It's all love

One of my goals for this year is to be more positive and happy, and to be more positive in writing in this blog.

If you met me, you would not think that I was depressed. I love life and have an energy that is all love. I have a very rough sense of humor, but I learned to treat life with humor.

I have been back in school, but without students this week. The first day back as a faculty I could not sleep the night before. There is no way to begin teaching without feeling the incredible pressure: the expectations of working students and families, the generations of work and thousands of hours that some families have invested, an 80-200 year investment to have a high school or college graduate, wondering when the fights and rapes will happen, who will die, thinking of your enemies and faculty meetings with Orwell newspeak and bullshit, the bleary eyed November meetings

None of it matters because all men have bitterness towards their chosen thing, and I chose this, and I will live with it and live a good life within and with it. The reason I decided to stay at ACE after every inch of me said to leave is simple, because now I know what it is all about. I saw so many horrible things last year, thinking of all that needless death and suffering. But I know now what to do about it. I know what teaching is now. Every single branch, behavior and component of teaching is love and service.

I do this for love and service.

I have been surrounded by love and service from students, and I have not lived up to it yet.
But I thank them, and I will match them.
It is going to be a good year.

So far things are going well. I ignored the teachers who lied on me and they ignored me, I made some progress organizing the union, I saw a lot of old friends, and we have a ton of new teachers who seem very interesting and passionate and young. It is weird, I only have one professional year in, and I am a veteran in some of their eyes.

It has been ungodly hot, in the ninties and no air conditioning. I hate sweating this much in front of these new teachers, some of whom are quite attractive, but I am putting in work and helping out.

Now all I have to do is actually be a teacher, and sadly the lesson plans and unit plans and overall idea of what the hell I am doing are still way too undefined.

I have four days until the first day of school. And I am terrified.

I was helping out shop teacher move some heavy stuff. He is a very charismatic, energetic construction guy with no background in teaching, he came into ACE for the second half of last year. He is from Compton, and has a real Compton streak, he is also a nationally ranked tennis player in his age group, which is around 40.

The dean of students came in and we all started talking about what we want to do this year. Somehow me and this shop teacher both ended up saying "It's all love".

I dedicate this year to love and service of those who need it the most.