This is Timmy Turner; He's Got Timmy Turner's Disease*

Hello love. Where have I been? Where have you been? I couldn't possibly know, because I have been away from the blogomosphere far too much this past week. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I have often lamented this addiction of sorts when I had other things I was neglecting, and here it is one week into my student teaching and I have been so wrapped up in it that I have spent only a few minutes a day checking emails, looking at stats and all that. I am supposed to be happy about that, right?

I am sososososo glad that the bulk of my schoolwork this semester involves activities relating to my future career. I am sososo burned out on taking tests and all the grades and the studying that... uh, I can't wait until I can inflict the pain onto others?

I am actually loving being in my mentor's classroom. She is a super veteran teacher of 17 years. We have kids the same age and she is just two years older than me. It is a perfect match-up. I really like her. I can only imagine how I'd feel to be apprenticing with someone 15 years younger than me with no kids. Not that he or she would not be a good teacher. It's just that I'm bitchy like that. I don't much like being told what to do, and I can take it so much better when I don't think the thing I am being told to do is wrong.

I love my kids. As of next Wednesday, I will be their teacher for most of the rest of the semester. Poor dears. Starting the following week, I will be teaching an accelerated class as well. They are both cool groups of 6th graders.

I sat in on one of my teacher's classes that I will not be teaching..., thankfully (though I may be their sub from time to time), and saw my future more realistically. She's got a class with almost half special needs. It's an inclusion class, and oh my lord, after seeing the other classes all week, I nearly went into shock and saw the tears in her eyes when she was talking about what a challenge it is to her, veteran and all.

I can't fool myself. It is most likely that I will have to start teaching there, with the low-tracked, behaviorally challenged kids. NCLB, teacher pay incentives, and general fucked up fucked uppery have insured that. Those with the best experience often get matched with the advanced students- sometimes, they are given that choice, and then those well-performing students do better test-wise and that teacher might get a performance bonus in upcoming years, and the system perpetuates itself. The low-track students fall further behind when they go slower than their fast-paced peers and they may even have to be the group a brand spanking new teacher is learning on. I'm sure the bonding will be plentiferous, but after I saw my teacher's 6th period the other day, I started to get really nervous. I reported to my teacher that one child who was giving her grief flipped her off when she turned her back, and who wants to get paid to be abused like that? No one.

I also got annoyed by the learning specialist present in that classroom, as well. Every once in a while he would interrupt her and go to the side board and write out a not quite appropriate depiction of what she'd just said, and once he even stole her punchline, I knew from seeing her teach the same lesson earlier in the day. All around. Ughh.

But, that's not my class for now, and I am sure I will have my hands full enough dealing with the smarties. Not too surprisingly, the accelerated class is louder than the other class. Entitlement given their place in the social fabric of society is already in place.

I will likely try different approaches with my kids, more messy and hands on, than my teacher seems comfortable with, but she's really good. I am kind of getting off on all her classroom "systems." She has a system for everything: participation, homework, grades, late work, no homework, when they enter the class, how she dismisses them. Everything. I never realized quite how much of a teacher's job is clerical. I suspected that the majority of the work was done outside of the hours of teaching, but saw how my teacher streamlines things, so that she can focus on the content more in those off hours. Her emphasizing her insistence to post grades online (for students and parents) as to not have them expect them to be posted every single day is the kind of thing one wouldn't think about without having experienced it. Quite valuable.

One very bright girl yearnfully asked the teacher if they could ever go outside in her class. The teacher said there will be The Measure the Flagpole With its Shadow™ Day, and I made a mental note to have class outside sometimes. But, later when they're used to me.

Other Randomnesses:

Things are looking more and more like I will be able to manage going to France, and that would be great.

I fell down my front porch stairs on an icy day this week and have the world's biggest softball+ sized bruise on my ass.

Another thing I have had to do this week is iron my clothes, not wear pants I cut off at the botoom, and even wore some pretty comfortable heels one day. My brown boots are working for me best.

I missed Friday to stay home with a sick Snaggletooth, and a day off was never more appreciated.

I've got a thousand things to do today. Fortunately, about half include writing and school supplies, my two most prominent fetishes.

And, of course, there are the donuts to make.

* I laughed harder than I should have at that line on The Simpson's last night.

And, does the boy's name's being Timmy Turner on Fairly Odd Parents have anything to do with...?

Snaggletooth and I watched much of Vacation on Netflix last night and I can't imagine how funny Chevy Chase would have been in that with Will Farrell and Jack Black's underwear antics.

Coming Next Week: The heavy politics of using the copier in the teacher workroom.