Somemore Vocation

I honestly don't have any updates on what my vocation actually might be, but for the moment I do have an answer for my next step. I still think that teaching might be my road, but not middle school.

I accepted a high school math position at YES Prep NC.

I am actually really excited about the job. First, I get to teach high school. Second, I get to teach at YES, which is just an amazing place to work. The faculty is fun, and completely focused on getting the kids to college. The kids want to be there. They work hard and are friendly. Secondly, my course load is sweet; 2 sections of Alg 1, 2 sections of Alg 2 and 1 section of Robotics. Yep. I get my own robotics course.

So I am staying in Houston for at least another year.

Vocation

I was talking with one of my buddies from Purdue when he mentioned that I sounded depressed. Well, not "sounded" depressed, but that my blog made me seem like I was depressed.

I am not depressed. Currently, I am facing a vocational crisis, and it is consuming a good amount of my energy. Luckily, my pal Thomas Merton arrived just in time. The chapter on "Being and Doing" just ended, giving way to chapter 8: "Vocation." Hallelujah (or in other words: it's about time).

So here is a little soothing balm for anyone who is also suffering a vocational crisis.

Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

We must not imagine that we only discover this destiny by a game of hide-and-seek with Divine Providence. Our vocation is not a sphinx's riddle, which we must solve in one guess or else perish. Some people find, in the end, that they have made many wrong guesses and that their paradoxical vocation is to go through life guessing wrong. It takes them a long time to find out that they are happier that way.

In any case, our destiny is the work of two wills, not one. It is not an immutable fate, forced upon us without any choice of our own, by a divinity without heart.

Our vocation is not a supernatural lottery but the interaction of two freedoms, and, therefore, of two loves. It is hopeless to try to settle the problem of vocation outside of the context of friendship and of love. We speak of Providence: that is a philosophical term. The Bible speaks of our Father in Heaven. Providence is, consequently, more than an institution, it is a person. More than a benevolent stranger, He is our Father. And even the term Father is too loose a metaphor to contain all the depths of the mystery: for He loves us more than we love ourselves, as if we were Himself. He loves us moreover with our own wills, with our own decisions. How can we understand the mystery of our union with God Who is closer to us than we are to ourselves? It is His very closeness that makes it difficult for us to think of Him. He Who is infinitely above us, infinitely different from ourselves, infinitely "other" from us, nevertheless dwells in our souls, watches over every movement of our life with as much love as if we were His own self. His love is at work bringing good out of all our mistakes and defeating even our sins.
- Thomas Merton. No Man Is an Island. Pgs 131-132.

Projector

From January until spring break, I was not too excited about teaching. In fact, I was not excited to the point that I adopted a behavior that had never before existed - I began hitting the snooze button.

Regardless of how I arrived in that low place, nor what I ought to do as a result of it (in terms of life, vocation, etc.), I decided that 2 months of dreading work was just not something I was prepared to accept when I could take steps to change it.

And so, steps were taken.
I purchased a projector. For my classroom.
And for watching movies with a 17.5 foot diagonal screen in our living room.
But mainly for my classroom.

Today was the first day teaching with my new projector. My kids were excited. I was excited. I am still excited. I am actually planning right now (well, not right now).

So, if you ever get to the point where you are hitting the snooze 3 times a morning because you don't want to face the day, all you need to do is visit your nearest electronics retailer or Amazon.com and purchase yourself a projector. Guaranteed to boost morale, or your money back.

Of course, having a week off helps too.

I am Good

My friends came home yesterday.

Being a teacher, I am afforded an amazing opportunity to vacation. Just like a kid, I look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas and Spring Break with an eager anticipation that can only be described as liberation. Last year I went to Big Bend National Park for spring break. The year before that I went to Great Smokies National Park. This year, I stayed home.

My friends went down to Port Aransas for 5 days. They rented a house on the beach, and had crazy adventures like going on a casino cruise boat during a tornado warning, not bringing any cash, having credit machines go down in the storm, and being trapped, sea-sick, with nothing to do except watch other people drink and gamble (because they couldn't get any money). I stayed home.

My friends asked me to come but I declined. I was feeling very single. Three couples were going on the trip, and, well, I just didn't want to deal with it. Looking at them, thinking about being in their company seemed to highlight things that were not (I am not in a relationship. I do not know what job I will have. I do not know what I want.) instead of the things that were (My friends love me. They enjoy my company. I love my friends). So I stayed home.

During the time they were gone, I bummed around. I rode my bike. I climbed at TRG. I watched movies. I read books. I didn't cook. I thought about my future.

Thinking about the future is dangerous for me. I start thinking, and the thinking just spirals outward, ever outward. Figuring out the future is hard because it hasn't happened yet. And I don't want to mess it up. Those two governing criteria make success pretty difficult. Especially because I am not that great about Today, and shoot, I'm doing that right now.

Take teaching. I guess I am an okay teacher. I am not great. I am not bad.
Take engineering. I am an okay engineer. I am not great. I am not bad.
In fact, there is a list that could extend across multiple pieces of paper listing the things I am okay at.

And this fact also adds to the spiral of future thinking. I don't know what I want to do. I look around at people around me, like my friends, and I see qualities that I want to emulate. I see there not-singleness. I see there plans. I see their passion. I see their success. And those things stand in stark contrast against the corresponding abilities in me; the only difference being that I find my qualities to be lacking.

I've been reading a chapter called "Being and Doing", in Thomas Merton's No Man Is an Island.

Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?

