Letter to yourself

More stalling in putting out the big post.  Random thought for today.

There is a website I found out today that lets you send an email to yourself x days into the future.  I was  inadvertently shown this because a friend had sent herself a mail last year and proceeded to write one to herself for the following year and I took note.  

My first thought, my absolute first thought was this: god, I can't wait to tell my students about this-- maybe I could somehow ring it into a lesson.  But then I remembered reality.  Of course not, these lessons have little place in my specialization, math.  Because obviously teaching is about subjects and knowledge we have decided important, not the enrichment of the young which respects the evolution of the world as well as the evolution of the teacher in that world.  Furthermore excuses for no, I am not even a teacher at the moment.  My students still wait for me to share with them through a variety of means as a mentor and a friend, but it is no longer my place.  As if that weren't enough of a reason to give up, I feel that forcing this task upon someone who does not want to do it (as we do in our education system) is possibly more detrimental than it simply going unseen.  This thought, continually pushing me further away from the idea.  

Nevertheless, in the great electronic map of lightning bolts flashing in my brain that I call "thought," all forks lead back to that which gives me hope in this most desolate present: my children.  This is what I mean when I say I am a teacher.  It is hard wired into my brain.  It is my primary instinct and it is the thrill that makes the lion in my heart shatter reality with a bellowing roar.

With that, I say We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.  I may not be hopeful that I will ever have the future I wish for, but I will die making sure that my children will.  So here I say, "no."  I reject this silly reality and substitute my own.  I reject the world where I cannot help.  I reject the world without fundamental human rights.  Not in the imaginary world of my head, but with the power that these two hands hold, I reject this reality and build my own.  See you next post.

Grades

Sorry to be out of writing for so long.  I am working on something BIG.  It's gonna be multiple posts linking to themselves and outward and on a scale of thought and creation far greater than most of my musings thus far.

For today, I bring you a rant.  I am annoyed.

Grades just recently came out in colleges and there have been a myriad of posts on social media where people are like, "omg omg omg grades are coming out, I can't stand the anticipation."  

It makes me sick!  Eduction should not be about taking pride or shame in the mark achieved.  Every day should be an adventure of learning; the purpose not abstracted to a number at the end, but instead whispered in every dream and sung to the heavens as the great growth of minds occurs ad infinitum as the sun sets.  

If I could have one wish for education, it would be this: no more grades, no more mandatory attendance-- just teachers who love what they do, offering their knowledge freely and working to give agency and power to those young souls whose hope is the only true shining gold worth investing a single worthless penny in.

I am out of words on this topic.  Prepare yourselves... Big post is incoming soonish.