Mixed Bag of Thoughts and Reactions

It's been over a week since my last post. If anyone is out there reading and wondering where I've been:

1. It was the end of the second marking period and closing out the quarter took priority
2. I had quite a bit to respond to but I wasn't sure how to frame my respond
3. Jury duty--- couldn't write what was on my mind because of sequester orders from the judge.

So, that accounts for my blog-silence.

For people who read this to get insight into the mind of educators, I have been silent about the recent school shootings purposefully. I don't have proposals or insights to share. The terror inflicted upon the children and educators, in both incidents, cannot be cooked down into a satisfactory analysis that brings about a swift resolution.

At the risk of sounding like a cop-out:  it's complicated. Are there problems in this country with regards to who has acceess to firearms? Yes. Are there deficiencies in the way our nation deals with the mental health needs of its citizenry? Yes. Should we rush to make new ordinances in a knee-jerk reaction to the violence that keeps happening? I am not sure. That is all I have to say about that.

Personally, a part of me always knew I was involved in a dangerous profession from the time I was a student teacher. As a student-teacher,  I had a student in my class who was involved in a lethal car-jacking in Philadelphia, who was under house arrest, and who wore his "ankle bracelet" proudly. In another incident, a student was shot by an intruder in the stomach during lunch in the cafeteria. Adding to my "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" reality, there were also numerous cases of attempted arson to the building, and another intruder pistol-whipped a student  just outside the principal's office. These facts made it an inescapable reality that teaching there was dangerous.

Then, in 1996, it  happened in the spring. Columbine. The tragedy there drove a point home to me that teaching is dangerous  anywhere. I was teaching in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District near Princeton, NJ. Our demographics were similar to Columbine's and so were our social issues. We also had a population of parents who worked high-salaried, high-powered jobs that sometimes would leave them clueless about their children's actions. It was completely believable to me that a kid's parents could be oblivious while he stock-piled enough weaponry in the garage to outfit a couple platoons. That's when I realized "it could happen here too."

My response was not of fear for myself, but for my students. I understood the adolescent desire to destroy bullies, tormentors, mean girls-- the monsters of adolescence, who make most grown-ups emphatically reject the notion of regression to adolescence.  Middle school and/or high school were rough on everyone. No one wants to do it again. Those who actually act out their morbid fantasies of retribution are symptomatic of breakdowns in our nation about values, mental health and access to weaponry. I've got nothing. I don't really want to play the blame game--- it doesn't serve anything and it doesn't help solve the problem. Again. It's complicated.

Finally, I missed three days of class becase I had jury duty. Here's the shorthand. About three hundred citizens of York County were called to serve jury duty this week. We waited in lines for hours just to be processed into a room where we sat and we were talked at for another hour and a half. Then we were coralled into courtrooms 40 at a time to be selected into 12 person juries. The rejected prospective jurors were sent back to the holding room.

I was selected from myfirst "cattle call." We heard a criminal case and found the defendant not guilty on all counts. We weren't saying he was innocent, but when someone comes at you swinging a pick-ax with intent to do you harm and all you do is whack him with a metal basebal bat-- that's self-defense, and we all agreed. The "victim" only had a bat-shaped welt on his back no cracked ribs or anything. In our view he was fortunate because, if the defendant was perpetrating an assault with that bat, we would be looking at that plus attempted murder charges too.

The experience was eye-opening. Maybe Jerry Springer and Maury Povitch aren't staged after all--- we met the real McCoys and the Hatfields on trial this week.

I posted on Facebook about being happy to go back to work once we were released from jury duty. A friend responded that she liked and then unliked my post because: "wanting to go back to work is just wrong." SALTS (smiled a little then stopped.)  I like my job; there was even a time in my career when my job was everything in my life. When I have to go somewhere that takes me away from my class, I long to be back in class, interacting with my students. Some say that's weird. I say I'm blessed, because I found my calling.

Even my students miss me when I'm gone. Most of them. That tells me something good.

We're now in BYOD every day mode. Third marking period. There is grumbling in the building because kids are being  kids and they push the boundaries. They do that with everything. It is more interesting to me what the kids are doing right than what they are doing wrong. I know-- that makes me wierd but then again John C. Maxwell points out that: "Your attitude is the outward expression of an inward feeling." What does it say about others who think that I'm too polyana?

What are they doing that's interesting to me. Some kids are using a notetaking app on their ipods, smart phones and ipads called "In class." This app lets kids take notes, in order, according to their class schedule, they can organize photos they take of notes from the chalk board and the app will save it under "Logan English Period 4" for example. Awesome. It works too-- they aren't as clueless about what's going on. Does this mean I am getting through to digital natives on their home turf? Too soon to tell...

Kids are plugging into their tunes on their ipods and pumping out drafts in record time. Some may peer into my room with disapproval of the freedom I've given my students, but my bottom line is being fulfilled. The work is getting finished and produced at higher levels of quality. Students are exhibiting signs of increased motivation. What's wrong with that?