18 hours and Alain de Botton

This is the essayist I saw tonight. In person, he’s witty, polished, and has great presence. I was so excited to see him on the schedule for Seattle Arts and Lectures, and he didn’t disappoint. His 50-minute talk went by like 5. I would seriously listen to his accent and ideas for 5 hours.

But before that happened, this happened:

6:30am Wake up
7:30am Take A to school
8:30am Teach at the intermediate school (easy day, didn’t embarrass S too much)
3:30pm Pick up A
4:00pm Take kids to S’s guitar recital (fun times, she did great)
5:30pm Go home, finish making dinner, pack dinner for B and me
6:00pm Leave for the 6:30 ferry
7:30pm Attend Alain de Botton’s lecture at UW
10:05pm Get the ferry back home
10:40pm Run home alone along dark pathways, get scared silly and arrive home breathless, sweaty and with seared lungs.
11:30pm Cuddle up in bed and let my mind churn and churn and churn:

So many frogs at night
It feels like everything’s been done before
Maybe some mint tea would be nice
Up too late again
But look, we’re one of the first generations to navigate non-religious life
Smartphone flashlights are not bright enough
There are definitely gaps in the secular world

The path along the harbor is beautiful and weirdly frightening at night
There’s so much that we mean to do, but we just don’t get around to it
Things jump and quiver in the dark
That’s what religions do well; they infuse life with ritual
Running must kill hunger, motion being its own food
Actually it was all the chocolate

Food, drink, music, art, these are all important aspects of religion
It’s late and getting later
The kids are all asleep now
All the major faiths structure time
An outer structure for an inner phenomenon

bashful flimsy compromise

A couple of days ago, I chaperoned A. and the rest of the 2nd graders on their field trip to the Pacific Science Center. The butterfly house was the focus of the outing, the 2nd graders just having cared for their own Painted Lady caterpillars. We also saw the 3-D IMAX movie Born to be Wild. It’s quite good, even more so if you’ve got a 2nd grade hand to hold during the show.

This one rode around on A’s head like a living crown.

One of the kids in my little group was a natural with my camera–she got this shot of a butterfly hanging out on my sweater.

A’s 2nd grade vocab papers are cracking me up:

My akschage student mgiht be bashful. That’s right, we’re hosting an exchange student from China, who arrives in less than a week! I guess A. was listening when the coordinator met with us and explained that she might be shy at first because everything would be so new.

I had a flimsy balloon. The little “pop” is my favorite part. It’s brilliant to have students draw pictures of their new vocab words.

Sometimes my parents compromise. Best one yet: the dialogue balloons of me and B saying, “Aa!” and “Aag!” Nice to know we’re modeling mature, evolved methods of compromise.

Last Leg

This was my fortune from lunch a couple of weeks ago–I’ve been saving it for news re: the TPA.

Today’s mail contained the official letter: I passed UW’s Teacher Preparation Assessment! I can officially be a teacher!
With one week left of student teaching, I’m awash in relief (work-life balance to be restored), sadness (relationships ending), and hopefulness (sussing out job prospects). It’s been a stressful, joyful year of toting an overstuffed backpack, early ferry crossings, and non-stop work and learning. Here’s to the last year of the masters program!

Student teaching 12, 13, 14

I taught Mon, Wed, and Friday this week.

Wednesday went really well, and I was on cloud 9 after some great discussions around Hamlet in the 12 AP classes. Thursday I was exhausted and stayed home with a migraine. Today, Friday, I still have half a headache but still taught for my 2nd formal observation. Wednesday was no fluke! I’ve got the hang of how long it takes to do things, and I’m slowly learning to ask the students probing questions rather then tell them what I want them to know.

Teaching from a knowledge-construction theory is hard.

And I’m learning things about myself. In a teaching setting, my type-A personality traits tend to show like a poorly-adjusted slip–I’m a planner, and I like things just so. At the same time, my favorite thing of all is when an interesting conversation actually takes off. It feels a little like flying.

58 teaching days left.

Student teaching 11

8 hours of sleep.

Short periods of 35 min. each today because of the snow. 1st and 3rd periods were fine; 2nd was CT teaching, bless his soul. I am coming to see a myriad of ways my CTs are lovely, funny, well-meaning, and resourceful.

62 teaching days left.

The #4 bus’s snow route is quite circuitous so as to avoid the hills, but it still beats walking and it still got me to school by 7:45am.

By 11am, I was en route back to Bainbridge, as UW classes were cancelled for the day. Pho for lunch–and I was awfully glad to have the warm and savory fortification in my belly when I walked home from the ferry. If Kitsap transit shuts down often, this may be the winter I live off Pho.

Student teaching 7,8,9,10

Monday, Nov. 15:

Teaching the 9th graders was hard. Not a complete disaster. But 4 students really just defied me. They were talking and turned around during silent reading time and during the PP I did. One student in particular responded very poorly to my requests to her to turn around, get out her notebook and her book, and stop talking. She said, “Whhhyyy aaaaare yooooou taaaaaalking so sloooowly? Is it because I’m remedial? You’re acting like I’m retarded. My mom said I could correct you if you talked really slowly to me.”

I am really taken aback by this idea that she has that I talk really slowly to them. It’s probably a combination of being talked over, and hence pausing for attention, and choosing my words carefully.

Wednesday, Nov. 17

All-day field trip to see Hamlet by the Seattle Shakespeare Company. Intimate theatre, stunning set choices, and my favorite casting of Prince Hamlet ever. Darragh Kennan, you are brilliant.

The students were great. Really enjoyed my day.

Thursday, Nov. 18

Frustrating day with the 9th graders. I ran a lit circle that sort of imploded. I did a PP that engaged the students (yay, points for me) but then I lost them again toward the end of 10 minutes.

Friday, Nov. 19

So tired. 9th graders okay. I’m just avoiding walking by the one student’s desk altogether. I’ve worked out what I’ll have to say to her if (when?) she is verbally aggressive toward me in the coming week. I read several students’ autobiographical essays, and I feel so much hope and worry for them.

63 more teaching days left.

Student teaching 6

Friday, November 12

6 1/2 hours of sleep. 67 more teaching days left.

Another good day. I was nervous about the 2nd period 9th graders, like wake-up-in-the-night-in-dread nervous. But it went quite well. CT decided to give them the AP 11th graders’ warm-up, which required some deep thinking rather than their usual daily oral language warm-up, which is fixing the grammar in a short sentence. This time it was a quote from Barbara Kingsolver: “Art is the antidote that can call us back from the edge of numbness, restoring the ability to feel for another.” Two questions followed this, and the 9th graders dug in early and deep–a classic example of giving a remedial class more to chew on and seeing the heads perk up. Nearly brought tears to my eyes.
Except I was still shaking in my boots over the prospect of 2 full hours with the class.

After the warm-up, I gave them reading and writing time. They are tasked with making three annotations per chapter, and then turning those annotations into a 1/2 page paragraph. They worked for 40 + minutes silently. I couldn’t believe it. Then, we shared annotations and formed two lit circles. They actually worked this time. The kids were open, grappling with ideas in Part-Time Indian, responding to each other in civil discourse.

I am realizing that my CT’s too-cool-for-school persona masks a deep commitment to rigor. He said about the lit circles: I don’t know if what we did here was kosher or okay, but let’s keep doing it. Let’s keep talking about the book.

Student teaching 4 and 5

Student teaching 4: Monday, November 8

Running on 6 hours of sleep. 69 more teaching days left.

I taught AP 12 1st period–since I had overplanned, it was simply an extension of my previous day. Makes it easy. I really enjoyed that class.

I taught the 9th graders 2nd period and it was awful. The substitute told me he was 2 minutes away from calling an administrator to deal with the class. He didn’t have to, but the lit circles were something out of Dante’s circles of hell.

Student teaching 5: Wednesday, November 10

8 hours of sleep. 68 teaching days left.

I loved this day–I had the thought that I could do this and be fulfilled. That thought is very rare. I didn’t have to present anything, and it was a 1-3-5 period day, so no 9th graders. I read Melville’s story Benito Cereno. Amazing–I’d rate it among the top five best stories I’ve read.

Student teaching 3

71 teaching days left.

5 hours of sleep last night.

Formal observation today.

I did okay. No terrible behavior issues. I planned too many things for one period, and that’s something I consistently do. I need to scale back the number of things within one lesson.

2nd period had a sub, which meant I was the teacher. Really hard.

So sleep-deprived.

So relieved it’s the weekend. I brought home a stack of essays to grade.

Student Teaching 2

72 days left.

5 hours of sleep last night.

Co-taught 2nd period 9th graders a risky lesson on stereotypes by way of introduction to Sherman Alexie’s YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Of nine students in the class, only two had not read it in middle school. It’s required reading in both middle school and high school due to communication problems in the school district. This is not the only book that is on both reading lists.

It’s such a small class, with half the students out for a remedial reading program. I gave them gum today.

I stepped into some deep % during the stereotype discussion. Teaching is hard.

A better day than yesterday, with methods and assessment classes this afternoon. I love being at the university campus.