Girassol

Teaching in a rural high school is awesome

"Señorita, can I get my work for tomorrow?  I won't be in class."

"OK, why not?"

"Because my Animal Science class has to help Mrs. F. castrate the piglets."

So the new school year is going OK

We are now in the fourth week of the school year.  HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?  It is only September and I am already freaking out about how fast the year is going!!! 

I have a good group of kids this year -- about half of them are kids I've had before, and half are new.  I got very spoiled last year when a new teacher came and doubled the size of the Spanish department (from 1 to 2!) and I got to keep all the upper level kids and had NO freshmen and NO new names to learn.  It was blissful. 

It is incredible how much growing up teenagers can do when you don't see them over the summer.  They look physically different, of course, but even more noticeable are the social and emotional changes they make.  Sophomores walk in with a spring in their step that says, "Not being a freshman anymore is so SWEET!"  Juniors have turned into upperclassmen with attitudes and ambitions and the exuberant independence a driver's license can bring.  Seniors have a look in their eyes that is half "I have so totally arrived, and my friends and I are going to rock this place" and half "Holy crap I have to figure out what I'm doing with the rest of my life FAST."   

One of the things I like the most about a new school year is reconnecting with my students and seeing how their personality, and especially their sense of humor, develops as they get older.  On Friday afternoon during a test, the following exchange happened between Jiggywidit (a very white boy who wishes he were from the hood, and who is funny but not as funny as he thinks he is), Brainiac (a tall, awkward kid who is known for being a brain and NOT for being funny), and myself:

Jiggywidit:  Señorita, I'll pay you five bucks if you tell me all the answers.

Me:  Jiggy, dude, I would never sell my soul to you for a measly five dollars.

Brainiac:  How about ten?

Not bad, brain boy!  Cracked everybody up, especially since he was the LAST kid in the class who would have needed the answers anyway.  The best part about it was the look on his face when he realized he had just successfully, and with spot-on timing, had a class clown moment.  So great!

Then, the fire drill bell rang and everyone had to evacuate the building and so they probably all compared answers anyway while they filed outside.   

Woe is Me

You may have noticed that I never post here anymore.  Actually, anyone with a remote interest in this blog probably ceased coming here a year or so ago, but just in case someone's still lurking around...

Being a public high school teacher, I go to great lengths to remain anonymous on the Internet.  If there is something to be found online about a teacher, high school kids will find it.  The last thing I need is a MySpace page created in my name by some pissed-off teenagers, or a printout of my blog on the walls of the school.   (Assuming there were actually any juicy posts ever made here!)

Also, since my life mainly consists of work, there isn't much non-work-related stuff to post about.  And we all know the dangers of posting about work on the Internet.  Combine that with the fact that if I were to post about individual kids I deal with at school, I'd be violating every privacy law known to man.  I could always post about how much I hate writing a Master's thesis, but even thinking about it gets old very quickly, never mind ranting about it day in and day out to the Internet.  Hopefully that weight will be off my shoulders in a few short months anyway.

I really do enjoy the camaraderie created with others through blogging.  I enjoy the instant feedback, and the challenge of presenting my thoughts in an entertaining way.  I like having a faster-than-handwritten way of recording what's going on in my life.  Maybe someday if I get out of this profession I'll feel safer blogging again.  I've thought about taking this page down, but everything will be deleted unless someone can tell me how to back it all up. 

It's kind of wasteful spending money every month on something I don't update.  Shoot, I could be going out and buying a meal for a homeless person with the $4.95 I spend monthly to keep the site live.  (Although let's face it, I'd really just buy myself an extra pint of Ben & Jerry's and a Pepsi.)

For fun, I updated my music and book lists.  They very much reflect my current mood and the thesis currently consuming all my free time.

Surviving

I'm hanging in there.  I've been in the new job for six weeks now, and every day is a roller coaster ride of emotions.  Not just from one day to the next, but from one class period to the next, and from, literally, one minute to the next.  I barely can find time to use the bathroom.  I have a really hard time not taking stupid things that teenagers do and say personally.  I finally got all my clothes and shoes into my closet yesterday, and I've been here for two months.  I've cried every single day this week (although thankfully not in front of my classes).  I am more exhausted than I ever thought possible, and there are still eight months left in the school year.

If it's not too much to ask, throw a prayer or two heavenward for me.  I could really use it.

