Accept the fluster*

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I am looking for my sunglasses. Again. I’ve been planning lessons – poetry broadsides for the 9s, I think, to emphasize the connection between word and image, but what will I do with the 10s? – and I’m not fully focused. I walk back into the kitchen and check the table. They still aren’t there. And they’re not on top of the shelves near the phone or next to the printer or even in the TV room near the lamp. They’re also not in the cubbies by the front door or on the stairs.

By now I have a blanket over my arm and a glass in my hand. I head upstairs to put the blanket in its bedroom and then downstairs to put the glass in the sink.

Four kids are already in the car. We’ve gathered our children and some neighbour kids and we’re heading to the Arboretum for a “romp.” This mostly involves tree climbing, but will also include looking for frogs, finding very large sticks and rolling down hills. Even though I will likely not do any of those things, I would like my sunglasses.

My husband has moved into the hallway, waiting patiently near the front door as I check the kitchen table one more time. After putting the glass in the sink, I’m here. The sunglasses are not by the refrigerator either.

He is nonjudgmental, my husband, whether because he understands my fluster or because he is used to it by now, I do not know. He usually helps me search for things for a minute or two, then moves to the hallway and eventually, quietly, into the car, leaving me to search for whatever I’m missing.

My sunglasses are not next to the refrigerator, but I do locate some sunglasses left over from my cousin’s wedding last fall. Or last spring? I should remember this. Let’s see… the baby is 7 months old… so….

These sunglasses are not the ones I’ve been looking for, but they are going to have to do. I pick them up and take a few steps toward the front of the house. I’d like to go meet that baby this summer. If I see my friend from college… when is that?… well, whenever it is, can we then get down to see my cousin’s baby? And when is Beth visiting? I should probably send her a link to “things to do in…”

I hear the door close. My husband has moved out of the front hall and into the car. I spot another pair of sunglasses – where were they hiding the last time I looked here? – on the bookshelf, but still not the right ones. Why do I suddenly have so many pairs of sunglasses? When did this happen? Nevermind. I have the wedding sunglasses. Good enough.

I move toward the front door, nearly stopping to pick up some nerf darts – no! I move on. I am thinking about the lessons for my 10th grade class. Again. Is the work actually “applied” or am I fooling myself? I grab my keys from the hook we installed so I can easily find them. I put on the sunglasses and head out the door.

(In case you are wondering, my sunglasses were on the shelves over the TV. I found them at 9:30 pm. While I was doing something else.)

*the title is taken from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem One Art

Tie, tie again

Screen Shot 2018-03-18 at 7.58.50 AM — See more Slice of Life posts every Tuesday at Two Writing Teachers.

My son is learning to tie his shoes. It is not easy. It’s not easy to teach and it’s not easy to do. Learning to tie shoes, it turns out, requires desire, patience, persistence and no small amount of fine motor dexterity.

I watch him carefully cross the laces. He does not pull them tight before racing to form the first loop. Bunny ear. He pinches it together, hard, high above the shoe. Too high, I think, but I say nothing because he is already on to the next step, the one that gets us both every time. He takes the second lace, loops it around the first and… randomly stabs it through a space. He pulls. The maneuver does not work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. So far, neither he nor I can figure out what makes the difference. I’m guessing it’s luck; he thinks it’s magic. Same same.

The bus will arrive in a few minutes. Does he have time for another attempt? Before I even finish the thought, he is pulling and pinching, looping and stabbing again. Without looking up he says, “You do the other one.” His focus is unbroken. Nope, it doesn’t work again.

He scooches his foot towards me, “Your turn.” If he is disappointed this morning, it does not show. This is just part of the routine. How many times has he tried this? How many more before he will be able to do this automatically? How many before he is teaching his own child, trying to remember the steps that elude him right now?

When was the last time I worked like this to master something? When did I last work through failures, secure in the knowledge that eventually I would get it? When did I last believe practice would lead to inevitable success?

Today, my son stands up, shoulders his backpack and skips out the door. His shoes don’t fall off. He knows that eventually he’ll be able to tie those laces. He’ll try again tomorrow.

Sink Holes and Lava Flows

On Mondays, if I remember, I ask my class how their weekend was, though sometimes by last period the weekend seems far away. I don’t have any research on this, but somehow it seems like talking about their weekend honors their life outside of school and says that what they experience matters. Also, sometimes I glean interesting tidbits about them, and pretty much always I can get a sense of the class energy from the way the discussion flows. So I ask.

