Shoop

The funny thing about summer school is the fact that there is this almost palpable apathy that runs through everything that happens. The students don't want to be there. The teachers don't want to be there. The school administrators don't want to be there.

I imagine the only people who are ever truly happy about summer school is the parents who don't have to have their kids sitting around at home all day.

All in all, it's not a bad gig. It starts at 8:00 and, for the unlucky few of us who are teaching four full periods, ends at 1:00. Some of the more seasoned teachers wisely only teach two periods. If it wasn't for the fact that I so desperately need the money, I probably would have done the same thing.

At any rate, I am currently teaching remedial math to incoming sixth-graders. These are all kids who were born AFTER I graduated from high school and are much younger than the students I would prefer to be teaching. Seventh grade is about as low as I can handle...incoming sixth graders need their hands held for just about everything. They're all pretty good kids, so far, though. And it's not too bad- it beats sitting around this crappy apartment all day.

As I said, I'm teaching four classes- two periods of remedial math, and two periods of a class called Algebra Skills. The former class basically covers fifth grade math. This past week, we have been working with adding and subtracting numbers in columns. Sounds simple enough, but you'd be surprised how difficult it can be to get kids to line their columns up properly. Patiently, I must remind them again and again that they cannot add numbers in the hundreds column to numbers in the tens column. They actually have no problem doing the addition itself...they just get the wrong result because their columns are not lined up. Is it really that hard to do?!?

Next week, we'll be doing some more work with that, then moving on to adding and subtracting fractions. It'll be interesting to see how they do with that.

The other two periods (Algebra Skills) is not at all what I thought it would be. I was under the impression that the students taking it would have at least completed Pre-Algebra. Turns out, that is not the case. Most of those enrolled are sixth-graders, whose only exposure to Algebra has been the limited material they learn in the fifth grade, as well as whatever their parents have told them.

Anyway, last weekend I was away in Las Vegas with my old college roommates because one of our own was graduating from the Air Force Weapons School at Nellis (apparently, it's the Top Gun of the Air Force). Only 152 people have ever graduated from the course that he completed, so it was pretty impressive. We got to tour the weapons school on Saturday and, on Sunday night, the graduation ceremony was held at the Flamingo (where we were staying). The keynote speaker for the ceremony was General John Jumper, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, so that was pretty cool. The dinner was also quite good.

On Saturday of that weekend, I slipped away for a little bit to visit with Rick and Jessica Baldwin, and her family. Her sister, Melinda, had just come back from South Korea, so there was a small to-do at their parents' house. I got to see quite a few people I hadn't seen in years, including Rick's younger brother, Robert, whom I had not seen since I helped him move to Las Vegas in 1998.

This weekend was not as exciting. Friday night was uneventful...cabin fever caused me to slip out to a Barnes & Noble for a few hours, where I browsed through several books and ended up purchasing Wonder Boys, by Michael Chabon (suffice it to say, I purchased one WITHOUT Michael Douglas on the cover!), and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. The latter is part of my ongoing quest to read books that I was required to read in school, but didn't. To Kill a Mockingbird had been required reading in my 8th grade English class but I blew it off, along with most of the books that were assigned that year.

I also thumbed through a copy of Atlas Shrugged, almost daring myself to buy it. I resisted however, because I'm fairly certain that I would never actually read it. All of the other books that I have purchased and not read were bought with the best of intentions. I really MEANT to read them...I just never got to it. Or, in some cases, I have made several attempts to get through them, but have been unable to do so. These books include Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey, The Tin Drum, by Gunther Grass, We the Living, by Ayn Rand, and Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning.

I still fully intend on reading all of these someday. There's only so many years in a person's life, however...one can't possibly read all the books one wants to.

So, last night I went down to Manhattan Beach to what was supposed to be a party at the home of John Antolos. Out of all the people he invited, however, only three showed up. (This is similar, in many respects, to my failed birthday party earlier this year. Surely it is not a coincidence that many of the same people who failed to come to my party were also the same people who failed to come to his.) Those of us who were there, however, made the best of it, and went down to a little bar filled with so many people that it was surely violating fire codes.

While there, I met this guy, who played one of the terrorists on the most recent season of 24. Naturally, I was surprised to see him alive. The last time I'd seen him, he had blown himself up along with his pickup truck in an effort to avoid being captured by Jack Bauer. He was alive and well in real life, however. And, as near as I can figure, he is not really a terrorist.