Kindly Teacher

2011-08-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

This is a photo from egg dying this past Easter. I did it by myself as I have no kids around to "help." It's nice to have hard-cooked eggs for a while, but then, eh. They get old and rubbery and nobody really wants egg salad anymore except for Dot. I keep trying to fatten her up but it's useless. I give her chicken skin and scraps but she has the metabolism of a shih tzu.

Many tell me I am wrong to feed her these things. I disregard the admonitions. Dot doesn't seem to be harmed.

I haven't been writing here, and I see that my small list of friends who blog also have not entered new info for many months. Maybe this is another tech fad that is on it's way out. Probably. Oh well.

2010-04-11T12:46:00.001-07:00

It's mid-April, which is a bit frightening. This time of year always shoots like a roller coaster through to early June and graduation, or culmination celebrations, or whatever it is we need to call eighth grade finishing time.

There are so many things to plan for and to stage. This is also the time of year when I look wistfully at many students and get teary-eyed for their imminent departure from my life. Sure, many will continue at our school's high school, and then I'll be able to see them periodically, but some will go off to other schools, and I will miss them all. I think this attachment to students is an essential part of why I love working in a school, but it does have a downside. I am a softie, that's true.

I do love working in a school. It's kind of like being in a big play with lots of actors and lines to deliver and a director in charge of the whole shebang. There is stress and excitement and knowing that you are not alone in whatever the mission is. I do like that aspect a lot.

Wish me luck!

2010-03-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

Sitting in Room 211 at the Harbor View Inn in Santa Barbara. Day One of spring break. Billie Holliday singing down low on the iPod so we won't bother the people next door who I think have little kids.

We stayed here many years ago when the kids were younger and threw occasional fits and we rode the fringe-topped bike things along the beach. We are here now to celebrate spring break and the fact that our kids are both out of town, setting the stage for the next phase of our marriage. One is in Boston, and the other just landed in Paris for a 10-week study and "vagabondage" experience.

I guess this is a bit of what the empty nest will be like.

Although I don't think it will often include lovely, deluxe dinners at places like Downey's on State Street. Champagne, shrimp, avocado, braised halibut for me, veal for him. So, so tasty and enjoyable. So much nicer than a burger and fries or whatever cheapy thing we usually do.

Santa Barbara looks as beautiful to me as ever.

Is anyone reading this thing? I've really lost interest in keeping it up. I think it's time has passed, perhaps. Time for a new fad, a new technological trend.

2009-12-23T18:18:00.000-08:00

Most years, at this time, I think to myself how smart it would be for me to write some notes to myself about what to avoid and what to plan for the next time Christmas rolls around. Mostly it's because I can't shake some negative thinking right about now, a few days before Dec. 25, and if there's any way to avoid this emotional sinkhole then I'm all for it.

Except there are those who might say that I ought to just feel the feelings and let them slip on down. Don't always be trying to take the sting out of the tough states, which is kind of a lifelong habit of mine that has not really made things better for me.

I did have a fine party the other night. That was a good thing, and I did some aspects of it in ways that felt kind of grown up and thoughtful.

As for Christmas, I am in that spot where I fear I haven't gotten enough good stuff for my children to gorge themselves on when they open presents. It's not like I was born during the Depression. But I have this notion that the tree should be surrounded by gaily wrapped gifts of all sizes and shapes, bathed in the colorful, soft glow of the old C-9 lights (those LED ones at OSH are way too wimpy although they may be the Christmas light show of our energy-depleted future).

I do get tired of my same old woes year in and year out. But I also don't think I want new woes. These are plenty tough enough.

2009-11-22T16:53:00.000-08:00

This Thanksgiving I am grateful for a couple of new TV shows that I am enjoying: "Community" and "Parks and Rec," both on NBC. Good for good old NBC. It warms my heart to see that a major network can still do interesting work. Just like it's good to see Sunset magazine and The New Yorker still come to the front door periodically. I worry sometimes about these old modes that seem to be threatened with extinction. It makes me feel like I do when I drive by where the old Thiele's restaurant used to be on N.W. 23rd in Portland. I don't think it's a CPK anymore, although that was a weird slap in the face when that happened.

It is easy for me to get nostalgic about the good old days and the places that are no more and the toys that are long buried in landfills deep, deep down under forty years of flotsam. It is especially easy at this time of year, of course. Of course.

I want to curl up with a likely book and a soft blanket or comforter and fall asleep. But it's kind of late in the day, and it will be hard to fall asleep later tonight, and I just have to get up again to go do my job, which is a hard job.

Yes, it is. I have to come up with ways to help children who are struggling, and sometimes I feel pretty ineffective about it all. There are no magic wands to wave, no guarantees of personal happiness for every single child. There are hurt feelings every day, misunderstandings, transitions in friendships, experimenting with bullying, pushing people around for the fun of it. All the irritating and occasionally painful things people think up to do to one another, and it all happens in these middle school years. I mean I know it happens in preschool, but the edge can be honed in seventh and eighth grade in particular.

All I want to do is go back inside, go back in years, find a time when there was ease and comfort and safety and fullness and kindness and security. Wow, I wonder when the heck that was my experience...? There has been so much anxiety of so many different types through the years...

And to be honest it isn't really all that horrible right this second. I do miss my son, but we get to see him in just a few days... That will be nice. That will be something to be truly grateful for.

2009-11-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

It is my turn to call in to the court system to see if I've been selected for jury duty this week. So far, no go tomorrow. I want to be called, and I don't want to be called. I'd like a break from certain challenges at school, and I will pay for a break from those challenges.

Life is full, again.

My niece is trying to remember what it was like to be thirteen, the age her son is right now. I try to do that periodically, to get in touch with what is going on in the minds of the students I work with each day. It's really hard to do!

2009-10-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

It's Halloween, 2009. I don't care for this holiday much anymore. It used to be kind of fun with the kids, getting them dressed up and going out trick-or-treating, but now that they don't do that, and I am simply haunted by the candy I keep for the few neighbor kids, it just adds up to a rather tense evening.

Wow, what a bummer for me! I have got to lighten up here.

It was fun to watch the middle school students dress up for their costume contest on Thursday. Some excellent imagination and flair for drama there.

I think it's basically the candy that ultimately depresses me. I get depressed if I don't allow myself to eat it, and I get depressed if I do. No winning here.

I need a good movie to watch. Or a trip to northern Italy.

2009-10-25T21:27:00.001-07:00

Another Sunday night. I wonder what this week will bring? Will students implode? Will parents flip out? Will the kids be so jazzed by the aspect of a four-day weekend that little real work will take place? Will I lose my patience? Will I get H1N1?

This will be the first time in six years that I am not actively sitting in parent/teacher conferences. I will try to help everyone move smoothly through their rotations, and I may have some shortish conferences for a few standout cases, but I am not sitting in the typical English teacher spot, talking to parents about their children's writing and reading and homework. Wow, that is actually kind of a big deal. I wonder if I will miss it, or if it will be a relief?

The antibacterial soap at school hurts my finger tips.

2009-09-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the kind of day at school that had me thinking biggish thoughts by 6 p.m. The kinds of biggish thoughts that kept me from my morning intention of going to see that Keats movie. The kinds of biggish thoughts that one thinks when one is considering one's life span and what matters most to one in that span.

Can you tell it was a tough day?

Student meltdown, parent meltdown, colleague critiques.

I read yesterday that problems are good, that problems are what make this all so interesting. I'm trying to shift my framework to that way of thinking to see if it will help me.

There is probably some Buddhist wisdom that would also help me right here, right now, but I can't remember it.

2009-09-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

I almost spilled the beans today in my creative writing class and told my students about this blog.

It's not that it's a secret, really, but I just prefer not to share it with my students. Or their parents. Nothing personal.

It's the first week back in school, and I quaintly amused by how wiped out I am feeling right now. I'm not even teaching, really. Just doing the dean work is cooking my poor little brain. It got very used to being on vacation.

Poor, poor, pitiful me.

Does anyone remember that doll called Pitiful Pearl? My mom used to say I was acting like her. Lots. I was very sensitive as a child. Still am, in fact.

2009-09-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

C prepares her vehicle with the help of incredibly generous friends and a few hangers-on.

2009-08-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when the Bartletts and the Funks and the Martins, or at least most of them, get together at a perfect little cafe in LaConner, Washington. This happens once a year or so. It has become very important to me.

2009-08-30T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am glocky inside. That means mixed up, confrabulated. Ill-at-ease, a touch anxious, somewhat jittery. Not the full-on panic attack, but just the icky, commonly-found-on-Sunday-afternoon gloobiness that is not uncommon to my experience.

We went to see District 9 last night, and that was a mistake. Way too much creepy creature design and violence and the meanness of man versus alien. Again. Like watching a video game come to life. I don't really play video games. I know about them because of my son, but I'm not into them.

And then there are these fires that are burning just to the north of us. Yes, it's fire season in Southern California. Yes, the fires are horrible and they threaten friends of ours who live in the mountains. But we are not directly affected by their potential devastation. I mean, it hurts to breathe in lots of smoke, but we are far away from the flames. And all I do is worry about my friends who live up there. I offer to take them in, but they have other resources, and it appears that their houses are all going to be okay.

But the awareness of the danger and the high temperatures and the deeper meaning of global warming and pollution and air quality and living this far south are not lost on me. It all makes me want to move back to the depressed, moldy, often-dismal Pacific Northwest.

What would I do if I lived in Portland or Washington state? I'd have to find a job, and it wouldn't be easy, that's for sure.

Maybe I could open up that bait shop I've been dreaming about.

Or start my own school. Now there's an idea: Miss Lisa's School for Wayward Youths. But I don't want to deal with wayward youths. Wah.

Glorby. That's how I'm feeling.

2009-08-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

There is a lot to be said for taking care of your own house. We had a busy and expensive summer making repairs and painting and winnowing just a little bit. Now it is the end of August, pretty much, and we can relax a bit and enjoy some of the fruits of our labors.

Well, the labors of the guys I paid to do the actual work. And for that I owe quite a bit to Angie's List. Or at least the yearly fee.

It seems that if there is any "extra" money at all, it goes to either travel or house fixing. We haven't really traveled anywhere outside of our relatives' homes in the Northwest for many years. Nothing exotic at all, and I think there is a sense that if we don't do it sometime, it may get to be too late. At least that's the feeling one gets when one watches older relatives who have absolutely no interest in traveling whatsoever. My mom cannot fathom coming down here anymore, and that's probably reasonable. My father-in-law also wants to stay home where he feels safe.

But I have am really aware of how little traveled I am, especially when it comes to Europe. I've been to Japan and Korea because of my husband's work, but I've never been to Paris. I need to go before I become too decrepit.

In the meantime, thank goodness for effective air conditioning.

2009-08-16T07:56:00.001-07:00

We are in LaConner, Washington, to have a weekend of memorializing my husband's mom, who died last summer.

Although I have often felt like a friendly interloper here, none of that seems very important anymore. For the most part. The responsibility for the care of the patriarch does not fall to me, but there is something in the guiding of the next generation that is part of my unspoken expectation. I have two more members of the clan in my personal fold, having brought them, with the help of their dad, to add to this offshoot of the family tree. They carry parts of Kay and Glen and all the rest in the way they smile, the quickness with which they get their feelings hurt, and the sense of belonging to this collection of personalities in the Pacific Northwest.

And here's a bonus: one of my college roommates from 1977 is also here with her family, coincidentally staying in the hotel room across the hall from us! We were able to catch up a little last night at the LaConner Brewpub, and then she came back to our hotel room to play a few songs on my husband's guitar and give our kids pointers on playing. (Use a metronome and learn to tune your guitar well.) So cool. She has a new CD coming out in September called "Water Witch." Maybe I can post a snippet of a song here then.

2009-08-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

Saw Julie/Julia this afternoon at the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz. My esteem and admiration for Meryl Streep grows. She is so incredibly watchable, so compelling. She makes it look so easy.

Of course seeing the movie also made me want to reacquaint myself with my kitchen. I can get so lazy and uninterested in trying very hard with the cooking. Sigh.

2009-08-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

I just read Tom Davis's memoir called Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss. It's about his beginnings as a comedy writer and performer with Al Franken, he of Minnesota senate fame. It's fascinating not only to read the details of their work on Saturday Night Live when it was a brand new show, but also to note Davis's very detached, minimalist approach to these historic events and the people he worked with.

It's also amazing to consider that Davis had the success he had considering all the drugs he ingested.

I was not ever a Deadhead in any fashion, but I am now curious about Jerry Garcia and what he meant to a ton of people my age. I need to listen to some GD highlights to refresh my perspective.

It was also very interesting to read about Davis's feelings of professional jealousy and competition with all the other writers and producers, and Franken, too. I was a fan of Franken's in particular for many years; it is illuminating to read the story of the guy who was there alongside him for much of his comedy career.

Oh, I'm going to go on record here as predicting that Al Franken and Arnold Schwarzenegger will vie for the presidency within the next 15 years.

2009-08-02T22:14:00.000-07:00

It is summer and so I am cleaning out closets. Today I went through my son's stash of old papers from high school, including a lot of assignments and brush writing from his Japanese language and culture class.

I found the inflatable mattress. I wondered where that had gone.

I found a couple of games still wrapped in plastic underneath dusty boxes including Monopoly-Star Wars Version and Scattergories and Mastermind. These were last-minute Christmas purchases that I thought were necessary to ensure an appearance of unconditional abundance. There was a long period of time when I wanted the kids to wake up to a tree enveloped by gaily wrapped presents, a veritable landslide of orgiastic consumerism. Where did this come from, I wonder?

I found a nativity scene that Grandma Kay sent down for Mathias a few years before she died.

I question whether or not to toss a lot of this stuff, or donate it to the Disabled Veterans down on Sonora. I wonder if I am throwing away some aspect of my son's childhood that he will someday want to see and, when he asks me where his origami projects are, I'll have to admit that I threw them away when he was off at college.

I just cannot see the good in holding on to these artifacts. I can't see the good in holding on to my own flotsam, either. Some of it is quaint, but most of it is frankly pretty boring. Certainly there can be no need to retain merely adequate essays, right? I read through them and do not see gems. The work sheets are easy to toss. The original artwork and personal stories do go into a big portfolio, and he can do with that what he wants.

I'm at a point, and I've been here for quite a few years, where the weight of the things around me drags me down, makes me feel ineffective and depressed. I save unused envelopes and small journals and greeting cards and scores of pens and pencils, believing that one day I will find the perfect use for whatever it is and all will be balanced and right with the universe.

But many years have gone by and I have accumulated boxes of stuff. Some of it is cute and some is utilitarian, but having it around me has not enriched my life or helped me do anything very differently or better or in a more interesting fashion.

So it's time to let go. Give away, clean up, pare down. Keep the few essential items and of course the books that I really do want to read (but not all the godforsaken teaching books!). No one else around here wants to face the hard decisions so it has to be me. I have to be the brave pioneer woman who takes the heirloom pump organ and sets it resolutely by the side of the wagon train rut.

I will tie my bonnet anew, set my mostly Norwegian jaw, and forge forward to a less cluttered future.

I was looking for a good photo to post here that would illustrate clutter artistically, and I ran across a line from a hoarding article that said that clutter is obesity of the home. Yikes.

Note: I will not give away Grandma Kay's nativity scene!

2009-08-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Facebook has me by the neurons these days, and it is not a good thing.

Yesterday I had plans to put my house in order, as we have done a bunch of interior painting and all my office stuff is in stacks throughout the house. I do not like to be disorganized. It makes me feel bad. And I need to get rid of 75 percent or so of the flotsam and jetsam that surrounds all of us in this little house.

That would include a fair amount of books I've purchased from Amazon and Powell's online, all intended to help me be a better teacher and administrator. Some of them are good, and many are repetitive and unimaginative. But I need to pass them on to the next anxious mid-life career changer (there are lots of us out there).

Plus I have two kids, one of whom is in college and the other who is heading off in that direction in a period of time. They both have a bunch of childhood odds and ends taking up space and those things need to be carted off for others to use and enjoy. I am having a tough time getting my daughter to let go of her books, though. I didn't realize she loved Dr. Seuss that much...

Anyway, I got on Facebook, which is the best way for me to communicate with my son and to see how he is communicating with others. And I looked up two or three hours later and saw that I had been bouncing all over FB and the various links to silly YouTube videos, checking out people's summer photos and trip descriptions, seeing who is friends with whom, etc.

I am only playing two Scrabble games and get easily frustrated on the other word games, so I didn't mess around there too much. But still. I've got to cut it out.

Self-discipline is not a strong suit for me. Will it ever be? I don't know. And today is Saturday, and school doesn't start officially for another some weeks... Time to relax!

2009-07-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

Gosh, it's nice when friends leave comments. Thank you, friends!

I made a troubling discovery this last week.

As a middle school teacher/dean, I get invited to a thin trickle of bar and bat mitzvahs every year. I have preferred to give books I have loved as gifts, rather than money. It seems fitting, and the stories I've chosen are ones I truly have enjoyed.

For boys, I have given My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. And for girls, I have given one of my favorite gothic novels, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

So I went to a ceremony this last weekend and was thumbing through Jane Eyre when I caught sight of a distinctly anti-Semitic remark toward the end of the book when Jane is arguing with Rochester about something having to do with her ability to take care of herself financially.

I was so surprised, not having remembered this exchange at all in the various times I've read or taught the book. But it totally wrecks my little plan of what I had considered my perfect teacher-gift for the bat mitzvah. Oy.

Now I have to find another great title about a plucky lass who overcomes great odds to find happiness. I've been considering A Little Princess despite the idea that most girls read it when they're eight, and that it ends with Sarah Crewe being rescued by a rich old man.

I'm on the hunt. All tips gladly taken!

2009-07-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

I watched "My Dog Skip" the other night because it was on HBO and Cam had told me way back when that it was a good movie to watch with the kids.

Plus it has Frankie Muniz in it, which is good, but even better is Kevin Bacon as his father. I don't know what it is about Kevin Bacon, but I am compelled to watch him in every movie he's ever made. I think he is a very skilled actor. I am a fan.

Plus it also had Diane Lane in it, and she was good in "Lonesome Dove," which is a book I think I might enjoy reading again, and it also had Owen Wilson in it, and gosh, he is cute too. Who else... Oh yeah, Clint Howard. Got to watch Clint whenever he's on screen. Cannot not think of "Gentle Ben" when I see him. I guess that's the price you pay for childhood stardom. Ron will always, always be Opie.

Anyway, the Skip movie has this really cute Jack Russell terrier in it and a bad guy whacks the dog with a shovel at one point, and you're not quite sure if the dog is going to die on the operating table or not. I won't wreck the ending for all of my blog devotees who haven't yet seen the movie, but suffice it to say that "My Dog Skip" is a certified tear-jerker.

I need to see something not sentimental right now, but not the new Transformers movie, either. I need a good Western. Something with my other all-time fave, Jeff Bridges. We watched "Bad Company" last week and enjoyed that quite a bit.

It's 11:35 p.m. and there's a mockingbird outside tonight that is chirping away for all its worth. [Question: when you say "For all its worth," are you saying for all that it is worth? Or all of its worth as in the possessive use of its? I do not know right this second.]

But what gives with these crazy night-time songfests? It actually makes me feel slightly crazy.

So this is where my mind goes when school is out for the summer. It has been very nice to get my office organized the past few weeks, to weed out the extra paper and put things in their proper places (Wendy would be proud, I think). I still have a lot to put away, and I want to be intelligent about my groupings. I guess I need a drawer for Students, past and present, and then Procedural Things, and then some space for my heirloom lesson plans (just in case).

I did discover a cache of Post-it Notes, and that made me happy. Shiny and wrapped in cellophane, the whole deal. I really do have a nice little office. It's kinda cool. Plus I also really like my co-workers, my "colleges," as Scott used to say. Corny but made me smile each time.

"Hello, colleges," he'd say as he entered the room. I don't know if anyone else was charmed by that.

Once again I am grateful for the existence of my little school. And Kevin Bacon.

2009-06-28T22:58:00.001-07:00

Tonight we had a dinner for three very dear friends who are leaving this region, our neighborhood, the whole flippin' state. It is time for them to move on to other, newer places and pursuits. We've known these three for about 20 years, give or take a few, and have been through some major California headlines with them (most notably the Rodney King riots) and many minor but meaningful events.

People do move on. People do decide to strike out for parts unknown all the time. I am excited and nervous for them, and not a little envious. I've daydreamed about getting an Airstream and packing up some books and a bowl and a toothbrush and taking off for der hinterlands. Maybe I'll do it yet.

2009-06-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

Went to the Greek Theater last night to listen to Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and another excellent guitarist/singer who were all wonderful (Buddy Miles). Except it made me want to listen to Shawn Colvin even more. I love her voice.

School is deadly quiet. Which is the way it should be in June. But it's hard to work when there's no one around and the deadlines are so far away. I feel like Sarah Crewe in A Little Princess as she returns to her garret each night and befriends a cute mouse she names Melchesedic. Or something like that. There is a small mouse somewhere in the middle school. I choose to think of it as a cute, fuzzy little creature who is also alone and forlorn in this cold, cruel world. I choose not to think of it as a hulking, mean-eyed rat with no concern for where he/she leaves his/her droppings.

Melchesedic. I think that's how I remember it. I loved that book, especially with the Tasha Tudor drawings. I so identified with Sarah! Which is slightly weird since I didn't go through anything like she did in that book. Which is the genius of the author, whose name I cannot remember right now.

I always thought I was a bit of a slacker when it came to reading, because I had these siblings who read constantly, and read very dense, demanding work (compared to A Little Princess). But now that I think about it, I really read quite a bit, and I got so much enjoyment from most of the books I read. It saddens me that time for reading is growing less and less in this world.

That having been said, I'm going to go get a book called The Last Child in the Woods or something like that, about how kids today are nature-deficient. Too much time is spent staring at glowing rectangles and not enough time is spent mucking around in the dirt and bumping into trees and seeing cool leaves and listening to birds, etc. (Although the flipping mockingbirds in this neighborhood are really beginning to annoy me each night at 1 a.m.).

2009-06-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

I am not actually squeamish about worms. I'm squeamish about sticking fish hooks into them while they are wriggling. That seems wrong and cruel. Which it is.

But if it's wrong and cruel to kill helpless beings, it's also wrong and cruel to pay someone else to kill them so I can eat them. But I am not a vegetarian. It is a quandary, an ethical issue that I generally ignore about every day.

I have a whole bunch of conflicting social events that are bunched up this weekend and next. Plus I am nagged by the need to go see my aged mamaw. Plus the practical thought that summer is the best time for me to take care of stuff around this cluttered little house.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. He was not much into Father's Day, or Christmas, or birthdays. He did like Thanksgiving, I think. I once gave him a tie pin of a tiny fork and knife crossed over each other. I thought it was so funny and cute. This is just one example of my poor taste in gift-giving. I even buy things for myself that I never wear. My style is something strange and unbidden; certainly it's uncultivated.

Some people say they don't know much, but they know what they don't like. I don't even know that half the time.

Maybe I just don't care.

Frazz in the comics today was about Vonnegut on a summer reading list. That made me happy. Vonnegut was kind of crazy and so was my dad.

2009-06-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

Ahhh. Breathe in, breathe out. Smell the June. See the things around you. Listen. Touch. The electrical storm in your brain is sputtering its last. Suddenly you can be aware. Before, it wasn't possible. Before, it was at level four.

The train is blowing its horn way down the hill as it cruises through the San Fernando corridor. The birds are tweeting (not Tweeting). I don't know everything about everyone I care about, but I can live with that right now.

There is still regret and nastiness and fear and sorrow, of course, but it isn't swelling like it was, and I can walk the dog.

Walk the dog.

Walk the tortoise. Okay.

2009-06-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

I want a cabin in the woods next to a river with sizable fish running in it. I want good books on shelves, a fire crackling in the stone fireplace, an adequate pantry with good things to make to eat. I want a wonderful queen-sized bed with comfy quilts and really nice pillows. I want a clean, working bathroom, and a reliable and speedy internet connection. I want a little garage for my little car. I want a green lawn, not too big, with comfy patio furniture in chairs and a table to sit at when it's summer.

I want birds in the trees and occasional small wildlife; not too many skunks, although they have their place.

I think that should do it for now.

2009-05-24T11:32:00.001-07:00

Now my new desire is to run a bait shop up somewhere near Mt. Hood in Oregon. I'd sell worms, lures, and beer and coffee. It would be in an old wooden storefront up in the woods, with a few smallish rivers nearby, and a couple of good lakes within easy driving distance. Oh man, that sounds good. I'd also have a couple racks of books to sell, and a newspaper or two if they can survive.

2009-05-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

I seem to be captivated by some of the most mewling students of all time. Not captivated. That's really the wrong word. Captured is more like it. And I wonder, do I bring this on myself because of my way of being? Or is it just a turn of the celestial determinants, whatever that means? I just feel like there is a small knot of students at my school who seek me out so they can complain, kvetch, harp, whine, fuss, and generally annoy the bejabbers out of me.

