On wanting to smash everything with a hammer

Today I feel like smashing things. Smashing the TV so I don’t have to see one more goddamn fucking politician and their smarmy lies and twisted truths. Sure I still plan to cast my very-first-ever-non-elementary-school-election-vote, but that still doesn’t take away from the urge to smash the TV. And while I’m at it…the radio. I’ll keep my one sane CD and smash the rest. This Smashy feeling inside me is like the character Yzma, from The Emperor’s New Groove, who wanted to tun Cuzco into a flea, and put him in a box, and smash that box with a hammer. She looked like this:

That’s how I feel inside. Smashy.

It wasn’t a particularly annoying or unproductive day, though my afternoon class is starting to wear on me. It feels a little like a car whose brakes have been cut and we’re careening downhill. How do I rein it back in and keep my integrity as a teacher? I genuinely want ALL of my students to pass…and 99% of them I want to pass because they deserve it, and the other 1% so that I don’t have to see their smug mugs in my class again next quarter. I’m a college instructor. I don’t want to give seating charts or make them raise their hand or lock the door after a 10 minute break when they can’t show up on time.

 

WHY DO PEOPLE HOMESCHOOL?!

In theory I respect the right for individual families to make educational choices for their children. I have both friends and family members that have chosen to home-school at one point or another, or have been home-schooled, and with the variety have had varying levels of success.

In practicality, though, my educator brain doesn’t really like the idea or the overall practice of homeschooling…especially past elementary school. Perhaps I only focus on the negatives, but from my experience, many of the parents I have seen, sacrifice things that public/private education could have offered in an attempt to gain something (not sure what, exactly, but I am sure they have a reason in their mind), that doesn’t actually seem to work. An example, is my aunt pulling her daughters out to home-school, after her youngest was being forced to complete assignments and stay in from recess to do so. My aunt felt the teacher wasn’t being fair (which could be legit) and that my cousin was being teased (also a legit reason to look at the education). But instead of sending her to a different school or get her evaluated for an IEP (needed for both mental and physical reasons), she chooses to home-school her. What began as a legit reason to re-evaluate, has turned into 4 years of home-schooling by a depressed divorcee mom with only a high school education. My cousin is behind in grade level (assessed by my mom who is a reading specialist), and has social skills of a 4 year old (at 12). When we have family functions even the little kids tease her because she is so…weird…which simply perpetuates a pattern of teasing/low-self-esteem that as a mental health professional, I am concerned about in the future. In contrast, though, is my dad’s cousin, who raised 6 kids on a farm, is a college educated elementary teacher who home-schooled her kids through middle school and then sent them to public high school. While socially awkward in ways, the kids have gone to college and found boyfriends and gotten jobs. All things I am concerned about for my other cousin.
What brings this subject up in my mind, is the frustrating day I had on Thursday with my predominately home-schooled morning class. Many of the students are willing to learn and do the work that I require of them (which isn’t much, as far as college goes), and reasonably beginning to make friends and think critically…there are a handful of students who both are socially awkward with their peers AND with me, which can be worked through, but their intellectually arrogant attitude isn’t based in actual performance and I can’t help to think has been instilled in them by equally arrogant parents who thought that they were so smart that they could teach their children everything, including all the high school subjects. Nobody I know is THAT smart, which is why high school has different subject teachers. I am just baffled that one person could think they could substitute for a hundred professional people with experience and education in the teaching field.

I would feel less upset by this if it didn’t set the students up for such failure in life and higher education. This one student, who rolls his eyes and grumbles with every assignment is probably smart, but when he writes, he writes at about a 4th grade level. His friend was helping him formulate his paper into a paragraph! I could understand if this kid was so brilliant that he was oodles and oodles ahead of his classmates, and therefore was lacking in social skills, but he seems to have a deficit in BOTH social skills AND reading/writing comprehension. I think his bad attitude masks the fact that he really just doesn’t know what he’s doing…which I could see how he might have slid through in a public school, seen as defiant, but he was being home-schooled! His parents should have realized that he cannot perform at grade level! Right?! And the defiant attitude toward me, as a professional educator, just doesn’t seem to jibe with the whole ‘respect’ because they are Christian, thing, ya know?

