no shoe

A record day in my second year of teaching special education, today I sent home my youngest student, my only Kindergartner, with only one shoe. Yes, you read that correctly. He came to school with two and I sent him home with one. Lucky for me the Mom seemed amused when we called to tell her that this occurred about 10 minutes before the end of the school day. I hope she can continue to laugh because I have no idea where the other shoe is. This is not my first lost shoe of the year. Another child had lost shoes during a fire drill earlier in the year. Those shoes however, where inside my classroom and had to be somewhere inside my classroom and where eventually located. This new missing shoe is possibly somewhere in the ivy covered hill on the other side of the fence from our playground.
While I was in the school office to make some copies to go home and I warned the office manager that I had lost a shoe and apologized in advance for any parent phone calls she needed to field in this vein. Another office staff member told me excitedly that the head custodian had found a shoe. "Really!" I exclaimed as I briefly felt relief from our Kindergarten APB on the shoe search. "Yes" she said, "He found it on the lower playground around 9:00 this morning" I said "Wait a minute I may be negligent on the shoe matter but I'm not that bad, he had his shoes until 2:30pm"
In my defense this kid loves to take his shoes off, and though I have been told differently when I commented about playground observation on another blog, it is damn near impossible to see every child every minute on the playground. The consensus is my shoe taker offer, walked out of his shoes in typical fashion and another group of 5 year olds found a shoe to play with, a shoe that may have or may not have gone over the fence. The other little ones that play with my special needs boy spend some time after recess digging in the playground sand and tracking shoe prints to try to locate the little guys shoes. They are the best.

surrogate husband

Michael's friend Bart is staying with us through the rest of the week. He is in his words my surrogate husband of the week. He is staying at my house soaking up alcohol and cable television. He is providing conversation in the evenings and I think there is a possibility that he even cleaned up a little. Granted there are only few Michael's in the world who will do dishes and laundry but, having conversation in the evenings while Michael is busy working 2-3 jobs and driving all over Los Angeles is preferable to drinking wine by myself, while perseverating on the overall suckiness of my job and its possible legal entanglements. And see this is it I posted again in November.
Tomorrow is a field trip. My first at this school. I would be nervous about this but this day was so stressful and this week was so stressful I feel nothing can top that. I might even convince Bart to chaperone. Wish me luck.

in keeping up to standards

oh yes, I have no standards. This boring and lazy week is continuing. I have very little to say. I have to write a report and an IEP (Individualized Educational Program) tonight. Fun. I am with Angelique on continuing to celebrate my birthday week. This would be better if my idea of celebrating tonight looked more like a party and less like going to bed at 9pm. Maybe I will make it a party with a glass of wine, while I write the report. That always makes things interesting. Well at least it makes spell check interesting. I can't wait until I am living in the super flying cars future and I can have a waterproof laptop to use in the tub. Then I can combine all my favorites of a quiet evening at home, with the hell of having to bring work home.

my job

I don't often hear people saying the things that I say about my job.

examples:

"So I walked out onto the playground today and..."

Also I say many stupid things...(seriously more than usual)
ABC's the remix
ABCDEFG (Suzy, turn around and sit down) HIJKLMN (warning # 2 at #3 you have a time out) OPQ RST UVW XYZ. --did anyone notice the first typing of this where I missed the letters U and V. whew. Its tough mastering this academic content. Especially when you change the meter of the ABC's for someone as rhythmically challenged as I am.

We do this weird OCR clapping version where you clap after the G, N and then Q, T,X and Z to avoid the old elemenopee conundrum.

The Thanksgiving Post

Today my husband (ha, isn't that a funny word? I am still working on using it in daily conversation, anyway) Today, Michael and I are driving down to San Diego to have fancy Thanksgiving dinner with my cousin Amy and her husband (the chef/very important government lawyer guy), my pseudo Uncle John (actually 1st cousin once removed/also some sort of fancy rights protecting lawyer guy) and his wife Karen (who I can't write anything real in parenthesis about because I don't really know her yet).
I, unfortunately, am up at 7am so the drive and the turkey tryptophan effect (if that is true) combined with my love for the vino, should have me passing out in the guest bedroom shortly after dinner. Oh, and in this family we do dinner at a reasonable hour. None of that middle of the afternoon nonsense. If you do that, how do you fit in appetizers and cocktails? Also, as much as I love wine, the idea of cracking open a bottle to have dinner at 11:30am is even a little much for me.
Amy has reported that she has been banned from the kitchen today, which would be funnier if the kitchen was larger and could feasibly fit two cooks with the oven door open. This cozy group of 6 will be a welcome change from my last Thanksgivings, one at my parent's house with 23 of my closest relatives and 3 toddlers, and one at our apartment in Cincinnati where Michael and tried to starve everyone and didn't serve dinner until around 7pm because I was so excited about cooking my first turkey that I continually opened the oven door to baste the turkey, thereby bring the oven temperature down substantially and making the turkey cook in twice the expected time. Whew, how's that for a run on.
The almost-Thankful Part
In my crappy Monday staff meeting, I obligatorily told the staff that I was thankful for having all of my assistants in my class. I repeated this when we did what I am thankful for with the kiddos so they would have some examples (ooohh modeling remember it is Kindergarten), and then I prompted each of my kid's to raise their hand to come up front and say they were thankful for their Mommies.
Yesterday I found out that the school is replacing my assistants with other people. I don't think the people in charge understand that having to train staff is almost like having extra little kids around for a month. Now I am just hoping the replacement is quick and painless.
But really, I am thankful I have a wonderful husband. (there's that word again and ugh that sentence makes me want to gag, but seriously he kicks ass; does the laundry, cooks yummy food, brings me fizzy drinks, and wakes me up to go to bed when I fall asleep on the couch)
I am thankful that I have such a wonderful family on both coasts, who I can visit with and eat lots of food with over the holidays. And most of all I am thankful that I can be stressed about the trivial things in life from my own comfortable home. I do not have to worry about my own daily living conditions. I can feel sorrow over the tragedy and unfair conditions in my community and my world in the awareness that I am healthy and safe in my place in the world. And as much as my little snotty monsters make me crazy, I see them learning (some very slowly, but learning) and I am thankful for the small changes, I can make with my little guys everyday. (Whoa, preachy anyone? Now I have to go find some light Thanksgiving humor writing to read)
Well here is something amusing from last year, I am not sure anyone drinking can report back this early in the morning even on the east coast.

um yeah new crazy stuff

I haven't posted in a while, because my sheer exhaustion after a whole school day with developmentally delayed kindergarteners makes me useless. But I am still here. The wedding approaches. And I am just taking it all one day at a time. I only plan enough schoolwork to get through one more day (semi) successfully. We have sung songs, danced, read many stories, worked on puzzles, and created silly kindergarten art projects. We are working on walking in a line, finalizing a daily schedule, inside voices, raising hands, not eating inedible puzzle pieces, sitting for 5-10 minutes at a time without wandering away. The school system will be one I am awkwardly navigating for sometime. The bureaucracy between the school and the special education offices will be one I will struggle forever, or until I leave. Everyone is fantastic and helpful, but within the administration if it is special ed. I should talk to someone else because it is not their job, and if I call SPED it is the schools' job. This makes all the tantrums, biting, hair pulling, wet pants and disobedience seem like nothing. I am tired. But I am enjoying the smiles, the smartypants, the hugs, the burgeoning language, the helpful kindergarten teachers, and above all QUIET TIME my saving grace.

Hurrah!

I am credentialed (is that a verb? It is now.) to teach in California. At least that is what my HR lady told me this morning. I can't wait to get a paper or an email for the proof. But still, this is fantastic and now you can be happy that you don't have to read (or skim, or ignore) any more posts about my credentialing nightmare. (just crazy posts about my actual teaching nightmares).

more training (and a note on internet browsers)

idiotic training continues here
I forgot my massive binder and the "homework" contained within on the second day. If my other rant didn't contain my thrill of in-service training, that statement alone should illustrate the responsiveness my anal-retentive homework obsessive-compulsive butt has to this class. Just send good vibes to the dept. of ed in California so that I can receive money for this drivel instead of class credit. I have enough class credit in my opinion, I just want the cash.

