After Having Thoroughly Reflected on Student Evaluations and the Past School Year: My Hypothetical Plan for Day 1, Next Year's School Term

I think one of the most frustrating things about teaching high school is the limitations on frankness that one encounters. This isn't to say that one cannot be sincere, but one can rarely be as blunt as perhaps one ought. Having only been on earth for little more than twenty years, I am not qualified to say whether or not pedagogical expectations and practices have actually changed a great deal in this regard over the last several decades, but I do believe that much of the expectation surrounding the classroom and schools today is that teachers handle students with the proverbial kid gloves, which isn't to say that teachers shouldn't be sensitive and caring but shouldn't also be expected to shy away from breaking down the walls and the building insulation that keeps one warm, cozy, and deaf to the world outside of presumption and limited experience.

Part of this insulation stems from the entitlement to opinion. I am entitled to my opinion. Since when did we put such a premium on the value of opinion. Of course you're entitled to it. If you breathe, oxygen is supplied to the brain, synapses fire, and typically some thought is produced...even it's something as banal as I should probably keep breathing--that's opinion of course. Another natural product of the daily course of life is human waste--carbon dioxide, dead skin cells shed, urine...stool. Like thought, these byproducts too have some value. Our breathe assists plants and algae in the process of photosynthesis. Dead skin cells may assist in reducing ozone and, at the very least, reminds us that it is time to clean and organize things every once in a while. Urine and stool can be utilized as effective plant fertilizers. Though we would hardly examine the waste in our toilet and see much value there--crap and all its other forms has a decidedly negative connotation in the public lexicon--it seems more often that of the two human products, opinion and dung, the latter is the more substantive and inherently valuable.

Opinion is only given meaning and value through the evidence presented in support. That is one thing that I tried to drive home in classes this year, not only to reinforce the extrinsic motivation and mechanical skills of producing "good" schoolwork and papers for a grade but to also produce that most basic of human products--thought, rooted in experience and evidence, watered with consideration.

In considering the hypothetical beginning of next term, set in a hypothetical universe in which I would not be immediately fired or berated with phone calls and emails, I would begin my classes in the following manner--each with a blunt, straightforward assessment of things from the particular perspective and worldview of George Carlin. Opinion independent of all else is inherently worthless but that is not to say that certain opinions do not hold value in certain cases, such as this, being used to challenge thought, create discussion about opinion and seemingly extremist views, and remove the kiddy gloves that are doing little service to young people in this country who are becoming increasingly disconnected and disengaged from the people and world around them.

In this hypothetical, alternative universe, which finds itself still rooted in some reality in the fact that the state has continued to cut school financing, I find that I have received an email from my principal informing me that due to cuts in the budget this summer, I will be returning in late August to teach 8 periods (my two preparation periods have been eliminated) and a homeroom. To ease students back into the school rhythm after summer, before we take off at break neck speed for the following nine months, I am beginning each class with a short video. Here goes.

A1 American History

A2 English

A3 Consumer Education

A4 Homeroom

A5 Journalism

B1 Social Issues

B2 Driver's Education

B3 Health

B4 Homeroom

B5 Civics

Of course, at the end of each video, as good pedagogical theory and general, good practice dictates, we will have a discussion of opinion, theory, evidence, perspective, context, and most importantly values.