:: p-dog ::

I put pictures into my most recent weekly update. I did it instead of cuddling with my visiting boyfriend. I did it for you. Go look at them.



[students returning to class after the midmorning break]

:: Leslie H - 10:19 PM - ::

Have the night sort of off, hence the profusion of posts. But I wanted to show you a few examples of student work. Pictures coming soon.

Yazmin's on why she wants to go to college.
Chuy's, on why he doesn't. (Note the part on his dream, to die for his country/city. Where do I begin?)

:: Leslie H - 9:58 PM - ::

I've had "I love you, bizarro" stuck in my head all day. Freakin boys, with their freakin cartoons.

While we were watching that movie, I fed turtle-face a whole bag of peanuts.

:: Leslie H - 7:10 PM - ::

Oh, and I got a new camera (since the star-crossed minolta was stolen from its fed-ex box). So expect pictures as soon as tomorrow. I can't wait to show you all my school/friends/students, etc.

:: Leslie H - 5:52 PM - ::

My ads have changed from San Francisco to teaching phonics. Neither as exciting as steak and baby warmers.

God, I could use a steak.

:: Leslie H - 5:50 PM - ::

i compulsively check my email, hoping for word from one of you. what's up? where's the love? right now amy is the only one putting out.

:: Leslie H - 10:13 PM - ::

a five hour lesson plan
a five hour lesson plan, for the same 15 kids
a five hour lesson plan, for the same 15 kids, all on writing one stinking paragraph

five hours, on my feet, in front of the same 15 kids, talking about one paragraph, the whole day.

i'm hoarse, i'm tired, my feet hurt
i kept comparing it to a marathon, where i started out great and face-planted on mile 12.

i had a girl tell me sweetly she couldn't do my example from harry potter because it was about "satantic forces"

i'll give you satanic forces.


on the up-side, i'm done teaching for the week, except an hour a day with my literacy group (struggling to feel like i'm not failing two kids who don't know what the word "scarecrow" means or who is the governor of their state). we'll read a sentence like, "he was so angry at mark that he shouted as loud as he could." and i'll ask, "so, is this character *happy* with mark?" and they'll say, "yes!"

on the downside, i have to do this 5 days a week for the next two years.

my ray of sunshine today: maybe i didn't pass the teacher credentialling exam i took two weekends ago, and i can just get a job as a bank teller or something mindless yet sane.

(i'm not really as grim as i sound. just venting. i want to do something mindless and horrible and moderately self-destructive, like watch porn or trading spaces.)

:: Leslie H - 8:09 PM - ::

This week's post will not be quite as newsy as the last two as nothing dramatically new has happened. I continued to teach. As much as it freaked me out for months, Ms. Hall began to fit quite naturally. And this weekend, Bryan came to visit.

One thing different about this week was the amount of sleep I got and the general stress level. After the absurdity of last week, this one was easy by comparison. Last weekend I set up a lot of things to make my life easier--a grading system, more procedures for behavior management and absences, which cut way down on what I needed to come up with every night. I also continued to teach basically the same subject (writing, specifically the standard paragraph form), so I've managed to develop a much better sense of what approaches work well for them and what kind of instruction they need.

So in lieu of a lot of lesson descriptions, I'll tell you about my kids. (After two weeks, I already feel such ownership of the class, for better or worse. I can't imagine what it will be like when I've got a group for the year.)

Davionne: I think Davionne is the first one all of my group members would choose to write about. He is a genuinely sweet kid; he loves his family; he needs a ton of attention; and he has very little self-confidence. No matter how much I review it before the whole class, I cannot give Davionne an assignment without him calling me over: "I don't know how to do this." When I explain the directions to him personally and assure him it's just like what he did yesterday, he's fine. Davionne is also on house arrest. I have no idea what for. But he's got a tag on his ankle and one last chance. He's been in and out of juvenille detention several times--he is in the system. It breaks my heart to think of this kid in jail.
(2nd from left in this shot)


Lorena: I love Lorena. She will recopy her assignments three times before she turns them in. She's an ELL (English language learner) student, and it shows, though she speaks and reads aloud quite well. Her spelling is appalling, and she doesn’t seem to understand what a complete sentence is. I think she must have a learning disability, too, just based on her inability to do basic reading comprehension exercises or answer simple questions. While she usually tries hard in my class, I constantly feel like I’m failing to give her what she needs.


