Vergil’s Coffee

My father-in-law remembers it differently. He says that our first meeting was cordial and friendly and I tell him that his memory is a bit slippy. First, he should have remembered that Paul Hickey and I borrowed his Sony Micro Cassette recorder and hit “Record” and said some just plain silly things. We thought we were funny. Secondly, and perhaps more important, I was wearing my “Luv Ya!” kelly green pants which I thought was stylin’. Ken doesn’t remember that and why should he? Both of us, Ken and I, are fashion illiterate like most of our gender.

Perhaps it’s my mom’s fault because when it was time for “back to school” shopping, she’d just give me the local department store credit card and instruct me to get what I needed. I’m not sure if I ever asked for direction, so I was left to wander the aisles and purchase variations of the same theme: flair pants (avoiding that crazy bell bottom jean things that my sister wore) and t-shirts. About my only clothing purchase that I put thought into was the “I’m with Stupid” tee that was specifically for picture day. (I might have even calculated who would be the left of me in the yearbook…was it going to Jeff Graves or Karen Kane? Hopefully not Karen as I asked her to go with me via note and she wrote in “maybe”).

My mom did tell me that I needed to get a suit and tie for my 8^th grade graduation: apparently it was a big deal for the kids of Guerneville and my mom might have helped me pick out that ivory white suit with pants, jacket and vest. As I think of it, it reminds me of something that Atticus Finch would wear on a warm, Alabama afternoon as he defended Tom Robinson. But I was 13 years old and I was wearing an off white suit and I had grown eight inches that year and so, in short, I think I stuck out from the rest of the class.

I think my time at a private school and then onto a conservative private college has lead me to a conclusion about clothes: some people care more about them than I do. Or, perhaps more accurately, those people are attached to what they wear and believe that it’s their God given right to dress however they damn well please, thank you. “And, if you dare mess with my clothes, then you can just go…” and you know where this line of thinking is headed.

So, when Debbie made me pants and a shirt for the Christmas during my freshman year in Grand Rapids I was a bit taken aback. First of all, no one had ever made clothes for me and second, well, I was going to break up her when I got back to school. I think she was excited to give me the box that January and though I’ve been given the obligatory sweater or jacket, I might have paused a bit too long as I picked up the navy blue, uncollared shirt with the little green frog branding the left chest.

“Do you like it?” she asked and I might have paused, again, a bit too long, because she continued “I like the color and, well, you know: I like frogs.”

“Thanks,” I responded and then caught eye of the homemade tag on the shirt: “Luv Ya!” it read and I think she had crossed stitched it herself.

“Oh,” she says, “there’s one more thing…”

And I reach my right hand into the box while Debbie grabs my left arm and pulls it toward her with some giddiness.

She must of read my expression, because she said: “Remember when I did your laundry before winter break? Well, I took measurements and I worked on both pieces for about a week during break.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah, my mom helped me a bit with the inseam,” she said. “Try them on.”

Everything fit me pretty well, but as I emerged from the bathroom, I felt a bit, well, like a frog. It seemed that I should just start doing high kicks and get a top hat and take my skinny frogged legs on tour.

I did thank Debbie and I waited another month to break off the relationship…I distinctly remember that it was February 13^th and you have to realize that I simply couldn’t take it anymore.

I guess I never really considered what I wore to be who I am. And, perhaps, my few attempts at making a statement were only mere spastic tries at being someone beyond me. Perhaps I’ve aimed too low on the fashion scale or perhaps, I simply don’t care that much. It’s the complaint from girls to boys or girlfriends to their boyfriends or wives to their husbands and it just might be a gender thing. Women care about clothes; men eat on the couch. For one, there is a nurturing aspect of selection and matching and arranging, for the other, life’s about consumption and piles.

So, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on Ken for not recognizing my fashion faux paus during our first meeting. The fact that I even remember the incident probably has more to do with my wife’s reaction to the “outfit.” Not much was said regarding my choice of clothes and the arrangement thereof. In our subsequent conversations about fashion usually have fizzled into mere grunts or “while you’re up” requests from the pantry or the store. And I think of Ken’s advice to me during my engagement to his daughter; he told me, suggested to me: “Choose your battles wisely.”

