remembering for him: a tribute to my Daddy

I lost my Dad almost a decade ago.

But really I lost him long before that… to that terrible thief Alzheimer’s.

And so today, on Father’s Day, I want to take some time and do the thing that he was robbed of: remembering.

My Daddy loved the water. Every time we visited West Virginia, he made sure to take me canoeing at Babcock State Park. In all our family travels, there wasn’t a hotel pool that we didn’t enjoy together. I remember in the beginning stages of his sickness when he confided in me: “I feel something special when I’m moving through water; I can’t explain it.” He was shy to say it, thinking it was one more confusing curse of his disease. But I got it. I get it. I share this with him always.

My Daddy loved being outside. He climbed rocks and played with abandon. He always pointed weeping willows out to me. He toyed with snakes while my Mom screamed in the background. I remember taking walks with him around our neighborhood. Every time we were visited by a cardinal, we stopped and he called to it. I still do that.

My Daddy loved music. I remember dancing with him in the living room. We would twirl and then he would shoot me through his legs and rocket me up in the air; it was magical. He had this special whistle melody that he sang wherever he went; to this day I kick myself for not recording it. During the holiday seasons, we would play Christmas tunes in the car and we would sing and whistle along. He loved Frank Sinatra and Yanni. Even near the end of his decaying mind, he would sit on the couch and put in his CDs and close his eyes and tip his head back and disappear into the sounds; music was one thing he could remember. And now music reminds me of him.

My Daddy loved being active. He taught me how to catch, putting in hours with me tossing around baseballs with our tried and true gloves. I remember how much he loved golf, and how much he loved it even more when his family was involved. When I was a child, he would tip a cup over on the shag carpet and we would lie on our bellies and pool-shoot the golf ball into it. Later in life, I’ll never forget that one time I chipped in for a birdie… both of us were surprised and overjoyed. My athleticism reminds me of him.

My Daddy loved being adventurous. He loved traveling and road trips. As I look back at pictures, I have so many with him all around the country. I remember a white water rafting trip that bumped him out of the boat into the rapids. I was paranoid but we just got him back in and moved on downstream. Horses were my Mom’s and my thing. But, despite not being interested and slightly afraid, he did it anyways on one of our yearly trips to Kentucky. I’ll never forget when his horse neared home and took off and galloped down the hill and my Dad was sprawled-eagle with arms and legs flailing in the wind and reins everywhere but in his hands and then he was on the ground. We laughed at that story for years. I live a life of adventure now, too.

My Daddy was selfless. When I was a teenager, despite him not really supporting my religious fervor, he drove me back and forth from Oak Park several times a week for various meetings. He had this mocking way of saying “Oakkkkkk Parrrrrrk” when I would ask, because it was so common and so ridiculous. But he still did it. He always asked me true questions about how I was doing and what was going on. (I still have regrets for not answering him when I could. Maybe this is why my love language is questions.) He was selfless even in his sickness. I was so scared he would be too far gone to walk me down the aisle. But he did it, even though he didn’t fully understand what was happening…and I’m sure he was afraid.

My Daddy LOVED my Mom. When we would fight, all he ever said was: “don’t talk to your Mother like that.” It was never about him, but about her. When they weren’t doing well, he would talk to me about it and what was wrong and how it could change and why was it like that; he was petrified of losing her. In his sickness, the conversations revolved around us taking care of her when he was gone. This shaped my pursuit of a husband, and I am blessed to have found someone that evokes this strength of my Dad.

I love you Daddy.

I remember you Daddy.

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love & learning in the time of coronavirus

*Thanks to my coworker Nikki for inspiring this post’s title.*

I’m a mess.

Let’s just start there.

But I’m kinda grateful…I haven’t been inspired to write in a while, yet here I am, brought to the keys by grief, once again. (Albeit on my old blog; the new one just got too expensive to maintain. I’ve still got to import & organize all my content. But from now on, I’ll be writing here again. It feels like coming home.)

Like many others have done recently across the world, our school closed physically. Yesterday and today have been two grueling days of “getting ready” to take our classrooms online.

