WAH KA WAH KA--

It's supposed to be 78 degrees today.
I was supposed to be done with a set of essays today.
I am supposed to read 19 novels before June 10.
I am supposed to receive a new fridge, that works.

I am supposed to be responsible, mature, and good for my word.
but all I can think about are the failures and the mistakes that I have made in a day.

I was exchanging emails with my mentor this past weekend over a student situation that was eating away at me--and he, being my mentor, wrote something that has been on my mind.
He wrote:
"The most important thing here is exactly what you said: not to take personally what kids do. It’s huge. Almost 98% of the time it’s about them...something going on in their lives. Good teachers always blame themselves. It’s natural. But, this interaction with Miss ____is a great opportunity to understand it mid-stream... To adjust perspective. .... Onward! To the waves."

He's a surfer, I love it, and I need to learn it quickly, like I need to learn golf, and how to skateboard again, as well as how to drive stick shift, or as they like to call it around here, 'manual', and above all things, I just need time to do it all!

but I digress. because I can...anyway--I forget that often what I am presented with in the classroom is often what I only care to see. There is more going on in the lives of these students and I just think that it can be so easy to let all of that slip away, to disregard or just ignorantly overlook the substance that composes these kids to be who they are. Equal opportunity, right? don't let the insides get to you, or else, you look at them differently. But it's hard--I find that I am caught between the rock and hard place, but sometimes, and most of the times, it's just about them. They could care less what I'm thinking, because, let's face it: in high school, we were pretty precocious, but self-centered students, kids. young. inexperienced, insecure...yeah, all that.

so I'm good. I can find validation that I am older, hopefully wiser and the better for it...and that I have something in me to help them along--and that I am to be more mindful, more vigilant about the fact that even though I want them to show me what they got, they're also walking through that door, with a lot more than I am privy to see.

today was sixty degrees. it rained, and it was still cold downstairs in my classroom. I told myself I never wanted to have to be in a sublevel/basement room, where I could feel the mold and then dampness of the earth overtaking my life...yes, dramatic. but you know, when you spend a year living in a sublevel apt, on the verge of floods, leakage, draftiness, insect -infestation and mildew--you too, might be as I am.

The saving graces of my new adopted classroom are: that it's a cool room, it's located next to a cool English teacher, and well, it's my mentor's.

and yet, it's colder in my classroom than my fridge is able to keep my food. boo.
spring has decided to sleep in. so fine then. please come, summer. I am ready for you anyway.