Living a Whole Lifetime in 7 weeks

After 14 weeks of student teaching, I am back to my old life. Going to bed late, sleeping in, being a kid at heart almost all day (and it's exhausting!), cleaning up and doing things around the apartment. This is only my 3rd full day back at home, and I already feel like I have too much time on my hands. While it's exceptionally nice to be back at home, I feel happier when I'm working. Contributing to society, supporting myself and my kids, and most importantly - keeping myself busy.

Don't get me wrong. It's really nice to be back at home again full-time. I can get things done and go grocery shopping during the day. How I missed grocery shopping in the daytime during the week. I've gotten used to enduring long lines in the evenings and on the weekends along with the working people. Now I share the lines with stay-at-home moms, the recently unemployed and lazy bums.

In just 7 short weeks, I've learned more than I ever could in my entire life what NOT to do as a teacher. Teaching high school was a mess! In my personal opinion, some of the teachers created much more drama than the students did. They actually leeched off the drama between the students and recreated them. They call it "professionally discussing their concerns for the students" but they are really feeding off the energy and amplifying the situation. Some of the students acted more mature than a few of the teachers. How sad is that?

During my evaluation (which I passed with flying colors - but that doesn't mean anything to me coming from an ineligible sponsor), my supervising teacher gave me some advice - two, actually. First, he said I needed to be more social with the students and the teachers. Yeah - because I didn't want to hang out with him during my free time, that means I'm not social enough. Right. Second, he said I needed to dress more professionally. There he was - telling me that when he himself was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Maybe he meant I should wear skirts or pretty myself up. If that's true - he deserves a fist in the face. Here are some "Don'ts" I've observed and told myself to NEVER EVER do when I'm a teacher. It's also my advice to the supervising teacher I had:

1. When a student needs help on an assignment, never tell him/her to hold
on so you can finish talking about another student and his/her problems (in the
presence of a class).
2. Don't leave your student teacher alone for 30-45 minutes at a time
(almost daily) to wander the halls, talk to other teachers and come back with an
excuse saying "I had to deal with a problem."
3. When you make rules, never break them. If YOU break them, your students will.
4. Never make up grades based on how you feel about the students. If he earned it, good. If not, do NOT give him a passing grade! That only sets them up for failure in the future.
5. Do NOT back stab or gossip about your co-workers. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday it'll come back and bite you in the ass. Hard.
6. Don't teach the same lesson every...single...day. It's BORING! No wonder your students hate you.
7. If you're lazy - you're NOT meant to be a teacher.
8. When you often dump your class on another teacher because of a "situation", do NOT call that teacher lazy when he wants you to return the favor once in a blue moon.
9. Do NOT meddle in your students' lives. There's a fine line between caring and getting involved.
10. If you give assignments and tell them it's for a grade, do NOT just throw them in the trash when you've decided you don't want to be bothered with the gradebook. It's a waste of the students' time (especially when the assignment is 2nd grade material...like, really!? You'd give seniors a 2nd grade assignment!?).
11. When the student teacher teaches for a week, creates an assignment/test, and administers it to the students, do NOT disregard that as "practice" for the student teacher and simply place the papers aside. At least when the student teacher teaches, the students are actually LEARNING. Look that up in the dictionary - I'm sure it's a very unfamiliar term to you.
12. Again - if you're lazy - do NOT become a teacher.

Overall, you can see my experience wasn't a very good one. I did enjoy some of my time there. I met some teachers that I've become friendly with and hung out with during my breaks. There are some decent people there and the students can be super nice.

If you or anyone you know is planning to intern at HISD, please PLEASE talk to me first. I'll tell you who's good and who's not - so you can be sure you're not placed with the same teacher I was stuck with.

Major Venting Ahead

Bitch Mode: On

I am SO pissed! It's my last week of student teaching and I've had enough. It's taking almost all the strength I have to not walk out of the school and never come back. I can deal with the issues here, but this is enough.

Today is the final day of TAKS testing. The seniors were herded into the cafeteria for a long morning of meetings, getting ready for graduation and hearing college reps speak about how wonderful their college is and why the students should go there. Because my teaching supervisor is a Senior Sponsor this year, I got stuck with watching the seniors in the cafeteria.

Normally, these kids are OK with me. They generally listen with an occasional moment of rebellion. They quickly get over it and we get along fine. But today was another story.

