I'm a Teacher, man?!

McCourt's memoir Teacher Man is a great read. I blew through it in about 3 sittings. Anyone who wants an unblushingly frank, funny, and heartwarming look at the teaching life should check it out.

For the last two weeks, I've been attending professional development classes, working in my classroom, reading, organizing, despairing and praying in preparation for the school year. It's one of the strangest times every year. I'm well-rested, relaxed. I feel optimistic and hopeful and inspired, determined to attack some weak spots, holes in my repertoire. Then we go to these meetings--these meetings that I describe as soul-sucking meetings--and in about 12, maybe 15 hours, it's as if they try to kill any ingenuity, passion, or motivation that we might have cached away over the summer. I'm positive that this is not any one person's intention or motivation. But these meetings rarely fail and just to be frank, they are excruciating more often than not. Some years, I've had a horrible attitude. I've sat through these things grumbling expletives, fidgeting hot-faced and teetering on the cusp of mental breakdown, cardiac arrest. I tried calling-in well, saying, "I feel entirely too good to come to work today! Doh!" Other years, I've tried getting involved in order to control some of my own destiny--presenting little workshops for my colleagues. I've usurped other workshops, standing to proclaim in front of anyone who would listen that what we were doing was not a valuable use of our time--and that I intended to use my valuable time in a way that was productive. It only took once or twice to learn that these were both bad ideas.

I'm not here this morning to write an expose on professional development in public education. Maybe later. Probably never.

I'm just saying that this year I'm trying yet another mindset: it is what it is. And to use one of my colleague's lines, this is what we do. And so far, it's gotten me through cleaner than any other methodology to date. As a result, it seems as if all I have to do now is make it through 3 hours of "Nuts and Bolts" this morning and I'll be home free. I got this afternoon after lunch and tomorrow in my classroom to do everything I really need to do, and then the kids arrive Monday. I'll close my door and teach and everything will be fine.

Hey, I'm a teacher, man! It's what I do.

30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000 30,000

For the last couple of days, I can't stop thinking about the men and women in uniform, many of them National Guardsmen and Reserves, who are leaving for Afghanistan this year, their third, fourth tours of combat in under seven years. They're going over there to do a job that many argue can be accomplished with a few CIA operatives, Special Forces units, and drones. Many argue nothing can be accomplished at all for that matter.

When I voted in the last Presidential election, I had hoped I was voting for peace on Earth, revolutionary environmental policy reform, universal health care, education reform. Was I not?

It's complicated, I know--nonviolence, stewardship, compassion. Oh, the humanity!

Big Ten

The "To Do List for 2010" is rather spectacular compared with last year's Dirt Bombs resolution to "keep doing what I do." I have been mulling over some significant lifestyle changes, inspired largely by my students' class discussions of the novels Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness, and The Poisonwood Bible. They came to the sardonic conclusion that it is difficult, in America, to breathe without harming the innocent little Congolese children, all the children of the world for that matter--red and yellow, black and white.

• It is time to move. Our house has served us well, but we can't see ourselves living here forever. For the biggest change of the new year, we are purchasing an old, rehabilitated, downtown home in the Quapaw Quarter of LR, in part to counterpoise the construction of one more grotesque mcmansion in west county, but also, it'll be great living a mile from work and a mile from the River Market (with all of its amusements), on real dirt. The ultimate intent is that the move will catalyze significant new daily-life-habits from walking or biking most-everywhere to community gardening and Farmers' marketing.
• For fun in 2010, I'm going to brew some beer with mon ami, Nico. We haven't done it in several years. Best beer I've ever tasted. (I'll just keep the rest of my booze-wish list to myself.)
• This is serious: my tennis game has to be competitive at the 4.5 level by the end of May--by any means necessary. I haven't ruled out performance enhancing drugs or Lap Band surgery.
• RL's finally old enough to start doing some big boy outdoor activities! Time to hit the trail, river, lake, woods!
• Detachment from food, money, ego.
• Mindful, intentional spending, in every way.
• Change hope with action.

That covers the gist. I wish all of you a happy, new year. May you all find what you seek.

This year, I resolve to

keep doing what I do.

--MJF