Complaints

Here are the lists of things that have irritated me today...

1) People who work as teachers but don't have formal training as teachers, they didn't go to school to be teachers, they couldn't find other jobs so they became teachers, they thought teaching was easy so they got a permanent sub position...and so forth. Sometimes people ask me what I think is wrong with public education, maybe I'll just direct them to this post so they can see my answer. In Texas some schools need teachers SO BAD that they hire anyone with a college degree and those people get 'emergency certified'. The problem with this is that teaching doesn't come easily to most people, just because you are a master physicist doesn't mean you know how to transfer that information to a 15 year old girl. Or boy for that matter. We are hiring people who don't know how to teach, we are giving our children the bottom of the pile because no one respects teachers anymore. I have cringed a lot at the conference I'm at this week, but this trumps everything. I became a teacher because I WANTED to be one, not because it was a last resort.

2) Now this one a little tamer...bicyclist. I don't remember people biking in Itasca, I remember kids on sidewalks falling over their training wheels, but no professional bikers. Here they are all over the place and they really REALLY piss me off. There is this thing called rush hour, I don't know if you've ever heard of it but it's where all the roads get bombarded with cars and then suddenly you think I'm not on the highway anymore. I'm on a regular road on my way home it's a road no one travels and yet there is a lot of traffic. And then I see it. The bicyclist. In the middle of the road. So everyone has to slow down move into the other lane. My advice to bicyclists GET OFF THE ROAD, especially if it's during a time called rush hour.

3) Being surrounded by republicans. Literally. I know no one(well enough) within a 30 mile radius who shares my political views. Ugh, I hate the south.

And that is about it for now. I have a lot more I could rant about but some things should just stay in my head. I could get in trouble for documenting them on the internet.

1 down, 2 to go

I finished the 7th grade syllabus today!!!! Now I have to finish 8th and 10th but I think those will go a lot quicker since 8th follows pretty closely to the 7th grade they just have different things to read and a different order of writing assignments. 10th grade should prove to be the most difficult. The first 9 weeks are dedicated to short stories, and considering I don't know where the short stories are I don't know if students can take them home to read or if we have to read them in class.
That paragraph was filled with run-ons. My bad. That is a fragment. But I'm over it.

Besides that, things are pretty stressful here. I have a conference to go to all week so that will get me out of the house and hopefully help clear my head. Or just make it worse.

School starts in 2 weeks, I can't believe I'm about to start teaching. I feel like I should be starting classes at UNT at the end of August not teaching them at middle school/high school. But I can't wait until next year, 2009 will be a good year and that's what I'm working toward...2009.

Funny stuff

I'm teaching at a private Christian school and I've been thinking about incorporating music and art into my lessons like I did when I was a student teacher in the public school. Well you have to be super careful with pop culture these days, a lot of stuff is inappropriate for a Christian school. Even though I LOVE pop culture, I have to censor myself....until I found this youtube video. It takes a popular rap/hip hop song and turns it into a Christian rap song. I thought it was neat albeit a little corny too. But it's still shows some talent of a Pastor trying to reach this new generation.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TyfWJg8-w7E

What was I going to write about again?

Oh yeah, I was super excited to come home and write about seeing The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger was amazing, does he live up to the hype? Sure. But what about Christian Bale...amazing, sure he assualted his mother and sister or so the news media says...he's still hot. And he is a talented actor even if he's not a nice human being.

BUT

And I mean this a BIG but.... I'm no longer excited about the movie or writing about the movie or writing about how I think Christian Bale should get just as much notice as Heath Ledger. I received an email from my place of employment aka school. It included the school calendar, mandatory in-service days, a new staff questionnaire...and so on. Within this lovely little packet of pure panic inducing information was the worst piece of info I have ever seen. A rough syllabus of each class that I'm teaching has to be turned in by July 31st. JULY FREAKING 31ST!!!!! That's right around the corner, a syllabus....so many things can go wrong if you plan to far ahead. What if my students don't get the information as quickly as I think they will? What if I'm completely underestimating them and their intelligence and they blow through everything I give them like its a piece of cellophane? Or the worst thought that's running through my head...what if my principal hates everything I've planned?!?!?!

Everyone who knows me knows that I stress out over the littlest of things. To me, and to my fellow new teacher friends, this isn't a little thing. So you can imagine the stress I am now putting on myself. All next week I have a conference from 8-5 at UTD. How will I get this all done? I need to get my priorities straight er..straighter. I've always been a procrastinator but I think this time I've taken it WAY too far.

As a woman who holds a Bachelors degree in English...

I think there are some things that we could do without in the English language. One such thing would be using the word 'one' to replace 'you', 'he', 'she' and the like. Case in point: I love the show No Reservations... you know it's on the travel channel, with Anthony Bourdain as the host. You might know him from the show Top Chef where he judges aspiring chefs' concoctions with a sarcastic intelligence I only wish I could replicate. BUT I digress. Bourdain has a blog based on his travels around the world exhibiting different cultures and the fabulous food that goes along with them. So I go to read his blog and the newest one is on Colombia (and may I say that I can not wait until the show airs) then I scroll down to look at the comments people have made and there it is! Some dork is saying "one should do one's research" and I got to thinking about how I hated when my teachers banned me from using 'you' or 'I' in a paper. Now I understand, after four years of college, that using 'you' or 'I' in a paper makes it informal and there should be a difference between an informal and formal paper and yadda yadda yadda. But there has to be something else we could use besides 'one'. I find that it sounds a little pompous or like someone who wants to be considered of a higher status. Whatever. I've decided that my students aren't going to use 'one' in their papers because the English language is changing even if it is only in my classroom.


P.S. For future reference I am by no means a grammar 'nazi' as we call them in the English department. I don't like using formal grammar in blogs, email etc...well sometimes I do but only if I have to email my principal!

Thank God! This week is over!

Me and the nephew (Brady)

I was lucky enough to have parents that didn't leave my brothers and I alone so that they could go gallivanting all over the world. But now that my brothers and I are all in our 20s I think my parents decided it was time to take a vacation. They went on a 7 day cruise. Which left me to watch my nephew (this duty usually belongs to my mother)...all week. Every morning at 8:30 he would be dropped off by his mother, pop tart in one hand milk in the other, SCREAMING his little brains out. It's tough for a one year old to be bounced from one house to another and I understand that but I swear by the time Tuesday afternoon rolled around I was completely convinced that I never wanted to have children. Now that it is Saturday afternoon I kind of miss the little guy but I definitely don't want to take care of him for another 5 days in a row, I'll leave that to my mother.

I also thought that my nephew broke my phone, it has since been fixed but I almost gave the kid to the guy at Verizon so I wouldn't have to deal with him (and my broken cell).

On a completely different note...I have to start getting ready for school. I have only planned the first 3 weeks for each of my 3 different grades, which I think is a huge accomplishment in itself, but I still have a long way to go. I also have to get together with the varsity cheerleader coach so that I can start planning what to do with my junior high cheerleaders. The girls are really sweet but they are basically first year cheerleaders and I'm a first year coach so we have to work hard if we want to be any good. It is going to be an extremely stressful year.

I don't know what I'm doing. I just know that I'll make it through even if it means less sleep and more coffee.

Base your vote on Mariah Carey's opinion

While cruising the Internet for celebrity gossip, I came across on article titled "Exclusive from ELLE: Mariah Carey opens up about race, politics, her new marriage and the secrets she's had to keep" (http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/exclusive-from-elle-mariah-carey-opens-up-race-politics-marriage-and-secrets-203604/). Mariah Carey....the woman who went from girl next door-to singing diva-to crazy-to wife of Nick Cannon talks about politics, as if she's the political guru of my generation! Now Carey herself admits to being "not the political analyst of the ages" so I forgive her, but who cares what she thinks about politics? The only reason she was asked that question was because she has a mixed heritage. But instead of ranting about race and how this political campaign started off with the notion that it wasn't going to be about white vs black I'll talk about something else.
By the way...I'm a democrat so you can probably figure out who I'm voting for, I'm just irritated that we only look at Obama as the next 'black president' and McCain as another 'white president'. Why don't we look at what they stand for...okay so I lied, I had to rant some more...my bad please forgive me.


On to another subject....parents. If you are going to have a baby, or not take the precaution to prevent a pregnancy, TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN DAMN CHILD! Don't just pawn them off on grandparents, sisters, brothers etc...we didn't make the baby, you did! Yes we love our nieces, nephews, cousins whatever but watching them everyday is exhausting. If you make the baby...you take care of the baby.