Today was a big waste of time, and it felt great.

When I was finally out of the shower, dressed, and had my hair done, I looked at the clock and said to myself, "Wow, if I were at Bryant today, it would be time for the kids to go home." Yeah, I pretty much laid around all morning and didn't bathe and become presentable until early afternoon. So, I didn't make it down to the Child Development Center, BUT, I figure that since the woman that I need to talk to works at Bryant 2 days a week I can just walk over and talk to her after school gets out some afternoon next week.

I did, however, make it down to the Cahill Lab at SFSU at 4:50pm (it closes at 5pm - I fear that I will forever and always be a procrastinator...). There, I checked out the Teacher's Edition of the Houghton Mifflin reading program that we're being forced to do - SFUSD (San Francisco Unified School District) adopted it this year, thanks to Bush's lousy "No Child Left Behind" crapola. I actually heard from someone that the Bush clan have property on Martha's Vineyard (or some such white, wealthy, Christian, conservative compound) next to the family that owns Houghton Mifflin. If it's true, it's pretty freakin' disturbing, eh? Anyway, even though the whole program that I'm in (and the program that I did at IU ten years ago) preached about how you SHOULDN'T use scripted reading programs, it's what all of San Francisco's public school teachers are being forced to use, so, we're doing it. On Muni and BART on the way back from SFSU, I was leafing through the Edition's to see what was going to be coming in the next few weeks and, I've got to say, it was a REALLY cool feeling to think that people around me might be looking at what I was doing thinking, "Ah, he must be a Kindergarten teacher". It's all slowly becoming a reality.

This morning I had a startling realization - by the end of last spring, and all this past summer, I kept feeling like I might not really be up for this whole teaching thing. Like, what if it really isn't what I want to do, or even if it is something that I think that I am CAPABLE of doing? But, this morning, there was a sudden shift - now, I feel like I DO want to be a teacher and that I CAN be a GREAT teacher, and my only worry at this point is how much work it's going to take to BE a great teacher. Already, at the end of only my 3rd week of Student Teaching, a lot of the mysteries behind what teaching is really about, and what a teacher really goes through on a day-to-day basis (which fed into my insecurities), are being made flesh. The known can be tackled.

Right now, it's time for me to tackle the mound of dishes in the kitchen sink.