Doing Better, Part 2

Last year I wrote about the inspiration I get from my kids to be better and try harder.  Lately I have been unusually overwhelmed by the amount of self-improvement I want to accomplish, and I've been really exhausted by the questions that won't stop asking themselves over and over again in my head.  Perhaps this is part of growing up, this constant nagging of oneself.  Perhaps this is one of the markers of adulthood - like having your own washer and dryer or hosting a big holiday at your house.

In the recent insomnia and chaos that wants to take over me, I've been thinking a lot more about improvements I want to make in my personal life.  Here are the top five things that I'm desperately interested in getting better at: {help!}

1. Letting go.  When things go wrong I grin and bear it and say things like "That's ok," or "No worries," or "I'm over it." Spoiler alert: I'm not over it.  I try to fool people that I am in order to decrease friction, maintain good relationships, and keep things moving along.  I even try to fool myself but it doesn't often work.  When some idiot driver nearly slams into me or a pedestrian walks right in front of my car in the middle of the street, for example, I get extremely angry.  I may not always scream and holler, and I may keep driving as if nothing's wrong, but I am fuming.  These commuter annoyances, like many of the things I struggle to let go of, are a daily occurrence.  So shouldn't I be able to just honk and move on with my life like every other New Yorker? (Ha!) My blood boils for several minutes as I fake being cool.  The "fake it till you make it" thing is not working, or at the very least the "make it" part is taking forever.  How do I learn how to chill out and let go for real? 
2. Organization.  At times my stuff seems to be everywhere.  Doesn't everyone need to be better at this?  
3. Sleeping.  I've always been a bad sleeper, but lately it's gotten progressively worse.  It seems to take me eons to fall asleep and/or go back to sleep.  How the heck do you get better Zs without medicating?  
4. Running.  I am the worst runner, possibly ever.  You know those ads and pictures you see of girls running?  Their hair is bouncing in a pretty ponytail, they look tall, determined,  and strong of mind and body?  Yeah, I don't look like that.  {I look like this.} What I do outside on the pavement cannot actually be considered running, so I don't know why I call it that.  Also, I hate running so I don't even know why I want to be better at it, but I do, and I think that relates directly to....
5. Being bad.  I don't mean coloring outside the lines or breaking the rules once in a while.  I mean genuinely sucking at something and doing it anyway.  For most of my life I have had an intuitively good sense of where my talents lie and where I am essentially useless.  Like most people (?), I don't generally relish doing something I'm awful at.  I don't mind trying, but if it's not going my way I'd rather move on and try something else.  Being a teacher has helped.  I tell my kids to persevere, to strive for growth instead of perfection, and that there is value in the struggle, value in old-fashioned elbow grease and hard work.  I have no choice but to model these philosophies in my professional life.  My kids have to learn, and if I'm no good at what they need me to do, I have to try to get better, and keep trying. But just doing it in my teacher life is no longer enough; I want to be the kind of person who is ok with failing every once in a while.  How do you aim for better while being ok with the fact that sometimes you're bad? 

Our school recently had a class competition where the grand prize was a fun field trip to do an indoor sports arena.  Earlier this week the kids from one of my classes were gathered around looking at the tally sheet for their class, pointing and smiling at their score.

"Look, Ms. Haskell, we're doing better!"
Another child shrugged and added, "We're not going to win, but we've gone up a lot lately." 

They were right - they didn't win.  Not even close.  But they were happy with improvement. They were happy to try.  So that afternoon when I got home, I begrudgingly laced up my sneakers and went outside for a "run."  Maybe this self-improvement game is part of growing up.  But people, it comes with some serious growing pains.  {And some minor shin splints.}  

Sweet

Yesterday colleagues and I took the kids to Lake Compounce, an amusement park sponsored by Pepsi where you can get free, unlimited soda all day with your admission.  Before letting them jump into the wave pool and scream on the roller coasters, I gathered my group and essentially begged them to please stay hydrated by limiting the soda intake and drinking water.  As I laid out my plea, the kids jokingly rolled their eyes at me and started finishing my sentences in chorus.  They have spent the year listening to my occasional tirades on the diabetes inducing "drinks" they sometimes insist on buying and bringing to school, namely those 99 cent Arizona "juices" and "iced teas."  (The quotes are truly necessary because few edible liquids on earth could be father from juice than the crap inside of those brown bottles and tall tin cans.) In some city neighborhoods, you can find even more horrifying substances bottled for kids to consume, called quarter juices. The labels lists no ingredients but water, food coloring, high-fructose corn syrup, and the occasional chemical.  GROSS.  Oh, and they only cost 25 cents, hence the nickname quarter juice.  Thankfully my kids don't drink those nasty things, but they're out there nonetheless, fostering sugar addiction in really young children.

This past week, our Mayor announced that he wants to ban all sugary drinks over 16 ounces within the city limits.  Arms are up.  (I love the way The Young Turks debate the issue here.) A few years ago, New York tried to put a tax on soda and other sugary drinks to create revenue and hopefully discourage the purchasing of such horrifying substances.  No dice, the legislation failed, but it revealed some scary, scary things about people in this country.  There was one commercial that was no doubt sponsored by coke or pepsi or some other drug-dealer posing as food-supplier.  It had a mom who was complaining about how "juice would be taxed too, not just soda."  There was another ad that declared "the pennies add up when you're trying to feed a family." It's clear: we Americans have no idea what we are putting into our bodies.  We don't bother to read labels, we accept advertisements as gospel, and we eat and drink thoughtlessly, with utter disregard to what our bodies need to function and thrive.  Anyone thinking big bottles of soda and other high-sugar drinks should be part of "feeding a family" need a serious and immediate wake-up call.  As a society, we are obsessively seeking convenience.  Our priorities are warped and illogical.  We choose a fancy car and a designer bag over a nice neighborhood and a complete meal.  For most of us, these stupid decisions to focus on material goods over quality of life are not made consciously, but they are made nonetheless and they affect the health of our bodies, minds, children, and economy.  Many people don't consider why things like soda and junk food are so cheap.  It boils down to a simple cliche: you get what you pay for.  If you are more concerned with the cost than the quality of food, you ought to expect to look and feel like crap for most of the hours of most of your days.  Unfortunately, we are so diluted by the pill-popping, convenience paradigm that we don't even realize how truly sick our society is.

When tobacco advertising was phased out we saw a similar uproar that was (unsurprisingly) spurred by and stirred by the tobacco companies themselves.  So is anyone shocked that people are reacting badly to Bloomberg's so-called soda ban?  Any critically thinking human can infer that these responses are fully pressed by the drug-dealers (food producers/providers).  If you're consciously making the straight-up dumb choice to drink soda all day, go forth and be sugared up.  However, as adults we have more to consider than just ourselves and our current state.  We are supposed to be caring for the future as well.  Do we want our children to be part of a productive, competitive, and healthy workforce or do we want them to be riddled with sickness for the rest of their lives?

If you are an adult I really don't care how you abuse your body - smoke, drink in excess, use drugs, eat crap, poison yourself in any way you see fit.  You are sapping our economy, wasting our oxygen, and contributing to raising healthcare costs, but I can let all that go.  What I cannot and will not get down with is exposing kids to any of this abusive behavior.  Our government protects kids from tobacco by disallowing the ads that clearly targeted them; we have a drinking and a smoking age to discourage young people from making stupid choices and discourage companies from turning kids into hosts for their parasitic profits.  Few such regulations exist for protecting our kids from food companies whose moral compass points to the same false North as that of Phillip Morris.

Throughout the day yesterday between asking me to hold their money, glasses, and towels, many of my kiddos ran up to me with big smiles on their faces and clear liquid in their cups. In a tone and inflection clearly designed to gently mock me, they giggled and shouted "look what I have," and "it's water, Ms. Haskell!"  Children should be exposed to information about what they're putting in their bodies and encouraged to make good decisions about eating and drinking.  Since they often are not exposed to such knowledge, someone has to take on the responsibility of keeping them from going into a diabetic coma before they turn eighteen. If that someone turns out to be Bloomberg or "bigger government," then fine, because I could really use the help.

