My blog, my rules.  What up, dawggggg?

I admit it: too much Scrubs.

Here’s the post:

Is anyone else out there lucky enough to have a job that makes you so happy that all you have to do is walk into the building and you feel the positive vibes? My days seem so short now; most days I feel as though I’ve just begun, and bingo, it’s time to go to bed again.

I get tired, yes. I am exhausted, usually, by the end of the day. But even so, I love this teaching gig with a passion I didn’t even know I was still capable of after enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous public school dealings for so long.

I think that after so long in the school systems of our country, the teachers who stay evolve a mindset that is almost enslavement. We endure schedules and treatment that no other professional would dream of enduring. We allow ourselves to be used and misused and overworked, all in the name of love for our students. What other professionals have a clientele that pretty much expects to be supported, fed, dressed, taught, and catered to in every possible way, without showing the least bit of gratitude?

We get so used to it, we don’t even realize that there is another world out there, where people show each other respect.

We really do love the students, don’t get me wrong. But year after year in a public school kind of makes a teacher numb to any other possibility that might be out there for a person with these talents. Every year it gets worse and worse, even while we are thinking and saying things like “Next year it will be better.”

But it never is.

Next year, the classrooms are more overcrowded, there are fewer books, there are more dysfunctional families who seem to be in charge of the system, there are more duties, there are more responsibilities, there are more problems, there are more “incidents,” and there is less and less support. There is no respite. There is no discipline. The teacher’s union here stands idly by and allows a principal to schedule a teacher to the point that there isn’t even time in the course of the day to blow her nose. I am not exaggerating, either. The contract guarantees some prep time daily? We’ll count walking down the hall to fetch yet another class as break-time. We’ll count your driving time, from building to building, as your lunch. Ask any music teacher if I’m stretching the truth.

Yes, every year it’s worse. And a teacher doesn’t really know how bad it is, until that teacher walks out and tries something new.

Me, for instance.

And now, I teach every day in a building full of wonderful hardworking students and smiling administrators and friendly janitors and awesome bosses who TALK TO US AS THOUGH WE WERE EQUALS (instead of slaves) and the building resounds with humor and happiness and dedication.

Heck, even the restrooms here are superior. And there is ALWAYS toilet paper!!!!! The halls and classrooms are clean and well-maintained. Everyone behaves properly.

The sad and odd thing is, I did not know how bad it actually was until I left the public schools. While I was there, I was the most loyal and hardworking and dedicated person in the building. Sure, the days seems awfully long, and sometimes the despair and frustration were so thick one could cut it with a knife, but it was my obsession, to somehow be a positive force in this not-very-positive place. I came to school at 7:00; I got home around 6:00. I was determined to make a difference, a positive difference.

But, but, there was no appreciation. There was only the expectation that if I could do that, I should be doing even more.

I couldn’t keep on.

But now? I feel positive every day. I love coming to school. All I have to do is walk into this building and I am instantly wide-awake and happy.

Sure, there are some, um, “interesting” students here, but MOST of them are pure quality.

I still work the long hours. But I am appreciated, and treated like the professional I’d forgotten I was, all those years.

And now, I truly believe I am helping to make a positive difference. I can see it. I can hear it.

Scheisse, I love my job.

The really ironic thing is that in spite of all the negative things about the public schools, I still believe that this nation’s schools are the hope of our future. There is such potential in every classroom, such stories to be told, such wondrous talent and creativity and sensitivity and music concealed behind the t-shirts and the grubby jeans and exposed underwear and defiant raising of the eyebrows and the punky hair and the chips-on-the-shoulders and the trendy slang and the stubborn glares. . . . there is poetry behind the obscenities, and magnificent scientific discoveries behind the unwillingness to conform.

It’s too bad teachers are no longer allowed to cultivate it.

Why can’t we be allowed to step back and bask in the glow of unbridled enthusiasm, and throw ourselves into helping students learn and discover and grow, grow, grow, both physically and mentally and socially and culturally and scientifically. . . . .

What happened to us as a people, as a culture, as a nation, that our idea of ’school’ has sunk to the level of equating success with a number on a piece of paper?

I do tend to rant, don’t I. My apologies.

I miss what my former job might have been, in a perfect world.

But oh golly, I do love my job now!!!!

Mamacita says:  Sunday is Independence Day! And, if you do not believe in that, then, Sunday is the Fourth of July.

Deny it if you will, but you will be wrong. You have a fourth of July. Everybody has a fourth of July. It’s right there between the third and the fifth, so none of your lip now. If you live here, this country’s history is now your history, too.

When our kids were younger, we used to use our deck as a launching pad for bottle rockets. Well, the actual launching pad was a pop bottle, but who can find those any more? Now, we just jam the rocket between the cracks in the deck boards, light it, and stand back. Our deck is covered with black burn marks, but I kind of like that. It makes me remember happy summers with small children.

Oh, hush. We watched them carefully.

When the kids were older, we used to set off the big stuff in the back yard while the children sat safely on that same deck, watching. But I won’t go there in case there are any of those prissy types reading.

Our sidewalk is covered with black spots, too. That’s where we set off the coiling snakes. I’m still kind of partial to those. I like to look at the sidewalk spots, too, because they make me remember those giggling little kids, watching the coiling black snakes with big laughing eyes. The kids, not the snakes.

Nothing perfect can be truly beautiful. I’d rather have my spotty sidewalks and the memories than a pristine landscaped lawn. Good thing, too, since our grass is over a foot high in places the regular mower can’t go. The tractor’s in the shop.

