"Bailando, Bailando, Bailando"

It’s 8:00 on Friday night and I just arrived home after a long day at school. I am remembering a part in Eat, Pray, Love right now—the part where Elizabeth Gilbert is talking about how American’s don’t know how to relax: “Of course, we all inevitably work too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure.) Americans don’t really know how to do nothing.” For full-time teachers (and now, because of recent budget cuts, full-time teachers are now nurses, advisors, and counselors), “doing nothing” isn’t an option. So, I spend my weekends exactly as Gilbert describes—pretending to do nothing just because I am working with Something’s Gotta Give on in the background.

Teaching full-time, I miss out on a lot, so I try to schedule in a few weekends, including the last two, doing something I love—something unrelated to school or work. My last two weekends were filled with swim meets and conferences. Now, you may be thinking that I should be spending my weekends catching up on “real” work, but I need weekends like my last two—weekends when I get to do things like watch Sar swim or spend time learning at a conference rather than teaching. The conference, by the way, was unbelievable! I thought I would be completely out of my comfort zone—I didn’t know my department very well and I was the least-experienced teacher there. A few hours into the conference, though, I found myself offering and taking in ideas in the many breakout workshops. Most of the workshops were conducted in Spanish and I also went to one workshop in Italian. The atmosphere was so…me—people from around the nation and the world speaking Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, German in all parts of the hotel. I loved every minute of it. However, by the time Sunday rolled around, I was ready to spend some time with Sar and family at the meet:).

On that note, I am excited to finally have a weekend all to myself to grade, lesson plan, do homework, work on my resume, and catch up on sleep. I have gotten into a bad habit (or have been forced into this habit due to the fact that there are not enough hours in a day?) of not getting enough sleep. I spend my evenings after teaching on Monday nights and classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights lesson-planning. I always promise myself that I will go to sleep after I do “one more thing,” but one thing turns into five and before I know it, it’s midnight. And yet, I still never feel completely prepared for teaching when I wake up in the morning. This, I assume, comes with experience. Drinking coffee is no longer a casual treat—it is now a necessity.

Teaching is becoming more routine by the day. I am learning to deal with the daily challenges that come with teaching at Mt.. My 4th and 6th period classes are barely manageable, but I am excited to report that I had what I hope to be a huge breakthrough with my 5th period class this week. We started our first song in my Spanish 1 classes this week to help learn the new chapter’s vocabulary. The song “Bailando” is a one-hit-wonder from the 80’s by Lynda and my 5th period LOVES the song! My 5th period class is not particularly motivated to learn Spanish—most of my students in this period do just enough work to pass the class, but somehow, the song is different. They love the song so much that one of my students asked me if we could make a music video. Brilliant. I wish I could take the credit for this idea, but I can’t. We are now in the process of memorizing the song and mapping out the music video that I hope to film in a few weeks.

For now, that is all. Once again, I apologize for the long entry!