Yee-Haw! Or, I Survived My First Year Teaching Middle School

 It’s currently 56 degrees and rain is pattering on the drain pipe as I am typing this from my patio wearing my flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt.  When I envisioned this day, I pictured 75, sunny, tank tops and shorts, but the coffee is warm, the birds are chirping, and y’all, it is the very first day of my summer vacation! And I could sit here all morning drinking coffee and listening to the birds and that would be all I have to do today.  That makes me smile and breathe deep.

Me, smiling, and breathing deep

I like to take the end of a school year to reflect; I do a better job in late May than late December of seeing what the year brought.  This year brought an awful lot of change.  New state, new school, new grade being taught.  I was kind of caught up in a whirlwind of new and being the new person until about January.  I was in my own self-imposed vortex of laying kind of low, being charming and agreeable, and seeing how things were done.  Yuck!  Charming and agreeable are not how I normally run. I also ran out of all estrogen in my body at this time so there were some bleak weeks, I will admit.  

For a while, I really missed my old school.  My own confident self striding around answering to “Coach” and “Hey Miss” while joking with my teacher friends in the hallway between classes. I missed teaching my Women’s class and the room full of avid learners who pushed me to learn more and do better.  I missed the developed humor and sarcasm of a Junior or Senior in high school.  I missed the comfort and familiarity of teaching what I knew.  I have to say that even when I was wallowing in what I missed, I was very conscious of how great this new school was; I just had to get used to middle schoolers.

If it has been awhile since you were in middle school or had a middle schooler, let me remind you that these are indeed some of the worst years of your/their lives.  Friends are friends until they are not, your body is changing and you know that everyone around you knows, and because no one is confident, every one acts overconfident.  Boys this age truly believe cologne or body spray masks stink.  It does not; it makes a new level of stink.  And they touch each other all the time.  ALLLLLLLLL the time.  Half of the girls have hit puberty and maturity and look on with abject horror.  The other half compete with the boys, not by touching, but by being as loud as they can be at all times.  They also make up words and yell them at each other and use them in sentences.  Take my eyes if I have to read “skibbidy” as an answer one more time.

I think it was about November when I came out of my shell shock and started to see past the yelling and stink and carnage of my classroom management.  This may be around the same time a kid lost a tooth in class and I realized  that they were still just kind of babies.  I stopped expecting what I was used to and just tried to appreciate what was different.  I saw hands shoot into the air to answer a question.  I realized that this age is game to try all kinds of new things if you explain what is happening exactly 45 times in a row and with pictures.  They have a desire to learn new things if not necessarily a desire to read or write about what they read.  They question everything.  And, they can be really, really sweet.  They sign their notes “love” because they are still little and cute.  I remembered from myself and my own kids that they want you to see them, recognize who they are right now, and understand that somehow, they will never have a pencil for class.  They can be so patient and kind to others.  They speak in Polish to the student from Ukraine so that he can be part of the conversation.  They take the student from Mexico who only speaks Spanish under their wing and show him it is okay to laugh at your terrible attempts at Spanish.  They love a Kahoot and winning and a Jolly Rancher.  There is joy amidst the chaos when you start looking and I am so glad that I started looking.  

The school and district I work at are truly magical and I have recognized that from the start.  Amazing admin, teachers who have been there 20, 25, 30 years!  They have included me in all things from the first day and checked in with me and questioned why anyone would move from Texas to Illinois.  They gave me advice and comfort and as I stopped confining myself to my self-imposed vortex of being charming and agreeable, I realized they were also providing me with community.  And you definitely need a warm feeling like that when it is negative 100 degrees with the wind chill.

One of the first days of class this year, my terrible 7th period asked me to “yee-haw”.  I was from Texas and in their minds, everyone from Texas would say “yee-haw”.  I declined and they pestered and I said not until the last day of school.  I will be damned if these kids who can’t remember a book or a writing utensil or when things are due remembered allllllll year that I said I would yee-haw on the very last day.  On that very last day, someone shouted “Ms. McMahon, it’s the last day and you promised you would yee-haw” and the rest of the class screamed that I promised and even my Ukrainian student nodded in stoic agreement.  So, I quieted them down, told them all eyes on me, and proceeded to pretend to swing a rope over my head while letting loose the loudest, most Texan-sounding YEE-HAW while they hooted and tripped over themselves and banged the desks with excitement.  It was an insane sort of magical moment and it’s what keeps teachers teaching.  

