Development

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Ask most teachers "how do you like professional development?" The answers will include boring, useless, and a waste of time.

During staff development I nod and look interested while writing in my notebook. I imagine tunneling out or going over the wall dodging management's spotlights and Tommy Guns. At one particularly awful presentation I calculated the factorials from 1 to 20. (20 factorial is equal to the product of 20 and all the positive integers less than 20. Google tells me it comes out to be 2,432,902,008,176,640,000. I wonder if I got it right.) All this because management frowns on my drinking bourbon while on the job.

It was a nice surprise yesterday wasn't a total waste. A full-day training in restorative circles was actually pretty useful. Though it was mostly a re-run of training we did just months ago, I learned a couple things. I'm surprised but happy.

I may be sanguine about this professional development because it is my last with this school. It helps to know I'm almost gone. Some fads and ideas brought in by management for our professional development are good, most are bad, but all of them fade and disappear after three to five years. Like riding a merry-go-round, we come back to where we started over and over. This time I'm getting off.

It's nice to go out on, if not a high note then at least not a low one. I'm grateful to the trainers, the participants, and the clock which moved steadily and without fail toward our dismissal. I'm grateful to my friend with whom I texted ridiculousness throughout. I'm grateful that I'm done with professional development in this organization. One more step toward something new.

A colleague sitting next to me at the training asked what that something new will be. I said I don't know yet. Ah, he said. What a good place to be. It really is a good place, an interesting place strange as that may seem. I've learned that much even if it wasn't part of the plan. Learning is unpredictable like that. We never know what we'll learn next.

Let's Not Forget The Fun

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I wrote 500 words kind of about the Astrohaus Freewrite Traveler, a device that emulates the best of a typewriter (distraction-free writing, no real editing, no online connections). The piece was a continuation of some discussion I had with the guy who makes Writer: The Internet Typewriter which is the best distraction free writing tool online. I like the Traveler but it's expensive and needs a better editor, one like Writer. These aren't the only reasons I'm not buying one, but they are up there.

Here's the thing: the 500 words I wrote were done on my 1938 Corona Sterling manual typewriter that I had restored at Mohawk Typewriter. Typing with a great manual typewriter with a blue ribbon onto blue copy paper is simple and wondrous joy.

The piece I wrote would have to be retyped on the computer or scanned and fed into an OCR program in order to be shared online. Instead, it's a sheet of single-spaced typing sitting next to me here as I type this. It is mine and mine alone. It will likely stay that way. What an odd and lovely concept.

I wrote those 500 words for no other reason than I wanted to think through some ideas on the page. I think best in written word and I'm happiest when words are appearing on the page at the touch of my fingers. These words on the screen are good (especially because I'm typing them in Writer), but it's nothing like the pleasure of the typewriter or the smooth movement of a fountain pen over the page. That's the good stuff.

My work now is to find ways to move forward as a writer, maybe to make some money doing this work. Still, there's nothing better than enjoying the work, savoring the process, and loving the mechanics of making words on the page. When I'm forgetting those basics, I return to the typewriter and produce an artifact that is clear evidence of joy and reminds me what this is all about. And I write on.