Sunday, September 01, 2002
It was a dark and stormy night.
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Hebind the trees coulds scudded fantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the gound.
The house shook.
Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.
She wasn't usually afraid of weather.-It's not just the weather, she thought. - It's the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong.
School. School was all wrong. She'd been dropped down to the lowest dection in her grade. That morning one of her teachers had said crossly, "Really, Meg, I don't understand how a child with parents as brilliant as your are supposed to be can be such a poor student. If you don't manage to do a little better you'll have to stay back next year."
During lunch she'd rough housed a little to try to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, "After all, Meg we aren't grammar-school kids anymore. Why do you always act like such a baby?"
And on the way home from school, walking up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her "dumb baby brother." At this she'd thrown the books on the side of the raod and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse town and a big bruise under one eye.
-From A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle
Thank you Miss M! I am coming off a low confidence week here - - and Meg is just the person for me to relate to right now.
Work School - I'm so tired of not "fitting in" with the other teachers. I don't fit in subject wise - I don't fit in personality wise. I know it'll all be OK once I've had some time (and they've had some time to get to know me) but right now I just feel like an outcast. For one of our inservices we had to do a lot of talking (processing - discussing) with our neighbor. My neighbor happened to be Annette - who has a lot of opinions, but she wouldn't say anything unless I said something first (most of the time I had nothing to say - - I need more time, I need to think). At one point I joked with her "I want another partner" and she said "Why? So they can do all the talking?" (Actually, that IS what I wanted!).
We also had child abuse training -- which is never easy.
Julie School SMU had orientation last Tuesday. That would have been OK - in fact I was starting to get rather excited about some of the possibilities they were discussing- but they snuck some "assessments" at the end of the night. First up was the Meyers Brigg -- no big deal I've taken it a couple of times -- but it made my already prominate introversion feel maginified everytime I answered one of the Introvert / extrovert questions.
THEN there was a writing assessment. She said "no big deal, we just want to know where you are at, find out a little about your writing process, so we can help you with your writing skills" Well, it felt like a big deal. We were to write two essays -- one on why the government should support the arts and one taking the opposite opinion. Both should have been 200-300 words long and we should have been done by 9:00. ME?? I got out of there at 9:15 (not the last one, but second to last) and the combined length of both essays was about 170 words (including my name at the top of the page!) I had some ideas, but not enough time to think about it or devlop any good arguments. Not feeling good about that at all.
Labor Day weekend - family time. My parents think I've thrown my life away. Why can Diane go off to teach in Mali and be hailed as a hero to the wide world --- and me (teaching in a school with equal or lesser resources) be a clueless fool? THEY think I should have held out for a job in suburbia (it's not like I set out to find a tough school to work at --- This was the place that offered me a job!!
On one hand I don't care what they think. I really want to be a part of the dream, vission, and mission of this school. And I really want to get this degree.
On the other hand, it's a lot harder to ignore them, when I'm already feeling kind of BLAH and doubting the decisions (if I were still in WDM, I'd have a nice paycheck, a classroom, a CD player, a Piano) Part of me wants to yell -- "I was only joking -- I didn't mean it -- take me back."
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Hebind the trees coulds scudded fantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the gound.
The house shook.
Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.
She wasn't usually afraid of weather.-It's not just the weather, she thought. - It's the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong.
School. School was all wrong. She'd been dropped down to the lowest dection in her grade. That morning one of her teachers had said crossly, "Really, Meg, I don't understand how a child with parents as brilliant as your are supposed to be can be such a poor student. If you don't manage to do a little better you'll have to stay back next year."
During lunch she'd rough housed a little to try to make herself feel better, and one of the girls said scornfully, "After all, Meg we aren't grammar-school kids anymore. Why do you always act like such a baby?"
And on the way home from school, walking up the road with her arms full of books, one of the boys had said something about her "dumb baby brother." At this she'd thrown the books on the side of the raod and tackled him with every ounce of strength she had, and arrived home with her blouse town and a big bruise under one eye.
-From A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle
Thank you Miss M! I am coming off a low confidence week here - - and Meg is just the person for me to relate to right now.
Work School - I'm so tired of not "fitting in" with the other teachers. I don't fit in subject wise - I don't fit in personality wise. I know it'll all be OK once I've had some time (and they've had some time to get to know me) but right now I just feel like an outcast. For one of our inservices we had to do a lot of talking (processing - discussing) with our neighbor. My neighbor happened to be Annette - who has a lot of opinions, but she wouldn't say anything unless I said something first (most of the time I had nothing to say - - I need more time, I need to think). At one point I joked with her "I want another partner" and she said "Why? So they can do all the talking?" (Actually, that IS what I wanted!).
We also had child abuse training -- which is never easy.
Julie School SMU had orientation last Tuesday. That would have been OK - in fact I was starting to get rather excited about some of the possibilities they were discussing- but they snuck some "assessments" at the end of the night. First up was the Meyers Brigg -- no big deal I've taken it a couple of times -- but it made my already prominate introversion feel maginified everytime I answered one of the Introvert / extrovert questions.
THEN there was a writing assessment. She said "no big deal, we just want to know where you are at, find out a little about your writing process, so we can help you with your writing skills" Well, it felt like a big deal. We were to write two essays -- one on why the government should support the arts and one taking the opposite opinion. Both should have been 200-300 words long and we should have been done by 9:00. ME?? I got out of there at 9:15 (not the last one, but second to last) and the combined length of both essays was about 170 words (including my name at the top of the page!) I had some ideas, but not enough time to think about it or devlop any good arguments. Not feeling good about that at all.
Labor Day weekend - family time. My parents think I've thrown my life away. Why can Diane go off to teach in Mali and be hailed as a hero to the wide world --- and me (teaching in a school with equal or lesser resources) be a clueless fool? THEY think I should have held out for a job in suburbia (it's not like I set out to find a tough school to work at --- This was the place that offered me a job!!
On one hand I don't care what they think. I really want to be a part of the dream, vission, and mission of this school. And I really want to get this degree.
On the other hand, it's a lot harder to ignore them, when I'm already feeling kind of BLAH and doubting the decisions (if I were still in WDM, I'd have a nice paycheck, a classroom, a CD player, a Piano) Part of me wants to yell -- "I was only joking -- I didn't mean it -- take me back."