it's good to be home

at school again, with kids who can't pass the high school exit exam. We've got a lot of work to do before they take it again in November, as evidenced by this:

"A Historical figure I would his interesting to meet is Pearl Harbor."

uh huh.

not that i've blogged much lately, but...

I may be a bit quiet for a while. Within 10 days, starting last week and going through next Monday, I will have:

1)decided to give up trying to make my body provide enough milk for Mia, thus embarking on the adventure of formula for the first time as a mom,

2) moved Lizzie into a big girl bed,

3) moved Mia into the "girls dorm" with Pink & Lizzie, and away from my side at night, and

4) returned to work (with no pump! how strange! it kinda seems like that's just what I do in life)

Don't get me wrong, these are all ok things. The formula isn't a normal part of growth per se, but even that will work out just fine. I'm in new territory, needing to develop systems for budgeting for formula and keeping it on hand when we're out and about (since I've always been able to just pull over and feed a hungry baby myself). But many have done it before and I've been hooked up with tips and encouragement from my BFF, who seems to be switched with me: she resorted to formula for her first two, but has made it to nine months with #3. Mia will be fine. I will be fine. I will have less to carry to work and will be able to do more on my breaks than sit, trapped by wires and tubing, attempting to get every last ounce possible from my body.

It's natural for Mia to grow older and move from a newborn's bassinet into a crib. It's wonderful to walk into a small room with girly decor and to look in on three sleeping beauties. It's fun for all of them to share - they are loving it. It's nice not to hear her every moan and squirm all night long. It's all great stuff, really.

And I like my job. I still carry the fairytale around in my head of quitting and devoting myself here at home. But I do like my job and God has given it to me for this season in my life. I'm not very good yet at balancing work with the rest of life without feeling overwhelmed, and with 2 people in this house with relatively new dietary restrictions (wheat-free being one), I'm not looking forward to adding in making our own baked goods, but we will all get through it.

It's hard, though, to let go of feeding Mia. And that dang instinct reaches up like some kind of claw, grasping for anything that will let me hang on to feeding her myself. Logic prevails, and I'm resigned. But not without some sadness. A week ago she was sleeping by my side, eating from her mama, and I was home every day. Next week, she'll be sleeping in her crib, eating from a bottle, and I'll be gone a lot.

Sigh. So I'm going to be rather busy loving on my husband (who's been working extra hours) and my kids and preparing for 2 solid weeks of 4 sets of out-of-towners. I'll probably sulk a little bit, but mostly I'll be busy soaking in the beauty around me and giving my heart a chance to bask in the good stuff of life so the bad doesn't feel so bad. It's a big week of changes around here.

I'll be back.

books

Just as I sat down to make an attempt at a poignant post about graduations and graduation pictures, a little somebody came running up to me and begged me to sit with her to read her favorite book. So, in the spirit of the post I was going to pen, I'm off to read about monsters at the end of books and to "work really hard" at turning pages that are blocked off by rope & brick walls. More to come later...

math

So many things have been going through my mind today as I've been dealing with ramifications of complicated maternity leave pay, but the overriding though/feeling for my day has been, "I HATE math! I HATE math! I HATE math! I HATE math! I HATE math! E-SPE-cially payroll math! I HATE math! I HATE math!" Well, you get the picture. I don't teach math for a reason.

not exactly

A friend caught up with me the other day on Facebook, asking if I'd been doing more of the freelance writing I started before Mia was born. I'd been trying to get my foot in the door somewhere in the hopes that I'd have enough income to postpone maternity leave or quit teaching all together.

More writing? Ha! My reply:
Hey! I'm not writing at all. :( Most days I tread water with my head barely above the surface, and I went back to teaching already so I'm pretty much pouring myself into: putting away the laundry in time to have empty laundry baskets for the next week's loads, scraping off the floor before I mop it so the 18 month old can throw food all over it again, putting away the same books over and over and over again... you know, highly professional and stimulating work! :) Oh, and I forgot the part about stealing kisses whenever I can.

um, yeah

So, that didn't last long. My "togetherness" that is.

Day 1 at work was really only 2 hours, so I didn't need to pack breakfast, lunch, or a pump. Mia even ended up sleeping the entire time I was gone, so no pumping at home, either. Piece o' cake.

Day 2, yesterday, was my first full day. I packed my coffee, snack, lunch, pump bag, wallet, sunglasses, etc, etc. The day wasn't exactly ideal once I got home, but while I was at work, all went relatively smoothly considering all that is happening at our school this week.

Day 3, today, well, let's just say that I've really got nowhere to go but up from here. Snack? Uh, no. Lunch? Forgot that, too. Water (I'm an addict)? A bit. Pump bottles to collect milk so that I can pump through the day? Only 1 small one. So here I sit with no food, very full b**bies, and I'll be rushing through a drive-thru trying to pump once side at a time, asking for an empty cup so I can pour the milk in there and then pump the other side, then rushing back and eating while I'm pumping, trying not to get in an accident. At least I remembered my coffee which might just be more important than food after 2 very emotional days of almost no sleep. Because a hungry, grumpy, engorged, emotional mama/teacher who's exhausted and without coffee? eeesh! Not a pretty sight.

On a humorous note, though, pause for a moment to imagine the accident report I'd have to file if I did cause an accident: "I'm sorry, officer, I'm normally quite a safe driver. It's just that I was using this hand to pump, and, well, nevermind. You won't believe me anyway."

well, nevermind

Those seniors who gave me a lump in my thoat, who worked their way up to passing? Yeah. They (read: a large percentage of the 550 total seniors on campus) had organized a mass water balloon fight at lunch. Two Assisstant Principals were hit numerous times, and needless to say, heads are rollin' even as I write this. Lunch was cut short, seniors were sent to the gym, and even I was a bit scared as our looks-scary-on-a-good-day principal stripped them of all remaining senior activities and threatened to take away their graduation ceremony.

So I guess maybe they're not quite as ready as they seemed the other day when they were all dressed up for their professional, mock interviews. Uhn-hunh. Not quite as grown up. But I still can't help but feel excited for them and their ignorance, and laugh at their immaturity, much as a wise freshman teacher once told me that to laugh at farts in class is to embrace the personhood of each student. This stinks, but it's a part of who they are.

it's been a big week around here

Monday: A student whose dad's cancer was taking a turn for the worse informed me that his dad is now getting better. My own dad died shortly after my sister's graduation, so this was an emotional high.

Tuesday: There were too many stories to tell about my seniors who completed their mock interviews that day with community members. Many were "hired" on the spot. There was a lot of high-fiving that day. One student, who was failing until the end, came to me and thanked me for calling her mom about the 'F' in my class. She said that her mom yelling at her, and knowing that I had cared enough to call, was exactly what she needed to get her you-know-what in gear and do the work necessary to pass my class. She will now graduate, and she actually thanked me for getting her iin trouble!

Wednesday: Pink had her very first haircut of any kind (I've never even so much as trimmed one stray hair). She went to my normal salon and my normal guy did her hair. She's been a big girl for a while now, but it felt official yesterday.
ALSO, Lizzie "crawled"! She can now move to both sides, backward, AND forward! She does this thing where she lifts up her knees, plants her heels on the floor, and dives toward the ground to move forward. And the girl is practically unstoppable now.

Thursday (today): I have said my piece to all 100 of my seniors, signed stacks of yearbooks, handed back final exam results, and given out final grades. I have hugged, high-fived, and patted on the back. After a year of pushing, prodding, and pulling, and after having a 40% failure rate in one class just two months ago, I was able to tell every single one of my students, "Congrats! See you next week at graduation!" My heart is swelled with emotion.

Friday: We leave for a long drive to Phoenix, where Beloved will be the most handsome groomsman that ever lived, and Pink will be the most excited little flower girl that ever lived. Plus, we get to see my brother & sister-in-law's new house (first time buyers - exciting!), and meet our new niece, Katelyn.

And somehow, after an emotional week of successes & triumphs & life changes, I will do my best to not be in a puddle of tears on Sunday night when I watch 2 of my favorite people walk down a church aisle. No promises, though.

the irony of it all

Why do we say that the school year is "winding down" when I've had the "William Tell Overture" going through my head all day?

too much coffee, maybe?

What's THAT? Did my voice just ECHO in the hallway? I thought yesteday morning while lecturing about job application procedures.

I stopped myself mid-sentence and remarked to my students that I thought I just heard an echo of myself outside.

"Yeah, Ms. D., you're talking really loud."

"I AM?"

Said one student who had just gone to use the restroom: "Yeah, I could hear you, like, all the way down there."

"You could?"

And thus followed an explanation of how I was up until midnight w/ Beloved filing our taxes, up with my sweet baby from 2:30-4, and then up at the alarm's oh-so-annoying ringing at 5. Exhausted as I was, I rationalized to them, I drank an extra cup of coffee, downing it as they walked in the room at 7:30 am, earlier than the sun even fully woke up.

This is also the class that caught me talking at warp speed after drinking extra coffee a couple months ago during a particularly difficult, sleepless week. And this happens to be one of my favorite classes of all time - the winning combination of smart, witty, responsible, and hyper. So we know how to laugh together.

