Leaving Church (to the Believers)

For the record, I was raised in a strict Christian home. More precisely, I was raised within a unique sect of Christianity called the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church which has its own distinct subculture. In my household growing up, there was no drinking, smoking, dancing, wearing jewelry or make-up, going to movie theatres—or even public schools for that matter—or watching TV on “the Sabbath” (which was Saturday). In fact, until the age of 22, when I graduated from an SDA college and left home to attend law school at a public university, virtually 100% of the people I ever knew in my life were Seventh-day Adventist! Those who know me very well are of two sorts: (1) They also come from the SDA subculture, so they know what it is like, or (2) they learn a lot about SDA-ism from me, because like it or not, it is completely inseparable from my family and my growing up. But I am not Christian.

At an early age, I questioned whether this thing called God was real. In the fourth grade, I began wondering whether there was really anyone up there listening to our prayers, or whether we made all this up just to make ourselves feel better. From my own experience, I could identify absolutely no solid evidence to rationalize a belief in God, the afterlife, etc. Of course such questions, while liberating on the one hand, were also unsettling on the other, because they implied the dismantling of virtually everything I had ever known or been taught, not to mention going against the social framework of my entire existence. So at first I decided not to rock the boat. Keep singing the Sabbath songs, keep dreaming about the pretty girls at church, and everything will be fine. But it was not fine. Within a year, I began to feel dissatisfied with the conclusion I had come to. I realized that my position was not genuine. So later my sixth grade year (having skipped fifth), I entered a baptismal class, fully intending to get inspired. I did not get inspired. The answers were unsatisfying: Highlight passages in the Bible because it is the right thing to do. Follow this and that rule because that is what the highlighted text obviously means. Do all this and God will reward you with Heaven, but if you fail to accept his so-called “Grace,” he leaves you deader than dead. Got it? Well, no. It felt like a waste of time, and at the end of the class, I was the only person from my group to elect not to be baptized. And I have never looked back.

Some of us are atheists because we believe it is the most rational conclusion based on the evidence before us. Given the almost unlimited variation of religious and spiritual beliefs that exist in the world, it is amazing to me how many people seem to think only one of them is absolutely correct. Those who choose to look with an open mind sometimes take this as evidence that there is some spiritual truth underlying it all. I personally believe it merely indicates that religion serves evolutionary, adaptive purposes on the societal level, such as general social cohesion, justification for hierarchy, mobilization for extraordinary acts of collectivism (such as war, migration and expansion, even social movements such as temperance, abolitionism, and civil rights), and perhaps most importantly, the potent reinforcement of basic moral rules which allow people to live side-by-side without utter chaos and violence ensuing. In its less organized form, spirituality is a coping mechanism for our finite but sentient minds to comprehend a harsh and infinite universe.

Please note: I am not trying to denigrate any particular belief or even define any set of beliefs restrictively, but rather to lay forth the purposes these social phenomena serve, which to my mind explain their very existence. I personally find religion aesthetically meaningful sometimes, not to mention a useful mode of talking about ideals: My classroom management plan describes the positive learning environment as a “sanctuary” and a “Church of Knowledge.” I could go on and on, but I should spare you all my Atheist Manifesto. Apologies if my views offend any readers. If you are Christian or whatever you believe, more power to you. Keep on believing! The only thing that offends me is intolerance.

Which is the whole point: Religious tolerance is a really big deal to me. As teenager, I was forced to attend church, which I despised. I was forced to attend a private religious academy, which I also despised. And so on. My mother would worry herself sick to find me listening to rock music. And I could get in trouble just for going to the mall on Saturday. At first, I was just bitter, bitter, bitter. I hated everything. But over the years, I slowly came to learn tolerance within myself. As I came to befriend more and more Adventists of various viewpoints and characters, and as the immediate restrictions to my freedoms began to lessen, I eventually came to see that quality, moral, beautiful individuals—including, in time, my own parents—exist within this religion I despised so much. Having come from where I came from, and having reached this point, it would be beyond hypocrisy for me not to practice tolerance. But I also expect tolerance from others. You go ahead and believe what you believe, and I will do the same. If you ask me, I will tell you what I think. But it ends there. Your rights end where my nose begins, as they say.

