viva la vida

I have lots to do today, but I'm just so tired. So instead, I blog. It's about time, really. This is gonna be a long one, but complete with pictures!

We left Sacramento at 4pm on Saturday afternoon. Our flight was delayed because of mechanical issues (that didn't make me nervous or anything...) and we missed our connecting flight in Phoenix so... impromptu Phoenix vacation! Unfortunately, my camera was in my suitcase which was who knows where between Arizona and Colorado, so no pictures exist of our thrilling evening at the Clarion and the delicious dinner at On the Border that followed. We finally caught a flight out of Phoenix at 8:45 on Sunday morning and rented a car in Colorado, finally arriving at UCCS around noon. We had hoped to get Brian's computer checked in and then go to the zoo, but it turned out that he had to install Autodesk Inventor which takes like a billion hours, so I investigated Old Colorado City and Downtown Colorado Springs by myself until around 4. I then picked Brian up from the university and we went hiking in Garden of the Gods.
The next day it rained, so I lounged around and read a lot. We drove out to Seven Falls that evening and paid a lot of money to climb up a bunch of steps. It was too late to hike past the falls, which was a bummer, but the view from the falls was really pretty.



The view clearly inspired some romance...
Bridal Veil Falls was my favorite,
But leave it to Brian to be goofy:On Tuesday, I woke up early, slathered on the sunscreen, charged my digital camera, bought coffee, and headed out to the zoo!

I was excited, OK?

The giraffes were first (and really, my primary motivation for flying all the way to Colorado. I mean, besides Brian, of course):
I got to feed them - I was fascinated with their tongues:
There are about a million more pictures here. By the way, if you are as enamored with giraffes as I am, the zoo has a Live Giraffe Cam. Sweet! You can also adopt one! Awesome!

After I had my zoo fill, I drove to the top of Cheyenne Mountain to the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun.

It was a GORGEOUS clear day, so the view of Colorado Springs from 8000 feet was pretty impressive. Little did I know that I would end up at a much higher elevation later in the week.

Brian and I did a longer hike in Garden of the Gods on another evening and maybe got a little lost... but I took the opportunity to take this sweet picture of my hot mountain man boyfriend:
Oh yeah, and the park is really pretty too:
As our week drew to a close, I decided to drive to the top of Pike's Peak (but not in a covered wagon).It took nearly an hour to drive the 19 miles to the top (14,110 feet!), but it was totally worth it. It was even snowing when I arrived at the summit! I stayed for a few minutes, took a few pictures, considered buying donuts (apparently they are world famous?), and then started the trek back down the mountain.

After I left the Pike National Forest, I stopped to take this picture of the Ute Pass:

It's now Highway 24, but historically the Ute Pass began as a bison trail that connected the prairie with the mountain meadows and then became a wagon road and in 1888 the Colorado Midland Railway put in tracks to service the mining operations in mountains to the west. And I drove on it!

For reasons completely unbeknownst to me, we flew home on a red eye on Friday night. No pictures exist of that glorious occasion, but I'll give you an idea of how I felt about it:
Yep. It was awesome. We found ourselves home in Sacramento at the delightful hour of 3am and then woke up at 7:45 for breakfast with Brian's parents and sister, just returning from their road trip through Oregon. A superbly long day followed, including sorority reunions, bridal showers, bathing suit shopping, gazpacho, and fighting with my apartment AC, but those are all stories that will wait for another day (hopefully when I have pictures).

Harry Potter news!

An 800 word prequel to the Harry Potter series, handwritten and signed by JK Rowling, sold for £25,000 last night at a charity auction at Waterstone's Piccadilly to benefit English PEN and Dyslexia Action. The prequel is set 3 years before Harry's birth and you can read it online here!

hold me down

While we would all like to earn more money, I think good teachers tend to be less motivated by financial incentives than people who go into most other professions. Someone who becomes an insurance agent, for example, probably has making a lot of money as an important goal. People who want to be good teachers don't think that way. They go into teaching because they want to work with kids and do something worthwhile. Quite frankly, the teachers I've known who have been most interested in higher salaries usually haven't been very good teachers. Some of them end up going into administration. -From the Trenches of Public Ed.

Interesting...

HA! I'm glad school is over for a while :)

www.chalkboardmanifesto.com

bottle it up

I just browsed through the last 6 months or so of this blog and I am sorely ashamed. I have been a very bad blogger. There were so many things I promised myself I would write about and... nothing! I neglected to talk about Brian, my awesome Odyssey unit, camping in Big Sur, getting rehired for next year and my incredible new teaching assignment, and many other fantastic things! Instead, I just talked about how tired I was and how I get strange emails at work and while theses are both very true facts there is far more to my life than just exhaustion and electronic correspondence! And where are all the pictures??

I would promise to be better but... you know me.

sweet and low

From reading teacher blogs from around the country, I know that American students everywhere are anxious and squirrelly as the school year draws to an end. My district might do several things wrong, but I will say that whoever decided to end school on June 3rd deserves a big fat bonus. May 29 was the last day of instruction and (the majority of) my students worked hard right up until that last day and they did (relatively) well on their finals. Sure, it means starting in the middle of August, but not having to deal with kids once the calendar hits June is definitely a blessing!

This is the first summer since I turned 13 that I am not working and it is amazing. I have so many fun trips and activities planned for the summer that I know it is going to just fly by, but I am looking forward to visiting some new places and spending time with good people. Here is my summer run-down:

• June 7-14: House sitting in Woodland. I am anticipating lots of reading, running with the dogs, and working out. Woot! Also, I am offering Nick cooking lessons in exchange for guitar lessons. Sneaky, I know.
  
• June 14-20: Colorado Springs with Brian. He will be attending an Engineering Conference while I hike, mountain bike, and feed the giraffes at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!
• June 23-July 3: Area 3 Writing Project Summer Writing Workshop for Teachers. My district is paying for me to take this awesome class where all I have to do is write and revise my own writing for two weeks. Hooray!
• July 4-6: Lindy doesn't know it yet, but we are going to have a fabulous girls' weekend, hopefully complete with wine, pedicures, and sunbathing :)
• July 7-11: AVID Summer Institute with Scott, Katie, and Riki. Fabulous! I am actually getting paid to hang out with my favorite colleagues and learn how to teacher better!
• July 11-18: Maui with the parents. Gotta love a week of free pool-side lounging!
• July 19: Annie and Colby's wedding in Clarksburg!
• July 20-25: I haven't decided if I'm going yet, but the district is offering to pay for me to attend a 40-hour training for HOLT materials which will not only train me on how to make my teaching more accessible to all students, but might actually give me enough professional development hours to bump me up another step on the pay scale!
• July 26: Jessica and Robbie's wedding in Newcastle!
• August 7-9: Oregon Shakespeare Festival with Brian in Ashland! 3 plays in 3 days!

And then school starts on August 20! It looks busy, but it's probably better that way. Without any structure to my 2.5 months off, I am in danger of sleeping until noon every day, drinking nothing but coffee, getting sunburned on a daily basis, and shopping too much (not that any of those are horrible things)!

Hooray! Today was the last day of instruction and I am totally caught up on all my grades so all I have left to do is enter final grades as they come in and then I am free!

Part of me cannot believe that I made it through this year in one piece and another part of me knows that I worked my tail off and deserve every moment of glorious summer that is coming to me.

i just can't breath

So, aside from the physical (and mental) exhaustion, the soul-crushing allergies, the heat wave of death, and my MIA roommate, I'm so freaking happy I could just about cry. It's almost summer and my break is looking like a fabulous one indeed complete with a Colorado vacay (I'm determined to feed some giraffes...), writing classes at UCD, AVID training with Riki and Katie and Scott, Maui with the parents, and an Shakespearean adventure in Ashland with Brian. That and: no work, lots of exercise, plenty of new books, some guitar playing, and copious Yogurt Shack trips as well.

Again: so freaking happy I could just about cry.

take your steps away from me

And sometimes I get weird emails...

Megan,
First year is now over for BTSA. You seem like a wonderful teacher and we are lucky to have you in the District! By the way, I was raised a bit different than many by a wonderful grandfather, but I must pay a compliment when they are due. You are a beautiful woman!!! My grandfather is a smooozer! Please don't think of me weird, just a compliment to you!

The good news is that BTSA is over and there are only 11 days of class left!

you're big i'm little

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Graduating from junior high school and making the "big decision:" high school soccer or basketball? Yikes!

2) What are five things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

Well, today is basically over, but my non-teaching to-do list for tomorrow includes:

1. Dinner with Erica

2. Read Markus Zuzak's The Book Theif

3. Buy bananas

4. Celebrate with Brian because he got a job today at the California Aerospace Academy!

5. A run. Maybe?

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Yogurt. Apples. Dark chocolate.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Continue teaching. But for free :)

5) Three of my bad habits:

1. I still bite my nails when I'm nervous

2. I don't pay attention to people's names when I first meet them so I forget them almost immediately. For example, I cannot, for the life of me, remember Brian's mom's name, but I'm too embarassed to ask him what it is because I've met her and I should know these things.

3. I hate cleaning my bathroom.

6) Five places I have lived:

Milpitas, CA

Los Altos, CA

Davis, CA

London, UK

Speculator, NY

7) Five jobs I have had:

Meat department person for my dad

Receptionist at a mortuary (no joke)

Youth Program Assistant Director at COTW

Curriculum Development Assistant at the Mondavi Center

Teacher (my favorite!)

8) Six peeps I wanna know more about:

Peeps? Like the kind they sell around Easter that you can make explode in the microwave?

its now or never

I keep saying I have tons more to write about but that it will have to wait and then I never get around to it. Ergo, here I am at 12:30 in the AM after baking nearly 10 dozen chocolate chip cookies for my students, exhausted and all allergy-y, and realizing that I still have tons to say, but no time to say it in because I desperately need sleep tonight.

I'll boil it down to this: My life has finally stabilized. And not stabilized in the sense that for the last two years everything has been really up in the air and it has all finally settled down with the completion of graduate school, but stabilized in the sense that life has finally settled down, period. For the first time I feel like I have actually arrived at something that might actually resemble my future. I received a stellar education, have a fantastic job, am dating the most incredible man in the world, and I'm happy.

And again, not happy in the sense of like, yay I have a job and a boyfriend, but happy in the sense that I am doing what I love and what I want to do for my whole life and have found the person that I want to spend that whole life with. For serious.

My life has always just felt like getting over one hurdle after another, always anticipating what was coming next and knowing that something else was always coming next. I finished high school and looked ahead to college. I finished college and looked ahead to student teaching, I finished student teaching and looked ahead to graduate school. And now I'm done with graduate school and I have a career. Like, this isn't going to change in a year because I'm moving or because I'm graduating or because I get into university. I'm a teacher. It's my job and I love it and I'm not leaving.

I'm still not quite used to it. I still feel a little bit like a kid, or at least an undergrad. But I'm 24. 24! I have my own health insurance and I pay my own rent and when my car breaks down, well crap, I have to take care of it. But it's life now. My life. Not the life I live with the generous aid of my parents. Not the life I live while I'm figuring out what to do with my future. My own, real life. And it's good.

Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve it all, but I figure I'd better not push my luck.

all i ever had

I sometimes get nervous when I see an email from a parent, but this one made my morning:

Good Morning Miss Garcia,

I just wanted to give you some feed back on your assignments for Romeo and Juliet. I thought they were great, I felt like Brian was really involved and interested with the Myspace assigment and also the CD. Of course if it has anything to do with MySpace and Music he is all for it. I have also spoken to other parents and they feel the same way. It was a great way to keep these kids involved and them wanting to do their homework. I can't speak for all of them , but Brian really enjoyed his projects. Just wanted to say Thank You and keep up the good work in supporting our children with their education.

put in the time

I am alone in my classroom on my prep. The speech class that normally meets here is in the theatre today and having this hour to myself is like a tiny piece of heaven. Seriously.

Today is the last day of school before spring break. It is finally here! All of my classes (except for EL) are watching "Ferris Beuller's Day Off" (ha!) so I can catch up on grading before leaving for LA. I am so excited for this spring break and can't wait to spend time with my uncle and see Stephanie and Kevin and read the stack of books that I have been accumulating ever since buying my plane tickets.

Yesterday I attended an IEP meeting for a particularly difficult case. The student himself is very well-behaved and works hard in my class, but his learning difficulties are great and I know it's a struggle for him. I recieved this email from his mom today (student name has been changed, of course):

Hello Megan I wanted to make sure to send you a quick note prior to you’re
leaving on break. In preparing for the IEP meeting, Chris and I talked
about the questions the team would ask us. When I asked him what was his
favorite class I was surprised for him to say English. I would have guessed PE
or ART (smiles). Chris has never liked to read or write and I am so pleased to
hear he is reading aloud in class. Kudos to you, on making your class
enjoyable as well as a great learning environment for the students. Chris
and I also discussed he has learned more this year than the previous two or
three years in your class. Going to school to get your masters and keeping
up with all of your classes I know is very challenging and I wanted you to know
that I truly appreciate your efforts and support.

After being sexually harrassed by a different student yesterday (a story that will have to wait for another day because I'm still too upset to really discuss it), that was a nice note to get. It's important to be reminded why I love my job so much, especially as we near the end of the year.

This afternoon I'm getting my hair cut (yay!) and then attending the cast party for the children's musical (aww). Then tomorrow I'm meeting Brian's parents for lunch (yikes!) and then flying to LA (hooray!). Lots of exciting things ahead, including my 24th birthday in a mere 15 days!

cause you asked for it

Whoohoo!

As of 10:20am on March 22, 2008:


What a long, strange journey this has been.


Days until Spring Break: 14
Days until my 24th birthday: 28

you could get lost in a night like this

Yesterday, I was observed by my principle. The lesson went really well, the kids were engaged and acted appropriately (always a concern), and she seemed to really enjoy what I did. As the class filed out, she stayed for a few minutes to finish her notes and one of my seniors came in for second period. Upon seeing the principle, she looked alarmed at first, then sat down next to her and said, "Miss Garcia is a great teacher!"

I almost fell over, I laughed so hard. Completely unprompted! Thanks, Dalia. :)

Then, after school, Francisco came into my room to pick up his skateboard like he does every day. As he was leaving with his friend he says:

"Oh, Miss G. I forgot to ask you - how was your soccer game last night?"

