Good to be back in the swing of things... Headed home straight after Friday's classes got over for Harborfest. Had a really good time at home, saw family and friends. Whenever I'm home, it always seems like Oswego is such a dreary place, with nothing to do, but for that weekend every year, the place really seems alive and beautiful. It helps that the past couple years we've had beautiful weather. The fireworks, as always, were fantastic, and it was really nice having my close friends and my family all together for it (kudos to GW and LH for saving our beers from the water after our "cool it in the lake" bag broke) More or less just really good to be home for a little bit. Fortunately, from what I know about my district, I'll have an incredible 4 months a year off to make it home now and again.

Disaster struck today in class. One of my kids' grandfather brought in cake/cookies/chips/coke/fruit punch for a birthday party. Party was great, but I had to teach math immediatley afterward. I tried to get them calmed down by doing a little stretching, then a 10 to 1 countdown with their heads down and quiet. This was made difficult by their refusal to sit quietly, and the cries of "blastoff!" at the conclusion of my countdown. Things got no better when I launched into the lesson, which involved kids moving around to kinesthetically grasp adding and subtracting fractions (ok, the whole class is 16/16, if 3 people leave you subtract 3/16, what fraction is left?). So I had kids moving around class which was difficult enough. Then the phone rang, and my FA was not there to get it. I picked up the phone, and it seemed to be some sort of social call for him, so I'm trying to take down the phone number in case it was a parent, but the phone kept cutting out, and the cord wouldn't stretch to the blackboard. In the meantime, some random girl had entered the class and poured herself a glass of fruit punch that was left over from the party. I finally got the phonecall over and struggled to get back control of the class, but every time I turned around, somebody was on the floor, or taking his shirt off, or something. And this was a lesson that required the kids to do some independent work while I moved around to help the kids who didn't get it. On top of this, half the class didn't have pencils, and the rest of the pencils kept breaking and seemed to not want to sharpen correctly. All told, massive disaster, and all while my CMA was observing... wonderful.

Addendum- Last night it rained, for the third time in the 27 days I've been here. What's really odd, is that there's a direct 1:1 correlation between the rain and the three nights I've had Los Angeles regional meetings. And it always rains during the meeting. Statistics folks (MPO this means you) figure this out, ok?

Day off from teaching today. Because of my odd 5-person collaborative (the result of me and AY being rolled into another collaborative after our first class was terminated), I only get to lead teach for 4 45 minute blocks a week, and we team-teach an hour-long literacy/numeracy hour every day. This is quite a drop-off from the first week, where I was teaching a 1.5 hour block twice a week. On the other hand, it was nice just to have a little time to catch up. In other news, my collaborative had its first big malfunction today, which led to some members venting some pent-up frustration. Apparently we arranged to meet a student's mom after school today, but never really figured out which of us was going to do it (we figured that 5 teachers showing up would be a bit overwhelming...) The upshot was, nobody actually went down to see her, which makes us look pretty incompetent, so we all kinda dropped the ball. This was sorta the last straw for those who thought that some of us were kind of running a loose ship. I personally think that we all need to meet more so our wires don't get crossed at all, and I certainly need to step up and take more ownership over the class. Hopefully at our meeting tonight everything can get ironed out.

Really looking forward to getting home to Oswego for Harborfest this weekend... looks like most of the crew from OHS will be there- AS, DV, AC, BS, RH, DW, etc. should be good times (and a hell of a lot cheaper than going out in NYC).

Heat is back, and it is really really bad. I got another "Mr. Williams? Did you spill water on your back?" in class today after tramping up 4 flights of stairs from the basement in a shirt that (unfortunately) has some color-changing properties when damp. The class continues to be a real joy to teach- today I read them the old Appalachian folk tale "Taily-Po", which they absolutely loved. I think that even though they really didn't seem to get the sequencing activity I did afterwards, the fact that one of my reluctant readers asked for my copy of the story to take home made the whole thing worthwhile. Apologies to regular readers for not keeping updated lately, but it's just been too damn hot to sit in my room and type any of this up. When things cool down (it was 106 on the heat index today at 6 pm!) I should be in better spirits.

BTW: if any of y'all are reading this and have a few minutes, drop me an email (cnyexpat@hotmail.com) 'cause it's been 3 days since I've gotten anything other than ads for porno and debt reduction.

Weekend passed so quickly, I really can't believe it. On the other hand, last week seemed to pass pretty quickly as well. Friday night went out to local bars with a bunch of TFAistas, then up to a dorm lounge to drink cheap sangria out of 3 oz. cups. The freshman-year-of-college vibe here on weekends is so incredibly odd, especially when there are a lot of people (my roomate, for instance) who've been out of college for 3 or 4 years. On a Friday night it's really hard to believe that we're all teachers, or to take ourselves seriously at all...

Yesterday I went w/ my roomate JZ to Manhattan for the day, after an interminable district meeting where I ended up far more confused about the policies of the Los Angeles Unified School District than I was before I started. I'm really hoping to get into Cal State TEACH for my credentialing program, even though it's a bit more expensive than Long Beach or LA, because it's an entirely online-based, which means I wouldn't have to trek down to Long Beach 2 nights a week for the next couple years. Anyway, we went to the Guggenheim, which was really a trip. Along with a great collection of "name-brand" art like Cezanne, Degas, Picasso, etc., they had an exhibit called "Moving Pictures" which was mostly really odd photographs and video art (think my class with Terry Cuddy). All in all, very interesting, especially the works by Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Koons. After that, took the 4 down to SoHo and window shopped for a while- oddly entranced by the sweet Steve Madden shoes but unfortunately nothing there within budget. Had dinner at a cool little sidwalk cafe- nice to get dinner + tax/tip for under $10, even if my ravioli w/ pink sauce wasn't all that fantastic. Met up later w/ my advisor CR and the three of us checked out Times Square, which was as flashy as i'd imagined. I was struck by the idea that all of us tourists who were there are basically lining up to gawk at large advertisements. If somebody could find a way to charge us to get in, even a couple of bucks, it would be Madison Avenue's greatest triumph anywhere- an advertising theme park.

On a side note: further evidence of my district's utter, utter incompetence. We'd been told for 3 weeks that my elementary school was called the Max Schoenfeld School, named after the first principal. That's the name that's on all the official stationary and school letterhead. However, a plaque was discovered on Friday dedicating the school to Max Schoenberg, not Schoenfeld. The damn place doesn't even know what it's called... unbelievable.

Fools in the administration continue to astound me. Today, with one day's notice, we got midterms to give to our kids in math and reading. Not only did they totally fail to notify us about them at all (and giving kids 2 hours of pop quiz is a recipe for stress, even when you tell them it doesn't really count), but they were so half-assed. As my roomate said, it seemed like they were put together by some day-late, dollar-short administrator at 3 in the morning. My class got question books that didn't match answer sheets (mark A, B, C, or D in the question book for #3, but #3 in the answer sheet only had E, F, G, or H). Not only that, the test had the kids referring to maps on pages where no maps were, and telling them to answer "questions 13-25 using this passage" when the whole test only had 20 questions. When you're trying to reassure kids who've become terrified of high-stakes standardized tests that they're going to do OK, this is not reassuring. Frankly, if this is the quality of the final tests these kids get, no wonder so many of them fail. This shit is not happening in Westchester.

Well, after the rant yesterday, things did indeed get better. I'm now teaching 3rd grade, in a class that is so ridiculously well-behaved that it's certainly not preparing me for the fall whatsoever, but is really pleasant now. The kids are great at math (what I worked on with them today), we'll see how things go tomorrow. My new collaborative is great, if excessively vulgar (even for me). It is quite a pain in the ass for me (and for them) to redesign everything to take in me and AY, my other 5th grade exile. I would write more, but as of right now I really need to get a "Multiplication Bingo" lesson plan done for tomorrow. One final note: today in our group meeting, we were given notice from institute staff (not directed to us in particular) that whoever had been hitting on the girls at the high school volleyball camp at Fordham should stop, because their coaches were complaining. We are so shady here.

You know, if I ever get on a school board, or am running a district for some reason or another, I would never hire anyone as an administrator who was more than a few years out of the classroom. The brilliant bean-counters down at the district office decided to sacrifice children's education for a few bucks saved (which I'd imagine went for executive lunches or new mahogany panelling for the superintendent's office or some other worthy purpose). My class was canceled, my FA removed to another school, and due to some stupid goddamn arbitrary rules, the teacher next door couldn't take over my class, and supervise us as well as the TFA folks in her room (would have put her 2 students over the 24 max. class size) even though she was willing to do it and did it all day today effectively. Despite my advisor CR going to bat with us in front of the principal, no luck. Now, this stuff is a pain in the ass for me- I have to learn new kids names, figure out how to teach 3rd grade instead of 5th, get about half the teaching time in, etc. etc. But it's doable for me. I'm in this job because I'm flexible- I'm an adult, I've done change before, it's annoying, but I can deal. My kids however, get completely screwed. It took us and the FA 2 weeks of teaching to figure out where each of them really needed help, how they worked with each other, and how we could best teach them. We had units in progress, books in early chapters, hell- we only got halfway through the play we were reading today. By the time another teacher gets them, figures out how they'll fit into her lesson plans, get them assessed (even if we share what we know, you can only tell so much) they'll have about a week of summer school left, and what good will that do them? These are all kids who didn't have to be here, who signed up (or whose parents signed them up) to get extra help and make sure they entered 6th grade on a track to graduate... What gives somebody in the district office the right to waste their time? Just because they're numbers on a sheet? Statistics? Sure, close a 5th grade class, it's only a dozen kids. Well, shit. Somebody should be making these decisions who's actually come down and seen these kids. Seen what they've been doing, and how hard they've been trying this past week... seen how they light up when they tell me that they're finally figuring out fractions for the first time because we had the time to sit down with them in 2 on 1 groups to work through it. On top of that, how many times have some of these kids have adults walk out on them? Adults who told them they'd be there, and said they cared about them, and would help them? Maybe that's why one incredibly talented but unfocused boy spent the ten minutes after we gave our sad announcement pounding on his desk in frustration and burst into tears as my colleague walked him out the door? Anyone in the district office see that? And if they did, do you think it would make a difference?

Very slow day today, although quite productive. Kind of nice to be able to just lounge around read, IM people, and call some folks I haven't talked to in a while. RD woke me up with a start at 11 to go to breakfast, which was nice because it kicked me out of an awful dream I was having. The first teaching nightmare, as it were. Dreamed that for some reason, my class was being held in my old bedroom at home. On top of that I had no lesson plan prepared, and was distributing M&Ms for an activity, but not quite sure why. Then my glasses broke, so I couldn't see the kids, and they started rioting, throwing M&Ms all over the place. I was panicking heavily when RD woke me up (I also had a disturbing dream earlier about trying to take mass transit all over Oswego and having no idea why, or where things were, but just sure I was really late for something... probably the class being taught in my room). Spent the afternoon getting lesson plans figured out, and retyping "The Monkey's Paw". It is an incredible pain in the ass to type a play. Way harder than just churning out the words, it took me like 2.5 hrs. for 2000 words. Really unpleasant, but necessary. But, finally got all my lesson plans figured out and such for the week ahead, which of course may be utterly useless if I don't have a class... Well, they want flexibility, so we'll be flexible, I guess.

Very restful day today. After the stressful (though highly entertaining) day yesterday, I got to entirely relax today. Went w/ RD to the botanical gardens, saw venus flytraps, plants that look like rocks, and the waterful. Quite nice. Read my new book (Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing) which has been excellent thus far. Then went w/ RD and CR to Howl at the Moon, a local watering hole, where we had some drinks with Greg, a local ex-con who's hoping to be in the FDNY, although now he's a building super and volunteer fireman. Greg prefaced all sentences with "no offense" meant entirely for CR, before he launched into a discussion of how they hung a black guy in his neighborhood ONLY FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!!! THAT'S 1985!!!! Despite his well-intentioned bigotry (and I'm sure he congratulated himself on the way home for buying a pitcher for a black guy and his friends) Greg was really entertaining, a welcome break from lesson planning. Although I'm quite glad that he and his 48th precinct buddies aren't patrolling MY streets, it was very interesting shooting the shit with him.

Wow, ridiculous ridiculous day yesterday. Started out, I had a fantastic day with the kids. In our small groups (extra small because it was friday, I only had 2 kids in mine) we were working on multiplying fractions, and I really think that I was getting through to them in a way other teachers hadn't before. Before going through the formulas and "numerator" and "denominator", we were trying to get them to understand the concept by using recipes (double a recipe for pizza, for one pizza you need 3/4 cups of sauce, how many cups for 2 pizzas?). I didn't think that my final quadrilateral lesson went well, but our Faculty Advisor said that he thought it went over very well with the kids. I started reading "Holes" to them, and they loved it.

Then came the downside: due to district cuts, it looks like my class is going to be eliminated. Because we've only had around 9 kids or so every day, our class isn't a useful allocation of resources or something, so the kids will be split up and placed in other classes, our FA is going to teach 6th grade in another school, and I'm not sure what I'll be doing Monday. TFA folks told us not to panic, they're working on a way of trying to keep the class together, maybe with TFA people serving as the accredited "teacher" in the room while my collaborative and I are teaching. The principal is going to try to pull some strings with the district office. My collaborative and I are hopeful, we left all our charts and posters and stuff up on the walls, and are going in on monday with lesson plans, ready to teach somebody.

To celebrate the end of the week (and to de-stress), the TFA corps from CES 70 all went to happy hour at a little bar that I think serves as a Fordham student watering hole during the year. The bartender (grateful to have business this time of year, i think) extended Happy Hour until 8, and added to the fact that we were all exhausted, a lot of people there were pretty sloshed when we headed home. After a brief stop at White Castle, where I had to remind my colleagues that loud cursing was not particularly social behavior, I was basically hauling four of them home, having to stop now and again to peel them off the ground where they were trying to sleep. Three of the four at one point all offered to sleep with me (2 female, one male... which was interesting if awkward). I plead prior commitment and told them all to go to bed. Should be interesting running into them today, I can only hope they were blacked out at the time. Things stayed interesting for the rest of the night, I got back to my room and was taken by another crew to a TFA social at this salsa/merengue club somewhere near the GW bridge. (The rave thing i mentioned the other day was deemed not viable due to the fact that it ended at 4 am) I had a really good time there, although I'm absolutely wretched at salsa dancing. Danced several times with a very attractive girl who seemed to not mind that i was whacking her in the head with my arm every time we tried to do the spin parts of the dance. Subsequently, she convinced me to go on stage with her for karaoke. Quite appropriately, as this was a latino bar where even the call to come up on stage was in spanish, she had signed us up for the Offspring's "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" which the crowd seemed to enjoy immensely. Best part of the whole weekend was not waking up at 6.

Things are definitely looking up today. Taught my best lesson to date, and have great ideas for the coming week (reading the students "The Monkey's Paw" and with the kids first making 3 wishes, then after reading it switching papers and writing about how those wishes could go horribly wrong. A couple "rambunctious" students might have some interesting and gruesome things written about them!) Anyway, things just going very well. Going with some friends tomorrow night to some rave/nt tunderground hip hop/circus/costume party in the old Schwarz building- the first power plant in New York... one of my buddies has a friend who's running this thing, where a bunch of artists and entrepreneurs took over the building for 2 weeks and are having events there both weekends, with the whole place decorated and decked out. Should be very interesting, especially when taking into account the crew I'm going with. I'm not sure what it is, but I definitely (through random chance entirely) seem to attract gay roomates. I've had 3 in the past 4 years- first year of college, nashville, and here in NYC. I went into all of those blind, but I'm pretty sure i've definitely exceded the random chance factor. I've no complaints, my roomate now is awesome. Beats the hell out of Reid, certainly.

Wed., July 10:

Third day teaching today. Things were up and down, more time spent on down, but the brief up was fantastic and made up for all of it. After yesterday, I thought I had the whole "lesson plan" thing down pat, but today everything went to hell. Started out meeting the kids at breakfast, which was interesting, got to talk to one of the kids extensively which was really nice. Thought that class might only be 4 kids today, that's all that showed up early in the morning, but more trickled in later. Spent my planning period finishing grading the math test, which they all tanked. Really, really tanked. This is a 5th grade math final for kids who passed 5th grade, and nobody scored more than a 50% on it... kinda disheartening, but at least they all can read pretty well. Anyway, my lesson plan went completely out the window when I realized that the chapter I planned to teach in "Frindle", our reading book, was not one we could get up to because my collaborative colleague had not finished the preceding chapter the day before. Pretty sure the screwup was because i thought he said they read through chapter 9, not "to" chapter 9... so anyway had to come up with a lesson plan on the fly and discard the one i had spent 2 hours on last night... wonderful. The kids knew i was bullshitting, i knew that they knew, and they knew that I knew that they knew. Consequently they took it to me pretty well. Our small group math instruction, however, was wonderful. One exchange between me and a student made my day. "Good job, you just divided 4 subs so that 6 people could have them equally" I said. "unh uh, no I didn't-I can't divide" he replied. "well you just did," I said, "and even more, you reduced a fraction too."