teacher stuff

Trying to explain this to people is complicated and doesn't lend itself to the blog very well. Also, at some point, I started to address my co-workers in the second person. If that's not you (read- if you just asked yourself what second person is), then sorry.

I teach with a fantastic group of people. They are a creative, insightful group individuals who care about both their subject matter and their students. They manage to successfully earn students' trust while continuing to challenge their classes to excellence. Furthermore, they're a blast to hang out with.

In general, I enjoy my job and feel like I'm keeping up my end of the bargain as a teacher.

However, I'm worried about a few things. I'll try to explain.

Reality #1: I've taught two new classes this year. When I'm not teaching the class I taught five times a day last year, (and sometimes even when I'm in front of those students) I'm generally afraid of what might happen. One of those anything and everything can and will go wrong situations...

I'm not sure why, but it genuinely freaks me out to tackle new material for the first or second time in front of 15 year olds.

Reality #2: I'm pretty sure that most of the people who occasionally offer me a flattering comment have no idea how unsure I am of myself when teaching my new classes this year. (And for those scoring at home, this applies to both courses I've taken on this year that aren't about American lit...)

Also, I'm well aware that I'm the guy who's always bugging someone with questions about this and that or how this happened or what went well a certain part of today and all that sort of thing. I don't know any other way to learn how to do this job.

Reality #3: If I had fallen into some other situation where the people around me weren't willing to explain lessons to me over and over, I would have quit. A long time ago, I would have walked and never thought twice about it.

That's not ok.

How can so many fantastic teachers exist around me and I not have a good way to learn from them?

(I suppose some witty/ironic thing about how there is now way for the teachers to teach the new teachers how to teach well should appear here... I'm not feelin it right now, but know that it should be said. )

Beyond looking at a calendar or sacrificing a planning period to watch someone else teach, there aren't many good ways to figure out how all that great teaching that happens in your classrooms comes to life.

In a meeting today, discussion went round and round about the merits and ills of submitting written lesson plans. I've seen fewer topics divide people and spur on pessimism like this one.

So, what's in it for you to write lesson plans?

If nothing else, they would help me learn to be a better teacher. If you write them how they make sense to you, it will help me learn to think differently. I would love to look through the notes my friends have made about how they teach The Road, Catch-22, Midsummer, Romeo & Juliet, 1984, Huck Finn, and a host of other works to see not only what my students may have discussed in the past that I could draw connections to with my units, but also to get ideas about what I might be able to adapt from other courses or levels to fit in my own classroom.

It's no big deal to me what the administration might do with the lesson plans developed by our department. I'm interested in looking at how you convince students to learn in your classroom. I don't want to know every gory detail about how class went or see some foolishly complex documents completed about what's happening in your room. What I'd enjoy seeing want to see is how you move from one thing to the next. I want to see the connections you make and the discussions you love having with certain literature. When I get stuck, it's the kind of resource that could both help my attitude and predicament.

What should I read next?

So what should it be? I'm stuck with several good books around and not an incredible amount of time to read at the moment.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux (he's the author of the novel I just finished, The Clearing)

Woodsburner by John Pipkin

In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Another good book

Check out The Clearing by Tim Gautreaux (pronounced go-trow according to my dad who was born in the same city in south Louisiana as this author...). Again, I found a little preview for this one, too.

This is the first book I will have read entirely on my favorite present from this Christmas. Snazzy, eh?

two fantastic finds

Check out these two things (well they sort of become one here shortly...) that I've found recently.

The first discovery is this little app that will let you sample a book (thanks to Spiefel & Grau).

The second is Philipp Meyer's first novel, American Rust, which is available for you to sample below. I stumbled across this book at a fantastic bookstore in Austin which you should visit any time you are near there. (Go after eating at East Side Pies.) The only unsettling element to Meyer's novel is that people actually behave the way that he's characterized them in the novel. And it's not set back in the wild west or in some other detached era. It's set in the present, and people really behave that way.

I'm aware that this is fairly vague, but I can't offer you a more enticing snipet of the story that the first chapter. Read it.

Church Talk 1 - Fall Festivals (or how we serve ourselves...)

