When I was 22 and getting ready to graduate from college, I faced the first of many existential crises. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I was nearing graduation. I had thrown together a religion major with a French minor, but I had no plans to use either. It became a year of escapism. Like Walter Mitty I daydreamed of grand adventures and a lifetime of meaning. I escaped to a world of possibility: I could be a oncology nurse or a civil rights lawyer or a life-changing social worker. But still the clock ticked closer to graduation. I watched my peers who were so much more together than I was. They had life plans and goals; they wore power suits for real-life job interviews. I had an impeccable transcript and a useless major; I wore thrift store t-shirts and a necklace made from a cut-up red handkerchief. Like that senior year at Wartburg, I face a new existential crisis now, the mid-life sort where I question choices and contemplate regrets and what-ifs. I keep a folder in my filing cabinet labeled “Encouragement.” Inside I tuck in notes and reflections from former students. I store thoughtful thank you cards received after graduation and self-assessments that help me remember my WHY. I pulled out that folder this week, and several phrases from my early years as a teacher struck me. Students described me as “fun and exciting,” mentioning my “spontaneous personality.” One girl reflected at the end of the semester, “I love how you love your job” and another wrote, “I always left the classroom happy. You even lift me up and say more nice things than I hear from my parents.” I don’t share those things as a shameless brag. I share those things because they were all written nearly ten years. I’m not sure anyone today would describe me as spontaneous. Sure, I still get the occasional note from a student, but I honestly don’t feel like I’m making the impact I once was. So of course that causes me to reflect. Maybe a bit too much. Is the change because of me? I’m now a working mom. I don’t have the energy or stamina in the classroom that I once had. I no longer stay until 6:00 and volunteer to take on extra responsibilities that help to build relationships with students. I’m also no longer young. When I first started teaching, the age gap between my students and me wasn’t very noticeable, and now just eleven years later, I’m old enough to be their mother. I’ve traded my thrift store t-shirts for diamond studs and sensible flats. (As a matter of fact, just this week I was asked if I was a grandma. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider my stance on plastic surgery.) Is the change because of my students and our society? When I first entered this profession, we had to sign up for times to work in the computer lab, and students were texting on old flip phones. Students still passed real notes, for heaven’s sake. Now I work in a 1:1 district where every student carries a computer in his hands and one in her pockets. Snapchat and YouTube seem much more entertaining than a writing project for English class, and rather than spending spare time reading books, my students are perfecting their bottle flips. I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe it’s a combination of both changes in me and changes in our culture. Or maybe I’m just tired because we decorated doors for homecoming and I’m procrastinating responding to students’ Article of the Week reflections. I just know that I find myself sitting here at my desk, wondering if I’ve lost my mojo, and perhaps more importantly, if it’s time to go look for it.
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All it took was an Oreo. Hot, sticky eight-year-old tears flowed down my face, and all I needed was an Oreo cookie. Sometimes the biggest acts of compassion are stuffed into the tiniest of packages. And that’s why I believe in Oreo cookies. I ran in from recess that day with the imprint of the red bouncy ball still tattooed on my face. At least that’s the way it felt to me. An innocent victim trapped in the crossfire of a dodgeball game, my head was still ringing from the impact when I rushed into the door of my 2nd grade classroom. Mrs. Lott, my angelic second grade teacher, was the closest thing to a motherly figure for me at that exact moment. “It looks to me like you could use an Oreo, sweetie,” she stated matter-of-factly as she adjusted the glasses on her narrow nose. “O-o-okay,” I stuttered between sobs. She helped me wipe my tears with a Kleenex from the industrial size box of tissues on her desk. As she went to the cupboard to pull out her magic stash of Oreos, I looked around our classroom. Stacks of books just waiting to be read were lined up next to bottles of Elmers glue, soldiers ready for battle. Mrs. Lott’s lovingly-watered plants sprang to life on the windowsill; everything about the room exuded learning and comfort. Mrs. Lott neatly arranged two Oreos on a paper towel on my desk. My tears had now subsided, and the chocolately goodness was just the comfort food I needed. Mrs. Lott’s hug didn’t hurt either. “Now this is our little secret,” Mrs. Lott whispered as the other students started marching back in from recess. “Oreos are only for special occasions like today.” Her compassion came in words and in the form of a simple cookie. Years later Mrs. Lott’s lesson in compassion still echoed in my heart. I was in my early twenties when I learned that Mrs. Lott was dying of cancer. When I closed my eyes to picture her, I saw her gray halo of hair and that smile that made every student feel like her special pet. She couldn’t be dying of such an ugly disease. I didn’t know if a package of Oreos would be comfort food to Mrs. Lott, so I used the form of compassion that I’ve learned best through the years since that lesson in second grade -- my words. William Wordsworth wrote that we should fill our papers with the breathings of our heart. That’s what I did that day in my letter to Mrs. Lott. I told her just how much her Oreo meant to me, and I promised her that I would always try to be a teacher who showed compassion just as she had taught me. Her husband later told my dad that her feeble fingers wore the edges of that letter as she read and reread it in the days leading up to her death. A simple letter to say thank you for a simple cookie. Some days I feel pretty hopeless. A student wrote, in response to an article about Colin Kaepernick, “I kind of get sick when black people say it’s a white man’s country because it is we were here first and if you don’t like it then get out of our country.” And I think as I read those words, are you thinking of my children? Where did you learn such falsehoods? I see the giant Confederate flag waving in the back of another student’s truck, and I think, do you know what that symbolizes to so many? I sit at my desk and vacillate between throwing my hands up in the air or weeping or screaming. I want to give in. Today I’m feeling pretty beat up and broken. This afternoon I can’t read one more Article of the Week response telling me why the police are justified in all of their shootings. I can’t look at another essay that tells me that racism is over and black people need to get over it. It’s hard to talk about favorite books with a student one minute and the next minute read the hatred sprinkled in his writing. So this afternoon I switch Pandora to some worship music and remember that change once happened in me. Yes, this is a teaching blog that often touches on issues of social justice, but I am first and foremost a follower of Christ. When I was 20 years old and working at church camp, I sat alone in the quiet with God and had a vision of my heart hardened like a rock floating up to heaven. In return I received a heart of flesh. It was new. I was new. At that point in my life, my heart of stone was crusty and dusty and full of regret. But I went from living a life of darkness and sin to walking in the light with Love. Last night at my church small group we talked about the patience of Abraham and Sarah. They were promised a precious son, and then they waited. And they waited some more, waiting on a promise that God would fulfill only in His perfect timing. As we continue to live in the midst of sinfulness and depravity and the remnants of a white supremacist society, we are waiting on another promise that God made, the one in Revelation 21:4 that says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." In the meantime, we’re living in this shitty mess, the old order of things. (Excuse the language in a blog about faith. Sometimes it’s the only word that will do.) And in the meantime, it’s really really hard to have hope in this mess. It’s hard to hear of divisions and hatred; it’s nearly impossible to believe in that promise. But still. I have to cling to that same hope for humanity, even if that change doesn’t come in the timing I desire. (Or in my lifetime.) That doesn’t mean I don’t keep trying and praying and posting and pleading. It doesn’t mean that I sigh and give up in resignation. It just means that I do NOT give up my hope. It means that His ways are higher than mine. In “Your Hands” by JJ Heller she sings the Truth that “one day You will set all things right.” That is where my trust is today. Not in my words. Not in the government. Not in humanity’s ability to get it right on their own. I trust in God’s power to transform hearts of stone into hearts of feeling flesh. Come, Lord Jesus. Set all things right. This month my husband and I are taking a class titled Hard Conversations: An Introduction to Racism. This week the lessons are designed to lay the groundwork of fostering dialogue, not debate. We are digging in deep to understand structural and systemic racism. I’ve had two major take-aways so far. #1: Based on videos from Brené Brown and Thich Nhat Hanh, I’ve been chewing on the idea of compassionate listening and how it’s related to empathy. Too often we are worried about solving the problem or sharing our own opinion on a topic. Instead we need to do the hard work of really listening and discovering what unmet needs are being described. Sympathy uses the phrasing, “Well, at least….”, but empathy says, “I don’t know what to say, but thank you for sharing this with me.” That is where I want my students to be before they spout off opinions. This is where we all should be as we examine issues of social justice in our country. #2: After listening to the raw story of a black woman describing the racism she had experienced since a young age, I was struck by her description of the constant fear she lives with because of systemic racism. She walks in stores with her hands in her pockets so she won’t be seen as a shoplifter; she is scared to drive in her car for fear of a run-in with police. And then she addressed white folks like myself who are scared to have conversations about race. I am scared to engage in dialogue, while she is afraid to walk down the street. My privilege runs deep, so I must learn to face the fear and use my voice. I’ve been ruminating on these ideas, and then on Thursday night I received an email from our school’s athletic director relaying a message from the Iowa High School Athletic Association. Attached was a flyer about flag etiquette along with the following message: “The IHSAA would never infringe on one's right to freedom of expression, but I did want to call your attention to a flag etiquette piece created by the IHSAA, IGHSAU, IHSMA & IHSAA in 2006.” Did you catch that BUT? You have freedom of expression, but this is how we want you to express it. How quickly we have forgotten that we live in a country founded on protest. What do you think the Boston Tea Party was? (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t a bunch of guys sitting around in fancy hats and wigs drinking tea.) The Underground Railroad wasn’t a ride at an amusement park. And Rosa Parks had truly had enough. It was protest. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” And now our country is up in arms because of the way some folks are choosing to protest. We have hard conversations at our house about race and privilege; my boys know the stories of Freddie Grey and Tamir Rice. Now we will add Terence Crutcher to the list. They know they are not to be seen outside of our home playing with guns. They know that they will not be afforded the same privilege that their white peers will receive. They know the dangers of hoodies and listening to music and driving and walking in the wrong neighborhood. They’ve heard us talk about the unfair sentencing of the Stanford rapist, and they recognize the injustice when privilege is at play. You know what else my young sons understand? They understand that being against police brutality doesn’t mean they are against police. They understand that saying Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter. They understand that you can be at once patriotic and still want better for your country. They are 11 and 12, and they get that. So many others do not. They flood my newsfeed with their poison, their poison that feels like a direct attack on my precious family. Dang, my fear can be palpable. If I had been at the game last Friday during the National Anthem, I don’t know what I would have done. But I do know this. For now I can use my words. This, right now, is how I kneel. Protest is powerful and necessary where change is needed. Freedom of expression comes with no “buts.” More of my white friends need to be in on these conversations. As Dr. King wrote, again behind the bars of the Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This week in English 2 we discussed the difference between a rant and an effective argument. This came about because I recently implemented Kelly Gallagher’s Article of the Week assignment with that group, and it quickly came to my attention that they had never been taught the basics of argument. (For those unfamiliar, the premise of this activity is that each week students read a nonfiction article, often about a current topic. They show evidence of active reading and understanding and then write a one-page response.) Last week’s article was about a deported mother living in Tijuana. I received responses that called the mother in the article “stupid,” responses that said “the illegals” were taking jobs that other Americans needed. And here’s the thing. I’ve been doing cartwheels in this circus long enough to realize that not all of my students will share my same worldview. (Duh!) Politically, religiously, socially... we come from different worlds. So while I might not share the same opinions on the current issues as my students, I do have a responsibility to teach them how to share those views effectively. I projected a t-chart highlighting some of the differences between a rant and effective argument. A rant relies on emotion; an argument focuses on claims supported by evidence. A rant is often wild and impassioned; an effective argument is logical and reasonable. Students nodded as I presented this information. Then I got to the last row on the chart. A logic-based argument is more likely to change someone’s mind than a rant. I posed a question. “How many of you have been influenced by a rant?” Several students raised their hands or nodded their heads. “You mean to tell me,” I continued, “that yelling is an effective method for changing your mind?” “Yes,” one