ahintofcinnamon

i did it!

i finished institute!

i have all ten fingers, all ten toes, and most of my mental faculties.

the last two weeks have been crazy.  my children went nuts last week.  i had some of my worst days last week.  i definitely had two days where i counted down the minutes until class ended. 

the first of the bad days is a bit hazy.  i'm beginning to block it out.  we were studying the bill of rights.  i was being observed (of course).  we get to the 9th bill of right and the kids quit.  they just quit.  i think i'm just now beginning to figure out why.   class is almost over and i only have about 30 minutes to navigate my students through the last part of the lesson.  so i begin to hurry them.  they just did not have it.  you never try to push a class when you're covering the bill of rights.  they feel way to empowered to let you tell them what to do (even if it is you that just explained how they have these rights).  one of my powerful female students (a natural leader who can just as easily lead the class to success as she is to lead the class to failure), speaks up.  she is sick of hearing me talk.  she is sick of learning, especially from white people.  several other voices chime in.  in between calling me racist and then calling the african american students ethnic slurs, the class does not quiet down.  i say the class, but really it was about 6 people.  i spend the rest of the class (about 30 minutes) waiting for them to quiet down.  they don't take their assessment.  i have to give them all zeros. 

i don't see my children the next day because they are taking a standardized test.  i see them a few days later and assert authority soon.  i have to give my "rules" speech three times.  once to an almost empty room, once to a half-filled room, and once to my trouble-makers who all walk in tardy together.  the class is unruly, but we get through it.  i have to cover two lessons in one day to keep them on track.  i cover one no problem.  the second one was not as good.  most of my students still think the 13 colonies were located along the pacific ocean. 

after a three day weekend, i re-enter the class feeling refreshed.  i am in a great mood on monday, and they are not going to bring me down.  but wait.  the school's air conditioning has been off all weekend.  the classrooms are 93 degrees.  the hallways are even hotter.  the kids enter the classroom and think i've turned off the air conditioning.  they think i purposefully turned of the air conditioning to make them hot!  i delay a little too long, and don't address the temperature soon enough.  much too late i say "i can't control this.  i did not do this.  we are just going to have to work through the heat."  i manage  to regain control about 45 minutes through the class.  i am being observed through this entire chaos.  again "control" is a bit relative.  i manage to convince half the class to work on their extremely difficult assignment.  the other half just sits or writes notes.  i do the worst thing possible.  i let them.  i gave up on them that class.  i did not think they could behave.  i did not think they could do the assignment.  i was happy just to let them be off task as long as they were quiet.  i am still ashamed of myself for this.  this was really the worst day.  i came back into my cma room and just wanted to cry.  i was angry and frustrated and upset with myself for my poor teaching. 

i vow to try harder the next day and i do.  but you know what?  i realized something this past week.  i realized that i didn't give up on my class just on monday.  this was something that had been building for a while.  along some point of institute, i gave up.  i don't know when.  i don't know why.  at some point, i just stopped working as hard as i should have.  my lessons stopped being as effective.  i lost control of my class more often.  i stopped asserting myself as much.  i don't know why or how this happened.  maybe it was the long hours, maybe it was the difficulty, maybe... 

when i looked at my test results, i knew that i had failed my students.  some had improved.  some had stayed the same.  some actually did worse.  i didn't support my ell students at all.  if there was one thing i should have done, it was support my ell students.  especially after i had studied in france!  i had been through the exact same thing that they went through and didn't help them.  i didn't try hard enough to find someone for them to work for.  my plan to cajole my trouble maker into being "translator" and "tutor" fell through.  i failed my students.  i failed my students by my lack of consequences.  i was not fair.  i let some students slide--especially the repeat offenders.  i turned into a classroom bully.  i asserted my authority over students who would allow me to do this.  i couldn't do this over the bullies and so i let them slide.

i'm writing all of this, embarassing as it is, because i don't want to make the same mistakes again.  i know that in my classroom, in order for all of my students to succed, i need to be consistent.  i need to empower my students to take their education in their own hands.  it is not good enough for them to want to succeed just to please me.  i cannot always be the sunny, cheery, positive force in my classroom.  i'm going to have bad days.  i'm going to be tired.  the culture of the classroom has to be cultivated even when i'm not there.  my stuents need to succeed every day.  each student needs to achieve everyday--not just the ones i feel i can boss around. 

i can do it.  i lived through institute, the hardest thing i've ever done in my life.  i'm ready to take these two weeks (yes!) and make myself an even better teacher than i was before.  i have to make myself stronger and better.

"what is great about man is that he is a bridge and not a goal."

the last day of institute is tomorrow/today!

look for a wrap-up post soon!  i couldn't post last weekend because i was too busy not bathing in austin.  thanks lee blaney!

terrible day.  terrible terrible day.  i spent all weekend doing things for my students.  i did not go out.  worked friday.  worked saturday.  worked sunday. 

entered the classroom in a great mood.  meltdown.  total meltdown.  mutiny.

tomorrow is another day?

another week has passed in houston, tx and i am officially brainwashed.  more on this on friday. 

monday
on monday, one of my truant students showed back up.  she looked like 10 miles of bad road.  she had ran away from her house in the middle of last week.  she hadn't been home all weekend.  lord knows where she slept.  she decided to come to school on monday.  i think that says a lot.  this is the student i wrote about last week, the one i was supposed to expel.  she showed up.  every day, for the rest of this week i look to the door hoping that she'll walk in.  when she comes, she participates.  she's so bright, she gets everything so quickly.  when she actually participates, when she decides to pick up her pencil she's amazing.  i wish she allowed herself to be good at school. 

i honestly don't remember too else much about monday.  i taught a lesson about the battle of yorktown and the treaty of paris.  most of my kids aced the assessment.  so that was good.  after school we had a session on diversity.  it was really interesting.  this organization is really open and up front about its commitment to diversity.  this is extremely refreshing--coming from lehigh.  tfa is constantly trying to better itself and you can look around and see the effects of the effort.  can't say so much about my alma mater.  i left early from the diversity panel (it ended up being over 2 hours long!) and got...

a laptop!

