i have heard the mermaids singing, each to each

It's almost 9.30pm - a full hour after I went to bed yesterday - so this shall be brief. I thought a quick note was, however, in order: Welcome back to the school year! Two weeks into the semester and part of me is still adjusting; part of me feels as though I never quite left my little windowless 228.

But today we were working with figurative language, speaker, and mood with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." First, if you have never read this poem or haven't done so in the last year, please cease reading this and read it immediately.

Second, except for in 6th hour (which was catastrophically bad for whatever reason), junior classes were engaged and intrigued. They also readily and excitedly read the first part of "Krapp's Last Tape" by Samuel Beckett. (Inspired by Eliot's work, it's a brilliant one-man show also readily available online)
I'm not sure if it's the Dante epigraph, the ether, the yellow cat fog, or the perfumed dresses that got 'em. I think they also enjoyed my imitations of crabs and disembodied shoes in reviewing synecdoche. 3rd hour, traditionally a meddlesome class, listened in rapt silence as I read the first part of the poem. When I paused, a student said softly, "Please keep going." They also were the most enchanted when I had them visualize how I had seen "Krapp's Last Tape" - done by my beloved advisor A. Manley in an old gasworks building. In the winter. Without heat. With one naked bulb, cellophane, and a scratchy tape recorder.

Before I began, however, I had to have a little plug for rereading poetry. I thought it turned out prettily so, as much for my own memory, I'll commit it here: Re-reading poetry is like hiking on DY. It's like hiking in the riverbed that winds up to near the top. You know how you can find the bits of turquoise in the sand? That is what it is like. DY is always beautiful - a poem is always beautiful - but there is always something else. Something sparkly and precious. And new. To be found in each reading.

Happy Friday!
Over and out.

in the wake of the Koyem:shi

I'm headed off to aul PodjaQ in a few, but it should be noted: I did it.
I completed my FIRST semester EVER of teaching.

And PhotoBooth / Checkers / our couch saw me through it.
Picture highlights from the week:

Driving back from Pojoaque last Monday - which took an inordinately long, if beautiful time because of the ice-tastic, snowy conditions - I found a completely dark Zuni. It was when I passed the Giant gas station and it too was completely unlit, that I realized. WOW! Desh:kwi is here! Desh:kwi is the time when Zunis fast and reflect on the new year, and it is characterized with no outdoor lighting. It was really very beautiful to see the Village truly looking like a village.

Stranger, however, was when I came home (6ish) to find our house completely dark - but Emily's car was in the driveway. She opened the door for me and let me into our pitch-black house. The dialogue went as follows:

Me: I thought Desh:kwi only meant outdoor lights had to be out --?

Emily: We are strict Sha'lak'o house here.

Me: (laughing) Okay.

Emily: Yeah, the power went out about half an hour ago. 

Me:  Wait, what??

(Desh:kwi starts on the 20th)

This has prompted me to create a list: You Know You're in Zuni When:

• You assume a power outage is, in fact, the advent of a religious holiday.
• You get a stomach ache and suspect that a couple of your students may be cursing you.
• Your petsitter is late because she was making fetishes.
• Your car hood is marked with a weird design and you blame hatikwes (witches)
• Your students give you roasted corn, oven bread, piki bread, hot cheetos, and kool aid seeds as snacks.
• Your students' parents coordinate the coming of the gods.
• You hear scratching under the house and secretly fear the A:doshle (boogeyman)
• Your scabbed lip is from eating outside and subsequently having a witch suck on it

to be continued. . .

This was us midweek. I think this was Tuesday, when I realized that I needed to make up my unit tests, finish putting in late work, create a detailed unit plan for UNM, finish reading journals, and I would get 86 portfolios the next day. As you can see, a soporific Checkers was most sympathetic.

