Now I have put a couple hundred miles between myself and my school and the grown-up life I lead there, and I am comfortably ensconced in the safety of my family cocoon. Here at my cousin's house, the baby monitor provides some quiet white noise, a bowl of brightly colored toys festoons the kitchen counter, and conversation drifts around poop schedules and the various quirks of newer and older members of the family. It feels as if I have been transplanted to another world. From the pressure and hubbub and whirling, legs-flying pace of my strictly scheduled concrete-bound city life, to an unfamiliar, leisurely, soft suburban cushion. Here, naps happen and the Flow of the Day is dictated not by segmented, budgeted, properly apportioned down-to-the-minute chunks of instructional time, but by hunger and tiredness and shifts in mood or desire. It feels very quiet and orderly and still. It feels different, but good.
A couple months ago, when I realized that my impending thesis deadline and my budget would preclude a trip to Peru or some other exotic locale, I thought about what I would like my break to be. I decided that I would like to spend it in the vicinity of children that I can pick up and hug and kiss and hold. Cuddling my niece in her onesie with slobbery mouth and sticking-out belly is a welcome change from scolding and molding and shuffling soon-to-be adolescents in uniform back and forth from their desks to the rug and up and down 4 flights of stairs.
It is nice to be able to enjoy children, to just appreciate them, and not have to try and make them be or do any particular thing. That's why I still love working at camp in the summer - the kids get to move and play and scream loudly and run around. My role is to facilitate their kiddishness, not prevent it or stop it. Being a teacher is way different from being an auntie or a camp counselor or a babysitter. As a teacher, you have an agenda, you have bullet points and checklists and criteria. You are constantly evaluating, instructing, intervening. I am now much more aware of how precious it is to just step back and watch them be, to enjoy them as they are, to interact with them human-to-human, not as sculptor and sculptures or actor and objects.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
the snowball effect
I write to you now from the Other Side! I finished my frantic 500-meter dash towards Spring Break and at 2:10pm on Friday afternoon finally managed to break the bright orange ribbon waiting for me at the end of the line.
It won't sink in yet, because it's only Sunday. It will take a few days of not having to go to work, and still not having to go to work, and STILL not having to go to work, for me to realize that it truly is Vacation. But I am doing my best to make it feel festive from the get-go by gallavanting with my Cuz and going to Spa Castle to indulge in saunas and hot tubs and swim-up bars and pedicures and shiatzu massage!
February and March was a long run, but now we're kind of over the hump. When we go back it'll be full steam ahead towards the state tests, then NYSESLAT season and then graduation season and then those hot June days at the end that don't even feel real, then pack up the room and shove it in the closets and get the hell outta Dodge.
Last week I was walking (nay, running) around in kind of an elevated state -- I don't know if it was the fact that I got less sleep each successive night of the week, or that I had more or less tripled my daily caffeine intake to make it through, or if I can just blame it on the usual whims of womanhood or the fact that I was fried like an egg... But I felt raw, open, susceptible - like a flesh wound without a band-aid. Events struck me with perhaps unintended force. When A & A and Jules met me for my name day dinner with a blaze of orange, yellow and red tulips bursting like fireworks and sang to me on the sidewalk, I felt overcome with the beauty and kindness and goodness of people in this world, and with the good fortune of having these people as my friends. (I reassured them that mine were tears of joy, not of desperation, humiliation and failure like when we used to meet for dinners a year or two ago.)
Then the next day when I came into work, breathless from being almost-late, what awaited me on the floor of my classroom when I walked in but a seltzer-shrine, adorned with Name Day card and candy and a Cadbury egg! Corky was the culprit and engineer, since I'd mentioned it the day before, and since she is the queen of Random Acts of Kindness. Again, this gesture struck me hard, like an injection or a blow to the gut.
My elation also gave way to whatever you'd call the opposite of that feeling. On the subway on the way to my thesis class, I ran into Negative Nancy from the Teaching Fellows, who complained from Times Square all the way up to 137th St and said things that made me question why she even became a teacher at all, and whether or not she even deserved to have access to the children. She said she "felt bad" for the kids, that everything was "so sad," and came up with every possible excuse for why she couldn't do the things that she is asked to do (the very challenges, I might add, that she signed up to take on as a Teaching Fellow.)
It is so damn easy - and uncreative and boring and weak - to point out all the things that are stopping you from doing what you said you'd do. How does that saying go? Even if there are a million reasons why you can't, all you need is one reason why you can...? I felt personally insulted by her negativity. I felt like her arrogance and bad attitude were unravelling the work that my colleagues and I have been fighting so hard for.
But all this made me realize something. Something about momentum; about the nature of my work; the nature of human beings perhaps? That once you get your little snowball rolling down a certain hill, it gathers strength and speed more rapidly than you could've anticipated. That kindness begets more kindness, the same way that complaining begets more complaints. Just like training for my theoretical traithlon - exercize begets more exercize. Gluttony and sloth beget more gluttony and sloth. But once you stop the momentum and swing it around the other way, it force is just as powerful.
I have more to say on this topic, but after all it is Spring Break and I should get my priorities aligned: brunch awaits!
It won't sink in yet, because it's only Sunday. It will take a few days of not having to go to work, and still not having to go to work, and STILL not having to go to work, for me to realize that it truly is Vacation. But I am doing my best to make it feel festive from the get-go by gallavanting with my Cuz and going to Spa Castle to indulge in saunas and hot tubs and swim-up bars and pedicures and shiatzu massage!
February and March was a long run, but now we're kind of over the hump. When we go back it'll be full steam ahead towards the state tests, then NYSESLAT season and then graduation season and then those hot June days at the end that don't even feel real, then pack up the room and shove it in the closets and get the hell outta Dodge.
Last week I was walking (nay, running) around in kind of an elevated state -- I don't know if it was the fact that I got less sleep each successive night of the week, or that I had more or less tripled my daily caffeine intake to make it through, or if I can just blame it on the usual whims of womanhood or the fact that I was fried like an egg... But I felt raw, open, susceptible - like a flesh wound without a band-aid. Events struck me with perhaps unintended force. When A & A and Jules met me for my name day dinner with a blaze of orange, yellow and red tulips bursting like fireworks and sang to me on the sidewalk, I felt overcome with the beauty and kindness and goodness of people in this world, and with the good fortune of having these people as my friends. (I reassured them that mine were tears of joy, not of desperation, humiliation and failure like when we used to meet for dinners a year or two ago.)
Then the next day when I came into work, breathless from being almost-late, what awaited me on the floor of my classroom when I walked in but a seltzer-shrine, adorned with Name Day card and candy and a Cadbury egg! Corky was the culprit and engineer, since I'd mentioned it the day before, and since she is the queen of Random Acts of Kindness. Again, this gesture struck me hard, like an injection or a blow to the gut.
My elation also gave way to whatever you'd call the opposite of that feeling. On the subway on the way to my thesis class, I ran into Negative Nancy from the Teaching Fellows, who complained from Times Square all the way up to 137th St and said things that made me question why she even became a teacher at all, and whether or not she even deserved to have access to the children. She said she "felt bad" for the kids, that everything was "so sad," and came up with every possible excuse for why she couldn't do the things that she is asked to do (the very challenges, I might add, that she signed up to take on as a Teaching Fellow.)
It is so damn easy - and uncreative and boring and weak - to point out all the things that are stopping you from doing what you said you'd do. How does that saying go? Even if there are a million reasons why you can't, all you need is one reason why you can...? I felt personally insulted by her negativity. I felt like her arrogance and bad attitude were unravelling the work that my colleagues and I have been fighting so hard for.
But all this made me realize something. Something about momentum; about the nature of my work; the nature of human beings perhaps? That once you get your little snowball rolling down a certain hill, it gathers strength and speed more rapidly than you could've anticipated. That kindness begets more kindness, the same way that complaining begets more complaints. Just like training for my theoretical traithlon - exercize begets more exercize. Gluttony and sloth beget more gluttony and sloth. But once you stop the momentum and swing it around the other way, it force is just as powerful.
I have more to say on this topic, but after all it is Spring Break and I should get my priorities aligned: brunch awaits!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
soul shakedown
Today I went to the dollar store to restock the Prize Box for all the Jedi Rewards I will be needing for the new incentive program (presuming the Jedis can manage to stop annoying the crap out of me long enough for me to award them enough points.)
Buying prizes is something I love doing, for lots of reasons. Partly because it really doesn't take much to make a kid happy, and because who in their right mind doesn't love a brand new box of crayons (even if they are the cheap waxy dollar store kind)? Also I like to think that the items I choose are infinitesimally small notches into the giant climbing wall of social justice and equality -- this jumprope shall combat childhood obesity! These bubbles shall spread joy and wonder among children who may or may not have enough of it in their lives! This stencil shall make its mark in the service of art where art has been forsaken!
Also, I like to mentally multiply my excitement by like 25 to equal that of a 10-year-old confronted with a treasure box full of these riches.
Clearly, kids don't NEED prizes in order to learn, and I don't NEED them in order to teach. But they are kind of fun... I liken this expenditure to, say, buying doughnuts for your cubicle-mates, or springing for coffees one morning, just to be sociable. It's a personal contribution to your place of work in order to make it a more genial place for you to be in eight or more hours a day.
But when I dropped my thirty six bucks on my plastic made-in-China loot in the name of cheap material pleasures, it made me think about other stuff that I regularly shell out my hard-earned shekels for.
I wonder if the government that oversees public education knows just how much they receive in charitable contributions from teachers... I don't know of any teacher in the school who doesn't spend hundreds of dollars on their kids and their classroom every year. Compound that over years of service, and per teacher, per school - it adds up.
Many things we buy as teachers could never be considered budgetary necessities - pizza parties, prizes, snacks for celebrations, gifts for holidays, decorations for the classroom, "sponsoring" kids' field trips whose parents can't scrape up the cash (like D--, who almost couldn't come on the $9 bowling trip because her little brother needed asthma medication that week)... I'm pretty sure none of these things are tax deductible. But the thing is, if we don't buy those things for our kids? Then the kids just don't get to have them. And as a teacher it's very hard to see your kids not getting the things you feel they deserve and should be entitled to.
But it's not all frivolity that we reach into our pockets for. If you were wondering if budget cuts are real and whether or not they affect teachers' and students' daily lives, they are and they do.
Last year, every teacher got a whole box of paper to use for copies, and Mr. P was able to spring for printer ink. My AP Candy, who is quite gifted at getting us things we need, ordered me a brand new rug (a requisite for the kids to sit on as part of the TC Workshop model) when she noticed that mine was dirty.
This year I asked Candy, now that I had 29 kids and needed 29 spots on my rug instead of 20, if there was any chance of getting a new one. She said, no, not really, but ask around...I did, but wound up anyway with a third of my kids sitting on dollar store bath mats for the mini-lessons.
This year, Mr. P did the best he could by giving us two reams of paper each, and the ink request was negatory.
So what are the choices? Use the printer less? Stop making copies two months in? Or spread the burden to kids and their families by asking them to bring in reams of paper, which we do, along with tissues and ziploc bags and scissors and calculators and crayons... or we spring for it ourselves.
In recognition that teachers have a lot of unique supplies they need, they get "Teacher's Choice" money every year ( at least, we have been and hope to continue doing so - last year $250, this year $150). And we appreciate the sentiment, we really do. But to me at least, it kind of feels like spitting in the ocean.
So when the bigwigs in their offices make their budget cuts to public education, I wonder if they realize: schools don't all of a sudden start needing less money to make them go. It's just that the people in and involved with the schools, who care about schools, start footing more of the bill.
Buying prizes is something I love doing, for lots of reasons. Partly because it really doesn't take much to make a kid happy, and because who in their right mind doesn't love a brand new box of crayons (even if they are the cheap waxy dollar store kind)? Also I like to think that the items I choose are infinitesimally small notches into the giant climbing wall of social justice and equality -- this jumprope shall combat childhood obesity! These bubbles shall spread joy and wonder among children who may or may not have enough of it in their lives! This stencil shall make its mark in the service of art where art has been forsaken!
Also, I like to mentally multiply my excitement by like 25 to equal that of a 10-year-old confronted with a treasure box full of these riches.
Clearly, kids don't NEED prizes in order to learn, and I don't NEED them in order to teach. But they are kind of fun... I liken this expenditure to, say, buying doughnuts for your cubicle-mates, or springing for coffees one morning, just to be sociable. It's a personal contribution to your place of work in order to make it a more genial place for you to be in eight or more hours a day.
But when I dropped my thirty six bucks on my plastic made-in-China loot in the name of cheap material pleasures, it made me think about other stuff that I regularly shell out my hard-earned shekels for.
I wonder if the government that oversees public education knows just how much they receive in charitable contributions from teachers... I don't know of any teacher in the school who doesn't spend hundreds of dollars on their kids and their classroom every year. Compound that over years of service, and per teacher, per school - it adds up.
Many things we buy as teachers could never be considered budgetary necessities - pizza parties, prizes, snacks for celebrations, gifts for holidays, decorations for the classroom, "sponsoring" kids' field trips whose parents can't scrape up the cash (like D--, who almost couldn't come on the $9 bowling trip because her little brother needed asthma medication that week)... I'm pretty sure none of these things are tax deductible. But the thing is, if we don't buy those things for our kids? Then the kids just don't get to have them. And as a teacher it's very hard to see your kids not getting the things you feel they deserve and should be entitled to.
But it's not all frivolity that we reach into our pockets for. If you were wondering if budget cuts are real and whether or not they affect teachers' and students' daily lives, they are and they do.
Last year, every teacher got a whole box of paper to use for copies, and Mr. P was able to spring for printer ink. My AP Candy, who is quite gifted at getting us things we need, ordered me a brand new rug (a requisite for the kids to sit on as part of the TC Workshop model) when she noticed that mine was dirty.
This year I asked Candy, now that I had 29 kids and needed 29 spots on my rug instead of 20, if there was any chance of getting a new one. She said, no, not really, but ask around...I did, but wound up anyway with a third of my kids sitting on dollar store bath mats for the mini-lessons.
This year, Mr. P did the best he could by giving us two reams of paper each, and the ink request was negatory.
So what are the choices? Use the printer less? Stop making copies two months in? Or spread the burden to kids and their families by asking them to bring in reams of paper, which we do, along with tissues and ziploc bags and scissors and calculators and crayons... or we spring for it ourselves.
In recognition that teachers have a lot of unique supplies they need, they get "Teacher's Choice" money every year ( at least, we have been and hope to continue doing so - last year $250, this year $150). And we appreciate the sentiment, we really do. But to me at least, it kind of feels like spitting in the ocean.
So when the bigwigs in their offices make their budget cuts to public education, I wonder if they realize: schools don't all of a sudden start needing less money to make them go. It's just that the people in and involved with the schools, who care about schools, start footing more of the bill.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Test Prep Jedis Use the Force!