And then I begin to question these parents’ motivations. I know they are conservative Christians, but did the sacrifice of having him not be around “worldly” things really help him get the best start in life? I am very biased about this, having grown up very conservatively, without being allowed to watch tv/movies, and wear those long dresses, and go to church every week, but my parents always valued public education. And Boof and I have talked about the state of the education system, and how it doesn’t always meet a child’s needs, but I think home-schooling as their whole education is just the wrong way to go about it.

So, what are your thoughts on education…public/private/home-school? Is there a place for home-schooling?  A time where home-schooling is actually selfish? Thoughts on how I can reach these students who are failing?

Melancholy Monday

When I was in my younger twenties, I had less of an understanding of my issues of anxiety/OCD/depression and how it related to my career. Initially the anxiety pushed me to excel, be early all the time, but then there was a certain crash, where I felt unable to control myself. My early-to-work anxiety left me sitting in my car, weeping, writing in my journal, and listening to music, all in an effort to muster the strength to actually go to work. This pattern of thoughts/feelings ruling my actions actually became debilitating for awhile. I remember calling in sick from anxiety one day, and then sick again and again and again for four whole days because all I could muster was to putz around the house. It’s led to passive-aggressive sneaking around behavior at work, lying to my supervisor and generally acting like how I would imagine a young child would act when they are trying to get around their parents’ rules.

But I’ve come a long way since then. When I’m on medication, that has helped. I’ve done more introspection and understanding of myself and emotions and on days, like today, where melancholy rules, I still force myself to get out of bed, drive across the I-90 bridge in the not-quite-yet-sunrise, and walk into work. That’s where I am today, beginning my workday, with my emotions feeling raw and tender for no discernable reason (though leaving Potamus snuggled up with daddy certainly feels like that could be a starting point.)

I know that once I get in the swing of things this morning I will be okay, but for the moment, I cannot seem to shake the blues.

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In other news, Potamus is a healthy 20lbs and 27 inches long…which initially concerned me because he hasn’t gained weight since his last apt (well, it has actually felt like he gained weight, and then lost it), but the pediatrician said it was totally normal and he is height/weight proportionate and that all his moving around has caused the slimming down. When asked about his reverse cycling, the pediatrician laughed and said that he was “sorry” for me, but that the baby is getting what he needs and is totally healthy. He was also very proud of my husband’s efforts to get breastmilk into Potamus in creative methods, like mixing with yogurt or using a clean Coke can, etc. What I found to be most fun, though, was that he is a dad of 4 and was totally pro co-sleeping. It was actually his suggestion for us, since Potamus doesn’t sleep longer than 2 hours at night, even telling Boof that he and his wife co-slept/bed-shared with their 4 kids. Awesome! Not many pediatricians would be so honest, especially since it is discouraged by the APA!

On being a non-morning person…

I am determined to not let the brilliance of a 3 day weekend, every week, be overshadowed by the ridiculously early morning and commute to work the other 4 days. As I rise, before the sun, I am comforted by the fact that rest of the city is right along with me…blurry eyed, stumbling to put dress socks on and comb our hair into a reasonably professional look, and waiting (im)patiently at the nearest drive-through coffee stand to get caffeine coursing through our veins. I am NOT a morning person, that is, I do not actually like to get up in the mornings (though my body hasn’t let me sleep past 7:30 for at least 3 months). I wake up at 6 am and am out the door by 7 to make it to the college on time.

While I hate getting up, I do actually find that once I am awake and tasked with things to do, I am very productive. In one of my first jobs, I used to come in early, work until about 2 and THEN take a lunch, because after I’ve eaten, the hours tick by s…l….oooooo….w…..l….y. Like stabbing-myself-in-my-eyes slow. In fact, this tendency to want to escape the afternoon slowness had me “yelled at” on day 5 of my job as I was caught “sneaking out” early. I wasn’t sneaking out, I had arrived 30 minutes early and had worked through lunch, but didn’t have permission (didn’t ask, didn’t think I needed to, the last 3 jobs haven’t required that for flex time), which left me almost in tears…but I handled it professionally and have moved on from there.

