Lucy van Pelt

One of my favorite things growing up was the summer reading program. It was six weeks on Tuesday and Thursday and we got a colored sheet of paper to keep a log of the books we read. I say we because my brother, the boy next door, and two of our friends, went to the program faithfully every week throughout our childhood. I don’t know if any of them remember it as well as I do, the library was MY JAM. School was okay, but the library was the one thing that I really, really loved.

The summer between second and third grade, I discovered the Charlie Brown collection. Each year of the comic strip, Peanuts, was bound in a hardback book on the bottom shelf on the south wall. I was familiar with Peanuts. It was a comic strip, I read everyday while I was eating my cereal and on Sunday it always topped the colored portion of the pull-out comic section. I’d bring the paper in, hand it to my dad and he’d hand me out the comics. We had that ritual until the day he died. That summer after discovering the Peanut books, I read every single volume. I was too little to do an in depth character analysis, but I poured over those characters and really got to know their personalities. If you want to see me geek out ask me about Charlie Brown and his complex relationship with Linus van Pelt. In fact, I would love a third cat to name Linus, but that would put me in crazy cat lady territory and I am not ready to make that leap.

Anyway, it is no secret, that I am really struggling professionally. I am good at relationships with kids, but hate discipline. I don’t want to fight with kids to do the right thing. When I was teaching art, I had high engagement because kids wanted to be there and they wanted to do all the things I was asking. Not that I didn’t have jackwagons, but overall, kids were excited to see me and to do the projects. I went from 98 percent engagement to mmm…thirty, maybe forty percent engagement. Reading and writing and math are hard and I have a lot of students really struggling. And the shit–and I am choosing that word deliberately–I am asked to teach them is not engaging or captivating or relevant. And they don’t care. And you know what? I get it. I get why they don’t want to do it. And part of me agrees with them. And even though I have a rebel inside my heart, I rarely let her come out to play. But something about being right here, right now, has brought that rebel to the surface. She is loud, crabby and in my face. Lucy van Pelt is yelling at me to make a move. And she is not taking no for answer.

Messages come in all kinds of ways. Even though I am hesitant to make such a bold statement and want to be wishy-washy as Lucy would call it, and use words like maybe and probably and might, I know I need to leave the classroom.. I have known it for awhile and I have had all sorts of excuses related to retirement and salary and all that jazz. But honestly, the path is there and I just have to be brave enough to trust and have faith that I can take the next step in the journey.