A Gosling Thanksgiving

First off, may I just say, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and hope the Native American people of this country don’t hate the white people too much today.  I have been trying to gently explain the actual history of Thanksgiving to Max and how sometimes the Pilgrims weren’t very nice to the people already living here and how Columbus didn’t “discover” anything.  That one cannot discover a place that already has people living in it.  That would be like me saying that I discovered Starbucks or Loehmans.  He smiled and nodded but walked back to the kitchen to finish decorating cookies.  I am on my mini-vacation so should stop trying to have these little “teachable moments”.  It must suck sometimes to be a teacher’s kid.

My kids are just happy we are decorating Thanksgiving cookies so the civics lesson will have to wait, I guess.  They are having a blast decorating the cookies.  Ya know, traditional Thanksgiving cookie shapes:  Turkeys, maple leaves and dolphins.  Yep.  Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like aquatic mammals.  I actually made blue icing for them.  The boys have decided the turkeys should be rainbow colored.  Because of that request, my hands are now rainbow colored as well.  My thumbs are a lovely shade of pink.  But I love cooking on Thanksgiving, so I’m not complaining.  I love making everything from scratch.  I love roasting pumpkins for my pumpkin pie just so I can say that I roasted pumpkins for my pumpkin pie.  I am actually only making two desserts this year which was a difficult decision to concede to but there will be only nine people at my house this year and I know my boys will only be eating the blue dolphin cookies.  They probably won’t even touch the pretty maple leaves, iced in a lovely shade of light orange.  Which is also the color of my pinkie. 

I do love Thanksgiving for the idea of taking a little time out to be grateful for all of the stuff you have in your life.  That and taking time out for binge eating an entire meal made with butter.  I try diligently to not invite vegans.  Tofurkey scares me and seriously, vegans just don’t appreciate the butter component.  Or the turkey component for that matter.  It’s not like I eat like this every day, seriously, I would gain all of the weight back and I threw away all of my fat clothes so that cannot happen.  So, yes, grateful for butter and people who love butter.  But grateful for lots of other stuff too.  Grateful my parents are here at my house which means I didn’t have to fly home to Minneapolis on the busiest travel weekend of the year.  Super duper grateful for that. 

But instead of telling you all of the things I am grateful for, I took a poll this year at school and asked my students what they were grateful for.  I got a lot of answers of family and friends; video games and new phones.  I did get one kid who said he was grateful to have me as his English teacher but I am guessing he was just sucking up to get a good grade in my class.  Some kids said they were grateful for their lawyers and some said they were grateful just to be out of school for the week.  Two of my kids said they were grateful to have a home after being homeless.  That one made me think and be grateful that the universe seemed to be looking out for them.   Homeless kids and along with the few who mentioned their lawyers; seriously grateful.  I knew a few were for parents and a few for themselves.  Those are the ones that make my job hard to do without wanting to adopt them.  Good kids.  Most of them.

With all of the heartfelt grateful lists, I did appreciate the girls who said they were grateful for Hello Kitty, Elf cosmetics and Ryan Gosling.  I mean, who isn’t grateful for Ryan Gosling?  I liked how none of them hesitated on what they were grateful for.  I liked how all them smiled when they said what they were grateful for.  Not a bad poll. 

Before bed last night, I asked my boys what they were grateful for.  I was second on Dash’s list, right under racecars.  Max was grateful for my love.  Man, I love when he says that.  There is nothing more validating than a sincere eight year old. 

Okay, back to my turkey and my stuffing and my marshmallow ensconced sweet potatoes and my caramelized brussel sprouts and of course, my blue dolphin Thanksgiving cookies.  I am totally grateful my children have this wonderful sense of humor that incorporates marine life into the festivities.  Well, let’s face it; I am just grateful for them.  My life would be so boring without them.  I am also grateful for my friends and my family, the Gone with the Wind marathon on AMC, and having a great home filled with love and warmth and Hello Kitty.  And if it were filled with Ryan Gosling…

Oh, and by the way, I am grateful for the people who read this blog.  All of you.  Happy Thanksgiving.

It is what it is

I am realizing that the phrase “it is what it is” has become my favorite phrase.  There are others too.  “this too shall pass”, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger” and “success is the best revenge”.   However, sometimes it just…is what it is. (I should probably be citing these quotes with a good old fashioned MLA citation, being the English teacher here, but I’m tired so bite me.)

Another good one is “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” but I gave up the good juicer in the divorce so making lemons becomes more arduous than one might have remembered.  I loved that juicer.  It was the big silver one from William Sonoma that had the old fashioned handle that made things fun to squeeze.  It was like, two feet high and made juicing entertaining.  But I traded that in for some freedom and peace of mind, so my little plastic juicer will do just fine.  Plus, Dash likes fresh squeezed OJ and getting fruit into that little man is arduous as well, so I will squeeze with what I have.

So, if one doesn’t have the big William Sonoma juicer or access to a good Nietzsche quote, then what does one do?  Bathtub, shoes, chocolate, treadmill.  Well, not in that order.  But definitely treadmill after the chocolate.  Usually, I am lucky and stress causes nausea so I lose weight when I am stressed.  The treadmill is good because there is nothing better than sweating to loud angry music while releasing some well needed endorphins.  Greenday is perfect for this.  So are Christina Aguilera and surprisingly, Pittbull.  Loud, really, really loud, so as to drown out the objections and yelling in my own head.  Adele is playing now.  I like her.  Soulful. 

Drinking is out.  Well, milkshakes maybe, but then there will just be more treadmill.  Railing at god, yoga, mindless television and well, blogging seems to help.  I have always been a big proponent of writing things down to explain it to yourself.  No one needs to read it, it’s really just for you, but it is nice knowing people in Croatia, France and Malaysia will be sharing my experiences. 

Yelling at strangers is always good.  Driving in LA makes that really easy to achieve.  Customer service people at AT&T make that pretty easy as well.  Let’s face it, most “customer service” isn’t.  Although, I have learned if you are nice to customer service people, you tend to get whatever you need. Wouldn’t that be nice with all people…

You get to a point in your life where you realize you can’t run away from your problems and issues and anxiety.  You need to face it.  You need to deal with it in a pragmatic and positive way.  You need to tell yourself the universe will help you if you ask.  You need to be a grownup and own your issues.  No matter how crappy they are.  No matter if you have no idea what the outcome may be.  No matter what.  Icky-ness ownership comes with maturity.  Right?  Or I could just take a bubble bath and hope for a hug.

An old therapist of mine once told me, “you are going to feel this way until you are done feeling like this, so let yourself feel like this.”  Advice as good as “wear a sweater, you never know”.  So, I guess that means facing the icky stuff you really have no desire to face.  Dealing with it and moving on.  Not taking the world so personally and remembering that although there is crap in the world, there is some pretty great stuff as well.  Focus on the good stuff?  Right?  After all, it is what it is and no amount of shoe buying or milkshake drinking or treadmilling will make it go away.  It will make it easier to take, but in the end, being a grownup will win out.  At least on my end.

Okay, I’m done.  Going to make some lemonade and take a bubble bath.  

That’s not funny.

The education arena is fraught with acronyms.  Man, the pedagogic set loves them.  Seriously, they won’t make a test, a standard or an educational cohort without spelling out something.  CAHSEE, WASC, FERPA, OY.  Then of course, you can never remember what the acronym stands for.  I bet if you tested even the oldest and wisest of the teaching profession none of them would be able to tell you what CAASFEP stood for.  But they could probably tell you what BFD, LOL and WTF mean…

I have recently begun the BTSA program.   Technically I am still a new teacher.  BTSA stands for Beginning Teacher Something or Another.  (I told you these were hard to remember)  When you get your teaching credential in California, you start with a preliminary credential and then have five years to “clear” it.  Apparently, teaching, getting one’s masters, along with by-monthly evaluations by your administrators isn’t enough.  You need to spend two more years learning more pedagogy stuff so you may implement this stuff into your lesson plans.  They (ya know, the big THEY) say that most teachers only teach for five years and then decide they are insane and move on to other jobs.  I guess only giving the preliminary credential weeds out the ones who want their lives back. 

The BTSA program is a two year program but because I am impatient, I have chosen to do the accelerated program which means I am cleared in one year.  I had to write a self-assessment and reflection on the Teacher Standards of California to be approved for it, which by the way, you can find the standards in the NBPTS, the CSTP, or the NCLB.  Yep, I know, more CRAP.

Anyway, so I was reflecting on my teaching standards; which sounds so much more romantic than it really is.  Like I should be gazing into a magic mirror while sipping on champagne, dressed in a flowing gown.  Nope.  I am writing about what things I am good at and what things I suck at as a teacher (drinking tea, in front of my computer in my sweatpants with the big bleach stain on them).  Hmmm…what am I good at?  Creative project based lesson planning, culturally and socially relevant stuff and making my students laugh while actually learning, that I am good at.  Time management, trying to believe that the CST and other standardized tests do anything but teach a child how to bubble things in, and organizing my desk, I seem to suck at.  My desk is like a waste land where essays come to die.  I need to work on actually grading the homework I give out faster or just stop giving homework that needs to be graded.  Oooh, now that’s a good idea.  I actually have a whole slew of stuff to grade but just realized I am giving quizzes tomorrow so I will have oodles of time to finish grading them as the ten week progress reports are due on Monday.  I hate working on the weekends so that will work.  Oh, look, I am good at time management.  

So, I started writing this reflection essay and I kept wanting to crack jokes about the teaching standards.  The running monologue in my head was quite amusing but I realized I should probably write a dry and boring or rather intelligent essay as to not freak out the school district.  But it was hard to keep it that way.  I started realizing that writing amusing anecdotes was a whole mess easier and you all don’t mind when I misspell things or use improper grammar.  Although, my mother sometimes likes to correct my blogs with a red pen and send them back to me, but that’s another story. 

I teach persuasive essays, expository essays, reflective and analytical essays to my students yet the most fun and the ones that ALL of the students seem to turn in are the narrative essays and short stories.  Probably because they are just more fun to write.  I like to think that researching a persuasive essay on “anchor babies” or medical marijuana could be fun.  But I am totally fooling myself.  I wouldn’t really like to write a five paragraph essay on dry, banal socially relevant crap either.  I like to write and then embellish just enough so my blogs are fictional.  No, really, nothing I write here actually happens.  I am really a six feet tall blonde man who is an accountant and hates children. 

When I had to write all of those pedagogic research papers during grad school, I would almost put myself to sleep.  Still got all A’s, but crap, they were boring.  Then when it came to my Master’s thesis, I was allowed to write a half-narrative-half-research-paper on my student teaching experience.  That was actually fun.  100 pages of fun (got 98 out of 100, by the way) because I was telling my story and telling them of my experience.  Basically just writing about myself, which let’s face it, I love doing.  It was actually more fun when I presented it because as an actress, I like to be expressive and well, I knew the people I was presenting to, so it was actually entertaining and enjoyable to perform, I mean, present.

I love writing.  This whole new blog experience has been a wonderful experiment of writing and creativity.  I should have my students blog…hmmm…not a bad idea…I need a rubric for that.

Back to my reflection assessment of moi.  As I said, I do love writing about me, regardless of who I am, and it was actually quite thought provoking for myself to realize what I am good at thus far in my teaching career and what I need some help on.  Unfortunately, my reflection was only allowed to be three pages long but it was based on a forty page document.  I actually had to change the font size to 11.5 just to squeeze in the last bit of over-wordy-ness that is me and my writing.  I had one small laughable moment in it and then the rest was a serious assessment of how I see myself as a teacher.  So the BTSA organizers at LAUSD will be very happy with my reflection on my TSC while teaching GATE, ELL and SPED students all the while hoping to increase my CALSTRS account and using some VAPA and SDAIE strategies to increase our CST scores to raise our AYP and API. 

Now I am back to blogging.  Way more fun.  Not bad for a six-foot tall blonde accountant.