its april now

i am still alive, sort of. but i haven't been blogging, mainly because i don't blog. so there. but, yet, here i am blogging. so i guess i'll blog. here we go.

i teach a class with 28 little kids in it. they are hideous, but its not as bad as one might expect. yet its much, much worse than one might expect. nonetheless*, there are days (most days) when i don't teach them at all. instead, i spend the entire day scanning the room desperatly, looking for things to do instead of teaching**. since its a small room stuffed to capacity with kids like sardines, when i scan desperately i find kids. there is not much that one can do with kids (they are suprisingly inflexible and unbouyant), so when one is bored and kids are there, one often finds themselves conversing with the kids. which is not such a bad thing. kids have good stuff to say that is different than what adults say. also, they have suprisingly well developed senses of humor. they also love talking about purple aliens and grilled cheese sandwiches, so I get on famously with them. anyway, we were having one of our procrastination conversations. the topic of waking up in the morning came up, and we all agreed that lately, we can't stand waking up in the morning. which led to alvin standing up on a chair, pulling on his cowlick and screaming "its the muuuuuusic. i hate the muuuusic!" after we had pulled him off the chair and calmed him down, he explained himself (a little) more clearly. turns out alvin shares a room with his mom, dad, aunt, and 2 cousins. the younger cousin, a 14 year old girl, shares a bed with alvin. it turns out that she, like every other 14 year old girl, is obsessed with her clock radio, and plays it softly all night. this keeps alvin up at night and makes it difficult for him to wake up in the morning. so this is how his outburst was actully quite relevant.

at this point, dante chimed in. "yeah, like my mommer. her tings all night. i hate it mt. tooker. tee alwayt ting." (dante needs speech services and doesnt get them at our school. the upside is that i think he has invented a new language). it turns out dante also shares his bed with his mother, and his 14 year old male cousin, who "tores and farts". similarly, rafe shares a bed with his sister who he hates. rafe's story was a little sad. his reason for not being able to wake up in the morning is that his mom cries all night and he cant sleep through it. im not sure why she cries; rafe didnt elaborate.

while i was having this procrastination time with my students, on the other side of town my father was spending a day touring public schools with a fringe member of bush's education administration, a la "no child left behind", a la standardized testing for all, a la ivory tower. well, according to my father she is actually very nice, and had a lovely time with all the little kids***. but, he said, "she just didnt understand some things." when prompted, he went on, "well, poverty. i don't think she understands poverty." they had spent some of their day walking through one of the lower income low income neighborhoods in queens. she kept looking around at the houses, saying "well its not so bad here. it cant be so bad. just look at the size of those houses. they're HUGE."

thus, my perfectly illustrated point. thank you ma'am, for that.

*one should never use the words "needless to say", in argumentative writing. for if it is so needless to say, then why have you said it? similarly, the words neverteless and nontheless have absolutely no meaning and are potently absurd.

**god forgive me, but i absolutely despise teaching. the mere thought of relaying (usually useless) information to another human being is just too vulgar for words. that is my excuse.

***yeah, you spend all day with them, bitch.


--see why i dont blog???