Showing posts with label life update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life update. Show all posts

Round 1: Version 2

September 25, 2020

 I don’t spend nearly as much time on Teacher Twitter than I used to, but the general sentiment seems to be, “Online teaching is rough, I don’t like it, and I feel like I’m a first-year teacher.”

While I am exhausted at the end of the day, despite needing to set a timer that reminds me hourly to get out of my chair and move, I genuinely enjoy my online experience. Yes, everything takes me twice as long. No, I don’t know what 3/4s of my students sound or look like. But nothing beats when you are explaining GUIs to 12-year-olds and you reveal that everyone used to have to use a command-line interface. “CRAZY,” they say in the chat. Or when you greet your high schoolers as they roll into Game Design and every one of them says hi back to you in the chat.

When I interviewed at my school, I asked my principal if there was anyone I could talk to about the teacher experience. She told me it was unlikely, as all teachers were on summer break, but she’d try. She called me about 10 minutes later and gave me the phone number of a math teacher. Turns out said math teacher loves Nintendo and is very friendly, so we’ve been chatting ever since. The other day, he messaged me, “So, did I oversell, undersell, or accurately display life at HVAM?”

I immediately messaged back, “Definitely accurate.”

I honestly don’t mind that my students aren’t required to come to my classes. Yes, sometimes it feels like I’m talking to a brick wall, especially when certain students don’t respond. Yes, online teaching has the fisheye effect x100. Yes, answering the same email is exhausting. But I love how engagement looks in my brand of online teaching. I enjoy the control I have without feeling like I’m erasing student voices or disproportionately focusing on certain students. I like the fact that students seem to enjoy coming to my class. I enjoy not being told that my breath stinks and not telling students to get to a voice level zero.

Without the pandemic and a complete paradigm shift in the American workforce, I’m not sure I would have ever considered this career move. Most if not all of my colleagues have children at home—most under 5, some in school as well—and cite the flexibility of online teaching as a priority for them. Me, a young adult with 4 housemates whose idea of a good Friday night is watching a Korean movie about the trials of hell or part four of the Pride and Prejudice 1995 miniseries, is a little out of place.

And yet, I feel myself flourishing. I am seeking out feedback, I look forward to class, I don’t mind sinking hours into spreadsheets or calling parents or developing an assignment, and I get off of work at 5 (we’re not going to talk about the work I push off to Saturday). I genuinely enjoy my colleagues, even though I don’t feel like I know a lot of them, and when they told me that everyone at HVAM is willing to answer questions and help out, they were really right.

On Thursday afternoon, I had a series of panicked emails from a student in my Game Design class. We eventually got on a call, and she set up a time to work with me on Friday. On Friday, after we had worked through the basics of the assignment, we were shooting the breeze a little bit and she was talking about the amount of work she has to do. “I help new students, I help teachers—but I haven’t had to help you too much! You’ve learned pretty fast!” I smile and then think of the many mistakes I’ve made over the last two weeks.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I grinned as I clicked out of the window and took off my headset.

I don’t mind being a first-year teacher again if this is what it feels like: the paradoxical exhaustion and thrill that runs through me every day I wake up and remember, every time I see “Ms. Johnson,” every time I glance at my growing to-do list, every time I click the “x” on a classroom.


Continue Reading

MI/A — Road Trips and Home

July 31, 2020
The most insane thing I’ve done on the road is deciding to pass two coach buses on a one-lane road at 11pm in the mountains of New Hampshire. While on the other side of the road, I saw the lights of an oncoming vehicle. I, without checking my blind spot, sped up and swerved in front of the bus, praying I wouldn’t clip it. I was seconds away from a head-on collision that would have probably killed me and three of my best friends.

The second most insane thing I’ve done on the road was getting up four hours after that harrowing drive and driving 13 hours to Grand Rapids by myself. After a weekend like that and an earlier solo trip to Akron, OH, I’m pretty confident I can drive anywhere.


