let's try this again.....

so here’s the deal.  taking a break from the blogging stuff - way back in, oh what was it?  april? – seeeeeeeeeeeeeeemed like a fabulous idea at the time.  but now it’s, um, turning september in less than 8 hours and there’s hardly been a blip on the screen from me.

i’d make some excuses here, but really?  i just didn’t want to write.  no offense to anyone who cares that much.  (and yeah, if you do, chill, plz?  ‘k.  thx.)  A LOT happened this summer.  some spectacular stuff, some funny stuff, and some pretty stressful stuff.  and it’s all stored somewhere deep and comfortable in the caverns of my brain.  and maybe someday i’ll write about some of it and bore you with my ramblings then.  but for now….i’m just going to start with today.

because today i got to analyze testing data.  all.  day.  long.  after i spent the entire week last week doing the same thing (on my own, mind you.  who says i ain’t a self-starter?).  i finally had to laugh to myself because who knew that looking at numbers and state reading objectives could make a girl soooooo incredibly homesick.  because that is what happened.  and those of you from the life i just moved away from will get a kick out of this: i missed data groups.  and continuous improvement.  and, dare I say it?  okay.  i'll whisper it...taks.  (if you are reading this and suddenly feel clueless, please don’t fret.  your justifiable ignorance - a word i use with only the most POSITIVE connotation - really is a strong indicator that i should have a life away from those three things.  because seriously?  they should not be the topics of 94.6% of my conversations.)

please laugh now.

trust me…..this nostalgic feeling will fade very quickly.  as in, just because i got all misty-eyed at how much easier all of this use to be for me, it doesn’t mean it’s worth it to come back to. 

and maybe…..maybe it was just easier today to admit that i missed the “easiness” of the Texas numbers game (seriously.  i heart the okies, but they need to get some of their shit together when it comes to this) instead of the people.  because somedays it’s harder to explain why i left them.

to them... 

...and to myself.

who knew, pt. 2 and current events via 14 y/o's

so thanks for participating in the voting in round 1 - if you did.  if you didn't, um, i kind of think you suck.  :)  but not really.  

it looks like choice A won out.  it also looks like i will never be able to share a SECRET with my SISTER without FEAR of her announcing it on the internet.  FOR THE WORLD (i.e., our mother) to see.  there is no tattoo.  she is mistaken.  i was just TALKING.  geez.

round 2: shiny stuff

(vote in the comment section, again!)

A

B

C

_______________________

so the paranoia in texas is annoying this week.  such paranoia has found its ways into the halls of my school.  lemmejustsay, the best part of teaching 8th graders when anything MAJOR happens in the news is that i get to hear them wax prophetic about the state of world affairs . . . 

over the last few days i've been told these gems:

- i need to be careful not to get slime disease.

- you can only get slime disease from eating pork.

- the world needs to be helping mexico because the flu is in their water and we need to help them stop all of the diseases that regularly inhabit their country.  (which lemmejustsay, poor mexico.  they are taking the brunt of this.  which REALLY sucks.)

- the euro is the mexican dollar.  

- the government should just print more money and the depression or whatever or recession or whatever would just stop.

and i laugh at my kids and find them charming and tryyyyyyyyyyyy to set them strait.  which, lemmejustsay (is that annoying yet?  i'm hoping it is!) trying to convince a 14 y/o of anything if you are over the age of 19 is pretty much damn near impossible.  that isn't obnoxious AT ALL.  but also.  i bet if we look at that list of information up there most of you could find someone in your life - friend or no - who pretty much has the same line of thinking.  

yeah.  sad.

26 more days until summer.

not sad.

a purge

so i don't write tons about my job on here. for a variety of reasons. but mainly because really the only people who like to talk english teacher stuff are, well, other english teachers. and also - i don't know if you know this or not - but when a teacher gets going, they can really get going and some might perceive such "venting" as "whining" and that really isn't the case at all. for me anyway.

most of the time.

but for the sake of honesty, let's just say this hasn't been the easiest year for me when it comes to doing what i normally do best - connecting with my kiddos. and i know that everybody has years like this. ebb and flow and all of that. it's just, i HAVEN'T for a long long long time (like maybe since 2001-2002?). and for me, if i don't feel like i'm connecting then i also don't feel like i'm teaching at the same level that i hold myself up to. and for a perfectionist (don't laugh. i hide it very well.) that is extremely hard to deal with. so my reaction hasn't been probably the best one i could have. i feel myself pulling further away from my kids instead of working to build relationships. and i also find myself blaming my students - for being too cynical, for not being very open, for being apathetic . . .

and then the guilt sets in because i have three weeks like i've just had. when every. single. day. i learn something new about a different student. and yall, these new pieces of knowledge are things i wish i didn't have to know. simply because NO child should have to have these experiences in their story. and again, for the sake of honesty, there's nothing i can do to FIX anything. and THAT is hard to admit.

why am i writing about this today? i don't really know. other than maybe it is a means to explain why i haven't been writing much of the fluff lately? it seems trite to hear what i hear during the day and then come home and write about slicing my finger while cutting tomatoes or to write about my new obsession with napping . . .

___________________________________________

and even though they aren't really connected, but are somewhat related, i guess now is the time to address something else: hopefully in the next few months i'll be able to tell you i am employed in oklahoma. cuz yep. it's time to get on the road again. most of you who read this already knew this was coming, but nothing's a secret now. i've let the appropriate people at work know, so now i feel like i can freely share all job-related anxiety with the "masses." i am in the process of retrieving all of my transcripts (note to the young'uns - DON'T TAKE SUMMER SCHOOL FROM A DIFFERENT COLLEGE EVERY SUMMER) in order to process my oklahoma certification. i'll find out about my test on march 6 and will have another chance to retake it if i need to in april. so. if you are a pray-er please keep this whole job hunt thing in mind. i'm ready to be closer to my family (hi ica and j and k!) and my okies and to have season tickets to osu football (yes. a little facetious here. but not much.). this is a decision i'm very confident in. as you can tell from above, i'm probably in need of a change.

how did i celebrate the beginning of my winter break, you ask?

while most of my counterparts (with the exception of a few) had cleared out of the school by about 3:37 this afternoon, i was still there.  wow, sarah.  you must be thinking to yourself.  what a dedicated teacher you are to want to hang out with students crashing from their daylong candy-cane highs after the bell has wrung.  oh how i wish i were and that i could claim such a sentiment.

but yeah, no.  that is not why my little civic was one of the lone cars left in the lot after the last bus had left.  in fact, if you had driven by my school this afternoon you probably would have been perplexed to see the teacher standing on a chair in the middle of the parking lot digging through the recycle bin/dumpster.  that teacher?  yep.  you guessed it.  me.

i won't bore you with the details or an admission of how much of this may have been my fault.  instead, all you really need to know is that i had a box sitting near my recycling boxes today.  the box that was NOT paper for recycling was FILLED and i mean FILLED with the projects that my students had spent pretty much the entire week working on.  and oh yeeeeeeeeaaaaah!  i also had about $200 worth of curriculum materials loaded in that box as well . . . so you can imagine the freak out that occurred when i realized the students in my 7th period had taken THE WRONG BOX during their weekly save the earth mission . . . and why i absolutely HAD to go digging through the recycling bin this afternoon.

so probably not how many people would choose to celebrate a two week break from the insanity that is my job lately.  but that is how i spent my afternoon . . . 

in an unrelated note: my 7th period will be studying "common sense and how to find some" when we get back from the break.

__________________

 side note: all of the curriculum materials were found in my rummaging, as well as a good amount of the projects.  not all, but it'll do.  so thanks for the concern, but you can totally breathe now.

dear students

yes. i know it must be odd to get a letter from your teacher as she is out sick today. yesterday, many of you pointed out that i looked "awful" and that i needed to "get some sleep." several of you wondered out loud why didn't i "just stay home?" well. i have taken your advice today. thanks for the sweet words of encouragement (?) yesterday.

and i know a few of you saw me running around the halls this morning and are probably confused as to why i was up at school on a sick day. i have yet to figure that out myself. did i really need to be there to usher my WRAP kids into their yearbook photo? nah. jb had that under control. was it really important that my 4th period's homecoming poster got hung up today? nah. we all know it ain't gonna win. and honestly, do you really think i am going to grade the big bag of your work that i loaded up and brought home with me? ha. laugh with me here, because we know that is definitely NOT gonna happen. so why was i there?

