The Year of Fishing

Today I went to a professional development day at a local high school, where most of my favorite boys from last year are attending now. I like the school and what it is trying to do (strive to be better, always, just to sum it up).

Before the day even started, the campus minister got up and read that passage from the bible where Jesus walks on water. And Peter wants to, too, and Jesus calls to him to go ahead. Peter gets out of the boat, heads Jesus' way, and then falters.

I have always focused on the faltering. Always. Lack of faith.

The speaker guided us to look at that first part. The part when Peter gets out of the boat. Out of the perfectly good boat into the choppy waves. It wasn't "a boat sitting in a driveway in south county" but a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Boat's your best bet, buddy.

In order to follow Christ, in order to do what must be done, we must get out of the boat.

Of all the readings he could have chosen, biblical or later Christian writing, he chose that one to read to us today. And you know how I love connections.

I'm going fishing.

Cast your nets into deep water.

Get out of the boat.

Our speaker was Jon Gordon for the morning, and Jimmy Casas for the afternoon. They were both a little intangible compared to the past few years, but I was open to intangible today. Jon Gordon spoke about his book The Energy Bus, and how he started picking a word to focus on for the year. How focusing on a single word changes you, your actions, thoughts, perspective. It is a lens through which you see your whole life.

I have never done this, although I have done this. I can look at the last three years: hospitality, nichevo, and vulnerability. I settled on them during the summer and they guided my life throughout the year. Each year summer came along and another idea teased itself out. Each year they led to deepened faith and living with purpose. I wasn't doing it on purpose and it was only in retrospect that I saw the themes. But I like the idea of moving in a forward direction too.

He stood up there and asked us about what our word would be this school year.

Fishing.

A little harder to explain than "joy" or "determination." Makes it sound like I'm heading out for a weekend in waders.

I've never even been fishing. It's really just a metaphor for risk and faith and hope. But it's nicely tangible and I know what it means.

Because I'm pretty sure at this point that God is talking to me through these stories of Simon Peter's profession.

All Caught Up

I'm having an all-caught-up evening.

My house is clean. I'm on the front porch in the 65 degree fall evening. Just finished entering my grades.

I have a full tank of gas and properly inflated tires and all the checks that were sitting around the house have been deposited. The overdue library book has been returned.

The garden is picked. A ton of green tomatoes still on the vines and it'll be several weeks before they're damaged. Let them be. They're fine.

Spent the weekend with different non-overlapping euler diagrams. Good times.

I ran my culminating 5K this morning at a cemetery. I can't quite touch the irony there, but I'm sure it's there. Running to save myself from getting there too soon? It was a beautiful morning; I ran with a friend who runs faster than I do and it was good. She slowed and I sped up and we ran together. She could still talk after the first mile; I couldn't, but I'm good at the minimal response. There were too many very large hills. It was hard at times. But I did it and now I have a time to beat. Because I'm going to do it again.

Early fall is my favorite time on my block. A few porch sitters, yes, but more of it has to do with the general sagging feeling that matches our houses under this streetlight better than hot summers or a dusting of snow. Or mud. Dry crisp evening and older brick houses with lights still on.

Bix took the girls to the zoo and Niles had a playdate. I cleaned a bit, graded a bit, played our old nintendo a bit. We had dinner at the pub we always go to, and London complained that they hadn't seen the polar bear exhibit yet. I pointed out that there is time. We could go in a few weekends. It's free and....we're here.

The cat bolted out the back door while we were weeding. She came back.

This week is a new wave. I start a class with about 2/3 of my faculty that will run long and frustrate me and everyone else but we need to take it because. And Friday I have intruder training, which I hear is quite intense and involves a SWAT team presenter. Lots of the conventional wisdom we've been believing for no good reason, I hear, is pretty much false. More on that, I'm sure, after I experience it. Brooklyn has tennis matches every day. And my parents go on a trip, leaving me without afternoon carpool.

It's good that I'm all caught up. Because I'm about to start swimming again.

Cast Your Nets

Peter:Fishing as Sally:Teaching

Winter, 2013. I didn't know what was coming next in my life. The job I thought I wanted, teaching art for just enough compensation to send Niles to preschool, building an art portfolio, using it as a possible springboard to more art teaching in the future, hadn't panned out that past autumn. In a big way.

Our relationship with the school crumbled quickly after that. I'd already pulled London out and sent her to the little school she graduated from (and Brooklyn and Niles still attend).

I was subbing in a lower-middle-class suburb. I knew I needed a classroom job for the fall, or walk away from teaching for good. I was at a sort of crossroads. Everything seemed kind of barren for me. I wondered if I could manage something else. I wondered if I was even good at anything else.

The Gospel reading that Sunday was the one where Peter and Andrew are in the boat with Jesus and he tells them to cast their nets into deep water. Fr. Miguel told the story about how we are asked to cast our own nets into deep water, see what we draw up, see what bounty we find.

I knew I needed to try again. I needed to get my life in order and my portfolio and find a teaching job. So I got to work even though it felt kind of hopeless, like a useless effort. I was older. I'd been home for 13 years. I didn't have a master's degree. Talk about deep water.

Easter Season, 2013. The Gospel reading that Sunday was the one where Peter, sitting on the shore with other disciples, gets up and says, "I'm going fishing." I'd always read that with a sort of disgust in his voice, like, damn it, I'm outta here.

But Fr. Miguel said it like he was searching. Fishing. Searching. Hunting. This is what Peter did before Christ arrived in his life. And now that seemed over. What do I know? What am I good at? I need my life to make sense again and fishing was part of what made sense. I need to go do the one thing I know how to do.

I left that mass kind of shaken. I'm going teaching. It's the one thing I know what to do and I need my life to make sense again and I need to get this done. Now.

That week I got the permanent sub job out west, teaching in an art classroom for what was probably the only time I would be paid to teach art. And it was fun and perfect and poignant. Right after that job, I got the job I have now. Catholic school. Huge pay cut. Lots of fringe benefits--intangibles, you might say. In many ways, it has been a soft place to land, to start again, to go back to what I know from before.

This week, my class went to mass on Thursday.

The weekday reading was cast your nets into deep water. Again. I thought about Fr. Miguel's words from 2 1/2 years ago. I listened to the school's pastor's words, which were nearly the same. Cast your damned nets into deep water, Sally. Go outside your comfort zone. Do what seems contrary or useless or hopeless and see what God brings.

I drove to London's tennis match thinking about it. On the way home, she mentioned she'd gone to mass as well that afternoon during her activity period. Served mass, in fact. Got donut holes afterwards as a reward. And she talked about the Gospel. Cast your nets.

I'm not a "God gives me a sign" kind of girl. But I thought about fishing and teaching and how easy and comfortable my job is and how I am very very uncomfortable with the comfort. I thought about Peter on the shore searching for something that would fit, something that made sense. I felt like that, like I was uncomfortably waiting for something else bad to happen. And instead I needed to go do what I do best.

I need to go fishing.

I need to cast my nets into deep water.

I think I have a chance to draw up a catch beyond what I can hold.

Ten on Tuesday:10 Simple Ordinary Things That Bring Me Joy

1. When people wave. Like when I let them in the lane they need in order to turn left, or even people who stand outside the church on the main drag on Friday mornings and wave at drivers for Happy Friday. There's a strange man who lives about a mile from my house in a little place with tinfoil in the windows. Either he waves at everyone or he has learned which car is mine. Because he always waves at me.

I also love it when a student waves at me in the hallway or when I'm out of context, like at the grocery store.

2. Clean clothes folded in drawers.

3. Sotto voce comments made to me in class by students who think we are in on the joke together. Because we are.

4. Math problems worked in my head quickly in front of others. Perhaps it is a job related disorder. But I love when I can use the distributive property to quickly do computation. I can see the lines where numbers connect and separate on these occasions.

5. Planning trips. I'm in the midst of planning three. One for summer, one for winter break that might not pan out in the end due to timing, and one for spring break. Oh and the one we want to take London on when she graduates from high school. That's in the serious long term planning stage.

6. Weed flowers gathered in a vase. Little daisy-like blooms combined with those weird hard pink things and some tall grass gone to seed. In a milk glass vase.

7. A completed project. A quilt, a clean room, a sweater. I love sleeping under it for the first time or wearing it the first time, and so forth.

8. Snow falling.

9. Waking up and there's a kid in my bed. And they didn't wake me up before they crawled in next to me. It's cozy and perfect.

10. Making connections about history, either genealogy or about my house or neighborhood or whatnot. Putting the pieces together is very satisfying.

Perfect students don't need teachers

This is a teaching post. And kind of a long one.

My new partner teacher and I started using interactive notebooks this year. It's the anti-technology for math. Our whole school and whole world moving to an online learning environment and here we are with scissors and glue.

We teach lessons and create foldables and study aids for kids to cut out and glue in their notebooks. Like this (this isn't one of mine directly, but from Math = Love. I used this one this past week):

Those little doors close and you have each of the operations on the outside. It allows for a different sort of organized thinking. More spatial, more visual.

I teach tracked math classes (you are either average or advanced, there's no remedial). Except for a few boys who thought cutting and pasting was "hard" (I teach 6th-8th, remember), the reaction to the notebook system has been overwhelmingly positive.

The most positive reactions? Reasonably smart girls who are nervous about math. The group I have the hardest time reaching in a classroom setting, but my favorite group to tutor. And I decided to move to this system last year when, sitting in my algebra class with printouts and cut-and-paste work about radicals, a couple of my really bright boys said, "These are the best notes we've taken all year, I really get this stuff right now." So I knew that it wasn't just for kids who struggled. It is clear, it is personalized, and it's more fun than copying stuff I scribble on the board in a hurry.

On the test this past Friday, the last question was an evaluation of my teaching: what is working in math this year? What isn't? What are you worried about? How can I help? Of course this sort of question leads to lots of positive comments (some of them dishonestly so), but I did get comments like "I don't understand word problems" and "You talk too fast". Ok. I can dig it. I will work on that.

But one of my algebra students (advanced 8th grade) ripped me apart about the notebooks. He hates them. He doesn't need them. He resents that math has become this arts and crafts lesson and he doesn't see any value in it. He urged me to give it up and be a normal teacher. He was not nice in his urging. I would call him brave, except...

This child's father called out a teacher at our open house this week in front of a classroom full of parents. She was explaining the new math series and how it focuses on problem solving. She brought up an example on her smart board that showed how to determine if an answer is reasonable. He shouted out, "It's not REASONABLE. It's RIGHT. Who cares if it's reasonable?"

I was once at a classroom party with this student's mother, at which she got a little tipsy (no, not really, I'm just kidding, there was no alcohol) and started making fun of homeless people. In front of me, the other moms, and some kids who overheard.

She was the only parent who was disappointed when we stopped having math groups in 6th grade (we have since gone back to them, unfortunately), because her younger son was so looking forward to math on "his level" without the other kids dragging it down all the time.

The arrogance is doing me in.

So I wrote back to this child on his test. You certainly don't have to take notes this way if you don't find it helpful. That's what I wrote. This is what I thought, but did not write:

Everyone else will get an easy 15 point notebook check grade and you will get "NA", meaning it doesn't count for or against you (if you don't have your notebook on that day, you get "NA" as well).

And if there is any justice in the world, eventually something will be hard and you will come up to my desk and ask for help and I'll ask you to bring me your notebook.

But most likely, you will make an A+ in my class because you are gifted and hard working and don't need me. And that'll be good too. Because you are already angry at the whole damned world at 14. I'm glad math is easy. But I'm still going to teach everyone else this way. Sorry that I moved 8 more students up into your elitist advanced class and therefore we move a little more slowly for the good of those who don't have your giftedness, abilities, and advantages but can certainly learn algebra in eighth grade if I guide them.

If you want to be separate from them, I suggest you find a school you have to test into. Or a homeschool program so your mom doesn't have to worry about the word "Common Core" showing up on the front of a textbook. Or, God forbid, rubbing shoulders with someone a little less perfect.

Funny thing is, after I watched the soccer game the other night, and then after curriculum night was over and the whole staff gathered for a little happy hour, I started wondering if I was selling this place short. And then this happened and I remembered, no, I'm not.

I know there are difficult families everywhere. I know that there are asshole students everywhere. I think it comes down to the BRAND of difficult here. The assumptions and the arrogance. I'm tired of square peg/round hole-ing myself for the few families who like me. Because I won't be an elitist. I won't celebrate advantage. I won't make fun of homeless people with you.

I'm in the wrong place.

I know--just one kid, Sally, don't let it bring you down. I know--it's a job, Sally, that's why they have to pay you to do it. But you know what? I've had jobs that I didn't feel like I had to change who I was in order to teach there.

Negative Space

But if there's one thing in my life
That these years have taught
It's that you can always see it coming
But you can never stop it.

You sit at my table, you live in my house, you learn in my classroom, you ride in my car, you live on my street, whatever it is--I don't let people go all the way. I just don't. Even if they let go of me. I still think and pray and hope.

A text tonight: Sally, they took my son. From Troy. One of my people. Even though all the "even thoughs".

I called him and we talked, but he's bad at maintaining a personal narrative of his life. Details and timelines are not his strength. But there was a visit from a social worker last night that must not have gone well. He didn't even know there was an investigation. The state came to school today and placed his son in foster care. Troy said a social worker told him he may be charged with child abuse. And that there were three open cases about their family. I don't even know enough to know what any of that means. But I think it means he's fucked. I hope that child lands softly.

Thinking about that summer, sitting on my porch with him, with a lot of success under his belt. It had been a great summer. He and his son were great together. He was saving money. He was starting to fix things. There was hope when he moved on.

But dysfunctional, toxic, dangerous relationships involving children and mutual dependency are hard to walk away from. And when you have nightmares all the time and can't read people and have no boundaries and are filled with grief and rage from your own history of abuse, well, you have so many needs and so few skills you wind up caught up in a cycle that cannot be broken on your own. You have no bootstraps to pull yourself up by.

And then you wind up turning into the sort of person who gave you the nightmares in the first place.

I lay back on my porch floor, my phone resting on my chest, staring up at the negative space between the leaves of the oak tree in my front yard.

Right here. Right now.

I am sitting on my front porch. It is still my broke-down old front porch; we have the plans for the new one but it involves Bixby taking them downtown and, you know, he's working. I didn't even bother to go downtown with them. I don't know the answers to any of the questions.

It is barely 70 degrees. Rain came through at some point today, or maybe it never got hot? I don't know. My life is climate controlled and I never even managed to open my blinds in my classroom. So I'm enjoying the overcast mosquito-free situation on the broke-down porch listening to traffic on the main drag a half a block away.

I've just gotten back from a run. A run. I still love writing that and saying it. A coworker who runs marathons and works for a running STORE, for goodness sake, offered to evaluate my form. She's so excited that I've started running. I hope I can keep it up.

I needed the run to kind of clear the head-space I'm in right now. I had a root canal last week and the tooth behind it, it seems pretty clear, needs one as well. Going in tomorrow to have it looked at. Being in moderate dental pain for almost a month is wearing me down.

I am becoming my own worst enemy.
Plus I went back to teaching in my climate controlled classroom. So I have to be "on" the whole time and it's hard. Luckily, I think this is the Year of the Fragile Girl, in comparison to last year, the Year of the Extroverted Intuitive Feeler Boy, which was EXHAUSTING. My homeroom is quiet. My math classes are adjusting to some of the new things I'm doing with them. So it's only moderately exhausting instead of thoroughly so.

London started school this week. She loves it more than I ever could have hoped for. I cried on the phone with the learning consultant last night. I'm a little raw these days.

Niles and Brooklyn started school today. Their opinions were more balanced. But I think it'll be ok.

Everyone is getting into the routine of autumn and the weather is starting to match. The guy who runs my writers group wants to read more of my novel. I love his feedback. He's helped me see through so many stumbling points while still knowing that I need constant praise and attention (that's all I need, after all...).

Troy asked to move back in. I told him no. But then I brainstormed with him about other options. He'll probably move in at his brother's until he leaves again with the Army (brother, not Troy). Another Extroverted Intuitive Feeler I can't very well explain. His felony charges are still pending. The drug charges seemed to have evaporated. That's too many lucky chances. He left the toxic girl. Again.

He was over at the house when Bix's cousins were visiting from western Missouri. I'd been talking to them about him over the course of all of it. Her comment? "He looks so young." I hope. And I sit on my front porch as the weather gets cooler, knowing how that makes him start feeling, and I run and I teach and I live here.

Stabilitas. It's so good. And so hard. And the coworker who made my heart sick last year is being nice to me. Summer helps, I think.

I'm thinking about a change, though. In fact, I"m not thinking about it anymore. I've decided. Seeing my big old graduated 8th grade ENF boys today flipped the switch for sure and for good.

Because I can do more. Because I'm suffocating. Because I'm ready.

So that's the too long/didn't read version of my life right now. Clouds are gathering. October is on its way.