Yazmin: I don’t know why Yazmin is in my class. While she has a few spelling/grammar issues, they are nothing unusual for an 8th-grader. Her work is consistently among the best in the class; she finishes much earlier than anyone else; and she is very concerned with doing things right. We are all in love with Yazmin. In her, I think we TFA kids see our 14-year-old selves.


Willie: (sigh) Oh, Willie. This is how most conversations about him begin. At 15, Willie is the oldest in our class, but it’s no surprise that he’s been held back. Every day is a constant battle to keep him awake in class. When he works, when he tries, he generally does pretty well. But it takes him a long time to read things and understand them, so he often gets frustrated and quits. He’s a tiny kid, with a nascent mustache that’s never been shaved. It’s hard to get exasperated with him, though he so often sleeps in class, when he looks at us with big watery eyes and our imaginations construct a history of abuse and neglect for him. Everyone picks on Willie.


Michael: Michael’s a pimp. At breaks we see him surrounded by a circle of giggling girls, and he responded to a “why do you want to go to college” prompt with “to meet more pretty ladies.” He’s also ahead of most of the rest of the class. Though he’s concerned with his grade and performance, he gets off-task easily sitting next to girls. Like all of our students, his vocabulary is incredibly small. (“Who can tell me what the word ‘declare’ means? …no one?”) Also, their basic information about the world is pitiful. We read a Jewish folktale in class, and only one kid had the faintest notion what a Jew was.


Elvis: Well, Elvis has gone now. Officially removed from summer school on Tuesday, but not before the school security guard had him come back into class during the middle of a lesson to clean off the desks where he’d done some very artistic tagging. He usually did the work I asked for, and not too badly, but school was clearly not a priority. He would never accept discipline without a public challenge, and forced us to face him down to administer a detention. While TFA would excommunicate me for giving up on a kid, I was glad to have him gone from the class. I was totally ignorant of what his life was like, and I had no idea how to reach him.
[not pictured: Elvis]

Those are a few of them.

This week I plugged along with them at paragraphs. They are making progress. But I am running out of ways to present the information to them and be engaging. It’s a bit frustrating, too, because my faculty adviser applauds me for teaching this material but warns that “at the high schools they’re headed for,” it will not be reinforced. Part of me wishes I could be teaching them more abstract useful skills, like analytical thinking, civic-mindedness, basic social skills. But I’m not sure how to plan those lessons, impart those values. I know this is just a training session for us, and extra help for these kids, but I still feel I should be able to give them more than I have.

It’s blowing my mind that we are more than halfway through this. Deep down, I don’t think I ever believed Institute would end. But next weekend will be our last weekend here.

So Bryan and Jeff rolled into town on Thursday, en route to their San Diego graphics conference. Our weekend was joyful and surreal and inevitably sad. Joyful for all the obvious reasons, sad because it ended, as they always seem to. Surreal because I have become so focused and single-minded about teaching and students and the people here that it’s been easy to forget the rest of my life. Or not forget exactly, but feel as though I’m in an entirely separate sphere. My old Austin life has ended, and now I’m still the same person, but in another world. Friday afternoon was the first time that I had stopped working (for a reason other than utter exhaustion). At first, it was hard to stop my mind from constantly turning over lessons and students and teaching tactics. When I did, it was a strange sort of relief, but also definitely broke my stride. I’m not sure what to make of this—I haven’t stewed on it quite long enough myself. I am certain, though, that it was good to break my stride, to pause and recollect myself and remember what’s important to me.

This morning Bryan left, and I gave myself an hour before I picked the work back up again. I’m now working on planning my Tuesday. The schedule is different this week: instead of all of us teaching for 1-2 hours per day, we each teach one whole day. Tuesday’s mine. I’m (quite rightly, I think) nervous about teaching the same group of kids English for 5 hours, but I’m also sort of looking forward to the challenge and the autonomy of designing a whole day. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I have a feeling I’ll sleep hard Tuesday night.

Well, that’s all for this week. I don’t believe the calendar. It can’t really be July 27.

:: Leslie H - 3:49 PM - ::

Yesterday, two things struck me about this neighborhood I'm teaching in. First, it's beautiful. Rows of stucco houses with beautiful, big trees and gardens, playground equipment in the backyards. I had my nosed pressed against the bus window on the way to the school, looking down all the side streets.

And then, the end of the school day. Kids leave at 1:15, when most of us are eating our lunch. As we sat there in the open square that serves as cafeteria, dozens of them started climbing over the 12-foot chain-link fence right by us. When some go-getter types went over to make them stop (it was a pretty dangerous climb), we learned why they were doing it. There are three gates out of the school, and one of them, the one this group usually uses, was locked. But, as the asst. principal had told us the first day, these kids couldn't just leave through the front gate instead. That would put them on the wrong side of the street, and they'd get threatened/beat up/shot at. Can't even walk out the front door of their middle school.

:: Leslie H - 5:47 PM - ::

In the city of L.A. In the city, the city of Compton...

I have no idea where to start. I am stumped.

Ultimately, I think that to describe the reality of this experience is impossible. I can tell you about the exhaustion. I can tell you that 4 hours of sleep a night has quickly come to sound like a perfectly reasonable, even generous amount. I can tell you about the kids, and my mingled affection/frustration with them. I can tell you about the sudden realization that I never really considered where my teachers got all of their material, that it had never occured to me they just came up with most of it themselves. I can tell you about the joy of being surrounded by amazing, amazing people (well, some more amazing than others). But I will fall short of capturing this.

Gotta write something though. It's Sunday already, and I'm already getting wrapped up in this next week. I'll just start at the beginning.

Last Monday was my first day of school. I expected to wake up with that lurching feeling in my stomach, but I was surprisingly unnervous. And unprepared. Well, first let me describe our daily teaching schedule so I don't confuse anyone.

We teach a five-hour class in groups of four, with a 20-minute break in the middle. For the first half hour of the day and then the half hour after break, all four of us are in there, breaking the students into groups based on their reading/writing skills and working with them on basic literacy skills. So my day looks like:
6:55 Depart USC campus
7:20 Arrive at school
8:00 Enter, the students
8-8:30 Literacy hour
8:30-9:30 First person teaches, second person observes
9:30-10:24 Second person teaches, first observes
10:24-10:44 Break (called "nutrition")
10:49-11:20 Literacy hour
11:20-12:20 Third person teaches, fourth observes
12:20-1:15 Fourth person teaches, third observes

If you teach during the first two slots, you have a class during the third and fourth (and vv--if you teach third or fourth, you have a class in the morning). Then we're all in classes together until 4 and get back to the USC campus usually by 5. And then we have more meetings and workshops most evenings from 7-10.

When, you may rightly ask, are we supposed to prepare our lessons and materials? Make parent phone calls? Talk to kids after class? Make a binder with the week's work so chronicly absent students can catch up? Find interesting reading materials for our students? And this is the great secret Teach for America doesn't tell you until you get there: there is no time for that. Lesson planning and all that other stuff it takes to run a classroom comes directly out of your sleep at night. So when we get back from mandatory classes/meetings at 10, that's when we start writing our worksheets and cutting up our construction paper for the next day's lesson. Unlike some of my peers, I declined to pull a string of all-nighters, but all week I basically slept from 2-6, and that was it. Really, by the end of the week, it was starting to sound like enough. But my knees were also buckling when I walked.

So that's the setting, now briefly I'll do the cast of characters. The people most important for you to know are the members of my 4-person collaborative: Channing, Leyla, Camille, and my CMA (corps member adviser), Ariel.

Anyway, back to that first day. So I woke up surprisingly unnervous given that I was walking in cold to a room of 14-year-olds. I hadn't prepared much of a lesson, because Channing and I were teaching in the first 2.5 hour block and expected to spend most of the time on rules and procedures. Unfortunately, rules and procedures took only 1-1.5 hours, so then we had to start improvising lessons. It turned out okay--I read a story about Rosa Parks out loud with them and we talked about character; it wasn't awful.

It was, however, exhausting. We walked out of there at 11:20 Monday morning pretty wiped out. At lunch there were flurries of conversation all around that went something like, "okay, that was nice. I gave it a shot, but maybe, you know, never again."

Big Lesson learned on Day One:
Preparation is CRUCIAL.

So of course before Tuesday's lesson I had no time to prepare before 10, so I just did it after 10--we were doing topic sentences, and I wanted them to be able to identify them and then write their own to attach to a pre-written paragraph, so preparation entailed writing 11 paragraphs, and spending an hour and a half cutting three of them into sentence strips for the kids to put in order. But it was worth it, because I walked in the next morning for my first real lesson, and at least I had something to do with them.

Unfortunately, it was the most boring lesson ever. I can't even tell you what I did, it was so forgettable. 14-year-olds, it turns out, are hard to inspire with an intrinsic love of topic sentences, and my lesson sure wasn't doing it. But it was early--I was teaching first--so they were fairly docile. Or, you know, comatose. At the end of the day, I graded my topic sentence practice worksheets, and all of three students could write them.

