And the Award Goes To… May 8, 2018

Hello all!  Today an event took place that I was not looking forward to, but which I survived, although not without my embarrassing moment.  That’s right, folks, it’s Awards Assembly Day!

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In case I haven’t mentioned it at least 10 or 20 dozen times, I’m a teacher.  A high school teacher.  A high school English teacher.  I teach in a small rural high school with about four hundred students and today… was the end of the year awards assembly.  This thing runs about three hours and includes every award known to mankind.  The class awards were about 2/3 of the way through it, and I had been waiting anxiously and with great dread for my turn at the microphone.

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Okay, so maybe I wasn’t dreading it THAT badly, but I was hoping I could get through it without looking like a complete dork.  Pretty unlikely, in the grand scheme of things.  I only had five awards to give out- two in regular English, two in Honors English, and one for most AR points.  AR is Accelerated Reading, a program which requires them to read books and take little quizzes over them, and accumulating so many points per nine weeks.

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So we sat and sat until the English department was next.  We stood at the end of the stage entrance.  We stood at the front of the stage entrance.  Finally, we took the stage and I was third in line in the department. I teach sophomores and the senior teacher was the first at the mic, partly because she is also the yearbook sponsor and she needed to get back down to the floor and continue taking pictures.  (UGH! Pictures of me. Why?!)

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Finally it was my turn and I proceeded to lean down to the microphone and say “Good morning!” Nothing too horrible there, except thanks to the mic I was much too loud.  I jumped, I’m sure everyone else jumped, and I felt like a complete goof ball. Then I repeated it, much more softly, and introduced myself.  Crickets.  I should point out here that a number of the other teachers received a few cheers, a bit of applause, and the occasional “Wooo!!” just for stating their names.  I did not.  Given that it’s my first year here and they don’t really know me all that well, that’s not surprising, but it did hurt just a tiny bit.

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The rest of my brief time at the podium went without incident, unless you count the fact that I didn’t give my award recipients a warm hug, like my co-worker who gave her awards right before I did.  I didn’t even shake their hands.  I just handed them their certificates, whispered a word of encouragement, smiled, and tried to stay out of the way of their pictures.  I failed to usher them to the middle of the stage for that- they just stood at the edge of the stage, to the right of the podium.  It was all quite awkward.  I felt like a newborn baby deer.

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So anyway, my hope is that next year I can give my awards (since it doesn’t appear that I can in any way avoid this torture) without incident or awkwardness, but I know that has absolutely zero chance of happening.  I was basically born to be awkward.  One wouldn’t think that someone who has been involved in community theatre for almost five years would be so nervous in front of a crowd, but here we are.

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Only one week and one day of school left now, which is amazing.  This year has flown by, and I’m so thankful for how well it has gone.  There have been many moments when I have felt that I should run away and become a sheep herder in Tibet, but I have resisted the urge.  I’ve been rehired for next year, which is a great thing.  I’m going to spend much of the summer working on improving my lesson plans and trying to fix things so that next year I have even fewer days where I want to run away.

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Speaking of running away, only one month from tomorrow, I will be on a plane back to my beloved Alaska, with my beloved boy, and I can’t wait!  It’s going to be a great adventure, and I pray he has a good time and loves it as much as I do.

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Until next time,

D.

Teaching, Directing, And Other New Adventures July 22, 2017

Hello all!  What a hot, hot day here in my world.  So much has been going on lately, it’s quite crazy.

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First of all, I think I have probably posted before about going back to college, getting my degree after 30, my one year of teaching, the tornado, the house fire, how difficult it all was, and how I survived and grew stronger, but I didn’t really think I’d ever be able to teach again?  Well… I wouldn’t have believed it, but the Universe had other plans.  An opportunity arose, I seized it, and now I am the new 10th grade English teacher at my hometown high school!!  It’s almost miraculous, honestly.  I would probably never have gotten the chance without the help of a couple of amazing women and outstanding teachers, my friends D.B and D.J.  Between the two of them, they made me aware of the opportunity, encouraged me to go for it, prepared me for it, put in good words for me, and are helping make my first year back in about nine years easier by leaving a road map of lesson plans and complete units for me to use.  I am excited and nervous, and scared and thrilled and determined and ready.  I just pray so hard that I do a good job and make a difference in my students’ lives!!

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Theatre things are also cooking along like crazy.  I am now not only on the Board of Directors for the theatre, I’m the VP.  That in itself would be amazing for me, but on top of that, in their wisdom or insanity, I’m never sure which, my fellow board members voted to allow me to direct a show in the next season!  I’ll be directing a small cast play in March and April, called Ripcord by David Lindsay-Abaire. I am so, so looking forward to it, and I am so amazed and thrilled they gave me a chance.  In other news, the theatre is doing Oklahoma! this summer.  It has already opened and has five performances left.  I am planning to see it tonight and I’m sure it will be wonderful.

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Theatre is bittersweet for me now, in a lot of ways. It is one of those places where the faces stay the same but the relationships ebb and flow, and someone you felt close to in one show may feel like a stranger in the next.  Or you may feel you fit in, and then feel like a stranger peeping in the window of your own living room.  I miss certain people who used to be part of it all, and I miss feeling like I am close to the heart of it.  Oddly, I became VP and immediate began to struggle with my enthusiasm for it, in the face of changing friendships and allegiances.  But I suspect that’s normal.

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I’m really looking forward to tonight, though.  As I said, the theatre is doing Oklahoma! this summer and my mom and I are taking my 90 year old grandfather.  I think he will very much enjoy the show.  I was supposed to be shadowing the director on this one, learning and preparing for my directorial debut, but after I got the school job, everything else in my mind just kind of jumped into the backseat and I gradually faded out of the show.

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Also, my son has had a rough summer.  He did some summer school, which he hated, but he has also been struggling with his moods and emotions, and it has been difficult.  We struggle on a daily basis to be able to see his path and his future, and it is… well, difficult.  He is just not your average bear, and we have a hard time knowing what to do with him.

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Clearly I have a million things occupying my mind, so much so that sometimes, like now, when I want to be able to SAY something, my brain is nothing but drowsiness and white noise.  OH!  I have also been doing my best to plan another trip back to Alaska, AKA The Mother Ship.  If all goes well in school this year and I am rehired for next year, I am taking The Boy and myself, and we are going to the Great Northern Frontier, and we are going to have many, many adventures.  No matter what!

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I think maybe that’s all for now.  I’m going to do my best to write more often here.  Maybe I’ll find something worth saying.

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Until Next Time,

D.

My Kids’ Graduation and A Dream Vacation: The Ultimate One-Two Punch! May 18, 2012

These aren’t my daughters, but this is how big they should still be! Congratulations to my beautiful girls!!

Hello all!  Again, with the two months between posts!  I’m a sad excuse for a blogger, what can I say?  Things have gotten pretty surreal, pretty fast.  My twin daughters, my baby girls, those two beings I just gave birth to, what, 5 minutes ago?  They graduate from high school tonight.  Yeah.  Graduate.  High school.  Gowns, tassels, all of that.   I’m feeling ok right now, but hopefully I won’t be too over-emotional tonight.  I’ll get back to you after 7 p.m. Central time.

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Oh, the other surreal thing is that in 9 days I will be on the biggest cruise ship in the world, Royal Carribean‘s Allure of the Seas.  Nine days, man!  That just blows the mind.  I booked this trip over a year ago, and it’s finally here.  I’ve done so much plotting and planning and daydreaming!  I’ve researched and made lists, and yes, spent a bundle on extras like ‘Formal Night’ clothes (and the undergarments needed for said clothes.)  I’ve stocked up on camera batteries and sunblock, I’ve budgeted for photos and tours and fruity drinks. 😀  Now it’s just a matter of getting there.  Thank GOD for my mother, who in all her magnanimousness is taking us to the airport, because her *cough*almost 40-yr old*cough* daughter is too big a chicken to attempt driving in Dallas-Ft.Worth!   (To be fair, my car really isn’t in any good shape for a road-trip to Dallas, so that’s part of the reason.  And yes, car repair and improvement is next on my spending list.  Right after celebrating graduation with the kids.)

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So anyway.  Busy life, happy life.  Everything changes.  The week after we get home from the trip, my baby sister is getting married.  A couple weeks after that, we have a family reunion to attend.  And somewhere in there I have to find time to gather a ton of paperwork for applications that should have been filled out long before now:  financial aid for Daughter S., Vocational Rehabilitation for Daughter J., and online public school for The Boy.  (More on that one later.)

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Look for my next post to be a full review of the cruise, complete with pictures.  It will probably show up in about 3 months!  (Not really.  I’ll get it out sooner, I promise!)  Wish me non-teary eyes tonight and then in a week it’s Sailaway time!  🙂  Wooo hoooooo!

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Until next time,

D.

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The Time Is Now. August 5, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Hello all.  After posting my last two entries detailing the race in all its muddy glory, I am using my little bloggy world here to share another thing I am doing that is very much a leap of faith.  As all my real-world friends know, even though I work at a UPS Store, I’m actually a certified teacher.  A certified teacher who had a first year of teaching after graduation in December 2007 which was difficult in and of itself, but which culminated in a tornado, a fire, a job resignation and a marital separation, all within the space of two months.  Suffice to say, I was battle-scarred and very scared and unprepared to give teaching another try. 

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But I’m a different person now.  I’m different physically and I’m different mentally.  I have struggled financially and emotionally for the last two years with the aftermath of my first year of teaching, and I am ready to take a leap of faith.  The idea won’t get out of my head.  The desire to teach is there.  So even though I’m a little nervous and scared about this, (Ok, a LOT!) I am submitting an application and resume to Ardmore High School today.  They pushed the start of school back, in part because of the insane heat, but mostly because they are still desperately short on teachers!  One of the teachers there, with whom I did some of my observations in college, talked to my friend from work the other day, and begged and pleaded with her to tell me to apply, ASAP.  And so… before I go to work today, I am going to take my application to the admin office and drop it off.  And tell it to Go With God.  🙂

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I am trusting that whatever happens will be God’s will for me.  If that’s where He wants me to be, I’ll get it, and if it’s not, I won’t.  Obviously, I’ll put my best effort into it and everything, but I will trust in Greater Powers for the outcome.  Interviews are difficult for me- as I said on Facebook earlier today, I get all nervous and turn into a cross between Forest Gump and The Other Sister!!  So if I get an interview, pray for me to be calm, cool, and collected and to remember how to talk like a normal person!

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Thanks for your support!

Until next time,

D.

Like a Proverbial Burr Under a Saddle… August 30, 2010

Hello all.  For the last few days, I have wanted to write an entry entitled “In the Dictionary Under ‘Galling’...”  But up until today I haven’t taken the time.  I’ve just been really aggravated lately.  You know the feeling, right?  Where it seems like everything that happens is specifically designed to raise your blood pressure a couple of notches? 

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Like the other day.  Somebody let it slip to me that somebody else has been running their mouth about me behind my back.  Which I know they always do, but for somebody who doesn’t have a creative or talented bone in their body to criticize me for what I write in MY OWN blog?  Whatev.  Don’t like it?  Feel free to go read something else.  See what I mean?  Galling.

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Also filed under galling:  realizing that every teacher I ever had in school whose style in the classroom was anything like the style I would later have- the kids shredded.  I remember them.  Pre-Algebra teachers?  Shredded.  Spanish teacher?  Shredded.  Librarian/Yearbook teacher?  Shredded.  In fact, I don’t remember a teacher who had a personality like mine (soft-hearted, soft-spoken, and loving, if I do say so myself) in the classroom above about 3rd grade.  After that, they were all ‘Rambo with Chalk.’  Why in the name of all that is sane and holy could I not have realized this before I got the bright idea of becoming a high school teacher?  And why can I not let go of feeling like I was totally screwed as a first-year teacher?  And is there any hope for my teaching career, short of my checking into a clinic and receiving a Classroom Bitch transfusion?  Because in a high school teacher…  soft-hearted, soft-spoken and loving translates into indulgent, gullible, and doomed.

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Want more galling?  Try this on.  Hearing that the person to whom I am still legally married and who supposedly still cares about me would not have accompanied me to my class reunion even if I had asked.  Or more accurately, was hoping I would not ask because he didn’t want to have to say no.  Not that anyone would have wanted him there or that any of us would have felt the slightest bit comfortable with him there, but he should still be willing to go with me if I were dumb enough to ask.  Petty and small of me, perhaps, but still… galling!

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Galling:  Wanting to tell somebody something and not having the guts, not being able to make a decision and stick with it and not second-guess it to death until you drive yourself and everyone else around you completely berserk, not having the self-control you desperately need to develop if you’re ever going to become a Person At Her Ideal Weight, knowing that nobody is ever going to invent self-folding laundry.

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So there is plenty more, but in the interest of not driving away my few surviving readers, I’ll skip it. (You:  clapping and cheering gratefully)  Instead I will let my poetry speak for me by posting some more of it in the comments section under the Poetry and Fiction tab at the top of the page.  Check it out.  And maybe I will be in a better mood by my next post!  Thanks for sticking through it all with me!

Until next time,

D.