Much has transpired since I last wrote. A couple notables: I’m getting over being sick and for 24 hours I thought everything I own might literally burn to the ground. Additionally, the asphalt has gotten too hot for bare feet, all tomato plants are flowering, fire danger is concerningly high…it’s finally summer! Thank god. I love teaching, but man it’s exhausting. It’s kind of like gardening but with people, and at least half of them are actively trying to prevent the growth of themselves and everyone else at all times. It’s also way less relaxing, you can’t go to the bathroom when you need to, and there’s a constant barrage of communication necessitating professionalism, when really LOL usually feels like the most applicable response. I’d say it’s more challenging than gardening, but honestly a comparison of my data from each actually suggests otherwise.
The last couple weeks of school were a blur. Here are the things I remember most:
- One day at recess, a student stood at her backpack with a snack pack of Takis, clearly wrestling with an internal dilemma. After a few moments, she crinkily shoved the bag back into her backpack looking pleased with herself.
Me: “You good? Going to get fruit from the school?”
S: “Nope- I’m going to save my calories for later!”
Me: “Umm…What?”
S: “Well Takis are 100 calories (*they weren’t, but that’s not the point), and cake is…well, I don’t know, but it’s a lot, so I’m going to save my calories to eat cake later.”
…What?! Hearing my student already thinking about counting calories at 6 years old was upsetting. Our society really needs to work on prioritizing health and wellbeing. Also, she can’t even count anyways. Talk about a waste of time. Luckily, by the next day it seemed she had already lost any interest in calories. She brought in the most beautiful and delicious birthday cupcakes that I’ve ever experienced, enjoyed one herself, and was definitely the class hero for the rest of the day.
- One of my students went from not knowing her letter names and sounds in August 2025, to knowing every sound spelling skill through r-controlled by May 2026…basically, she mastered about 2 years of learning in a single year! This is a huge testament to her own efforts and resilience, and the support of her family at home. Teachers can give students access to skills/accommodate/emotionally support/provide basic needs like food and safety (while at school…then at least advocate for them to have this outside of school, too)/etc, but we can’t try for kids. Naturally, I started crying during her reading test which concerned her, and I had to assure her that everything was okay and I was just proud of her. And that more importantly, she should be very proud of herself. Not because of how much she grew- which was a ton and very impressive!- but because of her choice to keep trying every time it was difficult for her.
- Our staff DESTROYED students in our 5th graders vs Teachers Olympics on the last day of school. The greatest challenge was trying to get my class to safely walk their own chairs across campus to be spectators, but injuries were narrowly avoided, and once the entire school made it out there: it was like an arena fit for gladiators. All eyes were on us, and we were out for blood. Mostly metaphorically, but I do feel like there were some 5th graders who would have been pleased with actual bloodshed. My event was hula hooping, and the competition was fierce. Our top 5 teachers and 5th graders were hula hooping for so long that they actually had to add challenges to try and trip us up. Unfortunately, I was eliminated once we had to walk around while still hula hooping. But our top 4 were able to do that as well, and they also got to break out water balloons and throw them at each other. (*I have since gotten a hula hoop to practice so that next year I will make it to the water balloon level.) When there were only 2 left hooping, our AP announced that the students had won. In fact, one of them was actually a teacher from our SpEd department, but nobody corrected him. So really, the 5th graders were even bigger losers than they appeared by the end of the whole ceremony, but some of the boys still tried to accuse teachers of cheating. Based on the rest of this year, their bitch-boy behavior was not a surprise. Good luck to them with that attitude in middle school and beyond.
Since school got out, everything has been super relaxing! Not. One morning I was going about my usual business- making a cup of tea, pondering toast vs apple as a vessel for peanut butter, unloading the dishwasher, etc, when I heard helicopters outside. When I looked out my sliding glass doors I was alarmed by the sight of huge smoke clouds billowing over the very nearby hills. Before I’d even decided on toast, more choppers arrived and the sky continued to darken. It was not looking good. Mid-toast, I received a public service notice on my phone that said I was in an evacuation zone and it was recommended that I evacuate as soon as possible. I saw my neighbors starting to pack things into their cars and followed suit. I wouldn’t say I panicked, but I also wouldn’t say I was a cool cucumber when deciding what would get to be saved. That was a difficult task, and I would definitely do some things differently in the future. Did I save a single tomato plant? No. This will probably haunt me for the rest of my days. Thankfully, the fire spread in the other direction and has since been contained. All the tomatoes survived, but when I look at them I can tell trust has been broken and it is going to take time and effort for me to repair our relationship. When I finally started driving away, already questioning my packing choices, people who lived elsewhere were lining up on our street to take pictures of the doomed-looking hillside.
In the hazy smoke of the fire, I also made the difficult decision to let Frank the lizard go back into the wild. I did not have room for his enclosure, nor did I have anything else I could transport him in. We said our goodbyes: mine heartfelt, his trying to bite through my gardening gloves and unleashing his poop defense. Southern alligator lizards usually utilize this defense- in which they poop a lot in as many directions as possible- when threatened by a predator, but in his two prior relocations he never responded this way. I felt guilty because I knew the poop was about my betrayal and not because he felt threatened, but I just could not leave him inside with any risk of him being burnt to a crisp. He has grown strong, and all the neighborhood cats were being evacuated at the time of his release and thus posed no threat to him. If the fire spread to us, he had a better chance of surviving outside. I hope he traveled enough to get to a safe spot, and I think he will thrive in his natural habitat. Did I spend potentially my last moments in my condo cleaning up lizard poop? No. If everything was going down anyway, I certainly wasn’t going to spend any of my time on that. This did mean that once I got to go home I had to clean up lizard poop, but I was so grateful to be home safely that I didn’t care.
A sharp pang of loss hits me when I see Frank’s empty enclosure, but I like to think maybe he is off having a blast on crazy adventures. Or being swept up in a healthy, wildly fulfilling romance and becoming a lizard dad (or mom, I never could tell). Ever onward, Frank!