Friday, September 27, 2002
Okay, so it is pissing rain. Everything is soaked and Leith is making her money. A tropical storm is making its way up the back half of the Adirondacks and sucking water and wind over the island. So everyone is indoors, everywhere.
We had dinner with a member of the department last night. After we got rid of the elephant in the room, he moved to the kitchen. I think one of the nastiest effects of this whole shebang is that the presumption of guilt. And I guess I am guilty. I am guilty of many things. This particular sin I am not guilty of, but…I do swear in class. But, I hate having to explain everything over and over. So much of everything is in my words.
I am trying to write will watching the Ryder Cup. It isn't working. Instead, I have taken an hour nap on the sofa, watched TV and eaten a lot of pretzels. Not good.
In other news, today was the first day that we tried Rourke out in a few different schools. He did well at the elementary school today and was less happy and the SK place. When Syd walked in, the rest of the class was sitting listening to the story and Rourke was helping hold the book. And his future as a "helper" has begun. Apparently, he made a few forays into the hall. A half-hour into the class, he decided he needed to find Mommy.
I think his energy send SK onto the negative side. She had a stepford playgroup, clustered around a plastic tree. Rourke was ripping around the room, playing with a range of toys and puzzles. The other kids looked at him oddly. SK allowed that he was so much younger, and she wasn't sure, etc…
Didn't matter. Rourke got his donut and I came over here
Bob Friday, September 27, 2002
Well, it was a tough night. Beck woke up at 2:45 and fell back to sleep 45 minutes later. I didn't, of course. I slipped downstairs, wrote a few notes about some things for the novel, read some articles ('Go Tom Daschle) and had just started to get tired when Rourke woke up around 4:30. He woke screaming "Mommy, Mommy…" and in came the bride. So I went back to sleep and she stayed awake. At 5:45, Beck woke up and we all went downstairs. Then, after breakfast, we went a-walking and the bride went back for a rest.
I had hoped that I would disappear from the paper. Unfortunately, there is life in the old story yet. A lovely five hundred word piece on my replacements and why they are in the classroom, along with a cryptic and somewhat complimentary letter from Greta Feeney. I can't think that there is anymore that they could write.
I am dying to use this space to answer the paper, but I am not sure that this blog is not on the paper's radar screen and I don't want to put myself back in the soiling myself position. The paper has had a lot of fun with the two letters I put up on the website. I feel a little silly because of them, yet the letters achieved their goal. The tactics and the temper that led to all of these ridiculous steps needed to be brought out and into the clear. All of the support that students and graduates gave to me came from those letters on the website. Just like a barfight, the first punch wins. I got that in. As a result, I get to return. Everything else is an echo.
That is how I see it. The Charming and Beautiful takes all this stuff personally. The silence from friends, the jokes at the shop, the articles in the paper all eat at her. She can't put them away and into the distance. Instead, they become constant small arms fire of the day. For her sake, we have got to get off island for awhile.
Bob Friday, September 27, 2002
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Just had a nice conversation with Ted Anderson. He explained why he was not going to write a letter and his logic was, as always, impeccable. He said that the longer this goes on in the press, the angrier the Superintendent will get and the worse it will be for me when I return to school. While the Superintendent is here, that sort of Italian politics is necessary for survival.
I hear that but I fear for the Beautiful and Lovely. She finds it difficult to take this sort of abuse easily or with grace. Parents, kids, and friends come to the shop day after day, asking about me and whether or not I should have my mouth washed out with soap. Instead, it wells up inside her and comes boiling out.
I can see why. I think that I am used to being the subject of scorn and ridicule. There is a little voice in my head that listens to the abuse and is ready to tell the speaker to pound sand. It's easier to just assume that they are all idiots. So, I have learned by painful experience that 50 % of the people will like you and 50% won't. The Beautiful and Lovely expected redemption out of the paper and out of people's mouths. It never came.
So we are going on vacation so that we can have something else to fight about. A nice long run up to Camden Maine and Acadia. Hopefully, we will get even further up to Eastport, but I may be being a little too ambitious. Let the school figure out what the school is going to do. Hopefully, there will be a hurricane which will take everyone's mind off of the troubles.
By the way, I want to spend the next few blog entries examining Taunton, Easton, Harvard, and Provincetown schools in Massachusetts, then a look at the Poland, Maine school district. All offer a guide to what we could become, both good and bad.
Oh, in terms of the boys, Rourke has pooped in the potty for the third or fourth time, while Beck is learning the lyrics to "Another One Bites the Dust."
Bob Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
Okay, so I have spent the last hour listening to Warren Zevon and reading various rants and screeds on the web. Clearly, I need to stop the madness somehow. When I eventually get a real blog and can put up a bunch on links, I will. Suffice it to say that Neal Pollack is an extreme individual with a creative taste in the arts of personal pleasure.
Now, the big news is that we have removed all of the workers from the employee housing and it has become a big, comfy office for me. Well, not really comfy. I havfe placed the computer on a stool and my bum in a desk chair while the wind and rain come down outside. However, there are no kids and no interruptions. I can take the time and cruise the internet as much as I would like. Oh, and I am also supposed to write.
I was pretty happy at the state of the house when I walked in. We don't visit the employee housing much, for pretty obvious reasons. However, all of the surfaces are clear, the trash has been taken out, and the refrigerator is empty, save for a case of beer stashed in the bottom. Around the rest of the house, I can find rust and some decimation, but nothing as I had feared. We do need to do some basic carpentry outside at the windows and doors, and we need to whack the heck out of a tree, but otherwise everything seems pretty good. Knock on wood.
I would have rented this house. Looking around it, this house is still several steps better than any of the other houses, even the one from Sue Vallett. Sue's house was cozy and nice, but it was cold and small. I know that the heat works here.
Ironically, there is a TV in almost every room. I suppose I should never really be surprised by the way time changes everything, but the omnipresent TV is odd. There are no left-over books, no old magazines, not even any comic books in the bathroom. But three TV's. We should hire more literate employees. We need Jane Austen novels clipped and pasted to the refrigerator.
It appears that the storm over my "leave" has abated somewhat. I still hear it on the street and at Henry's, but it has otherwise passed on. Unfortunately, as I previously noted, that still leaves my Seniors high and dry. The permanent substitute who has been dumped into the room doesn't have a lot of energy or skills. Though a nice man and a pleasant interview, I think that my second period class will eat him for lunch. I don't know about my Honors students. I think that will be so relieved that someone who knows something about literature will be in the room.
One of my gracious colleagues can't access the website from school. My first thought was that she was going to the old site. My second was that the school was blocking it. While that level of paranoia may have been warranted a few weeks ago, I think I can put it to rest these days. The days hop by like rabbits.
And they should, by God. I have been trying not to hang on like a poor, dead corpse hanging from a gibbet. So much of my life was tied up at the high school that it takes a lot of effort and some knives to get untied. But I need to get untied and try to do some other things.
I really do think that this Fall is a gift. I can finish the novel, sell the damn thing, start another, and spend a lot of time with the kids. I don't have to worry about purchase orders, warning notices or faculty meetings. I can play golf every day. I can gloat at my colleagues. I can go on trips. I can walk the boys.
I will keep this blog going so that I have at least one connection back to the schools.
Bob Tuesday, September 24, 2002
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Word Spy Watch the new words come into the language. Thanks Kottke.
Bob Sunday, September 22, 2002
I visited the classroom today and not much had changed. My old lecture notes were on the board, as were literary terms the AP Seniors were reviewing with the children's poems. My first paycheck stub of the year was on the center table and most of the chaos was as it had been. Which is to say that the permanent sub did a good job in the room.
I could swear and could myself almost believe that the students didn't trash the room out of the expectation that I would return to the room in a few days. Most of the books were still in their places, and the desks hadn't taken on the long-term effects of carving and glue that often come from a long separation. A very long paper chain was the only sign of their boredom and my absence.
Monday will be another day. The new teachers hit the room and they will do something to announce their presence and their intention to stay for awhile. At this, my absence will be more permanent and the books will fly out the window. Perhaps not, but I suspect the fur really flies when students begin to believe I will not be back. Up to now, it has been an abstraction. Soon it will be concrete.
I am finding it harder to separate. I think about things to use in the class all the time and find myself updating the challenge page constantly. I worry that I haven't heard from my teaching friends and that I haven't done enough to keep them around. How do I thank them for their support? I should have thrown a party on Friday, but after the paper on Thursday, neither the bride nor I had the heart to talk about it once more. It's a muddle.
I am not finding anything interesting to read on-line tonight, save for the three tropical storms churning in the Atlantic.
I have fixed the wireless network in the house and my hunger for a new Powerbook has momentarily abated.
Bob Sunday, September 22, 2002
Friday, September 20, 2002
Wow. The new MCAS scores are out and they are….interesting. First off, the high school is ranked 57 in the state, according to the Globe, tied with Sturgis and behind only Nauset on the Cape. Second, the math scores are as eye-popping as they were last years.
