Some Cures Are Cruel: Letting ALZ Sufferers Go

A few years ago, I wrote a long complaint about how our culture doesn’t know how to help you grieve when a loved one “dies” or rather, disappears into Alzheimer’s.  When your parent passes away suddenly from a heart attack, or even after a long terminal illness, people come out of the woodwork, but that random day when your mother no longer is your mother due to dementia or Alzheimer’s, there’s no one, no announcements, no ceremony, nothing.  She’s just gone. 

Sure, people occasionally ask me, “How’s your mother?”  But if I say, “Like a three year old…”  They squinch up their face in discomfort and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  And that’s it…Or worse, they utter something ridiculous like, “At least you still have her…” and then go on to describe losing their mother to an aneurysm years ago…

I find myself feeding other people only the positives: “She can still talk…”

But lacking grief support is not the worst of it, honestly.  The worst is how we count milestones backwards from the same milestones one joyfully marks with their babies…”She can sit up, she can speak, she can walk…” These skills disappear in reverse in Alzheimer’s sufferers, until they are quite literally an infant lying helpless in a crib.  They return whence they came.  The best you can hope for is that a heart attack or stroke will claim them first.

Take my mother’s appearance, for instance.  She had always been stylish, taking excellent care of her wardrobe, neat, sharply ironed, attractively coordinated.  What I first noticed about her outfits, perhaps 5 or 6 years ago, she began color-coordinating like her life depended on it: royal blue shirt, royal blue pants, royal blue socks, blue shoes.  Somewhere in her brain existed a rule that she no longer could flex herself around. Then within two years after that, she had to be told that she could not wear the flannel nightdress to the grocery store, yet she could still don her own pants and button her shirts.  Now though she can still zip up her jackets, she cannot tell if clothing is on backwards or inside out, and she must be told it is time to get dressed or undressed; oddly, she still smears lipstick on before she goes about her day.  Neatly.  How odd.

We don’t worry about her appearance like she once did, but still…I predict by summer she will not be able to put her own arms into the sleeves or button her pants…

The words progressive disease is a misnomer.  I wouldn’t use the word progress in any form here.

Yesterday, I had an argument with my father about extending Mom’s life.  To put this into context, my father has always been clear that if technology arrived, he would freeze his brain until transplants were available.  For real.  He wants us to keep him on life support (should he ever need it) until Doctors find a cure for whatever is ailing him; he imagines one day being 167 years old.  

Mom never agreed with him.  However, as plenty of us do, Dad spends hours combing the internet, hoping for a cure for Alzheimer’s before Mom dies.

I explained to him how all the current studies hoped to stop Alzheimer’s in its track; the 70 year old who begins to show early signs can take the resulting drug and hope to get no worse.  No wide spread, serious research exists about restoring people as deteriorated as Mom is to their former selves.  Anything Dad gave my 82-year-old mother would only extend her life as the three-year-old she is now.  Even so, if medical science found a drug today that would stop the “progress” of ALZ in my mother, he would feed it to her religiously.  In fact, as her Power of Attorney, he says he will ignore her DNR contracts, and if he has to, he will go to court to reverse them.

This is just his grief talking.  But he trusts any fresh breakthroughs in ALZ meds will hold Mom in place until medicine does find a way to bring her back. 

As educated and as smart as my father is, he obviously does not understand what is happening to her brain.  He thinks that everything she has ever known is still stored somewhere in her mind.  However, Alzheimer’s is not just that plaques coat the synapses between neurons, damming communication.   It is that as those avenues are blocked, those neurons die.  Her brain is literally disappearing.  Any future meds that could rebuild her brain will not replace what knowledge is gone; imagine the physical therapy she’d have to go through to relearn all she has lost…at what age?

I am of the mind, however, that if I had my way, I’d take her off her heart medicine now.  Actually, if I had my way, I’d stop with any sort of her medicines other than pain killers.  I have begged my own children and husband to park me in the ocean long before I get as bad as Mom if I am unlucky enough to inherit this disease.  Expecting Mom to survive as she is now for any longer than she has to is cruel.  There is no way that I’d give her any medicine that would put her in a hellish holding pattern.

I had to take Dad to the dentist for oral surgery last week.  He needed someone to be there throughout the two-hour procedure.  But Mom had to come, too, for no one was available to “Momsit.”  The way her brain works now, she could not recall where we were for longer than a minute, and when I would tell her, she could not grasp why Dad needed to see a doctor, and fretted that he was hurt, and attempted to go in the back to find him.  And then she would embark repeatedly on the fantasy that she used to work in this office, sitting “there with those people,” (the receptionists behind the glass), and describing how these hassocks (pointing to what was really a coffee table) look pretty good now, because back when she worked here, they were covered in a really ugly fabric… but she didn’t understand why they made her stop working there, which would then agitate her. I repeatedly had to stop her as she jumped up to confront these unsuspecting women.

You have to wonder what Alzheimer’s victims experience in their mind’s eye, what awful nightmare is running through their brains.  Sometimes she thinks my house used to be hers and we took it from her.  Other times, she thinks she and I were in a bidding war and I won out and she was forced to buy something elsewhere.  Sometimes that makes her happy, because she is so glad that I got to live in such a cozy home. But other times, “losing it” hurts her feelings.  She loves my home, and forgets that her own is so much nicer…More likely, it is the emotion of being around my dogs and my children than prompts her feelings…

I can make a believable guess as to why she thinks she was forced to move out of her “own home”: being the wife of a military officer she had to leave many wonderful places behind before he retired.  Other times, I am at a loss.  Why would she think she was fired from an oral surgeon’s office, when she never held a job like that? She was a bank officer and a real estate broker before she retired 16 years ago, (which might explain the bidding war fantasy.) Plus, frankly, she was never fired from any job.

The worst “fantasy” recently was when she became very angry in a restaurant because, “That woman over there keeps looking at me.”  The woman in question was her own reflection in the wall mirror.  Every time she looked up, she saw herself, seeing herself.  She began twisting and turning to hide, surreptitiously checking back over her shoulder, and sure enough, there she was again, staring back at Mom.  At first, we thought she was kidding, because Mom smiled and told us how pretty that woman’s smile was.  Wink Wink.  But then she began to lose her temper. 

Like with babies, distracting is easier than arguing and explaining sometimes.  My sweet son, pushed his chair between my mother and the mirror and said, “Don’t worry, Gramma.  I won’t let that woman look at you anymore.” And then he ducked when she weaved.

How much harder will this become as the world makes less and less sense to Mom, and her brain creates horrors for her? You know how when you wake up and want to explain an inexplicable dream, you often add details to make it sensible—I think that is my mother’s whole mental landscape now. 

Why would anyone hope to make her live with that for any longer than she had to…? 

I try to prepare my father, who is obviously in denial, to realize he will need more and more help.  Right now, he takes her everywhere with him, almost like a pet.  But like the near melt down in the restaurant, she is not always compliant.  Typically, sweet-natured and willing, she understands explanations less and less.  For instance, in a grocery store line, I suddenly remembered something I wanted.  I could not send her to get it, nor leave her behind any more than I could leave an infant as I ran to collect the item.  In fact, a baby or toddler would have been easier, for I cannot scoop my mother into my arms as I rush back and forth.  Nor could I satisfactorily explain to her what I was doing or why we needed to hurry.

Like a child, she wants to know why…why…why.  But unlike a child, she cannot be answered or taught or cajoled easily.  Nor can you say, “That’s the fiftieth time you have asked that…” with any effect.  When he was a young boy, my oldest son liked telling the same joke again and again.  He learned that once is a great laugh, twice is a smile, and three times is booooooring.  Mom can’t grasp that…so basically,  I did not get the item I suddenly remembered in the store.  It was too difficult…

So…to those people who think, “Well, at least you still have her…”  you obviously have no idea.  I suspect these people imagine Alzheimer’s is simply not being able to remember.  Everyone has gone into a room and forgotten why they went in there in the first place: Oh, Yeah…my keys!  They think this is what the experience is like, multiplied in scope—a natural part of aging.  But we do not realize how much of functioning on a livable basis is rooted in our memory banks.  You cannot follow a TV show if you cannot remember what just happened.  You cannot carry on a conversation if you can’t recall what the first half of someone’s sentence was.  You cannot enjoy a park, if you suddenly don’t know where you are, why you are there or who brought you. Even planning the future requires a memory.  Your days might feel like you are constantly waking up from some coma…but every single second.

Yes, Mom and her family still have moments of love and connection…Yes, my father fears losing her body and soul…but at what cost?   Mom suffers the pain of confusion and nightmarish thinking, the isolation and indignity of being unable to do anything for herself, the weirdness of being in an unrecognized place surrounded by strangers (Who is that man watching her in whose-shower-is this?  Her husband, her home).  And the rest of us—helpless witnesses to her pain and confusion—suffer the loss of a loved one, while at the same time taking on more than any burdens that come with babies…

Yet there are no joys of a newborn in the house…when I start telling people that Mom “can still sit up,” it will be near the very end.

