Taking Attendance

Crossposted at Daily Kos as part of Teacher’s Lounge.

School stopped.

For me it was at 8pm last night, except for a visit to campus to pick up a midterm project…which didn’t actually happen because the student had an error she needed to fix.  Yesterday I learned that there was a silver lining in the 4 bomb threats we have had in the past 17 days.  Evacuating the campus wrought havoc on midterm exams being given, so they cut us slack on turning in the midterm grades.  I’m taking advantage of that and passing on some of that beneficence on to my student. 

She’s doing the class the hard way, by individualized instruction.  And I’m taking a constructivist approach.  She says she’s having fun.  Cool.

Anyway, school does not exist except as a place full of people for the next 60 hours or so.  Neither will the web, except for brief moments.  The world is stopping for a little all-about-me time.  Or maybe all about us.  And the Us will certainly vary depending on one’s point of view.

Debbie and I have our ceremony on campus tomorrow.  The college’s chaplain is going to officiate in his best Presbyterian mode.  Always best, I figured, to let an artists work in their own medium.  We each will have family present.  Debbie’s twin brother and his wife and her cousin came from Southern California.  My sister frosti has come from Oregon.  And we have friends who are coming.  I expect to cry at some point.

So there’s no Teacher’s Lounge tomorrow.  For the second time in its history, it’s on Friday night (the other being when I had to fly to Berkeley for a Critical Thinking conference in the summer of 2006).

But there still had to be a Teacher’s Lounge.  This makes 104 editions.  Two full years.  By my understanding of how these things work, that would make next week its birthday.

So you guys are going to have to amuse yourselves.  Perhaps it would be a good day, as was suggested a couple of weeks ago, to do a roll call.  I have this sneaking suspicion that their are plenty more people to whom education is an issue of extreme importance.  We are teachers and students, staff and administrators.  Or, even more importantly, we are parents.  Or we are older folks who have discovered in our life journeys that the secret to life is to keep learning, that as long as that is happening, then we remain young, even when our bodies begin to fail us.

I’ve always thought stories were more illuminating than polls.  Won’t you share one?

Here’s a couple of, I hope, appropriate poems.

Art Link Fire Teaching There must be a spark to which tinder can be judiciously applied to get a smolder (Or is the spark applied to the tinder?) With skill the smoldering tinder gives rise to a flicker and then a flame to which the kindling is added leading to creation of a real fire with the introduction of the hard wood How delicate is the the process that it can so easily be derailed I am a teacher It is my job to nurture the fire There is rarely a second chance if this flame dies –Robyn Elaine Serven –December 6, 2005

Art Link Sextet Love Does the Finding Love departed when I changed or at least what I thought was love but it came with conditions I could no longer fulfill I despaired of ever finding it again though I searched for it begged for it cried long hours and days at its demise and denial Eventually one stops looking I dedicated my life to helping others while I resigned myself to being alone It was then that love found me –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 13, 2006