Ground Rules (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog)

There are so many ways for this to go wrong. And I’m not talking about the Dr. Strangelove reference in the title.

OK, so that’s not the way to start any piece of writing, much less the first in what may be a long and drawn out series. It may also be short lived. We’ll see. I haven’t committed yet.

Public school teachers shouldn’t blog. It’s a bad plan. I even recommended that a friend blog, thinking in the back of my mind, “he’s totally gonna get fired.” (Sorry dude.) His fantastic blog, which I will probably reference from time to time, is right here. Not so long ago, a Pennsylvania high school teacher was fired for writing on a blog about her students. Granted, she said some things I might not, but I’ve had days like that too. One never knows.

In a time where teachers can get fired for internet speech, I have to hesitate putting myself out there. Jonathan Zimmerman wrote last week for the NY Times that teachers are more and more in danger. He also recapped some of the other things they couldn’t do in the past: smoke (don’t do that), dancing (can’t do that), failing to attend church (hey, I go to church!), or frequenting a place where alcohol is served (now I’ll have to move out of my house).

But I’m still writing this.

I must have some good reasons for doing what many would probably consider a stupid thing. And so I’ll put them down in writing, just so I don’t screw up.

1. I teach writing. I don’t write enough. I write lesson plans, grants, soccer practice plans, letters, emails. None of those are any good, at least in ways that I try to teach. Hell, my writing may not be very good in this blog either, but you know what they say about practice. (We’re talkin’ ‘bout practice!) So, in short, if I am asking my students to write, then I should write too. Otherwise, it becomes too much of the old “do as I say, not as I do.”
2. That said, I won’t let current students read this. I won’t link to it anywhere they can find it. It will take some extraordinary hard work on their part to find it, so then, they will have earned it.
3. Now, some of my readers will betray me. They will give the link over to the current students. I can’t stop that. Therefore, I’m not going to write derogatory or negative things about students on this blog. I have no reason to. As my good friend at the BlazeBlog writes, kids are dumb, and teachers should love and accept that. If they were already fully formed in the brain, I wouldn’t have a job. Why complain about them? They are not problems, they are potential in human form.
4. I’m not going to use my name, the name of my school, the names of my students, or the names of my colleagues. See, you can’t ration with irrational people, and I work for people who have shown recently that they can be quite irrational when it comes to things like this. If I rationally told these irrational people that the blog is harmless, they could still do terrible, irrational things to my career. So, I’ll operate in secrecy. Like Batman, only considerably more boring. So, Alfred then...(that’s a sobering realization)
5. I’m not going to reveal much personal stuff. I will talk about career stuff, education stuff, philosophy stuff, maybe even the occasional item from my past...but nothing current and personal. Every year, I have students ask about my love life. They want to know. And I say, you’ll know about my love life the week before I get married, because I’ll have to explain why I’m taking some time off. The same will go for this blog, because those resourceful little punks will find their way here.

There they are -- the ground rules. Anonymity, constructive thought, writing practice. But ultimately, I’ll do this because I think the sharing of ideas and opinions is a good thing. Can it go wrong? Sure. But so can anything. Americans have the right to free speech, and there’s enough drivel on the internet. Why shouldn’t I contribute to the intellectual corner of the beloved Interwebs? The worst thing for a democracy would be for educated people to cease to speak out because they feel silenced. So, despite the risks associated with blogging as a public school teacher, I will stop worrying...and love the blog.

Soccer: Alienating American sports fans since before America existed.

I was just recently pondering the question that all writers ponder: How could I decrease my American readership with just one sentence? It hit me like a well-driven ball to the top corner of an inviting goal.


I'm going to write about soccer.


Thanks for sticking with me, America. Listen, I know that you love sports with the flair and nostalgia of ancient Americana. I know you hate new things, like the centuries-old European obsession with "football." I know you hate sports where people run around for 90 minutes. If you want to see men running, you prefer the 10-second dashes that you only have to watch twice a decade when the Olympics come on. I know you don't understand this game with so many rules, and you prefer the simplicity of American football or the consistently enforced rules of the NBA.


But hear me out. Allow me to lay out a solid defense of soccer in America.


Complaint: Soccer is boring, and don't tell me it's because I don't understand.
Refutation: Soccer is like war. That's why the Europeans like it. They used to go to war all the freaking time. When that fell out of style, and they all started adopting the same currency, they needed to continue their bitter rivalries in other ways. Now they pour all of their hatred of their neighbours into various cup competitions. 


Now, you don't understand the tactics. Well, that's because they aren't drawn up. You hate hockey for the same reason. You think soccer is boring because you are unoriginal. Every movement on the soccer ball (or the hockey puck, actually) is unscripted and inventive. You deconstruct it afterward, not prior to. You can't predict it. That's what makes it fun to watch. Stop trying to understand it, because you are making it boring.


Complaint: Americans are bad at soccer.
Refutation: Well, yeah. We just got dismantled by Spain...and then Panama. At one point, we owned their Canal. Now they own us. But Americans are slowly carving out their own definition of soccer. It isn't that "boring" style of play that the Europeans play. It isn't the flopping and rolling around, faking injury to get calls. American soccer is cutthroat and adventurous. Americans sacrifice a solid defense to score for glory. They take very un-European risks. They have their own niche that reflects their identity. Let's look at footballing nations and see how their teams' football reflects their national identities:

1. Spain: almost like they are a tourist attraction themselves.
2. Netherlands: you don't know why they can't win the big one, until you realize that win or lose, they are still going home to a party.
3. France: cheese-eating surrender monkeys in any arena.
4. Italy: flamboyant and prone to surprising collapse under the wrong leadership.
5. Germany: terrifyingly efficient, and you always want to keep an eye on them.
6. United States: rebellious and can only play their own way.
7. England: pretentious and reveling in past glories, while doing nothing of importance in the meantime.
8. Brazil: they play like they are reminding you that they have Rio de Janiero, and you don't.
9. Czech Republic: classic overachievers in every possible arena. 
10. Australia: they aren't very good at war, and they're not very good at soccer. But they don't care. They live in Australia.

