New York: Day 873- Improv Everywhere

June 23, 2017 Nikolas Weiss

So far, in only a week, I already feel like I've utilized my summer freedom to a much higher degree than last year. I've done a whole mess of cooking in the past seven days and I think the people at C-Town and Key Food are probably wondering why I keep coming in every other day to get stuff. I've tucked a few movies under my belt as well, and after reading Rambo: First Blood the book, I rewatched the movie and was generally pleased with the translation. As per the title, this post is all about my evening on Wednesday when I got to participate in an Improv Everywhere event.

I've wanted to do one of these for a while and I'm pretty sure I tried to do one last summer but couldn't make it. If you didn't click on the link above, Improv Everywhere events are where everyone participating listens to the same MP3 track at the same time and perform varies tasks, games, or activities in a public space. It's super fun if there are a lot of people around that aren't in on it and you'll read why in a minute.

My friend Lovey and I met up in Battery Park around 6 and picked up our event prop: a hollow plastic tube we assumed was for banging on things to make noise (and we were right). Over the next hour, hundreds of people showed up, if not thousands, and at 7 the madness began. I will note here that we were tasked with coming with the following items: a ping pong ball, a bandana, a junky item (I brought an old flip phone), and a single dollar bill.

Now, just imagine you are walking around in the park on a beautiful Wednesday evening, minding your own business...and then this happens:

We sat down legs out straight and arms held straight like a mummy according to our birthday, before laying flat on the ground and staring at the sky. Then we got up really quickly and continued walking like nothing happened.
We followed someone who was not participating around the park for a few minutes mimicking their pace and actions. Several dozen of us made a huge line behind an older Hasidic Jewish man who looked intensely confused at the crowd behind him that also turned around when he did.
To apologize to these non-participants for our antics, we had to find someone not wearing headphones and give them our $1. I was first to the guy I gave my dollar to, and he must have made at least $20 over the course of about 30 seconds. There were quite a few smiling if slightly mystified people who suddenly became a few dollars richer.
After walking around for a few more minutes we had to take out our bandana/cloth and put it on the ground with our junky item on it. Several thousand people then spent the next few minutes shouting about why someone should buy their crap and a few people actually sold theirs! I bartered my junky cell for another participant's CD with music videos from 1960-1963. He was a rather odd gentleman, and he assured me the videos were "super weird".
More walking. Everyone froze and held up their music tubes like the Statue of Liberty and stood stock still for several minutes. SO MANY confused people who were just out for a walk and then had to find their way through a maze of crazy people all grinning like idiots.
Near the end, we gathered on a particular lawn area and played a few games with the ping pong balls and our music tubes, such as: linking tubes together and trying to send the ball from one end to the other, banging tubes in groups to make "music", and then having a ping pong war. This was the best part because our tubes were all different colors and Lovey and I were in a group together that gathered on one side of the green. The rest of the people there grouped up on the other side seemingly for a friendlier version of a battle out of Braveheart (with less mooning, anger, and death). Our group started chanting our colors: "Red, orange, teal!" over and over again amongst roaring our clear superiority. Then the battle began. We had to use the music tubes to sling our ping pong balls at the enemy group while screaming ourselves hoarse. Below you can see a video of the end of the event just after the war.

All in all, it was a kick-ass time, and if you get a chance to do something like this I won't say you should, but I will say you fucking need to. This was definitely the highlight of my summer so far.

If I see a full video on YouTube of the event I'll definitely share so you can get a better sense of what this looked like; I couldn't really take any photos during because I didn't want to risk getting my MP3 being offset from the group. But, you can click HERE to view more photos that the event photographer took (can you find the one that I'm in?).

Anyway, it's Friday, so I'm going to chug some coffee and do...whatever I want.

Have fun working today, chumps.

New York: Day 805

June 20, 2017 Nikolas Weiss

Holy crap it's been a long time since I got on here. In fact, its been 729 days since my last post. Cripes. I just reread my last post on here and...holy crap a lot has changed since then; so much as changed that, frankly, I'm not sure where to begin.

Let's keep it simple, shall we?

I moved from Queens to Harlem to cut down on my commute, taught 5th grade ELA last year as a lead teacher and looped up with my kiddos and taught them again in 6th grade this year. I proctored a shit load of practice tests and ran preparation for the New York State Math State Test by myself; no small feat for someone the kids know sucks at math. But, I can kinda math now, which is pretty exciting. Part of that was having to actually take the practice tests the kids were doing and be able to debrief it as if I knew what I was talking about, and part of it was preparing for my certification tests. One of those tests was 5 hours long with 60 full minutes dedicated to math. In a windowless, hot basement testing room at Hunter College. Fun. At least I passed all of them on my first go around. All I have left until I'm certified is to do the EdTPA, which I'm pretty sure was used as a torture method during the Spanish Inquisition.

