My life these days.

My life has been insane lately. Like, utterly and completely filled with work like never before in the history of me. I didn't work half this much last year. I never worked this much in college. And lord knows I didn't work this much at Grosvenor. (Ah...the days of a true 9-5).

Basically, my days go something like this:

5:00 - Alarm #1 goes off (switch phone to vibrate and hit snooze)
5:15 - Alarm #2 goes off (hit snooze again)
5:30 - Get out of bed, boil water for tea while I brush my teeth (I always seem do multitask those two things), throw on clothes that barely match, put my hair in ponytail because I probably didn't shower yesterday, contacts in, grab my external harddrive, throw a yogurt in my lunch bag, make my mug of tea, and rush out the door by 5:45.
6:05 - Get to school, dump my stuff, walk across campus to sign in, make 100 - 400 copies, write stuff on my board, post lesson plans on the door, queue up my powerpoint, set out papers for kids to pick up on the way in, and get ready for kids to walk in the door at...
7:00 - ...when the 'go-to-class' bell rings.
7:11 - First block starts. Teach until...
12:17 - ...third block ends. Eat lunch in the faculty lounge, savor the adult company, inappropriate jokes and swearing for 30 minutes, come back to my trailer to work from...
1:00 - 2:10 - Grade work, enter grades, send emails, enter attendance, make more copies, print off stuff for tomorrow, work on lessons until...
2:10 - 2:20 - ...afternoon duty. Walk back across campus, stand in the courtyard, catch up with students from last year on their way to the bus, encourage everyone to keep moving towards the bus lot.
2:20 - 4:00 - Work at school, meetings, more printing or copying, more grading and entering grades into the computer, more emails, more lesson planning.
4:00 - 6:00 - Drive home, eat something, change my clothes, check my gmail, check facebook, read some online news so I'm not completely clueless about the world outside West Meck, run (if i'm lucky to have the time), shower (if I'm lucky), put off doing dishes/laundry/cleaning because I have no time for such luxuries.
6:00 - 10:30- Plan lessons, type up lesson plans, make worksheets, make quizzes, make tests, make guided notes, make graphic organizers, make powerpoints, make warm up exercises
10:30 (if I'm lucky) - Sleep!!!


My recent conclusion? This is not working. It leaves me with zero time to like, oh, live my life like a normal person. So...I have come up with a plan to get ahead and actually get my weekends free. It doesn't really involve me doing any LESS work, as best I can figure, but it does involve doing it on a schedule and working ahead. Basically, doing more work on the weekdays so I can at least have weekends off.

Isn't it beautiful?!! Okay. It is to me. What's most beautiful? That green circle there? It's a weekend. Notice anything about it? Oh yeah....it DOESN'T HAVE ANY WORK WRITTEN ON IT.


Knock on wood. Next semester my life will be 10 times easier, because my Civics classes start over again, which means I get to use all the plans I've made already this year. And I am being obsessive about naming and organizing files as I make them, so I can find them next semester. But meantime, I'm just trying to figure out little ways to cut down on the work so I don't have to wait until January to have a life. I think my beautiful calendar plan is a good first start.


Also...I still actually kind of love my job. But I need it to be something I can love...that doesn't um, you know, make me go insane and lose all my hair.

"Oh my god Stalonda"

We learned about diversity and multiculturalism the other day in my Civics and Econ class. As part of their homework, I asked them to imagine they were moving to another country and then write an email or facebook message to a friend, telling them what parts of their culture or identity they would change or keep when they moved. I told them to imagine going someplace very different than America. These were some of my favorite responses:

“Oh my god Stalonda, down here the girls suppose to cover up everything but their eyes. I’m like so we can’t show our legs or arms. We not even suppose to speak to the male. I feel like this is a situation that you can get killed if you don’t follow this rules. I will follow the top rules, but as far as my mother cooking changing that not happened. Were not going to be be sitting down here eaten goat when we can still it hamburger. The boy are fine but to bad I can’t talk to them. Well girl I’m out and home to hear from you.”

One girl drew the facebook logo, and then wrote this:

“Heey girl! Smh. Ima miss you! I’m probably gonna have to wear those long body covering things they have those girls wear in Afghanistan! Lmao. I’m lying! I’m not wearing that! But I think I have to learn a different language & change how I act! Man, I don’t wanna go! Text me!”

“Hey, I’m leaving tommorow and I just wanted to remind you. I can’t wait to get to Congo. I plan on just remaining the same fun-spirited person that I am.”

“So I’m going to Saudi Arabia. I guess I’m going to have to learn Arabic. I’m not gonna change how I dress…hopefully the Taliban won’t come after me. Maybe their culture will be really cool.”

“Okay so living here is so strick…I can’t even ask a girl out without paying here parents 10,000 dollars 'as a gift' I cant really express myself as I did in the US. So I must of corse learn arbric and not use curse words…not that I ever did (like once or twice). I miss the USA.”

A month of summer condensed into a paragraph.

I haven't written in over a month, it seems. A record, of sorts. I'll give you all a quick rundown of the last month. Ready?

Drove to Florida with my family, saw cousins, giant spiders, drove down nature trails on a golf cart, beach, pool, pool, food, 12 hour drive back to Charlotte, AT for hike number two, Blue Ridge Parkway, hike, sleep in a shelter with a family of bats who dive bomb us, hike, feel like dying, hike hike, EAT MORE FOOD MOLLY, hike hike, get a call in the middle of the wilderness that I have a job back at West Meck teaching Honors Civics and AP Psych, hike, views!!!! sunsets!!!! beautiful!!!!! hike, get a ride to Buena Vista, eat half a delivery pizza, a mexican combo platter, a hotdog, a fried bologna biscuit, and a bag of nachos, drive back to my car through a cloud on the mountain, then back to Charlotte, hurt my foot running, gain five pounds, join the YMCA, Teach for America training, CMS teacher workdays, move my stuff to a trailer classroom, plan like crazy, live at Amelie's for two weeks, wake up at 4:30 this morning, chase a cockroach behind my classroom whiteboard, bell rings, kids arrive!

