Turning my back on my training

Teaching sentence diagramming involves writing on the chalkboard, usually in multiple colors. As I was diagramming a sentence recently, I stopped writing mid-motion. It had occurred to me that I had fully turned my back to the class.

This may seem like a non-event, unless you've taught K-12. One of the lessons teachers learn in their education classes—and really learn on the first day of school—is to never turn their backs to the audience. It's a way to compensate for the anatomical impossibility of having eyes in the back of one's head.

It took over a year, but my training had been undone. I turned my back to the class, and something illicit may have happened in those few moments. But that no longer matters.