To: Ms. Chew
From: Fredy
Seems like yesterday that you were
filling the house with stories and jokes
of how things were back in the good ol' days,
of how tradition is important and so is culture.
Seems like yesterday that my music and
clothes made you laugh.
Yet today... the house looks empty and the
clouds roll in, the stories are muted
and the jokes are humorless.
The house cries, because you are gone.
But you are still here in my sorrow
and my tears.
in my smile and laughter
in the walls of my heart that
will always keep you in and
will never let you go.
--F.S.
The poem one of my seniors wrote for me after I told him about my grandma passing away. It's moments like these that show me the love goes both ways.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Finish Line
So between my last post and now, a lot has happened. A lot has happened. In short, we had a successful project week, reviewed for finals, had finals, and I finished grading and packed up my room for the summer. I also finished our teacher induction program BTSA (unaffectionately dubbed SHITSA by all who go through it) and upon day one of next year, I will be a fully tenured teacher of the San Francisco Unified School District.
In long, there's so much more to explain about the malestorm that was the end of my second year teaching.
It started off with awesomeness. School of Rock was so much fun.. highlights include spending 3 days playing guitar with kids, hanging out in the Haight, and spending time on and backstage at the Fillmore. Our project was wildly successful, the kids had a great time and I would definitely do it again next year. With the one big change of pushing harder to get local bands to come and visit.. including hounding Green Day even more.
As we started wrapping up the year, I began to realize how much I was really going to miss this year's graduating class. They were my babies.. the juniors that were with me my first year of teaching were going to graduate and move on. Granted, the ones who repeated physics with me their senior year were not the best students, but more often than not they were the most fun because we had those two years of building relationships between us. I imagine had I taught freshmen all along, this is how I would feel when my first freshmen class graduated.
Prom was so great. I love that our kids treat their prom much differently than other kids might. While some kids might see prom as a night to goof off and cause trouble, our kids see prom as a really special night (partly because they can't afford to get dolled up and go out all that often) so they are really there to have some good clean fun. Most of my favorite seniors were there and I got to spend some more cherished time with them. The night came and went with barely a hitch.
By the time prom rolled around my classes were in full exam-prep mode. This time of year is a busy time for both students and teachers alike. They have final projects to finish and exams to prepare for. We have exams to write, give, and score, as well as grades to finalize and turn in and classrooms to clean up and tear down. It's not the ideal time (although there probably isn't one) for a personal crisis to come in and make your walls come crashing down.
I was still at school when I got the phone call from my sister saying that my grandma was probably not going to make it through the night. Thursdays are busy days and I had just stopped by my classroom in between after-school tutoring and heading off to an end-of-the-year awards ceremony for our kids. I checked my phone and I had 5 missed calls from her and a text that said "Gma's really sick, going to the nursing home now." I called her back right away and she gave me the news.. she probably wasn't going to make it.
Now I know up until this point this blog has been centered around my life as a teacher. I ruminate about my personal life elsewhere, sometimes on Xanga, most times in my journal. But this time there was no clearly drawn line.. my personal life invaded my school life.
By the time I hung up the phone with my family, my grandma was gone. And there I was, walls crashing down around me, still in my classroom. It was all I could do to call a coworker in to sit with me for a while before I gathered enough composure to walk home. That night and the next day, my family and I came to the decision that I would finish out the school year as much as I could and come home for the funeral the following weekend.
Which meant six days of business as usual to the untrained eye. In retrospect, I think it was good for me to keep going in to work to keep me busy and keep me out of my own head. But at the time it took all my strength to get out of bed each morning, especially the first Friday. Two of my students noticed a difference in my temperament and when I explained they were ever-so-sweet in comforting me. The president of our FreeSpeak poetry club even wrote me a poem in tribute to my grandma.
It took me until the Senior Breakfast on Wednesday to bring myself to tell my seniors that I wouldn't be going to graduation this year. And while of course this wasn't the biggest tragedy in my life, I was still pretty torn apart that I would miss it. It made the last moments I spent with my seniors all the more precious. Graduation last year happened to fall on my birthday, and was by far the best birthday present I had ever gotten. Graduation was the one day that made all the other days worth it and I wouldn't miss it for the world. Just trying to give you an idea of how big missing graduation was for me.
