tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35792166029293228012024-03-13T07:19:53.516-07:00Teachers Not TeachingThoughts on teaching in tough economic times and who we are in the classroom and out.Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-81297315076719199032018-06-29T11:31:00.003-07:002018-06-29T11:42:18.079-07:00RegretAsking teenagers to write about what they regret will not elicit much depth. It is not, as you might imagine, because they have not lived long enough to have gathered any regrets. They have. However, they do not recognize them yet. When you are young, everything seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Studying hard to gain acceptance to a good college is obviously a wise choice. However, staying up all night and skinny dipping in the lake with your friends while imbibing illegal substances can also be an excellent decision in the mind of a teen.<br />
<br />
After all, they need to make memories. Someday they will be middle-aged, worrying about interest rates, cholesterol levels, and their own irresponsible teens, so now is the time to embrace everything.<br />
<br />
My younger sister once confessed that she and her best friend walked on the not-very-frozen ice of our pool one winter because they wanted to "make a memory." I admonished, "You're lucky you didn't make the memory of your best friend drowning at your slumber party!"<br />
<br />
Naturally, this was not a consideration before they skated across the dangerous ice. Skating on thin ice is the preferred activity of many a teen, and if you honestly recall your own high school years, you were either skating all the time, going for an occasional skate, or wishing you had the nerve for such daring-do. I fall solidly into that final category. I never even bothered to put on skates.<br />
<br />
At forty-eight years old, I see my regrets more clearly than my students or younger self ever could.<br />
Despite rapidly deteriorating eyesight where I need to slide the novel closer and further away until the words swim up clearly, my <i>vision</i> grows ever clearer. I see my goals, relationships, and purpose with growing clarity. Regrets exist far back into my childhood--choices I made that I wish I had not, or rather, choices I did not make that I wish I had.<br />
<br />
In the brief six months when I broke up with my high school boyfriend, I regret inaction. I found myself dancing to Human League's "I'm Only Human" in a dark gymnasium on Homecoming night. My ex-boyfriend was three hours away, and I wish, even now, I had kissed the boy I was dancing with that night. I had a secret crush for years, but with the nervous contemplation that marked too many moments missed, I chose inaction. I chose thinking over feeling. I also chose to return to the aforementioned ex a few months later.<br />
<br />
The missed-kiss regret was tiny, like the shadow of a candle flame on a wall. The return to the boyfriend was a shadow that would hover darkly over twenty-eight years of my life, but I would not even see it that way for quite some time.<br />
<br />
I regret ignoring the meek voice inside my heart that whispered to leave him so many times. She was whispering<br />
<br />
at the panicky moment when he said he would move to Sacramento to be near me.<br />
on the first night at college when he threw up in my friend's dorm room.<br />
on the many nights when he was too drunk or stoned to call me.<br />
on the weekends when I wanted to stay in my own apartment but drove to see him instead.<br />
on that terrible day when a marriage proposal was a fait accompli instead of an ardent declaration of love.<br />
<br />
I regret not kissing the boy on the dance floor my senior year,<br />
or when he made Chinese food for me,<br />
or when we giggled uncontrollably at the atonal contemporary music performance we both found absurd.<br />
<br />
I regret not getting to know another boy who sang these lines from a country song each time he passed me in the halls at St. Mary's College:<br />
<br />
"Amy, whatcha gonna do/ I think I could stay with you/For a while, maybe longer if I do."<br />
<br />
I regret not even knowing if it was friendly banter or actual flirting. Because my romantic default has always been timid inaction, I still do not know the difference.<br />
<br />
These regrets are not fueled by some misguided notion that either boy would have been more than a flirtation, a momentary distraction. There is no alternative timeline of my life with a Disney soundtrack and a romantic panoramic end shot of the couple melting into the perfect kiss. However, my inability to embrace desire over constant caution, or to trust my own voice? These traits became the foundation later for a long, lonely marriage.<br />
<br />
Why did I stay?<br />
I stayed because I did not go.<br />
<br />
I tied myself too young to someone who may not even be psychologically capable of love at all. I bound our two lives together with a cord braided with youth, idealism, and naivete, a cord strengthened by my Catholicism, by my sometimes strangely distant relationships with my family. The commitment was stubbornly blind, so the subsequent compromises just became part of my daily life, so mundane and pervasive I did not recognize them. In those moments, they were necessary sacrifices, resignation, surrendering my sense of self. Now, they are the regrets that fill my memory.<br />
<br />
I accepted I would no longer watch certain television shows because he didn't watch them.<br />
I stopped eating foods he didn't like and started learning to cook the foods he did like.<br />
I avoided cutting my hair because he preferred it long.<br />
I allowed my political beliefs, my essential values, to alter, distort, and eventually change entirely.<br />
I abdicated my voice in too many parenting decisions.<br />
I moved away from the place where I had built a strong career and beautiful friendships because he convinced me it was the right choice.<br />
<br />
It was not. The most painful realization about life-altering regrets is that they are only clear in the rear-view mirror. When a therapist once said to me, "You should lead a support group for survivors of domestic abuse," my stomach lurched. My face flushed, and I wanted to flee the office. I am not a victim of anything. I am a successful, college-educated woman raising five children. I am <i>not</i> the face of domestic abuse; that's some other weak, timid, uneducated woman who is too afraid to stand up for herself.<br />
<br />
Except that is not how it works. Despite all of my advantages, despite my public power and confidence, I began to tiptoe and enable, sublimate and rationalize. Slowly, almost imperceptibly over time, I was lost.<br />
<br />
When I made these choices, I was supremely confident they were the right ones for me, for my marriage, for my growing family. I used a million tiny decisions to pave a permanent path away from everything I wanted, away from the woman I longed to be.<br />
<br />
I regret allowing myself to be defined by someone else.<br />
<br />
This sounds like a trite topic for some talk show where the next segment will address self-care and the importance of date-nights in marriage, but I mean it in the most tangible way possible. I allowed myself to become what he needed me to be, and the transformation was so confident and complete that <i>I </i>believed it all. I became unrecognizable to myself. Those closest to me accepted this new person, even while they mourned the loss of the woman they knew. No one questioned me then. It would not have mattered anyway. Having placed myself in such careful self-delusion, I did not recognize any changes had taken place.<br />
<br />
Self-Delusion and Regret have held hands and skipped through most of my adult life while I waved from somewhere far off, not seeing the damage and life-delayed they created.<br />
<br />
It is only now, at that mythical middle of my life, where, like Dante, I find myself "within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost." Only now am I reclaiming the self I lost, the self I gladly and stupidly gave away. I could be permanently paralyzed by my regret, but I am not. Rediscovery is the most exciting, fulfilling, and loving process I have ever experienced. I am a new creation, and there are memories to be made. I may go buy some skates. <br />
<br />
<br />Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-25542946943701538012018-05-18T11:20:00.002-07:002018-05-18T11:31:42.278-07:00Of Course, Again.May 18, 2018<br />
<br />
Numb. No shock. No more reassuring thought that "it could never happen here."<br />
<br />
Of course it can. Of course it will.<br />
<br />
My child chooses her seat in each class based on how quickly she might be able to exit when the shots begin.<br />
<br />
Our children know we will not listen,<br />
Or legislate<br />
Or leverage political capital to change this.<br />
<br />
Nothing will change.<br />
<br />
You are expendable, Children.<br />
<br />
We will be over here quibbling over the phrase "well-regulated" and the contemporary corollary of a "militia."<br />
<br />
We will wring our hands and unconsciously drool "thoughts and prayers,"<br />
<br />
But we will not stiffen our spines, nor stamp down our feet, nor speak in any kind of emphatic declarative sentences.<br />
<br />
We will perhaps mutter or pontificate, and we will probably mumble and bloviate.<br />
<br />
You are right, Dear Children, not to trust us.<br />
You should be ashamed.<br />
This is not how we raised you.<br />
<br />
But not to worry,<br />
In cities and towns across this nation, there will continue to be fewer and fewer of you<br />
<br />
listening in fear<br />
and casting down your eyes in disappointment and grief<br />
because you no longer have ears to hear nor eyes to see.<br />
<br />
Your bodies, riddled with bullets from weapons of war, have bled into clean, stark, numbers that will quickly be ignored.<br />
<br />
Today's number is 10.<br />
Today's city is in Texas.<br />
<br />
I am numb, and we don't care, Children.<br />
No longer believe us when we say we do.<br />
<br />
Of course you surely stopped believing us quite some time ago.<br />
We did not bother to notice because most of you do not vote in mid-term elections or show up at town hall meetings on a Wednesday in October.<br />
<br />
We are liars in a land of lies<br />
Where thousands of you lie under earth and stone.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m0A8_DY_dTk/Uuqygty_dpI/AAAAAAAAAR4/oQIq8i968ZIFXIiXsb3S2-VPgA0oONkWACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/road%2Bin%2Bafrica.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m0A8_DY_dTk/Uuqygty_dpI/AAAAAAAAAR4/oQIq8i968ZIFXIiXsb3S2-VPgA0oONkWACPcBGAYYCw/s1600/road%2Bin%2Bafrica.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-36874937715166061862015-06-28T16:44:00.000-07:002015-06-29T10:00:40.155-07:00Scrubbing a Roasting Pan: Chaos and Doubt in MotherhoodIt sat beside the kitchen sink for awhile. I'd like the definition of "awhile" to be a respectable two days or even a not-so-respectable-but-understandable four days. However, honesty is all I have, Dear Reader. Therefore I must confess: the roasting pan sat next to the kitchen sink for over two weeks.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
I roasted the turkey quite late on a Wednesday night, but that doesn't excuse the two weekends I let go by before washing it. I started roasting around midnight and took it out of the oven around 3:00 or 3:30 a.m. I then tented it dutifully with foil, turned off my 325 degree oven, and returned to sleeping on the couch until my 5:00 a.m. alarm.<br />
<br />
Roasting a turkey in April may seem strange to you. Even stranger may be buttering the bird and seasoning him with salt, pepper, and various poultry-friendly seasonings after eleven-thirty in the evening. I also shoved some limp celery and half an onion inside. I have no earthly idea if that actually makes any difference, but I heard somewhere it's what one does when roasting a turkey. I didn't baste. The Butterball hotline in late November may encourage basting every half hour, but I had to work in the morning. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O_nPsQhT1Do/VZBKaPrgyaI/AAAAAAAAAlE/lfq-TTjTnVQ/s1600/IMG_0668.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O_nPsQhT1Do/VZBKaPrgyaI/AAAAAAAAAlE/lfq-TTjTnVQ/s1600/IMG_0668.JPG" /></a></div>
Sometimes in my life strange events occur-- roasting a turkey at midnight, for example. Or sharing a twin bed on the floor with a five year old who still pees the bed. He doesn't care that it's <i>my</i> bed. <br />
<br />
My Mondays are probably not "normal" either. Every Monday I race on my lunch hour to pick up my two elementary aged children. Since I am a teacher "lunch hour" should be understood as forty-eight minutes from last bell of fifth period to tardy bell for sixth period. For some reason their school thought it would be a good idea to have Monday minimum days. Not occasional minimum days. Every. Single. Monday. Perhaps they thought it was cute alliteration. Each Monday I write "personal" in the "Reason" column on the green sign out sheet. I want to scrawl "because this school sucks," but that's just displaced frustration. No one needs that. I take them home. I admonish them to start homework, have a snack, lock the doors, and stay inside. Then I return to work until my day ends some time after 3:00 p.m.<br />
<br />
Why don't I just let my daughters finish their day? They could ride the bus to me, and be in my classroom or wandering the halls for that hour and a half every Monday. I do not mind the occasional teenage F bomb they might overhear. I don't even really mind my seven year old seeing gruesome videos on trench rats in WWI or the Allied liberation of Nazi concentration camps. I probably should, but my life is complicated, and I don't have the luxury of being a perfect mom.<br />
<br />
The real reason I go every Monday to pick them up is because after allowing them to come to my campus the first couple of Mondays, I realized in the event of a campus shooter, in the event of any kind of lock down situation at my school, my own children would be there. They might be wandering down to the library or swinging on the railing at the top of the stairs. Perhaps they would happen to be in my room, safely inside while my students and I slip the pin on my door to lock it and crouch down silently away from all doors and windows. But then perhaps not. <br />
<br />
I am just superstitious enough that having the thought about a possible shooter on campus is enough to force me to make the Manic Monday trip every week. A brief aside: that Bangles song is way too cheery to be considered "manic."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SsmVgoXDq2w/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SsmVgoXDq2w?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Susanna Hoffs is having a sex dream at 6:00 a.m. If I'm even sleeping at 6:00 a.m. all hope is lost. "These are the days when you wish your bed was already made"? She stops to make her bed? I haven't made my bed in twelve years. <br />
<br />
Mondays are a hassle, but I can't fall apart. I'm it. I'm mom. When I was in high school people started putting those lame bumper stickers on their cars that said "Mom's Taxi". I found them annoying. I still do not have one, but at least now I can empathize with Moms who want to advertise this particular frustration. <br />
<br />
Technically it's not a taxi because no one pays a fare, and you are expected to know when and where all the drop offs should be before they take place. Soccer practice. Meeting friends at Cool Bean Cafe. Giving their friends rides home. Going to their job twenty minutes over a mountain, down the mountain, and around a lake. School dances (both drop off and pick up). Doctor's appointments. Physical therapy appointments. Rare visits with their Dad at the local counseling center because said visits must be supervised by an adult who doesn't think pot smoking and drinking are acceptable habits for a forty-six year old father of five. <br />
<br />
I have strayed, Dear Reader. Let me return. This is all to explain that my roasting a turkey while the children slept with visions of Honey Nut Cheerios dancing in their heads is not as strange to<i> me</i> as it might be to you. Someone gave us the turkey last Thanksgiving. We do not turn down generous offers of free food in our house. My paycheck often (usually) does not stretch to the end of the month. We live paycheck to almost paycheck, so two free turkeys at Thanksgiving were gratefully accepted. <br />
<br />
We roasted one on the annual Thursday festival of Thanks. The other was put in the freezer. I don't know how long a turkey lasts in the freezer, but as April was ending, and we were in need of protein sources for dinner, I decided to put it in the refrigerator to thaw. The slick, colorful packaging said it should thaw for 3-4 days. I put Thomas in the fridge on Sunday...or it may have been Saturday. I could not remember which was part of the problem. I waited a few days, but my salmonella fears would not allow me to wait another day, so the roasting commenced after the kids were in bed on Wednesday. <br />
<br />
I probably should have skipped that <i>Frontline</i> episode about poultry. Did you see it? Misery loves company, so go look it up at PBS.org and watch. After watching that show and knowing I am writing about turkey, I am impressed if you are still here. You are a less fearful, more rational soul than I am, Dear Reader. Either that or you were just fooled by Will Lyman, who was described by Rolling Stone as "the-world-is-ending-but-please-remain-calm narrator" of the PBS staple. I just hear his voice and know PBS is about to scare the BeJesus out of me. Yet still I watch.<br />
<br />
This time it's chicken. Last time it was ISIS fighters cutting a swath across Iraq and Syria. That one was during my last period American Government class. Luckily it was not a Monday, so my children were safely at school learning about fractions and howler monkeys that day. Unfortunately that also meant I enjoyed a lunch break, so the Caesar chicken salad did not pair well with footage of Sunnis in Hawija mowed down by the government forces of Nouri al-Maliki. Come to think of it, that was probably easier than chicken salad while watching "The Trouble with Chicken," so I guess things could have been worse.<br />
<br />
This post is beginning to resemble too closely the interior monologue I suffer under each day, and you don't need to see that, so I apologize for the digression into PBS television and my lunch habits. Let's get back to the really important things like why my children had Thanksgiving breakfast on an early morning in late April.<br />
<br />
It is a testimony to the said chaos of the life we lead, that my children did not express surprise when they awoke on a school day to the smell of roasted turkey. At least it was a Thursday--a clever homage to Thanksgiving, right? No, I didn't think you would buy that. I already confessed that I was just trying to avoid a turkey who stayed too long in my fridge. <br />
<br />
My thirteen year old vegetarian came out asking "<i>What [insert disgusted teenager pause]</i> is that <i>smell</i>?" Clearly she did not want a slice, but when I explained I was worried it would go bad, her natural tendency to be afraid of germs and bacteria trumped her adamant position that "Meat is Murder." She offered an understanding shrug that seemed to say, "That's legit," and walked away to rummage through our laundry basket of perpetually mismatched socks. This morning sock ritual shames me, but I am somewhat resigned to its continuance. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-875fRxpU4bE/VZBHnJjaxvI/AAAAAAAAAkk/4yPx0rrz1nY/s1600/IMG_0669.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-875fRxpU4bE/VZBHnJjaxvI/AAAAAAAAAkk/4yPx0rrz1nY/s200/IMG_0669.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
Occasionally I solve it by just throwing away said socks, but they always return. This is a story for another time; we were talking turkey.<br />
<br />
My eleven and seven year olds were bewildered but quite happy to accept proffered slices of my poultry bounty once I explained that I was afraid the bird would go bad, and we need food. Joey, the five year old, bounded into the kitchen. I expected he might be the one most confused by the presence of a thirteen pound roasted bird on the stove where muffins or dipping eggs or oatmeal should reside. Instead, he joyfully grabbed a slice of freshly cut turkey from the plate beside the stove declaring "Turkey for Breakfast? Awesome!" It was as if I had planned this unusually delicious breakfast just to amuse him. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5iUjPfY78ek/VZBF9BNApEI/AAAAAAAAAkY/Ja5I1-Rk26I/s1600/Image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5iUjPfY78ek/VZBF9BNApEI/AAAAAAAAAkY/Ja5I1-Rk26I/s320/Image.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
God bless him. He doesn't even know that grown ups sometimes have beds that aren't on the floor. <br />
<br />
Once everyone had sampled some turkey, I threw it back in the fridge, roasting pan and all, because it was now safe from bacteria growth, at least for a few days. Plus, we had to make our usual morning run from home at 7:00 a.m. to the middle school to the day care center back to the elementary school, and finally to the high school. Five children. Four schools. Forty minutes. Priceless. My first period seniors have no idea what a miracle it is that I have a lesson plan every day, nor that on one fine Thursday my yawning was from two hours of sleep and the effects of the turkey's tryptophan.<br />
<br />
Here I must digress again. Does turkey really make you sleepy? I did some research. By research I mean I googled the question: "Does turkey make you sleepy?" and I clicked on the Web MD entry <i>rather </i>than the unreliable but tempting first hit from Wikipedia. It was a stunning act of scholarship, I know. Why has Stanford not called me? It just confirmed what I already knew. It's not the amino acid that makes us sleepy on Thanksgiving; it's the over eating. Do not blame the humble turkey while you're nodding off as the Detroit Lions kick the extra point. Blame the pile of mashed potatoes and stuffing and your inability to choose between pumpkin and mince meat pie. Covering both in a sheet of whipped cream doesn't change the fact that there are two pieces there. You are not tryptophan-tired and you know it. Notice my pronoun usage there? Second person. I am attempting to distance myself from the double pie incident through pronouns. Pathetic, I know.<br />
<br />
Some other single mom probably came home that April Thursday and dutifully cleaned the carcass of all its meat. She then scrubbed the roasting pan and rack and replaced them on the high shelf of the pantry for next fall. Afterward she packaged the extra turkey in freezer bags, dating each one. The bird bones were thrown into a pot with various vegetables and spices to simmer for hours, resulting in a homemade turkey broth for use in countless Pinterest recipes.<br />
<br />
I do not even know how to make turkey stock. The vague reference to "vegetables" and "spices" was not lazy writing; I actually have nothing more specific to offer. Whoever that mom is, she is amazing and probably has thousands of followers for her blog and a book deal in the works that will make the rest of us feel inferior. Well, I don't need your smug treatise on having it all and doing it all with Martha Stewart-like perfection. Enjoy your upcoming Food Network pilot and your perfect turkey stock, Madam; I cannot compete. <br />
<br />
I came home that day and ripped off the breast meat for dinner. Then I severed the wings, thighs, and legs from the carcass trying not to think about the fact that they are actual bird parts. My five year old always likes to discuss exactly which part of the animal he is eating. "So, Mom, is hamburger really a cow? Is it the cow's leg or belly or what?" I think my thirteen year old may be right to live on fruit and scrambled eggs with avocado. Because let's be honest, Meat is Killing, even if it isn't <i>murder</i>. <br />
<br />
Anyway, I set the roasting pan next to the sink. It was really close to where it <i>could</i> be cleaned, but I didn't clean it. I probably chose to read aloud to my children, listen patiently to their delightful school day stories, do a thirty minute Pilates workout, and then grade color coded maps of Hitler's march across Europe. That sounds good. Except I promised honesty earlier, and if for no other reason than structural integrity, I must confess. Again. I probably collapsed on the couch after dinner and fell asleep watching reruns of "Parks and Recreation" on Netflix. <br />
<br />
The roasting pan sat next to the sink. <br />
<br />
<i>Awhile [many days]</i> later, some awful smell developed in the kitchen. In trying to identify the disgusting smell I cleaned out the fridge. I took out the garbage and scrubbed down the can. I mopped the floor. Then I turned and realized that under the dishes piled high next to the sink was the roasting pan. This would be the moment when Joey inserts a dramatic "Bum, bum buuuuummmm!" sound effect. I had found the fowl source of the foul smell. After the kids were in bed I tackled the job. As I stood scrubbing rancid turkey fat from the pan and hoping there wouldn't be a residual rotten smell permanently seared into the metal, I felt like crying. <br />
<br />
What kind of mother am I? Why didn't I just wash the stupid pan the day I roasted the turkey? Then my self-doubt began to have doubts. Why is it solely my responsibility to clean the roasting pan? I have a fifteen and thirteen year old, don't I? Even the eleven year old could have cleaned this pan. They could have at least offered! <br />
<br />
Maybe I need to set up a chore chart again. I've tried them in the past and they never work. I never follow through. Remember, I'm the woman who didn't wash a roasting pan for two weeks. <br />
<br />
I can't afford to offer any allowance. I've done the math. The amount of money I would have to offer to get my children to regularly keep the house clean is a bigger sum than my monthly budget could ever afford. <br />
<br />
I returned to blaming the kids. How many Mother's Days and birthdays in a row do I have to say I only want one thing: "A clean house." I never get it. To be fair, it is a silly request because with five children "a clean house" is a moving target. It happens briefly in different places in the house--almost never all at once--and is quickly replaced by dirty laundry piles, full garbage cans, toothpaste sinks, half-finished bowls of cereal, and mismatched socks. Promptly clean roasting pans come from discipline, routine, and follow through--qualities I do not possess. <br />
<br />
Perhaps I demonstrate those qualities at work. I have them when talking with my kids about important ideas like which boys they shouldn't date and why homework, while tedious, is a necessary evil, and life is filled with these, so just get used to it and finish your math problems. I follow through on Sunday Mass...mostly...unless someone is sick or I don't have enough gas money. Jesus understands, but my students won't, so the gas gets saved for school days. <br />
<br />
Is that okay? I don't always know. A friend of mine who is also a single mom recently shared that she misses having a sounding board, a person with whom you share all decisions. Some decisions are trivial but many--so many--decisions in parenting are profound. Inadequacy and mental bickering inside my head abound. Sometimes inside my head is a game of table tennis where I both condemn and defend every choice I make.<br />
<br />
As I continued to scrub and add powder cleanser with bleach to get out the smell, I realized I will never have a clean house. It is just not in my nature to organize my children into an army of cleaners with matched socks. What would that life look like? I'm fairly certain I wouldn't recognize us, and I suspect I would not like that family very much. I sometimes see photos from friends with big families, and instead of making me feel guilty, it kind of creeps me out. How much time did it take to coordinate your outfits? How do you afford a photographer for your Christmas card every year? How do you remember to send Christmas cards? There's a Duggar-like cultish element to families who are too perfect. I just know they are hiding a filthy roasting pan somewhere in their house. Perhaps the mother is a secret alcoholic, or the father is having an affair. <br />
<br />
I realize these are petty, even cruel, speculations, but it's all I have to stave off my own feelings of inadequacy. I need to be okay with my chaos, my shortcomings, even my weeknight collapses into the couch, but often I am not. I need to own it. Good God, why do you let me utter these phrases, Dear Reader? Someone needs to invent a way for you to reach through the screen and stop me before I write something so Pop-Psychology awful.<br />
<br />
For now it is all I can muster. Have you not been paying attention to the roasting pan story? I suck. <br />
<br />
Some days I feel like an enlightened, relaxed mother who is okay with being imperfect. I know talking with my kids about how ISIS evolved and why under cooked chicken is dangerous are much more important than a clean house. However, the day I was scrubbing that roasting pan, I felt like a failure. Why didn't I thaw and roast the turkey months ago? Why didn't I start roasting it before midnight so I might have had the energy to wash the pan post roast? Why didn't I choose a more lucrative profession, so my paycheck could make it until the end of the month? Why is it that some days I can only muster grilled cheese and Netflix? <br />
<br />
There are countless people who praise me for being a "Supermom" and say "I don't know how you do it, Amy!" It's meant as praise and loving support, as if raising five children alone on a teacher's salary is some kind of miraculous accomplishment no matter how I do it. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4iZGsjaMPXY/VZBKxAtw84I/AAAAAAAAAlM/50aZZvhKraI/s1600/10597087_785406891512323_876570610_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4iZGsjaMPXY/VZBKxAtw84I/AAAAAAAAAlM/50aZZvhKraI/s400/10597087_785406891512323_876570610_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
My children are good students and kind, funny people. I make it to work most days, and I am a solid teacher. This is a victory those people seem to reassure me. This is impressive. However, they didn't smell the rotten turkey. They didn't notice mismatched socks. Those details are reserved for me, and I haven't made peace with it. Sometimes a turkey is just a turkey, but often it represents the lack of control I have over my daily life. It's a symbol, reminding me of all of the moments where I fail my children and myself. The smiling picture at the beach goes on Facebook, and the beautifully roasted turkey goes on Instagram with a filter and a bubbly hashtag. The rotten roasting pan stays with me, and scrubbing it, with all of its accompanying self doubt, is exhausting.Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-69983909911501514762014-07-18T15:46:00.003-07:002014-07-18T18:15:01.466-07:00Find Your Writers Before They Go<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am neither a Jewish New Yorker, nor an African American poet. These truths are simple and irrefutable. Yet through literature all things are possible. One morning last spring a dear friend and colleague texted me: "Maya Angelou died today." I realize that I am now of the age when the living writers I love, those whose words have informed and inspired me, are going to be dying. Someday there will not be a <i>new</i> collection of Billy Collins poems. My children and I agree that we can't even let ourselves think about the day when the Breaking News will say "J.K. Rowling, beloved author of the internationally popular Harry Potter novels..." Yeah, I can't go there. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Two of my favorite writers have already died, so they will be the subject of this blog. The writers we find in life allow us to live as we never have, be people we can never be. Yet another bullet point in the list of reasons why reading is so important in life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Nora Ephron</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4cjzOBrm-E/U6edKshoKeI/AAAAAAAAAf4/aT8kWM7rwr0/s1600/nora-ephron-0081.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4cjzOBrm-E/U6edKshoKeI/AAAAAAAAAf4/aT8kWM7rwr0/s1600/nora-ephron-0081.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I once joked that I wished every movie starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (<a href="http://teachersnotteaching.blogspot.com/2011/05/smores-like-gold-in-my-hand.html" target="_blank">Smores, Like Gold in My Hand</a>) It isn't because of Meg's girl-next-door smile, or that Tom is the Everyman. It's the writing. It's Nora. I love her quick wit and sassiness. I love the clarity of her voice and the clean, simple style of her prose. Ephron reveals truth in compact, simple sentences, a skill she honed as a journalist and one we all would do well to imitate. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She once said her mother advised her to see that the tragic stories of one day could be the comic stories of the next. I have found her mother's wisdom to be true as I attempt to raise five children as a single mother who teaches high school. The night the ants invaded the bathroom on a Tuesday I found myself on my hands and knees, sobbing about the frustration and injustice of my life. I did not see the humor in that moment, nor did I want to write. I just wanted to sleep. I submit the novel version, however, might read something like this:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Tinos; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;">The Night of the Ants</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;">They came in through the bathroom window, not nearly as welcome as if they had been a peppy Beatles song. They came in huge and marching determinedly down the side of the shower, across the floor, around the perimeter, up the door, under the toilet paper, around to the garbage, under the sink, and back again in a seemingly endless circle of life except without the wisecracking meerkat or uplifting pop anthem. </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: x-small;">They were carpenter ants. The terrifying encounter came at 1:45 a.m. when I stumbled into the bathroom and was already busy before I ever opened my eyes. I felt something tickle my feet. I opened my eyes, blinking furiously in horror to adjust to the light and the parade of smelly black ants everywhere I looked. There was no shutting the bathroom door and dealing with it later. It was the only bathroom for six people. It had to be handled. I had to handle it. I dove in--ant spray, Windex, Clorox wipes--whatever I could find to swipe, kill, and destroy. I worked furiously, with fear and loathing, so that any little person to enter the bathroom that night would not be greeted with the same nightmare vision. They returned again and again like some kind of Terminator Ant Model #10,000 from far into the future. Where the hell is John Connor when you really need him?</span></i></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
<div style="font-family: Tinos; font-size: medium; font-style: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nora Ephron comes to mind when I have a moment I think I can't bear. If nothing else, surviving the moment means I might eventually be able to write something decent about it. </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The plays, screenplays, and collections of essays she produced are laugh-out-loud-funny, even as they describe the lowest points of her life. She turned her divorce into the darkly comic, brilliant screenplay <i>Heartburn</i>. In explaining why she did not divorce sooner, even when she knew the marriage was over, she said she had an inordinate capacity for making lemonade. This resonates with me as I look back on my own twenty-eight year relationship that died long before the marriage ever took place. I have made too many pitchers of lemonade in my life. As I grow old, I hope wisdom and humor will be layered into my pain the way they are in Ephron's work. She is a mentor for aging, not necessarily gracefully, but honestly.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Remember that your writers are those you want to quote. My Nora Ephron quote saw me through the darkest days of my divorce. I wish I had read these words at eighteen, but at least I have them now, and so do you, Dear Reader:</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="font-family: Tinos; font-size: small;"> </span> "Above all be the heroine of your life, not the victim." </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Tinos; font-size: medium; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
</div>
<h3 style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eC7ON9_nVe8/U6efMg_gL1I/AAAAAAAAAgE/wGrsTax2G7w/s1600/maya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eC7ON9_nVe8/U6efMg_gL1I/AAAAAAAAAgE/wGrsTax2G7w/s1600/maya.jpg" /></a></div>
</span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maya Angelou</span></span></h3>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I started teaching at Santa Cruz High School in 1996 I was familiar with Maya Angelou's poetry. I had not read any of her autobiographies. For the next six years I taught <i>I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings</i> to class after class of sophomores. The book was core literature for all tenth graders. It only takes a few sentences of Angelou's story to be transported to rural, Depression-era Arkansas and transformed by the way Angelou's poetic prose uncurls off the page and attaches itself to your heart. In her taffeta dress, with high hopes that she will feel like a movie star, her awkward, self-conscious, younger self flees the church and we feel along with her "the unnecessary insult" not of being poor, black and a girl, but being aware of what that means--"the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." Angelou was parent-less, poor, and living in an era long removed from my own. I was a middle class white girl raised in rural California who attended a private Catholic college, but not for the moments her book held me enthralled. </span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One gift of reading great literature is that it provides writing models. A strong writer's voice, so difficult for my students to achieve, is easier to conceptualize when you read the strong voices of great writers. Angelou doesn't sound like Hemingway doesn't sound like Poe doesn't sound like Dickens doesn't sound like you. My students and I could look at Angelou's word choice, the order of her sentences, the music of her language and enjoy a master class in writing. </span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally, as a new teacher Maya Angelou helped me to discuss sexual molestation, life in the segregated south, broken families, the insecurity of coming of age and being a young person who doesn't feel pretty or smart enough. After tackling those issues through her text, what couldn't I teach? If reading Angelou's work filled me with joy, teaching her work filled me with confidence.</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />On the day she died, I hadn't taught Angelou's book for many years. The first thing I did when I arrived in my classroom that day was to take out my well loved, pencil-marked copy. I reread passages I had highlighted and discussed with years of students. I sat at my desk and cried. I will miss her voice. I feel so blessed that she will forever be one of my writers. Perhaps she is one of yours.</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-70815321970634987652014-06-11T11:05:00.001-07:002014-06-11T11:05:57.713-07:00Find Your Writers: William Shakespeare<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">
Insults, Sex Ed, and Life Lessons</span></h4>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zHVmrCk_bsY/U4yVlREXbHI/AAAAAAAAAfc/-4fPVbeNRyM/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zHVmrCk_bsY/U4yVlREXbHI/AAAAAAAAAfc/-4fPVbeNRyM/s1600/images.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I have now entered what may be considered cliche English teacher territory. You were forced to read Shakespeare in school. As a grown up, it's okay to return to him. In fact, at any age Shakespeare's plays and poetry do what all literature should do. They offer us a doorway to ponder essential questions we all ask and attempt to answer. I do not, nor should you, care so much about metaphor or symbolism. While those things may be interesting, they aren't what's most exciting about reading. The silly joy felt at bedtime when your Dad read <i>Green Eggs and Ham. </i>The tummy ache you felt along with the hungry caterpillar as he indulged in junk food that crazy Saturday. All of that wonder and delight are possible in Shakespeare without analyzing text the way pretentious grad students do. I know because I was once one of them. Trust high school English teacher me. Trust love of literature me. Let the high school angst go. Read one of his plays voluntarily. His work is not pretentious or condescending. Shakespeare is entertainment for the masses. He is Netflix or your local movie house. No tuxedo or fruity British accent required. Make yourself some popcorn, and don your favorite sweatpants. You will not regret it.</div>
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
He has witty retorts for your enemies, the sting of which they will immediately comprehend:<i style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"Thou art like a toad; ugly and venomous." (</span></i><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">As You Like It). </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You might enjoy t</span></span><span style="text-align: center;">hose that can remain cryptic to a contemporary reader but be no less satisfying for you: </span><i style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“You rampallian! You fustilarian!” (</span></i><i style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Henry IV, Part II). </span></i>Try it yourself. Click on the link below and use an insult generator. Go ahead. Someone's post on Facebook probably deserves a good zinger. Shout them at your neighbor's barking dog!<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZOj5vAAMk3I/U3F2S8DnV6I/AAAAAAAAAfM/eTtXaxypCHU/s1600/shakes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZOj5vAAMk3I/U3F2S8DnV6I/AAAAAAAAAfM/eTtXaxypCHU/s1600/shakes.jpg" height="160" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://insult.dream40.org/" target="_blank">Insults by Shakespeare</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Of course, Shakespeare is not all lighthearted ribbing. He deals with death, too, as our high school reading taught us. Hamlet grieves the loss of the father he loved so dearly and lost so suddenly. Devastated by his mother's<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> "o'erhasty marriage,"</span> he suspects (correctly) that his uncle Claudius really is a <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"dammned villain."</span> When his mother reminds him that all living things die, and asks Hamlet why it seems so particular with him, he tells he tells her:<br />
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 1em;">
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Seems, madam? nay, it is, I know not "seems."</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Nor customary suits of solemn black,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Nor the dejected havior of the visage,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">For they are actions that a man might play;</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But I have that within which passes show,</span></div>
</div>
<div style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">These but the trappings and the suits of woe. </span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #1f1f1f; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Hamlet, 1.2</i></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
All outward ways to show grief are so eclipsed by his actual suffering that he can't express it. He mourns the loss of his father. He watches his mother move on so quickly that his grief is intensified by loneliness, and the throne that should by all rights be his, is now occupied by a man who labels Hamlet's grief "womanish." These things are unbearable to Hamlet. <br />
<br />
I recalled this speech from Hamlet on the day I buried my grandmother. I knew that day would come, and at age ninety-two she fended off the inevitable for longer than most. As my cousins and I stood at the lectern in a small Catholic church where I had attended so many masses as a child, each of our voices broke. Words failed us.<br />
<br />
The responsorial psalm was <i>"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." </i>I believe my grandmother to be in Paradise with no wants. However, like Hamlet, I was not. I still inhabited this <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"sterile promontory".</span> Shepherd or not, I <i>did </i>want. I wanted my grandmother back. Why would we even be gathered together without her there? She was the matriarch. Who would make Easter bread for us? Who would talk with me in the early morning hours while the valley fog hung heavy around the farmhouse that she and my grandfather built? My grandmother walked me down the aisle at my wedding, and now I had to accompany her coffin to a quiet, small, terrifyingly final place in the ground and leave her there.<br />
<br />
Yet somehow the loneliness and finality of that moment was helped by having read so many accounts in fiction of characters who had losses akin to my own. I am not alone in any desperate state. Shakespeare has written my pain already. After all, by Act V even Hamlet becomes all Zen about things. He acknowledges to his best friend that he is about to walk into a death trap (literally). He may die at the hands of Laertes and evil Uncle/Father Claudius. He may not. However he concludes: <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: center;">"The readiness is all" (Hamlet, 5.2). </span><span style="text-align: center;">And for any other trial in life on a lesser scale than death, Benedick's words </span><span style="text-align: center;">always seem to enter my mind: </span><i style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"For man is a giddy thing...and this is my conclusion" (</span></i><i style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Much Ado About Nothing, 5.4). </span></i><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i>
</div>
Then there is the love. Naive, easily deceived lovers (Claudio and Hero). Witty, snarky lovers (Benedick and Beatrice). Jealous love (Othello). Strong, devoted wives (Portia). Weak-willed hot messes (Gertrude). In high school the perennial Shakespearean love story is that of Juliet and her Romeo. It is not a love we would want for our sons and daughters. It is tragic. It is, as Juliet herself worries, "too rash, too unadvised," but it is the literary love all high school students encounter just as they enter the dating years.<br />
<br />
Don't get me started on how unattractive Romeo is, as boyfriend material, ladies, at least in the first Act of the play. Your true love should not be the Emo boy who sleeps all day, mopes all night, and allows his undying love for you to be extinguished the moment he sees the jewel in an Ethiop's ear that is Juliet. He needs an anti-depressant. He's probably cutting himself. He is certainly annoying his friends and worrying his parents. <br />
<br />
Someone should really write the story of Rosaline. She is my hero. Proud, strong and chaste, she rejects Romeo because she sees how weak he is. She tells Romeo she plans to live chaste, but I think it may be that she knows, no matter how many gentle or passionate protestations he gives to the contrary, there is something wishy washy in Romeo's love. Living chaste is just code for she's not that into you, young Montague. While all of Verona mourns the dead lovers, somewhere in that ancient Italian city, Rosaline is raising a glass of red to her own impeccable instincts. Perhaps she and Paris can marry. It's probably the perfect match. Neither of them seems like the type to take poison or stab themselves without thinking it through. It is possible, Dear Reader, that parenthood has unfairly altered my reading of this play.<br />
<br />
So why is there a <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> initiation into high school literature? Poetry is one answer. Light and dark imagery, bird imagery, references to the stars, the sun, the moon--it's all there. I defy you to read the balcony scene and not be moved at some point. It's the breathless, adoring way we all want to love and be loved. The tragedy can come later; carpe diem, young lovers. <br />
<br />
The play also allows students to identify with young people who are often powerless to follow their hearts in a world that rejects the idea of them as a couple. Juliet's relationship with her father goes from his strangely modern claim to Paris early on that he believes Juliet should not yet marry and that she deserves to have a say in her choice of husband to a threat to leave her dying in the streets without food, home, or inheritance if she does not marry Paris. Romeo and Juliet have even the stars conspiring to keep them apart. Romeo must deal with his bros teasing him about being in love. Juiet's Nurse helps the lovers, but when Juliet must face her father's ultimatim, she quickly advises Juliet just to marry Paris and forget she has another husband on earth.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q4CGBpV1r4I/U4yWqDVXJ7I/AAAAAAAAAfk/p24aglLTP3U/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q4CGBpV1r4I/U4yWqDVXJ7I/AAAAAAAAAfk/p24aglLTP3U/s1600/download.jpg" height="400" width="330" /></a></div>
<br />
The world is unjust. Their parents don't understand them. It's us against the world, so no wonder their love is attractive to teens. Juliet's come night speech --filled with downright sexy, beckoning verse, yearning for her lover, for the cloak of darkness, for striking out against the oppressive forces that hinder young people--is racy rebellious. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"Hood my unmanned blood bating in my cheeks./Come, night; come, Romeo, come" Romeo and Juliet 3.2</span></i></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
I wonder if the school boards across America would like to take some credit for giving ninth graders everywhere such lyrical reasons to rebel, not to mention the passionate, planned sex. After all Romeo makes arrangements for a wedding night ladder. He thought of everything. It's not like they are planning to paint Capulet's orchard walls, people!<br />
<br />
While we're on the subject, do those same school boards know that teaching <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> involves the following topics and many more like them? Every. Year.<br />
<br />
1. Rude hand gestures around the world<br />
2. Thrusting women against a wall and cutting off their maidenheads<br />
3. Women growing bigger by men (pregnancy)<br />
4. Breastfeeding<br />
5. Wedding night sex<br />
<br />
<br />
Mercutio says these lines in the play:<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> "...the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind boy's butt shaft"(2.4) and </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"...the bawdy hand of the dial is now on the prick of noon" (2.4)</span><br />
<br />
It does not matter what these lines <i>actually</i> meant to an Elizabethan audience. To fourteen year olds in 2014 America, they read only as dirty jokes. No matter how quickly I explain something as a reference to Cupid's arrow; their minds have gone some other where. Mercutio also makes fun of the older, overweight Nurse in the streets of Verona to the raucous approval of the other teen boys with him. Nice. We shall read that during fifth period and then head off to that anti-bullying assembly. <br />
<br />
All English teachers appreciate irony. Every year as I teach this play to the impressionable youth of America whose parents fret over curfews and Facebook posts, who put parental controls on the television and forbid their children to attend R rated movies, I appreciate irony. This is why I love the works of William Shakespeare. They speak to the human condition in all its messy, uncomfortable, often hilarious and awkward complexity. Love and sex go together. Young men enjoy a dirty joke. Young women fantasize about being intimate with their boyfriends. Not much has changed because what makes us human beings does not change. <br />
<br />
In a list of my favorite writers, Shakespeare will always be there, not because I am a pretentious academic who wants to impress you but because I am a human being. Notice I haven't addressed the difficulty of the language because it's really not that difficult and because you don't need to understand every word in every play or sonnet to feel Shakespeare speaks to you. My ninth graders tackle it with great success every year. <br />
<br />
Shakespeare isn't for tea and crumpets while wearing high heels and shiny nail polish. He is for breathing in mountain air, stomping around in muddy spring puddles, and sweating it out on a satisfying hike. Reading can be, should be, a journey that leads us to a better understanding of ourselves and the other selves around us. While hiking through the human condition, Shakespeare is a wonderful trail guide.<br />
<br />
You might think of Shakespeare's writing as the rich, dark chocolate you indulge in when no one is looking. He is the thirty year old glass of Scotch you drink at your grandfather's birthday. Shakespeare is all the delightful, precious, and fine possibilities in our language. Do not deny yourself that pleasure, Dear Reader. You deserve the best.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-54750099816959050082014-05-12T01:05:00.000-07:002014-05-12T01:05:11.230-07:00Find Your Writers: John Green<h4>
<br /></h4>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AcT5FjIBIJk/U3B_wAvsTkI/AAAAAAAAAe8/KjwU3SiIL9Y/s1600/johngreen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AcT5FjIBIJk/U3B_wAvsTkI/AAAAAAAAAe8/KjwU3SiIL9Y/s1600/johngreen.jpg" height="166" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24.99250030517578px;">“Green writes books for young adults, but his voice is so compulsively readable that it defies categorization. The Fault in Our Stars proves that the hype surrounding Green is not overblown.” -NPR</span> </i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The rapidity of his speech. His unabashed passion for...well, everything. The clear-sighted way he sees teenagers, and the empathy and love with which he writes about them is unparalleled. Now, you might think a high school teacher is bitter about teens and cynical about those years. Quite the contrary. I love young people. I love their black and white way of seeing the world, their questions, their daily attempts to find their own path and voice, their enthusiasm, and their idealism. John Green knows all of this, and just like Hazel Grace says about Peter Van Houten, I would read his shopping lists. Hemingway once advised: "Write the truest sentence you know." So many sentences from his novels will resonate with you long after you finish reading. Like Hemingway, his style is spare, clean, and honest. He does not insult his audience by talking down to them. His depiction of adolescence is truthful and joyful without being sentimental. There are varying degrees of Holden Caufield in every teenager, and John Green may be one of the few people Holden would not accuse of being a phony. I adore his novels enough to read them more than once, which is a rarer thing than you might imagine. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Moreover, my daughters do as well. At a time in their lives when they are pulling away from me, I delight in the things we still share. Cherished are the T.V. shows or movies equally loved by my pre-teen daughters and me. Even more cherished are the books. Their obsessive love of reading is something to feed and fuel. I may feel guilty when I buy them donuts on a Saturday morning, or spend too much money at Forever 21, but I never feel any guilt about spending fifty dollars on John Green books for them. They are like a literary Flinstones vitamin for me, and a midnight ice cream sundae for them. Delicious, emotionally satisfying, and good for them. For all of us. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LzpEkwbhsh8/U3BwfBZNGHI/AAAAAAAAAeE/66wY_L4tzuA/s1600/TFIOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LzpEkwbhsh8/U3BwfBZNGHI/AAAAAAAAAeE/66wY_L4tzuA/s1600/TFIOS.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You should start with <i>The Fault in Our Stars</i> for many reasons. It's his best novel. You will begin and then not be able to stop reading until the last page. You will then want to start over again because the characters are just that memorable, the ideas just that thought-provoking. If you are a teenager, you will start looking for your own Augustus Waters or Hazel Grace Lancaster. Will the novel break your heart and leave you cursing the writer who has left you in pieces on the floor with just his words? Yes. Yes, it will, which is why you must read it. Furthermore, the movie comes out in less than a month. Do not insult such a life-changing novel by seeing the movie first. It's shameful.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Green's novels do not need to be read in any particular order, so after TFIOS read anything this man has written. He does not disappoint. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xb2MgPruV-4/U3B5Nr52_WI/AAAAAAAAAeU/4RVHDPfFe7A/s1600/looking-for-alaska-cover-md.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a5QDseEvZqQ/U3B5Tb4-CkI/AAAAAAAAAec/bUwc0Dzn8Aw/s1600/paper+towns.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a5QDseEvZqQ/U3B5Tb4-CkI/AAAAAAAAAec/bUwc0Dzn8Aw/s1600/paper+towns.png" height="212" width="320" /></a><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xb2MgPruV-4/U3B5Nr52_WI/AAAAAAAAAeU/4RVHDPfFe7A/s1600/looking-for-alaska-cover-md.jpg" height="200" width="136" /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2_9cOo1QllM/U3B5nFfCQQI/AAAAAAAAAes/AaqNVeIKoaU/s1600/willgrayson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2_9cOo1QllM/U3B5nFfCQQI/AAAAAAAAAes/AaqNVeIKoaU/s1600/willgrayson.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qvFJKTq0lKM/U3B5Wn8g06I/AAAAAAAAAek/oehXFPItqHw/s1600/katherines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qvFJKTq0lKM/U3B5Wn8g06I/AAAAAAAAAek/oehXFPItqHw/s1600/katherines.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-74073896210808002172014-04-29T14:16:00.000-07:002014-05-09T10:46:15.974-07:00Find Your Writers<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dear High School Student,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
I could write an open letter about sexually transmitted diseases. Perhaps I could wax didactic about pot smoking. After all if you don't take Nancy Reagan's insipid advice and say "no," you could watch yourself, from outside your body, allowing the enticing and rewarding to just float away into oblivion while you rationalize your isolated and increasingly sedentary existence. That high deceived you. You did not prove string theory or find Amelia Earhart last night. It was just a video game and some Mountain Dew, and this morning your life has yet again not progressed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
I <i>could</i> do that, but I won't because I'm writing to you, Dear Student, about reading. What else? Contrary to my current job description, I am, and will forever be, a teacher of literature. Today I want to talk to you about how noble, and essential reading is. Before you crumple up this letter, metaphorically speaking, hear me out. Well, the hearing should be literal, the crumpling metaphorical. Come to think of it, you are not literally able to hear me, so that is also metaphorical. Most things are. But I digress. I do not mean the <i>skill</i> of reading. Today I do not care about guessing meaning from context or decoding words by their Greek and Roman roots. Let's be honest, even on my best day I don't care much about those things. What I care about is you, Dear Reader. I care about you, and because I do I have one request:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Find Your Writers. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
You have already found your favorite movies, bands, snack foods, and youtube channels. Your generation is adept at generating playlists and Instagram likes. You know the exact filter you want to use on that picture of your Burrito Supreme so it looks kind of hipster, despite its corporate tool origins. I know you have opinions about all manner of things and a keen understanding of what you like and don't like. So, find the perfect filter, post it to your Snapchat story or your Tumblr and come with me to that last frontier for some of you--the bookshelf. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
You must find your writers. The ones who speak to you. The ones you return to again and again. You will share her poems with your friends when they go through a bad break up. You will post colorful memes from a favorite chapter, and you will dream that someday you'll meet someone just like.... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
Some of you have already found your writers, so you have an image right now in your mind. Is it Augustus? Four? Katniss? Holden? Hermione? Romeo? It should NOT be Romeo, but more on that later. Many of you have not found your writers though, and it is to you I write. If you read enough, you will fall into the worlds created in fiction. You will begin to see more clearly the Victorian sitting room as it is described. You will taste the acrid smoke of the artillery fire, and when she brushes up against the sleeve of his wool coat as they share a cab, you will feel their chills. Literature transports us, and since unfortunately the Doctor may not be coming in his TARDIS to whisk you away through all of time and space, you should start seeking your own adventures.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />While the feeling of being lifted from your world into other realms is wonderful, do not read only for sensory pleasure and escape. Reading can be a way to work through your fears, doubts, and insecurities. A fictionalized, yet nonetheless realistic other self can be your therapist. You cannot change your alcoholic father. Swallowing anger and sadness poisons only your own blood. However, find a novel that speaks in a voice like your own. If it is well-written, and so many of them are, it will help you. You will say, "Yeah, dammit, that's how I feel!" A cynical person may tell you this is not real solace because it's just a book; it isn't real. I submit to you that our understanding of what is real is decidedly and unimaginably limited. When Harry realizes that the Kings Cross station encounter is happening in his head, he worries it is somehow not real. Dumbledore reassures him:<i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><i><br /></i></span>
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><i>“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<span style="color: #181818; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Think about how much of your life every day is spent inside your head. While sitting in class, while watching that cute girl laugh with her friends, while listening to your mom lecture you about your grades--there is a running monologue in your head. Those thoughts aren't physically happening for all the world to see, but it doesn't make them less real to you. They are yours, intimately yours. Books can help you live the interior monologue of others, just as intimately as the voice in your own head because your reading voice is also in your own head. Unless you read everything out loud, which is just odd. You should probably see someone about that. Instead of therapy, or writing more bad confessional poetry in your diary, try a book. You will be pleasantly rewarded. Find a writer whose voice you like, a writer who shares your most intimate concerns. Then join that writer in a meditative conversation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #181818;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
Over the next few blogs I will submit to you some of <i>my</i> writers. I do so in order to show you how and why writers come to be important to us. Sometimes it is just the way their words roll around deliciously in our heads as we read. At other times a book is yours because it came to you at a moment in your life when you needed it, and now it has become part of your heart and memory in a way that you are not willing to dismiss. These writers are not mine because they are great necessarily, although I will fight anyone who says otherwise. They are mine the way a particular stuffed animal was mine in my toddler bed. They are mine the way I like my coffee with sugar and cream so it looks like a paper bag and tastes like an autumn morning. They are mine the way my favorite jeans are mine. The works of <i>my</i> writers fit. They make me happy. I like holding them, drinking them in, and being inside them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
I have many practical things to teach you, Dear Student, but when you love someone you tell them the truth. The truth is I do not care if you remember the ending to Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace". Nor do I care if years from now you remember the number of lines in a sonnet or how many metric feet are in a line of iambic pentameter. I don't even care if you truly understand what the green light at the end of the dock represents. Okay, perhaps I care a little about that one, but I'm willing to let it go in favor of a larger, more essential truth. <i>Reading enriches your life in ways incalculable, strange, and lasting.</i> This does not happen magically, nor does it happen with every book. You must do the work. <i>You must find your writers. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
My first writer for next time will be John Green. If you have not already found him, I submit he could easily be one of <i>your</i> writers, too. Unlike so many grouchy grown-ups, Green loves the place in your life where you find yourself right now--adolescence. Until we meet again, I will sign off with a link to his Crash Course videos on <i>The Great Gatsby </i>because although I said I would let that green light go, I can't do it any more than Gatsby can. Perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of your as-yet-undiscovered-writers. Besides, if you watch the videos now, you might begin to understand why John Green is one of <i>my </i>writers. More on Mr. Green later. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For now, Dear Student, farewell.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/xw9Au9OoN88?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/cn0WZ8-0Z1Y?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
</h4>
Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-49562111414314330982014-02-22T12:22:00.000-08:002014-04-29T13:54:11.558-07:00<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;">“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;">--Karen Blixen, <i>Out of Africa</i></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So begins the film <i>Out of Africa. </i>Meryl Streep portrays Isak Dinesen in her transformative journey from Europe to Africa and back again. In the film, Karen Blixen creates a new life for herself, a life she may not have thought possible. She defies expectation--a woman managing her own farm without a husband to help her. Technically she has a husband, but his interests lie more in womanizing and hunting than in farming. By the end of her journey the men in the local club who had at first shunned her, now toast her accomplishments. Their toast recognizes that the limits they had assumed bordered a woman's life were artificial. They toast her courage, to face and overcome hardships, and emerge on the other side.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/-NtpPdMGluE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
That phrase--"I had a farm in Africa"--has been rattling around in my mind for the past twelve months ever since I entered a painful, terrifying period which started with the unknown and ended with my life transformed. I walked out of my old life, and holding tightly to my five children, entered a new one. While the geography of my transition was not sufficiently grand to warrant a John Williams score, the shift was no less dramatic. I thought I had entered into an abyss, the heart of a darkness I neither understood nor knew how to navigate without possibly losing my mind. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Much to my relief, spasms and waves of relief over a long period of time, I did not slip into madness or embrace a Kurtz-like oblivion. Instead I discovered steps along a path already created for me that led to a sanctuary in the woods, a tiny cottage in the mountains. Our time there, in that tiny house, may have seemed like hardship but it was actually Providence, complete with all of the old-fashioned grandeur of that word. On our journey, we were accompanied by angels, miracles, and the patient, loving hand of God. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Within twenty-four hours after I left my home, friends fiercely and generously surrounded me, and we were given a new place to live. While I <i>want</i> to publish the names of the two generous people who handed me keys and told me not to worry about rent for "as long as you need," I will allow them anonymity here. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5u-WNoe2JZs/UuqzljGn2SI/AAAAAAAAAR8/3sSsr265d-c/s1600/kitchen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5u-WNoe2JZs/UuqzljGn2SI/AAAAAAAAAR8/3sSsr265d-c/s1600/kitchen.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></span></span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
The seven hundred square foot cottage may seem inadequate in the abstract. Frankly, it was probably practically inadequate, too. One bathroom for six people. A potty-training boy and five females. Is that even possible? From the moment we arrived, we knew our time there was temporary. I lay awake in the small hours of the morning and stared around that tiny space while the sleeping inhalation and exhalation of five children hummed around me. Two on the futon on the floor with me. One more on the Murphy bed behind the couch. Two more in the bedroom steps away.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W0InfIGGQdc/Uwd2jJQtI4I/AAAAAAAAATM/rbWi9UoO784/s1600/1167455_596781470374867_1706244909_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W0InfIGGQdc/Uwd2jJQtI4I/AAAAAAAAATM/rbWi9UoO784/s1600/1167455_596781470374867_1706244909_o.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I love my children, but I did not want them drooling on my pillow and kicking me in the kidneys permanently. When Karen arrived in Africa, she did not anticipate a return to Europe, but I knew the six of us could not stay here long, both because we did not want to try our friends' generosity and we needed more square footage. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the film Denis leaves Karen in solitude for long periods of time. She resents this...as much as any woman <i>can</i> resent Robert Redford dressed like this:</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aPLxONuEh9I/UwVrEzujVlI/AAAAAAAAASw/B06mC1b0AAQ/s1600/out_of_africa_1985_685x385.jpg" height="356" width="640" /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In our house there was no solitude. Quiet stretches to contemplate and shape a story for our future did not exist. Each of us slept with at least one other person within arm's reach. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">My youngest ate his meals on the floor, using his Lego board as a table. School mornings were a jumble of arms, toothbrushes and curling irons in the bathroom followed by a frantic flurry to find shoes and backpacks piled up around the base of the wood stove. Imagine how many pairs of shoes you own. Now multiply by six. Add in the organizational skills you had when you were 13, 11, 10, 5, and 3. The answer to this math problem is that you can't find your shoes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
We didn't have an oven, so the previously frequent morning muffins and bread puddings disappeared. Affectionately dubbed "guilt muffins" by me, baked goods were a before-school gesture that helped me stave off the feelings of inadequacy faced by so many working mothers. </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g1v7GcjXToQ/UwkEnSOvOlI/AAAAAAAAATs/QImcD-lEn58/s1600/photo+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g1v7GcjXToQ/UwkEnSOvOlI/AAAAAAAAATs/QImcD-lEn58/s1600/photo+(1).jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Instead, cold cereal or toast were the only possible options, and the eleven year old's penchant for smoothies, while a welcome change, also meant an alarm clock of grinding blender gears all too early in the morning. Why is the smoothie loving child also the one who rises first each day? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
</span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Human beings can make anything work with the right attitude. There are always others who have it worse than me, a mantra that has fueled my perseverance through many a dark hour. I have found anything is possible, and not just survivable, but joyful. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Just look at it--small, but inviting and warm--a sacred refuge. Please, Dear Reader, do not misunderstand me. Space was a problem, but the place, people, and landscape were only blessings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xsISc1eQZ2U/UuqznViNOXI/AAAAAAAAASE/PTxSUVQ9aaw/s1600/living.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xsISc1eQZ2U/UuqznViNOXI/AAAAAAAAASE/PTxSUVQ9aaw/s1600/living.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xsISc1eQZ2U/UuqznViNOXI/AAAAAAAAASE/PTxSUVQ9aaw/s1600/living.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></span></a></div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xsISc1eQZ2U/UuqznViNOXI/AAAAAAAAASE/PTxSUVQ9aaw/s1600/living.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></span></a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Did you know Santa summers in the Sierra Nevada mountains? He fixes toilets and hauls garbage cans. He has his own wolf pack since it's too far south for his reindeer. Snow white beard and generous heart, the twinkle in the eye...all are still there, just put to use in other ways. My children have gone on adventurous treks with him up hills and into rivers. Ask them; they will tell you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />My journey was not marked by a tense standoff with a lion or an airplane flight surveying the changing landscape of the African plain. However, the majesty of Africa's animals have nothing on the enormous grey lion, who perched on our bed and lounged in our front yard. He allowed my children to pet his mighty mane while he rolled on the gravel drive. He walked out into the night and did not return, but we shall not forget his visits and hospitality, allowing us to share his home.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
There were herds of deer who ambled through the yard and up the hill behind our bedroom windows. They paused curiously, wondering what we were doing there, and then moved on. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
And there were two angels. Did you know angels sometimes reside in ordinary homes? They maintain regular jobs and the mundane details of their own lives, while simultaneously generating magic and grace, beauty and joy, in the lives of others. They alighted in my front yard and whisked my children away for ice cream one warm summer evening. They picked up my children on a roaring metal steed and rambled around the mountains, even into the river to squeals of delight. They delivered lemon cake and stopped by just to make sure we were okay. They listened to me while I rambled and unpacked the fear and frustration, questions and worries of my heart. Angels come in human form, of this I am certain. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
Sometimes the Lord pushes us away from all comforts, and allows us to journey into the terrifying unknown. Far from frightening, what I found was a way already prepared. The road rose to meet us, bringing necessities and graces alike. There was little physical space but unlimited emotional space, psychological space, in which I could remake my life, reimagine the possibilities of happiness for my children, and heal from years of lonely struggle. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m0A8_DY_dTk/Uuqygty_dpI/AAAAAAAAAR0/Elew6V9EoBc/s1600/road+in+africa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m0A8_DY_dTk/Uuqygty_dpI/AAAAAAAAAR0/Elew6V9EoBc/s1600/road+in+africa.jpg" height="424" width="640" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;">"Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;">― Isak Dinesen, </span><i style="color: #181818; line-height: 18px;">Out of Africa</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If I had continued to wait, not changing my life until it was convenient, affordable, and safe, I would not have changed anything. Instead, walking into the darkness led me to see that I need never fear. Ironically my favorite passage in Scripture is the verse "Be still and know that I am God." My experiences in 2013 illuminated what that verse has always meant, but I had not seen clearly. Our comfort in this life comes from God, yes, but He does not work alone. I did not need a mystical experience or radical conversion. I was shown that all around us, everyday, people do God's work in our lives. Friends. Colleagues. People from my church and community. Family far away. Sudden strangers. All conspired to guide, teach, and love me through it, and they did the same for each of my five children. Thank you. You know who you are. You have been prayed for by six grateful hearts, and you will remain treasures to us as we continue along paths known and unknown. </span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uuM1xzP_v4Q/Uwd7uS63RvI/AAAAAAAAATc/CIewg86lj7M/s1600/922481_538644459521902_537970658_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uuM1xzP_v4Q/Uwd7uS63RvI/AAAAAAAAATc/CIewg86lj7M/s1600/922481_538644459521902_537970658_o.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 18px;">“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.” </span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i style="color: #181818; line-height: 18px;">― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa</i></span></div>
Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-47071309109711060782013-10-04T13:18:00.000-07:002013-10-04T13:22:18.825-07:00Gertrude Louise Silveira<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; font-size: 16px; text-align: right;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9_55BtCJNOM/Uj_OzJHRlAI/AAAAAAAAAQU/OQpEodlZRVc/s1600/Gram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9_55BtCJNOM/Uj_OzJHRlAI/AAAAAAAAAQU/OQpEodlZRVc/s400/Gram.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To tell a story about my grandmother, Gertie Silveira, is to tell many stories. There can never be just one. Some are goofy anecdotes about how she bought the can of Crisco, opened it at the register, drove home, and never paid for it. Others are inspiring tales in which she and Papa didn't think twice about opening their trailer and their lives to a homeless couple. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All stories reveal the same character trait: generosity. My grandmother used her life to be the hands and feet and heart of Jesus. She did not need to preach loudly or quote Scripture or ever point out the sins of others. Instead, she lived out the gospel in the way we are all called to do so: through the work and actions of our lives. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />It was not unusual to arrive at Grandma's house and find people I did not know, and they were not just relatives I couldn't remember! They were friends of friends or perhaps weary travelers who knew that a certain address on W. Hwy 140 is always a safe harbor. There you will be given dinner or breakfast, a cup of coffee, and a warm bed with a handmade quilt. There you will be made to feel like family, whether you are related to Gertie or not. She did not quibble over such distinctions. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />On the last day I saw her, I held my grandmother's face in my hands. I said these important words to her: "Woman, the happiest moments of my childhood took place in this house with you and Papa." Ernest Hemingway once said, "Write the truest sentence that you know." Hemingway was right. I don't know if I have ever said anything more true, and I am thankful I did.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />My early childhood was waking up to the sounds of Grandma cutting, setting, and perming hair in the back porch, of sitting in my mother's lap while she and Grandma told endless stories, catching up on all of the people in our beautifully large family. The smell of coffee and the rapid chatter as only the Avila female family line can achieve were the start to so many mornings while Dad and Uncle Kevin were duck hunting. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />As I grew my summers were spent picking blackberries on the canal in Papa and Grandma's aluminum boat. Purple fingers, getting stuck on sandbars, loading up bucket after bucket that would become delicious, tart cobbler or pie. We canned peaches in the backyard. We also canned A LOT of apricots one summer when my sister, Kimberli, and I decided to see if we could pick enough of them from Grandma's tree to fill the entire surface of the pool. It was an ambitious goal, and we came pretty close before Grandma discovered our treachery. She later told me how angry she was, but it is a testament to her patience, her kindness, that I don't remember her anger. I just recall picking those apricots and then canning them the next day! I didn't know my childhood was like the romance of an old-fashioned American novel. It was just Papa and Grandma's house--my favorite summer destination.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B3QJxjVuC1A/Uj_O9DIt_wI/AAAAAAAAAQc/0W4GsywZRYg/s1600/Gram+and+Papa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B3QJxjVuC1A/Uj_O9DIt_wI/AAAAAAAAAQc/0W4GsywZRYg/s640/Gram+and+Papa.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />My second child, Claire, was born on the anniversary of Papa's death, and he never knew any of my children. They never helped him make milk cans full of punch every July or watched his identical routine every afternoon after work like I did. They didn't get to follow him around the backyard doing his chores or receive fierce hugs from a man with a rock hard chest and saintly, quiet patience. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />However, my children were blessed with many years with Grandma. They couldn't wait to make a bed on the living room floor with quilt after quilt--the bird one, the jeans one, the one where Mom could tell them which squares came from my shorts or Beanie Grandma's dress. They thrilled to the smoky kitchen that meant hot, impossibly thin pancakes or finding cats Grandma saved in the backyard. It is a rare gift to know your great grandmother that well, and I am happy they will be able to remember her on their own and not just through my stories. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />I do not know how to grieve a woman who is so woven into the fabric of my life, of the lives of my children. I feel gratitude that God allowed her to stay with us for so long, and the only thing that lessens my sadness in losing her is to know she is reunited with the husband she ached for every minute after he was gone. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida console', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />This Christmas I will miss the endless parade of Santas around her home, but I will feel extra joy knowing that Grandma is finally home for Christmas, in Papa's arms, in the love of our Heavenly Father where I am certain she is being given an eternal reward for the life of generosity and profound love that she gave to all of us.</span></div>
Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-40938125449878245512012-11-05T00:43:00.000-08:002012-11-05T00:43:01.155-08:00What Do They Teach Me?Teachers praise the virtue of lifelong learning. Much of what I really need to know, I have learned directly from my students. My work has become increasingly frustrating, even heartbreaking, yet the magic of my time with students has not changed, and they teach me...everyday. <br />
<br />
I have learned that they need me...not just to correct their comma splices or help them revise their run on sentences. They need me to know them, to understand their lives, their dreams, their struggles. They need me to be there everyday, to be present, and to require their presence in return. <i>We are a team in that room.</i> I've referred to it in a previous post as the beating heart at the center of the most important institution of our democracy. <a href="http://teachersnotteaching.blogspot.com/2010/09/problem-like-maria.html">A Problem Like Maria, September, 2010</a>. <br />
<br />
Even more, I have learned that my calling as a Christian is intimately linked to my calling as a teacher. My students need love. They need prayer. They need me to be willing to give my time, talent and yes, even sometimes my treasure to help them navigate the path from child to adult, from student to lifelong learner. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PeMHm36ERdw/UJc2OFW5oHI/AAAAAAAAAKs/E_vze0zlMGI/s1600/candle-frame2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PeMHm36ERdw/UJc2OFW5oHI/AAAAAAAAAKs/E_vze0zlMGI/s400/candle-frame2.gif" width="400" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PeMHm36ERdw/UJc2OFW5oHI/AAAAAAAAAKs/E_vze0zlMGI/s1600/candle-frame2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><strike></strike></a></div>
<br />
I must be a candle, however small, however tenuous my flame, I must be a candle in my classroom. I cannot merely curse the darkness. <br />
<br />
That darkness is all around us. It is in the grinding poverty that touches my own life and all too often engulfs the lives of my students. It is in the clanging gong of a culture that tells them to defy authority, ignore the sacred, embrace vapid celebrity and empty violence.<br />
<br />
The darkness has begun to move menacingly around the halls of this place I love so much. It hovers over decisions to increase their class sizes every year, while telling them our decisions are based on "what's best for kids." They are not numbers, units, or dollar signs. As someone who has been laid off due to budget cuts, I understand the gravity of California's fiscal mismanagement, and my rural community is no stranger to a recessed economy and shrinking opportunity. However, those human beings in my classroom are not just delivery vehicles for ADA, and as their teacher, their teammate in that room, I am the one who must repeatedly remind those in power of that fact. <br />
<br />
And yes, the darkness can even be seen among the people who have chosen this sacred profession. A few can be guilty of treating it like a factory job, complete with punch card, coffee breaks and a numbness to the hearts and minds of the souls before them as maddening as a textile mill owner in the 1840s. They are not the inconvenient roadblocks to your weekend motorcycle ride or trip to the coast. No matter how exhausting and frustrating my day may be, I must not start to see them as impediments to my weekend. Students <i>know</i> when we teach that way. They speak up about it when we aren't around, and more importantly, they remember that we did not care enough to do our jobs. Even while they cheer a movie day, <i>they don't respect it</i>. <br />
<br />
When I am tired and demoralized, when yet another parent sends a rude email whose tone assumes I am the problem, I am the enemy, I sometimes gripe that this is a job, not a religious calling. I say it with bumper sticker snappiness, but it belies my own discomfort because I know better. No, I have not taken a vow of poverty and chastity, and I do not wear a black and white habit, but make no mistake, teachers are called. We are called away from professions that reward us financially. We did not choose cushy, respected, lucrative. We chose challenging...no damn hard. We chose thankless. We chose poverty. Why? <br />
<br />
Because of the senior boy who breaks down and cries in a room of forty-seven other teens and does not care because he just needs his teacher to listen, to help, to calm his fears about the future rushing to meet him before he feels ready. He needs her to tell him, "It's okay because you won't feel ready. No one ever does, but you are...you will be...I'll make sure. I'm your teacher, and I care."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O070wZ5brRs/UJdx9uLAn0I/AAAAAAAAAK8/CASrtaG_Z7E/s1600/canopic-jars-set-big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-O070wZ5brRs/UJdx9uLAn0I/AAAAAAAAAK8/CASrtaG_Z7E/s200/canopic-jars-set-big.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Because of the sixth graders, posing with ear-to-ear grins in their Halloween costumes, who buzz with excitement over today's journal topic and can't stop talking because they bubble daily and furiously with creativity like a pot of boiling water, just waiting for me to drop the pasta. Tell me about your day. Write to me about what you would teach if you were a sixth grade teacher. Come with me and let's learn the steps of mummification. Let's click again on the part where we pour the brains into the canopic jar with the Egyptian head on it just because it's gross and fun and we forgot to notice we're learning.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://kids.discovery.com/games/just-for-fun/mummy-maker">Play the Mummy Maker Game for Yourself!</a></div>
<br />
Because of the beautifully written phrase about her father's heart attack and the snowflakes glinting around her face that day so many months ago. Because of slowly unfolding description of his visit to Ground Zero, noticing how quiet, how holy, that place was amid the noisy cacophony of New York City. Because sometimes ninth grade writing can actually move you to tears. Did you know that?<br />
<br />
Because of the teenager, from a supposedly self-absorbed generation, who quietly offers to replace his teacher's stolen cell phone with his own, or another who brings homemade cookies to say thank you for making her look forward to history class. <br />
<br />
Because of the conversation about ethos, pathos and logos applied to Rufus Griswold's doctored letter from Edgar Allan Poe that so unfairly changed the public perception of one of America's finest writers. We learned together that even a contemporary A & E Biography perpetuates the myth as fact. Let's talk about the reliability of sources, even those at school, and then let's reel together, until you ask me, "Mrs. Weigel, do YOU ever read <i>anything</i> and actually believe it?" A nineteenth century literary Battle Royal may not be the most exciting content for freshmen, but why do I teach? Because it leads to questions like that.<br />
<br />
Taylor Mali, teacher, writer and poet, offers some wisdom:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/RxsOVK4syxU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
There is the teacher I want to be. She lives in small moments, all too far apart these days. She lives on my Pinterest boards with philosophy I believe and try to live by, with anchor charts I want to use, with warehouses of websites I need to explore. She's there, that Platonic teacher, and I keep leaning toward her, I keep pushing myself to find her. I keep hoping each student sees her at least a few times this year. <br />
<br />
I keep wishing my school, my district, my leadership, my state, would just allow me to be the teacher I know I can be. <br />
<br />
Won't you just let us, my students and I, go into that room with adequate supplies, with reliable technology, with numbers that allow us to really know each other? Won't you have a clear mission, a clear vision, so I can do my job? Won't you please go tell those factory workers that the auto industry probably could use them because this profession needs a lot more passion and a lot less selfish complaining. Go into that lunchroom and tell them the ship needs those that will swab the decks and trim the sails, and there's the plank if you don't want to work for students. <br />
<br />
Our students need gardeners who will tend each shoot and speak kindly, who will offer water and sunshine. <br />
<br />
I need to light a candle, not curse the darkness. I am trying, and it is difficult. Please help me because if you support me and steady my hand, together we can pass the flame along and illuminate this place again. We can bring back its life, its spirit, and we can celebrate what we have made together.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZSGnC8xk7gg/UJd2SplojfI/AAAAAAAAALM/k7Ks-EoliqU/s1600/tips-organic-gardening.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZSGnC8xk7gg/UJd2SplojfI/AAAAAAAAALM/k7Ks-EoliqU/s320/tips-organic-gardening.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-41924073425391932192012-08-03T22:47:00.002-07:002012-08-13T08:51:07.698-07:00Kindle Schmindle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
</div>
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
</h2>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Kindle offers a clean, silent reading experience. I like the immediacy of having the book I want...now. Just click on Kindle Store, and it's the Library at Alexandria. Well, not quite <i>that</i> grand, but you get the idea. I like the book light popping out, helpfully allowing reading to continue well into the wee hours without disturbing sleepers nearby. However, all too often my Kindle experience has been disappointing, even disturbing. Why? Well, there are several reasons, not the least of which is I'm afraid I'm betraying the printed page.</span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_407957026"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></a>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Let me start with the strange Kindle feature at the bottom of each screen: your percentage completed.</span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_407957023"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></a>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aSD-WpnzwuU/UAEZCd45XAI/AAAAAAAAAJc/vpX5fww3Fm4/s1600/kindle_statusbar_old.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="151" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aSD-WpnzwuU/UAEZCd45XAI/AAAAAAAAAJc/vpX5fww3Fm4/s400/kindle_statusbar_old.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_407957023"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></a>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">First of all, I do not appreciate the encroachment of math into my sacred reading experience; it leaves me queasy and uneasy. Similar to the tense moments while I wait to see how high the mercury rises on the baby thermometer, it's just not information I want. 27% is a number. I'd rather know that Katniss and Peeta are arriving in District 11 to greet Rue's haggard community of farmers. Tell me Mr. Rochester has just embraced Jane and called her an unearthly creature. Don't say 53% and counting. By the way, I'm making up those numbers. Kindle fans, please do not click to 53% in Bronte hoping to find that scene, and then send me neurotic comments about what Gothic treasure is <i>actually</i> found at 53%. Furthermore, Dear Reader, I think I may have graduate literature units revoked if I acknowledge publically that I read <i>Jane Eyre</i> on the Kindle. Well, the more accurate term is <i>reread</i> since the word only meant "to stoke a fire" when my eyes first moved through the pages of Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece. But I digress.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What disturbs me the most about this percentage feature is that it somehow makes reading a competition, and not just with myself. At a recent school function, I spoke with the mother of one of my daughter's friends. I apologized for not allowing my twelve year old to attend the midnight showing of <i>The Hunger Games</i> with she and her daughter. (Mary is hoping her parents will relent by the time Katniss hits the theatres for a second installment). In talking about the series of books and her response to the film, I mentioned I was reading <i>Catching Fire</i> on my Kindle. Then, for no apparent reason, I shared that I was at 27%. She turned to me with a kind of smirk (did I imagine it?) and said "I'm at 35%." Why did it matter? To either of us? Why did I even feel the need to announce my percentage at all? Who cares? Is reading about the numbers or the experience? Character development? Rising Action? Do these things mean nothing? Am I just racing to the 100% finish line?</span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_407957041"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></a>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Something about that little % creates a feeling of inadequacy in me. It's no coincidence that the feature itself is called "the <i>status </i>bar." I bet that woman has hundreds more Facebook friends than I do, too. Furthermore, her blog has comments from every continent on the globe and followers who don't actually know her in the real world. Does she have a blog? I don't know for certain, but doesn't it seem like we all do? My great aunt has a blog about her garden, and my aforementioned daughter has at least three.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_407957035"><br /> </a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_407957035"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></a>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Blog gluttony aside, keeping track of mathematical progress through a novel doesn't even seem like something a reader would create. I bet it was generated by a tech nerd in a cubicle who wanted to garner some praise down at the Kindle factory, so he came up with the idea. He's also the type who reads the last page before he's <i>actually on</i> the last page. He looks at the number of pages and divides by 2 to locate see the exact middle of the book. He may even divide by 7 to give himself the number of pages he must read in order to finish the novel by the end of a week. I don't like him, or his percentage feature. He's a math boy, and he should keep his crazy ideas away from my reading experience.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1902741" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-arWeS_qIv6k/UAEdxTygMjI/AAAAAAAAAJw/2OGTAV_894I/s200/barbie1.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1902741"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zIlJGDDHPC4/UAEe8wX2AvI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/eK_1X3WnRI0/s200/biggianthotwheelsracingcarballoon.jpg" /></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My love-hate relationship with the Kindle continues when it comes to games. Thread Words. Every Word. That strange little one with the treasure chests. I love them all! However, they are digital and ever-present. It's much too easy for me to just click away from my novel and mindlessly look for a six letter word that starts with t and ends with h. I'm only human for God's sake. I <i>want</i> to read the detailed description of Jean Valjean as he steals the damn loaf of bread. I <i>want </i>to savor every syllable of the paragraphs as they unfold like drowsy summer roses, but I'm a busy woman. Let's be honest. As a working mother of five children, all under thirteen, my reading does not take place in a quiet parlour. I'm probably tackling <i>Les Miserables </i>while sprawled out on a toddler bed pretending to play hot wheels with my two year old. Don't judge me; he can't tell the difference. However, I can only stay focused on Hugo's prose for so long with constant interruptions like:</span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"<i>Mommy, pay wif me</i>," and "<i>Look at big tuck, Mommy</i>!"</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Chances are I'm also dressing one of the many naked Barbie's in the Barbie bin, and desperately trying to find something that doesn't make her look like she's turning tricks. Believe me, there are not a lot of peasant blouses or baggy sweats in the Barbie collection.</span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1902741"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></a>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I know this seems like another of my many rambling digressions, but I can bring it back around. Don't worry, Dear Reader. While my heart desperately wants to immerse myself in the fiction I so adored in my college years, my life is much more conducive to using the Kindle for mindless word games and searching on Amazon for books I'll probably never download. I successfully read the entire <i>Hunger Games</i> series using my daughter's Kindle, but then again Suzanne Collins is not Victor Hugo...or Charles Dickens...or George Eliot. The woman writes in fragments. Frequently. </span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1902741"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></a>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The instant availability of these digital games lures me away from the reading I <i>should</i> do. Veggies are traded in for Twinkies, and Jean Valjean is poised, ready to grab the bread. He's still there on page...wait, I don't have page numbers. He's still there in some percentage I refuse to look up just to make my point. Katniss gobbled up the burnt loaf weeks ago, and the print on my keys is worn out from playing Every Word so much, but I can't seem to make the 21st Century technology of the Kindle merge with the thick, dense- with-detail novels of the 19th Century. They just don't play well together. </span></blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QeWJR7rJQHM/UCkiNtl_h3I/AAAAAAAAAKQ/aYFNuezor9w/s1600/kindle+and+stairs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QeWJR7rJQHM/UCkiNtl_h3I/AAAAAAAAAKQ/aYFNuezor9w/s1600/kindle+and+stairs.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /></blockquote>
Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-15718135710742764602011-07-26T22:48:00.000-07:002011-07-26T22:48:15.511-07:00Parenting: A War of AttritionThis claim implies children are the enemy, and that sounds so, well, mean...and also true. In my case, the war is being fought with boots on the ground firmly in the kids' favor. Kid Army-5. Parent Army-2. Granted, I conceived, gave birth to and have chosen to continue feeding and housing said boots, but instead of writing me off as a crazy person who deserves her war, imagine my position. I am fighting a war with an enemy <em>I </em>arm and fund. <em>I</em> pass the appropriations bills in Congress. <em>I </em>send them MREs, and <em>I </em>build assault rifles and fighter jets for them. It's absurd, so let's not quibble over blame here. I am in a uniquely disadvantageous position, militarily speaking. <br />
<br />
One of the places that steady, relentless parenting pays off is in church. Sweet, grey-haired women approach after Mass to congratulate me on how well behaved my children are. The war of attrition means learning to modify their behavior without the laying on of hands. I live in California, so I can't spank in public because I might be turned in to the authorities. (An attempt to pass a law making spanking in California illegal back in 2007 failed to pass, but it is probably only a matter of time). <br />
<br />
Beyond the danger of someone speed dialing CPS in a parking lot, it's also that I don't want to spank them; I shouldn't have to. I do not enjoy it, and it is a last resort, but if rare enough, an effective one. I want to encourage in them appropriate behavior in public places. My daughter's wonderful preschool teacher once reminded me that how they behave at home is not nearly as important as how they behave in public. The latter is the true test. Therefore, I am heartened when retired parishioners take note of their good behavior in church. I can trust the oldest three to sit still without making weird noises, and that is no small victory.<br />
<br />
The three year old still has occasional moments that try Mommy's soul, like the time I approached the altar for communion and she said, "Can I have a cookie." Not wanting to miss an opportunity to teach our Catholic faith, I replied, "No, you're not old enough, and it's not a cookie. It's Jesus. It just looks like a cookie." While this may be an admirable preschool level catechism on the doctrine of transubstantiation, it only made my daughter immediately shout "I want a Jesus cookie!" This kind of outburst is the exception, not the norm, thank you Jesus, and when people compliment my children's good behavior, I do usually credit Catholic masses every Sunday since the womb, not to mention Palm Sunday and the Easter Vigil. Whenever they start getting antsy, I just whisper to them fiercely and with feeling while pointing at the very crucifix pictured below:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m4bRM3WV-xo/Ti-cclXSKHI/AAAAAAAAADw/G_s8rBHlKkI/s1600/THANKSGIVIN+AND+ADVENT+OLS+003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m4bRM3WV-xo/Ti-cclXSKHI/AAAAAAAAADw/G_s8rBHlKkI/s320/THANKSGIVIN+AND+ADVENT+OLS+003.JPG" t$="true" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><em>"Look up there at Jesus. He died on the cross for you. I bet he wanted to get down and get a drink and he was probably hungry, too, but did he quit? No, he didn't. He stayed up there so that you can go and live with Him in Heaven someday, so it's not too much to ask that you sit still for the next few minutes. God only asks for an hour a week of you sitting still. It's the least you can do."</em></span><br />
<br />
If you're Catholic, you are laughing and nodding your head right now, and if you aren't, you probably think that is outrageous guilt. Well, we all should feel more guilt and less selfish indulgence, thank you very much. The Oprah-tization of our culture has meant a bit too much glossing over of the importance of sacrifice and guilt if you ask me. <br />
<br />
Despite the praise my angel babies may get in public sometimes, their behavior is almost never up to my standards and often, especially in the grocery store in the late afternoon after I have worked all day with teenagers and just want to get something for dinner and more granola bars and milk to get us through the school week, sometimes, they become the enemy and those aisles are a battlefield. <br />
<br />
There is a possibility you are not familiar with grocery shopping with five children, ages 11, 9, 7, 3 and 1. You are really missing out on a whole range of frustration and chaos that you do not currently experience. Come, come. Look, look, and think of this story next time you see me. Perhaps you will take pity. The following details come from an actual trip to the store. I did not invent anything. If you listen closely you may hear the artillery and smell the acrid smoke.<br />
<br />
Most people think the trouble with kids in the grocery store is that they ask for things. Most people are absurdly superficial in their understanding of how deep and wide are the skills to annoy that children possess. <br />
<br />
Kids do not just beg for cookies and Cheese-Itz and ice cream and yogurt raisins and every item featured prominently on an end cap at Von's . Let me just take this moment to thank grocery store market research for knowing exactly how to market to me and my family so as to completely defeat and contradict all good parenting. If you do not believe me, check out this article on <a href="http://www.allsands.com/food/consumerpsycho_baf_gn.htm">Psychology and the Supermarket</a>. There is a scientific reason why the Coco Pebbles are on the bottom shelf and the unsweetened Shredded Wheat is on the top. It is no accident that Little Debbie cakes are displayed on the end of the aisle where you have to stop your cart to grab milk and eggs.<br />
<br />
Beyond begging for treats they bicker with each other over who touched whom. They try to push the baby in the cart while ignoring his screams. He can't believe his sisters' nerve in trying to steer <em>his </em>cart. "Who do they think they are?" his red-faced squeals and fat, pounding fists seem to say. An equally popular approach to tormenting Mom while shopping is to try to explain to me every detail of the day. All four of the children who can talk do this at once, of course, as they be-bop behind angry cart baby and I, in various states of distraction.<br />
<br />
One child tries to tell me a funny thing her best friend said when the cafeteria lady threatened everyone with detention if they continued to throw their tater tots at each other. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, that inspires younger sister to tell me (at the same time) how much she loves tater tots. She then continues asking if we can buy tater tots for dinner tonight, even after I've said no three or twelve times and am now two aisles further in our shopping odyssey.<br />
<br />
Child #2 keeps asking about the tater tots with only slight variations like "Well, then can we get <em>french fries</em>?" <br />
<br />
This request is followed immediately by contributions from the seven year old who has only partially been paying attention. She will, at this very moment, pipe up with "Ooohh, I love french fries and you know, Mommy, they have them right over there at the deli and they're <em>already made</em> ...awesome!" A cheery fist pump seals her certainty that I will, of course, go buy three pounds of french fries for them. The logic is inescapable. Mom is here looking for food, right? We're all hungry right? My sister has just suggested a perfect solution, and I know they're right there because I already asked if I could have some when we first arrived. It makes sense that mom will do this.<br />
<br />
But don't worry, while this inane conversation continues, in fact throughout the entire previous exchange about tater tots and the cafeteria lady and the logic of french fries at 4:45 in the afternoon, my three year old has been touching boxes and asking for any number of things she sees flitting past her antsy, bubbly, rapid- fire, passionate, loving, blink-and-you-miss-it-focus. She has been trying to <br />
push the cart, <br />
pull the cart, <br />
climb the cart, <br />
ride the cart, <br />
and play chicken with the cart. <br />
<br />
She has also started two likely tantrums and several perfectly pitched whines whenever you have threatened to put her <em>in</em> the cart. As long as she's <em>not</em> in it, the cart is Scooby and the Gang's Mystery Mobile. It's Herbie the Love Bug and Thomas the Tank Engine all combined. However, she doesn't want to actually sit in it! "Nooooo, I don't waaaaaant to go in the caaaaaaart." Vowel extension is a predictable feature of three year old angst. Look it up in a linguistics text; I'm sure it's there.<br />
<br />
In fact, let us pause here to enter the mind of a three year old because it really will deepen your appreciation of the grocery store battlefield. A three year old can best be understood by studying this crucial and oft used phrase, <br />
<br />
"But I don't want to _____________" Insert whatever you like here:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<ul><li>go to bed</li>
<li>eat broccoli</li>
<li>clean my room</li>
<li>put on underwear</li>
<li>come inside when it's raining</li>
<li>go to bed</li>
<li>put down the hammer </li>
<li>stop watching that dancing mouse over and over and over again</li>
<li>go to bed</li>
<li>stay off the grocery cart</li>
</ul><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0a7MObDvzJs/Ti-cqLihDDI/AAAAAAAAAD0/BmOK21ifIV4/s1600/pouty+three+year+old.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0a7MObDvzJs/Ti-cqLihDDI/AAAAAAAAAD0/BmOK21ifIV4/s1600/pouty+three+year+old.jpg" t$="true" /></a></div>It does not matter what or when the request is, a three year old does not understand why she should do ANYTHING unless she wants to or feels like it. "I don't want to" is as soundly argued and reasonable as any sober pronouncements from the Supreme Court. It makes perfect sense, and it is shocking that you, Mommy, continue to think I should do anything if I don't want to. <br />
<br />
I don't want to go in the cart. I want some Fruit Loops. I don't care that they're packed with enough sugar to dissolve my teeth in one bowl. I don't care that the fruit flavor has been sprayed on in a factory or that cereal that tastes like Pez probably isn't the best choice, nutritionally speaking. They are at my eye level (thank you, again market research) and they are the latest image in my View Finder. <br />
<br />
Every second is precious and long in the life of a three year old, so simply saying "I am not buying you Fruit Loops" is not enough. You will have to say it every time you come to the store and you will say it at least once a minute for the rest of this particular shopping excursion. <br />
<br />
So, I have helped you understand where your three year old is coming from. It won't make your strong-willed firefly less annoying; she is just now placed in sharper relief. A clear, maddening picture of her. <br />
<br />
But wait, there's more. Just like the Ginsu knives, we aren't finished yet! Let us recap:<br />
<br />
Child #1: Continues to give details about friend's HILARIOUS comment -- "No mom, this is sooo funny!"<br />
Child #2: Loves tater tots and wants to make sure you understand. She's busying lobbying for tater tots while continuing to expertly scope out the store for anything else she can get you to agree to buy in your feeble state. Her sister is not far behind her:<br />
Child #3: Lobbying for real live <em>already fried</em> french fries, "Right over there! Don't they smell good, Mom?"<br />
Child #4 Is flitting around the store, playing with the cart and begging for sugar.<br />
<br />
Fear not, Dear Reader, in addition to the free shipping and handling, you also get Child #5 <br />
<br />
Child #5: Whining, reaching, grabbing, whining, screeching, smearing fig newtons into the cart cover. Yes, I grabbed fig newtons and started feeding him. Don't judge me. At least they weren't Oreos, and fig is a fruit.<br />
<br />
Like I said: war of attrition. <em>It requires patience in the moment and a long focus.</em> To yell, to hit or do something big, bold and memorable could end the gadfly questions about french fries, but what will that create in her, later in life? They do not understand that I am trying to meal plan for seven people while replaying mistakes I made at work and thinking about the housework and grading that wait at home. They live in the moment. We adults, we Five Star Generals, do not live in the moment. We suspend many moments and responsibilities together in ourselves, and my three year old butterfly won't understand why Fruit Loops cause Mom to be so angry. My seven year old didn't mean to make me cry and spank anybody; they're just french fries. What's the big deal? I cannot snap. I have to breathe and keep coaxing and discussing and loving them into good behavior.<br />
<br />
Scary. We wield a lot of power as parents. The world will tell you that you don't. They will say Rhianna and Lady Gaga and Facebook and Twitter wield all the cultural power. Keep telling yourself that, World. I see young people who respond to the healthy fear of not wanting to disappoint their parents. It's alive and well in some of them, just as it was in us. Where a healthy fear and respect of parents is not operating, I will show you drug use, sex, and drinking. I will show you defiance, detention, and bad grades. Harvard will not be calling, but you might awaken one night to this on the other end of the line, <br />
<br />
"Good evening, ma'am, I am sorry to wake you. This is Officer..." and your world immediately swirls into sweating and panic. I do not want to live that life in a few years, so I continue to hold them accountable. I did not buy french fries or tater tots. I did not yell at anyone, or sit down on the pharmacy chair and weep, although both sounded appealing. My three year old ended up having to ride in the cart. She screamed for a bit, and then she stopped because I said I would leave the entire cart there, march all of us home and put her to bed with a spanking. She believed me. Would I have done it? Yes, if I had to, but when you fight the war of attrition and you try to be consistent and firm, you rarely have to resort to such drastic measures. They know you mean business. <br />
<br />
In my role as a high school teacher, I often like to say my favorite idea for a bumper sticker is:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: blue; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: x-large;"><strong><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="background-color: white;">Good Teaching Can't Fix Bad</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Parenting</span></span></strong></span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Our culture often reviles teachers and bemoans the education system at the same time that it asks us to fix all sorts of cultural and psychological ills that come from family, not school. The boy smoking cigarettes and glaring at adults like they personally deserve nothing but scorn was once that cute three year old begging for Fruit Loops. If you teach him that "No" means "No" and it does so because you love him and want him to be a good person, perhaps he will not sneer and smoke outside Starbucks in a few years. <br />
<br />
I believe the bumper sticker is true. However, as the mother of five children who have not reached high school yet, let alone junior high, I'm holding off on putting it on my own car. I have high hopes that my children will be good students and citizens far into their futures, but the war continues, and I don't want to declare a premature victory.Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-36571818820821813432011-05-31T21:57:00.000-07:002014-05-05T09:21:27.889-07:00S'mores, Like Gold in My Hand<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<span style="font-size: large;">A Lesson in Point of View.</span> Too much of the time I l<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">o</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ok around my house and see mess--an Everest of laundry, an embarrassingly persistent pile of “wash by hand” dishes stacked on the counter, a full diaper pail, bathrooms that need scrubbing, a carpet of cheerios, dirty socks and toys where a carpet should be.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My point of view is often tired, cranky and self-loathing or self-pitying depending on the time of the month.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Often as I'm racing to work or frantically trying to get home from work (see <a href="http://teachersnotteaching.blogspot.com/2010/11/transition-words.html">Transition Words</a> for a reminder of this chaos) I hear the voice of Katharine Hepburn in my head as she confesses in the best movie ever, <em>The Philadelphia Story:</em> </span><br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">"I'm an unholy mess of a girl."</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br />
</span></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--yRrUe-bwio/TeUb1STe3qI/AAAAAAAAAC0/0Qh0UYiv7A0/s200/philadelphia+story.jpg" height="200" t8="true" width="135" /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-spacerun: yes;">When you are a mother of five who works full time outside the house, you can start to feel like a hot mess, start to resent the perky stay-at-home moms who have time to go for a walk around town in the morning, bouncing past the window with their dogs on leashes, their Starbucks cups and their cute workout shorts from Kohl's. You start to envy the women who get their hair done more than twice a year and who have the time and treasure to actually take their kids to Disneyland. It's a slippery slope when my point of view starts to see the glass not just as half empty, but as a sippy cup tipped over and leaking milk all over the counter. </span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes though, in unexpected and desperately needed moments, I’m given brief glimpses of the messiness of my life that seem pleasing and comforting, if not downright romantic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yesterday was Memorial Day. This was the detritus of my life:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hershey’s chocolate wrappers scattered on the counter, graham crackers smashed on the floor, bamboo sticks with marshmallow stickiness, dishes stacked in the sink, wet laundry languishing in the washing machine, clean and rapidly turning sour. Yet it was also linguica basted in beer, charcoal smoke, buttery garlic bread crusts on the high chair, Giants baseball--"3-2 pitch and Bumgarner strikes him out…"Grab some pine, meat."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I watched through the window as four children, gathered together in the back yard burying Joey’s chubby leg in the dark soil while making dirt castles and picking dandelions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After dinner, I saw four matching ballerina buns through my living room window, four buns perched on the top of four heads while they waited patiently over the Weber, marshmallow sticks in hand, twisting them slowly to achieve the perfect toast. Marshmallows because, well, have you ever eaten a s'more? If it's warm and it's a holiday, I am fairly certain there's some kind of local ordinance or maybe even a state law that requires s'mores. Ballerina buns because Daddy threatened, “Any girl who has her hair down, doesn’t get a s'more.” If I could use the promise of s'mores for clean rooms and speaking kindly to your siblings without my daughters weighing two hundred pounds each, I would do it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FHe8y2bR8pY/TeU49QwgHOI/AAAAAAAAAC4/_vHYUzaqPDs/s200/smores.jpg" height="140" t8="true" width="200" /></span><a href="http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/smores/Detail.aspx"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">S'mores Recipe</span></a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway, a quiet family day that ends with grilling and copious consumption of s'mores can make a girl feel downright warm and fuzzy. The disaster of my house, the bickering of my children, the unholy mess of my life miraculously became a sanctuary from the world that houses beautiful human beings whose very existence keeps me inhaling and exhaling. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No grand change took place last weekend. Despite my ferverent prayers, we did not win the Mega Millions or even <em>A </em>Million. Alice the Maid did not move in, nor did the DIY Network come to rescue my yard or remodel my kitchen. Heaven knows my daughters are probably bickering like old women right now: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"No I didn't."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Yes, you did."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"No, I didn't!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Yes, you did!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Altogether now with feeling...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"MOM!"</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The plot didn't change, just my point of view. In teaching literature point of view is essential and complicated. First person, third person, omniscient, limited omniscient. A novel isn't a newspaper or chapter summaries on Pink Monkey Notes; you have some work to do, Dear Reader.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reading great literature requires an understanding of point of view. <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em> is about Scout’s point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> If not, it's an entirely different novel. </span>Mayella Ewell's novel or Tom Robinson's novel or even the memoir of Atticus Finch is not the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The best line in <em>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em> loses all power without point of view:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em> "I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: 'All right, then, I'll GO to hell.'"</em></span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Chapter 30)</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the hands of a naive or passive or lazy reader, those lines may not make you tear up like I do. Okay, perhaps I'm a bit of a literary nerd, and I'm the only one who cries every time Charlotte dies or Elizabeth Bennet realizes she loves Mr. Darcy, but believe me: point of view is powerful stuff. If you need outside evidence, here's a link for you. As Annie Savoy in <em>Bull Durham</em> would say, "You could look it up."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <a href="http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/read/pov1.html">Literary Point of View</a></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This blog is about point of view, and about my job. I haven’t posted about my work lately. Given the title of this blog, I really should.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Basically God has given me bountiful blessings this year: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">r</span>ehired into a job I never would have dreamed I could love so much, a new perspective on my profession, a profession I had grown too comfortable in, a point of view on teaching that had become too routine, even jaded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> My job this year renewed my practice and made me </span>belive this is what my layoff was for, this was what God had in store for me, this wonderful new teaching life. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just when it all made sense, I was laid off again and rehired again. Wonderful right? Let's have some s'mores and celebrate! Not so fast. Here comes a plot twist that would make Charles Dickens proud. My district has not yet decided <em>what</em> position I will return to in the fall. In fact it's looking like I will be back at my <em>old</em> site. They want me back at the campus I left, the “main” campus, the “comprehensive” school, the Big House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, to you, Dear Reader, this may sound like I got sent down to the minor leagues but am now being called back up for a starting position in The Show. I am Crash Davis, and I finally get to go back to the bigs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> should not <em>have</em> to explain this movie reference, but I will for those of you who, in the pretentious, post-<em>Dances with Wolves-</em>director-of-<em>Waterworld-</em>Kevin Costner-era have forgotten his great earlier films. If you want to understand baseball and watch good movies, you can't go wrong with these:</span></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YQ-BnzCBUv0/TeU7E50v8uI/AAAAAAAAAC8/4vAOtTsf7Ts/s1600/bull+durham.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YQ-BnzCBUv0/TeU7E50v8uI/AAAAAAAAAC8/4vAOtTsf7Ts/s200/bull+durham.jpg" height="200" t8="true" width="133" /></span></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M65TzwjcuSs/TeU7J4e0VgI/AAAAAAAAADA/ubbrcCaAw8A/s1600/field+of+dreams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M65TzwjcuSs/TeU7J4e0VgI/AAAAAAAAADA/ubbrcCaAw8A/s200/field+of+dreams.jpg" height="200" t8="true" width="133" /></span></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LuaRnyRdins/TeU7NMAWYCI/AAAAAAAAADE/ydFjGQeSQEo/s1600/sandlot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LuaRnyRdins/TeU7NMAWYCI/AAAAAAAAADE/ydFjGQeSQEo/s200/sandlot.jpg" height="200" t8="true" width="126" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Great film, even if it's the Dodgers.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I digress. Like Crash, I am a veteran.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve done my time in alternative education, and now I “get” to go back to the “real” school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s probably what they thought I would feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Before my epiphany year in alternative education, it is what <em>I</em> would have thought I would feel. [Someone save me from my own syntax!] </span>Instead, I said, “No thank you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m happier here.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Now</em> my point of view becomes crucial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can be upset, sad, and frustrated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can be daunted by too many students, too many preps and returning to a more stressful job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, I can be resigned to see the beauty in both options.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter where I end up next year, and as of this writing I still don’t know, my point of view is the only thing that matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It must be positive and enthusiastic because my students deserve nothing less, and life is too hard to live any other way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-spacerun: yes;">Unfortunately, my point of view about where I should teach next year does not matter anymore than it did when I was laid off the first two times. If my point of view had any power, then in the last two years I could have just said, “Wait, I’m a really good teacher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t want to lose me,” and they would have kept me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silly girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s not how education works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not how life works either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Therefore, after d</span>utifully explaining all of the reasons why I should return to my current position next year and generously acknowledging that I would go wherever I am placed, my superintendent offered some more polite version of "Damn straight, you will, Sister, and you'll like it."</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next fall, I will still feel like an unholy mess of a girl because the daily chaos of my life won’t change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Life is messy. </span>The s'mores my children enjoyed last night were messy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I probably still have marshmallow squished into the couch, and I know there are still graham cracker crumbs on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They stayed up way too late on a school night, and I know at least 3 of the 5 didn’t brush their teeth before collapsing for the night into a diabetic coma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, those s'mores, those moments with them yesterday, are gifts, colorful jewels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What would my messy house and chaotic life feel like if I was suddenly diagnosed with cancer or my house burned to the ground or one of my children got sick? Would I care about Laundry Everest or the three mystery bowls of leftovers at the back of the fridge? Not likely. Every messy, crazy stressful moment would be a jewel, or as Joe Banks said of the days he had wasted in worry instead of living his life, they would be “like gold in my hand.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you don’t know this reference you aren’t alone, but I encourage you to watch <em>Joe Versus the Volcano</em> an easily overlooked romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Yes, Janeane Garofalo, I do wish every movie could star Tom and Meg, and you would be a lot less cynical if you embraced that philosophy, too).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, it has some of the best speeches and sweetest messages about living in the moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like this gem of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a speech when Joe finally quits his miserable job and explains to his boss why:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/oGLKnAvzlg4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Either way, alternative education or the Big House, each day will be a sweet, delicious s'more because I have, not just a job, but a profession I love in a beautiful mountain home in the best state in the best country in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> My students, my children, my husband and I all deserve a point of view that can generate joy, share love, and embrace adventure. The Lord has not abandoned me yet, so He must have more important work ahead. If He finds an unholy mess of a girl to be the place to start, I'm up for the challenge, and happy to be a </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><strong>Teacher Still Teaching <em>Somewhere</em></strong></span></div>
Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-51460990624082760242011-01-16T22:47:00.000-08:002011-01-16T22:47:11.853-08:00Where Did the Bad Kids Go?Do you know about "Alternative Education"? Perhaps you are like I was--a general ed teacher who had a vague sense that there were several other "educational options" for the students who couldn't cut it in the "real" high school. These places were undoubtedly easier, probably just passing students without making them do any "real" work. Said students were the "bad" kids---behavior problems, attendance problems, attitude problems. I and other regular ed teachers would just shake our heads sadly or smirk knowingly when we found "that kid" ended up switching to alternative ed. My own district has several alternative sites. I didn't know the differences among them. They were all the same. Those "bad" kids were all the same. <br />
<br />
Now, don't get me wrong. I am not now, nor have I ever been a heartless teacher. I worked hard to reach all of my students, to differentiate instruction, to reach out to parents and try to help whoever struggled. However, as I've said in another blog, the kid who desperately wants to learn and might be successful, but has immense personal struggles to overcome, often looks just like the jerk who doesn't care. My new job in alternative education has made me begin to realize, there actually isn't any jerk who doesn't care. <em>That kid doesn't exist.</em> I just thought he did. I thought he was the one who ended up going away to alternative ed, and I couldn't be bothered with worrying about it. I worked at the <em>main</em> campus. <br />
<br />
Well, the good Lord has a way of opening our eyes, even when we think we have nothing else to learn on any given subject. After fourteen years of success as a secondary teacher, I'm pretty smart. What am I missing? What could I possibly have to learn aside from some tinkering with my practice here and there? One layoff, six terrifying months, and one blessed, beautiful rehire later, I realize I'm an idiot thank you very much. <br />
<br />
I now work in alternative ed. In fact, that "general ed" term I just threw around like an old vocabulary shoe, is a relatively new term for me. I was just a teacher before; now I realize the distinction. I have come to undertsand the differences among each of my district's several alternative sites. I am beginning to see the tensions between the main campus and alternative ed. with new eyes. Most importantly, I see with glaring clarity the arrogance I possessed toward these places and these students...now my students. I know where the bad kids went. They came to me, and they were never "bad" to begin with. <br />
<br />
That kid who was pugnacious every morning? He has never had one positive adult role model. More to the point, no one has said anything helpful or loving to him...in years...maybe ever. Does that excuse his behavior? Nope. Does that mean he isn't my problem? Double nope.<br />
<br />
The girl who sleeps with everything on campus and sees every female as a threat and every sexual encounter as some twisted kind of love? She was abused and has never been loved the right way, so the wrong way has become a sad replacement for the real thing. Does this excuse spreading STDs and ugly rumors? Nope, but I can't just roll my eyes back at her either. <br />
<br />
The girl who never came to class? She's living in a car. <br />
<br />
The boy who always fell asleep in first period? He works nights to feed his family..really he does. He's not working to pay for car insurance, but oatmeal and diapers for his baby brother. <br />
<br />
The kids who can't focus? They're hungry. Ask them; they'll tell you, and people who are really hungry don't lie about it. <br />
<br />
The one who does brilliant work but is on the verge of dropping out because of attendance has chronic migraines. <br />
<br />
The other one is taking care of his disabled mom. <br />
<br />
Still another has been smoking pot since age ten because his Dad thought it would be okay, and the other one who's an alcoholic started drinking because she was so sad about her mom's addiction. <br />
<br />
Really? Yeah, really. <br />
<br />
I thought it was just ABC after school specials. Wait, no, those were tame by comparison. I think in my former job there were a lot of valid reasons for my being less empathetic and more cynical about the kids who now make up my entire day. <br />
<br />
The main reason is that I had to be. Self-preservation dictated that when I had to serve almost two hundred students per day, I didn't have the luxury of getting to know each one's story. I saw so many that I had to insulate myself from the knowledge of how bad some of their lives could get. Plus, there seemed to be very little I could do when considering how few minutes of one-on-one contact I actually had. <br />
<br />
Beyond self preservation, I also knew I wasn't the last option for students. When a student began slipping through the cracks, I would contact the counselor and eventually, if the student was unsuccessful enough, he or she would just disappear from my roll sheet and end up somewhere else. I could be safe in the knowledge that the system had somewhere for that kid to be. I didn't know if it was the best place, but it was another place after I failed, after the "main," "regular," school failed. After the students fail here, they can still perhaps succeed somewhere else. <br />
<br />
Today I now work in that mystical "somewhere else." I am the place the "bad kids" went. I am the last stop, or close to it. There are a few options in alternative ed, but really we're the last line of educational defense before dropping out, giving up, moving on without a diploma. There is nowhere else to go; we're it. As a result I spend a lot more time on the phone coaxing my students to come in when they are absent. I know more parents by their first names than I ever have before. I know where most of my students physically live and with whom they live. I'm learning to read subtle clues about what they aren't telling me, about whether contacting the parent will be helpful or end up in abuse. <br />
<br />
I made an English muffin with peanut butter this week because my student announced when she arrived that she was hungry. Students used to say that all the time, but it wasn't really my problem. Today, we had extra English muffins in the kitchen, and we always have some peanut butter, so she munched on breakfast while we discussed quadratic equations. Later, we took a "field trip" outside to get some fresh air and walk up and down the lawn as a physical representation of adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. Those signs are just directions, and passing over zero is a magical journey where addition becomes subtraction sometimes. <br />
<br />
Nevermind the strange miracle that I'm teaching algebra. My new position allows me to teach algebra for an entire hour if I need to, and my student will not be spacing out from lack of breakfast because I made it for her. How is this possibly the sad "continuation" place I used to think it was? How can this be anything but a wonderful place where students are saved, one by one, hour by hour? <br />
<br />
It seems to me the mission of my new alternative universe is to undo all the damage high school has done to my students, and to be there for them in ways that all good teachers long to be and try to be, but are prevented from being because of the factory-like necessities of a comprehensive high school. When you have 200 and the school has 900 students, they somehow cease to be students in the same way that I cease to be a human being to the lady at the DMV. They are units, ADA, or test scores. He's "below basic," she's "an AP kid,"he's "ELL" and has an "IEP", and on and on. I know most teachers in my former place don't feel this way, but for every general ed teacher "the system" can generate an insidious callousness that is hard to ignore.<br />
<br />
Lest this blog become a simplistic endeavor that champions the miracle workers in alternative ed and condescends to the comprehensive site I used to occupy, let me reassure you: my revelations are about me, not everyone. This epiphany was personal. My new position has reminded me why I wanted to be a teacher in the first place. The small, crucial moments so hard to find and celebrate as a general ed teacher (see my attempts to teach rhetorical devices in <a href="http://teachersnotteaching.blogspot.com/2010/09/problem-like-maria.html">A Problem Like Maria</a>) are much more frequent when you teach one student at a time. The drug problems, or relationship crises that I used to try to push beyond my classroom doors cannot be pushed aside here; they are the glaring reasons why my students are here in the first place. I have to work <em>with</em> my students' disabilties, their poverty, their crumbling families, and their poor attendance. It's messy work, often sad work, and always exhausting work. Yet it's still one of the most important jobs in our society. <br />
<br />
I like my new job in ways I could never have imagined. When my former colleagues seem surprised by this, I remember how I used to feel about "alternative ed," and am reminded of how little I knew even after fourteen years of teaching. One of the reasons for choosing teaching as a career was that I wanted to be a lifelong learner. Teaching in alternative education has uprooted all I thought I knew and reminded me of how much I do not know. Not just math or how metamorphic rock is formed. Not just why Newton is important or why the acronym FOIL is my best friend when factoring. I am learning again how much power my profession can generate in a student's life. Unfortunately I am also learning how much more need and sadness and injustice exists in the world around me, than I thought there was, even in my small, beautiful mountain place. I learn everyday at work. I laugh everyday at work. I think deeply everyday at work. I am challenged and victorious and a miserable failure everyday at work. So my new place in education is challenging and scary and a miraculous temblor that has shaken me up and made me so glad to be a <br />
<br />
Teacher Not Teaching Now TeachingTeacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-52304441094848687712010-11-12T20:27:00.000-08:002014-05-02T20:24:48.726-07:00Transition WordsOne of the important moments for student writers is when they learn to use transition words. I do not mean the way they use them when we scaffold it in elementary school. My first grader recently wrote a paragraph on her morning routine, complete with misspellings and awkward transitions, clearly inserted by the teacher to make students aware of their existence: <br />
<br />
"<span style="background-color: yellow;">First</span>, I wake up. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Next,</span> I eat breakfast. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Then</span>, I get dressed. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Finally</span> I get my backpack and go to school."<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;">Unfortunately,</span> many students in high school have long since forgotten these elementary attempts to make the use of transitions conscious and smooth. <span style="background-color: yellow;"> Instead</span> we see a lot of run on sentences, comma splices, and sentences that start with "then." By the time they reach sophomre or junior year, we can expect the reliably stilted, "<span style="background-color: yellow;">In conclusion</span>" to start the last paragraph of any piece of writing. <span style="background-color: yellow;">However</span>, for a student to achieve appropriate, precise transitions that move a reader smoothly through her essay, is a rare and impressive accomplishment. <br />
<br />
All of this thinking about transitions led me to ponder metaphor. Most things in life lead me to ponder metaphor. I didn't end up as a literature major and English teacher because I enjoy the linear. If smooth transitions in writing are difficult to achieve, they are virtually impossible in life.<br />
<br />
I race from work to home each day, never feeling I've put out all fires and cleaned up all messes. It's usually a panicky glance at the clock, followed by a sprint to the car and a quick text to reassure my family, especially the husband part who needs to get to work...now...that I didn't forget to come home.<br />
<br />
The transition home is loud. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Granted</span>, most things with five children are loud, and my daily welcome home is no exception: a chattering hen house of school updates, questions, hugs, kisses, permission slips and exclamations. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Then, </span> I close the front door and actually come inside. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Despite</span> many attempts to have a few moments of calm before leaving teacher person and putting on the full armour of mommy person, this frenetic welcome home goes unchanged.<br />
<br />
My early morning routine isn't much better. Every life needs a soundtrack and my mornings these days are accompanied by strains of "Chuggington," a colorful animated show for preschoolers whose theme song, for whatever reason, is completely enthralling to my eight month old. Complete with wobbling head and wonder-filled "o" of the mouth, he sits mesmerized while a cloying children's chorus sings the following: <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Chuggington. Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga Chugginton!" </div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/children/chuggington/images/wilson-koko-brewster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.abc.net.au/children/chuggington/images/wilson-koko-brewster.jpg" height="152" px="true" width="320" /></a></div>
I know. It's hard to believe my kids can't get perfect scores on the SAT someday if I just set them in front of this kind of quality programming all the time. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Fortunately</span>, he's only interested in the monotonous theme song. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Afterward</span>, we switch over to the beloved <em>Arthur. </em> This part of the morning is crunch time-- the transition from Mom to Teacher, from Children to Students. No matter how early I rise, the last half hour is still, always, slightly chaotic. I should probably just record my voice shouting the following:<br />
<br />
"Did you brush your teeth?"<br />
"You have to wear socks."<br />
"I don't know, check the dryer."<br />
"Did you pack your lunch?"<br />
"Someone pick up your brother."<br />
<br />
Weekdays are one thing. Saturday mornings are another. Soccer Saturday offers its own transition challenges. Now, you don't just have to get your children to school. You must get them there on time for an event involving several other families. It is a timed event. It requires special clothing, and sports equipment. Sometimes you even have to bring a meal for everyone involved. By the way, if you think the phrase "bringing snack" doesn't sound like a frightening summons to provide a full meal that pleases both sugar hungry mini-athletes and healthy minded parents, you are not a soccer mom. <br />
<br />
I've been a "soccer mom" for four years now. Four years to know when each of my three children have to be at their respective pre-game warm ups. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Furthermore</span>, this isn't the first week of soccer season when the transition to the routines might have some starts and stops. It's the middle of the season, so our Saturdays should move like at least a relatively well-oiled machine. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Instead</span>, this was my recent AM:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">After</span> an early morning session of chores, cuddling and Cheerios, I was lounging on the couch with said Cheerio eater, my six year old, and a cup of coffee. We were watching "Arthur,"a show I would watch by myself. I want to hang out with my friends at the Sugar Bowl after school everyday and make big plans with Buster in Arthur's treehouse, and I'm not even sure what Arthur is. My eldest says he's an anteater; I'm not seeing it. <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">But I digress</span>. <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Suddenly</span> and for no clear reason, I realize the six year old is supposed to be at the field much earlier today. I check my email for her coach's weekly update (Thank you, Lord, for coaches who email; <span style="background-color: yellow;">otherwise</span> I might never find any soccer communication) and realize we are supposed to be at the field in 30 minutes!<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Now</span>, considering the drive is about five minutes away, you might interpret this as good news. <span style="background-color: yellow;">However</span>, you would be wrong. Stupidly sunny in your optimism in fact. Even Superman and Wonder Woman together could not get three children ready for soccer games and two more ready for watching soccer games in that time. <span style="background-color: yellow;">After</span> rousing sleeping Dad to ask if he can bring Child 1 and 2 to the field in two hours, I go to work on the youngest Mia Hamm and the babies. As a family we enter Red Alert mode where I shout orders, Dad does triage on some blisters and shoes the two year old. <span style="background-color: yellow;">While</span> I pack the bag that will serve as changing and water station, cell phone dock, snack shack, bank and baby toy box, hair is brushed ("I don't know where your purple ribbon is; you'll have to go without it. I'm sorry."), teeth are brushed and water bottles filled. <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Soon</span> I'm flying out the front door, yelling for older sibs to move car seats from Dad's car to mine, and I begin to think we just might make it on time. Well, maybe a few minutes late. We can be those cool parents who think the start time is just too early, so we arrive a bit late, knowing that things at the field never really get going as soon as the coach likes to claim. Just as my sunny confidence begins to flame, it is quickly extinguished, and I realize I will probably cross that tenuous "fashionably late" threshhold and instead, again be the manic mother of five, racing in late and apologetic. I hate being that chick. It's sooo predictable! Anyway, the source of my new distress comes from this conversation:<br />
<br />
Mia Ham (heading out the front door)<br />
<br />
Eldest: Are you wearing one of my shin guards? Mom, she's wearing one of MY shin guards!<br />
Mia (with a slight but growing whine): I NEED it! I can't find mine!<br />
Eldest: They're not YOURS! I need them, too! I have a game, too!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Dad and I quickly realize that we have three soccer players and only five shin guards. It's kind of like the time-honored dryer conundrum where two socks go in but only one comes out. What happens to the other sock? <span style="background-color: yellow;">Coincidentally</span>, the T.V. show "Arthur" has a cute episode that explains the sock mystery: <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/5spaow0o3CE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">At any rate</span>, I am now clearly one shin guard shy of soccer Saturday. I refuse to race to the store to buy more shin guards. My six year old has the chronic habit of losing everything she wears that falls below the knee. We are often reduced to tears before school, before church, before birthday parties because she can't find socks or the other shoe or <em>any </em>shoes that fit. Today is just the latest in this predictable and frustrating habit. <span style="background-color: yellow;">While</span> I might want to dwell, wallow even, in the misery of this realization, I must forge ahead. <br />
<br />
Soccer waits for no mom! <br />
<br />
Please tell me this sad shin guard sharing is not the pathetic experience of just my soccer family. Do shin guards go missing in your house, too? Probably not. You're probably a super organized working mom who has special wicker baskets with canvas lining that match each child's team uniform color. After each Saturday, you dutifully wash the uniforms and socks and lovingly fold and place each uniform along with its cleats and shin guards in the basket for each child. Are their water bottles color coded as well? Of course they are. You are the master of soccer Saturday, and your essays all have delightful transitions.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Meanwhile</span>, back in the increasing H-E-Double Hockey Sticks that is my Saturday, we charge out of the house and into the car. Dad's executive decision is that they will share their shin guards because only two of them play at the same time. I realize no one has had breakfast, so I throw a granola bar back to my soccer star (Yeah, that will fuel her until <em>almost</em> the half) and a bag of goldfish crackers at the two year old, whose total devotion to me is sealed with this immensely cool breakfast choice. No oatmeal with sliced bananas. No pancakes with flax seed. No scrambled eggs with broccoli and cheddar cheese. She gets "Fishy Crackers?!" <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Predictably</span>, we are to late to warmups, but luckily there is another Mom who arrives slightly later than me. Victory. Everyone plays. Only one daughter wins her game, and yes, we keep track of these things in our house. Don't get me started. It's another blog unto itself. They collect their snacks. We trudge to the car, and when we get home, we're far too exhausted to do anything but collapse en masse on the couch. <br />
<br />
Dozing with the baby on my shoulder, I sense the two year old is grazing on the snack leftovers from her sisters. The six year old kicks off her cleats and socks which are almost immediately inhaled by the couch, hider of all needed things. Soccer uniforms end up in one pile or another, but they don't go into the wash for at least two more days. Let's be honest, they may still be dirty somewhere next Friday. I'm not even sure I own any wicker baskets. I know my five children have nothing color coded. All of this will either make them resilent and calm in a crisis, or at the very least, it will fuel some productive therapy sessions when they reach their late twenties and realize I am to blame for everything. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Either way</span>, Saturday is waning and relatively successful, and I still haven't learned how to transition from Mommy to Soccer Mommy. <br />
<br />
Tomorrow, there will undoutedly be at least some chaos between home and church. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Even though</span> I am a veteran working mother and a teacher who can guide students through any number of good choices to create smooth transitions in writing, my shift between home and work on Monday will undoutedly still be difficult. Transitions are hard. Smooth transitions are almost impossible to achieve, both in the classroom and in life as a <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://teachers.plainfield.k12.in.us/wac/documents/PHSTransitionsHandout.pdf">Transition Words Handout</a>Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-52574640652808273062010-10-09T21:31:00.000-07:002010-10-09T21:31:00.141-07:00Merit PayMerit pay. Isn't pay supposed to reward merit? Doesn't it do so in other professions? The automatic $138 per month raise each year in my district is little consolation for watching Joe Mediocrity lecture from literally yellowed notes, and pass out the same mimeographed vocabulary assignment he first made in 1981, all while making the same pay as I do. Actually, he makes more than me merely because he has been physically occupying space here longer. Truthfully, he makes much more than me because my union has been consistently building up the salary and benefits packages for these admirable elder statesmen in the district while young, dynamic teachers, still humming "Eye of the Tiger" on their way to work, can't pay their deductibles and vacation at the local park populated by tweakers and stray dogs. <br />
<br />
The Washington state teachers union was widely credited with killing a bill in 2009 that would have simply swapped out a years of service pay structure in favor of rewarding "teacher competency." In defending the actions of WEA, union president, Mary Lindquist, illuminates the very problem unions create. She claims: <br />
<br />
"There’s some good reasons for our existing salary schedule. I think it’s one that has stood the test of time. It’s a clear, transparent, predictable way of paying school employees and I think by and large they’re pretty receptive to the current system. I don’t see a lot of need from inside the education community to change that.” (Jenkins, Austin, "Washington Teachers Union Kills Merit Pay Proposal." <i>OPB News</i>. March 23, 2009). <br />
<br />
This is precisely the problem! Of course there isn't a need from inside the education community. After decades of knowing you will get an automatic raise, no matter what kind of teacher you are, where's the incentive to suddenly be held accountable? <br />
<br />
While I do not usually agree with the teachers unions who claim to represent my interests, they do have a point when it comes to concerns about merit pay. Its implementation is daunting. If we tie the third grade teacher's pay to her students' test scores, what about the teachers before her who prepared those kids? Furthermore, why should teachers in the poorest, urban districts have their pay tied to test scores that result from socio-economic factors largely beyond their control, while those who live in affluent districts reap the rewards earned by good parenting and high economic status? Should base salaries be derived from merit based criteria or only bonus money? Furthermore, is our only measure of successful students the results of their multiple choice tests at the end of the year, or do our claims to educate the "whole child" mean anything? How do we quantify success? As teachers, we all know it usually cannot be recorded on a scantron, no offense to you math teachers out there. Despite legitimate concerns about how best to implement merit pay, the answer cannot be merely to reject it outright. <br />
<br />
As is always the case, we teachers make the worst students, and what do we see in our students when the bar is low and "predictable"? Most rise only to the low standard. If you raise the bar in the classroom, the limbo party stops and students stretch themselves beyond what they perceived their capacities to be. Competition is healthy! It's true in the classroom and in our profession. Excellent teachers are not afraid of merit pay. In fact, many great teachers welcome the chance to be both held accountable by their profession and rewarded for their hard work. My master teacher told me many years ago that the best teachers constantly doubt how well they are doing, reflect upon their teaching and search for ways to improve. Those who don't probably aren't doing a very good job. As a teacher, if I don't want to question my own practice or challenge myself to improve, why would I be calling for the people writing the paychecks to do so?<br />
<br />
The rewards in public education are always intrinsic in the current system, and that just doesn't encourage greatness. When a teacher takes on outside tutoring, advises one or more clubs, or designs curriculum that requires students to engage in higher level thinking and rigorous work, the rewards should not just be an occasional grateful parent phone call or a superficial, "Keep up the good work!" and insincere chuck on the shoulder from the principal. <br />
<br />
People often speak of teaching in elevated, moral terms, like it's a religious calling. Certainly there is truth to that. In fact, students, parents, and administrators should rejoice in that reality -- most teachers are in it for all the right reasons. People often cynically assert that we're in it for the summers off, but that's like saying young men and women volunteer to serve in the armed forces for those great "Welcome Home" parades. The fact that becoming a teacher requires a bit of self sacrifice, perhaps a bit of a calling, doesn't mean the job does not deserve compensation. If this were truly a religious calling, then our housing, food and expenses would all be paid for by the church, and I wouldn't have any children to feed because of my vow of chastity and poverty. Just because we want to inspire out students, just because we didn't seek fame and glory in our career choice, doesn't then mean that we should be shut out of financial reward or compensation for a job WELL done, not just a job done. <br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong--I love the Facebook message from a recent grad who thanked me for her senior English class. She said it was clear I put my heart into my teaching and that despite my reputation for being "mean" or "hard", she quickly realized I just wanted to prepare them for the proverbial "real world". I treasure the flowers and card I received last June from a senior girl who wanted to thank me for helping her when she was being bullied as a freshman. I'm tickled by the 19 year old boy working at the local smoothie shop who bemoans how much he misses "this place" when he comes by to visit. Those are the carrots that keep teachers moving forward, no matter how heavy the burdens we bear. But those don't pay for soccer or Disneyland for my kids. They don't repaint my house or fix my car when it suddenly decides it won't get me two miles to my job one morning. However, just increasing teacher pay won't make public schools suddenly and uniformly successful anymore than Oprah's generous checks to a few successful charter schools will save the system. Furthermore, charter schools, while often wildly successful endeavors, still aren't the pillowy manna from heaven we might wish them to be.<br />
<br />
The link below is to an interesting article that points out how limited a mere focus on merit pay is. The problems in public education are geographical and local, socioeconomic, and complex. Can merely paying teachers more create widespread success? Probably not. Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C. has made bold attempts at reform and been met with Oprah celebrity and union scorn. A pilot program in Denver that has been mandatory for new teachers and voluntary for veterans, has been fraught with controversy and ambiguous results. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=is_merit_pay_a_distraction_in_the_fight_for_meaningful_education_reform">http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=is_merit_pay_a_distraction_in_the_fight_for_meaningful_education_reform</a><br />
<br />
<br />
Merit pay can't be the only solution to the systemic problems in public schools. My argument is not the traditional teachers-need-higher-salaries mantra. Instead, an entire shift needs to occur in public education. We need to reward models that work instead of politicians and yes, teachers unions, denigrating any movement toward compeititon. We need to liberate districts, allowing more local control over how their funding is dispersed. The recent film <em>Waiting for Superman</em> presents the terrible angst of parents living in low performing districts, just hoping to win a random lottery slot for their children in a successful charter school. Instead of opposing charter schools, as many unions and traditional schools have, why not see them as a way to change what doesn't work in all public schools? Why tie the hands of administrators with rigid rules about how money can be spent? California is one of the worst offenders there. Merit pay is only one element of reform, and the influx of homeschoolers and charter schools in the last two decades demands that traditional schools change or become obsolete. However, once Oprah moves on to discussing her favorite new scarf and Julia Roberts's latest comedy, once the public school question again can't be fixed by a two minute slot on CNN, we in education will again be left with these problems to solve. <br />
<br />
I'm not sure how to fairly achieve merit pay; implementation is fraught with peril. However, just because we aren't sure how best to reach our destination, doesn't mean we just give up on the journey. Do you tell your struggling students in danger of failing to just forget about graduation and give up when they come to you deflated and ready to quit? No, you don't. Physician, heal thyself!Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-62528192576287413242010-09-27T19:10:00.000-07:002010-09-27T19:10:36.112-07:00Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, it's true. My district officially rehired me on Friday afternoon! It is not in my previous position, but it is full time. I will be working in alternative education at two different sites in the area. It will be a new challenge, and I always like those. I do not know yet how to juggle teaching seven subjects, but I am excited about the opportunity to help students one on one, and as a mother of five, I'm really looking forward to working with teenage moms, recent and soon-to-be. If you are in alternative ed. I'd love to hear your stories and advice!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For <em>my </em>family this means I no longer need to know the daily balance of my bank account and the dates when the water and garbage payments deduct automatically. Well, let's be honest--I'm still a teacher, so I may need to know some of that, but I may not feel my heart racing <em>as much</em> when the recorded voice at the bank says "Your available balance for use is..." Those words can feel like a terrible, frightening reversal of a game show finale where I do not win the beautiful dinette set [what the hell is a dinette? Does it just mean small, cheap dining room?]. Instead the automated voice finishes her phrase with some number much lower than my worst guess, and I still can't figure out how the bank makes a computer voice sound more judgemental and condescending depending upon how small my balance has become since I last called. When there is a recent deposit she sounds positively chipper, almost as if I'm more worthy of allowing them to house my paltry income. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, while the title of my blog may not be the most accurate one anymore, it still works I think. After all it is plural, and, as you know, there are still way too many teachers not teaching right now. Too many of us who did everything right. We valued education. We obtained college degrees, dedicated ourselves to a difficult, oft-maligned profession, and didn't put financial gain ahead of helping others. Despite that, many of us are still losing our homes, facing bills we can't pay, and a bleak immediate economic future for our families and our school systems...especially in California. Therefore, I will leave the title unchanged because there are still many teachers not teaching, even though I am again lucky to count myself among those who are. Furthermore, I am learning not to trust the security of any job. The chilly winds of March may yet find me "pinked" and pushed again into the same spiral I just weathered. Only time will tell.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For now, I am grateful, thankful and counting my blessings, and I don't care if those are all the same thing--this kind of moment needs redundancy. As the Lord has shown me in every period of my life: He wants us to trust Him and know that He will provide, even when it seems most disheartening and difficult to do so. I think I'm doing really well, then I lose hope and begin to become frustrated and impatient. Then, He makes me wait a bit longer before coming through gloriously and with the kind of out-of-nowhere gifts that can only be attributed to Him. So, I'm humbled again...in every sense of that word. I don't seem to learn the lesson very well, so I keep having to experience it again and again! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have a dear friend who has been teaching for many years in Oakland, California. She and I have enjoyed Giants games and Christina Rossetti poetry together. We have debated whether or not the conclusion of <em>Jane Eyre</em> is really happy or a sad compromise for a woman who would have been better off as a missionary than as the wife of a blind liar..albeit a dashing, terribly rich blind liar. I admire her talents in the classroom and cherish her friendship. You probably have similar friends, those you turn to when prayers are needed because they always have your best interest at heart. She texted congratulations to me on Friday and quickly sent a second text saying "Keep blogging tho." I shall take my old friend's advice and continue. I hope you will be there, too. I like knowing you are out there. It has helped me enormously the past few weeks, and I'm sure it will continue to do so in my new role as a </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching*</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*My ten year old demands credit for this new title. It was entirely her idea.</span>Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-54829126442021144592010-09-22T22:24:00.000-07:002010-09-25T20:36:30.891-07:00Half Full or Half Empty: At Least I Still Own the Glass!<div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've been thinking a lot these past few weeks about the benefits of my new unemployed status. Let me correct that: I'm now underemployed. I believe that is the official term for someone like me who currently works fewer hours than I desire. All the platitudes have been running through my head. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade! Whenever God closes a door, He opens a window! Those phrases are so life affirming, albeit hackneyed, when applied to others. Being laid off is a grand adventure! New opportunities are just waiting to burst forth! Have you seen the handbills? Jobs and money all over California! Let's head west! [I apologize for the overuse of Steinbeck references. I'm a native Californian high school English teacher for crying out loud! What do you want?] The sunny optimism seemed reasonable when it was advice for my friends laid off last year. That's because it came while I sat comfortably behind my desk, students in front of me, salary directly depositing once a month like it had for the past thirteen years.</span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today, I must deliberately force myself to see the positive. I have to actively push aside terror-filled thoughts of what will happen next year if my district still has no job for me. I cannot focus on tomorrow; I must only see today. Tomorrow is frightening and unknown. Today, at least, I can control. Well, let's be honest, as a mother of five thinking I have much control over anything is probably naive delusion, but you see my point. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are some blessings I would not have in my pocket today, if I was still teaching full-time:</span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This morning I had time to make fried eggs and toast with my two-year old. While the baby slumbered, we dipped our toast in the sunshine yolks and talked. I learned where each scrape on her knee originated, and she learned that when I was little I ate eggs just like she does.</span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Last night I collapsed on the bed at 9:30 PM and didn't even bother to set an alarm for 5:00 AM. No alarm needed! I could still begin my day with relative sanity, even if I didn't rise until 6:36 AM when my eldest daughter said, "Mom, do you need to get up?" That's right. I had a <em>human</em> alarm clock this morning, and it <em>wasn't</em> followed by abject panic at the thought of thirty-five seniors waiting at a locked door while I yanked copies out of the jammed machine, cursing and sweating as the late bell rang. I was frying eggs when the late bell rang, thank you very much.</span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When my husband goes to the hospital on Friday to have a "routine procedure," I will be there. I will not have typed any detailed sub plans trying to duplicate what I do for my replacement. I don't need a replacement. My current self can just be where she needs to be without enlisting a Mommy-doppelganger, or a wife-doppelganger to do the work I cannot do. No matter what the doctor says afterward, I will be there to hear it.</span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have made brownies, oatmeal cookies with raisins, and three new recipes this month, and I have not driven my children to a drive-thru in quite some time.</span></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When this year's soccer practice schedule started coming into focus, I did not hyperventilate. </span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Child #1: "Mom, I have practice on Monday and Thursday from 2:30-4:00. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Child #2: "Mine is on Tuesday and Friday from 4:30-5:30." </span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't know when Child #3 has practice yet, but I remain calm. I can do it because I do not have any meetings or papers to grade or lessons to plan. My children can have my undivided attention whenever they need me. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will not overhear my two year old <i>this</i> year saying what her older sister said a few years ago. Back then, my eldest was "playing school." She was the teacher, and her little sister was the daughter. In her best, exasperated imitation of me, she said, "I can't help you now! I have to grade all of these papers! Please go play in your room right now!" Ouch. I can still feel my stomach lurch and my chest tighten with guilt. Working Mom guilt.</span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The lack of Working Mom guilt is a blessing beyond measure. Its absence is ironic since I'm still working almost everyday. However, you teachers who <em>are </em>teaching know: our job is not like other jobs. It is a flurry of executive decisions, putting out fires, manic talking and constant interaction with close to two hundred other human beings. It's that for at least seven hours a day followed always...always...by prep and assessment work that needs our attention. We are either attending to it, or we are distracted by the thought of it. We are surrounded by stacks of ungraded papers, or they are resting ominously in our teacher bag near the door like some heavy, simmering beast with bad breath, just seething there, attempting to get our attention. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No such beast currently resides in my home. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I mean, I braided hair and read Olivia and Dora books at bedtime more than once this week people! My six year old has had, not one, but <em>two</em> pre-tests on her spelling words! Pre-testing was not pre-empted by backwards mapping for sophomore English. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I know my eight year old didn't write D'Nealian "k"s on her homework and had to do it over at recess. [It is a sign of my high school teacher status that I had to look up the spelling of said cursive style--elementary teaching is a whole wonderland of things I do not know!] I also do not know the current boyfriend status of any of the junior class girls, let alone their penmanship struggles, and I'm fine with that. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My beginning flute player daughter is concerned that she can't also take choir because it coincides with her Thursday soccer practice. Working Mom probably wouldn't know that until she had been reminded of it at least three times, but I only heard it once yesterday, and <em>it's still in there</em>! No parent phone calls or department meetings have taken its place. </span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><ul style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I will leave this campus today and calmly go pick up my children at school down the street with only my purse in my hands, and I will not return here late tonight after the baby falls asleep to make copies for Friday's sub, so I can leave for the hospital with my husband on time. I will not lie awake worried about the boy who seems angry all the time, going over what I said to him today in case I added to his melancholy. <em>If</em> I lie awake, it will be to worry about my husband, or my daughters, or my baby boy. I may even worry about the nation's economy or the lack of world peace. Why? Because I can! </span></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This optimism won't last long. It's quite possible that I have only $3.62 in my checking account right now. I haven't received a paycheck since the end of July. Eventually I will have to deal with the fact that my ten year old wants an iPad for Christmas but isn't at all worried about the expense because--and I quote-- "It's okay Mom, I'm just going to ask Santa for it." Oh, good. Glad I don't have to worry about that then! By next summer I may cringe when the phone rings because I will know it is my mortgage company, and I do not have what they want. </span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, those are not worries for today. The glass can be half empty tomorrow or the next day. Today it is half full, half full of orange juice leftover from a breakfast with my daughter because I'm a...