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.