I’ve always liked that quotation. I also believe it is absolutely true. I think about it whenever I’m feeling particularly cowardly. It helps me overcome it. Words help me overcome it.

I’ve always stood in awe before the power of words.

With words, simple words, we can delve into the past and the future, and all the various time blends that scientists must use big words to explain, but which writers can explain simply by using one or two of the helping verbs Ol’ Miz Roberts made us memorize back in seventh grade.

Time machines in stories show the blending of times with numerals and fast-motion, whipping past the window of the machine, or by numbers going backwards or forwards on a dial.

Writers just use a helping verb or two.

Scientists discuss the concept of time, past time, present time, future time, using diagrams and equations and big, big words.  Writers just stick a “have” or “had” or a “will” in front of a plain old verb to show the same thing.

Past and future are the easiest to measure. They are also the easiest to understand, or comprehend.  “Already happened” and “not happened yet” are no biggie.

It’s the present that’s the most difficult to comprehend and measure, because even with all of our scientific knowledge, inventions, devices, equations, whatever, the present is too fleeting to measure. The actual ‘present’ is so fleeting, we can’t even realize it ourselves. By the time we do, it’s already gone. Blink, and it’s past. Breathe, and it’s past. Sit still; each beat of your heart is in the past, because by the time you are aware, it’s too late, it’s gone.

Look at your children. They’re in the present, sure, if you want to call it that. Watch them sleeping. Each rise and fall of the covers is already part of the past. History. It’s already happened, and it will never happen again. Not that particular breathe. Not that particular heartbeat. Watch them play; this moment will never come again.  Look at the pictures you took only a few seconds ago.  Those moments are gone.  The expression on your child’s face, the way his hair falls over his eyes when he’s played outside for a while, the Kool-aid smiles, that particular shirt. . . Gone.

So often we say that we can’t WAIT for a particular phase or week or school year, etc, to be over with. Be careful what you wish, my dears. . . . When it’s gone, it’s gone.  My mom used to tell me – usually in the midst of a particularly awful phase – not to wish my children’s lives away, but I didn’t understand what she meant then.  I do now.

The actual present can’t be measured, not by us, not yet. Use it carefully, for once you’re aware of it, it’s already part of your history.

And your history, and mine, are, of course, part of the history of mankind.

Ah, the power of words, that we can so clearly express the elements of time with just a few simple helping verbs.  Scientists can’t do it yet.  Only writers can do it, with our magic wands called pens.  The typing fingers of a writer can make the past come alive again, and the present seem permanent, and the future? A time of hope and joy, which I hope is true for all of us.

I wondered about it. (simple past: one-shot deal, it’s over.)

For many years, I have wondered about it. (present perfect: I was wondering in the past and I’m STILL wondering. Two times are represented here, one in the past and one in the present.)

I had wondered about it before I said something. (past perfect: both actions are in the past, but one is more recent than the other. Two times are represented; both past.)

I have always enjoyed teaching this concept, and with adult students, it’s even more awesome. I’ve had students weep, during this lesson.

Words are powerful. A pen in the hand is power. Use words carefully, and properly. Choose them wisely.

Remember, there’s a big difference between a wise man and a wise guy. And which would you prefer: a day off or an off day?

I love the power, magic, and majesty of words.  Maybe this is one reason I hate texting and  cutesy codes so thoroughly

U dig?

*Annie Dillard

I’ve posted a lot in the past about my dying father: blind, both legs amputated above the knee, on kidney dialysis, eating via a stomach tube, etc. That was an accurate picture, but it wasn’t the only picture. It is also not the picture I have in my mind’s eye when I think of my father. At least, not usually.

My father – my REAL father – the father who was intact, before the diabetes devoured him, was tall, and strong, and hilarious. He was handsome – Hollywood handsome. He liked new experiences. He liked to travel. He sang. He cracked terrible jokes. He read voraciously.  He was smart – really, really smart. He would have liked to have gone to college, but it wasn’t possible.  Instead, he sent four kids through college, and continued to work day after day in a factory “so we would never have to.”  He tried hard, and he did the best he could with what he had.

Dad wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. He and all of his brothers and their father before them were quick-tempered and easy to, as Mom used to say, “set off.” My Other Sister and I had a daddy who was playful and laughing. My two younger siblings had a daddy who was cranky and yelling. Dad’s illness began long before anybody realized it, including himself, and the personality changes were just brushed aside as part of the aging process or, possibly, his true colors. Nobody actually said “true colors, ” but we all thought it.

It wasn’t until both of dad’s legs had been amputated and he was blind and bedridden and too weak to feed himself or turn over, that we all realized that the diabetes had begun to affect his mind long before it took his body.

He stayed at home and Mom took care of him. I don’t think she went anywhere for three or four years, except her hasty runs to the grocery and drugstores while Dad was at dialysis.

As I said, he was a fantastic father to his older children. With the younger kids, his various illnesses had started to affect him, and things in the house were different. Some of it wasn’t his fault, and some of it was. In this way, he was no different from any of us. Whatever may have crossed his mind from time to time, he never entertained the thought of leaving his family. I’m sure he was tempted to, as who isn’t? In fact, we KNOW he was tempted, but he had made a promise and he kept it. In my parents’ home, promises meant something.

On Father’s Day, I will think of my father with love and a few head-shakings and a lot of forgiveness and smiling. And, a few things that I haven’t forgiven yet.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. I knew all along that mean yelling daddy wasn’t really you.

In the picture, you see my father before he was struck down. That is my brother’s motorcycle, but Dad liked to take it around town of a late afternoon.

So did I, in fact. Please don’t tell Mom.

(I add to this post a little bit every Father’s Day.  If some of it seems familiar, thank you for being a loyal reader!)