Okay. So. Today was the Test Prep Pep Rally...
It was spectacular. Worth every second of angst and doubt. If I ran my own school we would do stupid stuff like this on a regular basis, because actually, it's not stupid! It builds community, it de-stresses, and it motivates, which is, to my mind, the number one factor influencing whether or not a child will reach their academic potential.
You should have seen Principal Peeves laughing his head off in the back of the auditorium! And the kids laughing and shouting and cheering... just like in real life, and jollier schools.
It has everything to do with my totally amazing colleagues, who were willing to put in that extra effort, to all pitch in and put themselves out there, even though some of them they were shy...
Our literacy coach, who's evil test-maker analogy sparked this whole crazy idea, did an absolutely chilling job as Test Prep Vader. She is now well known for her evil laugh... Tev saved the day with her sister-in-law's Darth Vader mask and light saber, Y. pitched in with a cape, and the piece de resistance was a homemade Yoda costume by Mannie, who used to be a prop mistress! It was a white bathrobe with foam elf-feet attached to the knees - so the wear-er walks on their knees and Yoda is like 3 feet tall, with these amazing Yoda ears that she made out of a green t-shirt and green foam. I was so touched that she took the time and care to make something so incredible. Just like at camp, just like so many teachers I know - this amazing resourcefulness, the ability to make something out of nothing. Everyone just rolled with it, I told them my vision and they made it happen. Actualization! Everyone lent a hand - downloading music, helping with costumes and props, ideas, scheduling logistics, spreading the word, giving up lunches to practice, and overall enthusiasm and good spirit.
And it really was just as I'd envisioned... Star Wars theme playing as the kids entered the auditorium, then Vader takes the stage threatening with the trickiest, most complicated, most confusing test in the history of Standardized tests mwaaaaahahaha and leaps off stage into the audience. Enter the teachers, dressed as students, loaded down with backpacks and test prep books and moaning and complaining about all the work they have to do, hystrionic crying... when one of them remembers Test Prep Yoda...
...who trains them (and the audience, of course) to be Test Prep Jedis! Testing Jedis must be have strength, courage and willingness to work hard. Were they up to the challenge? (Guess...)
Step one: RELAX! (dancing in the aisles to Eye of the Tiger) Step Two: Use your strategies (That he leaves to the teachers) and Step Three: learn the Secret three-part Test Prep Jedi cheer.
Part 1: Test Prep Jedis Use the Force!
Part 2: Oh yes we can, yes, yes we can!
Part 3: Test Vader goin' down!
Then Yoda tells the crows that that just might be the best Test Prep Jedi cheer he's ever heard! And that they should challenge their principal that they will do better on these tests than any other group of kids in the history of PS OO! Heads turn to Principal P, who has descended from his leather-furnished lair to make a rare appearance with the masses and is still standing in the back. As planned, a chant is instigated: "Mr. P! Mr. P! Mr. P!" (Brownie points for me to get an auditorium full of kids chanting the principal's name? Hee hee. Highly unusual occurrence for P.S. OO.)
And, in a typically long-winded, thickly Queens-accented inspirational speech, Principal P eventually gets around to telling the kids about the Caaaarrrniiiiivaaalllllll! The crowd goes wild.
I will commend old Peevey, because although his delivery was as dry and stuffy as one might've expected and the energy of the crowd dropped off a cliff as soon as he started talking, his message really was inspirational. He talked about a woman with Multiple Sclerosis who, after her diagnosis, has climbed mountains on every continent. And what does she eat when she gets to the top? Gummi bears!
So he will also be sending Gummi Bears to the kids on the day of the test to remind them about challenging themselves and exceeding their personal limits and believing in themselves .... I thought that was quite a sweet and thoughtful sentiment.*
Cue "We are the Champions." Exeunt.
So. That was that. A tremendously positive and empowering experience. I led my little Jedis back upstairs, where I issued them their official Jedi Rewards Cards (blank index cards) which I will hole-punch when they are behaving like good little Test Prep Jedis - being brave and cooperative and working hard, 10 holes equals a prize from the prize box.
Then G-- came up and said "Look! I wrote on my arm!" And I was about to begin my lecture on the questionable dermatological health effects of ball point pen ink on skin, when I read what it said: "Believe in yourself. You can do anything you set your mind to."
All in a day's work.
*It represents a tiny shift in my way of thinking about our Feuhrer, a hair-line crack in my stone-faced villainous characterization of Himself, and I will try to use this perspective to counteract the bilious knot that still forms in my gut whenever I see or interact with him.
It was spectacular. Worth every second of angst and doubt. If I ran my own school we would do stupid stuff like this on a regular basis, because actually, it's not stupid! It builds community, it de-stresses, and it motivates, which is, to my mind, the number one factor influencing whether or not a child will reach their academic potential.
You should have seen Principal Peeves laughing his head off in the back of the auditorium! And the kids laughing and shouting and cheering... just like in real life, and jollier schools.
It has everything to do with my totally amazing colleagues, who were willing to put in that extra effort, to all pitch in and put themselves out there, even though some of them they were shy...
Our literacy coach, who's evil test-maker analogy sparked this whole crazy idea, did an absolutely chilling job as Test Prep Vader. She is now well known for her evil laugh... Tev saved the day with her sister-in-law's Darth Vader mask and light saber, Y. pitched in with a cape, and the piece de resistance was a homemade Yoda costume by Mannie, who used to be a prop mistress! It was a white bathrobe with foam elf-feet attached to the knees - so the wear-er walks on their knees and Yoda is like 3 feet tall, with these amazing Yoda ears that she made out of a green t-shirt and green foam. I was so touched that she took the time and care to make something so incredible. Just like at camp, just like so many teachers I know - this amazing resourcefulness, the ability to make something out of nothing. Everyone just rolled with it, I told them my vision and they made it happen. Actualization! Everyone lent a hand - downloading music, helping with costumes and props, ideas, scheduling logistics, spreading the word, giving up lunches to practice, and overall enthusiasm and good spirit.
And it really was just as I'd envisioned... Star Wars theme playing as the kids entered the auditorium, then Vader takes the stage threatening with the trickiest, most complicated, most confusing test in the history of Standardized tests mwaaaaahahaha and leaps off stage into the audience. Enter the teachers, dressed as students, loaded down with backpacks and test prep books and moaning and complaining about all the work they have to do, hystrionic crying... when one of them remembers Test Prep Yoda...
...who trains them (and the audience, of course) to be Test Prep Jedis! Testing Jedis must be have strength, courage and willingness to work hard. Were they up to the challenge? (Guess...)
Step one: RELAX! (dancing in the aisles to Eye of the Tiger) Step Two: Use your strategies (That he leaves to the teachers) and Step Three: learn the Secret three-part Test Prep Jedi cheer.
Part 1: Test Prep Jedis Use the Force!
Part 2: Oh yes we can, yes, yes we can!
Part 3: Test Vader goin' down!
Then Yoda tells the crows that that just might be the best Test Prep Jedi cheer he's ever heard! And that they should challenge their principal that they will do better on these tests than any other group of kids in the history of PS OO! Heads turn to Principal P, who has descended from his leather-furnished lair to make a rare appearance with the masses and is still standing in the back. As planned, a chant is instigated: "Mr. P! Mr. P! Mr. P!" (Brownie points for me to get an auditorium full of kids chanting the principal's name? Hee hee. Highly unusual occurrence for P.S. OO.)
And, in a typically long-winded, thickly Queens-accented inspirational speech, Principal P eventually gets around to telling the kids about the Caaaarrrniiiiivaaalllllll! The crowd goes wild.
I will commend old Peevey, because although his delivery was as dry and stuffy as one might've expected and the energy of the crowd dropped off a cliff as soon as he started talking, his message really was inspirational. He talked about a woman with Multiple Sclerosis who, after her diagnosis, has climbed mountains on every continent. And what does she eat when she gets to the top? Gummi bears!
So he will also be sending Gummi Bears to the kids on the day of the test to remind them about challenging themselves and exceeding their personal limits and believing in themselves .... I thought that was quite a sweet and thoughtful sentiment.*
Cue "We are the Champions." Exeunt.
So. That was that. A tremendously positive and empowering experience. I led my little Jedis back upstairs, where I issued them their official Jedi Rewards Cards (blank index cards) which I will hole-punch when they are behaving like good little Test Prep Jedis - being brave and cooperative and working hard, 10 holes equals a prize from the prize box.
Then G-- came up and said "Look! I wrote on my arm!" And I was about to begin my lecture on the questionable dermatological health effects of ball point pen ink on skin, when I read what it said: "Believe in yourself. You can do anything you set your mind to."
All in a day's work.
*It represents a tiny shift in my way of thinking about our Feuhrer, a hair-line crack in my stone-faced villainous characterization of Himself, and I will try to use this perspective to counteract the bilious knot that still forms in my gut whenever I see or interact with him.
Monday, March 22, 2010
What it takes
This morning as I strode purposefully to the bus stop, I felt determined, resolute, powerful and strong. "Whatever it takes!" I said (isn't that the motto of some branch of the military?) I visualized myself at batting practice, like in high school swinging away at whatever obstacles hurl themselves in my direction, lest I miss one and end up with a honey comb-patterned ball imprint on my forehead. Yes, I confirmed. I'll do whatever it takes!
I was reminded, it takes a lot. A lot of patience. A lot of swallowing your anger and frustration. A lot of pretended charisma and fake enthusiasm for Kaplan test prep strategies.
With the beginning of test prep unit, the kids didn't know what hit 'em. What's this? No more Read Aloud? No more independent reading? ALL test prep ALL day? I think they felt the switch, maybe sensed my internal tension as well, and it manifested itself in generalized increased pain-in-the-assitude. Even the ones who are not normally pains in the ass were painful today, and the ones who usually pains in the ass really outdid themselves. K--, for example, hit another kid upside the head with a book and broke his glasses? Like, not in a violent way, and the glasses weren't broken on purpose, but still. This is not how things are supposed to run in my classroom. K--, I think has reached an early adolescence and should be shipped of to a desert island with all the other attitudinal adolescents and only permitted to return when she's 18 or shows a record of better judgment. She gets under my skin like none other.
The other blow came with the after-school program I work on that's geared to helping high achievers maintain their high scores or do even better on the test. We got their test results
back many of my students went down over the course of the program. Which kind of shakes my confidence in whatever the hell we've been doing for three months but also confirms my belief that the tests are just so frustratingly temperamental and coincidental... it's not like the kids un-learned stuff, it's not like they got dumber or forgot what they learned... so why are we so bound to these scores? Can we take credit for a four point improvement? Can we penalize ourselves for a four-point drop? Like Corky says, if we're talking about margins that slim, it probably has more to do with whether or not the kid ate an extra cheerio that day than it does with anything in particular that we're doing
or not doing...
Anyway, partly I think as a result of the monthly festival of womanhood, and partly because of the rain and partly because of stuffing my round soul into ucomfortable square-shaped test prep shoes, I felt all out of sorts come 5pm. And, noticing this, in a touching and undeserved display of empathy and affection, Corky invited me to sleep over and get my grad school paper done in the company of a friend, leftover appetizers from her party and night-time mimosas. So it looks like once again, all will be well after all.
I was reminded, it takes a lot. A lot of patience. A lot of swallowing your anger and frustration. A lot of pretended charisma and fake enthusiasm for Kaplan test prep strategies.
With the beginning of test prep unit, the kids didn't know what hit 'em. What's this? No more Read Aloud? No more independent reading? ALL test prep ALL day? I think they felt the switch, maybe sensed my internal tension as well, and it manifested itself in generalized increased pain-in-the-assitude. Even the ones who are not normally pains in the ass were painful today, and the ones who usually pains in the ass really outdid themselves. K--, for example, hit another kid upside the head with a book and broke his glasses? Like, not in a violent way, and the glasses weren't broken on purpose, but still. This is not how things are supposed to run in my classroom. K--, I think has reached an early adolescence and should be shipped of to a desert island with all the other attitudinal adolescents and only permitted to return when she's 18 or shows a record of better judgment. She gets under my skin like none other.
The other blow came with the after-school program I work on that's geared to helping high achievers maintain their high scores or do even better on the test. We got their test results
back many of my students went down over the course of the program. Which kind of shakes my confidence in whatever the hell we've been doing for three months but also confirms my belief that the tests are just so frustratingly temperamental and coincidental... it's not like the kids un-learned stuff, it's not like they got dumber or forgot what they learned... so why are we so bound to these scores? Can we take credit for a four point improvement? Can we penalize ourselves for a four-point drop? Like Corky says, if we're talking about margins that slim, it probably has more to do with whether or not the kid ate an extra cheerio that day than it does with anything in particular that we're doing
or not doing...
Anyway, partly I think as a result of the monthly festival of womanhood, and partly because of the rain and partly because of stuffing my round soul into ucomfortable square-shaped test prep shoes, I felt all out of sorts come 5pm. And, noticing this, in a touching and undeserved display of empathy and affection, Corky invited me to sleep over and get my grad school paper done in the company of a friend, leftover appetizers from her party and night-time mimosas. So it looks like once again, all will be well after all.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Pity party
If you would indulge me, I'd like to take a brief dip in a pity puddle.
You'd think, the week before vacation, that I'd be in a fairly positive frame of mind, ready to coast through 5 more days of school and then punch out until Easter. The problem is, the week ahead is shaping up to be more mountain that molehill, and like most teachers this time of year, I'm feeling burnt - running on fumes, scraping the bottom of the barrel. I am the dregs of me.
Just logged a six-hour work session at Pheobe's. And while I got a lot done, there is, as ever, so much more to do... I feel torn, stretched, pulled in so many different directions - there is something of a cyclone going on inside my mind, various tasks and to-dos and don't forgets keep cycling through my brain. Items of Critical Importance keep coming and going, fading in and out of the forefront of my consciousness. I can't seem to escape from them. I am overwhelmed.
We're starting the much-anticipated and dreaded Test Prep unit tomorrow, which basically disrupts every routine I've had in place since the beginning of the year. I'm in the middle of data collection for my thesis, for which I must write a reflection paper this week, and my other grad school class has blithely assigned a group project, the most heinous type of assignment for its utter inconvenience with the added guilt that if you slack off and do the bare minimum amount of work at the last possible minute (which by the way, has been my M.O. for surviving all the grad classes so far) it affects other people who actually care about their grades. Then there is the matter of finding or making a darth vader costume for the pep rally, which is Tuesday (I'm realizing, or perhaps remembering, why most teachers don't like to take on extra assignments unnecessarily). Plus there are a thousand and one showers and birthday parties and other surprise events coming up in the next couple of months that I am intricately involved in trying to sort out while not spoiling the various surprises - who knows about what or is in charge of the planning and which life event we are celebrating when... just keeping track is a full time job.
And then there are these other things that just hang over my head like a cartoon raincloud - my horrifically overdue Americorps paper work, submitting timesheets for the two after-school programs that I both plan and teach, the filing of taxes right around the corner, "publishing" the kids' stupid newspaper, registering for graduation and the NY state licensing exams, buying new sheets and watering the plants, and trying to make my bedroom look like somewhere the Unabomber doesn't live, so my cousin will not be tempted to notify the authorities when she comes to visit me next weekend. Sleeping and eating feel incidental to all this other bullshit I have going on. And it's been a solid fortnight since I've managed to grace the gym with my presence, which might explain my debilitating lethargy today.
I feel like silly putty when you pull and pull and it gets so thin it's translucent, or maybe like one of those spin-art machines where the drop of paint splatters far and wide across the page.
When all of these engagements are pulling at my coattails, I find that I tend to "ostrich" away from some of them... there doesn't seem to be room for all of it in my head, so I kind of try to will it away - ignore it and maybe it will somehow get taken care of, perhaps a white knight will come or a reprieve will be issued, factory recall for a couple thousand agenda items.
Perhaps a more organized person would have like, a spreadsheet, a color-coded calendar of what to do when, deadlines and important dates and break-downs of what needs to happen when, an i-phone app to remind them about their well-thought out plan for the week. But what I'm also realizing is that I'm not, nor have I ever been, that organized or systematic or methodical of a person.
I'm always late, I procrastinate, I start things without finishing them, I bite off more than I can chew, I stick my iron into a lot of different fires and then run around like a chicken with my head cut off. I say yes when I should say no. I have ideas but lack follow-through. A person with more discipline and better time management skills would not even be typing this blog entry right now...
I know I have a lot to work on as a professional and as a human being. But I'm also realizing, part of me is kind of ok with it. Maybe one day I'll find a really great house husband who will cook and clean and file taxes and pay bills and pack lunches (not sure exactly what I'd bring to such a relationship, but a girl can dream)...but then again, maybe I won't. Either way, I get by. Maybe it ain't so pretty at times, but a certain level of craziness is also part of my me-ness. It makes me think of of the hilarious, whimsical series Walter the Farting Dog. Walter's greatest weakness - his potent farts - also turn out to be his greatest strength. Somehow, in bizarre and unorthodox ways, his farts always end up saving the day.
So I guess I'm kind of like Walter the Farting Dog. I might be inconsistent and distractable and punctually-challenged... but I'm also spontaneous and adaptable and creative and can think on my feet. I don't know that I could be some of those things without being the others.
And the other thing that helps me keep my chin up at times like this is the concept of "happy-ish," coined by a very brilliant soul-searcher/philosopher I know. The idea is that, okay, maybe there's a pothole or a rough patch, maybe sometimes you're sucking in exhaust on the Jersey Turnpike of life... but overall, all things considered is the trend of your life looking good? Do you like where you are and where you are going? Are you headed vaguely in the right direction? Are there little things each day that make you smile, and bigger things to look forward to on the horizon? Maybe today you feel irked or unhappy, but in general, in life, are you happyish?
And I'd have to say, despite standardized tests and group projects and taxes and data collection, the answer is definitely yes.
You'd think, the week before vacation, that I'd be in a fairly positive frame of mind, ready to coast through 5 more days of school and then punch out until Easter. The problem is, the week ahead is shaping up to be more mountain that molehill, and like most teachers this time of year, I'm feeling burnt - running on fumes, scraping the bottom of the barrel. I am the dregs of me.
Just logged a six-hour work session at Pheobe's. And while I got a lot done, there is, as ever, so much more to do... I feel torn, stretched, pulled in so many different directions - there is something of a cyclone going on inside my mind, various tasks and to-dos and don't forgets keep cycling through my brain. Items of Critical Importance keep coming and going, fading in and out of the forefront of my consciousness. I can't seem to escape from them. I am overwhelmed.
We're starting the much-anticipated and dreaded Test Prep unit tomorrow, which basically disrupts every routine I've had in place since the beginning of the year. I'm in the middle of data collection for my thesis, for which I must write a reflection paper this week, and my other grad school class has blithely assigned a group project, the most heinous type of assignment for its utter inconvenience with the added guilt that if you slack off and do the bare minimum amount of work at the last possible minute (which by the way, has been my M.O. for surviving all the grad classes so far) it affects other people who actually care about their grades. Then there is the matter of finding or making a darth vader costume for the pep rally, which is Tuesday (I'm realizing, or perhaps remembering, why most teachers don't like to take on extra assignments unnecessarily). Plus there are a thousand and one showers and birthday parties and other surprise events coming up in the next couple of months that I am intricately involved in trying to sort out while not spoiling the various surprises - who knows about what or is in charge of the planning and which life event we are celebrating when... just keeping track is a full time job.
And then there are these other things that just hang over my head like a cartoon raincloud - my horrifically overdue Americorps paper work, submitting timesheets for the two after-school programs that I both plan and teach, the filing of taxes right around the corner, "publishing" the kids' stupid newspaper, registering for graduation and the NY state licensing exams, buying new sheets and watering the plants, and trying to make my bedroom look like somewhere the Unabomber doesn't live, so my cousin will not be tempted to notify the authorities when she comes to visit me next weekend. Sleeping and eating feel incidental to all this other bullshit I have going on. And it's been a solid fortnight since I've managed to grace the gym with my presence, which might explain my debilitating lethargy today.
I feel like silly putty when you pull and pull and it gets so thin it's translucent, or maybe like one of those spin-art machines where the drop of paint splatters far and wide across the page.
When all of these engagements are pulling at my coattails, I find that I tend to "ostrich" away from some of them... there doesn't seem to be room for all of it in my head, so I kind of try to will it away - ignore it and maybe it will somehow get taken care of, perhaps a white knight will come or a reprieve will be issued, factory recall for a couple thousand agenda items.
Perhaps a more organized person would have like, a spreadsheet, a color-coded calendar of what to do when, deadlines and important dates and break-downs of what needs to happen when, an i-phone app to remind them about their well-thought out plan for the week. But what I'm also realizing is that I'm not, nor have I ever been, that organized or systematic or methodical of a person.
I'm always late, I procrastinate, I start things without finishing them, I bite off more than I can chew, I stick my iron into a lot of different fires and then run around like a chicken with my head cut off. I say yes when I should say no. I have ideas but lack follow-through. A person with more discipline and better time management skills would not even be typing this blog entry right now...
I know I have a lot to work on as a professional and as a human being. But I'm also realizing, part of me is kind of ok with it. Maybe one day I'll find a really great house husband who will cook and clean and file taxes and pay bills and pack lunches (not sure exactly what I'd bring to such a relationship, but a girl can dream)...but then again, maybe I won't. Either way, I get by. Maybe it ain't so pretty at times, but a certain level of craziness is also part of my me-ness. It makes me think of of the hilarious, whimsical series Walter the Farting Dog. Walter's greatest weakness - his potent farts - also turn out to be his greatest strength. Somehow, in bizarre and unorthodox ways, his farts always end up saving the day.
So I guess I'm kind of like Walter the Farting Dog. I might be inconsistent and distractable and punctually-challenged... but I'm also spontaneous and adaptable and creative and can think on my feet. I don't know that I could be some of those things without being the others.
And the other thing that helps me keep my chin up at times like this is the concept of "happy-ish," coined by a very brilliant soul-searcher/philosopher I know. The idea is that, okay, maybe there's a pothole or a rough patch, maybe sometimes you're sucking in exhaust on the Jersey Turnpike of life... but overall, all things considered is the trend of your life looking good? Do you like where you are and where you are going? Are you headed vaguely in the right direction? Are there little things each day that make you smile, and bigger things to look forward to on the horizon? Maybe today you feel irked or unhappy, but in general, in life, are you happyish?
And I'd have to say, despite standardized tests and group projects and taxes and data collection, the answer is definitely yes.
Friday, March 19, 2010
escape from data-drive
One of my favorite parts of teaching is the rare opportunities to, um... *not* teach. That is, at least where "teach" is defined by our bastardized, stifling, starchy, ratings-bound version of the TC Workshop Model.
The irony of it is, the reason I wanted to be a teacher was because I love kids (and kind of am one, a large one). But as it happened, much of teaching turned out to be finding novel was to suppress their innate kidishness, to squelch their verve, straighten their kinks and quirks, extinguish their unpredictable flare-ups. I hadn't considered that part of my job description would be squishing them into dress shoes and uniforms and molding them into productive little societally-approved capitalist cogs. (Naturally I am doing my best to undermine the status quo, but these things take time. Progress is a slow but persistent whittle.)
It feels slightly profane to be systematically uprooting the very tendencies that define, in my mind, being a kid. Sitting still for long periods of time, keeping quiet when your brain lights up with an idea, keeping your hands to yourself, being orderly, slow and careful instead of wild, fast and carefree... none of these exactly fit with my (admittedly idealized) notion of childhood.
So it is refreshing when I get to do things that don't follow the prescribed architecture, when there is no script to follow or checklist of approved teaching behaviors. We took the kids on a bowling field trip yesterday, and although it had little to no educational value in my mind, it was so delightful to see them being loud and boisterous, jumping up and down, squealing and high-fiving with the triumph of a strike, and falling to the floor in the agony of a split. It felt so good not to "shush" them. It felt so good for sound and motion to be ok. And by the way, if you ever need a few chuckles, go and watch some shrimpy kids with almost no experience hurl bowling balls jubilantly, yet oh-so-ungracefully, down a greased lane toward some pins.
Today also, we celebrated the end of the biography and literary essay units. I was pleasantly surprised when the kids voted to celebrate their writing in our traditional way, simply by reading and writing compliments about each other's work... It was so gratifying to see evidence that they care about their writing (and each other's), that they're proud of it, that they've invested parts of themselves in it (as well any writer should, I just wasn't convinced it could really happen for 28 pre-pubescent balls of id).
Out of context, if you suggested to an average 10-year old, hey, how would you like to read five or six literary essays in a row? I can't imagine they would respond with much enthusiasm. But here they were, racing each other and elbowing one another out of the way to get to a particular writer's piece first, effortlessly quiet and fully engaged for at least a half hour or more. Cha-ching!
To celebrate reading, we made comic-book biographies of either our own lives or a friend's, or someone they learned about in their reading. D-- made one about me! Quite good, actually. Many of them chose autobiographies. It was so fascinating to peer into their lives through these little windows, to be privy to their defining moments thus far. Moving to India and back, immigration stories, traumatic accidents, the death of a father meaning a switch from a private Bengali performing arts school to public school... it was facinating and gratifying to have a chance to know them as something other than their reading level or math ability, to find out what has been important to them as people... I was thinking, if I could do things MY way, this is much closer to what I'd want it to be like every day.
And then there was Pretzel Club, which felt great for the same uninhibited, unconfined reasons, and because I finally feel like I'm gaining some traction with my mentee, J--. It took some time to get a groove going, to find something that really made him light up, but as it turns out, he's a budding artist. I've been scouring my bookshelves and the library and bookstores, finding graphic novels and comic books for kids. It felt so nice to just. read. with him... we read the clever and adorable Sticky Burr together this afternoon. J-- is usually the main character and I do a variety of ridiculous voices as the rest of the cast of characters. I think hearing me act a fool and have fun with the voices helps him loosen up and read with some expression, too.
It felt great to be unbound by Teaching Points, conference notes, and other TC protocol, and not have to interrupt the enjoyment of the story with strategy-talk. I boosted him along when he got stuck and, like, gave him some helpful hints and all, but I didn't have to make a big DEAL out of it, which you kind of do in an official TC-style One-on-One Reading Conference. What I was doing was helping him learn to read for pleasure and enjoyment, which is what I think he probably needs as a reader as much as decoding strategies or comprehension work. The payoff? With twenty minutes to go I asked if he wanted to stop and work on his own comic, and he chose instead to finish the book with me. Score one for the teacher.
So yeah. Best part of teaching? Seizing the opportunities to not "let data drive my instruction," and instead, hitting cruise control and following my human instincts towards what my heart already knows kids need, but "data" has not yet gotten around to proving.
The irony of it is, the reason I wanted to be a teacher was because I love kids (and kind of am one, a large one). But as it happened, much of teaching turned out to be finding novel was to suppress their innate kidishness, to squelch their verve, straighten their kinks and quirks, extinguish their unpredictable flare-ups. I hadn't considered that part of my job description would be squishing them into dress shoes and uniforms and molding them into productive little societally-approved capitalist cogs. (Naturally I am doing my best to undermine the status quo, but these things take time. Progress is a slow but persistent whittle.)
It feels slightly profane to be systematically uprooting the very tendencies that define, in my mind, being a kid. Sitting still for long periods of time, keeping quiet when your brain lights up with an idea, keeping your hands to yourself, being orderly, slow and careful instead of wild, fast and carefree... none of these exactly fit with my (admittedly idealized) notion of childhood.
So it is refreshing when I get to do things that don't follow the prescribed architecture, when there is no script to follow or checklist of approved teaching behaviors. We took the kids on a bowling field trip yesterday, and although it had little to no educational value in my mind, it was so delightful to see them being loud and boisterous, jumping up and down, squealing and high-fiving with the triumph of a strike, and falling to the floor in the agony of a split. It felt so good not to "shush" them. It felt so good for sound and motion to be ok. And by the way, if you ever need a few chuckles, go and watch some shrimpy kids with almost no experience hurl bowling balls jubilantly, yet oh-so-ungracefully, down a greased lane toward some pins.
Today also, we celebrated the end of the biography and literary essay units. I was pleasantly surprised when the kids voted to celebrate their writing in our traditional way, simply by reading and writing compliments about each other's work... It was so gratifying to see evidence that they care about their writing (and each other's), that they're proud of it, that they've invested parts of themselves in it (as well any writer should, I just wasn't convinced it could really happen for 28 pre-pubescent balls of id).
Out of context, if you suggested to an average 10-year old, hey, how would you like to read five or six literary essays in a row? I can't imagine they would respond with much enthusiasm. But here they were, racing each other and elbowing one another out of the way to get to a particular writer's piece first, effortlessly quiet and fully engaged for at least a half hour or more. Cha-ching!
To celebrate reading, we made comic-book biographies of either our own lives or a friend's, or someone they learned about in their reading. D-- made one about me! Quite good, actually. Many of them chose autobiographies. It was so fascinating to peer into their lives through these little windows, to be privy to their defining moments thus far. Moving to India and back, immigration stories, traumatic accidents, the death of a father meaning a switch from a private Bengali performing arts school to public school... it was facinating and gratifying to have a chance to know them as something other than their reading level or math ability, to find out what has been important to them as people... I was thinking, if I could do things MY way, this is much closer to what I'd want it to be like every day.