Or is it that we are so close to the end of the school year? That could be it. My own stores of patience are nearly depleted by this time of the year. And students, like mad dogs, can smell insecurity and impatience and inability to withstand terror a mile away. They sniff it out, come hunting for you, and when they track you down, they grab hold and shake and rattle your bones and don't let go. You have to physically shush them out of your office and on to some other poor sap who will listen.

Maybe that's it. Maybe I listen too much. Maybe I need to work on my tough exterior a little more. I am so glad there are just a few more weeks left.

But then what? A summer of preparation for the new year... and new students, who must learn to respect and fear me, worry that they are bothering me, taking up my valuable time... No, that won't work. I do need some kind of a professional makeover, though. Argh. My least favorite thing. And it always seems to come to this.

Sand candles. I'd like to make and sell sand candles at a hippie market somewhere in Northern California. And dipped candles too, with various colors of wax, and poorly mounted wicks that would pop and sputter when lit. Yes. That sounds pleasant.

2009-04-26T13:28:00.001-07:00

There are about five instructional weeks left in this school year.

Why does this always surprise me? It is shocking how fast the time goes by when you are a teacher. Shocking. Never in my life have days and weeks and months flown by so quickly.

And what am I rushing toward, anyway? Retirement? I don't think so. Summer vacation? Yes, but we're already planning for next year!

Criminey.

2009-04-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

It is Sunday morning. Easter Sunday, to be exact, at least for those who observe this day. My observance includes hard-boiling two dozen medium eggs from Ralphs. Katie and I will dye them later this morning. I don't think I'll be going to church. There is something odd about going to church on major religious holidays when it's a Unitarian-Universalist church. Of course others who go to this church don't feel the same way I do.

I think I am becoming less religious as I get older. I am not too worried about it.

Okay. I have two sections of pop quizzes to grade this morning. My students are reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and many of them are either stymied by the style or are simply not reading the book. Not all, of course. But a lot of students put off reading for English class until late at night, when they are too tired to do the work or retain the information. This is one of the banes of my teacherly existence. I have one or two students this year who openly tell me they hate to read. I am dismayed by this, of course, and I want to do what I can to help change their attitudes. But I feel I have to be careful about this. I can't stomp around and demand they begin to enjoy reading. I have to be stealthy. These are, after all, seventh graders. They are on the lookout for adult coercions all the time. I just have to make sure interesting reading material is always available for them, and hope that my own attitude toward books and reading will filter down to them.

Right now I am glad I have this job. It has been a series of challenges for me over these past six years, but I really do enjoy it all very much. I get nervous on the weekends sometimes, and during vacations, thinking I won't be able to do a good job, or it will be too hard, or whatever. But then I get to school and I see the kids and it all seems very doable. And fun. There is that.

2009-04-05T14:52:00.001-07:00

I continue my quest to find a good movie about teachers or teaching. This break I watched "The Emperor's Club" with Kevin Kline which was somewhat interesting (mostly the part with Emile Hirsch as a young screw-up) and "Chalk," the supposed mockumentary executive produced by Morgan Spurlock. I could not figure that one out. It felt very realistic and horrifying and sad and depressing. Then there was a fantasty sequence that made me realize that it was all fiction. But it wasn't that funny. The situations the new teachers found themselves in all felt way too real and scary and demoralizing. Class after class of high school kids whose only real reason for being there was to be entertained by the buffoonery of misguided, overzealous young teachers who want to win Teacher of the Year or just get through a day with a shred of dignity intact.

Kevin Kline stars in the first movie about a history teacher (why is it always history teachers?) who runs this super-annoying contest where students out-do each other in Julius Caesar trivia. The winner gets to wear a laurel crown and a toga. Of course Emile Hirsch is a cheater and he grows up to continue to be a cheater, and that's the point, that humans have primary characteristics that never change and what you were in high school is what you'll be as an adult.

It was shot at a beautiful old school somewhere on the East coast. The credits said something like the Emma Something School. I don't remember, but it was gorgeous.

I also watched "Frost/Nixon" on my son's XBox (the dvd player wouldn't work, but now I know how to set up for Grand Theft Auto IV should I ever feel the desire). Now that was a good movie. Incredible to see the difference in the attitude about Nixon and any apologizing or confessing he might have been expected to do versus our own recently departed President Bush. What a huge difference. I recommend that movie to everyone.

School starts again on Tuesday. Here we are in April. We have a poetry event coming up for the middle school at the very end of this month, then a four-day camping trip north toward Kernville in the western Sierras. Then the last of May and the first week in June, and then graduation. Many changes afoot. The year has quite whipped by, and yet when I think of specific issues that came up, I realize somewhat painfully the outstanding moments of challenge and compromise that marked each week. It was a tough one. Has been a tough one. Ain't over yet, either.

2009-03-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

I wonder if I need to worry about Conficker on this MacBook. I watched Lesley Stahl report on it on CBS on Sunday and it made me furrow my eyebrows. When I went to the Mac Support pages, I couldn't find anything about Conficker.

Was it just me or did Lesley Stahl seem quite ditzy? I thought I remembered her as being a relatively serious newsperson, but she seemed so surprised by what worms and Trojan horses could do to computers... It was really off-putting.

I think I'll include a photo of one of my favorite dinners with this post. It's not a very good photo. In fact, it looks kind of hideous, but I tell you, the green curry eggplant with chicken from Saladang is really, really good. I see that there is also a mound of Prik King on the plate, which I don't care for as much. The green beans are often a little bitter. I am also displaying my place mat, which is very frayed on the ends and should probably be replaced.

My daughter is on a trip to Costa Rica right now and I miss her too much. It is making me think I will have more to reckon with when she goes off to college in fall of 2010 than I have been imagining.

I also watched an excellent documentary on Jonestown last night on PBS. It was very compelling. Right now I am feeling like all religions are cults. They all seem to ask people to turn over their minds and money to somebody else's idea of Right and Truth and Goodness. I'm moving farther and farther away from that as I get older. Even from my own kooky Unitarianism. I'm not saying I've found some kind of alternative that's better... But I just find suspicious motives in the group-think requirements, in all of them.

I'm feeling the need to be out in the country or something. And not the Southern California country, but back up in the wet and rainy Northwest. I think maybe I'm actually starting to get tired of being homesick.

2009-03-08T22:13:00.001-07:00

"Flight of the Conchords" is on in the other room. The dog is curled up in her cat bed. The furnace is running. I have three new books from Amazon on the table: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, and In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander. Which shall I open first?

I'm also rereading Fahrenheit 451 since the seventh and eighth graders will start tackling it this week. I hope it isn't too much for them. It is considered high school level material by many. I guess I'll find out. What I predict is that the majority of eighth graders will be into it, and a handful of seventh graders will be flummoxed by it. As it often goes.

I just watched The Reader tonight with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes (and Lena Olin and David Kross). What a difficult movie that is! It seems that we are asked to consider feeling sorry for a concentration camp guard, and yet it's not that simple. It seems that we are asked to look at the love affairs of fifteen-year-olds with some kind of deep legitimacy (which is always hard for me with Fiennes--I just don't buy his deal--even though I thought David Kross was very compelling in a sweetly Germanic way--his blue eyes and clearly European aspect set my DNA ringing). It also asks us to look at the value and beauty of reading literature through the eyes of someone we wouldn't normally sympathize with. But Bruno Ganz was great. What an amazing face and manner he has...

I'm feeling generally downhearted about everything having to do with the Holocaust (which sounds pretty obvious I suppose). Maybe it's movie overload. It just doesn't seem like anything good can come out of it. Like Lena Olin's character says when Ralph's character tries to give her money from Kate Winslet. She says nothing can come out of the camps, nothing. It's kind of strange to hear her say that at the end of this particular movie, but I have to agree. I mean what do we keep learning? That men and women can do such incredibly hateful, brutal, inhuman things to each other? I get it.

My mother-in-law used to say she didn't care for movies or books about the Holocaust, and I have another dear friend who refuses to go to Holocaust-related movies. I have thought these to be a little insensitive and certainly politically incorrect stances (at least with the people I tend to hang around), but my attitude is starting to change. It's not that I am only interested in feel-good, upbeat movies with happy endings. The most interesting dramatic pieces are the complicated, tragic things people do and think. I think it's more that I see the Holocaust as this weird trove of plot points and character arcs that have mostly all been explored (and exploited) by storytellers. I almost want it all to have a respectful farewell, and let it rest in peace. But then I risk sounding unfeeling to those who actually lost people and suffered tremendous misery. More ambivalence.

Part of my problem comes from having to teach middle school students about the Holocaust literature, too, which is exceptionally difficult in some big ways. The kids just do not get the gravity of the history, and I feel like I am pounding my own consciousness into this heavy, hand-wringing posture when I try to impress upon the kids how truly sad and horrific it all was.

I feel a sore throat coming on. I may need a health day soon. Mental or otherwise.

2009-02-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

Here it is, Sunday afternoon around 2. I have a stack of short stories to read and mark up. It's not that I don't like reading my students' work. Some of them are really pretty great writers, and I really do enjoy getting to know them through their creative writing.

But I am so stuck here, so much wanting to do anything else other than grade papers. Is this the way it is for all teachers? Why is it so hard, when it really isn't that hard? Is it just the age-old issue of procrastination? I don't even have that much to look at. Actually, I only have about 16 more to go. That's really not that much. Of course I have other stuff to do after that to get ready for tomorrow and the week.

Why does it feel so insurmountable? Why do I keep thinking of food I'd rather eat than these stories I don't want to grade? Why do I keep thinking that if I just moved to Oregon or Washington my life would be so much better? Why don't I just go walk my poor little neglected doggy? There's a good idea.

Here, Dot!

2009-02-15T08:50:00.000-08:00

Blogging here is feeling kind of quaint these days, sort of old-fashioned. I spend too much time surfing around Facebook, spying on my children (particularly my college boy), and it is starting to actually bother me. I had left Blogspot behind, somewhat, while I chased my flirtation into a small obsession with Facebook. Now I grow weary of Facebook. Well, kind of. I still check friends' status updates very regularly (some of them are so funny and so telling). But I like the slightly longer mental engagement required by writing my little paragraphs here.

I can also feel weighed down by the negative aspect of this inarguably narcissistic impulse, but isn't that generally what being a human is all about? I mean really. We come into this world and we squawk. We have to be taken care of or we die. Wait, I'm veering here (as I so often do). What I am meaning to say, and I am not writing a rough draft to get there more seamlessly, which is sort of hypocritical since I'm an English teacher who asks that of her students, is that it is in most of our natures to call out to one another, in one form or another, to say, "Over here!" "Wait up a sec!" "Don't ditch me, you motherf*ckers!" Which of course I can't spell out all the way because I am a teacher and ohmigod what if a student or parent or boss found this and fired me for it? Like that's gonna happen (famous last words).

Anyway, who really cares? I have perhaps three friends who might remember to look at this once every five months. I am not troubled by that math. It still is a chance for me to practice the writing, which is the thing I really enjoy the most.

Yesterday I took my daughter to Sephora for the full-on make-up lesson and in-store application sales pitch. She needed everything and I knew it. I knew it was going to be a hefty price tag (she didn't realize that make-up and all things cosmetic are outstandingly atrociously priced). I needed some stuff, too. Foundation, which I rarely wear anymore since I am old (50) and getting crepey around the eyes and who really cares anyway? But we spent well over a couple hundred bucks yesterday. My daughter's eyes were even bigger when we got the total than they were with the beautifully applied shadow and liner.

Did I say well over a couple hundred? I can't even say how much because I am that shocked by my own spending. But now we are totally set. Katie can go to the Oscars next week with her dad and have a great time. She'll get her hair washed and brushed out just so, and wear her pretty, pretty prom dress that hasn't seen a prom because kids these days wear retro cocktail dresses to proms. And I'll watch from home to see if I can catch a split-second glimpse of her on the red carpet.

By the way, go see "Coraline." It is quite incredible. I want to see it again.

2009-02-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

I went to a middle school debate tournament on Saturday and I overheard one girl who sounded exactly like Ja'mie from "Summer Heights High." I had to laugh, but truly, it was shocking.

I couldn't do debate in high school. It was way too scary, and the aggressive mean kids were the ones who seemed to be into it the most. I was far too wimpy to argue and defend and rebut and all that. So I took drama classes where you could be sort of prepared. Sort of.

I watched some of my students debate against some very tough opponents on Saturday and I was pretty impressed with their ability to think on their feet and not cower in vomitous fear. That would have been my reaction. The school I teach at is not into awards and ceremonies, so when the contestants at the tournament were given their trophies, it made me realize once again how glad I am to work at a progressive school that promotes and values creative, critical thinking and not stomping and shoving your way to first place. I wish I had gone to a school like the one where I am a teacher. Sigh.

2009-01-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

Facebook has stolen me away from my blog. I imagine that's happened to a whole lot of people. Updating one's status is so much quicker than composing a whole freakin' paragraph or two.

2009-01-04T20:06:00.000-08:00

Only a few more hours left before the school bell rings and it's back to reading, writing, and To Kill a Mockingbird. I still love that book. It still makes me cry. In Chapter 9, Scout overhears Atticus talking to Uncle Jack about the Tom Robinson case, and she realizes much later that Atticus intended for her to overhear. That just catches me in the throat every single time. Why is that? How did Harper Lee do that so nicely?

2008-11-28T15:19:00.001-08:00

2008-11-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

It is a glorious Thanksgiving weekend. Glorious because I don't have to go to school. Otherwise I kind of detest the use of the word "glorious." It seems like it belongs to a religious person, and I am not.

I got to see the first episode of "Summer Heights High" yesterday, and it made me laugh and laugh. It's an Australian comedy on HBO and stars one actor playing the major roles, a la Tracy Ullman. He's very funny and the show is about the rotten personalities that make up high schools (and junior highs). I can't wait to start watching the rest of the shows. Which is more than I can say for "True Blood," which I am also enjoying and hoping will become cracklingly good. I like its setting a lot, and the actors are good. But now that Sookie knows that Sam is a shape-shifter, what else will keep the suspense alive?

And how will "Twilight" compare to "True Blood"? They seem to be practically the same story, although one was clearly written by a Mormon and the other clearly wasn't.

Anyway, it's been a nice Thanksgiving break. Our school takes off Wednesday, so it's like a bonus day, and that makes me very happy. I'm sure the students are happy, too.

Does anybody put a comma before "too" anymore?

I'm going to revisit comma usage upon return. Won't that be fun?

2008-11-17T22:43:00.000-08:00

School is feeling hard and not all that much fun right now. Why is that? What is my part in it? God, probably more than I know.

2008-11-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

Parent-teacher conferences are uniquely trying and yet important parts of the school year. Face-to-face communication about the students is generally helpful, but there is a strange tension that wrings the life-force out of me every time. Nobody really understands it except for other teachers who've been through it.

Just like everything else. I need a therapist.

2008-10-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

Hello. It is now October. The pumpkins are out in front at Vons, and they cost $6 or $7 each. Oddly enough, the organic ones at Whole Foods yesterday cost .69 cents each. Was that a trick of my eye?

We don't really do Halloween at my school because classes are out the last two days of the month so we can have parent/teacher conferences. One teacher has a light-up pumpkin in his room, but other than that we are not at all big on seasonal decorations.

I loved that kind of thing when I was a kid. I wonder if our middle school students miss the visual treats...?

There are times when I feel like I am too old to be teaching. Mostly because of the lack of energy I feel. I love being with the students and being in class, but at night I am so wiped out... I want to crawl into bed by 9 p.m. every night and crash. And that's usually the time I have set aside for correcting papers and writing comments.

Big sigh. How are the rest of you teachers doing out there?

2008-09-10T06:48:00.000-07:00

Hello, persons. Did any teachers out there read Alfie Kohn's article in EdWeek about teaching being more about learning as seen through the eyes of the students rather than through the eyes of the teacher?

When I read Kohn, I am usually reminded of how I felt as a student, particularly when I was in high school in the '70s and felt that most teachers and the school program were set up rigidly and I was to fit into that mold as best I could. I managed to squeeze myself into an acceptable shape and I passed, but what did I learn?

What do my students learn now?

My other reaction to Kohn is as a teacher, and I find myself thinking well, yeah, that's easy for you to say. You're not in the classroom, juggling a million things at once, trying to figure out how to help kids learn how to do whatever it is you're teaching a little or a lot better.

Still, I think the arguments are worth thinking about.

I have a superb group of middle school students to work with this year. Or is that half of them are fresh and unknown to me? Last year's group was wonderful in its own way, too. But truly, it is exciting to see the new faces and to get to know them. I used an assignment I picked up from a teachers' web site: "In a million words or fewer, describe your child," and it was a smashing success. (This is for the parents, not the kids.)

I don't know how my colleagues will react to the essays, but many of them made me cry. The depth of love and devotion these parents display for their children is mind-boggling. What better topic could there be for a parent? One mom even made a small flip book of photos of her daughter. And yes, there is a fair amount of bragging, but there is a lot of cold, hard honesty about children's struggles, and much information about difficult family dynamics that have given me a new perspective on what my students have been going through for some of their lives.

I highly recommend this assignment, but not to any of the teachers I work with at our school. Sorry about that!

2008-06-20T18:05:00.001-07:00

I have a new computer! I am so happy! I am singing the new computer song!

Plus, it's a Mac! Yay! I am returning to my cpu roots... I knew it was time to get a new Mac when my daughter said to me, well, Mom, you're really kind of a Dell person.

I almost shrieked. Little does she know the debates I used to get into with DOS users who thought Macs were toys.

But now I have a Mac! Really, I am very, very happy about this. The only thing that would make me happier would be if I had remembered to tell the Mac people that I'm a teacher, so I could have gotten the educators' discount. No problem, though. I'll just head back to the store (very nicely air conditioned, I might add) tomorrow, and they'll give me that money back.

Like I said, yay!

2008-05-04T21:55:00.000-07:00

I simply cannot root for the Lakers.

I also cannot do the piddling few correcting jobs I have waiting in my gray plastic crate box thing. I simply cannot. Plus I have this burning desire to figure out how to teach sentence diagramming one month before the end of the school year. What's the matter with me?

I saw Iron Man and I liked it quite a bit, all because of Robert Downey, Jr. He is a good actor, and his past difficulties just make him all that more human and likable in my eyes. But they didn't play the theme song enough! And I wish someone else had played the Gwyneth Paltrow part. Ever since she was dished by Kathy Griffin, I can't feel much sympathy for Ms. Paltrow. Maybe even before that. Maybe if Kathy Griffin had played Pepper Potts... Now that would have been interesting.

Bravo to Jon Favreau. I like to see that guy do well. And Jeff Bridges, oh yes, always with the Jeff Bridges.

2008-03-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

I have been away.

I have been sick.

I have been busy.

The children, oh, the children. They are growing up this year, like they always do. I find myself getting a little misty about their impending departure in a few months. And then they do something irritating and I resume the usual. But mostly they are very dear, these little middle schoolers. Very dear.

Except for the one who passed on this flu to me. But that can't be helped, right?

We are moving into reading about the Holocaust now, and it is so incredibly depressing to me that I almost can't believe I have to teach it. Of course that is ridiculous, but still. We are watching a documentary called "Into the Arms of Strangers" about the Kindertransports to England, and man, is that devastating. I have many Jewish students who have pretty extensive knowledge of all this, and they give me more information than I sometimes know what to do with. We are reading The Devil's Arithmetic and will follow with sections of Anne Frank's diary and a little bit of Maus, Night, etc. We also have two gentlemen who will come speak to the kids. One is the son of a concentration camp survivor, and the other is an actual survivor.

If there any other teachers out there who have anything to share about the difficulty of teaching this to 7th and 8th graders, I'm open to advice or just thoughts about the experience.

Thank you.

2008-02-18T18:01:00.000-08:00

Exciting news! The year is whipping by faster than it did even last year! Wow!

I have never had a job where the weeks and months just flew along like this. It is mind-boggling, and somewhat troubling. Except that I'm not bored, not one bit at all. I certainly have had my share of clock-watching jobs, and the season-watching one when I worked at the TV station. But this business of teaching kids, with lots of homework to grade every night and weekend... It just makes the life go by so frickin' quickly. Nice assonance there.

My glasses are smudgy.

Time to get back to work. Time to cut the blog, I think. It's pretty damn boring, even to me.

2008-02-04T01:08:00.000-08:00

I just spent three hours on the phone with a very kind and patient tech expert in the Phillipines (spelling, please) who helped me get my wireless router (thank you, Linksys) up and running.

I am tired. I have to get up in a few hours and get ready for another week of teaching English to seventh and eighth graders.

We had an incident at our little school last week where a few students went online and created a web page with half a dozen or so nasty little comments about other students. I think this thing is happening a lot these days, and it brought lots of drama to our school and all the students. Too bad the internet is such a fantastic and amazing resource (how did teachers do it in the days before broadband?) (I guess they went to the library). Some kids just have to do dopey things. Oh well. I guess plenty of adults do dopey things, too.

As for me, I'm pooped. I didn't finish my correcting of papers this weekend like I'd planned. The kids will just have to wait one more day. On one hand I don't think this is the end of the world; on the other, I feel like I am just not the greates teacher if I don't have a reasonably quick turn-around on getting papers back.

I hope they'll be sympathetic.

Tomorrow is Monday. And the beginning of February. Where did this year go?

2007-10-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

It is time for parent/teacher conferences. I have never really liked or enjoyed these as a parent. There's always this weird energy and mild paranoia, even though generally reports have gone well enough for me with my kids. Still... there's always this worry that maybe the teacher is going to turn out to be some kind of evil tyrant who will be able to make me feel as small as I did in the first grade when I blurted out some inappropriate remark.

And it's not that much better being on the other side of the table. I mean, for most of my students my comments are positive and happy and we're all looking forward to continuing our work for the year, but there are a few for whom the outlook isn't so rosy. As always. I worry that if a student is doing poorly in my class, that means I'm a crummy teacher, and the parents will assume that and will go tell the director and the board and all that, and I'll be out on the street, penniless and homeless...

2007-10-01T19:43:00.000-07:00

Dang it. I just wrote a nice little blog about my two-night field trip to Catalina and didn't save it properly. Gone, just like that.

Had a good trip, but got so sick this weekend. Why does this happen to me? Am I getting too old? Too decrepit?

Still, I enjoyed the squid dissection and the snorkeling and the hanging out with the 54 students. Middle school kids can be so funny and delightful and endearing. I am lucky to be at the school I'm at. Wow, how's that for great English?

2007-09-25T23:04:00.000-07:00

I'm having one of those sustained awarenesses of how happy I am to be teaching this year. It is just such an enjoyable challenge to figure out how to best get students to improve their writing and reading and speaking. I really enjoy it. I feel like my ego is being gratified in some teacherly way. The kids are funny and endearing, even when they're annoying, and it feels like I am part of their world to help them figure some stuff out, or at least to be a calming presence while they go through their inevitable pre-adolescent shenanigans.

Plus Back-to-School Night at my daughter's groovy, progressive high school. Man, what an excellent situation that is.

It's a wonderful world.

2007-08-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

School starts soon and I am fritzing.

Things are pretty different this year. New building, new director. No wonder I'm fritzing!

2007-07-27T18:44:00.001-07:00

Ian McKellan will play Lear this October at UCLA. That is a performance I would really love to see.

I was in a production of King Lear in college. We set the play in a rehab halfway house for troubled teens. I played Oswald. I wasn't very good, but the young woman who played Lear was truly incredible. I am impressed with her performance to this day. I wonder how Sir Ian might compare?

I was also Paul Robeson in a college version of Are You Now or Have You Ever Been...? It was a lowlight of my college life. Not being in the play, which I have always enjoyed, but feeling that I was such a letdown to the director. This was in the late '70s, and the professor was a fan of Grotowsky, and he expected his student actors to be willing to take off their clothes, both literally and figuratively, for their craft. I was not one of those students. In fact, I attended a midnight session of his "para-theatrical" shenanigans and broke my ankle running around the dark campus. A week or so later, at an end-of-school party, this professor accused me of breaking my ankle on purpose so I wouldn't have to finish his special late-night event.

I was so angry to be accused, but now, almost 30 years later, maybe he was right. I never trusted this guy, never felt safe with him, and it turns out my intuition was right.

I know politically correct human relations requirements can be annoying and overdone, but it's better to call bullshit on abusive authorities than it is to let them act out their sociopathic thrills. This teacher took advantage of his naive students and that is reprehensible.

Brendan Fraser is incredibly good-looking in the movie Student Ties. Is that what it's called? He plays a Jewish quarterback in a '50s-era posh prep school. His classmates are Matt Damon (dang that guy is cute when evil!) and Chris O'Donnell (I love seeing him and Damon in the same movie because they are almost interchangeable). Ben Affleck was there, too.

