Brrrrrrr...

28 degrees is way too cold to be driving with out heat. I could feel the hair on my legs bristling among the goose bumps. We had been having a good run of warm weather since New Years. For the most part it had been in the high forties or low fifties, often rainy but bearable. My heat crapped out just before Christmas and I haven’t had the motivation to get it fixed. I shiver my way to school, get inside, and instantly turn the heat on in my room. It becomes 90 degrees in about 15 minutes and I can shed the three layers of outer clothing I wear to school each morning.

Things in the classroom are going well. Nothing stellar but we are marching in the correct direction. I have reasserted my Big Goal. All students will be medal winners by the end of the year. Behind the scenes this means that we will have mastered a substantial amount of ambitious content, but to the kids it means they will be Olympic champions. I had let the Big Goal go slack. My class averages were consistently high enough to please everybody, but there was no focused rallying point for academic achievement. It was easy to see sufficient grades and settle. I am back to pushing these kids to ever higher levels, and to do so I must continually push myself as well. To maintain student investment in the Big Goal requires me to maintain investment in lofty goals as well. I have run face first into the fact that if I want the students to achieve excellence I am going to have to work, in TFA jargon, relentlessly. So, now I am tutoring during my planning period and seriously rearranging my classroom to allow for remediation. If kids are not winning medals they are not going to believe it can happen, so I need to make it happen.

Conveniently, I do not feel overwhelmed and life is good. The little things have not begun bothering me and I have not lost sight of the big picture. It is easy to become mired in the trivialities of everyday Delta life…the poverty, the atrocious attitudes, the dilapidated houses, the racism, etc, etc. I attribute a portion of my positivity to the fact that I met a fantastic girl. Fantastic in the sort of way that invigorates life and reminds you to recognize it’s endless possibilities.