Spirit Week

Yesterday marked the start of our homecoming spirit week. Since we don't have a competitive football team, there is no game, no real culmination, but that doesn't stop us from dressing like fools for five days and having a dance Thursday night.

Yesterday was school spirit day and the school bought everyone matching tshirts. It was a little creepy to be in the halls between classes and see EVERYONE in the exact same thing. But, it was a nice idea and now I have yet another school shirt to rock at the gym. Tomorrow is "professional dress" day, which means I can wear parent-teacher conference wear and be okay. Thursday is twin day, which I might pass on - last year the whole SS department went as "twins" (technically, qunituplets), but this year's department doesn't have that same vibe. Friday is class color day and I will rock some combination of green (Seniors) and black/white (7th graders). You may have noticed that I skipped today (Happy Halloween, by the way). That is because today deserves a paragraph all its own.

Today is "'bama day." A 'bama, as far as I can tell is pretty unique to the DC area. Everyone who has lived here long enough simply knows what a 'bama is, but probably can't actually articulate that knowledge. "A 'bama is...you know...a 'bama" is what my kids have told me for the last two years. 'Bama outfits range from crazily mismatched to raggedy and dusty, but what they all have in common is their pure outlandish-ness. Earlier this month, I got a reasonable explanation. As I suspected 'bama is short for Alabama and the idea is that people in that state dress is loud and sometimes clashing colors. So "'bama day" is, in essence, mismatch day. Only for any of you who teach in schools with mismatch day, trust me when I tell you this is mismatch day to the Nth degree. Craziness will reign supreme in school today.

To answer your question, yes I did dress for 'bama day, as hard as it was for me. My whole being shies away from mismatching clothes and I have always had trouble embracing this particular spirit day (regardless of its name). Today I am wearing a navy blue skirt that has light blue and light green circles and dots on it. I am also wearing red loafers and a two-toned pink striped polo shirt. It's not the light up tiara, shorts on top of pants ensemble that another teacher is rocking, but it is the best this Banana Republic girl can do. (Note that I wore flip flops and a jean jacket to school so that when I stopped for treats this morning, I passed as an average young professional. And I have jeans and a black button down in my bag so I can go babysit after work in regular clothes.)

Oh. And Halloween in DC? 75 degrees and sunny. Happy day.

GAH!

I had entered 12 of 25 grade comments when my laptop decided to suddenly reject the pop-up comment screen (which hadn't bothered it in the past) and force me to refresh the gradebook site, thus deleting all aforementioned comments. Sometimes, technology is NOT our friend. Grr...

uhmm...G-d?

People in my family keep breaking...please make it stop. Thank you.

Two-in-One

POST I: Maybe relationships are like pregnancy

You know how most pregnant women do not tell people they are pregnant until they are through the first trimester? I am starting to think that maybe women should treat relationships the same way. Not tell anyone about them until they are through the unstable start-up period. Otherwise, you are left having to explain to a lot of well-meaning people that it "just didn't work out" or something similar and even less convincing. And there are few things worse than reliving your pain/confusion by explaining to your happily coupled friends that "current-crushing-on-guy" is now "no-longer-in-the-picture-guy," especially when the explanation is that he seems to have fallen off the edge of the planet or no longer feels ready to date.

I like to think that I have a pretty good attitude when it comes to being single and dating, but even I have my moments when I start to wonder. Today is one of those moments, I think. I mean really, was I absent from school the day they said this would be so hard? Or gave out the Cliff Notes for dating? B/c I am clearly missing something. ::sigh:: One of my friends once referred to herself as "one date P.." and I am starting to think I should pick up the long forgotten moniker. Seriously.

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POST II: A sorry state of affairs

My friend Jen posted a soliloquy on urban education, talking specifically about her experienc teaching HS in Milwaukee, that I loved. I have struggled for years to put into words what I see and feel and know to be true about my job every day and she managed to convey all of that and the sense of urgency that grows in me each day.

I hope she doesn't mind, but three of her paragraphs really resonated with me and I wanted to share them with more folks, especially with election day right around the corner.

The books and the research about delinquent activity among high school students says that increasing a student's social capital decreases delinquent activity. I know, personally, how valuable mentorship and community programs can be for high school students-- I'm just overwhelmed by the need. I don't have the time or the energy to be that connection or make those connections for all of my students and to also keep coming back every day. I have to make room for myself in here somewhere if I'm going to make it at all.And that's the thing, really. In the school system in which I grew up, there were certainly families and students with serious issues. The majority of families and students, however, were relatively healthy-- so the teachers, support staff, community agencies, churches, etc. could pick up the slack for the few students and families in serious crisis. In this situation, however, this whole community is in crisis-- and it's a serious crisis-- and the future just looks so bleak.

