Still Here

This year has been very smooth for me, but busy. I am shifting focus, changing responsibilities, and trying to squeeze in time for myself. I am not sure when I will be back to this blog...hoping to return someday.

Stressors

This year has been remarkably smooth for me up to this point. I don't know if it's because I totally revamped my lesson plans when it comes to scaffolding skills, or if I just have a great bunch of kids (totally do, by the way) but it has been very smooth, and I am very grateful for that.

However.

I have a freshman advisory class that meets twice a week and things are not going so smoothly there. My advisory class is my largest class, with 30 kids, and has 6 extremely.....rambunctious....boys in it that are rude, disrespectful, and extremely immature. I  have separated them, talked to them, been kind, been strict, been snarky, been direct, and they are just acting like tools. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that the lesson plans that have been designed for the freshmen are too easy and too slow, in my opinion. As a result, we end up with extra days where I don't have anything for them to do, and they don't handle free time well at all. They get obnoxious, I get frustrated, and we all end class upset. I feel like I am failing the kids that actually care about their school work and try to work when I give them time to do so, and I am failing to reach the kids who are goofing off. This class is supposed to help them graduate prepared to pay bills, find a job, fill out a college application, and essentially function as an semi-adult, and so far it's falling totally flat. I really dislike this class and it shows.

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This week is the beginning of the multicultural show period...auditions are this week and rehearsals start next week. I am trying to juggle more responsibility this year as the usual coordinator is out on maternity leave and the other coordinator has some major health issues that have forced her to take less of a role than previously, putting the majority of this on my shoulders. I actually don't love being in charge of anything outside my own classroom. I am really good at being a support to others, but I hate being in charge of anything this big and I am feeling really stressed out about it.

Another issue is that each year rehearsals become a battle with one particular coach who does not want his kids to miss any part of his 3 hour daily practice, and while I feel his pain, I'm not going to tell the kids they can't participate in the show because they are part of a sports team. I am planning on meeting with him before hand to work out a system, but an unfortunate and unavoidable issue is the fact that dress rehearsal is scheduled for the exact same time as the first track meet of the season. Oh, and did I mention that I also work the track meets?

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Mentoring is going well, my mentor teacher is very good but I feel like I am not helping her as effectively as I should. I hope I am giving her good advice and encouraging her to grow as a teacher, but I just am not sure about what I am doing.

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I haven't been able to go to tutoring since November. Sigh.

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I am taking over more responsibilities as the co-ASB coordinator, since the girl who does it now will be out on maternity leave starting in May. This means meetings every two weeks starting now, and an additional meeting every Monday starting at the end of March, as well as assisting with elections, and attempting to fill the shoes of an extremely talented leadership teacher who is totally beloved by the kids, all while not messing up things like the ASB budget and her system of doing things.

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I constantly feel like I am forgetting something really important and I hate that feeling.

Continuing on a Technological Track

Well the snow melted, and school resumed, and finals were bumped back a week, so we ended up having several days in the computer lab to work on the final project - creating an outline of a persuasive paper. The reason I had the kids write an outline is that I feel if the kids can identify and write the various parts of a paper separately, it will be easier for them to later construct a WELL-written paper, instead of a hodge-podge of partial thoughts and illogical sentences. And I am sooooo tired of reading mashed up research papers that make absolutely no sense...they make me frustrated and angry.

Parts of this project went better than expected and parts of it went worse. First of all, the kids really struggled with making an outline. They have a tendency to put a lot of extra words around the main thought and have to really fight to get it down to a stripped-to-the-bone main idea. In addition, only about 10% of the kids understood how to make an outline. The other 90% tried to write it in paragraph form.

On the flip side, as I am grading them I am noticing that once I convinced them to get those extra words out of the way, most of the kids so far seem to be doing pretty well. I think part of that is that I stood over them for a lot of this project. We were in the computer lab for 3 days straight. On the first day I went around to each kid individually and checked their thesis statements, redirecting when necessary. On the second day I went to each kid individually and checked the explanation portion of their outline (where they explained how the supporting detail supported their thesis). I think this really helped the kids work out some of the kinks and kept them moving in the right direction, and allowed me to get more one-on-one time with them.

In addition, I had the kids send me their papers electronically instead of printing something out. This is something that every other educational institution in the free world has been doing for years, but my district blocks EVERYTHING, including all non-district email access, and they don't provide email addresses to the kids, so up to this year, there wasn't really a good way of getting electronic files from a to b. But last summer we were given teacher websites hosted by the district, and it came with a direct email button, so all the kids simply emailed me their projects on Thursday. Of course, this resulted in my inbox jumping from 100 emails to 220 emails, all with the same subject line, but it was really nice not to have to deal with paper and printing.

And another bonus...I am finding that I am grading these outlines faster, since I can use the Microsoft editing function to edit both word and powerpoint documents, allowing me to leave better, more detailed, and more legible feedback. Yea for technology...better late than never, I guess.

Take What You Need

Today when I got to school, this was outside my classroom.

I'm not sure what was on the missing piece, and there was no information about who had put it up, but by the end of the day, this is all that was left.

And once again, I remembered why I love what I do and how thankful I am to be surrounded by amazing kids and passionate colleagues.

Snow Days Don't Really Mean No School Days

This is a shot off my balcony...which is as far as I ventured outdoors today. Last night we received a "significant snow event," which always makes me laugh because it usually consists of a few inches of snow that effectively shuts down the entire region (mostly because Seattle is all hills and doesn't have a lot of snowplows). Meanwhile, my aunt in Alaska has been posting pictures of -20 degree weather...it's all relative, I guess. School was a late start on Tuesday, was cancelled today, and we just got word that it is cancelled again tomorrow, because it warmed up just enough to start melting the snow and then froze again.

For me, while I like snow, and am perfectly fine with snow when I am prepared for it (which I was), I prefer that it happen on a weekend. Especially when it happens the week before finals, and my kids need to work on their final project.

Here is where technology pays off...As soon as I heard we were missing school again, I immediately figured out how I was going to adjust the final project (which I gave the kids on Tuesday) and tweeted that out, asking the kids to retweet the information since not all my kids follow me. One of my kids tweeted me a clarifying question about the project, which I also answered on twitter. I was able to email my students parents from home, so that between those two mediums, 90% of my kids SHOULD know the adjusted expectations. In addition, all the information I gave them in class on Tuesday is on a classroom website hosted by my district.

Online, other teachers posted on facebook that they had texted the principal to ask if we were planning on moving finals (we aren't) and we discussed alternative plans and suggestions for finals. The other ASB coordinator and I were on the phone today for almost an hour, talking about plans for the spring, which we normally would have discussed at school, and I did spend a little time grading, and will finish that as well as entering grades tomorrow.

After I sleep in, drink more hot chocolate, and continue my Doctor Who marathon, of course.

Fine. I'll tweet you.

Although I had a brief fling with myspace and have had a facebook account for years, I have never felt even the slightest twinge of desire to jump on the twitter bandwagon. The name stops me, first of all. I will forever associate it with the Disney classic Bambi, in which one character declares another character to be "twitterpated." The word "tweet" is ridiculous to me and while I can control who sees my thoughts on facebook, I cannot control it on twitter...and I don't really have anything that profound to say.

But then, another teacher mentioned that her students had asked her if she would set up a twitter account for homework reminders and so on, and it suddenly clicked. That might actually work.

So I contemplated it over break, and asked my kids about it (and got an overwhelmingly positive response), got a phone that will actually support a twitter app, and decided to just see how it works. The goal is to tweet things like "homework due tomorrow!" and "don't forget to sign up for the blood drive!" you know, lame stuff like that. =)

Meh....we'll see.

book review - Driven Out

Driven Out: the Forgotten War Against Chinese-Americans by Jean Pfaelzer

I don't normally choose books from the American history side of the library aisle, but nothing on the Africa or Asia shelves was catching my eye, so I picked this one up. I am very glad I did. I knew some of the history of Chinese Americans in the United States, but had no idea of the extent of the hatred and violence that was perpetrated against this particular group of people in the 1880s. Pfaelzer gives a detailed explanation of the motivations and specific actions taken against Chinese immigrants, especially in California, and takes a brutally honest look at the repercussions that still echo today.

This book made me angry and disgusted. I generally read while on the treadmill and my heartrate went higher than normal more than once while reading this book. It really brought home to me the fact that people may talk about life "in the good old days" but for many MANY people, the opposite is true. In fact, from what I can tell, it seems that being anything but rich, white, and male meant little to no justice would come your way until the later 20th century. Did you know that while the enslavement of African-Americans was made illegal in 1863, Chinese women were openly sold on the streets of San Francisco well into the 1890s? Did you know that despite mob violence that drove out thousands of Chinese sometimes overnight, little to no damages were ever paid to the people that lost their homes, lives, and property? And did you know that Chinese immigration into the United States was prohibited until 1943, in a deliberate effort to keep the Chinese people from becoming part of American life (and it was only lifted then because the US government hoped to use the Chinese to help fight against the Japanese during World War II).

This book is amazing, powerful, desperately sad, and angry. It is one of the most powerful historical books I have ever read and I would highly recommend it.

Book Review - the Last Jews of Kerala

This year is going pretty smoothly, school-wise, and I find myself without a lot of blog fodder. But I have been able to get back to reading down the history aisle at the King County Library, so I thought I would do a little book report here and there.

The Last Jews of Kerala - by Edna Fernandes

I didn't really know what to expect when I picked up this book and even getting into it I wasn't sure for the first 50-60 pages. The author writes at first as if this book is a novel. It is very descriptive, and several times she tells part of a story, hints at an issue (for example when referring to the flooding that hit Cranganore) that only gets finished 50 pages later, which is kind of annoying, but I did get into the book and it ended up being really interesting.

This is the story of one of the few Jewish settlements remaining in India. What made it more interesting to me was the fact that the area being discussed is the southwestern, or Malabar, coast of India, an area that we had just finished discussing in my world history class. The author spends time with the "white" Jews of Mattencherry, the "black" Jews of Ernakulum, and finishes by spending time with Indian Jews who emigrated to the then-new country of Israel in the late 1940s.

This book reads as a wistful and nostalgic story of a group of people that have nearly disappeared, and will probably be gone completely within 50 years. As an Indian herself, the author has a lot of sympathy for the culture and history of the area, and seems to be fluent in the language spoken in the area, which for me, made reading this more interesting.

I would recommend this book, it is not particularly scholarly, but it is interesting in a quiet, meandering, philosophical kind of way.

It's official

Last Sunday morning I found out that I am officially a National Board Certified teacher. In an ironic twist, I have been feeling particularly unsure about my teaching methodology lately, and as a result, have spent most of the last two weeks in a blue funk, questioning whether or not I should be a teacher, whether I am actually teaching my students anything, and whether or not I will ever be able to do things that normal married people do, like buy a house or travel.

Or retire.

Ugh.

Anyway...kudos to me...whooo.

Renaissance Art Day

Each year in my class, I spend a day talking about Renaissance art. It doesn't always totally fit exactly into the curriculum, but I think that art is so cool, especially from this time period, and it is more accessible to the kids than later artistic styles. I love to see them start to find details and meaning, where they had been afraid of art before. At the end of class, I had them fill out an exit slip and I asked them to tell me what their favorite piece of art was and why they liked it. Here are some of their comments.

Raphael - School of Athens

* I liked this because it had a lot of artists and philosophers in it.
* This is beautiful and it seems like everyone is happy. It's somewhere I would want to live. The other paintings are dark and have dark messages.

