Rose Blossom

It's just a mini-rose in our backyard. I think it is beautiful. I was out in the yard with Mr. Fun late this afternoon and walked to the fountain side where there are three mini-rose bushes that basically take care of themselves. So I clicked a little-of-this and a little-of-that and hoped something would come tumbling from my camera at the end of the day. Hopefully something will also come tumbling from this keyboard.

The day started with a horrendous morning. This is my season at the campus to be "evaluated." It is an every 3 year event. Last Thursday the Dean of Instruction sat in my classroom to observe. I was nervous, but well prepared. When the morning concluded, I thought it had gone well. This morning my friend and English Dept. colleague, Dr. Arend Flick, would be visiting my class.

Flick and I have been friends the entire 19 years we have taught together. We were both hired the same year, and we're both about the same age. We have mutual respect and admiration for each other. We shared an office for 6 or 8 years until the campus had enough offices that faculty could have their own. Mr. Fun & I attended Flick's wedding. He watched me go through the season of losing my real dad to cancer. He came and got me in my classroom when his dad died and just needed to tell someone. We had never evaluated each other's teaching until last year when he asked if I'd be on his Evaluation Team. I cringed, but agreed to. So this year, I asked if he'd be on mine.

I left the house this morning feeling like I was going to thrown-up, have diarrhea, faint, or all of the above. I could not believe that I was so shook. Flick spent 60 minutes in my room and I thought the hour went well. My students were so attentive, so focused. They participated, cooperated, and -- well, shoot, they just couldn't have been better. Together we did a short review of fragments, run-on sentences, and comma splices and a few other things in preparation for Quiz 2, which will happen 2 weeks from now when we come back to the classroom after spring break. Then we did a review of what exactly causes a draft to be "A Meaningful, Quality Essay." My students actually knew the "stuff." They had done their homework. I was pleased with how they responded. Hopefully, Flick was as pleased with how I led my students.

I walked out of the classroom at 10:25, pulled my cell phone from my pocket, dialed Mr. Fun to give him a synopsis of my morning, sighed relief, and wondered how in the world I could have felt so flustered about having an evaluator, a friend, in my classroom. I don't have an answer. I just want to record it here so that in the distant future when I read my journal again, I can remember that I should not take myself so seriously. I tell my students all the time to believe in themselves. Maybe I should tell me.

Somewhere deep in the petals of that rose is a cushion of softness and a fragrance of loveliness. Today I am grateful for the opportunity to blossom, even though the moment felt full of thorns.

Good night from Southern California,
where today it felt more like summer than early spring.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol