Nonsense, Drivel, and Balderdash

Today my hard drive in my laptop died. Out of the blue. No warning or courtesy call. It just up and died after the battery ran low. It was as if it lost its will to live as the computer ran out of juice. Maybe it was in love with the battery and it didn't understand that it could be recharged. And so, like Romeo, it took its own life as its love went into a deep sleep. Needless to say, the battery was quite taken aback by this once she awoke, sending the whole system into flashing folder icons on my screen, which I can only assume are my computer's way of expressing deep grief. I took the computer to the manufacturer's store today and they said it would be ready to pick up in 5 days, once they have ordered and received the right components needed to repair the machine. Unfortunately, all the data on the old machine will be lost. For the most part, this isn't a great tragedy. My computer was relatively new and, as such, most of the information on it was brought over f...

Growing up, it was always strange to see one of your teachers outside of school. There was something pathetic about seeing a teacher on the bus or subway. A high and mighty teacher, at the mercy of the transit system just like you. I took perverse pleasure at seeing them "humiliated" by normalcy. And yet at the same time, I hoped and prayed that they wouldn't spot me, because I knew that if they decided to approach me that I had to be polite or I would regret it the next day in class. Of course, now that I am a teacher, I am on the other end of this experience. I am the teacher that giggling kids are bumping into with their fake smiles. If I thought it was awkward was back then, it is way worse now. You would think that now that I am an adult, I would have the emotional and social tools to handle these sort of situations with more grace and poise than when I was 13, but I don't. The fact is, I go out of my way to avoid places where I might bump into my students. Wh...

There are potted plants on the roof of the house we are staying in. Some of the pots are actual containers made of baked clay, while others are not much more than canvas bags filled with dirt from which flowers have bloomed: big yellow ones hanging lazily from a vine, small white ones sticking out tongues of red, pink roses, succulents and cacti… there are dozens of little plants growing, hidden above the muddy Nepali streets below. They are subtle, not junglelike enough to overwhelm or surprise a curious rooftop visitor, but as I sat among them earlier today in the morning breeze, I was struck by their presence up there. Someone must have taken the time to haul these potted plants up five flights of stairs and onto the roof, to sacrifice some of their restricted water and time to keep them alive, though no one can see them from the street below. A secret touch of color five flights above the dust and soot. There are countries where squalor creates monochrome, a washed out despair...

14 hours from now I'll be boarding a plane, leaving the possibility of a cold New England summer for the certainty of Nepal's hot monsoon season. That is the only thing that seems certain right now. All I know of my time in Nepal is that it will be hot and humid. In less than a day I will be trading a summer of guaranteed mundanity and uncertain weather for a season of guaranteed humid heat and uncertain activities. If I were to stay in Boston for the summer, my biggest worry would be whether or not it would be warm enough to wear shorts, but warm weather seems to be the only thing that  is  guaranteed in Nepal. Everything else seems uncertain. I have been told that Nepal demands "flexibility," of the difficulty in making plans in a place that is in constant flux. Being a person who loves musical improvisation, I am surprised that this lack of planning has made me so apprehensive as the trip nears. Don't get me wrong; I  am  looking forward to Nepal. Jess and I ha...

Today I passed one of the most important milestones of a teaching career: finished my first year. When I started in September, all the other teachers patted me sympathetically on the shoulder. Throughout the year, as if offering condolences, they would say, "the first year is the hardest." At certain points of the year, as I wandered the halls in a daze, other teachers would look at me with pity. But even with all of this, I was still surprised at how many people genuinely asked me if I was going to continue teaching this year. The first year really is a trial by fire at the end of which many people decide that education is "not for them." The third year is the next big milestone that also sees a lot of teachers quit the profession. So I am still expecting a couple of hard years ahead. Nevertheless, I am confident that next year will be easier. Clearer expectations and experience will make things much smoother. The final real milestone, from what I hear, is the fi...

George's test was using more red ink than I expected, but as I went over his answers, two things became abundantly clear: 1) George was going to fail the test; 2) I was perversely happy about it.   Maybe more experienced, mature, or just better teachers don't experience feelings like this, but I do. I never realized how many complicated emotional processes being a teacher carries with it.  You get emotionally invested after working all year long to teach your kids, to get them to care, and to turn their efforts into results. I mean, just minutes before grading George's test, I was barely able to stop myself from cheering in the middle of the coffee shop where I had set up shop when I saw that Tony had gotten an A on his final exam. Tony and George have been my most... challenging... students this year. My mentor teacher has told me that it will rarely get any worse than these two. They both demand an unreasonable amount of my energy and attention: talking, ...

