May day

April flew by.

May first, May Day, m'aidez...

A couple of things touched off that "I need help" feeling, today.  We had a hastily scheduled, overly long, and completely disorganized staff meeting to announce all the organizational changes that are in store for next year.  I'm skeptical but trying not to be negative, and my biggest concern is the re-institution of the "cool kids' club" atmosphere that used to reign when the incoming principal last worked on our campus.  At any rate, it would've been helpful if the information had been presented with some context.  Instead I have the impression that someone was hurling blobs of jello at me, expecting me to catch it and somehow assemble it into something coherent and attractive.  I mean, jello can be delicious, but it requires some effort to make it so.

Just now, though, I fell for a pop-up's message that my "codecs are out of date!"  I've been having trouble with certain websites hanging and I thought, oh, that must be it, and without another thought, I clicked on the install button.

Then I spent the next 45 minutes uninstalling the eight programs that were installed on my laptop, and disabling the AOL toolbar.

Then my Adobe Flash player actually crashed, so I uninstalled that, and I'm working up my nerve to re-install it.

I'm just glad that I was able to figure out how to scrub all that junk off the laptop relatively painlessly, once I used Task Manager to stop the processes.   Honestly, I'm afraid to move to Windows 8 because I think there are more layers between the user and the operating system, and it will be harder for me to fix a problem like this, which wasn't a virus or an attack, just a whole bunch of stuff piggybacking its way in because I clicked on the link to install "updated codecs."  Man, am I stupid.  But also, relieved.

 

J's photo

Had a great talk with my sister J yesterday, who reports that the bulbs I planted in Mom's backyard last summer came up and bloomed!  They're daffodils.  I had no idea, I thought they were irises. I'm not even a tiny bit sad I won't get to see them ever blooming, it's enough to know they are there.  The occasional photo will be OK -- my sister is using one as her facebook banner photo.  Early reports on the rose bushes is that they are not all dead.  I'm looking forward to seeing them.

19 more days of school, but my students checked out after the AIMS tests were complete, two weeks ago, now.  Can't have that, so I'm holding them strictly in check, or at least trying to.  I'm hoping that if I drill my rules into the 7th graders now, there's a slim chance they'll remember them next year when they get back.  Hope springs eternal.

break

Closing out day 2 of spring break here, and I couldn't even remember what last year's spring break was like, so I looked it up.   Of course, I was in the middle of yet-another-round of tests (PET/CT) and dealing with an ovarian cyst, and generally just feeling lousy.

So much better, this year!

The weekend was busy on Saturday, shopping with DD for the various big events she has coming up ("My first designer dress!"  She was thrilled, I'm wondering if I've been encouraging the wrong ideas.)  It looks better on her than it does on the model.    And the shoes!  Hers are much less practical than mine:

I think these are the ones.  She's taller than me when she wears them, now.  Mine are very colorfully striped flats from Dr. Scholl's.  I shouldn't be surprised that shoes can invoke nostalgia, and these flats do, on two fronts.

First, all of the colors remind me of these shoes I got for school when I was in first grade, that had green/orange/yellow on the front and white in back.  Yes, they sound hideous, I'm sure they were, but I loved those shoes, and my little stripey flats have that same colorful cheer.  Second, all throughout jr high and high school, I lived in those Dr. Scholl sandals, the wooden ones with the leather straps and metal buckles.  They were awesome.  I'm hoping these little flats work out similarly well.  They have a nicely constructed footbed that provides decent support and they look summery and will go with just about everything.

After all that shopping on Saturday, Sunday was a stay-at-home and vegetate kind of day.  I've been taking a nap every afternoon, and somehow those two hours off are not causing any problems for anyone.    Monday morning the dishwasher repairman came so DH took the two older kids to their dermatology appointment, where we're trying to undo some of the damage that their acne has caused; that took a better part of the morning, but I worked on my curriculum maps.  The two younger kids had a makeup piano lesson in the evening, and I was a good girl and actually finished those maps, which is something of a miracle.

Today was our busiest day so far, with an early morning orthodontist appointment so DD could get her retainer (she so loves having her braces off) and DS2 another check to see if he was ready to get his braces on (another 6 month reprieve), then out to breakfast, then to the DBG to see the butterflies, and if I could figure out how to get the photos off my phone in some fast and painless way, eventually I will be able to put up a photo or two from the garden.

Then home, helping DS1 with his speech & debate prep for the state tournament this weekend, then a bit of shopping with DS2, then a lovely cookout and eating outside because the weather has finally, finally warmed up and  it's just delightful.

Wednesday and Thursday have a similar amount of non-stressful events lined up, and DS1 and I leave very early on Friday morning for the tournament, and won't be back until the wee hours of Sunday morning.  At least we'll have Sunday to recover before school starts up again.

We've made our summer plans -- well, we have our plane tickets already, but we have to hammer out the details.  Working on those curriculum maps makes the rest of the year seem impossibly short: only 9 more weeks of school! How did that happen?  It will be over before we know it.

Such a cliche, but so true.  It's so nice not to be in the middle of medical testing and all the worries that come with it, and actually be able to relax.

we're all alright

My MRI came back clean, and there's no need for any follow-up testing until my next ultrasound, which I think will be in June or July, and we'll do the Thyrogen trial again in a year and see what's what.  Yes, my tumor marker is creeping up, and perhaps eventually we'll find something operable, but until then, there's no point in worrying or holding my life hostage to what could be.

Mom's tests all came back great, too -- no blockages, no new medications needed.  She had really low blood sugar and few other minor things going on which conceivably could combine to cause her loss of speech.  She needs to start taking iron and eat more protein, but other than that, she's doing great.

Last but most unexpectedly, I had a performance review in which I wrangled 4 extra points out of my principal.  That doesn't sound like much, but each additional point represents a significant victory on a different performance metric.  We're evaluated using a 21-metric rubric. My overall score still looks horrendous because of how they weight the scores, but I'll take it.

sweet

On this Valentine's Day, I was surprised by gifts from three different students, I'm relieved that my Mom is home, and I'm glad my MRI is over. 

We had a great family dinner (surf & turf -- belated birthday lobster for DS2, shrimp for the rest of us) and just enjoyed each other's company.  I remember so well the days I wondered if a day like this would ever happen -- I'd cook and no one would eat more than 2 bites.  Those days are long gone. 

DH brought home a huge heart-shaped box of chocolates and some flowers... so unnecessary, yeah, but so sweet, since they're my favorite flowers (alstromeria) and the kids will definitely help eat those chocolates. 

It really felt like a little holiday, here in the middle of this crazy week, and that's very sweet indeed.

stories we tell ourselves

Last post I laid out a scenario just to give myself something to measure reality against.  Now it's Tuesday more than a week later.  I'm having my MRI tomorrow, finally -- the original order never made it over to the imaging facility, so I had to call yesterday.  The scheduler was really great about getting me scheduled quickly, too: tomorrow afternoon, without and with contrast.  I don't know that I've done that before.

The interminable hold recording flaunts the facility's state-of-the-art equipment that is supposed to be both faster and more accurate. I hope it is less jump-out-of-your-skin startling, that would help.  We'll see. 

Another deviation from the expected: I have no follow-up appointment.  My endo will call me when she gets the results and let me know what she wants me to do from there.  I appreciate not having to spend another $50 co-pay just to get the results.

The problem with my little story is that the only person in it was me.  Yesterday I called my Mom at lunch time to tell her about my MRI appointment, and her speech was garbled and incoherent, like she was speaking a made-up language or talking backwards.  My sister was with her but it took some convincing to get her to the ER.  She's home now, but in the intervening 36 hours she's had a multitude of tests and my other sister had to deal with the mountain of snow the town plowed in front of Mom's driveway, as well as the skating rink that her front yard had become.  Fortunately Falmouth's weather has been warm during the day lately so some of Nemo's snow is melting off. 

Today we celebrated DS2's birthday, since tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and he has soccer practice and piano lessons as well.  There's just too much going on and besides, DH and I will fast even though the kids are not yet obligated to.  Fast days aren't good for birthday parties, so we had a little Mardi Gras of our own.  It was a good dinner but a complex one, followed by his favorite brownies with vanilla glaze for his birthday "cake."

I feel sad but I'm wondering how much of that is actually just fatigue.  School's going OK, but I have to get back on top of my grading.  I miss my family and I worry about my Mom.  I'm nervous about the MRI itself and scared of the results.  I'm pretty sure when I had my recurrence my Tg was lower than it is now, but I'm not inspired to look it up.  I'll know by the end of next week anyway.

this is what's going to happen

Some day this week, I'll get a call saying that my insurance company has authorized the MRI.  I will call and schedule the MRI for later this week or early next week, and I'll make a follow-up appointment with my doctor for a week later.

I will get the MRI.  I will be cold and nervous and trying not to flinch too much when the loud noises start.  I will keep my eyes closed and focus on my breathing and relaxing my shoulders.  It will seem like it's taking forever and then it will be over.

A week later I'll see my doctor for the results. 

So that's about two weeks of uncertainty.  I can handle that.

OK

Well, at least the weirdness at work has settled. 

There's no way to go into any kind of detail without stepping on someone's privacy, so I won't. 

I can say that, prior to today, I felt unsure of how my administrators viewed me.  I had the distinctly unpleasant experience today of sitting in a meeting listening to someone outright lying about me.  It was unsettling and I remained unsettled until the end of the day when a smaller, second meeting clarified that no one believes those lies and I have nothing to worry about.

It felt like someone flipped a switch, and I went from not OK to OK in the time it takes to exhale. It's always good to know that your boss will stand up for you.

buffeted

Not a good day.  I was about to say "at all", but the class-giving part of the day actually went fine. We did the Cat's Meow lab with the eighth graders, and that one is both fun and easy.  One of my soon-to-graduate student aides popped by to say hello, and it was delightful to see him again. 

Things took a turn for the worse after lunch.  Rather than go into details, I'll just say I've never had to deal with a hostile work environment before, and I've been working pretty steadily since I was 15 years old.

When I finally got to leave campus,  I had just enough time to get to my endocrinologist appointment.  Sadly, my Tg, the thyroid cancer tumor marker, is elevated again, from 3.4 last year to 4.9 this year.  As last year's PET scan was negative, the doctor this year is sending me for an MRI.  While the increase is troublesome, it does not indicate an aggressive recurrence.  I think.  We'll see.

missed opportunities

Saw a beautiful sunrise this morning, but had no opportunity to take a photo, since I was running late as usual.  Not terribly late, just my usual 5 minutes, but still late enough that I didn't want to take the time to figure out where I could stop to get a decent picture.

Today was an easier day in some ways, more difficult in others.  I'm spending all my prep hours on calling parents. Most are supportive and say the right things, but so far I'm not seeing any improvement in behavior on the part of their offspring.   We'll keep trying.

closing the gap

When something's bothering me, I obsess about it until I can find some resolution.  So sticking with the theme of how to deal with my attention-seeking students, I realized that I instinctively back off when a student starts grandstanding.  Invariably the student will pipe up with something off-topic and then go on and on and on, and I'm stuck at the front of the room, waiting.

Silly me, I don't have to be stuck.  Jones' prescription for disruption is proximity. 

So today, whenever a student got into "look at me!" mode, I purposefully, not quickly, moved toward the student.  This happened three or four times today, and giving the student what they wanted -- my complete attention -- turned out to be not what they wanted at all.  Every one of them faltered.  By the time I got to their desk, they had stopped, which gave me the chance to put my hands on their desk, lean over, and say to them very quietly, "You're making a choice right now to act this way... I know you can make a better choice."

I'm also trying very hard, and it is very difficult for me, not to answer the backtalk, but to stare it down as I move closer.  I'm have a little refrain inside my head: shut up shut up shut up, directed to me, not the student.  It's helping.

Nevertheless, my two seventh grade labs today were chaotic, and I ended up having to send several disruptive students out as they were not following the safety rules.  It's going to take a lot of hard work to get us where we need to be, but we're getting there.

Jones v Flippen

My thoughts keep returning to my classroom issues, and what I can do to diffuse them.  The number one issue, whenever a class goes all to pieces, is an attention-seeking, disruptive student.  Sometimes it's more than one, but one is definitely enough.

So I've been thinking about what I do when a student goes off, and whether or not I'm helping.  Let me rephrase: I've been thinking about what I'm doing that's allowing it to continue or even making things worse.  Last night I pulled out my stack of "teacher advice" books and looked through them all, yet again, to see what I've forgotten. I didn't find anything of much use until I picked up Fred Jones' Tools for Teachers.

Jones is very clear on what to do with disruptive students.  In his chapter on dealing with backtalk, he repeats this visually alarming mantra: Open your mouth and slit your throat.   The accompanying illustration is kind of funny and kind of horrifying.  The point is, if a student is giving a performance, the worst possible thing you can do is give him more material. If the student wants to derail the class by starting a conversation about something else, you don't have to participate.  Jones' method of dealing with backtalk involves breathing, remaining calm, saying nothing, and letting it die a natural death as you wait out the student with an expression of "withering boredom".

I do wonder if Jones dealt with as many barely socialized students as I have.

When students go off-task, Jones' advice boils down to staying calm, breathing, turning fully toward the offending student, moving in (proximity), and if necessary, camping out on the student's desk until he gets back to work.  There is no dialog involved.  I've used this technique and it works -- at times.  I have students who are so resistant to the idea of work that they don't understand that I'm hanging around because I'm waiting for them to get back to work.  "Why do you keep looking at me?!  You're creepy!"  Then I have to explain that I'm waiting for them to get back to work (because the tapping on their desk, pointing to the work, wasn't clear enough).

Jones' technique does work for backtalk, and it's probably the only thing that does.  Responding verbally to the student just prolongs the 'conversation'/distraction.  I realize that because the Flippen Group training has me doing just that.

The heart of the Capturing Kids' Heart model is to engage with the students.  Very little was said about appropriate limits to that engagement.  In my efforts to acknowledge, respect, and listen to my students, I've put myself in a position where I let the more aggressive few talk all over me.  I'm not blaming the Flippen Group for this problem, because it's not something that came up.  What did come up was dealing with garden variety off-task behaviors, which are handled using the four questions, which begin with, "What are you doing?"  and "What are you supposed to be doing?"  These questions put the responsibility for the student's behavior where it belongs, with the student.  They work well when the social contract is place (especially since the social contracts all emphasize trust and honesty.)

The problem is, the Four Questions invariably start a conversation, directly contradicting Jones' Open your mouth, slit your throat edict.   I know Jones' advice works, but I've seen the Four Questions work, too.  I'm trying to figure out a method to get the benefits of both methods -- acknowledging the student, but at the same time discouraging the conversation.  I'm thinking of a series of statements/questions, like this:

1. I can see you really want to talk about this.
2. Is this something you and I can talk about quietly, so the rest of the class can get back to work?
3. Do we have to do this now?
4. I always have some time in my lesson plans for discussion, but we've already used that up.  Can we postpone this discussion and get back to the lesson now?

It amazes me how I forget things that actually work.  I've used, "Can we talk about this later?" countless times, but recently it has fallen out of my playbook.  The students sometimes complain that "later" never comes, but then I remind them that they can talk to me at lunch or after school, and then they beg off, because whatever it was is not really so important after all.

This is probably the sixth or seventh time I've gone back to Jones' book.  I should just make myself re-read it once a month, or at least leaf through it to make sure I haven't let any good habits fall away.  There are times for the four questions, but there are just as many, as if not more, situations that call for Jones' methods.  I always talk too much.  If I can hold onto that image of cutting my own throat, maybe I'll stop.

holidays 2012

Apple, Pumpkin, Pecan & Cranberry Ginger Pear 

Thanksgiving 2012

We had a great feast.  On Wednesday (blessedly a half-day of school), I prepped most of dinner and made the pies.  

If you've ever read a woman's magazine, or a cooking magazine, you'll have read the advice not to try something new for a big event.   I knowingly ignored that advice this year, because on a whim I picked up the Cook's Illustrated Holiday Baking issue.  The pecan and cranberry ginger pear pie recipes came from it, and were spectacular.  

But the biggest change was the pie crust recipe.  I've been using the basic pie crust recipe from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book for 30 years now, and it's a fine, fine recipe.  But the Cook's Illustrated intrigued me: chilled shortening and butter, vodka, and a food processor?  Sounds fascinating, so I decided to go for it.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize when I started that what this method absolutely requires is chilling time.  Fortunately, I managed it anyway.  The crust is phenomenally flaky and tender, and I didn't have to worry about over-rolling and gluten developing, because the alcohol in the vodka puts the brakes on that process.  So overall, the new pie crust recipe was a win, but I might just try making my usual recipe with vodka if I don't have time to thoroughly chill the dough.  

I also made the cloverleaf rolls, which were OK.  They had so much butter in them it wasn't even funny, but they just ended up too dense for me.  The family liked them well enough, but for me they were too labor-intensive for the result. 

Now, the turkey:  for the past few years I've been cutting up the turkey and brining the pieces, and then baking it on a flat sheets covered with aromatics (onion, celery, carrots) and a bit of chicken stock to prevent charring.   Here's how it looks going into the oven: 

22 pound bird, ready for the oven

 

It comes out fantastic in about 2 hours, give or take.  I brush the whole thing with melted butter and roast it 400 degrees. Yum. 

The back roasted while some of the pies were cooking, and then goes into the soup pot.  The soup was awesome, too.

DH says a 22-pound bird isn't big enough.  We were out of leftovers by the third day, which was OK with me, but not with him, apparently.  

 

The kids' Christmas recital was the first weekend in December.  DH's parents came out for a short visit, and we packed a lot of stuff into their few days.  We went to the Luminaria at the Desert Botanical Garden for annual "holiday cultural event" and had a great time.  The kids all played beautifully at the recital, and thankfully we were able to get a good Christmas card photo when they were all dressed up. 

 

This is not the Christmas card photo!  It's on another computer...

Christmas, not coincidentally, was a much more low key affair.  On Christmas Eve we went out to dinner at Baci. We had so much Christmas candy and cookies  from Trader Joe's and my students (a lovely surprise) in the house it wasn't even funny. I decided there were enough sweets so I didn't bake.  I was so busy in the run-up to Christmas that I didn't get a turkey, but settled for a beautiful spiral sliced ham from Trader Joe's (no bad stuff).  I can't even remember the rest of dinner at this point, although I do remember I made pancakes and bacon for breakfast, and DH picked oranges from our tree and all the kids took turns squeezing them so we could have fresh juice with our breakfast.  It was a lovely day.