When I told my housemates that I was planning on leaving at 2 am for Massachusetts this summer, they thought I was bonkers to be a. making the trip in one day and b. starting so dang early. But being a product of my parents, I started to wake up earlier and earlier as the day of reckoning drew close—changing light bulbs at 4 am, reading at 5 am, requesting library books at 7 am. The idea was that I’d force my body to go to bed earlier; I’m unhappy to report this theory doesn’t work when you have fun housemates and a neighborhood that consistently sets off fireworks from 10 pm on.

Nevertheless, with my food packed and podcasts downloaded, I set out at 2:40 am on July 1st. Well, 2:50 am since I had to turn around and grab the masks that I forgot. 

Other than podcasts and working out in rest stop parking lots, there's not much variety in the Michigan-Massachusetts road trip (you spend approximately 8 to 10 hours of your trip on the same freeway—love you I-90). Yes, there are podcasts that made me call my father and say, “I know it’s been on every anti-racism list, but like, Dad, it’s so good! They are talking about the lack of healthcare after slavery and it’s exactly what’s happening today. Exactly!” But most of my trip, I oscillated between two moments.

There’s the moment where all I can see is the road, a blue sky, and a couple of truckers, and I think, “Wow, I feel pretty good! I could do this all day!” And then there’s the other moment when I'm sick of everything: not excited about any podcasts, tired of cruise control, tired of people passing me on the road, sick of trying not to reach over and grab another snack. I play games with yourself, saying, “I’m going to wait until 1:30 to eat another brownie. Then I’ll know I'm actually hungry.” After each of these moments, I look at the clock, sigh, and stretch my legs as far as they could go.

Then there’s another category—the spiritual/weird moment that only comes once or twice a trip. Mine came at 8:30 am, having just finished the last episode of The Scaredy-Cat Horror Show. The music faded, and I paused the audio. I had seen myself earlier in that small corner of the rearview mirror that you can find when you stretch up, sunglasses on my head, and I had that weird premonition, remembering all the times she was cruising down the road, sunglasses on her head. I felt my mom’s presence. That’s weird to say, but I did. And nearly out of nowhere, a stew of anger and sadness boiled over. 

“Everything was going fine, and then you died, and then my life fell apart.” I gritted my teeth while tears rolled down my face and cars sped by.

I let God know how I was feeling as well (as I'm not sure whether I really believe that Mom is disembodied and could actually be listening to me) and my tears subsided. The road came back into focus, and I took a couple of deep breaths. I moved on. Fifteen minutes later, Sarah called me.

When I made the return trip to Michigan two weeks and a half, I didn’t heed the Johnson way. I was too busy seeing people every night to care about going to bed on time, so I decided I would just live with the 2am bleariness and chug some caffeinated water. I fought the weather: I drove with maybe 20 feet of visibility for the first 3 hours thanks to the heaviest fog I’ve ever driven through. The weird moment came when I believed I could see a fire roaring a bit inland from the road around 3:30am but then later thought that streetlights fuzzed by fog were further fires. There were no stand-out podcasts, although I did enjoy The Penumbra Podcast despite the awful audio balancing and Planet Money's Summer School series despite my aversion to learning. I-90 welcomed me back with open arms.

I only felt tired when I stood outside of Nizhoni, fumbling with my keys to get into my other home. My housemates trickled by, welcoming me back as I brought in loads of goodies from home: forgotten kitchen cabinet condiments, old hot chocolate, cast iron pans, books from my childhood room. It would take the next few weeks to learn what I had missed while in Massachusetts—a corn documentary, lapsed workouts, nature movies, frozen coffee creamer snacks, conversations in the kitchen. And yet, I could only grin as I screwed in the porch lights that had been neglected for the past two weeks.

In the age of flying and video chats, it's been easy for me to forget how far away my life as an adult is from my life as a child. I've never been reminded so starkly of this fact as I struggled to transition: the whiplash of going from Nizhoni to Massachusetts and vice versa left me reeling on both ends. The day after each road trip I thought, "Why am I here? Why did I leave the other place?" and then "How could I have left this place?"

