I don’t want to update just to say “it’s been a while,” but…

I get so caught up in the wash cycle sometimes I forget to do the things I like to do. It leaves me feeling like I miss someone, and there’s this little empty space in my life where someone should be…then I realize that person who I miss is me, and I go on a little frenzy trying to reconnect. It’s a long story, but a recent disinterest in running has lead me to emotional catharis, which has in turn lead me to question: what is it that I like?

Driving out to the Marigny today I pondered this question. The scenery helped. Red wrought-iron doors. I like those. Pitbulls on hipster leashes. Dislike. Children, yes, like. Children making cacophony with musical instruments when I’m trying to THINK. Dislike. Tea, like. Coffee, like. Samba, like. Casings for apple produces, dislike. Aesthetically interesting architecture, like. Welcome distraction, like. Unwelcome distraction, loathe. But these are all little preferences- they line the path back to me, i suppose, but don’t really shape it. If I lived over on this side of town I’d say these preferences don’t exactly put me in touch with my spirit animal.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of administering the EXPLORE test to my students- it’s basically an ACT test for middle schoolers, made by the same company, and intended to help them define their career interests, with a little verbal/reading/math/science scantron action thrown into the mix just to cause some 7:30 am rioting in my life. The first half of the test was an “Interest Inventory.” They answered myers-briggsy type questions that supposedly help them define what kind of a career path they may take.

Dislike- Indifferent- Like.

D. I. L

Bubble in one.

Would you like to…

Build a bird house?
Help people in an emergency?
Attend a lecture by a well-known scientist?
Develop a book-keeping system?

Etc. There were 72 of these questions.

I would have bubbled L, L, L, L, respectively. But that’s beside the point. Or is it? I’d like to try any mental pursuit once, I guess. I like learning. I love it. Researching, studying, feeling myself be mentally active, yes. I like all of that. Scanning the internet and Lexus-Nexus for answers and information. I could literally do that all day. Doesn’t bode well for for my figure, unfortunately. Which leads me back to my recent “I” to running.

Here’s a small sampling of my interest inventory as I’ve recently (last 2 hrs) defined it:

Learning- period. Mine or others’.

Archiving- photos, writing, essays, letters, emails, notes, just nothing work-related. You should see my desk.

Urban exploration- don’t do it enough because I’m scared of rats. 

Historical Research- Usually sparked by blighted buildings I pass and the natural line of mental inquiry that follows

Buying thing for people- It’s a mental exercise.

Long walks. Wandering.

And, actuallly- running. I do like it, I’m just so prone to losing my focus on my hobbies, whether they be kinesthetic, intrapersonal, whatever. Then it’s been so long that I feel like I’ve lost whatever ground I gained. I get discouraged. I feel the frustrating  self-inflicted mental restraints of imagined futility. Look what happened with this blog. 

End story: I need to devote more time to my interests, because they’re what nurtures my bond with myself. That’s a relationship that need not be ignored.

Frenchmen. Fall.

In a riveting gchat convo with a friend earlier (you might be wondering how that is possible considering it’s Tuesday which is a school day and I teach…clackclackclack…”pipe down children!”…clackclackclack…”children settle down, i’m trying to gchat over here!”), I got a little riled in my explanation of how both bros and hipsters alike do not too oft become teachers. My reasons neither interesting nor, likely, valid, but it made me realize that I used to get riled in education-related discussions all the time. In college I was passionate and firey about education reform, social-justice classrooms and the place of schools in society. I would berate the system for paying teachers less than garbage collectors and shake my fist at those who underestimated the importance of the position, all while standing on my soapbox made from stacks of education history textbooks. I couldn’t wait to get into my own classroom and teach “learners” how to be prepared for a global society; how to not only tolerate but ACCEPT those different from them, how to embrace cultural variation, how to herald the idea of gay marriage and love the processes of metacogntion and reflection.

Now, for whatever reason, I’ve fallen away from that a bit and seem to be sticking to the curriculum conventions. Yes. I teach largely to a set curriculum. And considering where I teach, it shouldn’t be that surprising that the curriculum isn’t exactly rife with social-justice material. I seem to be content these days just taking tiny victories, like teaching my students synonyms for “retarded” and getting them to understand that it isn’t nice to pick on people.

I’m definitely teaching- as in, people out there in the world are LEARNING things from me- important, meaningful things- and I’m proud of that. And I’m doing a lot to differentiate my instruction in terms of getting the curriculum basics (think- grammar, the writing process, personal-connections to literature) through to the myriad student population that enters my room, but I’m not doing the kind of teaching I got into the profession for, and I need to get back to that somehow.

In other news, I’m stoked for Porchtoberfest to commence on October 2.

It’s been an absolutely perfect weekend so far. Actually went for a run yesterday for the first time in too long. I find that on these first runs after a long hiatus, I have pretty low expectations for myself in terms of stamina, which means I’m not really going to be too metacognitive while I’m running. I won’t be cognizant of time and distance and it won’t be the ONLY thing on my mind. This means I end up running pretty far (for me!). It’s exciting. I ran to Lafayette Cemetery and took a walk around the tombs. It’s cliche to say about a cemetery, but it was indeed very peaceful. Private.  The grounds and graves were like a lot of things in this city; unkempt and a little wild, with spindly green moss reaching out of every minute crack in the cement.  Frizzy. But so lovely and warm. Welcoming. Even a place like this, with thousands of rotting bones. I find it astonishingly hard to believe that people can be here, whether they’re living or visiting or just being, and not become slowly intoxicated by this ethereal warmth which emanates from every crack like wet moss. It was a slow process for me, after my initial Nola buzz wore off, but I surely did grow quite drunk on this city somewhere down the line. It’ll be hard to detox from all of this spooky enchantment.

I’m reading a book with my students next week in which the protagonist meets a ghost in Lafayette Cemetery and the ghost teaches her about New Orleans’ history (and…drumrollplease…herself), so it was kind of a good site-visit for upcoming classroom happenings.

Anyway, Friday night we attended Friday Nigh Fights at Freret and Jena uptown and I got to intermingle with the most diverse crowd in which I’ve ever been just another face. It’s basically a sectioned-off parking lot in which 18 wheeler flatbeds become a sort of stage, and a makeshift arena hosts boxing matches between members of the gym that puts on the event. I think. $15 bucks gets you in, then its all the keg beer you can slam. Boxing matches are also interspersed with performances by [kind of whack] local rappers. I enjoyed the novelty immensely. Nice way to switch things up for a change.

Last night we watched Ben perform a dramatic reading at his coworker’s book release party in the Marigny. Pretty cool to see him in his work-social element and he nailed the reading itself. The book, Bubbles from Atlantis, is “a violent scream for help and a firsthand account of life in New Orleans during the first year after Hurricane Katrina. It is a mixture of memoir-style hallucinations and straightforward journalism, a full-throated proclamation of survival and a funeral dirge, the bleeding soundtrack of the post-apocalyptic city.” Peep it here.

Now it’s Sunday and I’m looking to max.

Jennifer and Lori

Romain!

This place is weird.

Everything was going swimmingly with my first group this morning. We had just finished independent reading and were about to get started on some hardcore direct instruction dealing with RATE responses. This is a constructive response strategy intended to bolster students’ reading analysis and response skills, which they desperately need to improve before the LEAP test in April. I was given this strategy in a PLC meeting as a first year teacher and used it with my social studies kids last year. It went surprisingly well, so I introduced it as an idea in a PLC meeting yesterday and it was pretty popular (in theory) with my colleagues. I decided to start right away, so I’m just getting into the lesson when my door flies open and 4 administrators come in, all in suits and business attire, and stand against my side-wall. Clearly they are here for a “discovery walk” aka as a secret “formative” observation of what I’m doing. Not a big deal, I’ve been observed many times before. This is a pretty major observation though- they all have iPhones in hand, are walking around looking at my walls, going through things on my desk, punching things into their phones and, when I’m busy trying to maintain composure through my now interrupted-lesson, they begin leaning down and questioning my students on what we’re doing.

No matter how the kids respond to the initial question “Hey Sally, whatcha doing?” their next question is “why?”

Then “why?”

Then “why?”

They are checking to see how deeply the students’ understanding of objectives go (they’re 14! it’s not very deep!) as a reflection of my anticipatory teaching. I’m fine with this, my kids are smart and I’m always sure to explain why, in essence, we do ANYTHING in the classroom. The kids deserve to know why they’re forced to do these things and how, in any way, what we do in class is going to benefit them. Completely fair.  However, this line of questioning coming from strange adults in suits with iPhones completely wierds the churrins out and makes them nervous. Bless their little faces, they think the observation is to make sure they aren’t cutting up- few of them realize it actually has nothing to do with them.

