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  • Wake me up when September ends…

    I am tired.


    It’s OK to be tired, but not perpetually tired, which is how I feel. No, I don’t have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or any such malady. I come by it honestly– I’m working seven days a week. True, I only go to work five of those days, but the weekends continue to be consumed with planning, preparation, and, most of all, grading. The pace does not relent. At some schools, you could plan for having an “off” week– when students don’t really turn in any graded assignments– to catch up after they’ve submitted a major writing assignment– say, book reports (which lie in front of me, well, actually on my lap, right now).


    Not here. We have to do vocabulary every week. We have to do grammar every week. More often than not we test on Fridays. And that’s just Language Arts. Geography– my Social Studies classes– finally got past the rather dry physical geography unit (although I’ve still got grading to do for that as well) and move on tomorrow to two weeks on the big bugaboo unit, World Religions. That leads right up into The Middle East, which comprises the rest of the semester. I still feel like I’m just making it up as I go along in that class. I’ve done a lot of “you read the book and answer these questions” kind of “instruction” rather than actually trying to teach it. In fact, I haven’t read a single chapter of the textbook in its entirety, while they’ve had to cruise through five already. But, I mean, this is seventh grade; I know enough to appear competent when they ask me anything. I probably wouldn’t try this approach with seniors.


    (Yes, if ever students read this, I’m busted. Hopefully it’ll be long after the fact. )


    September dawned as a month promising a number of fun outings for us. First was CATS, the Broadway musical. That day my back was racked with pain– it’s a condition that just flares up on occasion for me, but when it does, it’s nigh intolerable. I managed to coast through the school day, got home, and faced a choice. Either take drugs to alleviate the pain, but which were guaranteed to make me drowsy, or go without, and sit in pain. I chose the former. They worked, but once confined to a seat in a darkened theater, the result was inevitable. I slept through most of a performance I’d waited half my lifetime to see.


    Next, just this past Friday evening, we were supposed to go to a baseball game– our Colorado Rockies against my hometown Atlanta Braves (who will not be in the playoffs for the first time since 1990 ), with fireworks to follow. But Maria was sick with a sinus infection, and the forecast was for the upper 30′s with rain becoming snow, and we decided it best not to go. We also were going to take Caleb to a Day Out With Thomas again since it was in (relatively nearby) Golden this weekend, but tickets sold out.


    We still have one more event on the calendar, the Queensrÿche concert Friday night. This one was actually supposed to be Maria and Dora, but you have to be 16 to enter the venue so I get to go instead. It should be an educational experience for me.


    I hope that works out. I am, honestly, a real homebody, but even I don’t care for putting on loungewear Friday night and still wearing it Monday morning– i.e. never leaving the house all weekend. So it has gone for the past few, though.


    Until the next quasi-monthly update…

  • Can’t Stay Away

    OK, I admit it. I miss Xanga. Every time I try something else, I end up back here.  I still believe that WordPress is a stronger overall blogging platform, but it lacks the social aspect of this here  Xanga.  So, I’ll try  you again, old friend.  Even if you’re hell-bent on morphing into MyXangaSpace.

    I’ve enjoyed the long weekend by… never leaving the house. Organizing, planning, grading. So much still to do. But I can get through tomorrow, so long as I arrive early enough.

    In the meantime, enjoy this entry I posted a week ago at that other place. I’ve now got two weeks under my belt, not one, but still. Just read.

    27 August 2006

    I Will Survive…

    Filed under: Teaching — jasonwrites @ 10:25 pm Edit This

    …I
    have so far. The first day and first week of my first year of teaching
    have passed, and I am, in a word, exhausted. I really can’t let my
    weekends go this unproductively henceforth– but after clearing this
    initial hurdle, I wanted to relax. I did get in a bit of grading this
    weekend, but I’m not where I wanted to be– which is nothing new. This
    profession will force me to become better organized, which I
    desperately need to be, in all avenues of my life. I’m already tired of
    being at school past 6 p.m., long after everyone else but the
    second-shift custodian has vacated the building. Thursday, merely the
    third day of school, was Back-to-School Night. Facing the parents
    scared me more than facing the students, frankly, but I put on my
    professional front, blabbed a lot, and gave little indication of my
    inexperience, I believe. I got home just after 9 that night, but
    actually escaped at only 5:50 Friday afternoon.

    I keep telling myself you’re pulling it together, you’ll be fine,
    and just wait ’til next year: it will all be so much easier. The
    horrible thing about your first year is that everything is, well, a
    first: you’re having to make it all up from scratch. This is not to say
    that I have not been supported, because I have, wonderfully; other
    teachers have showered me with materials as well as advice, even giving
    me their weekly plans and inviting me to follow along. That’s a relief,
    to be sure, but just having the materials in your hands doesn’t tell
    you how to teach with them. All the resources in the world
    don’t change the fact that when class time comes, it’s just you, the
    lone professional, the singular voice of authority in the room, the
    only one who can determine if the next 52 minutes will be a success.

    I’m tired, but I’m not complaining. I love my job. I have no doubts
    that I made the right decision for my career; the only thing being
    tested is my resolve. I will survive, and moreover, I will thrive. And
    so will my students.


  • I’m done; done with the technical issues, such as this page only displaying half of my posts and giving no link to comment; done with immature individuals who have nothing better to do than steal my (and others’) content and pass it off as their own; done with the lack of support from the Xanga team, though they’ve done well by me in the past. I’m going to blog on a real blogging platform, not one that has shifted its focus from that to being a Myspace wannabe. To those who have visited me here, I thank you for your readership, hope you enjoy what you’ve seen here, and hope as well that you will continue to read me here. 

  • Oh, how I wish it would rain down

    So sang Phil Collins, but he hasn’t been living in Greater Denver this week, where it’s been raining every single day and pretty much continously since Friday. This phenomenon is beyond unusual; this is a semi-desert region. Coloradoans boast of our “300+ days of sunshine every year.” It’s a welcome change for me. I love the rain, personally. More accurately, I love the sound of it while I relax, warm and dry, indoors. Not that I mind walking or even playing in the rain– at least the misty or sprinkly varieties. I especially love when a thunderstorm rolls in, right before the first drops fall: the roar of wind, crack of thunder, that telltale smell in the air, the dark clouds casting a bluish pall upon the sky. I don’t especially care for getting caught, with no means of escape, with the floodgates of heaven are loosed and the deluge descends upon your unsuspecting head, fat, cold, stinging drops flung diagonal by the wind. Worse yet when followed by the meterological menace far too common here: hail. Frozen rocks from above pelting you, as if a rogue comet suddenly disintegrated in the stratosphere. Now, imagine all this happening while you have in your care an autistic seven-year-old boy who not only doesn’t comprehend what’s happening, but also doesn’t understand why you can’t get him out of it.

    That was the situation we faced last Sunday as we left the Colorado Renaissance Festival. It was Maria’s birthday and we thought it would be great to take Caleb there, along with her mom, Caleb’s sister Dora, and her boyfriend, Ryan. We’d only been there about 90 minutes when the storm hit full-force. Along with hundreds of others, we scurried out of the festival gates– and then promptly were stopped, as we queued in line for the shuttlebus to take us to the upper parking “lot” (i.e. field– RenFest is out in the woods, literally). It was then that the hail hit. We taller folk huddled around Caleb to try to protect him, but he, unsurprisingly, quickly commenced a meltdown. Meanwhile, the $10 bag of cinnamon-glazed almonds we had just purchased were getting soaked in my hand, despite my best efforts at playing human umbrella. Eventually, we escaped and made the long drive home, drenched but relieved.

    I felt bad that a literal damper fell on her birthday, but worse was yet to come. I don’t feel the need to reiterate it here, but you can read it all on Maria’s site. Now we are waiting for our insurance to be reinstated, so she can re-schedule her surgery. I’m still waiting to sign my contract. It’s been over a month now since I was offered (and accepted) the position, and three weeks since I attended the new hire orientation, and I’m still not updated in the system. Yes, I’m impatient.