it wasn't really the brightest decision on my part, especially since it meant that i got to meet the substitute. yes. you've all met him by now, too, i am sure. so you no doubt understand why it was all i could do, after a 2 minute conversation with him, to restrain myself from telling him (with the faint and croaky voice i can squeak out), "you know what? i'll just stay." i am sure you have wondered to yourselves by this point, why someone who hardly speaks english*, let alone reads it, felt that the best place they are most qualified to serve the community is in an 8th grade ENGLISH classroom. with EIGHTH GRADERS. who, if you are quite honest with your adolescent selves, are not the easiest group of students to wrangle. and that's coming from someone has spent 8 years of her life with your kind and has learned to keep the panic and terror out of her eyes when conversing with you. something your dear sub has not yet mastered, which means you have probably quickly found a way to torture him and scar/scare him for life.

so there isn't really a point to this letter. it's not like i can control what happens in my classroom today. instead i just have to hope that the majority of you step up and show compassion to this man (and your sick and obsessing teacher trapped at home) and refuse to allow your classmates to take advantage of him. if anything, just please, keep the floor clean.

thanks. i'll see you monday.
-miss h

____________________________________________________________

*i say this as someone who has an extremely liberal stance when it comes to english as our national language. i'm normally not one to say, "why can't you just speak our language?" but let's just say, three days of the nyquil diet has left my patience very raw. and yall. i leave things color-coded for subs. he didn't understand the color-codes!

dichotomy

when people ask me how i can teach junior high, my typical response is that i like the challenge of the diversity that accompanies working with 12-15 year-olds in my day. case in point . . .

i had to keep a student late after 7th period today to have a 'conversation' about the random whistles that seem to escape his mouth at inopportune times during class. he has absolutely no impulse control.

barely 45 minutes later, i was leaning back in my chair, feet propped up, having a mature literary discussion over the worth (literary or otherwise) of running with scissors by augusten burroughs with another student. if you don't know anything about that book, let me just say that, um, yeah, it probably isn't really junior high reading material.

the end.

and so it ends

welcome to the end of my most unproductive summer ever. i don't know if that is really the case or if i am just not sure how to deal with not moving to another apartment, not moving to another state, not starting a new job, not going on any kind of adventurous trip (sorry yall, but oklahoma, missouri, and kansas don't qualify, even if i did have a great time), not taking any kind of real classes to make me a better teacher or at least a better human, or not making any extra cash to justify the ridiculous amount of money i seem to spend during june and july.

tomorrow is friday, yet i must start back to school on a friday. now i know that complaining about going back to work after such an extended amount of time off is really quite tacky. i KNOW this. BUT, seriously? why a friday? it honestly makes it hard to have any kind of excitement or energy at all about returning to work.

oh. the point of this griping blog is to share the following video clip i just saw posted on que sera sera.  

and i know i'm not working for BIG BUSINESS, but, yeah.  still.  i related.  did you?

in all seriousness, i'm a little stressed out.

earlier this summer i bragged about how good i am about getting things accomplished during my time off. if i were giving myself a score on a scale of 1-10 on productivity THIS summer, i think a 2.5 would be acceptable. technically, all i really need to do i can cram into four days next week and be ready to face reality on august 15th. or. i thought i could.

then i had the following conversation with my principal via telephone this afternoon.

principal: hey sarah. we need to cut an english class this year during 7th period.

me: okay.

principal: so i'm thinking of giving you an exploratory elective with the rotating 7th grade class.

me: okay.

principal: and i know you would love to teach creative writing, but ************* did it last year, so we are going to keep her teaching that.

me: okay.

principal: so. you can create your own class. whatever you want. i know you had wanted to do some community service stuff last year, so maybe a class involving that? but you don't have to.

me: okay.

principal: so let's meet sometime before school starts to see what ideas you've got.

me: okay.  (don't you think she is glad she has me teaching language arts?  my vocabulary alone is extraordinary!)

-click-

yall. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO. seriously. i've been thinking since 1:30 (with the exception of my viewing of SYTYCD) and have now worked myself into a panic. here's the deal. the class is only 6 weeks long. that is NOT a lot of time to accomplish much. PLUS, there is quite a bit of pressure in the idea that i can do whatever i want because what if whatever i want doesn't work? that's public failure and i'm not so good at that. (remind me to tell you about the time i melted down at all-state tryouts my junior year.)

here are a few ideas so far . . . my sister came up with a few. which of these do you like or think would work?  any other suggestions? leave 'em in the comment section.  (sorry this is kind of like my brainstorming!)

• community service: this is DAUNTING because i don't really know how it would work with a) students who didn't necessarily volunteer for the class and b) 6 weeks does not sound like a lot of time to get much organized and accomplished.  could be cool because i would let the kids create the curriculum, which is something i have ALWAYS wanted to do.
  
• leadership: i don't really know what this would involve, other than all of the cool team-building games we played at church camp and stu-co things.
  
• humanities (music appreciation, art appreciation, performing art appreciation, etc.): resources would be a challenge here as would limited access to field trips.  but, this is something really lacking at my school and something important to me AND i could so do something on american music . . . 
  
• media awareness: this might be stepping on the toes of another class, so i'd have to see.
  
• careers: ditto the above.
• current events: this would be fun for ME because it would be different every single six weeks and God knows i can't do repetition.
• another creative writing class: because i am selfish.

AUGH.  so see.  the consequences of a 2.5 productivity rating are manifesting now . . . how am i going to get all of my other stuff done as well as plan a curriculum next week???

p.s.  SYTYCD???  ANYONE?  funky town is represented tonight!  :)

frenetic thoughts on this, my first official day of summer: a bulleted list

• so i finished my 7th year of teaching on thursday.  it should have been my 8th, but i took my little detour in 04-05, so i'm behind now.  all in all, it was a pretty good year . . . i love how i always say that in may, but if you had talked to me in february i would have sworn to you that i hated my job and everything involved with it.  but now that the year is done, i'm like, okay.  yeah.  i can totally do this forever.  (totally not saying i will, but that's always how i feel at the end of school.  weird.)
• speaking of 'forever' - i retired my second principal this year.  i've worked in three different school systems and have been really blessed in two of them to be led by people like mr. a and mrs. c., two of the most caring and compassionate individuals i have EVER known.  in both cases, they each worked in public schools for over thirty years.  i can't even fathom that . . . i'm hoping i make it to 10 before i follow another adventure somewhere else. 
• speaking of somewhere else - as a lot of you know, i was kind of looking to move to a different school next year.  two very unique possibilities popped up at about the same time, so i thought i would explore them.  as i told my principal, me looking into moving had absolutely nothing to do with my school now.  i actually am very content where i am. (stop laughing.  really.  i found out it's possible for me to achieve!)  but, i just felt like neither of these two possibilities were things i could ignore (one was teaching with melissa at her school and another was moving up to a high school in oklahoma to work with joy - both are things i would love to do at some point), so i dove right in.  for the last couple of months, my whole prayer has been for God to make it very clear to me where i need to be next year and that i would go there.  (sometimes my selfishness gets in the way and i don't really pay attention to that kind of "stuff," thus the request for clarity.)  i suppose you can't get much clearer than not hearing back from either option, can you?  God cracks me up sometimes.  so.  i'm sticking around for at least one more year and i am good with that.  from what i can tell, next year's bunch of incoming 8th graders will probably lead to a lot more prayerful conversations, though . . .
• my thoughts are actually much more organized - and WAY longer - than i thought they would be when i sat down to write . . . maybe i should change the title of this blog?  it's not really turning out to be frenetic.  but dude.  i love that word.
• so every summer, i make a list of resolutions.  i'm MUCH better at sticking to these than i am to anything i come up with in january.  the two i'm most excited about are de-branding my bathroom (trust me, more on this to come) and hanging out at a coffee shop or the library at least 4 afternoons a week to actually WRITE.  i've decided i am going to have to leave my house to avoid distractions, so i can actually accomplish something.  
• my complex better figure out the pH balance at the pool this summer . . . my skin STILL smells like chlorine from earlier today and it has been scrubbed and polished since then.

and now i want one . . .

so this afternoon i was at the WRAP club (writing, reading, and poetry) meeting.  i 'help' sponsor this group of 5 or 6 kiddos.  i say 'help' because i think my main function is to get them off topic and frustrate the other sponsor.  i seem to be pretty good at fulfilling this role.  it's actually pretty easy - they are 7th, 8th, and 9th graders, after all.  

seriously.  

all i have to do is utter two words: edward cullen and ZIP!  they are off.  usually, i like to utter those words with a few others like: "is a loser" (smart, i know) or if i'm feeling really verbose and daring, "sucks."  (if you have no idea what i am talking about, i secretly envy you.)

