Se Hace Camino Al Andar

Yesterday, I bought a paper before heading into the city. It was Monday and I always like to do the Monday crossword. I can always finish it and that makes me feel smart, it does. I get dumber and dumber as the week progresses. In any case, after I finished the crossword, I settled into the rest of the paper during my train ride, and while I ate lunch. I accidently left most of my paper on the train (I don’t know how that happened), much to my dismay, as I realized I was left with only the front page. It was just as well. The big story of the day was a long feature on Debbie Almontaser, a NYC educator. The article held my attention all the way through as I learned more about the story of a teacher who wanted to open an Arab-language school in the city. This story first broke sometime last year, then died down a bit after the initial frenzy. 

The story filled me with a sense of loathing and frustration. I thought the Times did a pretty good job of remaining objective on the issue but it definitely made me feel sympathetic towards Debbie Almontaser, and only served to increase my hatred of Randi Weingarten, and of the DOE. Maybe hate is a strong word but it’s definitely more than just dislike… disgust might be a better word. 

If you missed the story, you can read it here. (You might need a NY Times registration to read it.)

Of course, there are many sides to a story but I find it ridiculous, the insistence that Debbie Almontaser had some kind of hidden fundamentalist agenda with the goal of turning NYC kids into little terrorists. We have Spanish-language schools, we have Chinese-language schools, and so on. Arabic is just another language, and one that happens to be widely spoken in our city, and one that comes in handy as global interest in the Middle East grows. To suggest that a language is synonymous with terrorism is childish, small-minded and immature.  

I’m behind Debbie Almontaser 100%, as an educator and as a Jew. 

Technorati Tags: slice of life story challenge

Our internet connectivity is competing with the satellite on the roof, so it’s been iffy at best though I’ve managed to get some pictures uploaded. I have a Tuesday slice of life challenge to publish but I think I’ll hold off on that until I get back. I have other things to share… like a poem I wrote this morning. 

I had a dream that I wrote a

sad poem. 

I stood in the middle of a grass field

to read that sad poem. 

But some of the lines were grass

and wouldn’t translate. 

I skipped that section, frantically

searching the page for the appropriate

place to pick up a new line. 

A piano began to play. 

Someone circled me, 

waiting for her turn to 

stand in the middle of the grass

field. 

In my hand, I held the sad photographs 

to go with my sad poem, my voice

breaking as I brought my poem to

its shuddering end, my fingers clutching 

the photographs and my eyes scanning the

crowd for approval. I got indifference. 

I walked off the field 

and woke up. 

 

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I had some notes for this post but now, I don’t know what I want to write about. First off, let’s start with the fact that I’m slightly annoyed that the poem I wrote in the previous post apparently got cut off by WordPress or something else. At first, I thought it was a Safari problem but it showed up the same way on Firefox. In any case, it’s all fixed now and I feel better. 

This post is several days late. We just got back from the Cape and our internet connection was interminent at best. I was able to check e-mail and chat online but writing a blog post proved to take up too much bandwidth. 

The vacation was really for Henry, and I came along for the ride. Technically, I’ve been on vacation since January, right? But, still, it was a nice reprieve from the city and from all the endless little demands and errands that get placed on my time (er….maybe some of that is my fault!). I started and completed a little project, which I’m calling TimeStamp. I found myself waking up at the same time every morning, so I took a picture of the cove as soon as I woke up. It turned out to be interesting because there are day to day variations in the light and color on the cove, depending on the weather conditions. The difference between a rainy morning and a non-rainy morning is amazing! You can see the set here. In Photoshop, I signed the bottom of each with a timestamp, then I sent them off to QOOP last night for printing. Next is picture frames and figuring out where to hang the photos. I might give them to my mother to hang in the cottage. 

Now, we’re back in the city, back to the grind but slowly. Today, we have a Bradley Method class, I have an errand to run at Target and my goal for today is to sand down the wood we bought for closet shelving, so that Henry can start building out the closet and get it done before the kitchen construction starts this week. (See what I mean? Endless demands on my time, but my fault mostly… I admit that!)

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Well, this post was due on Tuesday and I’ve changed the timestamp on the post accordingly, because I’m anal like that but what I’m going to write about actually took place after Tuesday. More specifically, yesterday…. Wednesday.

