Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Friends I Never Knew
There is something comforting about predictability. Comforting and terrifying. Don't get me wrong, I respect routine. As a teacher, I'd probably go out of my gourd if I didn't devise an organized system for confronting the thirteen thousand daily tasks that I face both inside and outside the classroom. This includes everything from remembering to bring in an additional ream of emergency paper in case the cellulose lottery that is our office supply closet doesn't pay off to managing a half dozen or more stacks of graded classwork intricately arranged around my desk. Yes, on the whole, routine is a good thing in a classroom, for both teacher and student, even if after 4 months, my students still do not quite understand that the big blue sign labeled "DO NOW" might be worth picking up and completing at some point...you know...in the near future!
At the same time however, routines can be disturbing. Granted, at home, they have their place. Nearly everybody has their own morning routine consisting of some combination of waking up with the alarm clock, falling back asleep, waking up again to a second (third, twelfth, etc.) alarm clock, showering, eating, dressing, and going out to face the day. And similarly, most of us have an evening routine where some food is consumed, teeth are brushed, undressing occurs, and sleep overtakes us so we can begin the morning routine all over again. And these routines are good things! We like these routines. They lend some stability to a chaotic day, like bookends on an overflowing shelf.
At school, I find routines to be more of a convenience that both administrators and students take or leave on a whim. Eat in class. Call a hall sweep. Random assembly? Why not! And does anyone actually even pretend to go to homeroom anymore? The few times either group actually adopt routines, they tend to be stupid ones. I have one student for example, who gets up and walks to my door every day two minutes before his class is supposed to end. When I tell him class isn't over, he has two responses: 1. Yes, it is. (attempt to walk past) 2. Oh... (walks back to seat very slowly...and...the bell rings) Or my favorite. Today we come back from break and receive our weekly Monday Updates from the principal. All well and good...but as I told her, today is Tuesday.
The best part of the update? Random unscheduled, otherwise unannounced half-day on Friday! Huzzah! Let's see how long it takes before students and remaining staff figure this out.
For me however, beyond the mundane role of routines in the classroom, there is a greater issue. I fear falling too heavily into routines in my thinking. An unfortunate side effect of my love of trivia and pop culture references is a tendency towards the Pavlovian response. I share this defect with other members of my family, but it happens to everyone. Mention certain codewords and you'll get someone in the room to say or at least think of, various lines from movies or catchy commercial jingles from their childhoods. And there's nothing wrong with this in small doses, but when it becomes utterly pervasive to the point of unoriginality, when wit fades into mindless repetition, that to me, is the first step towards intellectual stagnation...or at the very least, a hint that some new stuff needs to be added to the referential mix.
And why am I musing on routines, patterns, and references? And why am I asking you? And why am I falling back into my movie referencing habit by continuing this string of rhetorical questions? Because while perusing the Invisible Archives the other day to post about New Year's, I discovered that for since I started this blog, I have devoted one post to the end of winter break focusing on my feelings of desolation and despair that my wonderful time off is over yet simultaneous hope that things will be going better soon. And guess what this little essay was originally going to be about?
Yep. Musings on my time spent with friends back home, followed by some searing discussions of my doubts and fears on the edge of the metaphoric cliff that is the return from winter break, and then some sort of gung-ho, Goonies-never-say-die, tally-ho exhortation as I charged once more into the breach.
Oh and then probably that evening (this evening?), some sort of depressed "Oh hell, it was worse than I ever could have possibly dreamed..." essay.
Which is partly what this is, I guess.
But not entirely.
Because I am not going to fall into that rut.
Nope. Not this year.. Sorry, kids. Instead of continuing on this rant, I am going to cut things short through the skillful use of a tangent. Any of you nonbloggers reading this were probably not aware, for example, of a website called Technorati , which serves as a sort of search engine for web journals. You type in the address of a blog...http://invisibleben.blogspot.com for example, and it will search for links to that blog on other websites! Astounding! I tested it out and discovered links to my blog from several friends and colleagues...and a few people whom I have never met in person.
Needless to say, my mind was blown!
This is bigger than that time that I discovered that my blog was owned by Shade and Kenny Tay. Who are these people? How did they find me? Did they just stumble upon me drunkenly one night while searching for other blogs that mentioned the word teaching? Were they googling a long forgotten movie quote about Eleanor Roosevelt or asking Jeeves about Nikola Tesla and the liquids inside hand boilers? Who knows? The point is, they not only read this blog once, but have actually added it to the blog roll, and in the case of one actually posted links referencing specific posts. All without my knowledge.
Well, that all changes today. It is my great honor and privilege to welcome two dedicated fellow educators to the Invisible Blogroll. The first is a science teacher extraordinaire, who traded in a cushy deal with Scholastic marketing tales of her class's expeditions inside the human digestive system or into the center of the earth in favor of teaching middle school in the Big Apple. Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Frizzle .
(APPLAUSE)
Yes now. And next up, coming to you from the depths of rural America...a graduate of the University of Illinois who was foolish enough to get suckered into this business the same way I did, but seems to be enjoying herself nonetheless. Please give a warm welcome to my new favorite veggie-vittle cooking, frisbee throwing, grammarian: Mz. Smlph !
(APPLAUSE redux)
Ladies: My apologies for your delayed enrollment on the Invisible Blogroll. Even the most cursory perusal of your respective sites indicates that your inclusion is long overdue.
Readers: Help me make up for my mistake by visiting their blogs...post haste! Trust me, it'll be well worth your time.
Heck...maybe you could even make a sort of daily routine out of it...
