Long Week

Hold fast to the break of daylight. ~Switchfoot - The Shadow Proves The Sunshine

This week got off to a pretty rocky start. On two separate occasions, in two different classes, students got into verbal altercations and almost started fights in my room. For the first time, I actually didn't want to get up and go to school. I found myself just trying to make it through to the weekend, which, albeit a familiar feeling from college, made me extremely uneasy. But you know what? Things got better, as they often always do. The troublemakers were still the troublemakers, but I feel like I'm making some genuine progress with most of my students. It's strange to me how a simple phrase like, "We learned a lot today," or students' staying after school on a Friday to get extra help can make me feel like I'm floating on air. There is a lot of work to be done, and I admit that I've been kind of winging it, which benefits no one, least of all my students, so this weekend is definitely time to buckle down and plan so that my students are really getting the quality education they deserve.

Next weekend, I will be reunited with the most wonderful of people in the most wonderful of cities. Mom, Dad, Flip, and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! Life does not get any better than that. I can definitely see what everyone means about being very deliberate in taking time for yourself. With any job, certainly, but especially with teaching in such a - dare I say it - depressing environment. I know I am going to need these times where I can zone out and not think about my students for a little while.

Jack came down last weekend, and I knew I wasn't going to get much work done, but I was definitely okay with that, because I got to get out of the house, explore Memphis, and have a great time with someone outside of TFA and outside of teaching. Don't get me wrong: I love my roommates, love living with teachers, love bouncing ideas off of them and swapping student stories, be they hilarious or heartbreaking. Nothing made me happier during in-service before school started than coming home and talking to them about our plans for our classrooms and our kids. But besides brief interactions with the couple next door (who are lovely and had us over for yummy beef fajitas) and two, maybe three, other people, I had not had a face-to-face conversation with anyone who wasn't a student, teacher, administrator, or TFA staff member in over a month. Even at bar trivia - at which Team John Stamos/Dollhouse/Peter Parker has made $40 so far - conversation inevitably turned to our students and their shenanigans.

Thus, it was all kinds of delightful to leave my education bubble (though there was no shortage of my rambling on about school, which Jack graciously indulged) and venture out to Graceland, where we saw a guy with, no joke, a tattoo of Elvis' face on his calf; to Mud Island River Park, where we took the same monorail, now red, seen in The Firm (monorail sighting at 1:22, Wilford about ten seconds later); to a huge movie theater to see The Other Guys (bizarre but quite funny); and to the Gibson Guitar Factory (good tour; I'd recommend it). As we are un-health-conscious gastronomes, the weekend also consisted of meals at Soul Fish Cafe (get the sweet potato fries!), Gus's Fried Chicken (heavenly cardiac suicide), and Kooky Canuck (home of the 7 lb. burger... which we did not order).

It is the anticipation of breaks like this, visits from people from "home," a word that now covers both Allentown and Penn State, that keeps me going. Val is planning a trip down here in the fall, and I am sure that will be another lovely couple of days I already cannot wait for. Another corps member made the analogy that teaching is like floating in the ocean, with life rafts of Labor Day, fall break, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Martin Luther King Day, and spring break, and the island of summer vacation. So true, and thank goodness for these other little breaks in between. It's selfish of me, but I encourage everyone to visit! I want to see your beautiful faces, make you fall in love with my newly adopted city as I have, and keep myself from going crazy.