< Letting Go

~inquiry

Should you decide to do something about it, I sure the heck hope it involves your writing, because OH.. MY.. GOSH.

I actually decided to do something about it.

But the context of my effort includes the likes of having long being at Sartre's side a la "hell is other la people", and tending to believe humans aren't too much different from less-soulful automatons, and thus (individually) increasingly un-malleable ("set in their ways", especially their thinking ways) as time increases. (There are, of course, exceptions, but sufficiently rare to muck with that seeming rule.)

So... given that, I felt that I - in a sort of fulcrum-for-change role - would likely be best inserted in the lives of children, hence my shifting gears from software development (it was getting extremely boring anyway...), to teaching 6/7/8th graders math and computer science (with one unit of compsci for 3/4/5th graders to be considered "full time").

Have I made a mistake? It's - let's be blunt - insanely grueling fucking work. And I rest at least 99.99% of it's gruel-dom on the internet, which has clearly wrecked the current new generation's ability to attend - if not that of a few generations before it. I'm frequently shouting over groups of kids to reach others - because it's either that, or spending the entire time asking people to quiet down and pay attention, thereby reaching absolutely no one.

Never mind that none of the attention-getting-and/or-behavior-molding "tools" effective in my day are anymore socially acceptable - let alone legal. I'm pretty sure I could completely reach a couple of the out-of-control monsters could I just occasionally grab them and throw them against a wall, for example. I'm exaggerating slightly, of course.. and yet that's the only thing that comes to this testosteronically-charged mind given its past - and thus, again, rather un-malleable - experience.

But I do see "light bulbs go off over heads" on a regular basis. Bell's shapely curve demands it will always be impossible to reach and encourage positive change in all. But I can't express the feeling accompanying seeing kids that age "get it", especially given many of them starting from a mental place conducive to making the sound of an anvil getting hit by a sledgehammer when asked some of the simplest things.

It's a superhuman effort. But the occasional results, shall we say, laugh at ejaculation's smug face.

One thing I know for sure is any possible solutions *probably* have nothing to do with turning away from the real world to stare at a goddamned screen......

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~zampano wrote (thread):

> Should you decide to do something about it, I sure the heck hope it involves your writing, because OH.. MY.. GOSH.

You are *far* too kind.

But as to your broader point, I think it's these kinds of "small" victories that actually matter. They don't make the news, which makes us under-appreciate them, but I think that it's through these kinds of changes that progress actually happens. The nature of our communications makes us think we all have to be Gandhi or whatever, but as I said, that's not the calling for most of us.

Your experience as a teacher jives with my experience as a parent: it's the hardest thing I've ever done, but the rewards are proportional.