Which we did lots of yesterday morning, as I described my morning, my coffee fix, and a couple of the many reasons why it's not a good idea to trivialize sex, babies, and parenthood. Because, I warned them, they might find themselves yelling at people without even knowing it.

This morning's cup of coffee is disappearing much more slowly.

completely normal

"How do you expect us to answer this question?" came the accusing words of one student today. The class was taking their final exam for the quarter, worth about 5% of their final grade in the class. I had checked over the exam thoroughly when I gave it two years ago, but didn't get out my fine-tooth comb this time around. And it bit me. My student was right: there were questions on the exam that were impossible for them to answer, and others that were confusing; all of it led to mass frustration.

For the rest of the period, I felt like I had failed them. Trying to balance time with my family with grading essays/planning meaningful units is hard: I've no where near mastered this art. But I do try hard to do right by my students. This time I'd unwittingly set them up for failure, made myself look incompetent, and felt horrible about it all.

Then about 20 minutes later I saw a student walking outside. He'd been released early to lunch by another teacher as a part of a school-wide "get good test scores, get out of class early" campaign. The only problem was that he had skipped my class this morning and missed that exam in which I embarrassed myself. And he's missed about four other days this month. So I casually walked outside, greeted him, and pulled him inside my classroom where I handed him the exam and told him to finish it. He's a great kid and we were friendly in our conversation, but I was totally the Boss and had my act together. I allowed him to send a text to the bewildered friend waiting outside, and then he got started. It was awesome.

Days like today make me feel completely inadequate, and on top of the world, and very much on the ball, and quite human in my normalness. Really, I'm not a terrible teacher or a brilliant teacher, but a teacher who is very human in her makeup and who gets better and better all the time.

And that isn't all that bad.

in the OB's waiting room

Holy cow. If this couple smooches loudly one more time, I can't help what I'll do. Granted, every woman in here w/ a big belly got here one way and one way only (presumably). However, we do not all need a peek into how they got here. We do not need running commentaries about which pictures in the magazines are sexy and which are not. We do not care to hear the comments and giggles about the "just do it" line from "The Hustle" that remind me of my days teaching junior high. And we can most certainly do without the discussion about whether or not they will try out the coconut-scented bath suggestion at home. Eeeww.

Seriously, I'm sitting here with a big stack of essays that must be graded before baby comes, and loud smacks are making me grumpy. I'd blame it on the hormones, but I really think this one is simple, common courtesy.

on adolescence

A student's essay on the most difficult aspect of being a teenager today started out:
"Being a teenager, I think, is the most stressful time in your life. You have school to deal with. Then the fact of trying to find a job for your college fund, because let's face it your parents aren't going to pay your way ll throughout college. Also the nerve racking decision of what college you want to attend after you graduate high school."

Setting aside issues she has with syntax & spelling, this rough draft caught my eye because of the stressful time in my life right now. My initial reaction was, "Hogwash. If you only knew."

And then I thought for a moment about what my senior year was like, and I identified with the pressure she's under. Thinking about Pink, I remembered her struggles with delayed gratification, separation from loved ones, and frustration over not getting exactly what she wants. For her, life gets pretty darn difficult at times. Then I thought of my mom - she owns her house free and clear, has a steady income, and is healthy. She has also been a widow for over five years and tries her best to accept that as God's will, even though she hates it.

Which stage is the hardest? Adolescence, as many of my students asserted? My current stage of uncertainty in which we prepare to welcome a little one into God knows what house or what city? Toddlerhood? Empty-nesting & potentially widowhood? Or could it be that God allows us to grow during each stage, through all the trials we face, so that we are then prepared to face the joys and trials of the following stage?

Certainly if my student, God bless her, were dropped into the middle of my life right now, her heart would give out. But does it follow, then, that my current life stage is more difficult? Or only that hers seems relatively easy to me because I've had 15 years of maturing, living, and growing since I was in her shoes?

Perhaps each stage is just as difficult as the next, barring tragic circumstances, and this girl's life is no less stressful to her than mine is to me. Perhaps I shouldn't snicker when I read essays that detail the stresses of a relatively "easy" life stage, but should rather take my student and her peers quite seriously. I'm sorry it took me 32 years to figure this out, but I'm glad it didn't take any longer, lest I mock any more of my impressionable young students.

how to keep a straight face in front of teenagers when the baby kicks

*look outside and pretend there's drama out there

*find a student who's about to fall asleep and wake him/her up by dropping a book on his/her desk

*turn around and write a name on the board; then say, "just seeing if you're paying attention."