“No two people are alike, and both of them are damn glad of it.”

That’s a quotation; that’s not me saying “damn,” although I frequently occasionally do. I am, to my shame, greatly afflicted with “potty mouth,” and although I managed to control it somewhat while my children were tiny, thanks to what I think of as my “Shit Epiphany,” it’s back, in full force. Honestly? I need help.

But I digress. No two people are alike, but both of them are expected to progress at the same rate by our public schools.

Our children are expected to learn to read and write by a certain age lest they be labeled “special education” and given an IEP and pulled from the classroom to be tutored in the Reading Room. Most of them are little boys.

Old hippies like me sometimes have a hard time admitting that there really are gender differences that no amount of “environment” is going to change. One of those differences is this: a lot of little boys need a few more years than a lot of little girls need, to mature enough so that their bodies and brains can sit still, together, long enough to learn how to read and write. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that while a lot of little girls are reading “Gone with the Wind,” many of the little boys sitting next to them are still struggling to recognize letter combinations. It is also a fact that some of these little boys who still can’t do it in the third grade, or the fourth, somehow have their own “epiphany” in the middle grades; something in their brain becomes aware of symbols and their meanings and how to translate them to Harry Potter. It wasn’t that these little boys didn’t TRY down in the lower grades; it was that their bodies and brains weren’t THERE yet.

I saw this miracle happen over and over again. With my own eyes I saw it. Sometimes, when I tried to tell other teachers, especially elementary teachers, about this awakening, they did not believe me. “I had that boy in third grade and I’m telling you, Jane, that he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a reader, a good student. He just can’t do it.”

And I’m telling you, Madeline, that I don’t give a rat’s ass* what the child did in your class. I am trying to tell you that in my class, the boy can read. One week he couldn’t, and the next week, he could. And he’s ecstatic.

Heidi learned to read overnight. It does happen. At age eight, Heidi learned to read overnight. And then she went home and taught her friend Peter how to read, and he was in his teens. The “learning how to read when convinced one would never be able to learn because it was just too hard” theme is a big one in this book.

My point? Do I have to have one? I guess I could drag one in by the hind legs if you must have a point. How about this one:

Hold off on the IEP’s and the labeling until the kid is in middle school. Tutor, yes. Give special help, yes. Hang a label on his forehead and put it in his permanent record? Not so fast there, Teach. Don’t do it Not yet. Not just for reading. Save the labeling for the children who genuinely need the help; don’t fill up the room with little boys who just need a few more years to mature.

Same-sex classrooms in the lower grades? Why not? It might work. It would certainly be better for the little girls who, most of them, just naturally catch on to the reading faster; they could move on! It would be better for the little boys, too; they wouldn’t feel pressured and might get comfortable enough to relax and blossom, too.

Many of our most highly esteemed scientists, inventors, etc, were late bloomers. Edison wasn’t even allowed to continue at his school; he was so slow, he held the others back!

Let’s give our little boys a break, what say, people?

And by the way, taking away a child’s recess because he couldn’t finish his vocabulary words quickly is cruel and unusual punishment. I suppose the boy would then be punished because he was extra wiggly since his ‘outlet’ was taken from him? Energetic little children NEED to be let loose on the playground several times a day!!! Taking away recesses for punishment or to make more room for standardized test review is the action of a halfwit who knows nothing about either education OR children and probably hasn’t been in a classroom since 1972 politician, superintendent, or some other administrator who falls into the ‘nimrod’ category of typical la la land unawareness of real people and how we live. Probably people who do that don’t know how to access their email, either, or use a computer. But then, that’s what secretaries are for.

I put up with this for 26 years. No wonder I had a potty mouth.

Back in the olden days, there were plenty of outlets for restless boys to work off their excess energy. Families sent their  boys out to chop wood, plow, herd cows, walk miles to a neighbor or a store, etc. Our boys fell into bed exhausted from genuine labor every night. Now, few boys have any safe or easily obtainable or legitimate outlets, other than sports, for their physical energy and it gets kind of balled up (sorry) in them and then they explode, sometimes for no conceivable reason other than that the kid simply needs an outlet. I’m a huge proponent of self control, but self control can only do so much. Any teacher can tell you that a middle-of-the-day segment devoted to intense physical activity is of vital importance for our students. Girls need it, too, but I’m focusing on the boys in this post. Afternoon classes full of boys who have had absolutely no physical outlet are a nightmare.

Organized games are not enough. Not every kid will get to play; plus, once the adults take charge, it’s no longer free play; it’s business. Let the kids run wild for a half hour or so and let the teachers stand there and try to keep them from getting hurt. Tim’s elementary school had a hill to slide down and a piney grove to play in. I taught in that same school for years and by then, the piney grove, the hill, and most of the coolest playground equipment had been removed because a kid fell down. Go figure. Our kids don’t even know HOW to fall down these days. When they are on ice or trip and really DO fall down, they get hurt because they’ve had no falling-down experience. Kids fall down. Live with it. Sheesh.

And by the way, this guv’ment standard of requiring our tiny first and second graders to sit still for NINETY MINUTES and read without interruption is ignorance in action on the part of whoever thought that one up. Tell me, Mr. Standards: Can YOU sit absolutely still for ninety minutes and read without interruption? I thought not.

*Dammit **, there I go again.

** Crap.

She told him she did it that way, because her mother always did it that way.

So the young husband asked his mother-in-law why she had always cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan. Her reply? She did it that way because HER mother had always done it that way.

At the next family dinner, the husband asked his wife’s grandmother why she had always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply? Because her mother had always done it that way.

