Teaching ceramics at three elementary school is a lot of things. One of them is stressful. The stress starts early in the day when I am wondering if the school bus will be blocking the entrance to where I park. I need to park close to the school to unload the dolly full of ceramic equipment. There’s new school bus drivers this year and there’s new school buses. In fact, I think they are electric. There are nice school drivers and then not so nice bus drivers and then there’s those in between. The one time I had the trouble and was not able to get in some parent encouraged me just to drive over the curb into where I had to park and that I did.

The next week the driver was friendlier and moved the bus a bit.

The week after that, she wasn’t there, and there was a white haired lady who told me that she had fixed the problem. I asked her who she was and she was basically the all-around person at school.

I realized that she must be replacing taylor. What a change. Taylor had been there for many years and looked like an African-American Graphic novel hero: powerful young man with dreds and very black skin.

He seemed a little scary, but actually, he was friendly, and he worked with small children. He had his own office. He had a very fancy sports car which he parked next to where I parked.

Once in the driveway with the car unloaded, I can get into the cafeteria where I need to teach. The next stressful moment is: will I be able to find someone who can open the kiln room for me? The kiln room is the dungeon room, down a dark staircase holding electric curcuit breakers and storage.

No one ever really needs to go in there so when the office gives me the set of many keys, they don’t know which one it is. When Pete gives me the set of keys he knows exactly which one it is. André the janitor gives me a choice of three.

It’s best if this doesn’t take too much time. I give myself an hour to set up, half of that with an assistant. I set up on two very long tables in the cafeteria where some 200 kids are congregating after the school day. Eventually most of them leave. Then 20 select ones come to my class.

It is a fast paced, hectic meaningful hour full of love and instruction. I try to fully meet each child.

After the first 20 leave, the next 20 come in.

Same same: love and instruction but now with a little fatique mixed in

After the second group, the cleanup looms enormous, but it is doable, and eventually it ends with me going down to the kiln room, to load all the kid artwork into the kiln, while the assistant finishes up the last of the cleaning

It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it and the children are wonderful. As am I and

at the end of each Wednesday, I feel like I should get a medal for pulling it off yet one more time