Avenue Q

I might just as well be Kate Monster.

She has big eyes, brown hair, and she's a monster kindergarten-assistant teacher who lives in a city and hasn't found love yet. Her mentor teacher is crazy and calls her one day to sub for the class, in which she hopes to implant progressive ideas into the defunct curriculum. When she finds a boy named Princeton to love, she is on the top of the world. Long story short, but Princeton breaks her heart and then begs for forgiveness by asking for money from everyone he knows in order to help Kate start her Monstersorri school.

So, I'm a muppet stereotype. We knew that all along.

Happy

There's this new documentary called Happy that hasn't even opened yet but it's been in my thoughts since I saw it last night. It talks about how 50% of our happiness is genetic, the other 10% comes from our circumstances, social status, etc., and the other 40% from the following 5 things:

1) Gratitude

2) Exercise/meditation

3) Being a part of a community

4) Giving back in some way, getting outside of yourself

5) Enjoying an activity such that you get into it- the "flow" and feeling like you are doing something worthwhile

I have all of those things and I find myself unhappy sometimes. I don't realize all of the good that I do have in my life, I don't realize how important it is to take a yoga class or meditate each day, how lucky I am to live where I live.

Colored tights

have earned me respect from the French teachers I worked with, made me recognizable along my bike route to and from school, and have continued to add to my Ms. Frizzle-like reputation.

I'm thankful that I can wear colored tights in February in California and not freeze. Make it through another week of first-year teaching. Go to counseling and feel like I am connected to the counselor that I am seeing. Talk to my brother on the phone. Be in the sunshine and soak it in- on the fourth floor of my school during a yoga class, at the Grove on a sunny day, on the playground. Read-aloud books that I would want to read as a kid. Try to teach kids the way that I had been taught. Eat and share community with other people. Celebrate important events in other people's lives. And more than anything else, realize that by expecting nothing, I am always pleasantly surprised.

Me Five

Third graders are slowly but surely winning my heart over. They may not hug me the minute I walk into a room, but there will be a Turkish boy who will say to me "Hi Miss Garner" every time he sees me, like he means it, which will be worth just as much.

They will ask me what I am doing there when it isn't my day to have English with them and sometimes talk back and threaten me with "Why?" or "I didn't do anything!" But, they will also be able to write letters to Michelle Obama that are meaningful, personal and heartfelt, talk about their feelings in a more mature way, and comment on each other's work on a gallery walk around the classroom. They may not be able to say the most positive things, but they will be able to comment on another's by saying "Me five!" and "Me seven!" attaching their notes to everyone else's. They will think that somehow I became a teacher who took race into consideration when I accidentally wore eye makeup the day that I was showing them how whites and blacks were treated while teaching them about MLK.

Their bay blades will be their life lines, as well as the Wimpy Kids, Time Warp trios, American Girl and Junie B. Jones books. They will remind you about something until you actually do it- 3 times a day if necessary. They will play games like Animal Herders and Give or Take through recess if they have a chance.

They won't remember you as their first grade teacher but they will think that you are somehow older than their parents. It's taken almost three months to get used to this new teaching gig, but I think that I'm liking the challenge and the excitement of 22 eight-year-olds each day.