One of the fellow teachers at my school blogs. She is funny, irreverent and makes me realize I'm not alone!

You can check her out at A Yarning to Write. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You may be a little shocked. But it's definitely worth the looksy.

Disclaimer: My teacher friend is definitely not a Christian. She is definitely not a Republican. She definitely likes swear words. And did I mention that she writes vampire novels chock full of erotic sex scenes? Her blog is not for the easily offended or the faint of heart.

And so do high school students.

This Monday one of my 10th grade students walked in and said rather proudly, "Guess what I did this weekend, Ms. D?"

He said it with such pride and such a sense of relevancy that I assumed it was something related to my class, or at least to school or academics.

I responded, "What did you do this weekend?"

His response--still proud and confident--left me speechless and completely baffled.

"I shaved my stomach."

"I have never let my schooling interfer with my education." --Mark Twain

I spent about 20 hours in meetings last week learning about a new program my district is instituting to attempt to reach our lowest performing kids. It's actually a promising program, one that appears to be fairly research-based and full of promise. One huge piece of this program is that students meet one-on-one with a mentor several times a week--the more contact these kids have with an adult who cares about them, the better they do. That seems self-evident to me, but now hundreds of thousands of dollars have provided the research needed to confirm it.

As I was sitting in these meetings, one of the women who holds a very high position in the district came to deliver data about our students' performance. First, she made the point that our students with low socioeconomic histories were performing the lowest--this group including most minorities. She then told us our white and asian students were performing better--at less than a 50% pass rate on all standardized tests!

Then she said something really interesting.

"The longer students stay in our school system, the worse they do."

How true and how sad!

One day earlier this week, I spent an hour by myself at lunch, enjoying Panera Bread, savoring the sun and digesting good poetry. Compared to the boring meetings I’d been stuck in all week, this hour alone was like a small taste of heaven. For some reason this morning on the way out the door, I grabbed a small collection of poems by T.S. Eliot for reading if the occasion arose. I had to read T.S. Eliot a few years back, and found myself entranced with the beauty of the language that he used—but completely lost as to what he meant. I would catch these glimpses of images, but they were transient and ethereal images, fading away as quickly as they materialized in my mind. At the time, I was in class with people a year ahead of me, people who seemed to be such experts at understanding all things lofty, who left me feeling ignorant and inadequate.

Perhaps it was because I was feeling lethargic and a bit trapped because of the meetings I’d been in all day or perhaps it was the romantic notion of eating lunch by myself in front of a book of poetry, but for some reason, I found myself caught up in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

The copy of T.S. Eliot poems that I have is an older edition, one that I bought at a used bookstore (Beers of Sacramento—best used bookstore in town). I love used books, especially ones that were previously owned by intelligent people, people who took note of their intelligent thoughts in the margins!

It’s a long poem, one that most of you do not want to read. But let me share just a few pieces.

He begins with this image:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming questions…
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.