Congratulations to the Class of 2008

Today was graduation, a day I savor every year, and this one was no different. The class of 2008 will always have a special place in my heart; I taught them as 9th and 11th graders, and they were also my first time teaching advanced courses. The woman who used to teach advanced 9th graders at our school was a legend, and stepping into her shoes was a big task, but I think I did a pretty good job with the group in the 9the 9th grade. 11th grade was slightly more rocky, at least from my perspective - having them in two classes of 37 and 38, respectively, didn't help - but even with a new course I think we did just fine. I taught 9 of the 10 students in the Top Ten for two years in English, including, of course, the valedictorian and the SGA President. This all felt very good.

Graduation Day feels like a genuine Teacher Appreciation Day. Before and after the ceremony, parents and students come up to me for a hug, a handshake, or a "Congratulations." I kid you not when one woman, the mother of a student very dear to me, who I had never met, looked me in the eyes and stated with her deep African accent that, "We take you teachers for granted, but, really, you have helped raise my child. Thanks so much." I mean, how could I not get teary-eyed and goosebumpy after hearing that?

For about ten kids that meant a particular lot to me, I have spent the last few weeks trying to think of the perfect gift to give them. I think I matched them up well - The White Boy Shuffle for the brilliant basketball player, on his way to MIT; Moneyball for a kid I both coached and taught, and who loves to read; an Obama book for the politically-minded aforementioned SGA President, who is on her way to a small school in California before she starts running for Congress; Dust Tracks on the Road for the spitfire I imagine has the same sort of spunk that Zora Neale Hurston had. I wrote letters to all of them, something I'd never done before.

Afterwards, we did our annual thing of having celebratory brunch and drinks at City Cafe. Because of the rain - well, we used that as an excuse, at least - we stayed longer than intended. It was a good afternoon.

Catie Curtis, Live in Baltimore

I saw Catie Curtis tonight, in the basement of a church at a venue called Cellar Stage, just across the street from the Dunkin' Donuts on Harford Road in the Hamilton area (real close to where I lived before, and pretty darn close to where I am now). I was last there about six years ago, when my friend Kristin Plater played there before a house concert I hosted, and I can't quite believe I've never been back in that time. It seems like the kind of thing that I should support every month - a group of hard-working, art-loving folks who get together once a month and watch an independent folk musician play music. About 45 people were there to hear Catie sing.

And, wow, was it ever good. She's got about six or eight songs that easily would be included on the soundtrack of my life. And even though she only played a couple of them, I was still enthralled at the performance. First of all, her songwriting is just so simple and detail-driven, yet so full of truth... I got so many goosebumps tonight, I alternated between thinking she was singing just for me and being amazed that someone could feel the same things I do about the world. And her warm personality really shines through as she performs; this is a great human being and it shines through in her music.

In fact, with her curly hair - the exact same hairstyle as the girl in college that everyone loved wore - and constant smile, I think I've got a bit of a crush. I always have crushes on lesbians, it seems.

A great night. My friend Rob and I went; Rob and I see concerts together several times a year, and never tell the other where we're going. We just tell the other to clear the night. He said he's got a lot to live up to for the next one.

Weighing cattle over and over again doesn't make them any fatter

Last week, my 9th grade students took the HSA. These students do not take the HSA in English until their 10th grade year, so it was not a big week for me. I looked forward to having them back for their last week of instruction this week. One day of instruction was taken up by a field trip that the Biology Department sort of offers as a reward for taking the HSA; we went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and had a great time, with the kids completing a scavenger hunt. So, that left Thursday and Friday.

When I returned from my field trip on Wednesday, though, I was issued something called the Gates-McGinty Reading Assessment, which all 9th grade students must take. No reason or rationale was given. The test window was May 27-29. It's a 60-minute test, which means two days of instruction are lost in our 50-minute class period schedule (several minutes also have to be taken up bubbling in names and other pertinent information, plus there's all that sharpening of pencils - pencils, I might add, that I had to provide myself because certainly the testers wouldn't do that and they're not something that kids carry around with them).

Now, I had heard about the test a couple weeks before, and had hoped to issue it and give it earlier, but they didn't arrive in the building until Wednesday. I guess I was hoping, also, that someone would drop the ball and they just wouldn't be sent. But, alas, they were sent. No final exam review. No time to revise their final project in class. Instead, they have to take yet another test, on top of all their HSA tests the week before, and on top of all seven of their final exams they take the week after.

I'm sad and mad that my last two days of instruction with these students are now lost. We started the test today and must finish tomorrow. I was so mad about it. Still am.

Tomorrow, I think I'm going to have to be inspired by this guy a little.

Re-post sans photos: Running and running away

I've been trying to get back into shape and have hitting the gym pretty hard in the last week.

If you do not know my fitness/health history, here it is in a nutshell: In 2000, when I was 23, I was a 310-lb vegetarian. Yes, I spent most of college eating pizza and drinking Mountain Dew. When I began student teaching, I started going to the gym every day, and doing other healthy things, like eating a balanced diet and eating breakfast. I dropped about 50 lbs that year (2000-2001). The year I started teaching in Baltimore, I continued my daily morning workouts, and got myself down to about 190-195 lbs at about the halfway point of my second year teaching. In January of 2003, I was probably in the best shape of my life. I was lifting weights every day and doing 45-60 minutes of cardio and felt great. It was never about weight; it was always about health, and I was healthy. And pretty buff, too. And wore a size-32 jeans.

In the Fall of 2003, I had my big health scare of the spontaneous double retinal detachment. Since I was under doctor's orders not to exercise for a month, and didn't feel good for a bit longer than that, it derailed my fitness, as did getting the head baseball coaching gig later that school year. I probably gained around 15-20 pounds that year, putting me at 210 or so. I'm pretty sure this photo is from that summer... at one of my fittest points, but not at my utmost fittest:

That summer, I got the second job waiting tables, and have kept that second job for the last five years. While I've still managed to go to the gym most days, I'm no longer in shape; I've probably put on around 10 lbs a year since then, putting me at around 235-240 most of the time these days. It's kind of sickening, actually - here I was, so proud to have lost 120 lbs, and now I've gained 40 or 50 of it back.

I've been at around the same weight for a year or two. Again, I don't really care about my weight too much - if I did, I'd look at my BMI and realize that even at the best shape of my life, when I was 190, I was still classified as well into the "overweight" range, and be disheartened. It's all about health, and feeling good, and confidence that comes with that. Confidence that, frankly, I really miss.

So I'd love to get back in shape. Last summer, I was doing real well, running ten or twelve miles a week, but I suffered a stress fracture in my foot and a year of problems with that right foot. My foot has felt good in the last few months, though, so I've tentatively started running again. A 1-mile run on Wednesday. A 2-mile run yesterday. A 1.5-mile run today. I'll push myself bit by bit, and hopefully begin to increase my mileage. When I was in the best shape of my life, I was running a lot, and want to do that again. I'm still lifting, and hope to make my body into more of a fat-burning machine than it has been. I'm also trying to eat better, and have been buying (and eating) expensive bags of vegetables to snack on instead of my usual cheese or the Baked Doritos I've been sort of addicted to since the winter.

The running came in handy tonight, as Holden ran off again (if you missed it, the same thing happened last July 4, and Holden was gone for about 3 days... I put up fliers and the old man who had found him called me, returning him safely). I heard some fool setting off fireworks in the neighborhood, and was trying to ignore it as I graded essays, when I heard the fence clanging in the backyard. I thought my roommate was coming home and entering through the back, but didn't see her - just saw the gate open. I then suddenly realized that Holden was outside, and figure out that he had gotten out, freaked out (again) by the fireworks. I ran as fast as I could after him, never catching sight of him, but hearing from several people on the street that he was going "that a-way", so I kept running and running. It was scary, because I was heading through rat-infested alleys with change jangling and it was fairly late - not really safe city behavior - but people kept telling me he was heading west so I kept running. I was on Bel-Air Rd., heading towards Erdman, and I was thinking the worst thoughts of me finding his body in the road, or of some teenagers trying out some fireworks on him. I finally headed back home, calling his name, looking under porches. I probably ran another 2 miles (on top of the gym run earlier).

When I returned home, a guy had called my cell phone. He lived across Bel-Air, off of Erdman, across from the golf course, and Holden - who has all his tags, including one with my phone number on it - had followed him home while he was walking his dog. Holden was on the front porch waiting for me when I drove up there, and he hasn't left my side since. Now, I've got to figure out how this can never happen again. I had thought the time before that someone had messed with the fence, but now it's clear that Holden can get out when he's freaked out, and that can't happen. It's good to have him home, though, and I'm thankful the 3 days it was last July was just 30 minutes this time around.

Another boring meta-post

The day after I wrote the last post, I plopped down on the field trip bus next to C, one of the more memorable students of the class of 2011. She flashed me a big grin, then told me she didn't appreciate me writing about her class on my "blogspot page," and then proceeded to tell me she read a lot of my posts and that I can get a cheap laptop for around $700.

Obviously I don't really know what to do about this. I like Epiphany in Baltimore, I like blogging, but I don't really like blogging and knowing a lot of individuals in my life are reading. Especially my students. But, on the other hand, I'm not (really) ashamed by what I write, and I should be able to stand behind it, right? So I've tried to ignore for a long time that people in my life probably read it - C says a lot of students read it, which certainly isn't a surprise to me - but I still inevitably self-censor myself. And, as the last commentor commented, most of my posts now are about "safe" topics, like school, baseball, or the election. And I don't like that. I'm bored by it. I don't even sit down and think "Well, I have to be safe when I write this," but, looking back, I barely write about, you know, my deepest darkest feelings, my emotional and physical health, my loves and losses, things like that. And that's why I liked blogging. Well, it's the combination of it all, of being able to get riled up about a educational political issue on one day but write about the beautiful polish girl on the next day, then maybe post a photo or two.

Writing about this issue is becoming boring, too. I've had this sort of inertia for seemingly a year now. I've never been good at making commitments or sticking with a decision, though, and it's showing here. This is honestly the longest thing I've ever stuck with (by far), so ending it would be huge. And, truth be told, I like that I have a relatively large readership and that some people have been reading for years and years.

My options seem to be as follows:

a) Continue to write my somewhat sanitized blog here.

b) Continue to write my somewhat sanitized blog here, and start a new personal that is totally anonymous.

c) Scrap this one and start fresh.

d) Start a new anonymous blog about educational issues in Baltimore City from a teacher's perspective (wow, there's such great stuff right now about re-assignment and such, and want it to remain on the forefront of educational discussion), and keep this one for personal issues, hopefully preventing me from ever getting into trouble from this one.

I don't know.

Existential Crisis

Last night, I wrote a long post about fitness and my dog running away (he's back now), complete with before and after and after that photos of me, but then I pulled it down, unable to expose myself on the Internet anymore, I guess. Or at least I was last night. Those of you on Blogtimore can still see the post in the feed, for at least a little while longer.

I'm just not feeling blogging lately. I've got lots of cool stories lately, but because I have no anonymity anymore, I've stepped back. My blog is certainly not as interesting as it once was, and I don't really know if I have it in me to throw it all out there anymore.

This is yet another existential dilemma with the blog, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. In the meantime, you should probably go read Inside Ed, where I've posted a bit lately. And tomorrow I might have something more interesting to say.

I only have two hands and two feet

I'm about done waiting tables. I've always liked it, but last night might have been the moment when I stopped. It just wasn't fun for me to run around serving people things.

Late in the evening, a table of seven came and sat outside. They were a desert table, which means double the work for me (I get all the desserts and drinks) and about a quarter of the tip. I bring glasses out to the them. I fill up their water. I bring silverware out to them. They order 4 decaf coffees and 2 regular coffees. I bring the four decaf coffees out first because I only have two hands. As soon as I put them down, they tell me they need more water and are ready to give me their dessert order. Oh, and cream and sugar as well. I want to tell them that I only have two hands, that all that stuff is on the way, but I just smile and rush back for the rest of my load. I bring out the two regular coffees, and one guy asks me, Didn't you hear me change my order? I wanted decaf. So I run back in, dump his regular, and add decaf. By the time I return, they need more water, and I still haven't taken their dessert order. I repeat the desserts. They order two desserts to split amongst seven people. They need more water. Fat man on the left has already drunk his coffee. I refill these, then run back and make the desserts. I bring the desserts out, and make five separate trips back to get more coffee because they just don't get that it would be a whole lot nicer to tell me all at once that they need refills. These people had no concept of what it is like to wait tables, and didn't realize that I was doing everything I asked them to do but I only had two hands and two feet.

I charm them and they're fine by the time they leave. Their bill is $23, and they leave $5 tip, meaning they were the hardest table of the night and I made the least amount of money off them.

I worked all Saturday night, and the slow Memorial Day evening made me make just $7. Ugh.

I've given my notice that I'm done in August. My $$ situation is good, I'm too old to be working two jobs during the school year, and, frankly, it doesn't seem like I'm enjoying the whole waiting tables thing anyway anymore, which is the most important thing. Waiters who hate their job can't be any good. I've always like it, which is why I've been pretty good for so long.

I've got a troubled, a troubled mind, and you've got a heart, a heart so kind

Teachers really know how to happy hour it up, and, now that baseball season is over, I'm able to join in again, or at least with more frequency. Today, we headed out to DuClaw on the water in Fells Point, and had a great time; afterwards, a couple of us headed over to Maggie Moo's, where my former student, who was working there, hooked us up with some free ice cream.

I want to accomplish a lot this weekend. I'm concentrating on getting myself healthy again. My body hasn't been treating me well in the last two months, mostly because I haven't been treating my body well. I've been to the gym every day this week, though, working out long and hard, and have already noticed a difference. The Stadium Place YMCA also now has televisions hooked up to the cardio machines, which makes working out go quicker than it ever has before, or maybe it's just the novelty.

Next Friday, no happy hour for me: Catie Curtis, one of my favorite singer/songwriters from back in the day, is performing in the basement of a church on Harford Rd. I'm doing that thing I do with my friend, where we bring the other to an unknown concert as a surprise. He brought me to see John Gorka a couple of months ago; I brought him to Suzanne Vega a couple months before that. I'm excited.

Below is "Troubled Mind," which is my favorite Catie Curtis song, at the moment (I really like "Magnolia Street," "Larry," "What's the Matter?," and "Radical" as well, but this one always seems to get me... just listening to the first six lines or so just gets me entranced, and thinking, "Yeah, that's it", and I think it's been this same song since I was about a junior in college:)

Come to class

Today has been HSA testing week at school, and a fairly frustrating one for a teacher. Our schedule has been testing all week, and classes in the afternoon. I expected my students to come to the classes in the afternoon every day, but they haven't. My attendance has been around 5-15 in every class, and that's such an imperfect number: not small enough to ignore for a study hall, but not big enough to teach a full lesson to that I can expect the entire class to get.

What's worse is that I feel like the school, and several of my colleagues, are doing a wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing with the kids, like they don't really need to come. There are days like these - for example, after final exams - but for the HSA? Please. Only one grade level takes it every day in the mornings, and, while these kids might be forgiven for at least being tired in the afternoon (not for skipping), the rest of the students should be there. No questions asked.

All my non-attenders will be receiving zeros, as promised. Along with my scorn. When you're 14 or 16 years old, you're simply too young to be deciding which days of school are important and which ones are not. And, as for my IB 3 students, we've got to finish Othello in two weeks; they better be damn sure there will be consequences for not being in class when they're required to be.

Finances and house-buying

My Master's Degree hopefully will allow me to do other things that I have been wanting to do for a while.

For example, I think I'm ready to buy a house, at least by the end of the calendar year. For a long time, I didn't feel like my financial situation was ever right enough. It's still not perfect, far from it, but I see light at the end of the tunnel of debt that I've been in pretty much since I ended college. I current have about $3200 in credit card debt, which feels manageable. I'd like to pay it off all the way (tuition reimbursement will help... I literally used credit cards to pay for my Towson University classes, and since I got at least a B in them, I get 75% reimbursement) before I start applying for mortgages and stuff like that, and I think I can do it by the end of the school year - or close to it. I also have about $4000 in savings. It's pretty much designated as summer money, but it's not like I'm going to be taking the summer off; I'll be working and bringing in enough to survive on. It's pretty cool that I have more savings than debt (at least non-student loan debt, but I've decided not to count that... I am current, though) for the first time in my life.

My credit rating has jumped about 20 points this year, depending on which credit agency you're looking at. It's in the low to mid 600s, and I think I can get all of them in the mid 600s or higher in the next few months, especially if the aforementioned credit card balance becomes zero.

The two or three hitches are as follows:

1. I will almost certainly need to buy a new car sometime in 2008. My 8-year old car has 130,000 hard city miles on it, but that's not the real reason. The rack and pinion and power steering are shot. I have to add power steering fluid every week or so, or else the steering wheel groans like an old man. It's never hard to turn the wheel, but feel like it would be if I ever let the power steering fluid thing go. The estimate to fix this was $2400. My car also has long-deployed airbags (a $2500 expense to fix), no car horn, no side mirror (just plumb fell off this past summer), and a crack through the middle of the windshield (just appeared overnight), it's probably a bit of a death trap. But it runs really well, so well that the last dealer I brought it to asked if I had had the motor rebuilt. Still, it's certainly not worth the $5500 in repairs or so that I'd have to put into it to really save it. So I've decided to run it into the ground, which will probably be whenever my power steering becomes totally shot (I'm trying to figure out if this is dangerous or not... the last dealer that it was not, but the Car Talk always seem to have a kiniption when anyone calls about power steering). Anyhow, long story short, I'll probably have to buy a new car this year.

2. For my Folger Shakespeare Institute this summer, they highly recommend a laptop computer. I'm thinking I might have to break down and buy one. I kind of hate laptops - think they're too breakable - but have been thinking about one for a while. It might be kind of fun to get one. I haven't yet paid off this desk computer from November, though (that's about $400 of the $3200 in credit card debt, although that one is my Dell Preferred Account, which I'm not sure counts as credit card debt), and it's certainly not money I want to spend heading into the two months of the summer without a real paycheck. Nahmean?

I sort of wish I had a financial advisor right now to help me figure out what to do. I feel like most people's advice of "You've got to buy a house!" is knee-jerk, because they don't/didn't know my credit situation (it's been real bad in the past, and I'm talking 5-digit credit card debt bad). But now I'm ready to hear it more.

Masters

As of 6pm or so tonight, I had finished my last presentation of graduate school. Judging from the professor's positive comments, I now, for all intents and purposes, have a Master's Degree in Secondary Education.

My final project ended up being about 100 pages, which I had to condense into one 15-minute presentation. I did it, barely, talking just a little bit too fast at the end.

Now, I'm going to try to sleep for at least 6 or 7 hours tonight. It's been a while.

Anyhow, phew... this is a relief.

Tomorrow, I have been selected at random to proctor the Biology HSA, which I'll be doing instead of attending my graduation. It's okay, I didn't really want to go anyway (though I heard it was a free day off... I never really investigated it.)

The 42-game mark

I just have to stop watching the Tigers. Nobody needs the depression of watching them every night.

This is worst than 2003, when they lost 119 games. Expectations were high, and they're playing horrible, listless, boring baseball. These aren't lovable losers; these are overpaid, slow, old, difficult-to-watch bores.

I'm the eternal optimist and am holding out some hope that things can turn around. But I'm already calling for the head of the hitting coach and the pitching coach; Leyland's will be next. Maybe he just can't win with high expectations.

At least they're still only 6 games back. Ugh.

And I hate interleague play, too.

baseball season over

Well, we lost. Our season is over.

It's too bad, because the game itself leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. We made - count 'em - four horrible baserunning gaffes in just the first two innings. They set the tone for the game and cost us at least a couple of runs. Later in the game, we eliminated these problems, but left the bases loaded twice. In fact, the bases loaded with the full count. They resulted in a pop-out and a K.

My pitcher, the best athlete on the team, who arguably was our MVP this year, is also the most emotional. When things are going bad, he begins to look like he's on the way to a funeral, like playing baseball is the last thing he wants to do. It gets into his head. He deserved this game, and pitched well, but I need to figure out a way that this emotional problem doesn't persist next year.

My starting 9th grade right-fielder made two key errors. That was sad.

But it was a team effort. It was a decent game, considering our opponent and how we played. I wish we could have kept it going... but we didn't.

I choked up a little during my post-game speech. My SS/2B combination are a couple of kids I'll remember for the rest of my life. They've been starters pretty much since they were 9th graders, and have done me proud. I really liked this team a lot.

Finish the season 12-4, including 1-1 in the playoffs. Not bad. Could be better.

Now I can start thinking about having a life.

Cloud 9

That we won.

