and none of it is equal

Injury time

2011-09-25T18:37:00.003-06:00

For the first time in my life, I am entirely incapable of walking independently, thanks to a knee injury from soccer last Tuesday. The doctors don't think it's too serious, but can't tell much for certain until the swelling goes down and the x-rays are looked at more closely. In the meantime, I've been hobbling around on crutches and feeling incredibly thankful for all of the following things:

Roommates who drive me to the doctor and carry my things around and share their Aleve and ice packs

Students who write priceless sympathy cards and offer to be my helper in the classroom

Colleagues who carry my lunch from the microwave and give medical advice and offer rides and knee braces

A sister and brother-in-law who trade me cars because I can't work the clutch and do all the work setting up tents and Thermarests and things so I can still go camping

Friends who get my meals and refreeze my ice and carry my coffee and give up their seats and chase all the stray balls while I play one-legged ping-pong

Thanks, guys. For the help, and for helping me realize how much more comfortable I am with helping other people than being helped. It's a humbling experience. And one I will remember even when it's over. Hopefully that will be soon.

Home Alone

2011-08-22T19:33:00.003-06:00

One housemate is out of town for a wedding, the other just moved halfway across the country, and the new one won't arrive for another week, so it's just been me and the dog. I've been taking full advantage of the situation: playing bad pop music on the piano, practicing the mandolin, turning up my "top of your lungs" mix and singing, talking to the dog in Mandarin, having zucchini cake for breakfast, eating the cream cheese icing straight out of the bowl in the fridge, making random things for supper out of fresh garden veggies and questionable leftovers, leaving dirty dishes all over the kitchen, coming home from soccer late at night and making lots of noise. Ah--good song's on. Singing time.

The Story of E

2011-08-09T20:57:00.004-06:00

About a year ago, I wrote about The Story of B, and how my story wasn't B's exactly, but that I didn't know quite what it actually was.

I started thinking about my story again more intentionally this summer, after reading Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest and realizing that most of the things I love and do and think are connected to what he calls "the Movement"--the confluence of the social justice and environmental and indigenous peoples' movements. It began with a mental web, during one of the summer's backpacking trips, of how all the books I'd read in the past several months connected in some way to those bigger ideas. But it was more than just the books; I started thinking about the college courses I'd taken, the jobs I'd had, the organizations and activities I'd been part of. They all had something in common. They all had me in common. It sounds obvious, I know, but it gave me a different lens for looking at who I am and what this story of mine might be.

I wanted to see what it might look like, visually, this diagram of things I've read and studied and thought about and valued, so I sat down on the floor one day and scribbled pages of ideas connected with arrows all over pages, until the mass of words and lines was so chaotic that even I couldn't tell what I had written. So I went online to prezi and made my first-ever zooming presentation. Forgive my lack of expertise with the program. Even with the prezi, not everything related can sit nicely side by side, and I had to stop drawing arrows because they were covering up too many of the ideas, but it's a start. I didn't create a path for you to follow in viewing this diagram because it not only is not linear, but it has no beginning and no end. Too many branches and forks. I don't have a path for a web. Explore as you wish. Press the play button down there, and zoom and move.

There are many more ideas that could be added and arrows that could be drawn, but I had to leave it somewhere. It's a work in progress. Not just the presentation. The story itself. Here you have it:

Revenge of the junk in the cupboards

2011-08-06T22:42:00.003-06:00

Spoke too soon, apparently, about the virtues of stashing stuff away in cupboards. As I was putting away the grocery bags today, I found a branch in the back of the pantry. Pulled it out...and pulled and pulled...and found:

a potato tree.

Victory of a pack rat

2011-08-05T12:57:00.003-06:00

Confession: I have three cupboards in my office filled with junk that I can't bring myself to throw away because I think one day, someday, it might be useful. Today was someday. I finished planting the fall crops in the garden today and used the junk closet not once, but twice.

Twine that the thrift store guy used to tie a dresser (now fully functional, with the 100+ Disney/Barney/Lisa Frank stickers removed and the drawers glued back together) to my car is now tying up the pear tomatoes:

And an old license plate is now keeping water and soil from escaping through the corner of a garden box where the planks had come apart:

Finally, a valid response to the people who tell me I need to throw this stuff out.

Short and sweet

2011-08-04T11:35:00.001-06:00

That is the theme for upcoming posts. Ambitious thoughts for long, deep entries rarely make it out of my head and onto the screen. With the end of an adventure-filled summer and the beginning of a new school year just days away, it's time for the annual taking stock of life and reevaluating priorities--and writing is one of them. Four sentences. Done.

Just a city girl

2011-06-06T12:35:00.002-06:00

But I'm not, even. At least I didn't think so. And then I came back here to my college town for a wedding and realized just how far I've digressed from my small-town mindset, and it made me a little sad. My road trip buddies and I pulled into town late afternoon after two days of driving and found the brother-of-a-friend-of-the-grandparents-of-a-friend, who showed us into the part of the house where we'd be staying. When I asked about a key, he said, "Oh--well, we never lock our doors around here, but if you want to, keys are somewhere..." Once I dumped my stuff inside, I went for a walk along the Mill Race to get the blood flowing in my legs again. Apparently half the town of Goshen had the same idea, and I was soon reminded that in this alternative universe, you are indeed supposed to make eye contact, smile, maybe even say hello to everyone you pass. And I still recognized a good number of them. Between that walk and First Friday and breakfast at Rachel's Bread on Saturday morning, I ran into dozens of people I needed to catch up with--old college friends, professors, siblings of friends, friends of siblings, the families of a brother-in-law and a college boyfriend, a coach, a tennis teammate, a stand partner from college orchestra, a neighbor. It's humbling to realize that even after being gone for four years, there are still people here who know me and love me. And this small-town girl loves them back.

Aging

2011-04-03T08:11:00.002-06:00

I've recently had a hard time keeping track of my age. It's not that I can't remember how old I am, more like I think of my age as staying constant while everyone around me seems to keep getting younger in comparison. I remember, as a kid, thinking that 40 was ancient...now those are my peers. And all these athletes, actors, musicians that everyone wanted to grow up and be like--it's too late. We grew up, and now they're all younger than us. It sunk in a little more, going back to my college town to visit people over spring break this past week, just how much my life has evolved in the four years since I graduated. I could walk around campus and not look so different from all the students, but then I'd sit down and file my taxes while my cousin plowed through abstract algebra homework, or design curriculum while my sister's friends stopped by the dorm room to talk about boys. And then I came home and spent a very productive day doing all sorts of grown-up-feeling things: getting new rotors in the car, installing new wiper blades, replacing light bulbs, analyzing the month's finances, buying a pitchfork for turning the compost pile and picking up a load of free manure for the garden. And it felt wonderful. I still get nostalgic sometimes for college days, sure, but I have no desire to actually go back and live them again. Just this morning I came across a pile of emails from the spring of my senior year of college, and just looking through them brought back those gut feelings of uncertainty, possibility but instability, the stress and pressure of making the decisions about jobs and relationships and location after college that would shape the rest of my life. The dread of saying goodbye to friends, family, community, of entering into entirely unfamiliar territory. Korea, Botswana, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Honduras? Life ahead was a thousand question marks. It took me a couple seconds sitting here to remind myself to breathe, to relax, to remember that I don't have to deal with any of that right now--and that all of those tough decisions brought me right here. And this is a very fulfilling place to be right now. Real. Rooted. And don't worry, I'll still go play kickball with a bunch of other grown-ups in the park tomorrow. We're never too old to stop having some little-kid fun.

Stop and smell the goose poop

2011-03-31T19:07:00.004-06:00

I took Moo on a walk this afternoon. It's spring break, and it was sunny and 70 outside, and I had spent the whole day in a hotel basement at a language acquisition seminar (which actually was wonderfully inspiring and made me want to run off and start my PhD in Second Language Acquisition...but that's another story), so it was time for my outside fix.

It's really springtime here. We'll probably get a 2-foot snowstorm before the end of April, but today the daffodils were blooming and the trees were budding and everyone in the neighborhood was in the park riding their bikes and flying their kites and walking their dogs and practicing their soccer and playing their tennis. And Moo kept stopping every 30 seconds to sniff around at goose poop and worms, poking through the dirt and reeds, and I kept trying to drag him along, realizing that his harness was not designed to pull him forward, only back. So I resigned myself to going at his pace: meander, backtrack, sniff, explore, repeat. And I started noticing all kinds of things. The patterns of the wind on the lake. The mallards sleeping on the shore. The kids on the porch swing across the street. The freshly plowed flowerbeds. The shiny red buds on branches above my head. The little girl with her daddy buying paletas de fresa. The grandpa teaching a kid to fly a kite. Isn't that what a walk's supposed to be? Feeling a part of it all? Not hurrying along with headphones stuffed in my ears.

It reminded me of school. Here are our kids, inquirers by nature, stopping to poke around at every little thing that fascinates them but that we as teachers all too often fail to notice. And we yank them along by the leash, powering through the curriculum, making stops only for the sights we know will reappear on the standardized tests, dragging them past all the things of real interest. Goose poop isn't on the standardized test. (Or wait...is that all it is?...no, no, that would be something a bit different.) No wonder so many of our kids seem to lose their natural curiosity, to become apathetic toward school in general. No wonder so many of our teachers get burnt out with it too. That's not the way it has to be. Which brings me back to the seminar. Ahhh, education that matches the way brains actually learn. More on that another day.

Photo update

2011-02-12T19:38:00.002-07:00

Here's a link to the facebook photos I just posted. If a picture's worth a thousand words, this more than makes up for my lack of blogging in the past month. Enjoy!

On the potential benefits of flat tires

2011-01-04T19:39:00.003-07:00

Just because I have a car now doesn't mean I'm giving myself permission to give up biking every time it's a little bit cold or snowy. They plow the bike trails in Denver, after all, even if they don't do the roads. I successfully made the commute with no wipeouts, but did manage to get a flat tire 1.2 miles from school. Boo. And then my pump broke when I tried to reinflate the tube--the plastic pieces got a bit brittle in 6-degree temps--and left the tire completely emptied of any air that had previously been in it. So I walked (and ran, now being late for professional development) the rest of the way to work. And once I got there, I was reminded of just how much I love my coworkers. Two offered me rides home, one ran home over lunch and brought back two bike pumps, another tracked down the pump from the school gym, and another, after looking at my 4-times-patched tube, ran to the bike shop down the street and got me two new tubes. And one more, stopping by to make sure I had everything fixed, offered, albeit jokingly, to follow me in his car to make sure I got home. Even if I can take care of myself, it's nice to know there are people looking out for you.

The co-op

2011-01-01T13:39:00.005-07:00

Happy New Year! Apologies for my three-month hiatus in blogging. Life's been busy (and that is a serious understatement.) Turns out I've been doing an abysmal job of finding the balance I talked about back in September. One of the many things keeping me busy (but also very much inspired) has been the realization of a summertime vision for a food co-op. It's now been up and running for about three and a half months now, and I'm thrilled with the success so far.

The basic vision: to organize a group of people who love good food and the making of it, and who care about where their food comes from, to trade homemade value-added food products. I wanted to bake bread, freeze jam, dry fruit, culture yogurt, can tomatoes, pickle cucumbers, dehydrate backpacking meals, make applesauce and tofu and salsa and granola and pesto...but I knew that as soon as the school year started, I'd be lucky to have time for even one of those things. The idea, then, is that if I make a large quantity of just one item to share, I can trade it for a variety of other foods without spending the time actually making them all myself.

After bouncing the idea off a number of friends and feeling out interest, we ended up with a group of 14 and met to flesh out visions and logistics, and the co-op was born. Essentially, we meet for a food exchange twice a month, bringing shares for everyone once and receiving shares both times. Emily went into a bit more detail about logistics in her blog, so I won't do it again here. James also set up a blog for the co-op itself, where all of us involved can post photos, recipes, questions, etc. I just posted a collection of food photos from the past several months there, so check them out if you like. And of course, feel free to ask us questions on that blog, or here. I'd love to see where this idea goes if people start running with it in different directions.

