Never mind the homework, here's the Vegan Teacher

Things have been busy and awesome lately. A tonne of friends returned to town last week so between work and music stuff, there was much stoop sitting to be had.

First off, the exciting news about my bike. It’s done! Besides being on the hunt for a new rear fender, it’s up and running perfectly! I woke up saturday vibrating in anticipation to get to work on it. After talking to some people about the specs of the frame, I decided to convert it to fixed gear. That is, a bike with a crank that keeps moving along with the speed and direction of the rear wheel. It’s supposed to be a fun modification to make to a bike and it gives your legs more of a workout. So, in order to do that I needed a new hub. Being that my rear rim was shot anyways, I decided to just pony up for a new real wheel with a flip flop hub already built in. This means that I can ride freewheel on one side or flip the wheel around to ride fixie when desired.

I brought my new parts down to the co-op an hour before it opened and they let me in after I promised not to ask any questions. I got to work on it and thankfully my projected piqued the interest of Bike Yoda, who ended up spending a good 2 hours with me getting the tensions right and making sure everything was safe. Bike Yoda has, no joke, 12 fixed gear bicycles, so he was full of brilliant tips that I wasn’t even considering. At the end of the day, I popped some toe clips on it so the pedals would be less likely to shred my shins up while slowing down on a hill or something.

I also left a brake on for emergency stopping. Then I spent the afternoon booking around the neighbourhood and it was wicked fun!

Anyways, moving on. I saw Rancid the other night. They were opening for some band I could really care less about, and originally hesitated to go until a friend called me up with a pair of good seats for 25 bucks. I told him I was in and we headed down there. The set was tight, comprised mostly of old faves. They played a few new jams but drew heavily on And Out Come the Wolves and Life Won’t Wait. Tim is a character, barely playing his guitar, dragging the mic stand around stage so that the roadie would have something to do between songs. I was stoked.

Lastly, work’s been going well. I just picked up a new student who was apparently given the boot from school for selling drugs. I think I meet with her at the end of the week for our first session. With two weeks left, I’m not sure how much work I’ll be doing with her. One of my other kids is back in class and I received a nice call from her Mom the other night.

I have another student that I’m trying to work with but keeps cancelling on me. It’s a very interesting situation. In an effort to not get into the specifics, this girl may or may not suffer from a medical condition. She has not been to school in 4 months and some people think her mother may be inabling her. I can’t really get a read on the situation and spend more time on the phone with her mom being a social worker than teacher. I’ve had her for 3 weeks and she’s completed next to none of her work as well. This is causing her regular teacher much concern because she’s already been held back a year. Personally, I wouldn’t even reccommend she’s passed in to the next grade as she’s quite behind, but there’s not a lot teachers can do now when it comes to holding kids back. Some will just make their way through the system until they are legally allowed to drop out of school. It’s not a pleasant topic, but it’s reality for some kids who don’t have the support from home to motivate them through their education.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a kid like this either. When I was in my first practicum, I had a Jr. High kid who managed to slip his way through the cracks and could not read. It wasn’t that he had some type of learning disability either, he was fairly capable, but he’d learned how to take advantage of the system. The tragedy I think of the whole thing is that these kids will likely have a rough go of it for the rest of their lives as a result of them not developing any type of work ethic to help them from being worked over by this here society. You can only explain to a student so many times why the funamentals are important for this reason, but in the end if their parents aren’t capable of providing them with support it’s gonna be tough times.

On a brighter note, one of my other students (the one who had a stroke not too long ago) is flying through her math course. She will probably write the final at the end of the month and resume regular classes in the fall for her last year of high school. I’m super stoked on this!