Passing Breezes

In a way, I hope my classroom is a “breezy” place this year. It’s a stretch, but I hope the students leave the room each day feeling a little refreshed, a little enlivened, the way they might feel if some short-lived breezes had just blown past them on a stuffy day. I must admit that it’s hard to imagine them feeling that way after spending 48 minutes making their way through a multifaceted and perhaps exasperating English lesson, but don’t the best breezes sometimes blow just when we’re working the hardest, and doesn’t a breeze often feel the best just after some strenuous labor? I thought of this today after noticing some tall grass by the interstate bending in the breezes of passing cars. The grass, you might say, “felt” the gusts going by – was influenced by them – and perhaps something similar might happen in 9th grade English. Some of the words we say in class to each other, and even the thoughts we think, might, unbeknown to us, be like evanescent winds in our lives, occasionally shaking us or our classmates like small pick-me-ups in a bustling school day. Perhaps, if a student occasionally leaves my classroom with a smile, it might be the smile of someone who’s just been silently freshened.