So here we find ourselves in the so-called “Bible Belt.” Certainly not the first time I find myself surrounded by Christian beliefs I do not share or wish to take part in. Just as in Peace Corps, I enter the situation briefed as such: (1) Everyone will essentially assume you are Christian, (2) people will find it odd if you are not Christian, to the extent that it may not be advisable to announce yourself as such, and most pertinently, (3) attending church is an excellent way to gain entrance into your community. Now I do not disagree with any of this advice.

By the way, I found the argument on another MTC blog about point (3) rather interesting, but somewhat off the point and perhaps even unnecessary. On the one hand, I can sort of understand how someone might be offended if you advocate insincere church attendance with words like “entertaining.” But few people indeed would wish to shut you out of their church just because you are not a member already, as long as you show proper respect. The element of disrespect implicit in specific words like “entertaining” was clearly at issue, but it is unclear how many church members would actually prefer nonbelievers to stay out of church altogether if they have no intent to convert.

The point remains that church performs a major social function in these communities. And according to Ben, if you do not attend the black church, the assumption will be made that you attend the white church. The obvious conclusion has been put to us, and undeniably this is great advice for someone who is sort of agnostic or does not have strong feelings about the matter. It worked for plenty of people in Peace Corps. But it is not me. I just cannot bring myself to do it. As Ben points out, nothing is more annoying to me than listening to people talk nonsense, which is exactly what church feels like to me. So I choose to be myself and leave church to the believers. Trust me, we will all be happier that way.

I will: Be the best teacher I can be. Attend football games, basketball games, the school play, the catfish fry, etc. Love my students. Praise and affirm them. Contact parents pro-actively. Continue to believe in the sacred separation of church and state. Be honest when confronted.

I will not: Pray. Attend church. Say the “Pledge of Allegiance.” Hang “In God We Trust” on my classroom walls. Announce my beliefs for no reason. Try to convert anybody.

The Policy of Truth

All summer here in our Teacher Corps training, we have been exposed to a number of experienced teachers who take the notion of lying to their students quite lightly. Sometimes, such as today, lying has been recommended to us as a way to avoid unwanted attention. What’s more, our assistant instructor has routinely entertained us this summer with the “harmless” stories (lies) he used to tell his students. Now I have absolutely no doubt that Jaws is an excellent teacher. He may be a better teacher than I will ever be—who knows? And his students probably enjoyed the tall tales he would tell them.

But I abhor inconsistency. I prefer actions to be governed by principles, and the more concise and consistent those principles can be, the better. Now, my position of absolute honesty is a peculiar view to say the least, one not necessarily shared by many others. I realize that. But my tolerance has been exceeded. I have heard so many teachers, good teachers, advocate dishonesty so many times this summer, and have disagreed on some vague, unspoken level, so many times that finally I have to take issue, realizing almost no one else besides me probably even cares.

When at first I look inward to justify my stance, I recall intensely personal affirmations that have come from my closest acquaintances. I believe that on one-to-one terms, my honesty, my integrity, while not necessarily recognized at first glance, eventually becomes more and more evident and increasingly valued by my friends as the relationship matures. In that sense, I think of honesty as an investment. Often it is easier, in the short-term, to be a little bit less than honest. Maybe you just want to smooth things over, for yourself or for others. You take the easy way out, or maybe you just want to protect someone’s feelings. Whatever the case, the truth eventually comes out, given enough time. You hear the snickers. You see the tell-tale signs. You hear it from so-and-so’s friend what she was really thinking all that time. Remember how much more you resent finding it out like that? And how do you respect the person who hid the truth from you? Dishonesty, no matter how small, once uncovered erodes trust, and trust is a fundamental element of intimacy, not to mention respect.

Even in humor, dishonesty can be risky. I remember one time in college, I had a poetry writing class with a girl I considered attractive. I had come to have a mild crush on her, felt a sort of kinship even, because I admired her writing. Frankly, she was one of the best writers in the class. (Well, besides me of course, hah, hah!) Well one evening, she and I happened to be in a computer lab at the same time. She was hanging out with a friend at a station near me, when she made some playful comments, addressed to her friend and supposedly out my earshot, about me being cute and her liking me. Well perhaps I should have known better, but I believed her. I wanted her words to be true, and so I gathered up all my courage, and I called her a few days later to tell her I liked her too, and what do you say we go out some time. Well imagine both of our embarrassment when she had to tell me, Oh, I’m sorry, I was just kidding! Certainly she meant no harm. She completely expected I would “get it,” right? But for whatever reason, I didn’t get it. And in the end, both of us felt bad about it. Was it worth it? On a similar note, a couple veteran teachers have warned us that our students probably will not understand irony if we reply with sarcasm in class.

On a more abstract, general level, I see honesty as a right, a basic human right each of us are entitled to as part of the dignity of being human. To feed misinformation is to taint someone’s perception of reality, whether physical, historical, or social. You never completely know where the ripples may end, how long your audience may go on believing your untruth and how much that could impair their judgment. To tell a lie is to steal, to impinge on an individual’s right to make their own judgment about what information is relevant and how to act upon it appropriately. At the extreme, dishonesty can even stunt an individual’s intellectual development, because no one can make rational judgments from faulty information. Every person has a right to make their own choices, and if they break laws they suffer the consequences, but if you misinform someone, you ill-equip them, you rob from them of the prerequisite knowledge, the raw materials if you will, necessary to make a choice in the first place.

Now obviously, some may argue, whether your students think you are married to Hulk Hogan or not is hardly a crime. On the surface, of course, they are right. No immediate harm will come of it. But remember as Teacher Corps we are among the few people of our particular demographics—racially, geographically, educationally, etc.—that many of our students may ever know so well. To a certain extent, we are representatives of a reality outside their everyday experience. What right then do we have to tease them with cartoonish depictions of how the other half lives? Essentially to do so is to take from them an opportunity to learn something valuable, a mini-social studies lesson, if you will, about someone whose personality and character every weekday morning is plain for them to see (and hopefully respect). Jaws writes about how his students refused to believe when he finally told them, quite truthfully, how he grew up in a lighthouse, without a TV. To me that seems sad. After so many “harmless” lies, his students were unable to learn something unique and valuable about their own teacher, something so far, far away from their immediate experience of the world. It could have been an interesting conversation for everyone, but instead it was just another tall tale, one of many apparently.

Furthermore, it is ethically vapid, without serious justification, to demand honesty from our students if we are not prepared to be honest ourselves. Do we expect situational honesty from our students, or absolute honesty? I for one expect absolute honesty from my students. It does not matter to me whether they are cheating for my test or another teacher’s test, it is wrong. Well then it is only fair that I reciprocate. Authority gives us the right to set reasonable and justified expectations and consequences, but it does not give us the right to hypocrisy, no matter how harmless it may seem. Arguably our position of authority carries a greater burden of honesty, because our audience, being younger, less educated, and less wise to world, is less capable of sorting out the truth than our peers would be.

There: I have laid out my principle and my arguments for upholding it. Obviously in particular, conflicting scenarios, the application of principles can become stickier. I mainly wish to change the basis of discussion from: What can you tell your kids to deceive them in funny ways that will also serve your own purposes, as a teacher? -to- In light of everything, do your legitimate interests as an authority figure but also as a vulnerable human being truly outweigh the risks of dishonesty, bearing in mind that the full price of dishonesty can be unforeseen?

Perhaps the answer sometimes is yes, go ahead and lie. If it makes you feel safer, maybe you do tell them you have a husband. But in my opinion, to do so wantonly and without thought or reflection, is irresponsible. Generally, a more attractive, straightforward alternative to inappropriate probing from students is simply to say that entire line of questioning is inappropriate. End of story. However, an exam-proctoring tactic I recently heard, and considered it pure genius by the way, involves an implicit deception: Mark the top of each test with a different color marker, red, green, blue, orange, etc., and then very carefully instruct each student to be sure they write down which color mark they have on their test—even though their papers are all exactly the same! I think I will probably use that trick this year, and that will be the closest I ever come to lying to my students. If they ask me where I live, I will probably tell them straight up. If they ask me how old I am, I tell them. I plan to answer all their appropriate questions at an appropriate time. I was thinking about having a regular sharing time at the beginning of class, just to take a couple minutes, only every now and then, when I ask a student to tell me something about themselves, and then in return they get to ask something about me. I want to know about them, and they want to know about me. Only fair.

