And sometimes, when the weather is nice and the light is just so, we’ll go outside for no discernible pedagogical reason at all.

And that, my friend, is the most important thing. As a teacher, I feel it is both the biggest responsibility and greatest joy of my job to expose my students to things that I find wonderful, that they might go out into their worlds and find wonderful things as well. Spending a 58-minute block discussing a Kurt Vonnegut one-liner, watching a funny or interesting or beautiful film, or just going for a walk through the neighborhood are all important things. The State can’t test students on their ability to recognize the beauty of a tree or a pattern of migrating birds, so State education apparatchiks might be offended by a lot of what happens in my class, but I’m willing to take that chance.