Heat

It's 106 today.  It was 107 degrees yesterday as I passed a bank clock at 5:15 p.m. on the South side of Oklahoma City.  I waited in traffic with the other schmucks, my air conditioner blasting slightly cooler air than what you'd find outdoors, sweating from the top of my melting hair to the bottoms of my low heeled pumps.  On the South side, you'll find about 60% of the people in their cars lack a/c.  Their windows are wide open, they drive fast to encourage air flow and have short tempers.  Their hair tends to be dirty with pollution and skin is more tan, at least on the window side of their ride.

I stayed on the city streets, skirting the outskirts on my way home.  If I took the highway, I would be more cranky, sitting in a traffic jam with hundreds of others, all inconsiderate and cutting in front because their destination and time are so much more important than my own.  Sigh.  It happens more in the summer.  People get more aggressive; either that or I just notice it more.

During the summer in Oklahoma I either head north for a couple of weeks and find a place to hang out that is both cool and near water, or I simply dig in and wait out the heat inside an air conditioned house/car/office/world because I cannot take the heat.  It is depressing, like seasonal affective disorder in the summertime.  Too much sun; too much heat.  Not enough snow.  Last year we had 63 days in a row of over 100 degree temperatures. Everything not inside died.  This year I planted cucumbers, basil, and a ton of other decorative plants under the porch awning where they are more or less protected from the sun.  As long as they are watered every day, they should live. Should. Except that (as my friend Laura says) it's like a pizza oven out there. We only had one day where it snowed and I felt more alive than usual.

The heat makes people a little crazy too. In the years that I have made my cell phone number public, I have never had a crank caller. I have never had hang ups and I have never had anyone sell my number to a telemarketer.  Only this week has anything strange happened.  I got a text from an Oklahoma City cell phone number.  It said "Can you Send meme pics of your schnou" with no regard for basic grammar. I'm not sure, but I suspect that it is from one of my students. Yes, I just berated someone's grammar before their poor choices.

I have been directly approached by college students and former college students for anything from sex to romance.  There is this rule that every educator knows and every educator follows or they are taking advantage of the power they have over that student, either by their grade or by the regard with which the student holds them. Generally speaking, you're a low-down dirty dog sun of a beeswax if you have sex with your students.  You just are.  Think of Mary Kay Latourneau, John from Oleanna, and any number of other scandalous rotten teachers. And that's just the female ones.  I have seen my share of both female and male professors in relationships with students.  There is a sense of decorum in waiting until after grades are turned in but not everyone who begins a romantic entanglement with a student has the ethical fortitude to do so. Me? I have to watch my own reaction to such activities. My fingers itch for a stick. My advice to all teachers everywhere is this: Don't f**k your students.

In no way am I interested in sending pictures of my schnou, nose, the crack of my butt or the crack of my cat's butt across the interwebs for the personal or public entertainment of another without payment.  I didn't respond. It's not that I don't have anything to say to the request.  I'd like to respond with "May I have your credit card information?" or perhaps "You are obviously in need of some higher education.  May I direct you to my English class instead?" or the classic "What the hell is wrong with you?", because this really is horrifying.  Then I wondered if I could look up some strange medical disease dictionary and forward those. Yes, I have a mean streak and do not like to be messed with. Must be the heat.  I settled on ignoring it.  If the person texts again, I will track them down and call their mom, girlfriend, wife, or clergy member and embarrass them.

This one is free, but the arm, leg, and schnou will cost ya!

During the course of writing this blog post, my dog has been outside. I have to get a pancake turner and scrape him off the sidewalk where he has melted around the edges.

It's that hot.

Towards a Better...

At my middle school, testing season is almost over.  Next week we will have make up tests and that's it for the year.  Things got thrown into panic mode since we were set to do paper and pencil tests for the 7th graders and at the last moment the state department said we had to do computerized testing.  We only have about 50 computers in the school and 500 students. It wasn't a nightmare but the counselor had never arranged this sort of thing before so we all suffered a bit.  Both the administrator and the monitor must stay in the room during testing and roamers are to come check every once in awhile to make sure that students are comfortable and that administrators don't need a break.  I really dislike having a room full of kids who have to pee for three hours and nobody comes to get them to take them to the bathroom.

Anyway, I am sure my kids did a great job.  I'm not allowed to see or to help or to look at test scores.  Likewise I instruct the kids not to talk to me about them.  However, it leaks out and sometimes in their exuberance, someone will brag to me about what they got.  I'm happy for them but also say they can't say those things to me. I think that the English scores will increase dramatically this year.  I'm in the English department and the main sixth grade teacher and eighth grade teachers really did a great job this year.  Those scores will follow us as well, wherever we go.

Speaking of going, my student intern is almost at the end of her stint in my school. Next week she is going to institute the poetry unit I asked her to create.  She has used my materials to come up with curriculum, written lesson plans and will institute them and assess at the end of the unit.  She is doing much better in the classroom and I feel comfortable having her there to help teach.  She thinks she is ready to go out on her own.  I hope so.  I've been teaching for that last however long and I'm still never as prepared as I want to be.  There is also a lot the kids throw at you and even when you are prepared, you have to watch your face and reactions.  So I've been thinking of some advice of my own for Title 1 public school teachers.

1. Don't take it personally.  Kids have it rough in public school.  Their home lives, especially those who live in poverty, are sometimes (though this is not the rule) challenging.  When they say or do ugly things, it's almost never about the teacher. When you hear ugliness, look immediately beyond the words to the child spouting them.  At all costs, avoid sarcasm.
2.  Not everyone who is poor is troubled.  Lots and lots of my students have happy home lives.
3.  My goals and values may not be their goals and values.  I am White.  The vast majority of the students I teach are either Hispanic or Black.  While we all have common American experiences, there are cultural differences and I do not have the right to make a kid feel bad because they realize from an early age that college is not for them. I do have a responsibility to learn more of my student's cultures and to pull those things into the classroom so that we can all learn better.
4.  That does not mean that I can give up talking about literacy, a better life, and college.  The fact is that as a 7-8 grade English teacher, I might be the last literacy educator they see.  This makes my job that much more important and urgent.  The buck stops here.
5. You know what my goal is? My goal is to be a better person.  That's why I teach. That's what it boils down to.  I want to look in the mirror every day and see someone I can be proud of.  How I go about teaching ties into that.
6.  My personal life has little place in my classroom.  My students know I am White and that I speak some spanish.  I tell them a little about growing up where I did, about the migrant children who became my friends and about Spanish lessons from 6-12 grade.  I tell them about my past teaching jobs, including the prison which fascinates them, and I talk about my dog and cat.  That's about it. If I am teaching curriculum and listening to their talk and their world and entering a realm that ultimately does not belong to me, I want to be as empty of a vessel as I can rather than a cup spilling over.
7.  Take the weekends off.  I know it is difficult.  Grade papers before you come home.  Set up curriculum and lesson plans on your plan period.  Do as my friend Bonner suggests and touch a door or some piece of the school as you leave and say "I am leaving this place" and do not come back until Monday.
8.  Laugh.  Tell jokes.  Enjoy these students because junior high is brutal and hormone filled and frightening.  Laughter is important and instructive and makes life easier.
9.  When you are wrong, say you are sorry. Publicly and with sincerity.  I apologize to my students when I get stuff wrong.  I take responsibility and get more respect for that than if I never admit mistakes.  This shows that if I can get better and be a strong person who is compassionate, then they can be too. It's a pathway and an example.
10. You spot it, you got it.  I stole this from an Al-Anon meeting (that's friends and family members of alcoholics).  When the kids were spending their lunch hours smearing food up and down the hallways and throwing trash on the grounds, I was dismayed and angry.  I decided that instead of some punitive action, I had a responsibility to teach compassion and responsibility.  I took an entire day and had the students write letters to Margarita and Griselda, who are our custodians.  I walked them around and we picked up trash.  We gave the letters to the ladies and made them cry.  I asked that if anyone saw people throwing trash or food where it shouldn't go that they speak up.  Now our hallways are mostly clear and the grounds look better.  Such a simple thing, really.  If you can, then do.

I feel strongly that we are the guardians of innocence.  Our middle school kids are half child, half teenager and spend a good deal of time just trying to figure out what to do next.  When someone or something threatens their ability to do so, it turns me into a raging witch.  For instance, one of our students dropped out for three months.  His dad dis-enrolled him and took him to Texas.  When he got back, his mom came to re-enroll him.  Only he had gotten a gang tattoo on his neck in the intervening time.  He knows that in order to be part of our school, he has to cover that tattoo but chooses not to.  Every single time I catch him, I take him to the principal and he spends time out of class sitting, waiting for his mom to come bring him a turtleneck.  It's crazy.  But I have to do that- to keep gang symbols and tattoos and signs and graffiti out of my school.  It's not just my job, it's my moral responsibility as an adult and as a human to protect others.

In other news, I have bronchitis again.  My doctor will be so thrilled.  Last weekend I missed an important play in Oklahoma City and this weekend, I missed a great play here in Tulsa.  I simply had no energy to walk from the damn car to the theater to sit there for two hours without coughing my head off.  I'll go on Monday for a shot and some antibiotics and blah blah blah...it's the same story.  My job is killing me because each time I walk into the building, I inhale dust and mold and probably asbestos.  I'm hoping next year will be better and working, always working, towards a better world.

A Safe Place

Yesterday, I asked an 8th grade student to carry a slim toad away from our portable buildings.  He or she had gotten into a classroom the night before and was stunned after being manhandled by 18 sixth graders and kicked by one of them.  Gently, the 8th grader picked up said toadling and asked where to put it.  I couldn't really think of anywhere.  In the soccer field there would be children running around after school. The pavement was no good because of hot sun, foot and car traffic and lack of moisture.  The dumpster might be ok but the fence line would only lead to the sidewalk.  We decided on the dumpster and let our hopping friend loose.

Today is the 17th anniversary of the bombing of the Arthur P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City.  On this day so many days ago, in revenge for the ill-conceived and badly ended standoff between the Branch Davidian church group and the U.S. Government.  Timothy McVeigh chose the Murrah building and Oklahoma City as an easy target. The Murrah building was a federal building and housed many beaurocratic headquarters for federal business in the city.  He filled a large truck with homemade explosives and detonated it, killing 168 people- including children in the daycare- and changed the course of Oklahoma history.  Oklahoma, the safe place, was under attack in an act of domestic terrorism. When it came to light that it was a scrawny white guy, a separatist, former military and an American, well, people were stunned. What had we expected, a non-White, non-English speaking, non-graduate of American school systems who held beliefs that were never critically considered?

Last Friday, one of our sixth graders stabbed another sixth grader with a pencil in the shoulder over a bag of skittles.  She had stabbed the victim before the day before but it did not break the skin and the little girl did not report it at the time.  This time, however, the pencil went through a sweater and a shirt and lodged in her skin.  And our alleged perpetrator was so rotten, disrespectful and belligerent that the arresting police officer put cuffs on her and took her past kiddie booking and to a juvenile detention center where she will remain until her arraignment.  Her mother did not go to see her and she is now in a position to get real lessons on how to become a criminal.  She is twelve years old.

I am missing one of my students for the rest of the year as well.  He (allegedly) brought a large amount of illegal substances to school with intent to sell.  Four other students were busted in the boys room smoking a Swisher Sweet with a large amount of cannibis in it.  Gone. Those kids are gone for the year.  I'm not sure why my students are dealing and taking drugs. I figure that reality sucks when you are a teenager and it must really suck to live and go to school in a ghetto with few prospects and teachers who often fundamentally dislike children.  We finally and temporarily replaced our deceased geography teacher. The new lady is nice and blonde and pretty and with sky blue eyes that make me think she might come from Edmond.  The kids have mostly been nice to her, and one drew her a picture which she put outside of her door.  Unfortunately it has gang colors and the drawing is actually of "the shocker" hand gesture.  If you don't know what that is, click here for an eye-opening explanation.  I couldn't find her today so I'll try again tomorrow. I heard one of the 8th grade boys (not my student) said some highly sexual things to her during class, poked a pencil into her lunch and left.  I really hope that is not true.

Students have been roaming the hallways in droves. I took it upon myself to stroll the hallways during classes.  Ok, it's trolling.  My student intern is now competent enough to handle teaching by herself so I walk around looking for kids ditching class. I catch about four per day.  It makes me cranky.  Yesterday, one of my gang-girls was conducting business with her boyfriend's cell phone.  She's really sweet and I like her. I suspect she probably compartmentalizes and gets to be a kid during those classes she attends and a "thug" when she needs to be.

In the meantime, we are doing the OCCT- Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test.  Awesome.  Along with the continued construction, how can we possibly hope to pass those tests?  Yet many of them are.  A good number of my 8th grade students either passed or got outstanding scores on their reading tests.  Next week my 7th graders are up and I expect they will surpass my principal's expectations but not my own.  I want better for them.

Yes, yes I do. I want better for my kids and I am frustrated and fighting mad.  What does it matter if my kids can think critically or read and write their asses off if the end result is not going to change?  Necessity trumps luxuries like novels and me and my little narratives cannot compete with the immediate relief of getting high. Sometimes I feel like a fool for even trying. The world, as illustrated by Timothy McVeigh, is not as trustworthy as it might once have been. My students are stunned toads with no safe place to go but dumpsters. At least there is food and moisture there, even if it smells.  All I can do is keep guard and provide hope.

Enough Perfection!

I have a new obsession: Single Dad Laughing. I read a post by him about perfection. You can check it out here. He made me think about how imperfect I am, not that I need any reminders.

But I look around me and I see that almost everyone I know is infected with this disease of being perfect. We- collectively as Americans- need to be perfect. I think it stems from some skewed perception of capitalism wherein we have to go big or go home. Large houses with green lawns, big boats, fast cars, expensive clothes and hair and slim thighs and great skin and the right shoes...it's all part of the American dream.

Why do I sometimes feel ashamed and angry that I don't have all of those things? I'm an educator, for Pete's sake. What I do is important and it matters greatly, to offer other worlds and experiences to students and to take the opportunity to learn from them. I derive a great deal of self-esteem from teaching, from doing anonymous good works, and from looking for ways to be kind- especially to those who would be unkind to me. I live in a house and I have enough to eat. My car goes places. My dog and cat are always happy to see me, especially if they think I have something tasty. My friends are there for me when I need them most of the time and I am there for them, most of the time. So why do I so often compare myself to the appearances of others and feel as though I lack?

But I feel what I feel. Long ago I made a choice to be what and who I am and that means that the American dream with a white picket fence, a couple of kids and the ability to keep up with the Jones' is not in the cards. I could have chosen vet school; I was accepted in the top three of the hundreds of applications. Not that being a veterinarian is so glamorous- it's a lot of poop and blood if the truth were known, but it comes with a nifty white coat. I only applied because I wanted my husband to think I was good enough. When I just couldn't do it, I left behind the man and the life and the lifestyle and became a teacher.

Years later in a fit of anger, my ex husband said that I was his project and that he never really did think I was good enough. At the time it stung, and it made me look long and hard at my own actions. I realized that I am defined by my actions but not my family. More importantly, I am a human and like other humans, I deserve real love, unconditional love. It's a lesson I've never forgotten and try to practice; to try to understand rather than just change others into your image of them.

I cannot tell you my schedule without feeling exhausted. I am actually attempting to learn Italian amongst all other stuff I have to do in a week. I have downloaded language learning audio onto my iPod and listen and repeat in the mornings on my drive to work. I have no other real time during the week. I have this drive to do well in my classes, to teach well, to be a good colleague, daughter, granddaughter, aunt, sister and friend. Fact is, those things often slide. Or at least one or two slide since I do have to sleep sometimes.

It's not just our time and energy that's subject to perfectionism. Our bodies seem to be under the most scrutiny. Everywhere I go I am bombarded with advertisements for rejuvenating treatments "My wife looks ten years younger. I can't believe it!", liposuction "Get the beautiful legs, hips and thighs you've always wanted. You deserve it!", breast augmentation "Imagine how much more confident you will feel!", day spas, salons, gentlemen's clubs, gyms, diet pills and make up commercials just on the radio. I gave up television long ago but the images still haunt me.

Nothing makes me feel more insecure than women's magazines and snickering, whispering teenage girls. The fact is that I went to war with my body sometime in 1999. I could say it's because I was a big girl in high school, with petite and beautiful sisters. I could say it's because when I was 11 years old, my grandma-who was trying to be kind- said "Well, honey, you're not as pretty as your sisters, but you have nice child-bearing hips." I could blame my ex-husband for telling me the truth when I asked if my jeans make my butt look big. He said "I love you, but you've gained twenty pounds since we got married." I went to the gym that day. From that day to this, I cannot see what the scale at my doctor's office tells me. If I know that number, I will immediately go on a crash diet to lose ten pounds. And I'm not too picky about how I do it.

The fact remains though, that every day that I wake up, I make a conscious choice. I choose to just be myself. It's not natural. I want to be a reflection of what people want me to be. Especially since I'm single again. I want to be liked even though I have no fear of being alone. Actually, I prefer to be alone. It's way less complicated. My cat doesn't judge me for eating watermelon for dinner right over the kitchen sink so that I don't have to wash another dish. She just sits on my lap and purrs while I type. That's why I post pictures of me with bad breath, bags under my eyes, acne and no hair brushes... because I need to just be me for awhile. I need that to be enough. I need that to be enough for me.

Dan Pearce, from Single Dad Laughing, struggles with his weight and self-esteem. What we all struggle with is that feeling that we're somehow unlovable since we're imperfect. I'm glad to struggle with this rather than to delude myself that somehow the universe loves me above any others. My imperfections make me feel a part of the human race, rather than apart from it.

Please, please be imperfect. Those imperfections in the people I love are what make them human and therefore, accessible. It takes the pressure off of me too. Nothing is as real as me calling up a friend to say "Boy did I screw this up. Can you help me figure it out?", because I know that next week she's going to call me and say "Oh please help me dig out from under this mountain of laundry!" and together we'll heft the load.