It is nice to see everyone is bright-eyed
and bushy-tailed for today's session .... well, present and accounted for,
anyway. The idiom just used dates to the 1930s and, at times, is used in a
sarcastic or a factious manner -- as it is for this photograph. Whatever else it signifies, this photograph sort of fits the message of this post.
There is one piece of music
accompanying this post. I had picked it out for my last post, the one about
rereading books, in case you missed it, but decided to use the MsMojo recommendations
instead. This song might well be one you never have heard before: "Blue Skirt
Waltz," performed by Frankie Yankovic and his Yanks with the Marlin Sisters. I
probably never would have heard it, either, if I had not had a German
grandfather. He was an avid reader -- a devout reader, I might say. New Ulm,
Minnesota, is a community settled by German immigrants, and one of the radio
stations there once was regionally famous for its farm reports and its "old
country" music. Most of my grandfather's Sunday afternoons were spent listening
to that radio station while he was reading.
Incidentally, this will be my last post for a while and I am blocking comments on it.
Lessons
learned .... part 1
Everyone
has teachers they like and teachers they dislike. Right?
I
know that certainly was (still is) true in my case. The negative element to
this, I figured out at some point along the line, is that in (American-style)
elementary and high schools a student almost always has no control over who the
teacher will be and the student, for better or for worse, will be "stuck" with
that particular teacher for an entire school year.
The
situation improves (for the student) in college, especially in the institution
which operates on a quarter system rather than on a semester system because the
period of time the student will be in a certain class is shorter.
Teachers
being human, it is to be expected they have "favorite" students and "wish you
were somewhere other than in my class" students.
Students
being human, it is to be expected some will be able to pick up on what types of
students a particular teacher favors and adjust his "classroom style" to come
under and gain the "good graces" of the teacher.
Lessons
learned .... part 2
I
have had teachers who, at the start of a certain class, have said words to
this effect:
1)
Read the books on our reading list thoroughly, carefully. My test questions
often are straight from those books.
2)
Take copious notes in class. Anything I say in class may appear in one of my
tests.
Teachers
who say either or both of those things are my favorites because I love reading text books simply for the
sake of rote learning and I am a good listener and an excellent note taker
because both aspects were part of my childhood experience, in a manner of
speaking. I might elaborate on that more another time.
So,
what I am saying is that an instructor who gave a list of books to read and who
stood in front of the class with a prepared lecture every day was among my
favorites and I would excel in those classes. An instructor who thought he was
an entertainer and proceeded to hold classes in such an atmosphere was a bore
from my point of view and I had a difficult time not showing that in my
classroom demeanor. On both counts, I was in the minority.
Fast
forward to today. I have come to realize that my posts, my comments and my
replies to comments have entered the same realm, so to speak. I write in a text
book manner and in a lecture fashion to the point where I am becoming bored
with my own words and I would speculate others are, as well. I like it -- doing what I am doing, writing the way I am writing, I suppose, or I would not be doing it .... but it bothers me ....
What
I am writing here is that I will not be posting for a while. For how long, I
am not certain .... to borrow lyrics from an old song, I have been a man "with my both feet firmly planted way up there in the air." I need to find a way back to terra firma .... later, baby .... take care and stay safe and be happy ....
No comments:
Post a Comment