collapse

i cried at school for the second time.

and there weren't even any kids there!

there might as well have been. the other third grade teacher (aka, the antique, even though she is pregnant) was just being a bitch! every time she came back over to our table it was like a black stormcloud came with her! she would say what we were doing didn't make sense. then we would ask her how she would do it? only to be met with no practical response on her part, just an attempt to tangle our problem even further!

at one point we had to think of an inter-disciplinary unit. what we had done first was cut apart the learning standards so we could move them around and make connections. i had to explain to her how the connections made sense. i think she was intimidated when i wrote e=mc^2, but that's the connection between matter and energy! i wanted to do a unit on force and motion, which is related to mass and energy, because there are so many fun things you can do with it! (yes, i suppose deep down i am a physics person at heart). anyway she kept coming back to the learning standards, which to be honest didn't have all that much to do with what we were doing. at one point i told her, look, forget about this chart. this is what we're working on. it's like she was hung up on what we were "told" to do, and she didn't get the point! she's just so inflexible and set in her ways. so the other two (an argentina and a peruana) spent the rest of the activity talking about her in spanish (yes she had gone up to whine to the facilitator so she wasn't at our table).

and couple with the antique the fact that the argentina and i will not be returning next year. we spoke (in spanish because la directora speaks like three words) about how it wasn't fair how la directora dealt with me, i talked about how i was sent up a creek without a paddle, and so i just got really worked up. and couple that to my philosophical dilemma (the POINT?!) and the connection between my role at the school (lame duck) and all the work i'm (potentially) putting into this and knowing that i'm not going to see it come to fruition because i won't be involved next year and neither will l.a. so WHO is going to implement it if the only people who care will not return????????????????????

so i spent the rest of the day in a bad mood and depressed. i just can't seem to get my mind off thinking that what i'm doing there is pointless!

i did come up with a tentative point. being a teacher, i could influence someone who influences someone else, and the chain will continue until the lifetime of the sun winds down and someone indirectly influenced by me finds another earth and a way to get there.

but what about when the universe collapses? :-o