Today as the hand approached 12 minutes after 12 I was in a meeting of heads of our academic departments. As this once-in-a-century moment passed, I decided not to remind everyone else about it, but I noted quietly the perfection of that 12:12 on 12/12/12 moment. In the midst of my ordinary day, that extraordinary minute passed.
I decided that I should commemorate this little moment by recounting what I did on this day. While the stroke-of-the-minute was an extraordinary number, the rest of the day was really a very normal, ordinary day here at KA. But blog entries tend to only highlight the extraordinary days, the days that may be worthy of note or profound thought. What about celebrating the quotidian?
In the last week I have taught Northern Renaissance art, that wondrous art of 15th century Flanders that places many of the familiar Bible stories in the ordinary settings of 15th century Flemish homes. Those artists believed that if they could locate the supernatural events of the Bible in an ordinary setting it might elevate the quotidian to the sacred. It might remind us that each of us may indeed be extraordinary in the ordinary places we live. Indeed, one of my famous lines if someone calls my mobile phone (see how ex-pat I sound with “mobile phone” and not “cell phone”!!) during class time, I answer the phone and say, “I can’t talk now—I’m doing God’s work!”
Anyhoo, I think it might be an interesting thing to remember the day with all the ordinary details, knowing that while the 12:12 p.m. on 12/12/12 is unusual, the contours of the day are familiar, and maybe even a little sacred.
I almost always rise before my alarm goes off. I don’t like this, but my body clock tells me to get going. So while the alarm on the phone is set for 6:10 a.m. I am often up before that. I start the day rolling over at 5:30 and know the sleep part of the day is finished. As I often do, I head to the landline phone to call the United States. I call Tracy, the college friend that transcends time and space. I want to talk to Tracy since this is the week of her Christmas concerts with her students. Tracy teaches music to K-3 grades and I want to know how the dress rehearsals are. Her day is winding down in Heath, Ohio, and my day has just begun here in the Middle East. When I hear my alarm sounding in the bedroom I figure it is time to go and shower and meet that new day.
Before breakfast I do an email check and answer a few of the ones that just require perfunctory replies. I check facebook because I am awaiting a lengthy email from a long-lost friend who said one was on the way. No email yet, but some of my stranger (I gather) facebook people are already spending time wondering whether the world might end on this historic 12/12/12 day.
At 7:05 I go over to the Academy Building to greet Nidal, the man who makes copies for us. I leave a couple jobs for him so that they can be ready for my first class in a little while. I head over to the Dining Hall, my head full of names that I need to contact for the upcoming Bangkok job fair, and also with the plans for my term-long course on how World War I shapes the 20th century. At breakfast the mood is one of an odd focus—for some the focus is on the remaining tests before the break, for some the inter-dorm lip synching contest that afternoon, and for some the enervating feeling of the last week before a well-deserved respite from the breakneck pace of a boarding school.
I am trying to decide how I want to begin class. The plan for the day is to look at the bizarre fight that breaks out on May 29, 1913 at the Paris ballet when Stravinsky’s work Rite of Spring debuts and there is a melee and mayhem in the aisles of the theater. Modris Eksteins, a man I admire and deplore (why deplore?? He wrote Rites of Spring a book that I should have written first but he beat me to it!) wrote about how this fight may be the real beginning of the first world war, well, at least as he (and me too!!!!!) sees the world as a simmering cultural ferment and not just a war of nations. I want the class to juggle all the strange things we have noticed about the pre-war world. I want them to explore this 19th century document by a German war theorist who discusses war as a moral, cleansing agent of civilized peoples. My thoughts are interrupted by a colleague who calls to ask me to think of her as she prepares for a Skype interview in an hour with a school in Japan. She decides to go with the red blazer for the Skype interview.
