The Twilight Saga, Take 2 July 31, 2009

Last night, by the way, I dreamed I was doing dishes.  All night.  Never ending washing dishes.  Ugh.

So, I finished the Twilight series this afternoon, for the second time.  I read a little faster the second time through, skimming some of the backstories and whatnot, because those are four long books, and I wanted to make sure I finished before school started.  (A week to spare…no problem!)  On the other hand, some parts I think I read more slowly.  The entire first book, I know I read more slowly.  And the first and last thirds of the last book.  (If you’ve read them, you know what I mean.)  Somehow, when I know how it’s going to turn out, it’s like freedom to enjoy the experience.  The first time I read them, I felt a crazy urgency to keep going, keep finding out more.  At the same time, the stories are so…big, I guess, complex, surprising…that I sometimes had to stop and just let the story settle in my mind before I continued.  But I couldn’t stop for long, I had to know what happens next!  The second time, I already know what happens next.  I could read and experience and enjoy the current moment, because I knew the resolutions would come in their proper times.

I am looking forward to more movies based on the books, but they will never, ever match the gloriousness of the stories told in book form.  I really enjoyed the first movie; it was nice to put faces and voices to characters that I couldn’t picture.  They did a fantastic job, in my opinion, with the soundtrack, and when I got to certain parts of the story the second time through, I immediately had just the right song in my head.  Even the score music was great.  But you just can’t get inside Bella’s head in a movie the way you can in a book.  The book takes, maybe, 14 hours to read?  The movie is over in two.  I can’t imagine that the movie alone, without having read the story first, could make you adore Bella and Edward and their fate.  I would be interested to hear what people thought, who have seen the movie but have not read the books?

It’s been how many weeks now that I’ve been pretty much obsessed with these books?  It’s like when the Olympics were over…Now what am I supposed to do with my free time? 

… July 30, 2009

“There are some things I know for certain: always throw spilt salt over your left shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, plant lavender for luck, and fall in love whenever you can.”

–Sally (played by Sandra Bullock), Practical Magic

Anxious, Anxious, Anxious… July 30, 2009

Wow, you type that word enough, you start to think you’re spelling it wrong.  A-N-X-I-O-U-S, right?  Haha.

Today is Thursday, so that’s four nights in a row that I’ve had strange dreams.  Sunday night, all the preschool teachers and paras were mad at me for leaving them.  Monday night, giant bugs.  Thanks, no doubt, to the three giant bugs that we found in our classroom on Monday morning.  Tuesday night, strange dreams about non-school things that I’ll keep to myself, thank you.    And last night, vivid dreams about vampires, car accidents (Sarah and Christine, are you okay in real life???), and the huge disorganized mess that is my classroom.

Last night was the only night that it was the kind of dreams that make me wake up feeling like I never slept.  It’s not supposed to start yet!  I still have a week and a half until I’m officially back to school, and I don’t want to start with the pre-first-day stress yet!  I know what those days will feel like, after a few sleepless nights and restless dreaming…

Maybe if I reject the reality for a few more days.  Embrace summer.  Ignore anything school-related.  I’ll just be postponing the inevitable, but if it works, I’ll sleep better for another week!!!

If it doesn’t work, maybe it’s time to throw myself into my job once again, embrace the reality that is the busy first few weeks of school, and look forward, sleepily, to the day when I’ve settled into first grade and my dreams go back to their normal, strange, but not exhausting selves!

Things It Would Be Rude to Say to a Coworker…right? July 28, 2009

Okay, listen up.  I am not positive and bubbly and optimistic every day.  Sometimes I’m mildly bitchy, for no reason that is evident to you.  Or sometimes for no reason evident to me.

I am not confident all the time.  I am allowed to feel anxious.

I am not comfortable all the time.  I am allowed to feel overwhelmed.

The fact that you are bubbly, confident, and comfortable does not mean I will not feel bitchy, anxious, and overwhelmed.  Do not ramp up the bubbliness to try to make me “feel better.”  Do not repeatedly tell me that “everything will be great,” trying to make me agree with you. 

I am not great today.  Today, I am overwhelmed.  I promise not to be rude to you, and not to get in the way of your incessant positivity.  I promise not to be dramatic or throw a big fit.  I promise there will be no tears.  I promise to be only polite, kind, and professional. 

I do not promise to be bubbly.

I know myself, I know this feeling very well.  I know that it will disappear slowly over the first few days of school.  I know that between now and them, I have a lot to do.  I know that forcing bubbly positivity, in order to make you think I “feel better,” will cost more precious effort than I have to spend, and will only get in the way of the things I need to do. 

What will make me “feel better” is to work hard during the day, and make progress toward the resolution of the overwhelmedness.  To go through and organize all the crap that comes with inheriting a first grade classroom.  To work through curriculum and figure out the big picture of a year of first grade.  And to do it all with a rockin’ soundtrack in the background, and escape into a good book at the end of the day. 

BUT, the fact is, life is messy and imperfect, and not bubbly and wonderful all the time.  It isn’t all that important to “feel better.”  In my experience, “feeling better” doesn’t feel better if it’s forced or fake.  What is important is to feel the feeling, let it flow, let it run its course, and work through it.  NOT to deny it.

I do NOT like being told how to feel.

Music Fix July 27, 2009

I worked in my classroom with my new coteacher today.  I don’t want to talk about it.  Not because it was horrible, but because I’m still overwhelmed, and feeling in over my head, and I only have bad things to say, even though it wasn’t horrible.

On the way home, I stopped at Half Price Books for a music fix.  (You might stop on the way home for a beer, I stop for a CD.)  I found four:

Iron & Wine:  Our Endless Numbered Days

 

Muse: Absolution

 

Travis: 12 Memories

 

Travis: The Invisible Band 

 

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m totally on a Muse kick!  How did I not know about this band???

 

I’ve decided Iron & Wine is the best music to read to.  It’s sort of…gentle.  But in an awesome way.    It doesn’t get in the way of your reading.  Often if I have to read or write, I want music with no words — classical, or movie scores, or something.  Music with lyrics gets in the way of what I’m reading or trying to write.  It distracts the “words section” of my brain, I guess!  But Iron & Wine music doesn’t force itself upon you.  It is very acoustic, lots of acoustic guitar, and his soft, pondering voice singing.

Bella July 24, 2009

“You’re wrong, you know,” he said quietly.

“What?” I gasped.

“I can feel what you’re feeling now — and you are worth it.”

“I’m not,” I mumbled.  “If anything happens to them, it will be for nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” he repeated, smiling kindly at me.

 

–Twilight p. 404, by Stephenie Meyer

The Annual Tantrum July 23, 2009

Hold on….wait a minute…it’s coming…

Yep, there it is.

WWWAAAAHHHHHH!!!!  What have I done???  I don’t want to teach first grade!  I love teaching preschool!  I just want to go back to MY classroom, and MY kids, and MY stuff…and now it all belongs to SOMEONE ELSE!!!! 

Okay, deep breath…think rationally…talk it out…

Tantrum finished.  Time for rational discussion.

 

I was reading The Daily 5, which is a trade book about a management and literacy ”program” that our school uses during guided reading time.  The more I read, the more I realize it’s mostly about management concepts, and those concepts are things that I have come to do without thinking in preschool. 

For example, the authors describe how they moved from the mentality that students should be told or shown something once, and then understand and perform the expected behavior every day from then on.  In developing The Daily 5, they now know that they need to demonstrate and practice the expected behavior over and over, until it is the students’ “default behavior,” and return to demonstrating and practicing whenever it becomes clear that the students’ aren’t defaulting to the expected behavior.

There are tons of things I have to learn about first grade, but that concept isn’t one of them.  In my years of teaching preschool, modeling and practicing expected behavior for many days in a row became my “default teaching.”

And I already miss it!

 

That’s just one example of the things about preschool that I’m going to miss.  But, once upon a time, I wanted this.  I wanted a change, and I wanted to try something besides preschool.  More than once upon a time, actually, but many times over the past four years.

 

The things I am already missing about teaching preschool:

-Working closely with the families, seeing them every morning and afternoon.

-Home visits.  (Yes, you can think I’m crazy if you want!)

-Each preschool classroom was a unique situation–I was the only one with 3- and 4-year-olds all day.  I could fly by the seat of my pants whenever I wanted or needed to, without diverging from any shared plan amongst the other classrooms.  I had lots of freedom to follow the kids–if someone found a robin’s egg, we could spend the rest of the day learning about things that hatch out of eggs if we wanted to. 

