Tuesday, October 28, 2003
I should just leave it alone.
"Make the sweat drip out of every pore."
I taught a pretty kick-ass lesson today to my seventh-graders. Stuff that evokes pride and delusions. Yeah. But the honest-best part about it was that the room for improvement will be easily acknowledged and filled.
So the review meeting went better than expected. Gotta admit: it's contagious seeing someone else's enthusiasm for their own work. I should really start to work on something to look forward to. These damn poetry and short fiction contests are killing me . . . wait four months for a "no-thanks" or two months for "Thanks, but no $ for you!"
Ranger's chompin' on his bone so frickin' hard right now, he's drowning out the music behind me.
There was a woman in class tonight . . . in her late forties or early fifties. Doing a career change, entering education . . . secondary, I think. She's big, there's no getting around that. OK, I should have deleted that, because that's an unnecessary pun that rips her, and that's not why I'm writing this . . . . But I'm too tired to delete anything right now. (Except for that.) And she stood up to present her group's poster. My group was to her right, so we could see this five or six inch tear in the side of her pants . . . and her belly press out against her sweater. And, man, I felt absolutely terrible for her. I still do. I remember having friends who would probably rip her for that. But I just kept thinking about how she would, someday soon, be facing high schoolers, a whole class of kids who don't give a damn about her up there. I mean the runner in me comes out all confident, like "you gotta get active," and that's fine, but . . . that's not gonna help her right then, not tonight, not right now. Because, she was honorable, you know? She presented their poster well, with a little style, some flourish -- she didn't mail it in; she's trying. So that made it all the harder -- knowing she deserved better, but that she'd be confined to teaching kids who wouldn't give a damn about honor or effort . . . or that she'd be analyzed to death by some idiot on his web log with too much time on his hands. And that's a fucking shame.
I taught a pretty kick-ass lesson today to my seventh-graders. Stuff that evokes pride and delusions. Yeah. But the honest-best part about it was that the room for improvement will be easily acknowledged and filled.
So the review meeting went better than expected. Gotta admit: it's contagious seeing someone else's enthusiasm for their own work. I should really start to work on something to look forward to. These damn poetry and short fiction contests are killing me . . . wait four months for a "no-thanks" or two months for "Thanks, but no $ for you!"
Ranger's chompin' on his bone so frickin' hard right now, he's drowning out the music behind me.
There was a woman in class tonight . . . in her late forties or early fifties. Doing a career change, entering education . . . secondary, I think. She's big, there's no getting around that. OK, I should have deleted that, because that's an unnecessary pun that rips her, and that's not why I'm writing this . . . . But I'm too tired to delete anything right now. (Except for that.) And she stood up to present her group's poster. My group was to her right, so we could see this five or six inch tear in the side of her pants . . . and her belly press out against her sweater. And, man, I felt absolutely terrible for her. I still do. I remember having friends who would probably rip her for that. But I just kept thinking about how she would, someday soon, be facing high schoolers, a whole class of kids who don't give a damn about her up there. I mean the runner in me comes out all confident, like "you gotta get active," and that's fine, but . . . that's not gonna help her right then, not tonight, not right now. Because, she was honorable, you know? She presented their poster well, with a little style, some flourish -- she didn't mail it in; she's trying. So that made it all the harder -- knowing she deserved better, but that she'd be confined to teaching kids who wouldn't give a damn about honor or effort . . . or that she'd be analyzed to death by some idiot on his web log with too much time on his hands. And that's a fucking shame.
