And then it hit

I've been really missing my blog. I've been thinking about it regularly and today is the perfect day to write what I'm up to.

So here we've been in the pandemic now for over 2 years. The anxiety of wondering how things would go if it came to our family has been a lot. The shoe finally dropped for me in the form of my catching COVID. So far my family is perfectly fine, thankfully.

I won't go into all the details, but I do want to share where I'm holding today. Last week on Monday I was already feeling ill. I was certain it was allergies. I got a PCR Tuesday night which is when I tested positive. The remainder of the week was spent in bed with bad cold/flu symptoms. 

Over the weekend I started to really recover. U kicked me out of the house to take a walk when he saw me fidgeting. Sunday afternoon I continued to push myself. I did a few loads of laundry (which means using stairs a lot) and went for two walks, one short and one long. The shorter one winded me, but later the longer one (15 minutes) was great. 

By evening, though, I was short of breath and realized I might not make it to work Monday.

Sure enough... Monday was a fight to breathe. My doctor put me on steroid inhalers and, by afternoon when it still wasn't resolving, prednisone as well. 

The day felt like a giant panic. I was so frustrated with my inability to control the day for my students. The tightness in my chest led to natural panic too. All day my colleagues told me remotely to stop worrying, but I couldn't. My supervisor talked me down from worrying about the whole week and told me to take things one day at a time. 

Today's another story. I'm still needing to go slow, to respect both my lungs and the effects of the medicines, but I feel more ease about doing so. I'm starting to trust more to my colleagues and am most grateful for the ones who are actively communicating with me. 

(I'll make a note of that. Could be others would like the same from me when are situations are reversed. I'll try to ask in the future.)

This certainly brings up memories of when I had cancer, of when I've had to take care of myself differently, but I accept those memories fairly comfortably. It doesn't hold the same darkness or worry that it once did. 

I'm worried about tomorrow. I don't know how to judge when I'm ready to return and I don't know yet what my plans will be for my students (or what to just turn over to others), but I'm feeling more like maybe I can wait and see. 

Yes, I can take it one day at a time. Thanks to the person who told me to do that. And thanks to her too for letting my students call me and wish me better. 

Shofar

It's always fitting that the month of Elul and the beginning of the school year align. Elul is a time of returning to Gd as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It's a time to re-commit to what we know to be true, and to lay bare our vulnerabilities.

Returning to the classroom brings the same drive. If a person doesn't feel vulnerable and afraid with the abstract concept of facing Gd, they certainly can while counting down the minutes to prepare a classroom, welcome a new set of students and preparing to face any number of challenges and tension that a new school year has in store. 

This year is no different, but the stakes are higher. It's so much harder to plan now, what will the year look like? What sudden shifts will we need to make? What an awesome responsibility to be a captain on a ship in these waters for a group of vulnerable children who might not only be afraid of the voyage, but might demonstrate their anxiety in all sorts of ways that make the navigation that much more challenging.

In 30 minutes I'll be "back at school" but starting the day from my couch and attending first meetings on Zoom. Strange. I'll go to school but be asked to distance from colleagues. Strange. I will bring back with me some of the books I brought home when we went virtual, but not many of them. I don't want to have to lug them back again afterwards. Strange.

I'm also blowing shofar daily for myself and family, driving our experience of Elul and drawing down strength from above. Not so strange. 

But powerful. 

How To Be A Teacher During the Summer of 2020

Step 1: Collapse

Despite all your years, and all of your experience, you started from scratch, you gave it your all during the time of year when you were supposed to be winding down. You deserve this.

Step 2: Veg

Whatever way works for you...

Step 3: Worry

If you aren’t good at this, try taking stock every day of every symptom you might have. Make sure to read articles about well-meaning selfless people contracting the disease and dying fast.

Step 4: Commiserate

Make sure every conversation includes words and phrases from the following menu:

“What is the _____________(Governor/principal/president/camp office) thinking?”

“How am I supposed to... 

Mask

Plexiglass

Social distancing

Antibodies

Fatality

Step 5: Revisit steps 3 and 4. 

Step 6: Learn

You’ve provided yourself on professional development courses or classes every summer. You need it again more than ever. 

Step 7: Practice

Classes taken, what new skills do you need? Schoology? Google Tools? 

