Megalopolis

It seems like only yesterday I was crying to myself about how much time was left in this awful two year  what was i thinking who in their right mind would ever agree to live in this godforsaken pit of a commitment. Ahhhhhhh, the memories. And now, only a semester left until they kick me to the curb, Americorps payment in one hand, inflated resume (though still a polisci-english double) in the other. And what do I have to show for it?

I have no clue. I feel like a better, older, wiser, smarter, more capable, calmer, more appreciative, more compassionate person. Was it teach for america and my classroom that make me this way, or was it simply going out into the “real world”? Am I even in the real world? Is what I am going through, what we (the collective thousands of us- that we- thats the we I always refer to), is that really what you can call real life? I hope not. I hope at some point it sort of gets easier.

I was teaching my kids about equivalent fractions the other day, and how to simplify them. We focused on that word- simplify. “Simple things are easy,” I said, ” and easy things are small.” Yes, they all nodded in agreement, they certainly were, and we set to work reducing 400/800 to 1/2. It was that night, in a conversation that I had with my dad, that i realized this rule unfortunately applies in life as well. He allowed, at the age of 50, that things were only getting more complicated. I asked, hopeful and optimistic as ever, if my life was about to take the turn towards clarity. He laughed at me- no, he said, not at all. Age, growing older, dealing with life, is just like numbers in fractions. My 10 year old kids have it easy. Their number is small. The problems they deal with are seemingly microscopic.

The bigger the number, the more complicated the problems. Such is life.

All this being said, i recognize that my kids are being forced to simplify fractions way beyond their numerical value. My babies shouldn’t have to deal with improper fractions and mixed numbers in their lives yet but….ahh well. Delta, poverty, etc. That’s what teachers, back rubs, shoulders to cry on are for.
It’s analogies like this that are making me a really good math teacher- our average on our last landmark was proficient! Read it and weep folks, 63% Well, 62.7%, but I round on occasions such as this because thats freaking incredible. That means that on average, my class is proficient. 8 of my kids scored proficient, 1 scored advanced, 4 scored basic, and 4 scored below basic. To meet my schools standards, I need to bump up those 4 basic kids and I am good to go. I can do this! I have 4 months to do this. I really know that I can.

In lit, we are slowly and steadily improving- our average on our test before semesters’ end was a 54%, which is solidly basic. I’ll take it, because literacy in a classroom where children greet you with “what that is that you got, Mz. D?” is not an easy thing to master. We’re working on it.

I am working on finding ways to feel NOT panicked about next year, including but not limited to extensive research of culinary schools, longer naps, more time to read, and a LOT of baking (I now own a 9×13 pyrex dish, a food processor, and a double boiler!). If I had realized how valuable these things were last year, I may not have been a better teacher, but I sure would have been a happier person.

All this and baseball season starts in only 105 days. AND it’s Christmas time!  Boy, life is good when you really just take a second to think about it.

It’s not that it hadn’t been graded. It’s that it’s been sitting here and there, around the house, in piles. Staring at me. So tonight i took it upon myself to organize these papers so I could hand them back tomorrow. An hour and a half later, all papers alphabetized and sorted, I hauled it into the bathroom to discover that I’d been ignoring 8.5 lbs of paper…

Ew.

In other news, I am having an incredible life, all things considered. I went to New Orleans over Thanksgiving Break (oh are you from here? No. Just leaving your family behind? yep) and discovered that it’s possible for my heart to ache for places outside the Delta. Not just the cultural aspect of it, because i love the Delta and at this point in my life appreciate every aspect of the culture in which I am immersed- I don’t need the museums and the concerts- but the need to help other people. In New Orleans moreso than a lot of other places, it’s very evident that there are people who need help that are being ignored. Driving around New Orleans and seeing the lack of action combined with the hope- it’s there. can you blame me for wanting to be a part of it? Especially that in some small way I was part of it before, though the house in which I lived is washed away.

That’s all a veiled explanation for the fact that, in my searching for what I’m doing in the future (next year future, not tomorrow future), I am considering New Orleans.  And Mississippi. And culinary school. And publishing. And grad school.

Life, I told my kids- sometimes you get what you don’t want, and sometimes you want what you don’t get. You make it work, and then when it finally does, you don’t know what to do with yourself!