Excuse my pessimism; I’m Scandinavian.

In Norse mythology, the world comes to an end. That’s further than the Greeks or Romans got, I think. The myths don’t say exactly when this will happen, but the circumstances are clear. We call it Ragnarok.

The entire world was created from the corpse of a giant, according to my people, and it will end in ice and fire.The Vikings didn’t tell pretty tales. (Example: Beowulf) Monsters, dismemberment, blood and gore — did their children ever sleep?

The fate of our universe, according to Norse mythology, depends on a tree, whose roots are gnawed by a dragon. When the well that feeds the tree dries up and the dragon eventually gnaws through the root, endless winter will follow. Eventually the tree will fall, and the world will catch on fire. The end.

At some point, a happier ending was tacked on, where the world is reborn from the mess that remains after Ragnarok, but we have our doubts about that. We may seem cheerful, but at heart, we are pessimists. That happy ending may have made it easier for some people to sleep at night, thinking that it wasn’t all for nothing, but we know better. We smile because, why not? Either way, the world is going to end.

Some think that 2012 will be the end of the world, as predicted by the Mayans, who must have been almost as pessimistic as the Norse people. It has to do with numbers and calendars. Since these things are pretty arbitrary, I don’t believe it, anymore than I believed that Y2K would cause the world to end at the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999, making it impossible for us to return to school on January 3, so why do any homework over break?

But it’s natural to think about apocalypse. When I was a child, people believed that the atom bomb would destroy us — the Fail-Safe scenario. A few years back, global plague was what we all worried about (Twelve Monkeys; Outbreak). Now it’s global warming, precipitating a new ice age, that people make movies about (The Day After Tomorrow). And zombies (I am Legend).

The people who make these movies have read their mythology. You didn’t think the Mother Tree in Avatar was a new idea, did you? Trees have always been symbolic of life; it makes sense that all life would depend on a really big tree and that in the last days some idiot in a gigantic truck would come and hack it down. In the sixties, environmentalists predicted that pollution would eventually kill all the trees, and that would make the atmosphere vanish, and all life would end. So we all started recycling and drinking herbal tea. The recycling part was a good idea; the herbal tea, not so much.

Making resolutions is a way to control the future, to change the doom and destruction we see ourselves heading towards. Tomorrow we will wake up hopeful, feeling that a new age has begun, and the world won’t end. It probably won’t, even if we don’t all go on diets and give up smoking.

More often, though, I just run around in circles, chasing an elusive insight through the tangled underbrush of meaning.

For example, I started this morning with the word ‘identity.’ We talk about identities being stolen, when what we really mean is numbers have been stolen, particularly that unique identifying string of digits we call a Social Security number. Society is much more secure now that we all have numbers.

Except when they are stolen. If I lose my identity, I am no longer unique. Possessing this, another person can steal other bits of my life — credit card numbers, checking account numbers, passwords.

But ‘uniqueness’ can’t actually be stolen, since what truly makes us all unique is DNA. Unless you’ve been cloned, no one has DNA identical to yours.

Linguistic point of order: No one is more unique than anyone else, or any less unique. That’s because unique is an absolute. You either are, or you’re not.

If we’re all unique, then none of us is really special. There is a limited amount of ‘specialness’ to share. The more of us there are on the planet, the less special each of us becomes. Like a flurry of unique, special snowflakes, we all end up looking like a pile of white stuff, and eventually slush.

Except that we’re all special, since we all belong to the same species. That’s because these two words – special and species – come from the same Latin word: species, appearance. To an alien, I’m sure we all look pretty much the same.

It’s easy to understand why we don’t want our identities stolen, since that involves money and reputation. But why is it so important to us to be unique? Humans are uniquely self-aware, but this need to stand out as an individual is a modern development. In the middle ages, the people who got their names on things were the ones rich enough to pay for them. All those craftsmen who built the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe? Part of the great, anonymous slushpile of time.

The world has changed a lot since then. Individuality is prized, conformity and uniformity disparaged. I read people’s profiles online, and see such a yearning to make themselves different from everyone else. Everyone is quirky and funny and unique. We all have different likes and dislikes, different quotes to define our uniqueness. Like women who show up at a party wearing the same dress, we are miffed if someone has already taken ‘our’ user name. The irony in all this is that, in striving to be different, we all do the same things – and come out looking pretty much the same.

I blame education for most of this. As a teacher, I must identify each child’s unique and special learning needs, and never, ever group my students according to ability, which would imply that some of them are below average. Our goal is to achieve what is mathematically impossible – to make everyone above average. Yet another irony: all my unique and special students are really just numbers to the people who are always admonishing teachers to ‘individualize’ instruction.

