Procrastination...

Hooray, I have started a new blog. It is 78 degrees outside and 9 days before Christmas...sweet. I have started a blog to share stories with the friends and family that I am terrible at keeping in contact with. All in the name of procrastination...

It is my planning period which as a teacher is a fantastic time to grade papers, lesson plan, call parents, write referrals, plan imaginary vacations...I certainly could be doing any and all of these, but instead I will eat Skittles that my Secret Santa gave me and begin to chronicle the crazy journey we are currently embarked on.

Anyone want my yellow and green Skittles?

So here we are in Jacksonville, Florida. Stephen and I left Utah the last day of May, 2008 in a 28 foot long Uhaul packed with everything we own. (We are packrats, yes.) Also towed behind was our Chevy Aveo...pictures to follow later.

We left at 5 am in the morning and Steve drove 23 hours until we arrived just outside Nauvoo, Illinois. Thank you to Dan Brown, whose a Angels and Demons made those hours go by much more quickly. I stayed up nearly the entire time, trying to coach my honey along. It should have only taken us 16 hours, but a 28 foot long truck only goes 35 MPH up those Wyoming mountains...getting 7 MPG (ouch...this was when gas was almost $4.00).

We spent a day in Nauvoo enjoying the sights and then spent another entire day in the truck making our way to Atlanta, GA. Steve certainly was a hero for driving the ENTIRE way from Utah to Jacksonville, FL...our final destination. When we arrived in Jax, we met up with a Bishop from a local ward and some Elders and emptied our truck into a storage facility. We soon realized that we were not in Utah anymore!

As sketchy as some parts of SLC can be, we quickly realized that Jax has some sketchier parts then Utah can do justice. (As a side note, there's some sort of shooting/stabbing every night. I met a student today who was stabbed in the leg last night and another of my students had 2 cousins shot in a drive-by last week.)

June and July were the months of teacher-boot-camp. We spent a week in Jacksonville getting familiar with Teach for America, our principals, and just the area in general. Steve and I realized quickly that we do not fit the typical TFA (teach for america) mold. Everyone else is single and almost everyone parties like it's 1999 every weekend. (And some weeknights). As talented as many of them are, we missed from the beginning our game nights and rockin' rootbeer drinking games! We traveled through our new workplace - Terry Parker High School, realizing that our classrooms have not changed since the 1960s. The rats are probably a different generation though... Someone tried to do a poor job painting my room, so there's splotched red paint all over.

Most of June and July was spent in Atlanta, GA. I must say that I really liked Atlanta. (The non-sketchy parts.) If I had a boatload of money, I could live there. They even had a Kroger store that reminded me of the good 'ol days at Smith's in Utah. (Publix is the mainstay here...no 10 for $10..nuts.)

In GA, we taught summer school to students who had failed the courses previously. We also attended seminars on how to lesson plan, invest students, handle class management, etc. It was a really draining 6 weeks. We would wake up at 6 and go to bed often past 12 withou a single break. It was a neverending cycle of lesson planning, teaching, sitting through dry lectures, eating at the cafeteria, sleeping, lesson planning...

After we "graduated" from institute in Atlanta, we came to Jacksonville once again. We stayed for 3 weeks with Steve's cousin who was outwardly sick of us by the end. His cousin's family was extremely generous to let us stay with them. They haven't invited us over since though so somehow I think they needed a long break...

We also lived with our friends Amy and Gina for a while before we settled into our house. Amy and Gina teach math at another high school in Jacksonville and are absolutely fabulous people. Very kind, generous, and fun. They just happen to be lesbians. So the Mormon married couple lived with lesbians for about a month. Pretty ironic. Like I said, they're great people, I am just happy to be married to a man then live with another woman.

After sleeping on twin sized mattresses for the better part of the summer, we FINALLY moved into our own place at the end of August. It is a townhome about 5 minutes from our school, built only 2 years ago. It was a model and no one ever lived in it prior to our moving in. I like to call some of its features "fancy pants". It has granite countertops in the kitchen (which stain!!! I thought granite was invincible...) drapes (some of which are slightly strange looking, but they're fancy) and upgrades throughout the house. It also has carpet that needs to be stretched still, and a strange mold thing growing outside our door, but we're working on it.

I'll definitely include pictures soon.

We had 2 starts of school. We started on a Monday and then had Wednesday-Friday off because of a hurricane. It really wasn't that bad but there was a lot of rain.

The hurricane made its way into the administration of the school, meaning the start of school was disastrous. Just as a reminder, we are teaching at a "D" school, where 50% of the students drop by the time senior year comes around and most of the stereotypes of an urban school are everyday life. Perhaps there's a reason we are a D school - schedules were so messed up at the start of school that Stephen lost one of his classes, gained a new class, and I have maybe 50% of the kids I started with at the start of the year. It was a mess, but we adapted!

Since then we have been pushed to our very limits...never before have we experienced the level of responsibility, stress, disappointment, and anxiety since we have become teachers. I need to get a few things together before school ends, but let me put out a few highlights before closing:

-Having students run from you when you try to escort them to student services when they skip class.
-Having one of the aforementioned students reach underneath his shirt as if he was going to grab a weapon under his shirt before running away.
-Having students cheat consistently on tests and quizzes.
-Realizing that the black hair on the ground after a fight is not actually real hair but weave. (Yes I am a white woman and didn't know what "weave" is).
-Having a student arrested for having a loaded gun on campus.
-Yelling for a security guard when there is no one in sight.
-Having the cops show up at school when you try and get onto campus after hours.

(More positive notes)
-Having your students do the excited electron dance because they know photosynthesis.
-Having your students come out of their way to give you a hug because they like you so much.
-Having students tell you often that you are their favorite teacher.
-Having your students tell you that they didn't like science until they had you.
-Having your students say "I'm sorry" when they bug you in class.
-Having your students who are failing every other class want so badly to do well in your class because "I like your class; I don't like my other classes" (I'm working with this kid).
-Having your principal say that you are a natural and the kids love you.
-Having the really rough kids as school give you "knuckles" when they see you in the hall because they know you are a nice person.
-Getting a referring back for a student you really have a hard time with.


Most days we need to remind ourselves why we are here because it is so hard. But despite it being hard, there are children in the world who need someone to love them, and we are trying to fill that need.

I'm fixin' to go help some greenies with their stuff. I'm such a G.

Happy Holidays, and until a short time of procrastination from now...
The Kastelers