make me feel like a new kid, santa

If you believe(d) in Santa, what would you ask him?  Here are a few excerpts (unedited) from high school students at Ridgemont High.


Dear Santa,

For Christmas, I would like to get all my piercings and tattoos done....I would like a huge trail of stars leading into a flower on my back and two doves on my chest.  And with all of that I would also like some numbing cream so I don't feel the needles jabbing into me.  That would be an amazing gift!

I've got a few questions fer "Mr. Claus."  Why haven't you died yet?  I mean hey, your like a bejilling years old now.  How do you know if I've been a good girl or a naughty girl?  Are you stalking me?  Are you Jesus?  Why are your elfs so small?  Are they legal midgets?  Why are you only white and not black or Mexican?  Why do you give people naughty gifts when they are suppose to be good? Are you sure your not a poser?

--Amanda (signed with a heart)



Dear Santa,

If you are real, I have a few questions for you.  If you have magic how come all the problems (such as war) aren't fixed?  Do you even care? Why did you limit yourself to only nine reindeer?  I would have at least 21 of them.  Why don't you get stuck in the chimney?  Magic isn't real so there has to be a logical reason.  Do you ever get sad?  If you don't, you're very weird....How did you find Mrs. Claus?  Did the elves set you up?  Why are elves so short?  Do they have an issue?  How does Global Warming affect you?  You house has to be on fire or something!

If I may, I would like to tell you what I want for Christmas.  all I want is for my family to all get along and be happy.  I know that's pretty much impossible but that's all I truely want.

Your pal,
Marie
(but you probably already knew that)



Dear Santa,

Right now, I can't tell if you're actually reading this letter, skimming through it, or not even reading it at all.  Last year, it seems as though you didn't read it at all, again.  I don't think that it's the letters getting lost in the mail; I've been sending 28 copies of the letters in the mail for the last four years.  I think you're intentionally ignoring my letters asking what I want and then give me what you see fit.  I've been asking for an AK-47 for three years, and yet you think I should have a pair of socks with reindeers on them.  I don't like reindeers, I just eat them.  Knowing this, I've decided to ask for money so I can buy the gifts myself, and so you don't mess it up like last year.

Sincerely,
Tom



Dear Santa,

Hello, 'Santa'.  Tell me,  what is your secrete to immortality?  Who old are you dude?  Would my theory be correct?  Are you a very old vampire?  That would work because you only show up after dark for one night and you have live for a VERY long time....

...Talk to you later,
Macy



Dear Santa,

Now that you are real I have a few questions for you.  I've been waiting my whole life for this moment so I hope you reply to this message.  This is my 14th year on this planet and I believe its the year that my wishywishes are heard.  This year I want world peace more than anything.  That why I like Christmas so much . It feels like my stress level is reduced, I feel more peaceful, and best of all I'm spending the whole time with my family.  I just want all of the violence, drama and fighting to end.  Yes, I understand that I am on the "naughty list", but I promise if my wish comes true I will try my best to never, ever be on the naught list again!  And if you can't do that this year then my second choice would be for me or my grandmother to win the lottery.  She has pretty much dedicated her whole life to trying to win the lottery.  We have both promised to donate some of it to St. Judes research hospital and the ASPCA center.

Thank you,
Julie



Dear Santa,

I have been great this year.  I would really appreciate it if you would bring me something that I would really love to have.  I heard that you can make anything happen with your magic make anything possibility for sad and kids in need.  So I was wondering if you could make my family happier.  Make them stop smoking make it so we become closer than that.  If not that could you please let me be able to see my dad more than I do now?  I miss him a lot.  My mom says he is a lousy dad.  But I really don't think so.  I also heard you can see everybody all around the world young kid's teenagers and adults.  So you probably would think that.  I would also like for you to convince my mom to trust me more and let me have more freedome than I do now.  But I don't think you can convince her to do that so you don't have to bother with that if you don't want to.  And the finally thing I would like for you to do is for me to erase most of my past make everyone forget about a lot of stuff about me.  Make me feel like a new kid, so I could make new friends.  I would love for you to convince my mom to get my belly pierced.  I would love you for that to.

Sincerely,
Courtney



Dear Santa,

I have many questions for you.  For one, how is it possible for you to go around the world for everyone's Christmas in one night?  How do you fit down the chimney?  Many people think this is magic.  But magic isn't real.  How long have you been doing this?  If you've been doing this for hundreds of years, how haven't you died of old age yet?  If you're supposed to bring peace, why is there war?  Shouldn't you be controlling and stopping this?  Since you have special powers or "magic", why can't you stop all the worlds issues like global warming?  Global warming kills tons of animals.  Don't you love animals?  Maybe you just love reindeers, since they're you're only transportation.  That's not very nice, Santa.  Since you live in the North Pole, what's your address.  Maybe I can come visit you sometime.

Now for my Christmas, I only want....

Love,
Melissa


Well, Santa?  Don't you love animals?  Do ya or don'tcha?

today in self-pity

I've read a lot about narcissism lately. 

I'm so done with her.  She's the most narcissistic person I know.

Narcissism will be no longer be a disorder as defined by the DSM-IV.

As it turns out, narcissism is trendy:

Narcissism: The New Normal?

Well, whatever.  This post is going to be all about me and I'm going to skip flogging myself.  If that makes you a little bilious already, better to head on over to etsy for some pouncing instead.

Christmas vacation started with our usual romp to visit our families of origin in the Clara City area.  The holiday always begins this way for my sons, with a weekend trip to exchange gifts and enjoy visits with grandparents and aunts/uncles and cousins.  It was a quiet, warm gathering with in-laws but all was not so well with my own family.  Without sharing all the gritty details, I can share what everyone shares about these situations: it wasn't my fault. 

The specifics don't matter.  What matters is that Mom died, and with her was supposed to go all the drama and emotional butchery of decades of alcoholism.  And then there was a stepmother and that was something new and dreadful to adjust to, and yet it worked out.  This year was supposed to be the year that things would be good again.  I missed Dad and anticipated my delightful nieces with feverish anticipation.  And yet I found myself, half-jokingly and half-wishfully asking him, "Are you sure they are my brothers?  All these years I've wanted that old joke about being adopted to be true but damn it, we all have to look so much alike."  I was trying to joke my way into comforting him, but it sounded as sad as we both felt.

Tonight I listened to a podcast of NPR's Fresh Air and heard Terry Gross asking Carlos Eire about his experience as a Cuban-American refugee.  Eire was a child and in one foster home he suffered from malnutrition that caused his back to grow askew.  He discussed how he never saw himself in a mirror and didn't realize anything was really wrong with his physical form until long after, when his aunt arrived in the states and said almost immediately, "What happened to your back?"  He later was shocked to see himself in a picture and only then understood the extent of his physical malformation.  He still has the picture, Eire says, and looking at it still upsets him. 

Visiting home last weekend and having this typically bellicose experience with my brother and finding myself defending my father and wondering to high heaven if I was doing the right thing and examining and re-examining my actions and motives--all of this left me looking at a picture of us for the first time and realizing (suddenly and too late) that with or without her, we are malformed.  Horrified, I realize that we are significantly, at our core, irrevocably and without question, damaged. We will never walk normal.  We will never be normal.  We are broken, ;ike a back that is bent from malnutrition.  It makes it difficult to look at one's self straight on without shuddering.

candy

Shligityshlog almost tricks you into thinking a swear word is on the horizon, no?

Pig Candy is a favorite holiday delight.  For those of you who aren't familiar with this simple recipe, you're a mere twenty minutes from rapture--and a heart attack.  Take a pound of bacon and lay it in a cake pan.  Smash a bunch of brown sugar on it and bake at 350 for twenty minutes.  There are many variations of Pig Candy, I have discovered, but none appeals to me so much as the original recipe.  You can add pecans or use honey or maple syrup in place of brown sugar.  But come on.  Brown sugar.  How come you do taste so good???

Every year I try to think of a way to thank my boss for putting  up with me.  I can be pretty challenging.  So can he.  We struggle as former friends and equals who have changed over to a boss/employee relationship in which he is a football coach and I am an academic, and in which we don't always see eye-to-eye about the priorities of a given situation in the school.  We have a shared a lot of wonderful and heartbreaking moments, including the births of several of our children and personal tragedies such as the death of a parent and the development of autism in a child.  We've developed from relatively inexperienced young toughs into tried professionals and we've shared a lot of happiness and sorrow over the same kids in our building.  Because of the small size of the building, our entire staff shares in the victories and losses of our kids.  There have been some funny moments, such as being scared witless and unthinkling punching him in the gut (when we were equals of course) and watching him stand up and bang his head into a locker so hard that little birds and stars flew around his head in a circle so that I stifled a laugh and he said through gritted teeth, "No, go ahead."  (Never mind the funny moments involving my embarrassment.)  There have been scary moments when a kid was threatening suicide, when a staff member was suffering and when someone was hurt in the building.  The grossest moment of all was seeing him put on a plastic glove and peel the tip of a kid's finger from a door that had pinched it off and then drive away with it to match it up with the fingerless kid who was already at the emergency room.  There are so many stories, but where was I?  Oh yes, Pig Candy.  This year we cemented our relationship with the whopperest whopper of a yelling match we've every had.  Things were thrown and one of us, (though not until he left) actually crumpled to the floor.  Still, it is only the heartiest of boss/employee relationships that bears one of those and is willing to meet for a mending session three days later, where both parties feel sorry and are quick to move on. 

Let us depart from this homage to such a long and well-tested relationship here to speak of something much more shallow.  That would be the two new teachers in the building this year.  Both have taught officially less than a year and one has already been part of a rumor about my impending pregnancy (much exaggerated) and therefore not made a good impression with me.  The other is a perfect gentleman of 24.  If I were to guess, raised Catholic, with the manners any mother would be proud of (and these are pretty high standards right here) and meticulous work habits.  Furthermore, work ethic is beyond reproach and his wardrobe is certainly more savvy than any coach in the building.  I saw him walking out in a 3/4 length wool coat recently and was frankly, stunned, to witness such fashion sense in a gentleman this far north. It's been my role with this young man to think of him as rather a boy since he is so new to the profession and because he looks extraordinarily young, even for his age.  Yet over the past months, he has really grown on me as so few men in the building actually have...grooming habits...and read regularly...and so on.  It was just a couple of weeks ago that he showed up on a Friday with a bit of stubble and it occurred to me that if he took off his shirt and leaned into the shadow with his hand to his chin just so, he'd make a nice Abercrombie and Fitch model.

How can I ever appropriately thank my boss for placing such a nice man and coincidentally delicious piece of eye candy right across the hall from me?

Get out the bacon and brown sugar.

it's been a while

and so much has happened that I barely know where to start.  I decided the color of the blog, though deep and rich, also too much brought to mind something rotten in Denmark.  I kept thinking of Lady Macbeth and needing to go wash my hands.  Further, I decided to lighten up with titles and airs and such, and while there is no version of "bloggetyblog.blogspot.com" remotely available (must not be an original thought), there certainly was http://www.shligityshlog.blogspot.com/ and that's where you'll find me from this point forth.  Perhaps it will help me keep the tone a big lighter.  I haven't felt a bit light these days, what with Minnesota winter bringing on my typical blues, weight gain, missing my mother, a teen pregnancy, staff spats, neighborhood house fires, and a pre-pubescent son apparently going full-blown pubescent.  A week or two ago, he went from the child who had been born seemingly out of a storybook (excepting long and painful labor and delivery) who had transformed into a full-on jerk.  Am I allowed to say that?  I wasn't going to until he broke up with his perfectly sweet girlfriend by sending her a (private) message on facebook.  Now, before I air any further dirty laundry, let me just say that the only person more protective of this boy than me is his father, who has lately been protecting him from me.  The boy and I bonded early and deeply and yet, of late, he's done to me exactly what seventeen years worth of weeping mothers could not have prepared me for.  He's tossed me away, emotionally speaking, with nary a word nor glance, and along with me, apparently any consideration for my professional environment since 53 minutes a day he is one of my students.  Topping it all off, he decided to split his English homework with his best friend last week and then exchange answers.  In his opinion, this was sharing the burden.  In my opinion, this was cheating, and he was promptly sent off to Saturday school and poked with sharp stick until his gall bladder became visible.  Skip the gall bladder part; I called his father from school, panicking.  "You be the teacher this time; I'll be the parent."  That night, I was torn when I heard his dad lighting into him.  As angry as I was at my son, I also wanted to protect him from his father's anger. The classic Clash of the Titans has begun: a boy and his father in their power struggle as a boy asserts his independence toward becoming a man, a man struggles to mold his son into a safe and moral man with a standard-of-living better than his own.  How predictable could we be?  This was my first week of being forty, his last month of being twelve.  If he were seventeen, I'd feel so much better about this.

My father thought the entire situation was hilarious.  My father had been a policeman, but might as well have been a fundamentalist Baptist.  He literally witnessed the worst outcome of everything that can go wrong with a teenager and was determined to keep his own children safe from it.  This was not cool when he pulled over my own boyfriend, his future son-in-law, riding three-wheeled ATV's illegally in town; now Dad could laugh as his former nightmare received his just desserts.  Yet my hairdresser also found my dilemma comical and I was laughing too as I described it to her.  She then told me that she was caught cheating on her eighth grade math final and was horrified later that spring when she attended a party with her parents and her math teacher was there!  Would the teacher tell?  I nearly rose out of the chair and ran out of the salon with my hair half-colored.  Who dares cheat on a final?!  And why hadn't the math teacher ALREADY called home???  Because of a parent like me, perhaps?  Sigh.  It's time to dig out that old classic that got me through my most painful professional cheating scandal, Why Kids Lie.  It will help me put my son's behavior in perspective.  And then I need to get on with life, mine.  Clearly he needs guidance, but maybe this umbrella parent needs to shelter herself for a little while.

My Bitches, Part Two

A friend of mine told me she really liked the title of my original post, "My Bitches."  Instead of thinking of it as "My Complaints," "My Nasty Things I've Done," or "Other Bitches I Know and Hang Out With," she told me she had a funny image of three slightly shorter versions of myself that worked as sort of henchman--or women.  I've been running with this image as far as I can go.  The Bitches are definitely the three witches from MacBeth and they are going to become regular characters on this blog.  "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble," they chant over their special brew before doom visits the castle.  I haven't yet  mentioned that I am such a fan of Shakespeare that I become embarrassingly teary-eyed at the beauty of the language all too frequently when reading "Romeo and Juliet" each spring.  If, right about now, you're think Shakespeare is too high-minded and cerebral or to put it in more potent language, just for nerds, I would argue that he's worth the work.  Look, people, the greatest writer the language has ever seen should present a challenge.  Don't be like a sixteen year old, all too unwilling to sweat a little.  Get some notes to help you through and if your high school English teacher did you the disservice of not being passionate enough about ole Will to impart ye with some enthusiasm, follow this recipe:

Round about the couldron go:
In the poisones entrails throw.
Toad,that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Sweated venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first in the charmed pot.
Double,double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blindworm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing.
For charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double,double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and couldron bubble.

I am pretty sure that was a fenny snake in a hell-broth reduction I had as the Soup of the Day down in the cafeteria today. 

Scale of dragon,tooth of wolf,
Witch's mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd in the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat; and slips of yew
silver'd in the moon's eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by the drab,-
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For ingrediants of our cauldron.
Double,double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Gall of goat is pretty sick.  I've seen it.  We once had a dwarf goat suffering from an unknown digestive ailment whom one over-zealous emergency veterinarian took too much to heart.  After running the required series of (expensive) tests in the middle of the night, she thought little of tubing our little darling and sucking the yellow and green offending fluid out of the animal's gut with her mouth, spitting it into the lawn, sucking and spitting repeatedly until the goatlet's tummy was empty.  The beast rallied, but passed later that night.  That vet is one bitch I would recruit. I would have her collect goat gall in a cup for me to sneak into Mrs. Puff's coffee.

What is a tiger's chaudron,  I wonder?  Sounds dirty to me.  Unfortunately duty calls, so I'll have to get back to you on that.  You may have noticed that entries are coming less often.  I've managed to pick up a side job, as teachers and many other people are finding necessary these days.  I'm grateful for it and a little busier.  Until next time, be a good knave and try Sonnet 29.

Think It Through

Covering detention today for Mrs. Puff, I found myself alone with Duke, an academically unmotivated and quite likeable freshman.  "I don't have a thing to do," he grinned.

"You can get a jump start on the first draft of your persuasion paper," I grinned back.  This week we had chosen topics, written thesis statements and collected notes on opposing arguments.

About twenty minutes later, Duke asked if he could change sides on his topic.  "Sure," I said, thinking to myself how bright I am for putting flexibility ahead of structure.  After all, changing one's mind based on evidence is so...sensible and educated.  "What was your topic again?"  I asked absent-mindedly.

"2012.  I was going to argue that all these theories are bogus.  But after I collected all this information, I'm convinced the world really is going to end in 2012."  He went back to his work, absentmindedly bobbing his head to the tune on the imaginary ipod playing in his ears.  At the end of detention, he packed up his papers and grinned, "Thanks, Mrs. Chatham."

This is what it means to be fifteen, I realize: in the frame of one hour to go from planning a long and rich life, to believing the world will end in two years and being okay with just planning the weekend.    

Pause

Let me put "My Bitches, continued" on hold.  Trying to find really good examples, I have very few I am able to share.  They are either too petty, too typical or not really bitchy, some even too funny.  Trying to conjure up memories of really nasty, mean actions has brought more pranks to mind than anything.  I've thought of a lot of bad behavior, but none really so much worse than what "normal" people do.  I do think teachers have their own hang ups and are solitary, competitive, lonely and disfunctional, but otherwise essentially good creatures and I guess, lovely and merry little pranksters.  I can't wait to share a series of fun memories with you, but first a word from the Insight Center for Community Economomic Development which this year released a report called "Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth, and America's Future."  According to the Utne Reader, the information in this report was picked up in one NPR story, two opinion columns and one newspaper article.  Yawn.  I did as I read this, sleepily dozing in my bed one night this week.  Shortly before my eyes popped out of my head. 

Wealth--as defined in this survey--is not income, but assets minus debts.  Says the article ("Wealth Gaps Yawn--And So Do the Media"; Utne Reader, September-October, 1010; unattributed):

In the United States, single black women have a median wealth of just $100, while Hispanic women come in at $120.  The median wealth of black men is $7,900; white women and men are better off ($41,500 and $43,800 respectively).  Looking at people in their chief working years, ages 36-49, the gap grows even more cavernous: White women own about 60 percent of white men's median wealth, which surges to about $70,000.  Women of color, meanwhile, have a median wealth of $5...(which is) .05 percent of  the wealth owned by men of color in the same age group ($11,000.)

Discussing these facts with upperclassmen today, my mostly white class was astounded.  One student raised his hand to state that black women have $5 median wealth because they list all their assets in their husbands' names, "like my mom does." 

"That could be," I tried to smile but I knew it was stiff. I was struggling. "What about the possibility of the single mother with multiple children whose boyfriends have left her to raise the kids?"

"Bingo," responded the only black student in the room.

"Oh," said one.

"I never thought of that," said another.  They are saying this, even as many of them have experienced it themselves.

"She might graduate from high school if she is lucky but she most likely won't make it to college.  If she can get a job, how will she work with 2 or 3 or more children?"

"She'll get child support," answer two different students at the same time.

"Will she?  Will the boyfriends pay child support?"

We continued to discuss the Five Dollar Woman for quite a long time.  We acknowledged that we were making grand generalizations and that stereotypes are dangerous.  We talked about what a median is and what we might find on both sides of it and how individuals vary.  But we were also forced to acknowledge the Five Dollar Woman.  Significantly, the students didn't seem to need to assign blame. We know she might be on welfare; in fact, the "w" word came up.  No one seemed to be jealous of her welfare check.  We didn't discuss whether she smokes cigarettes, drinks too much or shoots heroin.  No one said she shouldn't have babies or have so many, and no one said she shouldn't have sex if she can't afford babies, and no one said she should use birth control.  No one said it is $11,000 Man's Fault or $70,000 Peoples' Faults or President Obama's Fault or those damn Republicans' faults.  They didn't say it was the fault of public education or Five Dollar Grandma. 

Maybe it was because we'd just finished reading If the World Were a Village.  Students had been shocked to learned that in a mock up of the global village scaled down to 100 people, 50 of them are hungry part or all of the time.  They gasped audibly when I read the next line: "At least 20 more are significantly malnourished." I knew a few of them would go hungry tonight. 

They do not judge or pity Five Dollar Woman.  They feel compassion.  They find it unacceptable that she exists and they wonder why they haven't heard more about her.  I've been wondering about this myself. 

My Bitches

I have a host of personal issues.  I want to preface this entry by saying I am okay with that.  I have compared notes with a lot of people on this topic and the general statements I am about to make are not unique to me.  Sure, I need medication, I come from a messed-up family, I'm probably part of a messed-up family right now (although I'd like to think it's pretty cool actually,) and I've got a skeleton or two hanging next to my now way-too-small (but too-expensive-to-give-away) lucky sage green Talbot's interview suit with coordinating silk paisley vest, size 6.  Sometimes I just look at the waist on that baby and think, "Damn."

Today's topic is Bitches in the Profession.  And there are a lot of them.  Educators are people who start out wanting to help others, most rarely waivering from that goal, I believe.  We come from families where we were needed an inordinate amount and thus, we feel most comfortable being needed.  We are also people who thrive on attention.  We need to find it somewhere: on the field or track or court, through positive feedback from our bosses, or in Hollywood.  Since all of our bosses are authentically too busy to baby us through the day, that leaves only the coaches feeling fulfilled.  The rest of us are left to compete for the boss' tiny bit of attention and then to make ourselves feel better by tearing each other down.

Well, this is one of my philosophies.  I am not entirely sure if it's our profession or human beings in general, but outside of the time we spend with children (and I am 100% sincere about of our devotion to kids) we seem like an unusually competitive and snarky bunch. 