</span></div><b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Teacher Not Teaching</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Egg-in-a-Hole/Detail.aspx">Recipe for Eggs in a Hole</a></span>Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-11363349220930584622010-09-13T07:00:00.000-07:002010-09-13T10:20:42.544-07:00A Problem Like Maria<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do we improve public education? Strains from <em>The Sound of Music</em> fill my mind..."How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?" The answer depends on who you ask. A public system, dominated by a union system that protects mediocrity and discourages excellence is the problem. An administrative structure that too often protects its own power at the expense of other stakeholders is the problem. Helicopter parenting is the problem. Ineffective discipline resulting from a culture that wants everyone to have a trophy and no one's inner child to be wounded is the problem. And yes, bad teaching. Lazy teaching. Exhausted, overworked educators who are dispirited and all-too-often compromising their own high standards because the system won't reward it anyway. That's also the problem. It doesn't happen to all of us. It certainly doesn't <em>always</em> happen to <em>most</em> of us. If you are a teacher, the day chronicled below will be familiar, and hopefully illustrate the complexity of the systemic problems we face in educational reform:</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<u><span style="font-family: Arial;">8:17 AM, </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">an American classroom</span></u><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Papers are piled up in precarious towers on your desk. The angry red light flashes on your classroom phone. You know it contains at least one parent who has to speak with you urgently, and if it has been 24 hours since the first call, that same parent may have already left three messages and called the principal by now because "You don't return phone calls!" </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your email inbox has seven new messages in the past hour because your district has now linked your gradebooks to all students and parents. Unfortunately, the same district has not educated parents about the codes in your gradebook system. Therefore, you will be explaining to the first of three parents that the zero in his son's column is not counting against his grade and isn't even a zero really because you just haven't finished grading the essays. It's just listing the assignment. He <em>should</em> know this, but the projector for the Powerpoint presentation by the principal on Back-to-School Night wasn't working properly, so the parent doesn't know not to worry. He logs on to his son's grades, sees zero, and hits send before he exhales. God bless him. He cares. The system doesn't. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But emails and phone calls must wait because Danielle Drama in first period has broken up with her control freak boyfriend yet again, and while her friends comfort her in the bathroom, you have to quickly email her parents (divorced, so two emails) and set in motion a CPS report because her sister told you before class that Danielle mentioned wanting to kill herself last night. She won't. She's just sad, confused, and in love with a guy who texts her seventeen times before first period. She'll eventually dump him when she goes to college and realizes she deserves better, but for now she's weeping in the bathroom stall and texting everyone she knows that she "just can't take it anymore...she'd rather be dead." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a teacher you don't have the luxury to ignore this. Drug use, violence, suicidal thoughts--these things have to be reported. You must do a Tag-You're-It on someone else in the system. It's not just school districts that get sued, but individual teachers personally get sued, and as a colleague of mine likes to say, "I'm not losing my house for you or anybody!" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maybe some do brush off these comments, but you know, conscientious teacher that you are, you couldn't live with the guilt if you were wrong. You also know your district would (after consulting with their lawyers on speed dial) dump you like a hot, uncaring teacher potato if you knew she said the "S" word and failed to alert Mom, Dad, her counselor, the school psychologist, and the campus police officer. Paperwork must be filed even if she and Bruiser are already back together again next period. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh wait, the counselor with the immaculately clean desk (except for her heel marks and Starbuck's ring) has just sent a new student to your class of 38. This student comes highly recommended: a 1.3 g.p.a., an expulsion hearing scheduled, and here in mid-September, he has already missed seven days of school. A quick glance at his current schedule shows that he has two "academic" classes in a schedule of seven. He hands you the schedule change and slouches into the last empty seat in the back row with Spicoli and the cast of <em>Half Baked</em>. You've not been given a courtesy call about this new arrival ahead of time, so you must now stop just as your class starts to share examples of how they use ethos, pathos, and logos on a daily basis without even realizing. The art of persuasion is important when they want something from parents, teachers, or friends, and it doesn't hurt that it's also California Content Standards 2.1 and 2.6. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You were listening to the sweet girl in the third row who usually doesn't speak. She says she only makes logical appeals with her father when she wants something because pathos wouldn't work on someone who thinks it's weak to cry at funerals. We learn more than parents realize.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Listening to her must wait. You will now have to send Newboy out for his textbook which requires writing a hall pass. If you don't write a pass, the campus security agent in his shiny electric golf cart will drive Newboy right back to your doorstep and demand answers. "Why didn't you write a hall pass?" In the time it takes to return him, question you, wait while you write a pass, and return to the goft cart, Newboy could have gone to the library, checked out <em>The Grapes of Wrath</em> and already be heading to the California border with Granny's corpse tied to the jalopy. This logic wouldn't reach golf cart security, so you won't bother to demonstrate the art of persuasion for your class. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, you will use this incident right after the golf cart leaves to return to your class discussion of ethos, pathos and logos. After all, even the most frustrating moment is a teachable moment. But that will have to wait; you can't even send out your newest arrival to the library just yet. You must first try to put in a quick call to the counselor, who never answers her phone, in order to discover the careful, logical reasoning for adding a 39th inmate to the insane assylum that is your class today. You leave a voicemail, and just as you're about to return to Sweet Girl, Row 3, the phone rings. Parents are usually (not always) prevented from calling you during class, but anyone in the front office can ring through to your room. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><strong>Counselor (in a sunny voice, feet firmly planted on desk):</strong></em> "Hi, sorry to interrupt you. Can you talk for a minute?"</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The next moment is crucial. Wait, no it isn't. The next moment is endlessly variable. And the moment after the next moment is completely predictable. No matter what you say:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>A. <em> You (voice dripping with sarcasm):</em></strong> "Why sure, I can chat! This is a great time! I mean I'm just doing this thing called <em>teaching</em>. You've heard of it? It's the reason for the building you're sitting in with the clean desk upon which you're resting your feet."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>B. <em>You (voice strained with increasing frustration):</em></strong> "I can't really talk right now. After the interruption of the new student you sent without warning, I now have less than twenty minutes to convey the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos to my class, so they will understand how to mark examples in the article I am giving them to read for homework. It <em>must</em> be read for homework if I have any chance of getting them ready to write their scheduled in-class persuasive essay by Friday's long period, which they <em>must</em> write because it is the glorious "Benchmark Day" that occurs to the fanfare and flourish of the administration. In fact, <em>I</em> also need that day, so I can have one solid hour to grade three or four essays in the Leaning Tower of Pisa on my desk, in order to complete progress reports due to my principal by next week for all of my 205...no, wait for it...206 students! I can't talk right now! The educational clock is ticking! Can it wait?" <em>[I do realize the irony of chewing out Clean Desk Counselor after telling her I can't talk, but there's only so much a girl can take.]</em> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>C. <em>You (calmly, but back to sarcasm):</em></strong> "Oh, no problem. Let me just discuss the unannounced student here in front of him and the other 38 while they silently stare at me through our conversation. I'm sure no one will figure out who I'm taking about, and I'm sure I'll feel completely comfortable asking questions about his g.p.a., expulsion hearing, and personal life."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It doesn't matter. A, B, or C will all be followed by this response, or something almost like it: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><strong>Counselor:</strong></em> "Oh, well it will just take a second. I know your class is huge, but he really has nowhere else to go in his schedule. He was in Mr. _____'s class, but you're so much more easygoing, and they had kind of a personality clash, so I just thought this would be best for him."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Counselor-with-feet-on-desk (that's her Native American name, don't laugh) is no dummy. It takes years of practice to achieve the sheen on that empty desk. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She knows you won't use the f-word in front of students. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She knows you love students, so you won't pitch a fit about the fact that they are slowly dying from lack of oxygen due to the number of bodies exhaling in here. It's quite possible mating is going on. You wouldn't know, as there isn't any space between bodies anyway. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She knows you will swallow your anger and save it for an email later that she can just delete. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She knows <em>that you know</em> that Mr._____ of the personality clash fame <em>deliberately </em>clashes in order to shrink his class size. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She knows you do not engage in this practice. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She knows it's often the lowest g.p.a.-pot-smoking-anger-management-needing-heading-for-multiple-felonies losers who are your favorite students when all is said and done. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She knows you are a squishy mommy-person at heart who may howl and roar, but in the end who will acquiesce for the sake of the kids. (Think: Reverend Lovejoy's wife on <em>The Simpsons</em>: "Think of the children!").</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even apathetic stoner boy with the 1.3 g.p.a. needs someone to stop shuffling him along and just teach him already! Therefore, your response is equally predictable. You sigh dramatically and make some sarcastic remark about needing more desks, but you laugh, so your colleague doesn't feel too uncomfortable. You politely end your conversation in favor of returning to Sweet Girl in Row 3. You do this because it's easier. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because that counselor's desk will always be swept clean. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because you really want to hear how Sweet Girl used logos to convince her Dad to let her go to the midnight showing of <em>Twilight </em>last Friday. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because you want your students to have a relatable example to tie to this abstract Aristotelian concept. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because you want them to understand their homework, write well-argued, polished essays on Friday, and, most importantly, persuade others when necessary. Because you want them to enter adulthood with competence and confidence. Because what happens in this stuffy, overcrowded, chaotic, room is important! It's the beating heart at the center of democracy's most important system, and you are too busy keeping the heart beating to do much else. You just let it go, like you have to let so many things go in favor of the faces in front of you.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because Danielle Drama has returned, puffy-faced and hiccuping loudly for attention, and she needs to know that you think what she does here is important. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She needs to know that <em>she</em> is important, that her thoughts and persuasive skills matter. She might need them when her hovering jerk-of-a-boyfriend tries to convince her in a few months that she's nothing without him and that no other boy will ever want her. She will need to know logically why that doesn't make sense. She will need to know emotionally why this is unfair, cruel, and simply not true. She will need to realize her own ethos...the expertise, trust, and value she has to offer the world, so she can dump him once and for all. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stoner boy may never rise above his g.p.a. and achieve great success. Sweet Girl may never volunteer to speak in class again. Danielle may marry her boyfriend and live happily ever after with unlimited text messaging service. You don't know. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You <em>do</em> know teaching in a public school in America may not be humanly possible...at least to the standards you expect for yourself, the standards the students deserve. The problems are systemic. Would a phone call to stoner boy's Dad about his recreational activities help? Probably not, especially since another teacher at lunch will inform you that his Dad is in jail on drug charges. Ahh, the proverbial apple and tree. Would a rational discussion about unprofessional choices change the Personlity Clashing teacher or the relaxed counselor with not much work? Nahh, they are who they are. It is what it is...That, by the way, was a staff motto where I work, coined by the leadership, no less. That, and "Suck it up!" and "Do more with less!" It's morale boosting mottos like these which make me wonder why <em>more</em> people don't go into education. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It's a terrible, wonderful mess of a place, my profession. I don't have the answers, but ask any teacher, and we know the problems, whether we're in the trenches today or temporarily a...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><strong>Teacher Not Teaching</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span>Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-23456963276484232702010-09-08T11:12:00.000-07:002014-05-05T09:20:11.714-07:00Sub? Credential Up? Would You Like Fries with That?I used to joke about the fact that I'm a teacher and therefore have no marketable skills. Other teachers who have been lawyers or in business--they could return to the private sector, but I was stuck in education. It was funny to say because of course I had no desire to be anywhere else. I wasn't "stuck"; I loved my job.<br />
<br />
Now that I've joined the ranks of the millions of <em>unemployed</em> teachers, my former joke is just not that funny. A job posted on <a href="http://www.edjoin.org/">http://www.edjoin.org/</a> (California website for jobs in case you are on the hunt, too) is quickly gobbled up. District paper screening has now become a wondorous exercise where administrators can choose from among hundreds of qualified candidates before they ever have to schedule interviews. Staying within my district for at least a year or two after my layoff seems to make sense; at least they know me here. If I move to another city or state, I will line up behind the hundreds they have laid off, the teachers they know and mostly love. What are my chances then? <br />
<br />
So what do we do, oh teachers not teaching? Some of us apply to everything and wait for the phone to ring. Others, like me, have begun substitute teaching. I will have to write more about this later. The combination of liberty and humiliation that accomany subbing in your former school deserves its own blog. <br />
<br />
Another option is to "credential up", as I've been calling it. I don't have lesson plans to write or papers to grade, so I may as well study for other credentials. Last year, when I knew my layoff was looming, I attempted to stave off the snarling, wretched beast by arming myself with the CSET in Social Science. Taking the first two parts before giving birth to my fifth child and the last part just after returning from my eight week maternity leave, I felt I might make myself invaluable. My logic was that if they had to cut sections from my department again, then being a utility player made sense. Unfortunately, my district apparently doesn't have the budget of the New York Yankees. If they cut in English, they also cut in Social Science. Last year the cuts were deep enough that cobbling together a two-department schedule didn't happen. <br />
<br />
"I'm sorry, we're putting you on waivers, Mrs. Weigel. We just don't need someone with a gold glove and a .327 average."<br />
<br />
My theory might have made it into practice if my administration had made different choices, but that, too, is another blog...or another legal brief...I haven't decided. My principal now likes to remind me that I didn't officially have my social science credential until after the March 15 deadline for layoffs. He's actually right about that. The third test was scheduled the Saturday after my Monday c-section on March 8. I'm such a slacker. I mean isn't that why they have morphine? <br />
<br />
<br />
Whatever my hopeful plans were, doubling my credentials failed to save my job. However, I will not be deterred! Give me more #2 pencils! Point me toward the community college testing center! I am now embarking on a multiple subject credential. This quest is more daunting considering I haven't given math much thought in the past twenty-three years. My worthy and formidable opponents--Geometry and Algebra-- may be my downfall. I already sense a cold fear when my ten year old queries, "Mom, can you help me with my math?" It's unlikely that I would apply for a job as a fourth grade teacher who has to teach math. Cold fear on a daily basis just isn't a positive work environment. However, I might want a seventh grade core class where I could teach social studies and English, so it's back to my Kaplan review book and prayers: repeated, desperate, humble prayers that the Lord will just mercifully allow me to pass. <br />
<br />
It seemed to work last time when I took the World Civ. portion of the CSET after spending the night before the test hosting a birthday party for my eight year old and four of her friends, followed by my two year old's vomit fest -- Performances every twenty minutes! Midnight till 6:00 AM! No Cover! I went bleary-eyed with no caffeine to my test. (Nursing that newborn, remember? Sheesh! Keep up!) The fact that I passed is simply more evidence that there is an all-powerful God who is merciful because I didn't study. I didn't sleep. I didn't follow any of the sound test-taking strategies we all lecture about to our students. I didn't even eat breakfast for crying out loud. I was the Standardized Testing "Don't" Cartoon with a black box over my eyes, and I still passed. Thank you, Lord.<br />
<br />
While I pray for Divine Intervention again, I also study math long-forgotten. I review the parts of the cell, research child development, and remind myself again about phonemes and morphology. I do it all because I need a job, any job, and it will probably be in teaching. It's hard to sell yourself for a marketing position by explaining that you've been "selling" curriculum to judgemental and apathetic teenagers for years. Do I have "management experience"? Well, I've been managing 175-200 people everyday for 180 days per year. And my clients are not easy to manage! The skills are there, but they are in such a foreign context for the business world that it's difficult to make a career jump fourteen years later. I'm "credentialing up" because I have to. I love to teach. I want to teach, but for now, I'm just subbing, studying, and embracing my new normal as a...<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Teacher Not Teaching</strong></span>Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-7693286810520761662010-09-04T20:21:00.000-07:002010-09-04T20:21:50.180-07:00Mom, what's for dinner?It's Saturday, so if you're a teacher, you might have had a hearty, delicious dinner with your family. I mean soccer season isn't in full swing, so you weren't at a field somewhere all day, right? Not teaching has allowed me to reflect upon how poorly I plan for dinner. You might think that after five children and a decade to become a working mom diva, I might be able to fix dinner regularly. <span style="font-size: large;">Alas...</span><br />
<br />
Yet unemployment has also meant no excuses. I can't say I have papers to grade, or that a needy parent had me on the phone after school. <span style="font-size: large;">There are no staff meetings</span> <em><span style="color: #073763;"><strong>(let me just pause and allow the bliss of that reality to wash over me like a cool, refreshing spring).</strong></span></em> Therefore, when my two year old pipes up at 4:00 PM with "Mommy, what's fo dinnow?" I should have an answer. <br />
<br />
For the past two weeks I've managed to compile a weekly menu for dinner. Yes, Teacher X, after taking roll and passing out that oh-so-meaningful worksheet, I planned meals. <br />
<br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">How did I do it?</span></strong> <br />
<br />
1. My own, poor brain.<br />
<br />
2. My husband's wonderful cookbook of family recipes, lovingly compiled over the past ten years. Someday I'll convince him to publish it, and we will finally retire wealthy, well-fed and satisfied, but for now, it just helps.<br />
<br />
3. <a href="http://www.allrecipes.com/">http://www.allrecipes.com/</a><br />
<br />
<br />
4. <a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/">http://www.foodnetwork.com/</a> : Giada and Alton, if you're out there, will you marry each other and become my family's Alice? We'll build a room off the kitchen.<br />
<br />
5. Refusing to turn into the drive-thru line, either by sheer force of will, or by guilt upon recalling the articles on child obesity and fast food marketing that I forced my senior classes to analyze. <br />
<br />
These have helped me actually know what's for dinner and stick to it. Also, I <em>had </em>to stick to it because I bought the weekly groceries at one time. Some of you are thinking, "So what?" For me, this is a minor miracle. I like to joke that we enjoy shopping like Europeans, but really I'm at my local grocery store everyday because I haven't planned ahead. I'm trying to leave behind the relaxed, no-structure attitude of my twenties...<br />
<br />
I left the body, the freedom, and the red wine behind, so why not the slacking as well? <br />
<br />
Time will tell if I can continue this small, sweet structure of knowing what's for dinner. Until I'm teaching again, there may be hope. <br />
<br />
What do you tell your two-year old? What's fo dinnow at yo house?Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3579216602929322801.post-12854637982878020502010-09-03T14:23:00.000-07:002010-09-03T14:27:56.194-07:0039 Months and Counting...<span style="font-size: large;">Thirty-nine months.</span> That's how long I have until my district, the one I've devoted myself to for the past eight years, formally ends my layoff package and wishes me a sad farewell. That's a long time, but it's perhaps not long enough to recapture the students lost to the competing charter school (read: we'll give your kids a laptop and not require that they read anything, so come on down!), not long enough to generate jobs in a local economy of fast food, retail, and...what the heck do people do for a living here? People certainly don't open new businesses in the 65% of retail space currently unoccupied in our small town.<br />
Therefore, those thirty-nine months may not be enough time for my superintendent to call me one fateful morning with those words I long to hear, "I have good news. We'd like to invite you back." However, thirty-nine months is plenty long enough to watch Bank of America politely take back my house, and to see my family migrate like modern-day Joads in the opposite direction, in search of work and a new home. Ah, California schools. Livin' the dream. <br />
<br />
It's probably obvious this is my first blog, but I have time on my hands, so I thought I'd give it a try. If you are an unemployed teacher, join in! Commiserate! If you are still holding onto your job, this blog will make you appreciate your sick leave and prep period, and envy the fact that I'm blogging and not grading poorly written essays about the symbolic significance of card games in <em>Of Mice and Men</em>. Yes, high school English teacher; you got me. You may be surprised to find that this California teacher has just as much frustration for my union as for my administration. The "Public School Question", like "The Woman Question" in 19th Century England is complicated, and the answers won't be simple. But, if you're reading this, you already knew that. <br />
<br />
I'm currently subbing in my own district, so after fourteen years of teaching, an M.A. in Education and endless hours of meaningful curriculum development and assessment, I am reduced to taking roll, pushing "<em>Play</em>" on the DVD, and passing out worksheets. You know we can't be trusted. I understand. I was once you, but now I'm just a...<br />
<br />
<strong><span style="color: #274e13; font-size: large;">Teacher Not Teaching</span></strong>.Teacher Not Teachinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03224449470422102261noreply@blogger.com3