I will be happy to start next year with this past year behind me. I also plan to have absolutely no contact with anyone between the ages of 10 and 13 for the next three months to rest my weary ears.  If you need me, I will be sipping coffee, listening to the birds, and smiling.

Not the best view, but the birds abound.

A Week Without Chocolate

My person recently commented that I hadn't written in awhile.  I nodded and said I knew and was quiet for a minute. (just a minute).  I said that I felt it was silly to write about small things in my life while the world was a dumpster fire.  He said he got that but isn't it when we stop doing the things we enjoy that the people torching the world as we know it win?  He is very wise, my person.  You have him to thank for this missive!

In the past week, I have done something I did not think I could ever, ever do.  Ready?  I am really so proud of this one.  No, I didn't set a record pace for anything.  And sadly, my Spanish is still terrible.  I didn't graduate anything or enroll in anything.  I didn't save anyone or do anything noble.  But you know what I was able to do?  I went an entire week without eating anything chocolate!!! If you know me, you know what a feat this is!  I love chocolate.  I love to smell it and eat it and bake with it.  And for an entire week, nary a cocoa-dusted or chocolate-studded anything has passed my lips.  I expect my "One Week Without Chocolate" badge to come in the mail any day now. Hmm, this reminds me that I am still waiting on my  "Survived My First Midwest Winter" badge. 

I have gotten through life believing that one handful of chocolate chips a day is more important than 60 ounces of water for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  And if one handful is good, two is definitely better.  And that handful of chocolate chips doesn't count for a serving of sweets so go ahead and eat a Reese's cup or whatever other desk chocolate you might come across.  I have felt and treated chocolate like its own food group my entire life.  I prefer dark chocolate and dark chocolate chips, but I will eat milk chocolate and feel no sadness.  I also can't quite enjoy baking if there isn't chocolate involved.  Banana bread?  Needs chocolate chips.  Same with pumpkin or, really, any bread or muffin.  Brownies?  Have to bite into a chocolate chip to make it totally satisfying.  I have passed this love of chocolate onto my children and one of my favorite memories is a tiny Sophie declaring, "MAMA, I need chocolate."  I felt that in my bones and got this tiny child the chocolate she needed and some for me as well.

I swear I can smell this right now.

Why have I had a week of forgoing something I love so much?  Well, as stated, I did just survive my first Midwest winter.  There are a few different ways that I acclimated to survive a true winter in a very long time.  First, I curled under an electric blanket on the couch a lot.  SO much warmth and the cats liked it too.  Second, many days I didn't go outside again once I got home from work.  No reason to go back out there in that mess.  Third, my person and I regaled each other by making dishes from our youth that depended heavily on carbs on carbs with cheese.  Yum.  Family-size portions for two people.  Delicious, family-sized portions for two people.  When you are curled up under an electric blanket, eating carbs and carbs on cheese seems like a very good thing.  When the weather gets better and you put on a pair of shorts for the first time in six months and the horror of your prison-pallor thighs stares back at you, you realize maybe a little too much of a good thing.  This combined with the fact I am a middle-aged woman with a sluggish metabolism has left me making some new choices.

Knowing that chocolate has always been my Achilles' heel, I think I just needed to see if I could go a day and then two days and now a week without chocolate.  Could I control what has controlled me for so long?  And I could.  Last week alone, I turned down M&Ms and a chocolate chip cookie brownie combo! It was kind of empowering in a world where I can not control big things like the economy or the general lack of humanity to control one small thing instead. 

