Failing Foward

I've been asked recently why I haven't been keeping up with my blog, sharing details of my adventures teaching fourth grade in Baton Rouge. This blog began as a place for me to share stories from my adventures, and this experience certainly falls in that category. But the truth is it is easy to write about my life when I'm wandering around Spain building cactus gardens with one-eyed nudists and harvesting grapes from a vineyard overlooking ancient castles. It's not as easy to write about my life when I cried in the bathroom of the teacher's lounge three times last week. It's not easy to write about my life when eight of my kids scored "unsatisfactory" on their midyear standardized test and I flat-out failed several categories in my teacher observations. 

My responses to "how do you like teaching?" have become sugar-coated (typically in an attempt to avoid the subject), but here's the truth: 

It's been a steep learning curve is a euphemism for I pretty much hate my life six days a week. 

I'm okay is a euphemism for I cried twice today and it's only noon.

I love them but they keep me on my toes is a euphemism for one of those little #@%$s filled the pencil sharpener with hand sanitizer and put glue in Porche's hair.

Why do we have such a hard time talking about failure?

A theater friend once offered an astute analogy: we compare our backstage to everyone else's final production. Backstage is messy. It's full of stage fright, forgotten lines, damaged props, and costume malfunctions. It's full of... failure. Mini failures that are so completely normal we really shouldn't think of them as failure. The backstage mess is just the human experience. 

Social media is a platform for the final production. It's the place where we share the parts of our lives 
that we want other people to see, typically because it feeds our ego. Every "like" we receive stimulates a surge of dopamine to the brain-- the same neurotransmitter that smokers, alcoholics, and gambling addicts reap from their favored coup de grace. But it's ultimately a facade. We post the pictures where we look like a model, not the ones where we have a double chin and a huge zit on our forehead. We post about the exciting new job offer, not the grad school rejection letters. We post about the nights we spend sipping blackberry-gin cocktails, not the nights we spend anxiously scrolling through Facebook  in existential panic that we should be doing something "more" with our lives by now. (I'm guilty of all of these.) We've normalized a facade of reality that prompts us scrutinize our backstage mess with shame and confusion. Maybe that's why we don't talk about failure-- because somewhere along the line we've started to believe that the mess is abnormal. 


There is a yoga pose called Parsva Bhuja Dandasana, or dragonfly, which entails balancing on one's hands with one foot propped up on the forearm and the other leg stretched out beside you, hovering above the ground. 

It's hard. 

It's also become an aspirational pose of mine for the last few months, as I've gotten deeper into regular yoga practice (which is pretty much the only reason I haven't suffered an actual mental breakdown.)  I was caught off guard one day by the slightly sardonic comments of a substitute instructor who claimed that her class wasn't about "Cirque du soleil yoga". I indignantly thought of dragonfly pose. If authentic yoga practice is not about showing off, how did we end up with so many seemingly exhibitionist poses? 

I read somewhere that the purpose of meditation is not to become a good meditator, but to become aware of our thoughts and emotions during meditation so that we may be aware of our thoughts and emotions in real life. It struck me that yoga is the same. The purpose of yoga is not to become "good at yoga", rather to put our bodies into situations where we are likely to experience pain, discomfort, frustration, fear, impatience, pride, shame--emotions we often associate with failure-- and give us the opportunity to acknowledge and release these emotions so that we may acknowledge and release them in real life. 

Eventually we become comfortable enough with down-dog and tree pose that we cease to grow, mentally or physically. The purpose of poses like dragonfly is to once again put us face-to-face with pain, discomfort, fear of falling on our face, and the ego that threatens to turn us into show-offs. Our reaction to these experiences, and our reaction to our reaction, determines our progress. Do we judge ourselves for realizing that we're feeling prideful? Do we feel shame when we fail to stay present with our breath, or fail to reach a pose as gracefully as our neighbors? Do we judge ourselves for the mess, or do we lovingly embrace it as part of our humanity?  

I've been reading a book by a Buddhist nun called "When Things Fall Apart," in which she offers wonderful advice on dealing with "hard stuff". 

One of my favorite passages so far says this: 

"Well-being of mind is like a mountain lake without ripples. When the lake has no ripples, everything in the lake can be seen. When the water is all churned up, nothing can be seen. The still lake without ripples is an image of our minds at ease, so full of unlimited friendliness for all the junk at the bottom of the lake that we don't need to churn up the waters just to avoid looking at what's there." 

In the hardest months of teaching I sought every distraction, every comfort, every anesthetic I could find. At first it was wine, until I realized I couldn't finish lesson plans when I was sleepy. So I turned to social media, mindlessly scrolling, stalking past love interests, agreeing to dates with random guys in whom I had little genuine interest. In times of rest I filled my head with mental clutter, obsessively replaying nostalgic and imaginary scenes-- grasping at any comforting thought to distract from the discomfort of my reality-- the reality that for once in my life, something wasn't coming easily. 

