Over the river and through the woods

"We just saw 15 turkeys in the cornfield after Mossville."

BEARS WIN!!!

text from Megan, who is home already...

"you know in a christmas story when the dad is in the basement cursing up a storm? that is christmas at our house today"

Tomorrow--

Two more days--two more days.

Why the liberal arts? This is why.

In its purest form, a liberal arts and sciences education is about learning how to learn, how to evaluate arguments and experiences, how to enrich and enjoy the whole of human life rather than attempting to master some set of techniques or particular body of knowledge in a four-year preparation for a predetermined career.

Although nothing can be known for certain, there are nevertheless historically developing standards for judging the quality of ideas as well as works of art, and it is these socially constructed and evolving standards and modes of evaluating that endure. Built upon a relentless questioning of everything in existence, challenging entrenched authority (scientific, cultural, and economic no less than political), and yet disciplined by intellectual honesty and humility, the liberal arts and sciences are about pushing the limits of human understanding – seeing things in new ways, evaluating and suggesting alternatives to what is, and learning not to fear but to celebrate the inherent uncertainty of our knowledge about the universe.

Studying English means examining the whole heritage of our culture. It means coming to grips with the most fascinating ideas and thinkers in intellectual history. And it means dealing with concepts and movements not simply through abstractions, generalities, or statistics, but through great works of imaginative literature that capture the spirit of their times and the complex feelings of the people who wrote and read them. Studying English means learning about the passions and perplexities, the hopes and fears of human beings who sometimes appear very different from us, but who are at other times very much the same. Learning about them gives us the chance to learn about ourselves. In short, majoring in English provides an opportunity to grasp more profoundly what it means–and what it has meant–to be human.

Of course.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/opinion/13blow.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Writing samples are my life.

11 days left

A certain high school somewhere in Houston...

"Good morning teachers..."

"Please be advised that I'll be copying review sheets only this week."

"This is required for 9th grade teachers and optional for others. There IS extra duty pay and macadamia nuts."


OH BOY macadamia nuts. I knew I took this job for a reason!

At least it's December.

11.25

"I had to tell a student to stop sniffing the magic marker.
I had to take it away."

11.10

The feasibility of success in my ongoing grad-ap project is certainly questionable.

But, to quote Browning:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp
or what's a heaven for?

11.7 +1/2

Keats

Christopher Howell

When Keats, at last beyond the curtain
of love’s distraction, lay dying in his room
on the Piazza di Spagna, the melody of the Bernini
Fountain “filling him like flowers,”
he held his breath like a coin, looked out
into the moonlight and thought he saw snow.
He did not suppose it was fever or the body’s
weakness turning the mind. He thought, “England!”
and there he was, secretly, for the rest
of his improvidently short life: up to his neck
in sleigh bells and the impossibly English cries
of street vendors, perfect
and affectionate as his soul.
For days the snow and statuary sang him so far
beyond regret that if now you walk rancorless
and alone there, in the piazza, the white shadow
of his last words to Severn, “Don’t be frightened,”
may enter you.

11.7

11.6

me: yaaaaaaaaayyyyy
sushi
I looooooove sushi
and losing hole punchers

Alexis: I love my eye

10.31

It's Halloween

Romeo & Juliet is on in my classroom

Megan's coming

We have tattoo appointments (!)


We're throwing a party... in costume... with prizes... and Everclear(?)


Mia Bella Saturday night


And Cyrano de Bergerac


yessssss!

10.15

10.14

Alexis: nopet
nopez
noper
I'm bored

9.23

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey’s Version Of “Three Blind Mice”

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer’s wife
or anyone else’s wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic’s answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard’s
mournful trumpet on “Blue Moon,”
which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

Billy Collins

9.22

Highlights from our so-necessary meeting today:

-----------------------------------------------

"You can assume that it either is going to happen, or it is not."

-----------------------------------------------

"Tomorrow, uh, tomorrow is... is going to be interesting."

-----------------------------------------------

-Administration of Davis H.S.

9.10

I miss my dog.

8.19

"No no -- that word goes on the 'dead wall' -- RSVP.

...I mean... RISP!!

No, wait! Wait, I mean RIP?? RIP! That's what I meant!"

5.28

5.27

5.15

5

"instructional" days left

4

days of finals

3

-day weekend coming up

2

days of nothing but presentations

1

"teacher in-service" half-day

1/2

-way finished with TFA. !

5.2

Yesterday was May Day. Tu me manques, Oxford.

4.24

From an article in The Oregonian:


" There are 80 TFAs in Baltimore, and when [TFAer] Rennard's girlfriend comes to visit, she wants nothing to do with them.

'She says it's like hanging out with the survivors of a plane crash,' he says. 'They've all been through something so traumatic that it's impossible to approach them because you don't share the experience. I'm closer to them than I've ever been to anyone. It's like living through a war.'

'This is the hardest thing I will ever do,' he says. 'I don't think I'm doing a good job. Every day I'm failing them in some way. Every day I'm doing something for myself that I could do for the kids.'

Some days, he gets angry: 'Some days, I just go home and play Guitar Hero. 'On the other days, though, he brings food in for the kids who can't afford lunch. He drives them home so they don't have to sit with the Crips on the bus. He lets go of the clock batteries, and carefully hoards the pain and stress of all the learning moments.

'I'm excited for my second year,' Rennard says. 'Every horrible mistake I've made, I'm going to fix. And I've made a thousand mistakes.' "

4.17

"Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

by Ron Koertge

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

4.8

Travel 4.3 - 4.6

1 very late plane
1 missed connection
5 pieces of chocolate, each
0 flights to Peoria from Dallas after 7.30
3 possible flights to Chicago
1 last-minute flight (delayed)
2.5 hours with no beverage service (storms)
1 arrival at 2am
0 out of 2 possible pieces of baggage
12 new items purchased in desperation
2 recovered bags, a day late
1 amazing Shakespeare play
1 trip back without any issues

= great weekend!

Oh, the memories.

4.2

April = school is over. Basically.

3.12

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-Billy Collins

3.5

It's OVER!

Thank goodness.

And although a few tried, no 9th graders were able to actually escape successfully.

3.2

2.27

2.24

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

Irina Dunn

2.21

oh, Christmas

2.17

"We're lost."

"Oh. Are you afraid of the dark or something?"

Don't go to Roanoke, Texas without a detailed map and/or a personal guide.

2.14

I was gone last Friday. Judging by my email, it appears that the little darlings were a bit too much for my sub to handle:

"Many textbooks were thrown out of the window from your class. They are here on Ms. Acosta’s desk in main office.

X_______________
Administrative Assistant
Davis High School
Phone -713-xxx-xxxx Fax 713-xxx-xxxx"

2.13

Jesus: The sub? She was white-white.
Me: White-white?
Jesus: Yeah Miss. She was.
Me: Okay... am I not white?
Jesus: Naw, Miss. You're like.. mixed.
Me: Mixed?
Jesus: Yeah. Mixed.
Me: Oh. How am I mixed?
Jesus: 'Cause Miss, you got, like black hair.

Lesson #371- You're only white-white if you're blonde.

2.3

I don't mind being scared
I dont mind seeing that I'm under-prepared
it's the life that I've chosen and the way that it's going
shows that I ought to give into my thoughts
The philosopher's prayer: please show me I'm here so
that I can be okay to go

All the way to the earth from the sky
newly made today so I sink when I fly
It's in the way that I walk crooked lines
gaining strength all the time
and by the ocean I'm told
that we'll all be the same

1.22

So last week my kids wanted to know if I was a Crip. That's what happens at Davis.