Baby Steps

I don't make friends easily.

Now, those of you who've met me might be surprised by this. After all, I'm fairly outgoing, I'm comfortable around strangers, and I have a pretty good grasp of social cueing. So what's the deal?

I've often wondered that myself. I moved with my husband to my current part of the country not quite seven years ago now, and I'm only just now finding someone that I'm starting to think of as a buddy.

Part of it may be that I haven't felt like I fit in anywhere. I mean, yes, as a female English teacher, there's lots of us. But I'm not much like my colleagues at the school where I work. They coordinate their jewelry and wear sweater sets; I'm much more comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt over a turtleneck. They talk about Literature and Bible school for their kids, and I'm more current with YA lit and current issues in social justice.

They won't let me ditch Julius Caesar and teach Othello instead.

And then there's my husband and his nerd buddies. And... they're all guys. Which is fine, but... it feels a little weird calling one of them up and saying, "Hey, want to go watch Beauty and the Beast in 3D?" And - I dunno, maybe they WOULD understand - but since they're not teachers, I don't really bring up my curiosity about, say, how best to design feedback so that it's both authentic/personal and fast. At least not in casual conversation.

I rarely feel disconnected, because I've got lots of casual connections... my colleagues, our gaming group, people at my exercise and dance classes. And I'm close with my family (and we're a teacher-heavy bunch, too!) and then of course, there's the Hunk, who has proven time and again that soul mates really do exist.

But then this year for the first time something clicked with an addition to our department, and I'm finding myself in very unfamiliar territory. I mean, what do friends DO? Especially when we've both got extracurricular responsibilities at school and then family and you have to sleep SOME time...

So we'll see how it goes. I haven't had a BFF since, like, grade school. I'm kind of nervous, but it's an excited-slash-hopeful kind of nervous.

Image thanks to http://www.babysteps2health.com/

Continue...

Balance

Dang. How did it get to be quarter of ten already? I didn't get to do any of the schoolwork that I brought home. I did put dishes away and do a load of laundry. The Hunk was wonderful enough to cook dinner for us - PANCAKES! YUM! - and we watched last night's episode of Castle.

There just never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done that needs to be done. I doubt I'll even be able to make this anything better than just "reasonably coherent." The days are flying past - winter break begins NEXT FRIDAY, for goodness' sake!

I wanted to get our bookshelves moved into the library over Thanksgiving break, and it just Did. Not. Happen. We did get the space for them cleared out. Let's see if anything gets moved over winter break.

Between staying late at school, running errands, exercise class, and dinner... it's bedtime. I feel like I haven't done much of anything at all today, and yet the day is over! What's up with that?!

It doesn't help that I've been double- and triple-posting; all of my classes do some journalling each day, so I've been doing that along with them. It's a heckuva lot of writing.

Tomorrow for English II we'll be in the computer lab and they're to be typing up their research papers. Ooooo, I hope we don't crash and burn!

We actually have a few weeks left in the first semester after we get back from winter break. It's a little on the crazy side; usually everything finishes up neatly before we leave in December. Not this year, though. We started so late that we'll be going through the end of January before classes change. It'll be interesting to see how that goes...

Image thanks to http://angelalutin.com/

Continue...

Too Much

So we're off again, and all I can think of is "what all do I need to get done today and when do I need to do it?"

I need to turn in sign the purchase order for the 2011 supplements. (done!)
I need to find out if they've located the receipt books that I turned in last year. (done! though they're still looking)
I need to find out what to do about tax when I pay for something & get reimbursed. (done! arrange not to pay tax)
I need to review the second drafts of the letters… those are late! ugh! (done!)
I need to remind the Newspaper class that they are not to be listening to personal devices. (done!)
I need to have the Yearbook class type up the senior quotes. (done!)
I need to ask for an updated list of seniors who've had portraits made. (done!)
I need to print out and photocopy my list of sonnets. (done!)
I need to turn in the information about the donation from the used bookstore. (done!)
I need to create a form for the scifi club and send it to the students who expressed interest.
I need to check tardies and contact parents.

Oh yeah - and I need to, yanno, TEACH.

*sigh*

Continue...