Today, before I even finished the question, one girl was shaking her head and making a face. It was not a good weekend. She wants to move. Uh-oh. I looked at her hard – I know of several reasons why she might want to move, so I wanted to tread carefully, but I also knew that if she spoke up, she might make connections in the classroom, and she might find support, so I took the plunge: “Anything you can share?”

There was a shooting just four doors down from her house; she had heard the shots. She didn’t feel safe. “It was a homicide!” called in a boy across the room. Then he added, almost casually, “I live around the corner. A guy got killed.” I was shocked, but my students were not. Most of them live in the neighborhood, and they had lots to share. They talked about gun violence in their lives: they have heard it, seen it, been affected by it. I wanted to ask questions, find out if they were scared, know what they have seen, but I also didn’t want to push them or puncture the fragile veneer of safety they had created. One boy said he was not afraid because he wasn’t home when the shooting occurred. One girl said most of the shootings are on the 8th floor of her building, and she doesn’t live on that floor. As they talked, I realized that I didn’t know what to do.

I struggled to figure out my next steps, but my students didn’t hesitate. “Miss, did you hear about the sink hole in New Zealand? It’s GIANT!” “Yeah, and the volcano in Hawaii – you can see the lava!” I shook my head – I hadn’t followed any news this weekend, so I knew nothing. They were really proud that they knew things I didn’t. And just like that, we were talking about the changing world. We searched for articles, collected interesting words (“gigantic cavernous void”), talked about potential found poetry, watched videos. I complimented them for being so aware of the world – they weren’t doing this when the semester started. Most students participated in our discussion; everyone looked at the sinkhole video over and over. We couldn’t believe that it just opened up overnight, that the farmer just happened upon it. We couldn’t imagine having lava flow down our street. We decided that if we were in Hawaii we would NOT be dumb enough to go near the flowing lava to try to take pictures (though I’m pretty sure some of the boys were lying). And then we moved on to the rest of the lesson.

Now it’s evening, and I can’t shake off the shots that my students buried in that sink hole, that they burned beneath the lava flow. In case I had forgotten, my students reminded me today that they lead real lives that can sometimes make school seem beside the point. As we talked in class, we tried to imagine what it would be like to walk somewhere we knew well and happen upon a giant sinkhole in ground that had seemed solid just the day before. I think that actually happened to me today. Their world is not mine. I am shocked, overwhelmed, embarrassed again and again that I can think that I know who they are. I love them, but I know nothing.

Fragmented

6:30 am
Just going to try to get this written before the kids get downstairs. Don’t expect it to be my best slice, but things are *busy* these days. Nothing like taking over a class mid-semester (and supporting the two teachers who are picking up the other ones) to keep me on my toes. If I can squeeze out 10 minutes, I’m going to call this my slice because today will be full.

[The kids woke up. Breakfast. Out the door.]

10:30am
Ok, so I didn’t finish this morning. Maybe I can edit this afternoon & cobble something together. One good thing about teaching writing is that, if I write alongside them, I get a little writing time, too. This week & next we’re looking at integrating music and writing. Today’s prompt is Beethoven’s Minuet in G & they’re supposedly thinking about atmosphere. I don’t know what they’re writing, but at least most of them are physically writing. Of course, some are not. Some stare, almost defiant. Two are chatting.

[Another teacher came in, looking for my advice about a student with an IEP. Turns out that IEPs don’t go away just because I picked up an extra class…]

2:10
Now’s my moment. If I slice now I can do a quick edit when I get home & up it goes. Hmm… what to write about ? Book Sale – we’ve collected used books all year long to sell at the kids’ school’s Book Sale. This weekend we sorted a boxed hundreds of books. Maybe describe the physical feeling of books – the handling of them. But easier and easier for me to give away (though not my own)! Today we took 624 books (well, more or less: we fudged the numbers a little so that they were even) to the school at 8am. We ferried them out of the gray minivan, across the street, up the steps, through the front door, and into the lobby. Pause. Into the gym and onto the stage. Box after box. Sorted and

[Another teacher came in with a question. Then the principal swang by with a question. Then the Guidance Counselor called.]

7:02pm
Here I am. I have 13 minutes until the boys come tearing into the house & we start the bedtime routine. I promised a friend I would return her call 12 minutes ago. One of the cats just yowled in the backyard (where a skunk sprayed last night). The only edits I’ve managed are to add the interruptions.

Today I’m fragmented. Reflection is hard to come by. Story is escaping me and even the details slip away. I need to get my head wrapped around this new course, need to get to know my students, calm their parents, help my sick colleague, pay attention to the students I already love, play with my own boys, laugh with my husband… I need to feed the cats, make the lunches, wash the dishes. All these little pieces of my life & I’m just going to have to enjoy them as they go by because that’s all I’m going to get right now.

Somebody in some blog somewhere [Update – this is the post I was thinking of] recently posted about kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. What I’m realizing as I write is that kintsugi depends on having something that is broken, something that is fragmented. I bet the literature on kintsugi doesn’t tell about the moment the vase slipped from her hands, the way the pot hit the hard earth, how she wept when she saw the mess, how she had to take a deep breath, remind herself that the fragments themselves held beauty. No one talks about the hope she mustered as she gathered the shards and put them carefully into a safe place, fingers crossed that someday there would be gold – or words, or love – enough to create beauty from the fragments. She just has to wait.

7:15 – the door just opened (they really are good kids). I’m going to post without the Slice of Life picture or anything. And no editing. Deep breath – here it goes. Maybe I’ll edit and add the picture later.

Blooming

When I woke up this morning, my job description included teaching Special Education and Grade 10 Applied English. We’re six or so weeks from the end of the semester, so I assumed I would continue apace through June. Not so. By the time school started this morning, I had become a Literary Arts (aka Writing) teacher. (And also, of course, because teaching is a little crazy, I’m still a Special Education and Grade 10 Applied English teacher.) I teach at an Arts Magnet school, and one of our teachers can’t finish out the school year with this class. I have been asked to step in.

Am I ready? I’ll admit that I’m nervous and also pretty darn excited. To think: I started this blog a mere two months ago. Two months ago I challenged myself to actually start the writing I’ve dreamed of doing; two months ago I started sharing my thoughts in public; and today here you are, reading this. And here I am, getting ready to teach writing. Is two months (plus umpteen years) enough time to call myself a writer? It’s going to have to be.

Here’s what I know: Yesterday, the crocuses in my yard bloomed. They’re sneaky ones, those crocuses. We’re on the shady side of the street, so things take their time coming out. One day, the yard is completely brown and dead-looking; the next, purple and white blooms appear, fully-formed, seemingly out of nowhere. I know that they did not spring from nothing: they’ve been pushing up through the warming earth, making their way skyward long before I am able to see. They’ve put up tiny green tips under the leaves, sheltered from the cold, testing the air. And when it’s finally time to blossom, they have no reason to hide. The blooms are exuberant, wholehearted, and suddenly it is Spring.

Here’s what I think: I’m a shady side of the street sort of writer, coming along in my own time, tentatively testing the air. Am I ready? Not sure I have the choice. Once Spring arrives, it’s time to bloom.

slice-of-life_individual — Just about every Tuesday I blog for the Slice of Life challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. You can read more posts on that blog.

Night light

See more posts at Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life .

It’s bedtime, but he is just home from his friend’s house and full of energy. He’s not ready to stop bouncing. As I hurry him towards bed, he dances about. In the bathroom he hops on one foot and tosses a balled up sock towards the laundry basket. It misses. No matter. He switches feet and does it again. It misses again.

“You need to pick those up,” I scold.

He wiggles towards the corner to fetch the wayward sock balls, bumping things with his boogie-ing butt. One something falls, kerplop, into the toilet.

He stops.

“Uh-oh.”

An old night light. No longer necessary but it can’t stay there. He looks into the toilet to confirm what he already knows, then he looks at me. Quickly, he glances around the bathroom: he can take care of this himself. He grabs the toilet brush, gives it a disgusted look, and goes fishing in the toilet. Turns out a toilet brush doesn’t make a good fishing rod. The night light is wedged.

“Um, Mom?” His face has fallen. He is chagrined. But then, curiosity fires in him, “What are we going to do?”

My sleeve is already rolled up. Wordlessly, I plunge my hand into the toilet, fetch the offending night light, and deposit it in the trash. He sucks in his breath.

“Have you done that before?” He is impressed.

“Yes,” I say simply, as I soap my hands again and again.

“Thanks.”

Then, casually confident of his mother’s competence, he dances on out of the bathroom, pausing long enough to say, “Good thing I don’t need that night light anymore.”