Balance

2010-09-20T22:24:00.002-06:00

My dad asked me over the phone this weekend how I was doing at keeping my essential agreements. I told him I've been doing a great job of balancing work and play; the problem is that I've done it by working just as much as before and playing twice as hard. Not a sustainable way for me to live, it turns out. Lack of sleep and far too little down time turn me into the kind of person I don't want to be. I think I'm improving, though. Last Monday was about as bad as it got: I put in a full day of teaching and planning, went to a meeting on how to train other teachers to use their Promethean boards, biked home for just long enough to change out of biking shorts and grab a banana and a swimsuit, rushed off to a kickball doubleheader, ate the banana for supper between innings, headed straight to our string quartet business meeting (in a hot tub, naturally), made it home by 10:30, ate some real food, put the mute on my violin and practiced with miniscule bowstrokes for Tuesday's gig so as not to wake up my sleeping housemate. Today, I did not go a single other place after work. I came home, picked raspberries, read a book in German for fun, ate a leisurely supper, played piano, talked to an old friend on the phone for an hour and a half, and wrote in my journal. And posted a blog entry. And am going to get nearly a full eight hours of sleep. Let's see if I can make this trend continue.

Essential Agreements

2010-09-02T20:23:00.004-06:00

At my school, we don't have rules. We have essential agreements--the understandings we've established between students and teachers, paras and supervisors, staff and administration, to create the healthiest environment for us all. This year, after a summer spent putting a lot of things in perspective, I decided that in addition to my essential agreements with my students, I needed some for myself. For a perfectionist in a profession where you can never be perfect. For a teacher who needs to remember that she is many things other than that.

Photos and back to school

2010-08-15T23:18:00.005-06:00

I'm totally losing at this I-have-a-bedtime game. Tomorrow marks the first Monday of the school year (for teachers, at least; students don't come until Thursday.) To celebrate the fond memories of summer, though, I uploaded a new album of photos to my Picasa site. Enjoy! And now, to bed, with an alarm clock set. Qué pena, ¿no?

B Goes to Sunday School

2010-08-11T12:59:00.002-06:00

Everyone who's asked me for reading suggestions in the past six months has gotten the same advice: Daniel Quinn's The Story of B. It's a thesis-based novel, part of the Ishmael trilogy, that draws on anthropology and theology and ecology to challenge the unsustainable way we're living. Best book I've ever read. Not the best-written, or the most beautiful, or the one that makes me feel the best, but certainly the most urgent, powerful, inspiring, challenging. One of those where I had to lie flat on the floor with my eyes wide open for awhile after I finished, thoughts coursing through my brain.

Before you go flipping to your public library's website to reserve a copy expecting the same sort of experience, read this disclaimer: B would not have had the same sort of impact on me had I read it five years ago. It wouldn't have had the same impact had I read it five years from now. Had my previous experiences and ideas been different, this book might have inspired only outrage or confusion or defensiveness. Know that that's what it might do for you.

That's also why I was shocked when a man from the Mennonite church I attend asked if I would be willing to facilitate an adult education discussion series on the book. For those of you unfamiliar with Daniel Quinn's work, his ideas and characters are not exactly ones you would typically find in a religious setting of any sort. B is the last person I expected to be invited to church. I hesitated. He encouraged. I accepted. B went to Sunday School. People read the book. We discussed, questioned, challenged. I began my attempts to build up something new and different from the rubble of cultural and religious foundations that now lies at my feet.

The conversations have continued in many different contexts, with friends and family and anyone I can get to engage in discussion on visions of our role in the future of this planet. The energy I've found out there for finding better ways to live--related to the Quinn philosophy or otherwise--is nothing less than awe-inspiring.

Last weekend, nine of us got together for what turned out to be a wonderfully intense and intensely personal discussion. One of the discussion members asked me as I was leaving if I was B. I said yes, yes I am. But after coming home and attempting to go to sleep, mind still working as full-speed as if the coffee we drank had been caffeinated, I realized that I don't want to be B so much as E. E as in Erin. The story of me.

Maybe in another few years I'll have figured out what that means.

Cambodia in photos

2010-07-20T08:55:00.002-06:00

Well, here I am, home in Denver again, and finally getting my trip photos uploaded and captioned. Click on the Photo Albums link on the right of this page, and you'll see a new album called Cambodia 2010. You may have to put the slideshow on pause and flip through them manually because some of my captions are a bit long...my apologies. Enjoy!

Countdown

2010-07-07T21:52:00.002-06:00

Time for the lasts of everything. Leaving Cambodia in exactly 12 hours. (OK, maybe that's a little optimistic.) Got a head start on flipping my body clock by staying up till 4am watching the World Cup semis last night. I'll post photos sometime after I'm back in the States, but for now, I'll sign off and enjoy these dwindling hours to the fullest and try not to cry too much during goodbyes before beginning the 40-hour journey home. Leg cramps, I can feel you already. Wish me luck.

Magic marker magic

2010-07-04T20:43:00.005-06:00

Sopheak and Malachi are married--congratulations, sister and brother-in-law! The wedding was beautiful, and I felt so honored to be a part of it. My own personal highlight, though, was the chance to play violin and sing as part of the band alongside Jenny on keyboard.

If any of you read my blog while I lived here in Phnom Penh, you know who Jenny is. She was 9 years old at the time, now 12. She was my host sister, Khmer teacher, game buddy, cultural interpreter, friend. And piano student. When I first came in 2007, she wanted so badly to learn to play the piano, and I said I'd gladly teach her--except that there was no piano. That fact didn't seem to faze her in the slightest, and when she insisted she wanted to learn even without an instrument, I decided that that kind of motivation deserved to be given a chance. I asked her for a black magic marker and drew two octaves of a keyboard on a white piece of paper, and with that, our piano lessons began. We practiced note names, fingerings, and little songs while I sang the notes that she played on the paper keys. After a couple weeks of this, I came home from work one day to find an electronic keyboard in the living room and Jenny grinning from ear to ear. Her parents, apparently, were as impressed as I was with her dedication and enthusiasm, so they invested in a real instrument.

The lessons continued somewhat regularly, with Jenny learning incredibly quickly and becoming really quite good, until I went back to the States in 2008. Every time I called or emailed my host family, we discussed the piano progress. In the spring of this year, I got an email from Seiha, a dear mutual friend, who told me that Jenny had started playing keyboard with the worship team at church on Sunday mornings. I thought of our magic marker piano and almost cried.

When Jenny sent me a facebook message asking if I'd play violin with her while she played piano at Sopheak's wedding, I knew I had to find a way to do it. Thanks to a kind violinist friend here in Phnom Penh who lent me his instrument, I got to join the band and became Jenny's student as she taught me the melodies of the Khmer songs we would play while I scrambled to commit them to memory, as there was no written music except for chords and lyrics in Khmer script, which I can't read fast enough to keep up with a song.

After hours of practicing, and some purely fun jam sessions in the living room with a few other sisters singing and a brother-in-law joining us on guitar, we made it to the wedding day. Jenny and I played a duet as Sopheak walked down the aisle, and the rest of the band joined us for a whole variety of pieces during the ceremony and reception, from traditional Khmer wedding songs to I Could Sing of Your Love Forever to Celine Dion's Because You Loved Me. Pisey sang, I harmonized on violin, and Jenny improvised complicated piano accompaniments to it all. All that from a little sheet of paper and one very magic marker.

Lessons learned

2010-07-01T22:06:00.007-06:00

Two lovely women in Prey Veng transplanting rice seedlings.

After a short but lovely two-day trip out to Prey Veng province, I'm back to my host family's place for one more week, helping to prepare for tomorrow's wedding and trying to fit in everything else I want to do while I'm here. Yesterday I spent all day at the Royal University of Agriculture, my old workplace, amazed, as usual, at how absolutely normal it felt to be back there again. Same sunny office, same barefoot classrooms, same mouthwatering spicy pork at the Organic Restaurant. New bathroom, though, miraculously enough, although the running water was not running yesterday, and the old bucket and cistern of water for manual flushing are now nowhere to be found...ah, the joys of "progress."

In any case, I got the inside scoop on recent university happenings involving accounting crises, strikes, administrative changes, and much other drama, which, I think, for political reasons, I'd better not expound on here. Let's just say it made me truly appreciate the flawed but functional educational system that is Denver Public Schools.

In addition to hearing about university current events, I got to teach two first-year English classes, courtesy of the current English teacher in my old position. Crazy, you may say, to choose to work during my summer vacation, but I was really curious to experiment with TPR Storytelling methodology in a Cambodian university context, and who knows how long it'll be before I get the chance again?

I taught both two-hour classes, walking the students through the processes of Total Physical Response, personalized question and answer, asking and acting out a story, drawing events on a storyboard, and retelling them to partners. I was thrilled with the creative and entertaining stories they came up with, and with the near-100% engagement and participation. I don't often get that in my Spanish classes at home. Afterwards, though, when I asked the students for their opinions on the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of language teaching and learning, I was reminded just how big a disparity there is between my perceptions of effective learning and theirs.

Jocelyn and one of her students act out the story the class is creating.

TPRS is designed to make language acquisition as fun and effortless as possible. For my Cambodian students, however, if they don't have to work hard and seriously, if their brains don't have to break a sweat, they feel like they're wasting their time. A number of them voiced concerns that although this sort of lesson may have been fun, it was keeping them from progressing in their textbook. While it is my humble but professional opinion that they gained far more from storytelling than they ever could have with a textbook, they couldn't see any tangible progress, no pages turned, and although they enjoyed the time, they were anxious to get back to what they considered "real" learning: explicit grammar instruction, drills, and worksheets. There has to be a third way, something that incorporates comprehension-based methods appropriately into a Cambodian university context. Into any context. I mean, I could spend the rest of my life answering that question.

Hmmm. Maybe I will.

Muscle memory

2010-06-24T20:45:00.004-06:00

Whoever said you never forget how to ride a bicycle obviously never tried it in Phnom Penh after cycling Denver bike trails for two years. I can balance just fine, and pedal, and steer, but after my mildly harrowing but ultimately successful ride to the Olympic Stadium this morning, I can confidently say that I had completely forgotten how to play the driving game here. Rules: Do not stop at intersections. Merge carefully into the flow and just keep going. Stop lights are merely suggestions. Bicycles have the right-of-way only over pedestrians. Do not expect anybody, cars especially, to stop at intersections, whether or not there are stop signs. Don't stay on your own side of the road if there are puddles or potholes there. Etc.

That example aside, I've been amazed at how many things here come back to me immediately, unconsciously. Things I didn't even know I knew. How to angle my extra-large feet going down the narrow stairs at my host family's house. How to reach back and find the toilet hose in the dark. How to balance sidesaddle, hands-free, on the back of a swerving moto. (Yes, Mom, I got a helmet.) When we turn, my hand automatically sticks out and takes its position as makeshift turn signal. I didn't even remember I was supposed to do that. It just happens. And these hundreds of words in Khmer that I thought I'd forgotten...I talk, and they come tumbling out of my mouth, leaving me wondering where in the world they'd been hiding all this time.

It's unexpectedly beautiful, all these things that were once so foreign, so strange, eliciting nostalgia instead of surprise this time around. Waking up to wedding music just outside the house at 5:30 am. Recognizing the familiar ring tones of my host family's cell phones. Hearing a bullhorn on the street and knowing it's saying, "Grilled chicken eggs...they have flavor good-smelling, good-tasting." The hot, wet smell of the bathroom at night. Men peeing on street corners. Getting quoted exorbitant foreigner prices at the market. Being handed your iced coffee with milk (=2 solid inches of sweetened condensed beverage creamer) in a plastic bag. Parking a bike for the same old 500 riel (12.5 US cents) at the stadium. All these things that were once novel, disconcerting, exotic have become little reminders, dozens of little signs, all saying, "Welcome back."

Longest day of my life

2010-06-22T22:41:00.003-06:00

In both literal and figurative senses, yesterday was. Or was it two days ago? OK, so maybe I lie. It was two calendar days, having jumped across the International Date Line and skipping a day altogether, but I have never seen the sun for so many hours at a time. The sun came up just after I woke up in Denver, and it didn't go down again until 26 hours later somewhere in the air over eastern China. All three flights were problem-free, just far too long, and I managed precious few hours of sleep between layovers and meals and reading and World Cup and sappy movies and enough in-flight Tetris to make my eyeballs burn. Plenty of time to just let me mind run free, too, and plenty to think about. Such an eyeful of cultures. During my LA-Seoul flight, I sat next to a Chinese girl, whom the flight attendants with their matching turquoise eyeshadow and hair in identical black buns kept trying unsuccessfully to talk to in Korean, and a South Korean girl, who showed me and the Chinese one how to eat the rice bowl and hot pepper paste and seaweed soup and bean curd with dressing. In front of me, there was a saffron-clad Cambodian monk listening to his iPod and taking videos of the SkyMap with a little digital camcorder. And now I'm here in Phnom Penh, back at my old internet cafe where I sat to write similar blog entries three years ago, and realizing, just like then, that my time is about to run out and that I'm late for lunch. Sorry, Ma!

