What Are You Doing?

Twice in half an hour I have had to ask myself, what are you doing? I have asked it out loud because it seemed important enough to answer. Both times I have been staring at the laptop on which I've opened a new tab looking to distract myself with...anything. What are you doing? Each time I have stepped away from the computer and done something more useful, but I'm still wondering about my answer to that question.

An old Genesis song begins with Peter Gabriel crooning, "looking for someone". I stare into the computer looking for something. Looking for distraction to take me away. This is why I had to quit Facebook and why I use Twitter only for writerly stuff. I kept looking at social media, news, and YouTube to relieve me of thinking, to deliver me from boredom, a thing which I realize scares me.

Why is boredom frightening? Does it frighten other people? Maybe that's why we stare at our phones in line at Wegmans. Don't tell me all those people are reading books.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about doing nothing and yet I don't let myself do nothing. It doesn't count to stare at nothing on the screen waiting for good news, watching YouTube to pass the time, or anything else that tries to dodge boredom. I'm talking about sitting still, doing nothing. Haven't done it. I haven't been able to stand it.

Even now, I'm too interested in writing this to stop. I looked out the window for thirty seconds but had to get back.

There are worse things, but here's what concerns me: my fear of boredom is an indication of dissatisfaction mostly with myself. I'm afraid to be truly alone with myself and know what the truth of that. Hmmm. Heady stuff. I would think about it, but I'm too busy worrying what you're thinking of me as you read that.

Duh.

Twice in half an hour I've gone to the computer for distraction. Then I came to the computer to write this. Those things all being done, I have ten minutes to stop, resist the desire to revise this or just open another tab. I have the chance to be bored and ask myself what are you doing? just to hear what the next answer might be.

Brief Thoughts About School Trips

We took students to the Chinese buffet for lunch. Just a few of them because that's all who brought signed permission slips and were willing to go. We invited every kid in the program (a pretty small number, ours being an alternative school for at-risk kids) and were prepared to take all of them.

Shouldn't such a trip be a reward?, you ask.

First, they had to come up with the money. It was too much hassle to have the school pay (though my supervisor tried her best, bless her). If kids have to pay, that's no reward.

More important, rewards are a stupid educational ideas. Here's how to tell: they are done all the time and accepted as a matter of course. Anything at school that is just the way you do it is probably wrong. Also, consider the kid barred from going. It's a punishment and if you're into that, fine, but I'm into teaching and learning. The "bad" kid is taught that she/he sucks and thus learns to be worse in order to reciprocate.

Exasperated, you say, so it's a participation trophy!

If the trip was a reward and we then let every kid go, it's a participation trophy and bad lesson. If instead this is something to which every student is invited because there is a lot to learn from it, then it's just like a class, only tastier. We invited kids, set up a structure for participating, and let them learn from the experience.

Yeah, what did they learn from eating at a Chinese buffet?

• Swearing in public is a mark of bad manners, disrespect, and idiocy.
• Take small portions and go back for more.
• Saying please and thank you makes everything better.
• Try new things and talk about them.
• Not everyone likes the same things.
• We like each other.
• There's more to learning than four core subjects.
• Learning is better when it's not graded.
• Teachers do their best work when they seem like they're doing none at all.
• Eating too much is uncomfortable but unavoidable at a buffet.
• There's always room for sugary coffee drinks.

One kid learned that "bring a signed permission slip or you won't go" means just that. He wanted us to call Mom for permission. I said no and when he asked why I told him tennis is best played with a net.

To recap: school trips are good, rewards suck, and remember your signed permission slip if you want to eat at the buffet. Class dismissed.

Digital Minimalism: An Easy Hack

There are a lot of tricks to getting off the phone and into the world. Turn the screen grey, set timers for app use, shut off the data and only use the thing on wifi, leave it in airplane mode most of the day, turn off notifications, and more. I have a three-step tip that may be even more powerful.

1. For one day leave your phone behind, powered off, or on do-not-disturb. Whatever you can manage is fine but those three options are in the order of their power.

2. Watch people use their phones. Hear them blast music through headphones. Watch them text while their child goes ignored. See them read texts and email during intermission at the theater. Try to ignore them recording the concert you're attending.

3. Realize that we have met the enemy and he is us.

My phone is in my pocket. Notifications are off. I've been reading a book. My students are supposed to be reading as well. One next to me has his headphones blaring and hasn't turned a page in six minutes. He looks at the page then shifts to the phone. He's not just listening to music. He's got a video playing and can't look away for long. He has also, in six minutes, received 37 notifications. I've listened to the phone buzz.

How sad this makes me. He is a high school senior who cannot set his phone aside, cannot let it go. The phone often leads him into terrible, angry fits. I've watched him laugh at something on it, then look around as if to share before realizing no one else has seen it. He often asks, what? but is rebuffed because no one wants to bring him up to speed on the real world he chooses to miss.

Watching him I see me. God knows how much I missed when I was on Facebook. Has there ever been a tweet worth remembering a year later? I should never waste time learning what the big orange maggot has done today, who he has fired, for what he is being indicted. That way leads to regret.

The quickest way to get me off my phone is seeing others lost to theirs. Maybe I want to be better than them. I certainly want to be better than I am when I'm acting like that.

Take a phone holiday and observe all those staring into their screens as if that was the only world. As if that was a world worth living in.

Teacher Sadness

How do you know you're done with a job?

I've been a teacher my whole adult life. Even my summer jobs have been about teaching. But I'm done. Here's how I can tell: I wrote this note to a kid (I didn't give it to him). It captures where I'm at with this job, the sadness it engenders.

Frank,

I worry that the sum total of your life will be framed within the narrow confines of an iPhone. To live virtually, through a phone, is no life at all.

How is a phone different from the book I'm trying to get you to read? Why is a book so good and a phone so bad? I'm glad I asked.

Phones are all about now and me. They are self-centered, ego-driven, isolating things. People argue that phones connect people, but I don't buy it.

Books are about forever and everyone including me. Books help us to make connections inside ourselves and with others near and far. Those connections last and build things. Plus you never have to charge a book or upgrade its operating system. It's a hell of a deal.

I wish texting had another name. Text is a sacred word. Books are texts. The Torah, The Quran, and The Bible are texts. Letters written to someone you love are texts. Writing is text and it is the top of the pyramid.

Texting, on the other hand, is brief snippets of conversation that are less substantial than the wind and more polluted. I wonder if there have been one hundred texts in the course of history worth saving. If there have been a dozen, that's a miracle.

I encourage you to set the phone aside and get into something more substantial like your book or even just the real world.

But here’s the thing: You and I both know you won’t. That makes me sad.

I signed off feeling there's little I can do for students so lost to headphones, screens, and a virtual world that leaves them anxious, angry, and isolated.

In the last half dozen years I've become less effective at reaching kids. This year it has made me so sad I can't go on. This job is pretty much killing my spirit.

There may be other teaching in my future, different kinds of teaching, but I don't know. I hope that whoever follows me in this job will be able to do it the way I used to, to make a difference, and keep themselves on an even keel, sailing off into the sunset. Me, I'm tacking in another direction.