The "I's" Have It

You often hear to beware the Ides of March, but I think more attention should be given to the “I’s” of April.  Anyone who works in a school can tell you that the “I’s” of April are infinitely more harming than any ides of March.  The “I’s” I am talking about rest strictly in the “itises” that start immediately following Spring Break and quickly infect both the student and staff populations.

First itis is the dreaded and highly contagious Senioritis.  This used to effect only seniors, but in this day and age of everyone gets a trophy, everyone also gets Senioritis.  Kids are done with school, they are done with going to class, they are done with us and they are done with each other.  Fights are popping up everyone, trash talk is high and now with prom behind us, showering seems to be at an all-time low.  Colleges start accepting kids so early now that unless they are very highly motivated or OCD, there is not much impetus for them to keep trying.  They spend more time averaging their grades to see how little they need to pass for the year then they do on their actual assignments.  The weather is beautiful, they want to be outside, they smell like they have spent the last four days outside and it feels harder and harder to keep them on task and keep them present.

No one is immune!

This can lead the adult population to a secondary infection of teacheritis.  This affects all of the staff but for simplicity’s sake I will call it teacheritis even though it hits everyone whose job entails spending time with children.  You’ll notice teacheritis first in how we are dressed.  It is a slow slide from dressing like an adult to dressing in jeans every day. I can’t speak for everyone but at first I try to dress up my T-shirt and jeans with some carefully applied camouflage like scarves or cardigans.  Soon that even feels like too much work and I am debating if it is in bad taste to wear my Thug Kitchen shirt to work.  (It is, but I am so sorely tempted!)  Teacheritis is also noticed in how the adults start communicating with each other.  We no longer even need to speak.  We simply look at each other and see the number of days left of school reflected in the other adult’s eyes and grunt in acknowledgement.  Raised eyebrows say “yes, I feel you”, shared dead eyed stares bolster our strength and a quick head nod can say “you’ve got this, keep going.”

The third and final itis of April that is quickly infecting us all is tired-of-your-state-mandated-testingitis.  In Texas, our state mandating testing is the STAAR so I will refer to it here as STAARitis – please feel free to add your own state testing acronym in it its place.  As a parent I am tired of the schools telling me to feed my children a good breakfast and make sure they get a good night’s sleep.  I always feed my kids a good breakfast and I have one child who never sleeps so yes, let’s put pressure on her to sleep, that will help.  I will not say much about testing as I would like to continue my work in education, but good grief the hassle and stress and disruption!  Shut down this, move this here, no one talks!  I got to be bathroom monitor for the last round of testing and learned two very important things: listening to toilets flush for an hour and half makes you need the bathroom yourself and these poor children are so verbally constipated from sitting in a silent classroom for five hours that each and every one of them thanked me for handing them a pass, thanked me as they handed it back and told me to have a great day.  I refuse to fall prey to STAARitis and forbid my children to as well.  They left for school today and I said “Try your best.  This test is not a reflection of you, what you can do or what I expect of you. Positive reinforcement is the best way to defeat STAARitis because with just those few positive words, I watched STAARitis strangle and die.

You can quickly get caught up in the beauty of spring here and forget about all hidden dangers, all the itises waiting to infiltrate and infect.  There is no vaccine and no way to prevent the itises from getting you.  There is however one known cure; thirty-five more days until summer vacation.

The Good, The Bad and The U-G-L-Y

Ahh, springtime in Texas makes me wish I was a poet  The grass is green, the trees are abloom and budding and then they are quickly green and leafy.  My drive down 2222 each morning provides me with hill covered in various shades of green: light, dark and vibrant.  The trees are nice, but it is the wildflowers that steal the show.  First up from the ground are the bluebonnets.  People in Texas are crazy about bluebonnets.  Usually, I can take them or leave them, but this year they are especially abundant, full and downright gorgeous.  Look, these are the bluebonnets in my neighbor's front yard.  

Pretty in blue.

