Skip to main content

Chicago is Calling Me Home

Is it Friday yet?

No seriously, is it Friday yet? Next week is spring break for New York City public schools so I'll be on vacation for a solid week and a half. There's something super cool about being in my mid-20s and still having spring break, wouldn't you concur? I bet you'd concur.

For spring break, I'm going back to Chicago to see old friends, my brother and just chill the fuck out and reminisce. I haven't been back in nearly two years, so I'm pretty excited. There's something incredibly appealing about going back home and seeing familiar signs, roads, houses, and people. Driving along the same streets you grew up on. Speeding past familiar shops and restaurants, some still carrying on with business as usual. Once I start drifting down memory lane, I find it extremely difficult to return back to consciousness. It's like jumping in a pool and letting yourself slowly sink to the bottom. Fun.

What will make this trip even more interesting is visiting my old high school. I haven't been back to visit since college, so it's definitely been a while. The nostalgia to relive my teenage years will soon be satisfied when I walk my old hallways. I plan on meeting as many of my old teachers as possible (whoever is left, anyway). I also want to see the school from the perspective I now have as a high school teacher. I imagine my views of the school as a stupident (er, student) were most likely poisoned by teenage angst, emotion suppression and a general indifference for everything. My high school is quite old and established (compared to my school now, in its second year); I want to learn how they run things there and what systems they have in place, anything that I can offer back to the school I work at now.

I suppose since I'll be going on vacation, I probably won't post until I return. Chicago is calling me home.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We Need to Talk About Tenure

The idea and privilege of "tenure" in public education has garnered a lot of attention as of late. Most people who have never worked in education a single day in their lives seem to feel that tenure is unfair and teachers should work under the same expectations that other "regular" and hard-working Americans work under. At least, that's the narrative being presented in the media. Three years ago, I would have agreed, but I didn't know any better. At the college and university level,  tenure  is difficult to obtain and can take 4-8 years. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I think I know, the candidate usually needs to have published some sort of research and have demonstrated a strong teaching record, among other things. Before becoming a high school teacher, I understood why tenure was necessary at the college and university level as it protected academics when they published work that went against the mainstream, and thereby prevented profes...
16 comments
Read more

Teach for Pakistan

I've been visiting Karachi every other year since I was six months old. My parents were both born there. The bulk of my extended family still lives there. It's strange how my perspective and investment in the country has changed over the years. I hated going to Pakistan when I was younger. My mother dragged me there for two, sometimes three months at a time over the summer. The heat was miserable and the humidity was unbearable. My family wasn't well off, so it's not like I was in a huge mansion of sorts living in the tropics, eating cold mangoes. That would've been nice. The only things I enjoyed were the company of my cousins, the food and the taste of Coca-Cola made from real sugar. Besides that, I really never did anything else. I was pretty quiet: my aunts would compliment me on my lack of communication. Heh. It was not until I was a teenager that I truly began to appreciate my experiences in Pakistan. I started engaging in the family functions, weddings an...
15 comments
Read more

Two Face

The past two days have been unusually challenging for me. The majority of my school's students have been rude, disruptive and careless. I'm really feeling stretched right now given all the other shit going on. Here's the thing: I have all my lessons up online. I e-mail my students with reminders, send them review packets, make myself available by cell, text and e-mail. I even pack myself a sandwich everyday because kids feel my classroom is a "safe space" during lunch and use the classroom to socialize, study or just do homework. I can't say no to that... I also keep a spreadsheet which I update daily with all my students' grades to track trends in performance. I spend hours on each lesson and presentation to make sure it's clear for visual and auditory learners. I throw in real-life examples for those who need to be able to relate in order to understand. So why the fuck isn't everyone acing this shit??? If I'm doing everything I can t...
20 comments
Read more