The junk at the bottom of my lake was shame at receiving low marks, jealously towards those who I perceive to be doing better (whether or not they actually are), anxiety about never feeling fully prepared, guilt that my kids deserve a better teacher, frustration at things not getting easy quickly enough, blame towards Teach for America for the perception that they didn't prepare me well enough, loneliness from being away from close friends and ending a relationship... I finally wrote out a list and it was all there, almost every negative emotion I could think of, lumped under that umbrella sensation of failure, mess.  

The reality is that the junk in the bottom of our lakes isn't going anywhere. The mess exists for all of us, and no amount of therapy or self-help books is ever going to abolish anger, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, jealousy, frustration, or loneliness from our hearts. We can stir up the mud and live in fear of our raw humanity, believing that our mess is abnormal, or we can let the water settle, examine the junk with kindness and curiosity, and learn to love every dead fish, rusted can, and floating plastic bag, so that it may humble us, soften us, and bring us closer to compassion and empathy for every other human on earth (and the junk in their lake.) It's not about finding stability, rather making peace with instability. Instability, discomfort, impermanence-- these are all part of the human experience, the unavoidable yin to life's yang. We can't get rid of them, but by getting to know them they become less intimidating. 

There is a story that Chodron told in a commencement speech at Naropa University (which is now part of a book called Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better), that I'll leave you with. 

In the story a monk comes to a guru asking for advice about how to continue after feeling like his life has hit rock bottom. 

The guru says, "Well, it’s a lot like walking into the ocean, and a big wave comes and knocks you over. And you find yourself lying on the bottom with sand in your nose and in your mouth. And you are lying there, and you have a choice. You can either lie there and die, or you can run away, or you can stand up and start to keep walking out to sea. If you can choose to stand up and start walking, after a while another big wave will come and knock you down. You find yourself at the bottom of the ocean and again you have the choice to lie there or to stand up and face the waves. So the waves keep coming, and you keep cultivating your courage and bravery and sense of humor to relate to this situation of the waves, and you keep getting up and going forward. After a while, it will begin to seem to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller. The waves won't stop coming, but after a while they won’t knock you over anymore.”


I still can't hit dragonfly pose. In fact the last time I tried it I fell on my face. But every time I try, I feel a little less fear. My muscles stretch just a bit further than they did the last time. I've realized that success isn't hitting the pose, it's finding the grace and strength to continuously fail and still return to the mat with love and an open heart. Success is also that I haven't quit my job and will return to work next week, head held high. I'm still anxious, frustrated, lonely, and uncomfortable. But I'm learning to make peace with those things. 


Namaste, and happy new year. 

Dana

Reflections on my first month in Baton Rouge

This is a difficult post to write for a number of reasons. The first is because I have let a full month pass without posting anything, and a lot has happened in the past month that is worth recounting. Though it is tempting to skip straight to the most pressing news (an update on how Baton Rouge is dealing with the catastrophic flooding), I want to pay equal service to my experiences here that laid the scene for everything that has happened in the past week. The second is because the only reason I have time to write this post is because my house WASN’T flooded, and I happened to get the week off. A version of survivor’s guilt, I suppose.

Part one: First Impressions

This city has spunk. It ranks 90-something in terms of national crime rates and is definitely rough around the edges, but it has a kind of fierce dignity, as if it were staring you straight in the eye, daring you to call it anything less than magnificent. The trees loom over the streets, massive live oaks whose roots rip up sidewalks and dip down to the ground in an almost prehistoric glory. The southern architecture is true to its reputation, with stately white columns and wrap-around front porches that line the streets in antebellum grandeur. The wealth of the Garden District is juxtaposed with trailer parks and junk yards where creeping tendrils reclaim boarded-up houses with eviction notices still fluttering on the door. Still, ask any local and they’ll tell you they're proud to be from Louisiana. The culture and community run deep, and I’ve been warned that more TFA corps members end up staying in Louisiana than any other region.

I live in Spanish town, a historic district near the capitol where Mardi Gras beads hang from every tree. (and sign, and fence post.) I live in a baby blue house with hot pink and lime green trim and two giant, wooden flamingo cutouts on either porch banister (more on the flamingos later). My other favorite houses on my street are bright yellow and turquoise, and I must say that I thoroughly enjoy living in a neighborhood where purple is an acceptable paint color. Spanish town is where the Baton Rouge Mardi Gras parade takes place, and my house is on the parade route. I’ve got three housemates, two of whom are Teach for America alum and one who is a reporter for the local paper.

Being new to humidity, I feel like I’m in a rain forest, all of the time. There are banana trees in my neighbor’s yard, and I work up a sweat just WALKING outside. We have a tree house in the backyard that is currently infested with massive banana spiders but they eat mosquitoes so I can’t complain. Other spotted wildlife include tiny lizards (in the house), an opossum, an armadillo (road kill) and about a dozen feral cats which roam the neighborhood (fed by our neighbor, June.) There are also cockroaches, which are an unavoidable fact of living in the south. I have a particular discomfort with cockroaches that I think stems from a movie I saw as a child in which a cockroach is somehow baked into a piece of cake and then bitten into by an unsuspecting chef (I think it was called Mousetrap). When I first arrived in my classroom, there were about a dozen dead cockroaches on the floor. It seems that they only crawl out into the open to die, because I have never seen a live one. 

