The scarlet letter. P. It started as an idea board for our wedding. Way easier than emailing a million images to my sister and mom every day, I entered my pinteresting beginnings. But back then not many people used it so I gave it up for a few months. The Pinterest honeymoon period of one week had worn off. Then, upon my prodigal return last autumn, wholly guacamole... everyone and their sister were pinning away. This made things a bit more fun.

Now, it’s become the worst thing in social media since the advent of Facebook. I’m talking back in the days when we had to be “invited” to join. So addicting. I mean, don’t these photos make you happy?

Pin. Pin. Pin. Here’s the truth. My board, teacher tools, is seasonally complete with 65 educational pins. I’ve used/created 7 of those for my classroom. That’s 10%. An occupational waste of time. My workout inspired “physique” board means well with 30 fitness related pins. Less than a dozen times have I referenced that pin for interval workouts or inspiration. The only good in my “the d.i.y. list” board is the living succulent wreath I conquered a few months ago. Go, me! Let’s not even discuss the recipes for yummy dinners or charming desserts fit for a party. Not one. single. recipe. Zip, zero, zilch. 

Do you know that kitchen drawer where you put the coupons and handymen’s business cards? The throw away drawer that also holds miscellaneous post-it notes, inkless pens, nail clippers and scissors? That’s Pinterest. You’re positive you’ll need that mechanic’s number one day, but when the day comes, you just search Angie’s List. When you finally reach in to grab the Rita’s free italian ice coupon, you find out it’s a year old. And then there’s the nail clippers. You’ve already replaced them two or three times. If only you knew, all along, they were in that darn drawer. 

I’ll tell you the true value of Pinterest. Birthdays. Christmas’. Anniversaries. Take a look at somebodies boards and you know exactly what to get them as a gift. No more guessing. They lay it out for you. Board by board. Neat little digital files of all things they desire. Ahem, hubcap. My birthday’s in about 80 days….

Boys… listen up. She says she isn’t thinking about marriage, but check out her boards. Hidden in between a fashion board and a recipe board, she’s got her dress, flowers and colors picked out. The ring’s there, too, if you need some help.

Will I stop pinning? Well, did I ever stop dropping coupons in that kitchen drawer? The one thing Pinterest has going for it is that it takes the creepy, stalker feel out of Facebook. And I like pinning. It’s a great little filing cabinet with quick links to everything I could never possibly need. (Yes, I meant to say it that way).

Have a fabulously pinteresting day.

*Filed under Personal Life*

• Tags
• dessert
• dinner
• education
• exercise
• pinterest
• recipes
• succulent
• teacher
• workout
• wreath
• beliefs

Sometimes, Monday’s can be a real drag. Especially when you wake up to 6lbs of fur and whiskers resting between your arm and chest. Then, you look outside and notice it’s pouring rain. If this isn’t the type of day you are supposed to stay home in your pajamas, snuggled up with a blanket and a good read, then I don’t know what is.

Alas, I made it to work (and on time, too). However, there were quite a few surprise happies today that made me think… wow, if I didn’t get out of bed this morning, it would’ve just been another rainy, slow day.

Exhibit A: My good friend who has struggled all year to learn the letters in his name GOT IT today. I’m talking, really got it. We were searching for the letters in his name in a book he picked out. I gave him a bar graph of sorts to fill out and not only did he fill it out correctly (top to bottom, correct columns), but he told me the letter each time he found one (“This is an O” and “I found an E”). Ohhh, and the best part? When he scanned for his letters, he scanned left to right and then return swept to the next line. Non-teacher friends, this is what we call SUCCESS! To top things off, he told me, without prompting, that he had found the most e’s because the bar was highest on his paper. Smiles. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that not all kids can learn.

Exhibit B:

Yup. No electric bill. I love getting bills in the mail that have a $0.00 balance. I sure wish they would happen more often. Yes, I am aware we probably overpaid last month, but I don’t care. I’ll take it! It’s like finding a $20 bill in your winter jacket when you dust the cobwebs off and pull it from the closet in November.

