Three Semesters, 6 Quarters, Still a Sophomore

The conclusion of a faculty meeting around 11:45 A.M. yesterday marked the end of our First Semester, the school's Second Quarter, my third semester of teaching, and half-way point of my sophomore year of teaching.

It's some sort of milestone, I guess.

Things move along. There were some difficulties along the way, especially in the broader school. Children doing things they should not do in places they should not be; and the resulting office visits and murmuring by the lockers that fall mysteriously silent whenever a faculty member should appear. The Hurricane Days and the missing exams, the annoying meetings where the same issues are raised and addressed but never truly solved, the quizzes, the missing assignments, the game.

I mean the cultivation of minds in grace & truth, of course. But sometimes you need a timeout or half-time break. One of the many reasons Christ came when He did, as I understand it, was his divine concern for those of us in the Western Anglo countries who insist on a 9-month school cycle. For these He came to save, along with all the other fine natives who use different school schedules. (okay, enough Kiplingesquing for now! Take up ye burdens and move along!) But sometimes it feels like a game, and one just plays along until a surprise comes along and shocks one into remembering what is actually going on.

Learning, one hopes.

Amend: This wasn't meant to sound depressed; but I suppose that is what happens when there is very little one cares to say...

Valere

Just threw out my old high school Latin notebook in the process of preparing for a move.

Not that I dislike Latin, in fact I was am rather fond of it, despite struggling with Bs and Cs through high school and college. Fail me once, shame on me. Fail twice, well maybe reconsider your life goals. Fail a third time? Learn some grammar, gosh-darn it! Someday I will go back to it. I really hope so, anyway. Poor Mrs. Harvey, and Drs. Garnjobsts, Hutchinson, and Jones. What patience saints. Salvete Latina lingua I-have-loved (amabam? See, worthless).

I still have the college notes anyway.

Looking Alive

School portraits arrived yesterday. Last year I looked...tired, and somewhat distant (my brother said stoned, which is obvious not true, because this isn't Colorado). I was surviving, but very well worn and tired—and that was only 5 weeks in!

This year I actually look alive, happy, and even vibrant (questionable word choice, I know). The students who suddenly yelled "SMILE MR. FULLER!" probably helped. Regardless I consider the picture a measure of progress. I will not be mounting it on  my living room, classroom, or bedroom wall, however. Seeing myself every morning in the mirror is enough trama for one day, and there isn't anyone who would want to have my picture anyway. Which is alright, as I cannot blame them.

This Friday is the end of the first quarter. Eighth grade is getting their first real taste of the upper school faculty, with four tests this week. I was going to make it a paper but decided the test was easier on them, not to mention easier for me to grade over the weekend. They'll have plenty of other opportunities, I'm sure. Overall they aren't as bright as last year's class, so I'm having to slow down, focus on routine and repetition, and in general treat them more like the eighth graders they are (and remember that the eighth graders I saw in May of last year had were a full year ahead of the eighth graders I started this year with. There is hope.).

A timeline is slowly going up in my room, I have been meaning to make one since my last observation but befuddled by placement and location. Three thousand years of history is a lot to spread on the walls, flowing around corners, beams, and pull-down projector screens. Hopefully it will all come together, though I will have to relocate my Medieval Maps & Art wall to make way for American History (cue the Constitution!).

In time, in time, school has such a funny sense of time--class periods come, pass, bell, laughter in the hall way, dismissal, grading, planning, cramming for exams, teaching class without a lesson plan, desperation to fit material in as more and more class days are whittled away by events and sports and Christmas concert rehearsals, school pictures...

Into the desk drawer the picture goes. Perhaps I should send it to Grandma.

Song of Roland

For the last two weeks ninth grade has been reading the Song of Roland, Dorothy Sayers translation available through Penguin. It is a marvelous "Song of Deeds," a Chanson de Geste (French is always italicized, right?) of Medieval chivalry and Christendom, a swashbuckling tale of mixed verse and metaphor, of Christian and pagan, of right and wrong, of heroism and defeat, of manliness and cowardice and treachery.

And they don't like it. Which normally I wouldn't care about, but this is my best class. And they are bored. Whuuuut? What fools these mortals be! Today, during recitations, one student recited the following:

Then Berenger drives at Estramarin,
He cleaves the shield, and the good hauberk splits,
On his stout spear the trunk of him he spits
And flings him dead ' mid thousand Sarrasins.
Of the Twelve Peers ten are already killed,
Two and no more are left of them who live;
These are Chernubles and the Count Margaris.

(Laisse 102) 

The only real emotion was a pause to snicker at "Chernubles." Which is worth snickering at, but really, nothing else going on? the GOOD HAUBERK SPLIT? He was tossed dead among THOUSAND Sarrasins? ONLY TWO ARE LEFT? We can do better. Thankfully, for their sake, we are done and will be moving on to...less exciting things, unless I start talking about battles with Muslims again (always a fun topic!). Their loss...I hope.

It is finally cold, and I experienced the same rain that delayed the Orioles-Yankees game last night. What a chill.

P.S. Opening up Blogger revealed for the first time a very faint band of lightness down the center of my monitor. Perhaps time to start a Morris Replacement Fund -- he has served me quite faithfully for 7+ years and deserves a rest. Bother.

P.S.S. That moment of relief and "what the fried Twinkie?!" when you discover a bad quiz has been marked as double-weight in the computer...thus making everyones' grade even worse than it really is. I'm not that mean—I think.

October, in verse

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

-- Robert Frost, via The Poetry Foundation