A Day in the Life

So yesterday at school we had a late start day. That means the kids get to come late, school doesn’t start till 9:00 a.m., and the teachers get to start early, actually (7:15 meeting start time).  After sugar, caffeine, and required discussion, we sodded off to begin school.  Because we started over an hour later than usual, the students’ energy level was high and the talking was frenetic.  We had a student pass out in P.E. in the morning.  He was drunk, under the influence of alcohol to the point where he was non-responsive. The ambulance and fire engine came – excitement in the school driveway! – and carted him off. He later explained that he gotten the 4Loco, now illegal in our state but vigorously stockpiled, off a “hobo,” and he had gotten it for free.  (Not a real gifted critical thinker, obviously.)  His grandmother died about an hour before his collapse and he didn’t even know it yet.  When his mother was called, she had to deal with the death of her own mother and the hospitalization of her son.  There was a girlfight between periods; these are becoming more common this year.  It became known that a ninth grader has been receiving tattoos, both from another student on campus and from an adult off campus.  Naturally the student, who thinks it’s cool, won’t give up the identities of his inkers and his mother is beside herself.  A senior was very likely beaten up by her boyfriend, who is also a senior, and who posted something about it on Facebook and then claimed his account had been hacked.  He was absent from school last year because he spent the time in jail for statutory rape instead of taking the SATs and going to prom and bitching about homework.  The girl denies that he beat her up but doesn’t have a better explanation for her split lip and other injuries.  The seniors are having their spring meltdown – a combination of stress and fear and insecurity about what comes next – months earlier than normal.  Another student, a junior, confessed (forgive me, Teacher, for I have sinned) to almost cheating; the same student was then caught for an earlier actual cheating incident.  He’s under duress because the DREAM act didn’t pass and now he thinks he won’t be able to go to college and so any work he does now is just for nothing.  During fifth period, the air-conditioning suddenly took on a new, louder, more urgent tone, conflicting seriously with class discussion, but that was better than sitting in an eighty-degree box of stale bodies and synthetic carpet odor.  One student spent half of sixth period crying but took her quiz anyway and probably aced it.  These are only the incidents and occurrences that I know about; and I know so very little.  Just a typical day in public education.  Pray for the teachers you know and the ones you don’t; we need it.  The students do, too, these semi-grown babes.

Lying Fallow

I've not posted in a while.  I'm letting this blog lie fallow for a while.  Every field needs a rest, so I hear from the farmers and gardeners, and crop rotation is healthy.  I'm still writing, in pen-and-paper journals mostly, even more regularly than before, since about November.  Cross-pollination is healthy, too, I hear.  I have a writing buddy, which is the most incredible gift!  Someone who actually goes on writing dates, regularly, and with whom the stretching and learning works in both directions.  So cool!  God is good. 

Christmas was lovely, winter break was relaxing and rejuvenating, New Year's was mellow.  Started back to school today and didn't hate it.  It's been a difficult year -- not the kids;  it's never the kids;  it's all the other bureaucratic bs that makes life and labor hard.  But...I've decided to rediscover the joy in this here job (English teacher joke there).  I'm going to rediscover it (revolutionary thought) by looking for it.  Hmmm.  Could it be that easy?  We shall see.

It's an intensive four weeks to the end of our first semester.  It will be challenging to remain energized, be effective and effectual in my (mountains of) grading, and not lose sight of the joys that exist in this work.  Working on being present in every moment.  Good stuff.  Just thought I'd drop an update in case anyone ever looks at this anymore.  I still read and am nourished by a number of the blogs on my blogroll.  I don't comment much, but some of you bloggers minister to my soul weekly, and I am thankful for you.  (I'm talking to folks like Linda, jo(e), Songbird, Rachelle, MomPriest, Lena, Lomagirl, WhatNow, and so many others.  You ladies rock!) 

A Reminder, and Amen!

"If you aren't free to fail, then you aren't really free."

--Madeleine L'Engle

(quote source)


Food for thought for teachers and the education system.  Hmmm.

Bullets of Tuesday

Well, the enjoyment and self-discipline continue unabated (or so I'm telling myself). 

• Met a classmate/colleague at Peet's Coffee to work on our theses together.  In reality, we spent several hours catching up after not having talked much throughout the year, though we did spend an hour or two actually working.  She was a bit hungover, so we cut the afternoon short.  I did stay a little longer than she, but then it got cold again so I went home.
• It's been cold-ish here.  It's as if we traded weather with Seattle.  I love the misty-rain and cloudy mornings. but the rest of our locale is complaining mightily (they'd be complaining it if was wretchedly hot, too).  On Monday, the sun only managed to break through for about half an hour, in the very late afternoon.  Today it managed a couple of hours, but again, only in the afternoon.  We'll see what tomorrow brings. 
• Today the rain-ish-ness kept me in bed longer than I had planned.  It's ok, though, as I was reading a book for my thesis, so it counted as work. 
• Tomorrow I will head to Starbucks for the majority of the day, to work.  I'm supposed to email my advisor "something" by Friday.  (Gah.)
• Thursday is the funeral for Madame X's dad.  Madame X reported having a day that actually felt "normal" today, for which I am grateful.  It's been difficult to know how to provide support to her and her family, which is odd to say about someone I've known and loved for over a decade.  I think the books and movie gift card were the right things, though;  she called today to thank us for them and let us know she's already used the gift card (which helped lead to the shreds of normalcy today).  After the funeral, she and her family may have to head to parts north to see her grandmother once more before the dementia sets in full-bore.  Pardon my English, but Madame X has had a fucked-up year, and I know she won't be sorry to see 2010 get hit in the butt by the door on its way out. 
• Saw Winter's Bone, and it was excellent.  They made a few changes between the book and the film, but it did not detract from the story in any way.  My only criticism is that the beating one of the main characters receive is in no way as intense in the movie as it was in the book.  That was probably motivated by a desire to spare the viewer the discomfort and gore, but it weakened the impact of the later plot events, at least for me in comparing it with the book.  They definitely nailed the casting dead-on, and the setting is just perfect.  I recommend both the film and the book.
• I think Despicable Me comes out this Friday, doesn't it?  Strangely, I'm really looking forward to seeing it.  When I first started seeing trailers for it, like, last year, I was fairly meh about it.  But since I've seen more detailed trailers recently, I'm hooked.  "It's so FLUFFY, I could die!"  (LOL.)
• I walked today. 
• I've been obsessively checking the College Board's website to see if our AP scores have been posted yet.  This is the first year we get to check them online (finally, join me in welcoming the CB to the 21st century), but they're not up yet, at least not for my school.  Sigh.  The curiosity is giving me heartburn (or was that the KFC I indulged in earlier?). 
• This was a pretty boring post, but I'm in documentary mode, I guess.  Thanks for reading. 

Straight up

This is a good one.  I think I'll read Winesburg, Ohio next.  It's been in the basket beside my bed for probably two years now.  Perhaps the time is right. 

One more day to pack up the classroom at school.  I'm taking this opportunity to purge my filing cabinets like mad.  It's gorgeous...but it's taking forever.  I lost an entire day Saturday when I was sidelined with an icky stomach thing.  Dammit.  Oh well, if they want to fire me for not being done, let 'em.  Rumor has it our "new" classrooms won't even be ready for the beginning of the school year, so I'm already mentally gearing myself up to unpack right back into the same room.  Can anyone say "typical educational bullshit"?  I knew you could!

After I'm finished at school, I start on Teh Thesis.  And before the week is over, I will have seen Toy Story 3.  Can't wait, actually.  :-)

'Night for now.  More...much more later. 

More of a rant than a poem

For the Day #4 prompt, Nelle Lytle encourages you to keep going with your NaPoWriMo poems by writing inside-out or outside-in. She says:

I watch too much HGTV, so I have learned (very well) about bringing the outdoors inside and also turning outside spaces into rooms (which is, apparently, more than putting the old sofa out on the front porch).

In our case, writing inside out (or outside in) means setting your physical or metaphorical inner bits out of doors, to be walked around and looked at from odd angles, as if they were monuments or mailboxes (as an example). Or it could be transforming your internal organs into flowers or letting a pack of four-year-old’s (human or otherwise) loose in your attic. Write a poem today that illustrates your idea of what is inside-out.

I decided to tackle the inside-out thinking of the American public school system, of which I am currently a part.  [sighs deeply]  I probably should have chosen a different topic, as this isn't much of a poem after all. 

(All ritual apologies apply -- just sneezed it out, didn't edit it much, it's a first draft, etc., ad nauseam)

School Logic
(or, Your Seam and Tag Are Showing)

My fellow educators,
we must leave no child behind;
we must close the achievement gap;
we must work smarter, not harder;
we must turn out young citizens who possess the skills
that citizenship requires of them;
we must work leaner and meaner in light of budget cuts;
we must deliver a quality education despite worsening conditions.
We must do these things,
because everyone knows
it’s about the kids.

Let us, therefore, train our children to take tests better,
for it is in testing that our success is measured,
as it is in weighing the cow repeatedly that fattens the cow.

Let us, therefore, decry flexibility and creativity,
for it is in uniformity and pacing guides that our
children’s salvation may be found.

Let us, therefore, insist upon purchasing a new textbook package
for every child. Protests
of “but we do not use the textbook so we do not need a new one”
or “we prefer to design our own curriculum because it better meets our students’ needs”
or “it will be a waste of money – let us spend it on something truly useful”
will neither be encouraged nor tolerated,
for it is the data experts, only, who understand what true learning is,
and it is only through programs and off-the-shelf products
that we can protect our students from their bad teachers;
for it is in one-size-fits-all that differentiated instruction is best delivered.

Let us, therefore, write up good teachers
for the number of students who fail their classes,
and place said write-up in their personnel file
with the admonition that “it is not your instruction but your assessment,”
for it is in these open and frank conversations that morale is built
and good teachers become further inspired to try again
the incentives they have tried in the past and abandoned
and are discouraged from lowering standards and cooking the gradebook
in the name of accountability and student success.

Let us, therefore, require that teachers meet incessantly,
either on their own time or during instructional minutes
(we will provide the subs),
in order to analyze and discuss what teachers can do
to improve student failure rates,
for it is in focusing on teachers that we can best attack the problem,
as focusing on the individual needs of each individual child
would surely stretch our resources too thin
and certainly miss the point of education altogether.

Let us ensure that bad teachers are fired
(except for the one who slept with a student,
or the one who grades nothing,
or the one who gives enough extra credit to turn F’s into A’s),
that superintendents say no to every request made for crazy timewasters like campus gardens,
that school board members vote their own pay raises
(because everyone knows “riffing” sixty teachers and twenty custodians
is damned hard work),
and let us increase our class size average to a number that would
shock the rest of the nation if they knew about it,
and the name we shall give it is tightening-the-belt and research-based strategy.

Let us publicly lament the loss of a majority of new teachers in their first five years
and stanch the flow by requiring new teachers to attend hours of meetings
and complete hours’ worth of additional reflective paperwork,
for everyone knows teachers need to learn from trained administrators
who left the classroom after two years of teaching kickball and typing,
rather than from collaboration with colleagues in the trenches
or regular conversation with teachers with whom they share students,
which would only lead to gripe sessions and forming of bad habits.

Let us give students packet work and call it credit recovery,
for asking students actually to learn to write an effective persuasive essay
is just unrealistic for some of these kids and in light of times we’re in,
especially since we had to close the majority of our alternative education sites,
and since our vocational programs are still only whimpering back to life
after decades of dormancy,
and since we only allot four years for high school,
and since we group students based on age rather than ability or achievement,
and since we pass students on to the next grade level
even though they passed none of their classes the previous year;
we’re just going to have to make some tough choices.

Let us unite and make those tough choices together,
because we are in this for the kids.

