New Life

On my way to school today, cranky that it is STILL RAINING I was thinking that I would be so much happier if the d@&# sun would consent to paying us a little visit . . . maybe just a little glimmer would do. Still kvetching about the stupid weather and the work that is on my desk to the unsuspecting colleague who happened to make the mistake of saying good morning, my phone rang. A bit surprised to get a call at 6:55 am (only crazy people like high school teachers and students in my district are alive at this time) I said hello to hear a tentative, sleepy, and slightly scared "Coach?" on the other end. The dear voice on the other end was that of a former student and basketball player of mine and my husbands' who has become like a daughter to us. She was calling from the hospital where she has been in labor for nearing 15 hours. She wanted to check-in and let us know that she was there, all is okay (relatively speaking when one has been in labor for 15 hours!!), and that her husband is taking great care of her. And instantly everything changed. Life was again good when the hope and promise of new life is so deliciously near. And the obnoxious cliche of the rain before the flowers, the pain before the birth came tumbling down on me and I laughed at myself and the rightness of it all. Now if someone could just come and take the work off of my desk . . .

Of the Wood of the Cross, Chocolate and Charlton Heston

As I sit here enjoying a few pieces of chocolate-covered almonds that a colleague left on my desk yesterday as a "yay you made it throught Lent" gift, I am thinking about the really great gift of a weekend that I just had with my family. Good Friday morning was spent reading, and helping 10 year old with a school project. It was appropriately dark and rainy and peaceful. The boys and I went to Good Friday service that afternoon--which was beautiful and physical and moving (and I managed to pray for the hobgoblin). We ate cheese pizza and had a family movie night that evening. Saturday the sun came out to play and so did the boys--all three of them-- while I ran Easter Bunny errands. Saturday afternoon Sissy came home so we colored Easter Eggs as a family. Saturday night meant our annual viewing of the Ten Commandments--with the boys asking increasingly more difficult questions each year. Easter Sunday Mass was joyous and a relief to the boys who were quite done with the darkness of Holy Week. We went out to dinner with members from both sides of the family and returned to our house for coffee and pie. And really, the best part of it all, is that other than Mass and dinner afterwards, we hadn't pre-planned the rest of it (I know, I'm hearing gasps from those of you who know me). It was as if the play had been written and we picked-up the scripts and went with it. And indeed, IT was already written . . . so we let it be done. (Catch the snappy Ten Commandments reference??)

Accountability

Reading all of the news coverage as of late about teachers, teacher's unions, contracts, NCLB, you name it, is enough to make me want to run naked through the streets of Washington, D.C. or okay, closer to home, Springfield, shouting, "Don't you people get it????" We are in the middle of hiring in my building right now, and in the middle of rewriting curriculum, and in the middle of scheduling for next year, so I have been processing "what's wrong with education" from a lot of angles. I have finally decided that it is accountability. And this accountability has to come in the form of people. Here is what I mean:

In school A, the teachers are evaluated one a year or once every two years by an administrator. This evaluation may take a few days or maybe a week. At the end of the evaluation the teacher is granted an "excellent" because during the time of the evaluation there were no classroom management issues of note, the teacher and students were "on task," and the administrator hadn't had any major complaints or red flags thrown about said teacher in past year.

In school B, the teachers may be evaluated once every one or two years by an administrator, but that teacher is also evaluated/monitored/mentored by someone in that teacher's discipline who KNOWS and keeps close tabs not just on if the teacher is there and managing the classroom, but also that the teacher in question is actually teaching the curriculum. Every day. Not some days, not when the administrator is there, but every day.

We can legislate, we can rewrite, we can mandate, we can put anything on paper that we want to, but until teachers have direct, constant, and immediate accountability--to themselves, their students and to the school they serve . . . it is all not much more than politics and paperwork. And to be clear, I still believe in the Jeffersonian ideal of public education--just wish more folks had the same ideals.

Holy Week

 Been thinking a lot about Holy Week as oldest son was invited to a birthday party on Good Friday afternoon, and colleagues at school are planning a happy hour on Holy Thursday evening . . . I am not, and don't pretend to be a strictly observant Catholic--I miss some holy days of obligation, don't go to Confession as often as I should, etc. etc. But the idea of taking my child to play laser tag while Jesus is on the cross, or of imbibing Margaritas while Fr. Jerry celebrates the Last Supper just doesn't quite jive with me somehow . . .although I do suppose both events include friends, bread and alcohol . . .