I also quit my job at Success Academy.

That, to be honest, has been a major contributing factor to why I haven't been on here is because I simple have not had the capacity for any wordsmithing, at all. My life has been work, work, and work, with a side of work. For a while there I was pulling 18 hour days with teaching and graduate school both trying to annihilate me. Sometimes I even slept and occasionally I ate.

The culmination of endless hours of work on top of teaching. Killin' it.

In September I'll be working at another charter school, albeit a smaller one (without a Network mothership, yay!), and my commute will be a 5-minute walk. Hard to beat that, especially in this city. Oh yea, as far as I know I also don't have to wear a shirt and tie. Bonus. Also, I'll get some real creative control with my curriculum and can teach what I want, when I want, and how I want.

Yesterday I also started running again: something I haven't really been actively doing probably since high school. So far, I feel old and slow, but it feels good to be moving again on a daily basis. I am also looking into eating more plant-based foods, so my veggie and vegan chums, send along your favorite recipes for me to try. A few months ago I got to see Jim Jeffries at the Beacon Theater, and that was a fucking riot (be forewarned, he can be crass but that's why I love him). I also had what is basically my only celebrity sighting when I saw Jim Gaffigan on the street in the Lower East Side. He was with his boys and looked just as stressed as the jokes about on stage, haha.

And, finally, I got to go somewhere during Spring Break: something I have never done. I flew to Portugal in April with a bunch of people from my school and boy-howdy that trip was wonderful. If you have not been there I highly, highly recommend that you do. Hit up Lisbon, but spend more time in Porto, you'll be glad you did.

I will make an entire blog post about that trip coming up soon, so keep those peepers peeled for that. For now, I'll leave you with a few photos of my recent(ish) life, and if you haven't seen my write anything in awhile, start yelling at me to start mashing words together.

Until next time, chumps.

Let summer begin!

Some of the team. 6th graaaaade!

Fancy graduate.

Classroom is packed up. Kids are gone.

First day at Success...

and walking to the train on my last day at Success.

New York: Day 141

June 22, 2015 Nikolas Weiss

Despite the fact that it's been so long since my last post, I'm still alive! I haven't really had much time to sit down and be a wordsmith in quite a while and it feels good to be back behind the proverbial wheel. It's been a busy time here in the Big Apple. Where to begin?

Well, I survived the New York state tests but only just; it was brutal slog for the most part. First we had to prepare all of the classrooms by taking down or covering up every poster and then use sticky notes, blue masking tape, and plastic tarps to cover literally every letter and number, nothing could be visible. I was also "fortunate" enough to get slotted to proctor the 6th grade accommodations room for students who get time-and-a-half for each day of the tests. That means each time the rest of the school tested for 90 minutes I was one of 4 other smaller groups that tests for 2 hours and 15 minutes, for 6 days in total over two weeks. That's 810 total minutes of hardcore room pacing, posture fixing, tissue bringing, boredom fighting insanity.

Spring break couldn't come fast enough.

Thankfully we had a week off after the tests concluded and I had a nice little stay-cation in the City. I got out to Coney Island during that lovely week off and finally ate some Nathans and moseyed around on the boardwalk for a while. This was the end of April so it was still too cold to swim but it was still nice to get that sea breeze in my face.

It was nice to come back to school and watch some actual lessons, because really all I'd seen at Harlem West was endless test preparation (6 weeks or so) and it was much more interesting to watch the kids tackle The Tempest, which they absolutely crushed.

At this point, it was pretty tough to keep the kids invested because they could smell the end of the year coming and a lot of the started checking out, but we kept them going as best we could. Our lead Math teacher had to step out during the week a few times for leadership training and I got tapped to fill in for him, much to the mildly-confused delight of the kids.

Students: "But, Mr. Weiss...you told us you don't Math!"

Me: "I don't, so buckle up this is going to get interesting."

I did okay, overall and had a couple great lessons on triangles and other Geometry stuff (not so hard), and was really happy I didn't have to teach anything algebraic (oh god, my brain). Classroom management was really be a struggle with some kids and there were a few classes where I felt like I'd been put through a meat grinder; I think my record was 7 detentions in one class. But hey, that comes with the territory. Onward and upward, and all that. I punched through it and learned some hard lessons and still have some stuff to reflect on. Is that glass-is-half-full enough?

Other news: I'm still living in Queens and really enjoying it. It's cheaper than Manhattan and Brooklyn but it's only 15 minutes from the city and my commute to work is pretty painless despite the horrendous time of day. I also finally got off the air mattress struggle bus and invested in a queen sized Sealy posturepedic and that shit has changed my life. Not worrying about my bed deflating while I sleep has been a big step up. I feel so adult-like.

