:TESTO:Yesterday, I rode home in a gentle rain.
While my two rain-rides so far have barely dampened my pants, I fully expect to get soaked at some point this year, probably more than once. It's quite likely that I'll get a flat tire some day, possibly while raining. I leave early enough that the latter won't make me late, and I plan to keep a towel and a fresh shirt (and a spare pair of pants? socks?) in my office. Always Have Backups.

...I've rescued web-delivered lessons from a poorly administered network by having local copies of my hand-rolled HTML, and printing them at the first sign of a network-wide stumble. I've re-wired parts of the room mid-class (when a port just isn't happy), magically produced floppies from my desk (for when they can't handin their work over a broken network), and I always use the whiteboard as a redundant summary of my web-hosted agenda. Go backups! My lesson plans can withstand a nuclear attack.

***

Today worked well.
I had gentle jazz and reggae playing in the background as my students took notes on network flavors, me interrupting a few times to add an anecdote about the big SAN at Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, or such.

I think I have too much planned for tomorrow, with wrapping up a text-section and also starting hexadecimal (binary was 2 weeks ago - I wanted to take a break to avoid over-mathing their poor widdle heads). If the recent content isn't solidly known (which is boring *me*, let alone them), I'll spend tomorrow congealing it, then discuss Bandwidth or some other bite-sized topic Thursday, with a mini-quiz and another digestible notion (maybe with an interesting mode of delivery) Friday. I'd rather start my fun hexadecimal activity, which involves editing an HTML page to match color names with hexadecimal color codes, but I need a solid day's introduction to hex before making it thus complicated. Slow down, David. Give ideas breathing space. Yes.

***

I ran into my old principal, at Digital (where I teach, these days) for an administrators' meeting. As I asked after the old school and particular students, she seemed a bit disappointed in my abandonment (although it may have been projected guilt), which is understandable. I remain thankful that she supported my transfer-request, despite her school's need for math teachers. Digital is perfect for me, geographically and atmospherically and topic-ally.

***
Girls' soccer lost today in overtime, to City (the fanciest of the Baltimore City High Schools). The parents there from City were very active, presenting their opinions on their team's performance (in instruction form) just loud enough to be heard by players near the sidelines. Very overbearing, very competitive. I'm glad my dad wasn't such a person.

(My dad, by the way, just got back from France, reinforcing my intent to spend some time off this continent, this summer).

</ramble> :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:Snakes under Velvet
Chopped and Molten Metal
Half-cooled Jello
Running Glass
Hilly


Moving water lends itself to metaphor. In my first two weeks at the new school, I took the water taxi every day. The harbor's diverse temperaments suggested the words above, and in my head they've dwelt, for many a week. While on my bike today, I was struck by a particularly gelatinous harbor.

The impact was such that the words have come loose, so I'm setting them down for safekeeping. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:What a week. Tomorrow is professional development ("inservice", they used to call it), which means no students tomorrow. I am blessed, to regard that  as somewhat of a loss.

There was a fight in my room, and the class didn't go crazy, or try to jump in. It was resolved with two suspensions, and little to no harm came to the students involved. I've seen much, much worse, and I still regret that it happened - there are cues I surely missed, preemptive actions I could have taken. I need to hone the art of paying attention to 22+1 things at once.

While I don't come home until my work is done, I've taken to leaving school to catch home games, thrice soccer and once football. It's very pleasant, to spend the afternoon on a shady hill on the cusp of fall, and watch my boys and girls do something they enjoy, and to dream the what-if, to remember David, the Cross Country Captain. Ball-kicking games aren't quite the same animal as a -CC-> meet, but the spirit of high-spent energy, of training become manifest in competition, is a lovely breath of Saturday-morning mud-wet air.

The kids earn a bit more respect for me, to boot.

(My battle-cry to the students on the field is "Jesus Loves You!" - for recently I've reconciled myself to the hair-powered name, which doesn't appear to be going anywhere. I think it was the kids who shout it outside my door and then run impishly away that finally made me accept it as harmless. (Much better than an egg, too)).

And I devised another, more clever roux for my pasta this evening. Slightly too much flour, and not enough garlic, bit much better than the previous paste.

I picked up Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys on its release date, for the thrill of a brand-new book, on my way home from school on Tuesday. I like it, although it's not yet as magical for me as American Gods. *That* was a story of myth and big movings, whereas this (in its first two chapters) is a more person-life-centered tale. None the less pleasing to read well-wrought words, and I anticipate twists and endeepenings, and maybe a Norse cameo (although some of them are mostly dead, as I recall).

This has been a ramble.

Maybe I'll write a poem tomorrow. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:Important Things To Remember:

• It is possible to vault the sally-port gate to my backyard. I should lock my bike.
• It is very difficult for somebody watching television on the thrid floor
  to hear somebody shouting, from either the front or the backyard.
  I should visit a neighbor and use their phone the next time I get locked out.
• I should take my keys with me, even while traveling with my housemates,
  as I might need to make a side-stop to pick up truffles for the school secretary,
  if I happen to have been late with attendance two days in a row.
• Three glasses of wine is enough to encourage me to vault a gate,
  and to not remember (upon diverging for truffles) that I don't have my keys.
• Ze Mean Bean is a very nice Hungarian restaurant/café. And they have nice wine.
  I should go again. With my keys.

...
Friends, I've been shy on pseudo-saxon lately. Allow me to remedy:

Its iron rails, grey girders
across the hollow hall
did not hold against his coming.
Bold with drink and chocolate treasure
he scaled the ore-wrought wall.
Here no voice heard him,
shouts lost, to the roar of the word-box
to the fog of the heights.
Casting stones, he summoned
the dog, the door-warden.
Yet still no friends knew he lay without.

He paused, and sat (in uffish thought)
and bore a bit of boulder toward the window high
Finally they heard him, and he let out a sigh.

He came to greet the arms of friends,
he came and met their scorn.
For with that last rock that he had cast,
the window-screen he'd torn.

Sigh.

No worries, it's hardly a dent, and served me a bit of adventure.
Next time I'll remember that they hear me better from the front, if at all, and that I have neighbors who may prefer to be disturbed by a polite knock than a crazy man hollering outside.

Good night. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:Last night, I dreamed a dream.

I dreamed that Jed (eccentric super-genius of the computer science department, graduated a year or so ahead of me) was teaching a course, Computer Science 10,000, in a grubby little classroom in the corner of the highschool of my youth. Alec, Erik, and two others were sitting in front of a tiny black and white TV when I came in, watching Jed's pre-rendered lesson while Jed fiddled around in the back of the room. The topic for the lesson was "contextless contextuality".

The dream cut to the 6 of us in a car, at a red light. Led by Jed, we stepped out into the stopped traffic, accosting passengers and passerby. The accosted and the accosters were wearing all-white. This, apparently, was the "intentional randomness" of "contextless contextuality".

Cut to the Upstairs Computer Science Lab (or possibly one of the Upstairs Labs at my current teaching-school), outfitted with bright yellow VR motorbike helmets, and matching workstations. Jo and Nathan and several anonymous students of OCCS were loudly racing, as we returned to our classroom.

Erik was grumbling about Jed knowing too much about certain topics (Flash and Java, and a forgotten acronym, symbolizing the entirety of Computer Science), and not enough about others (lecture presentation). He wondered aloud how he (and we) had been convinced by Jed to take the class, and how Jed had secured the position in the first place.

Flashback to a black-and-white Maltese-Falcon-era movie, in a nightclub. A woman, the only colorized element of the scene, wonders how anyone could be taken in by "him", a tall, fedora'd figure in the shadows of the room. Another woman says "but he's so tall, and handsome, and mysterious...." and hands the first lady a drink. Upon imbibing, the color fades from her, and the camera cuts to a closeup of a very dashing-looking Jed, teeth sparkling and eyes glinting evilly under the hat-brim.

Hm.

