So Much Potential

And now, a message from the drama llama:

"Dear Kimberly, I know you've mentally mapped out the stories from last week's substituting adventures, and I'mma let you get there, I'mma let you finish, but first I have to introduce something to you. It is called 'The Potential Job Situation.' And it goes a little something like this."

I've been substituting for a wonderful school system in a little town so cute it might as well be Star's Hollow (hometown of the Gilmore Girls). There's a long-term sub opening for next semester, and for a while I thought I was pretty much a lock for the job.

Then I found out there's another substitute, at the same school, who wants the same job, and who has already done the same job, for that school, last year.

When the air is let out of your balloon, it sounds something like this: Pffffftttttttbbbbbthhhhhh

I'm also hoping to be involved in a local tutoring, um, thing, that starts in October. Provided they get all the students they need. Provided I can work around subbing. But at any rate, it's still more money.

I got a call today from a county to which I applied for a job (like, a job-job) this year, asking if I would be interested in a longterm substitute position at their middle school.

And the heavens opened up and the angels sang....Death metal.

Wait. Angels don't sing death metal. Why are the angels singing death meta?

Because, as I listened on I learned that this long term job overlaps the other one. The one I might not get, but want very very badly. Whyyy??

You might be sitting there reading this (And I guess if you're reading this you are, in fact reading this...), thinking I would be stupid not to pounce on anything that opens up. But if it were an easy decision, I would have made it already. So let's just give me the benefit of the doubt and assume there must be some reason not to take it.

I love the school where I'm currently subbing. If I could get this long term job here, it could really really help in getting a full-time job, should such an opportunity come along. But if I leave and let someone else have the long term, then I feel as if I'd be taken out of the running altogether. Maybe not, but it will at least hurt my chances that I wanted to leave. Further, there's the tutoring. Yeah, yeah, the tutoring that hasn't started yet. But if it does happen, they want to make me lead tutor for my county. Kind of a big deal to have such a, if I may quote a card from the game Munchkin, Really Impressive Title. BUT, the commute between the school that called today and the tutoring place is.... quite possibly too long to make it in time. And it's just 2 months of work, granted it's two months of guaranteed work. But if something opens up here next year and I've left, it would only be logical to turn to the person who was put in the classroom to fill in, and that wouldn't be me.

So, is it worth staying for two potential jobs that might be building blocks to amount to awesome wonderful jobs? Or is this a "take what you can get" kinda thing? And why do I feel I've posted this very same angst before? And where are my shoes?

Ann M. Martin is a genius

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a babysitter more than a rich kid wants a pony. Specifically, I wanted to be a member of the Babysitter's Club, a fictional organization of 13-year old, fully certified babysitters. At 9, age 13 seemed so old and responsible, but by the time I was 13, I knew I wouldn't have put me in charge of anything living. Mainly because my babysitting tactic, for a long time, was to do everything fun and amusing that I could think of day one, then get irritated because children, as it turns out, need to be entertained and cared for every day. Who knew?

I have, since then, gained more patience for youngsters. I have also learned not to overexert myself on day one and to save some fun things for later, because there always will be a later. One thing I did love about what the Babysitter's Club babysitters brought to the table were the Kid Kits. Kid Kits were these sweet little boxes that the Babysitters filled with stickers, coloring books, crayons, and all kinds of wonderful kid-entertaining things. I imagine there had to have been some glitter, or there would have been an inevitable coup of some kind.

Today, I learned how much smarter than me these made-up teenagers were. I was called in to substitute for a middle school parapro, which meant following different classes throughout the day. As if that wasn't complicated enough, today was also field trip day for one of the grades, so some of the teachers were out. At one point, I led a class (a LARGE class, at that) into a room, seated them, and stood in horror as I realized there wasn't a teacher in the room already! Cue hitchcock-style scream. Of course, being alone in a room with students is not something that is new to me. As a substitute (And even during my student teaching sometimes), I find myself flying solo all the time. In fact, today would have been the first day that I wasn't filling in for the primary teacher. But here's what was severely lacking in this scenario: A lesson plan of any kind.

We were actually supposed to be in the computer room, but the computer room was occupied by another class, so we were told to go to this classroom, and..... And what? "And what?" is exactly the question I was met with, as I stared at 30-ish seventh graders, who were being relatively quiet as they waited for guidance. And none came.

It was eventually decided that they would present their technology projects, which, in a room lacking of personal computers meant that they would be reading from printed powerpoint slides and doing their very best to be quiet and listen respectfully. Uh-huh.

And so I refer back to the genius of Ann M. Martin, writer of the phenomenal series that spurred a not-so-phenomenal movie, and an ehhh spinoff series: Kid Kits. Or something more grown-up and professional sounding, but essentially, yes, Kid Kits. You see, I'd like to gather a handful of lesson plans, varying in time length, for the not-so-unlikely occasion that I find myself standing in front of eager students (whose attention spans are drifting by the second) with nothing in hand. And that is where you, the reader (you know, all five or so of you, am I right?) come in. Throw out some lesson plan ideas for me to use! Try to make them engaging, but educational, without making them feel too much like they're in "school." I know they are in school, but what right does a substitute have to teach them anything? This is why it needs to be sneaky. I will probably work best with English/Language Arts-related topics, but feel free to throw anything in. Current events could work well too. Just so they are doing something, and the class period doesn't turn into heads up seven up. I don't mind if I have to print anything out; I'll probably print out like 10 copies and have them do the stuff in groups or something. One more thing! If these could be altered to fit as many ages as possible, it would be best; I'm on the list for primary-high school, so it's anybody's guess where I'll be!

Anyway, here's my short-list; feel free to add to it!!

5-10 minutes:

Brainteasters, etc.

-Have students brainstorm as many uses as they can for simple items: brick, blanket, fork, box... If time allows, discuss some of the students' answers

-Droodles (clicky): Look at these shapes and see what students think they are. Spend a few minutes jotting down everything they think the things could possibly be. Talk about ideas.

-Circle madness: Have a paper full of circles (students can draw them, or they can be pre-printed). Have students draw on circles to create different things, count how many each student comes up with.

-The famous farmhouse: Draw that shape, you know the one (a box with an X in the middle and a triangle on top of it. It looks like a farmhouse to me... Challenge students to recreate the shape without picking up their pencil, tracing lines, or crossing lines.

15-20 minutes: (or more, really)

Writing!!

-Have students draw inspiration from Lynda Barry's What it is (right here) and write short stories, poems, plays...

-There's always this amazing book, that supplies the first sentence of a story FOR the writer.

-The zombie exercise is always a hit. Basically, students visualize a room in their house, look to the left from a particular spot, imagine themselves picking up the first thing they find, and use it as a weapon in the zombie apocalypse. Usually more of a hit with boys, but girls have fun with it too.

Quick Skit!

-Act out characters of scenes from books and have the class guess who it is.

20-30 minutes

An infinite amount of writing prompts!

Here are some of my favorites, and students can share their pieces with time left over

-Think of your favorite song and a memory you have attached to that song. Write that memory as a scene in a story.

-create a scene: Students brainstorm different methods of travel (anything from submarine to bicycle to spaceship; literally nothing (well... not nothing is off-limits)), then answer a series of questions about the main character (who are they, why are they traveling, where are they going) and write a scene from this information

-aaackk I'm drawing a blank on writing prompts. Help me out, here! Natasha, I'm looking at youuu!!

There's always time for poetry!

-The Jabberwocky lesson plan: Students read Jabberwocky in groups and try to decipher some of the crazy words and say what they think the poem means

A full class period

-What makes a good story: Discuss some elements of stories, pausing to discuss the "hook" in general. Have students pick books from a bookshelf (hopefully there is one!) and read the first sentences of their books. Rate the sentences 1-5 stars, 1 being "I don't want to read this book now," 5 being "I HAVE to find out what happens in this book!" Then have some students read their sentences, discussing what would make them better or why they are great the way they are. Students brainstorm their own first sentences, pick one, and WRITE!

-test-taking strategies: Talk about how to do well on a test. Give the sample test (something I got in class last year) and see how well students can do on a test -- one that basically takes itself! Then discuss the answers and how you can use a test to help you.

-It's always possible to stretch out some of the other things on above lists...

So that's what I have so far. I'm sure if I thought long enough I could come up with more. Most teachers do have a plan for the sub, but in case I'm faced with the unthinkable again I want to be prepared! So... Get your ideas ready.... set..... GO! Let me hear it!

Fear and Loathing in rural/suburban Georgia

When we first moved in, we put Ferris in Michael's room and shut the door. In the beginning, we even locked the door just for good measure. After some time, the doors would be left open and the native cats and dog would wander in to find a new, strange, VERY bristled/hissing smallish version of a cat. Eventually, Ferris developed the courage to cross the hall into the guest room, and he now spends his days running full speed in and out of the guest room and Michael's room. But what is incredibly odd is that he doesn't go any further down the hall. Seriously. Whenever we go downstairs, we can hear him meowing from the doorway. And we know it's from the doorway, because I snapped this picture once as I came up the stairs:

See that little blackish dot on the door? That's Ferris, and that is as far as he will go down the hallway. It doesn't make sense -- at the apartment, he left no nook unexplored, no patch of carpet unscratched (luckily he didn't leave any marks...). But for some reason, he cowers at the prospect of venturing down the hallway. What a fraidy cat, in every literal sense.

It takes one to know one, though. I, too, am quite the fraidy cat. My list of fears is quite long. Sure, there's the usual death, loved ones' death, war, etc -- also throwing up (who is afraid of THAT, I mean really), and of course failure.

I almost faced a fear earlier this week. Michael and I talked about watching The Grudge, a movie that had me awake for two days, a movie that had me running into the lobby during the movie, just for some reprieve from that creepy Ehhkkk-ehhkk-ehhkk noise. I shudder just thinking about it. But then, the dog got trapped in the laundry room and made so much noise that my heart was pounding and I realized was definitely not ready to face that particular fear. All of you who laughed at the silly, screaming little girls in the movie: Shut it, please? Thanks.

Then there's this little gem, thanks to some people from the comic fury chatzy last night:

CLICK FOR TRUE HORROR

(DISCLAIMER: seriously, don't click on that unless you are not easy to scare. It's awful. Oh, and if you DO clicky, you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom. Just do it; you'll see why. Make sure your sound is on).

So yes. Terrified. And terrified of what, exactly? A comic? Asian special effects, and a noise made by the movie's own director? Why? I guess it's because anything is technically possible. What if this is some kind of evil ring-like web page, that haunts you for the rest of your life until it finally makes you lost your mind before the creature consumes you. Or something.

I don't understand my fears. I don't understand being afraid of a normal bodily function, or being afraid of something that was animated and put online. I don't understand being afraid of failure to the point that Homer Simpson's age old wisdom "Trying is the first step towards failure" starts to ring true. Everybody fails, right? Maybe I should assess myself based on the general scrapbook of moments and not just one snapshot. That is what we learned was the best kind of assessment after all... I think at some point we just have to accept our failures, learn from them, and one day be able to see them as lessons, rather than failures. I consider myself to have no regrets, only lessons learned. But I'm not 100% sure that's true. I still kick myself for walking out of a job fair that was hiring on the spot, just for getting one phone call offer, especially when that offer amounted to nothing. And I tell myself that there was a reason that one didn't work out, and that there was a reason I walked away from the job fair. There is really no point in dwelling on what we don't know.

Yet "the unknown" is number one on the list of people's fears, isn't it? We aren't afraid of death because it hurts. Even if it does hurt, it's only for a second and then it's over. We're afraid because we don't know what happens after. We have faith, sure. But the very definition of faith implies that there must be some unknown. Ferris isn't afraid of the hallway because the dog's cage is in it. Usually the dog is in the room with Ferris, dodging the threats that Ferris hisses and growls at him. No, Ferris is afraid of the hallway because he doesn't know what could be in it, where it goes, what lurks behind the doorways ten feet away from the one he knows and loves.

One day I will have to face my fears. I search for jobs every day, because the lack of money overrides the fear of coming up short. And maybe one day I will strike gold, so to speak, and find out exactly why nothing else worked out. And it will all make sense.

But I am not clicking that link again.

Big Bad World One

In the roller coaster ride of highs and lows that is life post-college, the past few days would be filed under "low." If I had a filing cabinet that is. If I could afford one.

I'll let Mr. Coulton explain it to you in song.

Clicky clicky.

for some reason you can only upload videos if you actually have them on file. Laaaameeee... But seriously, that song's cool.

In other news, I am going to tap into a high schooler and post one of those irritating, vague "is this about me" kind of posts that nobody but me really cares about:

I hate when people are mad at me. I hate disappointing people and making them unhappy. And I really hate when they're mad at me when I think they shouldn't be. Because that makes me mad at them. And then we're in this stupid cycle of stubbornness and waiting for apologies and whatever, and then I watch movies like What Dreams May Come, and cry the whole time, thinking about last words and how we never get a chance to make amends for things, and THEN I think that even if I apologized it would be snubbed anyway because, well, who knows.

In other other news, I am tired of disappointing people who are encouraging. Why don't people stop being nice and encouraging for once? If you say " I know you can do it," and then I can't, then I have negated and let down your confidence in me. So if people would just stop having so much confidence in me, I could only have myself to please or let down. I'm trying, I really am. But I often feel pressured to live up to other people's expectations of me, which match my own (which I can't seem to meet on my own). So yes. Please stop being supportive.

I am a terrible person for the above post. And so, so ridiculous. I'd hide it from prying eyes of the public, but this is my place to be raw, or whatever. Today's just not a good day. Perhaps tomorrow the roller coaster will have reached a peak. I'm working, and then getting a hair cut and going to North Carolina, so it really better!

Good things ARE worth waiting for... But how do you decide when to wait and when to leave?

That was a long title. My apologies. My apologies also for the boring cat videos. Apparently not so much of a crowd pleaser. Duly noted.

So, I have a question. A problem. A conundrum. Sometime last year, I had this plan for my future. I was going to work at the local school and live in one of the cutest small towns I've ever seen. If they didn't have an opening, I was going to substitute and try again next year. Then I started thinking that I was limiting myself with this plan. The jobs are out there, not right here. So I pursued some, with no results, and went back to plan A. Well, really I guess it was plan B, since I've started substituting. There are still openings, even after school has already started. The problem is that, still, they are farther away than I wanted.

I could have a life here. There's a house that we want (though it might get rented out before we get the money together to rent-to-own it). Michael's band is here. Our families are here. But the jobs aren't here. Not yet anyway. Is it stupid to stay here, make much less money than I had wanted, and work my way up from the bottom for jobs that still might not be available next year (actually, I'm pretty sure the BIGGEST COUNTY IN GEORGIA will have something again next year, and I will know more about the application process and have a better chance by then)?

Or should I apply for whatever opens up, wherever that may be? Should I uproot not only myself to pursue something, just because it came up? My career isn't the only one that matters, but I'm in so much student-loan debt, it feels like I'd be stupid NOT to try to get a higher-paying job. And it's not all about money; I want to teach -- have wanted to since the second grade.

How do you know when to wait and when to act? How do you balance "good things are worth waiting for," "slow and steady wins the race," and "nice guys finish last"?

And why do I suddenly feel like Pocahontas in her canoe?

"Just around the riverrrrr bennnnnd"

Saturday Night with Ferris

Last night, Michael and I decided to stay in (which isn't really that out of the ordinary) with our cat friend, Ferris. Ferris started doing hilarious things (which isn't really that out of the ordinary, either), so we filmed him. I apologize in advance that they are all sideways. I don't know how to flip a video.

This first video is a bit blurry, because in my haste to capture the hilarity I forgot to focus the camera. Whoops.

This next video is much clearer, but doesn't get interesting for a few seconds. Then it gets quite interesting, as Ferris and Michael have what is unmistakably a conversation.

No, it's not what it looks like in this last installment of Saturday with Ferris. I know it looks like something you'd have to pay to see on Cat Cinnemax, but I assure you Ferris is just hopping backwards on a hat. he does this with his prey. Then he and Michael engage in a Father-Son game of catch, in which Ferris volleyballs his mouse into the litterbox. Gross.

So that's Ferris. I promise I will not use this blog to fulfill my Catlady obsessions. You have my word, real content in the next post.

Getting long-winded about hate and fate

During graduate school, I did something I'm not proud of -- something that I'm only now beginning to be able to deal with. I hated somebody. I know we say things like "ohh I HATE her," but hate, like love, is a word that we often fling around casually. Those who have people they love know that how we feel about spaghetti and how we feel about our friends and family do not remotely deserve the same word. I hate Twilight. But I hated this girl.

I'm not going to go into what she did, why I hated her, because I'm never going to be able to get over it and deal if I keep flinging mud. Suffice it to say that I felt justified in the emotion, though it was a scary one to possess. Not even the girl who unwillingly stole my boyfriend in high school was on the receiving end of something that damning. And anyway, we're friends now. It worked out.

But this person... Let me back up a bit and explain that it was a hard year. It was like high school again, which I felt was completely ridiculous because we were all in our twenties. But still, every day of class I felt like the band geek trying to sit at the cheerleader table. As you can imagine (and probably know), I was not cool in high school. And, as cruel fate would have it, I am not cool now. Well. By their standards, anyway. So it was a hard year, because most of my college friends had graduated and left me there, and I suddenly went from having a large handful of similar-interest-having buddies to.... being condemned to the Left Side of The Room. Left-siders were.... "other." I did eventually bond with my fellow lefties, but that there was a division at all was a problem.

Graduate school is hard. Nobody really prepares you for how much harder it is than college, and really, it's weird that it is so much harder. Especially for me - because I had grad school and college in the same school. But it is harder -- so much harder. The work is harder (don't let the fact that you have considerably less class hours fool you), the homework takes longer, you put together portfolios, projects, and papers, in MUCH less time than you ever would have dreamed possible in high school. Add to that the fact that I was working part-time AND student teaching, take away almost any trace of a social scene, and you've got a year that is challenging in pretty much every way.

That kind of an obstacle produces a lot of negative energy. Everything was stressful, and when I tried to unwind we were either forced to stay in town because I was working or making the very trying one-hour commute home. All that frustration needed an outlet, and one pretty much presented itself to me in the form of my own personal scapegoat.

I maintain that what the person did was uncalled for, though for the purpose of this discussion what she did doesn't much matter. But what I did in response was equally uncalled for: I took all the frustration with class, fear of not finding a job, loneliness of having no friends, mixed it up in a salad bowl with pretty much anything else that gave me trouble over the course of that year, and mentally dumped it on her head. Anything that went wrong was her fault. Not directly of course -- she couldn't be to blame if I waited until the night before to write three papers -- but somehow, cosmically, it added up. I needed someone to hate, some target for all this negativity inside me -- and she had done something terrible to me already. It just fit. It worked. So, for the rest of the year, she was my focus. Hating somebody takes work, just like loving somebody. When you love somebody, you have to look past all the flaws, the mistakes, the quirks, and love the spirit of the person. Hate requires almost the same process. You have to teach yourself how to be so utterly unforgiving, an un-movable wall of loathing. The difference between the two is that with love comes rewards. You have the comfort of knowing that when they look at you, they too can look past the flaws, mistakes, and quirks and see your spirit. You make each other happy, you grow with each other. But when you hate, there is no good outcome. It's even worse if they're unaware of the daggers you stare at their head, because then you might as well be pouring all this darkness on the floor; it does you about the same amount of good. And sometimes you trip in the mess and wallow, not letting in any of the light around you.

It's not a healthy place to be. But the past year was like trying to fight my way out of a meat grinder -- almost nothing seemed to work out. And now, I am the last the last person from my class to be without a job. It's humiliating, really. But then it does seem to fit in with the meat-grinder year. A year where I never felt I belonged, where I grew to second-guess myself, felt invisible, and then ultimately at graduation more than one person couldn't remember my name. But that's not the girl's fault. She is not where I need to be directing my negativity. I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe what goes around comes around. I believe that, if I spend an entire year refusing to take responsibility for my problems that it would follow that I'd have to continue to have problems until I can grow up and deal with them.

Call it God, call it Fate, call it the Universe (and say it's out to get you -- Matt), call it "Ceiling Cat" (though that's usually who you pray to when your feline friend is in trouble), call it whatever you want. I believe in it -- and I believe that the pieces of the Life Puzzle do eventually, somehow, fit together. There are lessons we have to learn, hurdles we have to jump, and monsters we have to fight. Sometimes the monsters are really ourselves, the inner, darker, slimy creatures that we keep hidden most of the time but have to face eventually.

It's funny, because about four months ago I had a plan for the future. I was going to try to work at the local school (a school I LOVE), and if that didn't work out I would substitute until an opening came along. But then I got desperate. I started fearing that I wouldn't have the dream job, so I chased dream jobs all over the sate (and a few other states). Now, at the end of my search I am exactly where I was four months ago. I'm guessing this is what was supposed to happen.

And speaking of what's supposed to happen, I can't help but feel that the past year might have been a meat-grinder because it wasn't the right thing to do. I applied to exactly one MFA, didn't get in, gave up and pursued another degree -- one I got in without really trying. What if, as a dear friend puts it, the Author of my Story wants their protagonist to do something else with her life? What if the fact that I was given an offer that was then taken away due to a technicality, and then walked into a minefield of a sample lesson presentation -- what if those are walls that have been put up to give the character of my story a detour? What if I need to spend more money, more years in school, and get an MFA, pursue a different path? I'm not going to do anything crazy or drastic right now -- but I can't help wondering if nothing is working out because it's not supposed to. I absolutely loved my student teaching experience, and the actual learning part of the year was incredible. But what if I'm supposed to be somewhere else? Maybe this isn't the plot the Author of my Story really had in mind when the first pages were penned. And maybe one day, I will figure out what kind of Story this is supposed to be.