Beginning of Year Frustrations: Big Picture vs. The Here and Now

I'm on my third teacher workday as I write this. Across those three days, I've had only 3 hours unscheduled and right now I want to throw things. The rest has been inefficient meetings, sixty percent of which were unnecessary or inapplicable to my job description.

Par for the course for educator life in the twenty-first century. Teacher workday? Ha! That implies the teachers get to work. I'd call these what they are: mind-deadening meeting days.

See, kids are coming on Monday. And kids are the only reason I show up, so they are the only part I give a fig about being prepared for.

Being prepared for the kids means having my tech hooked up and functional, the room arranged, the displays in place, my systems thought out and organized, the lessons planned, the copies made.

Until all of that is in place--until I know that the here and now will function logistically--I couldn't care less about the big picture.

Upcoming initiatives from the school district, teacher evaluation systems, dress code, team building, and vertical alignment all matter . . . but not as much as being ready for day one on the ground.

So, I'm sitting in meetings about the big picture instead of working. Many of these conversations matter, but since I'm feeling under the gun, I attend with an unwilling heart, watching the clock and praying for the internet to go down so they'll have to cancel the meeting and I can go set up my chairs. I feel hamstrung before I've even begun, forced to fit a week's worth of work into four or five unscheduled hours, or give up my personal life entirely.

I work hard at protecting my personal time, making sure that I allow adequate nonworking hours to handle the business of life and get some rest and enjoyment out of life. So, I'm not willing to stay until eight o'clock each night to have time for the work I should have been handling during work hours. I'm not willing to come in on Saturday even if my principal agrees to unlock the building so we can do all the work we weren't allowed time to do on the teacher workdays because we were too busy talking theory instead of handling practicalities.

Then there's the nonsensical decisions districts make . . .like buying me a big television to use instead of a smartboard, but not providing a monitor that can support the proper resolution or providing any kind of presentation mouse that makes it possible to teach using a TV instead of a touchscreen without isolating myself behind a desk during class. Have they ever met a middle schooler? I can't sit behind a desk and teach them.

So, I can choose to buy all the things they don't provide, or deal with a shoddy system that makes it difficult to handle basic tasks like sending an email to the office that isn't projected for the entire room to see. I get so tired of working with cast-offs and incomplete systems on furniture that leans downhill on one side and is the wrong height for either the kids or the adults.

Then there's the information I don't have, like who in my classes has an IEP, 504, health plan or other concern. If this year goes like other years, I'll have already failed to comply with several IEP plans for two or three weeks before I find out that the plans exist.

Yep, I'm standing on the peak of Mt. Frustration again.

So, if anyone asked how to make this better, what would I do about it?

1. Manageable workload: Part of the reason I am so impatient to get to the day-to-day logistical work is because there's a metric ton of it and only 90 non-supervisory minutes a day once school starts.

If my workload was something more humanly attainable, I could spare time to talk philosophy without it meaning that my students will have to set up their own furniture on the first day of class because I didn't have time to.

Don't make teachers choose between being prepared and their health. Make the workload tenable.

2. Consider whether a meeting is the best way to handle information flow: Large group is a

terrible format for discussion.

If there are more than ten people in the room, someone is not being heard. The environment is chaotic and full of sidebars that the rest of the room doesn't benefit from.

So, what you're really having is a presentation following by a Q&A involving only the most extroverted people in the room.

If you want a discussion, you'll have to do it in smaller groups. If you don't want a discussion, then why are we all in the room together when you could just send us a presentation or video to watch? We would be called on the carpet if we did this to the students.

3. Value efficiency: A good meeting has a focused agenda so it's possible to accomplish the task in the allotted time.

A good facilitator doesn't not waste the time of the people in the room who could be getting other work accomplished if they weren't required to sit there.

Make sure you don't require people to be there if their input is not needed. That wastes their time.

Remember the twenty minute attention span limit of most adult humans. If your meeting is longer than that, we're not really focused anymore, so our time is being wasted.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Inefficient meetings are its death.

4. Order of operations: Teachers are highly autonomous workers.

We have to be.

90% of what we do in any given day is witnessed only by the children. We know HOW to do this work in the best way for each of us, including what needs to be done first, second, and so on.

I would require that at least the first two teacher workdays be completely meeting free, with all our district support staff and experts (tech department, curriculum experts, etc.) available to be called up on as needed. Protect teacher workdays as time on which teachers do the work. Tell us ahead of time how much time we'll actually have. We're incredibly efficient at fitting an inordinate amount of work in a short time frame.

We have to be. That's usually all we get.

Give me time first  for what I consider top priority and then I'll be much more patient with what your top priorities are.

Thanks for coming to my rant. Tune in next week for the next chapter of "When I'm made Queen."

Another Year Over . . .and what have I done?

I've just finished my 24th year in the classroom. If I had stayed in Alaska, I'd be eligible to retire. In a lot of other venues, I'd be contemplating the end of my career. But I live in North Carolina, and I bounced around between three states before that, so my retirement status is a mess. (Sigh) I guess figuring out that mess ought to be my summer project.

But right now seems like a good moment for a little reflection of a more interior nature.

I decided I would be a teacher almost as soon as I started attending school. My mom picked up some antique school desks (I still have two of them in my office at home now) and set me up a school in our basement when I was little, and I'd force my little sister and younger cousins to play school with me. I'd write on the board and read them stories, and make them practice their alphabet letters. Even then, it gave me a charge when I saw them "get it."

Teachers always talk about those light bulb moments, and there's definitely something powerful about being a part of someone's realization and growth moment. Even a really terrible teaching day has some epiphanies in it: academically, emotionally, socially. Teaching is my chance to try to make the world better by making sure the next generations coming up have the tools they need and that they become good people, with a heart to help.

I went to college to become an English teacher, because reading and writing are my passions. I studied Spanish only as an afterthought.

I had heard that English teachers needed a marketable minor to land teaching jobs because there were so many of us. One of my principals, after hiring me, told me that English teachers were "a dime a dozen" but that he was thrilled to have found a good Spanish teacher because they were like finding needles in haystacks.

For my early career, taught both. In small schools in Alaska, one teacher performs a range of duties.

My first full time teaching job in Kenny Lake, Alaska was a 7-12 position in which I taught 7th and 8th grade language arts, high school Spanish I and II, Computers, Drama, and Chorus. I produced the yearbook and newspaper with another teacher. I also was listed as a hockey coach, though I knew little of hockey and didn't coach it. It was just that the team was co-ed, and they needed a woman to travel with the team.

I only held that position a year (the principal and I didn't get along), but I traveled with the kids all around the interior of the state and learned to create good educational experiences even when I was way outside my comfort zone. Chorus? I've sung in a few, that's all.

After that I went home. Not back to Kentucky, but to the only place where I ever really felt like I

belonged: Nome, Alaska. I stayed there for the rest of my twenties and my first dip into thirty. I taught English II, English IV, Spanish I, Spanish II, and a variety of English related electives (Creative Writing, Yearbook, etc.). I grew the theater program and took a group of kids (some of whom had never left the state) to Spain, where one young Yup'ik boy freaked out because he got a sunburn and didn't know what was wrong with his skin.

