Here are some notes that were waiting for me on my desk this morning after my day off regarding the MIA PBJ:
Dear Ms. D,
Today at lunch when we were eating M-- told. Ms. P that someone from the boys "ate" his peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. Ms. P then told the Dean, so then the Dean gave all of us boys new spots to sit at, for the rest of the year till someone confesses the truth.
Sincerely,
D
Dear Ms. D
M-- is trying to get all of us boys in trouble for like no reason. Well it wasn't our fault that he left his tray like that. Plus the whole table was on the lef side no went near his tray... Now at 12:35 he said "he forgot".
Sincerely,
A
Dear Ms. D
Today at lunch Michael "lost" his peanut butter and jelly sandwhich then he told Ms. P who told the dean who asked us who stole it noone confessed so now we are with kindergarden. My opinion is that he probally ate so then he made an excuse to get another one.
Dear Ms. D,
I do not know who ate the PBJ sandwich. I think M-- ate it himself and he wanted more so he made up that excuse. But I am sure that no boy in this class ate that sandwich but him.
Sincerly,
J
Dear Ms. D,
Noboy ate M-- sandwich, I think M-- was starving ad he wants another sandwich. M-- said that h didn't ate breakfast.
Dear Ms. D,
M-- is telling a big lie. M--, I saw him eat his lunch and get another one but his excuse was that "somebody ate my lunch." Think, why would someone be so despret for food, that they would eat his germs? I don't even know why I at the kindergarden tables, I wasn't even at the table, I was at the girls table.
Sincerrly,
Sh--
Dear Ms D.,
I know it was not me because I hate pb and j.
Dear Ms. D
At lunch I went to get lunch. Then I sat down. I opened my Peanut Butter & Jelly. I grabbed a peare then I sat next to A--. I started eating. I probably ate my other sandwich by accident. If nobody took it I probably ate it.
Sincerely:
M--
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
flash in the pan
When I got to school today I was totally caught off guard by the level of anxiety I felt over the test. I realized I'd made a mistake on the day of the practice test about some of the testing logistics (thanks in part to the extremely incoherently written memo we received about it), and before I even knew what was happening the situation had degenerated into panic-tears just before I had to go down and pick up the kids.
But if there's one thing I've learned it's that the show must go on, and if there's one piece of advice that has helped me do that, it's been "Fake it 'til you make it."
So I plastered on a big fake smile, mustered up some rah rah, sis boom bah, woo hoo game day show time spirit, and lied (convincingly, I thought) about my allergies acting up when they asked about my red eyes. (As they inevitably will - they never miss a thing, they are eager, almost, to discover cracks in the facade.)
And so the test came and went, in 45 minutes flat. Nothing more I could do. After tomorrow it's back to regularly scheduled programming. It's like an entire month of the year was just excised, surgically removed from the rest, like a cyst or a suspicious mole. You'd never know test prep even happened.
But if there's one thing I've learned it's that the show must go on, and if there's one piece of advice that has helped me do that, it's been "Fake it 'til you make it."
So I plastered on a big fake smile, mustered up some rah rah, sis boom bah, woo hoo game day show time spirit, and lied (convincingly, I thought) about my allergies acting up when they asked about my red eyes. (As they inevitably will - they never miss a thing, they are eager, almost, to discover cracks in the facade.)
And so the test came and went, in 45 minutes flat. Nothing more I could do. After tomorrow it's back to regularly scheduled programming. It's like an entire month of the year was just excised, surgically removed from the rest, like a cyst or a suspicious mole. You'd never know test prep even happened.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Roots
As my family reminisced this weekend, my aunt spoke of things she had experienced during war times and the devastation thereafter – hunger, rootlessness, and transience. Hiding, scavenging, wanting. Lacking.
She talked about diving into ditches to escape machine gun bullets, of collecting nettles to make soup to stave off starvation.
And she also spoke of her immigrant experience. So many of the things she talked about reminded me of bits and pieces of my kids’ current lives: moving to New York City to live a brand new life that resembled nothing she’d ever known. Sleeping on mattresses lining a relative’s living room floor. Sharing a small apartment with three families - one bathroom between fourteen people. Moving from place to place. Having parents who took the jobs as janitors and superintendents of buildings. Being frugal. Caring for siblings and cousins. Getting food stamps. Starting a new school where she didn’t know the language. Having family members that didn’t speak English, didn’t understand America.
And now look… we sat in her beautiful, luxurious living room, feasting for days to celebrate her seventieth birthday. There were three magnificent cakes, and not even the combined forces of all the extended family could finish them. She speaks three languages, has a PhD and has retired from being the dean of a major university. She has five gorgeous grandchildren that have every opportunity open to them and have never experienced deprivation, and hopefully never will.
So she embodies the American Dream. She worked hard, she overcame, she succeeded. Her life’s story makes me believe in what I am doing, makes me believe in the kids. Her life is proof that things can be hard but they can also get better. That hard work will get you somewhere. That the better life is possible, that it is worth striving for, that sacrifices made for kids’ futures do pay off. Her story is hope. Her story, and others like it, is why I am doing what I am doing.
She talked about diving into ditches to escape machine gun bullets, of collecting nettles to make soup to stave off starvation.
And she also spoke of her immigrant experience. So many of the things she talked about reminded me of bits and pieces of my kids’ current lives: moving to New York City to live a brand new life that resembled nothing she’d ever known. Sleeping on mattresses lining a relative’s living room floor. Sharing a small apartment with three families - one bathroom between fourteen people. Moving from place to place. Having parents who took the jobs as janitors and superintendents of buildings. Being frugal. Caring for siblings and cousins. Getting food stamps. Starting a new school where she didn’t know the language. Having family members that didn’t speak English, didn’t understand America.
And now look… we sat in her beautiful, luxurious living room, feasting for days to celebrate her seventieth birthday. There were three magnificent cakes, and not even the combined forces of all the extended family could finish them. She speaks three languages, has a PhD and has retired from being the dean of a major university. She has five gorgeous grandchildren that have every opportunity open to them and have never experienced deprivation, and hopefully never will.
So she embodies the American Dream. She worked hard, she overcame, she succeeded. Her life’s story makes me believe in what I am doing, makes me believe in the kids. Her life is proof that things can be hard but they can also get better. That hard work will get you somewhere. That the better life is possible, that it is worth striving for, that sacrifices made for kids’ futures do pay off. Her story is hope. Her story, and others like it, is why I am doing what I am doing.
testing tirade
I left school on Friday buzzing.
We tried to take it easy, squeezing in ONE more practice test, ONE last reminder to answer all the parts of the short answer question, to re-phrase the question in your mind, to look back at the text and rely on your eyeballs to find the answers and not your memory. But I didn’t expect anything I did that day to make or break their fate on the ELA. Mostly I wanted them to feel confident.
In the afternoon we looked back at all the Kaplan lessons we’d done and took note of all we’d learned; the types of questions that were trickiest and the strategies that have helped us the most. Then we made posters of advice and encouragement for the third and fourth graders who are also taking the ELA tomorrow. They were really cute. S---‘s was two crossed light sabers and said “Victory will be yours!” Sh— drew a (really good!) Jedi defending himself from Testing Vader. Others wrote strategies we’d learned or generalized words of encouragement. Then we snuck over to the third and fourth grade hallways to hang them up as a surprise.
During the last few minutes I took them out on the terrace -- this largely unused, empty patio that we have on the third floor -- to give them a pep talk. I reiterated how proud I am of them, how I was confident that everyone sitting in that circle was more than capable of getting a 3 or a 4, but that I would be proud of them even if they all got ones because of how hard they’d worked, how they had been supportive of each other and stayed positive and worked as a team.
Finally, on our way out for dismissal, we went down the stairs chanting the Test Prep Jedi cheer… “Test Prep Jedis Use the Force!” and “Oh Yes we Can, Yes, Yes we Can!” and “Testing Vader Goin’ Down!”
The rest is up to the kids and the powers that be in
I know kids need to be evaluated from time to time for logistical reasons. I know the government needs some sort of gauge to see how kids and schools are doing. But I think that multiple choice tests are too narrow to capture an accurate picture of what kids have truly learned, that they do not assess what we think they are assessing. I think that the stakes of “high-stakes” testing are inappropriate, and that the emphasis on these scores is detrimental to real learning.
Of course, it’s obvious why we do it this way. Multiple choice tests are the easier and less inexpensive way out. We do it because the outcome is clear-cut, because the end product is a number that can be compared to other kids’ numbers and compiled and graphed and averaged and compared other schools’ graphs and averages…
If the end product were, say, a portfolio, or a project or the completion of a task that more closely resembled tasks that could be encountered in the real world… well, imagine! Who would pay to grade all that!? Who would decide what is good enough? How could we create and cut funding based on that!? Whom would we penalize? How could we manage if not every kid did the SAME thing?!
We like to put kids in boxes because we know what to do with the boxes. They are easier to line up and stack up and count. Reducing each child to a single digit is convenient for us. A 1, 2, 3 or 4 is a lot easier to digest than a project, a painting, a poem, an essay.
Just imagine! If we looked at the actual shape of kids minds, rather than the leftover space in the boxes we build for them. What would happen if we looked for what is there, rather than what is not?
With standardized tests, we ask a yes or no question… “Did they learn enough?” without asking the logical follow-up, “enough for what?” To look at kids’ minds through this pass/fail, black/white, yes/no model limits our collective definition of human understanding and intelligence, and it seems to me that it may actually be limiting the breadth and depth of our understanding and intelligence and progress as an entire species…
I don’t think it’s an accident that no two individual minds are created alike, and I think it shows the short-sightedness of Education to expect that we will all use our minds the same way to achieve the same result in the same amount of time. That sameness is considered desirable is at odds with a fundamental reality of being a human: To be human is to be an individual – irreplaceable, inimitable, and unique. There are more than four categories of human.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Why I love my colleagues
Henrietta came to lunch wearing her glasses, which was unusual.
"New glasses?" I asked? "Nope," she explained...
One of her ESL students had to get glasses and was feeling kind of bad about it, so she promised him that the next day she would wear her glasses and they could be glassmates! (She had to explain to him why it was funny, but then he laughed.)
"New glasses?" I asked? "Nope," she explained...
One of her ESL students had to get glasses and was feeling kind of bad about it, so she promised him that the next day she would wear her glasses and they could be glassmates! (She had to explain to him why it was funny, but then he laughed.)
working
I've been dreaming again. The other night I dreamed of a plane crash. Just for kicks, I looked it up on some internet "dream analysis" sites.
Aisling Ireland (an ordained Spiritual Counselor!) said: If you dream of an airplane crash this may symbolize an overactive mind, one that needs a rest from thinking...An airplane crash may also symbolize spending a lot of time worrying and fretting about things over which you have no control...
Hmm. Test Prep ring any bells?
...lack of control may be another concept a plane crash dream symbolizes. Do you feel like you are in a situation where not only are you not in control but there is absolutely nothing you can do to rectify what is occuring? Do you feel that the person in charge of the situation is ill-equipped to handle it?
Why, yes! Yes I do!
Perhaps this is related to my last night's dream, of Principal Peevey being just absolutely awful to some of my kids and saying verbally abusive things to them... I guess he is my subconscious's go-to villain for educative matters.
It think all this dreaming is a result of test prep madness coming to a head.
Today my classroom underwent its ritual transformation into a "testing site." I had to cover up all printed materials that might aid in the examination on Monday. My "print-rich environment" must become a print-null environment, and all the Word Walls and artfully made charts and reminders must go into hiding for the Duration. The school quickly ran out of the brown paper we usually use, so we had to resort to other methods. I ended up using big black garbage bags for a lot of my walls, and as I teetered high above the classroom on a chair with stapler and packing tape in hand, I thought to myself, "It's kind of fitting, shrouding the classroom in black. Like a funeral for education." Appropriate color for Testing Vader's day of destiny as well. The use of garbage bags, too, seemed symbolic... you know, like, this is garbage?
The day of reckoning approacheth, and it's hard not to be nervous after thinking about and focusing on practically nothing else for all this time... When you go around acting like it's the most significant event in the kids' educational lives, you start to believe it, too. I know on Monday I'll have to model confidence and nonchalance, like, psssh? ELA? Puh-leeze. You guys could ace it backwards, upside-down and sideways with your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your backs! But even so -- even though I truly, truly believe every one of them can and will do extremely well -- I wouldn't be surprised if some knots of anxiety infiltrate my abdomen come April 27.
It will be a relief to put all this behind me, to go back to the luxury of Read Aloud and Independent Reading time and even writing memoirs, and ease back into the normal pace and rhythms. I think all the upper grade teachers are burnt to a crisp, myself included. I feel like I climbed into a big black Test Prep-shaped hole for the last month, like I've been burrowing into the side of a mountain. It's been such a long slog at such a frantic pace... We run around making copies and creating lessons and collecting "data" like so many headless chickens, and then we look up at the clock and the calendar and it's like, eleven-hour work day? How'd that happen? April already almost gone...? How? When?
This afternoon I saw the end of my rope coming up quick and it was all I could do not to snap in half. I think the kids hit their limit days ago. It was becoming one of those moments, the dizzying kind that happened a lot more often in the first couple of years (thankfully not as much anymore...) Disaster strikes, Plan A aborted, Plan B non-existent, stalling for time, fumbling around, the kids' decibal level hitting the upper limits of acceptable and creeping upward...
The smartboard wouldn't work properly - I think I may have desensitized it from overuse of something..., I couldn't find my clipboard with all my notes, the Venn Diagram lesson I'd spent my whole prep making had just absolutely up and disappeared from my hard drive, and when I picked up a dry erase marker to teach it the old-fashioned way, the ink was dry. I let out a long exasperated sigh and asked the kids, "Have you ever had that kind of day when everything you do and everything you touch and just doesn't work?"
And then one of them piped up, "We work!"
Which kind of made me laugh. I said, "You know what? You're right. We do work." If nothing else, at least we've got that. I took the opportunity to remind them that I love them and how proud I am of them for giving it their all.
And the truth is, we do work -- as a class, as a team, as a family. Even despite Sh--'s perpetual motion machine of a body, despite I--'s buffoonery (he of course couldn't resist pointing out to his friends how much the Venn Diagram I'd drawn resembled a scrotum), despite K--'s less than stellar work ethic and A--'s tendency to talk back, depsite the space cadets and the fisticuffs and the whining and wheedling, we work. Together. We're a unit.
It ain't always pretty. I don't spend a lot of time feeling like Robin Williams in Dead Poets' Society - (probably more time feeling like the dead poets) But I realized, hey! We're doin' it! I'm doin' it! It's like riding your bike without training wheels for the first time...I fell hard and I fell often those first couple years. But here I am. Just like they promised. Workin'.
Aisling Ireland (an ordained Spiritual Counselor!) said: If you dream of an airplane crash this may symbolize an overactive mind, one that needs a rest from thinking...An airplane crash may also symbolize spending a lot of time worrying and fretting about things over which you have no control...
Hmm. Test Prep ring any bells?
...lack of control may be another concept a plane crash dream symbolizes. Do you feel like you are in a situation where not only are you not in control but there is absolutely nothing you can do to rectify what is occuring? Do you feel that the person in charge of the situation is ill-equipped to handle it?
Why, yes! Yes I do!
Perhaps this is related to my last night's dream, of Principal Peevey being just absolutely awful to some of my kids and saying verbally abusive things to them... I guess he is my subconscious's go-to villain for educative matters.
It think all this dreaming is a result of test prep madness coming to a head.
Today my classroom underwent its ritual transformation into a "testing site." I had to cover up all printed materials that might aid in the examination on Monday. My "print-rich environment" must become a print-null environment, and all the Word Walls and artfully made charts and reminders must go into hiding for the Duration. The school quickly ran out of the brown paper we usually use, so we had to resort to other methods. I ended up using big black garbage bags for a lot of my walls, and as I teetered high above the classroom on a chair with stapler and packing tape in hand, I thought to myself, "It's kind of fitting, shrouding the classroom in black. Like a funeral for education." Appropriate color for Testing Vader's day of destiny as well. The use of garbage bags, too, seemed symbolic... you know, like, this is garbage?
The day of reckoning approacheth, and it's hard not to be nervous after thinking about and focusing on practically nothing else for all this time... When you go around acting like it's the most significant event in the kids' educational lives, you start to believe it, too. I know on Monday I'll have to model confidence and nonchalance, like, psssh? ELA? Puh-leeze. You guys could ace it backwards, upside-down and sideways with your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your backs! But even so -- even though I truly, truly believe every one of them can and will do extremely well -- I wouldn't be surprised if some knots of anxiety infiltrate my abdomen come April 27.
It will be a relief to put all this behind me, to go back to the luxury of Read Aloud and Independent Reading time and even writing memoirs, and ease back into the normal pace and rhythms. I think all the upper grade teachers are burnt to a crisp, myself included. I feel like I climbed into a big black Test Prep-shaped hole for the last month, like I've been burrowing into the side of a mountain. It's been such a long slog at such a frantic pace... We run around making copies and creating lessons and collecting "data" like so many headless chickens, and then we look up at the clock and the calendar and it's like, eleven-hour work day? How'd that happen? April already almost gone...? How? When?
This afternoon I saw the end of my rope coming up quick and it was all I could do not to snap in half. I think the kids hit their limit days ago. It was becoming one of those moments, the dizzying kind that happened a lot more often in the first couple of years (thankfully not as much anymore...) Disaster strikes, Plan A aborted, Plan B non-existent, stalling for time, fumbling around, the kids' decibal level hitting the upper limits of acceptable and creeping upward...
The smartboard wouldn't work properly - I think I may have desensitized it from overuse of something..., I couldn't find my clipboard with all my notes, the Venn Diagram lesson I'd spent my whole prep making had just absolutely up and disappeared from my hard drive, and when I picked up a dry erase marker to teach it the old-fashioned way, the ink was dry. I let out a long exasperated sigh and asked the kids, "Have you ever had that kind of day when everything you do and everything you touch and just doesn't work?"
And then one of them piped up, "We work!"
Which kind of made me laugh. I said, "You know what? You're right. We do work." If nothing else, at least we've got that. I took the opportunity to remind them that I love them and how proud I am of them for giving it their all.
And the truth is, we do work -- as a class, as a team, as a family. Even despite Sh--'s perpetual motion machine of a body, despite I--'s buffoonery (he of course couldn't resist pointing out to his friends how much the Venn Diagram I'd drawn resembled a scrotum), despite K--'s less than stellar work ethic and A--'s tendency to talk back, depsite the space cadets and the fisticuffs and the whining and wheedling, we work. Together. We're a unit.
It ain't always pretty. I don't spend a lot of time feeling like Robin Williams in Dead Poets' Society - (probably more time feeling like the dead poets) But I realized, hey! We're doin' it! I'm doin' it! It's like riding your bike without training wheels for the first time...I fell hard and I fell often those first couple years. But here I am. Just like they promised. Workin'.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
head bumps and bouncy balls
J-- caused T-- to hit his head at lunch today.
It turned out to be a case of misplaced elbows and energy more than any kind of misplaced malevolence.
But the initial report I received from the front row cafeteria spectators of course somehow morphed to include blood and a possible concussion.
And I felt a feeling that I imagine is what it probably feels like to be a parent sometimes. It felt like a sucker-punch to the gut. It immediately felt like my fault: I had let this happen, because I had failed to train them sufficiently on how to behave when I'm not around. I hadn't shown them the way. Somehow all my entreaties towards peace had been completely ineffectual.
The guilt was compounded because they're not really mine, I'm only borrowing them. They're on loan, and I promised I'd keep them safe, and my mission had failed. I wondered where I would find a Tibetan translator to explain the incident to his parents.
Thankfully, that didn't turn out to be necessary. It was an innocuous, run-of-the-mill childhood head bump. No blood, no head trauma. I reminded myself that not everything can be my fault; the children do have free will.
As we wound our way back up stairs in our daily 3rd-floor pilgrimage, I remembered feeling that intense parental sickness one other time, when I got a phone call in my classroom after school and the dean asked me come to the office right away - something about N---. Clearly something was wrong.
I remember waiting for the elevator, frozen. Waiting out the last few minutes before my life and career disintegrated. Thinking I should enjoy the last few minutes of uncertainty before the world collapsed around me or erupted like Mt. St. Helens. The elevator doors closed around me and I descended to catch up to my stomach, which had already dropped to the ground floor.
N-- had been hit by a car on his way home from school. He was fine. He's quite athletic and I think he must've bounced off the car like a rubber bouncy ball. The dean needed some help completing some of the paperwork and a copy of his walking permission slip, which I had.
Relief. World in tact. Thank goodness.
But he's so small. It could've been worse. All of them are so fragile.
When people ask me if I have any kids (usually it's the kids doing the asking) I say, yes, I have twenty nine. Which is plenty.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
treatise on post-industrial humanness
Sometimes you forget that they are humans.
You forget that you are a human. Sometimes, especially at times when test prep is all day every day, the kids are like multiple-choice machines, and you're the mechanic, meant to repair them when they are not performing, tweak them until you can rid them of all the glitches. When you see them, you see incomplete homework, you see sloppy handwriting, you see 3 wrong answers AGAIN!
You're not always thinking about whose parents had a fight last night; whose mother is on bed-rest after her operation; whose sister had an asthma attack; whose neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking all night; who had to babysit all afternoon for their little cousins.
You don't always remember that everyone in that classroom is a human, even if no one is really allowed to act like it.
Stanley Aronowitz says, in his introduction to Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire's case for restoring a lost universal human ethic to education:
"In this age of subsumption of the human spirit under the imperatives of alienated work without end, society has lost its tolerance for even kid pleasures [such as recess], and school authorities have, sometimes enthusiastically, subordinated themselves to business by imaging schools in the modalities of the factory or the large corporate office."
My school is a case study in this wierd industrialist mentality, the morphing of schools into information-acquisition assembly lines and corporate training camps. For some reason, schools haven't caught up with the way the world is these days.
If you think about the problems the world is facing today, the really big ones, the ones the kids will be inheriting in a decade or so, what comes to mind?
I get war, of course, political conflict, hunger and water shortages, depression and mental illness, health care crises, poverty and homelessness, climate change, widespread waste and destruction of natural resources, economic collapse, upsetting the global "food web," unfair labor practices, racism, sexism, all the other "isms," violent crimes...
You'd think we would, as a society, choose to teach the kids about economics and globalization, about the environment, about conflict resolution, health and emotional well-being, conservation, sustainability, political awareness and activism, tolerance, government and the legal system...
How come these things are not a priority? How comes these are afterthoughts, leftovers for when you're done measuring angles with a protractor or identifying factors of prime and composite numbers...
You'd think it might be disheartening to read about Paulo Freire's vision of education as I am a participant in the very form of "banking" education that he deplores. By his standards, I am an enabler of the status quo.
But it makes me feel good to know that the ideals I came into education with are still out there somewhere. It is encouraging to believe that I am a part of a group of people who can conceive of another way of doing things... "conditioned but not determined" by the circumstances in which I find myself. I am willing to embark on a long slow journey towards something better. I am willing to take a leap of faith towards Freire's optimism and hope, not "false optimism or vain hope." I am willing to take issue with the "immobilizing ideology of fatalism" that Freire names.
Like the story goes, I'm willing to throw the beached starfish back into the ocean, one by one, because it makes a difference for that starfish. I am willing to help move heavy stones, centimeter by centimeter, in hopes that we might build a pyramid of dreams. I am willing to dig holes because I believe there is something of value to be unearthed; that something out there is worth finding.
When I spend a whole entire month (10% of 5th grade) teaching "testing strategies" like identifying the six most commong types of questions on the ELA; when we memorize the brainless formula for answering "short response questions" - it makes me feel like a part of the problem. I feel wasted and wasteful, like throwing recycleables into the garbage can. I am a henchman and a faceless cog. I am a contributor to the de-humanizing of the next generation...
What happens is, you have your agenda, you have your data, you have your dinosaur of a deadline looming up large and close. And you have the threat, real or imagined, of dire consequences if you and your robots do not perform up to industry standards. You are worried about the efficiency of your educative assembly line. You are worried about having all the right parts, about putting them together in the right order. You hope your products will turn out uniformly and perform well, get a high rating in the Consumer Report.
But despite all these things, you are also a warrior. And, best of all, you are a human being.
Alice Walker said, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
And as it turns out, kids still love jump ropes and stickers bubbles and modeling clay and yo-yos, even ones who've been assessed within an inch of their lives. And as it turns out, resistance is possible if you're flexible with the definition...
I started Quote of the Day as part of my campaign to re-humanize my classroom, so we could discuss ideas like courage and optimism and life choices and making changes and self-acceptance and other concepts that are not explicitly stated in the New York State Learning Standards... Do I sacrifice a few minutes of test prep each day to do it? You bet. This is my medicine-dropper of independence in the Olympic-sized pool of mandated instruction. This my microscopic flipping-of-the-bird in the shadow of a giant. An iota of action in the mire.
Do I still think my kids are going to ROCK the state tests? You bet. It helps to have an external enemy -- it is not ME they are fighting against, it is Testing Vader, my pop-culture scapegoat and icon for all that is wrong with education. I tell the kids that the reason they must do well on these tests so that they can grow up and become the chancellors and mayors and governors and principals, and tell everyone kids don't NEED tests like these. That what they really need is music and dance and art and recess and gardens and parks and causes to believe in.
And are my kids still human? You bet.
I take it as a compliment that their eyes well up from time to time with tears because they did something that has disappointed me, and themselves, (even I--'s, who is now bigger than I am and has a mohawk and tries to act tough). It is actually a relief, an indicator of humanity. It tells me I have not lost them yet.
And I savor the moments of unfetterred openness and humanity that do sometimes arise (despite everything working against it), like when J-- modeled their shiny blue graduation cap and gown so they could see what it will look like, strutting around and hamming it up. The laughter in the room was comforting and reassuring, and also invigorating. It reminded me, "This, this is what I am fighting for."
You forget that you are a human. Sometimes, especially at times when test prep is all day every day, the kids are like multiple-choice machines, and you're the mechanic, meant to repair them when they are not performing, tweak them until you can rid them of all the glitches. When you see them, you see incomplete homework, you see sloppy handwriting, you see 3 wrong answers AGAIN!
You're not always thinking about whose parents had a fight last night; whose mother is on bed-rest after her operation; whose sister had an asthma attack; whose neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking all night; who had to babysit all afternoon for their little cousins.
You don't always remember that everyone in that classroom is a human, even if no one is really allowed to act like it.
Stanley Aronowitz says, in his introduction to Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire's case for restoring a lost universal human ethic to education:
"In this age of subsumption of the human spirit under the imperatives of alienated work without end, society has lost its tolerance for even kid pleasures [such as recess], and school authorities have, sometimes enthusiastically, subordinated themselves to business by imaging schools in the modalities of the factory or the large corporate office."
My school is a case study in this wierd industrialist mentality, the morphing of schools into information-acquisition assembly lines and corporate training camps. For some reason, schools haven't caught up with the way the world is these days.
If you think about the problems the world is facing today, the really big ones, the ones the kids will be inheriting in a decade or so, what comes to mind?
I get war, of course, political conflict, hunger and water shortages, depression and mental illness, health care crises, poverty and homelessness, climate change, widespread waste and destruction of natural resources, economic collapse, upsetting the global "food web," unfair labor practices, racism, sexism, all the other "isms," violent crimes...
You'd think we would, as a society, choose to teach the kids about economics and globalization, about the environment, about conflict resolution, health and emotional well-being, conservation, sustainability, political awareness and activism, tolerance, government and the legal system...
How come these things are not a priority? How comes these are afterthoughts, leftovers for when you're done measuring angles with a protractor or identifying factors of prime and composite numbers...
You'd think it might be disheartening to read about Paulo Freire's vision of education as I am a participant in the very form of "banking" education that he deplores. By his standards, I am an enabler of the status quo.
But it makes me feel good to know that the ideals I came into education with are still out there somewhere. It is encouraging to believe that I am a part of a group of people who can conceive of another way of doing things... "conditioned but not determined" by the circumstances in which I find myself. I am willing to embark on a long slow journey towards something better. I am willing to take a leap of faith towards Freire's optimism and hope, not "false optimism or vain hope." I am willing to take issue with the "immobilizing ideology of fatalism" that Freire names.