We cannot be ourselves unless we know ourselves....We cannot begin to know ourselves until we can the real reasons why we do the things we do , and we cannot be ourselves until our actions correspond to our intentions, and our intentions are appropriate to our own situation. But that is enough. It is not necessary that we succeed in everything. Am an can be perfect and still reap n o fruit from his work, and it may happen that a man who is able to accomplish very little is much more of a person than another who seems to accomplish very much."
- Pg 126

I think this is very true. When Jesus called his disciples, they were not Torah rockstars. They were not rich, successful people. They were fishermen. They were the people who were not good enough to make the cut to be disciples of Rabbis in the regular Jewish culture. And they messed up. They messed up a lot.

Right after Jesus was crucified, he appears to the disciples and he has a conversation with Peter. Peter was one of Jesus' three closest friends, but Peter lied about this friendship 3 times while Jesus was imprisoned. He had messed up. But the conversation is not about the betrayal. Instead, Jesus comes to Peter and asks if him if he still wants to follow, if he still wants to take part in Jesus' work. Peter doesn't respond with joy. He doesn't even respond with guilt. He responds with, "Well what about HIM? What about John? What are you going to do with John?"

I think that I too often act like Peter. I too often "strive to be something I would never want to be" because I see it in other people and it seems to be working so well. But I am not made that way. Currently, I am an okay teacher. And that's okay. It is not okay if I stay here, if I do not try and improve, but for today, it is okay.

There are other things I can do. I can cook a meal for my friends. I can bless them by providing that for them. I can combine tastes into something amazing that makes you pause as it shouts on your tongue.

I am good at that. And that's okay. For today.

What Next?

My commitment to Teach For America, and to my original placement school ends with the school year. My friends are all eagerly discussing their applications and interviews, cheering acceptances and morning rejections. I have applied to one position. I was rejected.

But this is not a post about rejection. Yes it sucks, but it does not control my life. It happens, sometimes a lot, and we have the choice to learn or not, try again or not. My thoughts are not on "what did not" but instead on "what I should".

I am envious of people who have a plan. I still remember the cutting words of my friend B., a pivotal person in my spiritual growth, who said, "What are your plans? You don't know? I've been telling boys I know that they should Be a Man, have a plan." It is one of those pithy sayings that makes one's spirits immediately sink. I fear that what was true for me then is still true now; I am big on dreams, pretty light on plans.

I have friends who tell me that I am good at finding opportunities, going or doing things that are out of the ordinary course. My mother says the same thing, which makes it definitely true. But even if I am good at finding opportunities, my current hang-up is on what opportunities I should find. What dream should I turn into a plan.

The normal things are guiding me. I want to get paid. Hopefully, enough to eat, have a place, take some trips, have Internet. I want to meet new and exciting people. I want community. I want to grow and learn. I want to see and live in the outdoors. I want to meet a girl before the questions from my family become to frequent and I stop wanting to visit as a result.

But more than these things, I want to be challenged and I want to know that what I do matters. My application to TFA was centered on these two ideas. Of course I got almost all of the other things as a bonus, but I was seeking a challenge, and significance in my life. And I don't know where I can find that again.

And it is not that my current job lacks significance all of the sudden. Or that I am some amazing teacher and it is no longer a challenge. Maybe I just want more...excitement. Maybe I just want the new car smell.

I guess this post kinda lacks a conclusion. Well, I don't have this figured out. If anyone does, please let me know.

More Heavy Merton

I have been slowly working through "No Man Is an Island" by Thomas Merton. I've been trying to read this book for something like 3 years now, as I keep starting and stopping. Each section is so much for me to handle; I usually have to re-read a one page section a couple times to really understand the points. Then once I have understood it, I need more time to look at my life through the lens of that particular section.

Since we are in the season of Lent, it is fitting that the chapter I am currently working through is entitled "Asceticism and Sacrifice". Below is an excerpt from the section I read last night.

No matter what our aims may be, no matter how spiritual, no matter how intent we think we are upon the glory of God and His Kingdom, greed and passion enter into our work and turn it into agitation as soon as our intention ceases to be pure. And who can swear that his intentions are pure, even down to the subconscious depths of his will, where ancient selfish motives move comfortably like forgotten sea monsters in waters where they are never seen!

In order to defend ourselves against agitation, we must be detached not only from the immediate results of our work – and this detachment is difficult and rare – but from the whole complex of aims that govern our earthly lives. We have to be detached from health and security, from pleasures and possessions, from people and places and conditions and things. We have to be indifferent to life itself, in the Gospel sense, living like the lilies of the filed, seeking first the kingdom of Heaven and trusting that all our material needs will be taken care of into the bargain. How many of us can say, with any assurance, that we have even begun to live like this?

Lacking this detachment, we are subject to a thousand fears corresponding to our thousand anxious desires. Everything we love is uncertain: when we are seeking it, we fear we may not get it. When we have obtained it, we fear even more that it may be lost. Every threat to our security turns our work into agitation.

So this section basically punched me in the face. I think I will need at least a week to sort through it. The detachment section...geez. The reality is that as I am currently thinking about what to do next, yes I am praying "Thy will be done" but at the same time I am thinking "Hmm, I want some place with lots to do, that has mountains and water, that is warm. I want a place with a job that gives me lots of time off, but is meaningful, and uses all of my abilities. I want it to pay a lot. I don't want it to be too stressful. I want a community who will appreciate and validate me. I want I want I want."

Conservationalism Again

I loaned "Serve God Save the Planet" to a friend of mine, so it was out of my possession for a couple months. During that time, I talked about it on various occasions with a diverse group of people. I made choices for my house as I could make them. The call to be stewards became one always near the forefront of my mind, imposing itself in the periphery of my daily life.

Now that it is back in my possession, I was thumbing through it, recalling different aspects of the challenge that it offers, when I came upon the following passage, taken from one of the giants of Christian theological thought.

Let him who possesses a field, so partake of its yearly fruits, that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by negligence; but let him endeavor to hand it down to posterity as he received it, or even better cultivated. Let hi so feed on its fruits, that he neither dissipates it by luxury, nor permits it to be marred or ruined by neglect...Let every one regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses. - John Calvin

This last, "Let every one regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses," represents an idea that has been moving me during this school year. Just like in the parable of the talents, where the master rewards the servants who worked hard with the amounts they were given, so every single gift, ability, possession is given me that I might be a blessing to others with it.

It is not unlike a parent giving toys to a child. The parent does not start off, unless they are foolish, by just buying a $3000 entertainment center or drum set or roller blades. First, the parent will get a simpler object, an introductory object, which will satiate the child's desire, but at the same time, will serve as a test to see just how interested, how serious, the child's original request was. The child's actions bear out true intentions; if the child cares for it, uses it, is willing to share it, then they were earnest in their request and a further investment would be prudent.

This idea is one of the causes of my current career struggles. I feel pressure, now that I know I ought to be sharing whatever I can do, to invest in all my abilities. I feel somewhat like a failure because I cannot come up with some brilliant idea that utilizes all of my personality quarks, each of my skill sets, and at the same time is a service to God and man.

I mean, I spent all of college honing my mind in the rigorous problem-solving structure of engineering, and teaching simply does not utilize that kind of technical aptitude. And a traditional engineering job denies my athletic nature and my social nature; I cannot sit in a cubicle all day.

So I think I finally came up with the perfect job. I am going to travel by foot (running, cycling, walking, hiking) from place to place, and clean the areas I go, while doing some sort of rigorous environmental study, and then show up in some place and have an amazing kitchen waiting for me where I will cook gourman meals for people I meet and design custom engineering devices. Oh and I am going to get paid for this. Who will fund this enterprise I have yet to iron out, since I just made this up.

Why the Balancing Act?

This earlier post talked about two sides, schools of thought, on education.

Here is a summary from one of the education blog reel I read. It emphasizes the human quality of teaching including the following:

I’m concerned with the jobs my students get - especially with the jobs my special education students get. But I’m more concerned with the sort of people they become. And what of the minimalist approach that looks at children and teenagers and thinks first (or only) about their place in society’s economy? I find it insulting to core. It makes me want to heckle public speakers and defend the values I imbibed as a student of the liberal arts.
- Dangerously Irrelevant Blog

For another view on this topic, this blog post by another TFA alum argues for national assessments.

Won't this just take teaching to the test to the nth degree?
Teaching to the test happens when the test doesn't reflect what otherwise should be taught. If teaching to the test becomes teaching students to pass a vital, standards-based, focused assessment each week, isn't that just teaching with a test?
- from the t.f.a. trenches Blog

I do not mean to set these two articles up as mutually exclusive. Instead, I have noticed in my own teaching experience that I struggle to strike a balance between the ideas of giving character and life type education and more formal skill and knowledge type education. There is a finite amount of time in the classroom, and every decision I make moves my students toward some end. With data in front of me and always at the forefront of my mind, I tend to get caught up in how far my students have to go, and how much we need to focus on skills. I forget that there is more to life, more that my students need to experience to be successful.

This is especially true in middle school. I guess my conclusion is that we need national assessments. We need the accountability. Our students are supposed to be receiving a service, a product, and only assessment gives the nation or the public or the consumer/student feedback on what that service actually amounts to. In this push to provide an excellent product, an excellent education however, we educators cannot lose sight of the fact that an excellent education is more than just making a growth goal or making a mastery number for the year or passing an exit exam. We educators must also make choices that provide opportunities for providing decision making abilities, ethics, communication, social structures. We must make instructional decisions that make life possible in our classrooms.

Balancing Act in Action

This post is wrapping up my teacher-talk on planning and NCLB. When last mentioned, a question about "What Ought to be Taught" loomed on our collective horizon.

This question has two sides, as I see it. The first, I shall term Accountability. The Accountability side of the debate centers on, well, accountability. "We need accountability for students, for teachers, for administrators and for schools, and shoot, while we're at it, we need accountability on the policy-makers and politicians setting this whole system up too," might be the call to arms for the Accountability Camp. They might take issue with what exactly should be assessed, but some assessment is better than no assessment, and let's be honest, this is a work-in-progress folks, so they will take the TAKS test, they will take the NY Regents, they will take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, they will call for greater state-to-state alignment and national standards. They will call for merit pay because we should reward teachers who actually, well, teach...well. They will call for high expectations; high expectations for student learning, high expectations for teacher performance. The end game for Accountability is an excellent product; in this case, graduates that are capable of doing anything and everything and contributing to society (I assume.)

The somewhat-opposing view I will label as holistic (Note: I am completely making this stuff up. I am trying to put to words the sense I have of how things work, and I don't know how well it conveys the true nature of things.). This view is that students are Individuals, people. They have desires, needs, dreams, and education should lead them to self-actualization so that they can choose for themselves the path for their lives. As a teacher then, my role would be to help students to understand the world and their place in it, to help them learn to ask and answer questions that they themselves pose, to give the skills they need to relate to the world. Testing does not really fit into this structure.

