Mini-Mailbag: Zion, Summer Comparisons, Job Interviews

Welcome to the first ever Stay Home Husband mailbag… I could be disingenuous and just make up questions and say they’re from “Sully in Boston” or some nonsense, but that would be weird. I’ve got three questions to answer from real actual people.

If you’re inspired and want to ask a question, respond to this email! Would love to make this a twice a month newsletter!

My soundtrack while writing this is Lorde’s “Pure Heroine.”

Alright, let’s get to the questions:

QUESTION: Thoughts on the proposed NBA playoff format? Letting in an additional four teams from the West, rumored to be so Zion could be in the playoffs (via Brian Windhorst), fair or unfair? - Tim

ANSWER: Tim was the first person to email a question, which is a little dated at this point (I dragged my feet, okay?!). However, while it may be a little old, it is still worth discussing, especially now that the bubble in Orlando is filled with NBA players getting ready to restart the NBA season on July 30.

The Zion Williamson conspiracy theory is goddamn real if you ask me. Sure there’s an equality issue here, teams lost about 16 games to make the playoffs and teams like the New Orleans Pelicans are 3.5 games out of the 8th seed. NOLA also had the easiest schedule down the stretch, and will have the easiest schedule in Orlando’s Bubble. However, the NBA put all of their eggs in the Zion basket last summer when making the schedule. The Pelicans played so many primetime games that even the Golden State Warriors were blushing at the overexposure. Unfortunately, there was no Zion for any of those games because he was injured.

Now, the NBA gets to showcase Zion and use this as an opportunity to push the narrative that he’s next in line for the throne (there’s a chance Zion and Lebron meet in the first round of the playoffs…).

The NBA also needed to include 22 teams (leaving eight teams at home) because it generates more games, which means more TV money, which means the NBA doesn’t suffer too much economically. If they jumped straight to the playoffs, they’d lose those eight games that each of the 22 teams will play. That’s a lot of basketball to leave on the table.

If they invited just 16 teams, Zion would have been at home and the drama would have been diminished because the teams would be just playing for seeding (and maybe manipulating their slot for an easier first round match-up. It would have felt like Italian soccer: weird results and stories about coaches playing golf together and striking a deal to sit starters…).

With all that being said, Zion could be electric over the next month. The likelihood of the Pelicans making the playoffs is very low. But we get eight games to watch him and drum up excitement for the 2020-21 season (is it sad that as I wrote that sentence I thought, “IF there’s a 2020-21 season… ugh.). And if the Pelicans do make the playoffs, it will be a big deal for Zion and the NBA.

It’s not quite a “frozen envelope” or “Jordan’s baseball hiatus was a suspension” conspiracy, but in the age of Adam Silver it’s as good as we’ll get.

QUESTION: What are summers like as a teacher vs. not being a teacher now that you have experienced both? - Dean

ANSWER: Okay, Okay. I know what you’re thinking: Sean you just said you weren’t going to make up people and the second question comes from someone with basically your EXCACT name. I promise you, Dean is real.

Summer is delightful any way you slice it. As a teacher, the summer is an oasis. I wasn’t tied to any sort of schedule or routine. I could wake up any particular day, check the weather and go play golf on a whim (while Tiff shook her fist and scorned me…I kid…). The weather was typically the driving force in how I’d plan my week. Rainy days would be the ones where I’d try to “make hay” and get some planning done for the upcoming school year.

In the last couple years as a teacher (and Dean of Students…) I was on campus probably once a week for meetings with the administrators that were stuck on campus all summer. I also spent three summers up in Vermont/New Hampshire getting a Masters degree, which was fun, but created a bit of a routine, too.

Now that I have a (part-time) job, I am responsible for logging a certain amount of hours each week. There’s more accountability, to be sure. I have a few standing calls and every now and calls are scheduled last minute. Last Friday I played 18 holes early in the morning and hopped in my car only to read a chain of emails planing a call for 2:00PM on a Friday. Ultimately, I have more things to plan around each week now. I tutor three days a week in the morning and I but my but in the seat to write every day for 60-90 minutes.

The biggest difference is counting hours, I think. Summer for a teacher is timeless. I lost track of days, only reminded of Sunday via texts from teacher friends basking in the lack of the Sunday Scaries. I’m also sitting at a computer a lot more, which is exhausting and soul sucking. Zoom calls are brutal (I had a two hour call on Monday that just destroyed me).

Finally, I will say teachers work hard in the summer. If it’s not physical, butt in seat work, it’s emotional work. They take classes, go to seminars, read and think endlessly about how to improve, revamp, or build units and lessons. If I never return to education, I will never stop defending teachers and their summers. Louis Black said it best: if there were no summers, insane asylums would be skyscrapers filled with teachers.

QUESTION: What's the best job interview question you've ever been asked and why? - Pat

ANSWER: My interview experience is strangely limited. I spent my first 13 years post-college at the same school. First as a Teaching Assistant, then a fourth grade teacher, then a sixth grade teacher. I interviewed three times, once for the TA job, once for a fifth grade job (which I didn’t get) and then finally for the fourth grade job. I moved to sixth grade without needing an interview.

There is one question that actually pops into my mind every now and then that I was asked as a college kid applying for the TA job I took after graduating from Holy Cross. I’m not even sure why it stands out.

I was given a very specific situation that might occur on the playground during recess. The situation, as I remember it, involved a child saying something racially insensitive (maybe homophobic) to another student. I was asked how I would handle the situation. It was a heavy topic for a 22 year-old to grapple with, especially when interviewing for a job as an assistant. I think I said something about pulling the student aside and speaking with him/her in private so as not to create an even bigger scene and ensuring there was an apology. My answer doesn’t matter (I got the job, after all…). But of all the questions I have been asked in interviews and seen asked while part of search teams, it’s the only one that comes to mind every now and then. It would come to mind when I handled something at school in a different way than my 22 year-old version had explained in 2006. It would come to mind when seeing kids act exactly as described in the interview scenario.

I don’t think education interviews have the same mind-bending questions like “how many ping pong balls could you fit in a 747” that other professions slip into their questioning process (maybe they should…). If I could come up with one of those weird questions it would be something like, “How many spider legs exist on the planet.”

Sit with that one for a while…

Thanks for the questions. Please, respond to this email with new questions and I’ll fire back some answers in a couple weeks.