Simple IQ Test February 10, 2010

Last night I had a very unfortunate run-in with a couple falling glasses.  My thumb was sliced up pretty badly, but my roommate came to the rescue with enough bandages to resemble Little Jack Horner.  Fortunately, by this morning I could wear just a band-aid.  But even a band-aid catches the attention of 6-year-olds.  The questions started as soon as they entered the room:

Boy 1:  What happened to your thumb?

Me:  My baby tiger bit me.

Boy 1:  (satisfied with the answer) Oh.

Girl:  You have a baby tiger?

Me:  Do you really think I do?

Girl:  No.

————————————————

Boy 2:  (yelling from his desk)  What happened to your thumb?

Me:  (ignoring him)

Boy 3:  T wants to know what happened to your thumb.

Me:  My baby tiger bit me.

Boy 3:  (satisfied with answer and walking over to Boy 2)  Her baby tiger bit her.

Boy 2 then looked at me with a skeptical look, grinned, and shook his head.

Fat Men Beating Each Other Up Over a Little Ball Trumps Worshipping God, Our Lord and Savior, Who Created the Heavens and the Earth February 7, 2010

The following message was sent out from my church this week:
Super Bowl party directly following the 5:30 service! The service will be kept short and we will be recording the Super Bowl – so you won’t miss any of the game or any commercials. Bring your favorite Super Bowl dish or snack to share.  (My emphasis added.)

Seriously??  I certainly have skipped church on occasion for likely unworthy causes but never to sit in front of the TV.  This is why I sometimes hate this country.  Now the question is, do I want to go to that service at all knowing that there will be all kinds of references to football?

(I don’t know why that paragraph is so small.  I can’t find anything on here to change the size or type of the font.)

Race in My Classroom February 7, 2010

I teach at a majority bilingual school.  On my team of nine first grade teachers, five teach bilingual (which in first grade means instruction is mostly all Spanish) and four of us are monolingual.  The four of us teaching monolingual have a mix of students, including many Hispanic or Asian ESL students.  However, because the teacher I replaced was not ESL-certified, I had no ESL students when I started.  As a result, my students are predominantly black.  To be precise, I had 17 black students and three Hispanic students when I started.  I now have two more Hispanic students.

I, as a white teacher, am very aware of the segregation in the school.  I found it hard to relate Martin Luther King’s fight for integration to my class.  Usually I can point to my melting pot of students and say, “Isn’t it great that because of Martin Luther King’s fight for civil rights, we all get to be in school together?”  This time around I said, “I’m so glad that because of Martin Luther King, I get to be your teacher.”  I don’t think they got it.

When I first started teaching a month ago, we made a poster with the students’ faces all around.  I had manila, light brown, and dark brown paper for them to choose from.  I had drawn my face on manila.  I really stressed that they should make their self-portrait look as much like them as possible.  I was surprised at how many chose manila paper, while a couple of the lighter-skinned kids chose dark brown.  I thought:  Maybe they’re not aware of their “blackness” or “Hispanicness” or my “whiteness”.

Then this week, I changed my mind about that.  Let me preface my first anecdote by explaining that I share lunch/recess duty with my neighbor teacher who is a bilingual teacher.  She takes both classes to lunch every day, and I take both to recess.  The two groups never interact (except for the bullies!).  This week because of the weather, we had a painful five days of indoor recess.  On one of the days after Mrs. B’s class had gone back to their room and Iwas asking about something that had happened during recess in my room, one of my kids said that “one of the white ones” did it, referring to the Hispanic students in the bilingual class.  The White Ones.

Another day this week I was getting tired of all the tattling that was going on all day and decided to just start mimicking what the students sounded like.  At one point, one little girl whined about another:  “She won’t stop messin’ wi’ me!”  So I cocked my hip, put my hand on it and threw back, “She won’t stop messin’ wi’ me!” which created many surprised looks and shut several students up.  Then the tattler said, “You sound like a black person.”

So apparently I’m not the only one aware of my “whiteness” and their “blackness”.

I Guess I’ll Pack Up and Move to a More Righteous City January 25, 2010

I recently came across a website called boycotthouston.com, created to retaliate against our newly elected gay mayor.  I didn’t explore the website at all because I thought it was so ridiculous.  But a friend’s blog just alerted me to the hilariously serious suggestions given by the website on how to boycott our city:

What you can do to help:

1. If you take a vacation, do not take it in Houston.
2. If you drive through Houston, do not buy fuel, food, or stay in a hotel there. Spend your money in one of Houston’s outlying suburbs.
3. If you fly, arrange connecting flights so as to avoid lay-overs in Houston. If this cannot be avoided then spend no money at the airport.
4. If you shop online, find out the location of the company who’s website you are browsing. If the online store is based in Houston, go to another website.
5. If you have relatives in Houston, try to get them to come visit you rather than you visit them.
6. If you are considering a business convention, do not consider Houston.
7. If you are planning a business or professional conference, plan it somewhere other than Houston.
8. If you are considering hiring a contractor, do not hire one based in Houston.
9. If you are searching for employment, do not accept a position in Houston.
10. If you are seeking investment opportunities, look at opportunities elsewhere.
11. If you live in Houston, shop in an outlying suburb whenever possible.
12. If you are considering a service ( cell phone, internet, cable TV, etc) do not use one based in Houston.
13. If you need to ship something, do not use Houston’s ports.
14. If you are starting a new business do not open it in Houston.
15. If you are considering expanding your business no not expand in Houston.
16. If you live in Houston and you have considered moving, now is a good time.
17. If you need a medical procedure and it does not endanger your health, go to another city.
18. If you want to buy a newspaper, do not buy a Houston paper.
19. If you need insurance, do not buy a policy from a company based in Houston.
20. If you are a sports fan do not watch Houston’s teams or spend money on their team’s apparel or product.

Can we boycott the boycotters?

Cute Stuff Kids Say January 24, 2010

My kids are generally not very nice to each other.  As always with first graders, there’s a lot of tattling going on.  There’s also a lot of whining.  One of my students is CONSTANTLY out of his seat and constantly bothering other children.  When I get on him, he whines, “What I diiiiiid??”  All day long I hear this particular whine.  The other day one of my sweet boys was talking about “humping girls”.  Another boy was saying “ass” all day.  Plus they’re often calling each other “ugly” or “dumb”.

However, occasionally I can get them to focus on academics, and occasionally a cute thing or two comes out of their mouths.  Here are a couple examples:

We’ve been studying Martin Luther King for the past couple weeks.  In one book it said that “people should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  I asked them what they thought that meant.  They turned to a partner and discussed.  When they turned back to the front, I asked what they had thought with their partners.  One little boy confidently raised his hand and said very intellectually, “Well, we were thinking about Spongebob.  Because you know, Spongebob, he’s a character.”

Another day we were working on main idea and details.  We put “Martin Luther King was an important man,” as our main idea.  Then I was asking them to come up with details from all the books we’ve read.  Someone said, “He was shot and killed.”  I wrote that down.  Then another boy said, “Martin Luther King died for our sins.”  I tried not to laugh and asked, “Was that Martin Luther King?”  He kind of shook his head, smiled sheepishly, and said, “Oh, no.  That was God.”

Three Little Girls January 22, 2010

I had lunch with three of my students today.  One is particularly sweet and basically a perfect child.  Let’s call her Ashley.  Another one is really sweet and I think gifted but often does her own thing, and I have suspected there are some issues at home.  Let’s call her Karly.  The other girl is like a 16-year-old trapped in a 6-year-old’s body.  She has the biggest attitude I’ve ever seen in a young child – always rolling her eyes at me and smacking.  She is pretty consistently in a bad mood and is often mean to other kids.  Let’s call her Kenyatta.

Innocent questions about their families turned into this conversation:

Ashley:  My daddy doesn’t live with us.  He in jail.  He broke the law.

Me:  Do you get to visit him?

Ashley:  Yes.

Me:  How’s he doing?

Ashley:  Good.  He gets to play basketball and football behind his school.

Karly:  I never visit my daddy in jail.  …He was selling crack.  And weed.

Kenyatta:  Oooooh, you said two bad words.

Me:  Karly, how many brothers and sisters do you have?

Karly:  I had three brothers.

Me:  How old are they?

Karly:  One is seven.  One is 13.  And one is dead.

Me:  Oh no, how did he die?

Karly:  He jumped off the roof.  He was fixing the roof.  He was 19.

Kenyatta:  My brother was walking to the store and someone shot him in the back of the head 17 times.  He was 18.

