Catching Up: End of School Stories

Oh jeez, I am sooooo sorry I've gone AWOL for so long! The last time I posted occurred right before the last day of classes (just as hot as last time I posted--so excruciating) and then I had to correct my own exams and then I proctored Regents exams and then the English Department spent three days correcting those Regents exams and my car broke down on the way to work and my horse threw a shoe and the computer exploded and melted right in front of my eyes....OK, those last three things did not happen. I don't even drive to work. But seriously, I didn't feel I could update at work and when I got home, all I wanted to do was...not sit in front of a computer. Forgive me [said with Bambi eyes]?

So...let's see...I think this post will include witticisms about the last two weeks of work, because I don't want to start back with my rant about plastic bags (but it's coming, I warn you now) or Scarlet Lily's beautiful wedding because that deserves a post all its own. Well, work. All right. I will state right away that the old joke of "School would be great if it weren't for the kids" did ring true, honestly. Nobody begging for an extension or complaining about it being too hot...wait, we did do that last bit. Whoops. I did actually miss some of my kids and felt absurdly flattered at the ones who asked me to sign their yearbooks. For next year, I will know to sign next to my picture so I don't again see "Jenn, I luv you cuz you take care of me when I'm [really] drunk...." Sigh. I also have had a few that wanted to be my friend on Facebook, which I of course have to gently click "No" to because that crosses a boundary for me that I find it best to keep well established. Again, though, I found it slightly flattering.

After grading my own exams, which "ranged", as I always tell the students (from 43% to 90% this time), I then had the joy of helping grade the Regents exams. For those who don't know, NY has every single 11th grader in public school take the same exams. The English one takes place over two days and has them write a total of FOUR essays. In an un-air-conditioned gym. This may sound mean, but the fun for us in grading is when we come across an unusual or stand-out exam. I think the best came from their reading about skin cancer and having to write an article about it:

[starting sentence] "THE SUN DOESN'T LIKE YOU!"

"When a person thinks of the sun, one word comes to mind: cancer."

"Parents, why not pay for a spray-on tan so your kids can be safe and ready to look great at prom?"

My other favorites involved a few kids who apparently read the manual How to Kill a Mockingbird. (Step one, get BB gun for Christmas. Step two, do not aim at Miss Maudie while she's tending her flowers.) We did have some great ones, too, as with the student who wrote that Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield both wanted to escape from society in their own way. With the fourth essay, they had to read a quote, interpret it, agree or disagree with it, and then choose two literary works that backed that up (as with the previous sentence). This year's quote came from David Mamet:

"...the human lot in life is to try and fail..."

Not uplifting, but it works with a lot of what they read. What we all found interesting was the number of students who read it as "humans attempt to fail" because in slang, you say or write, "I'm going to try and clean my house today" instead of "I'm going to try to clean my house today." So some kids read the quote as the former, viewing it as "the human lot in life is to try to fail". One student wrote that the human race is trying to kill itself. He did disagree with it, I'm pleased to report.

Now that that's done, I get to wait for my room assignment and schedule. Hopefully I find out about this tomorrow, because I'd like to set up camp soon. Plus I got to do every teacher's dream today: order supplies for next year. All teachers secretly (or openly) would love to go to Office Max with a $1000 gift card and go nuts. Mostly we just go and gaze at all the different kinds of pens, Post-Its, and folders available to us, with a little knot of excitement gurgling in our bellies. Truly, I'm going there tomorrow to get accordion folders to organize my literature units and I could not be more excited. I also get to see if my office still has a wall tomorrow-- truly. The maintenance staff had to move my desk four feet away from the wall due to some fire code and they have to put up a new wall, so I may very well come in tomorrow with a desk that faces a set of lockers in the chemistry hallway. I'll let you know.

Whew! Enough of a catch-up for now? Have a good Tuesday, folks.

Opinionated Puppy

So as I waited for the computer to warm up just now, I looked behind me and saw Penny taking a giant whiz on a pile of graded essays. Clearly, she thinks they're not that good. I shall refrain from comment.

We also inadvertently introduced her to the pool yesterday: With the 90 degree weather and no A/C installed yet, we headed to T's mother's to swim, thinking just maybe we'd get the dog to come into the pool. She wasted no time in leaping directly in and coming up swimming. So proud! I wish I could post the phone picture I took (if anyone can tell me how to do this, I will) because when you drench a very fluffy dog, she looks like a skinny, drowned rat. Seriously one of the funniest sights I've seen in a long, long time.

Now I'm off to the farmer's market and put gas in the car before it goes above $4.09. Sigh. I need to keep my job just for the walking commute.

Think Wicked Witch of the West

I'm melting! Meeeeellllltiiiiiiiiiing! Oh, what a world, what a world!

OK, not that bad. But teaching on the third floor is simply an exercise in [chemistry? physics?] today: Hot air rises. It's 7:30 a.m. and already 80 degrees outside. Girls wear their shortest and strappiest clothing, and I may have to let a lot of it slide. Eyes will droop with lethargy. I will do my best, but I can't quite fathom how I can get my students enthralled about literary and poetic terms when they can't think straight in our bad-kind-of-sauna classroom. On a Friday. With three days of classes to go. Truly this constitutes a day when all dedicated teachers should get Oscars, because boy, do we have to put on a show to get them interested when all we want to do is go home and sit in the dark in front of a fan with a tall, cool glass of [insert favorite summertime beverage here].

This morning the seniors have their picnic and SADD (the DD now stands for "destructive decisions", BTW) stages a car explosion/crash and simulates a drunk driving accident. Any minute now we'll hear said explosion. Apparently the cops come, the fire trucks come, and students "die" and are taken away, all to show what happens when you drink and drive. This weekend they have prom, so you can make the connection. One colleague said she worried that the kids would get jaded about it but every year they don't, which I find terrific and sadly necessary. Everyone goes through their lives with a story of someone they knew having that happen, and I hope this type of demonstration allows for fewer stories.

So off I go to prepare the kids for talking about allusions, archetypes, irony, oxymorons, and the like. Whee! Friday fun day! Thank God for linen dresses and in-laws with pools. Have a great weekend, folks!

p.s. M., I did not mean to neglect the lovely time I had last weekend in Albany/Ellenville with you and C's family. I will post about it soon. It will work better if you send me some pictures....

Did it work this time? My picture?

Mosaic of Me (thanks, FN and Domesticali!)

I got this idea from feather nester, who got it from Domesticali and thought it was fun. I'll list the questions below and how to do it. Funny enough, when I put in my first name, that's the girl who came up. And I'm really not sure about ol' Jake anymore but I couldn't think of anyone else.



Here's how you play:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs (right click on the image, choose properties, then the image URL) for the images into Mosaic Maker.

Here are the questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word to describe you.
12. What is your flickr name? (If you don't have one, use whatever you usually use for a user name)

Memorable Memorial Day

Well, I couldn't have had a better Memorial Day weekend, in my opinion. Friday I graded (gross but necessary) and got in some quality plunking time (on the couch, in bed with a book, etc.). Saturday we went whole hog and had Mom and R. out to help us with our backyard--R. brought a chainsaw and shovels, so he and T. did many manly things with cutting down tree limbs and unearthing an old stump that became our new fire pit. DH is VERY excited about this, as well he should be.

Here's how economical and green we did things: We used the organic material from the stump as one level of dirt for my new, tiny vegetable garden! We had a bunch of old tree trunk parts to use as the border, dug up the soil, laid the organic stuff on that, add a dash (OK, a lot) of peat moss and cow manure, add plants and water, and hopefully I'll send future shots of my gorgeous little tomatoes and peppers. Either that, or I'll send pictures of my brown and dead efforts, lamenting the fact that I didn't put the garden in full enough sunlight or something. Seriously, the four of us had such fun weeding and cutting and creating. As Mom says, gardening works so well because it's instant gratification: When you weed, you immediately see a difference. She directed me and we did quite a good job, only flinching after R. pointed out that we had poison ivy growing near one of our trees. Thus, I am saving money for the future, AND I got the plants at the farmer's market, so it goes from pretty local to backyard-local. Plus we used all the weeds and sticks as fuel for the fire. Not bad, I say.

Once a stump, soon to be a fire pit

See what I mean?

My wee garden!

Sunday must have rocked, because I can't even remember what we did--oh yes, nice, slow day doing more puttering in the yard and getting full use of the new hammock. Oh, and while I biked around town (exercise, no gas, no emissions--can you tell I feel a little proud of this? I do. I totally do.), DH went and bought me a present: A red wheelbarrow ("So much depends..." for you William Carlos Williams fans out there). It's not every woman whose husband buys her a wheelbarrow that she'll actually use. I did get excited: This is one of many reasons why we're together. DH got to use his fire pit that very night as we entertained, and I have to report there's something very satisfying about sitting around enjoying something you created, no matter what that something is. Life doesn't get much better than this, my friends.

Monday I did a bunch more grading (again, gross) and that evening we went to Mom and R.'s for an absolutely delicious dinner that we did not have to cook, although I did ring in summer officially by making gazpacho. Just cutting up the cilantro and parsley made me decide to have a small indoor herb garden when winter comes: I loved the smell of fresh cut greenery!

If You Never Watched Beverly Hills, 90210, Skip This Post

Truly, Papa, just ignore it. You won't like it. It has to do with 90s TV you disliked intensely.

For the rest of you, have you seen this? It's the NEW 90210.



I think the Fug Girls put it best in their post at NY Mag, but seriously, can we please find something new to watch instead of more of the same old crap? At the same time, I may find myself watching an episode or two in order to know what my students are watching, laugh myself silly, and stare in that can't-tear-my-eyes-away, train wreck kind of way. For those of you who admit to having watched Nip/Tuck because it's so completely voyeuristic and trashy (I have, on occasion, for that reason), I think the one chick was on the show, mainly dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl tart who liked to entrap older men in her web of young sexiness. Yuck. I can only assume she'll reprise that kind of role on this new show.

At least they got Kelly Taylor--possible Dylan McKay showing???? Oh, he was sooooo dreamy!