yup… I did it!
What I Did in November
Friday Night Cemetery
My daughter has been fascinated with death lately. It is a normal, healthy fascination brought on (I think) by the one year anniversary of my father-in-law’s passing. I wrote about it here if you want to check it out. I really miss him. Every day on our ride to school, she asks me so many questions. “Mama, what do angels eat? How is there enough room for all of the angels? So many people have died they’ve got to be close together.” Questions that I had to be creative to answer.
She asked me this week if we could go to a cemetery because she wanted to see where people’s bodies are. I think she wanted reassurance that they didn’t turn into zombies or vampires or something of that sort. Plus, her teacher did a fabulous job of talking about Veteran’s Day. She wanted to see where soldiers were buried and “respect” them.
I don’t do very well at cemeteries. I cry. The ugly kind of cry. Not for the people who’ve passed but for those who are left behind.
I am trying really hard to answer the girl’s questions when they come up. It is important to me that she feels comfortable asking me anything. I’d much rather she come to me than learn everything via wikipedia. I want her to know that death is a natural part of life and that it is okay to be sad. I don’t know why, but when I was younger I somehow got the idea that it wasn’t good to be sad. If I was sad, I was being bad in some way. Don’t ask me where I learned that because I have no idea.
(c) just me julie
Anywho, I did some research and found a cemetery near us. It looked sort of like this one, but it had more grass and some trees. I didn’t even think to get a picture of it, but you get the idea. We talked to her about how to be respectful and peaceful during our visit and went on our way.
It was a beautiful cemetery. That seems like such a contradiction to me, but it was. There were flowers on almost every headstone and wind chimes and green grass. It was peaceful walking through it. If there were flowers out of their vases, the girl would place them back in. If there were no flowers, she would “respect” them by putting pine cones from the trees next to the names of the departed. She’d touch the white veteran circles that were placed on the headstones and said thank you. It was the sweetest thing ever.
The girl was a little disappointed that they didn’t have headstones like the ones you see in scary graveyards so we wandered around and found some in the very back of the cemetery. All was going well. The ugly cry wasn’t going to show itself to the world. I was definitely teary, but that was about it. Until we came up to a 30 day temporary headstone. It was surrounded by flowers. You could tell that the person who was buried there was loved by many. Curious, I leaned down to see who the person was.
I shouldn’t have. The marker was for a young lady born in 1994. She passed at most 30 days ago. She was the same age as my first group of sixth graders are now. A senior or just recently graduated. So much life left to live. There was a picture of her in a cheerleader’s uniform– you know, the one where they lay on their stomachs and have their legs up, pompoms in front of them. She was smiling brightly, her blond hair in a ponytail. I could imagine her jumps when her team scored.
She was only 18.
That is when the ugly cry started.
The best thing about my daughter is that she wasn’t fazed about it. She asked me what was wrong. I told her that I was sad for the people who lost their family members. She looked at me and told me that crying was okay, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to the next headstone that didn’t have any “respect.” She solemnly placed the pine cone she had in her hand next to the name, turned, and smiled at me.
I couldn’t have said it better myself! I have hit the 2 week mark. I like my story, but it seems to have stagnated in my brain. My inner editor is so loud right now.
If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo this year, then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. About two weeks ago, before this all started, we were all filled with both excitement and dread. We were all going to write our own novels and reach that goal of 50,000 words. We didn’t know how, and many of us secretly doubted that we could do it. Then week one kicked off, and we were wrapped up in our stories and the exhilaration of creating. Word counts soared, and we all accomplished so much in that first week. And then week two hit. Suddenly, I’ve been finding my job and my home life to be twice as taxing, and even when I have plenty of inspiration for my story and I know exactly where I want it to go, it’s hard to find the time and the energy to sit down and write it. …
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What I’m Doing Now
Yes… a thousand times yes.
Contains swearing, but not by me.
Depressed people can be fucking infuriating. They don’t turn up when they said they would. They think the worst of you, of everyone, of themselves. They’re entrenched, often bitter, often afraid of perfectly normal things. They lash out. They can be provocative, spiky, defensive. They are flaky and they let you down and then get angry with you for it. They don’t do the things that might help them: they drink, they don’t exercise, they don’t eat any good food. They don’t take their medicine and they complain about it when they do. They can see nothing beyond their own suffering, they are selfish. All they seem to want is to bundle up in a room on their own and wallow in it, while outside it is sunny and might lift their spirits if they just got off their arse.
Depressed people are wankers, are a pain to be around…
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Haters Gon’ Hate… (but it still hurts when they do)
The Nobel Prize winners have been announced (Yay, smart people who are changing our world!)
One recipient, John Gurdon, is receiving extra attention not because of what he did but because of what was done to him. Someone dredged up an old report card of his from high school in which the teacher lambastes him for being a rebel, an outside-the-box thinker. The words that the teacher uses are horribly unkind and, if they were written today, the teacher would lose his job before he could say lawsuit.
One of my favorite FB sites, “I f*cking love science” posted a graphic with the remarks paraphrased– check it out here. I have no issue with the comments being brought to light. I do have a problem with the comments that follow the post.
There were some positive posts:
And then there were some not-so-positive posts:
And my all-time favorite:
Don’t forget the one that caused a WTF, YOU IDIOT! moment:
Huh? This doesn’t even make sense at all. Respect has to be earned. I work hard to ensure that my students respect me by being truthful, straight-forward, and fair. I expect the same from my students and won’t tolerate any less. I’ll be damned if I will “respect” <— WTF does that mean anyway??— > my students just because they might be a Nobel prize winner or president or a tyrannical dictator someday. If they are not at the level they should be, I let them know as kindly as possible. But they still need to know. How can you improve if you don’t know the truth about your abilities?? I’m so tired of being expected to coddle little (insert student name here) when they really need the truth and encouragement to get themselves out of the hole they’ve been allowed to dig for themselves.
Okay. Rant over. Wait… maybe not.
I know that I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it does. Every day people get bombarded by how horrible teachers are. Every day. You rarely turn on the news and see something positive about them. Every day I see the media/parents/students/my favorite authors talk about how horrible educators are.
Nobody asks us. Nobody tells our story.
Do you know how many principals I’ve had in the last 6 years (just in one district, mind you)? Four. Four changes in command. Four people with very different management styles and different focuses for the school vision. Four adults who my students feel have abandoned them. I don’t think everyone realizes how much kids yearn for stability. Sometimes school is the only stability that they have.
Did you know that, every year, teachers are told that their methods (that were successful the year before, btw) are now COMPLETELY wrong and have to be changed immediately? Not just a few aspects of their methods– oh no– everything that they do. Never mind the fact that they are master teachers and can show it because their students are LEARNING beyond the test. The new strategy du jour is more effective than anything else (even if it is largely untested).
Did you know that most teachers provide the basics for their students in the classroom? If I want to do anything with my students beyond pen and paper learning, I have to purchase all of the supplies. According to the district, there is not a budget for those things. Asking my students to bring their own doesn’t usually work– very few do. One teacher I know actually got reprimanded for asking students to bring supplies (not with my current administration– they’re lovely).
Did you know that, because of legislative budget cuts, most teachers in my district are getting paid much less for doing more work? Yet we still do it. Teachers are on campus at 6:00 in the morning working hard to give their students a head start. They stay until late grading papers and making parent phone calls. (I don’t even want to get started on parent phone calls. It is apparently the teachers responsibility to let the parents know if their students aren’t passing classes. If they aren’t passing classes, it is because teachers haven’t made the lessons entertaining or engaging enough. Because, you know, jobs are ALWAYS going to be entertaining and engaging… bah.)
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I guess I’ll close with this. Teachers are PEOPLE. Yes, they are imperfect, but who isn’t? So many forget this, I think, and are vitriolic in their criticism. If someone did tell the teachers’ story, would anyone listen? Or is it so much easier to have a scapegoat for society’s ills?
the time is almost here
Have you missed me? I’ve sure missed you.
I’ve got some good news, though! I can feel the beginning of the school year “stuff” winding down. I am no longer doing my lesson plans at the very last minute. In fact, I can see where we’re going to be in a couple of weeks. My students names are (mostly) lodged in my head. Things are well on their way to being awesome. That being said, I’ve got many post ideas swimming around in my head and I can’t wait to get started on them.
Until then, I leave you with this thought:
words to ponder
Reason 23 Why I Love Teaching
I have a student who carries a towel every day and whose favorite answer is 42. Enough said…
words to live by
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble‐sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
Sorry I’ve been gone but my days are just too long
Dearest blog readers,
I know I’ve not been posting lately, but I have a really good reason this time. School has started. Usually August is a time when I am completely engrossed in getting my classroom ready, lesson planning, and jumping through all of the other hoops that teachers need to do at the beginning of the school year.
I am tired.
I miss writing on my blog, but most of my creative energy is being consumed by the need to get the school year going. Hopefully I’ll get it under control soon.
Anyhoo… Please don’t forget about me while I get everything situated. I’ll be back as soon as I can with entertaining posts about life and running a classroom full of ninth graders!
Oh, I’ll leave you with some words to ponder:
Wise words from Ser George Carlin
Zombie Kitteh Will Eat Your Face
Awww. Such a cutie-pie!
This is Frodo, our new-ish kitten. He looks innocent, doesn’t he?
Appearances can be deceiving.
One night (morning?) at 3:00, he crawled up next to me on the bed purring loudly. I love snuggly cats but I’ve not had one in a long time so this was exciting to me. His little whiskers tickled my faced as he moved closer. I figured that he would just rub against me and then settle down for a good sleep. I laid there, waiting to see what my cuddly, itty-bitty kitty would do next. Then, I felt a tongue in my nose, literally. He was trying to find something in my nostril with his tongue. It was not at all enjoyable; cat tongues are quite rough and- yuck- in my nose! I reached up to pull him away but, before I could, something startling happened.
The little turkey bit my nose! Not just a little nip, oh no, not for this fella. He was full on gnawing on the tip of it. The zombie kitteh was trying to eat my face!
Luckily, I was awake enough to not throw him across the room. I gently took him and placed him on the floor by my bed and tried to go back to sleep. This is when I discovered that my little Frodo furball is a zombie. He is not the typical zombie in search of brains, though. He mindlessly seeks nostrils and the tips of noses. Obsessively, even. It usually takes about five times removing him from the zombie-feeding zone before he gives up. It has been four weeks and he still does it three or four times a week.
Have you ever had a zombie pet? How long did it take for the face eating to cease? Do you think the rules from Zombieland would help? Cuz I’m getting a little bit desperate.
I’ll see you in your nightmares!
Quietly Askew 