In which student teaching begins

As those of you on the facebook know, it has been a really good week; I started student teaching, I received passing scores on my Spanish CSETs and I got accepted to the APLE grant, which is a loan assumption program for up to $11,000 if I agree to teach foreign language classes in California for four years.

Student teaching has been good so far. I think I'm really going to enjoy working with my master teacher because we have fairly similar attitudes and approaches to teaching. She's a really awesome teacher and I hope I can learn a lot from her. The classes I'm in are ELD (English Language Development, also known as ESL or English as a Second Language). I probably would have been student teaching for Spanish, but I didn't pass my CSETs early enough, but I did pass the English CSETs in November. It's actually pretty lucky to be teaching in ELD, something I'm actually interested in, rather than in a regular old English class. I'm pretty sure I would hate teaching regular English.

I love working with the kids in the ELD classes, but it is hard. The hardest part right now is figuring out what proportion of foreign language to English to use (legally, 100% English, but whatever). Obviously, I don't speak every language, so this really applies only to our Spanish and Arabic speakers in my case. But considering that the lowest level class is more than half native Spanish speakers, this is coming up a lot for me. It's also difficult because different kids need or want different amounts of Spanish. I had one kid tell me, "I speak English, you know." Kid, I know you speak English, but you need to respond when I speak to you in English. Also, I really like to speak Spanish, so that makes it hard as well.

It's also kind of weird student teaching at the high school that I graduated from because I'm working with a totally different class of kids. When I was in high school, I was in all AP/honors classes and I basically only interacted with the same. The ELD students are basically disenfranchised from most school things. The only AP classes any of them are allowed to take is AP Spanish or AP math classes. Technically, it's illegal to not even let ELD students try the tests, but the unfortunate part is that none of their parents are going to do anything about it since they're immigrants who don't speak much English themselves and they aren't familiar with the system. That's really depressing for me. The other thing I noticed during this week's rally is that the "big" organizations like student government and cheerleading are overwhelmingly blond. There were a couple of students from the ELD classes who performed in the rally; they were in the hip  hop dance club. Again, super depressing to see these kids not being able to/not being welcome to participate in a lot of the other aspects of school life. The good news is that the ELD students really have a tight community. My master teacher leaves her class open at lunch and there are always 30 or more kids in there everyday and they're all really nice to each other.

I'm still not sure if I will want to be an ELD teacher myself. I wouldn't be opposed to it necessarily, but rather I think it is just a huge time and emotional investment and I don't know that I could/would want to do that. Teaching Spanish or something seems a lot easier (not that I've ever taught a Spanish class). But I do think I'm really going to enjoy teaching ELD for student teaching.

The other depressing aspect of ELD teaching is that my master teacher is, in theory supposed to keep to the same scope and sequence schedule as all the regular English classes. That is insane. Luckily, the principal at the school is sympathetic to the cause, since she is familiar with ELD teaching, so we aren't really expected to do it, but the idea is to keep along as much as possible. Essentially, the state expects magic from ELD teachers.

In other things: I rode my bike to school four days this week. It doesn't even take that long: about 10 minutes including traffic lights, etc. It takes about 15 to get home since I have to ride uphill (wah womp). I've been trying to keep up on my Arabic studying (CSETs in May, ugh), but I think it's going to be difficult to maintain it what with circus and lesson planing and what I call my social life. I got a book of Nizar Qabbani poems, which is pretty awesome. They're short poems so it's basically like bite-sized pieces of Arabic that I can look at for a few minutes when I have some downtime. Whereas when I read a book or something, I need to know I have at least an hour or so to do it, otherwise I won't even get started.  Apropos of nothing, my new favorite phrase is "Japanese bondage festive." The combination of the words (and I suppose surrounding context that will remain secret) just makes me chuckle.

I think I'm going to try to blog at least once a week, in part so I can think about/share my thoughts on student teaching and because I don't think I have more time to blog than that.

The Conversation That Makes Me Crazy

At my house, my "office" has the misfortune of being in a big open room, in which my desk and bookcases occupy a corner. I would like it to be treated like a private room, since there is nothing else of interest in here--no TV or anything--, just a bunch of chairs that the cats sleep on. This room does, however, have a few large windows that face the street. And my grandpa likes to join the cats in their favorite hobby: sitting on chairs and staring out the window. That, in and of itself, does not bother me.

Anytime I'm listening to music, watching a show, or have sound emanating from my computer for any reason and that sound stops (whether because it ends or I stop it), if my grandpa is in the room, the conversation will go something like this.

Grandpa: You didn't turn that off on my account, did you?
Me: No, it just ended/I paused it/I am now reading/I got sick of listening to crappy trance music, etc
Grandpa: Because if you did, you didn't have to.
Me: I didn't, I just was done listening.
Grandpa: I wouldn't want you to turn it off just because of me, in fact I like it.
Me: I didn't turn it off because of you, I'm just done with it.
Grandpa: I don't want to bother you, so you just keep listening and don't let me stop you.
Me: You didn't stop me, it was just over.

