Her Artichoke Heart

4 poems I wrote in the 6 months after Sept. 11, 2001

2011-09-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

1) untitled

I didn’t dream for days
for weeks
the smoke drifted to my neighborhood
and I awoke thinking
my apartment was on fire
they said on the news
you can see it all the way from the moon
one of my first grade students announced
another drew the towers falling
drew his own home standing tall
my building is strong
he said
very strong
looking into my eyes
to make sure I believed
he was safe.

2) New York City, December 2001

It doesn’t feel like winter,
that’s the strange thing.
People peering at Christmas windows,
ice skating at Rockefeller Center,
walking through Central Park
have not even zipped their jackets,
don’t bother with gloves or scarves.
Flags wave across the city in a spring-like breeze.
Outside a firehouse, amidst the flowers and cards,
a red white and blue pumpkin still grins.
Emptying a drop box, the mailman
wearing short sleeves,
wearing plastic gloves,
turns his face to the sun.
Perhaps this year
winter has put itself on hold,
given us a reprieve
from the sleet and the snow,
the wind that slices through your skin
until you can’t stop shivering.
We already can’t stop,
we’ve been shaking for months,
eyeing every plane overhead,
waking in the middle of the night,
dreaming of bombs, of fire,
drinking more, taking more tranquilizers,
having more sex,
donating more money,
giving more time,
looking, really looking, into one another’s eyes.

3) Volunteering After September 11 (in early 2002)

I am hunched over a file cabinet,
checking lump sum payments to displaced residents.
Two employees behind me are laughing
about someone they both know.
“She’s gonna have some ugly-ass kids if she stays with him,”
one says.
“Ohhhhhh,” says the other, half-disapproving, half-giggling.
“Their kid’s gonna be so ugly, they’ll take him away,
put him in the Bronx Zoo.”
“Shut up!” her friend laughs.
The room smells like winter coats.
I am handling copies of leases,
unpaid bills, invoices
for apartment cleaning,
for valuables that have yet to be replaced.
“You better watch out or your kid’s gonna turn out ugly!”
“I don’t care,” she says, “as long as he can fight.”
The beautiful ceilings are so high.
Voices carry up, up, up.
All I can do is listen.
When the first woman walks away,
the second one murmurs,
“God’s gonna punish her.”
Then, more clearly,
“God is going to punish her,”
her voice low, and ominous.

4) Towers of Light (March 2002)

Standing at the edge
of Washington Square
staring
mothers stop, their babies in strollers,
wide-eyed
Lights even taller than the towers once were,
curve into the night sky,
a ghostly half-rainbow at the top
A helicopter flies through one
I hold my breath, but
nothing is left for it to hit

It doesn’t feel like half a year
more like two months, maybe three
and this is what I think about:
war in Afghanistan
the hungry and the weary
the job that I lost
blood, bones,
fire and smoke
last phone calls home
hands outstretched
the things we do for love,
or the promise of it.

ANOTHER principal fired

2011-04-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

OMG. I just read on the Inside Schools web site that not only is that crazy charter school where I taught last year definitely closing for good as of June 30, 2011, but the new principal, who hadn't even been on the job for a whole school year, was "terminated for cause" in February! Geez. That place just cannot hang on to a principal, can it? No wonder it's closing.

an original 3-sentence play (in honor of tax day)

2011-04-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

Bob: "It's too bad you can't claim your cat on your taxes."

Me: "I know! I wish I could claim her as a dependent."

Bob: "Dependent? I was thinking more along the lines of a hardship."

Poor Izzie! ;)

Shuttin' it down

2010-12-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Guess what? The city Department of Education is recommending that the terrible school where I taught last year should be closed at the end of this school year! I was shocked, only because the city rarely moves to close charter schools. But almost 80% of the teachers and 25% of the students who were there last year have left, and the test scores were terrible -- only 30% of the students actually passed the state math and reading exams last year. Of course, the rich founder of the school and her lawyers were quoted as saying things like, "The school is still new -- we've only been around for five years -- we just need more time!" More time to steal valuable learning time from kids' lives? I don't think so!

Autumn approaches

2010-09-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, what a relaxing summer (at least after the statistics course I was taking mercifully finished on July 15th -- I passed!). The first day of school for kids around here is this Tuesday or Wednesday for most schools, and I'm so relieved not to have to worry about it. As my sister said, "Just think, the next time you're preparing for the first day of school, it will be as the school psychologist!" Yep, I started my graduate school courses in school psychology last week! One week down, 155 to go. But who's counting? ;)

In my old school's typical lack of attention to detail, my old work e-mail account was never shut down. I've been logging in from time to time over the summer just to see if anything interesting is going on. That's how I found out my supervisor (the special ed director) quit. My co-workers and I had a feeling in the spring that she was interviewing for another job. She kept being out for part of the day at very specific times, and once she couldn't even go with me to a professional development workshop we had signed up for. Now that she's left, they've literally had a complete turnover of all administrators since last year's first day of school: the principal, both the middle school and lower school vice principals, the special ed director, and the person who was the equivalent of the dean are all gone.

A few minutes ago I logged in for the first time in a few weeks, and found these reactions to the new schedule which was just shared with teachers a few days ago:

"It is difficult to integrate English/history with the arts every single week. It should be less frequently and for a single period instead of a double period.
We have been told for the last two weeks to write 45-minute lessons. Now our schedules are double-blocks every day. We were also never told about the constant integration periods we would need to plan for.
Some teachers have class all day without prep time.
It is completely unnecessary to have 80-minute blocks with each class almost every day.
160 - 240 minutes straight through makes us ineffective teachers. Students are completely unable to sit through 160 minutes of intense instruction in core classes.
Each core class should have single periods every day with only one double period a week.
I am double-booked with two classes for the same period on Thursdays.
This schedule is a complete disaster for all. We need to completely re-work it."

Yikes! I cannot imagine having the same sixth, seventh, or eighth grade class for 240 minutes straight. That's four hours! I wouldn't have liked that as a student, let alone as a middle school teacher.

Is it bad to admit that after reading all those comments, I promptly sprang up and did the dance of joy because I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH ANY OF IT!?!? ;)

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!

2010-06-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

Today was the last day of school! It's over! I still can't quite believe I made it through this school year without quitting or getting fired, but somehow it happened. What a relief. I think it still hasn't completely hit me yet.

Not very many kids showed up today, since it was a Monday and only a half day. I spent much of my morning trying to ignore the fact that report cards were frantically being prepared even as the principal was pressuring teachers to change students' grades to make them higher. No, I am not kidding. The place is so corrupt, it makes me sick. Completely unethical. I am so glad to be out of there. I never have to do recess duty again! Or stairwell duty, or listen to the students curse, or be insulted and disrespected on a daily basis, or worry about getting pushed around (literally). There are students I will miss, and I feel sorry for them, because they're trapped in that place. I'm so grateful I'm free!!!

:-D

Come to me, unemployment checks!

2010-06-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

I GOT FIRED!

Well, technically not fired, fortunately -- I'm finishing out the schoolyear -- but I was not asked back for next year. Can you see me doing the happy dance from all the way over there? :)

I never got an appointment to meet with my principal and the special ed supervisor about next year, so I finally had to e-mail the principal's administrative assistant and ask. She gave me an appointment for June 2nd. I wasn't nervous that morning -- I *wanted* to get fired, so I can collect unemployment when I start grad school full-time this fall -- but then 20 minutes before the meeting, I suddenly got anxious, the stress hormones coursing through me, and I kept having to go to the bathroom.

But it turned out to be anticlimactic. The special ed supervisor opened by saying, "As you know we've had many conversations over the course of the year of challenges you've had with various students and classes and your advisory class."

I nodded.

The principal continued, "I think we've had enough conversations and documentation to be able to say it's just not a good fit."

"Okay," I said.

"So we won't be renewing your contract for the 2010 - 2011 school year," she said.

"Okay," I said again.

"We're not saying you're a bad teacher! Nothing like that!" she added hastily. "It's just not a good fit."

"Okay," I said for the third time.

Then we sat and looked at each other. They asked if I had any questions, I said no, and that was that. I'll be collecting unemployment as of August 16th, which will really reduce the number of hours I'll need to tutor. Life is good! :)
.

My job was posted on-line!

2010-05-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

Yes! As of Saturday, my school's very own web site says they are looking for elementary AND MIDDLE SCHOOL special education teachers! Theoretically, this could mean they just want to add a third special ed teacher to the middle school, in addition to me and the other current special ed teacher. But coupled with my rather negative summative evaluation, I think it's a good sign they'll lay me off and I can get unemployment! *fingers crossed*

Accentuate the negative

2010-05-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

My boss e-mailed me my "evaluative summary" of my teaching today. It was fairly negative. My favorite part was where she wrote, "Ms. Artichoke has been observed yelling at students, invading their personal space, and persistently confronting students." Yes, I have yelled. That was wrong. I admit that. But I don't see how if I, say, block the doorway with my body so a student can't leave without permission in the middle of class, and that student gets angry and gets as close as they can to me without mowing me down, that *I* am invading *their* personal space -- aren't they invading mine? And I don't like the way she wrote that I "persistently confront students." That makes it sound like I keep harassing students over and over again about some issue, which I never do. Once it's over, it's over, and I still say hello to them and help them with assignments as if they never sexually harassed me or threatened to punch me in the face. If I'm guilty of anything, it's the opposite. There are a couple of students now I just don't even bother going over to in class to see if they need help with their work, because doing so only leads to trouble (for me, not for them).

The principal is setting up meetings with each of us teachers this week to tell us whether or not we are being offered teaching contracts for next school year. I hope I'm not asked back and I can qualify for unemployment. I wouldn't hire a teacher back who got an evaluation like mine, so this could happen. We'll see.

Blogging again

2010-05-02T19:09:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since I blogged. My dad died on March 9th, about six weeks to the day from when he received the diagnosis of lung cancer. I miss him a lot. My job was nice about it, at least -- they even sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers "from your school family," as the card said. But even with the generous bereavement time (5 days), I've had to take a day off here and there since then, especially when my sister and I were going through/cleaning out Dad's apartment, so in my last paycheck I got docked three days' pay. I can't believe there are still 39 long schooldays until the last day of school. It feels like it should've ended months ago.
I'll try to write more later this week.

New assistant principal

2010-02-28T18:42:00.000-08:00

Five school days down, 20 to go until spring break! Actually, last week ended up being a four-day week since Friday was a snow day. We got almost two feet of snow here in NYC -- highly unusual -- and we've had TWO snow days in the past two weeks, also highly unusual because NYC schools never close. I remember growing up in northern NJ listening to school closing announcements on the radio in the morning, and no matter how many schools in NJ were closed for snow, it seemed like the DJ always ended with, "But New York City public schools ARE open" -- so Friday was a real gift.

Since playwriting enrichment ended in January (thank you, God), I've been teaching "Arts & Crafts: Collage" to four sixth grade boys and one seventh grade boy. It's been going well, except they got kind of bored with collage, so I decided to order them latch hook kits. They had never done latch hook before, and they LOVE it! It took me about half an hour to re-learn how to do it (embarrassingly enough), and then another boy who picked it up quickly helped me teach the others. Three of them are doing skull & crossbones, and two are doing wolves. They're enjoying it so much! They thanked me profusely for ordering the kits and kept talking about how cool they're going to look when they're done. One of the boys said happily, "I like latch hook. It's relaxing!" :) So that's been a lot of fun.

In other good news, we finally hired a new assistant principal. I haven't actually formally met the man, I've just seen him around, so all I knew about him was that he was a white 30-something guy named -- well, I'll call him Patrick. It was funny because when I was telling the reading specialist about two kids who got into a scuffle during advisory and how I had nowhere to send them, she said, "You could've sent them to Patrick."

"Um, does he WORK here?" I asked. "I thought he was still just being interviewed and observing."

"Well, I guess technically he is," she admitted. "But I heard he officially starts tomorrow."

And sure enough, we got an e-mail from the principal on Wednesday that it was Patrick's first official day as vice principal. Hopefully having him around will be helpful. I checked my e-mail just now and the principal had sent us all an e-mail with a behavior contract we're supposed to discuss with the kids in our advisory group tomorrow and have them all sign. Oh, if only we had done this on the first day of school instead of the 106th day of school! This could have been a very different school year....

I didn't get fired

2010-02-14T19:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I still have a job.

The special ed director had already scheduled my mid-year review for Thursday during the second-to-last period of the day, so all day I worried about whether she and the principal were going to use that time to fire me. But then the time came, and the special ed director came to get me, all perky, and led me not into the principal's office, but into the conference room, where a couple of other teachers were grading papers. She did my whole mid-year review like normal, and then at the last minute she asked, "Oh, and did you give any thought to our conversation on Tuesday?"

"Yes," I said. "I want to become a better teacher. I want to stay."

"Okay, that's great! That shows your dedication and commitment," she said enthusiastically.

And that was that. It was rather anticlimactic, actually. The principal wasn't even there! Which is fine with me -- if they want to pretend like it never happened, I'll just play along.

Now I'm on my one-week February vacation. It is so, so, SO nice to have this week off. I really needed it. As my dad said the day he was released from the hospital, "If I'd had to stay here one more day, I would've had a nervous breakdown!"

;O

I might get fired tomorrow

2010-02-10T20:58:00.001-08:00

Bit of a setback yesterday.

I was doing well, didn't even raise my voice last Friday despite a near-riot in my homeroom at the end of the school day when I came quite close to being trampled by a group of eighth graders. But during my advisory class the last period of the day yesterday, they were being so obnoxious -- throwing pillows at each other, talking over each other and me, not listening...one of them was even throwing milk (don't ask)...so I raised my voice to show them I was serious and meant business. But the special education director and the principal made me meet with them after school and told me that an adult who was also in the library at the time thought I lost my temper. Both the elementary school music teacher and the librarian were in there, so it could've been either of them. I really felt I just raised my voice and was firm. I didn't think I lost my temper like I did on the two occasions last week -- I didn't feel out-of-control enraged or anything. But I guess that was the librarian's or the music teacher's perception. And who knows, maybe all the stress of working in that place is making it impossible for me to distinguish between raising my voice and yelling. I have no idea anymore. :(

Anyway, it was such a frustrating meeting because every concern I tried to voice, the principal twisted my words around to make it my fault, and that that's why I shouldn't be working there anymore. When I said we haven't gotten lesson plans for advisory in weeks, she said as a professional educator I should've been proactive and realized I had to start creating my own. I said, "I would've been happy to do that -- I *have* been doing it, on the fly -- but it was never communicated to us." She said there are so many creative lessons I could create with advisory, and if I can't, maybe this school isn't the best fit for me. When I said the behavior in the hallways is scary-- the pregnant math specialist was knocked to the ground in the stairwell last month by kids running wild, pushing and shoving -- the principal said, "Oh, those were just students being careless. The math specialist knows that. She's not afraid of the students. If you are afraid of them, you can't work with them effectively, so maybe this school isn't the best fit for you."

Then it dawned on me what she was trying to do. I let her talk for a while and just yessed her to death. When she asked me what I was thinking and how I was feeling, I wanted to say, "You shithead! You're trying to force me to quit three days before February break so you don't have to pay me over vacation week! THAT's what I think!" But I behaved myself and just repeated back what she'd said to me, that we have to be positive with the students, respect them, be role models, etc. Then she insinuated that I would be happier teaching in a school for juvenile offenders. "In schools for juvenile offenders, you walk the halls and can hear a pin drop, it's so quiet, because they're so boxed in they can barely move. Here at CrazySchool, we want to give our kids more freedom than that," she said with her enigmatic smile. "But this isn't for everyone, so maybe this school just isn't a good fit for you."

Anytime she asked me what I was thinking, I said I completely agreed with what she was saying and that I was committed to staying. It was actually pretty comical to watch her try to hide the disappointment on her face every time I reiterated my commitment and refused to quit. In the end, we finally left it that I would take today (which ended up being a snow day, thank God) and "reflect on whether this school is a good fit for you." Such B.S. I mean, is losing your temper a couple of times -- not swearing, not using berating language, not hitting a kid or anything -- really a fire-able offense?

So now my decision is made for me. I was doing my best to stick it out, but I can't work at a school where I feel like the principal is going to be gunning for me, just waiting to catch me doing something wrong. That is, if she doesn't just fire me tomorrow. She'll either have to terminate me so I can collect unemployment, or wait for me to quit after I've found another job.

I'm very curious what will happen tomorrow.

Quiet

2010-02-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

I didn't scream uncontrollably at any kids today! :-D
Also I helped one student with a science test, and another with math.
All in all it was not a bad day.
We even get out early tomorrow. On Fridays our school day for the kids ends at 3 PM instead of 4:30, and usually we teachers have professional development from 3:15 - 4:30. But tomorrow, professional development is cancelled! Only because we have to go in for an all-day professional development session on Saturday, though. Sigh! I just hope it's useful.

Stress

2010-02-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

This morning during breakfast I was watching the door to the cafeteria to make sure that no more than one girl and one boy went out to the bathroom at the same time. Some kids grumbled, but grudgingly either waited their turn or decided they didn't actually need to go (probably none of them actually NEED to go that soon in the day anyway).

But this one seventh grade girl blatantly refused to wait, even after I explicitly told her she had to. She walked right by me and started sauntering down the hall to the bathroom, merry as could be, even as I followed her telling her to come back. I finally physically blocked her from walking, and she STILL wasn't listening to me, so I lost it and started screaming. Second time in the two days I've screamed at work this week, albeit each time with a different kid.

And what did she do? Laughed in my face, of course. She thought it was just so funny, getting an adult to yell at her like that. Until a parent who was bringing their elementary school kid to school late walked by -- and started scolding ME! "You shouldn't scream at the students," she said angrily. "You're a teacher. You're supposed to set an example."

Of course, now that she knew she had another adult on her side, the kid I had screamed at put on a hurt look, as if she was sooooo traumatized, the poor defenseless waif, and said primly. "Yeah, why you yellin'? You're supposed to set an example!"

"And you're supposed to listen when I tell you to do something!" I shot back. I was so angry. And who should magically appear but the social worker, of course, just in time to witness all this, as she did with the kid I screamed at on Monday. She probably thinks I'm more in need of counseling than the students at this point.

So an hour later the special ed director (my boss) asked to meet with me, because that parent, "as well as others" (the social worker, I assume), had gone to her with concerns. She told me, in a nice way, that we shouldn't scream at the children. And she's right, and I felt guilty. Not that I think that girl was traumatized in ANY way...but we are supposed to be the example. The longer the school year goes on, though, the harder I'm finding it to take all the abuse and disrespect yet continue to "turn the other cheek" and be a good example.

"You don't seem that happy here," my boss said.

"Um, is anybody?" I asked. No, I didn't really, but that's exactly what I was thinking. Instead I said, "It's just frustrating, because the only consequences we have are suspension, which is only for extreme cases like fighting, or calling their parents. And if we've called the parents before and it hasn't really helped, there's nothing we can do."

Her advice was to stay calm and not to get into a back-and-forth with the student ("Don't go the bathroom!" "I'm going." "You can't!" "I will!"). Just give them a choice and a clear consequence: "There's someone in the bathroom right now, so you need to wait your turn. If you don't, understand that I'll have to call your parents. It's your choice." And, she said, "There's always the option of silent indoor lunch with Juan."

I was like, what!? We have de facto in-school detention??? I knew Juan sometimes detained kids during lunch, but I thought that was only at his discretion.

"I didn't know that was even an option for us," I said. "I avoid giving kids silent indoor recess because I watchsixth grade's indoor recess during that time, so I wouldn't be able to keep any kids silent on punishment with the sixth graders running around."

"Yes, you can either keep them with you when you eat lunch and have a silent lunch with them then," she said (yeah, like I want to give up my 20 minute lunch period -- it's short enough as it is), "or you can arrange for them to go to Juan for a silent lunch and recess."

Isn't that interesting? Here we have this great new discipline tool that was NEVER communicated to or shared with us at all. How was I supposed to know that was even a choice?

But I do have to stop screaming. Both because it's the morally right thing to do, and because I can't afford to get fired. Of course, I wouldn't mind if they just don't renew my contract for next schoolyear if it means I'll qualify for unemployment, since there's no way I'm coming back next year anyway. But I have to get my stress level under control. Right now I feel like I'm getting carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand and my stomach muscles are as sore as if I'd done 1,000 sit-ups, even though I haven't done anything over the past week except work three days and spend the rest of my time sitting around the hospital keeping my dad company. I don't usually feel stress physically like this, but I don't know what else it could be. I literally feel like I've been beaten up!

Week of tumult

2010-02-02T20:23:00.001-08:00

What a week.

1) One of the fifth grade teachers quit at the end of last week. That brings our total resignations this schoolyear up to seven.

2) Remember the kid who threatened to punch me in the face a week and a half ago? I screamed at him so loudly on Monday (while I was being observed by the special ed director no less) that I hurt my throat, and both the principal and the social worker came running out of their offices to see what was going on. I laid into the principal about how the kids get to disrespect, make fun of, verbally abuse, sexually harass, and threaten teachers however and whenever they want, and nothing is being done, and nothing changes. I had to walk outside ten blocks in the cold to calm myself down. The inmates are running the asylum, my friends.

3) My dad came home from the hospital today (YAAAYYY!!!) -- but with a diagnosis of lung cancer.

I hope the next seven days are much less interesting.

:/

ANOTHER teacher quit (!)

2010-01-26T20:20:00.000-08:00

Yep. The sixth grade humanities teacher resigned today -- effective today, of course. No one ever gives two weeks' (or even one day's) notice at this school. Since you need a scorecard to keep track of all the personnel changes at this point, let's review:

1) The 7th/8th grade English teacher quit in early October.
2) The 7th/8th grade math teacher quit in late October.
3) A technology specialist (he worked with teachers, not with students) quit in early December.
4) The vice principal quit in late December.
And now 5) the 6th grade English/history teacher has quit in late January.

