I've been floating through this week. I came back from a weekend visit with my best buddy in Indiana, and I was flat out on the couch as soon as I walked in the door. I actually wasn't feeling all that well in the car on the way home and stopped at the rest stop to take a quick nap, but I didn't realize what was to come. By Monday morning, I was really in the thick of it. And it's been three days of just yuck. It's a miracle, really, that I haven't gotten sick sooner with all the germ carriers that I work with, but I hoped that with Spring coming I'd make it all the way to summer without the hiccup of an illness. I'll try again next year.
Running
See above. Not much of it happening this week. One of my favorite runs in the world is around Lake Maxinkuckee in Culver, Indiana. It's a nice 10-mile loop, and it's where I got my start. I had hoped for the chance to run it with my best friend last weekend, but a) I wasn't ready and b)the weather wasn't cooperating. I honestly think I could have struggled through a ten-miler by myself, but I didn't want to put Jen through the torture of running such a slow pace with me--I'm embarrassed about my current state in a lot of ways. I'll work back from it, but I'm also very hard on myself, and right now I need to be hard on myself.
House
After nearly two years of our house sitting on the market...empty...I'd think that the stress would even out. In some ways it has. It's a low-grade stress that is constantly there. Right now, it is slightly lessened by the fact that we have a trustworthy tenant in the house for the next month and a half, but then the house will go back to sitting empty if we don't sell it. And we don't have any prospects even considering the place at this point. I just don't know what to do.
I have prayed. I have tried to earn karma points. I have put my time in living in a run-down farmhouse that is so small and falling apart that we have to put out no fewer than five buckets or trash cans each time it rains to catch the water from the leaking roof. Our wedding gifts are now coming up on their one-year anniversary in my father-in-law's basement along with 80 percent of my belongings, and looking at them makes me want to cry. I dream of having friends over for dinner, of living in a place where all the burners on the stove work, of having a dryer (yes, we have no dryer because we have no place to hook it up). I can't wait to cut my commute (currently 1 hour and 15 minutes each way each day). Yet it's been almost two years, and it's starting to feel like it's just never going to happen. It's felt like that for a long time. I just don't know what we can do.
We are lucky. We aren't like the folks caught not being able to pay their mortgage. I just happened to leave my job at a time when the housing market was about to take a dive. And without going into too much detail, there's a story behind leaving that job that makes this all even more sad... and there's a level of unfairness about that whole situation that I just have to let go of. The boss I had at that job ran her tornado through the lives of me and my coworkers, and while we ultimately found a recourse for that, it was not without a heavy cost to me and my friends.
So selling that house for me will be finally closing a chapter that I've been working to close for two years. And it will mean a new start for my husband and me. But we're doing alright. Just...wishing.
ESL
We start standardized testing on Monday, and that will run for the next nine school days. Every morning. Kids will be tested in Math, Reading, Science, History, Social Studies, Arts and Humanities. And our school will get its funding based on their performance on these tests. The thing about it is, though, that there's no motivation for the kids to do well. I'd like to think that their sense of responsibility and community would be enough to make them want to do well, but at the middle school level, the world is all about them. And for a middle schooler to really want to do something just because it's the right thing to do is often a tough sell.
I had a conversation with another teacher that went something like this:
Me: I just don't understand why we don't tie their CATS tests into something for the kids--hold them accountable for their performance on the tests.
Other teacher: I TOTALLY agree. And we had an expert on testing come in here, and he said that we just can't hold the kids accountable for their scores on these tests.
Me: But aren't we held accountable for how the kids are doing on their tests?
OT: Yes, we are.
Me: So you mean we are held accountable for the performance of kids whom we are not allowed to hold accountable?
OT: Yes.
Me: [dumbfounded silence]
OT: Yes.
Me: One other thing, are we also held accountable as a school for the improvement of our students or for the actual level of the students?
OT: The actual level of the students.
Me: So you are saying that if a kid came in here at the beginning of the year, and they were a novice, and they have moved up to apprentice (seemingly as a result of our instruction), that doesn't matter because they aren't proficient?
OT: Right.
Me: So no matter what we do, if the kid actual shows outstanding improvement, we don't get recognition for that as long as they don't meet that "proficient" standard?
OT: Yep.
Me: [dumbfounded silence]
Annie needs to go out. I've gotta take her.
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