Hans Holbein - The Ambassadors

* I liked this because he did more than put two and two together. He was very creative.
* I liked this because of the conflict shown between traders and priests and the three levels of life between them.
* I liked that there were different ways to interpret the items in the painting
* I liked that this painting was hard to explain
* I liked that you had to look at this from a different perspective to really see things correctly

Jan van Eyck - Arnolfini's Wedding

* I like that the artist painted himself in this backwards
* I like the significance of the mirror
* the mirror was so amazing, so small but he drew very beautiful
* I like that it represented loyalty
*I like that all the detail and the symbols all mean something
* this painting is a symbol of life, love, lust, and death

Michelangelo - the Mona Lisa

* I like the background
* I think it's cool that her eyes follow you
* this is a real-life painting
* she is really ugly (disclaimer...we had talked about how Michelangelo painted real people, they aren't made to look better than they are)
* She attracted me with her smile the first time I saw her

Artemisia Gentileschi - Judith Beheading Holofernes

* This showed how strong a woman can be when she's been hurt
* Female dominance rules
* this captures the angerts and hatred, and portrays the strength that a woman has
* it shows how a woman can stand up against the bad guys
* her background gets my attention (Gentileschi was raped while in her teens)

Caravaggio - David with the Head of Goliath

* I'm not sure why I liked it, but something about it intrigued me
* David has a look of accomplishment on his face
* it shows David being powerful and heroic

My favorite part of Renaissance Art day is how the kids interact with the paintings. At the beginning of the period they aren't sure about things but before long they start finding symbols themselves, things I haven't even seen. It's a great activity to do the day before a break and I love opening their minds up to the possibility that art is not scary.

Community Irritations

"Nothing good ever comes out of South Seattle."

 

Those were the words I heard from a security officer at the Homecoming Dance on Saturday night and it unfortunately reflects the opinion of far too many people in this area. I love this city with all my heart, but Seattle is snobby. I have, more than once, received "the look" from people who live in Seattle when they find out that I don't live within city limits. Aside from the neighborhood snobbery, there is a definite cold shoulder given to the south end of the city itself...which happens to be where I teach.

I hate this attitude. I deal with it all the time; from comments on local news stories that happen to mention my school or the neighborhood I live in, to people in the grocery store who hear where I teach and give me the raised eyebrow and the sympathetic head shake.

You know what comes out of South Seattle?

• First generation college kids whose parents are immigrants who didn't graduate from high school and don't speak a word of English
• Kids who help opposing players on the football field and basketball court back to their feet after a hard hit, and then compliment them on a great play
• Somali refugees who arrive from a country with no functional government and one of the lowest literacy rates in the world and leave as high school graduates who then return to help others in their community
• Girls who finish high school with a baby on their hip, even though their mothers didn't make that same choice
• Kids who choose their teacher to be their "parent" at a recognition, because their parents are working three jobs in order to support their family and allow their kids to go to school instead of go to work
• A football team that has learned a hard lesson about picking themselves up and getting past a seemingly insurmountable hurdle....and has learned how to lose gracefully
• Kids that have learned how to accept blame, learn from their mistakes, and move on
• Kids that can clearly articulate problems in the world today and suggest solutions that make sense
• Kids who graduated from my school 5 or 10 years ago and come back to teach there again, because they went away, grew up, and came back to give back to the people who made them who they are
• People that are funny, beautiful, quirky, diverse, and compassionate

Now to be fair, there are some problems in South Seattle. Just like there are problems in North Seattle, in Magnolia, in downtown, and on the East Side. But labeling an entire community like that irks me...especially from someone in a position of authority.

So here's to ending snobbery, keeping an open mind, and looking for nontraditional beauty in the community you live in.

Coasting

It's been a while since I last posted and I was thinking the other day about why this is.

1. this year has been going so smoothly that I don't really have any angst to dissipate here
2. I found out my principal reads my blog and it really freaked me out
3. I am behind on grading (shocking, I know)
4. I redesigned two units and am having to redo everything in those units, which takes a long time

So suffice it to say, things are going smoothly, I need to grade, and I am very glad we have a day off of school tomorrow.

Treading on Eggshells

So far, this year my kids are awesome. I am afraid to mess things up, which is why I haven't posted anything lately, I'm a little afraid of jinxing things. =)

 

It's true! My kids are sweet, friendly, and very nice. There is one kid that is minorly annoying, but all the other kids in class simply ignore him, so it doesn't bother me at all. I have quite a few special ed kids this year, so it is nice to be able to give them a little more attention.

Um....this posted by accident. TO CONTINUE....

It is nice to be able to have some time to breathe. My goals this year are:

1. to take better care of myself
2. learn to understand my money and budget better (how else will I ever be able to go back to Hawaii?)
3. work more on curriculum development

Goal 1 - I joined a gym (after an extremely traumatic visit to another gym, I joined a Bally's close to my house) and have been working out most days. I would like to be able to afford a trainer to teach me how to use all the machinery, but that is out of my price range at this time. In addition, I am once again participating in the "Biggest Lose" challenge at school. As far as cooking goes, I am struggling a little with that, but am experimenting with taking salad to school each day instead of something hot.

Goal 2 - Ugh. This is my NEMESIS. But now that my car is paid off and I am within a year of getting the last of my credit cards paid off, I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am experimenting with a method of budgeting using digital post-its on my desktop, so we shall see how that goes. This month did NOT go well, but I had some unexpected expenses.

 Goal 3 - I hate grading and I wish someone could do it for me, but I am still in "training mode" in my classroom, getting the kids used to my expectations, so it is important that I have them turn everything in at this point, to get into the habit of DOING things, and it is important that I look at everything they do so I know what their capabilities are. All that to say that I am behind (AGAIN) and doing curriculum falls by the wayside when I don't stay caught up on grading. I am hoping to get back to my schedule of going somewhere to work on Saturdays this school year, it worked well last year while doing my national boards, and could work well again this year if I make it into a habit.

In other news, I signed up again to tutor my Somali kids at the apartment complex each Tuesday. It will mean there is one day a week that I will not be able to work out, but I think this is worth it. And while I am not going to be a class advisor again for a while, I am now officially an assistant to the ASB/Student Council advisor (one of my best friends at school) and am kind of excited about that. I think I will be in charge of organizing volunteer opportunities, which is something I am really interested in.

So to sum up....So far, so good. =) Fingers crossed.

Teacherpower

I saw this on Pinterest today and immediately stole it.

Debrief

School started on Wednesday for the freshmen and yesterday for the rest of the kids.

All in all it has been a good week, and I think I have at least partially recovered my mojo. My classes are a little smaller than I was expecting and have been pretty quiet.

I was a little concerned when the zipper on my pants broke between 1st and 2nd period on the first day of school, because starting the school year by flashing 130 sophomores is Frowned Upon, but it all worked out. (Thank goodness for long shirts!)

I am glad for the long weekend, however, it will be a nice ease into the school year.

Year 10

I can't believe I am about to start my tenth year of teaching. I started teaching when I was 22, barely 4 years older than the scattering of seniors in my sophomore classes. This feels like a big milestone, but on the other hand, I don't feel that my life has progressed any further along than it was 9 years ago.

It might be for this reason, or possibly the stress of last year, or possibly the stress of family stuff, but for the first time, I am really struggling to be ready to start school. School starts in 2 days and the words that come closest to describing the way I am feeling are "apathetic," "burned out" and "tired." But I don't know why.

I am discouraged by this feeling. I want to be excited. I am hoping that the kids will change my mind once they hit my classroom. But I am worried that if I am struggling this much in September, I am really going to crash in January. I am choosing to be positive because I know that will help, but while it is normally something that comes naturally to me, I have been having a hard time with it recently.

I hope something amazingly positive happens soon...

Saying Goodbye

I have a relatively large extended family on both sides. Growing up, until I was 5 or 6, every single one of my four grandparents, four aunts and three uncles, their spouses, and all 15 of my cousins lived within an hour's drive from my house and even now, the majority of us cousins still live in the Pacific Northwest. While I have fond memories of both sides of my family, for the rest of this post I am going to focus on my paternal grandparents.

The core of my family, on both sides, is my grandparents. My paternal grandparents lived exactly half a mile from my house, and family get-togethers were common for holidays or random Sundays. I remember many Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters and summer Sundays spent playing with cousins...in the barn, climbing up on the haystack, checking out the cows, swinging on the rope hung from the barn rafters, playing in the corn bin, looking in the windows of the chicken house, exploring the old milking barn, playing house under the big split maple in the front yard, setting up the marble run in the front room, and playing with the dolls from the chilly back bedroom.

I remember my grandma making clothes for my sister and I. Her sewing room was a room that was off-limits to us kids unless she was in there and when I go to my grandpa's house, I still instinctively stay away from that room. The living room had a sliding-top cabinet radio and record player that I absolutely love, and sitting on top was a revolving light with Niagara Falls that when you turned it on, would look like the water was actually falling. My grandma had a master touch with plants and 15 or more African violet plants thrived by the massive front window overlooking the garden and fields that stretched all the way to the hill several miles away. My grandpa was a farmer and my grandma was a housewife. They had a huge garden, that my grandpa was able to keep miraculously weed-free. We used to joke that the weeds just knew to stay away. There were always cookies in a green tupperware in the corner of the kitchen, and orange marshmallow peanuts or candy corn in the cabinet above the counter. When we ate dinner at  their house, dinner was never complete without canned peaches, applesauce, bread and jam, and a tupperware of cheddar cheese slices cut into 1" squares.

My grandpa was born into a German Mennonite family, and spoke only German until he went to school. When he was frustrated, he would speak in German and then shake his head and chuckle. He wore overalls every day but Sunday, with a plaid or blue chambray shirt and work boots. On Sundays, he wore a gray suit and black dress shoes. Until I was in high school he wore a pocket watch on a shoestring that was tucked into the front pocket of his overalls and I vividly remember playing with it many times. He wore a John Deere or straw hat when it was hot, and never ever unbuttoned the top button of his shirt or rolled his shirt sleeves up, except to wash his hands in the big metal basin in the garage. Into his 80s, he could buck hay with us young'uns (throwing 40-50 lb bales of hay 4' or higher onto the back of a moving wagon) and until 2-3 years ago, actively farmed along with my dad and uncles.

When I was in elementary school, my grandma had the first of many strokes. Her personality started to change, and it is harder for me to remember her before this point. My strongest memories of her after this point involve her sitting in her recliner in the family/dining room/kitchen, nodding and smiling as we cousins talked and laughed. She gradually lost more and more of her personality, and while I was too young and self-absorbed at the time, looking back it must have been so hard to watch her go. She had beautiful snapping black eyes, like no one I have ever seen before, and gorgeous silvery hair that she wore pulled back in a bun. She always had a half-smile on her face, like she was just listening and enjoying what was going on around her.

When I was in 9th grade, she died, more or less unexpectedly. That was hard. No one in my family had ever died during my memory, except my great-grandmother. I don't really remember much about it, except seeing my grandpa cry openly and brokenly for the first and only time in my life.

After that point, if it was possible, we got even closer. Even as we cousins grew up, we still had family Christmases and Thanksgivings together. Every Christmas and for my birthday 5 days later, my grandpa gave me a card with $10 inside, and he did this for every one of my cousins, their wives, and their kids, in varying amounts. He got quieter, but he appreciated humor and smiled at our jokes and laughed at the stories when my dad and uncles teased him. My cousin took pictures of him that I still have on my dresser. One time when I came home from college, he took me out for lunch and the waitress told me that he was cute, and that all the waitresses there looked out for him when he came for lunch.

After I moved back to the Northwest, when I went home to visit my parents, I would sit with him in church; seven rows from the front, on the left hand side. He never said much, just smiled and moved over. I used to watch his hands in church, gnarled and scarred, with short nails. I have some pictures of those hands on my phone and my ipod, and my computer. He would open the hymnal and sort of hum along, then listen to the sermon. Sometimes I nudged him awake and he would silently grin at me, shake his head, and blush a little.

A couple of years ago, he fell and broke his back. He was in a collar and brace for a while, but healed faster than expected and was back weeding the garden.

Over the past year, I've had to help him find the hymn a few times and he doesn't smile at me quite as easily. He seemed frailer when I would put my arm around his shoulder and dad would tell me about another skin cancer spot that had been removed at the doctor's office. His hair got thinner and he seemed to be...leaving.

Dad called Friday. It's cancer, and it's spread, and hospice has been called.

My aunt has flown in from Pennsylvania. My cousin's wife posted on facebook this afternoon that he's in pain and told another cousin that lucidity is rarer. Discussions are happening about funerals and I have made a lesson plan that can be done on any day just in case.

I'm struggling with this.

I know that my grandpa's faith is deep and unshakeable. I know that he has wanted to go home for a while now and that he knows where is is going. I believe he is going there, and I want him to be free from pain and loneliness. But he's been such a big part of my life for 32 years and I am having trouble letting go.

Ironically, I can't bring myself to go see him. I know I'm being selfish, but I don't want to see him in pain. I don't want to see him forget my name. I don't want to say goodbye.

I want to remember the grandpa of my childhood - the one that wrestled hay bales, taught me to drive a truck, let me sit at his feet in the combine, sat next to me in the seventh row, and fed me 1" cheese squares and home-canned peaches. 

Per Our Conversation....

I've been thinking about this after a conversation with a friend this afternoon.

My Bucket List:
1. dye my hair with purple, pink, or blue streaks
2. get a tattoo (don't freak out, dad, I haven't done this)
3. spend 6 months traveling around Europe alone (cliche, but nonetheless true)
4. go to Vegas and people watch
5. go to New York and be a tourist
6. live in a really old building/industrial space
7. volunteer for a community organization
8. own and fix up an old house
9. visit Boston
10. get married (I think I live in the wrong city...)

Jobs I wouldn't mind doing
1. personal assistant (shopping for other people? Awesome!)
2. teacher coach (all the good parts of teaching, none of the grading)
3. personal chef (if only I could cook)
4. translator at the UN (if only I could speak another language)
5. teaching English overseas (if I wasn't such a weenie)
6. being a tour guide in Seattle (I could actually do this one)
7. being a tailor (I like sewing, so sue me)

Places I would like to live
1. on the beach almost anywhere
2. in a houseboat on Lake Union
3. on the shore of Lake Washington
4. on top of Queen Anne
5. in Ballard
6. in Wallingford
7. in Magnolia
8. in West Seattle

Tiled.

School starts in 9 days.

This is hard to believe for many reasons. First, we are starting in August for the first time ever. Second, and more importantly, I haven't been in my classroom in over a week.

That last detail is not my choice.

Several years ago, probably twelve or fifteen years or more at this point, my high school was completely remodeled. It looks fantastic on the outside, the building is about 100 years old, so it looks kind of like a red brick castle, complete with turrets (one of which is where our printer lives). But the inside is not so great. The overall picture of the inside is pretty good, but a combination of 1200 kids tramping around for 181 days every year and not the highest quality of materials used in the remodel means that on the third floor (where I dwell), the tile floors keep falling apart and the kickplates on the stairs keep falling off.

So this summer, the plan was to re-tile the third floor of my building. I am not totally sure how this works, but I know that there is glue and tile involved and that it takes a while for the glue to set.