But before I start in on the absurdities of modern education, let me return to where I began: “identity.”

Anyway, here’s the etymology: identity comes from the Latin word ‘idem,’ which means ‘the same.’ Thus,  identity isn’t what makes us all different; it’s what makes us the same. Striving for uniqueness only makes us more like everyone else.

Circle complete.

So I created exercises, presented examples, wrote feedback on their stories: more description, use dialogue. They improved a bit. They made their characters talk to each other and described what they were wearing in great detail.

But many of them seemed to lack any idea of what a story ought to be. They were non-readers and reluctant writers who had been placed in my class to fill a hole in their schedules.

Anyone can tell a story. Believing this, I set out to bring out my students’ inner storyteller. Under the pen-name Anonymous, I wrote terrible stories for them to critique. They could tell when a story was bad, even point out what was wrong, but they had no idea how to fix it. In the lab I sat with them and asked them about their stories, praised what was good and made suggestions for improvement.

And I improved my lessons.

Their stories were short, so they wrote Flash Fiction.

Their stories lacked theme, so they wrote fables with morals.

The protagonists of their stories were all the same – beautiful, popular, and incredibly lucky – so they invented unlikeable characters with major problems.

We discussed why a character must have a problem to solve, why it can’t be a foregone conclusion that Kayla wins the scholarship or Trey gets the girl.

The following year I decided the problem was that they didn’t write enough. The solution was to make them write more. As long as they were writing, they might learn something.

My new group of students sporadically turned in weekly journals with few entries, all short. Once a week, they would crank out 300 word stories that came to shocking and abrupt conclusions when their writing stamina waned, stories that sometimes had no conclusion at all. Only rarely did they proofread or even spellcheck their writing. They turned in blocks of text with little punctuation.

To build up their writing chops, I lengthened journal time in class. I gave them more choices – you can use prompt A or B. I came up with more interesting prompts.

At the end of the second year, I was still getting much the same. This wasn’t surprising, since every semester brought a new group of students.

But my instruction was getting better – why were they still writing stories with the same tired scenarios, using the same idealized avatars as main characters? Cliches abounded. If they remembered to include dialogue, they still didn’t bother to make a new paragraph every time the speaker switched.

Now, in my fourth year of teaching this class, I understand the real problem. To write well, you have to see the world as a writer.

Teachers have a huge blind spot. Most of us became teachers because we liked school. We were good students. English teachers like to read and write. Math teachers find math beautiful. Science teachers are intellectually curious. Only a small percentage of our students share our passion.

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t make up stories. I wrote books – handwritten pages bound with a report cover. I thought about words and continually asked, “What if…?” I have always had a passion for language and story-telling. My students are less enthusiastic.

As teachers, we compensate for our students’ apathy by planning fun, interesting lessons. We entertain our classes, make learning seem more like play.

At least, that’s what we were taught to do. Educational methods are generally focused on the lesson – what the teacher can do. We look for ‘outcomes’ – what we expect students to do as a result of our lesson. We decide how we’re going to measure the results. If we don’t reach the goal, we remediate – that is, we make different lessons.

Though we were taught to give a nod to other types of ‘intelligences’ – emotional and social, for example – these things are hard to measure. Under pressure to improve scores, we go for the measureable outcomes and hope the other intelligences tag along. Under pressure to graduate more students, we lower our expectations.

The adjustments are all on the teacher’s end. We figure out what’s preventing students from understanding and find an alternate route. Yes, we are paid to do this. I don’t complain – my favorite part of the job is planning instruction.

Our brains, however, are less pliable than our students’. Shouldn’t we be teaching them how to teach themselves, rather than letting them believe that someone will always solve the problem for them and give them points for trying?

As for my students: my job is tougher than writing new lesson plans. Many students don’t think about words. Their imaginations are parked back in the third grade.

To them, school is all about getting the right answer, turning in neat papers that meet our requirements. Did I insist on dialogue? They throw in a few lines. Did I specify a minimum word count? They describe what their characters are wearing. They don’t really want to write any more than they want to do algebra. All they want is an A.

If they are to write better, my students need to think like writers. No matter how well I engage them, I can’t teach them this. For them to see the world through different eyes, they have to understand first that there are other ways of seeing the world.

When I teach them point of view in writing a story, I’m really teaching them that there are other ways of seeing the world. Their stories will still have flaws, but a rubric can’t measure how much they’ve really learned.