But there is just something about Brendan Fraser that is so voluptuous... I'll have to go hunt for a good picture of him so you can all agree with me.

August is nearly here and I have LOTS of preparation to do for the coming school year. I really, really hope I won't procrastinate as much as I did last year. Really.

OMG, the movie is called School Ties, not Student Ties. Student Ties would be a promotion from Lands End, I think.

2007-07-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

So it's hot and sweaty in Brooklyn right before a big rainstorm.

I guess that isn't news, is it? I knew going to Brooklyn for this Shakespeare seminar in July would be uncomfortable, and yes, it was. But there was a ton of good information for teaching Shakespeare to the youngsters, and the people were nice, and I got to see my little sister and her family, which was magnifique.

We also went to the Transit Museum and got a tour from a grizzled volunteer named Phil. So cool! I recommend the subway museum to anyone who likes that kind of thing. We got to see a switching tower in actual use, with lights on the board and signal switching and everything.

Subway people call subway fanatics "foamers." My sister and I think there are a lot of little boys with possible Asperger's Syndrome who might fit that category. The transit museum is the perfect place for little obsessives.

We also had a superb lunch at Pacifico near Brooklyn Heights. Better and more sumptuous guacamole I have not had here in Southern California! Not to mention killer quesadillas.

My sister lives in Park Slope, which gets written about often in the New York Times as being a very groovy place for up-and-comers who can't/won't/don't want to live in Manhattan. There are strollers galore, mommies breastfeeding like crazy, a policemen's bar (Farrell's) on the corner, and insanely succulent bagels (Terrace Bagel). I love visiting my sis there. Hustling for the screaming subways and dodging pedestrians reminds me of my younger days when I spent more time in New York, back in college when I might have entertained the fantasy of living there for about two seconds.

But I am getting older now, and all that hustling and jostling and hot, steamy, grimy air in the subway stations is kind of hard to take.

Still, I have new respect and admiration for the people at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. (the largest collection of Shakespeareana in the world) and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. That was a cool event. Thirty hand-picked English teachers (most from the northeast) who were taught how to better teach Shakespeare to their high school and middle school students. With tons of performance and acting exercises--yay! My favorites!

The Folger experts say that if you want to teach kids all about the characters, plots, and themes in Shakespeare, point them to any Cliff's Notes or Sparknotes and it's all there. But! If you want them to really get the feeling for the words, the language, and the beauty of it, you must get them off their butts and onto their feet and beginning to act out passages. You have to get the students to use their frickin' mouths and heads and bodies, to open up and use the text for the rich resource it is. That means playing lots of theater games that allow kids to all act like fools together, so they won't be as self-conscious when you ask them to stand up and recite the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet all alone in front of the class.

More later.

2007-07-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

I've been browsing other blogs and I'm thinking, there are some funny and good writers out there, but how do you know how to find them unless you spend time hunting and pecking? And shouldn't all the intelligent and thoughtful bloggers somehow get together and harness their energy and bring about actual change in this country of ours?

I mean really, it's getting ridiculous.

2007-07-02T13:49:00.000-07:00

It grows hotter.

I found a paperback of Annie Dillard's found poems at a Crown Books (remember those?) and I bought it because I like A.D. and I'm interested in found poems. But I wonder: Are found poems legitimate? I mean, they are cobbled together from other people's writing, right? I mean somebody had to think of those phrases and choose those words. Then somebody comes along and snips up your article or headline or whatever and glues it next to someone else's line and calls it his or her own. I don't know... The collection is called Mornings Like This. Which shouldn't that be Mornings Like These? Maybe not.

I guess there is a place for found poetry. It certainly can be useful with students who feel like they aren't particularly poetic.

I am not fond of my dog right now. She is peeing and pooing freely around the house at night. She seems to have forgotten all previous housetrainings. And if we shut her up in her wee kennel then she just yips and whines all night long. I don't know what to do. The carpet is wrecked in the TV room and the rug in the diningroom, which was never a good rug, smells horrid. Do I have to even mention that the diningroom is not a good room for pet stench?

I asked the vet on rabies day how long Shih Tzus last, and she said, oh, this little girl should make it to 15 or 16 in fine form. That's a good eight or nine more years of this.

It's not that I want Dot to die, per se, but I am not happy with this leakage situation. I guess it's up to us (me) to retrain her. And I become so utterly lazy at this time of the year.

Laziness mixed with grand procrastination and a dollop of anxiety. Realizing that I have a list of things that really need to be done around the house in the summer, when classes are out, and yet I cannot make that call to the house painter and the person who installs an attic fan and the people who put in new windows and sliding glass doors.

Next week I go to Brooklyn for a mini-institute held by the Folger Library and I hope I shall learn how to better teach Shakespeare to my students. I hope it's good. It's going to be damned hot and sticky and I am really feeling unhappy about that. But I do get to see my sister and her family, and that makes me glad. I can see what she has on her Tivo which is always of great interest to me.

I also want to figure out how to speed up my reading rate. I'm slow, and I do a fair amount of re-reading when I get started. If anyone has any advice or ideas about speeding up reading, let me know. Thanks.

2007-06-17T21:13:00.001-07:00

I believe there are quite a few avid readers in the incoming middle school group.

This makes me excited. It also makes me miss the high school students of yore. It is so much fun to discuss all the cool business that takes place in the literature that we get to study at our amazing little school.

Although I did see an article in the L.A. Times about an online high school through Stanford that sounded like it would be so ideal for those students who are so advanced that hanging out with more average readers in a classroom can be stultifying. I can think of one or two kids who might've benefited from that kind of set-up.

You can argue that home-schooled or online-schooled students would miss the social experience of being in a physical school with classes and other kids and teachers, but I really doubt the wonderfulness of that experience many times. Maybe we should all just hook up at home and never venture out into the scary world... I have some relatives who would probably enjoy that.

I'm reading The Voyage by Philip Caputo. I hope it's good--it hasn't grabbed me yet.

2007-06-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

How is that I forgot that I have to write evaluations?

I was so happy the other day, wallowing in the newness of summer vacation, feeling a smidge smug and so joyous and free. And then I was reminded that I have to write these evaluations for my students, and my heart sank.

It's not that it's that hard to do, because it isn't. But it's kind of like grading papers. The fun stuff has all taken place, and now comes the housekeeping. And it's not easy evaluating humans on the very subjective criteria we have for middle school English class. At least it's not easy for me. I imagine that veterans with years of experience just pop these things out with insight and clarity and really good ideas for personal improvement. I don't.

One fun thing is coming up with the summer reading list and choosing the titles for next year's study. That is enjoyable.

I am thirsty.

By the way, hello to Limon! I still cannot comment on your blog, which annoys me because I am enjoying (in a sympathetic way) your writing about your travails with your poor AM's bad back. I would have a margarita in a second, or maybe a martini, three olives please, or just a tall glass of cold, clear water with the idea of a frothy cocktail in mind.

2007-06-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

Week One of summer vacation.

It's almost enough to make me believe in a higher power.

I am so glad to be done with classroom prep! It was really getting tough there in the last weeks... I wonder if the kids could tell. Probably.

Still, it was a great year. I enjoyed my students just about 95 percent of the time, which I think is pretty excellent, and I found I have pretty terrific colleagues, which is also excellent.

And now I'll know so much more as I prepare this summer for next year.

I do hope I'll be able to turn my mind off of teaching for at least a little while. And then of course turn it back on when it's time to buckle down. But not yet.

To all summer vacationing teachers in the land, I salute you, drink a toast to you, and wish you great, meaningful rest!

2007-06-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

Four more days and counting.

Actually, just three and a half. And these are "fun" days, lots of activities for the final bonding moments before the eighth graders begin worrying about high school in earnest and the seventh graders relax because they made it through the first half of middle school.

I know so much more than I did in September. Thank god.

I am really, really tired at the end of this year. I need a nice, long break. In a cool, clear swimming pool. Turquoise, deep end, steps in the shallow end, a comfy chaise for drying off. Length for lap swimming. Someday this will happen. I have faith.

2007-05-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

I'm planning some changes for next year.

For instance, I've got to pound some basic grammar into these kids well before winter break. I've got to do it in a fun (well, more or less) way.

I've got to get them to learn how to write interesting topic sentences with logical, compelling introductory paragraphs that follow.

I've got to get them to hunker down with some seriously atrocious spelling.

Is it incorrect to say I've got to do something? Should I have written I have to pound some basic grammar into these kids? Oh my. Please don't shoot me, I'm only the English teacher.

I need a break. I need to read some good books that are only about my interests. I need to be acutely selfish for a while. I need to walk my poor little dog. I have got to find a swimming pool. I have got a great and tremendous thirst for summer vacation.

I want to see Paris, Je T'aime and Brooklyn Rules. I don't think I need to see Pirates... I want to read Cold Comfort Farm with the cover illustration by Roz Chast.

I met my husband 24 years ago on Memorial Day at a drunken party at my sister's house. That seems really long! What the hell? Where did the time go? What happened? Criminey.

2007-05-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

Time for Romeo and Juliet tonight at A Noise Within.

I am looking forward to this so much. I've already seen the play, and I think my students will like it quite a bit, especially the cool swordplay and the cool Mercutio... He's quite fab.

We've been reading aloud from the play in class, and it is so difficult to listen to students who struggle with that. Of course there are a few who get into it and make it so much fun. Middle schoolers tend to go all-out a little more than high school students do, or at least the ones in my experience. Middle schoolers seem to be (mostly) natural hams.

They also like to draw flip-book comics in the corners of their copies of the play which is pretty irritating.

Oh well.

It's almost summer. I laugh thoroughly.

2007-05-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

Eve Arden had such an amazing voice, and such tone! She always seemed to know exactly what she wanted, who she was, where she was supposed to be. She had great comic ability and elegance and man, did she know how to wear lipstick...

There are certain women from my childhood who struck me as being self-possessed and quick and entirely competent in a man's world. Eve Arden was one who fulfilled all that but wasn't scary, like Katharine Hepburn or Barbara Stanwyck (just writing her name gives me the chills).

Who are/were the other women like Eve Arden? I don't think there were many.

2007-04-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Alec is no longer my favorite Baldwin.

I heard the snippet of the nasty phone message he left for his daughter, and I am aghast. There is no excuse for that kind of attack, especially from a father to a daughter.

I don't think there are any Baldwins that can win my favor anymore. Except maybe the makers of the Baldwin piano. Maybe.

If anyone out there knows of a really good grammar textbook for middle school English class, please let me know. I explained to the students the definitions of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, verbals, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions, gave them examples, talked about the rules, and then had them highlight these items in copies of their own essays on To Kill a Mockingbird.

They kept peppering me with questions about which word belonged to which category, seemingly unable to figure out for themselves what to do. It nearly drove me bonkers.

So I need ideas, if anyone has any. Thank you!

2007-04-23T00:19:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness Limon de Campo is back at her blog. But for some reason I cannot send her comments anymore. The link isn't working. I wonder what's up with that?

This is a picture of the front of my old grade school, Ainsworth Elementary. The second floor was really scary because that was where the big kids were, the seventh and eighth graders. A recurring locale for the occasional nightmare.

I need to teach more grammar, and had big hopes to get the kids into sentence diagramming by now. I haven't done it, and feel somewhat guilty (so what else is new?). Part of the problem is that I haven't diagrammed sentences for about, oh, 35 years or so. With Mrs. Williams in my seventh grade class.

Make that almost 40 years. O Mrs. Williams, where art thou?

2007-04-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

Some moments of silence for Kurt Vonnegut.

I have been a fan for a long, long time. The highlight of my fandom was teaching Slaughterhouse-Five last year. The other highlight is turning young kids on to Vonnegut now. Perhaps time for me to re-read some of the hits. Yes.

2007-04-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

Hay fever.

I've got it. Allergies and water coming spontaneously out of my nose. I mean I'm just sitting there, reading the paper, and water drops onto the Family Circus.

"Look, Billy! It's snot raining!"

2007-04-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite bloggers writes no more.

What has happened to witty Limon de Campo? I was first intrigued by her blog because of its name: Not a Folk Singer. But she hasn't blogged since late March, and I'm worried.

If anyone knows what's up, let me know.

A famous L.A. writer/blogger named Cathy Seipp died recently, and there has been a lot of attention about her in the local media sources. I didn't know a lot of her work, but I enjoyed her columns in L.A.'s Buzz magazine before that slid greasily into the maw of Los Angeles magazine. I don't care for Los Angeles at all--it seems like it exists just to make regular people like me feel bad about not being wealthy. But Buzz was interesting and had good writers, and Seipp wrote under the pseudonym of Margo Magee way back and would write about the underbelly of the Los Angeles Times. She made it sound so wicked and funny and cool.

