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.)
Thursday, April 22, 2010
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.
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