History According to Tenth Graders

These last few days of summer have blown past faster than a Michael Phelps butterfly stroke. True there are a handful of days left before school starts but they really don't count. Work starts with a slow trickle at the end of July, not with a fullblown fire hydrant blast at the end of August. As far as I'm concerned, when the last fireworks display trickles out on the Fourth of July, Summer is over.

So here I am back at the school for year two. Except this time teaching sophomores World History. It's funny what a teacher collects over the Summer. I found a few things in my drawer that I decided to post on my bulletin board. The relevant New Yorker cartoons that only I think are funny. My Onion article about problem Senators who are placed on a seating chart at the capitol. Then there's the letter from a student accusing me of being a fascist. I relish that one.

I also think of my successes and failures from last year. Only a handful of my 11th graders didn't pass the state's high-stakes standardized TAKS test. But yet I forgot about the miscommunication that led one young scholar to believe Harriet Tubman, the famed leader of the Underground Railroad, was responsible for the decision to drop the atomic bomb over Japan. Or how in 1917 when the United States entered World War I, F-18 fighter jets strafed and attacked German U-boats in the Atlantic. If my failures outweighed the successess I think I had then I don't think I would be returning for a second year. It's no secret, our school has a high turnover rate of teachers. There are always a handful of newbies who come in. Some are coaches who once they realize our athletics program doesn't have quite the organizational capability as Steinbrenner's Yankees, leave for another district. Academics before athletics. I stand by that.

So the wax in the cafeteria is just drying and teachers are starting to file in, one by one, dazed and confused as to how two and a half months can be over so quickly. Like I said, mine flew past and now it's time to dust off my collared shirts and wrinkled khakis. In less than two weeks this classroom will be filled with 50 sophomores who good chance don't remember much about social studies over the Summer. That's okay. I forgot how to teach. So we can meet halfway somewhere.

I plan on updating this blog a lot more now that I'll be more stressed out with less time on my hands. Feel free to comment. I've been out of the blogosphere for too long.