I am drinking more water and moving more and added weights back into my life and once or twice a week, standing in a hot room doing hot yoga and sweating like my life depends on it.  Because it does.  Because I want to be healthy and hanging off of a mountain when I am 80 and older.  And I really like to eat.  I love to eat, actually.  I love the taste of food and the memories it can evoke.  I love the smell of something in the oven and that same smell reheated at lunch the next day.  But I can love food and still be mindful of it.  I can eat carbs on carbs on cheese, but maybe not family portions of them.  I also know that I will definitely bring back chocolate into my world and mouth soon because I love it and enjoy it; just maybe not by the handful. 

Strong, Opinionated, and Loud

 In this month of Women's History, today is International Women's Day.  In our current political climate (oppressive with a touch of impending doom on the horizon), I doubt it will get enough coverage.  I have always been interested in women and their history and the things that they have done and overcome and continue to do.  I miss teaching my Women, Words, and Wisdom class and watching young girls learn and inspire me to learn more every single day.  As a teacher, of course I am indoctrinating all of my students, and brought a week of Women's History Month to my 7th graders.  I had them journal for three minutes writing down the names of every famous woman they could think of.  At the end of three minutes, they had to cross out any actresses, then musicians, then TikTok personalities.  They had very small lists left.  My favorite moment came when one girl asked "Why don't we learn more about women?".  Indeed and agreed.

I think it comes from being curious. I think it comes from being ten and being told girls can't play the drums in the Fife & Drum Corps; only boys.  I think it comes from being eleven and being the first girl to play the drums in that said Corps.  I think it comes from being an athlete and treated like what I was doing was tolerated but not encouraged.  I think it is from having a boss in my early twenties that spent more time looking down my shirt than listening to what I was saying.  I could go on and on about my own perceived injustices or the mistreatment of women but today is a celebration.  Today is a day to stop and encourage and applaud.

I am grateful to the women of history who suffered so I can vote.  And own property. (not on this teacher salary but had I made better career choices, sure).  Women who demanded their fair share.  Women who voted for laws, changed laws, made laws to reflect that women were an important part of this world.  

I am grateful for the first women to do anything.  For Sally Ride and Jeanette Rankin.  For Elizabeth Jennings and Elizabeth Warren.  For RBG, HRC, and AOC.  For Katherine Johnson and Alice Paul.  For Susan B. Anthony and Michelle Obama.  For all the women who climbed and climbed until they shattered glass ceilings for the women after them.  For the women in the #MeToo movement who stood up and spoke up and said this is not boys being boys, this is rape.  Who gave other women courage to do the same.  

I am grateful for my mother and my aunts who are some of the strongest, loudest, opinionated, and caring people I know. They showed me how to stand up for myself, how to use my words in ways that matter, and how to love people around me.  I learned the importance of family; the ties we strain against when we are young and long for as we get older.  

I am grateful for my sisters, my first friends and enemies.  For carving a path of success so wide that I could pick which way I wanted to go.  For telling on me and shielding me.  We shared a room and hated each other.  We all moved out and realized how much we loved one another.  They modeled working and having babies and doing all the things well.  They too are strong, loud, opinionated, and caring.  They taught me colorful words and are in the center of memories filled with love and laughter.

I am grateful to the friends who stay with me as we age.  For the transition from moms with littles to moms with empty nests.  Who held my hand and my heart as I transitioned to other stages alone.  Who love my kids because they knew them tiny and revel in them grown as I do theirs.  Who are strong, and loud, and opinionated, and beautiful.  Who are funny, and political, and knowledgeable, and inspiring.

I am grateful for my daughter. She gives me the passion to keep fighting the things I am so tired of fighting against.  She gives me hope and purpose and clarity.  For her strength, her sense of what is right and wrong, for her laughter.  My God, for her laughter.  I am grateful for the young women I have taught and coached.  Who compete in ways that leave me breathless.  Who wonder and question and listen and learn and constantly move to me to know more, to do better, to be better.  To hope.

I am grateful to the women I have taught with and now teach with.  Who model, who listen, who deeply care about children who are not their own.  Women who expect more, demand more, and even when disappointed, do more.  Women who teach not only their subject matter but more importantly, how to be a good person. Women I have laughed with and cried with, (oh! that sad year), commiserated with and celebrated with.  Women I drew strength from when I had none of my own.  Strong women.  Loud women. Opinionate Women.  The best women.

I do see the theme of strong and loud and opinionated women running through this thank you and it makes me smile.  I hope you can take some time today and be grateful for the women in your life and let them know. Pick up a book about women and read it and pass it on to the next woman in your life.  Annotate in the margins!  Share your thoughts and your passions and your voice.  Celebrate the women before you and the women with you now.  Change this current forecast to one that is cloudy, but a chance of sun on the horizon.

Winter Weight

 One year, when the kids were tiny, we went to Buffalo for Christmas.  There was a bunch of snow and cousins to play with and fun to be had and I believe the kids and I stayed a solid two weeks up there.  It was also bitterly, bitterly cold and every single time we went outside those two weeks, my sweet Texas-born baby William would burst into tears.  Like instantly.  Step outside, face crinkled up, real tears and sobbing within seconds.  I am reminded of this right now as the full weight of winter settles upon me and I, too, want to burst into tears every time I step outside.

Yesterday, it was -26 with the wind chill.  Oh, that's the wind chill, you say.  Okay, true, but until you have had a midwestern winter wind come barreling over the plains and punch you straight on, you may not talk to me of wind chill.  I find that even I am at a loss as to how to best describe that first assault of -26 wind on exposed and unexposed body parts.  Bitter, biting, bracing, polar, vortex, criminal.  Adequate descriptors, I guess. Cutting, slicing, and murderous might be better.  You can wear as many layers as you want; that wind finds a way in.  And settles right into your bones and gives you a weird, instant headache.  I have found it has made me religious once again as all of my curse words are preceded by "Holy".  This morning, snow was added to the wind and when those tiny pellets of murderous, menacing, maniacal moisture hit my face along with that wind, I did not burst into tears, but I did burst out with "What even is this?"

You may be wondering why I am even outside to begin with because surely school is closed when it is that cold.  Some schools did close yesterday, but not mine.  It is the Midwest and people soldier on here.  That put me in a mood beyond grouchy. Despondent, despairing, depressed.  I had forgotten how winter eats away at you and your best intentions to enjoy winter.  Grey skies, subhuman temperatures, salt everywhere.  Omg.  The salt from the roads tracked in every where you go.  Puddles of snow-ice-salt slush at your feet.  Good intentions to eat better blasted away by bone-chilling cold that demands hot things smothered in cheese and meat and carbs.  And not moving from the couch once you get there because you need that heated blanket as you eat your heated carbs.

I am really trying to not let winter beat me, but holy crap, winter is a really worthy contender!  We do try to bundle up and get out when the sun is shining.  We went sledding recently and that was as exhilarating and death-defying as I remembered!  WHOOSSSSSHHHH! You are careening down a frozen hill on a piece of plastic with no real way to stop or steer along with people who stop for no reason mid-hill.  And the long hike back up where your heart is pounding from nearly dying and the steep incline march and your nose is kind of runny and your cheeks hurt from smiling and freezing.  That was a good day.  My person and I also bundled up the other day to hike when it was 9 degrees.  We were like Arctic explorers!  The only people in the park trudging our way to the frozen lake.  I did stand on the frozen lake for a minute which was kind of neat. I was too worried about it cracking because of all the cheese meat carbs; I knew if any part of me went through the ice, I would have to just lie down and die right there.

as brave as I could get.

I do know that one day, it won't be freezing.  Or below freezing.  One day, the sun will come out and actually warm the earth and my bitter soul.  I will have survived a Chicagoland winter and add it like a major award to my accomplishments and achievements.  Until then, I will just try.  I will try to eat a vegetable with my meat carbs.  I will try to find beauty in the stillness of a frozen pond.  I will revel in placing a Buffalo Bills picture in my daily agenda and telling young boys that they are wrong when they claim allegiance to any team other than the Bills.  Other days, I will just give into that bitter biting world outside and be bitter and biting back.  (apologies in advance to those around me).  Yesterday broke me, but today I am trying and tomorrow is Thursday and Thursday is hot yoga and hot yoga is an hour of being warm from head to toe.  And if that doesn't sound amazing to you right now, you have not been punched in the face with a Midwestern winter wind enough.