Doing Better

Yesterday my kids took a quiz on integer operations, a topic I have never taught in-depth with sixth graders (it's a seventh grade topic).  The quiz wasn't easy, but the vast majority of the kids in both classes performed to the best of their ability, and many of them did 100% of the work correctly and completely.  When I handed back the quizzes today, the responses I got on both ends of the spectrum were exactly what I love to hear.

Can I come up at lunch and get extra problems? -G scored 70%
I can't believe I missed that negative sign! -T scored 90%
I'm getting better at this. -K scored 65%
Do you need help in after school this week? -B scored 100%

I met my goal.  I want to get an 80 next time. -C scored 75%

But there was one reaction that really got to me, more than all the others.  A student who throughout the year has been a challenge for me behaviorally and academically scoffed and shook his head at the thumbs up sign I gave him when I returned his 80% paper.  I gave him a look of confusion to which he replied, "I can do better."  Not so long ago, this student would be thrilled with a D, and sometimes perfectly content with an F on quizzes, tests, classwork, and homework assignments.  No more.  He examined his quiz meticulously and called me back over.

HERE!  This is mistake I shouldn't have made.  I forgot the rule that a negative divided by a negative is a positive.  I must have rushed through that question.

It's easy to blame everything wrong in our lives on external factors.  It's easy to avoid holding ourselves responsible and just blame something - or someone - else.  Does that mean it's hard to own up and step up?  I told him that since he used the same rule correctly on two other questions, he probably did rush through it, but now he'll remember to take his time, even when the question seems basic. He agreed and went back to work on designing story problems for multiplying a positive by a negative.  

Forty minutes later upon giving back the corrected quiz he repeated, "I can do better, Ms. Haskell.  I'm going to do better."  

Is it harder to solve a problem than it is to complain about it? Is it more difficult to maintain faith and resolve than it is to give up and despair?  My experience tells me that the good and bad options require the same amount of emotional energy, but one side of the coin leaves you inspired and hopeful while the other simply sucks the life out of you.  So is it hard to own up and step up?  No.  My kids can do it, and so will I.  I will be better too. 

The Reframe

Everyone has bad days at work, and lately I have had what I consider to be a disproportionate number of them.  The honeymoon period of the first months of school is over and I am unspririsingly entering the super-self-critical stage of the year.  It's freaking crunch time and there is too much to be done for me to waste my emotional energy on anything but the kids.

I have come to realize that the recent bad days have been merely a matter of maladjusted perspective.  My kids are awesome.  I should not care about anything else.  Yesterday I let a bad afternoon ruin my entire day, but nothing should have been able to discount the fact that earlier in the day my kids got their highest class averages yet on an exam, and that I had a significant number of kids master every standard I tested them on, including one girl who told me during advisory that this year so far has made her "love math so much."  I've reworked my mindset and I'm ready to let go of the nonsense.  I do love my job 99% of the time, and the 1% can pretty much just go to hell.

Infamy

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has come and gone, and the press surrounding this milestone has died down.  In this week that followed, New York was able to really reflect on the last decade of our country's history, and re-absorb the magnitude of horror that happened here ten years ago.  As a teacher, this is always an interesting time of year.  We have a moment of silence and say the pledge with renewed fervor, and teachers talk to the kids about why we pause every September eleventh to remember a fateful morning and its devastating aftermath.  Our middle schoolers were very young kids in 2001, and though most of them lived here in the city, they have absolutely no emotional connection to the day or its significance.  When they discuss the attacks in class or in writing, it is with a cooly distant tone.  I imagine that they read about 9/11 the way that our parents read about Pearl Harbor, understanding that it was a horrific event without feeling very horrified.

