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Given that I’m no longer teaching anymore, but I have quite a few things I’d like to be blogging about, I’ve started a personal blog. I don’t really feel like people who come to this website looking for insights into Teach for America want to read about my exploits when exercising or walking my dachshund.

But don’t worry, Ms. Bennett fans. I’m still here and I’ll post education-related tidbits when I feel they’re relevant. You can’t get rid of me that easily, Teach For Us.

Here we are:
advanced: 63%
proficient: 27%
basic: 9%
below basic: 1%
far below basic: 0%

For those of you keeping track at home, that’s right, 90% of my students were proficient or advanced. That means about 8 kids didn’t get to proficient. Pretty darn good, I think.

Honestly, I nearly had a heart attack when I read those numbers. Here I am, faced with unequivocal evidence that I was a good teacher, and I’m walking away from the classroom. Initiate existential crisis.

Sure, I was miserable every single day last year, but look at how I helped the children! Shouldn’t I be sacrificing my own happiness for this greater cause?

Answer: absolutely not. The only reason I was even able to make it through the year without going completely crazy was because I knew it would all end soon. Going back and doing it again this year would have killed my soul, not to mention my marriage.

So, instead, I can walk away knowing I did an excellent job and that my students are prepared for the future. I suppose what I really should do is take my knowledge and use it to help other teachers, so that they might better teach their own students. I am doing this on some level with my job with TFA, and for now that’s enough to keep me satisfied. It is refreshing to do a job that is at once challenging yet gratifying, while having people be genuinely thankful for my work. That didn’t happen while I was teaching. Instead, it was challenging, but all I kept hearing was that my hard work wasn’t good enough. Well, now I know that it was good enough, and I’m going to use my talents for something even greater.

Me: Do you perceive me as a happy person?
Scott: Yes, most of the time, why?
Me: Just thinking about how I come across to others.
Scott: Do you perceive yourself as happy?
Me: Most of the time. Except when I’m not, and then I’m REALLY not. I guess I just feel my emotions pretty intensely, don’t I?
Scott: Yeah, but that’s not a bad thing. That’s just how you are.

I suppose it is how I am. I suppose that’s why, after working with new corps members at Round Zero, I had a huge existential crisis and now I’ve determined that I can’t possibly give TFA up. Plus, it’s awesome to work with new corps members because it gives me a chance to talk about what I did well without having to kill myself doing it.

In completely unrelated news, I absolutely LOVE this video because it really shows what life is like where I’m from!

Colorado Girls

Settling back into my life has been surprisingly difficult. We’ve been back from our honeymoon for two and a half weeks, and I’ve spent the entire time reorganizing our apartment. Since we weren’t moving, I wanted our space to feel different, so I cleaned out cupboards, cabinets, and closets, and gathered together- are you ready?- 6 boxes of stuff and 7 boxes of books to get rid of. It is satisfying now that it’s done, but it was shocking to me just how long that took. From now on I’m doing spring cleaning every year instead of every 3 years.

I’ve also found myself feeling a little bit bored. Graduate school doesn’t start until the end of this month, while if I were teaching I would have started training on Monday. I don’t miss the stress of teaching, but I do miss having a regular schedule. Thankfully, I’m also working part-time for Teach for America as a Content Team leader. This is similar to the position I held last year, with a few structural changes. I am so looking forward to meeting the 2010 corps members and working with such amazing people!

This week is the Fall Kick-Off for the 2010 corps. On Saturday we have our first session with our Content Team, but on Thursday I’m also helping out the Program Team with part of their session. Last week I drove up to the TFA office in San Francisco for a training on the session we’ll be leading. Being in that room with such talented people really helped remind me why I joined TFA in the first place. We are all passionate about equality in public education and we’re willing to work hard to change it. I feel satisfied knowing that just because teaching isn’t what I’m meant to do, I can still be very connected to the mission of Teach for America and work to help people who are in the classroom meet their goals with their students. Not everyone is meant to be a teacher, and that’s ok, but everyone can work in some way to level the educational playing field.

And also, since I’m not teaching now, I can actually devote a lot of time to this job- the amount of work that it deserves! I can take teachers on excellent school visits and visit them in their rooms after school to help them. Organizing meetings like this is what I really love to do, so I’m ready to get started!

Maybe he’s right. Maybe, given how much I hate my job, and how demanding it is, there’s no way to find extra happiness for the next four weeks. This is an extremely depressing outlook, and I’m trying to bolster my happiness efforts. But I also know that the ending of school tends to be an incredibly busy and stressful time, so I’m just bracing myself for having to go into total survival mode for the next 19 days of school.

In other news, I have decided what I’m doing after teaching. I’ve been accepted into San Jose State University’s graduate school. I will work on a Master’s degree in Recreation, Hospitality, and Tourism Management. I am hoping to become an event planner, perhaps even for education nonprofits. I am really excited about this next stage in my life! I know it’s a complete 180 from teaching, but given how difficult my year has been, I think that’s what I need. I’m ready to spend a couple of years focusing on myself and my marriage, and after that then I can go back to working on other people.

Here’s to new beginnings!

It hasn’t helped that the upstairs neighbors decided the other night to suddenly do a hammering project at 11 pm, or that my allergies have been so bad I can’t breathe through my nose. Despite obsessive nasal rinsing and prescription allergy meds, I just can’t seem to get it under control. I am really looking forward to allergy season being over!

On the home cleaning front, I have taken some of Gretchen Rubin’s advice and adopted two easy principles. The first is the “Less than One Minute” rule, which is, if it will take less than one minute, do it right now! For example- you just ate a granola bar. It will take less than one minute to throw the wrapper away, so you should just do it now. If you don’t then you will have a whole pile of granola bar wrappers lying on the coffee table. The second is the “Tidy Up Before Bed” rule, which is, take 10-15 minutes before getting ready for bed tidying up. I have found that this significantly reduces the amount of cleaning I have to do when I go for a deeper cleaning, and I wake up to a neater apartment.

So, I’d say over all I’ve had a good start to my new project. I haven’t noticed an increase in energy yet, but I can definitely stand to be in my apartment a lot more, and it doesn’t make me completely crazy to come home. The next big step is to reduce clutter- that is, to find homes for things that don’t have them and to clean out my closets. This will be a lot harder than just throwing trash away and tidying up, so wish me luck!

In the book, Gretchen Rubin focuses on one area of her life a month that she would like to improve. This makes sense to me- otherwise it would be impossibly overwhelming. At the end of each month, she would switch to a new resolution, while continuing the ones from the previous month. Theoretically, by the end of her year, she would be doing all of the things on her list. (I haven’t finished reading it yet, so I don’t know if she made it.)

Yesterday at dinner Scott and I talked a lot about what it is that makes me happy, and what I would like to do to become even happier. The following is the list I came up with. I may end up adding to it later on.

My Resolutions:

Give appreciations to those I care about every single day.

I’m starting with the first two for the next four weeks. A common theme for me these days is that I’m tired all the time- partially because my current job is physically demanding but also because I stay up too late reading books or watching TV. Our apartment is usually a disaster, even after we’ve cleaned it up. I tend to not clean things right away because I’m too tired. After we’ve cleaned up, it still looks messy because we have lots of knicknacks and clutter lying around. Some things simply don’t have homes because we don’t have enough storage space.

I’m hoping that going to bed earlier will give me the energy I need to make it to the end of the school year without completely losing my mind. In addition, I hope that cleaning and de-cluttering my apartment will make my home feel like a sanctuary rather than an agent of chaos. I’ll be able to make it through the work day with patience and peace, and I’ll be able to come home to a place I feel calm in.

Considering this is a pretty big lifestyle change for me, I have a long, steep road ahead of me. But I know that the body can’t function without enough sleep, and I know our environment affects our mood. So, I resolutely go to the kitchen to get out the cleaning spray.

I suppose it’s a bit of double work to be using those tools and blogging about my project, but oh well. I think I can use those tools and then come over here and synthesize and reflect on what I’ve done. So, it begins.

One of the first things in the Happiness Project is coming up with a list of personal commandments. I made my list, but I think it was difficult for me to separate commandments from resolutions. I understand that commandments are supposed to be universal while resolutions are things I’d like to do differently. But at this point, all I’m really thinking about are resolutions. So, I’m sure my personal commandments will change, or at least expand during the course of my project, but that’s ok.

My Personal Commandments:

5. Love myself.

I really think number 5 will be the most difficult for me. I certainly am my own worst critic, which definitely contributes to my unhappiness. I’m going to have to give myself permission to make mistakes.

The next step, which goes right along with the Personal Commandments, is writing Secrets of Adulthood. These are the lessons that we’ve learned along the way in our life. I had a lot of fun thinking of these and I’m sure along the way I’ll think of more. I think these contribute to the Happiness Project because they put life in perspective and remind us that while we’re on a big path to enlightenment, we still have to brush our teeth every day.

My Secrets of Adulthood (first list, in no particular order)

Always bring Kleenex.

If it feels right, it probably is. If it feels wrong, it probably is.

So, there you have it. The beginning of my very own Happiness Project. Next time: my resolutions!

After months of soul-searching and thinking about the future, I’ve decided that teaching simply isn’t the profession I’m meant to have. I’ve worked excessively hard over the past three years, and to be honest, I’m exhausted. This isn’t fun. It doesn’t make me happy. To get anywhere you have to work all the time, and that’s no longer a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

So this is it. The end of my stint as a teacher. I’m exploring my options beyond the classroom and as soon as I know what I’m doing, you bet it’ll be here.

I’ve decided I’m going to keep blogging about my life. Maybe it won’t be as interesting as my life as Ms. Bennett, but it’s high time I gave precedence to my life as Chris. I’ve started reading a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I’m only about 25 pages in, but so far it really speaks to me. I think I’m going to start my own happiness project, seeing as how at the moment I am extremely unhappy in this job.

The Bay Area is a glorious place to live, and I’m going to actually start living here! Goodbye, drudgery, hello enlightenment!

That has certainly been true here in the Bay Area for the past week. We’re experiencing that classic Bay Area winter- a few weeks of rain, followed by spring.

Rainy day after rainy day is making everyone nuts. When kids get wet, the extra crazy comes out. I believe that their energy reserves are water activated. If you’ve ever been to a water park in the summer, you know what I’m talking about.

But that figure of speech also applies to the amount of work once has to do, and the work is certainly pouring on me right now. I have taken on more responsibilities at work and now I’m in charge of a math data project. I’m very much enjoying it, but it is causing many more deadlines to occur much more quickly. I’ve been working late every night for the past couple of weeks (at home, but still) and the next round of report cards and conferences are right around the corner. After that we’ll have a big push before the CST.

Sigh. It’s a never-ending carousel ride going at 100 mph. Are all jobs like this?

I’m also getting into the thick of wedding planning. This weekend we are hoping to address and send out our save the date cards, which is no easy task.

And, in the interest of feeling like I have more of a life, I’ve booked several weekend trips this winter, both near and far. I’m booked clear up to the beginning of March. I could cancel some of these things, but then I would just do more work. And one thing I realized before Christmas break was that I could literally spend all of my time just working, eating, and sleeping, and still not get everything checked off my list. So, it’s about priorities. Get the things done that must be done, and then take time for myself. Because ultimately, a sane teacher is an effective teacher.