Losing My Faculties Part One

Okay, I am not going to lie...I hate when people can do things better than I can. But there is a good reason that Brendan Halpin is published and has a fancy website, and I am not and do not.

In Chapter 6, Halpin recounts a story from his student teaching days in which the master teacher, Mr. Stevens, frets about not being able to reproduce the great classroom experience that just happened. Mr. Stevens believes that because teaching is a profession, the results must be reproducable. Halpin understands this but also recognizes that very often things just click and we have little control over that.
I am amazed at how I can teach the same lesson plan with two different periods and have vastly different success. A discussion thread that bored my first period seniors enthralls my sixth period seniors. It doesn't make sense. I ask the same questions, point to the same text, but the two classes react differently.

In Chapter 7, he recalls walking his paperwork into the Central Office and watching the secretary stamp it, just to be certain it doesn't get lost. He never gets a call back.
My Central Office "never received" an important form that would have bumped me up a year on the pay scale--convenient.

So far, Halpin's casual and irreverant style fits perfectly with the tone my story would be told in. I feel like this book is going to work out nicely for me.