It seems clear in waking that Jed is a placeholder for me in this odd dream, as I continue to doubt my appropriateness for the classroom - I have sufficient content knowledge, but am making up the teaching part as I go, relying on personal energy (instead of the students') to drive the class forward. To be fair to myself, I have definitely taught my students how binary numbers work, in the past two days (has it only been two?), and I do have several good teaching/management-mechanisms in place, and a predictable structure to my classes. I think I'm succeeding, but I get a smack in the head whenever I try to turn over to autopilot, so these "moments of failure" can weigh on me.

Sigh. I'll leave analogies of TVs to web pages, of white suits to uniforms, of mickey-powered-mind-control and racing helmets to goodness-knows-what, as an exercise for the readers. All 7 of you.

Off to teach Subnet Masking, with bitwise AND! :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:Upside:
I learned a lot about CSS, JavaScript, and Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets.
For those of you with Mac OS X Tiger and a passwordless ssh-key hookup to occs (hiya, Rafe!), you can now click on a cookie-shaped widget to get a tasty nugget from the hirsute depths of Oberlin College Computer Science's collective wit.

Downside:
I spent the afternoon and evening alone and inside, on a beautiful day.

Remind me not to do this too often. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:If you don't have anything interesting to say, write a silly poem instead.

My riding-bike has very old gears,
odd levers upon its shaft.
It jerks and it creaks
when turning them foreward,
and chatters when turned to aft.

Tooth-gnasher is earning his name. I don't quite understand the purpose of the lefthand lever, but the righthand lever I use for "uphill" (toggled rearward) and "not uphill" (toggled foreward). The space in between is a clattery sound, and the cable connecting the lever to the gears is not as taut as I think it ought. To be. I nevertheless remain pleased with my bicycle.

and
If you're bored and listless, take two and call me in the morning.

A teacher's life on a Friday night
    ain't always a sight that you'd like to espy.
A week of nothing but school on the mind
    released for the week-end, he starts to unwind
And melts in a puddle of goo.
With nothing much else to do.
He flops like a puddle of goo,
and watches the evening go by.

:ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:My bicycle has a generator!

A little spinny dynamo, that turns against the front wheel, to light a happy headlight.
I go slow with a subtle glow, and accelerate with frictive squeals,
and the brilliance of a hundred thousand suns!

I should work late more often, simply to get to use it.
A few of my students (just done with football practice) witnessed my departure.
They were impressed, or baffled. I was thrilled.

Finishing my work for the next day at school, even if it takes four hours (as it did tonight), is faster and more pleasant than coming home, turning off for a bit too long, then working into midnight. I was *done* for tomorrow at 7:30, and I got to bike home in the me-lit dusk along the harbor, as an additional plus. I shall endeavor to make this plan a habit, with suitable provision for sustenance.

Now, for ice cream!

(and hello to my sister, who passed through town at some odd hour this morning, while we whiled away at work)
:ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:Seldom the solitary one   selects for himself
a whole watermelon,   ripe and red
the hearts of friends     and kinsmen distant.

My sister came through last week, on her way to Burning Man. She stayed the night to catch a early plane. She brought me a watermelon, and it sat, barely touched, brooding in the fridge. I had a few slices over the week, but a watermelon is not a job for one who dines alone. Its volume reserves the fruit for group occasions, and I had expected my fellow home-dwellers to consume more quickly. The weekend came, and my housemates escaped to celebrate the birthday of one of their parents, on (incidentally) a farm in Virginia. I remained, with 4/5 of a watermelon (and a puppy) as my only company.

The "watermelon-needs-a-party" problem is wholly psychological.

I sit, with a good liter of melon on my plate, each slice as thick as my arm, happily realizing that watermelon tastes good and is not filling, a perfect food for lesson-planning. There will be leftover watermelon or the day will end, but surely not both.

***

Update: A nice surprise, my 10 minutes of stardom paid $75, which includes the cost of a meal and wardrobe, neither of which I imbursed in the first place, but appears to be a standard part of the extra's payment-package. Contextually, it's about the same as the monthly "beer and chocolate" allowance for a Twin Oaks member, which gives me a pretty good idea of how to spend it (minus the beer).
:ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:Goodness.

What a very different first week this has been.

