Has adulthood arrived?

So.

I got a teaching job.

It hasn't really sunk in yet. It was my fourth interview and went the best of any I've been to so far. They called me to offer me the position approximately two hours afterwards and I immediately accepted. It's at a great school. Weirdly, it's where I was originally set to do my student teaching before that placement fell through.

Things just keep occurring to me over the past 24 hours.

I'll get a real teaching email address so I'll actually know when there will be a fire drill.

I'll get a paycheck for teaching.

I'll get to set up my desks however I want.

I won't have another person in my classroom watching me the entire time.

I can take phones away if I feel like it (both of my cooperating teacher now are very anti-taking-phone-away. I find myself heartily in favor of the practice.)

Just a few minutes ago it occurred to me that my name will be listed in the faculty on my school's website.




The annoying part in all of this is that I still have to make it through the next 8 days of student teaching and quite frankly, I'm phoning it in.

The Next Thing.

I had my first sort-of job interview today for high school position in Vail. It went well and I think they'll call me back for a real interview (this was just a screening interview) but it's made me even more frustrated with my current situation.

 I'm tired of being in someone else's classroom. I'm tired of having to double-check every decision I make. I'm tired of having no storage space of my own. I'm very tired of having tables instead of desks in my grade 9 class.* I'm tired of following other peoples' rules in my classes. It just sucks. Interviewing for jobs sucks, but having one will be so much better than student teaching.


Sometimes I feel like my generation has this sort of Peter Pan syndrome where they constantly complain about growing up.

"OMG it's so weird that my friends are getting married!"
"Wasn't it so great being a kid with no responsibilities?"
"Does anyone else miss the 90's?"

Each of these at least once a month on Facebook. And I've never felt this way. I didn't hate my childhood at all, but I don't idealize it the way that some people seem to. I love being an adult. Maybe the novelty will wear off in a few years, but I like making my own decisions, even when it's exhausting. And at this point, student teaching feels like the last area where I'm constantly being babysat. By the time I was a senior in college, I didn't have any hand-holding going on and student teaching feels like several steps back in that regard. It's only annoying me more as the year progresses.

So even though job-hunting sucks royally, bring it on. I am ready for the next thing.



*Fuck tables. Getting my kids to shut up is hard enough when they aren't sitting in circles facing each other.

I will probably regret this.

If you spend any time in the Mormon feminist community, you may have read this story. Basically, a friend of a blogger has been released for breastfeeding (uncovered) in church and will be asked to cover or nurse elsewhere if anyone else complains about it.

I find my position on this is a bit different from the majority over at FMH, so I decided that taking a position on my own turf would be a safer move on my part.

Here's the thing: I don't think it's all that unreasonable to ask a woman breastfeeding in church to use a cover.  If you want to nurse uncovered in a park, restaurant, store, or train station, go ahead. You have the right. It's a public place.

But church is a little different. We're a part of a culture where nudity isn't acceptable, but that's even more potent at church. Yes, it's an issue of culture, I don't deny that, but the norm here to to nurse with a cover. Cultural standards may be arbitrary, but people still find them important. More importantly though, you can leave or move or turn the other way in a number of public places, but at church you don't have the option to leave and choose another place, like you would with a park or store or restaurant. We are required to attend with our ward at a scheduled time and I don't think it's okay to nurse uncovered where people don't have the option to leave.

And really, it's such a small request. I just can't fathom that someone would get repeated complaints and then insist on breastfeeding uncovered. I just don't buy oft' repeated line that there are babies who "refuse to feed with a cover." 99% of women manage it just fine.

So yeah, I'm not falling with party lines on this. It's really quite selfish to insist on doing something that makes so many people uncomfortable, when you've repeatedly been asked not to.

My least favorite thing (today)

One of my cooperating teachers is forcing me to contact the parents of 2 of her (Honors) students who are missing assignments. Because we're only a month into the school year, this assignment is affecting their grade more than it would ordinarily, though both of them are still passing.

So this is already ridiculous. This is the "special snowflake" problem at it's very worst. It's not my job to track down students who are missing ONE assignment, nor is it my problem if they have a C or a D. I'm pretty accommodating to students who talk to me first, but I don't believe in helping those who won't help themselves.

So that's annoying.


But this is worse. When I talked to said students, I got the same response from both of them.

"I swear I turned it in!"

Nothing bothers me more. I can count on one hand the amount of assignments I've lost this year. It's been a few weeks since this assignment was due. If you HAD turned it in, it would have turned up by now. This is just lying to my face and quite frankly, it makes me want to slap these students. I am much more inclined to be merciful if they had just said, "I didn't hand it it."

Ugh.

My take on the Santa issue

Someone on facebook recently posted (and praised) someone's take on talking about Santa with their kids. This particular person told her kids that Santa was a game that everyone played and that you weren't allowed to say that he wasn't real.

Here's the thing. I know anecdotal information is useless, but never in my life have I met someone who felt harmed or betrayed when they found out that Santa wasn't real. If that's the case, then I think the blame falls squarely to the parents. If their child is so wrapped up in a fantasy that they are devastated when they find out that Santa isn't real, then I think they probably took it too far.*

The thing is: Christmas should be fun for kids. I know that everyone talks about trying to emphasize "the reason for the season," but honestly, I wonder how much of that actually detracts from the fun that Christmas should be for kids. No matter how many heartwarming Christmas stories my mom read me, or charity events my family did, or even gifts that I made, I didn't really get any of the real reason behind Christmas until I was an adult. I enjoyed the stories and the giving of gifts, but I wanted presents. Children are wonderful, sweet, and loving, but they are also simple and selfish. Telling them that there is no Santa (or that he's just a game) isn't going to change any of that.

Telling kids that there is no Santa, or giving them just a different lie and telling them that Santa is a game seems to parents' way of either sparing them the pain of finding out that Santa isn't real (a pain that most of us never seem to experience) or sparing them from the materialism and trying to emphasize the real spirit of Christmas. Both of them seem kind of like a lost cause to me.

All I know is that if I found out that everyone else got to have the fun of believing that Santa was real and I didn't, I would be pissed. Kids deserve some fantasy in their lives and Christmas is one of the few fantasies that adults can share with them.



*I also think that today no one knows how to suck it up and get over things anymore, but that's a post for another day.

Some teacher thoughts

I have a confession to make. It is embarrassing and probably heretical considering that I graduated with a degree in English.

I didn't like The Odyssey.

It's actually embarrassing that I hadn't read it until I had to teach it, but I found myself quite underwhelmed by the entire story. I thought Odysseus was full of it and that the majority of characters had mostly a symbolic function that sort of killed any personality they might have.

I know it's an important read because there are so many allusions to it, but everything that alludes to it is way better than the actual epic poem.

My class also had to read the entire thing, which in my opinion is totally pointless since the first four books are entirely expository and really, why make kids read that? If it was up to me, we would have done some excerpts so that we actually had time to talk about the book a little bit. The length necessitated far more in-class reading time than I am comfortable with.

It's sort of depressing teaching something you don't really like much at all. It was less depressing when the book was easier to get through (Little Brother). At least then I didn't have to devote as much time to a book I disliked.

However, I really enjoyed teaching Julius Caesar. I feel like my class connected with the characters and themes a lot more. (High schoolers relating to people stabbing each other in the back? Shocking.) The characters are complex, flawed, and interesting. You can actually talk about them. There was a point where I couldn't think of anything left to say about Odysseus.

Anyway, teaching both at the same time was kind of interesting for me to see what I like teaching. I became an English teacher (well, I'm student teaching anyway) because I loved literature and I knew I would like to talk about it and share that with students. I did not expect how involved I would become with the literature in this entirely different way. Teaching literature is a whole different kind of romance than reading it and I have to say, it's actually kind of hard to feign enthusiasm for a book you don't particularly like.

At least I can appreciate The Odyssey. I thought Little Brother was completely retarded.

My take on the pants issue

Perhaps you've heard, and perhaps you haven't, but there is currently a facebook event called "Wear Pants to Church Day." It encourages women to wear pants to church next week to support women's equality in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

And on the surface, I agree. I believe that even past women not holding the priesthood (though my opinions on this vary from time to time) there are a lot of institutional problems with the church that keep women from feeling equal. Things like outdated and utterly inappropriate Young Womens' lessons, inequity in budgeting for youth programs, women being encouraged to stay home with their children, regardless of their own needs, men "presiding" over their families. These are all things that I would like to see eradicated.

But my views didn't happen over night. I didn't wake up one day and say, "Goodness me, I'm suddenly feeling so unequal!" I woke up one day and wondered why the boys went camping while I tied quilts. I wondered why other girls chose careers based primarily on how well it would work with a family, rather than their passions. I was utterly disappointed by my experiences in the temple. Rather, my feelings on equality developed over time. Years, in fact.

With that in mind, my problem with the event has nothing to do with pants. For what it's worth, I have worn pants to church. I got a few funny looks and was asked if I was a visitor and that was the extent of it. My problem with the event is that everyone is inviting their non-Mormon feminist friends who read the description of the event immediately see that this is an event supporting women's equality. It's a depressing truth, but you don't become a feminist by reading a paragraph on Facebook. You become a feminist when you gradually observe the inequalities that still exist in our world and take issue with it.

If you really want to change peoples' minds, don't make the event about equality. Make it all about pants. Buying an argument on equality might take a whole paradigm shift, but buying an argument on why slacks are just as nice (if not nicer) than denim skirts isn't really a huge stretch. Not only does it come off as far less threatening and agenda-driven, it's giving someone a non-threatening baby-step. If this event really was all about pants (at least on the surface), maybe some true blue Mormon woman might see it and think, "You know, toddler wrangling would be a lot easier with pants on." Maybe she wears pants and thinks it wasn't so bad. Maybe it opens the doors for her to wonder why her kid in scouts seems to have a lot more competent leadership and time invested in his activity than her kid in Achievement Days. Maybe she wonders why her little girl was told that her sundress was immodest.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Just one brick at a time.

Instead, she sees a polemic on the inequality of women and all the defenses raise immediately. She doesn't feel unequal. She's been told her whole life that women are valued, and besides, she believes the church is true, weird social policies included.

If Mormon feminism really wants to have their voice heard, they need to start with a gentler approach. Echo chambers really don't get us anywhere.


Anyway, despite my problems with the approach that this event has taken, I will be wearing pants on Sunday. Mostly because I want to see if any other women in my ward do. And then we can be friends.