I swam in the ocean for the first time when I was eight years old. It was in Mexico on the Pacific side. During that trip, my family went to a charted island with a cove and swim up bar. I remember standing waist deep in the waves as the tide came crashing in, and a perfect shell came into my hands. Since that day, I have been on a quest to have another moment of finding the perfect shell. I have combed beaches in Hawaii, California, Florida, even Alaska on my quest. I never would have imagined the perfect shell to show up in Alabama, but this trip has been full of surprises.
The first surprise was Dauphn Island. On the map, Dauphn Island is a thin strip of land in the Gulf of Mexio. I thought we might have to take a ferry, but there is long bridge out to the island. The island is home to a bird sanctuary and a lot of boats, a few restaurants, and souvenir shops.. I guess the whole west end of the island was destroyed during Katrina, but new houses have been built, away from the water, high in the sky on stilts. Some of the houses are like boxes, but some are gorgeous with terraces and decks. Just for fun I looked up the rental rate on VRBO and found whole houses for rent for under a hundred dollars a night. Shayne and spent hours walking along the sand. The tide was coming in and bringing in perfect little seashells. As the first piece of land after a long flight across the gulf, many birds land on the island for a rest. I saw a pelican and all kinds of interesting birds that I have no names for. It was during this walk, that my perfect shell washed up on the shore at my feet. I was as excited as I was when I was a little kid.
I entertained renting a beach house for the night. I thought about what it would be like to wake up Christmas morning with the surf right outside my window. I wondered if it would feel amazing to have a bucket list morning in a bougie beach house, or if it would feel lonely, waking up on Christmas in a sad attempt to ignore the holiday.
In the end, it was hunger that took us off the island. There was nothing open off season. We ended up at a shack under a bridge. I am totally calling into question the sobriety of our servers, but the food was good for a rickety building under a bridge somewhere in Alabama. I kept thinking about the long drive home and decided that maybe we should head west, instead of further and further east. Montgomery seemed like a good choice, then Birmingham, then Tupelo, Mississippi. Then neither one of us was tired, so we just kept driving. We are just pulling into Amarillo. The radio is off, because I can’t handle one more version of Jingle Bell Rock. The sky is all gray and foggy, but so far no moisture. Shayne said that we might be able to get to Pueblo West by a family member’s usual dinner time. And there is a football game. Surprise, surprise. I guess that even though my son is willing to drive all across the country with me, he still wants family and turkey on Christmas. So barring no tragedies, it looks like I might be home for Christmas after all.
It occurred to me that while many people take selfies next to landmarks, I take pictures of trees wherever I go. I love how the branches twist and reach for the sky. We visited a swamp in the Mississippi delta today. I was fascinated with the way the roots hugged the banks of the waterways and the reflection of the limbs in the water. The air boat went so fast, I just aimed my phone and hoped for the best.
I had ideas about swamps from books; my actual foray into a swamp surpassed my expectations. First of all, the water was super still. It was very shallow, but so dark that it looked deep as night. There were ripples from fish and turtles, and alligator bumps like rocks just above the surface. Cypress trees and saw grass made inlets and channels. Birds were everywhere–thin, white egrets, cranes, hawks, swallows. Our guide pointed out an old alligator nest and water lines from Katrina. After the hurricane, alligators were sunning themselves on metal rooftops twenty feet above the ground. Katrina may have been twenty years ago, but her mark is still fresh.
My son’s fascination with alligators started when he was a toddler and we’d go to the alligator farm near Alamosa., Colorado. He has held them, and read about them, and done projects on them, but this was the first time he has seen them in their natural habitat. He was so happy, but for me, a whole new world opened up. I want to know more about the deltas. More about the wildlife and vegetation. I am the one with the obsession now.
The boat we went on was a airboat–it was powered by a fan and skimmed the surface of the water, allowing travel on inches of water. It goes only forward, so only someone really skilled could move it through narrow channels. It took a balance of speed and absolute finesse to navigate. I want back on that boat. It was a rush like I never had before.
I have read about people who live back in the deltas. I get it to an extent. It really would be living off the grid . Surviving in a place with alligators and mud and trees that could grab your foot and not let go would definitely take a lot of grit. I have never seen so much wildlife in such a small space. Everything about it was breathtakingly beautiful. I never thought I’d say that about a swamp.
