Summer, Part 2: This Time It's Not Summer Part 1

Like Ebeneezer Scrooge of old, I feel like I've been given another chance. Second Summer will be just as good, and better, than the first half was. I've finally finished my academic experiment: taking an entire semester's worth of class - two classes, actually - in two weeks time. Monday through Friday, I was at basically at school from 8 AM until 5 PM.

That's a lot of sitting time.

Not that I don't sit when I work every day. But the biggest difference is that when you work, you leave and you're done. When you leave school, you take it home, and you cannot escape it.

I suppose I learned, and I liked going to class for social aspects, and now I'm six credits closer to graduating. And the best part is, it's the last day of school all over again. Summer is reborn!

Court!

So if you haven't heard... I lost in court today. I was sentenced to 15-20 days in prison, which is why I'm writing now from jail. Thanks, American tax payers, for maximum-security's high speed internet connection!

No, I'm kidding: I only had to pay the fine. And speaking of fine, so am I. Really!

Backstory: In case you didn't hear, I got a citation (forever ago: it was May 30th!) when I was a passenger in my roommate's car, for not wearing a seatbelt. Yeah, it's taken this long for Logan to get around to making me pay it!

I left my first class a little early and arrived a tiny bit late to my later class, but overall it fit nicely into my schedule. When I first got there I got to see the video from the cop car (I'm a movie star!) and was pleased to see I had remembered what he said almost word for word. Then I went up and spoke to the judge.

I was really surprised to see that it was just like on TV - without a jury of course, but I sat at a desk, there was a bailiff, the judge was a middle aged woman with crazy bushy hair and those same frumpy robes. The cop's prosecutor even asked questions with the same slippery jargon as on those shows, and I even got to call up my roommates as witnesses.

Lisa swore in for me, and Jenny did too (after the trial, she even swore for me literally! Woot!). They both told it like it was and I couldn't be more grateful for their help. Well, Lisa would disagree - she wishes she could've helped out more. I was up there and couldn't think of anything more to ask them as witnesses, nor any cross-examining questions to ask the officer. Afterwards Lisa said she would've represented me. I definitely think she should be a judge. After she's a teacher. ;)

Really, I was so much more calm and together than the first time, when I'd gone in to make my plea. I wasn't nervous; I wasn't even mad. I think it was because of the high volume of praying I had done the previous 24 hours, but I decided beforehand that I was fine with whatever happened. Sure, I could've just paid the ticket and not had to go through all this, but it was definitely worth the try. I remember thinking, even as the prosecutor was going through his schpiel, that this was great just for the experience. Another notch on the List of Things I'd Never Done! (It's going great this summer!!)

There just came a point when I realized that it was more important for me to be nice and possibly lose than win with the price of being mean. I guess that plays my hand - I'm really just a softie at heart. But I didn't feel good about fighting. Instead, I felt great, sitting in front of the judge, prosecutor, and police officer, smiling, friendly, calmly stating my position.

The officer said that it was dusk, around 9:15 or 9:30 when this happened, and he had a good look into the car and saw my seatbelt hanging loose. (Actually, it was at least 10 pm, since that was how late we'd left from getting our hair cut, so it would've been dark by then, and my seatbelt was never hanging loose - it was clicked the whole time. It was only the shoulder strap that I adjusted lower.) The prosecutor was really good with words though, and ran a nice circle around me. I couldn't even think of anything to ask! Honestly, I felt pretty intimidated by the judge, who had told me off when I first got there for talking when I didn't know I wasn't supposed to talk yet. Sigh.

The judge finally decided that I wore the seatbelt lower on my shoulder than normal, meaning I "failed to wear a properly adjusted and fastened safety belt."

I'm not going to get mad. Well, the only thing that was insulting happened after I explained why I was wearing it low - I'm short, so when I wear it the way it comes out it cuts into my neck, so I push it down lower, but still high enough that, I believe, it would still save my life. Then the judge looked down at me and said, "Not to be mean or anything, but that's why they make booster seats. My granddaughter has the same problem." Ouch. Ok, I'm short, but I don't need a ...a booster seat! I smiled and thanked her for the advice. I also felt bad for the cop who had to take time out of his day to come repeat his story in what must have seemed like a trivial little matter, and even apologized (really quickly and quietly) as he walked out. So I can't be mad, really. Even the prosecutor was kind to me afterward.

Luckily I have a few roommates that can get mad for me. It's like when Harry Potter feels happy even when bad things happen to him, because "Hermione's and Ron’s indignation on his behalf was worth about a hundred points to him... his heart felt lighter than air." Thanks, friends!!

So, yes, I paid the $45 fine. It's the same amount of money I spent on Monday buying a single textbook for one of my summer classes. Ah, it's great being a college student.

Incidentally...I had been feeling bummed lately, a little nostalgic, about leaving Logan. I don't feel that bad about it anymore. ;)

In the end...believe me when I say I'm glad this happened. It was an educational experience and I'm glad I could learn about the court system on something so small. I hope I never have to do this again!

Idealism in the Face of the Impending Bitter Awakening

In terms of myself as a preservice teacher, I realize that I am idealistic and yet I can do nothing to change that. I can't force myself to become embittered and cynical because I have no experience to warrant such feelings. I suppose I know it's impossible for me to change all my students' lives, to ensure that everyone passes my class with flying colors, to make my future students learn... and yet I don't know that, because I want it to be true so badly I think I really believe it.

Where did that rant-ito (um, Spanglish for "tiny rant?") come from? Through my multiple clickings today I found this article in The Atlantic Monthly that I really, really interested me. It's written by a part-time, adjunct professor who teaches the nontraditional, returning students in like a community college, and is saddened and frustrated with being the bad guy in "the system." S/he is in charge of teaching English 101 and 102-type classes to people who are already working full time but need some post-secondary credit for promotions or to get into some other field. The students are also mostly described as illiterate. And so this writer is faced with being the bad guy: having to fail people that were accepted and perhaps led to believe that they would suceed when really they can't, and don't. The article says:

"No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment."

What is so depressing about this article is that it rings true: we all know that college is not for everyone. The writer of the article even mentions how 9 out of 15 students in the class fail. And I can see where this would hurt the most: not the universities, who get their tuition money whether or not the student passes the class, but the teachers and the individuals themselves, who are the ones who have to deliver and accept, respectively, the bad news. The article continues:

"America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns. "

I found this article through a link from a teacher's blog called http://teachingprofessor.blogspot.com/ and one of the comments from that post was from another teacher who also is in charge of "numerous students who do not have the necessary skills to be in college" and is terribly tired of it. She says,

"The writer of the article is not blaming the students personally for their failure, but s/he is exhausted at taking the blame. And so am I - so exhausted in fact that I am leaving teaching. I can no longer look over a class of 24 students and know that as many as half of them will not be able to achieve the level of writing proficiency they need to go on, that failing my class will be the reason they do not go on in their programme or receive their certificate. "

Um...remember the part where she says she's leaving teaching? She's sick of watching people not make it.

It's too much for me to ignore. Obviously something similar will happen to me. Even from a purely statistical perspective, it's clear that not everyone I will teach will suceed. So it seems it will overtake me either way, pushing me away from teaching so I won't have to tell people they're failures, or keeping me on but in a gradually more embittered and depressive state.

Raise your hand if you still want to be a teacher!

And yet I do. Which is exactly my point: I still don't believe it. I can't understand the notion of giving up or giving in because I haven't yet begun.

What do these scenarios mean for a junior high or high school teacher? I mean, the problems these college professors had were from "poorly prepared students." That only seems to make my job that much more important, and essential, in preparing students for whatever lies ahead. Ok, so not everyone will go to college. But I can still prepare them for other things they might need to come up against in their lives. And I can prepare those who are heading toward college to suceed in future classes. That's my role.

One last thing I really appreciated from the Atlantic Monthly article is when the author noted the growing assumption that everyone in the American workforce in general should be better educated, how there is a sense that "we want the police officer who stops the car with the broken taillight to have a nodding acquaintance with great literature. And when all is said and done, my personal economic interest in booming college enrollments aside, I don’t think that’s such a boneheaded idea." Me neither!!! I especially love when the article lists a couple of ways that literature might be able to broaden perspectives of people in all areas of the workforce:

"Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? The health-care worker Arrowsmith? Should the child-welfare officer read Plath’s “Daddy”? Such one-to-one correspondences probably don’t hold. But although I may be biased, being an English instructor and all, I can’t shake the sense that reading literature is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you. If I should fall ill, I suppose I would rather the hospital billing staff had read The Pickwick Papers, particularly the parts set in debtors’ prison. "

Not gonna lie: I haven't read all the aforementioned works of literature, though I have heard of (most of) them. But I can see where the argument is going, and I appreciate it: that "reading is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you."

Remember, that's why I'm teaching English: like milk, it does a body good. :)

A blog within a blog within a blog

"If I'm just adding to the noise, turn off this song."
---Switchfoot

Wow. I just read something that really turned me off blogging. And that something is.... everyone else's blogs.

Since I have nothing to do at my morning job, I literally sit and play on the internet for three hours and get paid for it. I have my rounds - my favorite is clicked.msnbc.msn.com, because it's just a bunch of links to more silly entertaining internet stuff.

Today Clicked said this:

"Speaking of giving up, One Post Wonder is a blog that features blogs that have only managed a single post. Blogging seemed like such a great idea until they actually tried it."

So I clicked it. Funny idea, yes? But in the end, so terribly, terribly humiliating.

And here I am...adding to the noise.

Thanks for reading. You get a cookie!