Tag: work

Blog post blog post blog post

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching, WorkLeave a comment

I spent the entire day with my face buried in iMovie, putting together the 8th grade recognition video for my kids, since we can’t have an actual ceremony. It’s up to half an hour and I still have people who owe me bits of it. My eyes are bleeding, and I’m taking the rest of the night off.

That said, it’s a damn shame I can’t share this thing with y’all, because I think I’m pretty proud of it.

Meanwhile, this song will be running through my head until I die, and if you didn’t want people using your video for graduation celebrations you shouldn’t have called it “Graduation,” lady.

6:44 PM, Thursday May 28: 1,719,855 confirmed cases and — sigh — 101,562 Americans dead.

In which I stay in my square

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Be it known that I managed to accomplish nearly all of the tasks on my list yesterday– and the one that I didn’t get to, the beta read, is being worked on right now. Amazingly, this means that I not only posted to Patreon for the first time in a while but that I wrote fiction. I actually have some decent ideas rattling around right now, and I just need the wherewithal to actually get them set to screen.

I made it official today that I plan on returning to my current job and my current building next year, meaning that for the first time in a while I will hold the same teaching position for two years in succession. For most of the year I was planning on taking at least some time to look around for a new job this summer in a sort of relaxed, no-big-deal, no-panic sort of way, but at this point everything else in the world is so screwed up that I’m going to be happy to have something secure and not fuck around with it. It’s always possible that something is going to magically drop into my lap, but that’s going to be what it takes for me to not be back teaching 8th grade math again next year.

Speaking of teaching, I’m experimenting with office hours again, where I basically post a link to a Meet video chat on my Google Classroom and then sit in front of the computer for an hour to see if anyone comes to talk to me. So far in about three hours of sessions I’ve had one kid that popped in for maybe two minutes and two kids who were in the room just long enough for me to get the notification and then bailed. So … fuck it, I’m trying, right? We’ll see if today’s afternoon session goes any better; if nothing else, it’s forcing me to be in front of the computer, which means that I’m mostly listening to music, reading comic books, and getting work done. There are worse ways to spend my afternoons.

Is it a bad idea to admit that the election results in Wisconsin yesterday give me a little bit of hope for this fall? It’s a bad idea, isn’t it? I won’t say it.

2:11 PM, Tuesday April 14th: 584,073 confirmed cases and 24,485 Americans dead.

Things what I should be doing

On By Luther M. SilerIn WorkLeave a comment

Various “work” tasks I could and/or should be doing right now, in no particular order:

  • Finish a second beta reread of a friend’s novella
  • Provide commentary for same
  • Get something on Patreon, since I forgot to cancel them last month and they sent me money
  • Get tomorrow’s lesson planning done (critical)
  • Get this week’s lesson planning done (would be good)
  • Get the next eleven days of lesson planning done, taking me through to the end of April (best choice)
  • Maybe some grading (not really necessary, but would be nice)
  • Write some fiction, since I actually have some ideas bubbling around right now
  • Play Nioh 2 (not a joke; the boy has been begging me to play all day because he likes to watch. I will actually disappoint my son if I don’t play any video games today.)

What I have done so far today, at 4:13 PM, in this order:

  • Twitter
  • Attended a Google Meet session with the rest of the math team
  • Twitter
  • Eaten lunch
  • Twitter
  • Showered
  • Got dressed
  • Put on socks
  • Twitter
  • Blogged

I am nothing if not a winner, y’all.

4:16 PM, Monday April 13th: 572,169 total confirmed cases, 23,070 American deaths.

In which there is an unexpected development

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I have recently come across an Employment Opportunity that is worth thinking about and investigating. Don’t get too excited; I haven’t even decided to apply, much less done so and been called for an interview or anything like that. Nor do I know how much it would pay. But for now, just trust me that it’s an Employment Opportunity and leave it at that.

At any rate, I’m bringing it up because my first thought upon discovering of its existence was I’m not sure I want to leave teaching right now. And, more broadly, I’m not certain I want to leave teaching again.

Which is … not the direction I thought my life was heading a few months ago. One of the numerous problems with being a teacher, of course, is the limited window one has to find a new job if one wishes to 1) stop teaching without 2) abandoning one’s current students. And I am finding that I am far enough into the year and I like my kids enough (most of ’em, at least) that the notion of ending the school year early even for a much more lucrative job gives me quite a bit of pause. The most amazing thing is that I’m not currently planning on a mad scramble for a new job this summer. For the first time in forever I feel like if I ended up in the same job next year that I have this year I’d be okay with that. And that surprises the hell out of me, especially since I mostly teach 8th graders who are all going to be gone next year anyway whether I like it or not. One way or another I’m highly unlikely to be in these kids’ lives for more than about seven more months; is it really that big of a deal if I were to leave in, say, January rather than June?

Apparently it is.

I’m going to look into this job anyway, because there’s no harm in looking into it; it’s not like I’m committing to anything by putting in an application, and they may not be interested in me or it may turn out that the job doesn’t pay enough or really any number of things. But it’s odd to realize that I’m back in the position where “Yes, please, now, please” wouldn’t be my immediate reaction to escaping the classroom again, especially since ending up where I have was at least a bit of a last resort anyway.

God help me, I may actually be enjoying my job again. Weird, innit?

Errbody cross your fingers

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Work4 Comments

I applied for a job today– a job I’m well qualified for, and would be good at (and, basically, have already done under a different title) and the application window is tight enough that there shouldn’t be a ton of other applicants, and which would come with an enormous raise.

So, whatever it is that you might do to try and shove some good luck in the direction of other humans, I’d appreciate it if you’d do some of that toward me in the next few days.

Still here

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Monday was a bloody nightmare. I didn’t get a single second of sleep Sunday night– little enough sleep that it would normally trigger my Required Minimum Sleep for Showing Up at Work rule, but I feel like I can’t follow that rule on the first damn day back after Spring Break. I spent the whole day as a zombie, basically– most of the time there’s a shot of adrenaline that gets me through the day even if I come in kind of run down, but there was nothing that was going to make me human yesterday– not my coffee, not a couple of periods teaching (oh, yeah, I’m back in the classroom for those two periods for real for real this time,) not nothing.

My wife basically felt the same way, and we were both in bed before nine last night. I still didn’t really get the kind of sleep I wanted; I’ll try again tonight, I guess. Today was a better day, complete with some nice classroom success– these kids are chatty but I’m still a big fan of my honors class, and I’m getting there as I figure out the mix of personalities in my other class. One way or another, though, there was no way on earth a blog post was happening yesterday other than maybe some sort of primal scream thing and I pretty much did that on Sunday so two days in a row seemed kinda excessive.

Interesting thing: I’ve gotten emails from two different agents in the last week offering me books and asking if I’m willing to review them on the site. This is very much a thing I’d like to encourage! I like books! If you happen to be someone with the ability to make these things happen feel free to get in touch and send me stuff.

Also, uh, if any of y’all wanna represent me, let’s definitely talk.

An observation

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

…I have survived the first day of the Great ReTeacherification. I’m only doing two classes, not three as was initially suggested, but that’s still on top of my already full-time job, remember. The honors kids continue to be a pleasure. My 7th hour is … well, one of us is gonna win this, and I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be me but I’m not a hundred percent sure yet.

One day at a time, one week at a time, right?

I gotta move out of this neighborhood

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching4 Comments

(That’s a BB King song)

Today was fucking awful.

We had … I dunno, six fights in the building today?  Let’s say six, it was close to that one way or another.  One kid caught what I think is probably the worst ass-whipping I’ve ever seen short of Rodney King.  I hope to hell the other kid is in jail right now.  I don’t know why they don’t take you to jail when you attack someone at school; school is the only place you can just beat the shit out of someone and then expect to go home afterwards like nothing happened.  This kid should be in jail.  He should be there until he turns 18, frankly.  But he’s not, because he attacked someone at school and not out on the street.  

Go ahead; there’s six plus years of damn near daily blog posts around here.  Hell, the running average is probably still more than one a day.  I wrote a whole-ass book about teaching that you can look through too if you like.  See if you can find another post where this kid needs to be in jail for what he just did is the topic.  I can’t think of one.  That rough of a day.

And I do not have a hard job, guys.  I really don’t.  There’s a lot of moving parts but I don’t have a hard job, not compared to what everyone else in the building is doing.  And today was damn near too much for me anyway.  I don’t know how the hell any of these people get up and go to work every day.  I do know that there’s no way in hell I return to this building next year.  Not if my life depended on it.  Which means I get to start jobhunting again.  There’s a chance to do the same job just in some other school but for various reasons (which I’ll probably get into eventually, but not now) is not as likely as I’d like it to be, so the best move is to start looking for alternatives now.  Because I can’t be in a place with this rotted a culture any longer.  I’ve never worked in a school this bad.  Not even close.  And I’ll make it to June, but I need to be gone after that, and if something good turns up before then I’ll jump ship.  I’ll be burning this bridge for the last time, but I think it needs to be done.

(Then again, for fun, especially if you know me in the real world, think back over my life since graduating in high school and count the good decisions.  Other than marrying my wife, there aren’t as many as I used to think there are.  I’m actually not very good at this being an adult nonsense.  I remember when I thought I was good at stuff; it was a while ago.)

And tomorrow I’ll get up and do it all over again.  Six more days with the kids and then I get a couple of weeks off.  I can manage this, I think.  I don’t have much of a choice, one way or another.