Back to School!

Wow! Another school year snuck up on me fast and goosed me a good one! Totally unprepared to go back. It's sort of a sad commentary on my life that I've been going to school for just about 40 years straight. You'd think I would have learned enough by now that I could move on to something else, but my life revolves around the cycle of a school year.

I've been teaching now longer than the years I spent as a student, and I've learned a few things along the way. Not much, but a few things. There is a famous book that shows that all a person really needs to know in life are the lessons that she learned in kindergarten. Well, for the teachers out there, all the really important teaching takes place in the first few days of school, and the rest is just biding your time until summer vacation comes around again.

Don't believe me? Let's consider some things. First, you have to lay down your ground rules, and without those rules and the consequences you'll enforce if the rules are broken, then your room will simply become a haven for chaos, and we all know that learning will not take place amid chaos. Secondly, the first few days of school are the only days in which your students are even remotely interested in being in school, so you have to grab them while they're even slightly attentive and pump them with as much knowledge as possible and just hope it lasts through the remaining eight months of the year. Thirdly, and most importantly, the beginning week or two of school is the only time of the year not interrupted by sporting events, pep rallies, assemblies, standardized tests and any other thing that cuts into your teaching time; so it is the only solid block of time in which to get some quality education accomplished.

Since I've been teaching so long, I've been assembling a guidebook for first year teachers. Mostly, it's a compilation of some of my venting after long days beating my head against the marker board in defeat, but it's intended audience is that group of first year teachers who start out their careers all rainbows and roses and end their careers nine months later looking like the walking dead with glazed eyes and missing pieces of their hair where they've pulled it out in frustration. Teaching is not for the faint of heart. It is a profession that will try the most decorated combat hero, and it's one where over half of those entering the field leave it in a mad dash for freedom and sanity at the end of that first year. So, since I'm a hard-ass and a smart-ass, I decided that I'd be a good person to give those eager newbies a dose of reality with some old-fashioned words of wisdom thrown in to help guide them through that arduous first year. Lord knows we need more good teachers out there -- after all, who is going to replace me in a few years?

Here are some of my chapter ideas to give you a taste of my warped sense of humor in action:

The First Day (or: Run Now Before It's Too Late!)
Lesson Plans (or: Those Things You Never Follow)
Problem Students (or: Every Student)
Extra-Curricular Duties (or: Free Time? Kiss That Good-bye)
Parent/Teacher Conference (or: One Night in Hell)

Hopefully you get the idea. Maybe some day I will actually finish my ranting and raving and actually edit what I've written and then get it published, so it can do some future first year teacher a little good and give him the motivation to return for a second and even a third year. After that, it's smooth sailing . . . uh, who am I kidding? 

Good luck to all the teachers out there! And remember when you're having a bad day, just take a deep breath and mentally (not aloud for all to hear) tell your students or your boss to Shtick This!

Reading Suggestions

I write a bi-monthly column about books and literature-related topics for a newspaper. My focus is on older books that merit the attention of today's readers for reasons of enjoyment and not just for classroom study. I have a personal obsession with Pulitzer-prize winning novels, and I also hit on books considered to be classics as well as more current books that I find to be especially praiseworthy. I keep my own annotated list of books I've read, and I'd like to share a few from 2011. Some of them have been the subject of one of my columns while others I have just read for my own sake.

1. "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: I bought a Spanish copy of this at a book fair in Madrid a few years ago. Once I started the novel, though, I couldn't read it fast enough in Spanish to satisfy my fascination, so I checked out an English translation and finished it in a few days. Imagine if there were such a thing as a Cemetery of Forgotten Books! This novel spoke to my deep-seated love of literature and the need to preserve books for all eternity.

2. "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx: This novel won the Pulitzer in 1994. I've read it twice now and each time I am captivated by the author's word choices and her poetic, choppy style that is simply beautiful to read. Who would have thought that a novel would make me want to visit Newfoundland someday?

 

3. "Watership Down" by Richard Adams: Why this book is always filed in young adult literature I'll never understand. It deserves to be read by people of all ages. Sure, it's about rabbits, but the things that happen to them and the tactics they use to solve their problems are very much adult themes. It has everything -- adventure, danger, love, death, birth, conflict, humor and so much more. 

4. "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen: The one book I read all year that I literally could not put down. I read it in only a few hours, and I was so disappointed when it ended and I had to close it. The research that went into this book to bring it to life for the readers is astounding. I felt like I was living on that circus train and enduring all the hardships right along with the characters in the book. I also fell in love with Jacob and didn't even mind that he is 93 years old!

5. "Dracula" by Bram Stoker: If I'm going to read a novel containing vampires, it better be a good one like "Dracula" where the vampire is really a terrifying, evil creature and not somebody that the heroine falls in love with. Sad to say that I hadn't read this novel until last year despite knowing the literary figure my entire life. I was most surprised to learn that Van Helsing is an elderly professor and not some sword-swinging, muscular vampire slayer as the movies have long portrayed him. I like his true persona so much better.

6. "Now in November" by Josephine W. Johnson: The author was very young when she wrote this Depression-era short novel, and she won the Pulitzer for it in 1935 despite the fact that she was both young and female in a male-dominated society. I read online (I forget where, sorry) that this novel is one of the five least read and remembered of all the Pulitzer prize winning books for fiction. I find that sad after reading it because it is well-written and tells a tragic yet beautiful story of a family struggling to survive in a world hit hard by the Depression. 

7. "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham: This novel rightfully won the Pulitzer in 1999. The confusion you first feel at trying to figure out why it's a story about three different women living at three different times in history is blown away by the understanding and amazement you feel by the end of the novel when you see how the writer masterfully pulled it all off. I am now reading "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf, and then I plan to reread "The Hours." It's simply a great book.

8. "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco: This was a hard yet enjoyable read for me because I love books so much. I was in awe of the scope of the labyrinth-like library that the monks had created, and then I was saddened when it all burned up. Even though it was a fictional library, the thought of all those important manuscripts being lost forever was torture for a bibliophile like me. 

9. "Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries" by the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries: As both a high school Spanish and linguistics teacher, this book was extremely educational for me. It also contains many humorous insights into the common words we use that we took from the Spanish language. Well researched and well explained. I appreciate that as a teacher and a word-lover.

10. "How Fiction Works" by James Wood: As an aspiring novelist myself, I am always looking for insight into how to write better. Wood had a unique approach to offering writing advice, but what I most liked about this book was the wealth of examples. From it I have greatly expanded my list of books to read in the coming years. This also is one of those books that bears a thorough reread to glean more insight from the abundance of advice contained within its pages.

Thank you for reading my list. These are what I would consider to be the top ten books from the fifty I read in 2011. If you have any interest in knowing what other books I read, feel free to contact me.