About a half hour before 11:00 a.m, I was talking to one of my classmates.  He lamented about the fact that he had to go to Fort Hood over the weekend since he was in the reserves.

Then, around six in the afternoon, I heard about the Fort Hood shooting.  According to the news, it happened about 1:30, just two hours before that conversation. 

I'm not even sure what to say.

I managed to get in with the same teacher as last time. We went to the library and watched the students do lab work for an essay. I didn't mind. It gave me an opportunity to talk to the teacher and to observe the students, which had been difficult to do with an actual lesson. I knew that teaching was hard work and that it required someone insane to do it, but knowing that and hearing it from someone who's already juggling an observer, a roomful of bored students, and kids who won't work for one reason for another was different.

I still want to be a teacher.

My Sed teacher -- the good one, not the one that romanticizes teaching into one of those cliched movies where everyone walks away successful and happy -- has often told us how much work it is. That nobody would choose to become a teacher if it weren't for a certain gene (i'm pretty sure he's being metaphoric) which he called the Helping Gene, or if a person was out of their gourd.

The helping gene is self explanatory I think.

I've never really considered myself as someone who wants to help people because I know just how selfish I can be. I do like helping people. I have let people use me for information and notes. I like being the only person who bothered to take good notes and thus able to save the day.

I like saving the day.

I'll never have children. I'm okay with this. I am not okay with being unremembered. Erikson would probably say I was fulfilling my need to make a difference in the next generation by becoming a teacher. He is probably right.

I have few friends, and I have often felt isolated from society in general. I am not okay with this any longer.

My fellow wanna-be English teachers have little interest in teaching those students in the lower ability groupings, or in teaching Freshman English. I want to teach those people. I know that I will do a better job than someone who does not want to be there. I also don't see the point in teaching Senior English if the instruction in the previous years was so crappy they can't do the really fun stuff. Some of the students in today's class were in the lower ability groupings. They had difficulties writing an essay. Nip it in the bud I say. Nip it in Freshman English if they were so unfortunate to have teachers who didn't nip it in middle school, elementary school, primary school. I want to begin at the beginning.

I want to learn Spanish. There was an ESL kid, Angel, who stared at the computer for the entire 50 minutes. He didn't type a word. The teacher said he was a good kid, but that he shut down. I wondered if Angel wouldn't have shut down if the teacher had been able to explain it to him in Spanish. I know that some people would say that if you come to America you should speak English. Before we pushed West, the people spoke Mexican. There is a story called The Squatter and the Don where, in his own native land, it was the Don who had to speak in English and ask if the squatters needed an interpreter in order to understand him, instead of the other way around. In his native land, he lost the power of his own language. Perhaps, it should have been us who learned Spanish (and before that the native language). Maybe instead of speaking English today, we should be speaking a new language that was both English and Spanish. I mean, even if that is naieve, that is the logical follow through of, if you come to such and such land you better speak the damn language, right?

Of course, it didn't work out like that. But today is different. What harm is there in bilingualness? I can think of none. And, even so, what's the point of teaching if the goal isn't to learn in whatever way necessary?

There was a co-teacher there, too. She had to take her English licensing test twice because they didn't pass her the first time. The second time she marked herself as white and didn't change any of her answers. She passed the test. I also heard a story where someone marked himself as African-American on a job or internship application. They interviewed him by phone and called him in for an in person interview. When they saw that he was not African-American, their entire attitude changed and he did not get the job or internship.

Really, World? Really?