Filed under leading

Gracias, Presidentes

<3 Congregation Ale House with Ms. Love – Chimays, Gourmet Sausage, Sweet Potato Fries
<3 AWCHS snow trip! – "I'm wearing 7 pairs of pants!" "You… can't wear a house shoe inside of your snowboot" "Aww, Miss! These boots make me walk with a Pimp step!"
<3 Tara and Dan's moving away party – Seeing old UCLA friends and inhaling delicious Armenian food and beverages.
<3 Sunday school – "Esther! I learned about Queen Esther!" "Oh? What did you learn?" "Abraham Lincoln never told a lie!" "Oh… okay."
<3 10.45 Mile run – At just under 9min/mile pace! I might be slow, but I'm loving my distance. Training is going well. Now to figure out just what I'm training for, because I think I've gone beyond the point of training for a 10k, haha. But yes, thanks to all who told me to check out the LA river. Big improvement to what it was like back in the day; it was downright beautiful.
<3 Found out an album I wanted to buy is a free download.

This will be a short but crazy work week. My prediction is that I will hate the first half and love the second half.
-Stack of papers to grade that is literally 5 inches tall
-2 days of teaching
-2 days of after school meetings
-Pre-Observation Conference (along with a beast of a lesson plan and write-up to complete).
-Off to Arizona for convening on teacher effectiveness.

NPR & Growin’ on up.

Something switched in me this week.

I’ve loved NPR for a long time, tuning in for the occasional human interest story and of course the eclectic music offerings. But man, this week every last thing on the airwaves was fascinating to me. Two nights ago, I listened to a Santa Monica City Council hearing, for goodness sake! Why? I have no idea. Stories of hot air balloon expeditions to the north pole, council meetings, political commentary, the State of the Union Speech (though this last one is not too strange) all filled my car and filled my mind.

All of this, amidst a fairly significant week in my career has me feeling pretty adult. Confirming flight and hotel accommodations for a conference, visiting a school board meeting in San Diego County, providing input on big decisions being made in Los Angeles… It’s all so surreal. I’m extremely thankful for people who invest in me, and so appreciative of the opportunity to learn about the broader picture of education.

However, this whole meta-cognition about how grown-up I feel instantly makes me feel quite young again.

iloveit

I love it, I love it, I love it!

Careers are cool.
Life is crazy.
God is good.

I don’t think I can keep a public blog much longer. Not quite aligned with my goals.
Sad.

2012. My Mayan blood might lead my blog world to an end.
My first students are now older than I was when this silly thing got started.
9 years strong, dude.

I see myself change as the days change over
I hear the songs and the words don’t change
I write them out of the book right there

We’ve been had, you say it’s over
Sometimes I’m just happy I’m older
We’ve been had I know it’s over
Somehow it got easy to laugh out loud

themes, etc.

We’ve been working extensively with themes in English class while looking at Act 3 of Romeo and Juliet. No, themes aren’t just one word, like “love,” “family,” “revenge,” or “punishment;” those are topics. No, themes don’t just describe what happened, like “Juliet still loves Romeo even though he killed her cousin;” that’s a summary. Themes are the message about life, the lesson, the key takeaway, like “You should (or should not) always stand behind those you love.” It’s been fun watching my students come up for themes relevant to this act, given a topic.

All of this talk of themes inspired me to try and come up with a theme for this season of my life. No matter what topic I come up with… “career,” “love,” “friendships,” “grace,” “God,” “solitude,” (the list goes on)… I seem to come up with the same theme. No matter how far I’ve come, I still have so far to go.

As I heard my work email chiming with congrats from friends across the organization who watched my webcast (unreal to think of how many people will have watched it, come Friday), I couldn’t help but feel proud, honored. I felt similarly as I walked into the focus group with 4 other teachers from my organization to speak with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation about how our reform efforts are progressing.

But, MAN! The behavior in my classroom before I left early to attend that focus group? OFF THE HOOK. In a not good way. It’s downright embarrassing, not to mention migraine causing. Rubberbands, walk-outs, gang-banging, OH MY. Let’s not forget the busted markers, thrown pens, spitballs, profanity, attempted fighting or the walking around the classroom aimlessly. No, my days aren’t all quite so Dangerous Minds, but that class period or two who behave that way every few days? Again, I HAVE SO FAR TO GO.

Thoughts on Love, friendships, grace, God, solitude… those are a lot harder to process and package into something shareable.

Post-NY Musings

This trip was good, good for my soul.

Little details we experienced made me glad, such as the great weather and pretty foliage.

On a deeper scale, I’m appreciative for my friends. Despite all that went down with the break-up and ‘the exodus’ this year, I still have a great group of friends who I can turn to for laughs, hugs, hospitality, advice, and the like. This is so huge, so meaningful! Sally and Andrew’s hospitality was amazing; I know it’s hard to live in NY and invite 3 people into an apartment that is already shared with 4 busy people. Despite that, we were welcomed, our air mattress and futon were set up, and the bedding was laid out. Sally was a great hostess! Despite being busy with work, having other friends in town at the same time, and needing to prepare for a 2 week trip, Sally spent a lot of time with us! From food recommendations to subway advice, to catching up on each others’ stories, it was so good to reconnect. Finally, I am so thankful for Diana and Sitha, and for the opportunity to travel with them on this trip. I’ve traveled with both girls separately before (St. Louis, NY, Seattle, SF Bay, Ojai, Panama, Las Vegas, Tahoe), and the three of us have hung out a few times before, but this was our first trip all together. Both of these ladies have been there for me this year and have helped me so much. Every experience I wrote about in these blogposts was an experience shared with these two ladies, and I couldn’t have asked for better travel companions for this trip. It was an honor to celebrate Diana’s 25th with her.

There is nothing like time away from your everyday life to help you gain perspective on what you want your everyday life to look like.

The trip was good for thinking through a lot of other things I am going through and experiencing at this time in my life… relationships, friendships, etc. It was refreshing to have things confirmed by multiple friends. Next steps are still TBD, but it’s good to know I’m supported.

In terms of working and living thoughts… Do I want to move to NY? Maybe! Is it something I’m going to pursue RIGHT NOW? No. Like I said, perspective was gained–that doesn’t mean that answers to my life questions were found. I won’t lie to you, being in Manhattan, surrounded by people 24-30ish working as consultants, advertisers, investment bankers, and studying in professional school certainly made me think of the “what-ifs” of a career change (as I’ve said before–a change would probably still keep me within the field of education at a more macro level, outside of the classroom).

Regardless… “Age Quod Ages”, right? Tomorrow I go back to work to see my babies. It’ll a full week of classes (our schedule has been funky for the past couple of weeks), as well as a full week of meetings. It’s always tough to be at work after a vacation (I will not deny it– I could get used to planning my days around the gourmet food I want to eat that day, taking photographs of trees, etc.) but it’s all good. It’ll be exhausting, but it will be amazing. This exhausting/amazing combo will last until at least June. Until then, I have a place to be, and a mission to accomplish at my school.

“I’ve got some issues that nobody can see
and all of these emotions are pouring out of me
I bring them to the light for you
its only right”
-Kid Cudi

the secret

I’ve started to set my alarm for 4:30.

So I can snooze for 15 min – 1 hr, depending on the demands of the day.

Today confirmed things such as:

I’m tired
I’m stressed
Field trips are hard to coordinate and execute
Rather than recognizing I’m having a weird series of breakouts, my students think I got “snakebite” piercings
My students are super intuitive and can pick up a lot from observed interactions with staff members
I love education reform even when I’m tired
I love the happy cow burger and sangria from the factory (especially when it’s freeeeee)
I love aqualung
I love sleeping at 9:15.

day [and evening] and night

Day and night
I toss and turn, I keep stressing my mind
I look for peace but see, I don’t attain…

Today was a rough day
a good evening
And an okay night.

I really hate feeling ineffective in the classroom, and I guess that today was just one of those days. I love seeing my colleagues grow and excel, but I really want to see some of that growth happening in my classroom too. No, I don’t need to be unnecessarily harsh on myself, and believe me, I’ll give myself credit where credit is due: I know that I am growing immensely in my leadership skills OUTSIDE of the classroom. The work I do outside of the class is key toward making sure that other peoples’ classes function effectively, and that is important. There’s just something so ironic that in handling those responsibilities, my own classroom growth is stagnate. Tomorrow’s a new day, right?

I love my friends. And I really wish I could have spent more time with them this evening. But it was fun to catch up, talk about boys of the present, and laugh about boys from the past.

Tonight was… 3.5 hours worth of that work that I’m good at, the work I do to make other people’s work go smooth. And at 1:22 am… goodnight.

Wash, rinse, repeat.
Time for a day off.

In awe

Continually in awe of what God is doing for me in my career. I added on a 3rd job today. Because I’m not already overworked :)

Do. not. get. it. twisted.
I am not amazing. I am far from it.

(because… man… sidenote: MAN I have those moments where I’m like… WTF AM I DOING IN THIS CLASSROOM.
Those moments where I feel so ineffective, or those moments when I think about my milk-crate FULL of stuff waiting to be graded, literally bring on emotional breakdowns)

But as more opportunities open up for me, I have this genuine internal curiosity about what my role in the educational world is evolving in to. I tend to feel very tiny and yet somehow full of potential, waiting to burst out at any given moment.

The definition of HORROR.

The moment when you walk back into the conference room after lunch, only to find that your computer has been playing a slide show of ALL of your personal pictures for the past hour.

Not cool dude. Not cool. If you’ve ever happened to be in front of my computer when this happens… then you KNOW how horrifying this was. To make matter’s worse, the majority of the people in the conference room are people I’ve only known for 2 days.

Sidenote: I am extremely jealous of all of you who work in an office and/or get to take hour long lunches. It’s such a luxury! When school is in session, I get 20 minutes to inhale my food, go to the restroom, and get my classroom ready for post-lunch craziness. I’ve been at the district office these past two days, and the ability to go to a sit-down restaurant, eat my meal at a leisurely pace, and even step outside to call a friend… has been such a novelty.

Back to work attire!

Summer, as one might imagine… has been fabulous. In addition to the activities mentioned in the last post, there was a Britney Spears (and Nicki Minaj) concert, KBBQ, dancing, Bad Teacher , Glen Ivy Spa, and three trips to El Torrito.

But tomorrow… it’s time to go back to work for a committee I’m on. I’m at my parents’ house tonight because I’m getting a free rental car in the morning, and then I am promptly heading to the district office in downtown LA. The problem with the late notice for my rental and my subsequent impromptu trip here tonight is that I do not appropriate work attire for tomorrow. My options are a few pieces of laundry I left here over the weekend, what I wore today, and [shudder] cast-offs from my high school days.

Tomorrow, will I wear:

-The strapless dress I wore to the day spa today? – Inappropriate and scented with chlorine and sunblock!
or….
-A size 3 mini-skort from 9th grade? I have no other words. Size 3. Mini-SKORT. 9th Grade.
or…
-Spandex capri-length leggings that I wore to a 5k? No worries, they’ve been washed. As an added bonus, Susana pointed out this weekend that they are see-through!

I’ll keep you in suspense.

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