Happy Spring!

I wish that I had some better pictures to show you as far as my spring goes thus far. I have one fun one, but mostly they're just me playing around outside with Jack.

This is a picture of me and some friends at the Vampire Weekend show at The Orange Peel over Spring Long Weekend. It was the last night of the break right after I got back from the beach and it was a super fun night. We went for drinks and to sit on the sweet patio at Hannah Flannagan's beforehand (and a shot at Mo Daddy's on the way) and just had a blast hanging out. The show itself was GREAT. If you ever get the chance to see them, do it.

One thing I do love about The Orange Peel (among the many things I really hate) is that they get all kinds of bands somewhat early on in their career, right before you'd expect to see them play in Charlotte rather than in Asheville. The issue is that people from Asheville will travel to Charlotte to see a show usually, but people from Charlotte suck too much to drive to Asheville. For example, I saw Wolfmother at the Peel a couple years ago, right before they blew up and they are now playing at the Fillmore in Charlotte. Same thing with O.A.R., though that was more than 4 or 5 years ago probably, and I also had the opportunity to see Queens of the Stone Age there, but I chose not to go.

They also get really fantastic, kind of huge bands every now and then, like the time the Smashing Pumpkins played 9 shows there. And the time the Beastie Boys sold out in like 45 seconds or something.

Here's Jack playing in the sun one of these really hot days. Actually, I guess he's technically not playing so much as panting, but you get the picture.

Where's Jack? This is one of those times that I was doing laundry and the washing machine was scaring the crap out of Jack. Instead of hiding under something this time, he went outside and refused to come in for like 2 hours. In fact, he hardly moved from that spot. This one also is a good picture of how long the grass in the backyard is...

Happy Spring!

BEACH

I LOVE THE BEACH.

We had a Spring Long Weekend and I went to the beach for four days and it was great. Unfortunately, I spent the vast majority of my time in the sand drinking and therefore did not trust myself with my new camera.

I literally did next to nothing except sit in the sun and drink. It was amazing.

I did, however, take a really silly video last week sometime when it was nice outside. This is my backyard and you can also kind of see the deck. Please excuse the quality of the video; I shot it with my cell phone. Also please excuse my extraordinarily loud talking, giggling, whistling, and the vibrating at the end of the video when someone sent me a text or something.

Other than that, my dog loves sticks. And running. :)

Just a Couple Things...

Nothing really major has happened in the last...two weeks I think it's been...? So here's a bunch of small things that have happened...

1. I tricked Jack into thinking he was on his leash and tied up when he wasn't. My friend Adam has a sweet house a few hours from Asheville where he goes to school, but the backyard isn't fenced. There are two dogs that live at the house currently and one that hangs around a lot. None of them run off when they are off leash. Jack, on the other hand, runs off any time he's off the leash. It's ridiculous really because he is so needy and follows me around in the house; it's like he momentarily forgets that he likes me as much as he does. Anyway, last weekend I put Jack's leash on him and let him drag it around. He didn't even attempt to run off; in fact he didn't get more than about 20 feet away from me. We'll call that a win for me.

2. I helped Adam bottle some IPA while I was there. It was fun (and yummy!).

3. We had Saturday school this weekend. School six days a week is not fun.

4. I tried Thai food and liked it, though I stayed away from the spicy. :)

5. I did nothing for St. Patrick's day.

6. It was warm enough to play cornhole last weekend and warm enough one day this week to put on a swim suit and lay out.

That's about it. Things have been pretty uneventful. That is about to change. "Spring Break" (really just a four day weekend) starts Friday and I am hitting the beach.

I'm Either Teaching or Thinking About Teaching

It's so true.  It takes up so much of my time.

I have a student teacher this semester.  I was very excited about this at first, but as time has gone on, I have started struggling with this pretty massively.

It's really hard to watch someone else teach students that I have been working with for about seven months.  Different teachers have different ways of going about things.  Trust me, I completely get that.  It's the same as students having different needs.  I try to be understanding and find the good in everything.

But my student teacher's way of going about things gives me a headache.

He's very much about teaching Literature (yes, capital "L").  He is really smart and philosophical and enjoys the content he is teaching (read: he was a legit Lit major, unlike myself, which means that he has read every thing ever written and enjoys the really hard things most, whereas I got away with reading mostly just the things I enjoyed).