There are always international students waiting at my bus stop. I find this to be odd, because Winthrop (my town) seems like an out-of-the-way place for a young Japanese person to come live in for a semester. It isn't near a university (which is already odd for Boston) and it is not on the subway line. Instead, one must get off the subway in East Boston and take a shuttle from there into our town. Nevertheless, every day when I get out of work and arrive at the bus stop, there are invariably several foreign students already waiting. Japanese kids are probably the most numerous, their concentration divided between their books and electronic translators. Arabic students also make up a decent contingent, though they usually congregate in small groups where they talk and laugh loudly in their native tongues. But on any given day, you might run into Italian, Frenchman, or Argentinian students waiting for the ride to town. Often, I can't help but watch these students are they sit,...

It's not even May and I can't help but count down the days until summertime. I am not really  counting them down yet, not literally. I have kept myself from doing that at least. But my big teacher's calendar is by my big steel teacher's desk and I can't help but notice that there isn't much more than a month and a bit left of school. We actually get out earlier this year because the extra week of "snow days" were never claimed. Winter was mild and the snow never came. The mildest winter in decades has only seemed to pull summer closer than ever. Part of me feels terrible for looking forward to vacation so openly. Like it somehow makes me a bad teacher to yearn for June. I know this is nonsense, but most of my chronic guilt is nonsense. But teaching is the most exhausting job I have ever had, and according to mental health polls, one of the most mentally taxing vocations out there. As a teacher, I have already heard snarky comments from other professi...

Everyone can think of a teacher that they had in middle school that still looms huge in your memory. Who is yours? I can think of several. Many of them are still vivid in my mind because they were so bad: Maribí, "la Champiñon," or "el Locuras" (Spaniards have a penchant for nicknames). Others are remembered fondly, like Miss Ohler or Miss Stenoien. But in some ways, the idiosyncratic teachers are the ones that stand in the forefront of my brain.  Those are the ones that I look back on and laugh about, sometimes with a smile and other times with a shake of the head. You guys know what kind of teachers I mean: the kind with catchphrases, quirks, outdated views and mannerisms, oblivious of reality, and often a love for their subject matter.As I think about my own teachers and my memories of school, I can't help but look across my teacher's desk and wonder what kinds of memories my students are making right now. Sometimes it's pretty obvious which teacher...

Diligence is the name of the game if you are to work on a ship. Shipping, like all transportation, relies on punctuality and hard work so I arrive at the dockyard early. I just got here, but I'm already wet with the constant drizzle that hangs in the air. There is no way to keep dry against the tiny droplets, which I seemed to simply walk into rather than be rained on by. My umbrella, useless, dangles limply from my wrist. The the sky has begun to lighten, but you would hardly know it through the mist. I nod to the harbormaster and he nods back who seems surprised to see me here, though evidently not surprised enough to come out of the dry booth that oversees the waterfront and serves as his office. He flips through his charts and schedules and then looks up at me, surprise changed to amusement and grins grotesquely. My attempt at a smile back looks more like an awkward grimace than grin. The dock is empty. I look at my watch. I'm early, but the ship must be cutting it close. ...

Overheard in the school hallway: ( In awe at his sudden realization) 5th Grade Boy :   "Don't you realize? We are the kings of elementary school!"

I have been floating in the same place for months now and my writing reflects it. Looking back at my past few blog posts, I can't help but cringe a bit. Some whiny meta-writing  and a cliche-ridden entry about snorkeling. Not my best work.        In some ways, I think I enjoyed blogging the most when I was at the height of confessional blogging towards the end of college. Reading through my old blog posts, the ones that stand out the most are the ones with some heart, the ones that took emotional risks. Sure, those risks were often cheesy and angsty, but my introspection frequently yielded decent writing and growth. Like I said, it wasn't always brilliant "writing" but there was an element of personal substance that has been missing of late. Perhaps I should simply embrace that cheesy, heart-on-sleeve personal writing that I started with. It is cathartic and easy, which would be good, since writing hasn't come easily of late. My will to blog has dried up ...

This past Christmas, I was lucky enough to revisit the Caribbean. Third time in its waters, third time getting there on a cruise ship. The first time I traveled there courtesy of my mom's side of the family. The second time was on my honeymoon. This third time was courtesy of my wife's folks. That side of the world offers many delights, but most of them are to be found in and around its crystal blue waters. I think my favorite day this time around was (yet another sign of my aging tastes) my day in St. Martin, which was spent lounging on a beachside cabana, sipping cold beverages, taking dips in the water, and generally forgetting all the stress that teaching middle schoolers affords me. But usually most of my favorite Caribbean moments are invariably spent under the water, not sitting across from it or sailing over it. There is something magical about putting on a pair of flippers and a mask and wading into the waves until you are submerged. The moment your head goes under, ...

