Hitting a Wall

A teacher and I were discussing after school last Monday just how very tired we both were….on a Monday!  She reminded me that it is this time of year that we all get very tired.  We’ve accomplished so very much in less than 45 days of school.  We’ve unpacked and decorated our rooms, gotten to know our students, we’ve established relationships with our families, we made tons of copies, graded and analyzed lots of work, had plenty of assessments, completed progress reports, made tons of phone calls and conducted several parent conferences.  That is just a simple small list of all that has occurred the last 45 days.  To say that we deserve to be tired is almost the worst understatement that I’ve ever made.

I’m not sure about you but when I start hitting the wall, I sometimes feel like hitting someone (not literally). My Clarendon County temper likes to rear its ugly head.  When I’m tired, I can be quick to anger, quick to respond in a not so kind way, or quick to jab when I should pull back.  Luckily, I have learned this about myself and have learned to spot those signs (most of the time).  

My AP and I were discussing a discipline problem recently and he was reminded of a quote he heard, “small minds discuss people; average minds discuss events; but brilliant minds discuss ideas.”  I wrote it down, as I do with many quotes, and have pondered over that idea for days. 

This is an Eleanor Roosevelt quote.  I’m not sure how much you all know about Mrs. Roosevelt, but she had what I would call the most miserable life growing up: alcoholic father, mother who tragically died of diphtheria, her brothers dying of scarlet fever, and an orphan by age 10 when she was sent to boarding school.  She had a lot to complain about.  I am sure she had many times when she felt like she was hitting a wall.  However, she used that sadness to become an advocate for minorities, the poor, the addicted,and for children and women’s rights.  Even when you feel like hitting a wall, and so many of us do right now, don’t do what becomes the natural thing to do….hitting others (with our words or actions), power through knowing that you are making a difference...with little sleep and loads of caffeine. 

I'm becoming my mother.........

MUSC is a wonderful hospital. Having spent a lot of time there this last month, I can say that they certainly understand the importance of relationships. One of my Mom’s nurses always spent time talking with us-not just about my Mom but about us. One day one of her nurses, spent a lot of time asking me questions about my life, my boys, and my job. Before he left the room, he looked at me and said, you sure do remind me of your Mom.  “You look and act just like her,”  he said. These are not words that many 40+ year olds want to hear. “You are becoming your mother” is what I heard ringing in my ears the entire drive back home. Not that my mom is a terrible person, she is not,  she is wonderful, but there is something about becoming my mother that stopped me in my tracks.  We don’t always like to hear it, but it’s true. It’s in our DNA. The older we get, the more we resemble our parents. If you’re especially close to your parents, you might even start to act like them and before you know it, you are them. 

The more I drove the more I thought about this and the more I thought about school.  Isn’t this true about school? I remember once when Rosebro#1 was in kindergarten and he was “playing school” with then 3 year old Rosebro#2 who wasn’t behaving very well in pretend school (shocking). Rosebro#1 made me cry with laughter at his dead on impression of Mrs. Jacobs when attempting to get Rosebro#2 to do the right thing.  Children mimic our behavior.  I remember that same year in kindergarten being at the public library and Rosebro#1 checked out a book because it was one of “Mrs. Bahnmuller’s favorites”.  You see his love of this book came from his teacher’s behavior. He didn’t guess it was her favorite, she had told him.   

I speak a lot about modeling to our students.  I don’t mean modeling just our behavior or writing or how to work out a math problem, but modeling our own love of learning. We should model how we want our kids to behave.  You model those expectations, but what you should be asking yourself is do you model your passion for learning?  Do you pick up a book and show your kids how much you’ve fallen in love with the words?  Do you model your writing?  Do you tell them about an interesting video you watched or newspaper article you read about something you’re studying in Social Studies or Science.  Do you explain with excitement how you used measuring skills to make curtains at home or order tile for your new kitchen design?  If you don’t how is it expected that your kids will fall in love with learning? If you aren’t passionate, how then can our kids ever be?   As I thought about me becoming my Mom, I eventually was grateful for that statement.  She is a strong, kind, generous, sometimes goofy and airheaded, a graceful Christian woman who always puts her family before herself.  Who wouldn’t want to become that?  When you think about that, when you think about what you are modeling to your students either with your behavior or your joy of being a life long learner, do you want your kids to be that?  Do you want your kids to show your same level of enthusiasm or passion?  If not, you only have the power to change the model. 

