MCAS is a sinking ship of fail.

I hate MCAS. 

We know this. It’s not a secret. I complain quite frequently about it. MCAS is a soul-sucking, creativity-killing, beaurocracy-driven, logistically despicable waste of valuable learning time. I understand why tests need to happen. I don’t understand why we can’t figure out a faster way to revise the testing process to make it more accurate and meaningful. 

Thirteen years ago, the sophomores sat down to take 10^th grade MCAS for the first time (officially, anyway, because previous years served as guinea pigs). Thirteen years later, we finally have a new set of learning standards, but we’re scrambling to create a better test to assess these new standards. Thirteen years of stupidly-worded questions, boring, repetitive analysis, and hours of missed learning time later, we’re TRYING to make a new test.

THIRTEEN YEARS. Why can’t it happen faster? What’s with the slow turnaround? While we were wasting time on a dumb test that doesn’t measure anything worth knowing, THIRTEEN YEARS worth of kids grew up and graduated or didn’t but it doesn’t really matter because we can’t help them now. Thirteen years worth of students think open response is a genre and multiple choice is a way of life. Thirteen years worth of students missed God knows how many hours of learning time that was spent prepping for or taking a dumb test. 

What took so damn long? When a ship is sinking, you jump ship and try to swim to shore. You escape in a lifeboat. You shoot off flares. You do anything, really, as long as you’re doing SOMETHING. You don’t stay on the sinking ship until it hits the ocean floor, just to make sure it’s really sinking, just to make sure there’s no hope. 

So here’s a radical idea: What do you say we try not to drown from now on? 

This depicts my feelings towards MCAS.

BIG thoughts

Done.

Maybe that’s why I took so long to finish the 8th grade poetry book. Because on some level I knew that the completion of that would really mean the end. I mean, what do I really have left to do? Buy envelopes. Pack. Organize. Find those damn letters. Dayanara is afraid to go to high school so she’s subconsciously sabotaging herself with negative behavior. Is it all that different? Probably not.

the sheer volume of information I have in my head is overwhelming on a level I never thought possible. If I thought I could write it all down I’d try, but I don’t know how far I’d get before losing it completely. However, one skill I have perfected this year is learning to take my own advice, and practicing what I preach, so more often than not I find myself saying, “What would I tell a student who had this problem?” It works, surprisingly. I think using student strategies helps talk me down from my metacognitive cliff because a) they are good strategies, b) we are not that different and c) it keeps me humble. So, how would I advise myself?

First, a flood of ideas would deluge my mind. Then, I would consider where the student was coming from on every level I could think of, and suggest something I thought they could handle. So, what can I handle now? Right now, I need structure. I need some way to express these ideas, some medium, because or else I’ll burst (or deflate). But I think I need to structure it so I don’t freak myself out.

Marion’s idea of color coding everything is probably going to help in the later stages of this mental inventory and organization, but for now, I think I’ll just broadly compartmentalize. If I had to put all the info, duties, plans, necessities, every part of my life into three buckets, what would they be labeled?

Personal/me, curriculum, remembering as much as I can.

There. There are my buckets. So, here’s the plan which I just came up with forty five seconds ago. I’m going to carry a notebook. Or maybe a little, four-subject notebook. and I’m going to keep a running list. Listing is another thing I tell students to do, because it’s not as scary as paragraphs and sentences, and more often than not, when you take the pressure out of the equation, most of your bullet points end up being sentences or something like them anyway. But regardless, I’m going to list. Two lists for each, one on computer, one on paper. And that way, I’ll remember everything I can.

How did someone with such poor executive functioning skills by nature get a master’s degree in education? I sit, in this room, in this disastrous hellhole covered with clothes, middle school vampire literature, New Yorker magazines and school supplies, and marvel at my ability to teach nine different classes when I can barely locate my right foot. But I’m working on it. Baby steps.

Just start listing. You might miss something, a thought might fly out of your head while you’re using your brainpower to write another thought on paper, but if you never start writing, odds are you’ll lose both of those thoughts.

I wonder what a thought looks like. That would make a cool personification exercise. If you had to give a visual representation of “thought” how would you do it? Food for thought. HAH thought.

So, I’m glad I wrote all that. I’m sure it’s a mess, but the point is, I wrote it, and in doing so, I talked myself down off of my metaphorical, metacognitive cliff. I wrote to move time. Before I started, it was standing still, and I was not happy about that. I hate when time stops. It’s unnatural, illogical, impractical and wasteful, because inevitably when time starts up again, you miss the time you would have had if time hadn’t stopped. Say time stopped at 12:40 a.m. for roughly two minutes. When time starts again, it’s 12:42, and you’ve missed 120 seconds, skipped, gone, adieu.