Return

2010-06-21T01:16:00.004-06:00

I'm headed back to Cambodia in the morning--or rather, later this morning--and, in keeping with tradition, I am up quite late getting my act together before I set out on the journey. This time, I can at least justify it by saying that I'm getting a head start on adjusting my body clock to a time zone 13 hours off from the one it's used to. And this time, I don't have to say long-term goodbyes to everyone I know and love, don't have to put all my earthly possessions in storage, don't have to mentally prepare myself for the transition to life as a foreigner. I'll be there for a visit, a two-and-a-half-week stay, a dear host sister's wedding, reunions with host family and friends and coworkers and students. I've never done this before, this going back to a faraway place that used to be mine, reclaiming parts of my identity that have lain dormant for the past two years: daughter, sister, teacher, friend. Foreigner, outsider, curiosity, sore thumb. Explorer, adventurer. So many memories rising to the surface. We'll see if the wanderlust returns.

Roots

2010-06-15T07:01:00.004-06:00

I cleaned my room this week. Seriously cleaned it--this was no one-day task. Dusted, vacuumed, took everything out of the closet and dresser, everything off of the walls and the bookshelf, rearranged the furniture. I couldn't figure out why I felt the need to do all that until I realized that I've been living in the same house, sleeping in the same bedroom, for nearly two years. Since I left my parents' house for college, I've been used to packing my life into boxes and moving every five months, three months, nine months, eleven months--no wonder I'm needing a change of scenery after 22. I've grown rather attached to this place, though, and to the idea of starting to feel like I belong here. I know this house and all of its idiosyncrasies. I know this neighborhood and its bike trails and its bus schedules. I paid my taxes this year not only in just one state, but for just one employer. I finished the school year knowing, for the first time ever, that I'd be back teaching in the same place in the fall. I have a garden bursting with vegetables. I've been here long enough to see the veggies-to-kitchen scraps-to-compost-to-dirt-to-veggies cycle through. And I, with my tentative roots in this community, finally feel like I'm starting to get as many nutrients out of this soil as I'm putting in. I had gotten so used to being transitory, always coming or going, making excuses for not really connecting, not really investing emotional energy in where I was, telling myself that I wasn't supposed to feel like I belonged because there was always somewhere else that was home. I think I'm finally ready to own this one.

Makeover

2010-06-13T08:18:00.001-06:00

Enough of llamas and snow. This shot's from last week's backpacking trip on the Kenosha-Tarryall Circuit.

Rainstorm

2010-06-05T21:54:00.003-06:00

It rained tonight. A good, hard rain that drummed on the roof. I went outside and sat in the garden where it smelled like dirt and worms and raindrops on hot pavement, watched the lightning explode soundlessly behind the night sky clouds, let the cool drops run rivers down my sweaty legs. The garlic and potatoes and bok choy looked so happy there, getting their feet muddy. Guess we all just needed a good watering.

Resurrection

2010-05-24T22:29:00.003-06:00

In case you were wondering, I did not, in fact, die in the canyon of dehydration or rodent attacks or any such thing (although the effects of radiation, I suppose, remain to be seen); I've just been fighting to keep my head above water since then with the end of the school year and all the work that goes along with it, and my writing time has suffered. I know I should be sleeping right now, but I need to do something to reclaim my general sense of well-being from everyday hecticness, and the revival of writing seems a good place to start. Besides, this is the last week before summer break. No more Mondays. Good thing, too; the way this one started, I may not have survived many more. For starters, my temperamental alarm clock decided not to go off again after I hit snooze at 5:43. When I woke up again on my own, I realized that I could barely open my eyes because I had finished reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes last night and sobbed my way through the last 40 pages or so. Once I worked my swollen eyelids open, I saw that it was 6:09 and almost time to leave for school. There wasn't enough time for a shower, or enough leftovers in the fridge for me to take for lunch. I scrambled to get all my stuff together, jumped on my bike, and made it all of five feet out of the garage before realizing that I had a flat tire and no time to patch it. Luckily enough, Colin has lent me his car for a few months while he's gone. Back inside, changed out of biking shorts and into teaching clothes, out the front door. Climbed into the driver's seat and noticed the lights were switched on. Sure enough, dead battery. Inside again, searching for bus tickets, realizing that by that time, I'd managed to miss the bus, too. All three of my modes of transportation, useless. Then Kate saved the day--thank goodness for roommates with jumper cables. Jumped the Festiva, survived the school day, cooked the supper, washed the dishes, watered the garden, bought the groceries, fixed the bike, resurrected the blog...four days and counting, baby, and tomorrow can only be better.

After long anticipation

2010-03-27T06:57:00.003-06:00

Today begins the grand adventure of Kate, Greta, Matthew, Colin, and Erin from Denver to Hotchkiss to Moab to Grand Canyon. We're as ready as we can be for canyon backpacking, although, as we have been more than adequately warned, many obstacles are far beyond our control. Some examples from the permit application correspondence:

"Experience has shown that trips such as the one you requested all too often result in off-itinerary camping, injury, and occasionally even death. Please do not accept this itinerary merely because it is available."

"Legions of small animals...will devote much attention to separating you from your food during your stay at the designated campsites."

"...the water in Horn Creek may exceed EPA MUNICIPAL water standards for alpha radiation during high flows. Remember, the dehydration threats from not drinking can be much more immediate and life threatening."

"There is water in the bed of Horn Creek about half the time, but unfortunately it is radioactive so don't drink it unless death by thirst is the only other option."

After talking to a ranger in December, who assured me that our itinerary wasn't what they call "crazy," we made some slight adjustments and started preparing for the hazards ahead. So here we go--radiation, dehydration, traumatized toenails, legions of rodents, you're on.

Snow day

2010-03-24T21:40:00.013-06:00

After being 65 and sunny two days ago, Denver had its first snow day in the two years that I've been working for the school district. I love my job and I love my kids, but let me tell you, this was a much-appreciated break. To celebrate, I'll give you some happy snow photos from the past few weeks.

This afternoon, for example, Greta and I decided you don't have to be a little kid to build a snow fort in the backyard.

We had rescued the daffodils from our flowerbed just before the blizzard.

Snow forts in T-shirts. I love you, Colorado.

And this was after surviving the bike ride home yesterday. It had just started snowing when I left school. By the quarter-way mark, the bridges were covered. By half, I couldn't see the trail. My tally of fellow bikers fell to a record low of one (who yelled, "Oh, YEAH!" as we passed in the blinding snow.)

My snowshoes got their initiation after last Friday's snowstorm on a trip to Mt. Evans with Andi and Emily.

And last but not least, an exhausting but well worth it cross-country skiing adventure to Lost Lake.

And that, sadly, must be all for now. The sun has melted almost the entire foot of snow, so it's back to school tomorrow. Two days till spring break, baby.

Critical diacriticals

2010-03-18T19:59:00.002-06:00

Yes indeed, look at this--I'm writing on a school night. I came to the conclusion last night, after reflecting on my overstuffed day and realizing that the most relaxing thing I had done was to take a five-minute break to clip my fingernails, that I need to start doing more of what I love and less of what I have to do. So here I am.

Today's teaching highlight came during 5th grade Spanish class, where we've been working on describing family members. I took a brief detour into English to impress into my students' brains just how important it is to write and pronounce the diacritical marks--those lovely accents on vowels and tildes on ñ's--in Spanish. My high school teachers informed me of the papá/papa distinction, but they neglected to teach me the more important ones; I was well into my time living in South America before I figured out the crucial difference between mamá and mama, año and ano. I realize, I told my kids, that by teaching you these words, I'm running the risk of you using them inappropriately, but I'll take that risk to spare you the embarrassment of going around telling people, "My potato plays tennis," "My breast speaks French," or, horror of horrors, "I have 11 anuses" instead of "I'm 11 years old." Jaws dropped; ears turned red. For a fleeting moment, I had the undivided attention of every single student, until one of my typically less-than-attentive pupils leaped out of his seat to grab a pencil and started scribbling notes, and I burst out laughing. This was the only time all year that an elementary student had taken notes in my class. Go figure. A noteworthy occasion indeed.

Lions

2010-03-14T16:52:00.004-06:00

I knew it had been a little while since I'd written anything here, but today when I opened a new Safari tab I noticed that my blog had been removed from the display of my 12 most frequently visited websites. Not only that, but it had been replaced by things like H&R Block and the Denver Public Schools job board--how terribly depressing. Fortunately, now that my taxes are done and my teaching job rather miraculously secured for next year, I can work on getting my priorities straight.

So. What has happened since January? We're well into March, somehow, and the first two weeks were absolutely gorgeous, no lions in sight. I left my fleece jacket and wind/rain/snowproof biking pants at home and wore sunglasses for the 6:30 am ride to work for the first time since fall. The commute home took me past several fishermen on the riverbank, two little girls on scooters, and a grown man on a skateboard being pulled along the bike trail by a big frisky dog. I counted an impressive 25 other bikers on my way home on Friday, more than doubling the previous record. My arms got minorly sunburned after a 60-degree Saturday morning spent building new compartments for the compost bin and digging up soil in the garden beds. (Also, spell check tells me that "minorly" is not a word. And there are some surprisingly heated forum discussions on the matter. Fascinating.) I spent yesterday afternoon hiking around a snowy mountain in a T-shirt. Then I woke up this morning to gray clouds spitting snowflakes outside my window. Boo. Now it's turned to chilly rain, and I'm sitting here staring at the garden through the glass and drinking hot chocolate out of a snowman mug in somewhat begrudging deference to the fickleness of spring. So be it. If I have to be inside this afternoon, I'll spend it digging my tennis rackets and sandals out of the closet and putting them optimistically with my skis and snow boots. Come on back, little lamb.

Potty humor

2010-01-13T21:46:00.002-07:00

8:15am, hallway duty, first-grade hallway
J: (Urgently running down the hall.) Miss Gotwals! Miss Gotwals! I can't get my seatbelt off!
E: (Confused. Obviously, he is not in a car.) Your...?? Oh, your belt...
(I pause, wondering if it's legal or prudent for a female teacher to be witnessed disrobing a six-year-old boy in the middle of a hall full of parents.) Mmm, can you try it yourself one more time?
J: But I already started peeing my pants!
(I look down. Sure enough, a wet patch is spreading quickly down the jeans.)
E: Oh! Ehhh...
(I frantically undo the belt. He looks up at me, dismayed. Clearly too little, too late.)

12:37pm, walking back from from lunch
(Two second graders are having a worried conversation in the hall. I see the boy point at me and say, "There's Maestra Gotwals!" and take off. The girl walks up to me.)
S: Umm, Maestra, do you have a Spanish class right now?
E: Not for three more minutes.
S: Well, the bathroom pass got in the bathroom trash can, and I can't get it out. Could you maybe, um, come and get it?
(Exactly how the bathroom pass "got in" the trash in the first place I never found out, but I was just able to fish it out from the bottom of the four-foot garbage bin with my adult-sized arms. One for two.)

1:30pm, just before 2nd grade Spanish class
(One student hurries to my door before the rest of the class, pulling her shirt down as far as she can.)
C: (Whispering.) Maestra, I peed in my pants just a little bit, I couldn't hold it.
E: (Thinking, unbelievable--how do I attract all this bathroom drama when it's not even my fault?) OK, come on in, we'll get you a pass to the office and nobody else will know, it'll be fine...

Seriously now, why wasn't this part of the training I received in Curriculum and Instruction: Foreign Language Methods?

Synesthesia

2009-12-27T19:07:00.004-07:00

syn-es-the-sia n : A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color. (Greek syn = together + aisthesis = to perceive)

In spite of the sound of its name, it's not a disease. It's not a disability. I like to think of it as a super-ability. I would never want to give up my vivid world of words and numbers with their colors as I perceive them.

I can't distinctly remember a particular time when I realized that not everyone experienced this, but I know that letters and numbers have always had colors to me. Apparently, this particular type of synesthesia--called lexical or grapheme-color synesthesia--is the most common, although any combination of senses can be affected. Some synesthetes see colors and shapes when they hear music; some taste foods when they hear a sound; some experience smells as touch. There seems to be little hard data out there as to how many synesthetes there actually are, in large part because many don't know there's a name for their perceptions. Current research says that the mixing of senses comes from extra neurological connections that everyone's born with but that most brains prune away very early in life. On occasion, they stay.

