Actual thought that crossed my mind today while decompressing over the 4pm TNT showing of the first season of Alias (which, of course, I own on DVD): When do I get to be Sydney Bristow? I would so much rather save the world one terrorist at a time than one inner-city middle school student at a time.

Oh. My. God.

Am I suddenly reverting to the blonde hair of my youth or is that a grey hair I see??

The Muse

I tell you the truth:
I have often loved poets,
but never much understood them.

And they, in turn,
while Love's fancy carried them,
loved me in chaste thought
and impure touch,
with precise words
and love neither quite cruel
nor entirely kind,
but always violent - for a time;

then sang songs
of beauty divine
or brilliance sublime
(or some other such thing)
sang to possess but not to be so,
and sang to exorcise
the betrayal of imperfection.

And this also: I never fancied myself
a poet, nor even a poetess,
but times there have been when
thoughts sprang, Athena-like
from me, though sullied by
the Afterbirth that I dare not bury,
which renders me
unclean for seven days -
or is it fourteen?

But their meaning
I shall have to leave
to those with a sharper pen.

So, this is slightly off-topic, but lately I've often found myself thinking of intellectual kinship, and what I can expect or hope to find in my students. My university supervisor* has challenged me recently to attempt to create students who might share in those interests which brought me to teaching in the first place. I wonder how I should go about doing this. Perhaps a book club? If so, then how? My most gifted students are all not interested in adding any activities to their plate, and dread expending intellectual effort that does not involve the memorization of the periodic table of the elements for trivia competitions. (On that note, I wonder how our National Academic League did in their meet today?)

Ideas would be greatly appreciated.

*(I almost feel like a hometown cheerleader on the Today show who feels the need to give a shout-out to all her friends and family, as of course I know that the aforementioned supervisor will be reading this. Woohoo! Go, Hopkins!)

Oh, the joy.

Today a colleague (and sort of mentor) resigned his position. He will remain on staff until a suitable replacement can be found, which is a very kind thing to do for a school with chronic substitute problems, but that is the only positive thing that can be said for the situation.

On that note, I spent the early morning with a combined class as my 7th Grade co-teacher was unexpectedly ill, and was reminded of the horror of a huge class as (in a shocking turn of events) two chronically truant children finally showed up. And as a suitable ending to the evening, after I had just spent two and a half hours rewriting and reorganizing my (paper) gradebook to reflect my new grading standards and style, I received a phonecall from my principal stating that, come next Monday, we were going to reorganize the homerooms and classes all over again (thereby, of course, making my entire afternoon a write-off).

Thankfully, I hadn't gotten to all the planning I was going to do. More importantly, I am grateful that Monday marks the beginning of a new unit. It would have been too much to expect that a reorganization of this kind would have been attempted prior to the beginning of the 2nd quarter last Thursday. Thankfully, we'll only be a week into the term.

Quote of the day on excite.com (oddly suitable once again - excite people, how well you know me!)

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
(Alistair Cooke)

Drama. There has been ever so much drama lately.

I am reminded of the time my 9th grade English teacher intoned in her gratingly awful faux-Brtish accent that a child dying in its cradle of Suden Infant Death Syndrome, while tragic, was not a tragedy. A tragedy, she maintained, involved a tragic hero or heroine whose fatal flaw brought on ruin and grief. I notice now, looking at the American Heritage Dictionary, that the meaning most people associate with the word, "a disastrous event, especially one involving distressing loss or injury to life," is in fact listed and therefore correct.

I hesitate to think what she would think of my use of the term "drama" to apply to the events taking place in my school over the past few days. Would she wince, or has she mellowed with age? Drama in this sense, referring to events that were overly-dramatic, seems highly appropriate. Then again, given my seventh-graders, everything is dramatic.