Posts I Will Write At Some Point

  • -Women's pants (yes, this is related to teaching)
  • County vs. township school districting
  • teachers are aliens from mars (or, "you eat lunch?")
  • Urban appendices to management books
  • Cultural differences in discipline
  • Ruby Payne's "A Framework for Understanding Poverty"

Saturday, January 12, 2008

the problem with analogies

This is something I've been mulling over for a while, but just now found the words for.

Back in October, when I was hired, the representatives from my school said that the teachers were "like family."
I didn't realize at the time that rather than speaking of "family" in a Platonic sense, they were actually talking about my family. Specifically my second and fifth aunts.

Little details...

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Look out for number one

This is not something I ever thought I would hear myself complaining about. I have heard enough other women complain about it for several lifetimes, and wasn't exactly hoping to join them. But here it is:
My pants don't fit anymore.
This is not because I've gained weight. That was what happened this time last year, when I fell off my bike and sprained my ankle and was basically totally sedentary for four months. (Please note that, at the time, I did not complain about the state of my pants, other than to bemoan the loss of my favorite cords in the accident.) This is because I have lost weight.
I discovered this yesterday, when I put on my pants without the flannel pajamas I've been wearing underneath them for the past several weeks. (The building isn't always warm, and I walk several blocks to the bus stop each way.) I can't wear these pants -- pants which I bought back in October, wearing nothing but standard underwear, and which fit me fine at the time -- without them falling straight off me. This is the literal truth -- I take four steps and have to grab them. Wearing a belt they bunch up so much as to be uncomfortable.
At least I can go back to my typically nonconformist outlook in the fact that I am not exactly happy about this. Sure, I could have stood to lose that extra 15 pounds I gained a year ago (and I think I had lost some of it). But I would have preferred to do it by maintaining a healthy diet and taking a few dance classes, and not, as I seem to have done, by sleeping through dinner so frequently.
(For the edification of my father, I would like to point out that as I write this I have just finished a bowl of granola and yogurt, and that I had a well-balanced, healthy dinner last night and breakfast this morning.)
I need to find some out-of-school energy somewhere. I come home and the last thing I want to do is cook dinner. Or make lunches for that matter, which explains my execrably high grocery bills the last few months (I've been grabbing premade sandwiches from the co-op, at ~$3.50 each, plus the occasional energy bar for breakfast, more than twice a week since mid-November). Other than all the wandering around at school during the day (and the miles and MILES of stairs in that damned three-story-with-a-basement building), I'm not really exercising. I'm just teaching and sleeping, and occasionally eating a sandwich.

Clearly, this has to change. I need to find some good, simple recipes that I can cook -- preferably over the weekend -- and eat all week. I need to start keeping a container of yogurt in the staff room, so that I at least have a backup plan. Because this is ridiculous.

I am also -- big surprise -- writing this to avoid doing this week's lesson plans. Argh. The next round of benchmarks are coming up Friday after next, and we've barely done any science in the meantime. Got to get back into that, at least to the extent of reading the textbook a little bit now and then. We did on Friday, which was nice.

Classroom management post later, I think. Same problems with same kids, but I'm getting a bit more advice. I just wish it didn't all conflict. >_< Sigh.