Big Lesson learned on Day Two:
It's hard to learn when your teacher is writing paragraphs about wind energy and the Civil War and completely failing to engage you.

So that night I stayed up even later. I made a big poster to illustrate a paragraph--the topic sentence was the signpost, the supporting details were the road, and the conclusion was the big shining city at the end. Then I made another poster with a signpost at the top, called "topic sencence masters," and boldly wrote down the three names of the people who, despite my lesson, had written good topic sentences for all their paragraphs. I wrote 8 or 9 new paragraphs to practice with. Before we could move on to supporting details, Wednesday had to be Topic Sentences take two.

Wednesday morning I walked in nervous--I had spent so much time on this lesson, I didn't know if I could handle it crashing and burning, too. And it didn't. The kids who'd made the "masters" list were actually pretty excited, and the others wanted their names up there, too (nothing like a little competition). We did another practice worksheet, and about 8 of them could write a topic sentence. Then we moved on to supporting details, which I began by having them write 3 details about/reasons why they liked a) Nelly, b) the Matrix, and c) why their nutrition break should be longer.

Lo and behold, they were engaged. Everyone likes writing about Nelly, evidently. And even if the resulting paragraph was:
I like Nelly. First, he is so fine. Also, he knows how to rap. And finally, he knows how to dress. (No conclusion--that's tomorrow's lesson.)
I was happy. They were getting the idea at least.

Big Lesson Learned on Day Three:
When the kids aren't comatose, they're a lot harder to handle. Discipline had become an issue.

On Thursday, I came in with another masters list (about 10 kids could do supporting details, and 5 or 6 more had made the topic sentence list), another review of what we'd learned so far, and an intro to concluding sentences. The lesson went reasonably well, and I am told that I was very energetic and positive in front of the class. But when I sat down in the back of the room with my faculty adviser (who is there all the time, observing), tears started welling up. There was no reason, really. The lesson was fine. But that energy I had in front of the class had evidently been my last, and i was running on fumes.

Lest I break down in front of the children, I left and recovered myself. Until I ran into my CMA Ariel in the bathroom. When she asked the perfectly harmless question of how my day had been, I suddenly started sobbing and hiccuping and laughing at the same time. When I could manage to get out a few half-words, I tried to tell her my day had been just fine, and I didn't know why I was crying, but I was just so tired.

Anyway, Thursday was a low.

Big Lesson Learned on Day Four:
No, really, I do have to sleep.

And that night I got 6 hours, a ridiculous luxury.

Friday was fine. We reviewed the parts of a paragraph and I had them start writing their own that we'll continue/revise on Monday. I overcame my reluctance to be up talking in front of the class rather than just have them working on some activity all the time, so my instructions and expectations were much more clear. The topics I used for our paragraphs: Why I'm pumped its the weekend, and Why the weekend should be three days long.

Friday night was a relief, but I still had to study for my giant standardized teaching certification test Saturday morning. I studied as much as I was capable of, and then I went to bed. It was indeed the hardest standardized test I've taken, simply because so much of it was knowledge-based, and I think it covered every single academic discipline ever, from cognitive development to Japanese history, from simple machines to art history and theory. However, all I was really going for was a pass, and I think I pulled that off at least.

Yesterday I tried to get some work done for the coming week, but I couldn't. And then I thought about hanging out with people, but I really needed some time alone. I ended up making a pilgrimage to the ocean for the last hour before sunset, and I just sat there, on the ridge above the beach at Santa Monica, and listened to the ocean/cars, and watched the sun go down. And that was my night, and it was glorious.

So I've narrated a lot of particulars about my week, but no sweeping statements (and nothing about my students--I'm so selfish). But here are some overarching themes:

Things that have surprised me:
1. I like my kids.
2. I am not scared of my kids.
3. I want my kids to like me. (This, in a teacher, is a weakness.)
4. Though it will probably always influence how I get along in the neighborhood where I teach, from the first moment in front of the class I no longer felt strange being the only white face in the room.

Things that concern me:
1. One that many of us share: how do we give as much to teaching as it demands and still have room for anything else in our lives?
2. Okay, 14-year-olds I can sort of do, but what if I'm teaching first graders in the Bay?
3. If I don't have time to take a breath until Christmas, what will give? (health, sanity, interpersonal relationships?)
4. These kids need so much help, and I only have about 15% of my energy to give to them.
5. I am only teaching two hours a day, and it's this hard.

So that was Week One. The only thing I really want to tell you about and didn't was my students. But I've been writing for an hour and don't have any more time, so maybe I'll try to post again tomorrow or the next day (but don't hold your breath).

I hope everyone is doing well.

:: Leslie H - 9:44 AM - ::

Okay, seriously, if anyone has ideas for making topic sentences/supporting details/concluding sentences REMOTELY interesting to 14-year-olds, lay it on me. I'm dying here.

:: Leslie H - 7:30 PM - ::

Sorry guys--I'd tell you about the first day, but I'm too busy sending flowers to every teacher I've ever known.

:: Leslie H - 6:35 PM - ::

I've decided that the one thing I want more than anything else right now is a television, so I can just veg out vacantly in front of, I don't know, Trading Spaces reruns.

That's precisely why I shouldn't have a television, though. If I sat down in front of one, I might never get up, let alone plan lessons for Wed-Fri. My computer is a big enough distraction.

I have to say, my "well-rounded" Plan II education has never been quite so concretely helpful as when studying for this multi-subject teacher certification test. It's a pretty hard one, and many people are lamenting that they haven't had a class in ____ [insert one: biology, math, physics, english, history] since they were in 10th grade, or they've just never had a class in ____ [insert one: psycology, sociology, communications, philosophy]. But for me, not counting physics, which I remember nothing of, I feel decently prepared in all of those subjects already. Plus maybe I can even work in a little Buddhist art trivia ("the California gold rush reminds me a lot of why statues of the Buddha have elongated earlobes...").

Conclusion: Plan II is training legions of excellent elementary school teachers.

The other interesting thing about this test is: it's brand new--they just started giving it in January, so there are no study guides yet at all. But of course TFA wanted to give us something to help prepare. So what we've got appears to be some pirated draft of a study guide, with DRAFT written all over it and little notes like, "Director: In the final version, include the passage from 'Harriet Tubman' with questions about historical context and themes." Looks like TFA dipped into the black market a little to procure this bad boy.

:: Leslie H - 11:55 AM - ::

Wow. Okay. Talk about one of the most eventful and thought-provoking weeks of my life. Expect this post to be a little random as I am a bit tipsy and absolutely strung-out exhausted.

First let me just give the specifics of what's going on, so everyone (or rather, you, Clare and Amy, who are the only people who read this thing) is up to speed on what exactly I'm doing. I am in L.A., living in the USC dorms for 5 weeks, with about 550 other Teach for America newbies. People training here will go in August to teach in LA, the Bay Area, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, and St. Louis. We're spending our time divided pretty equally between teaching class, planning for that class, and taking classes ourselves on how to teach. Although my assignment in the Bay is to teach elementary school, here I am teaching 8th grade Very Remedial english in Watts, CA (in South Central--my school is actually on Compton Ave). We actually start teaching on Monday. Good times.

I just got back from a ridiculously fun afternoon/evening. At the end of our crazy week, a good 150 of us (out of about 550 at Institute) went to this restaurant/bar for happy hour. I had some great catch-up chats with Bay Area people I haven't had time to see all week, and a whole mob of us danced like lunatics to our peers singing karaoke. It was not only a blast to see all these people I know in a business-like way *freak dance*, but it was also all done at 7:30, with the sun still streaming in the windows, because after this week even the craziest partiers won't be up past 10. I had 4 strawberry margaritas, and I'm riding that high to give me the energy to write this now.

On Sunday, I moved into the dorms. It was a little surreal. Bryan and I had been road-tripping for a week (see gallery.overt.org), but on Saturday afternoon I had put him on a plane and booked it to the Super 8 to mope. Sunday I got up early and headed for USC. After a sweaty couple of hours moving in and setting up (we don't have what some people call "air conditioning," but it's really okay as the weather's nice here, and we're booked solid with activities between 7am and 10:30pm, so we're not in the room much). Then, I got to go hang out with Tim and Donna for a couple of hours as they we're in LA visiting family. That was a lot of fun. Not only was it good to see old friends, but it was just lovely to be in a completely stress-free social situation. I'm just not super-comfortable with new people all the time.

So on Monday we headed to our schools. I was a little surprised to find myself at a middle school, but I figure elementary will be a breeze after angry 13 and 14-year-olds. We boarded the school buses at 7am and headed for, well, the ghetto.