One of the hardest parts of mornings, though, is leaving sweet Potamus and Boof in bed slumbering, while I creep about eating my peanut butter toast and digging through a dark closet for something reasonable to wear. They look so sweet together, and while I now these days are limited, as Boof will hopefully get a job soon, it does make me twinge ever-so-slightly with jealousy of the thought of them sleeping in indefinitely and lounging about the house. (In reality, though, Potamus is up by 7 and doesn’t nap until mid-day and Boof has to hold him for 3 hours because he won’t ‘go down’ for a nap, and both are covered in Cheerios and yogurt and all the thing that make less jealous of the whole morning arrangement).

My morning class is overwhelmingly the best, engaged and participatory with amazing insight. My afternoon class, when the caffeine and enthusiasm is wearing off, is…less-so. It is smaller, more masculine, and I’m having a difficult time deciding if I should compare them to the morning class or roll with what they give me and go from there. They just seem so…apathetic, and doing a song & dance to convince them to discuss things isn’t really my style. I’m looking at it as a new challenge.

First Week, Fall Quarter

Whew, what a whirlwind the last two weeks have been! I am happy to report that I have successfully completed my first week of teaching at a local community-turned 4 year- college!

In a quick turn of events, I was hired, gave my notice at my crisis-counseling job, and transitioned into this position that allows me the freedom and flexibility to be both a worker and a mother. I spend four days a week at the college, two of the days as an instructor and the other two as an advisor for 16-20 year old students who have dropped out of high school. The mix of kids is delightful. There’s the run of the mill “thug life” kids that bounced from school to school because of expulsions, suspensions, and pop-off attitudes. There are the little-house-on-the-prairie homeschool types, who wouldn’t dream of who have clearly excelled academically to a degree, but the somewhat intellectual arrogance has left them socially awkward and blowing out of regular high school. There are mothers, felons, medically fragile, procrastinators, and class clowns.

Regardless of the reasons behind dropping out, they are welcome here in our program, a 4 quarter structured program (much like a very scaffolded running start) where they are introduced to college and supported as they attempt to get an AA degree, or a transfer degree, or even a certificate in an area of focus. And I get the newbies, the ones who are first stepping into a college classroom and hoping to be changed.

Okay, that’s actually optimistic and lofty. Many of my kids are simply hoping to not fail again. And many of those intellectually arrogant are actually just trying to “jump through the hoop” of my class in order to gain access to their 2nd quarter where they can take an English class, and their 3rd quarter where they can “take the fun classes” (actual quote by a student today, as she pushed her glasses back up her nose).

My curriculum is intangible in so many ways. These students have been taught subjects, but in my class, I hope to give them the experience of learning about themselves in a different way. Because that’s what I learned in college…I learned to think outside of the black/white paradigm and analyze poetry and give my opinion on things without stuttering or wavering in discussion. Of course I will teach things like study skills and learning styles, but I hope they gain a sense of community at the end of it all.

My college self, the one who thought about being an English teacher,  but didn’t have the confidence to really finish that degree, is now standing in front of a college class, with unbridled freedom in planning and executing the teaching objectives. Want to watch an episode of Dirty Jobs to illustrate Career Development? No problem! Want to give “This I Believe” speech/essay assignment? Go for it! Want to design group work or have free-writes or listen to music lyrics? All acceptable.

And the best part, perhaps, is coming home at the end of the night, happily tired with enough emotional energy to drop to the rug and play with Potamus for a few hours until bedtime. While I’m not getting much sleep at night, thanks to full-on reverse cycling and Potamus nursing at least every 2 hours (if not more), I am happy. So happy.  But like a quietly contented happy.

Reflections on 16 months of crisis counseling

I have witnessed a lot in the past 16 months of crisis counseling, and as I sit on my last day, having discharged my last client last night, I feel so much hope in my move forward. But there is also this lingering sense of  heaviness from all that I have witnessed…

I accepted the job, as a Crisis Intervention Specialist, working with youth 3-18 and their families in King County, 24 hours after I learned I was pregnant. So my first 9 months on the job I was pregnant and the 2nd half of the job I was a new mom. While I have been employed there for 16 months, if you take out the maternity leave in the middle, I’ve solidly worked there for 1 year. But 1 year feels like an eternity. There are things I have seen, and witnessed, and felt that are hard to put into words, hard to describe to people who haven’t been there.

Like, how do you explain the feeling of arriving at an apartment, to find a 250 lb naked teenage developmentally delayed (can’t speak or understand language)  girl from a foreign country sitting on the stairs and realizing that she is the client. Naked. And what goes through my mind is, “my schooling did not prepare me for this.” To be body slammed and try to explain to the family through an interpreter how the mental health system works here in America.

How do I explain the smell of a pre-adolescent who hasn’t showered or changed clothes for the past 3 months because she sees a bloody axe wielding woman in the bathtub. How do I explain the condemend house infested with fleas with the family living in the basement? Or the 13 year old who was pregnant and kicked out of her house by her aunt, who said it’d be fine if she just went to live in a shelter. Or the 5 year old who put his mom in a choke-hold while she drives down the freeway. Or the meth-coke-crack-oxy-marijuana-alcohol abusing 15 year old trying to stay sober in a family of addicts.

Or what about the 12 year old prostiting herself because she heard her birthmother did drugs and was on the street and she hoped that maybe she would meet her out there, somewhere, sometime.

I have seen so much, and yet, what I have seen doesn’t compare to how much my family’s have seen. And I am leaving this position changed, in a way that is hard to put into words. Not much scared me before, but now there is very little that I am really afraid of in reaction or relation to teens or their families.

 

Four Years Ago? 11 Years ago?

I keep hearing repub-types saying things like “where were you four years ago?” in an assumptive attempt to sway votes toward the Ryan/Romney camp. But it got me thinking, reminiscing, on where I actually WAS four years ago…where I am today…and the implications of my answer might not make those repub-types as happy if it means I’m going to vote for this trend to stay the same.

Now don’t get me wrong, as a privileged white woman of middle class origins, I know that many many people in America have not been as fortunate as me in the last four years. But here is where I was four years ago:

September 2008
Boof and I  are three months away from our wedding date. I am taking 10 graduate credits, in full last-minute-wedding-planning mode, and working part-time as a substitue teacher. I lived in a little one bedroom apartment that had been infested with tiny little flies after the basement/crawl-space that had been flooded when a sewage holding tank backed up and overflowed.

In the four years since, I have gotten married, lived in a sweet 2 bedroom apartment (with no fly infestation), gotten a dog, received my Masters of Arts in Education, Community Counseling with a 4.0 GPA and honors, gotten pregnant, bought a house for a good price and in a good neighborhood, had a healthy/happy baby, become a licensed counselor, and had three progressively better paying jobs in my field of interest.

Whoa, that’s a huge list of amazing things that have happened in the past 4 years! And if that’s because Obama has been president, well, then I can’t really complain about his leadership.

And with this being the anniversary of September 11, 2001 it got me thinking. Where were YOU four years ago? But also…where were you ELEVEN years ago? It’s amazing for me to look back on such a tragic day and see how beautiful my life has become.

 

HOLY COW!

I am almost too excited to write.

Almost.

Today I interviewed for my dream job…32 hours a week, 2 days teaching, 2 days counseling/advising, on a college campus with at-risk youth (high school dropouts). My interview was at 11am.

They called me at 3:00 to offer me the position.

Holy Shit. My life is going to go from crazy unstructured crisis counseling with fitting in nursing sessions in between suicidal kids to 4 days away from Potamus for 10 hours (8 hour days plus about a 2 hour commute). BUT the benefit is 3 day weekends, only working 10 months a year (getting winter break, spring break and summer break off) so that I actually get time to enjoy my little guy without worrying that I would get some crisis call.

Plus, did I mention it was my dream job?

Literally.

On maternity leave I remember an anxious night where I went out and journalled what I wanted to do with my life. The list read:

20-30ish hours.
Structured but flexible.
Counseling/Teaching combination.
College.
By October 2012.

Seriously, I start September 17th.

Hi Universe, I owe you a big thank you.

Long hours

Today was my longest day away from Potamus, and I managed to survive! Yesterday was shitty, but I was wrapped in love from my friends and family and woke up today ready to have a calm centeredness to my life. My mantra in this line of work is…”they are in crisis, I am not in crisis.” Sometimes its hard to remember that!

Boof was sweet and sent me this picture while he was out on a walk with the little boy. It made me smile and helped me feel better while I was trying to pump discreetly in the car (and failing miserably might add). We were separated for about 6 hours and I surprisingly felt darn good when I was out. I really like this work…the hours are what makes it terribly hard.

In other news…Potamus is 4 months old tomorrow!