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I bought Phoenix’s It’s Never Been Like That a year late. When I graduated from college at the beginning of May, I found myself, for the first time, subletting my apartment for the summer, packing up all of my worldly possessions from college, and driving back home for the last time. The album came out in 2006. I picked it up in 2007, about one month before I flew to Philadelphia to begin my two year commitment to Teach for America.
It’s Never Been Like That was that perfect fresh blast of soft and pop music I needed for the summer. I spent many nights driving down the canopy roads and thinking about the choices I had made up to that point, the choices that had gotten me to being back home in Tallahassee before I started a job I had no qualifications for, a job where people just told me, “It’s so tough. You have no idea”–all the while Phoenix was playing in the background. (So was MGMT. But what self-respecting semi-hipster indie-fan didn’t have them spinning all summer long?) I waited in Tallahassee for almost two months.
Look out--look at, look at me Calm down calm down I said to myself this time
The nervousness of my impending future/disaster (…it’s so tough…) played in my head. It reeled over and over again. Possibility after awful possibility played in my head as I permuted the possibilities of the future my decisions had led me to the former here and now.
Where to go I had no idea about it Most of the people do, they're only doing just fine I don't wanna stay in place no more, see Ain't doing well, well, well, I'm only doing just fine
Then, all of a sudden, I was in Philadelphia. Phoenix was still playing on my iPod, and I was desperately listening to anything to calm my nerves. I was aloof in a place where people weren’t allowed to be aloof. I was in TFA. As a requirement you are asked to be social all the time, to participate, to be active, to meet people, to schmooze, to engage, to question, to discern, and to do a whole host of other verbs. I walked in the crowd, headphones in. No clue where I was going, but confident the group would get me to where I needed to go.
Second to none, I wouldn't seriously get involved in a thing Bored of all the talking, you know it didn't change much I doubt your intentions are to make me feel any better today I even doubt tomorrow will be as easy as it was
I was ambivalent about TFA. I didn’t exactly buy their sales pitch once I became a member of their organization. I doubted what they were really about, I didn’t want to get involved with them much, and it seemed as though the more I rejected them, the more they rejected me. (NOTE: This is only tacitly true. Once I, later, began accepting them, they became more accepting of me.)
It started all in early September When my godgiven little became a lot older
The rest, as I shall say, is history. Last September came and went, and here I am a year older. Phoenix is still with me. And now they have a new album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, to sustain me and relate to my life. When the lead singer Mars hits it, he hits it right.
The question is, which lyrics will define this year?
Your life will never be as bad as this movie. And you can be happy about that. Unfortunately, your life will never be as awesome as this movie. Which sucks, but it’s reality. Neither do you have the tragedy of living near or having to talk with Larry the Cable Guy. Nor, on the other hand, can you be as good looking as Bruce Willis or Milla Jovovich while living a life of fantasy in the near non-existent future where aliens exist (and apparently look like armadillos) and Chris Tucker is…Chris Tucker. I’m not sure where I was going with that. I could have gone a lot of places with that. None of them would have been good places, though. Regardless…
Anyways, to get to the point. I constantly compare my life to the movies I watch. I lament the fact that my life will never (A) be as interesting or (B) successful as The Lives of Others, and sometimes wish Danny Kaye would Court Jester his way into my world just once. Ever since moving to Philadelphia, and probably because I ride my bicycle everywhere (primarily because I’m too cheap to buy a car, and in no way does my concern for the environment dictate my decision but it is nice that it is a benefit) with my iPod headphones in, I have had the insane hope that one, as I am riding home from work, two rival gangs will bust out into choreographed dance/fighting a la West Side Story, or maybe even a little basketball choreography…whatever gets the youth off the streets these days. By the way, I did not know that movie won 10 Oscars. Since Return of the King, Ben Hur, and Titanic are the big 11 Oscar winners they seem to get all the attention, but 10 Oscars is a darn impressive feat. And until rewatching that YouTube clip, had never noticed that Bernardo wore Converse All-Stars. That’s just classy. Or maybe everyone wore Converse All-Stars in the ’60s and I’m just a little young to know or understand. Either way, classy. I stand by my opinion.
