Taking the night off

On September 22, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I have nothing to say tonight that anyone wants to hear, I think.

In which that’s not fair at all

On July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

So, see that fortune cookie in the post before this one? It’s from yesterday. We had Chinese last night.

I’m going through the blog in search of material for Malumba right now.

Check this bullshit out.

Aaightden

On July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

It’s been interesting, over the last several days, going through literally every single post of my previous blog in search of material for Searching for Malumba. My previous blog started in 2004 and finally petered out in 2009 or so, with a brief revival before moving to this space a couple of years ago.

I was really really angry during those years. Like, all the time. This isn’t a revelation to me, mind you; it was the Bush years, and I have not forgotten what those years were like, but getting the compiled output of my brain for five straight years of that nonsense– plus a year or so of startled relief toward the end after Obama’s election– all dumped into my brain at once has been a little sobering. I also had a horrible job for a good chunk of that time that didn’t help at all. Right now I’m just compiling these posts, but once I start actually rewriting and editing I will be removing a lot more profanity from the earlier posts than I will from the newer ones.

(I won’t be removing all the profanity, mind you, which will make my book a bit atypical in the “teacher memoir” genre. Most of those books are sanitized for the delicate sensibilities of the elderly kindergarten teacher. I will not be doing that. My policy on profanity for The Benevolence Archives has always been to remove about half of it on second pass, and I’ll be following more or less the same policy for Searching for Malumba. I’m considering putting a parental advisory sticker on the cover. I need to find out if that image is copyrighted or not.)*

Actually, speaking of copyright, the other thing I need to do is contact William Carlos Williams’ estate and see if I can get permission to reprint This is Just to Say in the book, because one of my favorite pieces is about that poem and it won’t work if I can’t actually include the poem. I’d quote it, but it’s only about 50 words long, so “excerpt” becomes “reprint half of it” really quickly.

Anyway. The image, in case you’re wondering, was one of my favorites from that time. I have no idea if I found it that way or if I added the speech bubble, but either way I cracked up and immediately saved it once I found it.

I’m starting to Sunday a bit, I think. I haven’t gotten a single callback for an interview all summer despite applying for several jobs that I’m perfectly qualified (if not actually ideal) for. I’ve told my principal I’ll be back at school on Monday; the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff we ordered at the end of the school year is currently strewn in boxes throughout the building and it will take at least a week to get through everything in anything resembling a coherent fashion. I still have one solid chance at a position that will keep me out of the classroom but I don’t know how much I should get my hopes up, especially since it comes with its own baggage anyway.

If I get the other job I intend to keep looking for other work, because it’ll be a job I can quit midyear without screwing anything up too badly. If I’m in the classroom… I don’t know. My wife insists that I need to keep looking even if I’m teaching. I don’t know if I can quit on a group of kids partway through the school year. And you never know; I used to like teaching quite a lot, and I’ve been reading lots of stuff about liking teaching. It might end up being a good year. I might not want to leave. But one way or another this has to be my last year with this district. Cold reality is starting to creep up in a way that has nothing to do with me and I need to be gone before all the rats flee the ship.

Actually, that’s not true. I still love teaching, if by “teaching” you mean “helping other people to understand things.” It’s everything else about teaching that I hate. All the non-teaching stuff is awful and gets worse every single year. Entertainingly, the IDOE is commissioning some sort of group to figure out why nobody seems to want teaching licenses in Indiana anymore. It’s been fun, because every article I’ve seen about it has been swarmed by teachers going “Are you kidding? You need to ask?”

The reason no one wants to teach in Indiana anymore is that the laws and policies passed by the Indiana legislature over the last dozen years or so are having their intended effect. This is exactly what they wanted, and no one anywhere has any right to pretend to be surprised.

So. Yeah. Plenty to do today; I just need to decide if I want to focus on fiction, nonfiction, getting my head back on straight, or getting my house back under control. Only a few more days before my time gets substantially restricted again.

Whee!

