Lessons Learned

The last entry I wrote, and left unpublised, was from February. I was going to say how I had been so wrong to misjudge certain members of my family and how I was even hoping that sooner-rather-than-later, I'd be able to put things that happened between us in the past. I was going to say that, until I realize that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I was going to say, that forgiveness or the road that leads there is as much for the trespassed as the trespasser. When the wrong party doesn't forgive, then they just keep stewing on the past and hurting themselves. That's what I'd been doing when it came to certain members of my family. Since I tend to obssess about things this happens to me a lot.

I was going to do all of this, until I found our Friday, from other family members, as always happens in this passive-aggresive, shit-pit of a family that people are getting their feelings hurt, and rather than confront me directly have started a campaign behind my back over things that I have written here. So let me just put this to rest:

1. This is my space, my thoughts and my voice, it can say whatever the fuck it wants, when it wants and how it wants.

2. If I'm writing it down, I'm just as happy to tell you to your face that this is what I think and why I think it. I'm not a a twit, I'm an educated, articulate, bilingual person. I know for better or worse that this is out there. I'd be happy to respond to comments, questions or concerns. For the parties mentioned here though, I doubt it would matter much since they tend to like to victimize themselves.

3. I consistently keep in contact with those friends and family I choose to have a relationship with, just like I assume that they keep in contact with me for the same reason. If we're not talking it's probably because I got tired of putting up with your bullshit.

4. I'm sure that this post will make me a bit of a hypocrite. That's cool. No one's perfect. I tend to want to be a victim too, and I'm sure I'm not blameless. Once it's all said and done though, I'm not hiding behind being a good person either.

Oops.

This year I finally made resolutions at the beginning of the year: new job, GRE and grad school. Since my job now is sucking my soul out of me in a tortuously, agonizingly slow way, I've decided this will be the first resolution I tackle. Plus Chaz was whining about me looking at Grad School programs when a new job might not allow me the time...

I've applied for something like 15 jobs in the past week. I'm beginning to feel like the job slut. I'm cycling through these so fast that if I was taking on Johns I'd be able to quit my regular employment. But you know, I have a contract and I can hang in there.

Whilst praying for another job I also periodically ask that my boss be smite-ed by a hangover, dysentery or that she randomly gets hit by a bus or MACK truck on the way to work. I don't care what happens so long as I don't have to put up with her crazy for a day. Today was one of those days! Also since the kids were "testing" (because, you know, they're all so ambitious) I had lots of time to work on other things like grades, and cleaning my room and cover letters. I had already drafted a few of these on a legal pad, and decided to bring it out just in case I was inspired today.

On the way out of the car this morning my Starbucks was far more important than The Blue Pad. So I put it one the trunk, where it miraculously stayed all day. I imagine that hobos and crack heads don't really need a blue legal pad. That is it stayed all day until my boss came back from her meeting at 2:00 p.m.

In her quest to be Good Samaritan of the Year, she starts asking around to find the owner. I'll cut it short and say that once she started reading and one of my girlfriends freaked out, she might know I'm scavenging for a new job. Awesome. Funny thing is I don't really care.

Let's Try This Again

My last post (recently deleted though it is) was about how I'd had it with the school year. That was on October 6. Tomorrow I'll be taking a Mental Health Day before I really do carry through on my threat and throw a child out the window. Of course if I really had my way, I'd throw a child out the window after decapitating them and putting their head on a stake. While I jest, and really do love my kids deep down, the thought of getting them to behave by using some Henry VIII style disipline does bring a smile to my lips.

I've decided that I'm going to take tomorrow off to be able to breathe and search for what I want to do.

I can't help but wonder if I keep praying the wrong prayer about becoming a good teacher, but rather that I'm praying that I just find a better fit.

Gratitude Journal

Apparently I've typed this before, because when I typed this title in, the wonderful Predictive Text Fairy finished it up for me. I was reading another blog today (authored by another teacher for DISD) and said author commented that his blog this year has been nothing but rants. I feel like this has been the general trend for teachers this year. NCLB+poverty children= a group of kids who have never been taught that learning is important and that the American Dream is hard work, and that only the most nimble beasts (mentally nimble that is) survive the jungle.

Back when I was a kid, I fantasized being the Anne Frank of the Y-Generation, you know, minus, Nazis and Jews and fearing for my life in an Amsterdam attic, oh and minus a vagina. I tried to write in my journal constantly. All the time hoping that there would be something exciting, original or noteworthy that people would want to read about 50 years later. I never kept up with it. The Digital Age has now amplified this and given a real-time aspect to what my narcissism.

To the point. Back then I watched this one Oprah Show. She had been saying how she was keeping a gratitude journal and how this then turned up the volume on her positive outlook on life. She said to start with three things, the more practice you get the more you become grateful for. We'll give this a try again every so often.

1. I am so grateful for Chaz. Despite the terrible flutter of insecurity that just coursed through my body at the mere mention of this need for another person, I cannot go back or turn around. I can't even imagine not having him there. And, while I didn't get smacked around by any one of my boyfriends (unlike the two dreadful, hypothetical lesbian crack whores I passed on my run today) I did get a little mentally smacked around. My need for perfection in fact has made me a veritable 16 year old girl with low self esteem who picks out shitty boyfriends to continue to make them feel inferior.

2. I am so glad to have a job and feel like I actually know how to do it finally!

3. I am glad we have our pups! Sure they're like speed addicts and they need lots of attention but they give you great stories, and it's really fun to watch them play and run around and act like puppies.