Karly:  Someone shot my baby sister all up and down her body.  She was bleeding everywhere.

Me:  But she’s okay?

Karly:  Yes.

Me:  Who shot her?

Karly:  My daddy friend.

…

Karly:  My sister was kissing a boy.

Kenyatta:  Yeah, my momma saw her kissing a boy.

Karly:  Everyone say she had sex with that boy.

Kenyatta:  Oh that a nasty word.  You cain’t say that!  Not in front of the teacher!

Karly:  (completely unfazed)  They say they had sex.  He say they did.  She say they didn’t.

Me:  How old is your sister?

Karly:  Eleven.  That boy is 15.

I live in a different world than these kids, only 15 minutes away.  In many ways I feel like I adapted to Mozambican culture more easily than this culture.  I don’t understand the world they live in.  I don’t know how to begin to understand what it’s like to be six and know these things about the world.  And I don’t know how to respond.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice January 14, 2010

My dear friends, Zach and Renee, got their girls today!!!  For those who don’t know, they’ve been going through an adoption process in Colombia for the past two years.  This past summer they found out that they were matched with sisters, Monica (5) and Kelly (4).  On Monday, they flew to Colombia and today they finally got to meet their girls.  Check out their story:  www.ardenlane.net.

On Being a Teacher Again January 10, 2010

Just as the Israelites were instructed to tell and retell stories of how God worked in their lives – to always remember -  I need to write my story about the last couple months before I forget, before I become swamped in difficulties and challenges.

As I mentioned in my last post, I never, ever thought I’d be back in Houston teaching first grade.  Never, ever.  And I didn’t look for a teaching job either when I found out that I couldn’t return to Mozambique.  In fact, I had decided that I would look for other positions abroad or maybe get a job at Starbucks just to earn a little cash but to do something mindless while I figured my life out.  I also thought maybe I could substitute teach starting in January.  Which is how I ended up on my old school district’s website one evening in November.

It was a bit early to think about subbing, especially since I wanted to take the rest of the year off.  But something prompted me to do some research that night into what I needed to start subbing.  I never did find out what I needed because in the confusion of the district’s website, I ended up on their vacancies page and saw two postings:  third grade bilingual and first grade.  First grade is what I had taught for three years.  I clicked on the link and realized I knew the principal because she had been the AP at the first school I taught at.  The deadline was two days later.  I knew I needed to apply.  It was too weird that I should come across that particular posting without looking for it.  I immediately emailed the principal to let her know I’d be sending my stuff in.

I was jittery that night.  In a sense, I knew I already had the job.  And that scared me because I didn’t want to be in the States teaching.  I wanted to go back to Mozambique.  On the other hand, I knew there were so many positives to teaching in this season:  earning some money so that I could buy a plane ticket to go to Mozambique in June to collect my things and say good-bye properly to friends and colleagues, gain some more teaching experience, renew my teaching credentials which expire in March, connect to church and friends for more than just a couple weeks, etc.  There were many reasons why staying in Houston and teaching would be ideal.

A couple weeks later I went for the interview and felt an instinct to turn around when I walked into the school building.  Thoughts of, “What am I doing here?  I left this three and a half years ago!  This can’t be my life again,” ran through my head.  And I prayed, “God, you know I don’t want to be in Houston right now.  You know I’m weirded out by interviewing for a teaching job.  But I applied because I believe you brought this job to my attention.  I will interview in my best ability.  If you want me to have this job, give me this job, and I will gratefully accept it.  If you don’t want me to have this job, please give it to the person who most deserves it, and I will also gratefully accept that.”  It was a no-lose situation for me.

The next day, the principal called and offered me the job.  I gratefully accepted it, but I also cried on the way home from a meeting I had been at as the reality of not going back to Mozambique and now living in Houston hit me.  This is my life:  I am once again a first grade teacher living in Houston.  I couldn’t help wondering that if I’m right back where I started, what was my time in England and Mozambique about.

