miércoles, febrero 16, 2005
tengo la camisa negra
This morning, nightmare mom/her son brought me a rose. "Para reconciliar." What the HELL. This woman has played more tricks in the last six weeks than my gay ex-best friend did the first year he came out of the closet (and that's hard to do). As my mentor teacher stated this morning, can you say BI-POLAR??? Although she did shoot down the notebook idea, saying her husband has taught their son that men don't talk about their feelings. Now I wonder if her husband has it worse than I do, or if she's a pussycat at home and unleashes all that pent up aggression and whatever else the second she walks out the door.
tomorrow is family learning night. since i have to go out of town tomorrow afternoon, i won't be there, but our wonderful reading specialist will be taking my place in the classroom. thank god. given all this parent-related craziness, the last thing i wanted to do was spend time with all of them, all at once, at NIGHT. what a happy coincidence. however, my team wants us all to be aligned in terms of the activities we discuss... that's fine and dandy, but they left me with about 15 documents to translate/re-create. and they gave all of those to me on Monday. i don't think i've bitched a whole lot about how isolated i feel as the only bilingual teacher at my grade level simply because the parent stories are more interesting, but it's become a real problem in the last few weeks; or rather, it's finally become so evident i can't really overlook it anymore. i would really like to be doing what the english monolingual classes are doing; given my class' weird teacher situation last semester, that's not possible right now, but i've still been trying my damnedest. i've translated rubrics, word problems, criteria charts, etc. i make all my own materials when the spanish versions are lacking or too expensive for me to buy. typical problems for a bilingual teacher, but all the more difficult considering it's my first two months teaching. if a new monolingual teacher can spend every day after school working on normal stuff, imagine what i could be doing if i didn't demand so much "me" time.
to lighten things up a bit, before the reading circle i teach after school on wednesdays, one of my kids walked by me and declared, "¡Maestra, echaste un pedote!" For the record, I didn't, but it still took me aback and made me laugh.
tomorrow is family learning night. since i have to go out of town tomorrow afternoon, i won't be there, but our wonderful reading specialist will be taking my place in the classroom. thank god. given all this parent-related craziness, the last thing i wanted to do was spend time with all of them, all at once, at NIGHT. what a happy coincidence. however, my team wants us all to be aligned in terms of the activities we discuss... that's fine and dandy, but they left me with about 15 documents to translate/re-create. and they gave all of those to me on Monday. i don't think i've bitched a whole lot about how isolated i feel as the only bilingual teacher at my grade level simply because the parent stories are more interesting, but it's become a real problem in the last few weeks; or rather, it's finally become so evident i can't really overlook it anymore. i would really like to be doing what the english monolingual classes are doing; given my class' weird teacher situation last semester, that's not possible right now, but i've still been trying my damnedest. i've translated rubrics, word problems, criteria charts, etc. i make all my own materials when the spanish versions are lacking or too expensive for me to buy. typical problems for a bilingual teacher, but all the more difficult considering it's my first two months teaching. if a new monolingual teacher can spend every day after school working on normal stuff, imagine what i could be doing if i didn't demand so much "me" time.
to lighten things up a bit, before the reading circle i teach after school on wednesdays, one of my kids walked by me and declared, "¡Maestra, echaste un pedote!" For the record, I didn't, but it still took me aback and made me laugh.
