There’s a caterwauling feline I’m tossing around above my head that seems determined not to be part of this juggling act, and I can’t really blame it: after all, I’m also juggling a set of kitchen knives and a chainsaw, along with some greasy ball bearings and a blob of slime one of my students made, and they’re all getting tangled up in the random arcs in which they sail over my head. Every time the cat comes into my grasp, I get a fresh set of deep gouges as the cat’s claws rip into my skin. At the same time, I have to worry about the slices the knife blades so desperately want to inflict on my arms, and the chainsaw seems determined to take off one appendage or another. The greasy bearings and slime are just the last lovely touch as they somehow make my hands simultaneously slippery and sticky, complicating the entire process. And so I’m bound to drop something.

I have two classes of eighth-grade on-level English. In one class, I have seven students of such low English ability that I’m supposed to make alternative versions of most things we do. In both classes, there are also students with special education requirements that are similar. Some of these kids need only a little help; others need a lot. So for multiple-choice tests, I make three versions: one with four possible answers per question, one with three possible answers per question, and a final one with two possible answers per question. Once I make these tests, I have to make sure that the right student gets the right test, which can be particularly challenging since most of them are supposed to be administered electronically so that we have “data” to assess. (I put that in quotes because a) it’s representative of the foundation, indeed, cornerstone of edu-speak these days as and a result, b) I absolutely loathe it.) So what happens if I give 

• Required number of grades and suggested grading schedule
• Required assessment that I really don’t feel is a good assessment — too difficult for these students
• Required units/pacing guide that I don’t really feel is good for these students — too much of a shotgun, hit them with a million topics approach. 
• Required to cover the same things as other teachers at roughly the same time in the name of “equity”

The shells on the beach just at the edge of the surf were visible for only a few moments before the white bubbles and turbulence hid them again. In the brief time I could clearly see them in the shallow water, it was obvious most of the shells were only fragments, often smaller than the smallest coins, slivers well on their way to becoming grains of sand. Every now and then, a shard would catch my eye, and I would think, “I might try to grab that one” just before incoming wave hid them once again. By then it was too late: once the water cleared up, the tide would have tkane the shard so far away from its original position that finding it was all but impossible. Another might catch my eye, but then the process would simply repeat itself.

To get a shell required calm and patience followed by a paradoxical ability to move quickly when needed. Hesitation meant the loss of the moment. In some ways, that’s a metaphor for live in general for many people. Everything is about getting the right moment, and when that fails, increased stress is the outcome.

Yet the older I get, the more I realize the error in living like that, the unnecessary stress it causes. Yes, I might not get that exact shell that I wanted, but there were plenty of other shells that were just as lovely, often more so.