The End Is So Close I Can Taste It

And it tastes like gingerbread. Mmmmm gingerbread.

I just submitted my HAT for Adolescent Readers on LiveText and now just have to complete my unit for Special Methods (I'd say I'm 60% there), make it through class on Thursday, and endure having that whole class watch video of me teaching. I'm boring. Sorry, methods folks. Once that's done, I can put my feet up and focus on the stress of being broke for the holidays and having no reliabe source of income for the next 5 months or so.

I'd like to sat this has been a great semester. I expected to be able to say it was the best yet--then I started it. Now, it could be that I've been so preoccupied with having to find work from day to day, trying to get settled in a new house with my girlfriend who lived 750 miles away for the past year, and just trying to juggle school, work, homework, and my personal life that I won't realize how much I learned until I take some time off and decompress. I really hope that's what it is, in fact. There's definitely been a lot to learn from--a lot of people, places, fun, and frustration.

If there's anything that I know I've learned, one thing I can point to, it's that I'm happy being in school every day. That seems like it's important for a teacher. I don't like the unpredictability of subbing, and I don't like having to introduce myself to between 25 and 150 kids every day and answer questions about my height, beard, (lack of) hair... I don't like getting stuck in rooms with teachers who yell at first graders for crying because they yelled at them and then answer their cellphones in class, or teachers who yell at little girls for sneezing too loudly. I don't like 17 year-old football players trying to physically intimidate me because I'm the stranger in their classroom. I don't like getting called a leprechaun.

But, all that aside, subbing is still the best job I've ever had because it's teaching, at least sorta. Yeah, I'm tired and ready for vacation (and I could really do without having to bust my butt to try and work all next week), but I am pumped about student teaching next semester. I learned from my days as an audio engineer that any idiot can fake it through the classes and get a degree, but the real test, and the real learning, is in the field. I've been in the field all semester, every day, and all I want is more (after a vacation).

Too Cool for School?

I have recently discovered that I am cool. This is not a first for me; I was cool in the sixth grade when I had the good fortune of being--among the seven boys in my grade--neither that crazy sociopath kid who talked to trees nor the fat kid (who was, you know, fat). In seventh grade, there was an influx of students, and I became very instantly uncool. By high school, I was pretty tight with the fat kid, that Marilyn Manson kid that everyone else was almost too scared of to pick on (except not really at all), and all the other dorks and misfits who picked theater over sports for after-school activities.

I mean, I've always been cool, from my fourth grade school picture in my Harley Davidson t-shirt to my years in New York City playing rock star to empty venues on Friday nights. I'm, like, a totally rock 'n' roll, non-comformist, anti-establishment, heavy-metal-punk-rock-Bruce-Springsteen-and-Black-Sabbath dude, y'know? It's just that I'm SO cool that for most of my life I've been the only person cool enough to see how cool I am, see? Lightyears ahead of the curve and such.

Anyway, I've been observing/student teaching once a week at JHS all semester, where my host teacher leads a journalism class. I do not know what I have done or said in that class, aside from having a giant beard, but those kids have decided that Mr. Beard is THE COOLEST! Sounds awesome, right? Don't all teachers want to be the cool teacher, like that suave motherf**ker in that crappy Rose McGowan horror flick that was on TV the other day--that dude was helping young damsels-in-distress with their lockers, beating flunkies in half-court for the wager of an A in his class ("I believe you owe me an A."), making out with his smokin' hot girlfriend in front of students, and then--and THEN--he was like, "Call me Pete." Now that is cool. Who doesn't want to be that teacher?

I don't. That guy was a douche, every aspect of his behavior was inappropriate and should have been grounds for firing, and by trying to be a peer instead of an elder he completely undermined his own authority. Good thing he was a good basketball player, I guess, or he might have had some classroom management issues.

Well, I'm 5'3" in my teacher shoes, and I don't shoot hoops. I'm glad kids like me and think they can relate to me (they seem to value my opinion, and that's certainly a plus), but it's like they're so convinced I'm cool that they forget I'm a teacher. One of them actually started to say something really crass about my host teacher right in front of me! Look, if a kid is dissatisfied with the way he's being taught, I do want to hear about that. I can learn from that. But how did I let that interest get mistaken for, "Hey, I'm the cooool teacher. You can talk crap about your other teachers in front of me. Don't worry, I'm coooool."

You know what happens when you forget your place because you're too busy trying to be cool? You become Michael Scott from The Office. I don't want to be the Michael Scott of teachers. Sure, I want the kids to like me, but not because they think I'm like a kid or I'm on their level; because I give them the chance to come up to my level and behave like and be treated like adults.

Reading Response: Looking For Alaska

This blog contains spoilers. You have been warned.

I have a confession to make: yesterday, I was that bad substitute that mostly ignores the kids while he sits and reads because of this book. I had started reading it a tiny bit at a time during the week, but during a planning period yesterday (which combined with lunch to form a 90-minute block of freedom in the middle of my day) I had my first chance to start reading in earnest, and when the kids came back to class I couldn't quite pull myself away.

At first, it was the humor in John Green's narrator, Miles "Pudge" Halter, that hooked me. Pudge and his friends are quintessential teenagers with the intelligence to make their teenage-ness really hilarious. My private high school in Jersey certainly didn't have everything in common with Pudge's Alabama boarding school, but I felt a lot more connection to that experience than to the ECE class I was charged with for the day--populated by kids who mostly seemed smart enough for comprehensive classes but too resigned to failure and too determined to hate everything about school to prove it to anyone. I do love the way that teenagers see the world and interpret it; that's one of the bigger reasons I'm going into high school. What I love more is teenagers who can back up their attitude with brains, who aren't all backtalk and self-absorption. These are the characters John Green creates in Looking For Alaska, and that got me.

Then the book stopped being funny, and it hit really close to home. I had a friend in high school who was a mystery like Alaska. She was that dark, sad, beautiful girl who smoked to die but laughed and smiled in a way that made me want the first day I spent with her to last forever and made me act a fool that whole day just to keep her laughing. She only used payphones and usually hung out with a group of people I didn't want to be around, and so we mostly lost touch when she left my school and went to live with her father. A week before her 18th birthday, she took a train into New York City with some friends for a night on the town. Late that night, she overdosed and died at the hospital. I hadn't seen or talked to her in seven months, but the day she died I was thinking about calling her--I couldn't remember her number.

After Jill died, my friends and I were left with a lot of the same questions and feelings as Pudge and his friends. Like Pudge, I had had an infatuation with Jill that never had a chance to blossom. Even as distanced as I had become from her before she died, I had guilt to deal with; maybe if I hadn't let her slip away things would have been different, maybe if I'd been a better friend to her she wouldn't have spent so much time with those friends I never liked. More than anything, I had to deal with the fact that I'd been clumsy with our relationship and would never know if she died knowing how much I'd loved her--and with never knowing how she really felt about me.

Another confession (or two): While six ECE students alternately slept at their desks, toyed with the idea of actually doing their assignments, and watched rap videos on YouTube, I teared up behind the teacher's desk reading this book. After dismissal, I cleaned up the room a bit and sat down to read for a few more minutes before writing a note to the teacher about my day. So yeah, I liked the book. A lot. One of the quotes on the back cover says, "The spirit of Holden Caulfield lives on," but Holden Caulfield was not this reflective, not this purposeful. Looking For Alaska asks the questions teenagers have to start thinking about for the first time and admits to them that they will probably never have any more answers than what they choose to believe. It is literature as much as it is adolescent, if not more, and I wish I had had this book eight years ago, when I was dreaming of my lost friend's uncatchable ghost and kicking myself in the ass for never pulling her as close or holding her as tight as I always wanted.

Reading Response: The Lightning Thief

Of the "teen lit." or "adolescent lit." books that I've read so far this semester, this has probably been my favorite. Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief is the first in a series about a boy from New York who finds out around the end of his sixth-grade year that the gods and monsters of Greek myth are real, and he's one of them--a demigod, in fact, half human and half god. Among the mysteries Percy (short for Perseus) Jackson must solve is the question of which god is his father, so I won't spill the beans here.

As the story unfolds, Percy sets out on a quest to find and recover Zeus's stolen lightning bolt, a personally important task for him because he is the primary suspect on Mount Olympus (which, by the way, has moved from Greece to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building). Along the way, he has dealings with more mythical creatures than I knew existed, even in myth, and discovers how the Olympians, their monsters and friends, and their offspring continue to be the driving force behind "Western culture."

Riordan writes from Percy's perspective, with a convincingly naive yet adaptable voice, and the action and mythical references never let up. I've read a couple of series books this semester, and this is the first one that's made me want to continue the series. It's definitely adolescent, perhaps moreso than it is literature, but it's informed and fun--adventure with an education--and I kind of like the idea of seeing ancient gods in the modern world.

Reading Response: Wilhelm Ch. 6

In the section titled, "Toward A Critical Literacy," Wilhelm brings up a couple issues that I find worth reflection. First, he asks, "Why do we teach the language arts? What do we hope to achieve for our students and for ourselves through this enterprise?" (151) For me, these questions also tie back into a question he posed earlier in the chapter, regarding "what our purposes are as teachers: to teach texts, or to develop readers who can and will want to engage with and know texts in personally powerful ways throughout their lives?" (145) In my special methods class this semester, I reacted to the idea of teachers having a responsibility to the text. At the pre-college level, I don't believe that teachers are responsible to anyone or anything but their students. Their success, in and beyond our classrooms, is our job (success being measured by actual learning and performance, not grades). The text is a tool to be used in whatever way it is most effective towards getting the job done.

But I digress. Regarding the initial question, I wrote earlier this semester that my goal as an English teacher is to create "effective and fluent communicators." Wilhelm, like me, sees the skills nurtured in English classes as reaching beyond the classroom, and beyond reading and writing. He writes, "Literacy is both the willingness and the ability to evoke, conceive of, express, receive, reflect on, share, evaluate, and negotiate meanings, in the various forms that meanings may take." (151) All of those things, in my mind, fell under my umbrella of "communication." As I read this section, I actually thought again about Frankenstein (the book this time). When I first read Frankenstein in the seventh grade, I was struck at how eloquently the monster was able to describe the experiences of his life before he learned (or re-learned) to speak and write. I wondered if, without knowing the words for what he was seeing and feeling, he would really have been able to commit those experiences to his memory with such detail, to be recounted later when the proper words were there.

Whatever the answer to that query, I do still believe that our communication skills, our comfort with language and its use, can enrich our experiences and enhance our engagement with the world around us on many levels. Working with figurative language teaches us to think abstractly and make comparisons and connections, to think if not in metaphors then perhaps in analogies that help us make sense of the new and unfamiliar. English classes, ideally, teach students to ask questions and think critically to answer them, to consider motivations and character, to interpret what isn't said as well as what is. In this way, students learn not only to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others or to receive and interpret communication from others, but also to communicate to themselves the full significance of their experiences with richer detail and deeper meaning.

Why do we teach language arts? To allow our students access to the world around them, to help them break down the mysteries, build understanding, engage their environments, and improve themselves.

Reading Response: Wilhelm, Ch. 5: Reading is Seeing

Towards the end of the chapter, Wilhelm writes something that I found potentially more interesting than all of his experiments and findings throughout the chapter. "In an art class," he tells us, "divergent views are 'interesting' rather than incorrect," and "students are prodded to explore and express their visions and understanding, not to simply justify them." Wilhelm argues that the use of (visual) art in our reading classes can "open the doors to these same possibilities with literary response" (140).

I watched "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" yesterday, and there's a professor in Victor Frankenstein's first medical school lecture who begins by warning students--and I'm paraphrasing here--not to fool themselves that they might ever have a new or original thought, or that there is any hope or virtue in creativity or imagination. I'm sure no teacher in schools today tells students such a thing that explicitly, but to what extent are students being taught that same lesson? Why should art class be the only place where divergent views are encouraged? For that matter, why should it take the addition of visual arts to our classrooms to make students welcome to "explore and express their visions and understanding?"

Watching "Frankenstein" in 2008, it's easy to see what a fool that professor is, acting as though everything had been done and discovered and there was not a single advancement to be made in the field of medicine, but would we not be just as foolish to act as though we have all the answers to any text we might be reading with our classes? Easy as it is for us to see that we would, many of our students come to class expecting us to act just that way, and they don't know what to do when we don't. I of course love the way Wilhelm used drawing to draw reluctant readers in and will borrow his methods, but if the only time we are "prodding" out students to "explore and express" their "divergent views" is when they're doing it through visual arts, we're falling short.

Feelin' a Funk

Today is the last day of my 5-day weekend. Friday was a pretty good day. Julie was working, I had a list of things to get done and errands to run, and since I had my momentum from the week behind me, I managed to have a good and productive day and then to relax a little. I even made my first gumbo! For a guy claiming to be a Cajun, it's pretty sad that it took me 26 years, but it came out awesome.

Saturday was another great day. Julie & I went pumpkin picking, and we drove out to Lexington to do it just to get out and see a bit more of Kentucky. On the way home, we strayed from highways for a while and drove through some really pretty country and cute small towns. We both love Louisville, but we came to Kentucky for something a little different than the way we're living now. It was good to get out and see it, to remind ourselves of the ultimate goal.

For the last three days, though, I've been totally in a funk. With as little free time as I usually get, a 5-day weekend seems like having an eternity stretched out in front of me. After 2 days, I completely failed to make or stick to plans to continue getting everything done that I wanted to. The attempts I did make to put up a gate in the backyard so we can finally let the dog out without a leash or get ahead on my homework were frustrating flops. I tried to have band practice Sunday and to make plans to hang out with friends last night, but nothing came of it.

In a normal week, I get about zero time to stretch out or relax. The only downside of having 3 days off should be missing 3 days' pay, but somehow--poor as I am--that feels like the least of my frustrations right now. If only I could pinpoint what the most of them are, instead of just floating around here like a potato in a funky stew.

Reading Response: The Book Thief

For anyone reading this blog who is not in EDAP 540, read this book.

The Book Thief was easily the best novel I've read in several years. It's a positively gut-wrenching story of a young German girl during WWII, and it was probably the first thing I've read since college that truly impressed me with the sheer artistry of the writing. Zusak writes with a special kind of awareness, playing with and confusing the senses just enough to make you have to stop and think over his vivid descriptions without making them too obscure to be understood and felt. He could have written about a perfectly idyllic summer in the relatively uneventful life of a completely average child and still created a compelling narrative so rich in detail as to be nearly heart-breaking.

Instead, he wrote about a few sorrow and triumph-filled years in a poor, war-torn community, following a young girl who seems to attract grief as surely as honey attracts flies. The voice through which he tells this story is that of Death, whom he makes surprisingly believable as an overworked and sympathetic character who himself--against his better judgment--becomes fascinated and falls in love with the story's heroine.

As I mentioned in our class discussion about the book, one of the things I really liked was the new perspective it offers on Germany during World War II. This is not a Holocaust book, despite having a Jew-in-hiding as a primary character. It's a life-during-wartime story and a reminder that not every German in the 1930s and '40s was a Nazi, and that there were consequences for those who were not. It was, without question, an evil time and--in that time--an evil place (or at least a place filled with evil), but for many that evil was just something to be lived through on the hope of a better future. And many, including some of the most lovable characters in The Book Thief, would not live through it, would not see that hope confirmed.

One last thing: For me, the book's protagonist, Liesel Meminger, is a beautifully crafted symbol of childrens' ability to remain children through the hardest and darkest of times, as well as their paradoxical ability to become adults when they must. She is the human spirit, which is both most vulnerable and most resilient in childhood, and for those of us who work with children, she is a reminder of what kids can be, and what they will be--both of which we should bear in mind and do our best never to stifle.

Reading Response: The Warrior Heir

A few weeks ago, I was charged to visit the teen lit. section of a bookstore and pick out a book that appealed to me. I bounced around a bit and eventually walked out with The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima. To summarize, Jack is a pretty average 16 year-old in a small Ohio town who finds out that he's descended from a race of magical people--wizards and such. He's a warrior, his mom doesn't know, his caretaker's a wizard, his aunt's an enchantress, and he has as much trouble following it all as I'm having explaining it. With this revelation, Jack not only has to deal with new knowledge about himself and many people he knows, but also with new characters in his life who may or may not be trustworthy. He's being hunted by wizards from both of the two warring houses (White Rose and Red Rose), who either want him to fight under their flag in "The Game," a battle to the death between two warriors that determines which house will retain power until the next game, or who want to kill him so he can't fight. Meanwhile, his friends and family are trying to keep him out of the game, the new assistant principle is training him to fight, and he's trying to keep his secret from his mother and best friends.

If I were a teenager, I would have liked this book a lot more--except that this is not at all the kind of book I liked to read when I was a teenager. Unlike the Harry Potter series (which I have not read), Chima's "Heir" books (there are three: The Warrior Heir, The Wizard Heir, and The Dragon Heir) don't so much transport readers to a new universe existing alongside their own reality as they pull at the possibility of an unknown, magical undercurrent to our reality. That being the case, this book deals with a teenager's struggle to accept a new dimension of self-knowledge and to somehow balance his two lives--to study for school and learn wizard magic, to practice for soccer and for battle, to keep his friends from asking too many questions even after they see him dig up a sword in a graveyard and shoot fire from it. The writing is not overly florid or hard to swallow--teen readers should have no problem with it--and the story has plenty of suspense, plot twists, and adventure. When I came into the last few chapters of the book, after a certain plot revelation that I'll not disclose, I found myself eager for the end, both because I was kind of tired of reading the book and because I wanted to see how Jack would solve this latest challenge.

Perhaps for teenagers who'd like to imagine an extra layer of excitement in their own lives, this kind of fantasy works. For myself, I think I prefer wizards and warriors in their own places and times, without the distractions of modern teenage life--or soccer, which is far from my favorite sport and got plenty of spotlight in this book. My "sword and sorcery" archetype is Robert E. Howard's Conan, of course, who is the opposite of Jack: a savage barbarian and natural to combat who navigates through civilization by wit and instinct while having little use for social conventions. I doubt that I'll be reading the other books in the series, but that definitely would not stop me from recommending this one to a teen reader as an accessible, imaginative adventure story.

Also, it could have used a few dragons.

EDTP 540: Reading Response: Wilhelm, Chapter 2

Although I felt this chapter served mostly as a bridge into what's to come, it does wrestle a bit with an important issue for English teachers, the question of why we teach literature. In light of the first part of the chapter, which basically tells us that (for Wilhelm's middle schoolers, at least) school, not reading, is the reason kids don't like to read--and kids know it--the question takes on a sort of pessimistic tone. "If all we're doing is killing reading for these kids, why don't we just teach technical texts and let kids hold onto some faith that reading literaure might be different?

Since Wilhelm got this book published, and we're reading it, I'm assuming he found some way to have kids read in school without ruining their reading experiences. I'm eager to hear about it. In the meantime, I actually began working on the "why teach literature" question in another class, and I have my own answer: My purpose as an English teacher is to teach kids how to use the language, how to be effective and fluent communicators. In order to be enthused about that, they need to see examples of what the English language is capable of doing. Writers of literature are experts of language who test its potential. On a sticky note left in one of my books, I jotted a vague analogy about a boxer-in-training watching videos of Muhammad Ali. Sure, any bozo who's had a few sessions and a few fights can teach you the basics of the sport, but to see the art of it and to see what you could be reaching for (even if you have no intention of reaching all the way), you need to visit with the experts.

This isn't an argument for "the classics" or "the canon" in high schools. Just for real, good literature that kids can enjoy for its artful and clever use of language, not just its subject.

EDTP 540: Reading Response: Wilhelm Intro & Ch. 1

At the close of the introduction, Wilhelm briefly introduces a girl he calls Joanne. I liked Joanne, and I'd like to get to know her better. I like that she was forthright enough with her teacher to tell him, "You're not interested in how I read." I like that she's savvy enough to separate what is right or true for her from "what you all (teachers) think is right." And I like that after she "does what she has to" in school, she goes home and spends time on "real reading." (Wilhelm, 10) That is, of course, pleasure reading, apart from quizzes, questions, and assigned page quotas.

Yeah, I like Joanne, but how many kids are like her? I always thought I was pretty smart, and I always thought I loved to read, but even now as a grad student I have trouble bringing myself to do much pleasure reading after all my school reading. As teachers, can we make all reading "real reading?" Can we let kids who have sports, TV, video games, hi-tech toys, and the internet only read pleasurable material? Is it possible to make everything they read a pleasure? Of course not, so where do we start, and where do we stop?

Wilhelm notes that his students "didn't seem to converse with or critique characters, authors, or other readers." (23) Maybe Joanne did, but she knew well enough not to do it in school. I bring this point up, though, because the trutt is that we can't make all reading a pleasure, but we can teach kids that it's ok for them to dislike a book. We can let them know that even English teachers sometimes read books that we don't like, or even stop reading books that we don't like. We can stop cramming the institution down their throats and admit that we didn't get Shakespeare the first time either, Bronte is a bore, and every time I sat down to read Heart of Darkness in high school, I literally fell asleep. I did get through it, but it took a while.

I suppose you'll always have the "Marvins" who just think that reading is stupid, but you'll also have the Joannes, and if kids who like to read don't like to read for your class, you're doing it wrong.

Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More

Last night, Julie and I watched Ghostbusters. It was the first time I'd seen the movie in many years, and aside from being one of the greatest movies EVER, it prominently features my alma mater (and the statue Alma Mater), Columbia University. Unlike that crummy World Trade Center movie with Nick Cage's stupid moustache and completely failed attempt at a Noo Yawk accent, Ghostbusters actually reminded me that there are things about that place I miss and probably always will.

For one, most of the shots I recognized were places I walked every day in college. My parents tell me I missed out on a real college experience, and I'll admit that I was never as happy as a college kid should be, but I was still a college kid--and I was GOOD at being a college kid, in my own way.

But it's not just college I miss sometimes. The saying in New York is, "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." No. I've known and come into varying degrees of many people who were doing just fine in New York but who, I assure you, could not make it anywhere--and possibly couldn't really make it anywhere BUT New York. The truth is, New York ain't so tough. It's expensive, crowded, and has more bad attitude per capita than a lineup of Rocky Balboa's opponents, but it has the most thorough public transportation system in the world, and the whole place is a numbered grid. All NYC takes is a little getting used to, and the reward is a sense of ownership and personal possibility you can't find just anywhere.

One of the things I hate most about New Yorkers is their apparent sense of entitlement and superiority. I will admit, though, that living in New York makes you feel like the star of your very own movie. Maybe it's the scale of everything around you, or maybe it's the way a place that crowded forces you inside your own head. On the other hand, when you're that close to so many people every day, knowing that each one has his own story, there's another sense of possibility that floats around you. Not personal possibility, not I-can-go-anywhere-I-can-do-anything possibility, but a more romantic possibility. The City holds so many incredible and unlikely stories; why shouldn't yours be one of them? It's easy to forget the odds, I guess.

For me, New York was always the best when you could feel its history. I liked the places that hadn't changed much in a hundred years. I liked the museums and parks. I'd stand in Central Park and look at the apartment buildings that lined it and imagine what the view must have been like in the 1920s. I could sit for hours in the sculpture garden at the Met, or wander through the Natural History Museum. Or I liked the City at Christmas time, all the places I went with my family as a kid--Rockefeller Center, FAO Schwartz, St. Patrick's Cathedral.

As I was writing this, I was (coincidentally, mostly) listening to Bruce Springsteen's 2nd album, which has two New York songs, "Incident on 57th Street" and "New York City Serenade." They both tell stories of the romance of the every-day in New York City: sweeping, epic ballads of average kids doing average kid things in NYC. That's the way the place makes you feel.

That is, when you're not too busy being rushed, stressed, grumpy, antisocial, crowded, and lonely to notice. That's a New York state of mind.

Recognition

Substitute teaching is thankless work most of the time, but I'd be amiss to say I don't get any recognition for it. Two girls in Whole Foods, when I worked over the summer, recognized me from a middle school class. When I volunteered for Every 1 Reads, one of my student's classmates told me he had seen me at Kroger. Later, I saw my student himself at Kroger.

I was out bowling last night with my girlfriend and some friends, and I was found out again. Spotted. Caught being more than just a teacher. A few minutes after we took our lane, a little girl whose family was in the next lane walked over to me, her father just a few steps behind, and asked what grade I teach. I explained to her that I'm a sub and teach all grades, and her father explained to me, in turn, that she had seen me at Klondike Elementary. "Oh yeah," I said, "I was there last week. Third grade. It was a good day--good school." And that was all.

Personally, I think it's good for kids to see teachers outside of school, outside of the context of our jobs. It reminds them that we're people, that we have lives outside of and away from their perception of us. It didn't worry me that this girl, who wasn't even my student the day I subbed at her school but could have--in theory--been any student I have ever had or will have, saw me out with my friends with tattoos and stretched ears. I didn't care that she saw the chain on my wallet or the big skull on the back of my heavy metal t-shirt. I had no beer (contrary to the spirit of bowling, I know), but even that would not have bothered me.

I just hope she didn't notice what a completely awful bowler I am.

Wizard!

Welcome to Beard School!

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what I'll be doing with this blog, but here it is. Most likely, I'll be using it to keep track of my reading--just reactions, mostly; not even what you could really call reviews. Knowing myself, though, I'd say it's not unlikely I'll get hooked and start blogging about all kinds of who-knows-what.

Let's start, though, with the name of the blog. Why "Beard School?" A few years ago, at my first apartment in Jersey City, NJ, I got mail from my high school. My roommate thought it was a joke. She came into my room with the letter.

"Is this for real? Morristown Beard School?"

Sure was, but it's pronounced bared, not beered (named after headmistress Lucy C. Beard) and dress code required that I be clean shaven. (Having no choice in the matter of my own facial hair as a teenager might have influenced my adult fascination with beards, but that's another story.) I probably don't have to explain that my roommate thought it was a school of beards, not a snooty private high school whose administrators thought scruffy-faced kids would scare away their funding.

Point is, I liked the idea of a Beard School, and now that I'm simultaneously a teacher and a student, dedicating a blog to both, well, what else would I call it? Plus, you know, I have a giant beard.