The Wizard

Yes, I have become a wizard.  It isn’t just my author-beard and my Gandalf-hair.  It is a matter of wisdom.  To be a wizard, you must be a wise guy… in more than one sense of the word.  I am a wizard because over the past 33 years, I have had about everything that could possibly go wrong in a teaching career go totally wrong.  I have also had things go totally right.  I have gotten teacher evaluations that are so high that you can’t score any higher.  I have also been evaluated so low that I was dropped immediately, It took two years of substitute teaching to get another job.  I have been accused of being stupid, of being evil, of being a child molester… none of that proven… except possibly the stupid part.  I have been a department head, a gifted and talented program coordinator.  I have taught every kind of kid there is.  I loved many of them with the love a teacher feels for those he must reach… and then does.  Experience makes you a wizard.  Now that I am retiring, I am not giving up the magic.  I am still going to reach people.  I will have to do it mostly through words and ideas.

So, I am thinking a lot now about my magic.  I am still working at my craft.  I am practicing by trying hard to post a blog post every single day.  You have to stretch ideas all out of shape.  Mash up old ideas and rehash old drawings and paintings.  Make something new out of something old.  Shuffle things around, pair them with something different… You have to rearrange the matrix of the mental world you live in.  Okay, enough stretching and mashing.  I am a wizard of words, and this that I am typing now is my magic.

So have a little bit more of my magic.  This little wizard is young Prinz Flute.  Drawings are part of my magic too.  You wouldn’t believe how much teaching I did with cartoons on the board, on the overhead projector, on handouts.  Drawings make the ideas go around.