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2001-11-29 - 10:38 p.m. I just wanted to thank whoever decided to vote for me. I now have three votes for best website of the links at Shaun's Page. I realize I will not win the contest but I am just happy to say that I am not the only one who voted for me. :) This is a case of not having much to say but writing anyway. I found a really cool webpage the other day. It is by this girl, Erin. I love/hate people named Erin. Anyway, go visit her. I read many of her archives and concluded she is very interesting and fun. I did get a notice, finally, that they served the papers to the evil landlord's PO Box. I had to write a special letter to tell them to do that if they couldn't find him so it took awhile. I guess they served it on November 22nd. If he doesn't respond within fourteen days I automatically win. Or something like that. But the matter of actually getting the money is another story. I am just doing it for the principle, and the hope of money. We'll see what happens. I went to school today. I think I had a fever because I was all hot, and normally I am always freezing. I had pink cheeks and one of my students told me I was luminescent. This is the same one who had a dream of me as a dominatrix. It sounds sort of creepy, I know, but if you knew him you wouldn't feel that way. Another one of my students who normally loves me to death is deeply angry at me because I wrote a referral on him. Another teacher came up to me and told me he was skipping my class and so I had to write it. It is like one of those things. He said he will be mad as me as long as it takes. As long as it takes for what, I don't know. It makes me sad but I guess he will have to deal. It was sort of a surreal day. I had no energy and sat like a slug. I had them doing make up work since tomorrow is the last day of the quarter. It was an easy day but still draining. I did actually have grade printouts for them so that helped me to look like I didn't just have a makeup day because I didn't have anything else for them to do. I actually did sort of have something as a back up plan but I'm glad I didn't have to use it. Tomorrow I have real lessons. I also had to go to a three hour curriculum meeting for one of my many committees. It sucked because I thought I knew where the school was that I was going to and instead drove around over a half hour trying to find it! I had to call the secretary at my school and ask for directions. I was so embarrassed because I was late and I am never, ever, late. Part of the problem was that we had an unexpected staff meeting that I didn't want to jump up and leave so I left with only twenty minutes to go, which, if I really did know where the school was, would have been fine. Anyway, everyone was very understanding and did not get angry and luckily someone else was even later than me and another did not show up at all. It was the most boring waste of time ever. The superintendent showed up for much of the time and everyone was majorly kissing ass. I hate that. I know they all are suspicious and probably hate him and they were acting so grateful to see him. I didn't care for it at all. Luckily he didn't touch me. The only good part was that I am paid for this meeting and also that we got free dinner that was good. I also did some catching up with another woman who used to be the special ed person at my school and told her how all the kids are doing. But the bad part was that we kept talking about something that I forgot the definition of (scope and sequence) but yet everyone else seemed to remember what this was. Then we kept talking about the curriculum guide vs. scope and sequence and how we wanted those to be formatted and I thought we were just going to be discussing the design of the curriculum guide. I had no idea we were also doing this other thing and spent the majority of the time feeling very clueless and stupid. Everyone else seemed to understand what was going on and seemed quite fascinated while I couldn't wait to get out of there. They got so caught up that the meeting ran twenty minutes over. So I was disappointed because I expected a much more interesting and fun time in which I would wow everyone with my brilliant ideas and I would be seen as the young prodigy that they always seem to expect that I will be. Not really, but you know. It's hard to wow people with my ideas when I have no clue what anyone else is talking about. And it's not even about that really, it's about wanting to at least be somewhat interested in what they were talking about. I definitely was not. This Saturday is the big Civil War game between Oregon State and U of Oregon. I will actually be visiting my cousin during this time near where the game will be and I am so not into this football stuff. Justin and I got into another fight on the phone. He is feeling really down because of many things to do with school (he's doing badly in his classes, his professors never seem to have time to talk with him, he didn't get the classes he wanted for next semester since he registered too late and they were all closed). I tried to be very sympathetic and did not say many of the things I was feeling such as, "Maybe you should not wait seven days past the time you are able to register to register. Maybe you bring many of your problems on yourself because you do things like wait to do things like this, or somehow are unaware of things that others would be aware of." I bit my tongue and was quite nice. I talked to him for quite awhile about whether he wanted to change his major, whether school was right for him, etc. Then he had the nerve of trying to insinuate that I wanted to go to Eugene on Saturday to go out with my cousin in order to meet hot guys that would be out partying after the Civil War game. I just thought that was so rude because I didn't even know that the Civil War game was the day I was visiting until TODAY! I planned this two weeks ago. Plus, even if I did, why on earth would I try to go meet hot guys if I have a boyfriend? Third, why would I want to meet football fans if I hate football? It was so random and jealous and rude and absurd and I could not stand it. And the worst part was that he was serious, he actually thought that. Then he went into this whole thing about how I always act like I hate him, when I really don't act like that unless we get into a big fight. We have got into a total of two big fights in the last six months. Well. I swear there are tons of good things about that boy but right now I can't think of any. I am feeling sort of better but not great. I have my lessons all planned out for tomorrow but don't feel confident in what I am doing. Part of that is that we are going to be in a circle for it and the kids always feel all weird and out of place at first when you do that. So we will be "out of our comfort zones." One of my students wrote this impassioned note to me in her journal about how she thinks I have a problem with her because of these various things she listed. I was totally shocked. I wrote her back a long note in her journal about it and explained my point of view and then we talked today and I think we got things worked out. Thank goodness for the journals sometimes because I have always liked her and she had this impression that I didn't like her. I had no idea I was giving off these vibes but apparently I was. I felt quite bad about it but I'm glad we worked things out. The two things that I did were that I would give her looks that in my mind meant, "Be quiet now, you're talking and I am trying to teach, but I am giving you a nonverbal cue so I don't have to single you out." Apparently she took these looks as, "I hate you and am singling you out as someone I hate." The other thing was that I gave her and her friend a detention on the test day when I had to make the big point where I said I would give a detention if you were talking after the test was over and they were talking so I had to. Anyway, I am glad everything is okay now. I did apologize for making her feel that way and I think it is all good. She seemed to believe that I do actually like her and that I was quite shocked about the whole thing. I really do like it when the kids use the journals to communicate with me about something like that because some of these things you would never know and they can hold it against you for life. And sometimes they really seem to need reassuring that you do like them whether or not you sometimes get into conflicts and also they seem to appreciate it if you say you are sorry or if you admit you are wrong. I wrote awhile a few days ago about being fourteen. I thought it was okay, not enough "sensory details" as I might tell my students, but the problem is the tenses. For some reason I can't figure out what tense to write in and I get all confused and stifled. I need to take a writing class or something. And they trust ME to teach writing to these children? I feel like such a failure at it sometimes. I try but their writing doesn't seem to get much better. I explain fabulous new ways to do leads and they use it once and then never again. Well, some used it again, but most just went back to their boring and lame leads. I have to start figuring out better ways of teaching writing because whatever I am doing is not working. But really I don't know how a teacher can be a good writing teacher, in a lot of ways. The stuff you need to give to help a writer develop doesn't seem possible in a regular classroom. I don't have time to conference with each student and really go through their drafts with them. School just isn't set up to do that. Sometimes I get so disillusioned about school itself. I hated school when I was growing up--don't ask me why I wanted to be a teacher and spend the rest of my life in school. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday. Some week I've had. Ha ha.
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