Love and Rockets

I'm two days into my official student teaching, wherein I go into my placement every day. For this first week, I simply continue to observe my mentor teacher and go into some other classrooms to see how other stuff is done. However, the stories of legend continue to spring forth from the original classes that I'm in. I can say with pride that the ninth graders this year as every bit as immature and inappropriate as I am.

I've already blogged before about the smartass girl with the hyperactive sex drive in the inclusion class. This girl's FLIRT dial goes up to eleven. Only two days in, and she's already made a huge spectacle of herself in front of me on more than one occasion. Yesterday, my mentor teacher gave the class some time at the end of the period to talk quietly. Of course, some of the kids in the back turned around to talk to me... because I'm just that awesome. Hyperactive Sex Girl (HSG) was one of them. She looks down knowingly at my feet:
"Wow Mr. P! You have really big feet."
"Yeah," I say absentmindedly.
"So..." she says wickedly, "what else of yours is big."
I catch on fast and reply deadpan: "I have really big socks."
I thought that was rather clever of me, but then HSG caught me off guard with the following:
"You know, there's nothing wrong with dating a 15 year old."
I pause. I can't think of any response that wouldn't set me up for an interview on To Catch a Predator, so I simply roll my eyes and turn to talk to another student.

Today, things got even worse. I was conferencing about paper outlines with students in the inclusion class while my mentor teacher monitored the room. Of course, 3/4 of the room didn't even do the assignment, but HSG sure did. She comes sauntering back in a manner that I can best describe as amateurishly seductive. She flops down in her chair in leans dramatically forward, making damn sure that I know what she's trying to do. I'm ready for her bullshit now, so I tell her firmly to sit down. She still makes some attempts to garner my attention, but I ignore her and get through the damned conference.

With only five conferences to do, I finished early and assumed my usual role of wandering about the classroom to keep the inclusion folks from pulling each other's hair, dancing in the aisles, and flipping desks over. When I wander in front of HSG's desk, she pats her desktop and coos, "You can sit here if you want, Mr. P."
"I'll pass"
She glances at the guy who's subbing for the special ed teacher, a guy about the same age as me. "You're so much hotter than the sub," she says loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Get back to your reading," I say.
The sub has no reaction and looks rather bored. "You don't look happy to be here," says another student to the sub.
"I'm just doing what I can," says the sub.
"No wonder you'll never get laid!" HSG shouts to the sub before turning to me. "You're so much better than him."

My mentor thinks I'm handling HSG pretty well, but she makes me nervous. I know I'm not going to do anything inappropriate, but who knows what sorts of shenanigans she's going to pull next. Sweet statutory, I don't need this in my first year. Mentor teacher even admits that she's one of the stranger cases that she's had in all her years.

But the inclusion fun doesn't stop with HSG. Before the holiday, another inclusion kid came into the classroom while the mentor teacher was on her lunch break and proceeded to draw at least a dozen very clear and detailed pictures of penises and balls all over the teacher's podium. Apparently this is the kid's calling card, who routinely draws them all over his homework and assignments in all of his classes. He's a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but maybe he's got some Oedipal issues as well. In any case, the drawings are still there for some reason, and the final honors class took note of them yesterday.

Now honors kids are a different breed, of course. They're smarter and generally more mature; however, they're still kids who like to make jokes. Heck, I'm 26 years old, and drawings of genitals all over a teacher's podium would make me giggle like Beavis and Butthead too. The great thing about honors folks is that they're far more clever in their immaturity. Instead of jumping for the obvious, one kid blurts out, "Hey Mr. P!! Check out the rocket ships on the podium!" Another kid shouts, "Yeah! They've got big wheels on them too!" Then the floodgates open. "Looks like the exhaust is coming out the wrong end of that one." "That rocket looks pretty chubby." "Look at the size of that one!! It must be penetrating really deep space!" My mentor teacher was actually teaching the class, and even she couldn't keep a straight face. Meanwhile, I'm in the back trying so hard not to laugh and failing miserably.

I'm not sure why this English class in which we're teaching research papers has become a hotbed of sexuality and explicit content, but it's certainly more interesting and colorful than I'd been expecting. I have to admit, even though it's probably frowned upon by the administrators, it's certainly not boring.