His wife’s great-grandmother was still alive, so he went to the nursing home and asked her why she always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply?

“I only had the one small pan, and the only way a roast would fit in it was if it was first cut into two pieces.”

When my children visit, I often think of this story. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it might as well be, because so many of the things we do make no sense except in the context of the past.

First of all, both of my children love grilled cheese sandwiches. I mean, who doesn’t? Secondly, neither of my children will touch a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta.**

Thirdly, and most importantly, I can grant these wishes because A. I won’t eat a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta, either, and B. Velveeta is a name brand food I can actually AFFORD!

My son comes down to visit me frequently (Yay)  and the minute he enters the house, he requests grilled cheese sandwiches. When he was a little boy, the only way he could eat a grilled cheese sandwich was if I mashed it down flat with the spatula after the Velveeta had melted. THEN his little mouth could close around it, and he could eat the sandwich “like a man.”

He is 24*** years old now, but he still wants his grilled cheese flattened with the spatula. Because that’s how his mother always made them.

When he gets married****, I can’t wait to hear his wife’s reaction when he asks her to mash a perfectly good sandwich flat. Will she question it, or just do it?

Sometimes, family traditions have serious beginnings and funny middles. As for the endings, there aren’t any, not really.

*beef roast vs. roast beef: is it regional or are these two different cuts?

**No, I got no money or Velveeta from Kraft for saying this.  It’s just, well, true.

*** He’s 29 now, but who’s counting?

**** Mommy is still waiting.

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild,
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There’d have been no room for the child.
–by Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine has been one of my idols for many years.  I quote her frequently in this post.  She was awesome.

School administrators puzzle me. They don’t seem quite human sometimes. When they look at a group of students, what do they see? I mean, what are they really SEEING, when they look at our children? What are they seeing when they look at the teachers? I think they see statistics. I don’t think they see children, or educators; I think they see numbers, and dollar signs. Their schools are not filled with children; they are filled with potential federal cash cows, and potential lawsuits if their parents are not catered to. There are no educators; there are only puppets.

Children are not measurable. Statistics are.

I have a hard time understanding people who see progress only as a measurable statistic. I have problems with people who see creativity as a threat to order. I don’t get along well with people who see rebellion as a disregard for the status quo. What a sad commentary on our society, that the movers and shakers are mown down and shackled, just when they most need to be exposed to every innovation, every wonder, every aspect of the world that can possibly be brought into the classroom.  How sad that teachers are no longer allowed to bring the world into the classroom.  I was actually told that it wasn’t FAIR for my students to have a speaker, etc, when the other teachers weren’t doing that.  I was told it wasn’t FAIR that I cooked breakfast for my ISTEP students every morning, because other students (and their parents) were complaining that the other teachers weren’t doing it. A hot breakfast gave my students an unfair testing advantage.  Unquote.   Guess whose activity had to cease, immediately?  Yep, you guessed it.

Besides, what was I coming to school so early to do?  I mean, really?

What kind of people have we become, when attempts to guide are interpreted by those in ultimate control as journeys into perversion? When did going out of one’s way to try to help someone become inappropriate? Why must everyone now be so very equalized that much individuality is lost? Of what societal or individual use is an echo? The ingredients in a multiple vitamin are standardized; children should not be.

What possible good can be accomplished by a reflection that is not one’s own? I’ve seen a child’s original poem edited and corrected until the end result had nothing to do with that individual child’s talent or purpose. But then and only then did it get a good grade.  I was sent to a seminar and taught how to do this, in fact.

When the arts are removed completely (and they already are, in some schools; for the rest, it’s just a matter of time.) to make room for more practical, measurable, easily understandable lessons in math, sports, grammar, sports, science, sports, sports, sports, PC, and sports, what will our children have to write about? And why should they bother?

Our nation isn’t, to our shame, much about the intellectualism thing. (I made that sentence appalling on purpose.) It’s strange to me, then, that administrations set such store by IQ’s and standardized testing. An IQ cannot measure artistic ability. A high score on the ISTEP does not measure a capacity for love. We have no test that measures common sense. All we have are standardized tests that give us statistics, and statistics are not facts. I’ve ranted about that before. Statistics are people, with the tears wiped off. (Professor Irving Selikoff ) This is not good. We need the tears, too. The numbers are not accurate without the tears. Or the laughter.

Tears and laughter are not measurable. Therefore they are of no use to school administrators. They want only those things that can be measured with straight numbers, graded by a machine. In order to do this, things that make our children laugh or cry or sing or dance or draw or paint are no longer allowed in many of our schools. And yes, sometimes crying in school is a good thing. I’ve had students weep over a story in a book, or a scene in a film, or a headline in the newspaper. It’s GOOD. (I’m not talking about bad things that make children cry.)

The ability to love, to be loved, to express love: can it be that these are more important than grammar, or math, or social studies? I think they are. I also believe that a good teacher can do both at once, if ever he/she is allowed to do so again.

How do we teach children to have compassion, to allow people to be different, to understand that “like” is not the same as “equal?” How do we teach our children to laugh, to love, and to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have – nor do they need – statistical right-or-wrong answers.

There are even “educators” (and I use the term loosely) out there who believe that creativity itself can be taught, and who write learned (hahahahaha) and usually dull, treatises and articles and textbooks on methods of teaching it. If you try to eat air, you’ll. . . . well, you know what happens when you eat air. What comes out usually stinks.

The creative impulse, like love, can be killed, but it can’t be taught. What a teacher CAN do, in working with young people, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I’m concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations. Teaching out of a text so a test score will be higher is not.

