I assumed since all three daughters are in their 20s, college graduates and adulting that I would no longer be receiving these upsetting phone messages.
I was wrong.
Here’s the phone message I received last Friday. The names have been changed to protect innocent
[Cheery voice]
“Hi this is Miss Teacher from (insert school name here.)
I’m calling about Ralphie. I just wanted to call back and talk about his missing work because he still has not turned in his missing assignments (this is where her serious stern, edgy voice begins!) AND because he did not show up for class today, he now MISSED A QUIZ which will be a VERY BIG ZERO in the gradebook and I do not wish his grade to go lower so I would like him to go in and take the ‘Cremation of Sam McGee’ quiz. It is in the quiz section of my Canvas page and he also has to get all the missing work done — we have done two assignments in class but the rest he is supposed to be doing at home … and he has not turned in all of his stuff. He has turned in a couple things but not eve-ry-thing.
… So he has — let me count — one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine missing assignments. That includes the quiz that we took today. So nine missing things that he needs to get done. And they are all in the gradebook — all you have to do is go to Canvas and click grades for him and you can go to each class to see his grades, because Synergy is a little messed up for my class right now, but right now his grade in Canvas is accurate.
So thank you. If you want to call back, my extension at the school…
Thank you, have a good day.”
After I took a few breaths to calm myself down and remind myself that (whew!) this is NOT my child, I returned the phone call leaving a pleasant message that I was in fact the same cell phone that Miss Teacher had called twice a few weeks ago. Miss. Teacher was quite stern and business-like asking me who I was, as I explained that she had the wrong number for a student (I had gotten a new cell number in March.) She was persistent in asking “Well, who ARE your kids,” and only relented when I responded they were all over 22 years old.
Almost a week after the phone call I find myself praying for Miss Teacher whose entire teaching world has been thrown into a snow globe and shaken around. I hope she continues to find joy, hope and laughter in her job as she navigates through the pandemic mandates.
And as for Ralphie (most definitely not his real name), I found myself praying for him also. I was hoping he’d accidentally call and I could walk him through reading Robert W. Service’s 1907 poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”
I would lead him to an audio reading by Johnny Cash and show photos of Service’s cabin in the Yukon territory — the northwest corner of Canada’s mainland and east of Alaska. I’d send Ralphie some bison jerky (if he wasn’t vegan) and explain that Service’s poem tells of surviving the Arctic cold and has themes of loyalty, perseverance, friendship and death.
We would share stories of where we were at the coldest times of our lives. I would encourage him expressing that learning can be hard, but is one of the grandest adventures and is actually quite fun.
And I would thank the student because I was grateful for receiving his teacher’s phone call by mistake, because it was the first time I’d read the poem which begins and ends with the following eight stanzas:
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
