Seriously, Though, Guys…

I know it’s a silly post, but the whole simile-or-not-a-simile issue is making me quite insane… Any help out there?

More Backposts

I’ve posted about a “seriously? did you just say that?” moment from the first day of school, as well as a nagging professional question regarding figurative language. Whee!

Catching Up

This has been a slightly odd year so far, in terms of my blogging habits. I’ve half-written several entries that I want to publish, and I want to put them at their correct time in history so that they make sense to my chronology if I ever go back and read them. That being said, I don’t want to sneakily back-post stuff, so I thought I’d just let y’all know (in a current post) whenever I back-post something. That way, I feel like an honest blogger, and you can find them if you’re interested in such things.

I just posted about a bad experience I had near the beginning of the year, and shared something chuckle-worthy about student essays from mid-October. More (probably) to follow…

From the Mouths of Babes

Grading short essays over Antigone. (This assignment turned out GREAT, btw; couldn’t be happier!)

This example wasn’t a particularly well-done essay, but I thought he hit the nail on the head for at least four sentences:

On page 222, lines 1045-1046 of Antigone, the Messenger is speaking to Creon: “Great calamity can come to a man through man’s perversity.” This means disasters can come to a man that is too stubborn. […] It is still relevant today; stubbornness can be a man’s downfall. For example, if a man today is addicted to something and he is too stubborn to quit, he will lose everything, his family, friends, everything.

You got that right, kid.

Reality Check

It’s news to nobody that education in general, and teachers in specific, are kind of getting screwed over nationwide. Your state is running low on funds? Hey, teachers are overpaid! Let’s cut their pay! (It’s like, someone comes in to the ER with blood gushing out of their leg, and the doctor puts a bandaid on their nose.)

My state is one of the real winners at this. It’s a very red state. One of their solutions for this year’s budget downfall is to cut all teacher salaries by 4%, and to freeze our gained-education salary increases. Last year they froze our gained-experience salary increase; they’re doing that again this year. I am beginning to think that I am going to teach my entire career at a first-year teacher salary – at which point, that entry-level HR job I left to become a teacher begins to look pretty good.

Anyway, our newspaper’s website is chock-full of self-righteous idiots who spend all their time writing poorly-spelled anti-teacher rants. I recently received an email referencing said rants and encouraging me to name my first-grade teacher as a rebuttal to the idea that teachers don’t matter. I did, and then kept writing. I’ve included what I wrote below.

You know, if people had to use their real names on these websites, we could track them down and force them to live the life of a teacher for even just two days. I think they’d be changing their tunes pretty quickly. Of course, I’m preaching to the choir here, but I’m at the pulpit, so here goes!

Don’t get me wrong. As a teacher, I know I have some amazing perks. Two weeks off for Christmas, anyone? I don’t, contrary to popular opinion, get 3-4 months off of work every year – but I do have about 2.5 months each summer with which to do my choice of a number of things. Usually, because of the requirements of keeping my job, that will be additional training. (Other professions do this as well, but because it’s not necessary for an engineer, for instance, to be at his desk every single day, they can go to training sessions and seminars throughout the year. As a teacher, it pretty much has to be when the kids aren’t in at school.) I get a ton of autonomy and rarely interact with a supervisor. My "office" is big enough for 36 people to work in. Best of all, I get to play – it’s part of my professional responsibilities to attend football games, act goofy at pep assemblies, and occasionally wear pajamas to work. Not much to complain about there.

That’s on one side of the scale. On the other? Being the one person in the world who notices or cares that your child has an eating disorder, is not getting enough sleep or food, has developed a drug habit, is hiding a reading deficiency, may have gotten his girlfriend pregnant, is gay, is miserable. Looking at your child – on my own time, because there isn’t time while "on the clock" – and all of his weaknesses, everything that isn’t working for him, and trying to figure out a way to help. Spending all of my "fun money" on things that I hope will be fun or helpful… for my students. Slogging through your child’s three-page literary analysis paper that doesn’t analyze literature because she didn’t read the book, or that contains beautiful analysis straight out of SparkNotes. Making the phone call home only to discover, the hard way, that the parents don’t care as long as the kid scrapes by and doesn’t have to repeat the class. Finding out the next week that your well-intentioned phone call earned your student a beating. Being a sounding board for a student who is fighting with her mom, or whose mom is dying in the hospital, or whose mom assaulted her and sent HER to the hospital – and not being able to say what you really think, because you don’t know what will get back to the parents, how much of it is true, how much of it is just a melodramatic teen’s sour grapes. Driving twenty miles out of the way to shop far enough from your school so that you won’t get caught buying beer or feminine hygeine products. Trying to convince your child that there is any value in reading something written by someone who died 500 years ago, or in remembering that sentences require both a subject and a verb. Trying to convince your child that there is value in working to earn As and Bs when they can do the bare minimum and still pass. Driving home thinking about what you did that day, spending the evening evaluating what the students did, and lying in bed at night thinking about what you’re doing the next day. Stripping yourself of all political, religious, and sexual identity because someone might get offended that you aren’t a living embodiment of a 1950s sitcom. Raising 150 to 200 of someone else’s teenagers, all at the same time.

This is the hardest, most heartbreaking, most exhausting job I’ve ever known. What keeps it in the balance? It’s also the most fun, the most rewarding, and the most life-affirming job I can imagine. There are many negative things with this job, but – on most days, it must be acknowledged – they add up to less than the sum of the positive elements. There are small victories that carry great weight. There are moments that are worth entire years.

I played with the math a little bit, and I think – even considering summer break, etc., and including all hours in which I am legitimately working – I make just about $10 an hour before taxes and insurance come out. Is it worth it? Yeah. Is it worth more? I think so… but this year, I guess I’ll take my 4% pay cut and my reneged-upon contractual pay adjustment for gaining education and experience, and just keep on keeping on. Your kids need me.

In the meantime, anyone want to pick up some beer for me? I’ll meet you in the parking lot with the money…

How is your state treating educators these days?

Lacking Community

My interview for the National Writing Project was this past Saturday.

They brought about eight of us into a conference room, with another half dozen or so alums of the project, and broke us into small groups for “conversations.” They were careful to say that they were not judging us as good or bad teachers, or good or bad writers. They’re trying to create a group with a particular distribution of elements: different teaching assignments, different subject expertise, different amounts of experience, different parts of the state. As a second-year high school English teacher in the capital city, I’ve got four strikes against me. Then again, they’re taking 1/3 of the applicants, and I tend to be a good interview, so here’s hoping.

Before they interviewed us, though, they explained what the NWP was. I knew that it was a summer institute, that it included aspects of a writing workshop – things like that. I didn’t know that it was a bigger thing than that. I didn’t know that it was a community of teachers, of writers.

Basically, they’re looking for teachers who will help perpetuate a cycle of teachers-teaching-teachers. They want teachers who are passionate about certain elements of their craft, who will share that passion with others. And they’re looking to provide said teachers with community.

“Being a part of networks is a key factor,” the local director told us,  ”into whether a teacher leaves the profession within the first few years.”

When he said that, several things happened. The first was that a lightbulb went off over my head. Oh, I said. So that’s why I’m unhappy.

Then a surge of yearning went through me as I realized how much I wanted to be a part of this program.

And then, like a kick to the gut, I realized that I very well might not get in this year. That’s when I really understood how much I wanted to be picked.

They say that many people apply for 2-4 years before getting in. I feel good about my chances, but in the end, I can’t control what they’re looking for or whether or not they liked what I had to offer. However it goes, I should know within a few weeks…

Curses! Foiled again!

I had a great idea. Buy my own domain name for this site, move the blog over, and use it as a place to upload files I wanted to share without DIVULGING MY SECRET IDENTITY.

But as it turns out, www.fullofbees.com already belongs to someone else.

Trying to decide whether I’d want fullofbees.net, fullofbees.org, or maybe full-of-bees.com – any thoughts? Which is easiest to remember for readers?

Still Here…

I’ve been bad about updating. I’m still sick – pushing two months now – and I’m taking two graduate classes that periodically kick my butt, and I’m teaching some stuff I’ve never taught before… even when I find the inspiration to post, the energy or time is usually lacking. Today I’ve got a nasty hot headache, and all I want to do is go home and go to bed, but our district is having a sub shortage so they’re begging us not to take time off, especially near weekends or holidays, unless it’s an absolute emergency. And this isn’t – I’ve taught through worse, and I’ve got an easy lesson set up.
 
I met with the principal with my course proposal, and he really liked it. I’m officially recruiting students for my creative writing/online publications class. It could all still fall through, but I’m hoping – oh my goodness gracious, am I hoping. Of course, this all assumes that I’m staying here next year and not seeking greener pastures. This is probably true. I’m wondering more about the possibility of moving my house than of moving my job, which I guess is a good sign?
 
Three of my students were caught in the school locker room smoking pot last week. They got a couple of days of suspension. Shouldn’t you end up in legal trouble for smoking pot at school? Maybe they did. All I know is that they’re back in school, and if other students hadn’t told me what had happened, I never would have known. Not that I really think that smoking marijuana is a huge thing that I need to know as a teacher… although in this case, it would be good to know that these three (who are all in the same class of mine) are A) really bad for each other and B) have very poor judgment.
 
