A Modern Weapon for Justice?

One of the most interesting people I've read about in a while. I'm somewhat tempted to read this with my students but I'm not sure if it would send quite the right message...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/technology/hacker-informant-and-party-boy-of-the-projects.html?_r=1&hp

When I sit down and chronicle this entire year after it is all over

When I sit down and chronicle this entire year after it is all over, I will finally be able to break down and cry like I have been wanting to this whole time. I will finally be able to cry not just for myself, but for each of the children who I have seen come and go. The weight of what I have seen and the experiences of the kids I have met are too much to bear. And I despise the role I have played in all of it, or almost all of it. I have not been the leader, the teacher, the mentor, the role model, the support that I would have hoped I could be for these children. Instead I was often an antagonist, trying and failing to assume the role of the “tough love” role model and always falling too far to one side or the other.

But for the time being, I have the lamentable lot of expending every last ounce of energy I have into just making it through. One day at a time. Maybe that’s the problem though, maybe if I really gave up that last bit of thinking about myself in all of this, if I gave up thinking about how I am failing, how much it hurts me, and turned my attention fully over to what is going on for each of my students, then maybe things would start to get better.

ideas and reality

This article I just read about how black students are more likely to be suspended really reinforces my belief in two things:

First, that our education system is neither designed nor adequately equipped to serve all students, particularly low income students of color. And second, that it is in fact designed to create a certain fate for those students, which is containment and isolation from society at large.

And of course now I am the teacher who frequently suspends students and adds to that number.

Bad day

Today was just one of those days. It was a combination of me being really off and my kids being a little off. I came into the day already feeling like I didn’t want to be there, and I really wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be either.

I don’t know how I feel about this medication. It definitely keeps me from getting upset or anxious, but I also think it makes me let myself get away with doing stuff halfway. I’m also just a lot slower on it, so I think it might take me longer to get things done. That was part of the problem: yesterday I took a long time to do my planning, longer than normal, but overall it turned out being lower quality than normal too. There were just huge gaps and things I didn’t do. And I didn’t feel stressed out or pressured to do something about it. So I just let it be. And I kind of think that’s why I had such a terrible day today.

I’m just so exhausted too. Every layer of exhausted. I wouldn’t be sleep-deprived exhausted except that this stupid medication makes me so drowsy.

All I know is that I feel really miserable right now.