"I Do Not Love You Except..."

As I mentioned a few blogs ago, I'm presenting poetry to my Freshman class this quarter and have been coming across some amazing poems that I had never heard or seen before. I've never been much of a poetry fan, so for me to enjoy a poem enough to want post it, it has got to be pretty amazing.  Here's a poem I came across today when I was looking for love poems to present to my students.  This is pretty self explanatory:

                                             I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

          I do not love you except because I love you;
          I go from loving to not loving you,
          From waiting to not waiting for you
          My heart moves from cold to fire.

         I love you only because it's you the one I love;
         I hate you deeply, and hating you
         Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
         Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

         Maybe January light will consume
         My heart with its cruel
         Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

         In this part of the story I am the one who
         Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
         Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

                         -- Pablo Neruda
                            Chilean poet, diplomat and politician (1904-1973)

Um... Wow!  That's all I can say.  Wow!  Just such a powerful and emotional poem that strikes at the heart of anyone who has been in this particularly situation! Just amazing!  

Romance Novels Have a Place...

Okay, I admit it - I sometimes wish I lived the life of a leading female character in a romance novel. I'm not particularly proud of this pronouncement but it's a fact I have to embrace instead of running away from it. Now, I'm not talking about the really trashy, kitschy romance novels, like the Twilight series, Shades of Grey series or Harlequin Romance novels. No, I mean the novels that are slightly more elevated than that, for example: Nora Roberts, Helen Fielding, Sophie Kinsella, Margaret Mitchell, and yes, Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë (I do love my classic romance novels). These stories have a particular pattern that I would not mind if reality mirrored them - at least a little bit:  boy meets girl, boys loses girl, boys finds girl again, and boy and girl live happily ever after. Yes, it's an archetypal trope, and as an English teacher/literature fanatic, I should have higher aspirations, but alas, the hopeless romantic in me won't be satisfied with anything less. And even though I know that this pattern does not resemble real life ... well, at least not MY life, I can't help but wishing that I could crawl into the pages of a book and take on the role of ... well ... Elizabeth Bennet, Elinor Dashwood, Bridget Jones, Jane Eyre, Scarlett O'Hara, etc. No, instead my life more closely resembles Miss Bates from Jane Austen's Emma. (Miss Bates is a middle-aged spinster without beauty or prospects, who is a sweet, generous, kind, and thoughtful woman who lead a rather unimpressive and unnecessary existence.) Well, at least I'm represented.

Career Change: I Nearly Quit Today...

I admit it - today I was completely at my wit's ends and thought "there is no way I can continue to do this career change!"  I spent a good portion of my lunch and two free periods in tears, wondering why I decided to change careers. I know the impetus was that I loathed my corporate job and honestly thought that I'd be perfect for a career in teaching. I don't deny my heart is in the right place, but I'm not sure I'm cut out for the realities of inner city teaching.

What brought this crisis on?  My students.  For 73 days (or 1752 hours, or 105,120 minutes, or 6,307,200 seconds), I've been dealing with certain issues that appear to be getting worse as the days march on. My students have behaviors that I cannot seem to come to grips with:  mostly they're lazy, whiny slackers who apparently could care less about their academics. Okay, that's not entirely fair. Out of 80+ students, I have about 15 or 16 students who are generally engaged in the material being taught, interested in their academics, and legitimately want to be in school. To sum up, 17% of my students are amazing!  The other 83% are the whiny complainers.  Today, I actually  had a student in my English 3 Honors class ask if we could watch the movie, The Green Mile in class. Ummmm... NO!  WTF?  Well, last year another English teacher let them watch the movie.  Yeah, as a comparison to a work of literature that they were reading!  Yes - this is my "honors" class.  I spent the past two days of that class reading the short story, "Rip Van Winkle" because if I assign it for homework, they won't read it. They complain that the stories that we read are boring and perhaps we could read 50 Shades of Gray.  Oh, yes, have I mentioned the chutzpah of these kids?  They actually tell teachers to their faces that: the classes are boring, the books/texts are boring, they have zero intention on doing any work, etc. One student told me today that she was content with the D+ that she currently has in my class.

This is definitely not what I signed up for when I wanted a career change.  I honestly thought that the 17% would be the slackers. Yeah, I am that delusional.  I stupidly thought that the students I would be teaching would not be all that different from the way I was in high school.  I'm not saying I loved every class in high school.  Ugh... chemistry and algebra.  But I would never have had the nerve to tell a teacher to their face that the class was boring and I wouldn't be doing any work.  No, I did my work because it was what was expected of me.  <sigh>  I honestly am wondering about the wisdom of my career change.  But I've made my bed, now I have to lie in it.  I can only hope that these next two years move quickly, and then hopefully I'll be able to find a school in which the 83% are the engaged, academically inclined students that I so would love to teach!  In the meantime, I get to try to teach Shakespeare's Othello and Macbeth to my English 4 classes -- if I don't blow my brains out first.

America at its Best!

Today is Election Day and I am so excited!

For me, Election Day is what makes America great and I am proud to have been born an American.  I know, pretty patriotic for such a snarky pessimist like myself.  

For the past 28 years, I have been a ritualistic voter.  My love affair with politics started when I was quite young.  When I was 10 years old, my elementary school had a school election for the Presidency in 1976 - Gerald Ford vs. Jimmy Carter - and I have been hooked ever since.  My first official vote as an adult occurred on November 6, 1984.  A young and still idealistic 18-year old Sandi stepped into a voting booth in Hamilton Square, New Jersey, in order to vote in her first Presidential election.  The choice was either Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale and I felt fantastic when I pulled that lever for the candidate of my choice.  It was inspiring.  Of course, I got my first Election Day disappointment just a few hours later, when my candidate lost...  Um, perhaps "annihilated" would be a better word.  It was the first of many crushing blows in the political arena. I didn't experience the joy of picking a Presidential winner until 1996.  I suppose you can now guess my political affiliation.  

Even though I never live any place where my vote makes a difference, I still feel it's my duty as an American to step into that voting booth and vote my conscience.  Today, I walked into my new polling place here in Newburyport and got my ballot, filled the bubble for my candidates, voted on the issues, and walked out 10 minutes later.  It was fantastic! I hope that I never get tired of it.  Now I sit and wait for the results.  I suspect it will be a long night, but I have my hopes high and know that I did my civic duty today!  I hope everyone went out and voted!  Otherwise, you have no right to complain about the results!

This is Just to Say...

Today, I was writing a poetry lesson for my Freshman Scholars as we are working on poetry this quarter. I decided to have them write a parody of William Carlos Williams's "This is Just to Say" poem. They have to take the first two words from each stanza and create a new poem. I thought I would challenge myself to this task before having my students do it.  Here is Williams's original poem:

This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

   --William Carlos Williams

My rewrite:

This Is Just To Say
I have licked
the frosting
off the cake
for the party

and which
you were probably
waiting
for guests

Forgive me
it was inevitable
so yummy
and so good.

I had written about 2 more but they were snarky so I refrained from posting them. What do you think?  Think you can do better?  I challenge my readers to post their own parody in the comments section and let's see who can create the best rewritten poem!  Ready?  Set!  Write!

Career Change: Whatever Happened to Personal Responsibility?!

My school has just reached the end of the first quarter and I have discovered something curious. Wait, no! Let me correct that statement: it's not curious, it's annoying! Apparently, the fact that I have a few students failing because they don't come to class (or if they do, they sleep/chat through my class), never turn in any assignments, fail every quiz or test, etc., is MY fault that they are failing!  Erm, huh??

Of course, most of my students come to class, do their work and are passing - several with A's - which is attributed to the students' abilities, not the teacher's. That's reasonable and I agree completely. But I don't understand how an idle, failing student is the fault of the educator?! Whatever happened to personal responsibility?? I will agree that it IS the teacher's fault if the student is in class, attentive, completing their work, etc. and still fails. That scenario is an example of a teacher who is not invested in their students. But beyond that, at some point, the onerous for passing a class has to come down to the student, particularly in high school.

Yesterday was the end of the quarter. Consequently, I had several students who came to me asking why they were failing my class, which if they had checked the online gradebook at all over the past few weeks, they would have seen that they were failing.  My answer: "Um...you haven't turned in any work, you sleep or chat through my class, and/or have excessive absenteeism, and you still expect to pass?!"  Many of these students are seniors and they are planning on going to college next year, that is if they pass their senior year. 

The truly annoying factor is that students in my school are not held to ANY personal responsibility and haven't for a long, long time.  As far back as elementary school, these students were just passed through the system and never had to have any accountability for their education. I don't really blame the students, entirely.  This comes down to years of inaction on the part of previous educators and parents, and now those of us attempting to educate these students in high school are left holding the bag for years of apathy! Because my school is in receivership and is beholden to the state, these failing grades actually could end up with me losing my position, but I refuse to pass a student out of fear of losing a job. I have certain standards that my students must uphold and one of them is show up, pay attention and do the work in my class. I don't think that's a ridiculous request.  <sigh>  It's going to be a long year!

Sarcastic? Who? Me? Nnnnooooo!

Okay, maybe just a bit... or a lot.  I just had to share this story:

Today I was reviewing "irony" with my students.  [For anyone who is unaware, there are 3 forms of irony: verbal, dramatic, and situational.]  During the lesson, I asked my students: "What is verbal irony?"  To which, one of my students responded: "Sarcasm. Everything that Ms. Smith says is sarcastic."  LMAO!  Okay, my students have really gotten to know me over the past 10 weeks! I fully admit that I have raised sarcasm to an art form and it's nice to know that at the very least my students can recognize verbal irony because I model it on a daily basis.   :-)

Okay, okay. Perhaps I might be a little too sarcastic, but what do you expect from a 40-something single, lonely woman who lived for 17 years in New York City and has been burned by life time and time again. Actually, I'm probably not sarcastic enough considering my history.  

Speaking of sarcasm, I will say that I enjoy watching The Big Bang Theory for the copious amounts of sarcasm on that show! Nerds with witty sarcasm - what's better than that! Enjoy the sarcastic stylings of Leonard, Sheldon and Penny!