But anyway, I hate it when time stops, and when I closed the document, it did just that. When time stops, you feel everything. Where your bangs lay on your forehead. Tongue against inside of your front teeth. Ring sliding down finger. Sometimes I swear sound slows down too, but I’m not entirely sure about that.

I don’t do well with big transitions. In fact, let’s call them negative transitions. I don’t mean bad, I mean diffused. When I suddenly have a lot less to do, and a lot more time, I flip out. The sudden loss of that is horrifying. It’s why I got depressed after running the marathon. I looked
up marathons overseas compulsively. I planned training runs. I even bought new sneakers. You need something to fill a void that size.

The real issue is that my 8th graders will be gone. My eyes are crossing with the revelation. I always tell them sometimes you have to write 5 pages of junk to get to that one great line. Well, I had to ramble about all this GodKnowsWhat to get to this place. The place where I’m going to lose a piece of myself when they go. It’s not weird or inappropriate, it’s just reality. They made me the teacher that I am today. Wow.

Need to sleep on that.

Sometimes I think I'll never have the time and energy to revise my own writing. Well, what I'm doing now is more important anyway.

This one time, in the hospital...

Rather than tell everyone what happened a million different times, I'll just sum it up here:

WARNING: ANNIE, DO NOT READ THIS. IT IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH OF STOMACH. CALL ME, AND I WILL TELL YOU AN EDITED VERSION. I REPEAT, ANNIE, DO NOT READ THIS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I was teaching my sixth graders and suddenly my stomach started burning. By the end of the day, I was puking in the parking lot. I don't really know how to describe it... "churning" is the word that comes to mind, though I'm not sure why. I just kept on hurling, it wouldn't stop. The worst thing was, I ate my mom's lasagna for lunch, so clearly it wasn't food poisoning, because my mom's a better cook than half the people on Food Network.

The worst part, by far, was my last chunk of teaching. Literary magazine and running are the only classes I teach where there's no one else near me, so I was just terrified that if I needed to puke, I'd have to throw up in my mouth and slyly spit it into the trash can. I couldn't leave the students, clearly.

Oh God and running? I gave them a time trial, and when they asked why I wasn't running, I said I was analyzing their gaits. True, if by analyzing gaits I actually meant trying not to ralph all over the gym floor.

Anyway, I called my doctor when it hadn't stopped after 5 hours, and she said to call an ambulance. Of course, I thought that was ridiculous. I mean, there were probably people who actually needed ambulances, so clearly I wasn't going to occupy one. I figured I'd tough it up.

Then came the blood.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure, throwing up blood is probably one of the scariest things in the world, and I've been through some scary shit. I will now take the time to make a list of the few things that are scarier than throwing up blood:

1. bleeding out your ears (which means you probably have a spinal or brain injury)
2. the scene in the Jack@ss movie when they give themselves papercuts between their fingers and toes
3. moldy cheese
4. being completely irrelevant

Anyway, when that happened, I made a mental note to buy extra whitening toothpaste and called a cab. Interesting note: cabs aren't supposed to take you to the hospital if you're sick, because of liability, I assume. When I requested to have a cab sent to my apartment to take me to the Emergency Room of Beth Israel, the man was skeptical. I insisted that I was visiting my sister (I don't have a sister), and to my surprise, he actually asked me questions!

What do you do when that happens?

Wait a second, on what planet does that ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

Well, in my case, it was a Tuesday, so with House MD still fresh in my mind, I responded, "Lupus." Questioning ceased.

Looking back, I must have looked like a wreck. I wore pajamas, because I figured if I wore clothes I'd just have to take them off anyway, and before I could fill out paperwork I had already thrown up three more times. I was given a complimentary bucket. I still have it. I did not actually throw up in the bucket. I missed. Oops.

So, the ER is actually much nicer than it appears on TV, although the doctors weren't nearly as attractive. I got hooked up to IVs and given lots of fluids (weird word, fluids), anti-nausea meds, and they stuck weird things all over me and put me in machines and then, I realized the unthinkable.

In real life, McDreamy has grey hair.

So sad.

But still so hot.

I will say one thing though. Asking the doctors all about their love lives is a great way to pass the time. That is one of the true elements of Grey's Anatomy.

Oh God, and my mother was of course, going nuts. I told them not to come, because I was fine, and to their credit, they did wait about three hours before my mother decided that since she was going to be on the phone with me every ten minutes anyway, she may as well drive down there.

I would have been fine, but thanks guys. Your witty banter helped considerably. And walking the mile to the 24-hour pharmacy in Copley (since I got out at like, 2) would've sucked.

So, hopefully at some point in my life, I will get an iron-clad immune system and avoid situations like these. They always say the first few years of teaching are the hardest on your body, and I'm now positive that's true. No hard feelings, students. It was pretty clear where the point of origin of the illness was (the name is too confusing to remember. Gastronanahanawhatawhosasomething). I compared IV bruises and tape marks with my students two days later, and my God, the only thing worse than throwing up blood as an adult has got to be throwing up blood as a twelve-year-old. My poor girls. And maybe boys, too, who knows who's caught it by now.

So, I came out of the situation bruised and with a free bucket. And two fewer sick days. Oh well. I guess they exist for a reason.

So, I should really stop starting every paragraph with "so," because that's redundant and unnecessary.

Loveyouall,
LW

I <3 running, I don't <3 pants...

I used to be so good at blogging. I decided to start a blog again because of a teacher from grad school. Long story short: he lost a paper I wrote. Rather than going on a joyride through my old, ruined hard drive, I elected to write it again, and OH MY GOD I had so much fun.

I forgot how much I loved to write. All my time is spent teaching adolescents to write, so I haven't been writing, and I MISS IT! So, this is my attempt to get back in the writing game. It will probably be all rambly and horrible, but you made the decision to read it, so...

So, what's going on with me? I am completely overwhelmed at work. It will probably be this way for the first couple of years, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's so hard creating everything from scratch for four grade levels, but at the same time, I know that if I were given a curriculum and told to teach it exactly, I would hate it. I'd rather spend the extra time making something I love.

One of my eighth graders wrote the greatest writing reflection the other day. He's a guy's guy, a self-described "not so much writer," but he wrote a fantasy story for his little brothers and they loved it so much that he's gone off the fiction deep end (in a good way). It made me happy.

Recent obsession: Twilight. One of the unexpected pleasures of teaching eighth grade is their alarming insight into themselves. My fifth graders are so oblivious, but my eighth graders are very aware of their own thoughts and feelings. That doesn't make them rational, logical human beings or anything, but still, it's interesting to hear what they think about themselves. My Twilight obsession came about because one of my eighth graders said, "Miss, I hate everything pretty much. If these books can get me to read over 2000 pages, you should definitely hit them up."

After this, I realized two things:
1. She's right. If she connected with them, I should definitely experience them.
2. I clearly have a borderline creepy love for vampires already. Think about it. I grew up watching Buffy. I loved Interview with a Vampire. I liked that short-lived cheesy show Moonlight. I OBSESS over True Blood (on HBO, go watch it, it will change your life). Clearly, another vampire story is not such a stretch.

Hmm, what else is up with me...

What author study should I do with my students? I'm already doing a mini- one on Sharon Creech, but that's more of an excuse to read Love That Dog and introduce free verse poetry. The older ones like really twisted stuff, so I'm thinking Poe, but we'll see.

Oh, I went running for the first time in forever yesterday! I got so confused. My body isn't used to running in this area. I always start in Beacon Hill, so by the time I reach the Holiday Inn on St. Paul's street and Brookline, I've been going for a few miles already. Living in Brookline completely screws it up. Marathon training is going to be challenging. I'm going to be tempted to just run home mid-run. Good thing that's not happening for a year at least.

So, I ran all around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, and into the middle of it by accident. I'm not sure how it happened, but it all looks different in the snow. At some point I looked down and thought to myself, "If I jump really hard, I will fall into a body of water. Oops."

Anyway, I am feeling it today, but not as badly as I had expected, which is good, I suppose. 90 more miles and I can buy new sneakers, BOOYEAH.

I was also deathly ill. I still kind of sound hoarse. My students began an unofficial "use figurative language to describe our teacher's horrible voice" contest, and my favorites were:

She sounds like Lindsay Lohan after a rough night.
She sounds like an adolescent male going through puberty.
She sounds like Sylvester Stallone punched her in the voice box.

I love my creative ones.

Any other updates? Oh, HOW 'BOUT THAT TOBIN BRIDGE? One lane? Really people? I'm going to have to take the Turnpike to work. That costs $4.25. Damnit.

My vaccuum broke. It is tragic, and probably my roommate's fault.

Oh! So, our motivation for losing weight is that we're going to throw a skanky short-shorts party in late March. Thus, we will lose weight because we must look fabulous for said party. Clear your calendars... probably one of the last couple of weekends in March. My goal is to wear short shorts WITHOUT stockings. And possibly a lifeguard bathing suit. We'll see.

I should go lift weights, but I just don't like the gym. I'd rather run outside for hours than sit in a confined area letting gravity have its way with me. Plus, I'm so used to going to an all womens gym, that going to Gold's is daunting. All these huge, burly men watch me constantly. I was flattered at first, but then I realized they didn't think I was hot, rather, they were watching with a kind of horrid fascination as I failed to bench press the bar. I'm quite good at working out. I know fifty thousand exercises for each muscle, I swear, so I would look like I know what I'm doing, except... except for the fact that I'm holding 8-pound weights. The boys are nice though. They help me when I am doing something wrong.

So, I'm off to read notebooks, make food, shower, and hypothesize about the next season of the L-Word.

Goede Nacht!

--LW