Leaves on the Seine

I've got some catching up to do!

So apart from my post on Saturday from JFK, the last time I posted was last Saturday, after my flight in for week 3. I didn't post much for week 3 because honestly, nothing much new happened. I taught the classes, went through the motions, ate pizza or Denny's or Hawaiian BBQ, watched the Food Network, and went to bed early. I tried to go to bed between 9 and 10 every night last week, which helped me be mostly rested for my classes. I've been noticing that when teaching, Sundays are a little difficult because I haven't been teaching for a few days, so I have to kind of shock myself back into teaching mode. Usually classes go alright; my Level R in the morning is usually quite pleasant despite a few kids who offer some resistance to doing things everyone else does in class. But, they're only 4-5 years old, so I take everything they do with a grain of salt. The Level 5 after that had started out so great, but kind of has gotten a bit worse since then. I think it's the fact that, starting in Week 2, we work on non-fiction stuff as well as reading in Banner in the Sky, and many middle-schoolers resist doing work on non-fiction. The Level 4 at the end of the day is mostly good, there are a few students who are really good readers and love doing the work, some older students who have a bit of an attitude in the class, some goofy younger students who are hard to corral, and some shyer students who don't say much. The worst part about Sundays is how late I get home, only to have to get up the next morning at 5:30/6:00 to teach at 8:00. Usually San Francisco is drab, foggy and chilly as well, so I don't leave in a terrific mood other than the happiness I have from knowing the day is over.

Mondays are better because I have a day of teaching under my belt, but worse because they're in the middle of the week, when I'm most likely to despair. They're earlier, so I'm initially more tired, but on the other hand they aren't after a day of travel, so I'm a bit more rested and used to a routine. At any rate, whatever tiredness I have usually wears off during my first class, another Level R. This one isn't as active as the other, I'm sure because it's so much earlier. However, they're the young'uns, and are cute as such, and it's a short class. These days in San Jose are the ones where I only have 30 minutes between each class. It's nice because I get done by 3:15 every day, but it's not so nice because I don't get any time to relax during the day. My Level 6 starts at 9:45, and this is the surliest group of high schoolers I've taught yet. Some of them are improving, which is awesome, but there are some that still seem to be hating the class. I've moved them around to different seats to where I think best lends itself to them paying attention and not being distracted, but it's still a battle. Almost definitely the hardest class I teach. There was also a pretty serious problem at the end of class last week (week 3) as I forced them to wait in the room until their parents came to pick them up (though they were mostly just waiting in cars out in the parking lot). I thought I was doing the IRD-proper thing to do by doing this, but there was an amazing amount of resistance, even to the point where one of the parents came to the room and was angry with me. Is it that big a deal?

Last is my humongous Level 5, which has also gone downhill a bit. There's one student who was just falling asleep during the nonfiction lesson this week that I couldn't get to focus and do what he needed. I was so angry that I wanted him to stay after with his parents so I could talk to them, but when it came time to leave (again a problem with parents coming to the room to pick them up), he came up to me and said that he couldn't stay, they had to leave right away. And of course, in the confusion, he left, and I resolved to call his mom during the week at home, which of course I didn't , due to my busy schedule. My days off are already spent on a conference call for IRD and doing hours of online reporting for attendance and assessment, so the last thing I want to do is to have to make phone calls home on those days. Ugh. Not to mention some other students in the class who are constantly talking and one in particular who mostly seems to snicker about just about everything. The end of this day brings happiness mostly from me knowing the next day is my last of the week and easiest, too. It's nice to have the whole evening to myself, too.

Tuesday is a good day. Level 1 in the morning isn't too bad, in fact has gotten better since Week 1. There's still the issue of David whom is almost impossible to get to stay on track. His poor father tries to talk to me after class, but he has an toddler in tow as well, so he is almost always dealing with distractions. He deals with them amazingly well; I admire his parenting. However, it's hard to have a conversation with him and he said he would try to get a babysitter so he could come in Week 4 to watch David. The Level 2 is much better, though with the addition of Tyler who moved up from a Level 1, and with the continued talking/attention problems of Dylan, it can be a tough one to handle sometimes. Tyler has gotten better though, and I've sat Dylan close to the front though this doesn't much seem to help. My break in this class is putting on the Pole and Vole CD track for them to listen to. It's a nice 5 minutes of relative quietude where I don't have to talk or, really, even listen. The Level 4 is my final one, and indeed my best class of the week. It's relatively small and almost everyone in the class enjoys doing the work and the reading and answers questions. They're all pretty good readers too. Again, I'm sure it's made better by my improved attitude, since I know it's my last class of the week and after it I can go home.

Last week traveling home was fine; I got to the airport about 1 minute past the check-in deadline, so there was some reprimanding going on there. But I got my bags checked, and got on the flight to Chicago. I was sitting next to a tween girl whose first flight this obviously was, and eventually a woman sitting in a row kiddie-corner to us offered to switch with her so she could sit with her mom. I watched a bit of Flight of the Conchords and then ordered a snack box for $5 that had some beef jerky in it. The woman and I started talking and ended up talking for the rest of the flight. It turns out she had been in the service and then starting working as an architect, which was her BA. She recently was laid off by her firm, so she was flying home to Wisconsin after a trip to California and New Mexico, interviewing for some jobs. I told her about my teaching and the run, and we chatted about lots of things. It was nice to have someone to talk to rather than just reading or working on my laptop. Finally I got to Chicago, and again I made the long trek to a different concourse, and waited a while for my next flight. It started pouring in Chicago, and I talked to Dad and Jackie on the phone for a while. I boarded the flight to Buffalo, and a short while later there I was. Jackie came and picked me up after I got my bags, and thus ended week 3.

Wednesday night we got some food at a Mexican place in Amherst called El Palenque, all of which was very delicious (I had a Shrimp soup and a side of rice and a taco; Jackie had a plate of Enchiladas, rice and beans), went home and not soon enough afterward I fell into a blissful slumber. It was awoken on Thursday and I got up to make my conference call with Chris Brown, which was mostly useless but ended early. The rest of the day I spent reporting online and watching TV/messing around on the internet, and also preparing the lesson for my Flash class on Thursday night.

At around 6 I went down to Squeaky Wheel and rang in. It was much different to go there as an instructor. Tammy showed me the ropes and got me acclimated, and soon I was all set and ready to teach. The students mostly all showed up and I started by introducing myself and having them all introduce themselves. Then we got cracking, as they say. The class went really well. I had a lot of fun teaching it, and it definitely was nothing at all like teaching for IRD. The oppressive weight of someone else's curriculum and a strict timeline was gone; I felt so much more comfortable doing it. That isn't to say, of course, that my teaching skills and experience didn't come in handy when I was teaching, because they definitely did. I got my own set of keys to Squeaky Wheel and locked everything up when I left. Jackie was there to pick me up, and we decided to skip over to the Anchor Bar for some dinner. Corianne met us there; Jackie and I had a drink and ordered some pasta. I got us a single order of BBQ wings. We ate what we could and chatted, then headed home. Another nice night of sleep.

Friday started out with a bit of crisis. Jackie's computer had shut down and would not restart. It was giving her a message that "no operating system" could load. I suspected a hard drive failure. Jackie was, of course, distraught. We decided to take her computer to a repair shop, so we looked up some on Google Maps and picked one across from Squeaky Wheel on Main St. Jackie called them and explained and they told her they would look at it. So we drove it over and Jackie emailed work to let them know she wouldn't be coming in. They took her computer and told her they would call her. We decided to go to the mall and look at the MP3 players, since I was thinking of getting one. So we went to Best Buy, and I didn't see anything there that looked good. We decided to head over to the Apple Store to check out the iPods and, of course, the laptops and other computers since Jackie's was on the fritz. We spent a good deal of time in there and I eventually decided to get an iPod nano, the 2GB version. Then we went home, and I put music on the player and then Jackie gave me my birthday gift, an LCD monitor for my computer. I hooked it up, and it was absolutely awesome. It blew me away! Totally transformed my notion of working on the desktop. I can't wait to use it some more. I spent the rest of the night hooking up my laptop to the television in our living room, projecting movies onto it and packing, which Jackie was a great help with as usual.

For the most part, you already know about my ordeal on Saturday. I didn't get in until 9:15 Pacific time, so I didn't get to sleep until after 11. It wasn't too bad, I could sleep in till 7:30 or so anyway. Sunday's classes went alright, maybe a little better than the week before. The Level R was a lot of fun, with the book Where the Wild Things Are, the wild rumpus around the room, and playing alphabet soup. The Level 5 was OK, I had a few kids fill out some evaluations who wouldn't be there in week 5. In Level 4, not too bad either, though some of the students were still a bit tough to deal with. I was in the mood for Chinese food at the end of the day, so I drove home and decided to go to a P.F. Chang's in downtown San Jose. It was a really neat place, and I was glad I had chosen to go there. There seems to be a great nightlife there, and even on a Sunday night a lot of young people were out. There was some Latin Jazz playing somewhere outside. I parked in a garage and walked to the restaurant, noting a lot of other interesting ones as I passed by. Inside P.F. Chang's I waited for a table and when I was seated I ordered a pot of a citrus tea that ended up being quite good (makes me want KC Tea and Noodle's jasmine tea, mmm), a cold vegetarian side dish of Shanghai Cucumbers (with sesame and soy) as an appetizer, and the Cantonese Chow Fun with beef for my entree. All was good and Jackie kept me company on the phone as I ate. I got myself a bit lost before coming back to the hotel, and made it a little before 10 pm. Sleep was soon to follow.

Today went pretty well. The school is now closed, which worked out in my favor because the principal was there early to unlock my door rather than my having to go ask for a key from Mr. Bro. My first class, the Level R, was good, though attendance was rather sparse and most students were late. The Level 6 went much better this week, and I think by next week most of the students will have made some good progress, not just in terms of reading rate either. The Level 5 was a bit of a bear this week, having to deal with some misbehavin' students. But I was happy when it was over, and now I just have one more day before coming back home for my final 2-day break. Then it's on to the final week of teaching and, following that, a celebration of mass proportions. So until next time I will say adieu.

Oh, and the thought that keeps getting me through all this is the all-too fleeting yet magically wonderful experience that is the autumn at home in Western New York. Fresh, crisp apples. Hot mulled apple cider with nutmeg and cloves. Pumpkin bread. Toasted pumpkin seeds with red pepper flake. The odors of a hundred scented candles throughout the house. The colorful leaves. Winter squash season. All of these images make me smile at my darkest times throughout the day, keep me pushing on.