“Vaya pues.” Roughly is translates to “so it goes.” That’s the Buddhist-sounding, laid-back attitude I was told to have when I first signed up to work at Santa Monica Bilingual School almost three years ago. Despite all I’ve learned about lesson planning and classroom management, that advice sticks out as more valuable than any other. Just to give you a few examples of what I mean, nothing shakes up the day like a student discovering a small snake in a backpack, or having a power outage during a 95 degree afternoon, or the sound of inexplicable moaning and dinosaur calls from a student during silent reading. Nothing can truly prepare you for the shriek of 10-year-old pretending to be a pregnant pterodactyl.
That said, it’s hard to define a “typical” day at Santa Monica. I guess the only thing typical is I always know something weird and wonderful will probably happens, and so far that’s been enough to drag me out of bed on my all-to-typical 5:45 a.m. wake-up call. This year has been full of even more surprises than my last, because I have a new class after sticking with the same students my first two years. My new students have enough origami aficionados and kleptomaniac coffee mug snatchers to keep me chasing my tail most days. Never a dull moment.
The best part of being a returning teacher is that, with my confidence growing in the classroom, I’ve been able to take a step back and really appreciate the students this year more than ever before. I find myself less stressed at lunch and recess, and more likely to dig out the volleyball to start up a game, toss the Frisbee, teach a new card game, or roll some marbles with the same students I just confiscated them from that morning. Nothing beats a casual conversation with a 9-year-old about the best “Plants vs. Zombies” characters or debating which teachers are secret mermaids. It’s what makes this job so great. Wherever my life turns next, it will be hard to find anything quite as atypical as a day teaching my students at Santa Monica.
Check out pictures from one of the typical, not-so-typical days in the life of Mr. Ryan here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153456262901461.1073741855.4…
