Playing Teacher

One issue that I have been confronted with lately, or at least the past couple of years, is how to be myself around high school kids who I am supposed to be a role model to. Some good advise that has served me well has been that in a classroom if you try to b e anything other than yourself then you will come off as fake and the kids will see straight through you. I have found this to be true. But then there presents a different, more complex problem.

When I was in college I really felt that I discovered who I was. I learned how to behave in a way that endeared me to others, and I felt good about myself. I tried not to take myself too seriously, but I took my relationships with others very seriously. I could be silly, serious about certain subjects and you could love me and hate me all at the same time. I was very comfortable with this. I still am.

The problem is the seemingly contradictory advise I get on the subject of being one's self to his students. I'm told, "You have to be strict, be the adult, don't let them see you as one of them, or else they won't respect you." But I feel like one of them sometimes more than I feel like a teacher. This doesn't mean that I want to go out and do the dumb stuff they do, or that I care about the petty problems that they freak out over. But, there is a portion, especially in my theatre classes that I relate to more. I understand them and what they're thinking and I hardly ever understand what other teachers are thinking. I think I'm more specifically referring to those students who I see myself in. Or that I think if they were my age, or vice versa, we might hang out. Certainly there are students who might as well have come from outerspace, so I am being too general. But I still want to be myself around them regardless. I enjoy my work more when I'm not playing teacher. Because when I move into, "sit down, do your work, no you can't go to the bathroom" mode I feel like I'm playing. That's not what the real me would say. I've never really been one to care what other people were doing so long as it didn't bother me or you weren't a close friend. My attitude toward students most of the time is, "please do this right so that I don't have to play teacher." What I really want to say is, "Hey, if you don't do your work, that's your funeral." "Go to the bathroom. I don't care." "You're finished? Great, go home."

But this is public high school. I have to play teacher. I guess that's what's called doing your job.

I'm not going to be at school but one day this week because of UIL and Godspell. While this makes me extremely happy, I'm afraid my kids aren't going to recognize me after a while, because I'm gone so much.

Mid spring blues

I'm finding it very hard to get excited to go to work and teach kids. Especially with me having to be gone so much for the UIL contest play. It's impossible to start anything because I won't be there for them to get instruction on anything. I think this also gives the students an expectation that we aren't doing anything anymore so then when I do try to start something of substance it goes to crap. I am caught between my heart and my sense of duty. I would really rather just do plays after school and get to ignore the classes that I teach during the day. But I know that I can't do this. For one, it would be unethical (I guess.) For two those theatre 1 kids don't get involved in the theatre department and the program doesn't grow. I sometimes feel like my theatre 1 kids are all going to be sick of me and won't want to be in theatre 2 next year. Not that they're even going to have me next year, they'll have Mrs. Parker, but I want her to have a good group of second year kids like she does this year. I would very disappointed if I couldn't recruit enough kids for her second year classes. Of course, I was supposed to have theatre 2, but she wants to keep them for next year. I was kind of looking forward to having theatre 2. Oh well. Nothing funny to say right now.

I'm listening to Clipse, so I got this funky base and tune in my ears as I'm typing and I'm trying to keep up with the rhythm with my fingers on the keys. I'm also dancing in my desk chair. That makes this entry that much harder to write. But this song is just so funky and hype. It's dope. I don't think I can write anymore and keep up with the rhythm of this song. Thank God. The song is over. This next song is mellow so I feel like I have to keep up. I can just chill and hit "Publish Post"

Is it bad that I'm already ready for summer?

Real Me

Real Me
Posted by: bullmartin.

This a picture of me from my best friend Eric's wedding. I wanted to use it as a profile picture, but I couldn't figure out how to post one. So here it is as a post.

Epiphany! (I'm feeling much better, thank you)

I have been having a discussion on a movie message board about the movie "Saved!" If you haven't seen this movie it is a satire about a Fundementalist Christian High School where a girl gets pregnant when she sleeps with her boyfriend to save him from being gay. The ensuing story shows this girl go through a major transformation in her beliefs based on the treatment she is shown at school from her peers and even from Pastor Skip. The movie isn't great, but does a great job of satirizing Christian hypocracy.

This is my latest response to some points the other guy was making about sin and being a Christian. Much of this reply was an epiphany moment for me and so I wanted to share.

The other's comments are in "quotes."

