Teacher Classes and Other Updates

By way of letting you know that I do think about things besides kissing and music, I thought I’d write some updates about other stuff.

This is my second semester of online teacher certification classes. It’s really hard, and I still feel ambivalent about my decision to go back to school. My financial aid doesn’t quite cover all of the classes that I need to take and being alone on the computer makes my soul feel gray sometimes. Superthanks to my pals who have counteracted the grayness by sending me songs!

I started this semester’s classroom-observation this week, and whenever I’m in a classroom, I feel hopeful. Yesterday I got to help a group of second graders with reading and re-reading their books for fluency. They were practicing inflection and pauses and the “f” sound. We spent a good amount of time practicing the word “humph!” I did my best to help them break down the words into sounds and point out the differences and similarities between words they kept mixing up.

I don’t know what I would do with the rest of my life if I didn’t get certified to teach, but the money kinda weighs heavily on me. Amy’s student loans are something like $189, 000 and mine will be over $100,000 by the time I am done. Amy is still commuting to Delaware and our car needs a fancy part replaced and the passenger-side door needs fixing from a dumbass parallel parking mishap of mine.

When I write about my car, I feel like a country song. Sometimes I think Amy and I are like our poor car—just putting too many miles on ourselves and not being able to stop driving, even as things start to break down. I guess everyone’s feeling that way, otherwise they wouldn’t be occupying everything. We are sure feeling like the 99% and I’m glad we have a date to play board games at Occupy Philly tomorrow. Come say hi to us, we’re shy, but we have Apples to Apples!

I feel bad that the name of this blog has been a bit more ironic than it should be lately, but the transition I’ve been going through, from working part-time and getting to write most of the day to working almost always and fitting in poetry where I can. Giving up working with the Philly Poetry Slam was the hardest part, and I feel like I just haven’t been myself since then.

I’ve been very, very lucky for the past ten years to have Amy support my poet dream and my teacher dream and all of the other little dreams in between. Part of the reason I want to be certified to teach is so that I can help pay off our debts and someday just tell her to quit her job until she finds something she loves. Being a poetry housewife was wonderful if a little lonely sometimes, but I look forward to some day when I am waking up every morning to go to my own classroom.

It’s hard to imagine how my book-editing process is going to fit into all of this busyness, but I got to meet my wonderful editor last weekend and the fact that he has the kindest heart in the universe is really comforting to me. I know that he will be patient and kind and also push me to have the best book possible. And there will be some miracle, I hope, that allows me to find time for the book tour I’ve always dreamed of, too.

Thank you for listening, dear readers, I feel more serotonin-y already.