criticism

so here i am venting ...

Today I lost my patience with a sped student, but then my cooperating teacher lost patience with me.

she was not able to write and do the writing thing
not able to do the math thing
 nothing
just nothing
i said how much did the temperature go up
i handed her a calculator
nothing
just nothing
i said
now how do we find out how much difference between the temperatures? we need to subtract to get the difference...
nothing
i asked if she wanted to leave or if she was going to stay and finish the work
she stayed so...
ten minutes later and she's still sitting there so we tell her to leave and detached a page from the packet of work she'd been given.

then another student walks in and asks about the same problem. i showed her that she has her formula, she does not have one of the constants defined so i gave it to her freebie "specific heat of water is always 4148

but ...
nope.

the the teacher wanted to physically jump between us i could tell
she said "don't tell her that!" and i realized she wanted the kids to find this info on their own. like go to the book chapter. like read the whole chapter on their own.

why can't certain groups of kids be given the constant though? in a sci-math problem where there is this huge term "specific heat of water" <<<it also means nothing if you can't draw conclusions or your vocabulary sucks.
just give them the definitions they need.

so i'm seeing all these weaknesses in the kids
in myself
in her teaching
in the system

today.

Where is that line between lazy and just unable? I have to know this as a teacher. i have to determine this and be on the watch all the time. Learned behaviors that i am supposed to snap to attention when i hear them and get those darn kids back to work. Sometimes maybe they should be allowed to be lazy. I don't know. Should I still yell at them?

Unfortunately this year my position isn't certified so I do not get to see kids' test scores or know their parents. I'm the paraprofessional and the professional is here giving me on-the-job tasks to do.

There are limits to the type of support to provide for each student. I also see holes in the instruction. I don't know if I'm supposed to be making them read or what but they do surprisingly little reading throughout the day. Even in the Language Arts class they can mostly opt out of physically translateing the text into language using their eyeballs and brains by just listening. what skills are being cultivated? what is the underlying curriculum here, implicit or not.


Asking them to take notes is a nightmare. They do not understand notes.  I think they should be using Cornell Notes but again the teachers will just complain that they do not know how to take notes and then show them what to write. the modifications are not delivered at the level i feel they should be. the scaffolding is not happening as it should, it isn't built into the lessons (granted when i was a teacher in my own classroom it was difficult for me to differentiate the lessons. every child has different ways of doing an assignment no matter how flexible you are, sometimes they just are not ready for it.  its still much the same. )



My next classroom I will differentiate the assignments and group the kids more. reduce my own suffering. i am a writing teacher first and foremost above being a reading teacher. i love literature though so it is fun for me to share texts with students but again, this snails pace of reading sucks all the fun out of books. kids need to have good experiences with books and not shitty drawn out assignments and debates and dissection of themes and symbolism.

Kicked three more girls off the team Monday! I’m watching my back too because they had horrible attitudes and mean spirits :(
Now we’re only two over capacity & the disruptive girls have been banished so we can get on with training. I am in charge of making 14 elementary schoolers do interval training today :) coaching is fun.

Job satisfaction.

Today

a high schooler with guitar- pick earrings,
a guy but very glitzy and such,
spoke to the middle school class
standing on the table talking to students,
doing a little speech
not really prepared
approached me later
and asked if he thought they got anything out of it,
I said most definitely
but explained why in a teacherly way
that doesnt really mean anything to self-critical young persons


later last hour of the day the middle schoolers were great listeners
and after the speech one of them expressed himself once everyone was gone,
walked up to the high school student.
said thanks for speaking to us it was greatly appreciated.

Then I went by choir room and gave this girl fake money for the school store

She thanked me twice; she was smiling when I left.

Doing what's best for the team.

Oh my goodness I am exhausted. Coaching was tough today and then we had a really long meeting after. Decided to kick one girl off the team. Wish I could just know what to do sometimes… I am volunteering for this running group for elementary. I love it but we can't let everyone stay who isn't participating regularly. The girls who really need this program the most are the hardest to reach & when I have to let one go it hurts.

On Writing

Prepare for gut-spillage in 3.. 2.. 1..

As long as I can remember I have considered myself a writer. I am by no means in a perpetual state of writing (don't let the dozen half-started story drafts fool you: works in progress does not mean I am working) but I am in a perpetual state of thinking about writing. The stories and words floating around in my brain (or pockets if they manage to find their way onto a scrap of paper) are demanding, but somewhere along the line I learned to sort of drown them out. The little sprite turning the cogs in my brain itches for me to accept his requests for production of writing, but mostly I just tell it to shut up and let me live my life.

This won't do.

The formula is simple: write to become a better writer. You must read to become a better writer, too, but if you don't like to read then you probably have no desire to write anything worth reading. Skill as a writer and production of meaningful content come about only through hard, grueling practice. "I hate writing. I love having written." (attributed to Dorothy Parker, but really, who hasn't said this?) Many pages of utter shit must be written before a writer begins to sense a purpose to her work. There is no other way. One must write, to the point of madness, to the point where your teachers and parents are interrupting your work tearing the notebook from your hands so that you can finish math homework instead of writing page after page of fiction prose. To the point where the files on the computer fill so many separate folders that you can never go back and work on the draft you seek, you just sweep them all off into one directory and call it "1997" and don't open it again. The point that your journals begin to look the same on the outside from year to year: bound with spiral crushed and impractical, the dingy cover some degree of greenish-puke, the back of the journal hanging slack by a few diligent pieces of binding, scribbled and furry cardboard covered in labyrinthine doodles reflecting the inner turmoil of writing and never producing words that mean what they are supposed to.

The myth of inspiration is a cruel lie that young people tell themselves. "I won't be able to write a great novel until I've gone out and experienced the world's exotic sights and sounds." Words to pacify your sense of guilt and laziness. Just start! Write about your boring life. You won't remember it unless you do. You won't remember how foolish and bland your life was, and you'll crave it as you become older and complex, as you learn that love and loneliness are eternally dancing inside your noggin, tempting you with fulfillment and stunning you with misery. When you're a kid, how can you ever conceive the hardship and heartbreak that awaits you? How can you know of the interconnectedness of the human race through the emptiness and universal yearning within?
You can't. You are still figuring out how to pass seventh grade without becoming the target of a wedgie-nazi. So write about your pet dog and your nasty ill-tempered babysitter. Write some horrible poetry about the stars or the flowers or the wind.

It won't matter how terrible it is; it's not your voice. Your words are not your own until you've read so many tales that they all become a part of your fingertips. Strangely, this is how it happens. You meet so many minds that your own mind grows to encompass them all, and that is you, speaking through the hearts of many.

Don't be afraid. Yes, there is fear, but if you can break through it, find comfort in it, you will taste the reward, the energy of a writer, the passion that sustains.

short assignment: a year of not teaching

"I just don't understand," my mother looks across the table at Starbucks, "what do you live off of? How can you afford to pay the bills?"

I shrug. I haven't worked for ten months. The first three months was paid summer vacation, and then my paychecks ended during August, and my health insurance policy ran out in October. In December I took a vacation to visit my dad and step-mom in California, in January I stayed with friends and went to free concerts on school nights, in February I sold a record number of handmade items in my Etsy store, and in March I went outside every day and rode my bike for transportation. Things I could never have done while teaching.

Teaching is not a 9-5 job, I knew that when I started. I thought my love of learning and seeing kids grow and experience literature and writing would be enough to fuel late-night paper grading, rising up before dawn to make it to early morning duties, staying at school until my car was the last in the parking lot just to make sure I would have lesson plans for the next day. But it just didn't feel like I was using enough of my time to further myself.

I miss the bonds with the children. I miss the camaraderie of working with the other teachers. There are plenty of positive and negative pieces of school life that just suddenly were no longer there. I like to focus on all the things I can do now that I have freed myself from this demanding work.

First and foremost I was able to start exercising and taking care of my body again. No longer must I wait for hours before I can leave my little desk and use the restroom; I can pee whenever I want to! I can sleep in if I don't feel well. My lunch no longer has to be wolfed down in 20 minutes or less so that I have time to relieve myself before the children's lunch period is over. This is probably too much information, but my first year of teaching I suffered from dehydration and urinary infection because of the simple inability to control what was going in and coming out of my body and when.

I have resumed meditation practice, and regularly exercise and go for walks. I read more, I feel less stress, I craft, I sew, I clean. When did I do these things before? How did I feed and bathe myself when 65 hours or more of my week were dedicated to lessons and meetings and stress?

If I can't quit a job that isn't making me happy, now, while I'm 26, unmarried, and full of dreams, when will I do it? Sure, a well-balanced and mature individual may have, with discipline, been able to do all of the things I've listed above as benefits to my having quit the school. But who is that person? It wasn't me. I was suffering and my work was suffering for it, and I needed time to be me, apart from a class of kids who needed me.

New take on blogging

I don't think anyone reads or follows this blog (don't think they ever did) but it's linked to my gmail forevermore, so I've decided to start using it as a writing collection. I will be giving myself various writing assignments and just working on the practice that leads to the art which is Writing.

I just like the name of this blog. No need to change that even though my career has shifted focus for now. I am still a student and a teacher and a reader. I just need to write. In addition to all of my job duties, I perhaps could have still been working on a fantastic piece on the side, in my "spare" time. Every source of career advice hinted to me that I should not quit my day job, but sometimes one must be a quitter to make room for new habits.

I don't feel a need to censor myself here. For now, most of the writing is going to be pretty personal, and very rough. A blog is not a place for edited content to me as a writer. I would love to be a Steve Pavlina, but at this time I just want to find my voice and figure out what exactly it is I have to say.

On top of that, freelance work as a writer might be the change in work ethic I've needed. I am looking for jobs outside of the education field; the tech field is growing exponentially and I am primed to program or be trained in any type of software or design necessary. When I hear people my age say things like "I'm terrible with computers! I can barely check my email!" I realize there is a gap between us and that my vantage point allows me some power in the digital marketplace.

One of my experiments last year was to open a vector graphics company. I have made three sales, and need to work on my stock a bit before I can get major attention, but I really like the work. My significant other is entrenched in 3D modeling and CAD, and getting remarkably better each day, so this could be something that we have in common, yet accomplish separately.
My craft with selling other items is doing even better, but needs rebranded and less personal marketing. My mother suggests that I don't want people to see me, which could be why I started my business on ebay/craigslist/etsy in the first place.

Freelance work is tricky. Yes I get to sort of hide from the customers to a degree while I am creating, but finding clients has not even begun. If I had custom work to hash out with someone over the phone it'd be another matter. Now I work on my own schedule, but offering my services to someone means that they will have expectations of my use of time and quality of work. Being home by myself has been a blessing and a curse; to tell the truth there are many days when I play video games for hours without changing out of my pajamas or I log on to the internet only to get sucked into twitter/pinterest/tumblr for hours and hours. Such is digilife.