Hipscrews

It's been six weeks since my accident. Just over month since I came home from the hospital. In April, I left my house three times.

Emily stayed for two weeks, then had to go home. I've been driving since May 1, when I also started outpatient physical therapy in place of the therapist coming to my home. Monday, I gave up the walker for a cane -- the kind with four little feet, but I'll take it.

Physical therapy is three times a week, about three hours each time. I'm up to 45 reps at 80 pounds on the leg press. I can walk with a normal stride on the treadmill in the harness that lifts 50 pounds of my weight. (Five short of half my weight.) I only take pain meds at night.

Those of you who know me know that a year ago I could hold a 40-pound box on my shoulder and run up a six-foot ladder. For an eight- to ten-hour shift.

There are three 6 mm screws in my left hip, each about 7.5 cm long. I'm packing a lot of titanium.

As suspected, I will not teach this school year. I am hopeful that I'll be able to do my summer school teaching and classwork in Oxford. With luck, I'll be fully recovered by August when school starts.

But it's a long road. There are days I lose the mental battle.

Life deals us cards. I've had some amazing hands dealt to me, and I think I've played them as well as I could. I still maintain that things do not, as many say, happen for a reason. Things happen randomly. Our job, as higher-order critters, is to give meaning to those things. And that, my friends, is what is known as a state of grace.

Since my brother's death in November 2003, my family has read this poem in place of the traditional blessing at Thanksgiving, his and my favorite holiday. It's good advice to keep in mind. I taught it to my students as an example of extended metaphor.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
    translation by Coleman Barks

above clouds

Thanks for the many thoughtful comments. Obviously, I do not want to get into what someone has politely called a shin-kicking contest, but I do think I should make a few points.

Prologue: No one who commented on my post has ever been in my classroom for so much as a second. I do not run the "silent classroom." It is a classroom run on mutual respect. Students speak freely in discussion, and engage in candid banter. I do not require raised hands, though many choose to do so, and are acknowledged. Students manage their time and move from one task to another. More days than not they participate in the teaching as well as learning. They know exactly what's expected of them. If you had come into my room in March (the last time I taught due to my accident), you would have thought I had no rules. Again, students know exactly what's expected of them. There's only one road to that. It might have many entrance ramps, but it's the same road: Tell them what's expected of them. Insist they live up to it. Do not tolerate it if they don't. Expect them to succeed in living up to your expectations. Respect them for it.

And now, for the main event:

First, anyone who knows me or has spoken to me or read my opinions about why I am teaching in Mississippi knows that my motives are far from what has been suggested in some comments. Specifically, I refer to accusations of "colonialism."  I assume what is meant is an oblique reference to some sort of systematized noblesse oblige in which privileged white offspring descend into the depths of savagery to sprinkle hope and salvation to the poor and oppressed. Paternalist, perhaps, but not colonialist.

My heritage, my experience, and my motives could not be further from that model. Of course, if one's only experience with me or my opinions was to have brushed me off at an MTC alumni event, it's hard to know this. Perhaps the prejudging of prejudice works in both directions. Having spent more years involved in various social justice projects than some of my commenters have been alive, I think I've gotten my head around why I'm in the Delta teaching. If you're interested in knowing, contact me directly. Better yet, drive into the Delta and join me with a cold one on my front porch for a conversation.

As for the inferences that my statements about adolescents reflect what "can only be racialized undertones," I ask you to take a moment to consider this. There's a saying that "he [who] is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail." What is your filter? Why, specifically, can this "only" be a racial issue? In my experience with raising a child, in dealing with adolescents from every geographic, racial, and economic strata, I find (and am in agreement with psychological and sociological research) that adolescents in the best of circumstances often have trouble with the self-regulation that make it difficult for them to appreciate the nuances of behavior necessary for self-regulation. That is, "You can talk, but not too loudly;" "You can be late to class if you have a good reason," and so forth. Additionally, children with developmental problems caused by a variety of things -- but most notably here in the Delta by poor prenatal nutrition, little or no verbal/cognitive stimulation in early life, drug or alcohol consumption by the mother -- are known to have problems with over-reaction to stimuli, poor self-regulation, and social management issues. This isn't a racial problem. It's an economic and class problem. In Mississippi these go hand-in-hand with race. But a wider and longer perspective might provide you with a different way to frame it. (The hammer quote is, interestingly, from Abraham Maslow, whose theories could inform this line of thought.)

