Hoosier Daddy?

This morning, the radio station was giving away—get ready—HAMS.  Yep, call in now and you have the chance of takin’ home a real beaut’ care of Martin’s Appliance Warehouse.  Maybe I have a skewed view, but don’t radio stations usually tout wares such as concert tickets, iPads, and Bahama vacations?  Not in Indy, folks.  We got hams. 

Then the world made sense.

I just got a call from an unknown 215 number while sitting at my desk.

Me: Hello this is Theresa
215: Hey Miss?!?
Me: Yes?
215: Miss hey this is Nadirah!

Nadirah was one of my 4^th graders last year.  I haven’t heard from her since I left Philadelphia last June; I didn’t even think she liked me all that much.   I didn’t have a particularly extensive relationship with her, and I remain unclear as to how she got my number.  (Maybe it’s etched in a UICS bathroom stall in purple crayon.  Maybe she got it tattooed on her arm at a dollar party.)  We chatted for a minute or two then I told her I had to go because I was at work.

Me: Is there anything you needed or were you just calling to say hi?
Nadirah: Well, I was just wondering…are you coming back to Universal next year?

The tone in her voice I cannot explain.  It was so genuine and sincere, like if she asked just right I might say yes.

Me: No, Nadirah, I’m not.  But guess what?  I’m going to be a teacher in Washington DC.
Nadirah: REALLY?!  SO YOU’LL BE CLOSE?!
Me: Yes.  Maybe I’ll even come visit you.
Nadirah: I can’t wait!  Bye Miss!

I can’t wait either, Nadirah.

Read this.

http://jeffforamerica.com/2011/04/10/four-weeks-and-the-next-four-years/

Then tell me how we’re going to not just change the system, but redefine it.

Okay North Carolina, you win.

Since UNC knocked Marquette out of the Sweet 16, I was feeling a little bitter toward North Carolina (particularly my UNC-themed hotel) when I arrived on Sunday night.  (By the way, UConn ended up winning the tournament.  Marquette beat UConn AT UConn during the regular season.  Therefore, Marquette is national champion). But I’ve come around.  Here is why:

#1 – North Carolina barbecue
Perhaps the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.  And no, She didn’t say that…unless she was eating North Carolina barbecue.  I had chopped pork and fried okra and macaroni and hush puppies and a buttery biscuit and a 2pm beer AND ate it all.  I even chewed on a toothpick afterward just because it seemed like the right thing to do.

 #2 – Southern hospitality
Excuse me, miss!  Hello there, ma’am!  I do adore your pink suitcases, miss!  Let me offer you a bottle of water for the ride, ma’am!  Allow me to hold this parasol above your fair skin as you sip sweet tea and snack on macaroons, my lady!  (Ok, I made the last one up but I have doubt as to its plausibility.)  People here are just nice. 

 #3 – Millionaire Pie
While eating lunch (by myself) (like always) on Tuesday, my waiter deliberately dangled a tantalizing tray of desserts in front of my face.  Then he winked at me.  Twice.  This all seemed strikingly familiar, but that didn’t stop me from ordering a plate of peanut butter heaven and giggling aloud over my library book about grammar.  Thank goodness I now know better on how to handle winking waiters.

#4 – Sun
I could get used to this.

Your Weekly Fix

My deepest passions and the things I view as our society’s most pressing issues: education reform, social inequality, urban poverty.  I have a journalism degree from a Jesuit university and an Ivy League masters.  When this blog comes up in public discourse, what is the commentary? 

“I love that you _________!!!  Like, oh em GEE your life is SO great!”

Fill in the blank:
I love that you continue to hang out with Calib even though he has trouble forming sentences!!!  Like, oh em GEE your life is SO great!
I love that you went on a date with an airport shuttle driver who lives in Indiana!!!  Like, oh em GEE your life is SO great!
I love that you ate an entire chocolate bag with the waiter that served it to you!!!  Like, oh em GEE your life is SO great!

So, if I ever write a book, it likely will not be about the abysmal state of public education or the triumphs of an urban teacher.  No, no.  Working title: Tales of a Redhead: My Lapses in Judgment or perhaps simply Boneheads I Date.

. . .

(Via text message)
Me: Ok see you soon!
Calib: Your not even home
Me: PS you + are = you’re
Calib: I do thing how i want
. . .

(Telling a story about a wild night out)
Calib: Then we got hungry so we rode to the store.
Me: You drove drunk?!
Calib: My buddy was swerving all over the road and I was getting pissed.
Me: I can’t believe you did that.
Calib: Well we were on his little brother’s bike.  I was sitting on the handle bars!
. . .

(Commenting on a V-shaped scratch on his face)
Me: Aww what’d you do?
Calib: V for vendetta!
Me: What, you get in a fight with your dogs or something? (He has two dogs, a rottweiler and a pitbull, one of which is named Baby Girl.)
Calib: Actually I hit myself in the face with a ping pong paddle.

Courage.

This woman reminds me to have it.  To hold fast to your dreams.  To stand up for what you believe.

This annoys me.

http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20110328_SV2011_Part3.html?c=r

Not because, in grand Inquirer tradition, the writing is of poor quality (note use of word ‘hooker’ in opening paragraph), but because it only evokes a one word response: DUH.

DUH.  Ask any Philadelphia teacher what happens every single day in city classrooms.  It doesn’t take a year-long Inquirer investigation.  Open your eyes and do something other than step aside! 

Also, don’t call violence in schools cancer.  Cancer does not have a known cure.  Violence in schools does.  It’s called hey grownups get yo’ act together.

Call me Old-Fashioned…

Tonight, I had dinner (alone) (like always) at a supper club in Ann Arbor.

I don’t know if it’s the contrast of the exposed wooden rafters against the white table linen, or the charming hum of the neon nameplate set in a hybrid of the New York Times masthead and what I imagine Sleeping Beauty writes like, or the fact that (after a discount coupon from Sandy at the front desk) I purchased a prime rib dinner with baked potato, salad, salmon pate, and cocktail for $12.58, but something about the midwestern supper club just does me right.  It reminds me of growing up, of dinners on the lake when life’s greatest woes are sunburn and the sand in your shoes.  It is nostalgia at its finest.

In valiant effort to bring a touch of maturity to the moment, I ordered an old-fashioned from the cocktail waitress.  I did not know what an old-fashioned was, I just thought it sounded cool and sophisticated.  I should know by now that all of my efforts to intentionally sound cool and sophisticated are almost undoubtedly foiled and this was no different, as apparently an old-fashioned is a rocks glass of bourbon with an orange slice on the rim.  (Trouble was in store.  This old-fashioned girl of twenty-four surely can’t drink whiskey like she could at twenty-two and a half.)

But still I sipped, for an hour and a half, alone, just soaking it all in.

Speaking of old-fashioned (or maybe just plain old), I spent my mid-morning in bed watching E.T. on HBO.  I haven’t seen that movie in probably eighteen years, not since I made my mom remove a hanging house plant from my childhood bedroom because it looked exactly like the film’s title character when the light of the moon hit it just right.  Then it struck me that eighteen years is a long time.  An awfully long time.

I woke up this morning and legitimately did not know where I was.  I knew I was in the bed where I had fallen asleep, but could not place for a handful of seconds where exactly that bed lay.

I feel like I am floating, perhaps even flying, through life without taking enough/any opportunities to breathe.  Eighteen years feels like last week but yesterday passed an eternity ago.

We, as humans, crave our daily rush without taking the long term into consideration.  We fill our heads with multitudes of superficial information instead of taking time to think deeply and contemplate our trajectory.

Call me old-fashioned, but I want to slow down.

Friday.

Friday night.
Starring: None other than Theresa, Calib, and Indiana
Note: No, Dad, he’s not homeless either.  But thanks for asking! 

(In the grocery store)
Me: Oooh! Sixty-nine cent cola!
Calib: We should become party planners.  Apparently we work very well together! 
…
(Trying to tell a joke)
Calib: Your mom was a squirrel that ran away with your wife!
Me: ??????
Calib: (Laughing) There’s nothing to get!
Me: There never is…
…
(Describing how he saves jokes for the perfect moment (clearly))
Calib: Yeah, like the time I met that artist.
Me: You met an artist?
Calib: Yeah.  I said, “What do you do?” and he said, “I’m an artist” and I said, “That’s sketchy.” (Laughs)
Me: Sketchy…haha I get it.
Calib: I thought of it years ago and had been waiting that whole time to meet an artist!
Me: Nice work.
Calib: Actually I think he was pretty offended.
…
(Talking about high gas prices around 9:55pm)
Me: My friend George lives in L.A. and it’s  $4.10
Calib: You’re ridiculous!
Me: I know, it’s crazy.
Calib: There IS NO SUCH TIME CHANGE AS THAT!
(Apparently the pronoun “it’s” was too confusing and completely dashed our first semi-meaningful conversation.  Drat.  Note taken)
…
(And my favorite saved up gem…)
Me: I have something in my eye.
Calib: Well it’s definitely not a twinkle!

Help Ms. Love!

Every few weeks, I receive an email from my friend Mallory.  Mallory teaches high school math in Philadelphia and, as any phenomenal teacher would do, she writes down all the insane things her students say.

First, read this:

-I turned the big 2-5 a couple weeks back.  A few of my students knew this and were adorable on my birthday.
 Things Ms. Loveridge got for her birthday:
-a cardigan (obviously)
-6 helium filled balloons
-a sheet cake that read “Happy Birthday Ms. Loveridge”
-3 singing cards
-a necklace
-a puppy stuffed animal
 
Me: did you guys bring a knife to cut the cake?
Emily: Miss, we go through metal detectors….

Principle (on the loud speaker, mid-class) Phillip Adel.  This is Mrs. Dean. Report to the main office NOW….and bring your scooter”
 (a student somehow got a motorized scooter into the building and was riding it all over)

Me: Okay, I’ll walk you back to class. I have to go yell at some seniors anyway.
Antonio: You know, for a little lady, people sure are scared of you
A) he called me little B) he called me a lady AND C) he said people are scared of me *best compliment EVER

I took my first ambulance ride (hush Monica) last week.  Little Ms. Mahdiyyah broke her thumb (the kind the twists and look a hot mess) during our senior games day.  It was an eventful afternoon.  I think the nurses are beginning to know me in the ER.

Ms. Loveridge has a connection with her students like no one I know–she honestly, truly cares.

This is why she also sent out this:

Dear friends and family:

As you all know (or have heard about…or read about…), I am in my 3rd year teaching in an urban, inner-city high school in Northeast Philadelphia.  I teach all levels of math, coach JV girls’ basketball and am this year’s senior class sponsor.  Although my students test my patience on a daily basis, they are wonderful children on most days that I adore dearly.

A few weeks ago, about 30 of our students competed at the state level HOSA (Health Occupational Students of America) in Lancaster, PA.  8 of those students qualified for the National competition in Anaheim, CA for this coming June.  Another teacher and myself are taking those 8 students to California.  We wrote the School District for full/partial funding for those students and they declined any assistance, so we are left with fund raising at our school.  As you can imagine, we are limited to how much we can raise in the area in which I work.

I know many of you enjoy the stories and send emails of laughter, words of encouragement or wondering in ways you can help.  So, if you would like to help and send a donation to help my 8 kids go to the National HOSA competition, it would be very much appreciated.  Please feel in no way obligated by receiving this email.  I’m just trying to send it out to everyone in case you want to contribute.

If you would like to donate, checks can be made out to:
Mastbaum High School (put HOSA in the memo line)

Feel free to forward this to anyone else that might want to contribute.  Thank you so much!

Mallory

In a suburban school, attending a national competition is a tremendous honor.  In an urban school, attending a national competition is a tremendous honor.  In a suburban school, parents or administrators cut a check and students are on their merry way.  In an urban school, the luxury does not exist.  Even $5 makes a difference.  Think…for one grande latte, you can make a tremendous impact on the life of a student.  If you or anyone you know is able to help, reach out to Mallory at mallory224@gmail.com to get her contact information.

Thank you!