Another wild, wild weather day in Maine. Flash-flood warning alarms blaring from our phones, crazy downpours, an astronomic high tide, the Bayside neighborhood and the docks under water, highway exits closed entirely because of water levels . . . The coast is a mess. 

I'm relieved we live on a hill so the torrents of rain and snowmelt could flow away from our houses and down the street. Nonetheless, water still trickled in through basement window frames and the foundation, and the roof leak is a major concern. But thank goodness for nice guys: this morning our chimney sweep will stop by, with his extra-long ladder and some roof tar, to patch up the situation around the chimney. Here's hoping that does the trick.

After a snowstorm and two winter hurricanes in single week, I am longing for a stretch of long dull chilly days. Plain old January: what a restful idea.

***

As the storm raged yesterday, I spent much of it reading scripts and talking back and forth with my kid. Pretty quickly P and I were able to put together the final packet for our class and frame out our writing prompts. It's been fun to work with him on this backstage planning. He's a teaching natural, I think--really good instincts about experiential approaches, awareness of how his own personality might affect the classroom climate, an eagerness to ask questions about ways to structure lessons, share information, and so on. For teaching artists, it's a good way to learn. I never went to education college: everything I've gleaned about teaching has come from watching how other teachers behave (both those I admire and those I don't) and how students react to teachers, materials, and each other.

I work in a discipline that can be a hard sell in schools. As a general rule, administrators and teachers are suspicious of poetry, and they transmit that uneasiness to students. Everyone is prepared to hate what I'm bringing to them. Moreover, certain teachers--often those who wield departmental power, control the AP or honors programs, or otherwise cultivate an elitist approach to literature--see me as a threat: someone who will show them up in front of the kids. It's a drag.

So to be an effective teaching artist, I've had to learn to ignore the shadows in the room; to build lessons that immediately tap into student thought and experiment; to use my cheerful, earnest, scattershot persona as a tool. It's hard work, but it's interesting work, and it's endlessly challenging.