Teaching and life . . .

Last Tuesday, while watching The Social Network at the Nickelodeon in Portland, my car was broken into. As I pulled up to the spot my little black Yaris was in, a guy asked me if this was my car and proceeded to tell me that someone had broken the driver's window and that the police had been there and left a note. I flew to the window where a few blueish bits of glass were still hanging on to the door and saw that my large LL Bean school bag, which had been perched, wide open, on the passenger seat just a few hours earlier, was gone. Shock, panic, anger. Hot tears, shaking hands, and for what? My school bag. People have mentioned the sense of being violated, the anger at being the victim of a crime, the loss of the feeling of safety that one should have in their hometown. To be perfectly honest, none of those things really bothered me. It was the fact that the punks who stole my school bag, save for my laptop, got nothing that was in any way valuable to them but got all of my favorite middle level books and magazines, notebooks on curriculum, leadership folders, binders filled with SBR work, and my favorite pink and purple Uniball pens. Not to mention all of the countless hours of work that lived on my laptop (thankfully much has been recovered from last year's back-ups, shared Noteshares, and emailed work).

Seriously, all of the other junk about crime, safety, violation, I don't care. I had my truck, filled with all of my possessions as I was in the process of moving from Maine to Washington State to go to school, stolen nine years ago. It sucked! But, I had insurance and they thieves eventually dumped my truck and many of my non-valuable things. I started over and really didn't miss my "stuff". In fact, it gave me the chance to get a new snowboard and other ski gear and a new stereo for my car.

This was different. None of the stuff stolen this time was really replaceable. I got a new laptop the next day. I'll get a new school bag (although I did really like that bag), and even the pens are easy to find at Staples. Ed has offered to help me find more books and I know I'll fill new notebooks with notes about curriculum, SBR, and leadership. But, I'll be honest, I've felt kind of lost in the classroom since last Wednesday. It is totally amazing that so much of me as a teacher was attached to the work I did outside of the classroom reflecting, reading, researching, and learning how to be a good teacher. Maybe I'm just in a funk. Maybe the whole thing did affect me in a deeper way. Or maybe I just had everything all planned out in that bag and now, that bag is at the bottom of a dumpster soon to be incinerated or buried in a landfill. It would almost make me feel better to see some kid downtown lugging that bag to the library. Then at least I know that something in that bag was valuable to someone!