In most modern schools, however, the providing of oxygen is forbidden. Only the hot air of measurable statistics is permitted, because this is the only sort of thing understood by many of those in charge.

When we make complicated that which is simple, the powers of darkness rejoice.

The powers of darkness rejoice whenever a child’s creative light is ignored or extinguished by a system that considers only statistics to be of merit. Not on the test? It won’t be tolerated.

The powers of darkness rejoice whenever a creative and caring teacher is removed by a system that considers only in-the-box, good ol’ boy, make-no-waves, textbook-teachers to have merit. What an ironic thing. What a joke on me. All these years, I thought my job was to teach and help young people. What a reality jolt to be told, after all these years of what people told me was success, that my job is NOT to help students, or to teach students, or to guide students; it is to teach spelling, grammar, and literature, and that it must be done with absolutely no delving into humanity, personality, or creativity. The language arts made rational. It is a travesty.

Facts. Facts. Measurable facts, cut and dried.

Have we learned nothing from Don Quixote de la Mancha? Is there no one out there in a position of authority who understands that facts are the enemy of truth? It’s better to tilt at windmills than to deprive our students of their individuality by cramming them into the little boxes of comformity. Yes, no student should ever be allowed to graduate or move on if he/she can not pass a basic grade-level skills test; but to teach only to that test? Absolutely unacceptable. Removing the magic from learning should be a capital crime.

And when all the glory and wonder and magic of the language are removed, there is nothing left but the very safe, very statistically provable, very politically correct picking of the bleached, sanitary bones. Our language, in all its glory, forcefully ebbing, forcefully waning, its light put under a bushel lest someone see something sentient and therefore potentially controversial and unmeasurable. Our children’s talents buried, hidden under that same bushel, to be dug up every nine weeks for a progress check.

WAIT! Over there! A teacher is laughing with her students! Can’t have it. BAM, she’s gone. Whew, that was close.

Bullying teachers? Check. Sleeping teachers? Check. Incompetent teachers? Check. Adulterous teachers? Check. Racist teachers? Check. Oh, we’re keeping all of those; no two styles are the same, you know.

WAIT! Over there! A teacher tried to help a student after hours! Can’t have it. BAM, she’s gone. Whew, another close one.

Decent, hardworking, winning coach/teacher? Sweet. But WAIT! A famous name says he’s willing to coach if there’s ever an opening! BAM. Instant opening. A few rules are broken but it’s all in the name of a winning season so it’s okay. Irony: no more winning season.

Plagiarist? Check. Another plagiarist? Check. Two plagiarizing valedictorians in a row. But it’s okay; their families are prominent, and the principal approved. He’s no longer principal, by the way.

He’s now the assistant superintendent.

Students with bullet belts? Check. Students who use racist epithets? Check. Hey, that’s just how we do things around here.

Student’s car, parked in lot, has an empty beer can on floor of back seat? Expelled. Student wasn’t even in the car at the time? Doesn’t matter. Zero tolerance.

LD student steals a girl’s purse, opens it, and eats all her Midol tablets. Student gets sick. Girl is suspended for bringing drugs to school. Zero tolerance.

Student’s purse strap catches on fire alarm. Parents are called in. They are nobody. Student is suspended for a week. Zero tolerance.

Student deliberately pulls fire alarm. Parents are called in. They are somebody. Principal slaps student on the wrist and sends him back to class. Check.

Student is seen putting Orajel on gums because newly-tightened braces are causing pain. Student suspended for drug usage. Zero tolerance.

Student unplugs a teacher’s computer and disconnects the monitor. Check. Boy was just being playful and silly.

Same boy has a website called Hate_____(insert various teachers’ names in blank.) All the students know about it. Boy takes pictures of teachers with cameraphone and posts them on these websites. Obscene language. Check. Boy honored with free trip to California for being so web-savvy.

Student steals Chapstick from girl’s purse, and eats it. Student gets sick. Girl suspended for bringing drugs to school. Zero tolerance.

Inhalers must be kept locked in the office. They’re considered drugs, too.

Okay, let’s calm down now and take some tests. They’ll determine your future, but no pressure. Anybody left in the room? Begin. Make your mark heavy and dark.

I guess that in today’s educational mentality, dormancy is a positive; at the very least it means a child has not regressed (bad for statistics); at the very most, it means that a child has not done any thinking. (also bad for statistics.) How safe, for those in charge. Imagination, that creation of an image for one’s thoughts, is the great enemy of the payroll statistician, of the elected administration, of the appointed administration, and of the population created by them.

Also, when a school’s scores are low one year, and higher the next year, the school gets more money than if the scores had been high all along. Improvement has merit; being good all the time does not.

“Picture Satan in a business suit, with well-groomed horns, a superbly switching tail, a wide, salesman’s grin, sitting with folded hands behind a large shiny desk, its top littered with the paper trails of many a person’s demise, thinking ‘Aha! If I can substitute images for reality, if I can substitute statistics for people, if I can substitute good public relations for truth, I can get a lot more people under my domination.” (L’Engle)

This is what I picture when I think of a school administrator now.

Public opinion. Administrative opinion. Political correctness. Euphemisms.

And by whose values is a test labeled “objective?”

“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy. Current methodology, the morbid preoccupation with scores and statistics, is destroying our society’s ontology:its essence, its BEING.” (L’Engle)

It seems that when those in charge do not understand a thing, they straightaway condemn it. Simplicity itself. These are the kind of people who never understand anything unless it is told them in very plain language and hammered into their heads. And even then they understand it only with their brains and not with their hearts. Such people don’t like creativity. They like facts. Facts are easier to comprehend. They take little effort. They represent money. They’re easy to come by and grade. The main thing, however, is money.

