Hi ho, hi ho

Yesterday morning I went to work convinced I'd be traveling and teaching 9th grade. Oh, and for those nonteachers, "traveling" means moving to a different classroom every period because there aren't enough rooms for everyone to have their own. I haven't traveled in a long time because I've always had to stay in one place for yearbook, but now the book is finished so I figured it would be my turn. And without yearbook class I just knew I'd end up with freshmen.

I dislike freshmen. They're obnoxious and childlike and haven't figured out what to do with their hormones and growing limbs. They annoy me. But I could handle all that if the curriculum didn't suck so much. LAUSD has decided that every 9th grade class must be taught the exact same way with very little room for creativity. I'm terrible at following directions and one of the things that keeps me in the classroom is the fact that I can change things up all the time.

Also the benefits and supportable salary and four months of vacation and the ability to talk about books all day, but other than that it's the creative ideas I can explore.

So anyway, I went to work yesterday just knowing my year of awesomness was going to catch up with me and I was going to have to move from room to shining room filled with ADHD infected 9th graders.

I forgot how much my boss loves me. And after this week I will never question her wisdom ever again.

I'm pretty sure none of you will understand just how much joy I felt when I found out that I am not only in the best classroom in the school all day, but I have a yearbook class.

We're done with the yearbook. Do you know what this means?

I'm guessing you don't. Unless you've taught yearbook too, then you can probably imagine.

It means I can really teach. I can do all kinds of cool projects and spend time actually teaching design concepts and preparing for next year and creating a distribution event and take pictures for next year and - here's the kicker - set up the school newspaper. This semester another teacher and I are starting our school's first paper. It's so super exciting I can't stand it.

(And no, RP, I'm not using an exclamation point. I get excited on the inside. Outside my face is stony, just for you.)

I'm also teaching a section of 10th graders under a new curriculum so I have a lot of work to do before school starts on Monday, and I've decided to teach Catcher in the Rye this semester for the first time to my 11th graders. So I will be very very busy this semester because I have three completely different classes ("preps" we call them) that will all involve different approaches. To be honest, though, that's how I like it.

Somehow in all that I still have a spec Pushing Daisies to finish and a new script to write and a short film to preproduce, but I'll figure it out. I promise I will still try to write a post every day during homeroom, but there may be days when I'm whirling around like a dervish and can't get to it, so don't go anywhere if I don't post. I won't disappear for more than a day.

I guess I'm never truly happy unless I'm up to my eyeballs in stuff to do.