I had a crappy Wednesday. A video that I was showing had faulty closed captioning and I kept scrambling to try and find some way to make this work for my class (which includes several hard of hearing/deaf students and even if it didn't the thing should be subtitled)...
I kept looking for alternate ways to play the documentary while simultaneously apologizing to the interpreter, the students, the interpreter-in-training, my co-teacher and the rest of the students who were forced to wait while I tried (and failed miserably) to get the thing to work properly. Which it never did. I printed out a complete transcript for my deaf student and apologized in ASL and in English. And she was very understanding and said it was not a problem (but it was!). This led directly to my feeling like a complete failure as a teacher and a detriment to the class. (I had previewed the first few minutes of the film, btw, and the captioning worked just fine.) I decided after such a hard day I really just wanted to go and bead and write and have some time to myself at local coffee shop (where I really enjoy going-- twice a week at least). But there was a Tenor Voice Major (with capital letters and all, if not italics and a marquee) tutoring some lowly undergrad in music theory. VERY LOUDLY. In the middle of the coffee shop. And no matter where I sat I could here him quizzing his student on different inversions and major and minor and dorian and phrygian... and then he began to SING VERY LOUDLY. I could not write. So I decided to bead instead. I am beading on leather. With a knife-edge needles. Which is intended to go through leather. And I had JUST enough wherewithal to not use said needle on Tenor Voice Major. Even before he sang, I could feel his tenorness from across the room. He projected each syllable as if he were on stage. He sat like he was holding court. And he kind of looked like Henry VIII. This makes it sound like I do not like tenors. That is not true. I just don't like the way this particular person (who happened to be a tenor) comported himself without regard to anyone else. Thursday I did NOTHING but bead. Okay, I wrote a little bit. But other than that, I spent the rest of the day feverishly beading. When it came time to go to band practice I began to feel ill. But I knew full well that it was just because I did not feel up to being with people. So I made myself go. But I told my friend that it felt like... you know when you have a pretty bad cold and you're trying to decide whether or not you should stay home from work? This was like the mental-health version of that. I was right on the border of "good god I cannot possibly go out of the house are you effing kidding me." My coping strategy (which seems quite odd, until you realize that all the beading was helping me cope with rising panic and anxiety) was to paperclip my current project to the edge of my music folder so I could touch it whenever I started to feel panicky. Which was quite frequently. But I am still glad that I went. Stay tuned for Friday and Saturday... Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |