Cabin & Spring Fever

Spring is entering my woods, with the owls nightly call, and my classroom with more kids fighting in the halls. We are human animals and once there is light before we start school and a few precious hours after school, the rutting season has begun for the teenage animal.

Not only do they know that they're half way through the 3rd quarter of the school year, but they've been subjected to a snowy couple months that have made them buggy with cabin fever. The normal course of action for them in the winter habitat is to ski, sled, skate and mess around in the winter wonderland. But this winter has been bitterly cold and drained them of the energies necessary for such frolicking. So now that we've had a few days of nearly freezing weather, it feels practically balmy and sure as the maples will be tapped for their running sap soon, the blood in the students is increasing in temperature.

Yesterday there was a fight in the hall between two girls. It went on long enough for big crowd to gather. A few of us dispersed the crowd while the Deans arrived to take stories and create consequences. In the spring, at LHS, it is mostly girls who fight now. Is this a new step in evolution?

However, a period later, in my classroom, a situation jumped from zero to sixty between two boys. I have several of the basketball team members in that class. While waiting for the passing bell they like to "dunk" over the door. It's a way of letting off steam just as class ends.

Only this time, one of the boys was narrating while the other boys were dunking. He said that "so and so" dunked on another kid. The "dunkee" spun around and started strong arm pushing the "dunker" through the group of 25 kids and had nearly strong armed him into the cement wall before I broke it up. I removed the dunkee from my classroom and  into the hall for a talk before the bell rang. For the life of him, you could tell he was upset by his own reaction, but couldn't explain why or how it happened. If it had been bucks with horns it couldn't have been any more textbook; spring has sprung.

Spring fever meets cabin fever meets young buck impulsiveness. 'Tis the season where the students get the fever and they get it badly. Combine that with March being the month of no three day weekends, or other breaks. Usually it's also Mud Season, which is want to keep the cabin fever brewing, and this year it will probably also be Flood Season. So I'm adjusting my reaction time for Spring Fever mode (rapid response) in the classroom, hallways and parking lots (oh, yeah, it can lead to rage in the lots, too)!

It's strange when you see the shift begin. It's not just the owl's hooting at night or the birds and deer stripping the bushes, it's the teenagers starting to preen and posture without even realizing what or why they are doing it.

So on one hand we New Englanders, lovers of the four seasons, are feeling done with winter. We haven't been able to enjoy the snow and master nature ~ nature dominated us this season. We're all chanting "think spring". On the other hand, spring means a new set of potential negative hurdles; mud? flood? blood in the hall way? However, the positive view is more commonly held: cleaning, gardening, chirping, and sniffing out each young plant and animal as it presents its self anew.

Here's to winter nearing an end. Here is to thinking spring. Here is to hope rising eternal and irrational in the life cycle of all living things, young and old, come spring!

Good Night, Cabin and Spring Fever Folk, G'night!