What You Would Do Anyway

When I walk, I listen to podcasts.  Today, I was listening to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, when he said, "The best thing in life is when you are doing what you would do with your friends for fun, and then someone gives you a check for it."  There are aspects of any job that won't thrill you - paperwork, scheduling (unless you are Mandy Gill and scheduling is your happy place), and meetings - but hopefully, there are at least some parts of your job that are things you would want to do anyway.  As I was walking, I thought of two things.

Explaining things - I am the daughter of an engineer.  If you ask him what time it is, chances are that he will explain to you the history of the invention of the watch.  So, my compulsion to explain things is hereditary.  Even as a child, I was always explaining anything I knew to anyone who would sit still.  My high school friend, Rebecca, and I spent much of our freshman year discussing theological controversies or science or whatever else was floating around.  What appealed to me about physics was knowing how everyday things worked.  I loved knowing how a microphone worked or why ice skaters spun faster when they pulled their arms in.  I went into teaching physics because I wanted other people to enjoy having that knowledge too.  There was one year of my adult life that I didn't teach.  I worked at Wachovia Mortgage while I was between schools.  I annoyed the mess out of some of my co-workers because I would answer questions they had absentmindedly asked but apparently didn't want the answer to.   Even during the summer, I'll catch myself explaining something to someone and say, "Sorry, I haven't taught anything in a couple of months."  Fortunately, there is a career that can support my compulsion.

Writing recommendation letters - I am the job reference for a lot of people.  I love thinking about the positive aspects of a person and telling other people about them.  Teaching high school frequently provides that opportunity because we fill out surveys, nominate kids for awards, and write college and scholarship recommendation letters.  This week, I got to write one for one of my favorite students (yes, we do have them).  They don't want you to say, "She's really smart" or "He works hard in class."  They can tell that from the transcript.  What they want are examples of the student's character.  That's what I love about writing them.  I got to think back over the five-year relationship I have with this girl and share about her enthusiasm for learning as evidenced by an experience we had at the Air and Space Museum.  I got to tell them about her heart for service as shown by how far above and beyond she has gone in tutoring other students.  I got to tell them how many ways I had observed her leadership as I have had her in class but have also seen her leading on the basketball team and in student council.  When she asked me to write this letter, she didn't realize how thrilled I was to write it because I would have wanted to talk about her anyway.  

Whatever job you have, look for something in it that you would happily do anyway.  Then, be grateful you getting paid for that.

Grateful for The Modern World

The modern world is . . . a lot.  Information overload is a real thing affecting our brains.  We don't know what the long-term effects of screen time will be on our development and eyeballs.  Deadlines seem to come faster and faster than they did before, and all the things that are labeled "conveniences" just raise the expectations of workload.  Sometimes, progress feels like more of a burden than not.

Yesterday, however, I spent the day feeling grateful for many aspects of the modern world.  I had a number of errands to run.

First, I went to the grocery store.  While I am often stunned by how little food can add up to such a high price, I was able to drive there in a car and buy a wide variety of things, many of which are not in season in my area, and I was able to put them into a refrigerator which would keep them fresh for a while.  When I cook them, I won't have to build a fire.  I will simply turn a knob on the oven.

Then, I took my car to Walgreens for a flu shot.  While I had to wait in line, I did so in an air-conditioned store.  While there was a bit of confusion about my insurance, they were able to straighten it out with a phone call while I waited in a padded chair and read a book.  I know books aren't new, but there was a time when books would have been very expensive and difficult to obtain.  I got this one delivered to my doorstep within two days of my friend, Blake, recommending it; and I paid only four dollars for it.  When they took me into the room to administer the shot, it took about five seconds and was accomplished with a sterile needle by a trained professional.  In the early days of vaccines, a man pulled up to your house with a smallpox victim in a wagon, cut the recipient's arm with a razor blade, and smeared the contents of a blister into it.  The modern world of vaccines is astounding.

My car was very far overdue for an oil change, so I headed to Take Five, where they informed me that they couldn't service my type of car, something I knew but had forgotten.  I couldn't remember the location of where I had gotten it changed the last time, so I went home and Googled my nearest Snappy Lube (Yes, I know you are thinking that if only I had a cell phone, I could have avoided the trip home, but I am comfortable with my life choices).  I found the location in moments and headed out again.  When I got there, I was told they would have to order the filter.  I braced myself for hearing that I would need to come back next week when the man said, "It will take anywhere from 1 to 2 and half hours for it to arrive."  He seemed surprised when I told him I was happy to wait.  I sat down in the air-conditioned lobby with my book and my iPod and listened to the wisdom of some Bible teachers who are able to share their thoughts from a studio in Texas, which I then downloaded to listen to at my own convenience.  The part arrived quicker than expected, and I was out of the store in just over an hour.  While things like oil changes and inspections and other care maintenance can be sometimes annoyingly inconvenient, they are far more convenient than the maintenance a horse would require, which is what I would have had a century ago.  I am grateful for the ability to own a car.

During all of this, my house was being vacuumed by my little Roomba, my dishwasher was cleaning the dishes, and my washing machine was cleaning my clothes.  These are all tasks that would have taken a lot of time and physical energy to accomplish just a few decades ago.  This weekend, without my even being present, devices made it possible for me to come home to clean dishes, clean clothes, and a clean floor.

When I got home, I realized that I needed to connect with a few colleagues about something, and I sent an email.  At the beginning of my career, this would have required either waiting until Monday when I could see them or making several phone calls.  While there are some headaches that come with email, I love that I can contact a large number of people at once and even schedule what time it sends.  And, of course, without computer technology, education would not have been possible for the past 18 months.

I am also grateful for my eyeglasses, my orthotic shoe inserts, easy-to-obtain vitamins, toothpaste, the postal service, soft drinks in aluminum cans (do you know that aluminum was once the most expensive metal in the world?), YouTube, lawnmowers, digital cameras, alarm clocks with snooze alarms, sunscreen, television, and hairdryers.

How does this relate to education?  It only relates in the sense that we live our lives in front of students.  We can model frustration when deadlines are looming or tech gets glitchy, or we can model gratitude that the tech exists in the first place and give them a perspective they do not have, that of a person who lived before and had to do all of their work manually.  We can teach them to view things from multiple angles and change their reactions based on that perspective.

Meeting Them Where They Are

There is a scene playing out in many schools around America, including my classroom.  The kids in front of us don't seem like the kids we've taught before of the same age.  Academically, my 8th graders seem to be fine.  As hard as it was, our hybrid program did result in far less learning loss than schools that did the year fully virtual.  In other ways (socially, behaviorally, emotionally), they are not presenting in the way I am accustomed to 8th-grade students being.  A quarter of a school year at home in their sixth-grade year and cohorting in their seventh-grade year has resulted in less maturing than it would previously have.  My normal classroom management techniques are less effective than usual because of where they are.

I know that it is important to meet all students where they are, but it is challenging, precisely because of the amount of experience I have with this age group.  My previous 22 years of experience teaching this age group is less beneficial to me than it has been in the past because they are not yet what I expect 8th-graders to be.  I also know where they need to be by the end of the year because they will be high school students, and our high school teachers will expect them to act like it.  We can't spend five more years saying, "But they had this difficult time during the pandemic" and then send them out into the world unprepared for it.  

As I said at the beginning, this is not unique to my classroom.  It's happening all over America to varying degrees, depending on how students were taught in the 2020/2021 school year.  I see it a bit less in my older students because they were already mostly socially formed and because many of them were able to get more social interaction last year due to their ability to drive.

So, we are faced with meeting students where they are, but I think it is important to recognize that we cannot leave them where they are.  To quote the sort of unofficial motto of the Village Church in Texas, "It's okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way."  Advancing these students in maturity will not happen overnight, but we must make an intentional effort to hold them accountable for poor behavior, model right responses, and remind them of proper classroom behavior.  I confess that I have not been doing this very well for the last month.  I have been reacting with frustration because my expectations were for this year to be more normal and recognizing that it is not has been upsetting.  Trying to find the line between what parts are my own irritability caused by our circumstances and what parts are behaviors I truly do need to address has been a challenge.  I'm still working on it, and I may be working on it all year.  I have the good fortune to work with great people, and I can run things by them to ask if they think I'm overreacting, and I know they will be honest with me.  I assume that other teachers may also need to separate their own frustration and depression from the responsibility of their job, so that's my only advice for now.  Have an honest friend that can hold you accountable.  Say, "Here's what happened.  Do you think I handled it correctly?"  Someone who understands but isn't part of the issue can often see things more clearly, but we cannot benefit from their wisdom if we do what we are often inclined to do, hide our own insecurities.  Be transparent with someone you can trust.  It's the only way we will be able to both meet students where they are and advance them to where they should be.