Please: Never cringe when someone tells you about their loved one with Alzheimer’s. Never say, “Yeah, but…”  Instead, ask them if they need a break…ask them if you can make dinner…ask them to tell you favorite stories about her…or even be willing to listen to how awful it can be…

Ironically like suicide scars, the symbol of hope…

My Beef with Non-Binary-ism

I’ve never cared about how anyone identifies themselves…(well, except White Supremacists, Nazis, Neo-Nazis, Al-Quida, Inquisitors and the like, etc.  Their identifications scare the crap out of me.) Rewind: let me say, I’ve had problems with people’s hate-preferences, but never with anyone’s love-preferences. 

When I taught at a local university, one of my students wanted to write his major research project on legalizing the rights of homosexual men and women to adopt children; he knew he was required to present the paper to the class and was afraid of the consequences—“People might guess I’m gay. Then they’ll tell others…?” He had not begun to feel comfortable in his skin.  Lee was an older student, returning to college after a decade in the work force; he desperately wanted children in a time before the laws were enlightened, and begged me to be able to write his deeply personal essay, but not deliver it.

I told him, “Right now, hiding who you are cannot feel good.  You do not put this on and off like a suit.  You are YOU.  You are strong enough to deal with people’s negativity—You cannot imagine how free you will feel when you meet the universe as yourself…”

His classmates welcomed his speech, a fresh topic back then among all those clichéd abortion, gun control, and capital punishment papers that Comp II students still seem driven to write. The worst reaction was no more than a Yawn. 

I received thank-you notes for years from Lee for encouraging him to live his truth before the phrase “living your truth” was even in our lexicon, notes I’m proud of and save in my memory box. To give perspective, this took place years ago, in the decade right after AIDS had appeared and rattled bigots’ cages in the Bible belt.  Lee’s speech was his first step towards his own advocacy. And he went on to detail a much happier life in his letters to me, eventually becoming a father. 

Embracing who you really are is core to your happiness.

So don’t misunderstand when I say I have a beef with non-binarism.  Not the identity, nor the action  (I’m not one of those love-the-sinner-but-hate-the-sin sorts), nor even the politics bug me.  It’s the freaking PRONOUN I have an issue with…

My God…this “they, their, them” shit is an English teacher’s nightmare.  Getting writers to make their subjects and verbs agree in Georgia is hard enough.  The verb IS rules here.  “They’s just foolin’” or “Them’s the ones you want…”  And that’s when Southerners actually use helping verbs…Many folks don’t even bother with conjugating to be at all: “What Y’all doing?” or “Where you going?”  And the concept that NONE and EVERYTHING and ANYONE is a singular subject is just impossible. Nobody ever learns that rule, not even most English teachers, for learning language is by exposure to speakers, not textbooks.  And now you want me to try and explain how a single person should now get a plural pronoun if you know this person identifies as non-binary?  UGGH!  

Oh, sure on a philosophical level, maybe even a symbolic one, I can totally see how “they” can represent what a non-binary person is trying to express: the multi-faceted, non-singular perspective of their love or their gender fluidity.

HOWEVER,  Can we please come up with a word that doesn’t already have a very specific function in our grammar world?  I cannot tell you how often I’ve been reading a published essay or article lately and had to stop. “Wait, who shot the perp?”  “Huh?  Just a second…who got awarded the medal?”  I go back, feeling illiterate, like I had a brain fart and missed something.  All because the word “they” is used grammatically incorrectly.  Seriously.  And we expect people who won’t even recognize homosexuality as “normal”—let alone non-binarism—to have a clue what they are reading?  In a Zoom meeting, one of our group members had posted her name like Zoomers do—Maggie—but tagged on “she/her”.  The confusion among the others when she tried to explain why was laughable.  Of course, Maggie’s use might be an attempt to mock non-binarism or to support its importance, who knows for sure.  But either way, the others were not moved to grasp the issue, let alone change their pronouns.  It was like trying to teach them why split infinitives and dangling prepositions are wrong, times a zillion. 