But that’s just me. Every teacher is different. My personal strengths are clearly different from Jaws. I intend to be good at what I know, and honesty is one of those things.

EDSE 500 TEAM Self-Video

I hate to say this, because it seems so self-satisfied, but actually I enjoy watching myself teach. I feel like I am doing a lot of things right, and I am pleased with the demeanor I have in the classroom. I am relaxed yet confident, do no over-talk, give lots of encouragement, praise, and thank-you’s for student participation, and take ownership of my own ignorance and mistakes when they come up without making myself look stupid. Although my lessons often involve a lot of direct instruction, working through procedures by example, as is typical for my subject at this grade level, it has become second nature for me to involve students in my lectures extensively, particularly by asking a lot of questions and inviting confident students to work examples on the board. Particularly in combination with cold-calling, this style seems to work fairly well for me most of the time.

Friday was the end of our week of so-called “TEAM” teaching evaluations. For the first time, our teaching was being evaluated for an actual grade. At first it was pretty frustrating, as I complained so bitterly in the previous post, but by the end of the week I guess I was getting better and better at dancing the dance, and I received 97% on my final two days of evaluation. Hooray! Well Friday was also my day to be videotaped.

I seem to have a good self-awareness I suppose, because when I watch a recording of myself teaching, it replays almost exactly as I remember the class session. No surprises, except the weirdness of hearing my voice the way others hear it, which is goofier, higher-pitched and more nasal—but in a loveable sort of way, right?—than the way it resonates in my head. Also I noticed that my butt looks more bean bag-like than I ever imagined, at least in those particular Dockers I was wearing that day. This after bicycling 1500 miles in a little over three weeks, just two months ago! Oh well.

Also my teaching voice is not very loud at all. I think this is a good thing, a little teaching trick I learned with experience. When you more or less shout to your students, it sort of gives them the okay in a way to make more noise, because they know you can still be heard regardless. But if you talk to your students with a very normal conversational volume, they have to stay quiet in order to hear what you have to say. It works! It also helps you maintain an aura of calm control.

The biggest problem with my lesson was my excruciatingly slow pace of ending the warm-up and set-up. The (admittedly short 40-minute) period was half over before we even began the activity that was meant to be the actual body of the lesson. The warm-up was particularly problematic, even though it consisted of only three problems. After walking around to check their progress (which was excellent), I asked several students individually to share their answers on the board. At first I felt comfortable doing this, because my lesson plan was not overly ambitious for time. But it took the students much longer than I imagined to write out their work. The whole thing took substantially longer than it should have. In a realistic setting, this would have been a classroom management problem as well, because students had finished their work already and sat for several minutes while their classmates were writing so slowly on the board. I had a sense at some point during this segment of the lesson that my time management was not going well, and this is consistent with the feedback I received from the veteran teacher who observed me. She suggested that, if all students were doing well with the work, as they were, I could have just asked the students to write their answers only, as opposed to all of the work, on the board. Advice well taken.

My set-up was also a bit long, but I feel like this is more understandable, as I was recapping the whole week’s material for the “test on Monday.” I also revisited my set from the day before, as there had been a question as to what the I for electric current stands for (actually a French word, intensité). I received positive feedback for researching and coming back to the class with the answer to that question. Overall, I think it was okay, I just needed to hurry up the transition out of the warm-up to begin with.

