24-Hour Party People

So I went to see this movie tonight. I really enjoyed it. The theater was packed - we had to sit in the far back row in the middle, which turned out to be great. The people to my left were obviously really, really excited about the movie, just like me. I didn't realize how much history there was with Manchester music and its evolution. I sort of wish that the film had gone a little further and talked more about the Stone Roses and the Charlatans and stuff since I'm really too young to remember when Joy Division came out. I guess that's actually better though, since I do remember the early nineties/late eighties. They chose some really good actors for the roles. The guy playing Ian Curtis was wonderful.

What you could tell with this movie is that there was just so much going on in that city over the last few decades music-wise. It was sort of obvious that Mr. Winterbottom could have made a five-hour movie and still not included all the information that he would have liked. I wish someone would do a documentary on British music similar to what Ken Burns did with Jazz.

Anyway, the movie brought back a lot of memories of when I was 12 and discovered music. It was fun. But that weird font they kept using was really, really annoying. Go see the movie and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Oh, it also made me want to go to England really badly for Spring Break. I didn't spend very much time in Manchester, and I'd like to go back.

First Week: Check.

When all the kids finally left today, I sat at my desk and just stared at the walls for probably fifteen minutes. I can't believe I made it through the week.

The worst part is that I already miss some of my kids. Wow.

I got to do some shopping in the last couple of days. I wish I had a digital camera so I could show off my fabulous new stuff. The first thing I got was the earrings I've had on hold at Gifted for a million years. They're these little loops with little stainless steel miniature...oh, I don't know what those things are called, you know, the thing that looks sort of like three snakes that goes in the middle of one of those 45's that has the big open part in the middle. That. If anyone can remember what those things are called, please leave a comment and tell me (ok - they're called 45 adapters). They're wonderful. Then I got a black long-sleeved Paul Frank shirt with a monkey skull and crossbones.

Today I got a Lemony Snicket book and a t-shirt also. It has the kids on it and some words. It's too big but maybe I can shrink it.

A friend and I got into a fight/discussion about America vs. Mexico at the bar tonight. She was saying that I should be learning Spanish from my kids rather than teaching them English since Hispanic is the majority race here. I agree that I should learn Spanish, but I think they need to learn English too. Whatever. They don't want to learn anything.

I think I'm going to maybe go buy a new record tomorrow. Somebody tell me what to buy.

Unfair.

Well. So, my best friend called me tonight and gave me the bad news that one of our buddies from way back died the other night. He drank himself to death. Was up drinking with his friend and went to bed, then never woke up. How messed up is that? People just shouldn't die that way. At all. Ever. (Note - going back and editing these old posts now - when I wrote this I never would have dreamed that just five years later my own father would die in this exact same way. I am so incredibly haunted by the image of both of these beautiful men - my friend and my daddy - lying dead this way with the bottle next to their heads. I'm not sure I'll ever really get over it.)

I met this fella at church, when I was in ninth grade. I went to church to meet boys and he was one that I met. Totally breathtakingly beautiful. Eyes like the color of some marble or something, all swirly and blue outlined with pale green centers. He was total trouble - if there is a god and a heaven and all that jazz, I wonder if they'll kick him out for the time when we were fourteen and he peed in the suggestion box at church. Or any of the other conventionally awful but nonetheless hilarious things he did. He was a nice guy. I had fun times with him. It's sad. I don't know what else to say about it.

I Love my Teacher!

Yeah, so, apparently I am not the meanest teacher in the history of education. Apparently I'm "nice." Nice = pushover. Damn. One little girl even told another teacher, about me, "I love my teacher! She's so nice!" This kid cracked me up earlier...not really something to laugh about, but she drew a picture for me of the twin towers getting hit by the planes, and then kept talking about the "Eiffel Towers" getting hit. It was just sort of cute how she was all confused about the different famous towers in the world.

I did call a kid out today though. I make them fill in this form letter I set up with what they did wrong, etc. then take it home for their parents to sign. He just wouldn't shut up! It worked out fabulously, because his mom came to the classroom after school, and I got to talk to her about it. I bet he's good tomorrow. If he's not, I'm going to call her, and we'll have a meeting. He's not a bad kid, but excessive talking is so rude. Especially when I'm reading a book to the class. Really. Be quiet.

So, I guess overall it wasn't so...uh, wait. Yeah, it was. It was hot all day, and the kids got fussy and hungry around 10 and I had to give them my lunch. This precious little child kept saying, "Teacher, I'm hungry" and I could only imagine that she probably didn't get breakfast at home...I had to share. Poor kids. Literally, poor. They tell us that for some of them, the free breakfast and lunch at school is all the food they get to eat, and that for a small group, they literally don't get any food at home over the weekend. I guess that's why most of my kids are really small for their age.

And So it Begins

Sigh. School starts tomorrow. I have had a zillion jobs and I have never been as scared of a first day as I am of this one. But anyway, I'm sick of thinking about it.


I am so, so, so very poor. I literally have no money in the bank anymore. Never realized just how much it costs to support oneself. Fortunately, I get my paycheck for the month in just three short days, at which point I will go to Gifted and pick up the excellent earrings I have on layaway. I will then proceed to Good Records and buy tickets for some of those blasted concerts that were scheduled on inconvenient days. I've decided to just go see Wilco and the Apples in Stereo/Clinic show mainly because I can't afford to go to six concerts in one month, financially or physically. This month is going to be demonic, evil, and awful. I have like four thousand meetings and a bunch of training classes to attend, not to mention the ExCet test on October 5...oh, and a bunch of little kids I have to look after and educate every day.

