You probably know why you're here. Let's jump right in.
1. Why did Xfinity skip channel #25 in their line up?
I don’t know what to tell you. They didn’t for me. It’s ESPN.
2. What are schools doing better than they did 30 years ago?
Addressing the non-academic needs of the students, and providing more comprehensive mental health services and family crisis networking. This makes me think of something Vision said in Avengers: Age of Ultron, about the presence of more superheroes in the world being a causality for more problems only superheroes could address. I think because we have more specifically targeted levels of special education, more psychologists, and more social workers in the schools, the availability of all this support has revealed greater need than was previously recognized.
3. What makes my sister Jenny so much better than myself?
She’s much more able to live a normal life since she doesn’t have to deal with the social shortcomings that accompany my particular degree of genius.
4. Why are dogs so much better than cats?
Dogs appreciate. Cats expect.
5. Is democracy dead?
Not by a long shot. But certainly not from a lack of effort from the woefully under-qualified assortment of chuckleheads and pathological liars currently taking up space in the executive branch.
6. What is your perspective on school shootings and how they’ve affected all school children?
There’s no “all” statement here, because so many have experienced it differently. We do lockdown drills at school, but when we do there are too many kids who see it as an opportunity to mess around with their friends while the lights are off and they think they’ll go unnoticed. I wish they’d take it more seriously. I remember talking about this with a colleague at a happy hour years ago, and we were both concerned about one particular person tangentially related to our school who absolutely had the potential to become an active shooter. Teachers are more affected since we know how serious of an issue it is. For too many of our Fortnite playing minions, it’s not real. Sadly that isn’t the case everywhere. But I'm also kind of glad they haven't had all of the innocence chased out of them yet.
7. Who is your favorite Marvel character, and why?
A tough one, but my first instinct is to say Peter Parker’s best friend Ned, because he’s hilarious and the kind of guy I would have wanted to be friends with in high school.
8. You’ve been sentenced to death. Pick your last meal and what last album you listen to.
First of all, this is more of a statement, which I hope isn’t true, and a command than a question. All the same….Last meal would probably be a huge Thanksgiving dinner with only the foods and sides and desserts I like. Last album would be Dream Theater’s Scenes from a Memory, if only to remind me that the spirit carries on.
10. Has children’s play changed over the last fifty years? How? Why? Who?
A few years ago I overheard a conversation between two boys and a girl in my third grade class, about how they planned to get together and play after school. It warmed my heart, right up to the moment they explained they would be meeting up over a server instead of in real life.
11. What’s the best show on TV right now?
This is tough. I can’t say Game of Thrones because it’s been fan-fictioned within an inch of acceptability over the last two seasons. I can’t say Veep because that’s officially off the air. I can’t go with anything on Netflix, because my definition of “on TV” doesn’t include streaming. I’m tempted to say “The Office” because it’s technically still on TV, if you count several hours of reruns on Comedy Central most days. I guess the show that fascinates me the most, even though it comes and goes irregularly for short seasons, would be “The Circus” on Showtime.
12. If you had to choose between giving away your entire book or music collection and never being exposed to them again, which would you choose and why?
I didn’t even have to think about this. I’d get rid of the books. Once you read them they’re either a part of you or didn’t connect with you enough for you to remember. I’d never give up my music.
13. How much does the final season of Game of Thrones suck?
I don’t think I’d go as far as “suck.” I think of it as lazily written and rushed. I think everything they’ve done in this season still could've worked if the story they are telling had been stretched out and developed over the course of two or three full seasons instead of six episodes.
14. What places would you like to go on vacation that you’ve never been to?
I really don’t know how to answer this. I don’t have any kind of a checklist. For me, traveling is more about the people you see once you get where you’re going, or, if there aren’t any people waiting for you at your destination, the people you travel with. Generally it would be nice to visit or explore new places, for the experience. Having said that, I’m still waiting for someone to get the Schulz trip to Iceland organized.
15. This could take awhile: What is your favorite memory of each of your cousins, and why.
I’m not answering this today. I want to honor the question, but it will take a separate post. That will have to come later in the month.
16. What is the biggest challenge you face as an educator?
Again, a tough one because I can think of at least fifteen biggests. Somewhat fresh in my head after this year's crop of frustrations, I’ll say trying to work cooperatively with parents when they are so wrapped up in their own ideas about what the school should be doing for their child that they expect every interaction with school staff to be adversarial. We all ultimately have the same goal when it comes to the education and well-being of their children, but when people come at us looking for the fight they expect us to give them, for whatever reasons they have or whatever issues they’re working through, it makes those goals much more difficult to achieve.
