September 23, 2011
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The Daily News
Proof of Monsters: Director's Cut
1 I awakened last night to what I thought was my neighbor's lawnmower going at 3 a.m.
2 Funny thing is, I wasn't mad. In fact, do you ever wake up and realize that some small noise produced a last-minute dream right before you wake up?
3 So I naturally was annoyed that some guy would be mowing his lawn in the middle of the night, but just before I opened my eyes, I thought, "Hey, it's Saturday! Excellent!"
4 Turned out that the sound that awakened me was the muted sound of a cheap fan whirring away across the room. With ear buds on, I thought it sounded like a distant lawnmower.
5 Oddities.
6 It's been a week of oddities, to be sure.
7 Anyway, I woke up pretty disappointed, to be perfectly honest. I thought it was Saturday, and that I could simply close my eyes and not worry about going in and doing lessons.
8 Wednesday's Back-to-School Night WASTED me. I still got a reasonable amount of sleep that night, but I truly became a zombie all of yesterday. I even told my students that I was disoriented from the severe schedule change; I suffered a form of educational jet-lag, which hit me like a bad case of rigor mortis.
9 Three years ago this was normal for me. I would be down at the school every single night just about, AND had a Leadership class before school. In addition, I took a bunch of college classes, fifteen units to be exact.
10 I look back on 2008-9 and stare astonished. I have no idea how I went in each day and was able to perform so efficiently. And then I look over my shoulder at Wednesday.
11 Wednesday was just one day when I had to stay down there past nine p.m. and it absolutely wiped yesterday off the face of the Earth.
12 I have been getting to sleep marvelously early this year. As a result, my teaching has been MUCH more energized, organized and focused. It took me almost an entire career to figure that one out. But when I got to the school yesterday, I already felt that I had received a fifth-round haymaker from Floyd Mayweather.
13 For the first time in my life, I came to understand Bottom's Dream in Midsummer. In fact, Shakespeare never looked so brilliant. I was so disoriented from the heat and from the madness of Back-to-School Night that during my last class I gave Shakespeare credit for having written Annabel Lee.
14 I corrected it instantly, and my students laughed, but I said some inane comment like, "Do you think Shakespeare said, 'I'm going to write Annabel Lee for ninth-grade English?' " I was moving swiftly to some sort of point about how reading sophomore literature as seniors isn't going backwards; it's actually appreciating a work of art over and over as one ages.
15 I'm reasonably certain that my students knew that I didn't think Shakespeare wrote Annabel Lee, which many students see as ninth-grade literature rather than as a masterpiece, and one that Poe had no idea would be pigeon-holed as ninth grade. I'm reasonably certain of lots of things these days, and I'm reasonably sure that Poe never even thought Annabel Lee would be taught in schools when he wrote it. THAT was my point, but once I blurted it out incorrectly I stood, looked off, shrugged swiftly, as the class enjoyed a hearty laugh at my expense. I sweetened my way out of it with a little tongue-in-cheek, but it was a telling moment.
16 I used to tell my actors that a pie-in-the face comes with the job.
17 I could expand that philosophy to this: a pie-in-the face comes with EVERY job.
18 Shuh-MACK!
19 At least next week there will be no monstrous changes in schedules. This week had to be among the most monstrous ever, considering the mid-week interruption of routine coupled with both the emormously disorienting weather AND with Facebook deciding to mess with the entire Great Social Networking Experiment.
20 Interestingly, a few days ago in the DN I had likened the entire Facebook non-story to someone moving your office things around. Yesterday during mid-flight I went to throw a piece of paper into my waste-paper basket. Someone had moved it, not much, mind you, just a foot to the right and forward. It wasn't much, but it was enough that when I routinely crumpled up the piece of paper and chucked it, it missed by around forty feet. The paper took a student bounce and rolled to an abrubt stop mid-room.
21 If I had to teach symbolism, I could probably use that to illustrate the entire week.
22 I don't remember ever doing an entire week of DN's that all somehow related, but if ever I did, I would have to say that this week would certainly be it. I pretty-much ignored a lot of the mainstream news and focused predominantly on the hot, muggy weather, on the monsters, on the demons, and on the entire teaching week from the perspective of an Old Brown Shoe who has been at it for quite some time.
23 It was never intended to be a week of grousing about a job; it was more at giving a clearer perspective on the life of a teacher who goes in every day trying to give it his all.
24 To newer teachers it must be somewhat amusing. I remember being a new teacher and thinking of how the old masters had it down, and being in awe of how wise and mellow in control many of them seemed.
25 But really, it's just a job like any other. It gets all over you, even if you stay on top of your game, and even if you have years of experience.
26 It's also a job like no other. Moments like my Shakespeare/Poe faux pas show students that behind all of our bravado, we are simply people, just like everybody else.
27 It's genuine, if that makes any sense.
28 My first principal ever, Dr. John Hernandez, told me on my first day teaching that the secret to being a great teacher is to be genuine. I never forgot that, and I don't know that I ever will.
29 For those of you who weren't paying attention this week, or taking notes, know this: Shakespeare didn't write Annabel Lee.
30 Poe did.
31 Hope you enjoyed the week.
32 I sure as heck did.
33 And there's one more day to go.
34 I just wish that guy would put his lawnmower back in the garage so I could catch a few more winks.
35 Have a glorious weekend.
36 Peace.
~H~
"It's finally all beginning to make sense."
--Old guy on Mars