Standardized test answer

Today our Grade 10 students wrote the standardized literacy test they must pass in order to graduate from high school. I supervised the extended time room and silently cheered them on as they worked. I cannot encourage or help them, but I can smile, wink and even pray. I also peeked at some of the questions. I cannot share the prompts here, but I can share two of my own answers…

Short answer response (6 lines provided):

I can swiftly and easily respond to inane prompts. I can generate a story for any question no matter how banal, pull semi-believable facts willy-nilly from the air, and find the perfect example for even the most general of queries, all while employing the Oxford comma. I can write complete sentences, including participial phrases cleverly separated from a main clause with commas for extra points. I can vary sentence length. I can repress my desperate longing to throw in an effective sentence fragment for style; I can restrain myself because, above all, I possess the skill of passing standardized tests.
(exactly 6 lines in Google Docs)

Opinion response – maximum two handwritten pages.
I’ve done a sneaky poetic response because
a) it’s Poetry month and
b) I don’t actually want to write a one page response to the question and
c) one of my students worked tirelessly on this one, and my heart broke a little for her.

Standardized Test Opinion Response – a Golden Shovel Poem

She flexes her tired hand then gets back to work, suddenly knowing that no matter what she does
Today in the library, tonight she will do the homework
Assigned by the teacher who looked her in the eyes and said, “You can improve,
You will improve” then gave her harder work because she is learning.

Eye of the storm

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants.

It’s quiet in my house. Our Easter guests have gone; my children are off with a friend, pretending that sunshine = Spring even though the thermometer says otherwise; my partner is at work, getting ready for a busy week. Even the cats are sleeping. Me? I’m sitting at the kitchen table, wandering through students’ notebooks, trying to get a handle on what they already know and where they need to go next.

It’s a patient little quiet here. I love the whirlwind of holidays and visitors – the cooking, the stories, the laughter – so I always feel a little bereft when my extended family leaves. The house has already settled back into its regular creaks and groans with only the discovery of an occasional missed Easter egg or some leftover confetti to remind me of what was reality mere hours ago. I’ve done a lot of laundry; most of the week’s food is prepared; much of what needs doing is done. I should tidy some more, but it can wait. Right now, I am still.

Tomorrow we will all be back to work and school. Texts are already flying about who will carpool where and when. There’s a Spec Ed meeting tomorrow morning before school and a Department Heads’ meeting to attend tomorrow night, then Parent-Teacher conferences loom on Thursday. When I think about the week ahead, I know I need to make decisions about mentor texts, book talks, poems to share, feedback, and more. I can feel the weight wanting to settle on my shoulders, but I’m not quite ready for it. Not yet.

I don’t know where this calm has come from. I know I am in the eye of the storm, but right now my kitchen is warm and my work feels useful. Right now, the quiet envelopes me and I am breathing in its unexpected serenity.

May I remember this when the storm returns.

Update: Everyone returned; chaos ensued. I spilled both water and flour on myself, one after the other. The older child had to write a speech; the younger did not. For inexplicable reasons, I decided that I really needed to pot some spider plant babies. And we had four loads of laundry to fold before bed. We are back in the storm. I’m trying to hold on to the calm.

How to write an ending

Ok. I have to do this. It is the final post and it must be written. Let me tell you, I’ve been overthinking this one. So I followed a tried-and-true strategy: I procrastinated. I’ve been an evening writer all month, but I decided that this would be a morning post. I mentally made notes on several fascinating ways to write this, but I conveniently rejected or forgot them all. And now here I sit, facing a blank page, and it’s the last day of SOLC18.

Should I say thank you? How on earth could I say thank you in a way that reveals what this month has meant to me? Do you know that I literally found this challenge randomly on Day 3? I don’t even remember how I found it. I have started to believe that something in the universe knew what I needed and placed it in front of my face. And why did I sign up? Naivete? I had no idea what this would entail. I remember thinking, “Well, I keep saying I want to start a reflective blog, how hard can this be?” I didn’t know that I would end up spending 2 hours a day on this challenge, that I would fall in love with commenting, that I would get to know other bloggers, that my heart would burst open with stories and thoughts and observations.

Should I tell you about my happiness? How can I explain what it feels like to read each comment? To read others’ stories? Do you know that my whole world has expanded? Even my 9-year-old has noticed my new demeanor. I feel supported, encouraged, surrounded by a group of like-minded colleagues who will help me grow and improve in my writing and my teaching practice. I have a whole list of books to read. My library hold list is a mile long & I’ve already discovered amazing books.

