A teaching teaser

Call me lazy. I don't want to think today, although I've got a lot on my mind. For example, I'm enjoying thoughts of the fun we had yesterday with the Presbyterian preacher here and the Plummer triplets.

Bill's Lodgepole Log gained five new names. Nancy agrees with me that the God tree is certainly unique and deserving of almighty reverence. Jacob agrees with Justine and Grace that the giant Lodgepole with its two trunks sure does offer some good climbing potential.

The triplets can concentrate their future play time at the Lovestead on the God tree while waiting for the Triplet tree to stretch its way toward the sky. We snapped pictures as Laura and her adorable darlings watched Bill "prepare the site" for that cedar seedling. Then, each grabbed a handful of dirt to secure its roots firmly into the ground.

Besides yesterday's good visits, I'm thinking ahead. This is the week I used to dread at Sandpoint High School. Now, I still dread it a bit, thinking about my sisters and all the other teachers who have to put in extra night hours this week with end-of-quarter parent conferences. They'll get a reward, though---a three-day weekend.

That three-day weekend was the ONLY thing that kept me going during parent conference week. My dread had nothing to do with parents. Most of the time, they were great. It was the logistics of the thing. Since I'm lazy and don't want to think, I'm leaving you today with a short excerpt from my new book Lessons with Love. This segment comes from the story "Ya Mean SHE Taught the Pope."

Actually, the true reason I hated our annual formal parent conferences concerned their marathon nature. Beginning at 4:30 p.m. and scheduled to end four hours later and recurring on two interminable evenings, they gave me a hint of that famous “I Love Lucy” scene years ago when the pies kept coming off the assembly line much too fast for Lucy to stay on top of her job. The pies all looked the same. As fast as she would remove one, four more would be speeding by, with some actually falling off the track. This resulted in one of the classic moments of hilarity in television history as Lucy danced around like a wild woman.

Well, I never danced like a wild woman at teacher conferences, but I do distinctly remember moments when I attempted supposedly intelligent conversation while subtly crossing my legs in a desperate attempt to keep my bladder from bursting and causing me uncomfortable embarrassment in front of the endless parent line-up. Indeed, some aspects of my persona had not changed much since the notorious pocket-girdle moments of my adolescent years. I still possessed an active bladder, but the miserable girdle that led to the bladder’s test of all tests in the seventh grade had long faded into the annals of Sandpoint Junior High history. Now, at parent conferences, my problem was that no bell rang at the end of 55 minutes, allowing me to race to the relief station. The parent queue kept growing, reminding me that a five-minute potty break was going to ensure at least another hour tacked on to the evening. In addition to the bladder irritant, conferences presented another problem. As most teachers know and repeat on a regular annual schedule, “parents who need to come to conferences seldom show up.” This means that most parent conferences go somewhat like this:

“Hi, how are you? I’m Marianne Love, and I teach English,”

“Fine, I’m Sally Jones . . . my son told me to be sure to come to meet you.”

“Oh, yes, Donald; he’s such a nice young man. Let’s see, I’ve got a sheet of grades to share with you. Let me find it . . . (tongue in cheek) well, Donald could work just a little harder; he has a 97.91 average . . . a little more effort and he could push that up to a 99 by semester.”

“I’ll be sure to talk to him about that; after all, he’s planning to go to Harvard.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“What does he need to do to improve his grade?”

“Uh, well, uh, encourage him to read more books-----blah, blah, blah----the session goes on but not without a reminder that Donald has read a novel a day for the past five years. Donald is doing fine, he’s a model student, turns his work in on time, always contributes in class . . . he’s guaranteed to be President some day, etc., etc.

Although my already-tired mind is currently multi-tasking on ear, eye and bladder control, my peripheral vision indicates that not one soul in this line-up of hyper-conscientious parents of super-conscientious students is planning to give up and go to someone else’s desk. They’ve all locked themselves into place, and even more have joined them.

A cursory peek at my watch shows that all of 30 minutes of the evening’s repetitive cycle has elapsed----at least three and one-half more hours of “praise, praise---your daughter’s brilliant; she spells well---praise, praise, an Ivy League school will be a snap, praise, praise . . . .” After one more story about Ashley’s busy junior-year schedule, the session finally ends. One more satisfied parent heads off to see the advanced calculus teacher, I monitor my bladder capacity, reposition my legs for stronger control, and extend the next upbeat greeting.

These conferences were always scheduled to end at 8:30. They did for most teachers. Invariably for me, however, 8:30 turned into 9 p.m., which turned into 9:30, and just as I’d think I’d was visiting with my last talkative parent---eyes crossed, lips churning like thick cement, bladder locked in permanent misery mode---out of the corner of my eye, I could see that figure of a lone person walking across the empty Commons area was NOT PUSHING A BROOM. No, this was NOT the night custodian; no, this was ONE MORE PARENT.

“Oh, God,” I thought with what remaining brain cells I had, “will this EVER end?” Fortunately the well-intentioned individual coming my way, a lifetime of intense self-discipline kept me from screaming, “Why can’t you just go home and let me outta here? Your kid’s a genius--- he writes like Shakespeare, speaks like Churchill, has a 239 IQ and will definitely score 1,700 on the SAT----now GO HOME AND LET ME DO THE SAME!” More often than not, this person, who’d gotten my undivided attention became so comfortable that he or she just kicked back and visited for twenty more minutes. All too often, after I finally unwound my knotted up body, raced from the Commons and wheeled into the nearest bathroom, I had to face the next problem.

Try going #1 after five and one-half hours of heavy-duty restraint. The flood doors had gone on lock-down. Approximately two gallons of built-up fluids remained painfully intact behind the barrier. Not even the first toilet flush could coax one drop of pee. Mercifully, a flush or two more and my inner mechanism eventually caught the cue. The dam broke. Thank God for big favors. I could now tidy up, head out into the frigid evening air, go home, hit the bed, teach the next day, and get ready one more night of agony.

Paid Advertisement, funded by The Committee to Promote Lessons with Love set for publication by Keokee Press, February, 2007. Marianne Love, treasurer.