Tragicomedy, Act 4 out of 5

Forget basketball. Ask anyone in this building--child or adult--and they'll tell you the true March Madness is going on within these walls.

March. What other month commands in such strident fashion? I mean, please. "May" is much more gentle. May I? But it's not here yet.

We've been teaching full weeks since the end of February break. That conference day we were supposed to have last Friday? Well, thanks to that ice storm a while back, it was a regular school day. Kids and teachers crankier than usual. Mostly--I'll get to that in a minute.

The dark clouds hovering over the faculty room have taken on a particularly bruised, angry hue recently. The rants are familiar: students with poor attendance/word choice/fashion sense/grooming habits/sentence structure, etc. Parents who don't care or--worse--actively enable behavior that works against us. Administrators who clearly don't understand What It Is That We Do. Deadlines. Piles of papers.

And, of course, this is a good time for everyone to get their schedules for next year. I'm teaching a level I've never taught before, and I'm doing another course I seem to get every few years or so, thus preventing me from establishing any kind of rhythm. (Those who are not teachers will vouch that such changes keep me fresh.)

Cranky. Cranky. Cranky.

Yes, I said to my colleague. But predictable. So predictable. How would the review go? The cast obviously knows their parts inside and out, and all deliver their lines with passion and verve, but the plot is a bit hackneyed, reducing the characters to flat stereotypes: the teacher martyr, the spoiled sophomore princess, the boy who throws worms and stuff, the text-addled junior with her hands constantly in her purse or her lap, the barking administrator.

Yawn. There's something better nearby... There's life outside these walls, even in that courtyard just outside my classroom window, where things actually grow. The grass will soon be lush and green, and gentle breezes will surely, um, stir the darling buds of... May. (Forgive me. I've read that sonnet too many times.)

See the humor in it, I enthused to my patient colleague. The deus ex machina, even. Invisible strings are tugging at us. We ARE reading scripts, and this is a restless falling action, hopefully leading to some sort of cathartic denouement: papers graded, boards washed clean, exams bundled neatly, students reduced to GPAs and class rank. Me, caught up for the first time all year. Yes, but we are stronger than those strings.

We can improvise. We must.

Another trusted colleague and I fall back on our favorite rhetorical question that gets us out of this rank-and-file March: "What's really important?" Well, it sure isn't the duct tape on the faculty room carpet. It's most definitely not the Regents exam. And no way is it the faculty meeting agenda.

March is gone. March on? Nah. Amble, sidle, sashay, and remember what's really important.