Here's the e-mail he sent to me and the other special ed teacher tonight:

Dear Artichoke Heart and _____,
I am sorry I did not tell you in person - I simply couldn't say it over and over today - but because of deep financial need and certain health reasons, I left CrazySchool today and accepted a position offered to me last Friday and confirmed this morning at a school I applied to last year. The position starts tomorrow. The hours are fewer, the school year shorter, and the salary significantly higher. I was caught between the needs of my family and my health and then the kids at CrazySchool. It was a horrible choice, but in the end, the only one I could make, I felt, was for family and health.
You have, of course, every right to be angry because what I did to the kids is not right. I hope, in time, they and you understand. However, in the interim, if it's possible, could you try to keep the trial of Socrates going? I know they love doing it and are looking forward to it happening. If not, I get it.
If you'd like to write, even to yell at me (the words are reverberating in my head anyway), feel free. My home e-mail is _______.
It was a privilege to work with both of you and I wish you only wonderful things.
Be well.

Can you believe it? It's like working on the Titanic, wondering each week who will be the next to jump ship. Unreal. But this teacher was in his late 50s and had over 30 years of teaching experience. Considering I was barely able to get them to match my salary to what the NYC Board of Ed would have paid me, I'm sure he would have gotten paid more for all of that experience at another school. More money for less work, you can't knock it.

In other news, my dad is in the hospital. :( He wasn't feeling well so he went to the doctor today, and his blood pressure was so low the doctor sent him straight to the hospital. (Thank goodness he didn't pass out while driving to the doctor, considering how low his blood pressure was.) So I'll be spending tomorrow with him. I hope he gets better soon -- or better yet, immediately!

Brooklyn Museum; advisory

2010-01-25T17:33:00.001-08:00

Went to the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday! I was a couple minutes early, so as I waited for the Nicest Guy in the World to meet me, I studied the shiny black sculptures conveniently placed in the lobby. I especially admired Rodin's Orpheus, his reach upward. The placard said, "This sculpture, with its intense torsion and strain, its mixture of exaltation and despair, reflects the complexity of the theme and Rodin's willingness to have his works express the internal conflict and ambiguity of actual experience, even when dealing with a mythological theme. According to the Greek myth, when Orpheus's wife, Eurydice, died, he descended into the underworld to try to regain her. This he accomplished through the persuasive power of his music. But returning with her to the upper world, he was unable to restrain his passion and glanced back at her too soon, ignoring one of the conditions set by the gods, and lost Eurydice again."

The cruelty of those gods. Always testing you.

Last Friday I had a nice day. I taught a small group lesson in sixth grade social studies using this neat play about Socrates. It was fun, and it went well. The special ed director observed, and I think she's going to give me some good feedback!

But today ended on a sorry note. We're supposed to receive lesson plans for our advisory classes (small groups that meet twice a week). But at least a third of the time, maybe even half the time, we're not given any lesson plans, so each teacher ends up with a group of eight kids they don't have anything to do with. This is despite the fact that at the beginning of the schoolyear, we were told we would always be provided with easy lesson plans that were basically scripts we just had to follow. In the past, whenever I didn't get a lesson plan, I would always make something up from scratch ahead of time (as if I didn't have a thousand other things to do). But last Thursday, I'd had it. We hadn't gotten any lesson plans that week, and I thought, you know what, I'm not going to kill myself to do this anymore. We still went around at the beginning of the period, as we always do, and said our "rose" and our "thorn" (positive part of our day/negative part of our day), and discussed that for a few minutes. But other than that, if the powers that be don't care enough to make sure we have lesson plans for these classes, I'm giving the kids a free period. I can get stuff done, the students will be glad not to have work to do, and everyone's happy. Right?

It worked out fine on Thursday. But today we didn't get any lesson plans yet again -- and wouldn't you know, it was the ONE DAY the principal emerged from her office on the fifth floor and came all the way down to the first floor, where my students and I meet. So she saw them being "free." One boy was reading and a couple others were drawing, but a few were playing with their handheld electronics, which they're not supposed to use at school. I'd turned a blind eye because all I had for them was paper and markers if they wanted to draw. I'm sure it looked bad, so now I'm just waiting for her to send an e-mail out to all teachers about making sure students are "on task" during advisory. To which I'll say, fine -- give us a task for them to be on! ;O

Chaos, continued

2010-01-10T18:08:00.000-08:00

I made it through the first week back at school from Christmas break. Everyone seems angry at each other -- the teachers, I mean. Well, not everyone...but it was Mitchell's idea before he left to re-do the entire school schedule, because right now the kids have six periods of math, English, science, and history a week, but only a few periods of music, art, and theater, so those teachers really have a part-time teaching schedule, though of course with duties, skills classes, enrichment class and advisory class, they're still busy. But the core content area teachers are even busier. So the scheduling committee went through all this work to re-do the schedule at Mitchell's request, and of course made it worse (ha ha). I personally thought some parts of it were better than the original schedule, but the people on the committee were upset at the complaints. I can't really blame them. The whole thing was Mitchell's idea in the first place, and now they're left holding the bag.

There are still a lot of discipline issues. Sending kids to buddy rooms isn't really working, because they end up disrupting the class they're sent to, and there's no real consequence to things like chewing gum (make them spit it out and they're blowing bubbles with a new piece five minutes later), coming to a class late, going to their lockers in between classes.... Discouraging. It's the middle of the fourth year of this school's existence, and we're still figuring all this out?? You'd think we were a first year charter school! All we have is the warning-time out-buddy room system, which isn't working, and suspension, which is applied inconsistently (four kids were suspended the other day for cutting a class, for example, but other kids have been caught skipping class and they've just gotten a phone call home). We can't really have detention, since our school day goes so incredibly late, and we don't have in-school suspension. So now we're convening a discipline committee to try to figure something out.

Over the weekend, a friend was telling me about when he taught at a school for students who'd been kicked out of inner city public schools. They had two huge guys standing in the hallway at all times. If a teacher told a student to, say, take out his notebook, and the student refused, the teacher just had to step out into the hall and call one of the guys over. If the student still refused to take out his notebook, the "bouncer" would literally drag the kid screaming out into the hall. By the time the kid returned to class, he had NO PROBLEM taking out his notebook. !!!

The toughest week: part 2

2010-01-03T20:07:00.001-08:00

Mitchell, our nice, smart, talented vice principal who I really liked, resigned the week before Christmas vacation. :(

A few of the other teachers had suspected something was up. On Tuesday, one woman whispered to me ominously, "Mitchell's desk looked awfully clean this morning." Then there was a leadership meeting with all the administrators on Thursday morning that went on forever. And on Friday, he was absent. "There's an important board meeting this morning," one of the other teachers told me. "Why would he call in sick today of all days?"

At 3:00 that afternoon, we got our answer. Mitchell sent an e-mail to the whole staff (except for Joyce, the principal) with the subject line CONFIDENTIAL. He wrote:

"Good afternoon.
I wanted to do this in person today, but sadly, Joyce asked me not to come in. I am writing to let you know that I have presented my letter of resignation effective 3 pm today. There are a whole host of reasons why this decision is best for me at this time. However, there is one that is most important as it relates to each of you. My role as Vice Principal should have been one of instructional leader, decision-maker, mediator, advisor, supporter, advocate, supervisor... None of these functions were able to be performed to the best of my ability and for the best interest of the students because of the approach of those to whom I answered.

Needless to say, this is not a choice I anticipated having to make at this point in the school year, nor do I expect it to be an easy transition for you. I am sure some of you will even be angry at me and frustrated by my decision. I understand this and you should know that the middle school team is the only reason I struggled with this decision for this long. I am confident that you will move forward best serving our students and families no matter who is in leadership.

Thank you for your unending support and your dedication to our important work. Know that I care deeply for you, even after such a short time together. Be assured that I am here for you and welcome you to be in touch if you ever need anything. My e-mail is _____ and cell number is _____.

I am sorry that this has had to happen via e-mail. I will miss you and wish you and your families a very well deserved holiday break."

We were all in shock, reading it. Mitchell was so dedicated, and so supportive and motivating when the math teacher and then the English teacher quit -- and now HE was resigning. I wonder if Joyce threatened to fire him and he said, "You can't fire me -- I quit!" There was definitely no love lost between the two of them. (During one of our professional development sessions, he gleefully high-fived people as soon as Joyce left the room.)

There was also a -- well, "scandal" is too strong a word, but an "issue," shall we say, with the report card grades. When report cards were due in early December, the administration suddenly realized we hardly had any math or English grades for the kids -- the subs certainly don't get paid to grade papers, so they hadn't. Mitchell and a few of the specialists scrambled to figure out what assignments had been given and what grades the kids deserved. In English, a lot of the kids hadn't taken the sub's assignments seriously, so they'd barely done any work; therefore, they got really low grades on their report cards. But their parents hit the roof, so Mitchell ended up writing a letter to all the parents saying he understood their concerns, and that each student would instead be given the grade they'd received in English during the last quarter of the previous schoolyear, since those grades were higher. ??? That didn't make much sense to me. But one of the specialists who'd helped figure out the grades told me she asked Mitchell point blank, "Could I lose my job over this?"

He assured her, "No, you're safe. If anyone's going to be out over this, it'll be me."

So, I feel like we don't know the whole story, and we probably never will. But I'll miss Mitchell a lot. It'll be sad to go back to school from Christmas break tomorrow, knowing he won't be there. :(

The toughest week: part 1

2009-12-20T14:49:00.000-08:00

Last week was HARD.

Rough part #1: Being sexually harassed at work...by a group of seventh grade GIRLS (!). Yes. Who would've predicted THAT? I've blogged before about how my playwriting class has devolved into mayhem -- even though it's only 11 kids, six of the girls (I secretly think of them as the "Nasty Six") should never be in the same class ever again, because they just goad each other into worse and worse behavior. Last Tuesday as they were (allegedly) working on their plays, one of them asked me if I was married. "No," I said distractedly while I went through some papers, "I have a boyfriend."

"YOU have a boyfriend?" they marveled incredulously, as if I were so repulsive they couldn't grasp the concept. Then they started asking me all these questions, innocuous ones at first: what's his name, do you have a picture of him, how did you meet. This, by the way, was the first time I ever lied about how the Nicest Guy in the World and I met (on Match.com). I never mind telling other adults, but I knew instantly that they would have a field day with that information. So I lied and told them we met at a friend's party.

But then their questions quickly descended into outright sexual ones. "Do you kiss your boyfriend?" "Are you still a virgin?" "Do you give your boyfriend head?" That last one shocked me so much, I thought I must not have heard it correctly, so I said, "What?" And she REPEATED it! No matter what they asked, I said, "That's really inappropriate and disrespectful. I'm not answering that. You have an assignment you should be doing." But they would just laugh their heads off and ask me something even worse. And honestly, I didn't know what to do. Administration has been on us to keep the kids in class and not kick them out unless it's a safety issue, and I didn't feel threatened physically...just emotionally! So I just took it for the rest of class until it was finally time to go. I was dreading class the next day, but luckily it was cut short due to an assembly. They asked if I'd brought in a photo of my boyfriend, which of course I hadn't, and when I said no, one of the girls said with a smirk, "No photo of your imaginary friend?" They don't believe the Nicest Guy in the World exists, I guess. This time they didn't get into the sexual questions, but probably only because the period was shorter than usual.

But the next day I was helping in one of the seventh grade math classes, and a group of kids on the side of the room kept looking over at me, whispering and laughing, so I knew they were insulting me in some way. I don't really care one way or the other, except that they weren't getting their work done, and they were distracting me and the kids I was helping. Then one girl from my playwriting class detached herself from the group, walked over to where I was standing, dropped a paper at my feet, and slowly walked away. Thinking she was just littering, I called her back to pick it up, which she did with a big smirk and handed it to me. It said, "Ha ha ha lolsz SHE GOT NO NECK = Ms. Artichoke." Which is kind of funny, because I actually have a very long neck -- these kids can't even make fun of a person correctly! Unless it's some kind of sexual reference I'm not aware of (I'm getting the distinct impression that some of these 12-year-olds know more about sex than I do).

I knew Mitchell and the other administrators would probably be pissed if I kicked anyone out of class, but I felt I had to nip this in the bud immediately. I can't do my job and actually teach the kids I need to teach if half the class is laughing at me to such an extent that it's distracting. So I immediately took the girl who dropped the note and the one who wrote it out of class. I did it calmly, but they were NOT happy about it. I brought them to my room for the rest of the period to have them do the math there, and the note-writer finally settled down and did some work. But the girl who had showed me the note, the one who's in my enrichment class, started crying and carrying on about how she shouldn't get in trouble because she hadn't written the note. Without permission she ran into Mitchell's office (no one was in there -- all the administrators were at a leadership meeting), and I watched as she called her mother -- which was great, since it saved me the trouble of dialing the numbers myself. ;o After she sobbed to her mother, I got on the phone, and told her not only about the girl's behavior in class that day, but also the things she'd said to me on Tuesday. "She was asking me really inappropriate and disrespectful questions, like 'Who is your boyfriend?' and 'Are you still a virgin?'" I explained.

At that, the girl burst into fresh sobs and hollered, "That is not true! I never asked who your boyfriend was!" Which I thought was really funny -- THAT was the question she objected to? But she admits to asking me if I was still a virgin?? Talk about being a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Her mother was appropriately mortified, apologized on her daughter's behalf, said she should definitely know better and asked to talk to her daughter again. But again, she ran out of the room without permission, back to my room, where she wrote this statement:

"In playwriting I agree that I give Ms. Artichoke attitude. But I didn’t ask Ms. Artichoke if she have a boyfriend? And is she a virgin and do she suck boys penis. And ask her about her sex life. And her relationships. It was Inez. And Debony. Me and Karla be laughing at it. And they be sayin she got no neck – Janique, and others."

After lunch, Mitchell finally got out of the leadership meeting and talked to them, and sent them back to class. The girl who wrote the note saw me in the hall later and apologized. But I didn't see the girl from my playwriting class again that day, and she was absent on Friday.

So on Thursday after school, I went to the special ed director and asked her if she could be in the room with me during playwriting this coming Tuesday, because this group of girls is basically sexually harassing me and I don't feel comfortable being in the room alone with them. She asked me to tell her the whole story, and when I did, she practically fell off her chair. Which was nice to see, actually, because while on one level I like her, on another level she can be a little by-the-book and robotic, so it felt good to actually get a reaction out of her.

"Well, that IS sexual harassment, and we take that very seriously," she said. She called the principal that very second in her office and told her I would be filling out a discipline report about the incident, which I did that night.

I also told two of the people who work in the office about the whole thing, and they were so appalled about Inez, the girl who'd asked (twice) 'do you give your boyfriend head?', that they called her mother and talked to her themselves! "Inez is a Christian!" the woman in the office said. "She lives above a church. Her father is a deacon!"

Whatever they said must've gotten to her, because she came to my room the last period of the day on Friday practically trembling, saying how sorry she was, promising she was going to change her ways and stay away from 'bad influences' (the other five of the Nasty Six, I assume), and asking my forgiveness. She even hugged me!

The whole incident was so bizarre -- like an episode from "Mean Girls," except they forgot I wasn't another seventh grade girl they could push around but an actual teacher. Thank God this class ends on January 6th. Not a moment too soon for me. Unreal.

If you don't have anything nice to say...you must be blogging!

2009-12-08T18:00:00.001-08:00

I'm sorry I haven't put up a new entry in so long. I really don't like my job lately, so blogging about it only makes me feel like I'm whining. More kids keep joining my playwriting enrichment class and it has descended into chaos. They talk so much we can barely read a scene aloud. My advisory class still sucks, too. I'm not sure which is worse: being blatantly ignored even when you're standing right in a kid's face telling them to stop talking and do their work, or dealing with the rudeness and disrespect they engage in when they do acknowledge your presence. Kids are cutting class, hiding in the bathrooms, hanging out in the stairwells, and when they do go to class, so many of them are so incredibly rude to teachers. How dare we ask them to learn, right?

When we were evacuated a couple weeks ago after someone (an adult) caused nauseating fumes by cleaning paint brushes with gasoline (don't ask), I chatted up the sub who was in for the science teacher that day. He said he has subbed in almost every charter school in the city, and our school is the only one where, when they call him to sub, he truly hesitates, because our kids' behavior is so awful. Isn't that interesting? Same types of schools, same city, same population, and yet our students' behavior is that much worse.

But then I turned around and chatted with Jill, the long-term English sub, and *she* said, "I've worked in schools where the kids screamed 'f--- you!' right in my face and threw objects at me, and these kids don't do that."

I felt like saying, "Give them time." ;O Actually, one student did whip a pencil at me a month or so ago. It hit me in the back, but still. I brought him to the office and he was talked to, but I don't think anything else happened.

Last Thursday the dam finally broke and I cried in front of Mitchell. Mortifying. The board suddenly wanted all this data last week to show the kids were learning something, so we had to give them this diagnostic test in English, and they were NOT happy about it. I helped proctor the test, which took almost two periods for each class, and the one seventh grade class was not very good about it, even though their history teacher, who they generally like, was in the room with me. Just stupid stuff like banging on the desk, whistling, trying to talk. But I walked out of there thinking, I cannot do this again with the other seventh grade class, with only the long-term English sub to back me up -- not during the second-to-last period of the day, when I was overtired and hadn't had any periods off except my 25 minute wolf-down-my-lunch time.

I rarely ask for help, but I tried to ask this time. I tried the mature, professional approach first. I went to my direct supervisor, the special ed director, and told her my concerns: the one seventh grade class had been just barely OK with their regular teacher and me both in the room, but I feared the second class wouldn't take it seriously, especially with just me and the sub there. I asked point-blank if someone else could come in and help us proctor, but she basically said no, to just "set the expectation" that they should take it seriously. Um, I can't even get them to let me finish a sentence! But I just said, "Oh. Okay." She said I could talk to Mitchell about it if I wanted, but clearly she wasn't going to help me.

So I went to Mitchell, and he basically said the same thing. "There are going to be two of you in there, right?" he said. Yes, one of whom is a sub they don't take seriously, I tried to say in a polite way. It became clear he wasn't going to help me either, and I finally broke down and started crying. Well. THAT got his attention. Suddenly someone else was found to help proctor the exam. Suddenly he and the special ed director wanted to know how theycould offer me more support. But it shouldn't take going to them in tears -- or in anger, as other teachers have done -- to get that, should it?

So. It was incredibly embarrassing, but it was effective. One of the other teachers graciously, courageously tepped in to teach my advisory class last period, since my weepiness had just barely stopped at that point. I brought my laptop and worked in the back of Mitchell's office that last period, listening to the myriad crises that presented themselves: one student claimed all her school books had been stolen; two others were taking a long time to finish their diagnostic tests; another had lost her locker key, couldn't get into her locker to get her winter coat, and Mitchell couldn't find the master key. All those ridiculous but time-consuming issues are probably why it's only the squeaky (i.e., weeping or enraged) wheel that gets the grease around there.

Demonstration lessons

2009-11-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

We've had the same long-term sub, Jill, for English for the past four weeks. But although she can sort of keep her classes semi-civilized (no easy feat with our crew), our principal isn't crazy about her pedagogy. They actually had Jill teach a formal demonstration lesson one day last week, and I didn't even realize it was a demo lesson, which isn't good -- you should really pull out all the stops and at least attempt to teach an amazing lesson when you're being observed.

Since then we've had two other potential candidates come in and teach demo lessons. And none of this one period in-and-out stuff -- Mitchell makes them teach ALL DAY LONG ("Is he trying to drive candidates away!?" one of my colleagues asked). Last week, when Juan, the discipline administrator, was observing, the kids were well-behaved, of course. But I was in the class that afternoon when he wasn't there, and the kids were terrible -- they wrote false names on the name cards he handed out, called across the room, yelled out, horsed around. They treated the guy as if he was a sub, and you know how badly seventh graders tend to treat subs!

But at least that guy soldiered on and completed all his lessons. This morning we had another candidate, a woman, come in to teach her demo lesson all day long. I wasn't in the room when it happened, but according to one of the other teachers, she had such a hard time that in the middle of her lesson this morning, she ran out of the room saying, "I can't do this!" and sobbing. (!!!) I'm telling you, these kids are a tough group. I'm lucky that before I was hired, I was only asked to teach a demo lesson to a group of four students. The only time I taught a demo lesson to a whole class was last Jaunary at a charter school in Brooklyn, and let me tell you, those kids were as good as gold. I did the name card thing, too, and they all put their real names; they were so quiet; they paid attention; they listened. I'm sure it was because half a dozen bigwigs were in the back of the room observing me, but I'm still glad. If it had been a horrible experience, I would've been terrified ever to teach a sample lesson again.

I have to hand it to the long-term sub we have now for math: Nicole came in last week and taught demo lessons for two days in a row, all day long, without pay, and then they finally offered her the long-term sub position, with the understanding that if the administration likes her, they'll hire her full-time come January. So far I like what I see -- she sticks to clear lessons that follow the basic lesson plan of modeling, guided practice, and independent practice. And she relates to the kids well, despite their behavioral challenges. It's much harder to find an experienced, certified math teacher mid-year than it is to find an experienced, certified English teacher, so I predict they'll end up hiring Nicole permanently.

Talking into the wind

2009-11-16T19:05:00.001-08:00

I had a really rough day with my advisory class last Thursday. It's only eight boys, but they're giving me a run for my money. A couple weeks ago I thought, since negative consequences aren't working, let's try being positive. I took a folder, drew a circle, and divided it into pieces. I had them guess what it was, which they did pretty quickly -- a pizza. I said every time they were all listening, on task, doing the right thing, I would color in a slice, and once the whole pizza was colored in, we would all go out for pizza one day during advisory.