17. Why are you still teaching? From your posts about days till school is out to hoping for snow days to dreading school starting in the fall, I just wonder why you keep doing it. You certainly have the skills to do many other things. It seems like you aren’t happy in your current job.
First of all, on the subject of being happy in any job, I’d invite people to read what I wrote about happiness earlier this month and apply that to any typical workplace. Secondly, dreading school starting in the fall is either a misinterpretation of a massive exaggeration of anything I’ve ever said; I’ve never dreaded going back to school. If anything, I’m usually ready to go back if not anticipating it two or three weeks early. Sure, there are a lot of aspects of the job I don’t enjoy, but that can’t be extended to the job itself. I had a friend ask me once: When I leave the house in the morning, do I think of myself going to work or going to school? 995 times out of 1000 it’s going to school. "Work" is a job. A job is something you do to stay busy in the afternoon and pay the bills. It’s wrong to call teaching a job. A career, maybe, but a calling or a mission is more accurate. As frustrating and exhausting and terrifying as it can be on any given day, it has purpose. It has community. I’m still teaching because it’s the most important thing anyone can do in our society, and I’ve known that since I was twelve. Plus, there’s this quote that I found in a college textbook in 1989 that I have on my Facebook profile still today:
"I am that most fortunate of men for I am eternal. Others live merely in the world of today, while I live in the world of tomorrow... for I am charged with that most sacred mission: to transmit all that our forebearers lived for, loved for, and died for to the next generation... I make wisdom live... I do not simply teach the mind, I reach the heart, and when I reach the heart, I touch the soul." -- Zev Schostak
Dated sexist language aside, that holds true. I teach because I can’t not.
And as far as celebrating snow days? Give me a break. Anyone with a job where they spend most of the time trying to keep their head above water who would get a sanctioned day off from work because travel is too dangerous would absolutely relish the unexpected opportunity to catch their breath and mentally recenter themselves. Damn right I love snow days, and I’ll never apologize for that.
18. If you could only eat six things for six months, what would you eat?
I’m taking advantage of a perceived loophole, in that the question asked for six “things” instead of six “foods.”
*sandwiches, because there are so many different kinds and so many ingredients
*apples, so I could share with Freddie
*cereal, for the same reason as sandwiches
*school pickles, because come on
*Nacho Cheese Doritos
*lemon bars (*not really*)
19. Which popular idiom do you find most annoying?
“It is what it is.”
20. If you could meet one person, alive or dead, who would it be and what would you say to him or her?
I’m tempted to go with the old "Pearls Before Swine" joke and answer “The alive one.” But I’d probably go with the real Freddie Mercury, and I’d tell him to track down Brian, Roger, and John and put on show so I can see the four of them play live.
21. What are your top 3 pet peeves?
Smokers, bands that call themselves bands without actually playing instruments, the inevitable parade of people that ask to use the bathroom in the middle of every friggin’ test I have to give.
22. Why don’t you like The Eagles music?
Honestly, I just think most of it is boring. That whole 70s era singer/songwriter thing never clicked with me. I like a song or two, and some of their solo work, but not enough to ever consider even a greatest hits package.
23. What order should I show my daughter the Marvel movies (the primary characters' storyline) and the Star Wars movies? The order they were made or the order they happened?
From a storytelling perspective, absolutely the order in which they were made. The Star Wars prequels were made the way they were to fill in the blanks leading up to the original trilogy, and without prior knowledge of the trilogy there are events that wouldn't be as resonant. Would it be as big of a deal at the end of Episode III if you didn't already know the twins being born were going to grown up to be Luke and Leia?
As for Marvel, they had huge success with Iron Man and then came up with an MCU plan to link everyone together. I look at "Captain America: The First Avenger" as being more prologue than prequel. We only have to know how he got to where he was in the 21st century, and the movie ends right before the Avengers were formed. The movies were put together in a way to, again, fill in the blanks, such as using "Captain Marvel" to explain why Nick Fury had an eye patch this whole time.
So my take? Definitely the order in which they were released.
24. If Flamin’ Hot Cheetos were outlawed, what would be your 3 main arguments against the unjust legislation?
I fail to see any injustice in that premise.
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