friends, food, and family...

After working several twelve-hour days this week, it was nice to sit and unwind with friends this labor day weekend.  friends are amazing.  I think that without friends, life would be less work living, work would be less worth doing.  We have family, significant others, children, etc.. And i will never discount the importance of those things.  But sometimes an outsider of the house is an insider of everythng else. 

We can sit and talk of music, complain about current girlfriends or exlovers, compliment our husbands, shoot the breeze about recipes and house keeping short cuts, share banter on the weather and whether or not it is warm enough to swim, IM about our terrible day at work, sing the praises of our children, cry over a divorce, breakup, worry, or death, or tell about the latest episode of True Blood.  Whateve the discourse does not matter... the meat of this magic is in the doing not the saying.     The doing is the being there--not always in physical matter, but in the emotional.  This is why friendship is important. 

Platonic, non-romatic frineds are just as important to a body as are food, air, water, and shelter.  There are some things that only a friend would understant-- like doing a "drive-by" to see if he is really home--to tell you that you are not intimidating, just tall for a girl--to chase you down two towns away because you didn't answer your cell phone and may be dead-- to baby sit your child when you need to get away-- to eat ice cream with when your dad tells you to drop a few pounds-- to talk you into getting two lab puppies instead of just one because they might get lonely if you separate them-- to tell you when you look silly after shaving your head-- to give you a heads up if there are "bats in the cave" or pepper in the teeth-- to call you after that first date with a someone new just to see-- to laugh with until the tears are rolling and breathing is labored.  These are small ways of showing love.  Becuse not all love is romantic and not all friendships serve the same purpose.  If that were the case, we could survive with only one friend, but instead, we surround ourselves with a web of people who make us laugh, hold us when we cry, tell us we need to go to the doctor then go with us to the appointment, and eat with us when we are lonely. 

So, cheers to my friends.  I only hope that i have and will continue to show you the same ammount of love that you have given me.   

Thanks for all the memory making!

bad dreams and other schemes...

So i found out today that my nightmare came true...  one more student was added to my roster of 36.  So here's the question: how did i find out this info this late on a Sunday night?  I have access to my online-only gradebook at home.   It is quite acceptable for my buisness, my employers, my school to expect that i would work extra hours--grading papers, entering grades, writing lessons, etc.--at home, but it is quite the opposite that i should be able to expect to have a teachable classload.   

And should i still wonder why my test scores are so low? 

On the other hand, a cute guy called me today... too soon for news on that front...  But with all this work, will there be time to add a spice to life? 

week one... over and done... again

This is my nineth year teaching. (Man, does that make me feel old.) My sixth at the same school.  One would think that I know what I am getting myself into year after year.  But again it all seems new and untried, mych like I am the first teacher in the world to deal with the problems I have been handed.  No, this is nothing new or original.  I am not the only person who has to deal with a rotten schedule, students who lack a knowlege base, overcrowded classes, and low test scores. 

It seems to me that, besides my rotten schedule, the other three are directly related.  Students begin to lack a knowlege base when they are not getting enough learning attention and intruction because they are crammed like sardines into a classroom, which leads to low test scores.

I am no miracle worker, but one would think that the powers-that-be, who always seem to work in the realm of  a "research based agenda," would read some of the literature or research on class sizes.  That is probably the one thing that local authorities can control by spending money on real needs such as more classroom teachers and lessmoney on frivolities like "programs" that waste time and money on staff development that teaches teachers what they already know.   

Back to the now, I couldn't sleep this morning, this Saturday morning, because I had a nightmare that another student was added to my roster of thirty-six in my forth block class where students already have to sit in chairs at the back and sides of the room because I don't have enough desks to accomodate all of them.  I am not trying to be finicky because I know that some teachers have it worse than I do, but some have it better... why can't we all have it better?   I would think the students deserve it better.