Photo by Zulu Fernando on Unsplash Most of the time, I liked teaching. Just teaching, not writing behaviorally stated objectives or lesson plans, and certainly not grading. I was always the last of the secondary teachers to finish my grades every nine weeks. Grading and averaging grades was all done by hand, and homeroom teachers entered the grades of their students from each of the other teachers. They couldn’t leave until that was done. They hated me on those afternoons. It was all the other stuff around teaching that weighed me down. In addition to junior class fundraisers that required my presence at, say, Saturday car washes, there were school-wide fundraising efforts, such as candy sales or magazine subscription sales. All of these needed to be carefully tracked; it felt like a subsidiary of grading papers. The worst extracurricular, however, was the annual Carnival. Held on a Saturday in February, it was not related to any spiritual practice. We didn't observe Lent. There was a bounce house on the lawn and many games. The junior class was responsible for a food truck; along with the students, I learned how to hook up canisters of soft drinks, and I grilled hot dogs. But for high school students, the undisputed ruling passion of Carnival was the dunk tank. Students paid for many tickets to have a chance to send their principal or a teacher into a tank of cold water. It was one of those things I did for the good of the whole body, though I did not enjoy being dunked. My father died on a Thursday morning. Preacher was wonderful; he called Inga, who handled all travel arrangements for the church and school, and got me a flight to Ohio that afternoon. (Funny what one remembers in a crisis; I’ve never forgotten her name was Inga, whom I never met.) One of the secretaries insisted on driving me to the airport. My roommate was horrified. I was just numb, my way of coping when overwhelmed. Much later, when I could joke about it, I told people it was my Dad’s final gift to me. He died the week of Carnival, the only time I was excused.
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Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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