Enjoying the Little Things - Another Teacher Story.

Just taking the wins where I can

Changing a School one rubber mat at a time…

The weightlifting interest meeting is always an exciting time of the year for me. I hang up posters all around the school with pictures of student weightlifters from past years with information about when and where the meeting will take place. The posters also explicitly say, “Not interested in lazy kids.” I go on to make an announcement over the loudspeaker the day of the meeting. I’ll say something along the lines of, “If you have skinny arm syndrome, and yes I am thinking of you Joshua Washington…the weightlifting interest meeting is after school today in the gymnasium” Then I cross my fingers and wait to see who shows up.

It was a solid showing this year. In a school of 170 kids, 20 of them showed up to the interest meeting. I gathered them in a circle and went over some basic rules: show up 5 minutes before we start, wear shorts or sweatpants, no cellphones in the weight room. Then I started talking about programming. I told them under no circumstance was this an open gym. “I’m going to teach you how to get strong, but that means showing up on time and listening to the break down of each exercise. Follow the program and reap the rewards. Any questions.”

Everyone nods in agreement and I’m about to dismiss them when one girl, we’ll call her Melissa, raises her hand. Mellisa has her hair done in cornrows that reach halfway down her back, she currently has glued 15 millimeter eyelashes on top of her eyelashes, and she has a current Instagram following of 10,000 people. So when Melissa asks, “Hey mista, what if there’s only one body part that I want to work on?” I know exactly what body part she’s talking about.

So I say to Mellisa, “Mellisa, if your worried about working on your…glutes, and you want to make sure your…glutes grow, then don’t worry, I got your…glutes covered.” I pause before each time I say glutes and keep eye contact with her the entire time I say the sentence to make sure she knows that I know what she’s after.

Melissa replies, “Mista, all i care about is getting a dump truck like you.”

And if you don’t think that’s going to have me riding high for at least a month you clearly don’t know me well enough. I swear, the job doesn’t get much better than that.

Till next week. Todaloo mothafuckas.