by Fitz | May 2, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
The only way out is through…
Damn! Another long post…
For better and worse–and through thick and thin–I keep piling on rubric after rubric to help guide the content, flow, and direction of my students’ writing pieces. The greater irony is that I never set out to create or use rubrics with them. I was always (and still am) a great proponent of just writing until your writing skills reach the omega point–that place where you write well just because you don’t know how else to write, except “well.”
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by Fitz | May 1, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
I guess this is a good thing. I showed up five minutes late for class, and my classroom was empty. I walked the hallways of the school and could not find any of them. I sheepishly asked the assistant headmaster if he “happened to see a class of wandering boys?”
No, he hadn’t.
Another teacher said he saw random groups of boys outside filming with their iPads, so that at least is a good thing because last week I also showed up late, but the room then was a chaotic rumble of misdirection. I used my “firm voice,” and I tried to get across the point that “sua sponte” means to do what needs to be done–not to wait to be told to do something, followed by the typical teacher rants that happens when a teacher is somewhat at fault for what is happening, i.e. my tardiness for class.
But I am at least mildly pleased today to be sitting alone in my room while “class is going on.” My students are outside being productive. In that sense they at least are thinking and living outside of the box of the classroom, and I am getting a bit of a break–and I can get this daily journal post up before one of the more astute boys point out that if I don’t do it; they don’t have to do it either….
But they will have to because this is…
Posted!
by Fitz | Apr 26, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
Someday, someone might fire you for not doing
what you should have done.
There are some days when a teacher might wonder whether it is worth giving the extra effort if the students are not giving the extra effort. I am lucky–and cursed–that I get to live and see it from both sides on any given day. I log in to your portfolios and I “see” a stream of posts and pictures and thoughts and ramblings that prove that most of you care enough to go the extra mile yourself. Rarely, but sometimes I run into a dead end, a place where you can almost sense the apathy and disregard towards what I feel is real and important and enduring.
I am always stuck as to how to react. I know I can make life difficult for that student; I know I can pull out the sharp sword of the gradebook and punish him for his apathy, or I can let it slide–but the problem with letting anything slide is that we can only slide downhill with any efficiency: sliding uphill takes a good deal of effort.
That begs the question of why we would want to slide down the gnarly hill of life unless we had already reached the pinnacle of success and there was no other way to go. As a writer I know that every writing piece is a step–forwards or backwards up or down the ladder of accomplishment–and it is a long hard slog to the top, but there is no other way. So you can practice apathy, or you can practice action.
You’re either doing it, thinking about it, or ignoring it.
One day you’ll either receive your pay or be fired. Now is the time to practice being a man. Giving a damn is not a switch. It is a way of life, though ultimately it is your life, and you ‘ll either slog up or slide down.
by Fitz | Apr 13, 2014 | Essays, Journal
Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after
~Henry David Thoreau
When you need something done, find a busy person to help you get it done. My mother loved repeating that to me all the way to her dying day, but I have always wondered what people mean when they say they are “busy.” Does it mean they don’t really care about the “little things” that are keeping them from taking care of the “big things?”
Or do they think that life is intrinsically unfair and has singled out them out as deserving of more busy chores to attend to—or at least more than other people in their same socio-economic, educational, or professional status? Or do they simply feel they are above what they are being asked to do?
I am even feeling bad for myself: My day started early, and I was busy ALL day, and here I am late at night writing this self-aggrandizing missive to my students who no doubt “know” where this is heading: something about posting daily journal entries, reading chapter this and chapter that in whatever book we are overanalyzing, or to work harder at their collaborative projects, or to come up with profound insights about obscure 17th century ballads.
And of course, all of this is important, if not crucial, to their future successes in life…
And they have four or five other teachers, one or two parents, several coaches, and probably a tutor or two all telling them the same thing. As it is now, I am afraid that we are all trapped on flimsy boats in rough seas and sometimes mistake bailing as sailing. We are so busy staying afloat that we forget the purpose of our journeys. Or maybe no one has ever really explained the purpose of that journey in a convincing way. Why is it easier for me to tell my hard-working and studious students the reasons for Telemachus or Odysseus’s quest in life than it is to tell them what their individual quest is and can and should be?
The reality is that all of my students will be successful in life. Most of them already are (much more so than when I was a young teenager) so why keep beating the horse that is already winning the race?
It has to be that I don’t want them to repeat my failures, my oversights, my wasting of untold moments, and my utter disregard for the wisdom of the adults who tried to train and tame me. Or maybe I just want to keep my job as their teacher, and teachers, dagnubbit, must teach, and when I get tired, I simply make them do what I should have done. But to say this, I need to regret how I’ve lived, and aside from whatever hurts I brought to people through my myopic greed for life, I do not have any regrets. You see, I love where I am and what I do and how I live. I have this fear that if my life were any different—even in the smallest of details–I would not have the life I have today, which on my own weighted scale of success is an amazing accomplishment.
This afternoon when I was taking Tommy and his friend Henry to another in a string of Fitz family soccer games I listened in as two eleven year olds discussed the possibilities of other universes—that maybe our universe is a small bubble amidst a zillion other bubbles and that maybe there were other Tommy’s and Henry’s in those other universes doing different things—or maybe doing the same things with different results…
…or maybe the other universes were just dreams of universes.
That’s the one that caught my imagination, because I really want Tommy to feel like he can dream a universe into existence. It made me question and ponder for the remainder of the day how important it is to keep any dream alive and to give my own kids and students the strength and time and optimism to will that dream into a reality.
Fitting that into my weekly syllabus is not what I planned to do.
All I can say is I was there and now I’m here.
And where are you and what bubble are you in?
by Fitz | Apr 10, 2014 | Essays, Journal
It is not where you go. It is how you go.
~Fitz
Is there any value in coming to the page this late at night after three hours of singing in a pub, just because I said I would? I expect you to go to the empty page and pry tired and stubborn thoughts and lay them on the screen in some semblance of ordered inspiration, so I guess I should, too. [comma rule #10: commas with tag elements] My mind, body, soul and being needs and wants to sleep, but I am more stubborn than my thoughts, and I WILL make something out of nothing.
…five minutes go by…
Nothing.
So I start scouring through my day. What happened that was fun, interesting, real, or removed? My daughter, Kaleigh, and her friend, Brenna came to my 8th grade classes. That was fun—for me and them! In fact, [comma after introductory element] Brenna said she had no idea a school could be like Fenn. All the kids and teachers were fun and friendly, engaged and comfortable, polite and productive, so maybe—just maybe—Fenn is as really cool and special a place as we say it is.
Even if sometimes YOU don’t think so.
I had dinner at Maynard High School (Pipo’s school for next year and EJ and Margaret’s school this year). It was an international dinner with about twenty tables of wicked good and diverse food. A bunch of kids were playing in an impromptu band, and I hung out with my the other parents and we were thinking, “Yeah, this is a really special place…”
And it is because it is never where you go. It’s how you go. Some good many of you are heading to new places next year, and another good many of you will start your high school life at Fenn—which is really cool, too. It is not what you let it be. It is what you make it be.
In the same spirit, I need to come to the empty page and start a conversation with the blank screen in my Evernote notebook, for this page is my school, and it where I am taught about myself, and, ultimately, see myself.
The mind does not unblock itself; you must reach in and pull away the boulders and debris and create the path for even a few words to trickle onto the page.
And then sometimes I might have to stop the flood…
Even a t 12:01 AM
