“You don’t have to assign all thirty prompts to be completed.”
“Nah, my students are smart. They can get it done. No problem. Besides, I’m giving them a whole week to work on it in class.”
It was a conversation I had at the beginning of the week before Spring Break. I had essays to finish grading, meetings about student behavior, meetings about student progress, faculty meetings, and every meeting has its share of paperwork to complete. Then there were deadlines to fulfill. There were votes to be made that decided the next text book we’d be stuck with for the next six years. We had to vote on the class schedule for next year. My application to the OWP summer institute was due at the end of the week. It’s an extensive application and an important opportunity for me as a writer and teacher.
Among the monotony, two teachers were lost to us: one to the behest of “personal matters” and a second to the ills of cancer.
In the time between teaching and grading/preparing for the next day, I like to fight. Four nights a week, I force the time to train like an MMA fighter: running, endurance training, hand-to-hand combat, and weight lifting. After teaching all day, it’s easy to hand over responsibility to someone else and just take directions. It’s reassuring knowing you’re progressing in a skill on a weekly basis. It takes years to become a comfortable teacher and decades to master. I can see myself improving weekly when it comes to mixed martial arts. Energy, strength, and flexibility are the main improvements others have noted.
This week, on top of everything else, I was going to spend a couple days helping an aspiring fighter train. I barely knew him but any educator would feel compelled to help when asked. I was asked to help drill him and sweat away ten pounds in a sauna. It wasn’t a healthy idea, but he had $300 guaranteed for just showing up to fight. If he won, he’d receive an additional $300. He wouldn’t spend it on frivolous things because he had a baby and a young wife to feed. They shared a duplex apartment and lived off food stamps until recently when his wife started making just enough to disqualify them for government aid. Because of his felony history, he couldn’t drive a vehicle. He’d walk unless his wife was off work.
When we trained, she would be there watching with a frustrated baby. Before agreeing to help him, I had no idea about his personal life. He freely shared it with me and even told me the story of when his friend stabbed him. He showed me the stab wounds on his arms and where the steak knife went into his stomach and pulled out his large intestine.
In the cage, we practiced defensive drills over and over. It made us both out of breathe and equally beat up our bodies. While I write this, I’m still limping three days later from a wrong landing. My ankle is swollen and bruised but it didn’t prevent me from practicing leg locks. I was already dehydrated but I suited up in multiple layers with this new kind of student and stood up in the sauna with him as we ran through punching drills. We were soaking but had lost ten pounds over the course of thirty minutes of non-stop movement. I had to demand he stay in the sauna. The heat was getting to him and making him frustrated. He tried to make excuses to get out but two hours earlier I had promised that I wouldn’t let him get away with that. It’s very similar to getting students to stay seated and remain engaged but a lot less comfortable.
He was exhausted when we walked out, so I pushed the stroller with his infant son. We still lacked six pounds to make weight, but he had forty-eight hours until it mattered and he wasn’t going to eat tonight or the next. I drove him to his apartment so he wouldn’t have to walk. If he wins, we’ll be celebrating with a victory barbecue on Sunday.
He’ll be helping me drop weight if needed for an amateur submission competition in April. It’s in Tulsa and I can’t think of a better excuse to drive to Tulsa.
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