It's a gift to have two places that you can call home, but it's hard to live with a heart divided in two. It's marginally easier when you enjoy making the trip between the halves.

                                               
Continue Reading

Thief in the White

July 25, 2020

I haven’t been able to find the one that crystallizes these sentiments exactly, but I’ve run across a few tweets and Instagram posts that go something like this: white people won’t be mobilized into anti-racism until they realize that whiteness is hurting them as well.

James Baldwin talks about this when he talks about how white people have invented Black people to make themselves feel better. I’ve heard echoes of it in an abolitionist teaching webinar that I attended where Bettina Love, Gholdy Muhammad, and Dena Simmons all made it exceedingly clear that abolition is a push for everyone’s humanity, and additionally that it’s insulting when white people say, “What should I do with my privilege?” because it shows they don’t want to give up their privilege. It’s present when people, usually Black people, point out that racism is a problem perpetuated by white people—it’s them that make everything about race.

All of the above makes sense to me logically. But it’s taking more time than I expected to come to grips with the fact that whiteness is oppressive to me too.

Bryan Stevenson has an amazing interview with Ezra Klein on Vox—from the abbreviated transcript I could easily pull ten quotes that glued me to the page. He emphasizes the fact that we have to be honest about our history and we haven’t dealt with the ugliness of it— “the ideology that we [white people] created — that Black people are less deserving, less worthy, less human, less evolved.” He urges people to see how they are implicated in that ideology and that history in the communities they love and to start telling the truth.

I want to say that whiteness is toxic to me because it implicates me in this centuries-old power dynamic where the color of my skin makes me more of a person in the eyes of the law, the government, my fellow citizens, etc. than someone with darker skin. That it’s toxic because I have to reconcile that history. I’m not sure that’s it. What whiteness continues to try to take away from me is the ability to see the face of God in other people. It is so desperate to prove that I am better, that I deserve more, that they are being unreasonable and exaggerating situations. I have been conditioned to turn away from justice for Black people because my whiteness and my power hinges on that injustice.

The other piece of the essay that hit me was Stevenson’s recognition of Black American’s commitment to the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice. His statements harkened back to Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 podcast (a must-listen. Like, right now. Go. Don’t finish this essay. Go now.) which essentially argues that the major strands of American culture are all based in Black American culture.

Ever since I have begun to understand the history and legacy of slavery and to question how men could write and agree that it is self-evident that “all men are created equal” and then literally own other people, I’ve been pretty disillusioned with American ideals of freedom. I’ve sat for the Pledge of Allegiance, I’ve taken little notice of the Fourth of July celebrations, and I’ve shown open disdain for anything remotely patriotic. I believed it was my wokeness. But in a conversation with a friend, he reminded me that we as white people have not earned the right to be cynical about this country. “After all,” he seemed to say, “we haven’t been the ones wronged in this fight.”

Whiteness has distorted the values of America—love, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—from the very beginning. I’m still not completely convinced those are the ultimate values I want to center my life around, but regardless I should be following behind Black and queer leaders who continue to push this country to put its money where its mouth is—to become the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I can see what white supremacy has taken away from the Black community—lives, communities, wealth, opportunities, dignity, justice. But to only acknowledge that theft is to fall into the trap of performative allyship and woke white person brownie points. For me to keep running this marathon to justice, I need to remember what has been stolen from me and that my liberation is wrapped up in this fight too.

// This is what I wrote on the way to the piece above. It’s entirely unrelated but also something I would share on my blog, so congrats! You get a musing piece and a life update. What a treat.

If you could distill the essence of Elizabeth and I’s conversations over the past 5 years, you’d bottle the oak scent of faith wrestling and the spruce fragrance of accountability. We’ve tried many systems throughout the years of keeping each other accountable with our goals, whether they be faith, health, or school-related.