Second, I do not need to caricaturize my students to make a point. Before the age of five, one of my students saw her mother shot in the back, and another saw her aunt shot in the chest by her uncle (about which she testified as the only witness). Another saw his mother set on fire (by the father, who late killed himself, of the student who sits next to him in second period). They've seen family members beaten, knifed, and run over by a car. A male student, recently more involved with town-rivalry gangs, regularly leaves blood stains on his chair from the crotch of his pants. At least seven that I know of are primary caretakers for grandparents or other relatives disabled by strokes, mothers who are crack addicts, or younger siblings. One student has eight children in his bedroom. He lives in a trailer with attic insulation blocking broken windows. Of the five current pregnancies, only one is by a boyfriend. The Delta certainly doesn't have a lock on family tragedy, but the isolation and stagnation of life where there are fewer than 3,000 people (people, not students) in a school district of 1,000 square miles does add a different dimension to how each of these incidents affects the student community as a whole.

One of my MTC colleagues mentioned that she'd never heard voices raised in anger in her family. Many MTC participants come from areas where there is little racial tension because there is little racial diversity. I think it's safe to say the several of us had not imagined the lives many of our students live every day. This was apparent in the shell-shocked conversations of the first few Oxford weekends.

Which brings me to hyperbole: A useful rhetorical and literary device, successfully employed for emphasis by revered third-years during my own summer training. Upon telling a summer student to try a new vocabulary word on his parents that night at dinner, one of this year's class was told in no uncertain terms, "They don't have parents, and they don't have dinner." We were advised not to let students use the bathroom during class because "they'll just gamble, do drugs, and have sex there." The line in my post that students interpret kindness and understanding as weakness is a direct quote from a TEAM teacher.

At the time many of us thought it seemed reductionist and harsh. Seemed. But the first few Oxford weekends proved that many had not taken the message seriously enough. Classrooms were disasters. Students were pitching quarters not in the restroom, but in the back of class while a teacher was in the room. Summer training, as easy-breezy as it seems now in retrospect, needed to be boot camp. An exaggerated experience that would get us to a point where classroom management was second nature and energy could be directed where our aspirations flew.

Many of my students have parents,or step parents they live with. Many of them might eat dinner with their parents. (Though if they do, they are in a minority even among the most affluent and well-educated.) And I'll even give the benefit of the doubt to most of the students who ask to go to the restroom. And those students, for the most part, are not the ones who cause the classroom management nightmares. I am grateful every day for the parents like the woman Karl met at the laundromat, and the ones who own local businesses, and come to parent night. (Twelve parents of my 128 students.) The issue is that the students who cause problems, while they might  be a minority in the classroom, occupy the vast majority of our time in classroom management. Those students who don't require cut-and-dry black-and-white rules to follow will manage themselves. They, for the most part, are grateful that there is a system in place to provide structure to the class. They've told me this. Thanked me for it. And as the months rolled by it was easy for me to see who was who. But the learning curve was steep.

In the first eight to twelve weeks of school, unless a teacher establishes himself or herself as the authority in the classroom, there will be problems down the road. It might come naturally to some, so they don't realize they've done it. But for most first-year teachers it's a struggle. Read the blogs. Listen to the conversations.

Authority in and of itself is not evil. It can be misused, and often is, resulting in opression. But children feel safer and happier when they know someone is in charge. Someone is making sure their needs are looked after. For many of our students, no one does this for them. Far too many have been doing this job -- even taking care of their parents -- and are relieved to have someone in a classroom as an authority figure. I know this sounds patronizing. But the effective use of authority is (dare I say it?) nuanced. The nuance lies in establishing it well enough so that it never needs to be used. Like an insurance policy, or keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.

Epilogue: Lastly, I'd like to point to a question.

And I wonder, why aren't you teaching anymore, really? Of course there's no simple answer to this question, and there were opportunity costs and so on, but I do think you came to believe that classroom teaching was not a sustainable choice for you (it's not for me, either), and I wonder why. What was the problem teaching math to the 25 kids in the room? Why couldn't you explain to them the philosophical corruption of the system, the moral corruption of the stimulus-response model of education, the importance of a social morality based on mutual respect and empathy and reason and the toxic effect of one built on a fear of punishment, and make it all better and more sustainable? ...

