A few days ago I got this note through the “contact me” section of my website:

I am a teacher at an alternative school for under privileged students and I found the book homeboyz which my students love. I let them read it in class and if they ask me if the can keep it, I always say yes which leaves me contantly buying this book. Most of the kids do not like to read or may have never owned a book. I would love to get as many copies either for free or discounted that I can afford to share with my students. You book is so popular with them. We read it together sometimes, well they really like it, so much that they want it. I just wish I had the ability to give every student a copy plus some. Please feel free to call me and ask me about my students and the type of school I am at. Plus I know they would love to meet the author. Thanks for really being able to reach my students on a personal level. Thanks

It really touched me. Why? Because reaching kids and helping teachers is what I love to do. It’s that simple.

I’ve spoken before about how I really do not have any plans to write another professional book at this juncture because blogging for me scratches that itch. It’s immediate, it’s free to the reader and if I can help some people out then I want to help them out without the idea of commerce getting in the way.

Of course, in the real world, we all have bills and expenses and yachts that need their decks refinished (teak is just so labor-intesive to maintain) so yes, the publishers with whom I work often require compensation for my goodies. And yes, it helps my entire life function when I actually draw a paycheck for the work I do in this world.

So on one hand, I really do want to send a free book. (Actually, I did.) But on the other hand, I am simply not capable of sending out all the free books that people would scoop up if I were to somehow make them available to everyone.

That sucks! But I’d like to and maybe, one day, if I become successful enough, I will be able to just give away my books.

(How cool would that be? I could be an author who writes for free when he could charge money for it instead of being an author who writes for free because no one will pay them for it. A neat plot twist if ever there was one.)

However, notes like the one above do make me feel as if I am living somewhat near the range of my dharma. By dharma, I mean, living somewhat near my world’s purpose, to get all California kooky on ya’ll. (note: I am loosely interpreting this from Eastern Philosophy.)

But teachers as a whole often feel driven to do what we do by a sense of our “purpose”. Me, I feel as if my career is best spent 1) teaching and 2) writing. (Not necessarily in that order but not necessarily not in that order, either.)

So what’s the point? Follow your dharma. There are all sorts of passions and abilities in this world (not that the bubbles test would ever validate any of them in our students beyond preposterously narrow corridors) but if you follow your heart, do earnest, honest work and imbibe your efforts with energy, diligence, guts and smarts, experience tells me you will probably find your way in this world.

It might not happen on the time schedule you imagine… and it might come to you in ways you never would have imagined… but the world is a magical place filled with many magical people.

Notes like the one above, well… stuff like this never gets old.

A common mistake I see with many, many educators is that when the end of the school year peeks its head on the school horizon, they begin to – how should I put this – well, they begin to “kind of coast”. They take it easy. They don’t stress, they don’t fret, they do not push the pedal to the metal but instead, they go into “Countdown mode”.

It’s educational quicksand and my warning to you is: Stay Away!

I’ll explain why. But first, some backstory: this educational insight hit me in the bathroom. (I’ll spare you the potty humor right now though, let’s admit it, I am really, really tempted to crack a bodily function joke at this moment.)

See, there’s a guy I see in the restroom practically every day… and every day for the past week, instead of greeting me with his usual, “Hello, Alan,” he has greeted me with, “Only 25 more days, Alan” – and then he adds a beaming smile.

“Only 24 more days, Alan.” (Beaming smile.)

“Only 23 more days, Alan.” (Beaming smile.)

Truly, it’s a great exercise for discussing the literary device of perspective. To this teacher, he sees the dwindling days as an exciting time, as if the torment of teaching will be over oh-so-soon for him and the joys of watching re-runs of Dancing with the Stars, or whatever he does, will begin in earnest. (Look, maybe he he’s a championship knitter over the summer, what do I know?)

