Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Will the two people from Sri Lanka and the three from Egypt who came to this site today under the search "First Sex Teacher" in Yahoo please comment and tell me if you actually read my site or just go away disappointed?
¶ 3:15 PM

"We are the ones who are going to heal all of the problems of society."

Direct quote from the guy leading the seminar I went to today. Heavy, huh (and certainly a little self-important)? I had somehow managed to forget this feeling. You know how when you carry something really heavy for a long time, you start to get used to it. Then you put it down for awhile and when you pick it back up, it feels twice as heavy as it did the first time you had it? That is how I feel, emotionally, right now.

I managed to forget this feeling of intense pressure that I felt all last year. Though I don't feel like I am responsible for fixing "all of the problems of society" (if I did, I doubt I could get out of bed in the morning), I know that if I do a bad job over the course of the next nine months, some kid is not going into high school. Ugh.

The past two days of training at my new school, I have been ranting and raving about their curriculum standards. We have a system that, though not quite a "scripted curriculum", comes really close. I no longer get to chose what I am going to teach...all the way from which concepts to which stories. I have been going on about how they should just roll some robots into the classrooms. I've been really upset-- I'm attached to certain stories and ideas.

Today, at the seminar I went to, the speaker talked a lot about how school should be focused on the learning and not the teaching. And talked about how students-- overall and overwhelmingly-- acheive much higher scores when they are a part of this program we are doing. So now, I feel more okay about doing it their way. I do feel sad that I am sacrificing some of the creative aspects of my job... but I suppose that I should look at it as a situation to have to be more creative. I have to try even harder to make material interesting-- since I don't get to pick more interesting material.

I don't know how I feel about all this testing stuff. I do know that it isn't going anywhere soon, so I better figure out a way to live with it and not fight it.

I am already kind of exhausted. Day 3 and the kids aren't even here, yet. Heaven help me.
¶ 2:08 PM