Not Bad Apples

Workshop has begun, and I can feel my school head settling in. I already miss my carefree summer head. Just get me into the classroom with kids, and I'll be fine.

I know it's "that time of the year" when I approach the back door and smell the crabapples that have dropped beneath the tree. Their rich scent ushers me into fall evey year.

Sunday Morning Silliness

These quizzes are everywhere on blogs. I took this and liked the result, so I'm posting it- ha! Although I don't like to admit it, the time out part is probably true. I think that means I can be a stickler for nice behavior. Hmmmmm. I've been told I'm "Teacher-y." That's probably the nicest way to say it.

A Wikipedia character study reports this about Kanga: "Piglet says she 'isn't clever'" and also that she can write her name, but "there's no other indication that she can read or write." This, for an English teacher. Yikes.

So Kanga's not the brightest bulb in the box. But she's "caring" and "kind-hearted." I'll take it.

Try the quiz yourself, and see who you are, in the 100 Acre Wood of Pooh.


Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

And then there are the rewards...

I've spent the last several days working on a freshman orientation program we will begin this school year. The best part of it was being with the kids. Doing this kind of work can be frustrating in many ways, but the kids always save me from throwing up my hands and running out the door in a fit of drama. Imagine what it's like to be greeted with hugs and sheer delight in seeing your face, after a couple of months of vacation. That's the kids. Gotta love 'em. And I gotta remember this, oh, say about next March.

Since vacation is ending, I thought I'd post this piece I wrote a couple of years ago, after helping with a move in another of the district's schools. It explains how I became a teacher, why I still am one, and how I'll change my life if I win the lottery, even though I don't play.

I Love School

Recently, we high school teachers helped those at other schools in the district get ready for construction work that will take place this summer. I worked for several hours moving boxes and furniture and wrangling garbage. It's the kind of work that erases all bitterness about having to make student loan payments at age 50.

My journey to college is a long, complicated story of missed opportunities and poor decisions, the result of which is a splendid, now 30-year-old daughter, and a lot of experience checking groceries, framing art, and performing office tasks. I spent 10 years as a medical office manager, for which I was paid a ridiculously low wage and, get this, was offered no medical insurance. Hence, by the time I got to the university at 41, I really wanted to be there. I agonized over whether to begin my studies at the local community college, where tuition and expenses would be considerably cheaper, or go for the complete university education I longed for. Here's how my decision-making process functioned in this instance:

A slip of junk fluttered from my car insurance bill, offering back-to-school scholarships of $5,000, $2,500, and $1,000 to hopefuls who could explain, in a limited number of words, why they wanted college. I wrote my essay and decided that if I got any of the three offerings, it was a "sign" that I was to follow my dream and shoot for the university. I got the $2500. So I loaded up the truck and moved to university. Bigger school, junky car.

The University of Iowa offered me a full-tuition scholarship based a 23-year-old ACT score, no money in the bank, and my promise to maintain a 3.5 gpa. I was given decent PELL grants (remember decent PELL grants?) and a part-time job in the university payroll office, thanks to a dear friend whose uncle ran the place. She liked me and also wanted the office job I would be leaving (thank you, thank you, sweet Michelle).

Despite my good fortune, being a "nontraditional" student (wtf kind of label is that?) has its financial disadvantages, even compared to kids whose families can't afford to help much. No riding the coattails of parents' health insurance, or car insurance, nothing to do but stay and spend summer earnings on high u-town rent. No free laundry or going home for long periods of freeloading in general. As a result, I'm now a 50-year-old teacher with six years of experience and a student loan to outdo many of my 25-year-old colleagues. Not pretty.

But I'm not complaining, I can't begin to express what my time at the university did for me. Not here, not in a thousand words, probably not in a War and Peace-length tome. Besides, I learned that if I die before I finish repayment, the loan is cancelled, freeing my daughter from the burden of an encumbered estate. This discovery is making grad school more and more attractive.

If I win the lottery, I'm going to pay off my student loan and spend the rest of my life weaseling my way into the great universities across the country, starting with UC Berkeley in the West, moving on to Boulder and Ann Arbor, and finishing up in the east coast institutions of the Ivy League, probably crouched under a desk. Because I'm certain I wouldn't meet their admission standards, and I'm not legacy anything, even with a gazillion lottery bucks in my bank account. When I get too old to army-crawl in and find my seat on the floor, I'll play the age card, feeding on the pity and authority complexes of liberal professors who wouldn't dare to damage their reputations by ejecting an elderly, earnest, note-taking grandma for her refusal to conform to the restrictive policies of the man. For insurance, I'll use my lottery windfall to slip each of them a bribe; maybe a lifetime of weekly meals at the best restaurant in town. But I digress...

Last May, when I was doing the exhausting work of the decent people who were my supervisors for the three measly hours I spent doing their jobs, I wondered how my life might have turned out, had I not taken the chance to further my education. Instead, I'm a grateful teacher with student loan angst and a lottery dream. Cuz I love school.

Rainy Day Haiku

In an empty space
Once filled with jagged heartache
I now keep soft stuff.


(art by Kazuya Akimoto)

Woo hoo!