  • Happy Birthday, Baby

    Happy Birthday to my darling wife, Maria. This has been the most up-and-down week imaginable, but I’m very proud of her for how she has held up through recent events, and I’m so glad that I can spend another birthday with her, and I hope it’s been a very special day. I love you!


    Because of the technical issues here at Xanga (at least on my site) I’ve taken up blogging elsewhere, but time will tell if I stick around here.


    Have a happy and safe 4th!

  • Garage Days

    My garage door bit me. It wasn’t the garage door’s fault. I could have gone out the front door, and avoided the whole problem; or, I could have just left the garage door up. But no. You see, the electric opener for the door was inoperative due to a piece of connecting metal snapping apart. When I returned from the Elizabeth interview on Tuesday, I parked in the driveway (which I don’t usually get to do) and decided that I would open the door. Later, shortly after I last posted, I had to leave for work, so I exited through the garage and decided to close the door. However, my right hand was occupied. The smartest thing to do would have been to leave the door open, since all the kids were home. The next-smartest thing would have been to deposit the contents of my right-hand (a leftover breakfast sandwich and cup of coffee) in my car and then at least have both hands available for the door-closing procedure. Instead, I tried to lower the door with just my left hand. I did not have full control, and I was trying to hold it by the hinge between the lower and middle panels. Now, guess what happened…


    The garage door fell shut, alright. Unfortunately, the tips of my middle and ring finger were caught in abovementioned hinge. Not only did they hurt like hell, but I couldn’t extract them. I was stuck, kneeling in my driveway, two fingers of my left hand stuck in the garage door. I started to panic only because I didn’t think I could get anyone’s attention. After a minute or so of banging on the door, I did. Soon enough all four kids and two neighbors were out. Their first idea was to try raising the door, which I quickly and vehemently instructed them NOT to do, as I had already gingerly tried and found that it only tightened the hinge. I reached in my pocket to retrieve my cell phone, handed it to Dora and instructed her to call 911.


    Soon enough, Litteton Fire Rescue were on their way. I couldn’t wait for them to get there, obviously. I could feel myself tingling all over, on top of the pain; I knew I was losing circulation in that hand. But they arrived within 2-3 minutes. I had no idea how they were going to extricate me, but as it turns out, all it took was a simple crowbar, prying up the aluminum enough for me to yank my hand out. They warned me that it would damage the door; at that point, I didn’t care if they demolished the damn door! But the damage is fairly minimal, I think. In any case, the door came out of it much better than my fingers.


    To make the story stranger, it was actually Maria’s ex-husband who took me to the hospital. He had come to pick up Corin for the night and just happened to arrive in the middle of the scene. I wasn’t too picky, after the firemen had informed me that an ambulance ride would put us back around $600. (Who knew? I didn’t…) I walked into the ER, checked in, and soon enough Maria arrived. Though she was more amused than sympathetic– OK, it wasn’t my most brilliant move – she did stay by my side. Amazingly enough, my entire time in the ER only lasted a bit over two hours, during which they took X-rays, saw nothing broken, gave me some Vicodin, and wrapped the two fingers up in what they call “birdcages.”


    We went home, ate dinner, and soon enough I was feeling downright wobbly from the drug. I lied down and passed out. I had another interview the next day, at 1 p.m. I didn’t want to have to explain, plus they really got in the way when driving, so I decided to take off the birdcages. However, I wore them again when I returned to work the next day after that, and repeated the story roughly 47 times that day.


    The interview was at The Manning School in Jeffco. As part of Jeffco Public Schools, Manning is public, but requires an application process for admission, as it is an “options” school. Manning draws a high-achieving student population; between 85-93% of its students are proficient or advanced on each area of the CSAP, which is 20-30% more than you’ll find at any “good” regular middle school. Yes, it is a middle school, 7th and 8th grades only. In 2004-5 it had a total enrollment of 312, which is less than half the size of Deer Creek Middle School, where I student-taught.


