The Whining Schoolboy - tales from a mostly-boring public high school teacher.

Never Too Old To Be Cool in School

2009-11-08T11:25:00.002-05:00

Friday was the last home football game for the seniors at school, and the tradition has been for the seniors to bring their home jerseys and ask one of their favorite teachers to wear them all day as a show of support. Frankly, I'd forgotten about this until a very large former student of mine, who I taught two years ago and whose girlfriend I've taught in yearbook now for three years, dropped by my room early in the morning, white and blue #82 in hand, and asked me if I'd wear it all day. My wry reaction was to ask, "Did you wash it?", but I agreed, and it fit pretty well since I had on clothing underneath it.

What I wouldn't have predicted in those first moments was how much this one little - er, big - jersey thing would make my day. After it started dawning on me how much of an honor this was (one I'd never had before), it also started dawning on me how ennobling this was, especially when everyone was making comments about it, or asking me about it, all day. Plus, a couple of other teachers were faux crabby about not being asked to wear a jersey this year, so my esteem climbed even higher, and I started standing a little straighter, chest stuck out a little more. When I had lunch duty, I purposely walked the busier routes and lingered longer at my post. When I had my planning period, I found myself inventing reasons to go walking about on small errands (to be fair, I do this on most Fridays during planning anyway). And, after school was over, when my former student came back to take some pictures with me and get his shirt back (his girlfriend, one of my all-time favorites and my son's babysitter, was just giddy about this all day), I was quite reluctant to take it off. I mean, I felt so coooool.

C.S. Lewis warned about the dangers of wanting to be in "The Inner Ring" and all the false esteem that comes with that, so I'll happily surrender the mantle o'cool. But beyond that I won't regret indulging in my day of being a BMOC. It's not like it happened for me back when it really mattered...

And, as mentioned before, it really was a tremendous honor, one that made my day not just for vanity's sake, but for the opportunity to feel blessed.

Quick Update: She Hasn't Killed Us Yet!

2009-11-08T11:01:00.004-05:00

After three weeks with a newborn in the house, we have been surviving quite nicely, thank you. Baby Daughter has consistently been gaining weight and consistently gets a little more aware of her surroundings, and family members. She's not overly fussy except for the usual reasons. There is really not much more to be asked for at this point (easier to speak for myself than the nurser-in-chief, of course).

The Girl has also figured out that night time is for sleeping longer hours, which in her terms means four in a row at the most, but she's ahead of where her brother was at this point. We'll chalk that up to a combination of her nature and having calmer, more experienced parents who are, frankly, too old to get as worked up about every little thing as we did eight years ago.

Another difference this time around - which makes things more difficult on a dying-to-get-out-of-the-house mom - is that our pediatrician basically doesn't want the baby going anywhere in public for as long as possible, due to our good friend the Swine. The doc is actually not freaked out about the Swine in the larger pandemic sense, but is when it comes to infants who can't take any vaccines. So, Wyfe is pretty much homebound until Thanksgiving, and yes, we're all paying the price for that (wink, wink).

Living Proof

2009-10-17T19:24:00.007-05:00

"Well now on a summer night in a dusky room
Come a little piece of the Lord's undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother's arms it was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
In a world so hard and dirty so fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God's mercy
I found living proof"
- Bruce Springsteen, "Living Proof"

Well, o.k., in her mother's arms, and it wasn't a dusky room, but a triage room (click here for the official, if only 99.9% accurate version of the incredible delivery happenings - I don't recall saying "Holy Crap", mainly because I didn't say anything!). In any case, say hello to Holland Elizabeth:

The Wages of Age

2009-10-12T17:58:00.004-05:00

I'm going to be perfectly open and honest, and perhaps not too uplifting today. But, I'm going to guess that if people were closely observing me and my reactions over the past month to questions regarding the impending birth of my daughter (impending as in, due date is Friday!), they would have noticed a certain hesitance in my voice, a certain shift in my gaze, and a dampening in the enthusiasm in my voice. Fact is, the closerwe we get to D-Day, the more nervous and weary I grow in inverse proportion.

Why? Sure, it's my nature, but I also think it really comes down to one factor: I'm eight years older than I once was.

Count out your life eight years at a time, and I bet you'll agree that at each interval you've learned (or will learn) how much more fragile everything is than you thought, how much more dangerous everything is than you thought, how much less control you have than you thought, how much less you know than you thought.

We've been through so many worrisome days and weeks since about late March that you might think these would be the salad days. We got in the new house just in time, and Mom and baby are wonderfully healthy as far as some of the best doctors in the business are concerned. But I can remember, even when taking off the rose-colored glasses of fond recollections, that eight years ago I was much more upbeat, much more enthusiastic, and almost literally had no worries about the Boy's birth. My responsibilities (at least from my earthly perspective) have increased exponentially since then, it seems. The number of hours in the day seem to have dwindled, and I don't sleep enough as it is. Our parents are older and antsier, and fretting. Unlike eight years ago, I now have other people's children to worry over in addition to my own. And like most everyone else, we wonder how secure our jobs are, or at least how much real income we'll have in the coming years. I'm not even going to go down the national security road...

Sorry, little girl. It's not your fault, but Dad's not always a little ball of sunshine.

The Edge? Yeah, He Can Play!

2009-10-06T08:27:00.005-05:00

After almost a decade of not seeing any concerts beyond the NC Symphony's children's series, I've reverted to early-20's form and have now seen (and blown lots of money on) Bruce Springsteen and U2 in the last six months. And, well, they were both more than worth it.

Look, I can get as cynical about celebrities, music stars, etc. as anyone, and the ticket prices are decadent. But for now I just want to gush a little about these guys based on the work they do on stage and in the studio.

The U2 show Saturday was the first outdoor stadium show I've seen since the late 1980's, and what a spectacle it was, with the giant stage-set of doom holding up the giant 360 degree kazillion dollar video screen. These days, the video screens have HD t.v. quality pictures, so they are really hard to take your eyes off of. When I wanted to just concentrate on the stage, I lowered my head and let the bill of my ball cap block out the screen. Just, you know, to verify that I was at a concert and not a movie.

As for the band, they were fantastic, and when there are only four band members (only three of which play instruments the whole time) in the middle of this huge stage, amidst a sea of people, there is really nowhere to hide. Really, this should have been no surprise, but watching U2 live, I realized immediately just how much rides on The Edge's guitar work. He provides every bit of melodic atmosphere that each of their songs has, almost as if his guitar is a stand-in for three or four different instruments at once. Again, no surprise, but that guy is damn good, and how often can you say a performer was better than you thought he would be?

Similarly to Bruce, U2's shows, as with the major thrust of their recording work, are life affirming. Over half the show was comprised of the three most recent albums, and anyone paying attention knows about the spiritual nature of many of these songs. However, in spite of the stage and the religious coloring of the songs, there was never a feeling of overreach on the part of the band or the audience. Instead there was just a sweet affection between the two. When Bono spoke of "issues" (and yes, it would be more than fine with me if "issues" never came up at these concerts), they involved oppression of democracy in Iran and Burma (friend Brad pointed out that Bono sounded positively forceful in defense of democracy compared to certain elected leaders we could name). So, there was minimal damage on the political front. He did give a shout out of thanks to both the Edwards and Helms families for their support of his foundation, but I think the unintended main effect of this was to completely embarrass North Carolinians of all stripes ("Oh, those political figures are/were from our state? Really? Who knew?").

Best moment of the night? There were several terrific moments, but I'll take when Bono pulled a boy, around 10 years old, up on the outer ring of the stage with him and sang "City of Blinding Lights" to him as they strolled about, like a father singing to his son. During the song's intro he found out the boy's name (Brian?), and they even went for a jog together. Imagine being 10, minding your own business, and having tens of thousands of eyes suddenly trained on you. The boy's reward? Bono took off his omnipresent sunglasses, put them on him, and gently sent him back to his parents. I'm an easy sucker for this stuff - anyone who's seen Bruce's shows recently knows he regularly includes kids as well, and it is great fun for me to see big rock stars, who also are quite upfront about how much they love being fathers, letting that side of them show up in performance. Second best moment? "Where The Streets Have No Name" completely blew the place up - I never would have guessed that that would have been the show-stopper, but it was.

The cherry on the top for me came at school yesterday, when a couple of my students from the spring, who remembered I was excited about getting tickets, found me to tell me they were at the show as well. They were positively beaming when I asked them how they liked it, and I remembered (with just a tinge of melancholy), that I was about their age when I first heard, and was mesmerized by, U2. Nice symmetry, huh?

Quick Update

2009-09-22T19:38:00.003-05:00

If I had any energy I'd tell you about bizarre school happenings, bizarre family happenings, 8 year-olds and baseball, yet more un-settling down in the new home due to yet more re-arranging of furniture due to yet more home improvement projects, putting together a trampoline, the 60 personal narrative papers it's taking me forever to grade (fully 54.6% of them are about grandmother deaths - perhaps we should make "Grandmother Death Essays" a genre of their own), X-Box vs. PS3 dilemmas,and the much-hyped U2 concert in less than two weeks.

But I'll save it, at least until tomorrow.

Incidentally, yes, when the time comes I promise I will blog as quickly as possible on newborn news for the benefit of my, and the Wyfe's legions of loyal readers.

However, I hope to get in a few posts before then as well... stay tuned!

On "The Speech"

2009-09-07T19:17:00.008-05:00

More from me on our big move in the next post (hopefully), but since tomorrow is the the ballyhooed presidenttial speech to school children, I thought I should oblige with a few thoughts:

1. Happily, since our lunches will be taking place during the time of the speech tomorrow, my school is recording it and "making it available" (direct quote from principal, and I'm not sure what that means) during 4th Block. Why does this make me happy? I have planning period during 4th block, so I get to avoid the issue altogether!

2. Literally, I have watched 4-5 campaign speeches, two inaguaral speeches, no press conferences, no other presidential speeches, and no state-of-the-union addresses since about 2003. That has been it for me and political speeches - I loathe them, and can catch the re-cap the next day. So under no circumstances would I be looking forward to another speech, no matter how unoffensive, from a political figure.

3. Having said that, I've been perfectly confident from the beginning that this would be an unoffensive speech, and positive in tone.

4. Still, even when I was a kid and political rancor seemed a bit milder, no one would have expected people to be enthused about a speech given by someone they didn't vote for and have no particular enthusiasm about. Just part of the deal we all have to deal with. When I heard about the speech last Thursday, I rolled my eyes, and agreed with the Wyfe that we would check off on the form sent home that it was o.k. for our son to watch it. This is the response I suspect most of my family members would have had if a form had come home about a speech Reagan was addressing to school kids: eye roll, and check "yes".

5. Much has changed since then. If Obama had decided to do this in February, say, it would have been much less of a big deal. Now he is indisputably a figure of controversy on a fairly high scale, just as Bush was before him. If Bush had decided to do this at any point after his 9/11 bump had waned away, we would have had a similar explosive reaction on the part of many who opposed him.

6. I understand , and mostly (?) still subscribe to the notion that we should respect the presidency and other elected offices no matter what. But, I'm pretty sure that the ship has sailed on that as a civic ethic that more than half the country, if that, still wants to abide by. And, given the sorry state of our political elites these days, it is harder and harder to maintain that automatic respect is completely desirable. After a while, it is almost impossible to separate the abstract offices from those who occupy them.

In addition, that ethic implies that it is good and necessary on the part of citizens to do all they can to respect someone they will often disagree with, since at some point we all have to endure having those in office that we don't support. Truly, that is how it should be. But what if the elected officials don't also extend such respect to those who disagree with them? Isn't that even more important in a democratic country? That was a complaint with the former administration, and it has already become one with the current. Brooks Brother's Brigade or Angry Mobs, anyone?

7. I know people who have decided they don't want their kids to hear the speech, not because they think it will be a controversial speech, but because they don't like the president much, and don't like the precedent set of him being beamed into classrooms. I'm not much bothered by the precedent (it's happened before, apparently?). If the president tried this even once a year after this, or Lord forbid more than that, I'm convinced even his supporters would say, "Leave the kids alone already, will you? Let them get to work."

8. I'm also not worried about teachers trying to twist this into another chance to swoon over the prez. Sure, many of them will use it as an excuse to do so, but in my observations over the years, even the kids who agree with their teachers who show political leanings in class don't really care, and those who don't agree don't have their minds changed. Rightly, the kids don't take their high school teachers seriously over this stuff, unless it somehow affected grades. It would be immeasurably better, though, if it never came up at all in the classroom.

9. While I don't think this is part of a cult-of-personality conspiracy, I do think the president and his handlers like the iconography and hero worship that the support groups and the media have fostered for lo these many months, and don't mind tapping into it a little bit. The original lesson plans that go with the speech may or may not have been part of a "tapping" effort, but they were unnecessary (not to mention lame and artless) and provided fuel for the fire. It also doesn't help the president in a situation like this that his administration has already become associated with the phrase "Don't let a good crisis go to waste" or with the book "Rules for Radicals" (now an equal-opportinity tome, I guess).

10. I despise nanny-statism, and understand sensitivity to government elitists trying to do parents' jobs for them. I've heard that objection, but it doesn't strike me as particularly relevant here because of the content. Nothing there parents can argue with, probably.

11. I have my disagreements with the president on many issues. That put aside, it seems to me the more he speaks in public, the more damage he does to himself, and the more I wonder at all the hype. Could be wrong, but I suspect the ole' cult of personality thing may not be an issue for that long. So, hey, unless it's going to do the country catastrophic damage, maybe we should encourage more of this stuff!

12. No one can better display the truism about unintended consequences than government policy makers. Someone at the White House, or the Dept. of Education (hey - quit laughing!), probably thought this would help teachers and administrators in their work, at least a little. Instead, this has just added a complication to our jobs for a day. Thanks guys!

13. When all is said and done, though, it is just one day, and this too shall pass...

Cue The Long March

2009-08-24T17:46:00.003-05:00

"There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm..."
-"The Promised Land"
Bruce Springsteen

O.k., perhaps that intro. is a bit dramatic, but we begin anew at the old school house tomorrow, and I can't imagine much more of an unsettled horizon for moi, though I hope it will be mostly positive unsettling. Still, unsettling is unsettling...

Aside from moving, birthing, and infant care issues, I have been curious and concerned for a while about the work atmosphere this year. With the combination of budget cuts, salary stagnation (actually a tiny cut), increasing student enrollment, and larger average class sizes, I expected sour attitudes from the start. But, I have to say, everyone (meaning faculty) seems much happier and settled down than they were at the beginning of last year. Maybe the tough times have given some needed perspective. Or, maybe it's just because there's not some damned election this year.

I have mostly sophomores, but one class of juniors has been added, and as usual I'm also messing around a bit with what I'm going to do so as to be more effective and, most importantly, avoid getting bored with my curriculum. The yearbook needs to make money, the students need to shut up and sit down, and I need to sleep well every night (ha!). Any questions?

By the way, yes I know The Boss is coming to Charlotte in early November, and that tickets go on sale Friday. Yes, that is two weeks after the Wyfe's due date, and a couple of months into the new steroided-up mortgage payment. Yes, the boy and I just saw him in May. And yes, like a good soldier I have ignored these realities anyway and have tried to prevail upon the fair Wyfe for permission to go. Alas, to no avail. Pretty unreasonable, wouldn't you agree? Anyone want to help argue my case?

I Don't Write Much When I'm Nervous

2009-08-23T12:19:00.004-05:00

As you may have noticed... Some people feel better by writing about their stresses and turmoils while they are occuring, but as for me, I basically just turn into a big ball of weenie, close off my word-forming faculties, replace them with groans and grunts and gnashing of teeth, and wait until the storm has passed.

I'll refer you to this and to this if you are unfamiliar with the details, but in short let's just say that between a cranky, hard-to-please buyer of our home and the Byzantine process of getting a loan approved in the current market, the last month has been full of its own special torture.

In spite of all this, it appears everything is still going to go through on schedule, somewhat miraculously. Perhaps one day it will make wonderful grist for the blogging mill. With a week left, however, I'm inclined to believe one or two more surprises are in order so I'm going to let that particular dog lie a little longer. There are other matters to write on, time permitting.

Oh yeah, and school starts Tuesday. Toodles.

Summer Sketch #2

2009-07-21T07:25:00.003-05:00

Lord, it just makes you worry for your children, every day, when you can‘t even trust people. And here she was just doing what girls her age do, babysitting for family friends. I’ll tell you one thing, it won’t two minutes after he heard about it that Tom tore out the parking lot - he didn’t even tell the other assistant manager. He didn’t run to his car, but walked fast and steady, legs trying to catch up with the rest of his body, which was lurching forward like it sometimes does. And here Tom hasn’t talked to the girl in months; she won’t have nothing to do with him since he showed up at the house drunk when they were having her sixteenth birthday cook-out. And she barely had anything to do with him before that. I don’t need to tell you her mama never speaks with him except when she has to.

But when he heard, he tore off, and I only learned the full story, little by little. First he tried to call Sherry while he was driving, but couldn’t get through. He left a message for her, blubbering and stammering, but I don’t know what he said. Anyway, in about fifteen minutes he’d made it to packing plant, where that Davey fellow worked the afternoon shift. Tom knew he usually worked the fork in the back, and so he just hopped the fence into the loading dock and walked around. Davey was sitting on the bench having a smoke, and Tom didn’t bother speaking to him; he just come up from behind, grabbed him by the collar, and slung him into the back of the fork that was parked there. Davey never knew what was coming, and Tom kicked him so many times in the ribs and the gut that he never had a chance. By the time they pulled Tom off, Davey could barely sit upright, and Tom was screaming and sobbing all at once now, screaming, “She used to love to chase your dog, David! Remember?! We’d hold her hand, and walk to the pond, and she’d break away and chase your dog… Remember?!”

They say the look on his face was the most pitiful, all purple-veined and twisted red, beard matted in sweat and tears. Ever notice how at the end of a fight nobody ever looks like they found the relief they were looking for in the first place? Tom did right though, I won’t deny it. Maybe it won’t the smartest way to go about it, but I won’t deny it was right. There's no telling what will happen to him in court. I hear Sherry still won’t talk to him, and she may not yet, considering her state of mind, poor thing. But he showed her something, at least.

Lord, it just makes you worry for your children.

Facilitate This

2009-07-16T09:49:00.002-05:00

Our school district is now requiring high school teachers who have honors classes to be certified in teaching Academically Gifted (AIG) students, something previously only required of elementary and middle school teachers, since in high school there are no "AIG"-only classes. However, since we all run across AIG kids in our honors classes, the county wants to make sure we can say we are challenging them sufficiently (and not doing anything to cause their parents to threaten lawsuits, as well, I'm sure).

O.k. fine - we get credit hours for completing the certification training, and I'm never going to complain about a central office push to pay some more attention to gifted kids and challenge them (which goes against the general grain of educational emphases over the last 30 years or so). I attended a couple of half-day sessions last week, and now have to develop two steroided-up curriculum units for a review in September.

One bone to pick, though (sure, I could pick many others, but won't). We were told last week that these units would ideally allow the kids to mostly work independently, and that we would serve more as facilitators than teachers. In so many workshops over the years since 2002, I can't tell you how many times I've heard this: with coming technology, we'll be facilitators; through online learning, we'll be facilitators; in 21st century classrooms, we'll be facilitators.

This bothers me on many levels. For one thing, most teachers who hear this find it demoralizing because a) it sounds as if there is a desire to devalue our knowledge, skills, and even (hopefully) wonderful personalities in the classroom, which means that b) we sound more replaceable. I don't think this is truly what is intended - in fact, what is intended is to push teachers to move away from too much lecturing and notetaking, because today's ADHD-electrogadgetized students allegedly can't learn this way. Fine, but I still can't figure out what the hell is the problem with the word "teacher"? Is directing students during a project, or meeting one-on-one with them for feedback, or pointing the way for research solutions, or looking at rough drafts, or setting up the context for a unit not teaching? Even in an online class, which has the regrettable defect of missing out on flesh and blood interaction, is there not teaching going on. What is wrong with this word? In our overly scientific age, does teacher conjure up too many ideas of wisdom, experience, respect, leadership, indispensability, and that all mysterious human touch?

I don't know, but I attempt to be a teacher, dammit. I ain't no stinkin' facilitator.

Quick Shout Out For Me

2009-07-10T08:11:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to inform everyone that here at the homestead yesterday I successfully handled my son and two of his buddies all by myself for a large chunk of the day, with nary a mom-type figure in sight. I successfully fed them, I successfully set up a slip-and-slide for them, I successfully monitored their slippy-slidiness, and I successfully watched them play the Wii (a lot, actually), all without a major altercation, major dammage to the house, a call to the sheriff, or a hospital air-lift incident.

Yes, dammit, I do feel empowered, thank you very much...

Bathroom Humor, or Gotta Love the K&W Crowd

2009-06-29T15:38:00.003-05:00

So yesterday we picked my son up from his grandparents at the usual hand-off spot, one of the ubiquitous K&W Cafeterias here in the Old North State, filled with the ubiquitous cafeteria demographic (uh, that would be old people for those of you not versed in the ways of K&W lore).

