east meets west

Five redeeming parts of the week

Four-day weeks feel longer than five-day weeks. I love long weekends, but the school week sucks. And this week sucked worse than usual with me having to deal more than usual with meetings, Social Services, Social Security, laws, counselors, cases of neglect, the start of two 4-hour long graduate school classes on weekdays, etc., etc. There was no crying this time. I'm just very, very tired. But let's focus on the (five) good things of the week:

1) Having my perpetually sleepy student stay after school to learn ratios and proportions TWICE this week. He nailed it and he's leaving the resource room to go back to regular-ed/inclusion next week.

2) There's this student, Jeremy, who has disliked me since the first day I dragged him into my resource room during reading class. He'd scowl at me, draw little devil cartoons on his papers, pretend to read, ignore me flat out... Since we started Independent Reading (also known as, "Read, Baby, Read") he's found a book he likes and he finished it. Not only did he finish it, but before he left reading class today, he told me he needed another book. We found one together and he took it home for the weekend. He even cracked a grin at me.

3) Having Independent Reading work! The kids bought into the plan! All I did was rearrange the room, reorganize all the books, determine which grade level each book was at and label them with the appropriate colored stickers, tell each student which color they were supposed to choose from, give each person an Independent Reading Log, count the number of pages they logged each week, move them accordingly on our Page Tracker (1,000 pages per party)...

4) Having my most troubled, oppositional, defiant student get into the act of reading. I drive 60 miles on weeknights to Gallup just to buy him the next book he'll read. I feel like I'm groveling to their wants. But, hey, he was the first person to finish a book in our IR program and as of last week, the person to read the most pages. *$@! his attitude, but God bless The Magic Tree House collection.

5) Taking my assistant (who has a son my age!) to Pilates class and both of us giggling as we collapse on the ground, unable to balance certain positions.

Wanted: U-Md. seniors

I'm returning to the University of Maryland in College Park on February 10 and 11 to hold one-on-one meetings with college seniors to learn more about their campus experiences and answer their questions about Teach for America. I'll also be available for small group or class info sessions. E-mail me at jbshyu@umd.edu if you're interested in making an appointment. I am taking times immediately. Also, feel free to let me know if there is an outstanding senior you'd recommend.

I barely made it into Teach for America.

Not because I hardly met the program's requirements (I have no idea about that), but because I didn't seriously think to apply until the night before the application was due last February. I didn't even really learn about the program until three months earlier. I sent the personal essays in online 14 minutes prior to deadline.

Teach for America was an afterthought. I was going to be a writer after I graduated and work at some newspaper. No one came around to offer an alternative plan, so that was that.

But even then, I knew something was amiss. I was working at USATODAY.com and had freelanced/interned as a reporter at several other newspapers. I had the proper college-graduate clips and resume, but I was simply that-- clips and a resume. I lacked the experience, the real-life know-how that I couldn't come by in just a newsroom. I missed something that kept me from connecting with my readership, my interviewees, my mark.

For better or for worse, Teach for America tends to recruit heavily from the fancy-schmancy Ivies and private colleges-- certainly not a really, really big, old state university. I practically missed their recruitment effort. I stumbled across Teach for America by accident when I browsed through an Honors Program e-mail newsletter in November one day (in journalism class, no less). Intrigued, I set up an appointment with one of the recruiters coming by.

I learned about their mission (to close the vast education gap in the country) and their methods (by training outstanding college grads to teach REALLY WELL for at least two years and, ultimately, to have these teachers become part of a broader movement of leaders in all sectors to move toward the same goal), but best of all, I got to hear about his own experiences as a teacher.

Even though he was in a suit and tie and prepping to go to Stanford Law, this TFA alum still spoke in awe about his third-graders and Boy Scout troupe in the MIssissippi Delta. On the street, he could pass as any flashy lawyer. But when he shared his experiences as a teacher, it was his attitude of being humble, yet relentless in the face of poverty, inequity and just plain unfairness.

There are good parts about Teach for America and there are bad parts. Four years of training in "objective" journalism and good common sense certainly cautions me against wholly endorsing anything in particular, especially when it comes to institutions.

But I can't think of a single reason why we shouldn't teach kids and teach them well. I can't think of a single reason why smart college grads shouldn't pour every bit of creativity, energy and inspiration they have into young minds-- even if it's just for two years. That's why I agreed to help Teach for America with recruitment for our 2006 corps.

Sometimes I think back in amusement on how I was just minutes away from not making into TFA. Yet, a more sobering thought is how some of my kids were perhaps just minutes away from never learning their multiplication tables.

Grooves

It usually takes me about three days to get back into the groove of things in Tohatchi after taking a trip of any length back to the East Coast. It usually takes me about 72 hours to get used not NOT having people, places or things constantly surrounding me. Apparently I lack nouns out here. But it's not all bad. In fact, there are plenty of things I love about living in New Mexico:

1) Fewer calories. The Mustang Gas Station makes a highly fattening pizza, but it can hardy compare with Panera, Einstein Bagels, Thaiphoon, La Madeleine, Cheesecake Factory, sushi bars and Macaroni Grille.

2) Skylines. I'm talking about true lines crossing the sky. No city can beat a Southwest mesa skyline at sunset. I'm a city girl at heart, but my view of the real lights and scrapers out here are more scenic. And environmentally friendly.

3) There's an amazing Pilates instructor in Gallup. I kid you not.

4) Friendliness is the norm. You're expected to know everyone. You're practically expected to be related to everyone out here (except me). If you don't wave when a car or a school bus passes you on the street, you're just plain rude.

5) My mailman doesn't come to my house; I go to his and I stay to chat after picking up my boxes.

6) My kids are learning. Slowly. Their diagnostic scores don't show it, but I swear to God, they're learning... I hope.

7) Speed limit is 75.

8) After half a lifetime of going at breakneck speed, taking extra classes, working three jobs, freelancing, driving through the Beltway... I can now sit back... maybe not to relax, but certainly to think. And to decorate my house. And to cook. And to appreciate everything that I'm NOT doing.

9) The amazing, amazing people, both educated and not, of all heights, intelligences, attitudes and political affiliations. (I live among non-Democrats! Fancy that!). I already know which folks I'll be flying out to my wedding one day in the (far) future.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if getting back into the groove is the best idea. Grooves suggest getting used to things, getting used to routines and, ultimately, being desensitized. It's a good thing to leave New Mexico (and go to Jamaica!) and then return. I found myself shocked when a man approached me and a friend in the Wal-Mart parking lot tonight offering to sell us gold or silver bracelets-- handmade. A month ago I would have just waved him off. People come to my door selling burritos, jewelry and beadwork. I even had a student come by my house at 9 p.m., one night selling pinons so his parents could make enough money to fill up the gas tank for work the next day.

It's comfortable to find a routine and normalcy in things. But just because something is so common, doesn't mean it should stay that way. It's a notion that I have a hard time balancing with certain situations, particularly regarding culture and education. Should I try changing the mind of a family who discourages their child to pursue a higher education because a college degree would inevitably mean the child leaving the area and seemingly ditching their home, family and culture? Is Western education really that important next to traditional ways? Why the heck am I teaching the times tables again when kids are getting sexually abused at home and have no heat??

Nonetheless, when my brain begins to feel a little fried from everything, I just have to remember that I'm just a teacher. I'm just an outsider teaching. And that's all I'm being paid to do. And that's just fine. Because regardless of the beatings and the cold, my kids do learn their times tables.

Sweet home

I never considered my parents wealthy until I moved away for the first time in college. When I came home on the weekends, I'd marvel over their impeccably color-coordinated paintings and molded frames. My mom always left an endless stash of gourmet goodies as well as unpronounceable, but familiar, Chinese dishes in the pantry and refrigerator(s). The carpets were unblemished with beer stains and there was always a subtle scent of vanilla throughout the house. The mid-upper middle class home I grew up in suddenly became luxurious juxtaposed with dorm room linoleum, community bathrooms and the lingering scent of Thursday night beer vomit from our dorm neighbors.

Few things have changed since I've moved to New Mexico. But now I see how you can scratch away the double-shine paint and see the poorness. My parents are immigrants and they always will be. Housekeepers, designer turkeys and interior decorators can't color over the fact that my father spent almost 15 years working toward two master's degrees. For every year he studied, he took another off to work as a waiter at a Chinese restaurant to pay for the next semester. In my mother's jewelry box of treasures, she still has laminated picture cards; cards that she has horded since she was a teenager when those were her most precious belongings. Despite all of the leather and suede furniture, the threadbare velveteen couch with little brown flowers that they bought when they first got married is still in the basement, too nostalgic to throw out.

By first-generation standards, my parents have "made it." They're professionals with their own business. They can outsource their daily duties to service providers. They even turn the heat up to 65 degrees now. They've given their children every little damn thing, for better or for worse. Many people would see them as rich. I see them as poor; all their little luxuries are built on being poor.

How to fit in

I was complaining to my friend, a fellow TFA teacher, that half of my kids hate me and few even listen to me, and much of it has to do with the fact that I'm neither Navajo nor old(er).

Her advice? "So dye your hair and wear a fat suit."

Duh. Why didn't I think of that?

To a certain extent, it's totally true. Many of the middle scholers misbehave and disrespect my authority because I'm new and unfamiliar. My title as a teacher and almost-a-decade-older-ness does little to nothing. I look different. They've never had to fear and respect someone who was young and Asian American.

The vast majority of the teachers and assistants at the school are Navajo and older. It's wonderful, especially when you see so many schools nationwide being run by whites (or Anglos, as folks seem to refer to the race here) when their student body is comprised almost entirely by people of color.

Classroom representation is wonderful. It's fabulous for kids to recognize their elders in positions of authority within their own community. It's good for the local economy and it's good for the children's self esteems. It only sucks for me, the lone Asian American under 40 (with no kids, thankyouverymuch-- although some of my close colleagues keep bringing it up. They say they're waiting for "grandkids" from me. Around here, by 22, I should be getting started... If only they saw how I can barely find time/energy to vacuum my house).

Hopefully they'll get used to me. Almost half a dozen teachers and students have asked this week if I'll be returning in January. I give them a flabbergasted look and say I'll be around next school year too. Retention is tough around these parts. I feel guilty about only having a 2-year committment with TFA. If I stick around for more than two years, by golly, I'll be among the longest lasting "outsider" teachers at the school. And hopefully by then, they'll listen when I yell.

Really little people

It's always around Thursday when I start losing the desire to one day have children of my own. Teenagers can be irritating like that. Deep down, I love that age group. I love their vulnerability, their child-like innocence thinly veiled behind baggy jeans, bad words and careless swaggers. But honestly, after more than 32 hours in a school setting with them, I'm that much less eager to one day breed the same creatures that hide behind baggy jeans, bad words and careless swaggers.

But I've found the cure to this sense of hopelessness, this distaste for children. I did morning duty this past week in the Kindergarten to 3rd grade hallway. Those students are little! They go barely to my waist! They listen to what I say! They look cute and they don't smell funny! My teacher voice wields power and they respect me. Teaching that age group isn't particularly appealing to me, but they certainly reignite my hope for little people. They're barely out of toddlerhood and they're so cute!

Poor

In textbooks, poverty has more than a dirt floor, if not electricity. In statistics, poverty doesn't laugh at the thought of Christmas presents. In newspapers, poverty doesn't go to school without a jacket in 5-degree weather.

I admonish my students each morning, gently chastising them for walking around in freezing temperatures with little more than a long-sleeved T-shirt. They say they're not cold, laughing at my over-concern as they huddle over the heater. They say they don't need jackets in the dead of winter. And I peck at them, half-jokingly, but know they probably can't afford them.

I remember learning a lifetime ago in one of my government classes that poverty can be relative-- if you only have the very rich to compare to, indeed a middle-class fool may consider him/herself poor. I remember feeling oh-so-dejected in 7th grade because I didn't have a pair of faded brown Doc Martens. Compared to my Potomac brethren, I was poor. I didn't have $150 shoes when I was 13.

