Char-What?

Charlotte.  Back in my home.  It's funny how much it feels like home, especially since I've lived out of two bags for a month and half.  My old "home" is really just my parents house now, and even though I grew up on the bunk beds they put back in my room after I stole all my other furniture for down here, it didn't feel like my room anymore.

As excited as I am to be back in Charlotte (after a mere 14 hours in the car starting at 5 am), I've encountered a few problems:

1. My phone is dead- maybe this doesn't seem like that huge of an issue except that...
2. My charger is missing- okay, that complicates things a little more, but why don't I use my car charger?
3. My car is about 2500 miles past its oil change.  Whoops.

Oh well.  I need to tame this explosion of things that is in my room right now.  I hate unpacking.

The Stages of Teaching

We were given this graph of the stages of a first year teacher sometime in October for a TFA session on having "balance" in your life.  HAH.  That's how most of us responded to that, if we could manage to untuck our heads from the fetal position.  One of my friends posted this on Facebook and got a pretty funny line of responses, mostly questioning whether rejuvenation would ever ACTUALLY happen.

I re-did the graph to more accurately show the stages of a first year teacher.  Please note the area where the plot line drops off the graph into no man's land (approximately September-November).

Additional Photos

I've been looking at old photos at home, and happened to stumble upon some from the infamous Cousin's Camp that I blogged about last week.

At left is the playhouse in all its glory, and below are two pictures of all the cousins.  To me, the funniest part is the fact that all the kids are doing whatever they want in the third picture, with my mom and dad just looking away not caring anymore. Wonder if Mollie's arm is broken there?

More About That Girl

My boyfriend reads Barstool Sports religiously (as most 20-35 year old men on the East Coast probably do) and I usually give him a pretty hard time about it.  Surprisingly, I don't love watching him pore over the Red Sox, weird-looking criminals with even weirder sounding crimes (i.e. does this look like the face of a man who would lure children into his broken down van with hot dogs and cotton candy flavored condoms?), and hot local girls.  Even so, I caught a post about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo over his shoulder... which made me laugh, mostly because it's true and also because I just blogged about it.  Women ARE reading this book, including my 80+ year old grandmother.  So all three males that read my blog- follow this advice and maybe it'll score you a date (possibly with Nana).

Upgrade

One of the few reasons I'm excited to get back to Charlotte- being able to join the Mac community.  I figure that getting myself a new little MacBook Pro will be ample distraction from leaving my family and friends and boyfriend until school starts.  After all, for the past month I've pretty much been able to bum around with whoever I want for however long I want.  I've extended two-day visits into weeklong stays, driven 400 miles on a day's notice, and used the "Let me check my schedule" sarcasm every time someone has asked me if I can come to a party.  It's a pretty awesome feeling, but knowing that I'll be going back to real life where work and yoga and eating and sleeping leave very little time for extra activities made getting a new little toy a very attractive distraction option.  The only problem is the fact that I now want to throw my old computer out a window... I'll have to suppress that urge until next week.

Camera Insurance

Yesterday I finally pulled the trigger and bought a new camera- my sixth one since I started college.  The quality of the cameras I was receiving (usually on my birthday or for Christmas) slowly began to decrease, and for good reason.  I mean, what kind of person needs a new camera once a year?

People that know me, especially people that know me from college, know that I LOVE taking pictures.  Some nights, I would come home to a memory card with over 100 pictures on it.  It would be closer to a film of the night's event than to random snapshots.  Part of the problem is that I used my camera at all times (and often alcohol is involved), so my little electronic friends would be done faster than most.  Following is a short list of how each of my cameras met its demise.

1. Camera #1: my 17th birthday present, it made it through high school without a scratch.  But at the first tropical party at Trinity, some kind of sticky beverage got underneath the buttons, making it very difficult to work them unless you could put up over 150 pounds on benchpress.
2. Camera #2: bought hastily to capture our family vacation in the Outer Banks in August, it lasted until New Years without incident.  It fell to its death in a toilet (note: a clean toilet) at a party in New York City, and although it still SORT OF worked after that, the pictures had weird lines through them.  Then it fell in a drink concoction and it was DEFINITELY done.
3. Camera #3: my 21st birthday present that was bought with my upcoming semester abroad in Rome.  I loved it.  It got through my 21st birthday celebration, Thanksgiving festivities, and Christmas at the beach in Florida.  Unfortunately, my purse got knocked out of the car at a gas station on our drive back north.  Purse: recovered.  Wallet with credit cards: recovered.  Cash and camera: gone (along with all our pictures from Disney).
4. Camera #4: I couldn't go to Rome without a camera, so I got one before I left that took awesome panoramic shots... probably the best feature on it, especially when I used it to create pictures combining one person's lower body with another person's head.  Somehow, this one stayed firmly on my wrist through a near-arrest by the Spanish police in Barcelona, red wine fueled club nights in Rome, sprints through Prague to avoid homeless men peeing in the street, and all the European gypsies that my mother cautioned me would chop off my arm with a machete to get to my valuables.  First week back at school and it got dropped onto a coffee table.  For some reason, a lens bent up at a 45 degree angle won't take pictures... weird, right?
5. Camera #5: Christmas, four months later.  I was hurting.  I had missed the documentation of MAJOR senior year events.  Then what did I find in my stocking?!  A new Kodak!  It was a Christmas miracle.  So maybe it was the cheapest model they made.  Maybe it was bigger than my first camera with its five-year-old technology.  I didn't care.  Fast forward to about two months ago.  After a night out in uptown Charlotte with way too much ridiculous dancing, one of my friends was missing.  We couldn't leave without her.  Unfortunately, I didn't make the most practical choice of footwear.  Solution?  Take off my four and a half inch stilettos while we waited for her to meet us.  Not wanting to stand on the bare pavement, I decided to stand on my purse (after taking out my electronics, of course).  My camera is probably still sitting on that lamppost, waiting to be picked back up.

The cashier asked if I wanted camera insurance on this new one as I was buying it.  I thought about it...

"Does that cover spilling things on it?"
"Uh, no.  Only internal problems with the camera."
"Oh, so like a lens that gets broken when you drop it."
"No, because that would be your fault."

What's the point of insurance then?  I can only hope that it survives this weekend in Boston...

What a Bummer

One of the most mood deflating things that can happen to me is doing something I hate (i.e. get up at 5:30) for something I love (i.e. 6 am yoga class) and then getting stopped by some impassable obstacle (i.e my dad's truck at the end of the driveway with a dead battery).  And all before I had coffee.  I would have jumped it, but considering I learned how to do that from Michael Scott (see Season 3, Episode 14 intro), I decided it might be better to just go inside and wait for someone else to help me with it.  See post title for my current mood.

Confidence Boost

Sometimes, the articles written about Teach For America give me a much-needed lift in my self-confidence.  Apparently these articles are in no shortage these weeks, probably because of a pretty anti-TFA study done in Texas.  I like reading both kinds of articles because it lets me see how much of the TFA juice I've drank (quite a lot) but it forces me to think about what I consider to be the positive and negative aspects of the organization.  It also gets me fired up because in most cases there is some kind of inaccuracy, especially regarding teacher layoffs* (see below).  Not that TFA's info is free from criticism- I'm pretty sure that their alumni statistics are a little skewed when it comes to judging how many alums are in an "education" field (a pretty broad category, I would argue) and how many still support the TFA mission (another vague description).  If you'd like to be a little bit more impressed with me (or rather, the organization I'm a part of), feel free to browse through these articles.  They're mostly based on Ivy League and really elite schools, but still applicable to all in TFA.

A Chosen Few Are Teaching For America, NY Times

What They're Doing After Harvard, Wall Street Journal

Also, if you haven't made your way down to the bottom of my blog, you'll find a stream of education/TFA related news... just in case you're interested.

*It's a pretty common misconception that during teacher layoffs, districts are letting go experienced teachers and replacing them with TFA teachers.  Budget cuts requiring a reduction in force and the hiring of Teach For America teachers are two different things- TFA hiring (at least in my district) is part of the district's strategic improvement plan, mainly because our superintendent believes strongly in the program's results.  So, for example, the district may be cutting its technology budget by 1/3, but its strategic technology plan calls for the purchase of 3,000 new computers.  These two decisions sound contradictory at first, but (as I said before) they're part of two different district initiatives.  Also, Teach For America teachers are not immune to layoffs.  You can ask corps members in my class who DID get laid off this year.  A lot of people believe that we are allowed to stay no matter what we do, but our performance is measured by the same evaluation tool used to determine which teachers get RIF (reduction in force) letters.  Usually, the teachers that get these letters are (1) mid-year or emergency hires who have only signed a contract to the end of the year, (2) teachers who have been teaching for fewer than five years and have been rated below-standard in one or more of their evaluations, or (3) teachers whose position has been combined with another or eliminated altogether (sadly, more and more special-area positions like librarians and guidance counselors are being cut).

What Happened to Cousin's Camp?

Today I went to Buffalo for a hot second with my mother for my cousin's graduation party.  My siblings and I are the only ones that don't live there, so we're given some extra points on the coolness scale because people don't see us as much.  It does make it more disappointing when not everyone shows up, though, because we drove the whole two hours to make an appearance for nothing (no hard feelings Jordan, Justin, and Laura...not).  In the family spirit, it made me remember a pretty significant tradition in my childhood that I realized has never been mentioned on this blog.

Sometime in the '90s, my parents decided it would be a good idea to have something called Cousin's Camp.  Cousin's Camp, in their minds, would be a week filled with fun activities and family bonding.  There was one rule- you had to be potty-trained.  Naturally, my aunts and uncles jumped at the chance to get rid of their pesky Polish offspring, and most of them were shipped of to the village to join the festivities.  All in all, there were nine of us- six Fiorillos and three Zaprowskis.

The next year, Cousin's Camp was shortened to three days.  The year after that, it was canceled.

"But why?" you're probably asking.  "It sounds like such a great idea!"  I don't think any of these events is the sole reason for the demise of Cousin's Camp, but they may have had something to do with my parents' hesitance to repeat it (or my relatives' hesitance to send their kids back):

1. The vagueness of the potty-training rule: to be clear, there is a big difference between potty-trained and mostly potty-trained.  One cousin (probably so excited at the thought of spending a week with his ultra cool cousins) wet his pants the first day.  I don't know if he knew of the only rule, but he hid the evidence... in his suitcase.  For six days.  You do the math.
   
2. Make-your-own-sundae: it works in theory, but when practiced in reality it results in one cousin stealing the strawberry syrup, chugging it under the kitchen table, then passing out on the living room floor after the sugar rush wears off.  Also, chugging strawberry syrup is impossible without spilling some (read: a lot) on your chest, which looks an awful lot like blood (especially if it's on the body of a passed out five-year-old).
   
3. Medical liability: my parents had a very specific mindset when it came to childhood (and teen and adult) injuries- suck it up.  In fact, "suck it up" was heard more often than most other phrases in our house growing up.  So, when my cousin Mollie stood at the top of our fireman's pole...
   
   Wait a minute.  I need a digression here.  After my sister's First Communion, my dad used the money to build us the most awesome playhouse of all time.  It was two stories high, with a cargo net leading up to a second floor balcony and "bedroom" that was carpeted.  From the balcony, you could take the fireman's pole down to the first floor, where there were swings, gymnast's rings, a window that folded into a table, and a ladder with a hatch back to the second floor.  It's the only reason we had friends as children.  Anyway, back to the main point.
   
   Mollie was too afraid to go down the pole, even though it was only about twelve feet off the ground.  My dad's advice?  Suck it up.  She tried.  But apparently to Mollie, suck it up means let go of the pole and fall twelve feet to the ground.
   
   "I hurt my arm!" she cried.  My parents' response?  Suck it up.  Oh yeah, and go bowling with everyone the same night.  Her parents were a little bit more concerned when she got back... broken arm.  Whoops.

So somewhere between the urine-soaked clothing and making a little girl use a crippled arm to bowl, Cousin's Camp lost its fervor, especially because I think my aunts and uncles paid to get the kids out of their hair.  Most people don't like to pay for stuff like that.  It's really too bad, too, because we all agree that Cousin's Camp would be awesome now that we're all older and DEFINITELY potty-trained.  Our parents still won't do it though- they claim they can't afford the alcohol.

I Need a Blog Intervention

I've spent WAY too much time on here today doing some pretty useless stuff.  But you'll be happy to know (or at least I hope you will, because if not it would've been a huge waste of time) that my blogs are now all labeled under the lovely categories you see a little ways down on the right sidebar.  Which means you can now find old blogs more easily by using the labels!  I bet everyone was hoping I would do that soon (not).  At least it makes me feel more organized.  Although I am a little insecure that some of the posts I chose to label "funny" are not found as humorous by others as I found them.

The Problem with Scary Books

My first book was "Are You My Mother?" by P.D. Eastman.  I used to sit on my little brother's lap and make him listen as I read out loud (something my college roommates know that I LOVE to do):

"Are you my mother?"  I'd look down at him squirming and pause.  "No," I'd reply to myself with conviction.  "I am NOT your mother."

Since that first book, I was hooked.  I read all the time.  It's part of the reason why I wanted to teach- because I love reading and writing enough to major in it in college (read: English) and actually enjoy when I had papers assigned on 400 page novels.  I no longer sit on anyone as I read, but you will find it pretty difficult to interrupt me.  It's like I'm in a different world.  People have screamed my name and thrown objects (and missed) but I don't skip a beat.  It's because when I read, I'm in it.  I think in the voice of the author.  I add myself into the plot.  I have to finish the book in a day or I risk dreaming myself back into, which only serves to confuse me when I start reading the next day.

My latest book was Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I'm a little behind on that fad, because it's already come out on Netflix, but oh well.  If you haven't heard about it, it's classified on its back cover as a murder mystery/family saga/love story/financial intrigue, so you can imagine how freaked out I was to have 100 pages left at 3 am.  I was far enough in to be at the most horrifying part, but not far enough in to reach resolution.  I was also at the absolute end of my energy; I had no choice but to go to sleep.  Turning off the light, I laid in bed, swearing I'd see a shadow in my window just beyond my foot board.  Forget that the story happens in Sweden.  I was in a half awake, half nightmare state.  I should have just finished the book.

Then it happened.  A figure- in my door, just standing there.

"What the hell?"  I called out sleepily.

"I need to sleep in here.  It's too damn hot."  Great time for my mom to open my door and stand as a haunting shadow for thirty seconds.  I should only be allowed to read scary books in the daytime.

*Note: the book isn't actually that scary.  Very good, no doubt, but really not that scary.  I'm just a baby.

A New Look

Due to summer boredom, a new Blogger template designer, and a general feeling that things should change since my blog is about to become the adventures of a SECOND year teacher, I've got a new look.  Today must be some kind of re-formatting day for me, because I also updated and redid my resume from scratch for law school applications (yikes!) AND started a blog/website for my dad's personal training business.  Like?

When LeBron James Was a First-Grader...

I'm no sports junkie, but my boyfriend is.  Usually I can sound somewhat intelligent by parroting what he and his friends have discussed in front of me and pretending that they're my own thoughts (sneaky, right?).  It's because of him that I know about the whole LeBron one-hour special tonight about his decision of where he'll play next, and because of him that I've formed the opinion that he is sort of acting childish in his request to have a prime-time special centering around his choice that would probably take up about a minute or two of the programming.  It would arguably take up that much time in the same slot even if he had released it in the way most of the other free agents had (given ESPN's propensity for beating the day's sports stories to death).

It made me think of what he might have been like as a first-grader, perhaps demanding that the kids watch him pick others to play on his team for that game with the big plastic basket and the different holes for the ball to come out.  He would definitely be the one shooting paper towels into the garbage can in the bathroom, chest-bumping his much smaller classmates who had not yet washed their hands.  It's because of him that all the students in my class would steal the sidewalk chalk from the communal bin during recess, rub it vigorously on their hands, and begin clapping clouds of dust into the air screeching "I'm the king!  I'm the king!"  (That really did happen pretty frequently).  Come to think of it, that's probably where his whole pre-game routine started- on the first grade playground.  Just some non-sports thoughts on a sports issue.

Get Out Yo Seat and Romp Around

One of the more amusing things about teaching lower elementary is the gifts you get from the kids throughout the course of the year.  Ask any K-2 teacher and they'll be able to tell you about some pretty hilarious and outrageous things that kids have brought in.  One of my student's former teachers donated a huge 3' by 1' decorative art piece that was clearly plucked off the wall of their home (or off the curb in front of a random stranger's house) in a last ditch attempt at Christmas spirit.  Some have gotten pints of obscure perfumes or toys from fast food kid's meals.  My aunt had to call home after a first-grader began stealing jewelery from his mother to give to his beloved teacher.

My mother, since her school was closing and she was retiring, brought home a massive box of gifts.  Most of them were cards and letters, ranging from "I hope you enjoy retirement" to "I'll dream about you every night."  She also got a cardboard box that was meticulously covered with colored duct tape with a large F protruding from the top of it.

I have received my fair share of thoughtful and bizarre gifts, ranging from Chick-fil-a gift cards to stuffed animals to the homemade flower pen I mentioned in a previous post.  My favorite and most random gift came on the last day of school just as one of the most well-behaved kids in my class left, handing me a cute little gift bag (I take a lot of notice of cute gift bags and cards).  I didn't get the chance to open it until the next day, when I found a pajama romper from Target inside.  Why a student and his parents would decide that a green floral onesie would be an appropriate end-of-year gift for a teacher is beyond me.  All I know is that it is the perfect summer accessory for me, letting me wear it all day when I've woken up past noon singing my "Romp Around" song (to the tune of this classic).  It really lets me capture the feeling of summer and my lack of responsibility and we all could learn a little something about the feeling you get when wearing one.  Those of you that aren't teachers, though, will have to go out and spend the money yourself.

 The romper in question from Target.com 
(no, I did not model it myself and then post it on my blog)

Happy Birthday America

I wish every birthday party could be this fun.  The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays, beaten by the only two birthdays more important than America's- mine and Jesus'.  In some ways it's better because you're allowed to be cheesy as if it were a theme party, with mass-produced flag t-shirts and oversized colored sunglasses.  It has no full family or friends obligations either- it's whoever you want to spend it with.

This Fourth of July was spent at my mother's family estate in Western New York.  I'm using the word "estate" very loosely here.  I managed to get my boyfriend back with all five of my mom's brothers and their families at the campground my Nana has been taking them for over thirty years.  It's a pretty unique little place, a circle of trailers left year round down a dusty dirt road on an Indian reservation.  The younger relatives are left to tents set up wherever there's room, sometimes having to resort to shelter under unused picnic tables or the beds of pick-up trucks (maybe that only happens when you forget some vital part of your tent).

The best part of Fourth of July on an Indian reservation is the fireworks.  Sure, we've all seen pretty spectacular fireworks displays, but you haven't seen fireworks until you've seen them set off of washed up tree stumps with a Bic lighter twenty feet away from you.  Add in a Happy Hour that officially starts at 5 pm (or whenever you wake up, if Nana forgets to take down the flag) and bonfire conversations until late into the night, and you have one fun party.

The topic at the bonfire this year centered on the five items you'd need to survive on a deserted island, led by my father who essentially bashed any of the other choices the other campers made.  A favorite interchange was when a family friend shared that he's bring a family photo for emotional strength.  My dad looked at him for a hard five seconds and just said,

"You're dead."

Great Fourth of July spirit Dad.

Searching for The "Just-Right" Book

Quick post to let you know that my very first Donors Choose project is posted.  Read my project proposal here and PLEASE donate so that my kids can have a full library when they come back to school in the fall.  Not only are you supporting my classroom, but you're also supporting a really great organization that helps thousands of teachers get the resources they need.  Take a look!