So, Americans aren't bad at soccer. We are bad at international soccer, because we don't play like the other guys. But if we did, we wouldn't be the United States. It would be like France getting along, Germany being sloppy, or England actually accomplishing anything in the modern era.


Complaint: The MLS was terrible 10 years ago, and it still is.
Refutation: And this is the big one, and part of why I'm writing this. The MLS just got good. It took them a long time. They wanted to put teams in all of the "big markets." Multiple teams in New York, Southern California, Florida, etc. Dumb. No one cared. They were over-saturated sports markets. Recently, however, those teams have been pared down and soccer in America has been rescued.


The Northwest is America's soccer mecca. I was out in Seattle a couple of years ago, when the Seattle Sounders opened their season in the MLS. I was in a sports bar on a "dead" sports night, where only baseball was happening in most cities. In Seattle, the Mariners don't actually play baseball, so they didn't even have that going for them. But in this sports bar, something else was on. It was soccer. And the people loved it. They cheered, yelled, misunderstood the rules, cheered anyway. They wore scarves, bright green shirts, acted like Europeans. It was great. They were crazies. If you don't believe me, watch a Seattle Sounders game: A Sounders crowd is rowdier than a Seahawks crowd.


So the MLS capitalized. They invited Portland and Vancouver into the fold. They brought in Toronto. The culture is alive and well, and the games are reflecting it. Don't believe me? Go watch some recent highlights. The talent, heart, drama, and suspense (even in highlights!) will erase your misconceptions about the beautiful game.


Now, the US is not going to win the World Cup. Get over it, Americans. We are the rebels who don't play right. But soccer isn't about the "three-peat," the "dynasty," or union bargaining and rules enforcement. It's about the narrative, and we're part of it now. The fact that we're starting to see some incredible soccer being played in our own backyard is just an added bonus.


So, the NBA and NHL have all but wrapped for the year. Baseball is on all the time. The NFL is an elitist mess. College sports won't be back until September. Next Saturday, make it Soccer Saturday. Watch the beautiful game and enjoy the narrative. If you are lucky, the narrative will be punctuated with one of the greatest goals you ever see. But you will never know until you try it out.

Do Work.

I was thinking about jobs today. How many of us have complained about our jobs? I have. As recently as last Friday, in fact. Why didn't I complain about it again on Monday? Well, I didn't have to go to work.


I didn't complain because it's summer, and summer is good. Summer doesn't mean I stop my work as a teacher. I still plan and read and prepare for the fall. But I do it at a much, much slower pace. Example: I decided to read a book about the rise of Western civilization on my deck at 10:30pm -- which is a time during the school year where I would almost certainly go to bed to wake up at 5. It was glorious.


I also coach, and I landed a pretty big coaching opportunity a few months ago, which makes my current job my dream job. Today marked my first day of summer sessions. So, as part of my job, I went out to a soccer field, played around a bit, taught some guys soccer fundamentals, watched and corrected and congratulated, and then I sent them home. I ordered a new set of goals for the field, and my day was done by noon.


And then I went home to take care of the world's longest list of errands. Because the school year is busy, I generally don't do anything at all for the maintenance of life during those months. I just put it off until June when I have the time to do the jobs right.


So, as I walked around this afternoon, taking care of some errands, I saw some men working a lot harder than me. They were laying down asphalt in 90 degree sun. Add to the 90 another 25 from their equipment, and they were literally simmering.


And yet there they were, doing a job that is necessary and important and taken for granted. In our fast-paced world of cars and cell phones and "emergencies," we forget how important asphalt actually is. Without asphalt, all of our conveniences would disappear. They would never get to us, and we would never get to them. Those men, working at a job many would never even apply for, were making our lives possible.


So why don't we celebrate these people anymore? Was there a time we did? This is good, honest, necessary work. It deserves celebration.


I submit that it is about how we teach our kids. We prioritize certain things: college, math, reading, high scores, tests, essays, etc. In school, we never talk about how great it is to do some honest work that isn't academic. Academia is fine, but it's not for everyone. 


Balancing a checkbook and planning for retirement and babies is for everyone, so math can stay. Reading and writing like a professional in a communication-driven world is for everyone, so English can stay. You'd better know more about American history than Sarah Palin, so history should stay. And you should probably know something about your body and chemicals, so science should stay. These important subjects, taught in schools, have a place in our lives.


But we shouldn't call these things the pinnacle. We shouldn't usher everyone out of the high school door to college, because academia is only one small fraction of what is possible out of life -- and it's not for everyone. If it was, the world would look bizarre. No one would DO anything. It would be a bunch of over-educated people postulating about why they aren't able to drive on the roads they used to have back when people did "that sort of work."


So, to all of the high schools dismissing wood shop, mechanics education, ag programs, and the other "non-academic," non-tested subjects: stop. You are going to kill our way of life. You are going to make the people who do those jobs feel like they missed the mark. They didn't. They do more in a day than I do (at least in June). Maybe we don't have to celebrate them every day, but we should dignify the importance of the work, and we should prepare good people to do it well.