The unfortunate part of this is that it doesn't really work for 9th graders.  I don't teach Literature; I teach reading.  I would love for my students to see the relationship between what happens to Jem Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (poems).  In reality, I don't understand Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience...because they are seriously god awful boring.  And if I, who love reading most of the time, think they are boring, then please take a moment and think about how a 9th grade boy might feel about them.

I also think that he had no idea how much outside-of-the-classroom work goes into teaching.  Here's my schedule this week: I had a meeting today that took up 1/2 of my planning period and then another from 3 pm til 4:30; tomorrow I am giving the 10th grade writing test during my entire planning period; Wednesday I have two parent teacher conferences that will take up all of my planning period again; and on Friday, I have another parent teacher conference during 1/2 of my planning period.  That means that Thursday is the only day this week that I will have a full planning period.  There's also things like taking attendance and sending weekly numbers in, making copies and transparencies, faculty meetings, remembering which students get modifications, and grading papers, not to mention the very babysitter and mother like things that teachers have to step in and do.

His level of professionalism leaves something to be desired as well.  He wore the same outfit for the first three weeks or so, and it didn't seem to have been put together with the idea of a career in mind.  We had a conversation about dressing professionally, and what I'm getting from him now is the same outfit every day, but it's at least a button up shirt.

Also, my student teacher lacks classroom management skills.  This is the part that really gives me a headache.  He is constantly yelling over students instead of having them be quiet.  He lets them be all over the room and yell at each other and talk while he is talking.  I'm not saying they always have to be in seats and not talking; far be it from me to say my classes are perfectly managed.  I'm a big believer in balance, and I always try to have a good balance of quiet sitting time and talkative moving time.  Honestly, I'm afraid of taking the classes back because they're going to be ridiculous, and it's likely that I will be writing a lot of referrals and driving myself crazy trying to reteach them how to sit down and be quiet when they need to do so.

He is doing some good things.  I think that new teachers have such an "innocent" view of what students can and cannot do and also will or will not do and are therefore more willing to try things that may end up crashing and burning.  They're often the kind of things that I just mentioned, like some of William Blake's most intensely boring poems.  Those kinds of things work occasionally and make the students have to think and work harder than normal.  My student teacher is really willing to try things that I would normally say are WAY over the students heads.  And yes, they fail miserably sometimes, but he has had some good successes, especially in the Honors class.

He is also good at connecting with the students.  They really like him, though I'm unsure the reason for that and am not entirely convinced that it's a good reason.

I am kind of wondering if my headache is coming because I rather miss teaching my own classes...

The Department of Homeland Security Came to My House

My phone rang on Monday morning, and, as it was a number I did not recognize, I let it go to voicemail. I checked the voicemail later that afternoon when my student teacher was teaching. Here's a transcript of that voicemail with my own thoughts included in italics:

"Hi (he mispronounced my name horribly, but in a recognizable manner), this is so and so. I work for the Department of Homeland Security. WHAT? OHMYGOD What did I do? OH MY GOD HOLY CRAP I'm in trouble. We need to come in to interview you. We are doing a background check on someone you probably know. WHAT? No I don't know anyone Homeland Security would be checking up on! No. Big mistake. Oh my god. It says here you've known this person since 1997. WHAT? No! No one I have known that long needs to be dealing with Homeland Security. Oh my god. Her name is ** and I don't know how to pronounce this last name but it looks like Lacks uh goo. (At this point I did actually laugh out loud, because I know how much Liz loves her last name being butchered.) Oh Bartholomew was applying for that government position a couple of months ago and told me she would need verification of living situations. Duh. Wow, Lou. Nice freakout. If you could just give me a call back at your earliest convenience, my number is...


Anyway, I hang up and call the guy back; we talk briefly about how I know Bartholomew and set up an interview for the next morning. Cue snow. In fact, we haven't had school since Monday. He called me back this morning and just came by the house to conduct his interview.

I was asked to verify a bunch of things I didn't quite remember, like Bartholomew working in the Asheville Mall and living in a house on Edgewood. I didn't remember her working in the mall at all until the guy said it was at The Children's Place and I vaguely recalled that. When he said "Edgewood," I said "The apartments near campus?" He said no and described it as a house that had been split into apartments and that triggered a memory and I said this, appropriateness apparently no matter to me:

"Oh I remember that, but not because I ever visited her there. She told me once she was living in a house with a professor from UNCA" Yes, he says and starts flipping through his notes to find his name. "His name was Seamus McNerney. Seamus Patrick McNerney, born on St. Patrick's Day actually." Sounds like a good Irishman. Was he a good professor? I pause because McNerney was one of my favorite professors, but not for very good reasons. Like any good Irishman, he drank whiskey out of his coffee mug during every class. He also gave me an A when I did not deserve it. I go with "Yeah I really liked him." Is he still at UNCA? I pause again because I'm not sure if looking up McNerney to ask about Bartholomew is a good idea. I went with complete honesty: "Actually, I have no idea (I don't.) But I heard he was really sick a few years ago (I did, from Liz. Apparently, the alcohol was slowly killing him)." I guess this was good enough information since someone else, possibly Liz, had mentioned McNerney and me remembering that he was there in that house without him prompting probably verifies that she did in fact live there, which I think was the whole point.

He never asked me about when we actually lived together except to ask if there were any drug, alcohol, or financial problems. I laughed. Probably also not appropriate. Liz did not enjoy my drinking habits at all when we lived together. She got over it eventually, but I was definitely the "bad" roommate.

Everything else was stuff basically along the lines of "Do you think that this person will betray her country?" It actually felt a little contrived, but that's probably because I don't really think about things like betraying your country. I guess I've never dealt with the government or anyone from the government that closely so it was kind of intimidating. He even showed me his badge when he came in.

One thing that did bother me a little is that he asked about foreign travel, and how much she had done and where. It seemed to be a matter of interest in "foreign governments." Scary. If I ever apply for a government position, they will probably not accept me solely based on the fact that I've been to France on four separate occasions, that my sister lived there, that I studied in England, have taken students to Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, backpacked in Costa Rica, that I have an uncle in Holland, that I'm taking more students to England, Wales, and Ireland, that I have plans to go to as many places as possible in my lifetime, especially on summers when there is a World Cup, and that my family is from California, because, let's admit it, California is kind of like a foreign country (all those damned hippies and Mexicans.) My sole saving grace would be that my grandfather was in the Air Force (Go America!) and that he instilled in me a love of seeing foreign places and cultures at a young age, I just never had the desire to fight for my country to do it.

The worst part was him actually coming to the house. I had to run around the house hiding all my questionable literary material and marijuana.

KIDDING!

Luckily, I Can't Kill a Student Today

Not that I would, really.  But I will take ridiculous pleasure in meeting with a certain student's parents or guardians, a guidance counselor, and an assistant principal as soon as possible to discuss the fact that this student...well, I shouldn't say bad things about students.

So we have yet another snow filled day on our hands here, and we are, unfortunately, going to make up this day by going to school on Saturday.  I've decided the only way to deal with this is to have a good attitude.  The silver lining WAS that my student teacher had already told me that if we did have to have school this weekend, he wouldn't be able to make it, meaning I would get to teach all of my classes again.

I am oddly excited about this.

Anyway, this is no longer the silver lining.  These kids are so lucky we aren't in school today because I am super angry.  And they're definitely unlucky that we will still have four days of school this week.

About a month ago, I had the students do essays on Romeo and Juliet (yes I know, a month ago.  Don't  judge me).  When we are learning to write essays, we start off with me giving them just about everything and them just filling in the examples and their own analysis.  I call them Fill in the Blank Essay Assignments.  It usually makes their grades on them better than if I just gave them the topic.  Over the course of the year, we work our way all the way down to them writing their own whole essay!  Amazing!

So I'm reading essays and they're pretty bad, so in my head as I am doing this, I am brainstorming ways to fix it this year and different things I can try next year.  I get to an essay from a child who came in for help on his essay the week before he turned it in.  What he brought to me was clearly copied directly off the internet.  I read one paragraph of his six page monstrosity (I don't give the kids page limits, but this essay should be about 2 pages) and didn't even bother with the rest.  I told him it was clear this was not his own work as it was not on topic at all and obviously not his own writing.  I refused to give him the extra credit he was looking for, went over the assignment with him again, and sent him packing with what I assumed was his tail between his legs.