It was in Nome that I first learned to set a few personal boundaries. That's kind of funny in a town so small that I bought my pregnancy test from one of my students at the grocery store.

But, I did learn that if I was going to do this long term, I had to stake out some time for something else, something not teaching: relaxing, reading, my own writing, exploring. Having my first child made that easier to do. People expect that you'll pull back a bit when you become a parent.

One of the best things about teaching in Alaska is that no one expected that I would stop being a person because I was a teacher. Sure, it might have still been shocking if I were publicly drunk or something (low risk of that from me: we used to joke that I was Nome's "town sober"), but no one found it strange that I bought groceries, chased my dog on the beach, acted in a play, or had the occasional drink at the Board of Trade. No one worried about my religious beliefs or what kind of shoes I wore to school. That kind of acceptance is something I've missed ever since.

Life pulled me from Alaska, and while I love where I am now, sometimes that still hurts.

I spent a couple of years in Kansas and Kentucky dealing with the fallout of personal life battles (marriage, health, etc.) and teaching. There was a lot to love in both places, but I was there too briefly and going through too much personal life issues to invest as deeply as I had in previous jobs.

Kentucky was where I first tried teaching only Spanish. I wanted to keep my teaching life in my school day and stop bringing a second job worth of work home in the shape of mountains of sophomore essays. I was working at a very large high school (which is how I learned that I hate that), and the administration was draconian, but I found out that especially if I taught beginning Spanish (which is where my strengths lie anyway), I could tame the paper tiger and protect my home life and my sanity. I could even find time for my own writing.

Then, we came to North Carolina. My first foray into teaching somewhere with no teacher's union. If I'd realized then what that would mean for the kinds of abuses I'd have to accept, I'd have encouraged my new husband to take the job in Seattle, even though I don't prefer city life. Still, I've found my way.

My North Carolina teaching career has been all Spanish, which now means that I've been a Spanish teacher longer than I was an English teacher.

Remember that light bulb moment? I get to see the academic version of it SO MUCH MORE OFTEN as a Spanish teacher. Kids come to me because they don't already know this language, unlike English classes, where largely they resent being asked to improve their skills in something they think they already know. They're open to learn in a different way, and they're just as thrilled as I am when their understanding expands.

Along the way, I still have plenty of opportunities to help them learn to be good people. There are still classmates to learn to work with after all, and you can't study a language without learning something of the peoples who speak it and the places they come from.

It's a shock to a goodly portion of my students to learn that not all Hispanic people are Mexican, and that those with brown skin probably inherited it from their Native American or enslaved ancestors not their Spanish ones, for example, or that if you call a person "Spanish" that means they are from Spain (which none of our students are).

Last year, I started teaching Spanish for Heritage Speakers courses, something my school is offering to support our students who want to work on their literacy in their first language and build confidence while earning high school credits. These have been a real stretch for me, and revitalized me with new energy when I'd had too many years of teaching exactly the same thing. Stagnation is dangerous and can make us complacent or leave us burnt out.

So at the end of year 24, I'm not where I expected to be in geography or in subject, but I'm in a good place and after a few weeks to recover from that tidal wave we called "seventh graders" that tried to flatten me this year, I'll pop up ready to do this again.

If someone tells you it's simple, they're wrong

It's never simple.

Everyone who presents a plan to fix education seems to think it is.

They pick one aspect of a multi-faceted problem and say that if only we address that, all will be well.

When I began my teaching career (early 1990s), we were busy blaming teachers for being unqualified.

Pundits of the day ignored all the intersections of poverty, racism, inequality, and hatred in favor of blaming teachers again. (Don't get me started on the underlying misogyny of refusing to believe that women are qualified to do the work they have trained for, in one of only a few female dominated fields in our country).

Obviously (please read with dripping sarcasm) if teachers were only "highly qualified" then all would be well. Teachers are all required to go through a teacher education program at a university in order to achieve licensure, but apparently we were not coming out of these programs "qualified."

So the nation instituted a new round of tests (PRAXIS) that we were assured would show that we knew our subject area content. Of course, anyone who knows teaching knows that subject matter knowledge is only one of part of being "qualified." I've sat and listened to many a "subject matter expert" who couldn't convey information in an engaging and memorable way for an introductory audience.

We ignored every expert who might have designed something tenable or productive in favor of pre-packaged tests for teachers and then more and more and more and more of them for students. We turned a blind eye to the millions of public dollars that went into private pockets to fund the making and distribution of those tests and pre-packaged programs to help people succeed on the tests.

We also know that many people "test well" or "don't test well" and these so-called objective tests don't reveal their actual qualifications or knowledge. So, it's like taking off your shoes at the airport and letting someone scan you. It doesn't prove a darned thing, but it makes people feel like they're doing something. It gives the appearance of progress, even though no one is smarter, safer, or better qualified.

We also know that most of the skills that make a person effective as an educator are categorized as "soft skills" and are impossible to measure on any kind of objective test. Teacher evaluation tools are nearly useless at actually assessing the effectiveness of teachers.

There is also significant evidence that people teaching things they are arguably unqualified to teach have been surprisingly effective.  For example, I once taught a remedial math intervention, even though I don't have any significant degree work in math, and my "outside the box" way of thinking about it proved to be exactly what several of those kids needed to finally understand concepts they'd struggled with for years. They needed to hear it explained from a different point of view, which I--a language person trying to speak math--definitely had.

So, thousands of dollars and person-hours later, are teachers better qualified on the whole than they were before the early 1990s? Are students more capable? My view from the inside says, "No." They are still people doing the best they can with what they've been handed.

The best of teachers are lifelong learners who don't give up on learning new approaches, techniques, theories, and technologies that might bring those struggling kids forward.

The worst of teachers become downtrodden and disheartened, but even those folks are showing up and giving kids a chance to learn something if only they will take advantage of it. They're better than nothing. They still make a difference for some.

Many teachers are somewhere in between or seesaw depending on the time of the year, life's demands, and what kind of teaching load we're carrying at the moment.

It's not simple.

There's no one thing we can do that will make our educational system perfect for every child. But after twenty-odd years of watching testing become something I spend nearly 1/4 of the school year on? If there ever was a magic solution, testing ain't it.

Things I Did Today That Aren't Teaching (all by 10:00 a.m.)

1. Fixed a backpack zipper
2. Found safety pins to repair a wardrobe emergency
3. Listened to a long story about a rough weekend
4. Fought the copier machine and won
5. Fought the copier machine and lost
6. Troubleshot four computer issues
7. Diffused a potential fight
8. Had a heart to heart with a kid about motivation and effort
9. Organized the paperwork left after a day with a sub on Friday
10. Answered two emails from worried parents (there are still 4 more waiting for later)
11. Updated the grades for one class
12. Debated what is lost vs. what is gained by having our students do most of their work on computers with a group of other teachers
13. Provided missing school supplies for eight children
14. Laughed at a bad joke I'd heard many times before
15. Gave out a band-aid
16. Translated the directions in a social studies assignment for a student who has LEP (limited English proficiency)
17. Congratulated a student on a sports accomplishment I didn't quite understand, but knew she was proud of
18. Provided extra copies of lost assignments to four students
19. Supervised the hallway during four class transition times
20. Helped a kid choose a new seat where she might be more productive
21. Stopped a kid from spoiling Avengers Endgame for another kid who hadn't seen it yet; had a conversation about why that's rude and unkind. 
22. Reassured a kid about a new haircut
23. Cleaned new graffiti off a classroom table (luckily, they wrote in pencil: easy clean)
24. Emptied the stinky garbage missed by the night cleaning crew
25. Let a kid read me "the best part" of a book they're in love with
26. Located the missing remote control for the projector
27. Provided feminine hygiene products discreetly
28. Hugged a kid who needed it
29. Did deep breathing with a kid who needed to calm down
30. Listened to a heartbreak story sympathetically
31. Helped clean up a spilled water bottle and rescue the homework that was dampened

No wonder I'm tired by day's end. I've also taught three lessons so far today. Four more to go! 

Sustainable or Just Survivable?

All the adults in my school look tired today. It's not a temporary kind of tired; it's the build-up of a campaign kind of tired. To the bone.

Some fight it with caffeine, some through sheer determination, but we're all succumbing to exhaustion. It leaves us stressed, irritable, and sick.

This is what I mean when I talk about the problem of the sustainability of the job. The physical, emotional, and psychological wear that is considered "par for the course" is NOT reasonable. It's like seeing portraits of Abraham Lincoln before and after the Civil War.

Most jobs have their ebb and flow, their busy seasons and their lulls. That might be on a daily pattern, like high-traffic hours. That might be on a seasonal pattern, like tax season. The key is that there are lulls: down moments, when the pressure is lower and a person can recoup a little energy (physical and mental).

Those rests and lulls are essential to self-care. If the pace remains relentless, even the strongest among us will hit a breaking point. And working our teachers until they break is how America runs its public schools.

There are a few simple changes that would help tremendously, but they will never be enacted because they cost money. I'm not even touching offering respectable pay for the work here, just setting up a situation that makes the educational system tenable.

1. More staff. There should never be fewer than two adults in any room with students (especially at middle school), one acting in an instructional role, and one in a support role: handling logistical details, and supporting both the students and the instructor. So much trouble could be avoided if there were just two sets of eyes and hands in the room.

2. Fewer classes. I currently teach 7 classes for my middle school every day. It's too many. I'm utterly amazing with what I can do in a day, but creating seven engaging lessons for seven groups of children ranging from age 11 to age 14 in grouping of 9 to 32 at a time? The numbers are against me. I'd half it, which takes us right back to number one again because we'd need double the number of teachers AND support staff in every room.

3. More time. Every other week, I'd provide a workday for teachers. Not a day for meetings, just a day for getting the work done that you struggle to complete on a daily basis: assessing your students' work, updating various systems, creating materials for new lessons, researching resources to help with your struggles. I think once every 10 school days would be often enough to keep me on top of things instead of buried by them.

I know I won't ever see this kind of support. For teacher appreciation week, people will give me little presents. They'll provide my lunch or give me gift cards.

And that's nice.

Small things really do make a difference. They help me keep heart.

But if you want to show your appreciation? If you mean it when you say that our work is among the most important work a person can do?

Vote for everything that brings more money and resources to our schools.

Because you'll be paying for these children one way or another. An early investment means they'll become productive citizens that help support the next generation on their way. Failure to do so means paying for the stop-gap measures and to mop up the messes created by the ones we weren't able to reach because this country won't spend the money to make it possible.

You get what you pay for.

My Love/Hate Relationship With The New Copiers (mostly hate)

My school got new copier/printers this year. W00t! Machines that aren't older than the students! Hooray! Now if I could get some tables or chairs made in this century . . .

Since I started my teaching career with mimeograph machines and purple ink (yep, I'm *that* old), I've seen a few iterations of this technology. Mostly, it's gotten better: clearer, faster, more accessible. But every new thing comes with trade-offs.

We've got Ricoh machines. They mostly do all the expected things: printing, scanning, different sizes of paper, double sided, stapled (if the staples are stocked), etc.

The cool part is that I can send my print job out there and pick it up from any machine in the building.

Since 8/10 times the machine I walk up to is out of paper, out of toner, or otherwise broken, this is definitely a bonus--no time lost running back to resend my jobs to another machine. I just groan at the offending machine, then turn around and go find another one elsewhere in the building.

It's also nice that I can scan something and have it sent straight to my google drive (no thumb drives or other messy transport systems).

But there is so much annoying that came with these machines.

Efficiency is the single most important quality of any system for me. I'm always trying to do SO MUCH with SO LITTLE time and I've got no patience for technology that has to be babied or that slows me down in any way.

Last week, our internet went down (in the whole community because of tornado damage). So, I tried to un-tech my lesson plan by copying a play my students and I would read in Spanish.

But, without internet, the new machines won't even let you put in your code to use the non-digital aspects. So, I couldn't make paper copies from paper copies while standing in front of a copier because there was no internet access. There's no reason the machine needed internet access to do this. It's just short-sighted to fail to realize that we still need copies--no, we ESPECIALLY need copies--when we lack internet access.

Not cool.

Also not cool, the fact that I can't move smoothly from one job to another. I have to login to my account over and over again to move through a stack of jobs. Like most teachers, I gather secretarial tasks all day and then run to the workroom to do those jobs during my few non-supervisory minutes. These extra moments spent re-entering information I just entered? Super annoying.

It's also slower because I can't stack jobs. With my old machine, I could go ahead and scan job #2, #3, and #4 while the machine was processing job #1.

Not so this machine. It will release multiple print jobs and do them in succession, but it refuses to take another paper-on-glass job until it has finished the one it has, requiring me to hover like I'm making a tricky sauce instead of releasing jobs and using the wait time to do something useful like go to the bathroom.

So, yeah. One good thing and three bad. That's not a good trade.

May should be optional

May is not my favorite month. This might be a side effect of my day job (teaching middle school), but this month is always a struggle. I'm tired, overwhelmed, and fighting apathy (my own as well as my students').

In fact, I usually feel like my tail's on fire and the radio's broken, so I'm just screaming out the window: Mayday! Mayday! 

It's called May, right? May which means that are allowed to do something, but don't have to. As in "you may proceed" or "you may discard two cards." Or it has to do with permission: "come what may" or "mother may I?"

Try as I may, I can't summon a devil-may-care attitude about this. So, I declare the the entire month should be optional. What do you say? May I be excused?

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

Had we but world enough and time

I work in a very strange profession. I have a job that most people agree is important, yet is one of the lowest paying jobs a professional can have. Everyone has an opinion about how the job should be done: legislators, religious leaders, parents, people on the street. I can't think of another profession where people with no training or experience in your field think they can advise you on how best to do your job.

