Method acting is tricky to define but – brusquely put – actors draw on real emotions to project fictional ones. Famously, in Marathon Man for a scene which called Dustin Hoffman to play haggard and worn out, he stayed up for two days to play the partLaurence Olivier’s equally famous reaction to his appearance, “Why don’t you just try acting?” is great but of no use to me here..

The idea is that you don’t sit in your canvas-backed chair pondering what your character would do in a certain situation; you immerse yourself so deeply into your character, you become the character, essentially, and just react naturally to the situation.

There was a time when I’d sit in front of my computer, the cursor blinking patiently while I tried to find an interesting angle on my lesson. I’d sit and think until I thought of something interesting.

After this last really good year, after this last weekend talking to Mike at a wedding reception, I’ve decided I am a Method Teacher.

I spent the last year acquainting myself with an RSS reader, becoming interested in several dumptrucks worth of extracurriculars, flagging them towards my front door on daily basis, and cuing them to unload.

I am, lately, an obsessively, compulsively interested person and so my natural inclination is to find an interesting angle on any given topic. I can’t help it anymore. More to the point, I can’t help sharing it with my students.

This is Method Teaching.

That last video didn’t make it to the RSS feed. Anyone know – top of the head – the magic HTML codewords to get embedded video to, well, embed?

[dy/dan completists oughtta click on through to the post itself. Early reviews have been generous.]

Tony Lucchese shakes me by the shoulders in what couldn’t possibly be a direct response to the doom and gloom of last night, but which had the same effect, regardless. Thanks, man. I’m ready.

School starts in twelve hours. I’ve come to the edge of canceling my subscription to Christian’s blog like five times already this month because his irrepressible cheer at that first fact only makes my bleak negativity that much more obvious.

It’s because I haven’t planned enough, haven’t spent enough time wading through a list of warnings I gave myself last year throughout the year. There will be consequences for that.

But mostly it’s because last year was such a good year. In my head, this year can only be as good as or worse than the last, the sophomore slump of my fourth year teaching.

I’ve gotta get that outta my head quick ’cause that kind of thinking tends to self-fulfill quick.

And this is the year of full inclusion. The same challenges as last year with a dozen learning disabilities added to each class. I’ve gotta get with it. I’ve gotta ponder the gospel according to Biggie. Successful or not, I’ll see you on the other side of today.

[Comments closed ’cause what I really need to hear right now my commenters are too polite to tell me.]

For the internal lexicon of this blog, a term which will certainly crop up again, one which describes a frequent scenario with scary accuracy for me:

The Sloshing Pail

Our students store their attention, energy, and perseverance in a sloshing pail. We’ve gotta help them steady that pail as we move on a path toward classroom activities. We steady the pail in small ways, almost always by eliminating distraction.

We steady the pail by:

• keeping our transitions between activities organized and short.
• speaking clearly.
• maintaining clear expectations for behavior.
• etc.

We slosh the pail by:

• keeping a messy classroom.
• designing unclear worksheets.
• maintaining a tense classroom environment.
• stocking insufficient supplies
• etc.

It is very easy to let attention, energy, and perseverance slosh out of the pail. It is very difficult to get it back in.