A Brief Interlude

Back from Disney - it was pretty much awesome! Had a few days to wash clothes and dishes and watch a lot of Law & Order. Now it's off to yearbook camp! TTFN :)

Continue...

I made it!

So the 2009-2010 year has drawn to a close. (For me, anyway.) The past week has been hectic, what with final projects / exams, grading, hunting down the few students who didn't pick up their yearbooks when they were supposed to, packing up the room, meetings, covering computers with garbage bags so that they don't get any more dust in them than they need to, putting files in order, closing out accounts... whew!

Won't have a whole lot of time to rest, though. Right now I really should be getting the last of the laundry done so that I can finish PACKING FOR DISNEY WORLD! Wuhu! We leave tomorrow. I'm so excited. In fact, we may wind up leaving tonight. ;D

Continue...

This Makes Me Happy

Continue...

The Good, The Bad, and...

For reasons I don't completely understand, I can't seem to help pushing myself into frustration. "Good" is never "good enough." No matter what I'm doing, I'm always looking for - and often finding - ways I could do better.

In some ways, this is very helpful. My students are working harder and learning more than they have in previous terms. Because of the projects I've had funded through donorschoose, I have more materials even though we had NO supply money this year.

But the flip side is that I end up pushing myself to the point of exhaustion (or past it) more often than is healthy. And I have an incredibly hard time enjoying success - or forgiving myself for failure.

Am I asking too much of my students? Or have I set my expectations too low? I feel like I'm constantly measuring, weighing, judging what I do, and it never comes out right.

Most of my feedback comes from my students, and it always annoys me. I feel like when they say good things they're playing nice, or else I haven't been challenging them enough, and when they gripe, they're complaining about having to work. Or it might be their mood that day, or hormones, or any of a number of outside influences. I don't expect them to know (beyond guessing) what strategies I'm even using, let alone how well I'm implementing them.

I have some fantastic work samples from our unit on Macbeth, and I'd love to see what other English teachers think about how well the assessment aligns with the standards and what level of understanding they feel the work shows. Dear God, I wish we had time for that.

But we don't. So I reflect pretty much by myself, while feeling like what I really ought to be doing is finding the USB drives that I need for Journalism (they fell out of my bag sometime during the week), or putting away the papers and books that I left on the kitchen table after we moved some furniture around, or emptying the dishwasher, or grading the Macbeth quizzes, or... oo, I hope there's nothing in the washing machine, or it's liable to be ucky.

There is always, always so much to do. And I feel guilty for not getting enough done.

I hope to goodness this is just PMS or something.

Image thanks to http://www.topnews.in/

Continue...

Boo to YOU!

I don't think I will ever get tired of Disney World! We went there last weekend - drove down Friday after school, and drove back on Tuesday.

We went to Epcot on Saturday and found out that the food & wine festival was going on. I'd like to do that sometime when we've got gobs of money. I'd love to snack my way around World Showcase, but at roughly $5 a pop, we'd need to save up for it. Plus we had a lunch reservation at the Morocco pavilion, and I wouldn't want to spoil my appetite!

The demographics were definitely different - lots and LOTS of college students. I figure it was probably fall break at both FSU and UF - we saw quite a bit of garnet/gold and orange/blue gear. Also, Sister Hazel (from Gainesville) played a couple of short sets at the amphitheater, and Better than Ezra (from Tallahassee) had performed earlier in the week.

On Sunday we went to Animal Kingdom in the morning and Hollywood Studios in the evening. I still can't believe there's never a line for Star Tours! I love that ride SO MUCH. Expedition Everest is probably my favorite ride overall - sit on the left-hand side of the coaster and then as you go up the first big hill look to the left. You can see Spaceship Earth pretty easily, and I think the white pointy building might be Space Mountain, but I'm not sure. The distances don't seem right. It's twisty-turny, there's lots to look at, and it has a great story!