Blowing Off Steam

When the Instant Pot first came out, people acted like it was an amazing new piece of technology that no one had ever seen before (and that it was super scary).  Because I'm a middle-aged white woman,  my social media feeds were filled with women worried they were going to get hurt, proclaiming the glory of potatoes made in three minutes, and photos of both their disasters and their triumphs.  All I could think was, "It's just a pressure cooker, right?"  Those have been around for as long as I can remember.  It's how my mom and grandmother cooked collard greens back in the day.  It turns out that they go back even farther than I imagined.  According to Wikipedia, the first pressure cooker was invented in the 17th century.  It's just basic chemistry.  Raising the pressure raises the boiling point of water, allowing the food to cook faster as a result.  The old ones were pretty dangerous because the pressure got to really high levels, so the lid could be blown off with a pretty high amount of force.  It wasn't until the 1930s that the pressure valve was added.  That is my most vivid memory of the one in our house.  I remember that it would jiggle up and down and sometimes whistle as it let steam out.  The tech has changed slightly, but the concept remains the same.  Slightly elevated pressure is good, but if it gets too high, the result is potentially dangerous.

The start of this school year has been stressful, possibly even more than last year.  Last year, we expected it to be the most difficult year of our careers.  We knew it was going to be strange and masked and stressful, but we were all so grateful to be back on campus in person that none of that mattered at the beginning.  This year, we expected things to be back to normal, but, of course, it's not.  Kids who had been troopers about masks last year have to be reminded multiple times per day to wear them correctly this year.  No teacher wants to spend all their time regulating, but we know this matters, so we keep doing it.  Some of our students have been learning virtually since March 2020 while others were in person with us last year, so there is an even wider difference in skill and knowledge level than there has been in prior years.  I had to teach my 8th graders to use a scantron card on our first test, which is not something I've ever had to do before, but because they took all their tests online last year, they hadn't used them.  Cohorting students last year has caused some changes in their social development because they didn't learn the things you would from mixing with big kids in the hall.  Some of this was anticipated, but we couldn't really plan for how to handle it until we got to know our students.  While some things are back to normal (no plexiglass, thank the Lord), things are definitely not normal, not even "new normal" normal.  And everyone, it seems, is grieving someone.  Whether from Covid or cancer or something else, it seems like everyone is suffering a recent loss.  It's hard to think clearly when you are grieving.  (Oh, and that's just school stuff.  I haven't mentioned the state of the world and politics and the fact that we have lost all idea of how to treat each other as we live in a society.)

The pressure has been enormous.  And building.

Our school usually begins the school year with a high school retreat, called Ignite.  It's three days of relationship building and fun and bonding as well as spiritual development.  Of course, last year, we couldn't have it in any form.  This year, plans had been made during the summer for a normal version of it.  Then, the Delta variant happened, numbers rose, and we altered it to a day event.  Then, numbers rose again, making packing kids into busses a bad idea, so it was decided to postpone it to October.  Then, our deans realized that was far enough away to make it impossible to know what might happen between now and then, so they asked themselves, "What can we do for our kids now?"  On Friday, we had Ignite Fun Day.  The first half of the day was team building (with doughnuts), a chapel service, and an escape room activity.  The second half was an outdoor field day with inflatable obstacle courses, velcro walls, frisbee games, ice cream, giant kickball, jump ropes, spike ball, and more inflatables.  God dropped perfect weather on us, and we had a day of laughter and silliness (and I mentioned the ice cream, right).  When we returned to campus, I asked my class to tell me their high points of the day.  They enjoyed talking with teachers and catching up socially.  They liked doing something physical and being outside.  They also appreciated the chapel message.  Mostly, they liked spending a day without academic expectations.  While one day of fun doesn't solve the problems of the world or undo grief, Friday was the whistling steam release from what had been the pressure cooker of the start of the year.  

I am grateful to have an administration of people who recognize the needs of our kids and allow time, space, and budget for a day like Friday.  I also know that it can't happen often.  It has made me ask myself, though, how I can work smaller steam releases into each week or each class period (like the jiggling bobber I remember from my mom's collard cooking days).  It doesn't have to be big to be a valuable reduction of pressure.  Perhaps I can take one minute from a class period to say, "Everyone, stand up on your chair and jump off on the count of three."  That one weird moment might provide a needed mental break.  Perhaps, once a week, I can tell a story or play a song.  Perhaps, once a month, we can do something special at lunch.  It will probably be different in each class, but it is important to remember that while a little elevated pressure is beneficial, if we allow it to build too much, it could be dangerous and do something to prevent it from getting to that point.