Labels: BASIS, blog, design, family, jobs, mixing, music, MySpace, school

Labels: BASIS, house, moving

Labels: BASIS, IM, parents, TV

Labels: BASIS, DJ, IM, teaching

"You may not contact the parents or students"

This phrase is in my dismissal letter. I doubt it's even legal, but even then, I am not contacting anyone. This URL is only going to be found by those looking for me; I was not barred from being contacted. As tempted as I am to give the whole, stupid story, I'm waiting until I get legal advice to do so. Still, I feel that I am being slandered and while I will possibly persue legal action to prevent that, I want to set a few things very straight:

A clarification, then:

1. I did NOT quit.

2. Teaching at BASIS is the single most fulfilling thing I've ever done. Ever. I'm including writing my own albums, climbing to the top of Mount Fuji, and the depths of the Grand Canyon. Graduating college pales in comparison. The only thing I can think of that makes me happier than my time there is my wife, and, occasionally, my car.

3. I would finish the year, given the chance. But that's not in my power.

4. I have asked a lot of people who ought to know, and all of them agree that the circumstances surrounding this are groundless.

Labels: BASIS, teaching

... but I certainly feel a little dead.

The reasons and circumstances of why I am not at BASIS will be detailed in full, but not yet. There is no ending to this story, yet, but I expect one within a few weeks.

Labels: BASIS, teaching

So I've been found by my students at BASIS school in Tucson on MySpace. This is a good thing - I like my kids.

Therefore, all of you - send me a message or friend request and I'll see you on here.

I promise not to peddle my music on you .. much.

Labels: BASIS, MySpace, school

I've been a bit stressed about something lately, and I brought it up: what's the other Art teacher position that they've been thinking about (i.e., who's that skank who said, "oh, I might be working as the Art teacher next year" - no, that's not what I said but what I thought)? And this person said that with myself and another teacher in the lunch room and the other teacher said that I looked like someone just walked over my grave.

You can't blame me for gettin' my hair up about it: this is my first stable job with any benefits, I like my job, and I make three times my previous high rate of income.

Turns out that they'll just have two teachers - and since she has 17 years' experience in this field and at this grade level, she'll be top of the program, which is fine with me as long as I'm employed full-time doing what I like to do: teach.

Also seems that there may be a Digital Art class next year that I would be teaching, if they can get the hardware (read: computers) for it.

Finally, I'm designing a house - actually it's not that simple, let me back up.

I assigned every one of my students (~200) the same thing: construct a cool house on an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper, so that it will hang sideways along with everyone elses' houses, and the more creative the better. I've had a pretty dizzying variety - shacks, caves, UFO's, mushrooms, etc., etc..

But my 8th graders have been so wonderful lately that they need little to no instruction - leaving me a bit bored, or cleaning, or grading. So I'm using that time to make a house of my own, in my own assignment. Of course, I built a sort of 'dream home' for Rachel and myself (we have conversations about this kinda thing from time to time).

Of course there's a risk in this: I need to prove to my kids that I'm really good - that I'm worth listening to as a teacher. So hopefully this doesn't blow up in my face. I doubt it, though. I'm enjoying myself genuinely and my artwork has universally been great when I do and put time into it.

EDIT: It's kinda sad looking back on this.

Currently reading : The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives By Neil Gaiman

Labels: apartments, BASIS, house, school, teaching, work

I decided recently that I'm still a pretty big slacker. So I'm trying an experiment. I'm letting myself slack to an extent, but I'm limiting my options to "acceptable" ways of slacking. I've decided that all of these things are ways I can allow my self to slack off:

• Post a MySpace blog.
• Play guitar and work on Ignition (my new album).
• Dream up new Art class assignments.
• Consider and note new ideas for my car.
• Update my homepage.

I'm hoping that by doing this, I'll either stop slacking or at least, have a good blog, finished album, an interesting Art class, an awesome car, and a cool homepage by the time I learn not to slack.

To clean the apartment to help prepare to move; I've already fixed a toilet and am about 7/8ths of the way through re-organizing and going through all of our files (W2's, reciepts, titles, etc.).

This also has other, cooler things I can do with a week of time on my hands. I inherited a pile of about 300 CD's from Maloney's when they went with an all-Mp3 based system. A lot of them are crap, and a lot of them are scratched, but I figure this is as good as any an opportunity to add to my Mp3 collection.

I can attempt to give Rachel a functioning computer (again). I even have a legit copy of XP to use now, too, so that'll save some headache.

And to plan for the rest of the semester at school. I really jumped into the semester but had a lot of problems with organization. Now that I'm more or less caught up with that part (heh, though I still have a huge pile o' grading to do yet), I can start planning lessons a bit better, maybe through the whole year (I hope).

Currently reading : Silverlock By John Myers Myers

Labels: BASIS, blog, cars, Ignition, Maloney's, mp3, MySpace, school, taxes, teaching

The last post was put up around midnight on Tuesday, January 31st. The previous day, Monday, started out looking pretty bleak. I had 2 days left in the month, lots of bills and basically no money.

A few weeks previous, I had become a member of the Maloney's Rejects. The week before that, Rachel and I had both been sick with a fever for a week (being absent for a week contributed strongly to the Reject thing, to top it off). So we had missed something like 2/3rds of our income for the month, and didn't even have the nice buffer we expected out of what turned out to be a placid New Year's Night at Maloney's. I will unleash the bile I have stored up about that at another time.

I got so desperate to find employment, I was going to be a DJ at TD's (a strip club). I applied for Unemployment and Food Stamps.

But let's back up even more. A few days before even this, I found myself tutoring a grade-school kid about the physical properties of light (and Bernoulli's Principle also and how it powers flight). I decided I ought to look for a job tutoring at a Charter school (which doesn't require a teaching degree)... and promptly did not do that at all. At least not until the Monday that started our story.

That Monday, I started calling all of the Charter schools in Tucson, in alphabetical order, and trying to find a job tutoring. One did decide to give me an interview the next day - BASIS [sic.] Tucson.

So I showed up at BASIS Tucson, and was shooed in to talk to Olga Block, the director. Olga was from Eastern Europe, shrewd, and to the point. We talked about what educational experience I had - lots of individual tutoring in Okinawa, basically - and talked for about 20 minutes. She then told me that she didn't need me in Tucson, or for that matter to teach any of the subjects I had listed. She wanted me up in Scottsdale to teach kids there Art. She wanted me there as soon as possible, and sent me to check out the Art class in that school.

During the meeting, I got a phone call from the Unemployment Office, who wanted to interview me to verify eligibility. Obviously, I never answered.

I arranged to borrow AZ and Tasha's car (Rachel's being needed to get her to work and mine was still in the shop) and stay with my Grandfather-In-Law, Howard. He and his wife are ridicuously kind people - they are the same ones that put together that truck of Rachel's and gave it to us.

I was to check out BASIS on Thursday, and do a demo lesson on Friday. This of course is an insanely tiny amount of time to put together a lesson, but I did it. Turns out, though, that the regular teachers were the ones teaching the Art classes.

Why?

Well ... the short version goes something like this. Back in August, Mrs. Bae was a fine Art teacher who got pregnant and took her maternity leave. She had a few subs while she was gone, naturally. Then in October she came back ... and left just two weeks later when her husband was promoted and moved to L.A.. Then they got another teacher or two. The most recent one tripped on a backpack and smashed her head into a chair, suffering severe head trauma and bleeding all over the place to the horror of her class. Naturally, she wasn't going to teach for awhile and in the meantime the other teachers had taken turns on their breaks substituting.

Howard and Anita (the grandparents in law) live in Peoria, and with rush-hour traffic I needed a full hour and a half and almost fifty miles of driving to get to work. This is not fun.

I arrived on time on Thursday, though, and when I got there, there really wasn't an Art class to observe (what with the teachers not doing Art) - so I started teaching. I had to improvise 4 Art lessons with kids I'd never met in a situation I'd never been in. It was stressful but fun in a mad way and I made it through Thursday pretty well. That night, I had the "let's talk about God and politics" conversation with Howard and despite my comparatively wishy-washy stances on Christianity (I am Catholic, but not anywhere nearly as religious as he is as a Protestant), it went perfectly well.

On Friday, I improvised several lessons and ... totally had the worst time with the one I had actually planned. Rather ironic, really, that the bosses (being Olga and the Director) saw my worst lesson.

But they hired me anyway. Almost on a lark, and because so many had just ejected due to burnout. I think they could tell that I was ridiculously enthusiastic and not so subject to just bailing out on them.

That night I drove down to Tucson quite elated, and came back up to Prescott to buy AZ & Tasha's new car (a '63 VW), and say hello to the in-laws who live there. The next Tuesday was my first day back, though I had to drive Rachel's truck all the time. Since then, I've been staying with my Mom who lives in a much more central location in Phoenix and my transit time went from and hour and a half to about 30 minutes.

And of course now I have more things to talk about: the school, the kids, and so on but that will undoubtedly take up the next several entries...

Currently reading : The Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Dealing with Dragons / Searching for Dragons / Calling on Dragons / Talking to Dragons By Patricia C. Wrede

Labels: art, BASIS, debt, DJ, in-laws, Maloney's, money, school, Scottsdale, teaching

Labels: BASIS, jobs, money, school