So · much · shouting, · so · much · laughter

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.


- by Naomi Shihab Nye

This is for the people who drove 6 hours to be with me for the service, despite all that I have done to them.
This is for the people who showed up at the service, even though I haven't seen them or talked to them in at least ten years.
This is for the people who call my dad to bitch at him for being an asshole.
This is for the people who sent me a card to show they remember, they care.
This is for the people who take me out to dinner and let me talk, or not talk and let go.
This is for the people who always picked up the phone, even though they knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation.
This is for the people who tell me they've lost parents, who tell me how difficult it is but they're only a phone call away.
This is for the people who have written to me to tell they support me, they're sorry.

This is to knowing I have back-up when I need it most, even if I'm not related to any of them.

I am awake.
This is bad.
But I am happy.
And for the first time in a very very very long time, I feel solid about my lesson plans for tomorrow.
Also, Ingrid Michaelson's "Be OK" is my new theme song.

i just wanna be ok, be ok, be ok
i just wanna be ok today
i just wanna feel today, feel today, feel today
i just wanna feel something today

i'm finding my way back to you
and everything i used to be

I am taking care of myself. That might mean dropping out of grad school so I can take pottery classes and learn how to cook two new vegetarian dinners a week. That might mean not committing my all to school.

But right now I can't be all about someone else, or work, or anything. Right now, I need to get myself together. And maybe in 8 months I'll be able to teach with fire again. Maybe it'll take two years. Maybe I won't come back at all. Right now, good enough is just going to have to be good enough. They are learning, as fast or as well as they could be if I was burning the candle at both ends? No. But the candle is gone. I'm still here, and it's going to have to be good enough. I'm going to have to excise some demons, find my bliss somewhere other than my work, and get grounded.

I am going to get help. I am going to admit trauma and I am going to admit that just because it happened for a long time does not mean it was not trauma. I am going to admit that it might have been neglect.

But I am scared of getting real help. I am scared of not being an emotional trainwreck. That is me. That is who I am. I don't know how to be, who to be, without that. I don't know how to give through life without intensity and severe ups and severe downs. I'm afraid I won't be me if I get "fixed" and come out the other side. I'm a mess. "A mess" is literally who I am.

But I will get help. So I don't kill myself before I'm 30. I will get help.

I am contemplating taking an F in my grad school class. I've missed over half the classes and haven't done 90% of the assignments yet. My professor is letting me make it up, and it's doable, but then we also have to present our unit plans on Wednesday. I don't know. Maybe I'll just take the F.

I've also decided not to take any classes next semester. I'll take my advisory session (Bank Street has this thing where you have an advisor who comes in and observes you once a month and then once a week you meet with 5 other advisees and talk teaching. not really a class, but you get credits for it and it's mandatory) and that's it. It's not a great plan. Being part of TFA means I'm currently getting a deep discount on my credits, a discount that ends after two years whether I'm done with the masters or not. I switched grad schools, so I have a year more of discounted tuition after June, but my heart is not in school anymore. I now understand where Meg was coming from when she didn't want to be in college. I cannot. stand. attending. class. anymore. Or doing the work. I thought switching to a good grad school program would help my motivation but it hasn't. My heart's not in it. My heart's not anywhere near it.

But maybe I'm just self-sabotaging because I don't feel like I deserve good things.

I don't know what I want to happen come June. I don't know that I'm ready to have the responsibility of being a teacher at this point in my life. I can barely take care of myself. And that sounds weird, because I'm doing it right now. But I just don't feel like I'm good enough person for these kids yet. I'm not mature enough. I'm not a grown up, and it's exhausting playing one when the stakes are so high.

At the same time, I don't know that I'd be happy doing anything else. If nothing else, my work matters. My kids matter. I get up every morning and I do something important and I am an important person in someone's life. But I miss so many days I should have been fired. I do bad things. I am a bad teacher. I matter, but I'm fucking up.

I don't know. Maybe it's the depression talking. But I'm not fucking taking classes next semester.

I am skipping professional development day at my school (i.e. no kids, they get election day off) to take a 3 hour train to Pennsylvania, vote, come back after midnight, and work tomorrow.

GO VOTE.

Obama is my choice.

Seems I have little to say lately. But since I no longer write in a real journal (typing makes me feel better now like writing made me feel better then) I figure I should update sometimes. I am alive. Second year is better. I'm struggling right now to figure out how to juggle and get all my kids exactly what they need - test prep for these kids, extra phonics for these kids; multiplication for these kids, adding on your fingers for these kids. Against TFA's advice, I am breaking apart my math block again. Not all of my kids will get third grade math. Watching them put their head down in defeat 30 seconds into a math lesson and knowing knowing they're not going to get shit out of math today because they already feel unsuccessful, I'm not playing that game. Sue me. I think it's what right for my kids. And that's the choice I'm making.

I'm getting a new kid Tuesday, my second girl, and with a para (the para that hit the desk around Nicholas's head with a yardstick while he was crying the first week last year, causing me to demand a switch and bringing Esposito (i.e. the para who was a crazy bitch and yelled at me and kicked the kids) into my room). Not fun. At least she's a high student and just angry/difficult to deal with. My forte is the high, angry ones. Sometimes I think that's no forte at all - preferring the students who understand most material easily. But then I talk to other sped teachers, how much they want the learning disabled kids, the kids who sit there with glazed looks but cause no problems. Those kids frustrate me. I am not a good teacher to them. But I can teach you how to deal with anger, because I'm angry too. I guess I just identify. Luckily, one of my paras, is great great great with the low kids and with actually teaching. There's a plus.

I miss my roommate. I live with a Smithie now - Melissa. We are like, the same person. Same childhood, same issues, same everything. Only I sleep all the time and she attempts to have a life.

The rooftop garden at the Met is amazing.

I gotta get out of new york.

My kids are like pshhhaw, procedures, we know you, we know how this class works, big room or not. Let's just get on with it, k? Seriously, the first few weeks of school last year at least some of them were on there best behavior and their was some sense they were either trying to impress me or test me. There's a sense of we're so beyond that now. There was some eye-rolling and heads on desks when I started off the day practicing things we'd done all last year, but we hit our groove. The two new kids - both kids from other sped classes in the school - by far had the hardest time today and really their biggest challenges were moving around during reading (which, of course, my old kids PROMPTLY called them on).

I'm hoping, if you know them, if you've seen them cry and they've seen you cry, it's ok to smile on the first day.

Anyway, I'm in that mode where I'm royally pissed I have to work for living, and that teaching never fucking ends, and that college did fucking end. I'm tired and a little cranky. A lot cranky. But hey, I could be working in a meaningless office job right now. Instead I inspire little lives. Just kidding. We barely make it through a lot of days, but today was a-ok.

"Can you be our teacher next year? In fourth grade? And the next year and the next?"
"Oh, I'm following you all the way to college."

"How are you doing Charlie? We're excited to have you in our class this year."
"I'm apprehensive."

P.S. When they come up from recess and it's fucking hot, I let them take off their uniform shirts and work in their undershirts, even if that's a wifebeater. I pick my battles. I'd much rather have them wear wifebeaters than be hot and their little emotional selves (not a good combination). Too bad the art teacher differs and called me out on it.

My roommate just schooled me on what a reading block should look like.

I can't teach.

Please don't make me do this again.

I can't teach.

Please don't make me do this to them again.

I broke my computer the day after school ended. Joy of joys, it would cost more to fix than buy a new one. I can't afford a new one until, oh, mid-August.

Apartment hunting SUCKS SO BAD.

Morningside Park is amazing - waterfall, turtles, herons, goooorgeous. Why can't I find an apartment near it? Why must southern Harlem be beyond me?

I am ridiculously excited about the upcoming Plastic Pony Convention.

I am looking forward to not seeing my roommate's fiance (my third roommate) walking around in a towel after August 1st. yeahhhh.

My last meeting with my TFA advisor happened today and WE MADE SIGNIFICANT GAINS!! Which means that my class made over a year's growth in reading (Jahlil made almost two years! and 3 others made at least 1.5 years) and the whole class mastered (learned) 80% of the state math standards. In other words, we rock, I did not fail them miserably, and I TFA-quantifiable reason to be proud of this year. Of course, I have lots of other reasons to be proud too, but this means a lot to me and it means a lot to me that a lot of them met their goals this year. My kids are AMAZING. They did all this despite the fact that I only really have been figuring out how to actually teach in the last 3-4 months. Next year? We can easily make 2 years growth. No sweat. And we will be able to paint too.
Because p.s.? I'm looping with them. And we are going to kick 3rd grade's ass.

My school has no air conditioners.
It was 95 degrees outside today. Probably close to 100 in my classroom. There are heat warnings that tell people to stay in air conditioned rooms.
My kids asked if THEY could buy an air conditioner.
It is so hot, one of my kids wrote in his journal that someone in his building had already died from the heat.
It will be worse tomorrow.
I don't know what to say.

I got my Ivy Day and graduation pictures from snapfish on Ivy Day 2008. How fitting. Lame that I wasn't there because of (so incredibly lame) grad school work (lame). But CONGRATS '08 SMITHIES! You all ROCK.

I didn't post a graduation album on facebook, like all my '08 fb friends from high school and beyond have done. I was wondering why and then I remember - moving around and them WHAM TFA training and Institute. You know, I was considering what I might say to someone who was about to go into TFA and I was thinking maybe "It's like getting hit by a train for 186 days" would be appropriate. But it's not. Sometimes, you get hit by a bus. And sometimes, the bus hugs you. If you're very very lucky, you get to be hit by the best buses to ever hit the second grade.

Whatever, it's May and I am facing down a solid 200 days possibly left with my kids (if I loop with them next year), and I still love them to pieces. And over half my class is on track to leave me reading at a mid-3rd grade level. The other half? I fucked up. That's what these next 200 days are for, starting with tomorrow.

You know, the whole mantra and culture of my class is second chances. They earn points for free time in the morning, and then the points get erased and they start over for their free time in the afternoon. It's all about starting over. That's kind of the nice thing about teaching, every day is a new day. You never know what's going to happen next.

P.S.? I got my 8 little WWE-watching, Transformers-worshipping, rambunctious boys to start chanting the name of a delightful little girl mouse who wears fabulous sparkly glasses and has a purple plastic purse (the title character from Lily's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes). They did it spontaneously, because they so wanted her to be the flower girl in Lily's Big Day. For serious? How do you NOT love them?

My last Saturday grad school class of this year is, well, today, in a few hours. I have not done anything at all all semester and so have 2 papers to write plus roughly a dozen short responses of up to a page. All but one of the papers are already severely late. I also have a few short assignments to do for my TFA-led Learning Team which is like another class. I need to be on the train by 8am. Not everything will get done. I should feel like a failure. After all, this week has pounded in to me the many incredible failings of me as a teacher, but none of that pounding happened IN the classroom. In other words, I didn't stand in front of them this week and feel like a failure, it's all been outsiders telling me. I've also realized that, while I may like teaching, I am completely unequipped and unable to deal with the billion things a teacher must deal with. I simply cannot handle the overwhelming responsibility, I can only handle small chunks. So I've only done the small chunks that DIRECTLY affect the kids - I write lesson plans, plan for multiple grade levels, and prepare work for them every day. I am, in other words, prepared to teach every day. I can also be "in the moment" with them very well. As best as I can, I respond to their needs and challenges all day with all the patience I can muster. Behavior is why they're with me, I am getting better about actually responding with patience every day when their behavior is challenging.

But I cannot do everything else. Write IEPs, overhaul my instruction (even when I think it would benefit them, I can only manage to concentrate on one or two things at a time), call parents, provide paperwork for the million people that need it, keep up with grad school, organize my classroom, and everything else. I can't keep up.

Despite this, and despite the fact that I should feel nothing but shame for completely ignoring grad school this entire semester, I am proud of how far I and we've come just this week. My high group is finally learning in reading because I had a EUREKA moment and know how to effectively plan for them now. Alex learned how to write a question. Frederick can read a decodable sentence and has learned several more sight words. Diamond is beginning to count on her fingers to solve problems. All of them have worked their hardest for the prep teachers, even though they come unprepared.

The fact remains that I am an overwhelming failure as a teacher. I have taught them no coping skills, nor as their behavior improved in any real meaningful way that will last when they go to another teacher with another system in their class. We will probably not make a year of reading growth (TFA goal is 1.5 years) which would essentially be the bare minimum of growth we should be making. My kids with severe behavior problems keep falling behind because they often don't participate in lessons. I have failed them. But it's not an overwhelming feeling when I'm with them. It no longer cripples me. It's not much, but it's progress.

Now for the next 6 hours to do work that is absolutely meaningless to anything that happens in my classroom.