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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.

intense flurries, no accumulation

for about 24 hours it snowed furiously... flakes whirling out of a leaden sky, stinging cheeks on a strong and bitter wind... it snowed and snowed, and yet a day later, when it slowed and stopped, there was hardly any snow in the streets... just the barest of white limning in the gutters... it was a weirdly dry snow anyway, and in the end one could imagine that somehow it had all blown away, or else evaporated without ever hitting the ground, like rain in the driest months in the desert.

friday they told me i was 'non-re-appointed' for the fall, i.e. fired.

the whole year feels like that snowstorm... flurry of furious activity, and... and nothing.

wealth and poverty

You must learn day by day, year by year to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about—the more you have left when anything happens.
--Ethel Barrymore

in the middle of screaming at my students the other day, i had the weirdest little fugue - i suddenly had a vision of no particular place but a mix of places i have been - iran, turkey, morocco - mostly iran because it's recent - dust and heat and sun and wide wide sky...

...with somewhere a whiff of roses and mint, the sound of water, all those pleasures that are all the more delightful for being found in the middle of the desert...

all this washed over me with incredible vividness. in my memory of the classroom scene, i clearly recall myself sitting on the back table, with a couple of students trying to do something at the board and chaos all around, with my mouth open shouting something at them - and just as clearly it seems that the dusty, scented wind lifted my hair for a moment, as i struggled there indoors in snowbound chicago...

it was so clear and overpowering that i was disoriented and lost my train of thought... i told them i had lost my train of thought, and started to open my mouth to tell them where i had been, but closed it again.

the all-powerful, live-or-die-by-it No-Child-Left-Behind-mandated standardized test is in 13 days: there is no time for wind that smells of roses and the preciousness of the sound of water in the desert.

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!