There is something comforting about predictability. Comforting and terrifying. Don't get me wrong, I respect routine. As a teacher, I'd probably go out of my gourd if I didn't devise an organized system for confronting the thirteen thousand daily tasks that I face both inside and outside the classroom. This includes everything from remembering to bring in an additional ream of emergency paper in case the cellulose lottery that is our office supply closet doesn't pay off to managing a half dozen or more stacks of graded classwork intricately arranged around my desk. Yes, on the whole, routine is a good thing in a classroom, for both teacher and student, even if after 4 months, my students still do not quite understand that the big blue sign labeled "DO NOW" might be worth picking up and completing at some point...you know...in the near future!
At the same time however, routines can be disturbing. Granted, at home, they have their place. Nearly everybody has their own morning routine consisting of some combination of waking up with the alarm clock, falling back asleep, waking up again to a second (third, twelfth, etc.) alarm clock, showering, eating, dressing, and going out to face the day. And similarly, most of us have an evening routine where some food is consumed, teeth are brushed, undressing occurs, and sleep overtakes us so we can begin the morning routine all over again. And these routines are good things! We like these routines. They lend some stability to a chaotic day, like bookends on an overflowing shelf.
At school, I find routines to be more of a convenience that both administrators and students take or leave on a whim. Eat in class. Call a hall sweep. Random assembly? Why not! And does anyone actually even pretend to go to homeroom anymore? The few times either group actually adopt routines, they tend to be stupid ones. I have one student for example, who gets up and walks to my door every day two minutes before his class is supposed to end. When I tell him class isn't over, he has two responses: 1. Yes, it is. (attempt to walk past) 2. Oh... (walks back to seat very slowly...and...the bell rings) Or my favorite. Today we come back from break and receive our weekly Monday Updates from the principal. All well and good...but as I told her, today is Tuesday.
The best part of the update? Random unscheduled, otherwise unannounced half-day on Friday! Huzzah! Let's see how long it takes before students and remaining staff figure this out.
For me however, beyond the mundane role of routines in the classroom, there is a greater issue. I fear falling too heavily into routines in my thinking. An unfortunate side effect of my love of trivia and pop culture references is a tendency towards the Pavlovian response. I share this defect with other members of my family, but it happens to everyone. Mention certain codewords and you'll get someone in the room to say or at least think of, various lines from movies or catchy commercial jingles from their childhoods. And there's nothing wrong with this in small doses, but when it becomes utterly pervasive to the point of unoriginality, when wit fades into mindless repetition, that to me, is the first step towards intellectual stagnation...or at the very least, a hint that some new stuff needs to be added to the referential mix.
And why am I musing on routines, patterns, and references? And why am I asking you? And why am I falling back into my movie referencing habit by continuing this string of rhetorical questions? Because while perusing the Invisible Archives the other day to post about New Year's, I discovered that for since I started this blog, I have devoted one post to the end of winter break focusing on my feelings of desolation and despair that my wonderful time off is over yet simultaneous hope that things will be going better soon. And guess what this little essay was originally going to be about?
Yep. Musings on my time spent with friends back home, followed by some searing discussions of my doubts and fears on the edge of the metaphoric cliff that is the return from winter break, and then some sort of gung-ho, Goonies-never-say-die, tally-ho exhortation as I charged once more into the breach.
Oh and then probably that evening (this evening?), some sort of depressed "Oh hell, it was worse than I ever could have possibly dreamed..." essay.
Which is partly what this is, I guess.
But not entirely.
Because I am not going to fall into that rut.
Nope. Not this year.. Sorry, kids. Instead of continuing on this rant, I am going to cut things short through the skillful use of a tangent. Any of you nonbloggers reading this were probably not aware, for example, of a website called Technorati , which serves as a sort of search engine for web journals. You type in the address of a blog...http://invisibleben.blogspot.com for example, and it will search for links to that blog on other websites! Astounding! I tested it out and discovered links to my blog from several friends and colleagues...and a few people whom I have never met in person.
Needless to say, my mind was blown!
This is bigger than that time that I discovered that my blog was owned by Shade and Kenny Tay. Who are these people? How did they find me? Did they just stumble upon me drunkenly one night while searching for other blogs that mentioned the word teaching? Were they googling a long forgotten movie quote about Eleanor Roosevelt or asking Jeeves about Nikola Tesla and the liquids inside hand boilers? Who knows? The point is, they not only read this blog once, but have actually added it to the blog roll, and in the case of one actually posted links referencing specific posts. All without my knowledge.
Well, that all changes today. It is my great honor and privilege to welcome two dedicated fellow educators to the Invisible Blogroll. The first is a science teacher extraordinaire, who traded in a cushy deal with Scholastic marketing tales of her class's expeditions inside the human digestive system or into the center of the earth in favor of teaching middle school in the Big Apple. Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Frizzle .
(APPLAUSE)
Yes now. And next up, coming to you from the depths of rural America...a graduate of the University of Illinois who was foolish enough to get suckered into this business the same way I did, but seems to be enjoying herself nonetheless. Please give a warm welcome to my new favorite veggie-vittle cooking, frisbee throwing, grammarian: Mz. Smlph !
(APPLAUSE redux)
Ladies: My apologies for your delayed enrollment on the Invisible Blogroll. Even the most cursory perusal of your respective sites indicates that your inclusion is long overdue.
Readers: Help me make up for my mistake by visiting their blogs...post haste! Trust me, it'll be well worth your time.
Heck...maybe you could even make a sort of daily routine out of it...
