Friendly Reminder

I traveled recently to visit my dad near Lake Tahoe, and I flew Southwest (love them). I don't know if you've flown them lately (I haven't), but they have a great system of boarding. When you check in you're given a letter-number combination, and when it's "time" you stand in a particular place and follow orders to board in an orderly fashion and then get to pick your seat at that time.

Anyway, as I said, it was the first time I'd been through this, and I didn't know what was what and figured I'd wait for the directions from the Southwest employees over the loudspeaker. Obviously, there were no written directions. So here's basically what I heard, "We're ready to begin boarding, people with an A something something something do something and get ready to something and others please something something ....". You get the idea. I heard a bit and then by the time I finished processing it, the next part was already said and moved on, and then of course I couldn't THEN make sense of the following part. Sheesh. Reality check on teaching for me.

I know the kids say I talk too fast (sometimes?). In my mind everything's clear (like I'm sure it is to the Southwest employee who's said the same speech many times), so I'm probably on autopilot (ar ar ar). I guess I need to make myself a poster for next year to hang in the back of the room to remind myself to slow down or to write simultaneously or to give kids processing time more consciously. My sign will probably be: SOUTHWEST INCIDENT!

Yes I figured out what to do, but, no, I still got stuck behind the smelly lady I was trying to avoid.