Part two: Teaching

Holy shit this job is hard. I knew it would be difficult, but I suppose I I thought that more of my working-with-kids skills would be transferable. I think there is a common misconception that if you understand the content and get along with children, you will be a good teacher, but the reality is that everyone, regardless of natural affinity, has to become a good teacher. It’s a process of acquiring a skill set that can’t really be taught in books, evidenced by the fact that the other first year teachers at the school (who all have education degrees from LSU) are struggling just as much as I am. The first year of teaching is just hard, period. 

The profession is like an iceberg. The content is the tip, and everything else is keeping 23 little humans happy and engaged long enough to absorb it. Every child has different needs, which change based on their mood, the time of day, stuff going on at home, or something that happened on the playground. Between lesson plans and engagement strategies and classroom procedures and personalities there are about six dozen shifting parts to think about at any given time. I think my real job title should be tiny human systems manager.

The first Friday of school ended in two of my fourth grade girls getting into a fist fight on the way to the bus, an event which I couldn’t help but feel partially responsible for given that the day had ended disastrously and many of my students were visibly stressed-out. I am lucky to be teaching at a school that has a leadership development curriculum well-equipped to employ restorative justice practices, so events like that one were out of the norm. The girl who started the fight was new to the school and has since been forgiven and accepted back into the class. (The entire class had to forgive her.)

Every day since then has gotten slightly better, though I admittedly now have a much lower threshold for what constitutes a good day. (Basically if no one gets in a fight and I don’t cry in the teachers lounge, it was a good day.) If I can get my kids to read silently for 10 minutes, it’s a win. If they manage to stay in a somewhat orderly line on the way to the cafeteria, it’s a win. All I can do is just keep focusing on the wins and know that it’s going to be a long and challenging year that will force me to grow in ways I can’t yet imagine. Thus far it has been an exercise in patience and humility.

In the words of Jake the Dog…

 

  

Part three: The Floods

Last Thursday night I fell asleep to the sound of rain falling on the roof, thinking how nice it was to not live in a desert climate. The universe has an ironic sense of humor. I woke up to a small stream flowing down one side of our street and wondered immediately if "rain days" were a thing in Louisiana. Turns out they are. At first I was overjoyed. An unexpected three day weekend! Teachers must love weather days even more than the kids, I thought.

But the rain didn't stop. Around noon my phone started buzzing with flash flood warnings, and we were told to stay inside. Saturday continued much the same, and we started seeing images of streets starting to like real rivers. Houses were taking on water and neighborhoods were being evacuated. Our street was wet, but Spanish town is fairly elevated compared to other parts of Baton Rouge, and our house sits up another 5 feet from the street on raised brick props. 

In another 24 hours, we realized it was going to be really, really bad. 20,000 people had been displaced, 10,000 of them in shelters around the city. My housemate Lauren's boyfriend works for the Mayor's office and had been gone from 7am to 1 in the morning every day, coordinating relief efforts.  Videos of dramatic rescues surfaced, and the death count rose to 8. I felt immobilized, wanting to help, but unsure that it was safe to drive, as the floodwaters were starting to move around, washing into unsuspecting neighborhoods that hadn't been required to evacuate. I bought some requested supplies for a shelter off of an Amazon wishlist, and set up this GoFundMe page to raise money for students at my school who will need to replace uniforms, shoes, and other school items. 

We got word that schools were closed Monday, and then Tuesday, and then the whole week. We were told to start calling parents, trying to locate families and find out who had been displaced. As of today, six of my students have lost everything, and I've yet to get a hold of four of them.  

When the roads were safe to drive on, I volunteered with my housemates at a makeshift Salvation Army center that had been set up in an abandoned department store. (All of the actual centers flooded, along with the food bank). In the absence of any real organization, our team of volunteers sorted all of the donations that were being dropped off by the truckload. The generosity of some was clear-- people who had bought Costco-sized packs of toiletries or dropped of cars full of water bottles. Others had clearly given what they had, but some seemed fairly clueless about what was appropriate to donate. We found half-empty bottles of shampoo, clothing with holes in it, six inch stilettos, and several decades-old (and definitely expired) collections of hotel body wash and shampoo. (Fun fact: trial size samples of anything have a shortened shelf-life--usually not more than a year or two. So if you, too, have been saving tiny bottles of things for years, please throw them out.) 

All in all, I have witnessed an incredible resilience in the community as people have come together to help each other out. The divisions that had been created in the wake of the shooting of Alton Sterling and the three police officers seemed for a moment to be healed. Blacks were saving Whites, Whites were feeding Blacks, and the only thing that mattered was that we were in this boat (sometimes literally) together. 

On Friday my school held a training for staff on teaching in post-traumatic environments. The most heart breaking realization for me was that the trauma of this event is not limited to the flooding. Given that 95% of our students live at or beneath the poverty line, and almost certainly didn't have flood insurance, losing everything sets off a chain of events that may continue to be traumatic for months to some. Consider a child of a single parent who has lost their house, and more importantly their car, which is the only way for the parent to get to work. They lose their job, and now have no way of surviving except from the charity of others, or FEMA funding if it ever comes (which might take several months). To cope, the parent drinks. The child is sleeping on the couch of a relative, where they don't get a good night's rest and are exposed to the constant financial stress of the adults in the house. 