Whew!

My first day back to school was great. I'm teaching solo this year, which I'm excited about. I'm teaching Honors and AP kids, which is going to be very different in some ways, but I'm excited about it. I'm actually organized to start the year, like, I have binders with all my papers, I'm in the process of making files for each student, I've got my computer file structure all nice and tidy. If you know me you know what a feat this has been. I saw a bunch of my kids from last year at school today, and was reminded again of why I love this job... I love those darn kids.

I'll get some pictures of my classroom once I get my new posters up. And I'll have a new wealth of wonderful student quotes to share, no doubt, although I don't know if anyone can top some of my students from last year for saying the smartest funniest things. A kid today wrote about Civics and Economics, "I thought this class was about cars. But government sounds interesting too."

I love my job. Every so often I just stop and think about leaving Chicago and my hedge fund job and all of that...and I think "Damn.. Best. Decision. Ever." Bring it, school year. I'm ready for you.

I'm 26, and I have a job (again!)

The school year is over! I write that with an exclamation point of surprise and near disbelief, rather than the exclamation point of relief. And that's a good thing. I ended the year loving my job, loving my kids, and hoping to God that I'd get the chance to do the same job (better) next year. Because there are approximately 389 things I will do better the second time around. I spent the last two weeks administering the end-of-course standardized test (this included giving five read alouds, in which you read, aloud, 100 questions and 400 answer choices) and saying goodbye to kids with "I don't know if I'll be back next year." I'd been reading the Observer religiously, hoping for news on the Board of County Commissioner's budget, and found out they'd be making a decision on my birthday, this past Wednesday. The day after my birthday I found out they'd be restoring a bunch of positions. And then on Friday...I got a contract in my email! The county voted to give the district enough money to bring back many of the jobs they had initially said would be cut. Not everyone got their job back, although the State still has to solidify their budget, but I got mine, and I'm grateful. Well, I don't know yet if I got MY job back, but I got SOME job back. I could be back at West Meck teaching Civics, which is what I really want, but I could be placed at some other school, teaching World History. I don't get any say in it though, so I get to wait and see. We're supposed to get an email this week with our assignments.

But for now, I'm ready for the summer. Tuesday is the last day I have to show up for work. And a week after that I'll be heading out with my friend Jill to hike for a week. Not sure if I'm anywhere near ready for that, but what the hell...I've got a backpack, a sleeping bag, and boots. Figure I'm good to go, right? Day after I get back from that little excursion, me and Sarah set out across the country to California, and then at the end of July it looks like me, the sibs, and our dad are heading down to Parrish, FL to visit my dad's side of the family. I've got a nice little summer planned out, and now that I know I'll have a paycheck come August, I can start to relax and enjoy it!

Gimme an R, gimme an I, gimme an F. . .

What's that spell? RIF! Reduction in Force! Woo!

Okay, so not actually something I'm cheering about. I have officially joined the ranks of those millions of Americans who have been laid off at one time or another. And, I'm a Charlotte Observer headliner: CMS sends out layoff notices to 739 educators. Big news. That's about 8.5% of teachers in the district, if my math is right. But, budget crunches mean cuts, and when you're a public employee, that's the way it goes. It's just really unfortunate that this particular budget cut means there are 739 fewer people teaching our kids. They've upped the student-teacher ratio too, so kids are going to have bigger classes. The superintendent has stopped pretending we can do more with less. Everyone admits this will hurt kids. It sucks. They need everything we can give them. They deserve a lot more than having their teachers fired and their classes get larger. I'm upset for my kids.

And, it's a hassle for me. It would have been a lot easier to have the security of knowing I've got a job in August while I relaxed all summer.

But I've been really touched by the way all the teachers in my department called, texted and facebook messaged last night to see how I was doing (after they heard I had a meeting with the principal.) And today folks stopped by my classroom, asked how they could help... I guess I'm not used to having people concerned about me (I've never had anything to be especially concerned about) and I guess to a lot of people a layoff is a big, devastating kind of deal. But, as I've been telling people, I'm fine! No tears were shed; I just went home and starting looking for jobs.

Nobody likes uncertainty, and of course now this means I have to spend time looking for a job, and I have to be a little more careful with my money, but I've been there, done that. I had to find my art teaching job, then I was jobless and homeless in Chicago until I found Grosvenor, then I spent a lot of time hunting down NC jobs until Teach for America came through. . . so I feel like a pro at the resume and cover letter thing. I've been saving my money to have my regular paycheck amount, plus some cushion, over the two months I don't get paid in the summer. So I've got about three months before I have to start worrying about paying the rent. I'm not really worried that I won't be able to find a source of income by August, but I don't want to have to take a job I'm not excited about just because my savings is running out.

Apparently, the county will be approving their budget in June, and the state in July. These budgets could potentially give the school district money that would allow them to re-hire people who have been laid off. That's the ideal scenario, obviously. But who knows.

I had every intention of finishing my second year with TFA, and still hope to make teaching a career beyond that. I'd like to either stay teaching apart from TFA or CMS, or get into education in some other way.

But, for right now, all I can do is stay on top of the local news, see what the county and state do with their budgets, and either I get my job at West Meck back, or I get another job within CMS, or I get another job entirely. I'm also thinking of taking the PRAXIS exam in some other subjects or grades, so that I could potentially teach other classes. But mostly I'm going to be updating my resume, writing cover letters, and raining job applications on every high school, and middle school, and educational institution in the Piedmont.

As inconvenient as this sudden change of plans is likely going to turn out to be, I feel okay about it. If there's some bigger, better opportunity out there, I'm going to trust God to help me find it. If I'm supposed to wind up back at CMS, well, then that's what will happen. If I'm supposed to pick up and move again (as big a chore as that would be) well, then that's what I'll do.

Keep your ears to the ground for me, folks. Anything involving teaching, or nature and the environment, or kids, or art, or a job where I get paid to grow vegetables and read books...

"Make sure you hit him with a frying pan of hot grits"

In lieu of writing anything timely, as I'm feeling the need to spend more of my hours of life doing things other than sitting in front of the computer screen, today I'll be posting a collection of student quotes collected over the past weeks. Enjoy.

One of my kids, who is brilliantly dead pan, raises his hand. The class is working independently, so I go over to answer his question. Mr. Archey is my co-teaching partner. We are not dating, but our students like to pretend/assume that we are. So my kid calls me over, waits a beat, and with no introduction asks:

"So am I invited to you and Mr. Archey's wedding? I'm just asking because I've got to get my suit, and get the date on my calendar. And also, I need to know what are the colors? And can I see some swatches?"

I laugh, and walk away to answer the question of a child who is actually interested in learning about the differences between criminal and civil trials. Maybe five minutes go by, and my student raises his hand again. So, I walk over to him...

"What's your question?"

"Ms. Andersen. When you and Mr. Archey get married, which I know you will, and when you want to divorce him, cause he's cheating on you, which I know he will, and you divorce him, would that be civil law?"

"Yes! It would! Very good!"

"Ok, just make sure you hit him with a frying pan of hot grits."

And, in the continuing series of kids making strange comments about my physical appearance:

"Man Ms. Andersen, lookit those big ol' eyes. I should call those your, hm. Green eyes...green eggs and ham eyes!"

Or about the food I eat:

[As I'm eating granola from a ziploc bag.]

"What are you eating, Ms. Andersen?"

"Granola."

"It look like bird food. Bird seed. You be eating like a bird."

"It's granola. Lots of people eat granola."

"Yeah, but you always eat like a bird. I bet when you lie down at home you turn into an owl."

One of my favorite kids made this observation about how white and black people buy groceries:

"White people be buying, like...okay. Say you see some plums in the grocery, and we got some over here for like 69 cents, and then we got some other plums over here, look exactly the same, but they like, $1. 25. Black people, we get the 69 cent ones, cause they the same damn plums. But you be like, no no, I want these ones over here, they look better! White people buy stuff like, they be the exact same thing, but they got some nice packaging on there, and so they be like, oh, these look nice, when like, the packaging cost more than the food."

And another of my favorite kids walked into class one Tuesday after being absent on Monday:

Me: Kevin! Where were you yesterday?

Kevin [not his name, of course]: At your house.

Me: Really. What were you doing at my house?

Kevin: Eating your cereal.

Me: So that's why my Rice Chex were gone this morning?

Kevin: Yep, I ate 'em all.

And from the same student...

Kevin: You’ve been to Europe?

Me: Yep, I went in college.

Kevin: You been to France? I heard they got people being kidnapped all over the place there.

Me: What? Um, yes I’ve been to France but I don’t know about the kidnapping.

Kevin: You didn’t get kidnapped?

Me: No.

Kevin: Well, Ms. Andersen, you ever get kidnapped over there, I want you to call me. You hear? You call me before you call the police. They can’t be doing that to Molly. I be over there and I get you outta there. Me before the police, alright? I got you, Ms. Andersen.

"Maybe I'll be a poemist"

A poem written after school by a student, who was supposedly staying after school to do homework. I accepted this as a satisfactory substitute.

Our 3rd block may seem boring, but thats OK
We still have fun In a Good type of way
When Mis Anderson laughs she gets real red
Some times even tears shed
I think my civic teachers get wasted during school
but At West Meck, who dosent do it when dey in the mood
My teachers are cool
But the students can be a fool
In now In some times our class is exicting
A few months our class was about fighting
Things we learn is endored with intrest
Im curious about new things every day before Entrace
I just want to say Yall make my day
By developing me into a informed, intrersted, and empowerd citizen of today.

(That last line is taken from a slogan we have posted in the classroom...kid knows how to win brownie points.)

Why sometimes teaching is hysterically funny

Collected from the last several weeks, here is an assortment of exchanges with my high school students.

Today, one of my students, who is black, had just spent twenty minutes sitting in a classroom while an ESL class of Vietnamese students gave presentations on famous civil rights leaders. He speaks very deliberately, and knows he is hysterically funny.

"So they're talking about Martin Luther King," he tells me. "Only I can't understand what they're saying, because they sound like 'Mah-tin Loo-teh King Joon-ya' and then one of them asks me if Martin Luther King ate a lot of fried chicken. And you're laughing Ms. Andersen, but they didn't ask you, they asked me, and I didn't laugh because that would have been rude. And they wouldn't have asked you, because you're white. But I know all about Martin Luther King. And fried chicken. Obviously."

And also today, we were reading an article that used the word "macro." So, we explained what the word "macro" means.

Me: "Macro" means "big."

My student: So what do "roni" mean?

He explained further: "I was thinking like, if 'macro' mean big, then maybe macaroni means like, 'big cheese noodle.'"

This is the same kid, who last week was suddenly awestruck by the fact that we live on a planet. "I'm tellin you, we're living on a PLANET. Like, we're living on top of a rock with water and dirt on it. Planet earth, man. And you think like, we're just a speck of dust in the whole picture, like I bet we're like a speck of dust in an alien's closet. One of these days someone's just gonna blow dry us out the way!"