Those stupid yearbook people cropped out my directional t-shirt and the “Luv Ya!” brand was discarded soon after my engagement to Lori. I’ve recently retire nine…yes, nine, plaid Timberland shirts that made up my teacher wardrobe last year. Apparently pleats are out and I’m just not a fan of the tie. Sometimes I tell Lori that “this year, I’m going with the tie and jacket look” and she’ll say something like “are you going to CVS for some M&Ms?”

It looks like Utterz has just updated its services and has focused its site around discussions (no more Cow theme?). I think Utterz has always emphasized this, but the recent facelift (and the changing of its calling menu) seems to be a clearer presentation in positioning itself as the Audio/text/video place for communication around topics or just whatever you like.

Which brings me to this Utterz from gtowna that I listened to this morning and feel compelled to share. Why? Not because I completely agree with him–I don’t know much about international politics; I think I know that we in an election year here in the States–I share it because I think I have to be reminded of how the actions of my country affect others (aside from Iraq). 

I get the feeling that folks in the US are a bit antsy about not being #1 and that as long as we can still be in the superpower club, then we can still call the shots. It’s the popular kids sitting at the popular kid table and everyone is (or should be) looking at what the popular kids are doing. All the while, there’s those who aren’t popular, having to deal with own issues of relevance and identity. 

I think that’s why I listen to NPR and BBC radio, read Christian Science Monitor and The Week, listen or read from sites like Twitter and Utterz: to try and get a better handle on a few of the single voices outside Goshen, Indiana.

Now, I’ve got to run to Wal*Mart.

Hint: It’s really simpler than you think.

Let me tell you a story:

It begins yesterday when I’m listening to simply the best version of “Mack the Knife” (Sinatra and Buffet) in my 1993 Ford Escort Wagon heading north on US 33 South toward school. If you remember this version (and probably like other versions) there’s the part toward the end when the whole brass section builds to an explosion: Pow! and I’m hitting the “back” button on my iPod Shuffle to hear it again. In my mind, this is one of the best recordings of music ever.

I’m at school and after 3rd hour one of the music teachers motions me to talk and we’re discussing some arrangement for a student of his to get out of my class to listen to a pretty famous musician. I’m cool with that, but what I really want to ask him about is “Mack the Knife.”

“You doing the Jazz band thing, eh?” I verify.

“Yes, I’m the other director,” he says.

And then I ask him if they’ll be playing “Mack the Knife” at the Jazz Cafe this year and he says “Yes” like they always play it.

“It’s a standard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says.

And then I launch into my experience of listening to “Mack the Knife” and how it’s incredible the way that “ol’ Blue Eyes” includes himself in the list of names in the verses that he and Buffet add to the song. And then I ask him if he thinks it’s a violent song as far as the lyrics and I think it is and he stops for a moment.

“You know,” the jazz director says, “I don’t think I remember the words…I just listen to the music.”

And I say “Oh” and he responds “But I’ll have to look at the words now that you bring it up.”

Here’s another story:

After I got my teaching degree, my wife and I moved to Bloomington, IN so she could complete her graduate studies in speech/language pathology. It is simply impossible to get a teaching job in any school district within an hour’s drive from Indiana University for someone who is from the outside and who has no contacts. I did, though, interview twice for a school within 25 minutes and those were sorry interviews (mostly because I’ve been told that I don’t interview well). But in one case, I realized that I hated some of the people that did the interviewing.

I was answering the usual questions and trying not to sound too desperate in wanting to do anything to land my first teaching job. (In our senior ed. seminar class, we were encouraged to say “Yes” to any coaching assignment or an extracurricular activity). I was working as a bill collector in Indianapolis at the time and I was ready to mop the floors if the school asked. I simply wanted to teach.

The principal then looks at my application and is unsure of where Grace College is at and “where’s Winona Lake anyway?” I tell him it’s by Warsaw and he still doesn’t get the geography of Northern Indiana and then looks back at me and asks/tells “You know, you can’t evangelize in the classroom, don’t you?”

I was amazed at this man’s inability to understand my application. First he didn’t know his Indiana geography and second, he was being an idiot (or at least that is what I thought at the time). I took a breath and then calmly pointed out to him that I had been a bill collector for 5 years and it wasn’t my general practice to “share the Good News after I had just asked a person to pay their hospital bill.” I don’t think he wanted me and I certainly didn’t want that type of a person as a principal.

