After a long hiatus away (I have a full time job now, teaching; if you want to call it that)...I have come to many conclusions:

1. I am technically no longer "broke" (at least in the monetary sense of the word - though I wonder if monetary poverty has its benefits when compared to the soul-sucking, mind-numbing, passion massacre of not being able to grow or develop oneself intellectually or creatively on the job)
2. I am still disgusted (with HigerEd, with bureaucracy, with lazy students, with grade-grubbing students, with whiny students, excuse-laden students, essentially with every student that I am subjected to each day in the No-Mind's-Land of Remedial Writing!)
3. I am tired and uninspired
4. I am becoming a bitter professor {I mean the bitterest of the bitter kind -- like that professor of mine who once, on that first day of class, hurled this shining insult: "You all are the victims of educational malpractice! You don't know how to write, and I don't know how you even got admitted to this school!" Yeah that kind of bitter = ( }
5. I rarely ever engage both cortexes of my brain...no, seriously! This is a major problem in my life right now. I have heard that people with too little stimulation can actually die...or maybe that is what being brain dead means -- I am literally an English teacher zombie: going through the motions but not actually engaging with any stimulating thoughts, my students or my own. (I never thought I would long for the days when I was a student and my only job was to read, write and think about beautiful, complex, and interesting ideas) 

I know that much of this sounds like complaints. Many people would tell me to suck it up and be glad that I have a job to go to each day, but when did "just getting through things" become the hallmark of good career advice? I don't want to just get through my career, wishing away day after day, longing for the next holiday to get here so that I can enjoy it for a day and then slip right back into the fear of impending doom on the job and moving through the doldrums of one bad day after another.

I know that the illusive "good job" exists. In fact, my students talk about this mythological creature quite often. It is truly something to be envied - it can be attained by anyone at any educational level, comes with a $90,000 dollar salary, amazing benefits, a house and a luxury car - isn't that amazing?!

But, I really do believe that I can find a job that is a "good fit" for me personally; a job that (most days if not many days) allows me to feel inspired and worthwhile, not battered and defeated; a job that edifies me as I edify others; a job that ignites not extinguishes my passions and creativity; a job that challenges me as I challenge the status quo of society; a job that encourages intellectual curiosity and doesn't squelch a budding idea.

This job Mecca or Utopia is out there, and the largest lesson that I have learned in my short time in this position is that pursuing your job dreams or passions or happiness is the highest imperative because there is only one thing other than marriage that many of us will commit the largest portion of our lives to - a career!


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Reporting from the Trenches...

Multimedia technology...Ruining our students or helping them?

I am a believer in incorporating technology in the classroom, but somedays (earlier this week is a good example) I find that it encourages students to be LAZY learners or not to be learners at all.  

I don't allow laptops in my lectures because they have crippled students' ability to spell, take notes efficiently, and, of course, pay attention. BUT, I have not yet figured out how to maintain the level of attentiveness (Active Learning, if you will) that I want them to be at while lecturing using technology. 

Anyone who teaches English understands this dilemma. The finer points of MLA format, grammar, punctuation, and structure can all be a bit daunting to illustrate fluidly on a chalkboard (plus volunteers to correct sentences are always few and far between) and you never want to bombard your students with worksheets (they checkout and you have tons to grade), so you turn to TECHNOLOGY!  However, when you put up Power Points (no matter how interactive...AND MINE ARE SUPER INTERACTIVE....I'm talking movie clips, sound bites, practice sentences with answers so it's like a game, images, cartoons to examine...THE WORKS!) its like students switch into HIBERNATION mode.  Pens stop moving, eyes glaze over or begin to droop, heads slowly become acquainted with their new best friend, the desk.  I literally have to go for shock value in my lectures that include technology or resign myself to the class morphing from  ENGLISH 101 into REM CYCLES 101. 

I didn't have the luxury of tons of technology in the classroom when I was in college, but that made me a better student. A student had to stay on his or her toes. If you didn't take notes well, you learned. If you wrote too slow, you learned to speed up or else you would miss important information. We all made friends with one another so that if we missed something the teacher said, we could consult each other, not blame the teacher/professor for not "POSTING" the information to said school/courses website. We came to class and were engaged in discussion and debate, instead of asking "WILL THIS PPT BE ON BLAHBOARD?" because we wanted an excuse to mentally checkout! (I don't think one professor I had on college posted notes, you came and learned or you were not granted the "pleasure" of gaining their knowledge)  In essence we were more actively involved in what went on in the classroom because it was our RESPONSIBILITY... a concept that I feel is very lost on many of my students.

I guess this is a different generation of students and the demand for technology in the classroom is here to stay. Maybe, students will miraculously change, become more engaged with the technology in the classroom, and I will learn to love technology it...

 or maybe not.