15 November 2026
I now get up to 25 hits on this blog. I don't post it anywhere. I know six of you. Are six of you reading it four times and one of you reading it five times?
So I'll post this on facebook and gather data.
UPDATE It was on my FB for ten minutes and got 14 hits. Then I took it down.
OK, our morning Yes I Am Aware It Is All Shit moment:
So, that was a Friday the 13th of November. I see Beetlejuice scaring the Maitlands and Geena Davis' face. That combination of "This is horrible" and "I'm done".
I stayed off social media for 24 hours on the 10th. Well...I mostly stayed off. I did not engage with loonies as is my daily joy. But I popped on for Aaron Parnas and Meidas Touch because how else am I getting any news. During the week I listen to NPR in the morning, and Friday on my way home from school, that's where I heard about the ground stop. Seriously. Came home and put on the local news, who weren't talking about it. Jim and I both had panicked reactions---when you do something like that, when you are the FAA and you say "NO PLANES SHALL PASS" you need to use your power over ALL media to get the word out that it's not 9/11, instead of just standing with a mic in front of your limited syccophants. Jesus Christ.
If one more red hat or psuedo christian screams that the left is "Dividing The Nation" I am going full Jeremiah Johnson. Fuck all y'all, I can't fix you.
Fences Essays
Well that went well. NARF.
To catch up, we read Fences by August Wilson in Theatre 1. There was a lot of history I had to teach alongside, as these kids could not define "systemic racism" to save their lives, and as it is a theme in the play, it fell on me to be the history expert. I missed an opportunity to click a win with the district mandate of DISCOURSE by structuring a discussion and inviting my evaluator, but that sounded like a lot of work. The end result was the same, observed or not; they now understand systemic racism.
I made them discuss the themes, and align it with two quotes. Then they had to write their thoughts out in at least two paragraphs, pencil to paper, and they had to add a personal experience with racism. Not systemic, as they are white and Latina and Vietnamese, just plain old ordinary racism. Personal experience, theirs or a friend's.
This is where I remind you how few students I actually have. In second period, I have seven on the roster. One has never attended. Four show up on the reg. One tries to be consistent, but her life is a mess. Two of the four have bonded and arrive 20 minutes late, and then one of them---the one with the Double Secret Nurse pass---leaves for the bathroom after five minutes and never returns. They both have an F, did not read the play, participate in discussion or show up on essay day. More on that in a moment.
Those who participated in the discussion and spent time reworking their thoughts, wrote beautiful essays. I called them "paragraphs" because one will burst into flames if asked to write an essay. So she wrote four paragraphs. All but one were by hand, in class. I allowed one to be written in class on a google doc as their handwriting is truly undecipherable.
The Vietnamese senior not only reflected on racism against their family---they are trans, so subject to double-whammy prejudice--but managed to teach me that the root of Vietnamese women becoming nail techs is due to Tippi Hedren.
Now, sixth period.
Six on the roster, five show up. One moved from fourth period and missed the unit, so she's not counted in the data for Fences. Of the four who show up, one misses class at least once a week for therapy, which is consistently unexcused. One puts his head down and says he's too tired because his dad lost his keys and kept him up looking for them all night---this was every day for two weeks, mind you. One skips all of her classes and is supposed to play sportsball, but can't keep her grades up. And one is a senior who transferred from DSSI or DDIS or whatever that school is, and she consistently tells us they're racist over there, she likes it much better at our building.
The transfer senior is the only one who wrote the essay.
However, she is failing her other classes, and her math teacher contacted her mom on Friday. So she asked me if I would contact her mom to tell her she turned in her essay, since mine is the only class she's passing. I said sure. Happy to do that.
I then sent a message to Lost Keys' Mom, who is listed as his primary contact. He doesn't live with her, he lives with dad, but she's the contact. Side note: I love snooping in the conference tabs--that's when I found out I'm not the only class he "sleeps" in. He's not sleeping, he's listening, and he'll respond when I ask what I was talking about, and then groan when he has to get on stage. Or answer a question. Or speak. Or sit up. Or participate. One day he groaned so loudly I said "Dude, enough. I get it. You hate this."
"No, Miss, I actually like you a lot. I just don't like the assignments you make us do."
I had no idea what to do with that.
OK, so period two, Double Secret Nurse's Pass. She didn't show up this week at all, so I contacted counseling. There was a note that there had been a family emergency, but she was only excused one day. Counseling chatted me the second I sent the email; "She's in my office right now." She told her counselor she doesn't come to class because I'm disrespectful. This is the kid who tried to hide her phone from me the first week, and when I caught her she physically threw the phone in the box. She arrives late and then openly talks to the other kids to find out what we're doing---rather than show up on time---then snaps at me when I ask her to stop talking. Yep. I'm disrespectful. After 24 years of kids like her and raising my own children, I Am Done With Your Shit. If that makes me disrespectful, so be it.