Safe Places

When I was a teenager I worked as a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly. Before you start laughing, this was THE job to have if you were a teenager in my hometown. All the cool kids, who had to have an afterschool job, worked at the Pig. Prior to my real job at the Pig, I worked for my Dad on the farm and trust me the pay at the Pig was 100 times better. My best friend worked with me. My boyfriend was a bag boy and the parking lot was always filled with teenagers, as the Pig was a local hangout. I loved my job. We always cashed our Friday paychecks at work and one day I had done just that stuffed my (now seemingly small) paycheck into my purse and went about my teenage life. I had probably spent $20 or so of the money by church on Sunday. My parents have always instilled in me to be a faithful tither so I again went into my purse and gave another $20 to my church during Sunday School.  Although I was a teenager, attending a small church meant that even at age 16, I was allowed to be in the church choir, so for the next hour or so I was in the choir. After choir I was hanging my robe when I heard frantic rumbling in the choir room. I soon discovered that during church, someone had come into our choir room and stolen out of all the purses of the female choir members. I ran to my purse and while I was expecting differently the remaining money from Friday’s paycheck was all gone.  I was devastated. Yet, what I remember feeling the most was that in my safest place-my church- I had been stripped of the feeling of safeness. Church was and always has been my safe place. After this incident the church started locking more doors and making it harder to get into the church.

Going to the movies is one of my secret hobbies. Since the Batman shooting in a movie theater a few years ago, I still remain a little anxious about going to the movies. I watch the folks walk in and look at the exit doors and honestly make a little plan in my head about what I’d do if something happened. This weekend I went to see the movie Sully. Tom Hanks portrayed US Airlines pilot Chesley Sullenburger brilliantly in this movie about the Miracle on the Hudson. While watching the movie, I was moved by the emotional display, without any script-only acting, of the landing and getting everyone off the plane and into boats. I watched Tom Hanks’s face and realized that that plane was his safe place. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did.  Last week, after our faculty meeting, I sat at my desk in shock and horror watching the live feed from Townville Elementary where two students and one teacher were shot in another school shooting. While church is and always will be my safe place, I have similar feelings while here at school.  I love our school. I look forward to car pool every morning and enjoying our Safety Squad and welcoming our kids to school. I love walking the hallways and looking at the displayed student’s work. I love being in your classrooms. Next to having one of the Rosebros telling me they love me, my favorite thing in the world is having a student read to me. I love hanging in the cafeteria during lunch. I had the best time riding my bike around the track during recess the other day. The last thing we expect is for all of those things to be interrupted by gunfire. School should be a safe place.

I feel strongly, that even with mistakes I make as a leader, I always try to make decisions that are best for our school, staff, students and community. The only time I ever “lose sleep” is thinking about the loss of JBE as a safe place. I do not nor will I ever take lightly the immense responsibility we have to ensure the safety and security of the students entrusted to us. As I was thinking about all of my safe places-I realized one thing holds true. These places-church, movie theater, our homes, our school-are still are safe places. They are safe because of the people we share them with and the experiences we have within the spaces. While in all of them we may do things differently to keep them just a little safer, they still are our Safe places. We make them safe not just in our physical actions of locking doors and gates, and ignoring the door and reducing adult traffic with in the school, we make it emotionally safe by creating relationships with our students and their families. It is through that sense of community and family that will keep us safe-even when the unthinkable happens.

