For awhile this blog didn't have any focus coming out from my end, and then the other day, as I watched a kid get what I was talking about, I thought it might be interesting to write more frequently and with focus:  henceforth, I'd really like my writing to be based on my experiences in the NYC DOE as part of their student-teaching program.


I am at a small school in Brooklyn, and my co-operating teacher will be out for the rest of the week due to a terrible (and sadly cruel) twist of fate.  I thought today might be a good time to introduce the unit I would be teaching starting on 5 October, but half-way through the lesson I realized that they haven't even been tested on what they learned in the previous unit.  Fuck.


I emailed my supervising professor for his advice about the situation- mainly about should I even be teaching with a substitute with little mentoring skills in the room, and he went ahead and called the principal.


Now I'm meeting with the principal tomorrow morning for a temporary reassignment, and I have a sneaking suspicion that she might be a little angry that I went to my supervisor before her, but my co-op teacher had her accident on Friday and I wasn't told about any of this until I stepped into the classroom Tuesday morning at 830am.


Argh.  I've joked about this a few times already, but the joke is wearing thin:  the job of this student-teaching experience is to also teach me how to navigate the murky and dangerous waters of a gigantic bureaucracy, and if I'm not even on the payroll yet I must be in for a real fucking treat from what I can tell from this preview.


Hell yes.

I am seeing the BIG DUCK this Summer. Swell!

55 degrees (Fahrenheit)! in June!

A snow day memory.

There was a snow day, in the very-early 1980s. My dad wore his plaid coat and other winter gear and I wore winter gear fit for a two year old.

There was snow that you could drown in, as tall as corn, eighteen stories high.

He constructed a snow slide, meaning a playground-type of construction, made of snow.

I was little, I weighed little, it worked like a charm.

I am sure I wanted my Dad to try it too, but he probably told me he was too big, ergo the slide would break.

I probably didn't understand, but enjoyed the slide.

Now, I am in my late-twenties and own a lot of plaid shirts and a plaid coat that I wear in the autumn, especially when I am pretending to rake leaves.