I hate this channel.

You've been here before, in nightmares. You sit facing an enormous 3-D television screen, the resolution crisp as life itself. A wave of dreadful anticipation breaks, spitting flashes of heat across your face. You know what's coming, but it's as if you can do nothing about it.

Then it starts - that numbing reality show that no one watches, no one likes. You reach for the remote control, pick it up, push the channel up button. Nothing. The channel down button. Nothing. You hit the power button, the volume up and the volume down. Nothing happens. The show continues. You stand and try to run for the door, but it's as if your limbs are entrapped in bubbles of water, and you move too slowly towards the door. You push down on the door handle, finally able to escape, but it moves only a fraction. Locked. You have no key. You try again, with the same result.

Turning around, you face the star of the reality show: a familiar face, one you seem to see every day, or perhaps every other day. The star speaks to you, asks you why you are standing by the door. The star glares, but asks you nicely if you would please take a seat. Your face is still flushed as you sit, and the reality show continues. No laugh track. No suspense. No action. Just the star of the show talking, sometimes showing something on a screen, sometimes illustrating on a white board. It's boring you to tears - real tears, not the false lugubrious type that seem to always be shed on other reality shows. So you stay. The reality show runs through its usual course. No one watches. No one cares. But you have to stay, so you stay until you can go. Finally the star of the show says that magic words: "Okay, that's all for today. I'll see you next time. Don't forget to do your homework."

"I hate this show," you mumble as you leave the classroom. But then, you stumble into another reality show - different star, different set, but the same premise, the same effect. No one watches. No one cares. Two more of the same show, and you're ready to leave for the day.

"I hate this channel!" you scream.

The problem with this scenario is in the viewer, not the channel. In fact, it's in the whole analogy. School isn't a real-life TV show. It's not meant to entertain, at least not primarily. For students to extract the entertainment, they will need to understand that the redeeming quality of the "show" is in its power to educate, to inform, to improve. Becoming a better thinker or a better scholar is entertaining; it's better than any TV show you could possibly imagine. With this approach, your "shows" don't end after an hour or an hour and a half. They're not sitcoms that you can view with half a mind (or less) while still completing additional tasks.  (Read: Facebook, texting, YouTube, etc whilst class is in session.) If students engage with their classes, with their teachers, with their peers, and with the subject matter, the appeal of the show will coalesce around a deeper understanding of entertainment. With this approach, you won't feel stuck in a bad reality TV show that is mind-numbingly boring. Rather, you'll feel electrically charged to see how much you can improve, how much more you can learn, how much smarter you can be.

Turn off the TV. Come to class with a learner's mind and plug into your education.

Time keeps on tickin' (tickin', tickin') into the future.

I shouldn't be writing this - there's no time. I don't have time to keep a blog. There are dishes to wash, classes to prepare, papers to grade, kids to help, dogs to walk - the list is exhausting, the tasks the same. Writing takes time,  and making time takes more effort. Why should I make the time to do this?

I shouldn't make the time. I already stated that. Yet here I am, tapping away while my oldest son struggles through a spelling word search, my youngest son struggles against falling asleep, my wife struggles with my youngest son's aversion to falling asleep, and I tap away. I tap meaningless words on a meaningless screen and take meaningless steps towards a goal that seems beyond my reach. Futility incarnate. Tap, tippity-click tap, tap. I shouldn't be writing this, so I'll stop for now.

And then I'll pick it back up the next day. Still, on this new day, there are tasks to complete. Still, there are other endeavors I should pursue before the clock commands me to relocate, to eat, to sleep. So why am I wasting my time with writing? The clock does not command me to write; something else entirely is in charge with that particular of my personality. And there it is - my personality and the need (not the desire) to compose. How many metaphors could I include at this point about the fabric of my being, the water of life, the comfy blanket, the drug? I'll stay away from those to simply say this: for me, writing must happen.

Others see writing as akin to exfoliating with 30-grit sandpaper or taking a nap amidst bot-fly larvae. (If you don't know what a bot-fly is, be glad.) Still others equate writing with eating unsalted grits one grain at a time or raking leaves off the lawn with a plastic fork. I understand that. But writing must happen, for me.

All of us have that in us, that need to follow a path or to compose or to build. There exists no finite list of these endeavors, nor do these same require personal sacrifices. If I had to choose between being a proper family man and writing (a false choice, to which I alluded in the opening of this piece), I would without hesitation choose the former. But there is a way to pursue whatever it is we need to pursue and still find the time for everything else. We simply need to stand up to the clock, revolt against its hegemonic push-and-pull, and do what needs to be done. Like now - I'm finishing this post because there are other tasks to accomplish. Writing must happen, and indeed it just did.

Go chase it.

Fast Food Education – You want math with that?

At the risk of sounding snarky - and I suppose I should begin each of my postings in the same manner – education is not akin to fast food. Of course, there are some similarities, much like one can find between two “anythings” if one were to look hard enough. (At this point I’m going to lapse into a more informal tone and might even use the second person. This is a blog, after all, not an essay for an English teacher.) For example, both an education and a fast food meal cost money, but both public education and fast food meals are both quite inexpensive, when compared to the alternative forms of each (private education or higher education and a proper meal with multiple courses and an appropriate beverage accompaniment). Both an education and a fast food meal are satisfying to some degree – and in another line of thinking, both can make you sick when taken in improper quantities and with improper rapidity. I could go on, but I believe I’ve made my point.

