It was fun to start today's classes with one of my favorite love poems: Falling in love is like owning a dog It's Thursday so it's reading day in my classroom. My IB kids seem to love it. They are involved in their books and look forward to having time to read them. Some find precious little time outside the classroom to read. They swear to me that they're so overscheduled that they spend zero time on TV, MySpace, and other time-wasting pursuits. How sad. I know their lives are busy, but it bothers me to think about being a kid with zero time to yourself. I know my life was an exception in many ways, but I remember my high school years as a time when I felt like I ordered my own existence for the most part. Certainly school took a big chunk of my time, and I did my share of homework (mostly in Trigonometry), but I also had time for the beach, tons of reading, walks in the woods, even some dating and a social life. I always thought I grew up kind of fast, but now I see that the drudgery of being an adult, being overscheduled, having a stack of responsibilities, etc, has been introduced to kids much earlier than when I was young.
Today most of them are reading Of Mice and Men, the text we're studying in class right now. Next week we'll watch the movie which makes for an easy four-day week for me. Can I begin looking forward to the weekend already?
It's birthday week for me; I keep expanding the celebration. Enjoy all the love in your life today!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
Another Friday
It's happened again! We check another week off the list and move into the weekend. Never mind that I'll be burning up my whole Saturday with hurry-up-and-wait at a debate tournament--sounds like fun, but the reality bites. Never mind that I must make family visits on Sunday. Never mind that the stack of grading I'm accumulating is several inches high now. Never mind that grades must be up-to-date on Monday afternoon for interims. I've got my "Be Here Now" attitude on and contentment prevails. If James Taylor is right and the secret of life is enjoying the passing of time, then today it feels like I've mastered the secret. Tomorrow? Who knows?
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