:: p-dog ::

Don't even bother reading this post unless you're *really* interested. But if you are, grab a beer and plan to stay awhile.


Bryan and I in Golden Gate Park a few weekends ago.
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It's cloudy here today, and it feels like fall. Something about the end of the heat makes me sad. Another transition. On the other end of this summer, I was in Austin, but now I'm losing my hold on the season, too.

This past week is important to write on. But my ceaseless work drains articulation. I have swells of emotion and insight, but they seldom precipitate into words. I try, though, for my sake as much as yours. I know I will hate myself in June if I have no record but a hazy sense of horror.

September went like this: up by 6:30, filled with dread. Glance at the paper, decide against packing lunch since there's no time to eat it, and get in my car. Enjoy a 20 minute drive to school, when I forget about where I'm going and listen to the daily horror on NPR. Vastly amused by the recall election, I nurse the suspicion that crazy politics follow me. I try various unsuccessful ways to keep the sun out of my eyes as it rises over the mountains of East San Jose.

Arrive at school. Do my best to straighten up my wreck of a classroom. Make copies, sketch out notes on the plan for each of my classes. Glance through the teacher's editions of the textbooks. Write up an agenda on the board and a "focus"--a short writing assignment to start the class.

Nerves begin at 8, half an hour before my juvie class enters. (This is the one with only 20 8th graders--the 20 worst discipline problems at school, in the at-risk youth program.) Begin to scramble.

Enter 1st period. When the bell rings, perhaps four of them are in their seats. The rest trickle in within the next half hour. Or not at all; there are a lot of absences. The same focus takes my 7th graders 5 minutes, my other 8th graders 10, and this class 20.

Stagger through the lesson at an agonizing pace while half the class ignores me, 5-6 are openly threatening each other, and one or two are yelling at the rest to shut up so they can hear. Good times.

Second period I have off, mercifully. I recover from 1st period and start to prepare for the rest of my day.

Third period, enter my second group of 8th graders, recently down to 37 from a high of 46. I have them for language arts and reading, 2 periods. They're a squirrely bunch, but at least 2/3 of them are willing to do the work I ask for. It's also a below grade-level class, so many of them have trouble reading and writing coherently, and I have no more resources to help them. Lessons proceed more smoothly, more quickly, and more effectively, but still at least half of my energy and attention go toward management rather than education. I keep the whole class in from lunch 4 days out of 5.

Lunch. 40-ish minutes. When I can, I escape to the teacher's lounge, but usually I have work to do in the classroom. There are usually between 5 and 20 students in there as well, doing what middle school kids do (early mating rituals).

My afternoon consists of one group of seventh graders for two periods. In language arts, I generally use the same lessons as with my 8th graders (which my 7th grade class finishes almost twice as quickly). In reading, we have different books. The afternoon is a joy. The difference, I recenty concluded, was that my seventh graders are actually somewhat motivated to learn.

The bell rings at 2:40. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I hang around for an hour and then go to my credentialling classes from 4-10. On Tuesdays I have staff or department meetings till 4. Once a month on Thursdays I have TFA workshops. I generally feel the best between 3 and 4, coming off of my good class with a whole children-free evening ahead of me. Things start to get bad again at about 8, when bedtime (and subsequently, sleep, and the next day) loom.

At night, I come home to the best apartment in the world, where I sort and grade papers and wrack my strung-out brain for a way to make nouns and verbs interesting.

My days. Not much differentiates them. This month has crawled.


I do not like teaching. Not a surprise. I did not expect to like teaching, or my life, at least until after Christmas. But "I hate this" has been tickering through my head for a month now, and that's wearing. Recently, I've decided that chanting "this is not my life" like a mantra is not an attitude that will improve things.

I told Bryan that part of my malaise came from failing spectacularly every day. It's true. I'm working insanely hard, and I'm not a very good teacher. But it's also true, I thought as I trudged to my car, that giving into despair, that concentrating on how I hate this, is not a way to work at improving--it's a way of giving up. Making an excuse, however valid, to stop doing this. And I knew then that what I really wanted was someone to tell me it was okay to quit.

But the thing is, there's still this fiber in the back of me that doesn't want to quit. It remembers that I didn't get into this to become a fantastic teacher forever, but to test myself in a totally unprecedented way. And quitting--literally or emotionally--was forsaking that sometimes bewildering goal I set for myself.

And that semi-mundane insight, which all happened during my 20-second morning walk to the car, seems to have been sort of a turning point. Not a point where things start to get better, but the point of inflection, where instead of getting worse at an increasing rate, they're getting worse more slowly.

Last weekend was a real emotional low. I spent much of Friday and Saturday fantasizing about quitting. I took a sick day Monday, a blessed, blessed relief that allowed me to spend a little more of my weekend unwinding and a little less working. Bryan and I went into to city again, and we spent a bit of time with friends. Having a four-day week made things a lot more bearable. Also, taking a business day off allowed me to straighten out the last, painfully lingering administrative shit. Putting the license plates on my car. Getting it insured. Cancelling my Sprint phone service. Changing my address with the last round of companies (I think...).

Something else changed, too. When I went to my credential classes that night and to school the next day, when people asked me how I was doing, I stopped saying "oh, fine" and started saying "well, I'm miserable." Just that little bit of honesty and the support/suggestions it elicited helped me feel a titch better.

I also got a little reminder jolt this week that I wasn't alone. Of course, I see my TFA friends at classes Mondays and Wednesdays, and on the weekends, but it has still been very easy to feel all by myself. Especially because there is only one other TFA teacher at my school (usually teachers are clustered with at least 3-4 TFAers at a site). A nice 2nd-year named Philip, he has been as supportive as can be, but also appallingly put-together and competent. Definitely not going through my hell. But on Wednesday, I was visited by Sean (one of the Bay Area program directors who has been incredibly helpful and supportive from the start). On Thursday we had our monthly workshops, which were helpful as well as comforting. And it was just unspeakably wonderful to hear again and again what I already knew: I am not alone. Everybody struggles. Especially the middle school teachers. I also had a talk with Philip (the 2nd-year at my school). He told me about his mistakes his first year and said he wouldn't relive it for a million dollars.

I don't know why that's so good to hear, but it is.

So now, I still don't want to go to work on Monday. And things aren't really getting any better. But my stress-level and workload are at least getting worse more slowly. Mostly, I recaptured some of the idea that I should be doing this. That it's not only good for me in some vaccination-like way, but that it may actually get better, and one day I may not be miserable doing this. And that after all, I'm probably doing some kind of good in the world.

That's where I am today.

:: Leslie H - 1:12 PM - ::

The ads on my blog are the funhouse mirrors of my life, telling truths in distorted, horrifying ways. I was fine when they were all about San Francisco real estate. Now they're all book reports and phonics. Is this really my life?

:: Leslie H - 8:03 PM - ::

I would just like to say: it's Tuesday night. I'm grading papers. And I'm a little intoxicated.

But sometimes you just need a coffee and Baileys.

And a boyfriend cooking you dinner. :)

:: Leslie H - 7:56 PM - ::

I'm writing this update now, during my prep period on Tuesday (2nd) because I'm in a pretty good mood about teaching, and that is a rarity. My first period class is seriously full of juvenile hall exes, and it's a zoo. But today went a little better. They got back their first tests (over 80% of this class failed it), and we started to review the material. I'm in a good mood because I kept two kids after class who are doing well and talked to them about helping out and teaching their classmates. This one girl, Selena, I like a lot. She's sort of belligerent in class, has two older brothers in jail, has been in juvenile hall herself. But when I talk to her after class, she shows this sort of surprising vulnerability. If I do nothing else right this year, maybe just forming a relationship with her and helping her get out of this trap will be enough to keep me sane.

Basically, as I've told many of you when you've tracked me down and forced an update out of me, I hate my life right now. I don't like teaching at all. Especially not the frickin subject and predicate of sentences. For those who don't know, they switched me to language arts and reading from social studies, and the material is just not nearly as interesting to me. I don't have time to write creative and engaging lesson plans; I'm still dealing with 42 8th graders in my 3rd and 4th period classes; I'm drowing in papers to grade; and the details of my life (health insurance, car insurance, dead car batteries) are getting left behind as I struggle to stay afloat. And everyone who knows tells me it's going to get worse before it gets better.

But, true, I did get into this expecting to be miserable until Christmas. So I'm not surprised by how much this sucks. It's just that, it's one thing to plan some "life experience" when you're nestled in the cozy college bosom, and it's quite another to have to get up and face it every morning.

Having Bryan here is doing a lot to maintain my sanity. He has been so supportive, so helpful in dealing with the administrative side of my life (like replacing my car battery yesterday), and so wonderful to come home to at night. I can't imagine going through this and trying to keep up a long-distance relationship. I don't know that it would have survived. He's also on the cusp of having a job, which will make him feel a lot better, too.

I am trying on the weekends (well, Saturdays--Sundays are work days) to take advantage of this awesome place that I live. Last Saturday Bryan and I went into the city (San Francisco is just "the city") with a TFA friend of mine, Jenn. It was awesome. I hope to do more of that.

Don't have time for beautiful writing/revision, all those other luxuries. Just wanted to tap out an update before I figured out what the hell I'm teaching for the rest of the day. Hope everyone is well. Rest assured, I miss you all.

:: Leslie H - 9:34 AM - ::

I'm now soliciting college work. I want to bring in an assortment of textbooks and papers from various college subjects to show to my kids, to give them an idea of the material covered and literacy level required in college. So, if you don't mind, troll your old files and send me your best papers! Fun but not obscene, from a variety of subjects and of a variety of lengths would be best.

Things are going okay. I'm still making it through the day by chanting "this is not my life" like a mantra, but I feel better than last week. Swamped with work, but what else is new.

We went hiking yesterday, and I communed with big trees. It helped. Check out gallery.

:: Leslie H - 6:46 PM - ::

Contact info:

3480 Granada Ave #307
Santa Clara, CA 95051

cell: (408) 887-0853 (free weekends, people)
home: (408) 564-5004 (not quite connected yet, but soon)

:: Leslie H - 9:56 PM - ::

Bryan and I bought plane tickets to come to Texas for Christmas. We'll be in Dallas the 23rd-25th and Austin the 25th-28th. So you should be, too. Also, you should visit us! Our apartment (the best apartment in the world) is all settled and cozy and ready for couch-guests.

:: Leslie H - 9:41 PM - ::

So, how'd the first week go? Well, it was long, agonizing, difficult, harrowing, but by Friday I really felt that I'd laid a good foundation with the students. I'd hammered the rules home, taken on some discipline problems and handled them fairly well, plus gotten excited about the curriculum. (world history, mmmm).

And then it turns out that I can't teach social studies after all! Ha ha! Something about the credential I'm getting means that I can't teach just one subject. So I get to start over next week, as a language arts and reading teacher. Whee! Boy howdy, am I excited. So now I'm teaching five different subjects: regular 8th grade language arts, 8th grade language arts and reading for kids below grade level, and 7th grade language arts and reading. And that class for kids below grade level: 46 students. Where will they sit? Who knows! It's all part of the *fun.*

I'm having to remind myself frequently to take deep breaths and have a life outside of work/school. Labor Day weekend has been life-saving. Now I feel like I have a sense of humor about the whole situation, wheras on Friday I was mostly sobbing uncontrollably.

:D

So, that's my life. I'd tell you about my kids, but I don't have them anymore. Just a brand-new bunch of 8th graders who have been described repeatedly as "tough."

Bring it.

:: Leslie H - 9:39 PM - ::