on performance anxiety

Molly, Sydney, and I went to the girls' basketball game last night, and as we were watching and chatting, the subject of teaching as performance came up.

Because it totally is.

At new teacher orientation, our superintendent told us, and I'm paraphrasing, "Seek help when you need it, because it's too important not to. You have the power to inspire, but you also have the power to destroy a child's dream." Um, can you say pressure?

So there's that fundamental weight hanging above us, and then there's the day-to-day need for standing in front of twenty-ish people and finding something important enough to say that they'll all listen. I mean, you can have a kick-ass lesson planned, but if you can't orally deliver instructions well, it's likely it will bomb. Sometimes, I still get nervous when the bell rings and the kids start coming in.

I think that's why I'm so exhausted all the time. It's performance anxiety.

I feel kinda silly writing this, because after every sentence, every paragraph, I can hear my college-student-self saying, "Um, duh. Get over it." And in no way do I mean this post as some kind of complaint. I LOVE my job.

It's just scary sometimes.

Writing really IS so hard!

It's rare to see a comedy, at least for me, about which I can sincerely say as the credits roll, "That was one of the best movies I've ever seen." But that I did say about Hamlet 2 the other day. Don't let the 2 fool you, as it did me; I generally turn my nose up at sequels. Or maybe do let it throw you, so that you'll have low expectations like I did, and then get your mind blown.

I couldn't find a clip of my favorite scene in isolation, but it's 5:03 - 5:45 of this one. I wouldn't recommend that you watch this whole clip because it doesn't work as well out of context. Just the 5:03 - 5:45 part.

"Do we use dial-up?"

That's what a student asked one of the other teachers the other day, sincerely, because our Internet at the school is SO slow.

That's why I got so excited that I just HAD to snap a photo when I saw these workers laying the fiber-optic cable through the neighborhood.

!

Eoin and Finola play DDR.

passing time

My class finished the final with about a half hour left today, so they were just hanging out. One of the students told us all that her first child's name will be "De'Wayne Obama Carter tha III" if it's a boy and "De'Waynea Obama Carter tha III" if it's a girl. The "tha III" is because, "Lil Wayne's best album was his third one."

I really like it when Obama says, "Let's get to work!" at the end of his speeches,

because working is one of my favorite things to do. Especially on days like today, when I get to work with a bunch of students after school to develop a plan for more effectively advertising and recruiting students into AP Prep and AP classes. One of the most pervasive concerns of the students (and non-students) on our social justice committee is the relative "white-middle-class-ness" of our AP prep and AP classes. In a school where 43% of our student body is made up of students of color, why do our most challenging classes not reflect that, is what we want to know.

WTF gmail!?

Check out this link that appeared at the top of my gmail screen this morning:


If you can't read that small it says, "Looking for Korean Eyelid Surgery? See Korean Eyelid Surgery. And it links to here. Which is not even a real site; just an excuse for a quick, racist shot at Korean people? I don't get it. Any body have any insight?

been meaning to post this for a while

This sign is on the door between the mailroom and the main office, which makes it very unlikely that the handwritten part of the sign is student work.

good day, weird rule

I was able to take my students to the auditorium, to watch on "the largest screen in Urbana" one of the teachers announced, Obama's swearing-in ceremony. So exciting!

When George Bush's face came onto the screen, they all laughed. He's like, so uncool.

After school, we had a faculty meeting at which we were reminded of the rule in the student handbook against scarves. Students are not allowed to wear scarves or bandannas of any kind anywhere on their bodies. The point was raised by a teacher that the scarves are not necessarily gang symbols, as the rule supposes, but are actually just, um, fashionable. She was like, "Somebody was telling me that this is part of some new 'hipster' (?) thing? Well. Hipster? Not welcome here!" ha.

NOOOOOOO!

I peed my pants a little when it happened.

habits

So I don't know what sparked this long absence from my blog, but I really just don't think of anything to write these days. Before, I would see something and think "Blog," immediately. Now, I'm feeling very out of practice.

