I'm not a role model... wait, yes I am.

Does anyone else remember this commercial? No? Ok, moving on. 

This post is about as revealing as a person gets, so sit down, strap in, hold on, and shut up.

No, please don't shut up.

Three years ago, a former student messaged me on Facebook. She wanted to tell me I am a failure.

She intended for me to be a role model. I was a female teacher who was willing to question the establishment in public.

She was used to being treated as a higher being. She was smart and a lot like Reese Witherspoon's character in the movie Election. If you haven't seen it, you should. It's good.

She came from what was perceived as a good family. Her dad was an attorney. She planned to go to law school.

I was pregnant the semester she was in my class. I had a fairly high risk pregnancy which ended with me on bed rest for 10 weeks and a lot of drama. I don't know why this is relevant, but it's part of the story. I was under a lot of stress. It was also only my third year teaching, so I was still kind of a fuckup.

This student was in my last class of the day. I seem to remember that it was a smallish class, but it was full of personality. That's what teachers say when you have kids who are pretty wild. In this class a lot of the kids didn't like each other and were assholes about it.

This student was in the class with her boyfriend. He was a classic brilliant underachiever. Teachers typically hated him. I didn't, I found him entertaining.

One time, we had a lockdown drill. This meant that we acted like there was a threat of some sort in the building. This was an unannounced drill which also meant that we weren't sure if it was a drill or the real thing. Teachers locked their doors, covered the windows, turned off the lights, students were pushed into a corner and we were all supposed to act like there was no one in the room. This particular student started freaking out. Her boyfriend was hugging her and telling her it would be all right. Two other students in the class apparently gave her shit for freaking out. I don't know, honestly, I was busy trying not to freak out myself and I was really worried that they weren't being quiet. Anyway, she loudly called him an asshole.

I wrote her up for it. Standard disciplinary procedure. In her message, I should not have done that because they were "two of the biggest shitheads in class."

Huh. I didn't realize that justice was for the mostly good. I thought it was for everyone.

There was a student in her class who might have been new to the school. I honestly don't remember. I do remember that she did not dress like the other students. She didn't look like them. She didn't act like them. And some of them gave her crap for it. This student in particular, gave her a lot of crap for it. In her message, she asked me if I remembered accusing her of bullying a student without asking how she felt about it.

I didn't accuse anyone of anything. Which is my failing. The student and her mom accused two of the students and I supported her version of events. I should have done the accusing. I watched it happen. They taunted her daily. The student went on homebound instruction for the rest of the year because she felt like she couldn't deal with school. I feel really shitty that I didn't do anything first. So no, I don't give a fuck what she felt about it.

During this student's senior year, I took a group of students to Washington, D.C., for Obama's first inauguration. It took an insane amount of planning to get that trip together. I was told by the administration that I could only take students who were currently in my government course at the time. Since I had to take a minimum number and the trip was expensive,  they allowed me to open the trip to honors or AP students with their approval.

She asked to go on the trip. Despite what I saw as a personality conflict with her, I asked the administration anyway. I wanted to say no outright, but I went ahead and asked.

They said no. She was being criminally investigated at the time. While I know the details of the situation, I'm pretty sure she was a minor and so I'm not going to say anything incriminating. Let's just say that it was extreme bullying. It was pretty horrible, honestly.

One day, just as the bell rang, this student tried to stop me on the way out of my classroom.

I have a small bladder. I can barely make it 90 minutes of class, and there were times where I had to call over another teacher to keep an eye on my class so I could run to the bathroom.

Anyway, she tried to stop me. I had to pee. BAD.

She says I slammed the door to my classroom in her face when she wanted to know why I couldn't take her on the DC trip. Really, it was the door to the bathroom. She could have waited for me to finish. But she didn't. I don't know that things would have turned out differently for her. She wasn't allowed to go. I didn't make that decision.

I was reminded of all this today.

A friend of mine posted this amazing article on Facebook: http://thehairpin.com/2014/10/let-me-love-you/

A quote from the article:

Here’s an insanely revolutionary act: why not counter each ill thought that comes through your head with an acceptance—the acceptance that you’re not always going to agree with everything every woman does. Or an acceptance that some women will be tricky and some will be actual bitches, some of them will read Lean In and be the next Sheryl Sandberg, some women will call Beyoncé an anti-feminist, some will be walking contradictions, or some women will say that I’m a fake behind my back, or that I’m a liar, and that I don’t write well, or whatever—and just to accept that people are just people, women are just women, instead of reacting poorly and slamming them in whatever juvenile way that you see fit.


I realized that I have been accepting but not liking certain women for years. When I was being a butt head when I was a kid, my mom would say, "I love you, but I don't like your actions."

I have accepted my students, flaws and all, and there is more than one that I have not loved. But love or not, I have been fair.

I have always been fair, no matter what their age, gender, sexual orientation, socio economic background. I will not give you a free pass to misbehave because you are smart or white or rich.

And so while this student carries this viewpoint of oppression with her, I am proud. I am damn proud of what I've done and what I continue to do. I am a role model. I try to choose to do the right thing. Sometimes I fail. I'm totally human. But I believe in fairness.

I hope this student finds peace and acceptance. Believing you are oppressed when there is no reason to do so is a horrible cross to bear.

A Good Enough Mommy

I gave up today.

I am not a typical Pinterest mommy. I didn't cloth diaper. I didn't take pictures of my kids on the first day of the month. I didn't make my own baby food.

Pinterest didn't even exist until my youngest was 3, so I guess I have an excuse.

I typically use Pinterest

 to pin things that I will never wear.

To pin things that make me laugh- this one is the most repinned of anything 501 times as of this writing.

To pin tattoos that I want

and of course to pin things I want to do for the kids

If one spends too much time on Pinterest, one can feel inadequate in about 100 different ways. I don't make dessert every day. I don't have enough money/time/energy to label everything in my house with wee tiny chalkboards. I don't work out enough. When I do, I don't wear cute enough clothes that I made myself by upcycling t-shirts.

This definitely goes for moms. I don't pack my kids lunches. I don't make them into adorable shapes. My kids won't touch kale. My kids don't  have bedroom signs with adorable saying on them.

We did do bubble art http://www.pinterest.com/pin/210261876323028128/

Once, we made bubble art. I totally micromanaged it. It still hangs in the boys bathroom and looks super cute, but I was a huge pain in the ass when we did it. I didn't want it to have too many bubbles, I didn't want the boys to be covered in food coloring.

Since before my boys were even born, I have liked scrapbooking. I totally get that it's mommy homemaker, but I like office supplies, pictures, and stickers, and scrapbooking combines all those things into awesome fun times for me.

As the boys got older, I discovered digital scrapbooking, which I actually enjoy even more.

HOWEVER, it's so much work. Editing the pics. Laying out the book. Organizing them by event. Putting cute titles on the pages.  And so on... that now I'm behind about 3 years. By the time I get to even editing the pictures, I won't remember why I took the picture of Agent X with the sassy look on his face or Agent N up to his elbows in mud.

And so I've decided not to continue. I'm going to put pictures in books. I'm sure I'll edit some. But I'm done with the titles and the stickers and the ribbons and the papers. Pictures in books because they tell a story of the things we've done and they remind of of the fun we've had. The boys like to hear stories of what we did together when they were too young to remember. And that's what's important.

Thoughts on Gay Marriage

When the Windsor case decision was handed down from the Supreme Court back in June, 2013, I kept hitting refresh on my internet browser like a monkey on crack. I was at a conference in Richmond and when it was clear that DOMA had been overturned, I interrupted the speaker and announced it to the room. Most people were happy and those that weren't had the good grace to shut up about it.

Today, when the same SCOTUS declined to hear cases that overturned same-sex marriage bans, therefore making them legal, I was happy about it, but also had the overwhelming sense of well, it's about time.

Marriage is a government institution. Society benefits from it.

And now, a famous quote from Liz Feldman:

Personally, I am very excited about “gay marriage”, or as I like to call it, “marriage”.  Because I had lunch this afternoon, I didn’t have “gay lunch”.  And I parked my car, I didn’t “gay park” it.  Although, I totally parked like a fucking fag!  

source: http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/d18ead07bf/one-day-more

I'm not gonna lie...

Why Teachers Lie About Their Classrooms - at The Atlantic

I don't lie about my teaching. I'm just never going to tell you the whole truth.

Yes, there's a kid who is falling asleep/cheating/texting while another kid has an epiphany. And tomorrow, the roles could be reversed. I literally don't care about the kid not paying attention.

When I was in the classroom, and now when I have group or individual sessions, or when I'm recording a lecture, I give 100% of myself to my students. I give that 100% to the students who give me 100% back. On any given day, that student could be a different person.

I don't hold it against them. If you and your mom got in a fight before school and she took your phone, you're probably distracted and not paying attention. It's nothing personal.

In my last 2 years in the classroom, the phrase "I'm not gonna lie..." was extremely popular. It would often precede a statement not worth lying about. "I'm not gonna lie, this was the best chicken biscuit ever. "

Sometimes, it preceded a hard truth. "I'm not gonna lie, class was really boring today, L-Mar."

I appreciated their honesty mainly because it gave me an opportunity to respond. Usually, it was, "You're right, the Puritans suck and I can't wait to be done with them." This was followed by laughter on both sides- they're not used to teachers admitting that something they teach is pretty awful (sorry, dear reader, if you like the Puritans).  And secondly, they saw me as a human. Which will lead to more "I'm not gonna lie... " statements in the future, which will lead to a better teacher-student relationship, which will lead to more learning.

Other times, it gave me the opportunity to notice that while the rest of the class was heatedly discussing the evils of Commie-chasing, this student was completely checked out and bored.

"Why were you bored?" "It was dumb."

"What's going on in your other classes?" "Ugh, everything is so lame right now. I think all of you teachers decided not to do anything interesting this week."

" How are things between you and your brother/mom/dad?" "My dad moved out yesterday."
(me, silently... AND THERE WE HAVE IT.)

also applies to teaching.

When I talk to my colleagues at lunch that day, do I share how the Puritans suck? Nope. I'm going to tell them about how my 2nd block was SUPER ENGAGED and everyone was making AWESOME CONNECTIONS between the Red Scares of the 1920s and 1950s.

I'm not gonna lie, but after you've been teaching a while, you get selective memory. You remember the awesome stuff and there seems to be more of it every day. You remember the really horrible stuff. But you don't remember the stuff in between.

Old, and getting older.

There have been a lot of things written about the age of people who are involved with church.

What we can do to keep the next generation (if you only read one, read this one- it really spoke to me)
Congregations getting older
How churches can bring young people back from (ugh) Fox News

As I sat around a table with fellow parents of kids from 6th-12th grade last Sunday, I realized something that I know my Assistant Rector who is in charge of youth programs and the Rector who is just in charge in general realized ages ago- we have a problem.

The problem isn't with the kids. It's with the parents. The kids can't get there by themselves.

My kid had never, not once, been to Sunday school. I wouldn't take him. The only reason I went last week is because I have such fond memories of youth group when I was in middle and high school. I also have some not-fond memories, but whatever, everyone has stuff like that in middle & high school. Anyway, I didn't take him before, because for adults, Sunday school is sitting and listening to someone. And then go to church, and listen to someone else. I do not have the patience for that. I need some interaction. I need discussion. I need problem solving. I want to be with my peers, too. And my peers aren't at church. Well, not many of them.

The alternative to listening to someone was teaching, but I didn't want to teach to little kids. I don't like little kids. I teach high school for a reason. But women always get asked to teach little kids. And I teach 5 days a week already. I didn't really want to go teach on yet another day. As it is, I teach 2-3 children church sessions a year, and I dread each one.

I love my church leaders, they are amazing humans, and I know they have very full plates, and I don't want to tell them no. So I just avoid them. Sorry. I know you're reading this. You probably already figured that out, though. I know it's passive aggressive of me.

As I was looking around, I realized 2 things:

• There was no one there who looked like me. I have purple streaks in my hair and a nose ring. I was wearing blue glitter nail polish. I was also wearing clothes from Banana Republic, before you get this image of me wearing a Slayer shirt with a mohawk and a tattoo on my neck (it's on my ankle). I'm not that rebellious, but sometimes I stand out in a white bread crowd. And yet...
• Everyone looked like me. We were all white, middle/upper middle class people between 39 (I'm fairly confident I'm the youngest) and 55ish? 60? I don't know. I'm not great with ages of people who are older than I am.  

I've been mulling this over for the past couple of days. I go to a small church in a midsized but rural town. I go to an Episcopal church which has kept ties with the Diocese and the area is fairly conservative. But the town I live in also has a university, which means by it's very nature has some random social liberals wandering the streets. 

These social liberals have kids. I know, because my kids play with them at summer camp, at school, in the neighborhood. A couple of them go to my church. And the ones who do are pretty cool people. But not enough of them are there. 

I grew up in the precursor to a mega church. It was perfectly normal to have 600-700 people on a regular Sunday. Wednesday night youth group would commonly pack the youth room with kids sitting on the floor after the chairs were gone- 50+ kids on a regular basis. None of the leaders were parents of kids who were in the room. They were college students and young married couples. 

Part of the delight of the youth group was the idea that we were always doing things that our parents would have probably not enjoyed. Singing as loudly as possible? Check. Randomly breaking out into tears over various teenage angst coupled with emotional spirituality? Check. Having that guy reach over and take my hand during prayer and not letting go when it was finished? Check. Wash dishes for an entire camp of people and stick my hands into disgusting drains to clean out the food? Check. 

I doubt any of those things would have happened if my parents were there. I would have gone- I would have been forced to go- but I would have been guarded. I would have been intentionally difficult to deal with. 

After this meeting on Sunday, I realized the draw of the "mega church."  I've been to a mega church. I didn't like it. It felt too fake. But it's easy to get your kids involved. You can plug them into a community that will reinforce some kind of values which you hopefully approve of through peer pressure and adults who aren't their parents. And if you choose to, you can not be involved at all. 

I always thought I would be involved with a youth group. I never thought it would be while my own child (or children) was in it. But when I tried to get involved as a college student, I was discouraged from doing so. I was too young, the kids in the youth group were too old and too close to my age, I wanted to change things too much- this was at a different church than the one I grew up in- and there was a strong undercurrent of "and you are too female, which is not ok with us." So it's been about 20 years since I've gotten active with church, and I'm kind of dragging my feet right now. 

Agent N, the 6th grader, needs to do some stuff without me around. He needs to have positive influences in people who aren't his parents. He needs to sing and yell and dance and cry without us watching. But we go to a small church in a midsized town, and so one of us will be watching sometimes. I'm going to try to get involved with other kids but it's hard when you hear your child's voice yelling (Agent N's normal volume) to focus on something or someone else. And it's hard to talk to kids you don't know when you're... like me. I'm a good teacher because it gives me an in- I have something to talk about. And then the kids tell me stuff, so we have something to talk about together. But put me in a room with random people, especially random teenagers, and I'm awkward as hell. I was about 1000 times more confident when I was a teenager. Now I'm a teenager in an adult body. 

And this brings us back around to the beginning. The church has an age problem. Where are the parents? Where are the college students? I have avoided getting involved because of the demands on my time. But if more people got involved, there would be fewer demands on everyone's time because there would be more people to share the workload. But in order to get someone to want to take part of the work, they have to buy in to the concept. 

I don't even know where we go from here. 

Help me help you!

Students,
Dear, Dear Students,

You think teachers have all the power. So I am begging and pleading with you now, I am demonstrating to you that you are the one with the power. I cannot help if if I don't know what you don't understand.

Let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time, I took economics. This was in college, and it was the 90s, so there was none of this bullshit about students as customers. If you didn't like the professor, fuck off. If you didn't feel he (mostly he) taught very well, fuck off. Many (though definitely not all) of the professors at the university I attended had the attitude of "We are the very prestigious university and many other people could have had your place as a student, so sit down and shut up."

Some of those professors were wonderful. None of them taught econ.

I did not do well. I did not understand. I did not like economics. I received the worst grades I had ever received. I still minored in econ.

Ten years later (give or take) I was told I would be teaching economics.