Vacation was filled with various appointments for all of us, including the cats.  I'll get my thyroid cancer test results on January 31; all the others have come back just fine.  In spite of all the running around, it was relaxing and restful, and I did only the work that I absolutely had to do.   Isn't that the way it should be?

 

change is hard

Monday is MLK day, and I have utterly squandered this first day of the long weekend by getting up early and reading all 500+ comments on the Project Runway All Stars season 2 finale post at Tom & Lorenzo's.  I needed to be up early because we had an appliance maintenance appointment scheduled between 7-11AM; of course the guy didn't show up until 10:40, but the cat woke me up before 7AM anyway.

The quiet here is intense.  DH and DD are in Connecticut, a surprise visit for Papa's 85th birthday.  They'll be away until Tuesday, so it's just me and the boys until then.  The boys could conceivably be downstairs with me watching television, but the DVR died on Thursday night and the replacement won't be here until Tuesday the earliest.  So DS1 stays holed up in his room as usual, but DS2, who has picked up a so-far mild virus and is running a slight fever, is crashed on my bed watching television upstairs.

I have this vaguely unsettled feeling, as if something is not quite right.  Part of that is DH being away and the slight worry that always nags at me when any of my family is traveling without me.  Part of it is concern over DS2's illness, hoping it doesn't get worse.  I think he's just exhausted.  We are alike in that we disrupted our normal sleep patterns so thoroughly over winter break that even now, two weeks into the new semester, we're still not used to having to keep regular school hours.

The biggest part of my unease comes, I think, from my work situation.  I did not hear anything about the position I applied for in December, but it's just as well because I do not think I could have left my school mid-year.  I mean, obviously, I could give two weeks notice at any time, but I wouldn't do that. I have a strong feeling that it's simply not the right thing to do.  I won't do that.

At the beginning of December, my administration sent me (with very little notice) to a 3-day workshop run by the Flippen Group called Capturing Kids' Hearts.  While the name of the workshop is nausea-inducing, the content was not.  It was an educational and frustrating experience, because I learned a lot of valuable techniques but it took me out of my classroom for 3 days just as the semester was coming to a close.   Regardless, I was already using many of the techniques they recommend, and I really appreciate the concrete advice on how to help children grow into responsible adults.   When I returned to my classroom, I was able to use some of the things I learned immediately, but I put the majority of it on hold until the second semester.

So, what's unsettling me?  This new social curriculum I am implementing.  The first week back, my students in each class worked together to write a "social contract," an agreement on how we all wish to be treated by each other (including me, their teacher.)  The contract is now their standard for behavior in the class, and it closely models expectations for responsible behavior in any workplace.  So, the contract gives us a concrete definition of what the "practice for real life" that I'm always talking about, is. 

The problem is, enforcing the contract requires 100% commitment from me.   My students already know I care about them, but this is pushing me into an even closer relationship with all of them, and many of them don't want to go there.  On every single contract, the word "respect" is most prominent, but many of the students have no idea what that means in reality, so when they are disrespectful, I have to show them that.  I have had the "two wrongs don't make a right" (and it's corollary, "3 rights make a left") conversation more times than I can count.  We have a huge put-down culture on my school and every single contract says that they don't want to be treated that way, so now I get to police that and remind them that it does not come into my classroom.  I like that, because I have always hated the casual way they are constantly cutting each other down, but I get a lot of push back for making them apologize when they say mean things.  I even have a few holdouts who refuse to apologize because they won't acknowledge that what they did was wrong.

The worst discussions are the ones where the students are literally shouting at me, "What, someone tells me I'm ugly and I'm just supposed to say 'thanks' and take it?"  And I have to explain -- again, for the tenth time -- "No, you tell them that's not cool, that there was no reason to be rude.  And then you forget it and forget them and get on with whatever you need to do."  It is helpful to remind them that hitting people is, in fact, illegal and can land them in jail, but they don't see that as a consequence that can effect them yet. 

I have students who have so few social skills that the only response they have is violence, or threats of violence.  They have no idea how to deal with someone who is making unkind remarks other than to tell him to shut up or to make him shut up.  These are junior high students who should have been learning these skills their entire lives, but in their culture, what they learn is "give back what you got", which of course only escalates the unpleasantness. 

Then, when there is a fight on campus, all the students view that as "entertainment", a good thing. 