Disclaimer: Churches do a great deal of good in most communities. On nights like tonight, if churches weren't putting things together for kids, many kids would end up in unsafe places or go without candy. I get that. However, I feel like these events reveal a few unhappy trends in which the modern church finds itself entrenched. So, with that out of the way, here we go...

Fall festivals irk me.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, it's often billed as some sort of safe version of Halloween that's put on by a church near you. The idea seems innocent enough, but is often a bait and switch where attendees are offered candy and entertainment only to be force fed a sermonette (and that's the best case scenario... it could end up being much more torturous than that...).

Many things with the Church rub me the wrong way naturally, but I'm particularly frustrated/confused by the Halloween alternatives offered on October 31st in church parking lots. If the Church is designed to be a group of people who make it their business to go out into the world and find ways to love the people who they come across, why, on the one night of the year that it's perfectly acceptable for you to offer candy to your neighbor's kids who you've never met are so many Christians all huddled together in parking lots at fall festivals? Not only are those people not in their neighborhood with the people who pass by each day, but they've likely either left a bowl of candy (which the first kid with no parent watching over his shoulder will promptly empty) or nothing at all on the welcome mat. Way to make a good impression on the neighborhood.

The Church has honed its skills at this approach to outreach. It's quite common for those in charge to default to an approach that asks what events will bring the most people to the building (or other strategically chosen location) so that we can interact with them there. Events like these are a common response as an alternative for parents and their kids when faced with the ills of the world.

Why is that?

Why has it become ok to gather together on nights set apart to be in our neighborhoods?

The more disturbing reality is that many church-going-folks expect this type of event to come together so that their kids have something fun (but not too much fun), safe (meaning isolated from those evil influences), and cost effective (aka free) to do on All Hallow's Eve. It also doubles as a place where kids can bring their friends (who aren't "saved") to get candy and have a good time. It looks like something for others, but is really an event for the members.

Unfortunately, the issues I see with fall festivals are only a symptom of a greater issue that's crept into the church.

The larger issue revolves around this set of problems:

• We've transformed membership in the church into something that more closely resembles membership in a country club than a group of like minded followers of Christ.
• We've made the church into a place we bring people who have problems.
• We've neglected the conversation about how we go about being the Church together.

Each of these areas of concern needs its own post for further exploration, but those will come quickly.

Tonight, on arguably the most neighborhood friendly night of the year, ask yourself why it is that things like fall festivals seem like such a good idea.

And remember, I know that there are good things that are happening there, but there are questions that are worth asking here, too. Join me in figuring all this out and continuing the conversation.

This might be the funniest thing I've heard in a while...

In a conversation with my sister, who's in Argentina at the moment, this came up:

then, i knew i had no other option so i went into my host parents bedroom and told them in spanish that my poop was stuck in the toilet

i said 'caca' and everything

they started rolling laughing

i told them i was going to go to my room and die

then i heard my host dad go into the bathroom and fill a bucket of water and poor it down the toilet

then he yells in broken english "goodbye! it's swimming!"

Fantastic.

The post about another future post...

For a long time I thought a lot of things about the way Church happens.

Then things changed. I'll get into that another day.

For a lot of reasons, I've kept quiet about many of the things I think about for a couple of years now (save for a couple of occasions in which the conversation was initiated by others around me), but I feel like I'm ready to talk about these things again.

There's a big part of me that doesn't know where to start with this and, in many ways, doesn't know where exactly it's going to end. In fact, that's one of the few things that I'm certain of with this whole deal: I've got no idea where this is going. I can see some of where we are, and I'm great at complaining about how where we've been has screwed up where things are now (I know what a charming quality, right?), but as for where things are headed, I'm not sure. Maybe that's why I'm so interested in these questions. I feel like this is going somewhere significant, but I'm not sure where yet.

In the midst of all those qualifiers, what I do know is that it's time for me to start talking about this again.

Wherever you find yourself, I'm interested in what you've got to say about these things.

If I haven't completely scared you off at this point and you're interested in a little more reading, check out this article by a guy named Michael Spencer. I don't agree with everything said in that article by any means, but I do like the questions he is raising for the Church. And just so you know, the ideas Spencer is discussing do represent many of the more radical viewpoints present in the discussion in which I've found myself.

I'll stop for now. I'll post thoughts about and reactions to the article sometime soon(ish).