Great Teaching Moment

After a talk with my co-teacher today, it was decided that I would kick off the lesson on Observations today. I have a PowerPoint I made for my self-contained kids, and I figured I could breeze through it with the team-taught class in half the time.

The lesson kicked off really well. The kids liked the PowerPoint, my colorful word signs, and really appreciated the chance to yell in school (I like to do some 'call and answer' techniques to keep kids awake). I think my co-teacher liked it too, because she got to see a different teaching style than her own.

I was high on a lesson gone right when we hit the practice examples. The first of which, is a picture of a squid attacking a piece of bait. The kids ooh'd and aah'd and thrust their hands up eager to participate.  The first couple gave me good Qualitative examples (color, etc), so I asked for a few Quantitative observations next (counting and measuring). One girl in the front of the class almost bounced out of her seat trying to volunteer, so I called on her.

"IT HAS EIGHT TESTICLES!"

The class was silent. I stood there for a blink or two, processing.

"You mean tentacles."

A Few Notes on Teaching

There was an article thrown up on CNN stating teachers had 49% of their rank and file leave the field within the first three years. Every job has it's difficulties, but some are more physically strenuous (not teaching) or just more asinine than others (definitely teaching).  

Thankfully, they make for some hilarious stories. From severely handicapped children pulling fire alarms, ("Well, it does say 'PULL!' At least he was reading!"), to a kid asking me if "there are special classes for special kids" when he's quite special himself, it feels like I always have something I can laugh about if I can just survive long enough that it becomes funny. Some years, so much stuff happens that it all blurs together and I lose more unique moments than some careers have in a lifetime. 

Then there's the parents. Ah, yes. Those silly parents. A math teacher I used to work with still walks around quoting me whenever she runs into a 'special parent ("Appletrees!").  

Three misnomers about being a teacher:

1. You don't get paid for summers. I'm on a 10 month contract. I have to go out and find work over the summer if I want a paycheck. No, my job is not some sort of dream job where I get paid for two free months. It's a job like any other - you only get paid for what you do.

2. You don't get respect. You get blamed for everything (especially by the parents). I'm not even going to mention all the things I've been accused of, but they range from racism, to purposely ignoring a parent's emails (because I didn't reply within an hour) and withholding textbooks. I love when I tell a parent what a kid did in my class and then they turn around and ask their kid "Did you do that?" like I'm making the whole thing up for my own nefarious purposes.

3. Yes, there are bad teachers out there, but there's a lot more good teachers that never get any credit. I'm sorry you didn't like a teacher you had as a kid. I hated plenty myself. However, a good teacher isn't always a kid's favorite and a teacher who's "cool" sometimes doesn't teach jack because they let the kids run the classroom. It's like parenting: the kids don't always want what's best for them and they're not happy to hear otherwise.

That sounds close to complaining, and I guess it is! On the bright side, teaching is a gold mine for comedy. If you can't laugh off some of the crap you're put through, then you don't belong in the field. Teachers certainly aren't in it for the money. I want to write funny anecdotes, but since I'm a special educator, I'm supposed to keep things confidential and try my damnedest. 

That means I can write stories from waaaay back when! One time, I had a blind girl threaten to bring a gun to school and shoot the principal(the principal replied "Good luck finding me!" - True story!) Another time, I had a kid wear the same shorts to school for a week with a giant wet spot over his crotch (though I guess it was more crusty than wet by the end of the week).  His mom thought he was a genius and that he belonged in more challenging classes. At another school, I had another student who was terrified of flies, because she thought they were poisonous. I had one student call me Stalin because I wouldn't let him wear a hood over his head with the drawstrings pulled tight, and another student who I had to have a serious talk with about picking his nose in public and why he couldn't get a date. 

It's sad, but so many of those stories happen they blur together and fade from my memory like I mentioned earlier.

I don't know where I was originally going with this post, but it's past bedtime.There will be plenty to do in the morn.

Congrats to Cammy and Erwen!

I actually had a life this weekend.  

I went to garage sales, Section 8 housing to do some computer work, church, a bar and my parents on Saturday. Then, I got to go to Cammy and Erwen's wedding celebration Sunday night! A big congrats goes out to the two of them. They've been together since I first met them some 7 or 8 years ago. Technically, they were already married before Sunday. The two of them ran off to Aruba to get married back in March or April if memory serves me. Sunday was supposed to be the more traditional Chinese wedding for their families.

The wedding was awesome. For one, it wasn't a wedding. It was a nine course Chinese dinner at the China Gardens! I came home stuffed to the gills with authentic Chinese food for the first time in my life. There was no sweet and sour sauce or General Tso's to my initial dismay. Instead, there was some sort of fried crab meatballs, lobster, chicken, duck, and some other things I'm really not sure what I was eating. Most of it was superb, and anything I didn't like just caused me to reach for one of the other courses.  I couldn't help but laugh when they brought out the 'traditional' Chinese food takeout boxes for food that was clearly above and beyond anything I'd normally stuff into them. The only wrenches in the works were when Cammy told me the wrong time to show up (I was early to being an hour early), and then the interstate was going through massive construction on my way home.

More bullets from the weekend follow...

A few thoughts

The current CEO of HP, Leo Apotheker,  is getting fired to the tune of $7 million in cash and $18 million in stock options. His annual salary was supposed to be $1.2 million, plus he got a $4 million signing bonus.

Now, I'm not saying that a good CEO doesn't deserve a healthy sum for running a successful company. Their success will translate to success for the company's employees and their customers.