-Three-year-olds!  I love that age!  I struggle constantly with whether full-day preschool is AT ALL appropriate for a “glorified toddler,” and of course it depends on the child (and the alternative–if they weren’t in my classroom, what would they be doing?)…but I love to watch them change over the months, because there is so much change at that age!

-Fewer students = more time focusing on each one.  If child A is ready to learn how to write the first letter of her name, and child B is ready to learn how to use commas and periods when writing a sentence, I have time to work with each of them.

-Art supplies.  Never thought I’d say that!  But I spent so many hours at the end of the year cleaning out and organizing the art supplies, and I wish I could go back and enjoy the fruits of all that work.

-My coteachers.  I have had so much fun working with and getting to know the other teachers and paras on the preschool team, and I’m sad to not get to work with them every day anymore.

-My returners…they’re not “my” returners anymore!…but I left it unfinished, because half my class is, of course, not ready for kindergarten yet!

 

Sigh…

 

The reasons I want to switch to first grade:

-Lunch break, planning time, recess duty only one or two days a week.  As much as I love teaching preschool, I was very, very close to feeling completely burned out at the end of last year.  There is only so long a person can handle being “on duty” for 7 hours in a row, no break to be away from the task, no few minutes to return a phone call or an email, no time to just sit still and breathe for a moment.  So often in preschool I was using Work Time (centers, students’ choice, you get the idea) to call the car mechanic, email a parent, use the restroom, have work-related conversations with other teachers, etc.  Anything that absolutely couldn’t be done after 3:35, had to be done when I was “supposed to” be teaching.  So there was not only a constant feeling of guilt over those little tasks that I needed to accomplish that day, or guilt over spending teaching time not teaching. 

-Do I prefer preschool or an older grade?  I’ll never know if I don’t try it.  I liked student teaching 3rd grade better than preschool, but student teaching may not be the best yardstick for what I will enjoy in “real life.”  And I loved my one semester teaching 2nd grade, but it was a whirlwind of being in over my head, and not enough time to judge.  I know what I adore about preschool and what I despise.  I need to experience another grade, to figure out what I adore and despise about that.  Without different experiences, what I despised about preschool was turning into despising preschool in general, and idealizing other grade levels.  And, unfortunately, it was really difficult to keep it from turning into bitterness toward other teachers.  “What could they possibly have to complain about?” and all that. 

-I adore the para I’ve been working with for the past four years.  However, I feel the need to take a break from being responsible for a para.  I’m looking foward to working with paras who are supervised and directed by the resource teachers, and are just in my classroom when their particular students are in my classroom.  Just for something different for awhile.

-I miss teaching content!  So much of preschool is about learning to wash hands and zip coats, learning to resolve conflict, learning to play games and sing songs…and it’s all important.  But I miss teaching guided reading groups, science lessons, math concepts.

-As a K-6 teacher, these are the basic tasks:  teach literacy, math, science, social studies, go home!  Music, art, large motor skills…these are someone else’s responsibility.  In that way, I feel like it’s a less impossible job.  (Less impossible.  Let’s face it…being a teacher is impossible.  It’s a job where you never, ever get your list of tasks finished.  You just turn to the next page, and start again.  It’s something to be strived for, and likely never acheived.  What in the world have I chosen as a career path???)

 

And then there are things I’m worried about for first grade, that have nothing to do with preschool:

-Thanks to the huge renovation starting this fall, another first grade teacher and I are sharing a classroom.  I’m so intimidated to coteach with her.  My first year in first grade, I’d rather make my mistakes behind a closed door.

-What do first grade teachers do on the first couple days of school???

-What students learn in preschool is important, but it’s all extra.  There will always be kindergarteners who did not go to preschool and needed it, so my preschoolers will go on to kindergarten always more prepared than someone.  First grade is mandatory.  If they are not ready for second grade, it is all me.  Accomplishing all the benchmarks is essential.

 

At this point, teaching first grade is a non-negotiable.  I already made my decision, and I’ve been assigned.  A new preschool teacher has been hired.  If I do this for a year, or even a few years, and decide I liked preschool better, I can always request to be moved again.  I can’t speculate on whether or not there will be an opening, but that’s the risk I take.  I can’t imagine hating an older grade so much that I couldn’t enjoy it if I set out to enjoy it.

That last thought really sums it up…if I set out to enjoy it, I will.  Enjoying something is not dependent upon the thing, it’s dependent upon me.  There are parts of every job I can enjoy…in this case, the sure thing is the children.  No matter how stressful or impossible the job turns out to be, I can enjoy getting to know the kids, bonding with them through the school year, turning a classroom and a group of children into a “family” of sorts.  That’s always been my favorite thing about being a teacher, no matter how much I love or hate the other parts of the job.  And, it might change a little when working with a different age group, but it doesn’t go away.

 

It’s funny…just a couple of days ago I was telling Sarah that I wasn’t having my usual “I don’t want to go back to school!” feelings that happen a couple weeks before I have to go back.  I was happy…maybe finally I’m settled into the school-year schedule!  Did I jinx it by telling her??? 

The Story of the Collage July 22, 2009

So, let me tell you the story of this collage that hangs above my dresser.  My junior year of college, I took an art class called Art for Elementary Teachers or something like that.  It was a required course, the objective being to learn how to use art as a teaching tool in the elementary classroom, of course.  I didn’t care about this class, I didn’t connect with the teacher, I was just doing my time.  I don’t perceive myself to be good at drawing, painting, anything like that.  I never took art in high school.  When it comes to being creative, I much prefer playing music and writing stories.  Trying to do anything visual art related makes me feel just as uncoordinated as trying to do something sports-related.  So I was just going to try my best and aim for a nice C+.  Of course I learned right away that I wasn’t the only one–none of us were art majors, after all!– and that quality of the product wasn’t the point of the class.  As long as I tried my best, I was going to end up with an A.  Imagine my joy! 

The assignment was collage.  That was it.  Do a collage.  I had a stack of magazines, one of which was a seed catalog, the kind with pages and pages of pictures of plants and flowers.  The picture on the front cover was a big sunflower, and I decided I would do something with the colors of the rainbow.  It felt like a cop-out, like I was escaping back into a more comfortable area, since the rainbow is an order, an organization of elements.  Something I know backwards and forwards since being an elementary school art student!  Nonetheless, I had made my decision. 

I started cutting out pictures of flowers, until I had a good sized pile of pictures from each of the six colors of the rainbow.  Then I just started gluing them onto my cardboard.  Somewhere in the process of cutting and gluing, it was like I went into an altered state of consciousness, totally focused on the project, and yet not focused on anything.  As though I could keep cutting and gluing for hours and hours, without growing weary of it.  And when I was finished, I had this thing that felt as though it had not been my idea.  It was just something that poured out of me, and became something of its own. 

I remember thinking that it was a cool experience…but nothing more.  I expected to take it to class, get my A for effort, and that would be it.  Strangely, the teacher and the other students really liked it.  I remember the teacher spoke of the “movement of the colors,” which was my favorite thing about it, too.  And I felt like I was taking the credit for some unnamed source, because it had never been my idea or my intention.  It just turned out that way.

To the best of my knowledge, I wasn’t inspired by anything but the colors in the seed catalog.  There was no experience that left me feeling the need for a catharsis.  There was no song that lit a fire in me.  I was given an assignment…I saw some pretty pictures…I started cutting and gluing…and this beautiful thing emerged.  It was very cool.

No Spoilers Below July 20, 2009

Keep reading, I’m not going to spoil anything!!!

I finished the Twilight saga.  Page 754 of Breaking Dawn, finished at about 1:00 this afternoon.  I did not, as I had expected, stay awake until I finished.  I read until about 1:30 this morning, though!  And then again from about 10:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., taking breaks here and there to eat, take a shower, walk around and let the story settle, etc.  Approximately 2400 pages of being completely engrossed in the story of a world where vampires and werewolves and humans exist together, whether they know about each other or not. 

I want to tell you all about it.  I’m so tempted just to put at the top of this post, “Twilight spoilers below,” and leaving it up to you.  I changed my mind as I was reading Stephenie Meyer’s author site, and on the Breaking Dawn page she describes why she didn’t want to accidentally spread spoilers all over the world:

Breaking Dawn was meant to be experienced in a certain way, and I would hate for someone to get that experience ruined by seeing something online they didn’t want to see.

I get that.  In fact, I was reading the FAQ pages for the first two books while I was in the middle of the third book, and right away I realized I wanted to stay away from the last two FAQ pages until I was done with those books, as well!  I burn with curiosity, I have such a hard time not spoiling the end for myself when I know I could learn so much more about the story and the characters by reading what the author has to say.  In fact, with these books there was actual physical temptation to go read the last page!    A couple of times I flipped to the last page just to read the page number and see how far I had to go, and it was so difficult for my eyes to stay away from the words!  It’s so hard, keeping a secret from myself!!!

But, I did.  I experienced the whole saga just as Ms. Meyer intended.  (Probably a little faster than others, since the books came out over a timespan of about 4 years, and I read them all in the last few weeks!)  But I didn’t know anything more than the book jacket told me when I started each book, and it was so worth it!  So I’m leaving you entirely in the dark.  If you choose to read the saga, I’m not going to be the one who spoils any part of the experience for you.

I am going to tell you the reasons, I think, that these books engrossed me so entirely.  One, Bella.  The main character is so much a reflection of me in ways I can barely articulate.  How she sees herself is much different from how others see her.  I feel the same, all the time.  I hear what someone says about me, and I think, who?  Me?  How did they get that idea?  I adore Bella.  I almost can’t wait to start again, experience her entire adventure all over again.

Reason two, music.  In each book, Ms. Meyer thanks the bands who have inspired her, and her taste in music is right in line with mine.  If you aren’t passionate about music the way that I am, you might not understand this.  But the music I listen to influences everything that goes on in my head, and therefore how I perceive everything that goes on outside of my head as well.  Every day of my life, there is at least one song, or even just a snippet of a song,  that is like the soundtrack of my life, and no one on the outside of my head would ever know it.  (Today, FYI, it’s “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse.  Yesterday it was the first five songs on Cradlesong by Rob Thomas.  Saturday, “Flightless Bird American Mouth” by Iron and Wine.)  And so, the music in my head affects not only what goes on in my head, but also what comes out of my head, what I say and do and create.  I think, the way that Ms. Meyer talked about the music she listened to while writing, that her passion for music works the same way.  And, it’s the same “feel” of music as I would have chosen to listen to, so the “feel” of the story fits right into the “feel” of the soundtrack in my head.

Reason three, which is a loose theory with no basis in anything, and feels somewhat related to the music thing, the need to create.  Artists, musicians, authors, I think it’s a similar thing that is desired.  The thing being, having something inside of you that you want to let out, that you know if you could just find the right medium it would spill out of you effortlessly and make something beautiful.  It is hard to articulate, and I don’t know if it happens to everyone, or just people with an artistic brain of sorts.  (I hope it happens to everyone, because it is wonderful!)  What I do know is, it has happened to me over and over since I was little.  Every time I stopped reading, to go to sleep for the night or eat a meal or take a shower, I felt that thing growing stronger, something that will eventually pour out of me in one form or another.  Immediately upon finishing the last book, I am in the mood to start NaNoWriMo already!  So that gives me one clue: this thing will be in the form of writing.  I don’t know what the story will be yet.  It won’t be about vampires.    It will be something…new.  My own creation.  Though, it feels weird to say that, because I won’t do it on purpose.  It will just come pouring out one day.  No novel, in my recollection, has ever made me feel that way before.  Songs, lots and lots of songs, the occasional t.v. show or movie, but never a novel.  Sometimes a random experience that seemed to come from nowhere inspirational at all…remind me to tell you about my collage sometime. 

(NaNoWriMo=National Novel Writing Month, aka, write 50,000 words between November 1st and 30th, for no good reason other than your own life experience.  I’ve tried twice, 2005 and 2006.  Or maybe 2006 and 2007.  I didn’t accomplish 50,000 words either year.  I’m ready to try again.)

And reason four that I think I connected so much with the Twilight story: I’m a sucker for a love story of the all-consuming variety. 

Needs and Wants July 19, 2009

I need to:

-pay bills

-swiff the floors

-write a new article for the church blog

-do a couple loads of laundry

-go to bed at a reasonable hour

 

I want to:

-READ THE LAST 400 PAGES OF BREAKING DAWN (the last Twilight book) !!!

 

Want trumps need, tonight!