It is cliche, it is overused, it is hardly a valid excuse for anyone, but it is nontheless true; I am busy. I suppose this is what I bargain for by being an affluent American in 2006, trying to live several American dreams at the same time, but it is already taking its toll. Work has only just begun for the year, and I have not so much as stepped foot into a grad class for the semester, but I feel it coming, and the weight seems awfully heavy at the moment.
As you may know, I began teaching a couple of weeks ago, and this year is going to be tough. The level of preparation and study is has been multiplied exponentially, and I am faced with the task of shifting a wayward literature program back towards its original, intended purpose. Fighting parents, administration, and other teachers daily is draining, but I feel as if God has allowed me here for such a purpose. Those in control of the "literature", and I use that term loosely, department do not share the vision that I share, and I have been hired to help mold a curriculum of change, a change back towards classical education. The problem is that change is painful, painful for everyone involved. I intend to keep plugging away until they ask me to leave, though.
On the grad-school front, I have done something I vowed to never do while I am teaching; I am taking 3 UD classes. I will not go into the justifications I had to go through to convince the department chair that I was capable of doing so, but suffice it to say, this may be the dumbest move I have ever made. Dumb, but, I believe, necessary and beneficial.
I must get some sleep now. It's an early day tomorrow, and classes begin for me tomorrow night. I am going to enjoy the sleep of the free for one more night until December. I can feel it now. I just wanted to check in with those of you who still read this, knowing that I have not posted anything worth reading lately (my school has blocked Blogger from being accessed on school property).
Hope to talk with you all soon - Michael
As you may know, I began teaching a couple of weeks ago, and this year is going to be tough. The level of preparation and study is has been multiplied exponentially, and I am faced with the task of shifting a wayward literature program back towards its original, intended purpose. Fighting parents, administration, and other teachers daily is draining, but I feel as if God has allowed me here for such a purpose. Those in control of the "literature", and I use that term loosely, department do not share the vision that I share, and I have been hired to help mold a curriculum of change, a change back towards classical education. The problem is that change is painful, painful for everyone involved. I intend to keep plugging away until they ask me to leave, though.
On the grad-school front, I have done something I vowed to never do while I am teaching; I am taking 3 UD classes. I will not go into the justifications I had to go through to convince the department chair that I was capable of doing so, but suffice it to say, this may be the dumbest move I have ever made. Dumb, but, I believe, necessary and beneficial.
I must get some sleep now. It's an early day tomorrow, and classes begin for me tomorrow night. I am going to enjoy the sleep of the free for one more night until December. I can feel it now. I just wanted to check in with those of you who still read this, knowing that I have not posted anything worth reading lately (my school has blocked Blogger from being accessed on school property).
Hope to talk with you all soon - Michael
It has often been joked that one is punished for their sins through the identical sins of their children. I have no children of my own, and so I should be safe, right? That is what I thought too, but I am beginning to realize, painfullly, that my past sins can be revisited in those of my students; those past indiscretions, rebellions, and apathy's are rearing their ugly heads each and every day.
For those of you who have only recently met me, those whom I have known for only the last 3 or 4 years, you might not be privy the Michael of old. Though I now take great pride in my education and the ideals set forth by great thinkers throughout history, I was once one who stood in utter opposition against these very things. I acted up in class, I never read the assigned books, and I generally mocked those who acted in accordance with the teacher's wishes. I now am faced daily with a room full of students who seem to both hate my classes and the teacher standing (or sitting, as is generally the case) at the front of the room. I literally, no exagerration, have put at least one student to sleep each day that I have been at STA.
Here's the probem, I could not be more excited about what I am teaching. Even the history classes, which are by no means my forte, are exciting and valuable to me, but despite my efforts to give an apologetic for our studies this first week, they could not be less interested, ranging from boredom to defiance in their words and deeds.
I can only laugh, because it is like looking into a mirror, a mirror into my past. They are brazen, uneducated and proud, illiterate, and they have no inclination to be any different than that which they are. My prayer is that I will be able to inspire even a handful to something great, that they might taste that which took me so many years to acquire a taste for. I do not expect overnight success, and I know that the majority will skate-by, doing the bare minimum, but my hope is that some will catch the same "fire" that caught me several years ago.
At the very least, they give me great fodder for blogging and coversation.
For instance, I have one kid, adequately named Michael, who turned in his first assignment of a book report over the summer reading. I told them I expected no more than a summary of what they read, void of any analysis or thought, and he almost immediately handed in a typed, 4 page report that he did in anticipation of just such an assignment. I was suspicious to say the least. One quick Google search later, he ripped it completely off the internet; he did not even remove the underlined hyperlinks from the text. I will have to talk with him tomorrow, but most of me just wants to laugh right now. How stupid does he think I am? He can hardly string together a coherent sentence in conversation, and he is going to try and pass of an articulate summary of a book, a summary replete with words that he more than likely cannot pronounce? Not a good start for this individual. if you are going to cheat, I say, do it with a modicum of cunning.
For those of you who have only recently met me, those whom I have known for only the last 3 or 4 years, you might not be privy the Michael of old. Though I now take great pride in my education and the ideals set forth by great thinkers throughout history, I was once one who stood in utter opposition against these very things. I acted up in class, I never read the assigned books, and I generally mocked those who acted in accordance with the teacher's wishes. I now am faced daily with a room full of students who seem to both hate my classes and the teacher standing (or sitting, as is generally the case) at the front of the room. I literally, no exagerration, have put at least one student to sleep each day that I have been at STA.
Here's the probem, I could not be more excited about what I am teaching. Even the history classes, which are by no means my forte, are exciting and valuable to me, but despite my efforts to give an apologetic for our studies this first week, they could not be less interested, ranging from boredom to defiance in their words and deeds.
I can only laugh, because it is like looking into a mirror, a mirror into my past. They are brazen, uneducated and proud, illiterate, and they have no inclination to be any different than that which they are. My prayer is that I will be able to inspire even a handful to something great, that they might taste that which took me so many years to acquire a taste for. I do not expect overnight success, and I know that the majority will skate-by, doing the bare minimum, but my hope is that some will catch the same "fire" that caught me several years ago.
At the very least, they give me great fodder for blogging and coversation.
For instance, I have one kid, adequately named Michael, who turned in his first assignment of a book report over the summer reading. I told them I expected no more than a summary of what they read, void of any analysis or thought, and he almost immediately handed in a typed, 4 page report that he did in anticipation of just such an assignment. I was suspicious to say the least. One quick Google search later, he ripped it completely off the internet; he did not even remove the underlined hyperlinks from the text. I will have to talk with him tomorrow, but most of me just wants to laugh right now. How stupid does he think I am? He can hardly string together a coherent sentence in conversation, and he is going to try and pass of an articulate summary of a book, a summary replete with words that he more than likely cannot pronounce? Not a good start for this individual. if you are going to cheat, I say, do it with a modicum of cunning.
Procrastination Makes for Good Blogging
1 Comments Published by Michael on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 3:54 PM.
At the bidding of Jamie, who being a newlywed and still finding time to blog, which of course shames me all the more for my lack of doing so, I decided I should give an update things. I have begun several different entries over the last couple of weeks, but I could not bring myself to finish them. Right now I am sitting on the couch, watching Tiger win his twelfth major, watching Julie nap, and attempting to research the Paleolithic Era for my freshman english history class in the morning. Nothing makes for motivation to blog better than studying history, and so here I am.
As you might have guessed, judging by my choice of Sunday afternoon activities, school has begun, and for those of you whom I have not spoken with this summer, I am no longer at Christway Academy, and God has faithfully delivered me from the clutches of the evil 6th graders. My life-blood has been restored, and I am teaching English and History to a smattering of 8th-12th graders at St. Alban's Episcopal School in Arlington.
It has already been much more challenging than last year. For the first time in my life I am teaching a block schedule, which means that I have to fill 1 1/2 hours per class, as opposed to the lessons that I planned last year for just under an hour. Even stranger is that they STA has entrusted me to design my English curriculums entirely. The freshman and I will be studying ancient literature this semester, beginning with Hesiod, touching on Homer, and ending with Plato and Augustine. They seem less than excited about the prospect, but hopefully they will learn to enjoy it. With the seniors things should be a little easier; they will be reading Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and possibly Bradbury before Christmas, and then they will get the privelege of reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in the Spring. It is daunting writing curriculum for the first time, but it will hopefully become more and more comfortable.
I almost forgot; none of you will ever believe where I teach my classes. My classroom is literally a basketball court! Last year the school took over a group of buildings built by some megachurch in the 1990's, and I am in a part of what was once a state-of-the-art youth room. It sounds like a dream come true, but if you think it is hard to control a group of kids in a regular classroom, try doing so in a gym. It is far from an ideal teaching environment, but I am working on using the space to my advantage. Pretty funny, though.
I better get back to work, but I wanted to let you know that I am still alive and doing fine. Talk to you soon,
michael
As you might have guessed, judging by my choice of Sunday afternoon activities, school has begun, and for those of you whom I have not spoken with this summer, I am no longer at Christway Academy, and God has faithfully delivered me from the clutches of the evil 6th graders. My life-blood has been restored, and I am teaching English and History to a smattering of 8th-12th graders at St. Alban's Episcopal School in Arlington.
It has already been much more challenging than last year. For the first time in my life I am teaching a block schedule, which means that I have to fill 1 1/2 hours per class, as opposed to the lessons that I planned last year for just under an hour. Even stranger is that they STA has entrusted me to design my English curriculums entirely. The freshman and I will be studying ancient literature this semester, beginning with Hesiod, touching on Homer, and ending with Plato and Augustine. They seem less than excited about the prospect, but hopefully they will learn to enjoy it. With the seniors things should be a little easier; they will be reading Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and possibly Bradbury before Christmas, and then they will get the privelege of reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in the Spring. It is daunting writing curriculum for the first time, but it will hopefully become more and more comfortable.
I almost forgot; none of you will ever believe where I teach my classes. My classroom is literally a basketball court! Last year the school took over a group of buildings built by some megachurch in the 1990's, and I am in a part of what was once a state-of-the-art youth room. It sounds like a dream come true, but if you think it is hard to control a group of kids in a regular classroom, try doing so in a gym. It is far from an ideal teaching environment, but I am working on using the space to my advantage. Pretty funny, though.
I better get back to work, but I wanted to let you know that I am still alive and doing fine. Talk to you soon,
michael
If I am not mistaken, and judging by my inability to maintain consciousness while talking about accounting it would be no surprise if I was, my wife recently took a class called "Cost Accounting"; I have nothing to say about this other than the fact that I realize the existence of such a class, but one thing I am quite sure of this morning is that a teacher in the first century taught also about counting the cost, saying,
For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enought to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him...Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and take counsel whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one with twenty thousand?My experience as a builder has been limited to a birdhouse that sits atop a bench in my mother's backyard, a survivor of multiple trees in mulitiple houses, towns, coats of paint, and storms of every variety, and a small, gray, three-tiered shelf that rumor has it still resides in the bedroom it was originally built for. My war experience is similar to my space travel experience, a smattering of books and backyard make-believe as a child; nevertheless, I am not ignorant to the idea of counting the cost, nor should any one of us be. Even small children experience this: "Junior, do you want to sit up and eat or maccaroni or do you want a spanking?" No one wants a spanking, but neither does Junior want the authority figure's will to win out against his, and so he counts the cost of his disobedience, choosing whether or not the pain of the spanking is greater than the small, ever so slight victory over mom, and it usually is.
I appreciate this concept more today than this time last week, and certainly to a greater degree now than on May 28, before my summer began. Julie and I took last week off together; in fairness, I suppose she took the week off, and I moved from one location to another and lived much the same as I did before we left. We spent Monday in Waco with family, the week in a cabin in the hills near Fredericksburg, and the weekend on the Riverwalk in San Antonio with even more family and some old friends. I need not bore you with the mundane details of a trip that you did not take, but I will tell you in on a secret: vacations are expensive!
That's right, you heard it here first, there is nothing cheap about taking a week long trip anywhere. We probably could have done nothing, eaten nothing, and had nothing to drink, thereby not spending much of anythinig, but what then would be the p0int of vacation? I speak not of finances alone, though, it costs greatly to leave town for a week. Since I am a poor example I will use Julie, Julie had to ask off from work, disposing of her entire vacation time for the year, ensuring that she cannot take another day of rest apart from the weekend for months and months. Leaving costs commitments that must be broken, insulation that needs to be installed, books that must be read, lesson plans that need work; it means the severing of what is normal and routine for the possibility of what might be fantastic or could just as easily be only costly. We did not approach last week with blinders on, we (okay....Julie) calculated pretty accurately the different costs of the trip, but it was not until we were driving away from our friends' place that we began taking true inventory of the week, and we came to a realization, one which I trust most have realized long before I: the rewards of time with family and friends far outweigh the costs incurred.
It is far too easy to settle into the rituals of life, rituals that create barriers to rest and enjoyment of those closest to you. Though Julie and I could easily set aside a portion of each day to sit out on the porch and sip a glass of wine, read together and talk, it took leaving the confines of our house to do so. I could call my mother and stepfather on the phone and talk for hours, but it is not quite the same as sitting under their tin-roofed porch, looking them in the eyes. Though I have seen Barbara countless times throughout my life, and spoke with her on more than one occasion in the last month, sitting in a cafe on the Riverwalk and sharing hours together catching up and relaxing was somehow different, more fulfilling.
I stand not on my proverbial soapbox and call for a shirking of responsibility and carelessness with one's resources, but I do advocate remorseless living. I shudder to think that I might miss these opportunities because I was too tightfisted with my cash, with my time, with my love; may I instead look ahead and count the cost of a life lived without the simple pleasures of leisure and relaxation, and choose to live otherwise.