And a last story:

Last Friday, a student in my Expository Writing class (senior composition) challenged my requirement of a 15-20 page paper when I was teaching them about how to write good sentences.

“If we can’t write a sentence, then how are we to write a 15-20 page paper then?” he said. And the kid next to him was saying “Well, there’s simply no way I could write a 15-20 paper.”

When the murmuring died down enough for me to answer–and maybe he didn’t want an answer, maybe he just wanted to say aloud what was going around in his mind–I asked him for a favor: to ask me the same question after he wrote the paper and to let me know if it was worth it. And, if he could, to then let me know in a year (after some college/life work) if he could see why I had the class write a massive paper.

And I think he backed off a bit and I’m not sure if he believed me, but I added: “You might just have to trust me on this one” and walked back to the front of the class.

Each day, teachers and students and staff engage in sharing their religion with one another by the stories they tell. We talk about our passions and we sometimes actively try and convince others that they too should see or hear or feel those same things that rouse in us the stuff that dreams are made of. Other times, some folk may misread us and instead of seeing a person full of passion, they’d rather see a label and restrict human potential through an incomplete sentence. But most religious of all school practices is when someone asks the simple question “Why?” For in that very question, one is attempting to figure out place and perspective and purpose. And as long as public schools encourage questioning and discussion of ideas with others, the public school will continue to be a place of religion.

I thought it was quite humorous too. It had been a day that began with me being slightly hostile toward…well, a few things: being moved to another room so my classroom could be used for retesting of the ISTEP and a faculty meeting that had me say some things that ran contrary to most of my colleague’s opinions. Some call it grumpy; I call it “Tuesday.”

So, there’s this student whom I swear is in the hallways, when he should be class, almost every hour. I’ll make some comment and usually the response is playful banter. He also has a girlfriend and she is in my resource period class (sort of a homeroom idea) and so I feel even more welcome in sharing my views on dating with the both of them. And at the end of the day I’m watching the rush toward buses and dash to after-school activities and there’s the couple doing the “departure” kiss and I yell down the hall: “Hey! Stop your kissing and read books.”

I think I’m funny, but the boy doesn’t. She leaves for the bus and he walks toward me and I feel the compulsion to say it again: “Don’t Kiss; Read Books.” He mutters something slightly negative and I turn toward my editor and tell him how funny I think my new found phrase is and he perhaps humors me and I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

My day started out hostile and I think I passed that hostility on to the kissing boy.

Like Target, eating a meal at Hacienda will yield at least three encounters with people from school (it’s usually 3 students to every 1 teacher). And as Lori and I are enjoying a night out without the kids, I see four students swing by our booth to say “Hey” or to bring us our food (I’m a fan of the wet burrito myself). Occasionally the conversation goes a bit beyond the “Hey” stage and Paige and I are chatting a bit while my wife was…well, now I think of it, I don’t remember what she was doing during this time. Anyway, Paige (maybe her real name) and I are talking and she wanted to make sure that I told my senior students something that needed to be told. So, I’ll repeat it here:

“It’s not that great.”

Or, at least that was the theme. After high school, according to her, it really isn’t that wonderful. You work on finishing college and then you get a job and you suddenly find yourself– well–at the bottom. And sometimes, at the real bottom with little money and little respect and little power. So, she tells me, “Tell your little seniors that” and I say “Okay” and she leaves.

Tonight I coerced my son into playing in a chess tournament this weekend. He’s two weeks out from playing in the state team chess tournament in Terre Haute at the end of the month and we have talked about playing in the county tournament this weekend. He was wavering a bit because my son’s calendar revolves not around events, but opportunities to be with his friends or PlayStation or–and the best scenario–both. He wanted one of his friends to come over Friday night which means lots of PS2 time (and not the usual 30 min. timer limit). So, before dinner, I tell him (whiles he sits on my lap and he’s being all silly) that I think it would be good for him to play in the tournament and he objects a little but then concedes with “Well, maybe he could come over Saturday night.”

During dinner I ask Evan if he feels like I coerced him into playing in the chess tournament this weekend and he says “Maybe.” I ask him if he knows what “coerce” means and he says that he thinks it means “To force” and I say “Yes, do you think I forced you into playing in the tournament” and he says “Sort of.”

And I don’t feel really bad about it. Father knows best, right?