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"What is it son?"
"I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant..."
"Dick! Dick, take a look out of starboard."
"Oh my God, it looks like a huge..."
"Pecker! Over there. Wait, it's not a woodpecker..."

10 Resolutions for 2010

WE WISHEN YE UN HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM VALHALLA!

In the next year, I'd like the make the following changes to my life:

1. Learn to Dance - I'd like to take a legitimate dance class wherein I learn to cut a rug and trip the light fantastic. I'm not talking about the casual club dancing either. I want to learn something classy. My brother once learned swing dancing, and I've had the opportunity to take a class in it on more than one occasion, but I always declined. Now I think it would be fun and worthwhile.

2. Blog Consistently - I don't blog near as often as I should, and the subjects range from bizarre to downright self-indulgent. I need a focus and a commitment to content. I find it fun on my own (it's writing with no pressure), but if people are going to read this thing, there needs to be a bigger spark.

3. Find a Job - I will NOT be unemployed during 2010. Once I'm done with this certification program at the end of April, I'll have two months (May and June) to substitute teach. As long as I can find some temporary work in July and August, I can start applying to full time teaching positions in September. I'll move wherever I have to in order to find a job. I'm sick and tired of mooching off of my parents and government loans. I want to be able to take some pride in my work and have my own life. Such things require steady and earned income.

4. Get a New Haircut - I'd like to try some new style. I've had the same hairstyle forever, mostly because my frustratingly straight and fine hair doesn't do much on its own. But maybe I can try something new and exciting that will make me look suave and epic. This one, admittedly, sounds stupid given how sexy I currently am. :)

5. Lose Weight - I'm 22 lbs. away from my ideal weight (210 lbs). I'd like to get there to see what I look like.

6. Travel - I need to go SOMEWHERE this year. I've never traveled on an airplane, and I've never been out of this time zone. I've been trying to work toward a trip to India, and I just might have to push that through this summer. If I wait for the financial situation to be perfect, I'll never go anywhere.

7. Learn Spanish - This one is a long shot, mostly because everyone says they want to learn a new language, and no one ever does. So I won't be terribly disappointed if this one doesn't happen. But I have a lot of Spanish vocabulary floating through my brain from five and a half years of classes, but I've forgotten a TON of the usage rules. I'd like to start refreshing this stuff so that I could get something out of it.

8. Be More Social - I'm kind of a loner when left to my own devices, and while I like my solitude quite a bit, sometimes the loneliness can destroy a man. I'd like to make a greater attempt to do things with other people on the weekends and in the evenings. It's very easy to become acclimated to a hermitic lifestyle.

9. Find a Relationship - I'm not looking for my one true love here, but I'd like to have some sort of relationship with a member of the opposite sex that lasts longer than 2 months. It's been six years since I've been able to pull that off.

10. Write Every Week - I really would like to devote some serious time to my writing. I say this all the time, but I have some great ideas swimming around in my head, and I should make a scheduled commitment to typing them into story form. I actually have some new approaches to this that I plan to blog about soon.

Of course, if I can even do ONE of these things, I'd be ecstatic. The way I see it, having ten goals and knowing full well that I can't accomplish them all takes some of the pressure off. Having this out in the open on my blog keeps me honest. I can't just change my mind or pretend that I never had the idea. Here's hoping I can create a JP that is more to my liking.

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"WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!!"

Wanted for B&E: Kris Kringle

He came into your house... through the chimney. He ate your cookies and left you with toys made through slave labor with materials not approved by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. I hear the bastard even uses lead paint to cut costs. He left hoof prints on your roof, too.

But go ahead. Let's all thank Santa Claus for his generosity.

Merry Christmas
from The Undesirable Element

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"You better watch out,
You better run fast,
You better duck down,
I'm telling you why.
Santa Claus is gunning you down."

Portrait of the Psychartist as a Young Man

While out and about on the town celebrating my birthday, my drunken revelry brought me to a bar called Belvedere's down in Lawrenceville. It was a really different bar with a bizarre aesthetic. The front room looks like a very traditional bar, but the enormous back room features a ping pong table, two pool tables, two refrigerators, a big-screen TV from the 1980s, a big bookcase filled with old horror flicks on VHS, and about two dozen old rocking recliners of various styles and colors. I rather liked the place.

Sitting right in front of the TV was a black gentleman all by himself eating a giant pizza and quietly but rhythmically tapping his fingers on the table while watching what appeared to be one of the early Jason movies. One of the friends I was with went up to him in an attempt to bum some pizza off of him, but she ended up getting dragged into a rather lengthy conversation with him. Eventually, my other friend and I want to know what's going on, so we went to join them. Thus, I got to meet one of the more colorful characters in recent memory.

He called himself "The Psychartist." Or "Firewolf." Or "Visionary 27." I guess it depends on what fan circle you run in. You can call him by his "birth name" Deion, but where's the fun in that. It turns out that the Psychartist fancies himself quite the slam poet, and he quickly regaled us with a rather impressive set of rhymes about the importance of following your dreams. We complimented his style. Apparently, the Psychartist works a day job down at the Bettis Grille and frequently entertains his patrons with these little diddies.

He continued with a lengthy and heartfelt monologue about the dangers of alocholism and the sins of the flesh. Monogamy is very important to the Psychartist. He spoke in great detail about how everyone should follow his or her dreams in order to find true happiness. There's nothing in this world more important than happiness, and if you simply pursue sex with every random girl, "then you'll get AIDS, and no one will be happy." The Psychartist be droppin some straight truth.

The best was yet to come. He asked if we wanted to hear his original CD compilation. Apparently the Psychartist has an amateur band and is trying to break into the big time with upbeat songs featuring uplifting messages. I was truly mesmerized by this man's bizarre hip hop after school special lifestyle, so I couldn't pass this up. He popped his personal CD (which he had on hand) into the DVD player....

It was AWFUL!!!

Imagine the most deranged and gutteral growls and wails from the devil being channeled into a microphone while singing lyrics about the importance of staying in school and monogamy. I remember one particlar track very well because the same lyrics were just repeated over and over again:
"If you cheat on your wife... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN
If you cheat on your girlfriend... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN
You think you're so bad but... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN"
It went on and on like this. The rest of the songs weren't any better, but I couldn't tell him that. He was beaming with pride and annotating every track, expressing the importance of each moral lesson as he went along.

He concluded our conversation with his hope for the future of psychartistry, a term and artistic movement that he apparently dreamed up (or so he says). What is psychartistry? As best as I could piece together, it's when you express your deepest psychological turmoil in artistic form while attempting to convey a strong personal message. I always thought that's what regular old "art" was, but maybe I didn't quite get it. I'll admit, I was drinking quite a bit, and he said a lot of things.

Still, he split a pizza with us, and he was one of the funnier and most interesting characters I've met in some time. You can bet your ass that the Psychartist is going to be incorporated into my novel in some way. He's just too good to pass up.

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"If you cheat on your girlfriend... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN!"

The House That JP Built

Virgil's recent stories of moving into her new home got me thinking about my own dreams of being an esteemed property owner and having my own house. Of course, such speculations are completely baseless at the moment, given that I can barely afford to pay rent even with a roommate. Still, a gentleman with too much time on his hands can dream... even if those dreams can't be fulfilled for another decade.

Location is always an important component, and I don't think I'd really like to live out in the middle of nowhere. Having spent the first ten years of my life in town where the houses are about a foot apart and then living the next fifteen years on a solitary hillside, I've experienced both extremes. I think I lean towards preferring the former arrangement with enough space added to keep me from knowing my neighbors far too intimately. Living in an apartment has its perks, but I'd like to have a decent yard with some room for nude sunbathing. However, I also don't want to have to hike a half a mile to see my nearest neighbor. There's a big difference between solitude and loneliness, and if I spent my life in some desolate rural field, I think I'd become quite the Lonely Larry. People may baffle me, but I like being around them.

But enough about the property. Let's talk about the actual structure. First, I want a big ass porch. I want to be able to go chillax on the front porch with a cold beer while hollering at the little kids to stay off my lawn. There's something chillingly uninviting about a house that has no porch. As proof, imagine any house where there's a front door with no porch and then a side door with an alluring deck or patio. I guarantee that everyone uses that side door. Porches are where you distribute candy on halloween. It's where you can play cards on a rainy night. It's a sleeping space for the cat during warm months. You can even let homeless people sleep there for a small fee. What's not to love?

Another absolute must have: BIG ceilings. My current apartment has surprisingly high ceilings for a Pittsburgh apartment, and that's an excellent trend that I plan to continue for my future dwellings. There's nothing more uncomfortable and rather claustrophobic than for me to be in a space where I have an inch or less clearance above my head. I feel like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Equally irritating are low-hanging chandaliers and other lighting fixtures of that nature. Mrs. Former-Employer had very high ceilings in her castle-home, but right in the center of her library/office was a bulky chandalier hanging 6'4" off the ground. I'm 6'5". I think I've lost the brain cells necessary to calculate how many times I've whanged my head off of that thing.

This is a guilty Englishy pleasure, but I'd also love to have a library in my house. One of the few tangible symbols of my education (because a salary sure isn't one of them) is my vast collection of books. I already have three stuffed bookcases, and I'm sure I'll acquire even more in no time flat. Nothing screams high-class muckity-muck like having a library. It'll adjoin my parlor and sitting room, and then my guests and I will retire to the study.

These are all legitimate desires on my part, but then my geeky side kicks in with its own ridiculous wishes that add a whole new meaning to the concept of "dream home." I'd be happy with a completely normal library, but imagine how much more epic it would be if I could pull out one book and have one of the cases slide away to reveal a secret passageway!? And what if my swanky and spacious porch also contained a trap door just in front of the entrance so that unwanted visitors could be dropped into an underground pool of maneating alligators? And despite the architectural nightmare and safety concerns, a long curved staircase with a slick bannister that I could slide down would put an extra spring in my step every morning.

I actually have an unhealthy infatuation with the houses in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Not only do they all have extremely large and ornate front porches, but they're large, close but with enough space for comfort, and old enough that they probably already have secret passageways and Victorian staircases. And they're solid structures too. I don't think there's anything more tacky than these houses in planned communities where the front has this elaborate facade of brick and windows while the other three sides have nothing but plain siding and a shabby deck. The houses in Regent Square are solid brick (or sometimes stone) all around, and they seem to look good from any angle. They don't make houses together like that with such care anymore.

On the other hand, those houses probably require the GDP of a small country to heat during the winter, but dammit, I still think they look awesome. And Regent Square has so much cool stuff along Braddock Avenue that I could die a happy man living there. It's called "Regent Square" for crying out loud. It couldn't sound more regal if it were called "Platinum Viceroy's Royal Palace."

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"Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams."

English 101: Rhetoric and Incompetence

When I was teaching Rhetoric and Composition at WVU, I actually believed at the time that I was pretty good at it. My young charges weren't complaining or throwing rocks at me, and they consistently gave me high scores on the teacher evaluations at the end of each semester. I'd had some difficult days, to be sure, but I figured I'd had all the kinks pretty well worked out by the end my last semester.

Then I started learning about proper teaching from the leading experts in the field... and yours truly received a swift education in just how pathetic his English 101 class had been.

In reading the research on effective teaching strategies for my certification program, I've come to realize that just about everything they highlight as being a piss poor teaching strategy is something that I implemented with alarming regularity at WVU. Class discussions following a shared inquiry model serve as the best way for students to work through difficult readings. I dismissed them as worthless exercises in babbling that made me uncomfortable. More and shorter writing assignments help students. JP, in his infinite wisdom, deleted existing papers from the curriculum and lengthened the remaining ones. Grammar lessons should be integrated into literature and writing lessons so as to encourage practical application. Guess who tossed out worksheets with rote lists and examples on them?

Speaking of grammar: marking up every grammar mistake on a paper does NOTHING for student learning... yeah, I went red-pen happy with reckless abandon too.

The worst blow to my ego was realizing that my goddamn coordinator at WVU was right about quite a lot. My swelling sense of superiority allowed me to simply say, "Bah, my stupid boss, you don't know what you're talking about." Then I'd throw out his ridiculous ideas as condescending and pointless. Well, it turns out that my former boss, despite his childish and condescending demeanor, actually knew a few things about teaching. It seems that all the current research indicates that multiple drafts, portfolios, feedback without grades (holistic style, if you will), and structured peer review workshops really are necessary to proper writing instruction.

Lest you think I'm being too hard on myself, I should point out that I had an entire course at WVU called "College Composition Pedagogy," wherein I was supposed to learn most of this stuff. In my automatic assumption of my own superiority, I dismissed the articles we read in class as the dribblings of pompous academics who knew nothing of real teaching. I badmouthed the professor of that class and the English 101 coordinator (behind their backs, of course, because I'm a classy like that) for their ridiculous strategies.

In retrospect, I think I spent far too much time worrying about how well their four major papers met my obviously arbitrary grading requirements instead of determing whether they were actually learning something about writing. When I would wonder why my students never came to see me during office hours while Virgil and Batmite had visitors constantly, I used to think that they just didn't like me... or were intimidated by my sheer awesomeness. But now I know the real reason: they knew I wouldn't provide one bit of genuine help. An office visit with old Mr. P would be akin to an appointment with a doctor who treats you with leeches: it's supposed to help but you end up leaving woozy and bleeding from odd places.

My students probably gave me high reviews because they didn't know that they weren't learning. As far as they were concerned, my class was a cakewalk. I never challenged them to do better because that would lead to mistakes and problems, which take longer to grade. Goddammit, we couldn't have that!

Did they learn how to predict what JP wanted? Most definitely.
Did they actually learn something useful about writing? I highly doubt it.

All of this wallowing and self pity seems especially bitter after I returned to my apartment today to find a sizable envelope from the Praxis Testing program (The Praxis is the test that all teachers must take to prove their mettle). The Praxis I is a complete joke, but last month I took the Praxis II (which tests the prospective teacher's subject matter), and it was reasonably difficult. In the envelope, I found a certificate with my name on it that reads:

"In acknowledgement of your outstanding score on the Praxis Series
English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge
Your exceptional performance earned a score that ranks within the top 15% of all test takes who took this assessment in previous years. This achievement indicates a high level of proficiency in an area critical for professional educators."

The attached letter had the following addendum:

"This honor will be indicated on all of your score reports. It formally acknowledges your personal effort and commitment to learning and to teaching... Your performance on the Praxis II assessment shows your dedication to high standards in education."

I'm not telling you this to impress you. And really, it was a standardized test that proves next to nothing of my teaching ability. Still, after reading the letter, only one word kept flashing through my mind: FRAUD. Yeah, I know my content, but is that really such an indicator of a great teacher? Shouldn't "Doesn't automatically assume he's smarter than every education expert in the country" be somewhere on the checklist of teacher quality?

There are roughly 175 students at West Virginia University right now who have me to thank for their piss poor writing skills. At the time, I was more concerned with grading quickly so that I could waste my evening watching Justice League episodes and eating goldfish crackers. That is some commitment to learning and teaching right there.

Well, here's hoping I've actually learned my lesson, because it looks like this program is actually going to award me a certification that will allow me to teach the youth of America how to read and write. Given the cracker jack job I did at the college level, maybe I should hire some of you to come kick me in the face periodically and tell me to keep my ego in check.

Okay, enough of this self-loathing. The next post will feature my glorious return to unabashed self-aggrandizement!

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"Dammit, Fry! I can't teach. I'm a professor!"

Another Day at Metropolis University

This is a video clip of a prank some kid pulled in a college lecture. I only wish I had the wherewithal and the showmanship to pull off something like this:

Not only does this guy commit himself to the role (complete with a heroic pose before blasting out the door), but he never once hesitates.

Though I wonder about the guy seen in the foreground as our boy bursts out the back door. He's got his head resting on his fist as though this sort of thing happens every goddamn day. "YAWN! I'll give a shit when it's something unusual."

If it takes more than that to pique his interest, he's going to be living one boring life.

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"Three things sell this newspaper: tragedy, sex, and Superman."