Should teachers use grades as incentives?

In school, several things are going on:

Teaching = preparing lessons, conveying information to students, assisting their acquisition of knowledge and skills.

Managing = taking attendance, keeping track of grades, writing kids up for various offenses.

Of the two, I want to say that the teaching is more important, but in reality, my immediate responsibility is to run a safe classroom, keep the kids out of the halls, keep them from fighting or doing other bad things.

There is a hidden side of school that idealistic reform rhetoric doesn’t acknowledge. School has become an economy of points. Students, like the rest of the world, work for rewards — in their case, grades. Teachers shape their behavior by using grades as an incentive. We justify this by telling ourselves that we’re only trying to get them to do what is really good for them. Does it matter how we achieve that?

Part of me says yes, it matters. Education should be about learning, not points. Kids should be curious about the world, themselves, other people, the past, the future.

Another part of me knows that the world doesn’t work that way. It hisses, “Accept reality – kids grub for points, not understanding. Use their greed for grades in ways that provide some benefit.”

In the real (i.e. adult) world, people don’t always do the things that would benefit them most in the long run – eating right, exercising, saving money, reading good books, eating organic food. The rewards for these activities are so distant or require so much effort that many people, though desiring them, don’t change their behavior to make them happen. The immediate reward – the brownie, the couch, the reality show, the video game – is right at hand and provides instant rewards.

Why should kids be any different? We expect kids to read and write and study for tests, telling them that the reward is a better future, a higher income. We use grades not to assess how much they have learned, but as incentives, immediate rewards, so that they will cooperate with our agenda.

At my school, first period is a huge problem. Many students arrive late. Some drive themselves; they don’t get out of bed early enough. Others take the bus, get to school on time, but hang out in the cafeteria or somewhere else for ten minutes or longer before going to class.

Why don’t they go to class? Plenty of teachers write kids up for tardiness – and other things: cutting class, using a phone or ipod in class. Do their behaviors change as a result of disciplinary measures?

Not much. A few kids respond for a while, but habits are stronger than the desire to avoid a potential punishment — one that may not even happen if the teacher is inattentive or too busy to write them up. Right now, they can play a game on their phone, respond to a text message, listen to a song, or take a nap. How can the promise of a better future stack up against that? “I want you to put away that phone and get to class on time because in some future you can’t yet imagine, you won’t be able to get away with that.”

What do we expect? It is more remarkable that there are so many kids who do the right thing, come to class, keep their phone stowed away, turn in their homework on time.

So how do we give immediate gratification to these tardy, disrespectful, apathetic students? Punishment has no effect; scolding is worse than saying nothing. College and career are too distant to matter.

The only thing left is grades.

Kids want good grades for a variety of reasons, many of them having to do with parents and permission to do something – use the car, keep the phone, go out with friends. Or perhaps their parent’s disapproval is more painful than my scolding.

Grades are also competitive. Kids equate them with self-worth. They don’t like seeing an F because they feel stupid. They like an A because they can show it off to friends and bask in their envy. They want to appear smart, even if the grade doesn’t reflect any real learning.

I think about incentives at this point in the grading period, halfway between interims and the end of first quarter. I have seen many of my students turn from cooperative, interested learners into demoralized, apathetic under-achievers — all because of a grade: S or U. Just wait until they see that D or F.

One thing is certain: I alone cannot change this culture of grades and rewards. (Sorry Alfie Kohn; I truly believe what you say, but I have to live in this trench.)

So I ask myself: How can I use this?

Kids will only put forth so much effort for a grade. Their effort must pay off or they will stop, give up. I must find that optimal spot where I am still challenging them, but they can feel successful and earn a grade that will get them the car for the weekend.

Here, three weeks out from first quarter grades, I am prepared to bargain with my low-achievers. They must put forth some effort, but I will make it worth their while.

I have never been happy with a grading scale that allows kids to become so buried in failure by the sixth week that they stop trying. That’s what a 60% pass means. It doesn’t mean that they know 60%; it means they have earned 60% of the points – however they achieved that. For students who have a 5% right now, the possibility of making it to 60% by October 28 seems remote. They are victims of the ‘zero’ effect – the accumulated consequence of not handing in assignments. Is it such a bad thing to give them an opportunity to win the lottery, strike it rich?

That’s what I’m thinking tonight. I don’t want to be the one slamming that door. Maybe I’m a bad teacher for not punishing their sloth and giving them what they have ‘earned.’ Maybe I should have done something differently three weeks ago.

