7.03.2004

Someone's Trying To Tell Me Something...

Events in my life keep showing me one way, and I keep going the other. What's my deal? Am I trying to escape the inevitable?

I am seeing very clearly some new (and not so new)issues and ideas.

Now that the summer is here, I am able to really concentrate on what it is that I want and don't want. This is the time to perfect my "game plan," so to speak.

I love that I have the summer off to think about these things. It really recharges me and helps me to center myself again. Working in the public school system, especially at a school like mine is really disorienting at times. Trying to survive in the midst of such dysfunction is really a damn shame. But it's very necessary if I'm going to make it at all.

People always ask, "those kids got you going, huh?" And I always answer, "the kids are the part that I love. It's the adults I could give or take, even on a good day!"

Sadly, we are all in this ailing, dinosaur of a system, which I hope is nearing its extinction. It's too big and cumbersome, and most times it seems as if nothing works.

So, most teachers (myself included) are trying to create order out of disorder, peace out of systemic chaos. And still, there are those who are just there for a paycheck. They are there to fulfill something they didn't have, to find something they lost or never got in their own childhood.

Teachers are most consistently ordinary everyday human beings. However, we are one of the only professions to be charged with such extraordinary responsibilities. We shape lives and the future leaders of this country (and quite possibly the world) with what we do ordinarily and every day.

I just wish all adults would respond rightly to the importance and urgency that is our children the way we must every day.


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