All of this is very much a surprise. Last year, the math department spent the year in a train wreck with teachers coming, going and showing movies. Everyone expected that the scores would take a serious dive, no matter how talented the class. However, they stay right on up there. Many, many props to the Math department. Second Highest on the Cape.
And, I thought our English scores would be higher. The current junior class is unbelievable strong and their multiple choice responses show how powerful they are. Coming out of those answers, I thought we would definitely have more people in the top scores than previously. Of course, we did, but not that many more.
I also thought oour failure numbers would be higher. I thought we would barbell more than the scores seem to show. Our failure numbers should be higher because the students who failed in the last two years are still taking the exam. A two percentage point hop points to one additional person failing.
Well, (You know what is coming) this certainly gives a lot of strength to the long block argument, now doesn't it. Nantucket does not have a vocational school, as mainland schools do, nor do we send as many special education students off to another school. Further, we lose many more students to private schools. Yet, our scores are still top of the line, in the top 15% of Massachusetts schools. We must be doing something right.
Bob Friday, September 20, 2002
Today was not a good day. I was Donnie Hill for the day, except with a better history. You may not remember Donnie. He was the reliever for the 1986 California Angels who, in the top of the Ninth in the fifth game of the ALCS, grooved a fastball to Dave Henderson which became a game winning three run homer and sent the Angels to defeat after leading the series 2-0. Hill was haunted by the press and the fans for his loss until he, sadly, comitted suicide.
No,, today the I&M decided I needed to be back in the suicide seat, top right, over the fold. And while I was there, they broke the news that I got a yellow card, not a red one. So that took a paragraph, but they had so much more space to fill that they led the Principal over the cliff for a few gratuitous swipes and then dug up an old malcontent to harp away and take a few kicks. Since I will be back in the game in January, I suppose this is grief that I will need to take, but it doesn't make it any easier when the clerk at the Hub snickers at me.
Had I not read the paper today, it would have been a good day. I wrote for four hours this morning, played with the boys, went out to a great lunch at Centre Street Bistro (eat any soup they serve), played golf, took a few cars on test drives, and walked the boys into and out of town this evening before one last rousing version of Goodnight Moon and a hundred pages in Atonement.
Atonement is exactly the sort of book I would be recommending for challenges, had I been in class. Thoughtful, tricky, engrossing, and very much into our theme. Plus, it has dirty words in it. While the Bride watched Mrs. Doubtfire (for the first time) I read about all of the good things in the library.
This evening, the beautiful and lovely bride put out a call for ice cream and I didn't want to go down to the strip for the crowds. All day I spent talking about the article while the students were safely locked up in school. The last thing I wanted to do was a street corner rendition. Then, I realized that I had nothing to run away from. So, I bravely went to the strip and met noone.
Bob Friday, September 20, 2002
Thursday, September 19, 2002
So, here I am on a new blog. With all of the mess about the situation close to being resolved, I am choosing to tempt fate and begin a new blog and link it to the website. The old blog led to some trouble, as that the I&M and the Superintendent all waved it at me during the hearings and the papers, but I still think that this is a good format.
Further, since I am no longer linked to the school's main page, one of the arguments against using this gets tossed out. Further, I think that my First Amendment rights are on pretty good ground about using the blog, in particular since I am out of school for the semester.
I learned much from my recent troubles, more than I can safely write and transcribe to the web. One of the most important things I learned was the primacy and effect that the web can have. With the web, you can get instant and near universal access. During the week of troubles, my website picked up a thousand hits a day. It amassed four thousand hits before the newspaper hit the stands. My version of events (the accurate one) was the one discussed and photocopied long before an official one came out.
Of course, the other problem is that writing to the web is exactly like writing on a newspaper. It lasts forever and can get twisted and edited into whatever contortions the writers want. For example, I have yet to tell the reporters more than "No comment" but they can excerpt and quote from my web works for as long as they want. Even removing them from the server does not remove them from Google or from various computers.
And you should never underestimate anyone who buys ink by the barrel full. My silence for the paper may have been necessary, but it forced me to have a very awkward two weeks. Although I got to shape the story initially, the reporters and editors of the I&M took over and shaped it in their own direction. Thank God I held back on printing the really angry letter.
But I am trying to move on.
Bob Thursday, September 19, 2002
A new blog for an old ham. May this one have better luck than the last one.
Bob Thursday, September 19, 2002
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