About half of my first class today was absent. This is day one of two days we’re devoting to a big paper. Why were they absent, you ask? Did they all catch the swine? Has bacterial pneumonia struck my school? Was there a band trip, or a choir festival? Oh no – there’s apparently some snowboarding event going on up the hill. I love that I’m told I shouldn’t take a sick day on Fridays, but half my kids don’t have to show up… oh, that’s just the crankiness talking. But still. Parents!
 
I’m really excited about the big paper we’re writing. I’m trying to decide whether I want to share it here. Doing so will require DIVULGING MY SECRET IDENTITY. Maybe a password? It kicks some butts and takes some names, that’s fo sho.

Sick

After coughing and wheezing for over a month, and after Mr. Bees finally got tired of telling me to see a doctor and just started giving me a long-suffering look every time I doubled over with coughs, and after my stomach muscles got torn up badly enough that – well, let’s just say I was carefully monitoring my fluid intake and bathroom breaks… after all this, I finally took a sick day and went to see a doctor.

(For what it’s worth, I didn’t resist out of sheer stubbornness. I just figured that it was another persistent cold virus, and that all a doctor would do would be to say, “rest and drink OJ, that’ll be $60.” Figured I could save myself the trouble and the $60.)

Well, the doctor had a different idea. After talking about it for a while, and about other things bouncing around in my medical history, he came up with two possible prognoses.

The first – and most likely – is that I have inflamed lungs, post-cold virus, and related to a long-undiagnosed case of The Asthma. I have always suspected that I had a minor case of The Asthma, so this diagnosis made a lot of sense to me.

The second is that I work with poor, often under-immunized teenagers, and that one of the darling dears may have given me PERTUSSIS.

Let’s be clear: if my kids gave me whooping cough, so help me I will fail every last one of them.

Anyway, the doctor gave me some beautiful little yellow capsules called benzonatate that reduce the reflex to cough, and a ventolin inhaler, which is a bronchodilator. If they make a big difference by the end of Sunday, he told me, it’s probably The Asthma, and I should get a pulmonary exam. He also gave me a prescription for some antibiotics in case I was still sick by Monday; they’re to treat potential pertussis.

Fortunately for my kiddos, the inhaler and yellow pills have made a world of difference. I still have a cough, but it’s a controllable, infrequent cough that doesn’t hurt, break me in half, make me wet myself, or disrupt conversations within a thirty-foot radius.

So I guess I’ll be back at school on Tuesday (hooray, holidays!) and may even be able to talk. That’ll be a novel experience for my classes; I don’t think they’ve heard my normal voice since they came back from Christmas break.

What’s Next?

Due to the bizarre calculus of financial aid and whatnot, and also because I’ve been itching to return to school, it looks like next semester I “need” to start taking graduate classes again. This has been a little more difficult for me to figure out than anticipated, because I can’t quite figure out what I want to take.

I was in a MA program for Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies. It’s basically the generic Masters in Education program at my university – teachers take it because they want the increased pay that comes with a MA, or because they want to understand the theory of their field, or because they’d like to eventually have a PhD in Education. I loved those classes and the professors. Unfortunately, the program changed at some point, and the classes I took that helped me get certified no longer really apply to the CIFS degree. So I’m at square one…

Mr. Bees is getting his MS in Educational Technology. I like the idea of being qualified to teach technology classes, like the publications class I wanted to teach at LMS. A part of me likes the fact that the Ed-Tech classes are online and, it seems, a little easier than the CIFS classes. Another part of me dislikes that they’re online, because I love the graduate classes – you don’t get the same thing out of a video or notes.

Then there’s a new program. It’s a MA in Teaching English. The classes sound like fun. I have at least six credits that will transfer into it – maybe 15.

The thing is trying to figure out what I want my future to look like. Because right now, I’m not at all sure that my future includes being a high school English teacher – at least, not at CHS. This isn’t working.

So what will work? I think I’d like to go back to a middle school. I’m not sure. There were definite downsides to that, downsides that really bothered me while I was there but that seem so minor now that I miss it. I do know that if I go to a middle school – and probably if I stay at a high school – that I’d like to be able to pick up a few classes at the college level at some point. I thought once, and am beginning to think again, that I might be supposed to be a college professor.

But of what? English, or education?

I would happily teach book arts, publication, composition – general or specialized (creative nonfiction, etc.). I would happily teach “how to teach English” classes. I would unhappily teach literature classes – I am not, and never will be able to be, a member of the literazi. I like “junk” too much and “great works” too little.

And I would happily teach teacher education classes…

Right now, it feels like the best solution is to enter the MA in Teaching English degree, and possibly plug in a certification in Educational Technology for my electives, which might qualify me to be a tech teacher…