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!