How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

CSI: SVU

The crime scene:

At first glance, everything appeared undisturbed. Shaping minds, touching hearts. Check, check.

Upon further investigation, however, all was not clearly right here:

Where are the red flags? They were between the light blue and purple flags when I last looked and now they're ALL GONE.

The evidence

BUSTED. Suspect was apprehended. He maintained his innocence, despite incontrovertible evidence. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to In School Suspension.

The victim is coping as best she can what with the Post-Its being ALL UNEVEN AND WRONG AND EVERYTHING IS RUINED FOREVER.

Honestly, I don't know how I can be expected to shape minds and/or touch hearts under these conditions.

From the pencils of babes. Actually, the babes mostly forget their pencils and use mine.

It's the end of the first quarter, so I graded journals on Friday. The following are some excerpts that I thought you may enjoy.

On the topic "What are you looking forward to about being an adult?"

I will be a good driver. I will be a good parent. I will get a priecing on my bully bottom.

I can cleen my own room (Some parent is clearly doing it wrong.)

you could choose your male or female (Choose a male or female to date/marry? Choose to be male or female? I don't know and more importantly, I'm not asking)

And on the topic "What grade should you get in my class? Why?"

I should get 100. I am go at English.

Finally, I give you some inventive spelling. Extra points to the first person to tell me what word this is supposed to be:

cherobul

Oh, fine. I may not have gotten it either without context. Here's the sentence:

I don't get in cherobul.

Got it? I won't even make you raise your hand and wait to be called on.

Friday Love List: I have no snappy title for reasons associated with the last list item Edition

I went to a seminar today that was really good. It's so invigorating to listen to someone really well-informed and passionate about a topic speak on it. Particularly, in my case, when it's about what I can do to better understand and help my kids and I leave with a bunch of ideas that I have to write down before I forget them. Most of these training things are not nearly so inspirational and/or useful. I love it when one is.

I love it when some of my kids stop outside my door on their way to another class to wave to me. And equally, if not more so, when kids who would sooner die than acknowledge me in the hall are bursting to tell me a story as soon as they get into my classroom.

And in non-school items, we have:

Chipotle's chicken burrito bowl

Glee (the TV show, not the emotion, although I suppose I'm for that as well)

my new red fleece from Target

a grilled cheese with dipping sauce tomato soup

Liz Lemon ("Another successful interaction with a man!")

Raspberry Pomegranate Michelob Ultra

college t-shirt Fridays which mean that I get to wear jeans and don't even have to think about what to wear with them

Nyquil

Your turn. Oh come on, I haven't done one of these in weeks. Surely you've got some lovable stuff to list for us.

One of these is how it really happened. I'll give you one guess.

"Miss," she asked at the beginning of eighth period, "How does it feel to be a teacher?"

A lot of words went through my head...

the story continued as written on a brochure for my teaching program

...challenging, empowering, dynamic, rewarding, yes at times even overwhelming. I thought of how nervous I was on my first day of school, all of those little faces looking to me, their teacher! I wondered whether all of the long hours were paying off. Was I reaching all of my students? Was I having the impact on them that I had hoped? One thing I knew for sure, my students were having an impact on me. I had learned so much from them already!

My student was waiting, so I just said the most honest word that came from my heart.

"Wonderful," I said. "It feels wonderful to be a teacher." She smiled and went back to work. It was the kind of moment I had dreamed of when I started my journey toward teaching.

the story continued as written for this blog

...and I said the first one that seemed appropriate to say out loud.

"Tiring," I said. She kept talking about something and I went back to trying to get sight words written on the board so we could get started reading them together.

I had only stopped in the first place because I find that ignoring the "Miss!" leads to auto-repeat with volume escalation. "Miss! MISS! MIIIIISSSSSSSS!" It haunts my dreams.

[Disclaimer: Not only was it the last period of the day, but my eighth period class and this student in particular work my last nerve. She had shouted this out, despite the vast amount of time we continually spend on the skill of raising our hands and being called on before speaking. A student asking politely at an opportune moment would get a more positive answer.]

Sub-par

I was sick on Wednesday. It started early Tuesday morning with what I assumed was the lamest hangover of all time. I had two beers while watching football Monday night. I hadn't eaten since 12:30 and was well into the first beer by the time my wings arrived, so I thought maybe the two beers had just hit me bizarrely hard.

By the end of the school day on Tuesday when I felt no better, I thought perhaps this was an actual non-self-inflicted illness. (Unless you consider any illness I get to be self-inflicted on the grounds that I choose to work with children, in which case, you'd have a point.) So I made sure to update the seating charts in my Emergency Substitute Plans binder and to leave the binder on the front table for just in case I should have a sub.

Wednesday morning was indeed pretty ugly, so I put in for a sub online, including instructions that the Emergency Substitute Plans binder was on the front table. I texted my boss a heads up that I'd be out and then I went back to sleep. Until 2pm.

I felt better this morning, so I went to work. And thank goodness.

I arrived to a full page of angry scrawling on the instruction page of the Emergency Substitute Plans binder. He went on and on about how THERE ARE NO PACKETS and THE PACKETS SHOULD BE IN PLAIN SIGHT and I WENT THROUGH YOUR DESK AND FOUND ONE LOOSE PACKET BUT I DON'T KNOW WHICH CLASS IT IS FOR. He explained that he had a teacher aide make copies for all of the classes because HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO although the teacher aide COLLATED AND STAPLED THEM BACKWARD. (This was a group of random worksheets, so there would have been no actual forward or backward.)

It becomes clear from the scrawling that at some point he discovered the packets I left for him. Cleverly hidden behind the tabs numbered by class period. He had even turned to these tabs to find the seating charts, but neglected to turn that one page to find the packets directly behind them. What could he have thought all of that paper was separating that seating chart from the next tab? We'll never know.

I found out that my boss had stopped in during third period to find out how it was going and was greeted by him shouting at her about how I hadn't left any plans. She showed him where everything was located and suggested (somewhat firmly, I think) that he ask for help in the future rather than freak out. At that point, he started writing me notes about how he had not previously been able to find them because my INSTRUCTIONS WERE UNCLEAR. He took it upon himself to root around in my desk to find a red pen with which to underline that.

He'd later point out that one of my students needed a lot of help. Well, yes. Being mentally retarded will have that effect. And he wrote up another student for excessive talking during class. Seriously? It's a class of six kids. And the worst problem was one of them talking. I cannot feel that this man has much of a future in substitute teaching. Or any business being in it at present.

On the upside, the worst critique of him that my students offered was to call him "weird".

On the downside, one of my students told me that I looked pretty today. Which, yes, sounds nice. But given that I went this morning with a look that could be most aptly named "Stay Back!" I have to feel that her having said it today renders void all of the times she previously said it to me. It can clearly bear no actual relation to how I look that day.

And then some of my students talked in class! And needed help! The nerve!

Even more pictures of me skydiving! Just somewhat more...abstract.

Yes, the green area of both drawings represents me.

I brought my skydiving DVD to school to show my students. My second period kids like their routine. And they perseverate. So we might be watching my skydiving DVD at the end of second period every day for the rest of the school year. Excuse me, the music video. Because this is how it has come to be known. I am the Courtney Cox of middle school special ed teachers. Or something.

Below, we see my birthday haul and my very own No Run-Ons poster. The student who created it not only grabbed onto not writing run-on sentences as a personal mantra, but he is also fascinated by In School Suspension, or ISS. He's a good kid, so he's never earned ISS, but his teacher did send him for an hour to try to remove the mystique. Nevertheless, when he made me a No Run-Ons poster, he included ISS as well.

I like how it implies that students can be suspended for writing run-ons. If only there were real world punishments for grammar crimes!

Finally, we will see the results of a little group project that my third and eighth period reading classes completed last week. A book that we read included step-by-step instructions for how beavers build their lodges. Following instructions in procedural text is one of our standards, so I could totally justify having the kids build beaver lodges. I thought on it for a while and settled on pretzel rods and sticks for the logs and branches. After dismissing peanut butter as way too messy, I decided on Play Doh for the mud. And for our river beds, paper plates.

Here you will see the vast difference between my third and eighth period classes. My third period students struggle more with reading. My eighth period students struggle more with impulse control. A visiting college student gingerly asked whether I would say there was some ADHD. To which I delicately responded, "YOU THINK?"

All of that to say, third period beaver lodges:

Our groups were girls and boys. The lavender and blue being the girls' creation, yellow and orange the boys'. They are structurally sound(ish), fully enclosed, and leave an entrance for the beaver. The boys even decorated their roof with a B. For beaver.

On to eighth period:

These were coed groups, selected on the basis of who would least likely kill each other. I said to the group working in purple Play Doh, "You should really figure out how you're going to do this before you start." When I returned from helping the other group and saw this final product, I said only, "Your beaver will be killed almost instantly."

Thus concludes our gallery tour. We hope you enjoyed today's pieces. Sadly, none are available for purchase at this time.

Give in to the faulty logic

Student: When do we get our progress reports?

Me: (whispers) Shhh, it's the moment of silence.

Student: (whispers) When do we get our progress reports?

Me: (whispers) Friday.

The Random Roundup

The students are selling cookie dough for their fundraiser. Some of them have asked me during class whether I'll buy it from them. I tell them to come before or after school to ask me. But all staff members have to cover areas inside or outside of school before or after school for three weeks per semester. I'm doing my three weeks all in a row, starting last Tuesday. Which led to this conversation with a sixth grader.

Me: Oh, but I won't be here after school for the next two weeks. I'll be standing outside the front doors.

Him: Why?

Me: I have duty.

Him: Heh. You said doodie.

Me: Heh. Yeah.

Oh, what? IT'S A FUNNY WORD.

* * *

While standing outside on duty (heh) I heard a kid from a short distance use a phrase beginning in F and ending in you. I gave them my Teacher Face.

Kid: You might not know, that's an expression we use that means "I'm very sorry."

Me: Oh, really? I've never heard that word before.

(Note: This student understood that I was being exactly as sarcastic as he was. Nope, he's not one of mine.)