What brought this all to mind again was reading the novel A Mango-shaped Space, which tells the story of a fictional 13-year-old girl whose synesthetic experiences were much more intense than mine are. My colors don't impede my ability to do math or learn languages; in fact, they're one of the main reasons I can remember words in new languages so quickly. I may not be able to recall the word exactly, but I'll remember what color it is and be able to deduce the sounds and letters that must be in it. I can remember phone numbers and bike lock combinations by their sequence of colors. I like certain names and words better than others because of the colors in them. I love Denver because of all its different shades of green. Your name has a color to me, usually based on how I perceive its first letter and the other major consonant sounds. After finishing the book tonight, I was inspired to map out my letters and numbers because everyone's alphabet is different. Some of the letters needed multiple crayons to get closer to the right hue and are still not quite accurate, but here you have it:

I've never talked to anyone I knew shared this colored-letter-and-number world, although I'm sure I've met some without realizing it, and I'm curious to hear about other people's experiences. Any of you out there?

Insomnia

2009-12-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

It's well past midnight, and I've been lying in bed since 10:30 without sleeping for a second. I've drifted into almost-sleep, ventured just far enough into surreality to see, through closed eyes in the dark, beams of light streaming from my outstretched fingertips, creative energy straining to be free of the bogged-down-in-work-ness that has been the overarching theme of these past weeks and months. I did eat far too many Christmas cookies before going to bed, but it's more than simple chocolate caffeine bursting around in this brain of mine. It's all the music I want to play, the stories I want to tell, the languages I want to speak, the passion I want to teach, the miles I want to walk, the people I want to love. All of it, all of this light and color, is shooting through me, trying to find its way out, not letting me sleep, more inspired than tired, too impatient to wait for morning. The brilliance of lightning fades all too quickly in sunlight.

Christmas comes early

2009-12-13T19:20:00.003-07:00

It's Sunday night, and I'm practically itching for Monday morning to come around so I can get to school and play with my classroom's newest and far-and-away most remarkable toy: our Promethean board.

(Check out more at their website.) It was there waiting for me when I showed up last Wednesday morning; I danced around my classroom and have been mesmerized ever since. For everyone reading without a clue as to what a Promethean board is, which was the case for me a mere three months ago, it's an interactive white board that does everything a computer screen can do but is activated by electronic pens on the board itself, with special software for creating flipcharts (similar to PowerPoint slide shows but with many more interactive capabilities) and hundreds of other exciting tricks. I've had 12 hours of training so far and feel like I've barely scratched the surface of its potential. Ideas are galloping through my mind: class-directed Spanish movies, interactive cultural inquiries, instantaneous analysis of student responses, video conferences with sister schools in Latin America. Tranquila, maestra. Start small. Perhaps an interactive vocabulary lesson tomorrow. Ah, but the horizons are so inviting.

Jello Chilies

2009-12-05T22:52:00.007-07:00

I've been craving Peruvian food lately, so I decided to cook up a little ceviche and ají de gallina and guanabana ice cream tonight for some of the old Goshen crew that's here in Denver. It's been quite awhile since I've done any serious Peruvian cooking, but I tracked down some recipes and set off to do the house grocery shopping. Unsurprisingly, there was no ají amarillo (a Peruvian type of yellow chili pepper) to be found at Albertsons or Whole Foods, where we usually do our shopping. I headed for one of the Mexican supermarkets to try my luck, but had none, except for finding some frozen guanabana pulp. I finally ended up at the biggest Mexican supermarket I know, the fourth stop of my grocery shopping trip. After searching all the likely aisles in vain for my ají, and more than ready to be done with shopping, I finally asked the man taking inventory of the spices for help. Our conversation went something like this:

"Excuse me, do you know if you sell ají amarillo?"
"What?"
"Ají amarillo...es un tipo de chile peruano que se usa para hacer ají de gallina..."
(look of skepticism and confusion) "Jello chilies?"
(look of surprise) "No, no, not jello. A pepper. Un chile amarillo."
"But amarillo is jello."
(half second of silence. epiphany.) "OOOOOhhh, yes yes yes, I'm sorry. Yellow chilies. Jellow chilies. ¿Se los vende?"
"A ver...es que no sé...es que this store is more Mexico, no South America...you want that I talk to my friend from Peru? He will know."
"OK, that'd be great."

He proceded to whip out a cell phone and call up the Peruvian friend, who informed us that the store did indeed carry yellow chilies, and that they were located with the other South American products, although neither one of them could tell me where that might be. I gave a heartfelt thanks and returned to my search, meticulously re-scanning every aisle and feeling rather frustrated until I caught sight of a lone 2-liter of soda on a top shelf, a neon-yellow beacon of pure Perú. Inca Kola. I couldn't help but grin. Sure enough, I found the ají amarillo not two feet away, and bought the Inca Kola for good measure, stopping to find the jello-chili man and thank him again on my way to the checkout before heading home for an afternoon of shredding chicken, chopping chilies, soaking raw fish in lime, and sipping on the Golden Cola, which tasted just as terrible as I remembered but made my heart sing. Craving satisfied. Thank you, jello-chili man, for making it possible.

Photo update

2009-11-29T21:32:00.002-07:00

It's wintertime, and I haven't posted any pictures since July. Here you have the three-season highlights: summer, fall, and winter. Without photos of teaching, I wasn't sure there'd be much left...but it turns out I have been playing a little in addition to the work. Enjoy.

Pantuflas

2009-11-25T09:37:00.003-07:00

Yesterday morning, I was halfway to the bus stop when I realized I was still wearing my slippers. I froze for half a step, debating whether to sprint back to my house to put on real shoes, but I was late and knew I'd miss the bus if I did. So I went to work in my slippers, pulling my pants down as far as I could to hide them while I sat on the buses and walked along the streets, until I made it to school, where I keep teaching shoes in my closet for the days I bike. My classes got a little story and a big laugh at my expense, and they learned how to say slippers, one of my favorite words in Spanish: pantuflas.

Dios mío. It's definitely time for a vacation.

Facelift

2009-11-22T21:58:00.002-07:00

It's winter. Time for a change of blog scenery.

Old Age

2009-11-22T18:30:00.004-07:00

I turned a quarter of a century old today. Unbelievable. Or maybe not so much. It seems I've been alive for quite a long time (although, obviously, I don't have much to compare it to), and plenty has happened in the last 25 years. It's just that not so very long ago, I would've told you that people in their mid-twenties were mature, serious, grown up, boring. Old.

I was playing violin this morning, and for the first time in my life realized that I couldn't see the lines on the staff to read some of the notes. Failing eyesight? You've got to be kidding me.

My bedtime is 9:45 on school nights. My grandparents stay up later than that. Granted, I rarely make it on time. It's a testament to the imbalance of my work and social lives that on a normal week, the only nights I'm in bed by bedtime are Friday and Saturday. Pathetic, ¿no?

There's not much I can do about declining vision or that fact that I actually need my eight hours of sleep, I suppose, but I've certainly been putting forth my best efforts to guard against becoming too serious and boring. After spending the better part of this past Friday night studying for more teacher licensure tests and completing an online training course in school emergency response, I was all too aware of how easy it could be to fall into a dangerously dull adult lifestyle of overwork and underplay. Unacceptable, I say.

So I ventured outside in my slippers through the snow and into the back alley, where the plastic sliding board from our ex-treehouse had been laid to rest in the dumpster. I rescued it. Then, with the amused but skeptical help of my dear and trusty friend Kate, I proceeded to attach it to my bed so I could slide to the floor each morning. Wouldn't you just be itching for the alarm clock to go off if you knew you'd get to slide out of bed?

She told me that maybe once I turned 25, I'd outgrow this severe silliness. I'm watching the clock, and that slide's still in my bedroom. I think I win. But if I end up in the hospital tomorrow morning with a broken hip...well, you'll know what happened.

Shit happens

2009-11-08T21:33:00.004-07:00

Well. What to say about this week? The string of luck began when our dead treehouse tree split in two and had to be cut down. Then our washing machine started making dirty water come up through the shower drains. Then our house was broken into, and we're down three laptops, three digital cameras, two gold rings, an mp3 player, several hundred in cash, a checkbook, and a pair of sunglasses. That same night I got pulled over for driving a borrowed car with one headlight out and couldn't find the insurance papers. Two run-ins with the police in the same day! Thought that was as bad as it could get. Then this morning when I ran the dishwasher, all manner of human excrement started bubbling up through all the toilets and showers. What can I say? Can't think of a more ironically appropriate ending to a shitty week.

OK, so to be perfectly honest, I found the whole poop-in-the-showers incident to be rather comical. Maybe I've spent too much time around elementary kids. Maybe if I hadn't laughed, I would've cried. In any case, everything that's happened has made me realize just how lucky I am that things weren't worse than they were. So much of what is valuable to me is worth nothing to anyone who would break into houses. I still have my journals, my photos, my letters. My housemates and I are safe, if not altogether sound. We have a truly amazing support system of people making sure we're OK. And I can still laugh and believe that next week can only get better. Knock on wood.

Mediocrity

2009-10-18T21:01:00.003-06:00

There's nothing quite like being a first-year teacher to promote a healthy sense of humility. I guess it goes to show just how absurdly privileged my life has been, but the times I've had to settle for being merely mediocre at anything have been few and far between. And now there is teaching.

There are days when I feel entirely overwhelmed, like it's all one big act, just pretending to know what I'm doing and praying the kids don't see through me. No matter how hard I work, there's always more I could be doing, should be doing. I want to be extraordinary right away, and it frustrates me to no end that I simply can't be. I waver back and forth between feeling like a very competent, talented teacher and like I'll never be able to get to where I want to be. Truth is, those two aren't as mutually exclusive as they might seem.

That's the thing about teaching: you can be exceptional, phenomenal, the best there is, and you'll still be thinking every night about a dozen things you should be doing better. I could spend every waking hour doing nothing but planning and prepping and teaching and reflecting and grading and analyzing, and it still wouldn't be enough. Plus I would've lost my sanity--not to mention my enjoyment of teaching--long ago, and if that were the case, my kids would hate my class because I would too. So I stay late at school, but I come home and cook and talk and write and visit and play soccer and tennis and violin, knowing that even if I can't be an extraordinary teacher overnight, achieving any sort of well-balanced life in this first year is pretty extraordinary in and of itself.

Light-bulb moment

2009-10-07T21:27:00.006-06:00

Tonight I am not doing any work at home. I won't even write about teaching. Is there anything else that exists? Ah, but of course.

Not too long ago, I stopped at Home Depot on a Saturday morning in hopes of finding light-bulb housings to use with my paper lampshades from Laos. Unfortunately, as John in the electrical department informed me, Home Depot doesn't carry such things. But--he said--are you handy with wires? Let me show you what you can do.

I laughed, and almost said no, thanks anyway, and walked out, but I was amused enough by his confidence in my electrical skills that I decided to play along. I would like to be seen as the kind of person who is handy with wires, even if I had no intention of actually following through with the job.

First I was shown to a huge spool of wire, and then to bins of plugs and switches and other gadgets. Soon, I was carrying around bulb housings and actually considering taking them home with me and giving it a shot. I read the employees' aprons: You can do it. We can help. Why not?

After admitting to the infinitely patient salesperson that I had absolutely no electrical experience whatsoever, I started taking copious notes and drawing rather indecipherable diagrams on the back of a receipt while he spent the better part of an hour giving advice on how not to get electrocuted and explaining exactly what needed to be done. It'll take you probably two hours, but it's a relatively simple project, he assured me. You'll be fine. I left with a plug, a switch, three bulb housings, heat shrinks, electrical tape, 30 feet of wire, and a big smile. I was going to be an electrician.

At home with my new toys, I informed my encouraging but slightly skeptical housemates of my plans. Kate volunteered to stay close to the phone, ready to dial the hospital or fire department at a moment's notice. I started snipping and stripping, measuring, hammering, shrinking, sealing, feeling quite impressed that I was actually doing these things, all by myself.

In less than the predicted two hours, I had everything assembled. Time for the moment of truth. I held my breath and plugged it in. Nothing. Not a single one of the three light bulbs turned on. How terribly anticlimactic. I disassembled the bulb housings one at a time, checking for problems, and sure enough, the wires had slipped and weren't making contact with the screws. Fixed them up and tried again--and regarde! A light! Three lights! And a feeling of immense satisfaction. I'm sure I could've bought something perfectly adequate from Target and spent half the money and a fraction of the time, but that sense of accomplishment is pretty much priceless.

