Last Christmas

So. Last night I had my first excursion to a new bargain bookstore having decided that I should do something special for my kids and get them each a hand-picked classic novel for Christmas. Add this to the fact that I've had them bring in stockings over the past several days to be filled by their classmates with treats, and you have me being, once again, the sweetest teacher ever.

I put some work into it too. Not only did I flirt excessively with the girl working at the bookstore to get a bulk price, but I matched up each of my homeroom students with a worthwhile literary work (Of Mice and Men, Anne of Green Gables, Our Town, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Hobbit, Little Women, etc).

The end product was thus: sixteen kids with stockings filled with literary goodness and sugary grossness.
And so, the kids opened their stockings, discovered the treasures that they held (the kids brought in homemade candies, cookies, sour straws, hand lotion for the girls, hackey-sack-type balls for the guys, little light-up toys, and so on)...
And guess what?!? They were complete jerks about it. Seriously. I got one thank-you and about a hundred complaints along the lines of "Ms. Brogan's class is doing breakfast, why aren't we doing breakfast," "I'm telling Dr. Prentice that you gave us a party, that way he will HAVE to cancel his lesson plans," "What? I got Wheelock's Latin? (a $30 book), what am I supposed to do with this?"

It sucked. They whined through an awesome holiday party, they whined through getting to watch To Kill a Mockingbird (starring Gregory Peck) and they whined their ways right down the hall and out the door.

Lucky for them I don't have to see their smelly little selves for more than two weeks.

Sheesh.

On the bright side, one little girl sang "Christmas Shoes," one of my two least favorite Christmas songs, but she is so cute that it was worth it. I've got a video clip if you'd like me to post it. Send your requests.

My other least favorite Christmas song is "Mary Did You Know?" mostly because the answer is a simple, resounding "YES". Yes, she did know. An angel told her. Did you even read the Christmas story? Get a life.

24 hours from now I'll be on a too-hot, stuffy plane surrounded by sweating fat people bound for the murder-capital of the world, which, if all remains as it is, will be under ten to twelve inches of snow and dense cloud cover.

The sound quality isn't good, but if anyone should have attempted to remake this song, it was jimmyeatworld.

Steady As She Goes

Lately I've been hearing from all sectors of my Web 2.0 life that I need to focus my blog, refine my vision of what I'd like it to be and get into a groove. I've been taking that to heart and after at least 2 1/2 hours of consideration I think, if my blog could be known for only one thing, I'd like it to be the exhaustive and complete source for all "I like my coffee like I like..." jokes. I only know of three or so variations myself, but I know there is potential there. Try your hand at one today and leave it as a comment.

Breathing Easy

Since I've started teaching, every Friday is the best day of my entire life. Our Fridays are shortened, which means that the kids leave at about 1:30 and I don't teach Latin at all - a small compensation for the fact that the periods between classes are only three minutes. While I struggle to stay on task for that extra afternoon prep-time, I enjoy the fact that the four classes I do teach on Fridays are shortened to 40 minutes.

Yesterday the 8th graders gave impromptu speeches, based on prompts like "If you could tell Obama and McCain one thing, what would it be?" and "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" They were required to speak for a minute and a half and then answer a question about their topic asked by one of their fellow classmates. It was by far the funniest day yet in my class, especially when it came time for the student with the prompt "Tell Mr. Good's life story" to present.

It turns out that in the eyes of my students I am a closet Canadian, born in 1979, to a world renown cupcake chef, and the son of a carpenter with an obsession for rocking chairs. I was also an amateur jump-roping star with Olympic aspirations, who kept rats and goldfish as pets (and a rat curled up in the pocket of my suit at all times).

I'm nearly finished with Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and while I've enjoyed the ride, not a bit of that enjoyment comes from picturing my grandma, a woman who would be about Julia's age, were either of them still alive, and nearly her height, as well. My favorite moment in the entire book occurred on page 289 and constitutes the harshest euphemism I've ever encountered, which is saying something as I'm a sort of connoisseur of kakophonisms. After relating how her dear friend Jim Beard had nearly died of heart failure Child says: "It was a close call. We were now at the age where some of our oldest and best friends were 'slipping off the raft', as the saying goes..."

Okay, first of all, that's surely not a saying and secondly, for any of us who have seen Titantic or read "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane, that is an unnecessarily gruesome way to refer to death. And lastly, it's hilarious. Almost as funny as a T-Rex delivering pizza on a tricycle.

Here's a little bit of extra Julia, just to make your day:


For those two of you that knew her, tell me that this doesn't look like my Grandma Good. .

