Why Teach?

Lately there’s been a heightened online interest among educators to reclaim our profession at a time when many feel beaten down and maligned. I’ve seen posts and videos responding to the prompt, Why We Teach, and each time I’ve seen this query rear its snake-like head, I’ve ignored it. Today, while my students were taking their state sponsored standardized tests, I decided I would give it some thought.

I teach because it’s one of the best ways to be positively engaged in the world. This lumpy, flawed world is stuffed with disappointment and heartbreak. There are times when I cannot absorb another story detailing exploitation, degradation, and humiliation enacted on people by other people. Times that I’m ashamed to say that I turn away from learning about groups clawing their way through another day of subsistence on this planet of haves and have-nots.  Hopelessness and sorrow threaten to overwhelm me and I don’t see how anything will ever get better. Until I realize that I am not completely powerless, because in my classroom, I have the ability to inform the future, one blessed, maddening kiddo at a time.

There’s a lot of power in the belief that your work matters and that your actions make a difference. Even if this belief is false, illogical, or it reveals some sort of twisted hubris on my part, I take my work very seriously and I strive to be the kind of concerned adult I needed when I was a child. I want children to understand that they have the power to create their own lives and that I care about them. And during those moments when I don’t have the energy to care as much as they might need me to,  they always pull me out of myself and help me find the strength to be the teacher they deserve.

I teach because it’s the kind of work where you can never be at the top of your game. There will  always be areas in need of improvement and revision, and with my robust inferiority complex this “never good enough” feeling is perversely motivating.  Luckily, every September there’s a new start, a clean slate filled only with a ridiculous, almost giddy hopefulness. Really, is there anything more beautiful than a stack of freshly sharpened pencils and a new school year about to begin?  It’s the career equivalent of annual child birth, complete with nightly assessing, reflecting and lesson planning taking the place of feeding and diapering.

I teach because there are some pretty cool perks to this job. If  I want to be any sort of decent teacher, I have to read lots of children’s literature, and children’s literature is pretty amazing  these days. And how many professions can boast lunch breaks which include the option of using playground equipment? I find a session on the swing set can help me reframe nearly anything. During summer break, I am afforded the luxury of time on professional development projects and courses that stretch my ideas about learning and teaching.

Because I teach, a tiny piece of me is infused in every student who passes through my class, just as every one of them has left their unique and indelible mark on my life. Little bits of our time together will stretch out into the universe farther than the mind’s eye can ever see. I can never know what this might mean. But I can imagine, hope and dream.

Why do you teach?

Our Marathon

I remember watching Johnny Kelly cross the finish line each year. I remember Bill Rogers winning the race – four or five times at least. I remember the amazing Uta Pippig winning nearly as many times as Bill Rogers. I even remember Rosie Ruiz. And who could forget watching the Hoyts each year? Those fixtures of the Marathon symbolize all that is good and right with the world. In our suburban house the small black and white tv in the kitchen was fixed on Channel 5 each Patriot’s Day, with Natalie Jacobson showing just the right amount of awe and respect for the runners as she gave us the updates and then the final results of the race. We learned about their training routines and their lives in faraway countries. And when victory was won, we saw them awkwardly crowned with olive leaf garlands. No one in my family was a serious runner, but it didn’t matter, this was our Marathon, the race was a big deal and the runners were worthy of our attention.

When I left the house for a series of rentals in Dorchester, Cambridge, Brookline, Brighton, and Somerville, I was able to watch the marathon in person and usually I did. One year it flowed past my apartment on Chestnut Hill Ave. and I stood outside for hours until my voice was raw and my hands were numb from clapping. Another year I volunteered to work at the race, past the finish line, and I saw just what 26.2 miles asked of the human body. It was terrifying and awe inspiring as most spiritual things are.

If you have ever watched the Boston Marathon in person, have ever cheered for those of us able to run this race, have ever felt that part of the human spirit that says yes to life so loudly and so brightly up at such close range then you know what someone tried to take away from us yesterday. If you haven’t, I’m not a strong enough writer to convey its beauty to you, but you should know that it truly is beautiful. It will move you to tears – repeatedly – to see tens of thousands of your own doing such a thing. You might believe that anything is possible when you are standing there, handing runners plastic cups filled with water and the eye contact you share with these strangers makes a searing impression on your psyche. These runners will make you believe anything is possible. They will make you believe in the beauty of this imperfect, messy, ridiculous world. They will inspire you to believe that you can achieve the impossible because they have just achieved it. Right before your eyes. And it feels almost  holy to witness.

Beautiful Boy

His mother was still in jail when I was his fourth grade teacher. He was living with his grandmother and his father, who had trouble staying employed. He was one of the brightest, funniest, saddest kids I had ever met. A wise old soul trapped in a large ten year old’s body and dysfunctional life circumstances. We lurched and stumbled through the year together. I made all the wrong moves with him because I cared perhaps a bit too much and had very little control over anything in his life. I sent things home via certified mail in the hopes that someone there might read them. Eventually his father did come in for a meeting. The school psychologist, who had agreed to work with him regularly, and I shared both our concerns and our hopes for him – to graduate high school if not college. He was so bright, and he thought critically about things that most fourth graders didn’t even know mattered. That year, I carried him around with me like a keychain long after the school day had ended, fretted over what he was doing each weekend, who was spending time with him.

Two years later, his mother was out of jail and I was his social studies and English teacher. In the middle school setting I saw him withdraw from an incredibly competitive cohort of classmates who were long on academic strength and short on empathy. When we read Freak the Mighty in class I hoped it would build more empathy for some of the “sharks” in the grade, and I prayed it didn’t hit too close to home for him. I tried to feed him books, but he was deeply in survival mode, trying to navigate an ever-changing home life and looking around for peers at school. I told him whenever I could that he could always come to see me about anything. That I wanted to be someone who wrote a letter of recommendation for him to apply to college. That I knew what it was like to be in a different place than my peers and we probably had more in common than he could imagine. He bobbed along like a cork through the rest of middle school. I would usually see him in the disciplinary space with the ever-changing acronym name in the office. He seemed angry while suspended in the Instructional Support System room and downright morose when the Academic Support Program tried to work with him. I tried to slip him books but he rejected them for the most part. I felt helpless but I never stopped hoping he would find his way.

Fast forward to this year. His senior year of high school. His senior year. He did not drop out. It bears repeating, he did not drop out of high school. I had the extreme pleasure of watching this beautiful boy, young man really, steal the show while playing a character part in the high school musical last week. It was amazing. He owned that space. He was confident, strong, and skilled up there. And I cried like a baby when I realized who it was playing the part of the gangster. He made it through middle school and found a home playing music and acting in the high school. This boy, who I feared reading about in the newspaper for all of the wrong reasons, had not only found his way, he made his way with strength and poise.

My heart is still full nearly a week later just thinking about it.

And This Is Why I Don’t Run

I tried to run today. I really did. But when I got to the top of Cherry Hill after trudging the incline as quickly as possible to warm up, I forgot how to breathe. As I moved along the road and regained my composure, I considered picking up my feet into a jog, but there were four horses standing very close to the road and I could tell they were snickering at me. I couldn’t lose face in front of the neighborhood livestock so instead of jogging, I started pumping my arms quickly to get my heart rate up. That’s when the music section of my iPhone started malfunctioning. I had been grooving along to Florence and the Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over” when suddenly Paul Anka’s cover of Van Halen’s “Jump” kicked on (if you are not familiar with Paul Anka’s collection of rock song covers, you are missing out on some serious cool-cat music). These songs aren’t even on the same playlist so I had no idea how this shift occurred.

As I continued to amble and lurch along while simultaneously sliding my finger along the phone and hitting virtual arrows, I lost some momentum. By the time I hit the golf course stretch, all thoughts of running had left my consciousness and I was consumed with untangling the ear buds and trying to figure out how I could bankroll the purchase of an iPod that would be mine, only mine, totally dedicated to my music instead of electronically sharing it with the family. That’s about the time I started noticing all of the litter trapped in the matted, decaying leaves along the side of the road and the plastic bags caught alongside the branches near the river.

As I rounded the corner onto Main Street, several cars drove past, this was the first sign of human life I’d come across since leaving my house. I figured I should turn down the volume on my music so I wouldn’t be surprised by a car coming up from behind. This led to another round of musical mayhem while I tried desperately to replace Dixie Chicks and Frank Sinatra with Beastie Boys or OK GO so my heart rate wouldn’t be in the toilet completely. Finally, somewhere around the burial monument of the Stockbridge Indians, I found a decent playlist and I started moving as quickly as possible. Since I was going uphill, I didn’t run exactly, but I was feeling the burn. Or, more correctly, the chub rub between my thighs. I was gasping at the top of the hill, which had to be good for something. I kept moving, but my feet were not running feet. They were walking feet. Indoor feet. And there I was, outdoors. I gave up all pretense of trying to run as I passed churchgoers dressed for Easter services but tried to keep myself moving as quickly as I could without feeling my back fat jiggle. Up until this point, I didn’t even know back fat could jiggle, but apparently if you feed it enough,  back fat can do most anything, except tuck itself nicely into oblivion.

I sort of Bob Fosse’d my way along the section next to the Red Lion Inn and down along the “highway” stretch, envisioning myself as a chorus member of some imaginary, and horribly choreographed, show starring a middle-aged woman in need of fitness and coordination. Nothing on my iPhone playlist made this any better so I was thrilled when I made the turn into my happy little street. I quickly found my way down the road, I may have actually picked up my knees a few times, and then I was home. Slightly winded and sweaty, but still very much a pedestrian.

Bluebird Memories

On the drive home from the gym this morning I saw a bluebird. It was a beauty. And then I started thinking about the year when I was in a Bluebird troop. Bluebirds were to Camp Fire Girls what Brownies are to Girl Scouts. Somehow Girl Scouts overshadowed  Camp Fire Girls because I don’t think Camp Fire Girls exist anymore. In any case, I was having one of those stream of consciousness moments that happen 20 or 30 times a day.

As I thought about my time as a Bluebird, sometime around second grade maybe, I remembered all sorts of things. Our troop leader was Mrs. Kelliher and I loved spending time in her house because it had two staircases in it – a la Fiddler on the Roof – and that did make me think the Kellihers were rich. Not to mention that there was only one child in the Kelliher household and she lived like a princess with her own bedroom. Her room was beautifully wallpapered with a coordinating quilt on the bed. That kid had it made as far as I could tell.

At one of our troop meetings, it was announced that one lucky girl would be chosen to model in a fashion show. This generated some serious buzz, although I didn’t know why. It didn’t interest me very much, which is probably why my name was chosen at random to represent our troop. When I asked my mother to get me out of it, she wouldn’t. She said it was a big honor and I should be thankful I was being given this chance. I recall going to Sears (yes, it was a very fancy fashion show) to try on clothing. The outfits we were modeling were part of the Winnie the Pooh collection. I had to wear a scratchy polyester pantsuit with a yellow and green lattice-style print on it and also a floral printed blue and green party dress that coordinated with a very groovy maxi dress that an older Camp Fire Girl got to model. In short, I had two hideous outfits to wear. Add this to the fact that I had trouble following directions and it should have surprised no one when my performance was less than stellar.

The day of the show came and when I walked out onto the stage, I froze directly under the fake trellis. Just refused to move and had no idea which way I supposed to turn. They had to send out an older girl, the same one I’d have to walk out with later in our party wear, to push me along. I just stood there, looking into the stage lights without any ability to move myself along. I’ve never forgotten that feeling of complete stress-induced paralysis. I got through the rest of the event, somehow, but the shame I felt lingered all the way home in the car and I couldn’t wait to get back into my dungarees.

Swamp of Student Work

I’m swimming in the literary equivalent of a quagmire filled with disjointed, listing narratives one after another after another. Sometimes I can wade through these marshy grasses happily looking for surprises, as if I’ve got positive-thinking hip-waders on, but today, I am drowning in a swamp of student writing that doesn’t show growth. The mud is cold, and it’s creeping up to my armpits.

You see, I’ve taken home all 90 of my students’ notebooks this weekend after taking a three week break from reading and responding to them. We’ve been working in response groups where peers are giving oral and written feedback to one another on a weekly basis. I thought I’d give things a few weeks to see where they were headed. Now I see where they were headed. They were headed somewhere back to November when students tended to list events sequentially without sensory details or specific information of any kind. They were headed back to Ramble Land where paragraphs might merely be a nice suggestion and punctuation has gone the way of the whalebone corset. The copious amount of time traveling in these pieces has nothing to do with portals or time machines and everything to do with rampant verb tense disagreement. It’s ridiculously discouraging. If I didn’t have a house full of other people’s children to supervise this afternoon, I would surely pour myself a glass of something fortifying right about now.

Clearly the students have not internalized much of the work we have done if they have skidded back to these listy, boring pieces where trips to amusement parks and car wrecks sound less interesting than a day at the laundromat. Somewhere along the way, I forgot to scaffold something. Or I didn’t provide enough practice.  My feedback wasn’t strong or specific enough. In any case,  I have screwed up. And the timing couldn’t be worse because the students will take their standardized tests, complete with the dreaded open response questions, beginning on Monday.  April Fools’ Day. I can only imagine what they will do there. Topic sentence? I don’t need no stinkin’ topic sentence. Evidence from the text? That sounds like too much work. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! All of my corpuscles are spinning wildly just thinking about the crazy talk that will come out of their pencils when they are left to their own devices. All those mini-lessons — just a fool’s errand?

I will not give up. I will read every last one of these entries no matter how painful it becomes. I will respond to each writer with specific, targeted feedback beginning with what is strong and true, even if it’s just the handwriting. I will conference with each of the writers. Then I will slowly remove my hip waders and walk onto dry land for that glass of something fortifying.

What’s The Big Deal?

Marriage equality and gay rights are prominently in the news this week because of the Supreme Court decisions, or indecisions, regarding Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. I have no idea why anyone might feel threatened by gay marriage as a legal right so it’s hard for me to understand what all of the fuss is about. If religious institutions don’t want to perform religious wedding ceremonies, that’s a different matter and I support their right to worship as narrowly as they wish.  I support gay rights and I support religious freedom. I am neither gay nor religious. I don’t think you need to be part of a group in order to understand their reasons for wanting protection under the law. I don’t see how someone else’s desire to worship hurts my desire not to, nor does it make sense to me that someone else’s marriage threatens my own- unless it is my particular spouse they are hoping to marry. That I might have something to say about.

I do think it will be hard for the folks on the far right to come up with reasonable, legal arguments against marriage equality for gays. Defending “traditional” marriage as a cultural norm becomes a trivial pursuit in the age of the Kardashians and The Bachelor, doesn’t it? Our world is filled with unwed parenting, blended families, reality tv competitions for mates, and celebrity culture. Those of us who are in long term marriages to the same spouse we started with decades ago are not necessarily the majority anymore. I wonder if any studies have been done about the number of heterosexual couples in long-term, committed relationships versus the number of homosexual couples in long-term, committed relationships? What would the numbers tell us there? Would there be any surprises?

In any case, I hope gay couples will soon have the same legal rights to marriage as heterosexual couples have in all 50 states. I see no reason they should be spared the stiff and awkward engagement photo, wedding showers, the thank you notes, the chicken dance, the cake cutting ceremony, and the exploits of a drunken wedding guest forever caught on video. They, too, should have to live with the photographs of the puffy sleeved dress or garish cummerbund. And in their golden years, may it not be a big deal at all for their 50th wedding anniversary announcement to be plastered on the community news page of their local newspaper.

Wednesday After a Full Moon

Full moon. Thanks a lot. There’s nothing that I enjoy more than a belligerent three year arguing with me at 2:00 am because he wants juice. I want not to have to remortgage the house in a few years’ time to pay the dental bills that come with a preschooler having juice in the middle of the night, so we were at an impass. Did I mention it was 2:00 am? Or that it had taken me until after midnight to fall asleep after worrying about a remark I had made during a Literacy Night event at school? Yes, really. These are the things that litter my psyche.

