Democrat-Gazette online

This is my last day of classes for the spring semester. Like everyone else--teachers and students--I am ready for a break. Ready not to prepare for class, to feel the weight of responsibility it is to stand up in front of a group of students and engage them wherever they are in the learning process with whatever poverty and personalities and backgrounds and disabilities and talents and trauma they are experiencing, and endeavor to inspire them. Challenge them. Help them succeed.

I am ready not to read my own assigned reading. I am ready to pick up the stack of books on my desk by contemporary authors and not think about how I might teach tone, voice, characterization, metaphor, symbolism, and that most important thing of all, theme, through them. I am ready not to take notes unless I want to. Not to keep attendance. I am ready not to wear professional-looking clothes and shoes. Ready not to be freezing all day.

I am ready not to grade endless stacks of papers written by hand in class to guarantee no AI cheating or turned in online to practice using Word and formatting correctly. Of the ones turned in online, there will be rewrites in class when AI........

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