First Person Limited

4 things

I like broccoli in my sandwhiches.

I love my students.

I have friends (in IN).

I'm adopting a cat.

4 (more)things

Apparently, I can't spell 'sandwiches'

I miss our StuCo.

I love you.

I'll be home in 8 days!

Dust to Dust

A year ago, I was in Paris-- the city of my dreams--where my heart beats freely and my breath whistles happily past my lips.  I spent my days strolling along the Seine, running in the Jardins, sitting in awestruck in musuems, praying in Notre Dame and going to school. My parents might tell you that I was happy because I wasn't working, but there's another reason: in Paris, there  was a spring and a purpose in my step, a burning desire for independence and discovery. There, I felt alive.

And this year, I am in Indiana. I am here because I needed a job, and one came, because I am a teacher, not a nanny and I came to be a teacher. In my classroom, I am on fire. When it's just me and the kids, I feel great. Working is what makes me happy. But mostly here, instead of relishing in self discovery, or discovery at all, I just want to leave. Every day on the way to work, I think for a second about heading east instead of west, of heading HOME: to Cleveland and my parents, to DC and my "family" or to a plane that will take me to the pebbles underneath the Eiffel Tower where I left my heart for safekeeping. But like a good, hardworking young woman, I head west.

I take the pieces of me that I've collected in Paris in DC and Cleveland, bear them into the wilderness and try to feel alive. I wear the necklace I bought at the boutique next to the Firehook and the shoes I bought on the Boulevard St. Germain. They are covered in the dust of the Seine and Connecticut Ave and now, the woods. They carry the the dust of my life and I keep walking on wanting them to take be back to the places I've been rather than the place that I am or am headed.

This is not the right Notre Dame. I don't give a damn about football. These are not the right roads, they lead to all the wrong places and I was meant to stroll and not to drive. These are not the rights voices, not the right laughter, not the anonymous bodies I want pressed against me in a crowded metro train nor those whose arms I crave, whose hugs and hands I yearn for, because they could pull me through.

I carry the dust of these far away places on my shoes and the warmth of these bodies in my heart but it's all wrong. It's all wrong and every day I head west and try to make it right then head east and cry all night long for the wrongness and emptiness of it. I don't want to be walking in the shadows of my former lives, I don't want to spend each idle moment longing for the arms, bodies love or even silent proximity of all the people I miss. I don't want to be alone in a dark and silent wilderness where the days are bright enough to keep me going but the stillness haunts me and the dreams of all the lives I've lived and loved before make me bitter and cold.

I want to touch the stones beneath the eiffel tower. I want to wake up  to the sirens and whizz of traffic on Connecticut Ave.  I want to not have to choose east or west. I want to ride on a crowded metro and to walk down a busy street. I want to go to the real Notre Dame and to wrap my arms around you and never let go.

I don't want to wrap myself in the memories of happiness and home and try to find the reality between the semitrucks, cows and cornfields of  Indiana. I came here for the job I alwys wanted and with it came a life I cannot wait to escape. I'm doing what I love, what I was meant to do and I feel empty. I want to be struck with wonder and gratitude for the richness of my life and filled with love.

Maybe I can't see the forest for the trees.

Maybe I need to go home.

?

What the hell am I doing here?

Discuss .

HI Mom

Hey Look! It's me! I finally appeared on the La Lumiere Website (along with the rest of this fabulous faculty) and I want you all to check us out! Click on this link

http://www.lalumiere.org/academics/faculty_target.htm to go straight to the faculty and then feel free to explore th rest of the site and find out about the school---the only redeeming part of INDIANA.

Hooray for La Lu.
And for teaching.

HI Mom

Hey Look! It's me! I finally appeared on the La Lumiere Website (along with the rest of this fabulous faculty) and I want you all to check us out! Click on this link

http://www.lalumiere.org/academics/faculty_target.htm to go straight to the faculty and then feel free to explore th rest of the site and find out about the school---the only redeeming part of INDIANA.

Hooray for La Lu.
And for teaching.

What it's like to be a Teacher

Everyone asks me what it's like to be a teacher. Do I feel different? Yes. Look different? Maybe. Has this new job changed my way of thinking, changed my life? Changed me? What do you think?

Teaching is like studying overtime.

