chatter from the Library Monkey

on a winning note

The Tigers End the season by thumping the WhiteSox. I forget the school and at my school town I don’t have internet. I am hoping that changes tomorrow.

If the internet arrives, then I can up load yesterday’s post as well as this one. Then I can start October fresh.

Cool here. I think down to about 30 tonight. It was like that in the hometown, but the house held the warmth and of course there is the gas fireplace

I an stumbling with the play. I think it is pretty good and will be good, but I only have it half done.

I thought about getting a futon for this place, but they are around $700, which is a bit much for my budget.

I am on a conference next Thursday, so it will be two four day weeks in a row. The following week is Columbus day on Monday.

School has really cut into these. I just noticed that barely posted more than half the number of days —- 16 of 30. Ha, you would think that meant I wrote more of the play.

Gratitude (3)

Gotta gotta get going

I am tired at 9:40 p.m. and I had a nap, not to mention I slept a little late as well.

The Tigers letting me down at the end of the year. They just lost 3-2 in the last inning, on a Ryan Raburn error. Well it was more that that. Fernando Rodney walks the first guy, then on the bunt, they screw up that with a bad throw to second. The Big Cats have just lose two games to the team that is 24 games out of first place.

I can’t even listen to the post game show, what a crappy way to end a season. Instead I will listen to Vin Scully.

So I think it is going to be an Irish Coffee, some reading and then off to bed.

I hate to say this, but I am already at the frustration level I was at the end of the school year. I think it is due to clear cut factors

My aide is really smart and probably a better worker than me. She is usually right about most things, but people like that, tend to not realize they can be wrong. And sometimes neither. Last week she said something to me, that I am not sure if she is right or not. She made a comment about how my relationship with students is adversarial. I think she is right, to a degree, but think it is unfair to say it is all my fault.

She made a comment and used herself as an example, which I took to mean she was saying she knows how to do interpersonal better than me. Again that might be right, but to a degree.

She has a couple things going for her. One is she has kids in school, so most of the kids have a relationship with her — a good relationship. And she works hard to maintain that relationship. That is to say she doesn’t do the things I do, that crates the adversarial relationship.

There is a student — call him Booger. Booger is a little unfamiliar with reality. On Thursday Booger and two other kids came to the library, and used a bad pass. I talked to the Business teacher who sent them up and turns out he had asked the students to go get the proper pass. I wanted to discuss this with Booger. Booger in the middle of the discussion says: “Can we stop this, I have home work to do.”

At that point I get really stern and say, “That is fine, you just won’t come to the library from your study hall any more.” Now he wants to listen. At the end of the period he wants to leave five minutes early to get ready for soccer. Then I remind him that he didn’t have time to talk to me 30 minutes ago, but now he has time to leave five minutes early. He makes a snide comment about too much homework, to which I point out how he had just spent 30 minutes of talking to the people at his table.

The reason why I talked to Booger is because the aide thought I should talk to all the boys that bent the rules on the pass.

Now this story is relevant to the aide because during the playing around, she was part of the giggling. AND when I was talking to Booger in the beginning of the period, she was there and she could have reinforced what I was saying and she could have not be so playful during the study hall.

I like that she has that good relationship, but she needs to know that when she is telling me how kids are getting away with things, that she either has to start accepting that she has to be a disciplinarian or understand that I will always look like the bad guy.

I said last year I would do the Audio Visual IF I was given a place to store the equipment. I wasn’t given one at first, then I was given one on the stage. Now the English teacher is mad because it is on the stage, but probably because they didn’t build extra storage for her drama. She did say she had like $10,000, which would mean she could have a shed built outside the school for her storage, but she doesn’t.

Gratitude (3)

up the anti

Well well. Here I am the second night. I think I have a couple funny stories, if I can take the time to squeeze them in. I forgot to my the last post on a usb, so I will end up posting at least two at the same time.

Tonight is the regular dinner night. I had remembered it right up until 5 p.m. I went out and watched a soccer game, at the half I thought — go home and get dinner, forgetting the weekly plans. I came back and watched the end of the game, which the home team lost 3-0. At 7, I sat down to listen to the game, when I realized I was suppose to go to dinner. I called and they hadn’t eaten yet, so I figure it would be to eat twice.

As I was driving over I was wondering how I could forget the only regular part of my school week. Then it hit me, the custodian was off tonight and he always asks me about dinner. I usually remember it, but when I do, he brings it back, not tonight though.

In all of this, I took some pictures and was looking at them at school. A couple were at half, when the coach gathers the players. the team was down 2-0 at that point and it kind of looked like the coach were going to ream the team. Well, I am looking at the pictures, which when taking them you don’t get a great sense because of the led screen and the sun and so on. Well there in the middle of the picture is a teacher’s son — one who I believe to be the biggest jerk in school. For many reasons, some of the intricacies. One being he is always pulling meaningless little stupid stuff. he mocks new teachers (and librarian) all the time. He

The weirdest thing is how me acts like he is mentally retarded, to mock the mentally challenged. Not that lots of people don’t do that, but a) his mother is a resource teacher and works with that clientele, AND b) the kid just isn’t very smart, he is only about four i.q. points from being in the resource room for all his classes. I think he gets assistance for one or two things now.

And there the idiot kid is in the middle of the picture mocking me as I take the pictures, in the middle of 18 kids who are losing a soccer match and have dejected looks on their faces.

The other story comes from the auditions. The went fairly well, though not enough kids tried out. One kid, put down on his paper that he could do various accents, one being ‘Arnold.’ I have heard him do it before and generally it is fairly stupid. And now I know why. He tries to be funny without the talent. yet when he just read the script as Arnold, it was funny. Partly because the script is amusing, but also because the accent suited the lines well.

And there was also a girl, who was lots of problems last year, doing well, but n ot so smoothly that we forgot what an attitude they had last year. She really was much more creative than just about anyone there, she thought up ways to play parts differently, i.e. came up with her own characters.

So I sat those two down afterwards and had a talk to them. Each have exhibited similar behavior. Like the boy can be a hot head and when he gets mad hit takes a while to cool down. Basically both have exhibited attitudes and I told them I would like to see them in the play, with some interesting lines, but not as the lead five characters. And the amusing thing is the girl admitted she was troublesome and even that she kind of had displayed some attitude just in the rehearsal. Last year she was disconnected from reality

It might not be funny ha ha, but it was impressive to have her say that and accept her personality. I was quite proud of both of them, though I want to see them hit the next step. It is interesting in that the kids that really need activities, are the ones who often don’t see that if they modified their behavior just a bit, they would reap lots of benefits.