Should I write about my sadness? How I have realized that I desperately need to connect with like-minded colleagues in my own space & cultivate those relationships more than I have? I will miss the daily affirmations of this community but I can resign myself to weekly, I think. Do you know that I am embarrassed about how many books on teaching I haven’t read? I am so behind. Seriously. And here I thought I was pretty on top of things. So… I have resolved to start a PLN here rather than continuing to wait for it to magically develop. I can do that. And I can read – oh yes, I can read. And write.

Should I talk about how my writing has changed? How at the beginning I carefully curated what I wrote, mining old journals and notebooks for well-crafted moments? And how I was not going to share my personal life – only professional. As if they were not intertwined! Nevertheless, I was stern with myself. And then, I let go a little. And you kept reading and commenting. Even when I shared a *poem* which is terrifying to me. You all, you said nice things about my poetry. And then yesterday I wrote what was happening *in front of me*. THAT IS CRAZY. And still you commented. I am amazed.

Should I talk about my excitement for the future? This challenge has opened up new vistas for me. I know that I am changing, becoming, moving along a new path as a teacher and person as a result of this month. I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but I’m going to coddiwomple along with glee.

But no, it is a Slice of Life challenge. So for my last slice of this life-changing month, I will share this moment: I woke up with my son’s small warm body snuggled next to mine, his eyes staring intently at my face, his breath warming my nose. He does not sleep in our bed, but he often wakes me like this. How does he manage to sneak in there? “Are you awake?” he whispered, “I want to play Starbound without cheating.” Downstairs, he sat on my lap, reading the words on the screen – words that were meaningless to him the last time he played this game six months ago – leaning against me, stroking my face as I got him set up. He is 7 and 17 all at once, this child of mine. When the game finally loaded, I said, “Ok, you play, I’m going to write” and he responded, “Oh good, that makes you happy.”

And it does. It really really does.

Thank you. See you on Tuesdays.

slice-of-life_individual

Slice of Life Day 31, March 2018

Thanks to Two Writing Teachers for this wonderful month of inspiration.

Late Night History

It’s late and the long weekend has begun. My mother and my aunt have arrived. The kids are asleep, my mother too. Me? I’m exhausted – sleep has eluded me several nights this week – but up late trying to write my slice for tomorrow. I am overwhelmed at the thought of this month ending, overwhelmed by the supportive community here, overwhelmed by what I’ve learned and what I’ve experienced. I have changed, and I had planned to write about it. But I’m sitting in at the kitchen listening to my husband and my aunt, deep in animated conversation. Honestly… how can I write or reflect when they are talking history?

For my husband and my aunt, history is alive and fully present. They are teary while talking about Uncle Pete (my great uncle) finding a baby during WW2 and carrying it with him through France until he found a family to care for it weeks. My aunt has a picture of the baby on her phone, but no one knows what happened after Pete gave the baby back. As Pete was dying, he wondered about that baby.

UPDATE: Here’s the picture of “Pete’s baby”
Pete's baby.jpg

And now my aunt is telling another story… and there are more tears – for a soldier who died at 19, for his buddy who lived and married his friend’s widow, for his revelation 50 years later that he had been living his buddy’s life for him and, after all that, he was afraid if his wife died first she would meet his buddy in Heaven and he would lose her forever. He died minutes before she did. These men, their stories, they are real and important right now in this kitchen.

And now they are laughing through the tears – for Uncle Pete who probably would have been diagnosed with PTSD and swore to God on a battlefield that if he ever got home he would never leave Rte 27 again. How he RSVP’d for a wedding by writing on the back of the invitation “Sorry, can’t leave Rte 27 yet.” How he really thought that Eleanor Roosevelt and Churchill were having an affair. And about the seemingly endless keg of beer in his basement…

And now they are on to Band of Brothers. And Saving Private Ryan. And Frederick Forsyth’s “The Shepherd.” Movies and stories and books that have embodied the stories that move them to tears. Their passion, the way they build on one another, their fully focused presence in this kitchen, far from any battle – it’s absorbing.

And here I sit, listening, writing, and marveling at their passion, at how stories bring these men into our kitchen, at how important the stories are. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn the end of this Slice of Life Challenge. Tonight, I’m listening to two of my favourite people discuss their passion like it is alive. What could be better?