First Day!

It was my first day at my new school! I forgot my breakfast, lunch, water bottle, and sweater. So far, I've had four packets of Target brand fruit snacks. They are not filling.

All of my students are Hmong. So I'm still a minority. But it's cool. The kids are super nice. And QUIET. There were times I couldn't deal with the lack of response. My honors and last two hours are pretty talkative. They seem excited for the class. I have only 5 students in my last hour and they all told me I was cool (I'm honored).

I got tons of new clothes too! I can dress cute again (since I'm expected to practically wear a suit). But it's cool, I'm now buying earrings and accessories for the first time and wearing cute clothes again.

I'd like to slow down though. I've got so much going on with my personal life. I feel like I still haven't finished moving and I'm running everywhere for everything. It's been a little crazy. This last weekend we went to the State Fair. Craziness. But I got some sweet free stuff. Like magnets. Perry and I took our adopted daughter, Porsha, with and it was amazing. Especially since she has never been to the fair. At the fair, she touched for the first time: cow, sheep, pig, horse. Foodwise I had: funnel cake, pronto pup, Tiny Tim mini donuts, Sweet Martha cookies. I feel like there was more, but I can't remember.

I purposely chose not to title this blog. I don't know what I would call it if I had.

I've gotten a new job, which is good, but can't seem to escape my old one, which is bad. I will be working in a much safer and more direction-orientated school. I'm truly excited for this. The school seems like a perfect fit. I'll let you know if it really isn't.

Finally finished with Minnesota Internship Center, I am grateful to get out of there. My lack of power and support and, especially, dealing with the incompetence among other employees left me feeling frustrated and useless towards my career and development as a teacher as well as utter remorse for the students in my classroom who did not receive what were, to me, obvious resources that would not have been difficult to provide had special education and administration took my advice seriously. It was a year of feeling as though I was capable of giving more to my students without actually being able to do so because of disorganization and a non-collaborative effort among departments and support services within the school.

This Thursday I found out a student of mine, who I had just seen last week, has been arrested and accused of murdering another teenager as an act of initiation within the Bloods. This has been very troubling to me as Leonard was a student of mine who, from the start, gave me warning signs. I advised lead teachers, security support staff, special education, social workers, mental health professionals and administration to evaluate and provide support for him. Nothing was done.

As I think about the last year, it makes me physically ill to know that one of my students is capable of such a horrific act. But what's worse, is that I knew he was, but was never heard.

Dogs and Houses

I have a new dog now. No, it's not Perry. He isn't new. She's really sweet and cuddly. She looks like a black lab puppy, but is fully grown. We think she's part wiener dog. She's mostly adorable. We got a new house, Perry and I. It's pretty awesome. We live in Eagan now. I'm glad to be back. I really like the area and quietness, but closeness to the cities. Lisa lives just down the road so it's even more awesomeness! I will send pictures later, but it's an end unit townhome. We both get garages (that's my favorite).

So Daria, my pup, has a few great qualities to her:

1. She likes to cuddle.
2. She's not a barker.
3. She's permanently stuck looking like a puppy.
4. She loves everyone and everything.
5. She is a great spider and moth hunter.

The only thing that concerns me is that once in a while she will over estimate the amount of space she has around her and accidentally hit her head on something. Like a wall. But whatever. It makes me laugh.

And I said, "Hey, WHAT'S GOING ON?!"

One of my hubcaps fell off! My mittens that I bought only a couple months ago are falling apart! A book that I ordered for my class to teach Othello hasn't come yet! Well I think it did yesterday but the office has informed me that UPS took it back with them today. WTF?! Just because I couldn't get home in time last night, does not mean I don't live here anymore. P.S. don't leave a note on my mailbox saying that you left the package in the office and then still take it with you. It just makes everyone look like an idiot.

Okay, I'm better now.

Of course! I HAD to teach Shakespeare

Tomorrow we start our unit on Othello. I bought a new copy of the play, namely because my Norton complete works will not fit on my scanner properly. The version I got, a Barnes and Noble edition, is actually pretty decent. I was skeptical when I was ordering it. But at the beginning of each scene it has a vocab list and the print is not microscopic. The latter part may be of more importance to me than the students. I also bought the No Fear Shakespeare edition to Othello. I need to check my mailbox to see if it's come yet. This book will help the kids. And me. The first section they read of the play will be overwhelming for them. It was for me. The language is difficult to get into. This second book puts the entire play in plain English and I think will be helpful to me and my students.

This last Saturday I was feeling a bit under the weather. So I stayed in bed. Until about 4:30. Then I went to support a friend who assistant coaches a dance team. Anyway, Saturday. I watched a four hour documentary of Shakespeare on Netflix' instant watching thing. THAT'S HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU, KIDS!!!! I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan. I don't think he's the greatest poet ever. In fact, in the recent past I may have compared him to Mozart's work ("You've heard one, you've heard them all"). I am terrible. I strongly disagree with my literary and education contemporaries. But the documentary was actually pretty cool. It answered a lot of myths and unanswered questions.

So why am I teaching it? Honestly I'm not sure now. And maybe this is the fear that I will fail my students miserably. But I don't think it's important to read in the sense of knowledge and whatever. I think it's important culturally though. I feel like so many things reference Shakespeare that it's important for them to know where it came from. That's right, I am teaching them useless information so they can have the glory and satisfaction of one day being at a party in which someone will misquote Shakespeare and one of my students will correct them. That is my dream.

The start of class and a new blog

I decided it was time to start over. I was tired of my last blog and am working on setting this one up. I felt it was unfair for my students to write in their blog three times each week, so I decided I would too. Mostly I will respond to the assignment questions on my class website (which you can find by looking at my profile).

I'm not sure what made me want to start over. But I think part of the reason I wasn't publishing much was because I just wasn't that blog anymore. I'm someplace else. At least this is what I will say is the cause of not publishing.

I'm excited about my advanced lit./comp. class. I finally have a way of really helping the students definitely bound for college. I hope they like it too. Not only is this an exciting class for me to teach (I don't think I've ever taught a college prep. class), but it's also got the material I'm more interested in. I love my British literature and I love my history. Sorry, kids.

Anyway, cheers to a new beginning for myself, my class, and my blog!