The school has a very strict rule - no cellphones, PDAs, etc during school hours. While the college reps were speaking, the Deaf group just sat at their tables and chatted away - completely ignoring the interpreters. They also played with their phones. Instead of taking them away, I gave them a warning. Put it away... and I won't take it if I don't see it again. I guess these kids were really bored (so was I), so they kept playing with their phones. After several times of telling individual students (one warning each) to put away their phones, I got fed up. I told them all.. if I see ONE more phone, I'm taking all of yours.

Of course, they all played with their phones again. They refused to give their phones to me, telling me that I wasn't their mother and their teacher, and I had no right to take their phones. Keep in mind - during this time in the cafeteria, I was alone with 20 students. My teaching supervisor had left me alone with them for at least 45 minutes - AGAIN. He has a nasty habit of leaving me alone with the students so he can roam the halls for people to annoy.

After struggling for a while, I walked out of the cafeteria. I found my supervisor and with a stern expression, I told him that he needed to go back to his students and handle them because I'm fed up. He just said "OK, go back over there. I'll be there soon." He shows up 15-20 minutes later and HE DID NOTHING! The students had their phones out. He just looked at them. He didn't say anything to them and he didn't do anything.

I realize that as a future teacher I need to get a handle on my discipline abilities. In elementary, I quickly got my students under control, I even won over the girl with emotional issues. I got along well with my high school students. I taught and they listened. However, they've been spoiled by their real teacher. He's all talk and no action. Whenever I tried to discipline them (or just teach), he would frequently step in and interrupt me.. when he's around. I feel that he undermines my status here at the school and presents a huge problem here.

Anyway, the students sat there and boldly started talking bad about me - in front of me and my supervising teacher. "She can't do nothing, she's not a teacher," is one example. You don't want to know what else they said. And my supervising teacher did - you guessed it - NOTHING.

In fact, he turned around and started flirting with a young interpreter. They chatted about Gallaudet and they both took turns talking about themselves, promoting themselves as an excellent teacher and excellent interpreter ("I learned all ASL all by myself! I never took ITP courses, I became very skilled because I have excellent deaf friends." mock giggle). GAG!

I was fuming inside. I pulled the assistant principal aside and told her about my situation with the kids, their disrespecting me and using the phones. She told me to go to her office later and to write them all up. I'm going to do exactly that. You can be damn well sure of it.

On top of all this - my supervising teacher told me this morning that I wouldn't be able to teach my lessons. On Friday, I approached him and told him I came up with an idea on how to present reading materials to the student and that I wanted to do that this week. He said "Oh, sure!" Today, he said "Well, we need let them go to the computer lab and do online activities. It's been crazy with the TAKS testing so this week will just be easy, OK?" I'm thinking - the past FIVE WEEKS has been easy on his students! The seniors did absolutely nothing all week last week except watch movies. And we need to take it easy because of TAKS?

I had started to become excited about potentially teaching a new idea I came up with. I wanted to test it out on my students and see if it really improved their understanding of their vocabulary words. Guess it won't happen.

4 more days. Will I make it?

Bitch Mode: Off

Abusing Sick Days

Let's review our vocabulary for a minute here. Don't worry, nothing too difficult.... Define the word, "sick." Done? OK, now define "sick days." The answer's pretty obvious, right? It's your basic kindergarten vocabulary. Sick means: "stay the hell away from me when you're coughing, wheezing, sniffling, blowing your nose, running a fever or sweating cold sweats - OR all of the above."

I have an issue with people abusing their sick days. Everyone does it, I know I have in the past... but excessively calling in sick and using up your sick days for when you are actually well is just plain stupid. And I'll tell you why.

There are two people that I know (who will remain nameless for obvious reasons) who have used up all their sick days for the year already - and they used it all up a long time ago. One used it to take an extended vacation for spring break - taking 3 days off right before Spring Break. I'm not going to list all the reasons why they used up all their sick days. Some were valid and some were simply "because I didn't feel like working." They were given 10 paid sick days. With all the school holidays, spring break and summer break - is there really a need to take an additional 10 days off - some of which because you didn't feel like working?

Because they have used up all their sick days, they have go to work when they're sick. When they work while they're sick, they expose their germs to other people - forcing them to take their sick days off work if they ever caught the germs. Here's a tip from Social Decorum 101: It's RUDE!

