This past week at school has been intense. Not because of the students or, miraculously, the administrators. I’m in the final countdown of the number of classes until my little ghetto brats take their finals. In the upcoming week, I’ve three more days with my A classes and only two more with the Bs.  Fortunately, the only good thing that has come from the overemphasis of testing is that my B classes are a day ahead; so they’ll both finish up equally.

Nonetheless, in the last three class meetings leading up to the finals, I’m presenting new information without much moment of pause. I’d slowed down the pacing in the beginning of the semester in order to tutor my students during class time since the vast majority cannot fit tutoring in their teenage angst-ridden schedule or reconcile it as part of their habitual motivations. Now I can no longer afford the luxury of having them to do majority of their work in class, which means (gasp!) they actually have to complete their work outside of class, whether it’s at home or not.

This’ll be an intense time for me as well. One of the major goals that I accomplished by Friday morning was putting the final touches on the semester study guide and getting the guide photocopied to offer to the students. Out of all the students on Friday, only a handful in the last class of the day requested to have their study guide this coming Tuesday. I was impressed at least with the acknowledgement of most of the students that it was better to have their study guides sooner rather than later, especially since I warned them that we probably would not have any time during class to work on it together.

Saturday, my normal routine changed, but I remained just as busy. I started my morning writing, then I took a luxurious hour to work on three paintings. I’d checked out “How to Draw Magic and Fantasy” from the school library, but I only flipped through it since the weather was so beautiful that I could indulge in painting. I do all my sketching for when it’s too cold to go out on the balcony and paint. I then went to the capoeira studio to wait for the guy bringing 30 rental chairs for the last event that I’m hosting in that space.

After arranging the chairs in a circle, which is this month’s theme, I dashed off to pick up my new prescription glasses. I jokingly told the optometrist that I was merely swapping one set of birth control glasses with the next, but truthfully I’d picked out a stylish pair of new specs this time. I dashed from there to the library for a screening of “The Inconvenient Truth about Waiting for Superman.”

About 30 of us turned out for the hourlong film. I appreciated that the audience was small enough to allow for a good discussion, but large enough to have parents, students and educators mixed in. Viewing that movie, I felt more empowered about the work I’m doing in the classroom, given how there’s a national conspiracy against both public schools and veteran teachers. It’s no coincidence that, depending on the class, my student population ranges from 60 to 80+% at risk students. Thanks to the war against teachers two years ago, my class size has exploded, which means even less time can be dedicated per student. Now, the growing trend has been to intimidate veteran teachers into quitting or early retirement, starting with sudden negative evaluations, placing them on “growth plans” and other tactics to discourage veteran teachers who are more likely to call out questionable practices and cost more money.

Following the housing bust of three years ago, education is now poised as the biggest untapped market for hedgefund managers. In addition to the lucrative market represented by standardized testing, taking over public school space and monies in the form of corporation-run charter schools is the new money-making venture.

Essentially, corporations have far more money to lobby the politicians, who will readily throw working-class and poor parents under the bus along with their kids. As a charter school, they can cherry-pick the students who will give them the high scores on standardized tests. If the selected students don’t perform well, then they kick them out of the charter school, retaining the “good” students who increase the overall test scores and concentrating the at risk students in regular public schools. And for all the corporate money and deck stacking, their students overall are not better educated in vast numbers as one would expect, given the fact that virtually none of the corporate-run charters accept students with learning disabilities or English fluency issues.

Part of the reason is that, like a business, corporate-run charters attempt to keep costs low. Inexperienced teachers are cheaper and as soon as they burn out, then the business can just hire the latest batch of inexpensive, energetic, inexperienced teachers to educate the cherry-picking.  Disgusting.

The ray of hope at the end of the discussion was the fact that the recently elected school board members are against this latest corporate-run charter and will have the ability to stop the spread of the infection. In addition, there is a survey available that anyone can weigh in on about the newfangled standardized test, STAAR. I cannot wait to share my  two cents!

After the meeting, I quickly whipped up my lunch for the week, and got myself together to go shopping with some capoeira friends and then hangout at a sports bar. One of my ulterior motives for being a part of girls’ night out was to survey other women about a certain sexual practice, which we codenamed “eating hotdogs.” As with virtually any sexual conversation, we had a lively discussion, arriving at 10 pros and 28 cons of eating hotdogs. I’m eventually going to type up my findings for a piece which I plan to read at the Austin Writers Roulette in February, which is themed “Cupid’s Naughty Secrets.”

One of the aspects of teaching that keeps me coming back for more is when the students say something so insightful that I ponder the ramifications long after the fact. One such jewel dropped from a student’s mouth when I was circulating around the room, helping my Physics students with their study guide in small groups. Inevitably, there was one group  that just wasn’t focusing as well as the others. They had hardly started; so I sat down with them and reviewed the difference between vector quantities and scalar quantities.

Of times, science students get tripped up on vocabulary even if the concept behind the term is easily understandable. So, I repeated the definition of a vector quantity, which has both magnitude and direction. Then the next vocabulary pitfall was “magnitude.” Instead of simply telling them what the word meant, I gave them examples of magnitudes such as their age, shoe size, height, weight. For ten of the longest minutes of my teaching career, I attempted to get one of the four students to say the magic word that was synonymous with “magnitude.” At one point, a student confessed that he felt that I was trying to get them to describe the essence of the color orange. At the time, I thought the comment was so outlandish, I quickly dismissed it.  A few minutes later, one brave soul carelessly said, “Numbers?”

I erupted, “Yes, yes, yes! Magnitudes are numbers! So scalar quantities, like your personal statistics, are represented only by a number and vectors such as displacement, acceleration, velocity and force have a number and a direction!”

The classroom was eerily quiet for a few moments, then the students collectively let out a sigh of relief and giggled at my temporary insanity. After class, my student’s magical phrase, “describing the essence of orange,” came back to intrigue me.

I thought I was giving clear, logical hints to lead my students toward the word “number,” but there was no connection to the pattern I wanted them to see. I loved that my student used an analogy about color since how would I describe orange or any other color to someone who had never seen color before?

I could have that person to taste the sweetness of a ripe orange. I could take that person outside during both the sunrise and sunset and let them feel the sun when it was that color, but could I reconcile those three experiences with the ESSENCE of orange? I could take the physics approach and talk about wavelength and how all the other colors are absorbed except the orange wavelength, which reflects into our eyes, making the object appear orange, but is that scientific explanation the essence?

In retrospect, I’m relieved that my job is merely teaching physics.

I don’t want to be “that teacher” who complains about the lack of vacation time, but for the fourth year in a row since teaching in Austin, the stretch between Labor Day weekend and Thanksgiving has been the worst time of the year. I’ve never noticed that before. Perhaps teaching outside the States for a collective 11 years, with a combination of American and host country holidays, have helped keep me sane throughout the school year stresses.

Over the past 4 years, I’ve absorbed the local culture and recreated my lifestyle, just like I always do when I move to a new place. Technically, Austin’s not exactly new to me, but every year feels nearly new since I explore another aspect of this wonderful patch of the universe. When I first arrived, I danced salsa at least once a week, trained capoeira 2-3 times a week, wrote every day and drinked a glass of merlot or cabernet with dinner.

Fast forward a few years and now I still train capoeira twice a week, drink malbec with dinner, write every day and I’ve managed to fit three bikram yoga classes into my busy schedule, which includes organizing The Austin Writers Roulette.

Despite my stress-relieving exercise schedule, writing outlet and wine consumption, my subconcious still slips me an occasional reminder that there are unresolved issues I still need to strategize. The most recent reminder came in the form as a familiar dream: I was driving a Landrover through a jungle. The road was bumpy, and adding to the challenge, the thick foliage. Nonetheless, I managed to maneuver well until I came to a sudden clearance, opening into huge, muddy canyon.

Since I was aware that I was dreaming, I allowed the Landrover to leap into the canyon, landing safely along one of the walls and continue rolling down. As exhilarating as the ride was, I woke up and instantly knew the destination: despair.

That word just popped into my mind. All the negotiating through the jungle represented obstacles that I face. The canyon of despair appeared because I felt tired. Not the kind of tired that comes from a few lost nights of sleep in a row, but the accumulative fatigue that sets in over a protracted period of time of working hard and feeling that very little progress is being made.

A bikram yoga class, glass of wine and good night’s sleep later, my new destination was hope. I’ve learned a while back that fatigue dulls my creativity and my best course of action was to rejuvenate myself as quickly as possible. In the middle of the next yoga class, I came up with a brilliant solution for work and a clever idea for the roulette. Two for one!

As this year comes to a close, I’m excited about the upcoming plans I’ve made and the new opportunities as they unfold.