2 week anniversary

It has officially been two weeks since I started law school…okay well, I guess I’m two days early since we started on Tuesday, September 8th.

But in these past two weeks, I have done hundreds of pages of reading and now have close to 80 pages of typed notes.  Whew, I wonder how many pages of notes I will have by the end of the semester.  I have also said:

“Vivian, and yourself?”

“I’m from Texas, but D.C. most recently”

“I was teaching, yes Teach For America”

“I taught 9th and then 10th grade English”

“Berkeley”

“07″

“Yeah so I headed to D.C. after graduating and now I’m here”

“I broke it playing softball”

“Section 3, yeah see you around!”

Yeah I’ve effectively said those facts in various patterns way too many times.  I guess that’s how it goes when you come to a new place with 255 other new people.  Everyone is very smart and nice.  Some people are very cool and I hope that a few people will become great friends.

So I went out to the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association (APALSA) dinner and after-event this past Saturday.  It was actually a lot of fun.  It’s so interesting how people of common experiences and backgrounds so frequently find themselves coming together.  For some it has to do with preference and others perhaps just a sense of camaraderie.  I feel fortunate to have met so many people from different walks of life in my short lifetime (sidenote: someone asked me how old I was yesterday and it felt really weird to say 24…I think that was my first time saying my age aloud to someone else since my birthday).  Anyway, so I guess I’m just trying to say that I feel lucky to have lived and experienced many cities and people up to this point in time.  All of which have shaped me in various ways.

But I have to admit that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to value the commonalities that I share with fellow Asian Americans.  I think this is normal, we all gravitate toward people that we can relate to and enjoy the company of and this obviously transcends beyond ethnicity but sometimes it includes ethnicity too, which is perfectly okay.  Hopefully this will be a time for me to grow as a person and not limit myself.  Too bad I have no idea exactly who/what will be limiting and who/what will be nurturing, but I think I’ll be able to discern as I go through these next few fresh months of 1L year.

Lastly, I am going to admit that I love to dance.  I think I really do.  And the thing is, I don’t necessarily like to dance all…club dancy most of the time.  This is a comment that I have received on numerous occasions when we go out.  Some guys just like to dance too!  …as opposed to have some girl all up in his space.  Although believe me, I’m sure many guys don’t mind the latter either.

But this doesn’t mean that I don’t like to dance in clubs.  I just don’t necessarily like to dance in clubs in a club dancy kind of way.  You follow?  I recently heard a story from my grandma about how she used to love to dance and how she would go out and dance the whole night away.  haha.  She even used to go out to places where older people gather to dance.  It’s really hilarious to imagine my grandma doing her thing on the dance floor, but I can’t help but agree that dancing is a whole lot of fun sometimes.

Documentation

When I think back to my original intention for starting this blog, I can boil the reasons down to two:

1. to document my thoughts as a TFA corps member

2. to find a new medium that would enable a smooth transition from xanga to blog

Now, several years later, I realize that my well-intentioned goals to write (and often subsequently reflect) and document have often been…ahem, inadequate at best.  At the same time, after a recent 10 day trip to three countries and six cities, I have decided(not as an excuse), but rather as a realization the following:

Sometimes, you’re too busy living life to document.  And this is generally a good thing, if you are living it fully.

And although 35 years from now, when we’re all flying our cars and downloading our food (Lord, I hope not)…I will fondly look back upon these digital archives with a rush of memories.  At the same time, I’m surprised at how clearly we are able to think back and recall our thoughts, emotions and perceptions of times passed.  Sometimes, I can imagine myself in that very moment.  It’s funny how our hearts and minds deem some memories worthy to keep and others…ahem, inadequate for whatever rhyme or reason.  In any case, I have many thoughts and no thoughts all at the same time these days.  I think, for the purposes of this blog, I have dug myself into a situation where I no longer desire to go back and track my thoughts ad naseum.

It’s currently prayer time in the Lee household and my junky desktop is attempting to upload some long overdue photos.  I think I’ll be back soon to post some ramblings.

…brb

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:

to 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.