ESL Tidbit of the Day: Beef, It's What You Wear On Your Feet

Has anyone ever read the book Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry?  It's a historical fiction novel for kids that tells the story of a Danish family during World War II who helped out their Jewish friends and neighbors.  The book talks about how one of the daughters got really upset that her new shoes were made of fish skin.  This launched a conversation about rationing things during wartime, and I explained that leather was one thing that had to be rationed so the people would make shoes out of other materials.  Someone didn't know what leather was, so I pointed out some leather shoes in the classroom and asked if anyone knew what animal leather usually came from.

One of my normally quiet Japanese students burst out, "STEAK!"

ESL Tidbit of the Day: This $#!+ is batty

Recently my class read the biography of Albert Einstein, and in this biography we learned that Einstein became fascinated by the boomerang as a young boy, and he made one for himself and used it to scare away the bats that hung around the Einstein family's backyard.  So I'm trying to determine how much they know about bats, since they aren't common in some of their countries.  I ask the class, "So why do you think the Einsteins wanted the bats to go away?"

A Mexican student decides to answer.  I love this kid.  Bless his little heart, but he sounds just like Cheech and has a really hard time with possessive pronouns.  He answers, "Because your poo is very bad."

I just stood there and went, "Actually, the BATS' poo is probably what they were worried about.  MY poo hasn't been anywhere near Albert Einstein's house."

ESL Tidbit of the Day: The Joker

I LOVE it when my students start getting good enough at English to try and make jokes!

This conversation happened on Wednesday:

ME [to a Taiwanese student, known here as "TS"]: You look different today.  Did you get a haircut?
TS:  No.
ME:  Is that a new shirt, then?
TS:  No.
ME:  Well, something's different about you today.
TS:  No, I just have Holy Spirit!


The following conversation happened yesterday when someone asked me to explain the difference between "supermarket" and "grocery store."  KS stands for "Korean student," JS is "Japanese student" and TS is apparently the class clown this week.

ME:  Well, a supermarket and a grocery store are pretty much the same thing.  We just say grocery store more often here.
KS:  In Korea, we say "super."  We use English word!
ME:  Oh, really? 
JS:  Yes, in Japan too.
TS:  In Taiwan too.... No, in Taiwan three!

Freaking Awesome News

You are reading the blog of the newest high school Spanish teacher in Pennsylvania's public schools.  I GOT THE JOB!!!!!

Two Job Interviews And A Funeral: Or, What I've Been Doing For The Last Week

So, the job interview.  Thank you for the good vibes -- I think they worked.

The interview involved me and a legal pad on one end of the phone and the superintendent, principal, assistant principal, curriculum director, and French teacher on the other end of the phone.  They asked me a LOT of questions, most of which I was able to more or less jot down while they were asking, which really helped me keep my focus and answer coherently.  Most of their questions were about my teaching philosophies and practices, along the lines of, "What are the elements of a good lesson plan?" and "What are some classroom management issues you have faced and how did you deal with them?" 

They also asked me at the end to look out my window and tell them in Spanish what I saw, and then to pretend I was seeing a little sailboat on the lake and describe how it reacted to the wind.  So I said a bunch of stuff about the boat rising and falling with the waves and the captain having to use the sun and shoreline to guide himself back to the coast.  Then the superintendent goes, "So how do you say 'sails' in Spanish?"  It struck me as an odd question because I realized I hadn't actually said the word sails in all of that, and I didn't think that anybody there spoke Spanish well enough to know that.  I wondered if they were just testing my vocabulary breadth or my ability to recall random words on the spot, or if he thought I was trying to avoid the word since I didn't know it.  So I go, "Velas, I believe."  And that was the end of the interview.

Well, sails ARE velas, and I wanted to kick myself for adding the "I believe" on there.   But apparently the interview went well enough overall, because they got in touch with me later that afternoon to let me know that they really wanted to see me teach a mini-lesson before they made up their minds about anything.  And this is where it gets interesting.

See, last Saturday (June 18th), my great-grandmother passed away.  I found out about her death and about the job interview on the same night, so I immediately started preparing a sample lesson plan to e-mail the interviewers and also started looking for an affordable plane ticket to get back to Pennsylvania on a moment's notice.  Plus, I had to work and get lesson plans together for my subs, and also the summer term started last Monday and I have to take a class.  It was a stressful week.  But when they asked me if I could get there and teach a mini-lesson, it couldn't have happened at a better time -- I would be right there in Pennsylvania and could easily get down to the school to do it.  It's just sort of cosmic the way this all happened at the same time, and so in a way I feel like Granny was stepping in as my guardian angel and orchestrating all of this somehow.