...I know you remember how mutually oppressive, how corrosive, it is to be in this place and governed by its bells every day. I may be sympathetic to a claim that this system is so corrupt and corrupting that one cannot long maintain philosophical and moral purity when acting as one of its central cogs. But replacements are on the horizon, and they're supposed to last two years. What you're not acknowledging in your response is that Sabatier is -- with whatever imprecisions and inaccuracies -- waving toward a way to cope with that constant, stifling hostility without taking it personally or ending up a wretched, tortured heap. You and me, we just "walk out of Calculus."

I spent nearly 20 years on the policy side of education, and decided to leave theory and enter practice. Not as a two-year stopover, but as a life. I gave up a successful, comfortable midlife to do it. I find "opportunity costs" an interesting euphemism. It's very easy to know how to do something from afar. It's much more difficult to find a sustainable way to enact it. It requires a balance that often comes only with experience and maturity. The thousands of split-second decisions we, as teachers of a special-needs population, make every day is a tightrope walk not many are able to finish. Knowing how to establish an authority strong enough that it doesn't need to be brandished takes (wait for it) nuance.

[REQUIRED BLOG: ADVICE TO FIRST-YEARS OR, WHY ARE THEY UNHAPPY RABBITS?]

... it's gonna be a bumpy year.

You've read the other second-year blogs that tell you to make the most of the summer, enjoy your time now, make friends, build a network, and whatnot. So I won't go there.

Here is my most important advice: Take to heart the advice you get about classroom management and organization.

As my school security guard says whenever I'm at my wits' end: You in the Delta now, darlin'   In other words: All bets are off.

During summer school you'll be told to manage your classroom in a way that seems dehumanizing and demeaning. Do it. It won't seem necessary in your summer school class. Ignore that. Your students in your classrooms come from families that are chaotic and tragic beyond your wildest imagination. They see more violence and fear before they come to school some days than you've probably ever seen in your life. What they don't have is structure. They are in free fall in terms of self-regulation. They do not understand nuanced behavior. Many are nearly unable to self-regulate or exhibit impulse control. I know it seems demeaning, but these students need the structure that gives them an anchor.

You'll be tempted to think, "I'll be the one who's different. I'll show them respect and they'll respect me for it. They'll want to please me because I'm the first person who's ever smiled at them and shown I care." You will be fresh meat. It won't happen. Believe us.

I'm going to make an analogy that will probably get me in trouble, but not establishing strict classroom management in a critical needs classroom is a little like having a dog and not training it: Neither of you will be happy, but you'll be the one who gets bitten. You have to immediately establish yourself as the alpha figure. This can be difficult when some of your students are bigger than you, more worldly than you, and maybe only two or three years younger than you. The only way to do it ... THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT in their world is through power. It's what they understand. It's the only coin of the realm here.

Your students interpret politeness and kindness as weakness. 

If you hesitate a split second they smell it and will wedge that little crack of insecurity open until you have no control. And believe me: That's a scary place to be. Fifty or 90 minutes of trying to control 25 or 30 teenagers is an eternity even in the best of situations (which this isn't), and it will leave you rattled and not ready for the next 30 who are walking in as the bell rings before you can fight back the tears.

Believe me, in the long run, your students are happier when they are in a controlled, calm environment where the expectations are simple and clear. They'll complain about that, but it's what they want whether they know it or not. You can always loosen up once you've gained their respect, but you can never -- and I mean NEVER -- regain the ground you lose by letting them control you and your class. They are masters at wresting control from you. You are a rookie. You'll hear some of us say "Don't smile until Christmas." It's not so far from the truth. Maybe Thanksgiving.

Once you've earned their respect -- and I've had students tell me they put new teachers through a trial by fire -- you'll be able to quiet the room with a simple glance or stance. But you must earn their respect first, and for the most part, they respect only someone who is in power. What you hope in your heart of hearts is that they will realize that your kindness and fairness is more powerful than the irrationality they encounter elsewhere. But maybe not. You need to be at peace with that.