(* Answer: No! It’s basically just text and as such is ineligible for copyright. At least according to Wikipedia. So I probably will be including it, because doing so entertains me.)**

(** Slightly more complicated than that, but it still looks like it’s free so long as I file the proper paperwork.)

Aaight

On June 28, 2015June 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

(I said this on Twitter, but I should say it on WP too: loving the rainbow banner, guys. Meanwhile, not quite done having fun with this.)

Anyway. Trying to use today to clean up a lot of little writing tasks that have been piling up lately; so far I’ve written up a fairly lengthy interview (details later) and done some promotional stuff for Skylights. I need to go into work on Monday for about an hour and then my grant is put to bed and I actually get to start my summer break, which will be spent working on Starlight and Searching for Malumba and also job-hunting. So July’s full already, especially when you factor in that I’ll be spending the entire 4th of July weekend in Indianapolis at InConJunction. Book signings! Free bookmarks! Woo!

(Are you in Indianapolis, or nearby? The con’s cheap, and it looks like a lot of fun. Come see me! Creator’s Alley, booth C9! Please? I’ll be so goddamn lonely.)

Speaking of putting grants to bed, I have two days to write my final report for the teacher grant that paid for last summer’s writing adventure. It won’t be much different from my mid-year report, since I’m not actually teaching and therefore can’t report on how the grant affected my teaching. Once that’s done, I start planning for the books. My first priority on Monday is to get at least a thousand words done on Starlight; my second priority is to get another thousand words done on a BA story for Lightspeed Magazine’s open submissions period.

And play a lot of Bloodborne.

So that’s me, today. What’s your Sunday looking like?

Musing/wanking

On June 22, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Feel free to skip this one. I mostly wrote it already anyway.

So my problem in life right now is that I really really need to find a new job but I am also a lazy human and I have a job, and searching for jobs is hard so I don’t wanna. I’ve caught myself thinking several times lately that being back in the classroom next year wouldn’t be so bad. I can allow myself to think things like this only so long as I’m able to pretend that “teaching” actually involves helping kids to know things, which is the smallest and frankly one of the least important parts of the job.

Have a story: Today I bought coffee on my way to work. I drank the coffee when I arrived at work. Approximately half an hour later, I had to poop, so I did.

That story is going to be impossible if I’m teaching next year, because teaching is a job where grown adults with Master’s degrees can’t go to the bathroom when they need to.

Here’s a story: Today someone else was sick and it didn’t affect how I did my job at all.

Only that story’s pretty close to impossible too, because the district’s policy for substitute teachers is so stupid and destructive that no one wants to sub anymore (and it’s a terrible job even under better conditions; we all know this) and so frequently if your partner teacher is sick you just have to shrug and have 65 kids in your room all day. And if you kill any of them it’s your fault.

I cannot and I will not.

Here’s a story: I had a Sunday.

I’ll never have a Sunday again if I go back to teaching. Sunday’s Grading Day.

I’m no more than three or four days away from being done with work until August or so. I need the break if for no better reason than Starlight is pushing on my skullbones trying to get out and I need a couple of weeks to get it started. And I gotta take this “new job” shit seriously and start looking. Because this ish ain’t gonna drop in my lap.

Sigh.

Well, that was depressing

On June 23, 2014June 23, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

Just got back from an interview that, I think, went really well both for me and for the other folks– and which was, for once, a couple of people having a conversation across a table, which is how I think job interviews ought to go– and which ended by me basically having to admit that there was no chance in hell I was going to be able to work for them because of their legally-mandated-by-the-state-of-Indiana salary structure. I have twelve years of experience and two Master’s degrees; no, I will not be teaching for you for $35,000.

It is literally illegal to pay me according to my experience and training. I have another interview scheduled for this afternoon; I have already read through their master contract and it is going to go the same way. I am sorely tempted to save myself the gas money and just cancel the interview. They can’t afford me, because the state doesn’t want them to.

Governor Pence’s master plan to entirely deprofessionalize teaching in Indiana is having its intended effect. I hope the state enjoys the results they will get.