I Check in With Myself, Offer Teaching Advice and Rail About Words

Is this next for me?

Time to check in with me.

How’ve I been?

In searching for a one-word answer I have come up with the following: okay.

On the one hand there’s the depression which, as the kids would say, totally sucks. On the other hand there’s the usual: good physical health, family, writing and teaching. So it’s kind of a wash. I strung together three days without depression recently and was impressed by how good it can feel to be alive. Then the depression returned like an invading army, sacking and pillaging my brain leaving a wasteland of pain and angst. I wondered if it were possible to feel good again. 

It’s been established that I’m medication-resistant and more recently I’ve learned that transcranial magnetic stimulation wears off after a few months. I don’t know what’s next. I know some people have had success with psychedelics and indeed I read a book about it by Michael Pollan called How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. But as I suffer acute panic syndrome I’m evidently not a candidate for such treatment. I’ve been looking into returning to therapy but have little optimism that it’ll make a wit of difference. So I’m in a kind of purgatory.

Depression is always aggravated by thoughts of death. Mine is somewhere down the road and I can’t wrap my mind around. A total cessation of being seems a cruel way to end one’s existence. I’d like to know about an after life or reincarnation but am not gullible enough to believe the tall tales many religions peddle. I suppose the wise thing to do is to accept the inevitable and prepare for it -- but that still seems so gloomy.

I’ve had great success recently with living in the moment. Much pain comes from looking back on past mistakes and wrong roads taken. A little bit of reflection is good for learning from mistakes just as happy memories can give one a shot of dopamine. But dwelling on ii only is not only fruitless but a contributor to depression. Besides it’s not like I’m living alone in squalor suffering major ailments. I’ve done all right and have been extraordinarily lucky.

Teaching has helped. For one thing the depression is forgotten once class starts and in most cases continues to stay away until an hour or so after the teaching day is done. Like most people I enjoy feeling productive. I also enjoy helping my chargers learn the lingo. I further enjoy those bi-weekly paychecks. One of the aspects of teaching I enjoy is creating lessons and I’ve grown to love making tests, particularly grammar exams. I’m unabashed in saying I’m good at both.

Teaching advice: adjust your lessons on the fly according to the needs of the students. Don’t stick rigidly to what you had prepared if students are struggling with a concept or if you note their failure to understand something along the edges of what you were discussing. Also if something is clearly too easy for them, move along, you don’t want risk boring them. Call audibles, adjust, be flexible.

There’s an accrediting organization that wants to see a lesson plan before they observe a class and they expect the teacher to be doing whatever is on the lesson plan. These are people who know nothing about teaching. A classroom is not an assembly line. It is an organic, living entity which changes as and when needed. That’s part of the excitement of a classroom experience, every day, every class is different, a good teacher knows that and not only adjusts accordingly but is part of the excitement; she or he responds to the students’ needs which is the great trick and fun of teaching.

So I know a little about that.

I read that San Francisco city offices are going to remove the word chief from job titles. You can guess why. Even I think this is ridiculous. I swear some people are looking for ways to be offended. But go ahead let’s continuing eliminating words, terms and idioms, parse English down to the bare bones. We’re also going to need to ban a lot of movies, books, plays and TV shows. The worst thing that can happen in the modern world is for someone to be “offended.” It’s enough to aggravate my depression.

But I don’t dwell on the word police. I’m more concerned with real abusive language and the intent behind it and the damage done. I’ve recently read of coaches and directors verbally abusing young athletes, dancers and actors. This is intolerable. A certain toughness can be in order but one can be stern without causing trauma. We should be banning bullies from any position in which they supervise young people. Period.

That’s it folks. Another blog post. Another recitation of my woes and joys. It’s where I’m at, dudes.