Later in that conversation, he comes out with...

Student: So if you get all that money, you gonna be comin' in here and make it precipitate?

Cliff, my co-teacher: What?

Student: You know, makin' it rain?

They're so smart! I love my kids.

In addition to commenting on my eyes (which happens with some regularity, for some reason) my kids will also comment on how small I am ("Ms. Andersen, you look just like a little kid!"), or on how long my hair is (today, for instance, I was asked if my hair had grown, because it was "looking pretty long.") These are at least relatively reasonable things to notice, I guess. Last week though, one of my kids looks at me and makes the following observation: "Ms. Andersen, you look like you was outside this morning selling lemonade or something."

Moral of the story, little kids say super cute things that make you swoon with their adorableness. High schoolers just say the absolutely most ridiculous things you've ever heard - and I love it. Not to say my job isn't really hard sometimes. And not to say it isn't stressful, and there isn't a lot of pressure, and a lot isn't at stake for these kids. But sometimes all I can do is stand there laughing hysterically. Because I love my kids, and they are some of the damn funniest people I've ever met.

"That's why you're so small, Ms. Andersen."

Eating has become substantially more enjoyable. I had honey yesterday. Something actually, truly sweet. Milk didn't seem to cause any problems, and neither did tea, so this afternoon I made myself a tea-ish sort of latte. Earl grey tea, hot milk and honey. It was glorious. I tested ground pork at dinner tonight, and soy (edamame) for lunch. One of my students came in to say hi today while I was eating my edamame at my desk. When he noticed the soybeans, he was perplexed. "Whoa, Ms. Andersen! What is that!?" I explained it was soy beans. "What's that go with?" he wanted to know. "Like, what meat?" I said I wasn't really sure, but that you get it at sushi restaurants sometimes. He looked skeptical. "That's why you're so small, Ms. Andersen. You eat beans for lunch." Fair enough.

My kids often make fun of my lunches, usually by insisting that it's white people food. It's funny - I can't tell you how many times I've been asked either what I'm having for dinner, or whether I like a certain food (one kid was legitimately surprised that I, a white person, like fried chicken). This morning, one girl explained: "White people be eatin' like, salads and fruit and stuff. Black people eat macaroni and cheese." Maybe black people don't eat edamame?

Tomorrow is a teacher workday, which means I can sleep in until seven, make scrambled eggs for breakfast (!!) and drive to school in the daylight.

Also! Liver enzymes, alk phos, everything is nice and normal again. ALT = 15, AST = 19, AlkPhos = 84. As there is now nothing diagnostically interesting about my blood, I guess it'll be a while before I see Dr. Nami again. Which is fine by me, because last appointment I waited an hour before seeing him for about five minutes, after which they quickly drew four tubes of my blood and sent me home. Sixty dollar co-pay to top it off. I'm just praying that this silly diet reveals something useful and that my joints remain as generally healthy-feeling as they have been. I even went for a run yesterday! (I'm tentatively thinking of running a 5k in March. This would be quite a feat, given that I am still pretty well out of shape and have never run in any kind of race ever...but it doesn't seem un-doable.)

"I'm in the paper!!"

A few fun snippets from my classroom...

Before the bell rang this morning, one of my kids (who I don't have until third period) came bounding into my room waving a newspaper, with a big grin on his face.
"Ms. Andersen! Ms. Andersen! Look! Look! I got my picture in the paper!"
He had the paper open, plopped it down on top of my overhead, and jabbed his finger at his mugshot, lined up with a bunch of other mugshots under the heading "Arrests This Week."
"They put me in the motherfuckin' paper, man! Check this out! And look man, that's my uncle!"
This kid was so excited, he had to come tell me before class even started. I wasn't entirely sure what to say in such a situation. Like, what's the etiquette?
"Um, I'm not sure what to tell you, Reggie. I mean, do I say congratulations?"(Not his real name, of course.)
"I know, right?!" And then he bounced, laughing, out of the classroom to go show his friends.


The last time I saw this kid this excited was last week when he suddenly called out in the middle of class, "Oh! Hold up! Lookit this!" He started reaching around in his pockets (which were down around his knees somewhere) and pulled out a penny and jumped up to come show it to me.
"Ms. Andersen! Lookit this! I got this crazy penny!" (It was one of the new ones, with the little crest on the back.) "It says, right here, look! E pluribus unum! Out of many one! It don't say that on other pennies! That's one special penny, man!"
Despite the fact that it does actually say that on other pennies, I was proud of him for noticing, for saving the penny, and for being so excited he knew what e pluribus unum meant that he had to show the whole class.

I'm not sure what to think about the fact that he was equally excited to be featured in the Charlotte police report section, but I guess everybody wants to see their face in the paper?

A year ago...

It occurred to me today that a year is a hell of a long time. I started thinking, for no particular reason, about where I was a year ago. I had a life all settled in Chicago, had broken up with Ben a month before, was an emotional train wreck, was still working for Grosvenor, and a week or two before flying home for Christmas I had been suddenly hit with the thought that I might want to move to North Carolina.

Here's part of an email I wrote, almost a year ago today:

I wrote two emails this morning asking people to be my job references, and am filling out an application for the Southern Teachers' Agency (the people who got me my Queen Anne job). I can rent an f-ing HOUSE with TWO BEDROOMS and a YARD for like, 700 bucks in Winston. Screw this thousand dollars a month bullshit, geez. So we'll see about that, but I think I might do it. You've always told me to follow my dreams and what do I really want to do and so on. . . and I think I'd really like to live in the south and be near friends and family and have dirt to plant stuff in and open space to wander around in. So we'll see.

And in another email two weeks later...

