The new year started. That's where I've been.
I kind of have some new jobs. For example, you may remember that I am the new department chair. I am also on some new committee that charts the course of our professional development to make it less useless. I am newly a 9th grade teacher. I am newly a decent teacher, I think. Not good, but at least approaching decent. For a second-year. By my school's standards, a veretan.
My new room is so, so great. It is, in the words of my ESL 3 students, "quiet, clean, smart, and big." I am especially proud of the library and the expectations wall. I will put up pictures ASAP.
My new students are phenomenal: sweet, dedicated, and gifted. I adore them. Unfortunately I also have some old thorn-in-my-side students who have failed the class three times and have no intention of trying to pass this time. These are not the ones who just don't get it yet, who I can work with. These are the mounds of flesh who sit there staring at the ceiling, pushing each other, etc. I also have a few true jerks. Fortunately, they are misplaced in ESL, and it's now well within my power to fight to get them moved out of ESL and into mainstream English. It's better for them, which is a great cover for the fact that it's way, way better for my other students and me.
I have some new strategies. A for instance: in my somewhat limited experience, requiring outside reading is not effective. This year, I decided to up the ante a bit and challenge my new freshman class to out-read me, page for page. There are fifteen of them, and only one (busy, exhausted) me. The idea is that they will buy in, and that I will then be forced to read, which makes me happier than almost anything else I could do with my "downtime" but almost never happens. The buy-in is initially overwhelming, and they read several hundred pages this week. I started off my campaign with a bang as well, reading Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days cover-to-cover this weekend. Highly recommended, both the book and the all-in-one-go plan of attack.
Ummm I don't sleep anymore. That is not new.
Also I still hate it down here. The heat makes me so sick every day that I feel like throwing up. Clearly I am not going to be able to run this half-marathon. I am still In Training though, in case the temperature plummets or something. Otherwise I will just donate a bunch of money to my hardier friends and lie in the bathtub crying. I am not even joking.
And sometimes, I even teach.
3 comments:
you just made me burst out laughing in a crowded moscow internet cafe. not that the idea of you laying in a bathtub crying is funny... aw shit, yeah it is. but you can do your marathon - i believe in you. and it does get cooler there eventually. i swear.
now everyone is looking at me funny.
Specimen Days looks great, I'm all over it =D
Yes it's hot here so it must be omfg insane cooking alive as if aliens mounted a giant lens in space and started to fry LA like an ant hot there.
That marathon will be difficult but I'm positive you can kick ass on it. =)
I was going to try to console you by saying, "There comes a point when you get so hot that you can't get any hotter," but I really don't believe it myself. I kept telling myself that yesterday when I said in a cafe that did not have air conditioning...I kept thinking and praying that maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I simply accepted the fact that it was indeed hot, and that my skin would indeed stay that moist...but then I started feeling faint and short of breath and had to go home.
The friend that I told you about who just started TFA training in LA had an away message that said "oh thank god they gave us the weekend off!!!" and I felt so bad for her and you.
Congratulations on your new year, and may God grant you free AC.
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