Eight Days a Week

Have you ever worn the same shirt for everything you had to do outside the house for two or three days in row? Have you ever had this great scheme ruined by seeing someone at Wal-Mart that you are supposed to watch a movie with the next night? Well, don't tell the world, but I only have one non-dress shirt left. Seriously. My luck has held out for like a month: I never see the same people twice outside of work, but soon the inevitable will happen and laundry day will be forced upon me once again.

The Walrus and The Carpenter

I read far too little. As I prepare to teach 2-3 authors per week to my eighth graders I read a lot of mini-biographies (of varying credibility) on figures like Jean De La Fontaine (a French fable-writer), Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, and Robert Service (the poet who wrote “The Cremation of Sam McGee). Learning that Lewis Carroll was reading Pilgrim's Progress at age 7 or that George Orwell had read every work of Charles Dickens before he was twenty, not as a matter of pride, but as a matter of course, I get the feeling that I'm already impossibly far behind. And I am.

I'm twenty-two and it's too late for me.

I could be content knowing that I probably read about ten times more than the average American (after all: it's not what you do, it's who you beat) but I'm not. I love the fact that I'm in a book club with friends from Hillsdale, but I'd like to doing a little more to close the gap between myself and the cultural standards of the past.

So, (and I'm especially talking to Mike, Pat, Kevin and Jose) I'd like to get something going where I can read great authors and discuss their works on a more regular basis. The idea came to me today of starting an “Essay of the Day” group, where we could each suggest one essay by a notable Western thinker every week and write a review to which the rest could respond. It wouldn't be much and definitely no more than one essay per week per person, but it would keep me intellectually engaged outside the classroom and I think I need something to get me involved in conversation with someone older than 14.

I took about 10 minutes yesterday (we were reading “The Walrus and The Carpenter”) to field all the arguments my students could come up with to prove to me that pigs didn't have wings. They were unable to overcome my logic,and the proverbial question of “whether pigs have wings” is still open for debate.

If you read this blog and would like to be a part of something like an “Essay of the Day” group, please leave a comment with your thoughts/suggestions and if there's an interest, I'll take the time to begin putting something together.

Also, I was looking through old files last night and, in addition to uncovering the full album of songs that I wrote in high school (I was emo before Death Cab was a twinkle in Atlantic Record's eye), I found the series of Microsoft Paint single-frame comics I made for my first (and ultimately ill-fated) blog. This was a favorite of mine:

Indoor Living

Ever eat in the shower? It seems like it ought to be against the rules, but take my word for it: shower-eating is exactly the reason why they made Flavor-Ice popsicles. You know the ones contained within the plastic sleeve? Not only is the cold artificial flavoring extra tasty when you are being bombarded with hot water, but they are a good way to conserve water as well. If it takes you longer to shower than it does to eat a popsicle: you are wrong.

Plus, there's nothing like standing in your manwear (dress socks and boxers), listening to your favorite pump-up song (Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time") and knowing that you are still eating the same popsicle you were when you jumped out of bed 12 minutes and 43 seconds ago.

Ramen is for Lovers

Despite having a long weekend I spent most of the last four days indoors. I toured the local coffee house scene, spent time in the library, and went into school for a couple hours yesterday. While I'm jealous of friends who were hiking and camping over the weekend, I've been content to stay at home nursing a cold and reading good books.

I finished Chesterton's book on St. Francis, and I'll give a full fledged review of that in the near future, but I also wanted to mention that I started reading both Julia Childs' book "My Life in France" and Frank Herbert's "Dune". Although I can only really stomach Julia Child while I'm actually eating (as a substitute for Colbert or The Simpsons, since the lovely people with the unsecured wireless network have finally shipped out), it isn't bad. In fact, it's nice to be reading a book again that is primarily about vocabulary words and pictures.

Today is the start of my second week of teaching and I'm feeling pretty good about it at this point. Of course, I'm writing this blog post from the past (6:12pm Mountain Time on Sept. 1st) so I'm less than 12 hours from actually being back in the building, which is a little frightening, now that I think about it.

Today is also "Back to School Night" which means I'll be at school for every second of my day. From my arrival at 6:00AM, at which time I will set off the door alarms for the third time in a week, to when the last parents finally leave at 9:30PM, I'll be going non-stop. If there's one way to add pressure to your first month of teaching, it's adding parents into the equation before you've even given the first test. Bad times.

I keep envisioning it as a School of Rock experience, where the parents realize that I'm not at all qualified enough or concerned enough about hygiene to be teaching their kids.

Dear Everyone:
Please come live with me. That is an invitation to every one of you to come out here and spend some time in one of the prettiest states in the union without having to pay for lodging. Give me a couple weeks with The Joy of Cooking and I might even be able to guarantee you food.

