Poem: First Staff Meeting of the Year

August, 2006

8:15

Weak coffee

secure a seat

wait for staff to get their picture taken

What's my background color preference,

asked the picture man

I was wearing green

so I said green

There's a pull down screen

projected onto it, taunting

are the words, "Academic Improvement Plan"

Next to it, an unknown woman in a dress suit

avoiding faces, shufflling paper

as people take their places

She looks unhappy

bracing, perhaps

she's got those bureauocratic wrinkles

the kind that take years of discontent to form

We begin

notes are taken

retention and promotion

short term assessing

standards aligning

skewed data defining 

improvement

The heads in front of me sink

I feel a wrinkle forming

Note to Self: Professionalism Begins with a Smoothie

Today's question: What's our most important professional responsibility outside the classroom?

Initially, I was compelled to shoot off a litany of professional badass-erisms starting with staying up to date on what's happening in the world of education and making our instruction transparent, as I'm gearing up to do with these daily blogs. That's wholly due to the culmination of a 30-year anti-public ed movement and the groundswell of discontent parents are finally becoming a part of. I'm fired up!  

But then I remembered a lesson whilst parenting: Take care of yourself first so you're in better shape to take care of others.  

I'd guess that's true for teachers, too. If we take care of our health and well-being, it pays off in all other aspects of our lives.  I struggle with sustaining that. When I don't eat breakfast, exercise, or sleep, it impacts my energy and brain power, not to mention my justifiable outrage and my willingness to get out there on the street and fight!

So, eat your Wheaties, boys and girls!  A kale smoothie is probably better.  Just do it so we have the energy to save public education and then get back to our usual business of saving the WORLD!

Disclaimer: I do not endorse consumption of said Wheaties.