that's right!  i'm an adult now!  it's a fancy laptop, so if any of you are wanting a video chat, or are wondering what my hair looks like now, or are wondering if i ever bought any more makeup (i haven't.  maybe in august), now's your chance.  this laptop is soooooo awesome.  it's going to be extremely helpful for when i'm a teacher.  i've been making awesome note-taking templates with it for my kids.  i've also made a tracking system for them.  it has three lines:  one line is their grade on each assessment, the second line is the class average, and the third line is 80% a "passing" grade for the summer.  the graph is super sweet.  and yes i do realize that 80% is more than passing.  you gotta have high expectations.  my students are all smart.

tuesday
tuesday was a disaster!  and it was all my fault!  i assigned my kids a reading from a textbook.  first of all, i have 1st period.  you never assign kids to read anything before 9am.  2nd of all, the text was too hard.  i wanted the kids to pull things from the text that i did.  i assumed that they would be able to infer, to come to conclusions.  no way.  went right over their heads.  did not get it.  i had to completely improvise in order to save my lesson.  and the worst part was that i was being observed by two of my advisors!  i apparently did a good job improvising, because one of them didn't even notice me covering.  she just thought i planned a bad lesson.  i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  i was able to maintain control of the classroom; there were no mutinies.  but my bad teaching definitely showed up on the assesment.  the worst class average yet.  i will absolutely have to reteach this objective.  yuck.  i always did hate the articles of confederation. 

wednesday
my kids flip out.  oh man.  so every morning, i pick them up from breakfast in the cafeteria.  they are extremely noisy in the hallway and several of them try to sneak off down a side hallway.  i busted them, and waited about five minutes for everyone to calm down and to get back in line.  we finally get back together and we walk up and line up on the wall outside the classroom.  i have to wait another 10 minutes for people to get ready to enter the classroom.  i have three female students who are super sassy.   they decide now is the time for them to push me.  we wasted 30 minutes of instructional time.  we spent 15 minutes in the hallway.  when we finally entered the classroom, i made them put their heads on their desks and observe two minutes of silence.  if someone spoke, we started all over again.  that took 10 minutes.  then, i made them write a letter of apology to the entire class for wasting learning time.  the worst offenders had to write personal letters of apology to me.  those ended up being really telling.  middle schoolers are brutally honest.  one of the female students told me that she didn't understand why she had to follow the rules.  she didn't believe that she was smart.  she didn't understand why i was so strict.  she also said that she liked me at first, but that now i was too hard on them.  i think this is accurate.  i don't really care if they like me.  this whole past week, i had been focusing so much on the negative of my students.  i've forgotten to compliment them.  i've forgotten to tell them that they're doing a great job.  if i'm always down on them, there's no reason for them to have good behavior.  if i'm only focusing on the negative, i'm never going to have anyone want to do something positive.  they'll only behave just good enough to not be hassled.  i decide to change. 

thursday
i bring my new laptop in!  i tell my kids that everyday, they start with MUSIC.  this means that they can listen to pandora during independent work time.  if i have to stop the class, i erase a letter.  if i erase all 5 letters, they have to sit in silence.  they don't seem to excited about this plan either way, at first.  but oh man, they loved it.  independent work time went like a breeze.  they worked really hard.  well, most of them.  there are still some people that i have to constantly hassle to get them to output anything.  yeah joao gilberto!  you helped me write so many papers!  now you're helping me with classroom management!  also on this day i'm observed by my literacy specialist.  she gives me so many nice compliments!  i definitely look up to her, and it was nice to hear that i'm doing ok!  she said that she didn't want to leave my classroom, she wanted to learn more. 

friday
friday is awesome.  my week has been great.  i had made a commitment to sleep this week and i for the most part carry through with it.  i get amazing sleep, and i'm so energized on friday.  i don't feel depleted or exhausted.  i can see the exhaustion on some of the other corps member faces.  they look crumpled, empty.  i am such a better teacher when i actually get sleep.  this may sound obvious, but it's not.  this program is so rigorous that sleep is often the first and last thing sacrificed.  my friday class goes great.  my kids are behaving like it's a tuesday.  they are so on-point.  i leave class feeling great.  the rest of the day is wonderful.
after the kids leave school at 2:30 pm, we teach for america people stay for another 90 minutes of training.  this friday, we were told that our normal casual school meeting was going to be an intensive school session.  we get this news early in the morning.  i think, "ok.  whatever."  i'm still in a great mood.  nothing's going to faze me.  we all go into the sesion room.  we're rushed in.  all of the people in charge are worried if we're going to have enough time.  the title of the session is "standardizing use of acronyms (sua)."  most of roll our eyes.  ridiculous.  whatever.  it would be just like tfa to have a sesion on this.  but the session leaders are saying this is really serious.  apparently 7.5 minutes each month are wasted on explaining acronyms.  this session is about going through all the acronyms that tfa uses and making sure we know each one.  we all roll our eyes.  i'm thinking, fine, whatever.  if they say it's important, then its important.  i'm willing to go on with any silliness they might say.  so i pick up my pen (with gusto, i might add) and start taking notes.  i'm well into my list of acronyms when our curriculum specialist shows us the next slide.  it says "get your things, you're going home early!  the buses are waiting outside."  it's all a huge joke and we have the afternoon off. 

it is this moment when i realize that i am brainwashed.  tfa uses a lot of acronyms.  they also have a lot of sessions on the minutiae of education.  the things that i personally would not think are critical but they think are.  there are a lot of acronyms in education, much like any specialized field.  i totally bought into that bogus session.  not only did i not think it was totally absurd, but i actually began to convince myself that it was important.  i was willing to make whatever sacrifices possible in order to get through that session.  i even ate a snack to keep my blood sugar up (this is a trick i've learned here.  coffee is often not availble.  the next best thing is to eat a snack.).  i have complete faith in those in charge here.  if they are showing me something on a powerpoint, i believe it's important and it deserves my undivided attention.  i have suspended my disbelief.  i have suspended all of my critical functions.  this place is a cult.  i swear to god. 

do you know what the name of my new laptop is?

student achievement. 

