A Surplus of Time

Well, summer school ended on Tuesday and, since that time, I have slipped into full vacation mode. I can spend as much time as I want doing whatever I want without having to worry about lesson plans or grading something or responding to e-mails or anything like that.

It's kind of boring.

No, no. Actually, it's been good. I have taken care of a few things that I have been putting off because of being busy with work. My vehicle registration is due this Saturday, so I had to get a smog check on my car and send in the $99 registration fee. For those of you who don't live in California, we pay a lot for vehicle taxes. It is somehow related to the current blue book value of your car, and, of course, decreases each year.

I finally finished reading the book What is the What by Dave Eggers, which I started back in November. (This past school year was just so busy and filled with all kinds of extra crap, that I barely had time for anything other than work.) The book tells the true story of Valentino Achak Deng, a man who fled his village in Southern Sudan at a very young age. His village was all but destroyed by the Sudanese government, and he walked, along with hundreds of other children, to Ethiopia and then to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived for nearly ten years before moving to the United States in 2001. (There were no spoilers there, really...so you can still read the book.)

So, the reason it took me so long to read the book is because of a little program called BTSA. It is a mandatory state program required of all new teachers. The intent was originally to help guide new teachers and provide them with support during their first two years. Unfortunately, like anything the state gets its hands in, BTSA has become little more than a bureaucratic mess. With mounds and mounds of paperwork and approximately 5 hours worth of meetings EVERY DAMN WEEK, it is now a dreaded living nightmare that detracts from the time one should be devoting to grading and preparing and otherwise DOING ONE'S JOB!

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, it was reported that the number one reason teachers leave the profession is "bureaucratic interference"- which describes BTSA perfectly. I made it through the program and am now looking forward to actually being able to do my job...but the program that was designed to support teachers and help them through the first few years has had the opposite effect, causing many people to leave rather than put up with it.

Suffice it to say, all of us "Year 2" people are now glad to be done with it and have our credentials cleared. But getting through it was hell (we routinely refer to the program as "ShitSA", thereby showing the powers that be how we feel about their stupid bureaucracy.)

Well, that's all for now. I should get to bed as I've got a full day of doing absolutely nothing tomorrow.