Slacking

En lieu of actually working, I surf the Internets and daydream while staring out the window at the police station and parking garages behind our building. Soon I move offices and pick up a lovelier view (of the University), but I will also have an office mate for the first time since I quit teaching.

Eh, who cares? My work habits, such as they are, will not change.

I need to compose an exercise teaching sixth graders compare and contrast skills. Typically such exercises are no problem. Today, however, I suffer curriculum writing block. I was cranking out the curricula before a morning meeting about cooperative learning philosophy and the underpinning research behind its four separate schools of thought, set up itself as a cooperative learning exercise wherein we broke into small groups and taught each other material in order to reinforce our recall. Any creativity or impulse to labor was drained during that exercise.

I work with people for whom Piaget, Vygotsky, Dewey, and Slavin are equivalent to the writers of the four canonical gospels. The various works of these venerated sages are quoted and exegesized on dry erase boards resembling Talmudic texts. I amused myself making assumptions about the political leanings amongst proponents of the various schools of thought: the Social Darwinist Motivational Perspective, the Leninist Social Cohesion Perspective, etc.

Perhaps a coffee will get me back on track.