The effects of trauma and constant stress on child brain development have been well studied, and one major effect is reduced executive functioning, which manifests in school as the ability to focus and control impulses. (Great TED talk about the ACE study here, the same study I talked about in my thesis and the essay I wrote for the Eli Wiesel Foundation.) Students who have been exposed to trauma in childhood are often misdiagnosed with ADHD for this reason. 

So on top of learning how to be a teacher, I find myself in the position of learning to be an amateur trauma therapist as well. Just counting my blessings and feeling lucky to be in a position to help. I have, however, felt a good deal of guilt that I have the luxury of sleeping in while others sleep on cots in crowded shelters. I was in a coffee shop on Friday, ordering a pour-over, wondering how life was allowed to feel so normal. I felt like the city should be in mourning, but as a friend remarked, life has the remarkable ability to return to normal, even in the face of catastrophe. The only way through is forward. 

The silver lining of this ordeal, if there is one, is that I have gotten a much needed breather with the whole week off of school. (I hadn't had more than two days off since January with my school and training schedules). I wish it weren't under such unfortunate circumstances. Another silver lining is that I can now clean up dead cockroaches without a second thought or even wrinkled nose. Problems are relative.  

An Affair of the Heart: Reflections on my first month teaching

Stats

Weeks of summer school: 4

Kids in my class: 11

White kids in my class: 0

Teachers in my class: 3

Average age of my kids: 7

Superman Band-Aids used: 6

Nights spent drinking wine: most of them

Through the stress, chaos and persistent feelings of inadequacy that accompanied my first month teaching, my  emotional rocks have been my fellow TFA corps members. We stagger off the buses  nursing battle injuries and headaches, dragging ourselves to our afternoon sessions with the weary convictions that YES, this work is important, and DAMN is it difficult. I never thought that teaching 11 seven-year olds how to add and subtract would require so much brainpower. (I'm admittedly overwhelmed to think what it's going to be like when there are 23 of them and only one teacher.)

We commiserate in the dining hall, swapping horror stories and funny moments in a daily council of catharsis. One teacher had a girl puke all over the math materials on her desk in the first week. Another high school teacher was talking about pets with his students and made the comment “I have a snake,” which was met with uproarious laughter.

The same teacher shares later in the summer that one of his students had just found out that he was going to be a father. I suddenly feel lucky to be dealing with temper tantrums and runny noses. Another corps member mentions that she thinks one of her students has Chlamydia because he gets up to pee every 45 minutes. Someone else points out that it could also be diabetes, but she says she thinks it’s Chlamydia because the Chlamydia rate for 18-24 year olds in the region is somewhere around 80%. Most kids don’t show symptoms.

Somehow the stories of teenage pregnancy and chlamydia turned into jokes, and as we laugh I feel my stomach twist. Why am I laughing? Why are WE laughing? I ask the question out loud, and a friend speaks the cutting truth.  

“We laugh so that we don’t cry.”

We laugh so that we don’t cry. Humor is the body’s best defense against heartbreak.

My heart breaks daily for my kids. It breaks when I realize that one of my girls can’t add single digit numbers on her fingers, when she should be starting to grasp more complex word problems and subtraction. It breaks when they talk about the guns that their parents (or aunts, or grandparents) keep in the cupboard. It breaks when they admit to being sleepy in class because they slept on a couch last night, and put their heads down angrily when their classmates press for details. I’ve learned that there are some questions you don’t ask.

But for every moment of heartbreak there is heart-growth in greater volume. Every morning they skip gleefully through the door with wide eyes and toothy grins, blissfully unaware that two more unarmed Black men were shot that week, unaware of the burdens that lie at the end of childhood.

For today, we’ll do the Nae Nae. The world can wait.

My heart expands in the first week when my boys are telling me about their pets, and one boy says he has two dogs. The next boy claims to have five dogs, and the third purports to have NINE.

 “Oh really?” I ask, “and what are their names?”

 “Jake,” he says. “They’re all named Jake.” 

My heart expands when they beg me to let them do a cinnamon roll hug at the end of every day, and without fail, fall over laughing.

My heart expands when decide they would rather build toothpick and marshmallow villages (complete with birthday cakes and a library) than marshmallow towers during our final team building activity.

My heart expands in the second week when one of my girls wraps herself tightly around my knees at the end of the day and says “Ms. Kiel, you’re not from Africa, but I still love you.” They run their fingers through my silky hair and stare at my blue eyes with wonder, and it occurs to me that some of them have never had a white teacher before. They laugh at me for not knowing who Kevin Gates is. (He’s a rapper.)

My heart expands when on the last day, the girl who couldn’t add at the beginning of the summer scores proficient on her computer test in math, and nearly cries with pride when I give her a shoutout in front of the class.

On the last day my supervisor presents me with a picture of the same girl holding a sign that says “I am why you Teach for America.”

I cry.

My heart breaks when I leave them.