OK. Organization. You think you're organized. You organize your stuff. You have cute little folders and you label everything and you have a system. Take that system and multiply it by 150. Gonna label everything? Or maybe you just keep it all in your head because you know where everything is. Dominique asks you what you did with that worksheet. You know, the one with the questions? About that book? The one from the day she left out early? She put it on your desk. Don't you remember? Times 150.

Touch each piece of paper as few times as possible. Have an absolutely iron-clad, fail safe system of where paper travels. Turned in, waiting to be graded, graded, handed back. What do you do with work you're handing back if the student isn't there? (Remember you have about a 25 - 30 percent daily absence rate.) What about late work? When was that due? Late because he was absent or just didn't do it? Now it's not with the others. Where does it go? Your students are, again, masters of the con.

Streamline all of your systems so that each one involves the fewest steps possible. Eliminate all redundant procedures. Record things once in one place. Establish self-sustaining systems that don't need your constant tracking. There will be a session during summer school about organization. It will be in the afternoon and you will be tired and would rather be swimming or drinking. PAY ATTENTION! You are about to be hit with an avalanche of paper and humanity demanding your soul.

Keep meticulous daily attendance records, and a daily activity log for each period. Your school might or might not require it. I have never turned in an attendance sheet other than for homeroom. It's a joke. I was tempted to let it go.

But when Lajeryl is failing and his formidable grandmother wants to know why, nothing impresses like your showing up in the office with a big-ass binder full of weekly attendance records, a printout of all the assignments he missed, and copies of the tests he cheated on.

When DeKindrick insists he never got that handout or didn't know about that test, nothing shuts him up like your silently opening the binder, calmly flipping to the page for the day you did that work (And you know that day because you've kept a meticulous daily log of what happens in class) and showing him that he was there. Maybe you made a note that he was sleeping or talking. Even better.

When classes are randomly cancelled or held in a four-hour lockdown, it's impossible to keep each of your six periods aligned in what they're doing. Use a notebook to record the daily lesson or activity for your students to see when they've been absent. I suggest also keeping a "teacher calendar" for yourself that has 6 blocks for each day so you can jot quick notes about each period.

The sheer amount of information, the millions of details will overwhelm you. Leave nothing to chance.

Lastly:

You're coming to Mississippi. Somewhere in your essay I'll bet the words, "make a difference" appear. You'll make a difference. But remember the MTC motto, the ever-present "One child at a time." When I got here I thought that meant lots of groovy one-on-one time with kids who needed my help. And there will be. What it refers to, though, is that you might only help one child. You'll get to know maybe 120 or more. They all need your help. But they also reject your efforts, and that hurts. You need to be OK with not fulfilling every aspect of your intention.

You have to know that on your worst day -- and your worst day will suck beyond your worst nightmare -- you are still probably the best thing that will happen for many of your students that day. You have to know it -- really KNOW it -- because they probably won't tell you. Until Christmas. Or maybe Thanksgiving.

Ah men.

UPDATE: This post obviously caused a bit of back and forth here and on other blogs. My response to responses is here. I hope that those who suggest meaningful discussion of the issues as part of the answer will prompt those discussions in the months to come.

Dan Fram ponders in which century he belongs

It started -- as most near-disasters do -- innocently enough: A plan hatched a few weeks before for three friends and a newly acquired truck to head out of the flat Delta and into the north Mississippi hills on some family property to shoot at things after Saturday classes in Oxford. Things like cow patties and clay pigeons. A little target practice and some skeet shooting with a variety of firearms.

As most plans do, it morphed and grew as the day's classes dragged on; soon it was eight people, three vehicles, and an excellent lesson on the differences among firearms, general firearm safety, a guitar solo I wish I could remember, and some preparatory target practice. (Note here that I was shooting straight: hit my targets on the first shot with both the shotgun and the pistol.)

And then: Horseplay ensued.

Time to set off the moving targets. Who'll shoot first? Being older, female, wanting to play those cards, and having demonstrated pretty good skills, I jumped up. But I was to be thwarted by a Fram. The next thing I knew my arms were pinned to my side and I was running backward as Fram was running forward on wet slippery ground. Just as I was thinking this was not really a sustainable plan, I saw the ground coming toward me.

BONUS. Extra Credit DOK 3 Question: Explain why snowshoes are more successful than crutches or high-heels when walking across fragile snow.

I have only one bruise on my body. Fram has none. The bruise I have is on my left hip. The impact of our combined weight -- admittedly only about 260 or so --  was taken by my left hip.

That would be the hip that's broken.

on the left side, just like mine

Realized pretty quickly I was hurt, and couldn't stand. I remember having my arms over Fram's and Tabitha's shoulders, then the next thing I knew I was stretched out quite comfortably across the back seat of the Bronco.  Relieved at not having said anything embarrassing or wet myself while out cold, I agreed -- after much persuading -- to stop by the hospital. Perhaps some Vicodin and Flexeril would be nice before heading back into the Delta and surely we would stop at Chamoun's Rest Haven as I usually do for Kibbe and grape leaves along the way home. Molly supplied a large ice bag, and with Beethoven's 7th blasting Austin led the convoy to First Baptist Hospital in Oxford.

Scooted myself out of the truck, into a wheelchair, and suffice it to say that the whole waiting room adventure deserves a blog entry of its own. You'll hear the stories someday. There had been carpool arrangements involved, so we ended up as a small crowd watching the UNC/Louisville game, eating Sonic, and generally disturbing the peace. Clearly the theory of a natural release of endorphins following traumatic injury is true.

Fast forward through a hellish night: Once the X-ray tech torqued my leg to get me out of the wheelchair and I felt the bones grind, I believed it might actually be broken. Endorphins gone. Gimme the morphine. Tabitha spent probably 30 grueling minutes helping me carefully take off my jeans and my original Daring Fireball t-shirt. She and Fram both stayed by my ER bed, holding my hands, patting my head, and coaching my yoga breathing until I was finally stable enough to be moved to my room. Dani bought me a new phone charger. Lisa gathered up everything I might need from home for the 5-day stay. So many people did so many nice things. People in uniforms drugged me and tied me up in traction.

Went into surgery Sunday morning: three screws and a washer. (A washer?) Dr. Lamar gives me about a 2/3 success rate on this repair. Success being the blood supply to the ball of my hip is not compromised and the ball doesn't die. If not: Full hip replacement in about a year. Plus I'm thinking that when your surgeon's name is the same as the street the hospital is on, you're in pretty good hands.

Hospital stay is a blur. People came to visit. Thank you. Sorry you had to look at all the various fluid bags and tubes running in and out of me. The food was good. A nurse threw all my flowers away.

Hospital etiquette tip: Don't pull your sheet over your face to block sunlight when napping during the nurses' shift change. It tends to freak them out when they walk in and see you like that.

Home Thursday. David and Michael carried me up my back stairs like Cleopatra on a porch chair.

Emily will stay here to care for me until I can get myself into and out of bed and maybe use a cane instead of a walker so I can carry things like plates of food. In-home physical therapy three times a week. House-bound until April 25 when I'll find out whether I'll teach again this school year. [Reality check update: Probably not. But will be able to do my MTC work in June.] Still have some minor vision problems in my right eye from general force of impact (no direct hit to my head) and am now an expert at giving myself subcutaneous blood-thinner injections.

Those of you around (who are still reading) I'm always home, so stop by. It helps the time pass even better than drugs. The back door is unlocked -- just holler when you come in.

Easter 1960: Is anything in this photo not creepy?

It sort of started as a spur of the moment little thing. And now I'm pretty much addicted ... don't know how I'd get through a week without it.

Nope, I'm not talking about huffing Sharpies. I'm talking about letting my students teach.

I teach six class periods a day. I tend to do the guided practice grammar worksheets as overheads on the whiteboard. One day, when I was just plumb sick of hearing my own voice during seventh period I announced half-way through that I was tired of it and held up my dry-erase marker, asking for a volunteer.

Well, Katie bar the door! I thought I had invited disaster to do this without any advance planning. But here comes Karebya, who does a spot-on imitation of my teaching style, right down to handing out tickets (her own!) to other students. She makes her way down the worksheet, circling the participles and drawing those great dynamic arrows to the nouns they're modifying, all while calling on other students, even calling them by last name, just as I would.

