Vous n'êtes point trompé; ce fou vend la sagesse

Yesterday, had the meeting at State School. Lots of the usual blather, but finally assignments were revealed. I'm going to a second grade room at Brown Elementary. I'd like to have gotten third grade, the first year the TAKS are given; I wanted to show that I could handle that particular stress. However, I'm happy with second, and a couple of classmates told me that Brown is a great school. Their website has some very impressive statistics about passing rates and so forth.

So, feeling good about that. Some lingering resentments toward my old alma mater back in Little Canada, the State U. where I got my master's. I had applied, back in 1995 or so, for an elementary teaching certificate way back then. I was denied at the interview stage; they told me I was too academic. They said I was wrong about a teacher's primary responsibility being to teach. They wanted me to say that a teacher's primary responsibility was to coach life skills and nurture. They said they were impressed with my intelligence, but that I ought to be a college professor, not a school teacher.

So I got my master's and over the next three years or so was confirmed in my belief that academics is not for me. I don't like college students. I didn't even like college students when I was a college student. Beer-swilling yahoos who don't appreciate what they have, is what they are. I strongly believe in reaching children when they're young, in making a difference early, and being an intellectual role model (especially for boys), of which there is a shameful dearth in this country.

And thinking about that today, ending up now in the spot I should have been starting out at ten years ago, I got a little bitter about the path my life took, and State U.'s role in that. But I carried a lot of that load myself, and anyway we have to let go of the past, and also remember that when you point a finger, three more are pointing back at you, unless of course you point with all five fingers outstretched, which just looks weird.