post-turkey

hello friends and family.
i haven't written lately because...well...i haven't been doing schoolwork lately. i have had the entire week off, a whole NINE DAYS--my first real vacation in almost a year. i had last spring break off but i worked preparing for teaching almost the entire time. i stayed home and just did stuff around the house and around town this vacation, but it's been amazing. the best things: sleeping in; drinking on a monday night; buying a new-to-me car (whoo hoo!); hemming our curtains; watching "casino royale" (highly recommended!); thanksgiving dinner of course; spending time with jesse; spending time with my mom and eric; doing 4 loads of laundry; i'm sure i'm forgetting something but that's all i can think of for now.

i am lucky enough to have two thanksgivings and spend both with family old and new. yesterday jesse and i went with my mom and stepfather to have thanksgiving with family in the south bay, and it was tons of fun AND totally delicious. it was such a nice day. we took a hike, ate turkey, played a massive amount of "fluxx", and just had a generally good time. today (friday) and tommorow are work days, and then sunday is thanksgiving with jesse's family. he is cooking and i get to make another pumpkin pie tommorow, fun!

there is plenty to report on school-wise but for the moment i will leave it at this. i hope you all had a wonderful holiday and i will hopefully be back in full force next week.

exhausted

sometimes i can't believe how exhausting teaching is. just totally, utterly exhausting. one of my students came in after school to re-take a quiz today and i was helping her study and i couldn't even think of a story or character to use to place the ideas in context. she said "ms. bogie, you look like you're tired. you must do a lot of work." (i wish i could put in a recording of her voice right here--typed words on a page don't do her justice!)

i never did think up a good story to talk about so we went with the movie "friday" and used that to talk about plot structure. i think she is getting it a little bit--she retook the quiz after about an hour of work and it did bring her grade up, which was her main concern in the first place.

i was so exhausted after school, i was really just counting the minutes until 6th period ended. for some reason, at the end of the day a bunch of kids from my strategic class showed up and were making tons of noise outside my classroom. as far as i can tell, kids are a little bit hyped up this week. it makes for hectic classes. i just wanted 15 minutes of peace and quiet and kids not falling over themselves into my classroom and yelling at each other and playfighting. i asked them to take it down a notch--but they didn't. oh well. my student finally retook her quiz and by the time she left and my colleague came in the room to get a ride, i realized i had to pee so bad and i was sooo hungry i couldn't even deal with getting my room cleaned up. the student who came in is so easily distractable that i can't do anything else while i'm working with her--often i can multi-task, just cleaning up papers or something like that. but, i can't do that at all with her.

so i'm exhausted, and i have to plan for tommorow and read 30 essays that belong to 7th graders. my man is at school giving out report cards to parents, so he will be home late. i'm going to get us takeout sushi just for a treat tonight, and hopefully get some work done in a cafe near our sushi place before that.

well, just an update. i am going to be working my butt off over thanksgiving. oh well....at least i don't have to plan and teach the whole week. soon soon.

four more days!!

sorry i've been away for so long. the week before last (when i last wrote) was really hard. after that, i basically had what i call a one day weekend--i had to spend saturday at my credential class. it wasn't too bad, but it was a really busy weekend. the weekend was fine but short. last week went fine, but it really just flew by, because friday was a holiday (veteran's day). last thursday night we had something called "danger of failing" conferences at school. apparently the school is legally responsible for informing parents that their kids are in danger of failing, so this night is one of the ways we do it. the parents can come from 5-7 pm and meet with teachers. all of the teachers are at tables in the cafeteria, and the parents come around and talk with you. however, it was pretty poorly attended, about 30% of parents whose kids are in danger of failing actually came and met with teachers. i had two parents come.

the whole parent communication thing is so ironic because in a school like mine, it takes so much energy to contact parents to deal with discipline and problematic academic issues that the kids who are doing well academically and really a pleasure to have in class never get acknowledged. i made two positive parent phone calls today for girls who have had frequent behavior problems. both of their moms had that "uh oh" sound in their voices when i told them who it was. it made the phone calls so dramatic. i hope that it felt good to both of them.

it's becoming so clear that the kids in my strategic class (double period) can pretty much behave if they have enough structure and work to do. i'm trying to develop something like a book report where they always have something to do when they finish work. jesse and i were just brainstorming about it--maybe where they have to write a report on every 10 pages of reading that they do, or every 15 pages or something like that. they're great kids and with format and structure almost all of them are fine (except for the two that i had to send to the vice principal today). for a lot of them, school kind of freaks them out because they are soo accustomed to failing. so their reaction is to misbehave instead of trying to see how they do. i wish that i was a better teacher so that i could boost their confidence, but the truth is that class isn't even that hard so i think that many of them do have those opportunities to be successful in my class. it's such a process, and i am just trying to figure things out as i go along.

i haven't even gotten to the most exciting parts of my life right now--well, last weekend was a three day weekend which i got to spend with my lovely boyfriend, mother, and stepfather. it was quite a treat to be at my mom and stepfather's house and relax and chill out and be cooked for and cleaned up after and get to snuggle with my kitty cat. (really my mom and stepfather's cat but...i love her a lot. and they're not possessive.)

so last weekend was a blessedly long weekend and...four more days of school until NINE DAYS OFF for thanksgiving. i am so excited. it's hard feeling burnt out, although last week and this week are/were manageable because of the upcoming break. the three day weekend last weekend felt like a week off, seriously. i do think that getting out of town helped.

so everyone tells me that i've gotten through the hardest stretch now. in the last 12 weeks, i was out sick one day, had a three day weekend after the very first week of school, and just had a 3 day weekend. those are the only weekdays i've had off of work since memorial day weekend in may. i worked on july 4 in training this summer. what a year, right? so after 4 more days of teaching (which i would be wise to go get ready for right now) i have a glorious 9 days off!!! (including 2 thanksgiving dinners, yum!)

on that note, i should attend to my 7th graders' essays because i promised i'd return them tommorow. it is kind of exhausting reading all of these essays--i read 60 over the weekend and commented on them. there's no way that i'm going to finish reading all of these in the next 2 hours, but i will try!

i'll try to write again this week. thanks for checking back and continuing to read.