One day

The day has finally arrived.  The one that marks the end of my time with my students and with my mission to Teach For America.  It’s like the day that I always anticipated, but never thought or perhaps even hoped would never arrive.  And yet, here I am.

It’s bittersweet.  And though I’ve shed few tears during my time teaching my kids.  I find myself shedding a couple today.  As I hugged Monna before she left to get on a plane to Georgia.   As I tossed a football in the hallway to Darian.  (probably very against the rules)  And finally as I put stamps on the letters that my kids wrote to themselves.  The letters I will mail back to them when they don’t expect it.  Maybe it will be a year, two years, I’m not sure…but I really hope that I always remember everything that went on in my classroom.  The little details that no one could truly see or understand without having done it too.

And yet, life strangely moves on so quickly.  Tomorrow we’ll all have new worries and pretty soon it will be as if it never happened if we let it happen that way.  I have to promise myself not to forget.

The little things.

When you’re a teacher, the little things really go a long way.  I suddenly appreciate treating myself to dinner at Chipotle with my friend on the way to grad class.  I smile every time I look at the daises that my student brought me for Teacher Appreciation Week.  Somehow, I think a little bit out of necessity, we allow these things to go a long way.

As I enter the final two months with the c/o 2011, there are many things going on within the depths (okay, not really that deep, I know) of my mind.

First of all.  I have just about earned a masters degree.  I know, what the heck?  My FINAL grad class was this past Thursday.  I didn’t realize just how good it would feel.  I practically skipped out of the building with a huge smile on my face.  Even though I didn’t place much significance or allot much time to my grad work, I am so glad that it’s basically over.  Just a few things left to go and then it will be time to graduate.

Secondly, I realized that affirmation (much like daises) goes a long way too.  In a recent conversation with my Curriculum Coordinator, she told me that anyone that knows anything about good teaching and curriculum knows that I am the strongest link of the 10th grade team.   Humility is typically the policy, but sometimes it’s okay to celebrate one’s achievements, right?

I was damn proud.  My Curriculum Coordinator is someone that I look to as a huge source of stability within our school’s English Department.  She was TFA 6 years ago in the Baltimore corps and has stayed in urban ed.  We didn’t have her last year and I can’t even begin to express how much better things are in the ELA Department at my school this year.  To have her say what she did was incredibly gratifying.  I also had the Chief Academic Officer of our entire district walk into my classroom randomly when I was having our “Scholar Celebration Day” with pizza and cake before the DC-CAS (the standardized test for the DC School District).  He asked me if there was anything he could do to get me to stay.  Was it money?  He could fix that.  What could he do?

I was like “uhhh, can we not talk about this right now?”  The kids are so used to having visitors in the classroom, that fortunately, I don’t think any of them were even paying attention to our conversation.

To think that in under 2 years in the classroom, I have slowly mastered aspects of what it means to be a really good teacher.  What it means to teach and love my kids.    And for those of you that may not be aware of the politics that go on in DC, 10th grade is a high stakes testing year, so they try to place the “best” teachers in the 10th grade for obvious reasons.  Again, I was really proud at what all of this meant to be a strong teacher.  It’s a moment that stands out in my mind.

But of course, today (Monday) we’re back to reality.  There is a flood in my classroom.  Class starts in 30 minutes and I still wanted to set up for the day.  I had to “adopt” 6 kids from the class next door.  The kids (especially mine) were bad.  I just wrote a quiz to review classroom expectations and procedures.  The back of the quiz includes a sheet to indicate preferences for permanent group work seating.  It’s funny how my mind has changed.  I just.  Think differently now.

An Elephant Never Forgets: stealing, bad luck or some of both?

With the arrival of 90 degree weather, it seems as if the forecast just suddenly decided to flip on us. It’s as if we cut straight from winter into summer overnight. One day, I’m wearing a scarf to keep me warm while jaywalking across the Pike and then the next, my students and I find beads of sweat forming along the edges of our foreheads and the tips of our noses while taking a trip to the zoo.  And now, it’s pouring rain.

It’s funny how I always feel compelled to blog when I have zillions of other writing assignments to do. I have one final paper left for grad school this semester (I turned in the other one last week), I have three scholarship essays to compose, one letter of recommendation to boot. But in any case, here we are…which brings me to the point of this post: “an elephant never forgets.”

I’ve always been an organized person. My mind is never at rest. I’m constantly thinking about what to do and in what order and why. Needless to say, I rarely lose or misplace anything. However, as you may have inferred from previous posts, reader, I am currently a teacher in an inner-city school. And trust me; there are just way too many things that teachers need to keep in order. It all started last year when I could not find my digital camera for the life of me. Stolen. Slowly, little things would go missing here and there. It was usually food that was taken intentionally and school supplies that were probably taken unintentionally. I had to just let it go and roll with the punches. After all, I figured it sort of came along with the job description. Fine.   But then while on vacation last year, my thumb drive stopped working randomly and I lost a lot of files from my first year of teaching. It was devastating at the time, but then I ended up changing the grade I taught this year (so those files were rendered almost worthless since I’d have to start from scratch. Plus they were from my first year of teaching so haha, let’s be a honest, a lot of the files weren’t all that useful anyway.)

This year, the trend has somewhat continued. I bought an 8 gig USB drive which was stolen only a week or two later. I learned to be a little less naïve and figured out who stole it, but there really was no point in trying to do anything except to hope that they learn the immorality of their actions. Then I lost my cell phone on one of the craziest nights of my life. Fortunately it was time to upgrade to a better phone anyway. I was in love. With the phone. Alas, less than a month later, someone stole my phone and demanded ransom in return.  The words “but it’s gonna cost you” and “so when can you get money, because that’s when we can meet up” will forever leave a bewildering and disappointing taste in my mouth.  Needless to say, I now need to purchase another phone and to top it off, my most recent USB drive also decided to stop working that very week. Who does that?! Who has to replace two phones and three thumb drives?  It’s like the tragedy of technology and theft.

I just had to docuvent my thoughts right now. It’s almost time for the kids to come upstairs and start another day of standardized testing. The good news is that I purchased another thumb drive yesterday.

This time it has a lifetime warranty. Things are looking better with the advent of this summer weather.

Best of Berkeley

I found this post that I had drafted when I first left Berkeley…now that it’s that time all over again, except now it’s time to leave Maryland, I guess I’ll go ahead and publish this post.  Perhaps I left it as a draft hoping to add reviews or brilliant and witty commentary, but instead, I’ll leave it as a list and leave you to do with it what you will.

Good Eats:

Desserts

• Masse’s Pasteries
• Ici

Eateries

• House of Curries
• Cheeseboard Pizza
• Intermezzo’s
• Smart Alec’s
• Sufficient Grounds
• Gregoire’s
• Cafe Brazil

Cafes

• Cafe Milano

Things I wish I had figured out sooner:

• research professors in detail
• what building or where the weekly emergency test system is or what type of emergency it is for
• how to study less, but still make A’s
• the ocf
• taking advantage of being so close to San Francisco

You see, by the time you realize some things…it’s just too late for other things.  Carpe diem.

Will you go out with me?

4 Yes

4 No

2 Maybe

I am close to making a commitment.  One of many commitments that I will have to face in the next several years.  Woe and bliss are impending life decisions.

Side note: I just sent a letter to Penn Law, but they wanted it via email.  Do you know that feeling of incredible anxiety before you send an important email?  After you press send, you’re just like omfreak, did I have a typo?  I’m always scared that I mispelled something, did something dumb or a random curseword or accidental something happened.  Computers are tricky like that, you know?  Dang, I’m just gonna take a breath and go to sleep now.  I am not psycho, anal (ha, au contraire my wordpress title) nor crazy…you all know what I mean right?  Yeesh!

PS: Hi Crystal, I heart you!

Intro-spec-tion

With every lesson, each productive interaction with a student and session of reflection…I become a better teacher.

It makes me wonder what kind of teacher that I could be next year, the year after, or even five years from now when so much growth is happening within my classroom and within myself as an instructor.  But then I realize that this momentum is something I will have to table, perhaps indefinitely.

I came home today before sunset for the first time in probably five months.  It was glorious.  The days are getting longer and my time is growing shorter.  A new chapter of my life is waiting to unfold.

Happy Holidays

It’s on days like this that I know that I’m slightly off my rocker.  I thought about how I’m leaving Friendship Collegiate next year and my students that I will have taught for 2 years.  Class of 2011.  And I wanted to stay..

Lest we forget the God forsaken building that flooded last week and didn’t have water this week.  Not to mention the rampant cursing, brattiness and general lack of manners.  The lack of accountability and…let me stop before my moment of bliss is fully put to rest by reality.

The point is.  I love my kids.  It was a great week and it’s really gratifying to share my all with my students.

I can’t wait to see my family for Christmas though.  And to be done with law school applications.  And for no need for jacket weather.  I need to live in the Southern Hemisphere where my favorites: summer + Christmas can be combined.   Happy Holidays everyone!

Here are two swanky websites that I think are neat:

http://media.tomsshoes.com/giftideas

http://www.pixelgirlpresents.com/

(I literally get all of my wallpapers from this site, it’s the best discovery that I’ve kept to myself for some time now, but ’tis the season for sharing!)

Why so serious?

So I just finished the 8th draft of my personal statement to law school and it’s gone through a lot of transformation since I first envisioned what it is that I wanted to say.  I know they say that 90% of your admissions appeal comes from your GPA and LSAT score, but since those two are already in stone and there isn’t much that I can or cannot do about it…it’s been the personal statement that has received my attention as of late.  (or at least whatever is left of my attention after work, grad school, church and blah blah blah).   It’s funny to think that I can try to fit all my thoughts and essentially my entire being onto a few sheets of a Microsoft Word document, but I guess that’s just it.  It’s not easy to write a great personal statement, but hopefully by the end of this weekend, I’ll be done with it.  To the best of my present ability anyway.

I just got home from our Sunday School teacher’s Christmas party a couple hours ago.  It was great fun to have delicious food (it didn’t hurt that Mrs. Park so lovingly made us take bags of leftovers home), to see the contentment or discontent that comes with White Elephant gift exchanges and to finally watch The Dark Knight…which was by the way…Angela’s gift that Christine ended up coming home with. Yay for being an indirect beneficiary!  I bought a Hello Kitty toaster that toasts with the famous kitty’s head toasted so toastily on every bagel or bread slice that you’d ever like toasted.  It was so cute and it found a great home after a couple steals.  How practical of me to buy, I know.

The point that I’m trying to get to is that the past few weeks have been a bit rough.  I think that I’m slipping into this slump where I’m not really sure where I’m headed or why.  It’s easy for me to go through life just doing what I do best…which is to try my best and not question things.  But I’ve been noticing that I pray less although I rely on praise more now and I’m not sure if I’m pushing myself to be a better and better person.  That is, after all, the ultimate goal.

My new 8 gig thumb drive was stolen out from underneath my nose this past Friday.  All of my school files and law school files were on there.  Thank God (seriously, He is really good to me) that I backed up my files last weekend and for some reason decided to save my grad school projects/papers and law school personal statements on my laptop at home.  I would have been just, so destroyed if this was not the case.  Teaching requires such resilience, but man, I’m not sure how I would have bounced back from having to redo grad projects this last week before Winter Break AND rewrite drafts of my personal statement AND lose all of my 08-09 school files.  I’m just thankful.  So over it.  And hope that whoever stole it learns to be nicer and realizes that what they did is truly wrong.

This post is getting long, but I guess as I type without having to think. so. damn. hard.  like I do when I’m writing a personal statement, I’m beginning to recall why keeping track of my musings on a blog is nice.  This upcoming week should go by quickly.  I knew this past week was going to be terrible, which is probably why it was.  But this week is going to be good.  I’m going to give my kids their little holiday gifts on Monday and I’m excited to promote all the love and healthy habits that will be inside each gift.  I’ll take pictures and post more images and less text next time.

Ah, and before I forget why I entitled the post what I did.  As life continues to whirrrrr by.  I begin to grasp more fully that things in life, they really aren’t so serious.  That thumb drive, Hello Kitty toasters and dare I say, law school applications…really are not that important in the grand scheme of things.  Which is why I have learned how to take a chill pill once in a while and relax post-college.  While watching, The Dark Knight (which is a rather excellent film if I might say so myself)…I had a lot of a-ha! type moments.  I think my favorite part in the entire movie was when these two boats that have the option of blowing the other up (sort of like the classic prisoner’s dilemma), well, they don’t.  And it’s a huge surprise to the Joker.  (I’m also convinced that if they pressed the button, they would have blown their own ship up and not the other one anyway) But that’s beside the point.  The point is that the Joker is a character that seeks the darkness, the evil and the worst in us as people.  He pushes people to make decisions that reaffirm his belief that all people are inherently rotten, like himself, inside.  But what he doesn’t realize is that his own game is also a huge lie.  That moment when he looked up, expecting one of the boats to blow up, was the rekindling of hope.  Hope in mankind.  It sounds so cheesy, but today my dad called me to tell me that he learned that hope is continuing to believe that what has not yet happened will happen one day.  Okay, so he said it better than me just now because I’m having hard time remembering exactly what he said, but you get the picture.  I have to remember to have hope and faith that I will do what I’m supposed to do in this world and that the world will be a better place for it.  Happy Holidays everyone.