Tidbits from Kathleen Norris

• She talked about the writing process and the fact that it is largely made up of boring work habits.  Everyone has to face the blank page.  (The cleanest houses are those belonging to writers on a deadline [and, I would add, teachers with a load of unpleasant essays to grade].)  The voice of the mocker says, "Why bother?  Who's going to read this?"  Acedia rejects the routine.
• We all have 24 hours to live in a day.  We either see this as a blessing or as a curse (acedia).  It's a choice sometimes. 
• Dean Nelson asked her if acedia was our national disease.  She replied, "As any reader of fairy tales knows, if you have a problem and you don't know its name, you're in trouble."  She went to describe symptoms of acedia -- ennervating despair, commitment phobia, boredom...the extremes of either lethargy or workaholism.  Yep, that's American society.  She mentioned watching a CNN broadcast in which story on a search for a child sex offender was immediately followed by a story on gas prices rising -- they both had the same importance, the same urgency.  (She said, "That's why I've stopped watching tv news and started reading The Economist.  Heh.)  Pretty soon we won't know what's important anymore.
• When asked about the opposite of acedia, its corresponding virtue, she noted that the ancients regarded it as zeal, enthusiasm.  But given the misuse and associations with the word zeal nowadays, she says it's love.  If you can love, if you can be in relationship, you have defeated acedia.  Acedia says nothing matters;  love says it matters.
• "Now, more than ever, we need symbolic language."  It touches our hearts.  Metaphors reach us more than anything can.  We've tried to shield ourselves from language that makes us feel.  She used the following as an example:  In the Civil War, the post-war effect on soldiers was called "soldier's heart."  In World War I, it was called "shellshock."  In World War II, it was called "battle fatigue."  Today it's called "post-traumatic stress disorder."  It's a long way from "soldier's heart" to PTSD.  We want to shield ourselves from pain.  Norris says that when we use terms like "PTSD" outside of the medical arena, we're fooling ourselves. 
• Re: poetry -- physical chores enhance poetry.  It's the same in the monastic tradition;  repetitive physical labor helps memory.  She referred to Donald Hall, who speculates that iambic pentameter developed out of the rhythm of walking.  [Calls to mind Augustine's "Solvitur ambulando" -- "it is solved by walking."] 
• Three things are taught so badly, she says, it's a miracle any of us is still alive:  the Christian faith, poetry, and math.  Textbook poetry is some of the worst ever.  Norris (like Mary Oliver before her) notes that kids have learned by 10 or 12 that poetry is boring.  She alluded to the missed opportunities to stimulate what's there already in kids.  [And again I am forced to question my vocation as a teacher in this current broken system.]
• She speaks highly of Flannery O'Connor's The Habit of Being [which I just so happen to have on my bookshelf, awaiting the right time for reading;  perhaps it will be soon]. 
• She lamented, "In the Christian community, what separates us is more important than what unites us."  She went on to note that St. Paul was writing about this in his epistles to the various churches.  Today's divisions are nothing new;  concerning the big church blow-ups, "we've been here before."  If there's one thing that still unites us, though, it's baptism.  She said, you hear people say "I was baptized a Roman Catholic" or "as a ____."  No, you're not, she said.  You're baptized as a Christian.  Baptism is ecumenical. 
• In response to the typical question about what advice she'd give to writers and hopefuls, she said first, "Of course, you're reading a lot."  Then she advised, learn to edit and revise yourself;  love revision as much as writing.  Writers' groups can help, but learn to detect when you've fudged or overworked or overdone something.  Everyone faces the blank page.  The world doesn't care if you write. 
• When asked what do you say to people for whom acedia appears to be a daily reality, she first responded, "Commiserate.  We've all experienced it."  Secondly, anything to get them out of the closed circle of the self.  It can be something social, labor, learning something new.  Thirdly, if a person is suffering with clinical depression, send them to a doctor. 
• There are no shortcuts, only the passage through the dark nights.  There is no magic pill.  God sends us moments, people, at times.  Receive these moments gratefully.  But it's not a snap-out-of-it. 
• What to read:  Flannery O'Connor's The Habit of Being;  Emily Dickinson's poetry;  The Praktikos, by Evagrius;  the Desert Mothers and Fathers.