I liked the idea a friend had for listing the top five events from the summer, which, sadly, is now over.

1. Graduating from college

2. Meeting all the foolish people I work with

3. The week-long hotel party with the people from Long Beach

4. The Breeders/American Analog Set music extravaganza last week

5. Living in an apartment with pink walls
I hope things go ok tomorrow. If the kids are too evil, they'll come back from lunch to find their dead teacher slumped over her chair with razor blades or a gun or something nearby. I wonder how messed up those kids would be for the rest of their lives if that happened? It won't get that far though...I'm going to be the meanest, strictest third grade teacher that school has ever seen. No problems in my class.

Now, we'll just see what I have to say about that tomorrow.

Early Evening

Wow, the lamest thing about my job so far is that it's ten o'clock and I'm already home and done with going out for the night. In addition to that, I am too tired to do anything else. Or say anything else. To defend myself, I did have quite a bit of tequila tonight.

I'm looking forward to going back to work tomorrow and dealing with my classroom. This is sad, because tomorrow is Saturday. At least I enjoy being there. I got 27 kids, all English as a Second Language (ESL) kids, mostly from Mexico.  Apparently someone is going to take digital pictures of my classroom next week, so I'll post some pictures of how lovely it is once I get them.

I'm afraid I'm becoming one of those teachers who lives and breathes school and her job. It doesn't help that nearly all of my friends are teachers too. What have I gotten myself into?

Bang.

Hmm. I don't really have anything to say today. I worked way too late. I'm mad because I found out another one of my friends has fewer than 20 students in her class and it looks like I'm going to have nearly 30. I'm going to lose my mind chasing around all those little kids. Just shoot me now, ok?

Various Annoyances

The first day at school was fantastic. I got a clean classroom which is really all I could ask. I have three computers, a color printer, and an enormous television. Seriously. I'm just gonna go hang out at school all the time. We get cable. Cable! In a third grade classroom? Yeah. Maybe I can watch some of the shows I like now. At the rate I'm going, I'm never going to get cable. I'm so broke, criminal charges should be brought against the school district. It's bad. I get paid next week and it's almost all already spent. After that I don't get paid again until the end of September. But that check...man, it's gonna be huge. I get half of my signing bonus plus $250 for supplies. It's neat that we get that supply money a month into the school year...


...That's the cool thing about school board decisions. They make no sense. It's almost like some kind of sick comical game that these disgustingly rich and wealthy, overwhelmingly white people play with the education system here. I spent several hours last Wednesday at a school board meeting. Generally, I really enjoy wasting my time, because it's fun. Sometimes I sit in staff meetings or training classes, and while it's boring, it's kind of fun because I figure out some way to occupy my mind, pass notes to my friends, or, on the rare occasion that the information being imparted is actually worthwhile, I learn something. This school board meeting, though, my God. It was so bad I couldn't even fantasize about being somewhere else. I think that they do all that parliamentary procedure crap to make it so boring and droll that no one will show up, so they can make decisions and when people get mad, they can say "well, you should have come to the board meetings!" It also helps that they schedule them when most parents are at work, meaning that only a precious few housewives [who probably can't come because they have other little kids at home to take care of] and people who happen to be off work in the middle of the afternoon will be able to come.

The saddest part was when the few parents and teachers who were there stood to speak, and it was just painfully obvious that the school board members and the superintendent didn't care at all what was being said. It made me furious.

Oh, I learned something else fantastic today. Former president Ronald Reagan, back when I was a little kid, signed a bill known as the "Double Dipper" into law. The basics of this are that if a person [say, ME] works for long enough in the for-profit sector to earn Social Security benefits upon retirement but also worked long enough in the non-profit sector [the vast majority of non-profit workers are public school employees] to earn benefits from a system such as TRS [Teacher Retirement System], their Social Security benefits are reduced by sixty percent.

You have got to be kidding me. If I earn my Social Security, I deserve to get those benefits upon retirement. If some other girl and I both started working at the same time, and paid into SS long enough to get our full retirement benefits, then we both quit working for the rest of our lives, and then started drawing our SS at the designated age [67 for me], we'd both get full benefits. But if she quit working and I started contributing to a system like TRS, a system that is totally separate from SS and in no way affects SS's fund pool, if I draw TRS benefits upon retirement, I'd lose sixty percent of my SS benefits. It just makes no sense at all. None. If you put more into your retirement fund, you should get more when you retire. The end.

Anyway, this archaic, stupid law has been slashed from the books in all but 14 states, one of which is, of course, Texas. We've been instructed to add to the mountain of more than 250,000 pieces of mail that's already been sent to Texas legislators asking them to pass bills SB1523 and HR2638 which would eliminate this problem.

Man, this job had better be as rewarding as everyone says it is, because it's seriously stressing me out already. And school hasn't even started yet.

No Themed Outfits!

Oh, city life. Today is my first day as a minion of the evil empire of the Dallas Independent School District. I just watched my first traffic report before work and, yeah, there's some sort of wreck between here [my apartment] and there [school].

I know there's going to be a lot of whispering and gossip and debate about the Edison Project, of which our school is a part. I plan to keep my trap shut and stay out of every conversation possible, save those that involve talking just to my already-established friends.

Yeah, right. I don't know that I'm ever able to keep my mouth closed, especially when it comes to something I feel strongly about. Anyway, I'm worried. I'm more scared of these catty teachers than I am of the kids, who I don't meet for another week. Anybody gives me trouble...I guess I'll just have to kick some apple-wearin' ass. God save the teachers and their deplorable wardrobes. And please don't ever let me fall into their ways.