Maybe Paige has a point: Life’s not all that great after high school. Maybe there’s an upside to the coercion that parents and schools inflict on students. Sure, we parents and teachers “talk” our kids and students into doing a wide variety of things and most of the time they’ll smile and nod their way through compliance. And at what cost?

The kissing boy said I should just go ahead and write him up because “I already got a referral today anyway.” I told him that’s not what I wanted to do. He wasn’t too pleased with what I had to say and started off down the hall. I told him that all I wanted him to do is “Stop Kissing and Read Books.”

He didn’t laugh. I did.

And this is not a rant against not getting the Lilly Endowment for not granting my proposal “Writing a blank canvas: Arctic Canada and Northern Indiana” (There is little distracting about the landscapes of Nunavut, Canada and Northern Indiana. But in writing about place, I plan on crafting an non-fiction essay about the vast beauty of each in a longer article for publication).

Is that not a cool proposal? Well, apparently it didn’t make the cut, but I’m still living without having the summer Lilly grant experience. And I just a call from a teacher in my building who also applied for the Lilly Teacher Creativity grant and well laughed about not getting the “good” letter of acceptance. Sigh.

So, for fun, I thought I might recount the last six years of grant proposals:

2008: Writing a blank canvas: Write an article about Nunavat and Indiana landscapes

2007: Building an Inuksuk garden (visit Nunavat and then recreate the experience in my backyard).

2006: Running in Nunavat: See inuksuk and run a marathon in Nunavut.

2005: Jack London: Visit Glen Ellen, CA and write short stories.

2004: Get a private pilot’s license.

2003: Study and complete in the National Chess Championships in PA.

I’ve been hanging around the idea of going to Nunavut for the past 3 years and I have a feeling that once people see the promotions for the 2010 Winter Olympics, everyone will want to know more about Inuksuk. But, perhaps, I need to let that idea go for next year.

And, to the winners of the 2008 Lilly Teacher Creativity Grant: congratulations and enjoy the experience. I hear that it is a wonderful boost to your teaching.

Tonight the 7-year-old informed me that Mom said “We could get a four-legged guinea pig” and I told him that his mother “wasn’t right in the head.”

He thought that was funny and went and told Mom what I said and she laughed.

Don’t try and read into the 7-year-old’s compound adjective of “four-legged,” I think he just meant…well, I haven’t seen a three-legged one before. I am serious, though, about another varmint thing in the house. And when Lois informed me a couple minutes later that I could be the “good” guy and be the one that takes the credit for getting the hamster-thing, I still said that she wasn’t right in the head.

And she laughed and left for a meet-up with her mom and a friend.

We did like Weebie a lot and the boys did too. Weebie played with the cats and I think even starred in a few of our movies. But, like most Weebie-sized pets, he died–on Evan’s 8th birthday. It was a sad affair with Weebie losing his eye sight and then, technically dying on Evan’s birthday, but we sort of hid Weebie from view (or said that Weebie was resting) and then pronounced him dead the day after May 23rd.

I think my aversion to small things dying came at an early age…around the same age of Evan when Weebie died. Here’s how I explain the story in a piece I wrote in 2003 and I’ll set up the context by including the first two paragraphs of “Mickey Rat” and then the last three paragraphs.

View Larger MapWashoe Court two blocks into an arc at which we lived. There were a dozen houses to the left of us stretching to the McCann’s house that bordered Neotomas Avenue. To the right, were three houses: the Davis’ (who were Catholic which didn’t mean really anything to me except that their boys got to wear grey slacks and sweater to St. Eugene’s school), the Robinsons and the Germans (who remind me of the kids’ obsession with Radley house). Brad Frost and I once played ding-dong-ditch on the Germans, Brad tripped when we made the get away and broke his arm in the process. Washoe Court straightened out and ran parallel for about thirty feet and then made way for another court in which Esther, our babysitter for a few years, resided. Fred, her husband, rarely talked much and her sons didn’t torture us as much as taunted. Washoe Court then rejoined the paralleling and yielded two more houses until it reached Ne0tomas also. Brad Frost, my best friend of 6 years until we moved to the River, was our neighbor to the left; the Ramseys, the Smiths and a couple houses down were the Gradys. We didn’t play with those two blond wavy-haired boys much at all. That’s why it’s still so strange on what possessed them to make us hate them so much and we were a fairly mellow family.