    I arrived right on time for the interview at 1 p.m. School is out for the summer and teachers had long left the building, so I was faced with just the AP who called me and the principal himself. We sat down and I noticed they had no list of questions in front of them. They quickly told me that this would be a less formal interview– and it was. It was more a conversation. They did ask some general questions, but it was more about my experience and views. They actually went through my résumé, which was refreshing– in the past, I’d begun to get the impression that they didn’t really count for anything. I got the chance I’d been waiting for– the opportunity to actually talk about myself and my professional concept of being a teacher. I even got to talk about our kids and their own struggles in school, and give some perspective about how I see issues from both sides, as teacher and parent.


    The interview time ended, but the principal wanted to take me on a tour of the school, which I saw as a good sign. Then he had me sit down in his office to talk a bit more, which was even more encouraging. I was feeling pretty confident but I didn’t want to get my hopes too high.


    At 8:37 a.m. the next morning– Thursday, June 8, 2006– my phone rang. I picked up and hear the voice of Mr. Sargent, the principal. We exchanged pleasantries after the usual fashion, but those few seconds were killing me. Then came his words: “I want to offer you the job.” I think my response was, “That’s wonderful!”– not “I accept” or “Yes!” but clearly affirmative nonetheless.


    Just like that, I am a professional teacher. Seventh-grade, three classes of language arts, two classes of social studies (which is world geography at that grade level– one of my favorites). I have my own classroom (I saw it– it’s a mess at the moment, but all I could think of was that it’s mine); come August 22, I’ll have, most importantly of all, my students. Because that’s why we’re there. Sure, we work under the principal, and for the school and district, and in the interest of parents and taxpayers, but ultimately the only people we serve are our students.


    I attend Jeffco orientation this Monday, and first report to work on August 11 (I think). In the meantime, I’m still working at Target, taking care of the kids who are now home all the time, trying to help Maria cope with waiting for her surgery to be approved by insurance, and adjusting to the obvious nerve damage in my fingertips– it makes them feel sort of like they have a thick bandage on all the time, which does make typing a bit difficult. Probably why, along with sheer laziness, I started writing this post on Friday and will finally publish it publicly right about now…

  • He bears the mark!

    So today is that day, triple-six day, although any way you shake it you’ve got at least one zero in the notation, which for me ruins the repeating-digit symmetry of it all, especially considering that, historically speaking, our calendar is off by around six years (there it is again!) from J.C.’s actual birthdate. I try to be an openminded skeptic about most things, but I see no relevance in numerology. Numbers are just that, numbers; they’re arbritrary designators of value employed to keep records and make mathematics work, but they have no significance in and of themselves. If our counting system were based on five or twelve instead of ten, they’d be completely different. The only configuration that may have some legitimate role in maintaining cosmic harmony would be base-two or binary numbers, because they represent the fundamental solid-state duality of nature, on or off, light or dark, wave or particle; wherein my favorite number (because I do allow myself one of those) is 101010– again, six digits, oooh… and symmetrical also, on-off-on-off-on-off. In decimal form it’s 42, The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, although no one can determine exactly what the Question is (could be “What is the product of the first three prime numbers omitting five (2x3x7)?” But why omit five? There must be a conspiracy here… Five must unlock the location of the Holy Grail! Now I must go back and look for secret symbology in all episodes of Sesame Street brought to you by the Number 5!)

     

    And they say English majors know nothing about math. Ha! I can discourse on a veritable plethora of topics.