Last year, after the first five days had had their way with me, I remember sitting in the office, waiting for something, feeling drained, fried, and beaten. As I rode home, I slouched on the windowsill. Passerby made comments regarding my likely stonedness. The couch caught me as I came through the door, and there I stayed for no short time. By the end of the first week, I had had things thrown at me, there had been a fight in my room, and students cursed my name and called me Jesus with alternating breaths.

Today, I was whistling.

My new school is organized, established, and very cool. My students challenge and test me (more with every day this week), but they do not defy me, or curse me, or surreptitiously place a condom on my head. The worst I've met so far is a big talker who'll still tuck his shirt in when I tell him to, and someone shouting "Jesus" after me in the hallway (which is better than dodging a raw egg). My administration is experienced, efficient, and well-staffed, contrasted with the opposite in each category.

I didn't mean for this to be a side-by-side comparison the whole way down, so I'll stop talking about The Old School.

I have whiteboards. These, of all the technological marvels at my disposal, are by far the most useful. Not only are they easy to write on and readable at great distance, they're *double-thick on little rolling things*! I've got two boards, each two panels wide and two panels deep. 8 panels is a fantastic amount of space for notes and schedules and even that darned lesson objective, with room to spare!

My room is frickin' huge, not quite 30 by 40 feet. The 22 student computers take up half the space, and the remaining void is designed for stool-height worktables, which are modular and rollable and thus currently pushed to one side, giving me a perfectly fantastic amount of space to pace about in.

My bicycle fits in my adjoining, personal office, or
I can take a water taxi to and from home, across the harbor.

I have a 30-minute lunch between my two different preps, allowing me a short grace period to switch gears. My last 90 minutes is my planning period, so my teaching day is over at 2 o'clock.

Wahoo!

I've got a sweet setup, and no mistake. This is a very nice place to teach, and to be a new teacher. My co-workers are no less experienced than the administration, and they're all very supportive and very nice. There do exist some icky office politics, but I'm safely straddling the sides for now.

Co-incidentally, I have students named Katie and David, and one with the last name of Barry (first name Milo).

***
I began stunningly, set my expectations and came across as a badass, and talked about the abstract idea of networks (using social networks, a la Kevin Bacon, as a central example). I then began on the basics of computer architecture, to arrive at a physical and conceptual comfort with the beasts that terminate our great wide internet. My second-year students received a solid foundation in this from the other Networks teacher, now teaching years 2 and 3. My first-years are picking it up quickly, although I expect I'll be spending another few weeks (maybe longer) in this realm before moving to the particulars of Networkiness. If I follow my colleague's example, I'll be discussing the differences the pros and cons of various flavors of RAM (SIMMS and DIMMS and SO-DIMMS, and their varying speeds and natures), drilling motherboard component-acronyms deep within their skulls, and otherwise being more detail-oriented than I usually am. I think the reasoning is sound (reinforce Big Ideas which ought to stick while working through particulars that probably won't), but it remains a mental gearshift I may need to make.

For those of you who may be interested, my course website (in snazzy John Donaldson decor) is available at http://adamson.bounceme.net/, which is apparently a very funny URL. I expect at least one of my students (Hello, Victor!) to Google or sleuth their way here eventually, so I may cut back on terribly personal information, or at least couch it cryptically.

Whee!

I'm going out to celebrate.

****

Wait! Don't stop! You're behind on your Anglo-Saxon quota!

I was talking with an English teacher in the copy room, before the first day. The page on top is somebody's famous "City Upon The Hill" Puritan manifesto, in Middle English. I comment upon it, and make my obligatory "Now give 'em some Anglo-Saxon" remark. Lo! The next pages contain The Seafarer and The Wanderer (whence comes this blog's name), nearly all in Modern English, save for "Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?" (where is the horse? where is the rider?", etc - alluded to by Theoden, at Helm's Deep) around line 92, which in her copy was repeated for flavor in the original (Old) English. She makes some comment like "I wonder why they didn't translate that part", and I happily inform her that they did, and proceed to break it down, word by word. David feels super-cool in his suddenly useful esoteric knowledge, and the kids get a better bit of "this is where English comes from" for their introductory lesson.

Wyrd bið ful aræd! :ENDTESTO: