9-4-01 Tu 10:35 PM

Today was the first fucking day of the school year. I suppose I could try to decide to have a better attitude, but I don’t. I typed fifteen minutes at school. Only fifteen kids showed up. One of them’s blind as a Louisville Slugger. I could go for a smoke. I’m watching remote controlled robots destroy each other on TV. It’s so late already. I needed to work on my mentor application, but it’s too late now. Ugh. We’re starting a new math program, a new reading program, and we’ve got al new administrators. All five of them are black women. No big, but no five white men could hold all five leadership positions at a school without a clamor for diversity. Overcompensation holds can be just as inequitable as the injustice it seeks to replace. Good luck to them all. I barely got through half of what I was supposed to do for the new reading program and none of the math. The Open Court reading coach same in and advised me to rearrange my desks so that the children were all facing the letters on the wall above the chalkboard (instead of a few that require a slight turn of the head, as I had them), and she sent me to observe some other classrooms to see how they had arranged their desks. So, I took apart the table groupings that the brain trusts had insisted on in years past and turned them so they were all facing forward. Okay? I got home about three thirty. They baby was asleep. I read the newspaper. Had to be at a meeting for LACAS at four thirty. They had sandwiches. There were forth minutes between the end of the meeting and the beginning of class, so I rode my bike down to Rite Aid and picked up the pictures from the developer and got an anniversary card for my dad and stepmom and some crap to use for prizes at school. I was all discombobulated once class had started. My Spanish had deserted me, and I felt like I had never taught before. I was nervous and didn’t know what I was doing. Ugh. It was torture. It ended unmercifully three hours later. Martin gave me a bag of loaves of different breads from the bakery where he works. My dad was on the phone with Rochelle when I got home. I doubt I’ll be able to get up early enough to do that mentor application before school tomorrow. Whatever. I never saw the baby awake today. I owe Pablo, Getoff, and Gil phone calls. I’ll read some more Michener after this, I guess. Got to get a third person page done tomorrow. Write Jim out of jail. I’m sick of the Jim world view.