Exhibit C: I started reading Mockingjay today. Well, this is actually rather depressing for two reasons. First, I can honestly say I’ve greatly enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy and am sad to be finishing it. Second, it’s a rather depressing book. Nonetheless, I am always giddy about starting a new book and I’ve come to love these dystopian, young adult books. So, for the next 300 pages, carry on, Katniss, carry on.

Exhibit D: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. My wreath is too fat to fit between the front door and the storm door. It would squish the poor succulents to smithereens. But, at my husband’s suggestion, I put it on the back door, leading out the the garden. The best part? It’s a perfect excuse to make a second one. I mean, double doors look silly with just one wreath.

Exhibit E: Speaking of the garden, I find our patio to be the most beautiful in the evening after a good rain. Everything seems more alive. I can’t wait for the hydrangea’s to bloom. Plus, we had a big barbeque for Alex’s birthday this past Saturday and it’s good to see that nothing was destroyed on the other side of all the beer and sangria.

Exhibit F: This one is my favorite. My husband is on his way home right now (yes, he works a lot of long hours) with Chipotle. When I asked if he needed to write down what I get, he replied, “No. You want a veggie salad with half brown and half white rice, black beans, extra veggies, medium salsa, corn, a pinch of cheese and guacamole. No dressing.” J’adore.

If this is any indication of the week to come, I’m sure glad I roused myself from the sheets this morning. Happy Monday night.

• Tags
• Monday
• teaching
• education
• pre-k
• wreath
• garden
• patio
• hunger games
• mockingjay

As a teacher, I guess I am suppose to remember which teacher is specifically responsible for my decision to teach. That’s how the stories go, right? One particularly hard year, one particularly caring, concerned teacher who reaches me. Unfortunately, you will be dissappointed if that is what you expect in the lines below. I always played school, I loved bossing around my dolls/ stuffed animals/ siblings/ friends/ parents/ pets as I ran the class. I will never forget sitting in the back of my parent’s old Jeep Wagoneer squished next to the gigantic student desk from the 1800’s they scored at a local antique shop one summer. God, I loved that desk.

(My “class” when I was a kid)

While I never intended to become a teacher (it was merely one of many interests) and I still have no intention to stay in the classroom the rest of my life, I do have many teachers to thank for many, many great memories.

Kindergarten: Sister Joyce for being the calmest, sweetest first teacher I could ask for. I will never forget when she took us through the other door of our classroom, which led into the rectory, and into her living room. I don’t know why we took that little visit but she called it a “field trip” and I think she had forgotten something. I also will never forget that we had a station where we made instant jello. I never could make that jello and I believe it foreshadows my poor understanding of science.

Second Grade: Mrs. Murphy for letting us pick her daughter’s name. Now, I am well aware 18 years later that our voting ballot system was rigged and that we did not, in fact, choose her daughter’s name. However, it still is pretty frickin’ awesome that she let us do that. Her name was Catherine. I also must thank her for letting me bring my stinky, loud, crybaby of a sister, Sara, in for Show & Tell. That must’ve been fun for her.

Third Grade: Miss Catterton for being a first year teacher with absolutely no experience and putting up with 36 Catholic school brats. I doubt I learned much that year because we wereawful. I thought about Miss Catterton a lot my first year teaching. Pretty much every time I cried because my students were terrible, I thought back to how we ran that 3rd grade room. Poor lady.

Fifth Grade: Mrs. Daniels for being my first friend in my new, public school. She was the first teacher to read one of my essays as the exemplar to the class. She was also the first teacher to reprimand me. If you must know, I was being disrespectful while receiving my D.A.R.E. award for reading my “I will not do drugs” speech during D.A.R.E. graduation. I couldn’t stop giggling and Mrs. Daniels said it embarrassed her. I melted into a puddle, with my heart stabbed into a million pieces.

I honestly don’t remember much about middle school except that we had bomb threats on nice, sunny spring days and that we read a book called Spermy the Sperm in science. As a matter of fact, I don’t think my book smarts grew much at all during those years. My street smarts sure did, however.

10th Grade French: Mme. Crall for calling my mom to let her know I was a great student and I always did perfect work on a day when I hadn’t done any classwork because she knew I was deeply depressed. Fast forward a few months and a new school later, I’ve met her daughter, Elena, and we’ve become best friends. And I was yet again doing great in French.