Today’s Christmas Eve. I have a bit of an urge to get a stocking at Walmart and capture a bit of magic and tradition out on the road, but there is also an ocean with a beach and a sunset. I guess I don’t need to create surprises and moments of wonder; they are already all around me. 
In my monumental effort to skip the holidays, I decided a road trip was in order. I tried to plan it out. I looked at apps that map routes and highlight attractions along the way. I browsed air b and b listings and read dozens of hotel ads. I overthought destinations. In the end, I just threw some clothes in a bag, and told Shayne we were headed out. He asked if Carl’s Jr in Walsenburg was a possibility, so we headed south.
I know every inch of the highway between Pueblo and Walsenburg. I can still see the ghosts of the billboards from my childhood, the site of the gas station in Apache where we often stopped to adjust the styrofoam cooler from squeaking. I automatically look for the metal roof of the barn Shayne and I rented for a few months outside Colorado City. I keep my eyes peeled for the white tail of antelope and the subtle movements of coyote. And I feel my dad next to me when I am on that stretch of the highway.
Shayne asked me if we were going to Albuquerque. I guess that made sense in a way. My daughter can’t come home for Christmas, so we go to her, but I had something different in mind, because I took the cut-off towards Amarillo. I have only been on that part of the highway twice, both times with my father. That’s when I knew that my dad was coming along on this trip with us. I always feel my mom around me, but my dad only comes when I really need him. I told Shayne that we were just going to let the road show us the way. He just put his seat back, and settled in for a nap. I turned up the radio.
We spent the night just outside Dallas. I told Shayne that we used to go on roadtrips when I was a kid and back in the day, there was no on line booking for hotels. You watched out the window and looked for the vacancy signs. I told him how we used to pull up at a motel and watch my dad enter the the lobby, hanging all over the front seats wondering if the pool was heated, if there was a diving board, if there was a TV in the room, because in the 70’s that wasn’t a guarantee. We’d try to read our dad’s expression when he came out. Sometimes he grinned and put his thumb up, sometimes he’d shake his head. Sometimes he’d shake his head, but then hold up the key after we sank back into the seats, groaning over another search. Shayne laughed when I told him that story. I think that’s my favorite part of traveling with Shayne. The voices seem to take a backseat and set him free.
When we turned toward Shreveport instead of Austin, “Shayne said, “Louisiana?” I said, “I think.” He said, “I call alligators, then.” I asked him if he wanted to stay in a hotel or an air b and b. He said, “I picked alligators. That was my decision.” At that moment, we passed a restaurant called Felix’s and I saw a billboard for The Golden Nugget in Biloxi. I remembered my dad so excited to show us the Golden Nugget our first trip to Vegas. So here we are–a bougie room at The Golden Nugget in Biloxi, Mississippi. Getting ready for a swamp tour to see alligators. How is that for skipping Christmas?
I haven’t decorated for the holidays. And I really haven’t bought gifts either. I was actually feeling panicky about the holidays, like taking cover and hoping they would pass by and I would sustain no casualties. I can joke about PTSD, but when the panic sets in, it’s not that funny.
I couldn’t quite understand why I was feeling frantic about this season, until I realized it was because my daughter for the first time ever won’t be home for the holidays. She has to work because that’s what happens when you grow up and you aren’t an educator. I think it stirred all the memories of the first Christmas after my parents died. I couldn’t even bare to look at the bin of ornaments they left behind. And I feel like seeing Darian’s Christmas stocking and the items that she made over the years would unhinge me. I have been trying to distract myself: I have a fantasy football team. I am knitting a scarf. I watched Ocean!’s 11, 12, and 13. I made a bitmoji classroom and am teaching myself Adobe Illustrator. But Christmas is still coming and the urge to hide is strong.
The one thing that can take me to a better place is to paint. So at seven thirty in the morning, I knelt onthe freezing cold sidewalk in my puffer jacket and winter hat, to paint a holiday window scene for a local business. I might not be feeling Christmas, but years of drawing, sculpting, and painting snowmen, make holiday scenes muscle memory. I painted a snow guy with a yarn ball body, a Christmas tree made with name of the business and a sleigh flying with skeins of yarn packed in precariously. My hands were frozen at first and the wind kept taking my stencils down the sidewalk, but eventually the sun came out and it was a beautiful day. Everyone who came by told me how great the windows looked. Whimsical and fun.
