Like old Ren and Stimpy

ahhhhh

This is so nice. I don't know if anyone will read this, but if anyone does, go ahead, comment away, I'll be posting on this blog for a while.

I remember an old ren and stimpy episode where ren says "i'll just sit back and teenk plezant tots....chicken pot pie, chocolate covered raisins, glazed ham!" Life is so good without this damn credential program. I am so happy. I have time to correct, time to play with my kids, time to talk to my husband, time to do nothing. I still am reeling over the fact that I did this with an infant (who is celebrating her first birthday today) and could have possibly ruined my marriage had I not been cognizant of the fact that this would end in May, and went from super-uber mom to fish fingers and tater tots. My mom caught me red handed, I was actually cooking organic frozen fish sticks. She dropped by (ah, the benefits of having a big family who is always in your face) and she gave me the guilt trip of the century. The woman is super woman. She is a high power broker and always managed to have a great meal ready at night. (However, she also was never home in the evenings and was always working, but they were chasing the american dream - cannot blame your parents, they gave birth to you and that's just that.)
Oh well, those days are over. Today I even admitted to my husband that my cooking has been really, really bad lately, and for the first time, the poor dude agreed. I made risotto that could have been used as tile grout, and the chicken with pomegranate tasted like the chicken at a fast food restaurant. At least I forced my daughter to eat peas and then we had cake.

The key thing I learned this year is that I have to find a way to balance all this. Family life, teaching, intellectual endeavors like writing and keeping up with my reading, and staying sane. Yay moms.

I'm done.

I have now handed in my Icap (a friend brilliantly titled it an ICRAP) and I have to say, as much as I think the satirical title is hilarious, after looking at this, I'm a bit pleased!

Since i came to this program with a few years of teaching experience, I thought I just needed the "paper" and should go through the motions. However, I have really learned a lot about long term planning, assessment, enduring understandings, and the importance of formative assessments.

Also, it also put some things in perspective. Whether we like it or not, communication is going to be the number one asset as the world becomes even more globalized, and I believe that teaching is going to go through a major paradigm shift in the next decade. I don't think bilingual cuts it anymore - my daughters will learn English, Armenian, and I will also like them to learn Mandarin and Spanish. Technology, whether you like it or not, is there and we better utilize it as another "discourse" because that's just where everything is going. Look at economics! Interest rates are bound to fly through the roof - decreasing the "quality" of our lifestyle, and in the end, economists like to cut the first thing, education. That said, we need to not get caught up with our subject, but always think about the global impact of teaching - whether you teach English, Math, or Art.

That said, I am happy this is over - I don't think what we learned is algorithmic, it will change, and hopefully, we can change with it!

Reflection or Refraction?

We are supposed to be reflective practitioners, but when does "reflection" become REFRACTION. Change in direction, change in speed - that is what is happening!

Some people are posting that they are burnt out and have senioritis. I agree. I agree with all of it, that we all come to class and like to interact with our friends. I have met some truly wonderful people in this program. I will actually miss the interaction and hope that i will have such friends when I begin working, IF I START WORKING.

Since I am a writer, I can just bury myself in my writing and live off grants. But how myopic does that get? My new book is dealing with discourse, genocide and string theory. It's done and I am waiting for yes and no letters from certain publishers.

My dad and I were discussing this (our dinner conversations often entail such grueling discussions as he is a nuclear/structural engineer) and he thinks it's a bunch of bullshit. Maybe he is right, fermions and bosons are it, etc. and spin being a very "cool" thing that isn't real science. Maybe. Should have gone into science. Forget art, poetry and all that stuff. Maybe the girls will go into physics and follow the family path of quantum physics, engineering and the like. I doubt it! Maybe after getting a PhD in physics they'll choose to go into options and derivatives, only to find that they want to be a teacher or something.

These reflections are becoming very tedious really. It's making me cynical, negative, and inert.

It's all a bunch of neural circuitry anyway.

my first breakdown

So, today, in the English office, mrs. tough one - no one bugs me - everything is fine - me, stressed? lady CRIES. Yessiree. One teacher came and asked me how I was. I couldn't speak. And then it started, the whole feeling like my face would become a potato and the choking feeling. Then, my eyes welled up. This was a very embarrassing moment. She was shocked and asked me how I was. I couldn't speak. I just told her the the happiest place is my classroom. Period. I guess that is good. THe show goes on. When I was prodded, I told her about my husband's health thing and I just started whimpering like an idiot. She was so nice. Wish I had her as a master teacher.