Step 8: Reignite

Visit Pinterest such as the beautiful beach scene classroom created by the teacher who put colorful umbrellas on top of the new plexiglass surrounded desks. Don’t read the downer wet blanket comments from people who are still on Step 4.

Step 9: Inspire

Don’t let someone else put out your flame. Share your enthusiasm with others. Fake it until you make it if you’re still lagging behind. Commit to protecting your own health as you blaze forward.

Step 10: Teach

This is what you’re made for. This is what you love. This is what is needed.

High School SAT scores

Oh spring. It comes with so much promise and then becomes such a time over multitasking that it's very hard to stay on track with any projects started before Pesach.

Well, today on this Memorial day weekend I returned to my Marie Kondo work for the first really good chunk of time in a while. I'm up to the stage of getting rid of papers, and our office floor has been covered for months now with all of my files, letters, papers etc. from old school work, to bills, to drafts of my writing, letters and more.

This is just a sampling.
There is more, so much more!

It's been very slow going. While I've put in a few minutes here and there I feel like I have an emotionally easy enough time sorting through old medical things or bills, but when it comes to the more personal things I'm not sure what to do. Today I opened a bag of old letters from all different people in my life. All of them -- all of them -- felt painful in some way. I suppose at least in part it's because these letters are from my college years when I was scared about the future, unsure of where I was going, that these are hard to look at. I read a few, then couldn't take it anymore, but decided at least for now to to keep them. These are part of my history and I haven't decided yet whether I need to let this history go, or if I need the story available to be retold. Just don't know.

Then I found a file of my old SAT scores, report cards etc. I went to show some of it to U. Maybe it's partly because I was sharing it that I had the reaction that I did. I flipped through page after page of reports from teachers I had, both those I liked and those I didn't like, and classes that I was good at and classes that were hard. Sure, the ones I liked best had the drop down comment, "talented", but there were comments too about incomplete work, not following directions, poor test scores even on a take-home test and finally I just started to cry. Reading these little slips I started to feel the crushing pressure of all these adults judging me according to what they wanted from me and they were things that didn't show who I was. The only reports that felt safe were from band class and writing class. But physics, math, even Spanish and AP English, I wasn't what they wanted to be.

Since becoming a teacher I have always reflected back on myself as having been a pretty good student. I wasn't labeled with a disability. I didn't misbehave (much). Yes, I was stubborn, but usually the teachers I think of fondly thought past that. So it's taken an act of imagination to see what it might be like for children that really really struggle in school.

Now, though, I see that I was being judged and that so many people saw me not living to my potential or, maybe more accurately, not living up to theirs. In this report card writing season I'm now seeing my own relationships with students in a new light. The judgement we put on them is very very powerful.

The good news for myself is that as I've gone through my files I've found some good things too. I love my letters of recommendation, cards from people I know love me and results of some of my most recent work in adulthood. What a relief to be an adult now and too feel OK with whom I am and what I do. What a relief to not having to be figuring out who I am from scratch anymore.

So the professional question to leave this with... how can we as teachers and parents make our children and students feel appreciated the way I do from those good letters and not crushed with the judgement I felt in my report cards. 

Welcome To Our Sukkah!

These first two days of Sukkot were packed and I want to write about two things that happened. In this post I'll tell about the sukkah hop. I'll use another post for the other thing.

So in our shul there is an annual sukkah hop. It used to consist of hoards of children bombarding one sukkah after another, swooping up candy, and leaders pleading with them to say thank you and try not to break anything. At least, that's what I hear.

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Routines

There are a lot of landmarks looming for me right now. Next June I turn 40. I'm just about to start teaching for my 11th year at the same school which means I've lived here for 10 years, taught here for 10 years and now gone camping for the 10th year in a row.

I remember how I felt at the end of my annual camping trip after the very first year. Pure terror filled me as I'd had a rough beginning at the new job and have always tended to be anxious. I felt nauseous and doomed. Teaching has always been anxiety-producing. At other times in my career it has manifested as keeping candles oriented in a particular way during yoga to help me see how close to Shabbat I was. At other times I remember being afraid to get out of bed until I could just remember the face of a child from my class instead of feeling I was drowning in the sea of things I needed to do and could not seem to do well enough.

It has been a habit for me to cling desperately to things that make me feel safe... visits home to Portland, hoarding of special items I'd buy there, weekends, precious moments in nature.

I've been through the cycle so many times now, it's no longer a big deal. When I went on my souvenir hunts this summer, I still loaded up, but not as much, and wondered what things at home I could get rid of at the same time.

How is this possible?

For one, I've become a better teacher.

For another, I have an easier position now than I used to.

Refuge seems to always be accessible now even if it takes a deliberate breath or step away from a difficult situation, but I've so many times gone through days that just weren't as bad as I thought, that I feel fine more often now.

As I began to reflect on this I wondered if age has brought a dulling of my feelings. I'm feeling less anxious. Does that mean less happy too? Now... it just means feeling a little lighter. Happiness is less desperate, but it's certainly there.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind if I were still camping right now. However, when I show up on Tuesday next week, it will feel familiar and I don't have to think a lot about it right now.

Summer Mindfulness

Summer is a complicated time for me. I'm fully aware of how fortunate I am to be part of the working population who has the summer "off" and as a result has a very different life during that time.

My summers are not, however, smooth sailing. My workaholism, ambition and strong belief in the importance of professional development prevent me from just vacationing. I've been putting in hours studying for my special education endorsement program as well as accomplishing things that I'm unable to do during the school year.

The onset of every summer is emotionally jarring for me. There's an enormous leap from putting in long and stressful hours, investing my work into children, worrying that my work over the year wasn't enough, waving them off and then having only my own child left to care for. To put in so much energy for other beings and then just have them disappear after maybe giving me a goodbye and thank you card is uncomfortable. It shakes up my sense of self-worth and industry. Then I face unstructured days and lists upon lists of expectations for myself, goals, to do lists.

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Welcome, 2015!

So it's the secular New Year, a time when lots of people make resolutions. I don't have any new resolutions to share right now. Rather, I find myself checking in with my intentions as of Rosh Hashanah/2014-2015 school year.

This year has been designated as a scaling-back year. The biggest part of that was taking a hiatus from my writing group and, hence, my novel as well. I've done very little volunteering and am taking stock of some questions about my work.

Instead, what I find is I'm settling into inhabiting my life. This has become a major phrase for me. It means
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Farm Visit

On Wednesday the first and second graders took a field trip to Green Meadows Farm. It was a special treat for many reasons, one was that since I teach Second and Naomi is in First, it was a rare opportunity to take a trip with her. So yesterday I attended as a parent more than as a teacher.

It had a very big impact on me. The Farm is basically a giant petting zoo and the kids were allowed to not only pet, but even pick up animals like goats, rabbits and full-grown chickens. Even growing up in Corvallis, Oregon and bringing in the eggs from our chickens, I never had held one before. (In fact, I don't think I held one yesterday either, but I did pet a few.) We also petted pigs, emus, horses, cows, puppies and kittens.

It was stunning to watch the reactions both of the children and the adults. Many of the children were a little afraid, although by the end of the day most were willing to go into the pens and touch everything. Some of the adults are terrified to go near anything which made me very very sad. The idea that the connection to animals had never existed or had been severed over time is heart-breaking to me.

Further, I realize that everyone that was with us that day readily eats meat without making the connection. In fact, a child asked as we were actually milking a cow, "Is this Kosher?" On one hand that made me sad, that anyone would want to eat this creature with whom we were interacting. On the other, isn't that exactly how it used to be here and is in other places? Children knew the animals they would eat some day. They excepted the cycle of life and then participated.

I think that the older I get, the more sensitive I become, and so even if it's natural, I am hesitant to participate in this cycle. However, what hurts the most when I consider meat eating, is the thought people do so without connection to where the animals come from and without any idea or acceptance that there may be a sadness involved. In fact, people revel in how much they can choose not to care about animals. ("Oh no, I only avoid red meat for health reasons.") Why this can be attractive stuns me. Don't we want to be around others who have compassion?

I realize this all, ironically, makes me difficult to be around, and it's not an easy way to feel either. I want to just revel in the joy of what I saw without thinking about how lovely those animals were and what will happen to them in a matter of a few short months or years.

Manic Activism

I think this tends to happen to me in the spring that I start to feel a sort of manic activism.