I don't know how to fix this stuff, but I know what we are doing is absolutely not working. Instead of working to increase the numbers of adults in these students' lives, we are cutting teacher positions and increasing class sizes. Instead of creating more ways to increase our students' social capital-- by providing more sports, after school clubs, special interest classes, and family programming; we are stripping budgets of everything but the bare bones of what's being tested to comply with NCLB. And in the meantime, the jails just keep being built and the wars just keep being fought and we wonder why our students don't know how to solve their problems peacefully and feel compelled to pledge allegiance to the gang.

I'm pissed, and I'm frustrated, and I'm disgusted, and I'm just so, so, so terribly, terribly sad. As a society, we are conveniently chosing to look the other way as generations of children are the living victims of poverty, drug abuse, gang violence, and inadequate education. We have our own CHILDREN living in Third World conditions in every major city in this country, and we're fighting terrorism across the world. What about the terror of having old bullet holes in the walls of your house from the most recent driveby in your neighborhood? I have no idea why we are spending so much time worrying about making it more illegal for people to get married and who is going to do what to lower our fuel prices. We are failing as a city, as a state, and as a nation-- and until we get our shit together, not one of us is innocent.

Think about it ladies and gentlemen, because the woman speaks the truth. And not just about Milwaukee - the same is true in cities around the country and something must be done. It may never be enough, but it is also never too late to try. And if we all start somewhere, then we will all start and that's something.

Repetition works

So, in order to teach our students to be better writers and to best prepare them for the standardized test in spring, we have been working with them on using evidence/details in their writing. The basic idea is that they open with their thesis (answering the question in a complete sentence) and then give three details or pieces of evidence that support their answer. They must also explain how each piece of evidence/detail relates to their answer. Then they close with some sort of conclusion.

They work on this in English with open response literature prompts and I use it in Civics with "big questions" from each chapter. Some students are still struggling with the five sentence paragraph format so today for their warm up I asked them to write a five sentence paragraph that explained why this weekend would be fun. Here is B's response:

This weekend will be fun because it is longer. I will be able to do more things with my family because I will be home longer. I could go to Phillips All You Can Eat or IHOP with my family since it is a longer weekend. I could probably go to Six Flags with my family since the weekend is so long. That proves that the weekend will be fun because it is longer.

Clearly, he has gotten the point.

Out of sorts

Three things have me out of sorts today:

1. My second period was AWFUL. Outright-yelling-awful. Calling-all-parents-awful. Completely-and-totally-exhausted-awful.
2. My back is twinging and locking and hurting; must go to the gym after work then.
3. My best friend in kindergarten is now three months pregnant. She is my first friend to have a baby outside of high school. Congratulations, Russ and Nora!

A whole new me

Friday night I went to get my hair cut and colored. I decided to try something completely new, something I'd been thinking about for awhile. I have been digging my long (relatively anyway) hair so I kept that, but in honor of fall and fresh starts and all that good stuff, I went in a whole different direction with my hair color.

At our apartment-wide party Saturday night a few friends didn't even recognize me, but once I re-introduced myself they all lauded the change. Even my kids were supportive, telling me I look great and that I should keep my hair this way. Thank G-d too b/c if they hadn't liked I would have known for sure.

So what does the new me look like? An awful lot like the old me, only with much darker hair. Witness:

50th post: Ode to DC

This is long, but worth reading through to the end (which, btw, could have been written by me to Madison or Chicago, the cities of my youth).

So, to my "new" hometown, a soliloquy from a former resident (posted on CraigsList and sent to me by Elizabeth). I may not live here forever, but I think that when I leave I will feel much the same thing (minus the part of living in the middle of nowhere).

I miss you already, you wonderful, self-important, walkable, sporty, humid, pretentious, kinetic, dazzling, overpriced, overcaffeinated, cobblestoned, self-conscious, self-unaware, popped-collar-sporting, popped-collar-mocking, preppy hipster college town masquerading as the political capital of the world.

I was just 17 when we met. You were my first love, and you stuck with me through thick and thin - the years rat-racing through college, that weird time after college when I worked in a restaurant, the overpaid paralegal job, the misguided semester of law school, and then even when I moved down to Virginia I still visited you every single weekend.

When the plane hit the Pentagon, I watched the smoke from across the river and cried. I thought the scaffolding around the Washington Monument was beautiful. I sat in Einstein's lap. When I was flush I drank at the 18th street lounge, and when I was broke I went across the street to Lucky Bar. I could lie in my bed at night and listen to the monkeys making a racket across the street at the zoo, and wake up on a Saturday and sit in my front yard and smoke a cigar with my best friends and watch your young families and your gorgeous, gorgeous young women strolling by.

