Burning the Candle at Both Ends

My Mom used to tell me all the time that I "burned the candle at both ends." I should listen to my mom more, because she was and is right. I know I've done several "I'm here, I'm alive...I promise" posts, so I figured doing one more wouldn't hurt.

I'm here. I'm alive.

I promise.

I told Eric this weekend that the Charlotte that comes back from our honeymoon in January is going to be like a whole different person. The wedding and honeymoon will be done. I'll have completed the 40+ hours of coursework for my Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). And my first semester of teaching will be under my belt, as well as my first project with my new partner teacher.

Why, I'll positively have free time!

Seriously though. I just wanted to say 'thanks' to everyone who's supporting us through this wedding process. I apologize in advance if I'm getting testy or hard to deal with. I'm not the uber "girly" type, but I've found myself snapping at friends and loved ones about things concerning the wedding, my patience has been drawn thin, and things I never knew could upset me, like how well the invitations turned out, have positively sent me spinning.

I want the old Charlotte back, and I know I probably won't get her until the wedding is over.   /sigh

The wedding-stress dreams continue. Last night I had a dream that there was a giant "to-do" list in front of me and every time I checked an item off as 'done' it would un-check itself, so I could never complete everything I needed to do. Ahhh!

I have a pile of unanswered email from friends and family and a few voicemails to return as well. I've just found that in order to keep up with the stress of the first year of teaching, and plan a wedding, and prepare my PACT that I have to work from 6:30am to 6:30pm. I go to bed by 9:00pm and wake up at 6:00am. I know that is technically nine hours of sleep, but if I don't get a ton of rest, I'll get sick, and I just can't right now. There is very little time left for anything else but eating, sleeping and loving Eric.

Off to bed.

Update on Friday, September 26, 2008 at 10:37 by Charlotte

As further proof that I'm alive, I give you my school blog. I've been focusing on keeping the school fires burning in technology-land, as opposed to the home ones. All of my students are required to keep a blog in my class. At a 'high tech' school' it's important to be able to communicate with students in a way that resonates with them. The blogs are glimpses into each student, into their personalities, their lives, their dramas and their intelligence.

A couple of friends have been asking for updates on me, so if I can't keep this blog as updated as I want this semester, you can definitely swing by my school blog to see what's going in academia.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

School’s out for the summer! Well, at least regular school. Summer school starts on Monday and I’ll be there sheparding all of the 10-12 grade humanities students who failed their classes this year. While Eric prepares for Code Camp this weekend, I’m gearing up to attend my school’s annual Summer Institute. I’m really looking forward to the talk by fellow teacher Ephraim Ross on implementing technology in the classroom. I took Ephraim’s class on the same topic last semester and in it he introduced me to T.E.D.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free . More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. (Quoted directly from their site)

I plan on posting several of the TED talks that have truly inspired me, and I thought I’d start with this one. This talk made me look at myself as a teacher and at the way I assess what my students have learned in my class. If I teach my class a unit on the American Industrial Revolution, I would normally test their knowledge of the unit in a traditionally academic manner, so through an essay, quiz or test. What if though, I asked my students to show me what they’ve learned in any way they see fit? What types of things would they come up with? Would they sing me a song? Perform a dance? Paint a picture? If I gave them the themes that were important that they learn, what would they do with the freedom of expressing their knowledge? It has really got me thinking forward to next year and how I’ll approach assessment (grading in layperson’s terms.)

Enjoy this talk from TED. I'd love to hear your feedback and comments.

Living in a High-Tech World

I've been busy. Slammed, really. I've gone from teaching one class for two hours a day, to teaching three classes for 5 hours a day. For the months of May and June I've been asked to teach Humanities to half of the 9th grade class in addition to my 11th grade class. It's been a challenge. Although I'll be teaching two classes for two hours each next year, it won't be as tough as now, because it will be one grade, so only one lesson plan will be required. Right now I'm juggling two separate lesson plans and three individual classes, and a bunch of 9th graders that aren't happy with having a teacher that comes in two months before the end of the school and gives them........(wait for it).....yes......

....

....

... Homework,

....like every night.

It's absolutely shocking.

I do love working at this school. I know things will normalize next year as I finally get my own classroom, my own classes and just one teaching partner. In the meantime I'm hanging on for the ride, trying to do my best, and over-working myself in the process. One great thing about the school is that it offers a free credentialing program for its teachers. In a year and a half I'll have my California teaching credential, (did I mention for free?)  I won't have to do student teaching, as my two years of teaching will count toward it. It's a pretty sweet deal. On top of that I'm working at one of the most sought-after charter schools in the nation, and the experience has been incredibly rewarding. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer just did a piece on the school. You can listen to the podcast here, and watch the video here.

The last day of school is June 20th. I'll be back to blogging soon.

Redwood City doesn't have an Urgent Care

I'm currently with 28 of my school's students on a trip to San Francisco to pitch their video game ideas to Electronic Arts, the company that brought you the Sims, Medal of Honor, and Need for Speed. We arrived in San Fran today, and I woke up with pink eye this morning. Wonderful. Most forms of pink eye are highly contagious, so now that we've got the kids to the hotel for the evening, I set off to find an urgent care, but a $30 cab ride later, and I wound up at the Emergency Room, because there are no urgent cares here. I just hope that the town is so small that I won't have to wait for 12 hours just to get seen for pink eye. At least someone was nice enough to leave their wireless network open so that I can post from the ER! While I'm here I'll ask them to take a look at my sore throat. Yet again I feel myself getting sick. I really, really hope that I won't now be getting frequently sick due to working so closely with kids. Life is NOT fun when you're constantly sick. Eric has been so awesomely patient, I hope I can get better soon.

While walking around SF today I saw an adorable ad for a Mini Cooper. I have a red Mini and LOVE that car. They showed a cute red cooper, a blue convertible and then... GASP, a new cooper. That's right. A whole new style. My god, it was beautiful. It's the Mini Cooper Clubman, and I am in love. I have to admit that I am not frequently stricken by deep pangs of materialistic, consumeristic, unrealistic pangs of I-need-to-own-one-of-those-now...but it hit me hard.  Mini really knew how to sock me in the ole' "If I don't have one of those my life won't be complete" parts of my inner-shopping-self. Although I'm happy with the Mini I have now I immediately hatched a plan to get one of those once I have a family. The inner story played out in my head of how cute we'd look motoring around in our little clubman.  As I envisioned Eric and I going for family drives and gayly running errands in our new car reality slowly started to creep back in.  Wait a second...I'm still paying off this Mini Cooper...hold on, I don't have children yet....wouldn't my current car work just fine with a kid?...aren't I trying to get out of debt, and not incur new debt? ... Why get a new car when I'm going sailing in a few years?

Ho hum. Reality sucks sometimes.

So Mini did a good job on that one. I know Eric did a whole post about how he doesn't think people should let their cars define who they are, but I think differently from him on that one. My Mini totally makes a statement about who I am. Call me a sucker, but I love it, and love motoring around it....and dang it, now I'd love to have another one of their products. I won't buy one. I'm going to pay off my debts, and go sailing with Eric around the world. Besides, when we get back who knows what other lovely products they'll have thought up by then. Until then I'll just let my internal daydream about it carry on. So it goes.

Update on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 23:14 by Charlotte

The kindness of strangers can be kind of astounding sometimes. As I sat in the waiting room tonight a show came on the TV called What Would You Do? It was sort of a Candid Camera take on putting people in different uncomfortable situations.  In the first show they staged a guy crying off of a path and watched as people walked by until someone finally stopped and helped him by letting him use their cell phone and one even went so far as to give him cash.

I was interrupted watching the show (a welcomed interruption, anything to get out of there!) by the staff to go fill out paperwork. I asked the guy filling out the forms if there was an ATM machine in the hospital because I didn't have enough cash to get back to the hotel. He said it was closed for the night so I asked how far the nearest one was on foot. He said I couldn't walk there because it was dark and not safe. I said okay, and that I'd have the cab take me to an ATM. He said I couldn't do that because the cab would scam me by taking back roads and extending the fair since I obviously didn't know the town, plus he was worried about my safety as a single female (wtf - do the cabbies have a bad reputation in his town or something?) He said he would call his manager and they would figure something out. At this point I was feeling awful, and instead of telling him not to worry about I just thanked him for his offer to help.

About 30 minutes late he and a nurse called me in and said that security would escort me down to the closed cafeteria to use the ATM machine there. Wow.  This is a busy emergency room and they took the time to do that? I was blown away by such a simple but kind gesture (and all after having watched that show about helping someone in need.)  They also let me use their phone to call a cab, but no one answered at the number the hotel had given me for a cab. I asked for a different number and they called a cab for me.

The cab driver was so nice. He took me to the nearest pharmacy and said, "I'll give you 10-15 minutes free, no charge, while you wait to fill your prescription." Holy cow - where were these people coming from? Sadly, the pharmacy I went to wasn't 24 hours, and the next nearest one was about five miles away so I just asked him to take me back to the hotel for the night.

I just wanted to say thanks to all the kind folks in Redwood City. Who knew this little bastion of good-hearted people existed up in the Bay Area?

So far, so good

Today marks day four of taking hormone stimulants for being an egg donor. I was really worried when I started taking them that I would become really emotional or have adverse physical reactions. So far the only symptoms I've noticed are fatigue (but this could be from the stress of the new job, and my period), diminished appetite (unusual for me, I am ALWAYS hungry), and a strange feeling of detachment. I feel very, very chill. Oh, and headaches. I've had a headache every day. Taking Tylenol knocks it out, but it's always lurking. Overall, these are symptoms that I can definitely deal with. I go in for an ultrasound tomorrow and they'll decide if I need to take a 4th stimulant or not. I hope not, just because I'd like to avoid any more drugs.  

On the teaching front, everything is moving forward splendidly. I've been meeting with the other 11th grade teachers to decide our second semester lesson plans and team projects. We're starting on the Civil War, so we're a bit behind. I'm hoping to be able to at least get up to American Foreign Policy in the 70s and be able to talk about the Cold War and American influence/interference in Latin America. We'll see though, just how far we can get.  I get to share an office with two other teachers, and I'm excited about getting my office and organizing materials out of storage. I've been trying to think about how I'll set up the class and working on lesson plans around slavery and the Civil War. We'll be reading this chapter from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States as well as some primary source readings.

I want to buy a stool to put in my room, but can't figure out where to buy one! I called a few teaching supply stores and tried Staples and Office Depot, but no luck, so I'm going to get a cheap-o one at Ikea. I can't believe I'm all grown up and searching for teacher's stools for my new job. I'm still in shock about how quickly this all came about. I'm SO GLAD that this is a 3-day weekend as it will give me time to prepare. I'm supposed to teach on Tuesday and Thursday this coming week as Wednesday I have to go Pasadena for a pre-surgery check in and Friday is the egg retrieval.