deliverance

"At the end of the day, it's actually not about you."
--my TforA summer school director

I started reading the Book of Mormon from page one tonight since the stake president said today at stake conference that one of his goals is for everyone to read it by December 31, 2009. If every session goes as it did tonight, what will be foremost on my mind while reading will be the students that I will meet as they enter my classroom tomorrow.

I have never before realized how captivating an introduction Nephi gave to his family's saga: he writes that the residents of Jerusalem were angry with Lehi, mocked him, sought to cast him out, stone him, slay him, take away his life. It's a pretty clear indication of the near-impossibilities they encountered.

Nephi immediately contrasts this account of grave obstacles with a statement of confidence, one grounded in real experience from his life. "But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance." -1 Nephi 1:20. If I was reading this for the first time, I might be curious, intrigued, but sharing the author's perspective on what he actually had experienced was remarkable. It triggered a remember-how-merciful-the-Lord-hath-been response that brought hope and promise to my own obstacle-ridden venture into education reform.

Tonight, the promise of deliverance is not about me. I understand what I need to do to attain it for myself, and I am not worried about it. My concern is the kind of captivity that keeps these children in poverty, that says that only 49% of them will graduate high school, that moves to stifle their expectations of themselves, that limits their opportunity to access the brilliance and humanity and divinity that I know each of them has. I am a beginning teacher who really has little idea of what it takes to succeed as a teacher, let alone as a teacher in an urban setting. I need something beyond my own preparation and even beyond my training. I need to become mighty even unto the power of deliverance. That is not my power. I think it starts with faith.

[these things I cannot write on my TforA blog. Can you imagine...? :) ]

a note or two from the day

I think that writing about my TFA experience so far is a lost cause. Let's just say this has been and will be one of the most special times of my life. Just a few misorganized notes on today:

I sat with some people I didn't know at lunch. One teacher was from Argentina; one from Cuba; one from Chile. The one from Cuba turned to the others and said "doesn't she just glow?" Puzzled, I asked her to repeat herself. "You have a glow. A healthy living glow." I thought that was a Sunday School myth, that people actually say that.

Also, another teacher addressed me using the title Cutie Pie.

As usual, I'm behind all the other TFA corps members in getting my classroom and plans first-day ready. This experience, just to warn you, brings a person into a most painful awareness of her weaknesses. I think I figured out why I don't work efficiently: I am reluctant to commit to something if I don't believe in it or love it. So I pore over ideas; I revise sentences; I revise words; I change the font from 12 point to 14 to 10.5; I write classroom rules, resent them, and devise new ones. I work for a long time but get little accomplished. Unless I am fully engaged--then I produce. This must must must must change. Teaching must burn it out of my personality.

Here's what I do have. My current rules are Be respectful. Be proactive. Be responsible. They were more complicated before, but I changed them and then made a poster of them so that I wouldn't be tempted to change them anymore. I'm going to have students create examples of what this looks like in action, as well as feed them with my own vision of what it means.

• Side story: One reason I finally committed to these rules. The word proactive means a lot to me. I know, weird. It's because my school director this summer was a pretty solid Savanna fan. This was confusing because I really didn't shine at anything during summer school. There is no way I would have made it on the "this is why they're hot" board illustrating different teachers' strengths. I got less sleep than most people spending more hours on work that wasn't as good. This general incompetence would have been overwhelming for me if not for this relationship and the one my corps member advisor and I established. Anyway, upon learning that my school director often talked about me on the way back to campus from our summer school site and that he really appreciated me (okay, my source used much more emphatic language, but I won't), I eased him into a conversation about why. His response? "Savanna, everyone loves you. [Me: huh?] You're [something. happy? enthusiastic?], genuine and proactive. I gave you a nickname (Savannarator 2000)." And so on. Proactive. Yes I think I would love my rules if they said that. And certainly my students won't know what it means. I might pitch it like this: be professional at being active, in helping people, in solving problems, in owning your future.
• Completely off topic, but from the same night when we were saying see-ya-someday: my advisor said "Savanna, I'm going to miss you. I didn't see you coming." That was probably one of my favorite things I've heard someone say. Ha. I miss them. Time-and-space machine, please.
  

Back on topic. I think I've finally settled on a classroom theme. College-bound Science Investigators Miami. I actually like this first because I recently discovered a channel called Sleuth TV, where either Law and Order: SVU or CSI Miami or something like that is always on. Also, high school graduation rate in my district is about 50% if I remember accurately. My students need to have higher expectations. Plus the word investigators brings in the critical thinking aspect that I really want to help them develop. That is a gift that I do not have yet.

I met one of my students today. I just saw her wandering and asked her name and remembered it from studying my rosters earlier. She instantly became the most interesting person in the world to me. Magic is going to happen this year if that's how I felt about just one little person.

Also, I'm not scared of being in the classroom. Believe it or not, I was actually very serious while teaching this summer. Like I don't think I even laughed in front of my students. I know, right? But I didn't get to know my students very well over summer school and I'm so excited for that. For the little moments when I know I've helped one person, or twenty. What hugely intimidates me is planning and having to be creative and being tired.

And how long is it going to take to snap out of my I'm-shy-and-intimidated-because-I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-and-I'm-not-myself phase? I don't like it and it took 2 full weeks of instruction to get out of it over the summer.

And that is where I suddenly stop writing.

PS I've noticed that the tone of my posts is largely introspective. In other words, I write about myself a lot. Please bear with me while I use myself as a subject for understanding humanity. :) Though using an atypical subject to represent a very large group of people is a bad science mistake.

Girl needs a to-do list

Hi. I'm looking for a to-do list computer program. Specifications:

• One-time items roll over to the next day if I don't take them off the list.
• Items that recur daily or weekly or monthly or yearly.
• In order to pop them right off the list, I mark them with labels that say, for example, done or I don't care about this anymore or I actually still care, but I don't want to think about it until after August 24 and then they disappear.
• Hierarchy of items: if you don't get this done you will in no way be able to do this.
  
• A simple, streamlined look--perhaps just a word or two appears in the list and if you hover, a more detailed explanation appears.
• Ooh, premium feature: If I think of something when I'm on the go, I can send a text message to the program with an item and it will ask me later if I want to add it.
  
• Such a list would pop up on the right side of my screen and still run when I close it as an icon on the bottom right corner, kind of like an AIM buddy list would back in the day when I used to use it.

Anyone have any ideas?

Anna? :)

I'll be marketing a line of tropics-inspired scents soon

"Savanna, you smell like a mermaid. All tropical and sparkly."

--my roommate Allie, upon taking a photo with me at the beach after I'd emerged from a swim in the deep blue

my first poem to my new home

Miami, I will love you
don't know how to but I will
and if you dare me not to
then I'll try harder still

Lovable moments from Tuesday's commute:
1. Adjacent businesses Dogma Grill and Karma Carwash
2. Car affixed to the side of a 3-story building, like it had used the building as a runaway truck ramp (which term you may only understand if you've driven on steep mountain passes) and stopped 3/4 of the way up. Why? I don't know.
3. Abandoned white stucco building where someone painted the phrase "Art By God" and silhouettes of dinosaurs parading across like ducklings

Lovable sequence of events from after work:
1. Hearing a 0% chance of rain forecast for the evening
2. Finally using the Savanna-is-beach-ready bag I now keep in the car at all times
3. Discovering that parking meters in Miami Beach are free after 6 p.m.
4. Finding the place where the savanna meets the ocean (I am both a person and a geographical feature) and that it is exactly 1.5 miles from my house
5. About that place: it's just the kind of beach that I prefer. It drops off pretty fast so it's deep enough for real swimming. It is still hot at 6 p.m. and the water is pretty much the same temperature as the air. I'd actually never experienced that before. Amazing. You know where I'll be at 6 p.m. as often as possible.


I found the dinosaur parade on a Google Image search.


Ooh, and the car too!

Brie this is for you.

Oh the changes I would make if I were to write these again. I can't figure out how to password protect this entry, and can't be bothered right now, so I just truncated some names. Hello, world, enjoy. Hello, Brie, here's what I submitted, and good luck. Here for you if you have questions.

Letter of Intent

Dear T-- for A-- Selection Committee:

T-- for A-- appeals to my interest in confronting inequality and my desire to develop educational skills. My parents buried a stillborn child during my junior year of high school. He was buried in “Babyland,” the area of the cemetery where the youngest children rest. The headstones on either side of my baby brother’s grave were in Spanish, as were many of the surrounding headstones. I supposed that their babies were more susceptible because the Hispanic community had less access to preventative health care. The injustice I observed solidified an interest in opposing inequality that had long been developing.

I have been searching for a profession that will allow me to express this desire to combat inequality. I attended a recent lecture by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings where she promoted teaching as an appropriate career for bright students who want to make a difference. While I had been considering T-- for A-- for several years, Secretary Spelling’s comments helped me recognize how to make a meaningful contribution to the development of both education and society.

Being a corps member would also provide fundamental training for my future profession. I aspire to become a principal, one intimately acquainted with the challenges involved in education and the concerns of students and teachers. My experiences with T-- for A-- would grant me the awareness necessary to influence policy.

As a corps member, I would hope to help develop in the students a sense of agency in their lives. I want them to own acumen and power to pursue goals, to define their lives rather than simply accept what lot life gives them. I hope to help them disbelieve in the impossible that is imposed by external limitations— for example, low income. A student who senses his own influence will choose to participate in civil society and contribute to a healthy community. Students will develop this sense of agency largely incrementally as they understand the world, learn to think independently, and express ideas through writing.

I also look forward to interacting with individual students, coming to know their personalities, needs, and motivations. Thus I may see the students for who they are, as well as the underlying cause of problems they may face. By understanding my students, I can preclude prejudice and effectively help them through challenges. I also hope to build relationships of trust with their parents and communicate what I expect of their children.

In sum, I want to be involved in T-- for A-- because I subscribe to its mission. Education is not a commodity, tradable to the extent of students’ purchasing power; children in low-income communities need not be impoverished. President Woodrow Wilson once said, “There is a happy coincidence between the spirit of learning and the true spirit of American life. Learning knows no differences of social caste or privilege...Genius comes into what family it pleases, and laughs at the orders of society, takes delight in humble origins, and yet will appear in palaces." I want this to be true in America.

Sincerely,
Savanna

Obstacles Essay

Finding in Frankstown

As an official representative of my church, I worked in Victoria, Australia. My purpose as a missionary was to present our message of faith, giving individuals opportunity to accept it through joining the church. Our message especially benefited those connected as families. Most missionaries generally approached the challenge of finding people to teach by knocking on doors, speaking with people on the street, and contacting referrals. I was urgently, acutely aware of the need to plan better finding activities specifically suited to the unique character of each area where I worked. Frankstown was one of these areas.

I arrived in Frankstown to a teaching pool that needed to be replenished, but finding people to teach was difficult. Prejudice against the church had been so pervasive that one missionary was pushed from his bicycle regularly. Passengers of cars rolled down windows to shout insults at us. I supposed that a misunderstanding of the church caused this prejudice, but did not know how to address it.

The question became a recurring subject of study and prayer. In my search for a remedy I encountered advice given to church leaders in its early history: “I have…many people in this city, whom I will gather…through your instrumentality. Therefore…you should form acquaintance with men in this city.” I decided to increase our visibility by offering service in the community, hoping to both form acquaintance with people that I could teach and mitigate prejudice.

After presenting the idea to my companion, she and I went to work, intent on finding people to serve. We visited P--, who had ordered a DVD. P-- and her friend, A--, were discussing her move to Adelaide. Suffering from various ailments, they worried that they were physically unable to prepare for the move. My companion and I immediately recognized our opportunity. We promised to return two days later with several colleagues; P-- and A-- promised sandwiches.

Together we packed the house and loaded the van. P-- departed for Adelaide, leaving A-- to clean the house for inspection. Again we saw an opportunity and returned in the morning. At the end of the day, we sat on the kitchen floor with A--, another friend, T.J., and T.J.’s children, K-- and K--. The children knew little about Christianity but wanted to learn more. They became our new family to teach.

I had wonderful times teaching this family. A-- occasionally joined us, always affirming that while she respected our beliefs, she had her own. She invited us over for her Christmas barbecue but I was soon transferred from the area, leaving another missionary to continue the work in Frankstown.

I found out months after leaving Australia that A-- requested the missionary lessons and joined the church. This represented the ultimate reward for a missionary’s efforts. I am not certain whether the community-wide prejudice subsided, but I saw individual lives improve. Success came from thoughtfully considering what the area needed, isolating the cause of the problem, boldly making sacrifices, and deliberately pursuing the course toward resolution.