Seriously though, the only reason to have a house is to fill it with people. If I didn't think that some of you would be joining me out here (as Brad and Leroy already did this summer) I would probably just live out of my car. So, let me know when you'll be here (notice there isn't a "I won't be attending" box to check). Honestly, if you are reading this you have to be at least in my top 100 favorite people, so make a little plan Stan, just hop on a bus Gus and get yourself out here.

Also, I appreciate how concerned you all are for my culinary health. Last night I made a salad for dinner and if you don't mind my saying so, I don't think it looks half-bad (not pictured: the tator-tots I had for dessert).

On Holiday

With a week down and 35 more to go I feel a little bit like a 6 year-old starring down the bottomless abyss of formal schooling.

This Week The Trend...

...was to get myself up about 5am, take the few unconscious hours that I have to spend, and work away the rest of them.

My kids are great. They really are. I don't think there's a brighter 8th grade class in the country, and I'll prove that to you come standardized test time. Also, after taking a couple hours just to finish some grading and enter it into the computer, I discovered that the student who has been my biggest discipline problem so far (which just means that he doesn't sit up straight and tries in small ways to be a class clown) is the only student thus far with a perfect A. After 3 quizzes, 5 homework assignments, and a writing lab, he has yet to miss a point. These kids are really good, and, despite the fact that they are only in 8th grade, most have done a pretty good job of understanding everything I say, even in the moments when I'm teaching in a way that would be more appropriate for seniors in high school.

Gauging the level at which I can lecture and the level at which I can expect my students to perform is going to be one of my biggest problems.

Now I'm sitting in a coffee shop using craptop to get some internet-related work done. Craptop is Brad's old hollowed-out computer that has neither battery, nor floppy drive, nor CD drive, and to top it all off the cord is covered with an electrical tape coat in an effort to make it more likely that the power-supply won't be cut off (which in the absence of a battery shuts the computer off immediately). Despite all that I've seldom been more thankful for a machine as i've been unable to "borrow" internet at home as of late.

Someday I do plan to return that internet. My future business (constructed on the Mr. Whitford business model) entitled "Good Times" will have free Wi-Fi.

If you didn't already know, and I'm pretty sure only two of you did, I signed up for RCIA classes last Sunday after mass. Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults is a preperatory program for receiving the sacraments in the Catholic church. So, over the next several months, starting September 6th, I'll be attending weekly cathecism class with the intent of entering the church at Easter. So, if you have reading material or well constructed arguments for me either about the Church, or about why I should run the other way, I'd like to hear what you have to say.

Is it wrong to listen to my blog playlist while writing my next post? It feels a little perverse.

Once again, I know I say this every couple days, but you should really listen to The Good Word playlist. Each post is named for a song and those songs grace the sidebar of the page. You can't really know me without knowing my music and I'd like to think that you wouldn't mind adding some of it to your own personal collection.

I laid off coffee this week so that I didn't end up getting jittery in class. But in the future I'll keep this in mind:



There are probably about a thousand episodes, but I really should start getting together a complete collection of The Red Green Show on DVD. It's one of the few really materialistic goals I have in life - along with having a secret part of my house that you can only get to by swimming through an underwater tunnel.

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

Wow. In the words of Mike: "oh my kittens." That was a crazy day. Not so much because of the day itself, but because I have to do it again, and while I spent two weeks preparing for yesterday, I only had 16 hours to prepare for today.

The Three Step Plan

Class went well, it really did. The kids were quiet and well behaved. I didn't stutter over my material, I didn't forget to mention anything too major and the worst part of the day was when I accidentally saved over my book check-out document with a temporary attendance spreadsheet.

In our second session of English class today we read the poem "There is no frigate like a book" by Emily Dickinson. These kids are going to get their fill of Dickinson, but I thought beginning with that poem was especially appropriate because of the subject matter and the fact that it is ingrained upon the deepest part of my gray-matter in the voice of Mr. Tobey who read it in my own 7th grade English class.

The poem is as follows:

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

I loved telling the kids about how Emily Dickinson slowly developed into an incurable recluse, and how her poems were only gathered and published after her death when they were found stuffed into her desk and even into the walls of her bedroom where she spent most of her adult life. For my money she is one of the greatest minds that ever lived and perhaps it was because she confined herself to the small beauties of her hometown and childhood home. Emily only traveled further than a few miles from Amherst once, and that was to visit her father who was serving as a congressman in Washington, D.C.

It was the simplicity of Emily Dickinson's life that really allowed her to become a great writer and thinker. She knew very little of the world, she had very few books to read, but what she knew she knew exceptionally well.

It occurred to me the other day that to be fully human - to be really living the human experience - only three things are essential, and that our models of humanity, from Shakespeare and Dante to John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, have shown us what this progression looks like.

1. Know Yourself - The truth is often so incomprehensibly simple that it can take us years to wrap our minds around even a small aspect of it. From our birth, our education should not be centered on "doing," but on being. It is not and has never been our job to find a profession or to learn a trade, but it turns out these things happen naturally as we learn to see the native beauty in ourselves and the world around us. But how does this education take place? Well, as I see it, if you are given access to formal education then the best way is through the masterworks of Western literature:Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton. When you are done with them: raking leaves, swimming, taking long walks, stargazing, playing with children, cooking your own meals, building a fire. That's how we become human. Neither the means nor the definition of humanity have ever changed, we've just developed an increasing number of inventions to distract us.

2. Make Yourself - As we digest the beauty of the universe and the produce of minds who have devoted their lives to pursuing the highest truths of the nature of man, we slowly begin to see the disparity between what we are and we ought to be. Between Jesus, Socrates, King Arthur, Odysseus and Atticus Finch, we have no excuse for wanting to stay the way we are and not conforming ourselves to a higher standard.

3. Make Yourself Known - "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten, because a tree is known by its fruit." - Matthew 12:33. Most literature, poetry, and culture in general today is a result of men forcing their way past self-knowledge to making themselves known. I can't imagine that a mind like Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson could do anything but write. You can see in their words that no matter how intricate and layered their meaning and intent, the composition was the effortless and natural consequence of comprehending real and abiding truth. I don't want to make this sound like reaching nirvana or anything like that, but I can't imagine how such understanding and comprehensive souls could do anything but provide, out of their abundance, signs and symbols that might act as intermediaries for the rest of us. Much like the atoning sacrifice of Christ, these giants of intellect devoted their lives and often their deaths to building a bridge between us and the truth.

Time

Today I demand that you all listen to the song of the day. It's so good and so 90's.

Monthiversary/First Day of School

Today marks a couple milestones. First, is it the monthiversary of my blog. I've managed to post every day since July 25th, which was a big goal I set for myself at the end of the summer. It's also my first day of school. Today I'll finally begin the year that has been in the back of my mind since I was old enough not to want to be a zookeeper when I grew up. It seems surreal that I'll actually be doing it.

I'm nervous and excited. I've told myself again and again how I want to carry myself. How I want to interact with the students. I know that if I walk with integrity and convey an earnest love for what I'm teaching, then if I fail it will be because teaching is not my vocation. We'll see what the first day brings. As prepared as I am for the exhaustion, I don't think there's any way I can be prepared for experiencing my first day with the middle schoolers.

I love that some of these kids will be in my class for three hours a day. All 7th and 8th graders at CMCA have two English classes per day and about 15 of my students will be back again for Latin.

Here's how my room looks at the moment. If all goes well the blank spaces on the wall will soon be filled with poems that we read and discuss in class, artwork from the Latin students as they illustrate vocabulary words, and the quotations which we will discuss at the start of each class.So, think of me today. Remember how your 8th grade year went and let me know what to look out for, what to do, and what not to do. I'll owe about half of you a call when I'm done for the day. Hopefully I'll still be standing when it's over.

Career Day

Part of growing up is finding out that most things are trite because they are true. The number one stereotypical "to-do" item on any T.V. show or movie is "pick up the dry-cleaning," and after dropping off my dry-cleaning for the first time ever I totally forgot about it. So, last night I picked up two pairs of pants that had been deserted there for going on two weeks.

T-minus 6 Days 'Til Kids...

This is gonna be quick because I don't have much time, but I wanted to update everyone on how the first week of training at Cheyenne Mountain went.

First of all, they have a sweet alternative to social security called PERA. That's right, I won't be paying ANY social security this year. Pretty nice huh? Instead I contribute to a PERA retirement fund that pays me when I turn 65 regardless of (though in proportion to) how long I've worked, and would pay me sooner if I were to keep teaching in Colorado.

Also, instead of paying a couple hundred dollars a month for health insurance I'll be getting a health savings account through the school. That means that I pay only $30 a month and the school puts $100 (tax free) into my a savings account in my name. As long as I use this account for health-related items they too are tax free. But, if I choose to use the money on something else, I can. All that happens is the money that I want to use gets double-taxed (once for being income and then again for sales tax). So, provided that you're young and haven't spent more than 10 years in the Social Security system all this a pretty good deal.

Now for the fun part: some pictures of my classroom.

Here are my classroom rules. They are all Shakespeare quotations. Just click on the image to make it big enough to read.

And here's a shot of the front of my classroom with my sweet bookshelf border (with about 100 actual titles of great books).
And finally my time-line. At this point it only had Emily Dickinson on it and no actual numbers, but it's progressing.
Those pictures are from last Thursday so I've made some progress since then, I'll be sure to post some more before kids arrive next Monday.

Group Participation: I'm planning on doing a famous quotation every day as a class warm-up, so if you've got a favorite you should post it as a comment. I can use all the help I can get.