The Platypus Reads Part XXIV
It's funny, but it's true; during the school year I have to shut half my brain off so that I can teach.
Bare me out on this one. You can't walk into a room full of eighth graders and say: "Modern America can only be understood in terms of Nietzsche's understanding of the creative man, or "over-man," as the maker of values via his will-to-power perversely democratized so that all of us can become value-generators." Well, you can, but they'll just look at you funny and roll their eyes. That's not to say that teaching teenagers doesn't require any real mental effort, quite the opposite, but that it uses certain mental faculties to the limit while demanding that others be temporarily suspended. You have to figure out how to communicate complex information in a way that they can grasp and run with. When you're mentally sparing with them, you still have to keep one hand behind your back. The goal is to help them develop their abilities, not to crush them with your massive brain. The part of my brain devoted to navigating those tricky waters gets worked to exhaustion during the school year. The other half, the half that desperately wants a long jaw with an Oxford trained mind, has to lay dormant.
Summer is when the other half of me gets let out of the basement. Practically, this means that I read about five books at once. The closer to the school year, the more difficult the fair. This summer, I've already long since exhausted my projected reading list, and so I'm having to make up more as I go. Sometimes it feels like my brain is on over-drive.
So what does all this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that my list of posts under the heading of "The Platypus Reads" is growing at an alarming rate (and I'm not posting on all the books I'm reading). Secondly, it means that I understand why teachers get that time off during the summer. Summer is your chance to remember that you're an adult again. It's a time to let out those parts of you that you have to stifle during the year in order to get by. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching, and I care about my students, but it comes at a price. Summer's reminding me of that fact right now.
Bare me out on this one. You can't walk into a room full of eighth graders and say: "Modern America can only be understood in terms of Nietzsche's understanding of the creative man, or "over-man," as the maker of values via his will-to-power perversely democratized so that all of us can become value-generators." Well, you can, but they'll just look at you funny and roll their eyes. That's not to say that teaching teenagers doesn't require any real mental effort, quite the opposite, but that it uses certain mental faculties to the limit while demanding that others be temporarily suspended. You have to figure out how to communicate complex information in a way that they can grasp and run with. When you're mentally sparing with them, you still have to keep one hand behind your back. The goal is to help them develop their abilities, not to crush them with your massive brain. The part of my brain devoted to navigating those tricky waters gets worked to exhaustion during the school year. The other half, the half that desperately wants a long jaw with an Oxford trained mind, has to lay dormant.
Summer is when the other half of me gets let out of the basement. Practically, this means that I read about five books at once. The closer to the school year, the more difficult the fair. This summer, I've already long since exhausted my projected reading list, and so I'm having to make up more as I go. Sometimes it feels like my brain is on over-drive.
So what does all this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that my list of posts under the heading of "The Platypus Reads" is growing at an alarming rate (and I'm not posting on all the books I'm reading). Secondly, it means that I understand why teachers get that time off during the summer. Summer is your chance to remember that you're an adult again. It's a time to let out those parts of you that you have to stifle during the year in order to get by. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching, and I care about my students, but it comes at a price. Summer's reminding me of that fact right now.
Comments
Well, that and it takes awhile to start using four and five syllable words again without defining them with smaller synonyms immediately after saying them. :)