Me with one such portfolio. It's a little hard to believe that as of 8.30am this morning, I had: successfully printed and distributed the December edition of the T-Bird Times, graded ALL the portfolios (including some real dogs and REAL gems), given unit tests (a bluebook and a persuasive essay on whether Zuni should get a casino [please no]), had my sophomores make vegetable fried rice, did a day of humor and a day of Edwin Arlington Robinson & Edgar Lee Masters (when in doubt, have students read a "Luke Havergal" one act you've written in college), and. . . well. Isn't that enough?

Now off and away - Pojoaque today, Indiana tomorrow, and Iowa for Christmas!

Over and out!

Breastfeeding and Backwards Planning

Today, I called the Zuni Indian Hospital.
Nurse: Hello, Indian Health Services, Zuni. How may I help you?
Me: Hi! I was just wondering if there were any childbirth education classes offered here?
Nurse: Hmm... I think so? ... Let me transfer you over to OB!
Me: Thanks!
Nurse: No problem!

(Gee, this is going well!)

OB Nurse: OB.
Me: Hi, I was just transferred over here. I was wondering if you have any childbirth education classes?
OB: What?
Me: (repeat first line, only a bit more slowly)
OB: What? You havin' a baby?
Me: Um, no. I'm a doula in the area and so I was compiling a list of references.
OB: (long pause) I mean. Yeah. I think we do. It's the weekend.
Me: Yeah?
OB: Yeah. The administrative staff will be back tomorrow. Call Women's Health at 541.
Me: 541. Great! I'll do that. Thanks.
OB: See, it's the weekend.
Me: Yep. Thank you!
OB: Bye.

Ah, gotta love the roundabout.
Thanksgiving break has been a great time to dread returning to teaching, spend some wonderful cooking / chilling / Dog-Show watching with the parentals, and re-kickstarting my doula training. In the melee of, well, everything, my certification work had been postponed.

But as of today, I finished a Breastfeeding Basics course! It was a free - and excellent! - survey course aimed at informing medical practitioners (and more peripherally midwives / doulas / mothers) on the science, troubleshooting, and general universal advantages of breastfeeding. I WAY recommend it if you think you'll be breastfeeding any time soon :). Though you can complete the course in a linear fashion, it also allows you to skip around and read on topics you have more interest in. www.breastfeedingbasics.org . Also, if you have any questions on jaundice, the advantages of breastfeeding, or the composition of human breast milk, feel free to drop a line!
This completion has also re-kickstarted my confidence in marketing myself as a doula (especially as a volunteer one). Breastfeeding was the area I felt weakest in at my friends' birth last winter. Now I feel comfortable with general technique (more than half the areola, tongue under nipple, belly to belly!) as well as the science / literature behind it. I'm sure after I finish Spiritual Midwifery and The Breastfeeding Mother's Companion (my two current doula books in addition to the school Red Scarf Girl and Atonement for leisure), I'll feel even more confident. Now, to the best practice there is: working with mamas and babies!
Oh, a quick note: especially after grooving with Ina May, the Breastfeeding course seems a little sterile. If you don't know Ina May, you should. She's the psychedelic Nana midwife of the movement - her Spiritual Midwifery, which is her earlier, and hippier version of her Guide to Childbirth, is part Bible, part manual, and part oxytocin trip. All of her recommendations and farflung opinions are anecdotal, but underpinned with pure science. I like this comfortable, inductive style; it makes it feel more intimate and woman-centered. The breastfeeding course, while working towards the same end, made me feel more clinically distanced. The focus was certainly a medical one - they said clearly at the beginning that breastfeeding was an ideal process, but then spent the rest of the time troubleshooting the process as if it were rigging up a carburetor. I suppose the main difference was rhetorical? It's unimportant, just a note I had.
Meanwhile, I also looked up some national volunteer doula programs. There are a couple really neat ones, especially in San Francisco. Hmm. . .

Also: the AKC Dog Show made me feel as though we should probably have a Rez Dog show here in Zuni (Cheerleading fundraiser). The categories would be: car-chasing, siren-barking, cutest mutt, ugliest mutt, will-actually-bite-you (as supplied by Emily), and rezziest.

You know you want to enter.


