My Google-fu and vocabulary have failed me

On July 16, 2014July 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Writing7 Comments

The bit that’s flipped up there, so that the pilot can climb inside the jet. What’s that called?

I swear to God I’ve just spent several minutes looking for the answer with no luck. Closest I can get is “windshield,” but I feel like that shouldn’t apply to the back part of the damn thing and plus windshield doesn’t repurpose to part of a spacecraft all that well, since there’s no goddamn wind. Vacuumshield? Dumb.

Words are stupid.

(Sidenote: Ha! There was a period of time early in the life of the blog where for some reason WordPress wanted to add “aviation” as a tag to every single post I wrote no matter what. I get to use it for real!)

On venturing into public

On September 19, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

My belly is full of pizza and my brain is full of nonsense. At the moment I prefer the contents of my belly; ultimately the pizza will cost me less. That said, it’s been a very long time since I was getting any kind of exercise regularly– and, despite my near-permanent status as a professional fat dude, I actually enjoy exercise. I got a weird little thrill when my wife pointed out that the current bathroom mirror (which is six feet wide and about four high, with no borders– just a big piece of mirrored glass) ought to go down into the basement as part of our as-yet nonexistent home gym. I was actually angry with myself that I hadn’t thought of it on my own.

I ran into three different families’ worth of students during the ten minutes that I was buying pizza, by the way, which makes me think maybe living in more or less the same neighborhood as my school isn’t that much of an advantage.

One of them asked me what I was doing there, which tells you the caliber of kids I’m dealing with. (Yes, this is an unfair thing to say. No student anywhere thinks his teachers are real people, and running into us in public, thus confirming the unwelcome truth that we exist outside of our classrooms, is always an occasion for wonder and mystery. But it’s still funny.)

“I’m here for pizza,” I told her.

“Really?” she asked.

I leaned forward.

“I actually live here,” I whispered, and pointed under one of the chairs by the door. “I slept there last night. Don’t tell anybody.”

Her eyes tripled in size. Her mother got their pizza (I was waiting for a Deep Dish pizza, which takes longer even though it’s more of a Deep Ish pizza) and shot me a weird look as they left.

By the time the third family said hello and left, I think the employees thought I was some sort of rock star.

The pudgy, bald, talentless kind, of course.

I tried to spend part of last night applying for a field trip grant through Target. Have I mentioned the DC trip yet? I take a group of seventh and eighth graders to Washington, D.C. every two years, and this year is a travel year. The trip is hella expensive so we’re trying to find a good way to pay for it that doesn’t involve me having to run a fundraiser. First it took twenty minutes and two changes of my password to log into the site, which is justweird, and then after taking three thousand or so characters to say I want to take my kids to DC so they can lern history gud, it lost my entire application except for the biographical part at the beginning. Frustrated, I tried to flip to the last section of the application, which asks me to break the trip cost down in ways that are frankly impossible (it costs, roughly, $800 per kid, but that’s a flat fee– they don’t break it down by transportation or food or lodging or whatever. It’s just $800. Target wants everything broken down specifically– I can’t even realistically estimate those numbers– and I doubt they’ll like it very much if I just put $32,000 HOLY FUCKING HELL ARE WE SERIOUSLY PAYING THEM THIRTY-TWO GRAND into one of the boxes.

Holy shit. How the hell are they making thirty-two thousand dollars off of us? That’s fucking insane. Mental note: redouble plans to become a DC tour guide once I decide I can’t teach any longer.

Jesus.

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS

On September 14, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I can’t even what god NO POST TODAY CANNOT BRAIN ANYMORE

Going to bed early.

On September 3, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

My uncle died this morning, my morning class was assholey enough that it made my whole day worse, I ducked out of work early because I didn’t feel emotionally up to dealing with bus nonsense at the end of the day, then I made dinner for my whole family because apparently that’s what I do now.

Tilapia is good.

Oh, and the tile guy came out to measure. That’s good too.

That said: today sucked, and I’m not in the mood for this right now.

G’night.

In the beginning

On August 21, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

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I’ve had twelve first days of school as a teacher. That was… certainly one of them. My throat hurts from talking all day, I’m exhausted, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m actually teaching tomorrow, which could potentially be a problem. Hopefully tonight I will be able to brain enough to pull together a couple of days’ worth of useful lesson plans, and to be able to bluff my way through actually teaching them tomorrow. Let’s cross our fingers!

It worked out kinda funny, actually: my first group was way more obnoxious than I was expecting them to be. My second group was way less obnoxious than I was expecting them to be. My afternoon class was exactly what I was expecting them to be. My day is, therefore, timed beautifully; my kids start off a hot mess (at the time of day where I’m most likely to have my patience together) and get better behaved and more fun as the day drags on. And my prep period is last hour, which works with me for a variety of reasons. The buses were terribly late, but not as terribly late as they’ve frequently been on the first day of school. (Elementary students, who let out before we do, sometimes don’t get off at their stop like they’re supposed to, and then don’t know things like their phone numbers and addresses, which have to be tracked down. The first few days/couple of weeks are always disastrous until transportation gets the bus routes worked out.)

All told: not a bad first day. We’ll see how the next two days go once I’m actually being expected to teach them something and they’re being expected to learn something.

I’m going to mention this here just because I need to mention it yesterday: Elmore Leonard died this week; I would do terrible things to my friends and loved ones in exchange for a fraction of the man’s talent. The only person whose Rules for Writing are better than his are Mark Twain’s:

1. Never open a book with weather.

2. Avoid prologues.

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.”

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

RIP, Mr. Leonard.

Pfah.

On August 17, 2013August 17, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

“Write every day, no matter what,” they tell me.

“Stay in practice,” they tell me.

“Have good ideas and something to talk about every day,” NO ONE EVER SAYS.

Stupid writing advice.

I made friends with a bug last night. But the story ends in tears so I’m not going to tell it. Instead, I’m going to go make soup. I like soup. It’s tasty. Tomorrow, I will make risotto and invite Joe Bastianich over to eat my food. He won’t come, but at least I’m trying.

The end.

On my future

On August 11, 2013August 11, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

Higher_learning

This is going to be my twelfth year of teaching, and my fourteenth year of thinking of myself as a teacher.

It’s time– it may be well past time, honestly– to start seriously figuring out what the next step in my career is going to be. This is the weird thing about my job; unlike basically every other career out there, there isn’t really any way to get promoted as a teacher. While I’ve spent my career in middle schools and I’ve often sort of thought of the eighth grade math teacher as the apex predators in the building, I don’t actually think that for any real reason. The person who had my job last year was a second-year teacher; it’s not like you have to prove yourself to get into that end of the building any more than you do anywhere else.

I can change jobs as much as I like, but short of flipping school districts somehow (and I suspect the other districts around here actually pay less than mine does) there’s no way to actually increase my salary that way. I can increase my marketability for other districts in various ways and I can shift my own focus on my teaching in some ways, but precious few of them will lead to a whole lot of change. Let’s run through the possibilities, shall we?

Go back to school and get my doctorate. This will not actually increase my salary so long as I live in Indiana, whose wise Republican government decided a couple of years ago that there’s no point rewarding teachers for getting education. It will also cost me money unless I can manage to get someone else to pay for it, and while I haven’t actually looked too deeply into this I don’t really think that there’s a whole lot of money for funding out there. I cannot acquire more student loans. I currently owe nearly ninety thousand dollars for student loans as is. That number will not be increasing under any circumstances. Further issue: there is no college offering an Ed.D or a Ph.D in education within non-pain-in-the-ass distance of my home. Online degrees are a bloody joke and there are any number of obvious issues with, say, trying to commute to Ball State (nearly three hours away) for classes. This takes something that already had major issues and nudges it thaaaat much closer to impossible. That said? I want a doctorate. I know lots of people with advanced degrees and goddammit I want one too. I know it’s irrational; shut up.
Administrative certification. This would require classes, but not necessarily another degree. That’s kind of weasel-talk, though, since most of the time admin prep programs are meant as Master’s Degree programs anyway, and I already have two of the damn things (that’s where 89 grand in student loans came from) and don’t want a third. Becoming an administrator would, beyond a shadow of a doubt, increase my salary. I would also probably hate the job, as principal jobs– and, especially, the Assistant Principal job I’d certainly have to spend a few years in before becoming a principal– basically mean you spend all of your time doing precisely the parts of this job that I hate and seek to minimize at all costs. I posted “Do I want to be a principal?” as a Facebook status the other day; damn near every single person said I did not.
I can always get certified in additional subject areas, which widens what I can teach and ensures that I can continue job-hopping every few years for the rest of my life. This does have its attractions, mind you, but I’m already one of the more heavily certified teachers in a district that employs thousands of them and it ain’t like it’s putting money in my pocket. You do reach a point where you hit overkill, y’know?
National Board certification. This provides flexibility in that it instantly certifies me in most of the states across the country, meaning that I can move somewhere where having your National Boards actually matters. Most states provide financial incentives– some of them quite sizeable– for teachers who attain National Board certification. Indiana, naturally, is not one of them. Board certification is difficult and moderately expensive, but cheaper than an entire degree and, frankly, it would probably be more helpful. Effect on my day-to-day life as it exists right now: zero.

Noticing a pattern? I’m kinda stuck, and I don’t like it one bit. The best answer appears to be “move to a state where people actually give a shit about education,” and that would be great if, oh, I lived by myself. It gets rather more complicated with a wife and a baby in the picture, particularly when moving means taking both sets of grandparents’ only grandchild away from them.

Seriously? The only thing I can think of that might be workable is to start writing books. I can’t make myself write fiction to save my life; my struggles with that have been amply detailed in any number of blog posts since forever, but I can sure as shit talk ad nauseam about teaching. The weird thing is, while I can’t actually make myself write fiction, I have tons of ideas for stories, and I can actually get myself to sit down and knock out a thousand words of nonfiction at the drop of a hat but I have absolutely no idea what a book about teaching from me might actually look like. Like, none. I’ve fiddled with the idea from time to time and gotten nowhere with it.

Although I WILL SLAP RAFE ESQUITH IN HIS STUPID LYING FACE would be a great name for a book, wouldn’t it? And its sequel, MAYBE YOUR HAIR IS ON FIRE BECAUSE YOUR PANTS MADE THEM THAT WAY, YOU ASSHOLE, due a year or so later.

Bah.