The official beginning of the day is at 8:05 and I meet with Charlie, a four-year veteran of the school, and the night before the host of a dinner with pork tenderloin—talk about your extraordinary events in Jordan! I had visited Charlie’s 10th grade class the day before—as I have done with each member of my department in the last week or so—and we had the follow-up conversation the next day. Charlie is someone that has been fun to watch his progress as a young teacher, and he had taught a lively class about Napoleon. I shared with him the moments where he had done such a good job with class discussion and questions. And as I find interesting to do, I shared some suggestions as to where else he might go with the lesson. I hope it doesn’t come across as, “Here is where you are wrong and what I, Lord Master of History, would do.” I always find it interesting to think about a point, or an art work, or a document and how it might re-cast or re-frame the class.
Oh, we talk almost the whole 45 minutes and now I need to get going to class. I think I will begin class with a certainty: on August 5, 1914, a war of large proportions had erupted. But when should we say the war began? And whom shall we blame for this war? We read the theorist. I got answers that were really more along the lines of 9th grade answers and I tried to explain how seniors need to up the ante. I modeled some answers and we teased apart the simultaneous events of 1913-1914.
A colleague had asked in an email if she could meet with me for 10 minutes to discuss an upcoming parent conference that could be tense. After about 20 minutes I reminded her that a good idea with a parent is to ask them to articulate their hopes and fears for their child for this year. Oh, I better try and finish grading the art history quizzes…can I squeeze in 6-8 more??
At 10:45 I go to teaching fellow Hadley’s class to watch her 10th graders give presentations on essays they have read. Later that afternoon we joke about many of them confessed/professed that they are not readers, per se, but “I loved this essay.” They do a good job, although this one girl was a little more obsessed with a murder than might have been seen as healthy.
Next is the meeting of heads of department. We are discussing how to finesse the decision that we will eliminate winter term exams and simply enjoy five more teaching days. Yep, that needed another hour discussion, but put a committee on something, and wow—the time can go. That is when I noted the remarkable 12:12 on 12/12/12 day…
I did not have a sit-down lunch today so I went back to my apartment and have chicken salad so I could prepare a little more for the art history class on Botticelli. As I am reminding myself of Botticelli’s obsession with Platonic philosophy I am wondering if I will have time to finish grading their quizzes. It turns out…no, a student asks for some help on my to class and there went that last 20 minutes.
As always, class with these guys is just great. We explore four paintings from the 1480s and I remind them of their test the next day. On my way to go finish working on their test I see a teaching fellow with whom I need to chat. He had recently made a youthful error about deadlines and we needed to have that chat. In that time headmaster John came by and we needed to chat about the professional development speaker coming in February. With the change of exams we may back his day a couple days and need to think about that. Of course we had to go over some things about the Bangkok job fair. I need to contact everyone on that list.
For the last block of the teaching day I had my seminar with the teaching fellows, exploring 3 of the 49 techniques in Doug Lemov’s book, Teach Like A Champion and also trying to impart some wisdom about the first big break in your teaching career…there may be some pitfalls in thinking about and reacting to the trip home.
I need to run back to class for a 30 minute study session—we go over a Gothic statue and a Gothic cathedral, and then we all have to run over to the auditorium for the Lip Synching contest. I think perhaps the least said about the contest the better! It is now 6:00 p.m. I have an hour where nothing is going on…I head back to have pears and cheese and finish the chicken salad and wash dishes…and not talk.
At 7:00 I go watch a little concert of teachers who wanted to sing Christmas carols. If the play had not been last weekend I would have joined them but instead I got to be a good audience member. After the concert—oh, I promised another study session. To the library and for 50 minutes we discuss the proto-Renaissance and how one writes about innovations in art.
Ruba and Chris ask me to stop by afterwards and we sit and talk for about 90 minutes about the state of the world—or at least our little place in it—they are always fun! I go back, procrastinate with emails and finally write email comments on papers I had promised earlier that day to attack. Somehow I end up staying up late, perhaps the only one still awake at almost 1:00 a.m. as the fire alarm sounds in the dorm and we all trudge outside in the cold.
That’s the day. Really an ordinary day, but sometimes interesting to look back and see what you did. I am up now for a new day—up an hour or so before the alarm sounds. But at the end of this day there is an un-ordinary feel as we scatter to the corners of the world for winter break. I will be flying home to Cincinnati tomorrow—an ordinary Christmas with my extraordinary family. I anticipate just like the Northern Renaissance guys, there will be tinges of the sacred in that ordinary setting.
