the rain in spain

...stays mainly on the plain...

in new york, in the summertime, however, it goes all over the place. today has been a day full of thunderstorms and weather drama, culminating in a great sideways wind, which while it thankfully has dropped the temperature outside a good 15 degrees, has also blown some of the rain in my open window.

oh well, like i said, at least its cool.

school has been going well. i gave my first test last thursday and it went over about as expected-- the kids that show up and participate in class did well, the kids who don't, didn't. tomorrow begins our last unit of summer school, astronomy, which the kids voted on as what they wanted to cover in class. i am hoping that since they got to choose, they'll have a little more ownership over the material. plus, there are lots of cool photos in the slide show. who doesn't think that galaxies are beautiful?

i am trying to come up with more creative/fun assessments to do in class besides the typical quiz format and for this unit i have conceived of a MySpace profile for each planet, which the students will create and then share, and a classification game where i have them sort profiles of "space junk" into categories based on the new definition of a planet by the IAU. this is the offending development which kicked pluto out of our solar system, but its a fun exercise.

outside of teaching, school has been going well, though my classmates and i are all obviously in the place where we are ready to be done for a bit. we have stopped listening to each other when we speak in class and there is so much eye-rolling that happens when we're talking, its amazing that we ever get anything done. one of my classmates, mike, said after a particularly frustrating day, "i have kind of had it with this class for a while. i mean no offense, but i see you guys more than i see my wife."

i am lucky to not have that problem. not the wife problem, because for many reasons that is not possible, but the not-seeing-your-significant-other problem. having jac in class with me is a great help, not only because we reinforce our resources and our learning by being in the same boat, but its built-in face time. the bad part is that i sometimes feel like we spend all day together, but don't really get to see each other, if that makes any sense. still, we've been doing a good job of spending time together when we can, but still managing to get work done.

rugby has been going well, though since i have been teaching and having to prepare class materials, etc, its been harder to want to practice until 9:30 at night after having been in school all day, and to still think about preparing for the next day in class. as we speak i am taking a break from making my lessons, which will hopefully catch me up until wednesday. we'll see how that goes.

here, for your consideration, is a very funny picture that i included in a recent slide show. enjoy.

update, overdue

last monday was supposed to be my first day of professional development at my high school, where i will be in the fall. professional development (PD, for those keeping track) is supposed to be the time when teachers sit around and plan for the next year, addressing areas that need improvement, etc.

i show up at 9:05am, thinking i am a few minutes late, and notice that there were kids roaming the halls. funny, i thought, summer school doesn't start until tomorrow. no matter, i'm sure i am in the right place.

next thing i know a secretary is whisking me into a classroom, hands me a manilla folder, and says "here are your attendance sheets. have fun."

wtf?

as it turned out, the school district only sent my school one science teacher, even though they requested two, and so, ta-da! i have two summer school classes.

by the time i got to my classroom and got my bearings, it was 9:13 and school starts at 9:15. fabulous, two minutes to prep.

i search frantically for anything i might use and find the white board and the chart paper are my only allies today. i have nothing planned, since i thought i was supposed to be observing, not teaching, and don't even have any interesting labs or anything leftover from class with me either.

fun times!

as the kids roll in, i'm desperately trying to think of a strategy for today's class, remembering all the things that we've been taught so far in our SAF sessions: don't turn your back on class! have your materials ready! don't write out all the notes at once! make friends with the janitor!

thankfully my classes are small, usually about five kids show up on any given day, and i only have two periods. they are also in "credit recovery" and not Regents prep, which means i get to make up the curriculum and don't have to bore them with Regents prep questions all the time. i surveyed their earth science interests and have decided on a curriculum which focuses on the dynamic earth (properties, equakes, volcanoes, tsunamis), weather and climate, and astronomy. in four weeks. yee-haw.

the days got better as i had more time to prep, but i was still writing my lessons the night before all last week. got a bit of a head start today by taking care of monday and tuesday's lessons, but still... i keep telling myself that this is all just great practice for the fall. on top of all the other stuff i have to work on for university classes.

hope that wherever you are, you're not writing summer school curriculum.

What is done, is done.

I took the Earth Science Content Specialty Test (CST) yesterday.

The CST is the test that you must pass in order to teach in your subject area and yesterday's exam was the only one that will give me a passing score before the school year starts, which means if I didn't pass, I don't get to teach until I can pass the test again, in December.

While I don't think that I aced it, by any means, I think that the immersion program work and the loads of studying I have done on my own payed off. Similar to what Justin says about "P equals M.D." in terms of medical school classes, in my case, I only need that 220/300 score to make it. Anything above 220 is just gravy.

The testing ordeal itself was a bit of a nightmare-- I was home by midnight the night before, ready for my six hours sleep before waking up to trek to Coney Island for the exam. Then, just as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I had forgotten to print out my exam ticket needed to get in to the test. No problem, I thought, I'll just use my roommate's printer, easy.

I have never seen a printer go so bananas before. From the instant I turned it on, before I'd even told it to print anything, it began sucking in every piece of paper in her paper tray, diligently printing one line of wingdings on each page before spitting it out. Oh my God, is this really happening?

I tried turning it off, unplugging it, etc, and every time I hit that power on switch, the same madness.

I live in Sunset Park, where there are no FedEx Kinkos around (hell, I don't think I have seen a Kinkos since I left Seattle), so I began to panic. I texted a ton of my classmates to see if they could print it for me, and all of them were either taking the test in Manhattan or were already asleep, which is exactly where I wanted to be.

In the end, I took the train to Jac's house, where she let me use the printer, and then crashed out for my official 3.5 hours sleep I got by the time it was all said and done. I know that NYC has public transit that gets you almost anywhere, yadda yadda, but at night, it takes FOREVER. Its normally about a 35 minute trip for me to get to her house (take the D two stops, walk to the G, take that three stops) but Friday night, it was about 1.25 hours. Ugh.

Yesterday after the test I came home and passed out for about two hours before getting up and playing a 7s tournament on the lower west side of Manhattan. My team didn't win, but I had fun anyway. One of the best games we played was against the New York Women's 7s side. The NY Women are the Premier Div 1 team here in NYC. That means that they're really, really good. They routinely make it to the top three in nationals. There was no Premier bracket in this 7s tournament, so they brought their A side to the "Social" bracket, which was where my team was playing. We played the NY Women's B side at Rockaway last month and beat them, but these A side women were totally different. Not only that, but I was playing with the Lions B team, which was even more of a skill-level deficit. I am happy to say that despite all of this being stacked against us, we only were beaten 5 tries to 1. For a team that had such a skill level advantage, being able to hold them that far, and to score against them, was great. I made some really great tackles against their VERY tall back line as well. Fun fun fun.

Back to reading about adolescent literacy for my professional development sessions. Yay.

Aquarius: the Water Bearer

Jac is an Aquarius, the first one that I've ever really had in my life, at least to my knowledge. I seem to have a lot of friends that are water signs, though, with an inordinate number of Pisceans in my circle of friends, but the Aquarius was a new one for me.

According to astrology.com (not that I ever really read that stuff, ahem), the Aquarius/Libra couple are a good match. Always good to hear. The real funny part, though, is how true the water-bearing quality is where Jac is concerned.

On Saturday, at about 11pm, we were leaving her house to meet Ruth, Aneal, and Meredith at a bar in Park Slope called Union Hall. It is a slightly hipster bar that feels like a library inside, with indoor bocce ball courts. I have kind of joined Aneal's Monday night bocce team, which is awesome. But I digress..

We were leaving Jac's house in Bed-Stuy (home of the Notorious BIG), about to get on the train, when a pack of 10 year olds come running down the sidewalk toward us. I think there were only like five of them, but it seemed like more. One runs in front of the others yelling "miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss!" It took me a minute to realize he was trying to get our attention. When he got closer he said "Yo miss, can you give me a dollar?" At first I was just surprised that a kid would come up to me and just ask me for money, when he didn't really need it. Usually people at least pretend to need bus fare or something, but he just straight up asked for a dollar. I told him I didn't have any cash, which was true, and Jac and I turned back around and began walking down the subway steps. Next thing I know I am pelted in the back of the head by an open water bottle, which splashes me all over my backside.

Nice.

Not five days later, Jac and I are walking again to the train, this time in broad daylight, near a park in Clinton Hill. Out of nowhere (literally, we didn't see where they came from) some punk kids sneaked up from behind and nailed her square in the back with a water balloon! Luckily for her they threw it too hard and it didn't pop, but just bounced off. Still, what punks!

I am going to start wearing my rain coat whenever we hang out. Or at least bring a dry change of clothes.