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In two days, I will have officially "taught" for a whole month. Twice I've been stopped by campus security, who, for a few seconds, look as though they want me to show them a hall pass. Not bad. It used to be much more frequent.

Interestingly, from the BTSA program that I have been enrolled in, I received the year's cycle of a first-year teacher. There is a time of disillusionment that occurs sometime in November/December. I've never been one to fit the norm. And it's not that I feel disillusionment, as much as I wonder how much my students are getting from what I'm teaching. I'm at the point where I'm trying to figure out whether I'm divulging too much information to them or not, finding the balance between caring about students and letting them rot for their own good, and where to focus my attention, which seems to be, increasingly, on the students who give a shit. I think that's why I look forward to seeing my juniors at the end of the day. They're battling with the reality of mental poverty, while being convinced of their actual potential. I remember back to the advice that my master teachers told me. I can't help them all. The ones on the border, who have the motivation and means to succeed but need help in order to do so, those are the ones I need to work with. That sounds unfair. It's against Federal Law (NCLB). It's a horrible Catch 22...which our students will probably not have the opportunity to understand, since we don't have the funds to buy that book for them to read.

The thing that's bugging me the most at this moment is the notion of caring about students. I remember back to discussions about public and private schools. The students who had come into public schools from private schools noticed how much more the private school teachers "cared" about students. Now, I bitterly laugh at that statement. It makes public school teachers sound like uncaring bastards. But it's pretty easy to care about students who care about doing well, especially when there are only a few dozen of them to watch over each year. Put private school teachers in the same concrete fortress public school teachers work in every day and they'll end up being the same way. Especially in their first month of being in that situation.

I need to get some sleep and grade papers and write essay prompts and check out grammar books and make photocopies during the school's hours of operation, which end before my 7th period does. Jackie just needed to rant a bit about school. Today was a hard day. I take that back, it's just been a harder day than most.