That we beat a team that earlier in the season mercy-ruled us, 13-1.

That the fact that we were mercy-ruled in March against them and beat them in May means I've done something right as a coach.

That it was a great game.

That we've now advanced to the 2nd round of the playoffs.

That we came all the way from the city, that we were the severe underdogs, that we were playing on a well-manicured field that obviously has a decent baseball budget, that we beat a county team, that I overheard one of their players say, "I can't believe we're losing to these guys!"

The victory turned into a crisis of conscience when it meant we have the second round of the playoffs tomorrow, when I'm scheduled to give my final presentation for graduate school. I had not expected it to interfere with playoffs, but because of the rainouts, it is. I called my professor and left here a heart-wrenching message, right from the field. She called me back, saying she could adjust, that she has another class I can present to. That's so nice.

Sendler's List

I'd never heard this woman's story, and it's too bad that it took her death for me to hear about it. Pretty amazing.

Polish Holocause Hero Dies at age 98

St. Foo Girl and Othello

I have a student who, when I tell stories about her, I call "St. Foo Girl." Because about two weeks ago, she told me to shut the fuck up in class. Get it? S.T.F.U = St. Foo. Anyhow, she said it multiple times. I think it's the worst thing I've ever been told by a student. I usually do well with the generally unpleasant girls, because I'm generally laid back and am not a confrontationalist but a talk-to-you-after-class-or-in-the-hallway kind of teacher. She, however, took her generally unpleasant self - and she comes to class only half the time - and then was not only rude to me, but to her classmates. I asked her a couple of times to be quiet, and then I very clearly told her to be quiet, and that was her response. I'm still dumbfounded by it.

In other news, I'm starting Othello tomorrow, and am pretty damn excited. I've never taught it and barely knew the story until about a week ago, but love it. Teaching Romeo and Juliet to 9th graders is one of the highlights of my school year every year, and now I'm excited to use the same Shakespearean teaching strategies with the more advanced Juniors.

Lastly, I've been up and down about the Juniors this year, but now I'm decidedly up. There are two classes of advanced Juniors at our school, and it seems like the other class of them is always embattled with their teacher, who is my friend. My kids, though, are cool and chill* and still work pretty hard. Or, at least, they read well (much better than they write), and it's fun to delve into the literature with them. Or at least about twenty-five of them. I've got pretty good at ignoring the ten who bring me, and the class, down.

The beginning of Persepolis went awesome. The kids are hooked.

*Probably because their teacher is cool and chill.

72 hours from a Master's Degree

I nearly pulled an all-nighter last night, working on my project, which is now nearly complete. I have to receive back from two colleagues some feedback, then incorporate those comments into my introduction, as well as assemble the pieces of the Appendix.

The presentation is Wednesday at 4:15. After that, I'll be completely done with my Master's Degree.

Until that point, I have the playoffs, and starting two new texts (Persepolis and Othello that I've never taught before), and a Mother's Day night shift at the restaurant.

Teaching Persepolis

On Monday, I begin teaching Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel, to 9th graders. I have never taught a graphic novel, and I am not ready. I wish there was more stuff online about teaching it.

Writing my unit plan tonight...

R and L

We finished the regular season today with an occasionally ugly victory, completing our 11-3 campaign. Tomorrow, we begin the playoffs against a team far in the county. It is a team that we played once before, in a pre-season tournament, and we lost pretty bad against them. We played poorly, though, and I think we can play with them and be competitive, but we will have to figure out how to eliminate the seemingly constant errors we keep making on simple plays up the middle.

Today was not one of my finest days as a coach. The sky was spitting rain throughout the day, and I was not expecting to play, and, when we did, I was barely mentally prepared. We scored a bunch of runs, and I pulled some regulars, so I could get some seniors into our last home game. The bench got too lax, though, while I was over at 3rd base, and we lost our focus for an inning. We were the Bad News Bears. It was a one-inning lapse, though, and we were able to come back from it, even while resting my two best players for the playoff game tomorrow.

There's a fairly good chance that we'll be done tomorrow, and I've been trying to plan the words in my head about what I want to say to this team. There have been times this year when I've thought that my job as a coach this year was the best coaching job I've done so far, and other times when I've felt like a crappy coach. I know that this group of kids needed a coach much more than either of the last two years, and I've felt that pressure. It was a young team, and pretty raw. My Team Captains were quiet kids, and a couple of other kids had way too much influence on the team dynamic. I had to insert myself into team squabbles more than usual.

