:: p-dog ::

Random observations

My radio mood pendulums by the hour. On the way to school, I get my news--morning edition daily. When I get in my car to go home, I cannot begin to handle the latest election coverage or stock market update: I need pop-y wimp rock crap. Invariably, I get in my car and get disgusted by the news before I've left the parking lot. Then I reset my radio to NPR when I get home, ready for my morning commute. Today I switched from some worthless fluff band called something like "The Lispers" back to NPR to hear the words "anti-Semitic violence," and that was it. Radio off.

Last year it seemed to take months of intermittent rain for the hills to turn green. But after a week of steady showers, there is already a visible layer of bright green seeping up between dead stalks of gray and brown. A dusting of green across the hills. I like having a visual cue for the changing season beyond falling leaves. Time is passing.

Some of my 7th graders were complaining about a bad smell today, which I was quickly able to trace to one of the students. He absolutely reeked of pot, and some kind of cologne that was doing a very bad job of masking the smell of pot. Today is don't-do-drugs week, by the way, and I'd just handed out pencils and bookmarks to that effect. On the announcements this morning they read a little blurb about the dangers of marijuana, and four periods later, here he was. It reminded me of my high school health class, when the lecture on lung damage made me want to light up during break. Kids are so stupid.

:: Leslie H - 3:53 PM - ::

Have I mentioned the alarming fact that I am now officially Fischer's Language Arts Department Chair? Lest you think I did something to merit this position, the former head has been trying to pawn it off on someone all year, to no avail. Sitting in a staff meeting last week, I finally realized that it wasn't that much work, and might be an interesting opportunity. In the absence of leadership, leadership (such as it is) emerged. Perhaps I was loopy with staff meeting fumes.

As I've pondered the whole thing, I've gotten sort of excited about it. There are certainly a wealth of ways our department could be working together better, and I am forever now concerned with improving the school in some lasting way (so I feel less guilt about ruthlessly bailing on the teaching profession in June). My first official act today was to commandeer an empty classroom to be a "Language Arts Resource Room," where we can at least leave books and materials to share with each other. Or get stolen. Or sit together on a table and, perhaps, mate to produce helpful resource offspring.

It's interesting, too, in that it will be my first ever leadership position in a group in which several members weigh in with three times my age and 20 times my experience. Fortunately they are a laidback bunch, and I'm treading lightly. I'll let you, the internet, know how it goes.

More pics on gallery from this weekend, by the way (Fall Hijinks album).

:: Leslie H - 8:48 PM - ::

I had a great time today teaching my reading classes about the 2000 election. I happened across a class set of a Junior Scholastic magazine all about the elections, and we've been reading it article-by-article on the last few Fridays. We reenacted portions of the first debate last week, and this week we learned all about the 2000 election. Of course, we had to stop, take notes, and draw pictures after practically every paragraph so they could actually understand what it was saying. Their knowledge of the political process is pretty slim, so in order to discuss the election of 2000, we simultaneously had to answer such questions as:

1. What are political parties, why do we have them, and what do they basically stand for?
2. Why do we only get two choices, what are third parties, and why are the major parties scared of them?
3. How do we elect a president? What is the electoral college and why do we have it?
4. How are election results reported? What are polls? What are exit polls? Why do the different news channels want to be the first to project a winner?
5. What is the Supreme Court? Who's on it? How do they get there?

Anyway, in addition to making them take copious notes on these subjects as we read, I also delighted them with tales of my own experience watching the 2000 election results come in, going to bed at 2 a.m. after the media called it for Bush, and then waking up and finding it all up in the air again. Oddly, they were very interested in this story.

With that finely-honed sense of what is not fair that only middle school students can possess, they were genuinely horrified at the discounted Florida ballots, the potential mistakes on the felons list, and the basic idea that Gore could get half a million more votes and not win the presidency. (I tried to pitch some ideas in favor of the Electoral College, in the interest of fairness, but I apparently wasn't that convincing.)

I came away fairly confident that they had learned a lot and been fairly fascinated by it all, which is a rare and glorious feeling. Being able to spark a mote of interest in the political system and process in my disinterested 8th graders has always been among my larger goals.

I've added some pictures of my students and school to the Fall 2004 album in gallery. There's a personally heart-warming shot of one of my lowest students interviewing the principal for the school paper, which was one of my warmest and fuzziest teacher moments to date.



Here's a shot I took of the girls' basketball team (Fischer in green), losing, as every Fischer team invariably does. At least no one can accuse us of prioritizing sports.

:: Leslie H - 4:06 PM - ::

Posted pictures from my family's visit now on gallery. Here's Dad on a tree:



The fabulous visit ended Sunday morning. Now I'm back to just Ms. Hall, and the kids are being shitty! Must go grade essays.

:: Leslie H - 3:50 PM - ::

Time for a quick update...

My parents/sister are visiting. We've been bopping all over the place, having a fabulous time but leaving very little left over for my two primary activities, namely working and passionately not working (watching TV, blogging, watching more TV). On Wednesday we "watched" the third debate, by which I mean we talked through most of them (my drinking game was poo-pooed). Thursday I took off from school for a jaunt through the Santa Cruz mountains. We karoomed through town after little mountain town, communed with the redwoods in Big Basin, and consumed a range of tasty wine samples at Bonny Doon. And that was all before lunch. Then we drove in and out of fog banks on our way to our favorite seafood dive in Half Moon Bay, where we dined on fish tacos, crab sandwiches, and cioppino, before puttering around downtown HMB and getting back to cozy Fremont by dinner hour.

Yesterday I taught school; Mom, Dad, Cameron, and Bryan got to witness the last 15 minutes of my sole 7th grade class, as they took a spelling test and squirmed. Other guests during that classtime: two former students, currently 9th graders, the maintenance man fixing my chronically leaky faucet, two phone calls and an announcement. It was a bit of a circus.
Then we visited the Winchester Mystery House, built 100 years ago by San Jose's resident crazy rich woman. It was a kick. Dinner with Peanut at Dasaprakash, our favorite regional veggie Indian food, then home through the vestiges of rush hour on 880.

I have fallen asleep (against my will) at 9:15 for the past two nights. This morning I got up at seven to make homework packets for next week. At nine we begin the San Francisco portion of our adventures.
These are good but hectic times.

:: Leslie H - 7:25 AM - ::

I watched the O'Reilly Factor tonight as an intellectual exercise. Usually Fox News and most of their cable brethren makes my blood pressure skyrocket, and I avoid it for health reasons. But tonight I threw caution to the winds because I couldn't, after all, get myself off this couch.

He really does a phenomenal job of sounding reasonable and pretending to look fairly at both sides of an issue--really, he's a fantastic media personality. On Sinclair Broadcasting's planned airing of an anti-Kerry documentary, he played the liberal, arguing against his viciously conservative guest. The guest claimed that the documentary was a fair outlet for voices silenced by the Liberal Media, while O'Reilly said that bad behavior (rampant one-sided Bush-bashing) by the Liberal Media did not excuse bad behavior by the Sinclair networks. He said that they should, in fairness, offer the Kerry campaign equal time to respond to the "documentary."

Sounds pretty fair, until you think about it, in any way, at all.
So according to Mr. O'Reilly,
Investing time and money into a documentary about completely spurious and discredited charges (Swift Boat Vets) and airing it on every station you own as you masquerade as objective media = giving the John Kerry political campaign a chance to answer the charges.

Hmmm.

He capped off his program by telling confused undecided voters that all they could do was listen to the debates and go "on instinct." Ladies and gentlemen, give up on facts. Truth is just too hard to figure out.

Saints preserve us, he's after our children.

:: Leslie H - 8:39 PM - ::

Interesting theory...

And, a much crazier debate game than mine, if you're feeling more daring, or plain suicidal. You'd have to update it a bit for #3, though. And buy a host of chemicals.

:: Leslie H - 5:10 PM - ::

Substitutes are funny. Sometimes you luck out, and your students behave so well that you feel just a teensy bit jealous. Other days, not so much.

I took a mental-health day a few weeks ago, and my sub-luck was in a slump. Here is an excerpt from the 3-page letter the poor man left me. In this section, he is referring to my one 7th-grade class (which is not my toughest).



My favorite part of the letter was his attempts at psychoanalysis, and apparent belief that "tugger-grabber" is a commonly understood designation, to be found in textbooks nationwide. (For all I know, it might be. Psych majors?) For the record, Tiana is a very good student, albeit full of energy like every normal 12-year-old.

My favorite part of the day, however, was learning upon my return that my substitute had almost thrown down with another teacher. In order to credit the appropriate class members for their offensive-projectile-making, he was allowing them to leave only one by one, after they gave him their names. Mr. H, our resident eccentric, wheelchair-bound, 300 lb. Vietnam vet, rolled over to see why his whole next class was tardy. When my sub gave him attitude, Mr. H offered to meet him after school to settle things with a good cane-thrashing. For the students, it was Christmas come early.

And while it never came to violence, the school was abuzz when I returned. I feel I should be absent more often.

:: Leslie H - 9:39 AM - ::

Where did this week go? Not that I'm complaining, but the days just flew by. This coming week--I can't quite believe it's here already--my family is coming to visit. I have been anticipating the visit for months and am taking Thursday off to go gallivanting. It will be my parents' first time out since they helped me move into last year's apartment (Cam visited in December). I'm looking forward to showing them around.

I enjoyed the debate last night, though the candidates seemed to come out pretty evenly. Watching the final round on Wednesday should be especially interesting with my parents, who are of that rare and elusive breed--the undecided voters. I wonder if they'll be up for our debate drinking game.
Drink when:
Bush says, "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" (twice if he says it wrong).
Bush claims Kerry has been inconsistent.
Kerry claims to have been consistent.
Either one accuses the other of dishonesty, deception, manslaughter, or piracy.

[Puddledog picture back by popular request.]

:: Leslie H - 6:23 PM - ::

Complete Distortion

The current New York Times headline on the VP debate is "Cheney and Edwards clash immediately," making it sound as though when they came out, instead of the traditional handshake, someone threw a punch.

My first impressions: Dick Cheney is a miserable troll, with a callous disregard for truth. Perhaps he’s able to tell bald-faced lies because the snarl fixed on his face masks his tells. Unfortunately, he appears to be winning. Evil is not steaming from his jacket as I'd dreamed. Edwards, on the other hand, appears to be a trophy wife. A very pretty lackey, with picturesque children.
I hope people forgot to watch this one. The candidates appear to be dodging every question in order to reiterate their loosely accurate talking points and accuse each other of gross dishonesty. So we can’t trust anyone. Makes me want to throw up my hands and move to Canada. Results: depressing voter turn-out.

Disjointed observations

I'm voting for the moderator:
Cheney: "I could respond, Gwen, but it's gonna take more than 30 seconds." (attempts charming smile)
Moderator: (deadpan) "Well, that's all you've got."

Mom, Dad, I could have had a stellar political career if only I could have claimed to be the first person in my family to graduate from college. What were you thinking?

Pandering to Israel:
Edwards: "*Six* children killed. What is Israel supposed to do?"
I don't know, blow up some more Palestinian children, I guess. Fair's fair.

Cheney: (attacks Edwards's attendance record in the Senate) "As the vice president, I preside over the Senate. I'm there most Tuesdays, when they're in session..."

The petulance breaks surface:
Edwards: "No, I DID talk about Israel! HE (points) didn't talk about it!"

As a language arts teacher who has, I swear to god, spent 20% of class time thus far giving students test after frickin test (today the vice principal yanked all but about 4 kids from 3 of my classes), it makes my *skin crawl* to hear anyone from the Bush administration talk about "No Child Left Behind" or their dedication to the public school system. Accountability my ass.

Ew.

Winner: Canada. I'm moving.

:: Leslie H - 6:30 PM - ::

I had a dream that students found my blog. I wonder what would happen then. Have I maintained plausible deniability?

If you're reading this and you're between the ages of 12 and 16, I am not your teacher, no matter what it sounds like.

Now do your homework.

:: Leslie H - 7:52 PM - ::