Grab Life

Adventures In Atlanta

2011-06-17T11:18:00.010-04:00

So far it's been almost exactly three weeks since I touched down in Atlanta, GA for my summer internship with Teach For America. Initially things were a little rough, and it was really strange to have the "same" job but in a new city and with a very different team of people. Within days, though, I was once again fully appreciating the city, the people, and my job! I think whenever I adjust to a new place there's always some nostalgia for the old. At the same time that I enjoy change and have always found it more exciting than frightening, it's really, really challenging not to compare what's new to what you know and, almost inevitably, find it lacking. Despite my almost-instantaneous and full, organic love of both teaching at Esperanza and being a student at Smith, I have never missed USC so much as in those first weeks at either place.

I won't talk too much about my job here (but if you're curious I'm happy to e-mail out an update!), but I will talk about the adventures I've had with the phenomenal people I've met. Hopefully this will provide some glimpse into what I've been up to since my temporary relocation to the urban South!

Of course I've engaged in some almost-shamefully touristy-- albeit extremely fun-- behavior. One of our first weekends here the entire group of operations coordinators went out to Mary Mac's for some delicious Southern cooking (which I may or may not have later regretted...), after which some of us went to Piedmont Park, which had a beautiful panoramic view of the night sky. (Sadly, being so close to the city, there is no way we would ever really see stars; it's a shame, since even at midnight temperatures push 80°. Perfect stargazing weather!)

The Atlanta sky at night. Taken on my iPhone on Friday, June 3, 2011.

Last weekend a small group of us spent most of Saturday floating down the Chattahoochee River about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta. After it started down-pouring and thundering, we decided to ditch the all-natural lazy river idea and instead left slightly early, totally drenched but also with a stash of home-made fudge that seemed to make everything better.

But I've also been lucky enough to see the non-tourist-y side of Atlanta. A friend of mine here at institute knows Atlanta relatively well, and is eager to look up some less mainstream places to go exploring. We've been to a smattering of different coffee shops that look like they would fit perfectly in Boston, Northampton, San Francisco, and everywhere else I adore. We've glimpsed art and culture that is rather different than what I expected. Granted, I didn't do much research on Atlanta before coming down here, and I can really only think of one person I know who grew up in Atlanta (and he and I don't really keep in touch at all; we were merely acquaintances at Exeter). So most of what I know about Atlanta I gleaned from songs by rappers like T.I. and Ludacris (both proud Atlanta natives). So I expected Atlanta to look something like Miami or Los Angeles, though in actuality it seems to resemble a steamier, mixed-up version of Chicago or San Francisco, where high-society and hipster-society both come together and clash with urban culture and cosmopolitan behavior. If it weren't for the lack of seasons, I could actually see myself enjoying it here long-term...

And speaking of culture clashes and/or coexistences, last Saturday I decided that, a month after departing from Smith for the summer to arrive in the not-quite-deep South, I would get what is a drastically and stereotypically Smith haircut, and one that I think surprised a lot of people. For those of you that haven't seen it yet, here's a photograph taken later Saturday night.

My new haircut. Taken on my iPhone on Saturday, June 11, 2011.

So far the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. One of my best friends asked me (more poignantly and in many more words), Why?, and my answer to her turned out to be longer than I would've thought, and, although I didn't necessarily share this part, it brought me all the way back to the start of my ninth grade year, even. I'm sure that question is probably going through the heads of many right now, so I'll write a longer post later, dedicated entirely to an explanation, justification, whatever-you-want-to-call-it about the sometimes crazy-seeming decisions I make about my hair.

I can't believe how quickly time is passing, and I'm looking forward to a few more weekends of exploring. Next up: The Color Purple, a karaoke night, hopefully actually going to Straits Atlanta (Luda's restaurant), and perhaps even a Fourth of July trip to a Monhegan-like island off the coast of Georgia...

Dazed & Confused

2011-05-25T20:55:00.005-04:00

I’ve officially spent three weeks on Facebook. After 21 days I’ve got 117 friends, one photo album, and an overwhelming feeling of “meh”.

I could go into great detail about the reasons why I'm ambivalent about (bordering on displeased with) Facebook, but suffice it to say I feel (somehow more) out of touch, out-of-context, and out of control.

I have Gmail, Twitter, and this blog, and I know that all signs point to me being someone who would revel in the connectedness and free-information-sharing of a system like Facebook. But right now I'm not the biggest fan. I'm still giving it a shot, and I'm not going to delete my account (it deserves more than a three-week trial), I'm just saying that so far I don’t really like it. Even that little hit of dopamine most people get from receiving a comment or a post or a message for some reason isn’t happening for me.

I’d love tips on how to make Facebook work for me!

What do you all like about it?

What features am I not using that I should be?

Am I doing something wrong (other than spending limited time on it and not really digging the concept of it)?

As with any blog posting, comments are more than welcome!

It's Business Time...

2011-05-25T09:25:00.014-04:00

In an upcoming post I'm going to talk a little bit about my (some continuing, some new) qualms with Facebook. Don't panic; I'm going to stick with it for at least a while longer and see if I come around to it. I do like having an easy way to share photographs, and I realize that such things can also be done on my blog! So, here are some photos from my last week as a junior at Smith College, complete with explanations!

The primary reason most of us stayed on campus (with the exception of our three active senior members) was to record "Business Time" (Flight of the Conchords), performed here at our most recent Jam by JC (far right in the above photo). We record in a studio that used to be an old slaughterhouse, and I wish I had gotten a picture of them, but hanging off the ceiling are squares of fuzzy, faux-cow carpeting, which I found quite hilarious. (The Noteables were all quite concerned about whether I would feel comfortable recording in an old slaughterhouse, being a vegetarian and all. It definitely wasn't a problem, and I actually really dug the aesthetic-- lots of exposed wood and whatnot.) PS: I'm not sure why KB is making such a ridiculous and unhappy face! Recording can be long and tedious, but this was the last part we were recording, which means we were almost done (we start with the bass part and move up until we get to the soloists, pictured here). Which also means we were about to head to a diner in Amherst for a late lunch (a Noteables recording tradition, apparently). At least MC and JC look happy enough!

As I said above, recording can be a lot of sitting around, recording and re-recording, waiting, listening... It gets long, definitely. (I also pity the folks who get to sit for hours on end "mastering" the tracks-- editing and mixing, basically. Oh wait-- next year that'll be me... Uh-oh!) But we Noteables always come prepared! Here are EB and SK working away on their laptops. And by "working away" I mean "probably reading cat blogs and/or watching Modern Family."

On Wednesday night (and now you all know what happens on Wednesday night...), after recording, we had the annual Noteables Senior Banquet. This is a night of fun, traditions, and pampering for our graduating senior members (past and present). The three on the left, JC, KM, and JB, were our active seniors spring semester; ED and RM are past members. It was a total blast and a great way to close the year. Also, we did "senior wills," when seniors in the group pass down some treasured possessions. Here are my three favorite-- and notable!-- "will" items:

1. This beyond-fabulous #1 chain given to me by ED and traditionally passed down from business manager to business manager each year. Now I'm just hoping I get some kind of rap solo so that I can don this thing at least once per performance...

2. This holographic (and Japanese) Pokémon card! YESSS! I used to be OBSESSED with Pokémon, and I always loved the fire-based characters, so the fact that KM chose this one for me just made my day.

3. This outrageous (and quite alarming) Iron Maiden poster. This one deserves (multiple) stories. The first is the dramatic tale of how it got willed to me, probably one of the least-expected people to receive it in our group: KM is standing up, going through her wills. She had just given some other punk band poster to RS, a first-year in our group who definitely has a bit of punk in her. So that made total sense. She suddenly unveils this masterpiece of a poster and begins explaining. I'm hardly listening because all I can think of is, I have to get that poster. But I realize I'm an unlikely prospect, and my mentality quickly shifts to, I'm going to be so jealous of whoever gets that poster! Maybe I can trade my holographic Pokémon card for it.

Kidding.

But then I start listening to KM, and I hear her saying something unexpected. "So, for this one, at first I was going to give it to someone who I thought, you know, has probably at least heard Iron Maiden. But then I thought, there are a few people in this group who I could probably give it to ironically and they would still appreciate the humor of it." At this point she's looking back and forth between me and one other girl, KG, who is definitely much more, uh, tame than I am. But I'm still holding out hope. "So, Claire, this goes to you!" KM declares.

"AHHH HAHAHA YES!!!" I exclaim, to pretty much everyone's surprise. As you're reading this, in fact, you're probably wondering why I am so excited for a stupid poster. And you are correct in assuming that I have never once listened to even a clip of an Iron Maiden song. So what gives?

Well, here's the thing. First of all, I know I will definitely hang it up somewhere in my room next year. Because it is a hilarious poster, even if it is totally frightening.

But the real reason I'm so excited for it is this:

My first year at Exeter during the art assembly, I think it was a few lowers who made a short video. It was a "silent" film, but the entire soundtrack was simply a song by Wheatus, called "Teenage Dirtbag." The video was adorable, and most of the campus-- or at least a large portion of the female population-- became mildly obsessed with the song for at least a few weeks. "Iron Maiden" is part of the chorus, but it's also part of the hilarious climax of the video, when the character played by NZ presents IW with "two tickets to Iron Maiden, baby". That was my first (and one could say only) introduction to and knowledge of Iron Maiden, and it's a pretty endearing one. So while I would probably never actually listen to their music, I do love the idea of it, and I enjoy the fact that this poster will make me think of two of my favorite things simultaneously-- the Noteables and Exeter :o)

Aside from all the Notea festivities, the seniors were also busy with tons of Smith graduation traditions. I was lucky enough to be able to snap a few pix of Ivy Day (a day where graduating seniors and returning alumnae wear all white and process through the campus on their way to the awards ceremony in the Quad.

This year's graduation was particularly odd to experience. It's strange for me to know that 1) this will be me next year!, but also that 2) based on my graduation from high school, I "should have" graduated this year-- most of my friends in my year at Exeter and USC did... At the same time that I'm watching them start the next stage of their lives, I feel so grateful that I have one more year to figure everything out! I wouldn't trade my year "off" (last year) for ANYTHING, and I feel that even if my route to graduation has been non-traditional and somewhat meandering, I'll graduate a fuller and more prepared person for my future than I would have otherwise.

"Math People"

2011-05-20T10:27:00.005-04:00

Photo featured in GOOD Magazine

When I tell people I want to teach middle school math, they’re often baffled. I’m not, one might say, a “math person” (although, I would argue, there’s no such thing as what we think of “math people”). But there are people with different interests, and math is not one of mine.

My brother pursued the math path: As I was sitting down to write this blog post he called to tell me about his upcoming interview with IBM (he’s a microelectronic engineering major at RIT). But what many people don’t realize is that I didn’t always have this better-you-than-me attitude about math or heavily math-based sciences (read: physics). And I actually enjoy thinking about frictionless planes and gravity-less environments and all those hypotheticals, but once I have to put numbers into formulas to solve a problem I’m not even that invested in, it stops being “fun.” In fact, my aversion to math it didn’t really develop until late in my junior year of high school when I started taking calculus and physics. Up until then, I’d always done well in math. Geometry, algebra, and trigonometry all made sense to me, and I worked to understand them because they are applicable to my everyday life (Exeter’s way of teaching math with real-world problems and Harkness style helped me recognize this).

I’ve never felt what Liz Dwyer, the education editor at GOOD Magazine, calls “math anxiety” in her online article. But Dwyer does seem to assert that being a “math person” doesn’t have to do quite so much with inclination or inherent ability as mindset and reinforcement, which I agree with. She writes, “It's pretty common in our society to believe that some people are just ‘math people’ who are somehow intrinsically good at finding the cosine of an angle. Interestingly, we don't have the same beliefs about reading.” People don’t walk around illiterate laughing it off with the excuse, “Oh, I’m just not a ‘reading person.’” And while I’m sure some people, for one reason or another, may be more eager to pursue math, or have a slightly easier time understanding certain concepts, I feel confident that if I had tried hard enough I could still be an A math student.

It’s probably a coping mechanism of some kind. Looking back on my life, I see a few times when I have picked—actually consciously selected—an interest or “strength” for myself. In our younger years, Will and I were both decent all-around students. But could it be the case that, upon recognizing his interest in pursuing math and physical sciences and my interest in pursuing English and social sciences, our tendency to slightly favor those subject areas became a full-blown “math person” vs. “humanities person” divide? He spent his summers teaching himself higher-level math courses and loaded up his schedule with multiple science electives. I poured all my extra energy into the school newspaper, although “extra energy” is kind of an oxymoron at Exeter: what I mean is that I took the energy I could have spent on comprehending calculus and spent it on writing, editing, and designing the Arts & Features page of the school paper. Will’s senior year included subjects like robotics and AP physics. My senior year featured courses titled, for example, “The 1960s” and “Great Books.” I made a conscious decision to drop math, stop trying to understand it at this high level, and pour that energy into something I enjoyed more and saw as a more practical use of my time and focus, considering the kind of life or career I wanted (at that time, one in journalism). Had I wanted to become an architect or an engineer, I probably would have dropped newspaper and spent more time on my physics homework and going to my math teachers’ office hours.

But I am happy with the path I’ve chosen—just as I know Will is happy with his. Will got consistent A’s in English courses at Exeter, is an outstanding Latin scholar, and I’m sure could have shone in a humanities career. As it is, one of his strengths in the science field is his ability to connect with “non-science people.” So, I wonder if it might work similarly in my favor that I am a “humanities person” who wants to teach math. As I’ve said, up until calculus I was a strong math student. Certainly up until 10^th or 11^th grade I was pulling pretty straight A’s. So I feel confident in my understanding of 7^th and 8^th grade math enough to teach it to students and certainly field almost all of their questions.

As Dwyer outlines in her article, “math anxiety” is more about how kids are taught to react to or think about math. “So, do we all need to go to math therapy?” she asks. “Not exactly. A big part of ending the cycle of math anxiety is changing the way teachers are trained to teach math and the way they react to student mistakes.” What if math teachers weren’t a bunch of “math people” trying to explain concepts in one specific way? What if math teachers were training students to approach math problems the same way they approach a novel: look for clues, tease out possibilities, approach it from different angles, view it through different lenses? And when a student asked a question, what if the teachers had the training and the capability to explain it in a variety of ways using a wealth of different examples? Perhaps there are so many myths around math that we allow only a few students to really excel at it, and a few teachers to feel competent to teach it. Math isn’t black or white—there are tons of different ways to look at concepts and problems, many different routes to the correct answer (even if there is only one correct answer). You’re not either a math person or an English person—you can choose which to be, to some extent, by choosing where to put your energy (some may have an easier time with some subjects than others, but I’m confident most people can understand Pythagoras just as well as Plato).

Dwyer writes that “Eugene A. Geist, a professor at Ohio University in Athens helps math teachers lower the anxiety level in classrooms, and encourages educators to focus on the process of learning math instead of simply trying to get students to churn out the right answer.” This is, essentially, how many great schools teach courses like English or history. Of course we know the colonists won the Revolutionary War or that pretty much everyone dies at the end of Hamlet, but that’s not the point. What we want to know is, how did the colonies get to—and through—the Revolution? How did we become America? What literary techniques did Shakespeare use to get us to the end of Hamlet? And why the heck is everyone dead anyhow?

“Geist is on the right track,” says Dwyer, and I agree. “A classroom culture where students aren't afraid to fail and are encouraged to learn by talking through wrong answers is optimal,” and optimal for any subject. When “math people” find a career, they won’t be valued solely for their ability to churn out theorems and formulas. They’ll need the same skills people need in any career: inquisitiveness, the ability to troubleshoot, teamwork capabilities, hypothetical thought, communication skills… What many people might think of as “humanities”- or “liberal arts”-based skills. So why do we have this strange you’ve-either-got-it-or-you-don’t view of math? Why are we thinking about it differently, teaching it differently, learning it differently, approaching it differently, and emphasizing it differently? The shift may not come quickly, but I’m hoping that at least by the time I at least finish my teaching career, people won’t be shocked that a “non-math person” is teaching math.

Maybe there won’t even be such a term…

Remix!

2011-05-13T21:17:00.003-04:00

As you can see, I've revamped my blog. I moved away from Tumblr because my blog was getting overwhelmed with irrelevance, but I also realize that my current blogging mentality may not be as entertaining, informative, or useful as I'd hoped. The purpose of my blog is to both document (and share) my learning and keep others informed about certain goings-on. Because I became so concerned with avoiding mindless updates, I stopped updating people about the seemingly-minor incidents in my life. I'm hoping that with this new look with also come a new sense of purpose for my blog: more frequent updates, more photos and videos, more personal updates, more entertaining updates... Hopefully my blog will find some happy medium between inane and non-existent. And as usual, feedback is always welcome. I look forward to keeping the discussion and updates going, starting "fresh" this summer and hopefully continuing into the years to come!

Getting WYSE-er

2011-05-13T20:50:00.003-04:00

This week, Smith College class of 2011 graduates, and although I won't be graduating with them, I've been spending a lot of time reminiscing about my college journey. It's not over for me yet, but had I not taken a year off, I'd be walking across the stage collecting my diploma right alongside them. So it's hard not to look back and think about the road that's gotten me here, to where I am today.

I've been looking back at some of the blog entries I wrote for my Education seminar this past spring semester, and I came across this one, which I published for my class on March 20. It reflects on an organization that I credit with changing the course of my college career-- and life in general, and I feel like now might be an appropriate time to post it:

It’s nearly impossible for me to go back to—or even think about—California without remembering WYSE, a mentoring program I was involved in at USC that worked with eighth grade girls attending John Adams Middle School (JAMS), Los Angeles Academy Middle School (LAAMS, pronounced “lambs” by our group), and George Washington Carver Middle School (Carver). It remains one of my favorite experiences, but there were times when I felt uncomfortable, unsure of myself in my role as a volunteer. I was aware that the middle schoolers I mentored at WYSE came from very different backgrounds from my own, and different from most of the USC mentors in the group. The USC and/versus community situation seemed perfect for conflict in both directions, but (perhaps thanks in part to Pete Carroll and his efforts) there was surprisingly little animosity between the college and the neighborhood.

Still, I had my doubts, though I tried not to let them show. Would I be able to relate to these kids? If I couldn’t, how would I give them what they needed? Am I qualified for this position if I can’t understand, 100%, what they’re going through? McLaughlin’s piece, Community Counts, brought this insecurity up for me again, when she shared an anecdote about David, a 30-year-old dance teacher. “He is tall, black, dreadlocked. ‘These are my babies,’ he tells us. ‘I was just like them. I come from the same place they come from.’” This seems to endear him to his pupils; sure enough, “The small room buzzes with energy” and students “maneuver to the front and wiggle for attention.” One of my best friends in WYSE, Cristina, spoke fluent Spanish—her family lived half in Mexico and half in California, near San Diego—and she could joke with the kids and charla con los padres. She knew exactly how to interact with the girls; when to push them, when to back off, what she could tease them about and what was off limits. Her understanding seemed inherent, cultural—not something I’d ever be able to “learn.”

I was scared I would mess up somehow. I wasn’t like David, or Cristina. I had never been a part of these kids’ culture. I had only even been in L.A. one semester! What if I said something wrong? What if I tried too hard? What if I didn’t try enough? I spent the first few weeks being friendly but gentle to a fault, if there is such a thing. I was so afraid of making a mistake—so uncomfortable (though I tried to hide it)—that I was pretty much just… boring. I was certain there were all sorts of subtleties I didn’t even know existed and somehow I would overstep my bounds, mess up in some way, expose my ignorance, and utterly blow it.

For some reason, though, after just one group meeting the first week, Cristina decided to put me with three girls, rather than the one that most other new USC mentors were paired with (experienced mentors sometimes had two girls). Looking back on it now, I feel like I was, in some ways, in the same position as the youth being helped by Community Based Organizations (CBOs). I was in a culture that I didn’t feel a part of, worried about fitting in, about how this community saw me, that I would or would not meet certain expectations. But when Cristina assigned me to three JAMS girls, I felt pride (as well as my nerves). She told me she knew I could handle it, and that I’d be a great mentor.

Just like the youth in McLaughlin’s article, I genuinely felt I wanted to “give back” to my community (which meant I couldn’t let myself turn down Cristina’s assignment), and thanks to the other WYSE mentors, and especially Cristina, I felt a “sense of unconditional support.” As McLaughlin writes, “This sense of belonging fostered the trust and confidence they [and I] needed to accept new challenges.” Maybe I could do this after all. I trusted (and coveted) Cristina’s ability to get everything right when it came to WYSE; maybe, in some way I couldn’t see, she had gotten this right, too. Like the CBOs in McLaughlin’s study, Cristina and the rest of the WYSE board didn’t wait for me to become completely comfortable before giving me more responsibility, just as successful programs “do not aim to remedy weaknesses or deficiencies in youth before providing opportunities for leadership and risk-taking.” I was asked to step up to the plate before so much as taking a practice swing, but the people backing me up seemed to have this gut feeling that I’d hit it out of the park. I probably couldn’t have verbalized or even processed all this during my time with WYSE. But I did start to feel comfortable and confident enough to pass the trust and energy and caring and genuine enthusiasm and passion on to my mentees.

Every Wednesday, instead of timidly walking into the gym with the girls, I came in guns blazing, high fives all around, joking with the girls, putting in my two cents about the guys they liked or the new piercing someone had. Instead of quietly nodding along when they said they just loved Metallica or Boys Like Girls or some other punk band, I’d kid around with them and then explain that I was more of a hip-hop fan, myself, though Taylor Swift was growing on me.

“Ohhh grosssss,” they’d groan, “she’s such a… goody-goody!”

“Hey!” I’d jokingly snap, smiling at them, “I’m a goody-goody!” Then, suddenly deadpan, “You making fun a’ me? You making fun a’ me?” The DeNiro reference went right over their heads, but they laughed anyways. Clearly they wanted my honesty—as nerdy or “late” or grosssss! as it may have been—more than they wanted my feigned agreement.

As I got comfortable and grew more confident, my walls came down. As McLaughlin says, there were suddenly “blurred boundaries between adults’ professional and personal lives,” and while in some cases this might be unhealthy or troublesome, in this instance—where I was meant to be a friend, a role model, and personal cheerleader—it helped, and the girls began to open up, too. I started talking to them as I would to a peer, which I hoped would show them not only that I cared, but that I genuinely valued their input, their advice, their thoughts and ambitions and ideas. And this openness suddenly came naturally. I felt my happiest, my most comfortable, most energized, most ambitious and optimistic when I was at WYSE, and I could tell they were starting to feel hoped more than anything that they would feel the same. I wanted to give them the same sense of self-worth and self-assuredness I felt. I wanted them to feel like they had so much to offer, and I wanted them to feel like they could rise to any occasion and give their all.

As WYSE mentors, we made a conscious effort to create a safe, welcoming, supportive, encouraging, educational, and open environment for the girls. We worked to build confidence in them, since especially as women we knew they’d have extra hurdles to jump in life. We checked in with them every week outside of the weekly group meetings, and at least every month took them on one-on-one outings, to touch base and do something they might not otherwise get to do (we drove through Bel Air just to check it out, we went to the library, we went out for their first frozen yogurt, we—cringe—went to see Twilight). In the Wednesday group sessions we learned about everything from safe sex and drug addiction to body image and conflict mediation. We visited the USC University Hospital and talked with medical professionals, or took a trip to the San Pedro aquarium, invited them to Take Back The Night, or toured Homeboy Industries. We built up the girls’ knowledge—knowledge they weren’t getting at home or in school—in an environment of friendship and trust. We taught them little things, sometimes accidentally; cultural references or skills like who The Beatles were, or how to pump gasoline, or how to easily calculate a 20% tip, or that I wouldn’t drive away until they got safely into their houses and waved to me out their window so I knew they were safe.

But I think WYSE also served a similar purpose for its mentors—at the very least it did for me. It was my hands-down favorite part about USC, but it was also the thing that made me realize my own potential. I was on my way to a WYSE meeting, actually, when I began to feel so strongly (stronger than ever) that WYSE was my favorite thing about USC, and not just my favorite, but leaps and bounds ahead of any runner up activity—classes, parties, other organizations. Why was I enrolled at a school where I was happiest off campus? What was I doing choosing to major in something that I liked even less than my after school activity? Why was I pursuing a career in journalism, which made me feel pressured and limited, when I could have a career in education, which I adored and felt excited and passionate about?

I called up my mom and told her I couldn’t talk long, because I was on my way to a WYSE meeting, but that right now I was leaning heavily towards withdrawing from USC at the end of the semester. I didn’t know where I would go or what I would do, but I couldn’t keep heading down the path I was on. As much as I loved WYSE—and in some ways because I loved it so much—I wouldn’t be returning to USC in the fall.

I know that WYSE has helped countless young teens find their confidence, find their voices, find their path, and find themselves. But it also helped me do the exact same thing. McLaughlin’s right: “Youth of all descriptions”—including more, um, adult-like youth—may at times feel insufficient support in their communities, but in the right community, in the right environment, and with the right supports, they can find their way to being passionate, productive, positive, and philanthropic members of society.

Expand Your Skills...

2011-02-05T18:35:00.007-05:00

Happy New Year! I'm officially back at Smith and, just like last semester, so far have been enjoying every minute of it. It's been a bit hectic as I re-arrange classes, adjust to a new schedule, and, of course, scramble to get all my work done by the time the Super Bowl starts tomorrow ;o) Luckily, I have a class that is going to allow me to keep up with my blogging on a more regular, weekly basis (hopefully you don't mind my "re-gifting" of blog entries-- since we're forced to keep a weekly blog for my EDC 336 seminar, "Youth Development and Social Entrepreneurship", I figured I can use a lot of those posts here, as well).

This first one is a response to some readings we had assigned last week. First, a McKinsey report that I actually read over the summer with Teach For America, bridges the "gap" between education and our economy (I e-mailed the report to my professor, the same one I had last semester, and was pleasantly surprised to see it turn up as our first reading assignment, along with this commentary in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman). Along with a few other reading assignments, we were asked to watch this video of Thomas Friedman regarding his book "The World Is Flat", and read the first two chapters of "21st Century Skills" by Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel on the new skills necessary for success in our increasingly evolving and global world. Our blog assignment for homework was simply to respond to the readings, but this became all the more interesting for me after I received a business management tip from Harvard's business school on Friday morning...

A few months ago, I signed up for a daily e-mail from the Harvard Business Review called “Management Tip of the Day”. In doing so, I shocked even myself since the closest I come to knowing much about the business world is listening to Marketplace, and that’s really just because it happens to be on NPR. Within a few days, though, I was amazed at how applicable some of the tips were to the seemingly non-business-y things I generally study. Perhaps that, in and of itself, proves just how integrated our world is becoming…

Last Friday, after completing all the readings for class, I received an e-mail tip titled “Expand Your Skills to Stay Relevant”. My mind immediately jumped to the Trilling & Fadel chapters on “21^st Century Skills”, the McKinsey report linking education to economics, the Friedman lecture on a flattened world, and even Obama’s State Of The Union address, where globalization and our failure to keep up seemed to take center stage.

On page 11 of “21^st Century Skills”, right at the top, Bernie Trilling & Charles Fadel write that two job requirements for the 21^st century are

1) The ability to quickly gain new knowledge—and apply it

2) Knowing how to solve every-day problems and work through daily challenges using vital 21^st century skills: “problem solving, communication, teamwork, technology use, innovation, and the rest”.

Our schools currently don’t teach students the aptitudes they need to be successful in our rapidly changing world. And as I was reading through the articles and chapters assigned for last week, I thought, “What can schools do to make this better? How doteachers teach kids to love learning, rather than teaching them facts? How do we create students who ask the right questions, rather than fill in the right bubble?” In our new “Knowledge Age” (Trilling & Fadel, 15), students must be prepared to face unforeseen challenges, work with unanticipated technologies, collaborate with unknown cultures—in short, the most valuable skill they can learn is how to adapt, a skill that we really don't have a curriculum set up for.

If my underlining and highlighting is any indication, I got particularly excited about a passage on page 33 of “21^st Century Skills”, a section titled “Internal Motivation.” This half-page explanation of the term talks mostly about forming an “emotional connection to what is being learned,” which enables a deeper understanding of the knowledge and contributes to students’ engagement and desire to continue learning. In the margins I wrote, “INTERNAL MOTIVATION = VITAL!!!” and, squeezed in elsewhere, “if you are interested in learning you can pick up nearly any skill…” If students are taught to enjoy ongoing learning, to appreciate the challenges posed by new hurdles, and to value the intrinsic rewards of the process as much as reaching a “correct” solution, they will have acquired an invaluable set of traits. They will find success at companies because of their constant innovation. They will find pleasure in their work because of their inherent motivation. They will, in short, be fundamentally successful in a fundamentally unpredictable world. But one of the hardest things to teach, I imagine, is something as abstract and seemingly inherent (you either have it or you don't) as motivation. What fifty-minute lesson, what after-school activity, what athletic drill, what new media teaches kids motivation? Where do we begin? And while we're answering that question, how much time has slipped by and how much (more) of a lead did children in China and the Netherlands just gain?

When I saw the Harvard Business Review e-mail, I started thinking about our reading assignment in a slightly new light—I started thinking of it beyond the classroom. Not the kind of “beyond the classroom” we talk about with after-school activities or extracurricular programs (like, for example, Youth Radio), but in a post-graduate sense of the phrase.

Now, I think we can safely agree, these “Management Tip of The Day” e-mails are not intended for middle schoolers. They aren’t even aimed at high schoolers looking to get the most out of their education before the "real world" strikes. I’m not even sure they’re aimed at educators. Many of the people reading these e-mails are likely older than me, quite possibly in their thirties, forties, fifties, and even nearing retirement age, and most of them probably work in “business” (whatever that means these days…). Those are the kinds of people (generally) reading this daily tip. And the same questions we are grappling with in class are staring them in the face in the realest way. They know better than anyone that:

"The world of work changes quickly. The skills that make you successful today probably won’t be the same forever. This means that whatever your specialty, it’s at risk of being outdated soon. You don’t need a crystal ball to see what skills you’ll need in the future. Instead, actively seek out opportunities that allow you to develop new skills, gain different experiences, and expand your networks. You may not need to open multiple career paths right now, but doing this will create more alternative futures. Don’t forget to think about what value these new skills bring to your organization. Being valuable is another way to expand your future options."

What makes someone—anyone—valuable in today’s world seems to be this ability to actively engage with challenging “problems,” the inclination to reach beyond our own comfort zone, the pursuit of opportunity and new knowledge, and the flexibility to successfully innovate—and appreciate and incorporate others’ innovations, as well.

For a forty-something-year-old who can vividly recall when video killed the radio star, it must be daunting trying to adapt to an age where Facebook ignites revolutions, cell phones can tell you where the nearest Whole Foods is, days worth of music can be stored in a device the size of your thumb, and all of that will be obsolete in about three years. What frightens me even more, though, is that people in my own generation might be just as unprepared…

The Test-Score Obession

2010-11-28T19:42:00.007-05:00

Just before leaving for break, my Education In The City teacher at Smith assigned us some articles on charter schools, one of which is about Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy charter system in Harlem (NYC). Aside from the other issues around her charter schools (they have displaced some of the most needy students in Harlem and have even run a few public schools-- which do serve those students-- out of business), one that struck me and some of my peers was just how test-score-centric her schools are. Almost all charters are. It is the way our education system measures success, and a way to set concrete goals and benchmarks. Being obsessed with test scores may just be an incarnation of goal-oriented drive within a school. However, many people (myself included) believe that this can create serious negative ramifications and is, essentially, a misguided way of measuring success. However, I also believe that at this point in time there is no other way to define or measure success-- and perhaps that's where the problem lies.

The following is a blog post from one of my classmates in response to the article linked above, which was assigned for our class last week:

The article on Eva Moskowitz and her crusade to establish charter schools in place of public schools is very interesting. She uses a cut-throat approach to closing the achievement gap in New York schools and helping disadvantaged kids learn. She believes New York schools are "tenth-rate" and has attacked teachers unions in the past to try to help improve the state of schools, particularly in Harlem. She has closed schools and added them to her network of charter schools: Harlem Success.

While I respect her approach and acknowledge that she has done a lot to help city children, I was extremely bothered by the huge emphasis on test scores in her schools. In the article, Fucaloro states that "We have a gap to close, so I want the kids on edge, constantly. By the time test day came, they were like little test-taking machines." Say what? Is that what is really important to the students in the long run, how well they do on their test scores? No, not really; even Moskowitz is catering to the adults. In order for her charter schools to stay open they must do well on test scores, and thus her lower achieving students are forced to stay after class and if they don't, their parents receive a nasty letter. I didn't know that test scores make or break a particular student's achievement in schools; yet again all anyone cares about is test scores and not about how a student is learning. Let's face it; most of the time your test scores in elementary school don't go on to affect you as an adult. She's fighting to help these students learn, and I respect that, but at the same time there is something very wrong in her methods.

Another striking quote in the article turns me off to her schools even more: "Many children appear fried by two o’clock, particularly in weeks with heavy testing. “We test constantly, all grades,” the teacher says.During the TerraNova, a mini-SAT bubble test over four consecutive mornings, three students threw up. “I just don’t feel that kids have a chance to be kids,” she laments." Here a teacher talks about the strict, structured schedule Moskowitz's schools have and how testing dominates the school. Aren't there other ways to prep for state tests and still learn something valuable in the long run? And not to mention, these are elementary age students. Is it really necessary to burn them out so early? They will get enough of that in high school with the SAT, ACT, and prepping for college; let them be kids, please. Let them have time to themselves and play. They shouldn't be stressing over tests.

I posted a comment this afternoon in response to her post, which I have included below:

I am also both alarmed and puzzled by the emphasis on testing. These schools are doing whatever it takes to... score better? I feel as though many of our schools have lost sight of (what I believe should be) their purpose: to educate CHILDREN to be WHOLE adults-- not to create little machines that will graduate from college having no idea how to do anything but take orders and exams. I'm not sure how to react to the fact that this doesn't seem to be a problem so much with the schools as it does with the EDUCATION SYSTEM. We are measuring and defining "success" in a way that may not be the most accurate for creating productive, creative, driven, well-rounded, concerned, thoughtful citizens and individuals. So can we really blame our schools and administrators for working within the broken system? (This seems like just an overwhelmingly dire case of "don't hate the player, hate the game"...)

As you said in your blog entry, Eva Moskowitz is "catering to the adults." Parents, teachers, and administrators are convinced scores make the student. Schools (and parents, teachers, and administrators) cater to and perpetuate that view. So how and where did this all start, and more importantly, how do we break the cycle? How do we fix it???

In taking this class I have begun to see how broad the problems plaguing our education system are (there are almost too many to count, never mind to address with simple, targeted reform efforts-- short of a massive, nation-wide, bottom-up-AND-top-down education-system overhaul, that is). But perhaps more shocking to me is that I've seen just how deep many of these issues go. What seems, on the surface, to be problems with the schools are actually problems with our society, and problems that we can hardly pinpoint the cause of, never mind even begin brainstorming solutions to. Perhaps the reason education reform is having such a tough time isn't that there are so many little problems with our education system, but that the problems are actually much deeper. So the question doesn't just become, "How do we solve all these apparent problems?" Instead, we are facing problems that are beyond even our scope of vision.

Constantly Learning

2010-10-27T07:56:00.003-04:00

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, my Education In The City class has us keep a blog going online. Recently we read a reform analysis of sorts in the form of a book by Charles Payne titled So Much Reform, So Little Change. He takes a somewhat different approach to explaining reform, focusing on what doesn't work and why, rather than on what reforms have worked (this could be due, in large part, to the fact that many reforms aren't even given the time and resources to succeed, so examples are few and far between). He elaborates on many different issues throughout the book, from lack of parent engagement to lack of teacher buy-in, failure to provide resources to failure to create a healthy environment, complications in the bureaucracy of schools to complications in the home lives of students. It is an extremely compelling book all the way through, and one I highly recommend for anyone interested in teaching or, particularly, policy.

There was one chapter of the book in particular that made me really stop and think about my experience at Esperanza and Teach For America last year (although they are both on my mind no matter what I'm reading or discussing in this class). It was chapter four, and it focused on the need to be both nurturing and tough, engaging and firm, compassionate and demanding. It is a balance that I failed to strike last year, as I elaborate below.

I wrote this blog entry to share with our class and have gotten nothing but positive responses so far. I know I have a long way to go in developing my teaching style, and I know that I am still very much in the beginning stages of learning what it takes to be a good teacher, but I do feel reassured that I am able to look back on my Esperanza and Teach For America experiences and learn from them more fully in this class through honest and critical reflection.

MY MISTAKE...

Posted by Claire A. on October 24, 2010 at 9:23pm

View My Blog

Reading chapter four, “Sympathy, Knowledge, and Truth: Teaching Black Children” in So Much Reform So Little Change was striking. I was reassured in reading some of the chapter, and felt as though there were many things in my year off that I had done well as a teaching assistant, particularly in terms of social support. I knew that setting high standards was important, but I also figured that if they knew I cared about them, that would be enough for them to want to succeed and not let me (or themselves) down.

At Teach For America this past summer I saw rigorous standards set for the corps members (in training to begin their first year of teaching), as well as for the interns. I was required to be in business attire at all times (even on dinner breaks), since even our clothing helps create an environment of high standards and professionalism (I guess even to 22-year-old college graduates this makes a difference). Everything was related in some way to student achievement, and “Set Big Goals” and “Student Achievement” were the mantras of summer training. Classroom management skills were a huge emphasis. The first four minutes of this video show the type of educators that Teach For America is striving to produce: teachers who respect students, believe in them, provide structure, and set ever-higher expectations—the type of teachers Payne argues we need in disadvantaged schools.

During my year as a teaching assistant I was not that teacher. I began reckoning with that over the summer, but reading this chapter provided case study after case study of proof, and having it in words, numbers, statistics—cold, hard, undeniable evidence—really hit home for me. On pages 102 and 103, Payne writes about the “authoritative-supportive model” of aggressive teachers who stay on their students’ backs and make sure they’re learning. These elite teachers are not just encouraging and enthusiastic, they are strict and hold students accountable. They are demanding, and do not accept academic, personal, or moral failure.

When I started teaching at Esperanza, I was under the impression that enthusiasm and passion would motivate students to greatness. Definitely infected with the “‘niceness’ ideology” Payne talks about on page 104, I also felt that being rigid with the students was more akin to playing the role of prison guard than teacher. As an upper-class, brand-new, white teacher in a school of mostly poor Hispanics (and two or three Blacks), I was afraid to hold them accountable for missed homework assignments or poorly-done projects. After all, I told myself, one of the eighth-graders was living in a two-bedroom house of 14 people and typically staying up ‘til one or two in themorning with her crying infant brother, and another seventh-grader’s brother was about to get deported, not to mention the sixth-grader who arrived from the Congo as a war refugee speaking only French just over a year ago; would I be able to live up to my highest standards if I were them? As English language learners (only two girls out of 68 spoke only English at home), was it really fair to expect them to have mastered tricky verb forms and such, or was it better to gently correct them but not deduct points?

At the high school I attended, half-way through each trimester the teachers were required to give an anonymous questionnaire called a METIC (Midterm Evaluation To Improve Class) to the students, a way for students to offer feedback to the teacher and classmates. I gave my classes at Esperanza METICS and over the weekend I read what they had written. One point repeatedly came up on their papers: I wasn’t being hard enough on them, and they knew it. “You need to get angry when we are being bad,” one wrote. Another said I should “make kids be quiet so they listen to you and know they have to do what you say.” The way they phrased it sounded as though they wanted rigid structure and sterner leadership—just the thing I had been trying to avoid because to me that teaching style went hand-in-hand with police in the halls, metal detectors at the front door, and archaic pedagogy. I asked my classes about this point the next day. “I don’t mean to be mean, Miss,” said one girl, “butthe bad kids here-- you have to make them respect you.”

I was shocked, not just by how self-aware the students were, but by the fact that everything I thought about discipline was almost completely wrong. This point was driven home by Payne on page 102, where he writes, “The really concerned teacher works hard to make the material clear,” something that the METICs showed I had been doing well. But I was missing a vital half of the equation: “… and, less intuitively, the really concerned teacher is demanding. … [p. 103] When students at Westside said that the concerned teacher is demanding, they meant that the serious teacher will make students walk the straight and narrow, stay on their backs about homework andattendance, stop them from fooling around and wasting time in class.”

I have been thinking a lot about how my ideas of “demanding” and “bad teaching” got so mixed up, and another section on page 103 helped me figure out the difference: “Students may respond to demanding teachers, but only if they have somehow legitimated their right to demand.” Arbitrary rules and lack of respect for students no doubt will be a nightmare in terms of positive learning environment, but striking that balance of authoritative andsupportive can create just the type of teacher and classroom kids so desperately need, as emphasized by Payne and supported by multiple case studies. For someone who values mutual respect of teachers and student, I am disgraced at how misguided I was in my efforts; not holding students to high standards showed a lack of faith in their ability and a lessened respect for their ambition and capacity to achieve. I know that without having been in the classroom it is doubtful I would have gotten as much out of Payne’s analysis, and I look back on my experience in a completely new light, and the memory now carries some guilt and disappointment that at such a critical age, and in such a critical setting, I didn’t live up to my students' full expectations. I like to think that there were positive things I brought to their lives, but in such a high-stakes environment I know we can’t afford mediocrity (another point raised in the first few chapters of So Much Reform…). Regardless of the fact that I was young, inexperienced, and my errors were “accidental,” I can’t help but feel that by not propelling them forward with great strides, I only further disadvantaged my students.

A Note About "Books I've Read"

2010-10-03T15:06:00.003-04:00

While I am reading many, many compelling articles, text books, novels, and non-fiction pieces of literature for my classes, I will not post those in the "Books I've Read" column on the right-hand side of this blog. For the sake of space I will only list the books I read for pleasure, outside of class. If you are interested in class reading lists or more specifics in this regard, let me know and I will be happy to discuss it more either in a blog post or with you personally.

And We're Back!

2010-10-03T14:31:00.004-04:00

It's been ages since I wrote, and at this point there is so much to catch up on that I think it'll be too overwhelming to try to re-cap my summer and first weeks of Smith. From now on, though, I will do my best to update this blog about once a week (I know I've set that goal before and, obviously, have had trouble following through on it, but I am sincerely going to do my best this time. That said, if I feel I don't have anything terribly worthwhile to say, I won't post anything).

All of my classes are fascinating and Smith does a wonderful job of making every single class relevant. Even in my class that deals with "Race, Gender, and Citizenship in Pre-1865 America" we end up sometimes spending entire class periods talking about modern conceptions of citizenship (which no doubt evolved out of the conceptions of the past, even the distant past). One of my favorite classes, though, is called Education In The City, which so far has addressed many issues I first heard of or dealt with in my summer internship with Teach For America in Philadelphia. For this class, we keep a blog, which each person in the class contributes to at least once or twice a week, and which serves as a forum where we can extend class discussions, analyze and relate to readings, consider our own experiences and the opinions of others, and share our thoughts with a dynamic and engaged group of people (as it is, all of this also happens on a daily basis, in every class, dorm, and dining hall here at Smith). Because these blog posts are written to be shared, because they deal with topics relevant beyond this class, and because they incorporate my personal thoughts and experiences as well as more critical analysis of these important issues, I have decided that I will re-post them on this blog as well.

The first entry that I will re-post here is discussing, in brief, the various issues plaguing our educational system here in America. I make reference to a few class readings and discussions, namely a reading by David Tyack and a case study of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) reform effort beginning in 2004.

The Tyack piece talks about the ways education has changed since the colonial era and the various explanations for this change asserted by educational theorists. From this reading the class was able to construct a sort of timeline or education in America, but Tyack also emphasizes that for each explanation asserted, there are other ideas and explanations ignored. This relates, also, to how we look at education reform: for each solution we believe to be the cure, we are ignoring multiple other solutions.

The SFUSD case study we read talked about an attempt by Superintendent Arlene Akerman to provide equal educational opportunity to students by implementing funding equality across the districts, increasing diversity in the schools, holding teachers accountable, giving parents more choice and say in the schools, and focusing on analyzing data to improve student achievement.

Inspired by those two readings as well as discussions we have been having for the past month in class, I wrote this post on Wednesday, September 29:

TOO BIG TO SUCCEED

Posted by Claire A. on September 29, 2010 at 10:22 a.m.

After a few weeks of readings for this course, followed by David Tyack's piece, "Ways of Seeing," and then having just finished reading the case study on reform in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), I am struck by the magnitude of change needed to turn our schools around.

I, like many others, am often frustrated by the slow progress of education reform. Not only that, but perhaps even more shocking and infuriating is the fact that so few people throughout the world seem to be genuinely passionate about it. I think most can agree that it's a noble cause (an essential cause), but the large majority of people don't see a way that they, personally, can make a difference. I cannot help but wonder why more people aren't outraged by the state of education and pushing in any way they can for government or grassroots reforms.

But then I thought back to the readings we've been doing in this class and the discussions that follow. Already as a class we have pinpointed dozens and dozens of reasons why dropout rates are high; why socioeconomic, cultural, and racial achievement gaps exist; why America lags behind other countries academically; why the system, as a whole, seems to be "broken." In many classes we will try to brainstorm solutions to a few of these problems, but for any one problem (of which there are a myriad) we have multiple good solutions, and each one comes with several downsides. As Tyack highlights, there are many ways of seeing any issue (especially issues of education), and each one is a way of not seeing various others-- the same goes for solutions. Even a relatively effective reform policy like the WSF in San Francisco "isn't a silver bullet-- the solution is much more complex than that." It is easy to see why people might become overwhelmed.

When people become overwhelmed, especially by issues that require more than one person to make a broad difference, it is very easy for us to just ignore the problem, or perhaps admit it's there but view it as a lost cause, something too big to take on, or so hopelessly gigantic as to be not worth the effort. It becomes easier to accept the status quo and gripe about it than to devote our time, energy, and resources to making change that may or may not come to fruition and, if it does, may or may not even make things better (after all, for every one problem solved, there are five others plaguing the system).

But I'm an optimist, and definitely not a procrastinator. I don't believe that there is one solution to the failing education system in America, but I do know that we need to start somewhere. No matter where we choose to begin, I am confident that if enough people and organizations mobilize their efforts, change in all sectors will follow. Some programs try to tackle multiple problems at once (Harlem Children's Zone with community and schools and Promise Neighborhoods in multiple cities). Some try to focus the majority of their efforts in one area (Teach For America with quality teachers in the classrooms). Some provide funds (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) while some provide manpower.

None of the issues identified as troublesome exist in a vacuum; all are connected to other problems, and if we fix one, it will spark positive change in other areas (conversely, if we let a few flounder, they will pull the rest of the education system down with them). Overarching reform may not come quickly, but the downsides of public education didn't develop quickly, either-- they started in the mid-1800s and the system has been headed downhill since then. Still, I don't see any excuse for not taking action on these issues, no matter how "hopeless" the future may seem. If we move on these problems there is hope for improvement; without trying, there isn't even the possibility of improvement.

BP vs. BP: British Petroleum vs. the Bigger Picture

2010-06-11T12:34:00.007-04:00

American oil consumption is rising. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2009 we burned through 9.05 million barrels of oil per day. Projections for 2010 estimate a consumption rate of 9.36 million barrels. (In 2011 it’s expected that our rate will begin to decline again.)

To put everything in perspective, new estimates out today say that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be spewing out as much crude oil as 25,000 barrels per day (bbl/day), possibly as much as 30,000 bbl/day, up from the previous estimates of 12,000-19,000 barrels.

Videos of gushing oil (and natural gas) bursting from the broken—now cut—pipes are all over the internet. Aerial pictures of swirling sheets of the stuff appear in every newspaper. Wildlife and plants coated in crude are being e-mailed, blogged, and photo-documented. It would take a robot to not be outraged—or at least moved—by these images, and right now that fury is directed at BP and the United States government. The general public is fuming.

There’s no “bright side” to this story. Optimist that I am, it’s hard for me to find anything good coming of this, at least at the moment. Not to say that I haven’t tried, but even thinking to myself Well, Claire, just look at it this way… seems not only forced but somehow negligent. What are you thinking?!? Don’t look on the bright side! Animals are dying, economies are ruined, fisheries (already at risk worldwide) are facing an even greater threat of extinction, “sensitive” marshy ecosystems are suffocating in oil (aren’t all ecosystems sensitive? Isn’t that why so many scientists and civilians are so concerned about global warming?)… This is no time for a positive spin!

I have no desire to put on rose-colored glasses. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a hope for some of the change this could potentially spur. And, frankly, I’m a little disappointed there hasn’t been more of a call-to-action, more discussion of this change, more talk of policy and behavioral adjustments.

It’s nauseating, the figures that keep being released, all the videos and pictures and articles and news reports. But let’s add some context: the amount of oil polluting the Gulf each day is only 0.3% (yes, point three percent! Not even an entire 1%) of the United States’ daily oil consumption. And where’s the outrage over that?

What’s being done? There’s a lot of anger. A lot of blame. An excess of finger-pointing and chatter and a bit of action to balance that out. (I’m sure that behind closed doors scientists and government officials are working full-time to solve the Gulf catastrophe, but the evidence of such efforts—in other words, solutions—is few and far between.)

A few weeks ago I asked something that I had been wondering since the first week of the spill: Why aren’t people talking about our energy dependence? What about alternative, renewable sources of energy? What about long-term cures to this energy binge?

After a few weeks of the blowout, I remember hearing on the radio that “people may begin boycotting BP.” They haven’t already??? I thought, incredulous. (As it turns out, boycotting BP gas stations does little more than put the local owners of those stores out of business; BP's gas spreads far beyond their own stations, so there is really no way to ensure a successful boycott short of boycotting oil in general.) As I bopped along in my Prius feeling guilty it wasn’t completely electric—or a bicycle—I wondered why people hadn’t yet begun trading in their SUVs en masse in favor of the many different hybrids out there. Why was there still debate over off-shore wind farms? Why weren’t people installing solar panels? Why wasn’t everyone changing all their light bulbs to more energy-efficient ones?

Many people don’t have the money; they just can’t afford these changes (affordable alternatives are a slightly different issue, though, and one that I won’t go into here). And of course there are reasons why people don’t just spring into action; I didn’t. But a renewed concern over saving resources was—and still is—on my mind. And for some strange reason I feel relatively alone in that…

There should at least be some discussion of it—and by “at least some” I mean “much more than we have right now.” With the extensive coverage this nightmare has received, why aren’t people mentioning grassroots changes they can control and make happen? Why aren’t they debating with each other and bringing alternative energy to the front of the stage?

I would expect to hear more about what citizens are doing to cut back on their own energy use; testimonials from folks about how concerned they are and how they're making small but effective alterations in their daily lives and routines to save energy. The media talks about Louisiana fishermen; we hear about the Florida tourism industry; we hear about the government and BP going back and forth pointing fingers and piling blame; and there's mention of a possible boycott that might start at some point (not quite the loud-and-clear message I was hoping to send).

So I asked my family one weekend morning, “Why aren’t people talking about this?”

This was after about six weeks of the spill. (I shudder to think that we will soon be talking about “back when they oil had been flowing into the Gulf for only a few weeks.” Let’s hope that never becomes “a few months.”)

Dad started to answer. “At this point—”

I nodded and sighed as if to say, “I know, I know,” and then verbally cut him off, too.

“People don’t want to hear someone up on her high horse preaching about hybrids,” I said, finishing his thought in my own words. It’s true—I wouldn’t want that either. We’re all in the same boat (one whose hull is dripping with crude), and no one wants to hear condescending eco-snootiness right now.

But these are hard changes, and there’s never a good time to sacrifice a few comforts and luxuries. Why not at least have it happen at a time when the consequences of our present courses of action are starkly apparent and fresh in everyone’s minds? When the need to change should seem more urgent and valid than ever?

“People want solutions,” Dad said. “Right now the government and BP—they’re all running around like chickens with their heads cut off. If they were debating bills instead of finding an answer to the immediate problem, people would mutiny.”

True. Very true. It was something I had already thought of—of course the government couldn’t be spending time sitting at mahogany tables, Starbucks in hand, having roundtable discussions about far-off energy reduction goals. I would be outraged if this were going on before the gushing well had been stopped.

But that doesn’t make it a non-issue.

“What am I doing?” I asked. “What are you doing? What are we doing, as civilians, all of us?” My voice was getting louder—I could feel the frustration (at myself as much as at the general population) growing. “We’re not running around like chickens with our heads cut off! We’re not the ones spending hours and hours a day figuring out how to plug the leak! We’re just living!” I took a breath. “We could be talking about long-term solutions. Why aren’t we thinking about alternative energy? All we want is to plug the leak but no one is actually realizing that soon all the oil will be gone—it’s a finite resource! Why can’t we—just normal people—be talking about renewable energy sources? Nothing wrong with that!” I stopped to breathe again, well aware at how loud I had gotten and how misdirected my anger must have seemed; I wasn’t outraged at Dad, I was outraged at… everyone, collectively, as a group. I tried hard to tone it down. “The majority of the nation isn’t that affected by this spill, so why aren’t we focusing on the larger implications?”

I thought about another story on NPR I had heard, I forget exactly when, but I remember thinking that the coverage might finally shift in a productive direction (less sensational, more solution-oriented). The interviewee was speaking about the disconnect in most people’s minds. Not many people hear about thousands upon thousands of gallons of, effectively, gasoline leaking into the ocean and think, “Wow, we should really cut back on our coal-burning.” It’s just not a logical jump for most people from gasoline specifically to non-renewable resources in general. They look more at what is leaking (literally) than what is leaking (broadly). But in terms of affecting change, the latter is the more important message to come away with.

There are tons of alternative, renewable energy sources out there, as well as a few non-renewable ones that might help tide us over (no pun intended) until we can reduce our footprint to all but a speck. And while I completely understand that the government can’t be focused on this quite yet, why not start the conversation amongst ourselves now? Would it hurt to have a few articles written about it, a bit of debate, some real grassroots change happening? If we can get the movement started with ourselves now, it will just be that much easier to pressure congress into action and push legislation through the right channels when they can finally get around to it.

Would it really enrage us that much that news outlets are carrying stories about the more important BP—the bigger picture?

It's Funny Because It's True

2010-06-11T00:36:00.002-04:00

This video, which I found on GOOD Magazine's website, was just too, well, good to pass up.

It's Just Not For Me...

2010-06-03T18:50:00.005-04:00

As some of you may have noticed (but I’m guessing not too many), I “deactivated” my Facebook account some months ago, around November 2009. I didn’t give a second thought to going back. That is, until I saw an article that said deactivating is not the same as deleting. In other words, I could still be tagged in photos, my personal information (what I had chosen to put on my profile, anyway) was still alive and well on the Internet, and I could pretty much just hop back on whenever I pleased (just log back in!). After months of being “off” Facebook (or so I had thought), I read that actually getting off of Facebook was, one article said, much more complicated than I had imagined.

Right before deactivating my account, I heard every response from “good for you” (my mom) to “Why???” (family and friends) to skeptical eye-rolls accompanied by “yeah, right.” In fairness, I had threatened to deactivate for months prior, and never followed through.

I suppose the most important question to answer (and most frequently asked one) is the “why.”

Right from the beginning I was skeptical of Facebook. In August 2005, around the time Facebook opened to high schoolers (I would start my junior—or “upper”—year that fall), one of my friends asked me if I was on Facebook. Assuming he meant our school’s student directory, also called facebook (and which Zuckerberg allegedly helped start while at Phillips Exeter, inspiring him to create a similar directory at Harvard), I hopped on my computer and logged on to the page. I sat there staring at the simple search screen.

“Ok, I’m on facebook. Now what?”

It’s a question many people probably faced when they first logged on to Zuckerberg’s international and public Facebook (note the capital “F”), but now it seems the company has eliminated the time that question can actually swirl in your mind—it pretty much finds friends for you and encourages you to fill in your personal details the second you’re signed up. Creepy that it wants to search your e-mail for friends? I think so. But I let LinkedIn do that same thing for me, so I guess it’s more my personal issue with Facebook rather than that specific feature.

“I can’t find you,” my friend said.

“I’m right after LA,” I said, searching the entire grade and finding my school picture Exeter's lower-case facebook, right below L’s.

There was a pause, and then he realized my mistake.

“No,” he said, “I mean Facebook.com. It’s this cool thing for college kids but high schoolers can go on now, too. It’s like MySpace. But better.” He paused, then emphasized, “It’s mostly college people.”

I typed in Facebook’s URL. It wanted me to sign up. Name, e-mail, birthday...

This is where my training kicked in. My dad, a technology “guy” at his office (and guru in our family), always warns us against giving away too much of our identity, especially online. He shreds everything, warns us never to download anything unless we know exactly what it does, and recently (after watching too much Law & Order) has begun to advise, “Don’t say one word—just get your lawyer!” I can’t imagine when I would be taken in for questioning, never mind actually guilty of any crime, but I do plan on shutting up and asking for my lawyer. I don’t download anything I’m not certain is safe. I don’t give up personal information online to sketchy-looking sites (or even legitimate ones if I can help it). I never “stay signed in” on Gmail or check the box for Twitter to “remember me.” Often times if a website even asks for so much as an e-mail address or my full name in order to enter I’ll simply close the window. Not worth it.

So I hit the Learn More button (or whatever it was called on the original Facebook) and read the privacy policy, terms of use, and decided it was too risky.

“It was started by this kid who went to Exeter,” my friend said as a sort of explanation. Still, not worth it.

I held out until winter break. I asked my dad to take a look at the site; he did, and deemed it safe (back then, it still was). After assuring him, and myself, that I was smart enough not to get into trouble on Facebook, I started my profile and immediately my “wall” was written on: “Glad you finally joined us!” one friend wrote. True, he was a techie and always ahead of the curve on digital trends, but the “it’s about time!” response was not uncommon. Really? I had held out for all of four months and it was as if I had been living under a rock for eighteen… Really?

Facebook was fine back then. I could start and join events, connect with friends, and share messages, links, and pictures. I felt that I was connected to a network of people I wanted to be connected to, and isolated (protected) from anyone I didn’t. Sure, I wasted some time on it, but I have never been obsessed with “stalking” (now that word is used lightly) my friends, acquaintances, or strangers. And for the first two years I was on Facebook, Exeter shut off the Internet at 11 p.m., which eliminated forever my desire to waste time online.

Slowly, though, Facebook started to evolve. Privacy settings changed, and the infamous News Feed was invented. I was puzzled by this new feature, which seemed unnecessary and a little creepy. I never really used it. It felt strange to know something about someone not because they wanted me to, but because I had seen it on the News Feed. So I ignored that feature, and never commented on the things I saw (accidentally) on that new home screen.

Most of Facebook’s new features felt superfluous to me and actually made me uncomfortable. Based on the evidence that I was seldom if ever using them, I thought maybe Facebook wasn’t right for me. It was headed in a direction that I didn’t need to go. At this point (part way through my freshman year at college) I wasn’t opposed to Facebook; I just felt like it was more than I needed.

I was, however, strongly against Mark Zuckerberg. My senior year at Exeter he came back to speak. Campus was buzzing. The assembly hall was almost as full as I’ve ever seen it. The entire Academy hung on his every word. (Let me remind you, as I have been reminded so many times especially at assemblies, that he was addressing the bright young future of this country…)

He strolled on stage wearing jeans, flip-flops (in winter), a tee shirt, and a sweatshirt. Since the assembly I have found out that this is apparently a signature look of his. However, this was before everyone knew he was going for a “look,” and he ended up just looking sloppy and disrespectful. Exeter’s dress code for the boys includes a button-down shirt, tucked in, and complete with necktie. Most male assembly speakers—particularly the more renowned ones—tend to wear a full suit. Who does this kid think he is? I remember wondering, viewing him as a kid even though he was into his mid-twenties and a good five years my senior.

For half an hour he addressed the packed assembly hall. He started by admitting he was just going to tell stories, and launched into a few tales about himself, his roommate, and his experiences at Harvard. He hardly mentioned Facebook for the first five or ten minutes. He then spoke, briefly and vaguely, about why he had started Facebook, before reverting back to what he probably thought were humorous or amusing anecdotes about his life. A few students laughed. I was puzzled, then appalled. With about two minutes left—not nearly enough time—he took questions from the audience.

“What do you hope to accomplish with Facebook? What’s next for the site?” asked one student.

“Ok, so…” Zuckerberg went off for the remaining minute-and-forty-five-seconds in a direction I was less-than-excited about. He wanted Facebook to tell us everything, about everyone, while events were unfolding (in other words, in real time). At least that’s how it sounded to me. He provided an example of what he wanted users to be able to achieve using his brainchild. It went something like this:

You are friends with Jack and Jill.

Jack and Jill are dating. You (and everyone) know this because it says so on the relationship status section of their profiles.

In your News Feed, you notice that Jack and Jill are both attending a party at The Hill (you could go, but you're busy that night).

Part way through your own night, you check Facebook and your News Feed tells you that—gasp!—Jack and Jill are both now single! What’s going on at that party?

The next morning you notice that someone has uploaded photos from the event (thanks again, News Feed). You click on the link and check out the photos. You aren’t even friends with the guy that uploaded the pictures, but Jill was tagged in them, so it showed up on your Feed and you’re allowed to look at his photos.

There’s Jill, dancing and even kissing another guy! It all makes sense now...

Mark Zuckerberg’s moral of this story is that Facebook is connecting users in new and intimate ways, making it easier to keep up with your social life (and the social lives of others); it comes to you instead of you hunting it down. Which raises the question: if you don’t have to put in any effort, is it still a relationship?

The message I took away from this example, though, was quite different. You don’t need to do any sleuthing—Facebook does it for you! Not only will you know everything about everyone (even some people you don’t care about or know—remember, I wasn’t even friends with that guy whose photos I snooped through to find Jill), but everyone else will also know everything about you…

My eyes widened in shock as this story unfolded and I remember peering around the assembly hall, waiting for the usual “hisssss” that follows particularly displeasing-to-Exeter-students news (most memorably following the mention of George W. Bush, or Andover. George W. Bush having gone to Andover, however, elicited cheers). My friends, my peers, the future of our great nation, were nodding, complacently and appreciatively. Were we so blinded by his fame and influence that we couldn’t see the truth behind what he was saying (or even recognize the uselessness of the majority of his speech)? Or were we just being polite?

It wasn’t there yet, but Facebook was headed in a bad direction, I could tell (late 2006, remember). And it didn’t look like anyone was going to put up a fight…

I wrote a scathing editorial for The Exonian criticizing Zuckerberg’s obscene waste of time and influence at Assembly that day, then stayed with Facebook for a few more years. There didn’t seem to be drastic changes, but I did notice some happening slowly. When default privacy settings slackened, I upped my personal settings to restrict content that was suddenly left available to all. My friends didn’t seem concerned, and they expected me to use Facebook in ways I didn’t.

My communication is primarily via e-mail, text message, or phone. If you want to get in touch with me about any time-sensitive matter, do not use Facebook. This led to much frustration for others. The excuse “I wrote on your Facebook wall!” meant nothing. I didn’t compulsively check Facebook, so if people needed a ride, study guide, or favor, they were out of luck if they tried to ask me on my wall.

Others actually wanted me to know things about them that I didn’t. It was on their page, or profile, but since I don’t look into every detail of all my friends’ lives, allusions to content they posted online left me clueless.

“Who’s R?” I would ask.

“He’s the guy who’s in my Facebook picture,” my friend told me, and moved on with her story. I still had no idea who this R character was, but I let it slide, feeling negligent and also incredulous that not checking my friend's profile picture every week, or even every month, made me negligent. We talked on the phone every few weeks; we e-mailed multiple times in between calls, sometimes many times each day. But I didn’t care about Facebook as much, so I seemed inconsiderate.

Other times my own desire for privacy presented conflicts, even if only in small ways. For laughs, my straight female friend and I got “married” on Facebook. Looking back it now could have been a statement at how trivial, meaningless, and ridiculous it is to declare love via a social networking site, but back then it was just teenage fun. Security slackened (again), and I retaliated by tightening my settings (again). A few days later my friend e-mailed me.

“I know it’s silly,” she admitted, and then she asked if I would loosen my settings. Apparently, because I didn’t want my name displayed to people I wasn’t friends with, some of her friends saw only that she was “Married” rather than “Married to Claire Abisalih.” To them, it was no longer a joke, it was just alarming, and they bombarded her Facebook wall with questions. I obliged her (how could I say no to my darling “wife”?) but it took me a while. Once I deactivated, the rest of the world saw her as just “Married” until she realized what had happened, and, I’m assuming, became “single” again.

Facebook, it seemed, was growing closer and closer to Zuckerberg’s dream of zero privacy. Suddenly, games and quizzes and all sorts of things were on the site. I could find out whether I was in Gryffendor or Hufflepuff; I could have a fake farm; I could fight wars against zombies…

Each of these quizzes, before actually being able to view or begin them, asked if I wanted to allow the application access to my page. Some even wanted to install cookies on my computer. Opening myself up to this application (and whoever else was looking or overseeing wherever this info went) was definitely a no-go. As much as I would love to know which car I “am,” I have absolutely no desire for the car companies to know me. I don’t want my name floating around out there, I don’t want people pulling information from my page, and I don’t want e-mails from Ford and some vintage car magazine when it turns out I “am” a Thunderbird.

I’m sure it was easy for Facebook to get so far without anyone noticing what was happening. Each time privacy got more open, people either failed to notice, failed to care, or rose up for all of two days to protest before realizing it was just a new norm (what happened with the introduction of the News Feed). Having heard Zuckerberg speak years earlier—and latching on to those words with a mental death-grip—I couldn’t help but feel that I was one of the few people seeing the direction this was headed.

“Mark Zuckerberg wants to take over the world!” I would say in half-hyperbole when people asked me why I was so vehemently against him. I would proceed, more calmly and rationally, to explain why I was so wary of him. They listened politely, as we had to him that day years ago, but ultimately I think they dismissed me, or even wrote me off as crazy.

After four years, he may have finally gone too far. Articles about Facebook’s privacy issues are popping up all over the place (most recently I read this one in Time magazine and felt compelled to write my own response, if for no other reason than to say “I told you so!” and get my name of the list of Crazies I know people probably put me on each time I told them stories of how nefarious and power-hungry I feel Zuckerberg is). He’s taking heat from all sides, even the government. And, if you ask me, rightfully so. This should have come months ago.

It’s not so much that Facebook opens up all this information on the Internet. People can put this stuff out there if they want. I choose to have a blog and share my thoughts. Strangers may stumble across it (none that I know of yet), but I feel comfortable in the opinions I assert here and confident in my writing ability. In short, there is nothing I would be ashamed for someone to find, and no one can learn that much about my identity. I am careful not to give away too much personal identifying information (personal opinions and preferences, fine—you can’t get into my credit cards by telling AmEx that I am anti-Facebook, love to teach, and drove cross-country once), and I do my best not to compromise my friends and family, either leaving them anonymous or using pseudonyms to refer to individuals who might be easily identifiable based on their association with me. I know that no company is likely to search through my entire blog figuring out what products I like, where I live, or what shops I prefer (I won’t get spammed or “found” the way I might if I took a quiz or “liked” something on Facebook).

I have a Twitter, which may seem hypocritical because it’s basically just a News Feed. But by going to my Twitter page, can you find out my phone number? That I added new photos online? That I’ve been chatting with one of our mutual friends? That I broke up with somebody? Not unless I choose to say so, which is completely different than Facebook's feature, where friends would tell me they saw my photos I’d uploaded thanks to News Feed, despite the fact that I clicked “do not publish” on the News Feed after doing so. Facebook simply broadcasted my activity without asking me.

I also have a LinkedIn, which in my mind is not a social networking site but a business networking site; different ends, and different means.

I do have Gmail, and I am frustrated and a little bit paranoid at how they tailor their advertising based on the e-mails I send and receive. But I’m slightly reassured that no one is checking up on me too closely based on the fact that much of the time the ads are totally off-base; for example, I’ll ask if someone wants to sleep over at my house and I get advertisements wondering if I have insomnia (probably thanks to “want” and “sleep”), when really they should be advertising popcorn and movie rentals. I have also never clicked any of the linked ads sent my way. Bombard me all you want, creepy and invasive marketing schemes, but I still have the power to ignore you, and I will!

So I’m not saying we should all smash our computers in and revert back to the days of non-Internet yore. I’m not even saying we should all give up Facebook (although I think it is ruining how we interact and diluting the meaning of friendship). But I think everyone should think long and hard about the value added by Facebook compared to the hassle or risks it poses. My biggest problem is that it’s deceptive and doesn’t give me nearly enough control over my own settings. The defaults are too lax. People expect me to use it in ways I have no intention of doing. It wastes time. It makes friendship too easy (I like the thought that people have to care about me enough to ask before they can know everything going on in my life). And, if not used properly, it can compromise employment opportunities.

For months I wanted to take the step to deactivate. It would be too hard, some people said, to keep in touch. But on Facebook how many people ever keep in touch? Tons of people I know spend minutes or hours searching people’s pages, keeping up with their activities and the information they choose to share, but never actually contacting that person to get together or find out how life really is. Between e-mail, texting, phones, and Skype, I’m still connected with everyone I care to stay connected to. Sure, we each have to make an effort to find out how the other is doing, but compared to the days of phones and writing letters, blasting off a quick e-mail hardly qualifies as “effort.”

After finally taking the plunge and deactivating (then deleting), I feel… wonderful. The world did not end. It’s been months since I’ve been on Facebook and still many of my close friends have no idea I deleted my account (perhaps highlighting my paranoia—no one’s watching me that closely—but also a testament to the fact that we’ve stayed in touch via e-mail and other avenues of communication; we make it work). I have more time that I spend on work, which is good, since I desperately need more hours in the day to accomplish everything for Esperanza. Or I use that time writing, reading, e-mailing, staying on top of the news, or maybe watching a show on Netflix.

Essentially, I don’t miss Facebook at all, and contrary to what the site told me when I said I was deactivating, no one has missed me too badly, either.

Context Is Everything

2010-06-01T16:46:00.004-04:00

In writing grade reports and comments for one of my vocabulary classes, I was looking over notes I had made on tests and assignments the girl had done. On the tests, I always have a section in which the girls are required to invent a sentence that uses each vocab word in context (they are given a word bank with six words and asked to pick five and write five sentences, one for each word). This section is my favorite, not because it shows the girls' understanding of the words in a real-world use, but also because some of the sentences I get are absolutely hilarious. I also give an occasional extra-credit question, which can also yield similarly funny results. Some of the questions involve using or understanding a vocab word, others have to do with current events, and still others are completely random.

For example, the week after the 2010 Superbowl, I asked who had won.

MM: It was a team with a bird sign on their shirts and there were a lot of men. It wasn't the Patriots though. Jerry Shocky is on the team and he has lots of tattoos.

I couldn't help but give credit. I'm assuming she thought the fleur de lis of the New Orleans Saints was a stylized flying bird. She definitely knew it wasn't the Patriots because I had been depressed about that for a while. I was also quite impressed she knew about Jeremy Shockey (and his many tats). My favorite part, though, was probably the "and there were a lot of men." Y' don't say!

In another wonderful extra-credit answer, I couldn't help but be amused by the detail and specificity of this answer:

Q: What is one thing that whets your appetite for sugar?

CP's A: A well-frosted cake or pastry.

I've had it up to here with those skimpily-frosted cakes, gosh darn it!

A few girls write sentences that nearly bring me to tears. Whether or not that is a strategy to get extra points (it doesn't work), I don't know, but I choose to think they are being honest in what they are saying. As much as I was a young, enthusiastic scholar, I don't think I ever sucked up to a teacher, so I'll assume these girls don't, either.

JR: Ms. Abi is a benevolent teacher because she sincerely cares about the students she teaches.

In further proof that context can really change the meaning or feel of a word, phrase, or statement, I will say that this sentence felt more significant to me knowing that at home she is often neglected or emotionally disregarded, even disrespected.

One of my favorite sentences, because of how humorous it is, follows:

CP: John is now impervious to any damage done to him, whether psychologically or physically, because of all the pain his phone company has caused him.

Basically, we are meant to believe that the brutality of John's phone company has made him immune to any other damage? I love it! Upon first reading this sentence, I thought it was absurd, but about fifteen hours after the girls handed in their tests, my flight to Los Angeles for February vacation was cancelled. After collapsing emotionally and visibly slumping in disappointment, I remember thinking, with a small smile and an added appreciation, Claire is now impervious to any damage done to her, whether psychologically or physically, because of all the pain her airline has caused her...

Tutor For America

2010-05-05T21:22:00.007-04:00

Don't get me wrong-- I absolutely love teaching. But even trying to teach one math theory, one history topic, or one English concept to twelve relatively well-behaved girls in fifty minutes is a major challenge. (Disclaimer: I have no professional training in education, and that could be a big part of my personal problem.) I often marvel at how teachers who have co-ed classes of near-thirty kids get anything accomplished, and when I find out that often times the achievement of students in our public systems is minimal and well below grade level, I am (sadly) hardly surprised.

Yes, I witness the girls at Esperanza growing, progressing, making headway in their day-to-day classes. But I see even greater progress and immensely more thorough understanding of concepts when the girls come to me after school with questions. I walk them through the solution, and the solution-finding process, making sure they don't just get the answer, but they get each and every step on the way to that answer.

I've often been debating whether my time would be better spent tutoring or teaching (in a traditional classroom setting-- of course tutors are teaching, but they are not "teachers" who work with groups of students at once, so in the future that is how I will use the term). The problem is that the students I want to tutor, the ones who need it most, can't afford to pay me, and I do want to make some kind of living. My dad suggested the other night that I tutor kids in more affluent areas where parents will pay top-dollar to get their child into the likes of Andover and Exeter, while a few days a week I tutor the students in dire need (without the cash) for free. In other words, have the wealthy parents subsidize the broke ones. Steal from the rich, give to the poor?

But there are some other ideas floating around out there, like this one that I found in GOOD, and I really think that the author, Seth Linden, could be on to something:

"Instead of a class of 30, 20, or even 10, we need to bring a 'Class of One' to our neediest students. By doing so, we can close the racial and economic achievement gaps, graduate more students from high school, and prepare more students for college and beyond."

When I was in Los Angeles volunteering with WYSE, one of my "mentees," KMM, was a generally achieving student who was seriously struggling in one area: math. Now, KMM is ambitious. I would ask if she wanted to hang out on the weekend, and she would see if I could take her to the library (she often didn't have internet, and never had a printer, at her house). In January 2009 she timidly asked me if I might be willing to help her out with math.

"I think I need to find a tutor," she said. We chatted for a minute or two about that. She was averaging between forty and fifty percent on her tests, failing the class. "Claire, do you think you might have time? I know you're really busy but maybe just for a little do you think you could help me?"

The only thing that brought me hesitation was that math has never been my favorite subject, and once I got to Calculus it quickly became my worst (below physics, a close last-place runner up). What if I didn't remember anything from that far back? What if I gave her the wrong answers? What if we sat for half an hour as I just told her, "Sorry, I don't remember this. Ask your teacher." Basically, what if I were no help whatsoever?

"Of course I can!" I answered brightly, concealing my doubts until I added, "and if I can't, I have some friends who are really good at math and could probably lend a hand." I hadn't consulted with Cameron or David and blindly volunteered them, but maybe just once or twice I could convince them to help out-- I'd cross that bridge once I had confirmed that I was an epic math tutoring failure. I could even offer to pay them.

We set up a date, Tuesday afternoons. I would pick her up at 3:30 after she got home from school (which let out at 2:45-- she walked a half hour home each day). We could drive to a local library and work for as long as it took, probably about forty-five minutes or an hour, I guessed.

I picked up KMM and she directed me to a library, mixing up left and right and eventually reverting to giving those directions in Spanish since I understood izquierda y derecha. We set up camp at one of the tables in the teen lit. room and started working. She was learning-- or trying to-- negative numbers and orders of operation, things I not only remembered, but which had become simply engrained knowledge. I knew what I knew, but I didn't remember learning it, which meant I would have to do some improvising (rather than mimicking) to get this into her head. We started by going over her notes.

"You have some really good notes here," I said. She had taken organized, thorough, and precise notes in class. I turned to her smiling to reassure her.

"I just don't really get them," she said. I nodded slowly, trying to hide my extreme bewilderment at how you can take such clear notes without knowing what they say-- or bothering to ask.

"Ok," I said, dragging out the word to buy time. "What don't you understand?" She looked at me. I tried to read her expression, and my best translation said, Where do I begin?

"Like... Any of it." She stared at me, then her notes, helplessly.

"That's ok," I said, in my best We can fix this! voice. "Let's start at the beginning."

And we did. The very beginning. The top of the page. Before the top of the page, reviewing. We proceeded slowly, methodically, thoroughly. I explained things a few different ways if she didn't get it the first time, worked with her on each little step of solving just about any problem her teacher could throw at her. We were there until 6:30.

KMM and I continued tutoring every Tuesday afternoon with about the same timeline (3:30-6-ish). Every couple of weeks I would give her extra help on Fridays, too. She often had tests on Wednesdays, so after reviewing for the test or quiz with her I would remind her things to study right before the test.

"Don't forget to always check your negative signs-- that's the one thing you forget sometimes," I would urge her before we left the library. "What's a negative times a negative?"

"Positive, right?"

"Yup. Negative times a positive?"

"Negative."

"Positive times negative?"

"Um. Negative. Same as the other one."

"Positive by positive?"

"What?"

"Positive times a positive?"

"Positive."

"Perfect! Just, when you finish your test, go back over every single problem and make sure you didn't forget any negative signs, ok?"

"Ok!" She shook her head as she packed her bag. "Why can't he just explain things like you do? It's so much easier that way!"

Her math teacher went over the homework for the majority of the class. He assigned a lot, and moved through it quickly. She wasn't the only one left completely confused. For the last ten minutes of class he would speed through notes on a new concept, then send them off with a fresh batch of math problems, completely unprepared for their nightly assignment. I assured her that if she took detailed notes-- even if she didn't understand them-- I would be able to decipher and re-teach them to her during tutoring. But I was astounded at the inadequacy of her class.

It was easy for me to blame him. How had he used his-- and his students'-- time so poorly? Why couldn't he even allow the kids time for questions? Didn't he see what a grave disservice he was doing this kids? What kind of teacher organizes their class that way?

It was also impossible for me to blame him. What kind of school puts thirty-two kids in a classroom with one teacher for forty-five minutes and expects him to teach at the pace they mandated? What could he do if the students didn't have parents or siblings capable of helping them at home, as mine had done for me? Whose fault was it that the best he could do was cram knowledge onto the board and hope it somehow seeped into the children's heads?

I shrugged when KMM asked me why he couldn't just teach the way I did-- it made so much sense this way, she argued, after suddenly understanding a concept she had been grappling with all week. "I think it's just hard for him with so many kids to help every day," I defended.

"He doesn't help any of us. He just ignores us and then expects us to know everything." She shook her head. "At least I get it with you."

When KMM got in my car one Friday, I treated it like any other day. We had been having tutoring sessions for about three weeks, and I hadn't seen her on Tuesday, so this was the first time since her test nine days ago that I had seen her. It had been so long that the test had faded from my mind entirely.

"How's it going?" I asked perkily as she slid into the passenger seat, waving goodbye to her mom.

"Good. I have good news, Claire," she said, smiling, a little self-consciously trying not to beam.

"Awesome! What is it?" I asked. I wondered if it had to do with school. Maybe a boy had said something nice to her? Maybe she understood what they learned today in math?

"Well. So. I took the test last week, and I did really well. But my teacher thought I cheated," she explained.

"What did you get?" I asked.

"A ninety-two."

"KMM, that's--"

"But he thought I cheated!" she interrupted. "So he made me take it again, by myself after school. Just him and me." She stopped.

"Were you nervous?" I asked.

"Yes!" She laughed. "But guess what, Claire. I think your tutoring is really helping me."

"Oh?"

"I got a ninety-three!"

I almost crashed the car I was so ecstatic, euphoric, elated.

"That's incredible! Are you kidding me?!? That's the best! KMM, are you wicked proud of yourself?"

"Yeah," she said, her entire face-- her whole essence-- lit up with her smile. "But it's just, you're really helping me." She looked over at me as I pulled into the library parking lot. "Thanks."

"You deserve a treat!" I said. "Yogurtland?" She looked at me and nodded, still beaming. "We can tutor tomorrow," I offered, knowing her weekend was free. "We need to celebrate!"

Within a few weeks KMM went from a failing math student who was consistently earning in the forties, to getting no lower than an eighty-five percent (once). The majority of her grades were in the nineties. She passed the term and graduated to high school.

Reflecting on this story, this impact I had, I wonder how many other students in her class, in the school, in Los Angeles, in America could benefit from one-on-one tutoring. No doubt almost all of them, but what about the kids who need it the most? Sure, private tutoring could bring some kids from earning Bs to earning As, but the greatest strides are made when the kids earning below-an-F suddenly rank in the top twenty percent of their class. And I wonder if my time is better spent with those kids, getting five of them a year to the top of their class rather than thirty to (hopefully) grade level. Should I pour my energy into really reaching fifty kids in the next ten years? Or should I merely touch-- graze-- 1,500 in that same span of time? I'd like to think I'd be a proficient, skilled enough teacher to really impact so many lives, but in the system we currently have, I wonder if that's possible for the United States on a broad scale. Perhaps it's time for another system, and additional system.

Perhaps I should found Tutor For America...

Practice Makes Perfect

2010-04-30T19:00:00.013-04:00

If you sat down in my car, slid in the key, and pushed the power button (yes, my car has a start button), among the first sounds you would hear would be voices and commentary of NPR. I get flack about it from many different people in my life (and compliments from many people, too). My close friends, after a few moments riding with me, remark something like, "You're listening to NPR..." to which I, extremely well trained by the station (and also oblivious to the fact that they are trying to point out the unusual nature of my choice with as little friction or judgment as possible), finish their sentence in an radio host-like voice, "National Public Radio." Awkward pause. "Oh, you mean, like instead of music! ... Yes, yes I am." My students, less concerned with social graces, simply say, "Miss, can't we listen to some real radio? Like, some music, or something good?"

But I love Public Radio (everything except A Prairie Home Companion, which is technically American Public Media). Despite the fact that I constantly lamented my dad listening to NPR on the way to or from anywhere, it has now become my main source of news.

And so, as usual, Wednesday night (April 28) I was listening to Marketplace (another American Public Media show aired on NPR) and happened upon a fascinating interview.

Tess Vigeland ("vigg-lənd") had just begun interviewing Matthew Syed ("side"), a British sports commentator for the BBC whose book "Bounce" was just published this month. In the book, Syed analyzes what leads to success, essentially debating whether it comes from innate ability or practice and perseverance. His conclusion is overwhelmingly on the side of the latter, which may or may not be surprising (I feel like by now most people assume that where you end up in life has something to do with both ability and ambition, genetics and drive). What I did find interesting, though, was one experiment in particular that supported Syed's ideas and changed the way I now view encouragement and support, particularly as a teacher.

VIGELAND: I think one of the practical applications here, you say the talent myth is disempowering because it causes individuals to give up if they don't make early progress. And your answer to that is again, look, don't worry about it, just keep practicing.

SYED: Yeah, in fact a brilliant psychologist, Carol Dweck from Stanford, has done some terrific research in this area. She took 400 fifth graders and gave them some simple puzzles. And afterwards half of them were praised for intelligence, for talent -- you must be really smart at this. The other half were praised for effort. Gosh, you must have worked really hard. Then she gave them some more difficult tasks to complete. Those who were praised for talent, for intelligence, when they come across these really difficult challenges and started struggling, they thought, oh my goodness, I don't want to lose that smart label. And it actually zapped their ability to persevere on the task. Those who were praised for effort, when they came across this really difficult problem they thought great, I can demonstrate now how hardworking I am. And they really ratcheted up their enthusiasm, kept going. So what Dweck argues very convincingly is that we must praise young people in any educational scenario for their effort and not for their talent, and try to embed what she calls the growth mindset. [Italics my own.]

VIGELAND: So this is really a message to parents everywhere to stop calling your kid a genius and instead say, hey, good job for studying.

SYED: That's absolutely right. And Dweck argues that this particular experiment she's done in all parts of the United States with different ethnic groups, and the result is always the same.

This has changed many small actions I've taken in the past few days. When grading a worksheet some of my seventh- and eighth-grade students completed, I wrote things like, "Nice work!" and "Love the effort!" instead of more generic comments like "Good job!" or "Nice!" The girls in my vocabulary class are in the highest level (and know it), which means some of them occasionally fall back and trust their intellect to get them through class successfully, rather than put in real effort. I'm wondering if, should I show the girls I value their hard work, they will step up the energy they put into their classes.

I have a reading lab with a group of fifth- and sixth-graders who are below grade level. They are virtually the opposite of the 7/8 group I have for vocab, although both groups sometimes seem to lack ambition in their studies. We go into the computer lab and use a reading program that helps them develop their fluency, reading comprehension, writing skills, and speed. After hearing this interview, I've started thinking more about how I support the girls.

Today in reading lab, MG, a fifth grader who has extreme difficulty reading, was doing quite well. I was giving her personalized attention, letting her work hard and letting her do her work, then helping her to correct her spelling and grammar, expand her ideas, re-word unclear phrasing. There were times we would work on two-sentence answers for four-to-five minutes. But by the end, her answers were thorough, well thought-out, clear and correct. Over the course of the 20 minutes we spent today, she learned that she needed to add specific details (which she was doing by the end without prompting). She was checking the story to make sure the spelling in her answers matched the spelling of names and other challenging words as they were written (correctly) in the story. Even an hour before this class, if you had shown me the answers she came up with, no name attached, I would've never believed MG had written them. It was fantastic to see what she was capable of, and I felt that, working one-on-one, I had been able to strike the perfect balance-- pushing her while also supporting her and telling her she was doing a great job, even when I knew that she could do better with just a little more effort (which she did-- every time!).

After we finished I turned to her and smiled. She smiled back.

"See how thorough those answers are?" I asked. She nodded, grinning so broadly and innocently. We seemed to both be feeding off each other's energy, which, in my opinion, is the bliss of teaching (or any relationship, really).

"You did awesome today!" I continued, smiling at her. "You should be really proud-- you worked really hard on those answers, and they look great. Really good work, MG."

Of course, it's only been one day with this new emphasis on work ethic, perseverance, practice. But even in those 20 minutes I felt like I was seeing a difference.

Next week the girls will take tests they took in the fall and winter terms as well. The goal, of course, is to see improvement in their scores. At the faculty meeting today we were asked to be encouraging to the girls and stay positive about the tests.

"If you tell them it's horrible, it's going to be horrible," we were told at the faculty meeting today. It makes sense to me, and as much as I recognize that the tests are tedious and eye-ache inducing, the girls still have to take them and, ever the optimist, I believe they should learn to make the best of the situation-- which can start with us, the teachers, setting the mood.

I began wondering, in the spirit of scientific exploration, what would happen if the girls were told the test measured their work ethic, how much energy they put into things. Some of these girls have learned to settle for Cs, even Ds. I can tell that some of them, sadly, don't think very highly of their intellectual abilities. If that is what a test is measuring (as all tests, in their minds, do), why should they even bother? But what if the test is measuring just that-- how hard they try? That's something they have control over, and they know it. Would their scores improve?

Looks like I've got my senior project ready for when the time comes...

Conquering Los Angeles

2010-04-26T20:56:00.002-04:00

Yesterday morning, at 7 a.m. Eastern Daylight (savings) Time (EDT), I touched down at Logan International Airport in Boston, Mass. I had spent an unexpectedly short-seeming amount of time in Los Angeles, mostly at USC, visiting friends I met in college (and a couple from middle- and high-school, which I will discuss in later posts). I say unexpectedly short-seeming because in reality I had spent almost nine whole days there, and going into it I figured that, if anything, it would feel too long. It ended up flying by, both a testament to how much fun I was having as well as a byproduct of the fact that I think my mind never once stopped churning. Time flies when you’re learning…

The primary purpose of the trip was to take a vacation and to visit my USC friends. Secondarily, though, I think it was to (in a sense) conquer Los Angeles, something I never really did in the 1.5 years I spent enrolled at USC. When I think about the person I was at USC, especially at certain times and in certain company, I see starkly how much I have changed, and how much that person, that Trojan Claire, doesn’t feel at all like the person I was in high school or the person I am today. For my own closure and reckoning, I needed to revisit USC and come to terms with the city, the school, and the people who influenced (explicitly or indirectly) the person I was and the person I have become.

My reasons for leaving USC are difficult things to explain to other people, and for a time it was difficult for me to explain to myself. As much as I spent hours analyzing my choices, (either with friends, family, or on my own,) I never felt as though I could pinpoint exactly why (the vague why here responds to many different why questions; why did I feel pressure from others? why wasn’t I motivated? why did I stop eating? why were some of my values reaffirmed while others were a complete 180° from those held prior? why did I make the choices I made? why couldn’t I just be myself?).

I have come a long way (in a positive direction, I feel) from the girl others may have seen at USC. I don’t think I ever lost the person I truly am deep down—it was the conflict between the person I had grown up as, who I knew and loved and respected and valued, and the person I saw myself becoming that led to what was serious (albeit temporary) depression in spring 2009 and eventually me leaving USC without a concrete plan in place (I couldn’t keep going down that path—anyone, anywhere, anything would be better than who, where, what I am now).

While the school and the city weren’t difficult to pass up, the people were, and still are. As I was saying goodbye to them on Saturday evening, I could feel my heart tighten and my eyes sting. You chose this—you wanted to leave. You want to leave. But not these people. They’ve been so good to me. There’s no one like them in my life right now—and many want to stay in California—what if I never live with them again? What if it’s all just weekend visits and vacation rendezvous’? What if we’re forever just “old friends”? What if we’re never even in the same time zone for more than a week at a time? It sent my mind into a tizzy and my spirits into a nosedive. My chest clenched and my eyes teared.

So why did I leave in the first place? I’m happier now than I’ve been in years, but how could I explain it to them, these friends I love and never want to hurt? How do I tell them that the school they enjoy, the place they have made home, the life they’ve chosen, drove me away at any cost? And how can I justify to myself that leaving these folks is really the best thing for me? Surely there’s some way for everyone else to understand... But first I have to.

And on this trip, I finally came into that understanding.

Last year, it was too easy for me to blame USC—I was too close to it, too confused, and too hurt to see myself as a critical part of the context that changed me. The school made me change my values; the campus made me depressed. The frat culture made me stop eating; the parties made me go farther than I wanted to. The teachers made me lose interest in my education; my major made me feel like a rat running a race. The weather made me feel stagnant; the city made me feel isolated. I was the eternal victim, and yet I was the one that had all the power to make all the decisions, and the one who finally made that decision to leave (another internal conflict: was I doing what’s right by me, being strong and taking a risk to better my life, or was I admitting defeat and running back home to the familiar?).

So since leaving USC, I have had many different experiences that helped me discover (and re-discover) what my values truly are and what I firmly believe in, and I have had plenty of time (well, not “plenty,” but enough) to think about the person I was and am. The combination of a million different experiences and thoughts brought me back, rather quickly, to realizing the woman I am becoming (and, in some sense, always was). Someone who’s confident, engaged, loves to learn, and does not do things for the simple sake of acceptance. I am passionate about the things I love, and intrigued by the things I don’t know much about. I speak my mind when I see fit, and I ask questions when I’m curious. I contemplate, inquire, ponder, and analyze. I draw conclusions—and enjoy having them challenged. My list of priorities is topped by being true to myself.

And this is the girl who, last week, arrived at LAX, ready to see how ‘SC did me this time…

I’m not sure if others noticed any change in me. Some probably did sometimes, and others probably never did. The changes may or may not have registered, and may or may not have even been apparent. But for me, they changed the way I felt at USC. I felt myself asking more questions, speaking up more often, and smiling a heck of a lot more than I think I did during my last term in L.A. I just felt happier, more confident, more self-assured.

As I told my parents (and probably some of my friends), the school hasn’t changed, but I have. Of course there are millions of tiny, almost-daily changes on any college campus, and I could see some of my friends maturing and changing, too, but on the whole, the atmosphere at USC seemed the same, the campus looked the same, and the weather was the same. The fact that suddenly I was so much happier here, so much more comfortable and ok with both myself and the school, quickly led me to the conclusion that I must have played a large role in my own unhappiness.

I felt immense pressure at USC—pressure I assumed was inflicted on me by outside parties beyond my control. But if all the other presumably pressure-causing elements of the school still existed, and suddenly I felt no pressure at all, then it follows that the stress and anxiety I felt stifling me had, in fact, been self-inflicted.

During a visit to Claremont, I had lunch with a friend from middle school, Jos. He and I talked about the rapid discoveries I had been making about myself in the short time I had spent returned to L.A., and he mentioned an experiment done involving prisoners and guards (no, not the Zimbardo (Stanford) experiment, but a different one). As I understood it, as told to me by Jos, this one set up a row of cells facing a guard’s station. Regardless of whether the guard was present at the post, the prisoners behaved better than another control group. They may or may not have been watched, but they perceived that they were under surveillance, and policed themselves.

The point is, we alter our own behavior based not so much on the objective realities around us, but on our perceived realities (I’ll refrain from launching into an existential digression). My perceived reality was the one changing me.

Honestly, I doubt anyone was staring at me, judging me based solely on my physical appearance. It may have happened occasionally, but it was not as rampant as I once thought. But once I started feeling judged based on how I looked, I felt that his must be how everyone judged everyone else. And the more I noticed attention from the opposite sex, the more convinced I grew that it was because of my appearance and not my personality. So, I became who I thought they wanted me to become. Skinny, passive, compliant; funny but not too funny, interesting but not intimidating, independent but not pushy, ambitious but not aggressive. I was under a constant perceived (but not at all actual) microscope, so my priorities changed from pleasing myself to pleasing who I thought everyone else was. Rather than looking at myself and who I wanted to be, I looked at others and what I expected they wanted me to be.

I felt obligated to make USC my home, to set down roots and become comfortable here. And to be comfortable, I decided it would be easier to assimilate than to simply be my true self and find the people whom I felt completely comfortable around. I found pockets of those people—and I remain friends with them today—but in all my classes, walking across campus, going to parties—those times, I felt vastly outnumbered and individual in an isolating, outcast kind of way. It just didn’t feel like home the way Exeter had, and the way I knew other colleges felt for my close high school friends, and to make it feel that way, I decided I had to be just like all the other girls I was encountering. Of course, I kept some facets of my individuality and refused to bow to certain peer pressures, but I lost my passion for many things, traded in bold personality traits for more passive ones, and perhaps most importantly, I seldom felt 100% comfortable with myself.

Being back at USC on my own terms, maintaining the person I have grown into, interacting with others as the me I am entirely happy and confident about—it brought closure to USC, and a new outlook on myself and my time there. I think I have further developed friendships that I hope will continue eternally, and blame has been replaced by understanding.

I now understand why I left USC. I wasn’t driven out, I wasn’t being judged into oblivion (except by myself). I left because I had lost who I was, and I needed to rediscover that person. I had hit a rough time in my life—and while it could’ve happened anywhere, I think there are also places it would not have happened. I left the school in search of myself and in search of a place where I felt entirely comfortable. It had nothing to do with the people I counted as my closest friends, and perhaps only some to do with the school or city itself. It had much to do with my own emotional state, mental perceptions, and self-inflicted physical consequences.

And so I returned to USC unsure of what it would “do” to me this time, and found instead that it had never really done anything in the first place. The responsibility, choices, and atmosphere I felt were a response to a mix of realities and misconceptions. The realities remain, and there are certainly realities I can live without (the reality of a bustling frat scene, large one-sided classes, and an impersonal campus). There are also false impressions that I recognize as fabrication rather than fact, and they no longer plague me.

I left USC with a better understanding of so many different elements of the school and myself. I left in a better place than when I left just under a year ago, and in a better place even than when I touched down late on Thursday, April 15. I left with tears in my eyes for the friends I would miss, and an excitement filling my mind recalling the good times we had shared. I left reaffirmed in my decision, knowing more than ever that leaving was the right choice and Smith would be perfect for me; I also left sad that I was unable to spend the next ten years surrounded with the friends I had made in California.

I feel I am finally in the right place. I recognize USC for exactly what it is (no delusions this time), and I have a firm, grounded understanding of who I am. I am finally ready to look back more fondly, and look forward more confidently. I hope—and I think—my closest friends at USC (and elsewhere) will understand this, and I am so grateful for the unerring support they have always flooded me with, literally no matter what. Thank you.

Where Do You Stand?

2010-01-15T19:48:00.004-05:00

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)

Help For Haiti

2010-01-15T19:05:00.006-05:00

The Esperanza girls continue to inspire and amaze me.

These are girls whose pants barely come to their ankles because they haven't bought a new pair in a year and a half. These are girls who can barely afford winter jackets. These are girls who sometimes go without eating for a day because their parents haven't had the money for food. And yet, today at school they had a fundraiser for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. The student council raised over $200 (I think $208, to be exact) to send. Girls who had planned on using it to go to the movies this weekend with friends or out to dinner for a birthday party brought in $10 and $20 bills to give to people they don't even know. I asked one girl, a fifth grader, if she was doing anything fun or exciting this weekend.

"No," she said first, then, "Well, yes. With my dad and brother."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Yeah, my dad found this way to give stuff, so my brother and I are going to clean out our closets and our toys and give them away to kids in Haiti who don't have anything."

By many Americans' standards, YC and her family have virtually nothing. And yet they're giving it away? Not only that, but these are elementary schoolers willingly handing over toys and clothes to total strangers. How many kids do you know who would voluntarily give up a toy to anyone?

The generosity of these girls absolutely astounds and inspires me. They may be young, but most have experienced more adversity in their lives than I ever may, and still they have some of the biggest hearts and most resilient, selfless spirits I've encountered in anyone. If you get the urge to follow their example, check out a few of the websites listed below:

The American Red Cross (Haiti donations page)

Oxfam America (Haiti donations page)

USAID (Haiti information page - text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 - the charge will be added to your cell phone bill)

Yéle Haiti (homepage)

Thank you!

"Don't Tell Me You're Busy"

2010-01-13T17:29:00.005-05:00

My friend Wes, from Exeter, sent me this article. Since reading it (all of ten minutes ago), my mind has been somewhat consumed by it. In some ways I feel like the article is accusing me of not choosing my words wisely (which it is), and as an avid writer and reader who counts improper pronunciation and grammar among her biggest pet peeves, I took offense. Getting beyond my own flustered emotions over facing such criticism, though, the bigger issue on my brain is: What word do I use instead?

As I began to analyze what word would be best suited to replace "busy" in my vocabulary, I realized that the author Penelope Trunk (I assume) and I had very different definitions of the word "busy." Her interpretation is that "busy" is synonymous with "stressed." It's can be dismissive ("I can't, I'm too busy"), it can be a scapegoat ("Sorry this is late, I was just so busy!"), and overall it tends to leave a lot to be desired. "Busy" is vague and overused, frustratingly so at times, and because it means different things in different contexts and to different people, it is impossible to interpret and hard to know when to take it seriously.

I re-read the article a second time, paying closer attention to Trunk's four main points, trying to glean exactly how she interpreted the B-word.

"1. Recognize that a frenetic life is a life half lived."

Ah. So "busy" means "frenetic"? Not so in my book. Generally I do not feel a lack of "flow" in my life. Sure, there are times when I am feeling hectic, overwhelmed, ambushed by responsibility (more on that when I address the fourth point), but I often find that the fuller my days are, the more productive my time becomes. I focus my energy in one place, because that's all I have room for in my mind, and I recognize that attempted multitasking (even mental multitasking) will only be a detriment to my efficiency. So I agree with the author: a frenetic life is a life half lived, but if she's saying that a "busy" life is a life half lived, then clearly we disagree on the definition of busy.

"2. Recognize that you are addicted to busy. You like what a busy lifestyle does for you."

Yes! Yes, I do like what a busy lifestyle does for me! And I might even go so far as to agree that I am addicted to it... Otherwise why else would I voluntarily work eleven-hour days? Why did I voluntarily spend my Saturdays at USC finishing the upcoming week's homework? And why do I feel lost when I have no schedule to keep me engaged?

"Busy gives you an excuse for poor performance."

Wait, wait, wait-- slow down a second. Just before you started this new paragraph we were in total agreement! What's going on here? I perform at a higher level when I'm busy! My work is more focused, my mind turned on full blast, and unless I cross over that fine line separating (my version of) busy from stressed, I'd like to think my efforts are fairly high quality. I've never had any major complaints, anyways...

"Busy gives you a way to ignore parts of your life that are falling apart and need attention."

Ok, so I don't e-mail or call my friends as much as I should. Touché. Sincerest apologies to all my friends who I have not e-mailed, called, written, seen recently. I'm sorry, but I know that you are all kind, forgiving people, who may get frustrated at me, but will also understand the importance of the kids I'm teaching and why they need to take priority in my life right now. (Not to mention that to some extent if they didn't, I wouldn't have a job. And I really need a job.)

So speaking of priorities:

"3. Prioritize."

While sometimes I prioritize "wrong" (after all, priorities are subjective-- plus I am also subject to lapses in judgment), I definitely agree that the only way to really accomplish anything is by recognizing what is important to you. I think Trunk would agree with how I prioritize my life-- there is no set hierarchy, no list or order of what to do when (sometimes there is if I start to get stressed, but on a day-to-day basis, not so). Based on my mood and mental state at any given point, my priorities may be completely different from any other moment of any other day.

Ah, but now on to number four. The dreaded number four. The point at which, if Trunk followed me around for a day being my life coach, she would get the urge to throttle me Homer Simpson style, knock some sense into me, give me two alternating slaps on the face and say "Get a hold of yourself, woman! Snap out of it! JUST SAY NO!" Probably multiple times. Per hour.

"4. Say no."

I can't. I just... can't. I'm getting better at it, but it's still a little shameful how horrible I am at turning someone down. Generally, it is others who do the turning down for me. As I said earlier, I love being busy. Saying "no" not only doesn't really come naturally to me, but I don't necessarily mind having more on my plate of responsibilities than some other people might. Is that a habit I picked up at Exeter, where you couldn't say no to a busy day without flunking out, because that's just how life was? Or was I so happy at Exeter because it's naturally part of my personality to enjoy more work rather than less? It gets stressful every once in a while, but most of the time it simply keeps me, well, busy.

"5. Change how you talk."

I'm supposed to never say I'm busy because it's dishonest. But I still can't help but feel that I'm using it differently than Trunk feels it is used-- we have different definitions. So, I turned to a dictionary.

Merriam-Webster online says that busy is "engaged in action" or "full of activity" (that's me!) but also "foolishly or intrusively active" and "full of distracting detail" (that's Trunk). So even the dictionary-- the final word on words-- can't settle this dispute!

When I say I am busy, I am not saying I'm stressed, disorganized, frantic, out of control, overwhelmed. When I am busy, I am engaged, my 24-hours each day are full, and I'm truly happy. Busy, for me, seldom has a negative connotation. At times it means I haven't found or made the time to do something that I want to or should, but most of the time if someone says, "How are you doing," and I say "busy," it's synonymous with "good!" Is that so hard to understand? Can I keep my own "busy"? Or will that be too confusing for the frenetically busy people? And if so, what word or phrase do I use instead? Productive? Engaged? Absorbed?

Full of activity?

It's Been A While...

2009-12-29T22:55:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted, and I sincerely apologize. The end of the school year was crazy, what with writing grade reports/comments, conferencing with students, finishing up classes, etc. Once the vacation started I got to wind down a little (I've been relaxing a fair amount, reading, sleeping, recovering, visiting friends!), but I also know that I need to plan the courses for the next semester, mail off materials for colleges, write my essays... Gosh, so much to do! The next few days will probably be full of buckling down and getting back to business. Of course that means I will also need to procrastinate, which means I will write PLENTY of blog entries, because believe me, there is a LOT to say (hopefully that won't scare too many of you away)...

I Will Always Be Thankful For...

2009-11-25T18:58:00.012-05:00

1. Good Health Like most people, there are times I've been healthier than others. But only once have I been dangerously ill, and while it taught me a lot, I am glad to be through that phase of my life. I'm grateful that I am able to run, jump, play, speak, sing, see, hear, think-- all those little things that most of us can do but take for granted.

2. A Loving Family and Friends who I know will always be there to support me, no matter where they are and no matter what our futures bring (because I've seen it from them all already, time and time again). I only hope I can return the favor.

3. Self-Awareness and the confidence to take risks in order to better my life.

4. A New Job I Love! It's pure dumb luck that I am where I am today, and I am so thankful that the risks I've taken have led me down this path...

5. All The Good and Bad Experiences I've Had So Far, because they have no doubt made me who I am today. It's hard to see the good in everything while you're living it, but I have no doubt that even the unhappy times in my life have been full of life experience and learning, and I'm sure (at least I hope) they have made me better in the long run. Regardless of what ups and downs I have yet to face, I have no doubt each and every minute will continue to be full of new knowledge and lessons to take away.

6. A Ton Of Little Things that are too numerous to list here, but they include all sorts of small moments and tiny gestures that make my days brighter :o)

The Magic of Sports Advertising

2009-11-25T18:37:00.009-05:00

Tell me what this skateboarding video, Wizard Smoke, reminds you of...

Perhaps the Nike commercial, simply known as "Chalk," featuring LeBron James?

The parallels go beyond just the dust-in-the-air theme, though. Both have an artistic vision, creative and intriguing cinematography. True, in Wizard Smoke it is a slightly more developed vision, but I'll chalk that up to the fact that the film is ten times longer.

Both have memorable music, although in this category I'd say the LeBron piece takes it. I remember the first time I saw the commercial being drawn to it because it was in black and white, there was slow motion filming (which, especially with sports and water, always hypnotizes me), and the story the commercial seemed to be telling was an interesting one, drawing unthought-of parallels. My friend David, on the other hand, would nearly jump out of his seat every time the opening chime sounded. "I need to know what song this is!" he would say to me, full of frustration, grabbing my shoulder as though I would somehow have the answer (eventually I did-- "Candyman" by Cornershop). To him, it was the music that made the ad.

Any good film, or for that matter commercial, tells a story of sorts. In Wizard Smoke there might not be much of a "plot," per se, but the film progresses from skate park to city streets to mother nature, and there is plenty of emotion-- these guys clearly have a sense of humor, and the fun-loving, free-spirited vibe the film gives off is infectious. The LeBron commercial weaves together the victories of basketball with the victories of life, whether they be giving a successful class presentation or simply giving a successful haircut.

Why do we like sports commercials so much? What are these advertisers doing to make us enjoy something that would otherwise be seen as an annoyance? Don't we all hate being asked to buy something we don't really need? Apparently not, otherwise Nike ads would be no more popular than telemarketers, which tells us that it's not what the ads do (sell stuff) so much as how they do it (with a story, good music, and cool visuals).

For example, in the case of one Nike commercial, "Fate", Troy Polamalu's and LaDanian Tomlinson's lives unfold in mere seconds. There is a clear story line there, and it's told with elements of drama, passion, and energy that you feel just by watching. Even doing nothing but staring at these mini-films (commercials) I can feel my heart start to beat a little bit faster. Maybe it's the panting in the ad, maybe it's the violins in the background, or maybe it's the mix of high speed and slow motion keeping me on my toes, but this commercial by Nike, called "Leave Nothing," is thought to be one of the best football-themed commercials recently, so it seems I'm not the only one drawn to these hyper-intense 30-second compilations.

Like sports films, sports advertisements generally have some excellent music. The LeBron James documentary, More Than A Game, made "Forever" by Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Eminem a top-20 download on iTunes recently. But in commercials, music sometimes provides more than just a soundtrack. This Gatorade commercial titled "Lock It Up" seems to be based on the music instead of the other way around (and if I heard this beat even with my eyes closed, all I'd be able to think of is KG pounding his chest with a clenched fist). In terms of a genre that is memorable for the music, I'd say the only rival to sports commercials are those for the iPod/iPhone (understandable).

Finally these commercials are artistic. It isn't just showing you or telling you something in a straightforward, just-the-facts-ma'am fashion. It's showing you a short film, an artistic vision realized that happens to incorporate a certain product. The famous commercial "Journey", for the Canon Rebel XSi brings still photography to life in an intriguing and unforgettable way (once you start watching, it's difficult to turn away). The advertising is subtle, and the focus seems to be more on the cinematography than the selling. A clever trick, no?

Why Teach?

2009-11-20T17:55:00.003-05:00

One of the things I’ve been pondering lately is why people get into teaching. Why am I drawn to it if I know this career path is one of few that will make my life more challenging rather than less? And how can there possibly be more than one of us insane enough to work sixty hours a week earning less than half of what a lawyer might be making and a quarter of a surgeon's salary?

Teaching is certainly not for people who are hoping for a fortune—if I had to guess I’d say it’s a few notches above “starving artist” in terms of financial compensation. Nor is it, I would argue, for those who are looking to “get by” or simply need money—I’m finding that for how much I get paid, the hours are ridiculous (I do know that I'm not a certified teacher, and I have virtually no prior experience, so I'm lucky to be getting anything at all). The amount of time and effort teachers put in is, for many, comparable to doctors and lawyers. I work five days a week, eleven hours a day just trying to stay even a half-step ahead of my students, and that doesn’t include times after school or on weekends when I’m actually planning my lessons or grading papers, tests, etc. And yet compared to doctors and lawyers, we’re making pennies.

In most cases I would say educators aren’t standing at the head of the classroom with a gun to their head, either—that is to say, no one’s forcing them to enlighten young minds.

So why teach?

Many of the reasons are selfish: the emotional reward is greater than anything else I’ve encountered in my life (not that I’ve had vast job-market or even life experience at the ripe old age of 21, but I still think that it's saying something, even if it is a very small something). There is nothing else I would rather be doing. Every day I go into school, hang out with kids for eleven hours, and within minutes, days, months I see their growth. I’m not solely responsible for these great strides of theirs—in fact, I’m hesitant to attribute much of their progress to my own contributions, although I do hope that in five or ten years they might still remember me and maybe I will have impacted one or two. But I do get to witness this transformation of theirs every day. It’s miraculous—and I mean that in a literal sense of the word: it is miracle-like. And to top it off, I am truly happy.

By the same token, though, these reasons could be flipped and seen as utterly selfless. Why do I do this? Because it’s what I love (selfish). But what do I love? Seeing others happy, and watching them become not only happier people but more intelligent, thoughtful, kind people as well. I like to see the trajectory of their life change for the better. I’ve spent anywhere from minutes to hours talking with students, and when it’s over I’ve seen the smile come back to a girl’s face when half an hour before they were cursing at me and punching walls (I asked them to go to their after-school math tutor), or ten minutes ago they were crying and giving up because they would never be able to read that entire paragraph fast enough—it was just too hard! By the next day, they are a completely different child, calm and rational; or within a month are reading a grade level higher. It seems like magic, and in even the smallest way, every teacher had a hand in the transformation of each girl. What more could you ask for?

A bigger paycheck, some of my colleagues might say. True, I’m in the lucky position of not having to worry about rent, car insurance, my cell phone bill—I am, for all intents and purposes, a child. I live at home, and although right now I’m teaching classes instead of taking them unlike most kids my age, I’m still just a kid. I won’t starve to death if I don’t have a job. Being unemployed doesn’t mean giving up health insurance. This is not the real world, and my outlook on this “job” issue is still a young, incomplete one.

But even when I try to look at teaching through a “real world” lens, I still can’t see why you would do so much work for so little money if you didn’t absolutely love it. After all, I’m making about half minimum wage. A full-time job at Starbucks pays better.

So what shocks me is when I see people teaching—especially at schools like Esperanza—who gripe about the hours, sigh over organization (lack of it), and complain about the low pay. As I’ve said before, why would anybody teach if they didn’t expect long workdays with short wages? And why would you choose a place like Esperanza—a start-up school catering to poverty-level, immigrant girls who will do just about anything except make your job easier?

When you look at these Esperanza girls you see two things, two potentials. Project five years and there are two futures standing side by side. In the first, the girl’s life includes an infant (or more), perhaps drugs but definitely alcohol, and, if they’re lucky, a boyfriend at least lingering in the background. Scene two, the girl is smiling brightly, looking forward to the next four years of college. The only thing she’s cradling in her arms this time is a high school diploma. Thanks to Esperanza and schools like it, and thanks to teachers who value young futures more than their own finances, the probability for hundreds of boys and girls across America shifts from the first to the second vision.

It may not be everybody’s reason, but I can tell you with absolute certainty: That’s why I teach.

GO BIG RED!

2009-11-14T17:22:00.007-05:00

Today is Exeter/andover Day (or, if you go to Andover: Andover/exeter Day) taking place this term at Phillips Exeter Academy. Every semester, all the varsity teams from both schools meet at one of the campuses (campi?) and play each other, but the biggest game during the fall meeting is always undoubtedly football (in winter basketball and ice hockey share the glory, while in the spring it's pretty unanimously lacrosse). This year, it was an especially big game for Exeter since our team, prior to this game, was undefeated! Luckily, we pulled through for the last, and biggest, game of the year and managed to win it (by a few touchdowns, although I can't find the exact score online), closing the season with an 8-0-0 record! GO BIG RED!

A poster advertising an old E/a game. The game, schools, and students look a little different, but the rivalry and spirit remains the same...!

One of the things I loved about Exeter, and about USC, was the rivalry element-- having a team to root for, a crowd to cheer with. Although they were very different atmospheres, the spirit remained there for both schools, and despite the fact that Exeter and Andover sometimes act as though they hate each other, there's a shared bond that comes from spending your high school years at a New England boarding school, and I find, having left, that bumping into someone from a rival prep school (even, or especially, Andover) sometimes means discovering a common bond instead of causing a feeling of rivalry and division.

Improv Class

2009-11-14T16:44:00.003-05:00

My favorite classes tend to be the ones I improvise. I’m not sure why this is, although I believe it might have something to do with the fact that these classes are generally ones in which the students are physically active, but also active in planning what we do. They have an influence in how the class runs, and since these lessons are more spontaneous and lively, they are also able to be more boisterous without getting in trouble. Because I have not planned too far in advance, I haven’t had time to set specific goals and deadlines—I hope that the girls will learn something about expressing themselves in writing or understand the vocab a bit better, but I don’t have a set destination in mind, like making it through the chapter or getting an entire page of prose handed to me by each girl at the end of the fifty minutes.

I spoke earlier in my blog about “tricking” the girls into learning, but I’m coming to realize that it might not be much of a trick. The girls are aware of their learning, but they want to do it for their own sake. It’s fun, and they can learn at their pace. Because I haven’t had time to create hard deadlines, they can participate and pick up knowledge at their own speed without pressure from me, and this stress-free environment makes it easier for them to focus on what’s happening inside their own minds, instead of what should be happening, or what I expect from them. Students are great at telling you what they think you, as a teacher, want to hear. But when even you aren’t sure what you want, they learn fearlessly because you both know there isn’t really a way to fail.

Yesterday, as usual, I had a class of sixth graders for creative writing. Although I know they have the potential to be great writers, they just lack the foundation—whose fault it is, I don’t know, but these girls did not get what they needed previously in their education. Thus, when I try to teach them about using vivid adjectives or some such thing I find that half the class doesn’t even know what an adjective is. After talking to a few other teachers about this, one of them suggested that I start teaching them vocabulary then incorporate it into their writing. It sounded easy, do-able, and like a good place to start with a lot of these girls.

On Tuesday, we began the vocabulary from a book given to me by one of the teachers. Usually the girls walk into class and demand, “What are we doing today, Miss?” I usually tell them something like, “Hmmm… Well, it’s Creative Writing class… How about some creative writing?"

“No, Miiiiiss!” Their voices change key once or twice making the prolonged “Miss!” sound both musical and whiney.

Tuesday they walked in and I told them we’d be doing something new—vocabulary! Hooray! The moans were even louder. “Miiiiiss, why can’t we just write?!” It was like pulling teeth trying to get through the lesson with them, and all the while they looked bored out of their minds.

I knew this wasn’t a viable solution. Even if I stuck with teaching vocabulary, it wasn’t going to be with worksheets and quizzes out of a book. I could come up with a more fun way to teach it. But before I could design that curriculum, I needed to finish off the one I had started, and quickly (though probably painfully). So, by wrapping it up on Friday, yesterday, I would then be able to move forward finding a slightly different and more engaging solution. While things didn’t go quite as planned on Friday, I think that is for the best, and I now plan to continue to both teach them creative writing and set up a foundation on which they can build the skills they learn in my class and beyond. It will take an interesting mix of careful planning and room for improvising…

Friday the girls didn’t come into class asking what we were doing, because they bounced in with little intention of doing anything at all, regardless of what I told them.

I’m in either the lucky or unlucky (depending on how you look at it) position of teaching these girls right after lunch on Friday. They are full of energy, both because they just had a social time eating with friends, and because mine is the second to last class separating them from the weekend.

This Friday was different, though. Yesterday at school the Student Council hosted a bake sale fundraiser. Each girl was allowed to buy two items, but even two mini cupcakes or a couple of cookies is enough to send most of these girls, especially this particular group of sixth graders, on a rampage of energy. And I was lucky enough to get them before the added sugar high turned into a post-sugar low.

MA came in and immediately began pacing quickly around a row of desks, walking up and down the length of the classroom with a definite bounce in her step and declaring, “Miss, I’m hyper right now!”

“I can see that!” I told her, raising my eyebrows and grinning a bit. KR crawled up onto her desk and sat on top of it swinging her feet like a little kid. Two others came in singing, at the top of their lungs, “Run This Town” by Jay-Z.

“WE GON’ RUN THIS TOWN TONIGHT! HEY YAY-AY YAY-AY-AY, HEYYY-AY AY-YAY! HEYYY-AY YAY YAY YAY-AY. WE GON’ RUN THIS TO-OWN! Miss do you know that song?” I assured them that I did, and as beautiful as their voices are, I preferred to hear Jay-Z and Rihanna sing it, and maybe could they take a seat quietly instead. They obliged by sitting, but were still far from silent, transitioning into Jay’s next big hit, “Empire State Of Mind”.

I knew my entire lesson plan for today, such as it was, was shot. There is no way these girls would tolerate a dull old vocab class—they would barely tolerate sitting still. What was I going to do? These girls were acting insane!

“Miss,” MA piped up again, still pacing rapidly in circles around desks. “I’m hyper. I’ve got tons of energy! I’m just crazy right now.” Hyper. Energetic. Crazy. Did she know she had just used three different adjectives to describe her ridiculous actions? I doubted it. And she certainly had no idea that she had just given me my lesson plan for the day…

“Alright, guys, take a seat!” I shouted over the din. Eventually they were all seated. “We’re going to do something that, I hope, is a little bit fun today—” and they all began shouting. I quieted them down and continued, “—but I need to explain it to you first, and we need to stay relatively quiet, ok?”

“OK!” they shouted. Far from quiet. I went on to explain the new, MA-inspired lesson.

“You guys kind of want to be moving around a little right now, right?” I asked. They shouted in agreement. “So here’s what I thought we’d do: Each one of you will invent a character in your mind.” Hands shot up.

SM didn’t raise her hand but shouted out, “It can be anybody?”

“Yes, definitely!” I told her, “You could be,” I hunched over, leaning on an invisible cane, and turned my voice into a squeaky, high-pitched waver, “a little old lady…” They laughed. “Or,” I stood at attention, saluted, and barked in a deep boom, “A MILITARY SOLDIER, SIR!” More girls throwing their heads back, banging on their desks, cracking up. I finished by squeezing each side of my collar between my thumbs and index fingers and jerking my hands forward, popping my collar as I punched my chin arrogantly in the air. “Or a gangstah.” Their eyes widened.

“Miss, do that again!” MA and KR demanded. I obliged them the “gangstah” move once more, and then said, “See, so you can invent anyone you want to be—anyone in the whole wide world. Then, each person is going to get a chance to act her character out for us.” I paused, letting this next step of the process sink in. This class is notorious for not being able to follow directions, especially when given them in multiple steps at a time.

“Is that it?” SM asked, jumping the gun.

“Not quite,” I said, and explained, “each person in the class is going to have to come up with an adjective describing the character.” After ensuring that each and every student still understood the concept of an adjective, I continued, “But no one can say the same adjective that someone else did. Got it?” They nodded, and started jumping up and down raising their hands to go first. I told them we’d start up front on the right with MA and wind our way along the rows of desks until we got to SR in the back left. “Before we start a have just a couple of rules. When you go to see a play or a movie, are you loud and yelling and screaming?” I asked. They collectively shouted a giant “NO!”

“Right! How do you act in a movie theatre?” They told me they were quiet so everyone could hear, and they stayed in their seats so everybody could see. Exactly. “So, just a few rules, like being at the movies. One: You should raise your hand, please! And don’t get out of your seat until I call on you to be the star, ok? And two: We need to be a little quiet. I mean, not absolutely silent, but quiet enough so that we don’t disturb the hard-working people across the country in California who can hear us from all the way over here, ok?” A chorus of “okay!”s rang out.

MA jumped out of her seat and once the “audience” was silent, began acting out a body builder, doing pushups and posing like a weight-lifting champion. She grunted with every movement, and the rest of the class began cracking up.

When she finished, she took a seat and I asked for adjectives. “Strong,” “manly,” and “big,” came up, but so did “sweaty.”

MA turned to SR, who had said it. “I’m not sweaty!” she blurted defensively, taking it as an insult.

“But your character was, probably,” SR explained. I was impressed. The girls had produced adjectives by really imagining this new character in their minds, making the jump into MA’s fantasy world of fitness fanatics and describing what they, in their minds’ eyes, saw.

A few girls later, KR took to the stage. She said she needed a helper and called on AV to play the role of hair stylist. KR pulled an extra chair up to the front (on “stage”) and sat in it while AV began fiddling with her long, straight hair. KR is one of the smallest girls in the class, but has huge personality with a touch of sass. At the same time, she can be a total sweetheart.

While AV was manipulating her ’do, KR examined her nails and mimed talking on a cell phone, holding her fist, thumb and pinkie finger sticking out, up to her ear.

“Apparently KR’s character can’t talk,” I told the rest of the class, with a touch of sarcasm.

“Oh!” KR giggled once, then fell right back into character. “Hi, Maria? So, I was just, like, wondering if, like, maybe you wanted to, like, come over, and, like, we could do our nails… AGAIN!” After “hanging up” KR got off stage and took a seat while the rest of the class began describing the ditzy, dumb, only-cares-about-her-looks (I had to teach the adjectives “vain” and “superficial”) character. A few girls gave their adjectives, and then I saw a hand at the back of the room raised high.

Mr. Nichols, one of the math teachers, is often present for this class. Because Esperanza is a small school, physically and in many other ways, we have a limited amount of space and I am sometimes forced to teach classes in other teachers’ rooms. This is one of the classes I teach in his classroom, and one of the ones I tend to feel most guilty about.

Reading through Frank McCourt’s book, Teacher Man, I remember sympathizing with his realization that, should any teacher, visitor, or administrator peek into his classroom, it would appear that McCourt had absolutely no control over what was going on. That is how I feel about this class. The girls are jumping up and down raising their hands, roaring with laughter, while another girl does push-ups at the front of the room. And where am I? Standing off to the side watching it all with a smile on my face. Not telling them to sit down, or be quiet, or get back in their chair and stop acting like children. On the contrary, I have actually encouraged this behavior. The horror!

Mr. Nichols sometimes leaves to make photocopies or, as I self-consciously believe, perhaps just to escape the insanity taking over his room. I imagine him closing the door behind him and emerging into the quiet hallway, shaking his head at this inexperienced teacher who has no idea what she’s doing, and resenting her hijacking his quiet free period only to fill it with noise and hyperactivity. But I also know that he has an understated but wonderful sense of humor, and is a good teacher who would probably have spoken to me about it by now if he saw a touch too much madness in my methods. When he raised his hand, I wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but I felt a great sense of relief—in a small, subtle way he was, perhaps, reinforcing my lesson “plan.”

“Mr. Nichols!” I said, calling on him. All the girls turned around. I’m not sure if they had even been aware he was in the room.

“Valley girl,” he declared, and I chuckled, wondering if the girls even knew that phrase (although I certainly had known it since I was a kid—my parents always used it to describe anyone resembling the main characters of Clueless).

“Do you know what that means?” Mr. Nichols asked the class, seeming to read my mind. They didn’t. “It’s someone from California who talks the way KR was and sounds a bit like they aren’t the sharpest tool in the drawer.” The girls began giggling, and continued describing KR’s valley girl character.

We got through the class and were left with only one girl remaining who hadn’t acted anything out yet. We had skipped over DP, who otherwise would have gone fourth, because she had asked at the very beginning of class if she had to go. I told her we could skip her and come back to her, and if she really didn’t want to then no, but I’d love for everyone to give it a try. Now, with five minutes left, I turned to DP and saw her sitting with her hand up.

“Yeah, DP?” I asked.

“I want to go now,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s my turn because you skipped me earlier, remember?”

“Of course!” I said, grinning ear to ear and waving her up “on stage”. She got up there, bringing a few other co-stars with her, and became the drummer in a rock band, the closing act, the grand finale.

With only a couple minutes now left, I asked the class if they had learned anything. Everyone, except one girl, hollered “YES!” and I assumed the dissenting “NO!” was either a joke or someone who didn’t realize they had been learning. Perhaps they actually hadn’t learned anything, but I tried not to take it personally, because I hoped they did not mean it that way and simply were ready for class to be over so the weekend could start—after one more class, that is.

“What did you learn?” I asked, and looked around, happily shocked, at the seven or eight hands that had gone up.

“I learned that you describe different people with different words,” GA said.

“Right, so each person isn’t the same as others, and you need to use different adjectives to describe different people. Exactly! What else, LD?”

LD is one of those girls who always raises her had. Whether she has the answer right or not, she always has an answer, and that’s good enough for her. She is full of confidence, and although seems to have either special learning needs or ADD/ADHD, she is a bright girl.

“That there are lots of better words for one boring word!” she said.

“Awesome! So, you might think you have a good word, right, to describe something and then if you take a minute and thing about it, you realize there’s an excellent word you could use instead.” The class nodded, still raising hands. “DP, what else?” I was eager to see what our hesitant participant felt she had learned, because the transition from not wanting to even give a descriptive adjective to, at the end of class, wanting to be a famous musician in front of everybody seemed significant.

“It’s easier to not be shy in writing,” she said.

I’m not sure if she meant in writing class or when you’re writing things down on paper, but I decided to take it as the latter, at least for the benefit of the rest of the class. “Cool,” I said. “So, guys, you know how hard it is sometimes to say things out loud in front of everybody? But if you write them down, it sometimes feels like you can say whatever you want and not be embarrassed about it. That’s what’s neat about writing, you can do anything—even be someone you’re not and no one will laugh at you because you’re not being crazy old Miss Abi, you’re being Miss Abi the author, the writer. And it’s fiction. Right?” More agreeing. “Alright, guys, awesome job today. Grab your stuff, leave Mr. Nichols’ room cleaner than you found it, and head to your next class! Peace out!”

“Miss, are you being a gangster again?” KR asked.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“You said ‘Peace out.’ Are you being a gangster again?”

“Oh, no, that’s just what I say sometimes.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s funny, Miss!”

“It is?” I asked. When I thought about it, I realized it was something these girls said to each other, but in their mind it was something no teacher would or should ever say.

“Yeahhh…” said KR. “But don’t worry, even though you weren’t acting or being a writer, I won’t laugh at you. So you don’t have to be shy about it,” she reassured me, patting me on the arm and nodding sympathetically.

“Ok, KR,” I said, on the verge of giggling at her, “Thanks for not laughing at me.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Abi.”

And We're Up To Speed...!

2009-11-12T23:42:00.002-05:00

How exciting!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we are finally up to date. All the archived entries from the former Grab Life (tumblr) that I feel are still important to this new-and-improved blog have been moved over here, and I'm ready to begin writing again in real time! That means no more dates in parentheses in the title (the time stamp on the post is correct), I can start talking about my life moving forward instead of looking backwards, and most fun and importantly, YOU can comment on it!

I'm excited about the potential this blog has to be much more interactive. I've loved reading your feedback via e-mail and Facebook, and certainly those modes of communication are wonderful always, but I think it will be neat to have your feedback remain next to the post you reacted to for, well, however long this blog is in existence! There are many updates to post this week, and I will probably update a fair amount this weekend. But for now, it's time for this tired teacher to get some rest! TGI(almost)F!

Heeeah's Ya Tuna! (November 8, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:39:00.002-05:00

It’s nearly impossible to make vocabulary fun.

When I’m in a jam, I sometimes try to think back to how my teachers at The Pike School taught various lessons—after all, I enjoyed classes and excelled in it at that age; they must have been doing something right… But I remember being slightly bored whenever we were starting a new vocab chapter. I would sit, reading ahead as the rest of the class reviewed pronunciation and meaning, and start on the homework exercises for the words we were learning while I waited for the bell to ring.

Vocabulary is one of those things that I feel most educators probably dread having to teach. I know I do. It’s something that simply needs to be done. The kids just need to learn it. And things that simply need doing are rarely enjoyable.

Thus, I’ve made it a small mission of mine to make vocab fun. It’s a challenge I’ve set up for myself in every class—to make every lesson a fun lesson; to make every subject an interesting subject; to make every class and exciting class. I sometimes fail. I also occasionally feel guilty, as though I’m trying to “trick” the girls into learning. But then I remember all the learning that I get done when I’m not even thinking about it, and realize that the best lessons are often absorbed unbeknownst to the “student.”

My class enters the room. It’s an advanced group of students, the most ambitious and gifted of the seventh and eighth graders, and while half of them are the quiet, obedient, passionate-about-learning pupils that every teacher immediately cherishes (and craves), the other half are that type of student that has gotten by on their natural abilities, often not having to work very hard; girls who can afford to let their minds wander (and their mouths follow) and still pass with high marks. So today, as usual, half the kids come in and immediately sit quietly, open a free reading book (which is not in my lesson plan), and are quickly ensconced. The other half is talking loudly—extremely loudly—and I have to start shouting to quiet them down.

“Guys!” I shout. “Guys!” And I become self-conscious suddenly, remembering hearing the girls at lunch mocking other teachers, saying to each other in high-pitched, irksome voices, “Ladies, settle down! Layyy-deeez!” while their peers laugh and join in, and soon there is a seven-girl chorus of “Ladies! Ladies!” being shouted in the lunch room. I wonder if they mock me, deepening their voices to shout: “Guys! Guys! GUYS!”

Finally I get their attention, and turn stern for a moment. “You’re seventh and eighth graders. Does it make any sense that I should have to shout to be heard? We’re already five minutes into class. This shouldn’t be a challenge for a group like you.” They are quiet, and meet my eyes with a gaze that I remember giving teachers as recently as high school; one that is full of recognition but void of apology; a stare that shows no fear, actually shows no emotion of any kind, masking the guilt swimming inside my brain and the butterflies flapping in my stomach.

I look at them for a moment, and let them simmer in their own shame as I, too, flounder inwardly, knowing I’ve just made a bad-teacher move. I could have gotten them quiet without filling them with unwarranted guilt and perhaps animosity towards me. Yes, they should know to be quiet, but they’re only middle schoolers, and is talking such a sin?

I never feel worse than when I come down too hard on a student, and realize seconds later the mistake I’ve made.

My response, when I do suddenly turn unusually and undeservedly harsh, is to turn bland for a few moments—either letting them work on their activity and staying quiet, or simply leading the class as an average, run-of-the-mill teacher might, all the while hoping the mood will pass. Then, I will become my energetic, perky, enthusiastic self and pray they forget my momentary lapse a few minutes prior.

So, into bland mode I go. “We’re going to be starting ten new words—these are words that you guys are likely to see on the SSATs. How many of you have taken the SSATs already?” A few raise their hands, and the rest, who have also taken it, start telling me about the test, talking over each other already, mere moments after I just shushed them.

“Ok, ok, ok,” I say, quieting them down again. “So, I’m going to pass these out—” I say. As eyes start to roll, I start to pass around lists of ten vocabulary words, complete with parts of speech, definitions, and a sentence showing the word in context. “We’re going to go around, the first person will read the word and the definition, everything typed under the word, then the next person will use it in their own made-up sentence. Got it?” No one answers, and I know they’re as bored as I was in their position.

We start going around, and the girls begin to loosen up a little bit. I know this is due to a mix of causes, one major one being that they have given into the boredom, resigned themselves to the fact that yes, this is what we’re doing, and yes, it is extremely boring, so you might as well get used to it and make the most of it. Or at least shut up so it’s over with quickly. I recall similar conclusions of logic when I was in their seats.

The list begins at accentuate and we continue past aloof, boisterous, cavity, dilapidated, and four other words, arriving finally at our last word, euphoric. Sensing the activity is coming to a close a few of the girls start to get noisy again. One girl mutters something snide, mocking JV’s mispronunciation of “euphoric,” which she has pronounced “yyyup-whore-ick,” and JV snaps back at her with a violent threat.

“Yo, JV, quit being so belligerent!” I yell at her, putting one of our vocab words to good use, hopefully shutting down the fight and setting a vocal example.

“OHHH!” the rest of the class jeers, and JV’s eyes widen and she starts grinning at me in shock.

She quickly recovers her composure, as usual. “Yo, Miss, CR’s jus' bein' boisterous over here. She should min' her own business and be more aloof, or I’ll punch a cavity in 'er face!” Everyone starts laughing and threatening each other with vocab words.

Inspiration strikes quickly. “Ok, ok, guys. So here’s what I’m thinking…”

“Miss can we play charades?” CR asks. We played charades with different idioms a few weeks ago, and since then a few girls haven’t stopped demanding we play it again.

“No, guys, we don’t have enough words yet!" I chuckle. "The game would be over in five minutes. Maybe once we learn more, though.” They shrug and don’t push the issue further. I found if I give a valid reason for why we are or are not doing something, I rarely face objections. Rules are acceptable. Arbitrary and trivial rules are “stupid.”

“I want you guys to break up into three groups—NOT YET—” they have already started splitting up and chatting noisily, but sit back down quietly—“and then I want you to create a skit that uses as many of these vocab words in context as you possibly can.” I stop and hear a few whispers, but for the most part it’s silent. I look around, waiting for them to begin. “Go!” I say, releasing the girls, and within seconds the din in the small room is overwhelming. I don’t bother to quiet it down, though, and when one group of generally well-behaved students asks to work in the hall where there’s more room, I allow it as long as they promise not to make too much noise. They give me their word and are dismissed.

The rest of the class period passes quickly, and with ten minutes left I ask if any groups are ready to perform. Only the group in the hall is, so we all crowd outside the door to watch their performance. I notice some seventh- and eighth-graders from a science class next door are watching from their classroom doorway while the rest of the class cleans up the lab they’ve just finished.

“I’m the magical tree,” RM informs us in her shy voice, perhaps explaining whey she is standing off to the side away from the main action.

“Awesome!” I say. “I like this skit already!”

Two of the girls begin catwalking down the hallway, arm in arm.

“Oh my,” says one, pointing at the tiled floor as they stop and stare beyond their feet. “Look at this huge cavity in the middle of the road!”

“Yes,” agrees the other, “that’s quite a pothole!” They peer down at the imaginary hole. Their voices are affected and proper. I smile.

Suddenly, from inside the computer room, a third girl emerges into the hallway, walking with the most overdone and ridiculous swagger I’ve ever seen. Immediately I see in my mind’s eye an image of how the Notorious B.I.G. would walk if he were a zombie, more limping than strutting. This zombie-gangster creeps up behind the cavity-inspecting-but-entirely-unsuspecting girls, who suddenly turn and see him.

“Eek!” shouts one in mock surprise. “What a daunting thug! Run!” It is probably the first and last time I will ever hear a thug described as daunting, but according to the definition I provided (“scary; intimidating”), yes, the thug is quite daunting.

The rest of the skit continues, somehow the magical tree is incorporated, and it all ends with our applause and a consensus that nine of the ten vocabulary words were utilized correctly, if unusually. Next week, the other two groups will perform.

Fast forward a week. I have ten more vocab words that I will introduce (this time it’s words that begin with the letters F through J), but only after the girls in the other two groups have performed their skits from the prior week. One group performs theirs, and the class agrees that seven words were used. The last group—and only group of three—takes the stage.

Two girls, SR and JV (the belligerent one from the week prior), stand off to one side and JR approaches as the skit begins. She holds her hands in front of her stomach, clutching a mimed cafeteria tray between them.

“Ya gatta cavity in ya tray!” JV shouts at JR in a raspy, New York accent that makes her sound like a fifty-year-old Jewish Manhattanite who’s smoked her whole life. Jerry Stiller’s female counterpart.

“I know, I want it filled with food,” JR says in a soft, schoolgirl voice.

“Heeeah’s ya tuna!” JV scoops imaginary tuna out of an imaginary serving dish with an imaginary spoon and slaps it onto the imaginary cavity in JR’s imaginary tray. JR says a dainty thank you and turns to walk away.

“Hey! Girl!” shouts JV, “ya need ta loosen up ya shirt! It’s assentuatin’ (accentuating) ya cha-chas!” The rest of the class explodes laughing. There’s a pause in the skit and then JV returns, skipping, to the two cafeteria ladies.

“Can I have more tuna!” it’s more of an excited exclamation than a question. She’s grinning broadly. JV looks at her with pure disdain.

“Don’ be so euphoric—it’s jus’ tuna!” she says.

Finally, the other lunch lady steps in. SR says in a kind voice, “Aw honey don’ listen tew ‘er, ‘cwourse ya can have mwore tuna.” Another New York accent, this time the w-heavy “cwoffee” genre.

JV turns on SR. “Don’ be cajoled by this lil’ brat!” she says.

SR retorts, “I’m simply espousin’ her desiyah (desire) fah mwore tuna. Why you always gwotta be so belligeren’, huh?”

JR pipes up, “you two are so boisterous. It’s very daunting!”

“Sworry, honey,” says SR.

“Heeeeah’s ya tuna!”

There are a few more lines incorporating more vocabulary, and the skit closes. I’ve been trying not to burst out laughing during each and every sketch, and this one has seriously tested my poker face.

I smile at all the girls. “Awesome job, guys, these were really good!”

CR, who always has a suggestion for how class should be run (only about one-fifth of them useful or productive), speaks out without raising her hand. (Coming from Exeter, this doesn’t bother me and I rarely scold the girls for forgetting to raise their hands, and only enforce the rule when they begin talking over each other).

“Yo, Miss," CR says, "I think we should do this again, because, like, it really helped me remember the words and learn them, y’know?” The rest of the class is nodding and agreeing.

“Ok,” I smile, and nod my head. “If it helps, then definitely.”

As I calmly pass out the next set of vocabulary words, I am jumping for joy on the inside, ecstatic that I’ve discovered a fun way to teach vocab.

Stop bein’ so euphoric! I think, and grin a little bigger. It’s jus’ tuna!

To Protect The Innocent... (November 8, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:35:00.003-05:00

When I was the age of the girls I teach, I had just begun reading Gossip Girl as my guilty pleasure book (no, I am not a fan of the show at all). I remember reading in the books that on "gossip girl"'s website, she abbreviated names as the first letter of their first names (characters with names like Blaire, Nate, and Serena were known on "gossip girl"'s blog only as B, N, and S.

Today, my girls read a chain of books much like the Gossip Girl series called the Cliqueseries, and I keep a blog, which sometimes, and probably more and more frequently, will begin to feature them in leading roles.

So, as "gossip girl" writes at the beginning of her blog: "Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me." Events and places probably won't receive this special treatment by me, however, the names will. In the future of this blog, names of my girls will be abbreviated as their initials. Hopefully this will maintain relative anonymity but also make the blog easier to read and write, not having to keep track of which "her" or "she" I mean this time...

Don't Dring! (November 5, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:30:00.001-05:00

I haven't mentioned to the girls that it's my birthday for a few weeks now. Every once in a while birthday discussions come up and the girls ask me when mine is, but I don't believe I've answered that questions for days and days.

This morning I was sitting at school, greeting the girls as they came in the door, and one of the seventh graders came up the stairs and stood at the top with her mouth agape and smiling. I looked at her for a minute, smiling myself, and after a few moments without me noticing, she held out her hand, gripping a gift bag with a birthday cake on the front.

Inside the bag was a nice gift, part home-made and part store-bought, but my favorite part was the gift card, which absolutely made my entire year!

On the inside of the card is typed, "You're not just a great friend-- you're a prescription for happy!" The fact that there are girls who think of me as a friend and not just a teacher filled me with happiness, and the added fact that I brighten their day (instead of make it worse-- which is how I think lots of people think of teachers) makes me so happy! I started tearing up right there in homeroom while I was reading the card, but managed to keep it relatively together...

Inside she had written her own messages:

"Not only are you my prescription you're an awesome person to talk to <3>

"We'll miss you next year!" "Come back to us!" "Almost done w/ us Esperanza girls (J.K)" "You're moving on" "College yikes" They recently found out that I was applying to go back to college-- I've been reading viewbooks during my free periods at school-- and have latched onto the fact that I won't be there next year... I'm not sure they realize that I'll probably cry harder than they will on graduation day!

Anyways, I think my favorite note she wrote was: "THE 1st YEAR TO DRING [sic] (don't do it) PLZ" Talk about lolz ;o)

V For Vendetta (November 5, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:28:00.002-05:00

I absolutely LOVE this movie. Definitely one of my all-time favorites...

Video Game Girls (October 29, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:27:00.001-05:00

So alarming...

tryingtofollow:

Career choices for girls according to videogames
(via)

Fight On, Trojans! (October 24, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:26:00.002-05:00

It's gameday! Fight On Trojans!

Skate Photography (October 24, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:22:00.002-05:00

Skate photography is so cool. I've never really skateboarded (although now I longboard), but when my brother and I were growing up I remember that even as young as eleven- or twelve-years-old, we would pick out skateboarding and snowboarding magazines. I seldom read the articles when I was that young (unless it was a snowboarding magazine, which I did because I am a snowboarder), but we would simply look through the photos again and again and again. Then we'd trade magazines and spend another half-hour just looking at pictures.

I think if I picked up a snow/skate magazine today I would still be intrigued by the photographs. When I saw this post on the MashKulture blog (about skate photographer Jaka Babnik), I was so excited! Not only is this some awesome skate photography, they are actually really interesting artistic compositions. I feel as though this is a more mature form of skate photography-- perfect for someone like me, who used to spend countless hours looking at skateboard magazines and now could spend hours perusing LACMA/BCAM or the Guggenheim...

Also, shout out to David, Tom, and Chingy, who take their own awesome brand of skate photos. Enjoy!

Kid CuDi (October 22, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:21:00.002-05:00

At the moment, my favorite rapper. Kid Cudi is incredible.

Today We Had Parent/Teacher Conferences (October 22, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

... which made me feel so official! Although, I don't think I've been so nervous in a while. It's one thing to teach kids-- you know they're judging you and you expect them to, because it's only fair, seeing as it's also your job to evaluate them. You also know that kids give second chances; make a mistake one day, and they'll hate you for a few hours. When they wake up the next morning, you're their all-time favorite again.

With the parents, I was scared because I felt I would only get one shot. Not only that, but they're all older than me (even if it's, sadly, only by a few years), and I am not just representing myself and, in part, their daughter and her performance, but also the school (what is Esperanza doing hiring this college student who's barely halfway through a degree she hasn't even decided on yet?).

Luckily, Laurie (the headmaster of the school) assigned me to only six students, all 8th graders who I know and love, and who are high-achieving-- which means I won't get an earful from the parents about why their kid is getting a C-, because in general the grades are As. Also, all the students she assigned me to had English-speaking parents, which was also nice that I didn't have to use their children as translators and could speak openly and directly with both the parents and students at once (the students come with the students so that they can help explain themselves, get feedback from teachers, ask questions, and, if need be, help translate). So the interviews actually went really well! The parents were proud of their girls, and despite them asking some unexpected questions, I felt surprisingly prepared and confident giving my answers.

There is a girl I met with today who is extremely eager to apply to good high schools, and is devoted to her secondary school ambitions. After talking about her outstanding grades, her mother asked, "So do you think she is ready for the SSATs?" I'm not sure why, but this question always makes me a little bit sad, since I feel that tests say so much less (almost nothing!) about a person, especially on applications where essays and interviews are so much more indicative of the the individual!

"Well, judging by her grades it certainly looks that way." I asked the girl if she had taken standardized tests, and she has scored in the high 70th percentile on all of her practice SSATs. "I know that at Exeter they value the application and the interview almost more than the tests, and I'm sure you'll certainly shine there-- your writing is outstanding and you're poised and outgoing, which will make for a really wonderful and interesting interview." I just read some of her writing for an English assignment today. It was poignant, mature, insightful, and poetic. I was blown away. This girl is applying to Exeter and is very excited about it, as is her mother. We chatted a bit more about Exeter, and then as she and her mother got up to leave, I told her to keep up the good work and told her mother that it was great to meet her.

"It was wonderful to meet you, too," her mother said. "She speaks extremely highly of you."

Prior to the interviews, I was on the verge of panic. After a few successful meetings, I was starting to gain confidence and by the time my last one rolled around I was almost actually feeling good! After shaking hands with the last parent and hearing that even one of my students was telling her mom about me in a good light, it was all I could do to keep from bursting into song :o)

Howl (October 22, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:17:00.002-05:00

I cannot believe that they're making a movie about Allen Ginsberg-- I am so excited about it! I absolutely love the poem "Howl" (posted below), and am fascinated by the culture of the '60s, especially after taking a history course simply called "The 1960s" my senior year at Exeter. Every generation of adolescents and young adults faces similar conflicts, but the parallels in the political and social culture that can be drawn between those in the '60s and our generation now are undeniable. I'll be fascinated to see this movie.

I really should revisit some of the music and literature from that class-- I saved most of it because I was so intrigued by it. More and more, since I've graduated and started examining my own life, who I am, and where I want to be, I've begun to relate to the culture of the '60s.

infinitebutterflies:

dailycuteboy:
jesseboy:
Aaron Tveit & James Franco in the upcoming film, Howl.

PS: Who is this Aaron Tveit character? Hmmm...

Throwback Snow Game (October 18, 2009)

2009-11-12T23:15:00.002-05:00

This day was fabulous (WIN 59-0 over the Titans)!

I absolutely love Wes Welker, and the Patriots game was so much fun today (even just watching it on TV)! Plus, it snowed! It's so oddly comforting to be back in a place with weather...

GO PATS!