Life

Beginnings

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

This week I begin my summer break. On Thursday I will officially be done with the 2014-15 school year. I swear it can’t come soon enough.

Last week was pretty rough. On Monday, after the insanity that was my daughter’s birthday party, I finally had a moment to breathe. My body recognized that the situation was no longer dire and promptly dropped all defenses against the cold that was evidently waiting in the wings. By Monday night my throat seared with pain; I can’t remember my throat ever hurting that bad. During the kids’ bedtime routines I was hot, lightheaded, shivering and riddled with body aches. At 9pm I walked out of my daughter’s room, told my husband (who had been on a conference call) that he would have to clean the house himself, and passed out.

I had to go to work on Tuesday because I’m out of days and didn’t want to get docked pay. We had a staff meeting, which only lengthened the torture. Then it was my daughter’s family celebration at our house (Tuesday was her actual birthday), which thankfully didn’t last too long. Tuesday night I was asleep by 9:30pm.

I slowly started feeling better by the end of the week. I haven’t been that sick in a really long time. I’m not surprised it happened. I’m prone to being taken out by some virus after a couple weeks of steady stress. The whole ordeal was entirely predictable.

Friday at work was a total shit show. Being stuck between two administrators who are leaving this year and truly DON’T GIVE A FUCK, and one who can’t possibly be on top of everything at two schools (and isn’t really being offered the opportunity at ours) is a shitty place to be. The 6th grade foreign language situation is a shit show and my dual-campus schedule is a cluster fuck. I’m supposed to meet with the new principal of the other middle school this Wednesday, even though as it stands now, I can’t actually work at both schools because on one day there is a 35 minute overlap in my schedule. How much you want to bet the issue still isn’t resolved by the time we meet?

So much at work is still up in the air. I’m working hard at accepting the uncertainty, but I’m extremely stressed out. Next year is going to be unpleasant on so many levels–I so wish I’d looked for a new job when there were more openings. I check edJoin every day, but there are no full time Spanish positions in the area. I’ll most likely have to live through this shit in my district next year and hope like hell I can find a new job for 2017-18. Oh how I hope I can find a new job.

But it’s not all bad. Summer is about to begin. And it’s not the only thing that’s starting. Yesterday I started training for my half-marathon. For the next month and a half I’ll be running four times a week instead of exercising for three. I haven’t been off the elliptical for that long since we got it! I’m excited, and a little anxious, to start upping my mileage. I’m also very thankful that both kids will be in daycare/camp for part of the week days so it will be easier to schedule runs.

I’m also embarking on a bit of a personal writing project. It will take place offline and I doubt I’ll be sharing much of it here, but I’m eager to see where it will take me.

And so this week, many things begin. All of them positive. I’m so ready to get out from under the weight that is work right now, and enjoy some much needed time in the sun.

Life

Done

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

We survived the party. As always seems to be the case, I spent the whole time running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I hardly got to exchange two words with each guest, but I’ve been told people had a great time.

The bouncy house arrived late but we had scheduled it to come early, so that was okay. The sun was shining until the minute the party started, when the wind and fog rolled in. Some woman went around collecting the little envelopes from my scavenger hunt (WHY?!) but I was able to re-hide most of them before the kids realized.

My husband has told me many times that it was a success. My daughter enjoyed herself. I suppose we can call it a win.

All told my daughter did a great job. She remained fixated on presents, but with gentle (and sometimes stern) reminders she stopped asking after them. She was constantly wanting the party could be over so she could just go home and focus on the presents, and in the end she left with my husband before some of her friends because the waiting was just too much. That happened after the end time written on the invitation so technically she made it.

She was excited about everything she received. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t a bunch of plastic junk (Barbies, Littlest Pet Shops, etc). It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I’m still glad it’s over.

Now we just have to clean up the house for grandparents to come this Tuesday, which is her actual birthday. Grades are due Friday, but I’m not too behind on those. Waking up this morning, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted.

There is still much to do, but the party is over and that was causing me a fair amount of stress; hosting large amounts of people is not my forte. Now that it’s done, I can focus on the week and a half left of school, and what I hope to accomplish before St. Louis.

It finally feels like summer is around the corner.

