On a rainy Monday morning . . .

It's rainy. Again. And cold, no doubt. What else is new? So I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down at my computer. I have to restart it for it to work properly. This old battleax has seen better days, to be sure. But she travelled in my backpack throughout a 6-week solitary sojourn in the UK last summer, so I am fairly attached to her. She's warming my lap right now, like a metal kitten. Luckily, however, she doesn't purr. That would probably be a BAD sign.

I am a little unhappy about going to school today. I feel pretty trapped there. My office window doesn't open and the heating and cooling system doesn't work properly. I am lucky if there is one faucet that sprays shockingly cold water to wash my hands down the hall. There is no water fountain. In my classroom downstairs, I have to wear tank tops in the winter just to maintain some semblance of coolness. My students are overheated as well; their eyes swell shut and glaze over like they are in an incubator. I watch them as they sleep in the middle of my class and want to wake them up, but what's the point? They'll just fall back asleep . . . because they drank too much last night.

My teaching career has never been like this before. I have never had students sleep in my classes. I have never encountered so many students who simply didn't care. Usually, I can get the students on the edge to become a little interested, but this doesn't appear to be the case here. I think about this as I glance at the shower, knowing that the time approaches when I have to get up and make the inevitable steps toward my daily fate. My stomach tightens as I think of this.

But there's only six more weeks of the semester left. And I have my good students. And I have lots of plans for the summer.

I just have to survive six more weeks of torture. So, what shall I do?

I shall focus on the students who care and who really want to learn. I have done my best for the first half of the semester and now it is really up to them. And it is truly only those who really care that I can help. The others have a different path.

And after this week, we have a lot of enjoyable class activities planned; we move into our popculture unit, which is always pretty enjoyable (or at least has been in the past). And then the students get to analyze music videos as modern poetry, which is an interesting way to look at the culture that is being shaped by artists today. Of course, this all sounds good in theory, we'll see what the result is, in practice.

Perhaps the feeling of frustration is the hurdle of the BIG paper. Perhaps once we are past this hurdle, the semester will be better. Even if it is better for five weeks, I'll take it. To be honest, I'm not sure what the problem is, though I have spent the better part of two semesters trying to figure this out.

And I must focus on the students who are really here to learn; who are eager to grow and to expand their minds. And I have quite a few of those. I'd love to spend less time chasing down the ones who don't care and more time investing in the futures of these bright students. Maybe by the end of the semester I'll figure out where that balance lies.