Travelblogue: Napa Conference - Mid-way...

Work, or more specifically, my district's 18 hour per year professional development requirement, brings me to Napa, California this week. The conference, for the larger network to which my school belongs, has been somewhat reinvigorating thus far. In the assorted sessions I've attended I've accomplished some valuable things, but more than anything I've become supremely frustrated through my interactions with the teachers from those schools within the network that are located in affluent (white) regions - these folk seem to be utterly ignorant and/or unconcerned of/for the differing needs of those of us dealing with drastically different demographics. Whereas they deal with affluent, white and south-Asian students with extreme performance expectations and demanding parents (all of which certainly do present some unique and valid challenges), I deal with predominantly poor, minority and/or immigrant students. On any given day, I deal with students having at least seven different native languages. The ability of the teachers from the more affluent schools to hijack any session they attend and curb any potential progress with their stubborn ingorance/indifference is frustrating. But I have been able to to channel my frustration into a positive dialog with one of the network mentors regarding some strategies to alleviate this situation and thus improve network service for all schools in the network and to more effectively advocate for what exactly it is we do in these schools. Two weeks ago, an experiance similar to what I have experienced over the past two days would have left me frothing at the mouth; that I have reacted as I have is a sign of significant healing on my part, and I am glad to recognize that - this vacation has been good for something, at least... Sorry for all the ambiguousness for all those who don't know me well enough to figure all this out, but I do want to protect what anonymity I do have. To some degree...

Anyway, the true value of the conference has been, to me, the development of of an improved relationship with my co-workers. Between evening dinners, late night talking/drinking sessions in the courtyard, and the like, I've gotten to know my co-workers even better than I did before, and repair a bit of the damage that Meatgrinder May did to our relationships. This has also been an opportunity to meet our new hires, one of whom I learned attended my alma mater, UCSC, and even resided at Porter College, as I did, though he in its glory days of the early 90s. The other new hire is, like me, a homebrewer, and we have already had lengthy talks on the subject. And last night, we all caravaned down to San Francisco to watch a Giants game, which I enjoyed despite my strong antipathy towards professional sports... In person, the spectacle is something to behold, and I find the entire event to be interesting as an anthropoloigical/ethnographic subject if nothing else... Regardless, it was a pretty damn cool thing to do with my staff, and on the principal's dime at that.

Now, when I was leaving the game - slightly before the end of the game but after it was certain the Giants were going to win - I saw this:

If you can't make it out - apologies for the crap camera-phone pics, I'll buy a real digicam sometime soon, I swear - that's a man in a Batman suit in a kayak. He was in the waters just behind the back fence of the ball park, behind right field, where some home-run balls occasionally go. There were about four other kayakers out there with him, hoping to recover any balls that should make their way over the fence and into the Bay during that particular game. They, however, didn't have attire that was nearly as interesting as the Batman suit. Calculated weirdness, surely, but it brightened my day nonetheless...

As of now, I have two days left in this conference. I hope to go through them being a little more aggressive, advocating for my school and the demographic with which it deals, as well as for the model in general. The time should be productive... And following the close of the conference, I depart to pick up James, then head up to the Homeland for a trip to the Lava Beds National Monument to camp, drink, cook food over an open fire, stay up late talking and philosophizing, and spend hours upon hours hiking/crawling/climbing through things like this:It should be good...

But when that is all over, when I return to the Sacramento Sprawl, I really need to re-focus my energies and try to get back to what I thought I was going to back to be back when I was young & idealistic (to think, then I thought I was old and grizzled...) I need to pull out a stack of canvasses and and do some freakin' painting. I need to go back to that zen-like state I achive when performing meticulous and/or exuberant creative tasks, and reside in it. I need to get back to that point, so close yet so distant, where I would read Kafka and seek jubilant inebriation with equal vigor. What has lead me to this resounding conclusion may, perhaps, be the subject of a future post. Nevertheless, know now that the strange and seemingly minor events of tonight have severely altered my perspective on a multitude of things, and should - assuming I don't get distracted and derailed in the intervening time - provide a focus and frame for my energies so that I may "correct" my life to some degree. "Revelation" might be an appropriate term. So may "epiphany." But I don't think either of those quite nail it. Whatever the case, I find I am chilled. And motivated. And confident. And yearning. And hopeful, and perhaps even comfortably certain. I think the Summer is finally sinking in, and this is, to be terribly cliche, "Me" coming back. Now let's just make sure I'm here to stay...