exchanged glances, inside jokes
late-night talks of love and hope
plan the future, see the past
making our together last
spreadsheet, budget, morning news
scrambled eggs and orange juice
ride to school and then ballet
get the dishes put away
sprinklers, swimsuits, lemonade
take a nap once we have played
tigers, zebras at the zoo
picnic, playground, sand in shoes
porch swing underneath the moon
end of summer, come too soon
telling stories, calming cries
thunderstorms and fireflies
pumpkins, peacoats, fallen leaves
orange and gold and red on trees
tiny batman down the street
fairy princess, trick or treat
waffles, bacon, jam on toast
prepare the lamb for sunday roast
all dressed up for sabbath day
learn to serve, learn to pray
exchanged glances, inside jokes
late-night talks of love and hope
plan the future, see the past
making our together last
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
My identity web
Hi. I had to write a paper about my identity for my Understanding Culture in the Classroom grad school class. You can read it if you want. Go ahead and believe most of it. ;)
By the way, when you're in grad school and working way more than full time, you just have to get it done. Is this edited? No. Also sorry about the paragraphs. They disappeared.
Introduction
In my several months as a public school teacher, I have found that teaching is an incredibly personal undertaking. Inspiring curiosity, causing real learning, and procuring results require great reserves of character and commitment. In an attempt to examine how my experiences affect my job as a teacher, I have isolated the six most relevant aspects of my identity. Some of these slices bleed into and color each other, creating a unique web of strengths and challenges that I must confront in order to be effective.
My race, white, represents five percent of my identity; my nationality, American, is significantly higher at twenty-two percent; my socioeconomic status, middle class, contributes eighteen percent. My education level provides fifteen percent of my identity; my gender, female, adds ten percent, and my religion at thirty percent completes my identity web. An explanation of each one and how it affects my work as a professional follows.
Race: White. Others perceive it more than I do.
I assigned a value of five percent to the race portion of my identity because I am of course aware of being white but historically I have only occasionally thought about how it affects my identity. It seems peculiar to assign such a low weight to someone whose ancestry is 100 percent Northern European, but for most of my life, my race has not been a useful tool for defining myself in the context of the people around me. My elementary and high schools had a present, but minor, representation of African-American and Hispanic students. We all got along well, so the white students defined themselves against each other rather than against students of other races. Individualized characteristics dominated our labels: he is a straight-A student; he is a track star. She is Irish, she is an artist. After high school, I attended a religious university, where I shared a faith with the other students that united us above everything else.
Race as an aspect of my identity became slightly more pertinent as I pursued international experiences after graduation. I lived and worked in Italy for half a year and in Australia for a year and a half. In Italy, the color of my skin made it obvious that I was not a native. In Australia, I worked with immigrants of Asian origin: people from China, the Philippines, Thailand, India. The people I met respected me and were interested in what made us different. They also endeavored to find what was common between us. I found success in adapting well to living among people of other races.
Now that I find myself an absolute minority in my new Miamian community, my racial identity has suddenly gained a huge amount of relevance, especially at my school. My sixth- and seventh-grade student population is about half African-American and half Latino. The racial composition of the faculty is about the same, with a handful of white teachers. One of my earliest impressions of the racial differences my students saw in me was when one of my homeroom students repeated back to me a few words I had said. I heard how my whiteness rubbed against them as she mimicked the cadence of my voice and pronunciation of my words. Hearing her and later students imitate my language made me feel like a specimen.
Evidence of some of my students feeling racially different from me has arisen when my African-American students have accused me of racism when they have thought I was siding with my Latino students. My African-American students call my Latino students white. I am not sure whether the African-American students believe I am of the same race as my Latino students, but I am sure that my Latino students do not believe that we are of the same race.
It has been a deep struggle for me to find that being a minority with an authority role in my classroom is much different from adapting to living among people of other cultures. I need to realize that while I do not see myself as my students’ white teacher, my students see me as just that. There is one other first-year teacher that is of the same race as many of the students. She has done phenomenally well with classroom management and building relationships with her students. I attribute the difference in our experiences in part to her being racially similar to them. Realizing this, I had to work to convince myself that my students can benefit from having a teacher who is very different from them, that I can have a legitimate constructive role in their lives.
I have also had some struggle adapting to customs that people of races other than mine have. There have been other teachers and staff at the school who have perceived me as unfriendly because I did not practice some of the local cultural norms, such as offering food to all people in a room or stopping to speak to all people. I have sometimes appeared overly businesslike, using behavior that I thought was professional but others thought was discourteous. Being occasionally reprimanded whether by words or by attitude toward me by my colleagues has made it easier to understand the expectations of my students.
Nationality: American. The source of my ideals.
I gave my race only a five percent share of my identity, but my nationality as an American receives twenty-two percent of the overall pie. I have always been proud to be a descendant of the religious freedom-seeking Pilgrims who helped establish American values. I hold dear such longstanding American values such as freedom of religion, social mobility, equality of opportunity, civic participation, and a solid work ethic. I place a high importance on the individual’s responsibility to contribute to a successful community. Much of what I do and the way I see the world and my perception of my moral duties comes from this perspective.