Cheerleaders

Twenty years ago (it is so hard to even type that), I was the cheer coach at SHS. I loved “my girls” and I loved what we did. We started the first competitive cheer squad at SHS and I am embarrassed now when I see Ashley’s SHS squad and how amazing they are compared to how bad we were years ago. One of the reasons I loved coaching was that at that time, I was also teaching ED self contained students. On a good day, this was a difficult job. While I loved it and loved my students, these kids were hard and sad and troubled and amazing all at the same time. They also needed me-a lot of me. I left school physically, mentally and emotional drained many days. And then I headed over to the high school. These girls were adorable. Yes, sometimes dealing with 20 teenage, hormonal girls was much worse than dealing with my 12 ED kids, but overall they were a wonderful distraction from the classroom. I enjoyed their “teenage drama”, their sideline antics, and watching them form as a team and do great things for the football and basketball teams. I loved watching these girls cheer for the teams. There really isn’t anything better than having someone cheer for you. Things came full circle last week, when the night nurse came by my Mom’s room and it just so happened to be one of my former cheerleaders. I was thrilled to see her again as she hadn’t returned to Spartanburg after finishing school at CoC  At some point last week, as I was trying to get my mom to speak, Shimekia was in the room and said something that really resonated with me. Watching me struggle with my Mom and attempting words with her, Shimekia knelt beside me like a player was injured and said “everyone needs a cheerleader, keep it up!” I was discouraged –I was injured-but her words kept me going. She was still my cheerleader and I realized that at that moment I was my Mom’s cheerleader. It got me thinking about our students here and the idea that we are their cheerleaders. We have many students who hear positive words each day. I see it in the car line each morning as they depart their cars with an “I love you, have a great day” but we have many more students who hear nothing-music is on, parent is on the phone or the parent is disengaged. It is one of the reasons that I am loud, enthusiastic, & exciting at car line each morning.  Each student deserves to be greeted by name and with a smile, a hug, a high five, and a wish that they have a great day. In essence I am their morning cheerleader (have no fear, I’m not wearing the short skirt anytime soon). I’ve shared with you before the great Ted Talks video of Rita Pierson (click HERE if you’ve not seen it) who begs you to believe that each child needs a champion. I believe each child-no, each person– deserves a cheerleader. One of the things I do when I walk the halls at 7:50 is look for those cheerleaders. Are you greeting your students? Are you starting your day with a positive interaction because as you know, “kids don’t learn from someone they don’t like.” Do you give high fives through the day? Do you celebrate small moments? Do you talk positively about them? In essence are you your students’ cheerleaders? Do you encourage them? Do you kneel with them when they’re hurt? Do you cheer loudly when they do good? We all deserve to have a cheerleader. Let me know if you need pom-poms.

Fan Club

     Two of the biggest benefits of being done with my dissertation is having my weekends back and being able to go back to football Saturdays with my family.  Last Saturday, we watched Clemson try really really hard to lose to Troy State.  It was exciting for another reason as well because Cedarius Rookard, former JBE student and SHS graduate, plays for Troy and Tavien Feaster, a 2016 SHS graduate, plays for Clemson.  My husband, not being a SC native, married into this Clemson craziness. While he pulls for Clemson, probably out of fear of divorce and the fact that pretty much all men in my family have a gun in their trucks, my husband tolerates Clemson tailgating, 80,000 loud fans, and the insane traffic coming into and leaving Death Valley. But this game was different.  He was super excited to see two of his former players on the big stage. Cedarius was the first player to touch the ball in the game running back the opening kickoff. Unfortunately Troy scored on their first drive, and kicked off to Clemson to none other than Tavien Feaster.  I got such a kick out of watching my husband-as well as trying to explain to the folks around us why we were decked out in orange and purple but cheering for Cedarius and the excitement of seeing Tavien in his first game. 

     As the game came to a dramatic end, my husband (never one to really like this at Clemson) raced down to the field in order to find Tavien and/or Cedarius. Now if you know my husband, you understand why I watched in amazement. He is my polar opposite. I am full of energy, excitement and enthusiasm. I have ADHD and am never still even when sitting, I am loud and can be a tab bit embarrassing while he is laid back, quiet, reserved, and somewhat a wallflower in public situations. But on the field he was almost running over folks to find his former students. While watching my husband act in a non-predictable manner, got me thinking about us with our students.  Cedarius had a great game, but his team lost. Tavien only touched the ball a few times. Yet, my husband needed to high five them, give them a “man” hug, and congratulate them. It was important to him to celebrate with “his kids”. 

     My thoughts drifted to our students. Our students don’t usually make it on the big screen. Our students’ “big moments” may be staying on green two days in a row, finally getting that math concept you’ve been working on for weeks, writing a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end or even engaging in conversation.  But the feelings are the same as if they are on the big stage in front of 80,000 screaming fans.  Do we celebrate those moments? Or do we worry about what they don’t know? Do you spend time patting them on the back for what they did right or do you focus on what is left undone? My husband celebrated with Tavien as if he had won the Heisman and he honestly touched the ball only twice and it reminded me of one of the most important lessons of our classrooms.  Don’t forget to celebrate-big and small. We all need a fan club.