They seemed enthused. However. I have not been able to color in one slice. Not one! Because there is never even so much as a two-minute period where they're all listening and doing what they're supposed to be doing. Even the kids who are usually well-behaved are starting to slack off and not listen. Last Thursday we were in the library, where the other special ed teacher meets with her group of sixth grade boys, and the gym teacher was there with her girls that day because the gym, where they usually meet, was being used to take class pictures. By the end of the period I raised my voice with them. All I was trying to do was play a game with them, and they couldn't even all listen to the directions. So embarrassing. I sent three of them to Mitchell (the vice principal), one of whom refused to go, so Mitchell came down and we spent 15 minutes after school talking to the kid. The next morning I called all their parents. During the staff meeting Friday I suggested we make a space on the report cards for a grade or comments on the kids' participation and behavior during advisory. Maybe then they'll actually take it seriously. I hate that they're getting worse; that a potential reward doesn't make them act any better; and that they don't respect me. That's how it feels, anyway. Like they don't care what I have to say, even when I'm trying to play a game with them, and that it's acceptable and even funny to disrespect me. It's like I'm talking into the wind.

On Friday, Mitchell interviewed a possible candidate for the math teaching position. Cori, the math specialist, sat in and got to ask a few questions. The woman used to be a doctor (!), but then decided to become a teacher, and she has a couple years of experience teaching math to urban at-risk kids, though Cori said it sounded like she worked mainly with small groups, not entire classes. But she seemed promising enough that they may ask her to come back to teach a sample lesson. I wish they would get someone decent in there quick, because the current long-term sub has zero classroom management skills, and even if he did, his lessons are really not that good. I'm scared to think how much these kids are falling behind. :(

Duty for the prevention of making out

2009-11-09T18:30:00.001-08:00

Last week, all of we teachers who have daily recess duty received the following e-mail from one of the administrators:

"It has come to our attention that some of our students are engaging in inappropriate activities during middle school recess, such as 'making out.' Please be sure we are actively supervising the playground by spreading out and monitoring students throughout the entire playground."

Um, okay. Of course during recess that day we all asked each other who had seen kids making out -- and none of us had! So who knows where they got that little tidbit from. But now, instead of each of us standing in a certain area of the playground and supervising, we all have to walk around the entire playground constantly to ensure the kids are keeping their lips to themselves.

Prevention of make-out sessions: just one more service we offer!

I finally made it to the podiatrist after school today so he could examine my ankle. He sold me some ready-made orthotics to put in my shoes which feel GREAT, really supportive, and he even showed me how to wrap my left foot with this Ace bandage type of material for extra support. (That was the closest I've ever come to feeling like an athlete -- getting my foot wrapped!) I could get custom-made orthotics, like I used to have, but they cost $450 and are not covered by insurance (!), so hopefully the regular orthotics will do the job.

Playwriting triumph!

2009-11-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, my playwriting enrichment class almost made me cry. But today, they were wonderful! I had them do an improv activity where I gave them a few lines of a scene -- one was between a mother and daughter, another was two friends, and another was a principal and a student -- and they had to read the four lines given, then improvise the rest. They did an amazing job! They really stayed in character and went down a few different avenues before finally either solving the conflict (2 scenes) or reluctantly giving up (1 scene). The special ed director happened to be in the room doing some work, but she started watching and was so impressed, she went and got Mitchell, the vice principal! He walked in during the last scenario, which happened to be between a principal and a student who had been misbehaving in class, and BOTH of those students have been sent to Mitchell's office for misbehavior...so once they realized Mitchell was watching I think they got a little intimidated and resolved the conflict kind of abruptly. But they were clamoring to do more! Afterward I had them write down their opinions of how the scenes went, and then they started writing some of the dialogue down. It worked out so well! Wow. It's such a relief not to dread teaching this class anymore. :-D

Open Communication

2009-11-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

Our professional development session last Friday was really interesting. A couple of days before, the administration had asked us to answer two questions, anonymously, in writing: 1) What does teacher support at our school look like now, and 2) What SHOULD it look like ideally? Then at the beginning of professional development, everyone's answers were read aloud. Similar themes emerged: teachers are feeling isolated, there's a lack of planning and co-planning time, support from administrators can be hit or miss, there are too many non-instructional duties, professional development is not as tied to our needs as it could be, etc. It was great, actually. I admire the fact that the administrators not only asked for our honest feedback but really heard it. Better to talk about the tension and low morale than to let it fester.

Friday was actually pretty fun because we had a Halloween party in the afternoon! We played music and had all kinds of snacks, even non-healthy ones :) and the kids changed into costumes: Michael Jackson, Darth Vader, old-time gangster, angels, cops, etc. They had a great time. Toward the end of the party I took my turn supervising the Horror Chamber, as I dubbed the room where they put all the kids with behavior, uniform, and/or lateness violations who weren't allowed to attend the party -- and let me tell you, they were NOT happy about it. Hopefully it will motivate them to get their act together before the Harvest Dance in November, or they won't be able to go to that, either.

My left ankle has been killing me lately. I start out fine every Monday, but by Thursday I'm hobbling around like an old lady. I have very flat feet and used to wear specially made orthotics (sp?) until they disintegrated from overuse ten years ago. But now that I'm on my feet so much at work in dress shoes (they're flats, but still), I think I need to get new ones made and actually wear them every day. Maybe the doctor will give me a note that I can wear my sneakers at work?

Speaking of ankles, the P.E. teacher is finally off disability and is coming back to work tomorrow. Hooray!

The kids are off this Tuesday for Election Day. Teachers have a professional development day, but we don't have to arrive until 8:30 AM and we get to leave at 4:00 PM! Maybe we'll even get a whole hour for lunch, too. :-D

I take one day off & look what I miss!

2009-10-27T17:43:00.001-07:00

Weeks ago I predicted that the weeks between Columbus Day and Veterans Day would be too long for me to work without a break, so I put in for a day off yesterday -- and I'm so glad I did. Yesterday morning, as soon as the math teacher showed up to work, Mitchell showed her two letters he had put in her file, one about not having her lesson plans on the database, and the other was something about her advisory class (probably for cutting out early all the time and making other teachers watch her students). Apparently when Mitchell showed her the letters, she got really mad and said she'd had it. She walked out at 8:30 AM, leaving no one to cover her classes, so other teachers had to cover for her until they finally got a sub in mid-afternoon. And they thought we couldn't afford subs before -- now we're down ANOTHER core teacher.

The other news is, last Friday after work, some of the teachers went out for drinks at a nearby bar. Two female elementary school teachers got into an argument about who had the better class, and they ended up getting into a fistfight over it -- yes, a FISTFIGHT! So now they're both suspended without pay for a few days. Although I abhor violence, the idea of primary school teachers coming to blows did make me chuckle. You have to laugh, right?? :O

Recess and enrichment. Ugh.

2009-10-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

The kids have come up with a couple of new "games" during recess. Game #1: They slap each other until one or more of them falls down. They claim it's not "real" slapping and doesn't hurt ("We're just playing! Why you gotta take away our fun?"), but it looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Game #2: They tie things like scarves around each other's necks and drag each other around. During our staff meeting after school on Friday, we were coming up with ideas for how to put a stop to this, like making kids caught playing these "games" sit out for the rest of the recess period -- a 'recess detention' of sorts. Then Juan made this weird speech about how, when he was at the mic at the end of breakfast shushing kids and telling them to line up for class, someone from the public high school we share the building with came up to him and asked, "Do you feel alone?"

"I don't feel alone," Juan said. "I saw that teachers were going around getting the students' attention and helping me get them lined up. But that was his perception, and no one can do this by themselves." Then he made some soccer analogy about how when he played soccer, he would watch the action and his dad would tell him he had to get into the game, and he said he sees a lot of watching but we teachers have to intervene.

Then he got a phone call on his cell and left. The room was silent for a minute, until another teacher said, "Um, so does he like the recess detention idea or not?" And I thought angrily, what was the point of that little passive-aggressive speech? That he feels like we teachers are not doing anything to help? I wanted to say that I *DO* intervene -- on Thursday I must have gone into the fray five times during the 25-minute recess to try to make the kids stop slapping each other. But when I walked away, they were back at it within minutes. Maybe, I wanted to add, we're watching more and doing less because when we try to stop the kids from touching, slapping, and hitting each other, and they REACH AROUND US to continue doing it, it's a bit discouraging, not to mention dangerous. We already have one teacher still out with a badly hurt ankle because a kid, oblivious to the fact that we were trying to get them to stop playing basketball and line up, ran into her and squished her foot. We don't need that to happen to anyone else.

Oh, and Mitchell told us the principal told him we're blowing through our budget for substitute teachers, and if we keep hiring subs every time teachers are out, we could get to January, have half the staff out with the flu, and have no money left for subs. So now when a teacher is absent, the rest of us are going to have to cover his or her classes during our free periods, though Mitchell said he would balance it so we would still have at least one prep period a day. One of the teachers who was there last year told me afterwards, "That's really weird. We had a teacher quit on the second day of school last year, and another teacher who quit during the second week, and throughout the whole schoolyear we still never had any problem paying for subs." I thought it was strange, too -- I mean, aren't we SAVING a lot of money not having to pay salary and benefits to the English teacher who quit?

Enrichment started last week. Teachers came up with interesting, cool classes that are different from what the kids usually take during the school day, things like drumming, arts and literary magazine, community service, etc., the kids picked their top three choices, and we slotted them into a class. It takes place during the last period of the day, two days a week. I decided to offer Playwriting. I walked into the first day of Playwriting class on Tuesday, all excited, thinking, Great, it's only half a dozen kids and playwriting was their first choice -- they'll be really into it! It'll be a lot of fun!

Wrong. It was a disaster. We had literally been in the room two minutes when one girl asked another, "Why did you sign up for this?"

Looking totally bored, she said, her voice dripping with contempt, "I thought it would be cool, but I guess not." She had been in the room FOR TWO MINUTES -- she hadn't even given it a chance. I had to send one girl out to Mitchell's office because she was so disruptive. And Wednesday was even worse. Five of the six kids were blatantly rude, disrespectful, and out-and-out mean to me. They were getting personal, when I was nothing but nice to them. I was shocked. I ended up raising my voice -- I didn't say shut up or get personal back with them or anything, but I did raise my voice -- which I know I shouldn't have done. But there's only so much time I can be attacked before I get angry, no matter how young my attackers are. I've decided to give it another try for four more class periods, maybe start each period with a play in front of us and get into reading it right away, with each kid taking a role, and then moving into the writing portion of the class. And if they're still horrible, I'm going to ask Mitchell if I can disband the class, reassign each of them to a different enrichment, and just help out another teacher who has a larger enrichment class. I don't get paid enough to be verbally abused. No one does.

The ironic thing is, we took all the seventh graders to the Museum of Natural History on Wednesday, and it went really well. The kids behaved pretty well, and they were going around filling out the answers on the scavenger hunt sheet the history and science teachers had given them. So they know how to behave like normal young adults; when they're in school they just choose not to, I guess.

Quitting

2009-10-16T21:05:00.000-07:00

What a day. Our first resignation of the schoolyear.

Don't worry, it wasn't mine (!), nor the math teacher's, surprisingly enough, since she's said things to Cori like, "These kids make me want to leave teaching after 14 years!" and "I hope to be out of here by Christmas." It was the seventh and eighth grade English teacher who quit. But we all knew she hadn't been happy at the school. There were the little signs, like her coming in late half the time and never doing the mornings duties of helping to supervise Tai Chi and breakfast, like the rest of us (except the math teacher) do. I also remember she left our professional development in Long Island a day early because "she'd had enough," according to what Cori heard. And before school even started, the other special ed teacher told me she was trying to help the English teacher plan because she was already feeling overwhelmed -- in August! The other special ed teacher and the literacy specialist were not exactly impressed with her lessons, either, and I have to agree. Her idea of teaching seemed to be, "Open your vocabulary books and do the exercise on page 3." Not all the time, but a good deal of the time, which was worrisome. It makes me wonder what her demonstration lesson was like -- all of us who got hired before the schoolyear ended had to teach a sample lesson before our interviews. But she might have been hired over the summer and not had to do one. And our principal's interview process is not exactly thorough. For me, I did my demonstration lesson, which the special ed coordinator observed, got positive feedback from her, and went in to talk to the principal. She basically just told me a little about the school, I asked her a lot of questions, and then she offered me the job. I honestly can't remember her asking me a single question! It was weird.

Anyway, Mitchell already made arrangements for a sub for next week, and he's hoping to find a long-term substitute A.S.A.P. while they take their time to interview deeply and carefully so we find hopefully find someone who's a really good fit and not have to go through this again. I feel bad for him because he was hired in mid-August and had no say in the hiring procedures (such as they were) -- but now he has to deal with the aftermath.

Ah well, at least the weekend has arrived. T.G.I.F.!!!

A pencil in the eye

2009-10-12T17:43:00.001-07:00

Last Friday, two of the most annoying seventh grade students got suspended for two days. One of them, during the middle of class, made a catapult out of rubber bands and shot his pencil into the air -- right into another student's eye. :O The poor kid had a big red splotch on the white of his eye, the kind you get with a broken blood vessel. And the other student got suspended for doing something similar -- he was just lucky enough not to hit anybody. Both of these kids are in my advisory class, so at least that should be a somewhat more orderly class for the next two days.
Also last week, while they were busy continuing to play basketball during recess, blatantly ignoring our calls for them to line up for lunch, a couple of the larger boys ran into the P.E. teacher -- and on top of her ankle. Now she's out until at least next week with a torn ligament or something. Never a dull moment....
Last Friday during professional development we were finally given time to meet and talk about what's going on in class, which was GREAT for me as a supposed "co-teacher." Mitchell has also put together a regular schedule of one period every week where the core teachers and I can all meet, so hopefully that will help me feel/become more like a co-teacher and less like someone who wanders in as the behavior police.
Tomorrow's Tuesday already. I LOVE three-day weekends!

Open House Night

2009-10-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Open House Night. Out of 48 seventh grade students, only five had parents show up. That's barely 10%! I'd thought we'd get at least 15 or 16 -- especially since it's a charter school, so their parents chose it. Kind of disappointing. The sixth grade did a little better, with 10 or 11 parents, but still not as many as I'd expected. What is the average percentage of parents who attend Open House Nights? I wonder.

Post from Bizarro World

2009-10-05T18:11:00.001-07:00

The most absurd day. This afternoon the math teacher kicked six seventh graders out of class at the beginning of the period for being disruptive and asked me to take them to my office (which I share with the math/reading specialists and the other special ed teacher). I asked her if she had a hand-out for them to do or anything. "We're doing adding integers," was all she said. O-kay. I copied the Do Now of four problems she'd had on the board, grabbed a math book and took the kids downstairs.

Fortunately, Cori, the math specialist, was in there because it was her prep period, and she immediately put aside her work to co-teach the Troublesome Six with me, which was REALLY nice of her. ("Adding integers? That's all?" she whispered to me at one point. "That's all the teacher told me about," I whispered back.)

That seventh grade class had a double (two periods of math back to back), so toward the end of the period, Cori and I brought them back upstairs for their second math period. As we were watching them walk back into class (some more quietly than others), who should come up to us but the Millionairess! Yes! The woman who founded the school with millions of her (and her late husband's) own dollars!! I'd heard stories about her but never met her in person; I was beginning to wonder if she truly existed. But in fact she does. She had two men with her (handlers??), and she asked us how things were going.

Cori, ever positive, chirped, "Oh, fine. It's just that now that we're in a bigger space than last year, the kids are still adjusting to making good transitions between classes."

"But they've been in school a month," the Millionairess said, peering through the window in the classroom door. I looked, and to my horror realized that two boys were in the back of the room beating each other over the head with their notebooks.

"Oh no," the Millionairess said. Here it comes, I thought. But this is what she said: "That plant in the back looks VERY thirsty."

Cori and I stared at the boys whaling on each other next to the plant, then at each other. Was this woman kidding?

"Oh yes, it needs to be watered," one of them men said after he, too, peered through the window.

"Those are great plants because if you forget to water them for a while, once you do they'll perk back up in 20 minutes," the other guy added.

"But still, it shouldn't get to that point. That plant needs to be watered," the Millionairess frowned.

After Cori and I reassured her we would remind the math teacher to water her plants, they walked away. And not a moment too soon, because it was too hard to keep a straight face anymore. Cori said, "I thought she was going to ream us out over those boys smacking each other around, but --"

"-- all she cared about was the plant!" I said. We could not stop laughing. Was I in some some of alternate universe??

"That epitomized perfectly the problem with this school," Cori said. "Caring more about the aesthetic than what the kids are actually doing!"

And she's right. I almost feel like, if that's our FOUNDER's attitude, what hope do we have!? Good grief!

Better

2009-10-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

Things were better this week. And not just because, thanks to Yom Kippur, it's only a four-day work week. ;) Mitchell and the rest of the administration are back to being more positive. He actually wrote this great e-mail last Friday with the subject "thank you," and he thanked every single teacher by name for some specific good thing that they'd done. I thought that was nice.

Random things about this week, since I'm too tired to really think coherently:

I called two parents this week about misbehavior, leaving a voicemail for one and speaking directly to the other.

We're going to start offering enrichment classes (electives that we teachers each develop ourselves) the last period of the day, and since Mitchell is swamped, I volunteered to make up the survey for the kids to select their first, second, and third choice for which enrichment they want to take. Even though it took some time, I really had fun writing the survey and finding a way to describe each enrichment class so that they would all sound like the most amazing class in the world.

Tomorrow we have to finish and turn in something called our SMART Goals, which I'm not finding very useful, and our teacher self-assessment and individual goals, which I'm finding much more helpful. I have a meeting with the special ed director next Wednesday to discuss my self-assessment and my goals. Hopefully it will help me improve, so I'm looking forward to it...

...even though she came in and observed for most of the seventh grade English class this morning while they were being rotten. Well, not *exactly* rotten, but enough kids were talking and fooling around so often that the lead teacher and I had to keep re-directing them and re-directing them, so I'm sure she'll bring that up during our meeting on Wednesday. I just hope she has some useful suggestions on how to deal with them, because some of those seventh graders just make you want to tear your hair out -- or *their* hair out! It's affecting instruction, or the lack thereof. Yesterday I had to finish up class with the "bad" seventh grade English class (the one that gave me such a hard time last week) when the other teacher had to leave and deal with a student who purposely pushed her as he walked out the door for a time-out. They were terrible, as usual, but I didn't let it get to me. Now, whenever I feel my blood pressure rising, I think, Two years from now, will they even remember this particular moment? Will I? And I just let it go and keep doing the best I can.

But also yesterday, I pulled three sixth graders out of study skills class because they needed extra preparation for their math test today. I helped them answer practice problems on the dry erase boards, and at the end of the period as I helped one student with his last problem, I turned around to see that the other two kids, having finished, were writing "Thank you, Ms. Artichoke!" (except they used my real last name, of course) all over the board, along with half a dozen hearts! Wasn't that sweet? They even spelled my name right. Teaching can be a thankless job, but yesterday, I was officially thanked by three of the people who matter most: my students. :)

My job: punishment for doing something terrible in a previous life?

2009-09-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

Extremely discouraging couple of days.

Apparently on Tuesday as the kids were being released to go home for the day, there was an incident with a middle school student allegedly pushing one of the elementary school teachers as they (the students) came barreling down the stairs. There are two sides to the story, though, from two different teachers (not to mention the student), so who knows what really happened. On Wednesday, Mitchell (the vice principal) was out sick. That afternoon he sent an e-mail to all of us saying he was sorry he couldn't be with us but he'd woken up feeling "absolutely awful" (note that he didn't specify whether he meant physically or mentally!). In the rest of the e-mail he reamed us out for the staircase incident and for not walking our kids all the way down five flights of stairs and seeing them out of the building when we release them for the day -- even though we were NEVER told we had to do that. I'm lucky because my class meets in the cafeteria on the first floor, so when that final bell rings, I'm like "peace out" and they walk right out of the building. Have you ever heard of a junior high where the kids are lined up to go to every class, and are even walked out of the building? But some of them act so immature, I can see why Mitchell feels we have to do it.

Anyway, he ended the e-mail by saying teachers who shirk their cafeteria duties, recess duties, walking their kids out of the building duties, etc., will have a letter put in their file. I am so sick of this "letter in your file" crap. They did that to Cori for the exploding pen vandalism incident, and one of the teachers from last year said it became almost a running joke that they were putting a letter in her file every month for one negative thing or another. It reminds me of the old "this will go in your permanent record!" threat. It's so demeaning.

Honestly, if teachers are sometimes tempted to shirk their duties once in a while, maybe it's because they're endless! Besides actually teaching for five to six periods per day, we have to supervise Tai Chi (20 minutes), do homeroom/morning meeting (25 minutes), breakfast duty (25 minutes), pick kids up from breakfast to line them up and bring them to class (5 minutes), recess or lunch duty (30 minutes), and escort the kids out of the building at the end of the day (5 minutes). That's almost TWO HOURS EVERY DAY just on non-instructional duties. That can't be normal, can it??

I wonder if the administration is even getting discouraged, because it seems like every e-mail we get from Mitchell or any of them anymore is scolding us for something. Earlier this week I'd sent Mitchell an e-mail saying the planned schedule of team meetings that he'd sent out was a great idea, does it start this week or next? No response. The next day I found these cool activities I thought would be good for the advisory classes, so I e-mailed them to him. No response. I know they're as overwhelmed as we are, if not more so, but it's not helping morale.

Then yesterday the English teacher e-mailed Mitchell and me saying she had to leave today at 3:00 PM for a doctor's appointment, so she would need coverage for her seventh grade English class and her advisory class. I hit "reply all" and told them both that since I was planning to be in there anyway to do some vocabulary review games and a vocabulary crossword puzzle, I was fine with covering the class solo. But then the teacher told me this morning that Mitchell wrote back only to her and said that was good, but he still wanted another teacher in the class with me. I was like, ??? First of all, why? I'm a certified teacher. It made me feel like he thought I wouldn't be able to handle the class by myself, even though I said I would be comfortable with it. I mean, I *should* be, according to the co-teaching model we special ed teachers are supposed to abide by. Second of all, why didn't he include me on the e-mail, too?

So one of the sixth grade teachers offered to help supervise during that period, since she had a prep period, but then the reading specialist said she had been planning to push in that period anyway, so we decided it would be her and me. I'd thought it would go great because I'd been in both of Andrea's seventh grade math classes that morning, and they were SO well-behaved, I thought she must have slipped tranquilizers in their breakfast. Juan wasn't even sitting in the back of the room, and they were still really good. Even the usual suspects were pretty quiet. So I thought, Wow, English class will be a breeze.

Well. THANK GOD Mitchell said he wanted two of us in the room. It was hell. They -- were -- HORRIBLE. Absolutely awful. The science teacher had, for some insane reason, given them balloons in the class right before mine as part of some demonstration, so they were popping balloons in the hallway and screaming before they even got to class. Also, somehow they'd heard and gotten excited about their old sixth grade teacher being with them that period, so the reading specialist and I were NOT who they wanted to see. So...play a game?? No way. They couldn't even quiet down enough to listen to my instructions about the crossword puzzle. They were getting up out of their seats, calling across the room, laughing at nothing, speaking totally disrespectfully to us. Even a few of the kids who aren't usually a problem were being completely rude. And I felt even worse when one of the handful of well-behaved kids raised his hand and quietly asked if the people who were following directions could at least play the game? I had to say no, because how would they have heard anything over the din??

I was thisclose to crying by the time the period finally, mercifully, ended. But I had to pull myself together because I still had a whole period of advisory to teach. Woo-hoo!

Needless to say, I felt completely and utterly miserable by the end of the day. If Mitchell thought I couldn't handle the class by myself, well, he was right. I couldn't even handle it with another teacher in the room. And I don't even feel comfortable asking for suggestions or support, because I'm petrified any potentially negative thing I admit to will get written up in a letter in my file.

But during advisory class, we went around and said our "rose" (good part of our day) and our "thorn" (bad part of our day), and one student, who'd gone to another advisory group the past week but then got switched back to mine today, said happily, "My rose is that I'm back in your advisory group now!" Even in the depths of my misery, he made me smile. I wanted to hug him.

Less stress is best

2009-09-22T18:14:00.000-07:00

Today was a lot less stressful than I expected. Both the English teacher and the history teacher were back today, for one thing. And for another, I walked into math class with dread in the pit of my stomach -- only to find the kids sitting straight in their seats, absolutely silent, like little angels. For a couple of seconds I couldn't figure it out. Had she just screamed at them a minute before and scared them? Her screaming usually just makes them louder. Then I got to the back of the room and saw Juan, one of our administrators, sitting there observing. The kids like, respect, and fear him all at once -- I think he's the only staff member who has worked at the school since the first day it started a few years ago -- so they were completely well-behaved in front of him. If only he could sit in on all of Andrea's classes. ;O

It was a lucky day in other ways, too. For example, I took one kid out of English class and made him stay in the hall for a couple minutes as a time-out, because he kept talking, laughing, and messing around -- and the vice principal happened to walk by. "Why are you out of class so much?" he demanded. "It looks like we have to call your mother and have her come babysit you in class so you learn how to behave. Let's go call her now." And he stalked off, taking the kid with him. Well-played!

Cori told me one of the administrators sent her an e-mail saying that a (negative) letter would be put in her file regarding the exploding-pen vandalism incident that supposedly happened under her watch during indoor recess. Shouldn't they put a POSITIVE letter in her file about how she took over Amy's math class one period last week with no notice?? Unreal.

And the only other bad news: today during advisory, I did an activity with the kids where they had to give a thumbs up if they agreed with a statement I read, or a thumbs down if they disagreed. The last statement was, "I like me," and only one kid, Jonathan, put his thumb down. "I hate myself," he said matter-of-factly. And he wasn't kidding around -- he was serious. He's a nice kid, well-behaved. He said he used to get into a lot of fights, so it seemed related to that. I said, "But you seem like a peaceful person. You don't fight anymore, do you?"

"I guess not," he shrugged. But he said he still hates himself. He's 12! Doesn't he realize he has YEARS ahead in which to hate himself?? Ha ha. But seriously, I'm going to talk to the social worker about him. Maybe he's depressed and no one has realized it? :(

Isn't it too early in the schoolyear to call in sick?

2009-09-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

The English teacher and the history teacher were BOTH out today -- I hope they were just slightly under the weather, and that they're not about to quit or disappear. I was in one of the 7th grade English classes today with the substitute, and the behavior was discouraging, although they did finally settle down enough to read an article aloud, and some of them actually answered some of the questions at the end. I was in one of the 7th grade math classes today, too. The teacher introduced an incentive program where, when kids are on task and behaving well, they get tickets they can eventually redeem for prizes and other incentives. But by halfway through the period she was discouraged and yelling at kids again. I don't know. I'm still getting my bearings with this whole special ed "push-in" thing. I try to deal consistently with the misbehavior, but it's amazing how hard it is with so much else going on. Classroom management was always a challenge for me, which is part of why I went back for my special ed degree, since I like working with small groups better. And anyway, I'm only in each teacher's class a few times a week, so if they can't manage the class on their own, we're all screwed. Sigh. This morning the assistant principal sat in on the sixth grade English lesson and, at the end, asked if the lead teacher and I had discussed my role in the classroom -- I think because the lead teacher taught the whole lesson pretty much on his own. Tomorrow the math specialist and I are both in the sixth grade math class, and we're going to break the class into groups and each teach the lesson. Hopefully it will go well. I haven't used this much math in ages!

I CAN raise my voice

2009-09-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

Thursday was something else. Dragged myself in for our staff meeting at 7:15 IN THE MORNING (!!!), and then it was kind of disappointing because we emerged after half an hour with only two definite decisions:

1) We should call the parents of the kids in our advisory class by the end of next week to touch base and introduce ourselves, which I think is a good idea.

2) We have to line the kids up in the classroom first and then walk them to their next class, rather than line them up in the hall, because that’s when they get into trouble – yelling, touching each other, general mayhem. Honestly, I think requiring them to line up is part of the problem. I can understand walking them to classes that are four flights of stairs away, like theater or dance (although it’s still ridiculous to have to walk junior high school kids anywhere). But all of their core classes are on the same floor – literally next door to each other. If the teachers dismissed them by row or by table, it would pace them so they’re not all out in the hallway all at once. Another problem, as one of my co-workers pointed out, is that some teachers don’t feel ready for the kids to come in – they’re still preparing – so they make them wait out in the hall even after the bell has rung, and the longer they’re hanging out in the hall with nothing to do, the more that chaos ensues. We specialists are supposed to walk through the halls ‘supervising’ during this time, but I feel invisible -- kids will literally reach around me to grab each other. For the first time yesterday, I didn’t feel safe, so I just got out of the way and gave up. The trouble-makers’ lack of intimidation around adults and authority figures is shocking.

Anyway, those two issues could have been handled in an e-mail instead of making me get up at 5:20 AM.

Then I went to one of my co-worker Andrea’s seventh grade math classes, only to find most of the class clustered in the front of the room and three kids off to the side, goofing around. Andrea said something to me like, “I’m teaching the lesson, but those turkeys don’t want to learn. If you want to try to work with them, go ahead.” I winced. Referring to the kids as “turkeys” is probably not going to make them behave any better. Just sayin’.

So I tried to get something done with one of the boys, and Cori, the math specialist, came in and worked with the other two. Then Cori realized another boy had been in the room a while as punishment for acting up in another class, so I took him to class, but it took a while because he had study skills with a teacher who floats, so it took us some time to find the room.

I returned to class after it ended, so Andrea had already lined the kids up and let them go. The other seventh grade class was in a line waiting to get into the room, so when the bell rang signaling the period was starting, I began to let them come in.

“Wait, I want to greet them each individually and hand them their worksheet,” she said, so I stopped them. But then she just wandered around the room, straightening out the desks and stuff as the minutes ticked away. By the time she went to the door with her worksheets, pandemonium had broken out, one kid shoved another kid, and that kid hit a girl who fell on the floor, hitting Andrea hard in the leg. The girl got up and complained her back hurt, but she said she was OK. Andrea wasn’t, though. I let the kids inside as she tried to take a minute and pull herself together, but then after the kids were in, she turned around and her eyes were wet.

“Go take a break,” I told her. “I’ll take care of them. Just go.”

She whimpered, “Thank you” and fled in tears. I got back inside, handed out the worksheets and managed to calm the kids down enough so I could hear myself think. Then I looked down at the lesson and waves of panic washed over me. It was on integers and rational and irrational numbers. Which is which, I thought frantically. I’d heard part of the lesson the period before, and I’d glanced at the material in the math book for a couple minutes that morning, but I hadn’t refreshed my knowledge nearly enough to be able to teach it with any sort of competence or confidence.

And then, like a miracle, Cori walked in. I whispered to her what had happened and said, “My math skills are just not up to teaching this lesson.”

“No problem,” she said, and for the next 40 minutes, she taught the lesson so expertly, it was like she’d designed it herself. The kids still talked too much, and we had to shush them every so often, but she got through the whole lesson, and those kids learned rational and irrational numbers (as did I). Watching her, I thought, What a pro. I already liked Cori a lot: she’s such a positive person, she brings up issues without whining, she takes her job seriously but never to the point of losing her sense of humor, she never complains. After she took over that class with such ease and professionalism, my admiration of her, already high, was magnified a thousand times.

In the middle of class Andrea wandered in, glassy-eyed, sat at her desk for a few minutes playing with her cell phone, then disappeared again. By the afternoon, though, she was back to teaching her classes.

At lunch, I told Cori how awesome she was. She laughed and said, “Well, I would’ve wanted someone to do the same for me. But I’m worried because Andrea used the ‘q’ word before class even started.” Andrea had told her that these kids made her want to quit teaching after fourteen years. “I wanted to say, ‘No! You can’t quit! Otherwise they’ll probably make me take over your classes, and that’s not what I’m supposed to be doing!’”

The next time I saw Cori, during my prep period a couple hours after lunch, she looked uncharacteristically befuddled. We’d held recess inside that day, which means the kids go back to homeroom and sit around for 25 minutes until lunch. Cori’s homeroom meets in the art room when there’s indoor recess. Apparently some vandalism occurred – a student purposely exploded a pen or something (?), and smeared the ink all over the room, staining the floor -- there were even ink footprints on one of the tables. So Joan, the principal, called Cori in and grilled her, asking how this could have happened during her recess without her knowing it. Cori said she didn’t think it had happened under her watch, because she would’ve noticed. “I mean, I was three or four minutes late to recess, so unless something happened then – “

“Why were you late?” Joan asked.

“Um, I was watching Amy’s class after she broke down in tears?” Cori said. But she still would’ve noticed the ink everywhere, so she thought it had to have happened the following period.

But, the next thing she knew, she was on her hands and knees in the art room trying to scrub the stains off the floor. Can you believe that? By the end of the school day they’d learned who did it and had suspended him, and Cori was running around collecting work for the kid to do while he’s out. She joked, “I think it’s more of a punishment for me than for him. I got to scrub the floor and run around collecting work for him, and he gets to have two days off!”

As soon as I heard that, I immediate wrote a formal e-mail to Joan and Mitchell, the vice principal, telling them how Cori took over Andrea’s class in such an amazing and professional way. I figured she would never brag about herself, so I should brag for her, especially in light of the hard time Joan gave her that afternoon. I’m sure the whole pen incident happened either when the kids got into the room unsupervised, or under the art teacher’s watch. I have homeroom with the art teacher, and I like her a lot as a person, but her classroom management technique seems to be to just shout over the kids. It’s so loud in there, a pen could literally explode – heck, a bolt of lightening could strike – and no one would even notice.

Speaking of loud, I got caught reaming Quigley out during my advisory class last period. He – never – shuts – up! He’s like that in all his classes, as far as I can tell, though he was in particularly rare form yesterday. I was just trying to give directions for an activity for five minutes, and he kept talking. When I tried to re-direct him, he just laughed and kept talking, making comments, fooling around. It’s so disrespectful. I want to ask him, do you talk to your parents that way? They’d probably be mortified if they saw his behavior.

On Wednesday I sent him away to sit at a separate table and not participate in the activity, since he was being so talkative and disrespectful. On Thursday, I screamed in his face instead (!). No, I didn’t actually scream. But oh boy, did I raise my voice. I reamed him out for a good 30 seconds (“Even now you’re talking! When your lips are moving that means you’re talking, and instead you need to be listening!”), telling him in no uncertain terms he needed to respect me by listening and not interrupting when I speak, just like I respect him by listening when he has something to tell me.

Just as I finished reaming him out, I looked over and saw Mitchell, along with one of my students, Shawn, standing in the doorway staring at me. “I just wanted to let you know I’m borrowing Shawn for a little while,” Mitchell said. “And tomorrow I’ll speak to whoever was causing *that* disturbance.”

So he totally backed me up, but I still thought, Oh, no, what did he really think?? I wasn’t screaming or out of control or saying anything inappropriate like “shut up,” but my voice was raised, and I did let the anger come through. And I don’t like doing that. I would love to be one of those teachers who can control a class without showing anger or raising their voice.

But on Friday Mitchell caught me in the hall to ask my thoughts about how this morning assembly went, and then he grinned and said, “Well, after yesterday I do know that you *can* raise your voice.”

I sort of half-smiled sheepishly, and he added, “But you know what? It was good -- you were firm. You made it clear that at that moment, you were the authority figure and his job was to listen.”

Whew, I thought with relief. So he was sincere when he backed me up. I told him how Quigley drives me crazy, and he said, “You’re not the first person who’s told me that!”

“His behavior doesn’t even seem sincere half the time,” I said. “I think he’s actually a good kid, but he wants to show off to impress his friends. He’s always looking around to see their reactions.” Which is normal at this age.

That, however, does not make it any less annoying.

The good part of my afternoon was in the sixth grade English class, helping Joe, who’s a good kid, no behavior problems, but he learns so slowly – he’s basically at a second or third grade level in both reading and math – that he’s supposed to be in a special class with only 12 students per teacher. But we don’t offer that at our school, so I have to get in there as regularly as I can. The English teacher did a neat activity where he played about an hour’s worth of music – different songs from the ‘60’s to now – and the kids had to write about memories any of the songs triggered or anything that came to mind. He’d prepared a list of prompts for the kids in case they got really stuck, and Joe did wonderfully. I helped him read the list, and in the end he picked eight prompts that interested him and wrote a couple sentences for each. He really tries, and I really like working with him.

Behavior

2009-09-16T18:24:00.000-07:00

Today after our usual morning Tai Chi (which I really like, by the way, at least when the kids are quiet enough that I don’t have to worry about shushing them), the vice principal sat them down and told them he’s already gotten calls from a few parents concerned about the behavior of some students at the school. “By being loud and causing a commotion when you walk from class to class, and by disrespecting your teachers by continually disrupting lessons, I hope you don’t think you'll make us all quit,” he said. “We love each and every one of you too much to allow that to happen. We want you to succeed.” Then when I was in the hall this afternoon, I saw him with one of the seventh grade classes lined up against the wall, scolding them, “Some of your parents have already called me with concerns about this behavior. It’s not acceptable.” And I thought, geez -- why on earth would anyone want to be a vice principal!? I don’t know how he has the energy or the stamina. Whatever they’re paying him, it’s not enough.

One of the few teachers who was at the school last year told me, “I’m surprised parents are complaining -- so far things are SO much better than last year. It’s like night and day.” Which makes me glad I missed last year. ;O The one seventh grade class I was in today actually went pretty well -- all but a couple of the students were on task and engaged. This one kid, Quigley, would not shut up, though. I have him for advisory last period of the day, and he was the same way there. I made him stay after school for a few minutes and write about why he kept getting into trouble and how his teachers could help him. He wrote, "By stop getting me in trouble for no reason. I got in trouble because of nothing." So I re-phrased the question as, why do you keep talking when your teachers are talking? How can they help you stop? He wrote, "Because teachers ignore me when I raise my hand. By not ignoring me and making my arm hurt." We talked about how his teachers appreciate it when he raises his hand, but we can't always call on him all the time -- other kids need a chance to speak. Who knows if that helped or not. We'll see how he is tomorrow.

The sixth grade already went on a field trip yesterday – some sort of Outward Bound type of thing with rope-climbing, trust falls, etc. Sounds like exactly the kind of trip I would’ve hated in sixth grade! But it went extremely well. One of the teachers who has been teaching for 37 years said it was the best field trip he had ever been on. “You talk too much, we know that,” he told the kids. “But the way most of you treated each other and helped each other out, it really inspired me and warmed my heart.”

Today when the sixth grade science teacher was explaining scientific laws and scientific theories, one of the kids raised his hand and asked out of nowhere, “What’s Einstein’s theory of relativity?”

I’m trying to get a read on that sixth grader Tre (the one who, when asked to write about who he really is, wrote, “I am an alien in a human body"). Half the time he’s just sitting around, unprepared, not writing anything down, and chatting with the kids around him. But today, when he was doing that and the teacher called on him, he knew exactly what was going on in the lesson and could explain it. The other day when I saw him in the hall, he asked, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”

“Invisibility,” I said immediately. (I’ve probably thought about that question too much.) “Because then you could go anywhere and do anything, and no one would be able to tell. What about you?”

“The ability to have ALL the superpowers,” he said. Tricky!

All this drama (and that's just the teachers!)

2009-09-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

As the special education inclusion teacher, I'm supposed to push in to classes and only pull kids out rarely, so I share an office (really a small classroom) with a few other specialists. One of them told me last Thursday about how a few of the teachers were using our office as a teacher's lounge, and "one of them was putting make-up on at your desk!"

I looked at my desk. It was clean -- so, honestly, someone putting on make-up at my desk is really the least of my concerns. Some teachers float and don't have their own rooms, and because the building was under construction over the summer we don't even really have a conference room set up, so if they want to use our room, I don't begrudge them that. Really, don't the kids bring us enough drama without us adding to it??

This woman definitely has a thing for "everyone and everything in its place." She carefully taped labels with our room number on every item in the room, for example -- even the garbage can. I'm afraid to borrow so much as a pen from her for five minutes out of fear she'll accuse me of stealing. Then yesterday I e-mailed notes from the special ed kids' IEPs to the general ed teachers -- things like if they need extra time on tests, preferential seating, etc. I almost didn't include this teacher on it, since she's a specialist who does pull-out instruction, not a core teacher, but I CCd her and the other specialist on it anyway.

Well, that was a mistake. When I came in this morning, she didn't even say hello, just gave me the stinkeye and said, "Who told you to e-mail all that information out? Did that come from the special ed director?"

"No, I just did it because I thought it was good information for the teachers to know," I said. "I wasn't even sure if you needed it, but figured I'd CC you just in case."

"It's just with confidentiality, I wasn't sure if you were supposed to, so I was wondering where it came from."

"Oh," I said. "I don't know. I didn't ask. I just did it." I had thought of confidentiality, too, but we share each kid's annual goals and short-term objectives on Google docs, so I assumed if that was all right to share electronically, why wouldn't information about whether they need extra time on tests be all right to share? And you know if I *HADN'T* CC'd her on it, she would've found out about it and said, "Why didn't you give me the same information you gave the classroom teachers!?" You can't win with some people.

The kids do bring us plently of drama. Last Friday, one class of eighth graders was so bad with the foreign language teacher -- yelling, throwing things, etc. -- that the vice principal marched them into their homeroom and made them sit there silently with their heads on their desks during their entire recess period. At one point he whispered to me, "I'm amazed they're able to be this quiet!" But they are afraid of him, which is a great quality for a vice principal to evoke.

Today the math teacher lost her cool with one class of seventh graders while I was in there. "Shut your fat mouths!" she said. "Shut up!" she said. And, "if you're not paying attention, that's your choice, I get paid the same either way." And she's been teaching for 14 years! :O I've done some things I regretted when I was a classroom teacher, but I never told a kid to shut up, or to shut his fat mouth. My rule of thumb is, don't say anything to a student that you wouldn't want to hear them say back to you.

On the other hand, they did finally settle down after that and get some work done.

There's this sixth grader, Tre, who really intrigues me. When the history teacher asked them last week to respond to the question, "If someone asked you to define who you really are, what would you say?" Tre immediately raised his hand and asked me, "Can we write ANYthing?"

"Sure, if you think it's who you really are," I said.

He promptly wrote, "I am an alien trapped in a human body." Ah, kids....

1 day down. 179 to go.

2009-09-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of school for the students! 48 sixth graders, 48 seventh graders, and 48 eighth graders graced us with their presence today. The vice principal said it was the smoothest first day of school he's experienced. My take? These kids are LOUD. Advisory period turned into a "make labels for your locker and socialize" period this afternoon, since we still don't have the advisory curriculum, and the din that 24 seventh graders can make is amazing, really. It just surprises me how unafraid of adult authority some of them are (completely unlike me when I was their age). I mean, it's only THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL and I already had to give a seventh grader a warning for throwing a little piece of paper while the lead teacher was talking! The seventh and eighth grade math teacher has taught for 14 years, and even she had a hard time getting them all to simply stay quiet and pay attention. She's going to assign seats tomorrow, separating a couple of the especially talky groups, so that should help. One of the teachers from last year said that this year's seventh and eighth graders are used to getting away with talking whenever they want, because for a couple of their subjects last year they ended up with substitute after substitute due to teacher turnover, and their other teachers had given up, I guess, and just talked over them.

The sixth graders aren't like that, though. They're all brand new to the school -- we didn't have a fifth grade last year -- so they were much more nervous than the older kids. Plus none of them know each other enough yet to chat too much. ;) The sixth grade teachers are wonderful with them, too. Although one little girl I met this morning was funny. Her first question to me was, "Do we ever have dress down days?" She was disappointed when I told her no ("It's so boring to look like everyone else!").

