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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But this year, when a chocolate easter bunny appeared on my desk under a post-it note that said I was the best teacher ever, I was able to accept the gesture more graciously. I didn’t have to suppress the deisre to try and disabuse A--- of her misguided notion about my teaching prowess.

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.

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!