Monday April 3, 2006 - 10:10AM
So this teaching thing has begun to overtake my entire psche. i dream about the students. i talk about them incessantly, you know, like parents talk about their babies constantly for the like, the first three years of the child's life?
i have to apologize to folks now and say (after 20 minutes of droning on about the children) "oh i'm sorry, how are yr kids? or job? or life? what's yr name again? sometimes i've found by the time i'm done talking about the children and "what they did today", that the person to whom i'm speaking has already got up and left. at such time, i just pretend, i'm talking into a wireless headset that no-one else can see.
robin bird: thank you so much for writing to me. i couldn't answer you back channel, because the e-mail address comes up as anonymous blogger. so feel free to write me again at roger@louderarts.com and i'll send you a reply. today is our 8th anniversary show at the reading series at bar 13, so i'm kinda stoked. of course, today i also have to teach regular school and teach after-school before that happens.
how do teachers not all become raging alcoholics? how did my mother not become a raging alcoholic? she had to teach AND come home to me AND go to my parent/teacher conferences to hear how i'd been sleeping in class or not doing the work or refusing to attend detention (that one was a doozy) AND come home to my brother who was the exact opposite personality - she couldn't get me to stay in the house and she couldn't get him to leave it - and i'm droning on again, and this here would be a tangent.
but... it's april finally and it's getting warmer so i'm getting happier by the minute and i have a boatload of work coming my way including MASQUERADE which is happening in DC at Howard next Monday and in a theatre festival here in June. Read Alicia Ostriker. do it now!
So this teaching thing has begun to overtake my entire psche. i dream about the students. i talk about them incessantly, you know, like parents talk about their babies constantly for the like, the first three years of the child's life?
i have to apologize to folks now and say (after 20 minutes of droning on about the children) "oh i'm sorry, how are yr kids? or job? or life? what's yr name again? sometimes i've found by the time i'm done talking about the children and "what they did today", that the person to whom i'm speaking has already got up and left. at such time, i just pretend, i'm talking into a wireless headset that no-one else can see.
robin bird: thank you so much for writing to me. i couldn't answer you back channel, because the e-mail address comes up as anonymous blogger. so feel free to write me again at roger@louderarts.com and i'll send you a reply. today is our 8th anniversary show at the reading series at bar 13, so i'm kinda stoked. of course, today i also have to teach regular school and teach after-school before that happens.
how do teachers not all become raging alcoholics? how did my mother not become a raging alcoholic? she had to teach AND come home to me AND go to my parent/teacher conferences to hear how i'd been sleeping in class or not doing the work or refusing to attend detention (that one was a doozy) AND come home to my brother who was the exact opposite personality - she couldn't get me to stay in the house and she couldn't get him to leave it - and i'm droning on again, and this here would be a tangent.
but... it's april finally and it's getting warmer so i'm getting happier by the minute and i have a boatload of work coming my way including MASQUERADE which is happening in DC at Howard next Monday and in a theatre festival here in June. Read Alicia Ostriker. do it now!
3 Comments:
rrroger,
so wow; hello again! i'm actually staying in/around nyc at the moment (albany right now, pretty far) and i've peeked at your words a couple times from here, wondering if you were able to write back via this blog. and there's my name!
it's a little absurd how much your words echo my thoughts (& experiences); echo echo echo again. i'm dealing with a slightly intense pile of chronic illnesses right now, but in the past [and future, if i have ANYTHING to do with it] i've taught theatre & writing to, and primarily been an in-the-midst therapist to, amazing groups of high-risk & abused children. (i did this first in yonkers, then in portland, oregon, spinning three thousand miles away.)
something that's very exciting about another way we overlap the tiniest bit: possibly exciting to me and not you, but nonetheless i'm... smiling: despite all this hopping around, d.c. is my home-city. i have appointments to return to before the date of your howard performance, which means that i'll be blessed to see you read for the first time in too many years. (d.c. is home right now and was for many years before, but nyc pulls at my heartstrings so hard it hurts. i was here for 3 years, may return if i can somehow fill my intense need for the ocean, while also being in the nyc area. coney island is a curious thought...)
so, i should probably carry this over to email, huh? i'm sure you have a hundred places to stay & even more people to see, but if you'd like to meet up in d.c., i'll be the one angling for a third-row seat, electric pink spikes jutting from the top of her head & Giving Her Away.
all good things,
bird
*
carrotyum at aol dot com
That's what happens with teaching! It's fascinating work. I went to grad school to become a poet and left a teacher. Looks like you're headed that way.
Yeah, I hear you, Roger! I never saw myself doing/loving/obsessing about that "teaching thing." But, here I am.
And that quote from The Little Prince about "being resposible for what you tame," just make me a little more obsessive.
BTW - It is really fun - after a lecture on revision and editing to bring out published texts by people you know....and have your students edit them.
I've had a lot of great discussions this way. Thanks.
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