porque ...

thirteen weeks to go!

the beginning of today sucked. i broached the subject of the big bad unit with c., and she wigged out because i am adamant about keeping the indian in his cupboard. (for anyone who thinks i'm being offensive here, i'm just saying i don't want to use the lynne reid banks book as the center of my unit. i don't want to do a "native american unit" with fifth graders for the same reason i wouldn't do a "people unit" or an "air unit."

other highlights of the day - c. shot down my art lesson plan because she doesn't think we should make the boys do a pointillism project with flowers. again i wonder what controlled substance she's been inhaling. my advice to future STs: make sure that your teacher is a) not an idiot b) certified by the same institution as you. not to say that diversity isn't what makes the world go 'round, but closed-minded idiocy is a hell of a thing to deal with on top of everything else.


so, according to c., males and flora do not mix. well, i personally find it kind of sexy when a man can differentiate between two different types of casuarina, but what do i know?

4:57 PM - 2 eprops - 1 comment - email it

too late to call and bitch, or i would. i can't figure out p's scanner. with picture it, it scans in grayscale and i can't find a convenient menu or button that offers normal color scanning. with paint shop pro i can't figure out how to resize the images so they're not bigger than my entire screen.

thumbed through zathura today, which looks interesting but not as good as jumanji. disappointing. the boys go to space, not a jungle, and there's really no trademark leftover piece of magic for the believers. but the kids and i went on a fritz hunt with jumanji, zathura, two bad ants (not there!), and wreck of the zephyr. she said the kids got into that part. i say they were into the whole lesson and she needs to pay better attention.

i've finally started having a good time with the kids. they're a pretty quiet bunch, which c. likes and i strive to change. at least ten times a day (and tomorrow i'm actually going to count) she tells me how "hopeless" and "clueless" and "needy" these three particular students are ... makes me want to throttle her, especially that last one. needy kids NEED. so stop whining about them to anyone who will listen (and i mean anyone - from the cafeteria manager to the PE teacher to the people we eat lunch with every day) and FIGURE OUT WHAT THEY NEED. i could name a few things: a supportive environment, better seats in the classroom, conversations with you and me, equity, for you to smile at them once in awhile, for you to stop telling everyone who stops by this classroom how much you hate having them in your class even though you never actually use the word hate but it's so apparent on your face that it makes me wonder why i keep getting stuck with mentor teachers who hate their kids.

okay, she's the first actual mentor teacher i've had - i won't count the paid positions i held alongside teachers who seriously needed to retire because they despised kids. we got along smashingly this week, which is kind of sad because this week i watched her teach (or not teach) and decided that even though i am still in training (we should ALL regard ourselves as lifelong learners, for that matter) and even though technically, in this situation, i'm voiceless, and even though in the eyes of le grande system i am, well, nothing - i KNOW that she's full of shit. it doesn't take a genius, a psychologist, a rocket scientist, to tell this. she says they need SO MUCH HELP ... and she never helps them. she tells them their questions are stupid and then wonders why they're so quiet. she reads them textbook pages and gives them homework she doesn't discuss. the homework comes back half-done, half-assed because she doesn't care that the material is not interesting at all, and she logs a pile of F's in her gradebook and shakes her head, saying, they're so needy. repeats her whole spiel to me. they're so needy. proceeds to ignore them for the rest of the day.

that said, tomorrow is friday. "art" lesson first thing - heaven help us all.

i just had the greatest idea. tomorrow i'm going to ask her why she decided to become a teacher. (i swear i'll ask nicely.) and hopefully she'll ask me the same question back, because i really want to share my reasons with her. i don't think she'll care, but i do want her to know.