My heart sighs. I am heavy wondering if this is permanent: was today a goodbye to my colleagues? What about saying goodbye to my students? That is not my kind of closure. My eyes hurt. So. much. screentime. My spirit is exhausted. The cynicism and criticism seems inexhaustible. When will it ever be good enough? My teacher soul is scared. I didn’t sign up for a virtual learning environment. I thrive on good vibes and quality connection. How will I meaningfully create that online?

And this is just all in my tiny little insignificant world. What about all the seniors worldwide who were robbed of their culminating experiences? What about the elderly parents who are achingly-lonely and isolated for fear of disease? What about students who are already so far behind academically and can’t go home to their own computer and internet service? What about health care workers who are relentless and spent with no end in sight? What about those without insurance? What about all the children who won’t eat regularly, who now will spend all day quarantined in a prison of neglect–at best and abuse–at worst? What about those who have jobs that just ended? No sick days. No pay. No safety net.

I. just. can’t. even. breath. #irony

And yet, even in all this, maybe because of it, I am so grateful.

I am so impressed with how my school has handled this shit show. Communication has been steady and intentional. Encouragement has been overflowing. (Today we even got personal bottles of our drink of choice for our virtual happy hour tomorrow! I mean, who does that? People are losing their jobs, and I’m getting free drinks!) We have been assured our school’s hourly employees will still be taken care of. We have advocates in our human resources, our parents, our bosses. These past two “emergency” PD days, I had substantial hours on both days to plan. I have great insurance and we’re close to a great hospital. Our campus is open-aired and still accessible.

Beyond my job, I am grateful for our apartment, that is expansive and inviting and a good place to quarantine. I am grateful for easy and quick access to the beach (that we are taking advantage of this weekend!) I am grateful for Dave who has pumpkin seeds, wine and homemade meals ready for me because he knows how tough it is. I am grateful our families are healthy. I am grateful for my strong body that swam 2k this morning. And for f***’s sake, I’m grateful we have plenty of toilet paper.

Through all of this, I can’t help but think of metta practice–lovingkindness meditation.

For me. For you. For the vulnerable populations. For those infected. For those recovering. For those traveling. For those scared. For those unemployed. For the politicians I disagree with. For the world.

May we be well.

May we be whole.

May we be happy.

May we be healthy.

May we be free from inner and outer harm.

May we live in peace and with ease.

let go. let it flow.

She saw him: beside me, to my right. She described him: a darker man, probably indigenous, dressed in the traditional garb of some ancient culture, regal headdress upon his crown, holding a spear as if standing guard. She said: the minute I declared I wanted to teach overseas, he started banging his spear up and down, in rhythm to some chant I didn’t know I knew. She emphasized: he would not guide me, that was for me to courageously do on my own. But, once I made a bold move, he would open doors for me and ease my transition and smooth the seas.

He has.

She said: it would heal me of my anxious tendencies. She described it: having been designed for vets suffering from PTSD, it has now become widely used in a variety of therapy sessions. She hypothesized: it’s grief; unprocessed grief is tearing you apart. I disagreed…until I tried it. In her chair I sat, headphones on, a binaural beat throbbing back and forth while I recounted trauma from my childhood. Inappropriate adult relationships; fearful encounters; accidents. And then, before I knew it, my Mom was there with me as vivid and visceral as her last trip to Colorado. Memories of her strength drowned my eyes. Gratitude for the joy we’ve shared lifted the corners of my mouth. I had grieved my Mom’s death, but I had not grieved the loss of her fierce protection in my life. I was now on my own, forced to embody her rather than rely on her. She was right: EMDR would help me.

It has.

People ask me often how I’m feeling about upending our lives and starting new in a foreign country. They know I’m prone to panic attacks and paralyzing fear and crippling anxiety. But something has broken open inside of me. I feel like the two aforementioned experiences have released the floodgates on my parched internal landscape, and liquid light is flowing now. I feel resolved. I feel surrendered. I feel exhilarated. I feel inspired. I feel strengthened. I feel encouraged. I feel emboldened. I feel renewed. I feel blessed. I feel like all of the God-Energy is pulsing within me, aligned and free, just as it should be.

 

storytelling using mentor texts

Inevitably, every break brings time for reflection and renewal for teaching. What’s going well? What’s hurting the team? Over winter break, I found myself desperate for a reset in my classroom. Students didn’t even know each other’s names, much less stories; I was the bad guy without enough of the connection that grounds those high expectations; I was so busy trying to collaborate in an overwhelming amount of configurations that I lost my authentic teacher compass; I was buried in systematic behavior expectations that did not align with who I am…and that didn’t work. I felt like a failure…worst, I was uninspired and uninspiring.

