A Jen Too Many

Last Friday I went to Oldest Girl Child's school and read to her class.

It was terrifying.

I signed up to do this at the student orientation the week before school started, when the teacher gave the parents the handouts of the class rules and the kids learned where their classroom was. I was excited. I like reading aloud to my kids. In fact, now that OGC can read, I often find that I have to restrain myself at bedtime. She wants to practice her new reading skills by reading the bedtime story, but I want to read, too! So I sit on my hands and keep my jaw clamped shut while letting her read.

A week ago I got the note from the teacher letting me know what day and time she wanted me to come in - Friday, from 3:00-3:15.

15 minutes to fill. I started timing myself reading aloud, and do you know what? Most of my favorite stories to read aloud take about 6 or 9 minutes. Longer books take much more than 15 minutes - at home, we break those down into chapters and read them over several days. Since I couldn't see getting to come in every day for a couple of weeks, that ruled out My Father's Dragon and The Wizard of Oz. Winnie the Pooh seemed too young for first graders. Eventually, I wound up digging out Rootabaga Stories* which I bought a few years ago, and then found out the girls were too young to really enjoy it. (The wandering off and playing while I was reading was a real tip off.)

I selected the story very carefully (How Bimbo the Snip's Thumb Stuck to His Nose When the Wind Changed), and practiced reading it aloud several times, working out hand gestures and motions to use to keep the kids' attention. I picked out a back up story, too (Never Kick a Slipper at the Moon), because the Bimbo story only took nine minutes. I was hoping the last three minutes would be taken up by things like the teacher introducing me and getting everyone settled down.

Off I went, fearing and a-tremble, first arriving too early at the school (20 minutes) and then (after deciding to use the extra time by checking out a sign I'd passed, saying PEARS HERE) almost arriving late. In the end, I got there right on time, trepidation making me breathe a little too quickly, and accentuating my natural clumsiness, so that I was tripping over things like desks, chairs and tables as I followed the teacher over to where the kids were sitting on a mat in front of a small chair. Not an adult-sized chair. A kid-sized chair. Placed so close to the kids that it was practically on top of them - and then the teacher moved it closer.

So I sat down, looming over the front row, hands shaking as I opened my book, voice failing me as I tried to tell the kids what the title of the story was. My daughter grinned and waved at me. I smiled back and felt a little better. I cleared my throat and started again. Then, of course, I read much too quickly. I was halfway down the second page before I took a breath. Trying to calm down, I took a second, deeper, breath and tried to read the next sentence a little more slowly. I scooted the chair back a little. I shifted to sit back more and stop hunching in the chair. Gradually I stopped shaking, and started making eye contact with the sweet little faces staring up at me. I made funny gestures and gave the right words the right emphasis.

And then I finished and there was a lot more than six minutes of my time left. So much for timing myself in my preparation - and a good thing I'd prepared a second story! I read my next selection, doing much, much better than the first story. Only, there was still time left when I finished. I grabbed for my original choice, a story I'd considered but passed over as being not as likely to hold the attention of little people as Bimbo the Snip.

How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country, I read, and kept on reading until the bell rang for school to be over. Which was before I finished the story, but that was OK, because it wasn't holding the kids' attention the way the other stories had. (Good thing I didn't read that one first, huh? I might never have calmed down!)

I'll do this again next month. Hopefully I won't hyperventilate next time. By the end of the school year I might even feel confident about it. (Hah! Pigs/wings, snowflakes/Sahara, bridge/New York.)
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*Why Rootabaga Stories? I wanted to impress the teacher. Yes, I admit it. I wanted her to see me as a Good Mother, as an Intelligent and Literate Woman, the sort of person who reads Carl Sandburg to her children. Not as the overweight, middle-aged and dowdy woman with bad hair, looking like every other overwhelmed and frazzled mother, that I really am.**

**Yes, it does annoy me when people assume that being a stay at home mother means I must be too stupid and/or lazy to hold a full-time, accountable to a boss-who-is-not-a-relative, job. It also makes me paranoid that everyone is thinking that I am too stupid and/or lazy to hold a full-time, accountable to a boss-who-is-not-a-relative, job.***

***My sister will roll her eyes at me for thinking that way. She'll probably lecture me, too.