Keeping Calm and Pumping Up The Jam with Technotronic's Life-Saving Dance-Party To Kick-Off A Graduate Class

It was year's ago when 1st period English required the utmost sacrifice of my a.m. teaching and when I learned there's only one way to get things going...

...A DANCE PARTY...

so, I would buy glow-sticks and at 8 a.m. in the morning, we'd break them, listening to music, and throw a rave in the darkened classroom of my 301 classroom.

Anything to wake us up, to have joy, and to find a way to welcome another day in the craziness of K-12 teaching.

Fast forward, and it is 2020. Nothing in my imagination could prepare me for any of this, and with another 14-hour day of online teaching, I simply sought a song that used to make me bop my head as a fledgling educator. So, first slide in tonight's presentation, I channeled an ol' Brown School jam. We danced until we were ready to talk.

It worked. We pumped up the jam.

In truth, my day began with grading, then planning, then meeting, then meeting, then a NCTE gathering with Detra Price and Matt de la Peña, followed by a Facebook gathering with Kylne Beers and Kwame Alexander, followed by a 2-hour graduate course, which included the dance party.

By 9 p.m., I was simply fried and wanted to go to bed (thankful to leftovers from weekend cooking). I answered an email from my cousin, hoping it will make magic happened, and WOLA! I also fielded the acceptances for NCTE presentations with my CWP-Fairfield colleagues (our crew had 10 accepted, total. That's amazing). We had great luck with our presentations, but the one, THE ONE, that we thought was an absolute no-brainer and shoe-in, was the only one we had rejected. I'm okay with this, but I'm curious as to what was factored-in to say, "nope,' as decisions were made.

Okay, Wednesday. It's the middle of the week and I'm trying to process, minute by minute, what I should. I don't have a lot of time to think about it, but when I do, I'm trying to be strategic as I can.

In truth, I'm actually thinking to generations down the road, so that they can make this a better world than what it's been for a while. I'm hoping for the next generations and what they are able to accomplish. In them, I invest. That is why it's so important to have dance parties. Please pump up the jam as soon as you can.