I just got home from watching Vegucated with my CSA as a launch for this year's farm share. It got me reflecting once again on my food choices which is a little stressful for me because there are so many "don'ts" and "can'ts," some more self-imposed than others. I try to be mostly vegetarian and would consider veganism if 1. I didn't love cheese but 2. (more importantly) I wasn't allergic to nuts and wary of soy. I would love to craft the most humane food-eating regimen possible, but for my food sensitivities, Kashrut, difficulty to come by certain foods, high risk for breast cancer (and so avoidance of soy) etc. After the images of animal mistreatment, however, I think it's tragic how many people eat meat -- including Kosher -- without fully realizing the impact of their consumption. If they knew, they might still choose to eat meat. But shouldn't they know?

It's not just food on my mind.

I'm also about to start my yearly Tread On Trafficking campaign to combat modern day child sexual slavery.

I'm writing an article about issues of gender in the Orthodox Jewish Community.

I spent a weekend with a dear friend that reminds me of my desire to watch my actions environmentally throughout every part of my day. (Amazing how proximity to the right people can remind you of values you share.)

I also just completed phase 1 of a project in my school to reduce waste production, especially of plastic water bottles. I'm proudest of that because it took a lot of planning and I see the effects immediately, but I'll return to that in another post.

I suppose when I'm like this, it could start getting annoying for others. All this desire to change is a form of perfectionism for the world and we all know how unhealthy perfectionism can be. I may be labeled idealist, self-righteous, obnoxious. They would be fair labels.

However, the alternative is dire. The things I'm aware of that drive me towards working on each of these causes (and more) must be tackled if not actually changed. The fact that so many people are  unaware is frightening.

Like the bumper sticker says, "If you're not pissed off, you aren't paying attention."


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IPads In The Classroom

Another article of mine up as of yesterday -- Using and Not Using iPads To Teach Reading.

Hurricane Sandy Final installment

In Hurricane Sandy Part 14 I mentioned an article I was writing. Here it is.

Hurricane Sandy Part 14

Things feel crazy right now.

Our school still doesn't have power although a few in the area do. Our principal arranged for classes to be held in different houses, but I didn't find out for sure this would happen until an hour and a half before it was happening and most teachers were unavailable to teach. I was home with no materials to speak of. Thankfully, I'm a hoarder. In my home office I found several piles of printouts and things that I'd been telling myself for years to throw out. Now I'm glad I kept them. I taught in not one, but two, different houses, racing between them and dropping ND off at a third house for kindergarten.

The kids were fairly off-the-wall, but when I took out a read-aloud, you could have heard a pin drop. How we are craving our regular routines!

Tomorrow will be similar except that many of the classes at least will be housed at a single location (a local shul). I didn't know for sure if I was needed until 10 o'clock tonight. I have pulled together a few things. I hope it's enough. I feel proud at the end of the day to help, but I don't like living minute to minute like this.

Making a Difference

Tonight I had some friends over to celebrate my 9 year remission anniversary. (That's one-fourth of my life that I've been a survivor.) Somehow I'm connecting it very strongly to the loss of my mentor, Michael this year and I spoke about him to my friends.

Throughout the night we talked about many things and it kept coming up again and again, the idea of people who had made a difference in our lives, often by a single interaction among many. I keep feeling like the work I want to do in healing the world will not happen through teaching. But maybe I've been wrong. Two of the friends there tonight are my friends because I taught their daughters and made a difference to them directly. I've sometimes been thinking I want to get out of the school environment because it is so intense, rushed and stressful in many ways, but maybe I'm needed there to help kids navigate it. Also, I care more about emotional landscape and survival than I do about teaching reading and writing. But maybe that's the very reason I need to continue.

I've just been published at the PLP network where I wrote about my childhood and compared it to contemporary suburban NJ childhoods. Maybe taking the question and knowledge I have of my ideal world, and taking it with me when I enter the world in front of me, can provide some small amount of respite or change or possibility to the children who enter the room to work with me each day. And maybe writing about this reflection can make a difference to others further away.

Maybe I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing and don't need to worry about it so much.

More inspiration!

Alysa and I came to Yeshivat Noam in the same year. We have always bonded over our concern about environmentalism, but she is just amazing and organizing and initiating programs that work. Check this out.

Inspiration and Agony

A friend of mine recently got a job with Teva and has been ecstatic since. On Yom Kippur he told me about a transformative experience he had davening Shacharit with a leader in the woods. He wrote a lovely blog post about it.

