Category Archives: teaching

December 26, 2014 · 4:05 pm

School Is Out For Miss Morgan

I have done it. I wrote the final scenes in my story of the school teacher who loves to teach and runs afoul of fairies fighting a war of good versus evil. The epilogue put the cherry on top last night, so I actually finished this book on Christmas Day 2014. I have great plans for this book. It is the best thing I have ever written. I based the lessons presented and the teacher experiences on my own teaching career. I transformed myself into the viewpoint character, Miss Morgan, though I did not actually have the sex change operation. The fairies are all based on real fairies I have known… as are the students in Miss Morgan’s classes… based on real students, I mean. The evil principals, teachers, and parents in the story are totally fictional. Yes, I have to keep telling myself that to prevent nightmares. I don’t know about the goblins. It’s hard to get to know critters you are spending your life stepping on and wiping out. I hope a few people read this book one day. I think it is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever to come out of a Midwesterner who moved to Texas and became a school teacher for 31 years before losing his mind, wigging out, and believing he could become a published author writing great pieces of literature.

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Filed under artwork, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as announcement, artwork, colored pencil, humor, novel writing, paffooney, school teacher, teaching

December 16, 2014 · 7:00 pm

Magical Moments

There comes a time, a moment of truth, in which a decision has to be made, a problem has to be solved. In the teaching business those moments can occur once per hour, or fifty times in the space of two minutes. You can bat 900, hit nine out of every ten out of the park, and still come out on the losing end. More often than not, you lose. You continue to get it wrong, and you feel totally defeated at the end of the day. No World Series of education for you. Sorry about that. But once in a while, you do not fail. You say the perfect thing to diffuse the situation. You think of the perfect example that, once explained, turns on every light bulb in every head in the room. That is magic. That is the reason you teach.

I am writing a novel right now, The Magical Miss Morgan, about a teacher. Without making a mystery about it, the teacher in the story, Miss Francis Morgan, is really me. I am basing this story on things that actually happened to me. Now, before the yelling and the accusations start, I will confess that I realize I am a male teacher and the main character is female, and there are things a female teacher does all the time, like hugging a student, that a male teacher can never do. And I must also confess that this teacher I am writing about loves all her students, even the ugly and stupid ones, and that is probably only true for teachers who really are magical. I further realize that the fairies in the story, just like the ones in Peter Pan, are not real outside of the story being told. I’m not insane… well, okay, I’m a teacher… a middle school teacher… so let’s just say I am not completely insane.

But there is real magic. It happens in that moment when you desperately need that perfect solution to pop out of the magic hat like a white rabbit and say, “Howdy!” Because if you have the courage to reach into that hat and pull the rabbit out, more often than not, it is there. And it doesn’t end when the teaching ends. I hit the wall with this novel at about 30,000 words. I wrote myself into a corner with no way out. But then I realized that I already had the answer. I am basing this story on what really happened. So, all I have to do is turn me into her and sprinkle some fairy dust, and voila! the rest of the novel is already plotted and as good as written. Everything fell into place in only a moment.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as colored pencil, goofiness, humor, magic, novel writing, Paffoonies, teaching, YOUNG ADULT WRITING

December 2, 2014 · 8:37 pm

The Rest of my Classroom Gallery

Here’s what’s left in my camera from school white boards and lessons.

There you have it, the results of 31 years of doodling on the chalkboard (which became the dry erase board). And yes, I did tell them the cartoon fairy drew all the pictures. Especially when they were in my class for the second or third year when they asked, “Who does all the pictures on the board?” And yes, I started doing this back in dinosaur days in white chalk on a green blackboard, followed by colored chalk, which later became a gray marker-board for washable marker, and finally became dry erase white board. And I really bought my own chalk and markers too. Teachers do that, you know.

Cartoon Board-Work

I admit it. I was a goofy teacher. Kids never knew for sure whether I was serious, joking, or halfway in-between. I worked for hours sometimes preparing the chalkboard, or later, white board, for the days lesson, putting key points and reminders up in cartoon form. I used characters, symbols, jokes, pokes, and silliness to get the idea across. Principals and others who evaluated my teaching always wondered why my classroom sounded so raucous and wild from outside the door with kids laughing, music playing, and sometimes desks being shuffled and shoved around the room. The perfect-classroom-is-a-quiet-classroom crowd always hated my teaching style. But the ones who came in and participated, got involved in paying attention and watching the kids interact with the content loved it. I am not bragging. My lesson plans were a mess filled with booby traps, explosions waiting to happen, un-intended consequences (also called teachable moments), and brainstorms that threatened at any moment to electrocute somebody with lightning. Teaching is a dangerous business. But the point is, there is an art to teaching that brings out the artist in you. I offer the following evidence;