rejoice for we are still standing

I'm not sure I'm brave enough to be a good teacher.

From an article in today's Toronto Star:

Kids slow to turn frugal
Perhaps the reality of recession doesn't hit home with children until they move out

...

Last month I found myself wondering, what if the bank calls the $6,000 loan on our line of credit? I'd barely started pondering how we'd raise that much cash, between the mortgage, car and braces payments...

...

We cancelled a Christmas ski trip to Vermont after the price suddenly shot up $1,200 because of the lagging loonie. We're heading to Quebec, instead, at about half the cost and three-quarters the mountain.

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Hey, here's a suggestion, why don't you NOT go on a $600 ski vacation and use that to pay down 10% on your line of credit! WOW. I think that's a pretty amazing suggestion on my part considering I haven't even looked at your finances and I've already found a way to pay down 10% of your line of credit. I must be a financial savant or something.

Also, maybe your kids aren't registering the reality of the recession, because despite the fact that you have at least four different debts - a line of credit, a mortgage, car payments, and braces payments - you're still going on a $600 ski vacation! Mixed messages much?!

My practicum is over. Ended a couple weeks ago actually. I feel really alone.

Teaching good.
Management bad.
Need fix.
Must be better.
Must be better.
Must be better.

Fucking Friday Night Lights has me crying a fucking 12 minutes in! This is fucking ridiculous!

Monday I start teaching. The unit is chromosomal inheritance. The level is Grade 11U. Timeframe is 4 days, ~75 minutes each, with Friday as a buffer. Plan is:

Monday - DNA chemistry, chromosomes (aka boring)
Tuesday - Plasmids, Biotech (Cloning, Fingerprinting, Detection)
Wednesday - Sex, er I mean Gender
Thursday - Genetic Disorders (plus assignment)

It's all going to be boring talky talk with blackboard writey write, because limited prep time and the subject material doesn't particularly lend itself to anything interactive at this level. There'll probably be a lively discussion on Wednesday, which is why I expect it to take the whole period. I might lead a class discussion about genetic screening on Thursday, dunno.

I need backup talking points though, if I end up running short. Normally, I could just make them do textbook stuff, but I don't like how the textbook covers the material, which is by jumping into the sex-linked stuff before going into the DNA stuff. When I did molecular biology in high school, we went from DNA structure and chemistry into replication, transcription, and translation, except that's in the Grade 12 course, so it's kind of a dead-end if I stick it at the end. (Diversity of Life is the next unit.) If I stick it up front, I can maybe bridge the ideas of DNA as a molecule and DNA as chromosomes and build up. I think. That's my plan anyways.

(Help.)

Matt and Julie 4ever!

(I think I've used this subject before.)

So I've been flu-ish for a week or so now. I could tell because I started getting nauseous on the bus, so I started taking flu medication, figuring I could fight it off maybe. But no, the flu-ish-ness persisted until this week and now that I seem to have picked up a secondary infection, I feel like hell x2, all with some school deadlines pounding down on my ass.

So now I sit here wondering if maybe I should have just submitted to the flu as soon I started feeling it. Maybe an earlier capitulation would have limited my suffering. Did I get too greedy?

Okay, so it's been a while. School school's been busying. Earlier this week, I did a 10-minute microteaching performance with peers that was filmed and was reviewed today. I went first and ran out of time. Oops. Next week, it's 2 lesson plans, a reflection on the microteaching, and a half-hour peer seminar. Nothing huge over-the-top, but it's enough to chip away at my free time. And, you know, NEW TV SEASON GLEE.

But you guys probably don't care about what I'm watching, not that I'm sure you guys care about what I'm learning/doing, but I figure if you're going to care about one, it'll probably be the latter. Anyways, today I found out where my practicum placement is, and it's back at Winston Churchill, with the same biology teacher whose classroom I observed twice. So I'm guessing I'm going to get that class too. I'm pleased that I get biology first, since I feel a lot more comfortable with that than I do math at this point, partially because biology's an elective that's limited to the upper years, but also due to general subject familiarity. I'm also pleased I'm back at WCCI, because Kramer and I will be running the Math Club there, a afterschool thingy for students intent on writing the CEMC math contests. So all in all, relatively good news, though my trepidation is still significant.


Oh, and for some reason, the subject of Gilmore Girls has come up amongst us classmates, and apparently I'm the only one who liked it :(

I think I had one today. It was one of those days that as you're about to drive home, you just stand in the parking lot and think about what happened and can't come up with anything. Just missed opportunities marked with hesitations, split-second decisions made without thought, ideas slung right through your mind into the trash. I feel like I missed out on almost the entire day; I don't even know what happened; I don't feel any way or another about it.

Maybe that's not the stereotypical bad day, but I think it counts.