This goes under the simplicity banner. Today I:
– sent by boss my lesson plans. It took three minutes because they are the same every week.
– called Matava for a story because I do that whenever I will be observed that week.
– graded some scantron T/F tests from last week and put them in the gradebook. That took fifteen minutes.
– hung out with my department home boys and girls in our common planning.
– got the news from my AP on how he took those those two kids out of my classroom and talked to him for awhile.
– enjoyed my three French 1 classes just doing some PQA for the story tomorrow and the reading Wednesday.
I admit that I am now a half time teacher, but it doesn’t change the victory. There was no sense of hurry. Everything was simple and no tasks or activities were piled up to throw off my sense of balance. I had no fear, as I used to, of seeing certain people in the hallway. My classes were slow and fun and I focused on the kids, trying to get these victims of the pedagogy of poverty to open up and be more human in spite of their years of training to do the opposite under the blanket of false instruction.
It was a good day. It sounds so simple and it was. The astounding part is that a simple, uncluttered day happened in a school in the United States for a teacher. That is so rare these days. I remember the days when I looked and felt like I was on crystal meth for all the insane things I would do in the course of a day.
We can simplify our teaching, you guys. We can do this. Deep breath. Though the world be crazy all around us, in those psychically dangerous hallways that can be so very, very dark, we have reason to act otherwise.