Quick Updatey Type Things

*Got a flu shot yesterday. I forgot how oogy they make you feel. It's almost as if I'm hungover right now.

*I guess this will show how obsolete I've become at school. So now that they know I'm leaving, they've decided to replace me with an Education Assistant and a part-time clerk. That's what they're doing with my salary. I guess they don't need Social Studies that much afterall. I sure hope the door doesn't hit my ass on the way out.

*In our Friday meeting today, they kept talking about two sets of rules, one for the teachers and the other for the students...kind of the venn diagram of expectations. Earlier today I heard the 2 new teachers saying how we need to split the kids into grades more. And we're already tracking the kids based on their math skills, thus creating an education hiarchy. And everyone treats the crap kids like they're crap and the "elites" like the elites...and that's how the kids act. And the reaction to all this is more discipline, more external punishments and rewards and no teaching of self-control. Honestly, though, that's the route they have to go as no one here is really versed in helping kids understand internal motivators. I'm getting out of here just in time...it's turning into a traditional school very quickly.

*Well, my dreams of coming back to Rochester with some control over my finances went up in smoke this week. It looks like I'll be back with a five figure debt-load and no job to start paying it off. I'm sure glad there's not a recession...DOH!

*Believe it or not, I'm actually in a decent mood. Today's school happenings really showed me how right I am to leave. And while I may need to come back to that crazy 3 job / 7 day-a-week thing again, I'm going to do my darnedest to make it so I can do things that are important. I'm fairly confident that I'll be saying "no" to more people/groups...for a while anyway. Stop laughing, I mean it this time!

The Right Time to Get Out

Yeah...there's a whole bunch of handwriting on the wall here.

First of all, I got an e-mail from a parent last week, asking why there were so few social studies grades for his kid. Oh, by the way, we use a web-based program called PowerSchool. The concept is good, but the software sucks. Parents and students can see up-to-the-minute updates of what work has been done and the "grade". Teachers can also make notes about behavior or whatever.

So there's not a lot of social studies stuff because I haven't been teaching much. There's all this other stuff the kids have been doing. I explained this to the parent. Well, the Lead Teacher must have been blind copied in on the original e-mail as I got a note from Dan telling me that every time I interact with kids I should be grading it, even if it's just for behavior.

Well, those of you reading this already know how I'm going to react to that, so I'll leave out the f-bombs. Let's just say that it ain't happening and I just won't use him as a reference.

And the same Lead Teacher was away at a conference last week and the other teachers decided to use Friday planning time to come up with a big-ass list of things Dan has or hasn't been doing. It's seriously extensive. And one of the new teachers is going to have a meeting with Dan and Mark (director of KCS) about it. It's going to be a car wreck. And I'm not involved.

Yep. It's the right time to get out.

Loose Lips...Suck

Ironically, it was our school counselor who spilled the beans about me leaving school to the kids. She was standing next to me talking about who-knows-what...there was a student standing right in front of us, one of my favorite kids who I unofficially took on as a project...which is another story. And the counselor just, matter-of-factly mentioned me leaving. I didn't react on purpose, but 15 minutes later, as I was confronting one of our problem kids on his behavior, the kid tried to distract me by asking if I was leaving. Of course I just blew it off and stuck with the kid's behavior.

Today, Peggy mentioned that the kids are starting to talk about it. I'm pretty sure I'll be dealing with it on Monday. Oh well.

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Told the landlord that I'm leaving today.

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Talked to Mom about George (my step-father). As she was telling me about the stuff he's dealing with in the hospital I was literally doubled over in "empathy pain". Unfortunately I picked the wrong time to call as I was waiting with kids for their parents. They thought I was having a reaction to lunch.

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Holy Crap!!! We went over the schedule for the next 2 weeks. I'm actually going to have to teach! A lot! Like, lesson plans and using my college edumication. Maybe we could just watch YouTube videos for 3 days.

Actually, my teaching has been so sporadic that I'm not really in the middle of anything thematic-wise. I can actually do a mini-unit on something...hmmmm...hello commrades....

My Last Hurrah: Actually, the Land Use Committee of the Maui County Council is holding a hearing on the Makena Development that our local rich guy is trying to get fast tracked through...it's on Wednesday morning and I'm trucking in a van of kids to put a MFing boot on that. Looks like Daddy's gotta get his big boy pants out for that day.

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I had to go buy pants. Seriously. I realized that I own a pair of sweatpants, a pair of jeans that have been ripped apart by kiawe trees and one pair of big boy pants that are too big now and have always been kinda high-watery. So I went to Savers...which is Maui's version of GoodWill, but for clothes, a million times better. So now I have some pants.

Damn, I need shoes.

Living in Paradise

Oh sure...you people back in Rochester may have had to brush snow off your car this morning, but did you have to deal with this?



Mmmmmm...Burnt sugar cane ash...and good for the lungs, too. I sure am glad the government is subsidizing them to stay in business.

On a brighter note, after only 2 days of the petition being up to get Linda Darling-Hammond appointed Secretary of Education, there's over 1000 signatures. Good deal. I'm working on a press release to send out to major news thingies in a day or so and Education Week e-mailed me, they want to do a short write-up on their website.

If you haven't signed...uh, like what are you waiting for?

http://www.petitiononline.com/DHammond/petition.html . There's info about her at the site.

Things They Don't Teach You How To Handle in Teacher School

"Mr. Atias, can you drive over more speed bumps, it helps my cramps."

Reason #27 why I prefer teaching girls than boys.

That's why they call me "velvet"

Cuz I'm smooooooooth.

I'm at the Y as I tend to find myself on a Sunday morning. And the crazy spin class people are calling to reserve a bike for tomorrow's classes. They're junkies and I give them their fix...

At a relatively slow moment today, I took a call from a regular who...well, I'll just say that I have a teeny crush on...I think she's married and it would be creepy to flapjack a member of the Y while working. But I was feeling a little daring.

So she called and asked if there was any room in the afternoon spin class.

Now here's where the story gets a little hazy. Because I can't quite remember which of the following I said:

Response 1: Of course. There's always room for you.

Response 2: Of course. I always have a seat for you.

Now, I'm sure you can see that Response 2 is far more creepier. I just can't remember which one I actually said. I'm pretty sure it was the first, but....

Velvet.

Indulgence

This is going to be a bit long...and maybe rambling. But I'm basically using this blog to work something out in my head. You can read all the way through, read it in parts or just skip it all together, but it's something that I need to do.

I had to scrap the lesson I had planned for school today. The first thing a student asked me at the beginning of my first class was, "Is Obama going to take all our money and give it to hobos?"

On this stupid island, homeless people are called hobos. I don't know why. We don't have trains. But no one wants to hear it from a dumb houlie.

So instead of what I planned, we spent the whole hour - for each of my 3 classes - talking about the election and what it meant. I think I was as neutral as I could be, but not to the point of accepting the lies of either side. I acknowledged the historic perspective of the election, but I also pointed out that since last night and this morning, there have been people who have called "nigger" (note: not "my nigga"). There have been people who have been discriminated against because of the color of their skin, or their gender or some other stupid reason. This election doesn't "fix" anything. It is a step in creating a better society.

Then, I made sure my kids understood that all the extremes that people are worried about (on both sides) are not going to happen. This guy is calm, efficient and centrist. All your money isn't going to hobos and we're not pulling our troops out of anywhere. Christ, there's rumors he wants to ask Colin Powell to be Secretary of Education. Huh?

I shake my head at people who call themselves progressives who think this is the second coming. And in the last 24 hours I've seen my...uh...man, I'm trying to get away from labels...friends who disagree, say that our country is in trouble now.

Now, I know that some of you (and you know who you are) think my - as Nart called it last week - fundamentalist lefty ways are quaint. I've been condescended to a few times and I've pretty much shrugged it off. But seriously, how could this country get into worse trouble? Forget about who's to blame - exactly how is it going to get worse? I don't make more than I did before and my taxes have never been higher. We've been in two mistakes of a war for a long time. Do you think Obama is going to bring us a third? We give billions in free money to corporations. It doesn't trickle down. Exactly what is it you are afraid of?

I promised my students that in whatever time Obama is in office, that if at some point, this country has real, socialistic, universal health care, I will change my registration to Democrat and stay that way for the rest of my life.

I'm not sweating it.

I'm used to the media dismissing Green candidates, but the silence about Cynthia McKinney was absolutely deafening. I mean it had to be, because she was the only one putting it on both the R's & D's and the media, whether it be Fox, NBC, CNN, HuffingtonPost, whomever wanted nothing to do with the truth. And I'm sorry, but she was speaking the truth.

OK...I'll get off this and switch to something we can all agree is more important...me.

So what's a fundamentalist lefty to do?

I sent an e-mail to a few folks, some of you who read this on occasion, telling you that I'll be home for good on Christmas. One response not-so-subtly hinted that I should show up and re-take over the local Greens, as if that's what I wanted to happen before. That's not going to happen. In fact, I don't think that's going to be my future direction.

Again, I'm still working through this in my head. I called somebody up a few weeks ago to bounce the idea of going Dem and running for office in the city. That way I could get in and really change things. The more I let that run around my head, the less that appealed to me. Running as a Green doesn't appeal to me either. Oh, I still agree with the Green's platform, but I think it's just butting your head against a wall. The refusal to see more than 2 parties is stronger than ever.

There's the non-political activist route, which is vital, but I do firmly believe that there won't be real, humanistic change without change in the structure in our political system. It affects our politics (duh), but it also affects any non-political change as well. If you want to change your neighborhood, you have governmental hoops you have to jump through. Politics.

So now I'm thinking...what can be done to change the political landscape in Rochester? Run for office or run another campaign? I don't think so. But is there something that can change the way elections are run, something that is being used already in cities in the US that is proven to increase participation in government and increase discussion over solutions to problems? Why, yes there is.

But that's not enough to satisfy me. Nope. I got involved in politics and activism because I recognize that people are suffering, and they don't need to be. Many of us are not able to put themselves into generations of poverty and discrimination and think about the affect that has on mindset. I have. So something needs to be done relatively quick to break that. Can it be done quickly on a macro level? Well, yeah, but it ain't going to happen. So how can I help deal with that on a micro level? Is there something I can do that helps people take care of the basics: food, jobs, health care, education, etc? Why, yes there is.

I think it's going to be pretty interesting when I get back. But first I need a freakin job.