ONE last note from Thanksgiving: First off, it was a delightfully lethargic day. It began with a big big big breakfast at the Inn at Halona (we're talking eggs, hashbrowns, pancakes, fruit, and tea) with the padres. Our breakfast the day before was shared by a cool film couple who encouraged my theatrical pursuits and left their info in case I'd ever want to teach the Inupiak up in Alaska. Hmm, as Emily said, "probably next week."
Anywho, breakfast and round one of cooking back at ye olde trailer #5. Then back to Halona for afore-mentioned dog show. Then cooking and eating and relaxing. We - parents choice, promise! - also watched "Imagine Me and You." If you haven't seen it, it's a DELIGHTFUL lez romcom.
I had never thought of myself as remotely conservative - I'm probably akin to a baby-loving, tree-hugging mystic Bolshevik - but I realized queer theory wise, I'm happily traditional; I once heard "Imagine Me and You" for being criticized as utterly unrealistic. Well, then. I'll let you know when I see a Romantic Comedy that IS based in fact. It normalized a lesbian relationship in the way that "The Kids Are All Right" tried but failed. Go, "Imagine," go!
Moving on, in preparation for the early arising and trip to Amtrak Gallup, we got in the car to pop back to Halona -- only to find our one route blocked by the Christmas / Thanksgiving / Shalako night parade. I mean, of course. So, we walked behind the parade - blaring Christmas tunes and weaving through all of Zuni - until Halona was in sight. We said goodnight, but I walked back to the Giant gas station so I could see the first part of the parade.

One image: religious elk dancers, in full regalia (antlers, turquoise, tall cloth boots, prayer canes) dancing to a drum circle. BUT, the song the drum circle was chanting? A Zuni language version of "Good King Wenceslaus." The antlers of the dancers? Hung with tinsel. The boots? Jingling with jingle bells. The prayer canes? Striped like candy canes. Holla back, hybrid identity!

This past month (and then some) has been such a blur - it feels like practically no time has elapsed since I wrote my Police entry, while also Halloween seems like eons ago. Go figure.
Halloween was swell, though, as these pictures provide ample evidence:

Yes, we carved four pumpkins and cadged another. A couple were stolen by errant students, but retrieved from down the drive. And yes, that IS a Zia pumpkin. Yes, it IS awesome.

1. Dramatic reading of "The Raven." Check it out.

2. Yes, curriculum supervisor, I am using the textbook on a daily basis.

3. How good does our ristra look? (a present from the lovely Lyly)

Halloween was professional development - it started out in a spooky scary way learning that I could work the rest of my life in the ZPSD, but only half of my retirement could be collected by a domestic partner (as opposed to 100% by a spouse). Cute, institutionalized bigotry. Cute.

But then the trick-or-treaters came and sang their Halloween song and loved our puppets answering the door, so all was well!

OH, it has also been in the last month that my classroom got up to 92 degrees for about a week. 

I don't think I need to say more than that. It was a time of utter and abject misery where no learning and much frustration was present. 

I must pop off soon to grade my memoirs, my Spider vs. Wasp comics, my accounts of discrimination (so far, they've been well-written and revelatory), and my Sojourner Truth paragraphs, but I need to make note:

VISITING CC LAST WEEKEND WAS AWESOME.

Good. 

I got to see the great "Opiate" twice - I can't tell you how wonderful it was to see THEATRE, and furthermore how delightful it was to sit up in the booth on Friday night. Similarly, attending junior seminar and having Ethiopian food and the BGP and the cast party and "Fire and Brimstone" and brunch and DogTooth and Poor Richards and angelic Ellement and and and -- 

It was an immensely rich weekend, thank you to all.

Also, thank you to all my friends who said, "OMG I LOVE your blog." You've gotten me to resurrect it, albeit with an odd holiday post that's more natural birth than teaching reflections.

After picking my parents up from Amtrak Albuquerque one week ago, we got stuck in crash traffic (http://www.koat.com/news/29818639/detail.html) and it took us 6 hours to get back to Zuni. After a reckless and sleepless CC weekend, this was the icing on the cake. However, thanks to my parents coming in as guest lecturers, I got sleep and my kids sure appreciated the enrichment! My mother taught a ladder of abstraction lecture with apples and my dad brought a poetry-writing workshop. 

By in large, my kids were remarkably focused and respectful; it's not easy to conjure up attentive students the two days before Thanksgiving break. My 3rd hour crazies were still crazy for my mother, but simmered down and were nonissues with my father -- this confirmed my suspicions that those three guys almost certainly have issues with female authority figures. Hmm, hard to know what to do with that.

But we got some beautiful work especially in poetry form, but it was also great to see my students get warmed up and engaged into describing their homely, Halona apples. JC gave a lovely note to my dad, and MN became one of "Doc's" biggest fans from the moment he held the door open for us as we walked up Monday morning.

**At this point, I'd like to summarize what I've done teaching-wise for the last month. Then, I realized that this would be a fruitless venture. At the end of a week, it almost seems too big to condense, let alone a month. I'll leave it at this: scary story contests, dramatizations, reading circles, tearing apart and writing about osage oranges, Making Meaning (thanks to Professor Pence, the awesome master teacher), banned book projects, another issue of the T-Bird Times (plus community distribution), newsjournals, peer revisions, reading reading reading. . . **

More easily:

So, what's on the docket for tomorrow?

My sophomores, in conjunction with Red Scarf Girl, will re-imagine Zuni as if it had a communist cultural revolution and give tours in groups; my journalism kids will read through our survey results of "What are you thankful for?" and prepare for training from documentarian MS for an oral history project; and my juniors will begin Cather's "Wagner Matinee" in groups in preparation to study the complexity of hard-bitten frontier women. My cheerleaders have typical MWF practice, but also games T&Th. Oh, boy.

All in all, it's looking to be a good week! Now, to gather up the gumption to do it.

Over and out.

and sometimes it is like the Police. . .

and every little thing [you] do is magic.

Do you see how I plan these entries strategically? I spare you the weepy Wednesdays, the Tear-my-hair-out Thursdays (one day I did actually pull out a few strands of hair in frustration), La Llorona / Moaning Myrtle / banshee on craic imitation days. I spare the reflections to future teachers - "don't do it! run the other way!" - and neglect to attach the furious e-mails sent to loved ones of my futility in this profession.

Because, as Donald Barthelme says (I just re-read "The School"), "You needn't be frightened (though I am often frightened) and that there is value everywhere."

These few days' value:

N.B's burst of inspiration, as strange but as brilliant as the "fitful flame of the bivouac" (on our Walt Whitman day)
J.C.'s beautiful poem, "Blighted," and his beautiful Patch of Ground and his beautiful symbolic drawing he brought to class just to show me.
My muhanna (a Zuni word meaning excelling / being kind in all) cheerleader K.K. smiling and giving me the thumbs up from her full tribal regalia during our homecoming parade.
C.P. consistently turning in evidence of her brilliance as a writer and her dedication to motherhood.
A.B.'s face lighting up like Sha'lak'o flames when I showed her just HOW excellent her essay on O. Henry was.
M.C. laughing with me when I suggested ways we could make her "Jersey Shore" article more school-appropriate.
My sophomores exclaiming that, today, class was SO FUN! These are the same who text constantly to check in on homework and also to invite me to go dancing with the class at the Zuni Community Hall.
My veteran colleague leaning over conspiratorially today and saying, "They really like you, you know?"
L.W. telling me quietly but earnestly that she loved her Emily Dickinson poem, "There is a Solitude of Space."

Today the air smelled of smoke; last night, of the silence of stars and roasted corn. It's a lovely place, here. It's a lovely place.

Over and out.

confessions of a bibliophile

My at-home work productivity has been less than optimal this week. Then again, it is homecoming week, and mayhap I should cut myself some slack? I think that this "slacking off" can be attributed to 1. sheer exhaustion, 2. stress-induced exhaustion, and 3. A reading addiction.

Honestly, after a day of talking about literature and reading c. 40 journals a day and reading / editing / grading papers daily, what do you think I choose to do with my free time? Yes, yes, you're right. I read. 

I haven't read this much in years! It's a delectable, if perplexing, feeling. I have also become wildly addicted to audio books - wildly!!! It began with the GORGEOUS and simple beauty of The Poisonwood Bible. Given my frequent (and delightful) forays over to Pojoaque, I have a lot of driving time - enough to listen to a 500-page book, apparently. It began as just a diversion for the drive - but then 94.5 got sold to the Navajo country station. Suddenly, my morning top 40 fix became Tim McGraw with Dineh dictation. Scandal! So then my mornings became audio book, and then quick day drives. . . in its current manifestation, I generally sit in my driveway for 10-15 minutes listening. I finished the beautiful Kingsolver, whipped through the YAL Esperanza Rising in one weekend away, and now am 2/3 through My Name is Memory - fun, if occasionally hokey, trip through time with the traveling pants' Ann Brashares. It's an ambitious book, and doesn't entirely succeed at it, but telling of a 1500-year-old love affair with teen angst, WWI, and amorous Anatolia makes for one fun trip. She's clearly hung up with the idea of our souls and how they invariably and mysteriously make their "own society." (We also tackled Emily Dickinson today with the juniors to mixed success) I'd like to pick old Ann's brain about this latest book.

But I'm also reading books. Two books, actually. I finally got a copy of Angela's Ashes, a book I've been meaning to read forever. If you are in the same boat as I was, GET IT. Now. Talk about an ambitious and inspiring book that absolutely succeeds - and exceeds, and re-creates, and and and. . . I'm, I'd say, roughly 3/4 through that one. 

And the third book, which I began yesterday but am already on page 70, is Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters. It's an Annie On My Mind for the 21st century - truer to mainstream high school, certainly, but not nearly so sweet and innocent. Good, though, and a good one for HS libraries. It rings true with themes of sexuality and bigotry in the largely-intolerant / insecure microcosm of high schoolers.

There's been an impossible amount to recount (rhyme!), but suffice to say that things are fine. Cheerleaders are fussy about our number of uniforms (we'll look a little slapdash come Friday) but generally a happy, endeared melee. In journalism, we had a visit and interviewed Josh Lucio - who works at the Zuni Education and Career Development Center and who helps run College Night. Our paper should go out next Friday. (oh, boy, cross fingers!)  

Junior English is the Romantics! We finished (sadly) with the Transcendentalists, but not before we took a nature walk last Friday. It was wildly popular, I'm happy to say :) The go-into-nature-and-write reflections I've received have been very good. I'll post excerpts from the best; yes, I certainly covertly Xerox the best papers I receive. 

I still don't know what to do with my pre-AP-ers. About half the class just doesn't read. Like, ever. But I have some absolute gems that make that class a delight to teach. So it remains half dread, half delight. For instance, one student asks me a studied question about irony while another group don't realize that their Tolstoy story (featuring serfs on the steppes) takes place in Russia. Hoh boy. But when I brought in "The Gift of the Magi" and we read it after studying "1000 Dollars" by O. Henry, they loved it. Direct quotes: "That was so dope." "I loved that." "I loved it more." "I loved it the most." Go figure.

A few pictures to end this (already too long post - past my bedtime!):

As part of Spirit Week, today was face paint day. I had none until last hour, when my juniors expressed dismay. I borrowed a tube of paint and led them through our beginning exercises; when they bent over their perplexing Dickinson poems, I quietly painted my hand. Then I whacked it on my face. Then I quietly cleaned off my hands. When I told them to find their poem partner to share thoughts and tone/mood/theme, they got quite the shock :) . Clearly, I told them, I'm the Blue Hand of Isengard.