*****

My first month as a teacher has been mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting, which is to say, it has been everything I expected and more. There have been days that went amazingly well (mostly by lucky guessing than intentional design) and there were days when the lesson plan fell apart and the room descended into chaos, and all I could think about were the dozen things I needed to change for tomorrow. Through the chaos, a calm and steady voice in my head issued a command: love. Just love.

My favorite definition of love is that it is primarily a verb. To love.

I am not going to be a perfect, or even necessarily good teacher for a while. It takes practice, patience, reflection, and an extraordinary level of grace for one's self. If I can do nothing else every day, I can love them. As a wise physician once said, the best medicine for humans is love. And if it doesn’t work? Increase the dose.

A Town Called Ruleville

Hi all,

I feels so strange that I’ve been gone for less than two weeks when it feels like months. The days have been long and challenging, both for the volume of information we are trying to absorb and the emotional challenges of witnessing the structural racism and classism that plagues education.

After five days of regional induction in Baton Rouge (more on that later), we drove to Mississippi for the official five-week training program, where we will earn a teaching certificate that qualifies us to teach for one year. We will have online classes throughout our first full year of teaching to reach a higher level of certification by next summer.

We are staying in the dorms at Delta State University (home of the Fighting Okra) in Cleveland, Mississippi, which is a big deal because it has a Walmart. The nearest movie theater is 45 minutes away, and the nearest Starbucks is an hour and 45 minutes away, but with 12,000 people it’s the largest town for 60 miles in any direction.  The locals are very familiar with Teach for America, and it seems the presence of the corps provides an economic boom every summer when the college students depart. The coffee shop I’m sitting in right now has a “Peach for America” drink, and another local bar sells “Drink for America” T-shirts…

The first week of training was an intensive crash course in lesson planning, classroom and behavior management, and social justice issues as they pertain to educational inequities. We learned that it took a long time after the passage of Brown v. Board of Education for Mississippi to actually take the integration of schools seriously. The backlash to this was the creation of all-white private schools that denied acceptance to black students on the basis that they were “unqualified”. The principle of school choice was used to defend these schools, even though many of them were unaccredited and even failing. I felt sick to my stomach when I realized that meant that parents would send their students to failing schools where they would graduate with a GED instead of a high school diploma rather than send them to school with black kids. The most infuriating part was that many of these schools still exists in the south.

On Thursday and Friday we visited the schools that we will be teaching at starting on Monday. Teach for America has partnered with local schools to provide summer programming that would otherwise be non-existent, though it is simultaneously a four-week training program for the teachers. (It’s kind of like how beauty schools do free haircuts and massages so that their students can get practical experience—the quality isn’t guaranteed, but it’s free.) Each classroom has three or four TFA teachers who trade off teaching different subjects. I’ll be teaching math as my primary subject, and literacy in small group rotations in a 2^nd grade classroom.

The school I will be teaching at is in Ruleville, Sunflower Country (population 2,800). In the hallways hang progress reports from prior years, which are mostly red, indicating “F” status on the national exam that measures Common Core standards (PARCC). The proficiency levels range from 15-40% across every subject and grade. My stomach dropped when I flipped the numbers in my head. 80% of third graders were failing in reading. 85% of sixth graders were failing science. One rare chunk of orange showed that 45% of fourth graders were proficient or above in math. I questioned the rational of displaying such depressing news so prominently. Just a reminder, you’re failing.

But compared to the rest of the town, the school seems the most joyful. The classrooms are colorful, with alphabet rugs and encouragements voiced by animated paper stars. You can do it! Keep up the great work! There is a sense of resilience in the administrators we have talked to throughout training. They know what their kids are up against, but they haven’t lost hope.

The surrounding streets are a different story. Everything feels slow and sprawling, with wide spreads of unkempt crab grass separating single story houses from trailer homes from lots with rusted tin sheds and farming equipment. The houses here are tired. They seem to sag into their frames, surrendering to the tendrils that creep and wind up the cracked and peeling paint.  The mosquitoes and the weeds seem to be the authority around these parts.

The one clear point of pride in the town is that it is the birth place of Fannie Lou Hamer, a Black sharecropper and civil rights activist who fought alongside Martin Luther King for voting rights for Black folks in the South.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer) You may have heard her famous quote “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

There is a monument garden around her burial site that is well-tended. When we passed by in the school bus that takes us to the site every morning there were several locals gathered with flowers at her headstone, paying their respects. One of our coaches said it best: “before you feel sorry for these kids, remember that they have the blood of Fannie Lou Hamer in their veins. Fear them. Respect them. Their ancestors led the civil rights movement.”

I am excited to start teaching, but also overwhelmed with the amount of information We've been given in the last 10 days about how to teach. I never fully realized how much goes into the process of running a classroom until we did our lesson plans for teaching single digit addition, which were around four pages long. Everything you say and do as a teacher should be intentional and rehearsed—the way you give directions, your body language, the way you give praise and consequences. To be honest, I’ve never been more anxious about standing in front of a room full of 7-year-olds. I worry that I will get so caught up in getting the processes and procedures right that I forget why I’m really there—to love them.

To end with a fun fact, I learned recently that teachers drink more than any other profession, and kindergarten teachers drink more than any other grade. After the past ten days, I’m not surprised.

Wish me luck. 

Intro to Teach for America

Hi friends,

In light of the interest folks have shown in my recent move to Louisiana to serve with Teach for America, I’ve decided to revive my old travel blog. The name Wanderhaus only implies adventure, and I decided that need not be limited to international wanderings.

To answer a few FAQs:

What is Teach for America?

In a nutshell, kind of like a domestic PeaceCorp for teachers. It’s a nonprofit that sends fresh college grads (and some middle age career changers) who are passionate about educational equity to areas of the country that have been identified as really struggling to provide quality education for all of their students. These students attend schools in neighborhoods where funding has been lost as richer students move to nicer areas, where structural racism and poverty put downward pressure on economic mobility and where it is difficult to recruit highly qualified teachers due to these problems. These areas have high teacher turnover rates and many students are stuck with long term substitutes when teachers bail after just a few months.

The program has been controversial over the years for a number of reasons (mainly putting non-education majors into the classroom after only 6 weeks of intensive training), but they have made significant improvements in the last decade, and on TFA teachers perform on average as good or better than first year teachers who have taken a traditional route into education.

The organization just celebrated its 25^th anniversary. For more info check out https://www.teachforamerica.org/.

Why am I doing it?

I had heard of Teach for America throughout college because they recruit on DU’s campus, but I had always been skeptically due to the criticisms I had heard. My area of expertise has become leadership and character development throughout my time with a number of youth programs, but I didn’t realize there was room for that kind of instruction after having coffee with a TFA recruiter who had been given my name by one of my Leadership professors. I’ve realized from conversations with other teachers that SEL (social emotional learning) is a hot topic in education right now, but one that few schools really know how to teach well since you can’t teach empathy the same way you teach math. From my thesis research I discovered that social emotional skills aren’t just a warm-and-fuzzy, feel good concept—they actually impact student success in very tangible ways, from academics and school completion to prison incarceration and teenage pregnancy rates. It’s the non-academic side of education that is so often ignored, but I want to develop this as an area of expertise and see how it can be used to help at-risk kids succeed inside and outside of the classroom.

Did you get to pick Louisiana?

Yes! I was part of a pilot program where I got to choose between 5 regions that I identified as good fits for my interests and needs, and I picked Southern Louisiana due to the strong presence of charter schools (where there is generally more room for experimental practices and social emotional development) and the strong and colorful culture of the region. Also, Colorado's stark lack of diversity (at least in the communities I've worked in) isn't conducive to an environment where I can grow in awareness about structural racism and my own identity. As I put it to one friend, there's only so much you can learn from people who are just like you. I picked the South because I knew it would challenge me. I don't expect this to be an easy experience, but I do expect it to make me grow in ways I can't yet imagine. 

How long will you be there?

I’ve signed on to a two year commitment, but if I were to choose to stay for three I could do a free master’s program at Louisiana State University in any subject. I’ve also been told that Louisiana has a high number of TFA alum in the area because so many people fall in love and never leave. We’ll see… 

On passion, purpose, and the art of living randomly

----Written circa May 2014----

Most people don't believe me when I tell them that the most life changing class I've taken in college has been creative writing. It has nothing to do with my major or minors, but it taught me an incredibly important lesson about life, something I doubt our professor even intended. The professor was a grad student named Serena who I'm fairly sure resented having to teach undergraduate classes as she constantly reminded us that one could not be taught how to be a good writer.

Instead she focused what little classroom structure we had on teaching us how to be creative, a process which usually consisted of "games" where we came up with random words and had to combine them into phrases with our neighbors, or deleted every third, fifth and sixth word in a line of text, or had to close our eyes and pick two words on a page and use them in the same sentence.... you get the idea.

The idea was that the best creative writing doesn't occur when you decide on the meaning and describe it in words, rather when you randomize words and derive meaning from chance encounters.

Of course none of our phrases made any sense (clearly we were amateurs), and being a highly logical thinker it drove me absolutely nuts. My professor would read aloud from books of her favorite poets, which usually sounded something like this:

Kiss my lips. She did.
Kiss my lips again she did.
Kiss my lips over and over and over again she did.
I have feathers.
Gentle fishes.
Do you think about apricots. We find them very beautiful. It is not alone their color it is their seeds that charm us. We find it a change.
Lifting belly is so strange.
I came to speak about it.
Selected raisins well their grapes grapes are good.
Change your name.
Question and garden.
It's raining. Don't speak about it.
My baby is a dumpling. I want to tell her something. Wax candles. We have bought a great many wax candles. Some are decorated. They have not been lighted.
I do not mention roses.
Exactly.
Actually.
Question and butter.
I find the butter very good.

excerpt from Gertrude Stein's"Lifting Belly"

(Apparently this was a poem about pregnancy, though I'm still convinced the author had just overindulged, an interpretation that seemed to offend Serena for some reason.)

The class went on in that way for 10 weeks, and at the end everyone who had showed up got As and we went our separate ways. It wasn't until a few months had passed that I realized just how valuable the concept of "random" could be in life.

It hit me as I was trying to figure out a way to justify the work I've been doing at a youth leadership camp. My mother had asked me what it had to do with anything else I wanted to do with my life, and I had to think about it.

The truth is I've done a lot of things that haven't had anything to do with anything else in my life. I decided to spend a year in Germany in high school even though I didn't speak any German. I started studying Japanese at the beginning of last year though I have no connections to the country, have never been into anime and (wait for it) don't even like sushi. I design runway fashion out of trash for an environmental advocacy group in California,  spent one Christmas break working as a Christmas angel, write for my school's business newspaper even though I'm not studying business, and dedicate a week every summer to working at a camp when I could be in DC doing fancy internships that I'm sure would look much more impressive on a resume.

But somehow, I find connections in the randomness that are astounding. I learned that my last name is actually a city in Germany, and that our last record from our ancestors was from a city just 60km away. I found out that my personality is much better suited to German culture than American, and fell in love with German sustainability, which turned into me making a traditional German dress out of German candy wrappers for a trash fashion show. After beginning Japanese I realized that Germany and Japan have a TON in common because of their World War Two histories, both going from shambles in the 40s to the third and fourth largest economies in the world today (I'm an econ minor). There are even types of traditional Christmas cake (which I learned about during my Christmas angel days) that are only made in Germany and Japan.

And when I randomly took a business class I learned that everything we teach at the leadership camp (teamwork, communication, empathy, integrity) are skills that are in high demand in business and for hiring in general. There's even a word for them ("soft skills") and I'm now writing my thesis on the importance of soft skill development to the economy, and my University in Germany I'll be at for study abroad has a research center for skill development. Somehow now I have the idea of combining my passion for education and soft skills with economics and international development by studying the economics of education in grad school. (One of three programs for this in the world is in London, where I've wanted to study since I was a kid)

My felt completely random until l I stopped compartmentalizing all of my hobbies and interests and passions and realized that the greatest meaning is derived from these "chance encounters." I figured out what I want to do with my life (maybe) because I just kept doing what I loved, even though it didn't fit into any sort of plan at the time. Now eventually, I'm figuring out a way to combine them into something I never would have arrived at by conventional methods.

But that's the thing about life-- you can't make a plan and fill it with all of the things that will take you from A to Z.  If you do you put on blinders to all of the seemingly random opportunities that might end up making the most meaningful connections.

We are surrounded with a mentality of delayed gratification. That is, if you want to be a successful lawyer/doctor/researcher/business person or doctor or whatever it is, you have to fit in all of the classes and internships and practicums required, even if some of it is horrible. We take a huge gamble based on the promise of grandiose titles and salaries-- who knows at the age of 18 whether or not they would truly be happy as a surgeon? It is physically impossible, yet that is what college kids everywhere are expected to predict. You can never choose a major without at some point being asked "so what do you want to do with that?" Can't it just be enough that I enjoy studying international relations and economics to justify studying those things? With some majors it's easy to say what you'll do, because there is a well know position associated with it, like psychologist, doctor, artist, etc. But there are so many more things you can do with your life than be one of the ten cookie cutter jobs that we teach little kids with picture books. The thing is-- you just haven't heard of it yet.

In economics this is referred to as imperfect information. When we don't have all of the information, we are more likely to make irrational decisions, like thinking we have to choose one interest out of dozens and forget about all the rest, or leave them to gather dust on the shelf and be pulled out years later with the guilt and regret of abandoned dreams. We grow up thinking it's a zero sum game. You can be an artist OR a scientist. A doctor OR a teacher. We don't think of careers that might combine all of our talents, passions and interests because there are just too many jobs out there to learn about up front.

But here's the great irony: if we know that there are so many jobs out there we've never heard of, and in all likely hood something that combines everything we love-- why are we content to stick with one cookie cutter option, and leave the rest as tangential interests or hobbies? What is the real harm in saying "I have no effing clue" the next time someone asks you what you want to do with your major? Feeling judged for not having your life figured out at the age of 18?

Because life isn't a straight line, it's a game of connect the dots, where all of the dots are the things you love and the lines are the chance encounters and relationships that tie them all together.

Of course, some things are mutually exclusive. You can't become an astronaut/princess/ballerina/veteranarian/kindergarten teacher (sorry 5 year olds), and some things might have to be kept as hobbies or extra reading. But if you give these things up to make room for "necessary" things you don't enjoy, you miss out on the opportunity to see the crazy ways those "random" dots might tie into your life.

Things I'm going to miss...

---Written circa August 2014---

(People not included)

1. The rocky mountains

2. Country music

3. Being able to drive where ever I want (while only feeling mildly guilty)

4. Bagels

5. Mexican food

6. Veggie Straws

7. Pirate's booty (If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't ask)

8. My dogs.



Things I'm looking forward to

1. BEING RID OF SILLY AMERICAN DRINKING LAWS
I just want a glass of wine with dinner, for Pete's sake. Also, I'll be 21 by the time I return, which means I never have to deal with prude American laws again. And my inner beer snob will finally have cheap options other than PBR and Coors Light.

2. Ubiquitous composting
Because ever since I got back from Germany I feel like a terrible human being whenever I have to throw compostables in the trash. They trained me well.

