The other day my boss’s, boss’s boss walked into my classroom with tickets in his hand.  He was nondescript as he walked them to my desk and asked how many I needed.  I had no idea that my response to his e-mail the day before, 5 hours after his initial offer, was a winner and that that day would be the reward.  I told him 12, not entirely thinking, just a bit dazzled by the officialness of the tickets themselves--the hard, thick paper, deep red color, slightly raised black ink, official insignias, serious warnings and of course, the name of the main speaker, Vice President Joe Biden.

 

I said 12, but I hadn’t realized that I was supposed to give a geometry test that day, so I turn to my assistant, “Sorry dude” was all I had to say as he offered to stay back and administer the test as I take my kids.  Problem 1 solved.

 

I went to down the hallway of our building.  It is still kind-of new, but starting to be a non-distinct age.  It’s not brand new, it’s just new, I guess.  So I go out through the windway and into the admin. building to sign out a bus for the day.  Problem #2: two busses are out for maitenance and all other vehicles are signed out for some portion of the time when I’d need them.  I take a mental note, go back to my room and e-mail two teachers to enlist their help to get us to this speech.  It was 8:40, seating began at 9:45, the event started at 12:00.  We are at least a 40 minutes from the venue, somewhere North on I-25.  My assistant begins finding information on the event so that the kids and I aren’t totally un-prepared when we show up.  I take care of some important other e-mails, letting parents know what we’ll be doing when, giving attendance, arranging things like busses and assignments, like electron flower bouquets in a web of screens and space--all nothing and nonsense, when you really think about it.

 

Shortly my students begin rumbling back into the building.  Typical of Friday’s they are done.  Done with school.  Done with the extra effort to respect all rules and slowly, ever so slowly, drop a rule at a time until the hallways are complete and utter madness and the teachers start to be done as well.  But we are going to see the vice president, so I don’t care about that.  I normally don’t care anyway, something about teenage angst joining up with new vocabulary words and larger general schema drives me nuts because it lacks the gelatin of continuity.  Arguments aren’t false when presented from such a platform, they just crumble so easily.  I suppose that’s true of a lot of teenagers on a lot of levels anyway, though, so I don’t sweat it as I rally my own homeroom students in to tell them the news.

 

I discuss the issues.  This is as much for them as it is for me.  In order for closure, I must disclose the decisions and get confirmation that a mistake hadn’t been made--I must also keep their attention and what better way than to tell a story?  I start with this, “OK, guys, I’ve got news for you, but I can’t just say it.  So I’ll disclose it to you in the form of a narrative.”  From my stool up front I continue with the telling of the headmaster handing me the tickets and the initial stages of arranging transportation and finding coverage for the test I was supposed to administer that day.  

 

I decide to give them a vocabulary and spelling test before we get too far.  This will tie up the week’s business, as well as buy me time to construct more e-floral display’s in my constantly growing and shrinking needs of my e-mail box.  Besides, vocabulary and spelling are important, as tiresome and repetitive as they can be.  They are the distance between the horses mouth and the carrot.  The distance that must be closed for one creature to obtain the object of it’s desire.  In basketball they call it sprints.  In war it is the fighting before the treaty is signed.  In road-trips it is the part on the interstate.  In English we call it vocabulary and spelling.  Shortly they are done and I can continue with the plan for the rest of the day, this time including them.

 

So I tell them about problems #3 and 4.  Being related, I could relay them together without confusing the kids too much.  They were both due to not having prior notice.  Problem #3 is that my students are dressed like Friday at school (a slacked version of our already loosened dress code) and #4 is related to feeding kids for an unplanned, whole-day field trip.  They immediately reassure me on point #4 and quickly I see that money and food won’t be issues.  Then, I was happily surprised when 2 students offered to go through “shareware” (code for “you are violating dress-code, put this on instead”) to address problem #3.  So those in need head down the kind-of-new hall to get collared shirts on, even if it does look back with sweatpants, or athletic shorts, or whatever else these kids wear these days.

 

So #4 and 3 were getting resolved and I decided to take care of problem #2: transportation.  I walk across campus into a building, until I become aware that I should have gone to the other side of campus where the teacher I needed to talk to has a classroom.  After a few conversations (one with a literacy specialist about a student who is nearly done working with her, the second a spanish teacher who lets me know that a student of mine is way behind, and I elucidate to him potential reasons (but not excuses) for said behindness) I find his room and he directs me to the keyholder of the van.  Said keyholder wheels-and-deals with me to bring a different key and deliver a different vehicle after I take her key and arrange to take her vehicle.  Earlier a few e-mails, while the kids were piling through shareware, arranged these meetings and made it go smoothly.

 

Soon I was walking across the budding grass of a spring campus, back to my room, with the sun glaring off the south wall and the cars alive and shiny like sunday morning at church.

 

I tell my students to meet me by the van from whence I just came, while I get keys and a vehicle for the teacher who so helpfully traded vehicles with me for the day on the way-other-end of campus.  The thing is, I just don’t trust our busses for trips longer than 20 miles, and a van is much easier to handle on busy highways like I-25 which buzzes through Denver at such bi-polar rates that one would procure a heavy dose of lithium for it, if such a prescription were possible, or such meaningful change possible from a single chemical in a single dose.  Anyway...

 

We are all finally in the van and ready to go.  It is just past 10:40 AM.  Seating began and hour ago and the program begins in an hour and fifteen.  We are 40 minutes out, assuming good traffic.  Good timing, but what is that anyway?  We get where we get, usually, whether we want to or not.  Often time we are just there anyway, by no drastic motions, or forceful actions, we tend to be where we need to be... It is the practice of small minds to focus on where they’d rather be, or what better, other, place exists than the one they’re in.

 

On the drive I review my notes of how to get there.  I remember a lesson from my first solo road trip down South, and it is one of the beautiful gems of our inter-state system that is so obviously intuitive, it is almost stunning.  My mind is firing as I explain to the front row of the van that we just passed mile marker 212 and that we are going to exit 240 which means we have 18 miles to go.  That the exits are numbered not according to their chronology, but their position geographically, is a comforting sign that there is sense in the created world, that makes as much sense as what we see in the natural world.  That man isn’t always as dumb as he is smart--sometimes he is just right, without having to think about it too much.  I’m not sure how much debate went into the numbering of highway exits, but I take comfort in the outcome of it.  18 miles to go, at rougly 60 miles an hour puts us somewhere around 18 minutes from our destination.  Being 15 minutes in, I tell them with assurance that we are right on time.  It is 11:00.

 

The kids are quiet as we drive.  It’s kind of nice.

 

We take the exit and turn right, then right again onto the frontage road.  A mile back the same way we came, then a left and a few hundred yards to a nice gentleman volunteer who directs us to the place to park.  Up there, 2 lefts, in front of the flagpole, then back of the building were all I caught as I thanked him and made sense of it.  In no time we were parking and I give the kids the schpeal on what we are experiencing here.  It’s funny how with any given person, and the correct time, you could offer them exactly everything they’ve ever wanted and it wouldn’t make sense to them without a clear reasoned pep-talk, and even then, it would make sense in spits and waves.  I’m not disillusioned.  That isn’t happening here.  But it is needed regardless.

 

The walk through the parking lot exposes us with lot’s to talk about.  One student doesn’t believe what his classmates are asking him and asks me to verify.  I see a bumper sticker worth taking a picture of “Support the right to arm bears,” and  the ensuing conversation about what it actually means.  I remind students of my general rules of appropriate behavior, in my normal jovial way, which usually involves words that don’t (and rightly shouldn’t) come from a teacher except in times of extreme duress--or in my case in the need to make a serious point but not lose the kids to fear or drown the otherwise jubilant atmosphere we’ve been enjoying.  I simply say, “This is not a time to be stupid” then I smile, I make sure I get a few chuckles and a few nods and I know we are all on the same page.  This is a special bond we have that I can say things like that and not really have to explain myself, or not make the kids feel demeaned in some way.  I think it goes the other way, I’m letting them into a friendlier side by maintaining my position as their teacher, but addressing them like I’d address anyone I’m close with.  The intent is lightheartedness, but I don’t do these things lightly--there are serious consequences for teachers who get too friendly and I’m not interested in being “cool” to them.  I am interested in running an effective field trip and the best leadership requiring the least amount of effort is relational.  It is good to rely on our relationship at this point.  We are, after all, approaching 12 armed security guards, and several more secret service operatives, operating a metal detector at the entrance of the building.