Taking a step back

Things were getting real intense. My students were getting frustrated and I was as well. I started to feel like I didn't have control. Ironically, of course I don't have control. Isn't that what I tell myself all the time? I cannot control what happens but only my reaction to it. I must do what I do, but beyond that things are totally out of my control. And of course I don't listen to my own advice. It was only when my boss told me to take a step back. She said that I was too much of a perfectionist. I take that coded as obsessive compulsive. She's right though.

The thing is that I want my students so badly to do well, that I get overly invested. Not healthy. It is very important for my sanity to draw a line. To be able to say enough is enough. Teaching has a high turnover rate and a high burnout rate. The intensity of the situation can be overwhelming. To always have to be on. To judge your success on your students' success. Not being able to plan for stuff that you have no idea is coming. To constantly feel judged. Then to have a punk ass kid spit at your efforts. That coupled with the low pay... Teachers all hanging out is one big bitch session. Teachers talk so much crap about kids. We gotta. We gotta let off a lot of steam.

Part of taking a step back means focusing more on myself and my life. I must not get into defining my life via my job. I have never wanted that. I gotta focus more on my family.

Married life rocks! I am far better at taking care of AL and me as a family than I am in just taking care of myself. I'm a better team player than just being an individual. Albert Einstein got me all jazzed about finance with his quote, "the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." I had to sit and think about that one for a while. Then I started going OCD on the finance shit. Read Suze Orman's "The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom" and "The Road to Wealth". I've been reading "The Motley Fool" alot. I'm trying to get all these things in place to take care of my now and future family. Compound interest is going to help take care of us in the future.

But of course I can't use the capitalist system and just kowtow to its amoral structure completely. I gotta go with socially responsible investing. Can my compound interest be as least exploitative as possible, please? Sadly, the Motley fool has an article called "The myth of Socially Responsible Investing." I found the article to be an argument for laissez-faire capitalism. He uses the idea of all or nothing "morality" and chooses nothing. He says

Suppose you want to invest in the chemical industry. What are you going to do, invest in the firm that pollutes the environment the least? If it pollutes at all, why invest at all?

My answer would be... yeah I'm going to be more down with the company that pollutes the least. The world is by no means perfect. But I believe in always trying to do a little bit better. We can have a goal in mind but never reach that goal. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a goal. I think that financially rewarding and investing in a company that is more environmentally conscious is a good thing.

If we can't be perfect then we shouldn't try to be better at all??? I wonder if the author has children or works with children? That's not the type of message we want to hand down to the generations.

End of the second quarter

This Friday is the last day of the second quarter. I'm proud to say that my entire advisory group's cumulative GPA either stayed the same or went up. However, I know that isn't going to be the case this quarter sadly. I don't know what it is but I've noticed that students really lag this quarter. I don't know what it is. Their grades drop. Maybe it's the weather I don't know. Perhaps in the first quarter students do better because they are excited for school and eager to do well. Then in the second quarter they lose momentum. Finally in the spring quarter they want to do well because they saw that not doing well in the winter quarter really fucked them up.

So, I finally got my teaching credential! YEA for me! They send in the mail a green piece of paper that had totally been printed out on the computer. $30,000 and I get a computer printout. But that's how it goes. It's just another hoop that they make teachers jump through and make it harder and less desirable for people to enter the profession.

I need to lose 10 pounds. I'm right now the fattest I've ever been. It's fuckin hilarious. One time I was sitting around and coughed. Then my pants button went flying off and I heard it bounce off of something. It's bad. So to get into shape AL and I are taking dance classes. We're going to dance in the Carnaval parade with my old Capoeira and Samba school. We're also taking Cuban Salsa classes. I went out dancing with my friend for his wife's birthday. But when we got to a club all I could do was watch. I was pissed. I hate standing around watching. I decided then and there that we had to take group and private classes. Now that I'm older I gotta learn to partner dance. Enough of this dancing by myself shit.

It's been a long time

So I haven't posted in a long while. It's not that I'm some amazing teacher now and I don't need the reflection. Far from it... I don't know. You just get away from the things that you love sometimes. Take for instance today, AL and I went down to take Samba classes to dance in the Carnaval parade. We're taking it from my old Capoeira teacher. The man has been a mentor and friend to me for a long time. But life just got busy and I haven't seen him and his family in a long time. Then I went down to hang out and dance and it was great. His two daughters are like my little sisters and it was great to see them. It just felt like I was coming back home.

So I'm going to try and get back to blogging and dancing and doing the things that I like.

So Kenneth Eng...

What a weirdo. First off, I'm wary of supremacists of all varieties. What was AsiaWeekly thinking? Irregardless, I would happy if there was a debate that sprung from this. If people started to talk about racial hostilities between black and asians and the history behind it, I would be happy. Sadly, I don't think that will happen. America doesn't know how to even begin to have a dialogue. This country is about talking heads and talking points. No one is trying to hear the other side. It totally bums me out when the country decides to focus on the ridiculous hate filled rants of some supremacist idiot.