September 28, 2012
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The Daily News1 I dont even remember what I wrote in yesterday’s DN, but it somehow got a million/kajillion hits.
2 I have this little hit meter that pops up every now and again, and for whatever reason, a ton of people tuned in on yesterday’s piece.
3 To me, these are all a blur.
4 I’ve been too busy lately to read whatever the guy who writes this drivel writes. I have been on a rampage to grade a bazillion papers, so everything else right now is like snow in my eyes.
5 I am also racing downhill to meet a grading deadline of Tuesday at 4 p.m. I know I’m going to hit that deadline, but I have a computer that tends to be iffy when starting up, and which jumps letters to different lines of sentences on a minute-by-minute basis.
6 I eat salads and crusty french bread for dinner and conk at nine or nine-thirty each night, sometimes leaving dishes and napkins out.
7 But I’m cool wid it. Cool wid it. What have we become? No matter.
8 Every time the computer decides to buffer or act stupid, which it does constantly, I read another student’s paper. I am obsessed at hitting this deadline, even on Friday.
9 Payday.
10 Wait.
11 I get paid to do this?
12 Moving on, Part One: We had a last-minute fire drill the other day.The admin may have warned us earlier in the year; I don’t know.
13 I do know that we were told online at around four in the afternoon on Tuesday that it was going to take place the next day. Wednesday was a half-day so that the afternoon could be spent at a meeting, which as stated earlier this week, usually prompts me to want to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.
14 What a fire drill means to a teacher racing to hit a deadline is that one of five classes on a minimum day schedule doesn’t have to do anything, while four others do.
15 When racing to a grading deadline, a teacher does not want his or her classes out of synch. We want all our classes doing essentially the same thing all periods so that we wake up and have one thing to think about, instead of two or three.
16 I have what they call two “preps,” meaning that I teach English 1A and 2A, two different classes, with different literature, vocab, et cetera, et cetera, but it is fairly easy to teach the same things with different lit and vocab. For example, I could teach a vocabulary lesson with two different lists, but do a lot of the same activities, making my planning reasonably simple and lined up.
17 But if one class sits out on a fire drill for thirty minutes, that class falls behind my other classes, and it reeks havoc on my schedule of each day.
18 If another class gets way ahead, and a third class gets stuck in the mud, I go in and have to plan three different lessons, which is akin to an airplane going out of control.
19 Fortunately, I have an array of backup lessons in the event something is suddenly sprung on us.
20 I don’t know that the fire drill was sprung on us. For all I know it may have been annouced on the first day of school.
21 On the first day of school, I make it a point to write everything that could possibly t-bone me in a planner. I am meticulous with dates, probably a hangover from my days of running the school’s activities.
22 The trouble with the grading periods per semester is that they force a hectic deadline in which everything in our real lives gets pushed aside while we race to get everything graded and accurately in place for the digital yearbook window, which closes like death this Tuesday at four.
23 The last thing we need is a last-minute fire drill.
24 I thought fast and decided I might let the rest of my students watch all of the extra DVD stuff from the 9/11 DVD. I don’t like going backwards, because it’s sort of bush league to me. But I knew I had that, and the TV was still hooked up from when we watched it on 9/11.
25 I may have told you, may have not, but I teach seasonally, using American advertising as my own commercials for what it is I teach.
26 So on 9/11 I taught about 9/11, on Back-to-School Night I had students make magazines when school supplies were being shoved down everyone’s throat at the end of summer. To a farmer, this last week was the end of summer. To Madison Avenue, the end of summer is the beginning of school. And Mad Ave controls the present.
27 Just watch the shelves in Walgreens; you’ll know exactly when the advertising seasons change. Never mind the weather, or the charts, or the Farmer’s Almanac. It is the end of summer when the gardening/summer stuff is pulled off the shelves and the binders, planners, and new clothes fly into the stores. That’s when I assign my magazine assignment for Back-to-School night.
28 I ride that wave each year. The next big thing coming up is clearly Halloween, so I will be going into the Heidi Chronicles really soon, perhaps next week, so that we will be prepared for the classic ghost stories in the theatre by Halloween.