The latest of these is the accountability chart I made on my house’s shared calendar. I’ve written down 4 goals and how often I want to achieve them (I want to read the Book of Common Prayer every day, but there’s no way I’m working out more than 3 times a week). A week in, it’s gone pretty well. I get a little thrill from writing down a “W” when I don’t spend more than 15 minutes scrolling on my phone after I wake up. Somehow I’ve weaponized my need for a perfect self-image as a tool to prod myself to complete simple goals.

I’m in the middle of Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott’s scattershot of writing advice. She says the thing that I’ve heard since I went on the Writer’s Retreat: writers write every day. I immediately frowned and thought of my goal on the calendar— “journal/blog: 1–2x a week.” Should I write more? What time would I want to set apart for it?

In conversation with Joel, I realized that often when I write, I feel like it must have an external purpose other than just writing practice for me. I write whatever I want on my blog (but it has to be something worth remembering), meticulously thought-out and edited pieces on the post calvin, and major life events/ideas that I’m wrestling through in my journal. In my head, I understand that if I write every day, I cannot be using those spaces, yet those are the spaces that have worked the best for my writing. A part of me understands that writing is communicating, and it seems like an exercise in futility to write in a Google Doc only seen by myself.
Continue Reading

A Difference a Week Can Make

March 14, 2020
As seems to be the theme with everything this year, this past week has taken me off guard completely.

On March 5th, I left robotics club early and drove home, walking in the rain to get to a local church. They run a community supper every Tuesday and Thursday, and this Thursday my church was supporting it. I greeted my fellow church members and hopped straight in, serving chocolate milk and shepherd's pie. When I ate my own dinner an hour or so later, I glimpsed a Festival of Faith and Writing email subject header before I swiped the notification away. Some bell went off in my head, and I opened the email.

Our aspiration… host… unfortunate news… postponed… April 7th, 2021… COVID-19.

When Linnea joined me, I was bursting.

"Did you see they are postponing the Festival? Because of the coronavirus?"

She furrowed her brow. "Are you serious? That seems a little excessive." I nodded. She leaned back in her chair. "I was really looking forward to it."

On March 10th, my coworker showed me a Tik Tok. "These kids in Vietnam made up a dance about the coronavirus."

"Think we should teach it to our kids during advisory?" The other sixth grader teacher cracked, grinning.

I invited myself over to my pastor's house for dinner. After the stories had been read and the clothes changed and the littles put to bed, we sat around the living room. "I just can't believe how big this is getting," I say.

On March 11th, I stay up too late reading the news—a case in Michigan, Calvin moving to online classes, educators tweeting about the inequalities that are about to be laid bare. When I tell my roommate Shira that I'm anxious, she says, "What? You should be excited!"

On March 12th, I've just gotten the class to put away their origami boxes. "I'm going to teach you about—Zionna, level 0—about the history of origami." I slide the the back of the room to change my powepoint slide. "Paper was invented in China—"

Immediately a disengaged student scoots his chair away from the table. "CORONA VIRUS. CORONA VIRUS."

I sigh, "No, I—"

"CO. RO. NA. VIR. US."

I try again. "I'm talking about at the turn of the century—"

He bugs out his eyes and cuts me off again. "CORONA VIRUS." I shake my head and move into my next point.

On March 13th, I'm sitting on my coach, an hour into my 5 hour long mission to finish watching Peter Weber's journey to find love. "You should teach your kids about xenophobia," says Fae, who had her spring break extended another week and gets to stay in Massachusetts for a little longer. Later in the conversation, she asks me if I'm coming home. And now that I have 3 weeks off, it's not a crazy suggestion.

"If anyone wants to come to the school this morning, we are going to pack up to book fair and respond to parents who show up." My boss texts that morning, right as I'm getting used to the idea that yesterday was the last day I would see my students for a while. "You are welcome to join us and support, but not required."

