A Beautiful Day

Thursday was a beautiful day.

I know that because the new chancellor of schools told us so.

On the other side of the Resource Room a group of teachers gathered to watch the the news conference where she and the mayor defended their decision  to open schools. I was on the business end of the Resource Room.  Nina had a ten page paper to write and snow or no snow we had no time to waste, (but more about that later).

I spent a restless night, checking my phone for  the school closed text that never came. By 6:30 am I was on to the bus, where the bus driver explained how hard it used to be to drive the route on snowy days, and how his first wife didn't even care about how stressed he was when he got home.  The new buses, had more gears, and chains on the wheels and we made it straight up the icy hill in record time, since there was no one waiting on the bus stops to delay our progress.

The new chancellor and new mayor who have been in office for exactly 6 weeks and who  had to make their fourth decision on calling a snow day,  explained why they opted to open school.  The transportation was running, Macy's was open, and at the exact moment the news conference was being held it had stopped snowing.  Which in the chancellor's opinion, qualified for a beautiful day.

Al Roker, our local weatherman, turned national weather man, was half a world a way in Sochi covering the winter Olympics.  Apparently, his daughter, who attends the high school of Fame, (the movie) fame- which is an authentic, if not typical New York City high school, was not.   In Sochi the weather was 66 degrees, Katerina Witt, was reporting in a bathing suit from the beach because in fact, there it was a beautiful day.  Those of us, like Al Roker's daughter who were  stuck back in New York City were wearing far more clothing and Al was mad that schools were open.

Al Roker criticized the mayor, the mayor criticized Al Roker, it snowed some more over night.  And Friday the schools were open again.

But this is a story about Nina and her ten page paper.  Which was why I had to go to the other side of the Resource Room and tell them to keep it down- some of us were working.

Nina failed social studies last semester.  I had become increasingly concerned that Nina was depressed as the semester wore on.  Her usually ebullient attitude had soured and she refused more often than not, to let me help her do anything.  I called the appropriate offices, I called her aunt, I tried to talk with her and nothing seemed to help. She failed  gym and social studies and  the college counselor refused to take her application to the community college.

With the new term underway, she began to wake up.  I helped her get some assignments typed, and met with her aunt for the annual conference.  And she began to perk up a bit.

 Why, she wanted to know, did everyone ask her if she was okay? Nina asked me during the conference.

"Maybe," cause you don't act okay.
"After my mother died, people always asked me if I was okay," she continued.  "why would they ask me that, I held my mother's hand when she died and promised I would be okay."

I would have spent the next period, crying but the assistant principal kept calling and telling me to get the paper finished, faxed and filed.  I dried my eyes and brought it up to the assistant principal.

I told her the story, as I handed it in, like Nina, I felt a bit better after talking about it, I left the assistant principal's office as she reached for the tissues.

Nina negotiated with the social studies teacher.  He assigned a ten page paper on how some groups have been traditionally denied their right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,"   and the movements, and laws that were the results of such discrimination. Nina had one week to research it and write it.   Nina reads and writes with speed and accuracy of dyslexic who has not caught a lot of breaks in life.  While the rest of the school played staff- student basketball games, watched new conferences and generally complained about being in school on what should have been a snow day Nina and I slogged through the paper.

We had nine pages done at the end of the day.  And together we finished the bag of chocolate I had brought in for Valentine's Day.  The assistant principal offered me a ride home, but I was busy talking to the guidance counselor about why he thought I should develop a strategy to have Nina learn how to write the paper on her own, without my help,  so I missed my ride.

I took the bus home.  Strangely enough, same bus driver as the morning ride picked me up.  Another uneventful ride, this time even easier since it was downhill, and now raining instead of snowing.  His second wife worries about him, he assured me, he called her at the end of every run.

That's the moral of the story, isn't it?
Bus driving, paper writing and navigating life is much easier when someone worries about you.
Even on a snowy day.

Siri Takes a Midterm

Siri was doing pretty well on the midterm review.

Yeah the Iphone Siri.

True- we’re still not supposed to allow students to use their cell phones in class. Hey- the city discipline code says they’re not even allowed to have them in school. 

I read in a blog this weekend, that a teacher, I like to follow, had decided she was going to confiscate them when she saw them.  I am not sure about her reality, but I live in one where the sentence “Let me have your cell phone,” works about as well as, “Scotty beam me up.”

