May 15, 2013
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The Daily News
1 I’m glad that I don’t live and die for Bay Area sports.
2 If I did, then I would have died last night.
3 Yeesh.
4 I like to take the high road though.
5 I woke up last night, looked at my toe, and there wasn’t a tag on it. That is a good day by anyone’s standards.
6 But once again, yeesh.
7 Oh, well.
8 Today is a new day, AND a Wednesday.
9 Argh.
10 I just remembered that Wednesdays are meeting days.
11 Always a plus on any job.
12 And yes, I meant that sarcastically.
13 fjdkfdd;fajdsjf;jf.
14 At least the dog woke me up somewhat early last night.
15 It was fairly easy to get to sleep early.
16 Who wanted to stay up and watch all that?
17 Thankfully I’m fine.
18 I have faith in those teams. They have all given us so much fun and excitement I can’t let one imperfect storm get all over me. It’s been quite a ride and it ain’t over ’til it’s over.
19 I’ll just let all of that roll.
20 You should too.
21 There are worse things dude.
22 Moving on, Part One: School has become officially over on my end.
23 I had planned so many fun activities that have since been crushed by bubble testing. And by stupidity at the highest levels.
24 Number two pencils.
25 Rampant stupidity.
26 Paranoia.
27 I won’t go into it, but my usual fun end-of-the year activities have been squelched by outsiders who honestly know nothing about the reality of life in the classroom.
28 I tried.
29 Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t give up.
30 I didn’t give up this year.
31 I was thieved by morons.
32 I can’t even explain it here because a lot of it takes too much time.
33 It has a LOT to do with testing and number two pencils and all.
34 For example, some tests come complete with answer sheets, pencils, and all the rest.
35 I have always been fine with that.
36 That is the natural order of things.
37 Unfortunately, when the teachers have to generate the answer sheets, it becomes a nightmare.
38 We have to deal with programs that are convoluted and involve learning how to go into a computer program and figure things out.
39 And after hours of pushing buttons that tell us that they don’t work, we get whatever we got saved on a flash drive, and THEN have to try to make the flash drive work on copiers that have been around since the eighties.
40
41 All of which is thrown at us the last two weeks of school.
42 I wound up taking my stuff to private businesses, which charged me a bajillion dollars to get the stuff done faster and with more precision.
43 I’ll cut to the quick, because this stuff makes for lousy copy.
44 Because of all the time it took to create these idiotic tests, I had to shut down my best lessons. I had to can them.
45 I had to shut down my poetry lessons.
46 This included poetry from poets that I have personally had pizza with. With whom I have had pizza. Sorry. Published poets. Local poets. San Jose poets who are in literature books.
47 I had to shut down the study of living, award-winning poets who taught me when I was in college.
48 Real people.
49 I had to cancel Maya Angelou.
50 I had to cancel Walt Whitman.
51 I had to cancel my open mic Café Verona poetry read, in which my own students come in my room wearing sunglasses, enjoying a breakfast complete with fresh fruit, orange juice, pastries, Starbuck’s coffee, and jazz music.
52 Bubble tests and massive stupidity obliterated that stuff this week.
53 The only thing I have left is The Taming of the Shrew, which I usually am able to do in our theater, on a big screen with stereo sound.
54 It will now be in my classroom, which isn’t at all that bad, but still not the way I had it over the years.
55 It will somehow serve as a sort of lava lamp for the signing of yearbooks.
56 As the Rolling Stones once put it, “Sad, sad, sad.”
57 My mini-unit on the songs of Paul Simon is now scattered to the winds.
58 I accept that. I will still strap on my guitar and sing two songs. That will be a nice moment, but nothing as intensely fun as I originally planned, and that has been the symbol of my entire year each year I have been at the Chill.
59 I just hope that I don’t have district people coming into my room and unplugging the mic.
60 Could happen.
61 Engagement and real teaching is being squelched as we speak.
62 The lunatics, as they say, are running the asylum.
63 I’ll make it safely to summer, and then I will need to plan a new method of staying ahead of the game.
64 This was an outrageous ambush, if I may be so bold.
65 I’ll re-group and figure it all out.
66 It’s too late to save this year. We were attacked and stripped down of all human interaction.
67 If I sound a bit like a mad man, well then let it be.
68 I openly admit that I am a mad man. Not a madman. A mad man.
69 There are still remnants of Shakespeare and Dylan floating in the wind.
70 Sad, sad, sad.
71 Just so you know, I’ll keep fighting, adjusting, and making things happen. I’ll never stop being a teacher, despite all the lunatics.
72 I’m just sorry that my students have been robbed of enrichment beyond what they would ever have believed could happen.
73 Longest DN ever. I really didn’t expect this. I woke up because the dog wanted to go out in the yard.
74 There’s a certain irony in that.
77 Welp, you have a GREAT Wednesday. Fly low.
78 I gottago. See you again.
79 Peace.
~H~