I have very vivid memories of Holy Week as a child, attending Mass for three days in a row, going to Tennebrae with my Mom at midnight, thinking Good Friday would never end, but then hoping it could take a little longer to get to dinnertime because I knew that Salmon Patties would be waiting for me . . . but then the absolute giddy joy of Easter Vigil--both because well, it was finally Easter, and because I could once again eat chocolate, candy, or indulge in whatever other major sacrifice I had suffered through for six weeks. . . . Curious how y'all have spent, and plan to spend Holy Week?

Roots and Community

For all of my adult life I have yearned for some place to "belong." This yearning comes from a wonderful childhood--I went to a small Catholic gradeschool, junior high and high school that lived and breathed the idea of family and community service, my parents were educators in the public schools in town and were very active in community theatre, politics, our church-- you name it. Although I didn't recognize it at the time, there really wasn't anywhere that my siblings and I went that we didn't somehow belong--that someone didn't know us or our parents. This belonging continued into my college years as I followed the family footsteps and attended my beloved Eureka--as the 5th Finch to walk 'neath the elms, Eureka was new, but yet, I wasn't a stranger.

When the time came for me to leave my college cocoon, I thought I was ready. I had my education, I was 21, and the time had come. What I had no idea of however, was how naked and alone I would feel in that first year by myself in a world were no one knew me or my family, and where all the town names and family names would be new to me. I felt disconnected, untethered, utterly alone. As I met my husband, became a stepmom, had my boys, and kept ridiculously busy with teaching and coaching, there was still an empty hole that cried out to be filled--and my husband felt it too. We both wanted the kind of life that we grew up in for our family. Eleven years into our family, this dream still has not come to fruition for us--our jobs and the needs of our children have given us our current life instead. But perhaps my understanding of how God calls us has grown, for while I still have some idealized vision of a different life for us floating in my "somedays"--I have been surprised by my own contentment lately.

A wise mentor shared with me a few years back that we are all called to put down roots--but some of us put them down deep, and others of us put them out wide. I have always thought I was a deep root person, but yesterday afternoon my best childhood friend called and left a message for me, last night I spent back at Eureka listening to a presentation by my father, surrounded by my family, this morning the boys were excited to go to their eye doctor because they said, "at least we know him--we have the same one every time," this afternoon a dear close friend from my current school called to "check-in," and this evening we are going out to dinner with a former student from my first school. Wide roots, I tell myself, might be a blessing after all.

Anticipation

Getting ready for Palm Sunday . . .it always feels like the catch-in-your-throat before the deep sigh. So expectant, so much stuffed-down anxiety, so much waiting. Not the calm before the storm, but the low-rumblings when you can smell the rain already on the air. The green just-living palms cry-out against the death that is sure to come. Forshadowing life to come again. But not. Quite. Yet.We'll join our Church family dressed in red and try to wrap our minds around the horribly beautiful week ahead of us.

Overheard Spring Concert Version

It is time for a second installment of comments overheard and the stream-of-consciousness that follow in the Garard household . . .this time as older brother readies himself for Spring Concert/Musical . . .

"Mom, I have a hard time saying 'Relativity'"--that's okay honey, most people can't spell it either.

Younger brother to older brother upon surveying older brother's "costume"--"You should dress like that all of the time--it looks like a school uniform"--so, younger brother must not like older brother's taste in typical outfit of  overworn generic underarmour shirts, fake dogtags and fedora?

"I need to make sure that I put enough of that stuff in my hair--because my wig will mess it up"--There is nothing one can think when their ten-year-old boy worries about this.

Art Imitating Life?

My husband and I are mini-series junkies. That being said, we were both pumped to see "The Kennedys" advertised. Husband set to business DVRing all of the episodes and then we waited until we had uninterrupted time to watch . . . so, yes, that means we didn't watch the first episode until last night. What horrible, over-the-top, ridiculous, engaging schmuck it is! Like a train wreck--I couldn't quit watching, while all along I knew that the disturbing scenes before my eyes were in no way going to improve me or my life. Oh, what glorious, awful fun. My mind kept rolling all day through scenes of Jackie and Jack, Jack and Bobby, and Joe and the clan . . . funny how I already know the story, but got such a fix watching it play-out. Which brought me to my next thought--what would it be like if someone made a movie of all of the REAL parts of life? The parts where someone is grocery shopping, someone else is mowing the lawn, one child forgets homework in his backpack, the other one is mad because he can't have his turn on the Wii . . .because most movies, tv shows, and fiction show us the moments of highest intensity so that somehow we come to believe that our lives should be filled with those moments, instead of understanding that our live are actually supposed to be filled with emptying the garbage, returning phone calls, wondering what is for dinner, and forgetting to take the black sweater out of the dryer. Not that the Kennedys aren't real, but I'm just sayin'.