One benefit of getting my blackboards cleaned one every two weeks or so (like, actually) is the palimpsest utility. This little cabin was originally scenery for a Zuni version of the Devil and Tom Walker - I easily appropriated it for Thoreau, however.

The infamous sign with its addendum.

The newly-coined "Dream Board." After reading an excerpt of "Walden," I sent them forth to write on a sticky the answer to: "What is the direction of your dreams? What is the life you have imagined?" This tied into the selection, the Thoreauan ethos, and also my CC graduation motto.

Less savorily: 

I discovered this gem a couple weeks ago. Surprisingly, the next day I had a wonderfully-successful conversation with my students about it. I began with the question, "Do you know what discrimination is? [definition given] Okay, good good. So, what would racist language sound like? [slurs] What would sexist language sound like? [slurs] What would homophobic language sound like? [giggles and slurs] Okay. Good work. Now I don't know who wrote it and I don't care, but I found this yesterday [read quote]. Now, is this discriminatory language? [overwhelming YES] Yes, thank you. Now, I didn't care so much when I first saw it - people are jerks, right [assenting murmurs] and I've heard it before and I'll hear it again. But then I realized that if anyone in this room had said this about any of my students, I would have gone apesh** on you. Do you understand how utterly inappropriate this is? In school, we need to feel safe. I don't care if you're gay or straight, Zuni or Navajo or white or black, I don't care how much money your family makes. This is a school. We are here to learn and celebrate our identities, not feel ashamed. If we are ashamed, we are scared, we cannot learn. And this is a school. I never, ever want to see this sort of language used against anyone in the school." (Vehement nods, smiles, rapt attention) 

"Okay. Go finish up your stuff."

Only rainbows after rain, as they say. I found this little guy on my board this evening after practice:

Sweet reading, Friends!

Over and out!

Transformational Change

First off, I'm not going to have any pictures this blog post. APOLOGIES! Given liability and all that jazz, I'm not allowed to post the uber cute shots of my cheerleaders. So I understand if you stop reading here.

All I can provide are snapshots of words.
First, me: I'm sitting on our NEW COUCH which we got from friend / co-worker Zowie, a 4th-grade teacher at Dowa Y'alanne elementary. It takes up a large part of our living room, but has effectively more than doubled our seating - so we're not complaining. I'm wearing a black tank top, blue jeans, and my Kokopelli earrings. I'm mildly disappointed about not making it to the etch-a-sketchy Zuni carnival this weekend; but given that I've finished all planning, grading, chores, and had a delightfully romantic / fun weekend to boot, I'm not one to complain.
[we're talking a boisterous win for cheerleaders and football team alike on Friday, sleeping in two days in a row, home-made-and-eaten mashed potato burritos & breakfast burritos & spoon-scooped kiwi & corn flakes, crazy UNM class (that featured me writing a crazy immigration narrative as a class assignment - see footnote1 for full text) & subsequent Goodwill hunting that produced a Tiki bowl, books, a nightstand ($3.99!), AND a cute dress,  and supper at the gay hippie commune Ancient Way (we showed up late and without reservations, and they STILL fed us <3), the film "Everybody's Fine," and all in all some R&R&S (Rest & Relaxation & Snuggling)]

Outside: dark. It's roughly 8.15pm, and I'm headed bedways soonish. If it were day, or you had the cat-lamp eyes of the A:doshle (Zuni boogeyman), you could see the makeshift start of our chicken fence, some squash blossoms with their eyes shut against the dark, the beans' little purple fists, and the wild plentitude of Zuni stars.

My lesson plan book: scribbled up to the gills and ready for action. Dr. Faustus, my blue sea dragon puppet, is coming into action when I model good think tank / fish bowl discussion techniques for Fahrenheit 451 later this week. My juniors are working with Ben Franklin, Sandra C, Olaudah Equiano, and Ms. Phillis Wheatley. Journalism is the hectic amp up to paper release on Friday!