The Hunk says his favorite ride is the Aerosmith rollercoaster, and I've gotta admit that one's a lot of fun too. It's INCREDIBLY FAST, and there are speakers in the headrest that play clips from their best-known songs. But at the same time, because it's so fast, the ride is over in no time. :(

Even more than the rides, though, I think I like the music. We got to see the Jammitors, Voices of America, and Mo'Rockin' at Epcot, the Caribbean band (I forget the name) at Animal Kingdom, and at the Magic Kingdom we saw the ragtime piano player at Casey's several times, as well as the saxophone group, the Dapper Dans, and the Main Street Philharmonic marching band. It's just so neat to talk to the performers about what they do and how they first became interested in music.

Disney as a whole is pretty awesome, but I think the Magic Kingdom does a great job of defining the Disney experience. It truly is the most magical place on earth. Big Thunder and the Haunted Mansion just feel so familiar to me - Space Mountain, too, though we didn't get to go on that because it was still being refurbished.

And everybody smiles. (Yet somehow it's not creepy.) It's like all of these storybook friends have been waiting here for you, and you can go and talk to all the minor characters and find out their stories. The Main Street characters are an absolute trip! I don't know that we saw anybody at Epcot or at Animal Kingdom, but we did catch an improv comedy skit at Hollywood Studios, and I know we'd seen non-movie characters there over the summer. I had dressed up in a peasant blouse and my green swirly skirt and had some fun chatting with the Main Street cast. I would love, love, love to do that some summer!



(Hi, Scoop!)

One thing I really missed was getting to see Wishes (the Magic Kingdom fireworks show). We were there for Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, and they had a special show for the event. It was pretty cool, because they shot the fireworks off from different sites so it covered the sky over the whole park. The finale was sooo bright it was like daytime for a few seconds! But... I think I like Wishes better.

Fortunately, there are a bojillion of 'em on youtube, so just about any time I like I can sing along and get ALL SNIFFLY. (I always do!) ^.^

Continue...

Status Update

Lordy, I hardly know where to begin.

First of all, I meant to post yesterday and I didn't. I guess I could've written something up during planning period, but I think I was grading. (I'm not sure. I'm still barely awake and it's hard to remember.) Wait - yes - I was. Not actually grading papers, but correcting corrections I'd made in the online gradebook. It's been fighting with me something fierce this year.

First of all, I had a number of students turn in make-up work, which I graded, put in the computer, and returned. Then, on the day AFTER grades were due to the office, I had a bunch of those same students come to me and ask why they had zeros for their make-up work. I'm not sure WHY they didn't save... and, well, it really doesn't matter. I'm going to have to re-do them. Along with filling out paperwork now that it's past MY due date. (But I think I'm going to hand the paperwork off to the students. You want YOUR grade changed? here's the form. ;p)

Then I had three students whose averages were below 50 (the lowest grade we're allowed to give for the first half of the term so that students don't 'log out' halfway through). So I changed those - but apparently I had the wrong column of the program active and changed the term average, not the marking period average.

*sigh*

This week was pretty much a total loss for my English IV class. I'd hoped to be done with Macbeth LAST Friday, and we haven't even finished Act IV yet. AUGH! We had three days at school and I didn't get them ONCE for a full period. Quite frustrating.

Journalism has gone a LOT more smoothly. We have a system for sending everyone out on interviews that seems to be working well. The boundaries are (1) no class is interrupted more than once per period, unless that teacher asks the journalism students to come back later on in the class, and (2) only two days of class time were given for preliminary interviews - this is down from three or four days last article. I'm hoping to move to just one next time.

The idea is that we choose articles Monday, plan out the angle, figure out what we need to know, and from that choose ten potential sources and what we're going to ask them. Tuesday we go do interviews. Rough drafts are due at the beginning of the period Wednesday, and during class we conference in small groups. Homework Wednesday night is to determine which sources we need to revisit for more depth or additional information. On Thursday we'll re-interview. Final drafts, correctly formatted, will be due on Friday.

I need to wrap this up. I really wanted to write about our trip to Disney, but my parents are on their way here and there are clean dishes in the dishwasher, dirty dishes on the counter, clean laundry in the dryer and on the spare bed (which they need), still-packed suitcases and bags in the living room, pizza boxes left out, papers and notebooks and DVDs piled up on the kitchen table...

OH! and I didn't get to post yesterday evening because I was IN A CARNIVAL. But I think THAT will get its own post as well. ^.^

TTFN, darlings!

Continue...