Finish Line

I’m writing this after sleeping until 2pm on a Tuesday. I feel well-rested for the first time in months. It’s pretty incredible.

Look, that’s me and my fellow student teachers, proving that we survived the experience, along with some of the Spanish faculty. Prof. Cere even changed his signature cardigan for a special multicultural corbata for the occasion. We had to each give a 15-minute presentation to the current curriculum class, who will be student teaching next semester. I was really nervous but once I was in front of them talking about my students and my lessons and the experience, everything was much easier. Mostly it’s such a relief to be able to honestly tell those other students: you will survive this, because I did.

My last day at the schools was last Friday, after lots of grading and tying up of loose ends. Grading the 6th graders “me gusta/no me gusta” posters was far more fun than giving out grades at the high school… which triggered a swarm of very tall teenagers waving papers or excuses at me. Claustrophobic!

I had several going away parties with my students. I forgot how hardcore little kids are about candy. I bought a crapton of it for the middle schoolers, and it was pretty dramatic. I am loving having free time, being able to breathe, and most importantly being able to sleep… but I already miss the kids.

Past few days I’ve actually had the time to

• sleep
• work
• sleep more
• start thinking about Christmas shopping
• look at my bank account and start thinking about paying rent instead
• go to a hindu temple with Chelsea
• make some noise with Wes & his noise band
• take pictures of trees
• fall down on the ice approximately 5 times
• work on my resume
• start looking for teaching jobs
• sleep more
• celebrate with some good friends (& cousins)
• visit the HLC & Judy Mack
• did I mention sleep?

Mmmmm.

Now for the rest of my life.

 

And the clocks twirl their hands nervously

I have a stack of copies made for my next class, and a few moments to self-medicate with some more coffee.

The good news is that  I am passing student teaching. I had a follow-up observation and final evaluation yesterday. I managed to pull things together. I still need to turn in the rest of my unit documents…. which is going to be tricky, since it involves borrowing a car or finding a 2-hr. block in the school day to take the stupid bus to her house.

Regardless, I will be presenting my final portfolio on Monday. I will be teaching full time next week (all six classes). And then I am done.

I am exhausted.  My eyes are starting to constantly feel like huge craters in my skull. Last two nights I only got any sleep because I fell asleep on Wes’ couch while working on papers and lesson plans, and my night-owl boyfriend woke me up in the early hours of the morning so I could go to school. If he hadn’t, I probably would still be there right now, passed out with my face on the keyboard

I have never worked this hard in my life. My days are so blurred together. I keep forgetting things like eating, forming basic sentences, returning phone calls.

I think I always assumed that Herculaneum effort could really prevail… that people only give up for lack of motivation or real desire to do something. I thought that really if you tried hard enough, you could do pretty much anything. It’s why I don’t take days off when I’m sick, and why I always try to work idiotic schedules. The last few weeks have proved to me that you do indeed reach a point where you do fail for lack of physical ability, not for lack of motivation. You can’t pull three all-nighters in a row, teaching all day and working all night, without passing out somewhere, or without becoming totally unintelligible.

I’m still happy, and this is still what I want to be doing.

But holy crap, I just want to sleep.

Cold Front

I feel like just yesterday I was sighing with relief because it was Friday, finally. And now it’s Friday again, already… though I think this has been the longest and most grueling week I’ve had during student teaching. Maybe during this year? life?

Unsolicited, unhinged

Second balmy November day in a row:
perfect blue sky, scent of damp earth beneath crinkled leaves,
the trees waving a last frantic hallelujah with their small many-pointed hands,
shaken free of narrow wrists.

I walk ten blocks or so each day, between schools. Today at the last busy intersection
(waiting for the light to change)
I saw a blind man opposite me,
the tip of his cane scanning the red brick of this Historical District,
pausing, listening to the brush of traffic. Calm and capable.
I stopped myself from raising my voice, informing him when it was safe to walk.
I didn’t want to offend.

Always find myself catching myself, reigning it in:
that need reach out and hang on, to warn you,
the impulsive reaching out of a mother to the passenger seat
at an unexpectedly abrupt stop.
I’m no one’s mother. I reach out for strangers.

I am always thinking of the times I should not have reigned it in.

As I round the corner I can see the students who have left their heavy coats inside,
running across the playground, clustered near the fence.
From a distance I can already recognize the ones I know:
a bright yellow shirt, the crook of an arm, a shout, the muffled laughter behind hands.
Near the door a very small boy who I do not know
sits cross-legged in solitude, eyes dark. I ask if he’s okay.
He is, he says. Just checking, I say.

I can’t help myself.
Sometimes I still almost break the impervious silences,
many times I almost call, still want to make sure.
I remember the girl crying on my bathroom floor.
I remember the rain on a borrowed coat, I remember
scouring dark streets for a lost wallet, making international phone calls
to worried parents whose daughter we rescued from countless indiscretions
in the filthy bathrooms of bars.
I remember international calls whose digits I dialed over and over again,
miscalculating time changes, leaving messages at odd hours,
trying to unravel the mysteries of communication.

Someday I will break through my tact and give you unsolicited reassurance;
I’d still give anything to tell you,
to prove you wrong, because I am still here,
arm flinching outward, protecting empty space,
filling up my arms with vacant gestures.

Even Seasonal Pet Names Are Pretty Gross

Monday, Monday. It’s been a busy day. I always feel somewhat deflated about this time of day… after the students stampede out the door, when the exhaustion hits that I’ve been staving off with constant activity all day. Taking a breather in the now-empty classroom for a few moments before catching the next bus back to Ypsi.

It was nice to have a (pretend) weekend… that is, a weekend of productivity, with a few stints of enjoyable procrastination. We did watch Ice Spiders!!!… Ashes and I knew we needed to rent it the moment we saw it on the shelf.

Really, it was everything we hoped for. I would recommend it if you are a fan of Mystery Science Theater-esque movie critique with your friends. And the computer animation was impressively bad, considering Sci-Fi made it this year. Then again, you can get the gist of the movie just by picking up the DVD case. Giant spiders, products of a top-secret government experiment gone bad, eating people at a ski lodge. Pretty straightforward. Pretty wonderful.

Speaking of Ice Spiders!!! …or lack thereof… it’s unseasonably warm out today.

I introduced my big Caprichos project to my students today… the culminating project I want them to do at the end of this unit. I’m really excited about it. Yes, I’m a big tool. I’m sure I’ll rant more about that later, though. Time to go homeward.

Crumple (& other fabulous words)

I am a fan of public transportation, for personal and global reasons, but there are a few things that suck. Waiting at the bus stop at 6:30 on November mornings, for example. Also, walking between schools means I have to shlep all my teaching stuff with me. I usually have my lesson plan book, laptop, folders of student work to correct/return, my binder of unit materials, sometimes food of some sort, articles of work clothing if necessary, etc, etc, etc. Today I also have a stack of art books. My back is already protesting, and I haven’t even shlepped the 10ish blocks to the middle school yet.

This has been another episode of Whining With Sara. Tune in next time for more whining (and dining?)

On a more positive note, Day #2 of my unit went incredibly well. I’m really happy with how things are going. I am loving the discussions we’re having of art, and how fast the students are catching onto the more boring nuts-n-bolts of grammar. Because of the day off yesterday and weird scheduling stuff, I haven’t seen Block 2 at all yet this week… so they get taught the first two lessons back to back tomorrow and Friday. We’ll see if optimism will still prevail.

Speaking of days off, I slept until approximately 2pm yesterday. It was beeyooteeful. Didn’t get a whole lot done before going to work, but that’s okay. I didn’t really expect it to be an outrageously productive day. Just outrageously restful. Which it was.

Monday night was really nice. Sherman Alexie was phenomenal. If you ever get a chance to go hear him speak, take it. He’s relevant but really hilarious.

This week in lieu of sandwiches (since none of the symposium had the motivation or ingredients necessary to pull something together) we held a ceremonial burning of James Blunt. Really, we wanted to have a fire and decided that nothing’s more fun than burning someone in effigy, and James Blunt lent himself fairly easily to hatred. We listened to “You’re Beautiful” for some solemn moments before watching his pictures crumple up into flame. It was lovely. I love the fireplaces at Kingwood.

And now, onward, mis amigos.

And it’s only Monday.

Killing time before I brave the dreary elements to catch the bus back to Ypsi, a hot shower, a nap. Sherman Alexie is coming to EMU tonight. I’m excited to go hear him talk; I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen and read of his work. Also excited to visit with long-absent friends & family over some cervezas. Perhaps the most exciting of all is that I get a freaking day off tomorrow. Both schools are out for professional development. I had my student teaching seminar last week, so my professional development tomorrow will consist of SLEEP. Professionally. I’ll be working on lesson plans and grading and papers, and going to work in the evening… but still. Sleeeep. Sueño.

I began teaching my unit today. I have been so nervous. What minuscule sleep I got last night was interrupted by constant checking the clock, dozing restlessly. I’ve been teaching the middle schoolers for weeks and weeks, but high schoolers are newer territory, and this is a wide two-week stretch I have to get them through, and hope I come out at the end with a handful of students who can conjugate regular verbs in the preterite, and perhaps even demonstrate new insights on art and history.

Actually, it went really well. The students had a lot of intelligent and thoughtful insight to offer during our discussion of art. I’m looking forward to their final projects, which will involve individual art projects based on Goya’s social commentary in his Caprichos.

In other (nauseous) news, I have been revoltingly happy with a certain young man, probably to the discomfort of anyone around us. It’s pretty disgusting. Pretty great.
Anyway. Public transportation. I must shlep. Hasta luego.

The View From Here

Busy, busy! There’s so much going on in my life right now. Right now I am drinking lemon ginger tea during a brief respite between schools. Yesterday and today we took each of the Spanish 2 classes to Habana’s, the new Cuban restaurant in Ann Arbor, as a field trip. We requested Spanish-speaking waitstaff ahead of time, and they were very kind and patient with us. I had a great time. The café cubano con leche was very good.

I’m staying very happy and energized lately, but sometimes I think that may be due to my almost constant state of sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep has always made things luminous for me. Then again, lack of sleep usually means that I am so incredibly busy doing things that I love that I don’t have time to sleep. There’s a lot of good things going on my life these days.

• Mostly I am still completely immersed in teaching, and gearing up to begin teaching my BIG SCARY UNIT this coming week.
• A friend’s water broke over the weekend and she will probably be giving birth any time. Another friend is preparing for the birth of his daughter, as well. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
• I’m excited, because I am prone to stealing babies.
• My old roommate/housemate just got engaged, which is not at all surprising but certainly very exciting.
• I’ve recently taken tree-climbing to a whole new level, thanks to Shana.
• The Kingwood house successfully survived another Halloween, full of horribly offensive costumes.
• The Sandwich Symposium is beginning to make a comeback, slowly but surely. Venison and pumpkin pie on pumpernickel? Don’t knock it ’til you try it!
• Speaking of sammiches, and men who cook them for me, I have been spending a lot of time (well, what little time I have) with what my grandma would call a “very nice fellow”. 
• I cleaned my room! Well, mostly. It’s a vast improvement, and more functional with all my books and binders neatly on shelves instead of scattered on the floor among shoes/clothes/papers/cats.
• I am considering buying another couple-hundred-dollar car from a friend… mostly to shlep to and from work on weekends when I have to close, and to have the means to really get to the grocery store without a several-hour detour. I haven’t had real groceries in weeks.
• I am trying to formulate post-graduation plans. I know I will be around EMU (graduated or no) this winter to finish up an incomplete, but after that I haven’t a clue.
• I’m trying to find a new living situation, but I doubt I’ll find anything cheaper than the current crowded and increasingly tension-ridden situation I’m in now. We’ll see. Keep me posted if you know of anything cheap (!!!) available in the next few months.

That’s all for now. Brief breather’s over; time to go do some lesson planning, teaching, and hopefully some bus-napping between school and work.

I miss all of y’all.

Student Teaching in Ann Arbor

My two schools where I am doing my student teaching are both non-traditional, alternative public schools. I don’t have a lot of experience in public schools or schools of any kind, but I know enough to recognize that where I’m at now is a little off the beaten path. I get plenty of reminders of the environment I’m actually working in. For example, in the 7th/8th grade class:

• We were learning Spanish adjectives to describe opposites, using “famous opposites”(Laurel & Hardy, The Odd Couple, Lisa & Bart Simpson, Celine Dion and her husband what’s-his-face, etc…) I’m not familiar with the Odd Couple, so obviously none of the kids knew who they were. But the picture we had was of two clearly different people: one scruffy guy with a scuzzy shirt, baseball hat, cigar, etc… and the other in a suit. Someone pointed out that the cigar-smoker was a “mal ejemplo” because of the smoking. A kid in the back piped up: “Well, clearly they’re both bad examples, because that guy’s wearing a suit, so he’s obviously part of a big corporation that’s exploiting underpaid workers…” and on and on. What? You’re in 7th grade.

• Same class, same discussion of opposites. When my cooperating teacher told the class that these were characters from a show called The Odd Couple, one kid asked if they were actually a couple. Another kid raised his hand and said “Well, probably not, because homosexuality wasn’t really accepted at that point in time. It hasn’t been publically accepted until a lot more recently.” I grew up in a white/straight/christian smalltown.. I don’t remember when I even found out homosexuality existed, but it was certainly well into high school.

• This week we were talking about greetings, and different ways to address tú (informal) and usted (formal) people. In Spain, we explained, or in schools that are more traditional, students don’t call their teachers by their first names, and it would be very disrespectful to call a teacher tú. “What about in an Open School in Spain?” somebody asked. “I don’t think they have open schools in Spain,” said my cooperating teacher. “Why not?” asked the Class Struggle Kid from my first example. “Are they classists or something?”

They’re such odd, funny, smart kids. I’m having a blast.

Everyone Has A Summer

Hello, amigos.

I’m sitting here waiting for a teaching sample video to compress, and realizing that it’s been a while since I’ve written here. I think I may try to pick it up again, to keep in touch but also because I realized that it might be nice to have somewhere to record my student teaching adventures. I feel bad for the friends I talk to often these days, because I don’t have a lot to talk about other than student teaching or work. This may be due to the fact that I don’t do much other than student teach and work. Regardless, I’ll get it out of my system here. If you’re tired of hearing me talk about Spanish, teaching, lesson plans, and so on… I suppose you could just click that little “x” button at the top of this screen.

But I digress.

A lot has happened since I got home from Spain. After you last heard from me…