Newbie (10 page)

hi sophie,

i’m just checking to see what you are up to? did you find the math book? are you

and liam an item yet????

:) beth

__________________________________

__________________________________

Subject: Thank you, thank you!

Thurs. Sept. 13, 20078:03 PM

I’ve been working like crazy making lesson plans. Thank you so much for sharing your calendar with me. No, we aren’t an item, but the date Saturday was great and he’s coming over for dinner tomorrow. Hard to believe, but he’s more gorgeous up close.

Miss you,

Sophie

__________________________________

A
t lunchtime, I take a note to the office. Liam’s leaving just as I step in. He smiles deeply, and his hand brushes mine as we move beside each other. He whispers, “Seven.” My hand, arm and neck tingle.

I rush home right after school today, vowing to move the remaining To-Do List items forward to Saturday. After all, I’ll have all day—makes sense. Mina is a miracle worker. She has everything for dinner prepped in little containers in the fridge, and brownies are cooling on the counter.

Karli arrives as we’re hooking up the video game. “Bad news—we have to bow out of the dinner tonight. My date found us some extra practice time at the studio. He’s also my clogging partner. Anyway, we can have the studio time, but it’s during the party so we won’t be here. Sorry.”

Mina and I both retreat to our sides of the house and we are back, looking fabulous, in the kitchen, waiting for our dates with fifteen minutes to spare. Stev arrives a couple of minutes later and Liam right at seven.

Casual looks stunning on Liam, who’s wearing khaki board-shorts and a maroon polo. His legs are muscular, like he runs all day, which most days he does. Should I volunteer for recess duty?

“What’s for dinner?’ Stev asks Mina. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to double with an obviously together couple. Stev leans against the kitchen counter, Mina standing in front of him, her back against his chest.

“Pizza, and you’re making it,” she says, looking over her shoulder at him, then stepping out of his arms. “Well, and you.” She points to Liam and starts pulling containers from the fridge and two pre-formed pizza crusts she bought from a restaurant.

“May I take your order?” Liam turns to me and asks. We have to top the pizza in halves. He likes red sauce—I like white. He likes onion—I don’t. He wants mushrooms. No fungus for me. He likes pepperoni—yay! Something in common. He goes for black olives and I want green, along with spinach and roasted red peppers. Then we agree again on loads of cheese. We put the pizzas in the ovens and set a timer for twenty minutes. Mina makes garlic bread, wraps it in foil, and places it beside one of the pizzas while the rest of us work on the tossed salad.

“Why don’t you two go pick out a game for us to play later?” Yes, Mina is dismissing us from the kitchen. “Don’t come back until you hear the timer” was definitely implied. Dutifully, Liam and I go to the living room and begin looking through games for the Wii. Then we sit back and chat until the timer rings.

After dinner, we move to the living room for games. Mina and I have it planned. We will start out partnered with our boyfr…dates…and play some of the games we aren’t very good at. Then we’ll partner with each other and play boxing against them so we end as the winners.

Our first game is baseball. Stev and Mina are awesome—well, so is Liam. Every time I swing the screen flashes, “You swung too early,” and the final word on my performance is “You Lose.” In fact, I see those words over and over in every game. My confidence is faltering by the time we start boxing.

Stev and Liam move the controls with serious precision. Their animated characters look like they’re really boxing. Then it’s my turn to take on the winner—Liam. My style is more like wild abandon. Head, head, gut, head. Since I have no plan, there isn’t a predictable sequence to my method, and Liam has no defense. I swing at him madly, stepping closer and closer to the TV screen, wiping him out quickly. We’re laughing so hard our cheeks hurt, and we’re out of breath. I take on each person, up and down quickly. Victorious at last. This is fun and exhausting. My arms are really going to hurt tomorrow.

Liam and I head out to the porch to watch a thunderstorm move through town. Wind wrenches leaves out of trees, pushing them across the yard and down the street. They tumble end over end and whirl in invisible eddies. As we sit on the Adirondack bench, cinching a quilt around us, lightning flashes in stark bolts and rain pelts the street and roof in a rhythm sounding like applause.

“So why the career in teaching instead of boxing?”

“Right now the question is just, why the career in teaching?” I tell Liam a shortened version of my last few months in real estate. “Thing is, I would have stayed in real estate. It’s more than a little intimidating to be in a classroom.”

Liam scoots closer and tightens the quilt around us. “Really, why?” Our hands clasp beneath the blanket. His thumb caresses back and forth softly along mine.

