Gertrude Louise Silveira

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. 

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. 

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.  

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.

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.  

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.

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. 

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.  

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. 

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.

What 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.

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.  We are a team in that room.  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 Problem Like Maria, September, 2010.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 know 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, they don't respect it.

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?

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."

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.

  

Play the Mummy Maker Game for Yourself!

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?

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.

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 anything 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.

Taylor Mali, teacher, writer and poet, offers some wisdom:

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.

I keep wishing my school, my district, my leadership, my state,  would just allow me to be the teacher I know I can be.

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.

Our students need gardeners who will tend each shoot and speak kindly, who will offer water and sunshine.

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.

Kindle Schmindle

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 that 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.

Let me start with the strange Kindle feature at the bottom of each screen: your percentage completed.

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 actually found at 53%. Furthermore, Dear Reader, I think I may have graduate literature units revoked if I acknowledge publically that I read Jane Eyre on the Kindle. Well, the more accurate term is reread 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.

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 The Hunger Games 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 Catching Fire 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?

Something about that little % creates a feeling of inadequacy in me. It's no coincidence that the feature itself is called "the status 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.


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 actually on 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.


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 want to read the detailed description of Jean Valjean as he steals the damn loaf of bread. I want 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 Les Miserables 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:

"Mommy, pay wif me," and "Look at big tuck, Mommy!"

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.

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 Hunger Games 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.

The instant availability of these digital games lures me away from the reading I should 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.

Parenting: A War of Attrition

This 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 I arm and fund.  I pass the appropriations bills in Congress.  I send them MREs, and I 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. 

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). 

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.

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:

"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."

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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 Psychology and the Supermarket.  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.

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 his 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.

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. 

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.

Child #2 keeps asking about the tater tots with only slight variations like "Well, then can we get french fries?" 

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 already made ...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.

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
push the cart,
                     pull the cart,
                                       climb the cart,
                                                             ride the cart,
                                                                                 and play chicken with the cart. 

She has also started two likely tantrums and several perfectly pitched whines whenever you have threatened to put her in the cart.  As long as she's not 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.

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,

"But I don't want to  _____________"  Insert whatever you like here:

• go to bed
• eat broccoli
• clean my room
• put on underwear
• come inside when it's raining
• go to bed
• put down the hammer
• stop watching that dancing mouse over and over and over again
• go to bed
• stay off the grocery cart

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

But wait, there's more.  Just like the Ginsu knives, we aren't finished yet!  Let us recap:

Child #1:  Continues to give details about friend's HILARIOUS comment  -- "No mom, this is sooo funny!"
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:
Child #3:  Lobbying for real live already fried french fries, "Right over there! Don't they smell good, Mom?"
Child #4 Is flitting around the store, playing with the cart and begging for sugar.

Fear not, Dear Reader, in addition to the free shipping and handling, you also get Child #5

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.

Like I said:  war of attrition.  It requires patience in the moment and a long focus.  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.

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,

"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. 

In my role as a high school teacher, I often like to say my favorite idea for a bumper sticker is:

Good Teaching Can't Fix Bad Parenting

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. 

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.

S'mores, Like Gold in My Hand

A Lesson in Point of View.  Too much of the time I look 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.  My point of view is often tired, cranky and self-loathing or self-pitying depending on the time of the month.  Often as I'm racing to work or frantically trying to get home from work (see Transition Words for a reminder of this chaos) I hear the voice of Katharine Hepburn in my head as she confesses in the best movie ever, The Philadelphia Story: 

"I'm an unholy mess of a girl."

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. 

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. 

Yesterday was Memorial Day.  This was the detritus of my life:  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."

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. 

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. 

S'mores Recipe

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. 

No grand change took place last weekend.  Despite my ferverent prayers, we did not win the Mega Millions or even A 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: 

"No I didn't."
"Yes, you did."
"No, I didn't!"
"Yes, you did!"
Altogether now with feeling...

"MOM!"

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.

Reading great literature requires an understanding of point of view.  To Kill a Mockingbird is about Scout’s point of view.  If not, it's an entirely different novel.  Mayella Ewell's novel or Tom Robinson's novel or even the memoir of Atticus Finch is not the same.  The best line in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn loses all power without point of view:

 "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.'"  (Chapter 30)

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 Bull Durham would say, "You could look it up."  Literary Point of View

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.  Basically God has given me bountiful blessings this year: rehired 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.  My job this year renewed my practice and made me belive this is what my layoff was for, this was what God had in store for me, this wonderful new teaching life. 

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 what position I will return to in the fall.  In fact it's looking like I will be back at my old site. They want me back at the campus I left, the “main” campus, the “comprehensive” school, the Big House. 

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.  I should not have to explain this movie reference, but I will for those of you who, in the pretentious, post-Dances with Wolves-director-of-Waterworld-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:



Great film, even if it's the Dodgers.

But I digress.  Like Crash, I am a veteran.  I’ve done my time in alternative education, and now I “get” to go back to the “real” school.  That’s probably what they thought I would feel.  Before my epiphany year in alternative education, it is what I would have thought I would feel.  [Someone save me from my own syntax!]  Instead, I said, “No thank you.  I’m happier here.” 

Now my point of view becomes crucial.  I can be upset, sad, and frustrated.  I can be daunted by too many students, too many preps and returning to a more stressful job.  Or, I can be resigned to see the beauty in both options.  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. 

It must be positive and enthusiastic because my students deserve nothing less, and life is too hard to live any other way. 

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.  You don’t want to lose me,” and they would have kept me.  Silly girl.  That’s not how education works.  It’s not how life works either.  Therefore, after dutifully 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."

Next fall, I will still feel like an unholy mess of a girl because the daily chaos of my life won’t change. Life is messy. The s'mores my children enjoyed last night were messy.  I probably still have marshmallow squished into the couch, and I know there are still graham cracker crumbs on the floor.  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. 

However, those s'mores, those moments with them yesterday, are gifts, colorful jewels.  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.” 

If you don’t know this reference you aren’t alone, but I encourage you to watch Joe Versus the Volcano an easily overlooked romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.  (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).  Anyway, it has some of the best speeches and sweetest messages about living in the moment.  Like this gem of  a speech when Joe finally quits his miserable job and explains to his boss why:

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.  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

Teacher Still Teaching Somewhere

Where 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. 

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.  That kid doesn't exist.  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 main campus. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

The girl who never came to class?  She's living in a car. 

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. 

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. 

The one who does brilliant work but is on the verge of dropping out because of attendance has chronic migraines. 

The other one is taking care of his disabled mom. 

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. 

Really?  Yeah, really.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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? 

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.

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 Problem Like Maria) 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 with 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. 

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

Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching

Transition Words

One 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: 

"First, I wake up.  Next, I eat breakfast.  Then, I get dressed.  Finally I get my backpack and go to school."

Unfortunately, many students in high school have long since forgotten these elementary attempts to make the use of transitions conscious and smooth.  Instead 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, "In conclusion" to start the last paragraph of any piece of writing.  However, for a student to achieve appropriate, precise transitions that move a reader smoothly through her essay, is a rare and impressive accomplishment. 

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.

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.

The transition home is loud.  Granted, 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.  Then,  I close the front door and actually come inside.  Despite 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.

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: 

"Chuggington.  Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga Chugginton!" 

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.  Fortunately, he's only interested in the monotonous theme song.  Afterward, we switch over to the beloved Arthur.  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:

"Did you brush your teeth?"
"You have to wear socks."
"I don't know, check the dryer."
"Did you pack your lunch?"
"Someone pick up your brother."

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. 

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.  Furthermore, 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.  Instead, this was my recent AM:

After 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. 

But I digress. 

Suddenly 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; otherwise I might never find any soccer communication) and realize we are supposed to be at the field in 30 minutes!

Now, considering the drive is about five minutes away, you might interpret this as good news.  However, 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.  After 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.  While 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. 

Soon 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:

Mia Ham (heading out the front door)

Eldest:  Are you wearing one of my shin guards? Mom, she's wearing one of MY shin guards!
Mia (with a slight but growing whine):  I NEED it!  I can't find mine!
Eldest:  They're not YOURS!  I need them, too!  I have a game, too!

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?  Coincidentally, the T.V. show "Arthur" has a cute episode that explains the sock mystery: 

At any rate, 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 any shoes that fit.  Today is just the latest in this predictable and frustrating habit.  While I might want to dwell, wallow even, in the misery of this realization, I must forge ahead. 

Soccer waits for no mom! 

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.

Meanwhile, 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 almost 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?!" 

Predictably, 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. 

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.  Either way, Saturday is waning and relatively successful, and I still haven't learned how to transition from Mommy to Soccer Mommy. 

Tomorrow, there will undoutedly be at least some chaos between home and church.  Even though 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

Teacher Not Teaching Now Teaching

 Transition Words Handout

Merit Pay

Merit 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.

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: 

"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." OPB News. March 23, 2009). 

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? 

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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. 

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=is_merit_pay_a_distraction_in_the_fight_for_meaningful_education_reform


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 Waiting for Superman 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. 

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!