Trying to get the hang of this

We’re in week two of having students in this new covid-education model, and I’m trying to get the hang of it.

Today, my seniors pointed out that I was wearing my mask backwards. It’s a simple surgical mask, and I have now been wearing it backwards for at least two weeks. It’s never too late to make a change, though, I hope?

I rubbed hand sanitizer in my eye yesterday.

On the first day (well, the third of four first days, with the way our schedule is arranged) I didn’t recognize a student I’d had in class last year. I called her name out from the attendance sheet and scanned the room, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Then this other girl raised her hand. Oh, I realized. That’s her. She’d dyed and straightened her hair, and with the mask, I had only her eyes left to identify her. I’m not observant enough to catch that, though. I could be in real trouble learning names this year.

Talking to a room full of people with a mask wears me out, and I spend half the time wrestling with and adjusting the mask. I am finding myself favoring lesson plans for in-person class that involve my saying nothing.

I interviewed a former student about The Road and have assigned listening to it to my current students. He’s read the book numerous times, so he’s an expert. I’d love to do more of this–inviting former students to be visiting experts on relevant topics.

Trying to get the hang of this

We’re in week two of having students in this new covid-education model, and I’m trying to get the hang of it.

Today, my seniors pointed out that I was wearing my mask backwards. It’s a simple surgical mask, and I have now been wearing it backwards for at least two weeks. It’s never too late to make a change, though, I hope?

I rubbed hand sanitizer in my eye yesterday.

On the first day (well, the third of four first days, with the way our schedule is arranged) I didn’t recognize a student I’d had in class last year. I called her name out from the attendance sheet and scanned the room, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Then this other girl raised her hand. Oh, I realized. That’s her. She’d dyed and straightened her hair, and with the mask, I had only her eyes left to identify her. I’m not observant enough to catch that, though. I could be in real trouble learning names this year.

Talking to a room full of people with a mask wears me out, and I spend half the time wrestling with and adjusting the mask. I am finding myself favoring lesson plans for in-person class that involve my saying nothing.

I interviewed a former student about The Road and have assigned listening to it to my current students. He’s read the book numerous times, so he’s an expert. I’d love to do more of this–inviting former students to be visiting experts on relevant topics.

Snapshot: Reading Key, listening to Vivaldi, dreaming of Midsummer

Lots going on at the moment, all of it good, as far as I’m concerned.

I’m currently reading: Harrison Scott Key’s latest, Congratulations, Who Are You Again?

I would love to make Key get some miserable job and watch him skewer it with his wit. Would he go back to teaching in a high school just so I could read his observations? I love what he does in one section of this book with a brief foray into salesmanship and fundraising.

I found many great books, like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which gave me great career advice while simultaneously making me want to microwave my own head. The advice included such helpful nuggets as synergize, which is known as “collaboration for jackasses.” The book also taught me to “put first things first,” in which I was instructed to complete urgent tasks before non-urgent tasks, which made me sad that the world needed a book to explain this, and so I non-urgently hurled this book into the garbage. Other books introduced me to bone-chilling new words and phrases, such as influencer, low-hanging fruit, and breakfast-meeting.

***

In the classroom, my sophomores are still struggling through A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We’re trying to have fun. Seared in my mind is the gentleman who played Helena as a deranged old man–it certainly made it clear why Demetrius would run far, far away from her, leaving her to the mercy of wild beasts. Another student says she’s going to start calling people acorns as an insult, proving that Shakespeare is relevant in unexpected ways.

***

This week The Curator published an essay of mine about libraries. It’s a longer piece, which I hope doesn’t turn off readers, but it gave me an excuse to praise the public libraries of my life.

In eighth grade, our long-term substitute teacher must have misread the class requirements because she assigned us 10-page papers on a local history topic—a challenge for high school students—and we had to use holdings that were locked away in the library’s basement. That basement was everything you’d imagine of a 100-year-old New England library’s basement—dark and a bit damp, with a chained-off area. By now my imagination has augmented the scene so much I picture an arched doorway and iron gate, but I’m probably making that up.

***

In Bible study I’ve been teaching Solomon’s building of the temple. We were looking at the fulfillment of promises so clearly depicted in 1 Kings, recognizing how the Promised Land functions as another Eden, the people ultimately blessed by God’s presence in the Temple. How amazing to see this recurring idea in scripture, that God desires to be present with his people. If Solomon will be faithful, Yahweh promises, “I will dwell among the children of Israel” (1 Kings 6:13). Solomon won’t be faithful, but that does not change Yahweh’s desire to dwell with his people, which recurs with Jesus (whose name is “Emmanuel,” God with us), and is is the lynch pin to the beautiful culmination of Revelation 21:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

***

While working I took a break from listening almost exclusively to the Danish String Quartet (Wood Works and Last Leaf are fabulous albums) to revisit Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Please, Lord, hear this playing of “Spring” as a plea for mercy from single digit temperatures.

***

I completed the program for the upcoming writers’ conference we’re hosting for AP students. The cover art is from a student, Eva Nichols. I believe it is time for her to start taking paid commissions.

Copyright Eva Nichols.

 

 

The Coolest Cycling Poster

I want this in my classroom. And on a t-shirt. I guess I’ll have to settle for the background on my computer desktop.

I wish I’d bought that album on CD instead of on iTunes

I think my fascination with owning digital music has just about exhausted itself.

It happened officially when we got a new computer. The old one was eleven years old and I had long ago disconnected it from the Internet, using it mostly to organize some files and type Word documents. I packed it up and put it in the garage, thinking its life was through.

Then I activated iTunes on our new machine and attempted to download the songs I had purchased years ago, but it wouldn’t let me. I had reached the number of devices I was allowed to put my music on and would have to de-authorize a device in order to activate a new one. The devices I could de-authorize include the eleven year old almost non-functional computer I’d put in the garage, a laptop I once used at work but that has been removed from inventory, and my current work-issued laptop that gets wiped clean every summer (requiring me to re-authorize iTunes each time).

Surely my situation results from my own negligence and not considering Apple’s policies. Possibly if I spend an hour working on it I can clear it up. I don’t care. To my mind the only important thing is to realize if I had bought the CD of Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Thile playing the Goat Rodeo Sessions, I would be able to listen to it on my new computer.

 

Phones and Manners: A video satire

One interesting element of satire, when it utilizes hyperbole, is to see how often the exaggerations are actually straight descriptions of reality. This video’s scene of the women drinking wine together isn’t far removed from the girls my family saw at the fair this year, recording themselves on their phones while sliding down a slide, apparently oblivious to what they’d just done . . .

10 Top Interview Tips for Your Favorite Coworker Who Is Trying to Leave

Have a trusted co-worker who is interviewing somewhere else? Are you afraid they’ll nail the interview get the job? Here are 10 tips that will surely bring about the best thing (for you).

1. Be fashionably late. If necessary, hang out outside the door for a couple minutes to make sure all your interviewers have a chance to get settled before you make your big arrival.
2. Wing it. Researching the company and the position’s qualifications are really not as important as showing them who you are despite what they want.
3. Relaxing is for sissies. If you’re too relaxed during the interview, they’re likely to think you’ll be relaxed on the job—like naps-when-they’re-not-looking and shopping-for-St.-Patrick’s-Day-relaxed. Be tense. It’ll show them you mean business.
4. Put your game face on. Everyone smiles during interviews, but look around a typical workplace. Are they all smiling? Are they friendly? It’s not really what the place wants. Want they want is victory. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan didn’t win championships smiling nice. Put your game face on, and they’ll know you’re a winner.
5. Don’t look them in the eye. Don’t look an angry dog directly in the eye, or he might attack. You look your interviewer directly in the eye, and the next thing you know, you could find yourself in the bathroom with scotch tape trying to repair your pretty dress.
6. Leave your philosophy at home. They know you have an approach to the job and some sort of experience. You wrote it on the application. Why should you repeat it now? Nobody wants to hire that guy who retells all the same stories all the time.
7. Look different. Dressing nice is fine, but what about making yourself stand out? What about looking so memorable they’re talking about you before they even get to your name in the pile of interviewees?
8. Don’t ask questions. People say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but are you willing to risk your future job on such a maxim?
9. Come Empty Handed. Paper, pen, and the ability to take notes? This interview is not a time for jotting love notes and admitting you can’t remember anything. They see you jotting a note, they’ll automatically think: “This is the kind of person who will go to the bathroom and forget why they got up from their desk.”
10. Don’t say thank you. Saying thank you implies that you owe them something. Your thinking they owe you something means your confidence is too low. You deserve this. You own this. This job is yours, and this interview is simply a formality you have to go through before you take over that interviewer’s corner office with the window. Saying thank you is simply admitting weakness.

• Mother on Flickr by: Mick and Wout