A Teacher's Sense of Humor

I'm trying not to lose my sense of humor.

I really don't feel like teaching anymore...putting on dress clothes, smiling, preparing lessons, standing up in front of the group, projecting my voice, pretending to be enthusiastic about a subject I've taught for twenty years, looking out at a sea of disinterested, sleepy faces...

It's that time of year, I suppose. And I'm tired. It's 8:00 p.m. on a three-job day and I have another hour or so of class time to go. One student, who always stays late to chat, will probably stay late again tonight.

I'm hungry. I misplaced my debit card and then the little bit of cash I had blew away in today's wind storm, so I couldn't stop for dinner.

This morning, in my high school class, I gave the students an assignment that was supposed to take 40 minutes. They were asked to use the chapter vocabulary to create a movie proposal (the chapter is full of movie-making words like "director," "script," "scenery," etc.). Only one or two of them followed the instructions. The rest spent their time writing silly "Hang-over" style scripts or love stories.

Ugh. I didn't even want to grade those horrible papers. I rubber-stamped "I'd like to see more of the chapter vocabulary" on all of them and left the building.

Finally, tonight, while running down a floor to my college office from my classroom on the top level, I passed a classroom where Math professor had just yelled out, "Idiots!" to his class."Who in the world comes up with X,Y,Z as an answer to this problem?!"

I was a bit shocked, but still, I laughed and laughed, because I too have those emotions bottled up.

This semester, and the school year, can't end soon enough.