The incessant beeping of the alarm pulls me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning. Actually, that’s a lie. The alarm goes off, and I turn on the lamp beside my bed, but I don’t get out of bed for like another fifteen minutes. When I finally drag myself out of my warm blanket cocoon, I’m still rather incoherent and mostly asleep. But I as I get dressed and shove my computer in my bag, my brain begins to wake up and the first thing I notice is how my whole mouth seems stuck together, and my throat already hurts even though I haven’t said one word yet today. Is my voice even going to work? I begin to wonder. Spoiler: It croaked like an old ugly toad all day.
Before I leave, I swallow an allergy pill in the hopes that it will do something to fix this mess. After all, I usually end up dealing with seasonal allergies this time of year, so that’s definitely all it is. I don’t have time for anything else. On the way to school, I begin to wonder how exactly I’m going to teach my classes today, especially the freshman who like to talk. I keep thinking about how I can’t wait for this day to be over. And it’s only 7 A.M. Great.
When first period starts, the first thing I say to my kids is that they’re going to really have to pay attention today because I’m losing my voice and can’t talk loud. They laugh, and one student who is sarcastic and never fails to make me laugh says, “Ms. K. are you ill?”
“I better not be,” I reply, “I do NOT have time to get sick.” This makes everyone laugh, and I laugh with them. We move on, and the lesson goes well. Better than I expected, fact. I asked them to look at two short stories, one fiction, and one not, to see how they were breaking the “rules” of writing. After they finished reading and discussing with their partners, we talked about the two pieces as a class, and I swear these kids have never said more in a class discussion than they did today. Even the girl who doesn’t speak at all if she can help it, and even then never above a whisper spoke up two or three times. I’m not sure if they were truly getting into our topic, or if they felt bad for me, but either way I’ll take it. The rest of the day passed in a haze of normalcy, and I realized after the fact that it took actual effort for me to recall anything we did.
There was a point to all this when I started writing, but I think I lost it somewhere along the way. Another victim of the ever-growing brain-fog that’s spreading over me. And while I have no idea if this was the original point or not, something I learned today is that is in fact possible to teach through the brain-fog and the throat that seems insistent about enforcing silence. It may not be easy, or pleasant, but it is possible. Crack a joke, remind your students that you’re human too, and move on. Croaky throat and all.
Teaching as Storytelling 