Jes and Ian

I’ve been passed a musical torch by Rob Weychert

The Volume of Music on My computer

17.52 GB (did I just say that!?)

The last CD I bought was

Actually not a CD, I got the album from the iTunes Music Store. Les Sans Culottes, Faux Realism.
Radical 60’s French pop. This band is originally from NY, though the thick French accent during spoken English intros tell a different tale. Before that, I think it was The Essential Johnny Cash.

Song playing right now

Up On The Hill (Traditional), Ween
When I was younger, my mamma told me, she said Gener, I wanna smell it. And then she smelled it and it was smelly and I say Lordy, Lordy, Lord I’m comin’ home

Five songs that mean a lot to me

Tom Waits Jesus Gonna Be Here.
I don’t know if this is a traditional gospel or not but Tom takes my breath away with a simple four chord progression arranged on nothing but stand-up bass, foot taps, two sustained A notes from a slide acoustic (played by Keith Richards, if I’m not mistaken) and his beautifully gravel voice. Sort of the inspiration for my own When the Hell is Jesus Coming Back!? For my money, his trademark “drunken-alleyway scat” doesn’t get better than in the first four bars of this baby.

Frank Zappa The Closer You Are.
My dad was a fan. He put that Yellow Snow epic on one snowy morning and something clicked with me and Frank. I can’t stand listening to endless guitar solos though. I suppose I’m missing what is great about them and that makes me inferior to you, but Frank’s ability to arrange entire sections of vocalists and instruments was extraordinary. Again, I may be mistaken, but I don’t think Frank could read or write muscial notation. Overnight Sensation has got to be my favorite (many a childhood hour was spent staring at the psychadelic album art). The man was truly a visionary and scholar, much more than your modern-day rockstar could hope to be.

The Dead Milkmen Big Deal.
I remember getting the Stoney’s album at Newberry Comics in New Hampshire and listening to it all the way through on the way back to my girlfriend’s parent’s house. Later, while practicing the drums to the album (ah, memories) the line, “You’re late for your class, you’re walkin the halls without a pass- big deal!” suddenly grabbed me. Big Deal was my anthem during that 18th year of my life, the year, coincidentally, I dropped out of high school in 11th grade and picked up a pretty healthy weed habit and was arrested (the first time). While some people will tell you that this is the worst DM album, I think it’s totally awesome. Crystalline, The Blues Song (he’s right about white people and tampons), Like to be Alone - Hello!? Just because it doesn’t sound like Tiny Town doesn’t mean it’s not awesome, Sutter!

The Dead Milkmen All Around The World.
Sorry to pick the same band again, but these guys were such a part of my development that they’ve become integrated into who I am and how I think. Sort of like a tree that grows too close to a barbed-wire fence. Joe’s intimate vocals ride over top of simple, bouncing, echoey synths. His accent is so Philadelphian and there’s never any attempt to cover it up proving that you can be punk at 80 bpm. The album fairly-well winds its way around conspiracies, UFOs, the meaning of life and Shaft. This one for me is the stand-out. I know about the UFOs, I know about the mind-control. I know some things I know I shouldn’t know.

Ben Rush Matthews All of the Fullness.
Ben’s my buddy, buddy boy. If anyone’s heard You Can’t Help Me (also known as the screaming guy song)- you’ve heard him play drums. I met him at a party when I was 19. He was sitting on the floor playing guitar in a gym shirt that had breasts painted onto it, his head was mostly shaved except for two long, unwashed bangs that hung nearly into his eyes. I passed him the joint, he denied. I later learned that he was 14 at the time. I started to record with him a couple of months later. He’s an incredible musician because he goes with what comes to him. There’s no composition! This is the song. You’ll notice that its just him and a mic and a four track. That’s one of the things that Ben very slowly taught me. That you can work all day to make something sound great, like the best it can be, and you can do takes until its so tight that air couldn’t get in, but in the end, you’ve lost the record of the event. I suppose I was more into making records and he was more into making music (maybe the other way around?). Right now he’s living in Arizona with his wife (my wife’s cousin) working as a blacksmith apprentice. Like I said, this guy’s awesome.

Five people who are getting this baton from me

Sutter, Dean Clean (mister boom-diddy-clang), Kevin Cornell, Brendon Small and Jeremy Hedley.

Finally!

Tomorrow is my last day of an adventure that you would call “trying to teach an SAT class for the first time ever”. Boy, am I glad. I never fully appreciated the work and effort that goes into trying to teach a group of teenagers something that they really don’t want to know. May God bless all teachers many times over. Coming away from this experience, I realize why I never pursued education as a career on a grand scale. Teaching part-time on a consistent basis would burn me out more than my 50-60 hour/week day job ever will. I have definitely gotten the distinct sense that I need to reconsider any statement that I can teach.

Do not get me wrong now…

I liked the kids. They may not have liked me, but I definitely liked them. I may not have been all that helpful to them, but I certainly liked them. And I like teaching too. I just cannot teach a group of kids, even if I do like them. I have tutored for the past three years, but one-on-one tutoring is distinctly different from trying to teach seventeen kids who are developmentally more focused on their social lives than they are on the short girl with the big hair up front trying to plod her way through her lesson plan. And as for that short girl with the big hair, can I just mention how easily distracted she can get with multiple stimuli? I cannot finish a sentence much less teach a lesson when I am around more than one conversation. And we had plenty of those going on in various parts of the room.

In my defense

I am not saying I did not teach my students well. I do not know if I did. My ability to gauge their progress was limited by a number of things. Most of these things being homework, or the lack thereof. After the fourth or fifth class in which only two or three students did *some* of the homework, I realized I would have a difficult time being helpful. I mean, how does one get a student who is likely already overworked and involved in a number of activities outside of SAT tutoring to buy into doing a few hours of additional homework every week? Additionally, since my main focus has always been teaching my students how to prioritize their needs and taking responsibility for their own performance, it is hard to feel like I was actually teaching the principal lesson in my syllabus.

Did I happen to mention that I had to proctor a test after school hours in which the test materials were locked away in the guidance counselor’s office? Did I also happen to mention the fact that there was only one answer sheet for a total of 33 students? Even if I had taught my kids well, that experience in and of itself was enough for me to feel quite finished with the whole thing.

Time to grab for my center

My aunt once told me a story of when she had a run-in with a very poor teacher. My aunt’s demands flustered the teacher so much, she tried to have administrators kick my aunt out ofthe class. Ultimately in the ensuing confrontation, my aunt advised the flustered educator to “hold [her] center as the teacher”. I have felt as though I’ve been trying to grab onto that center of which she spoke, but I have yet to find it much less hold it as a teacher. Trying to teach a class has simply left me with the vague sensation of trying to swim to the surface when I’m oriented towards the seabed. Counseling? I can do that relatively well. Tutoring? I can do that too, because it comes back down to the individual’s needs and my ability to respond to them with my full attention. Teaching seventeen kids at once? You’re not likely to find me doing that again any time soon.