so beat here at the end of the first week of the second semester that i couldn't bring my weary brain to write on a friday night (once a week seems to be my natural pace for this journal).

i've received a number of very excellent (funny, true, kind, and concerned) responses to my recent minor medical adventures. thank you. please forgive that i have not yet gotten back to you - it was that kind of week.

what kind of week?

well, first semester grades were due, done, exported, and posted (four simple words that belie the madness of the process) -

and then, last sunday afternoon i checked my school mailbox and discovered a thick envelope from Mount Marty College in Yankton SD. It began,

"Dear Brother Murphy [i hate when they start that way], thank you for consenting to work with A. L. for her Practicum Experience. This is an important part of our Education Program and is dependent on teachers who are willing to have our students observe and work in their classrooms...."

WHAT? HUH? this was the first i'd heard of any such thing. this practicum was due to begin monday january 7, i.e. the very next day. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? so i fired off an e-note of confounded befuddlement to assistant principal and department chair. and then checked my voice-mail. sure enough, here was A. L. wondering when and where to arrive. and here i was, reeling from a round of crunching grades without a single idea for class in the morning - let alone some fine teacherly plans worthy of observation. what the hell.

later that evening i reached A. L., greeted her, welcomed her, told her my situation, reassured her, asked if it would be okay if i wasn't the best teacher in the world. it was. monday morning an email from departmant chair suggests that he had forgotten to tell me about this and is the observer okay? yes, i replied, it is okay .... no problem. and i meant it. i've got nothing to hide. anyone is welcome to visit the mess that is me and my classes.

so A. L. has been with me all week as we rumbled along with Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Oliver Goldsmith and Ralph Ellison. she will be returning at some future point, during which she is supposed to "plan and implement at least one week of lessons in a subject area or class." we'll spill that milk when we get to it.

A. L. proved useful. she was charting various interactions in the classes. i took a peek at those on friday ... kind of scarey to see a class's very warm dynamics transmuted to those cold numbers. but it was fun to have someone in the room to whom i might turn at the end of a class and say "how was that?" or "what did you think?" odd to have a different pair of eyes.

the week ended with a student-parent conference yesterday that, i think, was very positive and productive ... despite the simple fact that it was 3:30 to 4:30 friday afternoon and my mind had the consistency of the oatmeal i eat every day for lunch.

how about them thumadumps, you ask? oh i still get them every day. but they ain't gonna kill me, say all the experts. so i just ignore them as best i can. but i'm not sure how long i can handle this de-caf routine.

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it "creative observation." Creative viewing.

William Burroughs