I haven't felt useful or quite myself for a long time. Ever since my job was "reduced" I have been feeling pretty useless and constantly doubting my own intelligence and abilities. As I continue my search for a new job it becomes harder and harder to keep a positive perspective on life.
This week I felt like myself again. By a strange circle of circumstance I became a teacher for a week-long fall history (yes, I said history) camp geared towards home schoolers. The class I taught was Performing History - quite a stretch from my regular duties as a naturalist. For one week I had a class of nine children ranging in age from 7 to 12. Every day we met dressed in 19th-century clothing and headed to our home base in the historic village - the Town Hall.
We played theater games, wrote in our journals, toured parts of the historic village, and prepared two theatrical presentations for today, our last day. There were 7 girls and 2 boys in the class and, despite their age differences, they all got along beautifully. We (yes, me too) learned to walk on stilts, roll the hoops, and play skittles. What the younger ones struggled with, the older ones stepped right in to help out. Whenever things started to get serious, the youngest ones provided near-constant comic relief. I began to think of the class as my own little production of the Sound of Music - all of us in our little dresses and hats playing games, singing songs, and forming a sort of atypical little family group.
What I discovered this week was that the person I thought I only used to be, or even imagined myself to be, still existed after all. All week we had a blast and people kept telling me what a wonderful job I was doing with the children. This afternoon some of the children asked me what class I would be teaching next fall. One's mother told me that her daughter paid me a high compliment - she said that next year she wanted to take whatever class it was that I was teaching.
I miss them already. The fact that today was Friday was bittersweet. I am indeed exhausted from my long week with the kids and all of the hours spent on lesson planning, but at the same time I was so sad to see them go. Despite my aching feet, I was reluctant to change out of my 19th-century clothes and come back to the 21st century. I find myself thinking up new classes I can teach next fall so that I can be with them all again.
This week was so profound and important to me on so many levels, and it all went so achingly fast. I actually started crying in the car on the way home because I don't want this feeling to end. I have to go back there tomorrow and they won't be there waiting for me.
Here we all are:
