We Learn to Do What We Do By Doing It

I imagine everyone who is student teaching has to constantly remind herself of what brought her there. I have jumped through so many hoops to get here, after years of experience in the field without the paycheck. Well, there’s that to look forward to…but what got me here is looking toward the time that I can totally focus on what the strengths are of my students, and to discover their “areas of need.”

Up until now, I have held the hands (rotorblades?) of helicopter parents, and spent way too much energy soothing their anxieties, when theirs were the children who were going to be going to the best schools, have all their needs met, and have every type of enrichment that one could imagine. I want to have relationship with the students and families who are not the privileged ones, where I can encourage them, help them uncover the writer, the artist, the reader, the mathematician that resides in each of us.

Now that I am in a school serving the less privileged, I find the school’s focus on behavior–sitting straight, eyes up front–the joy of learning is less evident. My master teacher works very hard to smile, to encourage, to sing, to nurture; she also is painfully aware of how much time she spends on discipline, warnings, consequences. And I swallow my questions, such as–why are the kids who are having the most trouble sitting still the ones who are on the bench at recess? Lots of questions like this pop up, mostly having to do with the culture of schools rather than the techniques of the individual teachers. I spent an hour in a music class and an hour in an art class today (with specialists,) which were so tightly controlled that the children were chewing on their clothing and on the verge of tears through most of it. (But damn, they behaved!)

I am also taking the positive of what I see, and trying to commit little tricks to memory. I enjoy many aspects of the classroom, and am aware (and happy) that I am not the One in Charge; I get to watch, and handpick the kids who need help, and let Ms. M. take care of the Big Picture. I would never venture to say that I could do a better job than she is doing. She is amazing.

Just my final two cents about technology in the classroom: I think power point is the worst use of technology ever invented. I have sat through the most boring lectures EVER when instructors think that the words on the screen say it all and the students think they don’t have to pay attention because they’ll get the pp later. I do have a visual learning style, but I learn when I translate what I hear into words on the page–just the gems, thank you. Power point is just rote, blackboard learning that a teacher doesn’t have to think about using from year to year–hey, I’m covering the material; the standards are right there on the screen (as if that’s so enlightening); I’m using the technology; and I don’t have to worry about breathing in the chalk dust! I never want to see a pp presentation again!

I heard Penelope Trunk on the radio over the weekend–I asked “who IS this woman?” and googled her blog called The Brazen Careerist. She is the total opposite of me (she IS brazen and brash and brilliant.) She writes about career/family issues as she is going through a divorce. Generation Y and Gen Xers are her peeps, but she tries to translate to us baby boomers what the hell is going on in the workplace, because it is now a foreign country populated by young folks dictating their own work needs. And we are a bunch of intractable bores still in the 9-5 paradigm. Of course “the workplace” is corporate, a far cry from the classroom; however, embracing new technology and looking at project-based learning are ways of breaking free of the rote methods by which we were taught (and fought against, remember?)

Please read “living up to your potential is bs.” As a parent and an aspiring special education teacher, this was a breath of fresh air and a big relief to me. She does sing the praises of social skills, not my area of expertise. But “kindness”–its a skill to take into the classroom, the office, onto the freeway, and home again.

thinking about all the books I can read now…Spent the morning reading Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons and loving it. I have six weeks ahead of me, a stretch that would be unimaginable in any other period in my life. It does come down to that old equation, though: When you have the time, you don’t have the money; when you have the money you don’t have the time. Well, I’ll try to use the good old Berkeley Public Library and get outside with my dog as much as I can.

I really really want a mojito to celebrate…one quarter down, five to go!

Mi familia: Gabe, Joel and Skye

Last August, I was hired to be a shadow aid for Sam, a first grader who had Prader-Willi Syndrome. I read everything I could get my hands on about Prader-Willi (see the link on the right), so badly did I want to know all about Sam before the school year began. I generated pages of questions for Sam’s mother about how what he likes, what he doesn’t like, how he responds to this, how he responds to that. This was in mid-August; Sam’s mom was stressed out (at the time I had no idea) with trips to the OT, the PT, the SLT, Grandma’s house, orthodontia, assessments, and the baseball games to which Sam’s older brother was devoted. I began asking away–learned that Sam loves anything having to do with animals, basketball, and trains. He loves stories, and could listen to them for hours. Sam loves having jobs to do, and will do them with pride, which is conducive to his diagnosis: Sam regularly needs to get his body up and moving around–or else, he will simply fall asleep! 

I tucked this information into my mental notebook. The rest of the questions, Mary simply told me “You’ll know when you meet him.” She had a difficult time describing Sam’s emotional world, only that it was topsy turvy at times and it was our job to keep a safe, consistent routine for him with lots and lots of positive feedback. Okaaay, that was easy since that was my entire job description in the world of Early Childhood Education. 

But this was First Grade! How would I be able to keep Sam motivated to learn to read and write and keep up with the demands of the classroom? I met with Marti, the wonderful first grade teacher. We hit it off right away. It was almost scary how much our temperaments, our outlook, our ideas were alike. “We’ll just play it by ear,” she told me. And that was pretty much our mantra for the year. Little did I know that this was the attitude that was necessary for educating Sam. The best-laid plans might go kablooey, but going with the flow and taking advantage of small teachable moments–lots of improvisation, experimentation, and keeping it light–were just what Sam needed. 

Is it possible to love a job? I knew I wanted to go back to school, and I knew that I would need a year to de-stress from eight years of directing a preschool. I needed to  get my “ducks in a row” for a teaching credential. And somehow, I found my dream job…or we found each other.

Craigslist had a posting for a shadow aide for a child with Prader-Willi Syndrome at a small independent school near downtown Berkeley. Quickly, I googled PWS; it was not a pretty picture. A defect of the 15th chromosome causes, among other things, constant hunger, food-seeking behavior, and behavior problems, including tantrums. This was right up my alley. 

The school was my favorite independent school in the world, a small 60 year old progressive constructivist elementary school, where I had taught in the after school program many years ago. Some of the teachers were friends of mine; I admired all of them and could not wait to be given the chance to jump into their classrooms and learn. 

I fell in love with the family who had placed the ad, and I fell in love with their kid. I now had a mentor teacher in a classroom of twenty students. The school values diversity, and is generous with scholarships. I was in the perfect place to learn. 

That’s what Stevie is titling his new album. He sees more than most of us. Lucky me, I got to hear him play last night at Concord Pavilion. After a hellish two and a half hour drive to get there, in the inland heat of over a hundred degrees, and nothing but bad radio in the car, I sat on the lawn and breathed in the vibe. What a diverse crowd–lots of greyheads like me, but also a lot of young people too. The vaguely familiar smell of pot being smoked, no specific age demographic there. Gorgeous people, young and old, all singing along with the songs, every word memorized. That really struck me, how twenty-somethings really knew  the material. I loved sitting amidst this crowd, everyone singing together the love songs I grew up with. Stevie Wonder was in great form.

The only disturbing trend was (and maybe because this was an outdoor show) how many (mostly young) people just talked during the music, just jabbered away without any consideration that other people were there to hear the music. There were even people who were yakking on their cell phones during the performance. That just made me crazy. I was there to pay tribute to one of my gods, and these people just didn’t get it…

Is it okay to play? This project is so involving, two hours later I wonder if I should start working on something “important” but…exploring and getting lost is one of my favorite activities!