This blog was born eleven years ago in a Starbucks that’s now a Dominos…a storefront that’s two blocks away from the school where I teach mostly English and a little music on the side. Tomorrow I head to campus for my tenth year of full time secondary teaching. “Once more unto the breach” and all…

It’s far, far too early for the mindset I dub ‘grim resolve.’ It’s the still the season of unexpected classroom dreams, of the great inbox-filling email machine whirring to life after a few quiescent months. The days are hot, the sunrise still early enough to punctuate the morning walking of the dog. Still, that mood looms on the horizon more urgently than usual. 

The state of Texas has not raised the per-student allotment that is the foundation of our education funding since 2019. As you’re likely aware, there’s been a little bit of inflation since then. Instead of addressing school funding during its regular business, the legislature waited until a special session and considered education funding only in conjunction with Greg Abbott’s school voucher program. The voucher program was not passed; school funding remained unchanged. This resulted in about 80% of the districts in the state facing budget deficits for the 2024-25 school year. 

Education budgets are ultimately balanced on the backs of teachers. Secondary campuses in my district have had their faculty cut by 8-10% this year. Class sizes are up. Teaching loads are up. (I expect to have about 190 students this year.) We will do everything we can for our students, like we always do, but we’re going to be spread that much thinner. Thinking about the numbers, it becomes all too easy to fixate on Henry’s second line: “Or close the wall up with our English dead.” 

Agincourt, the battle in the play and one of the most famous English military victories in history, was also characterized by a numbers imbalance. On the cusp of the new school year, I’m doing my best to focus on the latter half of Henry’s speech:

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit…

(I don’t expect to be crying ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George’, though.) 

If there’s ever a year I am not straining upon the start like a a greyhound in the slips, I oughtn’t remain in the profession. I’m going to have more students than I should. Some of my colleagues will be dealing with even larger sections and student loads. But I am going to have students. The meetings this week will be interminable. I expect to fill up more than a few margins with my spiral doodles. But the week after? The week after, I’ll have students in my room again. I’ll have found some extra desks and somehow made space for them. I’ll have a new set of welcome activities and a whole lot of names to learn. 

Will I get to “grim resolve”? Absolutely. It might even hit before its usual October arrival. The “resolve” part is just as important as the “grim” part, though. I’m no English yeoman seeking inspiration to show “the mettle of [my] pasture,” nor is “imitat[ing] the action of the tiger” really best practice for teaching literature. Still, sinews may be stiffened, blood may be summoned up. Work will be done, and I can be the active that eschews the passive voice.

And vitally, there’s the other speech from Henry V, the St. Crispin’s Day speech: 

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition

Leaving aside the class and gender assumptions baked into psyching up a bunch of dudes about to go try and hack other dudes apart, Shakespeare here gives us the bond of hardship shared. I have always had fantastic colleagues. I work with great human beings. Even if we have to hold things together this year with string and duct tape, I know my colleagues will be there to share. We’ll learn some new knots and help each other untie others.

For them, and for my students, I want to be a better teacher. It is easy, a decade in, to relax into mere professionalism. Every day, every month, every year, I do the job I’m contracted to do. That’s even truer when the exigencies of teaching become more acute; I know what I need to do get my students and myself through the barest array of necessary hoops. No muss, no fuss, no problem. Some days, that will be reality. Other days, though? Other days I’ll be reflecting on my practice, trying new things, listening that much harder to the students I went back to the classroom for. 

With all that in mind, once more unto the breach!

Or, in the more succinct phrasing of Jake ‘Joliet’ Blues: Hit it!