This is Your Brain on Sugar Plums

The holidays tend be a time when I am reminded of why I became a teacher. There are concerts filled with doe-eyed kindergarteners in little three-piece suits and miniature prom dresses. There’s a half a day spent making snowmen out of tube socks. The excitement as we approach the big day is palpable; the growing amount of snow (about two feet so far) has only made the season all the more real.

Outside the school, the kids have dug huge forts into the six-foot snow drifts that piled up above my windows, making our playground look like equal parts the surface of the moon and southwestern cliff dwellings.

There is of course the other side of the whole affair. Those same doe-eyed kids trample snow through the halls, stomp all over forts and feelings alike. Getting any work out of these little cherubs is nearly impossible as they seem just so distracted by everything. I take comfort in the fact that the holidays and the absent-mindedness, as they do every year, will pass.

At Greenwood, the last day before break we have the Jingle Bell Run. Put on by our gym teacher Mrs. Weyer, the students do a cross-country run through our outdoor classroom blanketed in a few feet of snow. One last sprint, one last surge from our kids running through the snowdrift and everyone will be ready for a week-long break. I know I will.

 

Winter Sets In

Image: Fotolia

The dark days of December have begun. I say dark, because it is. The sky is dark until about seven in the morning, which would be fine, but it gets dark again by 4:30. The weather we have been having is typical; cold, windy and grey. I cannot remember the last time the sun shone upon our fair schoolhouse. Thanksgiving, thankfully has passed, and with it, the hunting season. Droves of my kids were gone either physically out hunting, or mentally absent, their heads full of leaping bucks. A few of my students had pretty good luck this year, one girl bagging two does. She complains that she wanted a buck and may have to go out for muzzle-loading season to get another chance. It’s all good for me; I love venison, and hope to get some sausage this Christmas instead of another four coffee mugs.

There is a happy side effect to the weather: the kids want to stay in. The school newspaper is going well with droves of kids writing about all kinds of topics from a presentation on bus safety to a visit from a soldier on Veteran’s Day. I hope that I can keep up this enthusiasm on the part of the kids until the end of December, when the prancing deer in the minds of my students are replaced by sugar plums.