Getting the Bird

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Screen Shot 2013-06-18 at 8.56.06 AMI’m giving an exam. There’s a lot of human suffering–the kind that makes a kid have to go to the bathroom. One girl left to accomplish this task.

“Miss, there’s a bird.”

“Someone gave you the bird?” This is urban education, man. Toughen up.

“No. A bird.” Sure enough, there was a beautiful little bird flitting around the hallway, trying in vain to get out the window. It wasn’t going far, so intent at looking at the view outside, yet stuck in place by a pane of glass. Kinda reminded me of myself at times. I had to help.

I got a large plastic chip bowl–the kind of thing that clutters my classroom that I keep meaning to toss but I think, “hate to waste, maybe it’ll have some use.” Finally. It’s day had come. A colleague walked down the hall, seeing the bird and the chip bowl. “We should call maintenance.” I wasn’t sure how someone who fixes everything that breaks for me (my heroes) and who also bestowed upon my neighbor the Coveted Key To The Bathroom had any more training in bird catching than I did.

“No.” I said. “I got this.” My colleague went to prevent my class from cheating on my exam–a moot point, because they probably finished in the time it took me to get the chip bowl anyway.

Slowly, I snuck up on the little bird. He slipped over to the left, then the right, but not out of reach, and he never left the glass. It seemed to me that if a large, purple chip bowl was coming for me, I’d fly to the ceiling. Maybe he didn’t know that chip bowls and humans can’t fly. He was so intent–staring ahead, banging his head against the very thing that was hurting him–trapping him–holding him back and keeping him from being free. I stood still for a moment, and then slowly…put the bowl behind him a foot away.

“I know I can get out it in a minute…if I just…keep…at it.” So intent at breaking through…bang, bang, bang.

I put the chip bowl down on the glass. For just a moment bird did not move.

“Sorry, little bird…” I’d trapped his foot under the bowl. I picked up the bowl, just a millimeter, releasing his foot. The bird flittered inside. Bang…bang…bang… I had caught the bird. I’ve never caught a bird before. I’ve been given the bird, and once or twice I returned the favor, but I never caught one.

I realized something.

I was stuck.

“Hey!” I called out to my colleague. “I’m stuck. Dump a box and bring me a large piece of cardboard.” The clutter in my room was really starting to pay off. He came back with the bucket I use to clean out my fish tank.

“Not a bucket! Cardboard. I’m going to slip the cardboard under the bowl and make a lid. Then, I’ll take the bird outside.” He came back with someone’s posterboard. Sorry, to whoever’s project that was, but it served a higher purpose. Probably got you an A to begin with, but it saved a life as well.

I took the bird outside.

I released it. Such a simple act. I smiled. I watched the bird fly away. I hope his little foot doesn’t hurt too much.

How many times do we just…keep…at it. How many times do we bang our head against the glass, the wall, anything really, and keep ourselves from getting where we need to be? Probably more than we’re willing to admit.

Thank you, little bird, for the lesson. I hope I’ve helped. If I can ask just one thing in return–can you please tell your friends not to poop on my car? I’d appreciate it.

[image credit: allaboutbirds.org]

 

Disengage

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“You seriously think stuff like this should be ignored? I understand that hatred like this will never go extinct, but should it be allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged?”

Screen Shot 2013-06-16 at 8.01.49 AMWe were discussing hatred and discrimination–hateful comments on a discussion board. My friend spends significant time trying to convince hateful people to be less hateful. I commend him. What happens, though, is he just gets mad.

I tell him to stop. It’s not productive. There isn’t one person there who wants to be changed. It’s depressing. It brings him down. What starts as righteous indignation ends in battle fatigue, with residual vestiges of mad–it’s inevitable. I’d be mad, too. Discrimination doesn’t sit well with me.

But I’m a hypocrite–I did the same thing trying to solve the problems of public education. The nature of the beast is that I read a lot of books, blogs, and news material. I was commenting on a reform blog. It was a national blog, a person you all know. Someone that, until that moment, I venerated–a “champion” of reform. Someone who calls it like it is.

I used the word “scholars.” The hyenas descended.

