We don’t have many extra duties at my school, but we are tasked with clearing the halls of the dozens of kids who tend to linger and chat well after the bell rings. Three times a day (six on non-block days), I postpone starting my own class so that I can get other teachers’ students to class.
The models I have for hall duty (we call them hall mentors) are very tall people with big booming voices that can pierce through the noise of a hundred kids talking, laughing, yelling.
“Head to class!” they bellow. “Walk and talk! You got one minute!”
They can be heard over all the noise. They’re projecting their voices, not yelling. They sound concerned but never mean. And kids move.
I am a short person with a small voice.
“Head to class!” I try to project my voice, but it comes out like a whisper. Wearing a thick mask doesn’t help my volume. “The bell just rang.”
Three kids bump into me because they didn’t see me standing there. No one makes a move to head to class. And now my throat hurts.
A colleague with a background in theater and speech tries to teach me how to project my voice from my diaphragm, but it’s hopeless. When I try to project, I sound mean and strained. And still too quiet. I am always relieved when a much louder teacher (basically anyone else in the building) shows up to help with the clearing. Being loud isn’t my way.
Except then I notice that some of the louder teachers don’t always sound so nice. They’re yelling at kids. The kids often escalate with attitude. The teacher sometimes escalates with anger. Everyone goes to class cranky. That can’t be my way either.
It’s Fezzik and Vizzini who get me thinking. I keep replaying that scene from The Princess Bride in my mind. What’s my way?
And so I try something new. I go up to kids and talk to them in my regular voice. They have to lean down to hear me.
“How’s your morning going?” I ask. “It’s so good to see you.”
And we have a conversation. What class do you have next? What’s your favorite class? What are you looking forward to on this fine Thursday morning? Do you need anything? Are you almost ready to wrap up what you’re doing here and head to class?
It takes a minute. But it’s kind of magical. Because kids say yeah, I’m about ready. And mostly they are. I head to my room, and they head to theirs.
“I wish I could do that,” I tell Mr. C one day as he clears forty kids out of the hall with one very loud “Walk and talk!”
“My big voice is my gift,” he tells me. “When someone needs to clear the halls, they call me. You’ve got a quiet voice. When a kid needs someone to look out for them, I send them to you. That’s your gift.”
Clearing the halls will probably never be my “pocket of joy”–but I am learning to appreciate and even treasure the interactions I can have with kids even as I’m trying to redirect their behavior.
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My theme for Slice of Life 2022 is finding inspiration in the writing of others. Each day I plan to find my slice in someone else’s words or forms. Today’s inspiration came from a post called Pocket of Joy–Morning Duty at The Librarian’s Journey.
the dirigible plum 
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