Quarantine

2009-09-20T20:38:00.002-06:00

Flew to PA this weekend for 36 hours of Mom's birthday, hurried visits to grandparents, and a lovely cousin's wedding. Felt a little sickly, but wrote it off to traveling and teaching exhaustion and the presence of 600-odd adorable little kids generously contributing their adorable little germs to my classroom. Walked through airport security early this morning on my way back home and read the H1N1 warning billboard. Cough. Sore throat. Headache. Damn. Spent the entire afternoon flipping back and forth between the CDC website and my half-finished substitute lesson plans, analyzing my potential as a health hazard. Decided on better safe than sorry. Watched my temp drop from 98.7 to 98.5 to 98.0. Curious. Will sleep long and hard and reevaluate tomorrow.

Initiation

2009-09-09T23:04:00.003-06:00

I had my first lost tooth in Spanish class today. And my first pants-wetting incident, because I told a kid to wait five minutes until the end of class. In the same class period. And it was a fourth-grade class. And I had several kids start crying throughout the day, because I didn't call on them, or because they answered a question wrong, or because they missed their moms. Sheesh. Blood, sweat, and tears. And urine. The nurse took care of the blood, and our heroic custodian came and mopped up the puddle of pee from my floor. I did my share of tear-drying. The sweat is mine. No sign of that letting up soon. Welcome to elementary school, maestra.

Fragility

2009-09-02T21:23:00.003-06:00

This morning I started the usual commute to work along the bike trail as the sun was rising. Beautiful chilly September morning. I was still trying to wake up after another night of not enough sleep when I saw the two bikers coming toward me suddenly collide and fly over their handlebars, crashing onto the pavement in front of me. I threw down my bike and ran over to find a man with a scraped-up leg rushing over to a woman who was lying on the trail between bicycles and making terrible moaning noises. There was also a high-pitched squealing sound, which I thought was coming from her as well until I looked down at her bike on the ground by my feet and saw a squirrel with its head and front leg wedged between the front tire and the bike frame, clearly in great pain, but still very much alive and squealing its head off. My attention snapped back to the injured biker as another man rode up, asking if he should call 911, just as the woman, who had been starting to talk, suddenly lost consciousness and dropped her face into the pavement. He called. She made frightening noises on the ground with the first man kneeling beside her. The squirrel screeched in pain. And I just stood there, terrified, mind racing through CPR training and first-aid lessons, coming up with absolutely nothing I could do, feeling entirely helpless. He got an ambulance on its way. She opened her eyes. The squirrel somehow freed itself and ran zigzagging into the woods on three legs. She told us that her back and neck were hurt (and her head would have been, too, had it not been for the now-cracked helmet she was wearing), and asked me to find her phone and call her husband, which I did. Within minutes, we heard sirens and saw the ambulance come flashing down the trail to where we were waiting. The paramedics asked a few questions and bundled her onto a stretcher, leaving the rest of us, still somewhat in shock, to pedal off to work and never know the end of her story. Had I left my house two seconds earlier, it could've been mine.

Maestra

2009-08-30T21:32:00.006-06:00

Tomorrow is the last day of August. I have not written this entire month. It's not that I've disappeared; it's that life beyond the computer world has been hurtling me full-force through the past weeks, and I hardly have time to breathe, much less blog. I will not even attempt to catch up on everything that's been happening this past month, but I will start with a little glimpse of the biggest change tonight and take it from there.

I am a teacher. A "real" one. Not a teaching assistant. Not a student teacher. Not a volunteer professor of English in Cambodia. Not a para. A real live maestra de español. Since I last wrote, my classroom went from looking like this:

to this:

And voilà--I am a teacher. A sleep-deprived, overwhelmed, exhausted, and utterly inspired teacher. With 23 classes and nearly 600 students. And it is past my bedtime. Again. Hasta la próxima, pues.

Photo update

2009-07-28T14:33:00.002-06:00

It's been a jam-packed July filled with adventures, and I've finally uploaded a bunch of the photos. Find them here in the "July" and "Brought to you by Greyhound" albums. Tomorrow I'm off to the East again for family and a wedding, so the next update may be a long time coming. Until then!

It's official!

2009-07-21T22:36:00.003-06:00

As you may already know, I will be starting a new job as a Spanish teacher in just under a month. It's the same job that I interviewed for way back in March, the one that was offered to me the next day, taken away a week later, and finally given back to me in May. Needless to say, after the first round of making happy phone calls and then having to tell people that I didn't actually have a job after all, I was a little more hesitant to publicize this time around. I told myself I wasn't allowed to get too comfortable until I had a signed contract in hand. And now, as of this afternoon, I finally have it. Along with my brand-new English teaching license that came in the mail today after all my coursework and exams were approved. These Colorado licenses begin, "Be it known..." Yes. So be it known that Erin officially has a teaching job, and a third endorsement on her license, and her own classroom, and 600 K-5 students to teach in just a few short weeks. And she's really excited about it. In case you couldn't tell.

Transubstantiation

2009-07-05T15:59:00.002-06:00

I baked the bread for communion this morning, and after punching down the dough (my very favorite part) and leaving it to rise a second time, I realized: the Body of Christ really does rise again.

Microcosm

2009-07-04T21:54:00.004-06:00

I got caught in a rainstorm yesterday as I was exploring downtown Denver. It started out with the familiar wind and threatening clouds, and in practically no time, the slow, fat drops had turned into a downpour. I considered braving the elements for the 20-minute walk to my bike and the 30-minute bike ride home until a bolt of lightning seared itself onto my eyeballs and chased me under the nearest shelter, which happened to be the ampitheater at the Civic Center park.

Quite a crowd had already gathered between the Greek columns, trying to avoid the rain gusting in from either side, a real microcosm of the Denver that was not at work at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. I stood there, watching the storm and the random conglomeration of people it blew in, and getting rather wet until a white guy with a fauxhawk and a joint and dozens of tattoos informed me that I was welcome to stand in the shelter of one of the larger walls with his buddies, that they wouldn't bite. I laughed and politely declined, knowing that I couldn't even pretend to be part of their crowd, and made my way over to the shelter of the second wall, which seemed to be mainly populated by businessmen and tourists and homeless people, and where I felt I could be a bit less conspicuous.

Since the storm showed no signs of letting up, we got to talking (or rather yelling) to each other over the thunder. A cowboy-esque white guy, who seemingly had been sitting in the ampitheater since long before the rain started, told us all about the bizarre and unpredictable weather of Denver. Two guys from Italy, on their last day of a one-month tour of the American West, pointed at the flooded street and told me that they had come to see "the Denver River." There was a black businessman with a sopping dress shirt stuffed into his back pants pocket under his raincoat, and a homeless white man who looked a little perturbed that we had all interrupted his nap. A young Latino guy with his life and sleeping bag in a backpack came and asked if any of us had a cigarrette, and the homeless man sold him one for 11 cents. An older Latino man rode in on a bicycle with a stereo strapped to the back and played Bob Marley and the Barenaked Ladies while the rest of us tapped our feet to the music and chatted and watched and waited.

We watched people on the sidewalks sprinting from one building to another. We watched the druggies at the other wall run screaming into the fountain. We watched Colfax Avenue turn from a puddle to a stormy pond to a raging river. We all jumped at the same earsplitting thunderclaps and laughed sheepishly after looking up to make sure that the columns weren't crashing down around us.

All told, is was almost an hour before the rain died down enough for me to venture out to track down my bike and soggy helmet, but a fascinating hour it was, getting a glimpse into the lives of so many people I would've passed on the street with my eyes on the sidewalk on an ordinary day. Just one more reason to love thunderstorms.

The summer so far

2009-06-29T23:31:00.002-06:00

I won't write any more about it here, but most of it's in the captions of two new Picasa albums of summer photos. Look at "Back East" and "Fun in the sun...and snow." Enjoy!

Dancing with Barack

2009-06-25T17:24:00.006-06:00

I got to dance with Barack Obama today. At Machu Picchu. In French. As part of a French lesson, in fact. Never mind that "Obama" was really a Spanish teacher named Joshua, or that "Machu Picchu" was the staircase in the hotel conference room. It was still the highlight of my day...and I could tell you the entire story, in slightly imperfect French, without ever having studied the language before: "Il y avait une femme. Erin voulait danser avec Obama parce que Obama était intelligent et sexy..."

I'm in the middle of a three-day TPRS workshop in preparation for my new Spanish teaching job. (I don't think I've mentioned the job here before, which reminds me just how far behind I am in blogging, but I'll save that for a later date. If I tried to catch up on everything in one post, it would be scandalously long, and no one except my mom would read it.) TPRS is a relatively new language teaching methodology that stands for Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. (For you other language educator junkies out there, it's no longer Total Physical Response Storytelling, although it still makes good use of TPR.)

TPRS is the main method I'll be expected to use in my classroom this coming school year, and I'm super-excited about that. In a nutshell, TPRS involves teaching a few new phrases or structures in the target language (in my case, Spanish) by using gestures or pictures or translation, and then creating a silly story, full of audience participation, using those structures and including celebrities and characters from the class. The students act out the story as it's invented, add funny details, and answer myriad questions about what's happening to get as many repetitions of the target structures as possible. The whole process is highly entertaining when it's done right, and it makes learning a language much more engaging than if you're doing worksheets and reading textbook dialogues.

During the practice sessions today, I got to teach a TPRS Khmer lesson to my group and had them understanding and answering questions--in Khmer--in no time. I'm sure my elementary kids will love this stuff. Heck, I love this stuff, and I'm a full-grown adult. When else would you get to disco with the President in Peru, or watch your classmate and Johnny Depp take the dance floor in McDonald's? Brilliant. I almost didn't notice that the teacher was speaking in French.

Spring Fling

2009-05-26T20:59:00.003-06:00

This is a bit delayed, but photos from Spring Fling at school can be found here. As you can see, some of my favorite coworkers and I had entirely too much fun after the students left.

Breaking and entering

2009-05-24T20:14:00.004-06:00

My house- and dog-sitting adventure this weekend turned out to be a bit more than I bargained for. I had been happily watching the house of a family from church without incident (other than the dog eating a melon-sized hole in the kitchen tablecloth) when I got a call from the family: they had just gotten word that their neighbor had been unexpectedly hospitalized, and would I be able to take care of her three dogs as well? Sure, no problem. I love dogs. I'm happy to help out in situations like these. No worries.

Half an hour later, I got a call from the daughter of my house-sitting family, who is the normal caretaker of dogs when the neighbor is gone. She asked me if I had a pen and paper to write down instructions for taking care of the dogs. Good thing I had a full sheet of paper, because the directions filled up the entire thing: how to get into the house, where to find the dogs' bowls and food and vitamins and pills, each dog's dietary and medical needs, a description of each dog so I would know who was who, the proper placement of each one's bowl throughout the house during mealtimes, and instructions for shoveling up their messes in the backyard. No kidding.

So I gathered up a bunch of plastic bags for poop collection, and set out for the neighbor's house. First task: enter the backyard. Not so easy without a key. My instructions told me I would have to use a ladder to reach over and unlatch the bolt from the inside, or climb the fence. I had no ladder. I looked around. Broad daylight, with cars driving past and people walking down the street...now or never. I stuck the poop bags in my pant leg to free my hands and hoisted myself up and clawed my way over the 6-food solid-wood-panel fence, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible as I fell into the backyard. I crouched there for a minute on the ground, half expecting to hear shouts and sirens coming my way. I've never felt so much like a criminal in my life. I checked to make sure I had the instruction sheet in my pocket to plead my case when the cops came. Nothing. Sigh of relief.

I finally decided it was safe to come out of hiding and walked up to the back door, which was supposedly left unlocked. Supposedly...#&@%. Now what was I supposed to do, climb back out and fall onto unsuspecting passers-by on the sidewalk and let the poor dogs starve? Then I noticed the doggy door. I couldn't help but laugh as visions of Home Alone came to mind. So in I went, worming my way through the hole and ending up on the laundry room floor in the fetal position, looking up to find a Saint Bernard twice my side drooling on my face, with two other dogs behind him. Pure love and bumbling puppiness. All trials and tribulations worth it. Maybe not worth the $10 I earned, but at least it makes a good story, eh?

Festa

2009-05-12T21:02:00.000-06:00

By the way, photos from last weekend's Italian feast can be found here.

Buried treasure

2009-05-12T20:15:00.006-06:00

Looks like our springtime snowstorms are finally over--fingers crossed--and the garden is really going to town. Even more exciting than the feeling of dirt under my fingernails while preparing the soil for planting was the hodgepodge of treasures I discovered while digging:

My housemates say I get way too excited about my newfound toys. I say that's impossible. Now the only treasures still buried are my carrots and onions. Checking their miniscule growth every day when I come home from school isn't quite as thrilling as digging up surprises, but it brings its own unique sense of satisfaction, and a connection to earth that I just don't get from horseshoes and rubber frogs. I never cease to be amazed by what miracles climb their way out of tiny seeds.

The Good Word List

2009-04-28T20:43:00.002-06:00

A while ago I started keeping a list of good words on a sticky note. Words I came across in books or conversations or crossword puzzles, words that are as fun for your mouth as popping grapes. Now the sticky note is full, and I wanted to type up the list before it got lost or thrown away (which happened once, to an earlier version), and figured I'd let you all in on the fun while I was at it. Some of these words I love for their connotations, some for the connection between their sound and meaning, some for the colors of their letters (yes, only in my head.) All of them for their feel in your mouth. So go for it. Read the list out loud.

polypeptide
smock
springform
flounce
swagger
rickrack
cheroot
ferhoodled
bizarre
exaltation
rigamarole
persnickety
spiel
flummox
pilfer
fidget
arugula
chlamydia
obtuse
glum
inevitable
fierce
gypsy
dilapidated
collateral
nomenclature
reciprocal
crinkly
ubiquitous
gnarled
volcanologist
plump
spritz
trapezoid
zephyr
finagle
tantalizing
ambiguity
pyroclastic
poignant
peculiar
shrewd
rickety
shellac
snarky

Well done. Now get your own sticky note and make your own. And don't forget to tell me what they are.

Balls and packages

2009-04-20T20:34:00.004-06:00

Seriously, what kind of math curriculum designer came up with the bright idea of giving middle school kids a project designing packages for ping-pong balls? Whoever it was clearly has not spent enough quality time with seventh-graders to recognize the imminent danger in such an assignment.

Here's the background info: we've been investigating volume and surface area of 3-D shapes, and discussing how short, fat boxes have less surface area than long, skinny ones, and therefore save companies money by requiring less packaging material.

Scene from 3rd period today:
I left a table of boys who found it vastly entertaining to make loud farting noises every time I tried to talk and went to check up on another group of boys who appeared to be slightly less off task.

Me: "Can I see some of the boxes you're designing?"

D: "Here."

Me: "Nice; very creative shape. How many balls will fit in it?"

E: "Yeah, do you have two or three?"

Me: Mental note: use caution when referencing balls around middle school boys.
"It asks you to make a small package, a medium package, and a large package. Which one is this?"

(Smirks and giggles.)

J: "He has a small package."

Me: Mental note: use caution when referencing packages around middle school boys.
"Are you going to stack these ping-pong balls on top of each other or put them in a long line?"

T: "I dunno."

Me: "Well, is it better to have a short, fat package or a long, skinny package?"

Silence. They all just stared at me.

Me: %$!&

I got up and left the table, turning my head almost in time to keep them from seeing me laugh.

Can you tell I've spent too much time around twelve-year-old boys?

Why I love what I do

2009-04-17T15:24:00.003-06:00

Well, the play is over...one more unexpectedly successful performance under our belts. The show for the school was by far the best we had ever done it, which isn't saying a whole lot, but still. I am satisfied, and it is done.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago at the end of spring break that I had written a list to remind myself of the things I love about my work as a para so it wouldn't be too depressing to go back. Now, after a laid-back teacher planning day with no students, and with yet another April snowstorm turning the world white outside my window, I actually have both the time and the energy to type that list up. (It's amazing how much less exhausted I am after work when I haven't spent the past eight hours pulling teeth trying to get defiant middle school kids to focus. You know I wouldn't say it if I didn't love them.) And one of my students and his friend just knocked on our door and offered to shovel our sidewalks for $5. Even though the snow's still pouring down and we'll have to do it again ourselves in a few hours, it reminded me just how much I like these kids and this community.

So, without further ado: Why I love my job.

Things like spring break and winter break actually exist.

I can keep my Spanish in decent shape.

My knowledge of Mexican slang and expletives is improving rapidly.

I get a crash course in teen pop culture.

I can build relationships with kids working one on one and in small groups.

Students beg their teachers to go and work in my group.

Abby, my fellow para, is awesome. I don't know if I would've survived this year without someone in such a similar situation to laugh and cry and vent with.

The whole staff is pretty amazing. I see teachers here who truly inspire me.

I have a chance study German flash cards while I'm on door duty every morning.

There are always kids who want to talk to me while I'm on lunch duty.

I can teach the girls in my recess how to throw a football.

Students trust me. They tell me their problems, their fears, their issues.

Kids are curious for information on what it's like to be in high school, in college, on your own.

Absolutely miserable days at school make for absolutely hilarious stories.

I get a taste for urban education without having to be the sole person in charge.

I get to see a bunch of different teaching styles and decide what will work for me.

Staffroom gossip is highly entertaining.

I'm getting a much better understanding of educational politics. Better than I ever wanted.

Student fashion sense is a never-ending source of amusement.

I get advice on hairstyles from middle-schoolers.

Since I'm not a "real" teacher, I get invited to chaperone almost every field trip in the school. I've been to the art museum, the skating rink, and the zoo in the past three weeks, and the University of Colorado, the opera house, the contemporary art museum, and the Museum of Science and Nature are all on the calendar for the next month.

FAC. Debriefing on Friday afternoons and spending time with fabulous coworkers in an outside-of-school context is pretty much the best.

I get to go outside for two recesses every Tuesday and Thursday.

I run into my kids in the library, in the park, and just walking down my street.

I can bike to work.

When the weather is miserable, I have a standing offer for a ride from Abby.

I don't have to take work home.

I get to be involved in theater and orchestra.

Kids say the funniest and most ridiculous things in class.

Sometimes I get high-fives in the hallway.

I can be a positive role model.

After our math group one day, one of my kids told me she was actually learning something.

Watching struggling students actually understanding a concept and then running to teach their friends makes it all worth it.

On very rare occasions, kids will actually let on that they appreciate what you do.

And last but not least, there are only 30 school days left before the summer.

Drama, Take II

2009-04-13T20:52:00.002-06:00

Six weeks ago, after the against-all-odds success of our first middle school play, Abby and I were asked to carry the momentum and direct a second production. Being agreeable people with tendencies toward overcommitment, we agreed. When I think now of the chance we had to decline and settle for bowing out on the high of the last play, all I can do is shake my head and admit that we should've known better.

The unfortunate truth, though, is that we didn't, and now our April 16th performance of "Jackie and the Chile Stalk" is a mere three days away. Did I mention that we are left with only five of the twelve student actors we started with? And that half of the cast was kicked out due to disciplinary issues with their families or the school or the police within the past week? I have counted a total of one actor in our cast who has not quit the play or been forcibly removed at any point. One. Fortunately, we've reclaimed four others, so between them and a couple of us teachers who spent the weekend memorizing lines as emergency replacements, we're hoping to avoid complete catastrophe and total humiliation in front of the entire school on Thursday. I'm crossing my fingers that that's a reasonable goal. Today, at our second-to-last rehearsal, only two of us had our lines memorized. Sigh. Still, as the kids never fail to remind me, though, "we were badder than this for the last play!" And all I can do is laugh. If I didn't, I'd either be crying or chasing kids around the auditorium in a fit of rage, armed with the magic guitar.

Here it is in writing: I will not say yes to any more plays. None. Until maybe next year.

A bunch of crap

2009-04-08T20:31:00.002-06:00

And who would've thought it could make me so happy? Last night, after reading through my Rocky Mountain gardening book, I asked my housemates to let me know if they knew where to find any manure. Approximately two hours later, James came in with the news that someone had just posted a truckload of fully composted horse manure on freecycle.org. Brilliant timing. So this evening after work, Kate and I drove over, knocked on the door of this couple's house, and shoveled manure from their backyard into trash bags to fill the trunk. If it doesn't snow this weekend like it has the last two, I'll be out in our garden getting dirt under my fingernails. When work is rough, it's little things like this that give me hope for the world.

Last day of spring break

2009-03-29T16:32:00.003-06:00

Sad but true. I wrote a list today of things I love about my work; otherwise, the end of break would just be too depressing. Rather than describe the adventures had, I'll just give the link to the photos. Enjoy!

Recap

2009-03-26T22:27:00.008-06:00

Yes, I know, it's been over a month since I last posted anything here. Life is busy. I come home exhausted every day from work, and there's always more work to be done or fun to be had. This week is finally spring break for Denver Public Schools, so I'm getting to catch up on a lot of things that have gotten put on hold during the craziness. Here are a few highlights from past weeks:

The middle-school play. I wrote about this once before, after our first rehearsal. I had hoped things would calm down significantly after that rough start. Who was I kidding? I think we had at least one lead quit (and usually come back) at every single rehearsal, including the one just hours before the show. Pure insanity, I tell you. But they pulled it off, miracle of miracles, and were so proud of themselves. And I of them. So now the after-school program director asked me and Abby to direct another play immediately after that one ended. Next performance: three weeks from today.

Young adult retreat at Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp. A fabulously fun weekend out of the city with a bunch of people from all over Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas, complete with hiking, hymn-singing, ping pong, Dutch Blitz, and many hours of broomball.

Standardized testing. Somehow this has come to be my main responsibility as a paraprofessional. Such is the state of education these days. First the CO English Language Acquisition test for all students whose families speak a language other than English at home (which happens to be most of the kids at my school), then benchmark testing to practice for CSAP, then CSAP itself, the high-stakes state standardized assessment that everyone agonizes over. My jobs: to administer the test with my group of students; to track down and test any students who were absent on testing days; to darken bubbles and erase stray pencil marks in every test booklet; and to recopy, by hand, every 87-page test booklet that had a tear bigger than 1/16th of an inch on any page. Seriously.

Job searching. These days, a rather depressing pursuit. There are a total of two Spanish teaching positions open in the district of over 150 schools. I've labored over cover letters, applied for a bunch of jobs, interviewed for several, and finally was offered one of the said Spanish teaching positions--only to be called back the next week and told that no new teachers can be hired until all the current tenured teachers in the district whose positions have been cut have been placed in the openings. Back to square one for me.

English teaching licensure exam. Since Spanish and ESL teaching positions are few and far between, I spent a week cramming American and Brit Lit, the history of the English language, and literary theory to take Colorado's English licensure test, which went very well for me. Hopefully this will open up a few more job possibilities.

Quartet rehearsals. I've gotten to spend a good amount of time violining recently with a fun quartet of people from church. I also took my violin in for a checkup last week and found out she needs major surgery. If it ever stops snowing here, I'll take her in.

Fun in the parks. Hooray for Daylight Savings Time. Football and Frisbee and soccer and croquet, and the occasional grilling of bratwurst and veggieburgers. Beautiful.

Visits from (and to) a number of friends. This is what keeps me going. People coming from near and far, joining us for suppers, sleeping on the couches, keeping life interesting.

That's it for now. I posted a number of pictures of these and other events in a new Picasa album, so check them out if you so desire. I'll try to add some more from spring break before I go back to school on Monday and the craziness starts again.

Wa Kyi

2009-02-19T16:47:00.008-07:00

After rough days at school, which seem to occur more and more often recently, few things redeem my faith in humanity like an English lesson with Wa Kyi. Every Tuesday and Thursday after work, I hop on my bike and make my way to her house for an unfailingly entertaining tutoring session.

Wa Kyi...how do I describe her? I only have little bits of information myself, given that our communication is entirely based on gestures, facial expressions, and what English I've taught her over the past four months. I'll let her introduce herself with the questions and answers we've practiced.

What's your name?
My name is Wa Kyi.

Where are you from?
I'm from Burma.

What language do you speak?
I speak Karen.

Do you speak English?
A little bit.

How old are you?
I'm 64 years old.

Where do you live?
I live in Denver.

I was connected with Wa Kyi through the Colorado Refugee ESL (CRESL) program, which I found while I was still in Cambodia and looking for Denver jobs. In addition to offering regular ESL courses for refugees in Denver, CRESL sets up in-home one-on-one tutoring for women who can't attend the classes. That's how I came to know Wa Kyi.

