I'm a little miffed. Put out. Tetchy. 

The worst part is, I am not sure I'm justified in being so annoyed. Oh, the hell with it--let me just say it. I'm angry and disappointed.

As some of you know, my dear wife went in for knee replacement surgery today. Since it was an elective surgery, it was planned for a long time. I set it up with my students for about two weeks in advance, alerting them I would be absent on the school day on which the surgery took place, but that I'd have a substitute and a lesson plan and everything. 

As happens sometimes, there were minor glitches in the substitute's plans (especially in Distance Learning, these things happen) but which the substitute admirably attempted solutions for. Some students were mistakenly marked "absent" in this process.

So you know, this marking does nothing. If the parent knows the student was in attendance, and the student completed assignments, then there's literally nothing that happens as a result of the mislabeling. Nevertheless, I got some panicked emails from students--while I was in the hospital with my wife--asking me to fix the glitch. 

Here's the thing with that: NONE of them asked how she was, or how I was, or how the surgery went. It just struck me as remarkably self-centered, is all. I have more sick days accrued than I can count (I think I am at about a year's worth) because I NEVER miss school. Today marked the first day I had to miss school this entire year, and possibly last year as well. So I am reliably present. And this was not a surprise--I'd told the students for two weeks it was happening and WHY it was happening. 

You may be saying, "they were worried about their incorrect attendance." Yeah, I'm sure they were. But how do you explain that ONE student out of over one hundred even mentioned the surgery and wished me and my wife well?

Like I said in the intro, I am not sure my anger is justified. I know that I don't often post to Facebook when I see a "Facebook friend" has posted something tragic or harrowing. I do sometimes, but not always. So can I castigate my students for the same behavior? I am not completely consistent in well-wishes to everyone I know--can I truly get angry at the utter lack of concern shown by my entire set of students?

Should I also dismiss my disappointment that among my friend group, when I mentioned the upcoming surgery, I frequently got NO reaction whatsoever? Not even an acknowledgement that the surgery was taking place? I feel as if I am a sympathetic ear more often than not, and even though I don't lend my emotional support in expectation of reciprocity, it is nevertheless disappointing when I am ignored in my time of need.

It's worth noting here--with no small amount of chagrin--that in many, many cases, people expressed their sympathy and concern for Sue and for myself, and I am grateful to have so many good friends. I do feel more than a little ashamed that I am letting the self-centered behavior of a few people poison my mind: what I should be doing is focusing on the many, many good friends who have chimed in messages of support.

Still, Dear Reader, as we all know, emotions are not usually subject to logic. Despite what I may or may not be justified in feeling, I nevertheless feel it. I will have to work at getting over this and not let it unduly affect me.

Be seeing you!

I had the honor (and burden, frankly) of passing on a minor honor my school hands out monthly to a colleague--a brother or sister in education, as I have come to call my co-workers--and I used the theme of "excellence in the familiar" as the conceit of the speech.

I'm also now grading AP essays about the value of exploring the unknown. Virtually all of the bright-eyed students are saying there is tremendous value in exploring the unknown.

I don't disagree, but it seems to me that there's another point here. There is value in celebrating the familiar.

My wife and I are best friends--no, that's not right. We transcended that a long time ago. We talk about facades or aspects of our character, our personae, and while I believe that these aspects are not false necessarily, the only person who knows the totality of those facets is my wife. And, as far as I know, she appreciates and is attracted to them. As I am to hers.

We are coming up on 30 years of marriage. Lots of people will celebrate and congratulate us on that when the moment comes in December of this year, and we will certainly do so ourselves. But what, exactly, are we celebrating? Just that we made it? We didn't divorce? Divorce is a choice some couples make, and while it's not mine, I can't condemn it universally. So what's the big deal about being and staying married?

To me, it's that I find the things about my wife--things I have known for decades--to be continually attractive, wonderful, amusing, and enthralling. The renewal of the familiar, I guess you'd call it. I celebrate that I know things--I realize people like to discover new stuff (perhaps that's one reason people get divorced) and I like that, too, but I also like to plumb the depths of something for a long, long time. 

In other words, let's not confuse "exploring the unknown" with a sort of juvenile and facile attraction to "novelty." I have been guilty of that in my own life, so I speak not just from theoretical reasoning but from cold, harsh experience. 

I love my wife BECAUSE she is familiar to me. She continues to excite me not because I find new things about her but because I look at what I already know and continue to be amazed by her. I'm attracted to the things I have always been attracted to in her. I'm not talking about mere comfort--though there is much to be said about comfort and stability--but by being startled anew each day by something that she does or something that she is. 

A contradiction? Perhaps. But, as Francois de La Rochefoucauld said, "When we are in love we often doubt what we most believe."