But here, it's not uncommon to not have electricity or heat. Nearly everyone wears practically the same thing to school everyday. I recognize the smell of wood-stoves and propane in my kids' clothes. Everyone gets free breakfast and lunch. Almost everyone is poor. And sometimes that makes poverty seem almost OK.

But my kids remind me that it's not. They may not be able to read poverty indexes or the latest news from the U.S. Department of Human Health and Services. But they can tell me that they hate Christmas and stopped believing in Santa long ago, because Santa never went to their house. They can beg for second helpings of lumpy and dry school lunch, because they know they won't get dinner at home.

Or they can be like one of my students and call me straight out: When he needed to move up to the board to read a question, I reminded him that he needed glasses. He said he didn't like wearing glasses and wanted to get contacts. Absent-mindedly, I told him, "So get some contacts!" He just dead-panned me and said, "Well maybe you can afford it, but I can't."

Today I have a $150 pair of designer Coach heels sitting in my closet-- beautiful and unworn. I would have worn them in a previous lifetime, traipsing down the streets of Georgetown, readying for a 6-course French dinner and a night at the bars. But I can't now, partly because I don't think Gallup offers any multi-course French meals. But also because I just can't seem to justify shoes that cost the exact amount of money that a family needs to fix their truck so that they can get to work.

As a teacher in a rural region, I've become less idealistic. You can't save everyone. I can't let myself feel guilty about splurging on a vacation to Jamaica. I can't buy everyone coats. I teach my students that they endure time with me in the classroom so that they'll always be able to afford heat and food when they grow up. In too many ways, they're much wiser than I was at their age or even today. I haven't figured out how to reconcile accepting poverty and doing something about it.

Poorness is dirty and everywhere in the world. The work of those close to me revolve around the hungry, sick and stricken in third-world countries. But to me, my work is heartbreaking too. Because we're still the greatest country in the world. And because middle schoolers should not have to beg for more nasty school lunch.

Under-40 and childless

And so it's done. My partner has left. My only other Teach for America colleague at the school drove into the sunset down Highway 491 heading toward Albuquerque. She'll be back on the East Coast by Sunday. I'll be lesson planning for Monday. And now I'm alone.

But I'm not alone. I have friends outside of Tohatchi. I have family on the East Coast. I have colleagues at the school and the Special Ed department to back me up. I have my assistant. I have my students.

But I don't have my Post Office buddy. I don't have my across-the-hall buddy. I don't have my fresh-baked-banana-bread buddy. I don't have my Wal-Mart run buddy. I don't have her and that's sad. Because on rough days, all I can look forward to is collapsing on the bean bag chairs during lunch with her and getting a big hug at the end of the day. We were both busy, occupied and had separate lives, but she was my only true peer on the mesa. I'm now the only teacher under the age of 40 and without children at the school.

I'll be OK. I'll be fine. I'll make more friends with people in my community. But in the meantime, I'll be alone.

Why it sucks to be a turkey

I hate crafts.

And having been taught in a very straight-forward, textbook manner throughout my secondary education, I often forget that my kids like to do artsy craftsy things. Luckily, they remind me by acting up and refusing to work after I give them one too many read-and-answer assignments.

So to appease the kiddies and their need for cutting, pasting and coloring, we made a turkey bulletin for Thanksgiving. Each child wrote a paragraph about how they would feel if they were a turkey around this time of year. After they were done, they colored and cut out a turkey's head and feet. Then they pasted the turkey parts onto their writing assignment sheet, making the text the turkey's body. It was cute and it helped decorate my classroom for the holidays. I also hate making little cutesy things to decorate my room. But I know the kids like it. That's why I sit around on Saturday nights cutting out paper leaves and snowflakes.