Spent the first day of the new decade making art with my new pastels, cleaning old shit out of my house, and sending my resume to recruiters in NC. Juliet has given me all kinds of great reasons why Charlotte is an awesome city and I should totally move there. Nelson has good things to say about NC, but doesn't like Charlotte because it has too many southern people in it. Kristen's gonna call me back later and tell me all about TFA in Charlotte. And I, meanwhile, need to start applying for some other things in case TFA still doesn't want me. But, fact is, I can basically do whatever the hell I want to, wherever the hell I want to do it! I'm really excited and really hoping I get the TFA gig, but either way, I'm crossing that Mason-Dixon!

I guess it's just nice to look back on that, sitting here in my apartment in Charlotte, getting presents ready to drive home for Christmas (because I can drive now, not fly), steeling myself for two more days of rowdy teenagers who are just as anxious for break as I am...able to think hey, I started at Point A, decided I wanted to get to Point B, and here I am. Funny thing is though, all that does is make me think about what else I want to do... if I wanted to move to NC, decided to do it, and then actually did it...what else do I want to do?

(P.S. It sometimes snows a little here and it's beautiful!)

On patriotic symbols...

We learned about propaganda today, and watched a bunch of campaign ads.
(If you never caught the Demon Sheep ad...I suggest you check it out. Good for a big wtf.)

Anyway, one of the propaganda techniques we covered was the use of patriotic symbols. Sarah Palin's PAC ad is thoroughly doused in American flags, for instance. We asked what other patriotic symbols they could think of. One of my favorite kids took that as a springboard for a little tangent about eagles:

"Yeah, we got them symbols man like, ain't that why we believe in the eagle? Man, you don' wanna fuck with an eagle. I'm tellin you man, I seen one of them fuckin' eagles, he walkin right up behind me and he was bigger than a dog, man! That fuckin' bird was fidna pick me up! That how big it was! Man, and I'm afraid of heights!"

School-appropriate language? Nope. Do we have bigger battles to fight? Yup. Couldn't not laugh.

Two Successes, One Almost-Success, and One Not-Successful-Yet

Our kids bombed their midterm (we're talking like class averages in the 50s). And then they bombed the quiz we gave them on Friday that was designed to be relatively easy and give them a confidence boost after failing the midterm so miserably. However, I refuse to count this a failure because we have three more quarters to get them ready for N.C.'s End of Course exam; it just goes in the category of not-yet-successful. This morning I got up and cranked out two study guides for them to complete as homework on Monday and Tuesday in preparation for their test on Wednesday. Do you know what two people make up the city's Executive Branch? How many justices are there on the N.C. Supreme Court? What is our state legislature called? No? Well, neither do a lot of our students...yet. But they had damn well better know it on Wednesday, because we will have worked their butts off and they will have no excuse. End of story.

Success #1 today was finishing spray painting my porch furniture. Well, almost-success. I got two hand-me-down white plastic deck chairs and a matching bench from my no-longer-neighbor Genevieve before she moved. I wanted them to be something other than white, so I decided to try Krylon's Fusion paint, which is supposed to bond right to plastic without priming or sanding or any prep work at all. The stuff is magical! My two chairs look beautiful.
The bench, on the other hand, had been painted white in a previous life (white paint on top of white plastic...not sure what sense that makes). The Fusion paint does indeed fuse beautifully to plastic, without chipping or looking blotchy or puddling up or anything. However, it does not fuse beautifully to crappy old paint. I tried to scrap off as much of the old paint as I could, but it still looks like the furniture equivalent of someone with a skin disease.
Gross. I'll have to make a seat cushion, and throw some pillows on it.

My second success of the day was chili. When I lived in Chicago, I was fortunate enough to live a block away from a fantastic chili and pizza and hot dog place called Chili Mac's. If you're ever in Chicago and want an amazing chili dog instead of those funky "Chicago-style" hot dogs with neon-green relish and celery salt and nasty little "sport" peppers... take a 22 or 36 to Briar and Broadway and thank me later. I'd never heard of "Cincinnati-style" chili and honestly had no idea what made it any different from what I knew as like, normal chili. Chili powder and cumin = chili, as far as I knew. BUT! I did some googling this morning, found a couple recipes, and actually made a batch of chili that I won't get sick of and throw away after a week. It has cinnamon, coriander, allspice, paprika, cumin, chili, cayenne, and bay leaf (as well as the usual garlic, onion, etc.) I have a tendency to relegate things like cinnamon and allspice to cookie recipes, and forget they can make other things too.
Next up: polyurethaning my blue bookshelf and putting plastic insulation film over my windows.

SLDs and IEPs

I'm taking this online class right now with UNCC (towards my Master of Arts in Teaching) that talks about "diverse learners." Basically, this means kids with learning disabilities, behavioral disabilities, kids who are English language learners, or who have some other issue that classifies them as EC (Exceptional Children.) I teach three blocks of inclusion, which means all of my classes have a variety of EC kids included with other non-EC students. Their issues or disabilities are ALL over the map, and are challenging, heart-breaking, and aggravating as hell in turns. Or, all at once.

To give you a little idea of what some of these kids are like, and the challenges they face just PASSING a class, here's one of my recent forum posts from my class. (We have to post three little reflections every week.)

So here's my frustration with IEPs. As I've mentioned, I teach inclusion classes, and have a LOT of kids with IEPs and 504 plans. Their IEPs say things like "extra time on exams" or "testing in a separate setting" or "read aloud their tests." Okay. That's all well and good, and those accommodation definitely help them come test time. But what IEPs don't do is give me any idea of HOW to actually help these kids LEARN better.

We try to use a variety of teaching strategies, and try to engage kids with different learning styles, and so on and so forth. Obviously there is a LOT more improvement we can do in this area, and there's lots to learn about how to best teach all of our students. But I find myself just at a loss with some students, particularly those SLD kids that have retention and comprehension problems. I can sit and talk through an assignment with a student and watch the wheels in his or her head just spinning and spinning without gripping anything.

