november 27, 2000. Today was an interesting departure from the classroom hustle. We had an in-service today, which is what they used to call a P.D. Day back when I was a wee lass. It's always kind of disappointing when you grow old enough to see beyond the surface of things. For instance, I can't look at a bake sale or a dance without thinking about the hours that someone had to put in to organize what looks like a carefree event. It was sort of like that today. It's not like I thought that teachers had a fabulous time on professional development days, but I thought that there was something motivating and exciting. All we did was argue about which anagrammatic ethic code to adopt. My group's suggestion of Safety Helpful Accountability Respect/Responsibility Excellence was roundly shouted down, so we sulked for an hour. Other than that, there was just a lot of tension about the different duties of staff. Nobody wanted to talk about teaching methods or coherent curricula, everyone wanted to talk about discipline and I felt about as included as you would expect a student teacher to feel. When I had a chance to talk to my supervising teacher, we got all excited about Fifth Business, the novel I'm teaching in December. He says that he can't wait to see what I do with it, because he feels that he teaches it very badly. It's a strange admission on the face of it, but he's an extremely confident teacher, so confident that he can say these things without feeling a loss of face. As for me, I'm going nuts trying to get all of my information together. I want to do so much with this unit, but I have to remember to teach to 17 year olds, not write lectures to university students. This is going to be the hard part. The Boy is off in the woods again this week. I think that I've finally come to the end of my trauma: not only do I not feel like crying, but I actually feel pretty upbeat and motivated. Instead of collapsing on the couch as soon as I got home tonight, I picked up my mail, voted & walked up the hill. It felt very empowering. Go, me. It helps having difficult, worthwhile work to keep me busy. But more than this, the social aspects of being in the school are feeding my need for human contact quite well. These other student teachers aren't my heart's companions, but they're interesting, smart & funny. We have yet to run out of frivolous conversation, despite a 2-hour daily commute. I find that encouraging. Well, I'm off to mark papers. This has been a heck of an interesting day, but I'm tired as hell and I want to go to sleep as soon as possible.