Teachers are Fools! We Should Be In School Today

Today, of all days, teachers and librarians should be in school. But alas, so many of us are out on compulsary Spring Break.

This morning, I have been happily inundated with the most interesting of news, blogs, and tweets, and it is not even 11:00 a.m. Who knew how many ground breaking stories could be unleashed in one day? Much of this news directly relates to teens and their interests. Just think of all the reading, witing, and conversing that would be going on today behind those sacred institutional walls, if only... In less than an hour, I was privilaged to be one of the first (million) people on the pulling end of pushed updates on YA authors, Comics, Video Games, Google Innovations, etc...

For example:

Author Neil Gaiman is in danger of being stripped of his Newbery for The Graveyard Book - did you hear? http://tinyurl.com/conu44

Marvel Comics signs fresh, young, talent. Anyone can aspire to be a Marvel comic artist! - http://is.gd/q2na

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 developers just added a new butt-kicking character! This babe is none other than Aunt May. Could this be the beginning of the end for media discrimination of the elderly! - http://is.gd/q5hN

Google unleashes CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity). An online social being that actually learns, you know, like artificial intelligence. And is it ever cute! - http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/

YA educators are missing the academic boat load today for sure. Of course we would have to deal with multiple requests for left handed pens, desks and chairs turned upside down and moved about, permanent marker in exchange for dry erase, and books all backwards on the shelves. I, for one, truly believe the pedagogical benefits of teaching on such a great day in history would outweigh these trivial annoyances.

We are YA educators darn it! We should be engaging our student, not lazying around, sipping coffee, contemplating a shower, or deciding for or against wearing our pj's all day. Today is a missed opportunity to teach, a professional crisis.

Are you with me? Then lets start a movement. No Spring Break on April 1st Act of 2009. Go to this form letter where you can write your congress person asking them to bring this bill before the general assembly. Let's put our students education first people!