i'm sitting in my bedroom, listening to damien jurado and rain. it has been raining in austin for the past twelve years, and while it's soothing and makes things pretty and green, all i want is to go to my pool and get a damn tan. what must i be smited like this?
in other news, our priest from nigeria had a lovely surprise this weekend and is being deported back home. they couldn't extend his work visa. and let me say, the fact that the cutest, sweetest, most joyful and peaceful PRIEST in the world cannot extend his work visa shows just how f-ed up our immigration policy is in this country. i could go on and on about how we screw people that really need to be here, and are trying to make it even harder for the ones whose lives depend on it, but i'll spare you. for now.
happy rainy monday. p.s. only 6 more weeks of my job!
i spent saturday through wednesday of this week having an amazing time. saturday night i made an impromptu trip to seguin to hang out with clay at his river house. sitting in the trees, taking in all the sights and smells of the country and talking until 3AM is exactly what i needed. then sunday i drove into san antonio for my literacy conference. THANK GOD I WENT. it was the single most useful thing i have ever done for my teaching career. i got to know some of my fellow teachers and had a chance to hear the reality of my school. we've been academically unacceptable for several years and this is our last year to pull up the scores on the TAKS test. otherwise, TEA could be closing my school next year just like they've done for some other schools in austin. where do the kids from closed schools go? well none other than the other academically unacceptable schools, pushing them further down on the achievement gap and making the teachers even more overwhelmed. that's no child left behind at work my friends. be proud that g.w. decided to try it out in texas first. anyway, the children at our school do not come from the most solid academic background. couple that with their uncanny affinity for violence and it turns into a challenging situation, to say the least.
i talked to some of the teachers about the lockdowns, stabbings and gang problems from last year and honestly was not really surprised by anything. i knew what i was getting myself into in the area of discipline when i took the job. i took self defense twice in college. i can hang, yo. :)
what did surprise me was that i learned i was a horrible teacher last year. i entered last year's classroom with the belief that all of my students could read. i knew that it wasn't as easy for some of them, but i assumed that if they just read HARD ENOUGH, they could get it. what an idiot. the reality was, and i sadly did not realize until almost two years later, that i had a LOT of students that could not read. sure, they could probably sound something out or slowly stumble over words, but that is not reading. reading means understanding what you have read, even in the most literal and fundamental sense. my kids could not do that and i could not see that they could not do that, not because of a lack of effort, but because they did not know how.
thankfully, i went into the conference assuming that i would have kids on a third grade reading level in my seventh grade class next year. (i guarantee i had kids at that level in my 10th grade class.) i walked away from those four days with practical and affective strategies to use on a daily basis to help these kids learn how to find the meaning of a text by themselves. that, my friends, is true power. these children will be lost in the real world without literacy. they're already lost in their teenage world without it. they get up every school day and go to a place where almost everything they do revolves around a skill that they do not possess. on top of that, they have to do everything in front of their worst critics- their peers. the main presenter of our conference pointed that fact out to us. how many adults can say they do that? i sure as hell do not. no wonder they say they hate school or it's stupid or they just can't do things. i'd probably give up after that many years of failure and no end in sight. so, i could not be more excited right now about what i'm going to do in the fall. i'm going to have a classroom in which students build skills and cognitive confidence that they can carry with them beyond the school year. i am happy. and embarrassed.
i just got back from seeing the movie chalk and i highly recommend it to anyone that lives where it's playing. sorry lubbock folk. anyway, it was the most realistic portrayal of teachers that i have ever seen in the media. as one review of the movie said, teachers in film are always shown as saints or doofuses. the reality is something completely different and this film recognized it. mostly because it was made by teachers. so it was hilarious and almost made me cry about 30 different times because i'm so excited that i'll be doing that again in TWO MONTHS. p.s. i get to go to adolescent literacy training in san antonio for four days next week and i'm friggin pumped. i'll get to hang out on the river walk, learn stuff for my job, hang out with my future coworkers and get a break from the depressing and monotonous world that is my current place of employment. until then, i'll be killing my time with hiking, pilates, salsa lessons, pancake theater, trivia competitions and studying for my certification exam. it should be eventful.
this past week i came to a realization. all of my really close friends are grappling with huge life issues right now - health, marital, relationship, family - and each of them has been stressed to the max. i, on the other hand, am utterly content. the biggest issue i'm dealing with is being an idiot and losing my keys. it's funny how things like that work out and sometimes i feel really guilty because i'm not worrying about anything but them right now. i shoud probably count my blessings because it could all be reversed in an instant.
i hope anyone that reads this still is doing well. i miss a bunch of you and am impressed with the things you're doing in your lives!