As for work, apparently leadership at my school has seen potential in my abilities as an assistant teacher and the way I mostly fumbled through the few occasions I was really teaching over the last few months. I had a few meetings with my principal and they want me to come back as an ELA lead teacher in the fall. More money, more responsibility, more stress, less free time. A lot less free time. Then again, I'll be the center of my classroom's culture and be able to have a lot more chances to have an impact. Being honest, I'm rather intimidated of the prospect but there's that weird part of me buried somewhere in my brain that is already relishing the challenge, so we'll have to see how things go in September when school fires up again.

We finished school for the summer last Thursday and already not getting up at 4:30 in the morning has been a welcome change. My first two graduate school classes also finished up and theywent pretty well, I got an A in both of them despite a rocky start. In case I haven't covered this already, I'm in a specialized program through Touro College where (theoretically) I'll have my Master's in Education/Special Education Grade 1-6. It's specialized because Success pays my tuition and it's quite accelerated and should only take 18 months or so to complete. All of my classes are online, which is pretty nice, but it's still a lot of work. About every 9 days I have to write 6 initial posts that answer guided questions about the reading as well as 24 responses to other people's posts (over the course of 5 days), on top of projects and case studies and the like. I will say that it's been rather nice to have a lot more time to put into my posts and readings because during school I was working 12 hour days and then doing 3 hours of studying afterwards and occasionally sleeping more than 5 hours a night. Now, I'm usually on the computer for a few hours a day and my roommate looks surprised when I'm not in my usual spot at the kitchen table. Hooray.

For the summer I don't have many plans besides trying to save a few bucks (already not going so well), spending time outside if I can, and making some time to do all the touristy stuff I couldn't do because I haven't been able to do because I was either too busy or it was too damn cold. I did get a chance to check out a Muay Thai gym just a few blocks from my house and I went through a trial class to try it out. I solidly proved to myself that I was a rubbery sack of garbage and was horrendously sore for three full days.

It wasn't that we beat each other up, there wasn't actually any sparring, but it was just so damn relentless. 60 straight minutes of punishing cardio with endless sit ups, push ups, and drills. It would have been awesome if I my lack of conditioning didn't make me feel like Mr. Potato Head. A few of the guys I met there said they'd trained at other gyms but Sitan was the best place in the city and I'm inclined to agree. Today I had my second class and it was super fun, even though I know my body is going to continue to hate me all week (and all month). One of the trainers has a brother who is fighting in Manhattan on Friday and I think I'll make my way down there and cheer him on. The Lady Banks and her footman The Stimp have recently gone to Thailand and send me photos/video of some real fights they saw and I'm itching to see the real thing.

Anyway, it's about time I finished this post and crawled into bed to enjoy a few more hours of mobility before all the lactic acid I made today pisses off the rest of my body. Keep those peepers peeled for more of my adventures in the coming weeks, I'm thinking about a day trip to Philly or possibly making a pilgrimage to Burlington, VT for the Vermont Brewer's Festival.

See you next time, chumps.

New York: Day 64

June 18, 2015 Nikolas Weiss

I've been able to update a few people as to how things are going for me down here in The Big Apple, but Eric tells me there's a lot of people asking him "How's your brother like it?" or "What's his school like?" or "Has he been devoured by subway rats yet?"

If you remember, or saw on my blog, the last time I put up a post was 63 days ago. That's a little over two months. You could then infer that I'm either a lazy douche-balloon, or I've just been that busy that I haven't had the time to sit down and get in some time as a word-smith.

I now understand the phrase "in a New York minute."

I've done and been through so much in the last few weeks I don't think I could put everything down here but I'll try to focus on the big stuff.

As I've told a few people, living in New York has been the easy part so far. Sure there are a lot of weirdos and people that dance on the subway trying to get a few bucks and I frequently play the game Crazy? Or using Bluetooth?, but overall NYC has been pretty good to me. Most people just want to be left alone and I've yet to be hassled. Unless you count train delays, because then I get hassled all the time (along with the rest of the city).

Queens in particular has been pretty great as it's slightly slower-paced than Manhattan and my apartment super quiet at night. However since my air mattress decided it would be fun to slowly start deflating over night, I've been sleeping on the couch for the last two weeks which has not been the best. Yea yea, I know. BUY A MATTRESS. I will! But my roommate agreement is only good until the end of May and the less stuff I have to lug around if I have to move, the better.

New York has a surprising shortage of tree stumps.

Work is by far the largest stressor in my life. Even after 6 years of kicking ass and taking names at Hess there are still moments where I feel adrift at sea with no oar and having just lost my volleyball-best-friend.

It's tough. And I don't mean that in a Dangerous Minds kind of way, most of the kids at school are great but this is a super difficult time to get into the game as the school year is more than half over at this point and we're right in the middle of preparation for the state exams.

My typical days starts at 4:30 when my alarm goes off and I slide out of bed and into the shower. By 5:30 I'm dressed (shirt and tie required) and out the door for the bus. I'm usually in Harlem just past 6am and in the school building at 6:30. Class starts at 8 and I'm usually home at 7pm. 12-13 hour days are normal, and with prep for the following day (and grad school on the near horizon) I'm lucky to get 5-6 hours of sleep a night.

One of the biggest differences and things I've really struggled with is being a total hard-ass with the kids at school. My students in Taiwan knew that I could bring the hammer down if I needed to, but this is a totally different kind of class management beast. The standards at this school are super, super high and basically I get my salary to see that the kids are held to them. There is no speaking in the hallways, not following directions the first time usually brings either a silent lunch or a detention, and I'm making parent phone calls daily for a variety of reasons. Oh, there's theres frequently staff meetings at 7am and/or at 5:30pm to plan for the day/week or to debrief.

By Friday I'm pretty beat down, but at least there's weekends in the City. I'll give it to these New Yorkers, they know how to do a proper brunch...

Stay tuned for another update coming soon!

New York: Day 1

February 2, 2015 Nikolas Weiss

Greetings from the Big Apple! Yesterday was the big day and my next adventure of working as an English teacher at a charter school in New York City has begun. The drive down from my dad's place in Massachusetts wasn't too bad, I drove the first leg and my pops did the rest. I'm super glad he was driving when we got into the city because it was pretty wild. Big shout out to Google maps for sending us 10 minutes in the wrong direction through rush hour traffic just to have us make a U-turn and come back.

But, we got here okay and once I got to my new pad (pics below) I unloaded my crap and then ran off to the bar to watch the Superbowl. My contact list in the city was, and is, pretty minimal, but my new roommate's friend was more than happy to have me tag along with him and his lady friend. Astoria Tavern was pretty cool with good beers on tap and I thought the atmosphere was pretty good even though us Pats fans were outnumbered and in enemy territory (everyone cheered like mad when Brady threw those interceptions). Shortly after half-time my new roommate Lauren showed up and we instantly got along really well. She never really follows football, I guess, so I got her on board to root for the Pats. What a game that was! There were probably a dozen of us Patriots fans at the bar and I started walking around shaking hands with every happy-looking stranger I could see once Butler made that pick. Champs again in supremely improbable fashion!

Today I let myself sleep in until about 8 o'clock, which might be early for some of you but for the last month or so I've been rolling out of bed at 5 AM in preparation for my long days at school. After I unpacked my suitcases I walked two blocks to Burger King and satisfied my craving for some Rodeo burgers. Score! Then I went to Key Food and had some first-hand experience in how expensive my groceries will be in New York. I got a pretty good haul for the $100 I threw down, but carrying it six blocks back to my apartment was pretty grueling and I shudder to think what it would have been like if I hadn't brought my duffel bag for the heavy stuff.

After food shopping it was off to Manhattan to find Bed Bath and Beyond and look for a chef knife. I spent the better part of half an hour walking around using a three gallon bucket for a shopping basket before noticing the people with the actual shopping baskets. Not very observant of me. On my way back I slipped and fell on the escalator at Lexington and 59th and those metal steps hurt just as much as you'd think. At least some nice gentleman handed me my subway card after I dropped it ($112 value!) and I didn't have to wait long to get on my train. For you folks reading this in warm(er) places, today was all sorts of yucky outside: rain/sleet/snow all day. That made for some pretty interesting times on the sidewalk, and the N train I took back to Queens from Manhattan was so delayed I got off three stops early and walked home (1.3 miles!). But before I did, the guy next to me was pretty upset about being held up for so long. I guess he really had some place to be because eventually he angrily said, "Fuck it!", and then reached into his bag. Now, I was expecting a few things, perhaps an instrument, a cutting board and an onion, or book maybe. I was definitely not expecting him to bust out a stenograph with a practice book. My odd subway encounters have already begun.

Now I'm roasting a sweet potato and debating going out again to the deli down the street for a six pack of suds. I'd say my first day was a pretty good one and tomorrow, weather depending, I should be able to get out and get some quality time in at some of the museums before picking up a free lamp from an old friend from high school. Big day. One week and counting until I start working on February 9th, and that will be when the real fun starts.

Don't forget to check out the pics I took of my new pad before you go, and feel free to comment and like your way through a few other posts if you feel keen on reading some more. Cheers!