I dreaded it. I did not want to teach it. I did not like it.

I was wrong.

I did like it. Kind of a lot. It's really useful information. You can apply what you learn to real life.
And because I struggled with it, I am really damn good at teaching it.

Now, ten years after that, I'm teaching AP economics. And I understand your struggle. I know that not everyone gets it on the first pass. I know that sometimes you need three or four or ten examples before things click.

HOWEVER.



When you say to me I DON'T GET IT. I totally understand how you're feeling. I do. I have been where you are.

Because I'm teaching online, this is all via email. It shouldn't be, but no matter how many times I tell you about the software that we use to meet in real time, you refuse to meet with me.

I send another email. And I ask you- can you give me an example of a question that you don't understand. A practice quiz question. An assignment. Anything?

And you email me back and say I just don't understand.




And I email you again. This time, again asking for a specific example of what exactly you don't understand. I want to help you.



Please, tell me, WHAT DON'T YOU GET? Do you not understand the theory behind it? Do you not understand the formula we are using? Do you not understand anything about gross domestic product or consumer price index or monetary policy?

I have given you EVERYTHING. At some point, you have to take responsibility. You have to read back over your notes. The textbook. The additional website I showed you that has videos. The website with definitions. The practice tests.

And then, you have to answer my questions. I will make you a video. I will write out painstaking, step by step instructions. But you have to answer my questions.

The Great Decluttering Challenge

Every day for the past month, "Declutter 1 Thing" has regenerated on my to do list. I love repeating items on my to do list.

Declutter could mean 3 things:

1. Throw it away. 
2. Put it aside for yard sale. My neighborhood has an epic yard sale every spring and fall. Some people are very serious about selling stuff at this yard sale, or renting their driveways out to their friends. Traffic is mayhem at this ridiculous yard sale. People get out their grills and sell hot dogs. In general, I decided that if someone else might find value in it, I was going to pack it into a box and put it in the basement to sell in the spring. All money from the yard sale in May, 2015, is going to fund my service trip to Honduras (more on that later). 
3. Put it aside to give away.

More rules I established for myself:

• If I didn't declutter one thing, I couldn't check it off the list. Which means it turned red and became "overdue" on my app. And then the next day, I had 2 things to declutter. I only got really behind once, when I had to declutter 4 things in one day. 
• I could only remove something of my own, unless I had permission. The other day I cleaned up my younger son's books but I had to have permission to remove them. He gave it, since most of them were "baby books." 
• I couldn't check things off in advance. If I got fired up and cleaned out 3 things in one day, I couldn't check off 3 things ahead. One day, one check. The only time it counted was in back pay. (see above)

Occasionally, I decluttered lots of things. I started by cleaning out bookcases. Since my oldest son was born 12 years ago, we have moved 4 times. Twice to different states. That's a lot of packing and unpacking books, some of which I don't even like. It was hard to get rid of books because books are nice. They're comforting. You might need them someday. Some of them I gave to fellow teachers for their classrooms. Some I put in a yard sale box. Some I gave to a local charity.

Once I got past the initial routine, it became easier. I would try to think of a place I hadn't cleaned in a while and look there.

Some wonderful results of this particular challenge:

• I got a lot more organized. 

So organized. (not mine.)

• I have some really good stuff to sell at the yard sale. I always feel like I have a ton of stuff then I put it out and it's not that much. Which means that people don't even stop to look. Maybe they will this year. 
  

Some problems I came across:

• When I thought we should sell/give away something that a child refused to part with. A regular conversation was "You haven't played with this in years!" "But I want to now!" 
• Sometimes, the task was too daunting. I would look in a closet and decide that I would not be decluttering that particular location. Mainly that was because the object in that closet were not mine and I didn't want to get approval for decluttering. Either that, or I didn't want to move them around to get to the stuff that is community property. 

I'm not saying the rest of the people I live with are hoarders,
but I might be the one person standing between them and reality TV. 

• I'm so organized that I can't find some things. 

Either way, I strongly recommend doing this. It really helped me think about how there are some things I don't care about that I have moved around over and over again. And it definitely made me more organized. If only I can find the cookie cutters by Christmas, I'll be ok.