What's Going Well

Today I woke up to a revelation: I have fallen into an undesirable pattern in these writings. In making this egregious mistake, I have put myself in a 'glass is half empty' position, and it doesn't sit well with me. Not only in my faith, but in secular life, not recognizing what's going well,--- no, not FOCUSING on what's going well, the blessings, the gifts, the great things that are there every day, those things I take for granted,--- can plop me into a malcontent state. So here I sit, with eroded gratitude and plummeted emotions. Time for a paradigm shift.

Yes, my interminable divorce is lousy. My finances are where I never planned them to be, I have tennis elbow I am continually icing and stuff in my bronchia for which I take a very slow-working inhaler twice a day, Kyle didn't breeze through EMT school and my dad is a pain. There is plenty of that in this blog. As I read through, it falls just short of being a diatribe. But enough of that already. Let's start looking closely at the good stuff.

I have been at my job since February 3, 1975, same district, same school, with a two-year break in the later 70's to move to NYC where I had the priceless opportunity to work in the private education sector and see a completely different side of teaching. Back at my school after NYC, I brought higher standards and greater expectations of what children can do in school as well as what parents can contribute to learning. I struggled my first several years as a teacher. But I worked incredibly hard. I have a tenacity for my job that has rarely allowed me to feel defeated in its continual challenges.

This year, maybe my 37th or so, has been as remarkably different on some levels than I could have ever imagined. As usual, I have some very needy students who require more than their share of attention, but no one is mean. Some are egocentric, but they all can be exceedingly kind. They get to work as a group far better than most classes I've had. They show effort, and some of them show caring and helpfulness that warm my heart. One little girl has a capacity to be sympathetic that is both appropriate and sincere. She also mimics my voice while we're singing, but adds in a vibrato that verges more on a wobble/tremulo you throw a cat through, delighting in her experience and her love for vocal music. Another little girl notices nuance like few kindergarteners I know and, although pretty wiggly, she has a burgeoning talent for art that will grow into something remarkable. She also likes to yell out, "Show us your bat wings!" when I'm wearing short sleeves. P is one of the brightest young men I have ever known, and possesses a maturity that is forever causing me to marvel. He's the go-to guy in whole-group lessons I know I can finally ask when no one else can answer a question. A quiet, sweet girl is the fourth I have had of a family of five. On the first day of school, her mother embraced me and remarked in Spanish how happy she was that all of her children have been in my class (there is still one at home). This little girl is hard-working, honest and conscientious in a way that tells me that no matter how hard it is for her to learn subject matter, she will work at it as diligently as any person possibly can, and she will persevere until she has met whatever standards we have for her. Another child, S, is simply an angel. When I think of 'still waters run deep', he is exactly that. Yesterday we were painting wood birdhouses with acrylic paint for holiday gifts. Kindergarteners and paint must always be done with great care but kindergarteners and ACRYLIC paint is not too unlike handling nuclear waste. There is garb to don and very distinct procedures you must follow. He had painted his birdhouse the day before, but came up to me yesterday and quietly said, "I want my mother and father to be proud of me. I want to do a better job. I want to paint my birdhouse again." I looked to the ledge where I had put the drying projects from the previous day. As I spotted his, it didn't seem to look poorly done. It looked like the typical work of a five-year-old, something a parent would rejoice in receiving and knew his parents would be thrilled with it. But apparently, he wasn't satisfied. I took it down and set him up again; he re-painted it with more care, this time following the grain of the wood in his brushstrokes and covering each little bit of wood with paint. I asked him if he was happier with it now and he said yes. Em's family works with a local Christian charitable organization and I can tell she has been taught to love all people. I doubt she would ever harm a friend let alone a bug. She has a sweetness that says 'I will accept you as you are'. A new student comes from a battered women's shelter. He is withdrawn, quiet. He has seen things done to his mother no child should ever have to see, not even in a horror flick. I know that as soon as he understands our room is a safe environment, he will come out of his shell, relaxing and maybe going to the other behavioral extreme. As annoying as that might be for the person who has to run the classroom, it will be a healthy sign. It will signal the beginning of him discovering who he really is and the departure from his past. I don't know how long he will be with us but the children immediately embraced him, shepherded him around the class, our yard, and the school, introducing him to new teachers when we first entered their rooms, and engaging him in activities. This is a good place for him, and his mother and I have conversations about the need to keep him here and not cause any huge school-related transitions for him as she reaches the end of her time in the shelter. I could spend weeks writing character profiles on my students. Looking closely at who they are is a very pleasant and satisfying experience.

One thing that is off-the-charts this year is the parents in my room. Cal it 'rising to the occasion' or 'stepping up to the plate', whatever it is has been a shocking delight. At Back to School Night two mothers approached me and said they wanted to share the job of room parent. They have worked hard. One of them meets with me once a month, I tell her what's going on in the room, what I need help with, anything I want parents to know, and then she goes home, writes it all up, and sends it out in a newsletter she emails to all the parents. I can then follow-up on a website another mother helped me design on Shutterfly, complete with calendar, announcements, homework assignments and sign-up sheets. The other room parent and the woman who set up the webpage post photos of all our class events. Two of them set up a 'co-op' in our school's parent room where parents agree to watch younger siblings for each other to free-up parents to help in their children's classrooms. I now have parents helping for at least one portion of every day. This means that some parents have seen the holiday cards and gifts we're making, so when they enter the room, I say, "You never saw this." They say, "OK," and we laugh. They have given gift cards I never dreamed I'd get, not for myself but to buy classroom supplies, from the local teacher's supply store, Staples, craft stores, and the supermarket. It is a teacher's dream.

I also have a cadre of 'legacy' students. These are children whose parents I had as kindergarteners. It is common to have siblings of former students, but not so common to have their progeny. One probably lives out of the district but uses his parents' address to get his son in the school. He seems to have wonderful memories of his year with me, which I think was about the time Laura was born, and begged to have his child in my class. He signs up to volunteer, paid the portion of our Adopt-A-Class that was not met by other parents, and donated all the food and supplies for our holiday gingerbread house party. He's also a plumber and when our annual Friendship Feast ended with the annual clogging up of my workroom sink, he went to his truck, got whatever was needed, and cleared the clog. He picks his child up at the boy's mother's every morning, feeds him breakfast (because apparently the mother doesn't), and brings his lunch back to eat with him almost every day. My 'legacy students' all come from a section of town that's nestled between the cemetery and the south end of the local freeway. In a town that's known usually for its celebrities and high-end lifestyle, few know there is poverty as well. When I started working here, this neighborhood had tremendous transiency. Children would be in school for mere weeks, possibly months, and then they would be gone. Their families lived in crowded substandard housing and even took shifts sleeping in the beds. During the two short years I lived in NYC, the city enacted a powerful, pro-tenant rent control program and the transiency came to a grinding halt. For this reason, generations of families now live in apartments and attend the same schools as their parents and grandparents did. Rents are fabulously low but so is upkeep and landlord maintenance. Selling buildings in that neighborhood is tantamount to 'unloading'. But for the families there, it ensures a security and sense of community for which they long and is reminiscent of their lives in Mexico and Central America. In many cases, the younger generations have succeeded, gone to college, gone into better professions than their parents and their own bought homes. In others, the children have not risen much beyond the levels of their parents.

All these children and their parents bless me, even the former students whose family lives are dysfunctional. I rejoice in seeing their faces after the intervening decades and feel a strong bond with them and their children. Sometimes I can look in a child's face and see their parents' faces when they were in my class and I get an inward smile. There is a joy in this connectedness I feel. They are blessings. These children and their parents, they bless me and enhance my life. The recent changes in my life has opened me up to an increased appreciation for the other lives that I touch and who in turn touch me, and I am extremely satisfied.