I should have known.
Last week I had one of the best days of my teaching career thus far.
Today was easily one of the worst.

And that's the thing with teenagers- you never know when they're going to hit you. Which I guess I should find comforting, as their complete and utter disregard for other people can't possibly be personal if they just walk into the classroom ready to fight every few days.

But instead, it just leaves me disappointed.
I have never talked to anyone the way some of these kids talk to me on a regular basis. Nor has anyone talked this way to me, prior to taking this job. And I know it comes with the territory, but really, SHOULD it? No. It's unacceptable, and it's bullshit that I'm expected to be a punching bag for seven and a half hours every day. Attitudes are one thing. Being cursed out for simply doing my job is really quite another and I've actually lost track of how many times that's happened.

And the scary thing is, they just plain don't realize how wrong it is to talk to people like that. That's obviously standard for them, and being reprimanded is a non-issue to them. Guilt doesn't work, I've finally realized. How do you shame a person whose moral compass is already severely screwed up? These kids don't need to be told to have manners and patience and common sense and human decency. They need to SEE it. They don't need lectures; they need unconditional support and consistency. They need an adult role model who can show them how to handle conflict maturely and rationally, without letting their emotions get the better of them. Who can punish the behavior while still nurturing the child.

But some days, it's REALLY hard to be that person.

I really want to rant about bureaucracy and stuff.
But not now.
Instead, let's look at pictures of the delicious red velvet desserts of the week:


It may not look like much, but the owner of my hair salon made red velvet pops today and they were just giving them away!


Red Velvet Ben&Jerry's! Are you kidding me?
By the way, I've been really good with this pint. I only had a bit on Tuesday, and I stuck to serving size and everything! Of course, I probably would have dug into it tonight had it not been for the wonderfully unexpected red velvet pop.

Anyway, figured I'd post these here since I've come to realize that my mobile uploads album on Facebook is basically nothing more than the red velvet treats I've snuffed out over the past year or two and people are probably starting to judge.

More various fragmented thoughts that I don't really have the patience to polish, this time brought about by the passing of Geraldine Ferraro: 

It took me until grad school to fully realize that the first feminists I knew were my parents. My semi-conservative, blue-collar, rural parents.

And sometimes when I feel like I'm betraying my gender ed learnings by being a teacher, by not trying to run for office or be some ball-busting businesswoman or at least go for my Ph.D (which I guess MAY happen someday, but is so very unappealing at the moment), I remember what it actually means to advocate egalitarianism. Feminism doesn't just belong to the women who go to the best schools and hold the fanciest job titles. Maybe I am in a “woman's” line of work, but how many do I influence every day? Children need to know feminist teachers, feminist mothers (and fathers!), feminist doctors, feminist plumbers. They need to understand what it means to be an equal on every level of society. Girls still need to know that they are valued  regardless of whether they are bringing home six figures or no figures. And the women who are making the real difference need not be those inaccessible (to many of us) lawyers and politicians and CEOs. Yes, we need them out there, OBVIOUSLY, but we also need them here at home, and in the classroom, and the grocery store, and the dentist's office, every bit as much as in the courtroom. Don't women move the world wherever they are? You're not giving up your F-card by not becoming the first female president, not if that isn't where your passion happens to be. What about my mother, who worked two jobs at various junctures of her life and taught herself how to use the Internet at 45 so that she could help her daughters apply for financial aid? Didn't she inject me with as much “you go, girl!” as Hillary Clinton? YES! People like my mother, and most of our mothers, move our world far more than the Hillary Clintons out there, God love her. My mother wasn't out there waving signs and lobbying officials. I'm not trying to downplay the importance of those who did, by the way, but my mother taught me to earn my own way simply by doing what she had to do. It wasn't a political thing. It was a survival thing, and it was my reality that women were responsible for paying the bills as much as men. She was working nine to five and then often from eleven to seven, and she had a husband who was a partner and whom she had to support as much as he supported her. And the movement belongs to her every bit as much if not more. 

Things get broken 
at home 
like they were pushed 
by an invisible, deliberate smasher. 
It's not my hands 
or yours 
It wasn't the girls 
with their hard fingernails 
or the motion of the planet. 
It wasn't anything or anybody 
It wasn't the wind 
It wasn't the orange-colored noontime 
Or night over the earth 
It wasn't even the nose or the elbow 
Or the hips getting bigger 
or the ankle 
or the air. 
The plate broke, the lamp fell 
All the flower pots tumbled over 
one by one. That pot 
which overflowed with scarlet 
in the middle of October, 
it got tired from all the violets 
and another empty one 
rolled round and round and round 
all through winter 
until it was only the powder 
of a flowerpot, 
a broken memory, shining dust. 

And that clock 
whose sound 
was 
the voice of our lives, 
the secret 
thread of our weeks, 
which released 
one by one, so many hours 
for honey and silence 
for so many births and jobs, 
that clock also 
fell 
and its delicate blue guts 
vibrated 
among the broken glass 
its wide heart 
unsprung. 

Life goes on grinding up 
glass, wearing out clothes 
making fragments 
breaking down 
forms 
and what lasts through time 
is like an island on a ship in the sea, 
perishable 
surrounded by dangerous fragility 
by merciless waters and threats. 

Let's put all our treasures together 
-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold -- 
into a sack and carry them 
to the sea 
and let our possessions sink 
into one alarming breaker 
that sounds like a river. 
May whatever breaks 
be reconstructed by the sea 
with the long labor of its tides. 
So many useless things 
which nobody broke 
but which got broken anyway. 

~Ode to Broken Things by Pablo Neruda 

My classroom windows were smashed today. Again. This is the second time this year that this has happened to my room, and the fourth time this year it's happened to the school overall.
It kills me. As a kid, I never would have dreamed of ruining someone else's property, in fact, the idea of it still horrifies me. And I'm sad more than I am angry, because this just reflects the values that these kids have grown up learning. Maybe no one has ever treated their things with respect. So I'm actually angry at their parents, but how can I be angry at them without being angry at their parents? And so on and so forth. I'm angry at the society that makes some people feel so isolated and excluded that they have no qualms about tearing it down? So really, I'm angry at myself, because I and the people before me have created this divide, this inequality that at some point left us forever separate and wary of one another. The only ones who have pride in their community are those who feel it belongs to them, so somewhere we went wrong. I believe (I have to believe) that we are all just doing what we can do to survive and hopefully be happy. For some people, this means fighting and hurting and taking others down. That has to be the product of something. No one wakes up and consciously decides to be an asshole, and if they do, that is still some marker of a screwed up childhood or someone dropping the ball somewhere along the way. And I realize we can't, and wouldn't want to, live in a perfect world. I also can't imagine being those people on the other side, the ones who work so hard to dismantle everything the rest of us try to create. Why? So they don't have to participate? Because they can't have it, or feel no connection with it?
And you have to invest in children in order to make them feel valued. You also can't bring nice things into a classroom that is continuously vandalized, right? Regardless of the purpose it may serve in the interim, it's really really hard to just throw money out the window. It's simple self-preservation. I'm trying to preserve what I have, without turning it into something that would devastate me if wrecked. And that, I think, is the biggest problem behind public education in this country. No one wants to hop on a sinking ship.

P.S. Enough self-pity for ya yet?
More chocolate is probably the solution.

I guess there's some sign on my forehead that says, "It's just Tara. Go ahead and be an asshole. It totally doesn't count."