Sorting it out

I've been rather garrulous (and loquacious, and prolix, and voluble, and...) in this blog lately, with a commensurate lessening of readability. Well, lots of things are happening, I'm pressed for free time, and I find it hard to decide which events to record as well as how best to express them. Herewith, some random thoughts from the old cerebral vortex.

Ms. L spent a few minutes, as she does every single day, doing the calendar. Part of that is going over what day it is, what day it was yesterday, and what day it'll be tomorrow. After she had reiterated a few times that it was Wednesday and tomorrow would be Thursday, one boy raised his hand and said, "Will tomorrow be Fwiday?" That would amuse me, but also drive me up the freakin' wall. Ms. L, paragon of patience that she is, just took it with utter equaminity ("Well, let's see. Today is Wednesday...")

I made an appointment with Very Prestigious Private School to go in two weeks from now and give a lesson to the preschool class. Sounds like something I could do: fingers crossed! So I arranged for a half-day absence at Brown.

Ms. L verbalized one of my pet peeves today while teaching phoneme-letter relationships. When vocalizing the consonant phones, she adds that non-existent and misleading "uh" to the end, so that /m/ becomes /muh/ and so on.

I had a mini-conference with Ms. L and my State School sponsor today. I'm going to present a math lesson for observation two weeks from now. That shouldn't be a problem.

I've been getting six hours of sleep a night, amped up as I am all the time these days. I get up at 6:00 a.m. promptly and start the day immediately, work at Brown for nine hours, and yet cannot fall asleep until midnight. At this pace, I'll explode before I finish the term. Yet another thing to stress over.

Oh, and I've got to make a doctor's appointment soon.

I know this is only my third day, but I'm slightly disappointed at my reception by the kids at Brown. I'm used to being adored by small children; this batch is comparatively indifferent. Or perhaps just more canny about things. As I remarked to EPALG, "The older kids get, the more they realize they don't have to take anyone's guff."

Today I took pictures of the first-graders in two classes for a literacy center based on names. It's remarkable how many girls said, "Oh, how cute!" after looking at their own picture. Boy, it starts early, don't it?

Ms. L works ten hours days regularly and eats her lunch at her desk, planning and going over email. I admire her energy and enthusiasm, and I understand that as chair of the grade she has a lot of responsibility, but the other teachers don't do this. I'm beginning to wonder if Ms. L goes to unnecessary extremes. I know I wouldn't want any job that required that kind of sacrifice to personal time.

Basically, while I am enjoying my time at Brown (really, despite what this reads like), at this point I don't feel inspired enough there to pretend to anyone that I want to work there the rest of my life. I certainly don't want to come off as sullen or aloof, but neither do I want to gush needlessly in the hope that I'll be noticed by the principal (a gung-ho, managerial type who looks like he's about twenty).