Whoosh!

(The sound of time passing.) (Like crazy.) This'll be a brief one tonight. Grades are due Friday a.m., and I'm behind, as usual. Benedictine meeting tonight was uplifting. Nine p.m. night at school the night before was not uplifting, but it was productive, anyway. I'm looking forward to the weekend, if for nothing else, to sleep in and catch up on my thoughts and blogs. I'm looking forward to writing about Mary Oliver and the reading I'm doing. G'night, all.

Another...

...long day. Wrote a substantial portion of a new course. Wrote lots of emails. Wrote sub plans. Wrote and executed a shopping list. Wrote some blog comments. Wrote a blog post (brief) (and almost in the past tense). Off to bed; up tomorrow to do the same...except that I get to end the day, not with a grocery shopping trip but with Mary Oliver! Cool.

Oy

I hate days when I'm at school for fourteen hours. Today was one such day. On the bright side, I did get a lot done -- not everything I wanted to get done, but a lot: research workshop conducted, sub plans done, room cleaned (well, cleaner; straightened, perhaps), boards up, AP assignment typed, six letters of rec finished/printed/signed. And again I say, oy.

When one leaves school at eight p.m., one wants only to hit the drive-thru and go home. Despite the urgent desire, I went home and had a bowl of cereal. (I added blueberries -- health value!) I probably should not have eaten at all, given the late hour, but going to bed without my supper feels punitive somehow, and I already feel punished by the day. At least I kept to my Lenten rule and avoided fast food. It's been a long day; I celebrate the small successes. Off to bed.

The weekend...

...was short, compared to last weekend, during which we had a 3-day weekend (thanks to the Presidents) and during which I actually enjoyed a 4-day weekend (thanks to a dentist appointment, which facilitated my taking Friday off). Nice! And then Tuesday was a sub day, as I had to attend a conference on positive behavior. So really, last week was easy.

While this weekend is short (and tempered by the fact that I felt terrible for most of the day -- was it the chicken last night or the cheerios this morning? or perhaps a passing bug?), this week will again feel short, as I'm missing three days in the classroom due to being pulled out to write a course and the fact that I already had Friday scheduled as a personal day for several months now. Eek! I'll have to reintroduce myself to my students the following week.

What is it about February? This seems to have happened last year at the same time, too. I think it's because February is the beginning of our new semester, and everyone seems to see it as a good time to start new things. Sigh. Never mind that the high school exit exam happens in exactly a month and that I have two classes of sophomores to prepare for it. At least my sub is tried, true, and excellent. I wouldn't be able to sleep if it weren't for her. (She's my former master teacher and a retiree after over thirty years in our district. No one tries to pull crap on her. She's a godsend!)

In other news, Lent doesn't seem to be as difficult this year as it has in years past. Maybe it's just that it's still early in the season -- I may be singing a different tune in a month. The take-aways haven't felt as challenging -- oh, sure, I want wine with dinner and sweets after, and it's hard to go home and cook when I'd really rather go out to eat, but I'm not suffering, by any measure -- but the add-ons are more difficult. I'm a spectactularly undisciplined person about certain things, and I'm spectacularly good at rationalizing why I cannot do certain things at certain times. Excuses R Us, right here. So there's a good reason I forgot to do morning or evening prayer yesterday, and there's a good reason why I read two pottery magazines instead of reading something a little more devotional and challenging (not that art isn't devotional -- it is, exceedingly, but for me today, reading about it was more avoidance behavior than devotion).

Today's sermon, naturally, was about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Of course, his forty days of fasting put my little Lenten disciplines to shame, but fortunately it's not about comparative self-denial. It's about identifying our besetting sins and obsessions and addictions and distractions, and then setting about to cultivate the corresponding virtues (that from today's sermon). It is the opportunity to do new things. (We all know the definition, usually attributed to Einstein, of insanity -- in essence, doing the same thing and expecting different results.) Time to do new things for new, hoped-for results. New Year's resolutions never work for me -- they're good for reflection and such, but I rarely stick with them. Lent, though...I guess maybe because God's involved somehow...I tend to take a little more seriously.