I really, really like the L.A. Times. I think it is because I'm from Portland, and the Portland Oregonian is a thin shopper by comparison. I know the N.Y. Times is the grooviest, but I don't live there, and it's not about my life. The L.A. Times often has some excellent writing and many items of interest to me. And thank god they got rid of Mallard Fillmore in the comics section. I don't know what they were thinking in the first place with that claptrap.

I am kind of concerned about this new owner of the Times. I hope he doesn't turn out to be an evil monster. I also hope the L.A. Times lasts for many, many years to come. I hope L.A. does, too, because according to a front page story today, we're in for the global warming apocalypse in the not-too-distant future.

There's also a great bunch of articles in the latest L.A. Weekly about the Los Angeles theater scene, and one writer said that Los Angeles is the only place where you can actually die of encouragement. Does this make sense out of context? He was referring to the hordes of actors and writers and directors who are all waiting to make it big here. The thousands who need to pay the rent and shell out for ramen while waiting for the right people to notice and care about them.

But hey. I'm on spring break. Sping bake, famously said by a cartoon character I can't imitate well. I am so, so grateful for that.

2007-04-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

I need sping bake now.

There was a very funny character on "Hey Arnold!" named Olga, a saintly older sister to Helga, Arnold's erstwhile love/hate interest. There was one episode where Olga was terribly excited to be home for spring break, and she cried out in her high-pitched squeal, "I'm so happy to be home for SPING BAKE!"

Whenever I think of this, I laugh. The actress who voiced Olga was very good, very funny, and gave the character such a nasty-but-nice little twist.

This has been a head-achy weekend. Head-achey? A weekend with headaches. I don't want to go to school tomorrow. Mo-o-o-om! I don't feel good! I need you to go buy me a Hot Wheels set and some coloring books and 7-Up and some date-filled oatmeal cookies...

My mom did this once. I had various "stomach aches" in grade school, would stay home and watch the Virginia Graham show until that got cancelled, then would watch the Mike Douglas show, waiting so long for the afternoon line-up on the Chris Craft station (or was that Kris Kraft? I think it was the boat manufacturer) for "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Gilligan's Island" and blather like that. The cartoons were pretty crummy: lots of Deputy Dawg-type stuff. We had good local children's show hosts, though, namely Heck Harper and Addy Bobkins (Bopkins?). Ramblin' Rod came later, and I got to go on that show once, I think, for someone's birthday party. This was in Portland, Oregon, in the Sixties. Man, those were the days.

Oh yeah, Rusty Nails was the clown. He was the human clown mascot/dignitary for Alpenrose Dairy which wasn't too far away from my parents' house, and if you went to the dairy for the bicycle races (they had a cool velodrome there, not to mention funky little made-up dairy exhibits for kids), there was always a chance you might run into Rusty himself. Pretty exciting. He actually looked a lot like the latter-day Ronald McDonald. A latter-day saint? I think not.

Heck Harper was cool. He was a cowbow, if you couldn't figure that out. I wonder if he was related to Harper Lee? There was also a woman named Kay Lee who would play Mother Goose on the local TV and at the Portland Zoo, which had a children's theater called The Ladybug Theater (it was shaped and painted like a giant, yeah, ladybug). She was interesting but could be crabby, which seemed to fit the Mother Goose persona pretty well.

Damn, those were the days. I guess I had as many moments of depression and self-doubt as I do now, and I knew less what I thought of myself then, too. But it just seemed like it was all a whole lot simpler. Before the '70s, anyway, and Earth Day and Jimmy Carter and Watergate and that the Russians wanted to blow us to smithereens. But it's strange that it's taken this long for people to actually get worked up about global warming. I mean I remember the warnings from way back when. This is not news, people.

Portland was a cool place to grow up. I would move back there in a second if I could. Well, maybe not a second. I do have some good things going on down here, but I really miss the trees, and the water, and the greenness of it all. I miss the friendly people and the coast, Cannon Beach, Mt. Hood, Camp Namanu, Washington Park, all the bridges, OMSI, the rivers, Council Crest, my mom.

I miss Vista, Ainsworth, Patton Road, St. Thomas More, Hillsdale, Humphrey Blvd, the zoo, the Japanese Garden, the roses. I miss the rain, the fog, the overcast, the gray, the puddles, the mist, the downpours. The leaves mucking up the gutters. The clouds flinging around. The moss. The green, green moss of home.

Wow. I do need a break. The photo at the front of today's post was roughly the view out my livingroom window of the house I grew up in, at least until third grade.

2007-03-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

I really miss Helvetica.

Is it better to assign a final essay on To Kill a Mockingbird right before spring break, or right after? Some of my students (mostly girls) want it due before break. When polled, the boys (mostly) vociferously declared after.

What to do, what to do. I think assign it after, so I don't have 64 essays to read over my spring break. Yeah, that's right. I'm learning.

It is the end of March and I finally have my classroom set up the way I really want it. I also believe I have finally hit on the best schedule for all the little weekly things we do, like vocab, book discussion, informal writing, slightly-more-formal writing, presentations, etc. And of course we're scheduled to move to new quarters for the next school year. Okay! I can do this!

I watched The History Boys and enjoyed it quite a bit. Hard to believe the students would be so casual about their teacher's Roman fingers, but hey, it's Yorkshire. Whatever that means. Still, it's a great movie and Richard Griffiths is quite fun to watch. Plus the woman who plays Mrs. Lintotts.

One of my eighth graders looked up today and said, "Okay, so Jem is gay, right?" I tried to gently disabuse him of that idea (I mean I don't know if Jem is/was gay, I didn't see the character grow up, right?) and we talked about Harper Lee's friendship with Truman Capote as a kid and how the character of Dill is supposed to be based on that, and this student, who was embarrassed about getting the Jem/gay thing confused, said he was going to investigate and find out every detail about Harper Lee's childhood friendship with T.C. so he could disprove everything I've said (which hasn't been all that much since I didn't even know Dill was based on T.C. until this last year).

I said if he could do that, I'd give him an A+. Which is moot because ours is a progressive school without traditional grades. But he would get an A+ in my heart.

I often say that, that the kids will get an A in my heart, or extra credit in my heart, because really, we don't give out grades. And they always look kind of wistful, kind of disappointed, when I say that. I've tried to convince them that credit in my heart is much more valuable than a grade, but they don't believe me, of course.

The kids who want grades want them because they're sure they'd be successful. The kids who don't want grades don't care about anything much, whether you credit them in your heart or anywhere. Like M.G., who was staring almost zombie-like this morning. He's doing so poorly, and is so shy of me or something, won't come and talk to me about his problems, won't admit to any feelings about To Kill a Mockingbird. I see him slipping down this path to the end of school, resting and relaxing over the summer, and then sliding along into high school. I don't know what to do about him. Maybe I'll tell him that tomorrow.

Wish us luck.

2007-03-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

Today was funnish.

The students are making maps of Maycomb, Alabama, a la To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm certain every middle school teacher in the known universe has used or discarded this particular lesson plan thing, but it's new to me. And there is nothing sweeter than the sound of small groups of students working cooperatively on projects while murmuring softly about the character motivations of the people in the book they're reading.

There was a run-on sentence for you.

The students are losing momentum. I am oddly energized. What's that about? I'm trying to use up my Trader Joe's vitamins that have been gathering dust on the shelf... Could that be it?

Probably it's that I didn't assign a bucket of homework at the end of last week and therefore I am not swamped with correcting and grading today. This will all change by the end of the week. At this point in the year I am finally getting the idea about pacing myself with assignments. It certainly has taken me a while to figure it out.

2007-03-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

I have too much flippin' homework to correct.

There, I said it. And I'm tired. And full. And I don't care what anyone says about starting sentences with "And."

Harper Lee wrote a flippin' good book. Today, reading about Mr. Dolphus Raymond's reaction to Dill's reaction to Mr. Gilmer's cross examination of Tom Robinson, well, it made me cry. Remember how Dill cried because of Gilmer's sneering, rude treatment of Tom Robinson?

Then I think of Truman Capote in the last two biographies I enjoyed. It almost makes me want to read In Cold Blood again.

2007-03-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

Harriet Tubman visited our school today.

A Canadian actress who portrays Tubman from young girl to old woman put on a wonderful show, highlighting Tubman's life from slave to legend. It was quite amazing, and when I get her web address I'll put it up here for others.

I have this goal to give the students some kind of appreciation for the extreme circumstances of life that slaves underwent, and I have no real idea how to do it. We read from Frederick Douglass and others, we talk, we watch movies... but I feel inadequate in this ambition. I'll take any ideas floating out there in the ether.

I had a great moment today when the students told me they missed me when I was out sick; and I had a sick moment when I let the seventh grade study hall get too loud (again). I don't want to think I am stuck in my Kindly Teacher mode, aka Doormat Teacher Who Can't Make Kids Be Quiet, but I think I am. Help!

Here is Leslie McCurdy's web site for more information.

http://http://lesliemccurdy.ca/index.htm

2007-03-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest on the rude student who sassed me last week.

I spoke to him and it went really well. I mean he's just a little kid, really. It turns out I did make a sarcastic remark to him that I had quite forgotten. Not that that excuses his obstreperousness, but I can see how I said something that belittled him in front of his friends, and you simply cannot do that to a middle schooler. Or any student, for that matter. And this is hard for me.

I grew up with sarcasm and the humor of contempt. My parents were a lot older when I was a kid and teenager and they had seen it all. My shenanigans were hardly impressive, and their disinterest let me know that all the time.

I adopted the scornful attitude and sometimes it pops out when I am least paying attention. And that is not a good thing for my students. I don't think I'm as bad as many of my own teachers were, but it's not the kind of teacher I want to be. I want to enjoy humor and laughs with my students, but I do not want to kid them at their expense. I get no joy from that.

I had a high school teacher who derided us pretty regularly just for being teenagers. Maybe it had more to do with where our neighborhood was located. But he was cold and dismissive and superior. And he was in charge of the school newspaper, a coveted activity for quite a few students. What I learned from working on that paper, much more than how to organize a story, was that it was not uncommon for teachers to hold their students in contempt. Maybe that's one of the reasons I had such a miserable time in high school.

But I had a drama teacher in college who also shared this disdainful attitude. He used to complain that teaching at my particular private college was like "being a janitor in a casino, sweeping up after everybody wasted their money." Trouble with him was, he was an excellent drama teacher. But he left before I graduated, and I never did find out what happened to him.

Bob Porter, if you're out there: your classes were the best classes I ever took.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Leonard Adams, my fifth grade teacher and middle school science teacher, for teaching me what the word "arduous" meant and for treating me like an actual human; Elizabeth Hoover, my first and second grade teacher who was tough and demanding and made me feel proud of my reading and writing ability; and Laura Perko, my high school Shakespeare teacher who was simply cool.

William Stafford and Anthony Ostroff and Ted Braun and Stephen Dow Beckham at Lewis & Clark College were fascinating teachers to listen to way back in the '70s. Man, that was a long time ago, wasn't it? Terry Faw was a good psych prof, too.

Thanks, teachers. I hope you're enjoying your rest.

The photo top left is of an architecturally attractive building at Lewis & Clark College. The photo top right is roughly the view out my dorm window the year I was a sophomore and wished Don or Ed or Dan would figure out how really very amazing I actually was, and there I was, sleeping in the room right next door.

2007-03-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

I cannot believe that a small seventh grader sassed me today. I was having such an excellent time, going over Part One of To Kill a Mockingbird, finishing up with the last group of kids, a smaller, more incisive bunch, and I got to go out to lunch with my huz, and all would have been well except for this one kid who determined he had to take a photo with his cell phone five minutes before school was out.

I asked for his phone, and that set him off, and he demanded to see my copy of the student handbook where it said a teacher could take away a student's phone. It was so stupid. He started the year so sweetly, but there is a powerful lot of anger in this boy.

Why does it surprise me so much when students act out like this? I really do not expect it, and am almost shocked when I realize that they mean it, that they are mad, and they are wanting me to be mad with them. It certainly doesn't happen often, or else I wouldn't be teaching. But you almost feel like a customer service rep at the DMV.

Still, it reminds me of my first days teaching when I had a particularly obstreperous 12th grader on my hands who was pissed off that she had me as her English teacher... Talk about trial by snarky muttered comments. She even admitted to me that she had been "a bitch" to me all year at her graduation, almost like she was slightly bemused by the whole thing.

This kid's parents have a reputation for buttonholing teachers on the front steps first thing in the morning, so I'll keep an eye out tomorrow. Why do we even have to go through this kind of thing?

2007-03-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

Teaching the seventh and eighth graders about racism through To Kill a Mockingbird is going to be a big challenge. It pains me to teach them about the ugliness but I don't want to diminish the significance of our history.

2007-03-03T18:34:00.000-08:00

I am a relative latecomer to the musical stylings of Elliott Smith, he of Portland music fame, and he is my favorite to listen to by far. By FAR. Particular songs send me, "No Name #3" being the headliner these days. He went to my old high school, too, but long after I sullenly roamed its halls. I bet he was sullen, too. It is extra sad when a musician so sensitive and talented has to go and kill himself. I guess all committers of suicide are extra sad if you know them and you have a sense of what more they might have contributed through their art. It is hard to imagine being so utterly bereft that there would seem to be no better way around or through a bad situation. I've had my own share of black thoughts, certainly, but none of the actual thinking-throughs of how to do it. How to go the extra mile, as it were.

What I remember most about high school was feeling incredibly, desperately self-conscious. I felt like cameras were pointed at me every minute with no rest, and that the operator(s) on the other side of the lens were finding fault with every single element of my being. No wonder I was so anxious and unhappy. It was a tough time. But I don't remember suicide seeming like much of an actual option.

It is now the weekend. It is Saturday night, and I want to read and watch TV and do the laundry. But I have numberless small assignments to read. Of course there is tomorrow. And the tasks for Sunday are also myriad.

What would it be like to just pick up and move to a far country, where these mundane responsibilities wouldn't exist? Although I guess mundane responsibilities exist in exotic locations, too. Bills have to be paid. Difficult people have to be dealt with. Decisions to do the homework rather than take the nap come up the same way that they do here.

I would like to float in the ocean for a while, though. That would be calming and enjoyable. The Pacific off Maui is a good place to start, although I could be content with Oahu. I wonder if San Diego has any similarly relaxing beaches for gentle swimming? We should check that out come the next Comic-Con. Maybe I will. I'll ditch the comic-mongers and go swirl my toes in the sand, under an umbrella. Then out to the salt water. Lovely, buoyant ocean water. Like that ode to salt by Pablo Neruda that I hadn't heard before yesterday. What a cool ode that is.

Ode to Salt

This salt
in the salt cellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me
but
it sings
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those
solitudes
when I heard
the voice
of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a
broken
voice,
a mournful
song.

In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food.
Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste finitude.

2007-02-19T20:49:00.000-08:00

I actually watched Blood Diamond a second time. I think Leo might be edging out Kevin in my Favorites list.

I read several dozen essays on Of Mice and Men and they were generally very good. I am sustained. There were, however, way too many errors with commas. Why is comma use so hard for middle schoolers? Not to mention spelling the word disappointment. We will watch the version by Gary Sinise with John Malkovich next week. I wish we could watch Being John Malkovich but I'm afraid that's a little too much for these youngsters. I love that movie, along with Adaptation. Neither of which I flipped over when I first saw them. But years later, oh man. I am a fan.

Now we're on to To Kill a Mockingbird. I read this book and saw the movie later in life than most. I enjoy the book a lot, but some of the details within can be a little draggy. I have enjoyed watching the depictions of Harper Lee in the two recent Truman Capote biographies. Katherine Keener or Sandra Bullock? I really liked both the movies, preferring the storytelling of the second.

I loved Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats, a movie which only gets two stars on my Tivo. I thought Harry Connick was quite appealing, as was Ms. B.

Anyway, grading all those essays and planning the week in TKM and getting ready for tomorrow took me all day today. I appear to need a three-day weekend every week, just to get prepared for four days. That doesn't seem like a good sign to me. It certainly takes the starch out of Presidents Day.

2007-02-12T21:53:00.000-08:00

I saw Freedom Writers this weekend. Ironically enough there were two sassy Latina teenagers sitting in the back row hooting and hollering through all the scenes with gang violence. Not to mention the middle-aged couple who explained each plot "twist" right before it happened, they were so smart. Not to mention the three or four women who I took to be actual teachers. But none of them laughed at the parts where Dr. McDreamy got pissed about having to wait for Ms. Swank to come home from her idyllic educating career. I found those scenes to be quite hilarious. I just can't picture Patrick Dempsey ever feeling all that threatened by someone else's gratifying career. Yeah, the one where Hillary Swank has to go get a third job so she can pay for her students' copies of The Diary of Anne Frank. And I felt really bad for Vera Drake to have to come down so low to play such a one-note, nasty department head (although she did do a very good job, and I guess Judi Dench was too busy). (Imelda Staunton was robbed last year.)

I thought it was INCREDIBLE that Pat Carroll played Miep Giess, the woman who helped Anne Frank and family hide. Does anyone remember her as a stepsister from the TV Cinderella version with Lesley Ann Warren? I think it was on CBS, and it had quite an impact on me as a young girl... "In my own little corner, in my own little room, I can be whatever I want to be..."

I know the picture I've selected isn't Pat Carroll but Celeste Holm (with LA Warren). The Pat Carroll-as-wicked-stepsister was pixel-heavy.

Too bad they couldn't get Kaye Ballard to play Mother Teresa.

I love seeing the teacher movies, although my favorite by far has been Half Nelson with Ryan Gosling. I hear The Tao of Steve is also worth watching.

The Swank movie wasn't so bad. I didn't care for the Scott Glenn redemptive-father scene, though. I hate those kinds of scenes, mostly because I didn't experience one with my own father. I haven't seen one yet that didn't strike me as utterly and maliciously false. Maybe that explains why I gravitate toward Mean Dad movies, too, like The Great Santini and This Boy's Life.

Speaking of which, Leo DiCaprio was truly enjoyable in Blood Diamond. Connelly, not so much, but I really liked the settings and depiction of Africa a lot. Especially with reading Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and studying Heart of Darkness with the high schoolers last year (or the year before).

God, good literature is the frickin' coolest. Learning it again as a teacher is such an incredibly amazing situation to find myself in... I feel quite lucky.

2007-01-28T17:03:00.000-08:00

Venus is really amazing, surprising, arresting, you could say. I recommend it, yes.

I also enjoyed The Departed and especially enjoyed Marky's part. He was funny--and seeing him alongside Alec Baldwin was quite lovely. If only they could add in Kevin Bacon my world would be complete.

2007-01-21T20:18:00.000-08:00

Ha ha ha, I am caught up! I am caught up! I corrected 180 pieces of homework this weekend, give or take a dozen, and I am caught up!

Okay, so they weren't essays or big writing assignments, but still. I also wrote up a dozen teacher recommendations, and I prepared my vocabulary assignment on the last chapter of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, so I am very, very happy.

Up next comes Of Mice and Men, a nice, short novel that I hope the kids will enjoy. I don't know--so many of them are so quick to judge harshly. They cannot understand why it's important to read these old books written by dead people about old people who seem to have little relevance to their own lives.

It is kind of hard to point out the delightful nastiness of Crane's style in Maggie, but he is good there. It is quite darkly funny. "Is it yer fadder beatin' yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fadder?" It's almost Simpsonsesque.

2007-01-20T14:30:00.000-08:00

Lots and lots and lots of student work to correct, evaluate, judge, assign a score to, mark up, read, and hand back.

It's all starting to blend into one big miasma.

Yesterday, on the way home, I was sitting at a stop light waiting for the signal to turn green, and I found myself stressing about whether or not I'd be ready enough to move quickly enough to step on the accelerator.

The anxiety went away quickly as I realized how INSANE that is, but the whole thing made me realize, once again, just how much a spaz I really am these days.

I think I was a spaz before I started teaching, but doing this full-time has not helped me relax AT ALL.

I know there are reasons why I overdo it on all fronts. I worry that the powers that be will discover that I am a giant baby and not worthy of the job, or they'll see that I am filled with indecision and laziness, or they'll smack themselves in the forehead and go Oh My God we've been letting this person actually influence the minds of young, reasonably innocent children, and if the parents find out...

Perhaps a nap would help. Or swimming to Maui.

2007-01-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

Wow. Here was a great little essay about teaching students to use the first person narrative in their academic writing. The author makes a good case for letting students refer to themselves in their papers.

I've been teaching my middle school students to take out all references to themselves in their essays, explaining that I know who the author is and I don't want them to "muddy" their theses with regular references to themselves.

After reading this essay, I'm wondering about that.

I'm curious to hear what other teachers think about this.

2007-01-16T20:55:00.000-08:00

I gave my students full instructions on what to do for homework over this long weekend. I told them I'd quiz them today, and that they should look up all the vocabulary they didn't know in Chapter 2 of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.

And so what did they do? They came in today, shocked and dismayed that I would give them a quiz with vocabulary that I hadn't spoonfed to them last week. They kept asking if I would give them make-up work to balance what will surely be a rotten score on today's quiz.

I am disappointed with them but I also wonder (of course, as always) what I did wrong. I mean I really thought I warned them thoroughly. But there are times when verbal instructions seem to land nowhere inside a middle schooler's brain.

Sometimes I think I take all this way too seriously. Like if I don't make sure every little thing is seared into their minds then they won't be able to defend themselves in the coming revolution. And that's silly because when the revolution comes it's not going to make any difference if they know what a euphemism is or if they remember one lousy detail from Maggie. What they'll need to know is maybe anything they learned in Girl Scouts, like how to make a fire without a butane lighter or how to build shelter without an Eddy Bauer camper tent.

How will they live without their electronics, their iPods and cell phones and tv and computer games?

I need some Amaretto.

2006-12-31T15:22:00.000-08:00

While on vacation, I have watched quite a few movies. They are:

Pan's Labyrinth. Way, way too brutal but that's the story. I loved the feel of the movie, the intense atmosphere, the designs of the sets and the beasts. The little girl was very good, too. But so much violent brutality.

Notes From a Scandal. Judy Dench is so scary! Worse than the Wicked Witch of the West. And I did not find the teen boy that alluring at all.

Flags of Our Fathers. Interesting.

That Matt Damon movie, which I found kind of lulling.

Little Children. Whoa. This one was crazy! Kind of good, kind of weird, kind of brutal, too, but not as much as Pan's Labyrinth.

>Borat. I like the way he says vagine but that's about it.

So many more movies to watch. But I always want to go back to anything Will Ferrell did on "Saturday Night Live." Or either version of "The Office."

Oh, I almost forgot: Children of Men, and that was truly the scariest movie of them all.

2006-12-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

I have tried to be charitable in my expression of feelings about our president, but I can't stop it any longer. I have hatred for him. I think he is malicious and stupid.

On this, I am not a kindly teacher.

2006-11-28T17:03:00.000-08:00

Parents are coming tonight. They want to see what we have to offer them and their young'uns for school options next year. What if I stutter? What if I start swearing uncontrollably? Or controllably? What if I'm sarcastic?

Today was such a good day. Why? I was able to (mostly) really watch the kids and see them be who they are, coming up with the stuff they come up with. They are very dear. I mean mostly. Not all. But mostly. Instead of worrying about whatever I wasn't teaching them, or what lies ahead, I was able to enjoy them and I really did.

In Creative Writing some very vulnerable and lovely thoughts were shared, and that made me so happy.

2006-11-27T21:07:00.000-08:00

It is hard to go back to school after a break. Until you get there and see the kids, and remember why it is fun to be there with them. Until you get tired again right before lunch and wish you were back on break.

It goes up and down like this, all day, all week. Like it, don't like it. Attraction, repulsion. Just like Wes Nisker said. Says, in his books and his dharma talks. The lowliest of the microscopic animals behaves in the same way. It is drawn toward that which makes it feel good, and it backs away from that which does otherwise. Pushing and pulling, 24/7. So the meditative idea is to sit and watch all of that as it comes and goes. Be aware of attaching any meaning to the activity.

Today's group of middlers was actually into the meditation practice, and that was cool. It allowed me to even settle for a few moments. Often I am trying to figure out how to help them deal with their giggles. But these kids could handle sitting for 15 minutes two times. And this was the first session. Perhaps we'll be able to do even more next week.

I think teaching is an excellent occupation. I didn't feel this way growing up. I didn't know so much. So much. It is good to grow up.

2006-11-24T15:04:00.000-08:00

Oddly, my pants feel snug.

I think my daughter is falling asleep on the kitchen floor. She has fluffy blankies (too much so for me) and a vacant bed, but there she is, sprawled on the nicked linoleum. At least the dog is curled up in her brand new cat bed. The son is placidly flipping controls at his new Wii, which I helped him purchase. Will he complete his homework this weekend, or will he continue to be absorbed by this new console with its better-than-ever Zelda game?

I have more college recommendation letters to write, plus my students' book reviews to their school blog. Other than that, I wiped out two giant stacks of overdue homework last week so I could really enjoy this long, long Thanksgiving break. Oh yeah, there's finishing the apps for my own son's college journey. However, the enthusiasm he shows for entering college is so low compared to how he feels about this new Wii that I'm thinking maybe he should wait a bit before starting college. This is hard to gauge. And all relatives have different kinds of advice to share.

Thanksgiving was fine enough. We all ate too much, and pretty much all of it was high in fat and carbs. I got the heavy whipping cream instead of the lite version, and it whipped in 15 seconds I kid you not. Almost went to butter. Also made the sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top for some insane reason. I must've seen one ad too many, because I have never had the urge to put marshmallows on top of yams or sweet potatoes before, but I did yesterday. And they were fabulous, very desserty. Scrumptious (a word I truly abhor).

Found a foil-wrapped package of organic rolls in the oven today. They cost me $3.00 at Whole Foods. Maybe I'll make a bread pudding out of them. Low-fat version, to be sure.

One cute thing from yesterday: I looked out the window at one point and it seemed we were surrounded by families (neighbors) who were serving dinner to their whatevers. Usually it seems like most everyone goes away around here, and it's relatively quiet on the day. Our next door neighbors' relatives came and were roller blading or something in front of our house, and I found out today that one of the young boys fell and broke his arm.

I guess that's not that interesting. My blogging feels kind of pointless. Maybe that's what blogging is all about. And maybe that's what the Friday after Thanksgiving is also all about. Pointlessness. That's not so bad.

I wish we would leave Iraq immediately. Seeing the numbers of deaths mounting up since it seems to be pretty much agreed by all that our being there is completely wrong, well, seeing that more are dying and being ruined by this is crazy. To put it dumbly.

2006-11-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

I am mildly ticked that I have so many papers to grade that I could not go see "Borat" this afternoon with my family. And so I am writing my little blog now as a way of rebelling against the strictures of this job.

I do like teaching but I do not like grading papers on weekends and at night, and those are pretty much the only times available to do the grading.

I am also working in a SMALL private school and I have lots fewer students than do my public school colleagues. And yet I complain.

I stuck my arm in the free blood pressure machine at Target today and my bp is high. One more thing to worry about. Would seeing "Borat" have lowered my bp? I don't know.

Okay, okay, back to work, for a little bit anyway.

2006-11-04T22:36:00.000-08:00

I told my students two years ago that Louise Fletcher stopped acting after "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" because she felt overwhelmed by the negative impact of that role on her life. That she went home and took care of her family and left acting.

Well, I just watched her in a movie called "Big Eden." I am such a liar. I wonder if any of my former students are aware. I hate it when I discover that I've said some baloney or other and passed it off as truth. God.

I need more comedy in my life and fewer mid-term elections. I really, really hate all the robotic phone calls.

There is someone who likes to correct me. He is younger and is simply being young, and I hate it. How can people be so blind to these things? And so blind to my sensitivity? I really don't get it.

2006-10-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

Day One of parent/teacher conferences. Oh. My. God. My head felt like it was going to vibrate from my neck by noon. And the parents aren't even bad! I would like to have seen Ryan Gosling go through conferences while cracked. Now there would have been a good scene.

2006-10-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

I spent four hours today reading and commenting on student writing about John Proctor and what makes him tick. This on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when I could have been doing any number of other things.

Can I last through this year with all this grading?

I watched "Half Nelson" with pallid Ryan Gosling and enjoyed it, but nowhere did they include a scene of what he did with all his students' papers. We saw them writing in the classroom, and cheating on tests, and looking frustrated, and we certainly saw lots of Ryan Gosling being strung out on whatever drug he was ingesting. But we did not see him carrying stacks of paper around, or moving a stack from one spot in his crummy apartment to another, or even tossing the whole pile into any handy trash can, as one might imagine a junkie/teacher would do. That bugged me.

Other than that, I pretty much enjoyed the movie. I kept wanting to see it when it was playing in theaters, but I kept having TOO MUCH HOMEWORK TO CORRECT. Or grade, evaluate, whatever. Because if you're going to help kids learn how to write, you have to read their writing. And then comment on it in such a way as to MAYBE help them do it better next time. Or maybe they'll just toss it into a handy trash can. I don't know.

Anyway, I like watching teacher movies. I like the teacher in "Ten Things I Hate About You." I struggle with the Brokeback guy in that movie though because he does not seem like any high school kid I've ever known. Why can't I remember his name? I shook his hand at the Oscars last year, too. He was very pleasant and gracious... Huh.

I wonder what it would be like to make a movie like "Half Nelson" but instead of being a crack junkie the teacher could be a compulsive eater...? Probably pretty boring and ultra-depressing. And probably a whole lot more commonplace than the crack junkie option.

Heath Ledger. That's it. Why couldn't I remember?

Okay. Parent/teacher conferences now. How will the parents behave? Who will act crazy? Will I know how to express my business in five minutes? Will it make any difference? What did I learn when I was in seventh/eighth grade? Anything, besides the weird joy of watching my teacher's choker bob up and down when she'd get excited? She was a nice teacher... Kindly? Yes. I wonder where she is now. My seventh grade teacher was nice, too. Beautiful and magisterial. I was a sass. She was too good for me. I was a punk.

2006-10-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

I find it so helpful to read the bloggings of Not a Folk Singer. She has such a funny attitude about teaching and its pitfalls. It helps me very much to think of professional/social obligations the way she does... And to realize that grading student work is often a bane for most teachers. What is it about sitting down to a stack of papers that feels so utterly annoying? I do, in fact, want to help my students become better writers. I do, in fact, really like being a teacher. And when I get into the act of actually correcting the work and recording the grades, it's not such a big deal. But the thought of all that lies ahead makes me want to crawl under the covers.

The physical demands of being on my feet most of the day are starting to really get to me, too. I read an article on the ASCD web site about how some teachers want to do away with the whole idea of having a teacher desk, and that really gets me quaking. I don't sit at my desk during classes, but I do need to hold all my stuff, not to mention my computer/printer.

I suppose the physical thing would be less troubling if I could lose some weight. But one of the patterns I notice is that right around now, after a month of school, I start feeling so tired and depleted at the end of the day and then the end of the week that I just want to eat what I want and not pay attention to how much or if the nutritive quality is all that high. I know it's a self-defeating set-up. But eating willy-nilly sometimes feels the only truly nice thing I can do for myself. Being hungry and feeling restricted does not feel good at these times.

Sigh. It's finally cooling down here and that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. The kids are starting to grow on me. I'm beginning to understand the rhythm of this particular grade level, and I really like my co-teachers. So many things are aligned that would point to a general sense of well-being and satisfaction.

And then I look at the dining room table where the packet of papers and quizzes sit. And I read another blog.

2006-09-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

Ten-thirty. I am uptight, anxious, afraid to go to sleep, knowing that I'll be tossing and watching the wondrous radio/alarm clock every hour and a half until it's time to get up at six and wake the kids and move toward the first day of school.

I am worried that I haven't done enough to be thoroughly prepared, and yet I know there are things I cannot do until I meet the kids, learn which ones will be in which groups.

I'm going to start with a selection from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which I always think of as I Know Why the Caged Bee Stings. Thanks a lot to a master jokester. But Maya Angelou's memoir is really wonderful and beautiful written. I hope the students will enjoy it. And then fill out their own memoirs. Which my daughter told me today they will hate doing.

Oh well. No wonder I'm nervous. It's hard to live with such an assured critic.

2006-08-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

I am the only teacher in this tiny middle school who actually has children. I wonder how much of a difference that will make?

I will move in to my new classroom in another week, spiffing it up for the school year. Arranging stuff on the shelves and making the bulletin boards nice and ready for student projects. Moving my desk so I don't have my back to the door. Making it all wonderful.

I didn't have my own classroom last year, so I'm looking forward to this very much. I think I won't plaster the walls with my own pictures and posters, but will work on having the kids help provide the right stuff. I want them to have a very active and responsible part in how their classes work. I hope I can figure out how to do this.

2006-08-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

Just finished Of Mice and Men in preparation for teaching it to the middle schoolers. Of course I had forgotten how much I like that book, and Steinbeck's ability to cut to the chase. I had also forgotten how easy it is to read. No such luck with The Crucible, I'm afraid. Although the students do like the witchy aspects.

I went to a conference at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena that taught us how to use "design-based learning" to teach high and low concepts to our students. Lots of building of three-dimensional objects to induce clutch appeal, to get the kids to connect more meaningfully to a thing and then leap over to a concept in the literature or whatever and make a match. I wonder if it will work with To Kill a Mockingbird?

I wonder if the middle schoolers will be too cool to school... I wonder if they'll mock me and try to make me cry. I don't remember doing that when I was in seventh and eighth grade but that was also many eons ago. Things were different then, kids were more respectful. Yeah, that's it. I think we were just too scared, frankly. And for good reason. More on that later.

2006-07-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

Went to San Diego's Comic-Con and I'm pleased that I'm sure how to spell and punctuate the name of the event. According to the Comic-Con itself. Is that an English teacher for you or what?

I kind of hate the convention because I'm not really into comics. I used to like them, when I would read Archie and Veronica and Little Lulu (or was it Lil' Lotta?) and all those. And I read the comics in the Times very often. But I'm not as enthusiastic about the art form as are others in my family. And it is enjoyable to watch them have the grandest time skulking up and down the aisles at the convention center, looking for cool stuff from whatever thing they're into these days.

My brother, also a comics geek, found an odd little bunch of booklets by Esther Pearl Watson who has a character named Tammy. I haven't studied them closely--they're drawn in a very crude way and are supposedly taken from an actual school notebook someone tossed out. I'll read them and report back.

So in fact I think the convention is really well run, except why they do not provide benches for people to sit on is beyond me and very torturous. People are sweating and tired and there's nowhere to sit except on the floor, and that just seems inhuman to me. But they have a great shuttle service from outlying hotels (although the street traffic was so thick much of the time that it was quicker to just use the trolley). And god knows there's a ton of stuff to observe, not the least of which is the gigantic conglomeration of fans who dress up as their favorite characters. I really enjoyed the costumes a lot this year.

And there were also some great panels to listen to. I caught Robert Smigel who was very funny and I was grateful he didn't bring Triumph the Comic Dog over to harrass me. Also Kenan Thompson moderated Samuel Jackson nicely (although Jackson's comments about looking for a sweet young teenager were weird and off-putting), and it was very good to hear Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen and Forrest Ackerman talk about their opinions. But it was not so great to watch Simon Coen do his Borat thing where he wrestled in the nude with a fat man who was also nude, and we were not spared the sight of the guy's naked balls hanging in Borat's face. That one kind of threw me.

Okay, so there's lot of stuff to see and to laugh at. But I'm not the comics queen. And I have never found a comic book that relates to me at this age or point in my life. That would be thrilling and yes, I have considered trying to write one myself. Too hard, I think.

So I'm blathering. It was satisfying in that mommish way to watch my family enjoy themselves, and they really did. My son found a very cool light sabre and my daughter bought a lovely pendant based on Keira Knightley's from the first Pirates movie. In fact I think my kids spent all of their money, which is not hard to do if you're into this stuff.

Now we are back and it's time to rev up for school. I get to go to a design conference tomorrow, plus I'm taking a writing workshop at the nearby liberal arts college. This is good news! I have discovered again that I don't do well without some structure in my life. I get too lazy.

Maybe I'll have my students make a comic or two. I wonder if they'd like that...

2006-07-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

July 17th and the feeling that I will not be prepared for September starts to grow. I mean just about three months is a really nice, long time for a teacher to get her act together in order to be ready for the students. What other profession has this kind of schedule? And yet I sit and waste tons of time online and order new books (the collection of essays by Alfie Kohn looks fascinating and right up my alley).

I need to put together a vocabulary program because I don't want to rely on those big books they've used in the past. I want the vocab to be FUN and INTERESTING and PERTINENT. Plus I have to re-read all the titles so I can maybe guide the kids through them... and perhaps learn something new myself.

Then I need to scan all my how-to-teach-middle-school books to see if they have any magic solutions that I might need. Honestly, I am looking forward to working with this age group, but there is a lot I can't know until I get into it.

My own high school reunion is scheduled (away) for the second week of my school year, and I just think I'll be too pooped to enjoy the party... Plus I didn't get to go on that drastic diet I've been planning most of my life. Sigh. In some ways, summer is a very tough time for my mind. Not a Folk Singer advises severing ties with the things that make us insane--but what if we ourselves are the culprits?