"shut up and line up!"

Five of my six classes are still bearable. Some humor, some affection, some order, still remain after all this time.

The one that is totally out-of-their-minds impossible is my friggin homeroom.



They run around the room. The boys tackle and hit each other; the girls giggle and even shriek with laughter.

They change seats. They won't work. They won't shut up.

In general, they dramatically and flamboyantly flout my instructions.

Much of the time I roll my eyes at them and do some grading. Sometimes (in the name of total and utter inconsistency, which as we all know, is the way to make sure that dogs and children pay no attention to anything you say) I really get pissed and I call a bunch of parents, which I did this afternoon. Nine or ten of them I think. Several girls ran out of the room crying.

Ah, the little darlings.

all fired up

So I got fired today, finally. (OK, so I was "not asked back for the fall." Same dif afaic). I knew it was coming and didn't cry, got through the day ok. Maybe I'm getting used to it.

The shocking thing was how many of my friends also got the axe, including some very good teachers. I guess it's political. I don't know. Some of them were really, really stunned. Others said it was just as well, they wanted to leave anyway.

In my case, the administration did warn me three times, and I wasn't able to pull my shit together, so it was neither unreasonable nor unexpected.

The principal and I discussed that I had done better with the honors class than with the regular students, and that I would probably be better suited to a more selective school or a gifted program of some kind. (I said I considered this more of a failing than something to be proud of, but that's the way it is right now). He said they'd provide letters of rec and I suggested that maybe they could say that explicitly.

(And what a contrast to my previous psycho principal! She would not write a letter nor allow anyone on her staff to write a letter, due to fear of lawsuits - i.e. if I had documentation saying anything positive, supposedly I would sue the school for letting me go!)

However, my spirits continued to fall all day, and toward the end I realized why: I don't care so much about this job. But I feel like I'm looking ahead to a bleak summer. Job hunting and ensuing anxiety are always fun. Lack of structure does also tend to be difficult for me. We don't have any money to travel anymore (maybe we'll drive to Minneapolis...) so I feel like there's nothing much to look forward to.

And then... perhaps even more so... if/when I achieve that wonderful goal - a new job - it is hard for me to imagine going through this whole process AGAIN. The new school, the terror, the struggle, figuring things out, not knowing what to do, constant stress and confusion... Perhaps the same constant failure. Some people say it gets better in your fifth year. I don't know if I'm going to last that long. But I don't know what else I'd do.

Well... one foot in front of the other...

I leave you with a lil quote, and gratitude for all of you.

"To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is an understanding—in spite of distances or thoughts unexpressed—that can make of this earth a garden."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

i've officially lost it

i used to call my students "guys" or "hey!" last year. (as in, "hey! quit shoving! get in line!")

this year i've switched to "ladies and gentlemen," after noticing how much nicer it sounds when other teachers say it. it also makes the rest of the sentence come out nicer, as in, "ladies and gentlemen, please stop shoving each other and stand in line appropriately!"

(the Gary Larsen cartoon of the man talking to the dog, and all the dog hears is "blah blah blah Ginger," pops into my head, which leads me to the memory of the grown-ups on Charlie Brown cartoons and their indecipherable "mwah mwah" speech.... didn't take my ADD pills today, and i kinda forgot how i am without them - it's actually not all bad...)

ANYWAY.

i just accidentally started to address the dogs as "ladies and gentlemen" right before telling them to "get over here."

there went my last marble.

wow. depressing.

it's over. i made it. i survived. i'm still standing at the end. that counts for something, i'm fairly certain.

i had a little "you could do so much better, i believe in you, do your best and you can achieve great things" talk with each of my students, gave them their report cards, and released them - bubbling and effervescing - into the summer air. in my memory they sort of disappear into the sunlight as they walk out the door...

i wish i had remembered to say, "i wish you all the best, and i'll never forget you" to more of them. but i know it doesn't matter. regardless of what i might have wanted to say to these kids, i've already communicated what they will most remember from me, in a million ways... from just showing up every day, to all the times i told them how smart they are, to the not-a-lot-but-still-too-many times i screamed "what is wrong with you!!??"

we suffered through a looooong year together. we made each other feel angry, powerless, frustrated, miserable, hopeless and sad. on a very few occasions we felt other things... a sense of accomplishment, achievement, hope. very few. i should have provided more of those for them. i should have done a lot of things. let it go.

but it's hard to let it go... i spent much of the last week telling myself, "let it go, it's over" about one thing and another. "it's over." it's over and i have definitely not triumphed, though i am still standing.

today cleaning my room i swept stacks and files and piles of their work into big garbage bags... their hopeful, determined, eager, reluctant, agonized work... my sweet children... just children... i wish so many things about the past and future for them. it was my work, too, going into the garbage bags. i love them. i mourn them. i wish, i wish, i wish.

i came home and went to sleep. i don't want to wake up. wake up into another hard time, a differently hard time, a familiar unpleasantness. the summer stretches ahead. i have to find a job, unpack my office (never unpacked since we moved in last year...), do my share around the house, and not get too depressed. Loopy is depressed and the house is like a cave, a den, a refuge, a pit. it's seductive and miserable to just stay here in the dark all day, shades pulled, eating unhealthy food and sleeping a lot. i want to do that. i fear and loathe the idea.

i'm glad i have therapy tomorrow.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Post Script:

90 minutes and a good cry later, there is hope for the patient. Therapy and meditation must finally be sinking in (even though I haven't meditated in months)... while crying on Loopy's lap i remembered that how i feel now is just how i feel, and it doesn't mean that the whole summer really will be miserable or that i really did fail to do anything useful this year. i remembered to just feel how i feel and try to refrain from all the fantasies about the past and future and how awful it all is.

strangely this seemed to work. the feelings passed like a quick storm and i feel raw, unstable, but less depressed... as i passed through the kitchen i was moved to make myself a quick meal, a simple self-care gesture that i haven't made in days. somehow i even brewed myself a cup of tea.

As i said, there is hope for the patient.

hysterical ineffective

we are watching "The Dog Whisperer." a surprisingly large number of people have recommended that i watch it to help me be better with my students, or have talked about other animal training shows or their own personal experiences with animals.

this may seem demeaning to the children, but it isn't about them being poor and Black, it is about some kind of basic instinctive human interaction, something that seems to be shared by other social animals. the rich white kids i've taught in the past were quieter—MUCH quieter, lol—but they didn't listen or obey me either. they didn't FEEL that i was in charge.

lol.. the dog whisperer just said, "You can be graduate from Harvard, that doesn't mean you can walk a dog."

the dog whisperer talks a lot about "calm assertive." i started crying and whined to Loopy about not being able to muster "calm assertive." i thought of the state of screaming insanity that i'm in all day and said "all i seem to come up with is 'hysterical ineffective.'" then i started laughing and decided to blog.

i have tried hard to have that alpha-dog voice. when i tell them to sit down and be quiet, i say it like i mean it now. but i have no way to back it up, ever since they decided i can't communicate with parents. :P

but.... i have to be honest... the people who get the kids to obey, it's not because they threaten to call home—it's because they "claim the space" and establish dominance, in the language of the dog whisperer. the kids just know they have to obey.

hysterical ineffective poster child: a couple of days ago, i had them all line up at the door to go home. they were all messing around and out of control. i was trying to talk with the first two that started hitting each other, when suddenly somehow they all started hitting each other. all of them! i snapped. i flung the classroom door open, and pointing out into the hallway, shouted at the top of my lungs, "GET OUT! GET OUT!!!" i was so loud that another teacher actually came out her door to be sure that everything was ok.

the students, of course, although they registered slight surprise at my actions, quickly decided that this was still business as usual and tumbled out into the hallway in a mob, talking, laughing, and disorderly. *rolling my eyes*

sigh.

goblinbox points out that i sound like i'm saying "please just tell me i can't do it," in the letter toward my old professor. i don't know if i can or not. i want to try again, but i have taken hardly any steps toward job hunting.

in other news, i did find a promising new therapist, whom i'll call dr. g. she is much smarter than the woman i've been seeing (ms. L just for now). there's also some kind of power struggle i get into with therapists, on the level that the dog whisperer talks about... and ms.L isn't reacting well to it. i'm not clear on how it works or what i do, but i can see her getting defensive and digging in her heels in a power-struggly way, feeling like she has to assert herself somehow. that just makes me dig in. it's not working.

in still other news, i have caved to the two-party system. i signed up to phone bank for Obama next weekend. this after talking with a friend who has been living in Jerusalem for seven years, who told me that Obama was the only US elected official who had spent more than a few hours in the West Bank and Gaza—and he spent a week there! To some extent, I don't even care what his exact policy conclusions are—the fact that he was curious about what is really going on, that he wanted to see for himself—that already raises my respect for him a tremendous amount.

well, i'm distracted and half watching tv so this post is boring. more soon...

oh and... 51 days to go. that's less than a pack of cards.

56 days to go

i can make it through 56 days... right??? 266 hours... that's not really a lot... it sounds like a lot but it really isn't.......

spring break started with my dad's memorial service. it was actually really, really nice. i cried a lot. i don't feel like writing more about it now...

as spring break draws to a close, i do feel that i have had a proper vacation... a lovely luxurious break... with a lot of friends, sleeping, some sex...not enough good food but, oh well, ya can't have everything.

we also accomplished exactly one useful thing: we got our curtains hung... well we paid someone to do the drilling part (which was actually a good thing, because the windows are all at different heights and it was kinda complicated and he had a cool laser-sight thingamajig that made the curtain rods all even)... but i hung the curtains and made the swag look nice... or as nice as it can...



it's not as schmantzy as it looks in the photo.

is it?

as usual on a vacation or a weekend, it was partly ruined by massive anxiety. this was only exacerbated by my new therapist who made me draw a picture of how it would look if i was being efficient and effective.... then i had to talk about why i always made choices to take me farther away from that... so then i spent several days feeling like a big stupid shit for making all those bad choices, and berating myself... then i finally clued in that whatever good thing she was trying to do, it had just locked me into a 3-day anxiety attack...then i decided that (1) i need more drugs and (2) i need a different new therapist....

that sounds stupid now that i typed it out...

but given that i spend most of my time in a state of mild to extreme panic attack... ya think maybe i need more drugs? ya think maybe it's time to stop telling myself that i just need to "buckle down," or "get it together?"

i'm reminded of one of my students... two weeks before spring break my poor students had to take the mean nasty cruel evil standardized tests that make them feel like shit. as i passed one of my kids with the lowest reading level—just before she burst into tears—i heard her saying to herself, "keep it together girl!" god, it's heartbreaking.

point is, there was no way she was gonna read that stupid shit on that test, whether she "kept it together" or not. and telling myself to "buckle down" and "get it together" is not gonna make me stop having anxiety attacks and "make better choices."

i read this to Loopy and asked her if it sounded self-indulgent or self-pitying. "realistic," was her verdict.

in other news, one of our dogs has also started having anxiety attacks. she spends every night pacing, whining, shivering, drooling, and scratching at things, until i shut her in her crate (which is bad because she doesn't have water in there). i give her tranquilizers but it doesn't seem to help.

so tonight i gave her two tranquilizers up front before she started freaking out. now she's stoned...stumbling and weaving. it's awesome. we're gonna try to go to bed before she sobers up.

maybe i should have her draw a picture about how her life would be better if she weren't so anxious.

either that or maybe i should take some of the doggie tranqulizers. hm.

less poetic ... assessment of where i am now

I wrote to a professor from my school of education who knew me really well - warts and all, as they say. Trying to figure out what to do next.... I know she knows the field of education well. It was useful to kind of assess the situation... here is what I wrote to her.

Dear Dr. ______,

I don't know if you remember me, and in any case your obligations toward me are long since discharged, so I'm not sure if you will be willing and/or able to answer the questions I want to pose to you. If not, I understand - more than that, I think it is likely you won't have time to even read this email, and that is completely reasonable.

Nonetheless I am proceeding to pose these questions, under the assumption that, as the saying goes, "it can't hurt to ask."

This year I have been teaching fifth grade (self-contained class, all subjects including math and science) in a very high-need, low-income neighborhood in Chicago. Although I would have preferred to teach social studies, it was the demographic I had sought.

I was really terrible. I couldn't control the students; I was rarely prepared for class; I fulfilled few of my other school obligations. Everyone was disappointed in me. Friday I was informed that I am not being re-hired for the fall - no surprise at all. I'm very discouraged.

I need some perspective here. I need to decide whether to try again in the classroom or seek some other role in education.

You knew my strengths and weaknesses as well as anyone - and you know the field. If you still remember me, and have time, I would greatly appreciate your insight.

On paper I'm extraordinarily qualified - the [university I attended] program really was spectacular (as has become even clearer from hearing about other teachers' inadequate training!) and of course there's the Harvard thing, all the travel, the languages. I know as much about world history, geography, sociology, comparative government, etc. as anyone without a relevant PhD, and I have a deep knowledge of fundamental concepts and schemata in social studies. I'm good at curriculum design (under certain circumstances). I'm a good writer and teacher of writing. I'm a good collaborator and team player (in fact I work best when team teaching - that tends to balance out my weaknesses). I'm deeply empathetic and caring with students. I understand how learning works. I understand various disabilities and how to work with them. I'm good with parents. Of course I have more to learn in all these areas, but it's a good start.

But in practice I choke. I'm late, I'm bad with deadlines, I'm disorganized. Students don't respect or obey me. Worst of all, student work accumulates in ungraded piles - students never receive the feedback they need in order to learn and improve. It's absolutely wrong.

I have spent years and years taking medication and doing therapy to try to "fix" my disabilities - ADD and a serious anxiety disorder - so that I could be effective. I have gotten much better.

But it isn't good enough. I still spend hours every week immobilized by anxiety, and when I'm able to move, I have so much trouble organizing my thoughts that I rarely work efficiently. Some weeks I have worked 16, 17, 18 hours every day and still did only about 50% of what I needed to do. Then I was exhausted and mean to the students.

I need to decide: should I try again in the classroom, hoping that under different circumstances I could do better?

I did have some pretty challenging circumstances this year: (1) I was teaching an age I don't know well, and subjects that I had never been trained to teach; (2) my students are all far below grade level, and 100% are emotionally traumatized, learning disabled, or both; I receive no effective support from special ed personnel; (3) my principal is stupid, tyrannical, paranoid, and cruel; and (4) material resources are extremely scarce. Oh, and (5) it was my first year.

Nonetheless, it is inescapable that classroom teaching requires strengths in places where I have serious deficits.

Maybe I should stop fighting those deficits and accept that some disabilities really do make some jobs impossible. A person in a wheelchair will never be a firefighter.

If I were to leave the classroom, what could I do? How could I put my strengths to use? I still want to work in education, and I want to work directly with students if possible. What kind of position would capitalize on my strengths and not challenge me so much in so many different areas of weakness? Should I try special education? I really don't know what's out there - what the possibilities are. I don't know what kind of jobs exist in the field.

I would value your opinion on my personal next steps, but if you don't have time for that, I would be so grateful if you could just direct me to some source of information that can assist me in learning about the range of possible careers in education.

-=-=-=-=-

I finished the letter with additional expressions of appreciation etc.

So that's where I am.

Remember that scene in The Matrix where they're in this undefined white space? That's how I feel. Limbo I guess.

In meditation they're always trying to teach you to be comfortable with uncertainty. I am pretty comfortable with it at this point..... no, I'm not. I'm just used to it. But it still exhausts me.

how i became a marine; funny condolence

I posted on my teaching blog about some recent events and frustrations with my teaching... I have concluded that being a teacher is like being a marine... there's a lot of hazing and only the strong survive... i decided to survive. Why not? I am not weak. And I will prove it.

As for my old malaise, to my surprise, i did seem to overcome it this past week... i worked very hard and quite efficiently... put in some 14-hour-days... came home and worked more at night... got a huge amount done to improve my room. did not see much evidence of the part of me that i've come to call 'thirteen,' who whines and resists everything like a 13-year-old. cautious about drawing any conclusions from this, but pleased.

as a bonus result of my hard work, when i was raked over the coals friday, i felt quite confident that i had done nothing wrong. i didn't cry. that was a first. the crying (as i keep explaining to them) is just frustration with myself.

In other news, this is the most hilarious mistranslation/intercultural miscommunication ever.... from a Japanese friend sending condolences to my mother....

Dear Mrs. ____

I wan very sorry to know that _____ was passed. Your last message of _____ was very much touched in my heart how he hehaved in the bed with you. I hope you will accept my sincere condolences.

Regards,

[x]

My mother commented wryly that she thought the writer must have meant my mother's comments on how Dad was kind and gentle and cooperative to the end, even when he was weak and bedridden....because, she wrote, "I do not remember writing about me & my husband in bed in normal sense of the word."

lmao!

not just a job, an adventure.... aka my own personal circle of hell

supposed to be entering grades... grading is so fucking depressing.
'grades are structuralized violence' says stella mars. everything i've
ever heard anyone say about grading runs thru my head. "high
expectations, don't pull any punches." vs. "be gentle and supportive and
blah blah blah." i'm sure in some alternate universe where people can
think clearly, the two are not mutually exclusive. i just stare dully
at the forms and wonder how it feels to get a D, an F... wonder how to
motivate and inspire the students... kick their asses... not sure what
is needed... some far off voice from that alternate universe of clear
thinking or perhaps mush-headed sentimentality says that kids never
need their asses kicked (later on, Loopy - who lives in that universe of
clear thinking, lucky girl - confirmed that kids never need their asses
kicked). i get so angry at them though.

possibly because i know it's my fault. when they're all there together all
my defensiveness and anger comes out and i yell at them left and right. but when i'm talking to only one or two of them, i feel so much empathy and compassion. one little boy was there after school and i wanted to apologize to him for not making good lesson plans, for not making all of this do-able for him. they are so sweet and little. they don't deserve my anger. but i am full of it and it doesn't have another target.

welcome to the teaching profession, a voice in my head says sarcastically. and i also remember my buddhist teaching that falling flat on your face humbles you and makes you less arrogant, more kind.

just to be extra sadistic, the deadline for having our rooms
completely ready for inspection is tomorrow, same day grades are due.
there are all these things we are supposed to have ready........
student work posted in our rooms.... i have nothing like that to
post.... my students don't do their work and when they do it's
half-assed and not worth posting. aaaaarg.

i know how to do better. i know!!! that's what kills me.

just another day...

(from an email to a friend, hence all the abbrev's etc... just realized i wanted to share this with all my friends so... copy-paste is yr pal lol)

god such a ridiculous day today (w the students)... yest (at school)
was so great... the worst beh probs were absent and
the rest of the students actually did some work! it was awe-inspiring.
i felt like a teacher instead of a babysitter. just a little glimpse
of the promised land!

today i was really tired, and not well prepared.... the lack of
preparation steals all my energy and conviction and i just sort of go
through the motions - the students smell it and run all over me.

on top of that, today i had a meeting about a student, with his foster
mother and the social workers and special ed teachers. the Mom told
everyone that her son was acting up at school because i'm a bad
teacher and the students don't respect me. meanwhile the social worker
was defensive and cranky and wanted to be the expert and make everyone
else feel stupid (me, the parent....). it was kinda hellacious. i was
so mortified about what the parent said that i came back and yelled at
the students.... now i feel bad about it.

and of course the social worker looked in to see if the mom was right abt my room being in disarray... and because of the above-mentioned tiredness and under-preparedness... it was.... damn it all ...

am i losing it??

my passion, my love, my empathy... i don't feel any of it.

i am angry at my students, i resent them, i even hate them, or worse than any of that, as of this moment, i don't feel the slightest motivation to do any work for them, since they don't do any work for me.

i try to point out to myself the mountain of grading that i have to do, which wouldn't exist if they weren't doing *something.*

i also alternate this with beating myself up because i know all the things i have done wrong that have reduced my efficacy and encouraged their chaos:

• if i had graded their homework and given it back to them promptly, or shown any sign that i was even paying attention to whether they did their homework, they would not feel their homework was vanishing into a black hole and would be more motivated to do it.
  
• they also would be more likely to do their homework if i had not had a couple days last week when i was soooo totally unprepared that i just told them to do last night's homework during class... thus punishing those who had done it at home and rewarding those who had not... now at the beginning of each class some of them say, 'we're gonna work on last night's homework, right?'
  
• if i had implemented my consequences more consistently they would not expect to get away with everything all the time.
  
• if i had not given in when they argued i would not have a class full of arguers.
  
• if i had planned my lessons better (or at all) so that they were accessible to all students, the students who struggle more would be more likely to attempt the lessons i'm doing now, which are actually more planned and more accessible.
  
• if i had instituted better routines for transitions, for doing work, etc. we would not spend countless fruitless minutes with me yelling, 'put away your social studies and get out your math! chris! why is your social studies still on your desk? don't answer that - just put it away and get out your math! alexis! put away your social studies! tanya!" - etc.
  
• of course, transitions would also be aided if i would keep to the schedule that i have posted in the room. students used to look at it and try to make it match their reality... now they have given up... i just work on math for a while, then on social studies for a while... and i wonder why they don't move promptly from one subject to the next!

On the other hand... the total, complete, utter, and absolute lack of discipline, focus, commitment, order, follow-thru, ability to sit still and shut up, etc.... is not entirely my fault...

But there are so many books on how to teach discipline, order, etc. to even the toughest kids. I read the books. I didn't do it right. In so many ways.

And now I'm so angry and tired that I don't want to even try.

Although I can also point out to myself that the very discipline and commitment and follow-through whose lack I bemoan in my students.... would mean, for me, continuing to do my job as well as I can even when I don't feel like it. How many times have I said to them, "grownups have to do things they don't enjoy all the time!" (Today it was hot and they were whining and I even yelled, 'grow up!' and 'get over it!' ...)

I used to be their ineffective but at least kind and supportive teacher. Now I'm nothing.

It's the fourth week of school and I haven't started science. That's stupid.

In other news, we have a great new home entertainment system and can't get it to function. We have given in and are hiring a man to make it work. This is galling but if you could just see the remotes (three of them! huge and with totally incomprehensible button labels!) you would immediately see that their operation requires a penis.

it's not just a job, it's an adventure

i am overwhelmed, exhausted and not sure how to go on. but i still love my job. it's hard to explain... it's the challenge, the immense challenge - 'like extreme sports,' i said to one person.

i am not the best teacher in that school. i am not even a good teacher at this point—i am barely teaching. but i will figure it out! i will! i will learn how to teach effectively in this school. i will be the best.

what better way to spend the rest of my life? lol

posting on MadTeach...

fyi... here is the link... the previous post I think is posted in both places verbatim... but have posted a new one on MadTeach and decided to just post there...

at this point in my life

so i tried to get started on those ten weeks of social studies lesson plans today but it was the same old story.

procrastinated a bit. then panicked and flailed - did a bunch of stuff that wasn't important: looked for posters of satellite views of earth; browsed lesson plans on the "American Revolution," purchased $150+ worth of software that helps students learn to use maps. clearly all of those are dumb peripheral things, but why couldn't i see that while i was doing it?

came to the end of the day tired and in despair. why doesn't it get better?

around 9:30 i talked to OLIF (therapist) and finally ate something and started working; yet again i find myself in a very familiar place: finally getting some work done; three choices: keep working and sleep in tomorrow, throwing tomorrow off too; keep working and get up early tomorrow, to be sleepy all day; quit working when i'm actually accomplishing something and just hope that i actually get to bed and make it worthwhile that i quit working.

i'm not trying to abdicate responsibility for my actions but it does feel like i just desperately throw myself at these tasks and hope hope hope that i don't miss.

this might seem grandiose or self-pitying but this song (came up on my iPod) resonates a lot with me.... the 'you' would be my students, who need so much from me that i'm terrified i won't be able to provide:

At this point in my life
I've done so many things wrong I don't know if I can do right
If you put your trust in me I hope I won't let you down
If you give me a chance I'll try

You see it's been a hard road the road I'm traveling on
And if I take your hand I might lead you down the path to ruin
....
right now, right now, I'm doing the best I can
At this point in my life


....
I'm still searching for the light
Won't you put your faith in me
We both know that's what matters
If you give me a chance I'll try

You see I've been climbing stairs but mostly stumbling down
I've been reaching high always losing ground
You see I've been reaching high but always losing ground
You see I've conquered hills but I still have mountains to climb
And right now right now I'm doing the best I can
At this point in my life

At this point in my life
I'd like to live as if only love mattered
As if redemption was in sight
As if the search to live honestly
Is all that anyone needs
No matter if you find it

....
If you can believe in this heart of mine
If you can give it a try
Then I'll reach inside and find and give you
All the sweetness that I have
At this point in my life

--Tracy Chapman, "At This Point in My Life" (New Beginnings)

I guess the last verse I should address to myself. If I can believe in my own heart... I'm trying but I'm only able to keep believing because I have no choice - if I falter I'll be lost. No choice but to hang on.

bird... almost... in... hand... orflyingatmyheadfast

So it seems I have the job. Almost. I can go on down and sign the contract as soon as I get my Illinois license in the mail. Which was supposed to be four days ago. So I'm a bit anxious about that... I won't feel secure about having the job until I have that signed paper in my hand.

On the plus side, we are close to being ready for the move (on Tuesday). It's kind of astonishing really. Well, not so astonishing, since it's thanks to Loopy's incredible hard work—she did almost everything herself. I am miserable with guilt over the fact that she had to do all that (at a fairly high cost—she was often in pain at the end of a day of packing) and I hardly did anything on the house. I can't wait to get out of here and try to forget about that.

I am alternately excited and petrified about my job. And did I tell you, they actually seem to have hired me for fifth grade?!? I'm licensed to teach grades 6-12 but they hired me for 5th! Slightly mysterious.

Fifth grade... when the sixth graders come in in the fall, they're already so infantile that I don't know what to do with them... their noses run, their pencils fall on the floor... I have still less idea how I'll handle all these little baby fifth graders! When it occurred to me that I'll have to do things like Halloween parties and birthday cupcakes, my heart just sank.

On the plus side, I should still be taller than most of them, which is always helpful.

So... yes... hurtling toward destiny at an increasing speed...

I've done—and tomorrow am doing again—a session of EMDR, a type of semi-hypnosis that is supposed to help you get over your issues.... it seems to help a little. I just don't want to go back to the same old same old, self-sabotaging crap. I owe it to my future students and their families.... I owe it to me.

Huh. I remember going to confession in Japan and the priest shocked me by telling me I should pray for my future husband. I balked and he said, "oh, you may laugh, but believe me he's out there somewhere right now." I sputtered and wasn't able to answer... not because I was thinking of marrying a woman but because I intended at that time in my life to become a nun!

But, while a future husband is not in my cards, my future students really are out there somewhere, walking around, having their summers... They're real... they're out there... and they and I are on a collision course...

It's just a weird way to think of it...

On a more amusing note, Loopy came across some Star Trek fan fiction I wrote in elementary school! "I flipped through it and saw 'Mr. Spock' and I just thought, 'Ohhhhh no...'" she reports. We both find this hilarious.

my own chicago tour

So... I chose some high schools that were spread around the near-south, southwest and west sides, and had google make me an itinerary to drive by all of them.

Took me close to three hours... went down to the grand old campuses of Dunbar and DuSable, which have graduated all sorts of famous people since the mid-19th century and are now being re-envisioned as "small schools" within one building... drove across to the Latino neighborhood out by Cermak & Cicero... then up and under the Ike to another Black neighborhood just this side of Oak Park (that was freaky, when I took a wrong turn and tumbled out of the projects & churches into mansions and lawns like Alice tumbling out of the rabbit-hole)... and then on back home.

Wow.

First of all, there are a lot of poor people in Chicago, and it isn't a pretty sight. Faces and bodies beaten and battered, lined with care, jumping at noises or slumping in corners. I have spent a good bit of time in poor neighborhoods in the U.S., but not recently... I guess I'd forgotten.

Of course there were families hanging on stoops and children playing in fire hydrants, but also blocks & blocks of dead factories and boarded up shops, only the liquor stores open for business.

The Latino neighborhoods were much less depressing - plenty of beauty shops and taquerias, small neighborhood enterprises and larger shopping centers too. I asked R why it's like that and she said it's pure racism - people won't make loans to would-be Black small business owners, and don't open stores in those neighborhoods.

Anyway.