But I don’t want kids sitting in my class, feeling hopeless. Punitive measures have not changed anything inside of them. They are still without hope, but defiant, determined not to sacrifice their dignity. Better to go down with a 5% because you refuse to buy what school is selling than to try but fail to reach some arbitrary magic number.

I will offer them hope, if only to keep my own sanity. It will require some effort on their part, but I will pass them if they keep trying. They’re not stupid; they’re just drawn by immediate rewards rather than distant ones.

Yes, I’m part of what is wrong with American education. I’m using points as a reward rather than instilling a love of learning in my students.

But I’m the one who has to live in this trench, and I don’t see the auxiliaries arriving any time soon.

I don’t like spoilers, so I won’t share the importance of this remark, but it did make me think, “What was I doing a year ago today?”

The answer to that was easy: my son was married one year ago today. I remember a lot about that day, but I looked up August 14, 2010, in my diary – just to see what I might have forgotten. That day’s entry was sort of sketchy, but what I’d written triggered more memories that I hadn’t written down. I remembered exactly how I felt – stressed, happy, sad, and ready for the reception to begin.

Which is why I keep a diary.

What is the difference between a diary and a journal? Aside from the impression that ‘diary’ sounds more feminine than ‘journal,’ they have different purposes, in my opinion.

A lot of people, including me, keep journals – especially if they write. My journal is a tool: a place to brainstorm, sketch out ideas and vent feelings. I like thinking on paper; not everyone does.

I’ve kept a journal for a long time. When I look at my old entries – ten or more years ago – I always wish I’d spent less time venting and rambling about stuff and instead made more notes about what was actually happening. Angst-y moods will pass. It’s the little things we tend to forget that give shape to our existence – visits, appointments, phone calls, meals, movies, conversations. Details can trigger the memories we didn’t bother to write down.

For the last three years I’ve kept a diary as well as a journal. I write in the journal when I feel like it. I write in my diary several times a day, every day. What I record is quite mundane: I stop at various points during the day, note the time, and summarize what I’ve been doing: 08:06 / working on blog idea re: diaries.

I’m not experiencing any dementia, but at this point there are too many days in my life to remember each and every one of them. Most of the events are not important, but they are my life, and every now and then it’s nice to visit them again. Another bonus: I can settle all those petty arguments about where we ate or what movie we saw months ago; I can recall gifts I’ve given and received, figure out when I last had my hair cut or talked to my mother. No guessing.

A lot of famous people have kept diaries. I don’t believe it’s because they knew they would be famous and everyone would want to read it. It’s just a habit of mind, a way to give meaning and focus to existence.

This is the value of keeping a diary. 

Some planning and organization are necessary. There are many choices for paper diaries, which quite a few people prefer. There are beautiful blank books, practical Moleskines, and ones with tiny locks and keys. I love paper, but I am digital these days.

When I used a PC, I just wrote in Word because there weren’t a lot of options then. Now it appears that there are more. Most look pretty similar to the mac offerings, but I can’t make any recommendations because I don’t use a PC anymore.

Here is a brief rundown of the mac applications I’ve tested:

I use MacJournal for most of my personal writing – both journal and diary. It is very similar to the now semi-extinct Journler. Smart Journals, labels, tags, links, tables, locking, view options (including full screen), and a nice iphone app that actually syncs without problems. A quick-entry window makes it easy to add to an existing entry or create a new one. Very friendly, clean, and intuitive.

Another popular app, viJournal, is set up more like a paper journal, with a ‘page’ for every day. You can name entries, but they are grouped by date. Like MacJournal, it has a calendar interface in the sidebar, along with a list of journals and entries. A couple features MacJournal lacks: a Gallery for pictures and a drawer for notes. It also has a nice iphone app, and syncs very well.

Chronories is for people who don’t really want to write a lot, but would like a record of each day. It can be set up to record various data: weather, computer activity, web sites visited, people contacted, screen shots, and mood. There is a place in each daily page to type a description of activites as well. Minimal, visual, pretty to look at. I found it too structured and cluttered, but can see how others might love this.

I used Memoires for a while before I discovered MacJournal. It has a clean interface and is simple to use. A calendar allows you to click and view a day’s entries. It has a search function, but lacks any way to link entries or group them other than by day. For many diarists, this would be enough, though.

I used Opus Domini, another app, for a while, but found it limiting. Very nice to look at, though.  It is geared towards those who use Getting Things Done, with sections for goals, etc. Some people love this, but I wanted more control over the content and organization.

