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It\u2019s well after 10, rounding the corner towards 11 actually, and it\u2019s a Thursday and it\u2019s late enough in the week where overwork shows in the corners and bags under my eyes. On the stereo Albert Ayler is blowing open heaven and I look at the papers to grade and reading to read and I try to squeeze Robert Frost\u2019s words to fit my own minor apocalypse, because I have pages to write before I sleep\/pages to write before I sleep<\/em>.<\/p>\n I think about the backlog of calls I need to return and the emails that me-me-me for attention. In my ears still echo the words heard earlier this evening when President Obama told me, \u201cYou did that\u201d<\/a> as he helped proclaim the progress made in the country with regards to jobs, to energy, to education.<\/p>\n My rss<\/a> feed buzzes with reminders of the trickling in blogposts<\/a> I\u2019ve assigned. Student work getting done late into the evening. My tired eyes skim and it seems like every other post is a self-exploration into the need to blog. It\u2019s polished vehemence about having<\/a> to write publicly, about writing words because some professor for some required course is making us write a helluva<\/a> lot about I-don\u2019t-know-what and I have to if I want to get a decent grade and be a decent member of society, about inspiration<\/a> and \u00a0writers block and that menacing blinking and impatient cursor that snarls for you to get on with it already. [For the record, I am really thrilled with the posts and vlogs<\/a> my students have made.]<\/p>\n All of this preamble is to say, I understand the tensions my students are voicing. Having<\/em> to blog kind of sucks. The increasingly slower trickle of content on my site, for instance, is likely an indication that other commitments have taken me away from informal online chatter (and even, briefly, away from War and Peace and Cats<\/a>). However, when I think about what I learned and what I taught, I think I was perpetually practicing. I was shown, as an 8th<\/sup> and 9th<\/sup> and 10th<\/sup> and 11th<\/sup> and 12th<\/sup> grader how to write the evil five paragraph essay. I was shown and practiced how to do this so I could eventually break the rules of five paragraph essaydom and, like, do<\/em> something different within the essay format. Likewise, as an 11th<\/sup> grade teacher, my students and I practiced mimicking the work of Anna Deavere Smith<\/a> so that we could look at how writing can help distill, facilitate, and shape local political discourse. When students do work<\/em> in a class, isn\u2019t that about practice for something bigger? Sure, that may not mean being a professional blogger, but it may mean staying afoot in the tricky landscape of educational policy, it may mean being able to understand and convey a point of view, and it may mean having to advocate through words and actions.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been called into too many principals\u2019 offices too many times during my years as a teacher and had to call in my union representative (usually my good friend Travis \u2026 one in that aforementioned long list of folks I need to call) to know that being able to articulate and to provide evidence for an argument about the needs of my students is not only about CYAing<\/a> but about leading as an advocate for students and for a profession that is contested.<\/p>\n I think this post is more to psyche myself up for the continual challenge of loving the teaching profession and loving\u2013unconditionally\u2013the students we face each day. As my students and I struggle to figure out how to produce and communicate, I wonder if we need to step back and create an education-focused Ze Frank-like invocation.
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