Here are some details about a typical Saturday over the last month or so: I’ll have a leisurely morning, drink coffee, eat a light breakfast, walk the dogs, make plans for the yard, eat a heavier lunch, drop off cans at the bottle drop, buy records at the curbside of Music Millennium, dog bones atContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #28”
Tag Archives: distance learning
#402: Poem on April 29, 2021
Poem on April 29 The best thing I could dofor myself this morning: spin Scary Monstersin the empty classroom before the students arrived,timing “Ashes to Ashes” and “Fashion” just for the moment as the first group of kids came throughthe doors of A-9.That was a good way to begin. What has felt like a weekofContinue reading “#402: Poem on April 29, 2021”
#399: Poem on April 26, 2021
Remember that nightmare I had about distance learning? Poem #398 for easy reference. Well, that nightmare, or some version of it, was a lived experience for me on my first day back to school for hybrid learning. So here’s a poem on that occasion, unfortunately this time, not a dream but a reality. The kidsContinue reading “#399: Poem on April 26, 2021”
#398: Poem on April 25, 2021
Here’s an occasional poem, of sorts: on the occasion of having a teaching nightmare on the eve of returning to the school building for hybrid learning, April, 2021. I actually composed the following before I knew today’s suggested prompt, and I do think I would like to compose a poem more directly or seriously forContinue reading “#398: Poem on April 25, 2021”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #27
Be Drunkby Charles BaudelaireYou have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. ButContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #27”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #25
This morning I got up to find a comment posted to one of my blog entries! How exciting is that? I will tell you. It’s pretty exciting. It’s rare, these days–it’s rare in general, but it seems more rare these days–in part, I know, because I have not been writing. Guess what the blog entryContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #25”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #24
September 15, 2020 Yesterday was the first official day of school for students in my district, the first time in my 32 year career that the school year would open with distance learning on account of a viral pandemic, and, as it turns out, the first time in my 32 year career that school wouldContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #24”
Journal of the Plague Year: #20
As a high school English teacher, I believe that on Friday, June 12, 2020, I experienced the strangest last day of school in the history of last school days. I mean, on the surface, it was somewhat unremarkable. I got out of bed at 8:30 a.m., took a shower, didn’t shave, moseyed on downstairs inContinue reading “Journal of the Plague Year: #20”
#372: Day 28 Hummingbird Haiku
My sophomores, under the gentle tutelage of a wonderfully gifted student teacher, are distance learning about imagery, beyond the sort of rudimentary understanding that imagery is language that appeals to the senses, into a deeper knowledge that imagery plays on both the intellect and the emotions, that it is associative, that it often works bestContinue reading “#372: Day 28 Hummingbird Haiku”
#367: For Its Own Sake
Here’s a question. What motivates a person to do a thing, especially a thing that is purported to be good for a person–let’s say, eat right, exercise, learn an instrument, learn an instrument well, dance, sing, paint, or act well, and while we’re at it, add into the mix all the academic endeavors: write well, readContinue reading “#367: For Its Own Sake”
michael jarmer 