a welcome change...

so i was all ready for today to be a normal saturday consisting of me vacuuming my house, going to wal-mart, and grading papers. but instead my friend joe davis posted a link to this website which has now distracted my attention for the past hour. it has so captivated me, and distracted me from the normalcy of teaching that i've now been thinking about changing the world as opposed to "why do they still not know what a linear function is?" anyway... i'll give a quick rundown of the week, and then i've posted the link (on my facebook page) to this website that has me thinking grandiose world-changing thoughts. if you are interested... check it out. while teaching has taught me quite a bit about the pains of idealism, i still can believe in an young idealistic movement such as this.... you can look at the website... my friend originally tagged me in a note about this movement and i will also post what i commented on said note below. you most certainly don't have to read that part. ok so this week.... i think i had some idea that after thanksgivng things were going to be "all better" HA! not quite. it wasn't a terrible week, but things still aren't going so hot in my classroom. i still lack lots of classroom management skills, even in my classes that are like 8 kids. things are most certainly better, but i'm still not very good at this. i have a lot of ideas of things i want to change after christmas break. i am hoping to get a few of my classes changed around so that i can go much quicker in two of my classes (i'm like 4 weeks behind where i am supposed to be... oops) last night at a basketball game i threw a candy bar wrapper at one of my students to pay them back for all the things they throw at me. it probably will end up being a bad decision come monday when she returns the favor in the middle of 6th period. ohh well. anyway, i hope to keep improving, and i am posting my comments about the website i spoke of earlier below. some of the comments have to be taken in the context of the conversation we had on that note, but most should make since when it stands alone.... hope all is well. peace.


ohhh dear goodness thank you so much joe davis for sending this my way. it was a much needed break from grading papers on a saturday morning. i've had a deep longing for this type of discourse this semester as i don't get much of it in my algebra one classes. i now feel the need to add to the conversation

1. i really really like the "let us rise movement" i think it is founded in some deep and true ideals. if a movement like this were to ever really get rolling here in the US i think it could begin to break the chains of intense rhetoric and polarization that so plagues or current political system. the movement currently seems to be a bit idealistic, but i hope it can hammer out more concrete stances as the movement grows.
2. growing up in the church leads me to the same thought process that you have here joe. that is, "why are we (we as in christians) not at the forefront of a movement like this?" however, the more i think about it, the more i begin to wonder.... why do we have to put the label of "christian" on it in order for us to truly believe that Christ is a part of a movement such as this? after reading the mission and guiding aspirations of this movement its obvious to me that Christ is very much a part of this. "choosing love at every opportunity" is Christ. we don't have to label it as "christian" in order for Christ to be very much in the middle of what is happening.
3. all that being said, i am in no way putting down what you are saying joe. i could not agree more. i just wanted to add that element to the conversation. i do firmly believe that it is sad that we as the church don't have these type of mission statements at the forefront of what we are doing. we have a lot to learn from an organization like this. which will be hard for the church to do as long as we continue along these lines of polarization... church vs. non-church... christian vs. non-christian.... saved vs. not saved.... if we as the church could realize that those harsh lines don't really exist and embrace a movement that seems completely dedicated to love (which according to 1 john 4:8, isn't that what God is?) i think we would be much better off. ... See More

ok i am going to return to those papers that are calling my name. thank you for this joe davis. and to you and johncarl both.... duke... i'm coming. give me a couple of years and i'll be there. peace.

thanksgiving

thanksgiving break may have been the greatest experience of my entire life. it was so nice to see auburn people, family, and just relax. i managed to read a 480 page book in two days, work a little (too much according to richard rogers), and eat a lot. ohh thanksgiving was just wonderful. three more weeks and then a welcome two week break. i know i can make it two weeks no problem. oh i don't know if i mentioned this but every time it rains for more than five minutes our basement floods. haha. so yeah that happened tonight. nice little welcome back to arkansas present from our house. just realized i hadn't posted in awhile. life is good, ready for three more weeks.... kind of. peace.

oh and if you just so happen to be a male person who begot my existence (aka richard rogers).... the telling of the basement flooding is not just "another attempt to make my life sound miserable" it is simply a statment of fact. it rains.... our basement floods, just the way it is. peace.

seriously?

so yesterday im giving a unit test which are worth 40% of the students' final grade. and what does a kid in my fifth period class decide to do during the middle of said test? answer his cell phone. and i don't mean answer it in a sly type of way in which you are attempting to hide it. i mean answer it, say hello in a normal speaking voice, and then proceed to have a conversation. "yeah i'm in class right now." you can't make this stuff up.

