I'm in a bad mood, but I'll try to contain myself. It's just my typical moaning about having too little time to do all that I need to do. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being a teacher, too, but I am sure it will pass. Right now I feel like quitting because I'm sick of feeling inadequate. I love my kids, though, and I guess that's what is important.
I'm hungry for cookies or candy. I stayed home and ate a can of healthy soup instead of going out for Taco Bell like I wanted to. So I guess I earned 1 point of good karma today.
I miss Justin. That's another thing I'm tired of--being in a long distance relationship where I only get to see him on the weekends. If I had a less busy job I could probably see him during the week, too, but I don't. I want to spend every day with him. I feel jealous of other couples that get to do that.
I finished The Way it Spozed to Be. That was a really good book. It's funny how something can be written so long ago and still feel very relevant. I guess kids are kids. It was a totally funny book about teaching, and he is so great at description that I could totally picture what each kid was like. I wonder if any of those kids ever read his books and recognized themselves. Sometimes teaching books say that names and identifying characteristics have been changed, or that the kids described are composites of kids. I wonder if that is really true. I don't know how you could do that, really, and I wonder if they just say that to cover their asses. Hmmm.
I've also been reading a few books by my favorite cartoonist, Lynda Barry. If you haven't read her comics, you should definitely buy a book by her. They are so funny, cute and sad and remind me of growing up. I would love to meet her. She looks like such a nice person in her photos.
Maybe I'm just depressed because my poetry unit is over. I really feel like I'm doing something right and good with poetry, and with the other lessons I just feel like I'm not sure. I was looking through the standards today (not for the first time, obviously, but for the first time in about a month) and felt like, "What is this crap?" My standards are, "Kids should be able to read well. Kids should be able to articulate their feelings about what they are reading. Kids should know strategies to help them become better readers. Kids should be able to write well and use writing to express what it is they want to say. Kids should be able to self-edit. Kids should enjoy reading and writing." I'm not even going to go into what the state standards are, but they are definitely not close to what mine are. There are some valuable things, but overall I just felt like they had nothing to do with me, my students, or what I hoped would happen in my classroom. That's not to say that I don't use the standards. I do. But sometimes when I'm doing some lesson on vocabulary, for example, to help kids do what they are supposed to be doing, my heart is just not into it. If anyone has some heart-pounding vocabulary lessons please share them with me. How do you do what you are supposed to do while at the same time be engaging?
I think I need to go watch some MTV or something and hope I see my Justin Timberlake video to cheer me up.