As the special ed teacher for half the sixth grade and all of seventh, I'm supposed to "push in" to classes as much as possible, since we have a math specialist and a reading specialist to pull them out for extra small group instruction in those subjects. It's kind of weird, though, because I was told to just make my own schedule, but I couldn't even see the kids IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) until last Thursday when they finally arrived out of storage, and none of the other teachers even got finalized schedules themselves until yesterday. And in the three weeks of professional development we just had, we were given surprisingly little time for planning together.

So today I basically just observed and helped out in the seventh grade math and language arts classes, and the sixth grade math class. Even though I wasn't lecturing the whole class, like the lead teachers were, I went around and answered kids' questions, tried to make sure they stayed on task, etc. I barely saw our principal all day, but our vice principal was awesome, out and about in seemingly all the classrooms, an active presence. But then I felt weird because when I caught him to ask him a question (this was after he happened to come in to two different classrooms and saw me helping out), he asked how things were going, I said things seemed to be going pretty smoothly, and then he told me, "Don't be afraid to jump in."

I was kind of like, "Oh." Because to me, I *had* been jumping in. And today was fairly similar in all the classes -- going over the rules, the supplies needed, the syllabus, etc. So on the way home, I brooded. I like him as a vice principal, and I want him to think I'm going a good job. By Friday I hope to figure out when each teacher's planning periods are so I can schedule times to sit down with them and see what we can do together for our "special students."

Tomorrow is our first morning of whole-school tai chi in the wellness room (don't call it a gym; it's a "wellness room." ;) According to the wellness teachers, some of the too-cool-for-school seventh and eighth graders have been copping an attitude about it, but I'm looking forward to it, myself.

Diane Schuler didn't have cirrhosis

2009-08-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

The mystery continues: an article in today's Daily News by Mattew Lysiak, "Diane Schuler's Family: Autopsy Shows She Wasn't Alcoholic," states that the autopsy showed she had no physical signs of long-term alcoholism: no cirrhosis, no pancreatic disease, no erosion of her esophagus (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/08/29/2009-08-29_diane_schulers_family_say_autopsy_results_show_she_wasnt_alcoholic__though_she_w.html). Tom Ruskin, the private investigator hired by Schuler's family, said, "The autopsy supports the claims of over 50 of Diane Schuler's friends and family members who have never once seen this woman drunk," and indicated he was going to have a team of forensic experts read the coroner's report before deciding whether to exhume Schuler's body for further tests.
This news makes the whole case even more tragic, I think. She probably hadn't been drinking too much for very long, so if it had been a minor accident it could have been the wake-up call she needed for her to get help and fix her life. Remember when comedian Paula Poundstone was arrested back in 2001 for driving drunk to Baskin Robbins with her kids in the car? Her children went into foster care, she went into rehab and joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and after more than a year of being sober, she got her kids back permanently and has been fine ever since.
One person commented on the Daily News story: "Does every person who abuses alcohol have cirrhosis? No. Does every person who abuses alcohol have to have done it over a prolonged period of time? No. Let's accept that alcoholics all started out somewhere...I know plenty of recreational drinkers and pot smokers who will only sometimes comsume to excess."

Sleeping with strangers

2009-08-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm getting ready for my five days away from home for week 2 of professional development. All of us teachers have to arrive there tomorrow, stay for five nights, and leave on Friday. The place we're staying looks nice, and I'm sure the professional development will be at least partially worthwhile, but the truth is -- I'm dreading it. I think it's a lot for the school to ask us to go away for five nights when we won't even have our own hotel rooms. We're sharing, three people to a room. I need my alone time to recharge my batteries, and I won't have that, so I'm really nervous. I also usually have a personal policy not to spend time socially with co-workers until either they've left the job or I have, and we don't work together anymore. But this week I'll be sleeping with two of them, which upends my whole policy! We'll see how it goes.... :/

Made it through my 1st week of orientation!

2009-08-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well, almost. By tomorrow I will have made it through. Today we middle school teachers met in a group, along with the new vice principal (who was only hired a week ago), and it was terrific. As an ice breaker activity we played "two truths and a lie." I wrote that I'd taught for two years in South Texas; that I'm going to a wedding in Tennessee on Sept. 5th; and that I'd hiked 600 miles of the Appalachian Trail. The music teacher looked me up and down and said, "600 miles, huh?"

"Yeah, that's the lie," I admitted.

I like the other teachers a lot. They all seem really committted to the kids, AND to making sure we present a united front and stay consistent so they don't walk all over us! I'm a big fan of the vice principal, too. If he had already been working for the school when I was hired and had been the one to interview me, I wouldn't have had as many qualms about taking the job. He's really smart, easy to talk to, with a great sense of humor. At one point someone asked yet another question, and he said with a smile, "I know a lot of things, none of which you're asking me about. I'll have to get back to you on that." And this afternoon when I pulled out the huge package of Trident I'd brought, he said, "Could I attack you for a piece of gum? I think I still have lunch breath, and it's driving me crazy."

"Sure," I said. "You don't even have to attack me." :)

One of the teachers who was there last year also said he wanted to reassure us newbies that most of the really severe problems last year were actually in the lower school, not the middle school. *relief*

In other news, ABC News has a story here (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=8350259) about private investigator Tom Ruskin's attempt to trace Diane Schuler's timeline on the day she drove the wrong way on the Taconic, killing herself, her daughter, her three nieces, and three men in another vehicle. Apparently the 12:08 PM phone call she received was her brother, Warren Hance, and they had what was described as a "normal conversation" -- so much for my theory that that phone call had upset her. It wasn't until 12:56 PM, when her 8-year-old niece, Emma, called Warren Hance "in a panic" that Schuler seemed "sick," or as we now know, drunk -- confused, disoriented, slurring her speech, etc. Later her phone was found "on top of a wall by a bridge near the highway. 'It means 99.9 percent sure she got out of the car,' Ruskin later said." It was 25 minutes later when Schuler drove the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway, causing the crash. The article ends by quoting Jay Schuler, the wife of Daniel Schuler's brother: "We had an occasional pina colada at a family barbecue. She was meticulous, safe, I trusted her with my son when I left the country...those three girls before her own children were her life. This is absolutely not the woman they know. [Not] who I trusted my children with."

I still think it's weird that she and her husband brought "the same bottle of vodka" (who knows if it really was) with them every weekend when they went camping. Beer or wine come to mind when I think of camping, not hard liquor like vodka. Whether she was clinically depressed and over-medicated herself with alcohol, or a closet alcoholic whose first major cry for help was her last, she, four children, and three men are dead for a totally preventable reason. I predict we won't hear too much more about this unless there's a civil suit which brings more information to light, or unless the private investigator uncovers something outrageous. Really sad. :(

Orientation; and Diane Schuler, Part 3

2009-08-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my first day of professional development at my new job and WOW, I am tired! I haven't worked full-time hours since last fall. Even when I had three part-time jobs, it might have taken all day to complete them, but I had free hours during the day in between each of them. The other teachers seem very nice, but I'm nervous. A couple who were there last year told stories about objects being thrown across their classrooms and "nothing working" to solve behavior problems -- and those were the first grade teachers! :O I found out I'll be the special ed co-teacher for the seventh grade and half of the sixth grade, which pleases me -- I especially like sixth grade. I have to admit, I'm relieved I won't have any eighth grade classes. I taught eighth grade my first year of teaching, and it was really hard.

Also, because we are supposed to model healthy eating for the kids, all of us, teachers included, are only allowed to bring "healthy food" into the school building. Even when we're having lunch in the teacher's room, we're not supposed to drink soda or eat anything unhealthy. Is it bad that my first thought was to strategize as to how I can smuggle chocolate in my purse and secretly eat it in the bathroom? If that's not the first sign of addiction, I don't know what is -- I really AM a chocoholic!

In Diane Schuler news, Westchester district attorney Janet DiFiore announced today that neither Schuler's husband, Daniel Schuler, nor anyone else will be criminally charged in the case. Here are the links to the NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/nyregion/19taconic.html?_r=1&hp) and the Newsday article (http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/da-no-charges-in-deadly-taconic-crash-1.1376535). Not surprising, since she was the one who got drunk and stoned, drove the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway and killed eight people, including herself, so, as the D.A. said, the charges die with her. There's no evidence her husband knew she would drink and drive, as she didn't appear under the influence when they left the campground that morning, or even an hour and a half later when she stopped at McDonald's and then a Sunoco station. But Schuler's family will likely still face a civil suit from the family of Michael and Guy Bastardi, the father and son she killed when she crashed into their S.U.V. The State Police did note that "Mr. Schuler answered many questions from investigators but 'has not been forthcoming, perhaps, about marijuana use'" -- probably because he's a public safety officer and doesn't want to admit to knowing his wife (and he, too??) was using an illegal drug.

Here's a link to an interesting Huffington Post article by Stephanie Gertler, "Diane Schuler's Demons," which theorizes she was severely depressed, and the alcohol unleashed her suicidal impulses(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephanie-gertler/diane-schulers-demons_b_254266.html).

Diane Schuler, Part 2

2009-08-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of PEOPLE Magazine arrived in my mailbox with a picture of Diane Schuler in the top corner. In the PEOPLE article, her family admitted that Schuler occasionally smoked marijuana to help her sleep but insisted she wasn't a big drinker, that when her brother-in-law mixed drinks at family gatherings she would tell him to throw them out and start over if she could taste the alcohol.

The timeline is that Schuler and the kids left the campground at 9:30 AM; went to McDonald's and left there by 10:45 AM; and it's now being reported that video was obtained of her stopping at a Sunoco gas station/convenience store in Liberty, NY. She pumped gas, then asked the clerk inside for pain relievers. She didn't appear intoxicated. Private investigator Thomas Ruskin, who was hired by Schuler's family, told the Daily News that the guy behind the counter "said she asked him for Tylenol or Advil and he didn't have any - so the question becomes what was bothering Diane Schuler?" (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/08/14/2009-08-14_she_stopped_for_pain_med_says_taconic_mom_lawyer.html) She called her brother at about 11:45 AM to say she was running late due to traffic but she'd have her nieces home in time for a performance rehearsal they were scheduled to go to, and she sounded fine. She got a call at 12:08 PM, but it's not known from who; no details have been released about that. It wasn't until 12:58 PM that her oldest niece called her dad and told him Schuler was having trouble seeing and that her speech was slurred. In another article, "Driver's Spouse Meets Police About Crash that Killed 8," in the New York Times(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/nyregion/15taconic.html?_r=1) private investigator Ruskin says “There is some catastrophic event that is affecting her ability to speak, to see, her ability to know where she is and to make rational judgments. The Diane that they [her family] know does not drink and would never smoke marijuana in a car with kids.”

So she was in some kind of physical pain, and when she couldn't get Advil or Tylenol, she decided to sneak just a little bit of marijuana and vodka to self-medicate -- but she couldn't stop/got carried away because she was a secret alcoholic? That explains why she conveniently "lost" her cell phone after talking to her brother and deciding to keep driving. She was probably thinking that if she could just get the kids home, no one would find out what she'd done.

My friend's husband had an interesting theory that she started smoking the pot first, but it was laced with some other drug that made her go crazy and think that drinking all the vodka was a good idea. But then we realized whatever drug it was laced with would have shown up in the toxicology tests.

But who was that mysterious phone call at 12:08 from? Did she receive some sort of upsetting news, and that, combined with her physical pain, set her off?

Probably the only way we'll come even remotely close to knowing the full story is if Schuler's 5-year-old son remembers anything. According to this article in Newsday, he is still recovering from head injuries at St. Mary's Hospital for Children in Queens (http://www.newsday.com/long-island/boy-who-survived-taconic-crash-told-of-kin-s-deaths-1.1373415) and hasn't been interviewed at all.

In other news...tomorrow is my first day of work: three weeks of professional development for my new teaching job. Wish me luck -- I may need it.

Diane Schuler

2009-08-13T19:14:00.001-07:00

I've been obsessed with the news about Diane Schuler, the Long Island mother who drove the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway on July 26th before crashing, killing herself; all three of her three nieces, ages 8, 7 and 5; her 2-year-old daughter; and all three men in the car she crashed into. Only her five-year-old son survived, with critical injuries. One of the first articles to appear in the New York Times, "Bad Omens, a Fateful Turn and 8 Lives Lost" by Lisa W. Foderaro and Nate Schweber (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/nyregion/28crash.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Diane+Schuler&st=nyt) noted that "police are awaiting toxicology and autopsy results, but Captain Realmuto said it did not appear that she was intoxicated or impaired by drugs in any way.'" There was speculation that she had undiagnosed diabetes and was in some sort of insulin shock, or that she had had a stroke or some other sudden-onset brain problem.

But as Al Baker and Lisa W. Foderaro wrote in their August 4th article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/nyregion/05crash.html?scp=2&sq=Diane%20Schuler%20she%20was%20drunk&st=cse), "for all the misguided and well-meaning speculation about what may have caused Diane Schuler to drive the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway 10 days ago, killing eight people in a head-on collision, the real reason was stark in its tragedy and simplicity: She was drunk." Toxicology tests showed that her blood-alcohol level was 0.19, more than twice the legal limit, and that she had used marijuana between 15 minutes and an hour before her death. They found a broken jumbo 1.75 liter vodka bottle under a seat in her minivan. Even sadder and stranger was the fact that her family apparently had no idea she had an alcohol problem. Her brother and sister-in-law, Warren and Jackie Hance, said they trusted her and never had any reason to think their children would be in danger with her. Her husband, Daniel Schuler, swore she was the perfect wife and mother, only occasionally drank, and grudgingly admitted she "occasionally" smoked marijuana, but that there must have been something "medically wrong" to cause her to go on a bender.

There was something medically wrong, all right -- she was a *&^%ing alcoholic! And either she was extremely skilled at hiding it, or her family was in deep, deep denial. I just can't picture the scene in her minivan. She literally must have been swigging from the bottle while she was driving: she still had undigested alchohol in her stomach when she died, and the witnesses at the McDonald's where she and the kids had stopped that morning said she didn't appear intoxicated then (although perhaps she had just starting to drink slowly, then sped it up later?). But wouldn't it be physically awkward and difficult to drive and drink from a huge bottle like that? If she had a flask or something, it hasn't been reported. And wouldn't she think, "Hey, I shouldn't drink from this bottle of vodka and smoke marijuana in front of my kids and my nieces, because they're going to tell their father(s) and then my secret will be out?" I'm trying to think back to when I was 5, 7, or 8 years old -- would I have known that an adult drinking from a bottle of Absolut while driving was wrong? Did she tell the kids it was water? And what about the marijuana? Did she do these things so often when they were in the car with her that they didn't think anything of it until she became seriously impaired? If not, why that weekend? What happened that day that made her suddenly binge? Apparently there are alcoholics who have to drink every day, but there are also alcoholics who can go weeks, even months, without drinking -- but when they do, look out.

Schuler's oldest niece, 8-year-old Emma, clearly knew something was wrong on that day. While Diane Schuler had called her brother at 11:37 AM to say they were running late due to traffic -- and apparently sounded normal to him at that point -- she wasn't the one who called him back at 12:58 PM, as was originally reported. It was Emma Hance who called her father and said, “Daddy, there is something wrong with Aunt Diane and she is having trouble seeing and she is talking funny, she is slurring." The call dropped after three minutes, but Warren Hance called back at 1:01 and spoke to Schuler for nine minutes. After that, she abandoned her cell phone and kept driving, even though Hance said he told her to stay put and he'd come find her (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/nyregion/08crash.html).

Also, Daniel Schuler and his lawyer raised questions about where the vodka bottle came from, claiming it could have been on the side of the road and the minivan just happened to crash into it (?). But last weekend, the story changed: "Tom Ruskin, an investigator who is working for the husband, Daniel Schuler, said that Mr. Schuler occasionally drank vodka and that his wife, Diane, was so frugal that she packed the same bottle of Absolut in a bag meant for trips between the family’s home in Suffolk County...and the camper in the Sullivan County campground they had frequented for the past three years. He said a single bottle could last a year for the Schulers" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/nyregion/08crash.html). Well, hello. Just because Daniel Schuler thought it was the same bottle every weekend doesn't mean it actually was!

The whole thing is just so strange. The woman held down a full-time job at Cablevision, took care of her kids, watched her brother's three kids, no reports of any domestic abuse or police calls to the home, no prior DWI arrests (although interestingly, Daniel Schuler was actually arrested for DWI 14 years ago, when he was 24, as he was driving from one bar to another after downing five beers: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/10/crimesider/entry5230033.shtml)

I read somewhere that the condition of her liver would help determine if she had been a hard drinker for years, but no information has been released about that. Marvin D. Seppala, the chief medical officer at the Hazelden Foundation, an addiction-treatment center, theorized that "perhaps Ms. Schuler was experiencing early-stage alcoholism...so early that her husband had not picked up any telltale clues. Maybe the crash was an early public symptom that the situation had taken a significant turn for the worse. If so, that early symptom was also, tragically, her last" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/nyregion/08bigcity.html?fta=y). Also, she worked days while her husband worked the 4 PM - 12 AM shift as a public safety officer, so he probably didn't see her much during the week. That would have made it even easier to hide it from him.

The New York Post reported that Diane Schuler drank screwdrivers alone at a local bar, complaining of a bad marriage. But the Post doesn't exactly have the highest journalistic ethics -- they love to quote "anonymous sources" -- and they can't seem to write a story about this case without making a basic factual mistake (getting Schuler's age wrong, or referring to her brother as "William" instead of "Warren"), so who knows if that's true.

Here's an interesting article by Deborah King in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-king/diane-schuler-secret-alco_b_258560.html), which brings up the fact that while drunk driving is decreasing among men, it is increasing among women -- and women are more likely to have kids in the car. Apparently it happens more often than you might think. Scary.

I can't imagine what Warren and Jackie Hance are going through. Losing all three of your kids in an accident is heartbreaking -- and then to find out it was so easily preventable? I just can't even comprehend it.

P.S. Forget everything I just wrote. It was Anbesol, the topical pain reliever you put on your gums! THAT'S what gave Diane Schuler a 0.19 blood-alcohol level, according to Daniel Schuler's lawyer, Dominic Barbara (http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Anbesol-to-Blame-for-Wrong-Way-Crash-Lawyer--53143877.html) Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? That lawyer is getting on my last nerve.

Pregnant at 52

2009-08-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article about the photographer Annie Leibovitz today when I got distracted by the age of her children. The article said she's 59, but she has an 8-year-old daughter and 4-year-old twins. ??? Well, I just looked it up on-line, and while a surrogate mother had the twins, Annie herself gave birth to her older daughter when she was 52 YEARS OLD! Whoa! I can't imagine going through pregnancy and childbirth at that age! Well, I can't really imagine it right now, at the age of 36, but ESPECIALLY not at the age of 51. WOW.

I did a quick search on-line, and the only other celebrity I could find who actually became pregnant and gave birth in her 50s was Elizabeth Edwards, who gave birth to her youngest son, Jack, when she was 50. She and Annie Leibovitz most likely used donor eggs. But according to Wikipedia, "Aracelia Garcia of Sunnyside, Washington astounded doctors when she naturally conceived (without hormonal treatment) all-female triplets in 1999 at the age of 54. She delivered three healthy girls Arianna, Brianna and CeCelia by Caesarean section in January 2000" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50).

And this mother definitely didn't use fertility drugs: "Ruth Kistler of Portland, Oregon gave birth to a daughter in Los Angeles, California, on October 18, 1956, at the age of 57. The birth predated the advent of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) making Kistler one of the oldest women known to have conceived naturally" (ibid).

I'm getting tired just thinking about it!

I went to California!

2009-07-31T19:54:00.000-07:00

The Nicest Guy in the World and I went to San Francisco a few weeks ago to visit an old friend of mine from high school (come to think of it, we've known each other since sixth grade!). Neither of us had ever been to California before, and it was so much fun! We walked through Muir Woods, went to some wine-tastings, ate at delicious restaurants, went to more wine-tastings, took a tour of Alcatraz (factoid: the Birdman of Alcatraz never actually kept birds at Alcatraz, only at Leavenworth), and did I mention the wine-tastings? ;) Although we mostly stayed with my friend, on our last night we stayed at this great hotel in the Union Square section of San Francisco called the Hotel Monaco, which we found through Hotwire.com. How great was it, you ask? So great, they lend you a "companion goldfish" for the night, if you know to ask for one -- which, thanks to my Fodor's guidebook, I did. I'm probably biased, but I thought my fish was extremely cute. I called him/her Blinky, after the fish on "The Simpsons" (even though thankfully s/he didn't have three eyes like the 'real' Blinky).

The sorry state of my musical life

2009-07-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

I turned on PBS tonight (yep, another wild Friday night for me!), and Death Cab for Cutie was performing. I decided I like them. I may order their CD "Transatlanticism." Also, I heard this group called Elizabeth & the Catapult on NPR the other week and liked them, too, so I might get their CD "Taller Children." This is a big deal for me, since I don't really buy music anymore. I don't mean that I download it illegally or anything. Sadly enough, I just don't actually listen to much music. My 20-something self would feel so sorry for me. I think it started when I moved to New York in 2000. I always used to listen to the radio in the car, and that's how I would find out about new songs and bands. But when I moved to New York, I didn't have a car anymore, so my radio listening almost completely ceased. And maybe because the city is noisy, my first instinct when I get home isn't to turn on some music, but revel in the quiet. Then when by some miracle I do hear a new song and decide I like it enough to buy it, then I have the format choice to consider. Should I just download that one song, or buy the whole album on CD, or etc. etc. etc. I end up feeling so overwhelmed, I don't buy anything at all.

But Death Cab for Cutie AND Elizabeth & The Catapult are both sitting in my Amazon.com shopping cart right now. I haven't bought them yet, though. There are some books I want to order while I'm at it. But I can't order EVERY book I want -- I have to narrow it down. So that's yet another decision to make. Hmmm.

Oh well...I'll let you know if I actually place the order sometime this century....

God is like a weed

2009-06-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

When I go to church, my favorite sermons are the ones that give an interpretation of God that I'd never considered before, or that help me see a Bible story in a new way. Two weeks ago, Bill Tully's sermon at St. Bart's (http://www.stbarts.org) did just that. The Old Testament reading was Ezekiel 17:22-24, which reads in part: "Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out...I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain...in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar."

The Gospel reading was from Mark 4:26-35, the "mustard seed" passage: "[Jesus] said, 'With what can we compare the Kingdom of God...It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nest in its shade.'"

Rev. Tully compared and contrasted the two passages, pointing out that mustard wasn't considered imperial and noble like the mighty cedar. Mustard was a weed. So Jesus was actually doing something pretty radical here: comparing the Kingdom of God to a weed! It was messy and invasive. It got into things. Once planted, you couldn't stop it. Weeds just grow and grow, and you don't even fully understand how. "There is something about how life turns out that we can't control," Rev. Tully said. But what we do know is that life is growth -- in all its messy, uncontrollable glory.

Michael Jackson's kids

2009-06-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

In all the hooplah about Michael Jackson's death, no one I saw on TV was answering the question I had: what's going to happen to his three kids? They were born by a surrogate mother who renounced all parental rights, from what I remember, so it's not like they're going to live with Mom now. I finally just saw this article, "Attorney: Michael Jackson's Kids 'Are Doing Fine'" (http://omg.yahoo.com/news/family-attorney-michael-jacksons-kids-are-doing-fine/24378?nc), which says that his three kids, Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and Prince Michael II (a.k.a. Blanket), 7, are fine (which is a weird thing to say -- how can they be "fine" when their father just died suddenly?). They're in the care of a nanny, and will be raised by Michael Jackson's mom.

I still wonder if he truly is the kids' biological father. I mean, whatever skin disease he might have had, he was born a black man, but all of his kids look white, not biracial in the least. Which of course can happen, but with all three kids?

I remember when the "Thriller" video was all the rage when I was in middle school. My friends and I loved it so much, we would call each other whenever it aired ("Quick, turn on MTV! 'Thriller' is on!").

Kreativ Blogger Award!

2009-06-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

I am happy and quite honored that Sarah, author of one of my favorite blogs, Things Men Say (http://thingsmensay.blogspot.com/), nominated me for a Kreativ Blogger Award! Thanks so much, Sarah!

Here are the rules of this award:

(1) Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
(2) Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
(3) Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
(4) Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
(5) Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
(6) Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
(7) Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

Seven things you may or may not find interesting about me:

1. I can touch my nose with my tongue.
2. I am in the 95th percentile of women my age in my ability to do sit-ups (unless the trainer at my old gym was just trying to get on my good side!).
3. Everyone in my immediate family (all 4 of us) was born on either the 1st or the 14th of the month.
4. A short story I wrote when I was 17 received an honorable mention in "Seventeen" Magazine's annual teen fiction contest...back in the good ol' days, when magazines actually still published fiction....
5. I've visited seven foreign countries: Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Guatemala, and Ireland.
6. As a kid I once had 29 pet mice -- and now I stand on a chair and scream when I see just one.
7. I failed my first driving test because you're only allowed one mistake in NJ, and I made two: forgot to put my parking brake up on a hill, and didn't use my turn signal during the 3-point turn. (As if I would be MAKING a three-point turn with a line of cars behind me that could see my turn signal!! not that I'm bitter....)

Here are seven great blogs that I read (in addition to Things Men Say at http://thingsmensay.blogspot.com):

1. Waitress from Mensa (http://waitressfrommensa.blogspot.com/)
2. Homespun Heritage (go to http://www.homespunheritage.com and click on "blog" at the top)
2. Sizzle Says (http://sizzlesays.wordpress.com)
3. Dyn-o-Wright (http://dynowright.wordpress.com/)
4. Good Day Sunshine (http://sunshinecavett.wordpress.com/)
5. The Tabar Family (http://www.thetabarfamily.com/blog/)
6. The Jersey Girl (http://jerseygirlkarin.blogspot.com/)
7. The Shark Tank (http://whitesharktank.blogspot.com/)

Gainfully employed!

2009-06-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

Doing the sample lesson paid off -- I got the job!! Starting this fall, I will be a special education teacher for middle school students at a charter school in Manhattan! ;-D It's all "push-in" services -- I'll be in different teachers' classroom six periods a day, helping special education students within the regular classroom. The current special ed teacher said that may sound like a lot, but since you're not planning or grading all those classes, it's not as overwhelming as it may sound. Six classes sounded okay to me, though. When I taught eighth grade English, I taught six periods a day all by my lonesome, whereas in this position any whole-class teaching I'll do will be co-teaching. They really didn't have the co-teaching model when I got my master's in special ed in 1998, but I'm glad they do now. I think I'll like it! Having two teachers in the class ends up helping all the kids, not just the ones labeled as needing special ed services.

I'm grateful to have gotten a job this soon. Now I'll be spared from interviewing all summer. I'm really lucky.

I sign the contract tomorrow. First day for the kids is the day after Labor Day!

2 job interviews this week!

2009-05-31T18:19:00.000-07:00

This week I have two job interviews for full-time special ed teaching jobs for this fall. One is at a charter school in Manhattan, for which I have to teach a sample reading lesson to a group of four sixth graders with reading difficulties. And the other is at a private school in Manhattan for kids with learning disabilities, where the class size is capped at 12 students. Sounds nice, though of course if they can't handle being in a class with more than 11 other students, there is usually a very good reason!

The kids at the charter school go to school from 7:45 AM to 4:30 PM. I wonder if the teachers are on staggered schedules or if they're expected to teach for 8 hrs and 45 minutes per day, in which case they must have to stay up 'till all hours every night grading and planning. The school day at the private school ends at 3:00 PM, but they have a six week school summer program which they strongly encourage all students to attend. I really don't want to work during the summer. Summers off are the reward that makes the stress of teaching worthwhile!

But at this point I just need a job, so I'm excited to be getting interviews.

Scenes from the resource room

2009-05-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

Teacher: "Mitchell, concentrate on your test, please."
Mitchell sticks his tongue out at her and gets back to work.
Teacher: "Hey, that's not nice. I wasn't rude to you -- don't be rude to me."
Mitchell (matter-of-factly): "I wasn't rude. I was just being silly. If I wanted to be rude, I would've flipped you off."
Teacher: "Oh. Thanks for clarifying."

***
Teacher: "You shouldn't be wearing that shirt in school."
Simon: "What's wrong with it?"
Teacher: "You're not supposed to expose your shoulders."
Simon: "No, it's OK as long as the sleeves are at least three fingers wide, or something like that. I've worn this shirt a lot and no one's ever said anything."
Teacher: "Really?"
Simon: "Hey, you should see what some of the girls wear!"
Teacher: "Oh, I know. I do."
Simon: "Not that I'm complaining. As far as I'm concerned, all the girls could wear bikinis to school and I'd be perfectly happy." Pause. "Although I don't think I would get any work done."

* * *
Teacher: "You have a really good way of explaining things. Maybe you should be a teacher."
Jared: "No way. Are you kidding? I'd get fired my first day!"
Teacher: "What do you mean?"
Jared: "Teachers have to put up with too much crap. I've talked to teachers and asked them about certain things they should have done, and they've been like, 'Yeah, you're right, I would've done that, but I can't go against the bureaucracy.'"
Teacher: "But you'd get some of that in any big organization."
Jared: "I guess. But I also can't deal with stupid kids. You know? I wouldn't have any patience whatsoever. I'd just be like, 'You're being stupid. Get out of my classroom.' The worst would be to have MYSELF as a student. I couldn't handle me! I would kick myself out of class every single day!"

;)

Now we know why there are food banks

2009-05-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to a government services building in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to apply for food stamps. By the time I left the subway the rain had begun to fall, but I did get to walk past the famous Cyclone roller coaster along the way.

The building smelled like a nursing home, but I forged ahead and told the security guard I had an appointment. She said to find a seat, which was hard -- the large 'waiting room' with several rows of seats was nearly standing room only. A few people had a book or a newspaper to read during their wait, as I did, and a few others spoke quietly to the person next to them. But the majority just sat there, grim-faced, staring into space. I listened to the older woman next to me hum quietly to herself as I read my book ("The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, who definitely did not believe in food stamps). Every so often the security guard would come to the front of the room and ask, "Does anyone speak Russian and English?" and ask them to translate something for an applicant who had just walked in.

An hour after my scheduled appointment time, I was finally called in by a blondish woman with a Russian accent. I followed her into a maze of cubicles and sat down across from her. I showed her my proof I was receiving unemployment benefits, and she looked at the receipt for my nearly $1,000 a month rent, but she didn't look at the electric or gas bills. She sighed a few times as she entered my information into her computer. "I don't think you'll qualify," she said apologetically. "I'll say you're getting $405 a week in unemployment instead of $430" (you can do that?' I thought) "because $430 a week is too much."

She typed away at her computer, moving through various screens. Finally she said, "Do you want to be fingerprinted now, or do you want to see if you qualify first?"

I was taken aback. I didn't know you needed to get fingerprinted for food stamps. "Um, I'll see if I qualify first," I said.

She went through a few more screens, hit the magic button -- and sighed again, shaking her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "Your income is too high."

"Even taking my rent into account?" I asked hopefully.

She said, "We only count that if you're under the limit, but you're over." Which doesn't make sense to me (shouldn't it be the opposite?), but rules are rules.

But then I felt guilty because she seemed to feel so bad for me! She went on about how unfair it was that I didn't qualify. "If I make the rules, you would qualify. But when they make the law, they don't ask me," she said. "People like you who work should get. Not the lazy people who don't work!"

"Oh, that's all right," I said quickly, trying simultaneously to reassure her and stop her rant. "I knew I probably wouldn't get them, but I just thought I'd try."

"Well, I don't wish this on you, but if, God forbid, your unemployment runs out before you find a job, I hope you know you can come back to us," she said.

I thanked her profusely and left, thinking, If, God forbid, I don't find a job before my unemployment runs out in October, $200 a month in food stamps isn't going to cut it. Note to self: do some shopping for the St. Bart's food pantry this week. If I had to live solely off unemployment benefits, I would be one of its clients.

The New York Times actually ran an article on Sunday by Jason DeParle entitled "The Safety Net: For Victims of Recession, Patchwork State Aid," about how piecemeal the social services safety net is in this country, and how so much of the aid you can get depends on the state in which you live (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/us/10safetynet.html?em).

In other news, I'll have to send my resume much farther and wider for a teaching job than I have been. I was only applying for jobs in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and not at first-year schools (since they haven't had a chance to iron out the kinks yet). But that was before I went to the NYC Public Schools web site last night, where they have a big notice posted about a hiring freeze for the upcoming schoolyear. The only exceptions are specific shortage areas (like bilingual special ed -- if only I were bilingual!); schools that have been in operation less than 3 years; and "high need" schools (which is probably code for scary schools with metal detectors). The New York Times also ran an article about it, in today's paper (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/nyregion/11teachers.html?em).

Maybe it's a good thing I have a friend in the food stamp office. ;O

Do I qualify for food stamps?

2009-05-03T18:35:00.001-07:00

I don't think I do. But back in January, I completed and mailed in an application for food stamps, just for the heck of it. I never heard back and promptly forgot about it. Well, they called me last week to say I had a phone interview on Friday. But then on Thursday, I received a letter saying I was determined to be ineligible, but that I should attend an in-person interview on Friday if my circumstances had changed so they could re-evaluate. I called on Friday, and the woman I spoke with seemed to be saying that I'd been found inelegible just because I hadn't included a bunch of paperwork: a copy of my lease, bills for electricity and gas, proof of unemployment benefits, etc. So I made an appointment for tomorrow at 9 AM. Should be interesting.

According to the NYC Human Resources Administration's Department of Social Services pamphlet, "What You Need to Know About Food Stamps" (http://www.nyc.gov/html/hra/downloads/pdf/FS_Needtoknow.pdf) a "family" of one can't make more than $1127 per month gross, or $867 per month net. I gross $1720 per month in unemployment alone, so according to those guidelines, I'm over the limit. But in fine print, it says, "Certain subtractions to your gross income, called deductions, are allowed. These can be for things like housing, child support payments, monthly medical expenses over $35 for elderly or disabled people, or child care." My rent is so high ($992.75 per month) that if I can deduct that, I may qualify. The maximum monthly food stamp amount that a household of one can receive is $200 -- the equivalent of $50 a week.

Incidentally, if I were trying to live solely off unemployment, after paying taxes on the unemployment (oh yes, they tax it), and paying for the bare necessities: rent, monthly Metro card, electricity, gas, phone (you could argue this is not a necessity, but it's hard to find a new job without a phone), laundry, food for my cat (I couldn't give her up -- no one else could handle her!), and a bus ticket to NJ to visit my dad once a month, guess how much I would have left for food every month?

$55. Yes, just $55. Scary, isn't it?? Thank goodness for tutoring.

Emerging

2009-04-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in so long, but I was trying to finish a one-act play by the April 30th submission deadline, and -- I succeeded! Well, sort of -- I just e-mailed it at 1:20 AM, which is technically one hour and 20 minutes post-deadline, but hopefully they'll let it slide. Whew!

Happily, I don't have to get up early tomorrow because I quit my tutoring job with my preschooler, since she was absent ALL THE TIME. Well, okay, "only" 3/4 of the time, but that was still way too much. I literally didn't see her once last week. The one day she came to school was Thursday, the one day I wasn't scheduled to see her! But over the five days I did work with her in April, I made $540 extra I would not have earned otherwise. That part was worth it.

Spring break is over. sob

2009-04-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

I had off from all my tutoring/teaching jobs last week for spring break. It was so lovely. I didn't miss working one bit. Is that a bad sign?? :/ I'm dreading going back to work tomorrow -- well, it's mostly working with the pre-schooler that I don't look forward to, partially because I still don't feel like I know what I'm doing with her. She's the first pre-schooler I've ever "taught." And partially because she's the only job I have to get up early for, and I really don't like getting up early. Also, she's routinely absent a couple of times a week, so every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday I drag myself out of bed, knowing there's a 40% chance she won't show up, so I will have gotten up early for nothing and not get paid. I live so far out in Brooklyn that it doesn't make sense to go all the way home, just to turn around and go to my job at the high school, so I end up having to just hang around Manhattan for a couple of hours. There are certainly worse places to hang around than Manhattan, but most days I would've appreciated being able to sleep in.

But at least I will have this summer completely off (except for job interviews). Wonderful. :) The Nicest Guy in the World and I took a quick 2-day trip to Washington, D.C. on Thursday and Friday, which was a lot of fun. We went to most of the memorials, and saw the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution at the National Archives. The weather was beautiful for walking around, so we really lucked out!

Small child, big problems

2009-04-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

My 4-year-old student was sweet the first day I met her, to the point where I wondered why her teacher had even referred her for Special Education Itinerant Teaching (SEIT) services. The second day I went, she was absent. The third day I went was last Monday -- and she was terrible! She didn't want to sit in morning circle, she wouldn't share with another child at the listening station, she roamed from station to station at choice time, staying less than three minutes at each one.

"She was so annoying!" I complained to the Nicest Guy in the World that night.

"Isn't your job to make her less annoying?" he asked.

"Yes, but I don't know how!" I wailed. All I could think was that she had come to school late, rubbing her eyes like she was exhausted, so I thought maybe she just hadn't gone to bed early enough the night before.

Then on Tuesday she came on time, and she was great. She picked out and read a few sight words correctly, and she even played a whole game of Candyland with me for 25 minutes. But on Wednesday she was absent. On Thursday she apparently came to school -- she has counseling Thursday mornings, so that's the one day I don't see her -- but when I showed up on Friday, she was absent again. The teacher told me the girl is absent a lot, routinely missing a couple of days of school per week.

Then the teacher said, "They're staying at a shelter, because of domestic violence against her mom. They have a lot of problems."

Sigh. :(

Preschool

2009-04-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday was my first day as a Special Education Itinerant Teacher (SEIT) for a 4-year-old girl, working with her one-on-one while she's in her preschool classroom. She's mandated for 10 hours of SEIT a week, which sounds like a lot to me, so I was worried she would have all these problems and be really hard to handle. Her IEP goals are things like, "She will sit and listen to a story for 5 minutes 80% of the time," so I thought, geez, this girl can't even sit and listen for five minutes??

But I met her on Wednesday, and she's sweet. She has a lot of energy and loves to talk, but when I first arrived, she was in a music class, and she did fine listening to the teacher's directions and taking turns playing instruments. The letter in the file from her teacher, which was only written a few weeks ago, said she'd only just learned to write her name, and that she doesn't know any letters other than the ones in her name. But on Wednesday we played an alphabet bingo game with another little boy, and she could name every letter. The only ones she confused were the W and the M.

The funniest thing was her reaction when I told her my name. Her eyes got wide, and she said, "Your name can't be Vicky -- you're white!"

I said, "Sure it can. Vickies come in all colors."

She digested this information for a few seconds, then announced happily, "I'm Puerto Rican!"

When we were in the hallway later going to another room, she suddenly called out, "Vicky!" and went running into the arms of another teacher -- who is Asian. Guess that's where the confusion came from. ;)

Friday morning would've been my second day with her, but she never showed up -- I guess she stayed home sick -- so after waiting around for half an hour, I left. I won't get paid for that, either. Hopefully she'll be there tomorrow.

A full & productive day

2009-03-31T18:44:00.001-07:00

Busy busy busy day. First, as many of you know, I am addicted to Dove Milk Chocolate Promises. As many of you also know, I enjoy parties. Today I decided to combine both of these loves of mine AND (hopefully) make some money! A few months ago in the back of some magazine somewhere, I saw an ad for Dove Chocolate Discoveries (http://www.dovechocolatediscoveries.com/) and learned that you can actually sign up to sell Dove Chocolate products, just like some people sell Avon or Pampered Chef or whatever. I could never get excited enough about Avon or Pampered Chef to sell it, but Dove chocolate practically runs through my veins! As a chocolatier, you have chocolate tastings in your home, in friends' homes, etc., the guests order any chocolate products they like, and everyone goes home happy. This month there was a special where you could buy the business kit with enough supplies for your first four to six parties for just $99. I talked to the regional person (my "sponsor") this morning, and she was really nice and answered all my questions. Chocolatiers get a 25% commision on whatever they sell (more if you sell $2,000 worth of products or more in a single month), which seems standard for direct selling companies -- according to this March 15th NY Times article, "Direct Sales as a Recession Fallback" by Eilene Zimmerman (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/jobs/15sales.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=direct%20selling&st=cse), the usual commision varies from 20% - 50%, depending on the company. So I decided to take the plunge! I'll receive my kit sometime within the next 10 business days. So if you'd like to host or attend a chocolate party in the tri-state area (NY/NJ/CT), let me know. :)

Then I had my interview for a special ed teaching job at that charter high school in Brooklyn. They were very organized about it, which I appreciated. I observed a 9th grade math class, met with the special education coordinator for about half an hour, and observed the resource room. For the last 45 minutes, all of us prospective teachers who'd been interviewing for various positions met with the CEO/founder. He was great, talked with us about the school, and even gave details like the salary scale and benefits. I think the next step is to do a demonstration lesson, so we'll see if they liked me enough to invite me to do that. The job would probably be partly collaborative team teaching and partly teaching in the resource room. I like that combination.

Afterwards, I went to Union Square, and while waiting in line for the restroom at the Virgin music store, I read two interesting articles in Marie Claire magazine. One was by this woman who spent four months in jail on Rikers Island because she was convicted of financial fraud, even though she really was more of a victim of it herself. She talked about how the inmates grouped themselves by the housing projects they come from, and the physical fights that happened sometimes, and how she tried to make the best of it by helping other inmates -- apparently she even taught one of the women there how to read. I wish she'd written more about that, actually. She summarized how she made the best of the situation and helped people in only one or two paragraphs. The other article was about the Mosuo, an ethnic minority who live in Luoshi, a small, rural village in southwestern China, and how they are one of the few truly matrilineal societies. The men don't own anything; all money, land and lineage are passed down from mothers to daughters. And in their language, there are no words for war, rape, or jail.

Maybe I should start subscribing to Marie Claire.

To end my day, I went to a children's book writing forum at the New School, since I've written a nonfiction children's book I want to try to get published. The agent and editors who spoke were so informative, and they even gave out their e-mail addresses. During the Q&A I got to ask about biographical non-fiction books for children, since my manuscript is about a civil rights activist who is not a household name but should be. They said a narrative nonfiction manuscript about someone who hasn't already had a lot of books written about them would probably have a good shot of selling -- good news for me!

All in all, a very satisfying day.

Good news & money

2009-03-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

"Is this someone calling about good news or money?...No?...Well then, good-bye." (CLICK)

That's from this funny movie from the '60s, "A Thousand Clowns" -- not available on DVD, but on the recommendation of my dad I watched it when it was on PBS a few weeks ago. I thought of that line when my boss from the tutoring agency left me a voicemail last Tuesday, because she said, "I want to talk to you about two things -- I have another case for you if you're available, and I want to give you a raise." Good news AND money, all in one message! When I called her back, I learned that my tutoring pay has been increased by $5 an hour, retroactive to March 1st (!), and I agreed to start tutoring another student for TEN (!) hours a week (!!), beginning April 1st. I'm going to see how long I can do it, though, because this is a pre-school student with cognitive and social delays, and I've never worked with a pre-schooler before, so I don't really know what to do with her. At least I'll be working with her while she's at pre-school, so I won't be alone. Hopefully seeing her IEP (Individualized Education Plan) will shed some light.

This Tuesday I have an interview at a charter high school in Brooklyn -- I gave them my resume at that charter school job fair a few weeks ago. *fingers crossed*

Love (or at least commitment) is in the air

2009-03-25T19:14:00.001-07:00

Three famous couples who had so far avoided getting engaged or married have finally done just that. I never thought Calista Flockhart and Harrison Ford would get engaged, because they'd been together for seven years (after meeting at the Golden Globes in 2002), she already had a kid (whom she adopted as an infant when she was still single), and he is twice divorced. But apparently they got engaged over Valentine's Day weekend (http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20267173,00.html).

I also never thought Bruce Willis would get married again, since I read an interview with him in PEOPLE Magazine three or four years ago where he said he felt no need to settle down, he already had three kids and wasn't looking to start a new family, etc. But last weekend he married his 30-year-old girlfriend, model Emma Heming (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1164038/Bruce-Willis-marries-Demi-double-16-years-younger-Caribbean-ceremony.html). They've only been dating for a year, though, so I wonder if it will last.

And most surprising of all, David Letterman finally married Regina Lasko, his girlfriend of 23 YEARS, last week! (http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0324-david-letterman-ftmar24,0,1870943.story) I really never thought they would get married -- I mean, if it hasn't happened after 23 years and one kid together, you figure it's just not happening. He had married his college girlfriend in his 20s but ended up getting divorced after seven or eight years, and he seemed really burned out on marriage after that -- he dated Merrill Markoe, who wrote for his show, from the late '70s until the mid-'80s, and they never got married.

Never say never, I guess.

The Conference of the Birds

2009-03-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

I'm still in a "dry patch" when it comes to church. I've gone to a different Catholic church in the neighborhood a couple of times -- good for a change of pace -- but I still feel like I'm watching everything from the bottom of a well. I know I should go back to St. Bart's in Manhattan, but it takes me over an hour each way and I already feel like I live on the subway during the week ,what with all the traveling to my teaching and tutoring jobs. So on Sundays it's really nice to be able to walk to church. Since I fidget through most of it, though, I suppose it kind of defeats the purpose. I'll get there.

Spiritually speaking, I'm actually getting more out of my Mysticism class. I loved reading about the Sufis, the mystic branch of Islam. I can totally see the appeal, not just of Sufism but of Islam in general. During our last class, we read this beautiful parable, told in the book "Ways of Being Religious" by Gary E. Kessler. Kessler explains it's from the climax of "The Conference of the Birds," a mystical epic written by Farid al-Din Attar, a Persian Sufi poet who lived from 1120 - 1230. In the story, a large group of birds listens as a man is told that to achieve union with God, he would have to go on an incredibly long and arduous journey, crossing "seven oceans of light and seven of fire." Hearing this, the birds despair at how difficult such a journey would be for them. Many of the birds feel such sorrow that they die right then and there. But the rest decide to try. Their hard journey takes years and years, and thousands of them die along the way. By the end, only thirty birds make it to "the sublime place."

When these 30 birds arrive, they explain, "We have come to acknowledge the Simurgh (God) as our king. Through love and desire for him, we have lost our reason and our peace of mind...We cannot believe the king will scorn us after all the sufferings we have gone through. He cannot but look on us with the eye of benevolence!"

But the Chamberlain (the gatekeeper) tells them that "thousands of worlds of creatures are no more than an ant at the King's gate. Return then to whence you came, O vile handful of earth!"

The birds are shattered, but they are still "on fire with love," so they argue: "The friend we seek will content us by allowing us to be united to him. If now we are refused, what is there left for us to do? We are like the moth who wished for union with the flame of the candle. They begged him not to sacrifice himself so foolishly and for such an impossible aim, but he thanked them for their advice and told them that since his heart was given to the flame forever, nothing else mattered."

Finally, the Chamberlain,who had been testing the birds, opens the door, drawing aside one curtain after another, revealing a new world. The birds feel such peace and detachment from everything, they begin to realize that God is present! Their past is swept away. And then:

"The sun of majesty sent forth his rays, and in the reflection of each other's faces, these thirty birds of the outer world contemplated the face of the Simurgh (God) of the inner world...They did not know if they were still themselves or had become the Simurgh...In a state of contemplation, they realized that they were the Simurgh and the Simurgh was the thirty birds...And perceiving both at once, themselves and Him, they realized that they and the Simurgh were one and the same being. No one in the world has heard of anything to equal it." (Attar, "The Conference of the Birds")

The professor pointed out that this is a story of imminence rather than transcendence. The birds always had God within them; they just hadn't known it. And God is not only inside each of us. God is also in the faces of the birds, the seekers, looking at each other. We find God together. In each other. In community.

That's why I keep going to church. I can't be "spiritual but not religious." Sometimes I can feel it by myself, but for me, the most spiritual I've ever felt has always been in communion with other people.

Job interview next week!

2009-03-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

One of the schools I met at the Charter School Job Fair e-mailed me -- I have an interview next Tuesday for a special education teaching job! It's a charter high school in Brooklyn. It has been around for a few years now, and they have 600 students, about 9% of whom are entitled to special education services. It sounds like there's a whole special education department (I'm being interviewed by the department head), which is reassuring. When I worked as the special ed teacher at a charter school in the Bronx eight years ago (before the crazy principal fired me on Halloween), I WAS the special ed department, and I really didn't know what I was doing. I only have two full years of classroom teaching experience, so I need co-workers I can learn from.

Even though this school is in Brooklyn, it will still take me an hour and 10 minutes each way to get there. The school day is a full eight hours and starts at 8 AM, which means if I get the job and have to be there at 7:45 AM every day, I would have to leave my apartment at 6:20 AM (must allow 15 minutes of "what if there's a subway problem" time). 6:20 AM -- OUCH. I'd have to get up at 5:40 AM, so I'd have to go to bed by 9:40 PM every night just to get 8 hours of sleep. Ugh. I have never been a morning person, so that has always been one of my least favorite things about teaching -- having to go to bed and get up so, so early every day.

But right now I don't have to get up early at all, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it while it lasts!

Charter school job fair

2009-03-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

I went to the charter school job fair at Columbia U. on Saturday. It was crowded! But we're all certified to teach in different areas, so I wasn't in direct competition with at least half of the other candidates, or so I kept telling myself! Only one woman from one of the schools was snotty. I purposely approached her table because there was no line, only to have to wait a couple of minutes for her to finish her extremely important conversation about the new diet she's on, and how it's about being healthy, not losing weight, unfortunately, because wouldn't that be nice if it happened, blah blah blah. When she finally stopped talking and acknowledged my existence, we talked for a minute and she said, "Well, we are looking for a special education teacher but only for kindergarden and first grade." Then she took my resume, looked at it, and said in a snotty tone, "Wow. This is really confusing." I had talked to people from half a dozen other schools by then, and none of them had said my resume was confusing. Humph.

But most of the schools were very nice. One Brooklyn school in particular said they definitely need special ed teachers for the fall, that they give resumes from job fair candidates a higher priority, and that I should expect a call soon. Yay!

The only problem is that many charter schools have extended school days and extended school years, to give kids who are behind more learning time. I tried to avoid those schools. Am I a terrible person?? It's just that, for me, teaching is difficult and draining and challenging enough when you have a 6 hr and 50 minute school day, 180 days a year. When I taught 8th grade in Texas, the kids' school day was 8:05 AM - 3:35 PM every day (7.5 hours!), and I would be grading and planning all evening and on weekends, and I STILL never felt like I ever caught up. I was 23 years old and could barely do it. I just don't think I could do it now. One of my friends from when I did Jesuit Volunteer Corps was visiting NYC over the weekend from California, where she's now teaching 7th grade. She said she grades and plans every weeknight until at least 9:00 PM, but she's made a rule that her weekends are her own. She's a lot smarter than I was when I was her age! I didn't make that rule and therefore completely burned myself out. No more.

I will re-do my resume yet again, though. It's just so tough for me to organize a resume in a way that makes sense, because my experience is wildly all over the place: teaching kids, publishing, teaching adults, administrative assistance, fundraising, tutoring. The longest I've ever worked anywhere was 2 years and 5 months. Not the most typical career path. But it hasn't been boring, that's for sure!

Out of the mouths of babes

2009-03-06T20:35:00.000-08:00

The 13-year-old boy I tutor: "I had a dream last night I was a Jedi."
Me: "Really?"
Boy: "And I was fighting myself."
Me: "How did you do that?"
Boy (as if obvious): "Well, I had cloned myself."

Oh. Of course!

* * *
A high school junior in the resource room: "Your voice sounds low."
Me: "It does?"
Junior: "Are you a smoker?"
Me: "No."
Junior contemplates this for a minute, then declares: "It sounds like you've been inhaling helium backwards."

My interview at the new high school in Brooklyn

2009-03-04T18:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had my interview for an immediate full-time special ed teaching job at a high school in Brooklyn that just started this schoolyear with 100 ninth graders. It took me an hour and twenty minutes door-to-door to get there by subway, and it was *freezing* out. But I followed my directions from the train station, walked up to the huge brick building, and...had to go through a metal detector. (!) The school is housed on the top floor of a large high school that has performed so poorly, it's being phased out and will graduate its last class in 2011.

I met the principal, who was nice, but not Mr. Rogers-nice like he'd seemed on the phone. Which is good -- if you're running a high school, you have to be at least somewhat strict. I observed a global studies class first period. It was a CTT (Collaborative Team Teaching) class, which means anywhere from roughly a quarter to a third of the kids in the class are classified as special ed, so a regular education teacher and a special education teacher team-teach the class together. They were teaching a lesson on Mesoamerica, and doing a pretty good job. But they had the door open, and I could hear this DIN out in the hallway -- it sounded like students just standing around talking, calling out to each other and laughing. I kept thinking someone would make it stop, but no one ever did, and it was so LOUD, the teachers finally had to close the door.

Then I observed an English class, and the students spent most of the period using laptops to work on a writing project. But they took a while to settle down, and though some of the students were actually writing, some of them were sitting around talking. One student next to me didn't write a word -- he surfed the internet on the laptop for the entire period. And again, sometimes it just got so noisy! It made me anxious.

When the principal interviewed me afterward, he said that both the classes I observed had first year teachers, and they needed more assistance with classroom management, and with scaffolding instruction (whatever that is -- I'll have to look it up). Again, he was nice, but I just don't think I could handle working there. At first I thought, maybe it's just that high school kids aren't for me, but I've been fine working at the high school in Queens. The two schools are so different, though. At the school in Queens, no metal detectors, for one thing. And students and their families have to be with-it enough to choose to apply there, to audition, etc. It seems very ethnically and racially diverse, but I get the feeling the students tend to be mostly middle and upper-middle class. The other day, for example, two of the boys in the resource room were talking about how different pizza in Italy is from pizza in the U.S. -- they had both been to Italy. The school in Brooklyn is so new that I couldn't find any statistics for it, but I'm sure the school it shares a building with has a similar population, and at that school 95% of the students qualify for free lunch. It's a tough population, and I just don't have enough experience as a teacher and a classroom manager, especially in a gritty urban school, to feel like I can do the job justice.

I had a real comedy of errors getting to my Queens high school job after my interview in Brooklyn, by the way. First, I came up out of the subway and was walking to the school when I tripped and fell hard on my left knee. Because of the snow and ice? Of course not. It was the clearest, most dry sidewalk I'd walked on all day. I tripped over, apparently, nothing. A nice woman walking by grabbed the newspaper I'd been carrying before it could blow too far away, and asked if I was all right. I said yes and thanked her, and then limped on my way over the Queensboro Bridge -- on the side without a walkway. If you happened to be driving across the five-lane highway over the bridge yesterday and noticed a woman in a black coat staggering along the snowdrift at the edge of the road, trying desperately not to get hit by a car -- yes, that was me. At least the pain in my knee and the concentration required not to end up as roadkill made me forget the biting cold for a few minutes. ;O

Anyway, this weekend I'm going to the 7th Annual Metro NY Charter School Career Fair (http://www.charterschooljobs.com/) -- hopefully I'll get some interviews out of it!

Doing the beautiful

2009-03-02T11:56:00.000-08:00

Mysticism and Esoteric Tradition in World Religions. That's the name of the continuing ed class I'm taking right now. (Another good title would be Comparative Religions 2: The Mystic Years. ) I'm really enjoying it. On the first night, the professor defined mysticism as union with the absolute reality -- in other words, pure being. She talked about how mysticism has similar features among the different religious traditions, and the idea that there's a 'collective unconscious' leading to those similarities.

"There are no final answers about mysticism or religion," the professor said, "but that doesn't mean the questioning is not worthwhile." She then read this quote from "Letters to a Young Poet," written by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in 1903: "Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms, or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

I love that.

This week I stumbled onto the most beautiful phrase while reading a selection for class on Sufis (the mystics of Islam) from William C. Chittick's book "Sufism: A Short Introduction." Chittick explains that Islam has three basic dimensions: "submission" (islam), "faith" (iman), and "doing the beautiful" (ihsan). "Doing the beautiful" -- isn't that a wonderful expression?

Chittick writes: "The Prophet Muhammed...said that doing the beautiful is to 'worship God as if you see Him, for even if you do not see Him, He sees you'...It is the Sufis who take doing the beautiful as their own special domain...Both mercy and love are said to be the cause of creation. According to the great Sufi theoretician Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), the divine mercy that gives rise to the universe is existence itself. The very act of bringing things into existence is an act of gentleness and love. The same point is made in terms of love in a saying constantly quoted in Sufi texts: 'I was a hidden treasure,' God says, 'so I loved to be known. Hence I created the creatures that I might be known.'"

Makes a strong case for a benevolent God, doesn't it? You don't usually create something just to hurt it or destroy it. Chittick goes on to say that "human love makes itself known in sincerity of devotion to the One God. The greater the love, the greater the degree of participation in the divine image, and the greater the degree of human perfection. Hence 'love' is often taken as a synonym for doing the beautiful."

Doing the beautiful. I can't wait to read more about it.

Lent

2009-02-25T19:15:00.001-08:00

Watch out, world -- I have given up chocolate for Lent.

One day down....

45 more to go.

*sob*

The Nicest Guy in the World said, "I may have to force-feed you chocolate if things become too difficult." ;) But then he decided he would also give up chocolate in solidarity with me! Isn't that amazing?

My new part-time teaching job

2009-02-24T20:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my first day doing the part-time high school resource room teaching job. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. The Spanish teacher is in there as the regular teacher -- don't know how they get away with that, as she's not special ed certified, but I guess that's why they want me there. There's also a teacher's aide, and then today yet another teacher's aide showed up. For four to five kids per period. !!! And these kids are bright -- they just need extra time on tests, or a little extra help with homework, etc. -- they really don't seem to need an almost one-to-one adult/student ratio. But the Spanish teacher is very nice, and she suggested I just observe this week, so that's what I've been doing. Needless to say, it has not been very stressful. I spend more time commuting to the school (an hour and 20 minutes each way) than actually being AT the school (an hour and a half). Kind of funny.

The kids are pretty funny, too. Mostly boys, as is par for the course in special ed. Yesterday one of them was telling a story about how he got mugged on a street corner two years ago when a couple of guys demanded his money, and he said no.

"So what happened?" the teacher asked.

"They cut me with a knife," he said.

The teacher's jaw dropped. "And then what happened?"

"They ran away," he said, "and I went to the hospital and got 25 stitches."

One of the other boys started laughing and asked the teacher, "What did you think he would say? 'I pulled out my sword and we commenced to duel'?"

Then they started talking about a certain teacher they all like. "I have a crush on her," one of the boys admitted dreamily. "I heard she's 37. If I were 37, I would totally ask her out on a date."

"I know where she lives," another boy said.

The first boy rolled his eyes. "Dude, I'm not gonna stalk her!"

Oh, and guess what? I have an interview next week for a full-time-with-benefits special ed teaching job at a high school in Brooklyn! It's a new school that started this schoolyear with only ninth graders. I like the principal already. We only spoke a few minutes on the phone, but he just seemed so nice, so enthusiastic, so normal (three important qualities in a principal). He said, "I can't wait for you to come in and meet the staff -- we have such great people working here." So I'm going in next Tuesday morning to observe a couple of classes, and then he and I will "talk" (I assume that's his informal way of saying "interview"). Should be interesting.

Early Intervention training; Sunday on Thursday church service

2009-02-21T18:31:00.000-08:00

A weird random "news in brief" item I saw in the Metro New York newspaper yesterday:

"AUSTRALIA: Fourth-graders in Australia will no longer participate in an assignment asking children which ethnic groups they'd save, if required to choose, in the case of emergency. The education minister ordered the cancellation following parent complaints, reports CBC News."

Um -- huh? Is the sun baking their brains in the Land Down Under?? Bizarre.

I had all-day training on Thursday and Friday for a part-time Early Intervention job doing ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) one-on-one with 2-year-olds. It was excellent training, but the job itself scares me a little. Two-year-olds can be cute, but they can also hit, kick, bite, scratch, etc. -- especially if they're "on the autism spectrum," as many children in Early Intervention are. Also, ABA is a great program, but it requires the teacher to be so organized and track the child's progress by collecting data clearly and consistently -- and I can't quite figure out how you do that while simultaneously doing the actual teaching. But, if I can keep both my tutoring job and my part-time resource room teaching job through June, and get the unemployment extension, I can survive financially without a third job. It's good to have a back-up plan, though.

Since I didn't have tutoring Thursday night and I was in Manhattan anyway for the training, I went to St. Bart's "Sunday on Thursday" church service at 6:00 PM. It was really nice -- I barely fidgeted! (It helped that the service was only 40 minutes long.) The priest was female, which reminded me how refreshing it is to go to a church that doesn't insist that all of its priests be unmarried men. The Gospel readng was Mark 8:27-33, where Jesus explains to the disciples that he is going to have to endure great suffering, get killed, and then rise from the dead. When Peter took Jesus aside and tried to rebuke him, Jesus said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things."

So during her sermon, the priest told a funny story about a man whose wife had one bad habit of buying dresses they couldn't afford. No matter what he said to her, she couldn't stop herself from buying expensive dresses. Finally he told her, "The next time you go shopping and want to buy a pricey dress, say to yourself, 'Get behind me, Satan!' and that will help you resist the temptation." The wife agreed to try this. One week went by -- no dresses. Two weeks went by -- no dresses. The husband was so happy, thinking what he had said to her had worked -- until one day, she came home with the most expensive dress she had ever bought! Aghast, he asked, "What happened!? Why didn't you say, 'Get behind me, Satan'?"

"Oh, I did," his wife said. "And Satan said, 'Wow! It looks even better from the back!'"

;)

Spirituality, religion, church

2009-02-18T19:10:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been experiencing sort of a spiritual drought. Well, "drought" is a strong word -- it's more like spiritual dehydration. I still go to church every week, but I kind of have to force myself, and then, even though it's only an hour, it seems to go on forever, like it's in slow motion. Which is weird for me, because for at least the past ten years, I've been really into church. Sure, there have always been times when I felt more like going than others, but once I was there, I genuinely enjoyed it. But now, even though I'm there, saying the creed, praying the prayers, etc., I feel like I'm watching it on a movie screen or something. I feel very distant.

I was raised Episcopalian. My mom was, too. It was important to her, maybe partly because she was a child of parents who argued over religion (my maternal grandmother was Catholic and my grandfather was Episcopalian, back when that was a much bigger deal). When I was a kid, we would go through years of going to church regularly, then stop for a few years when a scandal broke out (in two different churches we went to, the priests ended up getting dismissed or asked to leave for alleged sexual misconduct), then start over again at a different church. But in high school I started getting uncomfortable saying the creed -- how did I know that Jesus was God's only son? How could I know ANYthing for sure? So in college I started going to the Unitarian church, where there's no set creed and you just have to affirm a set of moral principles. I liked it. But at home for Christmas and Easter, I went to the Episcopal church, and I also sometimes went to Catholic mass with friends, especially since it was so similar to the Episcopalian service.

We talk about having five senses: the sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. But after my mom died in 1998, I lost my sense of God. Even when I wasn't sure about creeds and orthodoxies, I had never before doubted that there was a God, or a heaven for the dead. I took it for granted, like I too often take for granted that I can see beautiful colors and taste delicious food. But I had never expected my mom to feel so GONE. After some people lose a loved one, they feel like they spot them out of the corner of their eye, or even see their ghost, or feel their presence in some way. For me, it was exactly the opposite. The sense of GONEness took my breath away. Life seemed coldly logical: my mother had smoked for 40 years; she got lung cancer; she died. I couldn't sense any divinity in that. It's not that I was angry at God. It was that I couldn't sense anything called "God" that I could even be angry at.

My sense of God did return, though slowly at first. I still went to Catholic mass with a friend; I went to Episcopal and Unitarian services sometimes, too; and for half a year or so, while in grad school in Boston, I regularly went to a church called The Journey. I'm a die-hard liberal and it was a pretty conservative church, but I got something out of the pastor's sermon every week, and found myself becoming a regular.

When I moved to New York in 2000, I started searching for a church home in earnest -- an Episcopal church home. I wasn't sure why I didn't feel called to the Unitarian church anymore. I just felt like it was missing something. Looking back, I think I was missing Jesus. I still don't know if I believe everything in the Creed (the virgin birth? not even mentioned in all four Gospels), but I finally realized you don't have to agree with everything and everyone in the church in order to go, and feel close to God.

Three days after September 11, 2001, I found my new church home. It was my 29th birthday, and I had never felt less like celebrating. Still in shock and sad and scared, I wandered into St. Bart's Episcopal Church in Manhattan for a prayer service. When the priest came out, he opened with, "It is times like these we cannot understand; we can only withstand." It was exactly what I needed. I joined the church and became very involved, stopping only when I moved to Camden, NJ in 2005 to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps for a year of service. I purposely chose a program with a spiritual component. I felt called -- not that I literally heard the voice of God or anything, but I felt a strong sense it was what I was meant to do at that time.

Then last year I did the RCIA program to officially become Catholic. Since my maternal grandmother was Catholic, in some ways I felt I was going back to my spiritual roots. And even though I had moved back to NYC from Camden, it's now a longer commute to get to St. Bart's, and I just couldn't seem to get up early enough Sunday mornings to get there. I was going to the Catholic church a few blocks from my apartment so often, I thought it would be nice to make it official.

But it's that same Catholic church I can now barely sit in for 55 minutes per week! So here I am, in Spirtual Drought Land.

