Musical Week

This week I've had two very different, very cool musical experiences, one in an Irish pub in midtown and one at The Apollo Theater in Harlem.

O'Neill's

On Sunday night, I met up with my friend Chris for dinner. Chris is a musician, and when we realized that the night was still young after we'd finished eating, his face lit up and he said he knew where to find the best Irish music in town. I didn't know where to find any Irish music, so I deferred to him, and we headed to an Irish pub called O'Neill's that's not too far from where I do coat check.

This is not actually O'Neill's, but you get the idea.

The band was composed of maybe 7 people at the playing fiddles, guitars, flutes, drums, and an instrument that Chris told me is called a concertina (it looks like an accordion). To my surprise, there was no stage; the musicians were just sitting around a table. The bar was absolutely packed, and every second person seemed to be from the emerald isles of Erin. Normally, I can't stand bars with blaring music, but in this case I would have liked a little more volume. It was tough to hear the music unless you were lucky enough to get fairly close. Each member of the band kept putting down one instrument and picking up another, which I thought was pretty impressive. And at one point, a narrow clearing was made in the crowd so that a few of the girls could perform an impromptu traditional Irish dance (think Riverdance) on the spot. It was free and it was great.

Wednesday night, Dave and I at long last went to Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Amateur Night takes place every Wednesday, and we've been saying we were going to go for ages. It's sort of like American Idol, in that the audience is encouraged to boo the performers they don't like off the stage and applaud the ones they do. At the end, all the ones who have survived their performances come out and the audience picks a winner by cheering as loudly as they can for their favorite.

The performances were all pretty incredible. There were singers, dancers, and musicians of all kinds. The winner was a trio of male dancers, two black and one Japanese, who did a really cool robotic/light show/hip-hop medley (it is difficult to describe...). Second place went to a group of about 20 high school kids who played a Rhianna song on steel drums. And third went to a rapper, who was good, but not as good as the spoken-word poet I was pulling for.

We had a great time, although somehow we managed to get seats directly in front of (I swear this is true) 30 guys between the ages of 20 to 22. They were endearingly enthusiastic for the most part, particularly in their commentary about an all-female dance troupe in tights, but there was one kid who thought it was really fun to boo everyone, loudly, and did it just because he could, sometimes before they even began performing. He must have gotten bored of it eventually, because he piped down during the second half. The teacher in me was dying to give him detention.

It never ceases to amaze me how much talent is in this city, and performances like the ones I saw this week make it impossible to forget that fact.

Marathon Training: Status Update

I don't really understand my body. I rarely stretch, loathe drinking water if I can help it, and train sporadically, and I'm making nothing but progress in my marathon training - just goes to show that "Know Thyself" is far better advice than what's often touted in running magazines.

The National Marathon is just under five weeks away. After a strong start in my training, I had to take some time off because of a tendonitis flare-up on the top of my left foot; not wanting it to get worse, I stayed off it for about a week. Then I went to Sundance. Then I went to San Francisco. Then it was raining or snowing or I'd just had a huge lunch or I got up too late or... Somehow, I've allowed myself to be stopped in my tracks by every hurdle and have still been progressing with flying colors. I ran 18 miles, then 20 miles, then 24 miles. The gap between my 20- and 24-mile run was 16 days long, and during that time I didn't run a step (well, maybe a few here and there trying to catch a bus). A 20% increase in distance should have been a next-to-impossible outcome. But that's what happened, and I'm thrilled.

This week I'm going to try to be a bit more proactive. I've got a short hill workout planned for today, and then I'll either go tomorrow or rest up, depending how I feel, before another 24-miler on Thursday. After that, tapering begins, and I'll cut my distances but try to increase the frequency at which I go out for short runs to keep myself in racing condition. During the week before the race I'll do no more than 6 miles at one go, and will lay off completely for the day or two preceding the gun. It's been cold, but I've been dressing well for the weather and have been sort of enjoying the pretty snowbanks and sparse showing of other runners. I've started bringing a Hammer Gel packet along with me, and I usually stop for a minute or two halfway through a long run to swallow one before proceeding; it's amazing what a difference they make, and the apple cinnamon flavor tastes remarkably like apple pie.

Not only is it tasty, the hammer design of the package is a big selling point for me.

Where do I go? Thanks to www.mapmyrun.com (a site that allows you to measure the distance of a route you design yourself, which I highly recommend to runners/walkers everywhere) I've been able to get pretty creative about planning my runs. My GPS watch keeps a more accurate record of my distance and time when I'm actually out. Lately I've been following the Hudson River south to the tip of Manhattan, then coming north along the East River. Thursday I plan to venture into Brooklyn by taking the Manhattan Bridge out there, circling a park, then taking the Brooklyn Bridge back into Manhattan. A change of scenery will be a nice change. To do this distance using my beloved Central Park route, I'd have to circle the park four times. Central Park is never boring, but I need something a bit more motivational.