I had two reactions... well I had a lot of reactions but I'll discuss two. First, it was hard to tell what I was actually seeing and what was just my own projections. I tried to make myself look for the little details that convey genuine information - flowers in window-boxes and lawn ornaments or plantings in the front yard mean the neighborhood isn't really that bad; bars on the windows, stripped cars on the streets, garbage everywhere mean it is. (I didn't see many blocks that were that bad - and heck, I lived on blocks like that in NYC!)

Second, driving that vast area - according to Google I drove forty miles - made it really clear what my place is in the scheme of it all - specifically - very small. The people on the stoops and corners, in the taquerias and auto body shops, they aren't waiting for me to come and save them. Their lives will go on much the same whether I teach in their neighborhood or not.

I've talked w my therapist (aka OLIF) about how to have good boundaries with my work, not try to save the world at the cost of my health and sanity, etc. This little drive actually really helped with that. It was clear that I should choose a job based on what will be fulfilling for me.

I love to teach students who struggle with different kinds of obstacles or challenges, but I will choose a job with those students because I love it, not because I harbor delusions of being some kind of savior or messiah. There are miles and miles and miles of those students and I will not make a dent in the big picture (if I do it will be through activism in some other realm).

But hopefully I will have a fulfilling and interesting job for the rest of my life, and hopefully there will be some whose lives will be better because of me, and that's good enough.

Still processing all this...

overcome

Wow. I'm trying to do job apps and, wow. Some of these jobs sound so great and I feel so unqualified.* I keep almost bursting into tears.

I'm tempted to think "if only I had done x or y in the last decade, I would be more qualified," but, I remind myself to just "sit with the vulnerability" of these feelings of inadequacy... and maybe give the people I'm applying to a chance to decide for themselves whether I'm adequate or not... just give it a shot and see where it goes.

To quote from the notes from a meditation seminar I attended in the fall of 2005 (which I just ripped out of a notebook and filed while waiting for my new OS to install)...

• plan the plan, don't plan the results
  
• make a choice - do something - then you find out what happens next
  
• allow results of what you've done to manifest & then see what you think

Trying to be more gentle, relaxed with this experience... ok, so since I can't seem to relax (my shoulders ache - I've been tensed up for days!), maybe I could have some compassion for myself in this situation?

Why is that so hard?

That mean voice keeps telling me that I've done everything wrong and that these unpleasant feelings of inadequacy are the appropriate punishment for all my mistakes.

Sigh. Breathe. Breathe. That's all I can do. And keep trying to write this goddamn cover letter without crying.

---

*Sample course description:

Law in American Society (Honors)
Students identify, analyze, and explain the structures and functions of the American legal system in this survey course which shall cover constitutional, criminal, and civil law in America. Students investigate and analyze the judicial system under the United States Constitution, using historical perspectives from Supreme Court decisions, responses to those decisions, and concrete illustrations of recent expansion of constitutional rights. Students evaluate their ever-increasing freedoms and responsibilities under the American system of law.

Part of me says, oh come on, you could teach that - and the other part of me replies, are you nuts? I could just as easily teach AP Chinese—which is also offered at this school.

icing on the cake

so between walking, lying on ice, and taking a lot of pills (it's actually been lovely, the first time I've been pain-free since January 3 - I didn't realize how much pain I'd been in b/c I'd just gotten used to it!) I did some more research on the job situation and finally found a good starting point in chicago.

I figured if I could just find one school that's a place I'd like to teach, hopefully I can talk with principal and teachers there and get their recommendations for other places to try. So today... I found one! Yay!

Check it out... only 18 minutes from our current apartment in Chicago... and at least according tot he website, so close to my whole approach and teaching philosophy that I could just cry!

Although I love the "Six Feet Under" box set (it has furry "grass" on top!!), finding this school is the best birthday present I could have gotten.

Now I have to go lie down. Not only should I do that for my back, but I'm starting to feel queasy.... in addition to all the medication, I ate both the two Vosges chocolate bars Loopy gave me within the last few hours ("hey, it's my birthday!"), and, uh, yeah, that wasn't such a great idea.

Are you HAPpy?

On the afore-mentioned trip to Avol's, I also picked up a self-help book that, unlike the ones discussed in Kaminer's book (see below), appears to be a genuine program of self-help--in this case, for getting control of anxiety.

Anyway, I was interested/amused in this list of characteristics that are often related to anxiety, or in the book's jargon, "High Anxiety Personality" (HAP) traits:

• high level of creativity or imagination (immediately imagine the worst)
  
• rigid thinking
  
• excessive need for approval
  
• extremely high expectations of self (expect self to accomplish things not expected of others)
  
• perfectionism (combination of high expectations, tendency to evaluate self with all-or-nothing thinking; tendency to focus on small flaws or errors instead of overall progress)
  
• excessive need to be in control
  
• suppression of some or all negative feelings
  
• tendency to ignore the body's physical needs
  

Aside from the fact that this describes many of us very well, I can't help noticing that these are traits that the school system (including the university system) encourages and nurtures--especially rigidity, need for approval, & perfectionism.

