Wednesday, June 28, 2006

School Nightmares

Since my first year of teaching I've had school nightmares during the summer. They usually don't come until the week before I'm due to go back to work. The context almost always consists of some form of chaos making it impossible for me to do my job. One dream had all of my stuff moved out of my room and piled in the middle of the floor in another room - the day before school started. Another had me teaching in an L-shaped room where I could only see half the kids at any given time and was having to use a lapel mic for everyone to hear me.

In the past two years, the dreams have increased in frequency, now occurring at intervals throughout the summer instead of being limited to the week before school. Last night I had the second one for this summer. (Thankfully, I don't remember anything about the first one, except that I had one.) However, last night had me trying to get students organized on the first day of school. The big problem this time was that I was in a large room being shared by 4 classes and 4 teachers! Everytime I tried to get a lesson going with my students I was drowned out by another teacher trying to teach his/her class. What I finally decided to do was take attendance. In doing so, I found out that the little boy who lived with me in foster care for a while was in my class! I made a mental note to discuss with the principal moving him to another class.

Aside from this impossible class arrangement, I was living in a what appeared to be a dorm room in a hotel. The room was right beside an elevator and the head of the bed, which couldn't be moved, was on the wall that the room shared with the elevator. I was sharing the room with a friend who had taped pictures on every available spot on every wall and I was trying to convince her that the wall by my bed was my wall to decorate. (This was my friend/colleague, Monique, who just moved to Virginia.)

I'm sure there will be more school nightmares to come ... the good news is, they never come true. (or haven't yet, anyway)

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Updates and Dates that Never Were

It's been a while - looks like all I do now are updates.

Here's the first: Dad's surgery was put on hold until he got better (breathing problems and sinus trouble) This week the lung specialist cleared him for surgery and told him to quit taking one of his heart meds that was probably doing very little to help, but was causing extra sinus trouble. Go figure. How my dad missed this little tidbit with all his drug books, I don't know. Anyway, I guess his next visit to the surgeon will determine when the surgery will be scheduled. And for those of you in the loop - the blockage is 80%, not 70%, as we were previously told.

The carpet was finally installed and I finally got everything back in place. A word of advice: don't ever let anyone take all the stuff out of your closet - it multiplies. Reorganizing is a pain! But thanks to a Tupperware party I scheduled I had no choice but to get it done, and so it finally is.

On being stood up:
It sucks. Big surprise, huh? I guess it is just too much to ask to expect people to do what they say they are going to do or to at least call if they've decided they can't or don't want to. I guess those are things you assume when you think you're dealing with adults. In my case, I spoke to my date for the evening earlier in the day and he said he was busy, but would call me back in a couple of hours to let me know what time he'd be over. That never happened, he never came over, and I haven't heard from him. I really wasn't expecting this behavior, he seemed so nice and very interested, so I don't know what happened. There were no indications that he'd stand me up. Is it really too much trouble to call and cancel a date if you need to? I just think that is at least the considerate thing to do. You might not like the reaction you get, but at least you were considerate of the other person's feelings and time. Something for all of us to keep in mind, I guess.

So that's it for now - today I am avoiding homework, but will eventually have to do some reading and a short assignment. Right now I'm considering snuggling in my bed some more ... one thing I love about summers and weekends!