December 10, 2009
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Go out and make it better.
–Carlos Santana
The Daily News1 Had a GREAT DN all written and ready to perform last night but somehow lost the first draft!
2 Ever had that happen?
3 Yeesh!
4 Like I had this WAY cool DN all ready to launch, and somehow all of my stuff vanished! Like, “Whoooooosh!”
5 Well, naturally I responded all mellow, as any one of you who has the slightest clue understand about me.
6 My indefatigable patience.
7 Haha!
8 In all honesty, I almost threw me computer into my neighbor’s yard.
9 The worst part of all of it is this: I couldn’t tellya what the thing was abooot!!!
10 I got SO cocky and wonderful in my etchings that I literally forgot what it was I wrote aboot!
11 The “aboot” tells me it was something somewhat Candadian. Might be the hockey.
12 But nope.
13 I had a bit about Santana, but nope. I do know that I could put a pic of Santana at the top of the page and it would be cool. So I did. And it made me feel REALLY good inside. AnywayZ…
14 Every now and again the internet steps forth and decides that the world has had ENOUGH of you!
15 And if you are an old brown shoe like meself, you decline and ask, “Am I to believe ALL of this, O Pythira?”
16 To which the response is like the classic eight ball on the YBDramaworkshop.com website-in-the-weeds: “Answer hazy, please try again.”
17 Okay creepy eight-ball d00d!
18 All apologies, but really?
19 AnywayZ…I had to re-write the entire thing last night late.
20 Well, I actually held out ’til around 9:30, but just got too sleepy, and decided I could wake up at around midnight and finish.
21 Wrong. Working out gets me more sleepy earlier, and I dozed well into the night, awakening at 2:30 a.m. to find that the DN was still sitting around idling. So I got up and lumbered over to the desktop to polish this guy off.
22 Moving on: I actually had some time on me hands yesterday, and realized that our school needed a good rubric for students’ writing.
23 In a lofty fashion, our department insisted on not only a good rubric, but how we could make it all happen for kids in every subject.
24 Having some valuable time (Do any of us realize the importance…I think not…), I took information from the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Examination), as well as the rubric from the CSU expectations for incoming students, and devised a rubric using both, just finishing up before our English meeting yesterday.
25 What was COOL was that the English Department threw everything else out and focused on my rubric at the meeting.
26 They naturally debated phrasings and such, but it is looking like my work will become the order of the day for cross-curricula writing, and that it may well set a model for the entire district.
27 Well, I certainly hope so! I stole all the ideas from two other sources, and made it into one simple piece that is pretty understandable, and which works for both high school students as well as students entering college.
28 That was an incredible meeting, and turned out productive, and if I may, due very much from my having worked my ass off for several days.
29 Felt good, all in all.
30 A part of it was for survival. An English meeting without a plan is like twelve episodes of The View coming down all at once. LOTSA voices, all of whom by nature are natural ponderers.
31 The very nature of English majors is to ponder, which is why I always preferred hanging out with science people and coaches. Pondering is nice if you are in an intellectual discussion, but in terms of after-hours meetings? Uh…no? Still, I felt great that I contributed a bunch to the department, and probably shortened that meeting by at least an hour. I also think that the end result was logical and progressive for the students not only at my school, but in the district as well.
32 Bottom line: I had a lovely day, because I had worked hard. The two quite often co-mingle.
33 Co-mingle. What a word.
34 Also, it felt that I had become a teacher again. And if you TEACH, then you would undersand all of this folderol. It felt great to be able to offer help to the department, and made life easier for lots o’ people.
35 So somehow, all this weird stuff is keeping me alive and vibrant! I keep trying to take all the intensity I had both as a director and a class advisor, and moving it into the classroom, and now, into the department.
36 GREAT day, which lived better than it read, but this is the second go-round, and it’s late. So just thought I’d share!
37 Hard work is often its own reward. In this instance, it sure paid off, and I felt completely invigorated when I got home.
38 I also conked out pretty early from putting so much energy into stuff.
39 Ultimately, it should all help the students, and that’s why we’re out there doing this stuff every day.
40 So I just thought I’d throw it out there that the day rocked, and I look forward to many more!
41 Better go; it’s late as I write.
42 Have a great day everybody; find it in your heart to make today the best day of the year.
43 Peace.
~H~
