Ideas at the wrong time.

If I had a typing apparatus in temple at young kippur I could have typed one hell of a blog, just out of my anger toward the temple - how it is run, what I get out of it, and my place in it. I guess it is a good thing - I can go back to blending and not sweat it. I haven't grown so attached that I will miss it if it self destructs. I am tired of feeling like I work for people. I was handed a shovel in my first couple of months and told to start digging without any type of honey moon where I could fall in love with the place. I mean after 8 years of tolerating the shithole I worked in I had tears when I finally had to say goodbye. As the weeks go on I remembered everything I WON'T miss about the place. But still, I had ownership - I was respected, I was allowed to make decisions, go about my own business. But it seems like most aspects of my life are boiled down to be an hourly laborer.

And if I could have stopped my school work at 10:30 last night I could have written yet another blog about how crappy the school system is.

Where do the ideas come from?

As was the original intent, I want to write a novel. But where do the ideas come from? All I need is a one sentence premise to build around (I guess). Something like "A reluctant super-hero must prevent the destruction of his city from alien psychopaths." I guess that would account for most fantasy premises.

But I need something I can get inspired by, something I will continuously think of plots and sub plots and characters and scenes. The cocktail napkin approach - where you find yourself writing little ideas on scraps of paper.

I have written stories into email but why can't I think of anything compelling. I need to be more systematic about writing but I wonder if other writers are too.

While I am waiting, however, I will continue to read about the structure of a story and how to build it ONCE I get my idea.

So how do I write a story?

One of the inspirations for starting this blog was to get my writing started. An everyday thing and maybe something would come of it. I find most manuals - either writer's digest or books on writing fiction quite annoying. I am a visual learner. Give me a picture or mark up a story to show me the parts of a story I should look for. I need a chart or one of those pyramids. Or a laundry list with examples - first an outline of highlights to the story, then the three parts, then the characters - and take me through another author's thought process. I just find the articles and books on story writing surprisingly difficult to decipher.

Wanding the library hoping for a miracle

This is what the blog is for. I am wandering around the library with dialog in my head and this is a way of getting it out.

Where were my parents during my teenaged years. I cannot remember them spending any time with me from like the time I was 11 till I went to college. They threw a bar mitzvah for me and they they sent me to college, helping me with the paper work. But in between I draw a blank. There was one time we all stayed up to finish a project for 7th grade and a few lame vacations in which I would get yelled at but otherwise I can't recall them actively (not passively) encouraging me, moving things out of my way.

I have found that I have a weakness for taking initiative on my own. Give me someone to answer to, make proud and I will work hard to please and not disappoint. It reminds me of how I would study extra hard before going to a study group.

I was just in the writing section of the library and remembering that I once attended a speaker event at the Y where a sit com writer was there - he had written scripts for the Bob Newhart show for god's sake. I recall going up to him asking personal questions. But where were my parents to encourage me, pave the way, I wrote so much from the time I was 16 to 25 and they weren't really interested. Sure my father harped on something I wrote when I was 10, but so what? It was like once I wrote a one page short story that was all I was good for. And now he flaunts that piece of crap to his grand children like that was the last thing I accomplished.

It isn't like I don't do anything on my own. Most things I do on my own. Nature of being a teacher and a father and a husband. Nature of having useless friends and an inability to make new ones. But it exhausts me. And if salary or family isn't on the line I get too easily distracted and down on myself. Shouldn't I have been a decent athlete by now - run a marathon or something? Shouldn't I have written a novel or been able to play piano in any capacity? Side jobs as a computer or statistics consultant? Anything?

Now that I am kicking myself for being in a lousy teaching position with no plan B and no way out I can see how I have failed myself. Because I wasn't strong enough to go out on my own with anything and my parents never encouraged me or paved my way when I was weak and needed it I find myself here. Why do I complain so much? Because when I had a lot of friends, excellent grades, and went off on my own, nobody paid any attention to me. I didn't even get rides to the Y, but my sister did because she demanded it. When I wasn't capable of asking I never got anything. He never anticipated what I needed. I was, as my mother puts it, the little adult.

Is there nobody in my life that can pick up at least a little of the slack when I need it? Is there nobody for me to give me a smidgen of support in my moments of weakness? I swear I won't take too much. This is the failure I ultimately point to. After all these years, I have useless friends who provide no support.

Not that I am capable of asking. But at least we can make a few teams.

First Day of Exams

After an hour drive home - exactly 60 minutes to drive 16 miles I can reflect ont he first day of exams. Many people didn't show up. That's ok - time to weed out the crap. And many people chose not to study for the exam or even be active during several days of reviews and prep. I will weed them out too. I think at this point I really don't care to fudge the data and jump through hoops. If they are not willing to engage in the scholarship I shouldn't have to make it up for them. School is hard and requires a lot of work. Once the weenie adults who run this system come to accept that then we should be getting somewhere. These are the same weenie adults who are more conserned with their 6 figure salaries and their elections to make any real changes that might inconvenience or insult the voter. So they would rather take it out on the teacher and other professional.

My school, in an attempt to keep itself from closing, is trying to divide itself into Small Learning Communities. This might take several years to get off the ground realistically. I doubt it will. For 1, the principal may not last that long, either through retirement or firing. Then someone with a different vision comes in. Or 2, the school may be one of the next to close. This is a very realistic possiblity.

And as usual, with all endeavors set forth with this system, the wrong approach is being taken. They are using the piling on method - not changing what they have and piling more on top of the heap. My approach would be from the ground up - design the community with very little of the existing situations to influence that design. And then start making course corrections to acckowledge the difficulties, road blocks etc. Their method doesn't acknowledge the roadblocks. The easiest example is where to have meetings - what other gorup would think of meeting in a cluttered classroom where nobody can face each other. It shouldn't be hard to start these things off with wish lists and work from there.

I am fogging up. Students not studying for exams. Students not showing up for exams. And I have to deal with it. Deal with it in a way I find totally uncomfortable and beneith me. Waste of time and resources. No consequences to those who thumbed their nose at the system. If they don't care for me then I don't care for them. Unfortunately, I still have to deal.

I need to get out and do something else. Is there anything that will pay me two hundred grand for something I actually like and has this much security? Do I have any friends or aquaintences to help?

What a waste.

An conference table in an air conditioned room.

Another meeting in a classroom - sitting at desks facing the teacher.  No honest exchange of ideas; just the occasional dishonest exchange when some of the talkers go off on rants.

Responsibilities piled up on us with no regard to timing and contract.  The funny thing is that we could probably accomplish all of these goals if they restructured our days from the ground up.  But the responsibilities are piling up - that is how she gives it to us - piling.  I mean we will not give up our lunch or single prep period.  Hey, as it is, my lunch is a prep period for everything I didn't get done the first time around.  So with two meetings a week, hall patrol, tutoring; that leaves us one day for everything else - phone calls, some sort of adoption, something called inquiry, bulletin boards, phone calls, clubs, ...I am probably forgetting a couple of dozen things.

Why can't we meet in a clean, comfortable room at a conference table, perhaps with refreshments.  Do we really want to see the inside of another cluttered classroom, and from the student perspective?  I can tune out with the best of them since they are even less interesting than me.

They have ideas for these small learning communities but the execution is soooo poor.

I guess the theme of many of the responsibilities is intervention of at risk students.  They are the ones who are absent 100 times.  The goal is to get fannies in the building.  Each nose is money to the system.  It is so much the wrong approach - in a better world, this is dead educational weight that should be left to social work experts, not academics.  Doesn't work in the business model either.  We should be going after the ones who are there mostly but just not getting by - 59 on the regents, fail a class, poor work habits, nobody checking their homework.  Like parents do.  I mean, what is easier - turning a 59 and 20 absences to a 65 and 5 absences?  or turning a 100 absences and a no show on exams into...anything?  Those are the people who are too far behind.  They won't be able to catch up in few months.  In fact, at least through math, they are probably 5 years behind.

Where are the best places to invest time and money?  There are too many places where we are doomed for failure.

Feeling any better these days?

My friend Michael sent me an email asking me the above question.  Every now and then we have a back and forth through the email discussing life and where we are at and why.  This was my response - I guess in a way my messages to him are mini blogs that deserve to be here.

Yeah, I'm fine.  I don't think I was doing so bad when we had our last exchange of emails (knowing what real depression is).  Just confused as to why so many people are in the same place and state of mind and why we all go about it alone.  It's like we are in competition with each other as to who can come out ahead.

I mean, at this point, I am resolved to making changes on my own, but I am still searching for the reasons why.

Right before the school year started I changed buildings.  Now - in the school system I work for (NYC DOE), it is not a different job, since we are all one big happy.  But at least this building isn't closing (yet!!!).  So I have prolonged one of my problems (this school was on the brink last year and I am told things aren't looking up).  So hear I am in year 23 of teaching, crappy classes (morons who couldn't pass the regents the first time around).  I work side by side with 25 year olds doing the same thing.  No growth or advancements.

But as I have been told many times I should be grateful I have a job.  I don't know why people feel good about saying that.  I don't want to be told I should feel grateful (isn't that something you should feel instead of being told??).  It's funny, all of the people i know who have lost jobs were the people who were making FAR more than me.  I mean if they had survived on what I was making and squirreled the rest away they should have more than enough to retire on right now.  But we know people's lifestyles are usually a product of what they pull down.

I think I will stop right hear since I am a little punchy and I am in full babble mode.  See how much you get for asking me if I am feeling better?  Actually I felt like running my fingers out and typing thoughts.

How are you doing on your end?

At Least I Get My Exercise.

Five minutes before first class. I wonder if I had to walk at least a quarter of a mile before I actually made it to the building. Parking south of the building is a bitch. Walking all the way around with the heavy bag. Even when I get to the gaits it is a long walk to the actual stairs - probably a city block of front space. Then up the stairs. I feel my fear of high blood pressure kicking in.

Today I have to work on my photos and videos and my piano and add a few more blogs. I have many blogs on baseball and school systems rattling around in my head.

I Don't Want to Do This Anymore

This may or may not be my first attempt at really keeping a blog.  I've explored blogs before but mostly to keep my recipes and my softball stats.  Now I have too much bursting out of me that needs to be typed.

I started at a new place of work this fall.  In a way it was a really lucky break.  I knew somebody who knew somebody and i got in.  I had to leave my previous place because the building was closing.  I wouldn't have been out of work - we are all one big happy and in reality it is just a building change.  But who knows how bad it can get when the building closes.  It would put me into a deeper part of a town that I really don't want to go to anymore.  So if this building closes at least I will get to sit in a better part of town.  Better Queens than Brooklyn.

I think I have the potential to be a really good writer.  I write good letters and small stories.  But I would like to write a book size thing.

As I change buildings - I am teacher in the huge NYC system, I realize, again, that my career has gone nowhere.  I carry a huge bag several blocks after finding a parking spot into an aging building that probably looked majestic in its day.  I carry that bag around to three classrooms and two floors and several offices.  I am still judged and observed on things I have done for over twenty years.  

I work side by side with colleagues who are twenty years younger than me.  Even though I earn a larger salary it is mostly based on payback for all the crap I have put up with.  The twenty-five year olds haven't put up with all that crap yet and, in reality, they are pulling down a good paycheck for their age and still living at home.  Other than that I have the same responsibilities as they do.  

I teach repeaters - students who couldn't be troubled to show up consistently last year or study for their regents, so they failed their Algebra regents and they get to waste our time and money again.  I wonder if the NYC tax payer really knows how their money is being wasted.

So it is a matter of growth, or lack thereof.  I am teaching the same shit - sorry, worse shit, than I did 20 years ago.  This situation won't improve.  I will never get to teach in a school where I can shine as an academic and feel challenged, and challenge others.  There was a time when that was true - I did get little glimpses of that life - but our schools were in transition and I couldn't appreciate it; and I didn't know enough to get out while I could; and I may have been too young to really be good at it.

So if I am not growing I am dying.I don't get any satisfaction from getting stupid kids to pass a test any idiot could pass by guessing.  Ok, not all of them would classify as stupid.  Unmotivated, lazy, without education values, uninspired.  Passed the years where simple algebra is exciting to them.  This is math for 7th graders, not 16 year olds.  Through their haze they know it is easy math - they recognize it after years and years of seeing the same thing.  In my opinion no teacher can make them feel very excited over a state exam.

But back to me...

I'm not growing.  It will never get any better.  There will never be a professional challenge to want me to leap out of bed.  I know if I said this to people they would throw a lot of "what if you do this" and "why don't you do that" 's at me.  But they don't understand a screwed up poorly run system with a lot of roadblocks, filth, disinterest in their staff, bloat, etc.  Since I still have to pull down a paycheck and finish out this prison sentence I call a career I have to think of a plan B.

Where were my friends?

All these years I was slowly dying - where were the people I surrounded myself with to save me?  All that time invested in making friends wasted.  I don't know why people put so much weight on socializing.  Never did a damn thing for me.  I gave to others and never got anything back.  I was never good at getting out on my own but I have to find some way.

Ok, I'll admit it: I never managed my career.  Teaching wasn't supposed to be a career.  It was a calling, it was teamwork, it was people.  But every time I turned around I saw people leave for better schools or better positions.  Loyalty wasn't as important as playing a system to their best advantage.  I stupidly stayed where I was.  And had to leave many times.  And never had a going away luncheon with Sunshine Fund gifts.  When I got into the system I met teachers that had been teaching longer than I had been alive.  But that was the end of an era.  And teachers quietly expanded themselves - they never discussed it with me or shared it with me - they just went on and waved bye bye. And I never saw the writing on the wall.

Now I still have crappy commutes and dull classes and no growth.  I'm tired and I bet I am getting sick and old inside.  I wonder if I have it in me to finally do something about.  If I do, I will have to do it alone.  And it starts her.  I document the journey.