A very simple approach is Day One, a menubar app that lets you pop open a small window to enter your thoughts. Minimal, elegant, it gets the job done with the least amount of fuss.

You don’t have to keep your journal on your computer, however. There are many online diary sites where you can keep a private or public journal.

Most of the online diary sites have a young clientele – lots of teens and twenties. The emphasis is social, allowing others to read and comment on your entries; like a blog, only less bloggy. A good deal of voyeurism is involved. Most sites allow photos and video posts; some of the entries are explicit.

Initially I was intrigued by the possibility of anonymously peeking into other people’s lives. I quickly discovered that other people have lives as uninteresting as mine, and many of them do not write very well. There are probably stories worth reading out there, but you will have to wade through a lot of “OMG!!! my bf is such a jerk!!!” posts. I say this not because I think my diary is great literature, but because reading these diaries can turn into a huge time sink. If the point is to write a diary, you might need fewer distractions.

I decided against having my diary online. Even though it contains nothing damaging or embarrassing, I can see no point in sharing it on the internet. If you do go with the online option, I would recommend creating a pen-name and sharing it only with close friends and family.

One web diary that might appeal to those who don’t want a social journaling experience is Penzu. Private by default, encryption options, and a very nice interface. Penzu looks like a pad; writing and editing are simple. It has a free version; paying gets you more view options, multiple journals, etc.

My diary will probably never interest anyone but me. I write it for myself and my faulty memory. Posterity may do as it pleases.

Until I have to go somewhere. That’s when I realize how much my life revolves around stuff: having stuff, getting more stuff, fitting stuff in a suitcase small enough to fit in the overhead bin.

Getting packed for a lengthy trip makes me realize two things:

1) I can live without most of my stuff for two or three weeks. Ergo: I don’t need all this stuff.

2) There is a lot of small clutter in my life that takes up space in my suitcase. How much time am I spending each day on clutter?

Years ago I flew home at Christmas to see my parents. They lived in New York; I lived in Chicago at the time. In Chicago I was bumped onto a later flight. My two suitcases, already on the first plane, flew ahead of me. I was assured that in New York they would be safe until I arrived.

You already know what happened: when I arrived in New York, one of my suitcases had gone to visit someone else. It was the one we had nicknamed “Gigantor” – except that I think the real Gigantor had wheels, or rocket jets or something. Mine had to be carried. I never found out who carried Gigantor away, but I am sure that they imagined it was full of expensive gifts. The theives must have been disappointed when they cut the lock off: the only thing inside was my entire KMart wardrobe. (I was poor.)

I never got Gigantor back. I got a check from the airline, bought some new stuff, and went on with life.

Now, all these years later, do I remember anything specific that was in that suitcase? No.

Moral: Stuff is replaceable.

Application: Don’t keep stuff around, thinking that you’ll one day need it. You won’t. And even if you do, you’ll go out and buy a new one.

How to Eliminate Clutter and Minimalize Your Stress

I am an organized person. Not a neat-freak, but I dislike clutter. Even so, it accumulates. My living space, however, is fairly spartan. How do I manage this?

My De-cluttering System: 

1) Get a large shopping bag. Not a box. (You’re not trying to preserve this stuff for posterity; you’re trying to get rid of it.)

2) Put all the clutter in the bag. (Note: clutter is anything for which you do not have a specific, future use. Keep your receipts.)

3) Put the bag in a closet that you don’t use much.

4) Put a reminder on your calendar (six months is about right): Open the Bag!

5a) If six months go by and you have never pulled out that bag to find something you need, put it in the trash. Do not unpack it just to see if you might want to keep something. Do not think about having a garage sale. Throw the entire thing away, bag and all.

5b) If you have gone through that bag before six months were up, keep what you needed and throw the rest away.

Fortunately, most of my clutter these days is digital. Clutter that takes up no space is easier to deal with, but it still takes a lot of mental energy.

I was using my son’s computer for a while; mine was in the shop. All the files I needed were on my external hard drive — along with every word I’ve ever written. Since I was working on a specific project, I moved over just a few files I was using and forgot about rest of them.

After working this way for a week, I realized: I don’t need all the gigabytes of stored stuff I have carefully backed up over the years.

There is no reason not to keep it; it doesn’t take up space. Except in my brain. Curating all that information requires energy. I worry about it. How will I find what I’m looking for in this huge stash? What if my hypothetical grandchildren want to read all my unpublished novels? Will the next generation of technology will be able to read these files?