as a side note... i am extremely tired. it does not matter how much i sleep on the weekends i am always completely exhausted by tuesday afternoon. only a week and a half til thanksgiving. dear goodness i cannot wait. speaking of sleep... last night (friday night) i fell asleep on the couch around 7 o clock and slept til 6:45 this morning. it was pretty nice. hope everyone is doing well. peace.

a good day....

so since my last post was semi-negative, i feel the need to update today and say that i had an extremely good day. my fifth period, which was slowly becoming my worst period, decided to do everything i told them to do. they all worked and most of them understood what i was teaching. it was great. one kid who had literally done nothing all year took down every note and tried to work every problem. i also helped a girl that goes to my church with calculus during my planning period, which made me feel way smarter than i actually am. ohh... and a kid (who isn't even my student) keeps coming to me for girl advice which is wonderful and hilarious. anyway, just wanted to give a postive update. hope all is well. peace.

trying to teach...

so it has been awhile since i have updated. september and october have been pretty insane months. we just finished our first nine weeks of school so i am officially halfway done with my first semester of teaching. i can without a doubt say that this has been the most difficult nine weeks of my life, but has taught me more than i could even begin to imagine or describe. i can't even begin to go into what these nine weeks have been like, but if i had to sum it up in a cute, cliche phrase it would without a doubt be: up and down. some days have been great, some days kids seem to have learned something in my class, while others have been.... well... rough. a few quick notes...

the other day a kid in my second period class (the roughest class by far) stole a giant bag of candy out of my desk and proceeded to throw said candy at the rest of the class (i was not happy). the day before that i tried to help some of the kids out by letting them use calculators and they proceed to take out the batteries and turn off the screen displays and then tell me the calculators were broken just to throw me off. its amazing what kids will do to try to keep you from teaching your lesson.

i am planning on taking one of my worst behaved kids out to dinner this week, i really hope that helps me get through to him. some of my kids are so completly uninvested in my class, school, or really anything. i want so badly to get through to at least a couple of them.

our football team hasn't had the season we had hoped for... we are now 3-3 but still hoping for a big run in the playoffs. auburn has been horrifically dissappointing after a start that was way too good to be true. i was an idiot and ran my mouth of the week before the arkansas game, bad idea....

i've been blessed to meet some awesome people here in the helena. i've got three great roommates and several people at my school who are great at listening to me vent as a source of aleviating stress when things aren't going so well. i've also gotten involved in a church right down the street from my house, through which i've become involved in a community group on sunday nights which has been a welcome break from thinking about teaching 24-7.

i am giving this thing pretty much all i have right now, and so far i have experienced little to no data-based success. my kids are failing (gave out 40% Fs the first nine weeks.) however, at the end of the day as long as i can look myself in the mirror and say i'm pouring myself into this job and into these kids then i can sleep soundly. i know am i where i need to be, and i don't for one spilt second regret the decision to come teach in helena, arkansas. it is hard, but such is life. life is hard, but life is also good. keep me in your prayers. i hope to hear from some of you guys soon. peace.

(ps - this is simply meant as an honest update as to how my life is, not as any sort of pity party or venting session. i hate it when people do that.)

quick notes

before seventh period another 1st year teacher comes up to me and hands me a note. a student in my seventh period class asks as she walks away... "is that your daughter?" i ask another student in my class... "how old you do you think i am?" she responds... "forty."

3rd period... my pre-ap, extremely well-behaved class is doing groupwork, they seem to be talking about things other than math. i ask one of the students if their conversation is math-related. she responds "actually yes it is, we were just talking about how we were all three going to get together and write a letter to the state nominating you for teacher of the year. we think that you should be featured on television as the best teacher in the country." of course, these were all lies she was spouting forth, but despite the overt sarcasm, i pretended she wasn't lying and it made me feel better about myself.

2nd period... one of the 9th grade football players in my class is not doing any work. i take him out the in hall to have a stern conversation with him. each time i say "why don't you do the work in my class?" or some version of that phrase, he responds "i do do my work." it takes all i have not to laugh. (only the truly immature may understand why.) i may look forty, but we see where my maturity level is...

one of the football players to me today, "coach, you know how badly i could hurt you right?" my response.... "yes".

things are going well. hope all is well at home. peace.

greater things have yet to come....

just realized i haven't updated in awhile. i've been keeping pretty busy. as i said last post i work pretty much non-stop. i'm starting to realize that is just part of the real world though. i've had it much too easy my entire life, and in the real world you actually have to do stuff. doing stuff is hard. thefore this job is hard. but it definitely has its good spots. for example... i have decided that i will have four day weekend every weekend. this is why... my first two thursdays were really good days. i realized that both days i wore by orange and blue auburn tie. therefore i will now wear my orange and blue auburn tie every thursday, and every thursday will be auburn tie thursday. this means it doesn't matter how bad the day goes in class, that is trumped by the fact that it is auburn tie thursday. and then friday CANNOT be bad because it is friday and i get a break the next day. so there it is... four day weekend every week. oh yeah, i got my laptop stolen out of my classrom last monday (while i was in the room.) i turned my back for like two minutes and it was gone. i didn't realize it til the next class period though so by that time it was too late. so that sucked. i'm still somehow holding out hope that it will show up even though i know its gone. it was pretty sad because there are some files and things that i really cannot replace that were on that laptop. but i'm just going forward without the laptop. our football team is now 1-1. we lost the state championship rematch which sucked. we were down by 20 at halftime and made an awesome comeback only to end up loosing by two points. auburn looks pretty good to me so far this season by the way. i'm not getting too excited yet though. this job will continue to be hard and be a struggle but each day i will try to do everything i can to move my kids forward, even when they absolutely despise me (which it often seems like they do). that is all i can do, and that is all i will continue to do. there are lots of days that i really do look forward to going to school, not every single day by a longshot, but many days i do. even when after my last class i cannot imagine returning the next day, i do. its not near as hard as i want to think that it is. at the end of the day i'm just dealing with some kids that sometimes make me feel bad about myself. life is good despite the struggles. life is good. hope everyone is doing well. peace.

the ups and downs....

well i already have a new level of respect for any and every teacher that i ever had throughout school. this job is no kind of easy. i just calculated it, and couting today i worked about 85 hours this past week. haha, that is including football practice though so i don't know if that actually counts. things are going pretty well, its a very much up and down kind of job. monday-wendesday were not too hot, with wednesday being especially challenging. on wednesday the kids had to take this state test that covered an entire year's worth of information that they had not been taught. i would probably be in a bad mood too. but luckily, they got to take it all out on me. hahaha. thursday was definitely the best day of teaching so far and many of the kids almost seemed to actually enjoy my class that day. days like thursday will have to carry me through the rough times. i really did not realize until this week exactly what i had gotten myself into, but i'm still convinced that i am where i need to be doing exactly what i need to be doing. so many of my students here are so jaded and it definitely comes across in their attitudes in class. its like i've asked them to haul cement blocks up a mountain in 110 degree heat when i ask them to take their heads off of their desks in class. and oh dear goodness when i gave a homework assignment on friday i swear i thought they were going to punch me. its going to be a challenging couple of years, but no doubt a good couple of years. i also had no idea how tiring being a teacher is. haha, i now understand why my mother goes to bed every night at 8:00 (its true erin.) last night was the second friday night in a row that i passed out before 9. hahaha. tonight i swear i'm going to try to stay awake past 10, we'll see if i can handle that. first football game this friday, ohhh i'm pumped. we had a scrimmage on tuesday and we destroyed the opposition. friday is the rematch from last year's state championship. pulaski academy. ohhh we better destroy those fools. ok, i'm gonna go to wal-mart now. peace.

every range of emotion possible.

ok so i can't write too much because its 4 in the morning, and i need to quickly figure out just exactly what i am doing today. so yesterday was the first day and it was nuts to say the least. my first and second period classes were more or less out of control and did not listen to a word i said from the minute they walked in the door. third through seventh period were not nearly as bad but still seemed more or less uninterested in me in general. however, there were a few bright spots during the day. a couple of conversations with kids after class let me see that they really did want to learn despite their generally unpleasent demeanor in my class. one kid about made me cry because she was so sweet, shy, timid, and noticably scarred from the obvious effects of a rough life. this job is going to be tough. i can already see that after day one. i am nonetheless excited about going forward. just wanted to do a quick update. it will likely be awhile before i can get to another. life will be hectic starting right now. thanks for all the support. i hope all is well with everyone. peace.

the time draws near....

just realized i haven't updated in awhile. i've been doing inservice, football practice, getting my room set up, and all of those fun type activities. just wanted to say that the kids are getting here on wednesday. pray for me. i'm feeling pretty good about it at this point; we'll see what happens when wednesday rolls around. i'll be sure to give an update after school starts. peace.