"It was alright," I told him. "We played pretty well, but just totally fell apart in the last three minutes and ended up losing-"

"Miss G doesn't play soccer," his friend (who is not one of my students) interrupted.

"Yes she does!" Francisco insisted.

"NO way."

"Dude, she totally does! She plays every Monday night. She even played in high school, right Miss G?"

"That is correct."

"Really?"

"Dude, yeah. Miss G is a savage. She's like the coolest English teacher here."

I love my job. Love, love, love it.

better put 'em in quotations

I am in editing hell. Revising and formatting the MA so that all my pages (160, at last count) and charts and tables (well over 100, but as yet not fully counted) are all in the correct order is, arguably, harder than actually writing the damn thing. If I'd known this was going to be such a chore, I would have taken a day off this week to focus on it. Instead, I must forgo my runs this week (with the weather so beautiful, too!) and force myself to format, format, format every day after school. Boo.

Brian informs me that I probably could have paid someone to do this for me, but where's the sense of fulfillment and accomplishment in that, really?

In other news, Romeo & Juliet is going swimmingly with my freshmen (better than last year - practice makes perfect!) and there is, apparently, an "unplanned" Senior Ditch Day on Friday, so I may get an extra free period. And this weekend is my last graduate class, as well as the Children's Musical Performance and Nick's fire academy fundraiser. Joy!

these last three years

Countdowns to usher in March:

Days until my MA Exit Interview: 19
Days until Spring Break: 34
Days until my birthday: 48

We were told to put a big X through February so that we could adequately focus on our thesis and to tell our friends and fmaily that we would see them again in March. Well, March has arrived and with it the beautiful weather and all sorts of free time that I can't remember having since March of 2006. Maybe I can finally focus on me again. That would be a nice change. I feel like I've climbed Everest. Or given birth. Or lived through a tsunami. Or something.

i'm going your way

Today was Symposium Day! I thought that maybe I would wake up super early and freak out all morning until it was time to go in for my presentation but instead:

1. Slept in until 10. Glorious!
2. Had coffee with Brian at Peet's and sat in the beautiful sunshine and watched puppies and talked about going camping and did not once mention my thesis
3. Photocopied my handouts and cruised onto campus 10 minutes early.
4. Presented like a pro and now I'm done!

The really, really, really cool thing is something that Steve told me when I was done with my presentation. Let me preface this by saying that I was really scared of presenting for Steve because I never had him as a professor and I have heard that he is really tough on MA candidates. Plus, Steve is like a master teacher researcher. He has done tons of his own research, he reviews research literature, and is the School of Ed's PhD. chair. When you need research, you call Steve and he's your best friend. When you present with inadequate research, Steve becomes your worst enemy.

He frightens me and I was scared he would say my research was crap.

Instead, he told me that it was a pleasure to get to know me and my work and that he thought it was so great that, get this, I had done something with vocabulary research that he had never seen before!

There's tons more, but for now... Celebrate!

i don't think you do

Symposium is tomorrow! Cue Megan's inevitable freakout.

Tonight I will play Scrabble and make Brian watch Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet with me (so I can plan, of course...) and I will not, not, not think about research.

The End.

youve got that look in your eye

Stream of consciousness during 4th period:

There are only 4 days until Symposium and I am totally freaking out, even though Brian has promised that we will spend this evening working, grading, and planning since he is equally freaking out about, well, just teaching in general. I am trying to assure him that he is a fantastic teacher, but my assurance-ability seems to be a little wonky since I need so much assurance myself that I am going to do well this weekend at Symposium. Dear God, please just let this program be over!

I haven't talked about Brian at all because it's sort of a delicate subject and I'm not 100% sure how to even start talking about it, but it will just have to wait until later because my ELs are almost finished with SSR (I may or may not have let them read for an extra 10 minutes today. Shhh) and I actually have to teach something to them before lunch.

Despite all the freaking out, I could not be happier about sunny weather and red patent flats and skirts (even though my shins are still badly bruised from last Monday's game). I am trying to remind myself that, compared to actually writing my thesis, Symposium is not that big of a deal. But because it represents closure and I so desperately need closure on this whole experience it is still making me really nervous. I must finish my slides tonight. Why have I put this off until today? Gah!

cause im holding my breath

Oh man, I am so exhausted. I'm eating chocolate covered espresso beans like I'm getting paid to do it, which means I'll probably be sick by 6th period but... it's just that kind of morning.

I am bruised and battered from last night's soccer game and limping around on a twisted ankle. BTSA is tonight (blech) and I am already busy every evening this week. I'm getting more tired just thinking about it. Hopefully this weekend will consist of going back to the Bay, finishing my research presentation, and a visit to the MOMA. There is a new exhibit that I've been really wanting to see, and it will be a nice break from all the work I've been doing.

I have some revisions left to complete for the thesis, but by and large I'm done and that's a beautiful feeling. I sort of have all this time now to do things like cook, work out, grade papers, go on dates, and prep for my classes. It's amazing how much less anxiety I feel now that all the major writing is out of the way. I can't really believe that I've done it, that I've spent the last six months working on 150 pages of research and now I'm done and will be given a Master's degree. I still have a difficult time believing that they let me graduate from college, let alone have my own classroom and now get a graduate degree. Am I really an adult now? Is that what all this means? Do they know who they are dealing with here? Yikes.

And holy crap, I just got an email from Elk Grove asking for an interview for the upcoming school year. I repeat: Holy. Crap.

Quote o' the Day: "I can't decide what color your eyes are. They're like... green, and blue, and brown. Kind of like looking at the Earth. Ha! Bet you've never heard that one before."

don't talk too fast to me

True that.

And oh, I am smitten. This is getting ridiculous.

The official birthday countdown begins today! 60 days until I'm 24. Holy crap!

when i'm surrounded

It's still up for revision, but here is my thesis reflection as it stands this evening:

About halfway through this arduous year, I began to wonder what exactly I had gotten myself into. Between EL curriculum piloting, BTSA, lesson-planning, and adjusting to their first classroom, what self-respecting first-year high school teacher decides to conduct teacher research and write a thesis anyway? I used the excuse, “But I like research” whenever anyone asked why I decided to continue into this final year of graduate study, but let’s be honest – that was a bold-faced lie, or at least it was at first. I made it through four years of undergraduate work with what was inside my head, and that alone. I prided myself on being able to think critically and not rely on anyone else’s ideas to inform my academic decision-making. This experience, however, has taught me that I must inform my teaching with the findings of expert practitioners, that everything I have done this year has been supported by research that other people have done – we do not teach in isolation and it would be foolish to try to do so.

I have lived and breathed this research for the past six months and I’m sure my family and friends will be glad to see me finish. They will be proud of me, yes, but they will also be glad to have me back. As a goal-oriented individual, I have lost sleep and a bit of myself in the completion of this thesis. I simply could not let it rest until it was done. Vocabulary squares littered the backseat of my car just as much as the importance of cognates for non-native speakers littered my conversations with everyone from my roommate to my little brother to the barista who makes my latte at Peet’s every Friday morning. I lamented that I had forgotten who I was and what I loved in the wake of this research until I realized that this is who I am and what I love. I have become close to my research because it is meaningful to me and it helps me remember why I became a teacher in the first place.