anyway.  today, i kept them away from the world of forks and bella and edward and JACOB! somehow i got them talking about the names they chose for their spanish class.  this, in turn, got me thinking about the name i chose for spanish waaaaaaay back in 10th grade.  i shared it with my kiddos this afternoon.  they didn't really understand my maniacal cackling when i remembered what i had chosen.  perhaps you will.  it's a little telling.

margarita.

oh geez. 

snow day? (be prepared for a really long post - sorry!)

snow day? in texas? in APRIL? um. yes. you read that right.

so last night around 3:15 i woke up because the blinds in my bedroom were blowing like crazy. i got up to close the window and to look outside where i could see almost nothing because the rain and wind were both so intense. being a good little okie, i knew it was time to go turn on my tv and check out the forecast, just like ol' jim giles/gary england taught me to do. at this point, i wasn't panicked. all i needed to do was look at a map to see where the red was. so, i stumbled out to the living room and tried to turn on the tv. the important word there, is TRIED. no electricity? affirmative.

about that same time the rain started pelting my windows so hard it sounded like rocks were pounding on the glass. lucy, being the smarty pants she is, went and grabbed her leash and brought it to me, all excited that i was up and that maybe just maybe i was going to take her on a random walk in the middle of the night. i would have laughed at her, but that's when i started hearing the sirens going off. they were so faint, that at first i was more disgusted with the city of "b" because there was no way people were going to hear those if they were sleeping. (i've since learned that they were the sirens from next town over.) anyway. THAT is when the panic set in and i put on jeans and shoes, grabbed lucy, the flashlight, my cell, all of the pillows from the guest room and my room, and all of the blankets on my bed and the guest bed and headed to my closet to wait things out. i live on the second floor, which FREAKS ME OUT during storms, especially since last spring when another tornado went RIGHT OVER MY ROOF. i've always been nervous about big storms, but over the last few years that nervousness has turned into plain fear. so . . . lucy and i stayed huddled in my closet until about 4 when i couldn't hear the rain anymore.

after that i tried to sleep, but i kept waking up. my alarm went off at 545 and i checked to see if the power was back on. it wasn't, so i figured, why get up now? i'm not going to be able to do my hair or anything, so i reset my alarm for 630 and finally went to sleep. right before the next alarm was suppose to go off, my cell phone rang. yep. "snow day." :) according to the call, my school had damage from the storm and wasn't going to be opening. she didn't know whether or not it was the whole district. sooooooo, i got up to try the tv again. still no power. (this being cut off from the rest of the world REALLY sucks. i need to get a radio with batteries for the future.) i called my parents and my mom proceeded to read me internet news for dfw for the next 30 minutes.

my power finally came on about 945ish. WHEE! i decided to go drive around to see if there really was damage up at school and if they needed help cleaning. luckily, it looks like my school is okay, but getting there was pretty crazy. below are the pictures . . .


this is the building behind mine at my apartment complex. lucy and i discovered this this morning when i took her out. i couldn't figure out what it was that had been ripped off of the building . . .

. . . until i saw this when i was on the other side a little bit later on. that is a CHIMNEY!!!

look how blue the sky is now! it's a perfect texas april afternoon.

i was driving my normal route to work, but it was closed off because of the power lines that had fallen. while i was out running around, i ran into melissa's hubby, kelley. he works for at&t. he told me that all he was doing today was driving around and going to their locations (i'm guessing he meant boxes and stuff) that were without power and running them off of his generator. in my area alone he said there 1000 locations without power.

this is the street i turn on to get into the neighborhood where my school is. you can't really tell from the picture, but this tree is covering the entire yard and has landed on the roof of the house. all of the street signs were down over in this area, too. (this is where the sirens were going off.)

this is the house that my classroom window looks out on. the house next door to it had even worse damage, but they were outside cleaning, so i thought it would be tacky to take a picture.

all of this was just from winds!!! craziness!!! the neighborhoods and apartments around my school are in pretty bad shape, which makes me wonder about my kiddos. i didn't see any of them wandering around outside to check on, though. i have a feeling most of that area is still without power, though, because all of the stores and restaurants along the main road were closed up and police were out all around making sure there were no problems. it's a pretty weird day, to be quite honest. i know that it could have been much, much worse and am so thankful it wasn't. but i have to admit that the constant police, ambulance, and fire engine sirens that are going off makes all of this pretty unnerving.

from what it looks like, a lot of you - dear amigos and familia - are going to be dealing with weather today and tomorrow. i'll be thinking of you as i sit here and twiddle my thumbs . . .