Still, there are at least two kids that, when I talk about them tomorrow, or Monday, or Wednesday (whenever our last game is), I'll probably choke up. R & L are two kids who have been on the team since their 9th grade year. Both are small in stature and quiet, both come to practice every single day for four years, and, with both, I've had some ups and downs. I am really relishing the chance, though, to look R in the face and say, "You have no idea how much I respect you. Your quiet dedication to this team throughout the last four years has been something I want all my players to emulate. Your character and integrity has meant a great deal to this team..." and go on from there. L is the other one, a kid whose enthusiasm for baseball kept me going many an afternoon when I didn't feel like practicing. Four years, these kids have been on the team. I'll really miss them.

This is so, so wrong, but so, so funny.

(found on Andrew Sullivan)

With every little bang, with every little push, with every little step I take, I get closer

I've survived through Tuesday night. My project is up to 55 pages. I meet with the professor tomorrow about it and hopefully it's decent. I'm trying to writing a bit more today. Just so tired...

The quick game I was expecting tonight turned into a 3.5 hour marathon of some of the worst baseball you're ever going to see. We were ugly. They were uglier. The playoff draw is tomorrow, and we head into it with a 10-3 record if the spring invitationa' doesn't count, and a 10-5 record if it does count. All in all, not a bad season, but amongst those ten victories are a couple of forfeits and a lot of easy teams. Unfortunately, there were only about 5 really good games this year, of which we lost two. Baseball in this city is a lot of haves and have-nots, and, luckily, we're a have, but we weren't able to beat the other haves this year. The team is young, and of course there was that game where our best player was tossed.

The last week of the season is always the toughest, it seems. Every game, a host of kids are out because of testing for IB and AP, or a college visit, or some other academic matter that I can't really complain about. I have a senior who is taking the week off because he's failing four classes, he says, and graduation is just a couple of weeks away. It ends up with games like today's, where we had our center fielder playing second base.

We won, at least. Finally. I was supposed to talk about summer reading with the incoming 9th graders, but ended up getting back about an hour after I was expecting to. A very, very long night.

At least Obama had a good night!

Tonight's song is Melissa Ferrick's "Closer," which is going to make it on my Spring 2008 mix (full of, of course, plenty of lesbian folk music and socially conscious and/or navel-gazing hip-hop, plus my new guilty pleasure Akon, mid-90s alternative rock and a crazy alt-country cover of "When Doves Cry"... so far), which I've completed a couple of drafts of and this one keeps making the cut. It just reminds me of spring, all about fresh starts and optimism, and is one of those Ferrick songs that I love - it's about performance, but she makes it universal somehow, like always. Plus, Ferrick has been in the area twice in the last four months or so and I've missed both shows; she's going to be somewhere in the area on the 9th, too, and I doubt I'll have the energy to drive the hour down to the show. I have to sort of put my social life on hold this season, for at least a little bit longer. (My season tickets to Center Stage were tonight. Not only did I not go, I didn't muster the energy to even call and change the date of my tickets. It's more complicated than it sounds - you have to know your exact seat, and the tickets are always at home in my desk, not at school where I need them to be when I call - but I just fanned on it, that's for sure.)

Hell Week

The graduate school semester is coming to a close; my final presentation is May 14, my graduation reception is May 20. I barely left the house this weekend, trying to finish the work I need to have done. The graduate school project needs to be e-mailed tomorrow for one last revision; I probably have about 20 pages to write before then. I think I'm going to take a personal day; my dept. head has given me permission and I really need to get this done.

First and foremost is the graduate school project (which, truth be told, I'm actually becoming pretty proud of), but the week is filled otherwise as well: baseball season ends Thursday, then playoffs begin - this is probably the toughest time of the year to coach, as some kids have Senioritis and others just have had their energy zapped now that the big games are over. Plus, the new 9th grade meeting on Tuesday night - I'll be at school until deep into the evening.

Thanks, Children's Bookstore

I wanted to publically thank The Children's Bookstore here in Baltimore, which just donated 130 copies of Persepolis to all of my 9th grade students.

