responsibility? what’s that?

It’s Saturday night and I’d rather be out at a bar with my fellow student teacher candidates doing karaoke. But alas, I am at home, in the same pyjamas I’ve been wearing since 2 this afternoon, finishing up lesson plans that should’ve been done over a week ago, before I actually did the lessons. That’s not really the issue though. They could get done tomorrow. But I woke up this morning feeling the onset of sickness. My breathing feels funny. And I’m headachy. And unusually tired given the amount of sleep I’ve been getting. So I’ve taken some ColdFX, vitamin C pills, lots of liquids, etc. I don’t think karaoke will help me get better. Or, at least, staying up past midnight.

I just can’t wrap my head around when I became this person. Alright, so like, obviously it was a gradual thing, right? But come on. I’m choosing sleep and good health over going out to socialize and do karaoke? What’s with that?  I just wish this whole notion of responsibility carried over into other aspects of my life, like putting away laundry. But I choose to blame that on not having a sufficient closet for my needs. (But I have a sufficient chair?).

Anyway, I’m being observed on Monday. I’m not really too worried, as long as I do some awesome planning. Which I will. Tomorrow. So I guess that’s probably the main reason behind my wanting to get sleep. Once I make it through Monday,  and guarenteeing it goes well, I’m in the clear – pretty much. I mean, of course I’ll still have to carry on with what I’m doing, but… well, you know. Monday. Monday Monday Monday.

Next on the night’s agenda: hot shower and gargling (?), cursing the fates, sleep.

1/2. almost.

It is nearly 6:30 AM, and I am getting used to being up so early. It helps that I got to bed before 11 last night (not always the case). This first teaching block is just about half way done. I am being evaluated on Monday. This weekend will not be long enough.

It’s been an alright week. Monday sucked, as you may recall. Tuesday and Wednesday were considerably better. Got them to write some poetry about apples and reading some bpnichol. Thursday was a write off. Today is a work period for their seminar presentations.

I miss having multiple long research papers due at the beginning of December. I miss doing cut-and-paste to organize my thoughts for essays. I miss complaining about how dense some literary theory is and how I don’t really get a lot of it, while secretly loving it so much. There is no feeling quite like spending an entire night starting and finishing at 12 page paper, drinking four coffees in that time, and then handing in  that paper the next day – completely exhausted but completely happy, knowing that it’s pretty awesome (my confidence was never quite that high… but looking back, they were pretty awesome).

Although yesterday, it felt pretty good when I had students actually asking me about their poetry seminars. And then, after most of the class went to watch the football game, I chatted with a few who had stayed behind and it was neat. I don’t know if I should’ve mentioned the tv show with the dead cat skeletons in it, being a little a morbid, but they didn’t seem to mind.

Anyway, my coffee awaits. Well, it awaits making. And then drinking. And then regretting, because drinking coffee before a certain time doesn’t sit well with me. I like to pretend that that isn’t the case, though. Happy Friday morning, everyone.

 

rollercoaster.

When I was in high school or something, I ran into my boyfriend’s father in the local bookstore. We talked about this and that, but also about my ambition to become a high school English teacher. He didn’t speak explicitly against it, but he commented on how stressed out his wife (a high school English/Drama teacher) would be coming home sometimes after teaching, and how she would seem so miserable. He also commented on how much she loves what she does.

Yesterday sucked. It sucked. I hated it. The students just weren’t with me. I don’t think I made things interesting enough. A unit on poetry should not start how it started yesterday. So last night, amidst lesson planning for today, I spent a time engaging in excessive self-pity.

Today, I spent the entire morning before leaving for to student-teach trying to up my positivity. It was challenging. My self-confidence was wavering. And then the lesson went really well. I think the students might like me a little less, because I changed their seating plan around a bit to stop chatty students from being a huge distraction. But the lesson went well.

It’s so up and down right now.

New goal: be more personable and personal. My students think that I am no fun. I wish I could apologize to them for this, and explain why I might seem this way. I wish I could tell them that I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing sometimes, because I’ve been thrown into this with little guidance or given expectations. I wish I could tell them that I sympathize completely, because I know that what I’m doing isn’t totally interesting. I wish I could be more relaxed and joke around with them, but I don’t know how. I realized today that I’m being with my students the same way I am with all people I meet for the first time – reserved, quiet, relatively serious. I take awhile to be relaxed, and just be whoever it is I am. I have to get over it.

lyrics.

So that interesting way that I was talking about yesterday? I forgot to mention that everyone keeps suggesting linking poetry to music lyrics. I get the appeal, I guess. But I also said something yesterday about everything seeming so done. I guess there are alright ways of making the connection. Referencing Raine Maida’s reference to Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”  in Yellow Brick Road or listening to The Raven sung by the Alan Parsons Project. But to simply talk about lyrics as poetry… does anyone else find that overdone? Is anyone reading this who would care to comment?

In any case, it’s the little magnet poetry activity for today. We’ll see how that goes.

it’s november

and I’m in the mood for some Vince Guaraldi. The weekend’s end is nigh and another week of student teaching awaits my novice. I worked about 16 hours this weekend. Last week’s evenings were spent at a fantastic poetry reading by Daphne Marlatt (accompanied by the Minden Duo), a conference for an evening course (thanks con ed!), teaching piano (admittedly, I only have one student, and so only teach for a half hour a week, but still! It takes up time!), chaperoning a high school dance, and attending an English Student Association meeting. How unprepared do I feel? (Answer: very).

Regardless, I’d thought ahead at least a little bit. I’ve got some stuff planned for tomorrow. It’ll be fine. But as I begin to put stuff together for this poetry unit, I’m realizing that teaching in a way that isn’t absolutely boring might be a little difficult. Rumor has it that we teach how we’re taught. And I’m being offered little fresh perspective on teaching right now. So tomorrow, I’m going in front of this class, doing some little magnet poetry activity, brainstorming what poetry entails (getting their ideas), and then giving them a sight poem diagnostic test using “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Ozymandias”. I mean, I need to do this to figure out what they know, but it seems so dry. So done. So… easy to not care about, from a student’s perspective. I’m certain there must be a more interesting way to start off, but no one is telling me what that interesting way is, nor am I figuring it out myself.

It’s all learning experience, though. And hopefully, I will be able to look at how tomorrow goes and adjust things to be better next time, right? Rather than just keep doing the same tired, old things over and over? I need some reassurance. And, evidently, more time to think about all of this stuff.

high school dance redux.

Teens these days.
They don’t wear clothes. Shirt? Pants? Nay, on both accounts.
I just got in not too long ago from chaperoning a high school dance. It was interesting. And indecent. At least I didn’t get asked to dance. For that much I am grateful.

Week one of four is almost over. I am feeling considerably more comfortable every day. Today, in particular, boosted my confidence, as I took over all of my associate teacher’s classes while she was gone on a field trip in Toronto for the day. Admittedly, all of the classes were doing group/seat work that didn’t require much on my part – and the school I’m at sometimes just has student prefects cover classes for teachers… but nonetheless! It was neat!

It’s also neat how teenagers are completely oblivious to the language they use. Well, maybe neat’s not the right word (I really only used the word as a segue..). Let’s go with… disappointing, frustrating, ridiculous, and/or not surprising. I gave them some group work yesterday that involved looking over examples of contemporary language… things that affect English today. Lolcats. Leet speak. Texting. Who’s on First. All Your Base Are Belong to Us. Euphemisms and political correctness. A parody of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. Urban Dictionary. The central discussion question: what issue regarding language does your example illustrate? What influence does it have on language? Is this influence for better or for worse? For the most part, clueless. Based on some comments I heard, a few people got at least something from the activity. Rather, I hope a few people got at least something from the activity. I just found it frustrating how they are so very much in their own worlds. I like to think that people use language, but in their case it seems to be the other way around. As a documentry I watched the other day put it, there is something to be said about getting the fish to think about the water. They live in this language. They breathe it. But they don’t think about it.

As I explained to a friend earlier, all I can picture is that scene from The Matrix in which Neo unplugs from the Matrix for the first time ever, and finds himself in a pod… and it shows all the other people, blissfully and ignorantly plugged in to a false reality mirroring some ideal of what really is. I hope I can wake some of them up with a bit of poetry next week.

day one.

So far, so alright. On a scale of unsatisfactory to excellent – where satisfactory and good are cushioned in between – I rated myself satisfactory, my associate teacher rated me as good. Obviously, there is room for improvement. My staying up last night proved to be beneficial when a student asked what that symbol is, where the ‘a’ and the ‘e’ are squished together. And yet I still found myself short of material to talk about. Must learn to purposefully overplan.

On the bright side, though there isn’t really much of a dark side to any of this, How I Met Your Mother is on tonight. And I’m eating dinner soon, which I’m pretty psyched about.

limits.

I am doing some last minute reading for my lesson tomorrow, which is an introduction to Anglo-Saxon. I am teaching the History of English in the next four days. Each period is 75 minutes long. At most, then, I would have 300 minutes to go from somewhere around 55 CE, say, and now. Five hours. But I don’t have even that, because half of Thursday is taken up by something else.

Anyway, I’m doing some last minute reading for my lesson tomorrow, and I can’t figure out where to stop. How much do they really need to know about Anglo-Saxon? How much will they really be interested in? Will they care about Caedmon? And the Great Vowel Shift? And the origins of the “Ye” in “Ye Olde Shoppe”? (Which, by the way, I only just learned about tonight! I was excited, but a little disappointed that I never knew about it before…). If I play them a recording of Chaucer’s General Prologue in rap, will they think me extremely lame? I could research all this stuff for hours, finding interesting facts, learning more in depth about Anglo-Saxon (because I apparently didn’t take any notes in the class I took on it last year, and I’ve retained very little), but how much is enough?

At least I’m excited about Anglo-Saxon, even if my students aren’t. For what it’s worth.

next chapter.

It begins on Monday. I’ve got a couple lesson plans made up. I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to wear. And I have no idea what to expect. Last night, I sat around feeling sorry for myself, for the same reasons I did when I was in grade eleven; oftentimes, I still feel like I’m in high school. But obviously that’s not the case. I don’t know the last names of the teachers I’ll be working around. I’m on the other side. It’s all very strange.

At work last night, I hurt myself in the kitchen. I was unable to attend to my five tables for the next ten to fifteen minutes because I was busy dealing with leaky eyes and a somewhat bloody arm. Once I made it back out, I checked on all of my tables (at which point, I only had three as one had paid and left, and another was taken over by another server). I was apologetic for my absence, and they all seemed very understanding except one table who, while they didn’t explicitly acknowledge any negative feeling toward me, were fairly cold and terse. I got over it pretty fast. But it reminded me: when teaching, some students will not like me. They might not understand where I’m coming from, or why I teach the way I do; they will not like me.

Serving has helped me come to terms with people who don’t know me and don’t like me. Of course, it helps that you only have to deal with customers for, sometimes, as short a time as a half hour. Students on the other hand…

But like, whatever. I’m awesome.

things for which I am grateful, or: obligatory Thanksgiving post

pumpkins. poetry. brothers, and other family. blood. autumn. ink. birds. voice. affinity. altruism. my cat. silly dogs. paint. canvas. fingers. shape. hugh laurie. charleston. clouds. the great lakes. myspace. language. professors. jazz. apple cider. peppermint tea. coffee shops. purple. stained glass. nail files. blank paper. friends. prisms. metaphor. brown squirrels. stars. my upbringing. sandals. blankets. hands. freckles. park benches. raw fish. corn fields.