Just as a reminder, we got out of school on June 22. Officially, teachers do not have contracted work time between June 22 and August 25. Realistically, you can find. someone there most days, but the lowest chance of finding teachers there is during July. In August, teachers start coming back, with more and more there every day as the month progresses, so that by the second and third week of August, you have a good chance of finding most teachers at school for at least part of the day every day. During the last two weeks of August, everyone is there all day getting ready for school to start.

So then logically, the best time to retile the entire third floor, cutting off access to all social studies and language arts classrooms is clearly the last two weeks of August.

Making it worse, the original plan was to retile the floor last Monday, giving us access Wednesday, maybe thursday at the latest. But then, SOMEONE WALKED ON THE FLOOR before the glue was dry, messing up most of the hallway, and requiring a major repair. Which consequently bumped our access back to today.

But on facebook this morning, teachers who went up to school posted that the third floor is STILL closed off and will probably be that way until THURSDAY. I may or may not have torn my hair and gnashed my teeth at this.

While I understand that officially, we are not contracted to be at school until August 25, meaning that the contractors have access anytime between June 22 and August 25, I wish that the district officials who plan these things would use a little logic. After all, a lot of them used to BE teachers.

The Limitations of Language

One of the things that I get frustrated with in my classroom are the future plans of my kids. It is not unusual for an elementary school kid to want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a basketball player when they grow up, but by the time they are 16, two years from being launched into the adult world, they should have a more reasonable expectation for their future, or at least have a more specific plan for how to get what they want. The majority of my kids are still planning on being a professional sports player or a professional entertainer (singer, model, and actor, in that order), but there are generally between 20-25% of my kids that fail my class, with another 20-25% that end the class with Ds or low Cs.

Last year, towards the end of the year, I overheard one of my lower-level special education students talking about her future plans to another student. She said, "Well, I haven't decided what I am going to do yet, but I will either be a doctor or a lawyer." This student had a 12% in my class and at the end of her sophomore year in high school, only had 2 credits...meaning that she had passed only two classes in two years of high school. So how is it that she is still planning to be a doctor or a lawyer, two careers that are completely out of the realm of possibility for her?

I have thought about this question a lot and while the answer is complex, I think it starts with the limitations of the English language. American kids are told, from day one, that they "can do anything you want to do." What we mean by that is that they have the RIGHT to do anything they want to do. What they interpret that as is that they have the ABILITY to do anything they want to do, and that is where the delusion begins.

Then comes reality tv. Using the premise on every reality show, the only thing you need to do in order to be famous (and therefore rich and successful) is to be obnoxious. There is no real (or perceived) work or skill that goes into these shows, and kids are once again getting the message that you don't need any foresight or plan in order to be successful in life.

Add to that the political incorrectness associated with "tracking" in a high school, and the sheer idiocy of NCLB, and suddenly all kids are being forced to the lowest possible level, instead of being in an environment that reflects the real world, where some people work hard and are successful, some people work hard and struggle, and a tiny fraction of a percentage are lucky and win the lottery. Over the last 20 years, we have created a situation where everything in their environment has told our kids that hard work is not part of the equation of their lives and success comes to those who wish for it. I recognize the validity of the argument that some kids don't find their feet right away and tracking can be harmful for those late-bloomers. But I also think that the fact that we don't have any kind of job training or vocational skills traning for kids who don't have the aptitude for college is a gaping chasm in our educational system.

Do you know that the only vocational or job training available to most high school students comes from joining the military after high school (or being in self-contained special needs classes)? And that manual, or "unskilled" labor has the highest amount of demand for jobs in the US today? But that is another issue altogether....

I think that the first step in changing how kids plan for their future is changing our language. Having the RIGHT to do what they want to do is so very different than having the ABILITY to do what they want to do, but the word "CAN" is confusing because it means both. We have stopped clarifying this difference, and it has been detrimental to our kids.

Finding that thin line between encouraging kids to work hard to get what they want and breaking the news to them that they need to consider other options is a hard line to walk, but I think it is necessary for our kids sake that we suck it up and just do it.