10^th Grade English: Mrs. Murphey for introducing me to my all-time favorite novel: To Kill A Mockingbird. I’m on my 3^rd copy and it forever has a home on my bedside table. Mrs. Murphey also read my essay on the aforementioned book aloud to the class, which generated a mini-celebrity status from my peers for the next week. Thanks to her, I can also recite from memory the paragraph from To Kill A Mockingbird that starts “Maycomb was a tired town, but it was atired old town when I first knew it.” That lady made us deconstruct the entire grammatical structure of that excerpt and then pull it back together into our very own story. She read that story aloud to the class, too. I gave it to my grandma, as it wasn’t about Maycomb, but rather Lake Michigan. This was before we typed everything and I wish I still had a copy.

11^th Grade AP Lit: Mrs. Postlethwaite for proving to me that I can read 2500+ pages of literature in one summer, including the underappreciated, Anna Karenina, and the American classic, The Great Gatsby. She is also the first and only English teacher to give me a B. In my first year with Mrs. P, our relationship pendulum would swing from the day she read my Anna Karenina “pop quiz” essay to the class as an exemplar to the day she quietly passed me back a paper raped with red ink, the D+ bleeding through from the other side. We evened it out by 12^th grade AP Lit. Because of her, I learned a valuable lesson on humility before I got myself in too much trouble. I was knocked off my high horse. In fact, if she is reading this, she’s probably wishing she had a red pen that worked on the computer screen so that she could circle the 19,142 mistakes I’ve made.

12^th Grade Religion: Mr. Kiessling for instilling the ethics, morals, values, and life skills I carry in my knapsack daily. I will never forget glancing over our “syllabus” for class, a simple three-column list of words and terms sans definition. While scanning the document, we overhear him saying “These are the words you will need to know and understand in order to be a functioning adult in society. Without these terms, you are worthless to your future partner.” All I remember is coitus interruptus being smack dab in the center of the list and thinking, “no, this is College Prep 101”. Mr. Keissling also read Dave Barry to us every Friday and spent a week or so reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven to our class while we sat quietly at our desks planning prom and graduation.

Thank You.

Oh, and Mrs. P, I’m still making my way through your list of books to read before we die. You are right. Rebecca is an amazing story and definitely worth reading. Also, Bag of Bones isn’t half bad for being a Stephen King novel, albeit scary as hell. I promise I’ll make it through the list, but The Hunger Games trilogy has derailed me momentarily.

If you could read this, thank your teachers.

*Filed under Personal Life*

• Tags
• class
• education
• school
• teacher
• teacher appreciation week
• teachings

There’s a boy in my class who made me smile today.  Sitting at my back table, slowly pushing the letters into their spots on the alphabet arch, he quietly says “A, B, C, D”.  Well, he stopped at D.  But that’s okay.  He has come a long way. 

Typically, I’d be embarrassed to say that one of my pre-k kids can only match four letters.  But my friend isn’t typical.  My friend used to drive me up a wall on the days he would come to school (which were few).  My friend has many different homes and has changed homes many different times.  In the fall, on days he came to school, he would try to hide under the table and give me the biggest “I don’t trust you from a mile away” look.  He’s shouted big four letter obscenities- the only words I think he used to know in English.  One day in the dead of winter (one of the actual winter days we had this year), he came to school in short sleeve shirt and shorts.  I guess his parents hadn’t washed his other uniforms.  He sat in the hallway in front of his locker sobbing with that same “I don’t trust you from a mile away” look on his face.  Once we got him some warmer clothes, he came into class.  But, like any other day, he didn’t do much besides sit at his seat.  Sometimes, I could get him to color.  Scribble scrabble always in blue.

If you saw him today, you wouldn’t believe me.  His schoolwork was beautiful.  He was on task and he was talking.  He laughed with friends, rubbed their back when they cried, shared his learning tools and smiled through it all.  I can’t tell you when this change occurred.  He’s coming to school regularly and has made friends.  I see his confidence recently soared.  Instead of pulling him one on one during free time and center time, I let him be- let him be a part of the class.  The last thing he needed was to feel any more different.  When I made this decision, I wasn’t sure it would work in his favor.  Well, turns out it was the best thing I could have done.

My buddy has a long way to go before June.  The road is going to be straight and smooth from this point forward.  He comes to school to learn and I love him for that.  Today was a milestone in his 4 year old life and a milestone in mine, too.  Tomorrow, we’re moving down the alphabet!

*Filed under Personal Life*

• Tags
• achievement
• education
• elementary
• pre-kindergarten
• students
• teach
• teachings

The past 24 hours have been a reflection on my current life status.  I feel overwhelmingly fortunate.  I feel so proud and lucky.  I feel incredibly blessed.  It’s hard to put into words, but I am going to try, because these feelings are the best type to share.

Selecting season is about to begin again.  I found myself at the round table, a reunion of sorts, ready for “refresher training” with some wonderful faces that I haven’t seen since the weather turned.  The night was long and it was tiring.  Yet, I can honestly say I am so happy when I am there.  We worked our asses off, asked questions built upon questions and we problem solved.  We listened to one another.  We challenged one another.  We took a look at our new program, refined and brand new to us.  Out of our comfort zones, we discussed.  We tweaked.  We refined.  A dozen of us, from different perspectives and different priorities, brought together with the common purpose- we’re going to find the best candidates to teach in DC public schools.  Walking outside into the noises and visions of DC at night, I stood taller.  It is so rewarding to be part of such a positive learning community- to work in an environment where every opinion is valued and considered.  I didn’t mind working until 9pm on a Tuesday night.

Then came today.  On random Wednesdays at work, the board of education decided to send the students home early 2 hours, leaving us to create professional development opportunities.  We’re closing the achievement gap.  They mean we’ll be working later and I lose planning time.  Sometimes, I’ve found them to be rather irrelevant to my practice as a pre-k teacher.  Today, that wasn’t the case.  Yet again, the overwhelming feelings of community, team, success and empowerment permeated the room.  We talked about tough things.  We talked about privilege and we talked about our students’ backgrounds.  We didn’t make assumptions and we listened to one another.  We learned from each other.  We stepped into the day with a common goal and a common concern.  We left with a common sense of personal responsibility- and a belief that we are making it happen.  Today, I didn’t mind staying at work longer than usual.

I haven’t always been fortunate enough to work in such amazing learning communities.  I haven’t always left work with a sense of community and belonging.  I haven’t always felt empowered or particularly powerful.  In the midst of all of the crap in this world, I completely understand how people become so negative and cold-hearted.  It is really nice to be sheilded from it right now.  I am so fortunate to work with and call these people my friends.  That we share a common understanding, a common passion, regardless of where we’ve been or are going to go, is an extremely rare and unbelievable gift. 

I am blessed to say I am part of two of these communities.  I believe these are the feelings that we need to share more often with each other.  And, lastly, thank you, for letting me share my fortunes with you.

*Filed under Personal Life*

• Tags
• education
• job
• poverty
• teaching
• work
• teachings

I am going to get in trouble for writing this.  I know it.  I just ask for you to read this with an open mind and understanding.  I don’t ask for you to agree with me.  This is my truth- it doesn’t have to be your truth.

The most difficult thing about growing up has to be shifting ideologies and values.  It hasn’t been by choice- I don’t think it’s ever a choice.  It’s been through a slow, ever awakening of reality.  It’s the fading of idyllic views and the birth of rational thought.  Let’s get the record straight before I get going: This is coming from the view of a pot smoking, hippie socialist who tattooed imagine on her hip at 19 and wanted to save the world, end hunger and fight the epidemic we like to call poverty with one word: love.  See?  Absolutely no rationality.

Here I am, 25, and though I don’t know it all, I’ve learned something.  I see the world from my eyes and that is what I can stand behind.  This is what I see and I understand it is not the same as what you see.  My husband and I bust our ass day in, day out to make a buck.  He works 3 jobs and I work 2.  We have bills, we pay them and we don’t complain about doing so.  We know what it’s like to hate our jobs; to be utterly miserable and unhappy at work.  So we’ve looked for new work.  We push through.  We prevail.  And until we have a new means of a paycheck, we stick it out with little complaint.  We aren’t quitters.  We possess masters degrees from accredited, non-online (yes, I said it) universities.  We have student loans from college that amass to some nasty debt.  We aren’t asking for hand outs and we aren’t running from it.  We also don’t complain about it 24-7.  It’s our personal business, we got ourselves here with the choices we made (nobody held a gun to our head) and we will get ourselves out. 

Furthermore, the number one reason it will be a few years before we have children is that we refuse to bring a child into this world until we can financially support it in a way that suits us.  Let me explain: until we can afford to set aside a bank account called “college” and we can afford to consider selling our townhouse for a single-family home so that our children won’t play in a parking lot after school, we aren’t having kids.

We value responsibility and education.  We value work ethic.  If you were too lazy to finish high school, I’m not quite sure I want to be giving you my tax dollars for your welfare check.  If you’ve found a way to convince the government you are disabled but you could work a cash register, I’d love some of that free money, as well.  I’ve got a slew of “disabilities” I could hash out.  Workplace hazards and a chronic bad neck that keeps me up at night. 

We see poverty every day in our classrooms.  It’s systemic and much deeper than government handouts.  Show us how you can fix the system so that the handouts can stop.  What about rehabilitation and training?  Put these people to work- they are capable.  And if not, maybe I should start working the system- start being irresponsible and knock out a couple of kids without a stable income.  Well, I’m not going to do that because I’d feel terrible.  Don’t they?

This is my point.  I’m not a genius.  I don’t have a solid answer.  I do see it all around me, though.  Alex and I use the term “welfare whore”.  There’s no stereotype that you can fit them into (race, weight, accent).  They are everywhere.  And yes, we teach some of their children.  But that’s what maddens me: when Newt Gingrich said that poor kids have no work ethic, I sympathized with him.  Albeit, he’s crazy, I agree that you must teach work ethic. If you aren’t learning it at home, you’ve got to learn it somewhere. I pride myself in working at a school where we are teaching these kids work ethic and responsibility.  Honestly, they need it.

But what about everyone else?  There are no excuses for this type of behavior.  I truly pride everyone out there who chooses to pick up whatever part time work they can instead of selling out to the system.  Good for you.  Clean up your own mess.  Or, the mantra of my childhood, if it happened to you, it’s your fault.

*Filed under Personal Life*

• Tags
• Newt Gingrich
• debt
• disability
• education
• ideologies
• politics
• social issues
• teaching
• welfare
• work
• beliefs

Looking back, it all becomes a big question.  What’s it all really for, anyway?  To be a teacher?

To all of my teaching friends: please don’t take this next paragraph personally, keep on reading.  I sometimes worry that the statement “those who can’t do, teach” holds true.  After 2 years of graduate research on the topic, I’m afraid to announce that yes, our dumbest college graduates make up the majority of the teaching profession.  They may have made it to college, but their SAT and ACT scores are some of the lowest of the bunch.  Here is where we find the problem with education in the great USA.  How did I get here?  I didn’t sign up for this in college.

So I sit here and look back on everything I did in college not to become a teacher.  The 16 credit hour semesters chugging away at public relations and art history while always thinking about how to be better.  Why stop at joining the honors society?  Become honors society president (which I did).  Be happy with a really high GPA?  Nah, add an honors thesis to top it off (which I did).  Why graduate a semester early if you can?  Stay and take more classes (which I did).  Take on an easy summer job?  Scope out those paid internships and work your life away, instead (which I did).  See the pattern?  Yet, my public relations portfolio is sitting on the shelf in our guest bedroom gathering dust.  I haven’t needed it since my first job offer out of school- to be a conference planner. 

Where did things steer off course?  You could blame the recession.  You could blame my itch to be in the classroom.  Sure, but this is my point.  Does it really matter?  I’ve read hundreds of resumes just like my own.  Young minds, bursting with energy, experience, background and a clear drive for success.  They have majors in fields like engineering, public relations, math, biology, Spanish.  Some even have a law degree or their MBA.  And they sit in front of me, magna cum laude, president of Lambda Pi Eta, the Communications Honor Society, 4 fantastic internships deep, published and paid for, not to mention a years worth of experience in non-profit government consulting.  They’ve traveled the country for this job, yet they are begging me to send their portfolio through with a nice, confident check next to ”highly recommend”.  They take each question I throw at them with ease, tenacity and brains.

Do I allow them what was allowed of me?  Do I give them the same opportunity to steer off course, leave the fireworks of success that are bound to follow them through corporate America, in the lab, or the courtroom?  This could end bad.  Do I do it?  Only if…. only if I can see that they have the same commitment I made three years ago.  Our students are thrown in the gutters of society because they were born into the wrong tax bracket, the wrong race, and the wrong side of the city.  To be quite honest, your run-of-the-mill educator with their low SAT score won’t cut it.  These kids need the best we have to offer.  And I know it’s the best as I look up at the clean, polished, nervous as hell young adult in front of me.  Their resume tilts up towards me from my lap with a glory to be proud of. 

And what does he do?  He recommends me in.

*Filed under Personal Life*

• Tags
• college
• education
• interview
• reflections
• spilled ink
• teaching
• teachings

My students are amazing.  Before I tell you why, you need to understand their background.  These students live in public housing communities.  Their living rooms are cement floors.  They use public transportation because it’s their only choice.  Most of them have never been out of their homes until this school year.  Their parents work in the kitchens of our favorite restaurants and clean the hotel rooms we trash.  They take care of their siblings.  They are 4 years old.  Most of them don’t speak English.  And those who do, speak Ebonics.  There’s 20 of them.  Each with a different personality and plenty of individual needs.  And I’m their pre-k teacher.

Now, let’s back up to the first days of school.  I noticed a certain boy immediately.  He’s the one that the other teachers pointed to and said, “He looks like big trouble- keep an eye on him”.  One adult even whispered to me “Oh my God, he’s a miniature thug”.  He sure did act like it.  He spoke like it, too.  You know what I realized, though?  His eyes.  When I teach, he sits there criss-cross-applesauce, eyes gazing straight up at the lesson with such intent that you can tell he’s inhaling it all.  In class, his behavior isn’t terrible.  In fact, 98% of the time, he’s exemplary.  On the playground, he can get a little rough.  He is loud, power hungry and controlling.  He has high energy and is very physical.  Last week, he spent the morning in the office because he punched a 4th grader on the schoolbus.  He is 4 years old.

But he’s amazing.  We taught them “Duck Duck Goose” a few weeks ago- just once.  You know what I saw him do?  We were on the playground enjoying this gorgeous fall weather and I peer over to see him organizing all three pre-k classes (that is 60 kids, by the way) into a circle.  I sarcastically said to my teammates “What are they doing?  Playing duck duck goose?”  Well, sure enough.  He has them all hold hands to stretch out in a big circle, sits them down on the ground and reminds them how to play.  He does a “trial run” with one of his friends.  Then, he tells another student they can start.  He is concerned that everyone will get a turn.  When someone is tagged, he takes their hand, brings them to the center of the circle and leads the group in “stirring the pot” to make duck soup.  They all laugh.  He’s smiling.  He doesn’t even know we’re watching.

My kids are amazing.  He might have a huge competitive streak, a short temper and speak improper English, but here’s the thing: he’s just a little human being.  He’s no different from the rest of us.  And without getting too political here, I’ve got to say.  That one adult might be right.  He just might grow up to be a gang member, running in and out of jail.  Or, he might grow up to be our next leader, stating his mind and organizing his people.  I know that I don’t get to decide who he becomes.  But, I also know that I am his very first teacher and who he becomes isn’t completely out of my hands, either.  And as far as I’m concerned, I just introduced you to your future president.  Let’s take care of him.

“My solution was to recognize in their misbehavior itself something I could respect. Sharp tongue? He’s got a feel for words. Interrupts? Wants to participate. Laid back? Easy to get along with. Takes over everyone else? Potential leader. Slow to participate? Wants to get things right. For anything students do, they have to use a capability. Distinguish it from its current misuse, make clear to them the part that you respect and appreciate, and help them problem-solve how to use it more constructively.”  Education News

*Filed under Personal Life*

• Tags
• education
• potential
• poverty
• spilled ink
• students
• teachings