Wednesday Morning Ramblings

September 5, 2012 D.A. Adams 2 Comments

Today, my youngest son turns six. In some ways, those six years seem like a fraction of a second. In others, they could be from a different lifetime. Finn is an incredible child — scary bright, perceptive, strong as an ox, sweet, mischievous, and shy. I call him my clone because he looks so much like me, especially when I was that age. Sometimes, when I look at him, it’s like looking in the mirror 34 years ago. He also acts a lot like me, stubborn, headstrong, and independent. Whenever I allow myself to think about how he’ll be in 10 years, I honestly get a little scared because I’m certain he’ll be as curious about the world as I was.

Every father should have a son who looks at him the way Finn looks at me. It’s pure, unconditional adoration, and it melts me every single time. Collin loves me, but whenever he looks at me, there’s an element of hurt and anger in his eyes because of the scars left by the divorce. Finn was too little to remember much from that time, so he doesn’t carry the same wounds. All he knows of me is the man who calls several nights a week, the guy who gets them a couple of times a year and showers them with attention, and the daddy who sings him to sleep every night he’s with me. I know the day will come when he no longer looks at me like that and no longer wants me to sing; I’ve already gone through that with Collin. Honestly, it will be a hard day, but for now, he enjoys being my youngest child and soaks up the attention.

Finn and I didn’t bond right away. I was working two jobs and barely saw him for the first year of his life. Back then, because Collin and I had bonded immediately, I felt tremendous guilt for not having that same connection with my baby boy. Then, during one of first times they stayed with me just the three of us, it happened. I had a porch swing and would rock him to sleep each night. I felt the moment we bonded as clearly as I had with Collin. We were on the swing, swaying back and forth, me singing about the tenth song to him as he fought sleep. He buried his head into my chest and wrapped his arms around my neck and shoulder. He pressed against me as hard as he could, and in that moment, we became father and son.

No amount of time is ever enough with my boys, and nothing will give us back what we’ve lost, but nothing will ever break the bonds we’ve formed, either. Finn proves that to me every time he’s with me. Despite having lived the majority of his life outside of my home and barely spending any time with me in person, he loves me deeply and knows I love him. He’s an amazing child with unbelievable potential, and I couldn’t be prouder of him. One day, he will accomplish great things. I love you, my son. Happy birthday.

General Posts

Thursday Afternoon Ramblings

August 30, 2012 D.A. Adams 4 Comments

Before the separation anxiety created by losing my children, I had never really known anxiety before. Sure, I’d gotten nervous in certain situations, but I’d never experienced the unexplained waves of fear that appeared out of nowhere and made me edgy. For the first year after the boys were gone, excluding the times when they were back with me, I lived in a constant state of panic, worried about whether or not they were safe and healthy and happy. My stomach constantly burned from this fear, and I often awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, trembling. As I adjusted to my new reality, the anxiety waned, and ever so slowly, I began to feel “normal” again.

Recently, the anxiety has returned. This time, however, it’s not about my children, even though the sensation is much the same. I can’t say exactly why I feel this way, but for a few weeks now, I’ve not been able to shake it. There’s no one specific thing I’m worried about, more like a thousand little uncertainties that gnaw at me. From the erratic weather to the political sideshow to the sluggish economy, I feel like we’re heading for something bad in the next few months. While I can’t point to any quantifiable thing and say, “Here’s definitive proof,” I just have an overwhelming intuition that the proverbial dung is about to hit the fan.

I don’t believe in the Mayan calendar and don’t expect the world is about to fly apart, but I do feel like our nation, because of the internal strife and chasms we’ve created through our sensationalist parodies of debate and deliberation, is on the verge of a deep, fundamental shift. I can’t say for certain what that shift will be, perhaps martial law, perhaps financial collapse, perhaps civil war. I don’t know. I just know we cannot continue unraveling at the seams the way we have for the last few years. And again, I can’t point to any one thing, just a feeling I get from people I encounter who either give off vibes of being frazzled and panicked or seem like mindless drones on auto-pilot.

I hope I’m wrong. I want to feel positive and optimistic about the world and the future. I much prefer feeling positive energy, but right now, there simply isn’t much to feel good about. Everywhere I look, things are just out of balance and eroding into an uncivilized frenzy of self-interest. People are either mad as hell at those who disagree with them politically, distracted by TV, or apathetic to everything. Few people seem even content with their lives, and I don’t know anyone who feels positive about the direction we’re headed as a society. I wish I could look at the future and feel hopeful about it, but right now, tomorrow just looms bleak and ominous as we trudge onward.

I’m sorry for writing such a negative piece, but this is how I feel about our country right now. I can’t pretend like everything is okay when in my gut I have this feeling that something awful is about to happen.

General Posts

Monday Afternoon Ramblings

August 27, 2012 D.A. Adams 7 Comments

Here’s another illustration of what’s wrong with education today. For several years now, the trend has been towards more and more reliance upon technology for virtually every aspect of instruction, from attendance recording to delivery to assessment to grade calculation. The most current buzz-trend is “Mobilization,” which the best I can figure is allowing kids to watch YouTube videos and play games while they are supposed to be learning. The powers that be tout the importance of connecting with “digital learners” on their level, which to me sounds like “dumb it down and let the machines do all the work for them.” Then again, I’m a tad cynical. Anyway, from these trends to digitize the classroom, now, nearly every aspect of our classes is online to some degree.

This morning, on the first day of classes, the first opportunity to make an impression on many incoming freshmen who have been coddled their entire academic careers by All Children Left Behind and The Race to a Stop, our internet system was down. Statewide. As in ALL Tennessee Board of Regents schools had no internet access.

We couldn’t check email, access course content (including syllabi), administer pre-tests, and in some cases, even check attendance. Fortunately, since I refuse to swallow my dose of Kool-Aid, I was able to collect my first day writing samples by relying on the outdated analog system. You know, pen and paper. I go back to a point I make again and again. We can put all the bells and whistles and flashing lights in front of the kids we want, but at some point they have to learn how to think. By forcing us to move so much of our materials online, the powers that be have in effect made us dependent upon those systems to function. I’m certain that many younger teachers, those who only know the “Mobilization” methodology, were paralyzed this morning. I’m certain the chaos of that paralysis gave the students a terrible first impression, and those children, raised on an endless diet of entertainment and instant gratification, probably now believe college will be more of the same dysfunction they endured in high school.

As for me, since I still lecture and write on the board (I could point to the body of evidence that proves when students write things down in their own handwriting they are more likely to remember it, but why bother? The powers that be will keep pouring the digital Kool-Aid because there’s more money to be made from grants and such), I was barely bothered by the outage. My morning class ran pretty smoothly because I don’t need bells and whistles and flashing lights to teach. All I need is a board to write on and an instrument to write with. Teachers, you see, old-fashioned, student-centered, professional, dedicated educators, teach from a deeply-rooted love of and passion for their subject. Unfortunately, however, we seem to be a dying a breed.