lost causes

for our weekly meeting, all the 11th & 12th grade teachers (all 5 of us) got together to talk about a very special group of students: the juniors with more than one F. there were quite a few of these folks, and the purpose of our gathering was to figure out what we could do to help this group get back on track so they can graduate next year. this is supposed to be the beauty of having a small school: we can give struggling students individual attention. but because we have limited funds these days, our teacher to student ratio is not where it should be, so it’s still quite a big challenge.

now i really enjoy working with these teachers. they’re funny, blunt, and self-described “hard-asses” (unfortunately, that does not really describe my classroom approach, so i don’t totally fit in with that), and moreover, they get straight to the point, which make our meetings run pretty efficiently.

so as we ran through different intervention strategies, we quickly eliminated ideas that didn’t seem doable, either because they wouldn’t work or because they just weren’t realistic. then we came up with the idea of doing a fantasy draft.

for folks that aren’t familiar with fantasy sports: at the beginning of a sports season, you get together with your buddies, create a fantasy league online, and then “draft” athletes onto your team. throughout the season, your fantasy team racks up points depending on how well your players perform in reality, and whoever has the most points at the end wins the grand prize.

so for the first round of our draft, we went around and each teacher selected one student they’d focus all their attention and energy on for the next 3 weeks, with the hope that the student’s grades would improve. after 3 weeks, we’d look at progress reports and see if our plan worked. well, when it was my pick and i was officially on the clock, i picked a kid that has been a big time struggler, because we had a pretty good relationship already and i thought maybe i could help him out.

little did i know, he was already in an even more dubious student group: he was a “lost cause.” i took a peek at his transcript, and i could see why — even though he was in his 3rd year of high school, he had only passed a couple classes up to this point. everything else was an F. he just had F’s everywhere. F, F, F, F, F, F, F, F… and F. shocking to me because he was a nice kid, and usually in my mind, i expect kids with those kinds of grades to be not-so-nice. so i selected another student, and he was also a “lost cause.”

i know what my colleagues were saying. we should devote our energies to helping students who actually stand a chance to pass and graduate with teacher support. ultimately, i selected a student who fell under this category, and i’ve been working hard on helping her. and yes, it is nice, because there is the feeling that she’s on the edge and just needs a lil push to make it over.

secretly, i’m resisting this idea of the “lost cause,” because it is not a theological category, and therefore shouldn’t be something i use to categorize anyone, or anything, really. as i was leading cgroup that night, i thought that maybe part of what it means to be a christian teacher is to see each student the way god sees them, no matter how far they might be from academic success; that is, as someone who can be redeemed.

hello hurricane

we heard a few weeks ago about a potential new student with a pretty extensive history. typical of students in the neighborhood, he’s bounced from home to home for awhile, so whether he’d actually be coming to school at hs3 or in california, it was unclear.

well, he’s here. and i’ve got him for 3 classes. we had a meeting to talk about how we’re gonna support his transition to our school, and i took a look at his file. armed robbery, harassment, drugs, multiple fights, petty theft, an 8.5 month old kid. and apparently, there have been three instances of rival gang members showing up at his previous school and looking for him in his classes. he’s been diagnosed with a learning disability, but my guess is he probably doesn’t actually have one. his “disability” is hanging with the wrong crowd.

i’ve been agonizing over this kid i’ve never even met. teaching has already been really tough, but the prospect of having a kid with his set of challenges 3 times a day makes me wanna curl up in the fetal position. when he shows up, how will i run my class? how will i go through my lesson plans? how will i get this kid to get anything done? i don’t know how to be a teacher with such a disruptive force in my room.

then i realized that he’s not a problem to deal with. he is the reason i became a teacher.

i’m eager to see just what kind of teacher i really am.

still arriving

my assumption had been that once i started working, i would find my larger purpose in life. whether i went with law school, seminary, or education, i would arrive at a clear sense of my place in the world and how i would live out my faith. but while sorting out which direction i would head in, i felt a lot of tension about how faithfully i was living out my beliefs in the interim. i scrutinized the purchases i made. i wondered about the homeless folks i passed by on the street. i’d think about how much i should be verbally sharing about jesus with my friends. i wondered if i was “doing it right.” i reasoned however that once i started working, a large chunk of my day would be devoted to something meaningful to me, and certainly at that point some of the tension would go away.

now that i’ve started teaching, i’m frustrated-but-not-shocked to say that i feel as much tension as ever. the things i ask myself are different questions now, but they don’t cause any less  anxiety. at the root of my questioning is a nagging concern that jesus is not preeminent in my life, because to be honest, i’m pretty sure he’s not. yes, a big reason i went into teaching was out of a desire to serve god, but no, i am not conscious of god in my classroom very often. usually it’s because i’m too tired, and i forget Why i’m there at school everyday. no, i don’t pray in my classroom very often. and no, i don’t do a stellar job of being jesus’ hands and feet to my students. i try to be, and there have been some magical instances, but wow, i’m amazed at how fatigue and frustration can co-opt even the very best of intentions. in some ways, that’s been a big theme so far: trying my darndest, but not quite getting there, and i’m left wondering about whether god is pleased with what he sees from me, and i’m left scratching my head over where i can find the energy to “better” submit myself to jesus’ lordship.

recently i’ve been getting back into the habit of going to my local gym. it’s a great de-stresser, but it’s also a great time to listen to some of my favorite speakers. while running on the treadmill the other day, i listened to the pastor of a little church in grand rapids, michigan talk about the beatitudes. in this talk, he talked about people living in tension, people who wonder about how much they should be spending on this, and how much they should be giving to that, or how they can really begin to empty themselves out. the typical thinking (that i’d unknowingly adopted) follows that until i get my questions settled, and until i started living right, i won’t have god’s favor on me. until i know how much to be spending, until i figure out how to pour out my life, until i’ve successfully identified how much to give away, god will keep his distance. in the meantime, i must continue to grapple with my questions and get them solved, so i can arrive as soon as possible at the kind of life god blesses.

but rob bell pointed out that, rather than god distancing himself from people trying to figure their stuff out, god blesses them while they are in that tension. that is the place where god actually draws near. the good news isn’t that god comes and saves people after they’ve figured everything out, but that god walks alongside them while things are still up in the air. god lives in the messiness.

running around on that treadmill, i really needed to hear those words.

rooted in rainier vista

carrie and i wouldn’t be home owners right now if it weren’t for my parents. they had been scheming for this day since before i was even born. it’s been their plan now for well over 25 years to someday save up enough money to put me through college and help me own my own home. and now, done and done. with a big boost from my parents, we now  own our first home in a little neighborhood called rainier vista, one of a handful of mixed-income communities in seattle.

there’s a lot we love about our house, but what makes it really special is that we live really close to a lot of folks we know. our immediate next door neighbors are friends from quest. a block over is the guy that officiated our wedding, and his wife who was our real estate agent. just up the hill from our neighborhood are some fellow recently-wed ex-IVers. around the corner is a guy i’ve known since i was in high school. and so on and so on. there are easily a dozen or so friends within a five-minute drive. of course, our morning commute is no big deal since the schools we teach at aren’t far, either. it’s no exaggeration to say that this is pretty ideal for us. neither is it an exaggeration to say we owe my parents big.

so tonight, we’re going to celebrate our new home by drinking some sparking apple cider (yes, we live on the edge) and unpacking a few more boxes. we have a ways to go before we’re really settled in, but once we are, i’m looking forward to a ton of future poker nights, football parties, lesson planning, movies, and community dinners in our home.

procrastinators everywhere – get freedom

for mac users, there is no more important app for the sake of productivity than freedom. if you are a chronic procrastinator who spends way too much time reading blogs, checking your fantasy football team, surfing facebook, or catching up on the news while you should be doing some actual work, please do yourself a favor. download freedom. it will increase your productivity 10 fold (it definitely has for me). guaranteed.

here’s how it works. you tell freedom how long you need to work for (up to 8 hours). then, like magic, freedom disables your internet for that period of time. you’ll be banned from the world wide web. try as you may, you won’t be able to get online until the duration of your work period is over. so instead of wasting time reading twitter feeds, you’ll be left alone with your stack of work. and then, you’ll actually spend time going through the work. it’s a miracle!

come experience freedom from the tyranny of your own lazy butt =).

what am i saying?

my life is my message

[mohandas gandhi]

here’s hoping for a better week

other teachers often ask me about how my first years been going so far, and when i tell them about how exhausted i always feel, or how anxious i am in the mornings, they give me that knowing smile that only comes from someone who’s been there and done that. that always makes me feel a lil better.

this was a much more challenging week, partially because i got a lil bit sick near the end. thursday night found me prepping for the next day with a burgeoning sore throat and runny nose. i didn’t do myself any favors when i decided to run to b&n after dark to buy a copy of junot diaz’s drown to teach alongside interpreter of maladies. well, it was a good decision because it turned out that many of my students really loved the diaz text, and i think they loved it even more when i let them in on the fact that its a “college-level” text.

but it was also a bad decision because by the time 3rd period was coming to conclusion on friday, i was really not feeling particularly swell, and by the end of the day, i simply didn’t have the energy to do my job effectively. it was a terrible showing. i explained to my students the situation and they were fairly gracious about it, but they were also more than happy to take advantage of my bad day by taking the last twenty minutes of class off. i don’t think anybody was doing any work at that point, and i was too wiped to do anything about it.

health was only one reason why it was a challenging week though. as much as i prepare for each day, there are still days when i feel underprepared, and it shows. sometimes i’m disorganized, sometimes i’m scrambling before class to make sure i have readings ready, and sometimes, i go through everything i have planned with time left at the end of the period. all our classes are 100 minutes, and it is a sick, sick feeling to go through the entire agenda with twenty minutes left and nothing to do.

but beyond that kinda stuff, i can always identify a bazillion ways i could do better. i’ve made too many mistakes already, and i’ve wondered on more than one occasion if my students have learned anything of value yet from being in my class. honestly, i’m not always sure. all i know is, this week, i gotta do a lil better than last.

book lust

this post may be completely uninteresting to you unless you’re just really into education talk.

i’ve been wrestling a lot with what book i’m going to have my classes read. when making a decision on a class text, there seem to be two general schools of thought:

1) they can’t read real literature. by real, i’m referring to any kind of text that holds some level of respectability in the literary world. for example, a teacher who holds this perspective might eschew walt whitman’s leaves of grass in favor of jewel’s a night without armor.

2) they can only read real literature, whether they can handle it or not. in this school of thought, the word real is used in a slightly different way. here, real literature is narrowed to only include texts by Dead White Men. and the students’ ability to “handle” a text is contingent upon several factors. maybe the text is too hard. or maybe it’s just too boring. either way, nobody wants to read it.

obviously both sides are terrible, and most educators want texts that are interesting and (for lack of a better term) good. i felt smarter when my teachers had high expectations for me. my undergrad thesis advisor made me feel like he believed i could make a living as a professor someday, and that helped me produce my best paper, ever. i wonder if the same could work for my students.

so i’ve gone back and forth. waffling between delillo, woolf, dubois, ishiguro, lahiri, morrison, alexei, mishima, jin, baldwin, and the like. old school texts and contemporary lit.

but now, i think i’m gonna settle on lahiri’s interpreter of maladies, her  collection of short-stories. i think i’m gonna run with that one.

so far…

so good. a few notes:

1) one of my students has nicknamed me “jackie lam.” gee, i wonder why?

2) i teach two 11th and 12th grade language arts classes, and two special ed math classes. i’m surprised to say that my favorite class to teach so far has been special ed math. the students in there are a lot of fun.

3) one of my students has a 3 year old daughter. wow.

4) after just a few days of teaching, i already started to lose my voice. and i haven’t even yelled yet.

5) this is an exhausting job. my body is not used to waking up at such an ungodly hour, and by the end of the school day, i am totally wiped. all i wanna do is go home, eat, and then crawl into bed by 8:30pm. while i think the first three days of my teaching career has been really positive, i am worried about staying strong and energetic for the long haul.

the unthinkable thought

with the first day of my teaching career just a couple days away, i am struck by how ill-prepared i feel to approach the task at hand. my training is, i’m told, excellent, and from one of the most reputable programs of its kind in the country. the design of the program is well thought-out — there is a heavy dose of theoretical instruction and an equally heavy dose of practical day-to-day experience in public schools. one would think that after two years of such training, i would feel reasonably confident heading into my own classroom on wednesday.

but this just isn’t the case. last week, i had the chance to meet some students who were already at school doing work in preparation of our freshman orientation. i’d seen many students over the past couple of years. but seeing the faces of students that i will soon be responsible for felt overwhelming. these are kids who need their education. what makes me think that i can offer anything to help offset a lifetime of challenges and obstacles, and help send them to the promised land of a 4-year college? there isn’t a more appropriate word to describe my emotions on that day than scared.

the unthinkable thought entered my mind: what if it turns out i’m bad at this? what if, when left without the watchful eye of a mentor teacher and faculty advisor, i just don’t have it. that magical it, the perfect combination of smarts, charm, authority, and warmth that can make the difference between an amazing (catalytic) educational experience for a kid, and just another class. what exactly does it mean when you try your best at something you feel god wants you to commit yourself to, and you’re no good? what happens then?

so, it’s with a good amount of fear and trembling that i finally begin my career in the field of education. and while i hope that when it’s all said and done, i’ll have made a significant (positive) splash in the community i serve, for now, i just hope that the kids like me, the other staff like working with me, and that i make it through each day.