I'll probably post more about this on MadTeach, but lately I've been thinking a lot about the psychological side of school. I started out with the institutional aspects and the history that spawned them. Over time I struggled to figure out how to be a positive cog in a negative machine, to oversimplify dramatically. Again in shorthand, my conclusion was that I have to help students learn how to defend themselves and not let the machine get to them (see my MadTeach post on survival skills).

So since then I've been trying to figure out how people become internally motivated, what contexts allow and foster curiosity and hard work and learning. I definitely have a lot more to say about this & I'll put it on MadTeach soon. The short version is that reducing anxiety is a HUGE part of this, and that massive anxiety is one of the biggest problems students face in class all the time.

So this book is going to help me with my anxiety, and at the same time, help me learn to help students.

One of the incredibly cool things about learning to teach is that in order to be a good teacher, I have to heal myself, and the things I most need to do to heal myself, will be the things that make me a good teacher. I love this. It feels so right, to go back and forth between "how can I reduce my anxiety" and "how can I reduce the anxiety in the classroom," and to see so clearly that it would be absolutely impossible to do the latter without the former. There's some quote from Emerson or Mark Twain or someone, to the effect that you can't truly help others without helping yourself, and I think that's so true. I'm not sure if I'm making sense but anyway, I am happy.

(HAPpy too, at times, but ever less so).

a hill of beans (in this crazy world)

lately I have felt really lonely.

I'm lucky and grateful to have friends a lovely Loopy wife who love me. But what I wish for, just at this moment, which there's really nothing to be done about and maybe it doesn't exist, is someone who is engaged in the same work as I am, who's chewing on the same questions or even similar... I feel like most people I talk with, either are socialists but not public-school-teachers, or teachers but not socialists, or else they are both but are so far advanced that they just look on my struggles and confusion with tolerance and indulgence.

I realize that it is no small thing for my friends to listen; that their indulgence and kind-hearted tolerance of my babbling is a very great gift of the heart, and that sometimes they really are interested, and I don't mean to minimize or disrespect any of this. I do feel loved and I feel that my friends and family wish me well. But I am so lonely!

I am lonely for exchange of ideas, for the process of figuring things out together, where I pass on what I've learned this week and then hear from that person what they're figuring out this week, where shared "war stories" and pondering help us both grow and develop. I tried to start a radical teachers' group but whaddya know, everyone who's both a radical and a teacher is very very busy (many are also parents).

I think there are other things making me cry a lot this week: the election of course, and both my parents seem to be deteriorating more than usual (or rather picking up speed in their deteriorating process--Dad's had another smallish stroke and Mom's spinal cord is in trouble and she might need surgery that might be paralyzing). Today I had a big long meeting with an old friend and political comrade to try to resolve some long-standing differences but we didn't really get anywhere--I don't think he can even understand what I'm trying to say (feeling even more alone). I am supposed to start teaching nearly full-time next week, I have to have a lesson plan for tomorrow, and my old demons just will not go away--it's that "deer in the headlights" feeling--I am just crying and crying and dreading tomorrow when I don't have a lesson plan, and yet I just can't even think straight. I cut class tonight. My back hurts. I am trying to help a couple of students in particular but their behavior is getting worse and I think it's something I'm doing. Teachers are mean and students are broken-hearted--yesterday I witnessed meanness that could hardly have been worse if there had been physical abuse involved. I'm letting someone down whom I promised to help with something. The worse it gets the more socially awkward and weird I get, and people look at me with that look, which just increases the loneliness.

I don't think I'm depressed yet but I am worried about going that way. Right now I feel pretty sad but it's not continuous. Just today has been bad. I wonder if I should go back on my anti-depressants, but i wonder if they hide something that I need to figure out.

A favorite book reminds me that no one else can give me what I need, that what I need is unconditional acceptance, that only I can give it to myself, and I just have to start right now.

I just wish it were possible for someone else to help.

I also wish I had my freakin' lesson plan done for tomorrow, but now I've worked myself up into such a state, not to mention wasted two hours and given myself a splitting headache, that I should probably just go to bed. I can't stop crying. Now I'm angry with myself for wasting all this time, but I'm not supposed to be angry with myself, I'm supposed to be giving myself unconditional acceptance; how the heck do I expect to feel better if I can't be nicer to myself? Maybe I subconsciously wanted to cry for two hours instead of doing the lesson plan, boy that would be insane. It's the hamster wheel in my head... Am I incompetent, crazy or just self-sabotaging? The choices are all so attractive.

Sorry for going on and on. But that's the beauty of a blog. You don't have to read it or respond to it. So I can go on and on, and on, without feeling that I'm imposing on anyone.

maybe I'm getting a cold or something. drinking and staying up til 3 am on Tuesday (election day, remember?) sure didn't help. note to self... no more drinking and staying up til 3 am on a school night. Right, got it.