The question might be for some: why can’t society create an all new pronoun?  The answer is often that a new word separates those people who identify as non-binary into a separate, lessor class, sort of like those idiots who insist on calling my pets “It” instead of recognizing them as the fabulous beings they are…However, I’d argue that applying “they, them, theirs” for single, non-binary people separates this group even more pointedly by the intended confusion this causes. Others might suggest that this confusion forces readers/listeners to perk up and ask, “Whuuuuh?” thereby introducing the non-binary platform.  Frankly, so would a new pronoun, but without butchering the grammar of sentences, and thereby disorienting readers and listeners. 

The answer lies in what we who care are trying to achieve with a pronoun shift.  Is it to identify as non-binary by classing oneself into a separate group, or is it to erase pigeonholes of gender? 

If the first, embrace a new pronoun representing only non-binary folks that does not confuse readers and listeners.  I doubt that anyone is ever going to get used to stopping in the middle of a paragraph to go back and figure out who “they” is referring to.  Look at this sentence from HuffPost about Demi Lovato: “I watched with interest as talk show host after talk show host documented their heroin-induced strokes and heart attack, along with their struggles with depression, substance use, self-harm, bullying and bulimia.”  Whose strokes and heart attack? Whose assorted serious illnesses?

A plural version of a new non-binary pronoun could make clear that the writer refers to Lovato’s health crises; a multitude of talk show hosts are not nearly dropping dead…

But if the change is to erase gender-identity pitfalls, coming up with a new gender-neutral pronoun for all human beings might be easier than repurposing one that is already entrenched to mean plural “people, places or things.”  True, we do occasionally use “they” singularly with indefinite antecedents, but we do so in a clear manner.  “Everyone should love their mother,” for instance, or “The caller asked you to call them back.”  However, though both those illustrations are not confusing, a grammar teacher would still strike you down for “antecedent/pronoun agreement errors.”

Either way, I do not look forward to trying to teach any of these new pronouns should they become widely accepted by the MLA, but a one-size-fits-all new singular word and its plural version would probably be easier to teach than the current non-binary use of “they, them and their.” Using “They, them, and their” would continually require self-conscious use, providing critics negative fodder in its unnaturalness. I’m just thankful I teach English and I’m not given the task of reshaping all the other languages in the world with their gender designated NOUNS, ARTICLES and ADJECTIVES and VERBS. 

Die Katze, die auf dem Tisch saß, miaute das Mädchen an.  Even a male cat Katze gets a female article „die“, the road Tisch is neutral, the verb meow Miaute is female because the word for the male cat is feminine, the girl Madchen, because she is a child, is neutered with „das“.

Oh, My WORD!

Mind the Gap: Millennial Horror Story

I’ve finally arrived at the point where the younger generation seems ludicrous to me; youngsters left and right are sporting disorders like fast fashion casual wear: sensory overload disorder, social anxiety disorder, aggressive-denial disorder,  even PTSD because of a being called a name in the third grade by the class bully, and expecting the world to bow to their sensitivities.  (And I’m not even going to mention all the popular allergies. . . as I give them a dismissive little shake of my old lady head.)

On one hand, I’m intrigued by how far the brain sciences have come in understanding why some of us are the way we are.  Did you know there is a gene for shyness?  However, by using genes to dismiss. . ahem, I mean explain our actions and thoughts, are we also suggesting that  “well-adjusted” is a dirty word?  That to expect a person to mature and “adapt” to society in particular ways is a prejudice of some sort?  Adjustment is an action, not an offensive label.

True Stories: Today’s young adults have meltdowns in Disney World bathroom stalls because Cinderella’s castle is overwhelming.  Or grad students walk out of their law school classrooms because the professor’s use of the word “violate” in a lecture (as in violate the law) triggers a deep-unreachable memory.  Of what, they cannot say, but it must be bad, and fleeing is their only option.

Bill Maher and Charles Blow’s argument a few weeks ago over the phrase “Social Justice Warrior” illustrates the hallmark of this millennial cohort.  The New York Times writer did not like how Bill Maher and Brett Easton Ellis were making fun of the folks huddling under that SJW title. And Blow was right.  There are people who devote their whole lives to fighting the real battle for social justice and do not deserve ridicule. But Maher was also right;  there are youngsters—whom Maher snidely labels social justice warriors—who are emotionally and morally assaulting anyone who has an opinion that is not absolutely undeniably pro ANYthing of color or gender neutrality or anti-cultural appropriation.  Don’t like a rap song?  Racist!  Dislike a woman’s outfit?  Sexist fucking pig! Eat at Taco Bell?  Thief!

I agree with Blow: those false “advocates” should not be called SJWs.  They give true justice fighters a bad name and of course, feed into my horror of the younger generation.  Maher should call them Social Justice Whorers, not just frangible snowflakes.  They barter in the currency of justice, fancying themselves heroes while setting rigid, illogical boundaries and expectations based on their bottomless sensitivities.

Overall, the media seems rampant with young people who see themselves and others as easily broken.  And of course, with that comes their expectation that no one should require anything from them because they are so tender: Please, Treat me with kid gloves at all times. They expect they shouldn’t have to work unless the job is fulfilling, nor study and prepare for a career that will actually support them, nor face something loud, angry, difficult.  Anyone challenging their path or their belief systems is a monster.

They could only have developed this way during this particular time and place, when obstacles like simply surviving the winter and fitting into a life-sustaining community are no longer necessary issues.  Though I would not suggest that modernity is perfect, today’s young adults enjoy a free and secure life style that all previous Americans did not. . .without realizing so.

In fact, they seem to have twisted the defining features of previous generations into a modern, yet sick form of uber-self-involved, “justice” seekers.

I once gave a gift of a squirt-camera to my young niece for her birthday.  She actually wanted a squirt gun, giggling gleefully when such stray toys appeared at the pool; being sensitive to anti-weapon idealogy,  I thought I was pretty genius for finding the camera.  But still, I was openly “shamed” by a complete stranger for my “pro-bullying” choice.  Her words and facial expressions suggested my niece had unwrapped a Bazooka. Asking her, “Wouldn’t it be more fun to let my niece use it, help her develop a sense of humor and boundaries, and teach her to never use the toy in hostility than to ban it?” simply elicited a nasty, lippy raspberry, a roll of the eyes and tut-tut of her chin.  So, No. . .social justice whorers have no sense.

Uggh.  I think, “Who are these idiot kids?  Where are their brains?”

My parents’ generation—“hippies” of the 60s—were truly difficult for their parents to relate to, with their weird rebellion and funky fashion sense. Thus, the word generation gap was born.  But I don’t think the rift I am suffering with youngsters today is simply a gap in generational ideology.

The true justice warriors of the 60s were actively fighting prevailing, but illegalized Jim Crow codes; a draft that was sending people to their deaths based on a birthday lottery; draconian traditions that kept women in “their place” during a time that, in some states, required a woman be married to receive birth control and only then once her husband allowed it;  They protested schools that refused to let anyone of color attend, blocked water fountains that quenched the thirst of only whites, and manned fair voting registration centers at the risks of their lives.  Sure, they might have seemed fragile to their parents for these warriors were also the first to really glom onto self-help books and deep psyho-analysis, but they also hatched the idea that the world could be changed for the better rather than just accepted.  Afterall, they were the first to return to organic farming and warn of Global Warming.

My generation—The Me generation (AKA as Generation X)—reacted to the Vietnam war, the gas shortage, the high divorce rates of the hippy generation, by retreating into ourselves, keeping our weaknesses a secret, pretending the world was to be bought, and doing a lot of cocaine in the meantime. Not me per se. . .We worked not just for the family’s financial advancement, but for the accolades and the luxuries of success, only rising up when the moment truly required it.  Strategically, however, we protested the Berlin wall, the Iran-Contra dealings, while also advocating for victims of the AIDs epidemic.  I was on one of the hundreds of buses, moving thousands of pro-choice people to DC that campaigned against Reagan and then Bush-era infractions to Roe vs. Wade,  the last time the choice laws were in true danger of disappearing; meanwhile, one of my  closest friends was recruited by the CIA and the FBI.  We were diverse, yet accepting. . .and also stronger because of the Hippies.

My children’s generation however, seem to have reacted to forty years of their ancestors’ examples by unleashing themselves to the extreme:  they have adopted the psychological digging of the 60s, trying to explain, if not downright excuse their inability to adapt to life on life’s terms. . .They apply social advocacy to the point where judgment of any kind—social or logical— is no longer allowed. . .And they are harnessing, and then twisting the Me-generation of the 80s into a “What I feel must be the truth” sort of Me-ism.

I could list examples upon example of why this is illogical. But instead,  here’s a huge generalization:  They lack adaptable skills and real world thinking.

