Wicked

We saw it. We loved it. It was wicked cool. I had to go buy the original cast recording ASAP, which turned out to be at a Barnes and Noble in Appleton. I love Steven Schwartz's lyrics; they are so witty, fun, and memorable! The set was incredible, Ana Gasteyer as Elphaba was amazing, and some of the songs gave me goosebumps. Rock on. Wicked will be in my head and in my CD player for a long time.

My classes are also being a bit wicked. There was quite a bit of shuffling that went on for 2nd trimester, and unfortunately I gained a few new students (were held back after 7th grade, now are moving up to 8th because they did well enough redoing the first tri of 7th. You know that can't be good). Now my 4th hour is MUCH more manageable, but I fear my 6th and 7th hours may become nightmare classes. Also, they kept taking kids out of my 5th hour. So, having one 15-person class is great, but that means my other classes are that much larger, 26 being the largest and one of the least manageable. This room is just too small for that many kids.

Not feeling the love

I am NOT feeling the teaching love right now. My kids were acting like jerks today and for some reason, it really got to me. I screamed (yes, screamed) QUIET!!! at my 4th hour class because they could not shut up. They seem to think it's really funny not to do what I ask them to. I do not find it so funny.

I took out some of my anger on my 7th period class because they were having a similar outbreak of stupidity and immaturity. These kids expect to be entertained every single second. I gave them a talking-to about being quiet, and not thirty seconds later, a few started talking again. That really set me off. I told them that they needed to exercise some self-control, that they are acting extremely stupid and immature, and that no one will put up with it in high school. At least they had the decency to shut up for a few minutes after that. I had to (again) talk to two of my students because I caught one throwing something at the other. The next time it happens, I swear I am sending them both to the office and letting the office work out the problem. It's ridiculous.

I understand the value of creating interesting, engaging, fun lessons. But it's just not possible or desirable for me to do a lab every day. There are other things to be learned and other ways to learn them. My students shy away from any task requiring ongoing mental (or even physical) effort. Their ideal class is to watch a movie or a Bill Nye episode, because they don't have to DO anything. They can completely zone out and think about their selfish little lives. Some of them don't even make an effort to do what is asked of them. I need to remember that I was just as self-centered and shallow as an 8th grader, but I like to think that I was marginally better behaved and had an attention span longer than 30 seconds. I guess I'm not typical.

It's at times like this when I think of a radical book I read a few years back. Why not stop making education mandatory? The kids who cause the most problems are the kids who DON'T want to be here. So why are we making them? This would be a whole lot easier if we didn't force kids to attend school, but allowed them to choose. Many of them would choose to be here anyway, because their friends would be here or their parents would make them. It would force us to make school more interesting for kids, so that we could get them to show up. It would definitely force us to change our teaching methods.

On the other hand, sometimes kids don't know what is good for them. The very same tasks that they never want to do build patience, perseverance, and critical skills. I have so many kids who claim they can't even wait 45 minutes to use the restroom. What happened to their patience? They have grown up on so much instant gratification that if they don't get their way, they throw a tantrum. I think some of my kids have hardly ever been told "no" in their lives. They just don't get that life is difficult, and you are always going to have to do things you don't want to do.

I guess my rant is over. Time for me to go do things I don't want to do--finish grading some papers.

Story time

I wrote this piece for our honeymoon album.

The July 7 Bombings

The second day we were in London, we got up with the intention of visiting the Tower of London. We went to the Underground station, but the stop for the Tower was closed, so we had to take a different route. When we got off the train at Oxford Circus to change lines, the PA announced that the Underground was closed due to a London-wide power failure. Along with everyone else in the station, we made our way to the surface. It was slow going at times, and everyone was quiet and patient. It was almost unnaturally quiet, now that I think about it. Maybe everyone knew, somehow, that this was no power failure. This must have been right after the bombs went off at four locations around the city, one only three stops from Oxford Circus.

We bought a bus map and figured out how to get where we were going—now the Tate gallery instead of the Tower—and boarded a bus. We did not know that a bomb was exploding on another bus at the same time we were riding ours. We spent the next few hours exploring the Tate. Although the gift shop employees told us that the buses had been shut down as well, even they did not know about the bombs. Then, we went over to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre for the matinee show of A Winter’s Tale. The show was canceled “due to today’s events.” It was only then that we started to suspect something was wrong—it was about 1 pm and the bombings had happened at 8 or 9 in the morning. We decided to go back to the Tate because there was more we wanted to see. On our way in, we asked a guard if he knew what was happening. He was surprised that we didn’t know that “there were bombs going off all over London.”

We immediately found pay phones in the museum. I remember seeing a high-school age girl sitting with some friends up against a wall and crying. We called Derek’s house and told them that we were okay. Luckily, they were just getting up and watching the news, so they hadn’t worried for too long. We had lunch and began the long walk home.

The walk took quite a while and it was eerie. There were little or no cars on the streets of London, but pedestrians everywhere. Because the bombs had gone off in the morning, many people had already arrived at work by Underground or bus by the time it was shut down. Now they had to get home with no other means of transportation. There were extremely long lines to get on boats that were traveling down the Thames—the only means of public transportation remaining. People were quiet, stoic, patient. We passed several police officers and saw some with large automatic weapons.

Once we returned to our hotel, we set about making arrangements. We were supposed to leave by train from King’s Cross the following morning, but King’s Cross had been hit and we weren’t sure if the trains would even be running. We were supposed to pick up a rental car and drive to Stirling after arriving on the train. Derek called our travel agent and arranged for us to rent a car at Victoria Station (we were staying nearby) just in case we couldn’t make it to Scotland by train. Then he went to an Internet café to e-mail our friends and relatives to let them know we were okay.

Luckily, we were okay. We feel lucky to have been spared that day. We did catch our train the following morning, and were grateful to make it to Stirling, where we felt our honeymoon could really begin. But what a story we have to tell.

Cranky

I'm cranky today. I'm not really sure why. Could be that I don't have so much in the way of lesson plans for this week. Could be PMS. Could be that it's Monday.

I'm also generally annoyed because I'm pretty disorganized (for me) and not at all motivated to clean it up/take care of it. This is true both in the classroom and at home. I've just got all these papers that I don't know what to do with. Plus, I just ended a sentence with a preposition, so you know things have to be bad. I hate filing. I really hate filing. I think this is the root of the problem.

This weekend, I started reading a manuscript for a horror novel that a friend sent me. It was interesting...I did a couple pages of hard-core editing before I realized that it might not be what he wants me to do. Anyway, I sent it to him to ask whether it's what he wants. If I ever get tired of teaching, maybe editing could be a fun job...that's after I have my interior design career, though.