It has been several weeks, more than a month even, since my last post.
That is because I have been doing some very un-teacherly things.
Things like sleeping in until 11 a.m. and having peach schnapps with my salad at lunch. I'm leaving my bed at my parents' house in Maryland unmade. I've gone to the beach, traipsed through Europe and lounged by the pool with my boyfriend (who, for a few weeks, was not 2,000-plus miles away from me). For the first summer since I was 14, I have not done a lick of work. I love it.
But I can't seem to get away from it. This summer was meant to be a time for me to fully, decadently, unabashedly, relax. After working 35-hour weeks in college while attending school, 12-months a year, I felt somewhat justified to kick back and revert back to being a 13-year old, living out of my parents' refrigerator.
But more often than not, I'm reminded by something in the street or on the radio of my kids and New Mexico. I was listening to NPR today while driving through the leafy neighborhoods of the D.C., suburbs, and on came a rapso band from the Caribbean. Somehow, the beats reminded me of the native New Zealand "poly funk" band, Ardijah, which had come to my school to play for the students twice last year.
The first time they came was in the first few weeks of the school year. I was stressed, tense and apparently crying all the time. But when this group came to perform in our gymnasium that night, I made myself go. I was mesmerized by their sound. The acoustics bounced off the freshly waxed basketball court and made me bop in my seat. I wanted to get up and twirl, but no one was dancing. It sounded like part calypso, part reggae - yet all Polynesian seashore. I needed a mixed drink with an umbrella. But there I was, on a mesa on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico. It was all too twilight-zone-ish. I laughed and teared up a little bit. It reminded me of humid nights in Miami clubs. But best of all, I realized that I probably wouldn't have the chance to rock out to a native New Zealand band on the Navajo Nation again anytime soon.
I was wrong. They came back in the spring. I was much different then. I had figured out my job a bit. I had made friends with staff members in the school. The kids knew me. I was relaxed. By this time, my colleagues knew I liked to dance. They had never seen me dance, but they had heard about it. The concert was held during school hours this time, so I dropped by the assembly halfway through. When I snuck in to sit down, one of the teaching assistants kept prodding me and giggling that I should go up there and dance. I liked to dance, right? After 10 minutes of their nudging and teasing, I was fed up. I was going to dance. No one was up there to dance to this happy music, so I was. But this wasn't Miami and there were no neon-colored frozen drinks in hand. I wasn't about to go up there alone. 
At that moment, I spotted little Dana* . She was in the 3rd grade and was still having trouble sounding out her letters. She was as famous for her tantrums as her enormous brown doe eyes. For some reason, she took a liking to me early on. I waved for her to come down to where I was sitting. As soon as she sat down, I grabbed her hand and told her we were going to dance out there. She sat there petrified. But I kept coaxing her. The band was going to finish soon. The singer kept urging people to start moving, but no one did. Finally, Dana got up from her seat and we walked to the center of the big gymnasium, with hundreds of people and the band looking down at us. She tried running back to the bleachers.
But I grabbed her hand and started twirling her. Soon she was giggling as we wiggled our hips and waved our arms. (I like to dance. That does not mean I am good at it. There may now be a generation of young Navajo children who will dance like arm-flapping, hip-swinging chickens.) After five minutes, another teacher led a student to the center of our makeshift dance floor. Soon, more joined us. Everyone wanted to be twirled. Dana was ecstatic. I had walked away to take a phone call and returned a few minutes later to find her teaching a kindergartner how to swing her arms to the rhythmic music.
By the end of the concert, dozens of children were dancing. Even their teachers joined. Dana, who was more accustomed to sitting in time-out, was being patted on the back for being such a good dancer. Before the end of their set, the lead singer called her up to the stage to receive a special gift of an Ardijah CD for being the first student to be brave enough to dance. She couldn't stop beaming. Then she went back to dancing.
Wow, that is a powerful story on so many levels. A teacher teaches in many ways, and they learned a lot from you that afternoon. Dana may go on to a dance career or just an appreciation for dance or even just a little more self esteem. But she will never be the same person as she was before you led her to the dance floor.
There is a fine line between being a human being and keeping enough of a boundary so that you can be a disciplinarian and grade-giver. But what you showed in the gymnasium was a human side that inspired the kids and maybe even inspired the faculty as well.
Keep up the great work!
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