I had heard about the program - which simply allows students to receive a book for free - earlier in the school year, but was skeptical that it really worked. After a colleague applied for the program, though, I had to try; today, a kind woman left a really nice message saying they had boxes of the books ready to be picked up. I wrote up a little grant (they needed to know my unit plan, reason for teaching it, and a few other things) about a week ago and sent it in on Friday, so the turnaround was nearly immediate. I'm excited; Persepolis fits perfectly into my goals of trying to expose students to international texts, plus it works really well with our course's themes of Coming of Age and Justice. I'm also excited/nervous to be teaching my first ever graphic novel. I'm reading books like Understanding Comics and This Book Contains Graphic Language: Comics as Literature to prepare the unit. (Also, I shouldn't say this, but I'm also looking for a bootleg of the Persepolis film, with English subtitles, so I can show it to my students when we finish reading the text; I'm quite sure the DVD will not be released before the school year is over. Any ideas? I don't really know how to get bootlegs that aren't at the gas station at the corner of North Avenue and Bel-Air Road.)

Anyhow, I guess my real reason for posting this is to say that if you're looking for a cool charity that really puts books in the hands of students in Baltimore City, head over there to donate. I'm not really sure how they can afford to do it, but I plan on applying for the grant every year.

And thank you, Children's Bookstore, so much.

This is pretty awesome

Acting companies, film study, and facts about Des'ree

This week, we finished our acting companies - in which groups of 3 or 4 students direct, produce, and act in a scene from Romeo and Juliet - to decidedly mixed results. Some kids understand it, can figure out that they're not just up there to read a scene, and are able to include gestures and blocking and can explain why they did what they did or why they read it the way they did. Others, though, just don't. I saw the most boring Mercutio/Tybalt death scene that I've ever seen in my life on Wednesday. It made me want to cry, and definitely not in a good way.

Anyhow, now we're onto the film study. I like to show the 1996 Baz Luhrmann William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet, concentrating on scene study. I often wish I was more well-versed in film terminology, or at least remembered more, but my Film Studies minor (all of three classes) from Michigan State is pretty dusty (all taken with this guy, who smoked like a chimney and has appeared in most of Sam Raimi's movies).

Anyhow, I've now probably seen both of these films twenty times or so, and I feel the need to comment on them throughout. Finally, today, one of my favorite students had enough of me saying things like, "Oh, by the way, the woman singing is Des'ree, who had that big hit 'You Gotta Be' back in 1997 or so, and, that song she's singing now, well Beyonce stole it from her and sang it without permission, and now she's suing her" (by the way, one kid told me, "Uh, some of us were just three years old then"), told me she hadn't signed up for a director's commentary. And she laughed and laughed. I couldn't shut up, though. I mean, that fish tank scene is so cool.

So much of my goal throughout the course is for the students to realize that the effects they notice while reading something - or, in the case of film study, watching something - are the result of choices made by the writers or the directors, and it's our job as active readers to analyze those choices and the effects they create, then why it matters. They're getting it. Luhrmann's direction of Lady Capulet makes her a comic, floozy type of character, while Zeffirelli's makes her cold and disconnected. Despite the fact that Harrold Pirreaneau is dressed as a drag queen as Mercutio, his Queen Mab speech is delivered in a very similar way to that of John McEwen, complete with the anger, sexual frustration, and eventual catharsis. Much of the balcony scene from the 1996 version doesn't work (the characters are too close to each other, there is no give and take, Juliet doesn't have the upper hand like she should), while the 1968 version is nearly perfect.

I can't stand the Romeo in the 1968 version. Never could. I think Benvolio kind of sucks, too. In the 1996 version, the characters are played exactly as I like, except for a few moments (the aforementioned Lady Capulet is one). But overall it's great and, of course, the kids love it.

*******

Great stuff over at the Inside Ed Blog:


The challenge of co-existence

In Canton, any school unwelcome

Basically, the school system wants to open a new school in Canton, and the Cantonese are buckling. Some really interesting discussions, and some good points on both sides, but, from what I see, it mostly boils down to this: the rich white folks don't want black kids to go to school in their neighborhood. There is a lot of barely hidden racism throughout the comments, but also a lot of healthy discussion. Go over there, I recommend it.