Tick Tock

I broke my promise to blog at least once a week, so I am going to make up for it by posting twice this week. This is the first post, and it will be a doozy, I am sure.  I am trying to pare down a writing lesson for my freshmen so it fits in today's class period. It is not happening. Yesterday's lesson has spilled over into today, like the frothy head of root beer float, leaving its sticky residue on the tabletop that is today. So, I am going to go with it.  Sometimes, lessons cannot be bound by this man-made convention we call time. Learning goes at its own pace, and in trying to rush it, we risk splattering it all over the place.  Ew.

We do it all the time though, don't we. We have to finish this by the end of the hour, this must be completed by Tuesday, my plans say we move on next week to something new. I hate it. A second year teacher, who is developing into a very good English teacher, asked me the other day if it mattered that one of our units spilled from first nine weeks into the second nine weeks. Would that mess up the grading? I told her that as far as I am concerned, it did not matter at all. We need another week and a half to do what is right for the kids and the material. She went with it, which is a happy moment because she is a schedule maker of the highest degree. I wonder how much it actually bothers her that our first nine weeks is only eight weeks long.  (By the way, the world does truly need people with the compulsion to make schedules and annoy the rest of the world with them, people such as my wife, such as this teacher and those of the same bent in our department, for they provide just enough structure for the rest of us to make it to meetings and meet deadlines. So, thank you. Now leave me alone.)

I could go on. Perhaps I will. Later. I just looked at the clock and I have freshmen entering my room and they will need some instruction in about ten minutes. Dang clocks.

Tick Tock.