(Ever since writing this, I’m going to start pushing the theater department at our school to do West Side Story as the spring musical. This year they decided to do The Wiz. I’m ambivalent. The Wiz is apparently done every year at one of the middle schools in Philadelphia. I have a feeling it’s overdone in urban areas. Personal opinion. Although I have to give the theater department props for doing The Outsiders and moving the play from the middle of nowhere middle America in the ’60s to New York City in the late ’80s. They’re good.)
I am constantly wishing the movies I watch pop up in my own life. In case you hadn’t clued in yet, this is the MOVIES AS ESCAPISM philosophy. This is what I believe. This is why I particularly hate watching documentaries. I don’t like the world enough as it is, do I have to watch it all over again when I get home? (NOTE: This movie is a rare exception to the documentary rule. Moving on…) Watching Hoop Dreams was painful. Crumb? Just unnecessary.
This is why I’m not convinced by District 9. It’s a little to preoccupied with NOT allowing the audience member to hopefully ignore the fact that it is really about apartheid to allow the audience member to watch the movie without thinking. I like movies that make you think. I don’t like movies that do the thinking for you. This is also why (but for a slightly different reason) I will never like the National Treasure movies. The National Treasure movies, unlike District 9, just tell you the answer. District 9, instead, hammers the obvious into you with a mallet. Neither is very comfortable or easy to watch.
Clarification: Watching movies about the harsh realities of life is OK. I don’t know why, but it is. Watching Year of the Quiet Sun was much nicer than any factual movie I have watched about Europe post World War II. It isn’t a happy movie. It isn’t an altogether kind movie. But because I know it is fiction, maybe it is easier for me to stomach and accept, because I know it isn’t reality. The movie doesn’t have to be harsh to be hated. It just has to be real. Movies, to me, weren’t made to show the world. They were meant to, at the most, mirror the world, echo the world, re-represent the world, meant to capture our shadows on the cave, not to show our true faces.
This brings be to the review of the article (a personal favorite): Sunshine (I’ll get to Solaris another day.)
I know this is really late. I know this is two years late. I’m going to start actually writing about modern and relevant movies when work allows me the time to go out to the movie theater and see relevant movies. Until then, I’ll review old favorites.
This movie I think is quite wonderful. I think it is quite wonderful because it was probably a movie made precisely for me. Ebert got it right when he said the movie was made for nerds. But, it’s more than a movie for nerds. It’s a classic movie in that it devotes nothing new to the entire subgenre of movies where a crew of people go into outer space, get on each other’s nerves, and grapple with the fact that they’re on a suicide mission all while trying to be both psychological and vaguely sexy. It doesn’t add anything new because the genre exists solely for B-grade movies. (The exception is Solaris almost exclusively. I don’t like Alien or Aliens. I’ll explain that one later too, I promise.) I’m pretty sure this movie does not try to be anything more than the best it knows it can be–a B-grade movie. This is why Ebert will give it a 3/4. Because that’s all it should deserve.
Fortunately, it is more than that. It is part Science Fiction, part horror, part drama, part diatribe. It’s like an all style and no substance movie with a little bit a substance. Not much, but just enough to be entertaining. I won’t bother with the plot because the plot doesn’t really matter very much. You’ve seen it before. Until a certain moment in the film. Then it switches genre with one fail swoop and moves into another type of movie you’ve also seen before. It’s interesting to manage and understand the switch. It’s not that interesting. But it is interesting. What’s more interesting are the visuals, which will always win me over storyline, although the storyline isn’t terrible. It’s a joy to watch, the visuals will win any viewer over.
This, I admit is my major downfall as a moviewatcher. Oftentimes I’m willing to allow my obsession with great visuals overtake my practical sense of plot, pacing, and acting, none of which is lacking in Sunshine. Did I mention this is one of my favorite films. I’m not sure why I’m trying to make it sound so bad. It’s not. It’s actually really good. Give it a chance. Put it on your Netflix queue. I doubt you’ll be sorry.
