Things I Learned Last Weekend

One of the CAWP co-directors shared this poem with us earlier this week, and I immediately became enamoured of it. (On a completely unrelated note, what does it say about me that every time I use the word enamoured, my brain insists on using the British spelling of it?)

One of the things that I am most excited about for teaching a new course this year is the opportunity to use much, much more poetry than I have in the past, teaching AP Lang. I am excited to use this one as a model with my students.

Things I Learned Last Week

by William Stafford

Ants, when they meet each other,

usually pass on the right.

Sometimes you can open a sticky

door with your elbow.

A man in Boston has dedicated himself

to telling about injustice.

For three thousand dollars he will

come to your town and tell you about it.

Schopenhauer was a pessimist but

he played the flute.

Yeats, Pound, and Eliot saw art as

growing from other art. They studied that.

If I ever die, I'd like it to be

in the evening. That way, I'll have

all the dark to go with me, and no one

will see how I begin to hobble along.

In the Pentagon one person's job is to

take pins out of town, hills, and fields,

and then save the pins for later.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Things I Learned Last Weekend (in St. Louis)

There really is a difference

between freeways

and highways,

and that difference is

stoplights.

The sentiment,

"At least it's a dry heat"

is annoying,

but accurate.

Humidity sucks.

Monet's Waterlilies is

WAY larger in real life

than it looks

on other people's bathroom walls.

Shakespeare in the Park

on a summer night in open air

is exactly as wonderful as

I always dreamed it would be.

There are many people in this country

who think of any place

west of the Mississippi River

to be

West,

even though I had to fly

hours east

to get there.

It is mind-boggling.

Lessons in Transit

[Revised and Updated: 6/25/13]

A teacher’s life is one that is constantly in transition. We transition from lesson to lesson, period to period, unit to unit, year to year. We transition from one (new, life-changing, time-saving, field-innovating) program to another similarly "innovative" program. We transition from one classroom to another, one team to another, one grade to another.

This May, I left the school where I began my teaching career, where I’ve been working, teaching, learning, and sweating, crying, and sometimes practically living for the past four years. This July, I’ll be starting at a new school downtown. I am excited, but also a little nervous. My new position and new school will present me with many new challenges, and I look forward to the opportunities I’ll have in the coming year (and beyond, hopefully!). But it’s important to me that I take with me the lessons I learned at my last school into this new one.

Here are just a few of the things I’d like to remind myself:

1. Keep everything --but do it electronically!

My natural tendency to be a packrat is incredibly frustrating to most people who have ever had to live with me. Ask my parents, my sister, my college roommates--even my dog expresses his displeasure with the cardboard boxes I have stacked in my room by gnawing holes on their corners. I save clothing receipts (in case I need to return something), ticket stubs (for the memories), magazines (so I can make that recipe for lemon cheesecake one day), even slightly holey articles of clothing (because I am definitely going to mend that tear someday soon and it will be as good as new, seriously). I realize that this is generally unhealthy in my regular life, but it is a bad habit that has served me well as a teacher. I spent my first four years as a teacher avidly collecting anything and everything I could: lesson plans, worksheets, books, classroom supplies, even furniture! I begged my colleagues to email me copies of their worksheets and PowerPoint presentations, braved the vast wilds of the Internet to search for and save other teachers' lesson ideas, scanned copies of students’ projects to use as models. The last four years have taught me that even if I am teaching American Literature this particular year, I never know when this lesson on A Midsummer Night’s Dream will come in handy later on, or that peer review checklist, or these MLA formatting handouts. After a year or two of stuffing filing cabinets full of worksheets, I now know that electronic is infinitely more organized (and space-saving and clutter-minimizing) than paper, but this collecting habit of mine has saved me more than once on days when I had some unexpected extra time at the end of class or needed emergency plans for a colleague with a sick child or even when I (shhh—don’t tell!) forgot to plan a lesson for that day.

2. Share freely and ask without shame.

One of my most persistent and worrying fears in life is being a burden or inconvenience to other people. I am tempted at times to attribute this to my upbringing by two hard-working immigrant parents who taught me that I should never ask another person for anything that I was capable of doing myself. While this attitude has taught me to be self-reliant and fairly capable, it also has made asking for help a challenge throughout most of my life. During my first year, I had one veteran teacher who committed to being my mentor, even before I was brave enough to ask. She regularly updated me on what she was doing, sharing all her materials with me to use as I wished or not, without strings, and she was always available with help when I had specific problems (like the day when I got to school and realized I had left my flash drive at home and I had no lessons with me at all... which may or may not have happened more than once that first year). Almost in spite of myself, I ended up leaning on her heavily for materials and ideas all year, and she was an absolute God-send. Although that first year still felt sometimes like treading water wearing a cement suit and surrounded by hungry sharks, I realize now that she saved me from a lot of first year teacher catastrophes that would have arisen had she left me completely to my own devices. At the same time during my first year, another new teacher and I developed the habit of sending each other drafts of lessons and activities we were working on, even when we were teaching different grades. This not only helped by providing each of us feedback on our work, but gave us practice in looking critically at someone’s work, providing good feedback, and learning how to adapt something for our own use.  When I wasn’t the newest teacher in the department anymore, I made it a point to be as generous with my materials as these women were with me. More than a few times, my colleagues would use something I passed along and provide great feedback on it or adjust it for their own purposes and share it back better than before. Sometimes they would even just reply back with a file or link to what they’d been using instead. Eventually, I began to realize that whether the other teachers actually used what I shared didn’t matter so much as creating and maintaining the habit and culture of sharing. Collaboration—that highly-valued educational buzzword—didn’t have to be as time-consuming or formal as I had previously thought.

3. Take a real lunch break.

Despite the inherently social nature of it, teaching can be such an isolating activity. Sometimes I fear that a zombie apocalypse could begin sweeping the nation on Tuesday morning, and I wouldn't know it until 2:05 when I finally get a chance to sit down at my desk and check my email. That's why taking a break in the middle of the day has become so, so important to me. Part of the culture of my department was that most of us ate lunch together in the teachers’ lounge every day. I know it isn’t the same at a lot of schools. I’ve actually even been told by some veteran teachers I know from other schools to avoid the teachers’ lounge at all cost. I know they were well-meaning, and every school culture is different, but for me, taking that short break to talk to real live adults in the middle of my day was absolutely critical for my sanity. At times, teaching is a lonely profession, and that time to share stories, troubleshoot problems, think through lessons, and yes, vent our frustrations was incredibly valuable for me. Having those 30 minutes to talk to my colleagues every day, even if it was just about last night’s episode of American Idol, reminded me that I was not alone in this sometimes scary and exhausting endeavor we undertook every day. On days when I didn't feel like making the walk to the lounge, sitting at my desk in a quiet classroom with my lunch and the day's headlines (or the day's celebrity gossip, depending on my mood) on my web browser could be just as refreshing, another simple reminder that there IS indeed a world outside my classroom. Taking a lunch break, with coworkers or by myself, helped me to feel less like I was stranded on a deserted island of books and papers and red ink pens.

4. Keep the door open after school.

I am an introvert. (Once in a while I ponder how I came to choose a profession that quite literally requires me to be surrounded by at least 30 people all day long and I consider bashing my head in with a rock.) Some days after school, I am so exhausted of people that all I want to do is lock the door, close the blinds and pretend no one is home for a good 60 minutes. Some days, I actually do this. Most days, I resist the temptation. Some of the best conversations (personal and professional) that I’ve had with other teachers and students have been during unexpected moments in passing after school. An open door says, “Hey! I’m here! Say hello!” and helps to build community. I wonder how many wonderful conversations I would have missed, how many collaborative moments I would have never experienced, if someone hadn’t popped their head into my classroom to say hello or I hadn’t gotten up from my desk to see what the commotion was happening down the hall. Keeping my door open was an easy, visible reminder to myself and others that I was available and part of the community in my hallway and in my school.

5. Find at least one way to interact with students outside of class regularly.

One abrupt realization I had at the end of my first year of teaching was that the students who had become my daily companions for the past year, whom I had read poetry to, written essays with, lectured about the Transcendentalists, listened to discussing Plato, nagged about deadlines, even yelled at in frustration and cried over on my drive home, these students were mine no longer. Even if I saw them in the hallways or in the cafeteria or at a football game, I would never be their teacher and they would never be my students in exactly that same way again. That one year suddenly became far, far more precious. What a brief window of time where my life and their lives intersected! After my first year, I was asked, with one of my fellow newly-minted second year teachers, to sponsor our school’s National Honor Society. In a school as large as ours, NHS is a massive undertaking, with over 150-200 students in any given year spanning up to three grades. Although it was a lot of work and my co-sponsor and I felt at times that we were just making things up as we went along and praying no one would reveal us as frauds, sponsoring NHS gave me the opportunity to build relationships with my students that lasted more than just a year in my classroom (or even a semester, in our case, with our school’s crazy course scheduling). What incredible pieces of my students’ lives I would have missed if I only ever saw them for two hours at a time only three times a week! I would never have known that Aleyna loved animals and volunteered at the county animal shelter or that Dylan devoted hundreds of hours every summer to teaching seven-year-olds how to play soccer. Just as my students forget that teachers have lives outside their classroom walls, I think sometimes I forget that my students have lives beyond my classroom, too. NHS was an excellent way for me to see them outside of our “normal” context. The other thing I tried to do was to commit to attend my students’ music and art concerts (and yes, sometimes their sporting events, too). Many of my students were involved in theatre, dance, band, and choir, and it never ceased to surprise me how appreciative they were when I came to see them. I think they, just like all of us, like to be recognized for doing what they love, and I often learned new ways to appreciate my students that I hadn’t known before. Yes, Maria was quiet in class discussions and turned red in the face whenever she was called on to answer, but I saw her sing and dance in the spring musical, and she saw me in the audience, and after that night, she smiled and greeted me when I saw her every morning. That smile felt like a victory to me.

As I look back over this list, I recognize that I could never fit all the lessons I learned during my first four years into a neatly numbered list, even if I let myself continue on until I reached one hundred or even one thousand. I've probably forgotten more of those lessons than I could remember to record. What I do know is how important it is for me to keep reflecting and writing and learning, no matter how many more years I teach. Because I have many more transitions ahead of me. And I'll take those new lessons with me when I go.

One person in one head

We watched this lovely poem by Tanya Davis in CAWP yesterday.

How to Be Alone - by Tanya Davis

ALONE.

I used to have a real terror of being alone. I realize now that this is strange, considering how much of an introvert I am, how much time I need by myself to recharge. But living in a close-knit family with a close sister, a multitude of cousins and uncles and aunts, I never really had to be alone unless I chose to be. Even now, I make conscious and unconscious choices to NOT be alone, placing structures into my life that prevent my alone-ness.

I imagine it must be significant, then, that I've become a teacher--a profession in which, although I am surrounded by children all day, I am basically working alone nearly all the time. Sometimes, it is, indeed, lonely, and other times I feel it is not alone enough--I crave those moments where I can be quietly, blessedly alone in my classroom, no kids, no administrators, just me and the quiet hum of my computer, working, and 36 empty desks waiting patiently to be filled again.

Sometimes when I feel the need to trace patterns in my life, I think that I'm being trained on how to be alone. Maybe the cliche is true, that it is only when we learn to be alone with ourselves that we are any good at being together with other people. Maybe this is just one of those platitudes together-people tell single-people to say it's okay that you are waiting, to comfort you in your loneliness by assuring you that it is temporary. Maybe this is a lesson that just applies to me. Maybe, maybe I work too hard to find universal truths to reassure myself that I am not alone in the universe.

Whatever it is, I have learned to find pleasure in small moments of solitude--shopping, reading, watching TV, exploring the outdoors, wandering a museum. These moments are precious to me. Sometimes the people I'm with find this uncomfortable, I think. Some people understand. Those people, perhaps, are lonely, happy, peaceful people like me.

Thoughtshots

Our CAWP demo lesson yesterday was on something she called "Thoughshots," basically a moment in a text (usually narrative) in which you let the reader into the mind of a narrator or character. There are three kinds of thoughshots:

1) Flashback (thoughts about the past)
2) Flashforward (thoughts about what might occur in the future)
3) Brain Arguments (talking/debating/arguing with oneself)

After reading a lovely story and presenting the three types of thoughtshots as a revision technique (must remember this!), we were invited to take something we had written and add in a thoughshot or two. I didn't have anything to revise, so I ended up just writing a poem. (This could be a good way to teach stream-of-consciousness as well.)


Thoughts Upon Holding My Newborn Baby Cousin

Careful--careful. Gentle, gentle...
Elbow under her head, arm supporting her neck...
Okay. We're good. I've got this.
OH MY GOD I AM HOLDING A TINY HUMAN.
Hold her tight, be carefulgentle, don't drop her, don't--
Whoops, don't squeeze her either.
I can't believe they are trusting me with this.
This is too much, this is too scary, this is ... kind of nice, actually.
Her tiny face looking up at mine, her tiny hands waving at me.
Her sweet warm baby smell.
Her body a little tiny furnace in my arms.
I could get used to this, I think. Maybe one day, I'll--
Whelp, nope. That smells like poo.
Back to mommy you go.

Where I'm From

Another writing activity to try with my kids this fall that one of our co-directors shared at CAWP. This one uses a beautifully illustrated picture book as a mentor text:

Momma, Where Are You From?

Written by Marie Bradby and illustrated by Chris Soentpiet

In it, a daughter asks her mother (obvs.) where she comes from, and the mother explains by giving these beautiful details of people, places, objects, and colors from her childhood.

To write your own, you brainstorm places, people, events, foods, colors, etc. that have been important to your life.

Here is my very, very rough version:

I am from square black letters printed on yellowing pages that tell magical stories of far off lands and mystical realms, times and places that seem more exciting, more romantic, somehow more real than my own. I am from wishing--fervently, often--that life was more like the books I counted as friends.

I am from places far more prosaic.

I am from a white stuccoed house on Kachina Drive with rocks in the front yard because grass takes too much work in the withering Arizona heat.

I am from a choir director father and a pianist mother and listening to afternoon choir rehearsals, sitting on red cushioned church pews in dusty choir lofts.

I am from five older cousins, both feared and admired, from sleepovers and impromptu makeovers and musical reenactments and hot Sunday afternoons in the pool and roughhousing in the living room.

I am from one younger sister, from Legos and Barbies and pretending to be librarians, farmers, ice cream shop owners, sumo wrestlers, and dolphin trainers.

I am from Saturday mornings at the public library, wandering through the rows and rows of dusty shelves, searching for books I haven't yet met and devoured. I am from the sighs of my mother as I emerge, triumphant, arms laden with too many books to see over, nearly tripping over a display of paperbacks.

I am from Sunday evening dinner with the family, uncles and aunts and five older cousins chattering about the week's events, arms darting out to reach for food at the big round table, hurrying to grab your share before someone else takes it.

I am from white rice, fried rice, noodle soup, fried noodles. I am from special tofu soup just for me and my sister because the hot and sour soup for the adults is, well, too hot and too sour.

I am from dried shredded pork between two pieces of bread and butter for school lunch. I am from ham and mayonnaise sandwiches for school lunch. I am from butter and sugar sandwiches for school lunch. I am from wishing my mom made better sandwiches for school lunch.

I am from sleepovers of giggling preteen girls, not sleeping, Spice Girls on the TV screen and impromptu fashion shows down the hallway at 2 A.M.

I am from red and gold for Christmas and weddings and babies and Chinese New Year, shiny gold and inky black characters printed on red paper scrolls.

I am from impossibly blue Arizona skies, from brown grass, brown dirt, brown rocks, brown everything.

