suffer the little children...

today my phone was stolen.

i made the horrible mistake of leaving it on the desk for five minutes and turning my back. this happened at the end of my 8th period class, so i went on to teach for another 90 minutes while imagining killing the child who now held my telephone.

i'm still imagining it.

this is only the latest indignity in a week that has felt like a bath in pig shit.

i'm not sure if i've related the whole ESL coverage situation, but here are the important details:

• on my first day of school i was asked to "run down to room B7 and cover this class," and handed an attendance envelope.

• on the next day i was informed that i would be covering this class for (at least) the rest of the week.

• the next day, thursday, i was told that the reason for this is that the actual ESL teacher is hung up somewhere outside the country on visa issues, but that she intends to come back in the beginning of october.

• i made it clear to the necessary parties that i would not be able to cover this class until then for the following reasons:
• i am a first year teacher who has no idea what he is doing
• i am already teaching three different classes, five periods a day
• planning three classes is hard enough, a fourth is brutal
• I AM NOT AN ESL (english as a second language) TEACHER

• i was told that they would try to have someone else take it on monday.

• didn't happen.

• same thing the next week, i was told that this monday there would be someone new. they had, i was told, hired a long-term substitute teacher to handle the class.

• the sub wrecked his car on the way to work on monday.

• i still have the ESL class.

this is my life.

meow

my cat can beat up your dog.

(links to my roommate's write-up of the event)

satisfying

you know those little loops that are on the top of jansport backpacks and the like?

ever grab a kid by one as he tried to dive, chest first, into an unruly mob of fight-crazed high school students?

best moment of my fucking day.

--mister.

do now

[listening to: the long winters, putting the days to bed]

there are a little more then twelve hours left before a horde of unruly monsters descend on my classroom (which really isn't my classroom, but just the space i've dragged my teacher cart to for the next 50 minutes).

this is a horrifying prospect.

i have no idea how to teach a book (or even how to appropriately select a text to teach), i have no concept of how to create a simple unit plan, let alone plan a syllabus for a classroom, and i'm not really sure how i might learn these things.

seems like the kind of fundamental information one would expect to get from a boot-camp for new teachers.

you'd think.

on the bright side, i'm capable of making a kick-ass "word wall," a truly instructive bulletin board, and some mean-as-fuck graphic organizers.

my venn diagrams make grown men cry.

t-minus

school starts tomorrow. all of the anxiety and anticipation that decided to RSVP is here...with friends.

i have a classroom contract, a letter to parents, and an interest survey to give the kids. all of these things are lame.

here i go, into the fray. time to teach me some english.

rave on john donne.