I am saying that I wish I could get fired for over 20x my base rate of pay. Seriously? The guy must have had some insane contract. For 20x my salary, I'd quit my job tomorrow and take a week long cruise to celebrate losing it. Then I'd look for a job in another county and hope to get fired from that too!

Second thought: tutoring rocks!  The family I'm working with fed me pizza last week, and then it was spaghetti and meatballs and roast beef tonight. Back To School Night is much better when I'm not stuck at work for 3.5 hours of downtime and a commute that doesn't make going home to rest an option. Instead, I drive over to work tutoring for an hour, spend an extra half hour working and talking to the family so I don't feel guilty about eating their food, and then drive back to work to take care of business there. I'm pretty committed to making sure this family gets their money's worth out of me.

Third thought: I wish my commute home at 5 o'clock was as fast as my commute home at 8:30 PM. An average speed of 60 mph is much nicer than an average speed of under 20 mph.

Fourth thought: I've posted three times in three days. See you next month?

Role Reversal

Sometimes, I find it funny that my wife prefers to have me do the childcare so that she can attack projects.

Carrie's mom is coming up to visit tomorrow, so I took over Shane-duty after eating a quick dinner of leftovers. Carrie proceeded to attack any areas of disorderly muck that she could find for the next couple of hours. 

Okay, okay, so cleaning and caring about the presentation of a house is "stereo-typically" female. My wife will hand me the baby to tackle projects for work, conference calls, painting rooms, assembling furniture, disassembling a laptop, you name it! The one thing she won't touch are the cars and electrical problems, so those remain firmly my realm. Anything from IKEA becomes a race to see who gets to put it together (because it's fun like Legos!), but I normally draw the baby duty.

Of course, there are divisions with baby duty as well. Baby baths, for instance. I don't do them. I'm not really sure how that started, but Carrie is the baby-bather. Solid food has been my thing. I was the one pushing that earlier and am usually the one to feed Shane non-bottled foodstuffs now.  

Just a little insight into the weirdness that is my family. 

It's after 10:00 and I should be sleeping. I have another Back-To-School Night and tutoring tomorrow, so I won't be home until later.

Update from 2012: Guess who is the only baby-bather now, Past Mike? Hint: It's not Carrie! Just a random update as I go back and tag a couple of hundred posts.

Work is in full swing

Work is in fuuuuullll swing.

Right now, I tend to leave home around 7:10 AM and get home around 5:30 PM. Parent night last Thursday kept me out until after 9:00 PM but I managed to get home at 4:45 PM the Friday after as a consolation. Actually, parent night wasn't all that bad. I went to my tutoring job at 4, worked for a little over an hour, and then the family fed me a pizza dinner before I had to rush back to school and finish getting ready.

Have I mentioned that I really like tutoring?

Whoa

My 45 minute drive home in the pouring rain was not in vain! School's been rained out?

I'm in complete disbelief.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a Team-Time day and our first fire drill....talk about an easy day to get rained out, but....well, it is a day off! Huh. Go figure.

Shane's 9-mo Check-up and A School Update

Shane topped the charts today at 95th percentile height and 90th percentile weight!

Wow! That's a big baby!

He must be getting his size and weight from Carrie's grandpa. I never knew him, but he was over six feet tall and used to take on a fake name to play for football for the Steelers when he was in college (back in the 20s or 30s).

Unfortunately, today was also inoculation day. Shane's already been waking up at 3 in the morning crying from teething pains, and he got shots today for good measure! My fingers are triple crossed that he'll sleep tonight.

Work is unique as always. I have one kid I'm worried about who was plucking his eye-lashes out one by one, and I got observed on the 2nd day of school. Thankfully, I was kicking ass when I was observed, so that was a bit of a morale boost. Then again, I apparently drive children to pluck out the hair on their eye lids, but I'm willing to bet there's more going on there than my teaching.

More and less is going on, but I'm going to call it a night here.

First Day

I went to bed early and woke up to the tangy smell of cat urine. An unknown perpetrator decided to fill Shane's old infant tub with yellow water.

And so it begins...

And so it begins. Tomorrow is the first day of classes.

Early to bed, early to rise.

Shane - 9 months

Teething sucks.

Ask Shane. He'll cry you a note.

Fantasy Football 2011

Fantasy Football draft tonight!  I'm psyched.

We don't play for money, it's more just of a fun, bragging rights sort of thing. Plus, I suspect it's another 'rebuilding' year for the Redskins so it gives me something else to cheer about. I'm more than willing to be proven wrong about that, though.

Carrie and I are doing an online draft this year since it's going to be held out of town. She rescheduled a riding lesson to prevent me from picking Donovan McNabb in her name. My wife is far more pumped than I am. She made her draft roster a couple of weeks ago. She got bit by the fantasy sports bug ever since she took over Matt's team last year and reformed it to third place in a league of twelve. This year, she's looking to beat me out!

I texted my brothers and sisters to see if they'd be interested in having a family league this morning. I think it would be a fun way to keep in touch and compete with each other, but who knows if it'll get off the ground or not.

It has been funny hearing about all the sports players who aren't so fond of fantasy sports. While I think there are many people who lose sight of things and put fantasy above a team winning or a player's health, I think it would be hysterical if a group of pro players formed their own fantasy league by picking out their colleagues.

Back to work 2011

I survived the first official work week. Meetings, meetings, more meetings, and then trying to set up classrooms in the time leftover mark the beginning of any school year. School don't want to pay teachers more than they have to, so we have one week to organize, get our head in the game, and then go for it! The school has been open until 9 PM each night this week, and they're opening in up on Sunday as well for teachers who need more time setting up. I did everything I could to have my room ready to go, and I'm going to work on my lesson plans and IEP reading at home this weekend.