The main of my lesson was a review activity based on the “I have” / “Who has?” concept. You pass out cards with numbers on top. Each card also has a question that generally begins, “Who has my number . . .” with some arithmetic operation to perform. The cards thus link to each other, creating a chain. Students have to work out the arithmetic to see if they have the next card. Only my activity was a bit more challenging, because it was using arithmetic operations with complex numbers, the topic of my unit for the week. I think I did a good job of explaining the activity, asking for questions and allowing good wait time (which eventually did result in a request for an example), and also setting my expectation that the students work out every instance of complex multiplication and division on paper. Somewhere in the middle, there was an error in the cards that I made, and I probably could have jumped on that mistake much sooner. However, it worked out okay, because one student was able to suggest that he had a card similar to but not quite the correct answer.

I think I have consistently allowed pretty decent wait time when I ask questions, but I see that I am just a couple seconds away from ideal. I will try to wait even a little bit longer, because there seems to be a significant value difference between, say a wait time of 5 seconds and a wait time of 7 or 8 seconds. I forgot to time my actual waits. That would have been interesting. I do see that they are not bad, but just a few seconds on the short side.

One of my classmates commented about me saying “’kay” a lot in class that day. After watching myself, I do not really agree that it was excessive or distracting. I responded with “’kay” a number of times in between pauses while students were explaining their work, but only in order to give encouragement and prompt them to continue. I honestly think it was constructive okay-ing and not distracting.

Too Legit to Quit

I love teaching math. I get a natural high out of explaining something as clearly as possible, especially if my audience seems to “get it.” And coming up with the explanation itself, and examples to back it up, is all part of that system-construction my “Architect” personality is purportedly so keen on. I especially love capitalizing on impromptu teaching moments. This week we have been “TEAM” teaching to a group of our peers and a different veteran teacher evaluator each day. Well, today, one of my *students* came up with a different way to simplify a radical in the denominator than another student had presented on the board. A Spanish teacher, she was unsure of her answer, but I encouraged her and asked her to write her work on the board anyway so we could have a discussion about it. Well it turns out that she had gotten a “different” answer just because she had not rationalized the denominator. Both students were right. She got a self-esteem boost, and the rest of the class got to see more than one approach. I got to teach them how it was okay to be different “as long as you follow the rules.” In short, everybody wins. I love moments like that.

I realize I may not be the most entertaining teacher that ever stepped into a classroom. I never sing or dance or tell "harmless" lies about the snake that lives in my desk drawer or how my baby son lives in a dumpster out back because “that’s where the food is.” I try to be good-humored, but I hardly ever crack a joke, and once or twice, my observers have even commented on my supposed lack of voice inflection. But on the flipside, my observers have more often praised my calm, controlled, and no-nonsense persona in the classroom. In fact, Jaws (inventor of above-mentioned lies) today commented to our group how I was not dancing around, raising my voice, or “clown” teaching, yet somehow managed to keep the class engaged just on the strength of my lesson, direct as was. Well, I like to think my love—my deep respect and appreciation, really—for my subject comes through in how I teach. My students may not like math a lot of times, and they may not even like me, but by golly, as far as I can help it, they will at least learn something. And treat it and us and everything and everyone with respect. That’s all I ask.

Personally, I am not a big fan of rubrics. In their worst form, such as the one used for our grades in this demo-teaching, rubrics reduce evaluation to the ticking off a checklist, an empasis on form as opposed to a holistic evaluation of overall quality and effectiveness. For instance, most any experienced math teacher will probably tell you that a plethora of examples is absolutely necessary in teaching math. However, for these evaluations, I receive a much better grade by cutting short my examples for the questionable value of restating my objectives for the umpteenth time, and so on, going through the motions so my evaluator can check off whatever she needs to on that little form. Now I do think there is some value to wrapping up a lesson at the end, but there has to be some middle ground. Teaching the body of the lesson effectively is a lot more important in my opinion than always leaving enough time before the bell to sum it all up.

Furthermore, rubrics do not magically remove subjectivity from the evaluation process. Our evaluators this week have demonstrated that. For instance, I got docked one time for “subject matter knowledge” just because I did not refer to the origin as the ordered pair (0,0) instead of just “zero,” when in fact I was only talking about the x-axis at the time and had not even started talking about the y-axis yet. I mean, give me a break! Was it really so confusing? Do you think I graduated with a math degree—and received a Certificate of Excellence for the Praxis II exam—and still do not know what (0,0) means? Jesus.

