I Am Not Your Momma

Inspired by the poem "I Am Not a Taco" by Santino J. Rivera and my amazing colleague/friend Mr. Steven Arenas! [You can read about the awesome lesson he created in the fantastic article he wrote, published in the Texas Education Review, by going here.]

2018-10-16
Phoenix, AZ

I am not your momma
I am not your cool older sister
I am not a saint or a martyr
I am not a bleeding heart
I am not a know-it-all
I am not quiet all the time
I am not always bossy
I am not unopinionated
I am not staying in all weekend
I am not grading your papers on vacation
I am not reading Shakespeare all the time
I am not always using perfect grammar
I am not always correcting other people’s spelling
I am not your free personal editing service
I am not only passionate about books
I am not a cat lady
I am not a culture snob
I am not clueless
I am not forgetful of what it’s like to be seventeen
I am not a preschool worker
I am not a magician
I am not a politician

I am none of these things
I simply am
           A teacher

Anne and Me

[A literacy narrative written for ENG 506]
4 September 2018
Tempe, AZ

Anne and Me

When I was eleven, my greatest wish in the world was to have red hair. Two of my
favorite heroines from the books I loved had red hair: the clever and intrepid Girl Detective
Nancy Drew and my personal favorite, the carrot-haired orphan, Anne Shirley from Avonlea.
The most exciting things, it seemed, happened to young women with red hair. To my preteen
mind, it seemed impossibly unfair that I couldn’t have red hair, too.

In those awkward years of transition from girl to almost adult, I generally preferred books
to people. I don’t have any memories of my parents reading to me as a child, but I do remember
the stack of Nora Roberts paperbacks on my mother’s nightstand and the rows of well-worn Tom
Clancy and John Grisham books on the shelves in my father’s study, which he would let me take
down and “play library” with or even try to read a few pages of closely-printed black type before
I lost interest. Our mother took my sister and me to the local public library nearly every Saturday
morning, and she would let us check out as many books as we wanted from any part of the
library, as long as we could carry them out ourselves. I loved the library: the smell of dust and
paper, the cool, dry air, the shadows between the tall metal shelves. I loved that my mother, who
rarely trusted us out of her sight in public, would let me wander off on my own between the
stacks, sometimes for hours, until I emerged juggling a too-tall pile of books in my arms, to find
the two of them waiting patiently on the wooden bench by the library’s front doors. Returning
home, I would spend the rest of the day in the cool semi-darkness of our sitting room, lying flat on my back on the couch, my stack of books piled precariously high on the coffee table at my
right elbow.

I’m not sure exactly what it was about L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series
that attracted me so strongly, but I do know that I read the whole eight-book series cover to cover
several times and watched the made-for-TV movies more times than I can count. Anne Shirley,
the orphan who was supposed to be a boy but managed to talk her way into staying anyway,
seemed to me a creature utterly different from everything and everyone I knew. I loved her wild
imagination and her romantic spirit, her devotion to her adopted parents Matthew and Marilla
Cuthbert, her loyal friendship to the girl next door, Diana Barry, and her hatred-turned-rivalry-
turned-friendship-turned-romance-turned-marriage with Gilbert Blythe, the clever, popular, and
kind boy who lived down the lane. I envied her courage and her ability (or curse) to speak
exactly what she was thinking, her capacity for dramatic, yet ultimately harmless escapades, and
her poise and wit under pressure. I was fascinated by Anne’s little country farmhouse, her idyllic
small town, the charming pace of rural life before cars and telephones. For a quiet, bookish,
Chinese American daughter of immigrants from Taiwan and Singapore, feeling stranded in the
suburbs in the dry, unforgiving heat of Arizona, Anne’s life seemed to be completely removed
from my own. And yet, I identified with how Anne’s over-vivid imagination sometimes kept her
from interacting properly with the people around her, how she found pride and validation in her
success at school, how she thirsted for words and books and knowledge like a parched woman in
the desert; I remember, like Anne, understanding what it felt like to be an outsider, too.

I’m still learning the numerous ways that Anne has impacted who I am as a reader, a
writer, a teacher, and a woman. As a girl, Anne taught me that a woman should be valued for her
brain more than her looks, but that it’s completely okay to want to feel smart and pretty at the same time. She taught me that real, lasting love of all kinds is less likely to be dramatic and
“romantical” than quiet and steady. She taught me about the power of education to change a life,
that reading and writing could help me build the life I wanted for myself. As an adult, Anne
reminds me to hold on to my childhood pleasure in imagination and stories, to see beauty in the
small, simple things, and to remain hopeful even in the darkest of circumstances. She reminds
me that even in the midst of great grief, there can still be room for great joy. As a teacher, Anne
reminds me to look beyond a student’s troubled past or tendency toward daydreaming or too-
intense emotions to the potential inside of them. She reminds me that books give us the
opportunity to step into the lives of people who may seem utterly different and yet turn out to be
remarkably similar to ourselves, and she reminds me of how powerful such experiences are for
young people in particular. Of course, reading (and watching) Anne twenty years later is a very
different experience. My adult mind, trained to analyze and critique and to notice what isn’t
being said in the spaces between the stories, recognizes that Anne’s world isn’t as perfect or
idyllic as it seemed to me when I was eleven. But even now, the remembrance of Anne’s joy and
warmth and spirit still lingers, as does my old, improbable, illogical childhood desire for red hair.

Writing Our Own Grand Stories

Writing Our Own Grand Stories
July 9, 2018
New York City

As a young child, I loved stories. My mother would take my sister and me to the public
library on Saturday mornings, and I would pull books down off the tall shelves like choosing
candy bars in the check-out lane—arms already almost too full, twitching fingers eager to caress
the smooth plastic wrappers, mouth practically watering. When we got back home, I would lie
flat on the couch in the front sitting room, away from all distractions, like my parents or my baby
sister or the murmur of the television, and read all afternoon, barely stopping to eat dinner when
called. I was usually ready to return to the library by Tuesday, but my mom was firm: library
visits were only for Saturday mornings. So I waited the next four days, famished, craving stories
until the next time I could glut myself on a feast of words.

I recognize now that I consumed these stories so voraciously because I had a deep
desire in my soul to be part of a Grand Story. The adventures I read in my books were full of
magic and adventure, quests and dragons and heroines who saved the day with their wit and
strength. My uneventful suburban life seemed incredibly boring in comparison. I was not an
orphan sent to live with a spinster and her brother in the countryside or an intrepid young private
detective with a blue roadster or even a bad-tempered tomboy with the soul of a writer, waiting
with my three sisters for my father to come home from war. I was just a quiet, bookish Chinese
American girl living in Arizona. Nothing of note ever happened to girls like me in places like
mine. And while I could see bits of Anne, Nancy, and Jo in myself, none of my favorite heroines
quite seemed enough like me for me to believe that I could be part of my own Grand Story one
day.

As a young teacher, I was told that what matters most when teaching is to focus on
skills. Students didn’t need to write their own narratives and poems; they needed to learn to
analyze and parse, to communicate clearly and effectively, not beautifully or creatively. I was
warned to stay away from personal narratives or poems: “There are some things about your
students that you don’t want to know,” they said. “What if they told you something you had to
report?” It was safer to keep a professional distance. “Really, by high school, they should be
past writing little stories about themselves, anyway.” I could maybe do some narrative at the
beginning of the year as a warm up to more complex writing assignments if I had to, but really, it
wasn’t worth my time. And poetry? Sure, they could write a sonnet or something if it would help
them to appreciate how difficult it is, but would the state test ever ask them to write a poem?
Never. It barely even asked them to analyze one. Better to spend my time on informational
texts. Besides, it would be unfair to grade a student on their “creativity”, anyway. Some people
just aren’t creative. That’s not what English class is about.

But I’m learning more every day about how stories, especially personal ones, inform my
life, whether or not I write them down. The stories I tell myself about my own life shape how I
understand my personal memories, my family history, and my cultural identities. The written and
unwritten narratives that the world tells about me as a woman, as an Asian American, as a
daughter of immigrants, as a teacher, as a person of faith—those all impact how I am perceived
by others and how I interact with the world. I need to listen to and comprehend those narratives
so that I can learn to navigate them well. And, perhaps, if there aren’t enough stories about
people like me, it may be my job to write them.

What is true for me, in this case, is also true for my students.

The stories they tell themselves about their own lives absolutely affect how they perceive
their own human worth, their place in the world, their relationships with their friends and families,
and their goals for their own present and future. Although many of them have significant social,
academic, financial, and emotional challenges, I am regularly inspired by the goals, dreams,
and ambitions of my students as they navigate school and work and family and friendship and
life.

The stories the world tells about them are more problematic: immigrants, children of
immigrants, Hispanic, Black, Native American, multiracial, Generation Z, female, male, foster
children, residents of low income neighborhoods, non-native English speakers, first generation
college students—often it feels as though the stories the world tells about my students can be
unrelentingly negative, or at least disconcertingly monolithic. While literature for young adults
has come a long way in recent years, it is still difficult for many of them to find stories they can
see themselves in, to help them believe that they, too, are part of a Grand Story.

Since those early years of teaching, I have come to recognize the necessity for making
space inside and outside of our classroom for my students to tell their own stories and to take
back their narratives. I’m not absolved from this responsibility when I find small pockets of time
in my overpacked curriculum to do a “fun project”; my work as a teacher for social justice is to
find a way to make it the center of our work together. I want my students to believe that their
stories about their lives are valid and meaningful, that their experiences may be personal and
individual, but they also have much in common with others. Because the stories we tell about
ourselves and about others truly do make a difference, not only in how we see ourselves and
our place in the world, but how we see those in the world around us.

Empowering my students to stand up for justice and make positive change in the world
must start with empowering them to tell their own stories and to listen carefully to the stories of
others. Whether these stories take the form of poetry, narrative, survivor testimony,
documentary film, oil painting, expression of faith, or musical performance, stories are the first
step toward connecting us to each other and to the larger narrative of our communities and our
world. When my students and I write and share our own stories, we become part of the
narrative. We write our own Grand Stories together.

"How did you write what you wrote?"

June 23, 2018
New York City


How did I write what I wrote?

Settling in.
A folding chair. Notebook open on the table in front of me.
Water bottle set just so. Pen in hand.

I take a breath.
A beat.
Another beat.

What will I do if the words won't come?
Will I just sit here forever,
awkward in silence,
eyes watching the page
like students waiting for the last bell of the day?

An opening phrase flits through my mind

and I pin it down with my pen.

A Fragment

June 19, 2018
New York City

A Fragment.

Perhaps to be human is the impulse
to give love and seek love
beyond expectation of return,

hands reaching out, fumbling in the dark,

one last gasp of hope,

again,

again,

again.

Written on the Third Floor of the Museum of Jewish Heritage

June 18, 2018
New York City

Written on the Third Floor of the Museum of Jewish Heritage

Air. Space. Quiet echoes.

The view of the water and
the Statue of Liberty across it

Room to breathe and reflect

Room to make sense and make space

Room not to let go, but to hold loosely
a fragile thought pulsing with life

like an egg in the palm of your hand
or a bird
or the promise of wings.

Where I'm From, Version C

June 17, 2018
New York City

Where I'm From

I'm from saguaro cactus,
    from the prickly pear I scurried past
    on my way home from the bus stop.

I'm from digging holes in the backyard,
    from ground so hard and dry
    I had to drown it to make it yield.

I'm from white rice, from egg noodle soup,
    from dim sum and barbeque pork buns.
I'm from tacos, from chorizo,
    from horchata and limonada.

I'm from the jobs my father worked
    to put himself through college.
I'm from the English my mother learned
    to get along in a new country.

I'm from perms, from scrunchies,
    from Mommy brushing my hair too hard.

I'm from day trips to the White Mountains
    to play in the snow, then driving back
    to the desert heat by evening.

I'm from sheet music, from music stands,
    from Mommy's piano in the sitting room.
I'm from singing along to the Bee Gees with Daddy in the car.
I'm from piano lessons, from music competitions,
    from recitals at the mall.
I'm from stuffing my flute case into my backpack for school
    then carrying it home again.

I'm from books, from stacks of papers,
    from students' handwritten thank you notes.
I'm from Saturday mornings at the library
    and Saturday afternoons reading
    on the living room couch.
I'm from Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables
    and Encyclopedia Brown and Meet Felicity.
I'm from stealing paperback romance novels from my mom
    and John Grisham thrillers from my dad.
I'm from reading to my sister on the bottom bunk after bedtime,
    huddled together, a cocoon
    of blankets and words and love.

Once More, With Feeling

My childhood is littered with abandoned journals.

My inordinate love of books has long been a defining characteristic of mine, and so I suppose it is only natural that when my various loved ones are looking for a non-book gift for someone who loves words, well, it's quite frequently a blank journal.

Like many bibliophiles and school nerds, I also harbor a (slightly un)healthy, long-standing passion for stationery, and so I delighted in each of these gifts. Lined, blank, spiral-bound, book-bound, hardcover, softcover--I loved them all.

The trouble, for me, has always been filling them.

Perhaps it was that dreaded paralysis of the blank page, perhaps it's my unfortunate habit of leaving large projects unfinished, or even my brain's maddening need for regular novelty, but, invariably, I would start each of those notebooks with the best of intentions. I would write two or three really solid entries, then log in a couple of half-hearted attempts, then I would leave the rest of the journal blank, never to be filled. Eventually, the notebook would get lost under a pile of clothing or shoved beneath my bed, unused and forgotten.

When I eventually unearthed each of those barely used notebooks months or even years later, each one felt like a failure. What did it say about me, that I couldn't manage something as simple as keeping up with a journal?

I think more than anything else, it was this inability of mine to maintain a consistent writing habit that caused me to believe that I would always be just a reader, not a writer. Didn't writers need to write, like breathing? Didn't the words rush through their veins, like a river in flood, desperately searching for an outlet? I must not have had whatever special compulsion it was that those people, the real writers had. I didn't have that need, or that Gift.

But I am slowly learning that it isn't a constantly accessible, always replenishing flow of words that defines a writer, but the determination to keep picking up that pen or pulling that keyboard closer and trying again, no matter if it has been two hours or two years.

So it goes with this blog. Thanks for sticking around.

Poem: Signs of Life

Written on a "writing marathon" walk around ASU campus during CAWP Summer Institute.

2017-06-14

Signs of Life
I do not always know their names
But the shapes are familiar
Baked into my childhood memories
By years of sun and heat:

Wide, flat paddles covered in spikes
Tinged purple at the edges

Clusters of tall spears
Bursting in all directions like fireworks

Dusty green limbs, a folded lady’s fan
Stretching up and out like fingers toward the sky

Low wide barrels, ridges and valleys lined with needles
Always squatting alone

While their taller cousins reach long arms toward their neighbors
But also up and up toward cloudless, unrelenting blue.

Where I'm From, Part B

2017-06-13

Where I’m From, Part B

I am from dirt and rock

And slowly withering grass—

“Desert Landscaping”.

I am from the overgrown oleander bush

Standing guard beneath our front window—

Look, but don’t touch.

I am from too-big gardening gloves,

From pulling weeds in the yard with Daddy

And ice water after, tooth-achingly cold.

I’m from tacos and dim sum,

Hot tea and cool salsa,

Tamales and fried rice.

I’m from Chinese nursery songs with Grandma,

And English ones from PBS,

From Daddy’s cracked hands

And Mommy’s curly brown hair,

From staying up too late reading books to my sister

In the bed whose bottom bunk we shared

And filled the top with a zoo of stuffed animals.

I am from music, always, everywhere,

From piano, trumpet, flute, stereo, television, and portable sing-along cassette player,

From boy bands and hymns, the Bee Gees and Disney,

From “Peace Like a River” and “Hit Me Baby One More Time”,

From singing and listening and playing and rehearsing
and spontaneous bursts of song like uncontained joy.

Language and Magic

Some (perhaps slightly out-of-context) thoughts on language and magic: 

"If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart— reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded. But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes... Can a man who can cast a spell ever really grow up?" 

from The Magicians by Lev Grossman

The Benefits of Role Reversal

These last few weeks at school have been pretty busy and stressful. With quarter grades due on Sunday, parent conferences next week, and Fall Break so close but oh-so-far, it was difficult to convince myself to go to the Arizona English Teachers Association conference this weekend, even though it was free (paid for by CAWP! Yay!). On Friday afternoon, I had to stay late at school and was so exhausted that I couldn't make it to any of the sessions and decided just to go home and rest. But I managed to talk myself (guilt myself?) into making the drive this morning, and I'm really glad I went. Funnily enough for a person who loves being in school as much as I do, it was a good reminder that sometimes I need to take a break from being a teacher and just be a student for a while.

Learned lots, had time to catch up with some CAWP people, and picked up the names of some cool resources and ideas I can take back with me.

Also, I made this:

and scored some teacher swag (i.e., books):

Not bad for six hours on a Saturday. Yay conferences!

They Come To Me

THEY COME TO ME: A BACK-TO-SCHOOL POEM

They come to me at the sweaty, red-hot tail end of summer

     with curious, sunburned faces

     and back-to-school haircuts just a little too short.

They come to me sporting backpacks in clean, bright rainbow hues (no Sharpie graffiti yet),

     glossy shoes that squeak down linoleum-tiled hallways,

     and uniforms with the newness still creased into them.

They come to me with new packs of lined paper

     --the crinkle of clear plastic wrapping, the scent of fresh stationery--

     with mechanical pencils, five to a package,

     and 3-ring notebooks, see-through covers waiting to be cluttered

     with photos and ticket stubs and illicit notes passed quietly during boring lectures.

They come to me with forms--

     forms for the nurse

     forms for the office

     forms for the cafeteria

     forms for the bus.

     (School is all about forms.)

They come to me with test scores, with GPAs, with transcripts, with all sorts of records--official and not.

They come to me with expectations, with goals, with preconceptions, with dreams.

They come to me with questions--

     "When is lunch?"

     "Can we listen to music in here?"

     "Do we have assigned seats?"

     "How do I try out for football?"

     "Is high school as hard as they say  it is?"

They come to me with ideas--lots of ideas.

     Ideas to start a club

     Or rebuild their community

     Or spark a revolution.

     Ideas to change the world.

They come to me and I watch.

They come to me and I listen.

They come to me and I marvel.

POEM: Fear

I love writing group! That is all. 

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

FEAR

As a child, I had a reoccurring nightmare—

Trapped in a darkened warehouse

Huddling in a corner

Sinister voices echoing against concrete walls—

“What do we do with her?”

“She knows too much.”—

I watch

Doll parts pass by on conveyor belts—

An arm, a leg, a tiny dress-covered torso—

Before I realize

Not doll parts—human.

Another nightmare—

Running through the long corridors of

Sky Harbor Airport

Brown geometric carpet shapes blurring under my feet

Fleeing—or Chasing—

I run up an impossibly tall flight of stairs only to realize

There is no second floor.

Finally—

Black-clothed men with automatic weapons—

A torrent of bullets in a tiny grocery store—

Shattered jars of pickles littering white tiled floors—

I huddle behind the glass-fronted display counter

With a terrified checkout boy and neatly-stacked bags of rice.

My heart pounds.

Even now, these nightmares stay with me.

But fears change with age and experience

As the world both expands and contracts—

Terrorist attack, global pandemic,

The death of my parents, losing my house,

Early morning car accident on a crowded freeway—

Possibilities too real to entertain in dreams.

Of the two kinds of fears, I know this:

The fantastic visit only at night;

The prosaic show no similar discretion.

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.

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.