I'm not dead yet!

Just entrenched in the school-year-end psychosis that goes along with excessive grading and excessive hours spent at school in said grading.  So I shall forthwith entertain you (or bore you) with bullets of life since I failed to complete NaPoWriMo:

• I failed to complete NaPoWriMo.  But I'm not beating myself up over it.  The fact that I made it as far as I did lets me know I can actually do it for real next year.
• I have to move out of my classroom at the end of the school year!  Gah!  I've been in this room for 10 years and have, obviously, accumulated 10 years worth of both treasure and crap.  While I welcome the opportunity to purge, I am frustrated at the district's expectation that we will have grades in the day after finals schedule (the day after graduation duty) and have all of our classrooms packed and ready to be emptied the day after that!  We're requesting that they give us the weekend to finish up.  Contrary to popular belief, we do give finals during finals week (shocking, I know), so the notion that we're "not doing anything" and can just pack during school hours, using students as free slave labor, is not one that works for me. 
• The district also swears that they'll have our "new" portables in place and ready to go in time for us to move in before school actually starts in August.  Forgive me for saying I'm skeptical, given their track record over the past decade.  (Lord, help us.)
• I will write my thesis and have it finished during the first month of summer.
• After returning last night from a thirteen-hour grading day at school, I had to spend the next three hours monitoring an impromptu party (flash mob style) at a vacant house across the street from me.  Police were involved (finally).  They finally shut off the big searchlight, which was glaring almost directly into my window, at 3 a.m.  Needless to say, church attendance did not happen today. 
• Visited a junior high in San Diego area last week to see their failure-is-not-an-option model of student accountability.  Food for thought. 
• I've been looking through a lot of photos today, putting together an album for a niece who is graduation from junior high.  What a trip down memory lane!  The things that stand out most to me:  (a) I used to be thinner, a lot thinner;  even when I was fat, I was still thinner than now.  God!  (b) My yard used to be pretty, with a backyard lawn that wasn't patchy, and with semi-tended flowers in both the front and back yards;  now...aw, hell.  Where did I used to find the time and energy?  I'm not that old.  (c) I used to take a lot of pictures;  now I only take them on special occasions;  I miss capturing art like that. 
• I'm so angry about the BP oil spill in LA that my own bp goes up when I read about it or see horrendous pictures of it.  I might have to (re)join the NRDC or something.  I feel furious and powerless. 
• Is it just me, or have there been lots of odd celebrity deaths lately? 

And on that note, I'll stop whining.  I think I'll get this blog back to a more regular pace when summer starts.  Till then, I'm still checking in and reading everyone else's blogs at least once every week or two.  Prayers for survival and health and effectiveness always appreciated! 

Late Poem

That's right, folks! We have everything here: highbrow, lowbrow, and whatever comes below that. I wrote this last night but was too sleepy to post it.

Grading sucks.
I'm so f**ked.

Grading

All day. Most of the weekend. Persuasive letters in block format about banned books. Letters written by sophomores. Some are dreadful. I am so tired of fake writing. So I made a new assignment. They had to freewrite about what makes them angry. From there, they had write about how they would change what makes them angry, had they the authority or power or money to do so. They also had to determine who does have the authority or power or money to make those changes. And that naturally led to a persuasive letter, but this time they actually have to mail it. Amazing how seriously they're taking this assignment. It's for real. They want to make sure they have the right ethos so they don't screw up their argument before they even begin it. I don't think I'll be assigning banned book letters next year. I don't know what kind of fallout we might encounter from this, but we're moving forward as carefully as possible.

I'm ready for spring break. CO, here I come.

Weekly Installment?

Sadly, I'm afraid that's what these are becoming. I'm not beating myself up over it, though I had intended for this to be a 365 blog. My responsibility is to my students, and that responsibility will be finished within in a week (or at least as finished as it's going to be).

I have been taking pictures, though -- perhaps not every day, but enough to be ok with. Here's a catch-up sampling:

Playing games with nieces and nephew and friends. POM's sis was coming home from surgery this day.

The game? Prince Caspian Monopoly! We played the "quick" version and still didn't finish.

Little feet. Oh, for childhood flexibility!

Girls after my own heart. The eight-year-old is snarfing her way through the Harry Potter series. She's blowing my mind.

Can we say The Life of Riley? Sheesh. Get a job or something.

It's not really my birthday, but our department celebrates all the summer birthdays at our last department meeting of the year.

Grrrrrr! Source of frustration, proof of service. I was impressed, though, by the fact that I received a personally signed letter from our judge thanking me for my service. I don't remember that from last time. This judge was pretty cool.

Dinner one night last week. My motto: if you're not sure what to do with it, grill it! And summer's almost here, the best time for have grilled veggies and fruit! Mmmm.

I'm embarrassed to admit how long these precious little tomato plants languished in their storebought six-packs on our backyard table, awaiting replanting. Well, they're in now, and I sincerely hope they won't hold it against us.

Glad unfurling. (Hm, there could be a poem in that.)

Hydrangea, late afternoon. It's in a spot with too much sun, really (hence the brown and curling leaves), but it must like us enough to keep flowering, which it does with gusto.

The biology of the hydrangea is really fascinating. Note the little flower in the center as it opens up.

Aglow.

Remember the puppy? He's now to my colleague's knees. They always grow up so fast. (Sniff!)

That ain't no puppy butt anymore. That's a dog's haunches. Actually, he's still very mouthy and bitey, and we are all looking forward to obedience school.

A student of mine who is graduating is a Sikh. He normally wears his hair in a patka, but he has been promising his friends and certain teachers that he'd show them his hair once before graduation. It was a personal decision of his, and he made good on his promise this week. Isn't it gorgeous? What a cool young man he is growing up to be.

Done the day...

...gone the sun. Finished the grades (as much as I'm going to get done, which is not everything, but it's reality). Going to bed.

Arrived home...

...to a blackout. It covered a good portion of the city, but quite sporadically, so that some streets were half lit and half dark. I don't know when it went out, but it didn't come back on till 8:30 p.m. Never mind that I had a grip of research outlines and resource evaluations to grades...that I really need to pass back tomorrow...and I couldn't get it light enough with candles to see very well. I spent most of those hours petting the dog and staring into candle- or fire-light.

It's 12:11 a.m. on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning...

...and I just got home from school. Grades are due at 8:30, and I still had projects to grade. O.F.F.S.! I won't be posting a photo tonight. I'll do two tomorrow to make up for it. 'Night, all.

It must be finals week.

Student, napping, in class.

OK, it was after school. This is a great kid. Involved in everything. Student government, athletics, you name it. Excels in academics. And he's just truly nice and polite and intellectually inquisitive and well-rounded and broad-minded and a gentleman. A gem. He was wiped out. How cute is that?

Sunset tonight. The sky was expansive, blue, lightly cloud-strewn today. The mountains were broad, awash in snow and whiteness, and utterly clear. Yesterday's steady breeze cleansed the air of smog, and it was one of those days that reminds you why the settlers moved here in the first place.


Moi. Psychotic indeed. It's what grading stacks of high school sophomore essays will do to you. Ha!

It marches

I'm keeping track of this so I can chart my improvement next semester and marvel in smug alarm at my own lunacy and pathetic-ness once I have a better handle on my own supposedly adult life.

Balance...

...cannot be found here. Nosirree! Not us, man! Never mind that we, as teachers, should be role models of balance to our students. No! If our kids are gonna learn from us, it ain't gonna be from our examples!


[sighs heavily]

Consolation: the semester will be over this week, grades due middle of next week, and I get to claim that provierbial clean slate -- for least a few minutes, anyway.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting different results. I have identified the things I need to do differently -- the many, many things. But I think I'll focus on jumping on grading each assignment I collect within 1 day of collecting it (must "eat that frog!") -- at least start grading it within that time span. I also want to work on breaking up my day into time blocks to accommodate my teacher-onset ADD, blocks of 15 or 30 minutes, during which I can exercise, grade, cook dinner, grade, read for fun, grade, plan, grade; at least the grading will be broken up into psychically manageable chunks. ('Smarter, not harder, Self,' says I.)

Self-portrait in car window, courtesy of boredom while getting ride home from teacher friend after euphemistic grading 'party' -- gas station stop required. Note friend, who prefers the blog moniker Madame X, in window reflection, laughing at my photographic shenanigans.