My worst experience this week came when I conducted a little “debate” in Ms. L’s classroom concerning whether imaginary numbers really “exist” or not. Well, she was not amused, to say the least. She really tore into me, told me I had not taught to my objectives at all, said that it was worthless even to attempt a debate unless you spend half the term preparing for it, etc. She basically left me with two impressions: (1) Terrible, terrible lesson. (2) Never, ever, try to pull that shit again. Then, a thought of my own: (3) What a vicious, opinionated woman! I mean, she even went so far as to tell me I did “not teach anything.” Frankly, witnesses would probably agree that I "caught the brunt of it," and to me, her attitude seemed almost personal. Another classmate after lunch turned up late and ill-prepared, and her words toward that were actually gentler than she was toward me! Well obviously that was pretty hard to take. I was really quite proud of my lesson that day, and she made me feel ashamed of it. One of my classmates told me today that she had really liked my idea for the debate and did not agree with Ms. L at all. That helps me feel a bit better.

I do think it was a good lesson idea, if perhaps challenging for the students and arguably ill-timed or overly ambitious for a single class period. Risky, in other words, and in this imperfect world of rubrics, it would seem that risk never goes unpunished. However, I do think there is a lot of value in students conducting their own higher-order thinking as much as possible, which is the whole purpose of holding an informal debate, even when their understanding of the topic is unsteady to say the least. We got down to what makes a number a number, and we had people arguing about what infinity means and whether you can fit pi onto the number line, and so on and so forth. Which is the whole point. Imaginary numbers are not really that difficult. The hardest part about them is just the concept, and our natural tendency to reject ideas that challenge our flat-earth notions of what is and is not. Imaginary numbers, after all, seem made-up and, well, “imaginary.” It is hard to see where they come from or what good they do. In short, it is hard to believe in them. And that was the point of the lesson—to open minds. Is that really NOT TEACHING???

Sorry for the rant. I do love teaching. And I do want to be the best teacher I can be. But the rest is just nonsense.

By the way, last night’s pity party was by no means a hint that yours truly is remotely considering dropping out of Teacher Corps. Where else would I even go? No, just like Peace Corps, I am here for the two years at least, no matter what. By “temporary,” I just meant two years in Mississippi instead of, say, five. But what an embarrassing drool of self-pity, huh? At least it was honest. Basically what you get after two or three illicit beers alone in the dorm room while my neighbors are presumably out on the town, chatting as they will and casually making fun of their missing classmates’ social awkwardnesses in various cafes. Anyway, it helped me understand the emotional commitment I feel toward buying this house, even as time grows short and my potential roommate understandably begins to look for somewhere else to live. It lays it out for all to see what caused me to hesitate about coming to Mississippi in the first place. The way I see it, if I felt afraid of the loneliness, surely someone else has felt or will feel the same thing. So why not be the first to admit it? Don’t get me wrong, I really, really like most of my classmates. But none of them are my soul mate so far. And our age difference is not nothing. I still think about what’s her name, can picture her making love to her new-found what’s his name all Saturday mornings in Seattle. Painful. And lonely.

But teaching is good.

A Long, Long Way from Everywhere

Just before I received my acceptance from MTC, I had resigned myself to disappointment. In the depth of uncertainty concerning various applications no longer in my hands and recently coming off the break-up of the long-term dating relationship that got me through Peace Corps, I had begun to explore the possibility of starting over in a far-off, adventurous place, some place like Alaska. Alaska coalesced in my mind as a place of wondrous vistas, mind-blowing backpacking, and backyard ice hockey, a fairy tale land of like-minded souls drawn as I was to the obvious mystique of Alaska. Furthermore, unlike Washington, Alaska appeared to be a state with a viable certification route where I could begin teaching right away this fall. In fact, I was just about to send an application for a job opening in Fairbanks and truthfully speaking spent a lot of my free time daydreaming about what Alaska would be like, when I received my acceptance from Teacher Corps.

