For the Laughs

“Can I say one Mormon-boy rizz?”

Kathryn resisted the urge to rub the pinching headache building between her eyes.“No.” She was considering banning the word ‘rizz’ across the board, in all her classes. (According to dictionary.com, ‘skill in charming or seducing a potential romantic partner, especially through verbal communication’. Urbandictionary.com had a decidedly less appropriate but more accurate version of that.) 

“Please? Mateo and John need to hear it.”

“Still no,” Kathryn said firmly. Possibly it was harmless. More likely, it was inappropriate. Best to not engage.

“Okay, I’m gonna say it. Girl, are you Hymn 98? Cause I need thee every hour.”

Kathryn couldn’t resist a small laugh. “Okay, that was actually kind of funny. But please, less talk and more writing of your essay, okay?”

“See, even Mrs. Becker likes it. You think the girls in my seminary class-”

“Focus. Only twenty minutes till the bell.” Kathryn interrupted. “And I can see your progress on my laptop, remember? This is due Monday. Let’s use class time wisely.”

“I’ll just do it the night before,” Mateo shrugged.

“No, you won’t, you’ll do it now, when I have allotted class time for you to work on it. I’m going to watch the clock, and in fifteen minutes, I’m going to come check your progress, okay?”

They grumbled but subsided into a vague approximation of productivity, and Kathryn circled the rest of the classroom to make sure everyone else was keeping up too. She could practically hear Professor Chandler in her ear. You need to be like a shark. If you stop moving, you die. Students will only be consistently productive if they know that you’re aware of when they’re not.

When the bell finally saved her, she gathered her lunch (leftover salad and hot Cheetos, the pinnacle of nutrition) and headed downstairs. 

The staff room was warm and dark. Most rooms in the school’s basement were, what with only having narrow, water-stained windows set at the very top of the walls. It didn’t help Kathryn’s urge to curl up on the floor under one of the round tables and sleep. She could be using her lunch hour to continue lesson planning for the following school day. However, she had instead already decided on getting something caffeinated out of the ancient staff vending machine to sip on slowly while she poked at her wilting salad and generally disassociated from life. 

Her plans were foiled when the door swung open and Lori came in, already laughing. “A nerf gun, Kate? Seriously?”

Kathryn groaned, dropping her head into her arms. “These kids are going to be the death of me.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised none of my students have got me with a nerf gun after five years of teaching,” Lori said contemplatively. “Bad luck for you, I guess. On a scale of one to ten, how angry did you get?”

“I made a major mistake,” Kathryn admitted to the table’s surface. “Bad.”

“Oh, honey. What’d you do?”

“I laughed,” Kathryn said miserably. “Because it was funny. He hadn’t been aiming for me, he’d been aiming for another student, and his face when it hit me- it was hilarious! But then all the other kids started laughing, and now he thinks he’s done something brilliantly funny, and sure I gave the toy to admin but it’s too late now. He knows his comedic future lies in the ability to get another one, because the whole class loved it.”

“Oh, dear.” Lori was laughing now too.

“It’s just…” Kathryn paused, trying to gather her thoughts into something somewhat coherent. “I went to school for this, you know? I have binders upon binders of lesson plans and differentiated engagement methods and state standards, and- and blah blah blah. But not once in my four years of college level education did anyone mention what to do if your student shoots you with a nerf gun. Where’s the balance? Some days I feel like a fourteen year old babysitter, some days I feel like a professional, some days… I don’t know.”

“It’ll- well, no. It won’t get easier. But you’ll adjust. And sometimes I don’t know if there is a balance,” Lori said frankly. “Some days all I can do is keep them safe for sixty minutes, let alone try to teach them math proofs. You put thirty hormonal teenagers in a classroom and half of them have crushes on the other half and five have parents who are getting divorced and three don’t know if there’s going to be something for dinner and two are getting bullied outside class and one is going through chemo. We do our best, you know? It’s okay to feel overwhelmed sometimes.” 

“I guess that’s good to hear,” Kathryn said, picking at where the table’s vinyl wood top was peeling a little. “I was wondering. I mean, I’m so tired when I go home. I’m so behind on laundry and have been eating out way more than I budgeted for.”

“I thought I recognized the Wendy’s salad,” Lori said absently.

“And I don’t even have kids or anything! So many of you guys do, and I can’t imagine having to go home and do more childcare. Should I really be feeling this burnt out in my first year?”

“Well, it is April,” Lori said with a gentle smile. “Everyone goes pretty stir-crazy this time of the year.”

“Yeah,” Kathryn said, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, that’s true. And I do enjoy it- don’t get me wrong. I think it’s engaging and for the most part the students are so fun and I enjoy my subject. I just also feel a little burnt out.”

Lori was quiet for a moment. “One of the best things about being a teacher- if you’re lucky, anyways- is the community. The rest of us who get it. So if you need a little help here and there, or an ear to vent to, well, we’re here for that. Although I can’t promise not to laugh at your misadventures.”

“Well,” Kathryn sighed longsufferingly. “That’s why I do it. I’m not a teacher to help the kids, no- I’m in education for the laughs.”