A (very) miscellaneous link for the older set who find themselves repeated flummoxed by their students’ fashion and navel-gazing sensibilities. This is how you write about it. ¶ “… sometimes style feels less like a fun, personal expression and more like a total disregard for people who might weigh more than you, or have less money for cell phone technology than you, or might be more than five years older than you.” ¶ P.S. “hip-hop butterflies” is a perfect description of this.

Why haven’t any of you people told me about Bionic Teaching, a group blog with a healthy fixation on responsible classroom tech (standing opposite wiki-madness™) which interests itself in graphic design more often than not. ¶ You know that feeling? Like you’ve come home? ¶ Be sure to check their slick classroom integration of our Four Slide Sales Pitch.

I assigned homework to four of five classes this week, which is something like a personal record.Relevant reading: Why I Don’t Assign Homework I’d ordinarily count it as a professional low, also, but I don’t hate myself for three reasons:

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Tony Lucchese’s a money blogger who, content-wise, doesn’t have a clue what he’s about. He lily-pads from topic to topic, refusing to pin himself down. ¶ Who cares. ¶ Fantastic post today, one which concisely and clearly argues both sides of school choice. ¶ “The choice model is patterned after good old-fashioned natural selection. Whether you prefer the metaphor of a biological system or the business world, the simple fact is this. The vast majority of species and businesses that have ever existed have failed. They are extinct. They caved under the competitive pressures.” ¶ Awesome.

[preamble – i’ve gotta put this navel-gazing, to-quit-or-not-to-quit arc aside for a good while, if not for my sanity, for the sake of the good folks who pay me some mind. a lot of good comments & questions have gone unanswered but not unappreciated.]

That header is an accurate – if blunt – summary of this whole mess. I texted it to my girl from my usual spot last night after a friend came in and told me I looked tired. If I looked like I felt, he was right, if also a jerk for sayin’ so.

The incredible paradox of this job, summarized quickly, in one anecdote:

I spent an hour on a slide set last night, scaffolding several examples into maybe ten slides, all building to a worksheet. An hour.

Then I set into the worksheet and realized halfway through I was going about the scaffolding all wrong. I had a much better idea so I scrapped an hour’s work and re-built the slides.

I don’t know if I’m glad that idea struck or if I would’ve preferred ignorance. Once that idea struck, though, I know my options shrunk to one, even though it cost me some rest.

I admit that it’s easy for me to ledger up those lost hours and write some whiny post about it, maybe pretending at earnest career contemplation, but that position, I realized this morning, is extremely complicated.

‘Cause, see, as exhausted as I am here at the end of one of my twice-weekly plan-and-teach-a-thons, today I witnessed a painful concept explained clearly. I was personally privileged with that explanation, one which soaked up half as many slides as originally planned, one which tied itself cutely into a metaphor outside the classroom, one which, as it rarely does, met each of my kids at her ability.

I am so smitten and so humbled by that experience, it’s got me a little giggly. These times come wrapped in paper, tied in ribbon, and as long as I can un-remember what they cost my body, my relationships, and my ballooning to-do list last night, I know my career will survive at least a couple more.