Know the Teacher Left Behind

Cass Technical High, the esteemed Detroit magnet school with the fourth largest enrollment in the state, can now pad its preeminence with its first State of Michigan Class A Basketball title. The well-coached, well-balanced, high-energy team simply wore down Muskegon High 78-63 on a cold, rainy Saturday, March 25, 2023 inside a noisy Michigan State University Breslin Center. Go Technicians! (Yes, that’s their mascot-free nickname).

When my weathered weather vane, bombastic barometer and silent sounding balloons still signify love, hate and before, When the fallible forecast unthaws tears trapped under ice, declares buttons not yet undone and makeshift shelters to explore, We will share blanket expressions, ceremoniously, like thrown rice, in summer fulminology, as I calculate the orbit around your sensuous sun.

“Nobody ever trained for this; we were just teachers doing what we had to do every day.” — Columbine Faculty, from The Columbine Wall of Healing Memorial So where to begin about assault and battery — and worse — in America’s schools? Where do we go a month after the February 13, 2023 indiscriminate slaughter of three students with five others wounded at Michigan State University, my undergraduate alma mater?

“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” ― Howard Zinn “You’re only as good as your record.” — Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedys In August of 1999, I abruptly quit playing amateur baseball (hardball, not softball), quit playing drums in any band, quit playing piano as a songwriter, quit eating fast food and perhaps most importantly, just quit playing around. For good. Or at least until I start collecting Social Security and a union-secured pension.

Teachers naturally enjoy recalling students who supply fairly spectacular memories, who help remind us why we chose this strange profession. Some may leap to social media to post a rare artifact of appreciation, or share a moment of unexpected hilarity. Who can blame us? Every September marks an inaugural class procedure known as the Personal Student Inventory. The annual ritual asks teenagers to respond to a series of questions in one of many variable attempts at getting to know them.

Dear Faithful Reader, After five months of prose on pedagogy, poetry, film reviews, alternative politics, photos and play scene excerpts, a quick review: I truly appreciate all your reads and reactions, especially the personal emails or posted remarks. You actually help keep me inspired to keep writing.

Our band could be your life Real names'd be proof Me and Mike Watt, we played for years Punk rock changed our lives. —D. Boon, “History Lesson, Part II” by the Minutemen HISTORY LESSON PART 1 Birmingham, Michigan, six miles north of Detroit, remains my ancestral hometown. Founded in 1864, two months before a comparatively minor Civil War incursion in Virginia, the Battle of Yellow Tavern, where the 5th Michigan Calvary killed a famous Confederate Major General, J.E.B. Stuart.

Teacher Secret #48: We do not gather around water coolers, hallway drinking fountains or teacher lounge vending machines. We briefly congregate around the designated printer room, often running out of paper or desperately trying to clear a jammed feed before the bell to class rings. CAST (Not Real Names): MR. TERN. Dedicated aging veteran, subtly revealing long developed coping skills of minimally meeting administrative requirements, with maximum focus on necessary classroom reforms. MS. REE.

Detroit lost a unique anarchist prankster, mechanical genius, underground musician and reluctant sage, Linus J. O’Leary, after a two month battle with multiple complications from a brain aneurysm on February 25, 2015. He was 58.

How do some motion pictures both entertain and enlighten? How might they elicit both personal memories and select historical events? What if you spent an entire year where you viewed one film a day? . . . Here’s another excerpt from By William R. Boyer #309 (FEBRUARY 28) Edge of the City (Martin Ritt, 1957) Trailblazer Sidney Poitier introducing mainstream audiences to anti-racist prototype.