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When
I left my principal’s office after hearing my teaching position had
been cut, I was in shock, for about five seconds, and then the band in
my mind broke out into a jazzed up version of the Hallelujah chorus.
After almost twenty-five years teaching flesh and blood students
and online learners from high school to college, I was done.
It had been a fine trip, but the pressure of trying to behave
myself every day was over.
The
release came none too soon. I
was already contemplating a career change.
I had begun scratching out ideas for a newspaper column on the
blackboard, on kid’s English essays, on the bathroom stalls.
I
would sit at my desk gazing out the window, fantasizing about the
writer’s life until one of my students would tap, tap, tap my shoulder
and try to re-engage me in class activity.
So
hearing the principal’s verdict that bright spring day, I began
cleaning out the drawers full of ideas that I had been hoarding through
my lives as mother, wife, daughter, author, teacher, curriculum writer,
volunteer, hobbyist, inventor, pet owner, and mid-lifer.
I began to put the ideas into sentences and the sentences into
essays. The result: The Half-time Show.
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