Meanwhile, I sit on a desk at the side of the room -- not standing, but still taller than seated students -- asking leading questions to make sure the right information was delivered, still maintaining the role of a student. "Miss Jones, why isn't corndog being modified by slipping through my fingers?"

Bingo. She asked another student to answer that!

It was such a success! Eventually, I got to the point where I was able to do it with all of my classes. It was crucial to choose just the right day, with the right vibe going, to introduce the process, and it still seems to work better as an impromptu moment. I still play it by ear each time as there's just no predicting which day any given class will be able to handle it. Sometimes I ask for volunteers, and sometime I ask a specific student to take over for me.

One of the good outcomes has been that when I do a mini-review as a bellringer later I can say, "Now, remember, when Mr. Kelly did such a great job teaching you this?" and everyone feels good.

It's also served to defuse a few chronic classroom management issues. When a student is teaching and others are talking, or giving her a hard time about a mistake on the board, I can make a joke about it by saying something like, "It's a tough crowd, isn't it Miss Jackson?" When I first started letting them teach, I would interrupt and ask for tissues, or complain about the room temperature. Once was enough: They got the point, and it seems to have helped take a bit of the edge off their resistance to some of my classroom rules they don't understand.

I've done a few lessons in which student-teaching was incorporated into the plan. The last part of our poetry unit, for example, was to have small groups of students each teach a poem to the rest of the class. I supplied the groups with a printed poem, and they completed an explication worksheet that prepared them to annotate their poem at the board using an overhead. Of course, I had modeled that process several times by annotating poems all along, so they knew what I expected.

Whenever my students teach I remind them to check to make sure their students understand -- not just stand there and lecture. I have to listen carefully and manage my input so each class still gets the same lesson. And it's a classroom management minefield. But haven't I always loved working on just that edge, flirting with disaster?

But mostly I really enjoy the moment when I say, "I'm as tired of hearing my voice as you are. Who wants to teach?" 

Plate-spinning

Having recently found myself celebrating the start of spring break here in the Mississippi Delta with the improbable combination of two inches of snow, a roaring fire, mail-order Indian food, watching Lawrence of Arabia with a like-minded soul and a bottle of gin, I'm now contemplating why it seems that a good number of satisfied and successful MTC teachers seem to be those with adult ADD. Starting a 3-hour film at 6:30, and finding that you've stopped it to talk so often that you've only watched 45 minutes of it by midnight will do that.

ADD hadn't been invented yet when I was coming up in school, so I was just the scatterbrained girl who seemed to be able to focus on everything and nothing at once. I eventually learned to use this to my advantage, but it wasn't until my own daughter was diagnosed in high school that the pieces came together. Notice that I say ADD, not ADHD, and that's the distinction that sometimes lets us slip by undiagnosed. We don't cause behavior problems so we generally can make it through school without being drugged into submissive normality. Thank heaven. Because the skills we develop to manage our minds are precious.

How many people with ADD does it take to screw in a light bulb? The punchline (And if you've got it, you get it. The rest of you: Maybe not so much.) has become a shorthand for recognizing those times when it's getting a little out of hand. Like last Friday. Or spending two hours talking about Australia and Norway over a 7-layer burrito after yoga class. But still ...

The best metaphor I've found for managing a classroom of 25-30 is the old act of spinning plates. You either remember it from Ed Sullivan or you've seen the corny videos. But if you've spent one day as a teacher you know what I mean: Where did you set that clipboard? Who's currently out with the hall pass? You just saw Kenyarder pass a note to DeKindrick, should you pick it up? Are you still listening to yourself as you say the same thing for the third time in the sixth class in which you've said it?  Four people have their hands up. Who's already answered today and who will just ask if you have toothpick if you call on her? The bell's going to ring in 11 minutes and fourth period is still two days behind fifth period. Maybe the bell will ring early. Touch all four walls without ever turning your back on the class. Whom can you let mumble under his breath, and who will get out of hand?

If you regularly substitute espresso for Ritalin, this is a familiar state of mind. And if you've grown up learning to manage your ADD you're supremely adapted to living in this atmosphere. My theory, and I'm eager to discuss this with my MTC colleagues, is that the ability to constantly shift focus while still keeping the main event on track is one of the keys to a certain style of classroom management. Not the only way to manage a classroom, mind you, but a way to  manage one that is flexible and creative, doesn't rely on militaristic adherence to silence, and is able to roll with the daily craziness that is teaching in the Delta. Other teachers with ADD with whom I've spoken about this agree. We consistently get observation comments about the natural ease of our classroom management.

