Demo-Schmemo.

Yesterday I found out I made it to the next round: THE DEMO.

I was to prepare a 20 min. lesson on verb agreement (shit pants now), as well as a weekly unit outline where this would fall, and answer five questions.

Last night I spent close to six hours preparing. And why you ask? Let me take this moment to thank the progressive educators who taught me English during the years 1984-1992. They believed that learning to write (including grammar) was best done through whole language.

Mrs. Sikonia, Mrs. Norguauer, Ms. Prince, Ms. Muller, Ms. Allison, Ms. Levy and Mr. Bailey: I am not mad at you; I know you were only following the prevailing principles at the time. Unfortunately, those ideas and my compounding lack of knowledge as it pertains to traditional grammar rules has now circled around to take a huge bite out of my ass. I have found myself stranded in an educational system that regards standard grammar (old skool style, yo!) as a major tenant of it's curriculum.

Lucky, lucky me.

I went in this morning at 9:30 am, and taught my subject-verb agreement lesson to four stone-faced adults (which by the way is so the farthest thing from a true-life classroom setting. I had to believe that they each had the muscles necessary for smiling. Maybe I should have brought in Mimosas to lighten the a.m. mood? A little bubbly for you Mr. Principal??).

I was prepared, I was knowledgeable and I sold it. I was calm, spoke clearly and was the best I could be. And I even managed to get a smirk from the statues when I explained that they would recognize the names in the sentences as belonging to the characters from The Hills. C'mon, we all know we LOVE that show.

It was all over before I knew it; It took just 1/18 of the time it took me to prepare. They said they'll be "moving quickly" on their decision. I expect to hear the good/bad in the next day or so.

Going to have a Bloody Mary now...