Dun Dun Duhhhhhh

So......yeah.

It's about 7:33 in the morning, I'm up, and I thought to myself, "Self, maybe you should write an entry for your blog." So, here I am.

I've been up since about 5:00 and after catching Madame Sousatzka (wonderful movie starring Shirley MacLaine) and crying at its finale (once again), Roshomon is on and I've just had my morning vitamins.

Where to begin.

I think I'm getting to that place where I'm starting to enjoy my job. The first five weeks have been filled with the requisite doubt and frustration and temptation to quit. My eighth period class is a black hole of chaos, and my stupidity in thinking I could teach full time while taking two classes is showing. Despite this, all this, I sat down Friday after my last student had left, after I had entered the five week progress report grades and thought, "Self, these kids are freakin' crazy, but I think we like them." (Brace yourself reader(s), there will be a alot of third person in this post.)

On to the next topic. Did anyone catch that Beats something something documentary about hip hop on PBS? Some dude, former football player and former man's man, decided, after some amount of self reflection, to do a documentary highlighting the issues of misogyny and homophobia in hip hop. It was only an hour long, but it was good. Mind you, there was nothing groundbreaking about his discoveries (at least not to me. you're reading the blog of a girl who wrote rhymes about killing people with her vagina ... seriously), but it's always wonderful to see a person questioning the hegemony they've been force fed. It's especially impressive to see a man take misogyny seriously. I won't go on too long about this. We've heard all the arguments before. I will say that you (yes you) should check your local PBS listings to check for the next airing. I would love a copy to show to my kids. It could possibly spark a lively debate.

What else, what else? Oh, I attended my first union meeting. Incredibly boring and pedantic stuff. Boo! We're probably going to strike in the fall. What an auspicious sign of things to come in my teaching career.


Finally, let me rail against one of my university professors. I won't be extra bogus by typing her name, but I will say that she is wholly ridiculous and inefficient. See, she teaches my SEED/EDUC 480 class, the class one takes to reflect (I now hate this word by the way) on one's teaching, presumably in order to improve. To be fair, I'm clearly going into this situation with a bad attitude. After teaching five periods of rowdy adolescents, one wants to go home to watch mindless sitcoms and eat creamy, delicious foods. Instead, one must trek downtown, pay exorbitant prices for parking (for one is now too good for public transportation), and sit in class while suffering the indignity of being read to, kindergarten style (semi-circle around teacher, legs crossed steeze), from a frickin' children's book every week. That's right, she reads children's stories to us; she's even kind enough to hold the book up to every face in the room after each page so that we can all see the pretty pictures. Worse, she makes some shoddy, tenuous connection to teaching pedagogies after her weekly crusades of demoralization. Example: Last Wednesday, she read a story about some little boy who finds pieces of clay pottery in his town/pueblo/whatever (let me tell ya, SUPER boring). Then, she proceeds to illustrate how this story is much like the deductive reasoning process involved in making sense of data. Huh? Why not just start with the salient stuff? I'm not quite done. Then we use puzzle pieces to further drive her ingenious observations of data collection home. Dude, by the time I leave that three hours of class, I'm ready to whoop (not whip, but whoop) somebody's ass for that shit. I know you face the task of having to fill three hours of instructional time, but dammit you've been teaching for twenty years. Do better! So yeah, can't wait for this to be over.

That's all I've got. See ya when I see ya.