Routine

My daily schedule --

5:50 alarm wakes me up.

6:10 shower

6:50 wake my fiancé up

7:00 finishing touches on my tie

7:10 out the door for the drive to work

7:35 stop at Pennington Main for coffee and gum

7:45 school

8:20-9:55 Composition

10:02-11:22 Composition

11:23-1:35 Lunch/Prep

1:41-3:01 College Composition

3:30-5:30 football practice

6:00 return home

6:30 dinner

7-10 family time/ read and grade papers/ watch TV/ relax.

11 - get ready to do it all over again.


This is how my life has been divided for much of the past three years. Some nights, like last night, I made it a point to not grade anything after seven. Other nights, I make it a point to bring nothing home - though that’s really hard to do. Ideas for lessons hit me at odd times. I was reading with my fiancé, Kristie, around 8 last night and an idea hit me for an essay for my college comp class.

One of the many joys of my life is my fiancees daughter, Koko. A former student of mine burned me seasons 1-6 of Seinfeld. My parents and I were huge Seinfeld fans. So now I have passed that love for Jerry, Kramer, George, and Elaine onto Koko. While I was waiting for some Khakis to dry last night, I found Seinfeld on TBS. I called to Koko who was up in her room (beautifully remodeled over the past two weeks, thanks to Kristie). The next hour was spent watching her giggle at George’s antics - he was guarding a suit that was about to go on sale for half price thanks to an unadvertised sale. Such are the true pleasures of my life.

Here’s a pleasure from the classroom. I have an autistic student in my composition class. He is bright and outspoken. I wish I had a full classroom of kids like him. He has a wonderful sense of humor too. Currently we are working on writing a descriptive essay. So to help them write more descriptively, I copied down some of their less than stellar attempts at describing a place or event onto my laptop. Then I got a computer projector from the library and put the essays up on the wall in my room.

We were going through one essay about deer hunting. Students were to shout out things that would make the easy more descriptive - colors, senses, details and so on. No one was mentioning the use of thoughts (something I try to get the students using in their writing right away). So we were at a point where the young hunter in the essay has the deer sighted and is ready to pull the trigger. I asked them, “What would the person be thinking?”

Silence.

“Oh come on. I have hunters in here. Don’t lie, you would be thinking something right now wouldn’t you. What would it be?”

Silence.

“Okay, this is what I’d be thinking if I was this person right now - “I am sorry that I am about to kill this poor innocent little Bambi just to prove my manhood.”

Well, that got a reaction from the hunter section in my room.

“So if you’re not thinking about how cruel and unnecessary hunting this poor innocent creatures really is, what are you thinking?”

Still silence.

“Great. Are you thinking, “Lord don’t let me miss?” Or are you thinking “I hope I don’t hit a cow” or are you thinking “I hope I don’t hit drunk uncle Eddie who is barely clinging to his tree stand across the way.”

When I typed that last thought out, my autistic student let out such a giggle I thought he was going to fall out of his desk.

That laugh will sustain me for at least a week. So far that laugh has been the highlight of my school year.