A little over a week ago, I bought a lap top. Today, I installed a wireless network at home. Now, I'm imagining being able to sit...in my living room, or in bed, or at a wired coffee shop, and lots of new places to grade creative writing student assignments submitted to the online program we use at school. This is a very exciting prospect, as there have been times when the walls of my home office have closed in on me while reading and grading those virtual piles of student writing.

I'm a bit amazed by all of this, as I'm not very tech savvy. I think I'll take it as a sign that my life is meant to be easier. This completely discounts the absolute nightmare I endured obtaining the "deal" I got on this equipment. Seriously, the fiasco meter was approaching ridiculous...and now I wait for the rebates. Let's hope the memory of the experience fades fast, while I sit back and enjoy the fruits of Circuit City hell.

The other day, I laid my tiny cell phone next to my little lap top and thought about how much less space these devices occupy than just a few short years ago, when a clunky wall phone hung next to a big ol' desk top computer. What a world!

A Card-Carrying Member of the Guild

Another goodie from The Writer's Almanac:


The Worriers' Guild
by Philip F. Deaver

Today there is a meeting of the
Worriers' Guild,
and I'll be there.
The problems of Earth are
to be discussed
at length
end to end
for five days
end to end
with 1100 countries represented
all with an equal voice
some wearing turbans and smocks
and all the men will speak
and the women
with or without notes
in 38 languages
and nine different species of logic.
Outside in the autumn
the squirrels will be
chattering and scampering
directionless throughout the town
because
they aren't organized yet.


Recently the subject of squirrels came up when my older brother was present. He called them "rats with bushy tails" and I felt compelled to defend them, as I love seeing them out in the world doing their squirrel thing. I wish I had known this poem at the time of the squirrel conversation. I'd have reminded him how those little rats with bushy tails serve as an example for us members of "the guild." While we attempt to worry our way toward answers, the little creatures who "aren't organized yet" are busy doing. Don't they have it all over on us?

Saving the Planet

In a recent post, I mentioned listening to Barbara Kingsolver discuss her new book about eating locally grown food, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. There is a movement afoot that promotes eating locally grown foods partly as a measure to lower carbon emissions created by the vast amount of food that is shipped across the miles. Did you know there's a name for people who eat only locally grown food? They're called locatarians.

In the New York Times there's an article that describes a study refuting this idea. It says that taking all aspects of food production into account, eating only locally grown food may not be the most responsible approach. This is completely counterintuitive to me, but that's why research is done, to discover the "truth" of what often seems to be a perfectly logical reason/answer/solution. Here's the address if you'd like to read The Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html?th&emc=th

In my efforts to help preserve the planet, I often find myself flummoxed by the contradictions and complications of responsible consumption. An ex-boyfriend told me he saw a study that found when reducing total carbon emissions is the goal, it is more responsible to throw away rather than to recycle. He made the point that since global warming is the single most catastrophic threat to the planet, recycling is a poor choice. Though this made some sense, it shocked me to think that all of us who strip labels off cans, flatten food containers, sort, squeeze and schlep are having an overall negative effect. I still recycle; it just feels wrong not to. So much for hard data.

In the radio program Ms. Kingsolver talked about eating meat that was "harvested" locally as less disturbing to her conscience that eating bananas grown in tropical climates and shipped great distances in order for her to enjoy eating them. When my daughter was visiting, she mentioned that giving up meat would be the most practical personal choice she could make for the environment, due to the many ways meat production negatively impacts the environment and the principles of efficient land use for food production. Giving up her daily commute of around 60 miles would be fraught with complications, but eating a vegetarian diet is something she feels she could do rather easily, as she's done it in the past for extended periods. It seems a kind of epic justice occurs when the mass production and slaughter of animals for human consumption harms the environment we humans depend on for our own survival.

When I visited her awhile back, a group of us were discussing the pros and cons of our various efforts to help protect the environment, and how we often felt confused about how to be responsible stewards. Her husband made a comment that struck me. He said the kindest thing a great number of us could do for the environment is to simply drop dead. Most of the people involved in that discussion weren't yet born when the book The Population Bomb was published in 1968. I thought about how having only one child was her dad's and my mostly unconscious contribution to zero population growth.

At least I did something right.

Shaken

Yesterday's collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis brought feelings of shock and grief. I was having dinner out with friends, a belated birthday celebration for me, and as soon as we learned of the tragedy I felt an urge to get home, so I could follow the news. I found myself calling dear ones in the city to check on their wellbeing. According to news reports, many others were also doing this; cell phone connections were spotty. From 45 miles away, I felt personally shaken by the news.
I thought about how I was experiencing a small taste of the horror those in and around NYC felt on September 11. Of course we all felt it that day, but proximity definitely heightens the senses.
I thought about how seeing the ugly aftermath, and then the empty span of space for the next several years will keep these feelings closer to consciousness long after they will have passed for those who don't live around here.
I had a young friend who was so excited to have been accepted at NYU and had moved to New York for graduate school just before the 9/11 tragedy. She was a smart, capable young woman with serious ambition and an adventurous spirit. I later heard she had "come home" to Iowa within the semester. My heart went out to her as I imagined her trying to negotiate the landscape of that experience. I remember wondering whether to contact her, if perhaps she was weary of having to "explain."
The oppresive heat and humidity has lifted here today. The sun is shining and the air is Minnesota fresh. Television coverage from the wreckage has me thinking of the number of wounded and broken hearts that hover over the bright skies of the scene.