The issue that I’d like to address in this post is the tendency of some students to approach their virtually free public education in the same way they approach ordering food from a microphoned plastic box while still seated in a vehicle. Picture this: You drive up to a plastic box and the microphone tells you to order when you’re ready. You quickly look over the options, and place your order. The voice tells you how much it will cost after, perhaps, asking you if you would like to make some alteration to your order (“Would you like that __________,” or “Would you like _________ or _________?”). You then drive around a corner of the building, or simply to the next window, and exchange money for food. You drive off and eat, and that’s the end of the transaction.

I’ve witnessed a few students take the same approach with education. They show up for class expecting to see a plastic box with their options clearly written, maybe with a picture or two. They can be listening to music and texting friends and essentially paying attention with a small part of their brains and still complete the order. They decide what they want and expect to move quickly on to the next window where they exchange something for their education – maybe it’s a PowerPoint presentation, maybe it’s a test, maybe it’s an essay – and they expect to drive off shortly thereafter with their “education” and enjoy it in all its greasy, juicy, flavorful splendor. It’s quick. It’s kind of dirty. And it’s they way the world works these days.

The problem is that education isn't a transaction. Sometimes, the options listed on the plastic box are complicated, and you might even need to choose more than one option at a time. The options take time to prepare, and they take time to “ingest.” Payment might require more than simple currency. It might take you more than a few seconds to decide exactly what you want, and that something might be offered only on Mondays and Thursdays from 2:30 – 4:00. You might not get the option of including (or NOT including for that matter) other elements of your order, hence the title "You want math with that?"

No, education is not fast food. To completely kill the extended metaphor, education is something to be savored and appreciated for its complexity of flavors. I fully understand and cherish that students have preferences and tastes. But even if you prefer chicken to beef, there are quite a few ways to prepare chicken. Let’s not rush into this school year – or any year of our lives for that matter, with formal schooling or without – by looking for the easiest route through our educational drive through. Get out of the car. Go into the kitchen. See how your education is being prepared. Ask questions about the preparation. Trust the skill of the chef. Then sit down and participate in the wonderful meal of learning.

There. The metaphor is dead. Now go study.

Grass clippings and new denim

Picture Adam Sandler singing his "back to school" bit from Billy Madison. That song's in my head. It always is this time of year. August for me is that song, the smell of grass clippings and the feel of starchy new denim.

The song didn't come around until I was already done with public education (that provides you with the date range that is more and more cumbersome to my psyche). It became really funny when I was a teacher. But August for me growing up was the month that brought the last few kick-arounds at the high school before soccer season started. The grounds crew really started to care about the grass in August (or so it seemed). They cut it more often. They watered it regularly. And they always seemed concerned about how many of us were playing on it. The grass was always there, though, and where there was grass, we were there. We played in August.

Usually around the same time, at some point in August, I would go school shopping. This was a strange ritual because it mixed the giddy excitement of acquiring "new stuff," with the ominous feeling that everything was about to become more important. Learning was about to have grades attached to it again. Friendships might be in jeopardy based on team placement or teacher assignments or locker locations. Girls would be there - every single day they would be there, not just on the rare beautiful and fleeting meetings that often happened in the summer. All of this importance was setting in just as the register was ringing up the notebooks and the Pee Chee folders and the pencils ("Mechanical ones, mom. Please? I hate sharpening pencils!"). There was the new clothing, too. To be sure, I thought the clothes were just as important as everything else. When I was growing up, new school clothes had to include new denim. Not "new-to-you" denim that already had holes, or that was already broken in. I'm talking about stiff, dark blue, hard to wear for at least a couple of weeks denim.

I spent the rest of August trying to break in the denim, and playing on the freshly cut grass, and wondering what in the world this new school year was going to be like. The possibilities soared overhead, and the demons tickled from underneath. In a more refined way, that same mindset remains as I write this first post of the new 2012-2013 school year. The possibilities this year are truly exciting. The demons will always lurk under me, and I will stand before them and do battle as I always do. But at some point this fall I'll catch a whiff of freshly cut grass, and I'll remember how the denim felt after breaking it in.

And then I'll remember that I pegged those jeans, and that I had a mullet, and I'll cringe and try to continue repressing my childhood. Here's to a new year, and the soaring possibilities it brings.

So what are you going to write?

Great. I have a blog. I'm now one of bazillions of people on Earth who have a blog. It's great, having a blog. Just great. Now I can keep a record of all things pertaining to my professional life at RPA - in one place. I just have to start typing and let the ideas flow and then students, parents, other teachers, random people from Istanbul and Kumasi and Chengdu will "instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano." All I have to do is start typing.

And there it is: Fear. It flashes it's wicked little smirk before asking me a question faintly veiled in accusation: "So what are you going to write, hmmm?"

My response does not come easily. In fact, at first it does not come at all. I don't know what I should write. And even if I write something, who is going to read it? And if anyone reads it, who will actually like it? Whom will it benefit? And did I just use "whom" correctly, or should it be "who"?

We'll just have to see, now won't we? Here's my response, Fear. Take it or leave it.