Genius Freak

My Teaching Manifesto Regardless of the specific endeavors of any particular class, in room 235, I hope that what my students walk away with every day is another addition to their understanding of the extraordinary range of what it is to be human.  As I see it, all education, formal and informal, is about making sense of the world and our place in it.  Each thing we learn adds some depth or breadth or nuance to our understanding of how the world works, and how we can work our way through it.  If we can strengthen ourselves as readers and writers and thinkers, we strengthen the tools we have to do that work. What I hope to do every time I enter the classroom is to provide students with opportunities to see themselves in the world around them.  I want them to know that when we study the humanities, we study ourselves.  I want them to see their stories in the stories we read; I want them to see their world in the literary archetypes we discover; I want them ...

Lots of people, from the time I was in high school till now, just call me Mueller.  I prefer that to Dr. Mueller to tell you the truth.  And it fits.  I am a mull-er - as in one who mulls. I spend a lot of time inside my head, thinking and rethinking.  Turning things around, looking at all the angles I can find.  I don’t think it’s obsessive. I just ponder. A lot. About 10 years ago, a showtune-loving friend of mine introduced me to the soundtrack of a musical called Tick Tick….Boom! It’s about a guy who is getting older and wondering if he is making the right choices in his life.  My favorite song in this show is called “Louder than Words.”  The refrain captures the central idea of the song, and the show (and many of my recent ponderings, and this essay): Cages or wings? Which do you prefer? Ask the birds. Fear or love, baby? Don’t say the answer. Actions speak louder than words. Fear or love? That question is one that I...

Tomorrow will be my 29th first day of school as a teacher, and I am nervous. You would think that anything you've done 28 times before would be almost automatic. It isn't. Not for me, at least. When I was young and cocky, I wouldn't even bother making much of a plan for the first day.  I knew that I was going to go over rules, and my course overview. Maybe I would give out textbooks and talk about expectations. And maybe, if time allowed, do a little artificial getting to know you activity of some sort. Tomorrow, I won't be doing any of that. Tomorrow will be the first of the short 180 days that I will have with my students this year. Tomorrow will mark the beginning of every students' one experience with eleventh grade, or twelfth. Tomorrow is my one chance to create the first impression I want them to have of the year they can expect. Going over rules doesn't do that.  (In fact, I think going over rules says "I expect you to be bad, and her...