12/13/12—perhaps not as remarkable a day, but another day in the life of the school.
I decided that I should commemorate this little moment by recounting what I did on this day. While the stroke-of-the-minute was an extraordinary number, the rest of the day was really a very normal, ordinary day here at KA. But blog entries tend to only highlight the extraordinary days, the days that may be worthy of note or profound thought. What about celebrating the quotidian?
In the last week I have taught Northern Renaissance art, that wondrous art of 15th century Flanders that places many of the familiar Bible stories in the ordinary settings of 15th century Flemish homes. Those artists believed that if they could locate the supernatural events of the Bible in an ordinary setting it might elevate the quotidian to the sacred. It might remind us that each of us may indeed be extraordinary in the ordinary places we live. Indeed, one of my famous lines if someone calls my mobile phone (see how ex-pat I sound with “mobile phone” and not “cell phone”!!) during class time, I answer the phone and say, “I can’t talk now—I’m doing God’s work!”
Anyhoo, I think it might be an interesting thing to remember the day with all the ordinary details, knowing that while the 12:12 p.m. on 12/12/12 is unusual, the contours of the day are familiar, and maybe even a little sacred.
I almost always rise before my alarm goes off. I don’t like this, but my body clock tells me to get going. So while the alarm on the phone is set for 6:10 a.m. I am often up before that. I start the day rolling over at 5:30 and know the sleep part of the day is finished. As I often do, I head to the landline phone to call the United States. I call Tracy, the college friend that transcends time and space. I want to talk to Tracy since this is the week of her Christmas concerts with her students. Tracy teaches music to K-3 grades and I want to know how the dress rehearsals are. Her day is winding down in Heath, Ohio, and my day has just begun here in the Middle East. When I hear my alarm sounding in the bedroom I figure it is time to go and shower and meet that new day.
Before breakfast I do an email check and answer a few of the ones that just require perfunctory replies. I check facebook because I am awaiting a lengthy email from a long-lost friend who said one was on the way. No email yet, but some of my stranger (I gather) facebook people are already spending time wondering whether the world might end on this historic 12/12/12 day.
At 7:05 I go over to the Academy Building to greet Nidal, the man who makes copies for us. I leave a couple jobs for him so that they can be ready for my first class in a little while. I head over to the Dining Hall, my head full of names that I need to contact for the upcoming Bangkok job fair, and also with the plans for my term-long course on how World War I shapes the 20th century. At breakfast the mood is one of an odd focus—for some the focus is on the remaining tests before the break, for some the inter-dorm lip synching contest that afternoon, and for some the enervating feeling of the last week before a well-deserved respite from the breakneck pace of a boarding school.
I am trying to decide how I want to begin class. The plan for the day is to look at the bizarre fight that breaks out on May 29, 1913 at the Paris ballet when Stravinsky’s work Rite of Spring debuts and there is a melee and mayhem in the aisles of the theater. Modris Eksteins, a man I admire and deplore (why deplore?? He wrote Rites of Spring a book that I should have written first but he beat me to it!) wrote about how this fight may be the real beginning of the first world war, well, at least as he (and me too!!!!!) sees the world as a simmering cultural ferment and not just a war of nations. I want the class to juggle all the strange things we have noticed about the pre-war world. I want them to explore this 19th century document by a German war theorist who discusses war as a moral, cleansing agent of civilized peoples. My thoughts are interrupted by a colleague who calls to ask me to think of her as she prepares for a Skype interview in an hour with a school in Japan. She decides to go with the red blazer for the Skype interview.
The official beginning of the day is at 8:05 and I meet with Charlie, a four-year veteran of the school, and the night before the host of a dinner with pork tenderloin—talk about your extraordinary events in Jordan! I had visited Charlie’s 10th grade class the day before—as I have done with each member of my department in the last week or so—and we had the follow-up conversation the next day. Charlie is someone that has been fun to watch his progress as a young teacher, and he had taught a lively class about Napoleon. I shared with him the moments where he had done such a good job with class discussion and questions. And as I find interesting to do, I shared some suggestions as to where else he might go with the lesson. I hope it doesn’t come across as, “Here is where you are wrong and what I, Lord Master of History, would do.” I always find it interesting to think about a point, or an art work, or a document and how it might re-cast or re-frame the class.