"New York City is filled with children who have no reason to distinguish the eleventh from any other day in September.  At some point they'll learn, but for now, for them, what actually happened could never have happened." -Jonathan Safran Foer

As their teacher, there's something terribly isolating about the way the kids see 9/11.  I was surprised by it with my first class - the fact that it was just another day to them - but now I expect it, especially as the kids get younger.  It feels so lonely around the day in the classroom, surrounded by children because there's really no way to make it meaningful to them the way it's meaningful to the adults.  In fact, I almost envy the kids' naivety, and while part of me wants them to really feel the somberness of the occasion, the other parts of me realize that they are lucky to have been a safe distance (literally and figuratively) from the ton of bricks that came down on so much of the rest of the city (literally and figuratively).  The slogan that came to be associated with the attacks is "never forget" and it's certainly salient, especially here in the greatest city in the world, where the skyline will always be eerily incomplete.  But every September inside my middle school classroom, amidst the joy and anticipation of kicking off the school year, I find myself disconnected from a group of little people who will probably never remember.

The Roller Coaster

Memorial Day is less than a week away.  You know what that means; summer is nearly here.  This [school] year is truly flying by, and I am at once nostalgic, overwhelmed, and ecstatic about the onslaught of changes that are riding on my heels.  Por ejemplo:

1. My first class of sixth graders moves on from our little school next month, graduating to high schools all over Brooklyn and Manhattan.  They were so little when I was their teacher just a few years ago.  Now they are teenagers about to turn a major page in their lives.  In a lot of communities around the country, the transitions from elementary to middle to high school are not such a big deal.  In New York City, there are a myriad of factors in kids' lives that change at warp speed during these points - your school, your friends, your commute, your uniform, to name just a few.  When this group of kids came to us, most of them had been considered the shining stars of their old schools and classes, and with good reason.  That transition is difficult, but now they're so much smarter and so much better.  I hope that they go through the same process smoothly in ninth grade, and that they continue to be pushed and challenged by their schools and their peers.  I can't believe they're leaving.

2. We are moving to Queens.  Our new lease has been signed and we will say goodbye to Kings County (at least as our place of residence) in about a month.  Our new neighborhood is quiet, residential, and green.  The New York City rental market is a rapid enterprise, so we essentially decided on this apartment in the blink of an eye when we saw the kitchen.  Needless to say, I am slightly apprehensive about the process of moving, as well as the new, traffic-encumbered drive to work.  Like many, I am a creature of habit, resistant to change of many kinds and happy to be settled into a predictable routine.  Upsets to the delicate balance I've created are not necessarily welcome, even when they are necessary or beneficial.  Nevertheless, the new apartment is quite satisfactory and I am excited to settle into a new routine with a new borough as the homestead.

3.  The wedding is very fast approaching.  Last night I had a strange and alarming dream in which we were a week before nuptials and it came to my attention that invitations had somehow never been mailed.  I realize in my awake state that this doesn't make sense, as I would have suspected a problem earlier due to lack of RSVPs, and my dream never addressed whether this accident was my fault or his, which I also looked back on with perplexity.  Whatever, it was a dream.  The point is that (back to the dream state now) I did not feel nearly as anxious as would be considered normal over such a massive glitch, and I simply told Mike to call everyone, apologize, and ask if they were coming.  As my dream self, the consuming emotion I experienced was not stress, worry, or panic, but rather anticipation.  It was not the kind of anticipation that ails you when you want to get something over with, it was the sort that you feel when the whole world appears to be at your fingertips.  So this is how I woke up in the morning, with an eager composure and delight that assures me: amidst the end of year madness, the upcoming move, and the impending wedding planning crunch, life is generally great.

Life's Candy

I haven't written in a couple of weeks because I have a lot on my mind and things have been generally crazy.  School is more stressful than I remember it being in a while, mostly for reasons that have very little or nothing to do with me or my ability to do my job.  Somehow that makes it more annoying, not less.  The thought that recurrently runs through my head isn't "I clearly have no control over this, so I should step back and concentrate on other things." That would be the rational thing to say to oneself.  Instead, it's "why can't I fix this? And this? And this and this?!" In all likelihood, this feeling will continue for an undetermined length of time, and that is unfortunate.

But for now I am on vacation and that is wonderful in many ways.  I am home to enjoy the open space of the backyard, the exuberance of the many dogs, and the company of my family.  This particular vacation is also turning out to be the time when I handle a myriad of random and obnoxious "housekeeping" tasks, another source of mild anxiety surging.  As I deal (badly) with car trouble, portfolio chaos, the wrong maid of honor dress, and the absurdity of a $500 change fee to alter my honeymoon plans to exclude Tokyo, I am immensely grateful that it's spring break.  I have the time to call the airline and wait an hour (or three) for them to call me back.  I can bug my well-connected uncle to help me get my car fixed rather than dropping it at some random mechanic in Crooklyn Brooklyn.  The fact that all the extra stress has piled on now rather than during a regular school week is a grand and glorious blessing.  It also really helps that I am breathing fresh air, getting hugs from family every day, and watching my Lola snooze the day away after a morning of running around in the drizzling April rain.  It's the little things, people.

Barbara says it best.  As always.

Sanity Week

There is this spot on route 9 coming up on Croton where the tree line thins to give way to a wide angle view of the river, now half frozen, and the mountains, now scattered with snow but ready to spring back to life.  Today the weather was bleak.  While driving, dark gray clouds monopolized the sky and fat raindrops plummeted onto my windshield in an uneven and obnoxious rhythm.  But among this apparent and broad gloom, I had the same thought I always have on this spot of road as I drove home from home (to Brooklyn, from Garrison) this afternoon.  I am beyond lucky.  I am so fortunate that I feel as though I'm going to have to spend my lifetime trying to pay the universe back for all the good favor present in my life.  Even that will not be enough, but I'll try anyway.

My Valentine's Day Presents from Mom. 

Can you tell that I am feeling well and rested?  It's the product of February break - a welcome week off to rejuvenate the spirits and thus reinvest in the work of the school year.  For this blessed week, I did not travel off to a warm climate or a cultural epicenter.  Instead I spent the week relaxing at home with family and running necessary errands.  I feel like balance has been restored to my being and my surroundings and by Monday I will be all but zen-like. 

Some of the best dogs ever. 

Frustration

I have profound and fundamental issues with skating by.  You know, the process by which a person follows just enough of the rules, does just enough of the work, and acts like just enough of a decent human being to pass as whatever they are supposed to be or at whatever they are supposed to do.  Maybe it's because I was guilty of this lazy tendency for my first 17 or so years of life, or maybe it's because I now spend mountains of energy and time trying to drill the propensity out of students.  With the kids it can get tiring, but it doesn't really bother me much.  They are children, and they are growing.  Like me and many, many Americans out there, they will learn and they'll get it together.  With adults, however, it truly grates on my nerves - the idea that it is anywhere near acceptable or forgivable to do the bare minimum.  I would think that at least some of the time a grown person would want to exert a bit more effort than would be required in order to just graze the bottom of the bar.  Maybe try exceeding the expectations once in a while rather than perpetually falling an inch and a half short (far enough to get super irritating, yet not far enough to warrant the time it would take someone to address).  This kind of behavior is maddening and a slap in the face to the rest of us, but what's even more insolent is the fact that people who skate by actually think they are slick about it.  They think they have gotten one over on those around them.  Meanwhile, it's glaringly obvious from a mile and a half away.  Grow up and step up, or for God's sake stop putting on a show.  If you plan to skate by, at least have the nerve to do it with some dignity and stop pretending that you are anything more than just (barley) enough.

Teachers

There are way too many teachers out there who need to find a new line of work.  Not because they are still developing their skills or still learning how to be good instructional leaders, but because their desire for a paycheck, an airtight union contract, and a 3pm end of day outweighs their concern for the individuals sitting in front of them day in and day out.  These teachers (you know, the ones who care more about themselves than the future of our country) are a great departure from the ones that I remember growing up.  In the hopes that more of the good ones would join the profession, I'm going to throw out into the blogosphere/universe the names of some of MY most amazing teachers.  


Dodge, Gale, Solan, Reynolds, Levy.  If you've had them, you likely remember them and are grateful for their brief presence in your childhood.  Someone get more of them to come teach.  Now.  


A note to clarify: these individuals did not impact my life because they were excellent pedagogues.  They were excellent pedagogues, of course, but that's not why I remember them 5, 10, and 15 years later.  I don't remember how Mrs. Dodge taught me to be a better reader, but I remember listening to her read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe while sitting on the carpet, enthralled, and how Dodge city (our class token economy) was like the coolest thing ever.  I can't recall the structure of Ms. Solan's lessons, or the notes she gave us, but I definitely remember enjoying math more than I ever had before, and I remember getting a 98 on the regents after getting a 72 the year before (no secret that the teacher is the key).  There probably wasn't anything terribly remarkable about the textbook we used in Ms. Levy's class, or the way she assigned our homework, but the short time out of class that she sometimes took to do trivia or incite my impersonations of other, less admired staff members (SHAPIRO) - those were the remarkable things about school; the moments we laughed together as a class and sat on the edge of our seats and believed we could be really really smart.  These moments may not fall under the act of teaching, but they are a big part of what it means to be a good teacher.  It's a hard thing to remember in the current climate of high-stakes standardized testing, tenure debates, and drastic budget cuts that threaten our livelihood, but that's what it comes down to.  


And so, the bottom line comes from a David Brooks early January New Yorker article: "We’ve spent a generation trying to reorganize schools to make them better, but the truth is that people learn from the people they love."


End. of. story. 

Snow

Am I crazy or is winter especially unbearable this year?  I feel like the one snow storm a week phenomenon did not come to the city last year.   Every time it come down, it is just enough to be really annoying and moderately dangerous (sliding everywhere on the road, having to dig the car out every 6-8 days, the streets never getting cleaned, or fully plowed, etc, etc).  What's worse, it's always just under the required amount for Mr. Michael Bloomberg to cancel school.  This man just tells the city not to drive, but then keeps school open, when hundreds of teachers live in Long Island, New Jersey and Westchester.  I live here in Brooklyn, so I could leave my car plowed in and take mass transit, as suggested by our dear leader, but do I want to spend 1.5 hours fearing certain death on a bus driven by someone else, or 30 minutes in my own car with my life in my own hands?  The latter please.  Sometimes I miss the old Garrison days when our Principal/Superintendent lived far away and would shut us down for mild flurries.

Don't misunderstand; I love my job.  I want to be at school every day.  I want to teach.  I want to see my kids.  What I don't want is to almost die on the way to work, only to find ten students sitting in my homeroom, and maybe 120 in the school at large.  I mean, really, what am I supposed to do with ten children?!  I can't do anything new, can't do what I had planned, so I have to review and make new plans, make new worksheets, make new activities, or else assign dreadful busy work worthy of a sub.  Not this time.  I have contingencies this time.  Plan A; school is open and the majority of my kiddos braves the snow, in which case we work on area of trapezoids and triangles, or B; my half-class and I play math games in rotating centers and finish our Donors Choose thank you letters.  A wasted day, un-wasted.  Plan C, the little known engine that probably won't, is in case of a miracle: sit in PJs, snuggle Lola, plan, catch up on back issues of the New Yorker.  Oh, to dream.

The way I see it...

When you love your job, you love your life.  Ten years ago if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I probably would change my answer every couple of hours, or simply say, "no clue."  I'm amazed daily by how happy I am at work, and how much better I can cope with craziness than I could two years ago.  How does someone like me, with great academic promise but little direction, find their vocation immediately after finishing college?  No clue.

Here's the scary part though; I realize that I will probably never feel like a great teacher, and that I will fail on a daily basis as long as I remain in the profession.  I also realize that it's actually this exact sentiment that's one component of good teaching, but I'm not the type to be able to sustain it for an entire career.  I'm not that resilient (and quite frankly I don't think many people are that resilient...hence the surplus of bad teachers who are allowed to slip by in their laziness or lack of work ethic).  Ten more years I can probably do...and try to do well.  But twenty or thirty or, holy cannoli, forty...no way.  The whole career change thing, years in the future though it may be, is daunting.

I frequently refer to teaching as my vocation, rather than my profession, because it feels like the only thing I can even consider doing right now.  I can only hope that when the time comes to put down the chalk, I'll find something else to love.  Because really...when you love your job, you can't help but love your life.