perspicacious.org

There are two days left in February. In Albuquerque, we could certainly go out in just a sweatshirt by this time of year, and probably wear shorts by the end of March. It's still awfully cold in Fairbanks, though. In one of those twisted Alaskan ironies, it's been suny out for weeks– brilliantly sunny. That hasn't stopped it from being -20 and colder in temperature, though! You really can freeze to death in full sunshine here.

The kids went outside for the first time in a week yesterday, and at -10 with light wind I think it was not a pleasant recess. One little boy came in crying that his ears hurt from the cold. Several others showed me their pink fingers and cheeks. It's -28 today, so unless it warms up we'll be inside again. Blegh. I hate having the kids cooped up like this.

Two more weeks until the equinox, and then we'll be on the upswing until June. Sometime in the spring everything really starts to melt, and the light comes back and all of a sudden it's light out until 10:00PM or later. Not yet, though. We have at least 7-8 weeks of snow left. I like putting it that way– 2 months sounds too long. 7 weeks, though, I think I can do. Now, where are my mittens and scarf?

Oh my lord, today was total chaos and I am just beginning to come down from the shock of it. The kids were…so loud. I've lost one of my very favorite kids and gained two new squirrels in the past two weeks and it's just insane right now. And conferences are next week and I'm feeling way behind on work and yikes, yikes.

We had heart shaped pizzas and Godiva chocolate for dinner and feeling like I might just be able to tackle the rest of the week. I sure do hope that no new kiddos are coming my way before, say, next week and that the kids don't bring too much candy to school tomorrow. I will, of course, come prepared with mountains of candy and a venti latte. Or 4.

In the meantime, please do look at the gallery of unfortunate Valentine cards. I do love it so, I must link to it every year. Happy reading.

This is where I spend a good deal of my time, more or less in isolation. I feel very blessed to have gotten this teaching position, and I hear often what a good job I have done at getting the class on track, how smoothly things seem to be running, etc. It takes a great deal of my time and effort to keep this room and its occupants in shape and moving forward, and I do all of this without much support from anyone. Yes, I do ask questions of the other teachers around me, and I do chat with my principal, and R does help me with grading and other classroom stuff. The great bulk of the work, though, is me, working alone.

And since I'm being honest, I should tell you that I don't stop often to ponder where I fit in the philosophical scheme of things. I do have a philosophy of education, written out and posted in my personnel file, and theoretically correlated to my teaching practices.

This is it: I believe that learning should be engaging and honest, and based on give and take for both the learner and teacher. I believe that all people are capable of as much or as little as is expected from them. I believe in celebrating growth, new thought, and new ideas.

So, my delimma is this: I could hardly work in more isolation than I do now, unless I were to go back in time and teach at a one room school. Just getting the teaching done takes enormous amounts of time for me, and while I worry that I am not fully integrating my beliefs and practices, I am not sure I have the momentum to stop and ponder. I realize that there is a great irony to this– working and teaching within this box when in fact education is and should be a crucial, vital connection to the world. How do I tie myself, my philosophy, and my students to everything else that's out there? Time to start reading (and responding), I think.