Mostly Painless

Well I got my voice back enough to teach today, which was almost a shame. It would have been bad for me to use one of my (only three) sickdays for the year- but then again if I am going to be sick legitimately laryngitis is a great one to be out with. Usually when I take a sick day I’m just too darn sick to enjoy it.

Work was painless today, there is no extraordinary sense of accomplishement I get from there but it does not stress me out anymore either. Now obviously everyday and in every way I’m getting better and better, but the kids just aren’t keeping up. This isn’t some lame attempt at compliment fishing- trust me if you saw the way this place was run you’d have to agree. The textbook lessons could eventually teach them English, but on a long enough time frame so could re-runs of Friends.


But I must reinforce that I am not complaining, I would be if I wanted to make this job into a career- then the futility of it all would lead me to some dark inner turmoil. The kind that is manifested by bleak rhyming poetry. But as someone who has gotten far too invested in a lot of the jobs I’ve had in the past this is quite liberating. I do my work and leave, knowing that it is the time outside of the school that is my most productive. I have been very productive and proactive on a lot of little projects in my free time that I have long been putting off. Heck you gotta wonder how I manage to update both my blogs on a regular basis and still get anything else in life done. Too much caffeine and too little sleep is the short answer.

The only real thing that happened today of any real note was when the director popped in on one of my classes, well part of her, she literally sticks her head in the door and looks around for a second before yelling at the students. I think she was a little disappointed because when she stuck her head in one of my kindergarten classes earlier that day she didn’t see anyone misbehaving. This isn’t due to me, that class were angels when I got ‘em. So this time around she yelled at the students a bit (these ones were actually not acting up too much at all) and then watched me write some questions on the board. She then asked that I not write my “y”s from bottom to top, but top to bottom. She thought it might confuse the children as that was not the proper way. Now I hold my pencil funny and I write all my ‘o’s counterclockwise and all my letters from bottom to top and all of it sloppier than a pig covered in maple syrup. I had someone tell me once that was an indication that I was actually left handed or ambidextrous. Its my personal conclusion (and that of anyone familiar with my penmanship) that I am just equally useless with both hands when it comes to good handwriting. In any case my director is really not good at picking her battles, as I just mumbled something back about me being ambidextrous and unwilling to change. It had the intended effect of not imparting any comprehension on her sub-par English skills. I really don’t know what more she expected from me when I was ten minutes from being done for the day.

Anyway me tired go sleep now.