These values are precisely what led me to choose to be a teacher in a high-poverty community. American beliefs have found practical expression in me as a commitment to working for opportunity for all where it does not exist. It is offensive to this deeply American set of ideals that a person could be willing to work to raise the plight of his or her family but cannot locate the opportunities that will allow for an increase in quality of life. I recoil at the thought of people being mired in poverty, unable to climb the social mobility ladder. My students because of the economic situation of the community where they live simply do not have access to the quality of education and, almost as importantly, high expectations that they need in order to improve their quality of life. Equality of opportunity is more often an ideal than a reality, so I chose to do what I can to bring opportunity to students whose lives I see as more difficult than mine. Early Americans united to alleviate the suffering of, for example, a farmer who lost his barn. Today I join with my neighbors hoping to build opportunity where I believe there has been neglect and a loss of hope.
This set of beliefs from my nationality leads me to want to teach these values in my classroom. For example, on the first day of instruction this year I showed my students a list of the ten highest-paying jobs in the United States and compared the list to the ten lowest-paying jobs in the United States. I asked them to identify what salary they preferred: that of the anesthesiologist, whose income is at least $100,000, or that of the dishwasher, which was between $10,000 and $20,000. I wanted them to connect doing well in my classroom to being able to change their socioeconomic status. I wanted them to get a sense of their own social mobility.
I also try daily to teach them how the choices they make as individuals affect entire communities so that they can get a sense of the power they have for improving their communities or for depriving their communities. I have had difficulty, though, in trying to gauge how to do this without detracting from what pride they should have in being from the neighborhood where they live.
Socioeconomic status: middle class.
The related slices of race and nationality combine to make up just over one-fourth of my identity web. My socioeconomic status represents another eighteen percent of how I perceive my identity. This is another category where what I believe about myself, what others have assumed about me, and what is actually true do not neatly coincide. It is further complicated by my perception of my education level, which category will be considered in a later paragraph.
Much of my childhood was spent with my family being what I believe if measured by per capita income would technically be lower middle class, but during the past ten years has seen a shift to solid middle class. My elementary school was a Title I school. My family lived frugally by necessity and lived in neighborhoods my parents preferred not to live in. What people believed about me did not match these circumstances, however. New friends I made in middle school, and sometimes even in college, often made comments about how they thought that I was rich but changed their minds when they saw the family car or came to my house. Something about my mannerisms or appearance suggested that we had money. As years have passed and my family has grown older (I am the oldest of six children), our middle class status has stabilized.
I believe that having the experience of being lower middle class and feeling the push toward becoming solidly middle class has reinforced my value of social mobility. My perspective leads me to want my students to overcome their economic challenges and essentially escape their communities. I am not sure, again, that this is the right thing to want for them. I have led discussions on occasion about helping people less fortunate than themselves, and I am not sure that my students believe that they are in poverty as much as I believe they are. I see myself as having more access to success than they do because I have had a great education. I feel secure in my future. I have had the freedom to choose what and where I want to study and I want the same thing for them. I have not directly told them that I came with the intention of helping them escape the oppression of poverty, not knowing whether that would be encouraging and productive or hideously arrogant.
There is another, more frightening, aspect to the divide between my socioeconomic status and my students: I simply do not understand where they are coming from. I often become frustrated when they come to my class unprepared with a pen or a pencil and need to give them yet another item that I bought with my salary. It has required extended conversations with other teachers to realize that my students often lack food, medical care, and parents. I also become frustrated when they waste pens, crumple paper, and break pencils, wondering why people who have so little choose to squander what they have.
Education level: What complicates my perception of my socioeconomic status
Though my family’s socioeconomic status may have been lower middle class if measured by dollars per person, my perception of myself has always been higher because of my commitment to education. I assigned an importance of fifteen percent to this category. I always considered myself highly educated before I even went to college. My long-term plan when I was young was to go to the many required years of medical school, which evolved into getting a PhD in something interesting once I realized a medical career may not be best for my potential future family. I always felt like Harvard and Princeton were within my reach and I aligned my activities, thought processes, and interests with my idea of what a well educated person should be.
Since education has been so important to me, it is important to me that my students value what they are learning today as a path through the rest of middle school, the basis for success in high school, and the essential key to accessing college. One of my strengths as a teacher is my passion that everyone deserves an education, but it also leads to a great weakness. I feel intense frustration when my students do not have the same commitment to learning and academic success that I do. There is an opportunity here for me to learn to instruct my students’ desires so that they may want an education. Thankfully, other teachers have perceived my commitment to student achievement.
Gender: female, and I’m teaching because I want to.
I assigned ten percent of my identity web to my gender. As a highly educated female who values independence and adventure in my personal life, I am sometimes self-conscious of telling people that I am a teacher. Teaching seems like the fallback career for a woman: it is soft, easily interrupted by maternity leave, easily resumed after having children. When people ask me what I do, I often start by telling them about the mission of Teach for America before getting to the part that I am “just” a teacher. I always emphasize that I teach middle school, not elementary, and that I teach science. It is important to me to express that I am teaching because I believe in this mission, not because I am a woman who could not do something more ambitious.
My attitude does not persist within my school community. I feel valid and there is a good balance of male and female teachers. I do sometimes suspect that male teachers have an easier time with classroom management, which has been my greatest struggle, because of their physical size and volume of voice. I do believe that students can benefit from both female and male attributes that I may be able to reach some students better because of who I am.
Religion: the most salient slice of my identity
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which pervades most of what I think, feel, and do. Religion receives a thirty percent portion of my identity web. Mine is a minority Christian religion. In some ways it is a culture in itself that imposes layers on other segments of my identity. I have found fulfillment in it and have chosen to live by its standards. I defined myself in large part by my religion, which has often been misperceived, and so have had solid practice in staying confident in myself despite what others may think.