I love English, but I love my students more and it hurt me to see them struggling. My closeness to my research was borne out of a deeply rooted desire to see my ninth graders succeed in something they thought was impossible. I am proud of myself for making it through this year, but I am even more proud of my students who began making connections to words they had heard in other classrooms and in other languages and who learned how to construct truly meaningful sentences out of words that at first made them say, “This sucks, Miss G!”

I learned that I can do this, whatever “this” might be. For the first time, school was actually hard for me, and I made it through with relatively little incident. Amazingly, this has been the hardest section of the paper to write. How do I conclude a year of academic research? What should my final thought be? I am more exhausted than I was a year ago, but I am also more experienced, more informed, and more ready for whatever comes next. I’ll go against every fiber of teacher-researcher in me when I say that I suppose it’s not necessarily about the outcome at all, but everything that happens along the way.

just like any other

This is just so, so, so appropriate because at 5pm today I finished my thesis! Rejoice!

where those years have gone

hearts all over the world

I have started reading Tolstoy's Ana Karenina by email with DailyLit. It's going to take me 430 days, but I think that might be the only way to get through the beast. DailyLit is actually a great way to read literary classics, if you don't mind dragging it out a bit, and they have a ton of books available (the classics are free, but I think you have to pay for more recent publications). I think I might start Flaubert's Madame Bovary as well. I think my only problem is that I want to read more than 20 minutes of a novel a day... We'll see how this goes.

I found a great article this morning about Georgia schools paying their students to study so I've been asking my students to read it and journal about it and we've been having the best discussions. They actually are critical thinkers, they just only want to think critically about certain things! Sometimes that's hard for me to remember when I read some of their superficial, shallow, mindless writing. Today has been a nice break from the norm. We'll see how sixth period does.

I realized yesterday how much better my classes (sixth period especially) are doing. I gave out my first referral of second semester yesterday during sixth to a student that just transferred into my class. As his behavior was ramping up, leading to the referral, the other students started shooting him looks and whispering "Stop. You need to stop. She'll kick you out. You have to be good in this class."

It's not that my students are afraid of me, I think, it's just that I have made my expectations clear for their work and their behavior and they know there are clear and consistent consequences for their actions. My new students don't know that yet and are pushing my limits to see how much I'll tolerate (not much, as they will soon learn). The best part of it all is that I don't even have to tell them to stop - the other students do it for me! They don't like to see me upset anymore than I like getting upset.

Teaching has gotten easier and easier this year and I feel really confident about myself as an educator and a role model for my students. One of my EL's is writing his firsthand biographical essay about me, and was trying to describe why I'm not like other teachers in his broken English. I think what he finally concluded was that I'm "different" because I "sit on the tables" (don't tell the administration!) and I talk to them about what they did over the weekend and what TV shows they watch and, basically, treat them like real people.

My biggest problem with working in a big school, incidentally, is that I don't feel like the students are treated like real people - they're numbers. It doesn't help that we're in Program Improvement and in danger of getting some funding cut. I don't want my kids to be successful so my numbers look good - I just don't care about that. I want them to do well because they're learning and because they are getting excited about something and... I just don't feel like that is highly valued because that takes time and the numbers can't wait for the time I need to accomplish that kind of success with a lot of my students.

I have a "date" tomorrow night which is pretty exciting. It feels nice to have something other than finishing my thesis to look forward to. :)

feel it capsize

I'm wide awake and so alive
Ringing like a bell
Tell me this is paradise
And not someplace I fell
'Cause I keep on fallin' down

Just push me 'til I have to fly
I've shed my skin, my scars
Take me deep out past the lights
Where nothing dims these stars
Nothing dims these stars

I wanna let go and know
That I'll be alright, alright

this earthquake weather

OK, things are getting ridiculous. All of my friends' newest Facebook updates (See Megan. See Megan work on her thesis. See Megan get distracted by online networking. See Megan disgusted with herself...) are pictures of their babies.

Babies!

Although with as often as I talk about my thesis, I might as well take pictures of that and post it on my Facebook. I guess it's sort of taken on a life of its own at this point... I kind of feel like I'm in labor. A long, painful, 20-week long labor.

back to your heart

More thesis updates. After sitting in class yesterday, naseous for three straight hours, I packed up my things and drove to my parents' house. I will get my outcome data analysis done today. I will. Tomorrow night I have a soccer game at Off the Wall and I still need to lesson plan for this week, but right now I resolve to focus only on writing.

Last night my mom made me watch The Notebook with her and I almost vomitted from the sappiness. Is the book just as ridiculous and predictable? And I wonder, Is it that I don't believe in love like that period or I just don't believe it will happen to me? It made me feel terribly depressed and wonderfully self-sufficient at the same time. Whatever the case, I started rereading The Time Traveller's Wife (for the 4th? 5th? 63rd time?) last night, which is far more my style anyhow. It helps me believe that supremely disfunctional people are destined for great things and great love and it also makes me want to quit my job and move to Chicago and become a librarian at the Newberry.

No matter. Data triangulation, ahoy!

this will pass like yesterday

Yesterday I told myself, "I will write for three hours today!" but instead I went to Ikea and bought a bookcase and went grocery shopping and cleaned my bathroom and did laundry and cooked butternut squash deliciousness.

Today I told myself, "I will come home from church and do my writing and make graphs!" but all I've accomplished so far is assembling the bookcase from yesterday and writing this blog.

Gah! Let it be March already!

made for each other

I don't make New Years' Resolutions, but this works for me:

"Our lives are nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. If you don't like the story your life has become -- tell yourself a better one."
-Millionaire Mommy Next Door

make me sing

Tonight I broke down into ridiculous, snot-nosed, air-gulping sobs while driving on 237. The cause of my emotional meltdown? My cell phone, which has not had service since I landed in Texas last Wednesday...

Clearly, I've got some issues I need to work through that run a little deeper than hand held electronics. Sheesh.

face the truth

Back from Oklahoma, with lots of musings about the word unmoored and a general feeling of anxiety as 2007 draws to a rapid close and we zoom in on 2008. But none of that now. Just this:


All the future seems unclear
never moving never near
but You hold me as I scream
wake me from my wicked dream
something out there waits for me
hand in hand we wait for it
but I'm still nothing next to You
I'm still nothing without to You

And the wonder of it all is I'm still standing
And the wonder of it all is we're still standing
Never planned it
And I wonder where I'll be next year
-Monday Morning, Wonder of it All

not forgotten

These last few months have been, without a doubt, a very painful dry spell in terms of my faith. It has been difficult for me to focus on the Lord, to put my faith and trust in Him, when everything around me feels like it's spinning so madly out of control and when I feel so hurtfully neglected and left behind.

I know better, cognitively, than to plead "Where are you, God?" because God never deserts us or turns His back on us. I know that sometimes God chooses to fall silent for reasons that we do not understand. I also know that it is us, His children, that forget to acknowledge Him or become so wrapped up in our own lives that we cannot possibly fathom that we are not the authors of our own story, that this life is not our own, and that God has a plan for us. In my head, I know these things. These are the basics I grew up in, the anchors of my faith, the very truths in which I have found solace for many years.

In my heart though, the wounds of the last 12 months have created deep crevices that I have been woefully content to wallow in. I hate feeling lost and alone and without direction, but I hate feeling unable to turn to God, my Rock, even more. I fear becoming overwhelmed with a job I am dissatisfied with, a thesis that feels that it will drag on forever, a social life that has disappeared in the wake of said job and thesis, and so little vision of what my future holds that I wonder if I will just stay in Davis forever. In my heart I feel abandoned and lost and I wonder where God has gone, what any of this has to do with His plan, why He has allowed so much suffering lately.

My head, of course, knows differently. My head is overjoyed that today we celebrate the birth of Christ, our Savior and that the Word became flesh to save us, to save me, in all of my inadequacies and failings. My head knows everything will be OK. That God will pull through - He always has and He always will. That this silence has a purpose, that these wounds have merit, that I am being sanctified through these trials. I know that God does not cause our suffering, but He uses it. I know that He is using this period in my life to somehow grow me into the person He wants me to be.

It's just hard, right? Because I'm a teacher, an academic, an intellectual. I'm supposed to trust my head, the things I know. But I'm also human, and I tend to trust the things I feel just as much.

How long will my prayers seem unanswered?
Is there still faith in me to reach the end?
I'm feeling doubt I'm losing faith
But giving up would cost me everything
So I'll stand in the pain and silence
And I'll speak to the dark night

I believe in the sun even when it's not shining
I believe in love even when I don't feel it
And I believe in God even when He is silent
And I believe
Barlow Girl, "I Believe in Love"

for what ive done

Home, home, home. I cruised in yesterday afternoon after taking an excrutiating 3+ hours to drive the moderate 110 miles from Davis. My car = unhappy and in duress. Hopefully my mechanic can figure out what's wrong with it (and not to the tune of $3,600 - thanks a lot SpeeDee in Woodland) while I'm in Oklahoma next week.

For the first time in many years I'm actually looking forward to my trip to the midwest. I love my grandparents, but there is little to do on the ranch now that we are all older and my grandma is not well. While I normally anticipate with dread 4 days of sitting on the couch, cross-stitching, knitting, reading, overeating, and napping, this year I'm eagerly looking forward to 4 days of writing my thesis (and overeating). Hopefully I can get the bulk of the data analysis finished and write up a lot of the observational data so I don't have to worry about it anymore.... I'm throwing myself a huge party in March when this is finished.

Christmas this year should be pretty low-key. We're doing brunch on Tuesday, which is new, but I'm looking forward to it because it means less awkward-time with the cousins and more quality-time with my immediate family. I'm also way looking forward to the present giving and receiving this year. I did an excellent job of gift selection this year (Burberry Brit for Mom, the fashionista and The Lost and Biggest Brother for Dad, my true literary soul mate) and, for the first time in many years, I have absolutely no clue what my parents got me. Of course, it's not the gifts that are important, it's the time spent with my fabulous fam, but we get more creative every year and it's fun to see what everyone comes up with. Except my brother, who never gets anyone anything.

I also bought some sweet books today to take with me to Oklahoma (you know, for plane rides and study breaks), including The Keep, Second Glance, and Everything After. It's all I can do to keep from digging into them right now. However, I promised myself I would finish my second go-round of Girl Meets God and give Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell a fighting chance (I've been letting it fight for over a year but... you know. I can never leave a book unfinished, no matter how impossible it is to get through), so I'll persevere.

Mmmmm, books.

stuck on you

Only a few more days. I submitted my Benchmark last week and have spent the time since writing finals, attending SST meetings for my at-risk students, and trying to get my apartment clean before I head home on Saturday. Then this morning, on my way to work, my "check engine" light started flashing and my car threatened to explode. My car is currently sitting in an auto-shop in Woodland and I am vehicle-less until some undetermined point in the (hopefully near) future. I want to go home.

you tell the story

I've been rereading Lauren Winner's memoir, Girl Meets God, which I picked up summer '05 at a bookstore in Saratoga Springs, NY. It's so freaking good that every time I turn a page I want to open up this blog and post another quote. I love that Lauren is a scholar, first and foremost, and reads the Bible from a scholar's viewpoint - with cultural research and theology close at hand. I also love her memories of Orthodox Judaism, her descriptions of Jewish tradition, and her reflections on becoming a Christian and how God guided her to Christ. I don't really have anything else to say about it, but just felt that it was something that needed to be written down. Lame, I know.

to see the wizard

I don't really talk about it much because it makes me feel unbelievably dorky, but I'm completely obsessed with all things Wizard of Oz.

No, seriously. Like, I love Oz more than one might think imaginable. I used to watch the 1939 Judy Garland musical version over and over again until I had nightmares about flying monkeys and could sing every word to every song by heart. I also watched Return to Oz several times but the Wheelers totally creeped me out, so my fascination with it was short-lived.

Then I got a little older and started reading all the books. I'm an avid reader now that I'm an adult, but I was the same way as a kid, for sure. I devoured stories about Oz, even though they didn't all make sense to me.

In high school, my drama department produced "The Wiz" as our spring musical when I was a junior (no one on cast was African-American, but we acted with soul). I student directed the show and played Glinda the Good, the movie-star good-witch sister who shows up in the end to send Dorothy home and sing the amazing reprise of "If You Believe".

When I got to college, I took a children's literature course and we read The Emerald City of Oz and I was amazed at the complicated politics of Oz that I obviously never picked up on when I was seven. Then I read Wicked. Oh, Wicked. I love Wicked because it takes the Oz story and turns it on it's head and gives crazy detailed background about Dorothy and the Wicked Witch and, holy crap, I love that book. (Son of a Witch is pretty good too, not nearly as good as Wicked in my opinion, but still a book about Oz, so I love it).

This long line of Oz-fascination leads me, of course, to the latest in Oz reimaginings - The SciFi channel's Tin Man starring Zooey Deschanel and Alan Cumming. Tin Man has received some pretty brutal reviews, but still achieved the title of most-watched telecast in network history when the first two-hour installment aired on Sunday night. And I love it.

It's brilliant, really, in a totally post-modern, deconstructed kind of way. It alludes to Baum's original story (Deschanel's character is named "DG" and her mother is the former Queen of the O.Z. - the Outer Zone, Glitch is a scarecrow-like character who has had his brain removed by the evil sorceress Azkadellia, Cain is a former police man - or "Tin Man" - who was encased in a tin suit of armor for years as punishment for joining the resistance against Azkadellia), but definitely isn't a retelling. There is plenty of new and reimagined information to keep me glued to the TV for an entire six hours (yeah, it's long) of Oz-induced euphoria. Exactly what I need as this long and painful semester draws to a close.

that this would all be fine

God I'm in this place again I'm trying so hard not to fall,
but everything keeps coming down with the rain.
And I try so hard I forget to call.
Everybody's looking around, and everybody wants to be found.
And I'm just hanging on; I give You all that I am.
I come to You with all that I am, I bring to You all that I have,
and all I have is nothing, and I keep on trying, and all I want is You.
-Everyday Sunday

(picture courtesy of farlane)

that's what you get

About three years ago, I got an email from my uncle about some blog he wanted me to check out. At the end of the email, he wrote this:

"I want you to have all of the advantages of a free spirit early in your life.

I think you already do."

