what do you do when your best is not good enough?

as you all know, i work a ridiculous amount. i am invested in my job to an insanely unhealthy degree. i f'ing care about my students A LOT.

BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH!

i am not the teacher they want... NEED me to be!

my ADD, my anxiety, causes me to be unable to keep up with grading all of their assignments, giving them  back assignments in a timely fashion, and keeping them informed on "how they're doing.

but WORSELY (which should be a word), i can't keep hte noisy kids quiet long enough to give the amazingly focused, dedicated, resilient students what they need during class. and that makes me feel worse than anything. i had them fill out a reflection about the second marking period, which just ended, and they had to answer the question

"What can Ms. S. do to help you achieve your goals?"

and SEVERAL of my BEST students wrote

"She can control the class better."
"She can make it so the class is less noisy."

but see... the thing is, I CAN"T! because if I COULD, i WOULD.

and so i wonder whether if i quit they would get a sub who could do better for them.
but i doubt it.
and so i continue, press on through the year as a fucking mediocre 8th grade English teacher.
and it sucks.

better things

so today J., who is the student I'm pretty sure tagged "187 Ms. Salzfass" on the Scrabble pieces, tagged my name on the board with dry erase marker, during class. just my name. i saw him starting, and told him to stop, but he was like, "I'm writing your name!" and i have to hold on to any brief moments of anything resembling kindness towards me on his part and SO i let him tag my name. just my name. he needed a lot of help with the spelling. but it looked pretty good!

and also, on the subject of "some positive things do happen at school sometimes," B came in during 6th period while i was working with a student and said, "ms. s, i'm not gonna  lie or nothing, but i really did miss you a little bit."

:)

hee.

and A apologized to me for coming to school stoned.
and T apologized to me for saying she didn't like white people.

and E, who is one of the hardest working english language learning students i've ever met totally aced the ELA benchmark and was so proud of herself.

and so. it's not all bad.

POST, video, POST!

also, here is a video emily and i took last night of mojo sucking his tail. if that doesn't make everything better i don't know what does.

House Elves

On the topic of things happening in your house without your directly causing them to happen (the music box going off on its own).... on the topic of Harry Potter (actual house elves).... on the topic of set dressing elves (where is emily's blue blazer?)...

comes the most exciting "House Elves" related event of the evening -- coming home to discover that the thunder storm (or the house elves) made Bean do this:

Yeah.

that is actually blood on the door.
reminds me of when she was a puppy and i tried to keep her in a crate when i went out and she ended up scratching until her paws bled all over... ditto when i tried to make her stay in the bathroom. poor, poor neurotic dog. i have tried to so hard to let her know that rain is ok and doesn't signify the apocalypse but she DOESN'T LISTEN

also reminds me of our old family dog max, who, during a thunderstorm, managed to pull a printer out the window into the back yard. we thought we had been robbed; the police came and dusted for prints, but found only paw prints.

anyway. bean is ok. the door will be fixed. life goes on. maybe next time i go out on a rainy day i'll make her wear gloves.

in other news, HP 7 (part 1) was awesome. i didn't want it to end, and am so frustrated at having to wait several months to a year for the finale.

If you can hear my voice, clap once

so i have been meaning to start a blog for a long time. and then today i was talking to my parents on the phone going on and on about an interaction with a student i had today, let's call him Mike, and i realized that i always have a lot of stuff to say (especially about work) and that i often really like reading what other people ramble on about (like my cousin, Jill :) and so why not do some rambling myself? it might help clear the mind before bed. also, keeping a blog is one of those important things in "Stuff White People Like" and i like many of those things, so i might like this, too.

i don't promise to capitalize or use proper punctuation, however. and i'm not trying to be cute, i'm just feeling really lazy and my arms are sore from boxing class and i don't feel like pressing the shift button. i hope you can handle that.

so if you know me which i hope you do if you're reading this, you know that my job is crazy and a constant struggle and REALLY HARD and all of that. but maybe writing this will help me see the humor and positive things in the day to day.

like for example, today, with my fourth period class, i accidentally drew a penis on the board when i was trying to show that the last sentence of a paragraph (bottom of penis) always needs to tie back (tip of penis) to the first sentence of the paragraph (top line of penis.) if i knew how to draw and insert a "paint" image here, i would totally do that. in any case, a lot of laughing ensued, and i laughed too and it felt GREAT because i hardly laugh at all at school. it was like the best moment all year. then i accidentally drew a boob.

so the other thing i feel like sharing is that after school this kid, Mike, came into my classroom and sat down in the back and didn't say anything. and i had just been thinking about how i should call his mother because the last couple of days he has had his head down during class and has been rude and not doing his work. so anyway, i went back to where he was sitting and told him this and i said "what's been going on?" and i expected to get the normal shrug and "nothing!" response, so common among 14-year old boys. but instead, he actually said, "i'm having family issues."

note that i had never had any substantive, non academic conversation with this kid before. mostly he is the sort of quiet, under the radar, good student sort of kid. so when he said this, i was like "whoa." and of course i immediately started asking a lot of questions and he answered some and shrugged at some and said he didn't want to answer some but it seems the crux of the issue is that his uncle said something insulting to him last week, and it is still making him very unhappy. so of course i asked all about his safety, and whether he had been threatened, and he assured me it was nothing like that... and he said both his mom and his grandparents were there to hear the comment and that they were mad at the uncle, too... but Mike wouldn't tell me what it was! he said he "didn't want to repeat it." so i was thinking that maybe his uncle had called him fat or something (he's on the larger side). and i gave him some advice about having a thick skin and not believing mean things that people say to you, and about how he will probably feel less bad about it as time passes, and that maybe he should tell his uncle how he feels (he didn't like that idea).

anyway, the conversation wrapped up. i told him i was glad he had come and spoken to me. i really was glad. it made me feel important, and valued, and all of that stuff i struggle to feel when my classes are loud and disrespectful and angsty tweens say "no" to me all the time and laugh at the cat hair on my pants... and so when i was telling my parents about it, my dad said, "maybe his uncle called him gay." and i was like DING DING DING DING.

duh.

why hadn't i thought of that???

so maybe that's why he came to ME about this. i AM pretty gay.

anyway. any advice on how to proceed? i kinda want to be like, "hey, i hope you don't mind me asking this, but did your uncle call you gay? because if he did, you shouldn't feel bad about that! it's okay to be gay! I'm gay!"

but i don't know.

i mean, i guess i need to just follow his lead, right? keep the lines of communication open?

america's next top model starts in 3.