One more snapshot, this one into the past:
The Wednesday before last:  the teaching day, though only a half day, went well: I began with a Examining Student Work specialist, analyzing essays from the English department, so I had to prepare a sub lesson for my journalism students. Then a symbolism lesson for the juniors - featuring Vanitas, Zia signs, and Coldplay - and a close-reading of figurative language with Ray Bradbury for the sophomores. When the 12.45 bell rang, I sighed a great sigh and then began to grade and read the dialogue journals. The time flew. Then 3.30-5, all the cheerleaders gathered and ran and did sit-ups and such and I tagged along and then ran over to greet the FAMILIES of the cheerleaders. Picture me, barefoot, in little boy shorts, and a pink cutoff shirt that says, "Embrace Today" with scimitars. Picture them, many of them school board members (and the superintendent!!!), looking like the graceful women of Zuni. Picture the meeting going very well! After that, it was whisking to one of our HS portables for the grand opening of the parents' centre - where students / families alike can come to study and use computers after school. I ate, schmoozed with the women of Zuni some more, and then dashed back to ZHS proper. Why? College night! Every Wednesday, a group of volunteers teaches a workshop to help kids get oriented to the college search / application process. So I helped a score of kids create CollegeBoard profiles, snarfed some cheese and fruit, and then finished grading. Then I went home. It was barely 8.30.
I went to bed.
_________
So, you see, while I've been out I haven't entirely been a layabout ;)

Overall, teaching goes all right. I find it - although I know, in the Dan Savage fashion, it does "get better" after the first year - overwhelmingly stressful and exhausting. A letter from a family friend / friend's mother today said that she "felt for [me] in the crucible of [my] first year of teaching." Especially given that she's a scientist and knows well the physical properties of crucibles, I think that that's an excellent description.
Even so, it doesn't stop me from, on a daily basis, figuring out how my talents might better be used - either for my students or for my own health. I've gone through librarian, high school counselor, reading interventionist, and my two personal favorites: part-time drama teacher (yes!) and / or high school nursery worker. If the last, I could read to the students' babies CONSTANTLY and condition their infant minds to respect teachers and value hard intellectual work.
You see, it comes down to that. I feel like the base of the educational crisis in this country sits uneasily on its tenet of teacher disrespect - our profession isn't valued by the upper echelons of society even as it is spurned by our lower-class students. The middle class merrily maintains, "those who can't do, teach."
OF COURSE race and class are huge, institutionalized, almost-insurmountable odds to combat on a nation-wide educational basis. This reflection seeks, if anything, to reaffirm - and not demur - the efforts of TFA. However, I feel if we had transformational change in terms of societal attitudes towards teaching, the results would be astronomical.
Think of it this way. Even if a kid doubts her own ability, her teacher tells her, "you can do it! try!" And, because she was raised to respect and obey teachers, she complies and gives it a shot. Much to her surprise, she can do it! Her confidence in herself heightens as her respect in her teacher stays constant.
I know it's a blue sky scenario - but I feel that having kids be willing to try for my sake (and then for theirs) would make my job roughly 1000000000 times easier.

Thinking of this sort - of the transformational change I'd like to see in society - makes me miss the days when one could go places without a degree and even without a diploma. Again, I'm not saying that any one of my kids can't graduate. I am saying that some people, regardless of race / sex / age / ability, are not "school people." They're smart, they're driven, they're delightful people - but school is not the right venue for them, for whatever reason. Now, I feel like a lot of my students think they're this sort of person and actually are not, but it seems a shame that they lose tremendous credence if they don't have a diploma. The times they are a changin'.
I'm not being so coherent; it's clearly time to hit the hay. But I'll try again later to articulate this thought. It has something to do with the "olden days," something to do with the future, something to do with farmers, and something to do with monks. In this day and age, with 20% or so of even BA-holding youngsters unemployed, our monasteries still age with no vocations; our farms go to seed or worse, to Monsanto seed; our youngsters without BAs are forgotten entirely on the rez, in the cities, in the suburbs.
What to do? What to do?

Over and out, Sleeping Beauties.

....
ps. Okay, I lied about the pictures. As to not end on such a low note:
(note the spray-painted blue & gold hair, thanks to cheerleader Jamie E.)

And, if you were wondering, here is footnote 1:

(I went overboard, but c'est la vie. The assignment, which we then analyzed with a rubric and compared to student work, was to write a journal entry about an immigrant coming to America and seeing the statue of liberty)

That’s it, then, that’s it. With me knowing the bloody English language and all, me a young available thing, not mangled into a life a limping like Paddy Brennan at the mill or half blind and all stupid like Mary Keenan – she who the sisters didn’t even want to take when she came a beggin’ at their door over in Killarney, I thought they’d take me here.

            America. Feck. Everybody, all their French diseases and dropping off limbs and all, can come over from cursed London. Makin’ ya English don’t make ya cleaner – ya ever seen da feckin’ town o’ Liverpool? But the way ya hear ‘em talkin’ you’d think their shite was gold or summat.

            But I ain’t English.

            When the old English king kicked all us Catholics outta Dublin he said – well, me granddaddy and all said he said – to hell, or to Connaught. So we went to Connaught – went out to Inis Oírr and cobbled shoes and grew our bloody crops on the kelp and the sand. Me great great gran mammy married, prayed to Jaysus, had 30 kids or so and so on and then it was me.

I was set to have all the kids, do the rosary, darn their five score socks and all but then the potatoes failed. Wouldn’t grow. They plain rotted in the ground. We thought it was the worm or the soil but it was the same soil. There weren’t no worms just slime and black and nuthin’ eatable. We don’t have nuff land to grow nuthin’ but praities – we realized we were all set to die. So we pooled our money, a tuppence or two, and weren’t enough to give me a better life or what have you so I went to Dublin town down to the Red Light district and I sold me wares and now I’m here.

Now I’m at the feet of some big metal woman holdin’ a book and a torch and they’re tellin’ me I can’t come through. Ya big feckin’ hypocrite.

Ain’t I a huddled mass enough? Ain’t I yearnin’ to breathe free? And ‘cause I sold me wares I done sold my ticket outta hell. Months in the black shite of a belly of a boat, months o’ weevil bread and the skeevy men looking at ya bendin’ over the bucked, for what? My family gave all they got to send me to America, I gave my whole bleedin’ body and soul, and they say I can’t go ‘cause I ain’t clean so.

It’s just me and that big ugly metal lady and some men with doctor’s coats and one big fat ugly “no” in their white-teeth mouths.

So where do I go? Connaught’s hell, America’s hell, and I haven’t a half pence in between them.

Where's My Block Break???!

One brief note before the Mobile Home #5 crew goes to the all-corps:

(Teaching last week went well, by the way. More on this later today or tomorrow.)

Thursday morning was the worst morning I've had so far. I was cursing, throwing my sweater (which I slept in in a state of exhaustion), saying things along the lines of "If they want to be lazy and never amount to anything, let 'em! See if I care!" (I actually very much do, dang it), and showering angrily.
Have you ever showered angrily? It's a miserable experience.

Anywho, I got to school and was tiredly preparing the day's handouts / approaches / etc. I looked over at my calendar. Then, I realized: this past Wednesday was the third day of my fourth week.
Namely, it should've been the last day of the block.
My betrayed but now-comprehensible angst: Where's my block break??!

This idea rallied me through the rest of the day, but now I am seriously bemoaning my non-block existence: yesterday was a full, crumby day, though cheering at the football game was pretty swell. But then again, I'm coaching, which has a different ring to it than ASB leader :). But yes, now the all-corps and revamping / creating a day by day Long-Term Plan await me on the other side of this entry.
Glah.

But I was quoting "Smoke Signals" with some 7th hour peeps (who consistently cheer when they come in my classroom, so that's good) and there's at least the prospect of fry bread.

Summary:
1. I NEED BLOCK BREAKS.
2. THANK GOD / ALL KACHINAS FOR FRY BREAD

Over and out, little critters,
Coach Hudson of the Pickle Room