The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
The first sentence of this post was going to refer to “nameless dread” initially, but nah, work starts on Monday and I know perfectly well what the name of this dread is, along with its home phone number, address and probably the motherfucker’s social security number if I look through my files.
One way or another I’ve been in a mood all day and I’m taking tonight off. Go be nice to somebody.
January 2025 has been a long year, and I am way too tired for Sunday night right now, especially given that I was literally in bed by 8:00 last night and made it eleven hours before I even woke up to pee. I didn’t actually get out of bed until 9:30 or so, and other than taking the Christmas tree down, doing some reading– I am going to finish Wind & Truth tomorrow– and writing an assignment for tomorrow, I really haven’t done much. This image is prominent in tomorrow’s assignment:
This is going to be one of those annoying assignments that conceptually isn’t actually that difficult– you have two numbers in your coordinates, and you have to manipulate them in one of three ways to get your second set of coordinates, and those manipulations only involve making them their opposites or possibly putting them in reverse order– but it’s gonna break some brains anyway, because the sensible way to do this is to write down the coordinates of a point, look at the rule, then rewrite the new point, but my kids don’t want to write anything at all ever, and they’re going to try to remember the coordinates instead, and that’s … not gonna work.
Then I’m gonna get a chorus of “this is too hard!” and have to resist the urge to reply with “no, you’re just too lazy to do it right,” which is true, but … unhelpful. Also, if I’m tired, I’m gonna start making mistakes myself. So yay.
I hate teaching this unit. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that or not? But I hate transformations. I really do. I think Pythagoras is next, and that’s a little bit more fun.
Maybe I’ll go to bed early again tonight.
I spent a good part of the day today— five hours, maybe– getting prepared for next week and the two-eleven-hour-days-plus-an-elearning-day stint following, and while I’ve been mostly immune to Sundaying since starting this new job I have been a mess all day today. There’s just too goddamned much going on over the next couple of weeks, most of it related to not math, and I want to do Math, and not Not Math. But I’ve got twelve thousand other things to worry about this week, and I care about exactly zero of them– I don’t give a shit if the kids have a little Slides presentation to show their parents at parent/teacher conferences, because the only kids who will actually do those are the ones whose parents I don’t need to see, and I don’t give a shit about the door decorating contest that they gave us a week to do and then promptly filled every advisory period in between the day they told us about the contest and the day they were judging it, and I don’t give a shit about the schedule for Advisory they dropped on us today(*), and I don’t give a shit about the fucking lesson that I’m supposed to teach, which was clearly written by a non-educator(**), so that the kids are “prepared” for the field trip they’re taking on Tuesday that I also don’t care about.
Christ and fuck.
I need to clear this mood before first contact with the kids tomorrow or it’s going to be a rougher seven days than I already think it’s going to be. I don’t need any of this shit. Just get the fuck out of my way and let me fucking teach.
(*) “But Luther, isn’t it Sunday?” you ask. Yes. They dropped a new Advisory schedule on us on a Sunday that is supposed to be implemented Monday, and to hell with the seventeen other things we are supposed to do this week, all of which are supposed to be done in Advisory. Fuck Advisory. Fuck the entire concept. Get rid of it and give me more class time. I hate it.
(**) How do I know, you may ask? It’s a lesson plan for eighth graders that changes tasks seven times over the course of the lesson, with each section ranging from three to eight minutes in length.(***) Fuck you. You teach it.
(***) A sample task: “Put the students in pairs and have them write the letters A-Z on a piece of paper. Have them read whateverthefuck and list things by their first letter that are manufactured in this county.” Total time for this activity: five to eight minutes, which is insufficient time just to get them in groups and have them all write out the list of letters. Suck a cock.
I’m Sundaying hard today– there’s lots to do, but it’s not getting done as efficiently as it should be because I’m too busy stressing about the fact that I have to go back to work tomorrow. I have a four-day weekend and a Wednesday out-of-building training in October, so I’m trying my damnedest to get through September without deliberately taking a day off after missing a couple in August. That said, I’m really jonesing for a mental health day right now. My student observer starts this week, so I need the kids focused and ready when he comes in; no days off for me this week unless something really stupid happens.
Now if I could just accomplish something. I have, like, a whole list right here, and my wife’s already been out to accomplish shit and been back again, so I have some catching up to do. I guess I’ll cross “write a blog post” off the list and go vacuum something.
…actually, first things first: I’m trying to give some books away today and tomorrow. They’re all right here if you’re interested. Still making you buy Balremesh and other stories, though.
It’s been a rough day all around; I’ve been trying to get the house beaten into shape so it doesn’t look like it’s been Lord of the Flies here all week while my wife’s been out of town. I’m at the point where I’m going to shave the fucking dog bald; it’s not actually been all that hot a summer, but I think she’s actually developing allopecia as she ages– there is no excuse for the amount of shedding she’s been doing lately, and I’m worried that by the time my wife gets home tomorrow night it’s going to not only look like I never brushed her, it’s going to look like I never vacuumed either. Is that a thing that happens to dogs? I swear she’s never shedded remotely as much as she does now.
I actually got a fair amount done over the last couple of days, which is generally the standard by which I judge my weekends; the concept of “relaxation” being more or less completely foreign to me. It was a Good Weekend if I got a lot of shit done. It was not if I didn’t. This weekend’s been accompanied by a bit more headfuckery than I’ve had to put up with in the year and a half or so since I stopped teaching, but I think that’s just because I feel like I’m under deadline pressure to make the place look like a half-capable adult lives here. We’ll see.
There is also a distinct chance that I should seriously consider going back on my brain meds, but I’m trying to ignore that at the moment.
I caught the premiere episode of The Strain last night, which I found pretty compelling, so I’m watching the second right now. I may or may not write a few paragraphs of fiction while I’m watching it but I’m not going to hold my breath about it. After that, sleep, and hopefully no kicks in the kidneys tonight.
Wife’s back tomorrow night. Alhamdollilah.
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