Hello! November 1, 2007

We just had a fantastic Halloween here. Now it’s back to work, with a tall order of organising and planning classes for the next three months. I have many varieties of feeling about this. I want to be a good teacher, and I think planning my classes is really important. I would do that part for myself regardless of anyone looking over my shoulder. But no one does. There’s the problem the plans are viewed and nit-picked once, then nothing happens. I have more than twenty classes I have to write twelve weeks of classes for in quite painstaking detail, just because…So I try to make them as useful for myself as possible. I know it sounds like i’m whining, but I also happen to have a lot more classes than about half of the teachers, on the same salary. Actually, what I need someone to say is “buck up champ, this is the real world,” or “We all work hard, stop listening to anyone who isn’t.” I mean, if I have to write 25 of these things for weekly private lessons, then writing lesson plans as school teacher is going to seem a lot easier, right? If I were a lesser teacher, it would be enough to glance at and wing a class last minute. I don’t know, maybe it’s a good thing — aside from the fact that classes never go as planned. Students get sick, they take business trips, they come to school onry or tired. I not being left room in my plans to account for missed days so I write in a lot of review. I hope it works. Point is I’ll never be able to reference these and know exactly what I’m supposed to do, no matter how much detail is there, and no one else looks at them (but maybe I should stop telling myself that, or listening to others say it). But I am getting the hang of it. I’m starting to put it together. And I’m trying to figure out how to make the hoops I’m jumping through work for me. I really think I’d go insane otherwise. I hate being given tasks that seem to have no purpose, like putting my CD player in a box in my trunk so that I can take it on an hour journey, on an overcast day, and spare the wear the sunlight might cause. So I try to see it differently, afterall if I break suddenly, then having my CD player in a box might be a good thing — a better reason than the one I was given. I still have a hard time doing it though, I’d almost rather replace the cheap CD player. SO, is something wrong with me? Am I failing to see things straight? Do I need to grow up and stop being so rebellious? At what point do we realize it’s easier not to fight tyranny (– unless you have someone else doing the fighting for you? I’m reading Howard Zinn right now, which places a new perspective on U.S. History.)? I don’t know. I like living here though. I like my friends, my students and the many people I’ve met and things I’ve learned. I even wish I could stay with this company for another year. Afterall, look at what I’m gaining from this experience. I can feel the change everyday. Besides the company is not that bad — have you read anything about NOVA? look it up; I could be in a much worse situation.
I realize too, that I haven’t been working nearly as hard as the firefighters in L.A. That’s been really stressful, thinking about that. My family is always in my heart, but especially my dad and brother these days.