Oh, we talk almost the whole 45 minutes and now I need to get going to class. I think I will begin class with a certainty: on August 5, 1914, a war of large proportions had erupted. But when should we say the war began? And whom shall we blame for this war? We read the theorist. I got answers that were really more along the lines of 9th grade answers and I tried to explain how seniors need to up the ante. I modeled some answers and we teased apart the simultaneous events of 1913-1914.
A colleague had asked in an email if she could meet with me for 10 minutes to discuss an upcoming parent conference that could be tense. After about 20 minutes I reminded her that a good idea with a parent is to ask them to articulate their hopes and fears for their child for this year. Oh, I better try and finish grading the art history quizzes…can I squeeze in 6-8 more??
At 10:45 I go to teaching fellow Hadley’s class to watch her 10th graders give presentations on essays they have read. Later that afternoon we joke about many of them confessed/professed that they are not readers, per se, but “I loved this essay.” They do a good job, although this one girl was a little more obsessed with a murder than might have been seen as healthy.
Next is the meeting of heads of department. We are discussing how to finesse the decision that we will eliminate winter term exams and simply enjoy five more teaching days. Yep, that needed another hour discussion, but put a committee on something, and wow—the time can go. That is when I noted the remarkable 12:12 on 12/12/12 day…
I did not have a sit-down lunch today so I went back to my apartment and have chicken salad so I could prepare a little more for the art history class on Botticelli. As I am reminding myself of Botticelli’s obsession with Platonic philosophy I am wondering if I will have time to finish grading their quizzes. It turns out…no, a student asks for some help on my to class and there went that last 20 minutes.
As always, class with these guys is just great. We explore four paintings from the 1480s and I remind them of their test the next day. On my way to go finish working on their test I see a teaching fellow with whom I need to chat. He had recently made a youthful error about deadlines and we needed to have that chat. In that time headmaster John came by and we needed to chat about the professional development speaker coming in February. With the change of exams we may back his day a couple days and need to think about that. Of course we had to go over some things about the Bangkok job fair. I need to contact everyone on that list.
For the last block of the teaching day I had my seminar with the teaching fellows, exploring 3 of the 49 techniques in Doug Lemov’s book, Teach Like A Champion and also trying to impart some wisdom about the first big break in your teaching career…there may be some pitfalls in thinking about and reacting to the trip home.
I need to run back to class for a 30 minute study session—we go over a Gothic statue and a Gothic cathedral, and then we all have to run over to the auditorium for the Lip Synching contest. I think perhaps the least said about the contest the better! It is now 6:00 p.m. I have an hour where nothing is going on…I head back to have pears and cheese and finish the chicken salad and wash dishes…and not talk.
At 7:00 I go watch a little concert of teachers who wanted to sing Christmas carols. If the play had not been last weekend I would have joined them but instead I got to be a good audience member. After the concert—oh, I promised another study session. To the library and for 50 minutes we discuss the proto-Renaissance and how one writes about innovations in art.
Ruba and Chris ask me to stop by afterwards and we sit and talk for about 90 minutes about the state of the world—or at least our little place in it—they are always fun! I go back, procrastinate with emails and finally write email comments on papers I had promised earlier that day to attack. Somehow I end up staying up late, perhaps the only one still awake at almost 1:00 a.m. as the fire alarm sounds in the dorm and we all trudge outside in the cold.
That’s the day. Really an ordinary day, but sometimes interesting to look back and see what you did. I am up now for a new day—up an hour or so before the alarm sounds. But at the end of this day there is an un-ordinary feel as we scatter to the corners of the world for winter break. I will be flying home to Cincinnati tomorrow—an ordinary Christmas with my extraordinary family. I anticipate just like the Northern Renaissance guys, there will be tinges of the sacred in that ordinary setting.
12/13/12—perhaps not as remarkable a day, but another day in the life of the school.
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