tiny mental falter

1. I do not believe in endorphins.  I have never believed in endorphins.  Working out is painful and makes me feel gross.

2. I’m so tired all the time!  In the mornings I will admit that I have been feeling downright perky, but I’ve also been taking early evening naps cause I just crash.  Excercising makes me tired!  Or maybe it’s because I’ve been drinking cokes again.

3. That’s all for the negative.  Here’s the positive:  Yesterday and tonight I did the 5k loop again on the treadmill.  Yesterday I ran the first mile and alternately ran and walked the rest.  Today I just couldn’t do that first mile, so I ran and walked alternate laps the whole time, but since I did everything faster I finished in about the same amount of time.

Also tonight, I added 15 minutes on an elliptical machine, so the grand total comes to 4 miles and some change.  The elliptical machine: so hard!  especially on my thighs!  but hopefully that means I’m builing a little muscle in the jiggliest part of my person.

Nina, were you successful in your trip to the alumni office?  Are you going to be able to work out at the gym?

Back on the Road

I’ve now embarked on my abbreviated but ambitious trip.  It’s a domestic jaunt in the spirit of Commuter RailFest 2003 and I love America 2006, but it doesn’t have a name yet.  First stop is Norfolk, VA to attend a fancy dinner in honor of my sister ad the other senior residents in her program.  My mother will be staying for a bit and helping her move to NYC for a yearlong fellowship, but I am off to next stop.

out of the storage room, into the fire

I am going to try and run over to school today and get some pictures of the storage room/band room I’ve been teaching in for the past few months before they (hopefully) come clear away the detritus tomorrow morning.  It wasn’t pleasant when I had ten to fourteen children, but I didn’t complain (in fact, I was very positive) because the alternative was to be in the corner of someone else’s room.  However, now that I have 23 for most of the afternoon, the space problem reached crisis proportions.   One day last week, I got bumped from five different rooms (read: wandered around the building with my students looking for a space to teach in) and finally ended up cramming them all into the on campus suspension room. 

The best parts of next fall?  A desk so I don’t have to carry around all papers in my arms, a book shelf so I don’t have to carry around books in a backpack all day, a computer.  Next best: my own classroom, so I don’t have to hunt for classroom space several times a week.  Best best:  my own class, from the beginning of the year.

 

 

 

 

 

Uncle

Early on in this teaching adventure I called son1 to extoll the many virtues of the format of the results from a standardized test that the children took before I started.  So informative!  Such a useful metric!

Now, not so very far into the future, I see why they are so unpopular in the press and amongst teachers. In the short time since my start date, we’ve spent four school days  testing, and I’ve spent a couple of hours after school at faculty meetings getting trained so that I can administer those tests.  Tomorrow is another test, and in a few weeks will be the Big One (two days).

At this point, I’m not learning much new information from the results because I spend enough time with the students to see what their needs are.  I’d rather just spend that time….teaching.

optimism

I think I’m starting to hit my stride as a teacher, or at least I don’t feel so seat-of-my pants each day. From the time I was hired until Spring Break, I made a (mostly) systematic improvement in each subject starting with English, then Social Studies, Math then Science. Each day we also did some intensive work on comportment.

tragic

Halfway through the school day the vice-principal came to tell us that one of my student’s brothers was shot and killed this past weekend. He was 17.

It was the first time it occurred to me that not every one of my kids is going to be ok.

Pilgrimsomething

 I can’t tell you a thing about The Mayflowerexcept that it’s written by Nathaniel Philbrick (who wrote Sea of Glory, which was very good).  I meant to bring it with me on my trip to Denton as fun reading, but I forgot it.  Now I probably won’t get to it again until summer break.Oh, well.I’m pretty sure I know how it ends.

Know-it-All

I may be jinxing myself by posting here before I’ve actually finished this one, but it’s hilarious and A.J. Jacobs is a tiny god.   Go read it, so we can talk about it.  Can’t wait to finish it, can’t wait to read Year of Living Biblically.

Not good, but not terrible

First of all, allow me to say (with great relief) that today was not the disaster that I thought it would be.  Also, thank the SBJ for Blockbuster.  They were not what you might call “attentive” or “well behaved”, but considering that we didn’t have PE, Fine Arts, recess, or lunch in the cafeteria, I think we did pretty well.  I rented Night at the Museum and was able to successfully parlay that into a lesson.

Ooof

Today was not so much a good day, and for the first time since I started teaching (a scant month ago), I am not so much looking forward to tomorrow.  This morning we started out the day with a lecture about grades, turning in work, and behaviour, given by me.  I was pretty cranky for reasons that don’t bear getting into (hunting down recalcitrant students to force them to do their missing work, and the bathroom break.  Don’t even get me started on the bathroom break!).     After that, they were steadily terrible all day, even in my smaller class, which is usually much quieter and more diligent.  Did I set them on a path to resentful misbehavior by starting out the day negatively?

Worse than the bad behaviour was the feeling that we didn’t learn anything all day.  Science was especially excruciating.  I taught the lesson the way I usually do: having them read from the text book and explaining each new concept as it comes up.  Today I felt more certain than ever that I was mostly talking to myself, and not a single person grasped the concept.  It’s a terrible feeling.  Better science lessons will mean much more planning than I’ve been able to devote and some real soul searching about how to teach these topics.  Science and Social Studies are the two subjects that I most keenly feel the limitations of a bilingual classroom - concepts which fairly complex to understand in your native language become a minefield of opaque vocabulary in a new language.   Some of my kids speak almost no English at all, and I have not been successful so far at arriving at a good balance between slipping into too much Spanish (to make sure everyone understands) and neglecting Spanish altogether (and thus losing a portion of my audience).

I’ve more or less given up on teaching Math in English, but since I have never taken any Math in Spanish myself, I have to stop and look in the kids’ textbooks all the time because I don’t recognize the vocabulary they use.  (Yesterday I was stumped by a word that turned out to be “integer”).   Still, at least in Math we are learning.   (A longer Math post is forthcoming)

All of this is a buildup to what my post is really about, which is Sheer Dread for tomorrow.   The sixth grade is the only grade level that lives entirely out in temporaries.   We traipse in and out of the building several times a day for lunch, Fine Arts, and bathroom breaks.  Other grade levels (in the school building proper) are taking standardized test benchmarks  tomorrow, and in the interest of maintaining a sacrosanct silence, 6th grade is not going in the building tomorrow.  No P.E. (which means no planning period for me), no recess, and lunch will be eaten in our room.  The whole day, we’ll be in the same room.

ooof.