I'd change that slightly, Frankie old man: "When we are in love, we often exalt that which is ordinary."

​Be seeing you!

Had a great conversation with some bright young students about intimacy on social media. The idea was that people will share intimate details--history of abuse, sexual escapades good and bad, drug addiction, suicidal thoughts--but will withhold other ones, like one's true name or place of residence. 

It was baffling at first, until I remembered something rather similar. What other institution allows for a nearly-anonymous cathartic purging of oneself, where the identities of both parties is secret and unknown?

No, not therapy--you know the identity of your therapist, and she or he knows yours. In fact, the opening of therapy is usually a "get to know you" session.

What occurred to me was how similar Internet relationships can be to the Catholic practice of confession.

I'll have to think about this more, but now that my mind has been open to this possibility, I'd like to see where the idea takes me. 

Be seeing you!

Hello, everyone! Please don't be put off by the title--those words aren't really scary. Let's delve into them, shall we?

First of all, let me dispel a myth. Lots and lots of folks out there seem to think that there is some kind of "word police force" that will come and pummel you with socks filled with nickels if you dare to use a word they've decided is offensive. And furthermore (comes the cry) those words keep changing daily, so how's a person supposed to talk? You can't say anything anymore! (or so they say).

As far as I am aware, exactly ZERO people have been tossed in jail for saying "female" when they meant "woman," or "handicapped" or any other non-vulgar label they are using. That even applies to a word I won't type here but which begins with "n" and is a slur against Black folk. I am not aware of any law that has been passed, or any law that COULD be passed, making all uses of that word illegal. So let's calm down. No one is saying you can't speak.

By the way, free speech is of course not absolute. You can't incite a riot, for example. You can't divulge state secrets. You can't depict certain pornographic images. And so on. Free speech was NEVER completely free, so let's make sure that's clear.

Anyway, the idea that the LEFT (scare capitals included for free) is making up new words JUST so they can entrap sensible people and condemn them for wrongspeak is simply untrue. Ain't happening. 

If your argument is, "I can't say what I want and avoid any social consequences," well, then, now I agree. You can't. You never could. Here's a little experiment for you: go sit in the home stands at Fenway Park behind the Sox dugout wearing a Yankees jersey. See how well that goes. Are you ALLOWED to do that, legally? Of course you are. Are you legally protected from being fired for doing that? Absolutely. But are you legally protected from other folks letting you know they disapprove? Of course not.

Ironically, many of those people who are clamoring for "free speech!" really want "freedom from social consequences!" which is in itself a form of censorship. In other words, they want to be able to say whatever they want but silence those who would speak out against them. That seems fully un-American to me.

And so we come to labels. Words change over time. Their meanings, spellings, pronunciations, and levels of social acceptance. Words mean different things in different contexts. Labels, especially for sensitive areas, are constantly re-evaluated for potential bias, conscious or not. Let's take a simple one: the outmoded word "Oriental." Time was that this word meant (more or less) what the word "Asian" means now. Why'd we change? What was wrong with "Oriental?" No one meant any harm by it, so how come everyone got all upset and demanded we use the new term, "Asian?" First, no one got all upset, and no one demanded anything. We just came to realize that "Oriental" had some problems. What are those problems? I'm glad you asked.* See, "Oriental" literally means "of or relating to the east," the same way "Occidental" means "of or relating to the west" (hence Occidental College, my alma mater, the sister school of Princeton and situated, you guessed it, on the West Coast). 

Okay, so "Oriental" means "to the east." So what? Isn't Asia in the east?

Sure, if you take Europe as the center of the world. Asia isn't east in any absolute sense, of course--there is no place on the planet that is inherently "east." East and west are relative ideas. Only if you take Europe and make it the center of the world do you get "east" for Asia. So, to the Europeans, the Orient was anything east of it. 

See? That wasn't so hard. We just noticed that "Oriental" had a distinct Eurocentric bent to it, and we fixed it by saying "Asian." Easy.

I think you'll find that most of the time, when we collectively decide that a label is problematic, we move on to a new one that isn't, or is less so (maybe we'll uncover problems later with the new label, but that's the nature of language). 

"Neurodivergent" is one such label you may not have heard of. 

I think it is fair to say that there is still rather a stigma attached to people who have what some would call mental illness. And that stigma is significantly stronger for mental illness, or neurodivergency, than it is for other disorders. As I am getting older, my near vision is weakening, and I find I need glasses for close work like reading. So I just put them on. I don't get funny looks, I don't get people denying me jobs, I don't get people clasping their children tightly when I walk past. It's a medical issue I have, and it's not going away, but no one gives it a second thought. But if someone has a mental illness, that's a whole new ball game. We sort of tend to believe folks with mental illnesses need to just "get over it" or we tell them to do yoga or smile more and it will all go away.

So, "neurodivergent." A term that will hopefully remove some of the stigma we have placed on what we used to call "mental illness." It's not just P.C.; it's a way of humanizing folks who might have some struggles. And who could reasonably be opposed to humanizing folks?

Be seeing you!

*Check out my podcast of the same name!

This'll be my last Coronavirus entry, as we in America certainly seem to be moving towards a new phase. My heart goes out to India and their struggles, but it looks like America is once again poised to help the world and itself, so perhaps we will be able to contain and reverse the troubling trend in that area.

Anyway, some thoughts on what schooling has been like during the past fourteen months.

As I said in the last entry, I did not believe hybrid or blended learning would work, and I have both good and bad news on that front. The bad news is that it failed to provide any significant, universal change in student engagement or performance from my perspective. Oh, I don't doubt that someone, somewhere got better as a result of this massive undertaking, but from where I stand, and from every other educator to whom I have spoken, it did not change anything significant for the better.

The good news is the reason that it didn't work. That needs explanation, so here goes.

No one's coming to class in person. I say "no one," but of course I am exaggerating a little.  Last week, I had around 2-3 students physically in class per session. Some sessions had as many as 5, while other sessions had zero. Most had 1 or 2. 

Let me repeat that.

On any given day in any given period, I may have as many as FIVE students physically present, but I have had--several times--ZERO. 

That's what I mean by, "no one's coming to class in person." I suppose, then, this could mean that the hybrid/blended model neither failed nor succeeded, since it was essentially NEVER USED. At its best, we continued on with the same kind of system we had before--as one of my bright colleagues in the Union said, "it's still Distance Learning, but with a few kids in the room." 

(Mind you, I am speaking for high school right now. I understand that the junior high schools have a slightly different reporting rate.)

Many, many parents were clamoring for a return to school, but it sure seems like they didn't follow through and actually bring their children to the schools once they got their way. I have one parent who was very, very passionate about opening up schools (even going so far as to lie and slander me about said opening) but whose child has still never actually attended in person.

Parents may say that if teachers aren't going to make in-person learning different from Distance Learning, then what's the point of going? My rebuttal to that would be that I have personally witnessed teachers interacting very differently with the students in the room as opposed to the ones online; that I, myself, interact differently and more immediately with my in-person students, few though they may be; and that with over ninety percent of my students learning online it would be a disservice to a huge number of them to favor the in-person kids. 

It's just frustrating in the extreme to be working so hard, to have changes coming at us quite frequently, to be cowed by parent pressure that never even takes advantage of the changes they forced, and on top of all of it to be called a lazy, useless, shiftless grifter who doesn't care about kids. Oh, and unions are evil. That too.

I was telling a friend and colleague* that I think we're exhausted because we pour ourselves into our students, and they re-energize us by their expressions, their humor, their realization that they've learned something--all the daily interactions we have with them keep us going. And those daily interactions are almost completely muted now by the barrier of Distance Learning. We are pouring ourselves out and not being re-energized.

I, for one, am looking very much forward to being back in an overcrowded classroom with students.

Be seeing you!

*Be on the lookout for an announcement about a possible upcoming weekly podcast with this friend and colleague!

​The demands on both teacher and student are so great as to reduce the effectiveness of teaching and learning to far below where it is under Distance Learning. A teacher will have an in-person cohort at the same time he or she has a virtual cohort (and possibly a distance cohort as well). For the teacher to teach synchronously, she will have to monitor both in-person students and virtual ones simultaneously, while also actually teaching the lesson. We have already seen that teaching and monitoring a virtual classroom simultaneously reduces effectiveness: this will all still be in place with the ADDITION of an in-person group (whom the teacher not only has to monitor for academic success, but for medical protocols as well). In this sense, the blended learning environment retains all of the difficulties and problems of the distance learning setup and ADDS not only new academic challenges but unprecedented health challenges as well.

If the argument is made that students who are in virtual attendance do not need to be attending in the same way as the in-person students (i.e., they may attend "asynchronously") then the amount of time each student is receiving live instruction drops dramatically. A move to blended learning that REDUCES live instructional time seems ill-advised. The argument that in-person instruction confers benefits that virtual instruction cannot sounds appealing on the surface, and under ordinary conditions may even be a convincing one. However, consider the circumstances under which this in-person instruction would be given: students would be physically distant from one another, so in-person collaborative learning could not effectively take place (yes, students could collaborate online while in-person, but then the whole point of being in-person is lost. Students meeting in-person in order to collaborate online is such an odd move that even a school district must balk at it). Furthermore, due to social distancing, teachers would be unable to effectively check student work, offer one-on-one assistance, or even handle materials shared by a student. In other words, the students who were present in-person would receive essentially none of the ordinary benefits of being in-person. 

Add to this the technological demands placed on staff and students--the same ones that are currently present in distance learning PLUS all the new ones present for the COVID-19 version of in-person teaching. This is not even beginning to address the additional, special problems of accommodating those students who are on Distance Learning, and who would not be in-person at all. In essence, teachers would be doing what they are doing now--conducting Distance Learning--while ALSO conducting in-person learning WHILE ALSO conducting virtual learning for students who are rotating in and out of in-person learning. 

There are arguments being made that in-person learning is vital to student social growth, that a return to "normalcy" is necessary. I concur. But the blended learning model is not only "not normal," it is decidedly less normal than distance learning is (or has become.) Students would be returning to a classroom in groups of perhaps a dozen students. That's not normal--they would not see all their friends. They would be masked and mask requirements would be a constant drumbeat from teachers, administrators, and other students. This is also not normal. Students would be required to maintain an awkward six feet of social distance, which would include entry and dismissal from class; they'd be checked at the school gate and asked to provide paperwork verifying their health status. Periodically, students would be denied entrance and sent to "COVID rooms," or would be designated symptomatic while in class and sent away to reduce the risk to others. In-person assemblies, rallies, athletic contests and artistic performances would not exist. Lunch and brunch would cease to exist as social opportunities. Where, then, is the "return to normalcy" in blended learning?

I feel I am an experienced teacher. I feel as if I could, barely, handle the various platforms I'd have to juggle simultaneously. I'd be able to take attendance and get most students engaged, either in person, virtual, or distance, synchronous or asynchronous. I feel I could manage the situation, though with difficulty. But I wouldn't be teaching very well, and therefore, I don't think the students would be learning very well. It'd be a managed classroom, not a place for much learning.

I appreciate that parents want their children to leave their dwellings and physically attend school, even if the educational benefits of so doing are dubious or even nonexistent. However, I've approached this issue from a single standpoint--that of a teacher and his students. I've looked at this from the only angle I know how: what is the best, most effective environment for my students? I realize that other bodies must take into account other factors, such as community political pressure. I am in the advantageous position where I am only able to see this issue through the prism of student success.

Blended learning will not work as well as distance learning. Students will suffer more. 

As some of you may be aware, one of my novels, Beltrunner, is soon to become an audiobook. Because of this, my publisher and I have arranged for a little "reward" to be given out to anyone who submits his or her email in advance of the audiobook's publication. 

We decided on an exclusive story featuring Captain Collier South and his trusty computer sidekick Sancho as the reward. If you don't know, those two are the main characters from Beltrunner, and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time writing them in the novel.

So now I am returning to them, and I am finding them just as fun as they were when I penned the novel years ago. I think I finally get why writers (and I suppose actors) return to characters in sequels and such--these characters are people, and if we enjoyed their company in a novel, why not return to them?

In this case, I'm writing a prequel--partially because I don't want listeners of the "secret story" to know anything about what transpires in Beltrunner, and partially because I didn't have an idea. At least, not an idea for a short story.

The prequel obviously brings up problems--I can't have anything of so much consequence happen that won't align with the events in Beltrunner, for example. I remember watching and reading prequels of other stories and wondering why these events weren't mentioned in the main story, and I am determined not to fall victim to that. 

On the other hand, though, something has to happen: the story can't be so devoid of incident as to be dull.

I have hit upon what I think is a good idea, and I am almost done. It was very pleasurable returning to these two. So much so, that I am contemplating something I never thought I would...

A sequel to Beltrunner. We'll see.

​Be seeing you!

"You should write a book about everything that goes on here!"

I have no doubt that in all kinds of professional settings, those words (or a variation thereof) are spoken among the battle-hardened veterans of the job. You name the career, and I am certain that there are stories about the workplace. 

Just look at all the "workplace" shows that have been on TV in just the past few years. It's one of the most common settings because so many of us have experience in the genre. Almost all of us know what it is to go to a workplace, deal with co-workers and superiors, contend with obstacles, and balance a social life with a professional one. 

Some of these workplace stories--comedic, dramatic, or some mixture of the two--focus on sites that we associate with high drama: a hospital, a police station, a government agency, and the like. 

But many others focus on the most mundane of places: a small paper company, a community college, a municipal parks department, and so on.

My daughter and I have noticed something, though: of all the workplace dramas, comedies, and "dramedies," there have been very few ones about a public high school. Yes, I'm sure you're naming some right now, but how many of those are decades old? Welcome Back, Kotter and the White Shadow haven't been on the air in a long time.

Rather than wait for a show about public high school I'd like to watch, I decided that I would just write one myself.

It's a little bit new--both the idea of writing something that's not science-fiction, and writing a screenplay--but I guess I just feel like writing it. And what better reason could there be than that?

Be seeing you!