have any of you ever seen this website?  i found out about it last year from my friends who live on the internet.  apparently it was one of the earlier websites on the internet.  it translated the phrase "i can eat glass it does not hurt me" into hundreds of different languages. 

i think i need to translate it into tfa-speak (it would have lots of acronyms).

after this week, my first week in the classroom with tfa, i can eat glass.  it does not hurt me.

i can do anything. 

monday
my first day at school.  i get my 8th graders from the cafeteria.  we enter the classroom and i give them my spiel  ("i'm here to help you get to high school.  it is inexcusable for you to be in 8th grade for another year...").  i go over the rules and some procedures.  then i give them my diagnostic test.  they all seem to try on the test.  while they're taking it, i circulate around the classroom and memorize their names.  i think this is one of the smartest things i did.  after my first period class, i run back to the teach for america wing in our school.  then i run to the reading room and administer the dra test to my assigned students.  he is pretty much reading on grade level, (maybe half a year behind), which is awesome.  a lot of other people said that their students were reading on a 2nd grade level or 3rd grade level.  after this, i run to the rest of my appointments for the day.   just because i'm teaching does NOT mean my day is any easier.  after teaching, i have 3-4 90 minute seminars to attend.  then i get to go back to the dorms, rush to work on lesson plans, attend more seminars, and maybe sleep.  i think this week i averaged 2-4 hours of sleep per night.  just to set the mood for the rest of the week...

tuesday
ok, so tuesday i freaked out a little bit.  this is my 2nd day teaching, or my first day actually teaching my kids u.s. history.  also stressful because my faculty advisor is observing me.  on monday night, i realize that the objective that i'm teaching for tomorrow is not aligned to state standards.  this is something that they pound into you here:  if you teach something, it has to be aligned with state standards.  the objective on my lesson plan is totally made up.  no idea where it came from.  so i decide at 10pm, after i've worked on my lesson plan allllll weekend, to change it.  i stay up way to late on monday night to work on this new lesson.  i think i sleep an hour that night.  i also have two other lesson plans due on tuesday.  i barely do any work on them.  i am so anxious all monday night/tuesday morning.  my blood pressure must have been sky high all the way through breakfast.  then, i get on the bus.  i'm starting to calm down a little, starting to look forward to my day.  by the time i see the school, i am ready.  i am in a great mood and i'm ready to get in the classroom.  my lesson goes awesome.  my kids are paying attention.  they're asking great questions.  the lesson learned:  my life can be a shambles, but my classroom will not.  i do not construct the world but i do control my classroom.  now the hard part is telling tfa to chill out and stop hassling me!  after school, i have a short break where i do a ridiculous amount of work in 45 minutes.  then i have a two hour session on teaching secondary foreign language.  i'm dreading it all day.  i get there, and it's so awesome!  the time goes by so quickly!  the session leaders have loads of energy which was contagious.  i leave smiling and excited to teach french (turns out, i can teach it like i'm teaching elementary school!)

wednesday
wednesday i teach the declaration of independence.  i'm being observed, once again.  this time by a different advisor.  it goes awesome!  my kids eat up the lesson.  my analogy is that the declaration of independence is a breakup letter.  i'm able to relate the entire lesson to them that way.  the colonies and great britain are in a bad/abusive relationship.  the kids totally get it!  for the assessment, i have them write their own breakup letters.  they rock it.  some of them are soooo good!  unfortunately, the rest of the day isn't so hot.  i have lost my flashdrive.  it has alll of my lesson plans on it, and all of my diagnostic data which i've faithfully entered into a spreadsheet.  i have to tell my curriculum specialist, who i completely respect and also idolize that i'm not prepared for her class.  i have to tell my advisor that i don't have the info.  the day goes downhill from there.  one thing here at summer institute (which i've mentioned before), is that you need a laptop.  they assume that you have one.  most of the classes that you'll attend have clinics where everyone pulls out their laptops and works for 20-40 min.  so, when i tell my cs i lost my flashdrive, she tells me, "don't worry, just bring your laptop."  i reply, "i don't have a laptop."  she says, "oh did you not bring it today."  i reply "i don't own a computer."  then she gets it.  i wish that this was the first time i've had this conversation.  it's not.  after this session and others, i get to my afternoon.  we're having a lesson planning clinic.  we have a huge deadline tomorrow of three rough drafts due, plus one final draft.  i get to my advisor's room, and she yells at all of us.  we're all exhausted, freaking out about the amount of work ahead of us tonight.  this was a bad time to lay down the law about lesson plans.  i look around the room, and everyone looks like me:  close to tears.  finally i raise my hand and ask if there's ever a time when you're teaching when you don't feel like you're drowning.  everyone nods emphatically.  she stops yelling and we actually have a conversation where people can vent.  i'm really glad i said something.  everyone told me afterwards how glad they were i spoke up.  i still went home and cried.  i've done a good job holding it together in front of my peers.  i think 90% of the corps members here at institute have cried at least once.  yeah, it's like that.  i am up until 3:30 am tonight, working on lesson plans.  i'm in a great mood, though.  i was able to convince my credit union to release at least some of the funds from some checks i deposited.  i'm able to buy a coke to help me get through the evening.  it makes a difference!

thursday
i wake up at 5am on thursday.  sleep=90 minutes.  i'm so tired, but my mind is still functioning.  my class goes really well.  my kids have lots of fun with my lesson of thomas paine and ben franklin.  i tell them that common sense is like britney spears.  if they loved it or hated it, they still talked about it.  they really like that.  they tell me later i should have said lindsey lohan.  i feel really old right here.  when i explain what an ambassador is (ben franklin was an ambassador to france during the revolution), they get excited.  some of them seemed interested in the profession.  the day goes well, but after class, i'm dead.  i drag myself through the rest of the day.  i manage to work with my collaborative to come up with a lesson for friday that will not require me to lecture.  this has negative and positive consequences.  i go back to the dorms and crash for three hours.  i wake up, find out i've missed dinner.  luckily, i have money (yeah!) and i can buy dinner elsewhere!  i meet up with my collaborative and we get a ridiculous amount of work done.  then i rearrange my lesson plan for friday to incorporate this change.  i am exhausted, and i do not do a good job.  this has consequences.  i sleep four hours thursday night.

friday
i sleep through my alarm.  i am so tired.  i am a zombie through breakfast.  there's no coffee.  i get decaf, hoping for a placebo effect.  this turns out to be irrelevant because i misplace my coffee--my short term memory is shot from exhaustion.  my lesson plan doesn't really require a lot of input from me, except to keep my kids on task.  but it's not that great.  my kids behave, and are on task, but they're not into it.  i feel awful about this.  because i worked with my collaborative on the first part of my lesson, i have a hard time synching it with the second half of my lesson that i made up (about cause and effect).  the lesson learned:  when you work in a group on one part of your lesson, you have to make sure you know everything about it.  because we worked so efficiently, we divided a lot of the work.  people ended up making their posters to convey the information they wanted.  i was busy making note-taking templates and worksheets, and behavior expectations so i did not get a hand in reading it.  my kids do not get cause and effect.  i can tell.  i'll have to reteach that later.  lesson learned:  taking care of myself and getting sleep is in my kids best interest.  if i cannot string a sentence together, they are not going to learn.  the rest of the day is pretty much a waste.  i'm unable to do any substantive work.  our entire school team gets held accountable for bad lesson plans.  then we all go out to dinner at a mexican restaurant.  i get back from dinner and sleep for two hours.  then i wake up and go out with some st. louis people to two really relaxed, laid back bars in the arts district.  i'm glad i roused myself out of bed for this.  they're a part of houston i really like.  a side note:  the rosemont area is a really great place to pick up tranny hookers. 

saturday
i wake up at 9:30 am.  i go to breakfast.  i go back to sleep until 2pm.  awesome.  then i go to target.  i get supplies for my kids.  i also buy a pillow, laundry detergent, and deodorant  all of these things i previously could not afford.  i do my laundry.  my clothes smell great!  i keep catching whiffs of my clothes and think, hey what smells good.  you know what.  it's me!  i smell great!  and now, i don't have to shower as much to maintain this smell.  i'm moving up in this world!

my mantra for the coming week:  hari o taberarete kadzukenaiyo.  je peut manger du verre; ça ne me fait pas mal.  puedo comer vidrio; no me duele.  i can eat glass; it does not hurt me. 

i'm at teach for america's summer institute which is how you become a teacher reallllll quick.  i'm technically taking 9 hours of summer courses through an online university.  which was another thing to figure out!  these cost $1350! when i charged that, my credit card company freaked out and cancelled that card.  i'm waiting for them to send me a new one, which means yet again i am in a new city with no money.  gotta keep up the tradition! these 9 hours, plus additional courses, seminars, and workshops attended over the next few years is going to allow teach for america to convince the state of missouri that i am qualified to teach.  the first day of institute started at 5:30 am.  i attended workshops and curriculum sessions all day.  i also waited in line all day.  there are over 700 people here, so meals, showers, etc. were a trial in patience and logistics.  the next day, the 700 people were split into groups.  we're going to be working with houston independent school district teaching summer school classes.  because of my placement (high school french), i was slid into a middle school group with a bunch of other french teachers.  this summer, starting monday, i will be teaching 8th grade u.s. history.  i consider myself extremely fortunate.  i met another french teacher who was placed in high school math.  she freaked. 

anyway, a typical day for me starts at 6am when i wake up.  i'm one of the last people at institute to wake up.  i get to sleep in!  i get up, go down to breakfast and down coffee.  then i run to pack up my lunch and get on the bus.  the bus takes us to deady middle school which is about 10 minutes away.  it's in a primarily hispanic neighborhood (about 90% of the school population is hispanic), with about 60% of the students coming from this massive apartment complex.  i arrive at school at 7:10, sign in, turn in lesson plans etc., and get read for the first session.  we have different sessions all day ranging from how to invest your students in their education to asserting authority.  again, i am extremely fortunate in my middle school assignment.  it's a relatively small group of corpmembers and our curriculum specialist is so awesome!  she's got a ridiculous sense of humor and makes those classes really rewarding.  after about 3 hours, we do a classroom observation then meet with our corps member advisors (cma).  my cma lives in st. louis and works at the middle school where i did some previous classroom observations.  she's really nice as well.  she reminds me of cassidy (large eggs, slavy).  anyway, we usually do some intensive lesson planning, or classroom planning, or rehearsing.  within our cma groups, we're broken down into collaboratives of 4 people.  our teaching collaboratives all agree on our unit, and the objectives we'll be teaching during that unit.  my collaborative is teaching a unit with a general them of social contracts and governance agreements.  that being said, this is summer school, and many of these students are here because they were unable to perform to standard on the TAKS test (a standardized test in texas).  so our unit is based on the objectives that most of these students did not master.  the unit is a bit of a grab bag of american revolution, constitution, declaration of independence, bill of rights, political parties, etc.  anyway, we get into our cma groups, our cma sets a classroom timer, says GO, and we all plan like idiots for 20 minutes or even 4 minutes.  after that we have lunch. 

the rest of the day is pretty similar.  we have curriculum sessions, literacy sessions, sessions on diversity (which are really valuable and emotional), cma sessions, planning sessions.....  i leave the middle school at 4pm and head back to the dorm.  when i get back i don't want to see or talk to anyone.  i usually drop my stuff off in my room and lay on the grass for about 45 minutes.  then, i'm ready to go back inside and face the rest of my evening.  three days a week we have additional sessions.  last week was consumed by training to administer a reading test called the DRA.  this week i'm not so sure.  i try not to look too far into the future lest i freak out.  so those are the official sessions.  generally i meet up with my collaborative every evening to plan classroom management, discipline, the unit, etc.  after that, i go to the computer lab and work on my own lesson plans.  every single person here has a laptop.  i am serious.  that means during the day, the person leading a session will say "ok everyone get out your laptops and..."  this sucks.  it means that i get to look over someone's shoulder for an hour or two while they get work done.  i usually get to bed around midnight or one am.  then i get back up and start it all over again!

if you've suffered through this post, i'm sure you're thinking this sounds miserable.  it's actually not.  this is without a doubt one of the most difficult things i've done in my life.  this situation is extremely stressful--and artificially so at that.  everyone's emotions are on a roller coaster.  i will be laughing and joking during one session and then be fighting the next session to hold my composure.  i am patient, frustrated, calm, ecstatic, excited, angry, tired, energized, and annoyed.  all at once.  all day.  and it's worth it.  i know it's weird, and unlike my jaded self, but i really believe in what i'm doing.  by the time an african american or hispanic student reaches high school in st. louis he or she has a 4% chance of scoring proficient on a national standardized test in math.  this fact is devastating.  now, there's definitely a critique of standardized tests but regardless.  the way the system fails children is so sad.  that's what makes this worth it.  i don't want to preach to you all, so i'll leave it at that. 

i start teaching monday at 7:50am.  i'm really looking forward to it!  being in the classroom is something that i love, and i can't wait to work at something i honestly want to get good at.  that sounds trite, but it's true! 

ok all, i ought to get to bed!  you can definitely email me back, and i'd look forward to hearing from you all.  just to warn you, really the only time i have to respond to emails or facebook messages is the weekend.  regardless, i will devour everything you send me and try to respond--at least a few words!  like i've said a few times, this is one of the most challenging experiences of my life and i would cherish a few words from people i care about and who care about me.  i'm really going to need a lot of help to get through this!  i'll also need a lot of help celebrating on july 12th when i'm done!  not that i'm counting down the days or anything...

so last week, nothing seemed to go right.  i was going to do my performance at the dws 10 year anniversary party.  but my reader showed up late, i lost the pen i was going to use to write on myself, the writing wasn't where i wanted to be.  then the party went late.  we got behind schedule.  so i had to cut three of the readers in addition to myself.  we had to vacate the building so that onesource could finish their job.  i suppose i don't mind so much, things weren't where i wanted them to be.

i learned that with certain things, i am incredibly meticulous.  with this, everything had to go right, or else nothing went right.  i realized that i need a lot of control over this performance, and the way that i enact this is through the steps in which things go.  this surprises me because i'm usually very easygoing (unless we're talking about dishes).  anything goes, it doesn't matter.  but not with this.  everything matters.  a lot.

so next week, i'm going to try again.  friday april 11th, noon.  at the next dws.  maybe i'll nuance my idea more. 

performance for drown writers series party

(untitled as of yet)

i am going to be doing a performance piece on  march 28th that asks the question does the body resist?  i am going to use my body as a base upon which there will be text resisted.

the way that drown writers series works is that the coordinator announces the person who is going to read, then that person goes up to the podium or microphone and introduces h/er work then reads it.  i am going to be playing with this apparatus to give structure to my performance, to place a frame around my body and introduces it as piece of text.

i'll be introduced and then walk up to the microphone in order to read my poem.  however, i won't read it.  the poem will have been written all over my skin, but be covered up by my clothing.  a male friend of mine will read the the poem, reading my words off my body while i stand there.  he will have to take off some (all?  how gutsy am i?) of my clothes in order to read the entire thing. 

i want people to leave this performance feeling uncomfortable.  i want them to be asking themselves the way that they code meaning onto bodies in their lives.  these bodies could be other people, women, social bodies, etc.  when people watch this performance, i think that they will stop seeing my self and start seeing me as text.  my words will not be my words.  they will be unspoken, unheard and only activated when read by the male voice.  my body will be a text, with The Word written all over it...  i want the strip tease to be really uncomfortable.  it will of course be very sexualized, but i don't want it to be erotic.  when speaking for me, the male voice will have access to all of my body; he will need it in order to properly name me. 

but there needs to be some way for the body to resist.  i want there to be some way in which the performance can turn on itself, to leave space so that the body can be empowered.  i'm not sure what this will be.  i'm considering a few possibilities.  maybe i will deny the male voice the last word and speak it myself.  but then i don't know.  i don't know if that will be my body resisting the inscription.  i'll just be reading the words, which are my own, but the words are only written in order to be a part of the discourse of subjectification.  maybe i could pour water or something on me, something that makes the ink run, that makes the words unintelligible. 

the other issue i need to work out is how to get feedback from people.  i want to pump the feedback back into the performance.  expanding the duration of the performance could also help strengthen the message of my subtle(?) performance.  i want people to ask themselves how they inscribe the body but also wonder if there's anyway to escape the inscription.  i want to empower the escape.  passing out markers to people so that they can write on me seems to empower the wrong function of this writing/resisting dynamic.  same with passing out paper so that people can give feed back.  how do i empower bodies???  help!

me: we have to do this 'final experience' but we're trying to do it in a consensual way

"Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order" (94).

this week has been a really great week for me.  i realized that i am not so much attached to the outputs of my project, of the Event, but to the ideas.  i think i will be satisfied just tunneling from book to book to book.  however, i do realize that there is some kind of 'output' necessary for this credit/nocredit business.  i am excited for the investigations meeting, because i think the discussion will help me to guide my project into the final experience.  i don't want to create just another event that will take a lot of energy and will not allow me to engage in the southmountaincollege community.  i would be willing to help greatly in the final experience, and do better incorporate my project in with others.  so, the outcome of today's conversation of individual v. collective will benefit me. 

as for readings, this week it's been a deleuze and guattari week.  i've been reading a thousand plateaus like its my job.  i suppose it is.  i've also discovered this amazing artist named mary coble.  she does performance art that has to do with the way that language is inscribed on the body.  she did this fantastic performance where the names of lgbtq men and women are tattooed onto her body without ink.  the results are really powerful.
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/gallery/mary_coble.php
i've also been checking out the work of layla assaydi...
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/gallery/lalla_essaydi.php
i don't know what it is, but i'm so intrigued by writing, by script, by text on the body.  in the body.  something about that...

none.  none at all.  i'm so frustrated.  i feel like i need a radical change in my project.  with all of the extra south mountain college things i've been doing, i feel like i can't get anything done ever for this project!  and i can't!  i haven't.  i feel like everytime i try to take a step forward, i take about 10 steps backward.  i'm so involved with seminar that i end up writing proposals so that we can go do interesting things.  everytime i start to think about where i'm going to hold my performance art event, i end up thinking about the final experience and what that's going to look like.  i think i need to radically change what i wanted to do with my project. 

maybe i can try to mesh my project into the final experience?  depending on what that is?  maybe i'll only have one event, with just me and a few other performers.  maybe one performance idea?  it seems that less is more when it comes to the medium.  having one really great refined performance can take years to develop.  i think a few of them is perhaps too many.  maybe i can support my project in some way with some sort of writing...although that was something i really wanted to avoid (writing in the traditional academic paper).  i really want to do the event the way i envisioned it last semester, but i just don't think i can organize one more event!!!!  if i do, that will mean three-four this semester!  i don't think i have it in me to do that!

progress this week:  7 pages of roselee goldberg's performance art book.  that's it.  i'm feel awful about this.
progress this weekend:  sincerely think about this project.  is this time to change?
progress next week:  read.  read.  read.  read.

this week, i did not get as much done as i would have wanted to.  i had an incredibly productive weekend, but then when the week started i had a hard time getting into it.  i think that i am not living up to my new new years resolution, to use my time wisely.  therefore, i'm changing my resolution to:  be mindful of time.  i think that as soon as i'm conscious of time, i will recognize fruitful time v. the hours i spend watching episodes of dexter because i don't want to face the world.  so, from here on out:  be mindful of time.

this past weekend was productive for a few serendipitous reasons.  i got to go to new york and visit a really wonderful friend of mine who is in a performance studies program.  i got her to read my commitment proposal, and she really helped me to enlighten me on a few issues.  first of all, it turns out that a major source (peggy phelan) is not well-respected in the east coast school of performance studies.  moreover, the piece of hers that caused the most controversy is the very book chapter that i used for my commitment proposal.  my friend could not necessarily tell me why it is so contested, as the book chapter "the ontology of performance" has been glossed over in many of her classes.  she gave me the names of a few people who don't immediately write off phelan (they take time to do this...) which i will list below for my children's sake.
-(Moten) the first chapter of In the Break ........get excited erin!!!
-(Rebecca Schneider)
-"Breathless"....not the movie, but some article
my lovely friend also had some interesting points on the issue of performance/recording.  she said that recording doesn't necessarily have to be an entirely negative thing.  she suggested i read some deleuze (surprise!) and a book by Jacques Attali called "Noise."  she said that the performance/recording issue is one that's really fruitful and is still a live issue in her field.  this makes me feel great, because it assures to some extent that i'm not committing the metaphysical sin of wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  to some extent. 

then the next day, we went to a really wonderful art museum called dia:beacon.  this place was amazing!  it's a contemporary art museum in upstate ny and the work inside was really inspirational.  the best part, i believe was the richard serra wing.  i didn't think that i liked richard serra because of a critique of his work in The Reenchantment of Art.  however, the work in dia:beacon was really life-affirming.  it wasn't necessarily all positive, and it was definitely very masculine, but it wasn't as oppressing as i thought it would be.  the lighting in dia:beacon was perfect, and the afternoon winter sun turned the rusted steel a lazy tuscan orange.  some of the twists and turns of the serra pieces were emanating this black, blackerthanblack color, so that you couldn't tell if there was a wall there, or if it was just an unfathomable void.  there were young children running around the sculptures, yelling, and playing.  the kids playing helped to lighten the serious mood of the gallery.  this helped me to realize that it doesn't take much to change the mood of the room.  making a space joyous depends on the interaction of a person with the room.  this could be really important for making exuberant (and not masturbatory) performance art. 

after this great weekend, i kind of stopped working.  i didn't get to track down my leads my friend gave me.  i did, however, end up reading a lot of langston hughes, which isn't necessarily bad.  i also started thinking about a performance to do at the next creative writing forum that i host.  i think it's going to be something of a response to thomas hardy in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  i will post more about this later.

my goals for this coming week are to be more mindful of my time, track down performance spaces, follow up on the phelan leads, and to develop my performance piece more.

after last week's investigations, i left feeling really anxious.  it was evident that we as a group had never had a discussion about how we were to interact as a group.  we had never set any ground rules, or developed a system of who would speak when.  it was always casual and unstructured, which was fine for a while, or for a small group.  however, if the students of southmountaincollege ever wanted to get anything accomplished--or anything organized--we would have to figure out how to have a respectful group discussion. 

i arrived at the group meeting on thursday with a list of things that i wanted to discuss, a few issues that i felt we needed to resolve as a group.  we needed to come to an understanding of how to respect each other; we needed to figure out how to structure meetings so that things could be accomplished; and we needed to define what the different bodies of smc expected of each other.  what do students expect from students?  what do students expect from the investigations professor(s)?  what do students expect from the smc friends?  what does the investigations professor(s) expect from students?  what does the investigation professor(s) expect from the investigations professor(s)?  what does the investigations professor(s) expect from the smc friends...etc....  some of these questions were so large that it would take many many meetings to come to a consensus.  but, we did get to resolve a lot of eternal issues. 

for the first time, i am proud of being a member of this program.  the group meeting on thursday and then the investigations meeting on friday were incredibly productive.  i left feeling incredibly empowered, and read to take responsibility for my actions and for the group as well.  i feel that i finally have ownership in the group, that i belong in southmountaincollege.  i don't feel marginalized, i don't feel disrespected, i don't feel that others are disrespected.  a lot of anxiety about making my voice heard is gone.  i know that if i raise my hand, i will be called on eventually.  i can formulate intelligent remarks instead of blurting out something because i don't know when i'll next get the opportunity. 

in my individual project news, this week i met with an acquaintance who is a performance artist.  i asked him a lot of questions concerning his art.  i asked him how he develops his idea, how he relates to the audience, how his audience relates to him, etc.  he had a lot of enlightening things, and helped me to think more about one of the many weak points of my project:  chiefly the displacement of my identity onto the audience.  he said that one of the great things about conceptual performance art is that people don't have to leave feeling great.  a lot of times people are uncomfortable during a performance piece.  he also gave me some advice about some pitfalls to avoid.  one thing that will be important to my performance will be to think about all three dimensions of space.  i ran some general ideas of my project by him, and he gave me some constructive criticism.  he said that he would continue to work with me on this project.  since he teaches performance art at a nearby school, he has a syllabus that he would email me.  he also said that he had some contacts in the performance art world that he would get me in touch with.  it was a very productive meeting and i am glad that i set it up. 

for the week ahead, i am going to get in touch with community artists of bethlehem and continue planning the event.  i would like to nail down some logistics (time.place.etc).  i would also like to collaborate with some of the more philosophical members of the program to see if i could collaborate on a performance that would embody (ha!) some of the philosophical ideas of other group members.

these are a few things that have been rattling around the ole memory box.  i wanted to write them down before i forgot.
(thoughts on education)

i should be able to decide:
1. how i am evaluated
2. by whom i am evaluated
3. when i am evaluated
4. how many times i am evaluated

for those of you who know me, these thoughts are strikingly similar to the revelation i had last year:

(thoughts on love)

i should be able to:
1. love who i want
2. when i want
3. for the amount of time that i want to love them

reading:  "the university and the undercommons:  seven theses" by fred moten
reading:  truth and method by hans georg gadamer
reading (or rather wishing i was):   a thousand plateaus by gilles deleuze and felix guattari
reading (or rather wishing i was):  difference and repetition by gilles deleuze
reading (pending head-scratching):  all of the references in the moten article footnotes

pending conversations: 
-gelsey (reproducibility, explicating identity, documentation, performance, process (or a better word for that function where you're X-ing something)
-brian (gettin' at that identity business, talkin' through gadamer)
-janice (smc and probably some of the stuff ci-dessus)
-erin (the moten stuff, probably all
-you (whatever you want.  i'm game)

thinking thinking thinking

not sleeping.  later.  do that later?

so what am i after with this whole south mountain college thing?  it seems as though it is becoming more and more nessecary to define exactly what i want from this experience, although this is an action that i am reticent to do.  it also seems that what i want from south mountain college is the very antithesis from what it is ready to provide.  this is heartbreaking.  i have such hopes for this program, it seemed as though it was the opportunity i had been waiting for.  a chance to do exactly what i wanted to do.  it seemed to contain the critique of higher education in its very non-structure, but also the audacity to assume that there was a better way and the exhuberence to chase after it even if it was a pipe dream.  smc is still young, and maybe there is still some of this residing in it.  but this is something that needs to be talked about, slowly and gently. 

as a fifth year student, i am sick and tired and burned out.  i love going to school.  i love going to school so much that over breaks i find myself going crazy without regular seclusions in the company of some grandiose book that i don't understand.  i have always been like this, i am still like this, i probably will be for a while yet.  this kind of learning still excites me greatly.  but i am tired.  i am tired of building monuments.  i don't want to work all semester, all week, all day to create this great towering structure that just stays.  doesn't rot.  just sticks around frozen in time, dead even to the microbes that want to make it decompose.  i am sick of the academic product.  it doesn't mean anything to me anymore.  i wish it did.  it would make things so much easier, so much less painful.  but i don't.  and i can't make myself care.  and even if i could, would you want me to?  should i smile and obey the rules? 

i don't understand a great deal of what people say most of the time.  i don't understand large words (and even small words) that are used in regular conversation.  'to record' in english should really be about 20 different words, the number of meanings it includes.  'democracy' is another one of those words.  when someone uses it, i have no idea what they mean.  are they after the 'democracy' of ancient greece?  the representation the greeks made of themselves that vibrated through history and is passed down to us?  is it complete and utter and terrible equality between all people?  there is so much to this word, to all words that can be thought about.  having a conversation with 'to record' asking how it is, wondering how its family is, inquiring about its profession, its recent social function...  this seems as though this kind of wandering, this kind of questioning is not something that needs explaining, that needs justification. 

so what is the responsibility of an academic to explain him or herself?  what is the responsibility of an artist to explain his or her work?  what is the responsibility of a person to explain him or herself?  are these responsibilities the same?  are they different?  if they are different, then why?  why is it that we don't expect rauschenberg to explain his work to us, but we get angry when spivak betrays a misapprehension (ie uses opaque language)?  why is it ok to demand lipservice from some but not from others?  and what kind of explanation is required?  something in writing, no doubt, something recordable and transmittable and reproducible.  the conversation becomes less and less important, if it doesn't yield anything inscribable. 

in this journal, i am trying to be honest.  i am attempting to open up my mental processes to this community.  this includes things beautiful and ugly, focused and not, and a load of other binaries that officially i don't believe in.  it's a messy business and one that is deeply personal.  i don't mind taking a chance and sharing it with people as long as this is still my space.  as soon as i have to start worrying about saying the wrong thing, about leaving my thrice-worn socks about, then this doesn't work. 

 to record (courtesy of OED)
[ad. OF. recorder (in most senses of the Eng. word) = Sp. recordar, It. ricordare:

L. recordre (classical recordr), f. re- RE- + cord-, cor heart: cf. accord, discord, etc.] 

    I.    1. trans.    a. To get by heart, to commit to memory, to go over in one's mind.    b. To repeat or say over as a lesson, to recite. Obs.

    c. To take to heart, give heed to. Obs.¹

    2. a. To practise (a song, tune, etc.). In later use only of birds (cf. 3); freq. (c 1580-1620) = to sing or warble (a tune, etc.).

    b. To sing of or about (something); to render in song. Obs.

    3. a. intr. Of birds (rarely of persons): To practise or sing a tune in an undertone; to go over it quietly or silently. Now only techn.

    b. To sing or warble. Obs.

    II.    4. trans. To call to mind, to recall, recollect, remember. Obs.

    5. To meditate, ponder (something) with oneself. Obs.

    6. intr.    a. To have mind or recollection of a person or thing. Obs.

    b. To think or meditate on a thing or person. Also with in. Obs.

    7.    a. To remind (one) of (a thing). Obs. rare¹.

    b. refl. To remember. Also const. of. Obs.

    III.    8.    a. trans. To relate in words; to tell or narrate orally. Also intr. in to hear record, to hear tell (of a person). Obs. (in later use only as transf. from 9).

    b. Const. to or unto (a person). Obs.

    c. To declare as one's verdict. Obs.

    9. a. To relate in writing; to narrate or mention in a written account; to put or set down in writing; to put on record. Also, in modern use, of telegraphic and other instruments: To set down (a message, etc.) in some permanent form.
  In later use the sense of setting down in a written or permanent form becomes the prominent one; early examples are more closely connected with sense 8.

    b. To have (a gift, etc.) properly recorded; to give (a verdict or vote).

    c. To convert (sound or visual scenes, esp. television pictures) into a permanent form from which they can afterwards be reproduced by machine. Also absol.

    d. intr. Of a performer or instrument: to be suited to sound recording.

    e. trans. and intr. Of a performer: to give a performance, or a performance of (a work), that is recorded.

    10.    a. To bear witness to (a fact, etc.); to attest, confirm. Also absol., to testify. Obs.

    b. To call to witness. Obs. rare¹.

    IV.    11. To pertain or belong to (one). Obs. rare¹.

    V. 12. The infin. used in the sense ‘recording’.    a. attrib. (often as a name of a part), as record button, head; also record-reproduce adj.

    b. Not attrib.

i made marmalade with much coaching by my friend joe.  as i'm sitting here eating toast, i realize that i never wrote down the positives/deltas of the experience.  the marmalade is currently residing at the humanities center and also my appartment.  it will also be available in the southmountaincollege fridge shortly.  please stop by and sample.  i would love feedback. 

here's the recipe, along with what went well, and what i want to change:

marmalade
ingredients
-3 oranges
-1 grapefruit
-1 lemon
-2 cups sugar
-some water

method
-peel (by hand) the fruit.  remove as much pith as possible from the rinds.  slice into thin strips and place in cooking pot with just enough water to float the fruit.  set the actual fruit off to the side.  now would probably be a good time to remove as much pith from that as well. or not. 
-walk away and go to bed, insomniac!
-the next day, chop the fruit into disks and pull the cross-pieces apart by sections.  this method means less chopping and that oh-so-satisfying feeling of pulling limbs apart.  vegetarians have to take it where they can get it.  ask me about olives and apricots later. 
-place all that stuff in the pot with the peels.  this means seeds too.  that's where the pectin lives.
-simmer uncovered with apx 1 cup (250g) of granulated sugar.  this will take maybe one or two hours.  i think it took me 2.5 because i left the lid on.
-when the maramalade reaches the desired consistency add another cup of sugar (250 g) and simmer for apx 20-30 min.  you gotta stir on this bit
-let marmalade cool and place in jars. 
-cover with wax paper for aesthetic reasons and label.  or don't label and let every toast-making experience be a surprise. 

positives
-i added crystallized ginger to one jar of marmalade and cinnamon to the other.  this is because i did not watch my pot and the marmalade burned.  i don't think i had nearly enough ginger to really get the flavor against the citrus, so if i did that again, i would add fresh grated with the last cup of sugar in the pot.  the cinnamon was really lovely, though
-all-around edible.  even though it was burned. 
-made kitchen smell incredible for two days. 

delta
-watch carefully after adding last cup of sugar.  it burns quickly.
-i realized after the fact that i prefer a wetter marmalade (make your 'that's what she said' joke here).  i would simmer it for less time to have a looser compote.
-flavorings=delicious.  experiment with different spices.  how about coriander?  or cayenne? 
-i wasn't exactly satisfied with the proportion of fruits.  i think i would prefer more orange, although i'm not certain.  i also think that as winter approaches i'll have more choice as far as citrus goes.  i would also like to consider mixing in non-citrus fruits.  mango would be nice, in keeping with the bright tartness of the citrus but adding a soft sweetness and aroma.  lime-mango-coriander.

so once again the personality of my livejournal changes.  its multipolarity begins to creep bit by bit to the academic side of life...but hopefully it won't stray too much.  for those of you who read this, for you voyeurs, for myself, let's keep this clean.  but not too clean. i've got clothing to dye.  

i moved again today.  yes, again.  i think i move my things about every 6 days.  probably a little more frequently than that, actually.  i feel like a hermit crab with a dukes of hazzard lunch box for a shell every time i move:  incongruous, unwieldy, and lightly fried in a cornmeal batter.  it´s not the travelling that bothers me, nor never knowing what i´m doing, nor even the frequent language barriers i come against.  it´s having to carry all of my things with me that bothers me.  i think after my school in edinburgh, i´m going to stash my backpack with a friend and travel light for the remaining two weeks.  just myself and my toothbrush.  and maybe three books.  i wonder if hemmingway (or any of the other writers) faced this dilemma while travelling--the harrowing choice between another book, or a pair of socks and underwear.  whenever i would read on the road, i would envy the way kerouac could hop in the back of a truck, no food, no money, no coat.  i think i have too much cub scout indoctrination to travel in this way.  i start packing and i begin to hear always be prepared ring through the eaves of my mind, shortly followed by a scout is trustworthy, loyal...  i manage to think about something else before i get all the way to reverent. 

this fit of melancholic digression has been spurred on by a microincident on the tube earlier today.  i got up earlier to go to the room i had been staying in to move my things.  having a long ride back, and just having finished my book on the trip into the city, i was discreetly watching people through the reflection of the windows.  i kept seeing all of these impeccably dressed people, young men, women, my peers, some younger.  i looked at myself in the reflection, rolled out of bed,  and i realized that i will always be a bum.  always.  i have been given ample opportunity to put a respectable spin on myself, but always rejected those opportunities, feeling like an imposter, a sheep in wolf´s clothing.  the realization that i´ll never amount to anything more than drifter, guardian of esoteric knowledge, made me really sad.  not because of the status, but because i realized this so soon.    i think part of life is having this mystery, this great secret of what will do, will be with the time allotted.  i feel as though i´ve picked up a dropped mystery novel and accidentally read the last page.  i never wanted to figure out ahead of time who the murderer was.  i wanted it to be revealed to me when i had reached the appropriate chronological point in the novel.  i feel like i´m on page 14, not 290.  22 going on 100.