Wednesday, September 29
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Something new
[journal]Today I saw something I have never seen in my life. I saw a person licking their own armpit. I don't know if it was the taste or the smell but the same girl who goes around telling people she farted started licking her own armpit today. I told her to stop.
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Monday, September 27
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Karen, Lazy Ass
[journal]
Karen got off her lazy ass and posted something she did a year and half ago. His name is Travis. Enjoy! |
Sunday, September 26
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I only have three voices
[journal]
For my lesson The Little Red Hen my teacher encouraged me to do voices because the children are very receptive to that sort of thing! The only problem is I only got three voices. I can do high, low, and normal. When I was growing up with my sister and we played with our toys all our male toys sounded exactly the same and all our female toys sounded exactly the same. I was severely handicapped in the vocal department. So, this story, The Little Red Hen, needs three voices. I ended up giving the cat the high voice, the duck the normal voice, and the dog the low one.
I was pretty nervous about the voices so I did the entire sentence in the voice instead of what was spoken. So instead of saying "No" in the cat voice I said "'No' said the cat," in the high-pitch voice. Not only that but my voice cracked in mid voice acting! In the corner of my eye I saw my teacher holding back a well deserved guffaw, tears forming around the edges of her eyes.
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Thursday, September 23
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My parents
[journal]
Karen was complaining that my blog was getting boring with the massive lines of text and no pictures so THERE. There you have my parents when they were younger. A lot of people say that I look a lot like him and I suppose I do see the resemblance. I happen to share half of my genes with the guy so I'm not surprised. My parents are right now abusing the line of friendship with some poor man. This man waited in his parked car outside our house for an hour because my mom was singing karaoke in the basement and couldn't hear him knock on the door. My parents always do this. There was a Seinfield episode that talked about how you really had to be close friends with someone in order to ask them to help you move your furniture from an old place to a new. My parents would ask someone they just shook hands with to help them build Rome. Not only do they ask people they barely know to help them with yard work or house repairs, but they ask them to do it for consecutive hours for consecutive days. It's funny when I first see the "friends" come and my parents cunningly offer them beer and food. They merrily eat and talk and then my parents ask if they can help with this or that. The friend eagerly agrees and begins the help. The help continues into the night when the sun gives out and my parents have to turn on outdoor lights for the friend to see their own hands. The next day they will ask the friend to come over again to help out, but oddly enough my parents themselves will not be home and I or my brother or sister will have to entertain the friend until they remember about him or her. Similar to the poor man in the car today. My parents go through these, what my sister and I call, helpers about once a month. They are often carpenters or repairmen that my dad knows because he's their doctor. After a few days of grueling work we never see them again. They must hide, shaking in some corner, recooperating from all the work they did.
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Tuesday, September 21
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I know your kid (in you)
[journal]If the past month has taught me anything, it's that I don't know people as well as I thought I did. In university I was so happy that I was able to pick my roommate. I picked one of my best high school friends who was also going to McMaster. By mid-year he had put thumbtacks through the pictures of my face on his bulletin board and said, not so quietly, a number of times that he would enjoy killing me. Cramped intimate quarters and sustained interaction seemed to be a catalyst for showing his true colors (I was a saint of course).
It seemed that way too these past few months when I spent time with friends and my brother's girlfriend. Suddenly, stranger politeness and social habituations were stripped and the ugly insides were shown. People acted like themselves; they were who they really were.
Seeing the kids in the classroom I feel privilege that I get to see the real them right away. You have all your personalities right there out in the open. I see selfish boys and girls, friendly boys and girls, suck-ups, sweet, funny, silly, eccentric, risk taking, and whatever other personality adjectives out there. Now as teachers we tell them which of their traits are good and bad, are right and wrong, are acceptable and unacceptable. Slowly we conform them to hide who they really are and everyone becomes this friendly, but fake, social model. This totally screws everyone over because by the time they are 20 they become masters of deception and closet half (the so called bad half) of who they are.
If I really want to know someone, I need to travel back in time and spend a day with them when they were a child. While it seems like Bob, Jill, Marie, and Luke are all nice people, it's more probably like only Bob is actually nice and the latter just learned to be nice.
You might wonder what the difference is, but I think the difference is significant. The difference is apparent when you share a room with someone, or go on vacation, or get married. You'll then see the difference between the actual and learned nice.
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Friday, September 17
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What kids say and do
[journal]Kids are hilarious. There are times when I should intervene with a word of advice, but I find myself amused and transfixed at what they say.
Scene: The end of the day after doing arts and crafts, including painting. The children are sitting in a line waiting for their parents to pick them up.
Girl One: My hand smells like chips (licks hand enthusiastically).
Girl Two: Can I try?
Girl One: Noooooo.
Girl Two: Can I smell?
Girl One: Sure (extends hands to other girl's face)!
Scene: Outside on the playground at the swing set.
Girl One: (At the apex of each swing) Thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, one hundred.
Working at school is exhausting, but hearing funny things like this make it worth it.
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Sunday, September 12
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Girls' lunch out
[journal]For most of the week I ate in the staff lounge. I tried to be polite and social, but there are too many topics that I have no business talking about. The entire school has zero male teachers and one male support staff. Sitting in that lounge I felt like I had just put on fake boobs, make-up, and snuck into a girl's slumber party. They talked about their babies inside them, the babies outside, cute guys, marrying Yugoslavian men, wedding dresses, and low-fat foods. On Friday I could not take it any longer and the weather was really nice, so I sat outside and had a quiet lunch on the bench. I am considering bringing along my laptop and working on things.
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Thursday, September 9
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When it pours, I cry
[journal]The honeymoon is over. I had my first crappy day. I slept through my alarm; it rained; the kids were cooped up inside all day; I broke a pair of 200 dollars sunglasses; I missed a package delivery to the house.
Since the kids couldn't go outside they were so restless today and pretty much didn't want to do anything we told them. It was as if we injected them with sugar. Needless to say I quickly developed a headache and it just happened to be the first day I tried going without coffee (because I slept through my alarm). Compound that fact with the fact that the kids are getting used to us, the teachers now, so they are trying to see how much they are allowed to get away with.
With all the chaos I had trouble remembering everyone's names so all the boys became buddies and the girls became dears. Put that down buddy. Follow me dear. Flush the toilet buddy. You shouldn't sit like that dear. And I became Mr. Boo. That of course will only be funny to those who actually know my last name. I think they have trouble pronouncing my name. So to them, I'm their boo! It's a lot better than the teacher aid whose name is Ms. Gallegher, but they called her Ms. Gag-er.
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Wednesday, September 8
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They learn young
[journal]Today a 5-year-old said, "C is my best friend; we're are a team." I replied, "Oh yah? Do you guys live near each other?" He looked at me like I was crazy and said, "I'm black. He's white. How could I be able to live near him?" I had to explain that where I live, there are people of all colours. Afterwards, I wondered if I should have gone in further detail about race, but is he too young and would I say the right things? Another interesting thing was he called himself black even though he was Indian and he called his friend white even though his friend was Phillipino.
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Tuesday, September 7
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Oh that bush
[link]I just had to share this classic Bush moment: Click Here. |
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First day of school
[journal]
The day was not as I expected. It turned out better. The teacher I'm working with was really good with the kids and really nice to me. She's a talker and talkers get along with me just fine because I'm a listener. The principal turned out great too because it was her first day as principal, so she could really relate to my position. The teaching assistant turned out to be only decent, which does not bode well considering she's the freshest she'll ever be this term. However, the fact that we even have a teaching assistant is surprising, a welcomed one. Then I found out that at certain hours we have two assistants and how there are behaviour problem teachers and diagnostic teachers and all sorts of teachers. This leaves the actual classroom teacher totally focused on the lesson at hand and the students' specific needs.
One thing about I learned about was an interesting powerplay between TAs (Teaching aides) and teachers. Mrs. D, my teaching mentor, gave me a sheet that outlined the duties of a TA: set and clean up of areas, assist with questions, help kids use the bathrooms etc.... She then told me a story how she was really irritated one time when a TA sat and drank coffee while she had to clean the area up and attend to other duties. She said don't fall into the trap of doing everything for them. She added, not in these words, that I shouldn't be a dick about it and do help out, but our primary job is to form lessons and perform the lessons.
One way how I'll fail miserably as a jk teacher is the fact that I can't sing. William Hung would turn to me and say, "Joe, you really can't sing man. I can tell you had no professional training." I told my mentor teacher my concerns, and she assured me that I'm not the first, and how there are lots of tapes I can buy that will sing for me. I'll be Nilli Vanilli. But she could hold a tune and I saw how a melody can hold a child's attention and also help them memorize things easier.
The kids are really cool though. They were so well behaved and I think, however, that has to Mrs. D's expertise and experience. Teaching them feels so rewarding because you truly are such an important factor in their lives. You're giving them the fundamentals that many of them don't have. Did I mention cute? OMFG some of them should definitely sign up to act in commercecials or go on Bill Cosby's "Kids say the darndest things." I'm so dead-tired to articulate anything clearly right now but I will definitely write more of my experiences as a j/k assistant teacher and what it involves soon. I have to write daily journals as part of my schooling but I likely won't put those up, because they'll be school-jargon-babble, sucking up, and saying the things a supervisor wants to hear.
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Sunday, September 5
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Happiness is
[journal] I've finished reading Slaughter-House-Five, halfway through Naked Lunch and halfway through The Alchemist, but the only one I want to talk about is The Alchemist. Keep in mind that I have not finished reading the story so I could be wrong in the end, but I think I know where this book is heading with its story. To me, I feel that although stories, in general, should serve to help society in some way, this story really goes out of its way to teach something. The message is so clear and unfettered by literary complications that to me it almost seems as a lecture: go out and fulfill your dreams. It writes how when we're young we have dreams and aspirations, but as we grow older obstacles abound (like bills, girlfriends, family circumstances) and we lose sight of our dreams and settle. You're probably thinking, it's sending out a nice, sweet message right? How can Joe be criticizing someone who encourages us to follow our dreams.
I'm not against the message to follow our dreams. I'm not even going to argue how we have to be a realist and understand that we have other obligations like the bills, girlfriends, and family circumstances and to drop everything for our dreams is selfish. What I don't like is this obsessive preaching of following and always reaching out for our dreams stops us from being satisfied with the present and what we have now. The pursuing of our dreams is great, and so is being ambitious, but I look around the world and I see a world full of people unsatisfied. It's like how rich people always want to be richer, or successful people more successful.
For example at the start of the story, the hero is a shepherd and he's happy being a shepherd and he's excited about meeting a girl he met a year ago, suddenly he drops everything to go look for some treasure in the pyramids that is supposed to metaphorically represent his personal legend or his destiny. Always thinking that you'll be happy when you reach this goal or dream is nothing unless you can see that you can be happy where you are. Be happy with the now. Be happy with what you got. He was happy already, let him stay that happy shepherd.
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Thursday, September 2
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Back To School
[journal]In one week back to school takes on an entirely new meaning for me. Back to school will soon mean back to work. I'll have to set down my Pina Colada, my mouse, and the remote control. This September on the day after labour day, I'll be assistant teaching junior kindergarten. I'll try to update this blog as often as I can in between the nightmares that are soon to come. I guess this is the start of the chronicling of my teaching career.
I visited the school today and I had such a different vibe than the one I got from the other school I visited. The other school I'm referring to is the one that had a principal who asked me if I was there for ESL classes. When I got to this school the secretary asked me if I was here for the interview. I told her I was here because I was going to student teach soon and I was thinking of meeting up with the teacher. The teacher wasn't in but she introduced me to the other kindergarten teacher who showed me around and gave me some advice. She explained how the teacher probably wouldn't have much time to talk to me in between the babies crying (damn cry babies) and the parents nagging. She said that after a little while it gets really fun. She said fun. This school seems much more laid back then the military-like atmosphere of the other one. I have a good feeling about this, but then again I always have good feelings about lottery tickets too.... |
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