And then there was Pretzel Club, which felt great for the same uninhibited, unconfined reasons, and because I finally feel like I'm gaining some traction with my mentee, J--. It took some time to get a groove going, to find something that really made him light up, but as it turns out, he's a budding artist. I've been scouring my bookshelves and the library and bookstores, finding graphic novels and comic books for kids. It felt so nice to just. read. with him... we read the clever and adorable Sticky Burr together this afternoon. J-- is usually the main character and I do a variety of ridiculous voices as the rest of the cast of characters. I think hearing me act a fool and have fun with the voices helps him loosen up and read with some expression, too.
It felt great to be unbound by Teaching Points, conference notes, and other TC protocol, and not have to interrupt the enjoyment of the story with strategy-talk. I boosted him along when he got stuck and, like, gave him some helpful hints and all, but I didn't have to make a big DEAL out of it, which you kind of do in an official TC-style One-on-One Reading Conference. What I was doing was helping him learn to read for pleasure and enjoyment, which is what I think he probably needs as a reader as much as decoding strategies or comprehension work. The payoff? With twenty minutes to go I asked if he wanted to stop and work on his own comic, and he chose instead to finish the book with me. Score one for the teacher.
So yeah. Best part of teaching? Seizing the opportunities to not "let data drive my instruction," and instead, hitting cruise control and following my human instincts towards what my heart already knows kids need, but "data" has not yet gotten around to proving.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
love love love
One of the things that I have, that at a certain point in my life never believed I would be able to have, is a life outside of school! Even on weekdays! My school friends don't cease to amaze me with their exuberance for life and their generosity, their humor, openness and compassion. I feel like I can't get enough of them.
I woke up from a nap, here at Jafa's house, which is where I am because I just cannot say no to these people, and because my desire to be with them overcame my overwhelming desire to pass out face down and create a little puddle of drool as I nap away my bone-deep exhaustion. (Win-win situation: re-locating said drool puddle to Jafa and King's bed!)
You know that moment of clarity sometimes when you just wake up? I just had one of how much I love all of them, almost desperately - a worry of someday not having them in my life that is akin to what I think it probably feels like to be in love.
I cannot take for granted them taking care of me - making me tacos, providing me with fleece-y pants, socks, cookies and other delicious baked goods, napping space... knowing what it was like to be going it alone makes me all the more appreciative of this newfound beauty.
Yesterday Corky and I went to Manhattan to welcome Sha-naynay's new baby into the world, and then to Trader Joe's and then to Corky's house to drink wine and plot fun things for the future... today I'm spur-of-the-moment sleeping over at Jafa and King's and words elude me to describe my contentment.
*****************
The Backstory:
All this is in stark contrast to my typical afternoon as little as one year ago. More often than not, during the Dark Times, I'd stay in school impotently scratching out uncertain lesson plans, forcing myself to prepare a bare minimum of materials to get myself through the following day, wondering how everyone else had managed to leave already. I'd generally stay until after dark then drag my weary, lifeless body onto the crowded Q33 bus, sucked dry from the neediness and constant low-grade chaos of the 20 first graders under my tutelage.
The bus would bring me back to my spacious but isolated old apartment next to LaGuardia airport. I'd trudge across the exhaust-filled overpass of the Grand Central Parkway and heave myself into my empty home, sometimes having spoken to no one other than Rusty the janitor, and maybe my chain-smoking Yugoslavian neighbor if she was in her usual position on the front stoop.
I never seemed to have much in the way of groceries and my roommate was rarely around when I was. I'd drink a couple beers or more, depending on the day, and on the worst days I'd call up my Esteemed Aunt of Infinite Patience in California and cry. Often I'd fall asleep on the couch, lights burning, dishes in the sink, and wake up disoriented at 11 or 12 at night, turn off the lights and crawl into bed.
This was also the period of time when I Netflixed all six seasons of The Wire, and although I still maintain that it is the single best television show ever created by mankind, watching it then was a little intense. Perhaps it was not the wisest choice in terms of my emotional well-being to spend my off time watching a show about other people who were working unforgiving, thankless jobs and being trod down by The System, in it for the right reasons but being swiftly, brutally and mercilessly shorn of their idealism and hope for the future... but I preferred its ugly, resonant truths to other white-washed, perfume-scented untruths. I watched that and brainless comedies only. Any film with too much depth made my stomach hurt, and any movie that had small children in it, even happy ones (especially happy ones) made me weep with untoward and disproportionate devastation.
A year ago, Kima, McNulty and Omar were my embitterred companions, offering me comiseration in a world gone wrong and some measure of comfort in knowing that somewhere out there, people were worse off than me...
but my, how the cast of characters has changed.
All that darkness was before Jafa and Corky became indispensable staples of my everyday life, both in and out of school. I can't believe how tentatively I participated in Corky's birthday party last April, how unsuspecting I was of our impending connection, how drastically my sad little life was about to change for the better.
Now it seems so normal, so expected, so as-it-should-be to have Jafa stuffing enormous forkful's of King's famous quiche into my mouth everyday at lunch; to have Corky to turn to with every minute question or idea, or to put silly or mushy notes in each other's mailboxes; to have Smartboard lessons arrive on the flashdrive in my hands that I didn't have to make. No more suffering in anguish with each jagged, ruinous stroke of the marker on chart paper...
I used to feel jealous of my other colleagues who could be so relaxed and playful at lunch, rather than frantically trying to prepare the afternoon's lessons as I did. But it seems like nothing at all to be yucking it up at Henrietta's impersonations or cooing over Shanaynay's baby belly, and now, her baby pictures. My life has undergone, in the last year, an inestimably important transformation, a 180 degree turn for the better. For this I am and ever will be eternally grateful.
I woke up from a nap, here at Jafa's house, which is where I am because I just cannot say no to these people, and because my desire to be with them overcame my overwhelming desire to pass out face down and create a little puddle of drool as I nap away my bone-deep exhaustion. (Win-win situation: re-locating said drool puddle to Jafa and King's bed!)
You know that moment of clarity sometimes when you just wake up? I just had one of how much I love all of them, almost desperately - a worry of someday not having them in my life that is akin to what I think it probably feels like to be in love.
I cannot take for granted them taking care of me - making me tacos, providing me with fleece-y pants, socks, cookies and other delicious baked goods, napping space... knowing what it was like to be going it alone makes me all the more appreciative of this newfound beauty.
Yesterday Corky and I went to Manhattan to welcome Sha-naynay's new baby into the world, and then to Trader Joe's and then to Corky's house to drink wine and plot fun things for the future... today I'm spur-of-the-moment sleeping over at Jafa and King's and words elude me to describe my contentment.
*****************
The Backstory:
All this is in stark contrast to my typical afternoon as little as one year ago. More often than not, during the Dark Times, I'd stay in school impotently scratching out uncertain lesson plans, forcing myself to prepare a bare minimum of materials to get myself through the following day, wondering how everyone else had managed to leave already. I'd generally stay until after dark then drag my weary, lifeless body onto the crowded Q33 bus, sucked dry from the neediness and constant low-grade chaos of the 20 first graders under my tutelage.
The bus would bring me back to my spacious but isolated old apartment next to LaGuardia airport. I'd trudge across the exhaust-filled overpass of the Grand Central Parkway and heave myself into my empty home, sometimes having spoken to no one other than Rusty the janitor, and maybe my chain-smoking Yugoslavian neighbor if she was in her usual position on the front stoop.
I never seemed to have much in the way of groceries and my roommate was rarely around when I was. I'd drink a couple beers or more, depending on the day, and on the worst days I'd call up my Esteemed Aunt of Infinite Patience in California and cry. Often I'd fall asleep on the couch, lights burning, dishes in the sink, and wake up disoriented at 11 or 12 at night, turn off the lights and crawl into bed.
This was also the period of time when I Netflixed all six seasons of The Wire, and although I still maintain that it is the single best television show ever created by mankind, watching it then was a little intense. Perhaps it was not the wisest choice in terms of my emotional well-being to spend my off time watching a show about other people who were working unforgiving, thankless jobs and being trod down by The System, in it for the right reasons but being swiftly, brutally and mercilessly shorn of their idealism and hope for the future... but I preferred its ugly, resonant truths to other white-washed, perfume-scented untruths. I watched that and brainless comedies only. Any film with too much depth made my stomach hurt, and any movie that had small children in it, even happy ones (especially happy ones) made me weep with untoward and disproportionate devastation.
A year ago, Kima, McNulty and Omar were my embitterred companions, offering me comiseration in a world gone wrong and some measure of comfort in knowing that somewhere out there, people were worse off than me...
but my, how the cast of characters has changed.
All that darkness was before Jafa and Corky became indispensable staples of my everyday life, both in and out of school. I can't believe how tentatively I participated in Corky's birthday party last April, how unsuspecting I was of our impending connection, how drastically my sad little life was about to change for the better.
Now it seems so normal, so expected, so as-it-should-be to have Jafa stuffing enormous forkful's of King's famous quiche into my mouth everyday at lunch; to have Corky to turn to with every minute question or idea, or to put silly or mushy notes in each other's mailboxes; to have Smartboard lessons arrive on the flashdrive in my hands that I didn't have to make. No more suffering in anguish with each jagged, ruinous stroke of the marker on chart paper...
I used to feel jealous of my other colleagues who could be so relaxed and playful at lunch, rather than frantically trying to prepare the afternoon's lessons as I did. But it seems like nothing at all to be yucking it up at Henrietta's impersonations or cooing over Shanaynay's baby belly, and now, her baby pictures. My life has undergone, in the last year, an inestimably important transformation, a 180 degree turn for the better. For this I am and ever will be eternally grateful.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Parent Teacher Conferences
I'm trying to figure out why I get so intensely anxious about parent teacher conferences, what exactly led me to mechanically eat a whole bag of pretzels on the train ride home in order to blunt or replace the subtle gnawing dread in the pit of my stomach about tomorrow's day-long parental extravaganza...
I guess it's that Parent Teacher Conference is the time when I most feel the burden of their trust.
It's also the time when I feel the most like an impostor. Sure, I've learned to talk the talk and even walk the walk most of the time. When it's just me and the kids I feel fine, they know the deal... But their parents...
It's not that any parents I've encountered have ever been unkind or unwilling to listen or too demanding or accusing or confrontational or anything like that - the reality is closer to the opposite. In general they are humble and deferential and come with a great respect for Teacher, School and Education.
It is this reverence, perhaps, that is the most unsettling... I am afraid they will see through me, that they will find out as they penetrate me with their questioning eyes that I am a mere mortal, practically a child myself. I'm afraid I won't live up to their expectations, that they will realize how un-credentialed and inexperienced I am, how thinly veiled is my ignorance about the world. I am afraid they'll find out, when it comes down to it, that I don't know crap about crap.
Part of my discomfort is feeling ill-equipped to offer any meaningful answers...They look down at the strings of numbers whose meaning, even for me with my impending graduate degree, is somewhat obscure and difficult to discern. What they see is red or black ink staring back at them, 1's or 2's or 3's or 4's telling them their child is less or more, enough or not enough, and though of course any teacher tiptoes around these words, right there in black and white, they see "good" or "bad."
And then they look back up at you plaintively and ask "What should I do?? How can I help my child??"
My canned advice comes out sounding feeble and flat. Read as much as possible at home... practice the times tables... do the homework...
It doesn't feel as if I'm answering the right question. It's as if I came upon them starving in a desert and offered them a Tic Tac.
The report cards themselves are opaque and archaic (hand-written, mass-produced by the DOE for distribution among all of New York City Public Schools) and don't even align with what we're actually teaching them... how can I assign a grade for grammar when that's not even part of the curriculum? What do they mean when they say "Calculates equations with efficiency and accuracy?" Am I meant to be timing them? It sounds as if the person who designed the report card is envisioning pupils in rows plugging away at their long division, and if that's the case, perhaps that person should poke their nose inside a classroom sometime this side of 1950...The criteria for each subject seem almost random, like it was all somebody could think of at the time.
Communication is another sticking point. It takes a lot, to try and explain and justify and comfort -- some of the conferences I feel more like a therapist, trying to convince students and parents alike that low grades do not represent personal failure, but rather an opportunity for improvement. The conferences in Spanish I pretty much do myself, because there's a limited set of things the conversation will touch upon and I'm able to communicate a good 60% of what I mean to say. (Translation is available but I prefer not to wait and to have the conversation directly if I can manage it). And the ones in English, most of the parents probably understand another 60% of what I say.
I've also noticed a stark contrast with my first grade Parent Teacher Conferences. Those parents I knew better because they picked the kids up from school every day and I had to have more contact by default, since first graders only have the vaguest of understandings about most things... In first grade I felt I had more to offer, more suggestions for the parents about the process of learning to read and helping kids get number sense ... telling time, counting change, practicing sight words, learning the alphabet... these were things, concrete things, they could DO.
With many of my Big Kids, especially the ones who walk home alone, this might only be the second time I lay eyes on their parents... (Evidence of yet another institutional shortcoming of P.S. OO, with its fortress walls and uniformed guards and draconian, unwelcoming visitor policies and almost hostile treatment of parents and guests) But not only do I not know the 5th grade parents as well, I have less to say to them. The average PS OO parent can't help with math homework any longer once it gets to prime factorization and five-paragraph essays and determining symbolism. I sometimes wonder what it's like to work on writing pieces in a language your parents can't really read or understand...
But the biggest part of my dilemma about communication is not just how but what. Sure, for some kids a low grade is a much-needed kick in the pants. But that's a minority of students...
I have a big problem with the way we grade. My problem is that the grades haven't caught up with the pedagogy... As teachers we differentiate, differentiate all day long, we teach according to our students' needs, recognize students' unique learning styles and address the different modalities. We are held accountable for acknowledging that every student is different and are expected to reflect that understanding in our teaching. So where are the differentiated assessments? Why do we not differentiate our evaluations in the same way, taking into account what has been proven a zillion times over about the huma brain - mainly, that no two are alike?
How come A--, my newcomer who works her ass off every day and went up seven reading levels in four months is getting big, fat, bright red "one" in Reading... In contrast with my above-average intelligence but kinda lazy native New Yorker who went up one solitary reading level, but still gets to ease by with a comfortable "on grade level" 3.
Not to mention the paradox that, if the "on grade level" grade is based on the average performance of 10-year-olds, let's say the middle third of the lot... doesn't it make the assessment inappropriate for the other two thirds of the lot?
Knowing my poor C--, who still adds on her fingers and just can't seem to wrap her head around the times tables, though not for lack of trying, will take the same test as B--, who could probably teach the math curriculum better than I, is just frustrating. The end result in terms of teaching, unjust and distasteful as it might be, is that B-- is bored most of the time and often ignored, and C-- is floundering as I overwhelm her with "quick-fixes..." Prodded by the pressure of the ever-present Deadline, I glaze over gaps in fundamental understanding by training her to memorize steps out of context, frantically trying to fluff up her performance and mask her limited understanding by the time the big bad test arrives...
