Teach the Children Well

I spent about fourteen hours in Oakland public schools today. The first ten were at the school where I teach, so that wasn't particularly unusual. The next four were at my son's school, where it was "Back to School Night." Again, this wasn't peculiar, since I or my wife are frequent and regular volunteers of time and energy to our son's school. Still, the combination made for a solid wave of exhaustion that is fast overtaking me.
As I sat across from my wife in our son's third grade room, I kept having a vague sense of deja vu. I had been in that classroom before. I had put the screen up over the white board so that his teacher could use his overhead projector. I had stopped by to check the computer setup that he had in his classroom and noticed the raccoon puppet hanging over the closet door. Then I realized that the feeling I had wasn't so much connected to this particular classroom as it was to the experience of being in any classroom. I listened to talk about rubrics and assessments. I heard about making connections when children read. I looked at the overhead transparencies about paragraphs and verbs. I recognized my own work. This is the job I do every day, and I took some large and strange comfort in knowing that my son's teacher was doing things very much like I do them.
There was a behavior chart, for monitoring the student's progress through the day. He uses purple cards. I use clothespins. There was a listening center. He has bean bags - I do not. I took in all the sights and then took in the sounds: the fan on the overhead projector, the faint but constant sound of shifting in plastic chairs, and the periodic tapping of a pencil on a desktop. Through it all, his voice remained steady and just a little enthusiastic. I felt comfortable knowing that my son will be spending another eight months in that room.
My own Back To School Night is in two weeks - I'd better start practicing.