The sorcerer’s apprentice
When I was showing the Lake Magazine site to some friends of mine in Colorado, someone pointed out that I appeared to be dressed as Mark Twain and wanted an explanation.
And all of a sudden, it hit me. I haven’t sent a new picture in since Halloween! Yikes. When was the last time I blogged? Uhhh…Halloween?
I can’t justify this….I mean, if you say you are going to do something, you ought to do it and be done with it. Or quit doing it and be done with it. Those are the only two honorable options. Anything else is moral cowardice, laziness, sloth, immaturity, dishonesty, lack of self respect and, just possibly, Senatorial.
But while I can’t justify the lapse, I can explain it. In fact, I have 20 explanations, starting with R.B. and going through to B.T. That would be my fourth-graders and all the fourth grade things they do, which is to say all the children things, which is to further say, all the work they create for adults just by sharing our air.
I love every minute of it, but when you get right down to it, it pretty much adds up to every minute of my day that is not spent sleeping, eating or filling out forms related to education. I’ll give you just one example…this weekend.
I could title this “My So-Called Time Off.” I was supposed to play golf, I had been invited to go to the races, my yard desperately needs work and there are a number of Super Bowl parties tonight. It could have been a full weekend without adding anything.
Instead, yesterday morning I arose at 6, read, graded and made comments on 67 essays…some but by no means all of which included punctuation, capital letters, paragraph indentations and things that are recognizable as words.
I am supposed to be teaching metaphors, similes, anecdotal support and robust vocabulary to people who write the following:
paint art and color is my favotire thing. paint get messy I like to paint picures on flat I injoy finter paint with a brush to draw pupys. I hope to be a fmous drawling when i grow up.
Sift through a pile of that before breakfast some Saturday. Then move on to grade 20 science tests. You find out that a star is made up of galaxies and asteroids, the third planet from the sun is a neutron and a form of energy that can travel through space is a centimeter. If you wrap a coil of wire around a nail and attach the ends of the wire to the positive and negative poles of a battery, you will create an abolitionist.
That last one might be true.
That was another hour or so. Then I graded the Theme Three Test, again a batch of 20, 25 pages each, including yet another essay and extended response written questions. You can actually have a teaching assistant go through and grade a lot of this stuff, but then what have you learned about what the kids have learned…or haven’t learned? You need to see who is missing what and go back and try to bandage the scrapes and prop up the loose boards.
I could continue with the weekly test, the quiz on area and perimeter, the vocabulary sentences (8 per day, times 20), the FCAT worksheets, the solar system projects and reports on favorite planets, the letters to the pen pal in England, the five letters home I am writing this afternoon dealing with personal issues. The 57 letters I have to answer from the kids in class….my mistake there…I established a post office and declared that all mail would be answered.
The one on top of the pile says “Dere Mr. Vest: How am I doing? Do you like my picher? Will you draw me one? Why don’t I ever get to be line leader?’
Times 57. This is a slow week. Sometimes it is 20 a day.
What it reminds me of is the scene in Fantasia when Mickey Mouse is the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the buckets of water keep coming and keep coming.
The fact that what I now do is more fun than I have ever had in my life and is the most fulfilling part of it doesn’t change the fact that if you don’t keep up you will drown in the paper.
That is my explanation for the lack of blogging.
But let’s grade this on a curve….the old school way of accommodating student needs. If we create a formula that figures the amount of time spent blogging relative to the amount of spare time available, my percentage has to be way up there.
I’ll try to do better.
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