Now and then…all right, let’s face it, too often; I need to get out of my head…I look at where I am and who I am. Now and then, I even figure something out.

Contrary to grad school telling us that we were all going to be leaping tall IEPs in a single bound, I’ve turned out so far to be a mediocre teacher. Contrary to grad school, and then Pendergast, telling us that nothing but perfect was good enough, I’m OK with that. I’m first-year; I have a right to be mediocre. After all I’ve had to do to drag myself to this point, I deserve to be mediocre for a while.

The problem is, in pretty much everything else I can think of in my life, I’m falling short there too…on any given measure I can think of, I’m so far from who and what I was supposed to be right now, especially for what I used to be. I miss being a kid, for that; I like the independence now but I also liked being good at stuff, and as a general rule I’m not any more. “Good at stuff” as the foundation of my identity doesn’t work so well when it stops being true. It doesn’t help, I guess, that work is pretty much the only thing in my life. That’s what makes it hard to accept being mediocre; if I’m only doing one thing, I should at least be good at it.

This time last year, a typical day involved hitting the snooze too much, dragging myself to student teaching (which I considered a full-time job for all intents and purposes), working my way through the day, driving home, trying to get things done at home (with embarrassingly ineffective results), hanging out with my online friends, and staying up too late worrying about things I needed to do. The variation on weekends was to remove the alarm clock entirely in favor of oversleeping and of course no student teaching on those days.

Now, I hit the snooze too much (though less so than a few months ago), go to work, work my way through the day, walk home, try to get things done at home (with embarrassingly ineffective results), hang out with my online friends, and stay up too late (though a little less so because I just don’t have it in me) worrying about things I need to do.  The variation on weekends is to, on Saturdays, remove the alarm clock entirely in favor of oversleeping, on Sundays I’m once again experimenting with the church thing, and of course no work.

Hmm.

Same friends–I had some work friends at the last job, which turned out to be YATIs (Yet Another Temporary Interaction). Same lack of a local social life, due to lack of local friends.  Still stressing, not about the exact same stuff but it’s mostly connected.  Not only am I, contrary what grad school told me to expect of myself, not saving the universe, but I’m barely even managing to save myself from various stuff.

My new life is my old life but with cacti.

For this I packed up and moved to a different time zone.

What’s the point?  I’m not sure.  Partly I’m just trying to think things through.  Partly I think there might be someone out there who finds all this entertaining or something.  Partly, I’m looking at ways of making my new life more different from my old life.  I don’t know what to change, how, or into what, but other than that I’ve got it all figured out.  Heh.

Where have I been?  I’ve been wondering the same thing…

Long story short, work got to me.  I went in with enthusiasm but not a lot of energy, and it chewed me up.  Some of it is confidential.  Some of it I just don’t want to talk about.  I will say this…I still think I can teach and do well at it, somewhere else; and, for all the stuff I had a hard time with, I feel that there were things I had going for me that weren’t valued as much as they should have been.

So, I’m being released from my contract.  In theory I’m going to sub and find a part-time job.  In practice, hard to say.

Today, the job search began again. I got around to, final count, 7 different districts, to pick up the paperwork.  Tomorrow I need to take as many of those back as I can and get around to a few more.

I also got my personal belongings from the classroom…which sucked.  A few of my students were there–really decent kids, who I’ll miss.  Hopefully some of them will stay in touch, though it hasn’t happened yet.  Everyone was so nice; I almost fell apart.

Life is going to be extremely crazy for the next several months.  Subbing, some other kind of job (maybe working in a bookstore or tutoring), putting myself back together.  Preferably keeping the rest of it from falling apart.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

I’m having a hard time seeing the road ahead. There are a few things where if something goes a certain way, I can see what would need to be done about it, but…I’m having trouble making concrete plans further out than May. Partly it’s because of stress; partly it’s adding to stress because it’s not who I am to totally wing it.

I’ve learned the weaknesses of two ways of teaching math–CMP and its relatives (unless you add routine practice onto the program, nothing ever gets easy) and starting with the bare standards (takes freaking forever and working in a different order from the book doesn’t work anyway because the students aren’t set up for the materials). Now I know how to work around both. Next year, wherever I am (and by implication whichever I’m working from) I’ll be able to set that up in a way that can actually work, from the beginning.

The school district I live in uses CMP, which is not my favorite math curriculum; on the other hand, they don’t neuter it like Salem-Keizer did, and I know how to fix it now, by adding on the more traditional stuff but in a more structured and accountable way than Grant did. I could probably do OK at teaching there. They also have a middle school where the boys and girls are separated; I really wouldn’t mind giving that a try, to see how much good it does to cut out the flirting.

Or I probably could stay where I am. I’m sure today’s observation was much better than the first one, and improvement is a good thing. I know I still have to pull the kids into line a bit more…unfortunately that’s something no one seems to be able to explain how to do. The thing is, I know I used to know that–I hate some of what college did to me.

Anyway, the district I teach in uses these “curriculum maps” that supposedly break the standards down throughout the year. If I had it to do over I’d ignore the curriculum map and start with the first chapter of the textbook and see what standard each lesson met. It’s a little late to switch to that now. Next year, if I’m still there.

Partly, it depends on whether I’m going to stay in this area. If I’m only going to be around here for another year or two, there’s no point in going through the bother of another job search. If I’m going to stick around in this area, I might as well switch fairly soon–next year or the year after–because, although there are plenty of good things to say about this district and even this school, upper-middle-class kids aren’t my calling; I just don’t speak the language of families in which twelve-year-olds have $200 cell phones. I know I’ve made the Rafe Esquith comparison before, about other things, but…Camelot. Not my world; I could do some good in the Jungle. (Read the book if you have no idea what I just said.) There are several options nearby.

I don’t know. It’s not decision time yet, and partly it’s hard because not only have I not thought through the effect of either on my career goals, I’m not really sure what those are any more. Definitely don’t want to go into the administration side of things–yuck (I mean I totally honor and respect those who do that so I don’t have to, but…politics and paperwork, do not want!). I think I could do something that focuses on curriculum, but I don’t want to leave the classroom; too many decisions are already made outside of where the rubber meets the road, and I don’t want to be part of that. So, I’m not sure. On one level I’ve got what I’ve been going for; on another, I have a hard time believing that this is the pinnacle of all success for me. I thought I’d “see what comes along” but that’s really not how I operate.

So, there’s the basic question: Other than (someday) pay off my student loans, what am I going to do with my life?

Calculus with Analytic Geometry at one or the other of the local community colleges. It looks like a night class in spring semester will be an option. It’d only be about $300.

The positive aspects are mostly obvious…it’s math. It’d be fun. I could show my students what I’m doing now and then, point out some ways that what I’m doing uses what they’re doing. I’d be able to continue to further courses. This is the kind of course I would have taken as an undergrad if I hadn’t been trying to fit myself into WOU’s mold. And of course the intangible part: I really want it.

However, I’m already going to be retaking Tech for Teachers in spring, if I can find it. By the way, here’s the official blog announcement about that: I got stressed, I had too much going on…I messed up…I got behind, too far behind to fix it, and got a grade that I can’t count toward my degree. So, it’s a do-over if I want to graduate. Which I do. I want the degree, I want to not be a screwup, I want to get that $4000 pay column bump next year. Teaching is my top priority, Tech for Teachers would be second. Throwing another class on top of that might be more than I can handle, especially this soon after getting out of full-time school.

Wishful thinking says I can handle it. Self-doubt says wait. I don’t know which one is telling me to do something that’s reasonable for the actual real situation. I have a suspicion that getting stuck in acting out of fear is not in particular any better than screwing up again. I think I might be able to handle it…

I’ve been thinking it over for a whole day, a day in which I needed to be doing other things, and I’m still no closer to figuring it out.

It turned out to be a problem in FileZilla (which had previously worked on this computer), which I found out by installing the latest version of FileZilla not on their advice but out of desperation to try ANYTHING and disgust with being told the same thing repeatedly (or in one case, something inaccurate).  It wasn’t even a case of different support representatives not staying in contact–most of my so-called support was from one rep, who must be getting paid by tickets closed because JEEZ.

Transcript to follow shortly.  Goodbye, MySiteSpace.  I got started with you guys on a free account and traded up when they went away, and I learned a lot here about how to make websites, but I won’t tolerate “service” that ignores a problem.

I’m now officially looking for a different host.  Feedback is welcome in comments (i.e. ad comments for hosting services will be considered on-topic, not spam).  Expect another update shortly.

Long story short, MySiteSpace is screwing up repeatedly and in a remarkably inane way (server glitches, well, that happens; closing support tickets without the issue being resolved on the other hand is not something I’m into putting up with), so a hosting service move is probably pending.  So, the place may disappear without warning for a while at some point.

This isn’t a decision I’m making lightly; I expect it to be a pain in the neck to get everything set up.  But their response time had been slipping for a while and this was the last straw.

Right now…definitely not. I’m just too flat out tired of being a student, I want to not have to think about tuition and books and papers for a while. Plus I need to pay my student loans down a bit before I can throw anything else on top of what I’ll be paying.

But…eventually…

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