I've always respected the work but I never gave much thought to the physical effort involved in being a teacher. But having spent eight hours over the last two days reading and gardening with the Prince scholars, I am a physical wreck.
Two cups of robust English Breakfast tea provided the fuel; I didn't yawn all day. But when the pre-K teacher asked her student to go back to the classroom and tell Mr. S that nap time was over, then smiled at me and said, sotto voce, So I don't have to get up off the floor, I completely understood her situation. I was pretty comfortable on the tiny chair beside her; the walk to my next class was a distant 10 feet away.
So, denizens, forgive me if my only original thought is why do female skiers have silly first names?
Okay, a Google search revealed only the two I already knew, but I think the question's still valid.
Breezy? Who names their kid Breezy? Apparently, the Johnsons.
Picabo Street's parents called her Baby Girl before she needed a passport and thus a real name. Picabo was a neighboring town in Idaho. It was also Baby Girl's favorite game - Peek a Boo. Still.......
Feel free to ruminate on this bit of insignificant trivia. It's all my brain can handle right now.
Yep, teaching is hard work. And elementary teaching is even harder. I like high school students, they can function very well on their own and you can get them to run errands and do chores for you. First and second graders? Not so much. They take enormous amounts of energy. Just two days a week, 5 to 7 classes, and I was exhausted and knew, last year, my time was up.
ReplyDeleteThat is as intense as this week has been for me. I usually stay for 90 minutes or so, and not every day
DeleteFWIW, it seems that Breezy's full name at birth was Breanna Noble Johnson. So I guess "Breezy" is just her, uh, professional-slash-social-media handle.
ReplyDeleteI didn't meet my stepdaughter until she was already an adult, but as a kid she apparently suddenly decided she wanted to be known by her middle name rather than her first. And I had a very young cousin die last summer -- although he hadn't gone through any trans procedures, he had decided to identify as a young woman named "Cloud" instead of his given name...
(On my first book, I was adamant that I wanted a "Jr." after my name. Dad had died 3-4 years before that, so technically I guess I didn't need it. But I liked being a Jr., and, damn it, why couldn't I retain that connection to the old man? But the publisher won the day: the "Jr." wouldn't fit on the cover, without having to squeeze the name up too much. If I'd thought about it, I guess I could've just dropped the middle initial and saved the "Jr.," but I didn't think about it. Heh.)
Name choices can be damned weird, almost irrespective of who chooses them.
Jill, an extended family member, is now Jack. So it goes.
DeleteDo you think the little girls at school named Niyob (3 of them so far) think John and James are weird names?
These are things I wonder about.
One of the people who keeps cropping up in comments on the Substacks I follow is a woman named Randall. She must have a file of boilerplate text saved so she can just copy-and-paste things like "Yes, I know it's a man's name, but..." 😉
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