Time is a luxury item. And I seem to be poor...

During a graphing trig functions lesson:

Victor: Ms. H, your curves are sexy.


He was actually talking about my sine and cosine drawings, and not my curvaceous figure, but still, it was pretty funny.

sunday night

I'm stressed. I have to do my pre-thesis presentation for tomorrow. I'm stressed. I haven't felt this stressed in so long. Why?

And then I think practically about it, and there's not that much. Just do it. One thing at a time. Just do it.

But maybe this is good. Maybe it's good that I've stepped off of cruise control.. Because I'm so used to just doing. To being mindless. Maybe it's good that I'm recognizing my limitations, that I have this sense of desperation..

Dear God..

A mix of naivete and.. well, lameness.

Jose: Miss, you actually look like a teacher today!

Me: Jose, what do I usually look like then?

Jose: I don't know, an H&M model and all that.

Haha, I think he meant it as a compliment. I'll take it.

On my alleged love affair with Hubbard:

Germain: So Ms. Huang, Marvin wants to know if there really is chemistry between math and physics!

Honestly, I love my job, my kids, my coworkers. Even though they (or just the kids) drive me freakin' insane sometimes.

best weekend in a long time

Board game playing, cider sipping, pumpkin carving, hot dog roasting, smores making, Central Park picnicking, dim sum eating, football scrimmaging.

But you pay for it.

I can't sleep until I write this paper. That was due last week.

---

7:08 PM me: we should play more football.

Daniel: u should llisten to me when we play football.

7:09 PM me: sorry.

7:10 PM Daniel: as i was walking away

i actually realized

that i made a tactical mitake

i shouldve made you a safety

u wouldve had at least 2 or 3 interceeptions

7:12 PM me: hahaha

you really think so?

Daniel: yeah.

me: i don't know if i'm that good at intercepting

Daniel: well u would be

me: <-- short

Daniel: if u just listen to what i tell u.

hahaha

me: hahaha

fine.

Daniel: cuz u have really good hands

i was really impressed

7:13 PM i really put some zip on some of them

and u still caught it.

are u secretly a small boy?

me: hahahahah

i think so.

kind of, honestly.

i would play ball with the boys after church when i was little

i think that's how i got some of them to fall in love with me....

=X

7:14 PM Daniel: ....

u r gross.

ahahahha

who says

I THINK SO

TO ARE YOU A BOY

YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE OFFENDED.

me: i'm just being honest!!!

If I had a penny for every time a student hit on me....

this year..

I've aimed to be more organized, to be more consistent with my expectations, with my discipline. To teach my students something. It's working, I think. My students want to take a field trip to the Louvre. I think I talk too much during class.

Upkeep is a difficult thing. The inclination to bog myself down to my work, to avoid human interaction for the sake of.. work. My interactions with my roommates, with society, are so different during the summer than from any other time of the year. It's tiring to talk to people after having put on a 6 hour show for students.

This period of life is so odd. Turning 23, realizing that growing up.. is only just around the corner. So many possibilities, but so little time? I'm afraid that I will wake up one day and find that I'm 30. But there is so much to do..

And then there's God. Where is God? To find rest.. in Him. Desirable. But is there time for it? Rest ought to be a state of being. And then love. Totally not in that state of mind.. But still hopeful? Expectant. Maybe just waiting for God to do His thing and surprise me. The sovereignty of God is a comforting thing. Hopefully, a reality - not just a mind game we play with ourselves.

I like high schoolers. For the most part. They're always full of surprises.

easter 2009

want to love God. want to want to love God.

going home

always messes me up. Sometimes I feel so alienated from everyone and everything, but then other times, I realize that it is here that the people know me best and that these are the ones I love most.

Torn.

In other news, I used Cheryl for my middle school iteracy profile and had her read about Frank Gehry, who apparently turned atheist after bullies picked on him at school for being Jewish. When I asked her what she would do if kids bullied her about what she believed in, she said that she would pray to God for them to stop. I thought that was worth mentioning. :) And then I showed her pictures of her two-year-old self holding hands with little Isaac Chang and she was horrified. ;)

:)

Belting out (silently) to Taylor Swift in the staff lounge. Helping veteran teachers (a 52 and a 64 year old!) set up Facebook. I love Regents week. I'm also still especially proud of my students for their accomplishments.

Visit the High Line. It's beautiful.

And check out FLW at the Guggenheim. He's crazy, but he's a genius. Pay as you like Saturday afternoons!

New York City Food Film Festival tonight. Summer is in the air!!

crazy architects

and their floating of 30 feet long garbage-made models down the Bronx River.

(My students were responsible for working on the Estuary section - bottom right part of the Bronx model.)

For project proposal information: http://www.vanalen.org/html/03_2009_LeviSchachter.php#

Coverage: http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/06/bronx-river-crossing/ & http://designtrust.blogspot.com/2009/06/bronx-river-crossing.html

need to guard my heart

against resentment.

In small group last week, our token social worker talked about how easy it is to fall susceptible to resentment towards the people that you're trying to serve.. usually because they don't cooperate, if not make it more difficult for you to help them.

The idealist goes into the teaching field with these lofty notions that he/she is going in to help the poor, desolate, helpless children of the inner city who want to do better, but whose circumstances and family situations prevent them from doing so. Let me tell you - these students might be poor, but they don't appear to be with the way they carry the bling, rock out on their colorful I-Pods and Sidekicks, and sport it with the LeBrons and Air Nikes. They are real, live, people, not to be clumped together and idealized as faceless victims of the systems of poverty and education. Some can be annoying, some can make you laugh, and some of them just straight-up piss you off.

I'm having issues with the ones that piss me off...

All I know is that it's certainly easier to "love" people that you don't interact with regularly. Maybe that's why people sometimes gravitate towards serving the orphans of Africa, rather than those of their home church - because they subconsciously envision it easier to serve the fictional than the very real humans that they've put up with for so long. And probably for myself, I entered into this field with a similar mentality.. you disregard the reality of interacting with actual human beings, but upon realizing that reality, you're left quickly disillusioned and bitter because this was definitely not what you signed up for.

I love most of my students.. Perhaps, the vast majority of them, I have an affinity for to at least some level. But there are some - the most difficult, the most malicious - that I absolutely deplore being in the same room with. These are allegedly the ones we're here to inspire, the ones that need the most attention, the ones that I have the most difficult time loving because I don't know how to deal with difficult people.

It's hard to be right with God when you harbor these feelings in your heart.

I love/hate my job.

I love seeing the delight of my students when they're engaged in their work, when the room is bustling with productivity and excitment, when finally they see the product of their labor.

I hate it when I see the utter lack of respect for such projects, the freakin' inabiliy of some to NOT damage the things around them, the freakin' inability to even treat each other with decency. I hate that I've come to believe that education is not for everyone, and that it doesn't benefit anyone that some people are in school.

And I hate the fact that some students take everything for granted and have no sense of responsibility whatsoever. That they expect everything to be handed to them, because they themselves have never been taught that they need to work for something in order to earn it. That they have no sense of propriety of picking up after themselves, and that it turns to the teacher to have to do the work of 120 individuals.

But it's not everyone..

Is it more valuable to focus on the students who do have a chance, or the students who are falling to the wayside? Human nature makes it so difficult to do the latter.

Biological clock, please stop ticking!!

don't be silly

Sometimes, I feel like the same little girl who used to play with the boys ten years ago.. I still do it. I don't know what it is about me, but there are other thought processes that are coming back that are reminiscent of a little 7th grader.. It's juvenile. It's a bit imprisoning. 

I want to grow up.

For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end -- it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. Habakkuk 2.3

Moises

Moises: Ms. Huang, you failed me?!
Me: I believe I did.
Moises: Why?! You gave me an F?! Don't I at least deserve a D-?
Me: Moises, tell me why I should've passed you.
Moises: I took your quiz!
Me: You didn't pass it.
Moises: So? But I took your quiz!
Me: Moises, but did you pass?
Moises: No.. but, I took your quiz! Doesn't that count for something?
(Mind you, he would not take the first one.)
Me: Moises, listen to what you're saying. Did you do your classwork?
Moises: Um.. yeah..
Me: Why don't we take a look at your binder.
Moises: Yes, why don't we!
Anthony: Oh, you shouldn't do that..
We open the notebook only to find worksheets that blank and untouched.
Me: Moises, I could take your notebook and give to someone who has been absent as make up work.
Moises: Augh. Fine. I'll make it up right now.

I don't know. Kids these days.



In other news, Shamik was suspended for three days, after flipping a table over in my room..

Students are so fickle.

It seems that Evy and I are okay now. She's back after three days of suspension and we had nothing but pleasantry today. I sometimes forget that my students are in fact still kids.. kids who lead volatile lives, and as such, can be tempermental. But I'll take it for now.

---

Evy asked if she could bring me to get a body piercing if she got an A in my class 3rd marking period. Go figure. :)

A ray of sunshine,

I want to be.

Again.


A source of hope,

One who knows Hope.

I want to be.

Again.


To fall at Your feet.

And see nothing else,

but the cross.


Again.

Sometimes, I think I should be a high school counselor instead of being a teacher. To teach can be so emotionally draining, especially when you're at a standstill with a student. Other times though, when you remove the student from his/her peers, the difference in behavior is tremendous. Without the societal pressures to maintain a certain image-- a certain pride -- the student lays down his/her guard and becomes almost.. human. Moises, who cut class on Monday, who refused to take his quiz on Friday, approaches me during lunch and we have a good half hour talk about what's going on. Catherine, who refuses to go to triage because it's "effin' Emilio's fault for throwing sh*t at me", is able to acknowledge and not only understand her trespasses, but actually take ownership of her misbehavior (and dirty mouth) once she is separated from her instigators. We finally understand one another (I hope). And Evy.. well, Evy and I have yet to reconcile.. yet again. In time, or until next time, I suppose.

I'm exhausted though.

I finally started picking up my Bible again. 

Sometimes, I read it and I think about how hard it is to live up its mandates. "Let love be genuine." "Outdo one another in showing honor." "Be of one spirit." "Hope does not fail." And then I think of all grudges I harbor, and how it's so much easier to hold onto our own self-entitlements, than to surrender our pride for freedom from our sinful natures.

And then I read about Jesus and think, "He wasn't such a nice guy." And then I think, "Do I really know Him intimately, because right now, it feels like I'm reading a history book and making observations from a distance."

And then I question why "God consigns all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all" and then agree that yes, "How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!" (Roman 11.32-33), but I wonder if that's a good thing at all.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

C.S. Lewis


I'm afraid of this.