Last night in my PTA adult English class, we were working on life maps.  Each person was to use bubble letters (woot! woot! throw back to high school!) to write their name and then use pictures or words inside the bubbles to show the most important events of their lives.

Now, I love teaching these adults.  They’re funny and witty and they have their minds in the gutter the biggest part of the time which inevitably makes my face red, but happens to be hysterical.

So, they’re all working away and coloring and thinking and looking like my fifth graders bent over their desks in concentration.

And then Guillermo in a bout of frustration exclaims with fervor, “Aye, Mees, this is impossible!  My name is longer than my life!”

I just had to laugh out loud.  Bless him.

Oh, and in case you’re a visual learner here’s my unfinished example:

“Yes, Mees.  But, Mees, it’s just that sometimes the gentleman runs away and I’m what’s left.”

Roald Dahl is a wonderful source for new words and always a kid favorite.

Today my class and I were reading about The Chocolate Room and silly songs that Oompa Loompas sing.  I was using my best reader’s voice and my students were locked on every word.

I read fast in places and slowly in places and whispered in places and shouted in places.

And right after the line, “Charming!  Enchanting!” Mr. Wonka exclaimed, a little hand shot into the air.

“Mees!  Mees!  Is enchanting what you are?”

I felt my face turn crimson and smiled at the honesty in those two anxious, excited eyes.

“I’m not sure if I’m enchanting, Rafa, but I am, in this very moment, enchanted.”

I’ve heard it said, “Cold hands.  Warm heart.  Hot legs.” but I’m not sure I buy that.  I just know that sometimes mine are so chilly that I can hardly move them.  Especially in the mornings.

So, I generally walk around my classroom and put my cold hands on the warm cheeks of my fifth graders.  They squirm and giggle and say, “No, Mees!!” and I move along haphazardly through the desks with my cold fingers buried in my pockets.

This morning I was making the usual rounds as we read together and I stopped behind Camilo’s desk. 

He’s the coolest kid in the class and we fight on a daily basis and yes, I always win. He’s not interested in school and would rather be playing golf or chasing girls at recess than listening to what I have to say.  He’s smart enough to get away with it and honestly, I’ve wondered if reaching him was in the realm of possibility.

I stood there reading over his shoulder and without thinking put my cold fingers on his rosy, freckled cheeks.  He didn’t take his eyes off of his chapter book as he rubbed his own hands together and then put them over mine. 

In no time at all, my hands were as toasty warm as springtime sunshine on an open field and my heart was a puddle on the floor.

I called his name gently, but sternly in a way he could not ignore, and he sulked toward me.  I asked him to take a deep breath and then to take another.  Pieces of the anger left as he exhaled and his head hung like the leaves of a summer flower left too long without a drink. 

His head hung in shame.

We stayed that way for a while letting the silence steal the sting and then he looked at me.  A ten year old freckled face with sweaty strands of dark hair stuck to his forehead.  Two uncharacteristically light eyes. 

“Miss?” he whispered.

“Yes, sir?” I said.

“Miss, I am sorry to hurt you.”

He didn’t blink as he said it, and the puddles that sat precariously on his eyelashes told me why he didn’t. 

Even little boys are proud. 

I nodded, the burn of my own tears having robbed me of any words.

Then, the man who said he was sorry turned and ran like a child out the door.

I had one of those.  I didn’t write or sleep and I don’t recall breathing, although I suppose I did.

I’m on the other side of that wretched week now and honestly, I’m not sure how I got here, but I’m thankful that I did.  The view back is far more than rewarding and today it seems worth it all.

We finished the musical and I fell head over feet for highschool kids.  They were rockstars on the stage, workhorses behind the scenes, and absolutely charming in conversations.  It was three up-til-after-midnight days that were more full of wonder than tired. 

Wonder at how all those kids survive and all that they think about and all that they fear.  Wonder at the way a sixteen year old can bring a full house to their feet by belting out a cookie cutter Disney song.  Wonder at how hard they work and how insecure they are and the wonder of realizing that I used to be exactly where they are.

And although the time when I was there, sixteen and unaware, has long passed, I felt their uncertainity.  And maybe it’s because I’m a teacher and that’s what I’m supposed to do or maybe because I felt compelled to, I hugged them.  Every last one of them.  I hugged them with two arms and I thanked them for their hard work.  Some hugged back and some shed tears.  Some shrugged me off and walked timidly away. 

And one precious teenage boy kissed me on the cheek as Colombian children do and said, “Miss You, this was the best week of my school and I will miss you.”

I laughed at his honesty, hugged him fiercely, and yelled, “I have a name!” for the fifty second time.  Then, I kissed him back told him he could call me Miss You as long as he wanted and said,  ”It was the best week of mine, too.”

I couldn’t possibly have meant it more.

I let her cry and did my best to comfort her without crumbling myself.

She’s a first year teacher and barely 22 years old.  She’s away from home and speaks no Spanish and she teaches middle school.  Science!  I cannot for a second fathom what life for her must be like, but by her tears I know that today was hard for her and tomorrow will be as well.