As it turns out, he was not at all phased and on top of that, he thinks I am an idiot.  He turned in the exact same "essay."  I took a few minutes to look at it because anytime this happens (plagiarism, not their own work), I actually take the time to find the essay on the internet so that I can call the student's parents or guardians and have the proof that I have good reason to be giving them a zero on the assignment.

A zero on the assignment is not a good enough punishment.  I think they deserve to fail the grading period, if not the class.  In college, they kick you out.  I digress.

As I'm looking at this essay and googling sentences from it to find the source, I start realizing that he didn't use one essay, he used FOUR.  He used a whole essay for each different paragraph except for his conclusion.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  What's most ridiculous about this is that when you put them all together, they make nothing but NONSENSE.

The topic was to explain how Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy by writing one paragraph about how Juliet is heroic, one paragraph about how Romeo is heroic, and one about how fate takes control of their destinies and they can't avoid their deaths at all.  THIS IS SO NOT A HARD ASSIGNMENT.  He could have written straight crap and gotten a D.  In fact, I put a D on a straight crap paper a few minutes before reading this one.  Instead, this student's first "paragraph" is an essay from the internet about what strategies Shakespeare uses while writing his tragedy.  It's actually a good essay structurally.  It's got an intro with a thesis that states the three examples of strategies he uses that are then going to become the three body paragraphs.  And now he's got a zero.

Earlier today, I was commiserating about how being excited to have all my classes back for just one day would suggest that going to grad school for library science would really hinder my ability to teach.  Now, I am struggling with the thought that I am going to have to teach students like this for one more year before being able to go back to school to do something else.  I know I will forget all about this eventually, but things like this are a really good, quick way of hurting my feelings.  Ugh.

By the by, it's ridiculously easy to find these essays online; all you have to do is google a sort of unique sentence.  Try it.  Google "Friar John was quarantined so the letter could not reach Romeo."  The essay this student used for his first paragraph is the third hit.

It's Possible that I Live for Weekends

This past weekend I went down to Charlotte, mostly because I had tickets to two different concerts, but also to see my family of course. I think I may have mentioned this already, but it turned out to be another really great weekend so I'm just going to keep on keeping on.

Friday night, I had tickets to Flogging Molly (sorry sister!) at the Fillmore. They opened a new music place in downtown Charlotte last year. I got to see The Offspring at the outdoor amphitheater part of it last summer, but this was my chance to see the indoor venue, the Fillmore. I really can't complain about either venue in and of itself. The outdoor amphitheater is actually kind of perfect for any band you really want to see outside, but that wouldn't fill up a huge pavilion like place. The Fillmore was pretty well thought out and put together. There are plenty of bars and you can see from pretty much anywhere. All of that said, my biggest complaint about the place as a whole is the price of alcohol. A small fill-in-the-blank-here-with-some-crappy-beer is $9! WHAAAAAAAT?!?!?!

When we went to see The Offspring, we just tailgated in the parking lot beforehand. This actually did not go over that well as it just made me want more beer when we got in to the show and I ended up spending more money than I should have. This was not the result of drinking in the parking lot I had anticipated.

This time we had no such plan, but that turned out well because sober me cannot justify paying that much for beer while drunk me just wants more, apparently, and cost has no meaning. I had a solid one beer.

But Flogging Molly was fantastic and I'm fairly certain it's the best FM show I've seen. Zak, his girlfriend, and his friend Sean also really enjoyed themselves. I met up with Jim and some other friends afterwards for a little while.

The weather for the weekend was also fantastic, so on Saturday, I did a hike up Crowders Mountain and picnicked at the top. It was a seriously beautiful day. I took Jack as well and discovered that he's not much of a fun of rock jumping or heights. I had to lift him over some stuff. Someone actually asked if I needed help at one point. It was kind of funny. It's a pretty hard hike, but it was well worth it.

Here's Jack on top of the mountain. Please notice that's it the only mountain around for miles. I didn't even know it existed, honestly.

Sunday was also a really beautiful day, so I thoroughly enjoyed my drive back to Asheville, especially since I was well aware that this was just one of those random times when the weather is pretty for no reason other than to make me think spring has sprung and then dash all of my hopes and excitement by snowing again several days later.

And because it's hilarious, here's Jack looking out the back window of the jeep. It's not quite warm enough to take the top off, but Saturday was warm enough to put the back window up, but not have all the front windows down. Jack was okay with that.