I showed up at 7am on the Friday of an absolutely unexpected week along with the rest of the leadership team. We tape boxes of books and watch the sunrise and stress about student well being. "We've been depended on to provide so much," the music teacher smiles wryly, "and now that support is gone. It shouldn't be all on us. It shouldn't be all on schools."

But we answer the phones and talk to parents and put out the fresh fruit we have left. We stuff report cards into envelopes and put together online resources for students and talk about grocery stores. We provide.

"As crazy as this all is, we really need this break," my boss says.

As I'm dancing in my kitchen that night, legs and tongue loosened by my spiked lemonade, I'm inclined to agree.
Continue Reading

When You're Trying Your Best and You Don't Succeed

January 05, 2020
I’ve been thinking about this, and partially because no one uses Facebook anymore and partially because I’m beyond caring, I’m not protecting the links to this blog anymore.

When I started this blog about a year and a half ago, I didn’t really know if I would stick with it or keep up with it. I didn’t know what it would turn into and where it would go. I didn’t know if people actually wanted to read my thoughts, so I did the gradual release method: wrote for myself for about a month, opened the link to close friends and family, and slowly added people to the list as they mention hearing about my blog.

And the safety of a protected list is nice. I often don’t edit these pieces as I edit my the post calvin essays—the last one probably taking me about 4 to 5 hours from start to finish. I was able to be fully myself and say whatever I wanted. I guess now I’m confident enough to do it without a safety net.

Will I actually promote this blog more? Probably not. Will I write more on it? Also probably not. But this year I am trying to write more as I find it helps me work through my feelings. We’ll see what 2020 brings.

(If you’re new here, here are some posts that capture what this blog is about: The Start, Who Tells Your Story, Living in the Hyphen, Hallmarked Homecomings)


*****


I asked Abby, the post calvin content curator, for feedback on my posts. As I’ve mentioned before, I feel a little unworthy to be on such a high-caliber blog such as the post calvin and I don’t do my best writing under imposter syndrome. She mentioned that I’ve written a lot about teaching and that I should make a rule to not write about teaching until, say, April.

A part of me immediately balked at this idea. Me, a first-year teacher at a difficult school, not write about teaching for four months? What else am I supposed to write about? It’s what consumes most of my waking hours; if I’m not at school, I’m either lesson planning, thinking about my day and how to do better, at church, hanging out with friends, eating, reading, or sleeping. That list pretty much sums up my life.

“My life is teaching, my house, my church, and reading,” I glibly remarked to most of my parent’s friends at our annual New Year’s Day open house. I got kind of sick of explaining my job and having to be like, “No, it sucks and it’s really hard and I am kind of dreading it but it’s fine!” so I defaulted back to my joke-y line that reminds me of something Mom said in September 2018: “First-year teaching isn’t a job; it’s a lifestyle.”

That statement or advice has become unhealthy to me, I think.

(and even a piece of me right now is saying, “No it isn’t. Teaching takes a lot of time, and you are investing a lot and that’s good. Don’t try to weasel your way out of doing a good job just because you are tired. That’s really what this is.”)

I spend so much of my time thinking about teaching that it is becoming who I am. It’s taken me four months of conversations that have danced around this topic for me to finally let my guard down enough to even engage with that idea: that perhaps I am more than my job.

I’ve been so focused on being a good teacher that it has come at the cost of me being a whole person. Sure, being a part of a church and a PN house has mostly counterbalanced it, but I’m afraid if I keep hurdling down this route I will become the person who only talks about her job because she does nothing outside of that.

Here’s what I’m going to try: when I feel anxious and want to avoid my work, rather than browsing the Internet and find random memes or essays about pop culture, I’m going to turn back to things that I know fulfill me—reading, writing, prayer, and meditation. I will give myself evenings off. I will be a full person so I have the energy to love my students, even when they so clearly do not love me back.

But first, I have some lesson planning to do. Thanks for letting me process with you all.