Apparently we lived in a “custom-built” house that we designed and built by some lawyer who lived in it for about a year before selling it to us and moving to the City. I’m sure the neighborhood was happy to see a cardiologist with his young family move into 2546 Washoe Court. There would gatherings and barbeques and parties and some showing of the gathering wealth of the Judson family. I remember by father telling me how to grill a t-bone steak on our custom built, brick grill complete with a heating oven for things like potatoes below the grill behind a 2 x 3 foot black iron door. I also remember wheelbarrowing those bricks and heaving them off the 20 foot cliff in our backyard 8 years later due to age and atrophy and erosion…

It was around this time that the Jason, our half calico bred cat, wasn’t enough of the wild kingdom for my brother. We housed various lizards and snakes in our room, but we were quite fond of our rats which became so numerous that Mike built a shed in the back yard by the fence we shared with the Frosts. We housed the 100 or so rats in a large, Plexiglas aquarium and several cages. We feed them the usual pet store rodent food along with peanut butter which they would lick off your finger. My mother even donned a “Mickey Rat” t-shirt that she got at a flea market in Sebastopol and even though it might have been an editorial message toward the early Disney World, I always looked at it as sort of a family shirt celebrating our rats.

Brad and I are either riding our bikes or trying to throw rocks over the power lines that hovered the court when I hear my sister or brother yelling something. Stephany is running toward me and I come with her, half running in slow motion. We’re headed toward the shed and Mike walks past us looking down. I feel death and I see images of saws with blood and white and red rats with unblinking eyes and mouths agape and heads with no bodies and I turn and ask Stephany. She says Mike heard it was the Grady boys and my mom comes out and is upset and we’re half happy because we never did liked the Grady boys but more than that we ask ourselves “Why?”

The Judson mob, all four of us, led by my mother, head to the gated front yard of the Gradys drab green house and my mother is talking/shouting and the offenders are summoned by their mother and admit to the crime and I find out later that for their punishment the Grady boys are put on restriction for one day. We clean up the crime scene and make the unanimous decision to let the remaining 11 rats go free. I remember it was the next day and in sort of ceremonial fashion, all of us, Mike, Stephany, and I make a speech and then set our pets free. And I remember the fog and the rats heading down the edge of the incline that lead toward the wilderness of the Santa Rosa Creek. We stood there for a while and then made our way back into the house past the shed and what was left of my father’s brick grill.

I think we’re safe if we just stick to one gineau pig. It looks like the boys will be getting a living Easter present.

It was given to me from a former colleague’s husband who worked in DC when the love-years of NoChildLeftBehind were being birthed in the aisles of Congress. NCLB was the thing to rally behind, leaving no one behind. And yet, even though some knew that the emphasis on high-stakes testing was bad, the idea of NCLB was something to believe in (or vote in).

And I’ve worn my NCLB lanyard to secure my ID picture for these years until the day that the act gets repealed and torn apart because of what it has done to US education: trying to measure all peoples in all places the same way. And the result is to reward the rich schools and punish everyone else. And when, as I explain to some people who let me explain, NCLB is no longer the reigning educational law of this land, I will stop wearing my NCLB lanyard.

It’s been the albatross around my neck and an editorial statement for the past years.

But, I have a confession to make: NCLB has been great for education.

I know, I said wtf to myself when I realized it too. So, I’ll state it again: NCLB has been great for education.

It hit me two weeks ago when I was running, I think, along the canal in Goshen. And I was thinking about the part in John Stossel’s “Tampering with Nature” when one guest was telling us why all the Green Peace activists were trying to scare us with the images of polar bears and ice melting. And he said it was that if there was fear, then people (or lawmakers) will allocate money for that cause…lots of money. And then it hit me: Same goes for NCLB.

Because of NCLB, the overall public perception of US education is that our kids are struggling to keep up with the world economy (and, btw, look how horrible the US economy is). And if our students are struggling and the teachers are struggling and the schools are struggling, then something needs to be done right now…or else! So, let’s look at these charts that show how horribly our students are doing, how badly we compare to every other nation in the universe (of, don’t worry about where these stats came from or if they are measuring accurate data). The DATA shows how bad it is.

Now, enter NCLB and we have created a lot of jobs for people to advise schools how to run their educational centers more like an efficient business. Textbook companies are cranking out an incredible amount of “technology-based” software to help your students use technology to achieve state standards and pass that qualifying exam.