I still have no idea what will happen. He has a doctor's appt at 5 on friday. Maybe he should have stuck with teaching. Everyone says he will be a superintendent. I don't give a flying shit. I just want him to read his poetry and teach at this point. Even if he goes back to teaching he will make his administrator's salary which where he is, is three times what I will be making next year. So, the kids just won't go to the conservatory for piano lessons. big fucking deal. I even told him to see about finding a job closer to where we live. I guess that is a possibility. it's just not worth it.

which is a very strange thing because I was actually thinking of going into admin. Not a VP or P type thing, but maybe something having to do with curriculum since that is what i did in my old district.

Maybe i should just teach at a community college.

Maybe I should just be a stay at home mom again. I can roll dolmas, go on playdates with other moms, go to the park, eat ice cream and jump on the bed while I read curious george, finger paint, and have a smoke at night reading anne carson. However, "What will i be when I grow up?"

TPE HELL

Today, I have spent the whole day working on my TPE reflections. I am close to being done with 8, and working on 9. I am hoping to be done with this drivel by tomorrow evening.

I have a student who is constantly hanging around me when I am in my classroom during my free period. She is a wonderful kid. She is really into anime and poetry, and what was really interesting was that she liked my three day solo so much last semester that she and her friend signed up for my class this semester. Anyway, she always comes in with a treat or just to talk or just to do homework while I prep.

Last week after the VTECH shootings, I told the kids to just be happy and live life to the fullest because you can't predict what is going to happen. I even said, "I can't promise you that a mango won't fly through that window right now, so have fun, don't worry, study har, sometimes we are not in control of the craziness around us, and be glad it's a nice day."

The student then came to me and asked me if I had heard of a band called the Guillemots and I said no. She said that there is a song she would like to bring me the next day. I told her that would be swell, as long is it's not a song with profanity. Anyway, the next day she brought this beautiful drawing and the lyrics of the song. Then she said that something I said in class reminded her of the song. I was so moved! This is why I love this job, these serendipitous moments when kids try to connect to the teacher. I don't even remember what I said, but I guess it made an impression. I just remember the mango thing because the kids laughed. What a deep kid.

Anyway, I went home and that night, I went on itunes and there it was. It was already on my ipod and I didn't know it because it was one of those "free songs" once. Well, I listened to the song. I guess it must be the line about being thankful for facing the day and that you don't know when these things can happen to you. Quite interesting actually, and I actually like the song. What a great kid.

I guess that day is here, because my husband had to go to the doctor and has a strange growth on his throat. They don't know what it is, that it may be a thyroid issue and have to run some tests. There is the mango. I'm just looking forward to the end of this program. I'm finishing these TPEs because I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I think i'll start smoking.

Three cheers for nerds.

I think the most "at risk" kids are nerds, specifically adolescent female nerds. I know, because I was one, and I have made it my personal goal to address the needs of these girls. No one ever pays any attention to them because they're generally well behaved, nice, smart, quiet, and don't pose a problem in the classroom. Ask any teacher - they spend the most time with the downtrodden or obnoxious boys who are generally going to choose to be downtrodden in the future.

Girls, smart ones, usually are at risk for the following:

A) dumbing down because they are insecure over the fact that they are smart
B) dumbing down especially in front of some stupid, ridiculous teenage boy that they have a crush on. And generally, that boy is not as smart as they are.
C) being ignored, being the nameless, the anonymous, the kid you never remember
D) being insecure about the fact that they like nerdy things and don't have tattoos or t-shirts that blurt out what they like
E) thinking that they are different (in a bad way)
F) changing the way they are (like Frank Zappa said, Dope=you are what you use.

So, I have made a point to show off how nerdy I am by telling my students the following:

A) I used to belong to a pen club (I even brought my pen collection)
B) I used to read a thesaurus, highlighting the terms I thought I may need one day
C) as a teenager, I used to bake and dreamt of being a baker, calling my company "Hye Pies" (Hye=Armenian (in armenian) I still make a kick-ass apple plum tart and plan on bringing some for my students.
D) my mom had to ask my prom date's mother (at 22nd and Irving Market) if he would go to the prom with me. I begged not to go, and then my best friend Mia and I ended up sitting at the prom and watching our prom dates dance with other girls. This discussion came about when some kids were 'bummed out" that they didn't receive valentine cards and weren't going to THE DANCE. I told them "when life has you chewing on life's gristle, just put your lips together, and give a whistle!" My best friend is now an attorney in SF.
E) At summer camp, I used to take a tool called "a do it yourself star finder" and would gather my armenian "nerd" friends at AYF Camp in the angeles forest mountains and created a star club at night. My dad made the star finder for me as he is an engineer and felt sorry for me that I was not so good at math. Perhaps studying constellations would help.
F) My best friend's father invented gatorade and we used to hang out at summer studies listening to leonard cohen sitting at emily diskinson's grave at parties in Amherst.

It felt so cathartic to tell my students this!!! Two of the students now come to my classroom to hang out during their free mod. Also, as the mom of two daughters, I am probably bringing up two more nerdy girls (my four year old just told me that she put her doll in a very inconspicuous place.)

I read an article on cnn.com that there is a movement to work with these girls. So, my way of working with these girls is to give them the attention they deserve (while not ignoring the needs of others) and make sure that they understand how much power they have. Even if they stay home on fridays watching TV while other kids are out, they will be a-ok and often, much better off than their peers. I am sick of giving so much attention to the kids who don't deserve it.

April 24, 1915 = two poems by Siamanto

From Carolyn Forche's "Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness"

This poem is by Siamanto, one of the poets executed on April 24, 1915 after witnessing the beginnings of what would be the first genocide of the 20th Century. My grandparents escaped these exact purges, my paternal grandfather becoming a warrior (guerrilla) and my grandmother becoming a nurse for the American missionaries in Mesopotamia. It is one of the first witness poems of the 20th century.

Siamanto(Adom Yarjanian)- 1878-1915

The Dance

Her blue eyes, drowned in tears,
the German witness to the horrors tried
to describe the ashfields where the Armenian life had died:

"This untellable thing I'm trying to say
I saw with my pitiless human eyes
from the hellish window of my safe house.
While I gnashed my teeth in terror and frustration
my eyes stayed open and pitiless.
I saw a garden city change into ash heaps.
Corpses piled to the tops of trees.
And from the waters, from the springs,
from the brooks and from the roads,
the roar of your blood.

It is the voice of that blood that still speaks
in my heart. Don't be disgusted,
but I have to tell this story
so that people understand the crimes
men do to men. Let all the hearts of the world hear.
That morning with death's shadows was a Sunday,
the first useless Sunday to rise over those bodies.

I had been in my room all night, tending,
from evening until morning, a girl I knew
stabbed by knives. I bent over her agony
wetting her death with my tears.
Suddenly I heard from a distance
a black mob of men, whipping, leading twenty girls.
Twenty young women, pushed into my vineyard
while the men sang lewd songs
'When we beat the drum, you dance!'

And their whips began to crack ferociously
against the flesh of the Armenian women
who longed for death. Twenty
of them, hand in hand, began their dance.
Tears flowed from their eyes, as if from wounds.
And I envied the dying girl
who could not see, but who cursed
with her harsh breathing, the universe,
poor beautiful Armenian girl
giving wings to her dove white soul,
while I shook my fists in vain against
the mob below. 'You must dance, faithless heathen
beauties. Dance, with open breasts, to death,
smiling at us without complaints!

Fatigue is not for you. Nor modesty.
All the way to death, dance, with lust, with lewdness.
Our eyes are thirsty for your forms and for your deaths.

Twenty handsome girls fell to the ground exhausted.
Stand up' the roar thundered behind the snakelike
whirling swords. Someone brought a bucket
then, of kerosene. Oh, human justice
I spit at your forehead. Then they
doused those twenty brides, shouting
'You must dance. And here's a fragrance
Arabia does not have.' And with a torch,
set on fire the naked flesh.

The charred corpses rolled toward death
through the dancing. From my fright
I shuttered the window as if against
a hurricane. And asked the dead girl in the room,
'How shall I dig out these eyes of mine. How?'"

(1909)
(translated by Diana Der Hovanessian & Marzbed Margossian)

.....and this evening before sunset
all of you will go back to your houses,
whether they are mud or marble,
and clamly close the treacherous
shutters of your windows.
Shut them from the wicked Capital,
shut them to the face of humanity,
and to the face of your god...
Even the lamp on your table
will be extinguished
by the whispers of your clear soul.

-by Siamanto