flaneuse.org

On the way home, there was an interview on NPR with Derek Filkins from the New York Times about his work in Afghanistan and Pakistan and his new book: The Longest War. This was perfect because the book we’re going to be reading and learning about in the summer reading program is Three Cups of Tea, a book I chose because I think it has the potential to change how people think about education and other parts of the world and, most importantly, how one thing or one person can really make a difference — particularly in non-traditional ways. We’re reared here in the US to believe that we have to do things in the usual manner: go to school for so many years, follow the rules, choose our career, get our jobs. Yet new studies show that most of us will have more than 10 jobs before we’re 35. The future isn’t set, and we have so much more control over the present than we really realize, I think.

That’s an incredibly important lesson not just for the students in our program but for us as well. I teach because I think not only that teaching makes a difference but that learning is an essential part of my life. I am beginning to get excited about teaching and learning again, slowly. Which is just absolutely the thing that I needed to happen.

So I am sitting here, blogging for the first time in like six months — which means I have been too busy to sit or think or do anything. I’ve been busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest, as my BFF Joe would say. Too busy. Much. Too. Busy. I lost sight of things to such a degree that I landed flat on my back, literally, with bronchitis and threw out my back from coughing and the dr ordered bed rest. No computer even, for like four days. I. almost. died.

And now I am sitting in the back row of a training institute I am doing for 8 instructors and 8 tutors for a summer reading program for 150 incoming first year students. No — I am not kidding. The same summer the book is due and I begin teaching for the new digital lits program and my tenure papers go in, I get the opportunity to put together what I have only dreamed of, the opportunity to take my pilot version of what I think developmental education should be — built on student expertise, interesting content, and useful, authentic technology, and make it run. Right now.

I am terrified. It feels like there is so much riding on this.

Well, I haven’t gotten as far in Guitar Hero as I wanted to, because I just haven’t had the time. I can play a smaller-scale, shorter game like bubble spinner, but I haven’t had the time to practice songs to get better at Guitar Hero — which tells me something about the time kids spend to get really good at video games, to the exclusion of other things they can be doing. This semester is absolutely nuts; it reminds me of my dissertation seminar, but on steroids. I’m teaching my usual three classes, but also working on the book. The full manuscript is due in July and that’s going to be a tight deadline. I’m also working with middle schools in East Orange on a federal grant program to integrate technology into literacy classes. I have a paper to write and give at the American Educational Research Assocation conference in April, and another symposium to present. I’m tutoring an absolutely wonderful second-grader with her reading and writing once a week, and of course there’s all the usual stuff at home — cooking, cleaning, taking care of the animals. Thank God we don’t have children — I have no idea how that would work, how working mothers do it all.

This week my students from the video games, literacy and learning class and I are going to start playing and learning, which means I have to get past the two songs I know how to do on Guitar Hero. Which kind of sucks because I am sooooooooo close on one of them — like just a couple of notes but I just can’t seem to make it that last little bit. I have hit a learning plateau, so I need to practice the song more, so I have to find time to do that, which means learning takes practice. An important lesson. No such thing as immediate expertise, people. No such thing at all.

Until I go up for tenure in September, I am wearing a big sign or t-shirt that might as well say “tenure undecided” on it. In today’s department meeting, as I am the only one going up next year, I think everyone kept looking at me when we talked about tenure. Then again, I probably imagined that. Erik, next to me, probably always thinks we look at him when we talk about men — do we talk about men? That might be another question. All the way around, tenure is very much on my mind and I also wonder how I managed to get to go up in such a stellar economic climate. Maybe it’s the flu talking (yes, I have the flu, for the first time in years and there is no way I would be at work right now if it was anything less than a campus-wide series of departmental strategic planning initiative meetings made mandatory by the provost and my current position = toeing the line very closely) but everything feels very very important. Too important.

Over the last few weeks, my past has caught up with me — namely, Facebook has hooked together my middle and high school years with who I am today and I live in constant fear of a photo of me with a wall of bangs and heavy eyeliner in my Depeche Mode/Cure/Gothic days. (God help us all). Yesterday — or maybe the day before — a photo surfaced from a 70s party in the early 2000s in Nashville: I’m with my first husband, wearing a minidress and orange go-go boots with straight blonde hair to my shoulders. Nice. I’ve thought about “un-tagging” myself in it but other than the silly outfit, it’s not too bad. The funny thing is how all of the people in the shot have changed — we’re teachers, professors, researchers, managers, scientists, public health administrators, mothers, fathers, you name it. What was silly and funny in our 20s is already nostalgic. Does this mean I’m getting old? Argh.

OK, it’s not much, but I have managed to work on the book at least a little bit most of the days I have been home (once we moved in — another story altogether about moving in five days over Christmas). The book is going slow, but I am still plugging away at it and praying my editor meant late spring when he said spring. On the good side, I have also been visiting websites and talking with teachers who are using blogs, wikis, and digital storytelling with their students — in the last week I gave two workshops to teachers and met more who are doing really cool stuff. So… onward!

Well, thanks to a leak that turned into a downpour in our apartment on Christmas Eve, we ended up having to move in just a few days — most of which I was in Colorado. Nothing like a move to set up a new year on just the right foot. Everything is in the new place and we’re down to hanging pictures and patching and painting the places that need it and I am finally back to work — all good things. Let’s hope this Spring brings all the things we all need — deadlines met, balance in life.

We all made it to this point, which was not altogether clear just weeks ago. Everyone is either home with family or heading there (I leave for CO tomorrow). Grades are in, I’m feeling much better and much seems possible with the world. Best of days to everyone.

I’ve been real sick again, the worst part being that I can’t type very well because my fingers aren’t doing what I want them to do. Never again will I take health for granted.