I need to remember things like those during times like these. I will finish my thesis. I will be a good teacher. I will continue to be a fascinating and dynamic person, even when I feel like my life is nothing but data and research...

everythings right

Today was long. School, staff meeting, then BTSA. I left my apartment at 7 this morning and just arrived back home. But today was also good. I wore a cashmere sweater, listened to great music, had flowers delivered to my classroom, got my seniors thinking about Freud, and actually felt like my ELs learned something. And when I got home, Annie had baked cookies. And Heroes is on tonight. And everything is going to be alright.

There's more but... it can wait.

Things I am Thankful For, 2007

my health, a steady paycheck, houndstooth coats, FreeRice, pumpkin pie, ballet flats, students who try, running shoes, candles, stuffed bell peppers, soccer, coffee, high school football, Pottery Barn desk accessories, fleece blankets, kiwi, Lush products, Jesus, Shakespearean endeavors, strawberries, cranberry margaritas, empty weekends for serious writing, fireplaces, family, puppies, books, my roommate, a new cell phone in January, minimum days, yogurt, laughter, etc etc

if it kills me

From the awesome indexed.blogspot.com:

war on sound

I want to change the world... instead I sleep.

I want to believe in more than you and me.
But all that I know is I'm breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing now.
-Ingrid Michaelson

i haven't spoken

Just have to laud the awesomeness of FreeRice.com again this morning. While sipping my (extra foamy) latte and talking to my mom on the phone, I donated over 1000 grains of rice and reached level 41 (out of 50)! Amazing!

Now off to church and yogurt with my small group. Beautiful Sunday.

a few small repairs

I have never liked showering. The undressing. The lathering, rinsing, repeating. The shaving. The exfoliating. The turning off the water and getting cold. The drying off. The redressing. Then the moisturizing and the make-uping, and the hair-drying and styling. It's just always such a hassle.

Yesterday morning though, I stood in the shower for almost a half hour. I wasn't evening doing anything. I just stood and let the hot water run over me and prayed that time would just stop and I could just stay there, warm and alone and relatively content, for a while.

Of course, that's not possible. So I turned off the water and got goosebumps on my just-shaved legs and looked at the clock and realized I was late for work, single again, and legitimately heartbroken (not the end-of-the-world high school kind of heartbroken, but the real I-was-going-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-you-until-you-changed-your-mind kind of heartbroken). But I put on a brave little face and got a caramel latte on the way to school and smiled when my students complimented my dress and gave the obligatory "Yay, it's Friday!" every time I ran into a colleague and told Nick, again and again over frozen yogurt, "No really, it's going to be OK. I'll be fine," even though I was glad it was dark so he couldn't see my eyes get wet.

But today... I shopped and spent too much money like I only do when I'm sad. And I ate jelly beans until my stomach hurt instead of going to the gym and doing crunches. And I tried to clean my room but just ended up just sitting in the middle of the mess, staring into my closet aimlessly. And I cried because my roommate is away for the weekend and my boyfriend is not my boyfriend anymore and this is the most unhappy I've been in a long time, not just because of the roommate and the boyfriend, but because of school and work and growing up too.

On Wednesday my small group talked about how the world looks at things and says "That is impossible!" but our faith says "With God, everything is possible" and I told them about how when I was in New York, Mike reminded me of Peter walking on the water to see Jesus, but getting scared because of the storm that raged around him. The minute he took his eyes of the Lord, he began to sink, but Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him.

I'm trying really hard not to take my eyes of Jesus and to trust him in this stormy season and to let him love me and take care of me and fill all of the empty places inside me. But I sure could use prayers as well. I'm not so good at letting go of my pride and reaching out for someone else's help.

empty-handed

I'll praise You in this storm
and I will lift my hands
for You are who You are
no matter where I am.
And every tear I've cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side.
And though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm.
-Casting Crowns

do it again

http://www.freerice.com

World hunger relief and vocabulary development? I'll give you one guess what my students will be doing on our minimum day next Wednesday.

Also, last night Bethany taught me how to make a ringtone out of any song in iTunes. I now rock out to "Mmmbop" whenever I receive a phone call. Glorious.

its a perfect shame

Another crappy day at school (I have good ones, I promise). I don't have a problem with behavior management except for the students who have no understanding of "good behavior" in the first place. God, they just drag me down.

I got my hair cut today, and it looks pretty fantastic and sassy if I do say so myself.

I found an old letter from David on my computer today that he sent me the summer of 2003. It made me cry and wish that sometimes I wasn't such a bitch and that life wasn't as complicated as it is.

I've been unnecessarily emotional and unusually devoid of words lately. I need a holiday.

better than just getting by

Rough day at school, but now I'm home and (supposedly) grading piles upon piles of papers.

I'm far more stressed out than is really necessary, and about stupid things too. This weekend I became so fed up by a number of things, that I started researching schools for next fall. My old high school is already accepting 08-09 applications and I can't help but get a little excited about that, even though it's only week 12.

Well, it sounds bad that way, but week 12 means that in 6 weeks, I'll be halfway done. That is crazy.

I don't like thinking about leaving Davis, but at the same time sometimes it's all I can think about. I don't know what to make of it, but it can't be making this stress situation any better.

oh crystal ball

I just remembered this gem from COTW 2005:

Josh Pell: Wanna know the most annoying sound in the world?
Mike: Teens?

(I haven't gotten much done today, and just remembered I have to call 10 parents sometime this weekend to let them know their kid is failing my class. Worst. Job. Ever.)

im sick of waiting

Saw a great bumper sticker on the way home from class today:


Today's agenda:
-laundry
-clean my room
-empty dishwasher
-finish Benchmark edits
-work out
-lesson plans

Next weekend is the NICE Festival in San Francisco and a 3-day weekend. Rejoice!

the most wonderful time of the year

This year's pirate pumpkin. Sweet!

me and the twins

School went into Code Red lockdown today during the majority of 3rd period. Apparently someone robbed a convenience store and decided to hide out on campus, although, nearly 2 hours later, I have yet to recieve official word from the administration as to the actual cause of said lockdown which is, in a word, annoying.

I spent part of yesterday at a truly worthless conference about filing the FAFSA. I tried to get out of it on the basis of being a graduate student and having filed my own FAFSA for several years now, but still had to go. Upon arrival, I realized that all other "reqiured" teachers from my school had gotten out of it, which was irritating. Doubly irritating? Our head counselor, who signed me up for the thing, sleeping through the majority of the 6 hour presentation. It was a monumental waste of time (as I'm finding most conferences and workshops to be) and now I have to make up for the fact that none of my classes got anything accomplished while I was gone! Hooray!

I'm reading a really great book right now called The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield. All I really want to do right now is go home and curl up on my couch and read. Oh man, is it good.

And no, I did not dress up for Halloween, which is truly disappointing, I know, but my kids said they would laugh at me and I didn't have anything anyway and I surely wasn't going to go spend a fortune just to be laughed at.

The end.

days of the week

I took the day off on Friday to work on my Benchmark, knowing that I would probably get very little done this weekend. This was a good choice, as I finished the monster at about 6pm and then had the rest of the weekend to play...

...with my new computer!