The bigger point is that his beaming smile and countdown greeting are not filling me with glee but rather, they are making me tense. (I’ve written about this feeling before.) I have stuff to do, still. I have books I still want to read, projects I still want to tackle and on and on and on.

There’s still so much more I didn’t get to!

Obviously, our classes must reflect our varying dispositions. His class, I am assuming, operates at a leisurely pace whereby the students are, like the teacher, most probably biding their time.

My class operates as if, well, the classroom minutes matter. That’s a choice.

Ya know, we complain so much as teachers about all the stuff that isn’t right, that’s going wrong, that’s being cut or under-funded and so on and yet, here it is that we still have a patch of open road and some teachers are squandering their opportunity to do more, be more, teach more and so on, while others are not.

Really, the way I see it, there is only one way to conduct yourself as a classroom educator this time of year: be the type of teacher you would want your owns kids to have at the front of their class. It’s one of the best litmus tests you can apply to your own personal, self-reflective, professional assessment.

And if I would want my own kids in a class where the teacher is still demanding thoughtful, productive, hard work, then that’s what you yourself should still be doing. (And what parent wouldn’t want this?)

Really, why do the classroom minutes of late May hold any less value than those of early October? Of course, I am not saying don’t have fun. I have tons of fun. (But I do in October as well. Fun and rigor are not mutually exclusive to high quality schooling.)

Additionally, let’s be honest… I love summer, too. Really, I LOVE IT! (Maybe even more than the other teacher does.) But summer is not here yet… and there’s miles to go before we sleep.

(Hey, now that I think of it, maybe I can squeeze in a little extra Frost poetry this year. And connect it to this great article I read on Steve Jobs talking about how even though he is a billionaire on top of the world, he is still as driven as ever… because he feels, I assume, there are still “miles to go before he sleeps”, right? Ah, the possibilities.)

So much vibrant stuff is still available to do… with so little time so please, use the opportunities. It’s the stuff of which our careers are made… and our kids deserve it.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

I have a few new book contracts being negotiated right now by my literary agent for some upcoming YA titles that are gonna come out from me over the next 12-24 months.

What’s amazing is the degree of blindness with which both sides — the publishers and my literary agent — are negotiating. The fact is they are both, in some ways, quite in the dark as to how things are going to evolve with the ebook market.

And the ramifications are so potentially significant, it seems agents and publishing houses, on behalf of their writers and business interests, are now asking for “lookback agreements” and “ebook clauses”.

BTW, this is why, as an author, I have a literary agent. For me to be expected to keep pace with all of this — to know about how to make sure potential royalties on book sales in, for example, the year 2019 in goodness knows what format ebooks may take nine years from now, are credited properly to my earning’s statements, well.. it’s simply impossible.

My agent, who is as sharp as they come, gets paid to think about this stuff. As do the lawyers for the publishing houses. Thing is, I don’t think the negotiations are contentious between either party. I just think that both sides want to be prudent in making sure they cover their butts.

But how do you cover your butt for a scenario which it’s hard to even see?

The publishing house doesn’t want to give away the farm by not obtaining rights to material that might prove to be material to which they might one day need the publishing rights (and know they should be buying from me right now).

My agent doesn’t want to give away the farm by granting rights to material which may prove lucrative to me in markets that might not have even yet been invented so we only try grant rights to things which are clearly defined within the contracts.

Of course, fuzziness can come up. (And contract makers hate fuzziness.)

For example, I’ll retain movie rights to my book. (That’s standard stuff.) They’ll need ebook rights. (That’s standard stuff, too.) But what if video becomes embedded in a vook and that video explodes into an unforeseeable commercial property of its own. Who owns the rights to that? How will the percentages be split? What if the iPad empowers holograms to be projected and my characters become avatars that Mattel wants to use to make “learn English” educational games in Chinese?

Really, who knows what could come of things over the next decade? And yet, knowing who owns what and how things (i.e. the royalties) get apportioned well, what is now, in 2010, a no money idea could, in 2015, be a HUGE money element to these contracts.