Money talks. Statistics mean money. What is then the most important thing to listen to? Statistics.

The whispers of creativity and love and kindness and hard work are seldom heard above the screaming of administrative-types seeking money-making statistics. Teachers who go above and beyond the call of measurable duty are facing a firing squad, and the guns could go off at any moment. It’s dangerous, for many, TOO dangerous, to put yourself on the line to help a child. Those who take the chance, are taking a genuine chance. An administrator who can’t comprehend such a thing will do all in his power to remove a genuinely caring teacher from the ranks, lest there be talk. The truth be damned; they are concerned only with public opinion.

The concentration of a child in play is analogous to the concentration of an artist of any discipline. But unless the child’s output can be objectively measured, many administrators dismiss such activities and substitute activities which have a statistically measurable output. Recess is gone, in many schools. The time is needed to prepare for standardized tests. Wiggly little children have no outlet for their natural energy. They ‘act up’ and are punished. If there are music and art classes still in the curriculum, they are crammed with six or seven times the student population of an academic class; it’s just music, after all. Helpless teachers cry out in vain for common sense and fairness and they are not heard. Such things do not exist in the world of statistics and measurements. And our children are standing in the corner, trying not to move, lest they disturb other children who are having facts crammed into their heads that they might retrieve them for the State.

Don’t misinterpret me here. I believe in testing. I’m no tree-huggin’ earth mother who thinks children should sing and dig clay out of the ground for art and eat granola all day long. I believe in math and science and grammar and spelling and history. But I also believe that these are only a partial list of things that our children need to learn, so they will become rational adults who are able to earn their own living, care for themselves and for others, appreciate culture, have fun, and contribute, rather than take away, from society.

I am also a firm believer in cross-curricular education.  Everything is connected to everything else.  Astronomy can’t be taught without also teaching mythology.  And science is connected to EVERYTHING.  Yes, and teachers should require students to use proper spelling and grammar in all subject areas.

We must never lose sight of the fact that civilizations are judged by the arts they leave behind, not for statistics and varsity letters. What will the archaeologists of the future be able to say about our civilization? That we taught our children to be joyless? That we valued a statistic far more than a painting? That we stifled laughter and encouraged apathy? That we honored a scoreboard more than a poem? “Where are the statues and paintings and stories?” Can you hear them wondering? Can you? Or are you too busy condoning the firing of a winning and competent coach so that a Name Brand might be hired in his place? Are you too busy basking in the sea of innuendo and assumption, and ruining teachers’ careers and lives based on nothing but rumors and lies? I think some administrators are, and that they love it. They must, or they wouldn’t continue to do it.

It is sad but true that we are a litigious society. It is sad but true that many of the above facts originate out of fear of a lawsuit, or fear of adverse public opinion/publicity. The self-esteem police and the PC patrol and the heliocopter parents are rampant, and are to be truly feared. That is sad, too.

But it is even sadder that the society which strikes the most fear into the hearts of the schools was created by this fact-finding mentality that is so prevalent today.

The saddest, and the truest, is that this is a vicious circle, and no one seems to have the intestinal fortitude to straighten it out. Indeed, as so many of us have discovered, it is too dangerous to try.

Once upon a time, we were just sisters and wives and daughters when we got together, sharing a mom and having first names.  Now, we’re all Mom, Mommy, Grandma, Mamaw, Aunt, Great-aunt, mother-in-law . . . . I can remember days when I couldn’t remember the last time someone called me by my actual name.

I also remember, clear as a bell, the first time my child said my new name.  Mama.  That moment is etched on my heart, in beautiful calligraphy, and decorated with fresh flowers.  I still love to hear my children say “Mom.”  These women whose children refer to them by their first names, instead of some variation of mother?  I pity both woman and child.  Somethin’ WRONG wit dat.  Somebody gots her priorities all messed up.

Contrary to popular belief, mothers are not omnicient, we don’t have eyes in the backs of our heads, and we can’t read your mind.  The only exception to that would be MY mother.

And speaking of my mother. . . Mom, I have tried to emulate you in many ways, all of my life.  You read to us.  You sat down on the floor and played with us.  You used the power of Parenthood and created Special Days, all throughout the year.  Christmas is a holiday, sure, but it was YOU who created OUR Christmas.  I have tried to “do” holidays just as you did, all my married life.

I’m looking forward to Sunday, dear sisters and nieces and daughters and all of the other wonderful descriptions that come with all of you.  I might be the weirdo of the bunch – oh, it’s not like I don’t KNOW that!!!! -but I might also be the most sentimental of the bunch.

1.The phrase “working mother” is redundant. ~Jane Sellman

2. The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

3. I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

4. A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan

5. The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~Honoré de Balzac

6. He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men’s mothers. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

7. An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. ~Spanish Proverb

8. My mom is a neverending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune. ~Graycie Harmon

9. Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. ~Lisa Alther

10. Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing. ~Toni Morrison, Beloved

11. The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones. ~Mignon McLaughlin

12. A mom forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don’t even have. ~Robert Brault

13. One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. ~George Herbert

14. Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. ~William Makepeace Thackeray

15. Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother. ~Moorish Proverb

16. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~Abraham Lincoln

17. No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones. ~Harry Truman

18. God could not be everywhere, so He created mothers. ~Jewish Proverb

19. Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~Oprah Winfrey

20. I regard no man as poor who has a godly mother. ~ Abraham Lincoln

21. The mother loves her child most divinely not when she surrounds him with comforts and anticipates his wants, but when she resolutely holds him to the highest standards and is content with nothing less than his best. ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

22. The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. ~ William Ross Wallace

23. There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness… The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way. ~ Andrew Jackson

24. Who is getting more pleasure from this rocking, the baby or me? ~ Nancy Thayer

25. No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

26. Sometimes when I look at all my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.’” ~ Lillian Carter

27. And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see — or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. ~ Alice Walker

28. Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women’s opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering. ~ Elaine Heffner

29. If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much. ~ Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

30. I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best I could bring to it. ~ Rose Kennedy

31. A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

32. She was the archetypal selfless mother: living only for her children, sheltering them from the consequences of their actions — and in the end doing them irreparable harm. ~ Marcia Muller

33. Spend at least one Mother’s Day with your respective mothers before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him. ~ Erma Bombeck

34. No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there’s a wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick. ~ Erma Bombeck

35. Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate. ~ Charlotte Gray

36. Giving kids clothes and food is one of thing, but it’s much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people. ~ Dolores Huerta

37. Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still. ~ Nancy Friday

38. I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up. ~ Pearl S. Buck

39. The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. ~ Father Theodore Hesburgh

40. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ~ Virginia Woolf

41. A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path. ~ Agatha Christie

42. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. ~ Albert Einstein

43. If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylum would be filled with mothers. ~ Edgar Watson Howe

44. What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

45. My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it. ~ Mark Twain

46. Over the years I have learned that motherhood is much like an austere religious order, the joining of which obligates one to relinquish all claims to personal possessions. ~ Nancy Stahl

47. There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

48. At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent. ~ Golda Meir

49. A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take. ~ Cardinal Mermilod

50. A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man. ~ George Eliot

51. There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you’re faced with somebody whose needs won’t be put off. ~ Angela Carter

52. Isidor Isaac Rabi’s mother used to ask him, upon his return from school each day, “Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?” ~ Steve Chandler

53. Sometimes the poorest woman leaves her children the richest inheritance. ~ Ruth E. Renkel

54. Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~ Marion C. Garretty

55. A mother is never cocky or proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child has just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium. ~ Mary Kay Blakeley

56. It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. ~ Phyllis Diller

57. Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it. ~ Haim Ginott

58. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. ~ Abigail Van Buren

59. Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~ Elizabeth Stone

60. If you want your child to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales. If you want your child to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales. ~ Albert Einstein

P.S.  What’s that she’s saying?  She needs to FIND HERSELF?  “Find herself” my Aunt Fanny.  Grow a pair, and be a parent to your child.  He’ll have pals his own age.  YOU can “find yourself” after your job is done.

P.P.S.  Does anybody else love it when, out in public, a child says “Mama?” and forty women instinctively turn their heads?

When most of us first started putting bits and pieces of ourselves “out there” for “strangers” to see, we didn’t use our real names.  We made up fake or cute names for ourselves, and for our spouses and children, too.  After all, the internet is huge and strange and full of dark, creepy neighborhoods and “iffy” people, and if nobody knew who we really were, we felt safer.  Well, I did.  Now, most of us don’t bother with the original fake names; we use our real names because everybody knows anyway.  Heck, pole dancers are coming out of the woodwork these days, trying to buy “Mamacita” from me, but they can’t have it.  Not officially, anyway.    They can sign their posts that way but they can’t have the url’s or the Twitter name.

But, most of you know who I am now.  I don’t mind.  I like it.  Some of you know where I live because you’ve been here, and that makes me happy, too.

Fake internet names.  It’s almost funny now.

Then something happened.

Those internet strangers. . . they turned into real people.  Then the real people turned into real people with actual names and locations.  And then, well, then. . . a lot of them turned into real and actual friends.

Not just people with whom we exchanged advice and ideas and conversation, but friends.

I know there are those who do not believe an internet friend is the same thing as a real-life friend, but they are wrong.  In fact, I think we sometimes end up knowing more about an internet friend – assuming (and we have to assume this) – that we’re all telling the truth about ourselves – and I think we are.  Oh, there’s the occasional scam.  I’ve been scammed that way myself twice, BIG TIME.

This made me perhaps a bit more wary, but ultimately, I trust people because that’s how people become trustworthy, and I know that 99.99% of the blogosphere- at least the neighbors I’m familiar with – is populated with awesome people, and I’m proud to know them.

Proud to know them, both online and off.  Yes, I’ve met many of my online friends for realz, as the kids say, and it’s bloody awesome when that happens.

Conventions, conferences, meetings, Tweet-ups. . . . these are safe and convenient ways to meet online acquaintances and friends, but let me tell you something.  When someone you have come to know well and like and love to talk to invites you out to visit, that’s a happening one never forgets.  It’s a blind friendship date, and mine turned out wonderfully.  You know who you are, you wonderful, beautiful, fabulous people you.

But I digress.

Blogging has changed me.  It has encouraged me to be retrospective, to look inward and find ideas I didn’t even know I had.  It has helped me understand myself and other people.  It has forced me to look at things I’ve done, or that other people did, with fresh eyes.  It has helped me forgive.  It has made me look closely and from afar, because both microscope and telescope are equally important.  It has helped me deal with various situations.  It has renewed my trust in people.  It has helped me find myself, and others.

Part of these changes came naturally, as a result of this new way of looking at and expressing myself.  However, some of the changes came in another way.

Comments.

Total strangers who had something to say about what I had said.  People who were kind, and unkind, and full of wonderful advice.  People who came back to this blog again and again, like people with something in common who meet for lunch.  Occasionally someone told me off, which I occasionally needed.  People made accusations, and yelled at me with capital letters.  Sometimes my daughter and sister commented, telling me that my personal view of a situation or occurrence wasn’t necessarily the only one.  We all need to be reminded of THAT, you know.  It helped.  All of it helped.

