Well, my attempts to update more frequently have clearly been thwarted, by a combination of my own wretched laziness and an extremely exhausting last couple weeks at school. However, as of yesterday at 12:49 PM PST, (when the kids got out, maybe 1:47 when I got out is a better number) I have finished my first semester teaching. Please celebrate with me... come on, I'm not seeing much celebrating. Given that I have 7.5 hours until my flight leaves (or about 5 hours before I leave my house... love LAX) and most of my packing is done, it's been suggested that I use this time in a TFA-approved manner- reflecting on the semester. Now, a week and a half ago I went to JZ's house for a TFA sponsored "corps reflection dinner" where I assumed we would go and hang out and try our damndest on a Thursday night not to talk about teaching. Hah. One of the TFAista leadership arrived and immedately began posting chart paper and nudging us all into a big circle so we could answer touchy-feely questions. Well, after snagging another beer to make the entire thing even possible to sit through (though I was yelled at once for "elevator talk" when I leaned over to ask RW if she agreed with me that having an enormous copy of Plato's Republic in your living room seemed pretentious) I did take away one useful thing from the shindig- I am having way, WAY more fun than most of the other folks. People were complaining about not liking anyone at their school, about being incredibly stressed, about going home and having to physically pry themselves away from grade books. When it came my turn to say how I dealt with stress, I recieved (received?) numerous death stares for saying something like "well, I try to laugh at things... when the kids say after 3 weeks on Islam that Mohammed founded the religion on a hunting trip, I show it to my roomates, we all laugh, then I go on and try to make it better." This apparently is not the way other folks handle it.

I'm not sure if my fingers have the capacity at this point in time for full-fledged reflection... so much has gone on over the course of the past 4 months (6 if you count Institute) that I surely couldn't recount it all (plus it should be all here floating around in the archives- thanks to JD for braving all of it and for your comments). However, I could probably break it down into some basic lessons learned, in no particular order-

-Assume they know nothing. I have been burned more times going into a lesson with the assumption that the kids had some kind of prior knowledge of what the hell it was I was talking about. Not so much... many had never heard of Islam (despite sept. 11), samurai, continents, and various other things I thought I could gloss over.

-Break it down. The only way I've found to get around kids being absolutely baffled at what I'm saying is to break everything down into tiny bite-sized chunks of information, repeat them ad nauseum, and break down tasks the same way ("Okay, everybody put your name on your paper. Now hold it up to show me you have it written down. Now copy the sentence from the board. I'm coming around to check that you're copying the...")

-7th graders are amazing / 7th graders are horrible. Some absolutely fantastic kids thus far this year, many of whom I would have been pleased to have as friends back in the day...

okay, I'm sick of this lessons learned thing. If you have particular questions, talk to me and ask something other than "how's teaching going" because you'll get the answer "it's going" or some other drivel. I'm out-

After some prodding from various folks, I'm going to try to update more frequently. I think tonight may be the first time I've realized how insular my life in LA is. I see all these folks at work, and ostensibly have a corps of 200 LA TFAistas to chill with, but because RH and BL are doing architecture work, and JY and RD are out with their respective girlfriends, and I just took JZ to the airport to fly to San Fransisco, I effectively have nobody in this entire metro area of like 15 million people to hang out with. Thus, it's 8:36 on a Friday night and I'm at home IMing people, heating up a frozen pizza and updating this blog. Lest I sound overly pathetic, usually Fridays are good times at Sharkeez happy hour with the crew, followed by a group trip to the fabled "Tavern on Main" (oswego folks think Old City, Ham Tekkers The Rok with no TDX meatheads) for some pool, positouch, and discussions with the local racist former coal miner... good times generally, but tonight... not so much.

Thanksgiving break is over- it was really nice to have a break. We went to RD's parents' place in Orange County for the big Turkey Day itself, and had a really nice early meal there. Following that up, I went with RH, BL, RD, and BW to a go-kart place near Irvine and spent the rest of the day riding go-karts and playing arcade games and mini-golf. It was a fairly bizarre day, altogether, very different from more family-oriented Thanksgivings that I've had in the past. Although the go-karts were a decent substitute for riding four-wheelers at Uncle Tom's place. Missing Thanksgiving at home 2 times in the past 3 years has definitely been pretty odd. Both times that I've missed it, I've come pretty close to the "urban tribes" model that I hold so dear to my heart (taking 3 hours off from work on the campaign in 2000, go-karting with friends this year) and had some Eggers-like moments that I'll certainly cherish, but both times I couldn't help but wish I was back in upstate NY with the fam.