I am supremely lazy when I come home from a strenuous day of sitting on my butt and listening to teachers complain about the math program (when they are not reading aloud sections of the manual). I read things on the Internet and watch silly cable. Recently, I re-added a site meter to my blog. My only insight I have from this is (I am fantastic at wasting time ) more people I know should be using Firefox. I mean it! Tabbed browsing! It is fantastic. If you are at your home computer and can download you should at least check it out. I have no more to say, other than, do you have cable? Are you watching Weeds and Project Runway? I think I will watch Weeds tomorrow and then catch the Runway on one of the multitude of reruns during the week. (I am currently watching too much TV). I can't wait to get financially together (maybe sometime next year, but at least something will be in direct deposit by November) to start exploring the Korean BBQ in the neighborhood, as well as the Carry OK as it is pronounced by my Korean friends (Kareoke) and other shady bars and grocery stores in the neighborhood.

teacher math training

This week I am spending 5 days training at a local elementary school to learn to use the district wide math curriculum. I would say it is a bad sign when the facilitator rants about her family (they are all engineers, she is a teacher) and in a manner of speaking blames the patriarchy (or Malibu Stacy, "Math is hard!") for her career aberration. She goes on (after the other women in the class have an, I so agree the man is bringing us down bitch fest*) to talk about the allotted time for mathematics instruction (60 minutes). She makes sweepingly broad statements about emergency schools (schools where the kids are not passing tests and they government requires more intense programming) and explains that this particular curriculum recommends 15 more minutes of uninterrupted academic time for these schools or students that show the need for more intense instruction. She says, "So, what is that? .... (long pause)....90 minutes of instruction".
4 more days of this and crappy catering.

*I am a feminist; I just need these people to learn to run a professional program. There are many reasons why this is not one of them (not just an inability to add whole numbers). I just hope I don't need the credential credits so that I can collect a nice check for my 5 days of inanity and boredom.

evil things, good things

I just got off the phone with the certificated personnel HR lady. She now informs me (not really a surprise but irritating nonetheless) that she doesn't expect to hear from the state for 3-4 weeks. Hmm, that would be after school starts, and after all my training and orientation. Oh, she has new information...if it doesn't go through I can reapply for an emergency certification or for a one year certification, but they like to wait to hear about the full on certification first. Good of her to tell me this now. Then she says the contract will only be for one year (at this point does she think I care, whether it is for one year or ten, I just want the paycheck and the stability). I am taking this to mean that no matter what the first outcome, I will have a job (just not an ongoing contract). I will also take this to mean that when they deny my cool person certification I will have to go get another money order for $55 and try to get another kind of not as cool person certificate. She didn't say that, I just believe that is what will occur. I would love to be able to have one conversation that involves all the required information and not some half-assed version.

the good things?
I also just got off the phone with my former landlord, who apologized repeatedly and told me he is putting my security deposit in the mail tomorrow. This was fine with me, because now I know it is coming and it is coming to my new address.

I started a blog at blogsome under the same name. I think I might move over there because it looks like an easy way to categorize posts. I'll have to see how lazy I am about actually setting it up. You should check it out if you are interested in a banner that has cute puppies. Other than that there is not much going on over there.

Are you watching Project Runway tonight? Do you hope neck tattoo leaves just so you don't have to look at his neck tattoo any longer? Do you have a fun group of people that you watch with or do you have your own version of Michael who will be falling asleep on the aforementioned comfy IKEA chair when he is not to busy making fun of my taste in reality television. If it were up to him we would be watching World Poker Tournament all the time.

unreal expectations

I'm one of those annoying creative types that never actually gets anything done while waiting for some semblance of perfection to occur. I have been writing daily posts in my head for at least the last week. But my brain expects beautifully, long pictorial view of my late June road trip. Well, maybe someday, but until then...I am in LA now and mostly freaking out.

The apartment is good (there will be pictures of that too, mmmhmm whenever my lazy butt gets off the bed and finds the camera cord), the neighborhood is bad (but comparable to our Cincinnati 'hood and therefore we have made a very expensive lateral move, albeit one that added in a teenytiny parking space). I got my wedding dress and many boxes of invitations to print which will sit on my desk until I go buy cyan, magenta and yellow ink, because my idiotic (or maybe crazy smart in a bad steal my money sort of way) Epson, will not print in black without also having full cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges. We have lots of fancy kitchen gadgets in our ittybitty kitchen with an oven so tiny I can fit one cookie tray. I put together lots more furniture with allen wrenches. (I cannot wait to be able to buy furniture with no assembly required.) When I go places here I kind of know my way around. I can drive around town and back home without getting lost, and I can even take different roads home every time.

