Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" You know what? I have a hard time choosing, but I'd say that laughter is better medicine than whiskey. Although when the two overlap, it's great.

I promised myself I would never kvetch about my school here at "The Gods Are Bored." So I'm going to break that promise (all promises get broken eventually) but try to do it in a subtle way.

Last year, during my first year of teaching, I had a "coach" who came in a few times and then sort of disappeared. This coach was an experienced teacher from the other campus in our district.

Now I'm in my second year.

Recently, a teacher retired from my district who had 40 years experience in the same school. Literally, this man has had no other job in his life but teaching. In the same school the whole time.

He is my new coach. He observed me on the first day of school. And I only found out he was going to be there from the Opening Bell at 8:00 the night before school began.

If you're in the teaching biz, you know it's kind of like being a polar bear on an ice floe. You recognize that some other polar bears are going to come in and watch you, but it's your floe. This new coach wants a part of my floe, while also teaching me how to rule my floe, according to how he thinks it should be done.

At first I was sore as all get out. And then I just turned it into a laugh. What's the use getting riled up? If this school district fires me, I'll get unemployment while writing my heart out and applying for other jobs.

Anyway, this new coach makes Mr. Bigwand look reticent (and young).

New coach, new label.

This one I called the Teacher Creature.

But Puck the faerie pointed out that this coach deserves to be recognized for his ability to orate at length in a manner that literally has turned all of my memories of Bigwand to fond ones.

Puck suggested, and I concurred, that my new coach is the Preacher Teacher Creature.

It's great to have faeries around in these situations. They see you wringing your hands, all worked up and overwrought, and they remind you that life is short, and its lease grows shorter every day.

In conclusion, I may from time to time make reference here to the Preacher Teacher Creature. So I'm going to break another promise (just in the mood for broken promises today) and use an acronym. Preacher Teacher Creature will now be known as PTC.

PS - My dad taught school for 40 years, always a teacher. And my grandfather worked for the American Celanese corporation for 45 years, as an inventor. But when Dad and Granddad retired, well. They indulged in all the activities they had always wanted to do. Dad joined the city choral guild and sang his heart out. Granddad fixed watches, and antique clocks, and anything that broke mostly, and he went on garden tours and took lots and lots of slides of flowers.

The Preacher Teacher Creature is still in teacher mode. I guess he can't sing, and no one wears watches anymore.