If you are, let me know, and let me know why. Like my students who all seem to think an opinion ends with yes or no, I will always respond in the same way: an opinion is no good without a valid reason. Give evidence! That’s usually when I start raving around the classroom like a lunatic screaming incoherently about the value of justification and evidence. That’s when all my students stop listening. Which is fine. Everything is still fine.
I teach. Most of you, if anyone of you (whoever you are…I know you can’t see this but as I’m writing this I’m raising my eyebrows and sorta twisting my mouth and squinting my eyes to give the impression I’m a little skeptical there are people out there, and confused as to why any of you stumbled onto this disaster of a blog) know me, know that. If you didn’t, now you do.
Not only do I teach, but I Teach For America (all big letter words these days). And that’s how I ended up in Philadelphia. Actually, the new leadership of my school asked the teachers there to write a statement of positionality about how they got to Boys’ Latin and why they are there. The first round I was in a rather perfunctory mood and wrote the following:
- I was accepted to TFA to teach secondary English in Philadelpia.
- I was interviewed by and subsequently contracted to this school.
- I accepted, gladly.
- I will be finishing my second mandated TFA year this year, and hope to serve at least one more year.
Needless to say, some people in the leadership found that…shall we say, lacking a certain emotion. So I wrote another one. I don’t know why I did. It was the above in paragraph format. Four paragraphs. Four actions. They were underwhelmed. I was annoyed. So one morning I sat down and laid out the whole awful story of my life from playing in the ditches of Tallahassee, to the worst and best debacles of my teaching experience this past year. They were happier. And if they were happy, I was satisfied, and I got some weight off my chest. All was/is well…I think. Heather, if you’re reading this, let me know…
Work for the past year never really ended. A week after the school year was done, I was working with TFA to help Induction for the new PhiladelphiaCamdenWilmingtonand90%chancethereisgoingtobeanothercityintheregionbynextyear. The next week summer school started. Right when summer school was just ending, freshman orientation started, and then I had two weeks. Those two weeks were the longest vacation I had since exactly one year ago after Institute–remember that ridiculous teacher training camp. It was awesome (kinda)!
Anyways, freshman orientation was miserable. Wait, I take that back. I was miserable during freshman orientation. I figure it was a lot of things, but probably biggest was that I hadn’t taken “me” time in a year, and I need me time. (You know, the stay up late, drink all night, wake up late, eat out too often, watch too many movies, watch more TV, waste too much time, work way too little, pretend to do important things for an hour or so, but otherwise goof the day down the way you did–or should have done–in undergrad.) That’s what I needed. And I got it the past two weeks. Freshmen orientation was when I was apparently in the mood to write perfunctory lists. I’m embarrassed.
However…
Refreshed and excited about the year I walked into work today feeling good, feeling like I wasn’t fooling myself, with the past behind me, a bit worried about having to teach through four hours without a pee break, happy that I have good co-workers, sad that I have an entirely new academic leadership team, but confident in their abilities, more agreeable during PD sessions, less annoying to everyone in general, more focused on the idea of writing, confused about how really great movie get made, hoping I have the genius to pull one off one day, tired because I was still on undergrad time last night and around 1 AM thought I should go to bed, cursed myself the next morning (and by next morning I mean 5 hours later) for being so dimwitted, got out of bed, made myself a smoothie, rocked the earl grey, and got to school refreshed and excited about the year…
I could go on, but I probably shouldn’t. So I’m not.
Now, the blog is definitely back. Done and done.
There are many moments when I love my studnets. There are also many moments when I don’t love my students. Today was a day when I did not love my students as much as I could have. It was mainly their (not there or they’re!) fault. However I keep thinking to myself that I need to hold on to the nice and hilarious things they do because I really do appreciate them sometimes. I love it when they ask personal questions like
- After I said “I have to go home…and make dinner.” –Where’s your wife? Why doesn’t she make you dinner? (I love working at an all boys school. Keeping sexism alive one future man at a time.)
- Did you get the belt from the gap? Because my cousin has a belt just like that and he spent a lot of money at gap… (No Comment. But it was from gap…)
- Where’s your girlfriend? (How do I respond…?)
- Did you just fart sir? (Maybe…)
- Where you from? What’s it like? Did you live on the beach? (Florida. Like Philly, only more trees. No.)
- Can I buy your tie? I’ll give you five dollars? (No. I paid 30.)
- What do you put in your tea every day? Why you always so happy in the morning? (I take this as a compliment.)
- Why you gotta play us Mr. W? (“Huh.”) I mean…like every time we say something you gotta be smart with us and say something back..like, that’s not cool… (No, probably not. But it makes my life fun.)
- Why don’t you curse like all the other teachers?
- Where you get your hair cut?
- Mr. W got that “got me some” smile today! (“Inapproriate. Sit down.”)
To which I generally say: “Off topic. Are there any serious questions? Moving on..”
My school is just about to get its first white student. First ever white student. I’m thrilled. For the first time the student body population will begin to reflect most of the deversity of the world. We still haven’t had an asian enroll yet, but that’ll happen in 4-6 years. I’d put money on it. That is if there are any asians in Philadelphia who aren’t UPenn grad students. But that’s a small detail to be worked out.
Anyways, I hear the surprising news at work. And it’s exciting. Who isn’t curious how a white student will react in an all Black/Latino environment. So when I get home I tell the enws to everyone.
“Guess what? We’re getting a white student!?”
And, to a house full of teachers who teach primarily Black and Latino it’s an interesting and exciting possibility: the possibility of teaching a white student. Not because white students are any more well behaved or smarter. Just because white students are not what we know.
As I relate my excitemen to my housemates, I mention to one roommate who teaches at the school he will be transferring from “We’re getting a white guy from your school!”
He responded, “Not the white kid? He’s the only one we’ve got. I don’t even teach him and I know who he is. He’s practically famous for being ‘the white kid’ in school. Man, how could you take our white kid?”
I respond with a small victory dance. And the curiosity of what will come…
Man. Teaching a white kid. I never thought the day would come.
The one thing I was told to do during my time as a teacher was to keep writing about the experience. And I haven’t been able to keep that up. Why can I not take such simple advice?
Well, to be fair I have been busy, but that’s no excuse. I’ve still managed to get through the last two seasons of Heroes over the weekends, and Saturday has indeed once again become my “Do-Nothing Day” in an attempt to regain those preciouse “old days” that I remember so dearly right about now.
When I first got to my school I knew I was lucky. I am in a brand new facility. I am a part of a very small school, with small classes, smaller classes, and a small and very close, and very supportive faculty.
By all accounts I won the jackpot of Teach for America placements. And the students at the beginning of the year seemed to generally understand the basics. I thought to myself, “this won’t be bad at all.”
And then I started grading their homework. And the deficiencies these students have when it comes to putting down what they understand so well verbally in class is apalling.
Some don’t know what a noun is. Some don’t know what a verb is. Some don’t care. Some don’t write in defiance. And those who don’t still claim they want to go to college. But they think high school is nothing like college, and definitely won’t prepare them for the real world.
And I wonder. If they knew what I knew, would they still think that way?
The students are so much more advanced than I was at their age. They know so much more. They live in a city where so much more happens that in the suburbs of a midsized north Florida town. They have to deal with so much including being economically impoverished, subjects of a terrible education system, and still the hope of some parents who expect them to work, do well in school, and be the first student in their family to go to college.
And all of those expectations I somehow find on me.
How?
When did I become so empathetic?
Regardless, I am enjoying teaching so much. The goal everyday is to walk into the classroom and have fun. I’m the one who is supposed to have fun. And I do. I do not expect the students to have fun. I do not expect us to have fun together. But I expect to have fun, and I think some of the students notice my enthusiasm and attitude. Some do and just don’t like it. Some notice and are skeptical. Others don’t even notice, and those are the students I still haven’t notices three weeks in.
Those are the students I am most concerned about. Those are the students I feel I’m already failing.
