18 hours

By now, I am pretty used to being Mr. G. There were times last year when it felt pretty strange, but I feel much more accustomed to my adult role this year. Every once in a while though, it still seems so strange. Like when I wake up at 1:30 AM on a dark bus and the first thing I hear is Ed's voice.
"Aw Mr. G, you slept good, didn't ya?"
Yeah. Why, was I snoring Ed?
Yeah, you was snoring.
Loud.
Naw, not loud, but you was snoring.

what a gift. Imagine how much more of a difference that money would have made were it spent on a single school here. But I guess we nneed an elite class to rule the country and make the right decisions for the rest of us.

Yale? Where that be?

So, I emailed admissions departments at a bunch of top tier schools. I'm basically trying to work my way down the list to get a bunch of information for my students. Today, I got my first packets, from Yale and Stanford. Yale even included a poster, which I promptly displayed in my classroom. Although I wouldn't always call my students the most observant bunch, they picked up on the poster right away.

Mr. G, you went to Yale?
No.
Then what you got that poster for? Who went to Yale.
One of you is going to Yale.
I ain't goin' to no Yale.
Sure you are. Or Harvard then.
Yale, where that be?
Connecticut.
Oh no, I ain't going to no Conneccticut.

But after school, I stopped one of my favorite students. I told her that I had gotten the poster for her. She said her mom wouldn't let her go that far away, but I tried to convince her. She took home the viewbook. And she is just a sophomore.

To any fellow MTC-ers reading this, or any other delta teachers, have you ever had a student go to a really top-tier school? Or ever heard of a student from the delta going to a top tier school?

One of the things our principal said he wanted was for some of our kids to be going to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. While these schools aren't for everyone, and while they may be elitist, perhaps even extremely so, I feel like the academicaly elite of my school deserve the chance to match minds with the academically elite of the rest of the country. But even my brightest kids, even if they made it into that sort of institution, I wonder if they would be too far behind. I just think of my freshman year classes at Williams and then think about what my kids leave my school knowing. That's a big part of what makes me push them. I can't stand when they complain about having too much work, or when they're lazy - they have so much catching up to do. Maybe I should start some sort of after-school club, the elite college club, and just take the best students I can find, do community service and ACT prep, alternating one every other weekend. Obviously find a non-MTC teacher to help out with it. So many ideas - so little time.

i thought about the army

"well i thought about the army, dad said son you're f-cking high"

I don't know what I think about the services drawing as heavily as they do from poverty for recruits. Some consider it a form of conscription. Others see it as a great opportunity offered to those who have few others, with a strong dose of discipline being among the most important aspects. Do recruiters lie to these kids? I don't know. Do the kids leave recruiters' offices with a skewed conception of reality that is not corrected by recruiters? Yes.

Mr. G, I'm leaving for the guard in a couple of weeks.

Coach, I was thinking about joining the marines.

Well, at first they had assigned me to artillery, but then they put me in transport.

Coach, I'm gonna be all I can be.

I just know I don't want my kids to join up. I don't want my kids to be on the other end of an AK or an IED. Transport, to me, means roadside bombs. Marines means all the dignity of a military funeral.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I supported the war, or the idea of war, or patriotism, but I don't think I would. Those are questions for men to decide, not boys, and these are my boys. I know that they're almost men, and some of them have already gone through much more than I had before I was of legal age to enlist.

Maybe I'd feel differently if the kids who planned on enlisting were kids who could really benefit from it. When KM told me he was joining the guard, I was not upset. The kid needed the discipline, and he didn't have anything else. Nothing. He had such a strong personality about him, he could have gone through the military, gotten something out of it, and used that to forward himself. WE probably made the right decision too, although I didn't know him as well. But NB and DJ? Fantastic kids, never a behavior problem, probably not a referral between them in 4 years of high school, varsity athletes, (DJ 3 sports), supportive mothers. DJ has a 3.5 GPA. And he wants to go into the army?

I'm not going to stay in Mississippi forever, and once I leave, I don't want to be coming back for any military funerals.

SquashFest

My senior year at Williams, I lived in what is called a co-op, an on-campus house that is like a stepping stone to real life. You still don't pay rent or utilities, and you have B&G to take care of things like shoveling snow, fixing the heat, and cleaning the bathrooms, but you do have to do things like buy and cook food (no dining halls), keep a kitchen neat, and not kill each other.

I lived in this house with some very special people. It just so happened that they were all female, and all vegetarian, but nevertheless, they were good people who enjoyed food, and, to various degrees, cooking. Cooking, like many other things, is something I really enjoy doing whenever I don't need to do it. I made such delicacies as blini (блины), pierogies, raspberry muffins, and hamburgers. For many of the meals, the six of us all made time to eat together, and often we even invited guests - students living elsewhere, faculty, and other friends.

On of our staple foods turned out to be butternut squash. Cheap, easy, and abundant. We bought 25 pounds for $10, fresh from the farm. Then, we bought 25 more pounds. And 25 more. Over the course of a few months, the six of us ate more than 75 pounds of squash. Usually, we just baked it on a cookie sheet, with a little brown sugar, maple syrup, or some raisins, but we had some more creative cooks who tried some great things. Jess made a delicious squash soup, and one night, Kate made an entire dinner with every course containing squash.

I managed to grow a small garden last spring, to help keep me sane while my classroom tumbled into the, um, pits of hell, and although it was mostly overgrown by the time I got back this summer, there were a surprising number of butternut squashes hidden among the waist-high grass that the landlady was so angry about. I gave most of them away last weekend at Oxford, but I kept a few for myself, and tonight cooked up a squash extravaganza. We made a cookbook with all the recipes we had used in the co-op, and so today I made myself a double-batch of Jess' Squash Soup and Kate's Squash Rolls. Delicious, delicious. I also made the one addition that was always impossible at Parsons - some pork chops on the grill. Then I started to miss everyone just a little, then I remembered that I saw almost all of them this summer, in New Orleans, New York, Leland, and Lake Champlain, and realized I am still a pretty lucky guy.