{A big thank you to everyone who reached out on my last post. I was really struggling last week. I quickly regretted putting that out there, as I hate for a post to be nothing more than a stress vent, but what’s done is done and I can’t take it back. I hope someday I learn that publishing posts like that only adds to the stress in the world, and that a strategic email to a good friend is probably a better place for thoughts like those. I do think I’ll learn that someday, but the lesson will require more mistakes like Friday’s. I endeavor to be patient with myself along the way.}

Life

Home Stretch

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

We’re so close I can taste it.

I can also taste bile at the back of my mouth. I hate this time of year.

Things are super stressful. There is so much to do, and I’m exhausted. My daughter is struggling mightily with the transition from her regular Kindergarten routine to attending camp. Picking her up is an absolute nightmare in which she’s insolent and blatantly refuses to do anything I ask (like put her shoes on so we can go the fuck home) and I eventually lose my shit and drag her out by the arm at 6pm, under the judging eyes of parents and camp counselors alike. It’s awesome.

There is food to order for her birthday party. Presents to wrap. A scavenger hunt to write clues for. A jumpy house to confirm. Money to throw in a million different directions. And a daughter who, instead of being excited and grateful for her big celebration is melting down because her best friend’s party is the day before hers and she’ll be getting her presents a full 24 hours before my daughter gets any. Never mind that her friend is only having three girls over to her house and my daughter’s party has swollen to massive proportions. Never mind that my daughter will be getting tons of presents THE NEXT DAY. My daughter actually asked me if she could not go to her best friend’s party because just knowing her friend was getting presents when she wasn’t was more than she could handle. This is EXACTLY why I didn’t want her to be getting presents at all. It just not seem like a healthy fixation of being given things.

My house is a mess. My husband is taking both kids to daycare and camp every morning and is totally stressed out. I’m leaving later for work than I want to make sure they’re all ready to leave on time every morning. I’m falling behind on grading papers at work. At night my husband and I don’t really talk; he reads comics on the couch, neglecting the dishes and other mess in the kitchen, and I stumble out of my daughter’s room at 9:30pm after bedtime, finish up the laundry and other necessary chores and fall into bed.

Have I mentioned that I hate this time of year? Why does my daughter’s birthday have to fall in the final weeks of my school year? WHY?!

It has been confirmed, at work, that I’ll be teaching on both campuses next year. Evidently they CAN make me do it, and that is my schedule, as far as admin is concerned. Whether or not I can teach Spanish to the 6th graders instead of World Languages on the computer is still up in the air; one administrator says one thing, and another says something else. Neither seems very sure of themselves. I guess I need to make a meeting with the people at the new school and figure out what room I’ll be using, what resources are available to me, and what I can spend to buy the supplies I need. I’ll be teaching 1st period at the other middle school and 3rd through 6th at my own. The other middle school starts later than mine, which is good for the morning routine at home with my family (I can still bring my daughter to school, which wouldn’t have been possible next year otherwise) but bad for transferring between the campuses (there is only about 20 minutes for me to pack up and make the 10 minute drive). So yeah, that is happening. I still don’t really believe it.

By next Tuesday so much of this stress will be resolved, the biggest hurdle being my daughter’s birthday party. (This is definitely the last time we throw a big one for her, next year she can have something small, or nothing at all.) But others will linger. I need to remember that it’s not all unicorn farts and fairy queefs once the school year ends.

My school year if over in a week and a half. I know I can do it. I also know I’ll be miserable until it gets done. And then I have this hellacious schedule to get ready for next year. God, I wish I had looked for another job (and yes, I’m still looking, but so far no full-time Spanish positions have been posted in the area).

But we also have St. Louis to look forward to, and just the general slowing down of summer. I need it so bad, but I can already feel myself getting tense as I realize it’s not going to be enough to undo the knots that have tightened in my neck and shoulders. The breaks are never enough to get me back to where I want to be; my life if just not sustainable right now and I need to make more big changes so that I’m not always racing for the next break. I just don’t know if I can make the necessary changes. I don’t even know what they are.

Sorry for this stress dump, but I needed to put it somewhere, otherwise I might go crazy from circles it all keeps running in my head.

One and a half more weeks and then I can breath. Then it will get better. I can do anything for one and half weeks.

Home/Life

Clarification

Posted on by noemikjames / 11 Comments

When you choose to put yourself out there in a space like this, you are bound to encounter misinterpretation and misunderstanding. You are also likely to experience disagreement and dissent. You may even earn yourself some unsolicited advice. I am not surprised when these things happen. Most of the time I attempt to learn from the experience, and usually I try again.

I come here to write for a lot of reasons. Sometimes I’m in the midst of figuring things out, and I use writing here as a way to process. Other times I come here to vent–to lighten my load and perhaps gain some perspective. And still other times a vague compulsion propels the words into this space. No matter how or why I write here, my words can miss the mark.

When I wrote Friday morning’s post I was working through some stuff I didn’t quite have a handle on yet. I was hoping that if I got a small part of it down, the rest of it would settle into place so I could reflect and hopefully write more later. The problem is, a post like that doesn’t paint a full picture, mostly because I’m not sure what the full picture is yet (or the picture is constantly changing). Posts like that provide a vague outline and let readers fill in the gaps.

Here is the thing. I don’t want to live in the suburbs. That is not some dream of mine that being married to my husband is denying me. I grew up in one of the biggest, densest cities in the world and I LOVED the independence and freedom it provided me. I am not opposed to raising my kids in the city, it’s just harder sometimes to do it than I expected it would be.

And the school stuff… well I have a lot of thoughts about that and they are complicated and varied and sometimes at complete odds with each other. I thought long and hard about whether or not to bring my daughter down to my school district, and in the end I chose not to. I don’t regret that choice. We live in the city and I want our kids to go to school near where we live. I want their friends to live in the city, not 30 minutes away on the peninsula. I want the city to feel like home. I want the city to be their home. I have lived in San Francisco for 13 years and worked on the peninsula that entire time. I absolutely believe that commuting so far away has made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to embrace San Francisco as my true home (which is most certainly part of the reason I feel torn about some of the difficulties in raising kids here). I absolutely don’t want that for my children.

I also value diversity. Immensely. I think going to school with people from different cultures and backgrounds can offer an education that is more valuable than anything a rigorous curriculum could provide. I also believe strongly in the benefits of being truly bilingual, and a Spanish language immersion education is not something my children could get in the “better” school districts nearby. There are myriad reasons why we chose to send our daughter to the nearby school, and right now I don’t regret that choice.

That doesn’t mean it’s always the easiest choice. I went to schools, and have taught in schools, that look different from the school my daughter attends. Different can be hard, especially when it’s the kind of different that isn’t celebrated. Sometimes I have doubts. Sometimes I feel trepidation. But that doesn’t mean I regret the choice we made. I also know that if we needed to change our minds, there are always other options.

I truly hope we don’t have to take advantage of those options, because I already see my daughter learning important lessons at her school, lessons she would not be getting at the “better” school in my district. I also know that just because another school might offer a more rigorous education, doesn’t mean my daughter would have a positive experience attending it. My mom has covered a couple hours in the Kindergarten classrooms my daughter would have attended in my district and she said there are already intense cliques forming and that the Kindergarten teachers report that this is the most intensely negative social situation they’ve encountered in their classes in a long time. My daughter would really struggle with cliquey girls like that, and I’m glad she’s not being exposed to it. (And at a school that small, she would be stuck with that group of girls until 8th grade).

I wrote this post to clarify all this as much for myself as for anyone else. It can be easy to focus on the ways I fantasize it could be easier if only circumstances were different, but it’s important that I remember why we made the choices we did. Friday’s post was much more about my frustration with a lack of empathy and understanding from my husband, who struggles to see things from my perspective, not an admission that I’m being forced to live somewhere I don’t want to live, and am miserable for it.

My daughter is a bright girl who speaks fluent Spanish and is learning a lot at school, whose best friends are white, African American and Hispanic, and who doesn’t think twice that one of the yard duties at her school wears a burka. She takes the bus as much as rides in a car, and walks past people from dozens of different cultures on the way to the playground. Most importantly she is happy, and that is in no small part because of where she lives and where she goes to school. That is not something I take for granted.

Uncategorized

Reconciling the Hard

Posted on by noemikjames / 36 Comments

I have over 200 blogs in my reader and yesterday there were three posts. All day. This morning there were five. I guess the summer doldrums are already here.

My husband and I had a fight last night. One of our old ones. It wasn’t even a very thoughtful rehashing of the topic. I struggle with the idea of living forever in the city. It’s harder than I thought it would be. It seems increasingly impossible that I will ever develop any real sense of community here. My husband would be miserable in a monochromatic suburban wasteland. I am honestly starting to wonder if it’s better to be surrounded by diversity but ultimately alone, barely participating in it, or to just give up and feel at home with a bunch of people who look and talk like me (and have about the same amounts in their bank accounts). The progressive, liberal part of me (and it’s a BIG part) wants to slap the woman who would rather run away from the hard to a place where she feels like she truly belongs. The part of me that is actually living the experience of being one of the only white, English speaking people on her block, and sending her daughter to a school where she is one of the only white kids in her grade, wants to scream that it’s hard, and there is a reason so few other people are doing it.