     

    Two more interviews this week. The first was at Elizabeth High School, this morning. I was excited about this one because out of the six (again!) interviews I had at the job fair, Elizabeth was the only one who definitely told me, “You’ll be hearing from us…”; and that was the principal of EHS, so when I saw they finally had an English opening at that particular school, I finally thought I might have an “in.” It was the assistant principal who called me, and when giving me directions to the school, said to “consult your atlas of stellar cartography and head for the end of the universe”; he wasn’t far off. Elizabeth is a rural town, out on the plains (though, curiously, 1200 feet higher in elevation than Denver), a goodly 34-mile trek from our house. It took me exactly one hour to get there, five minutes late for the interview, but that was OK because the other teacher wasn’t there yet. What followed was my smallest, yet longest, interview; there was only myself, the AP, and the one English teacher in the room. It was supposed to be 45 minutes; I pushed it close to an hour. I had worried before that I wasn’t talking enough; this time I overcompensated. But I think it went fairly well.

     

    Interview #2 is tomorrow. This one surprised me, because I didn’t even apply. This AP just called me up and said he was from The Manning School in Jeffco and was reviewing my application to Jeffco and would I like to interview? It’s a combination Language Arts/Social Studies position, 7th grade. I’m only endorsed in Language Arts but under the NCLB standard I am “highly qualified” to teach S.S. also since I have 24 credit hours in those subjects. If I’ve interpreted it correctly, that is… we shall see. This is an “options” school in the district– students have to apply to get in– but unlike most alternative schools, it’s clearly aimed towards high achievers. It seems to adhere to a fairly traditionalist curriculum and boasts some of the highest CSAP scores in the state. Sounds like a pretty cozy environment, which makes me wonder why they want me. (Yes, I’ve become a bit cynical in this regard!) The downside, again, is that it’s in Golden (most famous, as all brewmeisters know, as the home of Coors)– not exactly around the corner, either, but closer than Elizabeth, in exactly the opposite direction.

     

    It’s occurred to me that anyone who only started to read this site recently, or is only familiar with this blog and not my original one, might start to think, “This guy really needs to lighten up!” I do have a sense of humor, really; it just hasn’t surfaced in my writing recently– it’s all been oh-so-serious, matter-of-fact, or downright melancholy. While I may never achieve the sublime laugh-out-loud quality of Daffodiliousness, I will try to look on the lighter side. Life’s too short to take it so seriously.

  • Finally, I can exhale…

    license

     

    I got it!

     

    It came in the mail last Wednesday, the 8th. I’m now officially a teacher– now I just need to become an employed one.

     

    We leave tonight on our road trip to Vegas, with overnight stops at Parachute, CO tonight and St. George, UT tomorrow. I promise a full report upon return. Happy St. Patrick’s Day and weekend to all!
     

  • Don’t Believe Fortune Cookies

    (March 1st) Time, time, time, what has become of me?… I am growing immensely frustrated because I feel as if I don’t have any time at all. I thought that after finishing student teaching, or at least after getting my license application finished and submitted, I would have some time, and room, to breathe. It hasn’t happened. The very same day I turned in my application, I started the grading job, and it has eaten up much more time than I thought it would. Plus, I never expected that Target would want me to work full-time, but such has been the case, and I could hardly turn it down, especially after four months with no income. The grading I can do at home, so it would seem that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal– until you witness the chaos that is this house. I live here with my wife, my mother-in-law, and four children: girls aged 13 and 8, and twin boys who will turn 7 on Sunday (March 5th), one of whom is autistic, plus three dogs, including a high-maintenance Bichon Frise puppy, and one very independent cat. Then there’s me, who is most certainly not a born multi-tasker and needs quiet to get work done.

     

    Of course, right now, the kids are at school, the wife is at work, the dogs are napping, and what’s my excuse? This would be simple work avoidance, folks. Not just that, though– I am desperate to write something. So much so that I have resorted to pen-and-paper journaling the past two nights at bedtime, which is just not something I do.

     

    (Now March 2nd) I find that I just wrote most of what I wanted to share here in an e-mail to my mom, so the following is copy-and-paste; forgive any redudancy with the text above.

