Lesson One: Audience and Purpose

As I begin this, let's get a few things straight...

1. I'm cynical: Teaching today's youthful beacons of light occasionally turns a teacher a shade darker.

2. I'm optimistic: The sun will rise tomorrow.

3. I'm honest, but really it's not you, it's me.

4. I'm a mess, but there's nothing a steaming mug of hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps won't cure.

So with that lovely introduction out of the way, let's roll.

One of the first lessons I begin the year with includes life's most important questions that I'm sure are EVERYONE's greatest quandaries that keep them up countless hours in the night: "Who the heck is actually listening to me?" and "Why am I even doing this whole writing business?" Objective for the day: Define audience and purpose in this blog thingy. Very clear, obviously.

First, let's chat about audience. My audience here is really me, however, that may seem at odds since I'm describing who my audience is to some type of audience. I'm an English teacher; I don't have to make sense. All ironic confusion aside, this writing is an ode to none other than me (selfless, I know), helping me process the humor, ridiculousness, frustration, beauty, and joy that teaching, most of the time, is.

Now that we've talked it out, or beat around the bush, (or whichever idiom you prefer), let's welcome purpose to the stage.

So one day, not too long ago, I woke up to the song, "Lean on Me," and images of students enthusiastically entering a classroom that symbolized freedom, hope, and other cheesy ideals, with their spongy brains ready to soak every ounce of wisdom that was spewing from my knowledgeable fountain. After they thoroughly drowned in this waterfall of infinite wisdom, they would excitedly discuss some obscure ideology, such as Marxist literary criticism seen in the work of Poe or Chaucer. After exacerbating such an enthralling subject, these great, teenage minds would produce writing that would put even Shakespeare to shame. Then the teacher and students would joyously discuss literature and its implications happily ever after.

Wow...I must have been really naive. Although I may have been slightly hyperbolic, this is close to the 9 out of 10 that I was according to the how-ridiculously-stupid-can-I-really-be scale. Now, I told you that we were welcoming purpose to the stage; here it is.

Unfortunately, but like most people it seems, I'm a little "over" my job. It's only my second year at this gig, and sometimes I think that I'm ready to pack my bags. The desire to travel away from teaching doesn't really have anything to do with teaching, actually; it's all of the other beautiful pearls that I have the privilege to handle that explain the jet to the door. Let me illuminate and introduce you to some of the said pearls (students' voices or at least what I speculate they're thinking in those noggins).

1. Miss Bass is the dumbest person in the world, and I will argue everything she says because she has no clue what she's talking about.

2. Miss Bass has a nice *** (I'll let you use your critical thinking skills to figure that one out).

3. Just in case I didn't complain enough about the homework assignment, I'm going to do it again just so Miss Bass can figure out that I really hate it.

4. I'm in high school, and I still can't seem to capitalize "I" or the first letters of sentences, or use punctuation for that matter.

Phew...now that I've introduced you to the pearls, the purpose has already been served. It really doesn't seem that bad, right? So, blog, we're going to dialogue about the tests and trials that add spice to the least boring job in the world - teaching. Hopefully, through taking out my sarcastic angst on keys that will be pulsating with my furious thoughts, I will realize that no matter how much I may whine like my pubescent students, that this teaching gig is right - especially for me.