Oh my gosh, I am in heaven. Now, I am not a techno-geek in any sense of the word. I mean, I like computers and I know how to use computers really well, but I'm definitely not the person who goes out and buys something the minute it comes out just to have it. I'm also not the person who replaces their digital stuff the minute it starts to get a little old, which is how I found myself with a six-year-old computer, running two operating systems behind, that could barely start up without crashing (and a two-year-old cell phone that only rings half of the time, and a digital camera with a corrupted internal memory, but whatever).

I didn't realize how old the old computer was, however, until I plugged this one in. Well first, it's just beautiful. And huge. I bought the smallest screen, and 20" is still a big freaking screen for word processing and playing online sudoku. And second, it's fast. I'm sure it's not really any faster than any normal computer, but compared to what I've been using, it's like moving at the speed of sound after riding a tricycle. I can't believe how much time I've wasted waiting for programs to open or waiting for charts to import from Excel or waiting for the Trash to empty.

In short, I am in computer heaven. More later.

what have you done today

Another super EOG:

I did not get much done this weekend, MA-wise. This means I'm in serious thesis lock-down from here until Sunday night (although I'm hoping it doesn't take me that long). What I did do this weekend was spend Sunday morning in Chico with my brother. He invited me and my parents up to see his new house and have lunch, and then after lunch he offered to give me a tour of the campus, since I've never been to Chico before.

It was a really great time to spend with him and see how much he has grown and matured in these last few years since his accident. He really is a great kid and I was just so proud of him this weekend - not only is he being kind and affectionate with my parents (and with me!), but he's working really hard at school and refuses to give up, even though his major is really tough. I've always looked forward to the day that we could really start to be friends, and hopefully that is coming up soon.

starts to take shape

I got a pretty great Encourage-o-Gram this week:


In other news, I just got back from class and am pretty stoked to get to work on my First Benchmark (only worth 50% of my grade!) which is due next week. Time to sit down with some tea and get busy with vocabulary worksheets and research timelines. Yay!

But in all honesty, for as much as I complain, I really love real graduate school. I like to research and the writing comes pretty easy to me and I'm learning how to be a better teacher in the process, so its a winning situation no matter how you slice it.

I'm also working to make this my "general stuff" blog and move all of my teacher-y research-y things a more formal "teacher stuff" blog over at http://rm205.wordpress.com since I can use any journaling I do about my classes as actual data for my thesis. Check in soon if you're interested in all the exciting goings-on of room 205.

I'm also looking forward to a new computer in the next week or so. Having a real job with a real paycheck certainly has its benefits...

It's so beautiful!

i want your love

"Well, sometimes love seems easy. Like... it's easy to love rain... and hawks. And it's easy to love wild plums... and the moon. But with people, seems like love's a hard thing to know. It gets mixed up. I mean, you can love one person in one way and another person in another way. But how do you know you love the right one in every way?"

"I'm not sure, but I think you'll know. I think if it's the right person, it'll be better than rain and hawks and wild plums. Even better than the moon. I think it'll be better than all that put together."

Where the Heart Is -Billie Letts

get it right

I made it through my entire credential year without doing it, but today I crouched down under my desk after the lunch bell and just cried.

wake up with the rain

Regardless of the last post, I'm still freaking out about my MA. I have another WARP due tomorrow and my first benchmark (worth 50-freaking-percent of my fist quarter grade) due in about three weeks.

Today I have a staff meeting (in about 5 minutes) where the English department will try to tell the ELD department how we should run our programs (I am part of both, of course). There will be no chocolate, because our department chair is male, which is highly unfortunate (the chocolate part, not the male part) because this has been a seriously bummer Monday and I'm not looking forward to sitting through a meeting one single bit.

Ah, life.

rock n roll fantasy

It would appear that all the freaking out I have been doing over my MA has been well worth it. Success!!

Megan,
Could I use your achievement data set as a model for good data representation to share with others in your cohort? Let me know if
doing so is all right with you.
Thanks!
Kathy

this will be the last night

I'm growing my own miniature Christmas tree.

You laugh, but come December I'll be stringing miniature popcorn garlands, just you watch.

i can only say your name

Last night marked DMB concert number 5 (6? 7? I've lost track) and it was awesome as always. The set list was one of the best I've heard - super mellow with some rare stuff mixed in with classic Dave and some of my favorites:

Sugar Will (tease)
A Dream So Real
Two Step
Eh Hee
You Might Die Trying
Everyday
The Dreaming Tree
Grace is Gone
Louisianna Bayou
Sister
Granny
Corn Bread
The Idea of You
#27
Dreamgirl
Jimi Thing
Grey Street
Stay

ENCORE
So Damn Lucky
American Baby Intro
Ants Marching

Like I said: awesome. I love concerts at Shoreline, but for Dave shows I'm starting to wonder why I pay so much money to just come home dizzy and smelling like pot. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it didn't used to bother me as much as it did last night.

Anyway, before driving down yesterday afternoon, I took a class with the Area Three Writing Project up in Davis about reading comprehension at the secondary level and I'm excited to use some of the strategies they taught us. I just wish my students were as excited to use the strategies I teach them as I am to use the strategies I learn in my classes... Is that what we mean when we talk about "lifelong learners"?

In completely unrelated and non-academic news, I got on the scale this morning (I don't own a scale in Davis), and I have lost almost 10 pounds since school started! I now officially weigh less than the weight I lied about on my driver's license. If that's not cause for victory, I don't know what is.

march into the sea

I nailed a couple of kids for cheating on their homework today. They were shocked. Not that I had caught them, but that I told them it was totally not OK and that they would be getting a "zero" on the assignment as a result.

I'm just sort of amazed at a lot of my students' attitudes about school. Mainly, that their education is not a priority and that I'm being unreasonable by expecting them to learn something. When complaining about the homework assignment the other day (oh, the complaining. The constant complaining), one girl actually said, "We have lives you know, Miss Garcia. Do you expect us not to have a life?"

Well, you can probably imagine that I lost it at that and gave a lengthly discourse on how their lives are wholly dependent on their education and how their job is school right now and if they don't take this job seriously, they won't ever have a job to take seriously again.

They looked at me like I was speaking Greek.

They probably don't even know where Greek is spoken.

I couldn't import the charts I made (yes, I made them), but the breakdown, percentage-wise, of grades in my two 9th grade classes looks a little bit like this:

Period 1
A - 5%
B - 33%
C - 43%
D - 5%
F - 14%

Period 6
A - 5%
B - 19%
C - 24%
D - 14%
F - 38%

At least Period 1 has a slightly modified bell curve, but Period 6 has a serious "group think" problem. Once one fails, all the rest follow. Lemmings, the whole lot of them...

starting at zero

Tons, tons TONS to write about, but let me just say that The Reflective Teacher's "Scream" compare/contrast exercise paired with the stuff I learned at my Write Institute training yesterday have me SUPER excited to really dive into process writing with my 9th graders and my ELs.

Also, 6-week progress reports are due this week. Maybe it's the MA talking, but I really want to make some graphs showing the trends in my classes, especially my two 9th grade periods. I have a feeling some kids are going to get grounded next week...

im a twentysomething

"All college towns are essentially the same. There is something strange about the roots of people settled in a place where everyone else passes through."
-Anna Quindlen, "One True Thing"

hopes and expectations

I'm at home again (are we noticing a trend? More on that later), supposedly sitting down to do serious data analysis, but I just can't seem to get down to work. My coffee is too cold and we have no muffins for breakfast and it's freezing and I'm distracted by the fact that I was a dummy and left a whole class-set of essays that needed to be graded on my desk at school.

I attended Max and Monica's wedding yesterday at Mission San Jose's Palmdale Estates and it was beautiful and tons of fun. I have been especially enjoying events lately where I get to see old friends and catch up and talk about life (as opposed to talking about sorority drama and the ilk). We sat at a seriously all-star table with the likes of Dan Neiman, Steve Doo, Joel & Emma, and Alex, ate fantastic food, and whiled away a rainy afternoon with awesome conversation and good times. I did not take a single picture because I was having such a phenomenal time eating and laughing and celebrating a wedding that I was genuinely excited to see happen. Congratulations, Max.

So yes, I'm home again. I was thinking the other day about how I still refer to the Bay as home, no matter how long I have been away and how often I try to call Davis "home" and the Bay "my parents' home". I have, actually, lived in Davis longer than my parents have lived in their house here in Los Altos, so for all intents and purposes, Davis is more home than Los Altos will ever be. Then I started thinking about how often I come home and realized, for a 23 year old, I sure come home an awful lot. What's up with that? I finally told my parents last night, "I just would prefer to do nothing on the weekend here than to do nothing on the weekend in Davis. I never intended to stay in Davis for this long in the first place."

Now, this is not to say that I am in any hurry to move back in with my parents. I'm pretty adament about that. It does mean, however, that I'm in no hurry to stay in Davis once this degree is over (if it's ever over, seeing how long it's taking me to get any work done...).

This brings up lots of issues, of course, that I'm not really willing to think about right now, but I guess I sort of always knew this was coming. No one expected me to go to Davis in the first place, let alone stay there for all of my undergrad, then do my graduate work there, and then live and work there once I was done. As for my high school? Well, it's serving a purpose right now and I'm enjoying myself and my students for the most part (4th and 5th period aside, of course), but there isn't anything concrete holding me there. BTSA will follow me (joy) and then I can start building tenure in a district I intend to stay with for some time.

Anyway.

I've been listening to a lot of Muse lately. Why haven't I listened to them before? Rock on.

this ship is taking me far away

(*names changed to protect the innocent)

Today my ninth graders took their nouns test. What I thought would be a straightforward and simple assessment (since we drilled proper, common, abstract, concrete, compound, and collective nouns daily for the past three weeks) turned into a nightmare.

When I review common and proper nouns in class, I typically name a common noun (like "dog") and have students list as many corresponding proper nouns as they can think of ("Schnauzer", "German Shepherd", "Golden Retriever", "Chihuahua", etc). I do this because, honestly, how hard are common and proper nouns? Proper nouns begin with a capital letter. They name a specific noun. End of story.

So, on the test, I listed five common nouns and asked the students to list three corresponding proper nouns for each. The nouns were "man", "actress", "president", "country", and "national landmark". I didn't think this would be difficult, but apparently.... well... the following dialogue took place in first period (during the test, mind you):

Lisa: "Miss Garcia, what's a country?
Miss Garcia: "Um. Well a country is... you know... a country." (well honestly, what did she expect me to say?)
Lisa: So, like, Woodland, right?
Miss Garcia: No.... Woodland is a city.
Lisa: Sooo.... California?
(remember, the class is taking a test)
Miss Garcia: No. California is a state.
Chris: Mexico, right?
Alice: No, dummy! Mexico isn't a country!
Miss Garcia: Actually, yes. Mexico is a country.
Brynn: Miss Garcia, this is hard! I don't know any countries!

It went on like this for some time, with my students insisting that they didn't know the names of any countries (including the one we live in? Seriously?) and me refusing to give them the answers. Finally, I lost it.

Miss Garcia: "OK folks. Countries. You know, Canada, Mexico, China, England, The United States-"
Students: "Thank you!" (they begin scribbling furiously)
Miss Garcia: "Oh no. You don't get to use the ones I just told you. There are hundreds more. Come up with your own."

...I still received several blank exams.

I just want to know how, on the long road to high school, these kids somehow missed the whole concept of geography. Like, basic geography.

No kids, Woodland is not a country, no matter how much you love it.

coming to an end

Last week was really long. Meetings meetings, and more meetings. And then on Thursday, I thought I didn't have a meeting, but then I did! I decided at the last minute to drive home last night and enjoy some time with my family and grade papers at my Mom's giant breakfast table with a never-ending cup of coffee on Sunday morning, which I'm hugely looking forward to.

Despite the exhaustion, last week was also really good. It's such a nice feeling to not be student teaching anymore, to have my own classroom with my own rules and my own procedures. It's nice to get to know kids from the beginning and it's really nice to feel my lessons start to flow effortlessly and to not feel so much pressure and anxiety every morning before a class starts. It hit me this week, "Hey, I'm actually kind of good at this."

I also finally got kids in my ELD class, which is both good and bad, I guess. I was hoping they would close the class if there were no Level 2s and give me some of the 9th grade overflow, but no dice. I have 10 kids in 4th/5th now and they're mostly really great. ELD is just a big committment though, and not one I was particularly excited or willing to make and now, of course, I have the Learning Center breathing down my neck about peer tutors and supplemental materials and it's just a lot more pressure than teaching mainstream classes. Fortunately, we're piloting a really awesome new curriculum that actually does a lot of the work for me, so lesson planning isn't as difficult as it was last year. It's just a long two hours in the middle of my day...

I'm reading Steven King's Cell and it's not nearly as good as I had hoped (nor nearly as good as Twilight, but I'm just going to have to shut up about that until spring at least). I also really need to get to work on my MA stuff, but after turning in WARP 1, I'm kind of burned out (not good) and I need to get back to research and data collection.

And now, I have to take the dog for a walk. It's nice to be home.

impossible to ignore you

I've been so blog- quiet lately that you're probably going to hate me for this entry but... it's just been on my mind.

I'm feeling depressed today. A deep sense of sadness and loss really because... I finished the third book in a series that I've really been enjoying and the fourth book won't be out until May of 2008. And really, all I want to do right now is sit down and read about Edward and Bella and Jacob and I can't because I read three 600 page books in one week and ruined it for myself until May.

Hmph.

I'll back up.

All the way back to when Katie send me that 50-pound box of books. There were a few that I wasn't familiar with, so I took them home to read so that I would know what they were about if a student asked. One of those books was Twilight. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I began reading it on Friday afternoon and finished it around 2 that morning. It was just that good. (And, it's YA fiction, so even at 600 pages, it was a quick read. Well, for me at least.) And yes, it's about vampires but that's not why I loved it. The characters were just so... real. And, as is often the case after I read a really great character-driven book, I had two enormous desires:

1. start writing a really great character-driven story
2. read more about these amazing characters

Twilight was Stephenie Meyer's first novel, so I doubted that there was a sequel yet or anything, but I Amazoned it anyway and found not one, but two sequels (New Moon and Eclipse)! I was thrilled. I ordered them right away (in hardback, no less, which is a huge deal for me because I hate reading books in hardback) and devoured them. And now they are done. And I am sad.

Because I'm tired and just totally worn out physically and emotionally and mentally from a tough week of teaching (and it was only four days) and I don't have any books to read.

Man am I a nerd.