Reckless Abandon

I often think about writing. More often, and lately, I think about not writing. I am not writing. Sure, I write lesson plans (tons), and behavior reports (half tons), and scads of assignments related to my practicum and CAGS program and other professional development endeavors, but let's call a spade a spade. This isn't writing. Writing is nourishment. Writing is love. It's sustenance, the kind of soul food that makes some people feel integrated and whole. And then, when writing disappears from the regular routine, things atrophy. They wither. If writing were my child, which it kind of is, then I would be reported to the authorities.

I feel like I've ditched my kid.

I effectively gave up writing Tales From The Clink when I left my job teaching reading in the juvenile justice system. I did not leave willingly--I was laid off, and because I have bills to pay and mouths to feed, I had to chase down a full time gig. Quickly. And with good fortune on my side, I landed my current job, teaching English language learners at the middle school level in an underperforming school. Yes, I think I may have mentioned that I work in an underperforming school in a previous blog post. The underperforming status of M school serves to make sure that I (and my fellow teachers at M School) do the opposite. Perform. And golly, do we do that all the time! We do it before school, giving extra help to students; after school, when we are contracted to teach extended days because someone theorized that more instructional time translates to higher academic achievement; after dark, when we are mandated to stay 2-3 hours weekly for professional development; and after we return home to our families each weekend, which I'd prefer to reserve for spending time with, well, my family.

The time that I used to use for reflective thinking and writing has been supplanted by these new "have-to"'s. I feel stripped of a certain vitality that used to feed my teaching self as well as my whole self. Do I just need to become a better manager of time? Or am I in an untenable situation?

I try to meditate sometimes. I'd been hearing more and more about meditation, from the occasional Facebook post or in quick snippets of "news" from Yahoo, that meditation is the new/old essential practice for good health. So I try. I never seem to stay at it that long, but when I do, and when I try to "listen" as I empty myself out, I hear something in myself. A voice, a signal. Write, it says. You have to. Don't and you'll starve.

Starving is a pretty senseless thing to do when you should and do have access to food. It's reckless. Making time for writing in the face of all these other responsibilities feels the same way. As I type this blog post, my children are fixing their own dinner and bickering over who got more mini chicken tacos. Voices are being raised. They clearly need their mother's attention. But I'm finishing this piece because I owe it to myself. Sometimes, you need to go after and get what you really and truly need. With reckless abandon.

The Glow of Opportunity

And summer school commences.

I was really on the fence about whether I would teach this summer. This past year has been pretty rough and tumble, between getting laid off from my job as a reading teacher in the juvenile justice system, to starting a new position as a middle school teacher of English Language Learners in a severely underperforming school. I have learned that if you're looking to raise your blood pressure by, say, ten to fifty or more points, a good way to do it is to start a teaching job in the middle of a school year. Even better if you're teaching middle school. And you get bonus marks if your students don't want to learn English, which is what you're contracted to teach them.

Over the course of the past six months, my head became like an over-inflated tire, dangerously close to exploding. My days were spent in the mode of constant redirection, with little successes sprinkled in here and there. I told myself, over and over, that this summer would be my grand reward, my treat to myself for having endured an incredibly stressful year. Images of beaches, lawn chairs, books I've been meaning to read, and cool drinks swirled around in my head. I was dizzy in love with my dream summer-to-be.

In early June, my school's ELL coach told me that the summer program had reposted the ELL Writing position. "I know you're not thinking about working this summer, right, Kate?" she sort of sheepishly said one day in passing. No, I'm not. Or I wasn't. I hadn't been? But it was becoming more and more a part of my thinking as we got closer to the end of the school year. I'll admit that part of my thinking had to do with my son's recent declaration that he wanted to go out for the high school golf team in the fall (big cash hemorrhage). But the bigger part of my shift in thinking had to do with conversations I'd been having with colleagues on Twitter. I participate semi-regularly in what's called an #ELLCHAT, in which teachers, consultants and other professionals in the field of teaching English Language Learners get together and share ideas, pose questions and create a supportive community in the field. A few folks had mentioned during one particular chat what a glowing opportunity it is to teach in the summer, particularly with this population.

I guess that's all it took. "Glowing opportunity" is the term that got my attention, but was I thinking of the kids' opportunity, or my own? At this point, I'm inclined to believe it's both. True, I'm far from the idyllic beach setting I imagined myself in earlier this year, but I'm glad I took this job. The kids are (surprisingly) well behaved, at least in my classes. We go on lots of field trips in this program, which provides great fodder for writing. The picture above was taken on our first excursion to a state park about 20 minutes outside the city. The kids got to explore the shallows of a pond and use small hand nets to find critters, creatures and other sorts of freshwater aquaculture. Later, they got to go swimming (although their swim was cut short due to tardy lifeguards). We'll be writing about this trip, and others to come, using pictures, posters, pamphlets, and more.

These kids often don't leave the confines of the city in which they live and, from what I hear, they often don't leave their homes except to go to school. It's awfully hard to teach kids when they have such a severe lack of background knowledge on which to base their learning. But here, in this program, there's a great - and yes, I think glowing - set of chances for kids to enrich their experiences and broaden their horizons. Maybe, together, we'll start to stretch ourselves in ways we never thought we could.