Thus the “lookback” clause. From what I understand, 3 years after publication, we will retain the right to “lookback” at the contract and determine whether or not the digital agreements we make right now in regard to ebooks are still being meted out a spirit of economic fairness.

Interesting stuff, for sure.

And like I said, I don’t think there is any hostility between either party. It’s just good business sense on both sides.

As we head into next month, I’ll spend a little more time speaking to the “author side” of things (as opposed to the teacher side) because a lot of very interesting stuff is brewing. But without a doubt, the world is changing and a contract to simply “publish a book” is no longer a simple contract.

So today I wore a Lynwood Knight shirt to school. Am I showing school spirit or am I just a dorkwad? Trust me, this one ain’t all that clear cut.

I mean back when I was a student in high school, I never wore any school stuff. That was for doofs. But now that I am a teacher, I wear school gear.

Fact is, I probably own too much of it. My wardrobe consists of Lynwood Knight sweatshirts, shorts, t-shirt, polos, hats and even headbands. I’ve got classic Lynwood gear (like the senior class sweatshirt from 2002) and just the other day I was thinking about springing for a new long sleeve t-shirt.

Why? I am not sure. My wardrobe is already disproportionally Lynwood-y and now I am going to add to the collection? Why would I do that? I mean let me tell ya, this ain’t Prada.

Of course occasionally I end up wearing school gear and regretting it. Like when you end up going out to dinner with other bona-fide adults straight after the school day ends, meet at a restaurant and feel like the biggest lunkhead on the planet when you realize how nicely other people with real jobs get to dress for their work.

And then there’s my wife. For some reason, she never wears Lynwood clothing. It’s not like I haven’t bought her stuff. She used to smile and say “Thanks.” That was when we first got married. Now she just says, “Why’d you waste your money?” whenever I bring something home for her… which I no longer do.

Ah, the frankness of marriage.

And let’s be honest, don’t some staffers wear just like WAY TOO MUCH school stuff? Really, is it every day gear? Is it every night gear? Is it every weekend gear?

Is it necessary that you wear clothing with school logos on it to the bat-mitzvah of your neighbor’s daughter?

When it comes to wearing school clothing, where is the line of sanity drawn?

If a kid leaves school without the ability to comprehend Ralph Ellison, well… it pales compared to the consequences of a kid not being able to read their credit card agreement.

Why does that not seem more obvious to people who wield power over the directions of our school curriculum?

Why do we not spend more time teaching “functional literacy” to our kids?

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d say it was because this is how we keep the lower socio-economic class in the lower socio-economic rungs of society. Upper socio-economic parents teach their kids the tenets of managing money, the financial rules attendant to cash. (Well, they certainly try but there are rubes to be taken to the cleaners at all levels of society.)

People who do not know this stuff, however, do not have the ability to teach it to their kids. And worse, they [incorrectly] presume that our public schools will show this stuff to their offspring.

But we don’t. Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into under-buying phone plans so that they end up getting $860 phone bills because they thought txt messages were included with unlimited talk time?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into signing up for one of those “no payments for six months” promotions then fallen victim to the fact that the rate skyrockets to 28% and they backdate the interest owed to all the way to the date of original purchase?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many people have been tricked into buying one of those “gift cards” to a superstore in their local supermarket (i.e. Best Buy, Staples, Target, and so on) and not realized that there is a 4% processing fee so that for every dollar you spend on the gift card, the recipient only gets 96 cents worth of goods.

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, now ask yourself… How many people have fallen victim to all three of the above scenarios?

Uhm waiter, more literary canon please.

Funny but English teachers will go to war to defend the canon. (Just you dare try to remove TKAM or Huck or Gatsby… you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.)

But teach basic day-to-day functional document interpretation. That’s not for English teachers who teach reading, is it? I mean isn’t their some kind of business ed class or home ec book that covers that?

