You'd think I'd read more...

You'd think as a teacher of English I'd be reading a lot.
But I'm here to tell you that as a FIRST YEAR teacher of English, I do not.

I wake up at 5:30 and spend an hour trying to look professional. Heels. Hair. Tucked-in shirt.

I get to school early to grade and make sure everything is in line for the day.

I teach 8th graders for 6 hours, consistently reminding them, "It's my turn to talk now; you'll have a turn in a few minutes..."

I read aloud to them some days and they squirm in their seats and play with their hair.

Then the day is over at 2:45 and I sit at my desk, mulling over my next day's lesson plan.

I type up very minute details so I won't forget what I want to say and how I want to teach.

I read my 2 Post-It notes that are always on my desk:

"Teach like your hair's on fire!"

and

"I have to love it first."

I go back to my lesson.

I worry that the students won't have a long enough attention span so I add another activity.

I make copies.

I run around the building in my clicking and clacking heels.

I try to leave by 5 every night, so I still have a chance to see the sun once for the day.

I listen to podcasts on my drive home about Oscar Wilde and Lizzie Borden or the history of handbags and why women shave their legs.

And by the time I get home, I want to turn the dial to OFF.

So I sit on my couch

and I forget the big words like exasperated and dinner

and I just want to watch internet TV until my husband comes home.

He comes home about an hour later.

We eat. And dance. And run around like children.

And 3 hours later we brush our teeth and put on our pajamas and I think to myself,

I wish I read more...

I almost forgot

Oh. Also.

I cut my bangs at 6:20 this morning.

Just looked in the mirror, picked up some scissors, and...oops.

These things happen.

Back in college...

It's funny how quickly it's seemed that I've come to be able to say, "Back in college..." (awkwardly phrased sentence. But I'm leaving it...)

I'm teaching the book Make Lemonade to my 8th graders right now. It was a stretch, a leap of faith for me. It's a girl book, and I have a lot of boys. A lot of reluctant-reader boys. But, I took the chance and here we are reading Make Lemonade. A book about LaVaughn, a 14 year old girl, trying to earn money for college so she can get out of her awful neighborhood by babysitting for Jolly, a 17 year old single mom with 2 kids.

We talked about lemons. About how life will hand us lemon after lemon after lemon.

I thought about my own lemons.

And we talked about how we can make lemonade out of our lemons. How we HAVE TO. We have no choice. We can't just be sad all the time; we'll fall apart.

I told them, "Back in college...I had a professor who told me, 'Bad things don't happen; life happens.' and I've never forgotten that."

The next day in class, Gatlin told me, "You remember that quote you told us last time about bad things not happening, only life happening? I really liked that. I put it as my status on Facebook..."

And I have boys sitting in their desks, holding their books, their eyes fixed on the words like it has the formula to cure the sadness of the world. They're paying attention. They're into it.

And I'm into it.

And I'm so into having my students into it.

It feels so good when you go out on a limb and choose a book that's about feelings and students don't fall asleep.

Today we went around the class and said our CAPABLES because they went around their class and said their capables in Make Lemonade. They finished the phrase: I am capable of...

They were smiling and beaming when I'd yell back at them, "Yes you ARE capable of that! You sure are! Oh yeah!"

It feels good to be doing something. And especially to not be in college and finally be able to say, "Back in college..."

Did you know I'm an 8th grade English teacher?

blogging diarrhea

Is everyone sick of me yet?

Well, tough. Because I'm waiting for Kelly to come home but he is not home yet.

Here's how it usually goes: Kelly usually gets off work at 5, the bus comes at 5:30, and then he is shuttled to his car at the park-n-ride and he comes home at like 6:30 or 7.

Today, however, the bus didn't come until 7. Then that bus's chains were damaged so they had to wait for a replacement bus. So the replacement bus drove until they found another bus stuck on the side of the road and they stopped to save the innocent victims of that bus.

So now at 8, Kelly is finally on his way home. Hopefully. And I'm sitting in his parents' basement, blogging, watching internet TV with the roads too bad for me to go anywhere.

Oh boy.

Blogging Diarrhea.

Nice, Brazil

"Sharing is the nature of creation, it doesn't happen in isolation. No one creates in a vacuum. Everything comes from something else." - Gilberto Gil, Brazil's Minister of Culture

Exactly what I was thinking...

Apparently Brazil has got it goin' on with the creative commons thing. They know how to party.

Blogging Spiral

Not working has made me blog.

But Monday I work again.

We shall see what becomes of my blog.

I have to plan the next 2 weeks in the next 2 days...

Hulu.com stops my productivity but sparks my blogitivity.

Copyright?

I'm watching this interesting documentary about Copyright laws and the mash-up artist Girl Talk. All these things that I'm seeing and hearing...

"Eventually everyone's going to realize that it's beneficial to share ideas..." - Girl Talk

"The past always wants to control the future..." - Manifesto #2 from documentary

"You can't argue your creativity when it's based on other people's stuff..." - Copyright lady

"Intellectual property is the property on somebody's mind. Okay, if I write a song about love, my unique expression about love is my property..." - Rick Cairns, Music industry lobbyist

It all just makes me think of an idea someone planted in my brain once in college:

There are no original ideas.

And I was challenged to disprove that. And I couldn't.

All anything I think has a foundation somewhere from someone else or something else. My brain has just built on it, putting my fingerprint on something that has millions of other fingerprints already all over it.

Intellectual property doesn't make complete sense to me. I get that you don't want me to sing the lyrics to a Metallica song and then say, "I wrote that..." but DUH - no one would believe me. They all know who wrote that. It's just so strange. I can quote someone in a paper as long as I put their words in quotes and say they said it. Why are people getting so crazy about music and movies?

They're suing people in comas, 10 year olds, people on welfare, people on disability... yikes.

Do I sound smart? Or rambly? Because I'm watching this movie still as I write this and I'm not paying much attention to what' I'm writing. Or thinking.

Is it all just vanity? Everyone wanting credit? Is it low self esteem? Everyone needs validation?Tell me I'm smart. Tell me I'm original and unique. Tell me no one else in the whole world could have thought this up but ME!

But here's Girl Talk creating a mashup. Enjoy:

So, are there any original ideas?

Are there?