Like the story goes, I'm willing to throw the beached starfish back into the ocean, one by one, because it makes a difference for that starfish. I am willing to help move heavy stones, centimeter by centimeter, in hopes that we might build a pyramid of dreams. I am willing to dig holes because I believe there is something of value to be unearthed; that something out there is worth finding.
When I spend a whole entire month (10% of 5th grade) teaching "testing strategies" like identifying the six most commong types of questions on the ELA; when we memorize the brainless formula for answering "short response questions" - it makes me feel like a part of the problem. I feel wasted and wasteful, like throwing recycleables into the garbage can. I am a henchman and a faceless cog. I am a contributor to the de-humanizing of the next generation...
What happens is, you have your agenda, you have your data, you have your dinosaur of a deadline looming up large and close. And you have the threat, real or imagined, of dire consequences if you and your robots do not perform up to industry standards. You are worried about the efficiency of your educative assembly line. You are worried about having all the right parts, about putting them together in the right order. You hope your products will turn out uniformly and perform well, get a high rating in the Consumer Report.
But despite all these things, you are also a warrior. And, best of all, you are a human being.
Alice Walker said, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
And as it turns out, kids still love jump ropes and stickers bubbles and modeling clay and yo-yos, even ones who've been assessed within an inch of their lives. And as it turns out, resistance is possible if you're flexible with the definition...
I started Quote of the Day as part of my campaign to re-humanize my classroom, so we could discuss ideas like courage and optimism and life choices and making changes and self-acceptance and other concepts that are not explicitly stated in the New York State Learning Standards... Do I sacrifice a few minutes of test prep each day to do it? You bet. This is my medicine-dropper of independence in the Olympic-sized pool of mandated instruction. This my microscopic flipping-of-the-bird in the shadow of a giant. An iota of action in the mire.
Do I still think my kids are going to ROCK the state tests? You bet. It helps to have an external enemy -- it is not ME they are fighting against, it is Testing Vader, my pop-culture scapegoat and icon for all that is wrong with education. I tell the kids that the reason they must do well on these tests so that they can grow up and become the chancellors and mayors and governors and principals, and tell everyone kids don't NEED tests like these. That what they really need is music and dance and art and recess and gardens and parks and causes to believe in.
And are my kids still human? You bet.
I take it as a compliment that their eyes well up from time to time with tears because they did something that has disappointed me, and themselves, (even I--'s, who is now bigger than I am and has a mohawk and tries to act tough). It is actually a relief, an indicator of humanity. It tells me I have not lost them yet.
And I savor the moments of unfetterred openness and humanity that do sometimes arise (despite everything working against it), like when J-- modeled their shiny blue graduation cap and gown so they could see what it will look like, strutting around and hamming it up. The laughter in the room was comforting and reassuring, and also invigorating. It reminded me, "This, this is what I am fighting for."
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
who needs sleep?
All I want to do is sleep. (I can't because I still have class from 7:30 to 10!)
I am an ogre when I don't get enough sleep. (Though with time I've gotten better at hiding my inner ogre, from my kids and myself.)
I get dizzy and overwhelmed and lose track of time when I don't get enough sleep. Everything is much more impossible when you're tired. Stairs are taller. Emails are more cryptic and responses elusive. Train rides are longer and offices are farther away.
And I knew last night when I got home that the responsible thing would've been to take a quick shower, pack a lunch for tomorrow and climb into bed...
But after a long day of bustling and hustling and moving forward, of completing tasks and dealing with things, it doesn't feel quite fair, to have to go to sleep already. It's like, hey wait a sec -- I didn't yet get to do anything I wanted to do! It's a disappointment, knowing that all I accomplished was checking off boxes of things that "needed to get done" - no surprises, no intrigue, no spontaneous games or unexpected windfalls.
Remember when we were kids, and we'd look at each other and ask, "NOW what do you want to do? What should we play?.. I have an idea for what we could do!"
I guess that's an annoyingly universal part of adulthood... It's predictable and boring at all the wrong times, and catches you off guard just as soon as you're not ready for it... Being a grown up means staying up late, but still having to set the alarm... Being technically allowed to go anywhere you want, but you only end up going to the same three or four places with any regularity.
I guess that's the price of being allowed to eat candy before lunch, or having a credit card you can use to buy stuff, or staying up late or being able to sleep over at friend's houses whenever you want or go places by yourself. All the sought-after prizes of being a grown up came tied up with strings - two-year contracts, fine print, layaway plans. Alarm clocks. All that open space and time got cluttered up with Metrocards, pin numbers, tax forms...
Things you never needed when someone else was there to escort you around and tell you when you had to go to sleep.
I am an ogre when I don't get enough sleep. (Though with time I've gotten better at hiding my inner ogre, from my kids and myself.)
I get dizzy and overwhelmed and lose track of time when I don't get enough sleep. Everything is much more impossible when you're tired. Stairs are taller. Emails are more cryptic and responses elusive. Train rides are longer and offices are farther away.
And I knew last night when I got home that the responsible thing would've been to take a quick shower, pack a lunch for tomorrow and climb into bed...
But after a long day of bustling and hustling and moving forward, of completing tasks and dealing with things, it doesn't feel quite fair, to have to go to sleep already. It's like, hey wait a sec -- I didn't yet get to do anything I wanted to do! It's a disappointment, knowing that all I accomplished was checking off boxes of things that "needed to get done" - no surprises, no intrigue, no spontaneous games or unexpected windfalls.
Remember when we were kids, and we'd look at each other and ask, "NOW what do you want to do? What should we play?.. I have an idea for what we could do!"
I guess that's an annoyingly universal part of adulthood... It's predictable and boring at all the wrong times, and catches you off guard just as soon as you're not ready for it... Being a grown up means staying up late, but still having to set the alarm... Being technically allowed to go anywhere you want, but you only end up going to the same three or four places with any regularity.
I guess that's the price of being allowed to eat candy before lunch, or having a credit card you can use to buy stuff, or staying up late or being able to sleep over at friend's houses whenever you want or go places by yourself. All the sought-after prizes of being a grown up came tied up with strings - two-year contracts, fine print, layaway plans. Alarm clocks. All that open space and time got cluttered up with Metrocards, pin numbers, tax forms...
Things you never needed when someone else was there to escort you around and tell you when you had to go to sleep.
Monday, April 12, 2010
armadilloes and old tuna
Another thing I am grateful for, in the bitter-sweet column of lessons learned so far, is the psychological armadillo-armor I've grown (been forced to grow) as a result of the trial-by-fire first years of teaching. I used to cry a lot when I'd get frustrated. I don't anymore. I used to get the wind knocked out of me emotionally when things wouldn't go my way… Shit still happens, and parts of my consciousness are still aware of how awful things can be... but it doesn't penetrate me the way it used to. I just kind of accept it (reject it?) and move on.
This feeling has transferred into my personal life as well... those days when nothing goes the way it's supposed to... maybe you miss the train, maybe you get splashed by a passing car, or someone is upset with you, or someone you care about moves away, or someone is unfairly denied a job or an apartment, some dude holla’s at you crudely, a stranger is confrontational or makes an unkind remark... It registers that something is annoying or frustrating or sad. But it goes into this separate compartment in my brain, it's cordoned off from the rest of me. And I’m grateful, because you really can’t function with no air in your lungs.
But sometimes I feel hard, and this worries me. Corky’s sister-in-law was shocked and concerned about the lunch monitor’s indiscriminate use of a bull-horn at lunch when she volunteered at her daughter’s school. And I remember feeling that way too about our cafeteria, in the beginning… I remember thinking “What kind of way is this to have a meal? What is this environment teaching our kids? A windowless cafeteria, 500 kids more or less screaming to be heard, smelly and hot, being shouted at by the dean through a megaphone? Forty-five minutes of this and no recess? It’s no wonder the kids are maniacs when they come upstairs from lunch!” I used to be SO pissed and SO outraged about no recess, here in the heart of the childhood obesity epidemic…and I still am, I’m pissed!
But what choices do I have? What can I DO? The kids need to eat lunch, by legal, moral and practical mandate, and this is the space we have for them to do it in. Party line on lack of recess is that that we don’t have the space or funds for supervision of 1700 kids at large…
And the reality is I really need some time away from them so I can breathe and renew my commitment to patience and perspective… so the megaphone and the noise and crowded madness of the cafeteria get cordoned off into that compartment, of things I don’t think about unless I have a reason to.
The ability to sort of lobotomize myself, to stick my head in the sand, is necessary I think, but also has unintended side-effects. I think this is what lets other things I’m supposed to deal with but would rather not – like my hideously overdue Americorps paperwork, for one --- sit and decay when I should be tackling them head on. It’s like negative transfer… Stuff maybe gets shunted into the “You can’t bother me if I don’t think about you!” compartment (I guess people call that avoidance?) and then maybe sits there a little too long. Like when the tuna sandwich you were saving gets pushed to the back of the fridge, and then when you finally open the Tupperware two and a half months later it’s like Holy Mother of Cod! From whence comes this horrible beast and what shall I do with it now!? How quickly and with what minimum of amount contact can I dispense with this furry monstrosity?
Doing my Americorps paperwork today was like facing the frightening fuzz inside the Tupperware… it was stinky and ugly and really would’ve been much more palatable if I’d dealt with it within a normal time frame.
But deal with it I did. I pinched my nose and closed my eyes and faxed it away as quickly as I could.
I don’t know if this extreme procrastination problem is maybe some sort of psychological disorder? Or just a strange side effect of my clever coping mechanism…
But anyway, that was my day today. Cleaned out some of the recumbent recesses of my mental refrigerator, and I’ll admit it was mildly unpleasant. But it’s a lot better now.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Steps
Yeah, in this line of work there's a lot you can feel embittered about. But the sweetness is that, as a teacher, you are uniquely positioned to take some those cranky, downtrodden, victimized urges and turn them around into positive, empowered, force-for-change urges, no matter if they are incremental, even imperceptible to the naked eye.
On Friday I went to Happy Hour (well, many hours actually) with my MBC's (Most Beloved Colleagues) and we all got REALLY REALLY fired up and impassioned about ESL, and the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. The bitter part is having so much to get fired up about - ineffective teachers, ineffective ways of providing ESL instruction, ineffective use of teachers with ESL licenses...* But, incremental step in the right direction: pin-pointing exactly what is not working and why. Thinking of a better way, even if you don't yet have the means to put it into practice. Caring enough about what you do to talk about it after hours.
We also recruited the new(ish) but totally awesome and incredibly hardworking school librarian to join in our hour(s) of happiness... I knew she was one of us when I saw how impassioned she was about Sh-- reading The Wizard of Earthsea, which she had ordered for the school library specifically because it is one of the few fantasy series in children's literature that has a non-white protaganist. She was delighted to hear that Sh-- is a sneak-reader (as she had also been in school)... The other day I caught him reading a book about about penguins when he was supposed to be doing ELA test prep... and who could blame him?
But little changes, as small as ordering a particular book for the library, are the ones that I think will matter in the end, when you begin to tally up the usefulness of the kids' education. Exposing kids to literature that reflects their realities and their life experiences, reading about real-life and made-up heroes who grew up as they are now, who face some of the same challenges and obstacles as they are facing and will face, knowing and believing that they can become the heroes of their own lives... this is how people manage to accomplish things, to achieve. The first step is being able to imagine your own success. Kids need heroes to model themselves after, and they need heroes in which they can recognize parts of themselves.
School librarians are heroes, too.
***
I also had an opportunity to up-end a bit of bitterness. This particular bitterness was knowing that, as a result of the great AIS restructuring of aught-nine, (Academic Intervention Services) J-- and D-- now miss their only periods of science and art in the week. Instead they are pulled out for periods of extra reading instruction with Ms. Snatch...
Ms. Snatch, by the way, is quite a character. She's a loud-voiced, aging reading teacher, who is always out of breath from climbing the stairs, and whom I also suspect of being a narcoleptic. Though I know she doesn't mean any harm, I've seen her, innocently but repeatedly unravelling my hard work at encouraging gender neutrality by saying things like "The blue turtle is the boy turtle and the pink is the girl turtle! I can't give you this pink one, can I, because it's the girl turtle!"
I also can't help feeling biased against her because she kind of bad-mouthed S-- in front of my whole class, saying that he is hyperactive and his behavior was "bordering on obnox--" and stopped herself. But the kids aren't stupid, they knew what she meant, and that type of comment coming from a teacher sure doesn't help the peerless and inimitable S-- (who is, in fact, both hyperactive and occasionally obnoxious, but doesn't mean to be) to be accepted by his peers.
Anyway, needless to say, J-- and D-- were less than thrilled to be missing out on science and art from now until the end of the year to spend time with Ms. Snatch. And, though I sincerely wish I could, I don't have any power to change any of this...
But, newly inspired to "be the change" by the happy outcome of the Pep Rally, I had a little idea. And I did something I consider to be small but significant. I went to the dollar store and got colored pencils and modeling clay and little paints and paint brushes and put them in a manila envelope for each. And I took them aside one day and told them they had extra homework, which was to use what was inside these envelopes. I told them, "Never being able to go to science and art sends you the message that they're not important. But I think they are important, just as much as reading and writing."
Will having a pack of colored pencils turn them into Picassos or future Fine Arts majors? Highly unlikely. I think both of them are more into soccer and baseball than they are into drawing and painting.
But who knows what they one day could or couldn't be... I surely wouldn't presume to say. And I surely wouldn't want it on my shoulders to have had a hand in stifling a budding artist's creative urges. I think the parameters of education these days are limiting enough as it is, and I think it's pretty effed up to limit even more their potential by taking away art and science. As an educator, I'd rather not have that on my shoulders.
Baby steps, baby steps. Spoonful by spoonful, if we keep at it, we might one day be able to dig ourselves out of this deep dark cave we're in. Book by book, pencil by pencil, we strive to walk toward the light, rather than away from it. Maybe I'll never get to see the end of the tunnel. But there's always the hope that the kids will.
*If you're interested in the nitty-gritty of this issue, my license is ESL, so theoretically my entire class could be made up of ELLs - English Language Learners -, who are mandated to have a certain number of hours ESL instruction per week... Technically, all of my hours of instruction are considered ESL. But, the way it panned out this year, I have eight ELL's in my class, and twenty non-ELLs - which I believe technically is against the law since I don't have a general ed license... Meanwhile, my good friend Henrietta, an ESL push-in/pull-out teacher, is overburdened with sixty ELL's, and she runs around the school trying to provide them with their requisite hours of ESL instruction per week, which even given her superhuman efforts, is physically impossible. On paper, it looks as if we're "in compliance" with the state mandates, but in reality, only if she can be in two places at once.
On Friday I went to Happy Hour (well, many hours actually) with my MBC's (Most Beloved Colleagues) and we all got REALLY REALLY fired up and impassioned about ESL, and the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. The bitter part is having so much to get fired up about - ineffective teachers, ineffective ways of providing ESL instruction, ineffective use of teachers with ESL licenses...* But, incremental step in the right direction: pin-pointing exactly what is not working and why. Thinking of a better way, even if you don't yet have the means to put it into practice. Caring enough about what you do to talk about it after hours.
We also recruited the new(ish) but totally awesome and incredibly hardworking school librarian to join in our hour(s) of happiness... I knew she was one of us when I saw how impassioned she was about Sh-- reading The Wizard of Earthsea, which she had ordered for the school library specifically because it is one of the few fantasy series in children's literature that has a non-white protaganist. She was delighted to hear that Sh-- is a sneak-reader (as she had also been in school)... The other day I caught him reading a book about about penguins when he was supposed to be doing ELA test prep... and who could blame him?
But little changes, as small as ordering a particular book for the library, are the ones that I think will matter in the end, when you begin to tally up the usefulness of the kids' education. Exposing kids to literature that reflects their realities and their life experiences, reading about real-life and made-up heroes who grew up as they are now, who face some of the same challenges and obstacles as they are facing and will face, knowing and believing that they can become the heroes of their own lives... this is how people manage to accomplish things, to achieve. The first step is being able to imagine your own success. Kids need heroes to model themselves after, and they need heroes in which they can recognize parts of themselves.
School librarians are heroes, too.
***
I also had an opportunity to up-end a bit of bitterness. This particular bitterness was knowing that, as a result of the great AIS restructuring of aught-nine, (Academic Intervention Services) J-- and D-- now miss their only periods of science and art in the week. Instead they are pulled out for periods of extra reading instruction with Ms. Snatch...
Ms. Snatch, by the way, is quite a character. She's a loud-voiced, aging reading teacher, who is always out of breath from climbing the stairs, and whom I also suspect of being a narcoleptic. Though I know she doesn't mean any harm, I've seen her, innocently but repeatedly unravelling my hard work at encouraging gender neutrality by saying things like "The blue turtle is the boy turtle and the pink is the girl turtle! I can't give you this pink one, can I, because it's the girl turtle!"
I also can't help feeling biased against her because she kind of bad-mouthed S-- in front of my whole class, saying that he is hyperactive and his behavior was "bordering on obnox--" and stopped herself. But the kids aren't stupid, they knew what she meant, and that type of comment coming from a teacher sure doesn't help the peerless and inimitable S-- (who is, in fact, both hyperactive and occasionally obnoxious, but doesn't mean to be) to be accepted by his peers.
Anyway, needless to say, J-- and D-- were less than thrilled to be missing out on science and art from now until the end of the year to spend time with Ms. Snatch. And, though I sincerely wish I could, I don't have any power to change any of this...
But, newly inspired to "be the change" by the happy outcome of the Pep Rally, I had a little idea. And I did something I consider to be small but significant. I went to the dollar store and got colored pencils and modeling clay and little paints and paint brushes and put them in a manila envelope for each. And I took them aside one day and told them they had extra homework, which was to use what was inside these envelopes. I told them, "Never being able to go to science and art sends you the message that they're not important. But I think they are important, just as much as reading and writing."
Will having a pack of colored pencils turn them into Picassos or future Fine Arts majors? Highly unlikely. I think both of them are more into soccer and baseball than they are into drawing and painting.
But who knows what they one day could or couldn't be... I surely wouldn't presume to say. And I surely wouldn't want it on my shoulders to have had a hand in stifling a budding artist's creative urges. I think the parameters of education these days are limiting enough as it is, and I think it's pretty effed up to limit even more their potential by taking away art and science. As an educator, I'd rather not have that on my shoulders.
Baby steps, baby steps. Spoonful by spoonful, if we keep at it, we might one day be able to dig ourselves out of this deep dark cave we're in. Book by book, pencil by pencil, we strive to walk toward the light, rather than away from it. Maybe I'll never get to see the end of the tunnel. But there's always the hope that the kids will.
