The author delivered this address last spring to introduce himself in his new role.

My name is Mr. Dyke, and next year I'll be working in the Academy chapel program. I have this weird memory of teaching a class here, maybe thirteen or fourteen years ago. It was the first day of school, and I went through a careful presentation of what I was planning to cover in my English course. At the end of the period, I asked the students if they had any questions. This one kid named Ben raised his hand and suggested that next class I should repeat what I just went over. I looked at him funny and asked him why I would do such a thing. I had just presented a carefully planned lecture, so why would I need to repeat it? Ben gazed at me with a serious expression and said, "I don't mean to offend you or anything, but I don't think any of us were listening. We're still kind of distracted by the fact that our teacher's name is Mr. Dyke."

This recipe offers a great way for schools to embrace change with a minimum of restructuring and controversy. By creating a school within a school, administrators can offer students more educational opportunities and re-energize teachers tired of using the same old curriculum binder. Please note: schools feeling the heat from low test scores, striking teachers, or class action lawsuits may need to wait until the climate cools before attempting this dish.

A couple of weeks ago, a buddy of mine dropped a bomb on me: The Sesame Street Human Resources Dept. had replaced Cookie Monster with Veggie Monster. While it turns out that this is an urban myth propagated by some internet jokesters, it's not too far from the sad, politically correct truth. Cookie Monster now eats vegetables and a "sometime cookie."

What is funny is that I am the last person who should be writing this article because I have no time to write it. It's just that I feel like I should be sharing this information with other people, not because other teachers would realize how hard they have it because compared to me they really don't have it so hard but because people should know how hard I have it. I am not asking for anyone to feel sorry for me. Like my dad used to say, "The way you can remember why pity is the pits is that pity is worth less than pee and does less to get you going than tea." He was a wise man.

Anyone who has taught Shakespeare (and I won't even qualify this statement by naming a type of classroom) knows that there is a huge range of levels of readiness and willingness to engage with the material. Obviously, this is true in any teaching situation, but because Shakespeare's writing was so dense and he basically wrote in a foreign language, you literally can have kids not understanding the book at all and others wanting to move faster and dig more deeply. So what is a teacher to do?

There is a reason why there is usually more than one teacher accompanying the students on field trips. Once unleashed from the constraints of the classroom, sensibilities that are normally reined in run amok. But we are not talking about the students here, are we? What happens when the one committing the field trip faux pas is you - the teacher? Here are some commandments to abide by...

Dear Mr. Alden,

The other day I went to drop my son off at football practice when I ran into an old fishing buddy of mine who was in Minneapolis for the annual, valve and fittings convention, but honestly that is neither here nor there. Well, instead of taking the two hours to fix the transmission on my wife's Cavalier, I went and had a few pops with Mike down at the Golden Viking.