A long time ago, my friend Kim, a Spanish teacher at my old school, asked if I would chaperone a field trip with her. Of course, I jumped on the chance! After all, I didn’t leave because of the kids and I miss those kids like CRAZY! I took the opportunity to get to the school early and drop in on my old AP class. They are doing wonderful with their new teacher, my friend Jon. I watched Jon and the class for awhile, feeling vindicated in my decision to leave. Jon is a great teacher, and my kids are doing wonderful. He has gotten them together and on top of things in a way that I was never able to. I was impressed and proud of them. I didn’t feel the least bit sad or remorseful because I could see how much better off they were with a teacher that actually teaches. They were happy to see me and placed a thousand blessings on my belly, which is probably twice as big as it was the last time they saw me in February. I got warm greetings from various people in the building, my former colleagues and the school support staff. I also had my standard answer ready for people who asked “Why did you leave? Why did you quit?” Simple and to the point, “I got tired of dealing with all the crap.” I got many nods of understanding and sympathy, silently reminding myself how lucky I was to have the option of leaving, even without another job lined up (this little “not working” detail definitely raised a few eyebrows!)

It was good to see everyone, it was good to spend the day with kids (even if most of them weren’t my old kids) and the field trip itself was great. We went to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to see the Sosua exhibit (about Dominican Jews). The kids got a kick out of seeing the Statue of Liberty, and hanging out by the water down at Battery Park, and just enjoying the sunshine!

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My nose is full of dust.

I’ve begun the second stage of “Operation Room for Baby.” The first was cleaning up all the years of teacher-related paperwork that I accumulated. Now, it’s time to get rid of a bookcase. When I moved into this studio, I had three bookcases chockfull. When Henry moved in, I got rid of a bookcase by consolidating and getting rid of books, as well as storing books on the floor next to the shelves. Now, I’ve adjusted my plan of attack to stacking books on top of each other, to maximize the space of each shelf, in addition to purging yet more books in my collection. Despite all that, it has become very apparent to me that I’ll need to store certain categories of books in a storage bin, until we move. That will probably end up being my education texts, since they take up a lot of room, as well as remainders after the all the books are stacked and shelved and discarded.

This is not an easy process for me. I mean, I know which books I am definitely keeping–my collection of Beat Generation texts, my education texts. What remains are trade paperbacks and classics. Which paperbacks are worthy of space? Which classics are worth holding onto? I have a complete set of James Fenimore Cooper paperbacks that my mother found and gave to me, but which have never been read. I’m keeping those. I have more than one volume of “chick lit.” Those go. Then there’s the question of defining a classic. The easiest definition is: really old! Ha ha. But seriously, I guess “classic” means notable authors, books that always show up on college reading lists, books that are part of the shared, common culture (you know, books that everyone has heard of, and knows a little about but hasn’t actually read…).

So, that is my little task for the next week or so, in addition to all other baby stuff that has suddenly gained primacy, like doing my Bradley Method homework and picking out items for my registry. Somehow, the phrase “three more months” has never seemed more foreboding or exciting.

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I don’t know if any of you NYC readers have been following the story of 475 Kent in Williamsburg but basically, the tenants of 475 Kent were evicted on a cold winter night after the discovery of some serious violations of code and an illegal matzo factory in the basement (!?). There are many different sides and opinions to the story and I won’t get into them here. Needless to say, my husband and I have friends who live in this building and are currently displaced. The building also housed artists (both commercial and non). To that end, an exhibit has been organized at the Queens Museum of Art, showcasing the work of these artists.

An opening reception for the exhibition will be held on April 11 from 6-9 pm with performances by 475 Kent resident musicians Connie Crothers and Richard Tabnik, Melvin Gibbs, Erik Deutsch and artist GGrippo.

475 KENT Lives participating artists include:
Kanoa Baysa, Lee Boroson, Jennifer Byxbee, Melissa Clarke, Jeremy Dean, Alison Dell, Emma Dewing, GGrippo, Kirsten Hassenfeld,Hollis Jeffcoat, Vibeke Jensen, Betsy Kelleher, Simon Lee, Deborah Masters, McDavid Moore, Lisa Mordhorst, Cecilia Rodhe, Eve Sussman, Rob Swainston, Shimpei Takeda, Michael Weintrob, Markus Wetzel and sa Elzn.

QMA AT BULOVA CORPORATE CENTER
75-20 Astoria Boulevard
Jackson Heights, NY 11370
A satellite gallery of the Queens Museum of Art is located in the west and south Concourse galleries of the Bulova CorporateCenter. The works of individual artists or a group of artists are presented in three exhibitions each year. 475 KENT Lives is made possible by Blumenfeld Development, Ltd.

