since i'm running banner ads, i suppose i should actually write entries. and since i'm bored at the moment, i'll do it now. i hate to even admit that i'm bored, after the hell that was last semester. but i am, a little. don't get me wrong, i love this extra time to myself thing--but i'm only working three hours a day, which is good for during the semester, but incredibly little the rest of the time. so what i've been doing a lot of is sleeping. gathering sleep like it's something i can store in jars for the coming semester, in which i will have 8:30 classes every day. let me repeat that. i will have 8:30 classes EVERY DAY,. for my last semester. the last semester i will spend as an undergraduate. that precious last semester before the "real world" strike. i will have to wake up early every morning (ok, every morning except friday, saturday, and sunday) and drag myself to class at an hour when i would normally be sleeping like any other sane college student. well, except that most of the time last semester, i was already awake and doing homework for my sanely-timed 11:30 classes, because somehow in my advancing years, i am actually becoming a morning person. frankly, this worries me. it's a close step from being a morning person to being a person who can't sleep in even on the weekends. and from there, i will become like my father, the type of person who doesn't want ANYONE to sleep in if they can't. and then my future hypothetical children will hate me.

but i digress. so i've been sleeping a lot. and watching a lot of television. and doing things i don't usually get to do in my busy schedule, like giving myself facials. today i covered 75% of my face with biore strips (they're not only good on noses, people), and joyfully examed the resulting tiny forest of excised blackheads. oh come on, like you don't look when you peel them off! right, sidetracked again. i've also been having my nails all nice and polished, and taking long showers, and updating my diary. oh, and cooking real meals, instead of opening cans and mixing their contents in some creative or non-creative fashion. in the past week i've had vegetarian shepherd's pie, spinach fettucini with shrimp and mushroom alfredo sauce, and shrimp stirfry with brown sauce. i'm also attempting to make a creamy tomato and spinach soup this weekend. leslie came over the other day and i taught her to make the shepherd's pie. and now she's decided that i'm going to teach her how to cook one thing each week (for my cooking obsession, see here). as for myself, i think i'm going to learn how to make some kind of indian food next, and vegetable korma's looking pretty good. sadly, i have none of the spices required, so i'm going to have to wait until i get paid again. mind you, i got paid yesterday, but that doesn't count because it was a ridiculously small one, since we don't get paid anything for the holidays when school is closed, and that was most of the past couple weeks.

i don't think i've ever really explained what i do. and hey, i have nowhere to be for another four hours, so here goes: i teach poetry to middle school kids through the YMCA. that's the simple version of it anyway. the real stories are always more complicated. anyway. what i do is, i go to this school in paterson at 3:00. depending on the day, i do different things. thursday i teach a group lesson to the seveth graders, then to the eighth graders. friday i teach two groups of sixth graders. monday i do individual or small-group consultations with seventh and eighth graders, and tuesdays i do the same with the sixth grade. or, if there's a shortage of counselors, i help out somewhere else as a stand-in. wednesdays last semester, i wasn't doing anything because i had night class and the logistics were a nightmare. this semester, it remains to be seen. anyway. on lesson days, i hand out some poems that i've photocopied that illustrate whatever it is i'm teaching about. then i read them, or i have kids volunteer to read them. the latter doesn't always go well, because not all of these kids read well (i'll come back to that). then we talk about the poems, and i give them some time to write their own poems. if things go well, we get back together and kids volunteer to share what they've written. sometimes it goes really well. sometimes the kids really take the lesson to heart and write amazing poems, and they all want to share, and we have a great day and a wonderful discussion. sometimes it goes really, really badly. they want nothing to do with poetry or me, they spend the whole time goofing around with each other or fighting with each other, and i throw up my hands and move on to the next group. those days, i tend to need a drink when i get home.

the eighth graders are my favorites. i know i'm not supposed to have favorites, but i do. and trust me, so did all your teachers. the eighth graders are serious. they're the oldest kids in a school that goes from kindgergarten up. they have plans for themselves and most of them have a confidence i never had at their age. they listen to what i'm telling them, and then from time to time they write some absolutely stellar poems. seventh grade is split between kids who really like me, and kids who want nothing to do with me or poetry. sixth grade is just a mess of epic proportions. the counselors are lazy and terrible, so the kids are out of control. i spent a couple days in there this week, filling in for a counselor who had to go to puerto rico for her grandfather's funeral. while i helped the kids with their homework and got them involved in games so they would stop running around aimlessly, the counselor whose JOB it is to do those things sat at a desk and colored. colored. it's ridiculous. if that's all the support she's willing to provide, to just be a warm body who occasionally tells kids to sit down and shut up, it makes total sense that her kids are out of control. these are not kids who are self-governing. i don't mean because they're poor, or because they live in an inner city, although these factors certainly don't help. they're undereducated, underfunded, and generally, i think, unhappy. but really, they're sixth graders. i remember my sixth grade year. we were hellions. ok not so much me, but my class was horrific. there was rampant sexual harrassment. we spent hours doing nothing at all if we could help it. we spent "library class" looking up dirty words in the dictionary, and recess talking about sex. we had a teacher who was more or less a warm body too, and we didn't learn much of anything. left to our own devices, we were terrible. a class is only as good as the person teaching it, and the same goes for an after school program. these kids know when they're valued, and they know when the counselor, or the teacher, doesn't give a damn about them and is just around for the paycheck. they know, and they resent it. and that's something i make sure they see in me. i treat them with respect, and i try to let them see that i'm really invested in what they do and how they are, even if it's just saying hello to them in the hallway. when they act out, when i need them to knock it the hell off, i tell them to please stop. i say please, even when i'm ready to tear my hair out. because they don't need another authoritarian speech about how they're disrespectful. they need someone to treat them with respect, and to make sure they respect them back. i don't have much problem with the kids, on most days.

there's a lot more i want to say about this, but it's going to have to wait. i need to get ready to get the sixth graders to write poems about living in paterson, which they are then going to dance to. with any luck, it'll be interesting and productive today. with any luck, i can get them excited about this. i can dream, right?

til next time,
beatpoetgrrl

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