And, let’s allocate lots of money for teachers to go to conferences and for staff development. (Which, probably, is the reason why I get to go to a cool conference in Georgia in May).

NCLB emphasized the need and now we have funds for lots of stuff to help schools get better. And that’s my confession. For I’m not sure if there wasn’t a perceived crisis in education, that schools would have received the money to do some good things.

Unfortunately, we have paid a lot of money to outside experts whom we will dub “guru” and smile and take in all that they might have to say so that schools can “get better.” Tomorrow, I will sit in on one such presentation for a nationally-known company whom people swear by as being the way to fix schools. And I think, unlike good business, that this company does not have a money back guarantee on their program. My feeling is that, like most educational reforms, experts are willing to give advice for a large fee and a nice PowerPoint presentation; but like a Rainmaker, will not be around when the results fail to meet the promises.

Next slide.

It’s the one thing that I can say to Evan that will guarantee a dramatic response. It goes like this:

ME: Evan, how was your day?

EVAN: Eh. Fine, I guess. (Fiddling with a miniature paper airplane as he looks longingly at the PlayStation2 which he’s been ground from for the rest of the week. These are mean parents).

ME: (Noticing the hope in his son’s eyes for all-things-PS2) Yeah, that’s not going to happen. So, have you practiced your piano and cello?

[EVAN immediately hits the ground like a sack of potatoes and screams as if he were in pain...real pain]

EVAN: Noooo! [And EVAN throws the miniature airplanes in the air and runs upstairs to his room before the planes hit the ground]

ME: (to his wife): Well, that didn’t go well, did it?

And really I can’t talk. When I did make the varsity basketball team and then started, I can’t tell you if or how much I practiced during the off-season. Sure, I wasn’t a great player, but my heart wasn’t it. I remember trying to do conditioning (running I think) on the back roads of the town we were living in at the time (Monte Rio). And, I remember getting all jazzed up out getting into shape for the season and I think I made it 5 minutes down an incredibly beautiful road lined with massive redwood trees and then stopping. I think the universal, existential question popped into my mind as it probably does with Evan when he has to practice his piano: “Why am I doing this?”

I did practice, though, my lines for the play “Who Am I?” in which I had the lead and the entire short play (30 minutes) was based on my character and what he said (it was sort of a 20 questions “show” with me being host). I felt the pressure because, well, I was the lead and Ms. Jungkeit said I needed to know my lines. So, each day to school, I would drive 40 minutes and practice my lines until I got the mountain that crossed into Rincoln Valley (the driving was curvy and I really needed to concentrate). I knew my lines and the performance was, well, okay. See we were the opening play, then there was another short piece, and lastly, the main event: You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown in which my best friend Jeff Graves had the lead role.

Now that I think of it, I wonder if I was on the “B” team and the “A” team played the important parts.

And now Evan sort of faces the same situations. See, the guy who played Snoopy couldn’t sing, and if you know the musical, you know that Snoopy has at least one solo and our Snoopy could not sing. No, he could not sing…I’m not kidding. But, people liked him and he was able to ham his way through the song and people were happy. Sometimes the more talented don’t get the lead roles or the better spot on the team.

Evan has had his best year in playing chess than the previous two years. He’s had better tournament records than before and had a great team contribution last weekend in winning all the games he played. See, originally he was on the “B” team, but because one of the players didn’t show up, Evan got to play on the “A” team and, again, did well (won all four of his games). One of the kids on the team is a good friend of his and the others were happy to have Evan on the team. In fact, they might have wondered why he wasn’t on the team.

Now, this is where I stop as a parent so it doesn’t look like I know what is best for the team and my son (imagine a fist fight breaking out in a chess tournament: Dad slugs the tournament director). But that’s not how I do things and frankly, I’m not violent. I was happy for Evan and how well he did. But the worst thing for me was realizing that he’s had a “successful season” without little or no practice outside of Monday and Tuesday school practice times.

Ouch!

And I think he’s a smarter player for it. He understands the board a bit more and he makes the most of his playing on Mondays and Tuesdays. But even at those times, he doesn’t show off or try and make sure that the coaches see him playing. No, he plays against his friends and sometimes is a twit (and yes, he gets that from his father).

Unfortunately, the “practice like you play” and “practice makes perfect” or “Independent Practice” (aka Homework) are all hallmarks of parents and teachers of the answer to “Why do I have to do this?” It’s unfortunate, because it is not accurate. And I think down deep inside, most reflective people know this to be true (and sometimes we call those kids who don’t practice: “bright, but don’t work up to their potential”). It’s as if that we as adults merely make the children do stuff as payback for when we had to practice when we in their shoes (it’s the anti-lesson of Atticus “…you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them”).

It seems to me that instead of practicing something over and over that one should actually be doing that particular task (be it writing or reading or calculus or chess). Instead of reading about or talking about or thinking about a particular skill or activity, shouldn’t we just be doing it? I think Evan is learning that lesson and he seems happier this chess season because he gets to play some chess and be silly with his friends.

I wonder if he’ll hit the floor today when I remind him to practice his piano and cello.

Or at least that’s what a student said I was.

The student wasn’t too happy with an answer I gave to a request and then in the next few minutes used her creative energies to pull a picture of me off the school’s web directory into a MS Word(r) document and write in a 24-point bold script “He is so Gay!” Mind you, the students were working on an annotated bibliography about an important journalism person or publication during the class time–At least that is what I had intended the time to be used for.

So, what did I do? Mostly what I normally do: ignored it. She was upset because I didn’t grant permission for her request and funneled her ire into Microsoft Word (and I can deal with that). I have that effect on some of my students: I make them mad sometimes and I’m okay with that. Question is: should I have been upset at being called “so Gay” or even that the student was using a “derogatory term” to channel her passive aggressive anger?

Again, I chose not to respond. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. What I usually do in these situations is pretend to ignore the behavior, the comment, the DDJD LookSneerCurse. But what I then will do is use proximity: I lean or walk in the student’s general direction. I might walk right by their desk. But most of all, I will make sure that the student knows that I acknowledge their presence by my presence and that’s about it.

Besides, I think she was having a bad day anyway.

Now on the “so Gay” part. I grew up in Northern California during the 70s and 80s and I have generally, for the first part of my teaching career, been trying to remind the students and youth (and perhaps adults) in Northern Indiana that to call someone “Gay” borders on being homophobic. And, as a side note, it really is the worst thing to call another male student (as if to be gay is to be one on the Highway to Hell).

And so, I would have a talk with my classes as it came up (as someone loudly would name-call another student “gay”) and remind my students of what exactly they were saying. And generally, like most teacher lectures on proper EmilyPost “be nice to one another” lessons go, it fell on CharlieBrown AdultTalking “wa wa waa, wa wa waa.” You get the picture and you hear the tone. The problem, though, is that I wasn’t any better than my students were: I and my friends, did the same things and made fun the gay community also.

As I mentioned before, I grew up in Northern California and our family moved to the Russian River community during my 8th grade year and then back for grades 10-12. We lived near the community of Guerneville and we had fun saying some things about the folk that would come up during the weekends and the summer. See, Guerneville, as I remember hearing, was a fairly “clean town” and “many of the business were owned by people who were gay” (mind you, we lived about 60 miles north of San Francisco and to many of my students that means I lived by the gayest community the world). And so– and I learned this from a high schooler whom we thought was cool (probably because he was stoned most of the time…no kidding)– we would yell out the window some name or title when our car went by two men holding hands along the sidewalk or road.

I’m not proud of it; I’m just saying that I did it.

Along with that, my church buddies would come out and visit me and one particularly funny kid in our group thought Guerneville should have a tagline underneath the city limits sign: Guerneville: Where the women are women and the men are to. And we laughed and thought we all were quite witty (remember, to be funny as an adolescent wins more points than being good-looking and being a decent athlete).

So, when I denied the student’s request to go to her locker so she could retrieve her electronic listening device, I wasn’t really shocked that she used a term, though I don’t think was too witty, to project her distaste for my declining her request.

Before you remind me of my duty as a classroom teacher of a public school, think for a moment and remember that we all are guilty of name-calling. It is human and yes, it is ugly, but it is very human to do so.

Though one of my former newspaper students, who happens to be African-American (see how careful I worded that), calls me her “wigger.” She’ll say “Hey, are you my ‘wigger’?” and I’ll remind her that she realizes that I can’t say the same thing back to her and she’ll say “I know.”

Now that’s witty.