The Crystal Ball

Your past, your present, your future...the crystal ball of educational documents...next years' class schedules are out.

It is MAYHEM. Students pour out into the hallways after third period upon receiving the single most influential document they have been handed all year. They rush to their friends, already huddled in the hallways trading schedules frantically, as screams of joy and the dull roar of “ughs” fills our acoustically friendly halls.

This is a big day- this is their deciding fate. For a student, there is so much riding on this single, plain, overly structured, black and white, piece of paper.

“Did I get the classes I want? Did I get the teachers I wanted? How hard is next year going to be? Will I be able to come in early or leave late? Most importantly.. the end all be all.. am I with ANY of my friends?”

And then, after all the conversing with friends, the celebrating and complaining, there is the “aftershock”

Students drizzle into fourth period, seemingly exhausted and, as a teacher, you can see in their faces. The greatest, and hardest, thing about high school students is there is no holding back their emotions. Locked and loaded emotional cannons just waiting, hoping, praying.. for the wick to be lit. The cannon sounds and again, chaos.

My heart goes out to the counselors. Every time I sent a student to them I envisioned the guidance office like the seen of a Walmart store on Black Friday, bodies everywhere, complaining, pushing, jarring for a chance to get out of “ the worst class evvvvvvver” because it is just “ SO UNFAIR!”

On the flip side of all of that.. students run up to me all day “ MR.PAHL!!! I HAVE YOU FOR ( insert the greatest class ever here)!!!!!!!!!!

I would imagine this is what Bon Jovi feels like in public.. but cooler.