Teaching with Tim

Jumping into summer, a few quick updates:

1)      My two-year Teach for America commitment is complete (hence the blog title change).  I enter the classroom in September simply as an LAUSD middle school teacher. I’ll have to leave my flame-retardant red-white-and-blue TFA jumpsuit at home. 

2)      As part of a haphazard self-improvement program, it is my goal to read 6,500 pages (about 20 books) before September.  Novels, memoirs, teaching guides, creative writing manuals… all kinds of stuff, from Moby Dick to The Nanny Diaries.  I am using a binder full of reading lists and reading records to track my progress.  Did teaching English do this to me, or have I always been this neurotic and uncool?   

3)      I’m taking an intermediate creative writing class at UCLA this summer.  I hope to have five publishable short stories by September—another goal that seems more ambitious than feasible.

4)      I’m moving out of my current apartment at the end of the month.  It’s interesting to explore L.A. through its available housing—one overpriced one-bedroom after another.  The place I saw yesterday had a ridiculous 2.5-foot wide, 7-foot-long hallway linking the kitchen to the living room, smelled like rotting wood, and rented for $1300/month. 

5)      Aside from moving, reading, and writing, another goal for this summer is to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.  We’ll see how that goes.