One student in particular (although there are several) has unbelievably bad retention; you can tell him what a word means, have him say it back to you, and then five minutes later he can't remember it. This same student has a really hard time making sense of what he's reading. We can read a sentence like "President Obama opposes the ban on gays serving openly in the military and wants Congress to repeal the law" and when I ask him to talk through it with me, and ask him "What does Obama want Congress to do?" this student will think out loud something "Obama opposes...with the gays...they are serving openly?" He can carry on a perfectly intelligent sounding conversation with you about his life, but when faced with a piece of text he has absolutely nothing to even grab on to. It's as though he's reading a foreign language with nothing familiar to guide him to meaning.

It's students like him that motivate me the most to learn how to teach better, and at the same time make me feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall, or whatever metaphor for futility you choose. His IEP provides no guidance as to how to help him LEARN, only guidance as to how to make it easier for him to show that he HAS learned what little he actually retained. I hope this class will give me some practical ways to help him, and my other students like him, make some degree of progress and acquire new skills.

I can name at least four other students right now who are similar to the one I describe above, in that they struggle so painfully hard to hold on to even the simplest piece of information - and yet sometimes will pull the most random facts out of thin air. Their reading comprehension skills are so bad as to make reading almost a completely non-viable way to acquire information independently. I honestly do not know if their challenges would have been made easier by better teaching throughout the rest of their academic careers. My hunch is yes, but that it would have taken extraordinary teaching to get them up to grade level, and it's going to take beyond-extraordinary teaching to even get them half-way to where they should be. I honestly don't know if we're up to that. I hope we can figure it out. These kids deserve so much more than what they've been given so far. They deserve every chance I've had, and it's just plain shitty that they've had to work so much harder to get just as far as they have.

Hey October, where the heck did you go??

Seriously though. The last two weeks have gone simultaneously very, very slowly and astonishingly fast. I am thoroughly exhausted, have been living off not-enough sleep, with no time for breakfast, and Bojangles for dinner. Consequently, I woke up yesterday with a monster of a cold. My face feels like it's being pounded by mallets. I've been throwing down EmergenC, stocked up on anti-viral Kleenex, and my skin feels crawly and gross. Not a fun way to spend my Saturday (and, so far, my Sunday). But...I'm going to Chicago on Thursday to visit for the long weekend, and I'm pretty ridiculously excited about that. A light at the end of the tunnel!!

In the meantime, I've accomplished a few things the last two weeks.

I had a bunch of friends (including my sister!) over for dinner. I made curry and we drank a lot of beer.

I repainted a shelf that my old lady neighbor friend Genevieve gave me. It was dirty black when I got it, with a dead cockroach sliding around on the bottom shelf.

And now it's a kind of robin's egg/turquoise! Matches my Kandinsky and Picasso prints.


I stocked up on flannel from the Goodwill!


This morning, I decided I should put a coat of satin poly on the bookshelf, and repaint the white plastic deck furniture Genevieve has also given me. So I threw on clothes and went outside to go to the Home Depot, only to find my anole friend camped out on my car.


I spent 10 minutes chasing him around the car until he finally jumped off. Pretty ridiculous. I'm glad nobody was around because they'd have seen me walking in circles around my parked car saying things like "Seriously? C'mon friend!" to a small lizard. He kept changing from green to brown as I chased him around the car; pretty adorable. And...since I finally have a new phone(!!!!) I could actually take pictures of him.
I finally pulled the car out of the car port and got him to run off into the bushes.

For the remainder of my Sunday, I'm collecting sources for our kids to use to research their current events project. They're each going to do a presentation on some issue they feel strongly about. Our options so far are: Prop 8/Gay Marriage; the Westboro Baptist a-holes/free speech; Islamic Community Center/Mosque in NYC; Texas and their social studies standards/are we a "Christian" nation?; CA Prop 19/legalizing weed (guaranteed to be a favorite); AZ's immigration law; offshore drilling; and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to close/reshuffle a lot of low-income schools in Charlotte.

I'm also going to try out Krylon's Fusion paint, which is supposed to stick directly to plastic without any sanding or priming.

Is it wrong that I'm way more excited about the latter?

Dear King George III

We've been going through the Declaration of Independence, and the build-up to the Revolutionary War this past week. Today, our third block had the option of writing letters to King George "breaking up" with him, or writing their own "Declaration of Independence" from something they didn't want to be involved with anymore. Our kids' might have shaky writing skills, but they're funny, and smart as hell, and this assignment made me love them even more:

dear king george,

we gave been together for some time now and i'm sorry to tell you this but I am splitting up from you. With all the ridiculous acts you've been creating is messing up my life. Especially, the Quartering Act why would you let some random soldier come to my house and eat, sleep, and shit. Just about a week ago some White soldier who didn't have any boots came to my house telling me to buy him boots.

Dear King George

I have had enough for your total B.S.! You don't pay any attention to me. I do everything you ask and when i slip you you want to start to tax us and make us pay extra for little things. The quartering law you just passed could have been your saddest attempt yet. You have no idea how many nights I have had to give up my bed for some dirty, stinky soldier who has a bad snoring Problem and tried to clean out my entire kitchen cause of his overly hungry appitite.

Dear King George III

Im breaking up with your government because, the laws you make are so harsh; one of them is the Quartering Act, I don't want no dirty Soilder comming to sleep in my bed. I want to sleep with comfort with my women.

