M.I.A.

I've been pretty MIA as a blogger lately, and it's definitely not for lack of stories. May was - for some reason I still can't figure out - unbelievably busy. Literally every weekend was booked with plans from sometime in February or March. Besides that I was also working full time for all of May and most of June, teaching 9th graders about important things like Juliet's hormones and pearls the size of grapefruits.

Finals week is usually a time for teachers to start winding down and getting ready for the respite of summer, but instead, I was gearing up for an entirely new undertaking. In May (at some point but now I can't imagine when) I replied to a random grouping of vague postings on Craig's List for tutors, teachers, and SAT instructors at various locations around the county. (I was staring summer - and it's pending 4 months of no paycheck for substitutes - in the eyes for the 3rd summer in a row and just knew my savings account would be sorely diminished come winter if I didn't at least attempt a search for potential income. I've never taught an SAT class or had any interest in doing it, but since I now know that I am capable of teaching a first grader how to read, 2 of the 3 SAT section tests are officially in my qualification wheel so why not?)

I'll admit that when I first received a phone call and had a preliminary phone interview, I couldn't even remember the names of the companies with which I had applied for jobs. That's how much attention I had paid to the application process. But I talked to the director of a particular institute for about half an hour on my cell phone while roaming the aisles of Target and we hit it off nicely. Within a week or so I had a job teaching 9th and 10th grade "Book Camp", 4 days a week, 4 hours a day. Not bad at all for summer. Maybe two weeks later, my new boss asked me to take on the additional responsibility of teaching SAT Critical Reading in the mornings, 4 days a week, 4.5 hours a day at a separate office for the same company.

So that's where I've been. I spend 8.5 hours a day teaching. 12 hours a day commuting, working, or on one campus or the other. Officially I work 4 days a week, but seeing that I'm up late on Sunday night reading one of the book camp books and I've just finished several hours of prep work including taking an SAT, reading 2 articles aloud to my mom, and writing discussion questions that my students will do for homework this week, in reality I'm working 5 or 6 days a week. In 9 days, I logged 90 payable hours... A calculation that doesn't include the additional 20 or 30 hours spent doing other work-related activities.

But here's the really cool part about all of this: I get to read abundantly and I find over 80% of the material interesting, some of it downright fascinating. I get to spend all day laughing and talking with some really smart, motivated, hard-working teenagers. My colleagues are intelligent, interesting, and generous. In short, I'm LOVING my job. I feel rewarded. I feel like I'm growing as an educator. I feel like the work I put in in genuinely valued and I am compensated accordingly.

Overall, I feel like this:

Yay May!

There are so many reasons why May has been such a deeply fantastic month for me. I feel like things are really going my way, in all ways, in all areas. I've been so happy these last few weeks, I can hardly contain it. Here are just a few reasons:


Plans. Always Plans.



BFF + baby + this weekend = happy me



This little girl is 4 today :)



I get to teach high school every day.



3 words: Best roommate ever!



Totally the most awesome friends a girl could ask for.



Summer = 8 weeks teaching "book club" for 9th and 10th graders. Total awesomeness.

Theme

My mother and I look nothing alike, but don't be fooled by that - we are the same person. Like my mother, I love anything with a theme. Together we turn a simple book club discussion into a gourmet event. We shop for months to find the perfect table clothes and favors for a baby shower (with a Secret Garden theme). We are both total suckers for color schemes, menu planning, and decorating. As I recently told Cate, I love anything with a theme and stationary.

This is why I love weddings. Weddings combine all the things I love doing that I don't get to do for my day job - color schemes, decorating, photography, menus, fonts, graphic design, vows (meaningful language), and so much more. Luckily, I seem to be in the perfect age range to employ my love of all things wedding for good use. My best friend Reanna got married a year and a half ago. I am currently the Maid of Honor for my other best friend Alicia. This allows me to browse wedding magazines, photography blogs, and event planning sites and pretend that I'm doing all of it for Alicia.
Somewhere between these two images, I've discovered a color scheme, invitations, costuming, favors, and a menu for two separate events:


I don't have an apartment or a classroom to design right now, so my creative energy must go somewhere else. Like, perhaps, finding the perfect dress to wear to my friend Colette's bachelorette party in a few weeks....
I have no idea if Kate & Cassie wine is any good, but I love this label so much, I may design an event around it:

Is this tendency to see a skirt or dress or wine label and plan an event to match strange? I don't know. I don't really care.