Like I said, our communication is rather limited, but this woman has an incredible story. She grew up as a farmer in Burma, never went to school, and never learned to read or write in Karen, her native language. She lost her parents, husband, son, and daughter in the conflict between the Burmese military and various ethnic groups. She finally fled to a refugee camp across the border in Thailand, where she lived for at least one decade, maybe several, before having the luck to be chosen for relocation in North America.

She's been here in Denver for several years now, and is living with another Karen refugee family, who are all wonderful people with unbelievable and unbelievably heartwrenching stories of their own. In spite of everything she's been through, Wa Kyi is a beautifully feisty, spirited old woman. She's never gone to school, but every day as I leave, I hear her singing her new vocabulary out loud as she hobbles around the house: "Shirt, pants, skirt, underwear! Shirt, pants, skirt, underwear!" Sometime she'll answer the phone in the middle of her monologue, picking up the receiver saying, "...skirt, underwear! Hallo?"

It's rough going, this learning English business. When teaching English to people whose language I don't speak, I depend on "universal" symbols and materials like clocks, calendars, and numbers. But what do you do when you realize that a clock means absolutely nothing to a woman who's spent her whole life in rice paddies and refugee camps? How do you explain the concept of schedules, of appointments, of time? That when a short stick points to the number nine, it means nine, but when a long stick points to it, it means 45? That four round pieces of metal are the same as one green piece of paper? The difference in pronunciation between "80" and "18," "put on" and "put down," "shirt," "skirt," and "shorts?" Why "a" is pronounced "uh?" The change in meaning between "sister" and "daughter," between "woman" and "she?" The meaning of "it?"

We've had our share of frustrations, to be sure, but Wa Kyi is an amazingly good sport. She makes the most hilarious facial expressions, noises, and Karen-English sentences when she's trying to figure something out: "Ooooooohhhh...eeeeeeyaaaaa...I-dunno-la. Ta good ba, brain nih, ooheeeeee...", as she scrunches up her face until her eyes disappear and shakes her whole head.

Today, we were learning family words: mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter. I told her that my family had five people. Then she told me about hers: "Father, die. Mother, die. Boy, die. Girl, die." She pointed to herself and held up one finger. "One. One go to America." Then she got up and walked to the kitchen. "Eat noodle." And she shuffled around the kitchen, making me noodle soup, singing her new vocabulary song of the day: "Mother, father, brother, sister. Father die, mother die. Die, die, die." Humming a happy tune. Bringing me noodles and cake and milk. "Eat. Good-good. A-wii." Delicious. And I come home with my hair smelling like fish sauce, reminding me of one more world that's come crashing into mine.

On a lighter note

2009-02-13T20:35:00.003-07:00

It's been a rough week, I'm not going to lie, but now it's Friday and time to switch gears, so here are some little bits of humor from life at the middle school.

Upon discovering that I do not have a TV in my house and that I have seen next to none of the essential movies of the past decades, some of my teacher friends were giving me a hard time, and one of them said, "What, did you grow up, like, Mennonite or something?" I busted out laughing and said, "Yes, actually...Wait, did you know that?", thinking he did and was just making a joke. Then I saw his face get red as he said, "Oh. God. That's embarrassing."

In one of my 7th-grade math classes today, I was teaching one of my favorite students how to solve algebraic equations without resorting to the trial-and-error method. I showed him, "Look, you just reverse the operation, and poof, the number next to the variable disappears! Magic!" He just looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said, as if he were explaining to a small child, "Miss, that's not magic. That's math."

Also today, I got to help chaperone a group of students on a bowling excursion. The other adults and I got in on the fun and bowled as well. Before we started, one of the other teachers, without our knowledge, gave the guy at the desk goofy names for us all to put up on the scoreboard, names like "Z-Rocker," "Abinator" for Abby, and "E-tastic" for me. The rest of us, sitting at our lane, watched our names come up in their five-letter versions: "ROCKR," "ABINA," and then mine: "TSTIC." We nearly died. One of the English teachers told me she'll never be able to think of me as anything else. How am I supposed to go around applying for teaching jobs with a nickname like "Testicle?" I'm just praying none of the students ever find out.

Triage

2009-01-29T19:39:00.005-07:00

One of the most valuable practical lessons of my college career came in our senior seminar after student teaching. One of my infinitely wise education professors told all of us aspiring educators that if we left with only one piece of advice, it should be this: teaching is triage. You can't be everything to everyone. Stop the bleeding where the bleeding is worst; anyone who's not dying just has to wait.

At that point, I was still pretty idealistic--still am, to a large degree--and told myself that I would never stoop to that level of educational mediocrity, functioning in survival mode, just trying to keep all my students' heads above water. I had visions of captivating lessons, fascinated students, extraordinary achievements, boundless energy...all in my first year of teaching, of course. If the past three months have taught me one thing, it's to be a little bit more realistic.

Teaching is triage, I believe that now without a doubt, but whom do you rescue first? The kid who can't add single-digit numbers or the secretly brilliant one suffocating in everyone else's apathy? The one who barely speaks English or the one screaming profanity? The one who spends the class drawing gang insignias on his binder or the one talking about the previous weekend's drug use? The one who clings to you begging for attention or the one who has withdrawn completely? The one scandalously dressed or the one without a coat on a negative-temperature day? The one who writes stories about abusive parents or the one who tells you about his brother's and sister's deaths? The one who painstakingly struggles through one-syllable words or the one who flat out refuses to do anything? The one relentlessly bullying other students in your classroom or the one getting beat up in the hallway?

Yes, teaching is triage. And everyone is dying.

Drama

2009-01-22T17:35:00.003-07:00

You'd better believe it. In every sense of the word. I mentioned in my last post that I recently started co-directing an after-school theater class, along with Abby, another para at the school who has become a very dear friend and true lifeline when middle school life is just too much to handle. Our theater class began last week with a course intro and auditions, but our first actual rehearsal was yesterday. Heaven help us.

The excitement began as soon as we brought the kids to the auditorium: preteen actors chasing each other through aisles, banging on pianos, screaming into microphones, and swinging from curtains. After a good bit of corralling and explaining how important it is to respect school property (and teachers), we finally got everyone relatively settled down to highlight their lines in the script. That endeavor went reasonably well. Except that a few students complained continually about who got which part. And that the Jester decided he didn't want to be married to his Wife, and they started hitting and calling each other names, just like any good married couple. And that the King disappeared. We eventually found him hiding wrapped up in a curtain, saying he didn't actually want to be in the play at all, that the Jester had recruited him so he wouldn't be the only boy in the twelve-person cast.

Then we began a read-through. Oh, pain. Most of the leads did a decent job and even used appropriate inflection on occasion, but a few seemed to stumble over every other word, which prompted some others to make scornful remarks and mutter under their breath how they should've gotten the part. Cell phones kept ringing throughout the reading, and one of the Ladies of the Court crawled across the stage to where I was sitting to tell me that she had gotten in a fight that day. By the end of the read-through, restless actors were rolling all over the stage--and the entire script is only eight pages long.

We thought we were doing pretty well when we finally got everyone pulled together into the front row of the auditorium to discuss the rehearsal schedule and expectations, until we noticed the Queen bawling in her seat. Upon further investigation, we discovered that the Jester's Wife had accidentally put the Queen's seat up just as she was about to sit down, and she fell right on her elbow. Several Ladies of the Court tried to console the inconsolable Queen, while the King badmouthed the Jester's wife, who consequently whacked him in the face with her script and then started crying as well. Good lord. Gives a whole new meaning to the term Drama Queen.

I went home absolutely exhausted, clinging to the hope that maybe, just maybe, this nightmarish scene would turn out like one of those inspirational movies about inner-city kids and their clueless-but-determined white teachers who somehow succeed in spite of the odds and prove everybody wrong, earning fives on their AP calc exams and playing their quarter-size violins with Itzhak Perlman at Carnegie Hall...sigh. Right now I'll settle for everyone surviving until the performance.

Hit the ground running

2009-01-20T17:38:00.002-07:00

Hmmm, looks like I haven't written in over a month. Let's say that's a testament to how busy I've been and not to how much I've been slacking in communication. Or rather, that I've been focusing on catching up with people in person instead of online. In any case, the past month has indeed been a full one: traveling back to PA, spending Christmas with the family, visiting with high school and college friends and lots of relatives, playing many hours of street hockey and Boggle and ping-pong, and making a trip to DC for New Year's Eve. Ah, winter breaks like this are not the least of the reasons I choose to work in public schools.

Since that beautiful vacation, life has been anything but boring. At school, I'm right back in the swing of administering English proficiency tests, working with struggling students, and, most recently, creating an after-school theater class and co-directing a play and musical number. I've also been updating my resumé and looking for teaching jobs for next school year, or even for this semester--stressful even to think about, but exciting nonetheless.

Also, happy Inauguration Day! I skipped my 10:00 lunch this morning to watch the proceedings on the big screen in the auditorium with a bunch of our students. (Granted, political awareness is not necessarily one of their fortes, as evidenced by our inauguration discussion in ESL class today, in which we asked 6th and 7th graders who would become president if something happened to Obama. Their answers: His wife. John McCain. George Bush. And Martin Luther King, Jr.) I don't think many of them fully grasped the significance of what was happening, but they were excited. It was...beautiful. Watching them watching him, I felt more hopeful about the future of this country than I have in a long, long time. Here's to a new day.

Bowling

2008-12-16T19:59:00.002-07:00

Who knew a bunch of middle school teachers, paras, and office staff could be such a good time when they don't have any students to worry about? Turns out we can be a heck of a lot of fun when we're not trying to act like responsible adults. And bowling, of course, brings out everyone's best side. The holiday party after school today included several hours of bowling, trash-talking, stuffing ourselves with Mexican food, exchanging white elephant gifts scavenged from our classrooms, and singing terrible karaoke. I won a bowling-pin-shaped water bottle for winning the bowling-through-someone-else's-legs contest and a Rishel Rangler jacket for being a member of the night's worst bowling team. If only our students could see us like this...they might lose all respect for us. Or they might actually start to see us as real people and respect us all the more.

Sage advice

2008-12-10T20:17:00.002-07:00

Looking back in my journal, I came across a little snippet of conversation that I had written down from two weeks ago in school:

(I walk into the all-boys' math class and run into another teacher standing at the door.)
Teacher: Are you helping out in this class?
Erin: Yeah, it's my first day for this one.
Teacher: Do you drink?
Erin: (looks puzzled)
Teacher: I recommend you start.

All in a day’s work

2008-12-08T18:14:00.002-07:00

I’ve been working as a para at Rishel Middle School for just over a month now—although it seems like much longer—and it deserves a little more coverage than the first-week impressions I’ve given so far.

So, what exactly do I do? I’m still trying to figure that one out myself. My schedule inevitably changes every time I think I have it worked out, but here’s a rundown of a day that goes precisely as scheduled...although I don’t think I’ve had a single one of those yet.

6:50 Bike three minutes to school, carry bicycle up the stairs and into a classroom, chat with the office staff, clock in.

7:00 Door duty. Stand at the main entrance and tell students they have to walk around the school and come in through the cafeteria, to which they unfailingly whine and complain.

7:25 Learning Families. (Homeroom, essentially.) Abby and I were recently adopted by an existing one.

7:52 This is where it gets interesting. I go to a double-period math class and am still being tossed around doing odd jobs the other period since the girl I had been interpreting for had her schedule changed.

10:04 Lunch. Slightly preposterous, ¿no?

10:45 More excitement. Depending on the day, I have two lunch/recess duties or none. I co-teach a double-period language arts class for ELLs (English language learners) and help out in social studies, more math, and orchestra.

2:30 Clock out, retrieve the bicycle, and head either to English tutoring or home, exhausted.

Writing it down, it doesn’t sound like it should take all that much energy, but you’d be surprised. It’s all the little things. Trying to persuade defiant students to pick up a pencil. Confiscating dozens of worksheets-turned-paper-airplanes. Escorting severely disruptive students to the office. Preventing out-of-control orchestra kids from stomping their violins to pieces. Seriously, it’s happened.

And then there are the redeeming moments, too. Persuading seventh-grade boys that they could have bigger dreams than working at 7-11 and answering their questions about college. Stopping and talking to four of my students walking down the street on my way to the library. Learning a new Vietnamese phrase every day during lunch. Teaching sixth-grade girls to throw a football at recess. Spending a solid class period on solving proportions with a group of students, inventing our own ratio problems about how many of them will drive Porches compared to Ferraris, and watching every single one of them finally get it: "Hey Miss, this stuff in the book is easy!" "I’m gonna take this home and do more of them!" And I remember exactly why I come back every day for more.