Spinning

It's amazing that the first few weeks back to work have turned me into the alpha-male. This is the first night that I've gotten to slow down. No work, no cooking, no chores, no more I have to get this done right now or the world will fall apart. Maybe, just maybe, if I cross my fingers and close my eyes, and click my heels three times, I can get away with it.

To say I don't handle stress well, is sometimes and in some situations an understatement. I don't handle not being perfect (or not seeming perfect and put-together) well. I get short and mean and I'm downright just out for blood. I feel like that's how I've been at home these past few weeks. Tonight, when we're in bed even though it's 8:30 I know I'm so blessed and lucky to have someone and the puppies to come home too. Nice steak dinner, walk and now some reading and t.v., and there is contentment. It's terrible that I've been taking that for granted, that I feel that if I don't stop at some point, I'll just keep on going, full steam, bull-in-a-china-shop, and lose this amazing and wonderful gift.

We're Entering Week Four

I don't like blogging about work. It's boring as hell. I also hate focusing on what's wrong at school, that is, inevitably, what happens. This year I'm seeing my kids, and some of their parents, and how quickly so many immigrants, illegal or not, adapt to the legal system in our country.

I sent a note home with one of my kids yesterday that said he was talking and then rolled his eyes when I corrected him. Frankly I don't remember if he did or not, and I wasn't really mad, it's just the rules. And, because the educational system has become so hyper-legal, it serves as easy documentation. In the past I've just become infuriated and then when I yell or have the kids call or try to write a referral to the office, they have all this damning evidence that I'm a horrible person. Did I mention that I'm usually reducing them to tears in front of the entire class? Not that tears is my goal, kids to day are just pussies. That's right, I said it. But we'll get to that in a bit. So this mother shows up with her son in my class and her son who's older to interpret. Remember that her son (in my class) is in the bilingual program, that would make me...wait for it... bilingual. Since we're in Texas you can guess, speculate or imagine that I'm not a German bilingual teacher. The better part of all of that though, is that most Mexicans (or Hispanics) expect a bolillo like me to speak Spanish well and with a trace accent. This can either be really disarming or intimidating.

We talked and she was very nice but wasn't going to sign the notification because she disagreed and her son said her didn't roll her eyes. Damn! I forgot to write it down in my notebook! And school was starting! Talk about hit and run. So now already caught a little off-guard, when she wanted a copy I didn't know exactly what to do. SO I wrote on the paper that we had conference and then she could keep it. She still wouldn't sign it. That's cool though. When I have to write her little hoodlum up, I still wrote that I talked to her, so my boss will be more likely to have my back.

The question is, where the hell do folks who can hardly speak English find out about signing documents and admitting to responsibility or not admitting to anything? While we're on that vein why does our society provide more protections for illegal immigrants to begin with? As a teacher I understand not deporting kids from school and providing Title I funds to feed the children. There is no oversight. There are no consequences and it enables an atmosphere of entitlement with no recourse. Gimme mentality will lead Texas and then the United States, to have an under-educated, non-taxpaying, workforce. Lower wages, higher welfare and in the end the burden for many upon so few. We may very well return to a United States that looks something like the US during the Industrial Revolution. There won't be any Carnegies or Rockefeller's, they didn't have income taxes or Social Security or Medicaid and Medicare. But we're protecting the poor, the tired the huddled masses, so it's all good.

Being Teacher of the Year Sucks

The first week of school, one of my cousins posted a "God Bless Teachers!" for all the world to see on her Facebook. At the very least if, it wasn't the world, it was all of her friends. As the new school year begins I wonder how many parents express this identical sentiment.

For me, it was touching, in the sense that, while I didn't dread the school year or have my stomach knot up or try to drop ten pounds by not eating, I am down-right tired. This year, I'm actually hopeful. It's not that brand-spanking new teacher, JFK, Peace Corps, I-can-be-the-white Jaime Escalante- kind of hope. No, what I'm carrying is the third year teacher, I didn't royally fuck-up last year kind of hope. I may not reach them all but I can reach one or two. The one thing I didn't want to do this year was lose my patience. My kids get so much yelling and scolding at home, that I want them to really feel like they have a haven and then I can get them to calm down long enough to learn something. The beginning of the year always motivates me. I get up early, stay at school late, walk around the room and do all those things that they say good teachers do. This usually gets robbed by my domineering principal, kids without any type of concern and parents who thing that my job is to corral their rug rats for 8 hours. This is while they sit at home and take care of the other 4 under the age of 10 and if they don't have a job, they're married to some waste-of-life Mexican who thinks that if they un-thether their women somebody else will stick something in 'em. Ergo- welfare, free lunch, the cycle goes on.

That doesn't mean that all Mexicans are lazy or that some folks don't need welfare just to get a leg up and then move on, but what I am saying is that typically this upbringing engenders a kind of hand-out mentality. Why should my child learn to speak and read and write, in whatever language if there is always some government program that will give food to your kids.

So far this year, I have the best class yet. I don't know if this is due to me feeling comfortable in my own skin behind the overhead or if the fact that the kids have been in a more stable Bilingual program has anything to do with it. I do hope with all my heart that I can keep going, no matter how tired I may be or how much I feel that the kids aren't wanting to learn that I can be that haven. Right now, though after a weekend of grading papers and lesson plans and vocabulary lists, I'm just plain tired.