I don't know that I have ironed out exactly what my view on the role of education is, but I know that Pure Accountability makes me feel empty when I teach, while Pure Holistic denies the reality of the system and gatekeepers that students must pass to advance into college or whatever.

A couple of weeks ago I had a lesson that did a pretty good job of balancing these competing purposes.

The lesson was the first of three or four dealing with the equivalence of rational numbers; this idea that fractions, percents and decimals all communicate the same amounts, parts of a whole, but are written in different forms. The objective for the lesson was for my students to see that all the numbers work the same way, and that we can compare them.

The lesson started with a situation.

"You just got a graduation gift of money. How much money do we have?"
Answers would range from $100 to $600. Surprisingly not one class went crazy on this.
"Okay, we have $500 dollars. We are going to put it in a bank account. Does anybody know why we might want to do this?"
Answers included so that we can write checks, to get a credit card, to save it for later. Roughly 20% of my students knew that bank accounts actually pay interest.
"Well, banks actually pay us to put our money there. If we leave our money in the bank, it will get more money for us and we don't have to do anything. So we have three banks to choose from. They have different savings rates. Which one should we choose?"
Kids knew that they wanted the most money possible. That was easy.

So, I conveniently changed the savings rates to easier numbers (none of this 0.32% crap), and made each bank use a different form of the rational numbers. As a class we went through and computed the first banks interest. As a table (group of 3ish), students did the second bank. As individuals, students computed the third bank. This took about 20 minutes.

"So which bank should we put our money in? Oh yea, Bank 3 gave us the most money! Cool. So let's review. We had a fraction a decimal and a percent, but they all gave us about the same amount of money. Hmm. We just spent 20 minutes figuring that out. Do you know we could have figured it out in 2 minutes?"

Groans echoed through the room. "Mister!" came the call from exasperated students.

I now introduce the idea of comparing rational numbers by changing them to the same form. We change them all to percents in 50 seconds, and have the best account in 70.

It was an early release day, so class was over at this point, but my students left knowing something real about the world (saving money in a financial institution helps me not to spend it AND it pays me money) and the saw something true about problem solving (there are many different ways to solve problems, just some are faster than others) and something content-wise (to compare rational numbers I need to have them all in the same form).

I felt extremely satisfied at the end of that lesson.

Post #55

There was this game, you know, advertised on TV when I was a kid, with all of these sticks and marbles and you tried not to have the marbles fall. My brother tells me that the game was called Kerplunk. I'm currently too lazy to confirm this. The point however, is that my Christmas break is best represented by the game Kerplunk. Well, maybe a backwards Kerplunk.

In this analogy, my sanity, my life, is represented by marbles. Novel, right? Well, in normal standing, there are like, I don't know, 20 little sticks holding up all the marbles, and depending on the day, sticks are being removed, sticks are being added, whatever. Well, this Christmas break has brought an influx of fully operational sticks. Sticks have come in and buttressed the crap outta everything that's already there.

It's like all of these different pieces are coming together and either supporting existing structures that were weak (propping up a sagging cross-beam) or completely replacing/removing structures that were decaying (replacing a cross-beam, removing that wing of a house).

Hmm. I guess you know that an analogy doesn't work if you need another analogy to explain it, but whatever. So I don't think I am making any sense. But I want post 55. Again, I the point is that pieces just keep coming together.

Or maybe they are falling apart. Yesterday I tried to take my parents to a movie. We drove to the wrong theater. The movie only shows on one screen, in one theater, at one time each day. We missed it. I read the internet incorrectly.

Today I missed my flight. Well, I was in time to catch my connection; if I had been in Memphis, TN. I wasn't. So yea, I missed it. Because I couldn't read the internet correctly. But, I seized the opportunity and went to see the movie I missed yesterday. Bella is powerful. I recommend it.

I don't know what that's about, but I still feel like things are coming together. Happy New Year. Happy 2008. Happy post #55.

N. Y. C.

"We're not scaremongering / This is really happening / Happening / We're not scaremongering / This is really happening / Happening / Mobiles skwerking / Mobiles chirping / Take the money and run / Take the money and run / Take the money / Here I'm allowed / Everything all of the time / Here I'm allowed / Everything all of the time"
- Idiotheque from Kid A by Radiohead.

Radiohead plays. Shouts. It is the soundtrack of my exploration and discovery. The subway plunges into and through portals of clinical light back into darkness. This is my soundtrack for the exploration and discovery of New York City.

I flew up to NYC on a Thursday. My sub plans were in order, complete with contact information in case of emergency, referrals for the bad students, and an excess of work for all of my wonderful kiddos. It is harder to get into trouble when you are drowning in worksheets. Of course, sometimes you get into trouble because you are drowning in worksheets. So with sub plans in order, I left school at 3 pm to make it to the airport for my 5:30 flight to Newark International (EWR). I normally get out of school at 4:15, but since I had this flight I skipped my planning period, conveniently located during last period.

I made it to Bush in plenty of time to wait for 2 hours of flight delays. There was freezing rain in New Jersey. Planes couldn't land.

We eventually took off. I arrived at 12. I waited for the train. It came at 1.

The train from EWR is nondescript. There is nothing notable about it. It has seats. It has windows. In fact, the trip into NYC would lead one to believe, if one did not know better, that the train merely passed through some minor industrial and residential areas before continuing into some unknown countryside. This is managed by way of tunnels; it is very hard to tell that you are entering the most populous city in the US if you are underground. Underground there are no signs of millions of inhabitants. There are just walls. And lights. And the rushing wind as the train plows through then artificial (and in my case, actual) night.

