fyi

I just finished college and my last college assignment.

Things are really looking up right now...

EDIT: 10:52 AM

When I finished my portfolio last night around 4AM and saved everything for the last time, I pretty much closed up shop right away. I was in my bed, I closed all the windows on my PC and just looked at my desktop.

I had nothing to do. At least in that moment, I had NOTHING to do. It was a very, very odd feeling.

Spring Break!

I made it to spring break! Three weeks of full time teaching might have been the hardest thing I've ever done. I've said that before, too. "My thesis is the hardest thing I've ever done," etc, etc. I'm curious though; does saying that now make the other times I said it a lie? Or were they, in that moment, the hardest things I've ever done?

Anyhow...I dont have school again until the 26th, and that week I'm only teaching half the classes and then Friday the 29th is my last day. I have to bust it over break on my portfolio though...and job applications...and all the work I haven't done for my methods class....

...Oops...

And I gave my unit exam for the US History unit this week...highest grade was an 87, so I'm a bit nervous about that. I need to do a question-by-question breakdown of the exams and see what my students had the most trouble with, but in grading, I didn't see any one concept or question that was being answered wrong almost universally.

I really want to upload some pictures and reflections I wrote in my next post, which I will hopefully make tomorrow while I go to my final (*tear*) APO fellowship...at Starbucks. We were supposed to go to the Nationals day game, but the DC forecast for tomorrow looks brutal.

All I really have to say right now is...

...being a teacher is really, really hard sometimes.


(edit @ 4:10 PM) and I'm also going to hopefully make a massive post sometime this week.

I should DEFINITELY be doing work frantically right now.

Headline says it all. Instead, I'm at Starbucks with my friend Jenn. I've got a bajillion things to finish before tomorrow morning, and I have about 5 of them done. I think my relationship with my cooperating teacher is rapidly disintegrating; she hardly responds to my emails and kind of expects that I get everything done that she needs from me during the week. This is hard when the only free time I really have is during the weekends, and she typically doesn't get back to me on weekends. I can't move forward with planning and what she needs me to do when she doesn't give me the feedback or instruction I need.

Besides that issue, I was super sick all through last week. I still kind of am. Kathryn couldn't have been less supportive or caring. Everything she said to me was very curt and often seemed to border on abrasive. When I got home each night, all of my roommates would usually greet me with a, "Oh God, Ken, you look terrible!" Finally when Wednesday night came, I was just too sick, tired, and out of gas, so I decided I would take Thursday off (it was a half day and we have Friday off too). I emailed and texted Kathryn right when I made this decision (it was about 9:30 PM and she goes to bed EARLY so I didn't want to call) and she didn't get back to me via email until later on Thursday, in another shitty-sounding response. That was the last I heard from her. I'm really nervous to go in tomorrow, because I feel like she will definitely have some kind of complaint or criticism for me. I'm also still DEAD tired because of the medicine I've been on. It has tons of hydrocodone, and I've had many of the side-effects of it. Gets me to sleep at night without coughing though, and that is what it was meant for.

Better news: Last night, Shannon and I went to the DC United home opener. My sister won 2 tickets to it when she ran a race down in DC last week, but she couldn't get down for the game, so she mailed me the tickets. The game was a ton of fun - DC won 3-1 over the Columbus Crew. I'm not one for watching soccer, but this was the first LIVE pro soccer match I have seen, and it was really exciting and the "big crowd" aspect of it really helped.


As you *might* be able to see, only the lower level of the stadium was full, and there were still many empty seats there. This was the first time I had been to RFK since going to Nationals games in Fall 2007. They made some pretty major/permanent renovations to the stadium since just soccer is played there, but there was minimal effort to actually make it look good. The baseball dugouts were still there, parts of the walls were discolored where they ripped entire sections of seating out, and the field just sort of looked like they laid a ton of turf/sod on top of fine gravel.

Either way, I'd go again. The crowd was far more enthusiastic and engaged than the crowd you find at a Nationals game. I figure that is because the DC United crowd is probably mostly hardcore fans, not casual fans you get with a shitty baseball team. After the game, Shannon and I walked back to the Metro and headed home. We stupidly realized on the way back that we could have taken the 96 bus DIRECTLY from McLean Gardens to the stadium - they are the terminal points of that bus line. Oops. It would have been super slow going through U Street and Adams Morgan on a Saturday night anyhow.

Now I REALLY need to do work...

Oh man...

To put it simply, I can say that things have been better. Its Tuesday - I've got to make it to Thursday afternoon. I have a half day on Thursday and a full day off Friday, which is nice. These past few days have been the hardest I've faced in all of college, I think. I've felt like I've bombed three consecutive lessons, and out of nowhere my cooperating teacher has been pretty cold with me. Our working relationship is strictly that - a working relationship. Very professional: I can count the times we've talked about things besides school/lessons/teaching/etc on one hand. On top of that, I essentially have to plan two curricular units by Monday. This is no small feat.

I'm actually grading papers now though so maybe I will add to this later...

Hopefully coming soon...

I want to write a blog post in my (hopeful) free time later today after I finish most of the work I'm doing now.

In my DC History class, the students are team-reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Some of the students have already read it in other classes (English or other history classes; there are also those who have failed DC history and are re-taking) and are growing tired of it quickly. Others just aren't that interested because they've heard all this stuff a hundred times and Douglass is the hometown hero. Keep in mind that this is a school with a 100% African American student body - if there is one thing they've heard plenty of in the summation of their 10-12 years they've spent in school so far, it is slavery and Frederick Douglass.

I spend most of my time in these class periods just cruising the classroom, sitting with some of the groups, occasionally reading out loud, but mostly trying to ensure everyone stays on task and isn't confused by the 150ish year old writing .

In my last period of DC history before break on Thursday afternoon, one of the groups I sat down with was being kind of quiet. As soon as I asked how they were doing, one of the girls just looked at me and, in a tone that told me she honestly had NO idea what my answer would be like, asked, "Mr. O, what do you think about slavery?"

I probably shouldn't have felt this way, but I think this was the most "on-the-spot" I've felt in a really, really long time. I guess it is because I instantly realized pretty much everything I've invested into building a positive teacher-student relationship was also at stake...