When we teach reading, we teach Reading with a capital R… even when so many of our kids are in desperate need of learning how to read all the lower case r stuff.

Look, let’s be honest for a minute. If you have been reading me for any length of time at all you have probably noticed that the past wee bit has seen a more cynical, jaded bite — a sharpened, more cutting blog-edge tone, if you will.

I admit it. I’ve darkened.

But the thing is, well… there are a few things. For one, if we are going to be really honest, this freakin’ job is freakin’ hard. And between the budget cuts and the bastards and the buffoons, it would take a saint not to get rattled by the crap we all face at both my school and in public education on the whole.

And I ain’t no f*&%kin saint.

This stuff is meaningful to me, this stuff hits me hard and this stuff impacts my life and the lives of my kids – and peers – in deep, significant ways.

My students get one chance to be teenagers in school and SO, SO, SO many consequences that will resonate throughout the rest of their lives are being manipulated by puppeteers that seem to have no shame about doing what is in their own personal, best, self-interest before considering what is in the best interest of the students we have been hired to serve.

My cynicism is a by-product of naiveté some might say… cause I believe I can change things – or at least impact things for the better – and I get really frustrated when I lay it all on the line and still, things roll downhill.

If I could be more zen-like, I’d be much better off. All I can say to that is, I am a work in progress — so please don’t submit final grades just yet.

However, I also know that things are cyclical in a school year and right now, we are in the thick of the jungle in a whole host of ways. Stress runs high during times like these and when you work 90-100 hours a week and still feel as if you are spinning your wheels, it gets maddening.

But we’re gonna get out of it. And this too shall pass. There are more fart blogs in me. Yes, I will write 800 words on “The booger-pickers of 4rth period”. (Note to self: Hey, that’s a good book title.)

The joy, the laughs, the ridiculous smiles, it’s all still there. I guess I just take this all-too-seriously in some ways, sometimes. See, I bought into the propaganda hook, line and sinker. I believe in kids, I believe in teaching, I believe in education, and I believe in serving the greater good of society. (And all that other nonsense.)

When you care about things, you open yourself up to being hurt. That’s just a law of the universe or something.

If I just wanted a job for the sake of pulling a paycheck, I would have become a lawyer. Really. Then again, knowing me, I probably would have become a bleeding heart, public defendant, still working for the government rambling on about pillars of the Constitution because a leopard doesn’t ever really change their spots, now do they? (Truth is, I have immense regard for some lawyers. My dad and grandfather were both barristers; sounds more high fallutin’ when you say it that way.)

So know this. I may be down and gettin’ kicked around in the mud right now but that’s because nobody in our field (that I know of) escapes that aspect of this work.

And I don’t trust people who pretend that it’s never like this — or sell you perpetual rose-colored glasses. It’s just untrue.

So me, when I am down at the bottom of the barn rollin’ around in professional pigshit, I kinda relish it. Why? Because I guess I figure if you are gonna rise to great heights in this world, it seems as if you must also plumb some pretty low depths, too.

The encroachment of cynicism on my writing — it’s there, but it’s not permanent. Not as long as I still find joy in the farting booger-pickers of 4rth period it isn’t.

Cause when that joy is gone, so am I.

As a writer, I want the readers of my books to be happy. As a teacher, I want my students to be happy. As a keynote speaker I want my audiences to be happy. Having these folks happily satisfied after they have spent their time with me matters to me. Right or wrong, it just does.

In order to accomplish this, however, I must remain responsive to feedback. But if you are going to be the type of person that welcomes feedback, you are also going to have to 1) develop a thick skin and 2) recognize when it’s time to listen to your own thoughts on the matter as opposed to the thoughts of others.

When it comes to developing thick skin, well, for me it didn’t really arrive in my life until being thin-skinned about matters proved to be too much of a detriment to the goals I was seeking to accomplish. Here’s a little tid-bit about how I have found my own human nature works.