But just now, I thought, "Blog." Because Jess is at the gym working out, and Kasey and I are waiting for her to come home. And we've got both doors to the apartment locked and chained, so that when she gets here she'll have to knock. And when she knocks, one of us is going to let her in, and one of us is going to throw a pie in her face!

I'm so nervous! I'm so excited!

pretty proud of myself for voting Rich Whitney

I kind of had to. We're friends on Facebook.

:(

I'm sad because Cassie discontinued her blog, and I loved it. As an homage, I tried to find and repost here this one really long list she wrote on it that was hilarious and super-poignant. But it's gone-zo on blogspot and my Google reader only has it archived back through the end of July. Bummer.

I guess a few of her there's-bats-in-my-room entries will serve just as adequately:

I have so much to say.

from cassiv by Cassie

You know why? Because I have a project due that I should be working on.


I want to talk about how much I love American slang, why there are Sheriffs dressed like Sheriffs from the '70s here, how I am living with four bats, how an almost mute documentary film maker slept on my couch, who, by the way, might be the only mature person I've ever met. I want to tell you about this photography book from 1961 I bought from a garage sale here, and how I cut out all the incredibly ridiculous, posed black-and-white high school photos and hung them all over my room. How charm is deceptive, and beauty fleeting, but oh how enthralled we all are anyway. And, on a related note, how wonderfully dressed Michigan boys are. I mean the ones with tattoos and the ones that pretend they don't care what they are wearing in the first place. They obviously do. But it works. I deceive myself to let them deceive me.

I like hats.



Okay so I guess I will settle for the bats story. It has the most drama, and is continuing, so maybe there will be a sequel.


No. I can't. I don't know what happens. I have really good blog stories and then the moment passes and I don't care anymore. Maybe if I get a photo I'll work my way around to framing it in words.


Until then, here is a drawing for you.

What Larry said as he slit the last dead bat's throat

from cassiv by Cassie

(locked in a room, alone with the bat, me outside the door listening)

"Yeah, I know. This is really messed up. But I have to do it because you got yourself stuck and you keep gettin in."

the bat did not reply.

This is not normal.

from cassiv by Cassie

Today I sat in a rare book room with my fellow "scholars" trying to read scrawly, inky 19th Century letters written by an American poetess. She used f's for s's. For example, "selflefs."


Why is Mos Def so fine?


Can I somehow relate contemporary Haitian literature with Victorian realism and/or film and visual culture studies?


I'm collaborating with my one of my favorite professors, Martin Wolske from U of I, on a book attempting to formulate action research based approaches to scholarship, which will be based on the past 20 years of the East St. Louis project I participated in.


My new roommate is a 30-something divorcee pilot with a 60-inch TV.


He just texted me, even though he is in the other room, to ask me if I have the full length version of Browning's Aurora Leigh, because I told him I'm studying Victorian Poetess politics and then he wikipediaed it.


My landlord called me today to tell me he is giving me a gift certificate for being nice. My ex-landlord sent me a letter yesterday telling me she is suing me for $4,400 for failing to live harmoniously with bats.


The other day, as mentioned previously, I sat in the park reading Shakespeare and discussing philosophies of art with a classmate.


The day before that, I went over to the house in which four girls in my cohort live, and two of them proceeded to spontaneously, and simultaneously, recite some Renaissance poem....


The fifteen students in my class year are called my "cohort." "Group" is too low-brow and "posse" is too mafia... duh.


Seriously, with the exception of those weeks I spent 8 hours a day walking alone in a foreign country, eating berries, wild mint, and sleeping in a tree hammock or with monks, I think this may be the weirdest my life has ever gotten, and that includes my time as a 12-year-old flannel wearing, mullet sporting adventurer with Jill Sparenberg. Now 2, Camino 1, Childhood 3.

movie recommendation

Doubt. So good. Really interesting in this fascinatingly painful way. See it with at least one other person so that you can talk about whether you think he's guilty or not afterwards.



It's the kind of movie I'd like to write a paper about. And that means I liked it a lot.

Almost as thought-provoking, was a question Clinton asked today on What Not to Wear:
Why would you wear mom-jeans in a world full of so many fabulous denim options?