A day of pausing when the bell rings

Wednesday. Grey clouds since morning, no rain yet.

I teach third grade. Today I tried one very small thing: whenever a bell rang, I stopped for exactly one breath. The alarm, the school bell, the phone, the little brass bell on my desk, every bell counted. I promised nobody anything. I only wanted to write down what a day is really like.

5:30. The alarm. My hand fumbled for the phone at the head of the bed and got halfway to switching it off before I remembered. I lay still for one more breath. In came the smell of an old pillow, with a trace of fabric softener left over from last week. By the second breath my head had already jumped to the stack of tests I still had to grade. Fine. One breath is still a breath. Up.

6:55. The bell for first class. The school's electric bell let out one long shriek just as I stood on the veranda with my bag on my shoulder and a box of chalk in my hand. I stood still. The soles of my feet pressed into tiles still damp with dew. One breath. Then dozens of sandals slapped past, and my breath was swept away with them.

7:40. The bell for the end of first period. I was halfway through a long division on the board. I put the chalk down. The whole class looked at me.

"Teacher, why are you standing so still?"

"I'm taking a breath."

"What for?"

"Nothing at all. It's done now."

Khôi, the boy at the front desk, breathed in as hard as he could and let it out like a balloon losing air. The whole class copied him. Thirty-odd balloons deflating at once, and then everyone laughing. I don't know if the class was any calmer. I only know the division went a little smoother afterwards, and that may have been the laughing.

9:30. The break bell. I didn't hear it. I was grading in the staff room, red pen in hand, a cup of tea long since gone cold beside me. When the bell for the next period rang I jumped and looked up. My shoulders had crept up to my ears, and fifteen minutes had gone as if they had never been. I let my shoulders drop, one breath. The break bell was already lost, and there was no getting it back.

12:00. Lunch box, fried egg with tomato, condensation still on the lid. The phone rang. Mum.

I let it ring twice more. One breath, then I picked up.

"Have you eaten yet?"

"I'm eating now."

"Good, eat. Are you coming by tonight? I'm braising fish."

I said yes. Only afterwards did I remember half a pile of grading waiting for me tonight, but the first "yes" of the day didn't come out as hurried as usual. That's all. That's all it was.

13:30. Reading time. I struck the little brass bell on my desk, the hand-held kind, its sound ringing long and then thinning out. Every year I ring it to tell the class to sit down. Today I did one more thing: I said nothing until the ringing had faded completely. About half the class went quiet with me. The other half kept rustling their notebooks. I let it be.

15:30. The end-of-day bell. Chairs scraped everywhere, bags knocked against chair backs, the whole yard as loud as a market falling apart. I stood by the classroom door, and every child who passed said goodbye. One breath. The wind turned and the smell of wet earth rose from the yard. The rain had really come, big drops landing on the tin roof of the bike shed, and I stood and listened to a whole round of it before going back in to tidy the desks.

21:40. The class-parents Zalo group pinged. I watched the screen light up on the table and didn't pick it up. One breath. Then I left it there, to read tomorrow.

Today I managed to stop eight times and forgot once. I don't know what that number means. I only know the time I forgot is the one I remember best, because when I looked up, the clouds outside the staff room window had changed colour and I hadn't noticed.

If you want to try this, you don't need to teach and you don't need a school bell. Any bell around you will do: an alarm, the ping of a message, a doorbell. Horns and bells out on the road don't belong to this exercise: when you are on the road, your eyes and ears are for the road.

If one breath feels long, three seconds of mindfulness in a busy day is an even shorter version.

Tomorrow the bell still rings at 5:30.

This article was created with AI assistance.