I listened as he told me about this and found myself exclaiming internally, "Oh oh oh! You've never davened shacharit in the woods before? Oh, how sad!!!! Oh, you know now about the light inside us all that comes from G-d... you hadn't had that before either?" I am so happy for him to have discovered this and feel a simultaneous plummeting inside me as I'm realizing just how few have ever even touched this. It feels as natural as water to me. I grew up in Corvallis, OR with nature and incense and touchy-feely Jews who loved Judaism for its connection to life itself and not just to text or walled-up inside shuls. To me this is what it is.

Over the years my day-to-day view of Judaism has changed, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, but that connection between nature and the soul and Torah are already inside me. It makes me so sad when it's obscured by materialism or simply by the devoted black hat suited culture that is passionate about G-d but disconnected from land and sometimes from their children because they don't always know how to connect their spirits together. What torture to imagine that it's not for so many people who want that connection so badly, sometimes without even knowing it.

Before this friend told me this story, we were sharing how grateful we both are to have jobs in where we know we daily engage in passions of our life that make a difference in the world. But there's a piece of me that still feels something is missing, a potential connection isn't meeting. Is this just the norm that comes of not being able to do all I want all at once -- change the lives of children while still writing and meditating and being present in my own free time and being a fun mother too. Or is it a gap I need to heal? I don't get to teach spirituality. I teach reading, writing, math and how to be a citizen from a child's perspective. The passion of teaching comes through connecting with children and families, particularly when there are barriers to overcome just as social or behavioral differences.

That's just it... I love connection. I'm connecting with them, sometimes helping them connect to each other, but are we connecting to G-d? Am I connecting all the parts of me, are we connecting all to each other, to nature, to our inner spirits? Or must the writer and meditator parts of me be reserved for different times.

In short, am I doing everything to the best of my abilities exactly as I should be? Or someday should I do it a little differently... the writer, meditating environmentalist teacher of behaviorally challenged children...

who loves to just sit and be alone sometimes in the woods.

And who already does that sometimes, returning to see the perfection in the present exactly as it is right now.

Recategorizing

Today I had lunch with a woman whose daughter was my student 6 years ago.

I love shifting people from "parent-of-kid-I'm-teaching" category to "friend." It's a shame it takes so long.

Happy to add her to my very slowly growing collection of true NJ friends.

A teaching relevant post for this... 2 days after the kids went home

Great article about what makes a good teacher.

I would add that while a clean classroom is great, the part about being organized does not necessitate having everything perfectly tidy. With all due respect, I sometimes see perfect cleanliness traded off for some of those other good things he mentions.

In The News

What an odd morning... waking up after a groggy to discover that Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Came to school and my 2nd graders were very excited, all talking in groups in the room. I kept hearing snippets. "Dead" "killed" etc. Especially kept hearing the voice of one student who is quiet on everything but politics and math.

So of course we had a meeting. I asked what they'd heard in the news. I said I wanted to help them understand things they'd heard, find out what was true, what wasn't true, what we didn't know etc. That child I just mentioned stated clearly,

"They got the guy who planned the attack on the two towers."

"Great," I said. "What else do you know?" and called on someone else.

"The Yankees beat the..." (I don't even remember who he said.)

"It was my birthday."

"I saw this cool motorcycle race on TV."

In short, they had no clue. These are 2nd graders. None of them were even born before 2011. And ant hills are bigger than mountains to them.

Love it.

A Ploy to Help ND Eat Healthfully

As part of my striving to have just the life I want, I've been making a real effort do dedicate special time to ND in our afternoons. One of her favorite things is to create "projects."

And one problem we have is that she just doesn't like that many foods -- once she decide she doesn't like something, she rejects it. (Sometimes she'll reject something for other reasons and say she's tried it before when he hasn't.)

So we made the following poster:
It's a modified food pyramid listing categories of foods. The pictures are just printed out from my laptop using Google images to locate them. ND is only allowed to glue on pictures of foods she actually likes. She was so excited by the concept that this would help Dad buy groceries! We're obviously not finished yet. She has some she hasn't even cut out yet.

The idea, though, is that I can offer a new food and say, "If you try this and like it, you can add it to the poster!!!"

Note too that the special treats and desserts section is a different color. We talked about how these just taste good and you shouldn't eat so much because they aren't so good for your body.