Recommendations:
  • The Good Place Season 1. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you that it is addictive. It’s on Netflix.
  • The Way You Make Me Feel — a sweet YA contemporary summer novel that was light and yet had substance. I enjoyed it a lot more than most of the books I’ve been reading.
  • Mad Max: Fury Road and Into the Spider-Verse are movies that I revisited due to the decade ending. Surprise! They are as amazing as they were when I first watched them.
  • Little Women. I’m totally sold on everything Greta Gerwig produces now.
P.S. This NPR article about how to use your weekend effectively is the kind of energy I was going for in this post, and it gives some pretty solid tips. Check it out.
Continue Reading

It's Okay to Wish It Was Already Thanksgiving

November 17, 2019
On my twitter feed a few weeks ago, this article I had read last year, “Hey, New Teachers, It’s OK to Cry in Your Car” popped up. It focuses on this experienced teacher who sends motivational emails to teachers in order to “get new teachers to Thanksgiving Break.”

Getting to Thanksgiving Break has been the line that has gotten me through these last couple weeks.

One of the other new teachers at my school decided to leave at the beginning of November. After his decision was announced to the students, one of my middle school art students said to me, “Ms. Johnson, are you going to leave? Like Mr. __________ ?” It broke my heart as much as hearing another student tell me in the first week of middle school art that they “bully the new teachers.” I told them that no, I was not going to leave. Even after the class where I spent the entire time telling them to be quiet and ended with the school social worker stepping in and taking control of the class because they couldn’t get it together.

There have been decent days, for sure. Days where students have unexpectedly stepped up and helped me out, days where a student who has been flat-out ignoring every word I say actually does their work, and days where other teachers lift me up and tell me I’m getting there. Then there are the other days where students almost fight each other in my room because they don’t know how to process their feelings, days where there are crayons completely strewn over my floor, and days where I can’t even teach because I spend the whole class period waiting for students to stop talking and giving out warnings and calling parents.

While this job, being the long-term substitute art teacher with an advisory of 16 sixth graders who all currently hate me, has been tough due to its insubstantial nature, it’s also been a good area for growth. I’ve been telling people that it’s a nice way to learn classroom management because if we don’t get to the art, my heart isn’t super broken over it. It’s not like we missed out on reading a beautiful poem by Jacqueline Woodson or discussing the intricacies of the pantoum poetic structure exemplified by Sarah Gambito’s “Charlottesville Curriculum.” At the same time, I’m not motivated to get up in the morning by the subject material; often I have to tell myself that today is the day that my children will be the hardworking and thoughtful angels that I know they can be.

The biggest thing that I’m learning is that structure can be a powerful force for good. I’ve heard so much and learned so much about the broken structures in our society that perpetuate racism and inequalities—and I’m certain that I’m contributing to that broken structure in some way in the job I’m currently in—that I forgot that they could be leveraged for good. Last Friday, I sat down and made a schedule for my Saturday, detailing all the tasks I wanted to accomplish and the time I allotted for each. My seating charts actually took me two and a half hours rather than 45 minutes and I didn’t actually get around to planning my Sunday School lesson until Sunday morning, but just the act of committing myself to a plan motivated me enough to get a good amount done. Today I had the freedom to spend an extra two hours in the kitchen to make sourdough popovers just for the heck of it and to sit down and write this blog post that I’ve been meaning to write for the past two weeks. In conclusion, yay structure!

Lately I’ve been finding myself going back to some bad habits of using the internet to avoid thinking about my problems and/or doing my work (sorry Mrs. Elliott—I know you are rolling in your grave over that slash usage). I’ve been using sites like “What Color is It?”, “Liquid Particles, ” and “Do Nothing for 2 Minutes” to break me out of that self-destructive cycle, and it’s actually been pretty effective. I give myself a moment to breathe, reset, and figure out what I’m going to do. I’d highly recommend this: find a site that you can visit when you need to signal to yourself to take a break and bookmark it so you can find it easily.

Overall, I’m making it. Sure, I’m not actually teaching a lot, and there are a lot of kids who strongly dislike me at my school, and I feel like I’m still learning the practices that I should have gotten the hang of by the first week, but I’m going to make it to Thanksgiving Break. And maybe when I’m actually able to get the students to listen to me, I’ll be able to take a critical look at my school’s philosophy of discipline and my own method of teaching. Until then, I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth and the little victories that pepper my days.

Recommendations:
I recently discovered that Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro’s Common Prayer book that I try to read as a daily devotion is online, meaning I can worship without leaving the comfort of my bed. This probably isn’t as good for me as I think it will be, but it also means that you all can experience the wonder that is daily common prayer.

I’ve been cooking a heck of a lot and trying out new recipes, but the best by far was the house dinner that Shira and I made with Malai Kofta Potato Dumplings and vegan Palak ‘Paneer’. We probably used 75% of our kitchen’s dishes and spent two hours making it and a vegan carrot cake, but it was so worth it.

The Toll, The Starless Sea, and The Queen of Nothing are all coming out this month! And I have all of them on hold in the library and with my luck they’ll come in when I’m on Christmas break! But that’s okay because I’m so dang excited to read all of them!!!

Did I recommend you read Oculus by Sally Wen Mao? Because you should.

Buzzfeed had this amazing article about how social media algorithms and backlogs of TV shows has messed with our sense of time—just be prepared to hold up your hand to a really annoying gif on the side of the first third of the article.

I saw Lucy Dacus in concert—please listen to Fool’s Gold and Pillar of Truth—and Liza Ann, an artist who was in my huge playlist that I deposit people who I eventually want to listen to, played this great song “I Love You but I Need Another Year” that I cannot stop listening to.
Continue Reading

Sorry, Alex Johnson Part II

October 19, 2019
I’m not exactly sure what to write about. Somehow the days keep slipping past my fingers and the “write a blog post” item on my to-do list keeps getting pushed to the bottom of my list, alongside “call the parents of people in my new advisory” and “go to sleep on time.”


Here are the thoughts that have been stewing in my brain:

I watched a video recently in my quest to find good art videos so the students in my art class can get some semblance of an art education from me about lettering, which is a style of art I can definitely get behind (and maybe one that I will try out someday). What stuck in my mind was a comment that the artist, Jessica Hische, made: “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” Ambivalence struck me—that comment makes perfect sense on the surface, but what does it mean that I procrastinate by skimming Twitter threads, watching niche gaming YouTube videos, and reading Young Adult novels? What’s my dream job—reading books? Searching the internet for fun content?

This Friday we didn’t have school and attended a regional Professional Development. Rather than attending the art teacher session, which is the role I am currently filling, I went to the middle school English workshop. I honestly did not have high hopes for this development. The company I work for isn’t the best with being at the forefront of good pedagogical techniques; however, I gained some good and practical strategies. I also just got to hang out with my coworkers, which was lovely since I barely see them anymore apart from 2 minute “how is everything going” chats.

We talked in that session about shifting discussions in class to be more student-focused, which requires a lot of scaffolding/teaching in the school that I am at since the students don’t listen to each other to start off, and it brought to mind another theme that is running through my life—community. Students crave community, even if they don’t recognize it, and it’s my job to provide the structure for the community (which I haven’t done yet). We all crave community. I realized this again in my house church’s discussion of the most recent sermon at Creston CRC on Luke 17:11–19, Jesus healing 10 men of their skin disease. Noah Kruis made a point that in these stories, Jesus isn’t saying that our physical disabilities are symbols of our sinfulness and made to be healed but are instead the representation of how we are cut off and excluded from other people. Jesus heals that exclusion and brings us back into community. If community has been such an important part of my life the last two years in Project Neighborhood, why shouldn’t I bring that community into a classroom? What’s stopping me, that the kids yell at each other? That I’m new? That we need to get all of this stuff done?