I am meticulous about backing up all my files. I have an external drive and a cloud service, plus a drawer full of floppy disks, CDs and flash drives. I have a PC that can read floppies, so if I ever need any of those ancient records –

Ask me how many times I have ever needed anything on those floppies or CDs. You are correct: never.

Moral: Having space doesn’t mean you should keep everything.

Application: Let it go. You won’t even miss it.

MacBooks aren’t supposed to do alarming things. Annoying things, perhaps. Sometimes the beachball of doom spins endlessly until I force an unresposive app to quit, but that’s easily fixable. No permanent damage.

Having a too-dark screen doesn’t leave many possibilities for noodling around, trying to figure out a fix. So I went to visit the geniuses.

I had never been to the Mac Store before. It’s not like other stores – no aisles, just large tables where customers played with iPads and Macbook Airs. At the back of the store was a long bar with stools. Customers were seated on the stools, and blue-shirted geniuses behind the bar typed into Macbook Pros. There was no paper anywhere.

Before I could brace myself for frustration, a smiling genius approached me, carrying an iPad. “Do you have an appointment?” he asked.

I did not have an appointment. I should have known that geniuses do not speak to mortals without an appointment, but I had foolishly assumed that since macs rarely need service, there would be nobody in line. 

But he thumbed-in my information, and fifteen minutes later I was walking out of the store – without my MacBook. It was an inexpensive problem – the thingy that makes the screen light up was dying, not the monitor itself. But they did not have the part; it would be a week before they could have it fixed.

Since I had already asked my son if I could borrow his old MacBook, I wasn’t worried. I would still be able to work on my book, get gmail, and buy things I don’t need on Amazon.

My son’s old computer is exactly like mine – except that it is full of his stuff, not mine. Getting what I needed onto his mac wasn’t difficult, but I feel like I’m living out of a suitcase, in a strange hotel where you can’t find the lightswitches. I certainly don’t need or use everything that’s on my hard drive, but I keep missing things.

It’s not a problem, but it has started me thinking about the cloud. There is already plenty of online data storage; I am thinking about iCloud, Apple’s upcoming sync solution, to be released with iOS 5.

I often run into people who are annoyed and dismayed that all their favorite software doesn’t have an iphone app that syncs instantly without wifi or USB cables or special software. They lurk on forums, hounding the developer, demanding to know when the iphone / ipad versions will be out.

Using my phone as a remote computer has never seemed practical to me. Maybe I don’t do enough texting to be an efficient thumb-typist, but it takes me much longer to type a message on my phone that to just pull out a piece of paper and write it down.

A prevailing attitude has arisen: if the technology exists to do something, then we ought to have instant, ubiquitous access to that technology – free of charge. Twenty years ago, a few people had PDA’s (small bricks that needed frequent re-charging and didn’t sync with anything), but most of us still used paper to keep track of our calendars and shopping lists.

The idea that I might one day carry a phone containing my entire database – to my sons this is not remarkable, but it didn’t occur to me that this might happen anytime soon. That’s because I was born when phones still had dials and televisions had rabbit ears. Even the Jetsons didn’t have iphones.

Do I want to keep all my stuff in the cloud? It sounds good, but I have a few questions:

How do I know my stuff is secure? Nobody is going to steal my novel or publish my diary on the internet, but what about all those logins and credit card numbers?

What happens if my online ‘box’ crashes, or is invaded by hackers, or goes out of business? Can I trust my data to these sites? As I explored online data storage options, I was several times met with a message like this: “This site no longer exists.”

What do I do with all this data?

Hard drives crash. A lot of younger teachers don’t keep paper gradebooks, but I’ve had my hard drive crash twice – just before grades were due.

If I keep everything on my hard drive, what happens when my document formats are no longer readable? Text files and pdf’s will probably be around for a long time, but a lot of the applications I use store data in a proprietary format.

I’ve started using Evernote to keep articles and snippets of information. I have my doubts about how secure it is, but I don’t store anything sensitive there. I sometimes use Google documents and Zoho. I have a Penzu account as well. Separated from my macbook, I begin to see the value of having things in the cloud.

My school, however, exists in an alternate reality where most of these useful solutions are blocked. I take my phone and laptop to school, but these things are easily stolen. There may be no paper in the Mac Store, but I still use paper copies of my lesson plans and gradebook.

I’m not sure if I want to live in the cloud – not completely. If it were not so easy to collect articles and snippets, I wouldn’t have several gigs of them squirreled away in a proprietary format on my hard drive. I don’t like being a slave to all these bits of data, worrying about whether I’m going to be able to read them when I’m at school or in the Amsterdam airport or in the air over the Pacific.

