In my nutshell: the path to learning

Following in my father’s footsteps (sort of) despite his vociferous efforts to dissuade me, I embarked on a career as a public teacher. The value of diversity, community, and democracy that public schools represented called to me. I wish I had seen what I really wanted– places devoted to learning, communities working for and with each other–in public schools. After working hard to implement a collegial shared vision of learning, the effort to change the status quo seemed rather like rebuilding a ship– a hole in its hull, with its motor set on auto, its speed set on get it done yesterday, while out at sea, fighting against a storm.

Luckily the year I entered teaching, I stepped up to a buffet of books and a plethora of possibilities. Money, through hard-earned grants and filled out forms, sent rookie teachers to conventions. I loved the mass gathering of educators that exhausted us with information; like a hungry person at a loving potluck table, ideas filled every space, and I stuffed myself. New ideas inspired me, yet little by little I found the job wore me down– the opposite of making a diamond from a rough, I felt like the system was bent on turning me into dust.

Not really surprisingly, but still vexing, “School” wanted me to change so I could fit its concept, and worse, I saw plenty of evidence that youth were either being squished into little square and circular holes or pushed to the side altogether. When I’m really depressed about education, I think of the ones, like my siblings, falling through conformity and indifference cracks.

Enter my children. Armed with the experience from public school, I worked part time. I intended to give more to their growth, and most of my family supported my decision. Little did I know my volunteering efforts at school still wouldn’t be enough to hit the mark.

Once my son came along and my daughter stepped into the public school, pretending that my divided focus no longer worked. Within a year, parenting tasks became harder than I expected. Despite our daily readings, our field trips in the community, and efforts to ensure my children had a wealth of information at their disposal, my daughter struggled to read, spell and calculate. One year, we were told we had to change schools to receive special education support for reading difficulties. The change was difficult enough, but the kicker was when we learned the special ed teacher, who was supposed to help our child, would be out for five weeks or more for her surgery and recovery.

In this and many other ways, I saw the limits of the institution both from the teacher and parent perspective. Yet I wasn’t ready to deter from my goal to have my children receive a quality public education. Volunteering in numerous capacities, setting up labs as a classroom volunteer , and even serving as a PTA Vice President in a predominantly Spanish speaking community (not to mention all the volunteer ops I accepted), I tried to bridge the gaps. It pains me to say, I regret the time it took to accept that my own daughter wasn’t receiving from school what she needed and deserved, nor would my son four years later.

After much gnashing of teeth, three campuses later, we left the public schools. Ironically, when I stepped off of what some called “the conveyor belt method” of school and listened to my children is when I finally earned my degree in Education.

Does HOME mean the same to you?

Ah, we are so sick and tired of being stuck at home, bemoaning the unfortunate circumstances we find ourselves in this year. Cannot our homes create a lasting place of happiness? Is it possible our homes can cause a sort of blindness to privilege? What is home? Is home the same if disconnected living has replaced belonging?

In the verse novel, Inside Out and Back Again, Thanha Lai recounts the war and her family’s flight from Vietnam, the difficult voyage across an ocean, and the even more difficult journey to become an American in the land of Alabama.

In a previous post, I wrote about Gary D. Schmidt’s novel. One of his characters, Mai, comes from Vietnam and she inspired me to choose this novel, along with the author who showcases a different genre of storytelling.

Told through verse, Thanha Lai delights her readers with snippets of poetry, reminiscent of a young girl’s treasured diary — giving us a child’s perspective that feels precious and light with innocence, yet weighted with meaning. When the narrator tells us of her beloved papaya tree grown from the seed “like a fish eye,/ slippery, / shiny, / black” she speaks as if one seed could sum up not only an entire tree but a glimpse of a life surrounded by all that means home. We witness the growth of the papaya in one “poem” from seed to white blossom, from fist sized papaya to the fruit that will always taste like home and family.

Like such seeds, each of us may grow beyond what we can imagine.

Growth is rarely an easy, straight line for most of us, and leaving a country during a time of war is hardly the stroll we wish life to be.

More World Book Day Inspiration

I admit it. I underestimated this book. When I read the first few pages of Gary Schmidt’s Wednesday Wars, I thought, Oh dear, another empty little middle school novel. To be fair, the parent who recommended the title, expressed a concern over violence in books. Would this book have enough meat? I worried. I needn’t have worried.

Schmidt’s book begins with the silly notion of a teacher’s hyperbolized hatred of the narrator, Holling Hollinghood, a middle school student. The silliness continues with a presumed bully who has already thought of over a hundred ways to get even with said teacher, a performance in yellow tights with a rear end of white feathers, precious cream puffs, and two escaped pet rats. Make no mistake, this is a comedy, but its moments of believable angst and appropriately placed insults a la Shakespeare balances this story, keeping it far from the edge of pre-teen sappy.

Holling Hollinghood’s Middle School “Tragic” Comedy

What Are You Reading?

Though a bit late for 2021 World Book Day celebrated on March 4th or too early for the Book Day celebrated in the U.S., a few books yearn for me to share them others. The two for today’s post are Dear Martin by Nic Stone and Buddha and the Badass by Vishen Lahkiani. Stay tuned for the next post about a few more good reads worthy of your attention .

First, Nic Stone’s Dear Martin is a heart grabbing story of a young black man who wants to forge a safe and positive path of change in the footsteps of his hero Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. Spelling out clearly what has been in recent headlines, Stone takes us through what Justice, the main character, encounters, all of which would take a heavy toll on any teen. Imagine how your teen has worked to process the news of George Floyd and school shootings (see this article on the number of school shootings). The heartbreak of Justice’s story intensifies when even the strong educated black adults in his life can’t seem to offer more than solace, a pep talk and a shared awareness of experience. Somewhere in the story, tension escalates between two teens playing their car stereo too loud for a man in the car in the next lane. I sobbed at the shortest chapter with the sound of three gun shots. Through the remaining of the audio book, all of the faces of the kids I’ve taught floated through my mind. While the story ends on a slim hopeful note, the tentative nod is really all there is, a mere gesture of what change requires: a diversity of voices and a wide range of supporters to confirm that black lives do matter.

Dear Martin is one in a series of YA fiction titles I’ve read in the past year, recommended by colleagues across the country. I’d also highly recommend All American Boys and The 57 Bus.

None of the YA reads are very comforting reads, but they do what good books do –they hold up a mirror of humanity and remind us we can and must change. Powerful, sad and gripping, Dear Martin, and other novels like it, begs us to treat each other with more compassion than we currently manage to find in ourselves.

Another book I’ve been reading is Vishen Lahkiani’s The Buddha and The Badass. One of my mentoring clients, a high school senior taking classes at community college, suggested this one for a leadership-themed year. We’ve read Brene Brown’s Dare To Lead, Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, and now we are exploring Lahkiani’s take on what it means to be a leader and how to lead a fulfilled life. While Lahkiani may be more well known for The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, in this book, he explores a blend of the “Badass” who breaks rules (or as he calls them “brules” as in bullshit rules) and the “Buddha” that promotes inner awareness.

His advice on Manifestos takes Covey’s vision/mission statement to the next level and inspired me to co-create manifestos with and for the writing groups I’m currently teaching. My intention was to convince them that this is their class, not just mine, and as such, they can take a central role in the development and the learning.

Not at all surprising, my favorite quote from the book is a Neil Gaiman, an admired author, from his Sandman series:

"I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. . . .

Not only is this book all about teaching readers something important, but also it requires the reader to be an asker of critical questions.

Three questions Lahkiani says we must ask ourselves:

• What do you want to experience?
• How do you want to grow?
• How do you want to contribute?

Inspiring me to be the learner I strive for as a teacher, I have found myself examining not only the ideas that have limited me and my work with students, but also how I want to grow as a writer and educator. Bottom line: Vishen Lahkiana’s book has offered an abundance of resources, discussion possibilities, and insights for both my student and me. I highly encourage you to check out Lahkiana’s work specifically for teens.

The next post will be about a middle school book that spurs students to research a pivotal time period (nearly as divisive as we’ve experienced recently) and choice that spurs me on my personal writing quest.