One of them came down with a very minor strain of "Influenza" (his words) which is just a fancy name for the flu. Is a very "minor" flu any better than THE flu? I think not. He was pretty sick. I did my very best to distance myself from him. His co-worker (who also used all her sick days) got sick, maybe from him, and continued to pass on the germs. Needless to say, I avoided her like the plague.

What's even worse - using up all your sick days will cause some people to act immorally (for lack of better word). Because her sick days were all gone, someone snuck out of work for 3 hours (during lunch and her free period) without signing in or out (because she couldn't afford to) to go to a doctor's appointment. For lunch - you're allowed to leave campus but during your free periods, you're required to stay on campus. Just her luck, the principal came around looking for her. This forced the other teachers to lie and cover up for her - telling the principal that she was in the bathroom, in the library, etc, etc. The principal was pretty pissed off - but I didn't hear anything about the teacher getting in trouble. I guess maybe because the principal couldn't really prove that the teacher stepped off campus.


My point is simple and my point is this: If you're sick - PLEASE take the day off and stay away from me. If you're NOT sick and it's NOT a life/death situation - drag your ass to work. IF and only IF you have lots of sick days left towards the end of the year and there's a VERY good chance you will not be sick (hey, you never know), then do whatever you please. If your job doesn't carry your sick days onto the next year then go ahead - use it all up and take an extra vacation. But for your sake AND mine, don't be stupid and spend it all on frivolous frolics at the beach. Comprende?

Counting down the days

I have two weeks left. After today, 9 days to be exact. 9 more days before I'm done with my internship. Finally.

I'm getting major "senoritis." It's a disease that seniors get. God knows I had that my senior year of high school. After so many years of school, we are finally at the end and the end is the worst. Time just drags on and on. This is when we get restless and lazy - big time. Time started to slow down for me two weeks ago. It was a slow "4 weeks left" and a slower "3 weeks left." Just two more weeks left, I keep telling myself, but I'm wondering just how slow it'll go.

I finished my independent study. The only thing standing in my way from certification is my Comp Exam. I'm due to take that in June. The first half is a couple of assignments and discussion board participation. I guess it's a way to prepare us for the test. I'm a bit annoyed by that but thankful, I guess. Everyone I know didn't have to take a "course", they just signed up for it and took the exam. Lucky for me, my Comp Exam grade isn't based solely on the test. So, if I don't do well, I have my assignments and discussion board participation to fall back on. I have a proctor for my exam (supposedly), so I'm all set. Let's go - I'm ready.

I've applied to 4 districts. Success comes in numbers, doesn't it? 4 districts with three schools each (if there's elementary, middle and high schools), my odds are good, I think. HISD just opened up a brand new position a few days ago for middle school. I applied. Fingers are crossed.

Today is the first day in 4 days that my butt isn't sore. Being more active - working out and doing cardio almost daily (so far), and rollerblading at least once a week makes me feel better about myself. I feel energized and I feel like I can keep on doing more things. Being sore is terrible - but it means I'm working the muscles. However, I'm not expecting any results anytime soon - I've been cheating. I've been having an affair with food. I just hope my body doesn't find out - but it probably will soon enough. Because of my birthday (and among other reasons), I've been eating out a lot lately - which means I've been taking in lots of calories. Oh well - nobody said guilty pleasures was good for your figure.

Not to mention - I do pretty much nothing 3/4 of my time here during my internship. For instance - I have 10:22 to 12:00 off today.... which means I'm playing around on the computer. I didn't have to teach this morning either - I had seniors for 1st period and they had meetings to go to.

Well, time for me to go and be bored. I bet you'd kill to be my position right now, J. Wanna trade?

Improvising at its worst

This week looks promising to be a bad week. Or at least a bad start to the week. Where to start? I don't consider myself addicted to the computer. I don't think I'm addicted to the Internet. It's an extremely nice "luxury" to have and to kill time with. Many of us don't realize that we literally have the whole world at the tip of our fingers when we access the Internet.... until we don't have access anymore.

I lost my Internet connection for two whole days. TWO days! That's a mighty long time for me, especially when everything is riding on the Internet. I do lots of planning and rely heavily on the Internet to supply me with ideas, pictures, and worksheets. Of course, I also use the Internet as a fact checker. Imagine teaching a few adults that "dog" is a verb. Ok, maybe not that extreme but you get the idea.

