Flag Day

In case you missed it, yesterday was June 14th. I caught some of it, but part of the day I was driving with Rebecka from northern Ohio, with another significant portion of the day spent recovering from said driving. Then, we went on to church in the evening and spent time with some friends afterward at a Mexican restaurant (though most of the time at the restaurant was not spent eating as there were about veinte of us).

My point for today, however, is not to inform you of the minutiae of a random Sunday. No, today I come to you with another purpose: to inform you of the minutiae of a random day of the year, namely June 14th.

Most notably you may have noted the many news media notations of that notable American holiday of the year that involves the date June 14th: Flag Day. Now, with my Lincoln County Public Educational System (motto: "Where the students of today are prepared for tomorrow's snow day.") history education, I don't really know that much about Flag Day. I attribute part of this omission from the class objectives to the fact that Flag Day occurs during summer break and, therefore, did not allow for us to have a free day to spend every class making some kind of papier-mâché (French for "student-made art project filled with glue and paper") flag. Another reason I think Flag Day was not taught was because it is not an official federal holiday and, thus, no retail store sales advertisements.

Ultimately, I believe the main reason I never learned anything about Flag Day has to do with the fact that I was not what you would call a "sports enthusiast" or an "athlete" nor even an "athletic supporter." This in itself had never really presented any difficulty to me except for the fact that my history teachers were very sports enthusiastic. In fact, I am fairly certain it is a state requirement that all high school sports coaches have a history degree. To fill their time in between practices and ball games, the coaches have a secondary job to sit at their desks in a high school history class and recount old stories about games they should have won and how great the football team was this weekend, but that they need to step it up for the next game. These stories, I believe, counted in the content standards for history education.

Apart from all this, Flag Day is an important day to commemorate as I'm sure it has something to do with the American flag and patriotism and the fact that there are only about twenty more shopping days until July 4th, as indicated by the many flags that appear magically overnight on the many telephone and electric poles down every Main Street in the USA, probably put there by history teachers in an effort to recruit more athletes for the next school year.

Poetry Time, Part Nine

BD Class #2

Behavioral disorders,
Or BD for short.
Are they real disorders
With evidence to report?
Or are these misbehaving
Students set apart
Because the other teachers
Cannot their help impart?
Is ADD or anger to blame?
A disease or need for attention?
Surely these kids need much more
Than a week's worth of detention.
From what I know, from what I've seen
They are simply being rewarded
Because in this class they do nothing.
They graduate regardless of merit.

Poetry Time, Part Eight

BD Class #1

Foul words, bad deeds,
Taking drugs, smoking weed,
Having sex, causing trouble.
The students in BD lose.

Comments on "Poetry Time, Part Seven"

"Early Reflections of a Substitute Teacher" was written during my first month of substitute teaching. I had been subbing and working the museum concurrently, making my subbing available on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays and working at the museum the other days (except Sundays). I ended up back at my original high school several times in that month, mostly due to my proximity to it from home compared to the other schools in the county.

I found it very interesting to be in the reverse role in identical surroundings. For six years (no, I didn't have to repeat two grades in high school; we had 7th through 12th grade in the same building) I had sat in the position of student, pupil, nervous test-taker and unsure speech/report-giver. Now, after college, here I was in the same rooms but at the teachers' desk, now assuming the position of teacher, educator, nervous test-giver and unsure speech/reprimand-giver. Those same feelings of adolescent student-hood were, by the walls of that school, reformatted into eerily similar feelings of early adult teacher-hood.

Just a few years of substitute teaching, followed by the almost completion of my Masters in teaching, led me to realize the futility of me being in a classroom of students whom I would have to keep in order. If I could be in the classroom, create lesson plans, and cooperatively instruct and guide the students, I am certain I would be a great teacher. I lack, however, that element of authoritativeness to keep a classroom in order. Thus, I gave up any hope of teaching in the public middle and secondary school sectors. I still think I would be a great college professor, though.

This poem, by the way, reflects my desire to teach in North Carolina. Before substitute teaching, I had gone to a teacher's consortium where I got to meet with several teaching recruiters from various states and boards of education. North Carolina had (and last I checked still has) some of the best teaching incentives in the country, including discounted groceries and housing, as well as a system of mentoring from experienced teachers to help the incoming new teachers. I would still like to get to live in NC some day, but it's not as much a priority anymore.