Don't Tell Me....

If I'm not careful, enough people are going to tell me that I'm not cut out for teaching and I'm going to end up being a teacher just to prove them wrong.

There has to be away to be a successful sub. There just has to be, or no one would ever do it.

Battle Lost, But Not The War

I just logged onto the computer program that manages my substitute jobs and notified them that I was sick and can't work at the middle school tomorrow.

I worked at the middle school today. It was shocking, and I don't shock easily. The kids were blatantly rude and loud and disruptive. The first period that I taught it took me fifteen minutes to take the roll for twenty or so students and I had to send SIX kids to the office. We finally managed to get through a third of the work the teacher left, when the kids came trouping back in saying the vice principal sent them back. Nice support there, Mrs. M.

I haven't ever experienced anything like that. No wonder Nick wasn't able to manage his behavior. All I could think, all day long, was thank God he isn't here anymore. What a nightmare.

Part of me wanted to go in tomorrow and show them that they can't beat me. But I keep remembering someone in that first period class asking if I was coming in for the science teacher today, and then a good half of the class cheering and all but rubbing their hands together sinisterly. Then the same thing happened in the next period. The last period was sixth grade and they have a different teacher. Funny thing is, that class was my reprieve. They are still young enough and close enough to elementary school to quiet down when the teacher raises her hand in the air. I flipped off the lights in the first period and they actually laughed at me.

So they win. This time.

P.S. After only three weeks as a sub, my mind if made up. I do NOT want to be a teacher.

What if?

I've had a weird, very strange week. I'm shocked at how quickly substitute teaching has taught me that I definitely want to be a social worker.

I taught math, history and Spanish at the high school. I'm not sure what happened, but somehow I have ended up channeling all the worst teachers I ever had when I work at the high school. I'm mean. I won't let them make a noise. I send them to the vice-principal for voicing opinions. As a result, they hate me. Of course they do. I would hate me, too.

Then I went and taught third grade and elementary p.e. the second part of the week. Those kids adored me. They hugged me and told me I was the best teacher ever and begged me to come back. Whoo, what an ego rush!

What did I do different? I realized that I really was channeling every bad teacher every where, and I changed. I told the third graders that I hate a quiet classroom (which I do.) I let them work together and I let them talk about their work. I played games with them and generally was not as uptight as I was at the high school.

In short: I wasn't afraid of them.

Anyway. Why has this taught me that I don't want to be a regular classroom teacher? Because I could so easily see the progression from eager, curious learners in kindergarten and kids in the third grade who are already losing their ability to think independently. I actually feel sick to my stomach about sending Ruby to school. So I think I won't.

At home, Nick is studying Anne Frank and the Holocaust. I'm struggling to let go and let him do his own thing. It is so hard to resist the urge to micromanage his education and trust that he'll want to learn something if I'm not riding him every minute. I'm trying though.

I'm reading The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn right now and it's amazing. Here's a question. What would you have done if you could have dropped out of high school and done anything you wanted to do with those years? Me? I would have trained for the Olympics, I would have written a novel, I would have taken some college classes. I would have been happy and maybe not had an ulcer when I was still in school.

What about you?

A Hodge Podge

I was called to a sub job in a kindergarten room. Good Lord, I am exhausted. That was the hardest job I've ever done. I realized today that I most definitely do not want to work in early education as a career. One day at a time as a sub is one thing, but day after day? No way.

I'm leaning more and more toward social work. Which means about nothing, since tomorrow I could lean the other way. My problem isn't deciding which one, it's giving the other one up.

In other news, I'm watching Biggest Loser. Every week I watch this show and I get this burst of inspiration which goes exactly no where. I have no time to work out. It' s seriously cold here in the mornings and in the evenings. Hell, it's seriously cold here 24/7 this time of year. I can't waste the money or time on a gym membership (I'd have to drive 20 minutes each way to the nearest on. Think of the oil!!)

Oh, the excuses. They are abundant.

I decided today that, instead of thinking about weighing 150 pounds, instead of thinking about losing more than half my body weight, I'm just going to focus on not weighing 300 pounds. That's all. Just 17 pounds. I can do that.

So here are some goals for this week (starting tomorrow. I swear! No excuses.)

1. Take my vitamins.

2. Give those Alli pills I bought a few months ago another try.

3. Focus on moving more. Just getting up and moving around. I'm not going to let all my excuses for not exercising stop me from at least moving around some.

The Boy Makes Chili

Friday was my last day as a teacher's aide. I already have three substitute jobs lined up, all at the high school. Monday I'm going in for the band teacher. I know next to nothing about music, but it should be fun anyway. I'll spend three periods at the middle school and one at the high school.

Tomorrow afternoon I have an IEP meeting for Nick at the middle school. I'll be withdrawing him officially. I talked to the principal on Friday and told him that we were going to homeschool. He asked why, but couldn't really muster any argument. I would be shocked to find out that anyone at the school wasn't relieved to see Nick go. He made them work.

Nick made a meal tonight for us. Chicken chili. It was delicious. Here's his recipe (he adapted it from a recipe he got off www.allrecipes.com)

Nick's Chicken Chili

1 pound boneless skinless chicken, cut into bites
2 14 ounce cans white beans, drained
1 can corn, drained
1 can carrots, drained
1 can whole tomatoes with juice
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 T oil
1 T chili powder
2 t oregano
1 t cocoa powder
1 t cumin
1 t paprika
2 t salt
pinch red pepper flakes
pinch black pepper

Heat the oil in a pan and saute the onion and garlic until soft. Put them into your crockpot. Put the chicken in the pan and cook almost through, until golden brown. Put into your crockpot. Add the beans, corn and carrots. Add the tomatoes and juice, cutting up the tomatoes some if desired. Mix in the spices. Cook on high for three or four hours.

Let Freedom Ring

Ruby is finally feeling better. She had a fever for three days, but it went away with antibiotics, so it wasn't mono like the doctor thought at first it might be. She's chipper and full of energy now.

Adrienne tired out for her school's production of a radio play of It's a Wonderful Life. So it's an anxious wait for morning to see if she'll get a part.

We went to Las Vegas over the weekend and I'm officially glad I don't live there anymore. It's smelly. It's dirty. There are too many people, too many cars. I hate Wal-Mart with a passion. I do miss Target, but you can't have it all, right?

And the big news. I'm going to start homeschooling Nick right away. Last night I enrolled him in Clonlara, which is a homeschool program that's very free and open to interpretation. Not free-free of course. Oh no. But considerably less than a private school. And worth it. Just to see his face when I told him he didn't have to go to school anymore was worth every penny and more. Today he stayed home sick from school and I told him he could do a trial run of homeschooling. Here's what he did today:

1. Watched one show on Discovery Channel closely enough to discuss it with me when I got home. (He watched myth busters and was able to tell me that the myth about people dying if they are completely covered with paint is a plausibility, not a proven fact.)

2. Went out and collected five very different rocks and made a list of their characteristics.

3. Gathered the items he needs to make a machine that will: push a toy car at least four inches, break an empty egg shell, pop a balloon and blow out a candle.

4. Brainstormed a name for his school and designed a logo. So far he's considering the following two names: The Congress Middle School and Nick's Ninja Academy.

5. Designed a menu for this weekend. Chicken chili, salad, crackers, hot chocolate and ice cream. Tomorrow he'll find recipes and start building a shopping list.

I already feel a thousand times more relaxed. I am done sending him to public school. I never have to deal with it ever, ever again. Never. Inside, I'm doing the Mexican hat dance. Inside I'm collapsing with relief. The struggle is over.

This is my last week as a teacher's aide. I have a bunch of sick leave that I'll lose if I don't use it, so I'm taking tomorrow off since all of my kids have been sick. It's a half-day at school and I'll be glad not to have to do the tutoring thing for hours after school. I'm incredibly excited about being a substitute. I'm going to work full-time until my next semester starts to pay off the Clonlara tuition. On Thursday I have to go and get registered into the sub system so that I can take jobs.

I think I'm going to dis-enroll Nick from school tomorrow. Let freedom ring.

More about teaching

I had my last "strategies for substitute teaching" class yesterday afternoon. I signed up for this two-weekend, one-credit class before I knew that I was going to be a sub. Turned out to be excellent timing.

I'd like to share with you an example of why I'm having a hard time to committing to being a teacher. Today we got copies of two actual sub plans from two high school teachers in Elko. One of them had an entire paragraph about "if the student asks to go to the nurse, the bathroom, or the their locker the answer is NO" and "don't be afraid to be mean." The other wasn't much better, with explicit directions not to lend out pencils or pens (so I guess a kid who forgot just gets to sit there for almost two hours??) and against the ban against bathroom use.

I learned a lot of good information in that class about graphic organizers and how to engage students in learning. But for Jesus. The teacher's are talking about kids who are at least 14 and some 18 or even 19. They can't go to the bathroom? Why are teachers so obsessed with student's bodily functions?

I don't want to be that teacher. I promised myself yesterday that if I ever become a teacher, I will not ever deny a kid access to the damn bathroom.

I'm still reading that book by John Taylor Gatto. He has an essay in there where he talks about the difference between school and libraries. In libraries every one has equal access to resources, the librarian never dumbs anyone down or makes decisions about what they can and can't read certain books or learn certain things. Librarians make no judgment calls about a person or their abilities based on what they read. Libraries are completely free, equally to all people. Librarians are available and usually eager to help when asked, but don't force help on a person unsolicited. People of varying ages and abilities can all use the library at the same time with great success. Library's have bathrooms available with no restriction on them what so ever. As a result, even "bad" kids respect the library. You never hear about escalating library violence or library shootings. Vandalism in libraries is very rare.

One of the reasons Gatto points to, to explain the differences between school and library behavior, is that librarians dispense real books and schools dispense textbooks. He calls textbooks pre-thought thoughts. The questions in them have the adverse consequence of making sure that kids don't learn much more than what the questions are asking.

On another note, Adrienne found the website for Phillips Exeter Academy yesterday. Exeter is an exclusive, top-level boarding school in New Hampshire. And they offer free tuition and room and board to students who are accepted and have a family income of less than $75,000. She got excited and spent the whole afternoon talking about what it would be like to go to boarding school, and to take really hard classes that challenged her.

I told her she could apply after her sophomore year if she still wants to. She'll have to study over the next year because her PSAT scores will play a huge part. And also work on building a resume of extracurriculars and community service. But when she goes into the eleventh grade she'll be 17, less than six months younger than I was when I graduated from high school. If she wants to go to a school on the East Coast and can make it happen she'll be old enough to do it then.

There's a book called Guerrilla Learning by Amy Silver and Grace Llewellyn that talks about how important it is for families to not think of school as the kids only, or even main, source of learning. And it talks about giving kids freedom to do what is important to them. Something that is important to Adrienne is good teachers. Exeter teachers are passionate about their work because they are teaching what they love. Mathematicians teach math, scientists teach science. There will be no teachers at Exeter who are there because they couldn't find a job in the subject they were trained to teach. That's exciting.

Adrienne might not get into Exeter. The competition is stiff. But she's excited about the work that will go into trying.

It's Morning Now

I've been thinking about why Adrienne seems to be able to take what works for her about high school and leave the rest behind. I really believe it is because school isn't compulsory for her. She knows that if it ever stops working for her, she can leave. She changed classes five times in the first week of school, because she wasn't willing to settle for classes that didn't work for her. She's learning French, because she wants to and would not be persuaded to study Spanish. She's learning woodworking because it's a skill she wanted to have. She's learning the drums because she's willing to wake up early and go to school for an hour before the other kids and study it.

She's there, literally, because she wants to be. I would be surprised if any of her peers at this school can say the same thing.

I have talked to a ton of students whose opinion of school is "I hate it, it sucks, it's a waste of my time." They're marking time until they graduate or are old enough to drop out. They aren't there because they want to be, they're there because they're parents say they have to be.

Maybe if the compulsory part of education were dropped, more kids would want to be there. If they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could leave if school ever really did become useless, or too miserable of an experience to deal with, then maybe they'd be more open minded about learning.

My goal with all my kids is to raise learners. Not regurgitators of information that's been doctored to be essentially American propaganda. I want my kids to be questioners. I want them to be critical thinkers to whom the Triple A Approach (Ask questions, Assess the data, Assert an opinion) is second nature. I don't want them to take anyone's word for things, but to have a desire to form their own informed opinions.

I want them to say screw you to someone who tries to tell them they can't take a piss because they don't have the right piece of paper in their pocket.

It's Midnight. I'm Taking Tomorrow Off.

I'm reading a book called A Different Kind of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto.

I'm basically a teacher at the high school. A teacher of one. I have to make lesson plans and design a curriculum for my student. I have to teach her every academic subject. We do not have a classroom teacher. They did promote one of the aides to be the teacher for the class, but she has only been at school two weeks this year due to surgery.

I've struggled to warm up to this new teacher. I realized today that a lot of that is jealousy. She gets to just be a teacher. I have to do four years of college first. She has a thirty-year-old degree in sociology. I have to choose education and study it. She isn't the low-man on the totem pole anymore. I am.

Working at the high school has been an eye-opening and exhausting experience. I have heard teachers say things about students that they should be ashamed of. I have had administration seemed shocked when I praised a student they consider a slaker. I have a student who is struggling to pass English because he can't connect with the Reader's Digest edition of Great Expectations, but he's reading a huge volume of Greek Mythology on his own time. English teachers have refused to try to help me get their students excited about writing short stories, because they don't believe their students are capable--because they aren't connecting with the Reader's Digest edition of Great Expectations.

Nick had a lunch detention on Tuesday. Because he had to pee. The kids have (I swear to you, this is what they're called) potty passes. They're supposed to carry them and give them to the teacher if they have to pee. That way the teacher doesn't have to write one out. (Or have a rubber chicken handy like my 12th grade English teacher did.) Nick never remembers to take his out of his homeroom class, which is his resource room. So he got to computer class on Monday and near the end he asked to go to the bathroom. The teacher said no, because Nick didn't have his pass.

Imagine, just for one minute, if you had to ask permission to pee. Imagine that you were told know, that you could hold it until your regular break time, now sit down and get back to work. How humiliating would that be? How demeaning? How quickly would you say, "screw you, I'll be right back?" What would you say to your spouse when you got home?

Nick left class, took a piss, came back and was ready to work. Instead of letting him, the teacher said he was going to write Nick up for insubordination. Nick got pissed off and when the bell rang thirty seconds later, pushed past another kid who was "lucky he didn't fall" (which means he didn't fall) on his way out the door. Hence the detention for "escalating violence."

Sigh. What am I supposed to do? Sit the kid down and give him a lecture about holding it if he has to go and doesn't have the prerequisite piece of paper in his pocket? Teach him how to take demeaning behavior from an adult with a smile, because he's 13? Tell him that those last ten minutes of computer class were more important than his bodily functions?

I think I'm going to home school Nick next year. I'm about 90 percent sure. I'm am so tired to trying to whittle my square-peg son to fit a round hole. I'm afraid of what I see already happening to him. He hides from learning, because his learning experiences hurt so much. He clearly isn't learning social skills in school. I'm afraid he won't ever be able to in a school setting. Three hundred kids and fifty adults is daunting for the most typical child, imagine dealing with that as an autistic kid.

He will never take someone else trying to set limitations on how often he's allowed to piss in 7 hours like a good boy.

I'm not sure I want him to.

I don't know what to do. Calling children our most precious resource sounds sort of silly. But think of it this way. I learned in my social work class that when my generation retires, there will only be 2.8 workers paying for our social security. Precious? Those kids turn into adults who will one day be running this country. We are already leaving them with an unmanageable mountain of debt and pollution. Can't we at least give them the creativity and initiative to figure out a way to fix those problems when they become theirs?

I don't want to be a smooth, oiled gear in the system churning out worker bees. I want to be a wrench in the machine. This is why I keep going back and forth between education and social work. I see so little of value in public education for so many kids.

It's funny, because I happened to give birth both to a kid who can only be dragged kicking and screaming through the school system, and one who thrives in that environment. Adrienne has somehow managed to find a way to bridge the gap between school and education (they are so not the same.) She's managed to hold on to her individuality, take everything she wants out of school and dump the rest. She's also an auditory learner. She learns best by listening to someone explain something to her and then doing it. She's naturally well-behaved.

I think I need to sleep. I almost feel high. Like I want to take on the world.

Yes. I really think I'm going to home school Nick next year. He deserves better than what he's getting. And not just because he's going to struggle hard with 80 minute classes.

Decisions

I spent the weekend participating in a Strategies for Substitute Teaching class. I also did some reading about Marva Collins.



Sometimes I think I'm like a raccoon who can't help but be hypnotized by shiny things. As soon as someone presents something to me in a way that connects, I want to do it. So now I'm sure I want to be a teacher. Tonight I have my social work class, during which I'll probably switch back to being just as sure that I want to be a social worker. And then sometime tonight, when I'm too tired to do anything about it, I'll remember that what I really want is to be a writer.

I've written a paper for my social work class about Jane Addams and the Hull House.



I would love to be Jane Addams when I grow up. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which she was awarded for her work with the poor in Chicago. Hull House, where she lived and worked until she died at a ripe old age, was a settlement house in a poor, immigrant-filled Chicago neighborhood. In the late 1880s Jane and her friend Ellen Starr leased an old abandoned mansion built by Charles Hull. They lived there, along with a rotating selection of students and people in helping careers. Jane and Ellen wanted to share their love of art and literature with the poor and believed that everyone deserved culture. Hull House had a kindergarten, day care for working mothers, job training, adult school, an art gallery, a book bindery, the first Little Theater in America, a residence for single mothers and a zillion other resources. It was flexible and changing.

The Hull House still helps tens of thousands of Chicago people every year, even though the mansion is now a museum. Every town should have a Hull House. A place where the poor are empowered instead of kicked when they're down.

See, now I want to be a social worker again. I'm so glad I have some time to decide. I know that I feel a strong pull toward working with people in poverty. I feel almost no desire to work at an upscale school full of middle-class kids. I'd much rather work in a school that really needs dedicated teachers. When we lived in Las Vegas, my kids teachers almost never stayed at the school more than a year because they constantly were moving into rich new schools in swanky neighborhoods. I don't want to be that teacher.

I'm also about 80 percent sure that I do not want to work for DCFS as a social worker. I get anxiety just thinking about knocking on someone's door with the purpose of investigating child abuse or neglect. I know it's a vital, necessary job. I'm so glad I'm not the one who has to do it. I will be though, when I do my internship, so I suppose we'll find out if I'm cut out for it. Maybe I'll love it.

Even writing it down makes me tired

I'm pretty sure that when I graduate and get a "real job," it's going to feel like a vacation.

Here was my day today:

Wake up at 5:45 a.m. Spend half an hour trying to become human. Get Adrienne up at 6:15, then spend the next 45 minutes running around like maniacs getting ready for school. Nick stayed home today.

Head over to the sheriff's office to be fingerprinted for my substitute license.

Get to school by 8 a.m. Tell the vice principal that I have to leave a little early to get Nick to the doctor for his sports physical. Take my student to her work study for an hour, come back and teach second hour. Talk to Kevin during lunch and realize that he can't come bring Nick to town for his appointment because the Dish Network dude is coming this afternoon. He's supposed to be there by noon, but has to come from Vegas and has called to say it'll be three before he gets to us. Tell my vice-principal that I have to leave earlier than I thought, all the while repressing some serious anxiety about sitting in her office in the first place. Since I'm there anyway, give my December 1 notice. (I'm afraid my student might not actually move, and I'm not spending $250 for a license that I'm not going to use.) Teach third period.

Leave school at 2:10 and drive home to get Nick. Kiss my baby and my husband, then head back to town. Spend at least 30 minutes getting Nick signed in, cursing under my breath about inter mural basketball and how is that different from PE anyway...mumble mumble grumble.

Meet Kevin in the parking lot of the clinic after he's picked up Adrienne who has had to wait for half an hour at school and is grumpy as all hell. Seems the boy she likes, whose mother is the school secretary, wasn't hanging around this afternoon. Boo. Kevin takes all three kids home.

Run like hell to my class at the college. Get there fifteen minutes late. I'm the only Ely student, the class is broadcast via internet. So I'm coming in late on live TV in classrooms in Elko and Pahrump and Winnamucca. Apologize profusely. Enjoy the class, it's one of the best I've taken (it's a short, four session course on substitute teaching strategies.)

Drive home, talking on the phone to Kevin most of the way about how Nick isn't cooperating with him and how Adrienne is still pissy and the baby is screaming in the background about something or the other.

Get home at about 7, make dinner. Talk to my dad about him and his wife coming to visit for Veteran's Day (his wife is a teacher.) Make arrangements for Adrienne to stay in town tomorrow morning, because her drama rehearsal runs from 10 a.m. to noon and my class goes from 10 to 2.

Eat dinner and get Ruby to sleep. Promise myself to spend all day Sunday with her. Swear to take her to the park if it's warm enough. Finally relax and watch Mr. Holland's Opus with Adrienne, which makes me bawl like a baby and decide I DEFINITELY want to be a teacher. (Until tomorrow, when something is likely to make me decide to be a social worker.)

I wanted to write today. I wanted to exercise. There just aren't enough hours. Never mind the beating myself up over my daily contribution to Global Warming and the fact that I need to read a novel for my history class by Sunday and I haven't even cracked the book.

I guess I can't do much about being busy. But I can write. Right now.

Good Morning, Mrs. Alburger

I went yesterday to the school district office and picked up the packet for being licensed as a substitute teacher. I'm sort of excited, to tell the truth. I can work less, if I want to, because it's my choice whether or not to take an assignment. I won't have as much responsibility, since I'll only be there for a day. I'll get to mix it up and work at all four schools in my district.

Also, if it comes down to it, I'll be able to home school Nick next year. And I'm afraid it might come down to it. The high school is so innovative when it comes to 99 percent of the students. But for the one percent who have special needs they really drop the ball. There is no teacher. They've hired a long-time aide to be the teacher, but come on. There's a reason that getting a special education endorsement requires a full year of education. This woman has a degree. In sociology. And the scariest thing is that I seem to be the only person who has a problem with this. None of the other aides are the tiniest bit concerned. I guess because they're kids aren't going to be taught without a real teacher.

The school has this weird policy of making the special needs kids stop work at the end of the second hour to help set up the lunch room. Who are they helping? The kids who are on in-school suspension. Which ties the job to a punishment. I actually feel a little sick every day when I take the kids out there to do the work. It's just so WRONG. They don't disrupt any other class to make the kids do physical labor. When I've mentioned it, I've been told that the resource kids need to learn responsibility. Because, you know, all the other 500-plus kids at the school are shining examples of responsibility.

Yeah, I think I need the option of homeschooling Nick. Hopefully next year they'll have a teacher. Definitely next year I'll be making a stink about the lunch room thing. But just in case, if I'm working as a substitute, my (and Nick's) options will be open.