boy agreed. “If someone is yelling really loudly and passionately, then I will probably listen.” “But don’t you want facts and evidence?” I pushed. “Nah,” several of them responded. And there you have it. We live in a society no longer persuaded by facts. I pushed the rewind button for my students. Using a graphic organizer, we chose the elementary route and planned out an argument about the superiority of dogs as pets. (Sorry, folks, but I’m a dog person.) We examined counter-arguments and together came up with answers to refute the opposition. At the end of the lesson I asked, “How is that different from a rant?” “Well, I’ve thought about the other side now,” one student answered. And that’s the hard work, isn’t it? That’s what I want for my students. I want them to examine their beliefs and question their biases. I want them to continually ask themselves, “WHY do I believe that?” And I get pushback and side-eyes and heavy sighs. But still. I dig in and do the work because THAT is the kind of world I want to live in. I don’t want to live in the world of social media ranting and either-or thinking. I don’t want my sons to grow up in a world where if you think differently than I do, you’re my enemy. I want dialogue and discussion, and I want democracy. One step at a time. Today at the end of the class we wrote anonymous encouraging notes to members of our learning community. We recently read Shirley Jackson’s “The Possibility of Evil” where the main character writes hate-filled anonymous messages. We chose to rise above that. Students thanked classmates for being “an awesome teammate.” One student told a favorite teacher that she was “the only reason I still like school.” We wrote notes to a lunch lady and the janitor; we thanked the school secretary and counselor. We spread love, not hate. This work is hard, the work of dismantling prejudices and discovering new beliefs and confirming old ones. But it is work that I love, that I am lucky to do. Rant over. And then they all looked at me like I was crazier than they had originally thought. It wasn't the first time I had received such looks during my sometimes-unusual methods and strategies to get students to think differently about writing. (During the first week of class we do an activity with Play-Doh designed to get them to understand the importance of the writing process and the difference between their creative and critical brains. Some of their creations are pretty amazing.) My College Comp course starts with a brief narrative unit designed to get our writing legs under us. With mini-lessons from Barry Lane and Penny Kittle and mentor texts from Sherman Alexie, George Orwell, and David Sedaris, we work on descriptive snapshots and exploding a moment. Eventually we have a story. And then I introduce the importance of an impressive first line. We talk about dramatic leads and misleading leads. We discuss introducing the narrator and even (gasp!) starting in the middle of a story. Then my students bring in completed drafts, and I bring out the scissors, pulling on an experience I had as part of the Ozarks Writing Project at Missouri State University. The you've-lost-your-mind faces came this semester when I had them cut up their essays. Literally. My students are familiar with the language of revision. Early in the semester we talk about the definition of the word: to see again. This activity enables them to do just that. I modeled with a memoir I've been working on about my first year of teaching. My original first line was this: "From the early age of five, I knew that I would be a teacher." "What questions does that make you ask?" I challenge my students. "Um, nothing, really." I hadn't captured them, so obviously my first line needed some work. I took out the scissors and cut my narrative into strips across the page, attempting to keep my cuts at sentence breaks. Then without thinking, I shuffled the strips and taped them randomly together. "Your teacher is telling you not to think. I bet that doesn't happen very often," I joked. At this point Sophie muttered, "I don't know what you're doing, but you have a degree, so I guess I'll trust you." After cutting and taping my narrative together, my new first line was this: "In all of my college classes on learning and classroom management, I never imagined a scenario like this." "Now what questions do you have?" I asked. "Ooooh, what happened?" one girl blurted out. "This sounds like a good story. Tell us," another demanded. And just like that, I had a lead that drew in my audience. This line was from the middle of my original narrative, so now I had to work at flowing things together, but I knew that I would have a much more powerful piece of writing. This strategy doesn't work for every student. Some of them end up with crazy new leads that don't make sense, but it does give a handful of students from each class a new beginning. And the rest of the students still see the value. Sometimes in our learning, we have to look beyond the chronological narrative because sometimes not every story starts at the beginning. And that might involve a bit of blind trust. There's truth there for me as a teacher, too. Sometimes I have to let high school juniors and seniors play with Play-Doh and allow my classroom become a flurry of scissors and strips of massacred narratives. Sometimes, no, often, that is where the magic happens. Yesterday I read this article highlighting studies that liken screens to "electronic cocaine" or "digital heroin." Today I'm chewing on it as an educator, a mother, and a person. I'll start on the educator level because this is, after all, a teaching blog. I work in a 1:1 environment where for the last several years all of my students have carried their own personal laptops to class. This has been transformative for me as a writing teacher because I no longer have to schedule time in the computer lab for students to work on essays. The use of Google Classroom, class blogs, and websites like Padlet and Quizlet have streamlined the way we communicate in my classroom. The list of benefits goes on and on, but still, I've seen the drawbacks. And of course I think some learning activities just work better with the low-tech version. Maybe it's just of my age, but I still prefer to read an article on paper. Each year we're told to print less, but I just can't require my students to read and annotate Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" on a screen. A handful of my students might prefer to use a digital note-taking system, but according to anecdotal evidence, the majority still prefer to underline and take notes in the margin the old-fashioned way. Similarly, our daily quickwrites are done by hand because I want my students to learn to silence their creative critic. Instead, I want them to focus on producing without the constant temptation of the delete key. And I could devote an entire blog post to the distraction element. I have a student who consistently opens up a window on his browser devoted to looking at hunting rifles. Every day when work time is given that involves the tech device, this student is shopping for the latest and greatest weapon. Our school does use Lan School to help with this issue, but at the end of the day, I'm still working with teenagers with developing brains. They are prone to be distracted, and for several of them who are already addicted to their cell phones, I feel like placing them in front of devices all day long and asking them to stay focused is a ridiculous request. Don't even get me started on YouTube. Yes, I see many educational merits, but I also see study hall students waste entire class periods watching mindless videos of cats scared by cucumbers and teens playing pranks on each other. (Disclaimer: I LOVE cat/cucumber videos.) As a mom, I face similar tensions. Sometimes I feel like the only parent of middle school students who don't have cell phones. At the same time, I enjoy seeing and hearing my kids interact with my husband as they all play Clash of Clans together. And of course I would be lying if I said I don't mind the occasional hour of silence on long car trips when my kids are watching a movie in the backseat. (Chris and I can actually listen to NPR or have an uninterrupted conversation.) But I don't want my kids to become junkies. I don't want their lives to be ruled by the screen, so I try to achieve balance. How do we know? My sons (5th and 6th grade) are also in 1:1 classrooms. The newness has worn off a bit on my oldest, but for my youngest, it's still exciting. Pretty much every afternoon I have to redirect him away from the "dinosaur game" that fills his empty moments in the classroom. I don't for one second discredit his classroom teachers. I think they do a phenomenal job, but again, when we're dealing with kids with undeveloped brains, distraction is often the name of the game. Then I think about my own personal love/hate relationship with screens. Some of my best friends were made through adoptive mom blogging, and while we can occasionally see each other in real life, the majority of our day-to-day connections take place on Facebook. I can't imagine what this parenting journey would have been without them. I get teaching resources and access social activist Tweets that change the way I see the world. I read a daily devotional that gets me centered each morning. All of these aspects are incredible valuable. But of course there is the downside. I found myself meaninglessly scrolling through my newsfeed way more than necessary this summer, so much so that my husband and I made an agreement that our handheld screens would be put away on Sundays. I've also made a commitment to stay away from all social media besides Twitter during school hours. But again, is this enough? Am I achieving balance? I don't want to miss my life because I'm looking at a screen. I don't want to my encouraging my sons' potential addictions. But I also know we're living in an ever-changing world where technology is king. How are you as an educator or parent handling this highly addictive material that is constantly at our fingertips? |
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September 2020
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