After two days of Regents exams, I am very grateful for today's snow day. Waiting around in the hallway to 1)escort students to the bathroom; 2)be on hand to get more pencils; and 3) be of use in potential disasters, usually makes me a little too talkative afterwards. Think of it: I spend most of my days being pounced on to communicate and explain things. It's addictive. Then I have to play Monk with Pencils during Regents' Week. The first person who says hello to me on my break is in for an earful! At least, when I am proctoring, I am forcefully engaging students with my eyes and footsteps. But, I wasn't selected to proctor until tomorrow. Proctoring isn't my favorite duty either, as I am always afraid of losing important papers/messing up the order of things.
It's also just these kind of activities which bring out the worst in the nicest of people. All of us were grumpy. If someone was five minutes late, administrators were called. Keeping an entire group of people in a silent world in which their job is to maintain silence can cause them to be irritated by the smallest sounds. I instinctively bark if I hear a student's mouth begin to open. I mean literally bark. "Woof!" I also hiss. I feel like a predator, alert to sound as if it is my nemesis and my prey. The students are completely used to this and it doesn't even generate a giggle.
My colleagues have begun the customary increase in the number of sentences which begin with "What am I supposed to....." It's the silence and the stakes of it. We still have grading to do. We have planning to do. There is nothing more disabling than hours of staring and snarling. You can't read papers as you have to keep your eyes on the kids. You can't look at anything but the kids for the time you are with them. If you are in the hall, you scout not just for the teacher calling you to escort a kid, but for any stray people who might be coming the wrong way. In a building with two other schools, this can happen. Even in those patches in the hallway in which you have nothing to do and feel like you are being lazy, you can't leave because something is going to happen soon and you will be needed. Grrrrrr. There are no words for it.
There's also a great deal of politesse which emerges from being busy and separated for a good part of your day. You simply don't see people enough to get angry.
At meetings, you collectively decry meetings. You collectively swallow your feelings and volunteer for more such assemblies. Then you go back to your intensive universe for a while. Even when you collaborate on curricula, you are all quarterbacks executing huge plays across a large field. The kids become quarterbacks, too. We are all together, but alone with the process of creation, as well. It's like working on sculptures. So, take us out of that and our hands and feet and teeth all chatter. It's much better to shiver silently in the snow.
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