     

    (Entering e-mail land) I just continue to be so busy because I have a second job, grading essays for the school where I student-taught. It’s a “work-from-home” kind of project but I never anticipated that Target would want me to work 40 hours a week when I came back, so now I find every hour of every day filled and almost zero downtime– for example, I have a stack of mail that has accumulated, unopened, since the beginning of the year, and just don’t get to do little things like organize all my papers or clean house or write, which I was hoping I’d have a little bit of free time to do now that I’m not in school.


    So, the lack of time has me frustrated, and so far I’m feeling discouraged about the job search, but it’s still early. I applied for my license on January 24th and now just have to wait to get the real, physical document in the mail; they say it typically takes 8-10 weeks. I went to my first job fair of the season last Saturday. There were 35 districts represented there, mostly from the Denver metro area, some from more remote counties in the mountains. I managed to wait in line for three of them– three of the biggest ones, which naturally had the longest lines. By the time I got through the third line, all the available interview slots had been filled across the board. I went to my #1 choice first, and they didn’t offer me an interview, but the other two did. Still, these were more like “preliminary screenings” than real interviews, since they don’t even have jobs posted yet; that doesn’t really get going until late March and April, when individual schools determine what their needs for the next year will be.


    Mom, let me tell you the reality: there is a “teacher shortage” pretty much nationwide, but it’s only in certain areas– most commonly math, science, foreign language, and special education. These are called “high-need” areas because there are many more openings than qualified candidates. My area, however, is English/language arts, and I’m also qualified (based on my college credit) to teach social studies. Unfortunately, these two subjects have, by far, the most candidates; you could almost say English and social studies teachers are a dime a dozen. Sometimes the “shortage” is also created by geographic location: inner-city schools, whether in Atlanta or Denver or anywhere else, suffer from the same general problems and, consequently, lack good teachers– because they don’t want to work there. Meanwhile, in the affluent (and, usually, white) suburbs, there’s a surplus of applicants because those are the most desirable jobs. The quality of public schools is almost directly proportional to the value of real estate in the attending neighborhoods. That’s not fair, but it’s a fact. All schools are not created equal because the majority of school funding from taxes derives from property taxes, and, obviously, the more expensive your house, the higher your property tax, and the more you’re paying toward your neighboorhood schools.


    A secondary cultural effect of affluence is that middle (and above)-class parents tend to value education more than lower-socioeconomic parents. This effect is largely due to a vicious cycle that works to keep poor people poor in this country; there’s been many a book written about it, but I don’t have time or space to go into detail explaining it here. The end result is that if their parents really care and get involved, students tend to care more themselves and work harder in school to succeed, because they’re expected to succeed (such expectations– not any alleged racial superiority in intelligence or ability– are the reason why Asian-American students, as a group, academically perform much better than any other minority and even white students on the whole).


    Douglas County, one of my top choice districts, is the most affluent and fastest-growing county in the metro area. The job fair was hosted by one of their high schools and I interviewed with the principal of a brand-new high school, opening this August. He was frank with me: I’m a small fish in a big pond. It would be great, he said, if I could also teach business or computers or math in addition to English. Without that kind of “exceptional” qualification, and no previous experience, there’s little, if anything, to distinguish me, at least on paper, from a thousand other applicants. Last year, Douglas had about 350 openings districtwide– and over 6,000 applicants. That’s the kind of competition I’m facing. But, I’m trying to remain optimistic. It is, indeed, still early in the game.


    (Now coming back from e-mail land) On a brighter note, despite mutual illness, we had one superbly fun highlight last week– the Bon Jovi concert Thursday night. That show was spectacular, in the true sense of the word. I couldn’t give a damn what any critic says, those guys still rock. They were supposed to be my first concert way back in 1988, but I got sick. Well, I was sick this time as well but that didn’t stop me from standing and singing along through the two-plus hours, even if I was falling asleep before they came on stage. I also don’t care if a large part of the attraction was focused on, ahem, female fans. That’s all well and good, but, in the immortal words of Twisted Sister, I (just) want to rock. In two weeks we’re hitting the road to Las Vegas for the wedding of one of Maria’s best friends. Sin City was the site of our own wedding 2½ years ago and I’m just glad to have the excuse to go back; plus there’s that magic pair of words: ROAD TRIP! Even if it is mostly through desert …


     

  • February: The Shortest but Sweetest of Months

    Only two weeks this time? A mere fortnight– I’m improving.

