Dar-bear

I find my own thoughts to be very interesting.

For example, millions of Muslims around the world are upset about Pope Benedict's comments last week, saying he is portraying Islam as a religion of violence. Which isn't actually true, but no matter. In response, the offended are rioting, issuing death threats, and saying that Islam will fight Christianity until it takes over the world. That's logical. "How dare you call us violent! We will kill you!"

I was such a bear today with my kids. Such a bear. Not a nice cuddly teddy bear, mind you. Not a tame black bear fed by campers, either. But a mean, ornery grizzly kind of bear. I thought that over the summer my patience cup runneth over, that I would approach this final year at Garfield with some sort of superhuman level of patience that I, somehow, had never quite been able to muster over the last 6 years. I thought that if I considered this is my last year there that I would be able to be just a bit calmer, a little less pushy, a little more nurturing than is my traditional style. But I was wrong. Today the kids came back after yet another 3 day weekend (we had training all day yesterday, so the kids got an extra day off), and they just knew absolutely nothing about nothing. It was like going back to the first day of school, except it's actually the 15th day of school and well, I *hate* repeating myself. Should I have to repeat my expectations for how they show me they're listening during class? No way. Should I have to repeat that when they are speaking to the class they are to use a loud, clear voice? No way! They've had plenty of time to internalize my expectations for their behavior. And to make it worse, we've got a couple people from Spain studying our bilingual program and for the first time all year one of them came in to observe my class. And what did he observe? He observed me berating my students in a variety of creative ways for approximately two hours. If I were him, I'd think that I was a mean, horrible teacher. I will never underestimate the value of context.

What's a teacher to do?

How about enter a 50 mile bike race with no formal training? The Tour de Menlo is this Sunday and I'm doing it, even though I've only been bike riding the last few months, and even then only maybe once or twice a week, and even then only a maximum of 25 miles at a time.