My countless half-dozen followers know that
I've spent the last nine months student teaching.
The journey has been grueling;
if the path to my BA was like going on a 5K Fun Run...
... then getting my credential was like an Iron Man Marathon.
"Jaysus, bring me sweet death."
It was the hardest thing I've ever done,
but one of the things that made it possible
was the thirty-one other student teachers
with whom I spent the last year.
I met this group of fellow student teachers back in August.
Through a school glitch,
we were the largest group to go through the program.
We would hear this fact ("There's so many of you!")
with eye-rolling frequency...
...but we turned it to our advantage.
Crammed into a room more suited for twenty-four students,
we developed the camaraderie that can come from dealing
with a stressful situation with humor rather than sourness.
We decorated the room with banners and our artwork,
carpooled, ate together, and cracked each other up with
just the words "schwa", "eleven," and "gefilte fish."
"No, YOU gefilte fish!"
Our motto was, "We laughed, we cried, we did origami,"
in honor of our much-loved math teacher who finished each class
with a new origami project.
Our graduation was a month ago,
and gave me one last opportunity
to spend a happy few hours with the cohort.
I handed out WWFD? bracelets
(another in-joke that stood for What Would Finland Do?)...
and after shouting "Schwa! Schwa! Schwa!" one last time,
we headed to the area where we would receive our...
empty tubes that a diploma would normally be in.
(Since we earned credentials, we didn't actually get diplomas.)
To give you an idea of my affection for this group,
despite coming from a generation where the only ink a woman sported
was a reminder written on her palm with a Bic...
... if they said, "Let's all get matching tattoos!"
I'd say,
"Let me get my car keys."
