blog diarrhea

I got the randomest urge to vacuum today. I usually hate vacuuming – one of my most dreaded chores… so I was surprised at myself. Then I realized that the urge had come perhaps 5 minutes after I had dropped some food on the ground and then eaten it. Somewhere in my subconscious, I guess I found myself mildly disgusting and was trying to rectify the situation. No wonder I get sick as often as I do…

On that note, I’ve almost completely stopped biting my nails. I think it’s such a gross habit but I haven’t been able to stop for YEARS. Now, I’ve gotten to the point of not actually tearing off pieces (yuck!), but I still stick my fingers in my mouth w/o thinking. I’m not sure that really helps in minimizing the germs from entering my body. Doh!

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I feel like I’ve been resurrected from the dead. It’s only been in the last 2 weeks that I’ve begun to recover from the first month of school. Even in my 5^th year of teaching, I still face lots and lots of obstacles. I opened the year w/ 40+ students in each class while the other 7^th grade science teacher only had 15 or so... the office had completely messed up on scheduling and our classes were insanely unbalanced. In trying to fix it, the counselors discovered a whole host of other issues – many of the students were scheduled incorrectly (like some had 2 science classes and no PE, others had 2 electives and no math, and there were numerous non-English-speaking ESL students sitting in mainstream classes…)

In the midst of the stress of the first week, I contracted strep throat. What an icky illness, and as bad as it hurts, it’s a really bad disease for teaching b/c my voice was completely out of commission for the next week. So I had to prepare lesson plans for a substitute and just cross my fingers and hope that my kids would be good for 4 solid days.

When I returned to school, I found out that the counselors had boycotted the responsibility of rescheduling the mess-ups… so b/c I had foreseen some of these issues at the end of last year and had attempted some suggestions back then, I got pulled into fixing it after it was already broken. I didn’t mind because I got to work w/ 2 other amazing coworkers… but each day, we found more and more mistakes and eventually, we had to rework the entire school and even give new class assignments to teachers. What a mess!

So in our 4^th week, we essentially “re-opened” school. Teachers were told what classes they would be teaching, and every child received a new schedule. In a lot of ways, it’s so embarrassing that our school was in such chaos… and it’s now very much apparent how bad the damage is because students are just not receptive to learning. They had 4 weeks of piddling in their classes, and now that we want to instill routines and academic content, they’re totally resisting. It’s been a tough start…

Working 15-hr days on something that wasn’t my job and carrying the stress of the entire school drained me of everything I had… I feel like my poor students (who had subs for 6 more days while I worked in the office) are getting a rather mediocre education from me… But as I mentioned, I’m almost back in the groove of things.

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One thing I am SO thankful for is jewish people! =) My district has so many Jews that we actually get holidays for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. So last Thursday, I decided to get some much needed exercise… and being in a rather adventury mood, I drove to an area of town I’d never been to before. What’s pathetic is that it’s an area I’ve lived near for the last 4 years! I finally got to discover Venice… the beach community is actually pretty neat. It’s not as posh as the other beaches – there are wonderful old homes adjacent to tattoo parlours – the flavor of the neighborhood is really diverse and cool.

And serendipitously, I found the Venice canals. It’s a beautifully quaint area and quite reminiscent of the real thing… every house has these canoes right outside and I saw neighbors just chatting together from their boats. So cute! I need to get out more…