It’s not hard for my husband because he loves living here. Being in the city provides him with all sorts of opportunities that he appreciates, even if he’s not able to take advantage of all (or even most) of them right now. He doesn’t crave community, in fact he’s happy to avoid it. And he is more removed from the challenges of raising kids in an urban area, because I handle a lot of the day-to-day logistics. While he attends most special events at my daughter’s Title 1 school, he’s never there for drop off or pick up or during the regular school day. He doesn’t see how rough the older kids are with each other on the playground. He does see that the line for the general education (as opposed to Spanish immersion) Kindergarten class usually only has 5-7 kids standing in it, even though there are 20 kids in that class. He doesn’t read all the articles about how schools with high percentages of lower income students (our daughter’s school is 92% free or reduced lunch), NEVER perform as well as schools attended primarily by upper socio-economic families.

I haven’t written much about my thoughts and feelings regarding my daughter’s school, mostly because COMPLICATED, but I think about it A LOT. Every day I drop my daughter off at one school and drive 30 minutes away to teach at an arguably “better” school. Obviously, we decided that it was best for our daughter to send her to the school in the city, and I still believe in the reasons we did so, but they are more abstract and harder to quantify. When there is so much written about the failings of inner city schools, it’s easy to wonder if we made the right choice.

I really hope I write more on this here, because I have a lot to work through and process. In the meantime, I need to get to work.

Friendship/Identity

My Failure Resume

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

Mel wrote a post about writing one’s Failure Resume, the idea for which she got from a Lifehacker article. This is how the original article begins:

Listing out your victories is a great way to build some confidence, but it can also warp your perspective on how you achieved success. Listing out your biggest failures instead will remind you how you got to where you are, and help you learn what you need to succeed.

I think it’s true that we can learn a lot from our failures. I know I have. And while I don’t revel in revisiting all the many ways I’ve failed in my life, I do appreciate the chance to review the lessons I’ve learned. Here are just a few of my failures (both big and small) and what I learned from them.

The car I crashed (and totaled) two days after I got my license. The loss of a thing can be hard, but never take for granted that everyone is okay–that is a priceless gift.

My ectopic pregnancy. Really horrible things can happen, for no reason at all, and I can survive things that I believed would destroy me.

The book that never got published. Sometimes just creating something is a triumph, even if no one else ever sees it. I can hold my children’s book close to my heart, and even though no one wanted to publish it, the fact that I wrote and illustrated can be a victory.

The fact that I’m still not as fluent a Spanish speaker as I would like to be. The journey can be profoundly gratifying, and sometimes it’s hard to recognize when or if you’ve arrived at the ultimate destination. I’m not really sure if I’ll ever believe I’ve gotten there, and that’s probably okay.

My secondary infertility. The most unexpected thing can happen, even the ones that feel like miracles.

The YA novel I never finished. I may not know yet if I want to finish something, but that doesn’t mean starting it is a bad idea. Learning that I am not really interested can be just as valuable as completing what I set out to do.

Never being invited to write full time for the magazine. I have to ask specifically for what I want, not expect people to just hand it to me. That means I have to be confident enough in my own abilities to feel like I deserve asking for it in the first place.

Dumb shit I have posted on my blog. I don’t need to put it all out there; my words can really hurt people. Sometimes the best course of action is no action at all. Always wait a few days to publish (or send) words written in anger, frustration or pain.

My continued struggle with classroom management. Some skills are really hard to learn, but it is worth attempting to master them.

All the ways I’m not the mother I want to be. Good enough really can be good enough, AND it’s always worth trying to be better (as long as I can practice self-compassion along the way).

That time I walked the last three miles of a half marathon. Just because I finished a marathon a couple of years ago doesn’t mean I don’t have to train for a half marathon now. If I train for it, I can finish it, but if I don’t, I probably won’t.

My many shopping bans. I can fail to achieve a certain goal (not buying anything for six weeks) but still benefit from the ultimate desired outcome (changing my spending habits).

Embracing minimalism. Just because I’m not there yet doesn’t mean I never will be.

