Ready to Roll

OK, only 3 more days will spring break. Man, I've been counting down the days for a little while, but not all that seriously. This week comes and for crying out loud, as expected, the kids are (some) worse than normal... some MUCH worse. Yeah, I know, that's what happens the week before spring break, but honestly, TRUST ME, if you saw how some of the kids were behaving today, you'd give me a shoulder massage. Well, not ACTUAL violence, but I felt like some was potentially gonna happen. One kid will be staying home tomorrow for (one) telling another student "why don't you kill yourself". That's screwed up.

The good, however, was that I got the pole vaulters in the air a little bit yesterday. They are sorely missing access to a proper pit, and therefore missing the opportunity to ACTUALLY vault. This is a screwed up situation. I'm waiting to hear back on some used mats and access to the UVM pit over spring break. First meet of the year tomorrow and supposedly the coach at the home school will let us use the pit to practice after the PV event is done. That would be cool... assuming my vaulters remember to bring some poles. Heh!

I got the bike ready a week and a half ago for the spring release and today I finally took it out. Re-riveted the right can first. Believe it or not, the bike started first try with only about a second of turnover... amazing!! I'd take it to work starting tomorrow, but I made an appointment to get a chip in the Civic's windshield fixed, then Thursday I need to pick Karen up fro work... so grrr... looks like Friday will be the first chance to take the bike to work. It better be a fucking nice day out... hehe, but I'm also guessing there will be more heating over the next two days so the ambient temperature might be up in the morning, which would be nice. It's still chilly in the morning.

So, I'm ready to roll - roll on into spring break, roll on over the crossbar, roll onto the streets and roll away from 12 stress inducing sperm byproducts for a week.

Aim for the sky

Wanted to post a quickie I'll need to add to later when I have time... Westborough MA, Patriot Pole Vault Club coaches... young vaulters and eager coaches, together in the windy cold learning about vaulting, coaching vaulting and camaraderie. Well worth a 240 mile (each way) drive.

I think I'm back in the game... now to find some new pole vault mats to make the kit at school legal.

... again, more later.

Oh, and I got some LAAAAAAAME video footage. If I can get anything useful out of it, I'll see about posting it.

Night and day...

So, I teach kids with emotional and behavioral disturbances. The truth is, under most of the hard crusts, most of them are at least good people. Sometimes you just have to carve much deeper to find that good person, but then it's often worth it.

My other side, with respect to being a part of the high school community is that I have been an assistant track coach (I believe I blogged about it before). I am coaching high school kids who are in a sport that loves individual accomplishment and thrives on encouraging each other. Boundaries break and people just get along, even if they have to try a little harder.

So, today was a very long and strange day. Only one more real academic day and a review day are left. The rest is a field trip and finals. So on this next to last real class day one of the kids who has been having a lot of troubles in the last month and a half decided to go the wrong way. If you're an adult, how does it feel when a 14 year old kid says "fuck you" TO YOU? Well, I experience it from time to time at school with these kids, but today, this one student accumulated more "fuck you"s in one day than I have gotten this whole semester. To top it off (actually, since it wasn't the last straw, I can't say it tops it off) he decided it would be funny to fart in the class. He does it often. I'm not sure if he has GI issues or if it really is intentional, but he is never apologetic and never seems to care that he always causes one other student to leave the room angry, another student to no shut up about it - therefore being distracted from doing actual work, and causing me to need to step out of the room. No, he's downright proud of such an accomplishment. The accumulation of all the crap and verbal abuse turned into a suspension for the rest of the academic days and restricted access to time to do his finals. Truth is, two months ago I would have felt very bad. Tonight, I think he's getting better than he deserves. It's still a question if he'll be back in the program next year. While I think he could succeed in our program, I think the cost would include bringing other students down and creating a hostile environment. The benefit of one nowhere near comes close to being more important the benefit of the whole or others.

To contrast is a freshman, about the same age, on the track team. He's an athletic high achiever, but he is still a normal kid. He's respectful and kind to me and even cares about what I think, about his running, but other things. He has his head on straight, even for a sometimes "airheaded" (as another person put it) freshman boy. Sorry, this is short on description... it doesn't need much. It's really that simple.

The connection? The father of the second boy is a guy I graduated high school with. He was an asshole to me a number of times. We didn't hang out. We didn't do the same sports. He wasn't college track, so we didn't even have a single class together. He just found a few reasons within the four year time span to be an ass to me. I never understood it. He was a few steps better than the first boy. I finally got to meet him again tonight and chat about his kid and him. He's changed. He sees what he was at that age and refuses to allow his kids to be that way. He was super positive and completely owned his past - and like me still know how to hold a proper grudge, not against me that is - and was a pleasure to speak with for the nearly 10-15 minutes it must have been. I told him I think his kid is great and he told me I have permission to keep his kid in line if he seems to be going in the wrong direction. I doubt it'll need to happen, but hey, he's a frosh, there's lots of time for things to change or even go wrong. I'm an optimist tough.

I said my good-bye and good luck for the summer to boy #2, wishing him a healthy and active summer, and looking forward to seeing him next year. Boy #1 is currently nowhere near to getting such a positive release statement. Of course me being me, I'll likely change my tune and come next Thursday (I won't be there Friday) I'll give him my best wished for the summer. I suppose that means, in all reality, "I hope you don't get locked up over the summer".

Run fast, plant, bend, pull, twist, push, land

Yay! Today at track practice it was all but cemented that if I'm back next year as an assistant track coach, I'll be the official pole vault coach. This means a TON to me. Spaulding High School hasn't had pole vaulting in years, I believe 7 or 8 in fact. Even then, apparently , since I left in 1990, there hasn't been a really competitive vaulter. I'm not sure of that though, since I did leave behind Steve C., who I thought did pretty well... even hitting or breaking my record (11'6"). Anyway, (Mr) Shawn Woods (the AD and current as well as my old track coach) said there really wasn't much.

I've been saying all along since I started down the path of becoming a teacher... I want to coach track. In that, I also really wanted to coach vaulting. I haven't actually vaulted since the spring of 19992, my only year on the UVM Track & Field team. I stunk. I had to relearn how to vault properly, since I mostly taught myself in high school. I only vaulted in one outdoor meet and I believe 2 indoor meets. I still never bettered my 11'6" record.

Spaulding doesn't have vaulting because of some cockamamie national requirement for a specific set of matts that cost in the area of $4000. At a school without a solid number of vaulters, that was too much money to justify buying them. This means that the current plan is that I take the vaulters to another local high school (about 7 miles away or so). That just sucks. I'm not interested in that kind of hassle. I'll do it if that's the only option though. However, I intend on trying to find the money some how. I'm no fund raiser, but perhaps I can come up with something the kids can do. And yes, there are interested people. Even cooler... a girl runner is the one who is getting this thing jump started. Actually, I was literally about to talk to Shawn about it today when he ended up bringing it up before me. I'll need to get certified, but I believe it's not a big deal.. and I'm going to start tonight looking into coaching information, potential for grants and all that.


To top it off, it's incentive for me to get my ass in shape. There's no friggin way I'm going to coach pole vaulting without getting my butt up there on a pole. So, I need to strengthen my shoulders, lose some weight and pre-load with some kind of exercises so that day one, I can do it as an example. I might get my ballsiness back bit too. I'm sure my wife won't be too happy about it, but she'll be ok. :) I hope we don't have to buy new poles as well... yikes, and worse, if we needed to buy a special pole for me to use... yikes!! Grr.

Anyway, if you know me and you're reading this and you want to donate to the cause, I'm more than happy to take some $$$ off of your hands.

I'll update this entry with a pic of me vaulting in HS when I get it scanned (err, after I find it).