So most of the time I just beg students to put them away before the roving assistant principal comes around and then student and me are both in trouble.  But the assistant principal’s 97 year old mother  died, and Friday morning was the funeral- so she and the other administrators were otherwise occupied.

I had not planned to give a mid-term to the self- contained class. Of course -that is in direct contradiction to everything I’ve heard in this week’s professional development about rigor and parallel curriculum - but so what?   I figured I had to give a test at some point, but I hadn’t actually gotten around writing one when I opened my email on Monday and saw a note from the assistant principal of the special education department,  that we needed to bring our midterms to her office to be filed.   I planned to ignore it, but by Wednesday I decided I would cobble one together.  Then as long as I was writing a midterm, I would write a midterm review sheet. 

Friday morning I gave out the review. Most of the students, I am happy to report, went through our attempt at an interactive notebook and  perused their foldables for the answers.  But not Darian.  Darian joined the class late and doesn’t come to school that often.  It interferes with his selling marijuana business.  Darian often tells me he makes more in week than I do in a month.  I have no way  knowing but he does have a much better phone than me.  Siri was most cooperative, and generally faster than even the most complete of the interactive notebooks.

“Siri, what is a complementary angle pair?”  Siri responded immediately that it was a pair of angles that added to 90 degrees, and threw in a picture for good measure?

“Siri, how do you find the slope of a line when given two coordinate points?”  Siri returned  the slope formula with instructions on how to implement it within seconds?”

Darian did encounter difficulties when he asked for the definition  of a linear pair?  He couldn’t get Siri to understand his pronunciation of linear.  Siri kept coming back with some information about ears.

Okay- so I understand that what a good teacher would have done – would have been to tell him to put his cell phone away and use the resources in the room, but I was caught up in the efficacy of his plan.

“Why don’t you ask, what’s the meaning of life?”  I suggested. 

Darian did.  Siri told us that was a good question, maybe the ultimate question, but didn’t get more detailed than that.

Back to the worksheet.

By the end of the period, Darian had completed the sheet. Pretty accurately I might add. 

The other self-contained geometry teacher stopped by my room later in the day.  She had administered the exam and was depressed by the outcome.

“I don’t know what the point is?” she asked.  I go over the same thing over and over and over and over again, and they still don’t remember it.”

I know how she feels.  I feel the same way. I’m frustrated too, why do we teach geometry to people who can’t tell time on an analog clock?  If you can’t manipulate a ruler and a compass do you really need to know the triangle sum theorem?

We are told that with the right amount of rigor, high expectations and multiple entry points we should be great geometry teachers.

But can that really be true?

I don’t know---maybe I should just go ask Siri.

(or maybe we should just be replaced by Siri, she never got frustrated even, when Darien  could not pronounce linear!)

We’ll see how Darian does on the exam tomorrow.  The assistant principal is back from the mourning period. He’ll have to put the cell phone away.

Living and Watching Movies in the Industrialized World

Our two week winter break was interrupted on Thursday for a return to school.  Fortunately, Mother Nature had a blizzard in store for us Thursday night into Friday, so our new mayor and school chancellor got to open their term by declaring schools closed.  I returned to the warm corner of the sofa in the den and continued my trip around the world through the magic of  movie streaming.  This week alone I have been to South Africa, Tibet, Israel, Brazil and others.

But at least for a little while on Thursday I was back in my corner of world, trying to wake up enough and get the few students who braved the Artic-cold to wake enough to engage in that teaching learning-thing we are supposed to do

By mid afternoon, with the snow already beginning to fall, Marilyn was the only student in the Resource Room.  She’s not my student, she’s assigned to the other Resource Room teacher.  Marilyn was a mom at fourteen and lives with her mother and the babydaddy.   Marilyn and the baby were born in the United States, the mother and babydaddy were not.  I think about which country should spend the next two hours on my wide screen TV, Marilyn thinks about what country she and her family can live safely in.

Marilyn needs to pass the History Regents.  Despite all those worries and responsibilities at home, Marilyn works hard, and does fairly well, but the language dependent Regents are a challenge.  The other Resource Room teacher, a whiz, at maintaining files of study material whips out packets of, well, study material, especially for the history exam.

“Industrial revolution, what word that you know do you see inside of it?”  she asks Marilyn.  And then adds, the word is “industry, so when you see Industrial Revolution, think -machines.”

And I, never one to mind my own business, must add that it so much more than just machines. I ask Marilyn to imagine what it must have been like three hundred years ago on our own farms (or the landlord’s farm-more likely for both our ancestors),trying to raise the food, weave the cloth and protect our families without the help of supermarkets, department stores and central heating.  I talk about, how people left the farms to work in cities, how large factories caused certain countries to think they owned others just to gather the raw material needed to stoke the machines, how large textile factories required large plantations and large plantations required lots of workers and the idea of declassifying humans as humans so they could work on the plantation for free. The Industrial Revolution changed everything I add.  Marilyn listens intently and nods.  I cannot tell if she finds me interesting or useful, or if she is just being respectful.

On the car ride home, I thought about how I had not even mentioned the story of the moths in England, that we talk about in the Living Environment Course.  The moths the color of soot were able to survive by not getting noticed by predators in the sooty environment of 19^th century England, and therefore were able to go forth and breed more sooty colored moths- a story often used to illustrate natural selection.

In the early morning Resource Room, the two students who showed and I read a article from the New York Times by Nicholas Kristoff.   It is one of my standard operational procedures  to share true stories about how hard it is for people elsewhere in the world to obtain an education.  I figure that should make one less inclined to squander one’s free available one. (data does not definitively support this conclusion)  The Kristoff story was about a young woman who preferred being beaten with an electrical cord by a family who sent her for few hours a day of schooling in the capital while keeping her in indentured servitude for the rest of the day, to living with her own mother and many siblings far from an available education.

We ended up talking about birth control and how hard woman have it, how difficult it is to survive in a destitute country far from the factories and machines of the industrialized world.

And then the blizzard struck.

We all retreated to our central heated homes, in cities, far from the subsistence existence of our ancestors.  For better or worse we live on the Industrial side of the Industrial Revolution. We live in a world of machines.

Here is a list of movies I watched on the machine that produces it 10 feet away from my sofa if I figure out the right sequence of bottoms to press.  Unless otherwise noted they are available on Netflix Streaming.

Master Harold and the Boys     South Africa (based on Athol Fugard’s play, Apartheid and family drama plays out in a Capetown Teashop- dated but good)

Tsotsi                                             South Africa (More recent Athold Fugard story about the struggles of the very poor and very rich in post Apartheid South Africa)

Himalaya (Michael Pallin’s 2004 Travel Series) (Stunning travel show with Monty Python humor mixed in)

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea          Israel and the Gaza Strip (teenage angst between Israeli and Palestinian youth)

Sounds of Sand                          Africa (not specified) (When the travel is for survival vs.  stunning scenery, although the scenery is starkly beautiful viewed from a home with running water)

Free Zone                                    Israel and Jordan (A young Natalie Portman illustrates her Mideastern roots-angst)

Lillyhammer                               Norway (The Sopranos move to the North)

Matchmaker                               Israel (Bittersweet story of Holocaust survivors looking for love and the meaning of life)

La Sirga                                       Colombia (Surviving on the outskirts of war and the 21^st Century in Colombia)

Shun Li and the Poet                 Italy (recent young Chinese Immigrant and not so recent Slav immigrant search for friendship on the Italian waterfront)

Unfinished Sky                          Australia (Afghani refugee and crusty outback farmer find their lives intertwined)

The Middle of the World         Brazil (available through Freegal- poor family of seven bicycle from northern Brazil to Rio De Janeiro in an attempt to find work)

The First Grader                       Kenya (Old man enrolls in the finally free school system to learn to read)

Cuckoo Teacher

I am a cuckoo teacher.

I know this because Alisha told me.

Friday was the last day before break. It was the last day I taught under the Bloomberg regime.

Thursday three administrators and a dean visited the fourth period self contained geometry class.Well the dean actually didn't come inside. He just stood outside the room while two girls yelled at him. I put the poster over the window in the door. We were working on perpendicular lines and slopes. Even I know that two girls cursing out a dean is more interesting than perpendicular lines and slopes, but hey I got the message that we are supposed to teach bell to bell.

Teaching bell to bell means that if you are going to be paid and subsequently evaluated on your teaching than that's all you should be doing in between the bells that signal the start and end of the period. As the break approaches the whole concept can be extended to teaching right up to the moment the last bell of 2013 rings.

Yeah right! Thursday's class went something like this, two girls yelled continously at dean for ten minutes in front of the classroom door. I placed poster chart paper in front of the door window- therefore cutting off the visual if not the audio signal. One administrator came in and told me not to place anything over my window- ostensibly so he can be assured I am actually teaching between the bells I took down poster. Second administrator comes in and asks why I was holding the poster chart paper, which was blank, since I did not choose to write any notes on it while it was hiding the hallway show. Oh- I told her I only used it to block the view of chaos. Oh- she says- if there are problems in the hall I should call the dean and not cover the window. (The problem in the hall was the dean but I hardly saw the point in mentioning that- I was teaching.) She closed the door with the window now completely unblocked. A minute later the principal walked in, I expected another discussion about covering the window. I was wrong. He only wanted to know where our garbage pail is so he could throw out a plastic soda bottle he found in the hallway.

And I'm supposed to teach continuously.

I am tired of slopes and perpendicular lines. We have been working on them for a week. I am still not convinced anyone actually gets the relationship. This is the class that still needs to discuss which axis is the x and which is the y. This is the class that has difficulty placing a ruler between two points and holding it steady to connect the points to create a line. I spoke with the assistant principal for special ed the night before at a holiday celebration and after a couple of glasses of wine confessed that I doubted the concept that enough rigor was enough to make members of this group master the content of high school geometry while I totally ignored the skills and talents that they did possess, (Kindness, humor, tenacity and creativity – all aspects of the class makeup – all not particularly useful in mastering the Common Core college preparatory geometry standards) She said, but if it helped them receive a high school diploma then that would help them in life. She said it with little conviction, she too had had a few drinks. (The conundrum here is that I will pass out passing grades, its easier than writing a justification for large number of failures, which we euphemistically call “scholarship reports”- but it will not help my very needy students to obtain the high school diploma, because there are all sorts of obstacles, mainly the Regents or exit exams in all the subjects that they cannot surmount).

On Friday I pass out coordinate grids with instructions on how to plot a Santa Claus. The paraprofessional works very hard on hers. The rest of us chat.

Alisha tells me I am a cuckoo teacher.

I rise to the bait and ask why?

And Alisha enumerates. I sing, I dance, I hop around (I was hopping around the floor tiles the first day we did slope- this to illustrate the concept of rise and run). I lay on the floor. (Fred was agitated one day, came into the room and said he was going to lay someone out flat, I laid down on the floor and said- oh you mean like this? Fred sat down and started to copy the notes- agitation under control).

When someone says “I'm bored,” I do the The ol' soft shoe (give me the old soft shoe that any girl can do, a one, a two a doodly doodly do) that Ms Bee taught me a half century ago when I took tap lessons. Giovani comes to class twice a week, settles in and immediately says “Miss, I'm bored,” Just to check that it still works.

Maybe Alisha is right.

I am a cuckoo teacher.

I keep trying to teach geometry.

From bell to bell.

Though its tough to compete with the show in the hall.

Discipline or not?

Bernardo came to resource room, a rare occurrence, to tell me he wouldn't be there for a few days since he was probably going to be suspended.

We have a new method this year to deal with behavior issues suspend, suspend, suspend.  If you are wearing a hat you get suspended, if you take your cell phone out you get suspended, if you have  a major or minor fight you get suspended.  If you curse out a teacher you get....

well maybe you get suspended.
Maybe you don't.

Being disrespectful to teachers is not a huge infraction apparently, not like walking around the school with a hat on is.

So Bernardo told me the story.
It was a long story.  They all are.

Mr.  (now I'm having a problem here- I'd like to insert the name of a forest animal, because that would be the teacher's name in translation, but for some reason most of the forest animals I am coming up are real names of teachers in the school- which is condition I find fascinating and when I share that opinion with colleagues I get the kind of looks that makes me think I will never really fit in.)

Back to story.
Mr. Forest told him to move his seat,  And the long and short of it was Bernardo didn't.

So I called the dean who said, she had just gotten off the phone with Bernardo's foster mother who shared the fact that Bernardo had stopped taken his medications because he wanted to join the army and you couldn't join the army if you are on meds.

You can't join the army if you can't read, didn't graduate high school or can't move your seat when a superior tells you to- either, but that conversation with Bernardo is still in the future.

If I thought the dean's office was uncaring and inflexible, it was just because I hadn't spoken to that dean.

She explained sadly, that she didn't really want to suspend Bernardo, but a) he would need to be removed from Mr. Forest's class for a week, b) he would need a place to go fifth period and c)someone would have to talk to Mr. Forest about why Bernardo was not going to be suspended.

I went to talk to Mr. Forest.  Mr. Forest attended the high school in the days when the school was populated mostly by second and third generation families of European immigrants who worked in the blue collar trades NYC had no shortage of then. I wouldn't doubt he was the first member of his family to graduate college.  He is a well liked teacher with few discipline problems, but one who looks back wistfully,  to the days when the school was a respected institution instead of building that is persistently on the list of schools in need of improvement.

Mr.  Forest was one of the people who complained loudly about what was perceived as a lax discipline policy last year.  So it was with great trepidation that I approached him.

I told him how Bernardo had been abused by his father and ended up in foster care.

"My father, was everything to me," Mr Forest recalled, "I want to be everything to my son.  Let the dean make whatever plan she thinks is best."

The plan.

Bernardo did not get suspended.  He apologized to Mr Forest and promised to move his seat next time.He had to attend my fifth self-contained math class for the week instead of going to Mr. Forest's general ed one.

On Wednesday afternoon I heard Bernardo reporting to the other kids in the resource room that I had been banging my head against the wall during fifth period.  I can't recall the exact incident, But I do recall banging my head against the wooden closest, (so much more comfortable than the hard plaster walls.-  Fifth period math has been going less than smoothly this week). He is happy to return to Mr. Forest's class next week.

Oh and by the way- Bernardo didn't curse out Mr.  Forest.  That was some students in Teacherkarps class.  They were not suspended. She told me about it on the car ride home Friday.

I will go negotiate with the dean about them  on Monday.

I am an equal opportunity negotiator. (Busybody?)

PS:  We had a discussion on Friday about the new suspension policy.
"Why do they think giving us a week off is a punishment?"  Evan asked.

I pressed the group for what they thought would be an appropriate policy and got no concrete answer.
I think the answer is an engaging curriculum, which is what we have less and less of every year.

But what do I know?  I'm just a  white suburban soccer mom.

A week in and out of hell

Here's a teacher joke.

If NYC schools were arranged geographically - I would say the superintendent told it. But alas under the reign of mayoral control NYC schools are arranged by network or cluster, or clustered network, which unfortunately has nothing to do with chocolate or nuts, which one would hope- anything that has the word cluster in it- would. I was sent out to another high school in our cluster for training.

And they all begin with the two words Children First.  

Wishful thinking.

So here's the joke already.

A teacher dies and goes to  heaven.  St. Peter takes him on a tour.  After showing him the modest sections reserved for lawyers and doctors, since they had lived lavishly on earth, he shows him the elegant section reserved for teachers since they had not had their just rewards on earth.  The teacher is impressed, but wonders why the other sections were filled with gleeful noise, but the teacher's area was strangely silent.

"Oh, " says St. Peter, "It's only quiet today, because its Election Day, professional development day- there all in hell."

It was a shortened version of hell.  They let us out at 12:30 and I walked home, stopping for a short visit at a friend's home, a retired teacher. I listened to the joys of being retired.

The restarted week began Wednesday morning with a note that three new students were being transferring into my self contained class.  Two are much lower functioning than the those already there. They came with a paraprofessional who promptly fell asleep.  Kenneth told her loudly she couldn't sleep in class, she was getting paid to be there.  I told Kenneth it was not his job to tell her that, but wished my filter was as porous as Kenneth's.  Bettina took  my attendance sheet to make sure, they were really transferred in, then told me not to worry, she was just taking attendance for me. (And then for the record, I was unable to find the attendance folders for the rest of the day, since it got stowed with the work folders,)  Owen walked out of the class for most of the period, and when I questioned him upon return, he confided,  he hated looking like he was in the retard class. I had nothing more comforting to say other than he was man enough to take it.

I told the programmer I thought the number on the register was too many for the size of the room.

He essentially responded - with "I'm woman enough to take it."

Wednesday afternoon, the assistant principal wanted to look at the folders from that class, essentially to determine if I am an effective teacher or not.  (I'm not - we've already established that effective teachers don't spend half their day looking for their attendance folder).

Thursday Elisha was working on the problem of the day when she said something that I never expected to hear from a student,  "how do you expect me to do this if I don't have my notes?"

Wow- we're using our notes!

Except of course the assistant principal had her notebook.

But wait- didn't the network maven say something about children first?

So I call up and an aide brings down the notebook - just for the class time- it must be returned immediately. She opens the door and hands it to me. Looks around then says she'll be back to post mission statement. Every classroom now must have a mission statement.

Elisha stands up, climbs over Dominic's desk, pushes Damion out the way, grabs the notebook and returns climbing over Kimberly's desk this time.

Where are those forbidden cell phone cameras when you really need them?  

Our web-based IEP program was revised over the last weekend.  Now a glitch crashes the program if you hit the save button twice.  We were given new laptops.  I'm not used to the keypad quite yet.  I crash the program repeatedly during my lunch hour.  I wonder if I smash the new laptop and retire immediately will they take the $1243 they made me agree was the price of the new laptop , from my final paycheck or will they deduct it from my pension.  But in a moment of clarity I remember they are selling chocolate in the basement.  (Surreptitiously, the mayor is against selling junk food in school).

In the basement I meet a teacher who used to be in our small learning community but opted out for lunch duty.  "Is this really better?"  I ask.  He complains that if they wouldn't keep changing their minds so much who knows maybe it wouldn't be but for the time being, he rather pick up the milk containers from the floor.

"Have I seen the knew mission statement?"  he asks.  I haven't the aide said she'd be back with it tomorrow.  

I have one mission I tell, him, to get some of the knowledge in my head, into the heads of the students.

"Transference,"  he tells me- we could make a one word mission statement.

Or maybe just - Teach

But then what would we talk about in hell on Election Day?

Bad Days

Larry Ferrlazzo posted the question on his blog, "What do you do when you are having a bad day in the classroom?"  My reply included drinking  wine and watching stupid  tv.  That's what I said on Monday, when I read it.

Then I proceeded to have a series of bad days just to make sure my answer was correct.

Monday, I noticed I had eight Individual Education Plans to write.  A long time ago, when the current special education law and I were both very young, I learned that students with disabilities have plans developed by a team based on their specific needs.

I learned quickly, for teachers in our system, that meant, I had to write an IEP and get a parent's signature on before a deadline rolled around.  There has been much informal discussion-in our little office, just how sincere the process should actually be, but let's just say its been my experience that getting the plan filed is the critical part.

For students I see in a the Resource Room or the self-contained program I have at least a glimmer of who that person is, but its much harder for me to get a picture of a student who I only see for 45 minutes a day in math classroom dominated by the general education teacher.

I find Lamont, one of the students I hardly know,  For a half hour after school, I try to  gather enough information to make a stab at assembling his IEP.  I ask Lamont to fill out a survey about his plans for life after high school.  Lamont leaves it largely blank and when I press him, he says, "honestly Miss, I don't see myself as having a future."

Now it is past the end of the school day, I go directly to the phones only to find that not one counselor is still answering, and leave messages with three different ones.

Lamont tells me it doesn't matter, he doesn't matter.  I respond with that of course he matters, he matters to me.  Which probably sounds as completely lame to him as it does to me.  I think, he matters to me so much that if I hadn't be randomly assigned his IEP to write, I wouldn't had even this much of a conversation with him.

I try again, "you could matter to me, we could try to make each other matter."

And then Lamont says the one thing that gives me reason to hope,  he asks, "how?

"How do you make yourself matter?"

Listen, I know the derivation of the distance formula, I can find the area and volume of many figures, I can even explain math to people who truly believe math is put on the face of the earth purely to torture them.

But I really don't know how we make ourselves matter.

On Tuesday I called a series of guidance offices until I finally got a counselor to talk to Lamont.  He spoke to her for an hour, and she told him to come back any time.  She asked me to send him to her office from time to time, but on Wednesday, she said he voluntarily came up during lunch.

The rest of the week wasn't much better, just the problems were more mundane, lost cell phones, reminders from for the random IEP assigner that I needed to file the cases.  Mad disrespect (I caught lip- from one of my favorite Resource Room students- and ended up calling his mother) and the rest of the stuff that will keep me from ever being that  much discussed, effective teacher.

I had a glass of wine every night this week.
I ended the reply to Larry Ferrlazzo's post that after the wine I had to forgive and forget because that's the only way I could get up and do it again tomorrow.

Maybe that's the answer to Lamont's question- how do I make myself matter.

I get up and do it all again.
Even after a string of bad days.


PS: I bet I matter to the owner of the wine shop.