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** #1153012 Not An Image **   The official Newspaper of the A-1 Writing Academy  Faculty Frontiers is a regularly included section of "The Academy News", provided to, for, and by our faculty members. This page will offer tips, suggestions, solutions, or perhaps just a touch of inspiration, motivation, or even exasperation within each issue! We hope this premiere issue of "Faculty Focus" will provide you with something every great educator needs to have in abundant supply. Our guest columnist is our own Budroe is Blessed!   who, under duress, agreed to provide one more important writing feature for our Premiere Issue of "The Academy News". We hope you will enjoy this feature of ""The Academy News". September 1, 2007 "Beginning: To Matter!" The purpose of this page in your A-1 Newspaper is for the faculty of the Academy to come together and spend some time thinking about something other than the craft of writing: the art of teaching. Here, reporters of your own faculty, as well as guest educators, or pedagogical specialists (now, you students may have to LIU on that one!), or perhaps even a Lawyer or Doctor, or Minister or Psychologist--any of these folks might make a stop by this page to help the faculty of the Academy as they begin a new term, and a new year, and a new way of practicing the art of education. I hope it will be crowded here. I hope this page will be filled with questions, and comments; discussions and assignments that the professionals of the Academy can use to THEIR educational benefit. That is what I hope. We will just have to see if this page matters, won't we? After all, what does it matter, really? The Academy is NOT some high-brow Ivy League School of ancient history, now is it? I mean, if we look all the way back to the ancient beginnings of the Academy, we cannot travel further than April 9, 2005. That is neither ancient nor history! We do not have a steeped tradition spreading across decades, or centuries. No sitting Presidents have graduated from our hallowed halls. We don't even HAVE halls, hallowed or otherwise. The closest thing we ever come to around here is a photograph of a building. So, let's not take ourselves too seriously here, okay? Let's just take a breath, and try to see if any of this truly matters. If we decide it does, we should try to figure out why. If we decide that it really does not matter, then class is dismissed. No homework, and the exam is "Open Book"! We'll have an extended recess for the remainder of the day! You will most probably not like to hear this, but it most likely really does not matter, you know. "SIT DOWN, CLAASSSS!"  Just think about it for a moment, and you will surely understand and agree with me that what we do here as faculty and staff, administration and support--really does not matter so very much--to anyone. How are you feeling right now? Wanna argue? Your feelings a mite hurt, are they? Anger startin' ta turn yer face plumb red, now is it? Want to give the "big shot" a piece of your mind?? Well, fine. Let 'er rip. Remember how you are feeling as you read these words when you have to completely revise an entire lesson because of a bad reference link. Then, what YOU think will begin to matter. Call this moment to mind while you are trying desperately to find an additional hour to wade through the assignments of your students this week--while your newborn screams for attention. Yes, then it might begin to matter. If you are feeling so completely put upon now, try to remember this feeling when that student laughing at these words right now comes to you in open class time, or in a Discussion Topic, or even in an email and tells you that they just don't have what it takes to succeed in your course this term. Then, in that moment, what you feel as you read these words might, indeed, begin to matter. Or, when you are so absolutely tired your eyes cannot focus; when you are so ill you cannot punctuate a sentence without becoming violently ill; when the requirements of the Academy have you so worn down that you think that YOU just don't have what it takes to succeed in your course this term--then you had better remember this feeling. In that time it WILL truly matter. Not only will it truly matter: how you feel about it, but what you DO about it. When, twelve chaotic, desperate, lonely, screaming-fit weeks after it begins, you suddenly find yourself trying to figure out WHY you are submitting Honors Graduate Requests--yes, then it will matter. As you fight the tears in the realization this term is almost complete, you will know how much all this matters. It will begin to matter every time you are creating new knowledge. It will begin to matter when "just one more" is just not enough. What you feel when someone tells you that what you do, or how you do it, or even WHY you do it just does not matter--matters much. That is not the mark of an experienced professional educator. That is not the mark of a 4, or 6, or even 12-year College Graduate being ridiculed by the less-informed. When what you feel when someone (or even yourself) tells you that it really doesn't matter, that it's not significant, or important, or worthy of the very best you could possibly muster for "just one more"...remember the first time you read these words here. Because, my friends, that is when it matters to the heart of a teacher! Remember how it felt. Remember how red your face got as you read what I said earlier. "Just think about it for a moment, and you will surely understand and agree with me that what we do here as faculty and staff, administration and support--really does not matter so very much--to anyone." Please. Please remember. Because, when you DO remember, that is when it begins to matter very, very much. It will matter to you in that moment when you have to, somehow, find one more reason to give a rip about teaching at this Academy. It will matter in a very real way when you have to face one more assignment tonight. It will matter when you have to figure out, for the fourth time, a DIFFERENT way for {User:ijustdontgetit} to understand the learning point for this lesson. When it begins to matter in these moments, my friends; that is when it will truly matter in the lives of your students. Your unwillingness to relent is directly relational to your students' determination to succeed. That is when what we do begins to matter. When your student does work that is a few light-years ahead of what either of you ever believed possible (and do we have stories about this, or do we have STORIES about this??) THEN it will most certainly matter. When you are angry because you are limited in the Honors Distinctions you can award your student? Yes, THEN it does truly matter.  It never really begins to matter until you decide it does. Not to yourself, not to your student, and not to the Academy or the WDC community. Does our work HAVE to be so hard? Yes. Period. Get over it. Get on with it. If it were easy, anyone could do it, and everyone would be doing it. Look around, faculty. See my point? Does what you do really matter? I don't know. That's entirely up to you. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. We've just spent more than two entire months re-designing our Academy. We've had some casualties along that journey. we've also met some terrific new friends. Before December 31 of this year (my Birthday, as it happens: 1155PM) is over, I fully believe we will have 1,000 students enrolled. That is our maximum capacity at this point. Yeah, so what? It's just a number. It doesn't really matter, does it? Make it matter, my friends. When it begins to matter, then everything becomes so much simpler. Now, please note, I did NOT say easier. We must hone our teaching skills. We have to keep up with the crazy dude in Admin. (Or at least try to keep him within butterfly net- range!) We have to re-work, re-vamp, and re-evaluate our lessons, and our Discussion Topics, and our assignments, and our students, and...ourselves--every time we approach this Academy.As we begin this new and grand adventure into the Quarter-Semester system at the A-1 Writing Academy, let's just agree on one, simple thing. Okay? If we can agree to this one point, I can declare to you our journey this year will be very easy. Any time we wonder if it matters, let's just agree that it matters very, very much. Seek help. Find understanding. Research your topic until you ARE the Master. Make it matter for your students. Let your students make it matter for you! I am so looking forward to this Term, and this new Academy Year. It has been such a pleasure, and a privilege to come to know you as faculty, staff, colleagues and friends. I am so grateful to be here, and so very honored to be your Administrator. Thank you for working these past days and weeks under such brutal conditions. You have only 27 days now until we begin again. Let it matter now. I'll see you in the classroom! Good luck on your journey. Let's have a legendary year! My Very Best Wishes, Bud Administrator A-1 Writing Academy Proudly presented by ** #1294451 Not An Image ** Return to the Front Page here:The Academy News
© Copyright 2007 Budroe is Blessed! (UN: kybudman at Writing.Com).
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