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1925. Ms. No - 9/10/2017 1:51:46 AM

And for no real-good reason I can find, I totally crashed yesterday afternoon. It was like a black wave of depression came over me and I'm questioning everything about my life.

I'm trying to frame this in terms of things I DO want as opposed to don't want, but that's a little difficult to figure out.

Do want:

to live much closer to more family -- ideally we'd all be on the east coast
to be able to buy a house in a decent neighborhood that's walking distance to a vibrant midtown/downtown
to put more physical activity into my life, which means cooler summers for sure!
to be doing a hell of a lot more art and writing
to sing and dance again


So, now I just have to make a plan!

1926. arkymalarky - 9/10/2017 2:14:30 AM

The thing about English teaching is it doesn't leave much time for anything else. All the things I think in the summer that I want to do in the fall I just don't get to. I'm tired at home after work, and weekends are spent catching up on the shit I didn't get done during the week.

Maybe you should pick where you want to live first, move there and see what happens. Gulf Coastal property might become pretty reasonable in the next few months....

1927. Ms. No - 9/10/2017 5:34:44 PM

Yeah - I followed some clickbait to a story on 9 places you can live abroad for under $2000/mo. All I could think was, surely I could find some telecommuter job making two grand a month.

And what am I doing right now instead of lesson planning? Gah, this has got to be some hormonal thing.

Well, okay, maybe not. It's my 10th year. It's supposed to be a crisis year, right?

1928. arkymalarky - 9/10/2017 7:56:18 PM

Have you ever looked into tefl? I did when my school is closing and I thought I might just do something part-time for a few months and transition to retirement. You can teach English in foreign countries without being overwhelmed with prepes and lessons and all that. Stands nephew did it and he's an engineer. He lived in China teaching conversational English for 6 months and absolutely loved it. Didn't speak a word of Chinese when he went over there.

1929. arkymalarky - 9/10/2017 7:57:15 PM

I don't even remember my tenth year of teaching. I'd have to count from first-year through 10 to even know where I was.

1930. arkymalarky - 9/10/2017 7:59:55 PM

I was in my sixth School and the second year of my home that I left one time and went back to until it closed.

1931. Ms. No - 9/11/2017 12:01:39 AM

How do you get into tefl? Is it a set curriculum? (Asks the woman who loves to write curriculum but is just damn exhausted by it at the moment.)

1932. arkymalarky - 9/11/2017 1:26:26 AM

Haven't looked it over in five or six years, but it's very straightforward IIRC:

http://www.tefl.com/

1933. arkymalarky - 9/11/2017 1:26:52 AM

It's just teaching English as a foreign language

1934. Ms. No - 9/11/2017 6:55:50 PM

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Got here this morning to find that for the first time in 13 years, someone had sprayed graffiti all over the school. Some of us called out by name as "fake" or "ass-kissers," and a couple of people are the principal's "dog", "boy," or "bitch."

It was shocking, and I felt so bad for the kids. Two of my early-bird students immediately came to my room to ask me if I was okay. That's how sweet our kids are. (for the record I'm the "ass-kisser). Fortunately most of it had been painted over by the time students were getting to school. The District acted really fast to get a crew out here to cover stuff up.

We've got video cameras everywhere, but the person was masked and wearing a bulky sweatshirt. We know for sure it wasn't a student. Right now we're thinking former staff member because of the way the individuals called out were referred to.

They'll slip up and we'll get them!

1935. Ms. No - 9/23/2017 7:35:53 PM

Second time in a week that I've run into a former student down on the K Street Mall --- obviously homeless.

This kills me.

I look around at all of the folks living on the streets and imagine them as babies. Somebody, somewhere, was once so thrilled they came into this world. Somebody somewhere once thought they were precious and adorable and ought to be protected.

I don't know what to do about this, but we have got to do something.

1936. arkymalarky - 9/24/2017 5:18:34 PM

Probably close to 30 years ago stan was working for the county and they had county prisoners cleaning up roadsides and one of my students begged him not to tell me he was among those on the side of the road. And it still amazingly hard to tell who's going to make it and who's not, despite what you see in all of the data about poverty and family backgrounds. The biggest thrill I have is a teacher is seeing a happy former student. Not so much the job and career but the happiness. I ran into one of my students in his forties who never got married but had worked in factories since high school and went back and got a degree in computer science because all of his co-workers and Friends kept telling him he was too smart for his job. I said you listened to them but you didn't listen to your teacher when you were in jr high school did you? He was black, dirt-poor, very rural, and had health issues in school. But he had core of character and good education that kept him on track even before he went back to school. That's why I rural public schools are so important. Especially for poor and minority students.

Drugs and alcohol in the biggest scourge on unhappy former students and I don't know what keeps some from going down that road. I've seen some great kids destroyed by it. And sometimes you think well it's the environment, and sometimes you think how could that kid possibly have gone that route with his or her family background?

1937. arkymalarky - 9/24/2017 5:18:52 PM

Sly Stone was right.

1938. arkymalarky - 9/24/2017 5:21:12 PM

And something has got to be done about severe mental illness in this country. Tossing them out on the street after closing the admittedly failing State hospitals doesn't seem to be working after 30 some odd years.

1939. Ms. No - 9/25/2017 5:45:19 PM

You've got that right. I'd say fully half - and probably more - of the people living on the K-Street Mall suffer from severe mental illness. You can tell because everyone on the Mall looks like their talking to themselves, but only the people in suits are actually using a Bluetooth.

On a positive note, we just had a bunch of alumni come back to visit and present to our Freshman class about the jobs their doing in health care. It's always so great to see what fine adults they've become -- and to know that they still love their school!

1940. Ms. No - 9/27/2017 12:13:13 AM

"they're" not "their"

jeeze

and they let me teach Englush.

1941. Ms. No - 10/27/2017 11:32:25 PM

Quite pleased with myself for having designed and successfully run my own BreakoutEDU game. Both of my Government classes did this activity as their final assessment on our Media and Propaganda unit.

I was a little let down when it was over because it took me so long to write all the puzzles and put the materials together, and then it was all done in two class periods. I'll recoup the time in future executions, though. Once it's built, it's built.

I'm most proud that I hit the mark correctly with the difficulty of the puzzles. Both classes successfully broke out, but it took them almost the entire class period to do it. Hearing them talk about the concepts and argue using their knowledge showed that they really did learn something. Waaaaaay more fun than grading a written quiz.

I don't know if I have ever mentioned this site before:

BreakoutEDU.com

It's free, but you do have to register. They've got lots of games already made, but also instructions on how to design your own games.

1942. Ms. No - 11/4/2017 3:48:26 AM

So this is happening

Sacramento teachers plan to strike Wednesday if no deal. Last walkout was in 1989.

We're all hoping for the best but planning for the worst. I've heard from a very reliable source that word at the district is "It's going to be a long strike."

They're prepared to issue 1000 emergency credentials and pay those teachers $500/day to cross the picket lines.

So, the ongoing effort to break the union continues.

They use our love of our students and our schools to fuck us over and then call us names in the press.

If it weren't so devastating to so many families I'd say, break the union. Lose all your qualified teachers to other districts instead of just the 30% you've already lost and then see if you can get anyone to come here and teach.

Come on in TFA. They're making room for you!

1943. Ms. No - 11/4/2017 3:50:59 AM

What to know about the Sacramento City School District teacher strike

And this is how they see teachers -- a paycheck, not a professional. Clearly, any warm body who went to college can replace a veteran teacher.

Wonder how many of those emergency credentials will still be teaching after the first week?

1944. arkymalarky - 11/4/2017 5:48:51 AM

How cool! I was out all week sick.

Wow. We both showed up in here the same time, so I'll leave the above comment for your post on breakout EDU, and read what's going on now, but my initial reaction to that is damn!

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