The teacher's back! Yay! All of us need his structure and that feeling of purpose that comes with it. He's younger than my younger child and so much older than the high school kids. Luckily I stopped aging when I gave birth for the first time.

The sophomores, here in this rural school where everyone is Indian, white or maybe Mexican, did not like Amiri Baraka's "Bang, Bang, Outishly (for Monk.)" How is this poetry? They said. I wouldn't download it for free, they said. I'd played them a little Thelonious Monk beforehand and that didn't seem to register - the connection between the music and the poem. Such a different response than from an urban classroom. Is this relevant? I don't know. I do know these kids are very afraid of what they don't know or understand, that is not already in their world. Maybe part of it? I played the Monk quietly through the period while we wrote poems - today we wrote "Where I'm From" poems inspired by last year's poems from our book THE NEWS FROM CHILOQUIN and a little bit by Georgia Ella Lyons' poem which had started those last year poems. I'm trying to heavily insert the reality of the book into proceedings. Thursday will be revision day.

I forgot there is break after second period and walked out of the class when the bell rang since the teacher had left, saying something about coming back. I didn't realize the break mistake until I was driving towards, nearly to, the library where I now sit typing instead of talking about syllabi development or going to meet with the principal to see if we can take the seniors off on an overnight trip to Bend. HA! No issues there. None. Zip zilch, cannot think of a way things could tip off the high dive into the deep end there.