Granny was born March 25th, 1912.  She was 93 years old when she died.  She saw amazing changes in the world in those 93 years -- from a brother fighting in World War I to getting electricity and running water at home to seeing man walk on the moon to the invention of our friend, the Internet. 

Granny learned to drive when she was 60 years old.  She bought us our first Nintendo (except she misunderstood and kept calling it an Innuendo).  She went on her first roller coaster ride in her late 70's.  Around that same time she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy.  When asked how she was feeling after the surgery, she replied, "Well, one less thing to wash."

Granny wore a tie-dyed blouse and culotte set to my high school graduation because she just knew I would think it was cool (and she was right).  She was so proud of me that day, because she was never able to go past eighth grade and she just thought it was the greatest thing that I had made it all the way through high school.  On my graduation day, she gave me a sterling silver spoon ring that she had been saving to give me on that occasion.  I've been wearing it every day for years.

Granny fed a house full of relatives on Sunday afternoons for as long as any of us can remember.  She was an amazing cook (was a personal chef for more than 30 years), and because of her prowess in the kitchen I never met a pickled beet, chicken liver, or split-pea soup I didn't like, and have been spoiled to death through homemade pie crusts, REAL whipped cream, the creamiest mashed potatoes known to man, and fried chicken that is to die for.  I've spent many a late night down at her house with all the womenfolk in my family playing cards -- group Solitaire, mostly.  And as old and slow as Granny eventually got, she was still tough to beat.

This is a woman who was the fourteenth of fifteen children and whose mother died giving birth to the last.  Because she grew up with no mother, she made darn sure everyone in her family would be treated beautifully.  She mothered all of us in some way or another.

Over the last ten years or so, Granny's health had gone downhill slowly, but in the last year and a half she had another cancer surgery, a stroke, and fell several times.  She was living in a Catholic nursing center since the stroke.  It was strange to go visit her and see her eating food that she hated because it doesn't taste as good as what she would have made.  It was strange to look in her little closet and see not her usual classy slacks and blouses, but just a couple of pairs of polyester pants and a couple of shirts, all labeled, "Margaret Benchoff" in black marker.  It was strange that sometimes she didn't recognize us when we showed up to visit.  It was strange to know that that woman was no longer the same woman we all knew.

But because of these changes, we accepted a long time ago that Granny wouldn't be around much longer, and we've been grieving slowly since long before she was actually gone.  When I heard the news that she was gone (and I think the same could be said for the rest of my family), I actually felt relieved instead of sad.  No more morphine drip.  No more Depends.  No more thickener in all the food.  No more confusion and frustration and loss of control.  Just liberation from an aged, malfunctioning body and reunion with her mother and father, her fourteen brothers and sisters, and her husband, who've been waiting for her to join them for a very long time.  How could I NOT be relieved and happy for her?

So last Thursday I flew back to PA and spent the evening preparing my mini-lesson portion of the job interview.  Friday morning I went and gave the lesson and I thought it went really well (although it doesn't matter much what I think, does it?).  Friday afternoon I had a meeting with a professor at a PA school where I'll be taking my last few classes toward teaching certification starting this fall.

Friday night was Granny's viewing.  Saturday was the actual funeral, with all six of us great-grandchildren serving as the pallbearers.  The WHOLE family was there, which was wonderful.  We put together some framed posters with pictures of her life to display at the funeral home.  There was a Christian Wake service given by her priest, and once all the other people had left, the family members had a chance to say goodbye to her.  Before they closed the casket, we put a deck of cards in with her, slipping into her hands an Ace, because of how much she loved Solitaire, and the Queen of Hearts, because, well, it just felt like her card.

Wish Me Luck, People

I have a job interview today.  Not just A job interview, but it's actually my FIRST real job interview.  Somehow I've always been lucky enough to avoid that part of the process and still end up in jobs that I've loved and have been great for me.

It will be an over-the-phone interview for a job teaching high school Spanish at a school back in Pennsylvania at a small school near where I grew up and I really want this.  I'm abominably nervous and could really use any good vibes you see fit to send my way.  Especially around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time this afternoon.

And if it doesn't work out, at least I've fulfilled my New Year's Resolution for the month of June.  Something I've never done before?  Job interview -- check.