Mamacita says:  Finally.  Someone has finally asked me a question I’ve wished for years someone would ask.  It’s a question that’s right up there with Ed McMahon asking if he could come inside and give me a surprise. (Shut up, pervs.)

Someone asked me what I really wanted to do in my classroom.

What do I really want to do in my classroom?  What have I ALWAYS wanted to do in my classroom?

I want to take each student, individually and collectively, by the shoulders and give them a shake and lift them up in the air and tell them to REACH.  I want to yell in their faces that life is short and the universe is amazing.  I want to point to the night sky and tell them that if they need perspective, it’s all up there.  I want to tell them that a book is a little universe full of awesome people doing cool things.  I want to tell them to play.  I want them to laugh at a lot of things that make dull people turn up their noses.  I want them to comprehend that each of them is blazingly beautiful, inside and out.  I want them to realize that each of them has a story to tell that nobody else in the world knows, and that we all want to hear it.  I want them to understand that mature adults aren’t really mature according to normal standards, and that we must be mature to realize that.  I want them to never, ever, lose their sense of “play.”  I want to tell them to turn off the TV and go outside; that’s where the cool stuff is.

I want them to hang out with people who don’t look like them.

I want them to try new things and go new places.  I want them to economize on necessities and splurge on creativity and imagination.

I want them to soar, higher and higher, in their heads if nowhere else.  I want them to not be afraid to venture forth and make fools of themselves.

I want them to sing in public and climb on the monkey bars no matter how old they might be.

I want to tell them not to let anyone tell them something can’t be done, because a lot of the time, it just needed a different perspective.

I want to help them comprehend that most awesome things are not comprehensible, just appreciable, and I want them to appreciate awesome things.

I want them to understand that, except for childbirth and insemination and peeing standing up, both sexes can do pretty much anything they want and should be able to do those things without any kind of put-down from others.

I want to show them that it is our differences that make us who we are, that nothing can be truly beautiful without a flaw, and that following the crowd didn’t work out all that well for lemmings.

I want them to stand up for what is right and to speak out when speaking out is needed.  I want them to understand that bad politicians are elected by people who choose not to vote.  I want them to volunteer, and share, and take good care of their own and other people’s possessions, and ask before touching.

I want them to understand that everything is connected to everything else, that nothing really stands alone, not even the cheese.

And, of course, learn the 8 parts of speech and the basic spelling rules, so they won’t look like tools when they express themselves in any and all ways.  🙂

And world peace.

Now, how do I get all that on a departmental syllabus?