In the following couple weeks, I visited my new class several times to meet the kids and get a feel for their routines and curriculum.  I found out that their first teacher had been fired, and they were on their second long-term sub.  I would be their fourth teacher of the year.  Many teachers stopped me in the hallway or came through the classroom and told me how excited they were to have me.  The language arts specialist, who had been working daily with my class, was particularly enthusiastic.  She told me how the principal had come to her one day and said, “You’ll never guess the email I got last night,” in reference to the one I had sent her letting her know I’d be applying for the job.  The language arts specialist explained, “We were worried about filling that position mid-year.”  I said, “Oh, didn’t anyone else apply for the job?”  She said, “142 people did.”  More affirmation that  God wanted me to have the job.

During those days of observations, I also began to get a feel for the kids.  Here were a couple conversations I had:

Boy:  Can you help me write this letter?

Me:  Sure, what do you want to say to your mom?

Boy:  That I love her, even though she’s in jail.

——————————————————————–

Girl:  Teacher, she said the t-word!

Me:  I’m sorry, I don’t know what the t-word is.

Girl demonstrates by cupping hands around chest.

——————————————————————–

Boy:  (Pointing to some snacks that kids had brought in for a holiday party)  Can we take those snacks home?

Me:  Then there wouldn’t be any for the party on Friday.  Wouldn’t it be more fun to have a party?

Boy:  But I don’t have any food at home.

——————————————————————–

I also found out that another child’s parents beat him, and a little girl told another teacher that her brother might go to jail for raping a girl.  Her brother is 13.  And this girl is six and knows what rape is.

It struck me that parts of Houston are as much a mission field as Beira.  The issues are the same.  There might not be AIDS orphans here, but there are “jail orphans” and hunger, poverty, and abuse.  This week it’s been in the 30s, and there are several children in the school who do not have jackets.

My heart changed toward teaching.  I began to get excited about developing relationships with my students, loving them, encouraging them.  I began to get excited about setting up my classroom and doing lessons – using my creativity in ways I knew I was good at and hadn’t been able to exercise in awhile.  I still struggle with “going backwards”, but relationships are relationships, and love is love, whether it’s with high school students in Beira or elementary school students in Houston.  I want my heart to be open to that and remember Who brought me to Beira and Who brought me to Houston, especially when things start getting tough.

On Being a Teacher December 18, 2009

I had the best teacher in second grade – Mrs. Andersen.  She had been teaching for over 20 years, so I thought she was really old at the time.  I realized a few years ago that she was probably only in her early to mid-40s!  What sticks out in my mind about Mrs. Andersen is that she was thoughtful and creative – two qualities that I still really value in people.  She was also encouraging.  She noticed what my gifts and strengths were and encouraged my growth.  She also made it clear that she really liked teaching and really liked us.  She used to tell us stories about when she was a little girl, and she encouraged us to use our own voices by writing in a journal every morning.  At the end of the year, she wrote superlatives for each student in the class.  She said I was most likely to become first female president of the United States.  I don’t remember what I learned that year academically, but those personal touches made a big impact on me and strongly influence how I teach.

Off and on throughout my childhood and teenage years I wanted to be a teacher, or at the very least work with children in some capacity.  Briefly I wanted to be a “baby doctor” and then a “rock and roll dancer” and then a mystery writer and then a journalist, and my dad tried to convince me for awhile that I’d make a good lawyer.  But I kept coming back to teaching.

Unlike my high school classmates who had no real vocational direction when applying to college, I knew that I wanted to go to a school that had a good elementary education program.  So I applied to a small no-name college in Oregon while my over-achieving classmates chided me:  “You can do so much better than that.  Why aren’t you applying to Princeton?”  But I knew what I wanted to do.

Until my first week in college.

I blame my change of direction on culture shock – returning to the US after living abroad for ten years – and on having been introduced to cross-cultural counseling the summer between high school and college at a re-entry program for missionary kids returning to the US to start college.  Two small but significant things happened my first week in college.  The first was that a horrible image flashed into my mind of me standing in front of an all-white suburban second-grade class wearing a denim jumper and chunky wooden jewelry.  I thought, “Heck no!  I’m not being an elementary school teacher!”  The second was in Psych 101 when I came across the term cross-cultural psychology. Up until then I was unaware that such a specific topic existed.  But at that moment, I knew that’s exactly what I was going to pursue.

Flash forward three years (after a transfer to the University of Michigan) to graduation with Psychology BA in hand and no clue what I was going to do with my life.  There were absolutely no regrets to studying psychology – I loved it!  But we all know it leaves a person unemployable without further qualifications.  I was working full-time as an assistant pre-school teacher at the Montessori school where I had worked part-time throughout college but knew that was not what I wanted to do long term.  I wanted to be overseas but of course had no real qualifications for anything.