Since we had just driven in from out of town, I took the first opportunity I could to use the facilities. When walking down the little hallway to the restrooms, I had to make way for several women coming out of their adjacent restroom before I entered the men's room. Apparently an older fellow was right on my heels, because just as I'd settled in to my urinal stall, he sidled in to the one beside me and made a comment about not being sure at first that he was heading for the correct restroom, since so many women were exiting the same area.

Now, I have to say I'm not used to urinal conversations, and I'll confess it is particularly difficult to maintain respectful eye contact in such a situation. But my new-found friend carried on, and let me know about two times in his life when he accidentally found himself in the wrong powder room. It seems that the Cracker Barrell he frequents in Mechanicsville, Virginia has the men's room on the left, and the women's room on the right, but once at a Cracker Barrell in Kentucky he made the mistake of assuming the same configuration, with regrettable consequences. And then there was something about walking into the wrong dressing room at a hotel gala one time.

About all I could manage to get in as a response was, "Well, I think you've got two strikes against you already, huh?" But I'm not sure he heard me, as he had completed his stories and his main task, and had already shuffled off to the sink. Meanwhile I, who had gotten there first, had been to distracted and still hadn't completed my main task - hell, my only task - in there. Never was much good at paying attention to two things at once.

But I do love a good story...

Summer Vacation Angst - Who Knew?

2009-06-25T07:26:00.005-05:00

There are a couple of good essays over at Front Porch Republic, first by Mark Mitchell and then by Jeffrey Pollet regarding the current crop of young'uns we are raising and their senses of gratitude, as opposed to their senses of entitlement.

It's interesting that the spark for both authors is how either their kids, or their friends' kids, are spending time during summer break. Though they are mostly writing about adolescents or college kids, we've been doing a lot of thinking along these lines at our house in relation to our seven year-old. Unlike many we know, we do have choices. He has the luxury/curse of having me around as "House-Dad" all summer. But for about half of the summers over the last three years we still sent him off to YMCA day camp, just so he could have some interaction with other kids, and have some structure to his day. But this year he's been adamant about not wanting to go to camp, and listening to his reasoning, I think I basically get his point: hanging out with other kids is fun for him (except for the bully types), but he finds the activities and structure at camp dull, and he has little control over how he gets to spend his time.

Yes, I could mention to him times not-so-long-ago when he might have been spending his summer working with his parents in the mill, but nonetheless I can sympathize. I loved my wide-open summers as a kid, even as a teenager, and wanted minimum interference. Yes, we belonged to a pool we could go to any day, though I often found that boring after an hour or two. Being home was mostly what I wanted, and like dear old Dad, the boy is probably a bit of a home body.

The problem, of course, is that if he could, he would choose to spend all his free time at home watching Johnny Test or other cartoons, and/or playing video games. The other problem is that I am not a "hey, here are eight fun, structured activities for us to participate in today, son!" kind of Dad. And truth be told, Johnny Test is kind of mesmerizingly funny...

So, what we've worked out thus far is this: he's going to attend an evening Vacation Bible School with a few of his buddies one week, and evening basketball camp for two weeks after that. He's also in the midst of splitting a week at both sets of grandparents' homes. When he's home with me, he has mandatory reading time 2-3 times a day, and he has to do a little writing once a day (The Horror! The Horror! - we've already had a couple of knock-down drag-outs on those latter activities), plus do some minimal chores. Other than this, he can go to friends' houses, or they can come to his. That's about it right now.

What I want to avoid is encouraging the sense of entitlement and sloth mentioned in the essays above, but also forcing the kid into too many activities he doesn't want to (and doesn't have to) participate in. I guess my aim is, to paraphrase Polonius, "Neither a spoiled couch potato nor an organization kid be."

Summer Sketch #1

2009-06-23T13:21:00.002-05:00

A man who has lived a life of rot has been death’s companion day by day, and yet finds a way still open to him. He knows he can take it, and follow it back towards those he has blown apart. They see him, have known him, looming there all along, even as miles and mountains and widest rivers separate them. He will come, and they sense it, because a way is still open to him, and like all but the truly damned, he still glories in life.

Small talk will be his only possession until he earns something better, but he may use it as a weapon, they know, or as endless shelter. For a time it will be his only means of saying what he can’t say - they know this too, but know it may end up being all he can say, and the hidden words may never spring to the surface, so that all may remain dry, and worse than that, dry with no promise of hope. His daughters , for this, will shun him and accept the moments they cross his shadow only as discomfort to be endured. His sons, for this, will spy him as he walks across distant hills or passes them on county roads, but will mention him not at all.

So he knows what he must one day speak , but it is long past the time he can approach such words as empty gestures, simply means to get by. There also lies death. If there is a last start at such speech, then the words will hold him to the course, to the open way. To cut the words from the way, this time, will close it forever; to start down the way is to realize it will never offer itself again, that the words and the way are one - for his children will not listen, will not wait anymore for a ghost of a man. Is it not better to keep off of the open way, to let it tantalize a little longer so that he will at least know it is still there?

He packs his belongings, meager though they are. He looks like hell, he notices, with a quick glance in the mirror, but even amidst the gray hair and sallow cheeks he sees a hint of the boyishness he‘s always recognized. Death has been his companion for so many years, and will always welcome him back with open arms. That is not the embrace he seeks, but why go, only to fall again? For a brief moment, the words flash at him - that is a boy’s question, a boy’s thought, a boy forever a boy. The open way offers nothing but a chance that depends on the strictures of truth, but it is a chance. And he knows they see him, and have known he is coming all along.

"As School Year Comes To End, Civilization Hangs by Ever-Fraying Thread"

2009-06-17T08:23:00.005-05:00

In an alternate universe where I would somehow have anything to do with publishing a local newspaper, I'd make sure headlines like the title for this blog entry were the order of the day. And if you are of my ilk (i.e. neurotically concerned about the ongoing decline of America - which is to say, a normal and rational person) and would have witnessed my school's graduation last Friday, you'd know how such a headline would be appropriate.

It's not that anything completely awful happened at our ceremony, which took place last Friday in the traditional small (er, medium)-town way, on the football field under a baking June sun. But it does strike me how much has changed so quickly. What would have been considered totally inappropriate for graduates or attendees twenty years ago has become de rigueur. It used to be that if a principal asked the attendees to remain quiet until the last graduate's name was called, they did. And if graduates were threatened with not receiving their diplomas due to poor behavior during the ceremony, they knew to tread lightly. Ah, such days of innocence!

When I first started teaching seven years ago, I quickly realized that compliance was no longer universal, but those family members/friends who broke propriety by whooping it up when their special cupcake's name was called were still the exception, and were easy to dismiss (sad to say) with the use of that fine old condemnatory Southernism, "trashy". In the intervening years, now, trashy has apparently become the new appropriate. On Friday I could count on one hand the number of graduates, out of 390 or so walking the stage, who didn't receive a "Whoo! Whoo!" or "Yeeeeaaaahhh-uhhh! That's my baaaay-bee!!" from somewhere in the crowd. It quickly got to the point that: a) I started feeling sorry for the very few who didn't receive loud applause (had no one under 90 come to see them graduate, I wondered?) and b) I became grateful toward those who let out minimalist "whooping" that didn't run over into the next graduate's name; sure they were rude, but not as rude as the worst offenders.

While most of the graduates did walk the stage with dignity, there were quite a few who either struck poses or found distracting ways to acknowledge the clannish adulation they received - little pretend celebrity punks and punkettes, playing out their fondest awards show fantasies.

Speaking of fantasies, it is no wonder that many teachers express the following as a perfect commencement scenario: Everyone is gathered in place, the graduates march and file into their seats, and, just after the opening invocation, a massive thunderstorm suddenly rushes onto the scene, leaving the principal no choice but to pronounce everyone a graduate and send us all running off to our cars.

Sad, huh?

Hear that creaking noise, fellow Westerners...?

Glad Tidings

2009-06-07T12:42:00.007-05:00

On Friday morning at 9 a.m., I silently sat forward in a darkened room, my face bathed in sweat, watching a video monitor, and heard the technician say, "Everything looks really clear today. It looks really good." The doctor came in and confirmed this news for us soon thereafter, and though he wanted one more follow-up just to really play it safe, he said, "Really, I think you can put this out of your minds now." Those words ended one of the most difficult, trying months of our lives.

I struggled for quite a while about when, and how, to write about this, but if you read the Wyfe's blog you know about the ultrasound finding of an echogenic bowel we received back on May 8th. In short, this means the baby's bowel showed up more brightly than normal on the sonogram, and this is a "soft marker" which usually, by itself, indicates nothing. Usually it resolves itself over a few weeks. But that word usually (or often, or most of the time, or frequently) indicates wiggle room, and wiggle room exists because this marker is also associated with Downs syndrome, cystic fibrosis, blockages, and other worrisome scenarios. Though the odds were low, they were about half as low as before, and of course nothing guarantees worry like the phrase, "It's probably nothing; I wouldn't worry about it." So even though we were told that there was no need to drive ourselves crazy over this in the weeks until our follow-up ultrasound, we drove ourselves crazy about it.

It was a month of terrible emotional fluctuations, of internet searches that were more like pleas, of prayers both hesitant and (on a good day) bold, and of many a broken night's sleep. There were days when all I wanted to do was talk out my worries, the way a child keeps picking at a scab; then, especially over the last week, there were days when I couldn't bring myself to mention them even once. A legitimate point we always made to each other was, "Look, it's not like we would love the child any less, and we know people with Downs who are happy and well-adjusted, and whose families have perfectly normal lives." This was all true, absolutely so. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a bit of hollowness behind these statements. Many people deal with birth defects, and do so with all the love in their hearts, working through the extra burdens and complications. God bless them. No one, however, wishes for such a scenario.

Certainly, though, there are those who can face uncertainty with a stouter spirit than I can. I managed my way through the last month because I had no choice, and no control. But I did so with white knuckles. It's a hell of a thing to have someone ask you how the baby's doing, or how the pregnancy's going, and to feel you can't offer a convincing smile and a full-fledged "Just fine, thanks!" Then again, who ever promised certainty in this world, either before, during, or after birth? (I know of those who have had much, much worse situations)

We intend now, however, to assume everything is fine, just fine - thank you, Jesus.

And, oh by the way, did I mention it's a girl?

Slackness As A Form of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

2009-05-19T18:41:00.004-05:00

So last evening was "Graduation Project" night, the end-of-semester event wherein seniors stand in front of adult judges, in front of often-hastily-prepared tri-fold cardboard displays, and strain to speak for at least five minutes on the "product" they worked on all semester which relates to their research paper. Since this grueling night is always scheduled on Mondays - once in deep, dark December and once in beautiful May - among the things it produces are grumpy, tired teachers for the rest of the week.

Last night was the first time I'd been tapped as a judge of the presentations and "products" (which can consist of anything from volunteer time to actually creating or constructing something), and five of the six seniors we graded did just fine. There was, however, the sixth, whose paper and project were ostensibly on "The Effects of Racial Profiling on the Educations of Minorities." Yes, the young man doing this project was black. From what I could tell, he was intelligent, had the ability to be an effective speaker/presenter, and had an engaging personality. He was well-groomed, polite, and neatly dressed. And his project was...well... crap.

What he was supposed to have done was visit two elementary schools, one predominantly white and one black, help teach second-grade classes about something or other (he never was clear on what), and observe how students were engaged with, punished, etc. by teachers and administrators. What he actually did, it seems, is only go to the latter school and help the teacher pass out papers and line the kids up for recess. When asked what evidence he saw of racial profiling at the school, he told about seeing some black and white kids pushing a boy on the playground and calling him a "Mexican". On his tri-fold he had a few pictures from his classroom visit, somewhat random quotes and questions pasted on at slanted angles, and two print outs of surveys. One of these purported to show the rates of gang activity among different races (why?), and the other showed the disparity in rates of suspensions between blacks and whites in five states (not including NC), and Long Island (?). Suffice to say, this was not a coherent or impressive effort.

As judges, we were to decide how well he supported his argument, and what quality of work he did. As you might have guessed, we judged him as below standard. As you might also have guessed, the three of us are white. There was much conjecture as to what the kid might attribute his failure to.

Oh, we profiled all right. We profiled for "kids who slack off until the last minute on the most important assignment of their senior year." Not a race, but a common species, it seems.

Me, The Boy, and The Boss

2009-05-02T10:57:00.004-05:00

"This is our kingdom of days."
-Bruce Springsteen, Kingdom of Days

If you've listended to Bruce Springsteen's latest album, Working on a Dream, you may have noticed a running theme that threads it's way even through the mostly upbeat, winsome feel of the album: our days on earth are numbered, and we must do the best we can with them. Yes, laughter and love can abound in them. But know that they are numbered. Probably the first ten times I heard "The Last Carnival", Bruce's tribute song to fallen friend and band member Danny Federici, I literally wept somewhere along the way. Our days are numbered indeed.

The story of my first encounters with the music, and the phenomenon, of Bruce Springsteen is rather pedestrian by standards of so many of his fans. As with much of the country, I got hooked on The Boss's music in the spring/summer of 1984 as soon as "Dancing In The Dark" hit the airwaves, and Born in the USA hit the record stores. This was the summer between my eighth and ninth grade years, a time for feeling so grown up and yet so overwhelmed by what was coming. I bought the cassette of the album, and listened to it non-stop for months. It was a heady combination for an introverted teenager ready to pop out of his own skin: guitars, backbeat, the masculine tone of the songs, intelligent lyrics, the dark edges, the stories the songs told. I distinctly remember the summer ritual of having my walkman with me everytime I went out to ride my bike, and everytime I went to bed, the cassette playing over and over (I still have that cassette, by the way). All this would have made me a laughingstock among most of my peers, who considered Bruce weak water compared to their Kiss's/Iron Maidens/Jimi Hendrix's, so I pretty much kept it to myself. But I was hooked.

Years later I realized that for many Bruce purists the album was a source of derision, but it was my introduction to the man. Of course, within the next year or so I had found Born to Run in the cassette bargain bin at K-Mart, and had saved up Christmas money to by the Live 1975-1985 album, which opened up whole new Springsteenian worlds for me, all of them equally compelling. 25 years later I'm still listening, still a fan, even through the uneven albums of the 90's and the Boss's occasional uneven political statements. One of my wife's many good points is that she has always been a Bruce fan as well, and I've found several friends over the years with whom I can bond over Bruce. I neither have the breadth or depth of Springsteen knowledge/experience that a couple of these friends of mine have (friends Brad and Phil, for instance have - I believe- seen every Bruce show ever in the state of NC!), and I've only seen Bruce live twice, though those were two of the most unbelievable experiences of my life, celebrations as much as concerts.

I first played Born in the USA for the boy when he was three, thinking it would be a nice intro to rock and roll for him, and of course openly hoping he would take to it. He did, and we've been raising a little Boss fan ever since.

When word of the new tour came around, it occured to me (perhaps prophetically, perhaps not) that, with one bandmate already fallen, this could be the last time around for 59 year-old Bruce and his crew, and that maybe, just maybe I should go. Unfortunately, Wyfe begged off, as she just doesn't like concerts anymore, plus she knew she would perhaps not have the energy for it at this point in the pregnancy. The thought occured to me, fleetingly, that I should take the boy... but, he's too young, it would be too long, etc. Still, in the wake of the Bruce Superbowl appearance, he had been saying, "I wish I could see Bruce Springsteen sometime." After friend Brad told me about the numbers of children who trekked to Bruce shows with their (rapidly) aging parents on the last tour, well... you can pretty much guess the rest of the story.

So, tonight in Greensboro, child earplugs in tow, the boy and I will be sitting on the lower level, yelling, screaming, bobbing our heads up and down, and air-guitaring, spending our evening with Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, a father and son sharing a place in time which will seem, for a few hours, like a place out of time. On this side of heaven, our "Kingdom of Days" are what we have, and we'll share a little piece of that kingdom tonight with a man whose given both of us, now, so much joy.

Clique-ity Clack

2009-04-21T20:34:00.002-05:00

At this point, having once survived high school myself and now having survived high school again for almost seven years, teenage cliques rarely bother me anymore. Yes, they are irritating, but so are spring allergies, and both come and go soon enough. Besides, I guess we've all been in some kind of clique at some point.

What I've run upon at school #2, though (and have mentioned before), is an adult clique I pretty much can't abide. Unfortunately, it is made up mostly of English teachers, all of whom I'm on good terms with. But when they are gathered together, something I usually witness while warming my food at lunch, the sum of their parts as gathered in their conversation equals any or all of the following: smarmy, immature, asinine, sneering, juvenile, hateful, politically chauvinistic, (anti)religiously chauvinistic, snobby, puerile, self-consciously chic, hedonistic... well, you get the picture, and see why I tend to delicately extract myself from the lounge rather quickly after my food is warm. I also tend to not sit right next to them during faculty meetings so as to be out of site of the embarassing notes they pass, or blatant talking they do, while the principal is speaking.

So yesterday a couple of my yearbook kids were out asking for teacher volunteers who might help us staff a distribution party after school on the day the books come in. When the girls went in the lounge to ask the gathered Clique, they were apparently dismissed rather rudely and haughtily sent on their way after being told what an awful idea this was. In the meantime, at least 12 other teachers had already pledged to assist and said it was a good idea, or at least worth a try.

What chafes me is that any of these Clique members, if approached one-on-one, would have at least been courteous, even if they declined to help. What is it about the group setting (maybe I should say the group-think setting) that can turn people into such turds?

Adults. Sheesh.

The Prospects of Being an Old Dad

2009-04-15T09:21:00.002-05:00

To continue my musings on impending fatherhood, Act II, let me point out a few other items of preoccupation:

*One of the first things that occured to me after we confirmed the news was that I would be 58 when this child, God willing, graduated high school. 58! I realize that in today's world this does not connote full decrepitude, and in fact this might only qualify me for the Viagra target audience, and not necessarily the mortuary. But will I be able to legitimately throw a baseball then without the kid going easy on me? Or stay awake by 10 pm? Or be able to intimidate a boyfriend? Yikes.

Plus, though this has not universally been the case, I've known many instances of a child being born to older parents, never having a real connection with them because they are so out of it, and turning into a rebellious turd. Will this child grow up thinking his/her parents are hopelessly outdated and just too old to share much with?

* What if this child is a girl? Seriously. Longtime readers are aware of the many head-shaking, not-able-to-be-rationalized stories I have from dealing with teenage girls on a day to day basis as a teacher. I've griped and griped about those bizarre creatures, so naturally I'm betting on a girl this time around. I picture myself wincing through the various delicate issues I would have to deal with starting at around age 10 or so. I picture myself shuddering at the thought of some boy touching my daughter. I'm not amused.

I will say I love what one of my favorite former students told me about how her father dealt with her and her two sisters when they would fall into "adolescent girl mode". This jolly, round man, usually the loudest person at all the sporting events he was at, was a fun-loving, blue-collar Catholic country boy (of all things!). But when any drama started, the exchange would go roughly like this:

Dad: "Quit whining, suck it up, and grow some hair on your chest!"
7th Grade-ish Daughter: "Girls don't grow hair on their chests!"
Dad: "Well then, suck it up and grow some titties on your chest!"
7th Grade-ish Daughter: "I don't really have any of those yet either!"

Doubt I'll be trying that line of attack, but you never know.

*What about the age gap in children? This I have the least anxiety about - I've surreptitiously been taking notes on others who have children this far apart, or grew up in similar circumstances. The anecdotal evidence is that all has been well, including the free babysitting down the road. What we don't want is for the Boy to feel either left out, or too left in (as in feeling like a third equal in the caretaking). We want him involved as much as possible, but to still be able to be a kid. This will take some work, but a good balance should be possible.

*I could go on about finances, time, work, the inevitable decline of the America, the loss of all public morality, and other worries, but no point in that now. By the time I'm 58 I'm sure I will have addressed those here, and with the kid, on numerous occasions.

Undeserved Joy

2009-04-14T07:26:00.009-05:00

As I've previously mentioned, my schedule this year is tick-tight, and the blogging has suffered, so how about a little update. What's been going on in SchoolMasterP's world? Well...

Let's see... a fulfilling Lenten season and Easter Sunday have passed, we're trying to sell our house and buy a slightly bigger one, the spring semester is halfway through, the hateful yearbook is finished, I just started a new Teaching Company course on Martin Luther, yellow pine pollen has once again engulfed eastern NC... uh, and... oh yeah, there is this matter about a baby on the way.

If you also read my wife's blog, or are a friend on her hateful Facebook page, you know all about the blessed news. Let me fill in some other pieces of this story of unexpected and undeserved joy.

A couple of years after my son was born, we decided to try, in earnest, for child #2, but whereas the conception of #1 was virtually instantaneous, as these things go, we had no such fortune this time around. According to the doctors, nothing was physically wrong with us, but nonetheless my wife had what turned out to be a short, unhappy encounter with a fertility drug just to see if it would help. After about a year, we decided just to let be what will be, but in reality we were both mostly convinced that the fertile years had passed us by. And so, that is the place we've inhabited for five or six years now.

What were our feelings, and thoughts, about all this? I must first admit that there was part of me, five years ago, that was relieved not to have another baby to raise after just getting through the infant/early toddler years with the Boy. Perhaps we were just meant to have one, and besides, since we aren't wealthy, and there is so much in the world for us to do with this child that maybe it was just as well. Where would we find the time or energy when we were already so sapped? How would we pay for another round of daycare? Selfish thoughts, for sure; at times, shameful thoughts. But real.