     

    Valentine’s Day has passed again, and ’twas a good day overall. I gave my beloved wife flowers, twice– a mixed bouquet at her office, and a single red rose when she got home. Since I had the day off, I thought it would be special to buy flowers and deliver them myself. Now, while my presence was a pleasant surprise, the response to the flowers was underwhelming. I learned that this day on the calendar is one wherein it’s especially nice to have flowers professionally delivered to your desk, and pay attention to the exact kind your female S.O. requests when she gives you explicit hints, i.e. e-mails a link with a photo to you. I hope she doesn’t exact bodily harm upon me for writing this here, but I want it as a reminder to myself as well as all other well-meaning but not adept-listening men out there.

     

    Any disappointment there was tempered by visits from another one of her best friends,


    who was all too happy to come out of The Disney Store and join his cousins at both office and home (she has quite the collection). We also had dinner from the Olive Garden… I say from, not at, because she was not feeling well; so we decided to carry-out instead, but it was still a magnificent meal.

     

    And, in other news yesterday, I got my grading done! The first set, anyway. After I had completed my office-delivery mission, I was concerned that I would not have the time to finish. I knew Amy (my cooperating teacher, who’s coordinating this project) would be coming by after school to pick them up. I knew she’d be there possibly as early as 4:10, so I had to leave the library by 4:00, and I didn’t arrive there until 12:45. I had 36 papers still to grade, and I thought it’d take up to four hours, but I got it done, amazingly enough, in three. That’s a rate of 12 per hour, when I had started out, with the first-period class, averaging less than eight per hour. Naturally, as with any task, the more you do it, the faster you get; but pressed for time as I was, I’m sure I didn’t give those last 36 essays the same level of attention, individually, as I had the prior 100+. There’s also the matter that I was tired when trying to do some, late at night after kids go to bed… The bottom line is, if this is indicative of how grading, or any assessment of students’ writing, will typically be, I can never meet the ideal of giving each student equal quantity, and quality, of attention. I sense that most teachers who fail likely do so because they are fueled by idealism, but their job is severely constrained by realism. Those who cannot find some happy medium– maybe “manageable” would be a better adjective than “happy,” because I don’t think anyone who ever wants to do his or her best is truly “happy” with compromising– are doomed to stress themselves out, and eventually give up.

     

    Anyhow, I did finish, got home, and then Amy didn’t show until about 5:00, right after I had left to take my daughter’s friend home. She left behind another set of essays, not hers, but another teacher’s. There’s only 48 of these, but I have to turn them around in less than a week– she’ll be picking them up Monday evening. We shall see…

     

    Speaking of my daughter, I wanted to share with the Xanga world my most exciting news of last fall, surpassing even the student teaching. I officially became a father on September 27, 2005, when we visited court and the judge granted my petition for stepparent adoption. Dora was born back in 1992, when Maria was only 17 years old; her biological father disappeared soon after. He became, well, not a good person some time after her birth, and Maria didn’t want him in Dora’s life. He had one last chance when she was three, and made a host of promises he didn’t keep. He was never heard from again after that. The court mandates that “diligent efforts” be made to locate the other biological parent in a stepparent adoption case, and we did try all we could; but there’s no record of him anywhere. So, upon the judge’s order, she became Dora O’Quinn and I am now the proud father of a 13-year-old daughter. She is proud to bear the same name as both her parents, whereas her three, much younger half-siblings retain their father’s, Maria’s ex-husband, last name. Though I love Corin (8) and Jonah and Caleb (twins, almost 7) as if they were my own, they will always be my stepchildren. But for Dora, I am, and shall always be, Dad.