Yesterday, at long last I went to the HR department of my school district to complete my becoming a teacher in what appears to be the Country of California, things were going extremely well, I was making kind chit chat with the HR lady, things were nearly completed when...She saw her supervisor on the way to the copy machine and they both puzzled over my new Ohio teaching certification. A two-year provisional certification. (Hmmm, to my knowledge the only kind you can get in Ohio unless you began a program in the late 1980's and have been grandfathered into to the old teacher for life system.) The two-year provisional certification is a problem, they have never seen one before, this may, in HR lady words, "condemn" my job offer. I think the word provisional is scaring them away. I tried unsuccessfully to explain that this is the the norm for Ohio. *Ohio and California have no reciprocity with teaching and California has its own set of tests and requirements. My job offer was always contingent on the ability to get a CA state license or certificate or whatever, this was always part of the deal. But the shock and confusion of the HR ladies and the word condemn really ruined my Friday. So now I am in limbo again, I must wait to hear from the state. In the meantime, do I attend the unpaid training sessions for math and reading? Do I continue to worry and plan for the 13 little kids I may or may not be in charge of educating this September. Should I really be looking for another source of income before I completely max out my credit card? Also I understand the States rights but really how is it possible to receive a masters degree in education from an NCATE credited university, to do a YEAR of student teaching, to pay repeatedly for FBI background checks because each state requires their own version and won't share, pay hundreds of dollars to each state's teaching certification people and still not be granted the license/certificate? Can they give me the time and money back? I hate not being in control. --end rant--

Really though, I am living in Southern California. I just bought 4 new bikinis (I practically never wear two piece bathing suits, but I was tanning/burning a big X shape in my back with my cool 40 style black one piece, which by my October wedding may look like some type of crazy tattoo or scar, thus the bandeau swim top to the rescue) I am going to the beach today, and hell maybe tomorrow too, because I can! I don't have a job. Oh and I am very fair skinned the tanning/burning in small unsuncreened areas occurs through my use of 30SPF or sometimes when I am feeling super neurotic KIDS 55 SPF. I blame Michael for the burn marks on my back, his ability to spray apply sunscreen is poor. I am thinking of purchasing a cream variety to see if that works better for him. Unfortunately for all my long armedness I cannot apply sunscreen to that one spot on the middle of my back.

3 reasons why I am happy to no longer be in Ohio

1. 6:30 am phone call 513 area code (when I called the west coast --or for that matter anywhere out of my time zone I did some quick math. EST --> PST = -3 hours, dumbass) I scramble around and find my phone ringing in my bag from the beach yesterday ( the beach, woo hoo I went to the beach) moving on.
2. ME-recognize Cinci area code in haze of sleep answer the phone formally, "Hello, this is formal first name I never actually use, (but I was expecting this woman to return my phone call yesterday)" HER "This is _____ from U of C. You are one of those special ed people." ME-"?" "um, no, I don't think..." "You were in a special program" ME-again "?" "No, I was in the master's in special ed..." HER-"Whatever, Doesn't matter." ME thinking (then why did you ask?) HER-"Anyway, you want this sent to this address?"
3. um my 6:30 am physic abilities must be subpar..."I would like the certificate sent to my NEW address at 123 SPANISH name (pronounced phonetically in English) STREET in LA" HER-"Is that how you say that name?" Me-(thinking)-no, actually, that's how I say that name but anyone else would roll an R or an N or something like that.

It is still so early in the morning I can't believe I had this conversation. I wanted to ask her to expedite the damn papers that she should have mailed to my old address (and which would have been forwarded by the post office with all of my other mail to my new address), but I feared change to what already seemed like her unsettling job of mailing out teaching certificates might send her over the edge and then I would never see the document.

UPDATE --I finally received the certificate it only took 12 DAYS!!! 12 days is that like 3rd class mail or a really lazy university adminstrator.

still

The waiting game sucks more so upon receiving a contract on a Saturday afternoon that says
salary shall be Class ____BLANK!, level ____BLANK!. That is not me self censoring. It is empty.
hmm
Its kind of hard to get a new apartment with a salary of BLANK LINES ________. And now I must continue to be tortured until Monday afternoon (at least) when I can call and leave a message for everyone and their supervisor, HR director, and their mothers to try to figure out how to fill in the ___s.

call back

Tonight, I got a phone call about a job in Pasadena. Is this a good job? I have no idea, I was so frantically sending out resumes and worrying about how I would pay rent that I didn't think too hard about what I was actually looking for. This is the first response I have received that seems to be actually interested. Other schools that sent emails just asked for my letters of recommendation (don't have them all yet) or my transcripts and credential (still in school, waiting for credential info from the state of Ohio), or to request that I get back to them when the state of California gets back to me (about a bunch of credentialing forms I have not sent in yet). The job would be working with the same little guys I work with now, but in a neighborhood school (sort of my ideal) and in a district school that would count to get my Perkins loan waived. (based on SES of school, based on free lunch ratio of kids). It is hard to make a judgment about school districts and neighborhood from the internet alone. Of course this may all be speculation but the HR person on the phone seemed very positive, and I got a another follow up call from a different school administrator that I missed, that seems pretty serious.

One of those days

Its been one of those days where nothing is really going wrong, but when I sit down at night I feel like everything has been driving me crazy. I feel like my body is vibrating tonight with all of my stress over school, work, moving etc. that I don't know what to work on. I feel over caffeinated (but I'm not) or all keyed up like I get when I take allergy medication (I haven't). I can blame the intensity of my professor in class tonight, who sounded like she was shouting all evening (and even felt the need to interject my name into one such statement --totally randomly like I was a little kid ready to wander into the street, or like had just asked her a question about that point and she wanted my attention [I hadn't, she had it]--and this is a big class with about 20 people or so). I can blame it on the intensity of sharing 3 minutes before and after class wtih ~10 people as keyed up and stressed as I am about completing their degree requirements. I can blame it on getting lost in the menu of the California teacher credentialing board and listening to their menu twice without hearing anything, before finally hitting a random button and being connected to a message that told me the office hours ended at 4:45 PST, it was 7:45EST and I probably would have made it in time if I had pressed a button my first time through the menu but I got distracted by the Internet and didn't hear any of the "press 6 if you know your party's extension and would like to dial it now." Also who closes their office at 4:45? I could blame it on the seemingly endless stream of evening emails between me and my internship supervisor about mysterious requirements that I think she makes up during her commute back to good old Kentucky. But if I am going to place blame I think I should blame my crappy day on everyone and go with the Simpson's quote "You know what I blame this on the downfall of? Society!"-Moe Syzslak

February blah

I am not enjoying my new student teaching placement. I am drowning in guilt every minute I am at home that I am not researching or writing a paper (this is many, many minutes for a procrastinator like me). I am feeling like an incredible poor communicator to my professors and anyone else I approach even with the most banal chit chat. I feel waves of confusion or annoyance floating off of people as I plough my way through a book recommendation or input to class discussion. They look at me with puzzled expressions as if I am speaking in a strange dialect (am I? this is the midwest). I am making bumbling mistakes in communication over email that makes me think I need to go back to bed and start fresh next week. PMS? possibly. The good thing?
Without any prompting (prompting, what an annoying special ed teacher word--in this case it means long whiny complaints and requests for stupid things), Michael left me a message today while I was at work just to say he was thinking about me and how much he loved me. (do you hear irritating strains of Stevie Wonder? so sorry) When I got home from school around 1pm I was in such a foul mood I decided the best thing for it was to nap until work at 4pm. Michael came home at 3:30pm (thank goodness seeing as how I had set my alarm but failed to turn it on). He brought a package of mini Hershey bars, cheesy crackers, peanut butter crackers, a 12 pack of Coca-Cola and cranberry juice. What nice presents for me. Now I am home after work, I am going to make veggie fried rice. I have poured myself a glass of red. I am cooking the rice (yay rice cooker) I am heading to take a bath while the rice cooks and chills (a recipe recommendation for fried rice that I cannot find an explanation for), then I can relax, do stupid homework, eat chocolate which goes oh so well with my pinot noir (thank you Amy for introducing me to the yummy and cheap Pepperwood Grove), and tomorrow I can roll out of bed, put on any old clothes for school (jeans, sweats, I think anything goes at this place), grab a coke and some packages of crackers (yay, that will be breakfast) and start over again. Its all about the little things in life.

again YAY!

So look around
TA DA

Again I must point out that my blog came back thanks to blogger support person Samantha. And below I just added the crazy posts I did on my replacement blog. I am sure if I was so inclined I could figure out how to merge the two blogs but I don't care. So, sorry if I omitted your comment from those posts, I still love you (well except if you were just some crazy lasik surgery spam and then I abhor you) Now I need to go watch tv and eat chex mix.

I have been cooking up a storm so when the motivation hits me I will download a ton of pictures and give you some yummy new recipes including the one I finished off tonight. Lovely warm potato soup, so easy and good for these rainy cold days.

today was very warm. We had a fire drill at school. I got paid $30 to jump on a trampoline for two hours.

tomorrow is my last day at the elementary school, and Monday I start a new placement. I will miss my little licey kids, I know they will (eventually) learn how to read without me, but I really liked helping them.