The End...Sort Of.

I missed my deadline. Obviously, nothing got posted in May. *sigh* Oh, well. I don't feel quite so guilty because what needed to get done did. Yeah! Yesterday was the last official day of work for the school year. We finished up our faculty meetings, made sure all of our grades and reports were in, and checked out for the school year.

I am no longer a first year teacher. Yeah!

Unfortunately, the end was not as clean and sweet as everyone had hoped. The economy has impacted our enrollment significantly, which means that our budget has shrunk. A LOT. In order to deal with the shortfall, the school president announced that they laid off four of our staff members this week. I don't know how it is at other schools, but here our staff members are definitely part of the family and much beloved. Hopefully things will get better soon.

In the meantime, I am just happy that I have a job. So, while this school year has ended, it's now time to get working on the curriculum for next fall. Unfortunately, I have so much fun thinking about what I shouldn't have ninth graders read (how about the unbridged Moby Dick?) that I get distracted from figuring out what they should read...

It's that time of year.

Tomorrow is the first day of May. That means two things: 1. We're one step closer to the end of the school year. 2. If I'm going to continue my once-a-month posting pattern, I have to figure out something to write about. Well, other than getting really sick on Saturday and still feeling like I'm in a fog Thursday night, I haven't been up to too much. "School" just about sums it up, and school, as noted in number 1 above, is rapidly wrapping up (yeah!). This also means summer reading assignments. *sigh*

I don't remember having summer reading assignments in school, but then again, it has never taken too much to get me to read. The hundreds of books in our house attest to this. However, I know that won't be the case with all my ninth graders next year. This led me on a great hunt to find the perfect book for them.

In years past the rising freshmen have read Chaim Potok's The Chosen. The student reviews were not stellar, and this year's teacher was none too happy with it, either. I read it, thought it was really good but not thrilling for students (there are NO female characters, for one), and kept looking. Between this quest and the independent reading books the sophomores could choose this semester, I've done a lot of reading: over 5,000 pages since the beginning of January. This has included 15 full novels and the first chapters of multiple other books. I've found some great books...

Unfortunately for me, I haven't found anything that fits as well into the freshman curriculum that fits thematically and is an appropriate reading level. The time for searching is over, so my students will be jumping into The Chosen--about two days before they come back to school in the fall. Again, *sigh*. I'll have to go bury my sorrows in a good book.

Obsession

Okay, I have to admit that I've recently found a website that, for me, is a bit addictive. I'm trying to stay away from it because I know it could be bad for my bottom line. It doesn't help that Ben encourages me in it, however. The site is aquabid.com. It's kind of like eBay for fish lovers.

Some of you may not know this, but I'm absolutely in love with bettas. Really, the fact that we have three fish tanks (one of which will probably be upgraded to a larger size) is all due to this fact. It started when the betta I rescued at the beginning of grad school grew old and passed on. Well, instead of simply getting a new betta, the hubby and I tried to replace him with other fish and bigger tanks. In order to not bore everyone with the history of our fish tanks, I'll just say that it didn't work, and now I have a new betta (a lovely little veil tail named Walter Mitty). I'm also thinking about getting another one for my collection. However, as Ben put it, I've moved from the soft stuff into the harder stuff.

Aquabid.com has put show-quality bettas within tantalizing reach. I'm willing to pay the price for the betta (about $20-30 for these guys), but I just haven't gotten to the point where I can rationalize spending the shipping price on top of that. But in the meantime, here is my fantasy collection:

Male half-moon red dragon betta

Male silver black dragon half-moon betta

Male black yellow half-moon betta

*sigh* Some day...

Oh, by the way, I found out what I will be teaching next year. I'll be the freshman English teacher. Hopefully things will play out that I'll get to teach art again soon, but in the meantime it will be a creative challenge.

It's alive!

When I started this blog, I thought I would post a few more things about my art. However, that hasn't happened. Last summer I felt so burned out from grad school that I had no desire to make art. Since I started teaching, I have lacked the time or energy to make much beyond examples for my students. As a follow up to my last post, I thought I'd show you one of my example puppets.

I simply scanned it because I was too lazy to figure out a way to photograph it well. My first puppet was an alligator that I'm quite proud of, but it was too big to fit on the scanner. I guess that means that you will have to just come to visit me to see it.

Anyway, presenting my bug-monster:

"Bug-monster," 2009. 10" x 8." Posterboard, tissue paper, pipe cleaner, and brass fasteners.

Sometimes I feel really lucky

Some days, it is all I can do to get up and go to school without having a nervous breakdown. Every time I start a new lesson, I never know if it is going to "work." Frankly, as a first year teacher, they usually have plenty of room for improvement. That wouldn't be such a big deal if I weren't a perfectionist. But I am. *sigh* However, today as I took pictures of my 6th graders' work, I felt pretty dang good.

It had been a bit of a crazy day. The mascot and a rookie from the St. Louis Blues had come to visit the 6th grade, which ended up cutting my class in half. I got them AFTER the visit. Last period on a Friday afternoon...oh, the potential for chaos! However, the kids were fantastic (this is one of my favorite classes). Last class they performed shadow plays, complete with original puppets, props, scripts, and sound effects, and today was not going to be the day to start a new unit. So, I didn't have much planned, but they settled right in to a creative drawing exercise that I had given some of my sophomores earlier. No need to say that young'uns were more creative. While they worked on that, I set up the screen from the shadow plays, handed back the puppets, and took pictures. My students were so charming, holding their figures tight to the screen to be photographed and playing in the light.

Some of you may have poked around my profile and seen the link to the blog I set up for them. It's just a place to stick links for them to follow so that I don't have to have them type the addresses. Anyway, I've posted some of the pictures. Check it out and see why these kids are super.


This photograph is of the screen sitting on our dining room table. This is before I installed the cloth on which the shadows are viewed.

Speaking of Uncertainty...

The saga continues. It is a tale full of sorrow, laughter, joy, and aggravation. This is the story of a girl, five classrooms, and no sink. And there is no sink on the horizon.

As most of you know, I teach art and English at a really nice private school here in St. Louis. When the school president called me up last May to offer me a job, I was ready to kiss his feet. Stability! I got a job! But from the beginning I knew two seemingly contradictory statements held true: 1. If I could not survive teaching at this school, I would not survive anywhere. 2. If I could survive at this school, I could survive anywhere.

That's because the fundamental truth about my school: everything is flexible and can change. I won't go into the details of my current position, but I find myself as the filler person in two departments. (Why else would I be teaching in 5 different classrooms, including a math room? Art in a room with carpet and no sink anyone?) Well, between the economy contracting, changing class sizes, and a key faculty change, my position is, well....Here's basically how my contract renewal interview went down:

Principal: Well, I have kind of a strange interview for you.
Me: I thought you would....
Principal: You've done a good job, and we want you at our school long term.
Me: This school is great.
Principal: So, we want you to come back next year, but we won't know what you will be teaching until at least April, maybe the summer.
Me: Yeah....

You see, the private schools do not have the same licensing requirements that public schools do. Currently I teach English, but there's no reason (other than sanity and common sense) that I next year I couldn't be singing and dancing for physics students instead. And right now, the principal doesn't even have a clue what they'll have me do. At least I have a job.

For the current time all I can do is cross my fingers and hope that I will get my own classroom. Or maybe only teach in two. But I know I won't get a sink. *sigh*

Living Uncertainly

I'll be brief with this introduction. My 10th grade English students are currently in the process of writing essays based on the "This I Believe" segment that airs on NPR. To help them understand HOW they can go about revising their essays, I wrote my own, which I thought I'd share. This is not the first (or "snot" draft), so it is a little more polished although not perfect. Anyway, without further ado, here it is:

"I know nothing. Or perhaps only a very few things. I know my husband and family love me, which is enough to keep me grounded. I can also say with assurance that I am extremely lucky to be an artist and a teacher. But outside of that, my knowledge amounts to one flake in the winter snowstorms from my childhood growing up in Utah.

All this uncertainty can be uncomfortable. It can be tense. The muscles in my chest still constrict when I remember standing in front of my graduate committee to defend my artwork. What if I couldn’t remember what I had written? My palms were so sweaty, and I could barely breathe. What if my work was not good enough? And with my personality, the questioning does not end with high stress situations. It happens every day that I put on shoes. I am a daily doubter. For instance, what if my students ask me a question I don’t know the answer to?

At the heart of each of these what if’s is a doubt that can lead to so many things. Doubt gets a bad rap sometimes. Truly it can paralyze and destroy when focused on the past and the uncontrollable. But if it weren’t for that persistent question, for the wonder of what more is out there, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

As an artist, I learned to doubt all my assumptions about my work. My undergraduate ceramics professor, a wonderful lady with hair like her sheep dog’s fur, encouraged us to play the what if game with our ideas. What if I turned it upside down? What if I made it the size of a truck? What if instead of glazing my piece, I covered it with spray rubber? There is a fire engine red rubber-covered woman in the back of my closet because of this question. What if I don’t fire it? You have my graduate work. What if I risk my ego and a few dollars to enter my art into a show? I just might get in, or I might learn that I need to keep asking myself questions and learning.

And it is not just in my art that doubt can be a driving force. I mentioned that I know my husband loves me. What if I question that, too? This uncertainty creeps in at inopportune moments when media images don’t reinforce my worth. So I probe, and the details sharpen. My phone beeps with a text seeing how my morning went. His posture softens, and he lets me bear some of his troubles. He knows my favorite color is green. The dishes on the high shelves are mine for the asking. And he makes the bed! For having doubted, my knowledge grew.

I’ve seen it so many times in my life. When I doubted, I went to grad school. When I doubted, I found my own strength. When I doubted, I learned more about the world and God than I ever thought possible. Maybe I do know something. But I doubt it."