Gallery Hours
Monday-Friday  7am-7pm
Saturday 10am-4pm

Opening Reception: Friday April 11th 6-9 PM

Technorati Tags: 475 Kent Lives, artists, exhibition, queens

….But you can’t take the school out of the teacher. Or something like that. Don’t get me wrong…I don’t miss the daily hassle and dysfunction of working in the NYC school system. It’s not the school I worked at, per se but the system as a whole. I know I still have that teacher blood in me because I get a thrill out of seeing the newest issue of the English Journal in my mailbox. I’m a certified teacher geek.

The issue is partly the system and partly me. I’m a control freak, in the worst way. I’ll admit it. When I have a vision or a plan, and it doesn’t pan out, I completely lose motivation. I didn’t have the resources to run my classroom the way I wanted to do, to execute my vision of what a dream classroom would be like and I was too inflexible to adapt. Other teachers are incredible at adapting and making do with what they have but I’m a spaz. If I tried hard enough, with therapy or something, I could get over it…if I wanted to. But I don’t want to.

More than one person suggested that I needed a change in environment and I shrugged them off. After all, NYC is NYC, no matter what school I work in. And like my former AP once said, “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” But, deep down, I knew it was true. A change of environment would’ve made a world of difference. The question is… would I be able to find the change I needed to keep me in the classroom? I’ve been out of the classroom for two months and I’m enjoying the chance to sit back and reflect on the past six years, on the work I did and didn’t do. I’ve been thinking about what my purpose is as a teacher and I’ve realized that I’m not interested in martyring myself. I want to teach for learning’s sake. It’s hard to do this at the high school level. When you get to high school, school is no longer about just learning. It’s about pressure, it’s about tests, it’s about wanting to be somewhere else. It’s a strong argument for non-compulsory education, if you ask me. Maybe a change of environment means a change in age groups. I got immense satisfaction out of working with younger kids, especially when I worked at PS 3 in the West Village. The teacher I worked with, Lucy Rubin, ran a classroom that totally matched my vision of what I thought a classroom should be, but my vision was high school and this was a combined 3rd/4th grade class. The vision just didn’t translate.

What do I want?

1. I want my own classroom.
2. I want a place where I can set the stage and control the environment.
3. I want a space for controlled chaos. This means having many spaces within one room.
4. I want different things happening at the same time, each kid doing what they need to do.

I don’t want to be a surrogate parent or a disciplinarian. I don’t want to be told that, as “a white teacher,” I’m “too soft,” because I don’t yell at the kids or verbally abuse them. I don’t want to be told that I have no business teaching minority children.

A few people, including former students, have asked if I’ll ever go back to teaching. When I first left the classroom, the answer was no. But now… I think I would, if I found the right place for me.

All of a sudden, I’ve become a daily writer, though not necessarily on this blog. It started with the Slice of Life challenge I did last month. I joined late and I really tried to write everyday, though it didn’t work out that way. But my Internet experience is no longer mostly consumptive–I’m microblogging over at Twitter, I’m writing for myself with the Slice of Life challenge. The SOL challenge is now once a week, on Tuesdays, so in the interest of daily writing, I’ve signed up at WordCount Journal, a website that encourages daily journal writing by recording how many words you write everyday, and pushes you to incrementally increase the number of words. If you have an account over there, you can add me as a favorite.

Slice of Life continues, in a weekly format! All day, I was waiting to write this post but either my host, or WordPress, or both were having serious issues and I couldn’t get anything to load. So, now it’s the end of the day and I’m realizing that I should’ve written down my post ideas…. in my pregnant state, I can’t remember exactly what it is that I planned to write about today.

My life lately has been a series of “I can’t wait until…,” as in, “I can’t wait until the kitchen is done.” “I can’t wait until this baby comes.” “I can’t wait to move to a real house.” “I can’t wait until the 3G iPhone comes out.” “I can’t wait until we get a new car.”

I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

Living my life in a perpetual state of anticipation is nerve-wracking and not very healthy but at the same time, it keeps me going. When I was teaching, I looked forward to the school vacations. It made the year go by faster, knowing that the routine would be broken up eventually and each break bought us closer to summer vacation. Now, I look forward to other things, some of them scheduled and other things just waiting for a window of opportunity.

Right now, I can’t wait for Henry to get home (my “I can’t wait” moments are one of his pet peeves), so we can settle in for the night.

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