Tied to an anthill

-->

One time, when we were like 10 and 12, my dad entered us (Dylan, Dad, and me) in the country club’s “Father-Daughter, Father-Son Golf tournament.”  A weekend long tournament with two kids who A) weren’t that interested in golf and B)were definitely not good at golf… oh and C) I think we did this two years in a row.   Not really sure why Dad did this.  I suppose it had its fun moments.  While it’s a very memorable experience, we (as a family) don’t necessarily refer to it as a fond memory...mainly because our baby raccoons were killed by the next-door neighbor-dogs the last morning of one of the tournaments. 

The best part of the whole thing was when the local news camera came around and interviewed my dad and the other dad in our golfing group.  When asked how the weekend had been my dad answered, “Oh, it’s kind of like being tied to an anthill.”  Needless to say they weren’t really looking for that answer, and in the final cut they used the other dad’s cheesy answer about how great it was to spend time with his son who was home from school, or some BS, and then just a brief clip of my dad swinging his golf club like a pro. 

This is what the last days of school are like.  Between state testing, AP testing and field trips… there isn’t a day when you have a whole class at once.  And even if you did, there’s no way you could do anything too academic with them.  Nearing the end of April you can start to feel the tension of rebellion building in their teenage temperaments as you hesitantly ask them to---read p. 212, do Actividad 9, or GOD FORBID take in new information you’re trying to teach.  Once they start taking daily AP or State tests…they’re done.  Not to mention you are also done.  You, as a teacher, have no creative energy left in you.  So you’re left with what can only be described as baby-sitting and as much as you’d like to think high school kids can handle just chillin’ and talking to each other… they can’t.  They are just as antsy and energetic as 4-year-olds at times.  Here is one video of Joel (giant, power lifting champ) coming up with an activity one day when 4th period had been held for like 45 minutes longer than normal (due to testing). 

So you gotta find something that keeps them busy but doesn’t require too much brain work.  My solution to this was to make them do presentations this past week.  Each Spanish 2 student doing a 3-minute presentation in Spanish.  Could water-boarding possibly be that painful?  Ok, that’s insensitive.  Water-boarding is OBVIOUSLY 1,000,000 times worse than sitting through 90 awful presentations, but I’m telling you…it was, at the very least, awful and something I probably won’t do again next year.  One kid mainly read off the multiple awards his baseball player won AND the year in which he won them.  (FYI, “1978” in Spanish is read “mil novecientos setenta y ocho”… imagine how long it took him to read like 9 of those off).  My students were even looking at me and saying, “Mrs. Maples, this has to be awful for you.  It’s been awful for us to sit through but you know how bad their Spanish actually is.”

My options were either terrible, torturous Spanish presentations or being tied to an anthill the whole week (instead of just these last two days.)  Neither option is ideal.  But at this point I’m writing this from the end of the tunnel.  Today was the last day of classes and it’s glorious.  You look back and think, “wow, not sure how I made it, but here I am…I’ve actually made it, and I managed to NOT cuss out a kid.” 

Sweet sweet summer is here at last.. well in a week it will be... when the anthill will finally cave and let me go free.