It occurred to me while falling asleep last night that David Letterman and I could probably step into each other's jobs fairly easily:
1 - Every show he starts off with the same introduction and a brief monologue, usually discussing current events. Every morning I start my day when the 9:30 bell rings, and spend about five minutes joking with my students about current events (the AT&T commercials with the little kids, video game release dates we're excited about, what we did on our weekends, etc.) before bringing my students to their specialist classes.
2 - Dave starts off each show with a lot of the same comedy bits getting mixed into the rotation: Visiting the Hello Deli, Small Town News, the Top Ten list, etc. Each of my math lessons starts out with the students being assigned something from the same pool of introductory activities: Math Boxes from the books, working through a multi-step story problem I've prepared on a half-sheet of paper, converting fractions to decimal values, solving 24 puzzles, etc.
3 - When Dave steps away from his show, people generally expect him to do or say something funny. Not more than two days ago, my principal claimed I almost made her break up laughing while she was presenting information during a school board meeting just because of my facial expression. I promise you I was just standing there and listening.
4 - Dave has frequent musical guests. I commonly have students quietly singing or humming to themselves without even realizing they're doing it until other people point it out to them. I also have a lot of instances of someone "accidentally" giving their recorder a quick toot in the hallway on the way to music class.
5 - Dave's interviews follow a fairly set structure: introduction, playful banter, plugging the guest's latest project, etc. My lessons also follow a fairly set structure: introducing the learning goal and essential vocabulary, leading the students into discovering a new concept, turning them loose on practicing said concept or providing them with extra practice, giving them time to play review games and presenting them with some follow-up practice.
6 - Dave has something of a reputation for being grumpy. My sense of humor has parallels to that, even being described as "caustic" by my eleventh grade journalism teacher. Back then I had to look up the word to understand precisely what she meant. I took it as a compliment.
7 - Dave has Paul Shaffer for a sidekick. In each class I have at least one kid who is so attention-starved, the only way I'm ever going to get she/he to stay focused on what's going on is to play off of them with a few jokes so that "look at me" need is met.
8 - We both receive salaries in the tens of millions of dollars. However since I'll be dropping the school patrol co-advisor position next year, I won't be able to make that claim anymore.