My trouble is that in my heart, I know the grades are bullshit. They're not fair and they don't reflect true learning and they don't take into account significant progress that has been made and they gloss over the fact that people learn, and demonstrate their learning, in different ways.
But to these immigrant families, the grades are not bullshit. For many of them, these grades are the reason to go to work each day cleaning houses and driving taxis and making deliveries, the reason for having left home and relatives and everything they ever knew. The report card holds the evidence that they and their children are getting closer, making progress towards that Better Life they're seeking.
I know how easily, and almost arbitrarily, I assign the grades that come to mean so much. In the raw, they don't really matter to me.
But at the same time, it would feel disloyal to the struggles and striving of the families to act as if they aren't important. The fact that I don't care about them must remain a secret because the significance of these grades goes beyond identifying a kid's strengths and weaknesses, their aptitudes or idiosyncracies. The report cards are not really about me at all... the grades represent purpose, hope, dreams, prayers... I'm not just validating the kids' work, but also the hard work and decisions and sacrifices and difficult choices of their families. In a sense, by the power vested in me by the state of New York and the dominant culture of the US of A, I'm grading them on how well they're living out their American Dreams.
In a sense, I have to continue to spout the party lines so that the families can continue to have faith in the system. I am forced to defend a system I see as so flawed and arbitrary and at times harmful and poisonous, because no parent wants their child's teacher to tell them, "This will not work. The chances are slim. There is just so much working against your child." These kids and their families, they don't really have a choice about buying into the system because it's really the only system available to them. For them, public education HAS to work; they have no other choice but to believe that it will. To tell them my true feelings would serve no purpose, would ultimately be a disservice. Instead, I tell them to work hard, keep on striving, you're almost there, you can do it if you try. Because, in a certain light, it's the only possible truth to say or hear.
Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself, reading too much into Parent Teacher Conferences.
But maybe not.
I guess it's that Parent Teacher Conference is the time when I most feel the burden of their trust.
It's also the time when I feel the most like an impostor. Sure, I've learned to talk the talk and even walk the walk most of the time. When it's just me and the kids I feel fine, they know the deal... But their parents...
It's not that any parents I've encountered have ever been unkind or unwilling to listen or too demanding or accusing or confrontational or anything like that - the reality is closer to the opposite. In general they are humble and deferential and come with a great respect for Teacher, School and Education.
It is this reverence, perhaps, that is the most unsettling... I am afraid they will see through me, that they will find out as they penetrate me with their questioning eyes that I am a mere mortal, practically a child myself. I'm afraid I won't live up to their expectations, that they will realize how un-credentialed and inexperienced I am, how thinly veiled is my ignorance about the world. I am afraid they'll find out, when it comes down to it, that I don't know crap about crap.
Part of my discomfort is feeling ill-equipped to offer any meaningful answers...They look down at the strings of numbers whose meaning, even for me with my impending graduate degree, is somewhat obscure and difficult to discern. What they see is red or black ink staring back at them, 1's or 2's or 3's or 4's telling them their child is less or more, enough or not enough, and though of course any teacher tiptoes around these words, right there in black and white, they see "good" or "bad."
And then they look back up at you plaintively and ask "What should I do?? How can I help my child??"
My canned advice comes out sounding feeble and flat. Read as much as possible at home... practice the times tables... do the homework...
It doesn't feel as if I'm answering the right question. It's as if I came upon them starving in a desert and offered them a Tic Tac.
The report cards themselves are opaque and archaic (hand-written, mass-produced by the DOE for distribution among all of New York City Public Schools) and don't even align with what we're actually teaching them... how can I assign a grade for grammar when that's not even part of the curriculum? What do they mean when they say "Calculates equations with efficiency and accuracy?" Am I meant to be timing them? It sounds as if the person who designed the report card is envisioning pupils in rows plugging away at their long division, and if that's the case, perhaps that person should poke their nose inside a classroom sometime this side of 1950...The criteria for each subject seem almost random, like it was all somebody could think of at the time.
Communication is another sticking point. It takes a lot, to try and explain and justify and comfort -- some of the conferences I feel more like a therapist, trying to convince students and parents alike that low grades do not represent personal failure, but rather an opportunity for improvement. The conferences in Spanish I pretty much do myself, because there's a limited set of things the conversation will touch upon and I'm able to communicate a good 60% of what I mean to say. (Translation is available but I prefer not to wait and to have the conversation directly if I can manage it). And the ones in English, most of the parents probably understand another 60% of what I say.
I've also noticed a stark contrast with my first grade Parent Teacher Conferences. Those parents I knew better because they picked the kids up from school every day and I had to have more contact by default, since first graders only have the vaguest of understandings about most things... In first grade I felt I had more to offer, more suggestions for the parents about the process of learning to read and helping kids get number sense ... telling time, counting change, practicing sight words, learning the alphabet... these were things, concrete things, they could DO.
With many of my Big Kids, especially the ones who walk home alone, this might only be the second time I lay eyes on their parents... (Evidence of yet another institutional shortcoming of P.S. OO, with its fortress walls and uniformed guards and draconian, unwelcoming visitor policies and almost hostile treatment of parents and guests) But not only do I not know the 5th grade parents as well, I have less to say to them. The average PS OO parent can't help with math homework any longer once it gets to prime factorization and five-paragraph essays and determining symbolism. I sometimes wonder what it's like to work on writing pieces in a language your parents can't really read or understand...
But the biggest part of my dilemma about communication is not just how but what. Sure, for some kids a low grade is a much-needed kick in the pants. But that's a minority of students...
I have a big problem with the way we grade. My problem is that the grades haven't caught up with the pedagogy... As teachers we differentiate, differentiate all day long, we teach according to our students' needs, recognize students' unique learning styles and address the different modalities. We are held accountable for acknowledging that every student is different and are expected to reflect that understanding in our teaching. So where are the differentiated assessments? Why do we not differentiate our evaluations in the same way, taking into account what has been proven a zillion times over about the huma brain - mainly, that no two are alike?
How come A--, my newcomer who works her ass off every day and went up seven reading levels in four months is getting big, fat, bright red "one" in Reading... In contrast with my above-average intelligence but kinda lazy native New Yorker who went up one solitary reading level, but still gets to ease by with a comfortable "on grade level" 3.
Not to mention the paradox that, if the "on grade level" grade is based on the average performance of 10-year-olds, let's say the middle third of the lot... doesn't it make the assessment inappropriate for the other two thirds of the lot?
Knowing my poor C--, who still adds on her fingers and just can't seem to wrap her head around the times tables, though not for lack of trying, will take the same test as B--, who could probably teach the math curriculum better than I, is just frustrating. The end result in terms of teaching, unjust and distasteful as it might be, is that B-- is bored most of the time and often ignored, and C-- is floundering as I overwhelm her with "quick-fixes..." Prodded by the pressure of the ever-present Deadline, I glaze over gaps in fundamental understanding by training her to memorize steps out of context, frantically trying to fluff up her performance and mask her limited understanding by the time the big bad test arrives...
My trouble is that in my heart, I know the grades are bullshit. They're not fair and they don't reflect true learning and they don't take into account significant progress that has been made and they gloss over the fact that people learn, and demonstrate their learning, in different ways.
But to these immigrant families, the grades are not bullshit. For many of them, these grades are the reason to go to work each day cleaning houses and driving taxis and making deliveries, the reason for having left home and relatives and everything they ever knew. The report card holds the evidence that they and their children are getting closer, making progress towards that Better Life they're seeking.
I know how easily, and almost arbitrarily, I assign the grades that come to mean so much. In the raw, they don't really matter to me.
But at the same time, it would feel disloyal to the struggles and striving of the families to act as if they aren't important. The fact that I don't care about them must remain a secret because the significance of these grades goes beyond identifying a kid's strengths and weaknesses, their aptitudes or idiosyncracies. The report cards are not really about me at all... the grades represent purpose, hope, dreams, prayers... I'm not just validating the kids' work, but also the hard work and decisions and sacrifices and difficult choices of their families. In a sense, by the power vested in me by the state of New York and the dominant culture of the US of A, I'm grading them on how well they're living out their American Dreams.
In a sense, I have to continue to spout the party lines so that the families can continue to have faith in the system. I am forced to defend a system I see as so flawed and arbitrary and at times harmful and poisonous, because no parent wants their child's teacher to tell them, "This will not work. The chances are slim. There is just so much working against your child." These kids and their families, they don't really have a choice about buying into the system because it's really the only system available to them. For them, public education HAS to work; they have no other choice but to believe that it will. To tell them my true feelings would serve no purpose, would ultimately be a disservice. Instead, I tell them to work hard, keep on striving, you're almost there, you can do it if you try. Because, in a certain light, it's the only possible truth to say or hear.
Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself, reading too much into Parent Teacher Conferences.
But maybe not.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Prioritizing
Teaching, like living, is a never-ending series of small sacrifices. Who was it who said (quite rightly) you cannot be everything to everyone at all times? You can't even be everything to yourself a small fraction of the time, given the constraints of existing as only one entity in time and space. (A sorry state that is ever un-conducive to being and doing the multitude of things you mean to be and do all at once.)
Prioritizing means giving things up, and doing it well means knowing which things to give up at what times.
In class, it can mean letting a student's snide comment go by unaddressed for the sake of not interrupting the focus of the rest of the class.
Last winter, it meant quitting Latvian school to restore a baseline level of sanity in my life.
Yesterday, it meant ditching the mural-painting event at school I really wanted to attend for a long-awaited road trip upstate to visit M.
Friday night, it meant sacrificing staying for a second drink for the sake of going home and getting some sleep.
Thursday I stayed after class at grad school to work on my thesis, knowing it would mean dinner would have to be a sandwich scarfed on the subway ride home.
Wednesday I forewent the gym (again...) to see some good friends that I'd been missing.
Staying late and throwing myself into work last Tuesday meant the cupboards would go bare for a few more days and dirty laundry would have to continue to accumulate, artfully arranging itself topographically in higher and higher mountain ranges in and around the hamper.
Going to Inner Resilience on Monday meant another week of not cooking communal dinner for my roommates even though it's something really want to do, and not cleaning the bathroom even though it really was my turn and it really needed to be done.
And day to day, sinking a bunch of my time into keeping this blog, even though I really love doing it, has meant maybe not talking to my friends and family in person quite as much as I'd like.
And then of course there is the host of things I've had to postpone essentially until further notice because I simply can't find a way to make room for them now (unless I somehow figure out how to teleport or live without sleeping or smuggle some extra hours into the day). Things like art projects or gardening, or joining volleyball or reading the newspaper, or cooking or training for my next triathlon or spending more time in nature or babysitting my nieces and nephews or trying to have some sort of meaningful romantic life... Hard as it is to admit it or accept it, these things will just have to wait. Maybe when I graduate. Maybe in the summer. Maybe next year.
It takes a long time to get good at choosing the best choices at the right times. I guess it's a craft I might never really perfect, and I'd wager that maybe no one ever does... It's hard to learn which internal voices to listen to and which ones to ignore, which one has the right of way, and to parse out the consequences of ignoring or obeying each competing demand. Juggling a lot of balls takes concentration, and inevitably you end up dropping some of them from time to time.
Sometimes your body takes over for your brain, and your list of priorities self-shuffles despite your logical protestations. Like falling asleep before that Critically Important Task is complete, or spending an afternoon rearranging the classroom library despite the fact that it was like 18th or 19th at best on the master list of Needs to Happen and would never have been categorized as urgent. Sometimes happy hour takes precedence over grading papers, and sometimes the other way around. (and sometimes, happily, the two can be combined!)
Some of the best teaching advice I ever got was, "work smarter, not harder." But despite my full and unmitigated belief in this credo, I still find myself reverting sometimes to my old, erratic, engine-revving, spinning-tire hamster-wheel tendencies.
Sometimes it's also sad to think about things you might be missing out on, especially when you're feeling particularly lonely or under-appreciated or overburdened, or when you're forced to spend your precious time on something you'd rather not (like pointless paperwork or long-winded meetings or commuting to class or waiting in line).
But the payoff in all this constant decision-making is recognizing, in fleeting, glowing golden moments, times when you've made the right choice...
This weekend I hit pay dirt in the golden moments department. In exchange for neglecting my laundry and my empty cupboards and my woefully wayward workout regimen I received a precious gift: sitting around the floor of M's cozy cabin in the woods of New Paltz with five great friends, laughing as they free-styled a silly song about philosophers and quantum mechanics. Wine flowing, rain blowing, bongoes drumming and guitar strumming, I thought to myself, aaaah, this is the life, the one I've imagined...
Part of me wanted to phone up New York City, tell them to send my apologies to my kids and colleagues but I'm quitting my job and they'll have to finish out the year without me, as I'm moving into the forest and becoming a full-time hippie.
Ultimately (for better or worse) my feet on the ground won out over my head in the clouds, and I returned to face Mt. Laundry, daylight savings, parent teacher conferences, the treadmill and my thesis.
But in my pocket to refer to when I need it I have that keepsake moment, a golden nugget to remind me of an important truth, as souvenir of Life as it Should Be...
That moment I was not a tired teacher or a grumbling grad student or a crabby commuter or a troubled tax-payer or a negligent roommate or a deadbeat auntie or a walking zombie... briefly, rarely, indulgently, I got to be nothing more than myself.
Prioritizing means giving things up, and doing it well means knowing which things to give up at what times.
In class, it can mean letting a student's snide comment go by unaddressed for the sake of not interrupting the focus of the rest of the class.
Last winter, it meant quitting Latvian school to restore a baseline level of sanity in my life.
Yesterday, it meant ditching the mural-painting event at school I really wanted to attend for a long-awaited road trip upstate to visit M.
Friday night, it meant sacrificing staying for a second drink for the sake of going home and getting some sleep.
Thursday I stayed after class at grad school to work on my thesis, knowing it would mean dinner would have to be a sandwich scarfed on the subway ride home.
Wednesday I forewent the gym (again...) to see some good friends that I'd been missing.
Staying late and throwing myself into work last Tuesday meant the cupboards would go bare for a few more days and dirty laundry would have to continue to accumulate, artfully arranging itself topographically in higher and higher mountain ranges in and around the hamper.
Going to Inner Resilience on Monday meant another week of not cooking communal dinner for my roommates even though it's something really want to do, and not cleaning the bathroom even though it really was my turn and it really needed to be done.
And day to day, sinking a bunch of my time into keeping this blog, even though I really love doing it, has meant maybe not talking to my friends and family in person quite as much as I'd like.
And then of course there is the host of things I've had to postpone essentially until further notice because I simply can't find a way to make room for them now (unless I somehow figure out how to teleport or live without sleeping or smuggle some extra hours into the day). Things like art projects or gardening, or joining volleyball or reading the newspaper, or cooking or training for my next triathlon or spending more time in nature or babysitting my nieces and nephews or trying to have some sort of meaningful romantic life... Hard as it is to admit it or accept it, these things will just have to wait. Maybe when I graduate. Maybe in the summer. Maybe next year.
It takes a long time to get good at choosing the best choices at the right times. I guess it's a craft I might never really perfect, and I'd wager that maybe no one ever does... It's hard to learn which internal voices to listen to and which ones to ignore, which one has the right of way, and to parse out the consequences of ignoring or obeying each competing demand. Juggling a lot of balls takes concentration, and inevitably you end up dropping some of them from time to time.
Sometimes your body takes over for your brain, and your list of priorities self-shuffles despite your logical protestations. Like falling asleep before that Critically Important Task is complete, or spending an afternoon rearranging the classroom library despite the fact that it was like 18th or 19th at best on the master list of Needs to Happen and would never have been categorized as urgent. Sometimes happy hour takes precedence over grading papers, and sometimes the other way around. (and sometimes, happily, the two can be combined!)
Some of the best teaching advice I ever got was, "work smarter, not harder." But despite my full and unmitigated belief in this credo, I still find myself reverting sometimes to my old, erratic, engine-revving, spinning-tire hamster-wheel tendencies.
Sometimes it's also sad to think about things you might be missing out on, especially when you're feeling particularly lonely or under-appreciated or overburdened, or when you're forced to spend your precious time on something you'd rather not (like pointless paperwork or long-winded meetings or commuting to class or waiting in line).
But the payoff in all this constant decision-making is recognizing, in fleeting, glowing golden moments, times when you've made the right choice...
This weekend I hit pay dirt in the golden moments department. In exchange for neglecting my laundry and my empty cupboards and my woefully wayward workout regimen I received a precious gift: sitting around the floor of M's cozy cabin in the woods of New Paltz with five great friends, laughing as they free-styled a silly song about philosophers and quantum mechanics. Wine flowing, rain blowing, bongoes drumming and guitar strumming, I thought to myself, aaaah, this is the life, the one I've imagined...
Part of me wanted to phone up New York City, tell them to send my apologies to my kids and colleagues but I'm quitting my job and they'll have to finish out the year without me, as I'm moving into the forest and becoming a full-time hippie.
Ultimately (for better or worse) my feet on the ground won out over my head in the clouds, and I returned to face Mt. Laundry, daylight savings, parent teacher conferences, the treadmill and my thesis.
But in my pocket to refer to when I need it I have that keepsake moment, a golden nugget to remind me of an important truth, as souvenir of Life as it Should Be...
That moment I was not a tired teacher or a grumbling grad student or a crabby commuter or a troubled tax-payer or a negligent roommate or a deadbeat auntie or a walking zombie... briefly, rarely, indulgently, I got to be nothing more than myself.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
highlights and lowlights
Highlights:
Reading biographies to the kids! One of the things I'm loving about fifth grade (as compared to first) is the awesome books we get to read for read aloud. So far we read about Li Cuinxin (sp?), a ballet dancer in communist China, and Jose Limon, a Mexican dancer and choreographer who became world-famous. (Dancing to Freedom and Jose: Born to Dance) The kids are so smart! They totally picked out symbolism and even rocked an allegory about a frog stuck in a well in Dancing to Freedom. It's really gratifying to set them up for that and hear their conversations and watch their faces when they figure it out... heh heh. And they think they thought of it all on their own!
When we finished Jose, I said, "Ladies, don't worry, because next up I have a selection of biographies about courageous and powerful women." (Wilma Rudolph, Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart) And the class groaned! (Mostly the boys, I guess, since they're at that boys vs. girls age.)
Naturally I was appalled and righteously indignant and told them how offended I was as a woman, launching into an only partly-sensical tirade about the centuries long fight for women's rights. Connecting it to segregation (which, I'm proud to report, is totally like a popular buzzword in the class since MLK day) seemed to make them sufficiently sheepish. And as a bonus my face turned all red (as it is wont to do when I get flustered or worked up,) and the students always enjoy that immensely.
BUT, the real payoff came the next day when the class went to choose their new book club books, and one of the groups (all boys!) chose a book about this suffragette women that I'd never even heard of myself... and J was like, Ms. D, we chose this book because of what you said yesterday!
I was totally floored... I'm still feel pleasantly surprised and mildly shocked when I find proof that they've listened to what I've said. And the book also led to a really interesting conversation about their parents' jobs the glass ceiling and present-day slavery in Bangladesh. J said of his mom, who cleans houses, "she only makes like $350 a week but she still buys me and my sister everything we want." Which I thought was quite touching.
Lowlight, to off-set all this feel-goodery, is the insane amount of diagnostic testing that I have had to subject the kids to, ostensibly to prepare them for the real thing... but my thinking is, what's the point of having them shackled to their desks in silence, in a sense performing (trained monkeys!) for others to analyze them and statistic-ize them and make them into little colored boxes on grids and data graphs and pie charts... the nice thing about my non-neophyte big-kid 5th graders is that they are actually aware of what they don't know... some of them were saying to me only yesterday, I still need help with adding fractions! I'm getting stuck on common denominator!
Which is timelier and more specific "data" than will be provided by the fancy computer program anyway. So meanwhile I've given up like five entire periods in the last two weeks when I could've been imparting actual information, in order for them to prove to the higher powers of data collection what they don't yet know (which I and they could've already told you anyway) which will then be reported back to me with lots of fancy labels and analytical break-downs, .. Aaah, the circuitous song and dance of over-sized bureacracy.
I would love to calculate the number of instructional periods that are sacrificed this way, between the predictives and practice tests, acuity tests, simulations, principal's content assessment 3 times in three different subjects... All the "data" doesn't directly help the kids - Yes, the teachers use the information gathered from these tests to plan their teaching, but there are other less intrusive, more immediate ways for us to do that.
Producing all these stats is like manufacturing currency for all the administrators and politicians to use for trading horses and counting pennies and pushing agendas. The real reason for the tests is totally external to what goes on inside the classroom. It's for principals and senators to compare and scrutinize, to fly the flag of their policies and practices high when scores go up, or bury them quickly and deeply if the scores did not pan out conveniently, when the exalted facts and figures contradict their personal and political interests.
And, in excess, all this testing robs the kids of actual real learning time that they are entitled to by law. Could someone try to find a legal argument along these lines?
But, not to be overshadowed by the lowlights, I feel like test prep is going all right so far... I tell the kids 'We're in it to win it!" and make them do cheers and chants and make stupid sound effects to keep them awake. Today my Professional Development group came in to use my classroom as a lab site, and the kids got great feedback from the teachers... it was so bizarre and kind of hilarious to see them parroting all the weird stuff I've been doing to try and get them to remember all these strategies and what not. Watching it all from the outside, as if they were in a fishbowl, was kind of strange and unnerving but mostly made me cover my mouth to keep from laughing.
Reading biographies to the kids! One of the things I'm loving about fifth grade (as compared to first) is the awesome books we get to read for read aloud. So far we read about Li Cuinxin (sp?), a ballet dancer in communist China, and Jose Limon, a Mexican dancer and choreographer who became world-famous. (Dancing to Freedom and Jose: Born to Dance) The kids are so smart! They totally picked out symbolism and even rocked an allegory about a frog stuck in a well in Dancing to Freedom. It's really gratifying to set them up for that and hear their conversations and watch their faces when they figure it out... heh heh. And they think they thought of it all on their own!
When we finished Jose, I said, "Ladies, don't worry, because next up I have a selection of biographies about courageous and powerful women." (Wilma Rudolph, Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart) And the class groaned! (Mostly the boys, I guess, since they're at that boys vs. girls age.)
Naturally I was appalled and righteously indignant and told them how offended I was as a woman, launching into an only partly-sensical tirade about the centuries long fight for women's rights. Connecting it to segregation (which, I'm proud to report, is totally like a popular buzzword in the class since MLK day) seemed to make them sufficiently sheepish. And as a bonus my face turned all red (as it is wont to do when I get flustered or worked up,) and the students always enjoy that immensely.
BUT, the real payoff came the next day when the class went to choose their new book club books, and one of the groups (all boys!) chose a book about this suffragette women that I'd never even heard of myself... and J was like, Ms. D, we chose this book because of what you said yesterday!
I was totally floored... I'm still feel pleasantly surprised and mildly shocked when I find proof that they've listened to what I've said. And the book also led to a really interesting conversation about their parents' jobs the glass ceiling and present-day slavery in Bangladesh. J said of his mom, who cleans houses, "she only makes like $350 a week but she still buys me and my sister everything we want." Which I thought was quite touching.
Lowlight, to off-set all this feel-goodery, is the insane amount of diagnostic testing that I have had to subject the kids to, ostensibly to prepare them for the real thing... but my thinking is, what's the point of having them shackled to their desks in silence, in a sense performing (trained monkeys!) for others to analyze them and statistic-ize them and make them into little colored boxes on grids and data graphs and pie charts... the nice thing about my non-neophyte big-kid 5th graders is that they are actually aware of what they don't know... some of them were saying to me only yesterday, I still need help with adding fractions! I'm getting stuck on common denominator!
Which is timelier and more specific "data" than will be provided by the fancy computer program anyway. So meanwhile I've given up like five entire periods in the last two weeks when I could've been imparting actual information, in order for them to prove to the higher powers of data collection what they don't yet know (which I and they could've already told you anyway) which will then be reported back to me with lots of fancy labels and analytical break-downs, .. Aaah, the circuitous song and dance of over-sized bureacracy.
I would love to calculate the number of instructional periods that are sacrificed this way, between the predictives and practice tests, acuity tests, simulations, principal's content assessment 3 times in three different subjects... All the "data" doesn't directly help the kids - Yes, the teachers use the information gathered from these tests to plan their teaching, but there are other less intrusive, more immediate ways for us to do that.
Producing all these stats is like manufacturing currency for all the administrators and politicians to use for trading horses and counting pennies and pushing agendas. The real reason for the tests is totally external to what goes on inside the classroom. It's for principals and senators to compare and scrutinize, to fly the flag of their policies and practices high when scores go up, or bury them quickly and deeply if the scores did not pan out conveniently, when the exalted facts and figures contradict their personal and political interests.
And, in excess, all this testing robs the kids of actual real learning time that they are entitled to by law. Could someone try to find a legal argument along these lines?
But, not to be overshadowed by the lowlights, I feel like test prep is going all right so far... I tell the kids 'We're in it to win it!" and make them do cheers and chants and make stupid sound effects to keep them awake. Today my Professional Development group came in to use my classroom as a lab site, and the kids got great feedback from the teachers... it was so bizarre and kind of hilarious to see them parroting all the weird stuff I've been doing to try and get them to remember all these strategies and what not. Watching it all from the outside, as if they were in a fishbowl, was kind of strange and unnerving but mostly made me cover my mouth to keep from laughing.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
be vewy quiet...
Add to my job description:
entymologist/epidemiologist.
Captured a bedbug in the classroom, crawling on Sh--'s pant leg. (Then of course dealt with the fallout from the trauma of the finding of the bedbug all day.) Just one of the many glamorous sidebars of teaching in a densely populated urban setting... Who would've thought that good ol' PS OO would be so teaming with life! Working there has exposed me to a wide variety of biologically diverse organisms, which besides bedbugs includes mice, cockroaches, water bugs (latin name: Godzillus maximus), pigeons that fly in windows, and lice. And all of these I have experienced in a very, shall we say, up close and personal way.
Ah, the rich tapestry of life! The miracle of the natural world!
entymologist/epidemiologist.
Captured a bedbug in the classroom, crawling on Sh--'s pant leg. (Then of course dealt with the fallout from the trauma of the finding of the bedbug all day.) Just one of the many glamorous sidebars of teaching in a densely populated urban setting... Who would've thought that good ol' PS OO would be so teaming with life! Working there has exposed me to a wide variety of biologically diverse organisms, which besides bedbugs includes mice, cockroaches, water bugs (latin name: Godzillus maximus), pigeons that fly in windows, and lice. And all of these I have experienced in a very, shall we say, up close and personal way.
Ah, the rich tapestry of life! The miracle of the natural world!
Monday, March 8, 2010
Skipping in the halls
OK, maybe this is just the hippy-dippy touchy-feely new-age crystal-holding incense-sniffing-chakra-aligning spirit-totem-Earth-Mother-worshipping womyn in me talking, but I seriously loooooooove the inner resilience program. It goes like this:
Eat free snack!
Moment of silence
Choose an image and explain why you were drawn to it today
Light a candle
Read something meaningful and talk about it
Meditate
Journal
Talk to someone for two minutes/listen to someone for two minutes
Write a letter to yourself
Blow out a candle
Eat free dinner!
Pack up leftover free dinner in take-out containers to become following day's free lunch!
It basically makes me feel like a better person and also want to be a better person. And it makes me appreciate the people in my life who already DO make me a better person, like Corky who let me spontaneously sleep over at her apartment last night to make sure my report card comments got done even though it was late and I was tired, and then dressed me and bought me breakfast for no reason at all... Or my roommates, I'll call them Harmony and Rose, who heroically cleaned the fridge today since it needed to be done, and who make me eat more kale.
A welcome transformation happens when I go to inner resilience... I feel capable of appreciating more and griping less. I feel confident, capable, balanced. I can focus on accomplishments and not aggravations. I become a different person. A better one? A mindful one?
At school, I spent the afternoon walking around with a knot in my stomach... too much time scrutinizing the data of deficiency, I suppose; a case of the Mondays coupled with anxiety over Math Topics Yet to be Covered...
And by the way, if you were wondering if testing is a disease and whether or not it fucks with your head, it is and it does. Because when the wonderful and benevolent and kind Ms. A, the school librarian, called to notify me that we had library (and as usual, it had slipped my mind) my response wasn't delight at this unexpected windfall of precious unstructured, joyful book-worship. My initial response was more expletive in nature, calculating ways I could make up for the math pages that would now be undone, and lamenting the empty boxes besmirhcing my spreadsheet for small group instruction.
And something about that just ain't right.
So leaving school wasn't easy while feeling the grains in the hourglass sliding by just a little too briskly as this week's Big To Do built up a head of steam. Cutting out early from Inquiry Planning felt like skulking away into the shadows, shirking my duties, disappointing my fans.
But I sometimes think of my life as a pie chart, with my time split among all my various roles as teacher and student and sister and daughter and colleague and friend and occassional athlete and wanna-be writer (and everything else that I wish I could be, and certainly would if I just had More Time... )And sometimes I have to elbow the other pie pieces out of the way in order to gather up a little more real estate for the slice designated... well, Inner Life Liver (hah, liver!), I guess, or Caretake of Myself or Seeker of Peace or something silly like that...But yeah, whatever it's called, this piece of the pie is special. Maybe it should be marked only with a symbol like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince...
Anyway, Inner Resilience Workshop is for that slice of me that doesn't really want to be named.
It is so great because it is a place and a time when I can stop self-censoring, monitoring my speech and my actions, stop searching for the most Appropriate Response, stop measuring and doling out emotions and ideas in easily digestible bite-sized tidbits, reduced and refined for ease of consumption.
It is a space that exists for Me and My Needs, and I can talk a lot or a little. Or I can choose not to speak, or to take a few extra minutes to finish something and not worry about how I will make up for them later on. I can lie down or sit or stand or walk or not. Fast or slow, loud or soft, off or on...it's all good. I don't have to worry about whether I am running off schedule, or whether I am correctly following the Architecture of the Mini-lesson or veering away from the acceptable protocol for one-on-one vs Small Group communication.
There, I am not right or wrong. I am not pedagocially sound and I don't have to be. Nor must I be efficient or effective or organized or responsible or even sensical. I am allowed to feel what I feel, say what I want, be what I am in that moment. I am speaking for myself, as myself, to others who understand me and do not wish me to be other than I am.
And finally, there also do I learn of tantalizing job openings in Manhattan schools where conference notes and massive assessment binders do not darken the desks; where sutainable agriculture can be a unit of study; and where students are allowed to skip (not run) in the halls...
Eat free snack!
Moment of silence
Choose an image and explain why you were drawn to it today
Light a candle
Read something meaningful and talk about it
Meditate
Journal
Talk to someone for two minutes/listen to someone for two minutes
Write a letter to yourself
Blow out a candle
Eat free dinner!
Pack up leftover free dinner in take-out containers to become following day's free lunch!
It basically makes me feel like a better person and also want to be a better person. And it makes me appreciate the people in my life who already DO make me a better person, like Corky who let me spontaneously sleep over at her apartment last night to make sure my report card comments got done even though it was late and I was tired, and then dressed me and bought me breakfast for no reason at all... Or my roommates, I'll call them Harmony and Rose, who heroically cleaned the fridge today since it needed to be done, and who make me eat more kale.
A welcome transformation happens when I go to inner resilience... I feel capable of appreciating more and griping less. I feel confident, capable, balanced. I can focus on accomplishments and not aggravations. I become a different person. A better one? A mindful one?
At school, I spent the afternoon walking around with a knot in my stomach... too much time scrutinizing the data of deficiency, I suppose; a case of the Mondays coupled with anxiety over Math Topics Yet to be Covered...
And by the way, if you were wondering if testing is a disease and whether or not it fucks with your head, it is and it does. Because when the wonderful and benevolent and kind Ms. A, the school librarian, called to notify me that we had library (and as usual, it had slipped my mind) my response wasn't delight at this unexpected windfall of precious unstructured, joyful book-worship. My initial response was more expletive in nature, calculating ways I could make up for the math pages that would now be undone, and lamenting the empty boxes besmirhcing my spreadsheet for small group instruction.
And something about that just ain't right.
So leaving school wasn't easy while feeling the grains in the hourglass sliding by just a little too briskly as this week's Big To Do built up a head of steam. Cutting out early from Inquiry Planning felt like skulking away into the shadows, shirking my duties, disappointing my fans.
But I sometimes think of my life as a pie chart, with my time split among all my various roles as teacher and student and sister and daughter and colleague and friend and occassional athlete and wanna-be writer (and everything else that I wish I could be, and certainly would if I just had More Time... )And sometimes I have to elbow the other pie pieces out of the way in order to gather up a little more real estate for the slice designated... well, Inner Life Liver (hah, liver!), I guess, or Caretake of Myself or Seeker of Peace or something silly like that...But yeah, whatever it's called, this piece of the pie is special. Maybe it should be marked only with a symbol like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince...
Anyway, Inner Resilience Workshop is for that slice of me that doesn't really want to be named.
It is so great because it is a place and a time when I can stop self-censoring, monitoring my speech and my actions, stop searching for the most Appropriate Response, stop measuring and doling out emotions and ideas in easily digestible bite-sized tidbits, reduced and refined for ease of consumption.
It is a space that exists for Me and My Needs, and I can talk a lot or a little. Or I can choose not to speak, or to take a few extra minutes to finish something and not worry about how I will make up for them later on. I can lie down or sit or stand or walk or not. Fast or slow, loud or soft, off or on...it's all good. I don't have to worry about whether I am running off schedule, or whether I am correctly following the Architecture of the Mini-lesson or veering away from the acceptable protocol for one-on-one vs Small Group communication.
There, I am not right or wrong. I am not pedagocially sound and I don't have to be. Nor must I be efficient or effective or organized or responsible or even sensical. I am allowed to feel what I feel, say what I want, be what I am in that moment. I am speaking for myself, as myself, to others who understand me and do not wish me to be other than I am.
And finally, there also do I learn of tantalizing job openings in Manhattan schools where conference notes and massive assessment binders do not darken the desks; where sutainable agriculture can be a unit of study; and where students are allowed to skip (not run) in the halls...
Her Wiseness Martha Graham
I just got back from my second Inner Resilience workshop, I feel like I have so much to say...
Perhaps it is best to start with someone else's words?
A Message from Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes is more alive than the others.
I feel like we, as teachers, are forced to spend SO much time "determining how good it is" (especially in report card season!) and comparing one with the other and telling the kids what of theirs is valuable and what is not.
(Even despite all the emphasis on DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION! they all end up taking the same STANDARDIZED TEST in the end... sort of makes all that differentiation talk sound a bit disingenuous, no? Not to mention how kids who have spoken English for one year are graded on the same scales as those that have spoken nothing but English for their whole lives...)
I think the current trend in education views teaching as scientific, empirical, formulaic... say the right words in the right order at the right time, input the right data into the program, adjust the controls, and get the output that you damn well expect and paid good money for!
But I think anyone who's ever tried teaching (or even witnessed it) would agree it's not like that. The processes of teaching and learning are very irregular and amorphous, and no one (not even experts like Doug Lemov, who was featured in this weekend's thought-provoking New York Times magazine article) seems to be quite able to put their finger on what it is that makes a Good Teacher.
In truth, I feel it is just as much art as it is science, if not more so. And that is where we, as teachers, get to connect to Martha Graham and her cohort... that unattainable-ness, the drive, the never-endingness... the "divine dissatisfaction" and "blessed unrest that keeps us marching" applies, too, to my daily project, that Flow of the Day that I am incessantly crafting and re-shaping and perfecting and collapsing... Like art, teaching is never DONE, there is never a finish line (only checkpoints, but as soon as you reach one, new ones appear on the horizon). It is never perfected, nor, I suppose, should it be... like art, it is about striving, it is about imagining it always a new and better way, finding the right balance or seeing something there you never saw before, imagining it again anew and, like Martha, keeping on marching in hopes of becoming more alive than you have been before.
The other part that spoke to me was the part about not having to believe in yourself or your work, but rather, trusting the urges and motivations that brought you there.
There are, sadly but truly, so many occassions during the course of my workweek where I think to myself, wow, this is really stupid, or what a dumb way to waste everybody's time! But rather than dwelling on the more irksome details of the myriad of daily duties, I think an important surival skill is forgetting all the bullshit and letting it roll off your back, and instead remembering why you're there... the urge to try and DO something, dammit, and the motivating force of the kids, with their big eyes, looking up at you expectantly, trusting you with both the pretty and gritty daily details of their lives.
Perhaps it is best to start with someone else's words?
A Message from Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes is more alive than the others.
I feel like we, as teachers, are forced to spend SO much time "determining how good it is" (especially in report card season!) and comparing one with the other and telling the kids what of theirs is valuable and what is not.
(Even despite all the emphasis on DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION! they all end up taking the same STANDARDIZED TEST in the end... sort of makes all that differentiation talk sound a bit disingenuous, no? Not to mention how kids who have spoken English for one year are graded on the same scales as those that have spoken nothing but English for their whole lives...)
I think the current trend in education views teaching as scientific, empirical, formulaic... say the right words in the right order at the right time, input the right data into the program, adjust the controls, and get the output that you damn well expect and paid good money for!
But I think anyone who's ever tried teaching (or even witnessed it) would agree it's not like that. The processes of teaching and learning are very irregular and amorphous, and no one (not even experts like Doug Lemov, who was featured in this weekend's thought-provoking New York Times magazine article) seems to be quite able to put their finger on what it is that makes a Good Teacher.
In truth, I feel it is just as much art as it is science, if not more so. And that is where we, as teachers, get to connect to Martha Graham and her cohort... that unattainable-ness, the drive, the never-endingness... the "divine dissatisfaction" and "blessed unrest that keeps us marching" applies, too, to my daily project, that Flow of the Day that I am incessantly crafting and re-shaping and perfecting and collapsing... Like art, teaching is never DONE, there is never a finish line (only checkpoints, but as soon as you reach one, new ones appear on the horizon). It is never perfected, nor, I suppose, should it be... like art, it is about striving, it is about imagining it always a new and better way, finding the right balance or seeing something there you never saw before, imagining it again anew and, like Martha, keeping on marching in hopes of becoming more alive than you have been before.
The other part that spoke to me was the part about not having to believe in yourself or your work, but rather, trusting the urges and motivations that brought you there.
There are, sadly but truly, so many occassions during the course of my workweek where I think to myself, wow, this is really stupid, or what a dumb way to waste everybody's time! But rather than dwelling on the more irksome details of the myriad of daily duties, I think an important surival skill is forgetting all the bullshit and letting it roll off your back, and instead remembering why you're there... the urge to try and DO something, dammit, and the motivating force of the kids, with their big eyes, looking up at you expectantly, trusting you with both the pretty and gritty daily details of their lives.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A resounding victory
So, Corky and I pitched the Star Wars themed test prep pep rally idea to the literacy coach, who pitched it to MoLo, the AP in charge of upper grade curriculum, who pitched it to Principal Peeves himself. And the response was one that I never could've anticipated in like 8 million years.
Not only does he want it to be a school-wide assembly for all three testing grades, he himself had the following brainchild: At the end of the assembly, he will come out and say to the kids, "You want a challenge? I'll give you a challenge! If you do well on these tests, I'll throw you a carnival!"
I was pretty blown away by this revelation, and undoubtedly wasn't the only one. (My shock was especially pronounced in light of my overwhelmingly negative past experiences with PP, notably him verbally belittling me after my first stunningly unsuccessful year of teaching, and more recently, unleashing his petulant wrath on my homeless student and her mom.) He is recently a grandpa, however -- perhaps this is gradually softening his heart of stone.
So, this is pretty much a high point of my teaching career I would say. Of course now there's a lot of pressure on this ridiculous skit idea, and I hope it isn't a flop. But that doesn't even matter to me so much. More important to me is that it has sort of tilted my thinking towards believing that change is possible? And that maybe the mission of the Teaching Fellows is not so far-fetched or unattainable after all... their whole "thing" is trying to bring positive changes into public schools a little bit at a time. This is maybe the first time when I have distinctly felt that my being there will have made a noticeable difference in the lives of the kids, that I am maybe making a mark, (even in the somewhat unconventional form of a star-wars- based assembly program) like my being there will have mattered in the long run. At last! Evidence that I am more than an infantry woman in an unjust war way bigger than I can wrap my head around, or an underpaid assembly line worker in an education factory.
Anyway, speaking of far-fetched and unattainable, I have a huge stack of report cards that need some attention, a doubly brutal task to face in light of my slightly addled state of mind from too much, ahem, socializing yesterday.
Not only does he want it to be a school-wide assembly for all three testing grades, he himself had the following brainchild: At the end of the assembly, he will come out and say to the kids, "You want a challenge? I'll give you a challenge! If you do well on these tests, I'll throw you a carnival!"
I was pretty blown away by this revelation, and undoubtedly wasn't the only one. (My shock was especially pronounced in light of my overwhelmingly negative past experiences with PP, notably him verbally belittling me after my first stunningly unsuccessful year of teaching, and more recently, unleashing his petulant wrath on my homeless student and her mom.) He is recently a grandpa, however -- perhaps this is gradually softening his heart of stone.
So, this is pretty much a high point of my teaching career I would say. Of course now there's a lot of pressure on this ridiculous skit idea, and I hope it isn't a flop. But that doesn't even matter to me so much. More important to me is that it has sort of tilted my thinking towards believing that change is possible? And that maybe the mission of the Teaching Fellows is not so far-fetched or unattainable after all... their whole "thing" is trying to bring positive changes into public schools a little bit at a time. This is maybe the first time when I have distinctly felt that my being there will have made a noticeable difference in the lives of the kids, that I am maybe making a mark, (even in the somewhat unconventional form of a star-wars- based assembly program) like my being there will have mattered in the long run. At last! Evidence that I am more than an infantry woman in an unjust war way bigger than I can wrap my head around, or an underpaid assembly line worker in an education factory.
Anyway, speaking of far-fetched and unattainable, I have a huge stack of report cards that need some attention, a doubly brutal task to face in light of my slightly addled state of mind from too much, ahem, socializing yesterday.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
just like alka-seltzer
What I love the most about Corky is that she effervesces. She is constantly bubbling over with ideas and opinions and plots and projects and plans... There is always something she is so excited to tell you about or something new that she can't wait to try! Her eyes crinkle cutely into a frequent smile accompanied by a squeal of delight, and she most often speaks in exclamation points... I often tease her about having been a cheerleader, but truth be told, I love having someone around with that kind of energy and spunk. (I think her full-throttleness nicely off-sets my sorta low-impact aerboics-ness)
Not to mention her thoughtfulness... sometimes she buys me seltzer for no other reason than she knows I am obsessed with it. And one time after I couldn't get into my can of soup at lunch, guess who left a can opener on my desk the very next day...
I'm only half joking when I say that I am looking for a straight male version of her.
Anyway, platonic co-worker/BFF love affair aside, I was telling her about my Test Prep Yoda idea on the train ride home. And because of her amazing ability to transform ideas into action, my little dress-up day has transformed, at least in our heads, into a plan for a grade-wide skit/ pep rally performed by all the fifth grade teachers, with costumes and "Use the force" banner hung up in the cafeteria. Knowing Corky, I wouldn't be surprised if at this very minute she is hard at work composing a call-and- response cheer (or chant or beat or whatever you call it) involving rhyming words for "strategies" and "protractors" and "main idea" and "rulers."
(By the way, I just want to point out that this type of thing was more what I had in mind when I decided to take my stab at being a teacher... elaborate performances and banners and theme days for inspiration and jubilation, yes. Conference notes and assessment binders, nahsomuch. Opportunities to indulge in frivolity are dishearteningly few and far between under the current regime.)
Now, we'll of course have to see if the other fifth grade teachers and the administration are on board, but basically, we wanna get pumped. If we're gonna have to do test prep, we're gonna seize the day, grab it by the gonads, and do it RIGHT.
