RE-LAX.

It’s been a long, challenging, tiring nine weeks at my new job.  New subject, new students, new co-workers, new bosses, new schedule, new everything.  Basically nothing is the same, and I’ve been running around with my head in constant work mode with no time to think about my health, my sanity, my emotions, anything.

I wonder sometimes what it’s all for.  Why am I working so hard, especially when I usually feel I have so little to show for it at the end of the day?  Is there a place out there I can live a more enjoyable life on a daily basis, yet still have a career as meaningful as teaching?  I’m still thinking Spain… but until then, there’s always fall break.

 
And look how lucky I got this weekend — two of my new friends from work needed a real break as much as I did.  No cities, no itineraries, no real sights to see – just relaxation in the sun right on Ft. Walton Beach for less than $200 apiece!  VRBO.com rocks! (Thank you for the tip, Faith!)

And until I figure out how to move somewhere more relaxing on a permanent basis, I will be reading this…

Busy Buzzy Bee

Did you know the title of this post contains alliteration? Not to mention onomatopoeia? Wellllllll, if you had been paying attention in my ELD IV class, you would know this!

Anyhoo, the reason I haven’t written anything for a month is that I honestly didn’t have anything to write about till just a couple weeks ago. Now I have entirely too much on my mind, and you, dear friends, get to be the lucky audience to my unloading session!  :)  On that note, I want to go ahead and apologize profusely for the pathetic quality of writing in this post — it’s nothing more than a glorified mass email.

First of all — Brittany and I are moving!  We found a fabulous little duplex a couple weeks ago — just our size, in the perfect area, and at the perfect price for us.  We seriously love it and are so excited!  Moving day is May 1st, and I’m not joking about needing a Conestoga wagon and some big burly men.  I have  a LOT of stuff.  We do have movers coming, but we’ll probably need all the help we can get from friends too!  Anyone?

I also just refinanced my car through my bank for an amazingly low interest rate.  It’s a complicated process, if you ask me, but TOTALLY worth it.

Switching gears to the even more fun stuff now…

A couple weeks ago I went to visit Josh, friend of mine who teaches ELL at another high school in Nashville, just to see what life was like at a school that is NOT on the No Child Left Behind “restructuring” list. Turns out life there seems pretty good. Definitely more chill. I loved it… and it got me thinking. I might need a change.

Then, the Spanish teacher at this school informed me of another teaching option for next year — in Spain!  What happened was, Juan (who is from Extremadura, España) invited me to check out some of his Spanish classes because if I go teach at his school, I would possibly be teaching Spanish as well as ELL. I enjoyed his classes as much as I enjoyed Josh’s, but over lunch Juan surprised me with another awesome opportunity: the brand new North American Visiting Teachers in Spain program, starting in September.  Long story short… basically, I meet all the qualifications, so I spent a week and a half of scrambling to throw together an application packet to mail to the Spanish Embassy in D.C. by the deadline on April 11th.  P.S. Overnighting a package through the post office does NOT get your package there overnight.  Try two and a half DAYS!  Anyways, my packet did arrive by the deadline, and for the last week or so now I’ve been stressing over the fact my name is still nowhere to be found on the website’s list of applicants, of which there are evidently 3,857!?!

So I had basically given up hope until today, when I received not only an email, but also a phone call (which I missed while I was teaching) from a lady at the Spanish embassy in Atlanta!  She wants to interview me over the phone next week… and I’m so nervous!  I mean… I don’t know what to pray for.  Am I completely crazy?!?!?  

On TOP of all this, a great new EL consultant position in our school district opened up last week, and I’m really interested in it, too!  I’ve already applied, sent in my resúmé, and might have an interview in a couple of weeks.

All this to say, I BEG FOR YOUR PRAYERS!  I have absolutely no clue where all this will lead, but I feel like something is brewing and there may even be some Holy Spirit action coming into play.  If you just happen to have any visions or signs from God as to what’s going to happen and what I should do, definitely shoot me a line and let me know, ok?

Whew!  I’m tired just thinking about it all, and it’s way past my teacher bed time now.  Gracias por leer, mis amigos, y buenas noches a todos!

Politics vs. Public School Teachers

Hey guys.  I know it’s been a month since I last wrote… and that last time, you might not have cared to read the whole book review of Shantaram.  Eh, well, I understand.  But it’s my blog and I’ll write what I want to.  :)

Here’s another maybe-no-one-else-cares post, just for you:

I am not normally one to get into politics and unions and stuff, but this time it’s personal.  Our governor here in Tennessee, Bill Haslam, is following in the footsteps of Wisconsin’s governor and trying to take away unions’ collective bargaining rights, including those of teachers’ unions.  I am not actually a union member myself (dues are too expensive and I haven’t felt the need for it yet), but it burns me up that one political party that happens to have a majority in the state I live in can just decide to take away our rights to bargain for reasonable working conditions and health care benefits.

If you haven’t noticed, guys, we teachers are trying our darndest to educate your children.  Oh wait — never mind, I forgot that you can afford the $10,000+ yearly tuition to send your kids to Montgomery Bell Academy or Harpeth Hall.

It’s not that we want tenure to keep our cushy jobs and benefits without having to work hard.  I have tenure myself, and I know for a fact I am working harder this year than the three years I worked without tenure!  I don’t know a single teacher that lazy.  Even if that teacher does exist, who has ever described a job that requires at least a bachelor’s degree and a professional license, yet whose salary caps out at $66,676 with a doctorate and 25 years of experience as CUSHY?  Heck, I’ll even post the link to our salary schedule for you to peruse.  Do you know any other jobs that pay this little for people who have two masters degrees?  If you do, tell them we teachers feel their pain.

(MNPS) Teacher Salary Schedule

In this video, Jon Stewart puts it as only he can…

Jon Stewart Exposes the Lavish Lifestyle of the American Public School Teacher

You know, I honestly don’t care if they make tenure requirements harder — but let’s first be fair about how teachers are going to be evaluated.  If the failures of kids whom I’ve never seen before in my life, whose parents never took the time to read to them at home, and whose goal it is just to make everyone around them miserable, fall upon me just because they walk the halls of the school where I teach, you’d better believe I’m going to be on the steps of the Capitol building protesting.

Gov. Bill Haslam Teacher Tenure Bill Headed for Senate Vote

Here’s a blog that I think kind of sums up a lot of us teachers’ true feelings (warning – it’s kind of caustic and bitter):

Jesus Loves You, But...

Ok, well, I’m done blabbing for the day.  Even though I could go on and on, no one likes a whiner.  And hey, at least I have a job… right?!  At least for now I do.  :)

933 Pages Later

My students can’t fathom why anyone would be interested in reading a 933-page book, much less attempt the feat. A couple of my friends (mostly of the graduate degree-seeking, male persuasion) hold an unhealthy, disdainful attitude toward all things fiction, so they, too, might not comprehend reading a novel at all, much less one two inches thick.

Hrmph.  Good!  More awesome stories for me.

I feel like I’m on Reading Rainbow right now, but I just finished what might be the best actual stories I’ve ever read.  You know it’s a doozy when you have to start off the review with, “Well, the author himself is a former heroin addict who was sentenced to 19 years in a maximum security prison in Australia for a series of armed robberies but escaped over the front wall and lived in exile in Bombay for ten years, where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers… as well as pursuing a few more nefarious careers.”  Whew.  I’m already tired.

The main character in Shantaram, whose real name we never find out, is, in many ways the doppelganger of the author, Gregory David Roberts (who, by the way, is the very definition of “badass”).  Most of the time we know the protagonist as “Lin,” a nickname based on his false passport name Lindsay Ford.  He makes a best friend in a smiley, lovable tour guide named Prabaker, falls in love with Karla, a cynical and mysterious Swiss-American beauty, and finds a much longed-for father figure in an Afghan mafia don named Abdel Khader Khan…  All of whom fade out of his life in one way or another, but who teach him more about love than he ever imagined possible.

By the end of the novel, Shantaram (man of peace), as Lin is called by Prabaker’s family, has…

- learned both the Marathi and Hindi languages, plus enough Arabic, Quetta, and Pashto words to get by in a pinch

- saved an entire Bombay slum from a raging fire, a cholera outbreak, and monsoon season

- rescued a heroin-addicted American prostitute from an evil madame’s clutches

- been imprisoned unjustly and survived incredible human rights violations for four months in a Bombay prison

- mastered the inner workings of mafia operations, including passport/legal document forging and smuggling and black market money changing

- gone on a gunrunning mission for a group of muhajeddin fighters in Afghanistan

- established a casting agency for foreign extras in Bollywood movies

- saved a falsely accused performing circus bear from the Bombay police under the disguise of a Ganesh statue

…among other things.

I seriously could go on and on, but really, if you were interested enough to read this post, you’d just read the book.  So maybe you should.

Oh!  And I just found out there will be a sequel… AND a prequel!  Man, I love a good trilogy.  Mr. Roberts, you just made my day.

How Not to Make Friends

“She has Anthropologie expectations, but most of us are just Target people.”

In other words, don’t be a snob.

Wintry Whining

Everyone knows the South is a little backwards.  This is not a new discovery.

Just to let you know, we in Metro Nashville Public Schools have entered our eighth snow day of the school year so far, and it’s only January.  We only had five (well, four plus a professional development day we had to sacrifice) snow days built into the calendar, so that means the last 3 days we’ve been out have to be made up at the end of May… and now possibly into June.

What are we really going to do in June?  Really?  After all the big state tests are over, kids check out.  Teachers check out.  I guess I’d better start stocking up on Rated-G and PG movies for the last couple of days.

Local Krogers and Harris Teeters got slammed yesterday afternoon, with thousands frantically running up and down the bread and milk aisles to grab the essential ingredients for their favorite winter meal… soggy toast?

Here are a couple of pics of the “severe” weather we’ve gotten and our “hazardous” road conditions.  You’ll be terrified to drive just looking at them.

On that note, I’m off to just try and enjoy the day and not think about late May.  Peace out!

Nashville: L.A. of the South

Call it Music City, Ca$hville, Nashvegas, or Smashville; I don’t care.  Just don’t call me a redneck.  We are NOT just a town full of hicks trying to become the next Kenny Chesney or Carrie Underwood.

Well… ok, at least 76% of us aren’t.

This shameless name-dropping post is dedicated to my friends Abby in Jacksonville and Chris in London, who (I think) really like Nashville and especially love hearing my stories of star sightings.  Maybe no one else will find this exciting, but oh well.  In chronological order, starting with the most recent…

Friday, January 14, 2011:  Ben Folds (you know, the piano-playing singer with the awesome lyrics)

My new friend Kanya from church and I met up at Frothy Monkey to chat and do some teacherly work around 3:30 on a Friday afternoon.  Walking into the main room, she says, “Oh, I’m going to go say hi to my friend over here.”  I look over and see Ben Folds and think, “Surely, she’s not talking about him…”  But yes, she was. Evidently he’s a regular at her family’s restaurant on the west side of town, so she sees him a lot.  He was super nice, shook my hand, and asked my name (and when he forgot it after 2 minutes, as most people do, he even asked again!).  Kanya introduced me as her friend who was already an English teacher, since she’s studying to become one herself, and Ben thought that was neat.  (Of course it is!)  He also introduced us to his friend (whose name I can’t remember), which I thought was pretty down-to-earth of him.  While Kanya and I were in line for our drinks, Ben and his friend were getting up to leave but first came over and told Kanya they’d sit there for a minute to save the table for us if we wanted it.  And they actually did!  Yeah, I felt pretty special.  After they left, Kanya asked, “You do know that was Ben Folds, right?”  Um, yeah!  I just hope I played it off well and didn’t look star-struck!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011: Patrick Monahan (of the band “Train” fame)

There’s not much of a story to this one.  On no less than my third snow day this week, I was sitting at a back table at the Green Hills Starbucks pretending to lesson plan, when I just happened to look up and see this little guy fixing up his to-go cup of coffee.  I barely had time to take in his puffy black North Face jacket and judge him for wearing black skinny jeans in real life before he turned around and left as quickly as he came.  But in case you were wondering, yes – he is really short, and his hair really is this perky in person.  Which leads me to ponder… Is he a leprechaun?  I mean, both his names are textbook Irish…

August 9(ish), 2010:  Reese Witherspoon 

Ok, so I didn’t actually see her, but my friends from England and Australia did.  Chris, Claire, and Mel came down to visit after their summer camp in Illinois, just to get a little taste of the South before heading home.  We had just been talking one night about star sightings and how Reese was from Nashville, when - lo and behold! – the three of them spotted her the next morning at Pancake Pantry!  After covertly shooting a video of her walking across the restaurant, they were bold enough to approach her and ask for a picture with her, but she was “in a hurry to pick up her kids.”  Likely story.  But I think just seeing her was pretty much the highlight of their trip, especially since Chris had gushed only hours before, “If I saw Reese Witherspoon, I’d ask her to marry me right there.”  (He didn’t.)

Sometime this summer:  Ty Brown (from Ali’s season of The Bachelorette) 

Another Green Hills Starbucks sighting.  I was, of course, going in with my work laptop, teacher’s editions, and all the best intentions to do some “lesson planning” before the school year began.  So as I passed the lone patio table outside, I glanced over and saw a good-looking guy in a white t-shirt sitting there talking with a woman who was probably older than him and not quite as attractive as Ali Fedotowsky.  (I’m sorry you lost her, Ty, but she’s not the Southern belle you’re looking for.)  It took me a second to figure it out, but once I did, I asked the baristas if they had noticed him.  The guys were like, “Ty who?” and the girls were like, “OMG, YES, he’s been out there a while!!!”  I guess he’s sort of a star, right?

Sometime this summer:  Travis Stork (former Bachelor, The Doctors)

Now that he has his own real syndicated TV show, I don’t feel dumb about calling him a “star.”  No big deal, but I’ve seen him once at Frothy Monkey, hanging out with a couple friends (including a really pretty girl), and once at P.M, again with a pretty girl but this time with his dog as well.  Both times, he looked amazingly bored.  Or maybe he’s just… boring?

Hmm, I wonder if one day someone will write a blog about seeing me in person…

Until then, I’ll keep you all posted if another celebrity runs into me in the near future.

Peace and love,

JKate

Resolve, v.2011

NYE 2010 was fun.  I can’t remember the last time I woke up in the morning wearing sequins.  And I hope to goodness no one posts that video of me dancing… but then again, I kinda hope they do.  ;)

Did you know Ca$hville drops a big, flashy guitar on Broadway?  It’s only the second year they’ve done it (so don’t feel too out of the loop), but it might be the sweetest new NYE tradition ever.  Here’s my video… sorry again for the poor iPhone 3Gs video quality, and for my obnoxious screaming!  (You might want to turn your volume down now.)

Nashville’s Bash on Broadway Guitar Drop

I do have some resolutions for 2011, and I’m going to post them here – more for my own benefit than for yours, because if I don’t document them somewhere, they may not come true!

• Pray every night before going to sleep – and pray much more for my loved ones
• Go to yoga twice a week and do some kind of cardio workout twice a week (just to keep my heart healthy, you know)
• Visit my dad and brother at least once a week, maybe twice
• Start tutoring after school again – preferably for someone who pays well, ’cause you know, I need $$$
• Read the Harry Potter series… after watching Oprah’s interview with J.K. Rowling, who is my new hero, this is a must!
• Set aside a couple hours outside of work to do my lesson plans for the week… and then just forget about it
• Stick to a budget – and save money for a trip to Spain this summer
• Love myself more, and, in turn, love others more
• BREATHE.

Now that doesn’t sound too hard, does it?! Ha. Please keep a close eye on me, friends.  Seriously.

Love and peace to you in 2011.  

Christmas Mash-Up!

I think I go to the greatest church ever.  (I’m sure you do too.)

Anyways, Sunday night was our annual St. B’s Family Christmas concert, and once again I was reminded that we have an unbelievable amount of musical talent in our parish.  If I were the name-dropping sort, you would be really impressed. This year, every single performance was quality, but three or four acts blew me away.  I wish I had had a video camera to record them all, but sadly, all I had was my little iPhone.  Here’s the one song I did catch, which was probably my favorite of the night: a mash-up of “Silent Night” and “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M.

…I know, right?!

Just a little background before you watch the video: One of our priests, Fr. Dixon (who plays guitar), and a friend of his, Julia, introduced the song.  They said that when they were thinking about what to do for the Christmas show this year, they wanted to acknowledge the loneliness and sadness that many people experience during the holiday season — but also wanted to speak of the real hope that lies in the Christmas story.  So that’s how this mash-up came to be, and I don’t think Dixon could have picked two more perfect songs to combine.  (Pure musical and pastoral genius in my book.)

Click on the link below and enjoy… Merry Christmas to all!

“Silent Night/Everybody Hurts”

No, it’s not for sale, and it’s not free, either.

Last Friday night my roommate and I got to volunteer for Compassion International at their booth at the National Youth Workers’ Convention here in Nashville.  Being my first time as a volunteer, I thought we’d be slammed with generous souls clamoring to sponsor a needy child in a developing nation, since we were, after all, in the middle of a youth workers’ convention.  There should be dozens, even hundreds of kind-hearted people lining up to pick out a cute kiddo, right?

Not so much.  We got one – count ‘em, ONE – new sponsor the entire night. There were two or three others who had a child picked out and were ready to go but suddenly had to walk off for various reasons…

“I need to go find my husband…”

“I’m going to go get a girl from our youth group and have her pick out a child…”

“I need to take this packet to my group leader to see if we are going to this little boy’s area on our mission trip…”

Ok, maybe I’m a little cynical, but just tell me you’re not ready to sponsor a child yet instead of making up a story, people!

On top of the general commitment-phobia we encountered with people at the booth, Britt and I also discovered rediscovered that Christian youth leaders are completely PSYCHO about a T-shirt!  We had several boxes of a special Compassion T-shirt to give people as a thank-you for sponsoring a child at the event, and I swear those things were 10 times more popular than the idea of raising a child up out of poverty.  

“Are you guys giving those T-shirts away?”

“No, sorry, they’re a gift for new sponsors…”

“Can I buy one?  As a donation?”

“No, I’m sorry, they’re for new sponsors…”

“Well, I already sponsor a child… and all I got was this gay leather bracelet when I signed up!” (No joke, a youth leader actually said this!)

“Well, I’m sorry about that… but leather’s pretty cool, I think.  It’ll last longer than a T-shirt!”

“Yeah… so are you sure I can’t buy it from you?”

“Yep, I’m pretty sure.  Sorry.”

We had several younger guys stick around for about 10 minutes trying to flirt their way into getting t-shirts.  Honestly??? One man whom I’d turned down before Britt arrived at the booth snuck up to the table from around the side and, seeing Britt before he saw me, said, “Oh, MAN!  I thought you (referring to me) had left!  I was going to try and get a t-shirt from your friend!”

I did, however, get to chat with a lot of people about their experiences sponsoring a child, which was really encouraging.

One family I met told me they sponsor four children in different parts of the world!  That’s pretty amazing in my book.  I hope to be able to do something like that one day…

So while the whole thing was a little frustrating at times, I would definitely do it again, but probably in a much different setting – where there are no T-shirt displays!