Can I just say...

... that I love my job? Because I do.

For the last 3 weeks I've been covering a high school teacher who is on maternity leave. She has a schedule of all 9th grade English classes and when I started, they were in the middle of Romeo & Juliet. Even though I was totally prepared for this class, I'll admit now that I wasn't really looking forward to it. I've been beat up pretty bad in the last two years as a substitute and, while I'm thrilled whenever I can secure consistent income, I was feeling pretty defeated as a teacher.

My two month position in fall really did a number on me. I was exhausted all the time and felt highly ineffective in the classroom. I had issues creating and sustaining order, I felt disrespected and frustrated, and I couldn't help but question if maybe it wasn't the kids at all - maybe it was me. Maybe I just wasn't as cut out for this as I'd thought. I've lived my life to be a teacher and always prided myself on the idea that if I'm good at anything, it's school. But what if that turned out not to be true? What if the real reason I haven't been able to secure full time work is not because of the budget, but because I'm just not as good at this as I'd thought I was?

So I headed into the season of no substituting work (January/February) feeling pretty down about my place in the education system and starting to feel genuine trepidation at the idea that maybe I didn't belong there at all.

I started tutoring in the evenings for bonus income. The work is unchallenging but pays well. It is with elementary school kids, but at least it's still in my field. It was not a win-win but it is not a lose-lose either. It just is.

In March I had a bit of a professional crisis. I had been helping out at my old continuation school two days a week and on one Thursday morning, a student stole my wallet directly out of my purse. Talk about feeling unappreciated and disrespected.

I also had a meeting with an administrator that felt like a punch in the stomach. She politely informed me that some people perceive me as negative and even condescending. I was crushed. I was heartbroken. I was also more grateful for the honesty than she will ever know. Here was an opportunity to concentrate on my weaknesses and actually grow professionally. Here was the real, honest feedback that I haven't been able to get from anyone, ever. For the first time I felt like I could actually do something about this feeling of inadequacey that comes with being laid off, interviewed, looked over, and ignored.

I've felt for years now that there must be something I'm missing, something I'm doing wrong that justifies why I haven't been hired. Well, here was something. Apparently, the way I speak can be interpreted in a way I don't intend. My whole family is sarcastic and biting. My speech pattern is naturally blunt. And how am I supposed to fix that? How do I change the way I speak naturally? So far, awareness is key.

My students - the ones I spend 90% of my day with - are familiar with my tone. They know that I care about them even when I don't care about their excuses. They know I expect them to take responsibility for themselves and that sometimes my responses seem harsh because I want them to learn. My friends and family know that whatever I say is said out of love and concern, not judgement. But the other people on campus don't know me that well. They see me in passing so how could they? When the voice seems abrupt, the real message can get lost.

All these factors contributed to the overwhelming sense of dread and trepidation I felt coming back into a full time teaching position. I was sick of feeling discouraged and inadequate. I didn't want to go to work every day in a place where people didn't understand me or thought negatively of me. I didn't want to spend my days dealing again with the kinds of disrespect, disorder, and stress I had been feeling at the beginning of the year. Education is the love of my life and I was sick of having my heart broken.

Boy was I wrong. From the first day I started teaching, I've felt more at home and more myself than I ever do in any other job. I was put on this earth to teach high school English. Maybe it doesn't seem like a noble profession. It's not a life's purpose on par with, say, feeding starving children in Honduras or providing clean water where there was none or giving medical care in Uganda or rebuilding Haiti, but I still feel like it matters. And I love it.

I love the conversations I get to have about how Romeo & Juliet were really just a couple of inexperienced, horny teengers. I love the banter. I love getting to know the kids. I love when they come in with gossip and say, "Ms. C! You'll never believe what happened!" and I say, "Telllll me!" I love that once I get going, I genuinely do know how to do this well. I love that substituting has truly taught me flexibility, adaptation, and efficiency.

I get to stay here through graduation this year and then who knows. The prospects for teachers right now are even worse than they were a year or two ago, so I don't know if I'll get any interviews, much less an offer from anywhere. But I'll keep looking. Even if I have to wait, I'm ahead of the game because I know where I belong.

A note on the elementary schoolers

Okay, so it's not sooooo bad. Right now my tutoring service includes one of each - first, second, third, and fourther graders. And it hasn't killed me. And I haven't wanted to kill (or even hit) the kids the way I sometimes do with my high schoolers. But here's the thing: I am not trained for this.

Two of my students are so young they often get tutored in their pajamas (bright yellow things with Sponge Bob on them or the Spiderman ones you can tell came with a removeable cape), as they have to go straight to bed 15 minutes after I leave. These students pout when they don't want to work. They cry. I don't deal with crying. I have NO tools in my teacher tool belt to deal with crying. Or wimpering. Or students who don't work well because it is PAST THEIR BEDTIME. I don't know how to respond when a kid (constantly) mistakenly calls me "Mom" - especially when it's the alternative to "Yes, Master." (I seriously have no idea why this kid keeps saying that but it annoys me so much sometimes I just want to get up and leave. He doesn't mean it in the rude, sarcastic way a high schooler would but I can't help that that's how I hear it.)

So, okay, I know enough by now to know I'm learning new kinds of patience through this experience. Maybe I'll be more understanding when it's my kids. Maybe I'll get better at hiding my frustrations rather than showing every emotion on my sleeve. Who knows. So far, I'm just getting by. I have one more week of my crazy schedule (teaching 9th grade all day, then tutor 2-4 hours after school) before I am back to one job for May and then no job by the end of June.

Dear Universe (2)

Two things:

1) Thank you for removing the kindergartener from my tutoring service. I knew we were on the same page. Now, please do not replace him with another one.

2) It has been exactly one year since the accident that fractured both of my wrists. Besides this worm of a scar on my wrist (which I can actually see shrinking - finally!) and a few funny stories about what it's like to have two broken wrists at the same time, it's like it never happened. Nice. But Universe, I will never take my functioning joints for granted again. Thanks again.

The Mirror

I have been brainstorming for a commentary on Michael Jackson's song "Man in the Mirror" for months, maybe even a whole year. I was first reminded of this song when it was used in a unity promotional film for my alma mater last spring (the film panned through the whole school, weaving through clubs and teams and different social groups in the quad, all singing the lyrics in unison. It was awesome.) Last fall when I saw the documentary on MJ's last rehearsals, This Is It, I was moved to start collecting songs for a new classroom soundtrack to be used the next time I have students of my own. (3 years ago I created one such soundtrack for my middle schoolers that was inspired by India.Arie's "Beautiful Flower.")

First, the lyrics to the song (listen along! it's on the player at the bottom of this blog!)

Gonna make a change for once in my life.
It's gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it right.
As I turned up the collar on my favorite winter coat, this wind it blowin' my mind.
I see the kids in the street without enough to eat, who am I to be blind pretending not to see their needs?
A summer's disregard, a broken bottle's top, and one man's soul.
They follow each other on the wind, ya know, 'cause they got nowhere to go.
That's why I want you to know,
I'm starting with the man in the mirror.
I'm asking him to change his ways.
And no message could have been any clearer:
If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change.
I've been the victim of a selfish kind of love.
It's time that I realize there are some with no home, not a nickle to loan, could it be (really be) pretending that they're not alone.
A willow deeply scarred, somebody's broken heart, and a washed out dream - they follow the pattern of the wind ya see, 'cause they got nowhere to be.
That's why I'm starting with me!
I'm starting with the man in the mirror.
I'm asking him to change his ways.
And no message could have been any clearer:
If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change. You gotta get it right while you got the time, 'cause when you close your heart then you close your mind.
...
Just lift yourself, you know, you got to stop it yourself.
Stand up and lift yourself now.
Make that change.

One of the cornerstones of my teaching philosophy is to encourage student growth and responsibility and guide my students toward lives as socially conscious citizens and overall good people. I see my work as a chance to inspire new generations to travel the world, live with a wide perspective, volunteer and think about someone other than themselves. High schoolers in general are very selfish people because their experience and range of understanding rarely extends beyond their own school or small community. I see my job as a chance to give them something else to consider, some other way to look at the global community. I see teaching as my best chance to change the world.

Many teachers are fond of the Gandhi quotation "Be the change you wish to see in the world" because it encourages people to make individual effort toward global goals. The hardest part of that idea, however, is figuring out exactly which changes matter most to you. There are a lot of problems in the world. Disease, disaster, social injustice, poverty, hunger - they are all huge concepts that are difficult to understand and solve. The question each of us should start with, then, is this: What injustice can I do something about first? What do I care about most in my own life?

For example, I think that having clear vision is a basic human right. I know firsthand how much of a difference a simple pair of eyeglasses can make in the way someone gets through their day; eyeglasses should not be a luxury. So I donate my old perscription glasses to Unite For Sight (http://www.uniteforsight.org/) and they are sent to people who need glasses but can't afford them or access proper optomotrist's care. It's an easy way I can help out an issue I see in the world.

"Service does not mean self-sacrafice. It means giving the needs of another person the same priority as our own." (Williamson 173)

What makes me more important than anyone else on this earth? What makes me entitled to a better home or food or health? Maybe I can't solve world hunger or AIDS or tsunamis and earthquakes. I'm not a divine being. I do not have spidey-powers. But even if I can't solve the problem at large, I CAN make a huge difference in the life of another person. There are 4 families in Argentina right now who have homes because I helped build them (http://www.habitat.org/). There are at least half a dozen people out there who can see better and function better in their lives because my glasses allow them to focus. There are seniors in San Diego who have food because I helped to sort it at a distribution center and food bank for impoverished elders in the community (http://www.theangelsdepot.org/). I can start with myself. I can make a difference.

"Our needs are not separate. If we contribute to another person's pain, it will always come back to haunt us. If we do what we can to help them, someone will always come around to do the same for us. It's not enough to sit idly by while others hurt, using the catchphrase 'It's not my responsibility'... as an excuse for a selfish stance." (Williamson 168)

If I can do something to help another person, isn't it my moral obligation to do it? It's so easy to fall into selfish behavior. So far, I have not made a donation to help the victims of the earthquakes in Haiti or Chile. I should, but I haven't. I could, but I haven't. I am preoccupied by the money right now. Even though I've found pretty consistent sub work this year and have some income from tutoring, I'm worried that a full time position will not be available for the next year (or maybe two or three) and I don't want to give up the lifestyle I have now. I want to be able to buy cute shoes and new clothes and hardback books. It is selfish of me and I know it. I could justify myself all day long, but that doesn't make it less selfish that I am not doing more to help people who have endured unspeakable tragedy and are in need of real assistance. As MJ says, "Who am I to be blind, pretending not to see their needs?"

http://www.redcross.org/

Dear Universe

I thought we already talked about this whole teaching-me-a-lesson-about-patience thing when I had to spend 6 weeks teaching rowdy 8th graders last semester! We're supposed to be even, universe! Remember? I decided to change my thinking and RIGHT THEN you (Universe) got me out of that job. Everything worked out!

But now...

In January I took a job teaching reading to students in grades 4, 5, and 6. This was a stretch for me but I needed something that could pay bills more consistently than subbing sometimes does. Ugh. I'm really not built to work with the young ones. I don't sing songs or do little dances. Ew. Gross.

And now -AND NOW! - Now I've been assigned two new students who don't even really qualify as youngin's or littluns. One kindergartener and one first grader. 5 and 6 years old! OMG. I'm gonna die.

First this: How can a kindergartener be considered "behind" in reading? How is that even possible?

Second: I teach HIGH SCHOOL. The kids I work with are 10 years older than the babies I'm supposed to practice letters with now.

When I was first assigned these embryonic students, Joe suggested that I should just think of them as "older Eva"s... I'm gonna have to try...

Wish me luck!