2002-10-29
Season Premiere of 24, posted at 10:01 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I made the font bigger. You like?Just watched the season premiere of 24. Fucking magnificent. This show, with its ragged hero, duplicitious villians, and twisty plots, is like Shakespeare. It's easily the best show on television right now (okay, so maybe "easily" is overstating it with Six Feet Under on the air... but I still haven't seen a new episode of that show so leave me be). I can't believe how entranced I was for the last commercial-free hour. It will be amazing if the show can repeat last season's stunning heights of emotion and drama, but it got off to a good start tonight.
It made me completely forget about my day, which seemed more jam-packed than usual. Instead of my planning period, I had a meeting with my department head. She's great and all, but I'm behind and didn't need to talk about grading philosophy right at that moment. My sister's birthday is Halloween and I still haven't got her package out because my work day has begun at 7am and not ended until at least 7pm either of the last two nights, and I was hoping to jet away today during my planning period to send it off. Now, it'll have to be sent tomorrow, and I don't think it'll make it in time.
One stressful thing that has left my life for the time being is my major credit card. After being given a $5,000 credit limit as a 19-year old college student with no income, I overspent and maxed it out, doing things like spending it on my classes and buying a computer. I've been paying it off every few months since that point, basically until the point that the creditors call me and make scary threats and then I'll pay. It's been shitty, but I think I figured out a way out. Over the next year, $200 will be automatically deducated from every paycheck to go to that debt. It'll make my paychecks small, but it'll be worth it. By the time the year is over, my debt will be much more manageable. I also get that year at 0% interest. I finally see somewhat of an end in sight, at least on that beast. There are two other pretty significant beasts to go, one being my student loans (which I haven't paid at all on yet) and the other being my smaller credit card. I'm not counting my car loan; I've never even been late on a payment with that. Anyhow, this was big news for me, and it's also a bit of a relief to know that when I get a phone call at night, there's one less bill collector that I can expect it to be.
Back to my job. The school day ended badly, as I had to hand out five detentions over the span of two minutes in my 7th period. I'm hating them. I need to be a complete bastard from now on with them, no question about it. This one girl wouldn't shut up and I kept adding 15 minutes to her detention time every time she spoke to argue, and ended up walking across the hall to call her mother during class because she kept saying, "I'm not going to serve any detention." We'll see about that, little miss. I hate (hate hate hate) resorting to detention, but they are leaving me no choice. Almost a third of the class is not passing at an acceptable rate right now, and much of the reason is because they simply talk to much to get work done or get at a better understanding of texts.
The rest of the day went well, though. I'm trying out a new version of my Socratic Discussion. The class will be set up with an inner circle and an outer circle. Only the inner circle will participate in the actual discussion, while the outer circle will be taking notes and classifying comments based on which category of Bloom's Taxonomy they fall into. I hand-picked ten kids out of my first period to be in the inner circle, and tried to mix it up with quiet people and talkative people. In my 4/5 period, I hand-picked six kids. We'll see which one works better. This is totally an inquiry process for me, and I'm approaching it as such. I'm seeing how it goes. Tomorrow will be an interesting day.
I also have to figure out a way to shoehorn in a mini-Poe lesson, because I always like to do it around Halloween. I have The Simpsons version of "The Raven" that I show on Halloween, as well as listening to Iggy Pop read "The Tell-Tale Heart" on this great CD of popular musicians reading Poe works that I got a few years ago. I think I'll be able to loosely tie to To Kill a Mockingbird because the understanding and analyzing the use of point-of-view in both pieces is very important in constructing the overall meaning of the text. We can look at why this is and compare and contrast them and all sort of shit like that. Or we can just eat the candy I'll bring in and gaze at the candle flame (I go all out).
Did I tell you what I'm being for Halloween? Curley from Of Mice and Men. The costume doens't take much, just a flannel shirt, jeans, work bots, a glove with Vaseline in it, and boxing gloves clipped to my side. The other Freshmen English teacher is coming as Curley's wife, so it should be fun.
I cannot believe it's only Tuesday.