These were aptly uplifting thoughts to cap off the day. Corky and Rosy and I stayed 'til six confronting the uglier face of Test Prep -- triangulating all the test prep practice pages we could find in the multiple books and programs we are using to coincide with the list of math topics we had prioritized in order of direness of necessity to teach or re-teach. Quite a thrill.
My confidence kind of took a blow recently because we got some other math test scores back and I fear I am passing my weakness in math along to my students... the other day I heard A-- say he hates math and I was like NNNNNNOOOOoooooo say it ain't so! At the beginning of the year it seemed like they all loved math so much, before I ruined it for them...I was hoping I could bluff my way through it, but I think my secret dysfunctional relationship with math has oozed out into the open.
Anyway, I was heartened to see that I did successfully bluff my way into making the kids be psyched for upcoming Literary Essay unit... we were reading stories and essays and responding to them by freewriting, and when it was time to stop, J-- was like, really? Do we have to? I want to keep going! And I was like mwaaaahahaha, you WILL love literature, I say!
I guess the difference there is I'm not really bluffing so much. I really do believe in reading good literature and responding to it in writing... isn't that pretty much how the world of collective knowledge and learning has functioned for like, eons now? But if you ask me to get all passionate about multiplying decimals, or mean, median and mode, well... that's a harder stunt for me to pull off.
Which brings me to another winding tangent about whether it might be a good idea for teachers to start specializing a little earlier on. I would've been happy to teach the Journalism writing unit all day long, and throw my heart and soul into it and really make it rock. But as it was, and as it more often than not turns out to be, journalism ended up being half-assed (or maybe even quarter-assed) as did the concurrent math and reading units, because I was simpy being stretched in too many different directions.
But anyway, going into March I feel determined. Whatever I have to offer, I plan to give it all I got. And as a person I felt kind of like, empowered and competent today. Not just at doing my job - that still feels quite tenuous at times, but I felt like I was making progress in knowing how to live. (Took long enough, I'm only at the midway mark of my twenties...) So I mean, I worked hard till six, but then I let myself leave, knowing what remained undone could remain that way until tomorrow if it had to. And then, even though I got off the train feeling all "wah wah wah, I'm stressed out and hungry and tired" I made myself keep my promise to go to the gym today - I was like, dude, suck it up, eat a protein bar, clothes are already in the bag, just go -- and it was a positively transcendent workout. The best kind. I hereby disallow and dissavow excuses for not doing the things I know are best for me.
And right now, what's best for me is to get a good night's sleep.
Not to mention her thoughtfulness... sometimes she buys me seltzer for no other reason than she knows I am obsessed with it. And one time after I couldn't get into my can of soup at lunch, guess who left a can opener on my desk the very next day...
I'm only half joking when I say that I am looking for a straight male version of her.
Anyway, platonic co-worker/BFF love affair aside, I was telling her about my Test Prep Yoda idea on the train ride home. And because of her amazing ability to transform ideas into action, my little dress-up day has transformed, at least in our heads, into a plan for a grade-wide skit/ pep rally performed by all the fifth grade teachers, with costumes and "Use the force" banner hung up in the cafeteria. Knowing Corky, I wouldn't be surprised if at this very minute she is hard at work composing a call-and- response cheer (or chant or beat or whatever you call it) involving rhyming words for "strategies" and "protractors" and "main idea" and "rulers."
(By the way, I just want to point out that this type of thing was more what I had in mind when I decided to take my stab at being a teacher... elaborate performances and banners and theme days for inspiration and jubilation, yes. Conference notes and assessment binders, nahsomuch. Opportunities to indulge in frivolity are dishearteningly few and far between under the current regime.)
Now, we'll of course have to see if the other fifth grade teachers and the administration are on board, but basically, we wanna get pumped. If we're gonna have to do test prep, we're gonna seize the day, grab it by the gonads, and do it RIGHT.
These were aptly uplifting thoughts to cap off the day. Corky and Rosy and I stayed 'til six confronting the uglier face of Test Prep -- triangulating all the test prep practice pages we could find in the multiple books and programs we are using to coincide with the list of math topics we had prioritized in order of direness of necessity to teach or re-teach. Quite a thrill.
My confidence kind of took a blow recently because we got some other math test scores back and I fear I am passing my weakness in math along to my students... the other day I heard A-- say he hates math and I was like NNNNNNOOOOoooooo say it ain't so! At the beginning of the year it seemed like they all loved math so much, before I ruined it for them...I was hoping I could bluff my way through it, but I think my secret dysfunctional relationship with math has oozed out into the open.
Anyway, I was heartened to see that I did successfully bluff my way into making the kids be psyched for upcoming Literary Essay unit... we were reading stories and essays and responding to them by freewriting, and when it was time to stop, J-- was like, really? Do we have to? I want to keep going! And I was like mwaaaahahaha, you WILL love literature, I say!
I guess the difference there is I'm not really bluffing so much. I really do believe in reading good literature and responding to it in writing... isn't that pretty much how the world of collective knowledge and learning has functioned for like, eons now? But if you ask me to get all passionate about multiplying decimals, or mean, median and mode, well... that's a harder stunt for me to pull off.
Which brings me to another winding tangent about whether it might be a good idea for teachers to start specializing a little earlier on. I would've been happy to teach the Journalism writing unit all day long, and throw my heart and soul into it and really make it rock. But as it was, and as it more often than not turns out to be, journalism ended up being half-assed (or maybe even quarter-assed) as did the concurrent math and reading units, because I was simpy being stretched in too many different directions.
But anyway, going into March I feel determined. Whatever I have to offer, I plan to give it all I got. And as a person I felt kind of like, empowered and competent today. Not just at doing my job - that still feels quite tenuous at times, but I felt like I was making progress in knowing how to live. (Took long enough, I'm only at the midway mark of my twenties...) So I mean, I worked hard till six, but then I let myself leave, knowing what remained undone could remain that way until tomorrow if it had to. And then, even though I got off the train feeling all "wah wah wah, I'm stressed out and hungry and tired" I made myself keep my promise to go to the gym today - I was like, dude, suck it up, eat a protein bar, clothes are already in the bag, just go -- and it was a positively transcendent workout. The best kind. I hereby disallow and dissavow excuses for not doing the things I know are best for me.
And right now, what's best for me is to get a good night's sleep.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Teach to the test, Yoda will
One of the things I decided I might need for the next unit, the dreaded Test Prep Unit, is a Yoda mask... I am envisioning myself picking the kids up in the morning on the first day of test prep in a Yoda mask and like, a blanket tied around me monk-style with a string.
I will tell them to envision a bunch of guys in suits all sitting around a giant conference table somewhere in a deep dark lair, rubbing their hands together and cackling evilly under their breath, but all wearing Darth Vader masks. Their sole purpose in life is to dream up new and nefarious ways to make the ELA test difficult.
I will them them the truth about how I feel about tests, at least a partial truth... Do I think it's an awesome way to spend time in school? No. Do I think it's fair how many they have to take and what they are like and how much they count for and what we have to do to get ready for them? No. Do I think they are important? Yes.
I will remind them that if they want to go to law school and be a lawyer? They have to take a test. If they want to go to medical school and become a doctor, they have to take a test. If they want to go to graduate school and become an archeologist or an astronaut or a newspaper editor, the have to take a test. If they want to be a teacher, they have to take lots and lots of tests. If they want to go to business school to learn how to make bucketloads of money, you get the picture...
I will also tell them that part of the reason they need to do well on these tests is so that they can grow up to be the principals and presidents and chancellors and mayors and other People with Power, and tell everyone, kids don't need tests! Kids need music and dancing and playgrounds and art and gardens and projects and field trips and outdoor time... But if they don't learn to play by the rules, they'll never get a chance, one day, to MAKE the rules.
So, according to my test prep fantasy, they will all become my jedi knights of test-taking, and teach them strategies, Ms. D will, to OWN the statewide tests. I will teach them how to use the force to overcome the evil plot of the test-making Vaders. And when the tests are over, I am also envisioning some sort of elaborate light-saber-bestowing ceremony to mark their achievement.
I had plenty of time to daydream about my Test-prep pep talk during the day-long unit planning meeting, as we discussed and debated the scintillating minutiae of test scoring and administration -- for example, whether a student could get full point value in the editing section for simply deleting the period without replacing it with a comma, and whether it would be more strategic to teach them to do notetaking using bullets, boxes and bullets, or an organizer with a pnuemonic.
I bet I'll have lots more to say on the topic of tests and test-taking and test-making and test-prepping. But it's late and waiting for me tomorrow, my Jedis will be.
I will tell them to envision a bunch of guys in suits all sitting around a giant conference table somewhere in a deep dark lair, rubbing their hands together and cackling evilly under their breath, but all wearing Darth Vader masks. Their sole purpose in life is to dream up new and nefarious ways to make the ELA test difficult.
I will them them the truth about how I feel about tests, at least a partial truth... Do I think it's an awesome way to spend time in school? No. Do I think it's fair how many they have to take and what they are like and how much they count for and what we have to do to get ready for them? No. Do I think they are important? Yes.
I will remind them that if they want to go to law school and be a lawyer? They have to take a test. If they want to go to medical school and become a doctor, they have to take a test. If they want to go to graduate school and become an archeologist or an astronaut or a newspaper editor, the have to take a test. If they want to be a teacher, they have to take lots and lots of tests. If they want to go to business school to learn how to make bucketloads of money, you get the picture...
I will also tell them that part of the reason they need to do well on these tests is so that they can grow up to be the principals and presidents and chancellors and mayors and other People with Power, and tell everyone, kids don't need tests! Kids need music and dancing and playgrounds and art and gardens and projects and field trips and outdoor time... But if they don't learn to play by the rules, they'll never get a chance, one day, to MAKE the rules.
So, according to my test prep fantasy, they will all become my jedi knights of test-taking, and teach them strategies, Ms. D will, to OWN the statewide tests. I will teach them how to use the force to overcome the evil plot of the test-making Vaders. And when the tests are over, I am also envisioning some sort of elaborate light-saber-bestowing ceremony to mark their achievement.
I had plenty of time to daydream about my Test-prep pep talk during the day-long unit planning meeting, as we discussed and debated the scintillating minutiae of test scoring and administration -- for example, whether a student could get full point value in the editing section for simply deleting the period without replacing it with a comma, and whether it would be more strategic to teach them to do notetaking using bullets, boxes and bullets, or an organizer with a pnuemonic.
I bet I'll have lots more to say on the topic of tests and test-taking and test-making and test-prepping. But it's late and waiting for me tomorrow, my Jedis will be.
Monday, March 1, 2010
time travel
One of the things we do at the monthly Inner Resilience workshop (for preventing teacher burn-out) is write a letter to our near-future selves - an affirmation, a reminder, advice, a realization, a prayer -- whatever it is that's on your mind in that moment. (You are perhaps aware how much I love that particular kind of cheese?)
I got it in the mail today, on pale yellow paper written in pink ink that had been slightly smeared by traveling through the ice and rain and snow. I wrote it last month at the workshop, which was the first time I really let myself acknowledge how upset I was at the loss of N--, and I really appreciated having a little window into that oasis of self-reflection. I said to myself:
You love them, and they know.
In the face of cruelty, model compassion.
In the face of frenzy, model peace.
Love yourself first, that they may also
learn to love themselves.
Be still. Be quiet. Let there be room
in your life to feel. Let them have
quiet moments of peace as well.
Thanks, inwardly resilient self!
I got it in the mail today, on pale yellow paper written in pink ink that had been slightly smeared by traveling through the ice and rain and snow. I wrote it last month at the workshop, which was the first time I really let myself acknowledge how upset I was at the loss of N--, and I really appreciated having a little window into that oasis of self-reflection. I said to myself:
You love them, and they know.
In the face of cruelty, model compassion.
In the face of frenzy, model peace.
Love yourself first, that they may also
learn to love themselves.
Be still. Be quiet. Let there be room
in your life to feel. Let them have
quiet moments of peace as well.
Thanks, inwardly resilient self!
pushing back
"Tomorrow it's March" said the singer last night at Phoebe's Cafe, Corky's and my usual Sunday evening spot. "So, congratulations I guess."
I get what she meant. It seems like the worst is over... maybe winter will end one day after all! Today when I woke up it wasn't dark out, the birds were singing, and there was just a hint of that feeling when you realize the wind isn't quite as frigidly cold that lets you dare to think of spring. What was that invigorating feeling... hope?
Sure, I know March is test prep season, and the long blocked-in month of of zero vacation days and dirty snow. And sure, mounds of brown and gray snow-turds are still piled up everywhere on the sidewalks, and most likely will be for a while. But as this last calendar page flipped over, we rounded a corner, and now the end is closer than the beginning.
***
Sunday nights at Phoebe's with Corky is probably the third most important thing I've done for myself this year in terms of improving my overall quality of life as a teacher. The first was locating and latching onto some totally amazing colleagues whom I rely on for absolutely everything imaginable, and with whom I divide and conquer the Goliath amount of work that is to be done. The second is getting my hands on a Smartboard, and using it for baaasically everything I do. And the third is Phoebe's.
Knowing that I have a standing work-date every Sunday eliminates the need for The Guilt, and related procrastination and Guilt-snowball- inducing behaviors. Always with good music, good company, friendly atmosphere, delectable eats close at hand and, most importantly, Sunday night happy hour beer specials, doing weekend school-work ends up being something I look forward to rather than dread, and something I can rely on myself for. Without it, I would be lost.
I get what she meant. It seems like the worst is over... maybe winter will end one day after all! Today when I woke up it wasn't dark out, the birds were singing, and there was just a hint of that feeling when you realize the wind isn't quite as frigidly cold that lets you dare to think of spring. What was that invigorating feeling... hope?
Sure, I know March is test prep season, and the long blocked-in month of of zero vacation days and dirty snow. And sure, mounds of brown and gray snow-turds are still piled up everywhere on the sidewalks, and most likely will be for a while. But as this last calendar page flipped over, we rounded a corner, and now the end is closer than the beginning.
***
Sunday nights at Phoebe's with Corky is probably the third most important thing I've done for myself this year in terms of improving my overall quality of life as a teacher. The first was locating and latching onto some totally amazing colleagues whom I rely on for absolutely everything imaginable, and with whom I divide and conquer the Goliath amount of work that is to be done. The second is getting my hands on a Smartboard, and using it for baaasically everything I do. And the third is Phoebe's.
Knowing that I have a standing work-date every Sunday eliminates the need for The Guilt, and related procrastination and Guilt-snowball- inducing behaviors. Always with good music, good company, friendly atmosphere, delectable eats close at hand and, most importantly, Sunday night happy hour beer specials, doing weekend school-work ends up being something I look forward to rather than dread, and something I can rely on myself for. Without it, I would be lost.
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