Formative Observations-Final Chapter

I went back to my classroom after walking in the rain (it hasn't rained here in about 3 weeks) and sat at my desk in the back of my room. The students were watching the movie, thankfully unable to see my frizzy hair and red hot face. I watched the sillouettes of 27 students; each one was fixated in the 1982 version of George and Lennie and not one head was on the desk. Maybe you remember what Friday afternoons were like 15 minutes before the release bell, and if you don't I can only tell you that I began to cry, again, at this sight. I relieved my wonderful E.C. inclusion teacher, who had so graciously let me take a soggy walk. I dismissed my students with little words, and the lights still dimmed, shut my door and prepared to call the AP postponing our standard observation debriefing until Monday. When there was no answer in his office I decided to just take my things and leave him a note, hoping he would understand my need for a two day debriefing of my own. Unfortunately, when I opened my door, he was standing there talking to the music man so I would have to tell him in person. He is a tough nut to crack, to say the very least. In the year I have worked with him I have had little contact with him. Mostly, this is from my own intimidation of people who do not show emotion. It brings me back to a phrase my brother coined when we were young, looking at our father and trying to figure out if he was going to get spanked or laughed at. "Are your eyes smiling, daddy?" When I am in a situation where I cannot read a person's body language or facial expressions, I often repeat that phrase in my head until I leave the room. Unfortunately, there are rarely times when said person erupts in laughter, as my father did.
Looking at AP I could only hope that his "eyes were smiling" and he understood my emotional outburst in his office leading to my abrupt departure. "You cannot take anything personally". I do believe this is the slogan HR uses to hire fresh meat. I walked up to AP and immediately apologized for leaving his office during confrontation with student. He stared at me for about 2 seconds before saying, "Ok, let's go up and discuss your observation." I had a very long walk ahead of me and I did the only thing I really know how to do well: I started talking. Walking next to him as students pressured the drink machines and cheerleaders warmed up, I told him how I felt. This is roughly how it went: I love this job and the students and I know I shouldn't take things personally but sometimes, when you bend over backwards and put your life into seven hours, five days a week, and sacrifice family and friends and money and you watch your defeats and cheer your victories and live and breathe these hallways and their goals and affinity for Lennie and then you have the ones who you put even more into, if that is possible, and they come around and sock you so hard in the gut, where your heart is always, and I wonder what on earth am I doing?
It was now my position on his couch and as I waited and took lots of breaths he looked at me and nodded, then smiled, and told me it was all a part of this twisted life of teaching. Betrayals and passions and failures and, of course, those victories. I wondered how he had channeled my parents as I sat there feeling like I was looking at Bread Loaf for the first time. Or listening to "The Boxer" as my sister sat on the other end of the line. And before I knew it I was signing my Formative Observation Data Analysis thanking him for a wonderful beginning to my weekend.
Sometimes the formal observations are most telling in the informality of our lives and our weaknesses. Or strengths, depending on how you look at things.