roachboy

interesting...i empathize with your situation, wilb...
i teach in a university and have encountered parallel questions, though i think they might work at a different level as a function of being in a university environment.

so while i can talk about my experience, which is ongoing, i am not sure how helpful it might be...

i do not remember exactly what kind of political action i thought i could carry out via teaching when i started--all i know now is that most of what i thought i could do turned out to be wrong.
maybe i was thinking in terms too big, i dont know.

i used to make more directly and obviously political arguments--now i work in a slightly different manner--usually using various texts of set up basic philosophical problems, the main one of which involves the problem of generating critiques (be that critique direct--as in THIS IS A CRITIQUE--or indirect/practical, by encouraging my students to make things, to take risks and assume a degree of responsibility for having taken them, that is hold them to a sympathetic but critical standard--by which i mean that it is not enough to simply take a risk, but that risk needs at somelevel to work, and in order to know what does and does not work, you have to develop a sense of what that might mean...for example) of a given space (say cultural space) when that space itself forms your frame of reference.

so the basic problem i try to get to is reflexivity.
this means that i can work on basic relations to the world without necessarily moving to a level that would entail filling that shift in with a particular type of information.
i understand encouraging a reflexive relation to the world to be a fundamental political act in itself.

example:
right now, i am teaching classes that combine writing, music and history.
in one of them--a history of experimental music since john cage--i am having the students do a series of writing experiments like n+7 (take a text and replace every noun with the 7th noun away from it in a dictionary) or cut-ups (which focus on procedures that will determine how the cut-up is arranged)...

the reason for these exercizes is tied to having the students do an audio project at the end of term--one based on collecting found/ambient sound processed through audio software (it matters less which one than they get access to it---which is easy enough)--the idea is to empower them, to let them understand that they can manipulate sound and do it quite well--that they can listen carefully, and thinka bout what they are listening to--all of which presupposes that they can bring to bear on the material they are interacting with a different conception of what "makes sense"...

beneath this lies the idea that they can enter into an active relation with "tradition" or "history"--that they are not simply jammed into a situation of passive repetition. what i mean by this, but rarely say, is that it is only through this active, reflexive relation can you be anything like free...that being free is a practical relation through which a relation to the social world can be developed--that is is easiest to think reflexively across a practical interaction.

i go as far as i can with the students.
i think it is political, but not in a conventional sense.
this idea is basic to me, it is what keeps me going.

sometimes i am explicit about the socialization function of the place in which we find ourselves--i raise questions of motive for being there at all, or for particular kinds of comportments (i particularly like going after the idea that being slack is a kind of revolt).

so perhaps by now you can see the problem with mapping any of this onto a high shool level--i can presuppose the process that you are engaged in furthering and work against it. yours is a different place.

thinking about it, i think the narrowing or focussing of how i understand my political action within an academic context is another element of what let me operate in it. to the extent that i do: i dislike intensely faculty culture--i went into academics as an engaging ay job the primary function of which for me was to enable me to work on music without having to rely on it to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

what is the point of all this?
i am not sure because it is a very short version of how i managed to find a way to operate for myself in an academic context. so it does not reduce to a single lesson.

it has been really difficult for me to figure this kind of question out.
it has taken a long time.

try to be careful about burning out--when i ran into it, both a job and a marriage collapsed--i couldnt seperate personal and professional pressures any more but i nonetheless made decisions---and it was a fiasco. so take care of yourself.

another thing you talk about that is difficult is the diversity of subjects that you are called on to teach...i find and have found it really taxing to be or feel like i am constantly scrambling simply to stay a few steps ahead of the classes i am doing...in the end, i tried to work out a plan that would let me at least stay a few sessions ahead of the curve in the areas i was least comfortable---as i suspect you are finding, i found that i did not anticipate the requirement for such a plan when i started out---so i had to use vacation time to work my way ahead, and impose a kind of regimentation on preparation until i got more comfrtable and could open things up more.

i dont know if this helps. hope it does at least a little. feel free to pm me if you think talking that way would be of any use to you.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite