Yesterday marked probably one of my worst teaching days ever. [Three times I have attempted to describe this one class I teach, and I just can't bring myself to do it. They are awful. That's all you need to know for now.] So, I have this awful class and I have been instructed to make every single exception I can in terms of their grades because of the situation with them not really having a single teacher for more than two weeks. They see me as a complete joke with no authority and think they have it figured out that their old teacher is coming back, which she might...Worse than that, the other teachers seem to also think I'm a fool for doing this job at regular substitute pay while lesson planning, grading, and calling parents. Maybe I am. One teacher went so far as to tell me that if I think this will lead to a permanent position, I'm fooling myself. Maybe I am.
But, you see, this week we went back to the Friends school we saw in the fall. We met with the Dean of Students and had a small "interview" for us to have some of our questions answered. We also had to deal with a child who has some severe behavioral issues interacting with Sal and Eli at our current school. All that said, we want more than ever to be able to send our kids to this school.
[One week later...]
Okay. Life got in the way of this post big time. And by life, I mean laundry and grocery shopping and cleaning (not that much cleaning) and other places to go and things to do. I began this past week with almost as much anxiety as I had my first week back to work. The week got progressively better. The students got progressively better. The staff got progressively better.
And I began my February challenge, which is also part of my year-long reading project. Last year I endeavored to reread all my favorite books, which was so totally fun. But along the way, I continued to accumulate new books: free ones from the library, birthday presents, a few Target sales, and ones passed to me from friends saying I should read them. My little pile I started on my bedside table is now halfway to the ceiling. The challenge is to get through all these books (and try not to add too many more to the pile) by the end of the year. This goes against completely everything I am as a reader, but I'm approaching hoarding status (well, as close as I'll ever get to being a hoarder--one stack of books halfway to the ceiling) and I've been seeing these reading challenges on Pinterest, so I thought a little binge reading, just for a year, might be fun.
February challenge, thus, is to read one book a week for the month of February. I realize that to some readers this in no way sounds like a challenge, but I'm a very slow reader and I rarely read for more than twenty minutes at a time. It takes me at least a month to get through a book. So four books in a month is kind of a big deal. I haven't done that since college, which doesn't count because reading as an English major in college is sort of your job and you have to blaze through all the material.
I began last Monday night and I am purposefully choosing smaller, quick reads to meet this challenge. My first one that I'm hoping to finish tomorrow night is Mindy Kaling's
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? She's funny and nerdy and as cute as can be, so my "binge" reading hasn't been all too painful. Not sure where I'll go next, but I have a few thinner ones I'm eyeing up.
But, here's the giant monkey wrench...Monday I begin two major units with my classes:
To Kill a Mockingbird and
Julius Ceasar. So, I did read TKaM about fifteen years ago on my own. Never once read it in a class, and I was suppose to read it with my freshman at my old high school, but I always managed to finagle my way out of it; therefore, I'm co-reading that with Kaling's book. And as far as
Julius Ceasar...I took a Shakespeare class in high school and one again in college. Both teacher and professor thought it better to choose a small selection of Shakespeare's plays and delve into them rather than plowing through as many plays as possible. Now I've read a lot of Shakespeare, but not
Julius Ceasar, which I kind of need to read, like all of it, this weekend.
So there's my February challenge: read four new books, a Shakespearean tragedy, and a civil rights drama in about fifteen to twenty minutes each night. I say doable!
