pride comes before

I don't know if I've mentioned this, or if you've ever noticed, but I'm kinda tall. Generally, this comes in rather handy- reaching things above the fridge, seeing a band in a large crowd, etc- but it's killer on your back when you're a teacher bending down to look at student work. Those desks are low to the ground! So around my fourth year of teaching, my students suggested I go out and buy a light-weight folding stool that I could just carry from desk to desk. I thought this was brilliant and also made me proud of my students' deductive reasoning skills.

And I did just that. I found a fantastic, sleek, and compact stool at the perfect height for me to crouch comfortably. After even a few days, I found that my back didn't ache and I was actually interacting with students more. It was perfect for reading aloud from literature after lunch and handy when I needed to give my "teacher chair" to a guest. Needless to say, I was rather enamored with my little perch.

Around about April (maybe? I don't remember exactly when), my friend Moraima was getting hitched and I was planning a week away from my students. It was a class I had "looped" with, meaning I'd had the same students for two years in a row, and we were pretty tight knit as a group by then. Students alternated between asking who the substitute might be and what I would be bringing back to them from Washington, DC. And one student, I recall, told me I should hide away my precious stool. I came to regret not following this tidbit of advice...

I had a fantastic trip- gorgeous wedding- and returned to students as happy to me as I was to see them. They told me they had enjoyed their sub- a round, jolly older man- but they were happy to have me back. I shared the video footage I had shot of the historic building, as well as giving them all the (free) little gifts I'd gathered at various museums and buildings. Then I went to sit on my little stool. I heard a loud cry from the entire class:

"NOOOOOOOO! Don't sit on it, Ms. G!"

Puzzled, I asked why. They all laughed and began talking at once, hands flying in gestures. One of the "alpha" boys stood up and cleared his throat. The room silenced. He said, "Ms. G. I know you don't like us to say mean things about people, and I don't mean anything by this, but the sub? He was really, um, well when he sat on your stool, it looked like the metal legs were just gonna BUST. Sometimes it kinda shook, too. We all thought he was gonna just crash to the ground, but he never did do. So we don't think you should try to sit on it." 34 students nodded in unison. I thanked them warmly for their concern, but assured them that if it hadn't broken for the sub, it would surely be fine for me. Students looked rather doubtful, but shrugged and we all moved on with class.

It was sometime in the next hour that I felt the first signs of stool failure. I was leaning over Alberto's desk, trying to explain the hamburger version of long division, when one of the stool legs groaned and shuddered. I put out my own leg to steady myself, and persisted with the lesson. Moving to another group clustered near the front white board, I begin to sit and- before I knew what was happening- I was a tangled heap, wrestling with the black metal legs and flat seat of my once-loved and once-whole stool. Tears sprang to my eyes as one section stabbed into my inner thigh and I attempted to extricate myself from a twisted piece of metal. Students exclaimed, running to the teacher next door in alarm. When Mr. Kenny walked in and saw me, he covered his laughter with his hand and excused me to go to the bathroom... in which, I promptly burst into tears and examined the giant bruise which would form almost immediately.

My favorite part of the story isn't the fall, though. It's that the following year, a seventh grade teacher brought me an essay to read from one of my ex-students. It chronicled my love/hate relationship with that little black stool and even had a moral: teachers should listen to their students to avoid being really embarrassed!