Then when the first group of agents leave, a second one enters, and the process happens all over again.

?

Alrighty then. So much for a clean, focused first-day introduction to RATE responses.

Hopefully I’ll get to deconstruct that little “discovery walk” tomorrow and get some feedback.

Speaking of my students, I preface this next part by saying that for all the times I want to lose my shit and start throwing things around the room at them, I love them very much. It is a bond that is difficult to explain- I just feel, for the most part, that with them is where I need to be. I can talk S about my students as much as I want, but if someone else starts to criticize, I get very defensive.

However, I will admit that they unintentionally hand incredibly laughable material

at times. On Monday they had a library assignment to create “author trading cards” for a Mystery author, complete with a mini-bio, list of the author’s works, and a list of cited sources.

Grading these at my desk today, I had to laugh out loud in both amusement and absolute horror at this motley crue of mutant beasts. Check out the following gems (they will haunt your dreams tonight):

      and my personal favorite:

Sweet dreams!

Nothing like the free Hare Krishna Sunday dinner to round out a laid-back weekend. Free healthy food, relaxed social atmosphere, balmy evening, close compadres, and arguably one of Nola’s most beautiful streets really eases the Monday nerves.

Can’t argue with a Krishna and a Top-Hat shooting the shit.

Returned from my little hiatus to a small, wet, hot city. Sizzling and frizzy. Moist skin, especially on my face. Collateral damage for all the good food in my belly all the time. Took a little jaunt to the rose city (Portland!) and decided that the crescent city could use a few roses! I didn’t know that other cities also have cool sewer covers. You learn something new every day.

It was refreshing to step out into fall crispness with clean, unpolluted air. Got to see some beautiful geographic features that don’t exist down here and spend time with people from different wakes of life, of which I highly approve.

Lots of health-food chat out there. Combined with the cool weather it curiously produced in me a craving for a hot steaming bowl of grits slathered with butter. I was very impressed by the mountains and waterfalls and WORKING transportation infrastructure out there (no Nola-style potholes, aka caves of mystery). However, on our last experiscursion, we went hiking through some desiduous mountain forest and I was so awestruck by the beauty that gravity got the best of me and my knees ate shit on some very pointy, hard rocks. It hurt, bad. I almost cried from physical pain, which hasn’t happened since my last desperate, ravaged Sunday Morning Half-Moon hangover commenced about 6 months ago. I realized in that moment it was probably time to accept that I’m not fit for a life of clean air, eco-friendly eating and general social progressiveness, and it’s time to go home.

Spent a very sleep deprived week at work teaching the churrins about the mystery genre, which has been surprisingly fun. Was able to keep my nose to the grindstone this morning and do some work on my applications, despite an epic app-process-meltdown which involved me pathetically whimpering into the phone to my Dad, who is probably really over that after 24 years.

I’m almost at the stage where I’m ready to click the “submit” button and pay my hefty fees. It is making me very nervous. Not just because I’m afraid there will be a void in my life after these things are over or because I’m afraid I’ll mess something up somehow, but because what happens from there is completely out of my control. I’m not going to enjoy sitting around for 5 months wondering which options will be available to me and which ones won’t while some nameless, suited-up committees somewhere pour over my statement of purpose (which I myself have been pouring over since June) while finishing their lunches of academia-food (apples, hummas, cornbeef sandwiches, leftover quiche) and decide collectively which pile it goes into. Or maybe not collectively- maybe they’ll be sick of it by then, and will just delegate it to one person- “Fred, we’re over and we’re going home. We trust you to handle this.” Yikes. Guess that’s the name of the game.

All this application stuff has me feeling mentally energized yet physically enervated. Despite my lethargy, I decided to take a break and check out the New Orleans Seafood Festival this afternoon. Included are some photos from that and other recent happenings, including the Saints Season Kick-Off parade in the CBD and an evening at Balcony Bar.

No seafood for you =(

This kid is bringing back the bowlcut like I haven’t seen in 15 years.

Canal and Tchop. It is exactly how it looks.

Tchop and Girod. Watching the shifting demographics…

Just a gold in a world of black and white. This was 2 seconds before being spotted by a coworker whose name I couldn’t remember, who also happened to be holding the copy machine the F up earlier that morning. We were also both drinking. Just another moment in the big (un)easy.

Balcony joy!

We’re good at hiding our faces.

And a little Lagniappe: