A Christmas Miracle in April

A friend from my ward called randomly about a week and a half ago asking if I wanted to buy two extra tickets she had to the musical Wicked playing currently in Salt Lake City.  My sister Beth and I had wanted to see this show for quite some time and had planned on going to see it in LA where it had been showing for an extended run.  But, as we are putzes, we waited too long and it closed in January.  When the tickets for the SLC showing went on sale to the public they sold out in about 15 minutes (no joke), and as neither of us were the 16th caller we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were just going to have to wait unitl it a) became a movie  b) came to another town relatively close in another decade or c) Las Vegas picked it up and built a multi million dollar theater just for Wicked like the Venitian did with The Phantom of the Opera.  So of course we jumped on the chance to go.  It was wonderful!!!  Our tickets were in the 10th row so we could see perfectly, and Beth wouldn't stop jabbering in excitement all night long.  So far, neither of us have symptoms of the swine flew, which both of us (after Beth explained the ENTIRE trip up how serious it was) knew was a risk of traveling to the big city and having to pass so many cars coming from California.  It was a long day - 8 hours of driving - but totally worth it.  And any chance to spend a day with only my sister for some girl time is a special treat.

    

Ok, so the following I did not take, but...

This is what happens when I try the famous television chef Jacques Pépin's recommendation of cracking an egg on a flat surface instead of on the edge of a bowl in order to avoid pieces of eggshell falling into whatever it is that you're cracking the egg:

Post Traumatic Teaching Disorder

My first year of teaching I had this student in my freshman English class who was very bright but kind of quiet.  There's not much specific about him that I remember (besides that he loved the Green Bay Packers) because that whole year was such a blur and I was just trying to keep my head above the water.  My second year of teaching I had this young man again (I taught 10th grade too) and boy, do I ever remember him THAT time around!  Let's just say my self esteem still is shaken to the core when I think about this kid.  He started off the year by repeatedly telling me how excited he was to be in my class again.  Unfortunately, he suddenly turned very cocky.

I no longer was smart enough to be his teacher.  He made fun of me in front of the class 

and sometimes of other students.  His open disdain for my teaching started to rub off on other students in their general attitude in class, and though I spoke with him about it, he got even more bold and told me point by point what I was doing "wrong".  He would wait outside of my classroom door in the morning and comment about what time I was getting there. He constantly complained about how my class wasn't challenging him enough - though I did give him extra books to read and tests to go with them and recommended plenty of others (hey, I was still building my curriculum and didn't have independent study units I could just pop out at the drop of a hat). But then because he was doing extra work he complained about it because no one else 

had to - or he just wouldn't do it.  I couldn't do anything right for this student.  His mother didn't seem to think so either (she only called me once but it was enough, and though I suggested he attend the charter school with an advanced curriculum, neither of them wanted to do that either) but at least she was polite with me.  His father met with me too (who, as it happens, was the Dean of the Science Department at SUU).  Like THAT wasn't intimidating!  He was really nice though and I think was more understanding of me, but his son wouldn't let up.  He argued points on books with me - books I had read multiple times and he only once, though I publicly told him I would happily recant if he could back up his statements by finding the points we disagreed on.  His essays had good sentence structure but would often 

get preachy, ramble and get off topic so never got the grades he thought he should 

get.  I knew I was probably grading him unfairly because of the resentment I felt, so I often had another teacher check my work and would pad his grade to some extent on these assignments while still leaving 

the scathing comments...just to show that I wasn't a fan but not trying to hurt his grade as a punishment.  I dreaded his class.  I was, in short, bullied by an 

academically elitist 15 year old.

The following year he did end up transferring to the charter school and probably did very well.  But the few times I would see him before he graduated brought up bad memories and a sour taste in my mouth. 

So you'd think by now four years later that I'd be over it.  But he recently requested to be my "friend" on Facebook, the social networking website, and seeing his name and face brought back a wave of anxiety.  Attached to this request was a note acknowledging the fact that he had been "difficult and at the time I was proud of it" but that now he feels bad. By accepting his request I would also be accepting his apology - though I never thought I would get one or that it would even cross his mind that he had been in the wrong - OR I could decline the friend request and feel petty.  While I repeatedly reasoned with myself that 'accepting' his request in no way makes us actual friends, that I am the adult here and should not hang on to these bitter feelings and should accept the apology, I still can't forget how his academic arrogance - and yes, he was very smart, especially for his grade - still haunts me to this day.  Why I let a then 15 or 16 year old affect me so much troubles me still.  I guess I take my job so seriously and am overly self critical, but even more so when I was a young buck out of school.  My second year of teaching was in so many ways harder than my first because I was more keenly aware of what should and shouldn't be happening and what was and wasn't happening, and I was still so insecure about my effectiveness that to have a student challenge me so frequently and so publicly and so cruelly still hurts.  I've realized that I'm one of those people who is still traumatized by the mean childhood nickname and playground teasing...it just didn't happen for me until I was in my mid-twenties.  

But I needed to forgive, so I wrote him a note of my own letting him know I appreciated his apology.  Of course, there is one ounce of satisfaction I can have in the virtual friendship world that those bullied in their kidhood can't:

Hitting the 'decline request' button.

I love it when...

I love it when the "word verification" words that come up when you are posting a comment on another's blog that are supposed to be random nonsense letter combinations could actually be reall words, or cool contractions of word that could, by me, become the next big thing.  A few examples that I've noted:

pontrfic - I think this one is positively terrific!

bootry - You THOUGHT you could scare me, but I'm way too smart for you!

ringns - Every holiday party you've ever been to 'ringns' the new season

shazo - Not sure about this one, but it could be the next cool nonsense exclamation, like 'shazam,' 'gee wilakers' or 'wowsers.' I think I'm going to try this one.  It could be huge.  HUGE!

"Hardcore Hensel" Lives On!

So this nickname I have - and consequently the name of  my blog - comes from my student teaching days and Canyon View High School almost six years ago.  One of the students I had in a class at the time approached me and said he heard me on Power 91 (the college radio station) the night before hosting the hard-rock show.  I was confused as to why he thought it was me, and he said he heard me and my DJ name: Hardcore Hensel.  I of course profusely denied it...anyone who knows me knows how little I know hard rock.  But he swore it was me.  What added to his adament belief that it was in fact me was that I knew of a lot of bands - and probably only a song or two by them - that were popular during those few years.  I was coming out of my college "experimental" stage with bands I really could care less about now, but with the people I associated with predominately at the time the more bands you knew and the more obscure they were was like a badge of honor or something.  SO, becuase I knew of these then-obscure bands which have since been signed by major labels and have fallen victim to the commercialization of the music industry, it elevated me into the realm of being an actual candidate for something as "cool" as being a radio DJ (all it really takes is registering for an entry level communications class at SUU).  That became my nickname with a hadful of students.

So.  I started teaching at Cedar High.  Never thought I'd hear of Hardcore Hensel again.  Little did I know that some kids from CV would get kicked out of their school and sent to mine.  The same students that called me Hardcore Hensel.  So the legendary - if not fictional - persona continued on.  In spurts over the next few years it would come up, but the students who knew about it were starting to taper off - the usual victims of graduation or, as unluck would have it, the American teenage drop-out rate.  Until Friday.  A Cedar High student - who I have never taught, by the way - walked into my class and told me he knew my secret.  You can imaging my alarm (I was going to replace the plastic fork I "borrowed" from the cabinet above the faculty microwave, I promise!).  "Harcore Hensel" was his response.  It just so happens that when you live in a small town, the kids who dropped out of high school a few years before now work at the same fast food places that the current batch of publicly educated scholars are working at currently!  Ok, so maybe they don't work together, but they DO talk and/or hang out in the same circles.  The point is, even though I have crossed the threshold of the third decade of my life, there is still this coolness factor still within the grasp of my almost arthritic fingers (or so the 14 year olds tell me) and which I totally don't deserve but will half-heartedly-deny-with-a- smile-knowing-that-the-smile-tricks-them-into-thinking-that-I-am-trying-to-trick-them-into-thinking-it-wan't-really-me.  

Strangely enough this matters to me.  In the blogging world, I feel rather uncool with my lack of posts about my children and in-laws and husband and family vacations.  People don't respond to my posts, nor my single friends' blogs, like they do to the people who have kids.  But I was a DJ once which is TOTALLY cool. TOTALLY!  So I'll take the validation any way I can, even if it is just a standing inside joke! ; )