Five rollings and October's gone

I wrote this mid-October:

The funk of October has set in without my permission, and yet it feels like October is extinguishing itself. I drift in and out of days and weeks like a long morning sleep--not to be confused with my actual abrupt wake up at 5:15 a.m. October feels like a waking dream;  it's almost black when I pull out of the driveway in the morning, and before I can shake off the mental replays of the day, it's dark again. 

How am I already halfway through the month? It's crept in and out like the vanishing day-lit hours I get to live at home. It was set up to be the great white shark lurking in the water. It's more of a lingering, nagging dark albatross than a great white. 

Funny thing is, I'm a creature of the night. It was very difficult at first for me to force myself to go to bed at 10:00. I love the darkness and the adventurous, unknown landscape that night provides. Late night drives, impulsive hour-long e-mails written to old friends about the latest life revelations, sitting and staring to music, reading my favorite poetry call-and-response style with Englishy friends…whatever it is that kept me up until 2 a.m. most nights for no real reason. 

The difference between the night then and the night now is that the darkness feels oppressive. It means that I'm that much closer to the next cycle of school day. Darkness means time to go to school in the morning, and at night darkness means time to plan my next day's lesson. Darkness does not mean adventure and wandering freedom; it means responsibility and obligation. 

I've reflected on the questions, "What's the deal with October? Why do people loathe it so?"  While I was resistant for awhile to giving October the special attention as "the most difficult month," I must admit that it got the best of me. There are the obvious reasons: the accumulated tiredness, the end of the honeymoon period of student behavior, the classroom floor getting streakier and streakier by the day, and the papers piling up. 

In my case, I noticed that I was a bundle of emotions for the last half of the month. I felt like I had regressed. School seemed more daunting again; one Monday morning, I literally cried my way out the door. I think that after the first nine weeks came to a close, I felt more pressure on myself. I could see clearly my failings from the first nine weeks, and as I became more knowledgeable and gained more experience, I had the classic consciously incompetent person's revelation: I know close to nothing about what I'm doing. I was terrified that at parent-teacher conferences I would be discovered as a fraud. This type of scenario was playing through my head: "Yes, I teach your baby. Do I know why she got such a low grade on test 3? What did she not understand about the material? You know, I can't really pinpoint it, but it may have been the fact that I taught the material in a confusing order, and by the time I figured out how to teach it the right way, all the students were bored with the material." 

The self-examination set in. What am I doing here? Am I helping anyone? Am I teaching anyone anything? Why am I putting myself through this experience if I'm not even helping anyone? 

But there were excellent, affirming moments, too! Like when I received a letter from a student on a day when nothing seemed to go right:

"Dear Ms. Gray,

You are a nice teacher and I love your class very much that I want to go to your class in 1st period but it be board in Homeroom time.

So sometimes you are not mean you are nice on everything you have or got and I promise that you are not going to have a fit on every student at school.

From: KJ

P.S. Ms Gray how old are you?

And another thing: you are sweet like candy."

On the non-school life front: 

The Holly Springs community seems to be heartily welcoming Lloyd and me. This is evidenced by the fact that our house has been rolled or attempted to be rolled with toilet paper five times in the last three weeks. Each one is a story. The common thread is that all the stories involve Lloyd and me chasing the Marshall Academy kids down the road; the variations involve our injuries (sharp pebble lodged in the bare foot, large asphalt cuts on the palms) and our tricks  (hoses, a sawed-off baseball bat, vegetable oil, Mrs. Butterworths, taking hostages, calling police, and sprawling on the hood of a getaway car). I've seen something very strange in myself in a couple of the instances. When I'm roping in those private school rollers to clean up our yard, I hear Mrs. Gray. I never would have said those things to those kids before I was a teacher. Mrs. Gray had edged her way into Catherine.