3. Nutella for days

4. The best flippin bread in the world
(though I suppose that might be pancakes... or naan? Do they flip naan?)
Germans really should be known for their bread. People train for years to become bakers, and it's a well-respected craft.

5. Doener Kebab
It's kinda like Gyros, but way better. On my last day with my host family we got Doener from a local vendor and had a picnic by the creek. (I'm not one for extravagant affairs. On my last night with my real family we had tacos and I was happy as a clam) (Except for the ones that end up in chowder).

6. German (read: Italian) ice cream
The wealth of Italian immigrants in Germany means you can get a cone of gelato for a Euro pretty much wherever you go.

7. Trains
There are few things more peaceful than riding a train through the German country side. And the route from Heidelberg to my old host family's house goes straight through the black forest.... And they're always on time *cough* Amtrak




Observation: Most of the things on these lists are food. Good thing I don't have enough money to buy much of it or I'd have to worry about the "exchange student 15" again...

Miscellaneous Wisdom

Drafted this a few years ago. Not finished or perfect, but worth sharing. 

1. On Success

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. A woman sat on her porch one summer evening and talked with her prized possession – a worldrenowned racing greyhound named Cash. When he raced, Cash ran with all his might and won and won and won. After each victory, his owner happily deposited the large paychecks into her retirement fund. The two often spent hours on the porch recounting these victories and pondering future races. This evening was different, however. After decades of success and millions of dollars in winnings, the greyhound told his owner that he was hanging it up. Cash had run his final race. Upon hearing the news, the shocked owner asked: “Just be honest. Are you getting too old to keep up this pace?” Cash answered, “No, no, I still have a lot of race left in me.” Moving on, the owner pried, “So, are you injured?” “No.” Cash replied, “Actually, I’ve never felt better!” “Well,” inquired the woman, becoming increasingly frustrated, “do I mistreat you in any way?” “Come on,” came the response, “you know you always treat me kindly.” “Then why? Why won’t you race? I must know. You are so good at what you do and you’ve worked for years to get to this point – the pinnacle of your career. If you retire, we will miss out on even larger paydays, worldwide fame and a chance to go down as the most successful owner-greyhound combo in history!” 

To that Cash replied: “I don't want to race anymore because after all those years of running and running and running, I finally discovered that the rabbits I have been chasing all my life aren’t even real.” 

-Corey Ciocetti, from Chasing Real Rabbits


2. On attitude

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference. - Robert Fulgham, Everything I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten

3. On Tact
Tact is the art of making point without making an enemy" - Isaac Newton

4. On fellowship with humanity 

Wisdom from Doctor Who

The Doctor: [Pointing to frozen Abigail Pettigrew] Who's she?

Kazran Sardick: Nobody important.

The Doctor: Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important before.

On grudges

The Carrot, the Egg, and the Coffee Bean

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. 

She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling.  It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen.  She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire.   
Soon the pots came to boil.  In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans.  She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes, she turned off the burners. She fished out the carrots and placed them in a bowl.   She pulled out the eggs and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled out the coffee and placed it in a bowl.  Turning to her daughter, she asked, “Tell me what you see.”

“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied.

Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft.  The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it.  After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. 

Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee.  The daughter smiled as she tasted its richness and savored its aroma.  The daughter then asked, “What does it mean, mother?”

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity — boiling water.  Each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting.  However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.

The egg had been fragile.  Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique, however.  After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

“Which are you?” she asked her daughter.  “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond?  Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?”

Think of this: Which am I?  
Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat?  
Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff?  Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain.  When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor.  If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst; you become even better and change the situation around you.

When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level?

How do you handle adversity?  Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?

The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of things that come their way.

On Humility

"My list of virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive meaning to the word.

I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points."

Benjamin Franklin, in

On Joy and Sorrow

Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow." 
      And he answered: 
      Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. 
      And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. 
      And how else can it be? 
      The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. 
      Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? 
      And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

On Pain

And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain." 
      And he said: 
      Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. 
      Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. 
      And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; 
      And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. 
      And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. 

On Giving

      Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving." 
      And he answered: 
      You give but little when you give of your possessions. 
      It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. 
      For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?  
      And what is fear of need but need itself? 
      Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable? 
      There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. 
      And there are those who have little and give it all. 
      These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. 
      There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. 
      And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. 
      And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; 
      They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
      It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; 
      And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving 
      And is there aught you would withhold? 
      All you have shall some day be given; 
      Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

On Love

 Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love." 
      And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said: 
      When love beckons to you follow him, 
      Though his ways are hard and steep.
      For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. 
      Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,       So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
      But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, 
      Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, 
      Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. 
      

Synergy is when the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, when 2+2 miraculously equals 5. In love and friendship, look for people who love you as you are, but make you a better version of yourself. 

On Nature

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

Henry David Thoreau

On safety nets

"If you ever choose to pursue something where the odds of your success are low, people will always tell you to have a safety net. "Study art, but double major in business, just in case" they'll say. Of course this advice is  always well-intended, but the problem with having a safety net is that if it's there, you will always use it. Without a safety net, you're going to get really damn good at walking on that tight rope."

(Not sure of the original source or wording of this, but thank you to Jim Halderman for sharing it)