Day: August 20, 2024

I didn’t sleep much last night. I like to think I have a semi-routine. I try to stay up to a certain time of night and then settle into the routine of curling up with the love of my life. I started it way earlier than usual and my mind responded poorly. By 2 AM I was up. It is 4 now and I am not only awake but at the computer typing out these words before I get to work on planning a semester of learning for perhaps a handful of kids who care among scores who really don’t.

Early mornings bring out my inner cynic. Still, I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom and discovering what that space is going to be like over the next few months. I can say that I am especially looking forward to teaching novel writing again. It is one of my true joys.

Still the cynic lives on. He says, for example, what about the other classes? What about ChatGPT? The other day I queried the AI to create an assignment that it would find difficult to complete. The response was… interesting. It also allowed me to start refining ideas for what a classroom space could look like for a modern composition class where apps of this nature are basically how students move through the system. We have, at this point, reached a level of computer aid where younger people don’t have basic understanding or skills and instead have new skills–the skills to interact with and manipulate the tools that do the (what I am forever referring to as) first level work and first level thinking. This frees them to do the second level and higher level thinking, which many of them do. However, the foundations are built upon and reliant upon tools they simply do not understand.

I learned how to build computers when I was in High School. Now everything is black box. Nobody knows what happens inside and if it breaks down, they just wait for it to get working again. Half my kids couldn’t put up a wireless network without a video to explain it to them. Of course, the videos exist they are available, so to them, they do not need to store the knowledge in their personal memory and understanding. It is readily available online.

So, that is the thinking I am dealing with in terms of being a teacher. That is what the cynic in me is trying to respond to.

Last night the blog got pushed to the end of the night. Again tonight it is moving past 7pm and, with a head weary of work, I write.

This is not the path I want to choose or continue down, but here I am. It tends to get like this at the start of a new semester, largely because I don’t plan for all of the factors. I know what classes I could be teaching and I should be preparing for them, but it is often in those last days that I actually sit down and prep. Why? Because I enjoy free time. I especially enjoy it with my lady.

I had an odd conversation with two of my older boys where they acted like I had as much time as they did each day and it was simply about how I chose to use that time. I get their perspective–that of 20 year olds who don’t have hardly any responsibility. It has to feel like you have all the time in the world if you’re them. However, being 25+ years older and (i’m just gonna say it) wisened by those years, I understand that there is time you must allocate to taking care of the things that 20 yr olds of this generation don’t think about. They don’t wake up in the morning and clean up the house. They don’t do the daily maintenance items to keep the place from falling into disarray. We do. They don’t work full time jobs and have to task hours to that. So when they talk about choice allocation of time, these things, and the interstitial hours they create, are not factored in. They just see what they see and call it reality.

I must sound bitter, but it is actually a sadness. I’m not mad at their freedom. As I argued at the time, I’m a bit jealous I didn’t do more with mine when I was at that age. I did exactly what they were doing (albeit for far fewer years) and enjoyed the hell out of it. I am glad they had the chance to do just that.

The reality train is pulling into the station for all of us. It is time to work. Time to go back to school. Time to prepare for success in our next endeavor. For me, that is having good classes, and writing this next project… and the one after that, and the novel to come after that. The year ends in a few months. I want to know I did all I could in this one. Tomorrow, it starts.