A Heart's a Heavy Burden

Last weekend (LAST last, the 22nd) Ben, Sean, and Dave were visiting from Madison. Well, Dave is continuing to visit from Europe but yeah. I can't remember all the finer details but the point is that Sean and Ben were going to Disney World (AGAIN, but this time with Ben's parents) and Dave was going to be alone for a week. Steve and I thought that was nonsense and invited Dave to spend the week with us.

Steve and I have never actually had a house guest stay longer than the weekend, but we DO have a guest room. Dave was such an easy guest: all he wanted to do was eat baguettes, order cheap pizza, play ITG, and talk about ITG and mini golf. He managed his own schedule and kept himself busy while we were at work. In the evenings one or more of us would play ITG. All 3 of us made improvements, and Dave ended up getting 2 new quads which is super impressive. Steve and I did pretty well too. I still need to re-learn officials after not having played them in months while preparing for Cupcake. But even with that, I have improved like 10 scores. I just need to increase my stamina and suffer through hard songs.

That's pretty much been my life! I also started knitting a hat with a super fun technique, SO EXCITED. I've been buying a lot of fun yarn lately. So happy about my yarn. I should knit more.

I've been really really tired still. Even with many hours of sleep, still so tired. I've been working on my attitude AT work (still really struggling with the getting TO work part), and negativity I could be bringing into my job. It's helped this week be better - I think I'm naturally one of the better educators at connecting with kids and making them feel like I care about them and want them to do well - AND that I expect them to give their best. However, I still think I've been struggling at being 100% and not getting bogged down with the annoying things - refusals, bad attitudes, etc. - and this week I decided to take it in stride and not allow myself to get exasperated. Instead I've been infinitely patient and understanding. For example, when Tino said he wished I'd teach at the board and if he didn't get it, come to him individually........... which is literally all I do. Forever. I did that even HARDER today than most days; usually once we get to "work days" I'm working individually and small groups 100% but today enough kids needed help that I went for a class re-teach. But I listened patiently and told him that tomorrow I will do just that. lol. We're working on 2-step equations and I know that's a challenging topic and requires a lot of thinking and effort on their part.

I'm super nervous about next year's group, it sounds like the 6th graders are much lower than this current group of 7th and 8th graders, so I'll have to manage them differently. Trying not to freak out already, but it's like, I'm working so hard at FINALLY building my curriculum binder after having lost most of my online resources when I left SPPS, and next year I'll have to change it probably. It's okay.... one thing at a time.

Therapy appt yesterday went well, but I left here around 2:30 and that is TOO LATE somehow to get all the way around the Twin Cities and at the appt by 3. So I blustered in at 3:05 and had to ask to let me go to the bathroom because I hadn't gone all day hashtag teacher life. Otherwise we had a lot of really good conversation about communication in my relationship with Steve and talking about boundaries and how boundaries/needs/agreements aren't static and we should revisit them regularly to see if they changed and how to modify our needs, etc. She also suggested a different book for me and Steve to review together that is more modern and might be more helpful now that we're not in crisis. I talked with Steve about it on my hour drive home, and I think he also will be looking into individual therapy. He still has a lot of bad moments and we agree it would be good for him to vent or work through some of these thoughts with an impartial and supportive third party.

We've been spending a lot of time in daily contact with Ben/Dave/Dmac/Sean, and have seen much less of our local friends. Noah fell a little off the map for a bit but is back. I've had some minimal texting wtih Courtney and it sounds like Steve talks with JWaid and Nick, but we haven't been hanging out? It's interesting. Noah mentioned to me the other day that it feels like everyone is just being regular old adults and it's disappointing. I imagine that happens in everyone's lives. I remember being a teenager and my mom hanging out with her best friend from high school after not having seen her in like 10-15 years and thinking that was insane! How can you not talk to your best friend?! But now I get it. And Bre and I maintain spotty contact and technology of course allows us to keep up with people without having to directly interact with them often anyway.

Uh I totally dropped the ball on shirts for both Fantastic Beats AND Cupcake. I just like... forgot about them. Whoooops. It's not a huge deal for Cupcake but I feel pretty bad about FB. It's not super like me to forget, but it just feels like I've got a million things I'm thinking about at any given time and my brain just decided that ordering shirts was not a necessity. That and I guess I had no reminders sooooo it's hard to remember.

My great-grandma died a couple months ago and she willed her money to her children, but since my grandpa Jack died a couple years ago the money allotted for him went to HIS kids. My mom sent me $1000 as a nice gesture, and I think that was super sweet. I think I'm probably going to use it for tattoos - I have a bunch of medium-small ideas I just want to knock out quickly here.

1. Something like "Go all in" from this Jim quote in The Office - "Well, you know, you can’t have everything so you gotta ask yourself what makes you the happiest. You just go all in for what’s most important. That’s my new thing." Pretty self explanatory, one of my favorite lines in the entire series, really speaks to me. Probably on my wrist? Somewhere I can see.
2. "A Heart's a Heavy Burden" with either blue Calcifer or the shooting stars from Howl's Moving Castle - I know I have an entire Ghibli sleeve but also this quote is my entire life. Either over my heart, or on my available ribs/side/hip.
4. Booya Moon from Lisey's Story. It's my favorite Stephen King book of all time, and I'm linking the image given on the book jacket for reference, but I think Andy would really like to draw his version or vision of it. I like his art. Probably on one of my thighs.
5. Possibly one of Andy's drawings, because I know how much he likes to tattoo his originals, and one recent one he posted is super good. Not sure where though.

So things of been pretty busy for me for this last month. I’m going to go back and write about my sisters wedding in greater detail but for now I figured I would write an entry about what’s going on currently.

I think that I have determined that a lot of my wrist pain has to do with typing on the iPad, but when I initially got my iPad I had ordered a keyboard to go with the iPad. Unfortunately the keyboard broke almost immediately and I have yet to get a new one. So I’m trying to do dictation instead of audio posts for every entry. I feel like this can make entries go by faster in terms of typing but also I think it changes how my brain thinks about what I want to say. When I write entries I end up taking at least a half an hour to an hour writing out every detail of the day, and verbally dictating an entry feels so much less natural because I’m not giving myself the time to think about what I’m going to say in the same way. There are also some issues with dictation not understanding the word I’m saying, for example, every single time I’ve said the word “entries” it has thought I have said something else. This is not a huge deal because I constantly make spelling errors when typing on the iPad anyway and end up with crazy random words sometimes.

Anyway, I’m going to write about this week first and then go back and backdate entries for my sister’s wedding and for this last weekend when I was at Ben and Sean’s.

This week has gone by crazy fast. I really struggled with my sleeping this week and I think it has to do with my increasing anxiety about the upcoming school year. Some of it also has to do with sleeping later during the day as I try to get every single scrap of sleep I can, because I know once the school year starts I will be getting so much less, lol. As a result, I have only gotten up with Steve a couple days this week.

The rest of my time this week has actually been mostly utilized in my classroom at my new school! Last Friday I had what was supposed to be a training, but ended up being a nothing, because the district thought they would have a contract settled for a math program but they did not. So there was nothing for us to do at the training? Molly, the other special ed teacher that I met at yoga, was at the training and had a lot of questions about the job because so far this summer we have heard nothing about what is expected of us. Luckily, there was another woman who works at Maplewood middle who texted the assistant principal and asked if we could come over! So that’s what we did instead of the training. We met with the assistant principal, Eric, and he answered a bunch of our questions and then we got to go to our classrooms. I met with Eric separately about how I will be gone next week and will miss sixth grade orientation. He was disappointed that I won’t be there, but reiterated how glad he is to have me this year. Then he suggested I get working on my classroom if I wanted to. So that’s what I did! First I went home and grabbed a bunch of stuff that I had from previous years and brought them back. This was crazy easy and fast because I live so SO close to the school. Once I had looked at the layout of my classroom, I was able to formulate a plan of attack.

I have never had a classroom to myself for any length of time. At Parkway, space is at an insane premium. There is no teacher who has an entire room to themselves. Often times during prep, someone else will be teaching a class in your room, or you will be teaching in someone else’s room during THEIR prep. It’s just the way it is. I was and continue to be blown away by the fact that it’s *MY* classroom, and I can do whatever I like with the space. I have spent the rest of this week buying materials and organizing the room. I’m pretty happy with how far the room has come, but as evidenced by the last two nights of not sleeping, my brain is really struggling to find ways to add color to such a starkly white space.

As for my schedule itself, I am mostly pleased with how it has turned out. My advisory will be sixth graders, which was disappointing at first because I prefer seventh graders and my caseload is comprised of about 15 sixth-graders and 5 7th graders. However, I suppose that it will be good to have all “new” students in advisory and me being a new teacher here. Also, sixth graders can be very easygoing with silly things and are so innocent and earnest.

My two gripes with the schedule are that I co-teach English one period and that my co-teaching math is eighth grade math... which is the only math that I have had no experience in teaching over the last four years. I’m pretty nervous about that, and disappointed because Pre-algebra is so fun to teach. But the good news is that I teach one pull-out math class and it sounds like the district wants me to focus on teaching to the skill level and not the grade level, which is exactly where my experience and philosophy are at*. I also will be teaching a social skills class, and I believe it’s only sixth graders aka less intimidating. As promised, I have half a period of due process (paperwork) time, and I have prep at the end of the day. All of my teaching is in the front half of the day and at the end of my day is more easygoing. This has been much of my experience teaching, schedule-wise, thus far. I also have half a period of “resource” time and Steve said that when he was in school, resource time was like a study hall.

Tomorrow I’m going to go in and try to get a couple questions answered (is there a laminator? What about big paper for the background of boards?), and maybe set up my “Sorry I’m not here for orientation but here’s a little about me and please tell me a little about you” table.

*To clarify - I teach a balance of foundational skills with grade-level expectations. I believe all students can do grade level tasks, just that some need more scaffolding, smaller steps, and reteaching than others.

( Before and after so far! )

Let me know what you think! Any suggestions to make the place more welcoming would be good! Only thing - that big white space in the back can’t be blocked or have anything on it, apparently it’s a very important vent. I still have plans for more colored paper (such as on my cork board by my desk), those books in the back on the cart were just in my room, I was thinking of putting those on the shelves, but otherwise I have no idea what to do with the shelves (the empty bookshelves and brown and white space in the before pics).