Updating

It's hard for me to update now. I only ever work and then come home and work some more. I rarely go out with friends. I think this is the third (fourth?) week in a row that I've stayed in both Friday and Saturday nights, but I'd rather not count because it makes me depressed. I feel like my roommates and TFA friends all ignore me. No one texts me to ask what I'm up to or if I want to join them for a drink. I don't talk to anyone except people from back home. I would actually rather be in a room of unruly 6th graders because my apartment reminds me of how I have nothing to do but plan lessons when I'm not at school.

People forget to tell you that moving somewhere new isn't all glitz and glamour and adventure; it's loneliness and trying to find new furniture and melancholy and aching for home. But it's also weird, because home isn't home anymore; supposedly I live here now. I feel like my mind is definitely not in the same place as my body. I feel like I don't live anywhere.

Swag

One of the parents bought cupcakes to the soccer game yesterday. He gave me a pumpkin cupcake with brown sugar buttercream. Between that and a student bringing me a chocolate cupcake on Wednesday, BEING A TEACHER IS AWESOME, YO. FREE CUPCAKES ARE THE SHIT.

Diversity

So the school district mandates this generic online diversity training. YES, I WENT TO COLLEGE AND I KNOW WHAT RACISM IS AND THIS TRAINING IS ASININE. The "situations" they propose are so overly simplistic and also one is about a man who walks into a teachers' lounge full of women AND FEELS SO UNCOMFORTABLE BECAUSE OF ALL THE VAGINAS I GUESS. Right, that's the real cultural diversity problem. That's where the real sexism comes in.

But it wasn't done yet. Nope, shit had not yet gone downhill. The video then started talking about "equality language" versus "superiority language". According to the video, an example of equality language is, "I don't want my parents to arrange my marriage. But I'd really like to hear about how your parents arranged yours." OOOOOHHHH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT EVEN. Nope. Just nope. SHUT IT DOWN.

Teacher Confession #38

I love conspiring with parents to make sure a student can't weasel his/her way out of homework.

Something profound about love

"The idea is that the real home that you build in your world is a home of love. That is a home that is all about exposing yourself to vulnerability, it’s all about giving yourself fully to another person, it means that you feel comfortable and safe enough to drop all of your masks…also that you forgive in another person their flaws, because you’ve already encountered, embraced, forgiven your own flaws. And really I think as a human person—in my mind, I’ve always thought the final home of any human is in love."

Junot Díaz on the imperfect perfection of the novel and why genre fiction gets so little respect

Junot Díaz why can't you marry me is it 'cause you're already married in real life*



*Don't know if he's actually married in real life. He's pretty awesome so I'm assuming he is because that's how the universe likes to fuck with me.

Historical Memory

Yesterday (September 10) we were going through the homework planners my students received for class. One of them asked, "It says tomorrow that it's Patriot Day. What's that?"

"I don't know," I responded. "Some holiday."

"Do we get it off school?!"

I looked at the date just now. OH RIGHT, THAT'S WHAT PATRIOT DAY IS. These kids were born in 2000 and 2001. They don't remember that shit. That's weird.

Apparently September is Hispanic History Month but every month will be Hispanic History Month in my classroom

So I've decided that fuck it, I don't care, we are going to skip science one day next week and learn about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

That's a lesson about México, Spanish poetry, AND feminism. BOOM BITCHES.