These feelings were balanced, though, by the almost unbearable disappointment my wife was feeling. Rarely does my wife seem permanently wounded by something, but this was one sorrow that seemed never to be assuaged. For one, there was the grief any woman might feel at believing her childbearing days are over. Plus, being an only child, she knew the unique challenges that growing up without siblings can present (there are, of course, unique challenges in having siblings as well!). Finally, there is just the disappointment of a dream not playing out as you'd hoped, and having that (relatively) perfectly squared American family of four was her dream.

Over time, especially the last couple of years, I started to feel the pinch of this same sorrow. I remember when the Boy was born, I thanked God so much for the privilege of being a parent, of just having that opportunity, that shot at it. I was mindful, and still am, that many who would love to be parents don't get that shot, which should always be a reproach to the smugness that comes from feeling you're "in the club." But having one child seems to naturally beg for having more, if possible - this is simply the way of life, not a judgment. It wasn't, apparently, our fate, and so staring at 40, it seemed an era of other possibilities had just slipped by us.

Increasingly, when asked why we didn't have more children, I found myself regretting that we didn't start earlier in our marriage, and regretting my former thoughts of relief over not having two little mouths to feed at once. The motivations behind such feelings ranged from low to high, the most craven of which is the thought that those with more than one child have extra buffers against the risks of losing a child. Who is more to be pitied, the thinking goes, than someone who loses the only child they have been given?

But I've also been looking upon my son with pity at times, for he is not only an only child, but an only grandchild on both sides of his family, which is a rarity. Sooner or later, I thought, all our misfortunes, all our burdens, all our infirmities will fall on his shoulders alone. It is not that he isn't happy, or that he hasn't formed many good friendships already at his young age. But it will all fall on him.

And now, we have the shocking, exhilirating, and (I'll admit) slightly intimidating news of a child on the way, due in October, with everyone apparently healthy thus far. And... Oh, my God, are You serious!?!?

Sorry, that still bubbles up every now and then. Stay tuned, dear reader, for Part II of my musings on the unexpected event...

But In This County...

2009-03-23T17:48:00.002-05:00

Our school just held its annual Miss ______ High School pageant a couple of days ago, and because I share planning and curriculum with one of our newer teachers who was helping with the pageant, someone who fortunately grew up in the socially-intellectually-materially advanced (wink-wink) town on the southwest side of Raleigh, I have heard quite a bit of the scuttlebutt surrounding the whole thing.

Of course, over the past few weeks there has been the predictable girl drama, the backbiting, the selectively leaked utterances of overconfidence, and the fake friendships (including, it seems, among the teachers organizing the event). But what was most interesting about the whole event was the girl my colleague really was hoping would win. Seems the girl is a great student, more of an intellectual than the other girls, a nice person, and someone possessing a most unusual talent: she played the sitar. Turns out, by the way, that this girl did win.

Granted, it sounds like I would have preferred her to win as well, had I been subject to daily helpings of pageant preparation. If you've spent much time around the pageant girl crowd - and if you are like me (that is to say, a typical man) - your patience has been tried early and often. Plus, as a rule, the dancing and singing "talents" these girls typically rely on are, to put it delicately, God-awful. So, good for this girl and her mighty sitar playing for laying 'em low.

But for the last few weeks all I've heard are how the rubes "in this county" might find something like the sitar too bizarre, or how people "in this county" don't think to ask the caterers of the event for vegetarian plate optiions, or how the people "in this county" aren't too concerned about proper syntax in the girls' addresses to the audience.

We should feel sorry for ourselves, I guess, living out here in the armpit of the state - a whole 20 minutes or so from civilization.

Why Lent Matters

2009-02-24T22:35:00.001-05:00

We've been reading Greek stories in my honors class, and the story of Perseus and his many heroic feats (in heroic sandals, I might add - get it? get it?) was one of the most popular with the group. As an extension assignment, I asked the class to write about the "Medusas" in their life they need to slay, and how and why they need to do this. I also told them that I wanted them to be totally honest about this, but if what they had written was too personal, they could put it in an envelope marked "Do Not Read", and I would trust that they did it (and honor their request of course).

Well, I did get about five envelopes - and yes, I believe that they really wrote the paper - but most everyone else was willing to share. Much of what I got was standard teen anxiety, such as worries about measuring up to expectations, or figuring out which social groups are the right fit. But there were also much darker stories shared, the kind of stories that almost make the world stop for a few moments.

I read a long paper from a girl who hasn't seen her mother in a year. This is the same mother who has been through four boyfriends over the course of this girl's sixteen years, who once had to go to the hospital after one of the boyfriends beat the crap out of her, which her girl vividly remembers. Upon last seeing her daughter, this mother showed more affection for her latest boyfriend's children than for her own, leaving the girl in tears. That will never go away.

And there was a beautifully written paper from another girl telling about how her life has fallen apart since only October, when she moved in with her mother. She writes about finally facing "reality", which for her means that people are essentially selfish and that the best way to make it through is to "not care about anything or give a crap about anyone." She's been in therapy, is taking antidepressants, has been in fights, and has failed classes. From her demeanor in class, I never would have guessed any of this.

So we come to that time of year when we give special heed to our own sinfulness, our own damned and damning selfishness, and when we do, we need to pay heed to the "least of these" who always suffer the most for it. But we do so not out of morbidity, not because of allegiance to death and darkness. We do so because there is Hope on the other side, blessed Hope. I hope our lost children, despite our best efforts, still know it's there.

Coincidence by Design?

2009-02-16T20:39:00.005-05:00

Honestly, I had no idea last week marked a Darwin anniversary of some sort until I saw a note about how Google had changed their homepage design to commemorate the date. It was pure coincidence then, I'm sure (?) that I was at the time delving into a fascinating read: John Carroll's The Wreck of Western Culture .

Carroll, an Australian intellectual, begins with the Renaissance and proceeds to march down the centuries until the 9/11, showing how humanism's first assertions of the great I ("we can become what we will") eventually led to the total unraveling of western culture in all but material aspects. Humanism, he posits, is now dead, and we live in its ruins, awaiting a new chapter. He utilizes brilliant readings of certain paintings, pieces of literature, and pieces of music to narrate his tale, and his heroes are the painter Poussin and the composer Bach, both of whom offered visions of life which still led to cogent answers for the three great questions: where did we come from? what is the meaning of our lives? where do we go when we die? Unfortunately, few others living under humanism's roof could address these questions - which tends to happen when we make ourselves the measure of all things.

Yesterday I read Carroll's chapter on Marx and Darwin, the final twin wreckers of the west. Marx, he points out, was full of rancor and bitterness (he actually never even toured a factory, and lived as a conventional bourgeois). Darwin's story is, to me, even more disconcerting - he wrote with no rancor, but with stereotypical scientific coldness, all along explaining how, in essence, the only god is the god of skulls (ape and human).

Now, whenever I read about the full Darwinian explanation for EVERYTHING (as opposed to the demonstrable portions of his observations), I'll admit a chill runs up my spine. Partially it is the worry that the largescale implications of his theory are correct, and that life is an absurd accident, ending merely in negation of being. Partially, it is the way so many embraced (and continue to embrace) this dead end, quite gleefully.

How to deal with this? How to answer Darwin, for those of us who stare out into his abyss, but recoil from it, not believing we do so in an effort to delude ourselves?

Well, I guarantee I have nothing profound to add, and can only speak for myself, but I find it amazing that all my Darwinian anxiety tends to lift as soon as I find myself in the company of others, working within the context of my relationships with them. Relations with my family, my friends, my students - they all put the lie to the nihilistic worldview, and for a Christian this should not be a stunning revelation. At its core, our faith is a faith in relationship - THE Relationship.

Perhaps it doesn't seem much to stand on, especially among the ruins of western culture. But from relationship comes a knowledge that the intellect, I believe, can only stand in awe of, and must follow. Darwin, when he overstepped his bounds, be damned.

New Semester Rising

2009-01-27T21:21:00.002-05:00

Because of our snow days last week, our new semester didn't start on time, so now tomorrow is the day. When I was in high school, there was no such thing as a "block schedule" semester calendar, so you stayed in the same classes from August until May. As a teacher, this mid-year changeover has always felt odd to me.

For some reason today I was thinking about the feel of this new semester versus the feel of a new school year in August. There is a touch of hope and optimism attached to the newness, but it is far more muted than it normally is after summer's end. Of course, it is the middle of freakin' winter, which is hardly conducive to joyous moods. Also, students and teachers alike have just finished last semester in a rush of activity, emotion, and exam angst, so none of us feel completely recharged to start over again, I suspect.

There is an upside, I think, in that I can still be hopeful about what lies ahead, but in a more realistic (chastened?) way. When I'm away from students for all those weeks of summer, I tend to get a little too "pie in the sky" about all my big plans and all the GREAT THINGS THAT WILL HAPPEN IN CLASS EVERY DAY!! AHHHHH!!!

Yeah. Well, some of those things did happen, so I'm thankful for them, and for the tiny miracles that will somehow occur even in this less-than-eagerly-anticipated semester about to begin... wish me luck, as always.

"All Changed, Changed Utterly."

2009-01-22T21:29:00.005-05:00

(With a hat tip to W.B. Yeats for my post title)

Snow, at least in measurable quantity, doesn't find its way to the central piedmont of N.C. very often, so it was a cause for celebration at our house when we got about six inches on Tuesday.

Especially during a morning storm, as the snow really kicks in, nothing seems quite itself anymore (I'm sure those in northern climates who are used to the routine would beg to differ!)

Added bonus - it only takes two days for it to disappear 'round these parts!

I'll Take This...

2009-01-14T21:34:00.002-05:00

How about a little self-pat on the back? Here's an excerpt from a student's "Farewell to English II" journal entry, which I took up after exams today:

"...I am going to miss you and this class SO FREAKIN'BAD!!! I had so much fun in here and I read more often than I have for a while - loving the Shakespeare! You helped me to start reaching out for bigger things and pushing myself to figure out what my limits really are. Thank you."

"The Absent Thing Alone is Real"

2009-01-12T16:49:00.005-05:00

Before he died last week, my wife's uncle (as we were told at the funeral) expressed that he was ready for death, tired after many a good fight, and ready to "go home." Two days later the author and priest Richard John Neuhaus died. Today I opened up the latest, now-melancholy issue of First Things to find the last words Neuhaus would ever publish in his column there. As he revealed a new bout with cancer, he wrote, among other things, "Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be."

I have nothing profound tonight to add on the subject of death (have I ever?). Only to note that the conjunction of these two deaths last week, one of a relative and one of a favorite author and thinker, greatly impacted my household, in different ways, of course. I'll also note the bravery, mentioned above, of each as they faced the final hours, knowing all the while they must have felt, at moments, less than brave. Which is to say they were human.

My wife's uncle was - will continue to be - described as "larger than life", and for good reason. He was a Marine who survived the hell-hole of Okinawa, a public servant and political force in his home county for decades, and a man who never met a stranger, nor, apparently, an excuse to throw a charitable fundraiser (preferably involving barbecue) that he didn't like. I usually only saw him once a year at Christmas, so for the fifteen years I knew him my perspective was somewhat unique - rather than the public man, I almost always witnessed the private man, often when eating breakfast with him at his kitchen table before the larger family gathering had commenced. He had me by almost fifty years, but we found we had similar interests and similar viewpoints, and I considered him my friend. He was generous with his attention and always ready to swap stories, the old Southerner par excellence. And, he didn't leave this world without teaching my son something - he taught the Boy how to salute! I, in turn, salute a long life lived well.

As for Neuhaus, I simply would say that whether or not you agree with his political stances over the years (and they were strong and principled), even if you never had the pleasure of reading his monthly "The Public Square" column, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not seeking out two books of his that have consoled me numerous times through rough patches - even crises - of faith. Death on a Friday Afternoon should be read often, but most especially, I would recommend, during Lent. And then there is Neuhaus's remarkable, luminous As I Lay Dying, his account of being at death's doorstep during his first bout of cancer, including the humble account he gives of an astounding encounter he had while lying semi-conscious in his hospital room. I remember going out to buy this book right after I had read William Cullent Bryant's alluring, nihilistic poem "Thanatopsis", and suddenly feeling the cold fear that all there is to life is this world. Neuhaus's writing has consoled me in the face of such fears many times now.

For all the consolations, though, there is still the grief of this world, always present, easy to find every day. We feel our losses deeply, and that can never change. I love this quote from Joseph Bottum in his obituary of Neuhaus:

"Grief doesn't conjure up ghosts. Grief renders the world itself ghostly. The absent thing alone is real, and in comparison, all present things are pale, gray, and indistinct: a vague background to the sharp-edged portrait of what is gone."

And The World Continues Apace...

2009-01-05T16:15:00.003-05:00

After a very long, very relaxing break, you can imagine I had certain trepidations about jumping back into the classroom today, especially with this being the last week before semester exams, and my having to return to grumpy teens their research papers, replete with notations along the lines of, "Make the following 15 corrections, redo your entire works cited page, and then resubmit."

One girl, in fact, got EXTREMELY angry that I told her to better paraphrase certain passages or else be in danger of the accusation of plagiarism, which was a heavy hint that she was, in fact in danger of the accusation of plagiarism. Well, she whined and fumed about how this is really the way she writes, and maybe she hasn't shown it all year but she could write like a stupid 5th grader if that's what I wanted, etc. So, I took her over to my computer, looked up a website from her works cited, found a passage from said website, and pointed out to her how she used the exact same sentences without quotation marks in her paper and just slapped an endnote on them.

I'm still waiting for my apology...

Later in the day, I also intercepted the following note, which I reproduce exactly as written:

What happened with you and Shotgun?

nothin I was just askin if you saw him. do you think he misses me?

I don't know, why? didn't u see him over the break

I told you already that Im not allowed to see him he will get sent to jail duh!

What? Why?
(end of note, as Mr. P took it)

There is definitely a Jeff Foxworthy joke or two just waiting to happen there, I know. Let's just hope ole' Shotgun, whoever he is, stays out of the pokey.

Standing Athwart Facebook Yelling "STOP!"

2008-12-11T20:19:00.002-05:00

That's me.

I know Facebook went mainstream and ceased being only for the acne crowd lo many moons ago. I know adults my age and older are using it to keep track of old friends, classmates, etc. I know it is used for social networking in an age of dispersion and alienation.

But most of all I know that I don't care. I declare here and now that I will never, never, ever, never have a Facebook page.

This all comes up because the Wyfe is finally making noise about creating her own page so she can keep up with old high school and college buddies. She has been informed, however, that I want no part of it. A partial list of reasons includes:

1. I cannot disassociate Myspace and Facebook from the pernicious effects both have had on many a teenager I have taught.

2. I don't want to be found, or contacted by those who don't already know how to find me (for reasons only the CIA and I know about).

3. It would just be one more damn thing to keep track of.

4. Younger teachers tell me about students trying to "friend" them on their pages all the time.

5. I resent the de facto formation of verbs like "to friend" that have arisen as a result of these sites.

6. Deep down (well, Hell - not so deep down) I have always enjoyed playing the part of the crotchety old man who likes to be contrary, just because.

True, there is irony in the fact that I'm publishing this rant on a blog. But blogs are practically Victorian at this point, and could survive a Burkean analysis of established social traditions, I'm sure. (right? right?)

In any case, I'll have a Facebook page when they register me by tapping my cold, dead fingers on the keyboard.

Advent Diary #1

2008-12-09T17:04:00.002-05:00

Probably like most who hope (very often, in my case, not strongly enough) to live the faith in word and deed, I've never been a terrific keeper of Advent - Lent has always been an easier time of year for me to discipline myself, put off instant gratification, reflect on shortcomings and sins, and learn to wait.

This year I decided to keep all of this in mind more often, and focus more intently during Advent on the fallen world all around us, and within us, before Christmas Day. Frankly, I haven't been doing so well, but I have had many things going on that are serving as very ugly reminders. To wit:

1. Major, major girl conflicts going on in yearbook, which brings with it the exciting baggage of a psycho mom calling me on my cell phone and another mom expressing "disappointment" over my consideration of removing her daughter from the class before taking intermediate steps.

2. Major, major seven year-old conflicts going on with my son's basketball team (luckily he's not one of the problems) between a bully whiner kid and another kid who wants to quit because of him (I'm asst. coach again, natch).

3. A member of my teaching team avoiding the other two members of my teaching team at all turns, with no one knowing why or being brave enough to ask (she's not mad at me, I'm certain, but I think I'm going to have to play detective/mediator at any rate).

So there you go - high school girls and moms, seven year-old boys, and mid-twenties teachers served up in a big, happy Advent pie. Then again, I asked for it this year, didn't I? I trust God has His reasons.

Acknowledging An Unacknowledged Sabbatical

2008-12-08T20:36:00.002-05:00

Here's the thing this year- school begins at 7:10, which means I have to be up at 6:00 and moving quickly. We finish at 2:20, and can leave at 3:15, at which point I head straight to the elementary school and get in line so I can pick up the Boy. We get home, I help with homework, maybe get in a short snooze, then cook for the three of us before Wyfe arrives just after 6:00. Then it's clean the kitchen, maybe get in some exercise, and get the kid to bed. By that point, my blog motivation is hanging by a thread (and none of this even takes into account nights for baseball, and now basketball, both practices and games). So...

Yeah, the blog has been a big desert, as has out of school grading time, putting me way behind on everything. ARRRGHH!

But, I'm going to try and return from my month-long sabbatical somehow or another. I'll try to squeeze in some things as soon as I get home, at least on certain days and see how it goes.

It is true, by the way, that I did run over a deer last week, if you've heard the rumor. Not a reindeer, at least!

Forgive Me Father, I Have Sinned.

2008-11-14T21:08:00.003-05:00

I did the unthinkable, the unmentionable this week: I quit on Shakespeare!

Well, sort of. You see, I've been doing The Tempest with my sophomores the last couple of years, to nice (if not resounding) success. No worries - I'm still doing it this semester. However, earlier this year, when putting together the final reading list for my honors class, I gave the smartie-pantses a vote on one reading. We could invest about $2.00 a piece and buy enough additional copies of Cyrano De Bergerac to do that, or add Othello to the list, with no need for a purchase to be made. The cheap-o's voted Othello, but frankly I was excited about this since it meant being able to do two Shakespeare's in a semester.

Well, I had forgotten that Othello was a much more difficult play, with much more dense and intricate language, and scenes that are long and less easily-digestable. Plus, we are at that point in the semester where kids' motivations are waning, and laziness has settled in like an epidemic. Things were not going well at all with the noble Moor, so after we slugged through Act III, I decided to pull the plug.

If it was just a matter of their laziness, I wouldn't have done it, but I was getting no interest or traction at all, except from about three exceptionally bright girls. A senior honors class would have been able to handle Othello better perhaps, but I'm not going to try it with sophomores again. Given the time left in the semester, and that I want to get in The Tempest and another novel, I made the tactical decision to withdraw from this battle in order to win the war.

And, I warned them, it will be war next week with The Tempest, a play even my standard English classes get through without scrapes. It's just that the honors crew will be responsible for a whole lot more... uh... enrichment activities to do.

Still, there is the guilt of letting ole Willie down, and at least one of the girls who was actually enjoying the play is angry because we quit. Oh, "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame!"

Craziness Doesn't End At The Finish Line

2008-11-05T16:50:00.002-05:00

Well, no the election did not go the way I wanted it to, but I already knew that was going to happen a while ago. And no, I'm not bitter, and certainly have high regard for the historical whopper of electing a black man as president (who also ran a much better campaign, frankly). Mostly, though, I'm just so freakin' relieved it is over with...

Alas, there were landmines to attend to at school today, where I've heard it all in the past few weeks. I knew today would be full of rude euphoria and full of bitter brooding, full of bad sportsmanship on both sides, so to speak. And yes, I suppose I anticipated the Crazy showing up as well. Just to give you a taste:

-Earlier in the day, apparently, 15 students had to be escorted to the principal because they almost got in a post-election fight in their class.

-Some black students were in the hall saying, in defiant tones, "Black people are gonna' be able to do anything we want to now!" On Monday, many of these same students were saying, quite seriously, they wouldn't leave the house the day after the election if Obama won, because they didn't want the "dogs being set on them!"

-I heard from more than one yearbook student how eerie it is when you compare Obama with what you read in Revelations. (I think it's eerie when you compare any human being, including yours truly, with Mrs. Turpin in Flannery O'Connor's Revelation and find so many similarities, but that's a different topic).

-Someone said their Mama remarked that "The morals in this country are really going to go downhill now." (Is there still lower ground to be found?).

Be careful out there folks. Human nature is still alive and well.

Three Terrific Things About Today

2008-10-24T21:24:00.003-05:00

1. I seamlessly moved from giving instructions to my honors class about a writing assignment, to blistering, Marine style, an impertinent little bratty girl who got up out of her seat for the second time in the middle of my lecture, to moving back into lecture mode, all while barely drawing a breath or missing a beat. Outstanding!