* * *

The kids, as I've mentioned before, can earn tickets with good behavior and hard work that they can then use to buy cheap and crappy prizes. They get to spend their tickets at the end of class on Fridays.

My seventh period class is all sixth graders. They've been making me crazy with their inability to work quietly, follow directions, and exhibit any impulse control whatsoever. So I gave them a pretty good lecture on these things during class on Friday. I forgot to watch the clock during class and the bell rang before they'd gotten to look at the prizes. When the students complained about not getting prizes, I told them that if I hadn't had to spend class time talking to them about respect, then we would have had time to do tickets.

Now, I know that one had nothing to do with the other. You know that too. But my sixth graders don't need to know anything of the sort.

* * *

I sat next to Melissa at Darin and Staci's wedding on Saturday evening. While gossiping inappropriately behind our fan programs, a thought occurred to me, which I shared with her:

"Oh my gosh, we're Those Women. We need big hats or something."

Could you get on that, Internet? Finding us some big hats? Consider it your duty. And if you'd rather not, then at least try to stick to the more commonly used and well known expressions of regret. My mom reads this.

How was your day, Lori?

I can't actually tell you very much, due to student privacy restrictions and wanting to keep my job and teaching license (provisional though it may currently be).

That might give you an idea though.

Nobody was hurt. Tomorrow is another day. Thursday, in fact, which is almost but not quite as good as Friday. And a three day weekend so close I can taste it.

(Interestingly, three day weekend does not taste like chicken. More like ice cream with hot fudge and fun sprinkles and not doing any work all weekend, no matter how late it means I have to stay next week to catch up.)

Good night, Internet.

No really, we have worked on -ed endings. Over and over.

Most of my students have me for both Reading and English. The majority of them will have me for all three years of middle school. Some students love this. Others not so much.

This is especially true of one student who we'll call Bob. Bob can be a good kid, but he and I had our days last year. He hates my classes because reading and writing are incredibly difficult for him. He at least very strongly dislikes me because I force him to attempt these things. Although I'm told that his behavior is pretty much the same in his other classes, meaning that his disdain for me doesn't even make me remarkable.

He did announce at the end of last school year that he was NOT having me for two classes again the next year. I let him go ahead and dream. Then I scheduled him with me again this year, twice a day.

Today, we started journaling. I gave them the topic and told them that they had to write at least three sentences. "Tell about something that makes you happy."

Bob first went to his go-to: "Miss, I'm finish."

To which I responded, as I always do, "Bob, you haven't started yet."

Step 2: Put his head down on his desk and refuse to do anything.

Surely he could think of one thing that made him happy. Nope. Nothing ever makes him happy. Not lunch time. Not school being over. Not riding his bike or playing soccer or any of the other things he's told me that he likes to do. Finally, I hit on a winner.

"Does it make you happy when I'm not your teacher?"

He smiled. Of course, when I looked at his journal later, he'd written four or five words, most of which were totally unreadable. (No, I don't mean illegible. I mean they were groups of letters that do not form words in English and did not appear to resemble Spanish either.) Then he scribbled for a while.

One more year, Bob. Then you go to high school and you and I are officially finish. Surely THAT is worth three sentences of happy.

The Calm Before the Storm

Yes, this is another photo post. Before leaving school on Friday, I took some pictures of my classroom because it's my first real classroom that I put together myself and also I am a nerd.

The front of my room. Notice how neat, how utterly devoid of clutter and piles of paper the top of my desk is. It will never look like that again.

See the green blob on the bulletin board on the right? The one that kind of looks like Virginia?

That's me, verging on the cutesy by embracing our school's theme for the year, "I think I can..." See, it's supposed to be a hill. I made tracks with one tie for each week of the school year and labeled where we have breaks and TAKS testing. I'll move the little train forward each week. This is largely for my own benefit, so I can see the weeks go by.

I bought US and world maps for my room since often when we read about someplace, the kids have no idea where it is. Unfortunately, my world map got a little smushed while going through the laminator.

Whole countries were lost. Not that the kids will notice, but it's hanging right over my laptop table, so I assume I'll spend an inadvisable amount of time staring at the map while I'm supposed to be working on my computer, mentally planning trips.

It used to be a science room, so I get all of those wonderful cabinets. I am extremely fortunate that the teacher who I took over for is still in the school in a different position and she left me most of the books and posters you see, plus a ton of supplies.

We're making some little projects tomorrow to introduce ourselves, and I'll have those hanging up soon. Probably on the glass in the upper cabinets.

That big poster with the red around it at the back is new. I had seen "Twelve Powerful Words" on our in-service schedule for last week and prematurely rolled my eyes, thinking it was going to be some hokey motivational thing. I was too quick to judge though. It turned out to be a list of words that are commonly used on things like tests that we tend to assume our students understand, when often they don't. Words like trace, infer, compare, contrast, summarize, and predict. I was already perfectly aware that my students don't understand these words (but I don't teach the average middle schooler - far from it) and I was pretty excited to score a free poster that lists the words and simple definitions in English and Spanish.

On the whole, in-service last week was useful and enjoyable, which are not words I've always heard associated with it. Our administrators did a good job of lining up sessions that gave us good information and ideas, making them short, and giving us plenty of time to work in our rooms. I was still there until 5:00 on Friday trying to make sure I was as prepared as I could possibly be before walking out of the building for the last time before school starts.

It's my first first day of school as a teacher. I'm a little nervous. Maybe a lot nervous. Once the first few days are over, I'm confident that I'll find my rhythm and everything will be ok. For now though, I've got my worst case of back to school jitters since probably the night before I started high school. But hey, at least I don't also have a perm for this one.

Milton Bradley hates women. Pass it on. Clockwise, starting with the highest roller.

Are you familiar with the game Guess Who?

Because I am not a monster, I give my student a break in the middle of her three-hour sessions. We have a snack and play Guess Who? (this parenthetical aside represents me giving up on attempting to correctly punctuate the end of that sentence.) I've noticed some things about this game.

First of all, there are thirty people pictured. Five of them are women. FIVE. Half the population is women and yet Milton Bradley, the misogynist, believes we only count for one-sixth. Also, it makes it really hard to win if you draw a woman.

Not only that, but two of these five women are wearing hats. Girl hats. What percentage of the female population actually wears honest to goodness women's hats? Milton Bradley would have us believe that it is nearly half. This leaves us with more redheads in the game than non-hat-wearing women. Redheads, genetic aberrations that they are, make up one to two percent of the world's population. Yet there they are, all over my Guess Who? game board, represented in greater numbers than women who are not either balding or at the Kentucky Derby.

We are also led to believe that a stunning percentage of men wear either a mustache or beard, but none have both concurrently. Oh, and roughly five percent of the population has no eyebrows, a phenomenon I've yet to encounter, outside of Whoopi Goldberg.

Even more disturbing than all of that, I am starting to think that Joseph and Kyle are kind of cute. It might be time to pick a new game.

Warning: Contents May Be Heartwarming

She was one of the students in the very first reading camp I ran here in San Antonio. It was the summer of 2004 and she had just finished third grade. She would go on to become one of my all-time favorite students as I continued working with her during the school years and summer before I left San Antonio in 2006. I still use a coffee mug that she painted for me for Christmas when she was in fifth grade. (I know the grade because she wrote her name and 5th on the bottom.)

She was back for camp last summer, almost as tall as me. When I talked to my former boss about coming back this summer, she said they weren't running camps this year, but she had some individual students for me. I was so happy to hear that this girl was among them.

In fact, she represents the bulk of my schedule this summer. I'm working three days a week, Monday-Wednesday. I see her for three hours each day. Now, imagine that you have to spend your summer afternoons sitting in a room with just one other person for three straight hours doing the thing that is most difficult for you. How would your attitude be?

She's a teenager now, going into ninth grade, which I cannot believe even a little bit. But she is, in most ways, very much still a child. If I phrase it, "Now we get to do spelling!" she's excited to do it. If I tell her that she's especially good at breaking multi-syllable words then she can't wait to show me how well she can do it. She has only complained about one thing in the nine hours I saw her this week, which was having to draw pictures on her vocabulary cards. Drawing is extremely difficult for her. Once I told her that I'd draw the pictures if she'd write the definitions and sentences, she liked doing those again. She's pretty much the ideal student.

Except that it can be hard to see her struggle. And it can be frustrating to watch her miss words that I know she knows. She has multiple delays and diagnoses, which mean that she struggles with pretty much every facet of reading. When she gets reading too fast, she'll just sort of make up the words as she goes. In a weak moment last summer, I threw my head and hands on the table, shouting, "[NAME], YOU ARE KILLING ME!"

She is doing so much better this year. We're reading Stuart Little. We go through each section, pulling out unknown words so she can figure them out before reading, and then she reads for me. When she substitutes words, she often stops and goes back because she realizes that it doesn't make sense. This is huge. This will revolutionize her reading. Her comprehension is still low, but it was nonexistent before.

We stopped after reading so I could write a note to her parents, telling them how very well she's doing. They are wonderful people, realistic, yet hopeful. They don't want me to fix her, but they do want her to reach her potential. I read her the note before handing it to her, and despite some difficulty in keeping track of things, I'm pretty sure she'll get it to her parents.

I guess all of that is to say, I had a good day at work. I thought I'd let you know.

If you ignore the run-on sentence and use of text speak, it's really very sweet.

In our collective defense (the student's and mine), this girl has learned not to use the text speak in her compositions and other school work. The run-ons...persist. Perhaps a slightly more awesome teacher can work that out next year.

Yes, of course, you can get that engraved on a flask.

We have a magnet on our refrigerator, no doubt given to Holly by some student, that says, "To teach is to touch a life forever."

My Teacher Appreciation Week gift was an assortment of Post-It Notes and Flags (actually useful!) in a faux-pleather case with, on the cover, a gold apple (of course!) and something along the lines of "Teachers, Opening Minds and Touching Hearts".

I've been teaching for a lot of years in various non-school settings, but as a certified public school teacher, I finally feel qualified to say that THERE ARE NO APPLES IN TEACHING. Nobody has ever brought me an apple. At no time in my four months at the school have I even seen anybody eat an apple.

I have, however, seen a lot of teachers down a lot of margaritas. And beers. And shots.

All of the tchotchkes in my Truth in Teaching Knick Knacks shop will feature alcoholic beverages in place of the apples. There will further be no ABC, 123, 2+2=4, chalkboards, crayons, or sweater vests of any kind. Looking for a School is Cool denim jumper? Look elsewhere, friend.

I have also come up with some new slogans for my wares:

To teach is to train your bladder for a pre-set peeing schedule.

To teach is to be able to live with hearing yourself say, "Don't be sorry, be quiet."

To teach is to count backward from 180 accurately from August to June.

To teach is to accept "mean" as a compliment.

To teach is to decide multiple times per day whether other human beings are allowed to relieve themselves.

English teachers, manning the front lines in the battle against text speak.

Because 3:30 on Friday is the happiest hour of all.

There is no I in teacher, but there is Cher. (Sure to go straight to the clearance bin, as even I have no idea what that means.)

You can have my E-Z Grader when you pry it from my cold, dead hand. Or if it's summer. Either way.

Teacher's Lounge Lizard (available in several sequined items)

Special Ed: Because sometimes love isn't only blind; it's also learning disabled, autistic, and/or mentally retarded.

No really, Officer, that's chalk dust.

Exhibit A

As I walk in to school, I pass the designated parking spaces. Front row, center is the Teacher of the Year parking spot. And every time, I think, "Man, if you had that parking spot, you'd really have to be on time. Every day."

Then it occurs to me that this thought alone is probably sufficient evidence that I'll never have to worry about it.

Telling tales out of school

This morning, Know-It-All Student raised his hand to say, "I thought you weren't allowed to wear jeans." I explained that we had a free dress day for Teacher Appreciation Week. I bet he would have turned me in otherwise. Nobody likes a rat, kid.

***

Which possibly makes it a bit hypocritical of me to report to you that I made my first office referral this week. A student of mine, who by the way was being a real pill all throughout class, later told another student, right in front of me, to shut the f*** up. But in Spanish so he'd be sure to get away with it. Wrong! I hauled him down to the office (not literally, although ear-grabbing was all too tempting) and he was sentenced to two days of in-school suspension. I am drunk with power.

***

Did you read Sideways Stories from a Wayside School when you were a kid? Do you remember the story where a boy has a bunch of mosquito bites and his teacher tells him to count them because then they'll be numbers and numbers don't itch? Well, I tried that today on an incessantly-scratching (and admittedly highly-suggestible) student and it actually worked.

DRUNK WITH POWER.

Literary nerds unite! And do my work for me!

I always knew that having all of you written word geeks around would pay off at some point, and I am hoping that today (or, you know, the next few days, NO RUSH) will be that day.

See, my students have been working their way through a structured reading program, which has many things going for it. The students, in addition to other work, read stories that are phonetically controlled and divided up unto short sections for ease of comprehension. The stories are sort of interesting. I guess. But boy, oh boy, is the writing just terrible. Really dismal.

I get that the focus is not on literary merit or aesthetics. But I am allotted two days a week off from the program and I'd like to use these to expose students to good quality writing. We read "Thank You M'am" by Langston Hughes and they really seemed to get into it. The language was simple enough that they could both read and understand it, but it was also just something well-written for a change. I like to think that they saw the difference from the usual drivel.

We're starting a unit on literary devices (seeing as how none of my students could correctly identify a simile last week.) (And before anybody gets up in arms about the sorry state of the public schools, I guarantee that my students have been exposed to literary devices time and time again, but have just not retained the information, so cool your collective jets.) I'd like to use some quality pieces while talking about similes, metaphors, alliteration, personification, hyperbole, and onomatopoeia. (We will be making SMAPHO books, oh yes we will.) I have a couple of poems picked out, but I could use more.

Either for literary devices or reading in general, can you suggest anything that's written in simple language (about a fourth grade level, if that helps you) that either they could read or, if it's short, I could read to them? I don't think kids should be denied the whole world of beauty that is well-written literature just because reading is difficult for them. They may never appreciate words they way that you and I can, but by God, it won't be because I didn't try to show them what there was to be appreciated.

I'VE GOT SPIRIT YES I DO AS FAR AS YOU KNOW

We had pep rallies today. Three, to be exact, one for each grade since the gym is too small for all of the kids.

THANK GOD.

It's not a big gym. There were big speakers blasting loud music. There were three hundred sixth graders yelling in unison. I'd say this is my personal hell, except I don't imagine I'm the only person to whom this sounds like torment.

It actually turned out to be much better than it sounds (although no less ear-splitting.) The kids get really into these things. Every grade has two teams and these two teams compete for a hokey trophy at each pep rally. There are pom poms, banners, signs, team chants, props, and one team even had costumes for its little cheerleader-type girls. They take it seriously, at least in sixth and seventh grade. I'm told the eighth graders are a bit too cool for these things, unsurprisingly.

The competition was where I came in. There were three judges deciding which team would get the spirit trophy, all of us SPEDs. It worked out well because special ed teachers aren't part of the teams, so we could be impartial (theoretically anyway). However, it had much more to do with a fellow SPED who was roped into being an advisor for the group that puts on the pep rallies. She needed judges, so she plopped down at lunch in the special ed office and started taking names, three for each rally.

My fellow judges and I sat at a table on the gym floor with our pencils and scoresheets. There were a couple of silly games involving students and teachers, as well as a dance team assembled a couple of weeks ago, which included a bunch of girls, a few teachers, and a couple of brave boys.

My favorite part, though, came during the academic awards. Each subject area gave awards for which there was no specified criteria, which allowed all of our most special students to win awards along with the general ed kids. It was pretty sweet the way that they got so excited about it. None more so than the autistic boy I tutor twice a week. That boy took a victory lap. He pumped his fists on his way to receive his ribbon. He high-fived students, cheerleaders, and all three of us judges on his way back to his group. Nobody has been more excited to win anything, ever. Nevermind that he was one of about twenty students receiving the Math Award.

Eventually, the time came for us judges to report our scores. I was all for throwing it to the team who had lost the last couple. Honestly, if there was a difference in the level of spirit, I couldn't see it. The judge sitting next to me concurred. The judge on the other side of her, however, was not in on the plan. He seemed to take his scoring responsibilities very seriously. There was a big enough discrepancy between his scores to overtake the small lead that the two of us had given the underdogs, and the reigning champions kept custody of the trophy.

This was announced. There was much cheering. There was much despair. There was the best line of the day from my fellow judge: "Let's get out of here before we get shanked."

And thus, we fled. Then I reported to detention. But that, friends, is a story for another day.

Here's one that I feel fine about sharing

We had standardized testing on Tuesday, which was, you know, awful. I had eleven special ed kids to test and they were forced to sit silently until everyone was finished. For some of them, this was almost an hour. After the last girl finished, I let them talk quietly.

One boy I hadn't met before Tuesday raised his hand and waited to be called on in order to share some very important information with me.

Boy: Miss, my hands smell like Play-Doh.

Me: Have you touched some Play-Doh?

Boy: No.

Me: Well. That's weird.

Satisfied with my response, he returned to talking with his friends. They're odd little critters, to be sure.

I even get a bogus San Antonio holiday off in April

I've been meaning to write something about my new job, but I keep stopping because I'm not sure what to tell you. Now that I have a job that isn't a temp job and which I'm actually planning to keep for a while and one that involves other people's children, I'm trying to be more careful about what I say about it online.

I will say this: it's a good job. I like my coworkers, I like my students (you know, mostly) and I even like all of my bosses so far. I have a nice classroom and am well-stocked with all of the supplies I need and people to help me. I have small classes, so although I have some challenging students, I don't often feel overwhelmed.

Do I spring out of bed every morning? I do not. I never will. And yes, I've had a mental count of how many days until spring break (FIVE!) just like every other teacher and student. But it's a good gig for me.

My coworkers even organized a happy hour on my behalf on Friday. Courtesy of a little bit of liquid courage, they are now aware that I'm not the shy, quiet, sweet girl they thought I was. This should make things more fun for all of us.

As much as I really wish that I'd been able to get my certification done in a more timely manner, there are benefits to being able to get started working for a while before having to add twice monthly classes and homework for my teaching program to my schedule. Also, I don't have to start paying them until next fall, which gives me some time to get my head above water financially before adding a significant bill to the budget.

It means that I'll definitely be at this job at least until a year from June. I'll get my regular certification then (I'm on a probationary certificate in the interim) assuming that I successfully complete my program and have the approval of my principal. This triggers my irrational panic over being trapped, but at the same time it's nice to feel that I can settle in a little.

Also, the part where the paychecks will keep coming is good. And the paid time off, including spring break, which I did I mention, is only five working days hence? My fun spring break plans fell through, due to Angela being in DC rather than in Dallas where I was going to visit her, so my plans now entirely consist of doctor/dentist/DMV. But doctor and dentist with insurance! Plus days of getting paid while sleeping in.

And there's summer coming up, during which I will certainly have to work either summer school or tutoring, but will also continue to receive paychecks and have insurance. And hopefully sneak in a trip to Washington to see Amy and her baby and also Portland and Seattle.

So that's the (unentertaining, for which I apologize) job update. I should get to bed now, because despite liking my job pretty well, there's an alarm to be cursed at in just eight short hours and children to attempt to have patience with shortly thereafter. For five more days.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Has there ever been a less original title for a blog post? I suppose I could have gone with Ms. Graham Goes to Washington. That would certainly have been worse.

Anyway, I left for DC on the Saturday before the inauguration. That is also the day that the student program started. My ticket was purchased by the organization for which I was working. You'll miss the staff meeting, they told me, but you'll get there in time for dinner. Just grab a cab at the airport and you'll get reimbursed.

Dinner started at 6:30. My plane got in at 5:30. To BWI. That "B" stands for Baltimore, as in the airport is much closer to Baltimore than it is to Washington. The hotel where I would be working and my students would be staying was in Virginia. So making it to dinner was seeming like a pipe dream to me. It also seemed like I was going to have to take a whole lot of cab money.

Before even getting to Baltimore, I got to stop in Memphis. At my gate, I saw a whole bunch of high schoolers in matching sweatshirts. They said "Inauguration 2009 Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport" on the back, which was my tip off. I talked to a chaperone and found out they were indeed headed to a program with my organization and would be staying at a hotel reasonably near mine.

(Grown Ups: When traveling with students for whom you are responsible, it's best not to answer a complete stranger when she asks at which hotel you and your students are staying. I realize I look non-threatening and it didn't even occur to me in the moment that it wasn't probably a good thing to ask someone who didn't know me. Still, the total lack of hesitation from this person in disclosing the group's hotel information was a little alarming. Helpful to me, but alarming.)

So I hopped on their bus, where I sat near the teachers. None of them deigned to speak to me, so I listened to my iPod. I could still overhear when, several miles into the drive, a student asked where we were. A teacher answered "Baltimore" (not terribly accurate, but whatever) and the student responded "I thought that was in Missouri." It was dark, so I couldn't tell whether the chaperones were properly ashamed. See, it's a civic education program, so the chaperones tend to be the kids' social studies teachers. Ouch.

About an hour later, we got to these students' hotel, where I hopped out, grabbed my luggage, and began the long trek to my own hotel. I got there just in time to crash the dinner with the teachers and staff. Not to eat dinner, since that unfortunately was over, but to sit through introductions. After that, I had (and for once I am absolutely not exaggerating) five minutes to say hi to my friend Vicki who I hadn't seen in several years, change clothes, eat dinner, fill out payroll paperwork, find out where my workshop was happening, gather supplies, and decide what activity I'd be doing with my students. No problem.

"It's a good thing I was never a believer in preparation," I told CJ, who was my boss for the week. CJ was in no way surprised or alarmed by this since we go way back. We even got co-fired ("downsized") on the same day several years ago.

Five minutes later, I met my students. One of them asked me if we could be called the awesome crew. "Of course we can," I answered. Yeah, they were pretty cool.

Then we went to orientation with all of the students in one room, where we instructors had to introduce ourselves. We were all old instructors from different eras, returning to work the week, and I only knew a couple of the people I'd be working with. I was not too sure about the other people. Some of them were very enthusiastic. Very. I would go on to explain to my students later that while they had clearly not gotten SuperHappyFun Instructor, they had gotten Laid Back Instructor. They felt good about that. Did I mention how my students were very cool?

After orientation, we got to go home. "Home" for me that week was supposed to be the hotel for ease of commuting, but the booking of rooms for us instructors never exactly got done. So I stayed with Katie, who was kind enough to pick me up at the hotel, despite my offer to take the Metro. (Her email response to said offer was: "You're so midwestern resourceful it's almost disturbing. I'll come get you.") And when we got to her place, Katie showed me the pumpkin cupcakes she had made me. With cream cheese frosting.

"I thought you could eat them for breakfast," she said.

"God bless you," I said.

Then we talked for a long time, until I remembered that I had to go to work the next day, which would involve an hour of commuting on foot and Metro before the day even started. Whoops! Nothing like starting a really demanding work week with some sleep deprivation. Good thinking, Lori.

Speaking of which, it is currently after 11:00, which is not enough hours removed from the time at which my alarm will go off tomorrow. So you'll have to stay tuned. Will my students stay awesome? Will a new president be sworn in? WILL I SEE STEVIE WONDER?

To be continued...

Baby or Middle Schooler?

Here's a new game: I'll list some things I said last week and you guess whether I said them to a middle schooler or my nine month-old niece, Allie. They are surprisingly similar.

1. Don't kick him!

2. What do you have in your mouth?

3. Are you pouting?

4. (Sung) All my aunts call me low-rider

Answers:

1. I said this to Allie. She was locked in a low speed chase with the cats, who would walk a few feet away and then lay down until she got to them again. Since Allie requires fingers to hold in order to walk, I told Calvin, the cat who is afraid of everything, that he had nothing to fear from Allie. "I've got her hands," I said. "You're safe." Then she kicked him.

2. Sixth grader! I had been playing fractions bingo with my seventh graders that morning. In my last hour, I saw a girl tear a piece of paper off and put it in her mouth. I told her to spit it out and she very unsneakily removed it from her mouth and tried to convince me that she wasn't chewing on paper. This involved opening her mouth to show me that there was (now) no paper in it. I could clearly see something red in her mouth though. It was a plastic bingo chip which she had found on a table and PUT IN HER MOUTH. Despite the fact that she didn't know where it had been, which was most likely on the floor and certainly in the hands of several middle schoolers, who clearly are not known for their adherence to basic standards of personal hygiene.

3. Again, this was a middle schooler. He was talking to the girl next to him and neither was getting any work done. I gave them a warning and the next time, I told him to move to a different seat. This made him very angry and he retaliated by closing his book and glowering at me for several minutes until I walked over to him and could not stop myself from asking whether he was really going to just sit there and pout. Answer: yes. Grade: F.

4. Well, ok, this was an easy one. Walking is Allie's very favorite thing to do, but since she needs to hold onto someone's hands, it can get hard on a person's back after a while. I just need her to grow another inch or two before I can walk her around without hunching over. On the plus side, she does often provide traveling music in the form of songs of her own composition. When I made her stop for a minute so I could pull her sock up, she sang me what can only be described as a lament.

That's it for today's installment of Baby or Middle Schooler? Thanks for playing!

Tethered

I got a job, Internet. I'll be teaching special ed reading classes at a middle school in the district where I live. This was sort of the goal when I started this whole teacher certification thing. Middle or high school special ed reading, English, or social studies. I've subbed at the school before and had a good experience, and both the principal and special ed coordinator seem really great.

So this is very good news. There's also the part where I'll make real money and have health insurance and be gaining marketable skills. And I'll feel useful. That's been the nice part about even this long-term sub position I'm in right now. Day-to-day subbing is mostly crowd control. My job in Madison benefitted people I guess in that it helped them to get their pensions, but when you're just inputting numbers, you're too far removed to feel that you're really doing much. In Austin, I did very little and most of what I did do was order catering. So, except for tutoring during the summer in Madison, I haven't felt like I was really contributing to society in almost three years.

There's also the part where I get to quit looking for a job. The new job will be a lot of work, but when that's done every day, I can read a book or spend time with people or watch TV or even write things not intended for immediate internet publishing without feeling like I should be looking for a job instead. A huge source of nagging guilt in my life is gone. If this job hunt had gone on just a few more months it would have been three straight years that I have been looking for a job in Austin, in Madison, and then here. That's a lot of time on job sites and writing cover letters and revising my resume. And a lot of trying not to get my hopes up.

Which brings us, finally, to the title of this post. For a lot of months now I've been feeling what I could only really describe as untethered. I've been a little bit adrift with nothing tying me to any particular place. First there was all of the uncertainty around leaving Madison and where to go, and then once I wasn't getting a job here and wasn't even finding any jobs to apply for here, the uncertainty about whether I'd be staying. It's hard to really want to put a lot of effort into making a life somewhere when you're not sure you'll be staying very long. Since getting the job offer this afternoon, I've found myself thinking I live here now. Which may sound crazy, considering I've lived here since June, but it's different now that I know I'm staying for a while.

It's possible that I could muster a lot more exclamation points about all of this if I were well, but I have what I initially assumed was a combination of cedar pollen in the air and yelling at middle schoolers, but now seems to quite possibly be a chest cold instead. So while I may not be projecting excitement at the moment, I can tell you that I do feel, at the very least, a tremendous sense of relief. For tonight, that's plenty.

Oh look, something new over there under my photo

Why, it's a link to Grammar Girl*, the new little site I put together to let everybody know that I'm available to hire for any writing or editing needs you may have.

This may not be the optimal place to advertise such services, since I seem to have attracted a following of grammar geeks who wouldn't need such assistance, but one never knows. Surely you wouldn't all be fascinated by the comma usage section in the AP Stylebook, nor would you necessarily purchase said Stylebook purely for your own edification.

(True story.)

(I'm even geekier than you thought, right? It's OK, you can say it.)

(I have not checked to see what the AP Stylebook says about multiple parenthetical asides.)

Anyway, feel free to check out what's there and let me know if you require the services of a huge written word geek for any sort of project.

*I opted against using Melissa's nickname for me, The Grammar Hammer, a decision that I stand behind 100%..

Chicken Soup for the Misanthrope's Soul

I mentioned to Holly earlier that among my CareerBuilder job suggestions (which are supposedly based on my saved searches, but bear no actual relation to anything I've looked at or even to each other) was a posting for Starbucks Store Manager. What followed was my not-so-altruistic explanation for why I choose to teach:

If I have to have a job working with people, then I prefer one where I can tell those people that they have to sit down and be quiet. They don't let you do that when you work with grown ups.

There you have it, folks. I'm quite an inspiration.

No wonder they like Twilight so much

I have come to a conclusion. Middle schoolers are vampires.

See because they, like vampires, do not seem to be able to come into your room without being invited in. Even this week, when it has been "cold", they'll stand outside in the "cold" until I come to open the (unlocked) door and tell them to come in. The vampire thing is the only explanation for this behavior.

There's also the way that they suck the life out of you. But mostly it's the having to be invited in thing.

Untouchable

In a class full of sixth graders, by far my noisiest class, one girl sits silently by herself. Nobody talks to her, but they talk about her, in front of her, unabashedly.

We played a game on Friday that involved one member of each team coming to the board to do a problem. Several of them loudly said that they wanted to go up against her because then they'd definitely win.

They sit two at a table. I instituted a seating chart today and the boy I had seated next to her was so horrible to her in the space of half an hour that he now sits by himself in a desk at the front. The last straw for me was when his pencil rolled away and she tried to hand it back to him. He refused to touch the pencil and told me he needed some Germ-X. I hated to move him because getting away from her was so clearly what he wanted, even though it meant moving away from his friends as well. But I couldn't continue to subject her to his cruelty just to keep from letting him have his way.

I remember the punished and picked-on at my school. I didn't have it in me to be outwardly mean to them, but I don't recall ever doing anything to help them either. Mostly, I just wanted to keep my head down and not do anything that might cause me to fall any further down the social hierarchy.

Now, as a teacher, there are some things that I can do. I can be someone who is safe for her, but that doesn't take the place of getting approval from other kids. I can stop them from attacking her in front of me, but I can't make them be genuinely nice to her. I can't make them see her as someone worthy of their friendship, but they've got to somehow be made to see her as worthy of common decency. For her sake and their own.

I just don't know how to impress upon these kids that this is a human being and that they are crushing her.

So Many Chiggers

I had a phone interview on Tuesday afternoon for a job that sounded perfect for me. I sounded perfect for it, too. In fact, after my answer to one question, the interviewer said, "Oh my gosh, can you start tomorrow?"

The job is in DC. I still have a Northern Virginia phone number so, despite my San Antonio address being just below my name on my resume, the interviewer was unaware that I wasn't local. Still! She couldn't wait to interview me in person! As soon as we hung up, she was looking at plane tickets!

Within an hour, she sent me an itinerary for the week after Thanksgiving. Was it ok? Yes! It was fine with me! I am flying to DC in two weeks to interview for a really great job! Oh, and a friend of mine has found out this very week that an apartment she owns in a great neighborhood of DC will be available for rent as of January 1. If I get the job, would I like it?

I would! Oh my God, things are finally coming together!

Wait a minute...she sent me that itinerary on Tuesday and I haven't heard anything since then. No problem, I'll just email her to confirm everything.

Budget conversations...economic downturn...may not fill the position at all...will let you know after the holiday.

She never bought the ticket. Not only did she not buy the ticket, she didn't email me to let me know that she hadn't bought the ticket, that the interview was at best postponed indefinitely. All the while, I was busy thinking about moving logistics and money and being torn about whether I wanted to move but also getting excited about it and generally getting my hopes up.

There's a tweet written by John Moltz a while back that cracked me up at the time and seems oh so applicable in this situation:

The original translation actually says "For every door God closes, He also opens a bag of chiggers into your pants." For He is vengeful.

I had forgotten that I had even applied for this job. I hadn't really thought they'd seriously consider me anyway seeing as how they wanted somebody with a master's degree. I have to wish they hadn't bothered dangling it in front of me.

It's not definitely permanently off. And there are two jobs here that I interviewed for in the past week. It's just, they had pretty well lost their luster in comparison to the job I thought I could get. Not that I feel any kind of confident about my chances at either of those anyway.

It's hard to feel much of anything good with all of these damn chiggers in my pants.

Getting in touch with my inner Viola Swamp

Somewhere along the line, students at my high school figured out that if they rolled pennies up the aisles when a certain sub was there, he would bend over and pick them up. In order to humiliate the man, students did this constantly. I never rolled a penny, yet I can't help but feel that I am being made to bear the combined karmic debt of every one of my classmates who did.

Subbing, it turns out, is pretty much exactly as unpleasant as you'd assume it would be. No pennies rolled so far, but I've already seen pretty much every run of the mill take advantage of the sub trick:

"We don't have a seating chart."

"I need to go to the counselor/the nurse/another teacher/my caoch/my locker/the dance team room..."

"We always get to leave early for lunch."

And so on. Fortunately, it turns out that I am neither stupid, nor sufficiently gullible. Unfortunately, I haven't worked with students in groups larger than six in a few years. While I used to be able to routinely command the attention of 200 high schoolers (albeit with a microphone) I am very much out of practice these days.

Maybe I need to take the advice that Tyra routinely gives to ANTM contestants to spend some time in front of the mirror. Except I'd be working on my mean teacher face instead of whatever pretty-ugly-dead-behind-the-eyes expression it is that the models aspire to. A whole different kind of fierce.

It's not all bad news. I did bring you presents from today's high schoolers in the form of this fascinating conversation:

Girl 1: Anybody who wears make up has a complex about how she looks. You need to believe you're beautiful.

Girl 2: I wear make up. Don't you?

Girl 1: Well, I mean girls who wear a lot of make up and they wear it all day every day. I only wear eye liner and lip gloss I don't put it on until after practice. I don't wear, like, foundation.

Devolves into a conversation about how girls who wear lip liner to make their skinny "duck lips" look bigger just end up looking like they have mustaches. I turn my attention to another student, and then listen in again in time for this gem:

Girl 1: There's someone for everybody. I mean, look at [redacted]'s girlfriend. She is butt-ass ugly and he loves her!

So it appears that there is hope for all of us, even the butt-ass ugly ones. Ladies, just believe you're beautiful, duck lips or not, and lay off the make up. Which could actually save me a couple of minutes in the morning, particularly when I'm called for a job around the time school is starting, leaving me precious little time to get ready.

One thing I know for sure: if I'm going to keep being woken up by the sub-finder phonebot, I am going to have to change my ringtone to something less jarring than the theme from Monday Night Football. Or else just hire some guys to dump Gatorade over me first thing in the morning. Because, you know, same difference.

We really can't hit them? Like, at all?

Yesterday, I tweeted about wanting to tell a guy at substitute teacher orientation that if he didn't stop clicking his pen, I was going to take it away from him. That was early on, folks, before I instead found myself fighting a very strong urge to turn around and say "YOU ARE BEHAVING LIKE A CHILD." Yeah, things went downhill fast at sub orientation.

First of all, we have people who have been told that business casual dress is required who have showed up in jeans, shorts, tennis shoes, rhinestoned flip flops or, in the case of a girl sitting near me, sequined flip flops with a beach-appropriate halter dress. I mean, sure, I wore boots that have been described as "hookery" but only because they are black, knee-high, pointy, and shiny. But I wore them with khaki trousers and you could only see the pointy toes.

This explains the time spent on the dress code during orientation. One man felt it incumbent upon himself to ask whether we are allowed to wear campaign buttons to substitute teach. He used a tone of voice that clearly indicated that of course HE would never do such a thing, but he didn't trust the imbeciles around him to know better.

Then we got to the "you are allowed to neither hit nor date your students" portion of the program. Pretty straightforward, right? NOPE. Most of the questions during this portion centered on the "don't take photos of your students" directive. This included a question from Clicky Nervouspen about video cameras in the hallways. He's a grandfather (Objection, your honor! Relevance?) and he wonders whether parents have problems with these video cameras. Answer: Uh...no.

Next, the part about being fingerprinted. This was the last thing before the break. As a person who had consumed one cup of coffee at breakfast, one Diet Dr Pepper on the way there, and most of a Coke generously provided by the school district, I desperately needed this break. There were lots of questions. For the most part though, these were valid questions because it was a complicated matter. Despite imminent pants-peeing concerns, I managed to wait out these questions patiently, at least on the outside. My pen-clicking colleague, not so much.

He loudly sighed and yawned, stage whispered No more questions! every time the HR person asked if there were questions about the fingerprinting, until the fifth or so time when he actually yelled "NO!"

The dramatics didn't stop after the break either. It was all eerily reminiscent of the two blonde girls, usually named Ashley, who were in every group of high schoolers I had in DC. These two girls spent the entire week rolling their eyes and hissing This is stupid! about everything we did.

But this was not a 16 year-old girl. It was a grandfather who wants to substitute educate children. And he couldn't sit through less than three hours of orientation without throwing a low-grade tantrum about it. Yikes.

Sure, I had some comically bad substitute teachers in my day. But it's a little frightening to see that there is no screening process whatsoever, beyond a criminal background check. We all go into the same system to be randomly selected by the phonebot.

Students this year though have a much better shot at getting a qualified sub, based on how many of us (at least half of the over 100 people there, I'd say) signed the "I'm certified and looking for a full-time job" sheet. I suspect these sign-up sheets were there merely to humor us and were promptly shredded after we left.

So, San Antonio-area students, perhaps I will substitute see you soon. Unless they call Grandpa Grumpypants, in which case, everybody cough at exactly 11:25.

To Whom It May Concern:

When I left my job in San Antonio over two years ago now, they hired someone full-time to do it.  He did a very bad job of it.  There is no longer enough left of my job to make a full-time position.  That’s sad on the one hand because I put a lot of time and work into making it what it was and we were helping a lot of kids.

But it is also very bad news for me right now. I was kind of counting on it as a back-up since it had been hinted that the job would be there if I couldn’t get a teaching job.  I found out yesterday that it’s not.

This has me back at the drawing board.  I could sub and tutor and try to do some test scoring or something all at once to scrape together a living wage.  Or I can go back to job-hunting in earnest.  I did it for a year in Austin and a year in Madison.  The job sites and the cover letters and the never hearing anything back from anyone anyway.  The never being able to do anything that isn’t looking for a job without feeling guilty.

The constant rejection is made worse since I’ve been rejected on the basis of a resume and a cover letter.  I’ve been rejected what has to be literally hundreds of times now on the basis of things I wrote.  And then I question that and, my God, if I don’t even have an ability with words, then what do I have?  Questioning my writing ability means questioning a part of the very foundation of who I think I am.

I don’t have too much more of this in me.  I didn’t really have it in me when I got here, but I had my sure-thing 99% placement teaching program.  They’re at under 50% this year, at least for the special ed group.  Of those with jobs, two-thirds are working in areas we were initially told we couldn’t do because we weren’t trained to work with the very high level needs among kids in those classrooms.  But there weren’t jobs in the areas we were trained in, so they started making exceptions, nevermind the kids who now have unqualified teachers.

What is really making me crazy is that when I was deciding where to go when leaving Madison, I made, for perhaps the first time in my life, the decision that was the most responsible.  I looked at what made the most sense financially and career-wise and I did that.

I came to San Antonio despite the fact that it has never really been for me.  When I moved here the first time, I tried to make myself fit it, and I was miserable.  I came this time knowing the challenges that this place presents for me, but hoping I could make some part of it fit me.  My family is here and some very good friends.  It would make me sad to leave them and it would be terribly hard not be near my niece and nephew after having gotten to see them regularly.  But I can’t stay for them either.