My son stopped by and in his awkward Shayne way gave me a pair of Beats. He said they were my Christmas gift and he knew I liked to jam out when I paint. Then my friend stopped by and painted on the snowflakes for me and helped me fix the two letters I had painted on backwards with the stencils. When I was cleaning up, my old neighbors pulled up and we exchanged hugs. Once again, I was reminded of how much love there is in my life.
I stood back and looked at the scene I had created. It really was so bright and cheerful and I felt like I had given myself a gift. I know in my heart that adult children have to build their own traditions and it is my daughter’s time. Letting her have the wings to do that is part of my job. I can be sad, but I can also recognize the joy in her successes. The panic las lifted and I am ready to embrace the magic and wonder of the season in the memories yet to come.
My first word was doy-doy, which technically isn’t a word at all. My parents discerned that it meant horse. My second word was dada. This makes absolute sense to me because I was pretty much obsessed with horses as a child and my dad was my hero. My early language acquisition was the stuff of family lore. My mother referred to horses as doy-doys for the rest of her life, much to my irritation. One of our last conversations included me saying, “I’m forty-six years old; I can say horse now. “
As a writer, a teacher, and an avid reader, I am probably more interested in words and the acquisition of words than the average person. When punctuation started becoming emoticons, like– 😉 and :(,–I was fascinated. I also love slang, because to me it’s living proof at how language morphs and changes.
I remember being introduced to the poetry of e.e. cummings in grade school. Someone asked why he could be a famous writer if he wasn’t following the rules. Our teacher said only someone who really understood the rules could understand how powerful Cummings was in breaking the rules. Poetry, powerful? That didn’t make a lot of sense to me when I was nine years old, but I never forgot it.
I have been having my students write. You would think with tools like spell check, grammar check, kids would be better writers. Not so much. They know that periods come at the end. Not the end of a sentence, the end. I often get a document with ONE period in it. All other punctuation is apparently obsolete. Capitalization reminds me of seventeenth and eighteenth century letter writing, when people capitalized nouns for emphasis, such as–“Today, I was introduced to the vile devil known as a Porcupine.” Sometimes nothing is capitalized, not I, not the first letter of a sentence. Wait. There are often no sentences, just words run together. I look at their writing and don’t even know where to start.
I tried having my students do some old school writing, meaning pencil and paper writing. Here’s what I learned–spelling is very weak. I guess spell check isn’t a great tool if the spelling of the word isn’t close. The spell choice suggestions could and do lead down the wrong paths in those situations. And while kids have plenty to say, they format their words in phrases and jumbled stream of consciousness. It’s like kids have been given the toolbox of writing with a three minute tutorial on how to use 300 different tools.
For the last few weeks, I have been on a perilous journey with my students to name some of the tools in the writing toolbox and give some rudimentary review on how to use these tools. We watched all eight episodes of grammar rock–“Conjunction junction, What’s your function?” and took notes. Then we used magazines to look at text and find examples of parts of speech. Then I had the kids make an updated video of a part of speech. I used a video making app called Wevideo. It was pretty complicated with adding text and images and transitions and I spent about ten hours on my example. The students caught on to the technology faster than I did and were invested in the making the video part. I saw a lot of growth in the understanding of how words work as parts of speech, but more importantly I finally felt like I was connecting writing in a way that made sense in their lives.
Words will always be my jam, but I sometimes question investing so much of my soul to building competent writers in young people. Won’t AI be writing the future? Maybe, but, it’s impossible to know. Tools are only helpful when wielded correctly.
I am helping prepare children for a world that hasn’t been invented yet. Language continues to grow and evolve, but the basic building blocks remain unchanged. Hopefully, these lessons will be of value down the road. Meanwhile, I learned a hell of a lot about making videos.
My son graduated from high school twelve years ago. I’m not sure when the voices moved into his brain, but when I first discovered them, I did my best to evict them. At some point I realized that they weren’t leaving, and I’ve grown used to them. I am not saying I like them, and my greatest wish is that someday, some cure will come and eradicate them forever, but I know the voices are a reality for my son. I know his brain is a noisy place that makes moment to moment thoughts, actions, feelings, basically everything, challenging. I know medicine doesn’t completely work for him and he is prone to looking for ways to quiet the voices using other means–pot, alcohol, meth, music, sleep, whatever it takes. Staying sober, staying functional, staying alert is more than a full time job for him. But I have to say, he has come to a place where he is managing. He has been doing some part time jobs for about six months now; he has money in his pocket, and he tries to help me. He buys groceries, and takes me to the movies on occasion. I guess our life has settled into a pattern of tentative peace. I say tentative, because for me, the shadow of the voices is always there. I know all the bad things they have brought and I am always on guard. I have no trust that this peace is permanent. So I just plan for today.
Years ago, when I accepted that schizophrenia was going to impact the quality of my son’s life, I tried to help him navigate being as independent as possible. Even though, I can take care of him, it’s in his best interest to learn how to navigate the world on his own, including living alone. We signed up for Section 8 housing. I never thought the day would come, but after three years of waiting, Shayne was approved for a housing voucher in July. I realized right away that independent living was more my desire than his.
I am really good at putting on his shoes. I get it. Things between us have really settled into a livable rhythm; why change it? His experiences of living on his own have been abysmal. When he moved out to California at nineteen, the voices took over. He ended up living on the streets of Hollywood, scared he was being followed, wearing tin foil hats, and losing all his possessions, except for two shirts, an Allen wrench, and a copy of the Grapes of Wrath. At twenty-one, when he tried again, he wrecked his car, tied the bumper back on with neon green shoelaces, and thought he was the Son of Man, ready to save the world. Then there were the times that he wandered off to live in the wilderness for forty days, or the weeks huddled in motel staircases or laundry rooms, pilfering free cookies and coffee. The last time he lived alone was the year in his car. That was MY breaking point because I never knew if he was cold, hungry, dirty, alive or dead. I slowly unraveled during that year, feeling like I was fighting my own war of survival every day.
So getting the voucher seemed like a victory to me. We’ve been to some dark places, but my son is a survivor and he is learning to cope with his voices, and demons, and with help and love, he has a level of functionality that he hasn’t had in more than a decade. But I realized that he is terrified to take the next step. And I can see that the housing voucher may have come at a bad time, but what? I can’t say, “Uh, this is a bad time? Can you ask again in six months?” If he goes back on the waiting list, it could be years before another opportunity comes our way. In fact, the waiting list isn’t even open in our county. Who knows when it will be available again? So, we couldn’t turn the voucher down.
I thought Shayne was warming up to the idea of moving into his own place. We looked at an apartment downtown, but the rent was too high for the voucher. While we could have gotten a waiver for the size, I was hesitant about the location (over a bar) and Shayne really didn’t seem ready. We looked at a tiny house; it seemed perfect. The size was good; it had a little yard; the price was great, but the owner kept saying the unit wasn’t ready. I realized that he seemed to have cold feet about doing a section 8 rental, but it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of disability and we were being “ghosted.” I told Shayne to call the owner and find out what was going on. He was told something about deciding not to separate the tiny house from the main property. And maybe that was true, but it seemed off. I was kind of sad, because that tiny house seemed perfect. I wish I could build a tiny house myself, or have a property with a mother in law house. It would give Shayne independence, but, still offer him the security he needs. So we were back at square one, with the voucher ready to expire.
I did a quick search for apartments in the price range and came up with a short list. We looked at a shared living situation. I knew that was a no. Shayne is clean, but sharing his space with other people would be difficult. He always has music or TV going because it helps with the voices, and he still talks to himself and laughs at only things he can hear. The pressure of trying to live with people who aren’t used to that would be too much. Then he found an apartment in our neighborhood that was the right price. He made an appointment and went to look at it on his own. He paid the deposit and dealt with the paperwork. I thought he was finally ready.
With all the enthusiasm I possess, I offered to take Shayne on a shopping trip to get things like a new shower curtain, sheets, towels, maybe a new trash can. He seemed less than enthused and said I could get whatever, but then reluctantly agreed to join me because he wanted to look for a movie. He did grab a shower curtain, but said he didn’t need anything else. I took the day off work to help him move, but he didn’t make any effort to pack up anything. We moved the big stuff like his bed, a table that I bought for him at a yard sale, and a couch, but he didn’t want to sleep at his new place. Instead he came home to watch Monday night football and fell asleep on the couch.
It’s been a week now. More of his things have moved over to the apartment. He hung up his James Bond poster in the living room yesterday and took over some movies. He is still sleeping on the couch. I made an analogy to this being like getting your toddler out of your bed to sleep in his big boy bed. And like that, I just have to be patient and keep encouraging him and reassuring him. It will happen.
Sometimes I think the lesson I keep getting in life is building my patience. The world isn’t on my timetable. I think he is ready for this. I think he will be fine. I just need to keep believing in him and wait until he believes in himself.
People keep asking me why I’m not blogging. That question makes me feel guilty. Like somehow I’m letting people down. I learned a new term this summer–preproduction. It’s a time to process information and sort out thoughts and simmer ideas. That’s what I’ve been doing.
In June, my son and I went to Chicago. We went to three Cubs games. I got addicted to the Cubs song–Google it and tell me that it doesn’t get into your head. I went to the Art Institute and saw the most amazing Georgia O’Keefe show. O’Keefe has been my favorite artist for most of my life. When I went to the Georgia O’Keefe musuem in Santa Fe, I actually got teary. It was so emotional for me to see her paintings in person after loving her for so long. The show in Chicago was spectacular. It had many paintings that took place early in O’Keefe’s career, during her time in New York. All the things she learned about painting in the city, she took with her to the desert. I am always amazed that she can use oils so seamlessly–her strokes look like glass. When I got home from Chicago, my friend dropped off a bunch of oil paints for me to have. I still haven’t opened them. I just lined them up in a row and think about what I might paint with them. I guess my painting is in pre-production too.
I have spent a fair amount of time with my brothers this summer. My oldest brother has fallen on some hard times. He never really recovered from losing his wife. His depression was so deep that he became paralyzed from Trisha and he lost his house. It’s tough to watch someone spiral and not really be able to do anything. I have lost a lot of sleep over it. I keep thinking of my mom. She wouldn’t want her son homeless or living in his car. Yet at the same time, I’ve got my hands full as it is. I’ve thought a lot about hard things that happen in life. I guess hard things can happen to us or for us; it is really up to us to decide which preposition to use. I sat on my couch an entire day and felt pretty shitty for not letting my brother come live with me. I have an extra bedroom, but I knew that it would also be really unhealthy for me and for my son. Shayne is doing very well right now, but he is fragile. He needs a consistent schedule and as little stress as possible. If we keep life on an even keel, he can remain stable. It’s taken years for us to get to this place and I’m not willing to rock the boat. I realized that as hard as it was to not let my brother come live with me, that it was the right thing for us. All the things that I’ve had to do in my life really gave me the strength to say no. I believe that my brother will find his own way and be okay. And in the end maybe even be better for it. He has angels in his life; he just needs to believe that they are there.
Lastly, I was chosen as a rural Colorado teacher National Board recipent. The National Board is high level education program for teachers. I’ve always wanted to go through the program, but it’s very expensive and I’ve never really been able to afford it. Receiving the grant was a huge surprise and ten years ago, I would have been thrilled. Now I’m at the end of my career and I wonder why the opportunity is coming now. I have spent several weeks thinking about the program and the commitment and if I should accept the honor or not. It would mean a three year commitment to teaching and a year ago, I wasn’t sure I had another day in me. However, it is something that I’ve always wanted to do and maybe this is what the universe is giving me now?
So that leads me to this moment right now. I’m currently in Denver at The Process participating in something called “Friday Night Writes.” The Process is a space–mostly rooms decorated with tables and chairs and lights and plants. It’s for writers to come and have organized work sessions. Friday Night Writes is an event that supports seven hours of production time with snacks and drinks and prizes on the hour, every hour. I won a sticker. The only thing I know for sure is that writing is still the one thing that I do every day. I wake up thinking about words and I go to bed at night thinking about words. Even if I haven’t been blogging, the stories are brewing and are ready to spew forth once again. I can’t wait to see where they take me.
On Friday, one of our sixth grade students got called down to the office. Her mother was killed in a car accident. I heard about it while I was signing my name. I forgot how to form the letters. I left out one of my “l’s” and my signature was shaky, like I was learning to write all over again. In that instant I was taken back to the night that I got my own phone call of losing my parents, the moment that changed my life forever.
The tidal wave of sadness, fear, helplessness came rushing back. For once I didn’t try to escape, instead I let all the feelings wash over me. It seemed like I was awake most of the night listening to the rain fall. In the morning instead of making myself get up and push my feelings away, I listened to music and cried a little and then went to the glass studio.
I made frit. Frit is basically ground glass. It can be purchased, but the advantage of making it is that different colors can be mixed and the texture can be really fine, really course, or anything in between. Glass in the blender makes an angry crunch., a satisfying sound. But spooning the frit into heart shaped molds has a meditative quality. The hours slipped by.
While I was making the hearts, I thought of my student. All year, she has been a kid that has had my full attention. Her reading skills are atrocious, but she compensates by asking a million questions and checking in and listening to every word, she misses nothing. She is loud, rude, and obnoxious, but also helpful, attentive., and a pleaser. She’s like the glass hearts, hard and fragile .
I have grown to care deeply about her and she left on Friday, before I knew what happened. I want to talk to her. I know this girl. She’s going to be tough and brave and not show she is dying inside. I know how that story unfolds. I want to tell her it’s okay to feel whatever she feels. Life will never be the same, but it does not stop. She is a victim, but she gets to decide how to be a survivor. Maybe I just want to give her a hug, because she will have to figure out her own path.
I used to think of grief of this kind of forest to get through. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to reroute myself. Now I see it is a one way trail. It’s not straight, or easy, but the only way to the other side is to stay the course and trust that light will find the dark places.
Since Christmas, I have been co-teaching a program called AVID with my colleagues. AVID stands for achievement via individualized determination. The program focuses on teaching kids that success comes through determination. There are organizational components, team building, and career and college exploration. It’s really made me reflect on how little I knew about ALL those tbings when I was a kid. It’s made me ask the questions: what would have better prepared me and is what I am doing helping these kids get what they need?
To be honest, I don’t even know if I had much ambition when I was a sixth grader, I think I planned on marrying a cowboy and having some kids and horses. I remember my senior year in high school honestly feeling like I wasn’t ready for college. It wasn’t afraid to leave home, it was more that I didn’t have a clear cut idea of what I wanted to do for a living. I thought maybe I would like to go to a New York and set paint, but I wasn’t sure of the path to that goal.
I might have been academically ready for college, but in every other way, I was not, especially financially. I got a job my third day on campus. In fact, I often worked two or three jobs during my years in Boulder. My lasting friendships from college were with workmates, not classmates, or roommates.. It seemed like I fit my classes around my work schedule, instead of the other way around. And I had a hard time understanding how my coursework was going to translate into a career. Sure Moby Dick was interesting to read, but was it really going to help me pay my rent? I meandered through college without a real definitive career goal. Even after college, a degree in hand, I felt like I was floating untethered through adulthood, sort of like a balloon, losing helium and buffeting about in the breeze.
When I was in my early thirties, I visited the University of Wisconsin on a one day trip to Madison. The campus is set on the shores of Lake Michigan and the summer is beautiful. Sailboats dot the horizon and kids skateboard in the perfect temperature and toss frisbees back and forth on the green lawns. I realized that at that moment that I was ready for college., except at that point I had two kids and a mortgage. I was figuring out what to be when I was grown up , but I was already grown up.
When my daughter was looking at colleges, we visited some that she had interest in. I wanted to make sure she had set foot on a variety of campuses and could imagine herself on one of them. One of the campuses we went to was Sarah Lawerence just north of New York City. I will never forget getting out of the cab and stepping into a small oasis of brick and ivy with Manhattan in the distance. I felt like I was at the campus of my dreams. When I heard about the writing institute , I once again felt the pang for going back to college as an adult because I was ready to appreciate the experience.
A couple of years ago, I took a novel writing workshop through SL as a treat to myself. My writing was chosen to be featured in a lesson on breaking with traditional forms. It was flattering and scary, but affirming all at the same time. I played around with getting a certificate or degree from the program, but I don’t have room in my life for college debt. I want windows in my house, and a new garage. Plus is writing in a classroom going to make me a better writer?
Teaching AVID and being back in the language arts classroom really has made me realize how much I have put my passions on simmer, so I could do the things I thought I had to do. I have been fortunate enough to keep my creativity stirred, but never really let it fully take over my world.
I applied for a scholarship to the Sarah Lawerence Writing Institute for a virtual writing class. I found out yesterday, that I got the scholarship. I am overjoyed for this opportunity. I feel like it’s not a chance for a do over, but a chance to bring everything I have learned and make the most of what is offered to me. This time I am ready.
When I was in fourth grade there was an eclipse. We made”glasses” with cardboard and pinholes and I honestly don’t remember the process. What I do remember is gathering outside with all the school and using my milk carton to look at the sun. It was fun for a minute, then I dropped the carton on accident and it got crushed by one of the milling masses, forever marking my memory of my first eclipse. Fortunately, I have had other opportunities to experience the wonders of the sun and moon intersecting.
On Monday, I wasn’t focused on the eclipse at all. Instead I was trying to figure out a way for kids to practice citing text evidence, because the STATE ASSESSMENT was looming. The kids came rushing back from recess asking me if I had seen the ellipse. I knew right away they meant the eclipse, because I can barely get them to use periods, I haven’t’ dared tackle ellipses. They would not stop gathering at the window. They would not stop talking about going blind. They would not stop shrieking my name because they were so excited to tell me about the sun being eaten by the moon. I was pretty sure I was going to lose my mind. No one gave a damn about citing text evidence.
Then Tuesday came and we started state testing. I am skipping the test part because part of the directions say that the test is not be spoken of. I started calling it “the test that cannot be named,” but only in my head. The kids were good during the allotted 110 minutes, but really didn’t want to do anything after. I found a super interesting article about the history of solar eclipses with an interactive poll and a way students could post a response and reply to each other. They were so excited about the eclipse on Monday, but learning about it through reading was a BIG ask. But it gave me an epiphany.
Maybe the epiphany was coming, because this has been something I have been puzzling over for sometime. Kids hate reading. They have been taught to read for answers someone else is asking. They have not been taught that reading can be fun, that reading can take you somewhere else entirely, that reading can spark questions and thinking and dreams and desires. For the most part, reading for many students, is a hoop of flames to avoid.
Since Christmas I have been team teaching a class called AVID. AVID is a program designed to teach academic success through things such as goal setting, collaboration, inquiry, exploration and team building. I haven’t been formally trained, but I have a handbook, and a website, and I have watched someone model the lessons. I have also been teaching for thirty years and it’s no different than any other program designed to teach kids how to be successful. The great thing about AVID is that I get to team teach with my colleagues. We can plan together, and help each other with management and technology and not feel alone when events go awry. So during this week of crazy solar phenomena and state assessments, we decided to do team building activities during AVID. We started with building a device to drop an egg safely. We gave kids two dollars in play money and they had to purchase things like cotton balls and tape with their money. I also told them could have an extra dollar if they sang a song as a group. Most eggs did not survive the flights, but the kids answered their exit tickets with thoughtful, honest responses and enjoyed the process. Then we provided the students a bunch of cardboard and the left over egg drop materials and split them into teams to make a marble maze. It was a surprise for me to see the creativity come out. The students built obstacles, ramps, and cages to trap the marbles at the end. One team even had the marble fall into a cup of water at the finish line. If the maze didn’t work, there was no rage quitting instead diligent problem solving ensued. At one point a girl said to me “Is this for a grade, or just for funsies?” I said, “Oh, it’s for a grade. It’s worth 156,000 points.” She smiled. Every team made a maze. No one was harmed in the making. Everyone, including the teachers, had fun, and creativity, cooperation, and trial and error lead to success.
I realized that maybe the joy of reading can be unlocked in this same way–with risk-taking and vulnerability and reflection. State assessment is over for language arts, but I have six weeks left to help kids see that words have the power to transform. Part of me doesn’t know if that’s enough time. But a bigger part of me knows that a single moment of wonder can unlock doors forever. I am willing to take the leap.
Just Another Damn Thing to be Strong About 