Generally, I start along the top edge of this map sort of near where the domed building is, then head left (south), past the Statue of Liberty, and around the tip of Manhattan, then along the East and Harlem Rivers (north). I always cut towards the center of the city at some point so I can finish in Central Park, right next to my building.

Wish me luck! I'm really enjoying the process so far and am already thinking about marathon #2. Pass on suggestions if you have them!

Nova: The Legend Continues

When I went to San Francisco for the international teaching conference, my mom drove up from Visalia to have dinner and spend the night with my grandparents so that we could see each other. She brought me some mail that had arrived for me, and with it, the envelope below (sorry for the quality; it's a cell phone picture):

"Bankrupt company Nova Corporation"

To my surprise, proceedings still seem to be in motion for paying back employees who didn't receive their full wages because of Nova's decline. For those that don't know the story, some brief background: I worked for Nova, a language instruction company, in Japan for a year. It was clear as I neared the end of my contract that they were in financial trouble, and about six weeks after I left Japan in September of 2007 they went under. This was a huge deal in Japan because Nova was a colossal company. They were the largest employer of foreign workers in Japan and operated out of over 800 branches across the country (which is even more impressive when you consider how tiny Japan is). Their downfall was a combination of too-rapid expansion and shady business practices, the latter of which horrified the Japanese; people in the Land of the Rising Sun are honest to the core, and they were shocked to hear that Nova's policies about payment and refunds were less than transparent. Interesting, when you consider that in this country we pretty much expect that everyone with whom we do business is trying to skim at least a little off the top. I generally expect to get screwed, and it's the exception if I'm not. Anyway, I was one of the lucky ones who got out before it all happened. I heard horror stories about foreign teachers who'd only just arrived in Japan when Nova closed and had no money for a ticket home because they hadn't earned any paychecks yet. I, on the other hand, didn't get a portion of my final paycheck, but otherwise the whole thing was a mild inconvenience at best.

The Nova usagi (rabbit), our beloved mascot. Why they chose such an odd, unattractive symbol, I'll never know. I heard a rumor that the prominence of his mouth and ears is supposed to represent speaking and listening, but who knows?

The paperwork in the envelope informed me that Nova owed me 22,979 yen!!! Sounds thrilling until you do the math and figure that it's actually somewhere around $275. Bummer. Still, it's money I didn't have, and I'm happy to be claiming it now. I checked a box and mailed the paperwork back today. Based on the speed at which the whole thing is proceeding, I'm going to start looking for the money order in 2013 or so.

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

Having decided to stay in New York for at least another school year, I decided it was time to get my literacy certification (I have the Masters but not the certification to do anything with it yet) and to get a New York teaching license for secondary language arts; I have a license from Tennessee already, but to teach at a public school here I'll need to transfer it. NYCDOE (New York City Department of Education), I have learned, is the largest educational institution in the world. As such, it is absolutely ensconced in red tape, and I've had to begin unwinding it. This is going to be a slow, painful process.

First order of business: take two tests at $149 a pop at a computer testing center downtown; this is for the inter-state transfer of the teaching license I already have. The hardest part about the test I took this morning was keeping my eyes open throughout. I showed some of the practice questions to Manu, a lawyer who has never taught, has no interest in teaching, and whose knowledge of the art of teaching comes from watching a few episodes of "Boston Public" in 2001. He aced them. Frankly, I'd rather take a test for which I had to study, as these questions were so easy it felt like a completely useless formality that I even be required to answer them. There were maybe 3 that required some sort of knowledge about teaching/academia, one of which involved special education law (although three of the four answer choices were so ludicrous that it was pretty easy to identify the correct one), one of which concerned very basic statistics terminology, and one of which essentially asked for the definition of "cognitive development." There was an essay question at the end, and to eat up a few minutes I proofread my answer about six times just because I felt weird walking out with so much time left over.

This morning's exam was the secondary level teaching test. I was allowed 255 minutes, of which, hungover and sleepy, I used only 130 or so, and that was including a bathroom break and a few very brief catnaps. I take the primary level teaching test on Wednesday, which will be the same format, and then there's a literacy test which will count as my area of specialty and will cover the stuff I learned at TC; that one will be for the new certification. I hope and pray that the latter test will require at least some thought on my part. Not that I love taking hard exams, but I don't like the idea of having to call a bunch of moronic people my colleagues because they managed to pass this ridiculously easy test. Once I've passed all three, TC has to "recommend" me for certification, which basically means they vouch for the fact that I went through their program without flunking anything, being convicted of any hate crimes, etc.

At least the testing center was interesting. To ensure that I was who I said I was, they asked for two forms of government-issued photo ID when I walked in. They took my picture and scanned my palms when I entered the lobby of the testing center, then watched me walk down the hall to the testing room where I was compared with the picture they'd just taken and my palms were rescanned to ensure that my vein pattern matched that of the person who'd just come from the lobby. The process was repeated when I went to and came back from the bathroom. (I once proctored an ACT test and had two sets of identical twins in the room. Even though they showed me their driver's licenses, I had no idea which was which, and they very easily could have tested for each other. I guess the palm vein scan thing is designed to prevent that sort of shell game.)

And we wonder why public education is a mess.

ISS IRC in SF

Because I was interested in the prospect of teaching overseas starting in the fall of this year, I applied to and was accepted by a placement company called International Schools Services (ISS). In addition to screening schools and candidates and providing a searchable database for both parties to peruse, ISS, hosts several recruitment fairs (IRC - International Recruitment Conferences) during the fall and spring. Administrators from many of the schools attend to interview and hire candidates in person. I signed up for the conference in San Francisco.

After going to the wrong Hyatt (who knew there were two so close together?) I ended up at the huge, lavish Hyatt Regency, at a table in the candidates' hospitality room trying to make sense of the piles of papers and pamphlets I'd been given. Monday, the first day, consisted of school information sessions and an orientation about how the whole process would work (curiously scheduled for the end of the first day rather than for the beginning). Interview sign-ups were to occur Tuesday morning, and interviews would take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Although I'd done some prior research, I still felt lost. I wasn't even sure which schools would be attending the conference. I was, however, in better shape than some people seemed to be. The girl sitting next to me in the hospitality room hadn't brought a single resume with her. Luckily, ISS had set up computer stations, printers, and a copy machine for everyone to use, along with a collection of Post-It notes, paper clips, and pens. On the other hand, some people had submitted full portfolios filled with god-knows-what to schools and were sitting around at tables writing personalized notes to princepals.

Each candidate and each school had a "mailbox" which was really a file folder in a crate. In mine, I found a welcome letter and a form from the American Creativity Institute (or something) of Kuwait informing me that they'd like to interview me. I checked the thanks-but-no-thanks box and submitted it to them. Over the course of the next 24 hours, I was to receive about 10 other offers for interviews, none of which came from schools I'd contacted (mostly places in the Middle East and South America which, I assumed, were desperate).

I put several introductory notes and resumes into file folders for schools in Lebanon, Turkey, Switzerland, India, and Belgium. Of course the position for the school in Belgium had already been filled, which I discovered five minutes later when I attended their information session, and the positions at the schools in Switzerland didn’t last long either. There seemed to be lots of openings for science and math teachers – consistent with demand in the US – and high school counselors, but there weren't many for English teachers.

Beirut

By the end of the first day, I realized that there were really only one or two schools I was all that interested in, and I discovered on Tuesday morning during interview sign-ups that one of the jobs, a middle school position in Beirut, had been offered to another candidate several days before the conference began and they were awaiting a reply. I interviewed with them anyway, just in case, and with another school in Beirut that I thought might be interesting but turned out to be only so-so.

Many of the other candidates here have brough attitudes very different from mine. They talk about "casting their nets wide" and talk excitedly about the stress of the conference. When I arrived on Tuesday morning to sign up for interviews, which were to start at 8:00, there was already a line about 200 people deep made up of teachers who looked ready to claw their way to their first-choice school's table regardless of who may be maimed/killed along the way. I would be delighted to land a job at this school in Beirut. I'd be equally delighted to end up in New York for another year. I'm not desperate to be hired and haven't cast my net at all; I guess I've dropped a hook more than anything, and I won't be terribly upset if no one bites. It's a nice way to look for employment, I must say.

Lusaka

At 4:00 P.M. on the second day of the conference, here is where I stand: My first choice school, the American Community at Beirut, will contact me for another intervew (the princepal told me he was "very interested in a second conversation") should the teacher they've contacted turn down the job. I should hear from them sometime today or tomorrow morning, as well as from the other school in Beirut that I'm not terribly intrigued by. Another school, in Lusaka, Zambia, may also contact me for an interview. While I would love to be in Africa, I've heard that Lusaka isn't too great, and while I'd love to learn more about it I'm not head over heels for the prospect yet.