Needing to relax...
I've been really stressed, lately...so many things that people want done...so little time to do them...
And I think I've been a little edgy with the kids...
Friday, progress reports went out...and I informed the kids, yesterday, that the largest proportion of kids in both classes got F's...
Why?
Because they sat and stared at me or socialized with their neighbors and didn't do or turn in any work...
And by last Friday, I was sick of it...so I let them hang on their F's until something changes...
It gets really annoying working your ass off all of the time, listening to complaints from parents, administrators (though they've been fairly good, this year) and the public (though terrorism has really overshadowed the very complex and difficult policy discussion around public education) about how you're never doing enough...
And, in class, watch students persistently stare at you or their neighbor...and do no work...
This is one of the little intangibles about pressuring for results that so many people don't account for when they decide that their desire to get stuff from other people is more important than their own welfare or their own sense of their lives...
The frenzy for it, these days, is so strong that quite a while ago -- 4 or 5 years ago -- I finally decided that I wasn't playing ball...
Once it becomes clear to you that people who are ordering you around or who are pressuring you for results are not really terribly interested in your welfare...
You learn to blow them off...
I'm sure that's how many kids feel about their teachers...and administrators...and many about their parents, sadly...
And I'm afraid that, lately, though my frustrations have plenty of validity...
That I've become one of those people...
So...
Today, I'm working on a permission slip...to see if maybe we can watch a movie, together, on Friday...
Ever since I saw Glory Road, this summer, I've wanted to show it to the kids...
It's a great movie, if you haven't seen it, about the 1963 Texas Western Miners winning the NCAA championship with the first college basketball team to start 5 black players, many of whom never planned on going to college, who not only defy all of the odds to win the tournament, but who earn college educations to go and contribute much more to their community than they had probably ever planned before graduating college...
We're going to watch the movie or do something to relax together, and not just be all work and no play...
Because I'm tired of being a grumpy teacher always complaining to the kids and to Melissa about how the kids won't do any work...
Before the last 6 years, there were plenty of people that I looked up to for guidance on how to work and live my life...
Now there are very few...
And all I know is right now, this is what I and the kids need, I think...
Have a great week, everyone:)...
Love,
Ben
3 comments:
Forgiving, letting go--releasing fear and so on can be so difficult and yet so easy if the mind just attends to a little re-training. There are some free subliminal and hypnosis programs for these issues at www.innertalk.com and they helped me.
Comment spamming, obnoxious efforts at generating business--abusing open comment sections and looking for cheap methods of hooking suckers can be so difficult and yet so easy if the mind is free of traditional business ethics and good manners. There are plenty of ways to use automated tools to create comment spam to pollute legitimate blogs with advertising crap. Just ask the folks at innertalk.com. They showed me.
Ben--
I have been running an interesting experiment. Keeping CSPAN on the tube in the background all day long as I work.
If you want to find a one-week means of giving up all hope in representative democracy, this is a wonderful strategy.
I can't decide which is worse. The episodes of actual stupidity or the cases of obvious intellectual dishonesty (when people who clearly know better say stupid things).
Listening and watching to the house all day will convince you that we are doomed.
That's my upbeat message for the day.
Later,
CDB
Carson,
I keep trying to respond and losing my response.
The grandstanding, the stupidity, the intellectual dishonesty, the power-gambles...
They all overwhelm and undermine the credibility of the decent impulses that lead so many people to go into public service...
It's very, very sad...because public service is so important...and yet we treat it like it is a high stakes game where some of us have to win and some of us have to lose, which is exactly why so many people lose faith in it...
If we want a better process, we will need a process where everyone wins more...and eventually and always expanding...where everyone wins and is treated with dignity, period...
We are choosing the alternative, right now, and it's a terrible mess...
That's the awful part about C-SPAN...
The great part is this incredible service that the market and the cable companies provide to the world through this channel that Brian Lamb pieced together to give us a birds-eye view on the world without commentary or bias filtering it...
I have this sneaking suspicion that Brian Lamb is a moderate conservative...but you wouldn't know it from his interviews, I don't think, because he is one of the humblest journalists I have ever watched give an interview...he makes one of the most genuine efforts I've seen to just let people have their say without trying to spin their message around his own agenda...it's very impressive...and so is that station...and probably the biggest reason that I miss cable, right now:):)...
And the coverage of live intellectual coverage is unrivaled, even by PBS, I think...
I gotta get to work, here, Carson...but I've been trying to respond all week and keep getting interrupted:):)...
I'll talk with you soon, dude:):)...
Love,
Ben
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