No, the first signs of New York come after I disembark at Penn Station. I step out of the train, drag rolling luggage after me, and climb 2 flights of stairs. I see ticket booths. Changing boards of arrival and departure times. Some people. I climb another flight of stairs. To 8th Ave and 31st St. The city punches me in the face.

Buildings tear into the sky, tear at the sky. At 1:15 am Friday morning, the cacophony of taxis, people, assaults me. The city is alive, it is a living, breathing, moving thing, which demands action, and will continue to do so until I depart. But first I must sleep.

See, I am in New York City because Teach For America has its national office there. I need to be at TFA's national office so that I can interview to be a program director in Denver. Or Memphis. Every winter and early spring, for the past I don't know how long, TFA site managers converge on NYC so they can screen candidates for PD and RD jobs, jobs which basically amount to managing corps members (that's a PD) or recruiting college seniors (that's an RD). I am here because I might want to be a Program Director. I think I would be good at it. Turns out, either TFA doesn't think so, or the openings did not line up with my abilities. Cuz I didn't get an offer.

Interviews were Friday. They were fun. I thought I conducted myself well, giving a fair showing of my abilities and my faults. I do not like to mislead.

After the interviews, I called my buddy Ajay who lives in Manhattan. Hey Man, what should I do? Maybe go to the museums. Go here, catch this train, get off, take this shuttle, take this other train, get off, turn around, walk, click your heels.

The instructions continue. I botch em. I ride the subway, listening to Radiohead. Radiohead is my anthem for NYC. Its sounds perfectly fit the forced proximity, the spiritual, emotional, psychological detachment. You have to cope somehow when you ride the subway, packed into a car with no room to move, to sit, to breathe. Radiohead anthems.

I walk through Central Park. Miles to and fro. It's cold. There's snow. I see rock shear out of the ground. I think about climbing it. I walk to the Guggenheim. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the museum. It has a 4 floor spiral staircase. With a 50 foot diameter. Approximately. I didn't measure it or anything. I look at Richard Prince's art work. There are lots of prints of trashy romance novels. With nurses. There are some pictures of cowboys. I'd like to be a cowboy. Someday. There are silk screens of Found Jokes. They are all dirty. I laugh at some.

After leaving, I retrace my steps. I pick up my bag at the hotel. I walk across Manhattan pulling my suitcase. To Ajay's. We go out. We are looking for the Art Bar. Apparently it's close, but we walk for 30 minutes with no luck. We find the Village Vanguard. The greats played here; Coltrane, Dizzy, Davis, Marsalis. I stumble across it while looking for the Art Bar.

We decide we are lost. We get ready to call a cab. We see the Art bar. I'm starving. It's 10. I haven't eaten since noon. I meet his friends. I destroy my hamburger. We leave and go to some other bar. There is a birthday party for some friend of Ajay's. Some other people show up. We walk across the street to some German bar. They sell Liter Beers. Liter Beers are consumed.

We leave. We go back across the street to the birthday party. Dancing is happening. It's crowded. I dance around. No one is paying attention. I can't hear anyone. We pack up and head to the Beauty Bar. In a cab.

At the Beauty Bar, they are playing 50s music. Some early 60s. It's bop. It's On the Road. It's perfect. I dance. We dance. There are little chairs around the room, where ladies used to get their hair done. Those ones with the space helmet looking things on em. That go over your head. Over your curls. I dance some more. Some ladies prowl on me. I laugh. I dance. I ignore them.

We leave at 3:30. Ajay and I cab it to his place. I pass out in minutes.

Saturday comes, and passes at a steady but lethargic pace. We wake after noon, and make plans to eat brunch, even though I thought brunch was between breakfast and lunch, not after lunch, but maybe it is all about your intentions, and we definitely intend to eat brunch. We talk. Ajay and I. Dreams, jobs, traveling. Where could we go? Where couldn't we go? What could we do? Would they pay us to do that?

I pack my stuff, even though it is pretty much packed, and take a cab to Penn Station. I leave the city in the same nondescript way I entered. The city backs out of view through the windows of Penn Station as I descend the steps to the main concourse. A guy gives me his train ticket. He had purchased the wrong one. Thanks man. You don't have to pay me or nothing, I just don't want it to go to waste. Oh, um, okay.

"Everyone / Everyone around here / Everyone is so near / It's holding on / It's holding on / Everyone / Everyone is so near / Everyone has got the fear / It's holding on / It's holding on."
- National Anthem from Kid A by Radiohead.

I'm just not doing work today

"What are you doing Susan?" I asked.
"Nothing Mister."
"What are we supposed to be doing right now?" I always try and draw the correct behavior out of my students like this. I wonder if they get sick of it.
"Oh I know we are supposed to be doing this Problem, and then working on this quiz. But I'm not doing work today."
At this point any sane person would pause, and continue very carefully. This student is very sure of herself. And she is alternating between sucking in her belly and pinching her belly fat and pushing it out and rubbing it.
I choose the safe route. "Really? Well, why not?"
"Look Mister. I'm fat. I look pregnant."
Again, any sane person would pause. I tread on shaky ground.
"Nope, you don't. That's just your belly. But we are talking about the Problem. We have to choose one of the stores. You did a really good job on this on Wednesday and Thursday. Let's do it once more and then you get to go home for the weekend."
"No Mister, I'm not doing any work today. I'm tired."