I guess what I’m saying is that all options are back on the table.  I'm applying for what jobs I can find here, but I'm not limiting myself to here.  As much as I can’t afford to move again, I can’t afford to keep not working either.  I can’t handle the idea of a third year of working multiple crappy jobs I don’t like for little pay and no benefits.  I used to do work that I was proud of.  I miss that.  I miss the person I was when I worked hard at something I enjoyed and considered important.

I’m tired.  I’m sick of the uncertainty and I am feeling utterly defeated.  

And I have cover letters to write.

How to start a superawesome day of looking for a job

Night before: your body stubbornly refuses to sleep before 2 am no matter what you tell it about being ready for when it has to wake up for a job and what if somebody calls for an interview in the morning? What then, body? It scoffs at the improbability, remaining awake.

Wake up at 10:00.

Roll over, start computer, check email you've been using for all of your job emailing purposes. Receive email stating, "There is still a large surplus of special ed teachers looking for positions." Tremendous.

Get up. Make coffee.

Call district HR offices:

District One: "Your call is important to us...please stay on the line...your call will be answered in the order in which it was received...thank you for calling...we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes...please try your call at a different time CLICK"

District Two: "We can't tell you if there are any openings. You are free to contact individual schools."

District Three: Phonebot lists openings, most of which closed over a month ago, none of which are campus-specific teaching positions.

District Four: Voicemail.

Etcetera

Shower, dress, map location to lots and lots of schools. Schools that, per emails from principals and special ed coordinators, have no openings. Print resumes. Put on your "I'm perfectly fine with rejection" face. Go.

No, really. Go. Now.

Why they don't let first-graders have the vote

The scene: reading camp. Six year-old student (Hereafter, Six) and seven year-old student (blah blah, Seven) are coloring pictures of words that have the long-a sound, including a frame.  Six has drawn a person inside his frame...

Six: Guess who I drew!  He has white hair.

Me: Santa Claus?

Six: NO!

Me: Uh...my grandpa?

Six: No, the president!

Me: President Washington?  He had white hair.

Six: Yes! President Washington!

Seven: He's mean!

Me: President Washington was our first president a long, long time ago.

Seven: Oh.

Me (seizing on what we in the business call a "teachable moment"): Who is the president now?

Six and Seven:

Me: President Bush.

Seven: He's the one who's mean! (There was some unintelligible explanation here, which seemed to maybe have to do with the president making kids take tests?  Possibly?  Hard to say.)

Me: We get a new president in January.  Everyone will vote in November.

Seven: I'm voting for the black guy what looks like a basketball player.

Six: I'm voting for Indiana Jones!

Sadly, I'm not sure this is so far below the thought process of many voters in this country. I mean, hopefully most people know that Indiana Jones is not only not running, but also fictitious. Hopefully.

These two kids could have a future though in producing campaign commercials:

"Sure, he looks like a basketball player, but is Barack Obama ready to lead?"

"John McCain: He's no Indiana Jones."

It doesn't really matter to me, either way. I'm voting for Batman.

Plus, I get paid to read Junie B. Jones

I complain about reading camp. Always have. It's a lot of hours a day in small rooms making kids, who generally have attention deficits, do something that is terribly difficult for them.

But this line of work has its upsides.

Last week, when I was tired and crabby one day, I called a cookie break wherein my older kids and I ate M&M cookies from the snack box.

Today, I spent ten minutes of my workday chasing a 6 year-old around the gym, rolling a giant ball behind him while he screamed INDIANA JONES IS THE COOLEST!

I have spent other gym breaks being repeatedly arrested by this same student, who was at the time wearing a cop hat (apparently from the My First Village People Costume Set) and Batman belt. He'd take me off to jail and when I asked what I was arrested for, he'd say, "Tell it to the judge!" Then I'd escape from jail so he'd run around chasing me and get some energy out. Otherwise he'd mostly look at himself in the mirror, marveling at how awesome he looked in the Officer Batman ensemble.

My commute takes roughly three minutes. I could walk there. I don't, because it is generally one thousand degrees by the time I leave in the morning, but I could.

I have starred in not one, but two short stories this summer. In one, I was hit in the face by a pie, tricked into eating hot pepper pie, and subsequently bitten by a vampire bat. In the other, I turned into a grasshopper with the hiccups, but my faithful students found a magical talking cricket to transform me back into myself. Whew.

I can totally justify doing Mad Libs at work, under the guise of teaching parts of speech.

A sentence I said last week: EVERYBODY NEEDS TO STOP SINGING AND COLOR. (In all honesty, this is only fun in retrospect. I was not enjoying myself at the time. They were supposed to be coloring the pictures on the page that involved whatever sound we were working on, but were instead trying, between the two of them to sing the alphabet. Except they were missing about 1/3 of the letters and they were entirely out of order and it was making me a little crazy.)

Jeans, t-shirt, flip flops, hoodie. To work.

A 12 year-old student told me how he was reading a magazine article with his Grandma and when he came across a big word he didn't know, they wrote it on a piece of paper and he broke it into syllables, using the technique I taught him, and then he read it. And his grandma was so proud of him.

And so am I. And that is what I try to remember when I'm saying "SIT IN YOUR CHAIR [HYPERACTIVE STUDENT]." for the one billionth time. That, and the way that there are only four days of camp remaining. That's pretty good too.

Dispatches from Reading Camp

One of my students growled at another one today.  In his defense, the other one totally had it coming.

These are my little ones.  I have them every morning from 8:30-12:00.  One boy is six, has ADHD, and is not medicated.  He is a sweetheart, but he makes me crazy.  Apparently he makes his seven year-old classmate crazy as well.  The other little boy is the quiet, calm one in the group and struggles much more with reading.  While he was reading, the six year-old kept talking and trying to read for him, and he finally had enough.  I had had enough too, but I'm not allowed to growl at kids, I don't think.

The same hyperactive six year-old (who, let us all remember, I had just spent three and a half hours in a small room with, attempting to make him learn) was picked up twenty minutes late on Monday.  Which meant that I spend the first twenty minutes of my lunch break entertaining him in the waiting room.  I was not overly friendly in informing his mother that we do not have staff to babysit children, as we all go to lunch at noon.  She understood.  It wouldn't happen again.

The next day, I only sat with him for ten minutes of my lunch break before he was picked up.  I don't know how late she showed up today.  When his mom called at 12:10, claiming car trouble, I went to eat, only because our high school worker was eating at the desk and could watch him for me.

All of this would be annoying, yet not infuriating if it weren't for this little jewel: today, when our clock read 8:28, she went to the desk to ask our office manager Kathy when I was coming to get him to start camp.  Kathy, because she is awesome, coolly replied "At 8:30.  She still has two minutes." 

Seriously, woman.  I've lost forty minutes of my life in three days to waiting for you, but if I don't show up at precisely 8:30 on your watch, you're complaining?  This makes me incoherent with disbelief.

So let us move along.  Perhaps we could discuss my nine year-old student who comes for several hours a day, despite being above grade level.  His parents want him to be a doctor.  I think he'd rather be a nine year-old for a while first. 

Although perhaps not, based on the way that when I tell him he misspelled something, he types it into the computer and uses spell check before he'll believe me.  I swear to you, kiddo, "until" has only one l and "everything" really is all one word.  I neither joke nor lie about spelling.

Today I nearly made a Go-Go Gadget Arms! reference with him before realizing that he probably wouldn't get it.  He was also able to write about a three hour boat trip without singing "a three hour tour, a three hour tour..."  Kids these days.

And now, I must get to bed so I can get up tomorrow and do it all again.  I can still get eight hours if I'm asleep...crap, fourteen minutes ago.  Let's hope I'm not the one growling tomorrow.

There haven't been any unicorns. Yet.

I'm a hippo.  I was a giraffe earlier this week, but have since become a hippo instead.

Because my advisor in my teaching program has assigned us group membership via brightly colored animal heads placed in our attendance folders.  Yes, of course we have attendance folders.  They too are brightly colored.  We attach them to the chalkboard rail using brightly colored clothes pins.  We wrote our names on school bus stickers to put on the outside.

We work in groups.  We make posters using Mr. Sketch scented markers (Is it just me or does Mr. Sketch sound like someone who should not be permitted within 500 feet of a school?) to show each other what we have talked about in our groups.  Today we read a case study that made us angry, so we all stood up together and said RAAAAAAHHH!

We finished the first part of our training today, so we all went out in the hall and made a line, all of us standing on the first tile block next to the lockers.  Then we put up our hands like we were pushing a wall, jumped forward and shouted WE DID IT!

This morning the 11th Graders I am student teaching with read and discussed Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (the 11th graders seemed unconcerned) and then I went to my training in the afternoon, where we gave the other animal groups standing o's by standing up, making O's with our arms over our heads, and saying OOOOOOOOHHH!

To be fair, some other people in my training class seem really into this stuff.  And yes, we're getting firsthand experience with some things some people may want to use with their students.

It's just, I'd rather we acted like we were all adults.  I have no doubt whatsoever that my advisor is an excellent teacher of elementary special ed.  But with grown ups, there wouldn't seem to be a need for all of the bells and whistles and Sesame Street stickers.  There shouldn't be a need of gimmicks or techniques to keep us engaged in the lesson.  The desire to be good teachers and the thousands of dollars we're paying for a program to that end ought to take care of that.

So here's my idea: reading, lecture, note-taking, discussion.  I picked up the idea somewhere, oh I don't know, maybe college, that this is how you educate adults.  Particularly when there is a lot of material to cover in a short amount of time, as is the case for us.

Then again, I am cranky and no fun and wasn't even into WE DID IT! kind of stuff when I was an actual kid.  So maybe it's just me. 

But let me plainly state here that I absolutely will not take part in the Elmer's school gluing of macaroni to any surface whatsoever.  This is where I draw the line.  With a scented marker.

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me (You're welcome for that song.)

In case you hadn't noticed, I've had a bit of a month.  There's the stuff you know about, plus some that you don't.

Question: But Lori, isn't the stuff we know about more than enough to deal with?

Answer: YES.

The fact that Tattletale Coworker has now escalated to full-on spying is pretty much the living end.  I noticed her standing watching me today and then another temp came over to ask whether TC had needed anything from me since she saw her peeking over a cubicle wall at me.  (I wanted to give TC a nastier nickname, but if you think about it, how sad must her life already be if she makes it her personal mission to bust a temp for intermittent internet use?) 