And here are a few "Declarations of Independence":

[written by one of our Vietnamese students]
I want to be Free in my life is Freedom of my country, because in my country they don't let us go to church. And to do whatever we want they control everyting. Like if you want to go to another country, you have to ask permission from them and them why? And they take control Religion they like us to go to church and they want us to do like what they do. And we have to listen to them. And if you go to church and they catch it they take to the police office and ask some question or take you to jail.

Cartoons I grew up up with you. Having you there every morning with my Bowl of cereal. But now I'm getting older an now I juzt think your for littel Babys But Don't Think That it's just you my cartoon Tite whites got to go to ok bye

The last one is my favorite. Took me a second to decode it, but yes, I think that's supposed to be "tighty whiteys."

A spelling lesson

Over the long Labor Day weekend, Toby and I paid a visit to the Home Depot and got some curtain rods. After much effort, plaster dust, paint flaking and dulled drill bits, we got them hung. Apparently you need a masonry bit or, I don't know, a diamond-edged spike, to put holes in my walls. Regardless, the place has gotten a lot homier over this past week, so for the benefit of curious family members, here are a bunch of new photos of 518 Willoughby:

Still needed are two barrel lampshades for my 60s golden pine cone lamps (on the end table). Also, some throw pillows. Also, a GFI outlet in the kitchen that can power the microwave without tripping the whole circuit.
Toby brought his turntable! He also brought a stool from the old Korner Diner in Newark (may it rest in peace). The stool make a nice, shiny side table, and its peely gray vinyl is still a comfy seat. Next up is re-covering the chair cushions. Midnight blue? Gold? Ideas?


A dimly lit photo of the dining room...but...I have a table! And four bentwood chairs. AND I have back the cuckoo clock I got in Germany in 10th grade! Although the damn cuckoo itself is so irritating I finally took the weight off the cuckoo chain.
These curtain rods were a nightmare to hang. This one is hung with a nail on one end, and a half-in screw on the other. There's a 5-inch circle of paint that popped off the wall when I tried to drill a hole, so that's held onto the wall with a giant piece of packing tape. Plaster walls are nice and solid and good for keeping the place well-insulated, but good lord they're a pain in the ass to hang ANYTHING on.

Still some things to pick up, hang up, and tidy up, but the place is looking a lot nicer than a month ago.

Teaching goes well. I think, to be honest, I had braced myself to be miserable and stressed and hate my life at this point. TFA even gave us a whole presentation about the phases of your first year of teaching, and how by October many people reach the "disillusionment" phase, or something to that effect. Apparently last year the Charlotte corps had more corps members quit after their first year than any other region. Yikes, right? I'm happy to report, however, that I actually very much like my job so far, and the people I work with, and our students. I'm also very thankful that it's my second year teaching, and that I'm not doing this straight out of college. Plus, co-teaching with someone who's been at the school for a year already has made a big difference in terms of the amount of work I have to do alone. Being able to divide up grading, or planning, or what have you makes things a lot less overwhelming. It's also nice to be living in a region where I have friends and family within easy driving distance.

As an addendum, one of my favorite kids (although one of the most obnoxious in class) stayed after school recently to get his homework done. He had to write sentences using vocab words from an article we'd read in class. He wrote one sentence with the word "wuz," and so I told him to spell "was" correctly. He erased "w-u-z" but then paused. He couldn't tell me how to spell "was." With some prodding, he figured it out, but it took a minute or two. "Man, I be texting too much!" he said, and then grabbed a dry erase marker and showed us how he and his friends spell things. "Dnt" and "Cmeing" and "Wut"... "Wen ru cmeing ovr?" I pointed out that "Cmeing" has just as many letters as "Coming," but somehow that didn't seem to be the point. Anyhow, it had never occurred to me that kids might actually FORGET how to spell words like WAS!!! because they write everything in text language. Even on facebook I see kids spell stuff like that. Sometimes I think there must be some contest to come up with whose spelling requires the longest amount of time to decipher.

Anyway, I was at the fabric store today, and I saw this:

Really??

I have 100 kids.

And I love them all. Well, most of them. And we actually teach more than 100 at this point...we're at 35 or 36 in each class.

Anyway, obviously lots to catch up on as far as the teaching goes. Like, I'm teaching now. And even thought I've been waking up a little before 5 most mornings, and not getting home from school till about twelve hours later, and then often doing work at home. And work this past weekend. Despite all that....I'm kind of having a blast. I'm encouraged in thinking I could have this job for a while.

I'll have to talk in more detail about my first week at West Meck, but it's getting near my bedtime and I'd like to finish my PBR and retire soon. However, I'm going to cheat and copy-paste in something I just wrote for UNC. I'm getting this Masters of Arts in Teaching over the next two years, primarily (if not entirely) through online coursework. The first course involves reading a text book I haven't bought (and am trying not to) and writing posts on a discussion board. THis last discussion topic though gets me a little heated, so instead of the paragraph I probably should have stuck with, I wrote the following:

As I've intimated in my responses to others' posts already, I fall on the skeptical end of the spectrum when it comes to technology and education. Of course I agree that our students need to be able to function in a world increasingly reliant on technology, particularly for the purposes of information gathering and digital communication. But beyond being able to create a word document, send an email and find reliable information on a search engine, I think a lot of times technology becomes something people push us to teach because it sounds nice and advanced, when really there are a million other things we could be spending time teaching that would better help our students develop into thoughtful, intelligent and creative adults.

Technology allows us to manipulate information: we can search for it, type it, put it in a spreadsheet, send it in an email, present it in a power point. And the ability to do those things is undeniably a useful skill. What technology does NOT do, however, is create new ideas. It can be used to make certain ideas manifest (creating digital models, running simulations, making digital art, etc.), but it doesn't teach people the creative, critical thinking skills needed to come up with those ideas in the first place.