Her resolution was apparent. The blank stare, the eye contact, the lazy way she played with her belly fat (she is an extremely petite 13 year old) all confirmed that she was not going to be doing anything, whether through bribes or threats or prosecution or act of God.

And being that it was Friday afternoon, my last class of the day, I decided that I didn't care. She *had* worked really hard all week. She answered all my questions all week long. She knew the material as well as anyone in the class. So I didn't push.

I feel like Susan right now. Not so much with the playing with the belly fat, although I do a little of that, but with the "I'm not doing any work today. I'm tired."

I came back from Thanksgiving with energy and a renewed compassion (and patience) for my kids, but that lasted a whopping 3 days. I have only had 2 days so far this year that began with the thought "I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to go to work. I don't want to deal with my kids today." Two days of that nature is far fewer than whatever number I had at the same time last year, so that is good. But I can't exactly say I have been excited on the other days, you know? There are some days, when I am excited, but normally, I am just on auto-pilot.

I wonder if that is normal. I wonder if this feeling is telling me that I ought to do something else. And really, I don't know. What I do know is that right now I am tired, and I don't want to do any work. So I'm not gonna. I'm gonna play with my belly fat.

Confirmations

This week I have been blessed by two independent forms of confirmation. Actually, come to think of it, there have been more than two, so I will put the total at 4, but I only will speak of two in this post. How's that for useless information.

On Monday, I taught a rocking lesson. There is no way around it. Basically, I had my kids read the story in the post above, and then we talked about changing words into numbers etc etc. What was even better though, is that my district math specialist, district math interventionist and school math specialist all visited my classroom on a walk through. And they came during my second best class. And they were rocking hard core.

My district math specialist said "This is awesome. I want to clone you."
me: "What?"
Her: "I want to clone you and put you in every school in the district. This is exactly the kind of stuff we need to be doing in our classrooms."

So...yea. That's a pretty glowing review.

The second confirmation was second hand, so that tempers it slightly. Basically, someone who's opinion I respect in TFA told my roommate and I that "It would be a shame if you do not go on staff next year. You might not be AMAZING teachers, but the things you are thinking about, the work you are doing, this is what this organization needs."

To temper these moral boosters, are three independent confirmations that I am a secret-selfish-jackass. What happens is that my default personality is such that I meet 95% of expectations (for personal interaction) placed upon me, but once the friendships/relationships become more important, I inevitably do a sabotage maneuver by not really thinking about the other person. I don't really have an explanation other than, "I don't think I have been challenged before." Which I think is true.

So the thoughts running through my head currently are "what does it look like if I really focus on something?"

People Who Should Be Replaced by Elmos and Litepros

Oh man. The title was just suggested by my roommate and my eyes are watering. But seriously. I am talking about a large group of...um...teachers? at my school.

I am starting year 2, and there are individuals who I am still not sure what function they actually serve. Really, when you think about it, if it is not immediately apparent what you do in your place of employ, you are either A) so awesome that you are used only on an as-needed basis or B) you are so useless no one wants to use you for anything.

I have some personal exposure to some of the individuals to whom I am referring, so I know that if they fall into category A, they must be hiding it pretty darn well.

In other news, Mr. F and I want to write some grants for Elmos and Litepros. We feel like these two items will really bring our teaching to the cutting edge of technology. Or in other words, they will help us to do less work. And yea, our teaching will probably be more entertaining for our students, but really, it's to do less work.

As a result, we reach the natural next step: they should just fire the useless people and replace them with the Elmos and Litepros that we want.

Ready

I finished setting up room 1107 in preparation for Teaching: Year 2. I am very excited to see how all of the classes and trainings and planning work out for my kids this year. I think that my new focus on problem solving will be a great thing, but I don't really know yet.

On the positive side, I am not nervous. Teaching summer school gave me a dry-run on first day of school stuff, so I feel like I know what I want to do, where it will go. I feel prepared. Of course this is a huge shift from last year.

In other news, my quest to become environmentally aware and friendly is growing; I am now recycling. I even put up signs over the garbage to remind my roommates that they too have an obligation to recycle. They were forgetting.

I finished Serve God, Save the Planet, and highly recommend it to anybody who is interested in environmental or health issues. Even if you are not of the Christian persuasion, the author is well spoken (or written, I guess) with a lot of sound advise for everybody out there.

Bureaucracy

This week marked my first week back at Alief Middle School. Last week was full of professional development opportunities (oh yes, opportunities) through TFA or the Alief district, and while some of that time actually proved to be quite useful, it is just not the same as being on campus, in your classroom, getting things ready for Day 1. Which is the 27th.

In preparation for this week of in-service training, planning and copying, Mr. F and I rolled over to AMS on Wednesday afternoon of last week. Our goal was simple: pilfer as many tables and chairs as possible.

See, last year, we came in as wet-behind-the-ears-newbies, with grand aspirations for the 'group concept', only to be greeted by a room full of desks on our first day. After submitting furniture requests and even begging at one point last year for tables, we now know, being the grizzled veterans (of one measly campaign!), that if we want tables, we have to do it ourselves.

Luckily, we knew where we could acquire said merchandise without offending too many folks. A teacher left the math department, who just so happened to have a room full of tables.

Mr. F and I arrived on Wednesday during a deluge and began moving desks out of his room, swapping tables back in. I was waiting on final word for a potential room swap (thankfully, I managed to remain in the same room this year), so we piled all the chairs into Mr. F's room, and most of the tables.