I often feel guilty about neglecting my writing, and I have neglected it more than ever during this past month and a half. You may have noticed my absence from the interweb, though that is only a small sliver of my writing life. Sometimes my stretches of greatest blog silence are actually times of packed notebooks and furious scribbling. I have realized I prefer to write by hand than typing. I enjoy typing, but my brain works differently when I type. Of course, as you have probably figured out, my brain hasn't been working creatively for a while. It has been too tired. I am still tired. In fact, right now I am forcing myself to write this post. I have to and I need to, but it doesn't mean that it is hard. Most non-writer types probably don't get this, but for you literate jocks out there, think about it like doing exercise. The daily grind makes you tired, exhausts your strength, and at the end of the day all you want to do is to sit on the couch and prop up your feet. But...

While working through Call of the Wild with one of my 7th grade classes, I assigned a quick writing warm-up exercise to start the class: "Who is the toughest person you know and why?" The book deals with the protagonist becoming tougher as he encounters more challenges in the great white north. I paced the room while my students wrote, occasionally stopping to answer a question or two about the assignment. After a few minutes, I asked for volunteers to share some of their choices. "I think the toughest person is..." one kid shot out the name of a wrestler that he had seen on television, but his classmates quickly pointed out that he had never "met"that wrestler and therefore he didn't count as someone he "knows." "My older brother is mad tough," another kid piped up. "He can lift crazy heavy weights." "That's not tough! That's strong!" other students disagreed. "Same thing" "You know w...

My 6th graders scored low in their ability to recognize "Author's Purpose" on their recent English diagnostic test, so I have been tasked with trying to get them to think of writing as having an audience and an intent. While the goal is to get them to see why an author would include a certain paragraph, I am starting out by oversimplifying the three main reasons that anyone would undertake writing for an audience: to entertain, to inform, or to persuade. In the course of the lesson, we discussed Genre and how different types of writing often naturally lend themselves to favor one of those purposes. Non-fiction, I told them, is more likely to be purely written to inform than fiction would be, etc. Anyway, I had some writing excerpts on powerpoint and we were taking turns guessing what the purpose of those different types of writing might be. One example came up and it was something in the vein of "Thomas got up and looked out the window. The sun was shining and he had...

I was trimming the ole beard the other day when I noticed something strange. There was an oddly colored hair among the jumble of blonde, dark, and ginger colored facial hair. A solitary white hair stuck out like sore thumb. Unconcerned, I took the tweezers and plucked it out. After all, everyone has a rogue hair that refuses to conform from time to time. That was a month ago. I have plucked that same hair out several times, but it refuses to stay down. "What are you doing hair??" I plead with it. "It is not your time yet! Stay down a bit longer... just 10 more years. You can do that, right?" But it doesn't listen. It keeps coming back. I have had to come to come to grips with the fact that this gray hair may be permanent. And, even harder to swallow, I've had to accept that I am getting older. A few weeks back, my high school friend Charles came over for a weekend of man-time. My wife was out of town and so we planned on playing video games, staying u...

In a way, I expected a post like this one to come earlier in my teaching career, but better late than never. The names of my students and coworkers have been changed.  A couple of weeks back, I was in one of my 6th grade classes while the students worked in that productive disarray that characterizes middle school group work. As I walked past one of the groups, a sound caught my ear. It was annoying, so I followed it to its source: one of my 11 year old boys was making a loud humming sound. "Hmmmmmmmm" "Albert, please stop that. It is distracting." I said He looked up, laughed, and explained as if he were letting me in on the joke."I'm masturbating!" he announced. "Albert!" I exclaimed indignant, "That is extremely inappropriate! I don't want to hear those kinds of jokes in class!" But instead of the usual reaction of disgruntled shame that follows a reprimand, Albert just looked confused and hurt. "Why is it inappro...

And the prize to "hardest thing about teaching middle schoolers" goes to... (drum roll)... "Hormones!" Yep, hormones make it very hard to teach them. Now, hormonal issues in 7th grade are very different from the ones that a high school teacher might deal with. We don't have to deal with sexual harassment or sexual tension. In 7th grade, kids have started experiencing sexual impulses, but they aren't really aware of what they are, so they don't act on them. No, the main hormonal problem that affects my ability to do my job is "inconsistency." A 7th grade classroom is the most inconsistent place on the planet. More unstable than the most volatile substance, more explosive than the Balkans, more unpredictable than the "end of days..." You never know what you are going to get. One day a student will come to class happy and ready to learn, and the next he is bouncing off the walls. Not just that, but one moment he will be happy, and the...

One of the weirdest things about my new job is thinking of myself as a "middle school teacher." I am 28 and this is the first time that I have had a "profession" not a "job." My first year back in Spain, with Vaughan Systems, I suppose I treated it as something between the two, but this is the first time that I've really had a job that I could possibly have... well, forever. I am used to answering the question "what do you do?" with a tentative answer. Since most of my jobs have been temporary or part-time, I have never actually considered what I "do" as a part of my identity. It was simply what I did to make money and to pass the hours between the parts of my life that actually mattered to me. Now my brain is wrestling with the fact that now I have a profession. And not just any profession, but one that is usually referred to as a vocation. This has several repercussions. On one hand, I feel... so old. No longer am I a just flo...