My plan: to explore other churches, and go to St. Bart's more regularly, too. It sometimes helps to be shaken out of my comfort zone (or discomfort zone, as the case may be).

A happy heart day

2009-02-15T20:57:00.000-08:00

I've rarely had a boyfriend during Valentine's Day, but I finally did this year. I must say, it sure made the day much better! The Nicest Guy in the World came over in the afternoon with the DVD of the classic movie "It Happened One Night." It was really good! Then he took me out for a "surprise" dinner (I knew we were going to eat but didn't know where) at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant, where we had only eaten together once back in 2007, when we were just friends. Luckily he never deletes any e-mails, so he still had the e-mail from two years ago with the restaurant name and directions. It was sooooooo delicious! Afterwards we came back to my place and he gave me a great card, Dove milk chocolate hearts, not one but TWO Dove chocolate roses, 24 boxes of Spearmint Tic-Tacs, a box of Sweet-Tarts, and best of all, a mix CD he had made himself of all these great love songs -- and on the cover he'd printed a photo of the two of us! Here are three of my favorite songs on it so far: "If Not For You" by George Harrison (originally by Bob Dylan); "If I Should Fall Behind" by Bruce Springsteen; and "Someone Like You" by Van Morrison.

The funny thing is, one of my gifts to HIM was a mix CD of love songs, and I'd put a few of the same songs on his CD as he'd put on mine! Unfortunately, I have no idea how to burn CDs, so what I actually gave him was the list of songs, the lyrics to each song, and $15 to buy the songs from iTunes. (Nothing like a do-it-yourself Valentine's Day gift.)

His mom even sent along a present for me: a heart-shaped box of Whitman's chocolates -- so sweet! Growing up, I always received a box of Whitman's for Valentine's Day (it was my little tradition to save the chocolate with the little man on it to eat last).

Anyway, it was such a wonderful day, not to mention infinitely better than looking at endless profiles on Match.com or eHarmony of men who would never respond, or who'd e-mail me back and then flake out on me, or meet me for one date and turn out to be weirdos -- which is probably what I otherwise would've been doing on Valentine's Day. ;O

Though I shouldn't say anything too negative about Match.com. That's how the Nicest Guy in the World and I met. :)

Hope you all had a very happy Valentine's Day!!

Healthy -- and hopefully covered again soon!

2009-02-12T22:11:00.000-08:00

The antibiotic is working -- I feel so much better! Turns out that when your pinkeye is disgustingly goopy and crusty, that means it is bacterial, not viral, and only an antibiotic will fix it.

But guess what? After all of my health insurance angst since losing my job in October, I'll soon be able to go back on my old health insurance plan -- for only $142 a month! Included in the stimulus bill is a provision for a 65% subsidy of one's COBRA premium. That's a lot cheaper than Healthy New York, which was going to cost me $233 without even any drug coverage. Apparently if you lost your job last September or later, you qualify. If you already turned down COBRA, once the bill passes you can call your old employer and tell them you want to do COBRA after all. We'll see how confusing that process will be. Hopefully it won't be too bad, because that would be the best deal by far. And if I have to see my doctor again, the man will actually get paid!

Also, people won't have to pay any federal income tax on the first $2,400 they receive in unemployment benefits in 2009. Woo-hoo!

Below is the article from the New York Times detailing how the stimulus bill could affect you.

February 12, 2009
Your Money: Stimulus Bill's Tax Breaks and Benefits
by RON LIEBER
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/your-money/13money.html?scp=2&sq=YOUR%20MONEY&st=cse

All the talk the last couple of days about the stimulus bill was about compromise and slimming down. What is left, though, is a huge spending bill, with well over $100 billion in tax breaks and handouts for individuals.
And most of us will be able to use at least one of them, though it will be difficult to get much money immediately, unlike the stimulus checks that went out last year.
What follows is a list of some of the biggest provisions in the bill that will hit you directly in the wallet. Keep in mind that the language in the measure isn’t quite final and the Senate and House still have to vote to approve it.
INCOME TAX In 2009 and 2010, there is a tax credit of up to $400 for individuals and $800 for married couples filing their taxes jointly. You calculate your credit, subtracted from other federal taxes you owe, by taking 6.2 percent of your earned income.
Your eligibility for this credit begins to phase out if you’re an individual with an adjusted gross income over $75,000 or a couple with income higher than $150,000.
Employers may end up adjusting tax withholdings on paychecks so that this credit trickles into your bank account over the course of the year. People who are self-employed can adjust their quarterly tax filings to account for the credit.
This credit is refundable, according to a summary of the stimulus bill that the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees released Thursday. That means that even if you have no federal income tax liability, you will still get the money.
UNEMPLOYMENT Normally, you pay federal income taxes on federal unemployment benefits. In 2009, however, you won’t have to pay taxes on the first $2,400 in benefits you receive.
HEALTH INSURANCE If you get fired, your company is required, thanks to a law known as Cobra, to allow you to pay to keep your health insurance, generally for up to 18 months.
The problem is, it can cost you $1,000 a month or more to keep the coverage.
Now, the federal government will subsidize 65 percent of the premium for up to nine months. To be eligible, you need to have been forced out of your job between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009. Also, your income in the year you receive the subsidy cannot be more than $125,000 for individuals or $250,000 for married couples filing their taxes jointly.
If you lost your job after Sept. 1, 2008, and declined Cobra coverage, you’ll now get another chance. Call your former company in the next two months to find out how this will work.
You need not keep an eye on the mail for a subsidy check from the government, according Kathryn Bakich, senior vice president in Washington of the Segal Company, a benefits consulting firm. Instead, your former employer will collect the money from the government.
SOCIAL SECURITY In 2009 a number of retirees and disabled people, including Social Security recipients, will receive a $250 refundable tax credit. The money would arrive within 120 days of the bill’s signing.
CAR BUYER TAX DEDUCTION For the rest of 2009, you’ll be able to deduct the state and local sales and excise taxes you pay on the purchase of a new (not used) car, light truck, recreational vehicle or motorcycle.
This will be an “above-the-line deduction,” according to Clint Stretch, the managing principal of tax policy at Deloitte L.L.C. in Washington. That means that you can take it regardless of whether you itemize other deductions on your tax return.
Mark Luscombe, principal tax analyst for CCH, a tax information service, notes that state sales taxes alone can run 6 to 7 percent, before any county or local tax kicks in. That said, if you trade in a vehicle, your taxable purchase price may be lower.
Eligibility for this tax break begins to phase out for single people with adjusted gross income over $125,000 or $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. And the deduction does not apply on spending above $49,500.
PELL GRANT According to a summary from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the maximum Pell Grant will increase by $500, to $5,350 in 2009 and $5,550 in 2010. The grants are generally for low-income students.
HIGHER EDUCATION TAX CREDIT This credit covers up to $2,500 of the cost of college tuition and other related expenses in 2009 and 2010. You’ll need to spend at least $4,000 in a single year to get the full credit. The credit begins to phase out for individual taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes over $80,000 or $160,000 for married couples filing jointly.
Forty percent of the credit is refundable, which benefits low-income students paying their way through school (who may owe no federal income taxes).
529 PLAN EXPANSION When you withdraw money from a 529 college savings plan, you can use it for tuition, room, board, books and other college expenses. In 2009 and 2010, families can also use the money for computers and computer technology, which could include educational software and Internet service for students living at home.
FIRST-TIME HOME BUYER CREDIT First-time home buyers are eligible for a refundable tax credit equal to 10 percent of the purchase price of their home, up to $8,000, if they made the purchase after Jan. 1, 2009, but before Dec. 1, 2009.
Unlike a similar credit that Congress provided last year, you don’t have to pay this one back over 15 years. The new credit, however, does phase out for individuals with incomes over $75,000 or married couples with incomes over $150,000 who file their taxes jointly. Also, you forfeit the credit if you sell the house within three years.
TRANSIT ACCOUNTS If you commute to work via public transportation, your employer may allow you to set aside pretax money from your paycheck to pay for the bus, train or parking. Currently, you can put aside only $120 a month for mass transit while those who drive and park can save $230. This year and next, those who take mass transit will also be able to put aside $230 each month.
A.M.T. PATCH Each year, Congress creates a temporary fix to keep millions of people from paying the alternative minimum tax. This year, the patch is part of the stimulus bill. “If you didn’t pay the A.M.T. last year, you probably won’t this year,” said Mr. Stretch of Deloitte. “For most people, this is a nonevent. They didn’t even realize they were in danger of being shot in the head by the A.M.T."

Why I love my doctor; unemployment benefits extension!

2009-02-10T19:37:00.000-08:00

My doctor is SO NICE. I went to see him today and explained my symptoms, and he said he's been seeing a lot of the pinkeye/cough/sore throat/congestion combination. "The bacteria that causes it can lead to pneumonia," he said (!). Good thing I dragged myself in to see him. He also told me conjunctivitis is one of the leading causes of blindness in developing countries -- isn't that sad? :( My lungs sound clear, but he wrote me a prescription for Azithromycin, an antibiotic. He said that should clear up the pinkeye, too, but also gave me a prescription for eyedrops just in case, and said to get that filled if my eyes aren't clear by Friday.

After all that, guess what he charged me? 20 bucks. Yes. That's IT. That was my co-pay when I had insurance, so he made no money on me even though he spent 40 minutes with me -- I love that man. If you need a general physician in Manhattan you should totally go to him! His name is Dr. Stephen Shaw, and his web site is http://www.midtowninternalmedicine.com/

It cost $48.69 to get the Azithromycin prescription filled. Not bad, considering that certain medications I've gotten have cost me $60 just for the co-pay.

More good news: the Senate passed the stimulus package today, and it looks like unemployment benefits will be extended -- not just for 13 weeks, but for THE REST OF 2009! O happy day! :-D Benefits may also get raised by $25 per week, though that'll depend on each individual state, I'm sure. I'm so relieved. The unemployment/tutoring combination is allowing me to survive financially until I can hopefully (*fingers crossed*) find a full-time teaching job this fall.

Here are a couple of articles about the stimulus package:

"A Comparison of Economic Stimulus Plans" by the Associated Press:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090210/ap_on_go_co/congress_stimulus_highlights

A nicely detailed article that compares and contrasts the House version of the plan vs. the Senate's version.

"Stimulus would boost, extend unemployment checks" by Deb Riechmann, The Associated Press
http://www.contracostatimes.com/business/ci_11671192?source=rss

This one has specific details about unemployment.

Still sick (cough)

2009-02-09T20:30:00.001-08:00

But, I still managed to do my taxes! I wasn't sure if I'd be able to figure it out, since for 2008 I had two W2s and two 1099s from three jobs and unemployment, plus I had to fill out two self-employment forms for the tutoring. But I did it! Weirdly, I actually kind of enjoyed it. I like how taxes are a sort of puzzle you have to figure out. I don't really like puzzles, actually, but I didn't mind doing my taxes. It was just time-consuming. The possibility of getting a refund is powerful motivation, however! I ended up figuring out I owe the IRS thousands of dollars -- but I'd put aside what I thought I would owe in a special ING Direct savings account(http://www.ingdirect.com), which I labeled "taxes." Fortunately, I oversaved, so now I have an extra $554.62 which I can keep for myself. Sweet!

...unless, of couse, I spend it all on my doctor's appointment tomorrow. :( I have to go, though -- the coughing and pinkeye are maybe a little better, but still there. He didn't have any openings today, so I'm going tomorrow at 3:00 PM. I explained I don't have health insurance right now, and he said he'd give me a discount. He's such a nice doctor.

Details on Resource Room teaching job

2009-02-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

When I talked to the woman at the tutoring agency today about the part-time Resource Room teaching job, she said, "The principal really liked you and was so impressed with you -- she even asked if you could work there next schoolyear, which I've never had happen before the tutor has started!" Which is pretty funny, because the principal did not interview me. She has never met me. In fact, she wasn't even in the building when I arrived (she was off at some meeting), so I interviewed with an underling whose name I never quite caught. I assume she was the vice-principal, but I don't know for sure. So I thought that was amusing.

But I don't think I would be able to work there next year even if I wanted to, because the vice-principal (or whoever she was) said the part-time Resource Room was pretty much the extent of their special education program there, and I need a full-time job! At least it's nice to know I'm going in on a high note, although it's also a little nerve-wracking. If they like me this much before I've even done anything, it can only go downhill from here, right? Now I know how President Obama feels. ;)

The woman at the tutoring agency may have another part-time job for me, working with two or three kids at another school just a few blocks away in the late afternoons, which could work out nicely. But I don't even have a start date yet for the Resource Room job -- apparently they have to get all of the students' parents to sign permission forms first. Since that will take several days, at least, and since February break is from 2/16 - 2/20, I'm guessing I won't start until 2/23.

Which is fine, because I need to recover -- I am sick. I started getting a terrible sore throat and a fever on Sunday night. The fever went away after a couple of days of taking Tylenol, fortunately, but the sore throat had to be the worst one I've had in 10 years -- every time I swallowed, I was in utter agony -- but that finally started going away on Thursday, thank God. Now I just have to get rid of the cough/cold/pinkeye. The pinkeye is pretty disgusting-looking (I'll spare you the gory details), but I hope it goes away on its own. Healthy New York delayed my health insurance application because I didn't include four weeks' pay stubs from my college teaching job (because I only get paid once a month, as I patiently explained to them on the phone), so I don't have health insurance until March 1st. Sigh!

I couldn't tutor my 7th grade student yesterday, unfortunately (I miss paid sick days!), but I dragged myself there on Wednesday. At the end of our session he read me a list of funny pick-up lines he found on the Internet. Here were my two favorites:

1) "Let's make like a fabric softener and Snuggle."

2) "Are you a parking ticket?"
"No, why?"
"Because you've got FINE written all over you!"

What can I say? They made me laugh. (Have I mentioned that I'm sick??)

I got the gig!

2009-02-04T19:07:00.001-08:00

The tutoring agency called me today and said I got the part-time Resource Room teacher job! Yay! I'm not sure yet when I'll start, but probably sometime next week. :)

Also, I was accepted to attend two days of (free) training in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) with an Early Intervention agency in a couple of weeks. Early Intervention is one-on-one teaching for kids ages 0 - 3 who are experiencing some sort of delay. After the two full days of training, I'll do ten hours of observation/practice, and if I do well with that, they will assign me some Early Intervention cases where I'll work one-on-one with kids in Brooklyn in their homes. I'm a little nervous about teaching such young kids -- babies, really -- but so many children receive Early Intervention services these days, it will be really valuable experience.

So if I can keep tutoring the seventh grade student I currently tutor through one agency six hours a week, and if I can do the part-time Resource Room teacher job through the other agency, and if I can keep my unemployment, I should be able to survive financially until I (HOPEFULLY) land a full-time-with-benefits teaching job this fall -- IF Congress passes legislation to extend unemployment benefits again. To qualify for the current extension, you have to exhaust your current benefits by March 31st, and mine won't run out until two weeks later (d'oh! missed it by *that much*!).

I really, really, really hope the extension passes. If it doesn't, hopefully the Early Intervention gig will work out and make up the financial difference. *fingers crossed*

I was pleased to see that Obama signed that bill extending health care coverage to more low-income children today (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090205/ap_on_go_pr_wh/children_s_health_20), and I'm very curious to see what happens with his proposal to make people who are on unemployment automatically qualify for Medicaid. That would really be a godsend. Let's put it this way: I receive $405 per week in unemployment benefits, which is the most you can get in NY State. But you have to pay taxes on it, so I let the feds take out 10% every week, which brings it down to $364.50 per week (I'm sure I'll actually owe about 25% on it in total when I file my taxes, but they won't take out more than 10% when they give it to you). That's $1,458 per month -- too much to qualify for Medicaid or food stamps. But the rent on my one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn is $993 per month, and the cheapest plan available under Healthy New York, the public program for those too "rich" to qualify for Medicaid (i.e., single adults without children who earn more than $600-something per month) is like $185 per month. That leaves $280 for the month -- $280 for food, electricity, phone, transportation, laundry, etc.

If I didn't have these part-time jobs, I'd never make it.

That's why this economic meltdown is so frightening. I am incredibly lucky to have an education, a teaching certificate, work experience, to be living in a big city with a variety of industries, and to not have anyone else to support besides myself. What about people, especially people with children to feed, who never went past high school and have always worked at jobs that never required more than that -- jobs that are now disappearing? What are they going to do?? :(

Success! hopefully (at least part-time)

2009-02-03T21:00:00.000-08:00

My second interview today for a part-time teaching job seemed to go well! If I get it, I would be a Resource Room teacher for two periods a day in the afternoon at a public high school here in NYC. It's a neat school because it's focused on the performing arts -- music, drama, and film -- and all the kids who want to go there have to audition. But I would be working through a tutoring agency, not an employee of the school itself.

The cons: It's not full-time with benefits; it pays $40 an hour instead of $60, which is the going rate for a special ed tutor in NYC; and it's a one-hour-and-fifteen-minute commute each way.

The pros: I would be paid through the tutoring agency as an independent contractor, which counts as self-employment, so it wouldn't jeopardize my unemployment benefits; being a Resource Room teacher basically means helping the kids with their work from their other classes, so I wouldn't have to come up with lesson plans or grade papers; it would give me experience with high school kids (the one school-age group I haven't worked with) in probably the least stressful way possible; there are only eight students in each class; and there's another teacher in the room, too, plus a teacher's aide.

So, I hope they liked me!

In other news, I sent the following e-mail to the principal of the charter school in Brooklyn that offered me the long-term substitute teaching position:

Dear Ms. XXXX,
Ms. So-and-So called me today about the substitute teaching position that starts on Thursday. Unfortunately, since the position does not provide benefits, I have to decline it. Although I am fortunate not to have any chronic health issues or anything, I would still be too nervous to forego health insurance (right now I qualify for Healthy New York, but if I were substituting full-time I would no longer qualify).
If a permanent teaching job does become available, I hope you will keep me in mind.
Thank you very much,
Artichoke Heart

She responded:

Dear Artichoke Heart,
Thank you for your reply. We will keep you in mind for the September position.

The Job Search

2009-02-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

I got laid off from my fundraising job at a health organization back in October. I wasn't too broken up about it because my boss was rarely in the office and I hardly had anything to do. What I miss are the paychecks (ironically, it was the highest-paying job I've ever had) and the health insurance!

I've been looking into becoming certified as a Learning Disabilities Teacher/Consultant, but since you need three years of classroom teaching experience to do that, and I only have two, I need to get a teaching job. I got my master's in special education ten years ago and have a permanent NY State teaching certificate, and since special ed is a shortage area, I didn't think it would be too hard.

A few weeks ago I had an interview at a charter school in Brooklyn. It was a panel interview, which are always a little intimidating -- the principal, special education coordinator, and two teachers all grilled me. I was actually lucky there were only four people, because, as the principal said, "Usually our ENTIRE hiring committee would be here, but they're off doing emergency teaching assignments because we have three vacancies."

Three teaching positions open in the middle of the year -- I figured I had a shot. Sure enough, 24 hours after that first interview, the special education coordinator contacted me, saying the committee had liked what I had to say. Could I come in the following Thursday and teach a demonstration lesson to one of the eighth grade classes? Why, of course I could.

I sweated and slaved over this lesson, then went into the school on January 15th and taught it, with the hiring committee watching. It was a challenge because I didn't know the kids, and I ran out of time at the end so I had to cut short the group activity I had planned. But the kids were pretty good, and seemed fairly engaged. They certainly didn't make me want to run out of the school screaming or anything. But by the time the period ended, the entire hiring committee had already left, except for the special ed coordinator who just said, "We'll be in touch in the next day or two."

But they weren't in touch in the next day or two. They didn't contact me at all -- until today (more than two weeks after I taught my demo lesson), when the school secretary called me. "The principal wanted me to call and ask you if you would be interested in a substitute teaching position starting this Thursday," she said.

Substituting? Huh?? "For what subject?" I asked.

"What subject were you interviewed for?" she said.

"Special ed."

"Then it must be a special ed substitute position."

It "must be"? Shouldn't you know for sure what the job is before you offer it to somebody? "How long would it last?" I asked.

"Well, it's open-ended. We've had temps in the classroom since there isn't a permanent teacher in that class right now. It could lead to a permanent position," she said.

I asked what the rate was, and she said $154 per hour, but I'm sure she meant $154 per day -- if it were $154 per hour, that would be over $150,000 per year! "And no benefits," she added helpfully.

Great. I asked if I could think about it, and she said yes. But what I really wanted to say was, "So let me get this straight. You asked me to come in for an interview for one of three vacant teaching jobs, and I did. You liked what I said and asked me to teach a sample lesson, which I did. After observing that, you think I would be good enough to teach -- but only as a subsititute??" Seriously, what are they thinking? I interviewed for a permanent job; I'm ready, willing and able to take a permanent job; but instead they want to hire me as a sub and continue this parade of temporary teachers in that classroom? How can that possibly be good for the kids? And, it's already February -- it's not like they'd be making some big commitment to me if they just hired me to teach from February through June. Once the schoolyear ends, couldn't they just not renew my contract if they didn't like me?

I guess they really don't want to pay benefits. I'm very fortunate that I don't have any health issues (knock on wood), but I don't want to go without health insurance. If I were substituting I would earn too much to qualify for Healthy New York, the public insurance program I will soon be on (for $235 per month out of pocket, of course). And if I'm teaching full-time, planning lessons and grading papers and managing a classroom just the same as a permanent teacher, I really shouldn't have to forego the benefits. What cheapskates.

Welcome to my new blog!

2009-01-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

Hello, friends! I'm looking forward to starting this new blog about current events, artichokes, my job search, books, relationships, writing, spirituality, and life in general. The title was inspired by my enjoyment of artichokes ever since I learned how to eat one as a kid, and by Inspector Clouseau's great line in the "Pink Panther" movie: "A woman is like an artichoke -- you have to work a bit to get to the heart."
Thanks for reading!