I am from breathtaking sunsets, pink and purple and orange streaks layered behind a golden-red sun on the horizon.

I am from warm hugs, loud music, a cool glass of sun tea, a quiet, comfortable silence.

I am from finally, finally realizing that there's plenty of romance and excitement and love right here, where I'm from.

Writing for CAWP

One of the hoped-for benefits of the new job I am starting in July is the opportunity to do cool professional development and teaching community stuff.

So far, it seems to be delivering. For the month of July I am participating in the Central Arizona Writing Project (CAWP) Invitational Summer Institute, which, as you might imagine is a room full of teachers who care about writing and care about students and for at least 3 hours a day, we are writing, reading someone else's writing, or talking about writing. It is both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. (The impetus for this blog comes from my attempt at a professional writing project which we are being asked to do over the course of the next month, actually.)

Yesterday we had a guest speaker come in and share with us a really cool activity that combines language arts standards with American history content. She shared with us a list of events that had happened on that day in American History and gave us three writing prompts, each from a different point of view.

Events on June 4:

1812 - Louisiana Territory is renamed Missouri Territory (because LA is now a state).

1862 - Union troops take Memphis (Civil War).

1876 - Transcontinental Express train makes it from NYC to San Francisco in 83 hours and 39 minutes.

1896 - Henry Ford completes his first gas-powered automobile.

1912 - Massachusetts becomes first state to set a minimum wage.

1917 - First Pulitzer prizes are awarded.

1919 - Congress approves 19th Amendment (suffrage) and sends it to states for ratification.

1939 - The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.

1940 - Churchill delivers "We shall fight on  the beaches" speech.

1998 - Terry Nichols sentenced to life in prison for Oklahoma City bombings.

PROMPTS:

1st person: I was there when...

2nd person: You never know when you're going to wake up and a day will be one for the history books. You don't know it when you wake up, and you usually don't know it when you go to bed, but you...

3rd person: He/She was a complex person...

Attempting this activity made me realize how large the gaps are in my understanding of American history (I managed to write a SINGLE sentence about Henry Ford before drawing a complete blank), but it was a really cool exercise, and I'd like to see how to incorporate it into my class sometime this year.

This the little bit I wrote for the second prompt. I chose 1919:

You never know when you're going to wake up and a day will be one for the history books. You don't know it when you wake up, and you usually don't know it when you go to bed, but you see it on the newspapers the next morning--"CONGRESS PASSES AMENDMENT FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE"--"WOMEN MAY VOTE IN 1920". 

You, of course, are thrilled, but you wonder what you father will say when he reads this. He married an intelligent, outspoken woman and raised two intelligent, outspoken daughters, but you know that, at heart, he is a traditionalist, a man who believes strongly in the value of the way that things have always been. You remember his disapproval of your new clothes, your short hair, the "radical" ideas you've been bringing to the dinner table. More than once your mother has had to break a tense, awkward silence with an amusing story about your baby sister's antics from that afternoon while the two of you stared at each other across the table, neither willing to back down.

You wonder who will bring up the topic first. Will it be your mother at breakfast, when she hands him his plate of eggs and bacon and toast? Will it be you, when you bring him the paper and his morning cup of coffee? 

In the end, it is your sister, sitting across from you at the table, happily shoveling down her oatmeal and managing, as always, to get half of it on herself. Six years old is too old to make such an enormous mess at the table, you think absently.

"Daddy, what's suff--suffer--" She has trouble wrapping her mouth around the unfamiliar word she sees printed in black at the top of his newspaper. You pause mid-bite. 

He looks up from the Business section. "Hmm? Oh, it's suffrage," he corrects. 

"What's that?" she wants to know. 

You want to know, too. You hold your breath and your piece of toast halfway to your mouth as you wait to see what he'll say.

A few "true sentences".

("All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." --Ernest Hemingway)

I love novels, stories, poems, songs, essays, and all things language. I teach high school English. Writing this blog scares me. I am learning to be brave.