:: p-dog ::

So, yesterday, for all of second period, I gravely pointed east and called it west. I've oriented thirty students completely incorrectly. I have turned their lives upside-down.

Such is my power.

:: Leslie H - 8:32 PM - ::

Okay, school starts tomorrow. I love you all deeply, and I want to give you all sorts of details about what the hell I've been doing for the last 3 weeks (some of the most eventful ever) but the story of my life is that there is no time for anything. So here's the highlights reel:

Institute ended. It was weird. On my way out, workers bust a pipe in the ceiling of our dorm, and the roof started to collapse while the building flooded. Added a sence of urgency to my packing. And then the locusts came.

Bryan decided, for a variety of reasons I have no time to discuss, to postpone graduate school. And as long as he's postponing graduate school, he might as well move down to the Bay with me. So we moved in together. Ack!

I met the faculty at Fischer Middle School and got the final word on my teaching assignment: 4 classes of 7th grade social studies, and one class of 6th. World History! I'm excited. Now the task: trying to make 12-year-olds give a shit about anything other than themselves, and what other people think of them. Ah, middle school.

I did some unit planning with my fellow 7th grade history teacher and set up my classroom. I was inundated by memories of my own middle school experience.

So tomorrow I'll meet my 165 students. I'm too busy to be nervous at this point, but, needless to say, this will be the most nerve-wracking first day of school ever.

A picture is worth a thousand words. That said, go look at some. gallery.overt.org will see us through this failure to communicate.

:: Leslie H - 5:58 PM - ::

hey! so much news it's absurd. i'm sitting in a classroom at fischer middle school checking email for 10 mins (i've been cut off from internet for basically 2 weeks). but i should have a cable hookup in my new place by tomorrow, so i promise a long update when i have a moment. i won't know where to begin, but i'll have to start somewhere...

:: Leslie H - 12:32 PM - ::

end of institute. crazy shit. i'll write more on that later, and all the other wild bits of my life. in the meantime, check out gallery again--i added maybe 20 pics, many that i'm actually in. you can tell the new ones because the captions are minimal and not capitalized. they start on p 4 of the album.

:: Leslie H - 10:45 PM - ::

BULLETIN * BULLETIN * BULLETIN

I HAVE A JOB. 8TH GRADE. ENGLISH AND SOCIAL STUDIES. FISHER MIDDLE SCHOOL IN SAN JOSE.

I WILL NOT (REPEAT) WILL NOT HAVE TO SPEND TWO YEARS WITH 7-YEAR-OLDS.

(and there was much rejoicing)

:: Leslie H - 9:34 PM - ::

I'm fighting a losing battle against the feeling that there are only four days left, so I should just get through them because there's nothing else I can do for these kids or my own teaching skills.

We discovered today that we have to (tomorrow!) give a day-long assessment where the kids read a story they've never seen and write a 5-paragraph essay by themselves. (cue maniacal laughter) TFA would expell me for low expectations, but the idea of some of them writing long essays without a little hand-holding is quite frankly frightening. Should be interesting at least.

I was reading the California state standards for 2nd graders and realizing that some of my students haven't mastered them.

(sigh)

Sort of a downer of a day. But only four more left.

:: Leslie H - 8:57 PM - ::

All I can tell you for this week's post is to go look at gallery.overt.org, where I've posted all my pictures from Institute. I have nothing really new to report, and I spent way too much time labeling all the pictures to write much anyway.

:D

:: Leslie H - 12:00 PM - ::