“What, are you teaching, college? Because if you’re not, they’re not scholars.” Guess you don’t give your kids much credit.

“Why would you say that, you pretentious snob?” Because words matter. Read some NLP–basic science. Students tell me they like that I “treat them like real people and give them advanced stuff.” That’s the definition of scholarship. Study. Nothing more. 

“Do you even have a university degree?” A couple and then some. Haven’t even finished paying for them yet because I hacked my corporate salary in half to save the world from ignorance and want.

Last night, I was at a party talking to an alum, an electrician. He’s making a killing. I’m the dumb one here…

“I bet you’re some charter school freak who makes her kids march lock step and teaches to standardized tests all year.” That statement–so riddled with contradictions, I can’t even  process it. 

This went on and on. I answered each angry comment like a champ, hoping to convince people they should see the possibilities in their students. All I really did was get smacked around a lot.

I considered this a rite of passage in being somewhat public. I wasn’t just some teacher locked in a room anymore, I got smacked around by XXX herself!

“Disengage,” said my newish friend James (plug: you can read his latest book here). He used to write about stocks.  I’d rediscovered him writing about the meaning of life. Stocks are nice, but since I really can’t do much with them at this stage of my poverty, thanks be to teaching, I sort of like the meaning of life more–better odds at achieving enlightenment.

“Disengage? These are my people. The people on MY side!” I want to make education perfect. What he said next changed everything. It’s the truth:

“You have no people. You have yourself. They are not on your side. Nobody is on your side but you. All these people–people like that–want to do is hear themselves. They want to argue and spread hate. It’s what they do. It brings them joy.“ I’m paraphrasing.  ”Disengage. Do not participate in those threads. Don’t even read them. Do not answer hateful comments on your blog. Walk away.”

Every once in a while someone says something that permeates the dense outer layer of my skull and changes everything. This was one of those times. Every moment I spend in a silly battle over things I can never hope to change is a moment I am not bringing vision to a student. It’s tough to recognize. I sat down. I prioritized…two piles, “Productive,” and “Not Productive.” I separated people, activities, and obligations into those piles. The “not productive” pile? Gone. Mostly. I focus on a few things–areas where I can make an impact. It feels good. “Productive.”

Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure, a 1716 samurai handbook and one of my favorite works, said the following, “Among one’s affairs there should not be more than two or three matters of what one could call great concern.” More than that, “not productive.”

“Not productive.” This advice is the same, whether it comes from a living friend or a dead samurai. They’re both right.

Do I seriously think hate should be unchecked and ignored? Never. I spend a great deal of  time with students. Occasionally, I battle those things. The only thing to do is replace them with something. I choose vision.  The greatest gift I can give students–and myself–is the ability to say “not productive” to negativity, urging them to surround themselves with visionary thinking.

It works. And it surpasses any curriculum I could ever write.

[image: bookofzen.com]

End of the Horror Movie

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coffee stationThere’s that point before the end of the horror movie when nearly everyone is dead. You know they’re going to catch the bad guy, because why else spend fifty million dollars on a budget, blood and goring the whole set red?

Most of the time at least one of the good guys has to come out alive… sometimes even two of the ones you were rooting for, or the ending sucks. And at least until the sequel, the killer dies or goes to jail. That’s where the protagonist gets twenty minutes of peace before it starts all over again in the next movie.

That’s what end of the teaching year is like.

For teachers, the correlation is obvious. It feels like we’re opening every closet where the killer might be…book collecting, inventory, complaints, unhappy customers, functions, field days, evaluations, data… the end of the year is like a cacophony of things we might be able to handle or enjoy if only they did not assault us all at once.

This desk represents Dantes's 10th circle of hell

This desk represents Dantes’s 10th circle of hell

For students, it’s that moment of sheer desperation where they look down at their grades and realize that we were right all along.  A senior handed me a paper which referenced Dolly the Clone Sheep more times than I’d ever considered clone sheep in my life. It was well researched and kinda-sorta fit the parameters of science fiction within the I-am-flexible-as-long-as-I-don’t-get-crap-research…the research was solid. So I let it fly.

