Chapter 8: What's My Line? (Days 57-58)
Coming on Friday is the other minimum day associated with Parent Conferences Day -- the one where teachers get to go home early, not just students. Once again, the minimum day messes with the block schedule -- odd classes meet today and Wednesday with all classes on the minimum day Friday, and so those are my posting days this week.
While the first day of November isn't the start of the new year, it is the start of the two- and four-year periods into which I divide my life. I chose November because it's when I switched high schools, in 1995 as a freshman. Thus November 1995-1997 is the first "breve," or two-year period, and also November 1995-1999 is the first "longa," or four-year period. ("Breve" and "longa" are musical terms.) Then today is the start of the fourteenth breve, halfway through the seventh longa.
On the old blog, I mentioned that the defining moment of the 13th breve is the pandemic, and so I call it the "coronavirus breve" -- or should it be "coronavirus longa"? Originally, I intended to call it a breve or longa depending on the production of a vaccine and the end of the pandemic. Of course, the vaccines have been produced, though strictly speaking, the pandemic still isn't over yet.
Then again, the breves and longae are supposed to refer to my own life. I've never tested positive for COVID-19, so the only real affect it had on my life is its impact on schools. At the start of the 13th breve, I was a sub, but now I am a full-time teacher. And I know that career path changed due to the pandemic, which shut down schools and caused teachers to retire. I truly believe that had it not been for the outbreak, I'd still be stuck as a sub. Thus the pandemic was the defining event of the breve for me.
Today there's an afterschool meeting, called not by the principal, but by the superintendent. The district leader tells us that, while the operation is costing the district dearly (nearly a million in the red), the goal is for the school to remain open -- perhaps co-located with our flagship or continuation high school -- and for us to remain as staff members. While nothing is official yet, this announcement solidifies my position and indicates that I will remain here for the entire breve, not just this year.
And so it's fitting that this meeting occurs on the first day of a new breve. The defining moment of this 14th breve for me isn't the pandemic, but the real start of my full-time teaching career. The new breve should refer to this school rather than the pandemic. Hmm -- the second breve was the Magnet Breve, referring to my transfer into the magnet program as a young high school student. Then the 14th breve can become the New Magnet Breve. After all, it's the reestablishing of my school as a magnet that will cause it to survive -- otherwise it's superfluous and the district would close it as a cost-cutting measure.
So far, this post is all about the past and future -- I haven't said much about the present yet. Well, Stats class begins Chapter 8, "What's My Line?" (of best fit, that is), while Calculus moves on to Section 3.7 on derivatives of logarithmic functions. As I promised, in Advisory class, I introduced my grading scale (27 points for the Vanderwerf Name Tents, six points each for the brag sheet rough draft, final draft, and the written SEL lesson).
List of Longae and Breves since November 1995:
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