I have a tendency to approach the world with this attitude: I'm not going to do that. That's dumb. For instance, "I'm not going to cross the mile high bridge. If I wanted to be suspended a mile above terra firma, terrified for my life, I'd fly in an airplane like a normal person."..."Wow, that was the most amazing view I've ever seen." "I'm not going to roller skate. Do I look eight?"..."That was so much fun. Let's do it again!" I tend to build up a resistance before I even try something. I don't know if this is some kind of ancient survival instinct (if I convince myself everything is horrible, then when it is horrible, I won't care very much).
I've been taking this approach to my newest undertaking. In my attempts to get my ducks in a row for next year, when I'm going to get shot out of the santa-slide into the real world again, I've sent away to the Ohio Department of Education a request for an alternative licensure for high school teaching. There is a part of me-- the part that taught and lived with high school students during the week long OSU Young Writers Workshop this summer--that thinks this is a fabulous idea. I love those students. The experience was one of the best of my life. And, yet.
I have this sense of high school (one not earned, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I never gave high school much of a fighting chance). But what I have seen: an environment that seems to me most easily described as prison-like. Including the shower behavior. Teachers who are fighting against a pretty much worthless system, or who have been so inundated with teaching to the test mentality they've decided they can no longer fight at all. Students who aren't being offered much in the way of education as I envision it (kind of like I envision parenthood-- you show them some cool shit to get them started, then let them fly. Hopefully, if you've shown them cool enough shit, they fly in directions you've never expected, and they use their wings in ways you couldn't have imagined. Had enough of the bird metaphor? Yah. Weak.)
But this morning I thought: what if I'm wrong? I know-- shocking. What if my beliefs about high school are based on my (pretty much nonexistent) experience and substitute teaching in a pretty bad district? Hmmm.
I also have another fear. It's a big one. I'm afraid I'd get fired in the first week. Maybe two weeks. First, I'm not the most appropriate person ever invented. I swore (snicker) I'd try not to swear during my first class yesterday, and then my phone rang (dammit) and I said "crap" as I turned the ringer off. That was in the first two minutes. I have a tendency to share things I think are interesting, regardless of age-appropriateness (see this summer's experience, when I might possibly have mentioned that the narrative arc, much loved by western tradition, most closely represents the sexual experience...Also much loved by western tradition. And the students told on me THAT SAME DAY. Yes, I believe they did it with good intentions ("hey-- did you know the narrative arc looks like sex? It even has a climax!") but nonetheless.)
I also have extremely limited tolerance for intolerance. One might even say I'm intolerant of intolerance. I'm not the kind of person who hears something like "I just don't believe in same sex marriages" and says, "Well, I disagree, but you have the right to your opinion." I'm more like, "Get out and die, fucker. That kind of discrimination is equal in evilness to racism. Are you proud of yourself and your religion? Do you like it when you hurt your fellow Americans and make their lives impossible to live? Die! Die! Do it now!" Luckily, I create my college level class plans with the soul purpose of avoiding finding out about their social/political opinions, so I never have to know if they feel this way. But I wonder if I'd have that kind of freedom in a high school classroom. Again-- I don't know. But that never stopped me before.
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