In other words, after six years of blogging, I think I know myself better.  I think I understand other people a little better.  I think I’m able to look back at certain situations with a more understanding eye.  I’ve “met” people who were hurting much more than I was, people who were much more talented than I am, people who were WAY nicer than I am, people who were mean and hateful and dishonest, people who were kind and loving and genuine, people whose creative talent made me stand up in awe, people I’ve actually really met, people I can’t wait to meet, people who banded together and raised money for someone in need who they’d never actually met, people who were hurting, people who were helping, people who were living in the Blogosphere as if it were an actual neighborhood (which it IS),  people I’m now working for, people I’d love to work for, people I like so much there simply are no words. . . . .

Before I moved to the Blogosphere, my world was pretty limited.  I taught in the same room in the same building all day and then I went home.  Sometimes, after school, I waited tables all night and cooked in a deli all weekend.  We never had much money.  Every day was pretty much the same, and I’d been working with the same people for years and years.  It’s not just online that people are fooled about other people.

Once I moved into the blogosphere, though, my entire life was different.  I had a different job, different schedule, different EVERYTHING, including a different outlook on life.  It took a little while to let my guard down and trust people, but once I did, it was liberating.  It was like one of those corny commercials that show a woman running along the beach, arms uplifted, living the moment.  It seriously was.  And we all know that most corny things are also true things.

Anyway, now that Scheiss Weekly is six years old, I wanted to thank you all for freeing me from the cage in which I was apparently living, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.  A public school teacher is a slave, and I’m not kidding, and most of them don’t even know it until they leave and start doing something else.  But that’s another post, isn’t it.

I am free, and doing work I LOVE, and meeting all kinds of people and finding them awesome.  Nobody will ever cage me again.  And if I want to show my students that all things are in some way connected, I damn well will and nobody can stop me.

I love my blog.  I love the Blogosphere.  I love the people I’ve met through this blog and through people I met through this blog.  They are real.  We are all real  The Blogosphere is real.  It is here, and it is now, and it is here to stay.  Twitter and Facebook, etc, are all wonderful and I like them and I use them but ultimately, somehow, it always comes back to the blog.  Some things need more than 140 characters to be said properly.

This is a long post.  If you’ve made it this far, I thank you.  Corny, sentimental mush?  Oh, sure.  I’m good at that; just ask my kids.

But just so you know it’s really me. . . . . BEHAVE YOURSELVES!

My husband still speaks wistfully of the day he and the kids visited his step-grandmother Margaret (she whom John Dillinger once tried to carjack. . . .) and she shared with them her unbelievable and, naturally, SECRET, morel mushroom patch.

Remember now, Hoosiers do not share this kind of secret with ANYBODY. People who will show a stranger their genital surgery scars will not share a morel mushroom location with their own mothers. Margaret took Tim and the kids across her fields and invited them to help themselves to the mushrooms.

They were everywhere. It was like a planted crop. You couldn’t take a step without stepping on morel mushrooms. They were all afraid to move, because around these parts, folks, you just don’t STEP on morel mushrooms if you can help it at all. They’re too valuable!!

How valuable are they? Well, if you can bear to part with yours, you can easily sell them for fifty bucks a pound. But it’s rare to find anyone who would part with them.

They came home fully loaded.

We once went to dinner at a friend’s home, and when we got there, she was preparing morel mushrooms as a last-minute addition to the meal. It seems that the night before, her husband had gone to their secret mushroom patch and had dumped two huge buckets of morels into their kitchen sink. All the guests were flabbergasted; usually, people don’t share their found mushrooms with others, either. To this day, none of us can remember what the main dish was at that meal. All anybody can remember is the mushrooms.

Except for me. Naturally, except for me. I am a freak, for I do not care all that much for morel mushrooms. I enjoy preparing them, but as for eating them. . . . well, let’s just say that everybody wants to sit by me, because I don’t eat mine and am happy to share.

And speaking of preparing them. . . . don’t let anybody tell you to use crushed saltines!!!

The proper Hoosier method is to mix together a little flour and a little cornmeal and a dash of salt, coat each mushroom, and fry in butter for just a few minutes. Remember to turn them.

Let them cool just enough to tolerate, and turn your crowd loose on them. There will never be enough.

Back in the middle school, my students used to bring breadsacks full of morel mushrooms and sell them to the teachers for twenty dollars apiece. The teachers got morel mushrooms for bargain rates, and the students got cash. It worked out pretty well for both parties concerned. I never bought any from a student; it wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, it was just that, well, I’d seen these same kids try to tell the difference between a noun and a verb all year, and pick wrong every time. There was something about believing that they could tell the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool and pick correctly every time, that just didn’t hit me quite right. I’m sure they knew; outdoor kids know these things. It was just a feeling I had.

As for the finding of them, I am probably the only Hoosier in the history of the state who not only doesn’t like to eat morel mushrooms, but also can’t find them even if they’re right there by the toe of my shoe. I can’t SEE them. I also tend to step on them, which makes me the kid who is picked last for anybody’s mushroom team. Usually, I just stay home and get ready to cook them when they’re brought home, whether I end up with a bowlful or a handful.

But if you live around these parts, around this time of year, around now, anywhere you might go, you won’t be able to escape the morel mushroom stories. In southern Indiana, we’d rather hear about the morel that got away, than about your boring old six-feet-long fish that got away.

And since I don’t care for them myself, that would be the “Queen’s We” that I’m using here.

I love to say that. It sounds so borderline.