On the workshop page, under "additional considerations", it says:

Experience shows that the optimal outcome - an intentional culture shift - relies on the complete support and involvement of school administrators. Consequently, they are strongly encouraged to attend as early in the process as possible.

 Our dean of students has attended the workshop, but our principal has not, and he commonly violates many of the most important terms of every single one of my students' social contracts.  He manages with physical presence and intimidation, and affirmations are few and far between (although I did get one last week -- in the year and a half I have been working with him as my principal, I think this is the second compliment I've received. I can recall no instances of encouragement.)

In my six classes, the contract is making a difference already in 8th grade, because those students are just four months away from becoming high school students, and they want that, they want to succeed.  The seventh graders right now are quite frankly just a mess.  There are too many of them who simply do not respect anyone, including their peers, who will therefore continuously disrupt the class and get us off track.  It's exhausting continuously reminding them how we agree to treat each other -- it simply leads to other arguments: "I didn't sign that contract,"  "I didn't agree to those words," -- when, in fact, they did participate in writing the contract, or if they did not, is was because they chose not to. 

At the end of the first full week of using the contract I am so emotionally drained I'm questioning whether I have it in me to keep it going.  I don't want to give up the contracts, and I'm hoping that it will get easier with time, but over the course of this week it did not.  By Friday the seventh graders were as badly behaved as they have ever been, for no reason anyone could fathom.  It's up to me to make this work, but I cannot succeed if I can't get the students to buy into it also.  The majority of the students want it, I can see that they are tired of the way some of their peers act, too.  I reminded them Friday that they have tools to help make the contract work and that they need to step up, too.  If the class as whole lets the off-task students know they should get back on track, that's a much more powerful message than one delivered by the teacher alone.

Then I wonder, is there any point in me doing this, when as soon as the students leave my classroom they go right back to their dominant, machismo- and honor-based culture, where put-downs, threats, and violence are the norm? I am the only teacher on campus who has implemented this, although the other teacher who attended the workshop with me is using parts of it.  For this to really work, we need all of the teachers and all of the administrators to use it. Right now I'm dealing with students coming to me, every single day, with stories of other teachers and administrators who use sarcasm, dress them down in front of the class, gossip, yell, don't listen, immediately suspect the worst, and so on.  In trying to help my students I remind them that they can say to an adult, "Hey, that's not cool," but even as I do that, knowing it should be true, I'm hoping that if they follow my advice to stand up for themselves in a respectful way that it doesn't get them into even more trouble. 

I don't know whether the students tell me these things because they trust me or they're hoping that the teachers who are mean to them will get into trouble.  I do know that they want the teachers who are mean to them to stop being so mean, so I suppose that's something.

In the meantime, I feel like my heart is breaking for a thousand different reasons every day, and it's taking a lot of energy to keep it together.  I'm not giving up, I don't want to give up, but I'm praying that something will "click" and it will start to get easier, because God knows I can't keep this up for the rest of the year.  Time passing does help, because they're getting older and growing up whether or not they want to, but it will go much smoother if they'd get with the program.

On Thursday, one of my eighth grade sections was exemplary.  It was probably the best class I have ever had at my school: we reviewed how to balance chemical equations, and then the students worked independently on a worksheet.  Every single student worked diligently and got at least some points; most got 100%.  Every time I teach this, the classes usually split 50/50, with half the class "getting" it and getting full points, and the other half completely lost and earning zero.  There were no zeroes in Thursday's class, and that has never happened before.  I was so proud of them that I gushed at them on Friday.  One of the  boys told me, "Do you know why we worked?  Because we want to go to high school." I won't ever forget that moment, that at least with that one group of kids, they understood what they were capable of if they just tried.

discernment

So I've applied for a job at a school that values its teachers very highly. 

I wonder what it would be like to work in a place like that?  I applied not sure if I would be OK with accepting an offer.  Of course I don't have an offer, but what would I do?  It depends.

To help me fill in the ledger, I looked back over the blog at what I've written about my school.  Brief flickering moments of joy shine among long, frustrating slogs.  That's the impression I have of the last two and a half years, interspersed with some true disasters -- the 2nd science fair that the students just didn't do, dealing with students who are not normally socialized, etc.

And I still feel like a square peg in a round hole, even more so when I look at the grades my students are earning in other classes, and I click through to see their assignments in the other classrooms.  I see that I have three times as many assignments/assessments - usually 3 or 4 a week.  How else can I hold them accountable?

The bottom line is the majority of my students don't care whether or not they pass science, because they can fail science and still get promoted at my school.  This policy is sub-optimal, as institutional support is lacking from the get-go, but I'll still go through the motions of printing out missing assignment reports and calling parents and all that.  But every time I do those things, I keep thinking, why am I bothering with this? No one cares about this except me.

This week, balancing chemical equations to a crop of eighth graders who can barely do fractions.  It's going to be interesting.

Oh: Thanksgiving was awesome.  I have photos and will get them up eventually.

I want to say something about today

I started the day running late because I couldn't decide what to wear because that new teal shirt I just bought has a grease stain on it already.  And it's cool, cold almost, in the mornings, but hitting 80 by mid-afternoon and that means dressing in layers and figuring what I have to layer that won't leave me either too hot or too cold seemed impossible this morning.

I ended up going into work in a perfectly serviceable outfit that I did not like one bit, and that set the tone for the day.

It should have been my easy day, since I only teach 3 (long) classes today, but it wasn't.

Without getting into anything specific, let me just say this: if a student makes comments about my personal appearance ("Mrs H has a nice butt") and constantly invades my personal space and touches me even though I have repeatedly made it clear that behavior is unacceptable, the person that needs to change is the student, not me, regardless of the excuses her older sister and her mother make.  That exchange was the coup de grace.

I'm seeing way, way too much "I reject your reality and I substitute my own" behavior.  There is only one reality and we all have to live in it.

Or maybe we don't, but I don't want to live in the world some of these people are inhabiting.

home alone in "winter"

My kids have school today, and I do not.   It's weird to be home by myself, and even weirder to think that just a few years ago, this was my default existence.   I'm thrilled to have this extra time to catch up on grading and planning -- the last two weeks we've had things scheduled nearly every evening after school, which makes it hard to keep up with everything else.

Not-summer is in full swing, arriving as it usually does: one day, it's just not hot any more.  It would be nice to slide gently into cooler temperatures, but we routinely go from the mid-90s to the mid-60s in three days or less.  I'm scrounging around in my closet looking for shoes after wearing sandals every day for the past 8 months.  Presently I'm in a sweatshirt and slippers and feeling chilled.  It's only 72 degrees in here and I'm used to it being 80.

It's hard to convey a "laughing at myself" tone of voice in print -- but I am.  I don't miss Massachusetts winters one bit, as even in this 72 degrees my hands are feeling stiff.  For me, cold = pain, and I am very grateful that this is, more or less, as "cold" as it will get.

digging out

All apologies to East Coasters who are literally digging out in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  I'm just digging out from the pile of grading that I managed to stack up, somehow, but am finally clear of, just now.  That was a long slog, but instructive.  It doesn't matter what odd things are popping up on the school schedule (high school AIMS tests, for example), I should still keep up on my grades because they seem to multiply if I leave them out of the gradebook for any length of time.

Recent days feel like a long series of unsteady stumbles from one minor crisis to another.  DS2 is reprising his annual "I don't feel like doing my schoolwork" routine, precipitating extra work for DH (checking math homework) and me (checking the signed agenda and other completed homework).   DS1 is doing congressional debate and impromptu speaking, and, as usual, puts in just enough effort to be fair-to-middling or sometimes even pretty good, but doesn't push for excellence. 

My own students require a "means business" teacher and I am too much of a squish to do that most of the time.  One of my biggest problems, I just realized today (stupidly, some 13 weeks into the school year) is that on Wednesdays and Thursdays I need to eat!  The other days I get my prep hour around 10 so that's when I have my breakfast.  On block days, I don't have the same schedule, so I end up starving and cranky.  Not good. 

Healthwise I'm doing well on my weight (steady around 137 if I don't drink alcohol too often), reflux, and arthritis.   I have enjoyed the occasional Starbucks tall decaf skinny mocha without getting sick afterwards, so that's progress.  I'd love to be able to drink coffee regularly, but I think it's the dairy that's getting to me, and I love my half-n-half possibly more than the coffee.  I've been having Trader Joe's peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets for breakfast, and that amount wheat doesn't seem to be triggering any horrible reactions.  Admittedly some nights my entire body is throbbing with pain, and I'm not exactly sure why, but at least I'm still sleeping well and generally feel fine when I wake up in the morning.  My hands are bothering me slighly these last few days.  I'll just have to keep an eye on things as the weather cools down.

Crazy weekend ahead - debate tournament and DD's birthday party.  We survived Halloween with a minimum of fuss (other than me haranguing DS2 about blowing off more schoolwork...), but that's just an illusion.  We're in the crazy time now, and there will be events every week between now and Easter -- or at least it's going to seem that way.

slipping away

One more day of fall break left.  Where did it go?  What did we do? Nothing major.  Lots of little things... I have this sense of being "nibbled to death by ducks."  Not that it's been bad, it hasn't been.  It just hasn't been much of anything.  (I should make a list of all those little things so I won't feel so discouraged.)

