Back in Baltimore

I'm back in Baltimore, tired from the day of driving yesterday but ready for a nice long workout today before I head to the restaurant to work my last ever New Year's Eve. I don't know what the reservations look like, but apparently it's been busy this past week - the possible result of a recent very positive review by the Sun's notably picky (but awesome) Elizabeth Large - so hopefully we'll have a good crowd in for our $75/person New Year's Eve fancy-smancy dinner, and I'll make good tips. The first year I waited tables, I was at around $350 after that night, but it's been steadily less in the three New Year's Eves since then. Still a good night, but not a almost-pay-rent-for-the-month type of night. My tuition bill is due on Jan. 2, so I could use the cash.

The holidays were fine. Nice and sloooow. I re-watched the first two seasons of The Wire. I have spent a lot of the last few years just quietly nodding in agreement when people talk about The Wire; I didn't really have too much first-hand knowledge of it, other than a marathon of watching it a couple of years before. Now, I got it, though. Now I know the difference between Barksdale and Stringer Bell. I think I totally missed episodes before, too, because how could I not have remembered the scene where Wallace is killed? Wow.

Season one is much better than Season two, though. I think Ziggy's character is akin to Jar Jar Binks. I just want to throw my shoe at the television whenever he's on. I haven't finished season two yet, and have no recollection of what happens, so maybe he gets his redemption or something. I've heard that Season 3 and Season 4 return to the quality of Season 1. Season 2 isn't bad, it's just... eh... too many white people not season one.

Other things I watched (I use Christmas vacation to catch up on movie watching):

Charlie Wilson's War: Excellent. Funny. Tom Hanks' best movie in years, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is great.

The Great Debaters: Also excellent. Not cheesy when it looks like it could be. I was disappointed later to read some of the liberties the script took with the truth, but still a cool movie.

The Kingdom: Entertaining film, cheesy at times but well-made.

The Simpsons Movie: A bit of a letdown, but good for some chuckles.

Superbad: Why do I always end up watching the dirtiest movies with my parents? Pretty funny, though.

I also - ugh - graded a lot of papers. I literally spent all of Thursday grading, plus a lot of Wednesday night, and much of Friday morning. Still not done. Hopefully by the time we return to school...

Searching for my song

So, yes, I've been thinking about ending this blog. I don't want to, but have come to the realization that the cons probably now outweigh the pros, and that I don't really write about that interesting of things anymore because too many people in my career and life are reading. I've always kept this online journal for me, and not for my readers, but I'm writing now with the audience too much in mind. Living such a public online existence is just making me feel really vulnerable lately, and it's getting increasingly so. A few specific things have happened, but more than that, it's the thought of what could happen.

I do wonder if perhaps I could make this all about educational politics, or something less personal, but then I remember that if one were to dig through the archives, this is connected to things I wouldn't want, say, a new 9th grade student of mine to be reading. I regret geographically giving the location of my blog, and regret allowing people enough information to figure out who I am. Being a part of the online blogging community here in Baltimore has made me a few friends, but it hasn't helped my blogging, at least in my mind.

I'm hemming and hawing about it, though, and decided to take a week or so off, and blogged just twice in the last two weeks. It's really hard to stop this train, though. Like, I just came back from seeing Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Center Stage. It's the fifth August Wilson play I've seen - I'm getting to the point where I might make it one of my life's goal to become an August Wilson expert - and the strange, quixotic play has been grappling with more questions than answers. And I just want to pour everything in my mind out somewhere, and this is what I used this blog for. And then I realize that I don't want to get too personal, but I do want to say that I'm Harold Loomis, and I'm just looking for my song, and how I year to shine like new money someday - how I teared up a little at the end, when Loomis ripped off his shirt and cut himself, baptizing himself in his own blood, and then walked - no, skipped - away, finally free of the burden he'd been carrying and limping around with the entire rest of the play.

Really, that's more personal than anything else I could say, at least to those readers who know the play. And then I wonder what I'm really doing - this blog, when it's going well, is a desperate call for people to know me, and to know my students, and to hear my story and, secondarily, the story of some good kids in Baltimore. It fills that ancient human longing of revelation to others, perhaps because I have little of that in my real life. And I wonder if I decide to step away, will that seep out in other, more productive, places and people, or if I'll withdraw into myself more. And this is why my sort of blogging scares me, because this feels good, and, yet, this is the type of writing - not about telling people how much I love Alicia Keys - that can probably get people after me... But this is what I like about blogging. So what I love most about this endeavor is what also scares me the most about it.

Back to hemming and hawing.

Happy Holidays! I'm so excited to get out of here a week. Holden and I hit the road on Saturday morning, and I'm quite sure this will be my last post of 2007.

Done.

I'm almost officially done with my semester. The research proposal - "Effect of Text-marking on Literary Analysis of 9th-Grade English Students" - will be turned in at the end of class. And then I'll go home and hope for a snow/ice day tomorrow - I could use the rest.

Not really into blogging lately.

Book Challenge

On Friday, I was out of school for a baseball coaching conference, and, apparently, a parent who happens to be a pastor came in irate about my class. His son was reading Drift, a novel by Manuel Luis Martinez, for my class. The book is often classified as a YA novel, and it's one of my favorites I've read in the last few years - a moving account of a 16-year old kid on a journey for redemption. I haven't re-read it this year, but I remember it has some tough language in it, and some drug use - he smokes weed and gets drunk, if I remember, but it's sort of his low point before he gets himself together. But the book is mostly about this kid's love for his grandmother, and his search for his mother, and how hard work pays off, and a lot of great things that I want my students to learn. I think it's a pretty important book, one that I can see a lot of my more at-risk kids relating with (bonus for it having a Latino-American protagonist, a group that is under-represented in our curriculum and in most high school English curriculums)

It was on a list of twelve novels I gave the students for their independent reading book, all featuring characters on a journey - so students can relate it to The Odyssey. The independent reading book is due on Dec. 20. I've only kept light tabs on how the kids are doing; this is meant to be a fun, high-interest text and activity to get them to a richer understanding of the archetypal journey story.

Anyhow, Friday morning I get a call from my Assistant Principal, about the pastor who has come in with guns blazing for me about this book. He's very angry, and talking about contacting the press (he knows a prominent education journalist and mentioned the name a number of times). From what I understand, the father had a problem with the language, not the content. The AP sounded relieved when I told her this was not a required text, but a text the student chose from a list I had created, and I think things will be okay. Maybe the father didn't know that, either. It'll be interesting what happens tomorrow, though. I hope no one is still upset.

*****

Otherwise, not much new. One class is over. One class still needs to finish. I can almost smell my Master's degree. I hope no one can smell the BS I'm throwing in the big paper I'm finishing up for Wednesday, though.

I think I'm gonna hit the island in a little bit, but what I said had you smilin a little bit, didn't it?

A song has finally supplanted incredible Lauryn Hill's "Lose Myself" as the song I'm obsessed with at the moment. It's Alicia Keys' soulful "No One." I love the grit to her voice in this performance I put below. Age has added depth to her voice - a little more scratch, a little more imperfection - and it works great for this stuff.



I also love the Kanye West sampling of this song, which I downloaded here. He can't sing, which makes parts of this kind of funny, but I love his wordplay here more than anything on Graduation (boo to all those Grammy nominations, but the cynic in me thinks he'll probably win Best Album for this one, even though it's by far his weakest), and the production is typically top-notch.

Now, I'll really go back to work. I probably should walk around or something when I need a break instead of blogging, but oh well. I might be up for several more hours tonight.

The end of the semester

Tonight I'm working on the work for the course I like. I'm resigned that I might get a B (and be lucky to get a B) in the other course, the one I hated. So far, I have earned 589 points out of a total 600 - not too shabby. But the final project is worth the last 300 points of the course, and I've barely started, and don't have a great idea about what it even should look like. Unless I pull it off good in the next five days, I'll probably turn in mediocre work and get a B in the course. I've actually done the math to figure out how many points I need to get to get a B, my first B in grad school. I'll perhaps blog freely about that course after I get my grade. I wrote a couple of pages about it in the evaluation yesterday, that's for sure. I could also come up with some epiphanies in the next few days and do pretty well. We'll see.

But this one, this course I sort of like. The work is a bit repetitive, but full of the reflect-about-teaching stuff that I love, and doing these processes is kind of envigorating in a way. Still, I'm about three pages into something that will probably be about fifteen pages, and I really want to finish tonight. The one for the other course will be longer, but that one's not due until Wednesday. It's crunch time, certainly, for these courses.

Break time is over. Back to MS Word and this paper.

Baltimore's first snow of 2007

All day, I clicked "refresh" on the WBAL Weather Report, to check for closing information for Baltimore City. All day, I was disappointed.

It was a crazy day. The kids are amped up to a different level because of the snow. Then, the power went out for about 45 minutes in the building in the middle of the day. We taught and learned by the light from the windows, and hoped nothing was happening in the pitch-black back hallway.

Still, no cancellation of schools, or early dismissal, despite the county getting out an hour early. Not a big deal today, but we're all anxiously awaiting how Dr. Alonso will approach the question of early dismissal and snow days. Most think that because he's from NYC, that he'll almost never cancel school. Maybe he'll see how the city functions with a few inches of snow on the ground and then decide. I couldn't believe how slippery the parking lot as on the way out of the school today. If schools are to stay in session, they should be the first areas salted.

Anyhow, now I'll be refreshing that same WBAL webpage to see if, by chance, Towson University might cancel classes tonight. Goucher already has. I don't want to go back on those roads.

The Return of Troy Maxson and Getting Out of Her Face

It's been an unreal night, and one I wish I could have shared with fellow Tigers fans, or even baseball fans. But it's probably best, as I'm trying to finish my grad school projects and I shouldn't be anywhere except right here in front of my computer. But it doesn't stop me from consistently going over to the Detroit Tigers Forum and commenting on the big trade. I'm still in shock. This is a huge deal.

The day in school was mediocre at best. It started with 1st period, where I had a conflict with a student ...
Second period was nice, because my Troy Maxson returned. This 9th grader's attendance is spotty, and, for the last few days, he tells me he's only coming to English so he can play the role. We need him. He's - quite literally - 6'2, 300 lbs (at least according to the football roster sheet), so he fills Troy's size well. He's also bright, but troubled, with spotty attendance and more problems than answers. I've tried everything I can think of with him - phone calls, discussions with other adults in his life, but he's fallen off the map a bit since the end of the season. We get along well, but he needs to be in class more often. And figure things out a bit.

And, the afternoon was just fine. I've started Kiss of the Spider Woman with my Juniors, and it feels like they're into it. We had a couple of alright Socratic discussions today over the first six pages. It's a hard book to get used to reading - it's all written in uncredited dialogue - but mostly the kids seem into it. Maybe this is the start of a renaissance with the 11th grade course. I wish that class was smaller and that it felt a little less... something... I just don't think I can ever relax in front of a class of 35. So many eyes on me. I just never feel very comfortable in class of nearly 40. It's just too much, and there's not enough space. It's like there's a point at 30 students where I just can't monitor everyone, or I just lose something.

But today was good. They're a good group of young people.

Tigers get Cabrera, Willis for Maybin, Miller, 4 more

This is insane.

Now the best lineup in baseball...

1. Granderson, CF

2. Polanco, 2B

3. Cabrera, 3B

4. Ordonez, RF

5. Sheffield, DH

6. Guillen, 1B

7. Renteria, SS

8. I. Rodriguez, C

9. J. Jones/Thames, LF


... and one of the best rotations:

RH: Verlander

LH: Willis

RH: Bonderman

LH: Roger

LH: Robertson

This is the biggest trade in my lifetime and maybe the biggest major league trade in five years.

Computers and cars and teaching

1. I finally filed a claim regarding my car, which was hit (in a hit and run) in front of my house over the weekend. I thought I might go without it - my car is on its last legs - but I can't drive without mirrors, and I'm quite sure there's significantly more damage than my $250 deductible. I'm old hat at this now. This is my fourth claim in six years, and the third regarding something that happened to my car while parked out in front of my house (it was hit once, and another time the driver's side window was shattered).

2. My new computer is awesome. So fast. I've been working on researching for my two major projects due in the next week, and the research has been going a lot better than it did before. I wish, however, that more of the articles I have found were available online. It looks like I have to take a long trip or two to the Cook Library.

3. My one issue with the new computer is how to transfer all my files from my old computer to the new one. The old computer is pretty unstable, but still workable. My big concern is moving the 6,000 or so song files over. I tried starting today with an I-Pod, but it wouldn't let me. It's going to take some research. I'm also considering getting an external hard drive.

4. I think that without any grading, I could get my job done between 8 and 4. The reason I say this is that I haven't done any grading in the last two weeks, only planning, as I've been trying to get my research done. And I've been able to get out of there shortly before 5. Today was 4:40. That isn't too bad. Unfortunately, after the Wal-Mart errand described below, I didn't get all the way home until 7, only leaving me a couple of distracted hours to get some work done. I made some ground, though.

5. It was such a weird day today. Usually, I firm up lessons and they go a little quicker and smoother as the day goes on, and, by 10th period, I have a few minutes left to spare. Today, it was first period's lesson that went quickest, and tenth period's that I didn't get through. I'd like to figure that out. Did I get a little lazy today as the day went on?

6. I have so much to do right now. Good thing there was nothing on TV in the Baltimore area tonight. (Just kidding. What a game.)

Life preserver

Mike is a kid who needs to figure out the end of his story. Always a troubled kid, things reached a head at the end of the summer when his junkie, abusive mother kicked him out of the house.

He's smart - real smart. He's also raw, and honest to a fault sometimes, and doesn't control his mouth or his temper sometimes. I taught him last year and got to know him well. He was an erratic student. He loves to read (hates TV), and on one hand, he would read Their Eyes Were Watching God in two nights and then complain we were moving too slowly. But, on the other hand, he would flat out refuse to do his daily grammar drill, and never held back his comments. But I got along with him well. I finally got him to stop using the f-word - both of them - in class. He started curtailing his talents into better work and a more disciplined approach. He got his grades from 50-somethings to 70-somethings.

I could tell the homelife wasn't great. The one time I met his mother, she seemed to have no idea how to be a parent, literally telling me she had no idea what to do with him. Then, the stories Mike would tell me, about refusing to let him go to school, about locking him out of the house overnight, about calling the police on him when he did try to come in. I usually round up a dollar to all the kid when they buy their books, and it's for kids like Mike - I got his books for him last year, because I knew he couldn't himself.

This school year, he missed about a week, which was a concern. When he returned, he told me, "Aw, you know me, Mr. Epiph, I love school. I'd never hook for a week." And he does love school, and wouldn't. Apparently, his mom called the police on him, telling them he had weed in his room. Which he didn't, and a search confirmed. It was clear that mom and son couldn't live with each other anymore, though. They haven't spoken since, in fact. He's now staying with his - get this - his grandmother's sister's daughter's family. Figuring out the family dynamics made my head hurt a little bit, but he's with an aunt and uncle who have a 19-year old daughter and a 15-year old daughter, who are apparently Mike's cousins. It's a stable house. He's got his own room and his own computer. He is now well dressed. His hair is cut regularly. He exudes health when before he just looked scrawny and unkempt. The difference is night and day. He is doing well in his classes and I couldn't be happier.

I give him a ride home on Mondays, after his Man 2 Man Book Club meeting (where they're currently reading Letters to a Young Brother. Tonight, though, he forgot his house key, and I wasn't about to leave him on his front porch for a couple of hours in the blistering cold. So we went to Wal-Mart, where I had to return something. There, he did his Christmas shopping for his aunt and uncle.

And I just can't believe the life preserver that's been thrown to him over the last year of his life. He's gone from an unstable house and a distant, clueless, possibly worse parent, to a stable, loving family. Here's hoping he uses that life preserver to get himself out of Baltimore and into college in the next year and a half.

I told him tonight that his story would make a great book - the scattered homelife, the messed up mother, the jailed father, the troubled educational path and now the redemption. I told him he's got to write that book now so that the ending works for him. Get his average up to a 90, where it should be, and hopefully he can turn this story into some great college essays and scholarship opportunities. He deserves it.

The Annabel Lee Tavern

There's going to be a bar named after my favorite poem, the only poem I've ever memorized?

And it's being run by the same guy who ran Brewer's Art for seven years? And it's in Fells Point, still my favorite neighborhood in Baltimore?

That's great news. Here's hoping it lives up to its billing.

Saturday Night Living

What a whirlwind.

Friday, I started Fences with the kids, and it went so great. They're already on the edge of their seats. I picked great actors. What a great teach that book is.

Friday night, I went out with friends to Ale Mary's and several other Fells Point establishments to celebrate a birthday. It was a good night.

Sometime overnight, though, my car was hit parked out in front of my house. I now have no side mirrors, and a piece of my fender came off, along with some denting. I found out about five minutes before I left for work tonight, so I didn't get a chance to call the insurance company. We'll see if it's worth the $250 deductible. It'll be close.

Very tired. Work was a hellhole tonight. Sooooo busy. Kitchen can't handle it. Everyone was pretty nice, though - I got a $25 tip on a $62 bill, plus $20 on $80. That's just two of the seven tables I had, so I had a pretty decent night.

Exhausted, though. And getting sicker all the time. Now it's my throat. I'm wearing myself ragged and my body is telling me to slow down. I'm doing my best. Probably shouldn't have gone out with such gusto on Friday night.