Early Dismissal, or as I call it Early Dismal

Students love early dismissal days at school. Parents, I don’t think they’re so crazy about them. As for this exhausted educator and his colleagues, there is nothing early about early dismissal days.

Early dismissal days for students mean long days for teachers. Years ago I began to refer to early dismissal days as early dismal days. My students would laugh at me and inform me that I was pronouncing dismissal wrong. I would tell them I wasn’t pronouncing it wrong, I was renaming it according to how I felt about it.

Much to my surprise, many students did not realize the teachers didn’t get to go home early on early dismissal days. Of course, being of a curious nature, the students would then want to know just what it was teachers did once they, the students, left.

“Well,” I told them, “we usually spend hours sitting in the media center listening to someone who is supposed to be an expert on some new teaching idea drone on about how we can all become Super Teachers if we just click our heels three times and believe.”

I’m much more circumspect about how I describe it to the students I have these days. Whereas seventh graders from ten or twelve years ago had a pretty good handle on sarcasm, today’s seventh graders are, when ic comes to understanding sarcasm, where fourth graders were those same ten or twelve years ago. Today’s middle schoolers take everything so very literally that if I told them the Super Teacher story, they’d want to see me click my heels three times and change into a teacher wearing red underpants outside of my blue tights and wearing a cape. And they’d be sorely disappointed when it didn’t happen.

Still and yet, I love them, each and every one, even if I don’t like each of them so much on some days when they forget they are the children and we teachers are the adults. I guess I’ll have to wait for the next early dismal, I mean dismissal day and hope they have a staff development class on how to like your students even when they act in the most unlikeable manner.

Until then, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator