Hope

On days like today I think there's hope for me as a teacher.

If you know me well, you know I never planned to teach. Elementary Ed. teachers teach because they love kids. Higher grade level teachers often end up teaching because they love the subject matter. I love the subject matter.

I also like kids. I really do. But I'm often too sensitive to teach 15 year old snots. It's not that I cry in front of them. But I take things too seriously. I'm not enough of an adult.

Being homeschooled has not helped. It helped my personal education. But I'd never really dealt with many of the problems I see daily. My mom only taught 2-5 students at a time. What the heck is classroom management? I'm still learning.

I cried all last year and swore I wouldn't teach. After all, I hated it. The grading, the administration, 12 year old snots, the whole deal.

But somehow I still go in every day and teach my heart out. And come home at night and grade and plan.

Much of the time it seems the kids don't care. They want the grades but don't want to really learn.

And then yesterday I got a letter saying I had been chosen as one of the Who's Who Teachers of the Year. Mary ( a WONDERFUL sophomore) had nominated me.

And at the parent-teacher conference last night Jeff's mom said she appreciates me wanting to promote him to an honors level class next year. But really could I just make sure he gets into my class? Because don't I teach sophomores too?

And Andrea begged me to burn my Sufjin Stevens CD for her (no, honey, teachers should not break copyright rules.) and told me she thinks I would make a good mom.

Tomorrow may be frustrating. I may want to tear my hair out and work at Sonic, but no one can take away today.

And that gives me hope.

Ah Spring!

Here's a secret: (I went back to school today, and I kinda liked it!)

Spring Break Highlights:
-Going to the Botanical Zoo with Evan and his parents. Watching Evan and his dad run around with their fancy digital cameras trying to capture every songbird, blooming flower, and duck (yes, duck!) in sight.

-Watching Bleak House, the Masterpiece theater miniseries on Dickens' novel. It was 8 hours long! Evan and I watched 4 hours in a single night!!

-Making the chili mentioned in a previous entry. My brother-in-law actually admitted that it was really hot. That's saying something.

-Taking Annie to go play with her best friend from agility and obedience classes. Ruby is a border collie. I think they really are in love. What happens when two female dogs, who are fixed, fall in love? Are they lesbians? Do they have a gender anymore? This puzzles me.

-Sleeping, sleeping, and more sleeping......

9 more weeks till summer!!! And I'm teaching 3 great works of literature at the same time! Heaven or hell for an English major. You decide.

Surreal--The Real Beneath Us All

I saw my life today. At the San Antonio Public Library. A vivid structure that Evan calls "enchilada red." The same color as the eight alarm chili I made with Adam's New Mexico chili powder. Well, the recipe did call for 1/3 cup of chili powder. My sinuses are good and cleared up.

A dance of colored glass begins at the first floor of the library and spirals upward to the ceiling. Over seven hundred pieces of handblown glass interwoven to create a carnival of fragility.

It was on the fifth floor that I saw them. I was loading up my arms with books on the Roaring Twenties and Romeo and Juliet when I saw the couple. Pudgy, he in an over-sized Hawaiian button-up shirt, she with glasses slipping down the end of her nose. She was holding up a Magic Eye book, and he was peering at an image. One of those cacophonies of merging color that supposedly holds a shape within its seeming horizon of pattern.

He was gazing down at it, his sandled feet placed firmly on the carpet as his forehead strained with intensity. I moved on past the couple as I muttered the call numbers of the next book on my list.

I have never been able to see the hidden picture. But show me the twisted glass, and I will hide my mind inside it. Lean my cheek against the cool glass. Let my spirit dance among the vibrant red and orange.

Don't ask me to look harder. I can't see the picture. I can't. I can't. Color spiraling upward.....up and up.

Unexpected

Sometimes it's fun to do something unexpected. Something not really me.

When Evan got his job with the photography co., I never expected that I might get a job, too. I thought I'd just come along sometimes and carry around lenses and such.

Then, a few months ago, the owners asked me if I would be the #3 video person for a Houston wedding. Talk about a crash-course experience. But it was fun.

Since then, they haven't needed me. (I doubted they'd ever want me again, considering my lack of experience with video cameras).

But apparently it's convenient to have me shoot video while Evan shoots still photographs. So next weekend at another Houston wedding I become video shooter #2. Shooter #1 is the company's lead photographer.

Yesterday Evan, Annie, and I went over to company still photographer #2 and video editor #1's house (they're married). Evan is helping the photographer (the wife) learn to shoot digital. The video editor (the husband) taught me the basics of video. We practiced with tripod and monopod. He showed me how to do crazy things like flip the monopod upside down so the camera can capture the feet of dancing couples.

He wants me to be adventurous with the camera. To get it in the thick of the party. Make the footage intimate. This is going to be a challenge for me.

Something unexpected (I think I'll like it).

I think I'll mess up a lot, have a blast, and get paid.

I think...who is that confident girl toting around the video camera? It can't be scared me.

But it is.

The Funnest English Class Ever

Yesterday was the last day of school before Spring Break.

In my Junior English class my students worked on (aka thought about working on) their group projects on The Great Gatsby.

My most, let's say, energetic Junior brought in a mini basketball hoop with a nerf ball and proceeded to put it up on the small window beside the door. He and other students took turns shooting around until one boy brilliantly suggested that we play Knockout. Imagine 10 of the 25 students in this class lined up across the room earnestly throwing and retrieving taped balls of paper (because we needed two balls). And my nicest student and most volatile student (the "energetic" one) --the two who NEVER interact with each other--were locked in a struggle for first place for at least 5 minutes.

It was the most fun English class EVER for most of them, I'm sure.

I ran into some of my sophomores in the hallway. "Can we play basketball in class, too?" they asked. "No," I said. "You're watching movie clips about poetry and taking notes as a quiz grade." "What? We have to take a quiz?!!"

We watched the movie In Her Shoes, which I unabashedly love. Cameron Diaz actually reads "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
and an e.e. cummings poems (we studied the Bishop poem this quarter, and read some cummings poetry as well). There was a hush over the classroom as we watched Diaz' character find meaning in poetry, as she read to an elderly retired English professor. And they wrote furiously to receive their test grade.

When the movie clips were over, one of my students broke out a copy Where the Wild Things Are. Michael and Aimee did a Wild Things impromptu dance. "Good-bye, my wild things," I told them as the bell rang.

The freshmen read over characters in Romeo and Juliet (which we will read after Spring Break). "I'll be anyone but Romeo," Michael said. "I'll be any girl part," said Kaeleigh. "Can a girl play a boy part?" asked Isabel. "Go for it," I said.

It really was a lovely day.

Then I went home to take 2 hour nap, since I spent nearly all of Thursday night grading projects. After the nap, Daniel and Alice took Evan and me out to an Indian restaurant.

So good....

We watched Walk the Line and petted Smoky, the bulldog.

Annie has just gone belly-up as I write this. Everyone should own a dog. This morning when I was walking her, we saw the little one-year-old who adores Annie. "Bobo," he shrieked as she raised her head in the air to lick his delighted feet.

I don't know what language he calls her in. But she understands perfectly.

2 days at home

I got sick again. I'm not getting enough sleep. I did the unthinkable (in my sleepy eyes). I took 2 days off work and let a sub deal with my spring-break-starved students. I slept, graded, watched movies, let Evan make soup for me, and just rested. It was nice. Two more days. Then I can break loose-- begin a cleaning frenzy, visit art museums, go to the zoo, arrange play dates for Annie, read books for me....and eventually start planning for next quarter.

Highlight of my week: Grete let me read her essay on Sister Sponsa. It was beautiful. It was so exciting reading an essay not riddled with errors or devoid of a main point. It was so nice to just let her words soak in.

I want to write an essay! Maybe I'll do that over spring break, too.

Midnight on Saturday Night

I love Saturdays nights. I love the expectation of church on Sunday. I know I have mounds of papers and planning looming on Sunday, but not tonight.

Tonight I can sit in my shorts and t-shirt here (yeah, it's back up to 80 degrees. Never fear....the record of 91 degrees was set in 1909, so it's still quite normal). I can pat my 30-pound puppy passed out on the floor. She's recovering from two hours at the dog park. I can listen with one ear to a British car show that Evan is watching (without him knowing I secretly enjoy it--hey, I played with matchbox cars as a child, I'm from Indy, and I love to drive fast).

I just got back from a girls night with Kate and Melanie. We vowed not to talk about school and failed miserably, but food, fellowship, and a movie did a lot of good for me. According to my watch, it is now early Sunday morning. In many ways, I feel that this Saturday is my Sunday. When I am open to wonder and actively bettering my life. On Sunday, after church, I just hurry home and cram as many work-related tasks into 10 hours.

Ah....and early Sunday am has arrived. I am feeling a sleepiness steal into my head (it's not the wine...really!) Oh, beautiful midnight hour....I have missed you.

On the Run

I have realized that my posts are really long. So I have decided to write something short and to the point. Items of note: my mother is having an identity crisis. She is going to see a life coach. She is in a different mood every time I talk to her. Sometimes in tears, sometimes very hopeful. After thinking about lots of job ideas, I think she will end up doing what she did back in Indiana: run her own school of sorts. I wish I could teach with her. We could be a great team...except she'd nag me a lot:) I miss my parents a lot. I'm confused about what I believe...still...and wish my parents were progressing towards some of my new revelations. They're not. They're very happy with their charismatic church--dancing, glory!, and all that. I try to understand and be okay with us going in semi-different paths. But I feel like I'm betraying them somehow. Anyway, this is tending towards non-shortness (you can tell it's almost the weekend for me!). I shall go and grab my five hours of sleep.
(6 school days until Spring Break!!!!)