But I am not racist. Glad she didn't throw that in there for good measure.
Theatre Renovation
There are now seats in the back half of the house, and nobody seems to know who did the sound installation so we can learn how it works. We can't get the board to turn on and we do not know where they put the microphones. But the seats are pretty.
Exploding Donut
I literally had two bright spots this week, and one was in sixth period on Friday. This is my umpteenth attempt at getting them to do improv. Since "S" moved to this period, the energy has changed dramatically. She loves theatre and is relentlessly positive. So I gave them a timer on the screen to work "Why Are You Late?" an improv game they loved, weirdly, but not as much as they loved the exploding donut timer I found. Whoever was the boss in the scene got to start the timer, and while I did enjoy having them engaged, it felt a lot like preschool.
Dining room and hall painted
Last weekend I had to put the art back up in the dining room.
I am not a person who knows how to design, so it took the better part of Sunday for me to simply sit and talk to myself while sketching where things should go.
I got it put together, then decided the hallway should be the same color. Now that it's painted, I have to pull the tape off and spend my day deciding if I'm putting the three pictures back on that or somewhere else. I have major anxiety about this stuff, I've been told repeatedly I have poor taste in choosing colors and I cannot design. Both statements are true, but it's not the kind of thing you want people to know;it's like they can see my spanx. It feel invasive and I Am Brave. I can choose wall colors and hang art in my own house without hyperventilating. So next week I'll let you know how that went.
Observation
So...Title 1 Schools are seriously abused. We do more to prove that we are teaching what we are teaching than any other buildings, and I have hit a wall with the redundancies. I have to copy and paste the same reflections on two platforms, my SLO class fell apart and I had to switch to combining two classes for the SLO because you have to have 10 kids but my observations are for my former SLO class which was Stagecraft which is teaching stagecraft without a stage which you should be grateful I am even doing instead of giving up and showing movies, but I digress.
When we get observed, we are given the elements we are being observed on, but told not to change the lesson. So...if the lesson is on say, building a flat but the element is discourse, then I will get a "bad grade" becuase my lesson didn't align with what they wanted to see, but I'm told not to change what I'm doing to meet the element. I'm also supposed to post my CLO which is new to me in a classroom, as I refused to do it on stage --WHERE would you like me to post these dictated words?---and I Hate Doing It, so they are never exactly what the district wants. The time I spend wordsmithing could be spent planning or cleaning or using the bathroom or aruging with a bot on facebook. It Doesn't Matter to anyone except the district.
I don't even look at what the element is they want. I don't care. I'm teaching stagecraft without a stage. I lost kids from the class because they signed up to use drills and saws, and we can't do that in room 233. I'm keeping the eight kids who remain as fucking engaged as I possibly can. You're welcome.
So this week, on Monday J worked "set changes" on our small stage, teaching kids to listen to the voice of the stage manager and move quickly and quietly for set changes. On Tuesday, M chose a costume silhouette and everyone had to bring her pieces in the shop so she could choose what worked. And Wednesday JT led a puppet making day, he had to lead the class in building a puppet from found materials.
For these kids, these days went well.
For my evaluator, it tanked.
Because M couldn't verbalize why a dress was wrong when it was brought to her, and becasue I didn't stand next to her to feed her vocab with her choices, because I had to be in the costume shop managing the two kids who kept trying to hide in the racks with their phones. Also, my CLO was not clear enough.
You know what?
Bite me.
I'm so so so tired- Jodi Jones knows.
Plant designs, rehearsal plant.
The student designing Audrey 2 is a gift. They are the kid from second period whose essay taught me about Tippi Hedren--they wanted to take Stagecraft, but they are a senior and aligned with CTE engineering, Honors and AP, so they had to take Theatre 1. It's fine, they arrive early every morning and we get to discuss designs and ideas. But if they were in stagecraft, they would be able to influence other kids with the same aspirations in a way that I cannot.
Please note this kid had an art opening at their "internship" --that's how they refer to the gallery ---on Santa Fe last week, and it was their 10th art show. They are a senior in high school. They've also been on the news three times for their art. This is An Exceptional Human.
It was such a joy to sit with them and listen to their reserach and design ideas. I learned about Godzilla and the different Godzillas,and the corpse flower. They brought in a #2 prototype from the original fly trap idea that we can use in rehearsals. I intended to sit down and express how this brought me joy, and words escape me. I could smell fresh air, I smiled, I asked qualifying questions about the build out and movement of the plants and watched the light dance in their eyes and wished this was my life.
It is not my life. It's not even a full percentage of my life.
It's literally a moment.
A moment that is used against me when I want to leave.
A moment like other moments that I say "That's how they trap you into teaching".
One more week until Thanksgiving Break.
Scene.
