| September'99 | . |
This Journal |
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All the little things that are so big. I just finished the last of the first round of response journals. The freshmen have needed some extra careful re-teaching of how to do a journal entry. The sophomores seem to have it under control. Many of their journals are very well done, right on the verge of A. I'm looking forward to some good thinking and writing and reading in them. I just finished a bit of laundry, mostly shirts. Dom irons everything, but I'm lucky to have only one shirt that ever needs it. I squeak by with the rest. "I keep my fingernails long so they click when I play the piano." Joe Ely I introduced our Carmel librarians to the secret ways of Brother Tom's Wonder Closet. They were pleased enough to bookmark it on the library's computers. Maybe that will boost the traffic a bit and get sone Carmel voices in here. Yesterday I finished the first round of progress reports. Had to do them by hand because I don't yet have access to the Grade Quick program at home. (The one big flaw in Carmel's pretty wonderful technology set-up is their thoroughly irrational and utterly total devotion to Windows...in my own humble opinion.) Well, this was only the first round because students who are on academic probation and students whose parents have requested progresss reports get processed a week before the rest of the crowd who might just be earning a report on their own. So I'll need to do this again very soon for those others. I was pleased to see that the Carmel girls golf team defeated the JCA girls golf team. Forgive me. Well, I'm in the process of re-defining my allegiances now. I'm looking forward to watching a bit of the girls tennis match when JCA shows up here next week. Critical thinking. While reading the response journals, I found myself thinking about thinking. I found myself writing over and over, "Push your thought farther by questioning the reading and yourself more." How do any of us learn to think? My notion is that we do it by doing it. (Like Annie Sullivan thumping finger-words into Helen Keller's palm over and over again, hoping that one day that crucial leap will be made.) Questioning seems to be at the heart of it, being able to pose sincere questions from the center of our confusions, irritations or passions. Wondering seriously. That's what I'm shooting for in the journals. Lookin' for them wonders. Maybe at some point I'll require them to write an entry which is nothing but questions. Maybe we should read a little Socrates/Plato. I didn't brush the cat tonight, but she got her treats anyhow. I suppose that at her ripe old age of eleven I can pamper her a bit, ease up on the rigid routine. Does this make me a bad person? I found myself thinking about Emmett today. He died about a year ago. Throughout this turbulent year, I've kept him with me by picturing how he would have reacted to whatever was going on. For a fella who could get pretty neurotic over some of his own complications, he was always able to help me see what was important in the midst of mine. He was good at helping me to sort the wheat from the chaff, as they used to say in old agrarian days when people knew about such things. It looked like a nice cool day when I peeked out my classroom window up through the branches of the whatchamacallit tree. The sky was full of pleasant clouds at high resolution. That's all I had of the wild open world today. |
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Pablo Picasso |
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Chronic
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