Some updates. On rage. And teaching persona. And stuff.

I'm being remiss lately, in not updating my blog super often.

I think about it. I just haven't decided to use the blog as a JOURNAL exactly, so I've been writing mostly in my other journal. The one not available to other people.

Item: If I want to enter a novel fellowship competition, and to do so I must produce by the end of February 50 pages of a novel, and I have zero... that's one of those setting-myself-up-for-failure things, right? Since it's pretty much a ridiculous goal?

Still, if it gets me started... well, that's something at least.

Update: Tapering is going fine, thank you. Though I am back to my original pre-medication state of potential irritability. If I take care, don't drink TOO much coffee, make myself run even in the cold and do some yoga, and mostly don't wait until the last minute to run errands, thereby ensuring that I will get stuck in traffic behind the idiot drivers in this town and will thereby toggle into road rage and will thereby clench in my stomach and feel my blood pressure rise and start spewing obscenities (I also have this thing where I bang my hand on the window, against which my ring makes a nice 'clack!'... because what I want to do is bang on the window of the car of whomever is failing to use their turn signal or is talking on their cell phone while in complicated traffic or what have you )... If I, in other words, DON'T court road rage, I can mostly keep the irritability to a dull roar.

Though if you say something to me and I roll my eyes or look condescending for a second before shaking it off? That's why. My natural brain chemistry. Makes me kind of a bitch. Sorry. I'm working on it.

Another update: So now I'm teaching TWO SAT courses. The commute to one is 130 miles round trip; the commute to the other is about 150 round trip.

I don't know if I am good at this. Plus, here's some paranoia for you: I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's blink. Which is interesting. It is about how the trained un-conscious mind can make calculations much more quickly and accurately than can an arduous decision-making process undertaken by the conscious mind. (Which is not to say that ALL snap decisions are on the right track: but for knowledgeable people, they can be.)

As an example, Gladwell tells us, when researchers show subjects 10 minute videos of professors teaching, those subjects can rate the effectiveness of the professor in a way that closely mirrors the evaluations the professor receives at the end of an entire semester.

In fact, when subjects are shown JUST 30 SECONDS of a professor teaching, said subjects are ALMOST AS GOOD at predicting the professor's effectiveness.

That's... frightening. Because it seems to hint at ESSENCES... to imply that the "essence" of one's teaching persona really does dominate over one's intelligence, preparation, pedagogical intents, etc.

Now, this was just one example Gladwell tossed in, not a major concern of the book, but of course I seized on it. Because it plays so nicely into my paranoias.

I am nearing 30, and -- especially with the 16 yr olds in my SAT classes -- it's no longer an issue of looking so young that I'm taken for a student. (Though let's be honest. In some pictures of me, I still look 14. Honestly, this is a reason to be glad I've gained a bit of weight: HIPS set me apart from the youngsters.) In fact, in SOME of my college classrooms, I have finally cultivated a good deal of authority.

But certain hallmarks of my teaching "signature" remain. I somehow still manage to convey "nervousness," even when I feel cool as cucumber, or at least as a grape. (This isn't just in teaching, by the way.) It must be some combination of facial expression, coupled with rapid mobility of features and hands... anyway, people take for "nervous" what I experience as "engaged."

Then there's my habit of engaging -- over-engaging, in some cases -- with my audience. This is something I at least have some degree of control over, though when I'm not thinking about it consciously, it still happens: I'm easily distracted, and I'm liable to interrupt myself for any muttered comment or question launched by a student and ask them to repeat so I can engage with and/or answer it.

THIS STUFF DOESN'T MEAN THAT I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, PEOPLE. And by "people," here, you should understand that I don't mean you guys, blog-readers, but instead mean my students.

Also, my handwriting is truly awful. Especially when I'm going quickly. So board work often turns into a sort of comedy. Sometimes this is okay. Sometimes it's just distracting. Again, this is something I can work on. (You know. I can work on it sometime when I'm not blogging or playing computer poker. My spare time. This is when I can work on it. Yeah.)

What worries me is the "essence" part. That, and the fact that I don't have a coach, someone who can say, see what you're conveying? Try holding your face in THIS expression... someone who can coach my persona without making me feel like a TOTAL, UTTER failure, because how embarrassing that I've been conveying nervousness through personal tics my entire teaching life?


To bring this extended diatribe back around to Gladwell, students still take me for a newbie... which, let's face it, I am. In one class, the students are TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL and I clearly can't control them. But the weird thing is in this class they seem to LIKE me. (Here's something weird about high school students, or at least these particular ones: they stand REALLY CLOSE to you during break, like when they're complimenting your earrings or repeating in a goofy accent something you accidentally said to one of them, which was IF YOU BRING THAT CELL PHONE TO CLASS WITH YOU AGAIN I'M GOING TO GET OUT THE BIG STICK, which admittedly was a stupid and funny thing to say, but come on, I'd been dealing with utter and total chaos for two hours already, it was 9 at night, and I had done a valiant, valiant job of introducing a helpful variety of arithmetic concepts IN SPITE of the chaos... Anyhow, the students will give me a hard time in class, but then during break they cluster around and, like, talk to me and stuff, all while standing REALLY CLOSE to me. One of them hugs me each time, and another often tries to put a ruler in my belt loop when I'm not looking. It's really, really strange, as classrooms go. Also, the principal gave me a little talking-to last night, about not "letting" the students run down the hall. Which, what, now I'm in high school again? Getting talked to by the principal?)

Oops. Let's try that again. To bring this extended diatribe back to Gladwell, in each of my two SAT classes, students (always male, arrogant-ish ones) have out loud commented on my apparent "newness." Or, in the case of the richer and punkier, my "lack of qualification."** So what makes me paranoid, then, is the idea that my teaching signature -- the 30 second blip that forever decides my effectiveness and my evaulation fate -- will always reveal my tentative effectiveness as a teacher, because I will always have the same "signature," of nervous tics or whatever.

Now, two things. For one thing, I am new at this SAT class. Hopefully it will get better. But for another, there isn't really a forum for this kind of feedback from a coach, someone who can CALL MY ATTENTION to the signatures of the signature... so in other words, I feel like it's something I CAN'T improve.

So the inner story goes... you've worked at this for years and clearly you're getting better. You're an effective teacher on the page: your students' writing always (or almost always) improves under your tutelage. BUT YOU'RE A FUCKING FREAK, A NERVOUS NELLY WHO CHEWS HER FINGERNAILS AND SAYS "SHIT" A LOT AND YOU MANAGE TO CONVEY TENTATIVENESS EVEN WHEN YOU INTEND IT FOR OPENNNESS. People who have never taught before but who just naturally have a "calmer" personality CONVEY MORE EFFECTIVENESS THAN YOU DO, even when your approach to the material and your understanding of your aims ARE CRYSTAL CLEAR AND BETTER THAN THOSE OF MOST 'CAUSE YOU THINK ABOUT THIS STUFF ALL THE TIME.

So in other words, my 30 seconds will never convey calm authority, and why am I putting myself through this again if I so clearly don't have the "personality" for it?

On the other hand... I have a job! Both these courses will be done by mid-March, and then I have one more in April, and then I can move on if I need to. I'm not REQUIRED to be perfect as a teacher. (Though I hate it, hate it, hate it when punks think I'm not "good," when this judgement is based on personality reasons. I hate it when I can't control what I convey.)

Bleah.

So this is the course of the semi-medicated mind.

In the meantime, it's totally an adventure. Yesterday I admitted to my class that teaching them was like being at a slumber party, albeit one I get paid for attending. I just hope that it's the kind of slumber party that makes their scores go up.

I'll end on a question. When a student asks point blank, is this the first time you've taught this class? -- what do you say? I ALWAYS bluster and try to suggest otherwise. But maybe I'm advanced enough in my teaching career that I don't have to do this... maybe this is defensiveness left over from always feeling too young and not authoritative enough? The kid who asked last night (granted, this kid as been to only two of six classes... another reason not to want to cede him any ground) didn't seem like he was being that much of a punk. So why not just say, yep, it is?

I feel like that would IMMEDIATELY disentegrate my authority, though this is pretending that I have any. Maybe what I need is more aplomb. Yep. Now shut up.

What do you do in that situation?



*What do students mean by "qualification," anyway? In the non-slumber party class, one punk wrote a note to another that said "she seems really unqualified," all of 3 minutes into the class. I saw the writing, while they were supposed to be doing something else, and read it out loud. The class gasped; I said, "What bothers me isn't that you think that, but that you were writing notes while you were supposed to be paying attention to X," then just went on [anger made me calmer and gave me authority -- something to remember]... and then I could tell them the meaning of any vocabulary word, so then one of the other punks wrote on his book "She's VERY qualified"... but I didn't know if he was trying to suck up or felt bad or what, but I didn't much care.

And, honestly, I thought that class went pretty good. But I was still mortified that at the beginning I'd babbled... I do that, but it works better if I've already gotten their respect FIRST.

But I do think by "not qualified," sometimes they mean "not an imposing male who puts the fear of bejeezus into us."