School: What a Shame

It's the end of a school day, and I have just said good bye to a class of rowdy and confused seventh graders. It's amazing how much school and teaching absorbs from my life. Teaching children is a bit like this, sometimes:


Your life is a bucket filled with water.

70-80 children come along with sponges and throw them into your bucket.
Their sponges absorb all your water.

At the end of the transaction, your bucket is empty.

Then you have to take their sponges home with you and grade them.

Okay, so that's a pretty bleak picture of teaching. It's not always true. Sometimes, they don't even bother to throw in their sponges. Sometimes they just sit around throwing their sponges at each other.

It was a hard last period of the day. Time for this bucket to go home and get refilled.