*return to the roll sheet and make sure you marked it correctly

*yell a threat about what will happen if students don't get to work immediately

*find a phone to confiscate

*distract yourself from a round of in-utero gymnastics by sitting down and writing a post about survival tactics for the pregnant woman in the classroom

true story.

i'm about to pay these kids

to take their baked doritos outside of my room and never, never, never bring them back. Turns out that Blue/Mini-Pink isn't fond of them, and he/she lets me know by churning my stomach and turning it in knots until I think I'm about to lose everything I've eaten in the past week. Preggie pops are doing nothing. I wonder what the going rate is for baked doritos.

And in my defense, said students are not mine. I share my room with another teacher who apparently can't see the bright yellow poster that bars food and drinks in the classroom. If they were my students, paying them off would be entirely unnecessary.

answer key

For the one of you who had the time/courage/gumption to guess how many misspelled words were in this post, the answer, including the title, is ten:

miss pelled: misspelled
desided: decided
graphon: graph on
diffence: difference
tempeture: temperature
now: know
far and height: Fahrenheit
speach less: speechless
mispelled: misspelled
apear: appear

And yes, Dilenna, you may blame it on being a math teacher, although 7/10 isn't too bad. Just promise not to ask me to find the value of x in any kind of equation. :)

miss peld words

The spelling word: height

The sentence(s) a student used it in on a test: I want to do a project for my science class, so I desided to do a graphon the diffence between Boston and Japan tempeture. But, I needed to now the far and height of both countries.

I'm speach less, but giggling. :) My poor students who don't bring erasers with their pencils. Maybe I'll stay here with them. After all, she did spell "height" correctly and, therefore, must have studied. Pencil & eraser or not.

Just for fun, any guesses as to how many mispelled words apear in this text, uh, post?

i think i need my master’s

Not so much so I can get paid more for my current line of work, though a bigger paycheck would certainly be nice. More because I have this idea, however unfounded it may be, that if I taught at a higher level (i.e., at the college level), my students would think to bring things like, say, pencils and erasers to class every day. Then again, perhaps not. I have colleagues who show up to meetings late, talking on their cell phones, which I believe to be the adult equivalent of not bringing materials. So, I guess there’s no hope.

It’s only January and this is the second grumbling session about my job in as many weeks.

Summer, my friend and respite, haste not in bringing your sweet relief!

the reverse mullet

Legally I’m prohibited from taking a picture of a minor student and posting it on the internet, so you’ll have to bear with me for the lack of visual media as evidence.

Picture yourself approaching a teenaged young man from the back – he’s tall and lanky, jeans lowered just enough so as not to fall down, t-shirt barely covering his all-togethers, graffiti-covered backpack slung loosely over one shoulder. His black hair is short and just a little messy. Not unkempt, but a little touseled. He turns slowly. You expect you will see a fresh face, maybe a little acne to disclose his age, and eyes that dart away from the glance of a teacher. But alas, you cannot see his face. “What’s this,” you wonder under your breath. Where’d all that long hair come from? Is this some new kind of comb-over? You smile and say good morning, using the communication as an excuse to take a better look. “Could this be the boy with that short hair I just saw?” It is; he has a reverse mullet. Short and layered in the back. Long in the front, covering his eyes, his nose, his mouth, giving him just a tad of the Cousin It -do.

“Am I that old,” you ask yourself as he passes. “I’ve not only seen the return of the mullet, I’ve lived to see it’s warped transformation. Scary.”

bakobama

Somewhere along the way, Pink learned to say "bakobama" by the time our new president was elected in November. We had many political discussions in our house and we do follow political events; however, there was no one name mentioned at home more than any other. And yet that is the only name she picked up on. True, at first she said his name every time she saw a man in a suit on the news. But she still knew the name.

I don't pretend to host a blog worthy of intelligent political discussion. I don't even like to get too deep into debate and my positions, while sincere, are no where near dogmatic enough to make for an interesting read. But that doesn't mean that the significance of last week is lost on me.

I spend my days with students who are fighting to make it to graduation. They are from foster homes, from other countries, and from poor neighborhoods, borrowing our "rich" school to earn themselves a chance. They are here because the counselors at this rich school won't tell them things like, "Don't get pregnant, don't get shot, and maybe you'll graduate." For so many young people, words like that are all they'll ever hear.

But a man came on our TV in our classroom last week, a man who looked like some of them and nothing like others. A man who told them to work hard and to keep on fighting. This man, like none before him, told them what mere words could never express: you will find your dreams, so you'd better aim high.

Maybe Pink's on to something. This man, regardless of political affiliation, will be the first president of whom she's aware. She will no doubt have little understanding of his policies even if he serves until she's ten. But doesn't that detract from the significance of today: she will know only a world in which the US elected a black man for president, and she will be less phased than her mother the next time it happens, for she will not have seen what I have seen. She will know better than what we have known thus far.

"Bakobama, Mr. President, 'Let's roll.'"