Weathering all of the comments that middle school students make about me has been easy because of my experience being somewhat different from others who may match me in the other part of my identity web. My students are starting to figure me out somewhat. I have told them to not wait until I curse at them before they choose to do the right thing because I do not think that is right. They have responded by asking me whether I am Jewish. My religion is another reason that I chose to do this job; I grew up with a commitment to serve others and help the less fortunate.
Conclusion
As I consider my identity web, I see a person who shares almost nothing with her students except for a small slice of it—my gender—that I share with about half of the people that I teach. This implies that if I am to truly make a difference this community that I have joined, I need to devote much of my energy to either creating or emphasizing qualities that can unite us. Somewhat conversely, I also need to reinforce my confidence in myself and what uniqueness I can offer to a student population who continues to have a lot to learn about the world. I have not been able to connect with them the way that I have wanted to, in part because of the differences between us. I will not be able to engage them in who I am and what I want for them if I remain reluctant to play on the constructive aspects of my personality and if I do not discover how to access theirs.
By the way, when you're in grad school and working way more than full time, you just have to get it done. Is this edited? No. Also sorry about the paragraphs. They disappeared.
Introduction
In my several months as a public school teacher, I have found that teaching is an incredibly personal undertaking. Inspiring curiosity, causing real learning, and procuring results require great reserves of character and commitment. In an attempt to examine how my experiences affect my job as a teacher, I have isolated the six most relevant aspects of my identity. Some of these slices bleed into and color each other, creating a unique web of strengths and challenges that I must confront in order to be effective.
My race, white, represents five percent of my identity; my nationality, American, is significantly higher at twenty-two percent; my socioeconomic status, middle class, contributes eighteen percent. My education level provides fifteen percent of my identity; my gender, female, adds ten percent, and my religion at thirty percent completes my identity web. An explanation of each one and how it affects my work as a professional follows.
Race: White. Others perceive it more than I do.
I assigned a value of five percent to the race portion of my identity because I am of course aware of being white but historically I have only occasionally thought about how it affects my identity. It seems peculiar to assign such a low weight to someone whose ancestry is 100 percent Northern European, but for most of my life, my race has not been a useful tool for defining myself in the context of the people around me. My elementary and high schools had a present, but minor, representation of African-American and Hispanic students. We all got along well, so the white students defined themselves against each other rather than against students of other races. Individualized characteristics dominated our labels: he is a straight-A student; he is a track star. She is Irish, she is an artist. After high school, I attended a religious university, where I shared a faith with the other students that united us above everything else.
Race as an aspect of my identity became slightly more pertinent as I pursued international experiences after graduation. I lived and worked in Italy for half a year and in Australia for a year and a half. In Italy, the color of my skin made it obvious that I was not a native. In Australia, I worked with immigrants of Asian origin: people from China, the Philippines, Thailand, India. The people I met respected me and were interested in what made us different. They also endeavored to find what was common between us. I found success in adapting well to living among people of other races.
Now that I find myself an absolute minority in my new Miamian community, my racial identity has suddenly gained a huge amount of relevance, especially at my school. My sixth- and seventh-grade student population is about half African-American and half Latino. The racial composition of the faculty is about the same, with a handful of white teachers. One of my earliest impressions of the racial differences my students saw in me was when one of my homeroom students repeated back to me a few words I had said. I heard how my whiteness rubbed against them as she mimicked the cadence of my voice and pronunciation of my words. Hearing her and later students imitate my language made me feel like a specimen.
Evidence of some of my students feeling racially different from me has arisen when my African-American students have accused me of racism when they have thought I was siding with my Latino students. My African-American students call my Latino students white. I am not sure whether the African-American students believe I am of the same race as my Latino students, but I am sure that my Latino students do not believe that we are of the same race.
It has been a deep struggle for me to find that being a minority with an authority role in my classroom is much different from adapting to living among people of other cultures. I need to realize that while I do not see myself as my students’ white teacher, my students see me as just that. There is one other first-year teacher that is of the same race as many of the students. She has done phenomenally well with classroom management and building relationships with her students. I attribute the difference in our experiences in part to her being racially similar to them. Realizing this, I had to work to convince myself that my students can benefit from having a teacher who is very different from them, that I can have a legitimate constructive role in their lives.
I have also had some struggle adapting to customs that people of races other than mine have. There have been other teachers and staff at the school who have perceived me as unfriendly because I did not practice some of the local cultural norms, such as offering food to all people in a room or stopping to speak to all people. I have sometimes appeared overly businesslike, using behavior that I thought was professional but others thought was discourteous. Being occasionally reprimanded whether by words or by attitude toward me by my colleagues has made it easier to understand the expectations of my students.
Nationality: American. The source of my ideals.
I gave my race only a five percent share of my identity, but my nationality as an American receives twenty-two percent of the overall pie. I have always been proud to be a descendant of the religious freedom-seeking Pilgrims who helped establish American values. I hold dear such longstanding American values such as freedom of religion, social mobility, equality of opportunity, civic participation, and a solid work ethic. I place a high importance on the individual’s responsibility to contribute to a successful community. Much of what I do and the way I see the world and my perception of my moral duties comes from this perspective.
These values are precisely what led me to choose to be a teacher in a high-poverty community. American beliefs have found practical expression in me as a commitment to working for opportunity for all where it does not exist. It is offensive to this deeply American set of ideals that a person could be willing to work to raise the plight of his or her family but cannot locate the opportunities that will allow for an increase in quality of life. I recoil at the thought of people being mired in poverty, unable to climb the social mobility ladder. My students because of the economic situation of the community where they live simply do not have access to the quality of education and, almost as importantly, high expectations that they need in order to improve their quality of life. Equality of opportunity is more often an ideal than a reality, so I chose to do what I can to bring opportunity to students whose lives I see as more difficult than mine. Early Americans united to alleviate the suffering of, for example, a farmer who lost his barn. Today I join with my neighbors hoping to build opportunity where I believe there has been neglect and a loss of hope.
This set of beliefs from my nationality leads me to want to teach these values in my classroom. For example, on the first day of instruction this year I showed my students a list of the ten highest-paying jobs in the United States and compared the list to the ten lowest-paying jobs in the United States. I asked them to identify what salary they preferred: that of the anesthesiologist, whose income is at least $100,000, or that of the dishwasher, which was between $10,000 and $20,000. I wanted them to connect doing well in my classroom to being able to change their socioeconomic status. I wanted them to get a sense of their own social mobility.
I also try daily to teach them how the choices they make as individuals affect entire communities so that they can get a sense of the power they have for improving their communities or for depriving their communities. I have had difficulty, though, in trying to gauge how to do this without detracting from what pride they should have in being from the neighborhood where they live.
Socioeconomic status: middle class.
The related slices of race and nationality combine to make up just over one-fourth of my identity web. My socioeconomic status represents another eighteen percent of how I perceive my identity. This is another category where what I believe about myself, what others have assumed about me, and what is actually true do not neatly coincide. It is further complicated by my perception of my education level, which category will be considered in a later paragraph.
Much of my childhood was spent with my family being what I believe if measured by per capita income would technically be lower middle class, but during the past ten years has seen a shift to solid middle class. My elementary school was a Title I school. My family lived frugally by necessity and lived in neighborhoods my parents preferred not to live in. What people believed about me did not match these circumstances, however. New friends I made in middle school, and sometimes even in college, often made comments about how they thought that I was rich but changed their minds when they saw the family car or came to my house. Something about my mannerisms or appearance suggested that we had money. As years have passed and my family has grown older (I am the oldest of six children), our middle class status has stabilized.
I believe that having the experience of being lower middle class and feeling the push toward becoming solidly middle class has reinforced my value of social mobility. My perspective leads me to want my students to overcome their economic challenges and essentially escape their communities. I am not sure, again, that this is the right thing to want for them. I have led discussions on occasion about helping people less fortunate than themselves, and I am not sure that my students believe that they are in poverty as much as I believe they are. I see myself as having more access to success than they do because I have had a great education. I feel secure in my future. I have had the freedom to choose what and where I want to study and I want the same thing for them. I have not directly told them that I came with the intention of helping them escape the oppression of poverty, not knowing whether that would be encouraging and productive or hideously arrogant.
There is another, more frightening, aspect to the divide between my socioeconomic status and my students: I simply do not understand where they are coming from. I often become frustrated when they come to my class unprepared with a pen or a pencil and need to give them yet another item that I bought with my salary. It has required extended conversations with other teachers to realize that my students often lack food, medical care, and parents. I also become frustrated when they waste pens, crumple paper, and break pencils, wondering why people who have so little choose to squander what they have.
Education level: What complicates my perception of my socioeconomic status
Though my family’s socioeconomic status may have been lower middle class if measured by dollars per person, my perception of myself has always been higher because of my commitment to education. I assigned an importance of fifteen percent to this category. I always considered myself highly educated before I even went to college. My long-term plan when I was young was to go to the many required years of medical school, which evolved into getting a PhD in something interesting once I realized a medical career may not be best for my potential future family. I always felt like Harvard and Princeton were within my reach and I aligned my activities, thought processes, and interests with my idea of what a well educated person should be.
Since education has been so important to me, it is important to me that my students value what they are learning today as a path through the rest of middle school, the basis for success in high school, and the essential key to accessing college. One of my strengths as a teacher is my passion that everyone deserves an education, but it also leads to a great weakness. I feel intense frustration when my students do not have the same commitment to learning and academic success that I do. There is an opportunity here for me to learn to instruct my students’ desires so that they may want an education. Thankfully, other teachers have perceived my commitment to student achievement.
Gender: female, and I’m teaching because I want to.
I assigned ten percent of my identity web to my gender. As a highly educated female who values independence and adventure in my personal life, I am sometimes self-conscious of telling people that I am a teacher. Teaching seems like the fallback career for a woman: it is soft, easily interrupted by maternity leave, easily resumed after having children. When people ask me what I do, I often start by telling them about the mission of Teach for America before getting to the part that I am “just” a teacher. I always emphasize that I teach middle school, not elementary, and that I teach science. It is important to me to express that I am teaching because I believe in this mission, not because I am a woman who could not do something more ambitious.
My attitude does not persist within my school community. I feel valid and there is a good balance of male and female teachers. I do sometimes suspect that male teachers have an easier time with classroom management, which has been my greatest struggle, because of their physical size and volume of voice. I do believe that students can benefit from both female and male attributes that I may be able to reach some students better because of who I am.
Religion: the most salient slice of my identity
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which pervades most of what I think, feel, and do. Religion receives a thirty percent portion of my identity web. Mine is a minority Christian religion. In some ways it is a culture in itself that imposes layers on other segments of my identity. I have found fulfillment in it and have chosen to live by its standards. I defined myself in large part by my religion, which has often been misperceived, and so have had solid practice in staying confident in myself despite what others may think.
Weathering all of the comments that middle school students make about me has been easy because of my experience being somewhat different from others who may match me in the other part of my identity web. My students are starting to figure me out somewhat. I have told them to not wait until I curse at them before they choose to do the right thing because I do not think that is right. They have responded by asking me whether I am Jewish. My religion is another reason that I chose to do this job; I grew up with a commitment to serve others and help the less fortunate.
Conclusion
As I consider my identity web, I see a person who shares almost nothing with her students except for a small slice of it—my gender—that I share with about half of the people that I teach. This implies that if I am to truly make a difference this community that I have joined, I need to devote much of my energy to either creating or emphasizing qualities that can unite us. Somewhat conversely, I also need to reinforce my confidence in myself and what uniqueness I can offer to a student population who continues to have a lot to learn about the world. I have not been able to connect with them the way that I have wanted to, in part because of the differences between us. I will not be able to engage them in who I am and what I want for them if I remain reluctant to play on the constructive aspects of my personality and if I do not discover how to access theirs.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Best of one
This behavior is so interesting to me, and may not be interesting to anyone else:
It is Australia Day. I wanted to make it memorable, so I broke into my store of Sipahh straws (Straws that have flavor beads in them that turn milk into cookies and cream or mint chocolate flavor) and grabbed the little kangaroo stuffed animals I meant to send as gifts once upon a time.
When students make good choices in class (my favorite one is getting to work without me telling them to or following directions right away or improving behavior), they get a little piece of paper called an opportunity ticket. It represents the opportunities people get in life when they do good things. The tickets then go into a drawing.
So today, my raffle prizes were the flavored straws (good because it's just before lunch) and the kangaroo. Two boys, J and A, won the straws. The first one, J, called out which flavor he wanted ("I want cookies and cream!!") and the second one, A, then called out "I want mint chocolate!" The thing that is interesting to me is that A said he wanted the only flavor that was left.
What was the purpose of A claiming the mint chocolate Sipahh straw? J could dominate any physical contest and is verbally dominant. I suspect that A would not dare contest J's claim on the cookies and cream, even if he actually wanted it. But he still wanted to appear that he was getting what he wanted so that it didn't look like J was controlling him. Why else would he actively claim the only one of two options remaining?
Interesting?
It is Australia Day. I wanted to make it memorable, so I broke into my store of Sipahh straws (Straws that have flavor beads in them that turn milk into cookies and cream or mint chocolate flavor) and grabbed the little kangaroo stuffed animals I meant to send as gifts once upon a time.
When students make good choices in class (my favorite one is getting to work without me telling them to or following directions right away or improving behavior), they get a little piece of paper called an opportunity ticket. It represents the opportunities people get in life when they do good things. The tickets then go into a drawing.
So today, my raffle prizes were the flavored straws (good because it's just before lunch) and the kangaroo. Two boys, J and A, won the straws. The first one, J, called out which flavor he wanted ("I want cookies and cream!!") and the second one, A, then called out "I want mint chocolate!" The thing that is interesting to me is that A said he wanted the only flavor that was left.
What was the purpose of A claiming the mint chocolate Sipahh straw? J could dominate any physical contest and is verbally dominant. I suspect that A would not dare contest J's claim on the cookies and cream, even if he actually wanted it. But he still wanted to appear that he was getting what he wanted so that it didn't look like J was controlling him. Why else would he actively claim the only one of two options remaining?
Interesting?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Danger
There was a weapon in my classroom today. Confiscated. Student Removed. Drama. Thank goodness it was a pocketknife and not a firearm.
It really was a pretty calm ordeal, but still a milestone in an absurd way.
It really was a pretty calm ordeal, but still a milestone in an absurd way.
Monday, January 11, 2010
thoughtful roommate
I received the lime green and pink version of this email this morning from my roommate and I want to keep it. (I don't know html well enough to do the colors right now)
Have a fabulous first day of grad school! :-D
You'll do GREAT!
-Ms. C (sorry I didn't see you before I left for school today!)
Have a fabulous first day of grad school! :-D
You'll do GREAT!
-Ms. C (sorry I didn't see you before I left for school today!)
Sunday, January 10, 2010
2009, O Wondrous Year
Copied from a facebook note, because that's easy.
2009 has become widely reputed to be an ugly year so I want to enumerate all of its wonders.
January-December: Teach for America
-Finished my Teach for America application in the Russian literature section of the Boston Public Library
-Somehow skipped the TFA phone interview, which I feel would have ruined my chances
-Researched possible TFA placements for weeks and weeks until I felt an unmistakable pull from the universe for me to go to Miami
-As soon as I received the email notifying me of my placement, went to Spencer's house to share the news, where he introduced me to my new home using YouTube videos of Miami Vice
-During induction, got pink eye after visiting a school for one hour
-Somehow got an amazing roommate
-Moved to Miami and became steward of Room 233, populated by 75 7th-grade and 50 6th-grade College-bound Scientific Investigators.
-Worked with truly innovative, dedicated, interesting, accepting, inspiring and inspired people.
-Ended most August and September days in an empty classroom with the question "WHAT just happened?"
-October: surplussed, un-surplussed, repeat. Still recovering.
-Visited NYC with other corps members and staff to solidify a vision of where we should be headed
February: I used my reserves of years of frequent flier miles to go to China to visit my trainer from my mission and the first two people I taught who joined the church.
-Flew into Shanghai, then to Zhengzhou, then overnight train from Kaifeng to Beijing Bei, then overnight train back to Shanghai.
-Cried HARD in the airport upon my reunion with Wang Xiaomei
-Received a Chinese name: Yang Hui, which includes meanings of fashion, foreign, clever.
-Spent amazing quality time with three of the people I love most in the world
-Met Richard's family and made dumplings with them
-Ate with chopsticks every meal for 2 weeks
-Visited the home of kong fu, the Shaolin temple
-Climbed the Great Wall of China
-Was photographed as though I were a celebrity
-Stayed in typical Chinese homes and was treated like an honored guest
-Got behind the wheel of a car at the Yellow River
-Met shepherds and held one of their baby goats along the Yellow River
-Visited Olympic sites with Franca and Ted
-Learned more Chinese than I thought I could
-There is really nothing I can write that can encapsulate how meaningful this was.
March through May: I worked for the Massachusetts Dep't of Unemployment helping people get connected to health insurance
-Gained insight and context into the national health care debate
-Became instant friends with coworkers
April: I reconnected with my childhood
-Found my best friend in Connecticut through facebook and drove to Waterbury, Connecticut to sleep on her couch and explore memories.
-Confirmed suspicions that choosing friends well is one of my superpowers, for though we hadn't communicated for a decade and a half, we studied the same things in college, have similar jobs, want to know the whole world, and got along like we hadn't missed a day.
-Visited our elementary school and in a moment of youthful abandon ran through the old lady's yard between her parents' backyard and my old house.
May: Epic roadtrip across America
-Surprised my family by showing up in Longmont when they thought I was in Boston
-Enjoyed 2000 miles of quality conversation--I didn't sleep one second in the car--with an incredible friend
-"Violins are harder to play," "those clouds are fleeing like refugees," texting sidekick, etc.
-Stayed with the long-lost cousin whom I'd considered my best friend when I was a tiny person
-Visited Niagara Falls and got interrogated by border patrol on our way back
-Stopped at Notre Dame, which eventually contributed to getting an awesome roommate in Miami
-Found President Obama's house in Chicago
-Introduced people I love to more people I love
-Stayed with my Shawna
-The day after arrival, received picture message updates to my phone while my Longfellow Park church burned down.
May: The Exodus
-Left Boston, land of my forefathers, and have thought about it every day since
-Introduced Alise to Boston, NYC, Waterbury, the New Jersey Turnpike, and Washington DC as she accompanied me on my move away from the heartland
-Spent several days in DC with loving family and friends
-Got to stay with the Lewises, the Whites, Annie, and Janna en route to Atlanta
June-July: TFA Institute in Atlanta
-Got an average of 4 hours of sleep a night during training, and once even worked for 36 hours straight. (I fell asleep standing up that day.)
-Somehow established an awesome relationship with my CMA and Sutton school staff (hi!) despite struggling with the work
-Taught 8th grade math
-Realized at the end of June that I had forgotten my sister's birthday two weeks earlier
July: California and Utah and back to Florida
-Flew from Orlando to meet my family in Northern California--visited the Redwoods, stayed with the generous Walsh relatives, saw the graves of my great-grandparents' from Norway, saw the grave for the first time of my grandfather who died while I was on my mission in Australia
-Reconnected with dear friends from Australia
-Flew back to Orlando and made the last, loneliest drive to Miami
Starting in August: MBII
-became unofficial co-branch mission leader upon stepping foot in the Indian Creek building
-found close friends in a group of incredibly supportive, non-judgmental, FUN people
-baptism of V, N, S
-"does she know?"
-Latin danced with Cubans (to some of you this may not sound like a novelty)
-temple bus trip in November (life saved by Cuban sandwich, Spanish session, sitting with Cristy and stirring up conversations)
-Ashley (can't assign words to this one)
All year: I saw my close friends' families expanding
-Met Brandon and Jenni's new daughter in NYC
-Attended Brent and Carrie's wedding in Orlando--my first temple wedding
-Saw Amanda after being married to Branden
-Lived with Annie while she become engaged then married
-met Kristi's baby
-met Rachel and Ryan's baby
-Met Elder Caldwell's wife Jessica and spent a few Sunday afternoons with them while I lived in Atlanta
Adventurized
-July: Explored Savannah, Georgia on my own
-September: Took Crystal and Christina snorkeling in Key Largo
-September: visit from Celeste
-October: Returned on a pilgrimage to Boston for the education conference, had precious reunions, masqueraded at the Harvard Club, ate Bosnian food, ate Indian food, maintained my relationship with Walden Pond
-November: Ate sushi for the first time on my 25th birthday. Also was treated to gelato and late-night staring at the beach.
-November: Went to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving with my Miamian partner in adventure
-December: Stayed with Lori in Manhattan and didn't get enough time with her
-December: Home for Christmas. Someone to watch BYU football with for once. Sledding, Christmas Eve at the Hawkins' and Christmas Day with the Seyfis', Denver Art Museum and KIPP with Juliet, missed Miami a little.
-Sometime in the last few months: Paid off my underemployment-era credit card
-Fell in love with Cuban food, standard institution of choice: Versailles.
(What am I missing?)
2009 has become widely reputed to be an ugly year so I want to enumerate all of its wonders.
January-December: Teach for America
-Finished my Teach for America application in the Russian literature section of the Boston Public Library
-Somehow skipped the TFA phone interview, which I feel would have ruined my chances
-Researched possible TFA placements for weeks and weeks until I felt an unmistakable pull from the universe for me to go to Miami
-As soon as I received the email notifying me of my placement, went to Spencer's house to share the news, where he introduced me to my new home using YouTube videos of Miami Vice
-During induction, got pink eye after visiting a school for one hour
-Somehow got an amazing roommate
-Moved to Miami and became steward of Room 233, populated by 75 7th-grade and 50 6th-grade College-bound Scientific Investigators.
-Worked with truly innovative, dedicated, interesting, accepting, inspiring and inspired people.
-Ended most August and September days in an empty classroom with the question "WHAT just happened?"
-October: surplussed, un-surplussed, repeat. Still recovering.
-Visited NYC with other corps members and staff to solidify a vision of where we should be headed
February: I used my reserves of years of frequent flier miles to go to China to visit my trainer from my mission and the first two people I taught who joined the church.
-Flew into Shanghai, then to Zhengzhou, then overnight train from Kaifeng to Beijing Bei, then overnight train back to Shanghai.
-Cried HARD in the airport upon my reunion with Wang Xiaomei
-Received a Chinese name: Yang Hui, which includes meanings of fashion, foreign, clever.
-Spent amazing quality time with three of the people I love most in the world
-Met Richard's family and made dumplings with them
-Ate with chopsticks every meal for 2 weeks
-Visited the home of kong fu, the Shaolin temple
-Climbed the Great Wall of China
-Was photographed as though I were a celebrity
-Stayed in typical Chinese homes and was treated like an honored guest
-Got behind the wheel of a car at the Yellow River
-Met shepherds and held one of their baby goats along the Yellow River
-Visited Olympic sites with Franca and Ted
-Learned more Chinese than I thought I could
-There is really nothing I can write that can encapsulate how meaningful this was.
March through May: I worked for the Massachusetts Dep't of Unemployment helping people get connected to health insurance
-Gained insight and context into the national health care debate
-Became instant friends with coworkers
April: I reconnected with my childhood
-Found my best friend in Connecticut through facebook and drove to Waterbury, Connecticut to sleep on her couch and explore memories.
-Confirmed suspicions that choosing friends well is one of my superpowers, for though we hadn't communicated for a decade and a half, we studied the same things in college, have similar jobs, want to know the whole world, and got along like we hadn't missed a day.
-Visited our elementary school and in a moment of youthful abandon ran through the old lady's yard between her parents' backyard and my old house.
May: Epic roadtrip across America
-Surprised my family by showing up in Longmont when they thought I was in Boston
-Enjoyed 2000 miles of quality conversation--I didn't sleep one second in the car--with an incredible friend
-"Violins are harder to play," "those clouds are fleeing like refugees," texting sidekick, etc.
-Stayed with the long-lost cousin whom I'd considered my best friend when I was a tiny person
-Visited Niagara Falls and got interrogated by border patrol on our way back
-Stopped at Notre Dame, which eventually contributed to getting an awesome roommate in Miami
-Found President Obama's house in Chicago
-Introduced people I love to more people I love
-Stayed with my Shawna
-The day after arrival, received picture message updates to my phone while my Longfellow Park church burned down.
May: The Exodus
-Left Boston, land of my forefathers, and have thought about it every day since
-Introduced Alise to Boston, NYC, Waterbury, the New Jersey Turnpike, and Washington DC as she accompanied me on my move away from the heartland
-Spent several days in DC with loving family and friends
-Got to stay with the Lewises, the Whites, Annie, and Janna en route to Atlanta
June-July: TFA Institute in Atlanta
-Got an average of 4 hours of sleep a night during training, and once even worked for 36 hours straight. (I fell asleep standing up that day.)
-Somehow established an awesome relationship with my CMA and Sutton school staff (hi!) despite struggling with the work
-Taught 8th grade math
-Realized at the end of June that I had forgotten my sister's birthday two weeks earlier
July: California and Utah and back to Florida
-Flew from Orlando to meet my family in Northern California--visited the Redwoods, stayed with the generous Walsh relatives, saw the graves of my great-grandparents' from Norway, saw the grave for the first time of my grandfather who died while I was on my mission in Australia
-Reconnected with dear friends from Australia
-Flew back to Orlando and made the last, loneliest drive to Miami
Starting in August: MBII
-became unofficial co-branch mission leader upon stepping foot in the Indian Creek building
-found close friends in a group of incredibly supportive, non-judgmental, FUN people
-baptism of V, N, S
-"does she know?"
-Latin danced with Cubans (to some of you this may not sound like a novelty)
-temple bus trip in November (life saved by Cuban sandwich, Spanish session, sitting with Cristy and stirring up conversations)
-Ashley (can't assign words to this one)
All year: I saw my close friends' families expanding
-Met Brandon and Jenni's new daughter in NYC
-Attended Brent and Carrie's wedding in Orlando--my first temple wedding
-Saw Amanda after being married to Branden
-Lived with Annie while she become engaged then married
-met Kristi's baby
-met Rachel and Ryan's baby
-Met Elder Caldwell's wife Jessica and spent a few Sunday afternoons with them while I lived in Atlanta
Adventurized
-July: Explored Savannah, Georgia on my own
-September: Took Crystal and Christina snorkeling in Key Largo
-September: visit from Celeste
-October: Returned on a pilgrimage to Boston for the education conference, had precious reunions, masqueraded at the Harvard Club, ate Bosnian food, ate Indian food, maintained my relationship with Walden Pond
-November: Ate sushi for the first time on my 25th birthday. Also was treated to gelato and late-night staring at the beach.
-November: Went to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving with my Miamian partner in adventure
-December: Stayed with Lori in Manhattan and didn't get enough time with her
-December: Home for Christmas. Someone to watch BYU football with for once. Sledding, Christmas Eve at the Hawkins' and Christmas Day with the Seyfis', Denver Art Museum and KIPP with Juliet, missed Miami a little.
-Sometime in the last few months: Paid off my underemployment-era credit card
-Fell in love with Cuban food, standard institution of choice: Versailles.
(What am I missing?)
Counsel me not
I wrote this as an entry on my good friend Dain's website, theironrod.org. He built it as a forum where people can read sections of the Book of Mormon at the same time then discuss their reading. He was inspired by his friends who have joined the church but have fallen away because they haven't gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon.
I teach middle school science to students from a community where everyday life is infused with violence and poverty. I'm doing this because I believe they, with strong leadership, can change their stars if they get a solid education. Many people--my friends, some coworkers, and others--have told me these particular kids can't learn, have made disparaging remarks about their neighborhood, have advised me to quit, and have said other things that would undermine my efforts.
While reading Jacob 5 during our silent reading time at the beginning of the school day, I came across these verses that deeply affected me:
21 And it came to pass that the servant said unto his master: How comest thou hither to plant this tree, or this branch of the tree? For behold, it was the poorest spot in all the land of thy vineyard.
22 And the Lord of the vineyard said unto him: Counsel me not; I knew that it was a poor spot of ground; wherefore, I said unto thee, I have nourished it this long time, and thou beholdest that it hath brought forth much fruit.
People have told me how poor this spot of ground is where I work, but look! I am nourishing it diligently, with heart and tears. It will bring forth fruit: it will bring people successfully to an academic future, adulthood, and hopefully some other results that I cannot forsee.
I teach middle school science to students from a community where everyday life is infused with violence and poverty. I'm doing this because I believe they, with strong leadership, can change their stars if they get a solid education. Many people--my friends, some coworkers, and others--have told me these particular kids can't learn, have made disparaging remarks about their neighborhood, have advised me to quit, and have said other things that would undermine my efforts.
While reading Jacob 5 during our silent reading time at the beginning of the school day, I came across these verses that deeply affected me:
21 And it came to pass that the servant said unto his master: How comest thou hither to plant this tree, or this branch of the tree? For behold, it was the poorest spot in all the land of thy vineyard.
22 And the Lord of the vineyard said unto him: Counsel me not; I knew that it was a poor spot of ground; wherefore, I said unto thee, I have nourished it this long time, and thou beholdest that it hath brought forth much fruit.
People have told me how poor this spot of ground is where I work, but look! I am nourishing it diligently, with heart and tears. It will bring forth fruit: it will bring people successfully to an academic future, adulthood, and hopefully some other results that I cannot forsee.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
apology letters
My advanced 6th grade class is so collectively incredibly disruptive and frustrating. I have tried a string of strategies to help fix the problem. Last class period I assigned homework: an apology letter for talking while I am trying to teach. The people who wrote them were the better behaved ones, naturally.
This one made me laugh:
Dear Ms Nilsen
Sorry for misbehaving in your class I was acting like a donkey in the wildness I was only trying your class look fun because from what I hear about that class is "oh it boring up in there" "She never let us do anything" but I will try and be good
Sincerely D.F.,
<3
This one almost made me cry:
Dear Ms. Nilsen,
I'm sorry for anything me or my classmates did wrong. Please I know you always going to forgive us. But just know you may not see a difference in some student. But, believe you will see a change in me: K.S.!
Truely, (Your #1 Student)
I'm not sure this one is really from the person whose name is on it:
Dear Ms Nilsen (e's written as 3's)
I'm sorry for miss behaving because I don't like you.
Sincerly A.U.
Somehow these brightened the end of my day.
This one made me laugh:
Dear Ms Nilsen
Sorry for misbehaving in your class I was acting like a donkey in the wildness I was only trying your class look fun because from what I hear about that class is "oh it boring up in there" "She never let us do anything" but I will try and be good
Sincerely D.F.,
<3
This one almost made me cry:
Dear Ms. Nilsen,
I'm sorry for anything me or my classmates did wrong. Please I know you always going to forgive us. But just know you may not see a difference in some student. But, believe you will see a change in me: K.S.!
Truely, (Your #1 Student)
I'm not sure this one is really from the person whose name is on it:
Dear Ms Nilsen (e's written as 3's)
I'm sorry for miss behaving because I don't like you.
Sincerly A.U.
Somehow these brightened the end of my day.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
practicing for awesome
I hope that the experiences I have chosen that have been attended by some feelings of being out of place and isolation are orchestrated to help me prepare for something really awesome when finally I grow up. The scenario I have come up with is needing to live in a foreign country in my future married life because of Husband's job. That is something that I actually hope does happen and I think I will know how to make the absolute most out of it.
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