Soundtrack

Day sleeping is a delicate thing- especially in the city.

Work is being done on the house outside my window. I hear saws and cellphones, hammering and cursing. There's a dog tied up in the neighbor's court below my window. It'd be generous to say he has a foot of slack. He cries and moans. It's awful to hear.

The traffic just five blocks away is dense. I-95 runs parallel to Columbis Blvd. for a few miles and produces a hum that I swear I can hear as I lay in my room on 4th Street. It's there the moment my eyes open from my day sleep.

Found item

This object made its second appearance in my shower this week. Please note, I share the shower with my roommate: a twenty-something alterna-chick who wears combat boots, teddy bear backpacks, leather skirts, knee-high striped socks and is an admitted dom. So it's not mine. But what is it? Comments welcome. Anonymous comments adored.

aim and throw a flame

I'm looking at my storage locker in a whole new light. Mine is #409 but I can't figure out why my neighbor is #370. Odd.

I'm developing a plan to empty out this jon'. If you're reading this and you have something in my storage locker, speak now or forever hold your peace.

Saved by a cool Sparsamkeitgeschäftjacke

What a shitty day.

Dreams of a warm beach and laying in the sand with some familiar blonde.

But a rare opportunity to sleep in and ignore the alarm and I woke up early anyway. Cold rain splattered in. Ceiling fan on for no good reason. So shivering and uncomfortable. Scratchy blanket. Cold feet. Work tonight at 7 p.m. Gonna' be so tired it'll hurt.

Drove to my lost neighborhood to check the p.o. box, raid the storage locker and take some pictures on the new digital camera, have lunch and some ice cream. Read the paper.

Then there's that thrift store in Quakertown. It's a little far, but so good. I found the coolest jacket for 2 dollars. Saved the day.

Stay tuned for the picture.

Losing it

I'm steering the fourth grade ship all day tomorrow. Since I'm supposed to eventually take over the class in November, this'll be a good warm up.

Shaping up to be a full day, too. I'm kicking things off with a quizzo game to review for Friday's math test. It's tough to write quick questions for line, bar and picto-graphs as well as ordered pairs and median, mode and range. But I like what I came up with. I created a grab box with prizes for the top finishers. I call it the 'count to 5 box' because students have to pull out something by the count of 5 or they miss their chance. The 'count to 5' box is full of pencils and erasers and cool halloween cards and pencil tops- and little boxes of raisins.

Later in the day we'll try to start a math lesson in the computer lab. Tuesday's workshop about the 24 Game should work pretty well. The students will play these mini games, which are actually math drills, in hopes of getting a leg up on their multiplication tables. That's our next math unit.

I'll round out the day with Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Disgusting Sneaker. I used to love Encyclopedia and Bugs Meaney and the whole crew. Most of my lesson revolves around drawing conclusions. It'll go well.

Classroom management. Transitions. Closure. These are the biggest challenges I'm expecting for tomorrow.

Feeling much less inspired this week as compared to the first month. Maybe it's because I'm learning more about the inner workings of the school, meeting more of the staff, getting to know them. Maybe I'm let down because people aren't that nice so far. Maybe it's more a fact of my temporary status at the school. Just a student teacher, no sense being too nice to me.

I want more control and the stuff I really want to do just naturally falls to the backburner. It ain't my show afterall. That might be what's really bothering me.

I want my own class.

I hated the way Mrs. P told M that he wasn't a good student and poor students don't get on student council. M really wants to be one of the student reps for our fourth grade class. I really want him to get it. Not sure if this was the time for tough love, but Mrs. P dished it out.