AUSSIE

Blog entry posted September 30th, 2009 by Dale Worsley

Welcome to “Paragraph Six,” the first installment of a blog-post op-ed reportorial investigative post-modern hip-hop column on wheels I impulsively proposed to produce throughout this school year.

My first idea for the post was to write pieces modeled on The Twilight Zone, which I would cleverly call “The Highlight Zone.” They would highlight (hence the title) ambiguous events in the schools that didn’t fit neatly into the conventionally prescribed models and processes, causing readers to ponder the reality of pedagogical experience and to forge in the smithies of their souls the uncreated consciences of their races. (Apologies to James Joyce.) That plan kept me up at night in a cold sweat.

Then I stumbled on the concept for “Paragraph Six,” in which I would get to entirely escape the constrictions of the five-paragraph essay and any other rules and regulations of formal behavior to freely explore ideas, feelings and experiences about education.

That sounded like a lot more fun. It also illustrated an important point about the writing process: contrary to Jack Kerouac’s dictum “First idea best idea,” it may take more than one shot to hit the bullseye.

If you’re going to be of any use in the world of education (or the world at large, for that matter), it’s advisable to come clean about your own beliefs and goals. Recall, for instance, that pseudo-teacher you had to suffer in X grade whose fundamental belief was that you were a nincompoop and a reprobate, and whose goal was to get out of the building as fast as she/he/it could when the final bell of hell rang. Compare that one to the true teacher who both embodied and expressed the belief that with a little work, you would be the next Woolf/Carver/Wiles/Thucydides, and whose goal was to take deep personal satisfaction in performing that work regardless of the sweat, frustration and utter lack of appreciation on your part.

Hoping like a good citizen to be useful in the context of this blog, I’ll come clean thusly: the voices of students can and should be liberated to (as I put it in the official statement of educational philosophy that I produced back in the day – and still adhere to, demonstrating its timeless value), “create beauty, express outrage, communicate love, solve problems and construct meaning, assuring not only the success of our children as individuals, but the healthier and more tolerant society we so clearly need in these times…etc., etc.”

As for my goal, it’s much more succinct. I simply want to enjoy myself.

At this point, I have seventy-eight words left according to Gina The Blog Editor’s word limit. Sixty-two, now that I’ve said that. Help me, Zeno! So I have to quit for now, and get back to the nap I would have taken had I not committed myself to this project. Or was I supposed to paint my daughter’s loft bed? I forget.

Next posting I hope to discuss the wondrous number pi as represented on the New York State Standardized Math Test in contrast to the way it is represented by Nobel Prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, and why we shouldn’t harbor prejudices toward either version. Until then, enjoy. And do me a favor while you’re at it: hope that Gina was too busy to count how far I went past the word limit.