Stay in school!

The teacher I aspire to be. Ms Tina Fey circa Mean Girls.



Don't consider this a return to form. Just a quick wave hello.

My new school doesn't suck! Teaching 9th grade is waaaaaay more enjoyable that 7th grade. I suspect the main reason for that is colleague related. Where I am, 7th grade is in "middle school", comprising 5th-8th grades. "High school" is 9th-12th grades. The middle school teacher population resembles more what you'd expect from primary/elementary school teachers. Not very well educated. Not especially deep thinkers. Not an expert in a content area. Nearly 100% women. Of course, I have mostly in the past worked in female-dominated areas (anything non-profit, anything social-welfare oriented usually is. Government's 50/50 depending on your department. Law outside of the big corporates increasingly is.); I clearly don't care about that. It was just that the work is characterized (ghettoized) as "care work"; something maternal involving little kids. Oh, eff that forever.

Anyway. I'm teaching totally out of my content area in 9th grade; ancient history to be specific. I am furiously catching up on a lot of stuff I've never studied, not even in high school.

The environment, class work, and colleagues have improved greatly. Teenagers (get ready, revelation coming) continue to be intractable, irrational and sometimes SUCH A GIANT PAIN. And, alternatively, intelligent, curious, thoughtful, proud of their work, and eager to impress.

I read a great post today from Fugitivus about underage girls who come to her place of work, a court, seeking judicial approval for an abortion. Her observations about teenagers were so totally on-point I must share. But do read the whole piece.

"Because the thing I forgot is, yeah, these girls need help, and yeah, these girls are caught in a nasty political intersection of harassment, laws, exploitation, lack of resources, sexism, racism, ageism, classism – but they’re also teenagers. And teenagers are fucking obnoxious. Teenagers show up late. Teenagers get lost. Teenagers wander off when you’re talking to them because they want to get some candy. Teenagers drag their feet and call you a loser when you tell them you’re an hour late because of them and could you just hurry. Teenagers won’t hang up their phone when you’re trying to get them to sign a Very! Important! document. Teenagers interrupt the judge and roll their eyes. Teenagers make out noisily with their boyfriend IN COURT. Teenagers sing repetitive annoying songs to amuse themselves. Teenagers knock over tables and then laugh and say the table was gay. Teenagers remain blissfully unaware and apathetic of the fact that they are a stand-in for your political beliefs and most deeply held passions, and then they make fart noises with their hands. Teenagers sneer and loiter and laugh irritatingly and mess up the office and knock things over until you want to grab their scrawny little necks and… and… and… find a way to get them access to the medical care and autonomy they need. By the end of the day, I was feeling just like that: “Oh, you little fucker, if you don’t shut the fuck up RIGHT FUCKING NOW, I am just going to do everything I can to help you, I swear to god.” "

Kisses!

A confession

Sorry world, I know it's been ages. But I am just going to have to take a break for a little while. I have been teaching year seven /7th grade for the last month or so at an unspeakably grim school in the D.C. area. It's not been a happy time for me. I have been transferred from that school, and will be teaching year nine/9th grade at a (hopefully, much less miserable) different school in the same area. Some of the students I've encountered have been as sweet and intelligent and motivated as I could hope; some have been withdrawn and uninspired in a way that makes me think their life outside school is pretty shit; and some have been a giant pain in the arse. But all of them had the potential to be engaged in school in way that their regular teacher and administration are just not encouraging. It was so sad. I suspect that it would skate too close to what is googleable information if I went into specifics, so just trust me when I say that this was the public school that would make me send my child to private school. And gentle reader, you know how I am about public schools.

So, while I'm out of that place and into a new school, I need to take a break from (not) blogging.

Love you! I'll be back as soon as I can.

Cruisin' for a bruisin'

For some reason all the horror I've read recently about planes that won't take off for painfully long trips across the Atlantic had me looking at alternative means of transport. Specifically, boat. I think that's my only option other that flying. I could only find one commercial boat trip between the US and Australia. It's takes 107 days and costs $25,000 per person. So, no.


Fingers crossed for teleportation before the end of 2010!

Grease is the word

Holy shit I love that movie. It was just randomly on VH1 and I watched the whole thing. I knew every word.

I mean, look, I know it has a terrible end message- girlz, change yourself and you will indeed get the hot guy- but it's just so massively enjoyable. It poos all over High School Musical et al, the lameo remake from the early aughts. You know why?

• It has tons of actual sex. Not *actual* Brown Bunny style sex, but teenagers having sex without dire consequences or lecturing.
• Rizzo and Marty have sexual desires to match the boys, and aren't deemed sluts. In fact, they are both respected and desired themselves, and seem genuinue friends with guys they aren't interested in.
• No, none of the "teenagers" look like teenagers, but they do look exactly like the 30 year olds they were. Normal hair, normal teeth, and yes, thin figures, but not the unattainable huge-boobs-skinny-legs dealio of today. They had little boobs to go with their little hips. Some of them aren't even good singers and their voices aren't auto-tuned.
  
• Smoking. Drinking. Stealing. Swearing. Illegal road racing. On the regular. None of these feature in a movie for 12 year olds today.
  
• Title song by Barry Gibbs.
  
• Best. Costumes. Ever. (I made myself a copy of the dress Rizzo wears to the school dance. I never got to wear it because I left it in Canberra after one weekend and then a friend mailed it to me and the package was STOLEN FROM MY APARTMENT MAILROOM. Enjoy that dress, theives.)
• Above all it was all so goofy. The dance sequence for the final song, We Go Together, is positively ridiculous. Possibly the unsexiest dancing of all time. And it looks so fun. I can't imagine Zac Efron being such a dork.
  

Maybe I'm making excuses for all the weight harassment (teasing Jan about being fat truly baffled me as a kid) and sexual harassment (Danny coping an unwanted feel of Sandy in the '"pussy wagon") because this movie plays such a huge part of my childhood. When I was in primary school the cool thing to do was to have a slumber party and show Grease and Grease 2 back to back. I must have seen it 50 times. I still love it.

Grease 2 is on now. Must go.