So to share a little bit of myself with my students at the beginning of the year, I showed a little from this montage of one of my most favorite 90s TGIF shows:
They say it explains a lot about me.
Yep, I'm weird. #sorrynotsorry
It's the weird part of me that is normally the wallflower when I am around adults - the stand-in-the-back-of-the-room-because-otherwise-people-might-know-I-exist type, or the prim-and-proper-ice-queen type.
It's like the pork chop vs. the ham hock. The pork chop is proper. Its boring. It sits with its applesauce and attempts to fade into the plate because no one knows how to cook it, and it doesn't know what to do on its own to be awesome. But a chef can spice it up and make it awesome. Or, if you prefer, make it "bring home the bacon."
Now, the ham hock on the other hand is exotic. It's not seen every day, only read about in obscure cookbooks, or discussed by Anthony Bourdain in a hushed, reverent tone. Extremely difficult to cook and work with, and has a flavor that is like nothing else. (or so I've been told)
Sometimes, I act like a pork chop. But, really, I am a ham (hock).
It's the ham hock part of me that was born to be a teacher. It's the ham (hock) in all teachers that draw them to standing in front of students for 8 hours a day, not the pork chop. Pork chops are made for sitting in offices. Ham hocks inspire the leaders of tomorrow.
So why do all teachers at one point or another retreat into pork chops?
Maybe it's all the testing, the data, the ratings - we have to achieve a certain end, and we forget to have fun on our way to that end. Or maybe its that we fear to be different, are afraid of our own uniqueness, uncomfortable with standing out too much, or at all?
It took me a long time to embrace and fly my "geek flag" proudly, but it was always easier for me in front of kids. I always figured that I didnt want them to be as afraid of being different as I was, so I was going to show them that being strange could be exotic, that it might be different than anything and everything they'd seen before, but the end result could be out-of-this-world awesome.
But, when you are stressed, there is no energy to be unique - when you are bogged down with a never ending to do list, all of your energy goes to surviving. When all of this first started last year, a friend (whose wisdom is at times profound, and is always worth listening to) said - face it, all the stuff you wanted to do, you can't. You have to go into survival mode now. I didn't want to believe him... but he was right. Surviving is not embracing individuality. Surviving is getting from point A to point B, and moving on to the next task.
I was a little afraid for this year, to be honest. Afraid I would not be able to get back all that enthusiasm for teaching that I had before. That it was lost forever underneath my pork chop exterior.
But then, I started researching a new teaching technique, and I started grasping the strands of my former creative self. I started to come alive again. And I started to be excited for teaching again (I have always loved and will always love teaching - but any teacher will tell you there are days when you dont like teaching). And as I get more and more excited, and as my students start to feel that enthusiasm, the excitement in the air, they are more able and comfortable taking risks. And you end up telling stories about zombie unicorns and Batman and Godzilla all eating each other. 'Cause you know, that's how Rome fell. Too many zombies.
They couldn't cut the pork.
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