School resumed for me last Monday. It was a hard week. Maybe I had let myself become too relaxed over winter break. Nonetheless, I always enjoy getting a new set of classes flying, and despite the fatigue that I felt by the week's end, I enjoyed this week.

When I was studying to become a teacher, I learned one true thing from the textbooks about teaching as a career: If you become a teacher only because you love your subject matter, you will fail your students as a teacher.

When I was studying to become a teacher, I learned one true thing that wasn't in the textbooks, but was offered privately and unsolicited by my advisor, an experienced teacher of teachers: Never expect support, reinforcement, encouragement, or praise from the administration. They exist merely to hold up the walls -- generously considered, a figure of speech to describe the administration's legitimate reponsibility to keep the organization funded and running smoothly, but less generously considered, a real picture of their day-to-day posture as they lounge about the buildings. Rely instead on intrinsic motivation. Become a maverick, but not a complainer. They are the "ed-yew-kay-tors," you are the teacher. You both have roles.

Write these things down. They are on the test. Yes, the test is comprehensive.

On the job, I learned (as I expected to) that the greatest extrinsic motivators for the teacher are (naturally) the students.

I'm lucky. Many of my past students choose to take additional classes with me. That's flattering, and good reinforcement for me.

I'm unlucky. Many of my past students choose to take additional classes with me. That forces me to develop new icebreakers, new exercises, new demonstrations, new lectures, new jokes. That's more work.

Choosing between those two points of view is a major part of the test.

Anthony has had four classes with me, three different ones, and as of this semester is enrolled for a fifth time in one of my classes. He (or perhaps we) failed the first one he took with me, but he chose to retake it with me.

As Anthony himself has said, he comes from the part of Kansas that's in New York City, from which place he says he rescued himself by joining the army. When he left the army, he decided to stay in Kansas, where he trained to become a paramedic.

He works part-time as a phlebotomist in a clinical lab, and part-time as a paramedic or EMT with the local ambulance service, cobbling together an income while he tries to complete his degree.

He is a single father of two young children, rare in itself. He has no local family support network that he can fall back on. His children are well-mannered and do well in their elementary school classes. He is proud of his kids. Someday his kids might tell him that they're proud of him, but in the meantime, Anthony guts it out alone, drawing on his own intrinsic motivation to succeed.

He will tell you that he has never met a stranger, just people whose names he doesn't yet know. This makes him a wonderful colleague in collaborative activities.

He comes to class late, but he stays after class. He is never absent. He struggles with his work, but ends up producing more than I've asked. He questions and pursues, and he won't permit me easy answers, the easy answers I often allow myself here. By the way, there's one coming up.

When I was studying to become a teacher, no one told me about Anthony, but someone should have.

I'm lucky.

On January 12, a Topeka tv network affiliate mentioned Josh's name as an academy candidate during their evening news. Hope that's not part of his fifteen minutes.

There is always so much to write about, and never enough time to do it all. Notes to myself for the next week:

trip to Magic Forest

trip to the book store

my amateurish photography

my new camera fetish

the fellowship program

thanks to visitors

thanks to linking folks

changes at Tripod

But I'm out of time today.