My failed friendship. This is the one I’m still not sure of yet. I guess maybe it’s that sometimes I will endure a tragedy and not learn anything more from it than the extent of what I can endure. I don’t want the lesson learned from this to be that you can never know or trust anyone, even those you feel closest to, so I’m going to stick with the first one.

What is something you would learn if you wrote your failure resume?

Life

Goods and Bads (This time the Goods!)

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

Yesterday’s post was supposed to be about goods and bads, but I ended up writing so much about the bads–that work stuff probably should have been it’s own post–that I needed to save the goods for today. So without further ado, here are the goods from the past week.

  • We attended my daughter’s Kindergarten Promotion on Thursday. While I don’t think that kind of celebration is necessary (and it was super frustrating to miss work on that particular day), I appreciated the opportunity to take a moment and recognize how much we’ve accomplished this year. My daughter really has grown up in a lot of ways, and even though I still worry about her considerable struggles with emotional regulation, I do recognize that things are much improved.
  • My daughter’s last day of school is this Thursday. She will be going to camps until I’m out, so most of our basic schedule will stay the same, but the slightly later start time should improve mornings quite a bit.
  • I thought my washing machine was broken, but then it wasn’t. So grateful I’m not dealing with a broken washing machine right now.
  • My son is finding his sense of humor and he makes me laugh. A lot.
  • I only bought my daughter three things for her birthday. That is by far the best I’ve done on the gift buying front yet. I’m proud of myself!
  • The trampoline fiasco was threatening to be a really big blow up between my husband and I, but we managed to reign it in and handle it respectfully. It might not seem like a big deal, but it really does signal that we’re learning to communicate with each other better, and that is a big deal.
  • Dr. Google suggested that my “nose zit” was actually a recurring staph infection and prescribed an OTC ointment (bacitracin) to treat it. After just 48 hours of slathering my nostril with it three times a day it feels worlds better. I have high hopes that if I keep up the ointment for two weeks the infection (and accompanying exquisite sensitivity) won’t come back (I’ve been dealing with this, off and on, for months now).
  • The weather has been cold, cloudy and windy, which is actually a good thing at the end of the school year. If it were warm and sunny outside the kids would be even more crazy than they already are.
  • I’ve kept up my exercise regimen even though it’s driving me a little crazy to do so, and I’m proud of that, because I know it’s the best thing for my mental health in stressful times like these. I’m not really looking forward to starting my half-marathon training, but I’m hoping when I have more time it will be more enticing. (I also seem to have avoided a possible IT band issue by doing a set of exercises and stretches every week. I’m very thankful that it no longer seems to be a problem.)
  • On a related note, I have some nice color on my face, shoulders and arms right now from my weekly runs. I look so much better with a little color.
  • The day I had to take off for my daughter’s Kindergarten promotion I was able to make a big drop off at the Young Families Resource Center. It feels REALLY good to get that shit out of my garage, where it has in the way for months (we do not have a big garage).
  • My husband is starting to get on board with getting rid of more stuff, which is no small feat. Now if I could just get him to actually help me sort through it all…
  • I just finished listening to La casa de los espiritus (The House of the Spirits) by Isabel Allende. The narrator had a thick accent (I’m not sure what accent it was, actually) and it was initially difficult for me to follow it, but I stuck with it, and ended up really loving it. It’s been on my must-read list for years and I’m proud to have finally finished it, in Spanish no less. Sometimes it’s the small wins.

I feel like this list isn’t very impressive, but honestly, Monday wasn’t a great day and I almost didn’t write this at all, so I’m calling it a win. This time of year is super stressful for me and I know I just need to get through it. In four weeks it will be over and I’ll have seven glorious weeks of summer ahead of me. I really am so close.

Health & Well Being/Life

Goods and Bads (Ok, only Bads)

Posted on by noemikjames / 23 Comments

It’s been a really shitty week and I’m feeling pretty down right now. But I also recognize that some good has happened, and I don’t want to overlook that. So in the spirit of “Goods and Bads” (what we call Highs and Lows at our house, because my daughter kept getting confused on which was the good thing to share, the high or the low) here is a look at the past week. I’ll start with the bads, because I always want to hear bad news first. (It turns out there were a lot of bads, so the goods will have to wait for tomorrow, but I promise I’ll post them).