Apparently, my computer decided to go off the deep end and start acting crazy. It was spamming the servers so the DSL company shut me down. I fixed the problem so I am back up and running now (obviously) and am trying to catch up on two days worth of checking emails, websites, and news.

Loss of Internet at home brings Improvisation Number One: Working at school during lunch and later, in an office frantically printing my GED lesson 10 minutes before class (I decided to revamp it, I wasn't happy with what I did a couple weeks ago). Doing stuff at the last minute is NOT fun and stressful. J and P - WHY do you do it!? You're both crazy.

What else has happened to me? Well, the projector at school decided to break too. That put a crimp in my math lessons. Improvisation Number Two: I decided to use the SmartBoard instead and have my students work off that. THEN the next day, the laptop connected to the SmartBoard decided to block us out and refuses to accept any logins and passwords. That gets rid of my plans to use PowerPoint too. What next? Improvisation Number Three: The teacher whose class I'm teaching has paper, posters and junk plastered all over BOTH chalkboards - so guess what? I had to write on a teeny tiny chalkboard that's about 8x8 inches. Fun.

Today, I had to go to an appointment at 8am which meant I would be late for school. I figured about an hour and half of wait time and meeting time which would get me back to school by 10 at the latest - which would allow me to teach my Language lesson at 10:15. Right? Wrong! The stupid office made me wait TWO hours before they even saw me. Needless to say, I was pretty annoyed. This also meant I arrived too late to teach Language. Which comes.... Improvisation Number Four: My teacher is insistent that I cover Deaf Culture for 5 days (bummer) so I couldn't bump up Language today. Yesterday, the teacher wanted to finish an old lesson she started but never finished. So - I have three days to teach them a week's worth of Language. It'll be fun cramming and modifying my lessons!

After my appointment, I had to stop for gas. I was in a hurry and cars were lined up, so I grabbed the first available pump I saw. I stepped out and guess what. Stepped into a very sticky puddle of spilled gasoline. Yay! My shoes were sticky for a while after that.

AND - I had a bad hair day today. If any of you saw me today (and P did), you'd frown. I learned my lesson - I'm not going to bed with my hair wet without brushing it. It.doesn't.look.good.

GED class went very smoothly tonight, thankfully. I'm hoping tomorrow brings a new beginning and ends the not-so-fun week I've been having so far. Wish me luck!

An Intern's Experience

I went on a field trip on Thursday with my students. We went to a ranch south of Houston to show the kids how people in Texas lived back in the 1800's through early 1900's and how life was hard for them. Specifically, we learned about the cattle ranchers and the cowboys that brought their cattle up north to be sold. Very Brokeback Mountain minus the gayness. I ate a homemade biscuit that was made from a recipe dated back to the early 1800's. Pretty good.

I experienced a huge deja vu in the morning when I got to school. Instead of my purse and my lunch sack (because of the field trip), I walked up to the school with a dark blue backpack slung over my right shoulder, cranberry juice in one hand and a cookie in the other. This is exactly what I had every morning when I went to high school. If I didn't have cranberry juice, I had chocolate milk.

Stepping on the bus was weird for me as well. It was the first time I stepped on a bus in 10 years. Nothing has changed except for two security cameras that were installed on the bus. One up front and one in the middle. I guess that's a good thing. Not good for students that like to pick their noses and eat the boogers or pick at their butts. There's an audience now.

On the way there, it was a slow drive because of the traffic. We have 8 students. Three of them wanted to sit together so that left one student alone, so I decided to sit with her. She's a new student that just moved from Africa a few weeks ago. She kept pointing out the window asking me what the names (specifically, signs) were for everything, so we worked on improving her vocabulary. She was in awe of everything. Last week, I had taught the class what solids, liquids and gasses were. As we traveled down the highway, we passed a couple of houses, creeks and factories. She beamed at me and called them out - solid, liquid and gas. This is why I want to be a teacher. Very satisfying.

I love working with her. She's always smiling and has an enthusiasm for learning new things. Although, just like any other student, she gets tired of working and gets restless in class. No student is perfect, I suppose... but she's pretty close. We continued to work on her vocabulary all the way to the ranch. Coming from Africa, her reading ability is quite low and some of her signs are different from ours. However, she excels in Math and is a quick learner.

