A Prelude to Work

It is a long awaited Saturday! Now I can get down to business. After I have some tea, putter around my gmail, and write whatever this will be.

The week started with a most unexpected 5:30am phone call on Monday morning. At 5, we'd gotten up to feed the cats and go back to bed, Dave noting "huh, it's snowing." When the phone rang half an hour later, I assumed it could only be the school cancellation phone tree in effect, but was a bit astounded that they would be calling off the school day for a few flakes of snow. A few hours later when we had a few inches, my astonishment had worn off.

I am not sure who likes snow days more: students, or staff. I had hauled with Dave on Sunday, and had spent part of that time thinking "huh, maybe I should have actually taken a day off. Just to, you know, rest." So I was very appreciative that the universe saw fit to lend me an extra.

So that was the week, off to a productive start! Then- and I don't know if it was because I was well-rested for the first time in a long time (new mattress! snow day!)- Tuesday morning, I went to school. In a very good mood. A mood so good it made me stop to label it as such. Not even moody teenagers could swing it- instead I took them up in mine. Lo and behold, I was visited by another such mood on Thursday. Prior to this week, I thought perhaps I had reached a sad little plateau of effective burn-out. Where I could still help kids get things done and push through the work and wildness, even if I no longer ever felt bright and shiny.

But, much to my surprise and delight, fun found its way in from the edges. Is it having the wedding over? Was I right, that I really needed to be able to face life as a wife rather than a bride-to-be? Or is it that first real snow of winter- the one that coats the trees and crunches underfoot? Possibly the rise of cookies in my diet as we approach Christmas?

All I know is that my mind was back. I re-cracked logarithms, so can make some headway with my Algebra 2 students as they reach the end of the class; in going on a tangent with a geometry student, I told him that pi (as a written character) is not unlike the trilithons at Stonehenge, which is kind of geekiliciously cool, because of Stonehenge's generally circular layout. This did eventually lead to me impressing upon him that pi (the ratio) is really just the constant relationship between the circumference of any circle and its diameter. So often kids have a very shaky concept of what the hell it is- since it is not written as a number, it's a funky letter, they assume it is a variable (see also: Variables; other shaky math concepts).

Speaking of other shaky concepts in general, I discovered, and at first did not believe, that some of my students made it through eighth grade without ever taking Social Studies. This particular kid had been with me over the course of the semester making up work for the Contemporary Issues class he failed last year. Turns out, all through his grammar school career, he had been taken out of Social Studies to work on his reading, or to do alternative education classes. Worthy things, certainly, but it left a hole in his education so gaping that when we were discussing geography and I asked him to hazard a guess about the identity of a largest country in South America, he hazarded the guess "Africa?"

I was gobsmacked.

No shit he failed a class that was all about government and international politics. When my co-worker arrived after the last bell, she confirmed his claim that he had never had Social Studies.

Good thing we have a little over a month before the semester ends and he starts World Studies, which is taught achingly by the book, with a steady diet of map quizzes. Now I know what he will be reading. Maps. Oceans, continents, seas, countries, rivers, mountains... stories. Just talk with visual props. Quizzes as games, not as grades. Internet geography games (best edutainment EVER http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.htm). He's a lobsterman- it's just a matter of extending the reach on his mental chart.

Sigh. I want to be a Social Studies teacher. It's one way of being an everything teacher.

Midweek I had back to back meetings, which were not nearly as dull as that phasing would imply. The first I was a little pissed to rush off to (I was working with an Algebra 1 student in nearly teary frustration regarding exponents)- it was scheduled during Learning Center operation hours, so it was stepping on my time with students on the home stretch of the semester. But the meeting itself, was useful- figuring out how to start a student-run writing center at the school. A project I wholeheartedly support- and I really do love sitting down with our principal and other teachers to work on improving what we do. Seriously, it's soul food.

The second was the Friends of the Reach Steering Committee, which is the support for the Director of the school district's performing arts center. And this was the first meeting where the Director could talk all open-like about tendering his resignation, and the search process for the next Director. It only makes sense for me to apply.

So we'll see what happens. I guess I'll just go forward with an open heart and do my best wherever I end up- staying the course in the Learning Center, taking up the reigns of a theater space, or eventually winding up my Social Studies certification...

All I know is that I finally feel like I am coming back to myself, after a year of intense transition: I'm at my own table (the self-same from my first beloved apartment in Portland), with Janey-Cat sharing my chair, and I am procrastinating today's to-do list to consider future work. The more things change... The big difference is that now I share the table, the cat, the future with Dave. Good deal.

You've Got It

Pushed up the wedding so I could devote myself to other responsibilities, and now...

Here they come. It was at about minute 23 of the 158 minutes of the mailboat company's board of directors conference call that the president introduced me as a nominee to the board, noting "she is the new go-to person when you need someone on a board." And I thought "I really should have turned this one down..."

But I stayed on and listened to the collection of voices- some very familiar from other boards, some less so. Seriously, I spend more time talking/listening to wealthy white men about money than I ever imagined I would. Between now and the 14th I need to go about writing my own contract for the Island Community Development Corporation's executive directorship- and that's just the start there. Then I need to get my shit together to actually manage the damned thing: getting the money to build new houses, getting the content together for a website to market the island, manage the current properties and microloan program, etc.... I think the worst thing about responsibility is the whole prospect of disappointing people. It's worse when those people are your neighbors. That said, they effectively volunteered me. So I guess they get what they put forth. And I was their best bet. Yep, I'm the least busy, comparatively young, well-educated warm body on an island of about 50 people.

Not yet experienced enough to say "no."

The way I see it (having now imbibed the greater portion of the neck of a bottle of Stella), it's not unlike having to direct the Xmas show out here. A painful rite of passage that I will survive and then grow out of. Hopefully won't even be tarred and feathered. We'll see. Just need to define what bits I am responsible for then see them through.

My only growing concern in this muzzy beginning of increased responsibility is the quality of life I'll see for the next year or so. As it is, I feel like I only ever see islanders across a committee table, never a dinner table. The things that drew me to the island are more like memories than realities- which I guess is part and parcel of no longer being new here, of commuting to work off-island, to being a part of some serious social change on the island (becoming involved with Dave made me the target of Opinions and the cause of Some Awkwardness- so it goes).

A task at a time, I suppose. Am rather assuming that my thirties will be about working my ass off, now that I have some confidence in my abilities (and more to the point, other people do and will pay me for it). The good news is that at the beginning and end of the day, Dave is now legally bound to be there for me through it! And thanks to the generosity of friends and family I have a comfy new mattress with lovely new sheets, a comforter, and quilt to ensure that I sleep well when I do get to bed. Now hopefully to get some land and a house to put that bed, paid for in small part by creating houses for future islanders.