2. Early voting! I voted today, and it was the most pleasurable presidential-year voting experience I've had since those great absentee-ballot days of my college years. Serioulsy - no lines, no annoying people, in and out in 10 minutes. There is nothing romantic about actual election day at the polls. Since we have an optional workday, I'll now be spending Nov. 4th in leisure, with the Boy. As for the t.v.? When it's on that day, it'll be limited to cartoons or sports stations (at least until around bed time).

3. With our seven-year olds down by a run, in a blowing rain storm, against a hyper-competitive rival team whose coaches always send their kids for extra bases even when it goes beyond the bounds of sportsmanship, I sent the tying runner home from third base under potentially dubious circumstances. The next hitter struck out for out three, and then the game was called due to rain, so we secured a non-loss, at least. Those guys really wanted to beat us, too, so our head coach and I shared a nice chuckle after the game.

Don't look at me that way... they totally deserved it. I swear.

The Old Standby

2008-10-22T16:54:00.002-05:00

In the midst of English departmental strife, misbehaving kids, sordid tales about things the adults in the school building do (both in and out of school), and that upcoming voting-related event which shall henceforward remain nameless in this space, it lifts my spirits a little to know that tonight begins yet another World Series, which is the huge sporting event I always look most forward to. The older I get, the more sentimental I get about baseball, moreso than any other sport.

Ah, yes, at least there will always be The World Series to count on... except for, uh, that one year back in the 90's, but never mind that.

Carpooling: A Cautionary Tale

2008-10-21T19:24:00.004-05:00

So, at the end of last year three English teachers and a science teacher decided that in 08/09 they would meet up at a central location in Raleigh and drive together for the 20-some miles it takes to get to school from there, for all the usual reasons of saving money and going green(er). The cinching criteria that the science teacher met, since the other three had already planned this, was that she could speak in similarly glowing terms of their preferred presidential candidate, thus ensuring their ability to speak openly and freely about the topic that sooooo commands most of their attention outside of school, namely politics, politics, politics. But, I happen to know, they are also pretty fair shots when it comes to trashing others, complaining about their personal lives, and deciding to stop for drinks, occasionally, on the way home.

Well, I share a first block planning period and a planning lounge with the other sophomore English teachers, including the youngest of the carpooling foursome, and we have been pretty good friends since last year, when we were both newbies at our current school. She is quite mature for her age, but she is just 24-25, and lately around her I've been reminded just how impressionable an age that still can be. You see, at first it seemed the carpooling was going swimmingly, but after a few weeks we noticed her coming in grumpier and grumpier, swearing more than usual. Soon she was prone to mini-rants (personal or political) every other day, some of which included harsh trashing of other school employees (notably, the science teacher mentioned above). She would also volunteer what others on the car rides were saying, and intentionally or not, painting not-so flattering portraits of them (two of them are my age, by the way, and I have been present for savage rants of theirs before as well).

A couple of weeks ago my young friend blurted out that she realized she had become quite cynical and negative, and wondered aloud if it was because of all the time she spent with her largely cynical and negative carpool buddies (Ding! Ding! Ding!). Last Thursday she came in looking sunken, had a rough day at work, and on the ride home had to hear about how one of the other riders was called onto the carpet by the principal for a lost temper at some meeting earlier in the week. On Friday, my friend was not at school, and the other teachers said she was taking a "mental health" day. Then, on Monday, upon her return, she told us she was no longer carpooling, and instead would live with the higher gas costs.

I will venture a guess that she will seem much happier within a week or two.

Wonders of the eZine

2008-10-12T16:04:00.002-05:00

It is a rare occasion, indeed, when I can tout my groundbreaking work (ha!) in using technology for the classroom. However, over the summer with the Writing Project, I learned about how to set up a private class "eZine" at Writing Matters, and so decided to give it a whirl with my honors class. I'm certain that more advanced teachers having been doing this sort of thing for years, but this was a bit of a plunge for me.

What you do is set everyone up with a password (so you can track deviant behavior), and then allow them to post a variety of academic, creative, rhetorical, or informal writings, which all others in the class can then post comments about. Of course, once I set it up, explained the rules, and displayed it for them, I didn't get the instant, "Oh, Mr. P this is the most wonderful, inspirational, rad, awesome idea ever! We're all going to post ten writings and comments tonight!!" reaction I was looking for, so I had to rely on one of my ingenious motivational techniques to get them going. Namely, I told them to post something, or get a "0".

Well, it worked, and the eZine really has taken off. There are something like 60 or 70 pieces of writing now up, and a plethora of comments. Fortunately, these have all stayed within bounds, and have been positive. I was hoping for a little more in the way of communal constructive criticism, but perhaps that will come as they get more comfortable sharing their writing and participating in give-and-take commentary.

In any case, I am so pleased with the results. Each week a few new things pop up there without prompting from me, and the kids seem to be into it. Now, the next frontier is to try it out with my standard English class, where many a reluctant writer presides. Still, I want to see how it goes with them, if I don't murder them for their fifth-grade mentalities beforehand...

Those Given To Us

2008-09-26T19:38:00.005-05:00

Well, they include those we work with, and we all know those folks impact our lives in a multitude of ways.

My immediate co-workers (English teacher subset) are eminently talented teachers, and eminently intelligent; most are truly fun to know, and blessings to their students. The majority of them (or at least the vocal majority), are also quite different from me in two key areas: politically, and religiously. Their politics, as one might expect, are mostly quite liberal; their religious beliefs are hard to categorize without deeper conversation, but suffice it say they display either a contempt for, or at least an ambivalence toward, religious institutions and church attendance.

If I had my way, it would never occur to anyone to bring these areas up in the workplace; and yet (especially as election fever has been rising over the last year) in my time at School #2 I've been stuck in the middle of countless English teacher break room/lunch break/after-the-bell-hanging-out gatherings that have, seemingly spontaneously, broken out into political/religious harangue sessions (today at lunch was the latest example). The language always seems to turn bitter and salty, and the certitude more, well, certain. And I have been the lone one in the room who might disagree with them. Last March, when I finally admitted I was refusing an offered cookie because chocolate was one of the things I gave up during Lent, the room suddenly turned into a funeral parlor. I don't conflate religion with politics, but imagine if I had added a positive comment about the surge in Iraq while I was at it.

Hard to say this without sounding like a braggart, but it's funny that in the department I'm probably the most scholarly, the most egg-headed, and the most seriously read of them all. Not a feather in my cap; it's just the way I roll, and my particular experience. But I'm also the most likely to hang out with, in fact to be one of, the petty bourgeouise who mows his yard, helps coach baseball, and doesn't cringe when someone says grace before a meal. Others who don't share my politics or religious beliefs do the same, but I find these folks much more like me than like my colleagues.

The everlasting question is, what to do in these awkward work situations, which, if I had my way, would never arise in the first place? To this point, I've basically remained silent. I feel neither the energy/interest to engage in political office debates, nor feel I possess the skill for them (the Wyfe might serve as a wonderful stand-in for me in such matters). It seems I am much less inclined to view my fellow man in political terms than they are, anyway.

Still, part of me believes I'm a wimp, pure and simple

I suppose I would be more comfortable with religious conversations, but I'm not one to bring these up, and don't feel my colleagues would engage in good faith anyway. To them, it seems, non-lapsed Christians fit all the worst caricatures of dumb redneck gay-haters.

Mostly, I wonder at their contempt and bitterness. I don't think they are idiots or rubes, and try to see their religious hang-ups, in particular, through compassionate eyes. Not everyone like them says what they do, or behaves as they do, so I try to resist engaging in caricaturing them the way they do to others. But they sure don't make it easy.

O.k., enough whining, Schoolboy.

Want to Know What My Friday Morning Was Like?

2008-09-21T20:29:00.002-05:00

We've been working on five-line poems in the past week: two nouns joined by a conjunction, prepositional phrase, subject and verb, and participial phrase - all meant to evoke more than explain. See what you can sleuth from this self-portrait (not as bad as it sounds, I promise!):

Neglected zipper,

and a morning beard untended,

upon his shirt red marker stains,

teacher of writing lost in words,

composing himself into a mug shot.

Informal Poll For You

2008-09-15T15:32:00.002-05:00

To attend a potential 20th year high school reunion, or not to attend a potential 20th year high school reunion? That is the question.

Pretty sure I already know my answer, but I would love some input and brief explanations for your answers.

Irritation Station

2008-09-12T18:51:00.003-05:00

That sums up my mood today, which is a shame since I haven't posted in so long (grading papers every night - hellllllp!), and things have mostly been off to a great start. But the past week was a trial, and when I finally sat down to post an update on Tuesday, we figured out our DSL modem had crapped out on us. Just got the new one today, and all appears well with the internets. But, withdrawal was an issue.

Update #1 - The Guest Speakers
As you may have seen in my comments, we were all prepared for an intervention with Ms. New Teacher over our uneasy feelings regarding her boyfriend and his brother coming to speak to the kids. But the evening before that happened, it turns out, another intervention occured: she and some of the other women English teachers had a blowout over the way she's been dressing (too provocatively), and she left school distraught. Fortunately - oh, most fortunately - I wasn't there. The next day, sensing a need to mend fences, no one had the heart to try and pull the "guest speaker rug" out from under her (there is a rather clever pun in that last phrase,I must say, if you can guess the country the guest speakers' parents are from). However, we did let her know some of our concerns, and we all felt a little better about it going in, albeit begrudgingly. Well, turns out the guys were really rather good. Their father was an enemy of the extremist regime which took over their country, and the family had to flee because of a hit out on him. They both praised America and Americans, and said we were loved among the populace in said country and its neighbors. They both said they wholeheartedly support both wars of the post-911 era. And, they both denounced the religious extremists who they believe warp their religion.

Now, if this had been a session of Meet the Press, there were probably many things they could have been grilled on, by me or others, as to the history of their religion and how it relates to current happenings. But at least there was no dissembling on their parts when it came to the topic of terrorism - they didn't even go for the "its partly due to decisions of the American government" line. And, considering the story they told of their family's terrifying flight, I think there is good reason to believe their sincerity.

Update #2 The Classes
Through the first two weeks I was absolutely in love with my classes. Then, as usual, they got comfortable and began showing themselves in the glory that is the full human being. Still love them, but this is when love becomes more the verb and less the sentiment.

I will say that among the kids in my honors class are a large number of first rate writers - best I've ever seen, and their personal narratives have been unbelievably good. On many occasions the writing has not only been outstanding, but has exhibited courage that makes me envious. My favorite piece is by a girl who recounted her experience of having a growth removed from her spine at age 5. The growth was so aggressive that the doctor's couldn't get it out in time to save her from partial paralysis, but she rehabilitated and rehabilitated, and finally was able to walk again. Today she is a normal teen whose right leg drags a bit, but who is also a first-rate violinist in a youth orchestra and probably the smartest person in a smart class. A beautiful story, beautifully written, by a beautiful young soul.

Update #3 The Soap Operas
Nasty political comments from English teachers who walk lock-step in the manner you might expect, nasty comments about the armed forces, catty comments about fellow carpoolers, yearbook kids with simmering feuds, mumbled misgivings about new teachers, mumbled misgivings about old, inflexible teachers, reluctance to share resources, grumpiness about our starting time (7:10 am!), hurtful gossip, dissimulations, grouchiness about graduation projects, snapping at secretaries, slamming doors, crying.

One month of work, and I've seen, or heard all of it. Such is the warp and woof of the school day. O.k., so that's not the whole picture, but I told you what kind of mood I'm in today...

God grant us grace.

Best Quote Ever

2008-08-26T18:45:00.002-05:00

From one of my honors students, in answer to a student info. sheet I give out at the beginning of the year:

Q: What are your strengths in English? What would you like to improve upon?

A: I'm good at reading and writing; grammar is a great weariness.

Yes, grammar is a great weariness, young lad. As are a number of other things...

In (not so) unrelated news, one of our new first year folks, fresh out of college, is basically sweet, and will probably be a very good teacher. However, she has to be taken in small doses at this point - way too much energy without enough direction. So, for the past eight days or so she has shared, every day, the fact that she currently dates a young man whose family is originally from a country we currently have troops in. And, this young man is devoted to a religion that, let's just say, has a controversial standing in post-911 America. Not only this, but because 10th grade in NC is devoted to World Lit., she has booked said boyfriend and his brother to come speak to 10th grade English classes next Wednesday and inform the kiddos all about said religion, pending approval from the principal.

Now, first of all, I'm not at a place in my unit plans where this is convenient yet (we'll read Persepolis later on), but to be a team player my classes will attend if the approval comes through. I would rather spend the time getting across the fundamental reading and writing practices in my classes that it takes a couple of weeks to establish. Second, I get the sneaking suspicion that there is a "let's educate the hick kids" mentality here. Third, even if these guys are absolute princes who have the best intentions of "bridging misunderstandings" (as I'm sure they are), what makes them expert enough to give such a talk, and how willing will they be to face questions about why many fellow Americans legitimately feel uneasy about their religion? Fourth, is this really, perhaps, just an outgrowth of overexuberant puppy love and a desire to show off Mr. Boyfriend (don't think they've been dating long)? Fifth, can someone get me Mark Steyn on the phone, and see if he can make the talk?

New School Year Preview (Part 2) - You Know You're Old When...

2008-08-18T16:21:00.002-05:00

... you look out among the sea of faces at your first big faculty meeting of the year, and notice a young new teacher who... OH MY GOD! SHE WAS MY EDITOR FOR THE FIRST EVER YEARBOOK CLASS I TAUGHT IN '03/'04, AT MY FORMER SCHOOL! SHE WON MY OUTSTANDING STUDENT AWARD FOR THAT CLASS!

It's true - This morning I looked over at where the business/marketing teachers were sitting, and I saw Suzie (not her real name, obviously), and didn't trust my eyes, so flipped through the faculty list in my new handbook. Sure enough, that's her. So as soon as the principal was finished talking, I rushed over to her, hugged her, and spent the rest of the day basking in the glow of getting to work with a former student. She seemed tickled and pleased about it as well. Last I had seen of her, she had no inclination towards teaching, but changed her mind between her sophomore and junior years of college. This is her first year in teaching, and her first real job!

ISN'T THAT JUST SOOOOO COOL!

Can you tell I'm excited? It was a great day all around actually, and I can't say that about every "first day back" I've ever had. For one thing, miracle of miracles, we were given half of the day to work in our rooms - trust me, that's quite a bit for Day 1. More later in the week.

New School Year Preview (Part 1) - Why My Kids Will Hate Me

2008-08-15T10:51:00.002-05:00

Yes, first workday is Monday. Sigh.

Well, might as well jump in the mud and get going from the start, which is what my kids are going to have to do. Partially because I'm brainwashed from my Writing Project experience of the summer, and partly because I was veering this way by the end of last semester anyway, I can proudly declare why my students will hate me this year:

They are going to write their asses off, more than ever! First, I'm incorporating a modified writer's workshop into my classes, where we will spend at least two days a week on nothing but writing and conferencing, and by the end of each quarter the students will be responsible for having finished several pieces of writing in a variety of forms. Many of the deadlines will be open-ended up to the report card deadline, which means self-discipline will be a premium quality. Those who wait until the last minute to do things (and we all know there will be several) will hear me say, "Ooops, too bad. I had plenty of time to help you the last eight weeks, but precious little now. Looks bad for you."

Also, continuing what I started to do last semester, I'm making all tests written tests, in one way or another. As I tell the kids, "Written tests, once I've told you what's expected on them, actually give you a better chance to show what you've learned. You are actually more in control of your grade than ever before." This not only forces the kids to think more, and in a higher-level fashion, but I am happy to reward effort, and I don't have to worry about cheating or guessing. And believe it or not, written tests are actually not that hard to grade when a rubric has been set up ahead of time.

So, we will write, write, write, and as much as possible, I will write alongside the little urchins in an act of solidarity against their outrageously unfair teacher.

Sound schizophrenic enough?

I'm Late on This, But Can't Help Pointing It Out...

2008-08-07T19:26:00.004-05:00

Rarely will you see me frequenting a Starbucks. Wyfe, on the other hand, is much more of an enthusiast, though to her credit, she just likes the coffee, and rolls her eyes at Starbucks pretensions.
Well, we always stop at the Starbucks drive-thru at the beginning of long interstate trips back home after visiting either my parents or hers. I always dread it when I'm the one in the driver's seat, because I have to repeat the nine or ten ridiculous words it takes to communicate Wyfe's order. As for me, I just ask for a medium coffee, which I guess ends up translating as, irritatingly, a regular "Grande".

Well, now I know I have at least one fellow traveler. This is from a while ago, the June issue of The New Criterion, but can't be passed up. From the wonderful, and curmudgeonly, media critic James Bowman:

On my occasional visits to Starbucks, the ubiquitous coffee merchants, I try to refuse to use the private language the company has thoughtfully provided for the convenience of its patrons. Sometimes I forget and ask for Tall, Grande, or Venti, but usually I ask, defiantly but with some embarrassment, for small, medium, or large, because I resent being forced into a greater intimacy than I desire with the Starbucks corporate culture. I want to be a customer, not a member of the Starbucks Club who validates his membership along with his entry on the premises by speaking the Starbucks idiolect. Doubtless the marketing department in Seattle has tested it to a fare-thee-well and found that most people are not like me; most people are happy to use the special, European-sounding jargon—the Stargot, as we might call it—because it flatters them into the belief that, along with their coffee, they have purchased at a very reasonable price admission to an exclusive circle of coffee-drinkers who are socially a cut or two above those who drink from the caffeine-springs of Dunkin’ Donuts or Ma’s Diner, where they use ordinary English.
Back on the other coast but with considerably less subtlety, The Washington Post has long been engaged in a similar exercise... [there is a] never-ending radio advertising campaign for the Post which ends with that newspaper’s supremely irritating slogan: “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” Was there ever such a crass appeal to intellectual snobbery by an organ purporting to be an arbiter of public tastes and morals?...

... Naturally, no one wants to be outside the circle of those who “get it”—a formulation once applied mainly to jokes but now used to indicate a political group-identity which defines itself in part by stressing the stupidity of those who do not share it. To be among those who “get it” is not only to hold a certain set of views that make one reliably progressive but also, by holding it, to be a member of the progressive club—which, like the Starbucks Club, is decidedly up-market socially.

The "Stargot", indeed!

The Good Tears Were Sad Tears

2008-08-03T17:20:00.003-05:00

With all the fun I've been making of the women-folk lately, especially in conjunction with the Writing Project experience, let me give you a small vignette about one day when I didn't mind the tears at all:

As mentioned previously, we were split into peer writing groups of four, and within these groups we read and gave each other feedback about our pieces, both online, and in person. In my group there was one lady in her fifties, one in her mid-thirties, and one in her mid-twenties.

The latter of these is a fifth grade teacher, and to observe her personality - bright, friendly, wholesome, and oh-so-maternal - is immediately to know that elementary education fits her well. Other clues about her cropped up each day during the first week of our institute: she baked breakfast goodies for us twice, she fussed over her hair and clothes when others wanted to take pictures, her necklaces and bracelets always matched her pants, and when she gave her presentation, she wore heels and a fairly formal black dress. She even told us that she and a few friends had started a cooking club together. If I had to pick one person I know who could go back in time and survive, probably thrive, as a stereotypical 1950's-style housewife, it would be her. Her first writing, a childhood memoir, was about the aw-shucks vacations her family always took at a cabin by the lake (yes, they even toasted marshmallows), while all her other friends went to Disney, or Cancun, or Hilton Head. I wondered aloud if she felt a jealous tension over what her friends got to do compared to her, and in total seriousness she said, "Nah." All of this made me privately giggle a bit - which is probably patronizing - but I meant no harm. She was obviously a wonderful person, but a bit of a throwback, and without much life experience yet.

Or so I thought. The next writing assignment was a personal narrative, in which we were to explore a formative event in our lives. We read these in our peer groups, and we were even being recorded as part of a study on peer writing feeback. My young friend waited until last to read hers, and I sensed a different confidence about her this time, like she knew she had something good. From the first couple of paragraphs, it was obvious I was right. Her writing was funny this time, all about her hair: the travails she had as a young girl when her mother wouldn't let her wear it long, and then the absolute self-esteem she had, once she was allowed long hair, from her teen years to the present. Even once she was married and gainfully employed, she occasionally had nightmares that her hair had been all cut off. These were mere dreams, though, and life seemed to be sailing along.

As she read, I knew some turn of fate was coming, but never suspected it would be too bad - perhaps just a mild admonition life brought along to remind her that looks aren't everything. When the turn came, though, we were all unprepared for the gravity and immediacy of it. She read of how, merely a few months ago, she miscarried a baby, and her beloved grandmother died, back to back. She reached this point in the paper so suddenly that I could almost hear my own internal "thud". Concurrently, all the confidence in her voice fell off, and she began sobbing. This was obviously awkward, and one of the other group members offered to read for her, while I dug in my pocket for a tissue to offer. She took the tissue, but wanted to keep reading, and she did, though with difficulty. Turns out, on the day her baby would have been due, she scheduled a hair cut, wanting to take inches off, wanting to feel like she could make a fresh start. When it was over, her feelings of brokeness, alas, had gone nowhere, and she finally had to squarely face herself and her grief.

It was a stunning story, and a stunning effort to finish reading it, all the while fighting back tears. We all eventually tried to offer a few pointers here and there about how to improve the piece, but frankly it needed no improvement - not then, anyway. The best I could tell her, in the end, was, "That was an awesome piece of writing, but I'm so sorry."