What ever happened to just thinking?

I knew it was high. When the first grading period ended, of 22 my students were failing English. Things got better, though. By the end of the fourth quarter, only 13 were failing — still too high, but only unreasonable in the fantasy land where we achieve 100% proficiency by the year 2012 — right before the apocalypse takes place.

But the conversation we had was a wake-up call for me. I explained what I had done to improve things – calling parents, cutting deals with students, etc. I didn’t explain how ridiculously easy it is to pass my class; that would have been defensive. But you can be sure that anyone who is failing my class has exerted very little effort.

The awakening happened about three minutes into the interview. I noticed that his data did not include all my classes. My total failure rate is not 36%, as he said, but 31%, because the class he overlooked had only two students failing, a 10% failure rate for that class. 31% is nothing to brag about, but I pointed out the omission.

“Hmm,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, if we add in the 10%, that gives you 46%. Nearly half of your students are failing.”

I was stunned. Was this some kind of New Math? The same kind of math, perhaps, used to calculate other things – graduation rate, adequate yearly progress, proficiency test scores?

Before I could think of anything to say in reply, he stumbled on. “Well, make sure that you’re calling home, etc., etc…”

This was the moment when I knew that all was lost. If my job had depended on it, I would have shown him how to calculate percentages. It didn’t; clearly he was just doing what his superiors had told him to do. Blah, blah.

But I began to wonder. Do his superiors know how to calculate percentages? Do any of the people determining educational policies understand how math actually works?

On the one hand, we are being advised to make our instruction “rigorous,” i.e. stop giving out worksheets and make these kids do some real thinking. We are told that we need to set the bar higher, that students will stretch as high as we expect them to reach.

On the other hand, we are warned that too many failures shows that we’re doing something wrong. Students shouldn’t be failing — not if we’re doing all that rigorous, relevant instruction.

My expectations are much lower than when I first began teaching – not because my kids are not smart enough, but because my superiors have policies that compete with the rigor I try to maintain.

Attendance, for example. We have students who have missed more days than they have attended, students who are tardy every day, students who regularly cut class – with impunity. Why does this happen? The system permits it. There are no real consequences for missing days. In the real world, they would be fired. In the fantasy world of school, I am required to re-teach every lesson two or three times, just to keep my missing students up to speed. I feel like a street-corner evangelist, preaching to whatever crowd shows up, starting over when it looks like there are a few new faces out there.

That makes no sense, you will say. You are correct.

But think of it this way: a school district is responsible for specific things – mostly for improving test scores and graduation rates. Our attendance figures are part of the equation, but a small one. We do everything in our power to make sure these things happen, but nothing more. We must not let tardiness or truancy impact our numbers, even if it means teaching students that tardiness and truancy are acceptable. All the talk of preparing students for the world outside has no meaning to us. We’re not responsible. If our graduates drop out of college or can’t hold a job, those numbers will never haunt us.

This is the crux of the issue: it is human nature to do only that for which we are held accountable.

Students will cut class, come tardy, and hand in as little work as possible because they know they can still pass. If homework counts for little, they won’t do it; if it counts a lot, they will copy from someone else. They don’t care about standards or the real world. In School World, they know exactly what they can get away with.

Teachers will push rigor only until we are held responsible for our failure rates. Then we will teach only to the multiple-choice test. We won’t do much higher-order thinking with our students because it would interfere with the goal: pass the test, graduate, be gone. The test doesn’t care if they can think; it only cares about the right answer.

School districts will never prepare students for the world after graduation until they are held accountable for what happens to those students. And tests can’t guarantee success out there.

There is a sweet spot in teaching – the narrow place where a student is challenged, but not discouraged, where the tasks we assign are relevant to their lives, but also pull them beyond those lives. That spot is where we should be.

If those who make decisions about attendance and test scores were to look for that place, aim all their efforts at it, teachers would be able to do their jobs, students would learn that they can’t get away with being late or absent or doing no work. They even might even be in class often enough to think critically every now and then.

If that day ever comes, I hope that I will still be teaching.

It is the week before the last week of school, just a few days until we get down to the serious business of deciding who passes and who fails. As always, both students and teachers are sick of it all, ready to be done with the tests and go home a week early. This would solve a lot of problems – papers to grade, whiny kids, water balloons, and whatever else bored teenagers can dream up.