...and I still have all my papers to sort for filing, and my lesson planning to do, and I need to get back into my classroom before Monday so that Monday isn't terrible.

I hate presidential election years.  Politics shrouds everything and distracts me and makes me anxious, even though I can't do a thing about it.  There's a fine line between interested/engaged and obsessed, and I'm working it.

That other thing, so obscurely referenced in the last post? Yeah, I got over it. It's true that some problems really will go away if you let them.  I wish more people realized that -- it's not denial, or giving up, or anything negative.  It's an active decision to let something go, and then following through on that decision.  We define ourselves as much by the things we choose not to do as by the things we choose to do.

I'll get over it

Periodically -- not often -- I have a conversation with someone I know, and that person says something that makes me reevaluate the entire relationship.  Our perspectives are drastically out of alignment.

It's very weird to find out, sometimes after many years, that what I thought was so, isn't.

I think about asking for clarification.  Did the person really mean that?  But I've found in the past when I dredge up stuff like this, the person usually doesn't even remember saying it.  A sentence that has been reverberating in my brain for days, that I keep trying to parse, to assign some meaning to that doesn't re-write the relationship -- it was just something to say, something tossed off in the course of the conversation.  So I don't think there's much point in bringing it up.

Then I step back again, and think, does it really matter what was said?  Does it really change the relationship?  Can't I look at our shared history and see what actually is, and not get all over-analytical with it?  Actions speak, but if the motivation is opaque, what then? Does it really matter why people do what they do, or does it only matter that they do it?

I know it's pointless, but I keep worrying this like a loose  tooth.  Whenever I have nothing else to keep me busy, my thoughts go back to it, fruitlessly.  I'll get over it.  As far as the rest of the world is concerned, everything is OK, even if I'm not feeling that way.  Eventually, I will.

in that groove

It seems every week when I speak to my Mom, there's really nothing new to talk about.  Nothing major, anyway -- we are in the groove.  Sure, RE started last week for me (looks like 21 students, too soon to tell what the personality of the class will be), and the kids had a recital yesterday (they acquitted themselves well, but not well enough by some lights), but other than that? We're well into the school year routine, that groove that could so easily become a grind.

Work is killing me this year.  I keep thinking (and saying, to different people), this is my third year teaching the same curriculum with the same materials, but I'm working twice as hard.  Part of that has to do with de-facto managing the math teacher who is covering one of the 8th grade science sections, but a bigger part of it has to do with our new schedule.  We are supposed to identify students for intervention (academic, behaviorial, whatever) so they can get the time/help they need to make up their work or understand concepts, or whatever.  Exactly how or what we are supposed to do to identify these students was never explained, so I've worked out a system where I review grades every weekend, print out missing assignment reports, and get those to the students each week.  However, that's not enough -- students that fail an assignment or quiz are required to re-take it.  How?  When? I've spent countless hours setting up online make-up for the nearly half of my students who need them... but a bare fraction has completed the online work.

I believe the system could work, but the staff was given no training whatsoever on what we have to do to support it.

Add to that our new requirements in our daily lessons (language and content objects posted, explicit vocab instruction, Common Core standards...) most of which I was doing anyway, but now I have to document -- yeah, that's not a groove I'm in, it's a grind.  

In happier news, continuing the diet is doing good things.   Yesterday we took the kids to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and yet this morning my weight was down to its lowest point in I don't know how long (133).   OTOH, Friday afternoon I had a small decaf Americano and then DH and I went out for Thai food, and by bedtime my hands were so swollen I could hardly get my rings off.  Was it the dairy in the coffee?  Something in the curry? The rice? I have a hard time thinking it was the rice with the Thai food. I only ate about a half-cup, total.

My g/e doctor was facinated by these results -- particularly the RA in remission.  I reminded him that I tested negative for celiac by biopsy (the most accurate test).  He replied that I could still have a sensitivity to wheat, which seems borne out by my experience.   He was OK with the DGL and D-limonene (I just started another round), but I don't think he paid too much attention to that information.  My throat still feels sore but not lumpy, and after not being able to sing at all last weekend, yesterday I could sing in both high and low registers comfortably for the first time in ages.  I asked for an H. pylori test and should get those results later this week.

I'm vaguely uneasy about my latest walk-through evaluation at work, which was terse to the point of ridiculousness, and negative about a lesson I considered very successful.  Then I got parked in a useless professional development session Friday afternoon which left me even more unsettled, but I'm putting that on the incompetent facilitator. I'm also agitated about how intervention is managed.  Just now I need to think about what to do about these things, if anything.  So far I'm just keeping my head down and doing my own work.  What I really have to decide is if that's the best long-term course of action.