I ended up homeschooling missionary kids in a remote village in Honduras.  Not my plan or pursuit at all.  After my second stint, I realized that I really enjoyed teaching and should probably consider getting proper qualifications.  However, I got sidetracked doing campus ministry for a year, which only confirmed that I wanted to teach younger children instead.

So I moved to Houston to become certified as an elementary school teacher.  This time I had a much different image in my mind as to what I could do with that.  My goal was to teach in the States for a couple years to gain some good experience, then teach at an international school, then move into educational development in some capacity.  I got hired to teach first grade in a low-income area with students who were way more street-smart than I but who barely knew their letters and numbers.  I loved it.  And unexpectedly stayed to teach first grade for three years.

But the itch to go overseas was always there.  Always.  I always planned to move on.  Teaching in Houston was only ever temporary.  I skipped the step of teaching in an international school and went straight into educational development – getting my MA in International Educational Development and then working on an anti-corruption program in Mozambique for two years.  And I was supposed to go back for more.  I was going back for at least one more year with Oasis and then stay on in Mozambique working on other projects or heading elsewhere in Africa.  Never was I going to come back to the States.  Never was I going to teach first grade again.

Yet here I am, about to start teaching first grade again.  About to be an elementary school teacher again…

Give Thanks in All Circumstances December 1, 2009

Several months ago I read Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place for the first time.  It’s the true story of a Dutch woman and her family who provided asylum to Jews in their home during WWII.  Corrie and her sister, Betsie, and their father were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps.  What is remarkable about their story is the hope and joy they – especially Betsie – continued to have despite their suffering.  At one point they were sent to a dormitory meant to house 400 prisoners but which accommodated 1400 crammed onto straw-filled, flea-infested mattresses.  Bestsie’s response was to thank God, despite Corrie’s protests.  Corrie grudgingly began thanking God for various things but interrupted Betsie when Betsie thanked God for the fleas.  Betsie’s response was that God instructed them to give thanks in all circumstances, which included the fleas.

Corrie and Betsie continued to pray in that room, which was not only filled with fleas but with despair and anger.  They started a Bible study and worship time with their fellow prisoners using a small Bible they had smuggled into the camp, and the atmosphere among those 1400 prisoners began to change dramatically.  The wardens were particularly strict and violent at that camp, but for some reason the nightly worship was never interrupted because the wardens mysteriously never entered the dormitory.

Some time later Betsie announced to Corrie that she had discovered why the wardens never entered that room…because of the fleas!  There was reason to be thankful for the fleas after all!

I was reminded of this story on Thursday morning when we read the passage from 1 Thessalonians about giving thanks:  “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  If Betsie Ten Boom could give thanks while she was living in hell on earth, how much more should I be giving thanks.  Even if I can’t go back to Mozambique.  Even if I’m not earning an income.  Even if I don’t have health insurance.  Even if I sometimes feel completely lost.  We love the call and response:  “God is good…” , “All the time!”, “All the time…”, “God is good!”  But we tend to say this when things are good, forgetting the “all the time” part.  All the time.  In all circumstances.

Everyone is very sympathetic when they hear that I can’t go back to Mozambique.  “What a huge disappointment,” they say.  Yes, it is.  But in the midst of the disappointment, or maybe because of the disappointment, I am thankful for many, many things.  (Believe me, this only comes from practice of being in previous situations of big disappointment.)  Here are the top ten things I’m thankful for (in no particular order):

1.  Friends who willingly let me stay with them and make me feel part of the family

2.  Family who make me feel part of the family

3.  A car to use until Christmas

4.  “Support surplus” so that I’m financially okay during this time of transition

5.  A job interview on Tuesday and other opportunities to pursue

6.  Caring friends around the country and world

7.  Good health

8.  Good food

9.  A comfortable bed

10.  Even if I lost any or all of the above, my God would still be with me.

I don’t think I would ever be able to give thanks in the Ten Booms’ circumstances.  In fact, I probably wouldn’t be able to give thanks in even less dire circumstances.  But I’d like to be able to.  I’d like to begin putting into practice giving thanks in all circumstances.