They are so lush and full and have so much depth that I fully expect some fairies, elves or at least Smurfs to be living among them.  I would like to get close enough to smell them, but in my head they smell purple (like grape Hubba Bubba or the scented markers we used to huff as kids) and I would be crushed if they just smelled flowery.  There are fields of bluebonnets on the side of the road and small, almost forgotten pockets of them that creep up.  After the bluebonnets come the orange blue bonnets.  I am not sure if those are called Indian Paintbrushes or if it is the yellow and orange daisy-like things that are called that.  Either way the orange among the blue is eye-catching and complimentary.  There are yellow tall things and wispy white dotty things and my favorite, the delicate pink ones that somehow remind me of teacups.  The grasses are alive and screaming with color.  People up north have their leaves in the fall and we have our wildflowers in the spring.  It is a visual cornucopia to admire and enjoy each day and helps detract from the not-so-good things about spring.

One of the bad things about spring in Texas is the Live Oak trees.  Live Oaks are weird and start dropping things as the wildflowers start to bloom. First they drop their leaves in March, so we rake and mulch and bag in the spring here instead of the fall.  Next, the tree starts to fornicate or mate or germinate or do whatever it is trees do and as a result it spreads yellow pollen everywhere.  Everywhere.  Your car is covered in it, your dogs are covered in it and the sidewalks are stained yellow like a smoker's fingers.  You are breathing this pollen dust in and you have allergies even if you never had allergies before.  Your eyes are sandy, gritty, itchy, red and leaking.  Your nose is sniffly, stuffy, dripping and raw.  Your throat is garbled, sore, and thick.  It's not pretty.  After the yellow dust, the Live Oaks drop crunchy, twisty pollen sticks.  They stick to your shoes, your dog's tail and are on every floor in your house.  They hold like burrs and it is not unusual to find they have made it through both the washer and dryer cycles on a pair of boy socks.  Finally, the last and most disgusting thing these trees with drop is worms.  Tiny, little, weird tree worms that hang from the trees on an invisible string so you walk into them unknowingly.  You convince yourself it was a twisty, crunchy pollen stick and keep going until you feel itchy and weird and run your hand over your head/shoulder/arm and find out it is said worm.  EWWWWW doesn't even cover it.   

Another thing you will find trying here in spring is hair.  Hair right now is ugly.  I will have one day each spring where my limp, fine, somewhat curly hair is gorgeous.  It will hang in sproingy ringlets and frame my face in a way I never thought possible.  It will not fall, it will do exactly what I want all day long and I will feel like a supermodel.  This will only happen one day each spring when the humidity is perfect.  The other days when the humidity is a dry-humidity or a "it might rain three days from now" humid or it's normal 1000% humidity, my hair is Albert Einstein meets early Michael Jackson meets lion.  The curl is both angry and tired.  It hangs from my head yet flies up on the ends.  It can look fine when I leave the house and by the time I get to work look like I never even washed it.  I then sit there at work and I swear I can feel it growing.  A quick look in the mirror affirms it has grown three sizes in five minutes and to tie it back, stat.  I am not alone here, everyone is sporting some kind of ponytail, braid, twist, or the occasional pencil stuck through a knot.  The other day SG was running through the house looking for a headband.  I told her the only one was in my hair.  She wanted me to give it to her. I laughed in her face. I love her and shared my body with her but there was no way in hell she was getting the last hairband.

Spring in Texas is definitely a mixed bag, but like all seasons here except summer, it does not last very long. I intend to sigh over the wildflowers, watch my veggie garden actually grow for awhile and enjoy the mild temperatures. I also intend to curse every Live Oak tree on our lawn as we rake and bag yet again and because the crunchy pollen sticks are already on the ground, I will be dodging the tree worms.  Good thing is that when the lawn work is all over, I can sit with nasty, knotted hair in my favorite blue chair in the driveway and drink a beer.  That and once again marvel at the bluebonnets across the street and think how pretty it is here in the spring.  Beer and Bluebonnets - there is a poem in there somewhere!