TFA is always in the mood to inspire. Sitting through all of our Curriculum Specialist Sessions, our Literacy Sessions, structured Differentiated Time, even teaching in the classroom etc. is like having an Education in America college class taught by Oprah herself.
So, at the end of most days we, the 2008 crops (to be harvested, or rather in the process of being harvested), get to hear an inspirational speech from someone famous, or someone not so famous, about changing the world, or inspiring children, the future of our world, making a difference, impacting future generations, etc., etc., etc.
Sorry if I ever sound flippant about these very legitimate and serious and powerful things. It’s just it blurs sometimes.
Anyways, one of the ones TFA has really grabbed hold of in the last weeks of teaching for us (so that we can stay invested, and so that we can keep our students invested) is this part of a speech, the main thrust of it being: “How Are The Children?”
And now we have signs up throughout our school that read “How are the children?” Keep in mind all of our summer school students can see these signs, they walk past them every day, and I can’t help but wonder if they actually read them and (if so) what they think about them.
The crops response to this motivational push has been to constantly repeat “How are the children?” constantly. We’re really saying “How tired are you of hearing ‘How are the children?’ constantly from every sector of TFA governance right now?” And that irony has not failed to resonate with the TFA administration at our school. So, we’ve had an emergency meeting. The thrust of this emergency meeting was (again, to inspire and motivate) to keep our heads in the game, to realize that we still have a week and a half of teach, etc.
It did not really work. Because running rampant down the halls of the Temple dorm right are criticisms and critiques of TFA and the job all the crops have been undergoing this summer. It’s generally negative in tone. But only in some respects.
It’s negative first because it’s hard to see some people quit. It’s just as hard to continue working with people throughout this summer who only know they will quit at the end of summer school. The people who have already quit, dropped out, left, leave a hole. My four person quite is now only occupied by three bodies, the buses are just a little bit emptier in the morning, people who were just teaching one hour now have to work twice as hard to teach two hours a day.
That emptiness kills enthusiasm. It kills people’s spirits, and it has become so much harder to maintian positive in this pressure cooker atmosphere.
Maybe because of that negativity many of us (read: almost all of us, in one respect or another) have become overly (because we are all criticizing too much) critical of TFA and the system we have been going through. But we all laugh at the absurdity of it sometimes.
We laugh about how hard teaching is, how good or how bad we are, how mind numbing this whole process can be sometimes, about how much paper being a teacher uses (trees fall in the name of education with just one hour of my teaching), how we deal with incompetencies, how we poorly cope with the systems, how we couple and uncouple like nervous high schoolers, how we waste time in an effort to create more work later, how royally screwed up the system is all the time, and of course, most of all, about “How Are The Children?”
After getting used to the regular Thursday Night Sketch nights that I rarely attended throughout college, I find that going out with TFA people is a lot like that, except I’m not nearly as comfortable dancing with them. So I lean against the wall and watch what happens instead. This is what I see:
- Begin the night on a good note at a chill/classy bar: Drink (Minimum) 2 Beers/Mixed Drinks.
- Hang out and talk with the circulating TFA people who are all wandering down Chestnut trying to figure out where all the other TFA people are: Figure Out The Person You Will Most Likely Be Making Out With At The End Of The Night.
- Begin the discussion of what dance club your group of TFA people is going to next: Facilitate Movement Towards Add Debauchery To The Drunkenness.
- Get to the dance club: Drink (Minimum) 3 Beers/Mixed Drinks.
- At this point, properly moving towards the mental state of wasted, attempt to dance (read: grind) with every person in the club, which invariably means only dance with other TFA people: Allow Alcohol Its Proper Freedom In Your Bloodstream.
- Boys will be dancing with boys, girls dancing with girls, those groups will break up to dance with each other and uninterestingly make out only to go back to dancing with each other, while the rest of the group awkwardly dances with each other with no skill but lots of enthusiasm: Lose All Inhibitions.
- If you aren’t already there: Get Drunk, Grind On Everything (Whether It Moves Or Not).
- Feel satisfied with the mirror you just made out with: Call A Cab Home.
- Pass out: Get Your Much Deserved Rest.
- Repeat as necessary until you forget you’re a teacher: Return To School On Monday.
It’s a interesting scene, man, it’s an interesting scene. And who would have thought I could have observed all that in just a four hour block of time.
This all began with Leah’s birthday, and a the Friday school day canceled because of a “heat wave.” It’s wasn’t that hot, but I took the opportunity to go see The Dark Knight, sleep a lot, and go out. I also exchanged my bed for one that doesn’t creak with rust every time a slight breeze flows through the room.
You should have heard the whooping and cheering as people around 5:30 waltzed out of 1300 (the building where we live) with the good news that school for tomorrow will be canceled and their only plan is: “Let’s Get Drunk!” We’re a classy group of kids, we are. Wouldn’t you say? I would say, indeed.
Wait, let me clarify–half of the people were whooping and cheering and the other half (again, around 5:30) were crawling into be to try and get more than six hours of sleep for once on a week night. After hanging out for what seemed hours late into the night, I realized it was only 10 PM and I was exhausted, so I crawled into bed and passed out.
And, the dreams about my classroom, and TFA have started. Little dreams/nightmares about poor students behavior, or my ineffectiveness, or judging observers seeing my ineffectiveness and my students’ bad behavior. Or maybe I’m just thinking about these things in the moments between sleeping and waking and they haunt my thoughts for a while, but regardless–the total mental takeover is beginning.
Serious/unfunny post ahead. Venture at your own discretion:
In no way am I a good teacher.
I realize this. And I’m learning and growing as a teacher.
That said, this whole institute thing is fun. Fun in the challenging way. Fun in the I’m only getting six hours of sleep and for the other 18 I’m straight working way. So many people before me said that Institute was the most challenging experience of their life before teaching, but I just don’t think so. Building that house down in Nicaragua was way worse than this. Just as little sleep, harder work, more work, more intense work. Nah, this isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But it is hard.
Almost the first words I received after assigning my first journal topic to settle down the class I walked into was student cursing out me and my assignment, it was hard to rebound from that. Trying to fight the apathy of 18 disinterested summer school students is hard. Battling the poor (almost forced) sleeping habits is hard. Planning an hour that must (must!) be engaging for students and still convey critical and basic information so they can pass on to senior year of high school is hard. Trying to find a residence when the only time is the weekend and then I only want to sleep is hard and challenging. I’m not saying this isn’t hard.
But I’ve had harder.
And I’ve learned that the success TFA thrives on is based a lot on the self-judging, self-correcting pressure many of their acceptees place on themselves in order to help begin to solve the problem of educational inequity. I have seen these new teachers put so much unnecessary stress on themselves for no reason that they sacrifice the effectiveness of their performance in the classroom. But those are the types of people TFA generally recruits. And I was that person the first day.
I thought: “Man, I couldn’t do junk in that classroom. Students were out of their seats, cursing me out, not doing the work I’m assigning, not pay attention, not really ‘getting it’. Damn, what am I doing wrong.” But then a friend helped me re-evaluate it. The students, after a few minutes, did quiet down and do their work, but I was so unspecific about what I expected they just did the barest (and I’m talking barest) minimum. They didn’t grossly act out. They didn’t all leave in the middle of class. They all read with me. They all responded to my questions if only with an “I don’t know” (but thankfully no “I don’t care”s). Overall, I realized, I did OK, for not knowing what to do. And the next day, instead of constantly telling the disruptive kids to stop mis-behaving, I thanked the good kids for staying on task. I became more explicit about how long their journals had to be. I gave them guided notes so they knew what the key points were, and when to write them down. I’m starting to become more effective by learning what’s wrong, and then fixing it.
Meanwhile, people have quit, and left the burden of their work on other teachers. Now instead of one hour, some people must prepare two hours of class for every day of every week. I couldn’t imagine that. I’m beginning to get comfortable in the front of a classroom.
From the boy who shook uncontrollably at his junior piano recitals as a 10 year old to the man who’s standing up in front of a classroom helping students identify theme, it seems my life’s taking a turn for the better.
But I am in no way a good teacher. Yet.
The Current 