P.S. A lenten devotional upcoming -- I get to go hear Mary Oliver later this week! Can't wait!

It's Thursday. Heh.

Nice to be back to yoga tonight, after a hiatus of several weeks (imposed due to busy-ness and laziness). Glad tomorrow is Friday. I'm not in the mood to teach this week. Thank God for presentations and exams. Heh.

Day two of Lent went fine. It's always easy in the early days. It's also mysteriously easier when you cancel your cable. Heh.

More rain in sight for the weekend. My only complaint is the headache the change in barometric pressure is giving me. I'm happy not to have to water the lawn for yet another week. Heh.

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.

Indeed

"This morning the water lilies are no less lovely, I think,
     than the lilies of Monet.
And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead
children out of the fields into the text
of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better
     than the grass."

from "Rain," by Mary Oliver

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.

Ack! I've become a weekender!

Oh, well. If that's the way it needs to be right now, so be it. I envision a different reality once summer begins.

In light of another busy week past, I will reiterate my practice of last weekend and list the things for which I'm thankful, and follow it with the photos I 'owe' myself and the blog for the week.

I am thankful...

• that POM's sister's surgery ended up being less radical than initially planned (rather than resecting her liver, they ended up doing oblation -- burning the lesions -- instead), which means less long-term trauma to her liver, more options for treatment later, and a shorter recovery time.


• that my sister made it home from a three-week business trip in Europe safely tonight.


• that my parents are excited about their Alaska trip upcoming this week (retirement gift from us).


• that my parents are really enjoying retirement.


• that I finally got my Gmail synced up with my Outlook (IMAP) -- sounds insignificant to most of you, probably, but it was a pretty big deal to me; I hadn't had time to do this minor procedure, and that inability was throwing me off-kilter since our email change. (I hate changing email addresses; hence, the gmail address, so I never have to do it again, knock wood.)


• that my master's classes for the summer are finally posted.


• that POM is enjoying her drawing class and that her new math class is engaging and not as difficult (and thereby discouraging) as the last one was.


• that jury duty next week should provide me with some quality time to work on grading the AP research papers I just collected Friday. (Hey, I have to find some good in this situation!)


• for Madeleine L'Engle, whose books I am slowly rereading my way through and who continually reminds me what is important. Reading her is getting back in touch with my soul and my roots.


• for Grace Llewellyn, whose Teenager Liberation Handbook is rocking my world and, like Madeleine, reminding me what is important in this world; it may guide me into a career change.

My student who finally spiked her mohawk again.

Local car wash.

Can we say thank God for the sixties?

Arty lines.

Morning pose.

From under.

Iris. D'oh! I mean, they're gladiolas! My bad!

Iris, up close. D'oh! Glad, up close!

Backside of Iris. D'oh! Backside of glad.

The lion.

Well...

...I didn't really intend to take a week off from the blog, but that's what happened. Quite frankly, I can't think of a better week to be done with. It pretty much sucked, for reasons both obvious and not-quite-nameable.

We've had a week without our pup. I've stopped welling up at inappropriate moments. I guess maybe we do toughen up through repeated exposure. No decisions yet as to when we might adopt another. Perhaps summer. Thank you -- my true, deep, heartfelt thanks to all of you who have sent messages of support and comfort. I know it's just a dumb dog...but it's not...and you all have been awesome. This blog community thing is pretty amazing; you're all godsends, imho.

We finished our last week of block schedule for state testing. I've found I'm block schedule kind of gal, but most of our campus struggled with it, not having considered the changes in teaching and planning that would be required. Another good idea that will probably be nixed in the future because it inconvenienced teachers.

The AP exam is over. My students feel at least somewhat confident. They released the essay questions on Friday, so we'll go over them together in class in great detail. We're finishing up Ellison's Invisible Man (what an incredible book), finishing a film for critical review (can't go wrong with Michael Moore for rhetorical analysis), and I have to conference with them on their research papers as soon as humanly possible if I'm going to collect a final draft and actually expect to be able to grade it. I dealt with my six plagiarism issues, though I still have two more phone calls to make to parents for whom I had to leave messages. We did a thorough review of how not to plagiarize (thank God for Diana Hacker) last week, so if they ever do it again as long as they live, it will be entirely their own faults; my conscience is clear that I have done all I can to ensure that they know how prevent plagiarism. I think their eyes are opened.

Saw Prince Caspian on Friday night. Meh. It's a good film, OK; I know this. But I'm a book purist, naturally, and my first viewing is always consumed with fault-finding and unncessary-changes-pooh-poohing. I did the same for the first Narnia film. They really made drastic changes in Caspian. I'll see it again and try to like it more; there's a lot to like, but really -- did they have to make Peter so immature and ridiculous? It's wrong on so many levels. I think Jack Lewis would be doing some serious ear-chewing and smoke-blowing were he here today. My two cents.

Had progress reports due Friday. Graded again at school on Saturday. Went to church and a friend's graduation party today. And it's already time to go to school again. I'm ready for summer (our 90-degree weather isn't helping that, I'm afraid); I'm ready to begin my master's classes, though I don't know what classes I'll be taking as the program has not posted them yet (trying not to overanalyze what that might mean); I'm ready to do a lot of work this summer, on so many levels, on so many fronts. This will be a productive, creative, progressive summer for me. May this last month-o-hades fly swiftly and efficiently.

Madame X wields the red pen of doom; grading on Saturday

One of the blooming trees on campus

The jacaranda is reaching its point of ultimate glory.

The detritus of life

Summer sunset, through the window

Getting closer

Yes, I was at school today, working on grades. Actually, I was working on referrals for plagiarism. I'll wait till after the AP exam to deal with it, but I needed to get out from under this. I was further encouraged to be done with this since our seniors have recently had a bout with plagiarism, and I'm going to act quickly and forcefully on mine so they don't have this problem again next year. Frustrating and disappointing. Next week, we'll have a plagiarism prevention lesson so they all recall what they've been taught every single year since seventh grade. (Sigh.)

The jacaranda is even more beautiful than yesterday. The contrast with the bottle-brush tree was nice in the afternoon sun.

Signs of hope

Teacher Appreciation Week, and I actually do feel appreciated after these notes. God knew I needed these this week.

The jacarandas are kindling and flaring up.

Random Bullets of...

...madness (a term which, unfortunately, some of my students use when they mean 'anger').

• The speedometer on our car decided to stop working tonight. It worked on the way there. It stopped working on the way home. Grr.
• Day two of testing. Sixth period was the hardest; they were just so exhausted, and none of them wanted to be there. They marshalled on, though.
• Is that the correct way to spell "marshalled" in this context?
• (Asked the English teacher)
• Went to a taping of the NPR show, Says You, at the Skirball Cultural Center tonight. It was hilarious fun...and long. They taped two shows; it started at 8 p.m. and didn't finish until 11 p.m.! But these guys and gals are just so quick-witted! I could've stayed all night...though I would certainly have fallen asleep.
• The traffic was ridiculously light this evening. We allotted over two hours to get from the OC to Skirball. It took us about an hour and ten. Weirdness. Not that I'm complaining!
• Must go back to school tomorrow for the first of two full-length mock AP exams that I give my students for the practice. Pizza follows. So...tired.... But at least these sessions are somewhat fun. They're certainly eye-opening for the students, as to the length and difficulty of the full test.
• Family game night tomorrow evening! Grew up doing those, but haven't done one in at least a year or two. Looking forward to it.
• Just got an email saying that my runaway student is planning to come home and should arrive in a few days. (?) Don't know why yet.
• The old man dog is starting to go downhill. (Sniff.)

All right; I'm off to bed before I fall asleep on my keyboard. Night, all. Sorry for the skipped post and tonight's no-pic post. I'll make up for it. I always do.