For the Jugglers
Teaching feels like you’re a juggler. You juggle apples. Three of them. That’s what you were trained to do. Then, five minutes into your performance, you find out you have to add a fourth apple to the mix. You do it. That’s when the International Board of Juggling rolls a watermelon on stage and says to add that to the mix. And then a chainsaw. You do add them to the mix because you love juggling, and the crowd deserves the best.
Now you’re juggling these four apples, a watermelon, and a chainsaw. The audience members ask if you can tell them a story while you’re juggling because, for them, it’s kind of boring to just sit and watch you juggle. The carnival boss says they’re right. It should be more interactive. You start throwing apples to the audience and have them throw them back.
Near the end of your routine, you get an email that you have to read while juggling. It’s one of the audience member’s parents and they’re furious you’re using Gala apples and not Granny Smith apples. You make the change. Then another email comes in. It starts with I’m not one of those juggling audience member parents, but…. It questions whether the switching of apples needed to happen because they actually preferred Gala. They cite an article they read that shows Galas are more effective for juggling. For the sake of appeasement, you add the four Gala apples back to the act.
You manage to juggle those four Granny Smiths, four Galas, a watermelon, and a chainsaw. You perform the grand finale where you do backflips on a unicycle while juggling. You catch all the items and gently put them down on the stage. You bow.
There are some cheers from the audience. Some of the audience members just stare. One of them points out that your shoe was untied the whole time. One stands up and you get excited about the possibility of a standing ovation, but he says he just needs to go to the bathroom.
That’s the moment a juggling evaluator walks in with a clipboard and looks around the stage, shakes their head, and jots down some notes. They say they’ll try to come back at a time when you’re actively juggling.
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all the metaphorical jugglers out there.