Another did all the critical thought questions on my school blog in detail hoping I’d let her “relearn” the material for a good grade. I will. Just like I considered Dolly the Sheep. If it’s well done.

“Miss,” said one student I’ll call “Jim” because that’s his name, approached me, downtrodden. It was about five years ago, and I was sitting peacefully in the hallway, guarding it from disturbances. “Remember in October when you said you thought I failed a class freshman year and I needed this class to graduate?”

“Yes.” I remember strange details like that. I don’t remember what I had for breakfast or what my husband asked me to remember–but a kid’s four-year course schedule…that, I can remember.

“Well, you were right.” This was as close to an apology as I generally see.

“I’m in the business of being right.”

“What do I need this quarter to pass your class?” he asked.

“One hundred and forty-five.”

“That’s not very likely, is it?” I almost said “If Jesus came and took the final, it probably wouldn’t happen. Except that’s happened before. I don’t want to make false promises I can’t keep before the Lord.

One day, Jesus did float in. “Hello, my child.” He addressed me in the gentle voice I imagined He would use. He was dressed in all white, wearing a crown of thorns. “Please pass my children.” Those “children” were in a similar numerical situation. A situation I’ve come to refer to as “Jesus math,” whereby only the good Lord, or another deity of choice–a big deity, mind you, not a little assistant–could influence the outcome.

Only later in the day did I discover that two white tablecloths were missing from Culinary and a rose bush in front of the building had been destroyed. Imposter! Posing as the Lord? Is there no low to which people won’t sink during grade mongering season?

Today, I received a set of final exam essays between classes while I was running to the bathroom. Teachers get one bathroom break a day. “I understand if it’s too late,” it says.

I answer. “I’ll look at it in a minute.” I wonder how many people will be wondering if I graded their paper on my iPhone from the bathroom.

The building itself looks rather like the final scenes in a horror movie before the end of the year–books tossed about, lockers being emptied, revealing unmistakable treasures like foods that might even have been edible months ago…It’s all a disaster. My room especially. Every year I promise to toss everything and attain clutter-free enlightenment. Then I look at the stacks of old papers I have created with love, making extra copies because we’re so often out of paper. Maybe I will need those again sometime! They never get thrown away. I’m hoping that because I have digitized most of my stuff on my school WordPress blog and Learnist boards, that I can free myself of these stacks of papers forever.

But for now, I just have to get to the end of the year in one piece. Then, I’ll start planning my attack for next year. I’ll make a plan to clean up my act. I’ve been making this plan for a dozen years, and it never comes together at the end to produce a nice, shiny classroom cleaned in advance. There are always scholars with last-minute numerical needs, last-minute research papers, and stacks of books and clutter. I can’t imagine that will go away. But I’ll try to tighten up my systems anyway.

And this time, next June, it’ll look like the end of a horror movie once again.

 

Torture 101: Exam Day

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Exam InspirationThis is the day all to which all teachers look forward. I am lording over my minions, watching them scribble on papers, staring down each question, regretting every day they left their brains outside the room.

I’ve given “the speech.”

Talking equals certain doom. Cheating equals bad karma. You don’t want to mess with karma…you never know where it’ll be lurking. Behind a tree? In a deep dark forest? Most likely it’ll get you just when you least expect it–like when you’re asking out someone you really like, perhaps, and then he or she will go out with your best friend. No, sir, you don’t want to mess with karma at all. 

Some students scribble away, others burn holes through the paper, waiting for their personal heavenly assistant to descend and provide them with answers. I see them bargaining with God.

“God,” they think (I see the thought bubbles floating above their heads), “Please help me, and I’ll never blow off studying again.” It’ll be the first of many bargains with the Almighty they’ll make in life, some as a result of poor choices, like the weekend college prayer, and others as a result of things more serious. I watch. God does not arrive and pick up the pencil. He’s got bigger issues to deal with. Take a number.

Exams are my few days to relax, drink even more coffee than usual, and watch the show. If students were sophisticated, though, they’d realize that exams and projects are not bad at all–no–it’s their one chance to get even. Every time I assign an essay, project, or… thing, well, I have to read or evaluate those things. Imagine–if every student, rather than asking me the question that cannot be spoken out loud (“How many sentences in a paragraph?”) simply wrote an extra paragraph, I’d have 240 extra paragraphs to read. If they wrote an extra page…Well, you get the picture. I’m buried now, I’d never come up for air. It’d be the most perfect revenge scheme of all time. Now, imagine if they organized such an effort to exceed expectations–the system would come to a grinding halt. I’d be correcting till next June. They wouldn’t have to work for months.

I remember in college, professors would put limits on papers. Nobody wants to read five extra pages times 500 people kissing up, 480 of whom are writing pure unadulterated crap–unresearched editorialization fit only to wrap fish and chips were it still a legal form of restaurant presentation. I’m a master of font obfuscation–11.5 font to sneak in a bit more? Move that margin just a tad…Because of this, I am also an expert font detective–don’t you give me no 13 font!

I realize I’m using double negatives. That’s teacher June grammar for you.

Anyway, instead of complaining about how little they can do at exam time, they should band together, organize, and flood us all with high-quality research. It’d be the smart thing to do. They’d win in the end.

But they don’t. They sit. They complain. And they give me the “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

Yup. That I am… Deadly serious. Get back to work.

Need another pencil?

 

 

How to Walk Your Demons

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Screen Shot 2013-06-10 at 6.15.20 AMEvery creative person has demons. Not just one, mind you. Usually a personal assistant or two with horns and a trident poking him in the keister. It took me a while to notice, but it’s true. I had to travel way outside the ordinary into the depths of the extraordinary, where the visionaries stand and I observe. Only then could I see, that among the greatest of the greats, demons come standard issue. That behind every beautiful book, every zen blog, every brilliant entrepreneur, is a person with a demon he’s working on training–getting that demon to heel, sit, and listen. To obey rather than control. He wishes he could send them away. He can’t. They are necessary.

They’re the ones jumping up and down with the ideas. “The world says you shouldn’t write this–do it!” they’ll say. “Push the button! Push the button! Push the button!” “So what if everyone thinks you’re insane, you just cured cancer…”You can’t solve that problem by doing that! You can’t! You can’t! You can’t!! Try this. It’s so much more controversial…”  They snicker. They goad. They pull at the deepest corners of the mind. They know just what buttons to push.

When they do, they provide the struggle that results in monumental solutions. The best writing. Creativity. Vision. Struggle that produces action no one else would take. Conflict generating great things.

I watch these creative greats at work. I study the results…their podcasts, books and blogs, their platforms, products and companies, when they create windmills that power villages in Africa, or generate amazing solutions, I am speechless. The results speak for themselves. Everything seems perfect, designed by superhumans. Unreachable for the normal person. How can I do any of that?

I turn around. My demon jumps up and down. I have one, too. I tell him to heel. “How can I live up to that?” I say. “How can my book be like that? How can I learn to do that in my business? How can I get my vision to change the world?” Bringing vision, individualization, and creativity to public education instead of fear, testing, and standardization–so that my students love coming to school each day again–it’s no easy task. It’s what I want to do. Those are the voices speaking to me.

Standing beside the greats, looking at the peak of my mountain way…over…there…It seems impossible.

My demon shakes his head. He gets me in trouble when he wanders off the beaten path. I have to find him. I go off the path. People give me the look, “Just do what you’re supposed to do and get the job done. Stop thinking so far outside the box. You’re insane…” In teaching, “Casey, you’re 10th step with a masters. Stop ‘solving’ problems. If they want you to balance on a circus ball, that’s what you do!” He jumps up and down. Bites at my pants leg. Chases a vision and brings it back to me. Drops it at my feet. I pat him on the head. “I’ll try.” I say. “I’ll do my best. I’ll be great.” We continue our walk on the obscure path. There are many paths to the top of the mountain.

My biggest epiphany:  Everyone has demons. Every “successful” person. The most successful stop hiding them. They walk with them. And they act. In hiding demons, I don’t  act. I watch and wait, accomplishing little, too busy worrying, telling demons to heel, missing the big idea.  Acknowledge the demons. Let them off their leash. Just a little bit. Act. That’s when you see results.

Anyone can do it. In any field. Even me.

As I walk on the path, I converse with the others out walking their demons. My demon sniffs out another a mile away. He tugs on the leash and goes over, excited.  The demons circle nose to behind, then they play.  I don’t walk mine often. No matter how much I train him, he always does something embarrassing in public. No one wants to be embarrassed in public.

Some walk theirs daily. They show them off. It seems almost vogue to walk demons these days on a big studded leash. People walk demons who made them sick, who pushed them down, who lost fortunes, who broke their hearts. They walk together. They write books about them, they heel them at their side, and when the demon tugs a bit, they smile and say, “Bad demon. Heel.” and finish the conversation with me.  Mine needs more obedience school.

I’m blessed. I meet a lot of people. Creative people. Visionaries. Entrepreneurs. One by one, I noticed their demons were writing the chapters of their books. Their blogs. Their business plans. Coming up with the ideas. I turn to mine. “Can you write?” He nods, wags, and points. There is a file on my desktop. All written. I never pushed the button.

I’ll keep up the training, and walk them more often so they heel more and poke me in the keister less. They drive my husband nuts. But then again, he has his own as a visionary, too. “Can’t you just think normally?” No. “Why can’t you do that logically?” I am. My logic is…different. “Don’t you have any common sense?” Not today. I just had a vision.

I ask myself. “Would you send them away for the chance to be normal? To think like everyone else?” The answer for me–and for the rest of the people I ask–is always, always a resounding no.

[images: maaretta.wordpress.com]

June

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They filter into the building. A steady stream of somber, peppered by an pattern of dress-code violations alternating with streams of text and music. 

I wish them good morning. They pack up hats and the headphones. 

It is June. Late June for school. Late-we-should-already-be-started-on-summer June. The minds are gone. Mush. Waiting for the ice cream man to pass by, bell ringing loudly. 

Waiting for the beach towels with sand kicked all over them, frying on a hot summer day. 

Waiting for vacation, adventure… 

Waiting for the chorus of…

“I’m bored. There’s nothing to do…When’s school.” 

Soon, we’ll be back again. 

Look at These Eggs!!

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Eggs from the farm

Eggs from the farm

Look at these eggs. I doubled back, putting the five dollars in the envelope in the cooler that said “Fresh Eggs.” I took the last two dozen. Quite a bargain, I think. The cooler had done its job. It could rest quietly in front of its farm. I pass this farm when I run a lot, but never noticed the “Fresh Eggs” cooler out front. I must have been running slow enough today to see the sign.

I cracked open the cartons. Each one of these eggs is unique. Beautiful. I picked several out and studied them.  I marveled that so many eggs could have so many characteristics. I marveled at this fact.

“You need some serious help,” said one of the voices in my head.

“What a nerd,” said another.

“Don’t you have anything more important to do than stare at the color of eggs?”

I answered them.

“Absolutely. I have exams to grade, curriculum to standardize, I probably should shower, and my favorite Twitter chat’s coming up in a half hour. But…these…eggs…are….stunning.”

“Stunning? Get some help. Shoulda used the five dollars for a copay,” said the voice before going silent. I’m not listening anyway.

Look…at…these…eggs. Every one is different. Unique. Perfect. The way life should let us be.  It shouldn’t put us cartons marked the same, “Grade A Medium White,” or “Extra Large Brown.” Whoa to the egg just a little bit larger, a little bit of a different color, and God help the double yolk.

Nature shows us uniqueness should be celebrated. Creativity, beauty, different thinking, the road less taken. I struggle when I see hate, discrimination, or pressure to conform. I’m sad when I see standardization, negative peer pressure, or the desire to churn out people who are all uniquely…the same. It seems to be the trend in society today. Maybe that’s because I’ve always been like the egg that never quite fit in the carton at the factory when they were measuring.

But these eggs…every single one says, “I have personality! There’s no one like me!”

Being unique is what makes us beautiful. It’s what makes me want to live. It is the magic of life. Strange that I can see it in something as ordinary, or maybe not so ordinary…as an egg.