My hesitation to commit to Mississippi Teacher Corps initially had nothing to do with teaching in Mississippi or the quality and value of the program itself. I was convinced a long time ago about that, and MTC was the first program I applied to as my Peace Corps service was winding down. To put it frankly, I was afraid of loneliness. Mississippi is a long, long way from everywhere and everyone I knew before now. And it seemed even further from the idealized Alaska in my mind. Fresh off a break-up, I pictured Mississippi as a place of woes, a cultural, social, and environmental void where I was likely to find little to do besides teach and swat at mosquitoes, and even less in common with virtually everyone around me, white or black.

There are times when it becomes almost painful to sit in a deli or a bar with my younger classmates and have a casual conversation about the future, and never do I feel our age difference so keenly as when they talk about the opposite sex. (Okay, the one other thing that grinds me is the people who want to go to law school after this. Fools! The two oldest and presumably wisest of us in the program have been there, done that, and come to regret it.) Still, it happens to everyone: When you are closer to 20 than you are to 30, your partnerships are still experimental and expendable somehow. You recover more easily, because your whole life is before you. But as you—and by you of course I refer to myself—creep closer and closer to 30 years old and beyond, you start to compare yourself to the people you know, the classmates of yours who were married several years ago, your siblings and how old they were when your nieces and nephews were born, your own father and how old he was when you were born, ten years after your sister. You start to project, if you had children now, how old would you be when they are . . . and your constant back pain depresses you, as you begin to wonder whether you will still feel young enough to teach your daughter how to kick a soccer ball someday. You begin to long for commitment—stability, really—along with companionship. And in your sadder moments, you even wonder what is wrong with you, to be so old and still so alone.

The last time she had much to say to me, my ex-lover wrote gushing sentences about how we are both in exactly the places we should be. “Give it time,” she says. But she is not in Mississippi, nor is she alone.

When my classmates ask me why I am thinking of buying a house in Mississippi instead of renting, I usually present the same, dry rationale of it being a sound financial decision, as long as you stay in one place for at least two years. Anyway, “I’m not thinking of this as two years and I’m out,” I tell them. But more to the point, buying a house is a way to reconcile myself to this place and my time spent here. In a way most of my colleagues cannot, I know exactly how long two years is. It is a long, long time to wait for something to end. Then of course you get busy, and stuff happens, and all of a sudden, it goes by quickly too. But right here, right now, I cannot bear the thought of spending the next two years of my life in Mississippi, just to get through it. This house that I’m thinking of, this beautiful English Tudor, built for a Jewish merchant family to the original plans of a local architect, having passed through just two owners since its construction in 1930, this house I could never afford anywhere in America besides Drew, Mississippi, is my lifeline. It means taking ownership not just of a house but of a place and an entire experience, the next two-plus years of my life. And somehow, if they could see for themselves its high ceilings and spacious rooms, the generous woodwork and hardwood floors throughout, the loving details of a by-gone era and the sun filtering through the back windows, looking on to the birdbath in the back yard, they would love it as I do, and know for themselves why I must buy it.

But the details are yet to be finalized. The deal could fall through yet, and if it does, I will probably default to renting and perhaps even take it as a sign that my time here in Mississippi is meant to be temporary.

The Architect's In Charge

INTP “The Archtiect”: Architects from a very early age are preoccupied with spatial relativity and systems design. But INTPs must not be thought of as only interested in configuring three-dimensional spaces such as buildings . . . they are also the architects of curricula, of corporations, and of all kinds of theoretical systems. What is important is that the underlying structures . . . be stated correctly, with coherence, and without redundancy.

They regard all discussions as a search for understanding, and believe their function is to eliminate inconsistencies, no matter who is guilty of them. It is difficult for an INTP to listen to nonsense, even in a casual conversation, without pointing out the speaker’s error. Architects are, however, even-tempered, compliant, and easy to live with—that is, until one of their principles is violated, in which case their adaptability ceases altogether.

