Epiphany in Baltimore

Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2003

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

"She's cute, she's funny, she's caring... and... she's not too screwed up to appreciate you."

God, how I love Ed. What a great show. I can definitely relate to that line, uttered by Carol Vessey. Who, by the way, is looking old. I think the whole not-being-with-Ed thing is wearing on her. I do like the new girl, the one from Sports Night. That show, by the way, has been released in its entirety on DVD, so if anyone is clamoring for gift ideas for a broke school teacher, go and get it. I think the fact that so many of its stars have landed on good shows is a testament to the quality of that show. I wish it had been given a chance to thrive, but then again if it had, I doubt if Peter Krause would be starring on Six Feet Under. (New season starts in a week and a half!)

***

School has been cancelled again for tomorrow. My car is still buried, and side streets are like soup. If I really wanted to, I could probably dig myself out, but that would require a shovel, which I don't have. Boston Betty picked me up today for some shopping, but Target was out of shovels and I figured that meant most of the rest of the city was probably out, as well. At least I got myself some Trader Joe's groceries.

It is weeks like this that I wish I was a more efficient and effective human being. I'm always complaining about being behind in my work or always having a mess, but I have accomplished very little in the time I've been home. I've done a lot of Internet surfing and TV watching, but not enough of the cleaning or grading that I've needed to do. The essays are boring to grade - there are only so many different ways one can write about characterization techniques in Of Mice and Men, and very few emerging writers who are just learning how to incorporate textual evidence can make a superb essay out of it. I give my students a well-structured assignment, and I think it's a good one for them, but I also know in the back of my head that I'm doing a little creativity choking with this sort of assignment. I know this because the essays are boring to read.

Grading the essays with my tape recorder contributes to the sense of desolation in the house, as well. I'm basically talking to myself. I truly believe that the kids are getting something from it, or will be, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm just a little bit wacky. I'm having conversations with a tape recorder. How could I not be a little wacky? I'm imagining my students sitting at home listening to the tapes, trying to catch all of my comments, and wondering if they know that there's a shadow of a giggle in my voice because Tobey is trying to swat at the string holder coming from the tape recorder and is looking cute doing so. I wonder if they have any idea that I'm trying to sound like a newscaster or pretending I'm Nicolas Cage's character from Adaptation. I wonder.

I have determined one of my life goals over the snow days. I want to write a book about teaching. I think I've become quite good at it, especially with this lower-level 9th graders, and think I could eventually be like this guy. I just have to find some sort of angle. This is probably just a result of my increased self-esteem from my performance review on Friday, and her saying that she wants other teachers to observe me. Or the fact that my department head keeps telling us as a department that we are doing cutting-edge things and that eventually schools from around the nation will look at our school and our English department as leaders in urban education and hire us as speakers or team leaders, and of course in the back of my mind I tell myself that I'm just a second-year teacher and I struggle a lot still, but it still feels good and makes me think I can do things that I probably don't have much business thinking about just yet. Someone in my guestbook said the other day that I think highly of myself as a teacher, and I guess that I do, at least lately, but just a year ago I was worried about being fired because I sucked so bad.

The increased confidence is making me work harder, and smarter, and my outlook has changed to increasing student skills rather than what I'm going to do in the classroom. Someone on the ncte-talk listserve the other day asked a question like, "Does anyone have any good ideas as to how to teach Of Mice and Men?", and that's the sort of question I used to ask, but now I know that the proper question really looking at what I want my kids to get out of teaching the book, and then backtracking and figuring out what I can do as a teacher to lead them to that skill. The novel is the vehicle, not the end result. It took me a while to move to this "work backwards from the skill" approach. I'm a better teacher for it.

***

Need to work out. Badly.