November in a nutshell

2008-11-30T21:53:00.009-07:00

So it's December in approximately two hours...figured I'd better squeeze one update for November in here. Whenever I haven't written for awhile, the task of trying to summarize just seems daunting, so I keep putting it off. But here I am, and it's already past my bedtime, so I'll see what I can do under pressure.

I uploaded some photos into my Picasa albums, so feel free to check them out for some of the highlights of the past month. I'll put a few here, with a bit of explanation, for a sneak preview.

Room 203: The project assigned to Abby and Frank and me during my first two weeks as a middle school paraprofessional. All the junk--textbook sets, office supplies, assessment materials, and literally thousands of novels--from the past number of years was transferred from the basement into this disaster zone. We were initially given two days to organize it. Ha. Just for perspective, this is what the place looked like after one full week of organizing.

Viola! And here you have it: the final product. Same view as before, but barely recognizable, eh? Each of those cabinets is filled with young adult novels, organized alphabetically and labeled with lists of all the book sets.

So now that that project's done, we've actually started working with students...but that is a subject for another day. For now, here are some other tidbits.

James and Emily observe sheep at the Georgetown Bighorn Sheep Festival. Or rather, Emily observes sheep; James observes Emily.

Greta and I hike around Red Rocks to celebrate my birthday. Believe me, I've never had weather like this for my birthday in Pennsylvania or Indiana. Awesome.

After watching a YouTube clip on how to carve a turkey, Charles and James go to work on our Thanksgiving dinner in Vail.

A walk in the park down the street. The first real snow of the season, and my first real winter in two years. I forgot how beautiful this was.

So there you have it: some glimpses into life in Colorado. More photos are in the albums; peruse at your leisure. And now it's time for me to get to bed...that 5:40 alarm clock will ring all too soon.

Middle school drama

2008-10-29T19:47:00.003-06:00

I’ve worked a whole two days at my new job, and now it’s fall break. Good thing, too; I think I need a vacation. After only two days, you’re wondering? Well. Take a little walk down memory lane to your own preteen years. Let yourself really remember how it felt. I’ve met very few people who actually enjoyed middle school, and I know for me it was pretty agonizing.

I remember how miserable I felt some days, how self-conscious, how excluded. I was mortally embarrassed that I didn’t shave my legs, didn’t wear deodorant, brought my soccer gear to school in a plastic grocery bag. That I got stuck walking down the bus aisle with my violin case. That I hated the way jeans felt and wore sweat pants and animal T-shirts. That I wasn’t a Christian. That I was terrified if any boy liked me. That kids in my music class made fun of my song when we had to bring one in to share. That I hadn’t gotten my period. That I didn’t know how to dance. That I hated dances. That I didn’t have anyone to dress up with for twin day. Even, heaven forbid, that I was smart.

How did I ever survive those traumatic years? And the thing is, I know I had a whole lot going for me that a lot of middle schoolers can’t count on. A supportive family. Enough money. A safe neighborhood. A quiet place to study. No serious peer pressure to try drugs or alcohol or sex. An elementary education that prepared me well for the academic expectations of middle school. Teachers who perceived me as someone who would succeed.

I can’t imagine having any or all of those advantages taken away from me. I can’t imagine trying to make it through those years in a language I barely understood, in a foreign culture, in a school full of strangers...yet that’s what the kids I work with are doing every day. Sometimes I just have to step back and admire their courage, their strength, the pure grit that gets them through. And then it’s back to the grindstone of trying to help them understand what’s going on in class.

My official title is "ELA-S Para," or "English Language Acquisition—Spanish Paraprofessional." Essentially, it means I go around to different classes with students who need extra support in English. In this school, that would actually be most of the kids, but I’m only working with the ones who have the most minimal language proficiency. I don’t have a fixed schedule yet, but I’ve been shadowing the two other ELA paras and learning the ropes. I sit with my kids, I clarify directions, I answer questions. I check to see how much they’ve understood and explain whatever they haven’t in simpler English or in Spanish, depending on their current level of English. I translate vocabulary. I reteach concepts that were missed. I do simultaneous English-Spanish interpretations of various class lectures, including one yesterday on Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift. How do you say plate tectonics in Spanish? Pangaea? Fossil? Mesosaurus? Crust, mantle, inner and outer core? Lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere? Needless to say, my Spanish has been getting a good workout.

And there’s so much more drama apart from the academic aspects of the day. A girl gets in a fight, falls, and cracks her head open on the corner of a desk. A boy is strangled in the bathroom during the Halloween social. Kids fall out of their chairs, stand on their desks, tear up their books, yell out, talk back, smack each other around. And they politely raise their hands, give each other compliments, beam from ear to ear when they answer a question correctly. Like the school social worker told me yesterday, I might get frustrated with this job, and I might get a little crazy, but I will never get bored. And that’s the way I like it.

*In case you were wondering, we just chatted in the lunchroom. I didn’t seek her out of my own accord. Yet.

Bicycling

2008-10-25T18:36:00.002-06:00

As I was cruising down the bike path on my way home from work the other day, past three traffic lights' worth of cars bumper to bumper in rush hour traffic, I was reminded of how happy I am to be a bicycle commuter. It's not just the voice of environmental consciousness in me that makes me feel good about biking; I've been coming up with more and more practical reasons why it's a viable mode of transportation.

Like I mentioned, traffic is certainly a big factor. Denver has made some serious efforts to become a bike-friendly city, with bike paths and bike routes on less-traveled streets that let you bypass most of the congestion and, at certain times of day, make biking just as speedy as driving. Public buses have bike racks on their fronts, and you can even carry bikes right onto the Light Rail with you.

Parking is another nightmare you don't have to deal with on a bike. I hadn't realized the significance of this until I borrowed a car and drove to work at the community college one day. I spent a good fifteen minutes driving around trying to figure out how to get into the parking lot, with all of downtown's one-way streets and no-turn lanes, only to find out that the college lots have meters with two-hour time limits that cost 25 cents for every 8 minutes. I could spend a full hour's pay on parking for one day. Ridiculous. Back to the bike.

And it's not just in parking that a bike saves money; think about no gas, no insurance, no inspection costs. Then there's the exercise factor. I'm not necessarily in the mood to go out running after a day's work, but after biking thirty-some minutes each way, I feel like I've at least gotten some physical activity. And there's the exhilaration of flying down the hill from our house onto the main drag as the sun rises. Who needs coffee?

Of course, there are some downsides to not having a car. It gets pretty chilly in the early mornings, and it's only October. (I shouldn't complain; at least I'm not drenched in sweat by the time I get to work like I was in Cambodia.) It's also a little silly to change into work clothes in a bathroom stall and have to find a place to keep socks, sneakers, spandex, sweats, fleece, hat, gloves, jacket, and helmet until it's time to go home. At least rain is infrequent in Denver, so I don't usually have to deal with rain gear on top of all that.

Biking in the dark is also tricky, even with lights. A couple nights ago, I set out on my bike for a friend's house to practice some quartet music. Despite the awkward violin case on my back, everything went perfectly smoothly until I arrived at my supposed destination, only to realize that the house didn't exist. After making a phone call, I found out that I had copied and pasted all but the first number of the address into Google maps and was actually supposed to be 40 blocks further north. Fabulous. I continued on my way in the dark on a busy street, hitting a poor innocent telephone pole with my violin in the process, until my sympathetic fellow violinist saved the day and showed up in a station wagon to give me and the bicycle a ride.

In spite of potential disasters like that one, I've enjoyed the adventures of pedaling around. I feel so much more connected to the world around me when I'm not shielded from it inside a car. So much more alive. Winter weather may change my attitude toward long morning commutes, but I guess that's a small price to pay for all the big ones I don't have to.

A community college education

2008-10-17T20:21:00.002-06:00

So. Last time I wrote, it was about being unemployed. No longer. In fact, since then, I have gotten not one job, but two. I actually had to give my two weeks' notice before I was even officially hired. Why do these things all happen at once?

My first job (apart from some Spanish tutoring a few hours a week) has been as a part-time tutor at the Community College of Denver's ESL writing lab. I've been working there for two weeks now, and I'm loving it. The students I work with are mostly immigrants and refugees, rather than international students who would go back to their countries after graduating. I started keeping a list of the countries my students were from: Eritrea, Mali, Ethiopia, Morocco, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, China, Mexico, and the list goes on. I've read their essays on fatherhood, politics, education, religion, poverty. On their lives in their homelands, their families they've left behind, their first days in America. Their frustration, their pain, their incredibly tenacious hope. I often just want to sit and digest these pieces for awhile, to ask questions, to listen to their remarkable stories, but they want me to "fix" it, correct the grammar, take away the errors, and please hurry and sign it, class starts in five minutes...sigh. It seems so trivial, scratching away at the mechanics of a paper when there's so much emotion just under the surface. They've been learning about outlines, commas, thesis sentences, and verb tense consistency, but I hope they're also learning that they have valuable stories to share. I'll have a hard time leaving this job at the end of next week.

There won't be much time to ponder that, though, because there's more adventure to come: on the 27th, I'll start a full-time job as an ELA (English Language Acquisition) paraprofessional at a public middle school a couple blocks from my house. 97% Latino, 90% free and reduced lunch, 70% ESL, 17% proficient in reading by standardized test scores. A different kind of challege than my college students, but one I'm still pretty excited about. I'll keep you posted on that one. Until then, happy Friday, and happy fall.

The joys of unemployment

2008-09-18T14:20:00.006-06:00

Really, I'm serious. I wouldn't want to do it forever, but this schedule of baking bread, picking grapes, exploring the city, applying for jobs, and doing some Spanish tutoring on the side while waiting for my Colorado teaching license to be processed is not so bad. And since none of us in this house have full-time jobs (yet), our schedules coincide quite nicely for quality housemate bonding time. At the request of my dear and far-away family, I've uploaded some photos of our place to my Picasa albums, along with some from the summer in PA and Goshen. Here's a little preview. Enjoy!

Rocky Mountain High

2008-09-07T14:23:00.025-06:00

It's been awhile, I know. The world does not stop spinning during these transition times, doesn't wait until I'm ready to begin the next phase, so I just keep moving with it. In the month and a half since I've been back in the US, I haven't been in any one place more than 11 days at a time. A blur of family,

friends,

love.

Of hello-goodbyes,

unpacking and repacking,

driving from one life into another into another.

Telling myself these feelings of ungroundedness come from being physically rather than emotionally homeless. It worked out pretty well, really, never giving me enough time to fall out of the honeymoon phase of adjusting to one place before I was off to another.

And now I'm here. Denver, Colorado. My fifth day in my new home. I have key and a bed and an address to put on my résumé. Five fabulous housemates, four bicycles, three bedrooms, two hammock chairs, and one treehouse in a crabapple tree.

And it's my night to make supper, so I'm off to explore one of many local Asian markets to make a Cambodian meal in our lime-green kitchen.

And I am happy.

There's no place like home

2008-08-12T13:33:00.005-06:00

Well, here I am, back in good old Pennsylvania. Finally found myself a computer and a little bit of down time to get this blog started up. This page is new, but I'll treat it as a continuation of my Cambodia blog. (Now that I'm back in the States, MCC will take that one down. Maybe I'll see if I can transfer those posts over here.) I liked writing while I was gone, and even though I'm no longer half a world away, I decided to keep up the occasional writings, for anyone who's interested. I'll give you some photos, random stories, life updates, reflections, expressions of what I feel...even though, as Nikki so wisely says, none of it is equal. I know.

Since I last wrote from Phnom Penh, I feel like I've wandered back through several lifetimes. Reentry days with fellow MCC volunteers, coming back to my parents' house, reconnecting with relatives, catching up with high school friends, traveling to Goshen, watching friends get married. Looks like the world kept spinning while I was gone, and now it keeps throwing me off-balance.

So many times during the past year, I thought about what it would be like to be home. In a place where people understood me, where I understood them, where I could simply be myself. Now I'm here, in my house, but home is more elusive than that. On one hand, it feels strangely normal, like I can just melt back into place. It's true; there's no place like home. It's beautiful to be back with the people I love, back where I belong. And on the other, I know I can never quite belong anywhere. Phnom Penh, Telford, Goshen, Denver... and no place is like home.

There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home...

Click the heels of my ruby-red slippers three times, and I might just disappear.