Architects are rare—say one percent of the population—and therefore not to be encountered in ordinary places. This type of Rational is the logician, the mathematician . . . that person given to any pursuit that requires . . . systems analysis or structural design. It is hard for some types to understand these terse, observant Engineers. However, they can be excellent teachers, particularly for advanced students, although here again they rarely enjoy much popularity, for they can be hard taskmasters.

Architects limit their search to only what is relevant to the issue at hand, and thus they seem able to concentrate better than any other type. Architects can also become obsessed with analysis. Once caught up in a thought process, that process seems to have a will of its own, and they persevere until they comprehend the issue in all its complexity.

The above is excerpted verbatim from the paper Ben Guest gave us to interpret our Myers-Briggs personalities at the beginning of the summer. Never has it seemed more true of me than now.

Recently started obsessing over my classroom management policies for next year. Spent the weekend backpacking in Tennessee thinking about it over and over. Absolutely could not sleep my first night back in Oxford. Finally set to work on classroom management plan in the middle of the night and many hours later started to feel better. Tired now. But the same thing happened today. Felt all out of sorts this afternoon, because my procrastination about house-hunting was distracting me from the project really on my mind. Finally drawn into classroom management plan later (which is important, although other things are probably more urgent) and felt highly alert and motivated ever since. Well it is now almost 3 in the morning. At least something productive is coming out of this.

Classroom management plan is almost done. A rarity for me to have an assignment completed more than a week before it is due! Still lots of classroom procedures to work out in detail, but the five required for this assignment are documented and more. Came up with a traffic light idea to communicate my expectations for what students should be doing in terms of noise, movement, and materials: Red Light for test & quizzes, Yellow Light for active listening, Green Light for work and cooperation, and Checkered Flag for dismissal procedures. It may seem a little juvenile for Algebra II students, but then again it seems like a very functional (i.e. concise and precise) way to communicate important expectations I never quite bothered (or figured out) to codify so explicitly before. Stole the Student of the Week idea from Jaws and gave the SoW a lot of privileges and responsibilities to be my special helper for the week. My consequence list is an amalgamation of different ideas: Ben’s no-limit checkmarks and corresponding writing assignments, Jess and Lily’s copying of meaningful paragraphs (about my one big classroom rule, “respect”) instead of single lines, and an intermediate consequence of detention (run by me if necessary) between copying paragraphs and going to the office.

Also wound up with a several huge ambitions I will have to work very hard to maintain: (1) Calling parents a lot, especially at the beginning of the year to establish rapport. This is very difficult for me, because I am shy and absolutely detest telephones in general, especially cold-calling. (2) Documenting every single instance of discipline action, even warnings, with all the why’s and what happened’s. This seems like a lot of work, but it should be manageable as long as I can figure out some efficient system to keep records on the computer and never, ever fall behind in the updating. (3) Giving lots of praise. Even included “Praise Motivates” in my philosophy statement. The trouble is, although I am indeed a big believer in the motivating power of praise, I am actually pretty terrible about putting it into practice. I tend to notice deficiencies and inconsistencies much more acutely than I pay attention to things that are actually going well. I think I also need to remember to give very specific praise to individuals. “Good job,” is nice, but obviously it means a lot less than, “Tyrone, whenever you come to the board, you always explain yourself so nicely. I can tell that you will go far in math! Have you ever thought about becoming a teacher or an engineer?”

Today we began to receive “Nonviolent Crisis Intervention” training from Zed’s wife, “Little Datsun,” and her strong-willed sidekick, “Big Bow-Wow.” Had a big problem with the way they seemed to discuss classroom management as an endless stream of moment-by-moment, “every kid is different” encounters. That goes way, way against the message we have been told over and over again this summer, which is, “Be consistent!” I guess their message was about defusing potential situations with empathy and understanding, and so on and so forth, but they actually seemed to be telling us to be the opposite of consistent. I cannot buy into that, and it makes it hard for me to listen to their lectures, because it seems so contradictory. Personally I think there is a place for empathy, but not at the expense of consistency. If a student sleeps in my class, he gets the consequence. No matter what. No matter who. The same consequence for the same crime, every time. Maybe you talk with the student after class to try to understand the problem and everything but you still give the consequence. That is consistency. Any thoughts?