29 I always thought that teaching seasonally was brilliant. I teach what the advertising industry is selling. I have billions of dollars advertising my lessons for free.
30 That’s the entreprenuer in me.
31 Anyway, the thought of playing 9/11 dampens the impact because that was a few weeks ago, and should have been put to bed. I wanted something else, but nothing seemed available.
32 The fire drill pulled me out of my rhythm at a time when I had no time whatsoever to pull off a miracle.
33 I got to school on Wednesday, searched for my 9/11 DVD and it was gone.
34 I figured I had probably left it home, which it turned out I had.
35 Frantically I looked around for a DVD that might last around a half hour. I looked at some Twilight Zones, but they are sitting peacefully on a shelf, quietly waiting for the Heidi unit. It’s too early for that, even though the Halloween stuff is already in Walgreens.
36 I know that the advertising industry puts that stuff out around a month early so that when it hits, it has been in people’s faces for a month. It’s going to sell more merch, because the propaganda is planted early.
37 Anyway, I needed a miracle on Wednesday morning.
38 I dug through my DVD’s and a miracle arrived.
39 I found a DVD of a classic gem called An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.
40 It is in the English 2 book, but the short film is a classic based on the story by San Francisco writer Ambrose Bierce.
41 You might remember it. It is the story of a Civil War confederate soldier who is hoodwinked by a union soldier into revealing a plot to blow up a bridge, killing the union soldiers working on it. He is condemned to hang from the bridge.
42 Like everybody else, I see Wikipedia as a lousy source for some things, but I Wikied the story and it is pretty accurate. Here is the Wiki account of the story. I cut the ending because I don’t want to be a spoiler, but you should read it, and then purchase a DVD on Amazon, or wherever you get your flicks.
43 Here is the awesome story of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge:
Set during the American Civil War, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is the story of Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer condemned to death by hanging from Owl Creek Bridge. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist stands bound at the bridge’s edge. It is later revealed that after a disguised Union scout enlisted him to attempt to demolish the bridge, he was caught in the act.
In the first part of the story, a gentlemanly planter in his mid-30s is standing on a railroad bridge in Alabama. Six military men and a company of infantry men are present. The man is to be hanged. As he is waiting, he thinks of his wife and children. Then he is distracted by a tremendous noise. He can not identify this noise, other than that it sounds like the clanging of a blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil. He cannot tell if it was far away or nearby. He finds himself apprehensively awaiting each strike, which seem to grow further and further apart. It is revealed that this noise is the ticking of his watch. Then, an escape plan flashes through his mind: “throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, take to the woods and get away The story flashes back in time: Peyton Farquhar lives in the South and is a major Confederate supporter. He goes out of his way to perform services to support and help the Confederate side. One day, a gray-clad soldier appears at his When he is hanged, the rope breaks. Farquhar falls into the water. While underwater, he seems to take little 44 That was a cut/paste.It will probably shrink the fonts. Usually does.
45 The students lapped it up. Yesterday we had discussions and the classes absolutely loved it. I was even able to sneak the film to the class that went out on the fire drill so that all the classes got in synch once more.
46 Call it dumb luck, but I suddenly had one of the best early-in-the year lessons ever! I haven’t done much literature yet, and students traditionally sit really quietly early in the year when literature is thrown at them.
47 I will usually do a piece of literature and have a conversation with three kids per class, especially if it is late August when school begins.
48 I worked marginally with Occurence a few years ago, but never had this sort of success.
49 What this means is that our literature discussions should be lively for the rest of the year, because they enjoyed thinking, discussing, arguing, and all the stuff any teacher would want. It set the tone for future discussions. It was certainly worth the twenty-five minute investment.
50 We have good days.
51 Having a good Thursday is always a blast.
52 Well, just thought I’d share a little more of a glimpse of what it is like to be a teacher in hard times.
52 Thanks for listening.
53 Life is good, at least for the moment. Try to find An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge online. It’s awesome.
54 Gottago.
55 Peace.
~H~
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