I wasn't prepared for that

     On my second day of teaching (yes, literally my 2nd day of teaching), I had a student,Walter, throw a chair, called me a b%&$^, and bite me.  He was five.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  That same year one of my students watched her mother almost beaten to death by her father.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  My third year teaching, I had a student, a 6th grader, hospitalized after her grandmother had given her a "at home" abortion.  Yes, she was pregnant -at age 11.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  My fifth year teaching, I had a student die in a fire at home.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  My sixth year teaching, I had a child lose his mother unexpectantly and no family wanted him.  He was ripped away from us and into foster care so I never saw him again.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  In the last class I taught, I had a student ask me if I’d ever thought about suicide because she was going to do it that that night.  I wasn’t prepared for that.  I fully believe that we are where we are for a certain purpose.  Call it a higher calling, predestination, fate, or dumb luck.  I believe we are where we are at any given moment because we are supposed to be.  I was not prepared for any of the situations-the horrible ones described previously-or many others such as teaching literacy to a classroom made up of high flyers and non readers and a little of everything in between, math or science when I came out of college with a teacher’s certificate in hand thinking I was an expert on all things education.  I had a desire however and I have picked up a lot of knowledge along the way.  While I had not been prepared, I made it through each one of those situations. Sometimes I used my mentors, my principal, my faith, and/or my team. I handled each moment, some better than others. Sure, I had surges of doubting my abilities to teach difficult students in difficult situations but never, not once did I ask to be rid of my student or wish that I didn’t have him/her.  You see, while I was never prepared, I knew that I was, for the most part, all many of those children had. 

     Last week I went to the yellow mall and stupidly left my interior lights on and came back to a dead battery.  I did what every wife does during football season and called her husband to come rescue her. As I waited, cars would pull up and I would think it was him only to be disappointed when it wasn’t his truck.  But when I finally did see his truck and three faces all beaming at me from the interior, I felt such relief.  I was safe and I knew they would fix my problems (well, I kinda knew-my hubby can heal you but he isn’t that great at the handy man stuff) and I’d be home in no time.  You see for your most troubled students, you are that savior. Many of them have had others in and out of their life-like the glimmer of hope those cars provided for me in the parking lot. For your most troubled students,  you are the one constant in their lives.  This doesn’t make it easy. I know how hard it can be for you and your other kids.  Walter, the biter, never made it fun that first year.  I cried many afternoons alone in my classroom. I cried many afternoons on the way home, to my friends, to my mentors, to my principal.  I wondered if I even wanted to teach.  I wish I could give you a great success story on Walter but I can’t.  I can give you a success story on his teacher.  I never gave up on him.  I wasn’t prepared for that. 

College Colors Day

Our College Colors day on Friday was so much fun. The “tailgate” party we had in the cafeteria was a bit wild and a lot loud, but it was a fantastic way to end the week and begin our long Labor Day weekend. It was great seeing the children in all their college colors. As you would expect in any South Carolina school, there was a pretty even mix of orange and black-not for Halloween, but of course for Clemson and USC. But what I found unusual was the vast spread of other college choices-Spellman, Wofford, UNC, Western Carolina, Winthrop, and even one Harvard. 

As I took pictures and interacted with the students, it got me thinking about how vastly different our students are. Just as we had a variety of colleges represented on Friday on tshirts, jerseys, and hoodies, there are other differences in our children. We have some of the most shy children I’ve ever been around. We have one child who I really wonder if she has or will ever speak to me. We have some who are so loud and boisterous that you know the second they walk into the building. We have some students who are reading well above grade level and some who are years behind where they should be academically. We have some students who are very mature and others who lack maturity. We have some who everyone-students and teachers alike-love and others who have very few “in their corner”. We have students who have a loving home with both a mom and dad, and we also have 2 moms homes, 2 dads homes, single parent, being raised by grandparent, and even foster children. We have home dwellers, apartment livers, and even homeless children. We have just about every ethnicity powerschools allows. We have numerous religious and non-religious backgrounds. As I looked at the variety of team choices, the one common denominator was that they were our students.  

During lunch I got some boos from some non-Clemson fans. I explained to these students that it was okay not to be a Clemson fan, but we had to respect each other’s choices. It made me wonder, how many of our students feel “booed” by their differences.  The best piece of advice I ever received as a first year teacher was to remember that my job is to teach the students I have-not the ones I used to have or the ones I wish I had or the ones the teacher next door has, but to teach those I have right now-all of them-even with their flaws. Even if their coach goes for it on 4 and 4 instead of kicking a field goal. Don’t ever boo your students.