16.3. The Useless Teacher

Why the hell do people get into teaching?

It absolutely must have something to do with the kids.  If you don't like kids, I can't imagine why you'd do it. 

Next, it probably has to do with learning.  If you don't believe in the idea of learning, I can't imagine why you'd put up with teaching.

For me, it absolutely has to do with kids.  And it absolutely has to do with learning.  But one of my favorite things in the world is seeing kids LEARN outside of my classroom.

I am not a teacher who has any illusions that my classroom is somehow more important than the rest of the world.... The rest of the world is just a different type of classroom.

This afternoon, I saw one of my students learning something entirely other than English. 

This student is a great one.  They are engaged during class: they pay attention, contribute to conversations, do group work, and they (occasionally) do some written work, as well.  They are a very good English student with tremendous potential as a human being.

Unfortunately, all of my impressions are drawn from my experiences with this student inside my class.  But today, I got to see this student as...something other than a student.

When I saw them today, they were in charge of their learning.  There was no "Mr. Coen" to guide them (and, surely, in this situation, Mr. Coen was only getting in the way).  This was a student who knew what they wanted, and they were kickin' butt and taking names.

I smiled to myself in this moment because I was utterly useless.  A teacher I was not.  I cannot think of a better part to teaching other than seeing your students learning (successfully) something that they want to learn....  And, so it's not English...oh, well--that's what American Lit is for, right?

Journal 16. Due February 29

16.1 What do you think your friends, teachers, and parents would say you best trait is? (Required entry)

16.2 Be brave now...what do you think your friends, teachers, and parents would say is your worst trait.

16.3 When I was in high school, the first iPod came out. It was really something, my friend bragged—it had 1 gigabyte and it weighed only two pounds and could easily feet in your pocket...if your pockets were the size of saddlebags. Things have come a long way since that day, about 10 years ago. So where do you think technology will go from here? What will be the next great invention?

15.2: What My Parents did that I Hope I Won't

I have distinct memories of coming home after school.  I would go to the fridge and grab a snack and a drink.  Whatever dishes I created would then be placed in the sink.  My four brothers would follow behind me and follow the same procedure and the dishes would pile up higher and higher.

When my mother would get home, her face would wrinkle in frustration.  Immediately, she would walk to the sink and begin scrubbing all of the dishes that we had left.  At dinner, she would complain about how much she hated coming home to a dirty house.  It ruined her day, no matter how good it had been.

I sympathized with her, I suppose...but only to an extent.  Never did my mother come seek us out when she got home--even if we were all there.  Instead, she would simply do the dishes, then complain to us later.  As stupid kids, we felt that it was easier to put up with the complaints than actually take care of our mess.  It was simple mathematics.

I realized, later, though, that this was just a form of enabling on the part of my mother.  Rather than hold me--and Tommy, Timmy, Paul, and Pat--accountable for our slobbishness, my mother was helping us through it and then complaining afterward. This lack of accountability in cleaning has continued to affect me.  I invite all of you to look at my desk...or my entire room.  It's a mess.  My closet is a mess.  I struggle to keep my spice cabinet orderly.  I feel like some help on my mother's part when I was younger would help this.

I hope that when I'm a parent, I don't fall into the same trap that my mother did.  Sometimes, in an act of self-reliance (or something), it's easier to just pick up after dirty people and then educate them later.  Instead, it's probably healthier to point out their errors and have them clean up after themselves.

15.1: What is Love?

Ah, the L-word.  It's one of those things that I've said before, but didn't always mean it...or at least I didn't always understand it.  In high school I said it to two girls.  I've said it to two since.

In high school, I definitely didn't know what love was.  It was just a word.  There gets to be a point in some relationships where you spend a lot of time with someone and...well...what's next?  So you blurt out those three words.  One time I regretted it and when she said, "What did you say?" I thought about lying.  (Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a plausible lie for what I had said instead).  My strategy, then, was to neither admit nor deny: "You heard me," was my sly reply.  Skirted out of that one.

The other girl in high school to whom I uttered those words had gone off to college after about four months of us dating.  Pretty much within the first week she began to get into college life.  She was going to parties and hanging out with other guys.  I didn't love her, but I also didn't want to be dumped.  So, in a poorly-thought strategy, I blurted out those words.  If she was in doubt about breaking up with me, those words definitely convinced her she should.

With the end of high school came slightly--very slightly--more serious relationships.  The next one was a disaster.  It was such a mistake that my college roommate continues to harass me about how angry and depressed the situation made me.  I had gotten to the point where I felt obligated to remain in the relationship.  In this particular situation, she was the one who used those words first: I. Love. You.

Now, come on!  What am I supposed to say to that?  

• "That's nice."
• "Oh, really?"
• "How about that!"
• "That's funny, because I don't feel the same way at all."

For the gentlemen reading, those are all bad responses.  I don't know what would have been a better response, though.  What I did say was definitely not the right thing to say: "I love you, too."  It wasn't the right thing, because it wasn't true.  But I lived with that mistake for over a year.

So, I've written a great deal and done very little to answer the question.  What is love?  I think it's sort of like a patchwork quilt, to use a bad metaphor.  It's a bunch of little things, quilted together.  It's got something to do with devotion, concern, happiness, compatibility, comfort, joy, laughter, hugs, tolerance, compassion, helpfulness....and tons of other things.  It's so indefinite it's like trying to catch a pig: the harder you squeeze it, the more it squiggles out of your arms.  In the case of not defining love, it's a lot easier to list the things it definitely isn't...hence the stories with which I started.

14.3 Coping with Death

I'm going to steal some portions of my response to Cooper to write this entry.

When I was 4, my paternal grandfather died, so I don't remember that. When I was 15, my maternal grandfather died. It was sad...but i wasn't heartbroken. In 2003, my maternal grandmother died. Again, I was sad, but it didn't break my heart. These were not moments with which I had to cope. I felt worse for my mom in those situations, than I did for myself. 

But then in college I made friends with this awesome kid. His name was Lance.  He was from Auburn, Maine which is right next to Lewiston, Maine.  Lewiston is well-known for being dirty and having less-than-reputable individuals within its borders.  Knowing that Auburnites saw themselves as superior, I immediately began to hassle him about how awful Auburn was in relation to Lewiston.  (The great part to this was that I had never stepped foot in either town).  Lance took great offense to this, and somehow all of our ridiculous insults back and forth to each other turned into a friendship.  From there, he quickly became one of my best friends and was just a blast to be around. My roommate and I, aside from being friends ourselves, didn't often agree on other people to hang out with--Lance was the exception.

Things took a nasty turn, however, during my senior year,when Lance died. And as I type this, I get this chill over my body, because it makes me so friggin sad that he's gone. I never had to cope with my grandparents dying...but I really have to cope with Lance dying.

I guess part of it is that he was young and should have lived so much longer. Part of it, too, was that I thought we had a lot more time together (we were going to open a burger restaurant...). So to cope...well, I guess I just try to think about the good things.

What's my point? I guess sometimes we just don't get sad. And then, one day, when one person dies, we finally are.

14.2: Camping in Acadia

Camping can be a horrible experience. I think back to some of my childhood camping adventures which involved my brother vomiting up bad oysters, or rain collecting in the tent during a massive rain storm.

Camping can also be a great experience. One of my recent camping adventures came in the summer of 2008. I had just graduated from college and, despite still being unemployed, Liz and I thought it would be a great idea to go to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine to spend some cash.

We booked a campsite at Blackwoods campsite.  After the four hour drive from Liz's parents' house, we finally arrived and checked in.  Setting up the site was a lot of fun because I hadn't done it in so long.  We got the site set up and built a fire.  There is something so awesome about building a fire--it makes you feel incredibly self-reliant.  And then we cooked some sort of dinner.

The next day we decided to tackle Cadillac Mountain.  It's not the biggest mountain in the world, but it sure is pretty.  One of my favorite pictures of Liz and I together was taken about half-way up, with the Atlantic Ocean hazy in the background.  We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the top, and marveled at the beautiful view.

Liz was tired at that point which meant she wanted to take the shortcut--which was in the deep crevice of a rocky valley.  She changed her mind shortly after making that terrible decision...which lead us up a steap, smooth rockface.  We made it out alive, however, although we had nearly doubled our return trip.  (This was the first of many navigational accidents with Liz that have become one of her endearing trademarks that make for some excellent humor in our relationship).


While we were back at the camp, we met a mother and her two kids from Michigan.  The boys were total nerds (about 5th grade) but they were so much fun.  They were introverted, dorky, and totally curious about the world.  Well, their mother had never been camping before and neither had they, so while they were in Maine anyway, they figured, "What the heck?"  But that didn't get them far.  They didn't know how to make a fire and hadn't brought anything to make s'mores with.  So we invited these fine people on over to Camp Coen and we built some s'mores for them.  As we gorged ourselves on graham cracker, marshmallow, and chocolate, we bonded over National Public Radio.


All-in-all, that trip to Acadia was the best camping experience I have ever had--and definitely one of my favorite vacations ever.

Journal Entries 15. Due February 15.

15.1 It’s that time of year when the cheesy red roses and crappy boxes of candy get passed out as representations of love.  So, I thought to myself, why not give in to Dyllan’s ridiculous request and ask this question: What is love? (Required entry)

15.2 I think, even as young people, we look at some of the stuff our parents do and say to ourselves, “I’m not going to do that to my kids.”  My mom says that she and her sisters made a conscious decision to be nice to their kids, because their mother had been so cold.  I think for me it’s that because my parents did too many things for me (do the dishes, manage my bank account and taxes) that it was harder for me to become an independent adult.  So, what is yours?  What habit of your parents’ will you be sure to not repeat?  … 

15.3 From Wikipedia.org, we get a wonderful entry about the Bennington Triangle which states:  

“stories of strange happenings had been told about Glastenbury and the surrounding area for many years prior to the disappearances in the 1940s, the best-known of which is probably that of Paula Jean Welden in December 1946. Other sources do seem to corroborate that such folklore does appear to date back as far as the late 19th century and perhaps even earlier. This includes the local folk belief that Native Americans regarded the Glastenbury area as "cursed" and avoided it, as well as tales of hairy "wild men" and other strange beasts in the woods.” 

I want you to tell the story of Paula Jean, like you were a novelist.  Don’t forget your beginning, middle, and ending.  (If you want to extend this story, write part of it now, and then continue the story over multiple free entries…)   …