But we have been commanded to wait. If we give finals early, we will have more food fights, more water balloons, more flip-flops being worn against dress code. (Why do they even make rules about flip-flops? Those who make such decisions have bigger things to worry about that what kids are wearing on their feet.) We will have less academic seriousness, fewer students highly educated and ready for life in the 21st century.

Why is it that kids never want to learn anything new the week before the most important grades of the year? They should be working their buns off, knowing that summer break is almost here. Instead, they say, “Can we have a free day?” or “Can we play a game?”

Why do I even bother to try to teach?

Teenagers never want to work. Mondays are out; they’re too tired from the weekend. Fridays are out; it’s almost the weekend so we ought to play a game. Any day near a vacation is out; I’ve never understood it, but the week before and after any break are supposed to be devoted to watching movies. If we used kid-logic to decide the school calendar, we would do actual work exactly one day of the school year: the first Wednesday in March. That date is too distant to glom onto a vacation, removed from the possibility of bad weather, and not near a weekend. It’s nowhere near Homecoming or Prom. Valentine’s Day is over, and Easter is not yet here. Winter Break is long gone; Spring Break is a distant hope. And proficiency tests are hovering on the horizon. On that day alone – the first Wednesday in March – can we demand that students knuckle down without expecting any serious protests.

For eight months I have weathered complaints, ignored all whininess. Now I’m tired. Lesson plans? I might as well bang my head against the wall. Trying to get kids to focus and learn something this week is almost futile. If you want to dismiss me as a slacker, part of the problem rather than the solution, you have never been in a high school the week before final exams.

Right now, twelve hours before first period, it doesn’t feel worth the effort to wrangle with kids over writing a hundred words about anything. Have I become cynical?

My son (also a teacher) wants me to read Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire. I could make a joke about water balloons putting out hair fires, but at the moment I lack the ambition to put it into words properly so it will sound humorous. Humor is all that keeps me going at times like this.

But I do want to read the book. And I want to believe what the man says. I just can’t get psyched up for still more advice on what we ought to be doing. Everybody’s always telling us what we we’re not doing right. And my son is in Japan — I don’t think Japanese teachers are being blamed for the demise of civilization. Not yet.

I don’t see myself as a cynical person. My enthusiasm wanes at times, but I continue to try new things, inspire my students, try do my job better. When I’m driving to school at 6 a.m., I look forward to my day and its challenges.

Tomorrow looms like a thundercloud that won’t quite let loose. I plan. We will discuss good and evil in English 11 (we read The Lottery last week), work on final portfolios for Creative Writing, translate the Rape of Europa in Latin. The world hasn’t ended, and these things still matter.

Though he never said so, I suppose he wanted our minds to be like stopped-up sinks, filling up and never losing a drop. It’s an imperfect metaphor (think about all that Greek flooding onto the floor), but I’m pretty sure this is how our governor understands teaching and learning.

A teacher’s job (perhaps his thinking goes) is to pour knowledge into those eager little sinks, making sure that the drains are properly closed and that there are no leaks. A bad teacher doesn’t keep the tap open, or allows the water to leak away, or maybe fills the sink with potato skins and banana peels so the disposal gets clogged and the sink fills with yucky gray water.

Here’s where the metaphor breaks down. Having a brain full of useless facts is just as bad as having a sink full of stagnant water. A student can pass a standardized test without ever really learning anything important. We graduate them; when they get to college, they realize how little they’ve learned.

Teaching is not just dispensing information. There are facts kids should know, but without critical thought, information is worthless.

Most teachers understand that we have to clear out the garbage before we can pour in anything new. Alas, our curriculum is all about the input. How do you ‘un-teach’ things that kids ‘know’? The curriculum guide doesn’t explain that; it just tells me to cover what will be on the test.

Another problem is that somebody keeps throwing garbage in the sink, and we spend all our time unclogging it. Every time kids turn on the television or surf the internet, they are learning things – but not learning to evaluate them. They believe things because they saw them on YouTube or read them at Ask.com.

Our governor doesn’t know about all the garbage. He just wants teachers to stop blaming the sinks. He suspects that we are pouring vast quantities of cooking grease down their drains. His solution? Drano — for us, not the clog.

If teachers are mind plumbers, our job should be to keep things flowing, not fill the sink. Students’ brains should be like sieves, filtering out what is incorrect or illogical. But it’s not simple; when you live surrounded by garbage, you don’t realize that it stinks.

It would be much better if we stopped treating kids like passive receptacles. “Fix a kid’s drain and his sink will work for a day; train him to be a plumber, and he’ll charge you $60 an hour, plus parts.”