comments, meaningful

It's been a while, I know that. The last time we were together, we were eating dinner at your favorite restaurant.

It's been a while, I know that. The last time we were together, you were laying in bed and I was reading headlines from the paper to you.

It's been a while, I know that. The last time we were together, you were sitting in your wheelchair, holding Mark on your lap.

You ordered lamb chops. I remember thinking that they always seemed so difficult to consume, but you cut through them like a surgeon.

OJ Simpson articles covered the front page. Above us, the television silently replayed highlights of 'the chase'. You turned your head and I'm certain you looked at my hands. They were holding the paper, but you must've noticed that they were shaking.

Mark reached up and tried to grab your glasses off your face. You leaned back to the left and smiled. Mark immediately determined that you were playing a game with him. At one point, you called him Ken.

We never really spent time together, just the two of us. I remember sitting across from you and feeling like I barely knew you. What were we talking about? What did we ever talk about? Probably golf.

I stopped reading the headlines for a moment and I looked up and saw my father and his sister standing in the hallway, talking to one another. What could they really be talking about? They hugged one another and then they walked in to see us. I'm sure they knew we both needed them.

Even sitting on your lap, Mark could see the room with the bunny rabbits. He leaned forward. He wanted to stand and walk on his own accord over to Snickers and Bubbles. You reached out to pull him back to your lap, but he was too strong, too determined. And he was just over a year old.

I told you the story about Father's Day, 1991. The father-son tournament at Philmont Country Club. Dad had been diagnosed with cancer. He wanted you to still play. He offered me up as his replacement. You knew I was a horrible golfer.

Your two children, my father and his sister, flanked me. You had turned your head away from us. It looked like you were fixating on the ceiling. I asked them why your eyes were yellow; yellow like those you would see on a cat.

Mark was babbling to the bunnies. You were looking at him like you would never see him again. He looked at you. "I love you, Ken." I reminded you that Ken was my name and his name was Mark. "Who's Mark?" I should have listened to my mother and not corrected you.

On the 15th, I hit a good drive. You were sitting in the golf cart, waiting. I admired the flight of the ball and turned to you for a much-anticipated compliment. "Even a blind chicken gets some corn." That's the last thing I remember you ever saying to me. A heart attack two weeks later took all of us by surprise. Do you know that I use that quote all the time? It became the central element to my graduation speech I gave some years later. Everyone laughed. Later that night, I cried.

The morphine was doing its job. It not only eased the pain, it eliminated it. Turns out, you can't beat pancreatic cancer, but you can mute the pain of inevitable death. It was my turn to leave the room. A few hours later, my father told me that you had finally succumbed. My hands never stopped shaking that day. I know you knew.

Mark was due for a nap. How odd to think that I left for that reason. I placed Mark back on your lap and you went to hug him. I hope you know that he cried because he was tired, not because he was scared. We left. And you left two days later. I took Mark back to see the bunnies sometime after. "Mom-mom?" he asked when we arrived. You would've been so thrilled.

Today my wife and I learned that we are going to have identical twins. We spent the entire afternoon calling anyone and everyone we knew.

Sometimes, having one really big thing to share makes you realize that there are so many things you've neglected to share.

It's been a while, I know that.

I have so much to share.

I wish the three of you were here to listen.

the most expensive round of drinks

Do you remember when you would send out emails to ‘select faculty’, inviting them to meet up after school at a local lemonade stand? The people you invited were the ones you wanted to be around. The group was a hand-selected lot and the selection process screamed ‘elitist’.

Do you remember going to said lemonade stand and having a really good time? You would tell your spouse that you would only be out for an hour or two and four hours later, you were well into your Friday night with a new group of friends. Good times.

Do you remember returning to school two days later and hearing the mumbles and grumbles of coworkers excluded from the invite list? They wanted to be invited. They wondered if you would send out a whole faculty email next time around.

And you did.

And come Friday, they were nowhere to found. A lemonade-less lot.

And you vowed never to send out a faculty wide invite because it was a wasted endeavor, meaningless altruism.

It’s not that I disliked the idea of a whole-faculty outing, but I knew that any real or tangible social value resided in the consistency and tightness of the group.

