end of the school year; always blows me away.
knocks me down, knocks me out.
does anyone else sit like a zombie
for days on end
after it's all said and done?
my friend Deb who is an incredibly fine
hs art teacher- the real deal-
says she does it too.
this year it has taken a month to find a rhythm again.
...rolled directly from the final day, Thursday, into
Monday teaching Godzilla camp to 14
-count 'em- fourteen highly charged-up ten year-old boys, most of whom
i did not know before.
what i did know was:
i was sunk when my first words, which i could barely
utter as i scanned the crew that first day
while the completely foreign feeling of trepidation in my own room
crept up my spine, holding my vocal chords hostage
were:
"Looks like i'm the only girl."
to which they all broke out in
screams of banshees,
pumping fists
in the air,
cheering and jeering with glee at the thought
that a mutiny had already occurred without a shot.
and this just the beginning.
the monster in them remained intensely present for the remainder
of the week as i came to accept my fate:
i was living in a frat house
for the duration.
it was one of the most fun weeks teaching enrichment, ever.
there was not one social "situation", "friend fight", or other relationship
issue requiring my attention nor intervention. this, in stark contrast to the way i spend most normal teaching days: de-escalating conflict, mediating, counseling,
facilitating resolution between parties.
it was the scaly Big Guy himself who fostered peace in the room-
bonds of brotherhood were forged by mutual love of
the King of all monsters.
world peace should be so easy...
my fondest memory of these lost and found boys is in the final few seconds
of camp, as mothers literally pried them from the t.v. screen,
(some hugging the freeze-framed headshot-with-mouth-open-in-a-roar of their hero for dear life)
their fists pumping, yelling "GOJIRA!" over and over at that indelible image,
in their most convincing Japanese pronunciation, no less.
these boys made me proud.
and then they were gone.
Half had never known who Godzilla was on that first day;
their mothers had just signed them up. Almost none knew why the
actors mouths did not quite sync with the audio.
Four days of cultural immersion later, so to speak, Gojira rules.
