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i like middles. they're safer
than starts and kinder than ends. middles are ok - and undemanding
beyond their steady requirement to keep on keeping on, left foot,
right foot...
here at the start, i stumble...
a bit. confronted with rooms full of new faces - each ideally
unique but practically indistinguishable one from another until
experience forges distinctions - i never get the names right...
not for the longest time. laura? theresa? chris? jim? no... but
by the middle i'll know these names and faces as i know my fingers
and toes.
the same is true of class material:
shaky starts in each of my three class preps. regular sophomores
are reading ender's game... honors start with puritan poets...
ap seniors with oedipus rex... but it takes a while for me to
remember what we do with it all... how does one "teach"
a novel or a poem or a play? entering year 27, i'm still wondering.
smartypants answers: you read the novel, the poem and the play
and let them teach you... or, you wonder what reading is and
how we do it and how we do it wrong as often as we do it right.
you wonder where meanings come from and why mine are sometimes
different from yours.
by the middle everything has
been sorted, but at the start we've got this mess of particulars
all jumbled up. and so i assign seats and homework. and try to
learn names. and after a natural summer of never raising their
hands to speak, they now raise their hands to speak (but teacher
never has to raise his hand). here at the start everything can
go wrong. a bad start will haunt us all the way to june.
the birthday always comes at
the start. it is a good day of doing the necessary things and
knowing that some people are remembering me... they send me cards
and call me... and even if they aren't sending me cards or calling
me on the phone i know they are thinking of me sometime... even
if not on my birthday. i know they're out there liking me as
much as possible, thinking mostly good thoughts about me, which
is what i think of them on all their birthdays... which i always
forget to mark with a card or a call - and other times too.
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