May 21, 2013
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The Daily News
1 I just got home.
2 I mean I just got home yesterday.
3 That’s how I have to move these days.
4 I ain’t complaining, it’s just that closing out the school year requires twice the multi-tasking that we usually do during the course of the year.
5 I ain’t trippin’.
6 I actually said that to a class, and through a microphone no less.
7 Someone said something to me about finals’ week and my response was this: “I ain’t trippin’.”
8 I was sort of trippin’ but really, I was not trippin’.
9 I wasn’t.
10 I knew that all sorts of things this past month prevented a higher quality of lesson plans.
11 With all due respect.
12 I had Shrew playing. That should silence the critics.
13 I also knew instinctively that due to the thirteen bazillion boushit things that happened in the past month, my students were going to be totally gone yesterday.
14 Couple that with the awesome yearbook that just came out. I’m talkin’ jewels. The last thing they cared about was Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Shrew. A part of me thought that it was a situation of pearls before swine, but I would never say it.
15 How is a fella supposed to compete?
16 I could have fought and battled. I could have guilt-tripped my students into joining me in my cause to culturize society, if there even is such a word.
17 But as a guy who has been there, I knew that the events of the past month, and especially of last week would have sent one of the greatest movies on Earth down in flames. To me, The Taming of the Shrew is up there with the greatest. It is arguably the most underrated film of all time. It is also the classic ending to every school year. You can’t argue with that.
18 And even that begs the question: What is the greatest movie ever? Okay, let’s sidebar, if I may courageously turn a noun into a verb.
19 What is the greatest movie ever? Simple answer.
20 This movie called Mitchell.
21 The movie is horrendous.
22 But its treatment on Mystery Science Theater is epic.
23 Okay, so the first time I saw it was under the guided hand of my daughter Caitlin’s genius husband Josh.
24 The film is called Mitchell. It’s called Mitchell, man. It is mad and awesome. But only if viewed through the lenses of Mystery Science Theater.
25
26 Moving on, Part One: Anybody looking?
27 At least I somehow got this stuff on fire. It isn’t easy to come home from the last teaching day of the school year and start anything remotely interesting.
28 Slow punk.
29
30 For the young set, a punk is something one uses to start a campfire.
31 It’s a tree branch, or a cigar, or some other starter.
32 So I tried to get this piece going with a low-burning punk.
33 It might have worked.
34 And it might not have.
35 Moving on, Part Two: Tough to fire something up. Today is the first day of finals.
36 I trained my students on what they need to do yesterday.
37 They have to write intelligently about myriad Shakespearean plays.
38 This includes the venerable Shrew.
38 Because of all the testing and nonsense from outside forces this past month, we almost didn’t even have Shrew.
39 I knew instinctively that next year I will have to re-create the entire ending of the school year.
40 Furlough days, common core pressure, benchmark bubble tests, and AP testing completely obliterated my best practices.
41 This group of students will never understand. Sad, sad, sad.
42 Yesterday I got a card from a former student who had me for two years.
43 It was a thank you card that was an assignment from another teacher, but hers was clearly not an assignment at all. It came from the heart.
44 I forgot to bring the card home, but it was a heartfelt thank you that summarized how much she had learned about writing, and about life and all.
45 Nothing I say here could put it in perspective, but she talked of how many of my lessons helped her to become a better writer, and that she loved everything I ever did.
46 I read that card, and then looked out at my current students who were happily ignoring Shrew. The only reason it was being ignored was because my entire end-of-the year stuff was so rudely interrupted.
47 I had to tell them that I had planned much more incredible lessons, but that they got interrupted by numerous outside forces.
48 This was clearly ineffective. I had already lost them last week amid all the nonsense. Not my fault. I didn’t adjust to the elimination of almost two weeks of lessons.
49 That card put it all in perspective.
50 It’s too late to recover from it all this year. I got numerous cards from all sorts of other students, but that one really put it all out there, and how much my students lost due to people from outside my realm trying to force their stuff into my lessons. It obliterated my strongest stuff.
51 Am I angry?
52 Nah. Just pensive. People are suffering tragic losses in Oklahoma City. I can’t even begin to imagine.
53 So no; these losses are pretty petty when placed in any sort of global perspective.
54 Still, as a teacher who knows he is at the top of his game, I am a bit annoyed that my students didn’t get to enjoy my best lessons, which I usually do the last month of teaching.
55 So I will go in today and give finals to two of my classes who never got the fun of the Cafe Verona, or of the jazz, or of the breakfast, fruits, pastries, and Starbuck’s for a nickel. They will never appreciate Shakespeare as anything but a boring lesson. So sad.
56 I doubt that I will get cards from them. Not that I need cards, mind you. I am comfortable with who I am.
57 I just feel that I got rudely interrupted by several outside forces, and that my students lost some amazing lessons, and that they will leave this morning never knowing what should have been.
58 I’ll say a sentimental good-bye, but I will also know that the second they all leave today, I will instantly begin planning how to get around all of the idiots outside the classroom who somehow wish to change something that has always been in place, and that has clearly worked.
59 It drives me crazy.
60 I will make a few adjustments for next year, and I will never allow this nonsense to happen again.
61 They will graduate in a few years never knowing.
62 So it goes.
63 I’ll adjust. They system will continually try to be better by having outside forces telling professionals how to do their jobs, but the best will circumvent, and make things happen.
64 Because we are in the trenches. And there are those of us who know how to operate in the trenches.
65 And there are those of us who will not suffer fools.
66 It is into the three a.m. and I do believe I should now gather some rest.
67 I have one more shot at reaching these guys.
68 This will be quite a task. I’ll still give it all I have.
69 They deserve no less.
70 They were robbed.
71 I gottago.
72 More to come.
73 See you again.
74 Peace.
~H~
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