The rope in the water,

the cleat on the cliff,

do them no good anymore.

Let them fall, sink, go away,

become invisible as they tried

so hard to do in their own dying.

We needed to bother them

with what we called help.

We were the needy ones.

The dying do their own work with

tidiness, just the right speed,

sometimes even a little

satisfaction.  So quiet down.

Let them go.  Practice

your own song.  Now.

–”Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back”, from Playing the Black Piano, Bill Holm, 2004

I first heard of–and met–the large, ebullient, red-faced Icelander over twenty years ago when I signed up for some poetry/creative writing workshop at my St. Cloud, Minnesota, college.  Bill Holm had just published Boxelder Bug Variations, and I was intrigued by the freshness, the humor, the seriousness, the twinkle.

Many years later, I suddenly found myself teaching English at a tiny little school in a tiny little town that just happened to be not only Bill Holm’s hometown–and current residence–but his muse, his tether, his theme, his kingdom.

It wasn’t completely accidental, of course.  During my interview for the teaching job, his name and acclaim were brought up as a way of sweetening the deal.

It worked.

For the nearly seven years I’ve worked here, I’ve seen Bill Holm speak in a variety of contexts, spoken to him in awe as he peeked into my classroom, driven by his house with a sense of fan-girl curiosity, and admired both reading and teaching his printed word.  While I’ve never–and will never–share his appreciation for the desolate prairie (I’m a “tree person” as he would say), I do share a Scandinavian Lutheran background, a Liberal mindset, and a love for wit, humor, and travel.

And a love of Walt Whitman.

Reading his essays, his poems, is like looking in a mirror and finding I share part of myself with a middle-aged bearded man with a hearty voice and a love of ale and chat.

It’s not a bad place to be.  Ever.

When I began teaching my Advanced Placement Language course one of his books of essays (The Heart Can Be Found Anywhere on Earth) centered around the very town in which I spend the vast majority of my time, three schoolyears ago, I was nearly giddy when reading certain of his pieces.  My class teased me the entire year about my schoolgirlish crush on the man, and kept threatening to stop by his house to tell him of my undying love.  Since I had thought about getting up the courage to ask him to speak to my class, this was a major problem.

I never did ask him–he spoke about the same essays in another English course taught by another English teacher (Aaron Cheadle, who also happens to live across the street from Bill)–and now I never will be able to.

Bill Holm died last night, in Sioux Falls.  We thought we’d lost him a couple of years back when he suffered major heart trouble, but he pulled through to keep carrying around Walt Whitman and leading Boxelder Bug Days, and even kept teaching at the local University until retiring this past year.

Every summer, he conducted an Icelandic travel and writing seminar, and I always wanted to come up with the money to go.  It was a dream of mine.

And last night…he left us.

And, like he wrote above, I still want to bother him and call it help.

Goodbye, Bill.  I will look for you in the grass.

I’m not sure if I was very helpful to people, but I hope so.  I began by asking the assembled faculty if any of them knew what “web 2.0″ was; not a single hand went up.  That was actually nearly reassuring; it meant that I wouldn’t be talking down to them.  I hate it when that happens, from either side of the communication.

A few more joined the faculty ning I set up over Christmas break–that’s a good sign.  Quite a few who had joined right away and then forgot also showed up today—adding some information, discussing other things.  A good start.  And, a group of us had a meeting today about doing interdisciplinary lessons and performance preparation for the concert that’s on Cinco de Mayo–we came up with some neat ideas–and we immediately said we need to add a group for that purpose on the faculty ning.  Yay!

Drop by drop.

Also had a discussion about YouTube (and subsequently Nibipedia and Wordia) being blocked.  It sounds as if most of the faculty (if not administration) supports unblocking it and finding other means of monitoring students than wholesale locked gates.

We’ll see where that goes, as well.  Drop by drop!

In other news, grades are due this week (I have hundreds of papers I’ve been putting off) and Round One of Mock Trial competition (I have two teams, and both play the same day) on Wednesday.  Preparing for a sub for the whole day plus the stress of the trials (I lose years of my life each time) added to the grading, AND a new semester starting tomorrow, and I’ve about had it.

Might explain the migraine I’ve been nursing all day, one that promises to gather strength if I keep heaping stress on like Mrs. Tam O’Shanter nursing her wrath to keep it warm…(one of my all-time favorite lines of poetry, there–thanks Robbie Burns!)

Oh…the insulting part of the day?  The insurance meeting.  We have a pay freeze on, statewide (Governor Pawlenty), but our already outrageous health insurance is going up at least 20%.  I have no idea where I’ll find that kind of money–we already aren’t making it, and my husband doesn’t even *have* insurance.

I’m trying not to think about it right now.  Not this week.  I can’t physically afford the worry.  Once grades are in, once Mock Trial is over, then I’ll spend the time to deal with having two degrees, several years experience, working a gazillion hours a week, but not being able to support myself doing so.

My tenth graders just finished reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, and they’re now working on culminating projects.   One of the groups is doing a “Who was Hitler, really” kind of thing, researching his life and trying to figure out how someone like him happened.

We were all in the lab today, and one of the girls in the group–obviously reading some informative site–asked me, “Ms O, what’s ‘mein kampf”?”

As I always remind my students, it’s not my job to provide answers but to help guide them to arriving at their own answers–which is much harder, usually, than the former.  For both of us.  So, I said, “I think you should research that.  Go see what you can find, and we’ll talk in a few minutes.”

About twenty seconds later–I hadn’t even rounded to the other side of the lab, yet–the same girl, after doing a search, said, “Ms O?  The filter blocked it.  Says it’s ‘hate speech’.”

Well, of *course* it’s hate speech…Hitler freaking wrote it! For the love of all that’s educational!

Frak!

Two years ago, I had a senior girl unable to do most of her research for a paper at school because she was researching breast cancer research.  God forbid a student accidentally stumble on a picture or description of a human body part, even in the interests of healthy research.  This same student had family members personally touched by this terrible disease, and really wanted to write this paper and learn more about it herself…so, she did so from home.

Because the filter wouldn’t let her type in “breast” and get any results.

A year or so before that, I had a student writing about the ravages of meth–something that definitely touches many here in the rural backwater.  Meth is quite a prominent, and deadly, drug in these parts.

What happened?  He couldn’t look up figures from NIDA–the National Institute on Drug Abuse–because–yep, you guessed it–it was blocked.  He couldn’t look at any site that included “drug”, just as my other student couldn’t look at any site including the word “breast.”  (No looking up chicken recipes!)

It’s enough to make any educator, anyone who cares about quality education, anyone who’s not tied into a veritable knot about “safety of children!!!!!!!” with a dozen exclamation points.

Our children will, most certainly, NOT be safe if we don’t teach them responsible internet use, don’t allow them to use the word “breast” or look up drug use statistics, or learn about a crazy, paranoid, dangerously-charismatic wingnut mass murderer.  We’ll send them off without any tools, without the ability to *educate themselves*.

All in the misguided ruse of “protecting” them.

So, today, when my student said she wasn’t allowed to look up Hitler’s book in a public school in supposedly the world’s “most free” country, even with a teacher’s blessing, I very nearly had a conniption.  (My students know how I feel about filters, and I had twenty-five pairs of eyes on me immediately–I’m proud to say that I did keep my cool, although I explained why I was angered by the filter.)

I said, “Well, the term means ‘my struggle,’ but I wanted you to find that out on your own, and it’s the title of a book Hitler wrote.”

And, so, I’m not going to break Godwin’s Law. I’m not going to compare a totalitarian, Big Brother-esque mandatory internet filter to…

…um, nope.  I think you can connect the dots just fine.

Edit:  1/16/09, to add italics to book title

You’re in a darkened, metal box.  Someone–someone evil, mind you–has set up a laser-and-mirrors gig so there are constantly-moving red lights around you in the dark, but you can’t quite find their source or track them easily.

It’s far too warm in the box.  And you don’t have room to lie down; you can lean against the walls, but they’re rough and spiky.

Your stomach is unsettled and you know you’re mere nanseconds away from losing your sandwich-and-yogurt lunch (one your awesome husband lovingly made and packed for you this morning).

While you’re enjoying all of these sensations, someone (again, someone evil) has loosened several sharp-toothed weasels to leap and crawl around (they have claws, as well) inside the metal box, and outside, several evil someones are pounding on the metal walls, with hammers, in various asynchronous, unrelenting rhythms.

In short, this is a day teaching while having a migraine after not being able to sleep the night before.

Just so you know. 

Educators have a natural “refreshment” break before each new school year, or term, to revisit goals and make adjustments.  New Year isn’t exactly the natural point for such endeavors, but since I haven’t been doing so well with the objectives I set for myself back in August–plus I have some new ones–I may as well start fresh here.

Ah, the sweet smell of optimistic good intentions!

So, first of all, the “I’ve-had-these-on-my-list-and-I-still-need-to-do-better” resolutions:

Grading. I’m still absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of grading and the hours and hours it takes.  I need to not only vow to decrease the time between getting the papers and handing them back with feedback, but find efficient means of doing so.  Perhaps I need to try some different methods–online commenting, peer review, etc.–because I something needs to change.  In 2009, I will try to grade more quickly and also find ways to do it *better*.

Family Contact.  My Principal makes this a priority, and we’re reminded to make contact with parents more often–and I have not done this as well as I could be.  I need to make more contact for the good things, the “wow” moments, the “You won’t believe the cool thing your kid did today!” moments.  I think part of it for me is that I’m far more comfortable with e-mail than telephone; I have a near pathological aversion for telephones and I would be quite happy not even having one, actually, especially in my classroom (I loathe the interruptions).  I know for sure that I would make more contact via e-mail than with phone, so my resolution here is twofold: to face up to my aversion to phones much more often and to make more e-mail contact, as well.

Fewer Stranded Lessons.  There isn’t enough time each day to get through all the lesson, practice, application I want, and there certainly isn’t enough time each school year to do justice to all the strands expected on the state standards.  I know I’m guilty of introducing a concept–usually something grammatical, the next step in making writing more fluent, etc.–and, because of lack of time, realizing days later that the followup for the lesson got lost in the shuffle.  When I come back to it then, it’s nearly like starting over.  I need to find ways of making sure this happens less often–I think I’m doing better this year already, but I haven’t reached my goal just yet.

And, a few new ones that I want to incorporate into my teaching:

Web2.0 Advancement. Ah, yes…I can hear the echo of this one reverberating off thousands of teachers’ walls across the country as we speak.  The big catch-phrase of 2008-2009 (at least where I’m from–we may be a bit behind the trends, being where we are, which isn’t always a bad thing as at least the trends have to take substantial hold before we get to them).  And yes, I am wholeheartedly signing on.  Not because I think the tools are ends in and of themselves, but because I think they’re great tools.  If the tools open up the world, if the tools help kids connect–both with text and with others, if the tools allow different perspectives, if the tools bring delight and efficiency to learning, then I want to use them.  I want to spice up old plans, I want to shift and expand and view lessons through different lenses.  Kids up out of their desks more often.  I want to see the love of discovery–something I’ve decried the lack of for years–and if these tools can help with that, I want ‘em.

That wouldn’t be a problem–I like putting together presentations–except for two things:

1)  I hate, loathe, detest, and am flattened by having to present to colleagues.  I can only teach teenagers.  That’s it.  My repertoire is quite…small.  I can do 8th grade, and I can do seniors, and I can do everything in between, but beyond that?  I either come across like a total imbecile or, in trying to avoid that, I assume far too much and end up speaking babble in Greek.

and…

2)  In deciding what to include, I’ve been spending hours reading edtech blogs, following links, adding to my bookmarks, and exclaiming, “Oh, hey, another way to use Twitter!” and “Wow, that’s so freaking cool!” a lot.

Neither of these points are very helpful, you might notice.

Perhaps as an act of exorcism, I’ll lay out some of the cool things I’ve been finding for #2.  (If any of you have ideas on fixing #1, please comment or e-mail!)

• Wordia.  I’m having visions of some very fun and creative vocabulary lessons for kids.
• Search Cube.  Cool for visual learners, I suspect.  You can view an example here.
• Twitter Venn tools.  Very cool.  Visually interesting and fun.  (Not to mention an awesome woman whose blog I need to watch closely so it’s already added to my RSS feed!)
• Speaking of new bloggers I’m following, here’s a great idea for Movie Trailers for Books with a very cool resource for keeping track of visual sources.  Woot!

Where did most of these come from?  Tweets on Twitter posted by other educators or edtechs.

So…back to that presentation.  Maybe after following links to just a couple of more sites…and checking my tweets another time…oh, and yeah, that new Wiki I joined for educators, that might have something new…and…and…and…