My So-Called Life or Something Like It

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Since the beginning of the school year, I have gained about 20 pounds. Since I could probably have stood to gain some weight, it wasn’t a really big deal. The only problem is that a lot of my clothes don’t fit now. I am not worried about the way I look now, but the thought has crossed my mind that perhaps I won’t quit gaining weight — that my metabolism has changed. The women in my family do tend to start out thin and get very, very big.

Being “too skinny” has been a part of my identity since I can remember. It was how I was teased as a child. It formed me into who I am. I guess, in a way, gaining weight kind of makes me feel like I am losing who I am. Right now, I weigh the same as I weighed at 9 months during all three of my pregnancies. And like I said, it isn’t bad, and I shouldn’t complain. But that is a thought that will give one pause, right?

It was a beautiful day here in Georgia. I sat outside at school and graded papers. That’s one thing that is really nice about our campus on sunny days — we can spend so much time between classes outdoors. It is sort of set-up almost like camp. I guess whenever we move to our new building, we might lose that. I will not miss the rain, though. Our campus is absolutely miserable when it rains.

I haven’t written here in a while, and frankly, I just don’t have anything worthwhile to talk about. I haven’t been up to much. I got my oil changed. I bought a new cell phone. I tried on a pair of shoes that fit really well, but the heel didn’t look right, so I didn’t buy them. I can’t find my Black Crowes CD (The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion). I am re-reading the Harry Potter series. That’s my life.

Why are you here? There are fascinating things all over the web. Go learn something.

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Purim

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In observance of Purim, my school held a day-long celebration. Judaism for Dummies describes the holiday: “Take the Christian Christmas pageant, add a down-home Halloween and a couple bottles of wine, and you start to get a good idea of the Purim festival.” I’ve also heard it called the Jewish Mardi Gras. It was a really fun day. We had good food. We read the Megillah, which was actually very interesting. Jewish readers of mine are aware of the custom of noisemaking whenever the name of Haman is mentioned. It was really different for me, because Biblical text is at once so sacred and solemn. I guess I’m not used to it being interactive and fun. I was only able to follow along with the text, which students, faculty, and others delivered in Hebrew, because I listened for the names of “characters” in the Book of Esther. I must have been convincing enough, because one of the Hebrew teachers asked me if I could read Hebrew. I said no, but showed her that my copy had an English translation. It is a mitzvah to read and listen to the Megillah on Purim.

Aside from that, we all wore costumes. Purim is associated with mistaken identity. It seems to be customary to dress as someone else or as something opposite. Many of the 10th grade boys dressed as girls. Some of the kids just wore silly hats. I dressed as Ophelia. We seemed to have a few “Esther” bunnies running around (including our headmaster).

My favorite part (and from what I can tell, the most popular part of Purim) was the Purim Shpiels. The students did an excellent job with theirs — quite satirical, very funny. The faculty shpiel was better than I thought it would be after I saw the script yesterday. I guess when you have entertaining characters like I work with, that wasn’t hard. Both shpiels mocked members of the other group; i.e., the students mocked the faculty and the faculty mocked the students. I suppose, though I didn’t ask, that such is customary at our school.

One of my students gave me gift basket. That was really sweet. As I was driving home, it occurred to me that one might even call that an “Esther basket.” Har, har, har! But seriously, folks… you can learn more about Purim at these websites:

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MT Amazon and BookQueueToo

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MT Amazon and BookQueueToo are not playing nicely with the rest of my MT setup. I keep getting this error when I try to access my BookQueueToo plugin to update:

Can’t locate XML/Parser.pm in @INC (@INC contains: blah, blah, blah…)

I have been trying to figure out what the problem is. It seems like a bug in MT Amazon, which hasn’t been updated in ages. Makes sense it wouldn’t play friendly with updated version of MT. I have been getting errors in my Activity Log ever since I installed both plugins, but they always seemed to work anyway.

Does anyone out there know what is going on with this? The MT forums are apparently not the best place to go. I’ve been ignored there. I am not savvy enough to figure this out, and I don’t want to simply delete these plugins. I would have to do a lot of work to keep up with my books.

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What Haven’t You Read?

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It would appear from the silence emanating from my trivia question that no one has read The Sun Also Rises. That means you suck.

There’s a thread over at Tingle Alley discussing this very thing. Shocking revelations! Someone has read no Faulkner? No Flannery O’Connor? No Great Gatsby?

I confessed that until this year, I hadn’t read The Awakening, Beloved, or Their Eyes Were Watching God. I still haven’t read any Vonnegut novels. I need to read more Faulkner and Fitzgerald than I have. I haven’t read Moby-Dick (just lots of really good plot summaries and films). I never finished The Grapes of Wrath. I haven’t read Of Mice and Men. I haven’t read A Farewell to Arms.

I really suck.

What haven’t you read?

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Here is Your Moment of Zen

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I think I have a difficult job. Most people agree with that assessment. I was talking with colleagues yesterday. One gave up a lucrative career because it was not satisfying in order to do something that fulfilled something in her that her high-paying job could not — she wanted to make an impact on the world. There is an assumption made by some that if one fails at some job or another — let’s say engineering, for example — one can always teach. An engineer can know all the math and science technically required to teach it, but does he or she possess the capability of helping students grasp it? Can he or she inspire? Even control the classroom to the degree that learning takes place?

There are few things that really grab me like teaching. When I have a really productive or interesting discussion with a class, well, I can’t say it’s like I’m on a high, but it feels invigorating. It revives me, somehow. One of my colleages said she teaches because it helps her continue to learn. I agree completely. I won’t go so far as to say it keeps me young. Frankly, right now, I’m not very concerned with that issue anyway. It does keep my mind moving, though. I really enjoy it. I don’t know what I would do if I ever had to give it up. For the few years I was unsure of myself and unhappy in my profession, I still kept at it. It was as if there was this nagging feeling that if I gave it up, I would regret it. And I did give it up for a time. But I came back. I guess I can’t stay away. I think a lot of people would have decided to do something else. I doubt many people in my position would have been so determined to keep at it. That’s not arrogance. There are astonishing statistics to back that up. Depending on which study is cited, anywhere from 20 to 30% of first-year teachers quit after that year. Within the first three years, 30-50% of teachers leave the profession. That is amazing. That means that if you make it past the third year, you have a 50% chance of sticking with it as a career. I guess I beat the odds, but I never would have believed it a couple of years ago, or even last year, when I was at the lowest point in my career.

When I was going through my teacher training courses at UGA, one of the projects I was required to complete was a dialogue journal with my supervising teacher and lead professor. I jotted down my thoughts about issues, my questions, my concerns, my complaints. Whatever I observed, I wrote down, leaving a wide margin on the right. My supervising teacher read this and wrote comments on the margin. Finally, my lead professor read both our comments and added her own. It was one of the most useful things I did in terms of preparation for the classroom, because it taught me to be reflective. I don’t think any teacher can ever be a good teacher if she doesn’t ask herself how things went and how she can improve for next time. It has to be okay not to be 100% “on” all the time. No one is. It is essential, however, to constantly evaluate my performance. One of the best compliments I received as I completed my teacher training came from my professor. She told me that I had what it took to be a reflective teacher for life. On the surface, that may not seem like glowing praise, but in light of statistics, she was basically saying I was one of the few who could make a career of this crazy thing; not only that, I could be a teacher who would constantly learn and think about what I was doing. After watching so many peers stagnate and mark time until retirement, I realize what my professor was really saying. She was saying I could get the hang of this thing. What is really rewarding is getting the hang of it and loving it at the same time. I can’t think of anything more rewarding than helping students learn something.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God… The Movie

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Last night, ABC ran its premiere of Their Eyes Were Watching God, adapted from Zora Neale Hurston’s novel of the same name. You can read my review of the novel here. I enjoyed the movie. I thought the casting was excellent, especially Halle Berry as Janie. The soundtrack was excellent and very appropriate. The acting was subtle — much was communicated with the simplest gesture or look. However, some of the charm of the dialect was lost. I heard it come through at times in the dialogue, but not like I remembered in the novel. Also, the scene in which Janie finally tells Jody off did not even come close to the power that scene had in the novel. Janie was still way too meek. That scene is my major gripe about this adaptation. I felt that it was a bit hard to believe that Janie wouldn’t age at all over the course of 20 years.

The actor who played Tea Cake, Michael Ealy, had a great deal of magnetism, and his chemistry with Berry was palpable. My first thought when he came on the screen was, “Uh-oh… here come Tea Cake…” If you had read the book, you just knew him as soon as he came onscreen.

Much of storytelling is taken out, and the trial is deleted entirely, but the cast perfectly caught the gossipy old hens on their porch whispering about Janie and Tea Cake, and I teared up when Tea Cake and Janie danced. I was thinking of Zora Neale Hurston. I was thinking that this book was published in 1937 and basically died. It wasn’t resurrected until Alice Walker came along. It wasn’t part of the canon of American Literature until very recently. What a vindication for Hurston, who must have known what a fine book she had written.

The costumes were historically accurate — very beautiful clothes for Janie and everyone else dressed as I imagined. The juke joint in the Everglades was perfect. Watching Tea Cake’s descent into rabies was touching and sad.

At several points, Janie references the title of the book in the movie. I felt that was overdone for those watchers who were unfamiliar with the book. The title comes from the scene when the hurricane is coming, and it seems out of place and odd for Janie to keep telling us, when she looks up, that she’s watching God.

Overall, I have to give it a high rating. It was very enjoyable.

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