(Refering to sinning and following God's word) "Is He [God] asking too much of us?"

Well, I"m okay with it. But, if God truly does want gays to deny their urges and resist the same sex, (I'm not saying he necessarily does) then I would ask Gays that question and see what they say. How many guilt ridden gay men and women have lived miserable lives because they've felt that they were going to hell for an urge they couldn't control?

"What is it that God requires of us that is too restrictive?"

It seems a little like you're forgetting that doing what God asks IS hard. Not impossible. But HARD. How else do you acount for sin? And I'm not talking about murder, stealing, drunkeness, adultery, abuse. Those things are no sweat. For me, at least. I'm talking about going out of your way to help someone out. Giving of your money to help a cause. Cooking for someone who is hungry. Forgiving someone who hurt you. Not getting revenge. Asking for forgiveness. Humbling yourself. Sqashing your pride. Putting someone else's needs above your own. THIS IS HARD! And how often do you hear conservative Christians up in arms about these things? NEVER! Why the hell not?!! Pride and Selfishness are WAY more widespread and trecherous than homosexuality. But you don't see any anti greed demonstrators outside NBC when they aired the Apprentice. Where were the Family Value Hounds when Matthew Sheppard was lynched, when Congress refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol forcing corporations to clean up the air and earth that we've taken a mere few hundred years to practically destroy? No where! Why? Because heterosexual Christians understand hate, greed, pride, selfishness, and lust for power. People raise hell over that which they don't understand, whether it hurts other people or not, such is the case with gays. No wonder the world looks at us with a smirk and rolls its eyes.

7 Haikus, (the plural for Haiku? Haiki?)

Broncitis sucks hard
I got some medicine, yeah
Gonna clear me up


My nose is sniffly
I've got my tissues on hand
Blow and snot comes out



Missed school on Monday
I wouldn't say I missed it
I was not there, though



Too afraid to sleep
Night flies by too fast for me
It's good to put off



Wasting time is fun
This is just as it should be
Procrastination



Who am I fooling?
I am such an idiot
Tomorrow will suck



This is the last one
My fingers hurt from counting
Please don't ask me why

Still Sick

So last night I'm thinking, "okay, if I'm running a fever before I go to bed then I'll call in for a sub and I won't go to work tomorrow. I don't feel too horrible at this point, but if I have a fever I shouldn't go to work, right? The fever was always the most serious of indicators of being sick. When I was a kid there were certain days that I just didn't want to go to school. My parents would always say that if I was sick then I could stay home, but if I was well enough then I needed to go to school. In my mind the degree to which one had to be sick was dependant entirely on the degree on the thermometer. If you had a fever you could stay home. A cough, a sneeze, a runny nose. I never felt like I could get away with staying home with just these pansy symptoms. No, I had to have an abnormal body tempurature. I even remember playing with the thermometer to see if I could rig it in someway as to give me a higher tempurature. But it always read me as being way to hot, which was unbelievable. I didn't have the cahones to get the job done anyway. I was cursed with the inability to lie. Which was probably my downfall when it came to being sick and staying home. My dad would ask, "Can you make it at school? If you think you can go you need to go." Of course I'm thinking, "tough it out, don't be a wimp. If I'm tough on myself I can go to school." In reality, I think some of those times I probably did need to stay home. But I was always afraid that I would be outed as a fake. Or at least thought of as one.

So, last night as I'm checking my tempurature, which the previous night and early that morning had read in the high 99s, I'm thinking that I don't feel too sick. But, sure enough, 99.7. So I figure that even though I don't feel like I'm on my death bed, I should at least go see a doctor tomorrow. After all, I have a FEVER. There is a little snag however, being that I've never had to call in sick and appearantly there is a procedure to signing in that I've never gone through and all the paperwork I need is at school. This morning I go up to the school in my PJs and try to get things ready for a sub. But the secretary tells me that I have to stay at school until the sub gets there, because, since it was called in so late she might not be there on time. To make a long story short I waas about to throw in the towel and say, fine, I'll stay! But the sub eventually showed, after the kids were already in the room and the tardy bell rang. I felt like a fake. Here I am at school, and now I'm going home? If I'm at school why can't I just stay there? I checked and the fever had gone away, but I still had the other symtoms. Plus, everyone kept saying that I needed to see a doctor. I left, after much angst and deliberation, but it wasn't without a guilty feeling hanging over me. Why did I feel guilty? This is ligit, right? I guess it is still hard to feel like an adult sometimes with the ability to make my own decisions about weather I should stay home or not. The part I guess I felt bad about was that we just got off of Spring Break. As if, I should have gotten all my sick out of the way over the break.

I'm at home now. I have a doctor's appointment in a couple of hours. It's been so long since I went to the doctor for anything. It's been even longer since it was for something other than pain killers or stitches or a physical. I just don't get sick. Maybe that's why I have a hard time staying home. It's just so hard to believe that I'm not imune to everything.

Sick

I woke up this morning at 5 in the A.M. with the worst fever I can remember having. My lovely wife made it go down, so I am happy for that. It was a miserable experience but I don't want pity, since I'm not really supposed to care what people think of me based on what they read here.

More weirdness about this blogging thing. This is supposed to be like a personal journal that every one sees. But that is impossible since if there is the possibility someone is going to see this it is going to be edited and filtered as to not alarm people. LIke, for instance, in a journal I would write all kinds of personal things about my wife and I, which Amanda would, understandably, kill me for. So, with this logic a blog must serve a greater purpose than just as a journal. If I really wanted to write a journal I would do that on a word document that I hid in some remote folder of my computer. But, I don't have the discipline for that. If I don't think that maybe someone somewhere out there gives a rip and is going to read it, it is very hard to get something down on paper. But, you might say, "Kyle, what about all of those poems and songs you write. You're not a musician, so why do you write all of that if you don't believe that someone is going to read." In the deep recesses of my ego I still believe that I will someday be a rock star. I hope that answers that question. It is a point of frustration for Amanda who sometimes has to pry me from the computer. Garage Band has really hurt my dedication to most everything else. Luckily, it's kind of seeping out of my system now, so I don't spend as much time using it. It is more in small doses, now. But for a while there I was a little bit of an addict. What I really need to be doing is writing plays and perfecting old ones.

So anyway, I've decided that this blog should serve a greater purpose than simply a online peek into the deeper recesses of my brain. My great love is writing plays, so I think it only appropriate that it should act as a area to talk about that. Or maybe just anything. I can't really limit what I talk about in here, just perhaps the manner in which I talk about it, I suppose. My mom told me I can't cuss on here since people who don't like cussing might read it. I understand that. I will keep this place tidy. Not that I use language like that anyway.

Sad Saturday

Spring break was nice. Amanda and I went to Austin and then San Antonio and had a really eventful, albeit short time. Today is really the last day she and I have to spend without having to worry about what to do tomorrow. School starts back again on Monday and I'm not particularly stoked about it. I'm not loving my technical theatre job right now. The kids in there don't care two licks about doing any work, and therefore it's a pain to try and do anything with them. With that said, there really isn't that much work to do. I could give them book work, or try to teach them something, but they resent busy work and I resent feeling like I have to give it to keep them busy. I know this class is going to change drastically next year because I am determining who gets in and who does not. It will be treated like an upper level class instead of the blowoff class that it has been for probably the last twenty years or so. I've all but given up with this year's bunch. As for my other classes they are fine. I can handle theatre 1. When in doubt, give them the job of putting together a skit or scene of some kind. In a couple of week we are going to have to start finding a short play for us to perform for the final six weeks. That will be a huge load off, because every student will know that everyday is rehearsal. And if we aren't rehearsing we are working on the play in some capacity.

Amanda and I are trying to find something to do today for free. As fun as our jaunt through Central Texas was, it has left us penniless until our tax refund or next paycheck comes a calling.

What the heck

I first heard about blogging when I saw the word sprawled across a sample webpage design on the website that I use to build my website. I thought it was a funny word, but had no clue what it was. Later I found out that it was a kind of online journal. At first I thought that I surely had to have something important to say in order to have a blog, but after surveying the multitudes of friends and family's blogs I realized that I was being closed minded. I don't have to be important or have any thing relevant to say in order to have a blog. I just have to like writing and saying stuff. "That's me!" I exclaimed as I jumped out of my chair. I can blog! And so, here I am. Blogging. My mom tells me that blog is short for Weblog, which somehow brings me more comfort in using the word so much. As if somehow, such stately sounding origins justify such a rediculous sounding word.

So this is my first blog. Let's hope I can keep this up.