hysterical ineffective

we are watching "The Dog Whisperer." a surprisingly large number of people have recommended that i watch it to help me be better with my students, or have talked about other animal training shows or their own personal experiences with animals.

this may seem demeaning to the children, but it isn't about them being poor and Black, it is about some kind of basic instinctive human interaction, something that seems to be shared by other social animals. the rich white kids i've taught in the past were quieter—MUCH quieter, lol—but they didn't listen or obey me either. they didn't FEEL that i was in charge.

lol.. the dog whisperer just said, "You can be graduate from Harvard, that doesn't mean you can walk a dog."

the dog whisperer talks a lot about "calm assertive." i started crying and whined to Loopy about not being able to muster "calm assertive." i thought of the state of screaming insanity that i'm in all day and said "all i seem to come up with is 'hysterical ineffective.'" then i started laughing and decided to blog.

i have tried hard to have that alpha-dog voice. when i tell them to sit down and be quiet, i say it like i mean it now. but i have no way to back it up, ever since they decided i can't communicate with parents. :P

but.... i have to be honest... the people who get the kids to obey, it's not because they threaten to call home—it's because they "claim the space" and establish dominance, in the language of the dog whisperer. the kids just know they have to obey.

hysterical ineffective poster child: a couple of days ago, i had them all line up at the door to go home. they were all messing around and out of control. i was trying to talk with the first two that started hitting each other, when suddenly somehow they all started hitting each other. all of them! i snapped. i flung the classroom door open, and pointing out into the hallway, shouted at the top of my lungs, "GET OUT! GET OUT!!!" i was so loud that another teacher actually came out her door to be sure that everything was ok.

the students, of course, although they registered slight surprise at my actions, quickly decided that this was still business as usual and tumbled out into the hallway in a mob, talking, laughing, and disorderly. *rolling my eyes*

sigh.

goblinbox points out that i sound like i'm saying "please just tell me i can't do it," in the letter toward my old professor. i don't know if i can or not. i want to try again, but i have taken hardly any steps toward job hunting.

in other news, i did find a promising new therapist, whom i'll call dr. g. she is much smarter than the woman i've been seeing (ms. L just for now). there's also some kind of power struggle i get into with therapists, on the level that the dog whisperer talks about... and ms.L isn't reacting well to it. i'm not clear on how it works or what i do, but i can see her getting defensive and digging in her heels in a power-struggly way, feeling like she has to assert herself somehow. that just makes me dig in. it's not working.

in still other news, i have caved to the two-party system. i signed up to phone bank for Obama next weekend. this after talking with a friend who has been living in Jerusalem for seven years, who told me that Obama was the only US elected official who had spent more than a few hours in the West Bank and Gaza—and he spent a week there! To some extent, I don't even care what his exact policy conclusions are—the fact that he was curious about what is really going on, that he wanted to see for himself—that already raises my respect for him a tremendous amount.

well, i'm distracted and half watching tv so this post is boring. more soon...

oh and... 51 days to go. that's less than a pack of cards.