rustypants speaks

the latest excitement:

• i’m down 41lbs from last june to 244lbs
• i continue to run 5x / week, lift weights 3x / week, bike infrequently, watch my calories, do some circuit training a couple times a week, drink lots of water, and juggle daily.
• i started doing yoga 3 weeks ago and am enjoying it quite a bit – very relaxing, yet also a workout. i frequently do it at night before heading to bed and it helps the insomniac in me fall asleep.
• this pic was taken this afternoon while hamming for the camera:
  
• the picture drives me to ask the question: if you had a high school teacher with guns like that, would you be messing around with him? no? then why the heck do my students mess with me? is it the shoes? is it the smile? maybe i don’t flash the guns around enough?
• i’m neck-deep in IEP writing, with somewhere around 18 IEP’s due in the next 2 months. oy vey.
• add to this that i’m taking a course on educational assessments at UWF and it’s a double oy vey.
• stephen king’s Under the Dome was a great read until the last 30 pages. he really is a master of plot development, but his endings are so frequently just blah.
• i’ve now worn my Vibram Five Fingers every day for three months and i’m telling ya: these things are absolutely awesome. i did acquire a second pair of them (seen in above picture) and do all my teaching, workouts, running, etc. in them. my feet / legs / knees / back have never felt better. i realize i have a followup i need to do on my previous post – it’ll happen, promise!
• spring break is the last week in march – i’m planning on being in Cincinnati for a couple days. am thinking of arranging some kind of party for a couple hours one night and see if we can’t get everyone together in one room to visit and catch up!
• there’s more to tell, but this was unplanned and as such, my brain is mush.

thanks to kate for the kick in the ass.

dunno about you, but if i were looking for an online college and ran across the following ad, i’d run quickly in the opposite direction.

doesn’t anyone proof these before they’re put out, or is it just that no one notices except folks with grammar fetishes?

where’s my red ink Internet pen when i need it??

anyone who can not only point out the error but also:

• explain why it’s incorrect and
• fix the error

will have their name put in a hat and i will draw one name for the following prizes:

• a sheet of sparkly star stickers to show your friends how smart you are!
• a Santa hat viciously ripped off the top of a dog toy by my dog!
• a couple of beautiful seashells pulled straight out of the Gulf of Mexico!
• an autographed picture of my shrinking manboobs!

to be eligible to win said prizes, you must live in the continental US.

Deadline: Midnight (Central time) on Tuesday August 25, 2009. NO CHEATING! don’t read the other comments until you’ve made your own!

baker college online? you’ll never have me as a student.

lise subbed for me yesterday.

when she came home, she told me about one student who was continually disrespectful to her, then insulted her. he’s a new student in the class, but well known to the disciplinary officers.

today that student strolled into class all cool and whatnot. “whassup, mr. rust?” he asked.

“siddown and shut up.” was my reply.

“what’s wrong with you?”

“you dis my wife and insult her yesterday? wrong way to get on my good side. sit. shut it.”

*look of disbelief* “that was your wife?”

*rest of class laughs uproariously*

he sat and pouted the rest of the class.

this was the email sent out friday morning at school announcing our haiku contest winners… names deleted to protect the innocent.

______________________

My distinguished panel of judges and I wrestled with many entries and almost came to blows in our struggle to choose the top three haiku – here are the results!

In Third Place, Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx wins the lightly used Continental Airlines Barf Bag for:

Anticipation
Like puppy dog tail wagging
June, July, August

In Second Place, Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx wins Nunzilla for the following submission:

Awakening minds
Butterflies’ wings emerging
An Aha moment

And finally, the First Place Winner of the snarky office door hangers, Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx submitted:

Will someone teach boys
To pull up their sagging pants
No peep shows at school
_____________________________________

Honorable Mentions abound (as will Mardi Gras beads):

Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxx sent:
Darn, It is Monday
WhY am I here? Oh that’s right
I Get paid Friday

Xxxxx Xxxx says:
That Crow woman canÂ
clean and jerk three hundred pounds!
sixty pounds, five lifts

Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx opined:
I wonder today
at the students’ attitudes
and ask, “what went wrong?”

Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx also sez:
Apathy abounds,
Stealing moments on cell phones,
Ignorance remains.

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx ventures:
Hazardous meeting
The blowhard passes me by
I feign diffidence

and finally, for managing to sneak in the name of our first female Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry, Xxx Xxxxxx declared:

What is in a name?
Edna St Vincent Millay
Poetry? Oh yes!

(Nancy Boyd wouldn’t have worked quite as well in that one, would it, Jay?)

Thanks to everyone who participated – it truly was fun to wade through the submissions and hard to pick the top ones!

the following was an email i sent to the entire school this morning initiating a haiku contest…
—————————-

Win prizes and literary fame in the PFHSÂ Staff Haiku Contest!

Well, maybe not literary fame, but hey – prizes! Bragging rights!

The History:
I write haiku to keep from going insane. I keep a notebook with me in my backpack where I write my haiku as a way to keep my cool in the face of adversity and frustration (read: students and school politics, etc.). It’s a quick, fun, and easy little trick that I can do right in the classroom as I catch my breath, grind my teeth, and try to keep my hands from grabbing someone’s throat.

What Is Haiku:
Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that consists of 17 total syllables split into three lines with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the 2nd line, and 5 syllables in the third line. This is a simplified explanation of something that can easily be Googled, but for the purpose of this contest, the above makes sense, right?

Examples:
Last Friday was a bad day for me. 2/3 of the way through the day, I wrote the following haiku:

(5 syllables) Thank God it’s Friday?
(7 syllables) Hah! I laugh with contempt and
(5 syllables) Write mass referrals.

I write haiku when good things happen, too. The following examples include both good and not so good:

My boss, Frank Murphy
The best principal on earth!
Keep my job next year?

Awful Seventh class!
Rust stuck it to them, and how!
No compassion here.

Valentine’s Day is
anniversary of our
agreement to wed!

A friend of mine also writes haiku and we sometimes email each other with them:

The stone we do roll…
A task so Sisyphean…
Whiskey’s the answer!Â

And now, The Contest:
Be creative! Write some haiku! They can be funny, serious, concerned, worried, angry – whatever tone you want them to have! The only rules are:

1. Be sure to stay within the confines of 17 syllables broken into a 5-7-5 pattern.
2. Make your haiku school-related.
3. Submit as many haiku as you want!

Submit / email your school related haiku to me before the end of business Thursday (February 26) and my distinguished panel of judges and I will award prizes for the top three haiku, and several honorable mentions.

The Prizes (see attached picture for each item in all its glory):
1st place will receive a pack of six handy Office Door Hangers with messages like: Out To Lunch (and short a sandwich); Meeting In Progress (the practical alternative to work); Bad Day In Progress (enter at your own risk); and three others! Use these door hangers to warn students and staff of your current disposition!
2nd place will receive Nunzilla! This fire-breathing wind-up sister trudges straight out of a Catholic school student’s nightmare like a determined disciplnary force, with green eyes blazing and sparks flying from her mouth!
3rd place will receive a lightly used Continental Airlines Barf Bag / Seat Occupied sign.
Honorable Mentions will receive a strand of Mardi Gras beads caught and harvested this past Saturday morning on the streets of downtown Pensacola.

Go ye therefore and write!

Scott

so far? the entries are quite good!

thirteen.

that’s the magic number of pronouns in the extra credit question posed friday.

“how so?” you might be thinking. let’s break it down, shall we?

panel 1: “you” “me” “you” “they” “you”
panel 2: “it” “you” “someone” “your”
panel 3: “I” “you”
panel 4: “I” “I”

final tally = 13

for those who guessed 15, i am assuming you added “these” in panel 1, and perhaps one of the instances of “that” in panel 4. both of these words CAN be used as pronouns, but “these” is an adjective modifying “assignments,” and the word “that” is used as an adverb (showing extent or degree).

my two winners? kate (a way cool chick and junior at U of Maryland) and rachael (another way cool chick, and a junior at Miami University). i’ll have your prizes in the mail this week!

one thing i learned here is: this extra credit question will be virtually impossible for my students to get. 15+ people responded to this via comments, facebook, text messages, and in person, and only two got it right (and at least 40 others clicked on the link but refused to answer the question, making me suspect those folks didn’t know it either). i may need to modify this one and make it multiple choice.

thanks for participating!

the end of the first semester at my school is upon us and i’ve spent the last several days putting together my 1st semester final exams (counting as 20% of my students’ final grades). in an attempt to start with a chuckle on my three English exams, i’ve put one of my favorite calvin and hobbes cartoons on the exam cover.

i also included an extra credit question on each exam and for my ENG12 class, i had a brilliant idea! the question is: how many pronouns are in the calvin and hobbes comic on the cover of this exam?

but looking it over, i wonder how many of them will get it, and whether it’s an unfair question.

so, faithful friends, i put it to you:

how many pronouns are in the following cartoon?

the first correct answer will be rewarded with a pair of Plak Smacker FUN Great White Shark Toothbrush Covers and a strand of authentic Mardi Gras beads (and you can keep your shirt down, thankyou). these will be sent by mail next week.

the second correct answer will win a genuine paper hat stolen from The Varsity in Atlanta, GA.

please, only one guess per person, and please don’t be intimidated by previous answers – gimme yours, too!

after three weeks of teaching at pine forest high school

i woke up from a nightmare last night

where i was back at my school from last year.

*whew*

one painful aspect of having been subjected to catholic school education was the weekly grade-level church service we had to go to.

my school, st. antoninus, didn’t have a lot of good choices of priests at this point in my catholic school career. the old one was father hagedorn – he was probably 107 years old, shook uncontrollably, smacked his lips a lot, and paused too long and too often. father mick was no better – he was probably 21, a little too chummy with the guys and waaay too physical with the girls – we didn’t care for him and it was obvious that he was either on the lam or made too hasty a decision to enter the priesthood.

my best friends and i did our best to keep it as low key as possible but still eke some fun out of the experience. we sit together each week against better judgement but up to this point we’ve not gotten into too much trouble.

catholic church, in and of itself, has always been a boring thing for me. too pious, too organy, too… churchy, i guess. and when we had to go with our grade each week, oh, sheer torture! what’s worse: being in CLASS or being in CHURCH – haha, it’s a hard choice!

so picture this: four 14 year old guys: ken. brian. tony. scott. it’s spring. thursday morning. eighth grade church. front row. bored. hyms. father hagedorn. jesus hanging on the cross. robes. solemnity. holy water. communion. sit. stand. kneel. stand. sit.

and when the next hymn started up, my friend tony had apparently had enough.

we’re singing this hymn and this garbled noise starts coming from my left. it sounded like… a cat stuck in a washer? no. a record being played backwards! YES! that’s it!!

i and my other friends look at tony and he has his hymnal turned UPSIDE DOWN and is singing… backwards.

i’m not sure who started laughing first, but it was SO FUNNY. oh, we tried so hard to stop, but there was no place for the laughter to go. we grabbed our faces, nudged tony, laughed and hoped no one noticed. then, since we couldn’t stop, we started singing backwards, too. and laughed even harder.

we were lucky – no one came over and smacked us or told us to stop. we managed to get ourselves together enough that we got through the service and back to class in one piece. short bursts of laughter still plagued us during the day, but we were ok.

and then. at the end of the day. the very end of the day… we came back into our homerooms and sitting on our desks? THREE DETENTIONS EACH. signed by the director of catholic education for our school. he had been sitting in one of the wings of the church, hidden, and had seen everything.

and church, my friends, was NOT where we were to be goofing off and screwing around!

was it worth it? oh, when you can still laugh almost to the point of tears 26 years later – it’s definitely worth it.

i was once shushed by the librarian at the gallaudet university library for being too loud.

when i asked if that wasn’t a bit like a blind kid getting scolded for sticking his tongue out at another blind kid, i was warned & shushed again.

dang, the library police at those libraries for the deaf are tough!

days like today and this past week

wear the hell out of me.

i get tired of playing psychologist at school.

tomorrow the FCAT begins.

and my class is gonna kick its butt!

my students are a tough bunch. passionate and vocal about everything – happiness, anger, fights, bickering, petty squabbles – they don’t hold back and this is cause for a lot of trouble at times. there are moments when i love this loud passion and many times when it makes me want to scream.

this loud passion also causes the few quiet, introspective, reserved students to get lost in the shuffle of classroom dynamics. i frequently feel frustrated because i want to give them more attention but often cannot simply because they’re not being obnoxious loud and passionate enough to be noticed.

but one girl in particular has been a real powerful influence in our grade. she’s quiet. she’s smart because she works hard and studies. she’s not real popular with the other girls because she’s not in-your-face and doesn’t look like them, but she has a lot of admirers. she was the first student in harper’s class voted as student of the month because she follows all the rules, does all her work, goes out of her way to be helpful, is quite respectful to not only students but to teachers, too.

and she’s compassionate.

early in the year as i was trying to establish my relationship with the students, she wrote me notes several times to let me know when this or that student was “doing a good job” – meaning that i should make sure i praised / reinforced them.

she has drawn me pictures just out of the blue. she’s made pipe cleaner / ribbon things and given them to me. we have swapped seashells and told stories of how we found them.

a couple months into the year, she wrote me a page long note letting me know that some of my interactions with the students were making them unhappy because they felt i was making fun of them. she folded the note into an interlocking square and colored the outside of it bright colors and gave it to me quietly at the end of the class period. honestly, i’ve not felt so chastised as at that moment.

several weeks ago she asked me what my favorite candybar was – i told her hershey’s special dark and forgot about the conversation. a week or so later, she’s brought me a mini special dark bar.

all this to explain how i continue to learn about compassion:

last week i hit the store and found bags of skittles 2 for $.95 and bought several to use for incentives. harper’s class is the noisiest and most obnoxious and in need of the most incentives, so during a 30 minute period during which students were to be working independently on computers in the lab, i made the following offer: the two students who could be the most quiet during that half hour would get a bag of skittles.

and it was amazing. the whole class. dead quiet. honest! you could have heard a pin drop. i was literally flabbergasted and at odds as to how to distribute two bags of skittles.

so i picked the two students who get into the most trouble for talking and messing around, and in front of the whole class, pointed them out, complimented them on how hard they worked and how quiet they were, gave them their skittles and was ready to proceed to the playground for a bit.

the moans and groans from those who didn’t get the skittles were predictable. what was also predictable was seeing this young lady so happy for those two students that she was literally hopping in place in line, huge smile plastered on her face, and she was clapping.

two students who almost never get praised for anything looking at skittles like they’d won the lottery. eighteen students who were mad that they didn’t get the skittles, some complaining and wanting to know how / why these two got them, it’s not fair, how did you decide, etc.

and one girl who was thrilled to not get the skittles. thrilled that two others got them. so thrilled that she couldn’t contain her happiness for them and was clapping for them.

now fifth grade is fifth grade and she realized that she was getting The Look because of her compassion and caring and clapping – obviously she stopped, but the smile never left her face. and i knew i had made the right decision about giving those skittles away.

and i am continually taught about compassion and love from sources i don’t always expect to find it.

last week, two of my frequently misbehaving students were discussing with me the discipline that occurs at home. it was a light conversation that ended like this:

student 1: have you seen how they make the kids squat against the wall and put their arms straight out when they’re in trouble, like to punish you?

me: yeah, that would stink to have happen!

student 2: my daddy makes me do that when i’m bad. he gives you a whuppin’ if you put your arms down or sit before he tells you to.

me: wow – does that happen often?

student 2 (with pride in her voice): no! i don’t never get no whuppin’ – i can squat and hold my arms out a long time! i have to do it a lot!

student 1 and i exchange a look that i wish were caught on camera.

priceless.

one thing that has pissed me off for years is having Christians tell me and other christians:

• how to vote
• what music to listen to
• what music to NOT listen to
• what products to buy
• which TV shows / movies are acceptable to watch
• what books to stay away from

over the last few years it’s gotten to the ridiculous – boycott Disney, vote for Bush, brian mclaren is satan, 24 is a tool of the devil, real-christians-would-never-listen-to ________________, Harry Potter will send your kids souls to hell, etc. etc. etc.

recently the flap has been over The Golden Compass, a book and now movie written by Phillip Pullman. Pullman has made headlines over the fact that he is an atheist, a humanist, and his heroes in the His Dark Materials trilogy literally set out to kill God.

at least a half-dozen well-meaning Christians have told me not to read this trilogy and have spouted off ill-informed rumors about the author / book / movie designed to bolster their argument and thus save one more soul from eternal damnation.

“have you read the book?” is my question. “oh, my goodness, no!” has been the consistent reply. “but i heard about it from ______________ (insert name of relative here)” or “james dobson told me not to read it! so i’m not!”

i’m at the very end of the third book and here’s my informed assessment:

• pullman is a good writer. he’s crafted a well-written set of books that hooked me early in the first book and, except for a few short spots, has kept me hooked ever since.
• pullman has written these books for children / adolescents.
• adolescents can read these books with little trouble.
• children should not read these books.
• Christians can read these books without going to Hell.
• the heroes do, in fact, set out to kill God.
• God, being dead in a work of fiction, does NOT kill him in real life.
• adolescents who have been raised in a Christian family and who understand the features of fantasy in writing (and they should – this is a benchmark in every state’s elementary school writing / reading curriculum) can read this book without losing their faith.
• pullman seems to have more of a gripe with The Church (holy, Roman, apostolic), especially The Church of history, with its manipulations, killings, suppressions, etc. than he does with God. this doesn’t change the aim of the book – it’s simply an observation.

now, why shouldn’t children read this book? it’s a bit much – the imagery, the length, the subject matter. harry potter is better suited for younger children, and even that is a bit much depending on how young we’re talking. i’d say that 11-12 year olds could read pullman’s trilogy with some difficulty and much in the way of questions and needing support in understanding the events.

do i like His Dark Materials? yep. do i fear that his killing of God will kill my faith or kill Christianity? haha – nope. as stated many times before: my God is bigger than that and the faith of His followers is not so shaky that a work of fantasy is going to tank the life-changing reality of the message of His son.

and finally: shame on you, ill-informed, fear-mongering Christians who won’t read / watch / consider something that you fear goes outside of your own worldview! you MUST engage the world around you! you MUST read non-Christian literature! you MUST watch TV shows that challenge your faith! you MUST form your OWN opinion about things and not simply follow the herd! you MUST because this is what gets Christians in trouble: parroting with no basis in fact, making you simply one more of the brainwashed millions who fulfill the stereotype of thoughtless, conformist Christian faith – something of little or no actual world-changing substance. and this, my friends, goes against what your supposed leader taught and did.

today, at the top of an “enough! go-to-the-back-of-the-room and write-out-definitions-just-so-i-can-teach the students-who-give-a-rip” assignment:

“I can’t wait to go back to Mr. Harper’s class.”

to which there was only one possible reply:

amen, sister. amen.

a couple weeks ago i received a request from one of my students to go to the office with a small group of girls who were having an ongoing issue with another small group of girls – this other group had asked (and been granted) permission to go to the office to address some of these issues.

well, when the second group got wind of this, a passionate plea to go to the office to challenge this first group arose. i was on to what was going on and refused permission to this second group for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that i had much for them to do in my class!

this, obviously, was cause for whining and under-the-breath muttering in my direction. and obviously, i was physically unable to care less.

until the following note was given to me by one of the leaders of this small group of girls:

to which i had to stop everything and explain:

Dude! I AM cool!! when God was handing out the coolness, he gave me an extra handful in exchange for taking some of my hearing. “Is that ok with you, son?” God asked. “It’s cool with me, yo!” was my reply. COOL was going to be my middle name until my mom convinced my dad that it just wasn’t appropriate. the latest edition of Webster’s includes a small picture of me with the definition of cool. why, i’m so cool that some people from florida take vacations to MY HOUSE because the temperature is a full 20 degrees lower in its vicinity.

obviously, some of this was a revelation to my students, but now that we’ve got that settled, everything’s cool.

hee hee.

math is probably my least favorite subject of all possible school subjects. i’m just not that good at the more complex problems and have difficulty remembering formulas and other whatnot.

when i took the GRE back in january 2006, i scored way high in the language section and in the writing section. i knew i would. i love language and writing. but then on the math section, i ranked somewhere like the 18th percentile of all people taking the GRE. i suck and i know it.

there are many hoops to jump through while getting your florida teacher certification – one of the hoops is having to pay for and take the florida general knowledge test. it’s four parts – language skills, reading, essay, and math.

math. bleah.

i was so bored at the end of this christmas break (sixteen days off is too much for me, folks – i don’t entertain myself easily) that i scheduled the three parts of this exam that i could take on a computer for friday afternoon. i wasn’t nervous as i went into the test. i wasn’t nervous when i took the language skills exam. i wasn’t nervous when i took the reading exam.

but math.

oh, math. bleah. the first two sections of the test were 40 minutes each. the math (bleah) section? 100 minutes. and as i started it, i was ok. easy! no problem. hey, know this one, too! haha! hey, maybe i DO know math!!

and then. THEN i had to compute the slope of a line on an X,Y graph. i stared at it for a couple minutes, sweat pouring down my face, knuckles white on the mouse, teeth grinding with such intensity that a fine, white powder escaped my lips. i hit the MARK button that would allow me to quickly come back to it later, then hit next.

9c + 14 – 2(5c – 1) = ________________ (fill in part two on your own – i’ve blanked on it). four possible answers were given for the variable.

and my heart started beating too fast. loneliness and despair were kicking in. YOU SUCK AT MATH!! this was what was being played over and over in my head as i tried to work the problem out for each possible answer and none none none of them would plug in the way i thought it would.

i slapped myself in the face, grabbed myself by the chin and said, “cut it out! you can DO THIS! now quit being a wuss and GET TO WORK, SOLDIER!” and as i composed myself to the sound of the other test-takers “Shhh!”-ing, i confidently picked whichever answer looked the most interesting and went on.

and forty minutes later i walked shakily out of the room, unsure of my future. until the man behind the counter handed me three pieces of paper. language arts: PASS. reading: PASS. mathematics: PASS.

when i came to several minutes later, i was able to calculate that the radius of the bump received on my head was 1.5cm, making the diameter a full 3cm!!

don’t ask me for the circumference or i’ll beat you silly.

i was talking with my friend mark a while back about teaching and teachers who made a difference in our lives. many days are spent at my school feeling as though i’m just a rule-machine, looking for someone to step out of line so that i can squash them with my evil consequences. we talked about those kids who are changed for the good despite how we feel we are (ineffective) as teachers.

one teacher in particular who changed my life was my sophomore english teacher at amelia high school: ms. ferguson.

