Power in Weakness

In that moment, I've never wished more that I had paid attention in high school Spanish. Because no one in the whole room spoke English. And I was supposed to teach them.     High school Spanish...was kind of a joke to me. To the constant annoyance of my teachers, I persisted in saying every Spanish word as dry, white, and gringo-y as possible and barely put in enough effort to pass. What I did expend effort on, however, was learning Spanish cuss words and inappropriate phrases, which I even slipped into class presentations from time to time. So even though I was shocked when my teacher finally kicked me and my friend Derek out of her class halfway through my senior year, probably no one else was. We had it coming.     Fast forward x number of years, all the way to last Friday. I took a sub job for a "Spanish" class. No big deal--I've subbed for dozens of high school Spanish classes. They're full of kids that are mostly like I was (perhaps slightly more...

One of the benefits of being in a different classroom almost every weekday is being exposed to different teaching strategies, classroom atmospheres...and classic books that I don't own!    In an English classroom 4 weeks ago I pressed "play" on Audible.com's And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie in a class full of freshmen in high school. It was soon clear that, while none of the students appeared especially interested, one substitute teacher was raptured into the intriguing storyline so much that he had to finish the book himself over the course of the next 3 days. I don't usually read crime novels, but this book (boldly endorsed as "the world's most beloved mystery novel" on the back cover) was so compelling that I devoured it as fast as possible, bringing it to an eerie conclusion throughout Halloween week.     Fast forward 2 weeks later and once again I found myself flipping through another English teacher's copy of Brave New World...