can't write the DD

I've been working, sort of, on a double dactyl for an epigram which has the name Sosobianus in it. It's got a good rhythm; I should be able to write something.

Went to see Sheryl Crow in concert last night. But in the a.m. I played soccer and rolled my ankle. I've been on it all day at school. Well, it's just too much trouble, you know, dealing with a sub when my brain works fine. But it's hard to keep me off my feet.

So now I'm here in bed with my laptop and my very, very swollen ankle elevated and on an ice pack.

Something's wrong with our internet access... it's really slow and timing out. I can't seem to manage to upload t-shirt designs for a colleague who needed them yesterday.

But I should grade. Ah, yes, I really should.

Someone asked me the other day why I became a teacher. Hell if I know. I suppose because some of the best friends I ever had in high school were teachers, not that the teachers themselves knew that. They made life bearable when I was awkward and didn't fit in. Oddly my own students find that hard to believe because they think I'm cool. I wasn't cool. I was the farthest thing from it.

But at first I was going to be a theatre teacher. I got fed up with the drama dept at UT (ruined my GPA for something subjective--a lab, of all things). Then I realized I could get my "theatre" in Latin. Maybe it was a desire to fix what I felt had been wrong with my own Latin education. I feel like I've been on this quest, this unfinished quest, to change Latin education, to get MORE students to a point of actually READING.

But what is so fantastic about Latin? Did the sex appeal to me? I loved Ovid; read a lot of him. I like meter and poetry and did lots of JCL dramatic interps.

And I still have fantasies about doing summer theatre... I'll be old and grey before that happens though. I have lots of midlife fantasies. I suppose it's always about just wanting to be smarter or better than I am. Oh, who knows!

But I enjoy working with kids. I enjoy taking them as they are, not passing judgment, and not allowing bellcurves to predict how many students will learn and advance. I was not the national merit finalist. I was not the well-read student. I was nothing more than an average student from a very middle class house where it was expected that we'd go to college but there was nothing in my life to promote high SAT scores, etc, or even the consideration of academic scholarships or anything beyond UT or A&M. I'm not complaining. I'm just trying to explain or explore why I am a teacher.

I always felt there was something, I dunno, grand that I could do. Something important. Something unique, perhaps. Something that would make me proud to be me. What a funny thing to say, but I suppose that's somewhere in all of us. I was put down a lot in school; I was the person people trashed and made fun of. I suppose another reason why I want to teach is to protect others from what I went through. Well, we could probably all spend some time with a good shrink in one way or another.

But at the heart of it is exploration of Latin, of myself, and of my place in the world. If that isn't too corny. Life is, after all, a journey. Might as well know what the journey is about.....