But at this stage of the exchange, two important things happen. First, my assistant principal catches us in the act, asks what we are doing, and then says "Oh, well, keep up the good work" in response to our explanation. Second, we realize that we know have 2 rooms worth of desks, but only one room to store them in.

An executive decision prompts us to stash all of my desks, all 24, under the stairs to the second floor, in the "Cub Reading Den". It ends up looking quite ridiculous. Imagine row upon row of desks with about a 2 foot clearance above them. Bring on the wee people! (I do not know the DCA term for people of abnormally small stature)

Our job done, we left.

This week, we meet our new teachers and find out that Lo, the school hired an interventionist to occupy the pilfered room. She is a first year teacher, and in a eerie turn of events, strolls in with a sketch for a grand group concept, of course necessitating tables. She asks me "I wanted to do lots of group work, where could I find some tables?"

I of course feign ignorance, and (laughingly) bring her to Mr. F. "Hey Mr. F, she needs tables. Do you know who to ask?"

Mr. F nearly dies.

New teacher gives up on tables. Shifts focus to getting uniform desks. At least if they are all the same color, type etc, things will be manageable right? Well, there is a classroom worth of yellow desks under the stairs. Whose are those? Nobody knows.

New teacher goes to ask the Math Department head. "Whose are those?" "I don't know. Ask the assistant principal."

New teacher goes to ask AP. "Can I have those yellow desks?" "What yellow desks? Oh those. Well, yea you can have them. But if anybody comes asking for them you have to return them."

So let me summarize (that's a higher level thinking skill.)

Mr. F and I decide we want tables. We take tables. We dump desks.
New Teacher wants tables. She has our dumped desks. She can't find tables. She then asks for more of our dumped desks. She has to get permission. Then she has to get more permission. For our dumped desks.

Should I feel bad about this?

The Future - Or More Accurately, Thinking Too Much

School is right around the corner, as much as it pains me to write that. YES summer school is great, and I love teaching there, but since it's culmination directly correlates with a week of vacation followed by a week of professional development and then school starts, it is basically like school starts tomorrow. Or something.

Anyway, a bi-product of my rapidly depleting summer is an intense focus on what I will be doing *next* summer. I already have grandiose ideas about traveling the world, or more accurately (yea it's the second time I've used that now) going to some far-away land and staying there all summer, there are other options and perhaps other necessities.

Here are the thoughts running around, pellmell through my brain.

• I could go teach at YES prep next year. This would be a minimum 2 year commitment. It would keep me in Houston. It would be an awesome teaching environment. I would be 27 when I could forseeably leave. I would continue to get summers off. Do I really want to stay in Houston for 2 more years? Is 4 years away from engineering too much? Which leads to...
• I could go work at some engineering company. I could go anywhere to do this. There are some social activist type companies out on the west coast that make products specifically to combat injustice (like clean drinking water), and that would be cool. I could go to Seattle (which I love) and work for Boeing. But do I really want a corporate job again? Would my conscious let me go? I think I'd feel like I was selling out.
• I could go to grad school for engineering. I think it would be great to be a professor, and always be learning and teaching in a subject that I like. I also like school, and am good at it. I always felt vaguely impatient at school though, as if I was waiting for real-life to start. Whatever.
• I could go teach somewhere else entirely. I love the concept of the Big Picture company. That would be a 4 year commitment. I could go all over with those schools; they have schools in Detroit or Chicago or Portland or Denver. All of those would have benefits.

I was talking with a friend of mine today on the phone. She was telling me that I just need to figure out what I love and do that. I said I didn't feel like I was serving anybody if I did engineering or something like that. Her response was that if you don't love what you are doing you can't serve anybody anyway.

I think this is an interesting point. I am not sure if I love teaching. I am sure that I did not love corporate engineering. I could love teaching at YES prep. Who knows.

I guess the thing to do is to go sit on the beach and rock climb and run and swim and watch movies and cook great meals because those are the things I love doing.

Loose Ends 4 - Now I have a job

This whole 'unemployed teacher' situation actually worked itself out a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to post it. I think that I wasn't too flustered about the whole situation so when it was resolved, it did not seem like that big of a change. I guess it was though. Maybe.

So here is the sequence of events:

In February I got the flu, and had a meeting where a bunch of bosses told me to shape up or find another job.

In March, my principal told me that Alief Middle School currently did not have room for me, but I wasn't being fired. Instead I was being put into a teacher pool. I need disinfectant.

In May, I left school and Texas under the impression that there was approximately a 5% chance of having a math job at AMS.

In the middle of June, the TFA placement coordinator called to tell me that "Alief no longer feels confident about placing you. You can now go wherever you want." She brought up an engineering position at an HISD middle school. I give her the green light to pass along my resume and stuff.

I get a call from the principal of the HISD middle school. Turns out the position is not engineering. It's eighth grade math. But it has one or two robotics electives tacked on. I do a phone interview. There is no further contact for 2 weeks.

I talk with TFA placement coordinator again. She tells me that YES prep has an opening. Would I be interested. "Hell yes!"

I get a call from YES prep. I talk. We talk. We keep talking. We try and set up a live interview. I was going to FLY DOWN for an interview. It cost too much. Principal asks for material to show my skills as a teacher. I email him a bunch of stuff.

We keep talking. He asks for a sample lesson. I remember I have a dvd of a lesson I gave in Feb (around there anyway). I think the dvd is on my desk. I have my roommate deliver it to YES prep. It is the wrong dvd. The dvd is actually an advertisement for YES prep. Ha.