Unlike other professions, where a person builds in responsibility with experience and newbies are given time to develop skills on lower-level projects, mine is a profession where you get the full enchilada on day one. Either you survive, or you quit.

Yep you guessed it, I teach. Public school. Middle school.

Every year since I began, I have been asked to do more, with less money, and more importantly less time.

Time is the part that rankles me.

Every single day I produce six engaging, edifying lessons which both push the gifted students and provide support for the struggling students without losing the interest of students at any other level. Each lesson is supposed to help each child become a 21st century learner and foster literacy skills. I utilize a variety of ever-changing forms of technology and teach the children to do so as well. I am maintain contact with 130 families, informing each parent of whatever struggles and problems their child faces in my classroom. I maintain a website that details everything that is happening in my classroom and provides resources students and parents can use at home. I am also my own secretary--making all my own copies, creating my own documents, collating, stapling, and filing. I am my own housekeeper as well, cleaning tables, whiteboards, chairs, etc.

To accomplish all this, I get two "prep periods" a day. This is teacher talk for the time during the day when you do not have supervisory duty (no students in your room). My two prep periods are one hour and six minutes and thirty-three minutes in duration (if I count my lunch, too). However, I rarely get all ninety-nine minutes. There are meetings one to three times a week, too. I try to eat lunch most days.

Because I am utterly amazing, and because I can now pull from sixteen years of classroom experience, I manage to produce lessons that please me more often than not. But I am always always always behind on assessment--paper grading, providing meaningful feedback to the kiddos to help them grow. I am frustrated 100% of the time because of time--99 minutes a day is not enough to do the preparation work at the level it should be getting done at. No matter how efficient I become, the work will never fit in the work day.

When I look at the work days of friends who do not teach, I get very jealous. When one friend is asked to make a presentation (one presentation--I make six daily), she is relieved of her other duties for three days so she can prepare. When another friend was asked to use a new form of technology, he was sent to a week-long training session at company expense and given three day workshops as follow up quarterly for a year.

Gah! What I could do! The amazing things I could do, if my profession had respect for the time it takes to do it well.

Once I had a teaching job with adequate time. It was awesome! I taught for a summer program at Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth. I taught one class of fifteen kids for two sessions a day. I had four hours a day to prep one lesson and do any assessment. Because it was a summer program, I didn't have to maintain a website or keep in contact with the kids' parents on a daily basis. For the first time in my teaching career, I felt like I was doing it justice. I wish teaching could always be like this.

It's not, though. So, why teach?

At its worst moments, it's like . . . spitting into the wind, herding cats, banging your head against a wall, hammering on cold iron, whistling in the dark, fiddling while Rome burns, tiptoeing through a minefield blindfolded, trying to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

Why teach? Because, at its best moments, it's like . . .touching the future, bridging the abyss, grounding live wires, opening doors, awakening sleeping giants, lighting the lamp that illuminates the world.

Really if you are a teacher, there's nothing else you could do. It's the only thing that feels right.

But I'll continue to wish for more time. I know, I know. If wishes were horses . . .

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

Keeping Heart

It's that time of year again.  And that time seems to come earlier each year. It's the time of year when I am so frustrated, overwhelmed, and annoyed by petty small things (mostly other adults that I work with and all their concerns that seem, to me, to miss the big picture), that it's hard to care.

You see, I'm a teacher.

A public school teacher. In North Carolina: a "right to work" state. "Right to work" seems to be a euphemism for exploiting workers, at least from this side of the fence.

Since I have taught in other states--Alaska, Kansas and Kentucky, namely--I have a wider view than some.  I know what it is like in other places.

Some things about my career choice are rough all over.  It doesn't pay well, especially not when you consider the level of personal commitment, education and variety of skillset it entails to teach successfully. I'm only half-joking when I say that I can only afford to do this because they pay my husband very well for his work. I know we'd have a lot less nice things if we had to rely on only my income.

It's also a truly staggering load of work each and every day. Each day I am supposed to prepare five forty-five minute long lessons on a variety of topics that include technology, differentiating my presentation for a variety of learning styles, background knowledge levels, academic skills and interests for 130 people.

With only 90 non-supervisory minutes per workday, I am supposed to also make contact with the families of these children with the good or bad news, collaborate with all the other staff that supports them in their learning (gifted learning experts, exceptional children experts, other subject area teachers, school counselors, school nurse, family welfare experts, autism specialists, hearing impaired support staff, etc., etc., etc.), evaluate whatever work the children produced that day (for 130 people), and handle my own "secretarial" stuff (making copies, responding to emails, submitting paperwork, etc.).

Some things about my job are harder in North Carolina than they were in other states.  Unions, for all the negative impact they have on the field (protecting poor teachers and making it hard to fire them; hamstringing potentially awesome programs for fear of setting precedent), also have some tremendous positive impact on my work conditions and I have sorely felt their lack in my six years in North Carolina. My non-supervisory work time is not nearly as protected.  The structures for giving and receiving criticism of my performance are not nearly as balanced.  Things happen all the time that leave me in a stunned silence. Can they really do that? Yes, apparently they can.

So, why do I stay? And how do I fight the bitterness so that it's a good thing that I am staying?

The obvious answer is the kids. There are plenty of frustrations involved with children, but they are the good kind of frustrations.  When I am frustrated with a child, it is because my heart is involved and I want so badly for him or her to find success, to "get it", to learn to use their strengths and safeguard against their weaknesses.  These are frustrations that inspire me to great heights and bring out all my strengths.  These are frustrations I am successful in combating often enough to feel like I am good at my work.

It's not just the kids though. I really truly love learning. I love thinking about the ways ideas connect, and being surprised by new connections.   Maybe there are other fields where I can be paid to live the life of the mind all day, but I haven't found them.

I love the trappings of school as well. I like awards ceremonies and book fairs, school plays and events, showcases and projects.  I love trying out new technologies and seeing what young people can make out of them.

If I'm honest with myself, the very difficulty of the work is part of the appeal for me. Thanks to my Mom and Dad and the way they raised me,  I'm a workhorse. I delight in checking off large numbers of items from my to-do list.  It gives me a sense of accomplishment.  I like feeling like not just anyone could do what I do.  I like the feeling that my work is big and important.  I'm not sure I could feel that way in other fields. 

On a bad day, I think, "You hated school when you were in it. Why are you still here?" On those days, I am tired, overwhelmed and feeling put-upon and unappreciated. I mumble to myself and my children suggest that I should take a walk.

But on a good day, I think, "School is my home. It's where I belong."  Yep, I'm just that nerdy.  And I'm good with that.  Here's to more good days!

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

Teaching with the One-to-One Initiative

My school district jumped headfirst into technology this year, purchasing a laptop for every student in grades 6-12.  It's been exciting and frustrating and wonderful and awful. I've finally got a few minutes to jot down some thoughts about implementation:

Exciting and Wonderful!

• No more "I left it" anywhere!  If the document is digital, it's with you. Even better, since the kids all got google accounts, it can't even be saved in a incompatible format or on a different thumb drive, or any of the other millions of excuses I've heard in seventeen years of teaching.
• Differentiation (edu-lingo for making different versions of the work based on the needs of individual students) is so much easier!  I can share different documents with different kids and with them all focused on their individual work, no one even has to know that they're not all doing exactly the same thing. I can provide extra resources to only some students with a couple of quick clicks. It's beautiful.
• Collaboration with my colleagues and among my students has never been easier. We can share our work with each other so easily! It doesn't matter if we're ever available at the same time or not (which is good, because, mostly, we're not)
• We're cutting the digital divide. No more have and have-nots. Every kid has access to the same technology and has a chance to develop facility with the various ways we use technology in adult life for work, networking, organization and play.

Frustrating and Awful!

• There's really been no provision to educate kids about using their computers. It's been a hard uphill battle for kids who aren't particularly tech-savvy. I've got at least five ideas for how to address this . . .but the horse has already left the barn and no one asked the people who might be able to predict trouble areas: the teachers.
• Lots of trouble-shooting that didn't happen in advance and could have. Even problems I directly asked about because I anticipate them were ignored.
• Distract-ability.  I guess I should have, but I didn't anticipate the degree of the problem. Most students are so good about using their computers for schoolwork, but there are those few who think that having a laptop in front of them is a ticket to play games all day.  It's been much harder than I expected to pull their attention out of the individual work stations and into the collective space so we can have those whole-class experiences that are so central to education. It shouldn't be surprising--I know plenty of adults who can't get their noses out of their smartphones for four seconds in a row, and these are kids!

Overall, I'm so glad my district took this step.  It's been a hard semester because of it--it's turned teaching into almost a first-year experience again, with the need to create everything anew to make use of our new tools.  But I anticipate an easier semester next semester and it's already easier to draw on the work I've done past years thanks to google's excellent search functions. 

Now, next time, if only they'd ask us to troubleshoot before the trouble shoots us.

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act. Amazing to think it's been seven years since then! One to one continues to evolve my teaching practice. I'd hate to have to go back!

Beware the Ides of March

March is a well named month, I think. It's the month where I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other like a good soldier and slog through the underbrush and quicksand, through increasingly hostile territory.  We march even though we are tired and sick at heart.  We march even though our feet hurt and there's no time to see a podiatrist. All in hopes of making it to that clear beautiful week we in the education game call Spring Break.

Someday, when I am appointed Queen on High, I am scrapping the school calendar as it stands and writing something that supports family life (for students and teachers), respects the amount of preparation time it takes to do this job well, and follows a pace it's possible to keep up without sacrificing your physical and mental health. When I do this, I fully expect to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, because of all the violence that is neatly sidestepped by making us all less frustrated and more successful.

Until then, I'm reading Tim O'Brien again and thinking about the things I carry . . .and which ones I can put down for a while.

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

May Day!

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Ah, spring.  The season of hormones and drama in middle school. Just in time for end of year testing, too.

My sixth graders are weepy. Sometimes they don't even know why. My seventh graders are wired or angry. They don't know why either. The eighth graders are either so sleepy they seem inert, or so excited about moving on to high school that they can't contain themselves.  Sometimes both at the same time. They can't tell me why.

They're all doing all of this for the first time. They have no idea what's going on. It's confusing. It's wild.  I've been here for years, watching, and even I don't understand this energy, this strange movement in the middle school symphony we call May.

Couple this with where teachers are at this time of year--stretched thin, burnt out, worn out, exhausted, stressed out, frustrated, frazzled.  It can be a very difficult combination.  Tempers flare easily in May.  Even though it has rained a lot, you should assume the kindling is dry and tread very lightly in this forest.  The slightest spark and we've got a conflagration on our hands.

Maybe it's not a coincidence that May Day when written as one word (mayday!mayday!) is a cry for help. 

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

The Friday Mom-a-Thon

Friday has gotten complicated around here.

The Mom is exhausted from a week of mom-ing and teaching and would like to sit on the couch and stare at the fireplace (with or without a fire in it; it doesn't matter--just so no one asks for anything).

The Teen wants to go out and is full of wonderful excited energy, but she isn't old enough to drive herself yet (and, thank G-d, neither are her friends).

The Munchkin shouldn't be allowed to stay up past 8:00--it tends to ruin Saturday if she does.

The Hubby has traffic goblins to fight and often can't get home at any sort of reasonable time, especially not if stops are need to buy stuff (as often happens).

The end result is a singular athletic event we call the Mom-a-thon.

The athlete in this event is not particularly athletic. She is heavier than she'd like to be and dressed in Mom-jeans and a teacher-geek tee-shirt (because we're allowed on Fridays). It's not as stylish as a sleek uni-tard emblazoned with the flag of my country, but we're all better off if I don't wear such things. Really.

The warm-up is a lovely espresso drink from my local market.  This may not seem like the kind of thing an athlete ought to do to warm up for an extended race, but it's surprisingly effective, better than yoga. It's my reward for having survived the work week. There's one particular gal who usually makes it.  She's wonderful. Besides making great coffee, she knows us (the Teen goes with me) and asks about little things we tell her.  I'm sure she doesn't get paid enough for how much better she makes my day. 

If my brain is firing on enough cylinders, I remember to get cash back when I check out. I'll need it for the Teen's Friday night expenses and Saturday morning guitar lesson. If not, it becomes one more thing to handle between 4:00 and 6:00.

Then, the first event starts: The Kiss and Go Lane. The Kiss and Go Lane should probably be called the "Harried Parents Hurl Your Tweens from the Car Lane." It's almost as dangerous as driving in a grocery parking lot right after work.  There are clear patterns the cars are supposed to follow, but they don't. You never know if the person in front of you is going to stop suddenly, turn in a random direction, or fail to stop when they should. The hubby handles the Kiss and Go Lane for the Munchkin. The Teen goes to the same school I teach at, so we're trying to get around the Kiss and Go Lane to get to the teacher parking. Luckily, espresso helps my reflexes.  We survive and even score extra points for landing our favorite parking place: nearest the exit.

Friday at our school is club day. Thanks to the warm-up of a double-shot latte, I am able to pull off thirty minutes of theater games.  Bonus points because the kids seemed sad when we ran out of time.

The third event is broken into three rounds. I'm an elective teacher, which means I teach all three grade levels at my middle school.  My rounds are called "eighth grade," "seventh grade," and "sixth grade."  This is extra challenging because the energy level of the kids goes up across my day in direct inverse to my own energy levels.

There's a dance tonight, the first one of the school year, so my sixth grade students, for whom this is their first ever middle school dance, are practically vibrating when they arrive in my room.  Teaching sixth graders under these conditions is akin to throwing a threadbare saddle with a broken buckle across the back of a rabid rhinoceros and trying to ride it. I live through it, but feel somewhat beaten and bloodied. On the way out, several kids remember to say thank you and wish me a good weekend. I am buoyed.

The fourth event is the after school run-around. This is a juggling act combined with one of those puzzles where you have to get things across the river without letting the lions eat the lambs. I get an assist in that the teen can be left at home unsupervised.  Still, it was five stops between leaving school and arriving at home. Everyone is eating dinner by 6:00, so the judges award me an extra star.

The traffic goblins are winning tonight, so the Munchkin goes with me to deliver the Teen and her friends to the place with the music and the laughter. We stay for a little while, but I have to get her home before she turns into a goblin herself, so back into the car we go.

Another hour later, a clean and sweet smelling Munchkin is tucked into bed, only half an hour late. Half points, since bedtime was missed. We'll find out tomorrow how bad that is.  The Hubby has defeated the traffic goblins at last and is left at home to watch over sleeping Munchkin while I go back to the place with the music and the laughter to retrieve the Teen.

I like the place they have chosen tonight. It has wi-fi, coffee, and live music, but I can sit far enough away from it that I can still hear myself think. I write while I wait for hugs goodbye. I try not to get the heebie-jeebies (or at least not let them show externally), when the Boyfriend kisses the Teen goodnight.

On the way home, in the quiet of the car. The Teen thanks me. She says she feels lucky to have a mom who will go to this kind of trouble for her. Some of her others friends aren't so fortunate. That folks is game-set-match. Mom won this Friday Mom-a-Thon. And there are seven days to prepare for the next one!

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

Giving Up Teaching

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act in March of 2014. I spent eight months of that year seeking another job and didn't find one. So, I returned to teaching. I've been in the classroom for another five years since then and things are better now (there have been some staffing and scheduling changes that helped), though much of what I said here, I still feel.

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I'm planning to leave teaching at the end of this school year (assuming I can find something else to do for a living). In all honesty, it scares the heck out of me. It feels like looking over a cliff and deciding to step off without knowing what's beneath me.

I've never not been a teacher.

I decided to be a teacher in first grade, when Mrs. Aldsorf paired me with another student who was having trouble understanding something. I helped her. She understood. I was hooked.

I've been a public school classroom teacher for eighteen years, pretty much all of my adult life. The only other jobs I've ever held were brief, and long ago. I took them because I couldn't get a teaching job and dropped them as soon as I found a classroom. I was a tutor, a secretary, a receptionist, a librarian, a teacher's aide (even in that list, two of those jobs are arguably teaching). But I was always going to be a teacher.

There are a lot of reasons to leave teaching. The hours are long. The pay is laugh-so-you-don't-cry poor. The stress is high. The work conditions are atrocious. The basic rights any worker should be able to expect are not guaranteed. I could bore you for several days with my frustrations with my field, my state, my country and my school. When I successfully talked my daughter out of becoming a teacher herself, the relief was palpable. I want better for her than this.

The reason I've always stayed is that I believe in the work. That old saw about being there to watch

the lightbulb go off in some kid's mind is totally true. It's magical every time. And my work matters. I'm not manufacturing goods no one needs and trying to get people to spend money they don't have to buy them. I'm *helping.* One starfish at a time.

So, why now? Why quit work that I still love?

Because all the external stuff is getting to me. I'm hearing that burnout tone in my voice, that bitterness that I have seen in many the colleague who stayed too long over the years. So, I need to leave. I need to leave before I'm not good at it anymore, before the bitterness starts to spread to the children.

In a way, it's like breaking up with an abusive lover. I still love him, but he's not good for me. He treats me poorly, blames me unfairly for things that are out of my control, even outright beats me down at time.  I don't like who I am when I'm with him. He separates me from my friends and other things I love. He manipulates with guilt and blame to get me to do more with less. He thinks he owns me.

But that doesn't mean that it's easy to leave. Ask any woman who has had to do it. It's easy to say you'd leave if someone was abusing you, but how many of us stay? More than would like to admit it. Especially when our financial well-being is tied up with the abuser.

We stay because we are afraid. We're afraid that whatever we leave for isn't going to be better. We're afraid that we haven't given it fair shot. Some part of us hopes that it will get better if we are just patient. The devil you know vs. that hidden devil out there in the deep blue sea. We stay because we don't know where else to go.

Good bye, teaching. I know I will miss you, but I deserve better.

The Joy of Unselfish Selfishness

I'm a mom and a teacher and a wife, three roles that can make it difficult to find "me time." I was also raised with a particularly strong work ethic, one that makes it hard for me to relax sometimes. I feel like you have to earn the right to play by checking off everything on the list. And we know how realistic that is when it's a mom's list.  Most of the stuff on it is cyclical and cannot ever actually be completed. So, if the list is never all checked off, then I never get to that clean space where I feel like I can play.

It can be really difficult to get to the selfish moment you've promised yourself sometimes.

But sometimes the universe lines up right. You do something because it's really what you want to do:  make a cake, play a game, see a film, take a walk.  You invite someone to do it with you, because they are really the person you want to do that with. And, afterwards, your someone thanks you . . . like you've given them a gift in making them do what you wanted to do.  Selfishness was a virtue.

It makes me wonder. There's a theory that happiness is what makes a person beautiful. So, if I am taking care of me and making myself happy, then that makes me inherently more attractive to others. In that sense, a bit of selfishness is arguably good.

In my above scenario, the friend I invited feels the magnetism of my happiness in what I've selected for us to do, and that's why she enjoys it, apart from any inherent enjoyment of the activity itself.

It makes me feel like I should be selfish more often.

No, don't get me wrong, I'm no Ayn Rand, thinking that if we all just watch out for ourselves that somehow it will all work out. In fact, I'm a big believer in the Greater Good and our collective obligation to see to it. I also know that there are those in this world who would take advantage of those of us who feel that way. In fact, the entire teaching profession relies on it. Because teachers are motivated by a desire to help, they put up with things that, in other professions, would lead to mass walk outs.

Takers (whether they are individuals or systems) rely on givers continuing to give.  So, how do us givers protect ourselves without changing who we are? It seems as if a person moves into thinking that selfishness is good, the pendulum swings way to one side, and she becomes self-serving and opportunistic, losing sight completely of her role in any kind of Big Picture.

I don't think we have to stop giving. But, I do think we have to learn to look at the world a little more skeptically, to ask ourselves why we are being asked to do something. Is it because we are the person best suited to the job? Because we have talent or skill or training that others don't and it would be easier for us to accomplish the task? Or is it just that we are giving by nature, and a taker has noticed that we will do it for them?

It's a weird mind game I play with myself, protecting me from me. Not letting me give away every moment of the day, but keeping some for myself for whatever use I want. Because I love my children and my students, and children are self-centered until they learn a sense of perspective, I can give too much of myself.

If I do that too often, there's a toll on my spirit. I get cranky, irritable, easy to upset. That's no good for anyone.

Like everything, it's about balance. Balancing selfishness that allows you to rejuvenate and replenish yourself, with selflessness that allows you to give to others and make a meaningful life. I'm not there yet, but I think I'm starting to understand. Taking care of me is taking care of the people I love, too, being the best me I can be for them. If I'm being selfish because of my love for others, then arguably, that's unselfish, too. And that, my friends, is joy.


NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

Burnout

“The flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long.”

― Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

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It's that time of year again. The merry merry mouth of May. The world is merry and bright and in love, and I'm the grumpy dwarf in Snow White's house. 

I'm tired. Epicly tired. Body-tired, soul-tired, brain-tired. Crazy tired. Stupid tired. 

Most jobs have a cyclical nature, I've observed. A busy season, a down season. My sister is an accountant, and when she was working for a CPA, tax season tried to kill her every year. My husband's work ebbs and flows according to what projects are on his plate in any given week. The difference in both of these cases, is that there is ebb as well as flow. 

Teaching doesn't have an ebb. Starting at the end of August and straight through to the middle of June, teachers are on. Every day is high pressure. We get to our "vacation" times and collapse gasping like fish who have been pulled from the water and left on the bank. 

This year was especially rough as a series of snow days removed all teacher work days from the calendar (teacher work days are days when teachers are paid to be at school working on the things that you can't do while supervising students: grading papers, analyzing assessment data, making lesson plans, gathering materials, cleaning your classroom, collaborating with your colleagues, etc.).  The tasks that I do on those days were not removed, however. I just had to find non-paid time to do them in. 

Over the years, I've gotten more and more efficient, capable of doing more in a sixty minute prep period than some manage across an entire workday. Unfortunately, this doesn't catch me a break. It doesn't mean that I suddenly have time to have tea with a colleague or take an actual lunch break during which I don't work. It just means that I bring less of my work home into the hours of the day the state is not paying me for. 

I know, I know. I get summer, right? That depends on what you mean by "get" and "summer." Non school days amount to ten weeks for students this summer in my school district. June 16-August 25. Teachers on the other hand finish work on June 25 and start again on August 18. Myself, I also work six extra days this summer on various kinds of planning and materials development sessions. So, about six weeks. For many teachers, it's even less. 

It's just barely enough to recover from the burnout factor enough to feel like you might be willing to try that again. If you have to work a summer job to make finances meet (as many of us do), or you are trying to fit some classes into your schedule so you can move up the salary schedule from "miserable pittance" to "mere pittance", then you don't benefit from the recuperative effects of the time. 

So, it's the time of year to fight your own burnout at school. 

For me, that means upping my caffeine consumption, making sure I get at least three hours of time outdoors in the sun each week, and reading escapist literature in my downtime (Spiderman Noir was excellent). So, pass the coffee and the comics, we've got a month yet to go!

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act. 

Testing Season

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So, it's testing season. When the teachers and students feel like rabbits being chased into their various holes.

It's not a happy time at school.

Everyone (teachers, administrators, students, families) is under stress and pressure, just when they are also exhausted and least able to deal with extra stress and pressure.

My oldest daughter in eighth grade. So, her list of standardized tests this year includes: Math End of Course Exam (for high school credit), English End of Course Exam (for high school credit), Reading End of Grade Exam, Math End of Grade Exam, Science End of Grade Exam, Social Studies Final Exam. On top of this she had a placement test for Humanities in high school and a choral audition for placement in high school.

She also had a major research essay due today in English, a math project due late last week, and a couple of other smaller projects due in the next few days.

It could have been worse. She didn't take yearlong world language for high school credit, so she isn't taking that End of Course Exam. She chose not to do the portfolio for advanced placement in visual art, even though she could have performed at that level. She just felt too buried and it was something she *could* take off her plate. So, she did.

I hope you've never seen such a bright and vivacious young woman turn into a grey and listless zombie in such a short time.  It's harrowing, as a teacher, and as her mother.

All this is required by external organizations at the state and federal levels. Very little of the decision making about how and when to test our children is in the hands of the individual schools, school districts, or parents.

I have to fight my anger or I could drown in the tide of it.

My daughter has wonderful teachers. If you went to each of them and said, "Does Samantha's daughter know the class material?", they could tell you. They could even list her specific areas of weakness and strength and suggest materials to shore up her weaknesses. If you give them the time and resources to do so, they would address those weaknesses themselves, and shore them up before they send her on to the next level. They care about her and her learning. They are professionals with experience and expertise in assessment and instruction of their given subjects.

Even that one year, when she didn't have a wonderful teacher, she had an adequate teacher. She still learned. Not as much as she would have learned with someone more inspired, but she still learned. 

But for some reason, we've decided to spend millions of dollars in this country to get assessment information we could get by asking the teachers. Don't get me started on my theories about why. We don't want another diatribe about sexism and classism, do we?

I could write dissertations on what's wrong with this picture. But no one would read them.

Maybe it was always this way. I don't know. I've only been a teacher for eighteen years and a mom with a school age child for nine years. I do know there is more testing for higher stakes now then there was when I was a child. I feel that my daughter's education is not improved by it, that the education she receives is not more rigorous or challenging then the education I received. It's just full of more tests, written by companies that were created to write tests and take government dollars to torture our children with them.

Here's what I suggest. All politicians and policy writers must sit in public school classrooms during testing season and perform the same battery of tests the children do under the same constraints the children suffer in.  Then, they must go to another school, and administer all the tests to children under the same constraints that the teachers do. Do you think they can focus for four or more hours a day and perform well on these tests? Do you think they can go four or more hours a day without an opportunity to go to the bathroom or eat anything? I doubt it.

If they can defend this method of assessment after participating in it, then I'll listen. But, frankly, I'd be stunned if a one of them would have anything to say.

The youngest is only in first grade. There's two more years until we start torturing her. I wonder if I can get my entire government replaced by then.

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

What I Want from Summer Vacation

This is my first week of summer vacation. As readers of this blog already know, I am a middle school Spanish teacher by day, and a novelist by night. On the side, I also parent, wife, dog-mom, volunteer, organize, cook, shop, drive, household, and sometimes even watch TV or go to a movie. It's a lot of hats. After a while it makes my neck stiff from the weight.

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So summer vacation is a relief (both to me and my chiropractor) because I get to take off the teacher hat for a few weeks. The teacher hat is some kind of sponge hat, because it gets fuller and heavier as the year goes on. By April, it weighs approximately as much as my car, so putting it down is a welcome respite.

For teachers, summer vacation is like a promised land, sparkling on the horizon. The problem I always run into is getting everything I want and need out of my non-teaching time, so that I come back refreshed, refocused, and ready to inspire young people to learn.

So my summer list:

• Writing, lots and lots of writing. Finish the sequel and submit it. Revise the opening to Cold Spring and resubmit it. Finish writing the novella for the superhero novella and submit it. Write a few more short stories. Resubmit (revising if necessary) everything that has come back rejected. Decide which of my projects will get my hard focus next: the second book in the Cold Spring trilogy? the third book in the menopausal superheroes? the middle grades novel? 
• Reading, lots and lots of reading. I struggle to find time to read during the school year, and I love to swim in the sea of books all summer long.
• Summer outings: swimming, beaching, farmer's markets, berry-picking, hiking, visiting grandparents, GEN CON!
• Sleeping and resting: let those days start a little later and actually wake up feeling rested. Take naps. Watch a little TV.
• Household catch-up: All that stuff that piled up all year and is now a fire hazard in the garage. Yep, time to bring out the backhoe and deal with that stuff. 

Over the years, I've learned that I have to be careful to divide my time between home, family and words or I don't get the refresh that summer vacation is supposed to bring me. I have to feel like progress was made on all fronts and that there was enough relaxed fun-time. 

So, here's to summer, filling my cup back up so I don't run dry during school months. I'll try to spend mine under a nice summer hat: colorful and broad brimmed and fun. 

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

How Being a Teacher Helps me be a Writer

I've been a teacher for twenty years. That's a wonderful and horrifying statistic in itself. In fact, I've not done much of anything else in the way of paid work. I had a brief run as librarian and a secretary in small town Alaska. Otherwise, I've spent my entire working life in the classroom.

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There are occupational hazards in being a teacher. You tend to take over in group settings, trying to organize everyone (which is not always appreciated by your adult family and friends). You tend to over-explain, assuming that the listener will need to hear it multiple ways to get it. You correct people's errors, even when it would be more polite not to do so. You're chronically busy, stressed, and under-slept, which can make you a cranky-pants.

But as I've moved to being a teacher and an author, I've found out that there's a lot I've learned from my teaching life that serves me well in my writing life.

Comfort with public speaking. A roomful of people who voluntarily walked into your panel or book talk or reading is a far easier audience than a roomful of middle school children who are required to be there. But that doesn't mean they aren't intimidating. I'm grateful that stage fright is not an issue for me.

A lack of dignity. Sometimes you really have to be a clown to engage children. I've worn crazy hats, let people put pies in my face or dunk me in a booth, and done some pretty amazing role plays as a teacher. So far, I haven't been asked to go to those extremes as an author, but it does make it easier to put myself out there as part of an event. I'm difficult to embarrass.

Diplomacy. I deal with a lot of stupidity as a teacher, and I've learned to do so with kindness. It won't help most situations to make someone (a student, another teacher, a parent, an administrator) feel bad about whatever way they've just put their foot in it. As a writer, I have had to deflect weird responses and questions from interviewers or readers, too, and defend my artistic choices to beta readers and editors who seemed to just not get it. Not to mention participating in a critique group, where I need to kindly point out the flaws in someone's heart's work. Good thing I've got a lot of practice.

Ability to Work Alone, Unsupervised. As a teacher, I have a supervisor in the

form of a school principal. But she or he sees very little of what I actually do. In some cases, I could probably have read a book or shown movies for weeks at a time without my supervisor finding out. Luckily for my students, I have high standards for myself and a strong personal work ethic. As a writer, I am even less well-supervised. In fact, I often don't even have a clear deadline to finish by or any directions at all about what I'm supposed to be creating. Without that self-starter attitude, I could easily just play solitaire and watch Firefly all day and only dream about being a writer.

Able to Think on My Feet: No plan survives contact with the enemy. That includes lesson plans. No matter how well I think I've planned, I always have to adjust on the fly. And I'm good at that after all these years. Turns out, that happens on the page, too. No matter how well I've planned out my story, change will come. Characters will surprise me. A plot twist will blindside me. And I can roll with it, follow it where it goes and trust to revision to smooth it out for the end product. In the classroom and on the page, I've built more than one silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Listening: Any teacher will tell you how important it is to listen to your students. As much as state legislators and pundits want to make education into a nice, clean, easily measured objective process, it really isn't. It's a very messy, human process, as much about relationships as it is about expertise and technique. And you build relationships by listening. You also get a lot of writing material that way.

So, who knew I'd been in training all these years. Too bad teaching didn't make me insightful about marketing. Then I could afford to give up teaching!

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.

Drink the Lemonade!

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I had a big disappointment a week or so ago. I found a great job that I applied for an internal transfer for. I really thought I'd get it. From my perspective, it was a perfect fit--capitalizing on my experience and skills and giving me an opportunity to grow and rediscover my enthusiasm. Just imagining myself in the new role carried me through the tortuous weeks of standardized testing that we finish the school-year with, like the light at the end of a tunnel.

And I didn't get it. The light? It was an oncoming train.

And I cried. In fact, I still feel like crying, telling you about it here. I'm burnt out and ready for a change, and it burns my biscuits that what felt like the perfect opportunity was denied me.

But I have to go back and keep the job I was trying to leave, unless life surprises me with an amazing offer in the next few weeks. I have responsibilities, so I can't just go away and sulk. So, that means I have to figure out a way to swallow these lemons quickly, or face a year of bitterness next school year. That's easy with sugar, but sometimes you have to make the sugar yourself.

Now, I say that like it's easy, but it's totally not. That's why people who've had a lot of disappointment end up making this face:

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I've know more than one teacher whose face got stuck like that, just like Mom always told us it would. I don't want to be that teacher.

So, where do I find my sugar to turn these lemons into lemonade so I can swallow it and move on?

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1. Count your successes: In my classroom, I have one bulletin board that is covered in student memorabilia. Photographs, cards, art, certificates. Just little things to remind me that in 20 years in the classroom, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of love. That it's not all vitriol.

On an especially bad day, I even make a list. It can be hard to let go of the really awful thing that happened, especially if it happened at the end of the work day and you're going home with that sour taste in your mouth (lemons without sugar).

But if I sit down and think about it, I can always find something that went well. Maybe I was able to make a sad child smile with some of my silliness. Maybe a student who doesn't usually engage participated today. Maybe one of my colleagues said "thank you" for something I do all the time, reminding me that I make a difference.


2. Know what heals you:  It may sound like a scene from Sound of Music, but think about your favorite things. Even better, do them. Distraction can be healing. You'll eventually have to face the consequences of whatever happened, but, for a little while, it's okay not to think about it. Channel your inner Scarlet O'Hara and think about that tomorrow.

So, tomorrow you'll figure this out. But today, you can run away a little. 

Shoot some things in a videogame, take an extra long walk with your dog, eat something unhealthy and delicious, read a great book, watch a favorite comedy, call your sister and listen to her talk for an hour, build a pillow fort and hide in there, go to a club and shake your money-maker. Whatever works for you. 

The key to this is only letting yourself run away for a short time. We're not looking for new recruits for the Lost Boys here. Eventually, you have to come back home.

3. Pick a new goal: There are other things you want. Pick one of those and take a step towards it. Send out another application. Call that someone you've been trying to get brave enough to call. Pick something to redecorate or reorganize. Audition for a play. Create something if you're a maker kind of person. Learn something new. Haven't you always wanted to know how to play an ocarina?

For me, I'm working on hard on that writing career this summer--I've got a novel to finish and two novellas to write by the end of August. I won't have time to sit around thinking about what might have been in the real world. I'll be too busy working on my new goal by running away to play with my imaginary friends. So there!

NOTE: This post originally appeared on Balancing Act.