Some Years Are Like That

There are years like that. I had one of those in 1967-68, the year I was pregnant with David and taught in a country school about an hour's drive from Athens. We were out there with the chicken coops in Talmo, part of Jackson County Schools. I shared a room with another teacher. Not team teaching, no, I mean we shared a room with a plywood petition between us. It didn't start off so bad.

The teacaher had been there forever, and to my young eyes she seemed to be 90 years old. They were building on to the school so we had to keep windows closed because of noise and dust, but we had no a/c. It was only an average size room, and each of us had our own group of 30 kids. We were barely civil by the time I left. I learned to be in different places than where she was. The hardest though was she would play the piano for the kids to sing while I was trying to teach my reading groups. She had a piano in her room and we had no public school music. I think she was related to everyone in the county, and I was a young pregnant wife of a graduate student teaching for the 3rd year, but the first time in 1st grade.

I don't think I ever even considered considering her as a friend. She would not have been a Facebook friend if we had had Facebook back then. Fortunately, I was too nauseated much of the time to care what she did. I was just getting through the day with one kid who was repeating first grade for the 3rd time, another kid whose dad was in prison and his mom in a mental hospital, a couple who literally lived in chicken coups, and a few others from the upper class whose parents owned the local meatpacking company or were school administrators. Any time I'd feel sorry for myself, a kid would remind me to be grateful when they shared in show and tell about finding some new toys and dishes at the garbage dump.