*If you're interested in the nitty-gritty of this issue, my license is ESL, so theoretically my entire class could be made up of ELLs - English Language Learners -, who are mandated to have a certain number of hours ESL instruction per week... Technically, all of my hours of instruction are considered ESL. But, the way it panned out this year, I have eight ELL's in my class, and twenty non-ELLs - which I believe technically is against the law since I don't have a general ed license... Meanwhile, my good friend Henrietta, an ESL push-in/pull-out teacher, is overburdened with sixty ELL's, and she runs around the school trying to provide them with their requisite hours of ESL instruction per week, which even given her superhuman efforts, is physically impossible. On paper, it looks as if we're "in compliance" with the state mandates, but in reality, only if she can be in two places at once.
On mattering
I've been ruminating a bit more about these trade-offs, the sacrificing of one thing for another - the paradoxical, oppositional conundrums of teaching.
Over spring break I had a really great, validating discussion with my sister about the nature of my work. She reminded me how lucky am, at the tender age of 25, to be doing something that more or less matters in the day-to-day. If I don't show up to work, it matters. People miss me. When I funnel my energy and brain power into endless hours of crafting my Smartboard lessons; when I strategize with Corky and Rosie about the best way to get a particular point across, I get to see the results, the fruits of my labor. The kids end up knowing things they didn't know before... When I go to work, I spend the day with eager livers of life, who are excited about all the possibilities the world can offer them.
Compared to so many of my contemporaries, this is a relatively useful and fulfilling way of spending my working life. So many people of my generation are no less capable, hard-working motivated, or ideal-driven than me and my colleagues. And yet, due to the cruel reality of being a new admit to the working world, their time and talents are funneled into filling up the entry-level chairs of cubicle-world: filing insurance claims; "researching" fruitless fundraising possibilities for poorly managed non-profits; administratively assisting various law firms and financial institutions; entering data for contractors and corporations. Gaining that frustratingly intangible "experience" you need to do something more like you wanted to do when you were in the fifth grade.
I know I am tremendously lucky to have been afforded the opportunity to do a job that doesn't entail me staring into a computer and checking Facebook half the day - that is its own brand of 21st century torture.
But the upshot of all this mattering, all this meaningfulness at my job?
It's exhausting. Like, deflated balloon, boneless puddle, brain-mush exhausting. In teaching, there is no day when you get to "phone it in," there is no way to work from home, there is no way to just lay low and check your email or surf the web for a minute or two when you get tired. There is no way to take a coffee break or eat a snack or even pee unless it falls into your previously arranged schedule.
Some weekend days, like yesterday, my body just rebels, and my mind, too, I guess. Even after a short work week, I slept and slept and couldn't stop sleeping. I was hard-pressed to leave my bed, much less my apartment. This happens to me from time to time, and when it does, I feel frustratingly, frighteningly powerless. My body just shuts down and refuses to be anything but horizontal, and my brain feels fuzzy and dull. I'm not sure if I can blame it all on my work - some of it could just be my own psychic idiosyncracy - but I know it's related. When you spend most days on all eight cylinders, every now and then the engine just gives out.
All told, I suppose I would million times rather be an exhausted lifeless school teacher on weekends than an energized but underutilized office worker. But I guess this is all to say, what I do matters... But mattering ain't easy, and meaningfulness has its price.
Over spring break I had a really great, validating discussion with my sister about the nature of my work. She reminded me how lucky am, at the tender age of 25, to be doing something that more or less matters in the day-to-day. If I don't show up to work, it matters. People miss me. When I funnel my energy and brain power into endless hours of crafting my Smartboard lessons; when I strategize with Corky and Rosie about the best way to get a particular point across, I get to see the results, the fruits of my labor. The kids end up knowing things they didn't know before... When I go to work, I spend the day with eager livers of life, who are excited about all the possibilities the world can offer them.
Compared to so many of my contemporaries, this is a relatively useful and fulfilling way of spending my working life. So many people of my generation are no less capable, hard-working motivated, or ideal-driven than me and my colleagues. And yet, due to the cruel reality of being a new admit to the working world, their time and talents are funneled into filling up the entry-level chairs of cubicle-world: filing insurance claims; "researching" fruitless fundraising possibilities for poorly managed non-profits; administratively assisting various law firms and financial institutions; entering data for contractors and corporations. Gaining that frustratingly intangible "experience" you need to do something more like you wanted to do when you were in the fifth grade.
I know I am tremendously lucky to have been afforded the opportunity to do a job that doesn't entail me staring into a computer and checking Facebook half the day - that is its own brand of 21st century torture.
But the upshot of all this mattering, all this meaningfulness at my job?
It's exhausting. Like, deflated balloon, boneless puddle, brain-mush exhausting. In teaching, there is no day when you get to "phone it in," there is no way to work from home, there is no way to just lay low and check your email or surf the web for a minute or two when you get tired. There is no way to take a coffee break or eat a snack or even pee unless it falls into your previously arranged schedule.
Some weekend days, like yesterday, my body just rebels, and my mind, too, I guess. Even after a short work week, I slept and slept and couldn't stop sleeping. I was hard-pressed to leave my bed, much less my apartment. This happens to me from time to time, and when it does, I feel frustratingly, frighteningly powerless. My body just shuts down and refuses to be anything but horizontal, and my brain feels fuzzy and dull. I'm not sure if I can blame it all on my work - some of it could just be my own psychic idiosyncracy - but I know it's related. When you spend most days on all eight cylinders, every now and then the engine just gives out.
All told, I suppose I would million times rather be an exhausted lifeless school teacher on weekends than an energized but underutilized office worker. But I guess this is all to say, what I do matters... But mattering ain't easy, and meaningfulness has its price.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Salty, bitter and sweet
Teaching is a series of trade-offs. Everything sweet has a bitter underbelly or a salty side.
Yesterday we sacrificed a whole precious day of test prep - the ELA test looms up in a near distance of less than a month - to go on a field trip to see a theater performance of The Diary of Anne Frank, a picture book version of which which we had read as a read aloud. It came at the price of a couple possible percentage points on the test, and the also at the price of $10 a ticket. It was hard to ask the families to spare that money, especially after all the expensive graduation-related stuff I've had to ask them for this year. Bitter: knowing what giving up $10 means to some of these families. But I think it is a testament to the families' dedication to their kids that they all came up with it one way or another - I think it shows how much they care about giving their kids the best education possible... sweet.
And to my mind, it was absolutely worth it. I grew up in a family where theater and music were priceless and where trips (field and otherwise) were considered just as essential a part of your education as learning to read and write. So when D-- said on the school bus that the only other show she had ever seen was with her last year's teacher, part of me felt sad that she doesn't get to have what I had, but part of me also felt proud and privileged to introduce it to her. A tiny bit bitter, but also sweet.
Another sweet: my AP Candy came up to me at dismissal asking if I needed a new rug and what else did I need for my classroom because she's about to place an order... I said, "Wow, what a great question to hear!"
To her credit, she has always been very good about getting her teachers what they need. She has often come around to my classroom with an armful of books or some other resource she'd gotten her hands on, asking if I could use them. I've always felt like she has my back, which is so crucial -- when shit went down with N-- and the other boys, I never felt blamed for it in any way - I blamed myself for it more than anyone else blamed me. I never felt that it was taken as a reflection of my ability as a teacher. And thinking back to my first year debacle of a post-observation conference with the Big Cheese -the one where He made me feel about 2 inches tall, and ridiculous for even having ever tried to become a teacher since I was so preposterously ill-suited and incompetent and undeserving of the job - Candy sat on my side of his big imposing desk, and fielded the blows with me.
The consensus in my academy of the school is that we're lucky to have her as our assistant principal - for this reason, and because she's kind of hands-off, and just lets us do our thing.
The salty side of this is that although I've always felt supported by Candy, there is danger in falling out of her good graces. I've heard from others like Nessa last year who made the mistake of crossing her in some way - well, Nessa's back was no longer had, and she no longer works at our school. I've heard it expressed that when Candy comes in to do a formal observation, the outcome is already decided when she walks in.
And although she has only ever been sweet with me, I do have another rather bitter complaint about her: I think she and Principal Peeves are a bit too quick to blame the kids and their families. I've heard her say things about kids and families, especially when it comes to up-close-and-personal topic like bedbugs and lice, like "they're dirty..." When Jafa and I were mentioning how much we like tamales, she asked incredulously if we buy them from the ladies with shopping carts who stand outside the subway station. When we said yes, she said something along the lines of "Ew, I can't believe you do that." And when Jafa told her that he and his partner are fostering a baby and that he might be taking some paternity leave, she made a comment that was totally supportive of him, but kind of made him cringe when she used the opportunity to derisively call into question the parenting capabilities specifically of Mexican families...
So yeah. I suppose every person has their underbelly. And how does that quote go? Let the person who has not sinned cast the first stone... I'm not trying to say I've never thought an unkind thought about a child or a parent, or that every comment I've made has been morally unassailable. Thinking mean thoughts and feeling forced into saying unkind things from time to time is almost a hazard of the job...but I try not to. I will say that it's disconcerting to work under a supervisor whose worldview appears to be so different from mine.
All in all, I think she's a good person, that she really does appreciate the kids and want to help them. And I really appreciate being left alone and allowed to do my job in peace.
But I also I know that when I started, what I really needed was NOT to be left alone - I needed someone to come in there and help me, save me, show me what to do and how to do it. Instead I bumbled painfully through, and cost some first graders, who really could've used a strong teacher, an important year in their educational lives... I felt like no one even knew I was in there most of the time. When Peevie finally remembered that he'd hired me permanently and not as a long-term sub and walked in to do his observation in May or June, I was the only one who wasn't surprised how much I was struggling.
I think the mark of healthy management is that the leaders of the school are really in touch and in tune with what goes on there day to day. I think most of our school leaders (not all) look at what goes on at PS OO through admistrative binoculars... And I'm not saying I would like to be visited more often by the administration, because I most emphatically do not! But I am kind of saying that I wish the culture of my school was one where seeing your administrators walk in the room wasn't so surprising, and wouldn't stop your heart and make your stomach drop down to your ankles. And one where you knew for sure that everybody's heart was in the same place as yours.
Yesterday we sacrificed a whole precious day of test prep - the ELA test looms up in a near distance of less than a month - to go on a field trip to see a theater performance of The Diary of Anne Frank, a picture book version of which which we had read as a read aloud. It came at the price of a couple possible percentage points on the test, and the also at the price of $10 a ticket. It was hard to ask the families to spare that money, especially after all the expensive graduation-related stuff I've had to ask them for this year. Bitter: knowing what giving up $10 means to some of these families. But I think it is a testament to the families' dedication to their kids that they all came up with it one way or another - I think it shows how much they care about giving their kids the best education possible... sweet.
And to my mind, it was absolutely worth it. I grew up in a family where theater and music were priceless and where trips (field and otherwise) were considered just as essential a part of your education as learning to read and write. So when D-- said on the school bus that the only other show she had ever seen was with her last year's teacher, part of me felt sad that she doesn't get to have what I had, but part of me also felt proud and privileged to introduce it to her. A tiny bit bitter, but also sweet.
Another sweet: my AP Candy came up to me at dismissal asking if I needed a new rug and what else did I need for my classroom because she's about to place an order... I said, "Wow, what a great question to hear!"
To her credit, she has always been very good about getting her teachers what they need. She has often come around to my classroom with an armful of books or some other resource she'd gotten her hands on, asking if I could use them. I've always felt like she has my back, which is so crucial -- when shit went down with N-- and the other boys, I never felt blamed for it in any way - I blamed myself for it more than anyone else blamed me. I never felt that it was taken as a reflection of my ability as a teacher. And thinking back to my first year debacle of a post-observation conference with the Big Cheese -the one where He made me feel about 2 inches tall, and ridiculous for even having ever tried to become a teacher since I was so preposterously ill-suited and incompetent and undeserving of the job - Candy sat on my side of his big imposing desk, and fielded the blows with me.
The consensus in my academy of the school is that we're lucky to have her as our assistant principal - for this reason, and because she's kind of hands-off, and just lets us do our thing.
The salty side of this is that although I've always felt supported by Candy, there is danger in falling out of her good graces. I've heard from others like Nessa last year who made the mistake of crossing her in some way - well, Nessa's back was no longer had, and she no longer works at our school. I've heard it expressed that when Candy comes in to do a formal observation, the outcome is already decided when she walks in.
And although she has only ever been sweet with me, I do have another rather bitter complaint about her: I think she and Principal Peeves are a bit too quick to blame the kids and their families. I've heard her say things about kids and families, especially when it comes to up-close-and-personal topic like bedbugs and lice, like "they're dirty..." When Jafa and I were mentioning how much we like tamales, she asked incredulously if we buy them from the ladies with shopping carts who stand outside the subway station. When we said yes, she said something along the lines of "Ew, I can't believe you do that." And when Jafa told her that he and his partner are fostering a baby and that he might be taking some paternity leave, she made a comment that was totally supportive of him, but kind of made him cringe when she used the opportunity to derisively call into question the parenting capabilities specifically of Mexican families...
So yeah. I suppose every person has their underbelly. And how does that quote go? Let the person who has not sinned cast the first stone... I'm not trying to say I've never thought an unkind thought about a child or a parent, or that every comment I've made has been morally unassailable. Thinking mean thoughts and feeling forced into saying unkind things from time to time is almost a hazard of the job...but I try not to. I will say that it's disconcerting to work under a supervisor whose worldview appears to be so different from mine.
All in all, I think she's a good person, that she really does appreciate the kids and want to help them. And I really appreciate being left alone and allowed to do my job in peace.
But I also I know that when I started, what I really needed was NOT to be left alone - I needed someone to come in there and help me, save me, show me what to do and how to do it. Instead I bumbled painfully through, and cost some first graders, who really could've used a strong teacher, an important year in their educational lives... I felt like no one even knew I was in there most of the time. When Peevie finally remembered that he'd hired me permanently and not as a long-term sub and walked in to do his observation in May or June, I was the only one who wasn't surprised how much I was struggling.
I think the mark of healthy management is that the leaders of the school are really in touch and in tune with what goes on there day to day. I think most of our school leaders (not all) look at what goes on at PS OO through admistrative binoculars... And I'm not saying I would like to be visited more often by the administration, because I most emphatically do not! But I am kind of saying that I wish the culture of my school was one where seeing your administrators walk in the room wasn't so surprising, and wouldn't stop your heart and make your stomach drop down to your ankles. And one where you knew for sure that everybody's heart was in the same place as yours.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Same as it ever was
I guess each time you return someplace it feels slightly less foreign, less jarring to the system to switch from one life to another.
But there was still a moment this morning, (in the exact same spot on the stairwell as the last 'first day back') of who..? wha...? where am I? who the hell are you people?
I'd been hoping to come back all refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to tackle it all again with newfound enthusiasm and gusto. But in reality, I think I'm just picking up where I left off.
The customary sights and sounds were, in a way, comforting in their familiarity: the klickety clack of trendy shoes (not mine) on the shiny, freshly buffed checkered hallways; the morning moose-call of "ELVADRRRR!" as we collect the third floor teachers to go down and pick up the kids; the shrill ring of the phone just as you take your breath to make the final culminating point in your carefully structured mini-lesson; the sighs of defeat in the ongoing search for the working copy machine; and the rhythmic, frustratingly slow chunka-chunk of double-sided copies (when cooperating machinery is finally located.)...
Mouse poo in the same offending corners of closets, only more of it than when I left. The same Himalayas of disheveled papers layered topographically on and around my desk. Same goofy kids with their goofy grins and snide remarks and clumsy sprawling limbs .
Despite my best intentions, I ended the day feeling claustrophobic and grouchy (seven straight hours of test prep will do that to a person.) So I had to call in the best antidote I know - Corky, whom I really missed over break. I lured her to our favorite neighborhood cafe after school under pretense of doing more lesson planning, but really we ended up hashing out our latest life revelations and ponderings and plannings over yuca fries and Colombian beer. And I realized that, as invaluable as she is to me as a coworker, she's become even more important to me as a friend.
Of all the stuff at school that is the same as it ever was, I am most grateful for my friends.
But there was still a moment this morning, (in the exact same spot on the stairwell as the last 'first day back') of who..? wha...? where am I? who the hell are you people?
I'd been hoping to come back all refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to tackle it all again with newfound enthusiasm and gusto. But in reality, I think I'm just picking up where I left off.
The customary sights and sounds were, in a way, comforting in their familiarity: the klickety clack of trendy shoes (not mine) on the shiny, freshly buffed checkered hallways; the morning moose-call of "ELVADRRRR!" as we collect the third floor teachers to go down and pick up the kids; the shrill ring of the phone just as you take your breath to make the final culminating point in your carefully structured mini-lesson; the sighs of defeat in the ongoing search for the working copy machine; and the rhythmic, frustratingly slow chunka-chunk of double-sided copies (when cooperating machinery is finally located.)...
Mouse poo in the same offending corners of closets, only more of it than when I left. The same Himalayas of disheveled papers layered topographically on and around my desk. Same goofy kids with their goofy grins and snide remarks and clumsy sprawling limbs .
Despite my best intentions, I ended the day feeling claustrophobic and grouchy (seven straight hours of test prep will do that to a person.) So I had to call in the best antidote I know - Corky, whom I really missed over break. I lured her to our favorite neighborhood cafe after school under pretense of doing more lesson planning, but really we ended up hashing out our latest life revelations and ponderings and plannings over yuca fries and Colombian beer. And I realized that, as invaluable as she is to me as a coworker, she's become even more important to me as a friend.
Of all the stuff at school that is the same as it ever was, I am most grateful for my friends.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Like clockwork,
the school dreams arrive.
Their little round faces are there when I close my eyes, letting me know it's time to go back to work. (No matter how long the vacation, it never seems quite long enough.)
Last night dream Pretzel Club fell to pieces under a dream administrator's gaze, erupting into barely supervised dream chaos.
The night before, dream N-- passed by my class, crying.
Their little round faces are there when I close my eyes, letting me know it's time to go back to work. (No matter how long the vacation, it never seems quite long enough.)
Last night dream Pretzel Club fell to pieces under a dream administrator's gaze, erupting into barely supervised dream chaos.
The night before, dream N-- passed by my class, crying.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Trying again
A letter came while I was away, from my former self, care of Inner Resilience:
Dear Self, ( I wrote, some 27 days ago...)
Have you sat with stillness today?
Have you let yourself feel silence?
Have you let yourself realize what you have accomplished?
Some days, like today, you are strong and brave and powerful, like a volcano erupting or a match igniting. Some days you can take on the world. Some days, like today, you are enough.
***
Again, the letter from myself has come at an apt time, because I've been thinking about my past and future selves.
A couple years ago, (after the particularly long and dark winter of my first year of teaching, when I really needed something to look forward to) I started a yearly ritual of life goal-setting in March or April, from a book called Best Year Yet. It’s the perfect time of year to do it, because looking ahead comes naturally, and you can believe it when you tell yourself the worst is behind you now.
April really is the start of a new year, not January. There’s nothing new about January or February. Snow gets old, cold gets old – the calendar might be new but winter keeps getting older by the day. Things are dead and dark, inside and out. March is the end.
And after the end, comes the beginning, again: the yearly miracle. No less miraculous for having rescued us the same way every year.
Spring is relief (we shall live to see another day) and promise (a full round golden summer on its way).
My favorite poet says of spring,
even though
it was hard times sometimes it’s nice
to know I can depend on the crazy
yellow of that forsythia to remind me
of how much I can forget in a year.
I've been thinking about everything that's changed in a year, how many things I've gained. Around this time last year things were looking pretty different. I was still suffering through first grade, drilling letter-sounds and sight words, resolving petty disputes, losing my patience and wearing myself thin day after day. I'd started to know Jafa and Corky and Shanaynay and Jade through last year's Pretzel Club, but we were still just familiar strangers and I had no idea they'd become pillars, centerpieces in my life.
I didn't know I'd do a triathlon and start to like running a little bit. I didn't know I'd move to Brooklyn to find a livelier neighborhood and escape my sad, empty Queens apartment. I didn't even know I was empty and sad at the time (though in retrospect, it should've been obvious.)
I didn't know how quickly or how fully my mom would recover from her surgery, or my dad from his. I didn't know if their business would get booming once again. I didn't know I was going to teach fifth grade, and that it would feel completely different. I didn't know how much my life would change in a year, though now if feels as if it has always been this way.
It's nice to know that I finally feel like I am enough sometimes...
I remember so clearly having lunch that first year with my officially assigned mentor, and breaking down in spite of myself. I remember trying to talk through pressurized tears, saying that even if I could do everything "they" wanted me to do, even if it weren't so impossible, it still wouldn't be enough. I felt, back then, that the kids had so much working against them -- I was a broken band-aid on a severed arm, a pathetic defense against unfathomably larger and stronger forces. Though I wanted to, I didn't know how to help them. I felt I was making matters worse, that my inexperience and ineffectiveness were robbing them of the education they truly needed and should've been entitled to.
So it's like this gorgeous Japanese magnolia the neighbors were kind enough to plant outside my window long ago. I've seen it in wind and rain, I've seen the branches bare and weighted with sleet and snow and covered in sleeves of ice. I noticed the buds when they first came out and now I see the blossoms fully, richly, thickly blooming. Today, the tree is exploding with possibilities and potential. Today it is brave and strong and powerful like a volcano or a match igniting. Does it know what it has accomplished? But that strength is always in there, just sometimes you don't see it... it's the same tree whether its branches are green or pink or white or bare. The same potential exists in the dead of winter as does in the height of spring... it's just a matter of sticking around long enough to see it.
So yeah. I'm the tree, the tree is me and all that.
It's not that the kids have changed, or their challenges, or the dark forces that are working against them. I know all that's still there. But I've changed in that I see things differently now, or maybe it's that I feel things differently now. I don't let immutable, immovable things like that hurt me in the same way. I don't care about the dark forces; dark forces be damned. Dark forces can go jump in a lake. I only care about me, and my kids, and my classroom.
So, take-home message: keep going. You cannot know what lies ahead. All will be well - the proof is there, under the surface. You will reap the rewards of what you sow. You are strong and brave. Today, you are enough.
Keep going.
It’s like my favorite poet says: there is something in this time of year that wants me to try again.
Easter promises
Easter is such a great holiday.
As the trees fly by the railroad tracks, en route from one home to another, my mind feels saturated with sunshine. It is imprinted with the rich vibrant yellow of daffodils, forsythia, and a family gathered around the Easter table spreading a warmth even the newly liberated sun doesn’t match.
It makes sense that Easter is a holiday largely about kids – Kids are nothing but balls of unrealized potential. Everything about them says Grow! Look to the future! I can hardly wait to see what happens next!
I got to be the Easter bunny for my niece and nephew this year. After I’d snuck out barefoot into the cold morning dew to hide the eggs I was struck by a feeling… There was something both exciting and comforting about looking into that great wide green backyard right before it all began – before all the cooing and clucking aunties and grannies and friends arrived, before the hubbub of stirring gravy and warming things in the oven and pouring drinks and finding chairs for tired legs…
I looked through the kitchen window out into the yard and saw happy little bubbles of pink and pastel yellow and purple and blue – Easter eggs in hiding, waiting to be discovered. Some of them were really very close by (Eddie’s not even three, after all), peeking out from behind blades of grass and perched on low-hanging branches. Little secrets, right there out in the open if you took the time to look for them. And I knew the precious little surprises they held inside, and the “treasure” under the pine tree, as my nephew later called his Easter basket.
It was heartwarming to see little EdBear stoop down to pick up the eggs and add them lovingly to his collection. He’d call out “a egg!” when he spotted one, reaching out to receive the things that had been put there to be found by him, and put them in his basket.
It seemed like a living analogy for life… Easter eggs: bright spots in the lawn of life, gifts soon to be realized. A trail of little treasures leading up to a great big basket of goodies! All you have to do is look, and you will find them, because they are there… Follow the trail and it will lead you to unexpected joy.
And sure, maybe the goodies in life are too big or amorphous to fit inside a plastic Easter egg. But that doesn’t mean you can’t hunt for them all the same. I have a feeling there are things waiting for me out there that are even better than cashews and pastel rainbow m & m’s, and even crayons and coloring books.
So that’s going to be my mindset going forward – life as an Easter egg hunt. Looking for treasures scattered all around ahead of me, just waiting to be revealed.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Hold fast
A wise, wise woman once told me to hang on tightly to the rewards of teaching when you find them, because they can seem awfully meager compared to the raging cyclone of work-related BS you’re forced to put up with.
Teaching, like life, is filled with peaks and valleys. In my experience, the valleys are low – devastatingly, heart-breakingly, soul-crushingly low. And while there are, occasionally, career highs to match - those breathless, tingling, heart-singing moments of transcendence - they are quite rare (this is, of course, why they stand out).
What come around more often are these other, lower-altitude, more run-of-the mill peaks… The thing about them is that they often seem, well… not quite high enough. Maybe not worth the effort. Nice, but not exceptional. Pleasant but imperfect.
So the trick is savoring the highs, any and all of them. Holding on to them reallyreallyreally tight, enjoying them as long and as hard as you can. Imbuing them with meaning and significance that may or may not exist in reality. If that’s all you get, you want to make it count.
In the past, I’ve felt a weird, conflicted sense of guilt when people would commend me for my teaching or compliment my work as a teacher. I didn't feel proud of my work. My internal response was thanks, but what do you know?
Almost every day after lunch my first two years, I would get love notes from my students in careful but crooked first-grader scrawl, filled with hearts and flowers and professing their eternal and undying love and proclaiming that I was the best teacher ever to have walked the earth… and while I certainly appreciated their displays of affection, it sort of felt like rubbing salt in a wound, like receiving a medal for some feat that I hadn’t really accomplished, or like getting an A on a quiz I’d cheated on. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t the best teacher ever; I sincerely hoped I wouldn't turn out to be the best teacher they’d ever have, and I also knew that I wasn’t even the best teacher that I was capable of being.
First graders will break your heart with their unconditional love, and their easily bestowed but un-researched superlatives. Six-year olds don’t have much basis for comparison, after all. I felt I was undeserving of their love and devotion.
I thought, if she feels that way about me, then I should bask in it - whether or not I deserve it, whether or not it is empirically true. If she felt compelled to express her love and appreciation in this way, then it’s only polite to feel appreciated and loved…
This is in stark contrast to my reception of the guilt-inducing rainbows and flowers and crayon-portraits bestowed on me by my first graders. How come? I guess part of me feels that fifth graders are slightly more discriminating, that they know better, and they’d only say it if they really meant it.
But I think the real difference is that for the first time, I feel like I am deserving of this type of post-it note praise... Not that I actually AM the “best teacher ever” – that title probably belongs to someone more along the lines of Jesus or Socrates or Ron Clark or the Dalai Lama… but if I look for the kernel of truth in A’s kind hyperbole, what I see is recognition that I am striving to be the best Ms. D ever…and for that, I feel nothing but gratitude.
So I choose to interpret my chocolate Easter bunny as a "peak," a reward, a hard-earned prize that I am trying hard to deserve. I choose to accept this gift in acknowledgment that I'm not, nor will I ever be, the best teacher, but that aiming for our ideals helps us strive to be our own best, whatever that means.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Confidence
Confidence is based on evidence of past success.
I believe I read this in a running magazine, and I believe it is the truth. It's true for me today as my muscles are complaining about my re-entry into running after several over-booked weeks away from it. But knowing that I've started before with less makes me feel like it's not impossible to start over again. I know enough to start small, not to push myself so hard I hate it, and that the most important thing is just getting out there, and letting momentum do the rest.
I feel this way about teaching, too. More confident, that is. Besides basking in the cuddliness of my niece-y and nephew, I'm also trying to use this time to, if I may use a disgustingly over-used buzzword, "reflect."
More on that later, because it sounds like my niece-y needs some cuddling!
I believe I read this in a running magazine, and I believe it is the truth. It's true for me today as my muscles are complaining about my re-entry into running after several over-booked weeks away from it. But knowing that I've started before with less makes me feel like it's not impossible to start over again. I know enough to start small, not to push myself so hard I hate it, and that the most important thing is just getting out there, and letting momentum do the rest.
I feel this way about teaching, too. More confident, that is. Besides basking in the cuddliness of my niece-y and nephew, I'm also trying to use this time to, if I may use a disgustingly over-used buzzword, "reflect."
More on that later, because it sounds like my niece-y needs some cuddling!
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