I’ll give a speech, do a keynote, write a work or what-not, and people will compliment me, want me to sign their books, chat more after the program, whatever. But if one person wrinkles their nose, shrugs their shoulders and points out where I wasn’t really all that great, I take it personally.

And when I go home later that night, do I remember the good stuff? Do I remember the praise? Do I remember all the compliments, even if they outweighed the critics 50 to 1? Of course not — I remember the criticism.

And I dwell on it.

The fact is, if you are going to put yourself “out there”, if you are going to “try”, if you are going to take a stand, make a speech, author a novel or whatever, you have to know that 1) no matter what you can do, it can be improved — which is why I find it so essential to listen to feedback and 2) know that some people just like to criticize for the sake of being critical (as opposed to doing it for the sake of being constructive).

It’s like a double-bind. I need to listen to the feedback but human nature makes me feel like I only want to hear the good stuff. And hearing just the good stuff is potentially ruinous. How can I improve my efforts if I don’t hear where I am falling short in my efforts?

This is why I know I need thick skin. When I show my books to people and ask for their opinion, I want the truth. If it ain’t working, I need to know it so I can make it work. It’s not about my feelings; it’s about the material. Having published multiple books has brought me to this doorstep of understanding.

When you stop taking it personally, you open up avenues to improve your craft in innumerable ways. That goes for almost anyone — teachers, writers, administrators. People are SO defensive about what they are doing that they often tune out to the ways that they can do the things they are doing better. Hey, no one’s perfect.

It’s why I have tried to become more thick-skinned. It makes me a better professional.

BTW, young writers are often hard to have conversations with because they take criticism of their material as personal criticism. Look, I admire anyone who straps up, sits down and cranks out a book. Hats off to ‘em… it’s hard stuff. But if it’s not great and you only want people to tell you it’s great instead of ways it can be improved, then you’re setting yourself up for trouble.

The best administrators, educators, businesspeople and so on want feedback. They want reflection. They want to improve. Even if it’s a wee bit salty on the soul, to get better, one must hear about the “issues”.

After all, is there really any such thing as a “master” who does not still have room to grow?

I am not sure if sexual molestation by school personnel against students is on the rise or if the explosion of web-based media has simply drawn more attention and awareness to the problem. Either way, it’s absolutely tragic when this stuff happens.

And it devastates lives.

As this story in the L.A. Times shows, the victims, the kids, suffer in ways that color their existence and worldview for the rest of their life… and what scares me is how numb I think we in our society have become to the crime because of the frequency with which it is being reported these days.

Having had students confess to me their victimhood over and over (it’s so much more common than I ever realized — like SO MUCH MORE!) is what drove me to want to do more. And the fact is, an incident right out of my own classroom (the tale a female student told me about her uncle) was the original spark for my latest book of fiction, The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez.

In some ways, I am just amazed how SONIA has hit a nerve with so many kids. Especially girls. And even more especially, with Latina girls. This novel hasn’t become breakout big like TWILIGHT or anything like that but it does have a very strong group of kids and teachers that really support it extremely well and it’s being brought into classrooms all around the country. (And oh the emails they send to me.) For that I am honored.

But still, I want to do more.

I guess the question is, how can we better protect our kids? And what more can we do to help them when this stuff happens?

BTW, was it always so prevalent and yet under-reported, or is society so much more sexualized that seeing more and more of this type of abhorrent behavior is simply inevitable?

Yet, this still brings me back to the bigger point: what can be done?

I do know that banning books like Laurie Halse Anderson’s SPEAK is not the answer. Books open conversations in a way that few other forms of media can do. Read Laurie’s answer as to how she feels about banning books right here… you go Laurie!

The tragedy of sexual molestation is a plague on teens today and yet so many folks are sweeping it under the rug pretending it’s not happening in their school, their community, their world.

As Mark Twain once quipped, “Denial ain’t a river in Egypt.”