Merry Christmas! I'm a few days late, I know. I've been having such a phenomenal vacation, I can't believe I have to go back to school in a week and start teaching again.

My homework assignment to the kids over the break was to "Find Mr. V downtown over the holidays." So far I have seen three kids but I don't think they saw me.

So far this break I've seen a bunch of movies, did a photo shoot (or three), hung out with lots of friends, and slept a ton. Wish it could last forever!

xo, Phil

Break time! First day of my winter vacation and I was very productive. I helped my dad set up a concrete bench in his yard, went to the farmer's market, had lunch with friends, delivered some wedding photos, went to the movies with a couple of kids from Young Life and Felipe and his crew, and now I am going to have dinner with those guys! Sweet.

Yesterday I gave quizzes to all my math students... AND a Christmas party :) I had kids sign up to bring stuff, and they pulled through! Two different classes had their parents order pizza and bring it to class. Crazy, huh? Little Ceasar's $5 Hot-And-Ready pizzas are hard to beat.

Here's a wedding photo!

The other day, perhaps in a dream, or maybe while daydreaming, I had a minor bout of inspiration. I do dream about my teaching sometimes, which is a little sad, because that means even when I am sleeping I cannot escape the stresses of my job.

My moment of inspiration had to do with discipline, and I was thinking of effective ways to keep kids in line. Now, let me pause right here and say that this is why I *&#@! hate teaching in a public school. Why should I be thinking of ways to keep kids in check? Does that sound like a fun way to live my life? Do kids hate school?

Anyways, I thought it would be funny to make a kid write something over and over again like Bart Simpson does at the beginning of every Simpson's episode. So this boy in my class was giving the double bird towards some student outside of my class (TWO MIDDLE FINGERS!) and I saw him and I said, "K____, what the heck?! Take a break." I always make kids go outside immediately if they are being terribly distracting. Then when he came in I made him write

"I will think before I act."

on one side of a sheet of paper until he filled it up. That's only about 33 times, but I think he got the idea.

It was awesome.

I've been offline for a long time! I actually went to Austria over Thanksgiving. Well, I actually took FIVE DAYS off of work before Thanksgiving plus the three days I already had for vacation. I was in Europe for 12 days total, and it was amazing.

I totally screwed up my substitute lesson plans somehow, and I was quite dismayed to come back to rumors of other teachers having to figure out what my kids were supposed to be doing. For someone who is terrified of off-putting others and caring a bit too much about what people think, I feel a little sick thinking about my reputation in the eyes of my colleagues at the junior high school.

I tried to make amends by giving Austrian chocolates away at our math meeting on Tuesday :)

I should be in bed but I just wanted to say this: It's Veteran's Day and I got a day off in the middle of my week! How great is that? I was worried it would be an unproductive day, but I did so much!

I deleted bad photos from a wedding I just took pictures for, went bowling, finished grading a stack of tests, starred the best photos from the wedding, had dinner with my sister and then a second dinner with my good friend Felipe, then played board games with him and some of his Young Life guys.

And by the way, I went bowling with a big group of junior highers, many of whom are my own students. I was VERY reluctant to spend my day off with my students, but I did, and it was fun (mainly because I kicked their ass at bowling).

Ahhh, there is nothing more satisfying than feeling caught up.

There is this student teacher at my school right now who I have a bit of a crush on... I'll just leave it at that, because I don't want trouble, or drama. :) But she's super sweet. I hear her heels clicking through the hall and I freeze, waiting for her to pass my door.

She wears sexy glasses and is quiet but beautiful-- my favorite type.

The Halloween Costume

There is a girl in my class who I'm pretty sure views me as some type of father figure. At the very least, she looks up to me, which is nice. That is probably the only reason why I put up with her ridiculousness so much, because she is the quintessential Class Clown.

At the beginning of this week when students were talking about costumes for Halloween, this particular student announced "I'm gonna be Mr. V for Halloween!" This is a 12 year old Mexican girl. She continued, "But Mr. V, I don't have curly hair so you're gonna have to straighten yours."

What kind of backwards logic is that?!

THE KIDS THE KIDS THE KIDS

Sometimes teaching feels amazing and sometimes I feel despair. One of my classes out of five (1/5 or 20 percent or .20) is just so smart! It has 33 students, all seventh graders, all simply beautiful, precocious, able young people. That class happens to be in my first hour of the day, and the rest is downhill from there.

In one of my lower-level classes, I am constantly telling this one kid who thinks he is SO smart to just show his work. He is able to do a lot of the problems in his head, but I insist that he shows his work so I know that he knows. Right? One of his recent homework assignments actually had this written on it:

"Uhhh!! Mr. V look I showd my work happy now! ?! :] Erick"

I just wish you could hear his voice. This kid talks sooo funny! Just imagine Al Pacino in Scarface as a 12 year old boy. The kind of guy that says "Say hello to my little friend." Cuban-Miami tough guy speak. Now read that again out loud. It makes me smile every time.

The Librarian

I've officially finished one month of full-time work at Santa Barbara Junior High and boy am I tired! I think I've figured out that if I go to sleep by 10pm each night I will be feeling just perfect for the next day. But I haven't actually gone to sleep at 10pm yet!

There is a girl who is in 9th grade this year who I taught last year. She is a quiet little Mexican girl who I taught how to solve the Rubik's cube. She is a pretty good artist and her family is very poor. Every time I talk to her, she lives in a different place with another family. Her mother and her and her two younger siblings take over a room or two in a place with another family and that's how she lives. Without much.

So she stops by the junior high as she walks home from school sometimes and visits her old teachers, myself included. She was asking me how she can do community service hours and I told her she could work at the library! I told her she should just get a job there afterwards and wouldn't that be nice to get paid so she can buy her own stuff and not have her mom take her clothes and give them to her sister? We were dreaming about all this stuff and guess what?

The next time I saw her she had picked up an application to work at the main library (that she had never been to before) and was already filling it out. I need this sort of encouragement when I begin to think that my kids are worse than squirrels on coffee.

Alright alright. I'll try to be a little more diligent here since I know you are all dying to hear about my escapades in the classroom.

I've been teaching full time for three weeks now. What the heck?!

Today in class this 8th grade girl says to me, "Mr. V. There's a rumor going around that you have a six-pack. Is that true?"

Whoo hoo! Welcome to junior high. I don't know where in the world that sort of rumor started, but I kinda liked it so I didn't really confirm or deny it.

For those who are unsure, a six-pack in this situation refers to abdomen muscles, not alcohol.

I got a job! I'm the new, official, 7th and 8th grade math teacher at Santa Barbara Junior High school. The day that I interviewed the principal wasn't there, but I got this text message from him later in the day:

"Word on the street is you did exceptionally well today."

How about them apples?

Oh, and I'll be making 42K this year. A nice step up from my baby 15,000 last year haha. So if you want, I'll buy you lunch. But you gotta ask first.

Hello followers. You still there? I haven't given you very many tasty morsels to snack on this summer, I'm well aware. I'm just not teaching right now, so there are no stories to tell!

But that is not entirely true.

At the farmer's market last week I saw one of my favorites from this past year, Karinna. She had asked me to take pictures for her and her friends on graduation day and I did, but I never gave her the pictures. She saw me on Tuesday and I felt incredibly guilty and went and burned her a CD right there. And met her and her dad, and her best friend Daniela (plus mom). It was really great to see them, and Daniela gave me a big hug. Those girls make me smile!

And now that all of the GATE kids are no longer at the junior high, I caved and accepted their incessant friend requests on Facebook. Those kids are chatty! But very bright. Here is an excerpt from a book a couple of my OTHER favorite students are writing (and they sent me chapter one in an email):

"The music blasting from Blake’s headphones sounded, to me, like some sort of musical mosquito, hovering on the edges of my hearing. It harmonized with the hidden bugs singing around us. The clouds above me hung as if suspended by fishing line, like something from the set of a elementary school play. Fake, that’s how they looked. Like some soccer mom volunteered to make the set, and then realized what she had just gotten herself into. I could just see her, futilely trying to stick the cotton onto cardboard and ending up with fluff hot-glued to her French-manicured fingers."

Damn! That's good.

Here's a recently taken photo for you:

This summer is absolutely flying by! Who let July sneak in the door? Seriously. I haven't had a chance to breathe yet. One of my favorite things this summer has been going downtown and seeing old students. I see these punky ones ALL the time. Ones that I have definitely sent to the office before when I was subbing. Now they slap my hand and say "What's up, Mr. V"

I took pictures for a mormon wedding last week! And I am shooting a wedding for an old friend of mine, Addie Brown. I am super excited about that! Whoooooooooooo

I'm done for the summer! School ended and I was so shot. It's been a crazy summer so far. I moved June 1st and I think I've only slept at home 5 times in the past three weeks. I've been camping out, at a Young Life camp, housesitting, etc.

All I really want is to be downtown editing photos. Here's a couple for you!

Good Lord, people!

Apparently some junior high girls that I taught last year got ahold of my phone number and decided that last night was the perfect opportunity to leave me 27 prank calls. I'm assuming they stopped either because they used up ALL of my voice mail space or it was something like 2 in the morning. After the third call I turned my phone off and when I got up this morning my voice message lady told me, "You have 24 new messages."

But honestly, it made me smile.

I know I haven't posted in a while. Honestly, I'm tired of school and all I really want to do is be taking pictures. All the time. Here's one I took yesterday:


Cool, huh? But I am still teaching every day. Our school got canceled two days last week during the crazy crazy fires that happened. If you read the news, you heard about the fires. So I had a nice four day weekend.

I'm writing because this kid today in my fourth period class just said some ridiculous stuff that I thought I would share with you. First of all, he has this terrible attitude every single day. He's not dumb and he's not poor. He just "hates math." His attitude causes him to give up so easily on stuff that I know he can do.

Anyways, today before class I was just talking to him and trying to encourage him a little. I told him I thought he could do everything that we've been doing so far. I said he's got to enjoy it a little because he's going to be taking math for the next four years. This was his response:

"If I had a choice between taking math for the next four years or slitting my wrists, I would slit my wrists."

What the heck, man!??! Geez

I implemented the most fantastic homework management policy today! I mentioned to the assistant principal that I hated calling kid's parents whenever they are missing homework; we are supposed to call home if students are missing 3 or more assignments. Since math has homework nearly every day and I have so many low-level students, I end up calling something like 15-20 parents and it takes forever! Imagine two hours of your life every week just contacting parents. And it's not like it's news to the parents. I've already called them two or three times before..

So the assistant principal said "Just have the kids call their parents themselves." And in my head an inspiration flower blossomed. It's beautiful. The kids call the parents. Of course! I don't spend time looking up numbers, practicing what I'm going to say in Spanish, etc. The students call. And not only that, but oh my gosh it was hilarious watching some of the students call. I heard one kid call and say in Spanish, "Hi dad, I'm missing 6 assignments in my math class. What? No, my teacher told me to call you. It's an F. But I'm gonna do it this weekend. No, I just have to call you. I know! I'm going to do it this weekend. I have to finish by Tuesday or I get a mandatorial. I know! I love you."

My favorite part was hearing the dad ask what the kid's grade was. This kid is one of the noisiest kids in my class, too. But he was very timid on the phone, haha.

Another kid was on the phone for like 10 seconds and I asked him if he had talked to his parents. He said, "Yeah, I'm grounded." Haha, "What did they say?" He replied, "My mom said I was grounded."

Oh man. I suppose this sounds a little mean laughing at kids getting in trouble from their parents, but I promise, it's not. You have to know these kids and the crap I get from them every day. And their parents are supposed to know about their grades anyways because I send home a progress report each week to get signed. I imagine a lot of them forge the signatures. I laugh because the solution is easy:

Do your homework each night. No problem. 10 minutes, maybe 15.

ps. If you think a kid could just fake a call to themselves or not dial anything, believe me, I am a sharp, young, no BS kind of teacher. I caught a girl doing it already.

I'm writing this post from Fort Collins, Colorado. Outside of the window there is a city blanketed in snow. I made 10 new friends last night.

I am on Spring break!!!!!!!!

I bought tickets to visit friends in Colorado and in Utah. After I spend a weekend here in Ft. Collins (and go snowboarding!) I will head off to Provo, Utah to visit my great friend Katie Houston from high school. She's a teacher, too! She teaches junior high choir, which sounds infinitely harder than teacher junior high math. Guess what? We are going snowboarding in Utah, too. How awesome is that?

So yesterday when I had to leave my darling junior highers one day early I had my friend Felipe bring pizza to one of my classes. He owed me 40 bucks so I just had him buy 7 pizzas from Little Caesars (5 bucks a pizza!) and hand deliver them to my class while they were watching a movie.

Don't you wish you were in my class?

I've been pretty burnt out lately teaching 8th graders math. It's not the math part that gets me. And it's not the teaching part that gets me. It's the part where the kids are dumber than most rocks and on top of that their home life is a mess and they don't care about school, or me, or anybody really. That's the part that really gets me. I need some compassion in my heart.

Recently these latina girls have been hanging out in my classroom at lunch. They gossip and one of them raps. Two of them take boxing "because some other cholas wanna get down." They are so precious and sweet and mean and everything. If I could, I would adopt them all. But I don't have a very big house (I have a room in a shared apartment) and I am a poor substitute.

I have a big heart for them.

Out of the mouths of babes...

For two of my 8th grade math classes I have a "Daily Quiz" set up every morning to prep the students for what lies ahead in the hour. Most of the time I give them three easy-to-difficult math problems to work out. Sometimes, after (or before) a long weekend or a lazy day, I put up a non-math related inquiry, such as "What did you do over the weekend?" or "Ask Mr. V a question!" Here are a few responses:

(from Ask Mr. V a question!):

"Can I move seats?"
"Hi. Why are you tall?"
And then virtually every other question was "Why did you get a haircut?" because I had just cut my hair rather short.

(from What did you do over the weekend?):

"got beat up by brothers"

My favorite was a combination of the two:

Question for Mr. V: "Why do u call home alot?"
What did you do over the weekend: "My dad yelling at me."

Yesterday I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain! I worked all day at school, picked up a bunch of students and left for the rides. I went with an organization called Young Life, which is something like a Christian mentorship program.

It was FANTASTIC. For 25 bucks, we arrived at 5, ate all-you-can-eat hot dogs, potato salad, BBQ chicken, etc, for an hour, watched a funny skit, and then pretty much just walked onto every ride after that.

I had 5 little seventh graders following me around like a flock of baby chicks and we had a blast.

Unfortunately I still had to work today at 7:30 this morning and my voice is a whole octave lower than it was yesterday.

Signing off- Phil!

I had an interesting interaction today with one of the administrators at the junior high today. It made my day!

She asked me how everything was going for me (in my third week of taking over three math classes). I replied that everything is going great so far. And she said, "That's good. I heard you were kicking ass in there." haha, I suppose on paper that statement can be misconstrued, but I assure you it was a compliment on my teaching abilities, and not a reason to be arrested for assault.

Ok, ok. It has been a while, I know. I have officially taught for two weeks now, and I am doing my best :) Today a kid drew me a picture of Barney.

This job makes me SO tired. And I can't complain, I'm only teaching three classes. But still, I'm back to something like 6 hours of sleep each night which is no good.

In other news, I'm stepping up my photography skills. A lot. I want to put up a new website soon. I will start a new photo blog. I am shooting a wedding in one month.

ps. I teach at Santa Barbara Junior High School. Two 8th grade pre-algebra classes and one 8th grade regular algebra class. "8th grade PRE-algebra you say??" Yes, they all pretty much failed it the first time.

I got a job! Not only did I get a job, but it counts towards my teaching credentials!

I'm not student teaching, but rather Interning, where I get to teach my own class and get paid while I earn my teaching credentials. Not bad, eh?

I start on Monday.

Today a student asked me if I liked being a substitute teacher. She didn't ask me for any particular reason, like the class was being terrible or something. Just curious.

I do like subbing, and I'll tell you why: A kid brought me pancakes from Denny's this morning. He even put syrup on them and stole a fork from the restaurant.

Also, this is week is finals week and the only instruction for this period was to collect the students' final projects. Some students are watching a movie on their laptop. Others are chatting, or finishing up work for other classes. I checked my email, looked up photoshop stuff online, and created a masterpiece of a photo that I took yesterday with Mark.

I'm getting paid 105 bucks for this, so yes, I suppose I do like subbing. And here is my photo:

I FINALLY have a job tomorrow. Subbing for Science/Math at Dos Pueblos. It's finals week in the schools here, so I will probably be sitting through five study periods. Not bad, not bad at all.

In other news, it's been a long process, but I think I am working out the details of my student teaching. I'm a bit disappointed in my school, National University. I am supposed to be starting my student teaching next week, and I hadn't heard a word from them in about a month. That's stressful!

I'll let you know the details when they come!

As for yesterday, I went to the butterfly preserve in Goleta:

Sorry folks, I haven't had a single job of subbing this week! What's up with that? I did get a haircut, though, and I'm sitting in a sweet little coffee shop, waiting for a gypsy jazz band to start playing. Ah, Santa Barbara!