Georgetown was the neighborhood I loved to hate, and seedy Adams Morgan at 3 AM on a Saturday was the neighborhood I hated to admit I loved. Afternoons laughing out loud at the human circus in Dupont Circle, then getting my butt kicked at chess by some homeless guy. All those weekends we spent Running Against Bush. Man, that seems like such a long time ago. Hitting up Mount Pleasant for real, authentic Mexican food, or crashing with my Hill friends and waking up early to get breakfast at Eastern Market.

Running on the Mall. Playing Ultimate or soccer or rugby on the Mall. Flying kites on the Mall. Building a snow sculpture of the Capitol, on the Mall. Worshipping in the temples of Lincoln and Roosevelt and most of all, Jefferson. Taking pretty girls for walks on the Mall and ending up on the top deck of the Kennedy Center, looking out at your beautiful lights and wanting it all so badly.

All those mornings for all those years, waking up before daylight to row up and down and up and down and up and down the Potomac. Running from the cops under Key Bridge. Drag racing up Rock Creek Park in the middle of the night, and a thousand other crazy stupid things we did together that in retrospect were idiotic but at the time, just meant being young and being broke and alive and full of ideals and most of all, happy.

And now they've finally taken me away from you, and made me come live in this desolate little town in the middle of nowhere where the highest form of culture is the Barber shop/Tattoo parlor combo, and the nearest movie theater is 40 miles away, and the people weigh too much and talk too slowly and I can't complain any more about strangers in bars always wanting to ask what's your job and what's your politics, 'cause around here, everyone's job is the same and people don't understand why a polite person would want to bring up politics in the first place.

I guess I never really told you how I felt, DC. They say that you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone... only, I guess in our case, you're still there, and I'm the one who's gone, but anyway it works out the same way in the end. But now that I'm gone, I just wanted to tell you hey, thanks for all the memories, all the good times, all the things you taught me about myself and my country and the world. I'll never forget you, the city of my youth. You're beautiful to me. You'll always be my first love.

Simple things

I am in a shockingly good mood this morning, especially considering how little sleep I've gotten this weekend and how packed my day is going to be. And yet, I'm doing well and wanted to share the very simple things that are making me sing along with my radio this morning.

1. Late-night pizza, beer and fun conversation with coworkers on Friday night.
2. Youth soccer at 10a Saturday (complete with some amazing plays by Leo).
3. Quality time with Gus on Saturday, including lunch on the couch and stories before naptime.
4. Great weather (high 50s-mid 60s with lots of sunshine) and a correspondingly great fall outfit (khakis, sneakers, red tank, black zipup, jean jacket, sunglasses) on Saturday.
5. Getting my movies at Blockbuster, even though I didn't have enough cash.
6. New nail polish that I love (Revlon "Really Vintage" - the 2 step, 10 day kind).
7. Three hour phone date with Maggie Saturday night.
8. Tomato soup and grilled cheese (all organic) for dinner Saturday night.
9. Waking up early Sunday morning (7:15a) and being at work by 8:15a.
10. Being halfway through my to do list at 10:30a.

This afternoon I am volunteering at the Dupont Circle Historic House Tour. I grew up going to house tours with my mom and this one benefits the Dupont Circle neighborhood association and their efforts to preserve historic homes. And anything I can do to prevent beautiful, old homes from being replaced by garish condos and McMansions is good for me. Plus, there is a party afterwards for the volunteers. Then drinks at Lucky Bar in Dupont and home for an early bedtime. It's nice to have those days that make you wonder, "What isn't there to be happy about?!"It helps me keep perspective on those days that seem so awful. I know y'all understand.

also...

The weather today is enough to make me walk right out of school and down to the Mall. Thank goodness it is supposed to be this beautiful all weekend.

Rethinking things

Last night I talked on the phone with Wendy for nearly 90 minutes. Granted, she did a lot of the talking (more to share, trust me), but still, it was really fun. Maybe I need to rethink this self-proclaimed aversion to phones.

Last night I also went to a birthday party for a coworker, Andie, in Crystal City. I thought I'd stay an hour at most, ended up staying nearly two hours and had a really good time. Maybe I need to rethink my feeling that I'll never make my own friends out here.

This past weekend I took a road trip with Elizabeth and starting thinking about the tension between being successful in your professional life and being successful in your personal life. Specifically, the balance between the two and how to find it when you're in your mid to late twenties. Can one be happy with only one and not the other? Perhaps and that is a question left to sociologists, biologists and anthropologists. Can I be happy with one and not the other? Now, that is the question of the year, I think. Because, really, I think the answer is no, but then I think that I have been relatively happy for the last few years and that those years have not seen the most success on the personal/relationship side of things. These are not questions with answers, I know, but they are still worth posing (especially to yourself) every once in awhile.

The week has felt exceptionally long. I cannot believe that today is only Thursday and that it is not even 3pm yet. I have so much grading and entering of grades to get done, not to mention lesson planning and such. I think it is going to be a long night. And I think that is okay.

***Note: I need to start saving money for a shopping trip. I have lost over 20 lbs since last fall and most of my clothes looks rather silly on me. This is not a bad thing to have to deal with, but I will need to deal with it soon. Good thing I can be such a capitalist whore!

Short and dirty

The subject refers to the version of my date story that y'all are going to get.

We met for drinks in my neighborhood on Friday night. At 8pm. Only he called at 7:45p to say he'd be 20 minutes late. He got to the bar at a little after 9p (he lives in MD and never comes into "the city"). We had two beers and a lot of awkward conversation, including a prolonged one about his most recent ex and one about how many Indian guys I have dated (he's Indian). When the bartender started asking if I needed anything with a look of concern in his eyes, it was time to go. I gave him (the date, not the bartender) much simpler directions to get back home, thanked him for the beers and walked my happy self home. To close, the answer to his question about my Indian dating history is two and he will not be making it three. Luckily, though, he seems to have gotten this message on his own as he has not called, emailed or tried to message me since. Anyway, it was worth a shot.

Back to the bench.

Now here's some news...

I have a date tonight. Weird. I'll let you know all about it later.

BUT...

Work is hard, BUT...

• It turns out I'm pretty good at what I do. My observation yesterday morning yielded positive results - students were off task less than 20% of the time and when given a prompt or direction to correct behaviors, they were 90% compliant with my request. So, even though it sometimes feels like I have no control, apparently I do. As much as I am NOT a math person, I am a data person and, in that respect, numbers are great.
  
• I love my students. Today, after Government, JH wandered to my desk instead of booking it to lunch as usual. I looked up from my computer and he handed me a large envelope. "What is this?" I asked. "My senior proofs," he replied, smiling. Inside were proofs from his three outift (tux, grad gown, casual) photo session that he just wanted to show me. I oohed and ahhed over them, made fun of how big the graduation gown made him look (it was WAY too big) and asked him which was his favorite. Then I sent him on his way to lunch. It was just one of those little moments that make it worthwhile.

It's only Wednesday, BUT...

• I have exciting plans for the weekend. Well, exciting to me anyway.
• Wednesday is now half over.

Maggie's mom is still sick, BUT...

• The doctors determined that her heart is healthy.
• Major surgery has been avoided, even if only for now.

Winter break is a long way off, BUT...

• I bought my tickets on Monday.
• I am already looking forward to seeing people.
• So many get-togethers must be planned. (I will be in Chicago 12/20-12/27)

Update

First and foremost, I have to send a shout out to my roommate, who turns 25 today. Happy birthday, Elizabeth! You are a remarkable woman and I hope that this is a remarkable year. Love ya.

Keeping with the shout out theme, one is in order for my friends Dave and Gwen who got engaged over the weekend. Congratulations, Dave and Gwen! I cannot wait for the wedding and I know that this is only the start of much happiness for the both of you. (PS: Gorgeous ring and great announcement. Seriously.)

Other updates:

• Elizabeth's party was Saturday night. A good, old-fashioned keg party was the order of the night and it was a lot of fun. More so, frankly, than I thought it would be. There were enough people, but not too many. There was flip cup on a specially crafted wooden table (supported by trash cans b/c we're not that classy). There was cheap booze in plastic cups. There was music and dancing (although not, apparently, enough) and conversation. And, of course, some pretty amusing moments and great one liners. I'd share them here, but there are too many and, to be honest, I don't remember all of them that well. I do remember this, said to me by one woman's girlfriend after I killed a spider on the porch so the woman would stop freaking out, "You are her hero. If you liked women, I'd be pretty annoyed right now." And the benefit of keg parties at age 26? Lots of cheap beer over the course of many hours (in this case, 5) means no pain the next day. Sweet.
• Work is hard right now. I'm really tired and sort of unmotivated and the kids have seriously lost their minds. My first and seventh periods pretty much guarantee that I start and end the day on a rough note and that's just no way to live. Yesterday, seventh period was so bad that I passed on yoga and the gym and went home to do laundry and drink beer. I was in that place.
• My friend Maggie's mom is having serious surgery today and, depending on what they find, may have even more serious surgery to come so please send positive thoughts out into the universe on her behalf.
• Speaking of moms, mine is doing well. She is on round two of chemo and feeling better than she did during round one. I mean, she still has cancer and is still rundown and not working, but her mood is up and everyone is staying positive. I know I don't say much about it (mainly b/c, at a certain point, there isn't much to say), but thanks to all of you who check in and let me know you're thinking about/praying for/sending positive vibes to me and my family.

I think that's all for now. Have a good one!