employed hipster: now with 50% more hip.

Quick Hit: Flustered.

    Reason #300 to keep your cool in the classroom at all times:
Only 50% of my kids turned in today's homework (which was necessary to continue today's lesson), and in my frustration I ended up handing back their midterms without recording the grades in my book.

Quick Hit: Behoove.

Me (raised voice): J and V!  It would behoove you to begin your homework now so you don't have to do it later!
C. (raises hand): Miss...
Me (walking over): Yes C.?
C.: What does that mean?
Me: Behoove?
C. (with pen poised): Yeah...and how do you spell it?
Me: B-E-H-O-O-V-E...it means somthing like, "it would be wise..." or "it would be a good idea."  Like advantageous...
C. (writing furiously): I like it.
Me (smiling): Yeah, it's a good word.

Quick Hit: Countdown!

T-minus 3 days until the G-Bomb comes to visit me!!!

I might actually pee myself from the excitement.  We're totally going to be shot on sight at the airport.

Quick Hit: Degrassi.

Setting: The halls of my High School - T-minus 15 minutes until I teach.

Me (rushing out of the bathroom): DEB!!!  Do you have a tampon?!

Deb: No...oh my god, this is like an episode of Degrassi!

Sunday is Funday Weekly Photo: WTK!?

Recently, it has become trendy among my fellow weefers to write little comments and sayings on the sentence strips provided in our teacher survival packs and post them on doors for all to see.  Not wanting to be left out, B. and I decided to throw up our room mantra in solidarity.  And by solidarity I mean passive aggressive protest.

I Teach Kids?! - A Weekly Newsletter

Week One

We Right On Track

There’s a legit reason for my complete lack of posting this week besides insane sleep deprivation, reason being, I officially teach kids now.  That’s right, after just one week of training I have eight full-fledged high school sophomores complete with malleable young minds precariously cradled in the palm of my hand just dying to learn.  And by dying to learn I mean dying to throw books at me because I am by the far the most psychotically enthusiastic person they have ever had to deal with in their short existences.  Granted my enthusiasm is an affectation brought on by too little sleep and too much caffeine, but they don’t have to know that – all they need to know is that I am really excited to be teaching them, and really excited to be a part of their lives.

And it’s true - I am really excited.  I didn’t think I would be, given the short amount of time I have spent with them, but amazingly I feel wholly invested in their daily minutiae every time they cross the threshold of my temporary classroom.  All eight of them are fascinating individuals with amazing stories to share and lucky me, as their English teacher, I get to encourage the sharing.  This is what keeps me going as I face hours of lesson planning, rubric creating, and session attending – the fact that my kids not only have great things to say, but that they WANT to say them.  All I have to do is show them how.

No easy task of course, but when I get discouraged I just flip through their Friday “exit tickets” – an index card with the answer to “How is class so far?  Is the pace too slow? Too fast?” scrawled upon it – and find N’s, which reads:

“The pace is good because it makes class go really fast, your (sic) a really fun teacher and crazy, thats (sic) cool.”

Or B’s which simply states:

“We right on track.”

We right on track, indeed.  As difficult as this WEETA (my new abbreviation for We Make You Teach Real Good Inc) bullshit is, at the end of my day I get to sit down and decipher their muddied, young adult handwriting and weed through their anxieties, their hopes, and their fears, and that makes it worth it.  Whenever I feel like flinging myself through my 11th floor window which refuses to open, I just take a look at J’s free write about how he left home at 16 but still goes to summer school because his girlfriend pushes him to succeed.  Whenever I want to drink myself into an oblivion in order to avoid lesson planning, I look at P’s free write about how he failed the state exam three times and how he desperately wants to graduate so that he won’t “be like them losers who do bad.” 

I used to think it was strange to hear teachers refer to students is the possessive, as “their kids,” but now, after just a few short weeks of systematic torture, I can easily say that I’ve drank the kool-aid.  I strap on my white Reeboks everyday and wait for the comet because I AM A TEACHER – and I teach kids how to write real good. 

Sunday is Funday Weekly Photo: Pro V.

Notes are an effective way to maximize your time with We Make You Teach Real Good, because communication is key.

Target and Teachers: A Drama in One Act.

Tonight marked the eventful mass exodus of education – the time at which a mob of budding young educators make their way to their favorite discount department store in order to secure necessary supplies such as construction paper, glue, markers, and Starbucks double shot coffee in a can.  Of course, as is our custom, B. and I showed up about 20 minutes before the store was about to close sans a lists or a collective clue.  We proceeded to throw everything we could think of into the cart, from a pink striped Isaac Mizrahi designer clipboard to Red Bull in order to get ourselves out of there in a timely fashion and proceed to our reward for a job well done – Taco Cabana.

As I wandered the aisles of the sports department, I heard a friendly shout from a fellow NOLA crewmember: “Hey!  Stop watches are down here!”  Delighted, I rushed to them as she scampered away.  About to bless her spirit of generosity, I was dismayed to find that what faced me were not stop watches, but rather, pedometers.  I scowled and booked it back towards the pencils, grumbling about how she threw me off track on purpose because she wanted to get the better supplies before I did.

That’s right, I’m ridiculous.

At the cash register I found myself chatting with the cashier who effusively apologized for my having to slide my own merchandise down the belt as the conveyers all turn off once the store closes.  Staring at my supplies, she asked me if I was a teacher.  I confirmed that I did, in fact, teach the children, which made her of course ask where I performed said teaching duties.  When I explained the training process she asked if I was staying in TX upon my completion because they need good teachers here.  I shook my head and told her about NOLA, to which she replied – “yeah, I guess they need good teachers too.”  A far better reaction than the waitress in Pigeon Forge, TN who asked me if I was going “to see what’s left,” that’s fo sho.

Exile in Boucheville.

Hello citizens, this is your friendly neighborhood bitchy midget posting live from The Mood, which, as alluded to in my last post, is the raunchiest dorm facility on the face of god’s green earth.  Jaysus H. Keeee-riiiiist it’s awful!  Just when I thought We Make You Teach Real Good couldn’t get any more ridiculous - between making us pay for the various testing hoops through which we must jump one footed, expecting us to find transportation to various desolate locations without assistance, and putting us through a schedule modeled after Navy SEAL training – they go and stick us here.  One would think that a major educational organization would have a bit more clout and be able to put us up in a place that has actual working computer labs with legit printers so we can print the insane amounts of homework that we’re assigned after our nine hour training day to be completed in the two hour window provided before regularly scheduled evening programming and the five hours reserved for sleep…

But no.  Instead we’re here at The Mood, a rather unfortunate set of structures whose architectural intricacies evoke the Kennedy administration.  Living in a dorm at my advanced age is bad enough, but living in a dorm whose vinyl curtain panels are the color of pea soup/drunk vomit does nothing to raise my already wavering spirits.  Just last night I went in to the communal bathroom (that’s right, you didn’t just make that up in your head, I did write communal) and another member of my platoon woefully spat:

“Oh my gawd, I can’t believe I have to put up with this shit, I mean, REALLY!  I graduated like, three weeks ago, I am so done with communal bathrooms.”

To which I silently nodded in commiseration as I poured myself a glass of water to wash down my Geritol.  Communal bathrooms are the worst.  I have problems doing my business in single serving public restrooms, let alone restrooms that involve taking a dump while others shower just yards away and anyone can walk in at any given moment and know that you are dropping the kids off at the pool.  Just typing it makes my sphincter tighten so much that my colon is threatening to retreat up into my body cavity and hide behind my swollen liver.  An uncomfortable feeling, I assure you.

In addition to the delightful community building lavatories, we also have the exalted privilege of being able to lay our exhausted bodies onto our very own BOUCH at each day’s fruitful end.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the bouch, it is an amalgam of bed and couch.

Exhibit A: B’s bouch pushed into couch position and somewhat tidied.

Exhibit B: My bouch, extended, a veritable wasteland.

The bouch is an experience, to say the least, made all the more pleasant by the TX Prison System label on the bottom of each accompanying mattress.  Roommate B’s theory is that, beneath one of our supine, battered asses lives a mountain of heroine such as the world has never known…or a severed finger.  In a fit of insanity I cackled that I was going to go to each bouch and rip it open in order to obtain said booty.  But alas, I am far too busy making acronyms out of everything I say and cutting off the tail end of each spoken word in order to maximize my effectiveness.  I’m very busy after all, kicking ass and teaching children.

In conclusion: I’m less than thrilled by this whole thing, but so tired from the constant motion associated with being a part of this elite, paramilitary, educational organization that I haven’t the energy to bitch beyond the occasional incredulous blogular postulation.  That said, I’ve at least managed to come up with my class motto…

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

…and I’m spent.

Welcome to TX: Proud Home of President George W. Bush

Highlights of the exodus from LA to TX:

1. Getting a 2 foot crack across my windshield.
2. Getting lost for an hour.
3. Getting 'tude for being late for registration.
4. Getting word that my start time tomorrow is the butt crack of dawn.
5. Getting stuck in the raunchiest dorm room imaginable.

God is just full of gifts today.