Getting ready to teach....

This past week I have felt posessed.

I have been extremely busy trying to prepare the classroom with Griselda and Guadalupe and any obsessive tendencies I may have are getting channeled into school shopping and making materials for the 23 incoming students. I'm up until god-awful hours into the early morning obsessively thinking about what we need, what I can make, what books I need to buy, how we don't have enough places for all of the children to sit, how we will need to teach the children two different alphabets (the Argentine handwriting is different, so they will be learning 4 sets of handwriting, print and cursive in both alphabets, and up to now, most have only learned all capital letters), who's shopping for recess equipment, how will we blend the classroom that will predominantly have children coming in from tradtional schools, how will I teach when we are missing material or when I'm not elementary-trained? Did someone buy a guillotina yet so I'll be able to cut paper to the right size? Is there a prepared first-aid kit for the room or am I supposed to do that? I sit up at night going through these questions and imagine each scenario being resolved, only to dissolve and present the next mess. And I can't stop thinking about the portion of empty shelves in the classroom, it looks so barren, incomplete. The language presentations will need to be presented in Spanish first and then English, meaning that there will need to be two sets of everything, one for each language. I will need to teach Griselda how to give these presentations since I will only be speaking in English to the children. When will we be able to do this, since she leaves at noon for her other teaching job?

These things have been preoccupying me lately and are pushing me to push myself beyond my limits, because even if this seems semi-impossible, I want to do it, and I want to do a good job, the best I am able, otherwise what's the point in doing it at all?

And although I've been working in Montessori schools for the past four years or so, I only had my own classroom for one year. This was three years ago. I suppose it says something that I only had my own room for one year. It was, at the time, a year of hell. To have such an enormous amount of responsibility for the first time in my life, these bright young children absorbing everything like sponges (and with parents that oftentimes demanded more from me than their children) along with a challenging boss, some children that were terrors, biting, spitting in people's faces (mine included), and stabbing people with needles and scissors, was just too much, and I began to unravel.

I am now having a flashback of an ultimate low point: the six-year-old boys running around the room playing Star Wars, papers flying everywhere, someone's clogged the toilet again with paper towels, in comes the janitor with his mop and plunger for the fifth time that week, a boy having another self-induced bloody nose, a girl doing cartwheels, another boy using a small work table as a pommel horse, and my assistant trying to keep one of the terrors occupied with a book so that he doesn't attack anyone; and me? I just remember standing there thinking, oh my god. Maybe this doesn't sound all that bad, you might say they're just being kids - but at this school, kids were not allowed to just be kids. My boss told one of my student's mothers that her daughter needed new shoes, her shoes made too much noise when she walked; another time she told a parent she needed to take out her gum, as, well, you know! it sets a bad example for the children.

I made it through the year, but when I was done thought, forget it, I'm never doing this again! So I walked it off in Ireland and went back home to Minnesota to finish my master's in literature.

Now I look back on that year as the year I had to grow up, and it was painful. Everything in my life felt easy in comparison to that year. So while I thought this job was ruining my life, I actually look back and see it as an antitode to my laziness.

While at school in Lujan, besides getting the room in order and making lists of what we need to buy, to make, and to do, I've been working on the lesson plan for the first week with Griselda, explaining my ideas in what I imagine is impossible to understand Spanish, broken up with fast sentences of English and gestures along with my struggling to grasp onto anything to help me explain what I am trying to say. She often laughs and says she won't be at school Monday (she has said this more than a few times now). I keep telling her it will get much easier as the year goes on, which is met with a look of skepticism.

We had a meet-the-parents night on Thursday, where I said a few sentences to introduce myself in Spanish and spent the rest of the time listening. The parents were a little concerned with the language factor - how will Griselda and I communicate? How will their children learn Spanish and English grammar and writing? When will they be able to get out? Of course this all set off a series of thoughts that didn't end until 4am. But I suppose this is good and my obsessiveness will pay off as long as I don't forget to enjoy what I'm doing. I don't want to be so caught up in the details that I forget what Montessori is all about: the child; and if I'm wrapped up in my head, I will not be serving the child to his or her benefit. I just keep hearing that old boss of mine, pointing out the dust and crumbs on the floor around the shelves, telling me my classroom is filthy, a pigsty! stressing the importance of math facts and beautiful handwriting, suggesting I see a therapist, and telling me that my students will be fine next year, when they have a good teacher.

But at the Montessori school in Lujan, I am relieved to know that I won't be dealing with parents who worry whether their four-year-old will be accepted to an Ivy League school in 13 years or a head of school that has a vision of Montessori that focuses on academics, only a fraction of the whole. But once again, that experience led my here. And when my new boss suggested I read a book written by my old boss to learn more about the Montessori elementary program, I could only smile.