Two days later, when it came time to pick one member of the peer group to read to everyone, we told her she was the pick, and crossed our fingers. She read with absolute composure, but absolute conviction, her voice not breaking until the final sentence.

In the face of her bravery, who cares what I was thinking, really, but I'll tell you anyway. What I felt was absolute pride in my young friend, who I know now, better than I did before, will some day be a perfect mom.

How I Know I'm A Tough Guy

2008-07-30T06:55:00.003-05:00

So, in what situation would I consider myself tougher, grittier, and more battle-tested than a stout, 27 year-old high school wrestling coach (and former state champion wrestler) who appears in excellent shape?

Why, when negotiating the world of women, naturally (Wyfe would totally agree, I'm confident). You see, this young fellow and I were the only two men in the Writing Project class this summer, surrounded and outnumbered by a ratio of 7-1. The women ranged in age from mid-20's to mid-60's, and they really were a fun group to work with. However, you know in a situation where over the course of three weeks everyone was asked to write and share childhood memories and personal narratives what was probably coming; you also know that when it's time to say goodbye and head off in different directions after bonding for three weeks that emotions will be outporing.

One activity we had to complete was to "spy" on someone over the course of the three weeks, careful not to reveal who they were, and then produce an appreciative piece of writing (I wrote a light-hearted sonnet, for instance) about them based on what we learned and observed. The last thing we did on Friday was share these and reveal who we were "spying" on. My man-creeps almost got the better of me when we were told to form ourselves into a "sharing circle" for the occasion, but I managed not to complain. Then the festivities began and, oh my, did the tears flow. After only the second presentation the lady sitting to my right spontaneously burst into sobs, and I actually wanted to turn and admonish her with a stern, "Oh, stop it!" Instead, I accepted my place in the universal order and fulfilled my given duty by sighing heavily, and then walking across the room and getting the Kleenex box for her. From then on I amused myself (and others) by being irascible tissue guy, walking the box around wherever it was needed. As for my poor young compadre, who is not married or dating seriously, he seemed shell-shocked, a wrestling coach out of water. Just follow my lead, kid - I'll see you through this.

I did suggest, for the sake of next year's two or three beleaguered male participants, that they at least relocate the "sharing circle" to a sports bar.

Digging Out

2008-07-29T06:22:00.003-05:00

Well, the Writing Project summer institute is over, and I feel like I just went through another school year all within the span of three weeks. Seriously - as we reached the end of the line last week, I had that same vibe I get when we enter the last week of the school year: satisfaction, relief, and fatigue all at once. Now I've got three weeks to recover, and organize the tremendous amount of information I received at the institute, before I report to duty. Well, realistically, let's make that a week to recover and organize, and then two weeks to get ready before reporting to duty.

After persevering through it all, though, I can now proudly call myself a Fellow of the National Writing Project.

So, was it all worth it, and what was a typical day like at the institute? Here is my attempt at digestable answers to those burning questions, with a couple of follow-up posts coming soon:

Was it worth it? Absolutely. On a purely selfish level, I was able to work on my own writing, receive great feedback on it from others, and get encouragement to write more for potential publication. We'll see where all that goes, but it's nice to have the enthusiasm. On a professional level, the institute provided a high level of useful training and knowledge, which anyone who has to attend professional development of any kind can appreciate. Not every minute or every presentation was completely outstanding, but most of what we did was at least useful, and at most convinced me to make life-altering changes in the classroom. In addition, there was a tremendous sense of community built up between all of the participants, and I can now count several new, genuine friendships as a result. More on both of these latter points soon.

What was a typical day like? Well, first it was nice that our instructors and fellow participants were all fairly laid back, but not frivolous with time. Most mornings started with a short writing activity or idea, and then the days were filled with a combination of the following: presentations by participants, writing peer group meetings for feedback/criticism on our own work, demonstrations of writing activities, short lectures on academic research about writing, reading our work aloud, developing lesson plans or writing assignments for our students, and learning all about Web 2.0 (I hate that pretentious phrase) and what it might offer writing teachers (wikis, class blogs, class eZines, digital storytelling, Delicious, aggregators, etc.). Most of the web stuff was new to me, and I can't say I'll use much of it, but will use some.

Yes, we had homework, too, which is a real pain in the ass when you also have to get your child to and from evening swim lessons, and do stuff like, you know, eat. But it was mostly writing, and I'm fairly pleased with the final products. Without the deadlines, I would never have written as much as I did.

In the next couple of posts I'll go into some detail on a few of the things I've learned, what I've decided to change in the classroom, and how much crying I had to put up with (you can guess, I'm sure).

Days 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8....

2008-07-21T07:06:00.001-05:00

AAAGGGGHHHH!!!

Sorry folks - I'm out of commission until this darned thing is over with (Friday, Thank God!). Be back with you then and can let you know of my writing adventures. Take care!

The Writer's Project - Day 1

2008-07-08T18:56:00.002-05:00

I won't have time to go into extensive detail (besides, I'm already tired of writing, which doesn't bode well), but each day I'll try to give you some highlights. From today:

* Someone in my peer group (a sweet soul, really) cried when she read her draft of a childhood memory, which involved the death of her dog. Awkward? You know, not really. After all this time (see multiple previous posts of mine over the last couple of years about working with women and yearbook girls),I've come to expect it.

* I wrote about the shameful time a friend and I threw mudballs into our neighbor's kitchen, and put his sister's bra in a glass of tea, while he and his family were visiting relatives on a Sunday afternoon. Hey, I was less than 10 years old, and my neighbor was bullying us, if you're looking for mitigating circumstances.

* No one has made themselves annoying so far by trying to dominate all proceedings, but there is at least one candidate showing potential.

* Our "gathering time" (i.e., time to show up for class) is listed as 8-9. That is what I call a laid-back approach.

* My hand still cramps up after writing for a long time, just like in the old days before these keyboard thingies.

*The lady I'm going to do a presentation with in a couple of weeks is very unsure of herself. Not sure how that will play out.

*Writing is actually, like, fun sometimes. Who knew?

Murray's "Educational Romanticism"

2008-07-01T07:39:00.003-05:00

I'm way behind on this (for all I know it's been making internet rounds for weeks), but back in May The New Criterion published an issue dedicated solely to education. While most of the articles involved the sad decline of the humanities in our colleges and universities, there was one lively article on K-12 public schools, entitled "The Age of Educational Romanticism" (sorry, it's a subscriber only article), from none other than Charles Murray. Frankly, I don't know enough about Murray's past arguments (The Bell Curve, et. al.) to comment on them in-depth, though if no less a personage than Shelby Steele has some criticisms, I'm willing to believe that Murray has at least not careful enough in stating his case from time to time. I'm not for genetic essentialism (though I am for recognizing reality, and I've yet to be able to run the 100m dash in under ten seconds!), and in my experience neither race nor sex factors in to who is highly intellectual and who isn't.

However, I've seen Murray interviewed often enough to say I agree with one of his basic premises, which is that our country's education establishment puts too much effort into trying to make everyone a college-bound academic all-star when we know full well only a certain percentage of the population has the ability and/or desire to be that. I would never say this means we shouldn't do our best with all the students we teach, or that those who aren't academic all-stars can't learn at all. But no public school teacher will honestly tell you all his or her kids, no matter their learning styles, will learn equally well.

In this latest article, Murray declares that both those on the left and the right are guilty of a romanticism that is out of touch with educational realities:

In public discourse, the leading symptom of educational romanticism is silence on the role of intellectual limits even when the topic screams for their discussion. Try to think of the last time you encountered a news story that mentioned low intellectual ability as the reason why some students do not perform at grade level. I doubt if you can. Whether analyzed by the news media, school superintendents, or politicians, the problems facing low-performing students are always that they have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, or have gone to bad schools, or grown up in peer cultures that do not value educational achievement. The problem is never that they just aren’t smart enough.

Murray points out that while those factors may affect attitude or application, study after study shows that one's intellectual ability is more or less fixed in place before a child even enters school, regardless of race, sex, or background. He says no programs or strategies make much of a dent in this circumstance:

...There are no examples of intensive in-school programs that permanently raise intellectual ability during the K-12 years (minor and temporary practice effects are the most that have been demonstrated). No one disputes the empirical predictiveness of tests of intellectual ability—IQ tests—for large groups...

...If a classroom of first-graders is given a full-scale IQ test that requires no literacy and no mathematics, the correlation of those scores with scores on reading and math tests at age seventeen is going to be high. Such correlations will be equally high whether the class consists of rich children or poor, black or white, male or female. They will be high no matter how hard the teachers have worked. Scores on tests of reading and math track with intellectual ability, no matter what.

Now, Murray points out that a really, really bad and violent school - or a really, really bad home life - might end up affecting these scores, but that in even a below-average school with below-average funding (like my former school), the intelligent child will almost always show the same aptitude throughout his or her school years. He or she may get lazy, or may get in trouble, and may fail classes left and right, but the innate intellectual ability does not change:

The normally bad school maintains a reasonably orderly learning environment and offers a standard range of courses taught with standard textbooks. Most of the teachers aren’t terrible; they’re just mediocre. Those raw materials give students most of the education they are going to absorb regardless of where they go to school. Excellent schools with excellent teachers will augment their learning, and are a better experience for children in many other ways as well. But an excellent school’s effects on mean test scores for the student body as a whole will not be dramatic. Readers who attended normally bad K-12 schools and then went to selective colleges are likely to understand why: Your classmates who had gone to Phillips Exeter had taken much better courses than your school offered, and you may have envied their good luck, but you had read a lot on your own, you weren’t that far behind, and you caught up quickly.

The problem, as Murray sees it, is that we squander billions of dollars in efforts to make all kids highly intelligent, though this is something nature alone has control of. When they still aren't all highly intelligent after our money and efforts, we in the education business dishonor the less intellectual by deciding that, by God, we've just got to make them like we are (or like we think we are)!. The rationale behind the No Child Left Behind Act (which, Murray points out, "a Republican president of the United States, surrounded by approving legislators from both parties [emphasis mine, b/c Bush always gets all the blame in education circles], signed into law") is that if we just re-double our efforts and make our schools tow the line a little more, all children will suddenly have that high IQ that Antoine and Susie have. So, we pay particular attention these days to the lowest performing students, thinking if they just get even more time and attention and scrutiny, they will be Antoine and Susie. But they aren't, and though they might now score a little higher than they would without this attention, they are not on their way to Harvard. AND, guess what? There's nothing wrong with that.

But wait, people say, what about the good old days when students performed at so much higher levels, and could grasp so much more academic material?:

Wrong. American schools have never been able to teach everyone how to read, write, and do arithmetic. The myth that they could has arisen because schools a hundred years ago did not have to educate the least able. When the twentieth century began, about a quarter of all adults had not reached fifth grade and half had not reached eighth grade. The relationship between school dropout and intellectual ability was not perfect, but it was strong. Today’s elementary and middle schools are dealing with 99 percent of all children in the eligible age groups. Let today’s schools not report the test results for the children that schools in 1900 did not have to teach, and NAEP scores would go through the roof.

Again, I would never say we shouldn't be teaching 99% of the population - everyone can learn and improve to some degree - but I must say his point rings true in my exerience.

If, in the past, lower performing students were totally ignored, that was wrong; but then again, principals shouldn't hire teachers who ignore whole blocks of students - that's not our job description. On the other hand, how can we draw a realistic line when it comes to the allocation of our resources, maintain realistic goals, and also do justice to our smartest kids?

Top 12 Things Actually Overheard On the Yearbook Camp Trip to the Beach

2008-06-26T16:33:00.004-05:00

Here's a fun game. See if you can guess which of these was said by students, by Wyfe, by the Boy, and by me. Fortunately, none of them were spoken by a policeman or a hotel authority.

(By the way, here's more can't miss reading on this epic foray to Atlantic Beach, NC from Wyfe herself ).

Anyway, on to the list:

12. She couldn't find her survey form because it was under her pile of dirty bras and t-shirts.

11. If you actually try to dine-and-dash, I'll hunt you down, kill you with a blunt instrument, and bury you in a shallow grave.

10. Look, this one's not my fault; the freakin' Google Map directions say "TURN RIGHT". See that - "TURN RIGHT!"

9. Really? You're from Korea? So do you speak, like, Korean?

8. Last I saw, she was sprawled out on the floor in the hallway talking on her iPhone.

7. Mr. P, will you figure out who's room you can move me into? I'm not comfortable being in there with those two girls; they're in that cheerleader clique.

6. Are you o.k., Mr. P.? I've never seen you look so tired.

5. OHMYGOD! MY NAME'S ALSO JESSIE, AND I ALSO HAVE A SISTER NAMED BRITTANY! OHMYGOD!

4. NO! I don't want any teenagers to sit in the back seat with me! They might have on their bikinis and stuff! Yuck!

3. But they told me on the phone their average meal price was $12.00.

2. Well, I haven't actually asked my mom if that's o.k., but I know she would say "yes".

And... (drumroll, please)

1. Mr. P., why do you have such a scowl on your face?

Off Again

2008-06-22T20:13:00.003-05:00

This time it's the yearbook workshop trip to the beach for two days. Among our merry band will be Wyfe and child, 14 teenagers, and a couple of other adult chaperones (thankfully). Should prove to be fodder, I hope, for some amusing tales, and nothing more than that (he prays!). Talk at you when we return.

The Boston Marathon, Vacation Style

2008-06-20T13:58:00.004-05:00

Well, at least we felt like we'd run the marathon by the time we got home Tuesday morning.

Yes, that's the Tuesday morning following the Monday night we were supposed to return. That night we boarded our plane only to be promptly informed that due to east coast storms we were to be delayed at least an hour. After that hour passed, we heard some relatively optimistic mumblings from the captain, and began rolling down the runway. Eventually we were in the on-deck circle, when we were informed that a storm was right over Boston, and that if we couldn't take off within the next 20 minutes we would have to return to the gate because the first officer's mandatory quittin' time (FAA rules) was upon us. So, we returned to the airport, while Wyfe and I tried to console our sobbing six year-old, and after another hour or so we were informed that more storms had popped up, and the flight was canceled. After about 6 hours of sleep in the hotel they put us up at, we were back on board early the following morning, and I'm happy to say made it back fine. But patience, individual and collective, was sorely tried.

The time in Boston itself was much fun - we just missed out on the basketball celebration, which was probably fortuitous, though I sort of wanted to see the pandemonium from the safety of our hotel room. Speaking of the hotel, we were right on the harbor, across the street from Quincy Market, and adjacent to North End, with it's 90 Italian restaurants. In other words, a great location, which explains the cost (we were only paying one night's worth out of our pockets, since this was a work-related trip for Wyfe). The aforementioned six year-old adjusted quite nicely, and was content to do a lot of walking and exploring, though we threw a horse ride, an aquarium visit, and a children's museum foray into the mix.

Back to the North End for a minute. I'm an absolute nut for Italian food (any region, frankly), so we ate there for dinner both nights. Wyfe and I were there for a brief visit nine years ago, and just picked a restaurant from a hat and tried it - it was great, but we couldn't remember the name of it all these years later. Well, after walking around Saturday we passed what looked like the same place, and determined it had to be. So, on Sunday we ate there (the Piccola Venezia), and left the place so stuffed we could barely breathe. I checked with the waiter, and sure enough they were there and in business back then, and he could very well have been our waiter, since he worked there too. It was great fun, and the food was both tremendous in taste and quantity. The heaping helping of eggplant rollatini with linguini and sauce would explain the smile below:

It was my third time in Boston, and there are still whole sections of the city I've never seen. The only other major, major cities I've been to are London, Philly, Atlanta, and D.C. (which is borderline on the major scale). I love Boston, but will admit I find Philly a little more hometownish for some reason, though I grasp Boston's geography more easily.

In all cases, though, I'm afraid the stereotypical country boy comes out in me after a while. Them cities is nice places to visit and all, but I shore wouldn't want to live there, as they say (and you know who they are)! It's great fun to be able to walk a short ways to get anything you need, but a couple of days pass, and I begin to tire of buildings and bridges and large bodies of water always looming before, above, or around me. Some of the very facets of the city that seem most attractive at first - the hum of cars and crowds, the constant events, the buzz of busy-ness and things always in the process of becoming - are also what eventually repulse me or leave me feeling just a tad lonely, even in the midst of so many people. There, my friends, you have the inherent tension of many an American novel. But I'll leave that to the professionals!

Don't Blink

2008-06-13T16:09:00.002-05:00

That is the title of the ubiquitous Kenny Chesney song being heard at many, many graduations, class awards programs, senior breakfasts, baccalaureate services, etc. this year. It's really hokey and cliched and full of too many drums and hard-edged guitar riffs to qualify as real country music, or really as even a good song. And yet, I heard it three times yesterday in the course of graduation goings-on, and tears welled up every time. My God, what will I be like the day my own son graduates? Probably a total mess.

Anyway, zee school year, it eez finished, and the family is headed to Boston tomorrow for a quick little vacation trip. Upon my return, I will write a mostly comprehensive reflection on the 07/08 days of yore, but until then how about a little quiz?

Let's set this up by proposing that at a school filled with teachers who hold multiple degrees, and filled with a sizable population of well-to-do students, the level of crazy and bizarre behaviors or happenings would not be expected to reach the levels I experienced in my old poorer, rural school district which the Wyfe used to declare was cursed. Now that we've accepted that proposal, here's the quiz:

Which of the following happened over the last 15-20 school days at my humble place of occupation:

A) A teacher became the center of everyone's attention because of amassing evidence that she's been carrying on with a 16 year-old sophomore (a jerk, too, who I taught this year). Administrators began asking other teachers for official affidavits regarding the matter.

B) A screaming match between certain English teachers over the direction of the senior project over the next few years.

C) A bad teacher, who is pregnant, accidentally checked a "resignation" box on a form, instead of "leave-of-absence", and no one told her (purposely) about the mistake until it was too late.

D) A young teacher discovered e-mails and phone calls from her husband to another woman and learned that he was indeed cheating on her. She filed for legal separation immediately.

E) A student and his mom laughed together as I told them over the phone that he wouldn't pass English and would have to go to summer school. "Oh, I know!" they both said.

F) A middle-aged Spanish teacher and a poorly dressed biology teacher almost got into fisticuffs prior to graduation ceremonies when the latter heard the former complain loudly about how undignified her attire was for the occasion. A sherriff's deputy posted at their station had to keep the uh, ladies, separated until they cooled down.

G) One of Mr. P's yearbook and English students, 16 years-old, had to have open heart surgery today because her bone structure was going to lead to her sternum crushing her heart (she is petite and in good health otherwise, by the way).

H) An allegedly roid-using senior stormed off the field at graduation practice because the principal had the nerve to pull him aside and speak to him about the Blue Tooth in his ear and the pimp strut he was doing across the stage.

I) All of the above.

I won't patronize you by actually telling you the correct answer. So much for my Wyfe's theory, though I suspect her next one will involve pointing out that I'm the common denominator. Sigh.

One... Week...To....Go...

2008-06-07T17:48:00.002-05:00

losing consciousness... must reach Bat Utility Belt...

Oh, hi. Yes, I'm still kicking around, though I'm doing so with much guilt over the lack of blogging. Just gotta tell you folks, the last couple of months (school, weekend workshops, t-ball and softball) have left me drained of, well, most everything, including time and motivation for blogging. I don't even know where to begin, but I want to get back into a more regular groove now that blessed summer is almost here. Actually, along the east coast it seems to already be more than here, what with the 100 degree heat and all. That, plus the gas prices, make me wonder just how much I should be excited about summer break, but I'll choose to ignore the ominous warnings for now.

Here is a quick update. Last Sunday afternoon I went down and saw the Baccalaureate service for the senior class at my old school, which was well worth it. Everyone was so welcoming and so, well, the same! In some cases, I guess, a few months don't make a huge difference

Thursday night should be my last official day of the school year, with graduation ceremonies that night. It appears we will not be in for any major cool-down by then, so cross your fingers that we won't have a phalanx of ambulances set up to ferry heat stroke victims to the hospital.

After that, my son and I will be tagging along with Wyfe to Boston next Saturday - she has a conference on Monday. Our hotel location, right on the "Hah-buh", can't be beat, and expect us to spend lots of time (especially meal time) among the rows of Italian restaurants on the north end. Too bad the Red Sox are out of town, but we will also be hitting the famous aquarium and some of the Freedom Trail.

In the meantime, I'll try to get back into writing mode with a few odds and ends. Hope I still have some readers out there!

Publications Hell

2008-05-26T19:14:00.003-05:00

Let's begin with a quick round-up of the publication for which I bear responsibility, that darned yearbook I've been whining about all year. Of all the times of the year I thought I wouldn't struggle with, the spring would have been my choice. But our books came in about 10 days ago, and suffice to say I was not at all prepared for what distributing 900 yearbooks would be like. Literally, I could have (and if it was a regular business, would have) spent the entirety of each day last week on nothing but yearbook matters. I could easily have sold thirty more, as well, if there had been any left.