My first year of teaching was filled to bursting with days like that and at the time I wondered why I ever chose education as my profession.  Now I know that I didn’t choose it at all.  Education chose me.  Kids chose me.

And my friend Jill is lucky because kids chose her, too.

She’s meant for this job even if she doesn’t think so today.  She’s warm and approachable and middle school girls imitate the way she walks and the way she fixes her hair and the boys stare at her as though she were the blondest of all heaven’s angels sent to Manizales just so they could gaze upon her beauty.

And they do.  They stare at her all googly-eyed and then act like they despise her so that their cool guy reputations stay in tact and that’s the only part she feels.

Tomorrow has the potential to be more of the same, but one thousand tomorrows from now she’ll look back on today.  She’ll look back on the tears she shed and realize that she cried them because she wanted so desperately for those prepubescent teens to understand the importance of her presence.

To understand that she knows more than them and that she wants the very best out of all that they possess.  To understand that she can open up a world bigger than any they’ve ever seen or hoped to see.

That’s what she can do and she wants them to know it.

And they will.  Even if it isn’t today.

For me it was a time to shed my teacher attire and jump head first into the camp counselor role that I miss so much.  I ran two workshops, one on choreography and team songs and another on improv acting skills.  The kids were classic and hysterical and I had a blast watching them act, dance, and mime their way through each rotation.

Alhough I tried not to be partial, I couldn’t help but adore my team– The Peanut Butter Boom– the most.

There are seven of them, four girls and three boys, all bursting with personality.  Two fifth grade boys in particular are real hams.  They quickly adopted a “gangsta” theme and pimp limped all over the campus while simutaneously rapping their newly pinned team rhyme.  The girls struck street wise model poses and wore big earrings as they sashayed through the corridors and I joined the hip swanging action and tried to keep a straight face.

By 11:30 we were back in my classroom digging out toothbrushes and trying not to die of giggle fits as Pablo, hard core gangsta fifth grader, pulled out his Little Mermaid sleeping bag and Eduardo “Brush ‘Em Off” Toro, donned his cow pajamas.

We finally got settled in and turned the lights off.  There were mysterious barking frogs in the night and stifled laughs beneath Ariel’s red, flowing hair and then there was a whisper.

“Miss? Can we talk about girls in Spanish?”

I laughed out loud at the request knowing that I constantly say, “BOYS!  Speak in ENGLISH!” and then whispered “Oh, I guess so, you big nerds.”  And before I’d gotten the word “nerds” completely finished off, there were a crowd of pearly white teeth and pigtails around me.

I laid there on my sleeping bag listening to them talk and answering questions about boys and girls and hand holding until after 1:00 a.m. and I thought about them and their questions for hours after that.

Kids are the same in every country, I’ve decided.  Sure, they’re different in ways and languages, but their insecurities and curiosities are identical.  They all want to be loved and popular.  They want their friends to laugh at their jokes and to be invited to birthday parties and they want the girls in the classroom next door to notice them and I can understand that.

I think I’m like that, too.  Maybe we all are.

Either way, I’m glad I stayed up all night and ate pizza and made up secret handshakes and terrible raps and I’m glad that those Colombian kids trust me enough to scoot up close and tell me their secrets when they know that their friends are listening.

And for some reason, the fact that fifth graders flirt doesn’t bother me so much today.

No, they don’t lose teeth anymore and that’s a plus.  Their whiny voices rarely rear their ugly heads and instructions are generally heard and followed without the third grade tendency to ask 563 questions and those things make me happy.

But they hold hands and giggle and write notes with hearts all over them.  And, friends, I am NOT prepared to handle this.  The good Lord knows that I failed Relationships 101 (more than once) and to be honest, it just freaks me out.  They should want to hug me, for Pete’s sake, not the dark eyed beauty in the classroom next door! 

I’ve really handled it well thus far.  I have.  No panic attacks, no breakdowns, but today five (not two, not three, FIVE) of my girls came in from recess wearing the pinkest lipstick you’ve ever seen.  Think Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30. 

But on crack. 

And right behind them?  The sweetest freckled face you’ve ever seen attached to the shoulders of the lovliest little ten year old kid in Colombia and he grinned at me like it was Christmas morning. 

“Heya, handsome, ” I said happy to see him so happy.

“Hey, Miss!” he said as he floated past me.

And then I saw it- an outline of two perfectly pink lips covering those baby boy freckles on the left side of his baby boy face.

Heaven, help me, I’m not ready for this.

I’m sitting in my classroom staring at my bags and smiling at the way Colombian children say goodbye.  There are hugs and kisses and wide grins that let me know they might miss me just a little.

“Give saludes to your family from us, Mees!” one girl says while another makes me promise to bring back lots of green gum.  The boys hug me, too, and seem less bashful today.  Perhaps Christmas and a blonde headed teacher have softened them just a bit. 

There’s a giddy chatter that’s seeping in through the door as the kids are loading buses and I think I heard one of them speaking English. 

Life is good here, but I’m putting it on hold for the next three weeks or so. 

I’m going home.

Here’s to hoping that there are no emotional breakdowns this go ’round.