Potayto, potahto

Yesterday my friend who teaches cooking here at school had an Iron Chef competition with her grade 9 classes. The students had all kinds of goals to meet, and the cooking took place in class time. Their assignment was to create delicious and well-prepared dishes with potatoes. A, the teacher, had asked staff members and teachers if they would be judges, and (never one to look a gift meal in the mouth) I accepted immediately, if not sooner.

I expected that I would be asked to cross the hall to the cooking room, where I would gaze at a number of elegantly composed dishes (snort) and take delicate bites here and there, closing my eyes and murmuring appreciatively. The reality was a little different...

Dear reader, yesterday morning between 10 and 11, I ate 6 plates of potatoes.

The cooking was great. There were scalloped potatoes, lemon roasted potatoes, sweet glazed potatoes, chicken and potatoes, and (my favourite) gnocci. (Seriously. Grade 9s made gnocci.)

Even I, however, can only eat so many potatoes.

Lunchtime did finally arrive, and that is when I made one final realization. I had packed my lunch as I usually do, taking leftovers from the fridge and jazzing things up a bit with a crusty roll and a bit of cheese and fruit. There, lying quietly and blamelessly in the bottom of my bag, was a tupperware container of food just waiting to be heated up and eaten.

Yesterday for lunch I brought leek and potato soup.

It all makes sense now.

I was wondering yesterday why all my students were so crazy. Perhaps, I said to myself, it is because we had a short week (PD day on Monday, Remembrance Day on Tuesday). Perhaps it is something I am doing differently (I always rush to blame myself for the bad stuff). Maybe they're just mainlining the remainder of their Halloween candy. Maybe they've settled in to junior high a bit and are starting to act like their own true selves (that is: crazy). Could be the weather -- we had a couple of snow flurries yesterday in the midst of an weirdly warm fall. (My student from South Africa said "Is is too cold to wait outside for my mum? Will I get frostbite?" It was 2 degrees celsius.)

Then I took the Wonder Dog for a walk last night and voila. There in the sky was my answer.

Howl.

Because I would hate to keep you in suspense.

The conference was very good -- it was in fact offered by the union and not the board, so the jargon (while still present) was a whole new kind. It was sort of refreshing, to have some new jargon.

So I hung out with my colleague (who kept a handout for me from the Saturday session, bless her heart) and met up with some people from teacher school and learned about a dozen new things and generally had a chance to sit and be talked to.

A good time was had by all.

Also, I thought I would tell you that when I become a hermit (not IF, but WHEN), this is where I am going to do it:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

The view a year later

I wrote this last year when I was just starting my practicum: it seems somehow oddly applicable here.

September 21, 2007

I have these dreams. I wake up (last time it was 3:17 am) in a literal cold sweat, thinking about teaching. I dream that I’m in front of a class and I can’t get their attention. I dream that the big kid in the back is threatening me and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I dream that my students fail, miserably, because I told them the wrong thing. I remember that someone very important to me said they wouldn’t be surprised if I’m one of those teachers who burn out in the first five years. I think of the thousands of dollars I have to repay in student loans, I think that my training as a writer and editor means I’m essentially unemployable, I think that I’ve spent the best earning years of my life, the time I should have spent solidifying my career, farting around in art school and then learning how to teach when I have no business being in a school.

I think of the horror stories I’ve heard about how hard the first year is. I think of how hard I’ve been working this week, just coming up with one unit plan for one class. I remember that I snapped at my son the other day because he was chattering about something while I was trying to figure out how I would grade this short story critique. I remember the bottle of Pepto-Bismol, which I now keep in the kitchen for easy access, and how the level has gone down in the last few days, even though I’m still scalding with heartburn in the middle of the night.

Someone refered to the thoughts we have in the middle of the night as 3 AM psychosis. It doesn’t feel psychotic at three in the morning, it feels real. (I try to remember those nights when I nursed my baby, and the grand plans and crazy fears that assailed me then. It seems very far away.)

But eventually I get back to sleep, and soon it’s morning. I make sure everyone has what they need (breakfast eaten, teeth brushed, lunches packed according to preference and facilities available, dog has been out and come back in, dog’s water dish is full, beds are made, we are all appropriately attired and well-shod, the boy’s agenda has been checked, library books are tucked in the bag, I have the books and materials I need, wallet, sunglasses, keys) and off I go.

And here’s the funny part. I walk in the front door of the school and I smell that school smell (floor polish, dust, books, eau de Adolescence, feet, Essence of Large Public Building) and get into the classroom and a kid comes up to me as soon as I’ve put my bag down and asks me a question about how to write a thesis statement and I think:

Oh. It’s alright then, after all. It was just a dream.

Comment is Free

I am going to a conference tomorrow; one for new teachers. I'm pretty excited, because it's supposed to be good, but it runs Thursday night (that's, oh, right now) all day Friday and most of Saturday. I'm signed up for it, but I'm only going to the sessions tomorrow.

I say that because I was in the staff room at lunch (first time in a couple of weeks, as a reward for fighting my way out of a pile of marking) and another teacher told me she was going too. She's going to attend every single moment of the damn thing, and she was horrified when I told her that I'm only going tomorrow.

"Why aren't you going to all three days?" she asked. "Can you do that? Is it allowed?"

And I'll tell you, people, I got mighty defensive very quickly. (I blame the marking, actually, I wasn't seeing straight.)

So HERE'S WHY, if you're interested:
My boy has spent upwards of 12 hours a day away from me this week. He's started to mix up my name with his babysitter's. (I love his babysitter and I'm glad that he does too, but really. It's the principle of the thing). (Also, I just typed "principal" in there. I think I need a break.)
The conference is in the deepest darkest northeast, and I live quite substantially south west. I'll drive there and back once, but not three times.
I have given ENOUGH of myself to my job lately and I need some time that is not related to teaching. Perhaps I need to spend some more time knitting.
A large part of my professional life has been given over to attending conferences (ask me to tell about the funeral service ones some day) and I have a pretty good idea of what I'll be missing on Saturday.
And, finally, my board has a great fondness for jargon, as all large organizations do. (I am going to count the number of times I hear the word "diversity" tomorrow.) As a writer, I don't have a lot of time for jargon, and I anticipate hitting my tolerance limit quite quickly.

So there.

In other news, I have changed the "comments" thing on this blog so that anyone who is so inclined can comment. Just watch your apostrophes, people.

Also, I am reading a young adult novel with the best title EVER: "I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You." Heh.

Moo

The other day in one of my ESL classes we had a conversation about things you really shouldn't say. (Conversations like this are one of many reasons why I love teaching ESL.) One of my students had been using the expression "Holy crap!" a lot, and I told him a couple of times that it really isn't appropriate to say in school. He asked if "holy cow!" was better and I agreed that yes, it was an improvement.

Here's the hitch, though: every time he wants to express astonishment (or pain, or horror, or excitement) he doesn't yell out "crap!" any more: now he says "cow!"

Duh.

Yesterday we were reading a short story in my grade 7 English class. The story included the word "hoarfrost" which had the students in absolute hysterics (as did the line in the next paragraph that mentioned a character had slept at the neighbours').

I almost said "what are you, TWELVE?" when I realized that yes, actually, they ARE twelve.

Be afraid.

So the other day my grade 7 English class had to talk about superstitions. All the usual ones came out (and a couple of unusual ones -- did you know that in Denmark on Halloween, they hide all the brooms so that witches can't come along and steal them? Cool) and then the students had to draw a picture of their favourite superstition.

One student came up with an elegantly rendered picture of a hat: it was black, possibly a fedora, with a lovely little flower on the side.

"What is that?" I asked, unsure if I'd ever heard the superstition about fedoras. My poor student looked confused.

"We just talked about it, teacher," he said. "If it crosses your path you get bad luck -- it's a black hat!"

I could not make this stuff up.