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It was a Friday after a long week, and despite the sweet release of the weekend being within my grasp, I was having a bad day. This morning the teacher’s lounge coffee machine was broken, during 1st period one of my kids stepped on a piece of gum and got it everywhere, I misplaced my favorite pen, and a brand new marker for my whiteboard ended up being streaky, and I have to grade over 120 unit finals on the layers and formation of the Earth. All of that added up, and now, in 8th period, it’s taking a lot of my energy to not just leave the class and have a badly disguised mannequin take my place.
“Alright everyone!” I said, trying not to let my negative emotions reflect on the class. “Since we’ve been learning about fossils this week, we’re going to practice identifying the different kinds of fossils, and then we can cash in bean bags. How does that sound?”
—
I walked around and monitored how the class was managing their identification. I had paired off the kids, and each partner gets to do 20 minutes of identification, and 10 minutes of writing notes. It may sound boring, but the notes were really just filling out blank boxes with arrows pointing to a diagram. I was only half looking where I was going, and as I approached the next desk, my foot snagged on a backpack, and as Newton’s First Law of Motion states, an object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by another force, and that object was my body.
“Shit!”
I fell flat on my face, to an intense “oooooooo” from the class, whether from my cursing or humiliating myself in front of a bunch of 12-year-olds.
“Language!” One of my students, Ashley, piped up.
“Did you just cuss?!” Another, Mateo, commented.
“Mr. Grace said a bad word!” Came from the back, Lisa, she was snickering.
I got up and dusted myself off. I looked up, and 20 pairs of eyes met mine, either hiding humor, shock, or the mischief that all preteens have.
I sighed, “You all heard that, didn’t you?”
There were various nods.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, mainly disappointed in myself. I keep it clean for the kids, and usually I’m pretty good at it, but apparently if I have a crap enough of a day, tripping on a backpack can undo years of self-censoring.
The class was whispering, the lab long forgotten, and at this point I couldn’t blame them. Seeing adults be unprofessional is always a shock to their systems, because adults are supposed to be boring and do boring things, like taxes or watching a late night show, not falling on their faces and saying bad words.
“Well, I suppose you ‘caught me lacking,’ as you say,” I hear a collective groan at the misuse of slang, “Any chance you all can keep this an 8th period secret?” I ask.
The class looked at each other, coming to a silent conclusion.
“We will!” Mateo replied.
“Good. Now, back to your lab, we have 15 minutes until class is over, and the notes are due today. Got it?”
“Got it!” The class replied in unison
I finish my round of looking over my students’ work, and sit down at my desk. Now that I PR’d my way out of that class incident, I take a deep breath in. The clock ticks on, and with 5 minutes left to spare in the period, I break out the goods, not only because it was Friday but as another distraction from my slip of the tongue.
"The Bean Bag Bazaar is now open!" I say, and see several hands rummaging around the different prize bins. It's always nice to see that spending what little money I get on things makes them happy.
Eventually, the final bell rings, bringing the end of the period and thankfully, the school week.
“Remember to put your notes in the turn-in box and I’ll see you all on Monday!” I say as my class streams out to various sounds from papers, bags zipping, conversations of what someone is doing after school, whatever slang is the biggest at the moment, and of course giggles at my clumsiness and unexpected vulgarity.
As the last of my kids leave the classroom, I just laugh to myself. Today will surely be memorialized in the Ryland Grace Hall of Fame for them, and I couldn’t blame them. At least I’ll still be the cool science teacher to them, and nothing will stop me from making these kids happy, nothing at all.