What killed me was, in the midst of trying to prepare and teach academic classes, being bombarded by phone calls, kids at the door, parent e-mails, teachers and teacher's aides regarding YEARBOOKS! YA GOT ANY YEARBOOKS LEFT? ONE OF MY KIDS ALREADY HAS A BOOK, BUT CAN I BUY ONE EACH FOR MY OTHER 5 KIDS? I KNOW I PAID FOR A BOOK, BUT I'M NOT ON THE LIST (yeah, right)! MY FORMER NEIGHBOR ORDERED A YEARBOOK BUT SHE MOVED TO DENMARK - CAN I SEND IT TO HER?

AARGH!!

I also had to call a "come to Jesus meeting" with the staff because of bad feelings brewing between class members over who was yelling at whom, and who was bossing whom during book distribution, and who will be bossing whom next year, and the editors for next already have a big head and are going to treat us like slaves, and blah, blah, blah. My message to everyone was real simple: they don't pay me nearly enough to deal with constantly unhappy people who are at each other's throats all year; get it out in the open now and work it out, and tell me when you're done (and happy again). So, they did, and I emerged from the room to declare "peace in our time." And yes, that analogy is apt because I'm sure the length of my success will be about the same as old Mr. Chamberlain's (we are talking about teenage girls, after all).

***

I will nonetheless take my publication issues, warts and all, over what happened to the newspaper advisor last week. Now, she has been doing this for a long time, and is VERY SERIOUS about journalism, and very prickly about complaints regarding her paper. Having said that, she has been really nice to me, and in my opinion the paper has generally seemed o.k. - not too controversial or too insipid, decent enough if not extrememly well-written. However...

Somehow one of her kids decided, in a teacher profile piece printed in the last edition, to include both pro and CON opinions of a civics teacher, as related by some of her students. These were quoted, verbatim, from a survey form. And, some of the quotes were of this variety: "She's too boring, gives us pointless homework, and is more interested in being a coach than a teacher." OH... MY...!

Well, the teacher hit the roof and was so upset she had to go home for the day, an immediate apology is now being printed in what is supposed to the final senior-dedicated edition of the year, parents of the quoted kids are outraged, and the rest of us are scratching our heads and wondering how in the heck-fire those quotes ever saw the light of day, how they got past the editors, and especially how they got by the advisor and/or the principal if he saw it. What - teacher defamation in the name of balanced reporting? I think the advisor gets to keep the job, and since that paper is her baby, I hope so. But like I said, oh my.

Yeah, I'll take MY publication issues anyday.

Careful Where You Step

2008-05-18T19:58:00.003-05:00

Around these parts, you know summer is just around the corner when you spot visitors like this fellow in your backyard (he/she was about 4 ft. long):

In case you're worried, we just let him go on his merry way.

A Summer of Torturous Prose

2008-05-12T19:52:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm in the middle of a five games in six nights t-ball stretch (seriously, is this the major leagues?), so that explains the stony silence of the blog lately. This is, however, the last week of spring season, which is fortunate for the health of the adults in the house.

Just a little something to preview what my summer at the writer's project institute will be like. You see, when you throw together a group of highly intelligent people who love to read, who teach reading and writing, and who therefore secretly, or otherwise, harbor pretensions of making a best-seller list one day, you can pretty much assume the worst. In a situation like this, where these people will be doing a lot of writing for others to read, one can readily anticipate encounters with the "trying too hard" syndrome.

Whatever it says about me, I am absolutely resolved to avoid purple prose and forced metaphors throughout this process, even at the cost of being boring. However, as you check out the following three excerpts (all from different people) culled from a message thread on our group's website, you tell me if others share my attitude. The topic, btw, is what it means to be in the "writing state of mind":

"When I do experience the "writing frame of mind" while I am at my computer or when I have pen in hand, it is like steping into a wave and allowing the cool, calm watering words to seep onto the page. It is a comforting feeling, an excitement that I am rediscovering. I am allowing myself to write without the 'full outline.' I have a quiet expectation, but I am genuinely surprised when the ebb of this tide recedes and I examine what is left on the shore before me."

"When I consider my writing "good," the frame of mind occurs naturally because my body is possessed. There is a writing ghost who inhabits my spirit."

"When I'm in the writing frame of mind it’s as if my brain itches. There is nothing I can do about it, I can't scratch fast enough, deep enough, long enough. In fact, the more I scratch, the more I itch. The words pour out like a salve, and the passion that inspired it is calmed as the thoughts pour out on the page."

Well, time for me and my writing ghost to hit the sack. See ya.

This is Why I'm Not in Management

2008-04-30T19:14:00.003-05:00

Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth, but here goes anyway. At my first school, the problem with recruiting a staff for the yearbook class was that there weren't enough talented, hard-working kids, and that many of those who did fit that bill were in band the same period as my class. So, I would usually get my top two or three for editor positions, and the rest was a combination of kids who liked me but weren't too interested in the book, or people the guidance counselors stuck in.

Now I have much different problems. I have a pretty good group to start with, and only four positions available for next year. There are 10 applicants for those positions, and they are all great candidates. Plus, instead of the advisor making the call by fiat, the tradition has been to let him/her hold the right of veto but let the staff interview the candidates and vote on them themselves.

Well, two of the four slots were slam-dunks to fill, and one of the other two was also decided fairly easily, if not unanimously. That last spot, however, was the source of an hour-long bare-knuckle brawl today. Cheerleader politics, comments about what someone's mom is going to be like to deal with, and every shade of what's-fair and what's-not-fair argument ensued. Nothing has yet been resolved, and I may be called on to make the final call, in which case I become even more of a contributor to someone's heartache.

Why should this bother me? Because I hate, hate, hate to be the one to give bad news, that's why. What if someone cries, for God's sake? Should causing people to cry be part of my job description, unless I'm being paid Dr. Phil money? Nay, I say, nay.

I think next year I'll hand the whole business over to one of the coaches; their used to cutting people all the time, and probably don't give a rip when they do.

Yes, I'm Alive...

2008-04-27T16:01:00.004-05:00

...but don't have much in the tank after my second weekend in a row of workshop/think-tank/seminar/reflecting heaven (I guess it's heaven to somebody, anyway). Give me a couple of days to get ball games out of the way, and I promise a full rant about some real live deconstruction cultists I wanted to punch during a keynote address yesterday.

In the meantime for any of you literary nerds, below is a link to a great piece on those pesky (mostly Southern, I must add) New Critics whom the deconstructionists like to think they've killed off. They're very much alive in my classroom, by the way, but then I've always been a sucker for the unfashionably old-fashioned. Enjoy!

Grammars of a Possible World

Day One of Writer's Project

2008-04-20T18:52:00.002-05:00

That was my entire Saturday, save for the little bit of mowing I squeezed in before dark. As you may recall the first two sessions of my summer Writer's Project class take place on back to back Saturdays in the spring, and now one is down. I must say it was fun, and the group of 15, plus three instructors, were fairly irritant-free. We wrote quite a bit, natch. And talked about writing quite a bit, natch. It was enjoyable, but the contrarian in me already points out that in contemporary America people who like to read and write can make books and writing a bit too precious, or a bit too much like religion. I'm well aware of this, because I'm sure I've been guilty of it myself. On the whole, though, I'll say I'm looking forward to spending so much concentrated time writing this summer, even while I try to suppress that "This could lead to big things! Maybe you could be a real writer!" voice I've heard all my life. You know you hear it too (or perhaps you are a real writer!)

Since I'll be spending three weeks of my summer with these people, it's important for me to go ahead and anticipate who will cause me heartburn during that time. The only candidate who sticks out right now is a near-retirement-age teacher from the coast who will be living in Raleigh on campus for all of July. She had a long-winded comment about everything, and while not unpleasant, was the least helpful person in the group writing assignment we did. We'll see if I'm right about my unkind speculation, but I read this as a "divorced and no grandkids" situation.

Wow, that was mean.

The only other person I'll mention at this point was this really sweet granola child in her mid-thirties who teaches in Chapel Hill (heh, heh). Seemed like one of the coolest people there. Among the things she is excited about is the new "Social Justice" academy she helped start at her school, which is run by some English and some history teachers (heh, heh, heh). But you know, she seemed like such a good soul, talking about the organic garden she and her husband have behind their house, and was so nice, that I don't have it in me to completely mock said academy. Yet.

I know that won't stop some of you, though. I hear you, Brad and Phil.

I'm a Made Man

2008-04-15T17:40:00.003-05:00

Not quite in the same way the guys from "Goodfella's" were, mind you. Last Thursday an office assistant brought me the following ominous note:

Please see me during your planning period. This is an important matter regarding your employment for next year.
-The Principal

I suppressed feelings of panic enough to make it through the class period, then went down to check on it. The agony wore on as I had to wait while he dealt with a couple of boys who had been fighting. Then, when I finally got in, he explained it was nothing bad, and in fact was good. Because of the particular license cycle I am on this year, he had to make a decision to deem me a tenured teacher at the school, or to let me go. "You're too good for me to let you go, so I'm signing off on your tenure," he said.

Now, tenure for public school teachers does not offer the all-encompassing protection it offers for a college professor. Essentially it means that I cannot be moved to another school by the county office against my will, and that my position cannot be eliminated unless our student population dwindled tremendously, and even then I believe they would have to find a spot for me. Of course, I could still get fired for not doing my job, and I suppose there are a number of unforeseen disasters, like half the county getting wiped out by an alien flu, that could alter my employment status. But basically, I'm safe.

Still, the "made man" analogy might not be too far off, judging from the mood around the school the last couple of weeks. Let's just say that everywhere I turn teachers are talking junk about other teachers, palpable dislike hovers over most meetings, and malicious subtexts abound. Yikes. Better find Tessio and Clemenza (I know, I'm mixing movies).

Boobs Again (Sorry!)

2008-04-09T14:18:00.002-05:00

Well, both t-ball (for the boy) and softball (for me, in an attempt at a limited comeback) have started, and for my pains on Monday and Tuesday nights I contracted a bad enough cough to warrant a visit to the doc-in-the-box again. Nice, huh? But at least there is no infection this time.

Onto the real item for today, which, unfortunately causes me to revisit the prom once again. On that fateful night, I've mentioned previously, there was much to take notice of. However, one thing I did not observe (because I'm a good boy), but that a colleague mentioned that she and her fiance did, was the volume of cleavage on display - in particular, the volume of inauthentic cleavage on display.

This was a bit shocking to hear, 17-18 year-olds and all, and without knowing who some of these belonged to the whole idea of it seemed a bit unreal (pun intended) to me. But then on Monday I had the following conversation with my yearbook editor over the prom page she was checking. Names are changed here to protect the not-so-innocent:

Editor: Mr. P. you need to look at the this picture we have on the prom page. It's got Holly in it, and we should probably take it out since she's on the staff. But also... well, look at her in that dress. Isn't that inappropriate.

Me (glancing at the cleavagy picture as gingerly as possible): Yeah, probably. You can take it out. You know, my wife and I happened to notice Holly's dress was really short.

Editor: I know. It was scandalous.

Me: Well, I'll tell you this also. I didn't happen to see this, but some other teachers were remarking on the number of... uh... implants they saw on a number of the girls there.

Editor: Oh, definitely.

Me: Unbelievable. What are their parents thinking? [pause] But now my curiosity has the best of me. Any chance Holly is one of those they were talking about?

Editor: Well, you know the rumor from last year, don't you?

Me: No.

Editor: She missed a lot of school spring semester last year, and she said it was because she had mono. But the rumor was she really had implant surgery. Everyone thinks it's true because no one can remember her having anything close to those before she was gone for so long.

End of sordid conversation. I will only add that "Holly" at one point drove a pink Barbie Jeep (yes, they make those), that she occasionally participates in pageants, and that she has already done a bit of modeling. I now leave it to you, gentle reader, to draw your own conclusions and do your own railing (and/or snickering).

Sign of Things to Come, or Just an Accurate Description?

2008-04-02T15:26:00.002-05:00

We picked up our uniforms for my son's tee-ball team last night (I get a shirt too, for being asst. coach). We knew we were the Braves, but didn't know our sponsor, until we saw it printed on the back. This season, we will proudly display the following on our jerseys for the world to see:

All Star Waste

I think I'll post a picture of myself in that shirt on my teacher web page.

Congrats To Me; Let the Whining Commence

2008-03-28T07:48:00.002-05:00

So, I attended a one day writing workshop back in January at N.C. State, and was so impressed by some of the tips I got that I decided to apply to the summer institute the Dept. of Education there puts on in conjunction with the National Writing Project. I was also highly motivated by the fact that I have two years left to get the rest of my continuing education credits out of the way, and thought I might as well do it in one big potentially enjoyable chunk.

Well, I applied to the summer institute, and just found out I was accepted. There were only 15 spots for 35 applicants, so yay for me, etc., etc. In reading the material, though, I began to seriously contemplate the pain in the rear this will be. In April, I have to go to a day long orientation one Saturday, followed by an even longer workshop and debriefing the next Saturday. That means working - gasp! - 12 out of 14 days. On top of that, it means missing two tee-ball games. DON'T YOU PEOPLE KNOW I'M AN ASSISTANT COACH?!!

And, as for the summer institute, it goes on for almost three full weeks, and, because it also counts for graduate credits, will no doubt involve some sort of research project/paper, in addition to heavy writing practice, as one of the core principles of NWP is that "Effective professional development programs provide frequent and ongoing opportunities for teachers to write and to examine theory, research, and practice together systematically." Whoo.

I need my Mommy.

Even the Prom Has Its Melancholy Side

2008-03-25T06:54:00.002-05:00

Well, Wyfe has now spoken on the prom, but I wanted to add something bothersome that I quite accidentally observed.

We had to man the registration table for the latter, interminable half of the prom, and after the king and queen had officially been announced, it wasn't long before a sizeable group of prom-goers gathered in the lobby, ready to head out for (ahem) other doings, which I had heard a little about from passive eavesdropping earlier in the week. Now, I did not know most of the these kids, but I knew enough to know this was the ultimate creme-de-la-creme in-crowd, partly because a few of my yearbook girls were among the throng. I watched a couple of these girls more intently than the rest, because I noticed how preoccupied they seemed. In fact, they walked right by us several times and never even noticed us at the table. I don't take this as a slight, because they are always friendly, and if they had seen us they would have spoken. They are good girls, off to good colleges, and in fact, though these particular girls are in the in-crowd, they are in no way partiers - I've heard them rail about the partying life before. I don't believe it was their intent to get too involved in doing the wrong things, but clearly they were going to be escorted off to the site of the proceedings nonetheless.

One of these girls is not currently dating, but her prom escort, a red-faced, overly self-assured seeming chap, was rubbing her back as they stood there talking with the others. Let's just say she did not look relaxed with this, but also was not discouraging it. Another normally confident girl shifted nervously, and went into the bathroom twice in the span of 10 minutes - I never saw her smile (in fact, if she had broken into tears it wouldn't have been a shock). Other girls whispered among themselves with serious expressions, and there was little jollity among them. As for the the boys in the group, I know I'm probably exaggerating a bit, but mostly they were what you might expect: the jocks and other cocks-of-the-walk who (in my jaded opinion) were clearly on-the-make, and disgustingly, smarmily professional in their on-the-make demeanors. I realize I flatter myself, but any decent man would have shared the same urge to punch every one of them.

Yes, the girls must make their own decisions, but I can't help but remember the horrifying seduction scenes from I Am Charlotte Simmons. I hope these girls made the right calls, but in an effort to stay popular they already gave in by putting themselves in a bad situation, I feel sure. Why, oh why, do we allow our girls to go through this, and allow our boys to become such predators?

As a counter image, I also noticed that most of the couples who stayed for the entire time seemed to be really enjoying themselves, and were not nervous or shifty at all. Some of their parents dropped by to see them briefly, and some of these kids I know are labeled as being "real Christian". Others were nerdy types, happy in their nerdiness. In contrast with the early departers, I felt relieved to watch these remaining couples. Believe it or not, some of them actually came to the prom in order to enjoy, you know, the prom!

Survived

2008-03-24T06:36:00.002-05:00

Last week's tour-de-force probably took years off my life, but I did survive, as you can now see. The week started with a wonderfully-timed three-hour leadership training session, scheduled right after school, that is required by the county for all employees who haven't undergone the training yet (so that each year the poor saps new to the county have to participate). From Monday to Thursday, my entire life was yearbook-related, except when I was trying, you know, to teach, or help coach tee-ball. In the last three weeks, I swear I've worked harder than at any point in my life (cue the sad violins).

Then, Thursday night was prom chaperone night, which I'll refrain from giving too many details about now in deference to my kind Wyfe, who was forced to join me and now wishes to blog about it herself (hint: it wasn't that interesting, and we were there from 7:00 to 12:40). Friday it was in the car and off to the in-laws while still in a daze, and after yesterday's Easter service and Sunday dinner we finally limped back in to town.

So... I plan to blog a lot this week, though I've threatened that before and fallen short. Since I have the week off, though, I may plague your in-boxes with many a new post. Bear with me!

Yesterday's Highlights

2008-03-15T14:15:00.002-05:00

(Which I whine about simply by passing them along)

7:30 - 1st period thrown behind by donut deliveries from a DECCA fundraising event (yes, of course I bought some - they were Krispy Kreme!)

8:25 - 1st period finally gets around to the Prologue of Oedipus Rex after class members whined their ways for thirty minutes through a slightly harder than usual vocab. test. We only squeeze in 15 mins. of reading.

9:10 - I determine I have to write-up a student, who by the way failed my same class last semester, because he snuck out of my room during his mandatory remediation time and never returned except to get his stuff at the bell.

10:10 - I have to actually take a time-out and upbraid my entire 2nd period for their rude talking and laughing (first time I've had to do that all semester). One normally good boy in there pouts on one side of the room, after I made him change seats, while his buddy pouts on the other side.

10:20 - The real prize of 2nd period - a loud and rude white girl who seems to have talked herself into believing she is a loud and rude black girl - continues to be disruptive and refuses to hand over her phone after I catch her texting someone. Mental note: second write-up of the day to turn in.

11:40 - 12:05 - Hateful tri-weekly lunch duty, at which I find out my prom duty (since I'm a junior homeroom sponsor), will last from 7-12:30 next Thursday - five and a half hours of sheer boredom, with an unhappy Wyfe in tow!

1:45: One of my English colleagues, who has the same planning period, stops by my room to ask about some vocabulary word activities, and just to shoot the breeze for a few minutes. About five minutes later, her nose twitches, and she says, "That smells an awful lot like pot!" We walk out into the hall, and trace the smell from the boy's room across the hall. I go in, but no one is there. Whoever it was must have just left. I call the principal, who investigates and then goes off to check the security cameras.

3:30 I leave with my bag full of 50 tests to grade and 20 yearbook pages to proofread. If I were a drinker, I know where I would head next...

Can't wait 'til Monday!

Yearbook Blues

2008-03-11T16:27:00.002-05:00

It is easy to look ahead at a challenge that lay far into the future and say, "Yeah, that will be tough, but we'll deal with it then." Then, then is suddenly here, and it turns out it is not just a challenge, but a giant, pulsating pain in the rear.

At my old school, we ran the yearbook on a rare fall schedule, so I had the summers to wrap up any yearbook issues (i.e., doing pages that certain kids let go by the wayside and quit caring about as summer break approached). Not so, now that I am in the big leagues. We have a spring book, and it is supposed to be finished by next Thursday, before our spring break. So, my staff and I are all running around with our hair on fire, while also in the midst of other classes we are taking/teaching. We'll get close to being finished, but I'm already preparing my plea for the mercy of my yearbook representative's court. Just a couple of late pages won't be a disaster, will it (will it)?

Speaking of yearbook, my editor was scheduled to go to Spain, France, and Germany on a Spanish Club trip for 10 days. For weeks she's been pinching herself over this, often saying (excitedly), "I can't believe I'm going to Europe!" So, the plane left last Tuesday. A couple of days before that, my editor started feeling bad, and by Monday (the day before the trip), she sounded awful and apparently felt awful. She went to the doctor that afternoon, sat in the waiting room for an hour, and was summarily told she had the flu and under no circumstances could go on the trip. So, she sat at home for a week, sick and devastatingly depressed.

Well, we did our best for her by throwing a little "We're Bringing Spain/France/Germany To You" party on Monday, when she returned to school. Of course, all the food the kids brought was Italian-like (not counting the thoroughly American Chips-A-Hoy), so they were a little off geographically. But hey, at least they got the right continent.

Some Tidbits

2008-03-06T19:08:00.002-05:00

First of the penis joke variety (got your attention?). Our department head, a woman about my age, was helping one of her students - "a sweet redneck boy" to use her description - work out some details of his senior project. She began to sit in the chair beside him, and ended up half missing the chair, causing her to teeter. She attempted to reach out and grab her student's arm in order to steady herself, but she began falling and her hand caught his leg area instead. Again, to her description: "My thoughts were, 'Oh, I've got his leg... OH!, that's not his leg my hand is on. I really wish I would have just fallen."

Can we say, "Teenager scarred for life?"

***

The next afternoon, I sauntered into the cafeteria, along with other department members, a few minutes before the scheduled faculty meeting. Another of my female colleagues greeted me and then was about to ask me a literary question, when she interrupted herself to say, "Uh, Mr P., your fly is kind of open there..." Well, there are no easy places to duck behind in the cafeteria, as you can imagine, so the best I could do is turn my back on everyone and act quickly. Too late, though, to avoid the tale being told around the table within a mere minute or so. Can you say, "Me scarred for life?"

