School’s Out…

“School’s out for summer
School’s out forever
School’s been blown to pieces

No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher’s dirty looks

Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can’t even think of a word that rhymes”

-Alice Cooper

Once again it is that day that every kid prays for… The last day of school.

My daughter doesn’t really get it, though.  She doesn’t really understand the sentiment of the poor misguided school girl named Alice Cooper.  Kids are supposed to hate school.  Their teachers are supposed to be witches and warlocks who live for creating misery in the lives of their students.  My daughter should know that already, since her mother and I are both teachers.  (I am retired now, actually… and I do miss making kids’ lives total misery.)  She is actually going to miss her middle school and all her middle school teachers.

She was up late last night using air-dried clay to make dragon sculptures to give to each of her teachers.  Her art teacher was recently telling me about how wonderful she is at art and how wonderful she is as a student during a recent scholastic awards dinner.  In fact, most of her teachers only have good things to say about her work in middle school.  And teachers are supposed to hate kids and hate teaching, right?  They are supposed to only be in teaching for the paycheck, marking time until they retire, living lives full of bitterness and revengeful interactions with children.

O, I am guessing that I am actually the problem here.   I never felt the way teachers are supposed to feel about kids.  In fact, I… like kids.  Oh, no!  The secret is out.  I miss being a teacher.  I miss the kind of devotion you get from the kind of students who stay up late making clay dragons for you as a goodbye gift.

While I was a teacher, we were not allowed to be Facebook friends with students.  Society frowns on teachers getting too close to students.  But now that I will never teach again, or be in the same room with any of them again, I have been saying yes to students’ friend requests.  So, I am now going to share with you pictures of former students that they have shared with me.  Of course, I won’t tell you their names.  I don’t want to embarrass them by revealing that they don’t hate all of their teachers the way they should.

So, there’s photographic proof that once I actually was a teacher.  And I know that it probably also proves I didn’t do a very good job of making their lives miserable and making them hate me the way I should have done.  But I miss it terribly.  And I would work harder at being bitter and crabby if only I could go back and do it some more.