BADS:

  • This week was really busy, and almost all of the events were obligations that I dreaded. I hate having a calendar full of cringe-worthy shit that I must attend.
  • One of those cringe-worthy events was Open House at my school, which is by far my least favorite night of the school year. I hate schmoozing with parents who want to turn a two minute handshake into a mini end-of-year conference. I also wasn’t at school that day, so I had to go early to make sure my room didn’t look like a bunch middle schoolers with only a sub to keep tabs on them had occupied it all day. I was also super nervous that the mom who has been writing shitty emails about me to my principal was going to be there (because she said in one of her emails that she would be), but luckily she never showed, or at least I never saw her. Still, I spent the whole night nervously scanning the room, anticipating her arrival. It was exhausting. (But my room was in surprisingly good shape, so that was nice).
  • My mom wanted to get my daughter a trampoline for our backyard for her birthday and it was on sale so we had to give her an answer pretty quick. We said yes and she ordered it, but then we did some research and realized that trampolines are incredibly unsafe for children under 6, and while we knew there was some risk involved in jumping on a trampoline (and had created a list of rules to mitigate that risk), we were not at all comfortable with how dangerous simple jumping on a netted trampoline is for smaller kids. So after much agonizing, we told my parents to return it. Of course by then my daughter had figured out it was coming (long story) and she was upset, and my mom was annoyed (rightfully so) that we hand’t done the research before she bought it, and I was disappointed because I know my daughter would love it and she really needs good ways to burn off her seemingly limitless energy. Sometimes being a responsible adult is such a bummer.
  • My son wakes up, ready to greet the day, every morning between 5:30am and 6am. I doubt further elaboration is necessary.
  • My son also remains decidedly two-and-a-half. That compounds the exhaustion of waking up with him at the butt crack of dawn.
  • My daughter’s birthday party is in two weeks and I’m not at all ready. In fact I’m not even close to ready. It’s totally stressing me out. I HATE that her birthday is at the very end of my school year. It creates all kinds of stress.
  • There are four more weeks of school left. This is the critical tipping point, where there are not nearly enough days to get everything done but too many days to be excited about summer’s imminent arrival. There are also TONS of assignments and projects and tests to grade. And the kids are fucking maniacs. (Truthfully, I’m not doing much better.)
  • Our Blu.Ray player mysteriously stopped working over a year ago. Suddenly we started getting a “No Input Signal” line on our TV when we tried to use it. We haven’t replaced it because we mostly just watch Net.flix and we could hook our computers up to the TV when we really wanted to watch a movie (ahem Disney) that wasn’t free through one of our services. Except that sometimes we only have the Blu.Ray of a movie (not sure where the accompanying DVDs are going, because we always buy the set with both) and even when we do have the DVD, our computers are so old and slow that hooking them up to the TV is a pain in the ass. So I finally bought a new Blu.Ray player at Cost.co and my husband finally set it up and we’re still getting the “No Input Signal,” even with a new cord, and trying all the inputs (including the cord and input port that allows us to successfully use the Ro.ku). It just doesn’t work. So clearly something is wrong with our TV, but WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH IT THAT IT JUST DOESN’T REGISTER BLU.RAY PLAYERS?! That makes no fucking sense! Especially since they were two totally different kinds of players. Anyway, it’s not so much that the TV doesn’t work, it’s that it works in such a annoying and frustrating way that defies the laws of electronics. And now we can never watch a fucking Blu.Ray (or even a DVD again without using our computer), until we get a new TV. So fucking annoying.
  • My house is a fucking shit show and it’s stressing me out.
  • And the BIG ONE (to be written in regular paragraphs because it’s that big):

My VP–who is actually leaving for a high school position next year (I think I forgot to mention that here)– pulled me into her office on Friday and dropped a pretty significant bomb on me. She told me that our incoming principal and the will-be-principal for the other middle school in our district want me to teach two classes at the other middle school and three at mine. They also want me to teach zero and 1st period at the other middle school and 4rd, 5th and 6th at mine. That means they want me to be teaching at 7:45am when I wanted to have my same schedule as this year to start teaching at 9am, so I can be home in the mornings and take my daughter to school. When I mentioned wanting my same schedule, my VP said the new principal wouldn’t go for it regardless, that evidently he’s not about making accommodations like that. So best case scenario I can stay at my school all day but still have to be there at 8am (which will be a massive burden for my family) and worst case scenario I will be teaching on two campuses, lose all sense of community at my work place, and gain the considerable stress of reconciling scheduling differences between the schools on certain days, and commuting between them (they are about 7-10 minutes away from each other, depending on how you hit the lights).

