Ides

My favorite part of Julius Caesar is when the soon-to-be deceased caesar mocks the soothsayer by saying "The ides of March has come." The soothsayer responds with a short and simple "Aye, but not passed." I don't know why, but that part has always reverberated with me. Either I enjoy rooting for the underdog or I just love the excellent use of foreshadowing.

I was observed today in class by one of the assistant principals. We were reading a nonfiction piece on the Titanic. Everything went well, but I was irked that they would observe me the same day I returned from my grandfather's funeral. I think maybe they were trying to trip me up, or either she didn't know I was going to be out Monday. I don't know why they'd bother with harassing me, since I've already turned in my letter of resignation.

Which leads me to my next point- a disturbing amount of teachers and administrators today seem to be in the profession not to teach, but to lord their power over other people. It's ridiculous. You can actually see the look of pleasure in their eyes when they catch a kid doing something wrong. It makes me sick. Sometime I think I'm the only person in the world who disdains emotional conflict. I doubt that's normal, but feeding off of it certainly isn't healthy, either.

There's a legend about Alexander the Great that I like to think is true, if only because I'm a romantic. Apparently he was leading his army of men across a desert and there was no water to be found anywhere. Everyone was close to dying of thirst. Out of nowhere, one of Alexander's servants pushed through the ranks with a single glass of water. Then he kneeled and offered it solemnly to his leader. Alexander took it, lifted it up for the men to see- and then poured it into the hot sand. The men stood up straighter and marched out of that hell alive.

That's the kind of leader I want to be. Walt Disney (or Antoine de Saint- Exupery, I'm not sure) said, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Whether or not I was the greatest teacher or the worst, I think almost all of my students (even first period) would admit that I sincerely longed for them to learn.

For me, that's enough.