At this point, I might turn something on just to be done with this conversation. It's actually gotten to the point where if the show I'm watching is ending, I will queue up something else if he's in here just to avoid yet another iteration of this discussion. I probably have this conversation once or twice a week. It's not because he doesn't remember having it, he's just so intent on not bothering me, that he ends up bothering the fuck out of me.

This one goes out to

Today’s blog is by special request.

As many of you know, when I first cut my hair short, I shaved it down to about an inch. It definitely wasn’t stylish, but I was pretty satisfied with it anyway. I’ve since grown it out into a much more acceptably femme sort of style. It’s still really short, but it’s cuter. That is the context for this recent quotation from my dad, “I like your hair a lot better right now. When you first cut it, it looked like you had just gotten out of a camp.”

In further anecdotes about the state of my hair: I see the same stylist as my mom and my grandma. It's probably about as dumb an idea as seeing the same therapist as family members, but we do it anyway; she always makes my hair look good. When I saw her to get my hair done this week, she told me that both my mom and my grandma had been asking her when I was going to grow it out. I told her "not in the foreseeable future. And you can let them know that, too." Long hair is such an inconvenience. Plus, it is way less awesome.

My family is a little bit special sometimes.

In which the consumer ethics are considered

So I read recently that Target donated $150,000 to Tom Emmer, who is running for governor of Minnesota. It bothers me that corporations can donate money directly to candidates now, which is another topic for another time, but what really bothers me in this case is that said gubernatorial candidate is for the execution of homosexual people. He is not simply interested in denying them the right to marry each other, but he flat out wants them to not exist. That is completely reprehensible.

I understand that $150,000 is of hardly any consequence to a huge company like Target, but that amount could mean a lot in a state gubernatorial race, especially for a relatively small state like Minnesota (small relative to California, I mean).

So here I am gonna say, Target, you need to fucking pay attention. I shop at Target as the alternative to Walmart. Walmart and the way it conducts itself irritate me. You are supposed to be the better company. Your wikipedia page goes on about all your "philanthropic" work, but I think this has the potential to get a lot more publicity than anything else.

I feel like it is important to "vote with your dollar" since there is not really a better alternative to getting one's message across to corporations. So I am thinking it's time to boycott Target. Is one person going to make a difference? Probably not. I can hope that other people will take action too. But at least I feel good that a company that I help support is in turn supporting someone who things homosexual people should be executed.

On the other hand, I kind of want to justify shopping at Target. They apparently do a lot of other good things, it's convenient, it's inexpensive, etc. But I am not sure I can really rationalize that.

I just hope that Amazon isn't doing anything sketchy or I am really going to have a hard time buying things.

Things of Great Annoyance and Things of the Good

1. Today on campus I passed two people with a giant sign board. I figured it was some club so I turned as I passed it to see what it was. And, to my displeasure, it was a picture of an aborted fetus about 2'x3' (maybe bigger) prominently displayed among other small pictures and a sign saying something like "Does this change you opinion of abortion?" or something equally inane. I was about 80% ready to give these fuckheads a piece of my mind but I decided not to bitch them out. Probably better that way, but I'm still going to rant here. Do they think that any woman wants, really wants to abort her baby. Even when a child is "unwanted" it's not because she wakes up one morning and says "I feel like killing something that never had a chance, I'm going out for some unprotected intercourse right away." Getting an abortion, I imagine (and have been informed) is traumatic and painful enough and I don't think anyone takes that kind of decision lightly. so WHY do these asshats feel the need to display a huge, disgusting poster of disheveled, bloody baby pieces to remind us that not only are you a cold-blooded killer, but you're going to hell if you do it. So a big FUCK YOU, University of Washington anti-women's rights sign bearers of the day. You almost made me vomit and you wish to condemn women everywhere, that is if you can't chain them to the stove in a life of domestic servitude. Good one.
2. (the rest of these are much minor rants) Co-workers not showing up for their shift and other irresponsible transgressions. Tuesday I was supposed to close with one of our newer coworkers. I got in at 5, as was he supposed to, and the two openers decided it would be cool to leave before the other guy showed up. Their reassurance "There's a mid." The mid-shift worker is also NEW. So naturally, 5:30 rolls around and he's not there. Not only that, but this guy doesn't even have a number I can call. The new guy stays til 9, which is better than nothing but I sitll had to keep an eye on him. So fuck you too, former co-worker!
3. Bus etiquette. When you get on the bus move to the back! Especially in the morning when it gets really full. Don't get on the bus and then stand there right where you got on. This is a major peeve of mine and indeed a GREAT ANNOYANCE

I think that's it...for now!

So to balance that out I suppose it must be THINGS OF THE GOOD

1. Tomorrow I'm going to take photos of the cherry blossoms on campus, for there are many and my camera is nice.
2. My Arabic teacher is hilarious. However, I don't think I can really describe it
3. I ordered a crock pot and intend to make delicious meals as soon as it gets here
4. I'm going to start going to the farmers market for buying as much of my groceries as possible.
   
5. It's payday.
6. I already have my writing class presentation out of the way for the quarter. And it was good.