Like I've said before, it's tough being a man in the English Department, what with women looking at your fly and all. I'm sure Wyfe agrees with me.

***

My Lenten reading of late has included (surprise, surprise!) Flannery O'Connor's first short story collection. My biggest belly laugh so far came from the following passage of "The Temple of the Holy Ghost", when two silly teenage Catholic school girls sing in Latin for the guitar-toting evangelical farm boys who live near the house the girls are visiting. Spying on the scene is the precocious child who set up the date in the first place:

The girls dragged out the Amen, and then there was a silence.
"That must be Jew singing," Wendell said and began to tune the guitar.
The girls giggled idiotically but the child stamped her foot on the barrel. "You big dumb ox!" she shouted. "You big dumb Church of God ox!" she roared and fell off the barrel and scrambled up and shot around the corner of the house as they jumped from the banister to see who was shouting.

PLC's? Puh-leaze! (Part III)

2008-03-02T12:21:00.003-05:00

Though in practice I think PLC's can be promising, helpful, and flexible enough to fit local, particular needs (something most educational trends, coming from on high, fail at miserably), irritants still abound in PLC-land (natch). The two most problematic irritants are that 1) PLC people like to talk way too much about PLC's, and do so in a hubristic "we can save the whole world" tone, and 2) there is already an unhealthy amount of crap jargon that has grown out of PLC-ism (something probably related to irritant #1). Here is a sample:

1)"PLC's concentrate on students learning, not on teachers teaching": This is the philosophical pearl of PLC-ism, a mantra insisted upon as profound wisdom. Translation: some teachers get up and go through their motions, and don't care whether their students are getting it or not. Well, o.k., we all have known teachers like this, but the point is that these were/are bad teachers. Good teachers have always been concerned about whether or not their kids were learning. I find this mantra daft, and the point it is making only profound in that it is profoundly obvious.

2)"Each PLC should set a standard of norms for each meeting": Norms? Norms? Sounds like we are on Cheers. Whatever happened to the word rules? I know, too masculine and heirarchical... Anyway, translation: People in PLC meetings should act like adults.

3) "PLC's help identify specific, attainable learner objectives": In many ways No Child Left Behind is the co-author of little nuggets like this one. Translation: Let's figure out what even below-average students can learn, and establish that as our goal. As for upper level students, well you're on your own kiddos.

4) "PLC's use collaborative teams and collective inquiry to achieve school goals": Yes, there are a lot of scary words that begin with "c" in PLC-land. Unkind Translation: Communism was a failure but the old lefty's among us still need a place to use the word "collective". Or, Kind Translation: If we work together a little more, we might be able to make the school a better place. If you aren't interested, the Borg will probably assimilate you anyway.

Well, there is a brief tour for you. My final, omniscient pronouncement is that PLC's can be good for a school if they are taken seriously, but not too seriously. I think most people like the idea of working more closely with their colleagues in a productive way. However, no one wants to be thought of as merely a faceless part of the team. Value me as an individual, and I'll value my contributions to the effort.

For God's sake, though, lose the jargon!

PLC's? Puh-leaze! (Part II)

2008-02-24T14:02:00.003-05:00

You may have deduced by now that I have some heavy guns loaded and aimed at PLC-nation, but actually my only major qualms have to do with smaller, laughable annoyances, so I'll save that for my next/last/most enjoyable of three posts on the subject. Before being a little unfair and snarky, I thought I should give an account here of some of the positives that I've witnessed, or see the potential for, in a school that goes PLC.

1) The regular "collaborative meetings" we have probably help provide firmer accountability for teachers, since it would be fairly easy to figure out which teachers aren't doing jack in their classrooms when they have to give an account of activities each week. After all, no one wants to look like a slacker.

Now, no one has come off as a slacker in the meetings I've been in, but at my old school, I can picture a couple of bad teachers squirming mightlily under this system. Of course, even then, I don't know that it would have mattered if the principal didn't feel he could get rid of them to begin with.

2) Considering the fracturing that has occured in so many American communities, striving to give public schools a more communal feel is a worthwile goal, I believe, and this may be one way to accomplish that goal. One key in this, however is that the faculty turnover needs to be at a minimal, acceptable rate, which is something many schools have trouble with.

Another facet of this involves the now boiler-plate mantra of "meeting every student where they are" in life. Well, this if fine, but part accepting "where they are" and fostering a communal school also means having due respect for the local community you serve, and laying off the heavy-handed approach of many that goes something like, "These provincial yokels need to think like the rest of the world (i.e., urban Northeasterners and Southern Californians), and it's my job to lead them there."

Not that I'm necessarily thinking about both the New Yorker and the Californian on my hall that I've heard implying such things...

3) From what I read, PLC-mania has been a bottom-up phenomenan which has grown out of schools looking to change their approaches and then reached academicians, and not the other way around. Something that bloomed from the seeds of actual practice, and wasn't invented by some fool with a Phd. Ed. must have something to recommend it.

4) For this all to work well, administrations have to allow teachers more flexibility in the classroom, and not scratch the micro-managing itch too often.

So, really I'm on board if we are going doing these things, with the understanding that there are parts of the PLC approach which will bother me. One of the biggest annoyances is that it seems we've done nothing but talk about the damn things for the last month, and I just want to get on with them. You may feel the same by the time I finish my next, and last, PLC post for a while. Please bear with me until then!

PLC's? Puh-leaze! (Part 1)

2008-02-22T17:13:00.006-05:00

Last year, at almost this exact same time, I blogged about the introduction of the term PLC into the lingo at my old school, and poked fun at the the jargoned-up description that my principal handed out to us about said Professional Learning Communities. Little did I know, from my lofty perch at the top of Mt. Smarmy, that in less than I year I would be working at a high school that had gone whole-hog PLC-ing. I have refrained from blogging about it so far this school year partially because the topic is so overwhelming, partially because it is kind of boring "inside baseball" school talk, and partially because it has taken this long to form some views that are in any way insightful. Now, however, the topic is unavoidable at work, and things seem to be reaching a new level of intensity over the whole matter.

In this post, I'm going to try and give you a short PLC primer, and then in subsequent posts I'll give more specific accounts of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Hope it's not too dull.

Essentially, PLC's are a new label for what used to be called "team-teaching", with a few other cherries on top. The centerpiece is that teachers of the same or similar subjects meet at least once a week and discuss their curriculum and what they are doing, and as their subject allows they try to come up with a few tests or assignments that they can all give, perhaps followed by a comparison of results. [Oh, did I say "tests or assignments"? Sorry, the prevailing jargon won't allow that denomination anymore - I mean common assessments. However, I'm jumping ahead of myself here, as I will spend more time ripping the jargon later.] During these meetings there is also supposed to be lots of sharing and supporting and affirming, and there are even fancy mechanisms for how to catch failing students early on and find more inventive ways to get them interested in their own educations and back on track.

A corollary benefit of PLC's is, ideally, that a the entire school and faculty will have more cohesion - that schools might, I suppose, have more of the community feel that has disappeared from so many of them. But there is only nostalgia for that one aspect of the schools of the past, because PLC-acolytes like to denounce "older school models" where the teacher was "an independent contractor who closed his or her door, took care of his or her own business, and rarely made contact with the rest of the school."

Some departments at my school have been doing their own PLC's for a couple of years, but sometime last spring our School Improvement Team (SIT)decided to forge ahead with PLC's for the entire school, starting the next (now current) year. So, most all of us have been dutifully showing up early on Monday mornings all year for our collaborative meetings. But the high majority of us have had little to no training in what we were actually supposed to be doing, and eventually this became a very apparent wart.

In response, the SIT decided all our staff development days this semester needed to be redirected so that we are only talking about PLC's (something that should have happened last spring). As a result, I've sat through about 10 butt-numbing hours of PLC talk in the last month, with four more hours to come in a couple of weeks.

Yes, kind patron, you should feel my pain.

Just as a preview, I'll tell you my feelings and opinions on the whole experiment are quite mixed, and I'll go into that in detail next post.

Sorry People!

2008-02-17T20:05:00.002-05:00

I've got a couple of posts in me that are just dying to burst out like gestating aliens in a body-snatcher B-movie, but I'm just completely jammed with paper grading right now. Be patient, please.

The good news is that our writing test is fast approaching, and the crush of major essay instruction will soon pass. In any case, I promise I'll get something substantial to you later in the week.

You Know You Have A Non-Serious Student When...

2008-02-11T21:14:00.000-05:00

The opening for an essay on responsibility goes thusly:

Recently, I just became president, and it was cool. I had lots of responsibilities and things I had to do. Then I wanted to become a police officer, and then I had even more responsibilities.

Well, at least she didn't spell it "kool."

Bizarro World

2008-02-07T19:35:00.000-05:00

As expected, our 66 year-old principal has decided to retire, though oddly in March instead of the end of the year. He's been the head of my school for 12 years, and has hired all but 15 of the 136 teachers there. Understandably, there is much anxiety about who will take over, and what that might mean.

So I guess that might explain why nerves are a bit frayed, or why the scene at yesterday's staff development session was so bizarre. First, the teacher in charge of the session, just before it started, was barked at by a tall staff member after she said, "M_ _ _, I need you to stick this poster up high on that wall." Apparently he felt he was being bossed around, and screamed about it. Then, another member of my department was chastised by a history teacher when she accidentally cut in line for pizza (it was virtually the end of the rather amorphous line, and she had just spent 30 minutes helping set up the session).

And then, the saga's climax. Let's just say that a teacher was asked to give a testimonial about how her department's collaborative planning sessions over the last three years have begun to yield amazing fruits, and that her talk had been just wonderful. But she should have stopped before her final point, which was supposed to be, I think, that these sessions help one bond with colleagues who one might not normally bond with. Let's also hope that her story was not meant to come out quite this way:

Well, first let me say that I cleared this with D_ _ _ _, and he gave me permission to tell this story. A couple of years ago, he and I shared a grading folder on the server. Well, one day he accidentally deleted my entire electronic gradebook, and I was really mad. I mean, I didn't speak to him for an entire year, and really I just had no respect for him at all. But once we started these colloborative sessions, I started seeing how good his test scores were, and how high his kids scored in certain areas, and so then I decided that I could respect him after all.

Gotta Hand It To Her

2008-02-02T13:02:00.000-05:00

If you missed this shot across the humanities' bow on the Wyfe's blog the other day, you should check it out.

Bound to Have Heard This Sooner or Later

2008-01-31T17:48:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, the one and only boy in my yearbook class of 14 finally erupted with this one:

"YOU'RE NOT MY MOM!"

Yeah... I'm not even sure which girl it was directed at, but I just knew that was coming eventually. And the sad thing for the poor guy is that we all just laughed until he had to laugh too.

One day he'll make a really good husband - though today he said he wanted to marry Brittney Spears so he could make her all better.

Me Need Male-Bonding

2008-01-27T15:04:00.000-05:00

Most of my adult life I have been in educational or vocational situations in which I have been a minority male surrounded by women. There is obviously a lot to be said for this - it helped me nab a hot wife, after all. But I haven't been "on the make" now for almost 15 years, and even in my single days, frankly, I was never one to have been "on the make" too much anyway. Even speaking platonically, there are good things to be said about working more with women than with men, but forgive me, gentle reader, if I occasionally feel a longing for more good, old-fashioned red-blooded male bonding.

Saturday I attended a writing workshop at N.C. State, at the behest of my department chair. It was actually a good workshop and made me re-think a few things I do when teaching writing; in fact, I think I will attend their more extensive "institute" over the summer to earn many continuing education credits. But this workshop consisted of me, and 20 women. Seriously. Plus, it was a workshop. At one point they had M&M's out for one exercise, and at another point they had Play-Doh out. Seriously. I minimally participated in the M&M thing, and just flat out ignored the Play-Doh.

Thus, the plight of the male English teacher.

At school, things are much the same way. Because we have so many faculty members, we all tend to hang out mostly within our own departments. The numbers in my department are something like 16 women and five men, with two of the men being already retired half-timers, and one being only a year or two away from it. This leaves one other man who is just slightly older than I am. He is a very nice, cheerful fellow, and we get along very well and have some fun conversations, but our personalities, interests, and life experiences are simply too divergent for us to be bonding pals (for one thing, I need to be able to talk in-depth about sports from time to time).

So, while I'm extremely pleased with my employment situation at the moment, the one thing I lack is at least one good male-bonding buddy. At a big school, the coaches sort of have their own club, and you never see them or talk much with them. Other male teachers at the school are either simply too far away from my room, or are not in my age group. At my old school I had a couple of perfect bonding buddies, but so far I'm missing out at the new place. Creepily, I feel a certain incompleteness.

Hey, quit laughing.

Second Verse, Close to the First

2008-01-23T17:40:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow marks the beginning of second semester, which probably also means a restless night for me. Second semesters don't usually bring out the nerves quite as severely as in August, but it is still tough to anticipate (or to be more precise, worry about) the unknown with complete calmness.

From what others can tell me, it seems my classes have a minimum of "nightmare" kids on the roster, which will be excellent in the wake of last semester's fourth period. But, one shouldn't count one's chickens before they hatch (have you heard that before?). Again, I have two sections of English II, and then Yearbook, which will be tough as heck through March, what with deadlines and all, and then should be a glorified study hall after that until the books come in.

We have new faculty on board in the department, and in one case, a faculty member new to me because she's been on maternity leave. She seems nice, but a little cranky so far, though I guess we all would be in the same situation. Returning to work is one thing, but returning (after only two workdays) and adjusting in the midst of 90 teenagers is a real stress provider.

As always, I'm promising myself to be a real hard-ass this semester, and as always I'm bound to fail in that department. Maybe I can at least be a hard half-ass?

Gee, Thanks.

2008-01-17T22:13:00.000-05:00

The lead teacher from the freshman building told me yesterday she needed to discuss a student with me. Since she only teaches freshmen, and I only have sophomores, and we rarely see each other, I was understandably confused.

Well, turns out she has a Hispanic kid who simply cannot pass the state test for English I, and it turns out that not only is he still learning English, he is basically illiterate in his native language as well. He will be taken to a waiver committee meeting at the county level, and most likely will be allowed to move along to English II, since he is already behind and can pass the English I class (with heavy modifications), but just not the state test.

What she wanted to tell me was that of all the English II teachers, she wanted me to have him this coming semester, and she was passing that wish along to the guidance department.

And so, I am in the rare situation of being ambivalent, or perhaps downright unhappy, about receiving a legitimate compliment. Ah, the teaching life.

You Put The Load Right on Me

2008-01-13T20:34:00.000-05:00

You know that song "The Weight", by The Band, where the narrator comes to town only to seek some rest, and instead ends up dealing with a variety of eccentrics and becomes burdened by everything from dog-sitting to the Devil himself? Well, that was me on Friday.

It was Friday, after all, and my only big duty for the day was to proctor a state geometry exam in the morning, and then maybe, maybe do a little final exam grading of my own, if I felt like it (grades aren't due for another nine days or so). It should have been a peaceful, low-key day. But as soon as I got into my room, before I could even head out for my proctoring, a (now) last semester student was in the doorway, and I could tell she wasn't quite herself. So, I cut to the chase fairly quickly - "Is something wrong?"

"Well, in the last two days I've lost all my friends except two."

"What did you do?"

"I don't know, exactly. Everyone just wants to talk crap about me all the sudden, and one of them said they shouldn't talk to me anymore, and so they aren't."

"Well, maybe things will look much different a couple of weeks from now. And at least you will know who your real friends are by then. Now, I've got to go, but I promise I'll still talk to you next time you stop by, o.k.?"

"O.k."

And, I'm off the the geometry exam. It is scheduled for 150 minutes, after the preliminary pre-test activities, directions etc., but the state allows up to four hours for the test. So, it took 30 minutes to get everyone in place and started, and then, want to guess how long it took the last girl to finish? Yep - 3 hrs., and 50 minutes. That would be a total of 4 1/2 hours, roughly, that I couldn't do anything but stare at the walls, walk about the room, sit for a spell, and then rinse and repeat. I also couldn't go pee during that time, and my bladder ain't so hot.

And there was this: in the middle of the exam, a girl (these were freshmen), raised her hand. I was closest by, and kneeled down to her, noticing she had a stricken look on her face.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I can't do this. I just can't do it"

"What's wrong? Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

"No. I'm having a panic attack [starts breathing rapidly]. I just want to leave."

"O.k. We'll call a principal to come get you. Just put your head down and take deep breaths."

"O.k."

So, I stayed beside her until they came and got the poor thing, and thought about how doubly embarrassing that would be for a 15 year-old.

Speaking of youngsters, the administrator for the exam is exactly 23, and while sweet, is wrapped a bit tightly herself. There is a sort of sad back story for her - she is brilliant, which one can tell after just a short conversation with her. She graduated from this same high school five years ago, and was editor of the yearbook. Apparently she spent much of her senior year crying, especially when it dawned on her, once and for all, that there are mean, nasty people in the world who cannot be changed or reasoned with. She then went on to finish college early, and apparently found time somehow to squeeze in a marriage and a divorce. In any case, she was a bit on edge the entire testing session, but by the end I could tell she was not feeling well. Turned out she had an awful headache, and she was barely able to communicate by the time we were done. She seems like such an interesting, bright person, and yet like a Tennessee Williams heroine, so fragile - only at a much earlier age.

For dessert, I topped the day off by going to luch with colleagues, where I heard about one teachers' father dying when she was in eighth grade and her mother's subsequent emotional disappearance during the ensuing high school years. I heard stories about rampant drug abuse during the teen and college years of another teacher, who also talked about the lonely weekend he had ahead of him. I heard what I would term "soft gossip" about the totally screwed-up lives of a few other colleagues not present. And to top it off, when I returned to school I had to talk with three desperate students whose grades are near failing in my class, all wanting to know what they can do at this late date, and all filling me with a sense of dread when I consider their futures in the adult world. By the end of the day, I simply wanted a long nap, followed by a long night's sleep.

Now of course the pretense of this post is that I am the normal one (even with my pissed-off bladder), surrounded by bureaucratic nonsense, weird personalities, and the emotionally traumatized. Trust me, I'm quite certainly a weirdo in my own right, and I've had my own emotional traumas over the years (though, they never played out in public, due to my certifiable Southerness, which grants me tremendous natural abilities in the areas of repression and stoicism). Plus it's in my nature to listen and try to help others when presented with the opportunity - I can't take much credit for the way I was made. So I'm no saint or martyr. Still, there are days when enough is enough (or is that the Devil talking?).

Anyway, guess what song I dialed up on my iPod Friday evening?

Best Whine of the Day

2008-01-09T19:52:00.000-05:00

(During 1st Period's exam this morning, from a girl whose grade hovers between the dimensions of perdition and "passing by the skin of my teeth only by God's grace"):

"This exam isn't fair. It's on all the stuff we read this year."

You got it sweetie. Funny concept, that.

The Weekend That Was, The Week That Will Be

2008-01-06T19:01:00.000-05:00

As an introvert, I'm bound by law to dread parties, and so I did all last week before the pending 40th birthday surprise party a friend's wife was throwing him on Saturday night. I've known many of the people who would be there for over 15 years, but have not seen many of them in many a moon. This was further reason, in my twisted reckoning, for dreading the party (although, which is worse - a party where you will not know anyone, or one with people you know, but haven't seen in forever?)

Anyone, much to my chagrin, it turned out to be a delightful affair, and everyone was so warm and friendly and geniunely happy to see each other, including me. Too bad: Wyfe gets to add an "I told you so" to her tally book. Oh, well - I guess she can have her requisite one per quarter.

***

Now, this coming week exams start, and after the non-state mandated exams are given, we will spend seemingly endless days giving the state tests, then re-giving them to those who fail them the first time around. Thankfully, I don't teach any state test courses this year, so I am only giving my own painful exam, and then will be twiddling my thumbs as a test proctor during the morning most of the other days.

Because there are so many kids, and so many of them have test modifications that require separate room settings, our exam period will last a whopping NINE days, to be followed by MLK Jr. Holiday, and two teacher workdays. Then the new semester will start on a Thursday, by which point the kiddos will have largely been away from school for about a week and a half, or more. Can you say Christmas break Part II? Can you say minds full of mush on January 24th?

But I'll not complain, no, no, no! I'll take two weeks where I will be paid only to get grades in, handle some yearbook matters, and plan for the next semester, all without having to deal with the little demons, er, darlings. We should do this more often.

One of My Puppy Dog Kids

2008-01-03T18:52:00.000-05:00

Today, after school, a student who has frustrated me all semester dropped by to make up a couple of tests. Now, she is not a bad kid, but she is of the sort who make me want to pull my remaining hair out from time to time: always expressing how she hates to read and how the books we read are boring, demonstrating little in the way of curiosity or imagination, often angling for ways to quietly communicate with her friends instead of listening to class discussions or readings, too immature and whiny for her age, and generally giving off the whiff (only metaphorically, thankfully) of being a bit of a party girl.

But... she's also one of those kids who, no matter how much I fuss at her, or (sadly) try to ignore her, seems to always want to hang around, or tell me stories at the most inappropriate times in class, or stop by the doorway (distracting me from tasks with another class) while on a bathroom break during another period of the day. She is the proverbial lost puppy dog that takes up with you; you mostly want her to leave you alone, though a bit of you, begrudgingly, is glad she hangs around.

