There are so many demands on my time these days.  Those of you who are raising small children, working two (or more) jobs, building your own houses with your own bare hands, &c., might want to read a less blithe post.  But I have the luxury of time–in fact, I have demanded of and created for myself the luxury of time–to do what, to me, counts.

So here’s what I do on days when I’m not sick and am not scheduled to be in multiple places simultaneously.  These are things that are important to me, and things which I consider crucial to my continued ability to teach in a large, highly affluent public high school without climbing a bell tower.

I engage with the world physically.   I never was a jock, but I love doing certain sports–softball, dodgeball, biking, hiking, long walks, the occasional run.  I’m not fast, and I’m definitely out of shape, and I could be a little stronger.  But I’m also content to be the guy who just enjoys getting outside and playing when it’s nice out.  On a clearish, warmish day, if I’m inside, I feel like I’m insulting the world.

There is music.   As much as the Moment of Silence is my favorite part of the day, I find it hard to go for more than a few minutes without some sort of music.  Ideally, I’m either listening to something great (which, recently, means jazz–Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Dave Douglas, John Coltrane) or at a band practice.  But it could be as simple as lightly tapping a drumbeat on some nearby surface.  It probably drives my students and officemates insane, but that’s the way it is.

I read.   This is something I’ve been thinking about recently.  I read a blog post somewhere, I forgot where, saying that we as teachers should get rid of all of our “edublog” links and replace them with links to sites that are about other things, whatever we’re passionate about.  And I think that’s a pretty good idea.  If you look at my blogroll, you’ll notice that most of my edublog links are gone, and that I’ve put up some links to things that I just think are interesting.

The sophomores are reading all sorts of books right now, trying to get at some basic questions about reading and how we interact with texts.  How does this text confirm or challenge my beliefs about how the world works?  Why do we choose particular books?  What links can we make between texts?  I’ve had a lot of fun, and a lot of frustration, examining my own recent reading through that lens.  In the process, I’ve discovered Bruce Schauble’s excellent blog, Throughlines.  I don’t know if Bruce has a fan club, but I’d like in–his writing is reflective, thought-provoking, and occasionally startling.   Check out his recent posts about walking around taking photographs in his neighborhood and talking to his students about ways of approaching a text about which they aren’t terribly excited.  Bruce’s blog is a model of what I’d like mine to be–it’s about teaching, yes, but in some non-standard ways.  He seems to be a teacher who inspires through example–he’s a real person who freely admits that he struggles with some aspects of the job, but he also isn’t afraid to share things that aren’t necessarily “relevant” in the traditional sense.  I’m keeping his link.