by Fitz | Jun 3, 2014 | Essays, Journal
Going to Canobie Lake is always the turning point of the year for me. It is like some primal signal that It is time to turn away from the school year and towards the future. Obviously, it is my hope that you learned some useful skills this year, but, more importantly, I hope that you have gained a deeper sense of the power and importance of words–and that you will tap into that power in whatever way you need or want over the course of your life. I want you to know that I am always around as another set of eyes for anything you write over these eight or ten more years of school–and many more of simply life–that you have ahead of you. Sometimes, it is simply good to hear from you. This year, this is the last you will hear from me. My last echo….
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by Fitz | May 6, 2014 | Essays, Journal, Teaching
“Zou Ma Guan Hua”
You can’t ride a horse and smell the flowers
~Chinese Proverb
Sometimes I love just browsing through old folders of pictures of my kids when they were just kids in every sense of the word. Just seeing the pictures is a visceral experience for me as I try to remember the whole context of each individual picture: Charlie looking like an upside down duck eating fresh strawberries in the garden; Pipo holding a big snowball for the first time in his life; Emma airborne off a rope swing over dark waters; Tommy strumming a guitar twice the size of his two year old body; Kaleigh dressed up as a hippy nine year old singing songs from Jesus Christ Superstar; Ej building a fort in the sweep of maples in the backyard; Margaret in her eternal thoughtfulness staring out at the ocean on a sunset beach–all of these does something, evokes something, and signifies something that I never want to forget.
A picture only tells a part of the story, but it does do an amazing job of setting visual scene in a reader’s mind. As a writer, being able to create this imagery soley in words is essential to grabbing and sustaining a reader’s attention–and often your own as the writer. I personally love the marriage of images and words and sound made so easily possible on these portfolios. To lose the moment is to only see the flower at a distance.
In these last few weeks at Fenn, use your portfolio time as a way to capture and remember as much as you can. After more than twenty years teaching here, I love reconnecting with old students and sit around “remembering the day” this or that happened. Your journal and your portfolio will someday be that place we can gather around and “remember” together, and for you it will always be a place that will give more back than you ever put into it, for these years will always be a great and profound teacher to you. Fenn is a pretty remarkable place, even if right now it just seems normal and unremarkable to you.
Capture now what you can.
Before it’s lost…
by Fitz | May 4, 2014 | Essays, Journal
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
~Plato
Writing a song is not just an exercise in seeking some kind of future fame. It is simply an exercise in making your own indelible mark upon the world—a setting in the stone of eternity a pattern that captures the sound, sense, and sensibility, an imprint against the ravages of time time of who and what you are and what you aspire to leave behind.
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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.
