To Shanghai with Love

Ok, what’s the assignment? Questioning Techniques. Sexy.

It’s not that difficult with only six students, but I use cold-calling often and plan on continuing to do so come fall – emphasizing the importance of knowing names – and eventually really getting to know the personalities that go with those smiling mugs. Mike G. mentioned he was going to take pictures of all the kids on the first day and then study them that first night, through the first week, to learn all of the names as soon as possible. I think I’m going to be having somewhere in the vicinity of 90 young Einsteins – cake compared to the meaninglessness of art history memorization. Cold-calling (not asking for hands, but just randomly hitting bewildered gophers on the head with the precision of Payton – am I allowed to say that in Oxford? He is better.) gives the teacher the liberty of picking off easy prey: the head-nodders, day-dreamers, jokers and the miiiiidnight tokers. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Leave the mad-doggers alone, they bite. It also keeps me on my toes and being attentive to the subtle fluctuations in vibe from the pack.

Just you wait and see how stealthy I can be.

I’m also down with experimenting a little. I liked the crumbled balls of frustration technique – tossing scrap paper questions around the room, which students pick up to answer for points. Maybe an alternative to a quiz if everyone had an equal opportunity. I also remember a certain teacher of mine with a side-arm like Eckersley and a tangled mess of red hair engulfing a pair of neon green eye-glasses that never made it down to her eyes, who would hurl her smiling, yellow ‘Happy Ball’ at unsuspecting seventh-graders if she wanted an answer. I think the only person happy was her, and that usually came at the expense of those hormonal teenagers too busy staring at Suzy or checking out Joe to notice her airborne inquiry, and that usually was me.

Had my first visit to Indianola yesterday con RC. Kinda stoked. After two hours of corn, cotton and catfish farms we rolled down B.B. King Drive and into our new home. Most of the school has no indoor halls. Instead, classrooms open up to roofed walk-ways surrounding central quadrangles. Each subject has a wing. Apparently I’ll have my own classroom, vacated by a teacher who had a serious car-accident last year. Definitely going to have to call the karma police to bust out the sage in that sh*t. I’ll be coaching defensive backs, supposedly (sweet to know now that I have five offensive-line instructional videos), and met a bunch of the players and coaches stoking their pigskin passion under the brutal delta sun. They have spring ball that starts in March and runs straight through the summer until football season in August. No balls or pads can be used, but otherwise full practices are held daily with coaches. I’m no expert, but I’m certain those oblong, brown things were balls. I was told, in this context and others, that “there are rules and laws in the delta, but nobody really pays and mind to ‘em”. Same goes for basketball practice, through the summer and fall, into the winter season. In hoops they were runner-up in the state last year. Girls finished in the top four. I was told the “Ram’s Den” gets hoppin’, and cannot wait. Very jealous of RC if he gets an assistant coaching position. I might be doing golf as well, and definitely pissed the Asst. Principal off when I said incredulously, “You have a gooolf team!?” while chuckling. Actually, it was more of a guffaw (vocab word from today). The only house we looked at had fleas, but will have time to survey some others on Monday when we go back down for our district interviews.

“You’re name?” Doober Dudley

“Can you read, write and cipher some?” Yes ma’am. ‘Cept for the cipherin’.

“Are you crazy, boy?” A little bit ma’am.

“Do you go to church?” I … sometimes.

Bonnaroooo this weekend. Four hours and a full head to Manchester. Going to be a mess of, um, musically-induced exhaustion come Monday morning. Don’t worry, teacher man, I’ll be lesson planning in the midst of all those mud-lovin’ children of the moonflower, creative juices flowing fast. Will leave my clothes, and come back with a little hope.