Humphrey's Response

Backward: The past year? There's a lot to say. I will come back to it at another time, before next Tuesday. Main thing: this class, teaching Honors, will stand out to me. I am proud that I didn't once lose my temper and scream at any of my classes; I will change the way I handle my students next year. I will probably be changing some curriculum too, but I can't think about that now. I'm proud of what I have done in my regular life, though I've spent a little too much time on Facebook.

Forward: I'm looking forward to having Juniors again (Though only one class, and not Honors.), and not teaching only Sophomores. I'm hopeful that my students will be at least as good as the good ones this year, and better than the bad ones. I intend not to allow my former students to repeat the class with me, because that really didn't work out this past year. I'm hopeful that our new principal will do a good job. I fear the budget crud will get worse. I'm going to finish my book this summer.


Upward: If I could make any wish, I would wish for a million dollars. My wife and I deserve to live as we want to live, rather than as society forces us to.

Twirling:
This isn;t entirely fair because I started thinking about this at school, and I kept thinking Don't stop! Dont stop! and that makde me think of Journey, and so for the last half hour IO've been singing "Don't stop believing" in my head, over and over again, since I only know a couple of lines. I have found that those are the songs that get stuck in my head the worst, those ones that hacve catchy hooks and that I ojnly know a few lyrics from, because they don't ever resolve and reach the ending, so they keep cycling around and aroun d because I don;t know the ending. This is why I tend to try to listen to my favorite songs over and over until I know them by heart, because then I can justs ing them and not worry about them getting stukc going {"I'm just a smalltown boy . . . living in the " I don't even know the rest of the lyrics. Screw it. I don't actually want to talk about Journey, ebcaue this is not what I think of as a good band. I think the singer had an excellent voice, and I wish I could sing that well, but otherwise they were njoth8ihg but a cheap 80's schlockfest and who wants that? Dogs are barking outside my house right now; makes me think of the comic Brian Regan who talks about barking dogs as saying "HEY!HEY!HETY!HEY! opver and over again, because really, what have dogs got to saty? Well, if you ask my wife and I, our dog has quite a lot to say, because we talk for him. Tghat's right, we talk for our dog. It's fun. I used to do it with my stuffed animals, too. Thart's right, I had stuffed animals. I still sdo/ Want to make somethihng of it:? Y3eah, I did't think sio. MAn, this not editing part is hard; Ikeep teictching that's twitching over towards the delete/backspace key, since I am(obviously) not a very clean typiost. I can type pretty fast, though, and the greqt part is, when I have something IO definitely, clearly, strongly want to say, I not only type a mile a minute, I type clean. It is one of the reasons I like argunig on line so much, because that's when it is most likely to happen: when I get in the zone in an argument. I really hope that you all learned something this year. I hope this hasn;'t just been a waste of time. I won't necessarily feel guilty, because not everybody can learn all tghe time, and lord knows I dind;t klearn a whole lot from my high school english teachers, but still. I don't want you to reassure me, I;mn not fishing for compliments, I just wanted to say that: I hope you learned this year in this class. That's five minutes, but I'm not going to end with "Peacve outm," even though that's what I thought of.

May the best of your past be the worst of your future, and may the road ever rise up to meet your steps.