Thrilled

So, I received my invitation just the other day to PRESENT AT NCTE 2010!

Two friends and I submitted a proposal late in 2009, and it was accepted. I will be discussing personal belief statement essays in our session while my fellow teaching friends will discuss choice literacy and Socratic Seminars. Sharing this news with my students was important to me. I'm forever encouraging them to take chances and be fortified by the taking of the chance in the first place; if the risk pays off, all the better. They recalled the enthusiasm with which I shared my experiences after NCTE 2009 (and they recalled the books--dear God, the books!), so they knew how much this meant to me.

In the midst of the anxiety brought on by the current state of affairs in NJ schools, the acceptance of our proposal was welcomed news to say the least. I'm not sure what will happen with my position next year. There is a strong possibility that it will not exist. I'm feeling curious above all else--curious to see what's next. I'm counting my blessings that I'm not one of the many who will lose a position and have to worry about how they will afford their mortgage or childcare. I have no spouse, no child. I live at home. I'm actually in the most perfect of positions to lose my job, if there existed such a thing. And I'm among the very few who could ever write a thing like that at a time like this.

Let's hope the populace in my district stops letting the governor do the thinking for them. (Fat chance.)

Two Things.

This: builtinbirthcontrol

And this: reverentreader


The blogs of peeps I love.

Word.

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe . . . The first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world "outside" us is largely hostile. We are forever "conquering" nature, space, mountains, deserts, bacteria, and insects instead of learning to cooperate with them in a harmonious order.

--Alan Watts, The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are


P.S.--I still hate mosquitoes.

Daily Bread

I wonder what it's like to not understand how blessedly amazing it can feel to punch in some numbers to a grade book, watch a student's average move up to a 70%, and be thrilled.