A greater level of selectivity is integral in fostering and maintaining meaningful relationships. Behold:

I follow 18 people on Twitter.
I read 14 blogs.
I float around in one ning.

Edtech circles should strive to remain relatively small because too many connections creates too much verbal static.

Here’s a handful of fun thoughts about these online communities:

Involvement in a ning is professional development; the place where you can sit next to select people, doodle and pass notes back and forth, and when the whim strikes you, contribute to the purpose of the gathering.

Blogging is a department meeting; a room full of people whose sole purpose is the advancement of a unified goal. Keeping a small blog circle is crucial. Remember the one about too many cooks?

Twitter is happy hour. Keep it short and sappy. Great for the social scene. Go with a select group. Have a good time. Talk shop. Vent. Keep going and next thing you know, everyone thinks you need to surrender your keys.

No one invites 300 people to happy hour. It violates maximum occupancy laws.

a twitter survival guide

Must there be a set of guidelines for everything?

Click the image and behold!

best new blog nominee - not me

I've nominated a blog for the 2007 Edublog Awards:

Taylor's voice is fresh, alive, and vibrant. The use of digital images only enhances a visitor's desire to stay, read, and subscribe. Anyone in education, classroom or otherwise, should make it a point to add taylortheteacher to his RSS feeds.

And the best part of all: posts about Tupac and Eminem! Taylor's voice is human. She is honest and forthcoming, but she keeps a blog that is varied, informative, thought-provoking, and entertaining.

Here's to the freshest, most honest voice out there! Good luck, Taylor.

schiess das Fenster!

Taylor posits that Star Wars is a galaxy of learning asteroids; a movie that teaches us a whole bunch of good stuff about life, liberty, and the pursuit of Wookies.

Everyone has one movie; one they turn to as a processing device for the way life careens and jostles about.

Me, I just can't get away from Officer John McClane in Die Hard. When Twinkie-stuffed officer Al Powell receives a fresh corpse on the hood of his squad car, McClane shouts out, "Welcome to the party, pal!"

This quote finds a way to root itself in the classroom and the school with amazing dexterity:

"Mr. Rodoff, you're really giving me a zero for not doing my homework?"
Thank you, John McClane.

"Do I really have to work with a group?"
Oh John, your economy of words captures the true collaborative nature of life.

"Holy crap, someone is shooting off a gun in the halls!"
Sgt. McClane? Do you copy? 417 in progress, use caution.

At times, walking through the halls or teaching a class is akin to McClane's maneuvering through a ventilation shaft: "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like."

But let's be honest; some of those meals are flat-out delicious. We know they're not healthy, but we eat them anyway.

And we know that school can cause emotional coronaries, but we go anyhow.

Because sometimes, it's just a guilty little pleasure.

In the middle of the Die Hard, FBI Agent Robinson invites Sgt. Powell to leave the crime scene. Robinson states, "Now you listen to me...Any time you want to go home, you consider yourself dismissed."

Sgt. Powell responds, "No sir. You couldn't drag me away."

He'd make one hell of a teacher. I wonder what movie he would quote?

tree me

A series of questions that caught my attention in David Weinberger's podcast, "What the Web Is For":

When are we humans at our best? When are you proudest of being who you are? If you wanted human beings to make a really great impression on Martian visitors, what would you take the Martians to see?

May I take the last part first? Thanks!

• The Giving Tree. When everything is said and done, we are an altruistic lot.
  

Okay, now the middle part? Great!

• Do you see those two children there? I'm with them.
  

So the first part:

• At Wawa. People still hold doors. No preferential treatment. Some people go for the coffee, but I recommend going for the civility.
  

myers-briggs type inservice

Which word in each pair appeals to you more? Think about what the words mean, not about how they look or how they sound.

• Inservice
• Surgery

• Adult
• Fetus

• Polite
  
• Spastic

• Respectful
• Penis

• Patience
• Embarrassment

• Role Model
• Village Idiot

• Professional
• Orangutan

• Tenure
• Accountability

• Impulsive
• Teacher

• Content you teach
• Reality that most people don't care about it like you do and they never will

Insert Forrest Gump voice: Sometimes, there just aren't enough mirrors.