there are many things that are obvious in life. the sky is blue (unless you live in vancouver, in which case you can’t look up, since it’s raining, and the sky is actually striped orange and purple and nobody has noticed yet). water is good for you. the closer you get to a child, the more inane and silly your speech becomes. other things appear obvious but only after a certain point. it has taken me years to realize some of these things and this is an attempt to save you some time investment in one of them. “friend” means different things to different people. i wasn’t exactly shocked to figure that out. what absolutely floored me was the vast difference between what i understand that word to mean and what others hear when i say it.

what we’re talking about is friendship in a close way, not the many hundreds of acquaintances that we loosely use the term for. i’m going to ignore that secondary function for a moment and stick to the people who are very close to me.

friendship should be several things. one of which is permanent. lifelong. i don’t say that lightly. you can count on me today; you can count on me tomorrow; if you call me in 2062 and ask for my help, the answer is already yes. this is why lack of commitment bothers me so much. if you’re only transitory, you’re not really friends at all. i won’t run away and i expect that you won’t, either. good, bad, or otherwise, i’m not a conditional friend. which brings me to the second part of the equation. friends should be unconditional. call me at 4am and tell me that you need to talk. or that you need to get to kelowna by dawn. or that you’ve just broken up with your boyfriend and need to borrow my couch for a few days. or that you want me to come and give you a hug. in seattle. no worries.

forgiveness is hard. if it were easy, we’d give it to everyone. i know this is simplistic. if you, my friend, hurt me, i will forgive you. that doesn’t mean i’m going to forget. but i value friendship more than retribution, more than myself, really. that being said, if you want to hurt someone, they’re not likely your friend and this doesn’t really apply, does it?

trust is difficult, too. perhaps not for you but it certainly is for me. i don’t trust easily. ever. mother teresa walks in here and asks me to follow her blindly into the hallway and i have second thoughts. you get the idea. yes, even if she has the habit on. and wings. saints still wear wings, right? once i do, that’s it. you’re in. lately, i’ve been having an issue with this, though. this has been my formula for years and has stood me in good stead. my friends never lie to me. ever. i’m good at judging it but i simply trust that they care more about telling me the truth than about my possible reaction. and that guarantees me honesty, total and complete, every time. not so much, you say? you’d be right. i got complacent. comfortable. joyful, even, in my sanctimonious sensation of protection from the pain of dishonesty. and then i got hit in the back of the head with a metaphysical baseball bat. cricket club, perhaps? five iron. that’s the one. over and over and over again.

and i survived. and i still have my friends. trust is going to be hard to rebuild.

what were we talking about again? oh yes. there’s one thing more important than trust. and it’s not theoretical in the least. ok, it’s theoretical but not the way that i mean it. help.

no, i don’t mean you need to help me. help is what i’m getting at. the most important part of friendship is being there to help. all the time. yes, all the time. every time someone needs help, you give it. and it’s incumbent on them to ask. that’s the give-and-take part of things. i’m going to deal with this in another post but that’s the idea.

it’s been quite a few weeks for me. feel free to ask if you haven’t been in the loop but suffice it to say that i wouldn’t want to relive the month of december for any amount of money. but i wanted to reflect on what it means to have some of the most caring friends that i could ever hope for. and so i have.

your shoelaces are untied.

they likely are, actually. you’re sitting at a computer, reading for pleasure. so you are most likely at home and your shoes have been discarded at the front door, consequently untied. and they say i’m not a rational person. ha.

as a teacher, i constantly have discussions about planning — in particular, lesson planning — with other teachers. it’s a dangerous topic, since many teachers live by the lesson book; many teachers live by the purloined lesson book, too, which i find to be a bothersome concept. i digress, however, and shall return to that in a moment.

nothing bothers me more in the classroom than rigidity, dogmatism, continuing a strategy that doesn’t work. public education is a strategy that doesn’t work, continued by other means. if von clausewitz were a high school student, that’s likely what the quote would have been. as a teacher, you are trusted with the task of, to state the obvious, teaching the students. that means that, at the end of the day, by whatever means necessary, the majority of the class should have more knowledge and more ability than at the beginning of the day — preferably in the subject area that you teach. (we will tackle the inappropriateness of subject division on a later day).

what people often forget, especially teachers, is that students are not computers, robots, or even, to be completely honest about it, rational, developed human beings. that’s not to say that they’re not people and should be treated badly. far from it. it simply means that you cannot predict anything beyond doubt. in particular, it means that you cannot plan with any degree of certainty. teaching is a long-term exercise in educated trial and error. and more often error than not. and, as a teacher, that is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. in fact, it’s something to strive for, to be proud of, and to be happy for, when it arrives. lewis carroll wrote once of thinking six impossible things — by breakfast. while i think this is an excellent model for teaching, i shall raise you one and say that you should have thought of six lessons destined to fail by lunchtime.

i know that sounds crazy. but i assure you that it is anything but that and everything in the interest of the students. if you do it right.

first, let’s talk about how to do it wrong. in vancouver, our days hold four classes. the traditional method of planning is as follows. before you arrive at the school (preferably several days before), you take your overviews, what we call unit plans, which are vague guidelines for how the whole subject is supposed to follow, and you come up with four (sometimes three, depending on breaks) eighty-minute classes. down to the minute. 0900. take attendance. 0903. stop taking attendance. 0904. inspect students’ eyes for illicit substance use. 0905. open textbook and issue reminder to listen quietly to chaucer. 0906. fall asleep while reading chaucer. you get the idea. while this is inherently boring and an extremely lengthy task, when done to the level that is required by the theoretical teaching instructions, this is not where the problem arises. other than facilitating the problem, that is. the problem is, the next day, when these lessons fall apart. which they do. if you don’t believe me, please try to remember your high school career. or your university one, for that matter. how many classes did you have every day? four? five? six? and how many of those classes did you walk out of thinking to yourself how much you learned, how much fun you had learning it, or how useful that will be. even in retrospect, how much of that time was well-spent? i would wager that it is a vast minority. how close am i to the truth? that is what happens when well-meaning teachers take the theory of teaching, write a plan, and then follow the plan, regardless of what happens.

i’m going to assume that you are with me. if not, that’s ok. but you can go back to the beginning and read again or move on to another post, since i’m simply going to presume that you’ve got it and agree.

what to do about it? nothing. yes, that’s right. i’m not saying don’t plan anything. that would be silly. unless you really can stand up in front of a few dozen students and engage them for five hours without preparation. which some of us can. but most teachers can’t and i don’t want to take away their crutches, only their symbolic couches. today, we’ll talk about chaucer. these are the three points that i want to deal with, in broad strokes. if it doesn’t work, we can move on to something else. good. planning complete. if you are spontaneous, you will have fun. the students will sense that and both have more fun themselves and learn more. you will be a success.

if you can’t do this, then you either need to work hard at it or find another profession. quickly.

you spend your life being a public figure to hundreds of young people. you are outgoing, generous, and knowledgeable. or you wouldn’t be here. please have some faith in your ability to work without a net. if you fall, you fall. if you’re going out on a limb for your students, they will catch you and you will climb higher next time.

may the force be with you.