he cool high school teachers always let you have class outside on a beautiful day. The cool teachers would close the door, clasp their hands in mock seriousness, and say something like, “We can’t possibly hold class inside on a day like this.” A cheer would erupt. And everyone would cart their stuff outside, losing as many minutes in the transit as possible, catching the eyes of envious, desk-bound friends as they passed through the halls. Having class outside was like a free pass. Not as good as a snow day, sure, but anything was better than school, same old school, again and again and again.

When I actually became a high school teacher, I hated having class outside. Hated it! Trying to compete with nature for these kids’ attention was like trying to steal the scene from babies and adorable chimpanzees. You had to talk louder, be funnier, you had stop kids from snorting ants up their noses. I sort of wanted to be That Teacher, the teacher who lets you have class outside, but it was such a pain in the ass. Of course, my kids knew that if they nudged hard enough, I might very well become That Teacher.

“Missss,” they would whine, because they called all their teachers “Miss,” like we were one big insufferable enterprise. “Miss Hepola, I mean,” they would quickly correct themselves, because now they wanted something. “Miss Hepola, we should go outside.”

“No. Open your books.” I always tried to be a hard-ass. Even I didn’t believe me.

“Come awwwwn, miss. Miss Hepola.”

“I can’t hear you. Open your books.”

“Miss Hepola, we’re very young and impressionable, and we get so little in this life, and it would seem that as our mentor you would want us to embrace what beauty there is in this world.”

Darin was one of my favorite students. He had dysgraphia, so his penmanship was busted and looked like a first grader’s, but he had a near-photographic memory. He lived in a trailer park, wore heavy metal shirts, and once told me he understood why kids brought guns to school. But put him in a prep school, and that kid could have gone to Harvard.

I shut my book. “Okay, Darin, it’s a deal.”

That semester, there was only one class I could take outside. First period was too sleepy. Last period was waaaaay too rambunctious. But third period was that perfect combination of animated and containable. (Our school ran on the block system--four classes a day, an hour and a half each. If you’re a superintendent, let me tell you, this is not a good system.) Third period loved me, and I loved them, and it was so great, because we could cut out all the bullshit that sandbags a classroom--the rules and the stuffiness and the pink slips and the contentiousness--and we could really dig our hands in. The class was World Geography, by the way, a subject I really DID need to learn. I used to have nightmares that I would have to find Turkmenistan on a map. But I was a new hire, and all new hires taught one WG unit. It turned out to be my favorite. Maybe because I wasn’t trying so hard to get the kids to love something, to make them be writers, to pull their hearts out with some book, and we just kind of shot the shit.

“What kind of leaf is this?” someone might say when we went outside. And then someone would look it up until we figured out what it was. And it was nice like that.

The hardest thing about being a teacher was class discipline. It was so exhausting to get them to shut up, stay still, do the work, stay on topic. But in that World Geography class, the kids did all the work for me. I had some straight-up thugs in there, boys that had returned from juvie for dope or taking a baseball bat to some unfortunate soul’s backside, but if they ever got out of hand, the kids would descend on them.

“Stop it, you’re gonna make her mad!” It’s the best class discipline there is. A class that likes you.

Anyway, I was thinking about third period today, and missing them. It’s a beautiful day in New York. The kind of day when you can’t possibly hold class inside. If they nudged me a little bit today, I would totally cave.