Now it’s 5:00 am, and I’m up and showered for the day, but it’s not pretty. Sandpaper behind the eyes. Bloated sensation in the belly. Wired on coffee. And of course, today’s schedule has me working with my two most challenging groups.

Oh well, it could be worse. It could always be worse.

Two Dimensional Gal

I just saw an ad for the movie version of The Great Gatsby. It looks very slick, polished, well-cast ,and despite my general dislike of movie versions of books, my interest was piqued. Then I noticed that the movie would be shown in something called “Real 3D.” Really? Gatsby in 3D? Why would anything think that’s a good idea? Sure, I’ve seen a few Pixar movies that were done in 3D. I have two kids and it’s hard to escape wearing the icky, shared glasses in order to take in the latest cartoon adventure. I even sat through the new Oz-themed movie in 3D. I didn’t enjoy it much, but I watched it. Still, I don’t think I will go to see Gatsby in 3D. I cannot imagine the purpose for these effects with this story. Did I miss the chapter with the lasers and roller coasters? Daisy’s dress is going to really billow like a balloon, isn’t it?

What’s next, Hamlet in 3D? Will Polonius hover over all of us? Or perhaps Macbeth will be the first Shakespeare production filmed in 3D and we can have the witches throw some green smoke our way as we duck the peopled branches of Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, ooh, and Lady Mabeth can wring her physically spotless but virtually bloody hands in our faces. That will add some life to the classics!

While we’re at it, why not go 4D and have smells piped in? A little rotting corpse stench for the zombie movies, and some wafting vomit odor for all those “Hangover” themed movies. That could be just the thing. The possibilities are endless. Sadly.

I love movies, but I want them to have some humanity in them. I want to care about the characters and get sucked into the story. I don’t want to wonder how the effects were created, or strain to see if the characters were played by actual people or created on a laptop somewhere. Too much artifice and movies become a scientific marvel devoid of art – at least for me. So I’ll be skipping Gatsby in Real 3D. Maybe I’ll reread the book and let the two dimensional words create a magical three dimensional world in my little Luddite mind.

And I absolutely don’t want to wear the glasses. Who knows where those things have been?

This One’s a Clunker, You’ve Been Warned

I’ve had crazy technical issues  over the course of the past week while I was traveling a bit with family, so I haven’t kept up with my SOLC posts. The first time I realized I wasn’t going to make it, I freaked out a little, got upset. Then I tried to figure out how I could make it work using my phone. My son had twice deleted the contact list off of the phone during the past week, so I could not write a blog post and believe it would “stick.” Finally, I accepted that I wasn’t going to have a perfect, 31 day record for SOLC and I went on a weekend long binge of not posting. It felt something like the Kubler-Ross stages of grief – denial, anger, acceptance – or am I confusing grief with swimsuit season again?

I have to say, I feel okay. I’m a little disappointed in myself for not fulfilling the challenge, but I won’t beat myself up for that just now. I’ve lost the bragging rights to posting for 31 days straight, but I may have spared some accidental readers a few posts that were even worse than this is shaping up to be. You see that? Shaping up to be? This is how I end the sentence? That sort of sloppiness should be grounds for having my virtual red pen revoked.

Right now I’m thinking about you, the one who reads but never leaves a comment because this blog is not your thing. You made a mistake when you went to the “Two Writing Teachers” blog, scrolled the comments,  clicked on the link to this site, started reading, and kept hoping it would get better. It won’t. You’ll have to trust me on that. I have nothing to say. Haven’t had an original thought in my head for days. I’ll try to come up with something for tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee.

I’ve already mined my kids, our dog, and my character flaws for these posts. I’ve written about childhood memories too. I’ve even resorted to the 6 word story — and that happened before the halfway point of the 31 days! I think I’ve run out of material. You’ll know it’s desperate if I start hauling out the poetry again. I’m no poet. Now go on, get outta here, and find something more coherent to read.