I’m back. Break was more “fun” than “restful,” but I think that will play out in my favor on my deathbed (though probably not this week).
I was going to let this blog go dormant again until I felt inspired, but then today happened. It was the first day of the new term, a day of professional development so bad I’m still tempted to believe I was Punk’d. Multiple people got professionally angry at each other. A vocational teacher compared the district to an abusive husband. Not a single one of us became a better teacher.
It was the kind of day that makes you lose hope because it reminds you how much is out of your control. But it was also the kind of day that reminded me part of the reason why I came down here in the first place: to satisfy a journalistic impulse, to see what’s actually going on and document it. You can’t make days like today up. Having taught for a semester, I’m not naive enough to believe that I’ll actually have time to write extensively about my job while I’m still doing it. But I need to be keeping better track of my day to day, and this blog seems like a pretty good place to do it.
One last note: a conversation with a very important mentor figure in my life over break strengthened my resolve to be here more than any other encounter since I first drove down to Mississippi in June. It reminded me that I have more emotional capital than any of my students, because I’m neither (a) a teenager, (b) impoverished, or (c) from a broken home. Were I to quit, it would be a tacit admission that the kids are stronger than me, and that’s not fair. I’ve led a charmed life; it’s my turn to take some shit.
