January 3: School starts back up tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to keeping up with my email inbox, or waking up early on cold and dark mornings, or deciphering nonsensical spreadsheets, or attending meetings on mornings when I have other things I need to do, or second-guessing half of the decisions I make, or feeling completely used up at the end of far too many days. But I am looking forward to seeing my students and my friends again.
LESSON: I refuse to fall back on the insufferable and empty educational cliché of “doing it for the kids,” but, in all honesty, the only parts of my job that have any real meaning for me anymore are the parts that directly involve my students.
January 16: Just want to point out that it's the 16th, the temperature is going to be below zero for the next 70 or so hours, and I haven't complained about it being January even once.
January 17: Maybe I'll just leave it all behind, move to Hawaii, and start a nice little papaya farm.
LESSON: Eventually the worst parts of winter, and January specifically because it’s such an awful creature, are going to get to me.
February 2: Read aloud is one of my favorite parts of the school day. I make it a point to choose books that I'm confident will capture the imagination of my students. I'm lucky to have a class that so readily and completely engages with the books I read to them. Today we finished a childhood favorite of mine, "A Wrinkle in Time," and tomorrow we'll be stepping into new territory as I begin reading one of my own manuscripts in class...for the first time ever. I've always felt to do so would be too self-serving, but the kids want to see if I've got any game after hearing so much about my writer life. So tomorrow while they sit down after Phy. Ed. to eat their snacks, we'll be starting Chapter 1 of the most recent revision of "The Ghost of Lake Emily." I fully expect the whole thing to feel weird.
February 11: Lake Emily read aloud, Day 7: I've basically lost storytelling perspective. If I could get away with it, I'd keep a notepad in my lap to make a list of all the things I discover while I'm reading that I want/need to fix.
LESSON: Even when essentially performing my writing, I can’t separate myself from it enough to appreciate what I’ve accomplished without still finding things that could be better.
February 21: I'm working on conference notes right now, and I just came up with a line that both makes me proud and a little sick of myself. Instead of calling out a girl for being bossy when working in groups, I said she "frequently tries to assert herself in noncooperative ways.”
February 22: During the drive to school this morning I heard "Back in Black" on the radio. On the way home just now I heard "Hell's Bells." In between I had a 12-hour day that included parent-teacher conferences. If this doesn't all mean something, it feels like it should.
LESSON: Parent conferences, and particularly the extra long days that accompany them, are not my favorite time of the year. However I’ll admit that they’re still more useful and productive than some other parts of my job.
April 11: I wish it was possible for all of the uncertainty and anxiety about the next school year to disappear, and that whatever changes happen would leave people feeling energized and optimistic.
May 20: A field trip to a world-class science museum is a day worth being dead tired at the end of it.
LESSON: In the world of public education, there’s a bad kind of worn out and a great kind of worn out.
July 10: I just saw 2016 will have a leap second added to it to keep atomic clocks set correctly. Which is great, because if there's ever been a year when everything has gone so well for the world that we'd want it to be longer, it'd be this one.
LESSON: 2016 was barely half over and already it was sticking its neck out to be recognized as a historic crapfest.
September 7: While driving to school the past two mornings, I've approached the intersection where I need to turn and thought, "What if I didn't turn, and just kept going straight east instead, with no destination in mind? Would that be a better decision? What adventures would await?”
LESSON: The road not traveled doesn’t always get to be explored once you’ve committed yourself to a certain path. But that doesn’t mean you can’t wonder about it. Maybe someday it will lead somewhere.
October 21: Here’s a glimpse into how deep the rabbit hole can get while revising a manuscript: "I used this unusually descriptive word on page 52. Can I use it again on page 110, or do I need to find a different one to keep it from standing out and distracting the reader?”
LESSON: Writing, and especially revising, is a lot like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with the lights off.
October 26: I realized today that, in the educational setting, it's much more common to see inspirational quotes from coaches and athletes than from artists. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with the statement that makes about priorities.
LESSON: I’m seriously tired of being immersed in a culture that worships athletes as role models and treats coaches as wise philosophers, when artists are looked upon as divergent freaks who fell back on different interests because they couldn’t throw a ball far or skate fast enough.
November 9: Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Voldemort and the Death Eaters won the Battle of Hogwarts, and the dementors had been turned loose to freely roam the countryside?
LESSON: Okay, look: I didn’t vote for our incoming president. I acknowledge that a lot of people did, either because they thought he would do a great job or was simply the lesser of two available evils. If, four years from now, the state of the union is a thriving utopia, I’ll be the first to happily admit I was wrong to underestimate him and will feel both relief and respect for all he's accomplished. But those of you who voted differently, whatever your reasons might have been, I hope you'll be ready to own that decision if things don't work out.
November 14: Really, Facebook? Are you just putting the question in a blank text box as a prompt for me to share some happy anecdote from my day, or do you really want to know what's on my mind? I'm thinking about how an hour ago I took my students outside for dismissal, and even though he hasn't been at school for over a year I felt absolutely alone because there will never be any kind of circumstance when my friend and his always-present Minnesota Gophers sweatshirt will be out there with me again. And now I'm thinking about how great it will be if I can manage to sleep tonight.
LESSON: I’m tired of death, and the games my accumulating residual grief plays with my state of mind. I’m really tired of it.
November 17: Somehow my glasses managed to slip from my face and land in the sink while I was brushing my teeth. I can only hope this isn't foreshadowing for the rest of my day.
LESSON: This seems more like a fitting analogy for the entire year.
December 3: I did my Christmas decorating today. It took eight minutes.
LESSON: Sometimes it’s best to save yourself the trouble of going through the motions when the only reason you would be doing something is to go through the motions.
December 21: Tonight will make the 5th viewing of "Love, Actually" in the past two weeks. Clearly something is going on here I haven't figured out yet.
LESSON: Five viewings eventually became seven; when everything around us becomes too much, we all need safe places and happy moments for retreat.
Here’s hoping 2017 will provide us all with a few.
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