I have never really been to the ghetto. Maybe it would have been a reasonable thing to do before I went to teach in one for two years. But it's just like you see on TV, pretty much. The houses are actually pretty cute, and, it being southern California, many of the yards have beautiful gardens. There are strip malls, pawn shops, liquor stores, restaurants, just as you'd expect, and some of them could be in any neighborhood. But there are bars on all the windows. And there is not a white face outside our school bus.

On the first day, we walked in through a mob of students. And, to be quite, quite honest, they scared me. 8th graders are pretty old. Out the window of our classroom on the first day, I watched a kid being escorted from the campus in handcuffs.

But each day I feel better. The kid in handcuffs was arrested for bringing a bb gun to school. I have yet to feel threatened by any person or situation. And the more we drive through the neighborhood, the more I see the mothers pushing strollers rather than the 25-year-old strutting men.

Revelation #1: As we left on the bus at 4:30 on the first day, I realized that I would get used to--and comfortable with--working in the ghetto, probably very quickly. And what a change that would represent in my life, considering where I grew up and, really, where I went to college.
Revelation #2: I spent more time talking with black people on the first day of Institute (mostly my fellow corps members--it's a very diverse bunch) than in the rest of my life combined. It hit home what a very racially homogenous group I have been surrounded with my whole life.

So that's the neighborhood, or the very superficial view I have of it at this point. Most of our time so far we have spent in classes and guided work on lesson plans, classroom rules and procedures, etc. The classes are basically rehashes of the reading I did (well, I did most of it) before I came. They are taught (and the whole thing is run) by former TFA corps members. They teach these sessions like they are middle school lessons. Lots of posters, moving around, brief written activities. While it's nice to get a very good look at some tactics to teach kids this age, it gets a little old to be back in a middle school class, given that most of us just graduated from very good colleges.

Top things that annoy me:
1. All the freakin acronyms. TFA, CMs, CMAs, SDs, get in your CMA groups, your CS groups, talk to your PD, your ED. Open your TAL book, your IDP book, go to your CMC workshop.
2. Being treated, occassionally, like I myself am 12 years old.
3. TFA staff cheering wildly at the slightest provocation. Everytime we get on or off the bus, they break into applause. However, I was worried that I would be the only one raising eyebrows at this, and I'm not! Plenty of people are turned off by the cheerleading, which I find comforting.
4. Ridiculous regional rivalry. At the opening ceremony (I know, it sounds like the olympics), everytime someone mentioned one of the cities where people will teach, those corps members burst into wild yells. Miami is particularly obnoxious. Fortunately, the Bay is pretty chill.
5. Sprint charges me 50 cents a minute for every call I make or receive in CA. Bloody bastards.

Top things that I love:
1. Having to really do something that I can't bullshit my way through. At all.
2. Working on something utterly new and foreign and different from anything I've ever attempted before.
3. Having the chance, just the chance, to affect specific people in some concrete, meaningful way.
4. The fact that my completely broken-ass camera was stolen out of its fed-ex box; some thief gets my worthless piece of crap that would have cost hundreds of dollars to repair, and I get the $400 insurance from fed-ex. Whee!

I'm not sure what else to tell you. It took a lot, I have to say, to even write this. My buzz is totally gone. I think it's that I'm so exhausted by everything, and my brain is constantly consumed by this every day, that I just don't want to think about it anymore. Certainly not in the thoughtful way it takes to write it down. I have literally not stopped working since Monday morning--every minute between 6 and 11, with the exeption of basic body needs like showering and eating, has been work. I have never, ever been so consumed by something in my life.

Fortunately, the people here are really awesome. As we make it past small-talk and get to know each other, it's really wonderful to discover such amazing and different people with all sorts of incredible experiences. Though I don't daily see that many people from the Bay, I see them often enough to lay solid groudwork for future friendships. And that's satisfying.

But I miss all of you (again, Clare and Amy, my sole readers) a lot. I can't draw cunt pictures or blaspheme in really creative ways with anyone at all here. I can't just veg out either--with new people I feel like I always have to be "on." I hope you guys are doing well.

I'll try to keep this regularly posted, but it may just be on the weekends--the only days when, though I still have a ton of work, I'm on my own schedule. Next week I'll be able to talk about actually teaching and more about my students.

Reason #128 this feels like freshman year of college: Nate's here. (He'll be teaching in LA.)

Reason #4926 this is the freakiest experience of my life: I introduced myself to a room of 14-year-olds as "Ms. Hall." On Monday, I'm going to write it on the blackboard.

:: Leslie H - 10:19 PM - ::

LA Stories--coming as soon as I have a moment to breathe and internet in my room.

:: Leslie H - 7:05 AM - ::