As an educator, how are you on the subject of t.v.?  And, more to the not-so-carefully-veiled point, how are you on the subject of TV Turnoff Week?

Seems the unofficial meme on my blogroll nowadays is Just what would you do for a little more energy? I’m seeing Hail Marys, white flags, and white knuckles everywhere. Here’s mine.

The same results are less exhilarating. Powerful first-semester tricks carry only a fraction of their potency now in the last month of the second. The energy necessary to engage my kids has doubled while my sleep schedule shrinks inversely. Factors are conspiring pretty well against the teacher right now.

So there are the mental stonewalling exercises, the eviction of un-positive thoughts, the conscious elevation of enthusiasm to nigh cheesy levels. There’s vigilance. Lightning must be caught now. What used to be a luxury is now essential.

So I keep my eyes open, fixed open, looking for math anywhere outside our textbook, outside the same openers and lectures and worksheets we’ve been running for nearly 180 days now. The second an idea or strategy occurs to me I write it down or hit speed dial 3 and have Jott e-mail it to me. I can’t risk forgetting anything fun at this point.

Eyes open. Even during The Office last Thursday, eyes open.

Like during the cold open, when Dwight hands Jim a demerit. Jim knows Dwight is just posturing and presses him on the details. In all his usual unctuousness, Dwight says (paraphrased and compressed):

You do not want to receive three of those. Three demerits and you’ll receive a citation. Five citations and you’re looking at a violation. Four of those and you’ll receive a verbal warning. Keep it up and you’re looking at a written warning. Two of those … that’ll land you in a world of hurt … in the form of a disciplinary review written up by me and placed on the desk of my immediate superior.

So I played the clip and gave today’s lead-off question: “If Jim is late once a week, how long until he receives that disciplinary review?” I realize it isn’t much but I’m just sucking for air, trying to catch a couple of good breaks per period per day, and realizing it’s far easier blogged about than done.

I was rereading my most recent post — the default activity when I’m feeling bored and narcissistic — and I realized I buried the lede beneath a pile of television criticism. Wrong blog, sorry.

And that thesis keeps hankering at me. I doubt it’ll leave me alone until I do it justice so the last paragraph, once again:

The truth, if you’re a speaker addressing an audience, is that the only way to get your audience more engaged is to become, yourself, more engaging. There is no shortcut. The solution is simple but not easy and the difference between those two adjectives lies somewhere on your TiVo.

That last point — that we can and should be imitating our favorite entertainers — is the most important.

I’ve led story development meetings. I’ve sat at a table with four other writers, a character to kill, and no way to kill him.

I’ve sat in front of my computer with a concept to teach and no idea how to make it engaging, new, or fun.

The two experiences are, in their intents and purposes and agony, completely the same.

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I’ve been watching The Shield compulsively lately. I’ll have an episode tucked into one corner of my screen while I design handouts or plan lessons or whatever. I’ve got some great television on deck too, the season finale of Friday Night Lights, for instance, but I haven’t watched and can’t watch any of them, simply because the twisted morality play of The Shield is engrossing to the exclusion of all other drama.

At the start of every episode, like so many other shows, they roll a recap of previous episodes. With 24, this recap tends to be so totally comprehensive, re-introducing characters only the mouthbreathers had forgotten, that I can’t help but check out.

The Shield, in contrast, plays only five or six choice vignettes, sometimes cut from seasons long-gone, and even though I just watched that episode last week, I can’t help but pay close attention.

Once again, there’s 24‘s sloppy, encyclopedic approach to story review and then The Shield‘s, where every moment of every recap pertains directly to the episode you’re about to watch. You know that every flashback is gonna blast through the current story arc like an asteroid.

How this matters to education in general and this blog in particular is this: if The Shield were a teacher, his classes would be too satisfying to cut.

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