I'm sitting in a high school library, compiling a list of 1920s slang from the internet while using my laptop.
In my day, it would have merely been dirty words in the dictionary.
PS Someone's cell phone went off. The ringtone was the sound of a baby crying.
Just in case that last entry sounded too much like I was on a magic soapbox of pinky clouds, here's the other side to independent contracting:
...I just erased the list I was making of all the steps it takes between a contract being written and sent to me all the way through meeting the terms of that contract and then waiting for a check because it was way too depressing.
See, because there are so many areas where something can go wrong and when even one of those things goes wrong, it means I don't get paid on time. Right now it's been an entire month since I should have received payment for five different contracts.
This happens on a somewhat smaller scale at least three times in any one school year. Considering the numbers of contracts I have each year, three times makes a small percentage in the world of errors, but that math still makes me want to puke.
Speaking of things that make me want to puke: yesterday and today have been military recruitment days at one of the high schools. Are you wondering if a White Officer came in and set up the table and then left the Black Officer and Latino Officer there to do the recruiting? Wonder no more! Are you further wondering if this school has a higher percentage of Latino and African American students?
They do have a mariachi band...
(It's not so much that there were officers of [the same] color [as the student population], but that the white dude swooped in and then left. As you were, fellas, as you were.)
What I did yesterday:
8:45-9:40
Taught a class of 7th graders. Curriculum focused on Newbery Award winning novel.
10:00-10:20
Emailed actors about auditions for local play.
10:30-1:00
Watched adaptation of Great American Novel with hundreds of teenagers, 90 of which are my students.
1:00-1:25
Emailed teachers and chatted with the premier Molly.
1:30-4:30
Participated in artful installation.
6:00-9:00
Rehearsed political allegory play. Specifically worked on scoring Getting the Hay In and The Battle of the Cowshed. Made it funny.
9:00-10:30
Emailed more actors.
That's pretty much a regular day: four organizations involved, variety of age groups and schools. Wait! Five organiziations! Five!
The artful installation bit was fan-flipping-tastic: I got to wear a lemon-yellow apron dress and a dark fuschia cape. I sat in a rocking chair at the end of two 20-foot lengths of sod. I listened to a sound scape of birds and voices and eclectica. I knitted fiber spun of old reading materials. (There were a total of 27 knitters, each knitting for two-hour stints on #10 circular bamboo needles...picture a long thneedy tube of roughness.) It was extremely soothing--there was a sign that said "Please do not speak to the performer."
Mind you, I'm still entirely disgruntled with much that is happening in the world of teaching co-mingled with all that driving around, but it's hard to be too cranky about how much use I'm getting out of my theatre degree.
Bachelor of Science, bitches!
I'm sitting in a bookstore in West Seattle right now, which is exactly what I did at this time yesterday and will do through next Tuesday. I've got a chunky break between two classes at my current residency and I like to have something that feels homey whenever that happens. I also like to find a little homeiness even when there isn't a break, usually in the form of on-the-way-to or on-the-way-from a given class.
More and more, though, all I want is the homey part. Maybe it's the Christmas music in here, but it's really getting depressing that mostly all I want to do these days is write in longhand and think some thoughts.
Okay, not depressing, just disappointing. Every year my state of burnout dictates a new level of passion for ideas and exhaustion at maintaining the patience to implement them in actual classrooms. Multiply that by too many NPR stories on education and you've got holiday cheer.
In comes the two-week tradition: even though I'm in a highly corporate building, I'm really enjoying sitting quietly and working with an occassional scan of today's shoppers (completely different than yesterday's: today is all about women in their 60s out for a little snack and conversation; yesterday was quick coffee drinkers and one old guy). I can pretend that I don't like Christmas music, but I do, so that's nice, too. In just a few mintues, I'll be heading back to school to continue an exercise in manufactured personality (today we add scurvy words and symbolism). It will all go well, there will be inspried moments, but tomorrow it'll be just as slow-going for me to get out of bed. And then I'll come here and relax into some happiness.
But I can't let that trick me: just because I'm good at something and just because I mostly like it doesn't mean I should go and go and go and go and go.
The tradition coming up after these two weeks? Fountain walks and a little ice-skating. And then a little last minute script writing.
Ah, rambling. You never let me down.
I just remembered that the sale of my father's farm is supposed to go through today....guess I'll go throw some dirt clods at a tractor to commemorate.
Hold that: I just called my dad and it turns out that the buyer wanted to change the receiving name.
Few more days of my childhood still intact, I guess.
Oh, blah: it's all intact in my MIND. I fucking loved growing up on a farm. (Not that I ever would have used the word "fucking" then.) I don't know any adults other than ones I'm related to who grew up on a farm. (And if I do, please say so, because yay!)
I found out that my dad was selling the farm because I called him up a month ago to tell him that I'd heard a story on NPR about a parasitic plant that sniffs out its victims. That plant turned out to be dodder: one of my childhood jobs was to walk through the clover fields with my siblings, spot dodder (it's the pale orange capellini lookin' stuff that attaches itself to the base of plants), pull up the affected plant and bury it so the dodder would suffocate. We even made up a little song to sing:
We are the burial service!
We are the burial service!
We bury your dodder
Even if you don't like it
(But you do)
We're Claw, Scooter, Weirdo, No Good!
(No Good? Whaddya mean "No Good?")
But the pay is very very good (...for us)
I also spent some time earlier today looking at the scar on my knee acquired by falling onto a gravel road off of my siphon pony. (What, you rode stick horses? Philistine!)
Stay tuned (perhaps indefinitely) for tales of the Ditchrider. If I do any more posting today something might happen.
Why, yes, I did ask that of a group of high school juniors today.
Only one student looked at me the way you are right now, but I suspect that the rest of them were a of all) too tired to notice or b of all) too confused by the previous writing activity wherein "pancakes" was revealed to be the newest curse word.
Yep, this is the same group of my previous post, the would-be has-been drinkers. I kinda think they can't all be, but I also cannot figure out how they all aren't if you go by the startling top that one of them was wearing today. I feel that if I painstakingly searched Go Fug Yourself I would be sure to find it: a mash-up of red satin and red chiffon shimmereen with a belly-revealing handkerchief construction and a flash of gold sequins.
Maybe it was her birthday. Maybe she was banking on Friday being a free ice-day and didn't do her laundry. Maybe she won a bet.
None of this is meant as a general post of "What on Earth?" We all know that I will step up to defend the Youth of Today much more readily than those complaining about them. Really what I'm trying to say is: dear Lord, high school is boring.
Sure, sure. That's nothing new. But what surprises me every year is that I'm surprised by just how boring it is. B O R I N G. I mean, here I am, dashing in at ungodly hours leading exercises containing the word "pancakes" and where is the general school system? Why, bucked by voting adults who want it to be or believe it should be just like it was when they were in school. I mean, that's nostalgia, right?
I'd like to see that same nostalgia applied to the field of medicine.
I guess this really is a general post of "What on Earth?" I don't see how anyone expects that anything in the entire universe will ever get better if all time in our school system is spent learning how to stay still and be quiet.
...yeah, I can't even wholeheartedly climb all the way up on that soapbox. What's the point? I'd rather spend my energy doing what I am doing: making teeny eensy differences that few notice and fewer fund. (Okay, so I got up just high enough not to get down quite yet.)
You know who else is in that class? A diagnosed functioning schizophrenic who is frustrated and depressed within general class structure but is focused, responsive and insightful when given the opportunity.
That's a pancake-ing joyful sight.
If I pat myself on the back too hard I'll fall right off the suds and break my nose.