I'm Baaaaaaaaack!

If anyone ever says that they keep their personal life completely separate from their teaching, tell them they are full of crap. Well, maybe not out loud, but think it really hard. A major confluence of my professional life and my personal life ganged up on me and really did a number on me.

As (I hope) you noticed, I have not posted to this blog for about year. I mean I went and changed the name again, Room 308 now, but nothing else since the tech post last year. There are several reasons for this.

I was transferred, at my request, from teaching at the high school to teaching seventh graders again. I was widely seen to be insane, but I actually like seventh graders. When they act crazy, there is a reason. Their hormones are jumping around almost uncontrollably, their brains are rewiring, they are starting to realize they don’t really have to do everything every random adult tells them to do (or believe what every random adult tells them to believe). So I was happy to make the change. I knew it would be an adjustment, but I was rarin’ to go.

I was, of course, swamped the first quarter as I was adjusting to the new school, the new students, the other teachers on my team (more on team teachers in another post). I was able to keep afloat, but with 30-40 more students than I had had the previous five years, it was a lot to do.

As I was starting to get in the swing and get my feet under me, my personal life went BANG! My wife decided she was ready to move out and be on her own. That it hit me completely out of left field is probably an indication of real problems there. But hit me out of left field it did. I was sort of a wreck for the next several months. I was trying to teach, work out custody arrangements, figure out what happened and if it could be put back together. I really didn’t have the energy to write here then. And if I had, it probably wouldn’t have been much worth reading.

So between the professional upheaval (which I sought out) and the personal upheaval (which I didn’t), this blog has lain fallow. But, like any good field that has done so, I am hoping that now I intend to till it again, it will be even more fruitful and worthwhile.

I have had several ideas for writing posts during the year and now that I am in a position to work on them, I intend to start posting again. So, here we go again folks. Wish me luck.

Thoughts on Returning to Class

As I prepare to return to the classroom, weeks after school has started, I always feel some trepidation. I know I am not the ideal teacher. I am not Mr. Chips or LouAnne Johnson—heck I am not even as grumpily and grudgingly good as Mr. Holland. I am just me. I come to work and try my best. I try to inspire my students to do their best. And I always end a semester feeling that I have not fulfilled my potential and often have not helped my students to fulfill their potentials, either. Granted, by the end of the semester I am exhausted and more likely to look at everything negatively. I must do better than I think as my students are often likely to stop me in the halls or the stores to say hi. The smiles and cheerful attitudes reassure me that I haven’t scarred them for life.

Today I was reading a post in blogessor and found that this appealed to me and gave me some insight and hope for the year:

Today, though, I came across an article called "The One Who Is Not Busy." In it, Zen Buddhist Norman Fischer talks about being "prisoners of the list" as we realize (again) that there aren't enough hours in the day to do all that we need or want to do. He says,

"But the point is not how many things we have done or will do in a given amount of time; the point is how we do what we do."

As I read that this morning, I substituted "taught/teach" for "done/do," as in:

"But the point is not how many things we have taught or will teach in a given amount of time; the point is how we teach what we teach."

"Learned/learn" works here. "Wrote/write" and "read/read" do, too.

As I move back into Eddy Hall this year, I know I'll be clobbered again by the temptation to become the prisoner of my lists. I know I'll want to be counting tomatoes rather than how many more projects are left in my stack of grading. I'm writing this entry to remind myself that I can't teach it all, no matter how ambitious my syllabi. In fact, maybe being less ambitious would let all of us learn more in the end.

Two Views on Why Public Schools Suck

Apparently my blog is a feast or famine thing. Currently we are in feast mode (a terrific way to avoid grading papers I desperately do not want to grade, while still feeling productive).

I have a bunch of subscriptions to science blogs. Why? I just do. Seems like I can always find something interesting in one of them. Well, as I was going through some back entries today a couple caught my eye and I thought I'd share them. Feel free to chime in with your comments. I know our schools have some troubles--exaggerated in some cases, underreported in others--but it just always pisses me off to hear the entire US school system constantly trashed.

Here's the first one--feminists beware! Women's Liberation Movement and Public Schools.

And here's one on our national disorganization: Nationalize Public Schools. Sorry. I am not currently in the mood to nationalize very much. At least not until we are under new management. And probably not then, either. Who knows what the next management shift might bring.