Before I left DC, a dear friend told me that " Being a teacher is being the most prepared student in the room." As usual, she was right. It's a thousand hours of thinking, planning and executing, all for the benefit of someones else, all in preparation for the questions posed by someone(s) else.  Through teaching, I've learned that explaining something, some obscure concept or simple lesson to someone else is  a) The most difficult challenge and b) the surest way to force my own mastery. That is not to say that I know all there is to know about Writing, reading and English in general but I do have to "study hard" so to speak and to always be on solid, comfortable ground with the material in my lesson plans. (Especially since they are perpetually subject to change or to trash...)

Teaching is 90% theatrics.

This may not be true for all disciplines and levels of teaching, but teaching high school freshmen, I live by one rule (Okay, two): Make it fun; make it relevant. I am shameless, as most of you know. I will do anything, anything to get these lessons to stick. I will scribble on the board, draw funny pictures, crack funny (or not so funny) jokes. I just want the kids to learn something and to not HATE English like I hated English (in HS).

Teaching literature is teaching life.

I have known this for a long time and now it has become the best part of my profession. I get to teach my students to think about the perceptions actions and beliefs of others in the same ways that they analyze the characters in our texts. I get to remind them that there's more than meets the eye or the page and that absolutely everything can and should be questioned, argued and explored. I want them to get angry, I want them to laugh and I want them to leave class and go to the dining hall and look at some kid differently because all of the sudden they find themselves thinking before they act or speak or claim to understand another person. My students are young, they are neophytes in the high school world just like I am new to the wilderness. Some of them hate it (like I do) some of them love it (like I am trying to do). They are victims of cliques and bullies and nerdiness like I was and everyday when they get out of bed they pray to Go d that they'll still be cool. They want Jimmy or Sandy to like them; they want to do well in school; they want to make their parents proud and teachers prouder and they hate that they have to listen to us; they think school sucks but they love it and they listen even when they don't want to hear.  So I have to keep teaching.

Teaching makes me feel like a kid.

I don't know everything. Most days. like them, I don't know anything and I am just making it up as I go along. They have lots of questions about life which I can't answer or won't answer. But I do the best that I can and I remind myself every time I feel lost and uncertain that they are wondering and wondering too. Some of them are far from home too. We are all " the new kids". I'm just a wee bit better off  faking it till I make it.

Teaching makes me grateful.

I have been a teacher for 3 weeks but have been a teacher in training for a lifetime. I would never be here if I wasn't made to love school, to love learning and exploring and to believe in myself. I have MY teachers to thank for that.

Teaching means:  I am stuck in the wilderness, stressed out, bored, broke and incredibly lonely.  I want to go home, want to cook myself dinner, want a pet, want a nap, want less papers to grade. I want some Advil. But I'm happy.

Manic Monday

It's Monday. More specifically, it's Monday of the third week of school. I know this because:

So far this morning I have had troubles of all sorts with the buttons on my oxford shirt, gotten red marker on my chest--a virtual scarlet K for KLUTZ--and spilled coffee on my skirt. Furthermore, the plumbing problems continued in my apt this morning, causing me to be 20 min late for school and miss the morning meeting. I also overslept, my hair's a mess--even though I just got it cut yesterday and my snazzy class presentation technologically malfunctioned. I had to resort to sribbling on the board, hence the marker and the start of this rampage.

Today I am a cross between Miss Frizzle and the Absent-minded professor.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have class in 10 minutes and I have to find my keys.

Duty 24/7

When I dreamt of being a teacher, I dreamt of changing lives, connecting to kids, exploring literature, working from 7-3 Monday thru Friday and having summers off. I see now that I was sorely mistaken.  I'm sitting right now in evening study hall, babysitting some great kids working on an english project and one who is typing a paper for Old Testament. Another student and teacher are hunched over a table practicing Spanish vocabulary and still others are amnning study hall in the dorms, making sure that the kids get their homework done and bags packed for the following morning and that they get to bed on time. Just like parents.

When this duty ends, I will drive home, east on route 80 and will think about the lessons I taught today, my struggling students, my brilliant improv troupe. I will worry about the look in her eyes and the fact that he was withdrawn today--sad. And I will add to this swirl of worry my own lonliliness and as I drive towards my temporary home, being sucked further and further into the blackness of Indiana. will sit up at my kitchen table planning for class tomorrow and will fall into bed worrying and tweaking and re-writing my lessons. At five o'clock the next morning I'll be awake again, changing my lessons sleepily, chugging coffee before I head West on the toll road and drive the 45 minutes to school.

A six-hour respite and it's back to work again.  I'm caught in this isolated world of students and teachers, parents and kids. They follow me everywhere. In the best and worst possible ways.

I was not ready for this.