Last semester, my colleague and friend started talking about the writing approach which consists of copying mentor texts. She’s all up in this book and talking about it all over the place. (You know, authentic and real PD…not the forced kind; rather the kind that evolves from dialogue and mutual eagerness to grow in our craft.) We implemented mentor texts with our juniors as a way to create real-life writing experiences: reviews.

Slowly these two bodies of reflection met and bowed to each other on the dance floor of my mind: how can I provide students the opportunity to share their stories and improve their writing with mentor texts? How can I create an opportunity for reset while encouraging students to write beyond the traditional (and boring) academic scope (read 5 paragraph essay).

And those two ideas danced. Beautifully and wonderfully, beyond my expectations. Here is how I approached it (some steps are modified for how I wish I would have done it):

1. I decided on two mentor texts: Maus and Night. This would give students the ultimate choice: story-telling via prose or story-telling via art.
2. Then I combed both texts looking for engaging prompts and mentor text sections that would elicit stories that matter from my students, the kinds of stories that bond at the heart level. Here are those prompts for Maus and Night.
3. To begin all this, and to deepen my own connections with students, I also modeled the process, as did my student teacher. I chose for my brain dump a piece about my Mom I had published on this blog a while back. Then I altered it to mimic the mentor text. I also walked through breaking down the mentor text into moves I could mimic.
4. Next students picked their genre and prompt followed by a rough draft. This draft is not based on the structure or style of the mentor text, but merely is a brain dump to get their stories onto the paper.
5. Then began the analysis of the mentor texts’ approaches. This was a chance for students to be independently taught writing craft by the mentor text they selected. They were guided through this process using extensive graphic organizers. Here those are for Maus and Night. Of course I shouldn’t have been surprised at how this organically produced the close and deep independent reading I’ve been trying to manufacture all year long. But that is exactly what happened. Three cheers for favorable instructional accidents!
6. After the analysis portion, students transitioned to the remaking of their drafts into the style of their chosen genre. For some, this meant adding dialogue. For others, they rearranged paragraphs. For the artsy, they drew and divided into panels with shading and captions. No matter what, each student was nose deep in a text, looking for how to mimic it. It took a bit for them to get the hang of it, but they did!
7. At this point, we did some peer workshopping. Secretly, the real point here was the sharing of their stories in partners to prepare them for a larger production. After all, in my head, this IS the reason for this entire writing project: community connections. All the academic benefits are bonuses. (Oops, did I say that out loud?)
8. Then, the wondrous glory of storytelling: the sharing. I asked for feedback from students regarding which peers they felt most comfortable and uncomfortable sharing with, and then I used that data to place students into a variety of small groups. In those groups, I gave very specific directions to 1, read his/her story out loud and 2, each student was to write a note of encouragement/thank-you letter to the author after he/she shared. I provided sentence frames and colored cards. To me, these are the kinds of days I live for as a teacher. Students huddled together in small groups, sharing secrets of the heart, spinning webs of connection that are strong and trustworthy, a web upon which we build more learning and more connection. A web which catches the light.
9. Finally, students self-graded using a narrative rubric based on CCSS. In the future, I will do a better job explicitly teaching these elements, because though they were inherent in the works the students produced, the students themselves did not have the language to self-evaluate with specifics.

The pieces the students turned in were breathtaking both in craft and content. Were there grammar errors? Of course…but honestly, who cared when I was seeing some of the best writing I’ve seen from students in my decade of teaching. The pieces were original and unique and authentic and individual and unfettered with the formulaic chains we so often think at-risk students need. The pieces were heart-wrenching with students exposing the dangerous truths of their lives: from gang violence to domestic abuse to homelessness to murder to drugs to suicide to anxiety to sexual assault to the grief of too many orphaned children. I was not reading papers; I was reading souls.

But THE most beautiful moment in this project came the day we shared our stories in small groups. Throughout the day, I roamed to different groups to pop in on students’ stories and leave them a note from my heart to theirs. In one group of two boys and two girls, one of my most difficult and often disengaged boys began sharing his story. As he worked his way through it, it was evident his exterior was cracking. His pace slowed; his face tightened; his eyes moistened; his words chocked. He collapsed into himself, a heaving pile of grief, shattered by bullets past. Literally. His peer, the other boy in the group, silently got up from his seat, walked around the table, knelt beside him, rubbed his back, and just stayed…a steady, silent, comforting rock. It was a moment so beautiful, so raw, I nearly lost my breath.

Who am I kidding? I did.

And things have been better with that student. Not perfect. Not a miracle. But a shaky bridge has been solidified.

And that is just the kind of story I want to write with penstrokes of my career.

 

brazilian wax poetic

I remember it very clearly. I was sitting in front of the computer while Dave sat on our blue leather couch. With my approaching December graduation date from North Central, we were discussing what comes next. What do I do as a teacher who graduates in December? It’s awkward. It’s unfavorable. It’s ill-timed.

And so, I uttered two dangerous words of adventure: what if?

What if we move to Colorado?

What if we work at a ski resort for the season?

What if we just spend a few months playing?

Those two words changed our lives. We moved to Colorado with everything we owned in a jeep. Found careers that we loved and that loved us back. Made new friends and new memories with old friends. Hosted family for holidays and vacations. Embraced the land and the lifestyle of the mountains. Became runners and yogis and cyclists. Experienced new dimensions of the Divine and new nuances of ourselves.

For the last eleven years, we have lived blessed and beautiful lives. Thank you God.

And now: what if?

Dave and I have been revisiting these very two dangerous words for a while now. Adventure calls.

What if we move?

What if it’s far?

What if it’s overseas?

What if it’s completely foreign and unlike any life we’ve ever lived?

Those two very dangerous words of what if have tumbled into two other words: I accept.

This past weekend I attended an international job fair in Boston, at which I found Graded. Before we went, I made a list of what I wanted in an overseas teaching gig: financially, personally and professionally. I pursued schools who met those criteria with a singular devotion. But in the end, or perhaps in the beginning, Graded found me.

And so, Dave and I will be taking this… freak show… circus… adventure on the road starting July 2017, at which time we will move to Sao Paulo, Brazil for a two-year contract. There are a million things to do and a million goodbyes to cry and a million freak-outs to stifle and a million questions to answer…but for now, I’ll settle into the wild-eyed lap of what if.

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For those of you interested in the details of our adventure, I’ll be starting a new blog by the title of this post. Stay tuned!

meditations on the sea

It is vast against the horizon. So much so…it IS the horizon. It shifts the sand beneath my cold toes, and still further dizzies my eyes with its periphery-dancing. Yet the sea does not dread the distances, calculating arrivals and departures, lost in the abyss of so-whats and then-whats.

It is buoyant despite emotional spasms. At one rock outcropping–battered knuckles of stone rising against the blue–there is anger. Foam churns, one million crashes in a busy liquid intersection. It is violent, destructive. Just five rock-knuckles down, small children and grown men laugh in the surf, their bodies caressed by the gentle tide. Here, there is joy: a playground for the young at heart. Yet, the sea does not worry about its vacillating waves of ups and downs, giggles and groans.

It is storied. An infinite amount of narratives are surrounded by its borders. There is no place on earth not footnoted by its boundaries. Beneath its surface another language exists: tall tales of ferocious hunters and tiny fables of minuscule plants. Yet, the sea is at peace in its own identity, authentic and brave and beautiful.

It is inconstant. The only thing that stays the same is that it changes. Fluid, flexible and fluctuating because nothing is in its control; it bows to the moods of the moon and the pollution of the people. Always unsure of who it was or who it will be, the sea just is.

It is frightening. Dangers lurk beneath it and above it and beside it. Fear multiplies like grains of sand: storms and tsunamis and sharks and stings and sunburn; currents and cancer and career changes and crashes. Yet, though drowning in a million anxieties, the sea is not anxious.

 

 

tidings of comfort

When I think of God, I think of Love.

When I think of Love, I think of Comfort.

And when I think of Comfort, I think of the holidays.

In the past year, we’ve lost both our pets. Our Christmas tree sits undisturbed in the corner of our living room, the sun through the windows its only companion. We don’t come home and play the game we so loved to be annoyed by: six ornaments rolling around on the ground, one broken, moving them further and further up the tree in some Jenga strategy to protect them from wagging hazards and pawing attacks.

Comfort.

Tomorrow marks the 5th anniversary of my Dad’s passing. My Dad loved Christmas music. He would sing along to it, or whistle along to it, from the deepest places of joy in his heart. To this day, I can’t hear “Silent Night” or “Jingle Bell Rock” without hearing his voice from some secret distance.

Comfort.

Two years later, my Mom joined my Dad. I miss her Christmasness. Peanut butter balls, fudge, all on a plate saran-wrapped, sitting cold on the porch. The buffets of food and a family packed around a festive tablecloth in an ivy-wallpapered kitchen. Mom, sitting near a frosty window cracked open so her cigarette smoke could escape.

Comfort.

And still we celebrate. There is joy in the holiday season. We are surrounded by those who love us and those whom we love. We live lives dripping with reasons to be grateful.

But there is also a sadness. An indescribable and inexplicable and inapproachable loneliness wraps around our heart like a scarf against the cold. A narrative of Christmas pasts of bonding and fighting reflects back at us from the twinkling lights. A deep ache to pick up the phone and hear that voice, that laugh, just once more burns as a candle on the windowsill. A longing for all the lost Christmases that will never be had drops in the belly, heavy like too many cookies.

Grief multiplies like frost on a window, intricate and beautiful and shattering lines of connection that disappear with the touch of a warm finger on lifeless glass.

Comfort.

I write this for me.

But, I write this for you, too: Jennifer and Jenny and Jen. Pam and Jo Ann. Mark and Regina. Cheryl. Erica. Fernanda. Heather. Doyle and Laina. Kathryn. Brandon. Dad and Mom. Juli. Jan. My family. Mel. Chris. Cara. Hilary. Melissa. Those of you not named, but nonetheless with me in sorrow during this season.

We stand together in the snow, icicles of crystal tears, and we hold each other up. Like wreaths, we circle in love and welcome those weights that break us and make us. We look for the light in the Bethlehems of each others’ hearts. We huddle together around the fire of comfort.

Comfort. For you. For me.

 

 

 

election day metta prayer

For the self:

May I loosen in surrender

May I linger in light

May I laugh in joy

May I luxuriate in love

May I  live in peace.

 

For the other:

May you loosen in surrender

May you linger in light

May you laugh in joy

May you luxuriate in love

May you live in peace.

 

For the community:

May we loosen in surrender

May we linger in light

May we laugh in joy

May we luxuriate in love

May we live in peace.

 

 

to see the light, be the light: shifting perspective

Transitioning back into the classroom full time at a new school has been so. stinking. hard. To the point where I feel caught in a web spun by a mid-life-career-crisis-spider. (More on that to come later.)

I work at least 60 hours a week. I am tired. I am overwhelmed. I never feel good enough. I feel unsuccessful at doing all those things I have written about for so long on this blog–the things that matter most. I am insecure in who I am as a teacher. It has been five years since I’ve had a caseload of 150 students. How do I connect with them all on a meaningful level on a daily basis? The answer is I don’t. I’m not. And it’s killing me (softly with his song).

All of this sob story is old news and has been since early September. What’s burning in my heart currently is an experience I had at a grade level meeting. The facilitator started off the meeting asking for anyone to share good news.

And. I. froze.

Good news…

Hmm…

Let me think…

Ugh…

There’s gotta be something…

O.U.C.H.

I have become that person I don’t want to be: Dramatic. Stuck in the muck of negativity. Drowning in cynicism. Devoid of hope. Lost in the dark.

No. Just no.

I saw this growing up. I love my Mom, and I miss her deeply, and from her I have gained so many strengths and wonderful characteristics. But one thing I do not want to emulate from her was her inability to celebrate good things without attaching a “but.” And because of this, I think more woe came to her.

Because for so much of her life  (pre-cancer), that’s what she saw: woe.

We become what we see. We attract that which is our focus. We reap what we sow. On what we dwell, we cultivate.

I am guilty of ADD: Attentive to Deficit Disorder.

And because I am consumed with them, deficits abound. Because they are at the forefront of my mind, problems manifest regularly.

Time to turn on the light.

• L. has spent the first few months of school refusing to write. Anything. “I am a reader, but I can’t write. I have never passed an English class, just look at my record.” Just yesterday, at Saturday school, he wrote an entire full page essay, typed.
• I. and I do not get along. She is constantly defiant and disruptive. But for a brief moment, she was turning in work. Good work. Quality work. At my desk in a conference, I told her: “You hide behind this mask of being a ‘bad girl,’ but I don’t think that’s who you are.” Her eyes glittered.
• G. was there when I was gently corrected by another adult for an error I made. It was all good. But he looked at me and said, “Miss, you want me to square up for you?”
• H. wrote: “I appreciate your high expectations. You don’t let us get away with less than our best.”
• T. complained yesterday at Saturday school about how the work was too hard. I provided him another resource. Soon enough, he is quietly settled into both resources to accomplish the task. Independently. Successfully.

We become what we see. We attract that which is our focus. We reap what we sow. On what we dwell, we cultivate.

Time to see the light.

Time to be the light.

 

 

welcome home to b261

The first day is everything.

My students spent their summer inundated with news reports about senseless, merciless and unjust killings of people who look just like them. They are afraid.

My students spent their summer working multiple jobs just to keep food on their families’ tables. They are hungry and tired.

My students spent their summer wondering which of their teachers from May would still be there in August. They are insecure.

My students spent their summer listening to a white man’s rhetoric about how they don’t belong in this country, how they’ll be shipped back to a place that is no longer home to them, only to have their vision of this country’s promise cut off by a wall. They are worried.

My students spent their summer surrounded by terror attacks of extremists who (reportedly) worship the same god they do. They are disheartened.

So, yes, the first day is everything.

When they walk into my classroom–into our classroom–they don’t just need a safe place. They don’t just need a restorative place. They don’t just need a grounded place. They don’t just need a comfortable place. They don’t just need a welcoming place.

They need a home where they belong.

• Home is where the door is open and inviting. It is important that the minute students see our classroom, they know it is for them. I do this with welcoming signs and clear communication.
• Home is a place that is tidy and organized. I bought a carpet to ensure the auditory and aesthetic quality of my room was on point. I have bins for students to store their stuff. All of the previous day’s handouts have a place to be with clear labeling. I have minimal decorations as this will arise collaboratively with students’ contributions and academic anchor charts throughout the year.
  

  

  
• Home is a place where resources abound. My first year student teaching, my mentor had the students bring community supplies for extra credit. I have copied this every year since. We have bad days or forgetful days; when that happens, my students always have what they need in the classroom to be successful–partly because they provide those resources for each other. 
• Home is a place where students are known. I do not want students’ first day to be going over a syllabus.
  

  #TeacherTip 66. U have one chance to make a 1st impression, spending it going over the syllabus would be like taking a first date to prison.

  — HipHughes (@hiphughes) August 20, 2016

  Rather, I give a survey the first day so that I can gather important information about who my kiddos are…in school and as a human. While they are taking the survey, I walk around and introduce myself to each of them individually with a handshake. Such a first day procedure ensures that the priceless first impression that our time together will not be about rules, but about them.

• Home is a place where I as the teacher am known. This was my first year at my current school, so the reputation that in the past had always done so much prework for me was void. So, I brought my reputation to them…alongside my heart. Students walked into the classroom to find this letter.
• Home is a place where students see themselves. Our first activity as a class was to watch and discuss this video about “what’s your WHY?” I shared with students that there will be times this year where it will be hard and discouraging, and that’s exactly why they need to know why they’re showing up and persevering. Some of their whys (more still to come from students throughout the year) now are on display at the front of the room as a visual reminder to them that this is not about a grade, but about a heart matter.
  

  
• Home is a place where students honor connection. The day after I introduced the why concept, we had circle. In this time, with the passing of a talking piece, students shared who or what their why is and told a story about their why. It was tender and special and bonding. It was a beautiful way to establish the kind of feel we will have in our classroom.

Just as the circle, I end where I started. The first day is everything. For I know that for there to be great learning in my class, there must be great risk.

And everyone feels more comfortable risking when they feel at home.

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For more of my thoughts on how to establish a sense of home where students belong in the classroom, check out:

• building a place we all want to be
• the puzzle of a positive learning environment
• a classroom thanksgiving
• mantras for students