Well, this afternoon, after we discussed why her grade isn't so great, she started telling me all these things about her and her family - when and why her parents split up, why her workaholic dad has been mad at her for a couple of months now and won't relent, how he started trying to buy her off with money after the divorce, her step-mom who has fake hair/nose/boobs, the car accident that almost killed her and her sister last year (hit by a drunk driver) - it was a regular litany of problems. But she also talked about how close she and her mom were, how her step-dad has been one of the best things that ever happened to any of them, and how her step-brother is her best friend. All in all, she doesn't seem bitter, but just wounded. Wounded, but not so inclined to let it drag her down forever, from what I can tell.

She also admitted she doesn't give her best in school, and that she thinks she will have to go the community college route before a university will accept her. I pointed out she still has 2 1/2 more years left before then, and that it would be best to get rid of the laziness now. She and her mom have been talking about this, and apparently have made a deal of some sort to address it.

So, here was a student I didn't think I ever got through to about much of anything, and after today I would say that that is probably not true. She may not ever get over her loathing for reading, which is sad and frustrating, but maybe with maturity she will. If nothing else, she seems to have found me a positive force in her life this semester, and that is worth gold. Plus, I'm thankful, because I certainly learned something from her today.

On second thought, she can hang around whenever she wants.

Thoughts on Winter's Tale

2008-01-01T19:30:00.000-05:00

"It might signify nothing, and be valuable solely in itself. A dream is not a tool for this world, but a gateway to the next. Take it for what it is."

"What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Nothing. It's like something beautiful. You don't have to do anything with it."

- from Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale

Yes, I'm a day late and a dollar short, but here we go:

Winter's Tale is, in short, about (not necessarily in any order) a man who disappears in a cloud wall and reappears a century later; a magical, heroic white horse; a child's resurrection; the quest for the perfectly just city; a plan to build a rainbow bridge to heaven; a man protected from harm by his dead wife; and the triumph of the sacrificial over the selfish. Oh, and that's not to mention a comically incompetent midget, a fairy tale village, a criminal's quest to build a room completely out of gold, or the fastest consummation of true love you'll ever read about.

This was the third novel of Mark Helprin's I've read in a year and a half, and though I haven't even read any of his short stories yet (he has three collections), it is fairly easy to discern patterns in his style, thought, and tenor. Most importantly - and this is a huge part of why I'm drawn to his work - Helprin is obviously a believer.

Let me parse that out a bit. I don't know anything too specific about Helprin's religious views, except that he is religious, at least in the broad sense. Winter's Tale includes many mystical episodes, and many third-person assertions about the truth of life, natural and supernatural, but I suspect any attempt to hash out a cogent theology from the novel would fail. Helprin is Jewish, but I don't know how devout. What I do know is that his books, while not religious screeds or devoid of the worst kinds of suffering, are animated by belief in life and love, in laughter, in beauty, and in an ultimate Good we can know, if ever so slightly.

This alone will place Winter's Tale in the minority when it comes to acclaimed contemporary novels. In fact, though it apparently almost won the NY Times' designation as "best novel of the last 25 years", it has had many detractors, most of whom, while not disputing that Helprin is supremely talented, point to its untenable (in their minds) story of redemption. Apparently, this reeks of naivity in these wise times of ours.

It may very well be that Winter's Tale, as well as most of Helprin's work, can only appeal to those of us naive enough to believe in happy endings (I hope not - I encourage everyone to try the books).

Then again, maybe one day the last shall be first, and the most appalling naivity will triumph as the highest wisdom. Oh, these happy endings may not necessarily occur on our time schedules (with our finite perceptions of time), but to paraphrase the narrator and some of the characters in the novel, justice works itself out, tomorrow or centuries from now, or in another place.

I'm one of those who are betting on it. But then, I'm one of those who has a taste for reading Mark Helprin.

I've Had All the Family I Can Stand...

2007-12-29T18:54:00.000-05:00

...I can't stands no more! Well, not really, as we had a very nice, and relatively (get it?) stress-free Christmas/grandparent gatherings of doom/travel across the state week. But, even after the best of hostings and visitings, one is happy to be home and unencumbered. For some reason I feel like I wrote almost the exact same thing last Christmas, but I'm too lazy to check right now.

Anyway, a few back-in-town nuggets for you:

1. Our church's Christmas Eve candlelight service was majestic. Right now our church does the big holy day services about as well as they can be done, I think. There is just the right mix between the theatrical and the contemplative, between the joyous and the sober, and between the personal and the communal. And the music, again, was outstanding, including the Handel. I love Bach's oratorios, but not knowing German, there is no way to fully, fully appreciate them. If you are an English-only speaker, I don't see how you can resist picking Handel's "Messiah" as the oratorio. Can we make sure to keep sprinkling "Messiah" throughout Advent, as we did this year, please?

2. Speaking of music, our minister's wife is a sublime soloist - don't know enough to judge whether or not she could have done opera (maybe she did), but if not she has to be darn near that caliber. I have never before seen (and heard, obviously) someone nail the ending of "O, Holy Night" - you know, the high notes no normal person can approach - so well, and yet so effortlessly. It just seemed so easy for her, with no strain at all. She could just as well have been filing her nails while finishing that one off, or so it seemed.

3. I just finished eating a plate of plain rice and green beans, and I feel like never eating anything richer than that for several weeks. I am sick, sick, sick of big meals and heavy food. And all those great holiday Food Network specials from last week? Don't make me gag.

But come to think of it, there are some yummy chocolate-covered peanut butter balls in the kitchen right now...

4. Wyfe thinks we are the only family without three children whose car trips devolve into three-way, every- man-for-himself wrestling matches (driver, perhaps dangerously, included). I doubt it, but perhaps not every family tops the fight off with a Ric Flair "Whoooooo!", as we sometimes do.

5. Both arms, and my lower back, are sore as a consequence of our first three days with a Nintendo Wii. The main culprit? Wii Sports baseball, which I've had to avoid the last two days until I heal up. Next time I think I'll ice down in the trainer's room after the game.

6. Tonight I will finish Helprin's remarkable Winter's Tale, and will report on it either tomorrow or Monday (I almost promise).

Whewwww!

2007-12-20T16:53:00.000-05:00

Let me just say that the beginning of the Christmas vacation break from school never ceases to bring joy and merriment - practically, it feels just like it did when I was a kid, with a little less pure giddiness. But only a little less.

I've known for a while that the past few days were going to be a tough gauntlet to run, and I wasn't counting on catching yet another cold virus, or my son catching yet another fever/tummy virus just to throw in the mix. Last Saturday we all drove three hours to South Carolina for the Wyfe's extended family gathering, then drove back Sunday. On Monday I had to stay at school until 6:30 in order to help with the presentation of graduation projects. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights my son and I drove thirty minutes into, and out of, Raleigh because Wyfe was helping narrate a short nativity play at church (and because I thought I had another church obligation which had been canceled, unbeknownst to me), and on top of this have been all the usual school duties. You know, yelling, fretting, losing planning periods, meeting yearbook reps., cramming in reading assignments, piling up things to sift through and grade - all the fun stuff.

So, I am mighty pleased to be officially off the clock for a couple of days. I have just taken a long nap, blown my $30.00 iTunes gift card, and brought my Mark Helprin novel into the den with me. I'll take it.

Give me a day or two for some school-related ruminations to bubble up. Right now I'm blissfully decompressing.

Suuurprize, Suuurprize (My 38th)!

2007-12-14T21:09:00.000-05:00

(With apologies to Gomer Pyle)

So yesterday my yearbook girls told me I "needed to find somewhere to go for 10 minutes." When I pressed them on it, they said, "It's a girl thing. We can't talk about it with you in here."

"What possible girl things could you talk about that I haven't already heard this semester?"

"Trust us. It's bad. Really bad."

So, I wandered off to eat lunch in the lounge, and it took me about two minutes to figure out they were planning some kind of birthday surprise, since tomorrow (or today, if you are reading this on Saturday) marks my 38th.

This morning before first bell I pretended to avert my eyes or look busy as yearbook kids kept surreptitiously sneaking in the room and heading toward the back - particularly towards the refrigerator. And once third period started, I dutifully went to my computer and turned my back to them - noticing that a couple of them conpicuously darted their bodies back and forth in an effort to run some sort of interference in front of the food assemblage. No, not at all obvious, kids, that you are all WAY quieter than usual. Then, finally, they broke out into song ("Happy Birthday", if you can believe it) and I was able to do my best PoMo/Faux/Ironic "Oh, I'm so surprised!" routine.

Well, what a bunch of sweethearts. And, it was a great spread. I didn't eat much yesterday due to a bad allergy-cough attack, so today I felt at liberty to gobble down two portions of lasagna, some pasta salad, two pieces of cake, a brownie, a cupcake, and a cookie. So there.

Remarkable, really, that they would have remembered my birthday like they did. I mean, I'd only been dropping heavy hints for, oh, 11 days or so.

Three Positives

2007-12-12T21:02:00.000-05:00

Since I've depressed reader Kathy with the last post, and since this has been a really good week thus far, it seems incumbent upon me to find some positives to report. And really, some have fallen in my lap the last two days.

At my old school, I was always enthusiastic about having a yearbook class because I dreamed of the wonderful crew of kids I was bound to have in there. In reality, there were always a small percentage of wonderful kids, and a large percentage of lazy, melodramatic big mouths who weren't the worst kids in the world, but didn't deserve to be in the class. Mostly this was a function of scheduling issues and a small pool to choose from.

But now, the staff I have is exactly what you would expect: great kids (not angels, mind you, but close) who have earned their ways in, and basically will do anything asked of them without attitude. So, there is Positive #1.

Now, in this class (as well as in my first period English class) is one of the best kids I've ever taught, a hard working, cheerful, All-American girl type if there ever was one - I would adopt her in a minute. For the last eight months, she has been dating a guy she really likes, but yesterday he rather unceremoniously told her some things that made her realize she needed to break up with him. This all happened between 2nd and 3rd periods, so she let her friends know about it after yearbook class started. She got a little weepy for a few minutes, and was certainly depressed, but already she had a calmnss and spirit about her that I've rarely seen out of high school girls in such situations. She had, believe it or not, a sense of perspective about the whole thing, and it wasn't long until she was laughing with those trying to make her feel better. The best I had to offer her was the only piece of chocolate in my desk, but I think that helped as well. Today, she seemed fine - still talking it out a little, but taking things like a champ. So, there is Positive #2.

Of course, in that class of 14 girls, I've had to hear a lot of "Sorry Mr. P's" following all the "men are scum" comments the last two days. I've just kind of camped out at my computer in the corner.

And finally, there was this today, from a conversation among five of the girls in there (ranging from senior to sophomore): talk of a New Year's Day party with everyone in agreement to keep it as mum as possible, because all the kids who drink will try to crash it and ruin everything.

WHAT!!!??? Party talk among in-crowd kids, with the idea being to EXCLUDE those who would bring alcohol? Somebody pinch me. That's definitely Positive #3.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

2007-12-09T14:42:00.000-05:00

Our sophomores are supposed to do a mini-research project which helps prepare them for ever-larger research projects as they move up the ladder, until they ultimately get to their big bad senior projects (which are now required in this state for graduation). So (unsurprisingly), all the sophomore English teachers, including moi, are rushing to sneak this project in before the semester is over.

On Friday, I started canvassing my classes on what topics each person was interested in, approving/disapproving the topics and/or giving guidance. Many of them had wonderful ideas which even excited me. One little group of suspected stoners all wanted to do something about Woodstock, or The Who, or some such nonsense. And then there were the black kids.

I know, I know - this gets me into certain territories that dare not speak their names in polite society, but here I go anyway. In my first period class, I have three black boys, and three black girls. Of the boys, one is really an exceptional student, one is middle of the road, and one is, unfortunately, and athlete stereotype who is barely surviving the class. I haven't yet spoken with the first two of these, but the latter kid only knows he wants to do his project on something involving gangs - surprise, surprise. What really intrigued me were the choices of the three girls, all of whom are really bright and the kind of students colleges would be dying to offer scholarships to (one is a little more exceptional than the other two, and might really go far). Well, guess what they want to do research on? Yep - gangs! gangs! gangs! Or, in one case, Biggie Smalls! or maybe Tupac!

I shot down (no pun intended) most of these ideas, only allowing one which was at least formulated into a legitimate research question. What they kept saying in response was, "But this is about RE-A-LITY, Mr. P!"

I didn't have time to debate with them, but if I had, I might have wondered aloud about at what point RE-A-LITY keeps being RE-A-LITY because it is a self-fulfilling prohecy: keep telling yourselves you are all gangsters, or surrounded by gangsters, and maybe you will eventually think you should be gangsters. Here are three intelligent girls with potentially bright futures, yet they watch the same media romanticizing of gang life as the real gang-bangers do. And I could hear in their voices a sense of pleasure in describing the awful RE-A-LITY of gang life that infests so many black communities. Sure, they would deplore it if forced to, I suppose. But that would deprive them, a little, of something they have come to keep a little too close to their hearts. Yes, of course it's real, but it is reality tinged with mythos at this point, and an endless loop of rap/hip-hop lyrics, videos, websites, and magazines both feed and are fed by the romance of the myth.

Now, there is a small percentage of white kids who get swept up in the romance of it all as well, and we all know some of the unsavory names that are given to such folk. But exceptions aside, in describing my reaction to my students, I'm describing racial divides between us. But the racial divides of the 21st century, are, from my perspective, spawning from different sources than from the old days. There may be relationships between the divides of the past and the present, but something new, and nasty is at work these days, and it is affecting us all. I would put it this way: as more and more black youths fulfill the self-fulfilling prophecy of RE-A-LITY, more whites find it easier to write blacks off as "never going to get it."

That is not fair, because there is a prosperous black middle class. But the black middle class isn't being romanticized on music video channels, or showing up on the nightly news.

Life Not Imitating Art

2007-12-05T21:16:00.000-05:00

So, we finished our romp through The Tempest yesterday, with lots of fanfare from Mr. P. about bridging the Unseen and the Seen worlds through self recognition, forgiveness, mercy, love, etc.

While this was going on, another tempest has been gathering within the class itself. The class includes the only sophomore who was elected to the homecoming court, and she fits so many, many stereotypes, from the overuse of make-up, to the "my need to socialize trumps your need to teach me" attitude, to the paranoia about others "hating on" her, to the soulful singing style well-honed for talent portions of pageants. In addition, the boy she was dating at the beginning of the year is in the class, but he broke up with her early on because "she was crazy!"

Up until now, Miss Priss (who can be sweet, and smart, when she so chooses) has had a couple of stalwart buddies in the class, but something has happened. Last week she was gone four days in a row with a "stomach bug", and while she was away the stalwart buddies, I noticed, were no longer stalwart-seeming when I asked if they had heard from her. And sure enough, this week, she is being roundly shunned by her buddies. We are working on a final Tempest project, and while they all sat on one side of the room, she was conspicuously alone on the other side.

I'm sure whatever she did, she deserves what she's getting. But, ahem, what about that mercy and forgiveness stuff, ladies?

One could point out that, in the play, there is no repentance without pain being inflicted first, so I guess I shouldn't hold my breath over a reconciliation for a while. Or, I could just give in to Wyfe's notion that teenagers are fundamentally pure evil.

A Void

2007-12-02T16:07:00.001-05:00

After spending much of last week sick, and then not sleeping well because of the speed-in-disguise decongestant I was prescribed, I've been spending the weekend in various states of napping, errand-running, helping get out Christmas ornaments,and lackluster grading/test making. Motivation has been low, as you might expect, for all but the napping. Really, I've got nothing much for you blog-wise, either.

Well, o.k.,some quick reading blurbs: I continue to make my way through the delightful Song of the Line (I'm a slow reader of poetry), and have picked up Mark Helprin once again, this time with Winter's Tale, which some consider his best. So far, it is quite promising, what with the murderous gang leader who's obsessed with pure, vibrant colors and the thief protagonist whose rejected-immigrant parents set him adrift as an infant in New York harbor on a stolen model sailing vessel. Both books have something immediately apparent in common: an interest, indeed a joyful preoccupation with, eccentrics. Explains a lot about me, I'm sure.

Sick, Sick, Sick (and Jessica Alba)

2007-11-27T19:07:00.000-05:00

Hope that got your attention.

Not exactly the way to finish off Thanksgiving weekend - coming down with bronchitis and sinusitis, throat hurting too much to even talk, coughing up phlegm that turned increasingly darker shades (I loved sharing the latter detail in class today). It was all enough to force a vacation extension, if you will, for a day.

I know this is bizarre, but I do have to say that one of my favorite places in all the world is the little Quick-Med doc-in-the-box we have down the road. For all intents and purposes, the docs there are my real family physicians, because I've seen them far more often over the years than I have my real doctor over in Raleigh. The nurses and staff are ever so cheerful, and the rotation of doctors do the best two-minute diagnoses you'll ever see. I'm strangely comforted to be asked the same old questions and have my vitals taken in the same old way, and get the same old antibiotic and decongestant prescriptions a couple of times a year. Go figure.

The one thing I don't like is that they've recently added a television in the waiting room, so it is harder for me to concentrate on whatever book I've brought with me.

So, yesterday morning I was surely annoyed, having to deal with Regis and Kelly while waiting my turn, but then... then... ahhhh... an angel in the guise of Jessica Alba came on the set for her interview, and she was giving details about the (no doubt) delicious stuffing she makes for Thanskgiving, and all seemed right with the world, and perhaps I even heard, somewhere in the distance, a heavenly choir singing the most serene music, and...

Then the nurse called me in, right in the middle of the interview. Dammit.

Please Explain to Me

2007-11-20T19:35:00.000-05:00

...why, last week, as I was leaving the house in the morning, Wyfe's alarm clock came on playing "Feliz Navidad"? Or why, yesterday as I was putting gas in my truck on a balmy 68 degree afternoon, the gas station's ubiquitous outdoor speaker system was blaring "Let It Snow" and a folksy version of "O Come All Ye Faithful"?

Never before has "O Come All Ye Faithful", always one of my favorite Christmas hymns, inspired the wish that I had a Green Arrow-style bow and a quiver full of exploding arrows, which I could have used to take out the 31 speakers before tearing off my receipt and leaving the station in the usual hum-drum manner.

Granted, that is a bizarre wish, but justified, I believe.

Happy Thanksgiving, but not Merry Christmas. Yet.

Occupational Hazards

2007-11-18T15:34:00.000-05:00

Being a yearbook advisor has many consolations, and as long as you are conscientious, it is hard thing to screw up. Of course, there are headaches (as I've mentioned before, English teachers are not the first group you think of for natural businessmen), but in the big picture they are relatively minor.

Since, at the high school level, girls tend to be more conscientious students, and since,for some reason, it's mostly girls who seem interested in yearbook, one of my consolations is that I tend to get good core groups to work with. However, having an all-girl class can be tricky for me from time to time. One of the reasons is that conversations in the yearbook class are not bound by subject matter the way they are in normal classes. Seems anything goes, so long as it isn't completely lurid. And so, I have to be circumspect about which matters to offer "I'm-old-enough-to-be-your-father" opinions on, and which ones to pretend not to have heard at all. No matter how careful, though, there is a subject I seem to often accidentally step into which involves... er... female biological functions.

Usually it starts when I innocently ask one of the girls who looks deathly ill if they are o.k. So it began on Friday, after one girl came in class and immediately dropped her jacket and proceeded to lay out flat - incommunicado - on the cold, dirty, hard floor. Another girl, sitting at the computer near me, also let out a weary groan from time to time. Soon, in some telepathic manner, my editor has figured out and announced that four of them are , um, having the same experience on this day. As I checked yearbook pages, I heard snippets of conversations about the wonders of Midol, or about personal stories their mothers tell, etc. Can you say "sticking out like a sore thumb"?

Look, I've been married 11 years, and I helped the doctor and nurses bring my son into the world, so I'm no wallflower. But on days like Friday, I can't help but have that same icky feeling I had in fifth grade health class. And seventh grade health class. And ninth grade health class.

An Older Issue Than I Expected

2007-11-15T21:42:00.000-05:00

So what is the point (or perhaps main points) of having an education in a democratic society? What constitutes educational success? We've discussed this here before. Clearly, the party line (from all parties) leans toward the view that education exists to help us all "get ahead." Suffice to say, you'll never hear a politician or education bureaucrat speak about much of anything other than the most tangible practical skills acquired, so that we can compete in the modern international economy, etc., etc. What good does it do, however, if we are also turning out moral morons with no taste for exploring why we live, and why we ought to live in certain ways (check out some of the best and brightest in Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons sometime)?

The latest The New Criterion is a special issue marking the 20th anniversary of Allan Bloom's The Closing Of The American Mind (I've read Bloom's book just once, but am feeling the urge to return to it). I've just gotten started on the special issue, but loved this quote in the opening article, taken from a book Robert Hutchins wrote in the 1930's:

"The people [education academics] think that democracy means that every child should be permitted to acquire the educational insignia that will be helpful in making money. They do not believe in the cultivation of the intellect for its own sake."

Because, of course, there are no fixed truths available for cultivation anyway - right?