I love reading the post calvin and have enjoyed it even more now that I’m a writer since I feel known on the blog; however, I’m having some serious imposter syndrome. I feel like I don’t have anything new to say, and when I do have something to say that it’s just going to turn out like an uninteresting think piece. “But Alex, just write what is interesting to you!” Maybe. I also feel like my piece for November should be in tribute to Mom since it’ll be posted 2 days before the anniversary of her passing, but I don’t know if it’ll feel forced or shoehorned. I just want to write pieces like Courtney Zonnefeld’s meditation on grief, Katerina Parsons’ exploration of coming back to your home culture after being in a vastly different culture for years, Josh DeLacy’s journey through a line in a public bathroom, and Gwyenth Findlay’s subtle look at nostalgia through hockey. What do I have to share?

I want this blog to be more coherent and for me to spend more time on it. I’m considering to switch it to being hosted on Glitch, a sort of DIY place for websites, and its blog template. That feels like a good job for me to get my feet wet into coding again (and also include more pictures), but I haven’t found a Saturday to sit down and do it. Now that I think about it, I keep just piling on events to do and friends to meet weekend after weekend. And my body hasn’t gotten the memo that I don’t have to get up at 5 on weekends, so here I am, doing some of the stuff I haven’t been able to get to yet.

You deserve a better post, but this rambling and winding essay is pretty representative of my life right now. When I get my crap together and can stop avoiding the practices that actually help me process things, I’ll let ya know.

Recs:
These two poems by Mary Szybist. Space Struck (haven’t read it yet but am sure it’ll be good. She’s coming to the Festival of Faith and Writing!). Overnight Sourdough Waffles/Pancakes, which I’m about to go eat. Lucy Dacus’ cover of Dancing in the Dark.


Continue Reading

"So Alex, How was Your First Week?"

August 31, 2019
There's been 4 days of school, I've taught 4 classes of creative writing, and only one of them has gone well. I know the learning curve is step but whew, I'm just trying to stay positive.

The Sunday before the first day I was hit with a wave of anxiety before I even got out of bed. I went to church and read more of my book and tried to keep my mind off of things, but this feeling of unprepared-ness lingered. Just who were these kids, and what did I think I could really teach them? Who did I think I was?

I mispronounced name after name on my attendance and only got through one activity that I had planned. The second day I went too far too fast, careening straight over my kids' heads. By talking about mentor texts academically, I lost them, and I lost a part of their trust. Wednesday was the worst—I got completely off track and my students just dissolved. I subbed for another teacher later in the day, and the students got so out of control that the behavior specialist had to stay in the room. When my boss asked if I wanted to debrief, I was feeling defeated.

But we talked through everything, and I got some actionable steps. I rewrote yet another lesson and finally got my students engaged in what I was presenting. I successfully pushed into other classrooms and helped to manage behavior. I was able to put my foot down, and students took me seriously.

Instead of getting down on myself about feeling exhausted after only teaching one class or beating myself up about not knowing where the heck to go after this (because I haven't done that at all...), I'm trying to see my role like a gift. I've already been able to see students in multiple classes throughout the day and get the one-on-one interactions to get to know them. In observing other teachers, I get to see the kind of tactics that work and the kind of tactics that do not and what I want to put in a classroom.

More importantly, I'm learning that I can relate to students who come from vastly different backgrounds from me and how they can teach me. They've already surprised me with their determination, their ability to stand up for themselves, and their genuine heart. They want to believe education can help them, but that has been proven to be a lie for them time and time again since they are African American. I just want to make sure I'm not getting in the way of that education, to let them learn in the ways that connect with them the most powerfully.

If you asked me how my first week of school was, I'd tell you it was exhausting and a bit demoralizing and made me question if I really know anything. But it was also a recognition that I love students and I would to better center my class on building strong overall community and strong one-on-one connections. We'll see how week 2 goes.
Continue Reading
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.