Should you visit a student's home?

How about "no?" [short answer--long answer below...]
***

Talk Amongst Yourselves*

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets. - Edward Abbey" [yea, I got it off of the Toshiba start page--I'm TIRED!!]
***
Sometimes you get so depressed that you can't "blog" your way out of it. But I'm pulling out. ("Shake it off! Shake it off!" said crazy-like-a-fox Bela Karolyi....)

Ouch! My ankle really hurts....but I have an Olympic Gold Medal, so, s'all good!
***
Also making it hard to blog is the super slowness of my computer.
***
Today I'm just going to try to chop wood,* make bread, haul sticks. Also blog. A little.
In the meantime, two favors:
1) Keep commenting--your comments are about 15 times more articulate than the posts, but I can't seem to respond to them [except in other posts] (thanks for that, Google!).
Basically, we regard commenters as guest bloggers.
2) Please refer a friend to this site. Do NOT e-mail about it on your work computer. You know, the Big Brother thing. But we need to see that more people are reading this, or we may have to regard this project as defunct.
***
BOY do I hate it when bloggers make extended comments meant only for a few people. That being said: LMG--you know you are in the Pantheon of friends, perhaps the Queen of the Pantheon...nay, you are the wife of Chronos, the progenetrix, the elder stateswoman. However "Cal" has a special place in the palace because he will e-mail me 17 times a day about bathroom fixtures. You two are tied, almost like some weird Greek god that is, like, conjoined, or twinned (Artemis/Apollo)... (okay, enough with the awkward mythological analogies).
***
*Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there. - Gospel of Thomas, v. 77, apocryphal/Gnostic?

*"Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water." — Zen Buddhist Proverb

*My house is dirty; therefore I will clean it. - Me

Reader: mentally insert here a video clip of "Maggie Jacobs" from "Extras" (portrayed by the same girl who plays the English girl on "Ugly Betty") cleaning her house up after being berated by the Ricky Gervais character....








*If you don't know from whence this quotation, then you are way too young or way too cool--probably both-- to read this blog!

Turnover

"The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future has calculated that nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone."

Here is an article on teacher burnout--it's very short and easy to read:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/teacher-burnout-blame-the-parents/

The comments are amazing as well...all 298 of them...
***

So, teaching to the contract is not just a strategy for drawing attention to the number of hours teachers ACTUALLY work; it is not just some pointless protest; it is a strategy to avoid burnout. If we really want to help children, if our life's work is teaching, then we cannot burnout like some character from Jack Kerouac's dreamscape:

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars ...."

If we really want to advance the profession, prevent new teachers from quitting, and make this a tenable lifelong pursuit, we have to start understanding ourselves as professionals and make professional choices, such as leaving when one is not being paid.

You do not work in a convent; you are not a member of a religious order. You deliver a service.