Thes-Con & Taylor Mali

A long time has passed and a lot of things have changed since last I wrote.

I am in a new school, yet find a lot of the same battles continuing over and over again. It came to a point in the fall where I was at quite a low point.

Those of you who know me know I teach theatre and the stress of rehearsals on top of teaching can be something that really weighs on me, especially in the fall for one reason or another. I was upset with the world and pretty much figured that everything sucked. School sucked, teaching sucked, my show sucked, high schoolers sucked.

A couple of things have changed since then. First, I got to attend the annual Colorado State Thespian Conference, which is always a huge boost, and that really seemed to refill my tank. I got excited about my spring production and have actually been looking forward to rehearsals instead of just wondering which student I'll have to kill today. So that is on the upside, anyways.

Second, a friend of mine, who is currently going through a very rough time at her school, turned me on to a guy by the name of Taylor Mali.

Before you go any farther, if you haven't seen or heard anything by this guy stop reading this right now and look him up. It's okay, I'll wait and it's that important that you do go look him up.

The first thing she showed me is this piece called "What Teachers Make" and my mind is completely blown.

It's funny how sometimes little things like a link from a friend can rock your world so hard, but this did. It's a nice reminder about how important the work I do is, and yes, we need that reminder a lot.

This isn't a world that values education or the educated any more or else the system in our country and the various comments you see about teachers in the news wouldn't have the tone that they do.

I learn every day that there are two ways you can handle this. You can get bogged down and depressed by it and it's something that happens to a lot of us, even the best of us, on a daily basis because we're human. We want to be valued and we want to be appreciated for what we do by more than just the odd student that says thank you every now and again.

Then again, there's that other way that is a lot harder to do sometimes, but is the thing that will keep you going. The way where you hear those voices of those students, however small, that say thank you. Those parents who look at their kid in a show and ask you how you got them to stand still and focus like that for two hours because they never do it at home. The unspoken moment where you see a child break through to something they hadn't been able to do or didn't know before and both you and they realize that if it wasn't for what was happening right then and right there, that lightbulb wouldn't turn on.

Education is a brilliant profession to find yourself in, but the truth that they don't tell you in teacher education programs is that the world of an educator is one that is full of daily crap. Crap with students, parents, co-workers, administrators and a society that believes your profession is the reason our economy is collapsing. It takes people like Taylor Mali, or that student, or just a friend who is sharing a hard time to remind you how lucky you are to be a teacher, and believe me you are.

At any rate, sorry for the rambles. Just a lot in my head. I'm going to try and write a lot more on here because I've been kind of inspired to turn this not only into a journal but into a bit of a poetry section.

I've never been good at poetry, but I feel like giving it a try. It probably won't be brilliant by any stretch and I don't care if it is, but I am thinking that this is a great place to start putting up some pieces of work that will hopefully be somewhat remotely similar to Mali.

It'll be interesting to see my try slam poetry, but why not?