Too much to do, too little time, too long the drive before I sleep.

Another Friday, sans conference period, and I’m near collapse at 3:24 when the bell rings. These Fridays are a perfect storm: I and my team have no conference period (because of the otherwise sound block scheduling), the 7th grade boys don’t have PE today (so we took them out to the basketball courts for part of advisory), and it’s Friday!

So I barely manage to stumble across the finish line with dignity intact and voice audible. I know everyone feels like this at this point. I have vivid memories of 1975 when I was hired to teach English at Crenshaw HS in south Los Angeles by the principal Sid Thompson. (Years later I would hire Sid as Superintendent while I was on the Board. LAUSD is just a village after all.)

Anyway, I remember that in 1975 I was bone tired, exhausted, drained of energy after a day or a week teaching. Then of course I really didn’t know what I was doing. Now I have an inkling, but much remains to be put back in place.

That process of rebuilding my expertise got a big boost this week when I went to a training on the narrative unit in English 7. I think the District curriculum is very good. It’s student centered and constructivist, but it still covers the main standards intensively. It aims to give the students an authentic experience of reading and writing narratives, and it culminates in a project that asks them to write about their own communities. Now that I grasp the big picture and the specific lessons of this curriculum I feel more confident in the day-to-day work we will be doing.

This still leaves me with the job of managing the behavior of the students, so I can take them through the various steps of the curriculum that will leave them with a deeper understanding of what narrative is. That management will be aided by my new clarity on the lessons, but will also still require more and more little behavioral tricks. And that means more record keeping, an activity which I am constitutionally inept at. And it’ll still be grueling on Fridays!

This also I remember: so much happens so fast in teaching. Now I have grades due next week, and a pre-assessment getting ready for the periodic assessments in a month or so. And I feel pressed to get them working on computers more (who writes on paper these days?).

Tuesday the faculty heard a presentation by Stephen Jimenez of Project 10. I remember the early days of Project 10 when Virginia Uribe started it at Fairfax. As a program aimed at LGBT students it always had controversy swirling around it. Mr. Jimenez’s presentation was engaging and provocative; he focused on the legal liabilities if the district didn’t protect the rights of all students to a safe and secure educational environment no matter what their sexual orientation or gender identity. I was definitely in my comfort zone with that kind of broad policy discussion, but now I have a different, more urgent set of tasks than developing policy—namely, to be ready to teach on the next day.

As soon as I leave school today I’m driving to Las Vegas for the conference of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. I’m expecting to learn a lot about how to teach these boys in subtly different ways so as to maximize the benefits of separating them from the girls. So far I am comfortable with the division, as are most of the boys. They seem very natural in their high-energy, testosterone driven behaviors. Still I know there is more I can learn in order to reach them more directly with the skills and concepts I want to teach them.

And so it goes. I’m looking forward to a long drive. I hope the traffic isn’t too bad. Maybe I’ll listen to some Mahler, or Ella Fitzgerald, or recent Bob Dylan. I’ll drink coffee steadily and try to get to bed early.

Finally, I want to thank Mr. Cortines for his kind words.

A bientot.