On the "other flip-side of the coin," as an old friend used to say, it often makes us appear to be poor teachers in the eyes of our more linear-minded colleagues because we are continually doing the last-minute lesson plan, turning in nine-week grades a day late (because we knew that the Tuesday deadline was just so they'd get them on Wednesday anyway!), and slogging through piles of unread essays.

But remember, it's that intoxicating adrenaline rush that fuels your creativity. And creativity, whether it's classroom management or lesson planning, is a big part of what will make you a great teacher.

Of course, you know, this blog entry was started at 4:10 a.m on Thursday. Yeah. If you've got it, you get it.

andy with hank and sarge

My brother died suddenly in November 2003. We scattered his ashes, combined with those of his pug, Sarge, on Christmas Eve this year. Worked them into the soil of the patch of garden he tended around the corner from his home at Sherwood Gardens in Baltimore.

In many ways he -- his life and his death -- was the start of the path that brought me here to Mississippi to teach.

While I was home with family and friends, I realized how much I think about my students. It was very emotional every time I paged through the photos on my computer.

Reciting their names. I could hear their voices.

I remember wondering if I would ever know them all. And now I feel like I can never forget them. I know a few veteran teachers -- 20, even 30, years. They talk about teaching the children of their students.

The image this calls to mind is looking into parallel mirrors at the endless reflections. Is this what it will be like after I've taught for years? Starting at 52, I surely won't have 30 years, but a dozen perhaps. Enough to touch generations. Enough to see them grow up. Have babies.

I thought that having my own child was the closest I would get to immortality. And I suppose in a strict biological sense it is. But somehow the sheer math alone of 125 or 150 students every year for 10 or 15 years is staggering. If these 122 have affected me this strongly, what will it be like? Will they say my name to their children?

I imagine my last thought will be to see their faces, looking expectantly at me.

Leland.

I was having lunch last Thursday (a duck and pheasant pot-pie, but that's another story) and got a phone call from 662 area code so I decided to answer.

"Hi, howya doin?"

"Um, fine. Who's this?"

"Scotty, [or John, or Dave, or whatever. I can't remember] your FedEx guy. I have a parcel [yes, he said "parcel"] here for ya, but you're not home. You gonna be home later?"

"Actually, I'm in Virginia, and will be home very late tonight. Can you leave it on my front screen porch?"

"Wow. Well ... it needs a signature so I shouldn't really do that. I'll bring it again tomorrow."

"Great. I have an appointment at 1:00 but will be home by 2:00. Is after 2:00 OK?"

"After 2:00. No problem."

Nice enough, you'd think. But wait. There's more:

It's noon. I'm at Cicero's enjoying the crawfish salad and get a 662 call again.

"Hi, howya doin?"

"I'm good, thanks. Who is this?" I ask, vaguely aware that I should know who it is.

Yep. It's what's his name. He's at my house and I'm not there, what with it being not after 2:00 and all.

"Well, look, I don't want you to have to make another trip. Just leave it on the front screen porch and it'll be fine. I'll be there in 2 hours."

"Well. I'll hide it behind this slate-top table, OK?"

Knowing this is better than hiding it among the pansies, I agree.

So, yeah. The package is there when I get home. My AppleCare documentation. Tucked nicely behind my table.

Here's the clincher:

Around 4:00 that afternoon. He called back to make sure I'd gotten my parcel.

shalonda

To those of you who have been sending things from my Amazon wish list ... Thank you! Unfortunately, they sometimes arrive anonymously so I can't thank you personally. I've never bought something from someone else's wish list, but I sort of assumed there would be a message field that might somehow convey the giver's identity.

tevin

So thanks for the markers, transparencies, games (so useful during the unplanned 3 or 5-hour lockdowns!) and books. Bless you all. I will definitely let the class know these are gifts from their newest friends.

(If you want, e-mail me or drop a comment here to let me know who you are!)

[REQUIRED BLOG: EDSE 600 FIRST SEMESTER REFLECTION]

emily goggles 1988

nathan at the rolling fork plantation house