Nevermind that I finished my entire assigned workload for the day by 12:30 and went back three times to get additional work.  No, the important thing is that TC most likely witnessed me printing off a copy of my Federal tax return from the H&R Block website since I forgot to bring it and didn't want to go home before the post office to mail my state return. 

(Yes, ok, I completed my state taxes in January, but I had to call to ask a question and I never, ever remember to make phone calls at appropriate times, which is one of the many reasons I vastly prefer email.  So I called last week and then mailed it today, complete with Ziggy return address label from the ones sent to me by The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  Really brightened up the taxes, I thought.)

Fortunately, I will only be available for TC's surveillance for two more days this week.  On Friday, I fly to Texas.  I'm going all the way to Dallas on a teeny tiny plane, which is not the model that has been grounded, so I'm hoping that means I'll actually get there.  I'm pretty sure it's another little guy for the rest of the trip.  If my large plane back on Monday got grounded, well it sure would be tragic if I wasn't able to return to the watchful eye of my favorite coworker on time Tuesday morning, wouldn't it?

In the intervening days, there will be babies to snuggle and margaritas to drink, although I will not do both concurrently.  My brother told me that he probably has to work all weekend, but he knows he's not the important one anyway.  That's right, you're not.  It sounds like Owen will be able to catch a ride to me with his mom.  And I am assured that Allie's schedule is wide open for this weekend.

I also see that the pollen forecast jumps from HIGH on Thursday to VERY HIGH in time for my arrival on Friday.  Awesome.  I guess we'll find out whether my new friend Zyrtec is up to the challenge.

In the meantime, I better try to get my internet fix tonight, lest I make TC's awkward attempts at espionage fruitful again tomorrow.  I mean to stymie that woman, if for no other reason than it will provide me another opportunity to say stymie.

Because one of us has to recognize that we're not in third grade

Instead of telling the boss, I'm telling the Internet. 

As I mentioned on Twitter, I'm pretty sure a coworker of mine went and tattled on me to my supervisor that she had seen my email up on my computer when she came into my cubicle.  She then went over to someone else and spent the next ten minutes discussing The Biggest Loser.  I failed to bring this to management's attention.  Because I am a grown up.

When you do the kind of repetitive, mind-numbing work that we do, you need the occasional mental break.  Most of my coworkers accomplish this by standing around talking, making personal phone calls, or going outside to smoke.  This doesn't bother me.  It's totally understandable.  But I don't do any of those things.  For my sanity, I turn to you, Internet.  Which apparently represents a whole different thing to the women I work with, despite the fact that I waste less time than they do and at least I'm quiet about it.

I therefore present to you, and not to my boss, this list of things that I have to listen to them talk about all day, every day:

What has recently happened on The Biggest Loser/Survivor/Big Brother/Dancing with the Stars/America's Next Top Model

Whose kids are learning to drive.  How it's going.  How it went with the people's kids who already learned many years ago.

Whose kids play for which soccer teams.  Which teams invited their kids but they declined.  When the games are.  How much they hope the games are rained out.

How hard each of their husbands are taking Brett Favre's retirement.

The new Taco Bell opening up by the Kwik Trip.  Who loves Taco Bell and to what extent.  Who walks by there during their evening walk and are therefore at a greater Taco Bell binge risk.  How their husbands reacted to the news of the new Taco Bell when they called them to let them know.

What they're cooking for dinner.  Whether and to what extent the husbands and/or kids will complain.  Whether, for what, and where they will need to grocery shop first.

Which store has what deal on which brand of cereal.  This actually turned into a lengthy and heated debate.  I am not kidding.

What diet they are currently on.  Weight loss potential of Slim Fast diet.  When they last did the cabbage soup diet.  The recipe for said cabbage soup.  Who actually liked the cabbage soup.

The current whereabouts of Johnny Depp, who is filming in Wisconsin.  Whose daughters have seen Johnny Depp.  Whether Johnny Depp will take photos with people (consensus: no).  Is Johnny Depp staying in Madison and if so, does he go to the continental breakfast in his hotel?  Could they make the rounds of breakfasts at Madison's nicer hotels and perhaps see Johnny Depp enjoying a bagel or some Special K?

Then there's whatever I miss when I have to turn to my iPod because the constant rattling of all of the snack food packaging is driving me out of my mind.  Cubicle life: not for me. 

I'm working on that, by the way.  Hopefully in the next month or so I'll be able to tell you when I'm leaving the go-go world of data entry and for what job.  I'm not being coy - I'm just not entirely sure yet how it's all going to shake out.  But when I figure it out, you'll be the first to know. 

Provided there aren't any middle-aged tattletales afoot, that is.

In layman's terms: "a crapload"

The official count is 13.3 inches of snow from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday evening.  That's the second most that the city has recorded, after 17 inches in 1990. 

I still came in to work yesterday, as I am a dedicated employee.  Plus, as a temp, no work equals no pay.  There is no way in hell I would have left the house if it had meant driving.  I do not understand why so many people thought it was a good idea.  I got to work and home courtesy of Madison Metro Transit and two bus drivers who were very nice, despite the stressful conditions.  (Take that, mean bus driver!  It was not even snowing AT ALL when you were mean to me!) 

Even the bus turned out to be a dicey proposition by 3:00 yesterday afternoon when I left work.  Buses were stuck all over the city.  My bus driver was the smart one, at times dropping people off a block or more from their stop in order to find a good place where he wouldn't get stuck.  I got dropped off a few blocks from my stop and then waded home through, at times, thigh-deep snow.  Which, in case you weren't aware, is a pretty good work out.  As will, I assume, be shoveling my car out tonight.

When I got to work, I found my supervisor becoming increasingly shocked about people not coming to work.  "It's not that bad out," she kept saying.  Then she left the earliest out of all of us and said this morning that she wouldn't have made it home if she hadn't been driving a 4-wheel drive truck.

That's the opposite of what normally happens around here.  Anytime there's serious weather (you know, pretty much every day for over two months now) people come in with increasingly scary reports of what it's like outside.  Then they go back to their cubicles and stay until their workday is over.

At first, the dire reports used to really freak me out and I even left early a few times as a result.  Only to find that it was pretty much like it always is these days: snowing, yet with no signs of the impending apocalypse, as I had been led to believe.

For example, here's a typical progression, this one from when we got some freezing rain last week:

"It's pretty slick out there.  Margaret did a 360 spin just trying to get out of the parking lot."

"Jim ran into the post office for 15 minutes and his car iced up again by the time he came out."

"There's no traction at all on the roads.  People are sliding down hills backward."

"Phil froze right to the pavement trying to walk to his car.  Then he got smashed by a runaway semi."*   

"Buildings are sliding right off their foundations and into on-coming traffic.  The Monona Terrace fell into the lake and caused a tidal wave that could have wiped out the entire city, had it not frozen in mid-air!"

"DOOM!  ICY FREEZING DOOM!  SAVE YOURSELVES!!!"

And so on.

We're all set for the moment though with sunny skies, newly plowed roads, and no more snow!  Until we get some flurries later today.  And snow showers tomorrow.  But then it's going to be beautiful except for the subzero temperatures over the weekend.  Followed by more snow every damn day until the end of time.  According to the Weather Channel.  As interpreted by me.

* (Not to worry, I made that up!  Phil is fine!)**

**(I made that up too - there is no Phil!  What you people won't fall for!)

Perspective

Overheard at work

Woman: Nothing pisses me off more than [trivial work-related thing].

Man: Really?  Nothing pisses me off more than genocide, but I see your point.

Now with far more backstory than the punchline actually warrants!

Recently the group I'm temping for moved from the fourth floor of one building to the basement of another.  So not only did we go from enjoying a very nice view to not seeing daylight all day, but my cube neighbor's radio station went from probable slogan South Central Wisconsin's Twangiest Country! to Now with even more static!  (Hello, Lori's iPod!  Now with Christmas music!)

Anyway, we're in the basement and the door nearest to my assigned parking lot leads into the basement (once you've swiped your badge and punched in your PIN code).  Except it leads to a part of the basement that is not connected to the part of the basement where I work.  I could instead walk farther outside in the freezing cold and then cut through a cold parking garage to come in to the correct part of the basement.  But in order to get into the heated indoors more quickly, I choose to go in the door closest to where I park, walk up two flights of stairs (or ride up two floors in the elevator, where you have to swipe your badge again, unlike the stairs - apparently this company is only concerned with security threats from lazy people), cut through the first floor to a separate stair case (stairs again, for I am all healthy-like!) and come back down two flights. 

You should also know that the other building offered free coffee.  It was pretty standard coffee, but it was there and it was caffeinated.  Here we have Starbucks coffee, but you have to pay for it.  Thus, I am bringing my thermal mug of coffee (Now with eggnog-flavored creamer!) to work every morning.

So, there I was coming down the stairs first thing in the morning when my boot heel got caught on the edge of the last stair and I briefly pitched forward.  Had I actually fallen, this would have put my face into rather forceful contact with the wall, most likely breaking both my nose and glasses.  But this was not my first thought.  No, no.  What immediately went through my head?

MY COFFEE!!!

And that, folks, is called having your priorities in order.

Blogger For Hire

I want to write you a blog post. I would like this post to be funny and coherent and make you all shake your head at the wonder that is my ability to be witty in writing.  Or at least my ability to do idiotic things and then tell the Internet about them.

I even have some topics in mind.  Except that each one would be roughly one sentence in length.  Or, because I am incapable of brevity, they would be one humorous and/or interesting sentence plus lots and lots of boring sentences in length.  And nobody wants that.  Maybe I will write them down and see if I don't have more to say about them later.

So I guess I'll talk about the job thing.

I couldn't begin to tell you how many jobs I have applied for in the past few months.  Some of these have been jobs I have really wanted, but I was pretty sure I wasn't qualified for.  But it doesn't hurt to try, blah, blah, blah.  Some I found interesting and felt like I had at least an outside chance at getting an interview.  And then there are that couple that I applied for just because I hadn't applied for anything else in the past couple of days and I need to get a job.