The meanest thing I've ever done is yell at Mrs. Puff in front of her class and make her cry.  (See previous post called "1984")  Not cool.  I don't know another teacher who has done that.  I did get a hearty pat on the back from the tech guy, but I'm really not proud of it.  I've walked out of a couple of meetings and I don't feel sorry about that.  I walked out on principle, and only after exhausting every other possible avenue of communication, reasonable and unreasonable.  I got in much more trouble for walking out of those two meetings than for yelling at Mrs. Puff.  Other things I've been in trouble for were total missteps or even what I consider not bad form at all.  For example, once I had a student who was so high as to literally be delusional in my classroom.  The A.D. and I had her in the office with the exact amount and identity of what she had ingested within ten minutes.  My principal gave us both a potent tongue-lashing since we had locked the door of the small office we were in while we talked to her and kept saying, "Just a minute," while various people knocked and interrupted.  She was talking and we weren't about to stop long enough for the principal to come in and spook the shit out of her, at which point she would freeze up and probably pass out.  "This was a chemical situation," he spoke slowly and clearly as if I were leotarded.  "What if she had a medical reaction?  What if she had needed an ambulance?"  I looked back at him, dazed and exhausted from the passing rush of adrenaline and wondered if he was leotarded.  Yes, I thought, in shock.  I had genuinely expected to be praised.  She was 500 yards closer to the door and you would have been able to tell the EMT's exactly what she had taken and when.  Apparently basic CPR training and a college diploma still left me unable to recognize a heart attack behind a closed door.

Alas, it's dinner time.  Children can't wait until bedtime snack for nutrition.  My own Vengeance Bitchiness will have to wait several days, but let's talk about someone else's nasties tomorrow.  One of you could be a priest, after all, and I might accidently be saying confession.  I don't want to break my twenty-seven year guilty streak.

A Kohn that Hits Home

I'm looking at a blog called Yellow Songbird and feeling very underwhelmed by my small attempt here in the blogosphere.  I wonder why everything I write or try to enter has to be in the center section and I can't put anything along the sides?  I wonder if my entries are too long and/or sentimental.  I wonder if one has to know the people in them to really appreciate the stories.

I find truth truly stranger than fiction and the real difficulty with writing about it is that it is so strange as to be barely believable.  All those crying mothers at conferences, carrying on about their seventeen year old sons who won't talk to them anymore, they are so cliche...until one sits across from them and have to construct a response.  At least they are cliche enough that one can polish an answer until it gets to be respectable and a little comforting.

I read a wonderful article by Alfie Kohn today that summarizes my feelings about the "Education Crisis."   I heard Alfie Kohn speak 15 or so years ago, and I was a little disenchanted when I followed up with his book No Contest.  Sure, a less competitive atmosphere would be healthier, but he didn't seem very grounded in my reality.  The world sure is competitive.  He seemed very Ivory Tower, this fellow.  It didn't matter how well-reasoned his arguments; they couldn't argue with rural Minnesota.  In any case, as I read his article today, and the embedded article by Maja Wilson, all my frustration with easy answers and labels and formulas and benchmarks and general lack of faith in education are explained.  I really don't think my union is that great but I do think it's necessary and I know it's not the problem.  If you have doubts, please take a moment to read one of these articles with an open mind.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alfie-kohn/operation-discourage-brig_b_777148.html

Finally, I'm putting out a call for topics.  What did you always want to know about your teacher, behind-the-scenes in a school or the profession in general?  If you could be a fly on the wall, what would you ask?  Since I am writing anonymously, the sky is really the limit.

Persuasory

I asked my ninth grade students to submit topics for persuasion papers.  Here are the topics, exactly as written:

• 'Don't ask, Don't tell' military rule
• Abortion
• Law+Rules=cellphone use
• Driving Laws=age,grade, experience
• 2012
• Legalizing the medical marijana
• NFL Players being fined for big hits
• Driving Laws-Should be based on experience
• NCAA Suspensions on Dangerous Hits
• Obama Administration's Wire-Tapping Movement (Against it)
• Capital Punishment
• Big hits in the NFL
• Bed Bugs--are they coming to (our town) or not?
• situation in afghanistan
• Budget cuts effecting entertainment
• Animal Abuse
• Malaria In Africa
• The Mosque at Ground Zero
• Topic: Generation dead extreamly good witeing/ Generation dead is okay its not the best book I have ever read, I don't really like how the author jumps from charicter to charictor.  My favorite thing about the book is the detail.
• Teen pregnancy, why its happening more often

Time marches on.

One of my biggest challenges right now is listening to what smacks of religious intolerance, particularly of Muslims, in my classroom.  I live in a conservative town and I am relatively liberal.  It has never caused a problem.  A teacher's political views don't belong in a classroom, but tolerance and acceptance are important values.  I suppose that just by standing there, I have made a political statement.  Sigh.  Because I teach a foreign language in addition to teaching English, I was challenged during the very first year of my career for teaching culture along with the target language.  I was flabbergasted, but I wasn't the only one.  The administration and board of education were supportive and these days, the Minnesota State Board of Education expects me to teach the cultural dimensions of the people who speak the target language--duh--along with the language.  

This post is really about what to do with anti-Muslim sentiment in the classroom.  I am a little beside myself over it.  I know my own children in the Little School are taught love as a value in first grade and inclusion as a value throughout, inclusion of different races and abilities and--stop right there--I'm not sure we've addressed religion.  I'm not sure we've ever had a practicing Muslim student in our mostly white town.  We have a small percentage of African American students and an even smaller percentage of Asian and Hispanic students.  We are so far north and our population is so financially limited that our students have very limited exposure to people of other races and faiths.  They believe in the Church of the Internet and of course, they mimic what they see at home.  Still, it has never caused a problem I couldn't openly address and steer gently until this fall when a sophomore said, "President Obama is a Muslim.  I read it on the Internet." This week, a freshman began to talk about the mosque at Ground Zero with such disdain that his face became twisted with rage.  The other students joined in with so much misinformation that I was stunned into silence. I observed them carefully, seeing them imitate the words and gestures of adults they knew or lived with.  I knew if I said what I believe--that the people who want to build that mosque have every right to do so, although I believe it to be in poor taste and that for the sake of tact and sensitivity and perhaps even ethics, they should not--my principal might get calls and complaints.  It was the first time in my career I have had this feeling and I now carry the sad realization that the time is different and new in its degree of hatred. 

I can't let it go, of course.  I read Little Son the story of Ruby Bridges and think of her teacher, alone with her in the classroom, while for weeks the entire school boycotted because Ruby, a child of color, was the first to attend the all-white school.  Every  morning, Ruby and her teacher said the Pledge of Allegiance together and throughout the long, patient weeks, she taught Ruby the curriculum and Ruby continued to learn it.  The school did not close and eventually, the other students rebelled against their parents' orders to stay home.  They came back.  I realize now Ruby wasn't the only brave one.

1984

One learns to observe to survive.  Say less, hear more.  Stare at your screen or your phone and just listen.  Listen while you talk.  Just listen.  People volunteer so much information.  But observe in a small town, in a small community, in a small system.  It becomes a blessing and a curse. 

I know nearly everyone.  I know all the staff, 100% of the students in my building and 80% of the students in the other building in our system, which houses grades K-6.  I know most of the parents and obviously plenty of the community.  I know the business owners and the older residents.  I know what people do, when they will retire, about their car-deer accidents, their extra jobs to put their kids through college and how much they paid for that sweater at Kohl's last weekend.  I know about their tomato crop this year and what the doctor said about their kid's learning disorder, along with every dirty deed committed during the divorce and how much laundry their kid does or leaves on the living room floor.  The information feels almost incestuous. 

I have a close friend in the other building with whom I mope and carry on about life; we do a pretty nice job of getting out the bad stuff and lifting each other up.  Because we aren't in each other's territory, we've never once gotten into a pissing match, which teachers are wont to do, and we both know that the other believes in God, family and country, kids first.  We share and compare notes and frustrations, compare how different situations are handled in our buildings, and give each other something we both need: love and honest advice.  Since I tend to overreact when there is a conflict and she tends to to underreact, she tells me when to let it go, and I tell her when to pipe up and state her case.  In addition to helping me keep my professional sanity, Beth also is a sort of spy for me for my own kids as they progress through her building.  She can subtly check on their lunchtime behavior, or if I hear strange stories about something that happened with a teacher, I can ask if such-and-such teacher would ever do "such a thing," or if such an action is typical.  It's an advantage every parent would die for.

All of this has come crashing together on many occasions, most recently related to the dreaded fall parasite, lice.  It's been a banner year for lice in the Little School, as we like to call the K-6 building.  My youngest son's teacher mentioned one afternoon that she was sorry for itching her hair so hard, but "I've wanted to do that all day.  I've got one that keeps coming back without the lice completely gone."  

Did she just say what I think she said? 

When did we change the policy where the kids kept getting sent home until they were nit-free?  The mother in me overtaking the professional, I had to ask.  "Well," she responded, "we can't just keep sending them home forever."

Yes.  Yes, you can.

My mind raced then and continues to do so now every time my son brings home the "lice letter" that means at least one child has been in the room that day with nits and/or actual lice.  I check, I re-check, my husband checks me.  Lice at our house could mean missing work, using sick days, missed wages for my husband. 

"Who was absent today?" I ask my seven year old casually.  He ponders and gives me his best guess.  "Who was absent yesterday?"  "Who was absent last week on Tuesday?" I may as well be asking.  Eventually I narrow the most repeating offender down to my older son's best friend's sister.  My older son's best friend keeps shaving his head.  My older son bugs me to have him over until I finally tell him why I'm resisting.  He understands.  Little son comes home one day to tell me that the lice are so bad that the room got exploded--what turns out to be a bug bomb.  A week passes, then, more lice letters.  His genteel and compassionate teacher tells the class a secret; he is not supposed to tell me.  He does tell me: lice like clean hair.  So he learns tolerance and inclusion.  Is that the proper phrase for this instance?   Either way, I like this secret and I love his teacher that much more.  I just don't want him going to Lice-a-pollooza everyday. 

Eventually I realize in a roundabout way that a co-worker has a lice problem in his house.  He is coming to work with his head shaved. Nothing too unusual except that it's unusually close-cropped and after an extended illness, his son shows up with a shaved head as well.  I have suspicions, but not concerns.  Until.  Until Beth tells me his daughter is coming to school with lice.  What should she do? 

This is what Beth and I call a "Really?" moment.  It's a moment when someone is so mean or dumb or unreasonable that one is left at a loss for words.  Beth wants to know what to do with the poor child, or better yet, with her mother, Lice-Lady.  A professional who works in a school and therefore understands the extent of what is wrong with sending a child with lice and/or nits to school and doing it anyway, and a mom who is acknowledging it and hugging her good-bye, long hair to long hair, in front of everyone...this all leaves Beth and I with only one thing left to say, "Really?" 

"Really?" in this case can mean a number of things, such as "What the fuck?"  "Is that the best you could do?"  "Are you shitting me?"  but most likely, "You're not really going to make me deal with this, are you, God or ______?" (Fill in the blank with name of boss/co-worker/friend/spouse/etc.) 

I gave Beth my best advice, but the problem was compounded for me the very next day when I was out of the classroom.  My substitute teacher was a woman with a gorgeous long mane of hair that stretches all the way down her back nearly to her waist.  It is big, curly, thick, beautiful hair and I am sure that she sat in my new red chair, the first new chair in my entire seventeen year career. 

You guessed it. 

Lice-Lady.

Conferences, The Mini-Series: Post 3

"She doesn't really have a lot of issues related to race, but if something bothers her, she'll tell you.  Unless you call her black.  She'll tell you, 'I'm brown.'"

Conferences, The Mini-Series: Post 2

"Oh yes, he is a little less likely to stir it up than the other boys.  You know I'm not really his mother.  I'm his grandmother.  But he calls me his mom because that's what I've always been.  I adopted him and his brother as soon as they were born.  His mother, my daughter, is thirty-five.  She's a heroin addict.  So yes, he is a careful boy.  He knows how things can go wrong and he is cautious about getting into trouble."

Conferences, The Mini-Series: Post 1

John's dad was large, dark, handsome and a tad overweight.  He gave my hand a hearty shake and plopped heavily into the seat.  He smiled at me in a friendly way, revealing six almost complete teeth.  His flannel shirt draped open over a soiled t-shirt.  "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," it read.  He caught me looking at it and laughed heartily.  "Yeah, yeah.  I read it to a lady friend at work and they sent me  home for two weeks."  He snorted, chortling on, "I guess you can't do that.  Technically,  it was sexual harrassment.  'S what the boss said.  Was almos' worth it though."  He leered at me and chuckled again, clearly cracking himself up. 

I've worked with John's dad now for over six years and I always find him to be friendly and respectful, although lacking sadly in parenting skills.  It certainly was the strangest beginning to a parent-teacher conference that I can recall.

Note:  For obvious reasons, all names and places in this blog have been changed.  Any resemblance to a recognizable person or place is just plain wrong!

You Are So Beautiful to Me

"That must be dreadful," people frequently comment when they hear that I teach junior high students.  The response dismays me.  Are children like puppies?  Should we only like them until cute becomes awkward and vulnerability becomes anxiety and apathy?  Over the years, I've learned that everyone has a specialty.  Mine is not a room full of six year olds.  Perhaps when people dismiss the desirability of  my student population, they are thinking about two things: their own junior high experience, and parenting a greasy, erupting and always moving target.

A lot of people my age grew up during the era of the latch-key child.  We mostly raised ourselves and we were left to wander the aisles of angst in the K-Mart of adolescence, alone with our hair and our loneliness, both piqued beyond repair. It was every bit as harsh as it is today for kids who struggle with divorce, abuse,  mean girls, violence, broken hearts and a newer and longer chapter of poverty than anything the eighties could have conceived.  We are of the Breakfast Club and Fight Club, of Heathers and the Weather Channel and, sigh, we wouldn't go back to junior high for all the money...even in these times when the money would be handy to pay off our copious debt.

Parenting a thirteen year old is not anything like teaching one.  This post isn't about the pain and fear  involved with parenting, so I won't even try to describe it.  There is joy too, of course.  Peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys.  To be a parent is to know extravagant vulnerability.

What is beautiful about awkward?  Baby fat pooching out a tummy and still wearing a clingy shirt.  Wearing high heels that are too high and tripping down the hallway.  The courage of pink hair.  Or french braids that don't quite work.  An older brother's much-too-large sweats and slippers on a waifer-thin body, bending in sweat-soaked, wrinkled-faced concentration over a desk peppered with fractions.  Asking your mother how to kiss a girl after being kicked off the computer for looking at porn.  Swearing and enjoying the pure sparkle of the words.  The honesty to cry in front of peers and get fired up enough to shout out loud.  Talking out loud in class about visiting your dad in jail.  (It is what it is.)  Being told in the morning that your parents are getting divorced and showing up for school like it's any other day.  Asking the teacher in your new school if you can resume counseling because some of the conversations you've heard lately are bringing back memories of your own rape. Anticipating the haunted house on facebook.  Decorating each other's lockers with crepe paper and bows on birthdays.  Helping the kitchen lady clean up the tables without being asked.  Kissing under the bleachers.

To be a teacher is to love the kid enough to envision the small child and potential hero within, but to have the emotional distance to see the long view--and to see it actualize over and over so many times that one grows to trust the pattern, to believe in the long view.  It is to know that the broken hearts do lead to a deeper understanding of love, and they are necessary and purposeful and such a meaningful part of what it means to be human.  It is to truly understand that mean girls are mean because nice girls were mean to them.  It is to eventually realize that the kids we wring our hands over the most frequently become the strongest.  They become the ones we use as examples of those who conquer suffering, or who will best understand another group of the abused and misused.  There is not good in all suffering, but young people have taught me not to wring my hands so much as to celebrate their resilience and strength.  They have taught me to recognize what was strong about me during that time I felt most ugly--or the times I still do.  I have learned to see them all as works-in-progress; it is not hard. In doing so and for so long, it has allowed me to see it in myself.  I have come to see myself not as a final draft with all my errors, but as a work-in-progress, still crafting myself, still being crafted. That has been the greatest lesson of all.

Blue Jeans

Do you remember when you were in third grade and first saw your teacher outside of school in blue jeans?  You had the sudden stunning realization that she did not live at the school.  Over a period of time, you came to terms with the fact that she had a family and activities that she participated in that didn't include you and your classmates.  Eventually you got into high school. You probably realized your teacher was real, but you probably didn't realize how real she was.  In fact, I discovered society saw a fabulous transition in me when I went from a normal person to a teacher.  This was not a real transition, unfortunately; it was an expectation.  I am like any real teacher though: I have flaws and characteristics that make me authentically human.  I have some secret blue jeans I wear outside of school; these are the things that make me real.

• I swear.  A lot.
• Sometimes I swat my kid in the back of the head.
• I eat popcorn as a meal.
• I make empty promises to God when my life or the life of a loved one is in danger and then I don't follow through and hope He understands.
• I argue with my parents.
• My teenager makes me cry.  
• I get speeding tickets and so does more than 50% of the staff.
• I make mistakes and don't learn from them.  
• I sneak an occasional invasive species into my garden.
• When money is tight, I let my dogs go without their shots and I don't buy vitamins for my kids.
• I steal the occasional pen that writes with just the right degree of ink from the bank or the doctor's office.
• I have a crush on my doctor and...a few other men.
• I definitely have no problem stealing this month's issue of "Rolling Stone" from the dermatologist's office so I can finish the article I started in the waiting room.

All teachers are real people, whether you want them to be or not.  The good news?  I always take the magazine back to the next appointment, and in spite of what people think, I don't take a mental red pen to anything except commercial sign-age and news articles.  In truth, I love your kid and my goal every day is to give him the power to wield words with competence and confidence in this great world.   I hope it's enough to get past the blue jeans.

The Librarian

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of story hour at Tamarack Public Library.  The librarians there were truly of storybook quality.  Mom could drop me off for story hour and go for groceries, knowing I would be entranced by their magic and just...loved--by the books and the ladies--while she was gone.  My favorite librarian was Virginia who had ropy yellow hair that fell to her polyester-clad hips, tight turtleneck sweaters that loved her plentiful curves, and a wide toothy smile.  Virginia must have been scraping along on her rural librarian salary, but she played the part gleefully, never tiring of chatting with me about books, even as I grew into a morose, sullen teenager.  She still recommended great books; she still was patient and she still loved me.  Perhaps Virginia's overflowing heart is the reason no other librarian since has quite been able to please me in the same way.  It must be that Virginia's enthusiasm and warmth set the bar too high.

In my school, we have a barbarian for a librarian who is sometimes referred to as Mrs. Fish due to her unfortunate resemblance to Spongebob's boating school teacher.  On better days, I think this is sort of mean, but on other days, I reach into my bottom left desk drawer and choose from two rubbery fish toys--one smooth Rainbow Fish and one rough Puffer Fish--and then squeeze for all I'm worth.  I took up this form of stress release after my current principal first experienced my former (and more effective) stress release on Mrs. Fish, which consisted of shouting and demanding better for the kids.

The problem is that she doesn't like kids.  And she doesn't appear to like books either.  Worse though is that she doesn't like kids and books together; it seems she'll do anything to keep them apart.  She'll go out of her way to block access to a computer, the lab or any reference materials if, oh say, a research paper is due in a few hours and a student just found out her Works Cited page is done wrong.  She takes a special joy in charging overdue fees and I personally think she uses them for her Healthy Hosiery Fund.  Examples of her cruelty in wielding control are numerous but they really aren't the point here.  We all know someone like this.  There comes a point every few months when she needs to be reminded that she works for the kids, they don't work for her.  Over the years, Mrs. Fish and I have had some whopper blowouts, (that is until the current principal came along and told me in a polite but firm way that this had to end.)  Because of her contemptuous nature, a couple of principals sort of thanked me as they chuckled about scenes like this, and there were plenty of slaps on the back from fellow staff who found both of our roles in these scenes plenty amusing.  There would be one day when she got the best of me: I was nine months pregnant and wobbled immediately from the angry scene to the faculty restroom to settle myself, where I promptly dropped my lunch card into the toilet and--oh, fuck it--flushed it away and went home to give birth to my firstborn.

Sometimes though, a bad librarian doesn't spoil the bunch (of books.) Last week, I took a midget seventh grader down to the principal's office when Mrs. Fish's antics had once again gone on just a day longer than I could bear.  "Olivia," I said to the tiny, cherub-faced 12-year-old who stood wringing her hands before us, "please tell Mr. Appleton what just happened to you in the media center."  As it turned out, Olivia had turned in her slightly late book and tried to check out a new one.  For seventy-cents-worth of late fees, she could neither check out a new book, nor have her old book back after it had been sucked into the "Returned" slot, even though she needed a book for class.  Olivia's earnestness was heartbreaking and apparently fueled more than my own anger.  Later that day, dear old Mr. Appleton put seven dimes on the librarian's desk and with the shark-like jaws of authority, forcibly changed the overdue book fine policy.

This one's for Virginia.  Bite me, Fish-face.

Purpose

From The Prophet:  "Work is love made visible.  And if you can not work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you s hould leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of the people who work with joy."

I have always loved Gibran's reflections on work, children and death.  This particular quote has hung near my desk for years, to remind me to have a better attitude when the going gets tough.  I don't mind work; it brings me great comfort.  Work gives purpose, and I believe purpose is a gift. 

I have trouble with mediocrity.  And reality.  What, really, are all those hours in the therapist's office besides accepting mediocrity and reality?  They are all about learning to accept flaws, my own and others.  I recently came across a few lines of Leonard Cohen that sum it up beautifully and from them, I draw the goal of my acceptance, and the title of the blog.  Thanks, Len, for once again tying it up so impishly.

Ring the bells that still can ring,
forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
that's how the light gets in.