Thoughts from atop an AV cart.

How I got on top of the AV cart on the third floor of my school is largely irrelevant.  It's really about the why.  The fact that I had the cart, that it was fourth period on a lovely June day and that the hall was relatively empty was simply fortuitous.  All that was required was that I lean on the cart, take two or three good pushes with my right leg and hop right on up.  I may have yelled a little "yippeee"  as I cruised by the open doors of the classrooms of the third floor and really only came close to hitting one unfortunate student who was making her way to the bathroom in the general vicinity of my now AV scooter.

Now, to the why.  You, my faithful reader of these past few months, may be correct in your speculation as to why I was riding an AV cart.  If you guessed that I was overcome with the sheer joy of June, you would be partially right.  Some of you, who read my blog out of a sense of duty because you work with me or you're married to me, may think I was riding the cart, because I have fewer than four weeks left to work and could not contain myself.  You would be close to correct.  And those of you who have read through these blogs, hoping that I can make some sense of public education for you, may speculate that I was perched atop the cart as a symbol of my defiance to a system run amok.  You too would have some claim to being right.

But if I am being completely honest, and what else is a blog for other than to be honest and self-centred at the same time, I really didn't know why I was on top of that AV cart until I listened to a seminar from one of my students shortly after riding into the classroom on said cart.

In her seminar on the novel No Great Mischief, the student pointed to the fact that the fulfilled characters in the novel feel a sense of mastery of their work and a sense of community and meaning from it.  I think that I have been lucky to feel a great sense of community and meaning in my work and maybe, I will let my students decide, a certain amount of mastery.

In No Great Mischief, the matriarch of the MacDonald family asks her grandson, "Do you sing at work? We use to sing at work."  He is unfulfilled and replies "no".

If asked the same question I would reply "no" as well but I might add "have you ever ridden an AV cart?"