I think the last thing responsible for the pathetic state of our public education system is a lack of technology in classrooms. Technology is great for many things, but it does not create literate students. It doesn't teach kids how to think about big ideas. It doesn't teach them to think creatively. It teaches kids how to find bite-sized pieces of information quickly, collate them tidily into a word document or spreadsheet, and then spit them back out in bullet points on a power point slide. Data manipulation is not learning. It can be a useful supplement to learning, but beyond that its utility begins to wear thin.

Our public education system is a wreck. When something is in that sorry of a state, you need to prioritize. Priority number one should be teaching kids to read and write. The horrifying lack of those skills is what's crippling our kids, not their inability to create an interactive web page. Priority number two should be teaching kids to think about what they read and write. They might be able to make the snazziest multimedia presentation ever, but if they have no meaningful thoughts to present, it becomes fact-regurgitation jazzed up with some video and a colorful background. Priority number three should be teaching creativity. Not just artistic creativity (although, as a former art teacher, I'll argue to the death about the importance of that), but out-of-the-box thinking in all the disciplines.

That said, I absolutely think that the first two elements of the report are pretty solid: content and learning skills. Absolutely. I'm just wary of any new educational direction that seems to focus more on technical skills that are relatively easy to learn on your own (my Nana has managed to figure out instant messenger and Skype), and focuses less on those aspects of education that require development over time and provocative, authentic teaching. Not that you can't be a terrific teacher and use technology - a power point can be very handy for certain things, particularly when teaching 36 kids - but UNTIL you are teaching real content and real critical thought, technology will be a diversion and a short-cut.

t-minus 36 hours

Classes start on Wednesday! Wild.

My co-teacher and I have been getting our room set up, hunting down desks (37, and yes, that's how big our classes are) and putting up posters. Today I was at school all day for a parent-student open house, where they could just drop in and meet teachers in their classrooms. Right now our rosters have about 110 kids in three classes, give or take. I met close to 30 students and/or parents today, which isn't a huge percentage of 110 but is still a lot of names and faces. Especially when I'm trying to remember their names phonetically and then match them to the names on my roster as soon as they leave the room.

A lot of parents told me how they really wanted their child to focus this year, how this was the year they were really going to ride them to do their homework, that kind of thing. One kid's mom talked about how much they really wanted him to go to college, and how much he reads at home, and how important this class was to them as they're trying to transition him out of self-contained classes, and this will be his only mainstream class this year. She told me that right now they (I took "they" to mean guidance counselors) were pushing him towards a community college, but that he really was smart and wanted to go to a real four-year school. They were both very talkative, and the kid started telling me about what books he'd read, "Where the Red Fern Grows," and "The Giver," and all the Harry Potter books except the last one but he's almost finished with it and can't wait to see the movie. So... my job just got a lot more real. My job now is to get him ready to go to college. Or as ready as we can get him in one year-long class. And we've got 109 other kids, and 109 more jobs to figure out. It's a little (read: a lot) overwhelming, but when I get stressed and exhausted and totally spent in the next few months, I'll need to remind myself that there are actual people with actual futures sitting in our classroom. And that their futures are now my job.

Reason 37 that I love my apartment

It appears that the big shrub outside my screen porch is actually a gardenia bush.
In both Delaware and Chicago, gardenias are houseplants that you buy in small pots in the grocery store to give as Mothers' Day gifts, so it completely threw me when I noticed familiar-looking flowers on this giant bush. The landscapers recently were out pruning mindlessly with loud electric hedge-trimmers, so it's not exactly flowering profusely, but given as the bush is behind my porch and not near anybody else's apartment, I had no qualms about cutting one of the few flowers I did see.

Gardenias smell so incredible, and nobody's going to enjoy it out in the parking lot. Now my bathroom smells lovely. (See the charming bud vase? Formerly a flask from a hospital lab, courtesy of my mom.) I should probably clean the rust off the overflow drain - that looks kind of dingy.

In teaching-related news, I've been schlepping off to the Marriott every morning for the past week for more TFA training/Kool Aid drinking (I'm swimming in it these days)/planning for my class that I start teaching in THREE WEEKS! I stopped by my school yesterday to scrounge up a text book, and was able to talk to the woman there who does scheduling. She told me that for all three blocks I'm teaching, I'd be working with an '09 Corps Member who teaches Civics & Econ inclusion. (Inclusion is just the way they teach the Special Ed kids who aren't so severely disabled they need their own class. They're "included" in the normal class, and the whole class is then taught by a classroom teacher and a special ed teacher who work together.) I'm really excited about this because my co-teacher, Cliff, taught this class last year, and so has a much better sense than I do of what works and what doesn't. Plus, having a co-teacher means I won't have to struggle on my own to differentiate for kids at different levels while trying to teach the rest of the students. Plus, he's already done a lot of planning for our class, so it's just going to be a matter of getting together and getting on the same page. Plus, he's been at the school for a year so he knows who can help with what, who's in charge of what, and all that other stuff that you get to know after working at a school but can't possibly know when you're brand new.
Tonight I have a dinner scheduled with some TFA donors who live just down the road. TFA has scheduled all of us to go to a couple of these dinners as part of their development campaign. Basically, we get a free meal in return for putting a friendly face on the organization they give money to. Although I'm not the most naturally outgoing person ever, I really kind of enjoy getting to know strangers in smaller settings like this, so it should be fun. Plus there are a couple other corps members going too, so it's not just me and the donors. I was planning on walking, but it has suddenly started thunderstorming (the weather here goes from sunny to monsoon in about 20 seconds) so that might not work out. I did walk to Ben & Jerry's though (3 minutes away) and got a black raspberry frozen yogurt. I don't know what possessed me to get the 'healthy' option - real ice cream is way better. Next time it's back to something with plenty of fat in it.
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