Oh, and the school board decided that we will be trashing our Spanish 6 classes so that all 6th graders take the same “World Languages” class, which allows them to pick between five languages on a computer program. This decision was made in the name of “equity” because they want the course offerings at both campuses to be as similar as possible, and they have had a historically hard time finding and keeping a quality Spanish teacher (hence, the desire for me to teach 7th/8th grade Spanish over there for part of the day). I created our 6th grade Spanish curriculum almost from scratch, and it’s a damn good program. It’s also VERY POPULAR. The fact that they decided to throw it away, without even speaking to me about it, feels incredibly disrespectful. I don’t necessarily love teaching 6th graders, but I’m really proud of what, and how, I teach them, and I’m really disappointed to see it thrown away for some bullshit computer program in the name of equity.

The most frustrating part of all of this is that I’ve been trying to get a meeting with our incoming principal for over a month and he keeps avoiding me. And I also told him that I hoped to keep my current schedule in one of those emails, so he knew that working at 7:45am was going to be incredibly disappointing for me. (I would assume he’s also realized that no one wants to teach at two different campuses during the day, and broaching that possibility needed to be treated with a certain amount of sensitivity, but who knows.) Either way, the fact that he didn’t make a meeting to talk about all this with me himself, but instead sent someone who doesn’t give a shit (and can’t even answers my questions if she did) because she won’t be here next year, feels really fucking disrespectful. One of the reasons I decided not to look for a new job is because I’ve had positive experiences with this man and had heard he was a respectful and effective principal at the other middle school. I had considerable hopes that he would make positive changes next year. Now all that goodwill is gone, and I’m left with the prospect of working with a principal who has already treated me poorly.

I’m so angry at myself for not looking for a job during the prime months of the school year. I can still look, and obviously will, but there are not many positions posted in the summer, at least not many desirable ones. Of course, it wouldn’t have to be that great to be more desirable than what I’m probably going to end up with. (And no, I’m not sure yet if they can MAKE me work on two different campuses. My guess is they can’t, but that they’ll offer me something so shitty at my own school that teaching 7th/8th grade Spanish at the other middle school is preferable.)

The union rep at our school is also a good friend, and a fellow language teacher. She has already assured me that they can’t make me teach zero period and 6th period because zero period is outside of the contractually obligated day. So I guess that is one good thing. Even if I didn’t want to be with my family in the mornings, teaching from 7:45am to 3pm would fucking suck.

Can’t you tell how stoked I am that it’s Monday?

Uncategorized

Lesson Learned (Yet again!)

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

I finished today’s other post on my phone last night, and it seems those concluding paragraphs have been lost in the ether.

This is not the first time the WordPress app has failed me. I cannot seem to publish a post on that thing successfully. If I’m trying to schedule it to go up at a later time? Forget about it.

I have a hard time when my words are lost. It frustrates me more than it should. {I’m going to have a hard time not blaming my mood on others or my circumstances today!}

The reality is, it’s probably better that the finalized post never saw the light of day. It was very woe-is-me: I am missing that fundamental piece that allows a person to be a good classroom manager; you can never teach well without that skill; it will really suck to be stuck teaching for 30 years and never become a genuinely good educator.

Because my god I’ve spent a lot of time (and money!) trying to improve my skills in this area and I haven’t seen any real improvement. And the worst part is, I want so badly to get better at this, because I recognize how vitally important it is to ensure a class treats each other with respect. I feel like such a fucking failure when I “learn” new skills and can’t seem to utilize them effectively.

And what happens next? Do I keep trying, and failing, to be a better classroom manager? Do I accept defeat and bolster my other skills in an attempt to mask my failings in that one pertinent area? What does either one do to my sense of self-worth? I have 20+ years of teaching ahead of me, I don’t know how to navigate 20 years of feeling, in some ways, like a failure.

The situation that triggered all this really sucks. I’m having a hard time balancing person responsibility and self-compassion.

And this post isn’t nearly as good as the one the WordPress app ate.

Uncategorized

The Chink

Posted on by noemikjames / 0 Comment

Today I was faced with a situation at work that had me lamenting my biggest weakness as a teacher: classroom management.

I have read so many books, been to so many trainings and watched so many videos all with the sole purpose of improving my classroom management, and yet it’s still a massive issue for me.

I’m just not good at classroom management. And I fear I never will be.