So in the end I came home before the official last day of school. I worked with the teachers of my seventh period Algebra class so that I could have them take their finals early and I missed graduation. I pushed so hard to just finish out the year that even now as I write, sitting on the couch of my sister's house in Maryland, I still don't feel like it's over.
Maybe I'll come back and polish up this entry a bit more later, but what I really wanted to say was this.. it's over. My second year of teaching is over. For the most part, it was smoother than the first, but it definitely didn't end the same way last year did. I'm no longer a probationary contract teacher. When I pick this blog up again next August.. I'll be a third year teacher. I'm still in the process of digesting this.
In long, there's so much more to explain about the malestorm that was the end of my second year teaching.
It started off with awesomeness. School of Rock was so much fun.. highlights include spending 3 days playing guitar with kids, hanging out in the Haight, and spending time on and backstage at the Fillmore. Our project was wildly successful, the kids had a great time and I would definitely do it again next year. With the one big change of pushing harder to get local bands to come and visit.. including hounding Green Day even more.
As we started wrapping up the year, I began to realize how much I was really going to miss this year's graduating class. They were my babies.. the juniors that were with me my first year of teaching were going to graduate and move on. Granted, the ones who repeated physics with me their senior year were not the best students, but more often than not they were the most fun because we had those two years of building relationships between us. I imagine had I taught freshmen all along, this is how I would feel when my first freshmen class graduated.
Prom was so great. I love that our kids treat their prom much differently than other kids might. While some kids might see prom as a night to goof off and cause trouble, our kids see prom as a really special night (partly because they can't afford to get dolled up and go out all that often) so they are really there to have some good clean fun. Most of my favorite seniors were there and I got to spend some more cherished time with them. The night came and went with barely a hitch.
By the time prom rolled around my classes were in full exam-prep mode. This time of year is a busy time for both students and teachers alike. They have final projects to finish and exams to prepare for. We have exams to write, give, and score, as well as grades to finalize and turn in and classrooms to clean up and tear down. It's not the ideal time (although there probably isn't one) for a personal crisis to come in and make your walls come crashing down.
I was still at school when I got the phone call from my sister saying that my grandma was probably not going to make it through the night. Thursdays are busy days and I had just stopped by my classroom in between after-school tutoring and heading off to an end-of-the-year awards ceremony for our kids. I checked my phone and I had 5 missed calls from her and a text that said "Gma's really sick, going to the nursing home now." I called her back right away and she gave me the news.. she probably wasn't going to make it.
Now I know up until this point this blog has been centered around my life as a teacher. I ruminate about my personal life elsewhere, sometimes on Xanga, most times in my journal. But this time there was no clearly drawn line.. my personal life invaded my school life.
By the time I hung up the phone with my family, my grandma was gone. And there I was, walls crashing down around me, still in my classroom. It was all I could do to call a coworker in to sit with me for a while before I gathered enough composure to walk home. That night and the next day, my family and I came to the decision that I would finish out the school year as much as I could and come home for the funeral the following weekend.
Which meant six days of business as usual to the untrained eye. In retrospect, I think it was good for me to keep going in to work to keep me busy and keep me out of my own head. But at the time it took all my strength to get out of bed each morning, especially the first Friday. Two of my students noticed a difference in my temperament and when I explained they were ever-so-sweet in comforting me. The president of our FreeSpeak poetry club even wrote me a poem in tribute to my grandma.
It took me until the Senior Breakfast on Wednesday to bring myself to tell my seniors that I wouldn't be going to graduation this year. And while of course this wasn't the biggest tragedy in my life, I was still pretty torn apart that I would miss it. It made the last moments I spent with my seniors all the more precious. Graduation last year happened to fall on my birthday, and was by far the best birthday present I had ever gotten. Graduation was the one day that made all the other days worth it and I wouldn't miss it for the world. Just trying to give you an idea of how big missing graduation was for me.
So in the end I came home before the official last day of school. I worked with the teachers of my seventh period Algebra class so that I could have them take their finals early and I missed graduation. I pushed so hard to just finish out the year that even now as I write, sitting on the couch of my sister's house in Maryland, I still don't feel like it's over.
Maybe I'll come back and polish up this entry a bit more later, but what I really wanted to say was this.. it's over. My second year of teaching is over. For the most part, it was smoother than the first, but it definitely didn't end the same way last year did. I'm no longer a probationary contract teacher. When I pick this blog up again next August.. I'll be a third year teacher. I'm still in the process of digesting this.
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