November is my new favorite month.

November is the best month because I get about a million days off, comparatively speaking. First, on Halloween, which was indeed technically in October, we had movie day after lunch. For some wonderful reason there was no movie being held in my room and so I got to sit in another teacher's room with her and monitor the kids. Since the other teacher is a much more experienced authoritative teacher and because the kids were actually being totally awesome and simply watching the movie, I got to do a bunch of grading and basically had an almost two hour long prep. Hurrah.

Then, next Tuesday is election day and there are no students. There is going to be professional development but there might not be anything for me to do since I am a Spanish teacher and no one actually cares about Spanish. Half hurrah, but still hurrah for not having to teach and probably getting time to grade and whatnot. Especially since grades are due on Thursday morning.

Then! Monday after that, veteran's day. No school for anybody, three day long weekend filled with sleep and cookies.

Then comes half day for parent teacher conferences. I doubt anyone really wants to talk to me because as mentioned earlier, no one cares about Spanish. I am sure some people will want to talk to me and probably a lot more people will want to talk to me than teachers in core subjects get at other schools with different population demographics, however, a half day is a half day and I will take what I can get.

Then Thanksgiving and being that I eat little to no Thanksgiving food(vegan) I am just going to stay at my apartment and babysit the growing collection of cats we have(up to three now) and plan and sleep and watch t.v. on the new cable we got installed today.

Right now I'm waiting for the signal to go out from the math teacher who always goes out really late in the evening. It's already 9:45 and I am starting to feel droopy, but I owe her a drink and I had a little ex-boyfriend sadness relapse spurred by his randomly instant messaging me just to chat after not having spoken to me for five months. It's like some bell went off in his apartment that I was starting to get over him so he had to talk to me for no reason at all just to screw with my head and now I'm thinking about him again. And he's just no good. Long and complicated past that I wish would just go away.

Also, it is freezing in my apartment and the heating is "broken" or so we've been told. It needs to be fixed right away, I can't take how cold it is in here. I am starting to regret the giant windows in every room. Brrr.

I have had no energy for posting. I gave a test, which didn't go over well, and I spent one hundred hours grading it. I had no idea grading took so long. I will never, ever give a test to all 236 students again. What a horrible ordeal. I am loving school though and my students. The other day one of the kids said something that just cracked me up and I realized I love my students. I am kind of bummed on the weekends because I miss them all(most) so much. I am wondering if this is my honeymoon period? Hopefully not.

Weekends

I love the weekends so much. I wish they were three days long. I need one whole day to do nothing, one day to do chores, and one day to do work. Two days is not enough. Next weekend I'm taking a trip to Baltimore because my mother's going to be there for a work thing. I'm taking the train right after work on Friday and I'm coming back Sunday evening. I'm pretty excited, it'll be my first vacation since school started. I don't know what we're going to do down there, but it'll be nice to see my mom and hang out. I'm going to try and take a nap on the train since I can't stay up past 9:00 on Friday without one. I am also giving a test this week, so I'll try and grade those on the train when I wake up from my nap. So much work to do forever.

Oh my goodness! I almost forgot. My school had the first dance of the year on Friday and I chaperoned. Hilarity! Middle schoolers are amazing at school dances. It was the Halloween dance, so a lot of them were dressed up too. So bizarre. Middle school aged people are so funny and interesting. I love it. Very awkward and there was some whole thing going to down with these two popular kids who went to the dance together, I don't know. I didn't get all the gossip. I was mostly moving around the gym trying to position myself near the kids who were dancing too close so they would get so uncomfortable with me being near them that they would stop. I didn't break much stuff up, only some really sexually explicit moves. Which is disgusting by the way, 12 year olds!

I also realized that the end of the quarter is coming up soon. I can't believe that in an entire quarter I've done one unit. I feel very ineffective. Being a teacher is so overwhelming, I feel like there are a lot of things I would like to do but I just don't have the energy to create them. Like I wanted to do a review bingo that would have questions just like on the test, but I just don't have the energy to do that. I am going to have to have the kids come up with the questions for half the period and then play the game based on those questions. I can't possibly design two different jeopardy games and create two tests and grade projects. I don't have that kind of energy. I also should get going because I absolutely have to do laundry today because I'm going out of town next weekend.

Perhaps I shall post again before I leave, but it is not likely.

My first cry

Back to school night went well. I didn't know what to say, but the parents didn't ask any crazy questions. Next year will be better I think. I'm going to take more time and really explain the details of my curriculum. It was actually kind of nice to meet some of the parents in an informal setting and just talk to them like people. I don't know when parent conferences are coming up, but I think those will be kind of yucky since you have to tell parents what is up with their kids. Nobody likes to hear their kid is a jerk or something. Hopefully my slackers can get their acts together before parent conferences. We'll see.

Speaking of which, last Friday I had my first cry. On Wednesday, during advisory, five kids got detention. I had them come on Friday because Thursday was curriculum night and I had to prepare for it. So, on Friday, two boys showed up S and R. I wanted them to clean out the desks since I didn't feel like making an assignment for them and the room was pretty disgusting. Middle school kids are very messy and sloppy. Disgusting. Anyhow, these two boys started kind of freaking out. One boy, S, started shoving the desks and the chairs around the room, causing one chair to topple over. I asked him to clean less violently and he started yelling at me. He went back to cleaning, but still shoving desks and chairs around very violently. I told him to stop cleaning and to come and sit down and calm down. He started yelling at me saying I'm pissed off at you!

The whole time the other boy, R, is yelling at me as well and talking on his cell phone to his mom because he had gotten another day of detention for complaining. He puts me on the phone with his mom and she doesn't speak any English so she's asking me to explain what's going on and as I explain to her, her son R is yelling at me, disagreeing with everything I'm saying. So S is still yelling at me and I tell him S, you can't have detention today because you're too angry and you can't calm down. He refuses! He yells, "I'M NOT LEAVING" and I started getting really stressed at this point. R is still yelling at me trying to say S shouldn't have to leave and other things. I kept telling him to leave but nothing. I called the AP and principal's office but they weren't there since it was after school and they do crowd control. So I called another teacher's room who seems to do really well with the kids and she came. He refused to come with her, she was trying really hard to calm him down. Nothing.

So that teacher wrote me a note saying I'm sorry I couldn't help, do you want me to get Ms. Assistant Principal? I said yes thank you and assistant principal came and got S. I still had R to deal with so I worked on Spanish stuff with him and he calmed down a little bit. He hates life and school and many things, so it's not exactly fun to work with him. Assistant principal said that S wanted to talk to me, but I was still working with R so I said we'd have to do it another day. Once R left, I jut broke down. I cried a bit in the corner, until assistant principal came in to check on me and cheered me up.

I wasn't sad because S and R didn't like me, but I was so frustrated that the situation got so out of control and I couldn't figure out how to diffuse it. I want to do really well and when I screw up I get upset. It's kind of hard being at my school because all of the other teachers are totally amazing, and it's easy to feel inadequate. Whenever people would say don't take it personally, I never really knew what they were talking about. I figured they meant don't be upset because kids don't like you or don't respect you, but after this whole ordeal I think it means don't let bad days make you think you are failing as a teacher. Everyone has bad days and nobody knows what to do all the time, but that's ok. You can still be an amazing teacher who doesn't know what to do sometimes.

After the whole ordeal we had a staff party which was awesome because there was free food and booze. I showed up late and tossed back many vodka tonics and I felt so much happier. It's nice to have colleagues who are young and don't think you're inappropriate if you get a little drunk. After the party we actually went out to a bar and then I went to a burlesque show with one of the teachers. It was such a good end to a bad day. Just the thing I needed.

I've got many many things to do now. I would really like to be better about posting, but I've been so busy with work. Hopefully things will calm down soon. Does that happen? Who knows.

Three day weekend

I haven't posted in ages. I had an ok week. All of a sudden I love my eighth graders more than anything. I don't know what happened but this week I just thought they were all hilarious and awesome and wanted them to hang out all day. I actually feel like I may have lost some ground with them because once you start loving them and thinking they're silly, you aren't on them all the time to get their behavior in line and get back to work. I need to get a little more strict this upcoming week.

Speaking of which, three day weekend this weekend which equals short week! Alright! Our at-risk letters are due this week, which means I am going to have to spend a lot of time at school doing that. Any student who might not pass your class has to have a letter sent home saying that so the parent's don't freak out at you about it. Also, we are having back to school night or some sort of equivalent this week so I'll be at school really late one day of the week for that. I am really scared because it's the first time I'll be meeting a lot of parents all at once and they have the opportunity to ask me questions. I have no idea what I'm doing so if they ask me questions about it, there's a very good chance I wont know or I wont have decided yet. For example, a lot of kids ask how many points their final grade is going to be out of. I have no idea how many assignments and tests and projects there will be, so I haven't a clue what the amount of points is going to be. Do other teachers plan these kinds of things out so far in advance? That's not happening.

I am loving my three day weekend. So far today I've eaten and caught up with the tv shows I missed this week. Now I might take a nap. It's glorious to have free time. I have to grade projects, so maybe when I get up from my nap I'll grade the projects I have here at my apartment. Most of them are at school. I think I've finished about half of them so far, but I'd like to get them done by Wednesday so I can see if the projects affect anyone's grade as far as the at-risk letters go. Friday night I went out with a bunch of teachers. I love the other teachers at my school, I don't want to ever leave here. I feel like maybe my principal will encourage me to stay even if she doesn't think I'm awesome because there seems to be a very high turnover rate at my school and I can't imagine that reflects well on us. There were seven new teachers this year out of like 20 teachers total.

In other news, I got some bug bites on my knees which have swelled up to gigantic proportions. I always have bad reactions to bites. I also have a dentist appointment on Monday and I haven't been to the dentist in over a year since I lost my dental coverage when I graduated. I am very good with dental hygiene though, so I think hopefully the dentist appointment wont be too painful. I also need to decide what in the hell to do this week in class. I want to finish up with my eighth grade review unit and test them already. I need to do question formation and some vocabulary and then move the hell on. I think for now I'll get back to napping. Hopefully I'll find more time for posting soon. Probably not.

Birthday

I'm starving, but it's some sort of Jewish holiday which requires the Orthodox Jews to close their grocery store where the most excellent bagels are sold for 35 cents. It's also my birthday, which is exciting. I tried to stay out last night until midnight, but I couldn't even stay awake that long. I left the bar around 9:30 and came home and watched the season premier of the Office, which was so-so, and then went to bed by 11:30.

So now it's my birthday, which is exciting. I am going to do my laundry today finally, and once that's clean I'll be very happy. Then I don't know what I'll do. My teaching fellow friend V. is going to come out with me tonight and we're going to go somewhere and do something. I don't really care too much. I wouldn't mind using my i.d., but I hardly get carded anyway. I feel like I'd go out and try to get carded but wouldn't, and would then be annoyed at spending money that I don't have. Speaking of which, I thought I would be getting paid on Friday because I got paid two Fridays ago and that's how it usually works. Oh no. We get paid on the 1st and the 15th, even if those days fall on a Monday or a Wednesday. I thought that was annoying because I don't want to be depositing checks on a Monday, but I guess I'm technically supposed to have enrolled in direct deposit by now. Because I have TONS of free time before 4:30 to hang out at the DOE office in Brooklyn. Stupid jerks. I guess I could mail it, but I don't have any stamps.

I have lots to plan for this week, but I really don't want to do that on my birthday. Tomorrow I'm going to plan this week out and then next week, three day weekend!, I'll try to do some real planning for like a whole month or something. I also need to start typing up my lesson plans so that next year I could actually reuse them. I type some up now, but I also just sort of write the activities down on random pieces of paper which I promptly lose. So that's got to stop. I also have some projects to grade, but a lot of them were too big for my canvas bag, so I have to grade them at school, as if I ever have free time when I'm at school. Next week hopefully. Oh and I'm doing progress reports this week because At-risk letters, if you want to fail a kid their parents have to be notified in advance, go out on the 12th of October. Which I think is stupid since kids aren't allowed to turn in late homework in my class, so I don't know how much it will help. If kids have bad attitudes and don't do any work in my class, they know they're failing because I already told them. Will telling their parents change their attitude in class? I highly doubt it.

For now I'm going to relax and catch up on T.V. that I did not watch this week because I don't have television. Hooray birthdays.

Refusals

I did not do any work today when I got home from school. I left early too, to go pick up my hard drive with my recovered data. Hooray! for tekserve, the most wonderful people in the world for saving my ass and my data. I still need to submit my curriculum maps to my principal, as they were due a week ago. I was supposed to do laundry too, but the last thing I want to do when I get home from working is lug a bunch of laundry two blocks and wait around. I am running out of clothes, but hopefully I can pull through until Saturday.

Saturday's my birthday though, and who wants to do laundry on their birthday? I am seriously considering buying more underwear so I don't have to do laundry. Or maybe wearing my fancy uncomfortable underwear that only exists for non-existent romantic encounters. We'll see.

Today in honor of my birthday I made a cheap heat up dinner and ate it all. However, I neglected to remember the fact that I have been eating so differently than normal, with my modified schedule and my limited time to eat, that eating like I would usually do, i.e. gorging myself silly, makes me feel all yucky inside. The alphabet cookies didn't help. Stupid Trader Joe's with their delicious sick-inducing products.

Also, last night I had my first grad course at my university. It went a lot better than I thought, the teacher is an old Spanish fellow and she said that we'd be doing stuff that we can take and use right away. I think that'll be great because sometimes I feel like the stuff I come up with is really dull, but I also don't have the time or energy to come up with brilliant lesson plans.

Today was sort of mediocre. I kept one of my classes 15 minutes over on accident because all the classes after lunch on Wednesdays are shortened to accommodate advisory period. Advisory went ok, we were reading again and I told them they could do anything they wanted while I read as long as I didn't hear them. And they were pretty good about it. They don't want to do anything so at least this way, they can feel like they are doing what they want, I don't have to be annoyed by their ridiculous antics, and they have to listen to the stories which are actually all about being a teenager and are more or less what advisory is all about, emotional well-being of youth. I think it's a good compromise. I most of all don't want to be annoyed at the end of the day, and today I wasn't. Hurrah.

I guess that's all. As a said, today is all about relaxing. I got a lot of planning done already at school and on the subway, I just have a few things to do for Friday. I am going to do those tomorrow and get to bed by 9. I needed this rest. Also, I want to give a thumbs up to NBC for their new show Chuck. I really enjoyed watching the pilot. I never watched alias, so if it's just a rip-off of that, then that's stupid, but if it's different then I think it's awesome. Also, a thumbs down to CBS for getting rid of that show with John Ritter's son and the friend girl from Mean Girls. I really liked that show and I watched the show it got replaced by, The Big Bang Theory, and it's horrible trash. Not funny and it feels sort of like watching a play. I can't put my finger on what it is though that makes it like a play. More fall previews opinions to follow surely.

An excellent day

Today was the best day ever. I saw my two worst classes with the TWO worst kids I've mentioned before, anger management Marsha and the boy who has walked out of my advisory two out of three classes. They were both good if not excellent. I also had another girl who has been very hostile and disinterested the whole time and today she raised her hand for almost every question. She speaks Spanish with her family, so maybe now that we are getting into the Spanish she'll be excited to show off. Who the hell knows. Anger management Marsha was exceptionally attentive and even participated. I moved the boy who she hit last week to a different desk, and the girls she always chats with was absent. I was so impressed with her behavior. When I raised my hand and started timing, which is what I do when I want their attention, she even told other kids to shut up and pay attention to me. It was such a wonderful outlet for her rage! I told her as she left that she did a really awesome job.

Also, my principal came into my room while I was teaching and said she needed to talk to me on my next prep period. I was for sure convinced I would be fired, for what I didn't know, but I'm a worrier. She brought up the consequence papers, which she hates, and I just said flat out "I got rid of them." After that she seemed to really turn around. She seemed much happier and nicer. She still didn't tell me anything that would be a good idea, instead telling me that she didn't like my hagan ahora(aka do now, standard NYC public school warm-up activity.) Wait, that's not true, she did give me a suggestion to change my hagan ahora. So all in all not bad, especially since I didn't get fired like I thought. I still didn't get to do my laundry, so that's depressing. But my birthday is on Saturday, so I am psyched none the less!

Tragic events etc.

My computer died last weekend, so I have not been able to post much at all. It was a most depressing week without my computer. I waited with bated breath for any news about the hard drive. First, I took the computer to the apple store. They couldn't fix it right away, but I bought a new computer, which is awesome, and they took both the new and old computer and tried to do some fancier process. They called me the next day and said it hadn't worked and that I should try taking my computer to a place called tekserve, who might be able to do "data recovery." I dropped my old computer off there on Thursday, paid them 250 dollars for the process, 110 dollars for an external hard drive to hopefully put the recovered data onto, and some tax for a grand total of 380 dollars. If the data can't be recovered, they'll give me my money back, but I'd rather pay lots of money and get all my stuff back. My photos from when I lived in Europe, my music, ALL MY TEACHING STUFF, everything that I have in this world is on there. I should know sometime this week.

This week at school was kind of crappy too. A girl called me a bitch and I sent her to the office and a boy, the same one who always gives me trouble, walked out of my advisory. He also called me stuck-up and told me that nobody at school really likes me. Then, the parents of a boy who had been working with the girl who called me a bitch (anger management marsha she shall now be called) sent me a nasty e-mail about how their precious child should never have been in a group with anger management marsha in the first place. Just yucky school week.

And last night, I woke up in the middle of the night for some reason. When I walked to the bathroom I noticed that the book I usually keep on top of the fishbowl to protect the fish had been knocked down. I looked inside the bowl and he was nowhere to be found. I lifted up his little castle to see if he was hiding inside, but nothing. I found his cold dead little body on the floor, and I'm quite convinced that my roommate's cat murdered him as I slept. I was very sad and cried a lot. I just felt so bad for not being able to protect him. I must have been sound asleep, because usually I am a very light sleeper but the cat had to knock two books down to get to the bowl and it didn't wake me.

I also think my principal hates me now. I can't really tell. I want to do better, but I don't know what it is that's bothering her about me. I know she hates these consequence papers I've been using, which I've found to be affective in some situations. I mentioned to her that I could change it a little bit, but she told me it just doesn't go with the school's philosophy. I would ask her if she has a better way to give students an outlet for their perspective on the misbehavior, but she seemed almost mad at me for having the consequence papers at all. She could stand to be more supportive of me. I don't think that having a consequence paper is such a huge mistake to say that I could never be a good teacher, which is the feeling I get from her. I got the idea from my adviser at the fellowship program, so I feel almost insulted that she's acting like because I had this idea I am an awful teacher. I hope it gets better because it's really hard for me to work in an environment where I want to avoid my boss at all costs. I want her to provide ideas for things I SHOULD do, not just come in my room and tell me things she doesn't like.

I guess that's all I've got for now. I should go and finish cleaning my apartment so I can start planning for next week. I'm going to a small party at my teaching fellow friend V.'s apartment tonight, so I know I wont be waking up very early tomorrow. I was supposed to do my laundry today too. Yikes!

Shopping

I went shopping most of yesterday. I bought some more teacher clothes. For more or less all of my life I have been in school. I've been a student for so long that I didn't even notice that I had no non-super casual clothes whatsoever. T-shirts and jeans are the extent of my wardrobe, so I ran out of outfits right quick last week. It's especially hard at my school because I see my classes only twice a week, so I can never remember when I saw a particular class last not to mention what I was wearing at that time. My mom teaches college so she has a similar issue and I remember how badly we teased her when she started writing down what she wore each day so she wouldn't wear the same thing to the same class. Now I think it's a pretty good idea. I bought two pairs of teacher pants and two nice long sleeve shirts. I also got a tank top to wear underneath teacher shirts and a pair of jeans for jeans friday. I am a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl, but my jeans are much too casual. I also always top my jeans off with a very business like shirt, so as not to appear too childish.

I think my students know I'm really young though, unfortunately. At least the eighth graders do. One of my seventh graders last week asked me if any of my classes had ever gotten a 90% class average before, because that's one of our big goals as a class. I almost burst out laughing right then and there. I sort of sidestepped the question by telling him that I had never set the goal that high before, which is technically true, but I've also never had any students before to set goals for, which I conveniently forgot to mention. Seventh graders are so sweet and eighth graders are so mean and nasty. What a horrible time for people.

I can't believe I STILL have two more days of freedom before work starts. Four day weekends are amazing. Today I might do some laundry and go grocery shopping. I also need to buy shoes and a flashdrive so I can do my grading at school and at home. Plus floss, allergy medication, and face scrubbing things from Trader Joe's. I may have to take back one of the pairs of pants I bought yesterday, depending on how much those items cost. I did get payed a lot more than I thought I would, but still not very much.

Right now I might take a nap though. I went out last night for just a little bit with my teaching fellow friend V. She's the best person ever and she's from New Jersey so she has a lot of friends here already who are really cool. We went to her friend's birthday party, which was a little weird because it was a pretty small gathering and I felt a little intrusive, but her friends were really nice and I think they all liked me enough. V promised to hang out with me on my birthday, which is good. I told her I didn't want to do anything like a special my birthday thing. I just want to hang out somewhere cool and have fun. I don't like doing things that are organized around my birthday though, it puts a weird pressure on me and I also don't like the idea of being rejected by many people on my birthday. When you have something for your birthday, then anyone who doesn't come probably hates you and anyone who only knows you sort of feels awkward coming because they don't want to intrude on someone's birthday. So I'd rather just go out and have a good time and have it happen to be my birthday then doing something specifically organized for my birthday.

What a long and rambling post. That's what you get for four day weekends.

Worst apartment ever

So, somehow I managed to rent the worst apartment ever. My landlord is remarkably bad. We had a leak for over two months which caused a lot of water damage and paint peeling. I was visiting his office almost every week asking him to come repair it and he always told me the guy was coming and then he never did. We noticed the leak the day we moved, in June, and it wasn't fixed until mid august. I'm really worried now that we are going to get money taken out of our security deposit.

Now the dishwasher is broken and he has said two times in two days that someone would be coming tomorrow, but it doesn't happen. And now it's Rosh Hashanah and he won't answer any of his phones. I went down and talked to some lady and she said he would be back in an hour, but she tried to blow me off first. I hate this apartment and I want to move out. My roommate is annoying too, which definitely doesn't help the cause.

Ugh, I don't want to think about it anymore. This is my four day weekend from my new stressful job and I can't even enjoy it because this guy couldn't just get it fixed on Monday or Tuesday OR Wednesday. And it actually broke last Friday but you can't reach him after like 3:30 on Fridays. What kind of landlord is never available? I don't quite understand what he does if not this kind of stuff.

I had a yucky school day on Wednesday. It started off well, but then we ended with advisory and that's the worst thing in the world. It makes everyone want to kill themselves, teachers and students included. School is going really well, except for advisory. I don't know what to do about it. I talk to lots of other teachers and no one really likes advisory, but nobody has the problems I have either. The kids are just big assholes in that class. I also have a really bad group. Almost none of the kids in advisory are good in their other classes either. Granted, they're not as bad as they are in advisory, but they still suck.

I am very hungry and I want to take a nap. The good news is that my check came yesterday and it was much more than I had thought it would be. I have no idea what amount of money I'm getting paid, but I thought it was going to be about 300 dollars less, so I'm psyched. I still need to go to the bank and deposit it, but I am doing all this annoying apartment stuff all day so I probably wont get to it. I wish my roommate would go away, she's awful. Hopefully my four day weekend will get better soon. I'm going to buy some music in a little bit and maybe go out to dinner somewhere I haven't been since I had money. Vacations!

Diagnostics

I just finished looking over the first set of eighth grade diagnostics I gave. Ridiculous. These students don't know ANY of what the teacher said she taught them. I don't understand what the hell happened. Did she lie about it? Most of the kids had really good grades last year, and they were not even close to where they would be if they really learned all the things they were supposed to have learned. Can summer erase so much? I am going to have to review all of the grammatical points there are, and possibly just teach them all again. I don't have that much time! These kids are supposed to be really smart! I can't figure out what happened. I know the kids aren't dumb, but I KNOW they don't know what they "learned" last year. I can't believe this. All the planning for the year I did is going to have to be totally pushed back. I was worried that I wouldn't have ENOUGH to teach, looks like I might as well just teach the seventh and eighth graders the same thing and not waste my time.

Things are going to be different. These students are going to be able to pass that fucking proficiency exam. I didn't really give a shit before because they're smart kids and they're all going to good schools and colleges whether they learn Spanish or not. But now, if I can't get these geniuses to learn Spanish, then I wont keep teaching. I'm slightly outraged. I also have to talk about a little shithead student soon, but right now I don't feel like it. He thinks he's smarter than me/everyone and I would like very much to kick his ass.

Exhaustion

This week was so long. I feel like I spent every minute of my day teaching. I stayed after school everyday, the earliest I left was 5:30. Except for yesterday. We had a barbecue for the staff of our school with the staff of the school we share a building with. It was nice. I think the principals wanted us to mingle, but there wasn't too much to say to the other staff. They're elementary teachers so I was like meh. I think also that it's too close to the beginning of the year to have a group barbecue. I feel like I want to get to know my co-workers a lot better so I spent most of the barbecue talking with other people from my school. Also, there are seven new teachers out of about 20, so a lot of people have a lot of mingling to do within their own schools.

On the plus side, I really did get to know my co-workers a lot better. Mostly just the ones who are young and single and don't have families. We spent a little time at the barbecue but then we went out for drinks afterwards with a lot of people who didn't have familial obligations. And that was awesome. I was SO tired yesterday, but I ended up not getting home until midnight. I talked a lot with the art teacher, the drama teacher, the 6th grade math teacher, and the new 8th grade humanities teacher. The art teacher, who I love and is next door to me and is amazing, gave me a lot of kid gossip which was really funny, like who's dating who and who's annoying and lazy and who's really good if you get to know them. She also told me who are the hott parents, which I'm pretty excited to see, and who are the annoying parents. A lot of the stuff she said really surprised me, as far as who are lazy and annoying. Some of it I already knew.

After drinks art teacher and I went out for dinner at a restaurant and rode a bus for a bit. I was really glad to hang out with her. She seems pretty awesome. Last year was her first year so she knows a lot of stuff about the current eighth graders, but she also remembers what kind of stuff you want/need to know when you are a new teacher. The humanities teacher guy is awesome too, I ate lunch with him one of the professional development august days. I think it will be really helpful to have him around too, because he sees only half of the eighth graders two times a day, so he'll get to know that half really well. He's already helped me design a seating chart for one of my classes and told me some stuff that he's done that works.

Also, over drinks my age came up. Many people found this fascinating/hilarious/incredible. It was kind of fun. I showed them all my fake i.d., which will be obsolete in exactly TWO weeks. I'm kind of sad my birthday is at the beginning of the year, since I feel like I probably wont be relaxed and comfortable with my job until at LEAST January. Everyone was really nice though and didn't get uncomfortable with me being 20, so I'm glad. I am so happy with my school. The other teachers are incredible and classes are even pretty fun. I don't necessarily enjoy every minute of teaching yet, or think it's the most incredible rewarding thing ever. I think that once I can get out of survival mode, where I am making all of my plans and materials the night before, and I can sort of relax and deviate from the plan every once in a while, that I'll start to really love teaching and doing my job. It will also help in that I wont spend 10 hours a day at school with another 2 hours at home doing work. Overall, this week was fantastic and I'm excited for the my three day week coming up!!!

FIRST DAY!

Teaching is extremely hard. I worked for fourteen hours today. Literally. I was at school for eleven hours and I did another three on the subway home and once I got back to the apartment. I cannot believe the amount of work I did today. I think everyone should have to teach school before they can go to school. All students would be 1000% better.

My day was good. If I had written this post at 12:00 instead of right now I would have had a completely different attitude. Before lunch I had two eighth grade classes and I thought I was going to die. They were SO loud. I could quiet them down for approximately two minutes and then they were talking over me again. Actually two minutes is way too much, more like maybe one. I've decided I'm going to try a system where the classes can get free choice time if they quite down in a certain amount of time. I wanted to make them stay late if they wasted time, but I'm not allowed to do that because the stupid school system wants them to grow up as coddled little babies. Dumb school system.

There are already a few kids who I know are going to be awesome and a few I know are going to be trouble. I had to talk to two(eighth grade) students after class already! On the FIRST day! But there are a lot of kids who are going to be amazing and so I really want to stick it out for them. I talked to the art teacher who is next door to me and she says she teaches eighth graders, but she lives for the seventh graders. It looks like that might be the case for me too. At least with the first two sections I met. I have a chance to keep the other two sections strong, so maybe I can do better. I have to go back again tomorrow, so I'm going to sleep. This weekend will see more posting, since I will not be spending 11 hours at my school. Goodnight!

Some pictures

This is my big goals area. I have decided to aim for every class getting a 90% or higher average on all assessments. This is absolutely manageable with my students because they are all totally brilliant. The challenge of the big goal is motivating them to do it. I think it can be done.




This is my back wall. I've got one side with cultural/geography posters and another side with more vocabulary/grammar stuff. In front of the bulletin boards is where I keep various class books and dictionaries.




This is my white-board. I have bad white-board handwriting, which makes me very self-conscious. I'll add some more pictures later because it is a pain in the ass to do, so I'm going to go to sleep early now and get up early so as not to be too tired on my very first day. Only one day left! Holy crap.

My school is amazing

I went in Thursday and Friday for the first school function. I have to say, being at school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday was really great and I'm glad I got to set up my room, but I was getting a little overwhelmed and freaked out. I spent around 6 hours a day in my room the first part of my week with no breaks, just working on the room and doing stuff to it. I definitely started feeling overwhelmed by the thought of teaching and doing this whole thing and that I am totally crazy and what was I thinking I'm not ready to do this. Then Thursday and Friday I met all the other teachers and it was such a relief. Everyone at my school is amazing and I feel so supported. Meeting everyone has sort of given me a huge confidence boost as far as what I'm doing. All of our other teachers are totally great, except for the gym teacher who is a little weird socially. The other staff makes me feel like a better teacher just by being around them. I can not even begin to explain how fantastic it is to work with a group of people who are masters of their jobs. I think this school is going to be so beneficial to me as a teacher and that I'll be hundreds of times better just by working there.

There are a bunch of new teachers at my school this year, which is really nice too. The veteran staff are all fantastic, but it's nice to have other people who are sort of just getting the hang of this thing too. A few of the new people have already been teaching elsewhere for a while, but there are at least four of us who are brand new. Two of the brand new teachers did their student teaching at the school and then there are two of us who are brand new teaching fellows. We also have a new teacher who was a teaching fellow a few years ago, so it's nice to have someone whose been through our experience there. I think there are other ex-teaching fellows at the school too. I don't remember how many though.

My room looks amazing, and I'm going to try and post some pictures soon, if I can make that happen. We'll see. I have a lot of planning to do this weekend, as well as shoe, pant, and bag purchasing. I think this next week is going to be awesome, as well as this next year. It's so reassuring to know that not only am I not in this alone, but I have amazing talented teachers to back me up if I get lost. I think this year is going to be pretty good. Tuesday is the big day!

One more week!

Tomorrow I'm going to go into my classroom for the official first time. I think other teachers are going to be there working and stuff. I'll actually be a teacher at a school tomorrow. So nervous. I am going to try and take some pictures, but I don't know how to post them on this thing. I think I know what to do, but I've never tried before, so we'll see.

The room is so empty right now, and I'm not sure if I've got enough stuff to make it look interesting or not. I don't have tons of money and there's not really space for anything fancy, on account of there being the legal maximum amount of students in my classes. A lot of the room is filled up with desks. Hopefully when I start putting everything up it will look ok. Oh dear, I just realized that Staples didn't have any of that stick on the wall putty stuff I was going to use to put my posters up. Hmm. I think there is a little bit left over from last year, but I may have to jot out and buy some when that runs out. I should go check if there's a Staples near my school or not. Maybe that stuff would be at a drug store.

The weekend was good. I went out on Friday to buy things for my classroom with two other teaching fellows. We went to Barclay's in Brooklyn which was pretty good, small-ish section for Spanish stuff. After that we went to Carol's in Queens, and it was pretty lame. It had similar stuff as Barclay's, for the same price, but not organized by content area so you had to go all around trying to spot the Spanish. And it was also REALLY FAR into Queens. From now on I'm sticking with Barclay's and if you are looking for teacher supplies then that is the place for you. I think Carol's may have had more elementary stuff, so if you're elementary and can't find what you're looking for at Barclay's, then try Carol's. Otherwise, don't bother.

I have about a million forms to fill out. Everything seems like it's done retroactively, which is annoying. You get your health insurance and that stuff, but not for a few months. They say they'll reimburse you once you get the coverage, but dropping however much a teeth cleaning costs is really not an option right now. We had new teacher disOrientation, they should have signed us up then and there and given us our forms on the first day of work. Get it together DOE!!!

I'm going to go to sleep now so I can leave here around 8. I want to do as much as I can early tomorrow so that if I'm missing anything I don't only realize it on Friday afternoon when it's too late to come back the next day. I'd like to be done with everything I'm planning by Wednesday, that way Thursday and Friday I can mull over the room and decide to change or add anything.

This is so surreal. I can't believe it's actually happening, it seems like there's no way it's really going to be the first day of school soon. I hope everyone else is as excited as me!

New Classroom

I went to see my new classroom today. I've been in there before, but not since the old teacher left. It was so weird to see it so empty. What the hell am I supposed to put in there? I don't know what to do! I am no good at decorating. I think I'm going shopping tomorrow and I'm going to try and find as many things as possible to stick up. It was pretty scary seeing it in that shape. I also started going through a big filing cabinet that is behind my desk. There are about 30 folders inside with various activities and I'm going to go through all of them and try to arrange things by subject matter so it will actually be of use to me. I did a little today, but there's so much more to do.

I got in around 2 o'clock and I sat down to work and all of a sudden one of the custodians was knocking on my door telling me it was time to leave. I had spent two hours in there and it felt like barely 20 minutes. It was kind of cool though. I felt like I was really becoming a teacher. Doing this program is like being in a dream for so long and then all of a sudden you wake up and you have responsibilities and everything is happening. It still seems a little unreal, so I get the feeling that on the fourth I'm going to wake up and be getting ready for college classes or something. It's almost thrilling to be getting started and to really be working. Maybe I can take some pictures next week of my room so I can document the before and after. I'll have to bust out my digital camera. I haven't really used it since I lived in Spain, but I think becoming a real life teacher merits similar accord.

For some reason, my principal told everyone we weren't allowed to come in to school until next Monday. I had already made plans with my Vice Principal to come in, so I still went today. When I got there though, there were a ton of teachers from the school we share our building with working in their rooms. I wonder why we aren't allowed to be in our rooms until Monday? I met two custodians and I'm going to try and remember their names so they will be my friends and not fuck with my room. Does that really happen? I hear a lot of custodian nightmares where you get on their bad sides and then you don't have desks or something. I had desks today, so it seems ok for now.

After that I had an EPIC doctor's appointment to get a TB test for the Department of Ed. I waited about an hour just to get in and get the test which takes like 2 minutes. It was frustrating. When the Doctor asked me where I worked, I just blurted out DOE. She thought I said DOH(Department of Health.) It's funny how different professions have their own cute little acronyms and such. It's also weird that I call it the DOE and I call my vice principal my vp. I don't know why I do that, but sometimes I feel kind of cool and hip. And then sometimes, like at the doctor's office, I feel like a douche. Oh well.

Everything is starting for real now, and it's so strang/terrifying/wonderfully exciting.

Teacher disOrientation

Today we had new teacher orientation delivered by the Department of Education. I will herein refer to this event as disOrientation.

I arrived at disOrientation about 5 minutes to 8 am, which was the scheduled arrival time. I was worried on the train that I had dressed too casual because most of my fancy clothes are skirts and it was really cold and rainy today so I wore black pants and my converse sneakers. I was dressed rather fancy, by disOrientation standards.

I waited in line to sign in, and then was directed by some shouting guy and a couple of signs up to the fourth floor cafeteria. There was a long line at the elevator, so I took the stairs. I've been sitting on my ass most of this week anyhow. Upstairs I wait around for approximately 25 minutes. I saw an old friend and we chatted and then I hung out with some other Spanish fellows and had some fruit. Finally another Spanish fellow texts me, come down to the auditorium. I was suspicious; no one had told us where to go now, but we had definitely been directed to this cafeteria. I went anyway because I was feeling faint-ish and there was no seating in the cafeteria.

About ten minutes after I arrive in the auditorium, a presentation starts. However, there are approximately 30 people in the auditorium, and if my memory serves me correctly, 90 people in the cafeteria. The presentation goes on about five minutes when someone calls out "hey the cafeteria upstairs is packed." The presenter woman says, go tell them to come down here, and PROCEEDS with her speech. I thought it was nice of her, after her organization failed to outline any sort of procedures and strand 90 plus people in the cafeteria, to just keep on going with her presentation. As it turns out, her presentation was a lame obviously scripted panel "discussion" where some teachers talked about how teaching is THE BEST THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD, NOTHING IS BETTER OR MORE AWESOME SO DON'T EVEN GO THERE. This was lame and unrealistic.

However, disOrientation was just getting the ball rolling on the lame and unrealistic front. Next we had some sort of workshop thing, except, well, we can't find your textbook so maybe we wont do anything actually. We'll just read what we would have done to you while you sit there mindlessly. Lots of people in this class asked weird questions and one guy sitting in front of me got violently hostile about the lameness of said "workshop." I hated it too, but he was getting all foamy at the mouth. Awkward.

Then was lunch. That was fun. Then was another workshop. Fine. The facilitator sounded like the Swedish chef, which is weird because I'm almost positive she was Hispanic. It was dull and too long. I spent at least an hour and a half to two hours today just sitting and talking to my friend. And not because I was slacking off, which I was, but because we were given about an hour to do a reading activity on FIVE pages.

I'm going back tomorrow, even though I found out it wasn't mandatory. We are supposedly being paid AND receiving a Staple's gift card. I hope the total value tops at least 60 dollars, but I'm not expecting anything. Ugh.

Ladies and Gentlemen, disOrientation 2007!

Dinner time

I am having a predicament. I ate a very late lunch and I didn't really start getting hungry until right now, almost 9:30. However, I need to go to bed in a hour tops. Tomorrow is some sort of Department of Education new teacher orientation thing. It's going to to last two days and I have not a clue what's going to happen. It's going to be my first official "real teacher" thing, as opposed to specifically sanctioned Teaching Fellow things.

Then on Thursday I'm going into my classroom, although all the teachers got an e-mail from my principal the other day saying no one should come in until the 27th. I already arranged to come in on Thursday with my Vice Principal though, so I think it's still ok. I assume she would have e-mailed me to say that I should wait until next Monday. Well, hopefully it wont be an issue. And if Principal is there, then I will just say I only came to pick up my tax-exempt form so I could start my shopping. Which I desperately need to do. I am hoping to get some sort of Big calendar thing for birthdays and/or assignments. So many things on my teaching list...

I just invented a new game with my cat wherein I throw her bowl of food across the room, individually, piece by piece. She LOVES this game. I think it's good because mostly she sits around all day, which is what I mostly do. However, I think a sedentary lifestyle for a cat is a lot more dangerous than for me. Plus, my sedentaryism(sedentaria?) is only temporary until I get a.) all of my teaching computer related start of the year assignments done or b.) school actually begins, whichever comes first. I have a sinking feeling it's going to be the latter. If any actual teachers out there ever read my blog, I'd like to know if you ever get all your stuff done and get to just relax, or if you cross things off your list only to add ten more things later. That sounds like how my summer has been and I'm hoping it's only temporary. Also, for the love of god, please say that I can use lots of stuff from this year over again. A lot of the experienced fellows who came in to our class said that that isn't the case, but I want to pretend they were just joking so we wouldn't slack off. I'm going to go with that!

New Teacher Orientation! Hey-o

Sweet television

I JUST watched the season premier of Weeds on my computer, as I am much too poor to afford television, let alone fancy cable channels like Showtime. Anyhow, I just wanted to say that Weeds is the most insanely dramatic awesome show around. The season finale was action frickin' packed and the season premier was almost as sweet. I'm quite impressed with this show and it might be awesome enough to order Showtime when my paychecks do start rolling in. I've got to think about it.

I think I might go to Iceland for Christmas break. When I was living in Spain, I had to spend the last two weeks of July in this apartment where you could pay by the week because my old roommate wanted to rent out my room for the whole month and I was leaving in the middle. So this apartment was filled with students doing study abroad programs in Spain and one Spanish guy who was from Southern Spain but was working or something like that in Madrid for a while. In Spain, people usually live at home until they can afford to buy an apartment or house or something, which is usually until at least thirty with the salaries and housing market being what they are in Madrid. So most of the apartment market is filled with students doing study abroad programs, which are huge in Europe. Because these people don't stay for a whole year, the places are rented out weekly or monthly and they are crammed with people. The apartment was very big, but we had like eight people in there. It was a totally sweet setup and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

It was actually kind of amazing living with eight other people from totally different places. There was me, the american, a german asshole, two lovely french girls, a japanese girl, a swedish girl, the spaniard, and this awesome guy from Iceland named Gauti. I liked him best and we hung out in the apartment the most, for some reason. We did a horrible job keeping in touch and actually didn't at all after I left Spain. Then, fall semester of 2006 I went with my friend to a bar to meet up with these couple of guys she knew. They were cool and whatnot and then one of their friends showed up. She seemed nice enough and we talked and she told me she was from Iceland, so I was like oh that's funny when I was in Spain I had an Icelandic roommate, yeah his name was Gauti. She goes, I know Gauti! It was too weird. Although, later I realized it wasn't that weird because Iceland's population is like 300,000 or something and almost half of those people live in the capital, Reykjavic, I think it's spelled. But anyway, then he e-mailed me and said what a coincidence it was and I e-mailed back and said yeah but then that was all.

For some reason, yesterday I decided I wanted to go to Iceland and since Iceland is very expensive and unknown to me I e-mailed him again and he e-mailed back this morning and said that I should totally come. I think it would be awesome to go there and he can be like my tour guide, plus he's a fun guy, even if I don't know him all that well. We did live together. So yeah, I hope that will work out because I think it would be neat to spend New Year's in Iceland. New Years is always boring, so being in a foreign country might be just the thing I need.

I am really overwhelmed with all this work to do. I started working on the 8th grade curriculum plan, but I just got overwhelmed and started feeling like I didn't know what I was doing so I stopped. Tomorrow I need to get at least two units done so I don't get too far behind. Next week is new teacher orientation, my first visit to my new classroom since it was vacated, and SHOPPING!!! I must buy lots of stuff. I am pretty excited about this. Soon there will be more to post about.

Too much

As of this moment, my "Big School-related Checklist" is at 29 things to do before school. I have three things crossed off. The list is ever expanding. I had no idea my job was going to be this complicated. I work every day on the things on the list, and yet I never seem to get more than one thing done. I have a very complicated and involved job that never ends. This is terrifying. It doesn't help yet that so many things on the list actually cannot be completed yet even if I wanted to. I need to get a tax-exemption form to take shopping with me so I can buy stuff for my classroom. I don't want to waste my teacher's choice money on taxes, that's lame. When am I going to be able to get this stuff done? I am very quickly running out of time. Let's see, counting today there are exactly three weeks left to finish everything. Oh god.

Another thing. I don't wear high heels. I'm not good at it and I don't really want to anyway. They are painful and dangerous. Why do all pants in the world have to be creepy-long? I am 5'7, which is not spectacularly tall, but it's not short by any means. Therefore, pants should not be so long on me as to pool at my ankles. I feel like a little kid playing dress-up when I go pants shopping, and that annoys me. If I want to wear flats, I should be able to wear flats without getting my pants altered. That is a fair statement.

I did go shopping on my vacation at the Banana Republic outlet store. I got a ton of awesome stuff, which is going to make me look uber-professional for the first week, after which I will have run out of clothes and will look a little crappy. I have to get some more stuff so I can pull off professional experienced teacher for at least a month. I need a pair of khaki pants and some sort of skirt, as well as a few more tops to rotate. Right now I have four-ish nice tops, but I think I could use at least 9 or 10 so I can move them around a bit. I have a nice advantage in that I only see each of my classes twice a week. That gives me a lot more leeway for wearing the same thing twice in one week. I just have to make sure that I remember what each class has already seen that week.

See how many things there are to think about? Too many!

Nothing to say

This week has been kind of awful. I've been in a bad mood and have been really unhappy. I don't feel like blogging about any of the stuff that's been going on because I don't really care to remember it. Hopefully I will be less depressed soon enough. I should start working on teaching planning soon, and hopefully that will get me out of this awful rut. Until then, I don't have much to post. Sorry.

El fin

It is over. Hooray! I got my check today which I really needed to pay my rent, so I am pretty jazzed about that. Actually, the last day of training was the worst day. For some reason, after all of the different groups did the little skits we had prepared, the Teaching Fellows thought it would be a brilliant idea to do a little scavenger hunt around the city. Fantastic, because it's only about 90 degrees outside. What else do you want to do in the city when it's 90 degrees out besides walk around? I can think of nothing.

We also got oddly fitting t-shirts and some sandwiches. I won a little mug stuffed with highlighters, pencils, and other kinds of teaching goodies. It was ok I guess. I just wish we could have done that all after class yesterday instead of coming all the way back for three stupid hours.

Now I'm home and I'm at a loss somewhat. I don't really know what to do now that I'm all finished. I took a nap, which was glorious. I have a meeting on Sunday with the woman I met with last week who's planning my curriculum with me and she's going to help me do some more planning. I think I should do some stuff for that. She didn't like the way our units were planned last year and I don't either, but she wants them to be like even more random and I was hoping to make them more sequential. It is a little challenging for me to plan out lots of random things to teach. I like teaching things that go together. She also says that I should teach in chunks of phrases so the students can start saying things right away and then later in the year teach them more grammar and conjugations and stuff. And I think that's stupid and I hate that. I was thinking maybe the first month we could do chunks with like ¿cómo te llamas?/ me llama and ¿cómo estás? but then that's over. I think she wants a lot of units that way, and I am not into that idea at all.

Blahhh it's so hot. What is this about. Oh my momma is coming next week and I'm going to meet her at my aunt's shore house. I think I'll spend most of the week there, going to the beach and doing nothing much at all. My mom has promised to take me shopping for some nice work clothes, so hopefully upon my return, I'll will be a model of professionalism, as opposed to the jeans and sneakers model I've been sporting as of late. It's particularly hard in the summer. I love when my family comes to visit. My little sister is coming too and she is getting so old. Seventeen this year. That's just ridiculous.

I'm quite happy for a few weeks of rest before this whole thing really starts happening. Training was fun, but it was pretty hypothetical. The school year is going to be the most surreal experience of my life. I can't believe it's almost here.

Workfolio Complete!

I finished my workfolio today, the big collection of stuff we can use in our classrooms next year. I think my parent letter is good, so I am very psyched about that. All of my stuff needs some more tweaking so hopefully I can get that all squared away in another week and I can really get down to business on my unit plans and all the lesson plans for September. I guess my goal for the rest of the summer is to finish both grades' unit plans and plan about six lesson plans for September, which includes the stuff I do on rules and all that. I think that introductory stuff will be about two days. I love September holidays by the way. Thank you September gods for giving me a few days extra to rearrange if things go horribly.

These last few days of summer student teaching are really tough. One of the kids told me today that he's going to curse me out on the last day. I didn't do anything about it because I think that's really ridiculous, but I realize now that I totally should have kicked him out of the room. That's like a threat right? The hardest part about teaching is you have to make snap judgments all day long, which I don't think I am very good at yet. And it's not like being a doctor where you can say ok here's what's happening right now, what can I do for that. Because kids are absolutely unpredictable and irrational. And insane and rude. I am coming down hard next year with my rules, I am not wasting my time being annoyed and flustered.

Also today we watched a video called F.A.T. City, which was about the way Special Education students feel in general ed classrooms. It stands for frustration, anxiety, tension. It was really interesting. If anyone has an opportunity to see it, they should most definitely do so. It sort of put people in situations that many learning disabled students find themselves in and it brings up a lot of stuff I never even thought about. One thing that was really interesting was how some students can't distinguish letters that are spatial rotations of the same shape, such as b, p, q, d. Actually, that's a perfect order for that because you can see a p is a flipped down b, is a mirrored q is a flipped up d. So I can totally see how that can be challenging. And then the people in the video were given paragraphs to read where they not only had to decide which of those four letters was "correct" in words, but the words started and ended in weird pieces and were all over the page. It was really hard for the people in the video to read like that and they sounded just like some students do when they are struggling to read. Amazing. I thought a really good thing to do if students had that spatial processing issue would be to let them write in Caps lock, since the letters all look different. That sounds like a really good example of differentiation, no?

Bleck, I am supposed to teach something tomorrow and we are all finished with teaching stuff. Every day this week is supposed to be about the students finishing their letters, so there's no reason for me to teach anything new. The field visitor crap is a waste of time. I don't know what I'm going to teach. I'm going to decide on the train tomorrow. My cooperating teacher doesn't want me to teach more than like five minutes anyway, since the kids get such little work done in a period, they need as much time as possible. Boo for field visitors. So sleepy now.

Last week

I've got one week left. I am super excited to be done soon. As helpful as this summer has been, I need some time to just step back and think of how I can apply all the things I learned to next year. When you are going through the program, you really don't get much opportunity to think about what you will actually do as a teacher. The fellowship throws so much information at you, but you're so exhausted and over-worked that it's hard to get any time to say, "ok how can I use this information in my classroom, what will I actually do next year?" So I think I'll be doing that once school ends.

Although I have a curriculum planning meeting today with a woman who has been teaching Spanish for ten years or something. I actually feel really lucky, my principal set me up with this woman and she's totally excited to just sit down with me and really plan out my year. I was talking to another fellow about this and she said that it sounds like my school is totally setting me up for success, so I want to really try to use this opportunity for the best.

We are meeting today at 3:30 and right now it's raining like a mother. For some reason, the lightning at my new apartment is always very loud. We must be in some sort of lightning hotspot? Do those exist? The lightning almost always sets off car alarms and the thunder is instantaneous. How could it be that the lightning is always so close to my apartment? It's really weird. Three separate storms now have been like this. It scares my kitty.

I have a huge workfolio to do, which is sort of a collection of different the tools I'll use next year. I wonder if I mentioned this already. Anyway, it's due on Tuesday and I'm really lagging on starting it. I don't think it's going to be hard, I just hate doing work on the weekends because it seems like I do non-stop work during the week. Oh! I am 1/5 done with my masters! That's pretty exciting right? So far I have a 4.0, so hopefully I'll get an A in this class I just finished. I'd love to get summa cum laude for my graduate degree, but I'm not even sure if they do that stuff in graduate school. I got cum laude undergrad because of a stupid required physics class that was way too hard for an introductory course. It also didn't help that I was working 30 hours a week for the worst boss ever and it was my first class at my school in New York, which was a much more challenging environment than the school I had transferred from.

I guess I'll work on my workfolio now. I've got to do rules, consequences and procedures today and a self-reflection I think. I've also got to finish my unit plans, but I think I'll do that with the lady today, hopefully. Very hungry too, I guess I'll need to eat. I'll do that too.

Students are strange

Today the problems with S. kind of came to a head. It started right away, as soon as second period started. He was sitting down fine and then randomly decided to get up and talk to his friend who he always talks to. I said, S. get back to your seat. Nothing. He didn't turn and look at me, he didn't stop talking, and he certainly didn't go back to his seat. I said that probably about three times with the same results. Which was ineffective obviously.

Later in the period, he announced I'm finished, after he had filled in an entire worksheet and wanted to move on to the second part of class which involved getting a computer. Well, the only problem was that a. students had to get their work checked before moving on and b. I was right next to him and not busy whereas my cooperating teacher was across the room helping other students. So I said ok S, let me see your work and then I'll get you a computer. Yeah fucking right. He was like no I want Mr. Cooperating teacher, I don't have to work with you, go work with other students, etc etc etc. We talked about ten minutes and it was nothing doing, totally disrespectful "get out of my face" and "stop bothering me" all over the place. So finally I said, Mr. Cooperating Teacher, I cannot have this, S. has to go now. He agreed, since he had intervened in all the of day's events to say you need to show her some respect and S. had said no I don't, or some variant of the like.

So I went to get an administrator and I said, look I am just having a really hard time with this student, he refuses to listen to me or work with me, and he's absolutely disrespectful. We decided to have a meeting after the period was over and it was absolutely unhelpful. S. totally insisted that he shouldn't have to work with me and insisted that I had yelled at him. He also flat out lied about what had just happened saying I was insisting that he needed help and that he kept telling me that he didn't need help and that he wasn't finished. I actually said in the meeting, well S. when you called out I'm finished that led me to believe that you were finished. He didn't deny that, but he just kept up with his story. It was bizarre. Students are strange, as I said. The meeting ended when the administrator said we would have to call his mom because his disrespect was getting out of hand and he almost began to cry. It was crazy! I didn't want him to cry. It was weird too, because I can't see how he could have thought that the way he was treating me was o.k, so it couldn't have been unexpected. I would have been totally fine with not calling his mom if he would have just used the meeting to agree to some sort of compromise on working together, but instead he used it to be more hostile and lie! to my face!

Unfortunately, the administrator decided that she would be calling his mom tonight and that hopefully that will turn things around. She said to address any misbehavior one time and then to just let it go unless it's really disruptive to the whole class or something. So I'm going to do that from now on and then she said to let her know how tomorrow goes and if he is still having problems working with me that we could bring his mom in for a meeting. It's so weird to me that adolescents cannot foresee parent teacher conferences for misbehavior. S. was like stunned when his mom's name was mentioned in the conference, even though I said in class to him that if this keeps happening I would be calling his mom. What the hell?

Dear, this post has gotten much longer than I wanted. It's past 9:30, which is my bedtime, since I am an old lady. Hopefully this situation will be resolved tomorrow, but I get a sinking feeling that it wont be. Until then.

So close to the finish

So, today was crap. It rained in buckets which was bad and apparently, when it rains, children refuse to act normal or do work. Instead they get crazy and disrespectful.

The kid who last week or so told me to get out of his damn face is actually out of control. He was so disrespectful to me all day, he is absolutely convinced that he is in charge. He gets out of his seat and he walks around the room all the time, just to talk to his friend. He doesn't do any of his work and he talks back to everything I or the teacher says. When I try to speak to him he says get out of my face or stop bothering me, and he acts like such a jerk that I start getting angry. This is not at all helpful. I really want to try and work on keeping my cool when students are angry, but his tone is so hostile and anxious that it makes me feel that way. With the other boy, the one who called me racist, he doesn't listen to what I say but he doesn't get all worked up about it so it's much easier for me to stay calm, but when S. is getting all worked up I find it really hard to keep my calm.

I have no more food, but I also have no more money. We don't get paid again until next Friday and I have to make twenty dollars that I got out of the atm on Saturday last the whole time. I'm going to try and save up to buy an apartment. I am sick of moving around and my parents hate to visit the neighborhoods I can afford. Plus, rent just keeps going up and I hate the thought of living in ridiculously far away neighborhoods forever. It seems like every time I move, I get farther and farther into Brooklyn. The real estate market here is absolutely bizarre. I can't understand how working-class people can get pushed out all the time. Who affords the 4000 dollar a month studio apartments? Who even wants that?

It looks like the rain is clearing up. I should probably get started on my mountains of work. I am so tired of this work. Three more days of graduate classes and seven more days of summer school student teaching. I can't stand those jerks anymore!

"Content" Workshops

Today is Friday and Friday means "content" workshops. And that means extended waste of my time. The problem is that there are very few Spanish Fellows in the program. By my count no more than about 75. There are only two classes, one at my university and one class at another university, which means there are only two Fellow Advisers for the Spanish Fellows, mine and the other one. The problem with this is that the Fellow Advisers lead each of the content workshops, but the teaching fellows program decided there would be four content workshops each Friday. So what happens is that I, and all the other Spanish Fellows too, get two content workshops that are good for us, and then two that are for E.S.L. teachers. The fellowship likes to pretend that these are good for both since we are all language teachers, but they are lying. Today in one of my "content" workshops I learned the name of the test E.S.L students take to assess their English language level, the LAB-R in case you were wondering. What a ridiculous waste of my time.

I arrived around ten minutes late and I almost ditched my last class, but since I had to wait for a friend to go out with after the workshops and I couldn't find her and convince her to ditch with me, I stayed for the full four hours. The last class wasn't that bad because I played E.S.L. jeopardy with a cute English guy. Like, an actual guy from England, not someone teaching English. It was weird because he said oh hey I'm my name and I said Hi, I'm my name and then he goes, in his British accent, "Are you English?" I was like... wait, that's what I'm supposed to ask. I've actually gotten that on multiple occasions previously, which is weird. I always thought people were just crazy, but to get that from an actual English person must mean it's true. I don't realize I'm doing that at all. Kind of fun I guess.

I'm having a lot of problems with one boy in my summer school class, but I'll post about that at another time I think. I took a nap at 7:30 and woke up about 15 minutes ago. I think I'm going to go back to sleep for the night now. This is really getting exhausting, only one/two more weeks to go. Yay!

An unpleasant day

Today was my first day teaching in my summer training. Let's just say it started off well. Let's not mention that after the first fifteen minutes or so everyone stopped paying attention or doing any of the work they were supposed to and started talking, throwing things, getting up from their seat, basically anything they could think of. The kids were being total assholes, for no reason. They do not act like this normally, they know they're not supposed to act like that. They just figured hey she's not our teacher, we can do whatever the fuck we want right now. It was weird though because my cooperating teaching was still in the room and he was still telling the students to pay attention or whatever, and they just didn't. Little fuckers.

The good thing is that my observer left, I think, before the madness began. The bad thing is this means I have to start teaching everyday so the assholes realize that I am the teacher in the class and that they have to do work when I'm teaching. I don't want to have what happened today happen while my observer is in the room, even though it doesn't actually matter if she says I'm bad. The fellows program, which I will speak about at another time, is a huge joke!

I was pretty bummed out and a little shocked afterwards, but now I'm just like meh. At the time I didn't want to go back ever again, but now I kind of do want to try again and try out new things and see if I can find a solution. Which I think is a really good thing because if I was ready to give up after one bad experience, I would think the year ahead of me would be pretty challenging. I just have to try and find a way to get over my failures quicker so I can keep moving during the day and try again each period. I didn't have to do that today, but next year in my own class I will so that's what I'm going to try and work on. Plus, if I can get used to failing and dealing with behavioral problems every day, then next year when I'm at my school with my amazing and wonderful kids, I'll think each day is a breeze. Hooray for lowering your standards!

Get out of my damn face...

... Was what a boy in my student teaching said to me today. Whoa. All of a sudden the kids are going fucking nuts! What the hell?? Another boy called me racist. What do I do with that?

When S. told me to get out of his damn face, I was in the process of asking him to stop talking to his friend M., who he sits next to and talks with everyday without fail. I had asked them a few times to please stop talking because the teacher was talking and he just blew me off. Finally, I told him that working in a group was a privilege and that if he couldn't stop talking to M. he would have to move. When he ignored me I said ok S. you've got to move now. You can't sit here anymore. He continued to ignore me so I sat down in the empty desk next to him so as not to make a scene, and then he started freaking out. He was so angry he was shaking. It really seemed overdone. What did I do? I wasn't that close to him. I can understand that some kids, because of abuse or various other reasons, have issues with their personal space, but I don't think I was that close. And what do you do when you are standing right next to a kid and they are ignoring you?

I was so frustrated after he said that to me and the teacher had to come and basically rescue me that I wanted to cry. What am I supposed to do? S. seems to think I'm someone to be ignored and if I just walk away and let him not listen to me, then he'll never listen to me, and I'm supposed to be teaching a lesson in his class on Wednesday. I'm nervous.

The boy who called me a racist started going crazy too. I must be doing something wrong, but I don't know what to do. I'm stressed out by this. The boy called me a racist in jest and I told him that racism is a serious allegation and I don't appreciate being called that and I don't know. All of a sudden he was actually mad. He mostly just jokes around and acts inappropriate and says things to bate me, but after I spoke to him about racism he was really angry. What did I do?

The kids were doing really great up until now and this week it seems like they aren't interested in listening to me or being on task. What happened over the weekend I ask?

A plea for help

So, I've been reading a lot of mildly melancholy, a blog by a former teaching fellow. Well kind of former, I get the feeling that some people think when you're a teaching fellow you're a fellow forever. I also get the feeling that you kind of stop being a teaching fellow after your first summer since the "organization" or what have you more or less drop you like a hot potato, what a dorky metaphor.

Anyway! The blog has really motivated me to do more updating, in addition to the fact that I seem to get hits when I update my post, and that thrills me. I just finished reading about her first year of teaching, and I must say I am terrified. She seemed to have a pretty rough time of it, especially the first few months. Although, she didn't start the year off at her school which I think worked against her a lot and is something I wont have to deal with. But it scares me more that her lessons seem to be so interesting or, at the very least, creative. I just don't feel creative about lesson planning. I'm nervous.

A foreign language is such a complicated learning process and I can't think of a good way to teach the stuff that I want to teach. I'm trying to follow this "workshop model" thing, and the individual and group practice things are pretty ok. Even assessment is manageable, at least I think. And I plan on doing an "hagan ahora" of review for my opening. But Mini-lesson? What the hell do I do there? How can you engage students in things like verb conjugations? I, obviously, think it's super awesome. I actually thought for a long time before applying to the fellowship that if I could only find a job wherein I would simply do Spanish grammar worksheets all day, that my life would be endlessly complete. But I'm sure 13 year olds don't think like me. Help!

Training happens

Training is going ok I guess. I don't feel helped much though. We started working on lesson planning and stuff and I got a really good start to it all, but I feel like I just don't know where to go now. Saying create a lesson plan is just not very helpful. I need more guidance.

For example, right now I'm working on my unit plans for next year. I decided to start off with the 7th grade plans because those students start from scratch so I can more or less teach them what I want. They haven't learned anything yet so I don't have to worry about teaching them something they already know, with the exception of any native speakers I might have. But, what do I teach them? How much can they learn? How do I know what I should do? I am just confused. It's pretty daunting to me. I have the curriculum map that the old teacher left behind, but the order she went in is confusing to me and I don't know how to alter it without doing too much. It seems like she taught them an average of 6 things per unit, but those 6 things were spread out over two months of instruction, which is close to 16 lessons. Is that weird? Did she spend some days reviewing? I don't get what to do, I need help!

On a nice note I passed my CST, so I don't have to worry about that anymore. Annoyingly enough they sent my score report to my old apartment and I'll probably never see it again. I'm going to have to pay 10 bucks or something to have them send another one. That's what I get for being lazy. But not really, I went on the website to try to change my address about a week prior to the score posting, but it's completely unhelpful and I just don't have time in the day to call the stupid NY State teaching certification exam people, who I'm sure are only open when I'm in training anyway. Bastards.

I don't like the font that the blog gives me as standard, but I can never remember which way does look good and I'd prefer to have a uniform looking blog I think.

Oh, some people came here looking for welcoming event, so I'll just say it was about half as inspiring as it could have been. Mostly because half the time was spent listening to department talking heads saying how great it is that we are joining this noble profession. How about if instead taking the day off to tell 1700 some new semi-qualified teachers how great it is that they are joining such a noble profession, you support working teachers so they all stop quitting? I don't mean to sound ungrateful because this is probably the only way I would have become a teacher, but really, I'm still going to suck this year and probably next year and those kids are going to lose out because of it. And if, god forbid, I have some sort of a child in the future, it's very unlikely that I'll be able to continue teaching unless whoever I am raising said hypothetical child with, has a much better paying job than mine. Or you know, if I one day decided to move to a neighborhood that's not unsafe or less than an hour and a half commute from work. That's much more likely than the baby scenario.

I wish I posted more. I think if I didn't feel like the teaching fellows program spent so many hours a day wasting my time I would be more inclined to write here. Only two/three more weeks though(two in my horrible methods of teaching class, three in my summer student teacher training site.) I'll have to write about my student teaching next time too. Maybe I'll post again soon about that. I have lots to say. Until then.

Things will get moving now

Dearest lovely little blog,

I am sorry that I have abandoned you, not returning to write in more than a month. Things have just been pretty slow for me. I read my teaching fellows guidebook, do assignments, move to a new apartment and yet don't think to tell you? What kind of a blogger am I? A bad blogger.

Tomorrow my teacher training officially starts. Welcoming event is at 2:30 and the next day the never-ending classes and work commences. I feel like maybe then I will be able to write more about teaching. I've mostly been dealing with personal stuff lately, and that's not what this blog is about, not yet anyway. I am so nervous about my impending adulthood. I am thrilled that I am finally going to be able to start thinking about teaching and being forced by my University to be proactive about teaching. Creating lesson plans and classroom management schema.

I promise to write more when all of this kicks off. Tomorrow it all begins.

Update

I got a job today! I am very happy. It was actually the first interview I went on and I got called back for a demo lesson, but I thought the principal hated me! She definitely didn't like the demo lesson, but I guess she thinks I have potential. She knew I was a teaching fellow and that I had never done a lesson before in my life, so she must have taken that into account. I went on two interviews after that first one, but they both felt really mediocre. I am overjoyed that I got this job, I think the school is absolutely amazing and when I was doing my demo lesson, I had such a good time working with the kids. I can't wait to get started.

Also, I passed the LAST, now I've got to tackle the CST. I am way more nervous about this one. My future roommate, also a Spanish fellow, said that there are a lot of questions about different Spanish-speaking countries. She and I both studied in Spain, so most of my knowledge is in that country. I've got to start reading encyclopedia entries about Spanish speaking countries soon. I wonder if there are going to be any questions about Equatorial Guinea. It's the only country in Africa where Spanish is an official language. We'll see.

Things are really moving now. I am so excited.

Borough Assignment and Tests

So I found out I'll be teaching in Manhattan, which is fantastic. I would have been happy with Brooklyn too, but I am very comfortable with lots of different neighborhoods in Manhattan, many more than I know in Brooklyn, and it will be nice to work in a neighborhood I already know and understand. So hooray. I've been trying to send out resumes and stuff, but I feel so weird sending out a resume to a job that I am, literally, unprepared for. I am not even certified yet! So far I've sent out two resumes and I haven't heard back from anybody. I don't know if I should call and follow up or what. I mean, how would I even follow up anyway? Hi, I sent you a resume did you get it, do you like me? I don't know. I am not used to this at all.

Tomorrow night I am going to a semi-job fair-like thing. I don't know what it is, but there are going to be two principals there from schools I am really interested in. Hopefully I can talk with them a little and give them my resumes and cover letter. I printed out a generic cover letter before I knew there were only going to be two schools there that I could work at, so now I am thinking to just make two personalized cover letters. But I also don't have a printer, so it might be a moot point unless I can find one fast. I shall blog about my first official educator work related experience soon! I can't believe I'm actually going to have one of those.

And finally, I took my LAST on Saturday. It was easy. It was SO easy. I hope I did ok. It was the kind of easy where you wonder what kind of ridiculous answers are they really getting at that make sense to no one and totally screw up your score. The essay was so awful and I really just sort of knocked something out that I'm pretty sure was mediocre. I don't really care though because I think you can get some incredibly huge number of questions wrong and still pass. Like thirty out of eighty or something. Which, is kind of silly when you think about it, because no high school student who missed thirty questions out of eighty on a test would pass, but his teacher gets more leeway. Interesting.

Job fair tomorrow!

Oh happiest of days!

Someone read my blog! Someone read my blog! I know it was only one person, but this feeling is so joyous. They even spent about half an hour on here, which doesn't seem right seeing as I've only got those three posts down there. Who cares! They read it. Wow, site meters are amazing. I wish my writing was more prolific or meaningful, but right now I am mostly just biding my time. And it's not particularly interesting. I am so overjoyed that someone read my blog!

What's going on with the LAST?

So I bought a test prep book for the LAST on Saturday evening. I haven't had a chance to really get into it and see what's going on, but my first impression is mostly "what the hell." Ok. So I understand that, in general, we'd all like our teachers to be brilliant, worldly, PhD candidates but the questions asked on this sample test are bizarrely random. They sample every single subject on the spectrum, from art history to math and on over to architectural elements. Why do I need to know what kind of features on a building enhance its appearance of height? What are wall setbacks? What is a single-point perspective? Sure, I can guess on these, but this kind of random grouping of knowledge is not the sort of thing anyone can study for and no person should be expected to have amassed such a large collection of obscure knowledge. I know how to add, I know scientific principles, I can analyze passages; so what is up with these questions that would serve so nicely as facts to be whipped out at a party to impress your host?

My other issue mainly stems from the fact that, yes, I can guess on all of these and when I did I got all of them right. What is this test for? What is it testing? What sorts of things are we learning about those who do and do not do well on this test that has any bearing on whether or not they will be a superb earth science teacher or a magnificent Spanish señorita(as is my intention)? I will report back with a more informed rant after actually reading through the book and maybe even after taking the test for real. That should be in mid-April, around the same time that I find out about my borough placement.

Of late, I am working frequently and getting paid too little. It's hard when you just could care less. The kids are cool and the other teachers are too, but I know I'm leaving and I wish I could spend my days thinking about Spanish and lesson plans instead of changing diapers and setting up snack. Oh well, I do enjoy a night of vodka-crans, and that is the price I must pay.

Accepted Fellows Reception

I had my accepted fellows reception last night. I think I had expected something a little more let's get this program going than here's why you should join this program. It seemed like a lot of people there had already accepted their fellowships too and didn't really need much convincing. It was sort of like attending my third information session. On the other hand, a girl who runs the volunteer program I work with got a fellowship too and she was there last night. It was nice to know someone else there, although I wish I had mingled a little more. But I did get to know C. better, and it will definitely be nice to have a friend in the program with me while I'm still trying to get all the different requirements sorted out. C. seems to be having some confusion over the testing too.

Right now I am stuck debating whether or not to switch my subject area from Spanish to ESL. I love Spanish more than anything, you pretty much have to to major in it, because if you don't, it can get real old real fast. And I've said numerous times before that if I could do beginning Spanish workbook worksheets for a living I would, so it seems like this might be my opportunity. There's just something about teaching a language that I can physically never be entirely fluent in that makes me uncomfortable. And my level right now is really not the best. I can pass all written and comprehension portions of any Spanish exam you throw my way, but the Oral exam's got me worried. This is truly a moral dilemma for me. I love Spanish, and speaking it every day and sharing it with new learners would be the most incredible thing for me, but I don't know if I feel okay with teaching something I don't feel I've mastered. Something for me to think over. No new teaching fellows related activities in the foreseeable future, just rounding up documents and sending them in. I don't find out until April what borough I've been assigned to.

In the meantime, I have a wicked cold that I cannot seem to kick and I'm attending dinner with my cuban relatives this weekend. They are so fantastic and wonderful and kind. I always enjoy an evening of cuban food and Spanish and stories of the grandfather I never met and the Cuba that no longer exists. More to come.

Here goes... a little bit

I just found out that I got a teaching fellowship in NYC, where I've been living for the past three years. I am rather nervous. I have been waiting for this fellowship for at least a year now, but now that it's here I am scared I've jumped into something much much bigger than myself. They've asked me to teach Spanish, and I hardly speak Spanish. Yes I've got a degree, but that means close to nothing as far as speaking goes. I can write 10 page papers about Spanish literature but I do not know how to talk on the phone properly or order at restaurants. Added to the fact that many students in NYC public schools speak Spanish already, I was not prepared for this kind of a challenge.

The program doesn't start until June, so I've got four months to agonize over it and study Spanish as much I can. In the meantime I am a preschool teacher. I'd like to use this blog as a way to monitor my progress and share my experience. I know for the last few months I have greedily read each and every teaching blog I could find, but I was always looking for something a little more first year, entirely untrained/unprepared, early 20's in New York. So maybe someone will read this like that. Or probably not.

Next week is an accepted fellows reception! Maybe I'll meet some other people like myself.