the authoritarian

i have survived week 1 (of 6) of my teacher training class and week 1 (of 4) of summer school. i highly favor the mornings at summer school to the afternoons being a student, because in the mornings i am totally in charge. well, not totally, because i'm just the student teacher, but for the most part, after 1st period, i was in charge of the 7th grade math classes.

the students we have, all 85 of them, are a little scary. but one must not let on that you realize they are scary. in fact, the first morning there i felt as if i was at a juvenile detention center, with all the teachers barking out orders demanding military straight lines, shirts tucked in, and no second chances. there is definitely a fine line of tension between quiet learning and utter chaos that i'm constantly praying will not snap, particularly during class periods on my watch.

i believe my finest teaching moment of the week actually came during the end of the week quiz. one young man was trying to recall the order of operations and i told him that all i could help him with was to try to remember the acronym and work through the problems using it (PEMDAS). he told me that he not only did not know what an acronym was but he had no idea what i was talking about, though the other student teacher had done a review on it 5 minutes prior to this conversation. i said, an acronym is where the letters in one word stand for letters in other words. scanning through my mind i came up with NBA...the national basketball association. the boy told me 'i have no idea what you are talking about'...his loss. the boys at a nearby table were apparently impressed with my NBA knowledge and tried to stump me with MLB...to which i answered major league baseball, and was met with stunned looks. yes, i had exerted my authority in not only math matters, but now also in sports. so sit down and listen to me students! ;)

in other news, ross and i celebrated his birthday last week with a trip to KOBE Japanese steakhouse, where they gave him some complimentary porcelain chopsticks since it was his birthday.

last night we cooked some kabobs on his birthday present (propane grill) and he even wore his cook-out apron, a bday present from nana.

also this week we had a little dinner party team awesome austin-style (will. lisa. summer plans??),participated in a small group from church, went sailing on lake LBJ, watched the spurs dominate with some friends, got a DVR and DishNetwork(!), and met up for lunch in downtown austin.

minnie is helping me write this post and wants you to know that she killed a very large lizard yesterday and is currently hoping i would share some tunafish sandwich with her as a reward.

a public service announcement is that summer has arrived. you should not go biking at 1pm on a saturday afternoon, as ross and i just did. it is simply waaaay too hot.