I spent four hours today reading and commenting on student writing about John Proctor and what makes him tick. This on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when I could have been doing any number of other things.

Can I last through this year with all this grading?

I watched "Half Nelson" with pallid Ryan Gosling and enjoyed it, but nowhere did they include a scene of what he did with all his students' papers. We saw them writing in the classroom, and cheating on tests, and looking frustrated, and we certainly saw lots of Ryan Gosling being strung out on whatever drug he was ingesting. But we did not see him carrying stacks of paper around, or moving a stack from one spot in his crummy apartment to another, or even tossing the whole pile into any handy trash can, as one might imagine a junkie/teacher would do. That bugged me.

Other than that, I pretty much enjoyed the movie. I kept wanting to see it when it was playing in theaters, but I kept having TOO MUCH HOMEWORK TO CORRECT. Or grade, evaluate, whatever. Because if you're going to help kids learn how to write, you have to read their writing. And then comment on it in such a way as to MAYBE help them do it better next time. Or maybe they'll just toss it into a handy trash can. I don't know.

Anyway, I like watching teacher movies. I like the teacher in "Ten Things I Hate About You." I struggle with the Brokeback guy in that movie though because he does not seem like any high school kid I've ever known. Why can't I remember his name? I shook his hand at the Oscars last year, too. He was very pleasant and gracious... Huh.

I wonder what it would be like to make a movie like "Half Nelson" but instead of being a crack junkie the teacher could be a compulsive eater...? Probably pretty boring and ultra-depressing. And probably a whole lot more commonplace than the crack junkie option.

Heath Ledger. That's it. Why couldn't I remember?

Okay. Parent/teacher conferences now. How will the parents behave? Who will act crazy? Will I know how to express my business in five minutes? Will it make any difference? What did I learn when I was in seventh/eighth grade? Anything, besides the weird joy of watching my teacher's choker bob up and down when she'd get excited? She was a nice teacher... Kindly? Yes. I wonder where she is now. My seventh grade teacher was nice, too. Beautiful and magisterial. I was a sass. She was too good for me. I was a punk.