We keep talking. He asks how confident I feel moving to high school. I tell him that after initial misgivings, I am totally psyched for the position. He tells me that we are going to have a couple more conversations and then he will get an offer formalized. "At this point I don't want either of us backing away from this, because this is the direction we want to go". The direction he means is hiring me.

The next day Alief Middle School calls. Apparently, the 7th grade teacher who thought she was staying decided she was leaving. My job is now available. If I want it. Dangit.

After debating, I decide that even though TFA specifically told me I do not have to take the job, and that my duty to Alief is done, I feel like I ought to go there. And I am excited too. Well, sort of. I call AMS and accept the job.

I call YES prep and give them the bad news. He is very understanding. He says that the "quick hiring has turned into a more long-term process". I smile. Looks like I might get to work at YES prep HS someday anyway.

Oh and guess what. The YES prep HS is the only school in Houston to be ranked on Newsweek's top 100 schools nationwide. It's number 37 or something.

Locations & Musings

I am not one that usually spends a lot of time thinking about what could be, but I recently have thought quite a bit about the affect that location has played in my current position in TFA, my career trajectory, interests, friends, etc.

Right now I wonder if I would be teaching if I had not joined the co-op program at Purdue (and you can see right away the futility of this line of thinking, and yet, I am currently deep in it). I think that co-op and its unique mix of meaningful work experiences combined with inane absurdities and general drudgery is at least 50% responsible for motivating me to apply to Teach for America in the first place. If I didn't know that corporate engineering was lame, would I now be working at some engineering firm in Seattle, WA or Greenville, SC? Would the added responsibility and work-load of a full-time position make it actually enjoyable? I don't know, but it is interesting to think about.

Another affect of the co-op program was to move me every 3 to 4 months from one place to another (that's usually what moving does). I went from school to work, from work to school, and only my first year (fall '01) and fifth year (fall '05) did I complete a normal academic school year. My friends became concentrated in the co-op program. There were about 4 guys who rotated together, took ME classes together, did the house stuff together. Later on I took more advantage of enjoying the church community of which I was a part, but how did these relationships get stunted by leaving? Would I have different friends? Would I be married (good question since so many of my college friends are checking that box this summer or last)? Again, I don't know, but it is interesting to think about.

For a moment. And then I look up and around at this summer that is here and now, and the realities of the friendships that currently exist, of the work that I am currently doing, of the summer school that is starting in 3 weeks, and I am moving again.

TFA Year One - Recap

No writing occurred for the past three weeks on this blog. This is self-evident. All you have to do is scroll down and see for yourself that the last date posted was May 6th or something.

One of my friends told me the other day that he thought maybe some freak hurricane washed me out to sea and since I was the only fatality of this otherwise innocuous natural disaster, there was no press coverage. What else could explain, he continued, your lack of postings *and* non-existent cell phone?

In truth, there was no natural disaster. I was ruminating. And I my phone stopped working.

I struggled, during this past month, to put this year in prospective. I knew that I would be returning to the Midwest for June, and with that return would come many friends, family and just acquaintances that would call me to give an account of my toil.

And my struggle revolved around a couple of questions:

• How do I explain the impact that I had when all of my hard data shows that I had no real measurable affect on my students? For that matter, *did* I have an impact? What was it?
• How do I explain the reality of schools like mine, where students are driven by the test and not much else? How do I explain the youth addicted to entertainment, with no focus for anything that does not involve BET, a movie or video games?
• How do I explain the administrators and teachers that are on the ground, working for the best for the students, but at the same time, trying to preserve their jobs? How do I explain their decisions?
  
• How do I talk about Teach For America, when I do not see 'solvency' in my classroom, when I see progress yes, but not solvency in my school, when I don't know what solvency even looks like in the broad scheme of things?

I think I struggle with these questions because they are hard questions and deep questions. I want to write that maybe they don't have answers, but as part of this movement, as a member of this movement fighting for educational equality, I *have* to believe that solvency is possible in some form. Maybe I am just not smart enough, experienced enough, creative enough, something enough to think up a solution that could work. I don't know.

The reality of this year though, is that by the numbers, I did not really make an impact. Yes, 7 of my students passed the standardized test, where no one passed last year. But there are quite a few students who passed 2 years ago or 3 years ago, and did not pass this year. In terms of net improvement, I had 50% of my students increase their scores. That means 50% decreased. The actual number of questions increased was also balanced by the number of questions decreased. So statistically, numerically, I am a wash for year one.

Yes, I still had an impact on my students. One of my students wrote me a letter talking about how she did not know how to divide before this year (a 7th grader) and now she does, how she was bored and ignored the teacher and she found herself being interested in fractions (!). This is a real impact. And so many of my students come to spend time in my room before school or during advisory saying "I don't want to go to so and so, they don't like me". Time and again the tough students come to me.

And while this *is* important, I cannot stop looking at the numbers. I cannot stop looking at one student who will come and engage me in conversation and then sit and do literally nothing during all of my class, regardless of my pleadings. If they don't *learn* anything from me, any math...well, did I alter there course? Did I change their life options? Who knows.

Despite these things, I can honestly say that I loved this year. I am returning next year. I recommend Teach For America to anyone and everyone. While I think it is not the end-all-be-all of educational solutions, I am reminded of a quote that TFA espouses, that really struck me by Mahatma Gandhi; "Be the change you want to see in the world."

TFA is *doing* something. I am *doing* something. And the something is not sand in the wind. The something lives and breathes and dreams and fears and grows up and changes the world.