Life Imitates Art

I heard shreiking laughter coming from the boys' bathroom after dinner last night. Went to check. Tentatively opened the door a crack, afraid of what I might encounter when my 8 and 10 year olds had been left alone together in the bathroom. I need not have troubled myself however when thrust into the thin slit between door and frame was what was formerly known as an army action figure now had hands where feet should be, and an arm where a head once resided. I paused, wondered, and then was confirmed when 10 year old shouted uproariously, "Look Mom! It's a Picasso!"

Humor is the Best Medicine

So a principal walks into a teacher's office and hands her a book. Teacher looks at principal quizzically and asks, "What is this for?" Principal replies, "Just thought you might need a little sanity." Teacher looks at the title, "Under the Covers and Between the Sheets: The inside story behind classic characters, authors, unforgettable phrases, and unexpected endings" and thinks, yes, this might be just what the doctor ordered. Teacher then opens to random page and reads, "Mark Twain wasn't a lover of all literature: He once wrote of Jane Austen, 'Every time I read Pride and Predjudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull  with her own shin-bone.'" I laughed so hard one of my colleagues came running to my office to see what the noise was. Sanity indeed. And I happen to love Pride and Predjudice, but I hear ya Mark! (Cousin Kev, this one's for you!)

Irony of all Ironies

So, when I couldn't decide whether to major in English or History in college (always with an eye on becoming a teacher regardless), my wise parents directed me towards English because "it would be easier to get a job teaching English ". . . I told myself it would be great . . . I had visions of expounding on the virtues of Shakespearian prose, mining Twain for gems of wisdom, reading deeply late into the night the next best poet I would share with my students . . . little did I know . . .
 That I am indeed expounding on Shakespeare--and why indeed it IS POSSIBLE to read and understand him (and okay, let's be honest, this ONLY HAPPENS when you actually take your book home), I am mining Twain--but only for when the next politically incorrect word is going to pop off the page and catch me unawares in front of my Sophomores, and yes, the entire reason that prompted this latest blog--I am indeed reading late into the night--but RESEARCH PAPERS and they ain't poetry folks. Sigh.

April is the Cruelest Month

Each year as the mud begins to thaw, the wind howls and the forsythia fights through, I can't help but think how true indeed is T.S. Eliot's line from The Wasteland, but first  I suppose a little admission is in order here. I don't really like Spring. I know-- I must be broken. I can remember being a small child excited to wake up and see what the Easter Bunny brought me, but yet I always had this feeling that something about the Easter basket and the neon-bright smooth plastic eggs was just, somehow, too much. I could never put words to it of course, and even in my little short brown-haired head I knew that if I tried to explain my distaste for disturbingly large bunnies and too happy unnaturally-colored silicon grass that somehow I would be wierd. Because, being from the Midwest, the party line that begins almost as soon as the Christmas manager is put away goes something like, "Gosh, I just can't wait for Spring," or "Man, it's been a rough one here--just can't wait for the weather to get warmer," or "Won't it be soo nice when we can go outside without all these winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves, boots . . ." Now, don't get me wrong, I love a 60 degree day as much as the next person, but there is something more deeply disturbing about Spring to me than the warmer weather and some tacky holiday paraphernalia. It is, I have found, the "waking" of new life, the the grunting and groaning of the Earth to come back to life that pulls at me, gets in my face and demands something from me that just sometimes seems as I have said before, "too much." I do realize that I am still most likely in the minority with this feeling--as I much prefer, indeed, LOVE the fall with its harvesting, rather than birthing, but about six years ago I heard something very disturbing that unfortunately for the context, opened a window to helping me to see that I'm not the only one who welcomes Spring with an odd sense of dread. I was at a teacher workshop and the presenter was working with us on the mental health of teenagers. She slipped into her presentation an almost off-handed comment that most teen suicides happen in the Spring. My stomach turned-over when she said this--not because I was or am suicidal, but because I instantly felt like I "knew" why this horrible fact might be so. She corroborated my instinct when she went on to say that this is the case because teen depression stays in hibernation during the winter months but the "energy" that come with Spring motivates teens to "act" on their depression. It wasn't a few weeks later when I stumbled back upon Eliot's famous line, and wham! I knew that I was, for better or worse, not alone in my feeling that April is indeed the cruelest month. Relating all of this to my sister while putting up Easter decorations for my family, big sis laughed at me and said that I should be a Minnesota Lutheran. She may be right.