well, here i am again, procrastinating as usual. since i've returned to dallas from my cross-country adventure, there has been a lot of change in my life. so much has changed in my life, some for the better, some for the worse, but it's still change. i'm not usually one to just accept things changing. if i had my druthers, things would still be the same way they were back in 1998. those were the days.
so, the first thing is that i'm at a new school now. it's a bad thing and it's a good thing. of course i liked my old school, specifically the staff. the kids were compact heart attacks waiting to happen. they were impending doom in a small container. they were noisy little migraines. the strange thing is that i got the news that i was having to move when i was still on my summer adventures. i was hanging out with james when my principal called me early saturday morning (it was 7.5a). i was still half asleep and she was like, "i hate to tell you this..."
when has any good news ever come after those six words? i'll tell you: never. it was awful at the time, but my principal was cool about it and hooked me up with a phone interview. that was a relief because it would've been holy hell to have to fly back to dallas for a job fair then fly back to north carolina and have to be docked for leaving, when lord knows we already were getting paid by the minute. did i mention the pay at this nysp thing was slightly less than what the kids get paid at sweatshops in india? it's minimum wage plus tips...without the tips...
anyway, i had a phone interview and apparently did well because i got a position at another school. this school, coincidentally, is literally a hop, skip, and jump from my old school. i think the most terrible thing about having to move at all is the fact that i was teacher of the year. teacher of the freakin' year, and i have to change schools??? i can't even park in my damn spot. it's a lovely spot that says "toty." that, of course, stands for teacher of the year. jerome, who is at that school (we used to be coworkers...now we're just colleagues) parks there because he was teacher of the year the year before. what i ought to do is drive to that school, park in the spot that i earned and deserve, then just take a bus to my current school. that would probably freak the mess out of people at both schools. then my job would be done. i'm wesley. i freak people out at schools.
so at this new school, there is an older crowd, meaning that the staff overall is a little older than the staff at my first school. it's not a bad thing; they're all veterans. it makes me coveted. what makes me feel even more coveted is the fact that i'm a male. guy teachers are already rare, especially at the elementary level. at my old school the principal was really obsessed with hiring men to work there, so it wasn't that big of a deal. at this new school, though, i am one of i think five male teachers. three of us are on the same team. i teach fourth grade now, fourth grade science and social studies...and by the way, i'm the grade level chair, which makes me the HNIC. if you don't know what that means, look it up.
and...at this new school i am (i calculated it) the third youngest person there...at thirty-three. there's me, wesley. there's a kindergarten teacher who we'll call "luby." she's tall and insists on wearing three foot stilettos to school like she's at the club trying to get picked up. it's a school full of women, so good luck with that. actually..that brings me to the other one. we'll call him "trip." the three of us are the youngest ones there, so i guess that brought us together. of the three, i'm the oldest and most mature. luby is the middle one, and trip is the youngest. he's an open mouth (and this n*gga has a mouth full of teeth too), which already kind of bothers me. we're like a mini family...like brothers and sister. i'm quite sure there will be plenty of stories about our misadventures.
meanwhile the fourth grade team is brand new. three of us (myself, trip, and "harvey") are new to the school. the last teacher, and the only female on the team, "cece," was there before, but in a different grade. we all get along well, at least i think so. trip, being the child, is always doing or saying or thinking something stoopid. i have to constantly counteract his buffoonery. i don't know how cece, harvey, and i are going to deal with him...
to digress just a bit, trip and i have (for some reason) decided to start a running gag. i always like a good running gag because it makes things interesting. so this year, and i guess for as long as we keep it going, trip and i are brothers...half-brothers. if you have the same father, you're half. if you have the same mother, you're full. that's the way it's always been. even if you come from the same mother and have different fathers, you're still whole siblings. so we're half-brothers from another mother. i'm the older one, which a lot of students have a hard time believing because trip is bigger than i'm. i could take him to the floor if i wanted to, but there's not been a reason yet. they can't all be like kel.
i've been at this school teaching for two weeks now, so i've gotten my feet wet. the kids so far are much better than the ones at my old school. i'm still trying to learn their nuances, though. what i have discovered is that they're quadri-polar. i'm new to the fourth grade team, which does a departmentalized system. i teach science and social studies, cece does reading, harvey does math, and trip does writing. the kids are with each of us for about an hour and a half, then switch to the next teacher. at first i was a little leery because i wasn't used to it. i've always done the self-contained thing, where i teach all the subjects to the same group of kids. i'm kind of digging this departmentalized thing though. i do the same lesson four times a day, which lightens my load. anyway, that was a background explanation. there are kids who i like that nobody else likes. there are kids that one of us likes, but none of the others do. they act differently in each of our classes. that's not to say that it's always cut and dry...
there are kids so far that i decorated profusely with red flags. the most rambunctious one is going to have to be called "mike" because he thinks he's mike tyson. in the two weeks we've been in school, he's had two fights. he's on track to have one every week. and the very first one was in my classroom. he tried to fight this boy we'll call "treasure." if you've ever seen the movie precious, he looks like precious' brother. woof. and he's at least six times larger than tyson. you can imagine, then, the hilarity of tyson trying to knock this boy down. i caught one of his punches as i stepped between them and for a split second thought that someone had thrown a paper ball at my chest...
the buffoonery will continue as the year progresses. hopefully i will be inspired to keep track of it all through this blawg. but this is all about change. when school first started, we (the staff) had to read this book called who moved my cheese? it's a simple story about dealing with change in your life. it's surprisingly deep and informative, even though it's a quick read. basically, it tells this story of two mice and two little people who are the same size as the mice. they are in this maze looking for "cheese," which is a metaphor for something that a person wants. one day, they find that the "cheese" has been moved, so they have to go looking for it. in short, the point is that you have to move with the "cheese," meaning that you have to accept change and not get stuck in the same routines.
having mentioned that, my roommate chong is leaving. he'll be finished moving out tomorrow, and gone back to houston for the time being. cheech is still here, but he's on vacation for the next two weeks. chong and i have been roommates since 2008, which makes this a sort of sad occasion. before reading the book, i was having a hard time accepting and dealing with him leaving because i got used to things being the way they were. i've come to accept it, and everything happens for a reason. it's the end of an era.
the awful thing about him leaving is that now i have to find someone to replace him. it's a monetary issue mostly. i've been putting the room out there on the craigslist and everything, but so far the people who have replied haven't given me the "feeling" yet. you know, it's the feeling that you get when you know that you've hit the target. so far, it's been one issue after another, and as much as i like to advertise for roommates, i'd rather not. i've got lesson plans to do.
how will i spend labor day? i can either do schoolwork or procrastinate further. i think we all know what's going to happen when i wake up tomorrow afternoon.
there's always tomorrow,
-w
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