Summer's Almost Gone. I'm sad.

"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
08/20/2018 at 09:52 • Filed to: None

I’m going into my classroom this morning for the first time since June.

DISCUSSION (29)

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 10:17

We had some good times, but they’re gone. The winter’s comin’ on, summer’s almost gone.

The next song on the album more than makes up for the somber tone of that song. I was always a fan of Manzarek’s (electronic) backgrounds in the second verse .

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 10:19

Are you a teacher as well? I don’t remember reading that anywhere if so! I graduated back in 2011 and am still looking for a full time position....interview this afternoon for a 40% term in the fall doing literacy and numeracy support, so fingers crossed! :/

Ash78, voting early and often > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 10:37

Kids, today we’re going to cover anagrams, starting with Mr. Mojo Risin.

Why not palindromes? Because racecar.

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often
08/20/2018 at 10:43

Better than Axl Rose. Much, much better.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 12:08

Hell of a perk of the job. Hope you get a good group of kids this year.

shop-teacher > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 13:00

Day 4 already with kids for me.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn
08/20/2018 at 13:16

We were so into that music. Now, I don’t find as much there there.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
08/20/2018 at 13:18

What subject(s) are you qualified to teach? I teach 8th grade math, though I get stuck with some 7th graders from time to time. I think this will be my 16th year. I did a bunch of other stuff first, like 6 years in the Army, and five or six years with a real job.

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 13:19

It’s definitely a product of its era, and certain states of mind can help with enjoyment. Some of it hasn’t aged terribly well. I still like An American Prayer perhaps best of all. Morrison was absolutely in his element, and the band made some of their best music together, perhaps because JM was dead. Morrison is no Robert Frost, but he did have a knack for stringing together words that sound cool, and that is a talent in itself, sort of like stringing notes together to make music.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
08/20/2018 at 13:22

Yes, it is. I’ll never bee a millionaire, but show me a guy who earns north of a buck-twenty a year — or for that matter, anybody at any salary level — who can spend five weeks driving his family from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back. Three different times. While the kids are young.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > shop-teacher
08/20/2018 at 13:22

Good crop this year?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn
08/20/2018 at 13:39

Yes to all of that, but in retrospect, I think as phenomenons go, perhaps JM was a bit overrated.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 13:40

Making memories! Important stuff. I managed to do half of that trip this summer. =)

ttyymmnn > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 13:40

He wasn’t overrated in 1967. Perhaps he is today.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
08/20/2018 at 13:45

We drove Route 50 from Fernley, Nevada, to western Kansas. They hype Route 50 across Nevada as America’s Lonliest Road, but Route 126 across Eastern Oregon is also pretty lonely.

shop-teacher > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 14:17

Yeah, so far, so good.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 14:28

I’m relatively new - graduated in mid 2011, haven’t had anything permanent yet. Trained for Jr. High / High School but experience tells me I prefer Elementary / Upper Elementary / Lower Jr. High far more. :)

My BEd. is in Social Studies/History and English.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > shop-teacher
08/20/2018 at 16:30

I was just talking about you. I’m in a couple days early setting up my sound system and my networked printers and stuff and I met the new English teacher WHO IS HECK OF COOL and turns out to be the wife of the other shop teacher I know, who I worked with at the high school several years ago. So yeah, I told her about the shop teacher in Indiana that I correspond with all the time and how, frequently, I remember her husband. So small world and my entire hall is full of cool people and I am generally jazzed right now.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
08/20/2018 at 16:34

You should be able to find work, at least in California, you could. Middle school would be the place as you could take on a varied assignment. Professing an interest to design electives and teach things like Leadership or ethnic studies or the like is a plus as well, though HEAPS of work...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 17:44

I’m up here in Nova Scotia, Canada....the Board I’m in just went through with big changes back in March, so a lot of things are backed up, and really up in the air. Positions being cut, changed, etc...there is a substitute shortage here at the moment, so at least I can still get steady days.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
08/20/2018 at 18:18

Subbing is rough duty. I’ve done it a bit, a period at a time, and it can be rough.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 20:40

Yup, but at least it’s semi-reliable work!

shop-teacher > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/20/2018 at 21:41

That’s cool! It’s amazing how small the world can be sometimes.

I’m genuinely amused that you keep thinking I’m in Indiana. :)

I’m in the western suburbs of Chicago. An Illinois boy my whole life.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > shop-teacher
08/21/2018 at 00:12

That’s right because we talked about Glen Ellyn. I’m an airhead about some of my Oppo contacts. Please don’t take it personally. I'm stoked about having a new friend at work. I was in a desert for many years.

shop-teacher > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/21/2018 at 07:09

I take zero offence, I actually laughed when I read Indiana. We all have those things we can’t get straight in our head for some reason. I have to ask my students how to spell the word height every time I write it on the board. Which, as a shop/ drafting teacher, is quite frequently. Height looks wrong to me ... But so does hieght ... It just won’t stick in my head.

That’s fantastic that you’ve got a friend at school now. School can be weirdly lonely when you don’t have any adults to talk to during the day. At my last school, the shop was in the basement. I could go weeks without speaking to an adult, if I didn't seek out adult contact.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > shop-teacher
08/21/2018 at 10:03

I had half a dozen students last year whose names I never sorted out. All year long. And this year? I can only remember a fistful of names of last year’s kids.

shop-teacher > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/21/2018 at 10:13

I don’t even try to remember their names. With the way my classes rotate in and out, I have hundreds of students every year. I’ve had over 500 a year for the last 6 years. Before that I had over 700 a year at a different school for three years . This year will be less, but still somewhere around 400 students. I think in the last decade in this district, I’ve had something like 3500+ discrete individual students. I had a whole conversation with a former student this summer ... not a clue who he was. Nice kid though.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > shop-teacher
08/21/2018 at 10:25

“Remind me of your name? There are hundreds of you and only one of me,” is what I usually say. Are you teaching at a middle school? Something I’ve really become aware of lately is how keenly they observe me. And how good they are about finding inconsistency. To which I will reply, “You’re right: it is my fault. But it’s not my problem.”

shop-teacher > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
08/21/2018 at 10:48

I usually say more or less the same thing. I’m honestly not sure why I didn’t that time . I met another one last week who is now working at a tire shop across the street from the gas station I often stop into on the way to school, and I did ask him . It threw me off for a second, because he has the same first name as I do, and my first name was uncommon when I was a kid (not so much anymore.)

T his is my 10th year in middle school now. Yeah, they are very sharp observers. I like that line, I may steal it.