The tingle that causes on my skin runs in rhythms up and down my arm. “I have to be ready every day for whatever happens. And things happen.” I slide my eyes to his to see if he cringes at the confession. “I worry about my class, and that I don’t know enough to help them. One more thing—I think it matters if I like them. That sounds weird to say aloud, but I didn’t have long-term relationships in my last career. In fact, four to six weeks is about the tops for real estate sales, then I move on to the next deal.” I laugh a little. This is my chance to find out the mystery that brought Liam here. “I guess I have more than a few insecurities in this job. How did you come to Rio Grande Elementary?”

“I’ve been working in the family business for a few years, but I wasn’t sure it was my thing. Last December, Mr. Chavez invited me to come over and see if the elementary school was a good fit, and I’ve stayed.”

“And is it a good fit?”

“I don’t know yet, but it’s fun to be around the kids. It’s something different every day. Right now, it’s good for me.”

It’s good for me that it’s good for him. “So what was the family business?”

“Hotels. Spas. Resorts. I’m really not into hospitality, though. I’d like to find something that interests me and go in a new direction. So I’m looking.”

Maybe I could interest you, if you’re looking.

September 15, 2007

Newbie Blog:

20 Hours a Week More

Teaching school is great except for the lesson planning part, and the paycheck part, and the thirty-minute lunch part. The shocker is that it takes me as long to plan a lesson as it does to teach it. Stay with me here…I teach five-and-a-half hours a day, that’s how long I need for planning, too. And I just don’t have the time. I have an hour a day in my contract for planning, five hours a week. I guess it would be easier if this were my second year instead of my first, then I’d just have to adjust old plans to fit a new class, but making it up from scratch takes for-ev-er.

This week, I used the five hours of contract prep time plus fourteen and an half more, and I only have half the lessons I need for a week. Yes, I’m going into my classroom again. Today. A Saturday. I’ll put in an extra twenty-five hours this week, making my wages per hour roughly equal to pathetic. In fact, I made more as a waitress my summer before college.

I used to think teachers whined too much about wages. After all, didn’t they know the salary before they took the job? Yes. What they didn’t know about were the extra hours. So, I’ve changed my mind. Teachers should be paid more. A lot more.

Something I’ve learned—buried deep inside the cupboards, hidden in boxes in the closet and shoved into drawers, the remains of every teacher who has ever had your room are with you still. Just clean out your room to meet them.

__________________________________

Subject: I’m So BORED

Mon. September 17, 20074:13 PM

hi sophie,

i am soooooo bored! i don’t know if i can stand another day penned up here. how long has it been? oh 15 days! all i can think about are ways to escape and the lies i would tell afterward to justify it:

•got lost on the way to the kitchen

•emergency to help a friend

•abducted by aliens

:) beth

__________________________________

Throughout the day on Tuesday, I take pictures of Beth’s class sitting angelically in their classroom, eating in the lunchroom, running around at recess, and then lined up to go home. I attach them to an email for her.

__________________________________

Subject: Your class

Tues. September 18, 20074:50 pm

Beth,

I thought these might cheer you up.

Sophie

__________________________________

Although I worked another six hours last Saturday to prep lessons, I didn’t finish everything I needed. Today is the last day I have every lesson ready. I don’t have the reading lessons for the rest of this week, but all the other lessons are done. It takes a couple more hours after work to create them for tomorrow before I head home.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I prep just enough for the next day’s lessons. My reading lessons for Friday don’t work out as I had planned, and we have half an hour with nothing to do before lunch. In desperation, I look around the room for a filler and see the stack of coloring pages Mrs. Hays delivered to me weeks ago. I feel like I’m cheating on a test as I pull them off the counter and choose two coloring pages and two worksheets for the students to do.

This is why Mrs. Hays brought them to me—because she thought I couldn’t plan real lessons for my class. Because she thought I wasn’t well prepared for teaching. Because she thought I would fail the students and the school. With more than a little guilt, I hand them out anyway. Ellie peers up at me with what I swear is judgment and disappointment.

There’s another lull in the afternoon, and I retreat to more coloring pages. This time, Ellie finishes the pages and approaches me. “I’ve been playing school most of my life, and this is not how it is supposed to go,” she says, putting the papers on my little table.

She’s right. I’ve got to put in more time to make this better. I was hoping for Liam to ask me out again, but even if he did, I’d have to decline. I realize this is why I thought my student teaching experience was a failure. I felt overwhelmed by the time and emotion it takes to teach, and I chose a different career.

I know my lessons haven’t been as good as I’ve hoped, but I make it through the week without a meltdown, putting in extra hours every night, and I’m working again tomorrow, another Saturday, to get my lessons ready for next week—especially Monday, my first observation and evaluation.