I applied over the weekend for a job that I really want.  And I am qualified for it.  I have done, if not everything on their very long list of responsibilities, then almost everything.  And I am passionate about the work they do, which is helping at-risk kids to succeed in school and go to college.  I am so sure that I will get an interview that I am checking my phone roughly every fifteen minutes to see if I have a message.

But I am also entirely convinced that they won't call, because I have been here before.  I was looking for a job for almost the entire year that I lived in Austin.  There weren't nearly so many jobs there and mostly they were in publishing where apparently they require previous publishing experience in order to get even the most entry-level of entry-level positions, but still, I lived with the bookmarking jobs and writing cover letters and submitting resumes and never hearing one damn thing for almost a year there, so I was tired of it before I even got here.

And yes, that worked out for the best, because if I had gotten some great job there that I loved, then I wouldn't have moved here, and most of the time (read: when I am not deep in the realization that winter is here and will be staying for far longer than I care to think about) I am happy to be here.  But the idea that I could end up spending another year at an unfulfilling temp job with no benefits, no job security, and very little mental effort involved, is just more than I can take.

I do realize, by the way, that this is my own damn fault.  I got a degree in Political Science, which is good for going to law school (my intial plan) or going to grad school (my second plan) but not for much else.  And I have had a series of jobs which, while interesting to me and generally doing some good for the world, are not entirely related and don't necessarily make the case that I am specifically qualified for much of anything.  A lot of these were contract positions too, which makes me look like I am a flight risk at any job, despite the fact that I took the jobs for a specific amount of time and stayed at them until they ended.

Probably some of you are wondering why I don't go back to school and it's not that I haven't thought about it.  I just haven't been sure what to go back for, and my experience of getting what turned out to be the wrong degree and then sinking a bunch of money into a masters that I didn't finish since it was in the wrong thing, makes me hesitant to rush into more education.  I do feel like I have it narrowed down now and am looking into possibly going back next year.

But that doesn't help me now.  Now I just want this one specific person to call me and schedule an interview and hire me so that I can stop looking and worrying and berating myself for having made bad choices that I have no power to change.

I'll see if I can't bring the funny on Monday.  Maybe I'll feel better as soon as I finish applying for this job that would allow me to write research papers for a living.  It would be a big, geeky dream come true if only they would hire me.  But I won't be holding my breath.

In order to maintain your sanity while unemployed:

• You MUST leave the house at least once a day.
• So, for example, if you have three errands to do, you want to do one per day. Efficiency is no longer your friend.
• You should shower every day, but feel free not to blow dry your hair. Now is the time to enjoy having no need of being coiffed, as you hope that this freedom will be short-lived.
• Become one with your pajamas. Taking them off before noon is not encouraged.
• You probably shouldn’t go to Target. At all.
• Under no circumstances should you allow yourself to become sucked into an America’s Next Top Model marathon on MTV. You will feel the IQ points slowly draining away.
• The only daytime programming that will not make you want to claw your eyes out or cause you to become stupider is whatever is on HGTV. It may also inspire you to rearrange your previously awkwardly-arranged living room. You will be thankful.
• You have got to mute the iPod Nano commercial or the Feist song will cause you to lay awake nights, cursing its brain-melting catchiness
• You should not yet begin to entertain thoughts of signing up for clinical studies. It has only been three weeks. Get a grip.
• Get your damn hair cut. Nobody is going to hire you looking like Carol Brady.
• Stop blogging already and write another cover letter.  Slacker.

How did he know?

Same kid.

Him: This guy is in jail.  He isn't happy.

Me: I don't think I'd be happy either if I were in jail.

Him: You're in jail too.

Me: Me?  What did I do to get put in jail?

Him: Drinking too much coffee!

Busted.  Take me away, officer.  Because if drinking too much coffee is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

For what it's worth, he also said I was skinnier than his mom.

I was working with a seven year-old student (seven and three quarters, he would want you to know) when the inevitable question of my age came up.  He had already asked me in our previous session and when he guessed (I always make them guess) 200, I said yes, I was 200 years old and was a sea turtle.  He asked where my shell was and I said that I had to leave it at home or people would know I was a sea turtle.  I was in disguise.  We discussed my sea turtleness for quite some time, but he didn't entirely buy it and he asked again on Thursday how old I was.

He guessed 18 this time, God bless him, and finally upped it enough to get to my actual age.  This is always followed by the question about whether I am married and/or have kids.  So I was prepared for that, but was pleasantly surprised.

Student: So that means you have...a driver's license?

Me: YES!  (internally: FINALLY!  One I can say yes to!)

But later that hour, he did get around to asking whether I had kids and I said no.  Then he realized that I couldn't have kids since I'm not married.  (Right...yeah, that's how it works.)  He asked if I wanted to get married and I said "someday". 

And then he asked: What if someday everyone hates you?

Well then.  Probably under those circumstances I wouldn't get married, would I?  Among all of the potential impediments to my hypothetical future marriage, everybody hating me had not entered my mind as a possibility.  On the upside, my student did assure me that he didn't think he would hate me. 

One down.  Everyone else to go.

It's true, what they say about me.

I mean the thing about me being a mean teacher who won't let you.  Why, what else are they saying about me?

I say this because it took me eight days of teaching here to make my first Madisonian student cry.  To be fair, it was only this student's second session with me.  What can I say?  I work fast.  Also, some of you people are clearly coddling your kids WAY too much.

This child has his own personal system for doing math.  It is backwards.  It was my attempt to make him begin adding at the ones place that started the tears rolling and him chanting "I don't WANT to learn that way."  Oh, it's going to be a long summer for that one.

Like riding a...well, a big wheel, I guess.

Here's a sentence you've probably never heard before: there's something so comforting about a nice auditory processing disorder.  Dyslexia?  Sigh.  ADHD with a side of Asperger's?  Like coming home.

Maybe it's because everything else in my life is so unfamiliar and up in the air at the moment that teaching reading feels so darn good.  It has been over a year since I have taught anything.  (Well, aside from "teaching" Madisonians that Texans drive like total idiots.  Or at least people masquerading as Texans by keeping their Texas plates after moving here.  Shhhh...don't tell.)  And yet it all came rushing back to me as soon as that first kid demonstrated poor phonological awareness.  People, I can fix that.  I already know which kids will mix up b and d, was and saw, what and that.  While every kid is different, reading disorders are fairly predictable.

That, and they are just funny little people.  Most of you adults have no chance whatsoever of being anywhere near as amusing as special kids.  It is not your fault.  It just would not occur to you to tell your teacher that you have a secret and after beckoning her close to you, whisper that you have ADD.  This despite the fact that your mother has asked you repeatedly since you arrived whether you took your meds.  And that you are possibly levitating.

Plus, when a special kid is being REALLY annoying, you can say, "UH UH.  Enough."  Grown up co-workers will never let you get away with that.  You know, I guess I never tried though.  Could you all give that a whirl and report back?

What is not familiar is this not having time at work for the Internet.  How do you people with work-intensive jobs maintain blogs?  I have a whole new respect for you.  Please be patient while I figure out this Work at Work, Blog at Home lifestyle.

(Oh, that post title?  I don't bike.  As a kid, I started learning, fell down, and hurt my ankle.  While many very stubborn children would apply their stubbornness toward refusing to give up, I applied my rather considerable stubbornness toward flatly refusing ever to bike again.  And I haven't.  Just TRY making me do something I don't want to do.  I dare you.)

Five...Four...Three...

Two days of scoring left!  People, it has been a LONG nine weeks.  But, as with anything in life, there have been opportunities to learn things along the way.  Things that I will share with you.

-There exist, among high schoolers, only about six styles of handwriting.

-High schoolers believe that "quite" is interchangeable with both "quiet" and "quit".  They also believe that "conversate" is a word.

-Under the right conditions, grown people will wear their hoods up indoors.  Yours truly included.

-At some point, I apparently started using the word "dude" in traffic.  I don't know how that happened since I never use this word in any other context.  This is, of course, only used for minor offenses, not worthy of a "rat bastard!"

-When I thank-you wave to people in traffic, I say "thank you".  Out loud.

-When I let people in front of me and they don't thank-you wave, I get seriously irritated.

-If you think you can work 14 hour days with no problem based on the fact that you did this when you were 25, you will quickly discover that you are no longer 25.

-If you think that you did this with no problem when you were 25, you are probably wrong.  You just liked your job more then and have clearly romanticized the suckyness of the hours.

-Sometimes there is construction on I-35 overnight which causes bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Sometimes the traffic hotline will give you this information so you know to take Mopac instead, but  sometimes it will not.  You can bail and cut through downtown, but this still adds quite a bit of time to your drive home.  At 10:30 when all you want to do is go to bed, this is Deeply Wearying.

-If you work in a quiet environment and are prone to getting songs stuck in your head, you need to be VERY CAREFUL about what songs you allow yourself to hear during the day.  Even a few notes of a horrible song will get that song irrevocably lodged in your brain and you will have to sing The Fray's "How to Save a Life" to yourself to get rid of it since you can tolerate that song even though it too is relentless once it gets in your head.

That's all I can think of at the moment.  Then again, I am only about 11% awake.  I'm going to quite writing now since it is probably quite enough in here for me to catch a nap.  Perhaps we can conversate more once I've woken up.

Until 11th grade, I thought the expression was "for all intensive purposes".

More gems from the high schoolers:

• Maybe it was my women's into wishing.
• He was taking me for granite.
• I had a new leash on life.
• I had a master bedroom with a walking closet.
• The buzzard sounded, and the game began.

Apparently, that last kid was playing Flintstones-era football.

And now, a note to craigslisters:

If you are trying to sublet your apartment, POST A PHOTO.  And before taking said photo, for the love of God, clean up!  I don't mean wax the floors here.  If you could just get your laundry into a basket or at the very least one large pile, it would help.  Maybe even open a curtain so that your "sunny" apartment does not resemble a cave.  Also, no, I do not want you to throw in the futon, but thanks for offering.

Perhaps I am too old for campus-adjacent housing.