i wasn’t a good student and wasn’t having a good time in high school up to this point. i had been in the hospital for a year and had to re-take my freshman year, was frustrated and bounced between feeling too smart or too stupid in my classes. i didn’t have good study habits, didn’t want to do the work, and generally made things difficult for my teachers.

enter ms. ferguson, charged with the unenviable task of teaching the classics to 15 year olds. we trounced into her class and awaited the harrowing first day’s torture.

and it never came.

oh, sure – we had to read the classics (great expectations, tale of two cities, red badge of courage, etc.) but ms. ferguson had a gift… she was excited to be with us. she was excited to teach. she looked forward to having us in her class.

she acted. she gestured. she smiled. she frowned. she recited. she danced. she articulated.

she put on mini-plays while reading to us, acting all of the parts, standing on chairs and putting on dramatic airs as she went. she roamed around the room. she called on us even as we hid behind whatever we could find. she dragged us kicking and screaming into seeing that the classics didn’t have to suck.

but what convinced me of ms. ferguson’s coolness was this:

she made us do writing journals. three times a week we had to turn in our journals to her and she would write back to us, make comments, or sometimes just left them blank. we were allowed to write anything we wanted to, as long as we wrote something. some students wrote directly to her. others wrote stories or poems or observations.

i don’t remember much about what i wrote, but i do remember HATING this part of the class. i didn’t know what to write!! i HATED to write!! my hand cramped up, i was embarrassed to let someone else read my crappy writing, i felt stupid – it was an awful thing!

one day early in that semester during study hall, i realized that i forgot to write in my journal and it was due the next period. panic set in and my stomach clenched as i thought about how i could get out of turning the notebook in.

but then.

then i thought, “hey! just write some song lyrics in there and she won’t know any better!”

so i decided to write out pink floyd’s “two suns in the sunset” lyrics from the final cut album. it was a favorite of mine, despite the album itself not being one of their better ones.

In my rear view mirror the sun is going down
Sinking behind bridges in the road
And I think of all the good things
That we have left undone
And I suffer premonitions
Confirm suspicions
Of the holocaust to come.

The rusty wire that holds the cork
That keeps the anger in
Gives way
And suddenly it’s day again.
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done.
Two suns in the sunset
Hmmmmmmmmmm
Could be the human race is run.

Like the moment when the brakes lock
And you slide towards the big truck
You stretch the frozen moments with your fear.
And you’ll never hear their voices
And you’ll never see their faces
You’ll have no recourse to the law anymore.

And as the windshield melts
And my tears evaporate
Leaving only charcoal to defend.
Finally I understand the feelings of the few.
Ashes and diamonds
Foe and friend
We were all equal in the end.

well, i quickly scribbled these lyrics out just in time for the bell to ring. immensely proud of myself for having beaten my teacher in her attempt to force me to write original things, i turned in my notebook and enjoyed the rest of the class.

and the next day – oh. my. god. i’ll never forget it as long as i live.

ms. ferguson hands us our writing journals back and i flip to the page with the lyrics written on them and there’s only one thing written there: Hmmmmmmmmmm… it was about half way down the page and she’d drawn a line between two of the lines in the song, pointing to her comment.

i had forgotten to include the humming part of the song.

and ms. ferguson liked pink floyd.

and. she. caught. me.

and i was both mortified and awestruck. i fell in love with ms. ferguson that day – not just because she liked pink floyd, but because i saw her as an individual who enjoyed what she did. she cared about us. she wasn’t trying to “catch us” writing someone else’s stuff – she wanted us to get used to the process of writing. she wanted us to enjoy writing and see what powerful change can be exacted by writing. she wanted us to read the classics and see what those old dusty books with their archaic words and structure told us today not just bygone days.

i fell in love with more than just ms. ferguson that semester: i fell deeper in love with reading and i fell deeper in love with writing – things that have stuck with me 24 years later. and now i teach reading and writing to fifth graders.
thanks, ms. ferguson – you rock.