The kids kicked and moaned about having to write at first. They always do. But after they settled down, they came up with the cutest responses. Many of the kids said they would run away fast and hide from the hunters. One girl said she would give herself up willingly to the hunters so the people would have food to eat-- but not before running around crazily to give those hunters some exercise. And yet another student wrote that he would gang up with some other animals, including a coyote, and basically start a massacre to annhilate all people. He's a little gruesome. But at least they made me happy by writing. And at least I made them happy by giving them the chance to color, cut and paste.

Teaching, at least in Special Education, seems to be mostly about compromise between me and the students. I need to make a special effort to stray from the manner in which I was taught-- textbooks and worksheets. To make linking verbs a little more fun (and to be a decent teacher, really), I sit around cutting strips of sentences and unbending paper clips so they can actually link together sentence parts. Oftentimes I wonder if I would have learned better if my teachers back in the day had used multi-sensory methods to teach. Perhaps then I wouldn't have to relearn whatever the heck linking verbs are the night before I teach it. (Another point learned from three months in the field-- as a first-year teacher, I'm sometimes just one day ahead of the kids. Too often I'm relearning, refreshing and rehashing middle school math and grammar the night before my lesson is "due.")

Prideful stubbornness

Writing this felt like a pep talk to myself. This is clipped from an e-mail sent to a friend who is interviewing soon for Teach for America:

I spoke to Elizabeth yesterday and she mentioned you are interviewing! I'm so happy to hear that! Truth be told, I'm worn, I'm weary and I miss college/desk jobs every single waking hour. This is a really tough job. It may be glamorous on paper and in blogs, but it's just shit-in-your-face sucky when you get down to it. Everything will probably suck and you will get very little help from anyone out there. Despite all of that, this is the best decision of my life. I love my kids, I love the results of my work and I love (some) of the people I work with. I am very happy in a rough, beaten way. =) My only tip for the interviews is say it like you mean it. I've already watched one friend quit a week into the school year and others contemplate it daily.

As for your personal interview-- be enthusiastic not just about the program but about yourself. BE HUMBLE. Realize that you won't be a martyr in these communities-- you'll be some damned outsider. You'll be asked to go home. You'll be just one of a million new teachers out there. Teach for America's advertising campaign makes us seem so special; we're just regular teachers with a can of TFA-whoopass. The daily grind is still up to us and the community. Be totally humble, but study the TFA mantra. Be enhtusiastic and proud, yet humble and hard-working.

After meeting hundreds if not thousands of TFA'ers in recent months, I've developed a theory on how they choose the teachers. They pick people not for their GPAs (my transcript actually had a [mistaken] 'F' on it when they selected me) or their schools. They pick people based on evidence of their resilience, hard-work and damn prideful stubbornness. I highlight the last part. They pick people who are so damn prideful of what they do, they won't take failure as an answer.

Even if you have to (and you most definitely will) stay up til 3 a.m., to write lesson plans and make stupid posters and wake up at 6 just to teach 100 whining, disrespectful, indolent, violent kids-- you'll do it and you'll fail and you'll do it better the next day and yo'ull probably fail again but you'll keep on doing it. Damn it. Seriously. Define, demonstrate, illustrate your resilience and fearlessness to fail and try harder and harder-- just to fail a couple of more times. Work hard. Be humble. Exude energy. That's all they want. Sometimes I think that's all you need to rule the world. Or teach children. I wonder which is harder.

I'm not trying to scare you away. My friends who contemplate quitting weren't given the whole harsh truth about TFA. It may look pretty to grad schools and to outsiders, but once you're in it, you just grit your teeth in between weekends (at least for the first year, I'm told. It'll get better).   

As you can see, I'm almost done with my first semester. I repeat-- I love my job. I love my life here. Not a second goes by when I wonder why I didn't party harder in college. But I love this. For the first two months I couldn't stop crying. I probably will kep crying for awhile longer. Life goes on.

Let me know if you need help with your lesson plans or jump ideas off me for anything. Come visit me if you want to too, to see what it's like. We need people like you. Man, it's tough. But as you probably read on my blog, there are little (and big and medium-sized) joys that make crying and late nights worth it.

Dude, it is so worth it.

Best of luck, Jess