Once we got to the ranch, I paired up with another student of mine. She has Cerebral Palsy and struggles with keeping her balance while walking. The ranch is a pretty big place, so this student was given the courtesy of riding a golf cart around the place. The teacher stayed behind with the other 7 students while I rode around on the golf cart with my student on my lap (who's very small and weighs about the same as my 2 1/2 year old). Because of her special crutches, she couldn't carry around her lunch or anything that she received that day. Guess who got stuck with carrying them all? I stuffed them all in my backpack. Good thing I decided to bring a backpack with me.

Most of the land was grass so my student struggled with dragging her crutches across. I carried her around piggyback style and had fun with her. She's so adorable and sweet - but like any other student, she has her flaws. She's SO slow with her assignments! While I think it's cute, it's definitely annoying - often, she'll stop whatever she's doing and get into a giggling fit. I wonder what goes on inside that mind of hers.

So far, my experience as an intern has been a good one. My students may drive me crazy and I may like some more than the others, but I know one thing for sure. When I finish my internship there in four weeks, I'll miss them.

My Daily Morning Commute

I started my internship for my MA degree three weeks ago. I work (or should I say intern?) at a magnet school. It's very different from a regular public school and sometimes I find myself still adjusting to the environment. I am majoring in Deaf Education so I am working with deaf children, specifically 2nd graders. This magnet school has three types of students. Talented and Gifted, Mentally Impaired and finally, Hearing Impaired. Everyday, I see lots of students with disabilities. Some are minor while others are pretty severe. There are good days and bad days. On the bad days, I leave school feeling depressed and feeling sad for the students who have severe defects. I won't go into detail here - but imagine seeing a small child that is practically a vegetable who sits in a wheelchair all day long, stares into space and drools on their bibs. Now multiply that by about 20 to 30. Pretty depressing.

Anyway, I have been driving to the school for three weeks now. I leave my apartment at 7:00am and arrive by 7:30. Some days, I don't leave my apartment until 7:05 or 7:10. I take the same route everyday. I go through the same morning routine 5 days a week. It can get pretty boring. For many of us, we have our daily morning ritual - and even if we leave our homes on time, we probably don't see the same cars on the road, right?

On my drive to work, I go through a fancy community. During my short drive in this community, I find myself feeling strange. I get this eerie feeling of being in a movie. Why? Well, you know how in some movies, people in small towns go through their daily routines and always pass the same people on the road or on the sidewalk? That happens to me.

On one specific road, I see the same people almost every single morning like clockwork. First, I see a middle-aged man that looks like he's built to be on a football team. He is always wearing a dark blue jogging suit. He comes out of his gated townhouse community with his middle-sized grey schnauzer and waits at the street corner. When he receives the signal, he crosses the street and starts walking his hyper dog down the road.

I see a woman with long blonde hair in a ponytail wearing a white jogging suit. She runs weird. Whenever I see her, I think of men training in the military. In the usual military obstacle course, you will see two rows of tires lined up. The recruits are seen running as quick as they can through the tires, picking their knees up and balancing back and forth. This particular lady runs like she's going through the tires. Her hair swishes back and forth wildly. I'm not sure if her running style is intentional or if she just runs weird.

I see a couple of senior citizens walking their dogs. Once in a while, I will see the same people stopping to chat with each other on the sidewalk as they pass each other. There are lots of dog walkers at this time of the day. Sometimes, I will see two people with their trainer (I'm assuming) going through a workout routine on a tennis court.

Whenever I go down this road, I am always reminded of movies and television shows that have their characters meet and greet the same people every morning on their way to work. I always think to myself that it isn't realistic. There's far too many people in the world and there's tons of factors to consider. Just how often do you see the exact same people every single day down to the exact minute? If I am a few minutes early or late on my drive through this community, I see an entirely different group of people. Most of them are dog walkers and some of them are business people walking down the sidewalks. If I am a little bit early in my drive, I usually see a lady sitting down in the grass next to a bus stop waiting for her bus to arrive.

I find it fascinating and somewhat comforting to see the same people every morning. My internship at that school ends in four weeks. I'll be starting a new morning routine and a different commute. I wonder what that will bring me.