A New View Thanks to a Wrong Turn on the Interstate This Morning.

I leave for my high school teaching job before the sun rises but because I drive north, I do not see the sun rise. I see the clouds slowly being illuminated by the rising sun, but I do not see the sun itself. 

Bone tired,  I was running late this morning, and thinking excitedly how our oldest son is coming home from college for the weekend. I was so exhausted and anxious and distracted that I took a wrong turn and ended up heading west on an interstate instead of north. 

So I had to turn around, head east, then north again. This is what greeted me as I headed back to my usual route. 

needle & thREAD: Why Kurt Vonnegut Would Like Community Knitting

Okay, so I am so cheating on this meme of telling my readers what I have been sewing and reading lately. I haven't done any knitting or sewing or handcrafted anything in a few months!  But I have been doing lots and lots of reading...of writer Kurt Vonnegut. After my husband and I drove out from New Jersey, I have spent the past week in Indianapolis at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in downtown Indianapolis at a workshop called "Teaching Teachers How to Teach Vonnegut."

Perhaps the most wonderful aspect of the workshop has been connecting with professionals who teach in a wide range of settings; I teach students with special needs at a large suburban high school and this week's colleagues included: a man who teaches international students at a private school in Singapore; my friend Meredith, who teaches largely poor, first generation community college students; a veteran teacher of farmers' children on the outskirts of Indianapolis, a teacher of deaf high school students,  a man with a law degree who runs an International Baccalaureate program at a public high school in Franklin, Tennessee and a young lady who teaches at a swank private middle school in Indianapolis. The way we teachers, strangers to one another on Monday,  all rolled up our sleeves and helped one to improve our teaching was nothing short of miraculous.

This week and last I have been reading lots and lots of Vonnegut. My favorite book of his remains Slaughterhouse Five, a satirical novel about World War II that I read and absolutely did not understand in high school. Now that I am well into middle age, the novel makes perfect sense.

"There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."

On my way out of the city today, I stopped for an iced soy latte at a cozy coffee shop called Calvin Fletcher's  in the historic Holy Rosary Neighborhood at the edge of downtown Indianapolis and right be the on ramp to I-70 East.  While I waited for my latte to be prepared, I saw a basket full of knitting and a  handwritten sign. How awesome is this.

This was the perfect ending to my days in Indy, immersed in conversation with teachers and scholars about Kurt Vonnegut. I think he'd really embrace the idea of the community knitting. Vonnegut was a novelist and an essayist whose spoke out against wars and totalitarianism and the rise of materialism in American society. In a collection of essays published in 1999 called Palm Sunday (he was not a religious man), Vonnegut wrote: 

"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

Odysseus' Lack of Contrition and a Class Full of Disapproving Teens

Bartholomäus Spranger - Odysseus and Circe

Statistics tell a troubling tale: the current rate of divorce in the United States is 50 percent. Ten percent of the population is divorced. Forty percent of people who divorce have children. Forty-one percent of married people say they have had an affair. One could even say broken marriage and cheating spouses are "normal." One would think today's teenagers are unfazed by adultery.

And so I was struck the other day, as my public high school class of reluctant readers and writers  finished reading The Odyssey, that, to a student, they were outraged by the hero's infidelities to his loyal wife, Penelope.

In Which I Try to Stop Comparing and Start Embracing the Lives in Front of Me

One of my bad habits is comparing myself to other women. Lately, I have been reading a lot of blogs by women I consider similar to myself, thoughtful literate mothers who are raising their families in the Catholic Church. I learn so much from them about how they manage their time and responsibilities while nurturing their faith.

I gotta say, though, I allow myself to feel "left out," when I consider their large families and the time they spend homeschooling their children and creating home and nurturing friendships with like-minded women living similar lives. My life looks nothing like this. I start to feel inadequate, as if my life is less than theirs. This is, in the end, a kind of idolatry and a disregard for the One who called me by name into being.

Stories from Haiti: "The Dew Breaker"

My husband headed to bed before I did last night. Our sons are in New Brunswick for a few days at Rutgers Model Congress. So the house is quiet for once.  At my request,  my husband put the novel I am reading outside our bedroom door. A little light reading? he joked when I told him The Dew Breaker is the story of a torturer from Haiti who immigrated to Brooklyn.

So how have I ended up immersed in my second novel in as many weeks by Edwidge Danicat?

My Life is Beautiful, Even When I'm Bone Tired

I decided to post this picture first to remind myself that my life is beautiful. This was the front of our house yesterday. New Jersey has been hammered with snow and the boys and I had yet another snow day from school. I am tired, bone tired, between working full time, taking two graduate classes in Special Education, advocating for our own son and helping to organize resistance to our local Board of Education, which hired a technocrat to run our local public schools and who seems intent on destabilizing our tiny school district. And so it is I find myself sitting in the family van at the end of another long day, unable to find the energy to open the door and walk into our home.

My Prayers and My Politics

I rarely involve myself in politics. I have friends and family members of  every political persuasion and I find politics so often divisive and counter productive to those relationships. I would rather spend my time raising our sons, nurturing my marriage and building friendships. In fact, the last time I took a public stance on anything was 10 years ago, when the United States was contemplating the invasion of Iraq. I went to some peace vigils and stood on the sidewalk of our small town with a sign quoting Blessed John Paul II. Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.

That was then. This is now.

School Reformers Can't Destroy the Longing to Learn

The board of our tiny public school district  in New Jersey has hired as superintendent a man who prides himself, as his resume puts it, in "data-driven decision making." His brief (he's 35) CV reads like that of a striving business man, not an educator.

What is missing from his resume, and from the school "reform" movement in public schools, is the understanding that the best educators teach children not just facts, but how those facts have value and how that value finds a place in our children's souls. And so, it was moving for me to discover yesterday, while I was stewing about how New Jersey politicians are deforming public education, our sons were returning from a field trip to the United Nations full of, well, joy. It seems no how badly politicians try to mess up the process of education, the drive to teach and the drive to learn are immutable.

Our In-House Quipster

Our son Lucky. What can I say? He knows how to get a laugh, even when he doesn't mean to. 

One of the benefits of going to parent-teacher conferences is finding out how your sons are behaving in high school. 

His Model UN advisor, Mr. Gold, who we adore, told my husband the following story last week. 

Lucky was in study hall, talking with Mr. Broadfoot. Mr. Gold was walking by in the hallway and heard our son say the following. Keep in mind I am a public school teacher. 

Tenured Today!

After three years and a day of teaching public school in New Jersey, I am tenured. To celebrate, my colleagues made a tenure tunnel for me and the two colleagues who had also  earned tenure. Tonight, Greg took me out for a seafood dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, The Barge in Perth Amboy. 

Heading Back to School, and Back to the Farm

My first year teaching special education was rough. I tended to take my students' struggles home with me and it was hard to let them go. Every Friday, to help me transition and to take away my sadness, I would stop by a wonderful farm in Morristown, New Jersey and buy farm-made cider doughnuts and cider for my family. It was my way of reminding myself that despite all the hardships humans experience, the world is full of Beauty. Today, on a visit to the farm, I experienced another sign that Beauty dwells among us.

Preparing to Teach: To Enter Into A Yearly Journey

First, a disclaimer: I didn't invent that phrase "to enter into a yearly journey" to describe teaching high school. I swiped it from a woman named Anglica Q., on the website Ignatian Spirituality.  You see, "Ignatian spirituality,sees God as actively involved in the world and intimately involved with us in every moment and place." Yup!

Angelica Q.  tweeted:

"I find God in my service as an educator--in the eyes of my students with whom I 
enter into a yearly journey.

I stole her description it because it perfectly encapsulates how I feel about teaching high school, and about the learning communities I try to cultivate each year in my classes. 

August looms. I am closing my summer reading books, finishing two graduate school classes, and preparing to teach two new courses: American Literature and American History. This book is in my purse.

At the End of A Difficult Day, Love Endures

 

I had a tumultuous traveling day, flying from Newark to Birmingham, Alabama, with a layover in Detroit. I forgot some important items at home, which will make my travels difficult. Tonight I find myself visiting with old parish friends before I tour civil-rights sites in Alabama and attend a teachers' conference in author Harper Lee's hometown. How ironic to find myself here, in a state that has endured so much violence and racial strife, on the day a Florida jury found an unarmed black teen's killer guilty of absolutely nothing. It can be so discouraging, this search for justice.

Can a Disability Be a Gift? Let's Share Videos about Disabilities

Find a video that you think is especially useful on You Tube or Teacher  Tube  regarding children with disabilities in relation to this course.





This is an assignment I am working on right now. As most of my regular readers know, I am a Special Education teacher and I am the mother of a son who has a language-based learning disability.I also am working toward my master's degree in Special Education. One of my professors this summer is asking her students to find a video online that will help folks understand some aspect of Special Education or of people with disabilities.

Here is the video I chose; I like it because it was produced by a young man with dyslexia.

I would love to hear what videos you have found helpful to understand disabilities or special education!

Keeping It Simple: On The Front Lawn

I  took this photo after a magical moment had passed. My husband and I spent time Friday evening sitting on lawn chairs on our front lawn, relaxing. It's been a long time since we sat with no agenda whatsoever.

My husband has had an exceptionally stressful stretch of weeks at work; I am barreling down the last few weeks of school while taking a graduate class called Introduction to Learning Disabilities. Our teenaged sons are busy, busy, busy with end-of-school year academics and music concerts.

This quiet time Friday was just the medicine my husband and I needed; the still spring air, the neighbors strolling past. Nothing called out to us, not the laundry that needed folding or the dishes that needed washing or a refrigerator way past needing to be cleaned.

For a few moments, it all waited.

This post was inspired by a link-up called Simple Saturday!

Seven Quick Takes: Milestones

1. The past week or so has been filled with milestones, for me and for my family. It is exciting to see chapters end and new ones beginning.  One milestone is that I was rehired to teach at my high school, which means I will be a tenured public school teacher in the fall. I am supported so much by my colleagues and the administration here.

2. Our elder son went to the junior prom last Friday night with a classmate. It was fun for me to help him pick out a suit. I thought it was cute his date and he spent time matching her hijab to his tie. Here is a goofy photo of them with friends.

Taking My Son To Work

I took my son to work today, part of the 20th anniversary celebration of Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day,^® It which used to be Take Our Daughters to Work Day, a day founded by Gloria Steinem and the Ms. Foundation until people complained, ironically enough, that such a day was sexist.

Celebrating a Perfect Gift!

Today I got to help my friend K., who teaches at the same high school I do, celebrate her daughter's first birthday! It has been a long time since I have been to a child's birthday party, given that our own sons are 13 and 16 years old. So I didn't mind driving an hour each way to help her large extended family and circle of friends celebrate Joy's first year on the planet.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Try to Have an Easter Attitude

When you are in the midst of the most stressed-out week your family has had in a long time, 

Seven Quick Takes for Friday

1. Our eldest son,  a high school junior, earned a spot in his high school's National Honor Society chapter.  We all went to the induction ceremony last night in the high school cafeteria.

I was really proud of our son, who is maturing daily.  I was moved by the students' individual thank yous to parents, coaches, and teachers. I was creeped out by the pseudo-religious nature of the ceremony, which involved a darkened cafeteria and kids already in NHS lighting and exchanging candles with the new inductees. And then there are the "four pillars of NHS:" character, scholarship, leadership and service, each with its own candle.

I am not making this up.

Neither my husband nor I remember any of this nonsense when we joined NHS at our high schools. 

 "Mom, if you walked into there in the middle of the ceremony you would have thought it was some kind of cult," our 13-year-old quipped on the car ride home.