This generation of kids is struggling in Med school surgical classes because they have not grown up using their hands (like in high school wood shop, or sewing, or model building, or gardening class. . .See, they prefer computer classes and games, not skilled labor pastimes or work).  Parsing out illustrative humor from actual verbal assault is a lost concept among this group (ask Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld why they won’t perform on college campuses). Taking pictures of food is more important to them than cooking or growing it; in fact, a survey showed that a majority of those young persons questioned have ordered a meal they would not eat just because it would look good on Instagram. They seem to think it is okay to violently scream in Chelsea Clinton’s face because they believe her “rhetoric caused” 49 deaths in a Mosque. How exactly Clinton’s very basic, and unrelated condemnation of anti-Semitism could be misconstrued as “hate speech” against Muslims that could lead to a single person firing an assault weapon in a Mosque simply defies logic. Scarily so.

And it doesn’t end there. . .They learn to drive at much later ages and seem to do so not because carpooling makes sense, but because, “It’s scary, Ma!”  These kids expect their teachers, even college professors, to take all work late, and give top marks to subpar work.  Plus, they skip school at higher rates not to go have some goofy, youthful fun, but because they feel anxious and need to hide at home in their Jammie bottoms.  And don’t give me stats about school shootings.  Even with those traumatizing events—which by the way what do you think the Boomtown Rat’s I Don’t Like Mondays of my parents’ generation is about—kids still suffer far less violence in their schools than they do in their own homes and neighborhoods, yet today’s youngsters beg to stay home. . . anything to be more of a fear-based victim.

They find victimhood to champion everywhere they look, no matter what they are seeing.

Being called  a girl or a boy from birth seems a violation of their human rights. They explode over anyone who thinks Black Panther  isn’t an Oscar worthy film. (I liked it, I don’t know. . .and truthfully, Denzel Washington should have won years ago over Daniel Day Lewis. . .that loss felt racist. . .but the value of a movie is subjective and in the Oscar battle of Washington versus Lewis, the choice was probably more about the politics of how DDL only appears in “art” films vs. Washington skating from drama to block buster. Hollywood has always been snobbish about blockbusters and the folks who act in them. Nominating Black Panther was their attempt to pretend they aren’t.)  Either way, you better think Black Panther was the best movie ever. . .you old, racist fart, you!

I feel as if members of this younger generation have the heart behind the Hippie movement, but not their causes, and lack the brains of the X-ers.    Like they are the hammer and everything is a nail in a time when there are far fewer nails than ever. 

This generation does not know what they do not know, yet they are not interested in learning what that might be before they go on the attack or a bender. If only they could find a proper injustice to hammer away on, like hunger or privacy rights or one percent greed.  Meanwhile, they are ruled by their emotions, and this difference is a rift, cut by the cleaver of time.  To me, they are several steps closer to living the lives of H.G. Wells’s Eloi, soft, fragile, weak, but without the elegance.

Sometimes I worry that life and parenting has changed so much in the last 20 years, with intrusive technology, organized activities, processed foods, transience, etc., that maybe these young adults aren’t just immature and nutty, but actually, fundamentally brain-mutated.  In the same way their fingers do not perform well for med school’s practice surgeries as compared to their fathers’ and mothers’ hands, maybe their brains don’t measure up.

Either way,  as much as I love my children and their friends, and though I know they along with countless other Millennials do not deserve my rant, I am too old to “get” the ones who do.  And definitely too old to help them, and I never thought I would feel this way.  Is this rejection and horror simply a Generation Gap or something more sinister?

 

 

 

Mean Girl vs. Know-It-All Politics

I just dumped the last of five other women out of my car after a week together at St. George’s Island;  she would have been the first out, rather than last, had I a choice.  The first, would also have been the first.  In other words, two of the women were a royal pain in the ass.  And their pain-in-the-assedness digs up a question:   whether, when and how one lets the pains-in-the-ass know their offensiveness.

First,  I had a truly happy time with most of these friends; and even the annoying had their strengths.  My stomach muscles pain me still from laughing so much about nothing at all.  We lounged about watching huge families of dolphins, swam in the blue gulf, biked through the scrub oaks and Chinese palms and generally talked so nonstop that my voice is gone. I learned more than I knew before we left our driveway and came to respect each woman for this new-found knowledge.

But I hesitated hard before I—the last to do so—signed on for this girls’ trip.  One woman, Sal—the last out of my car—irks everyone with a self-absorbed personality type.  Another, Maddy—the first out of the car—finds life generally, and this woman specifically, so irritating that she can ruin any moment with her mean-girl tactics.  And then there’s me:  just as annoyed by the know-it-all, butt-insky, but I am also a champion of anyone bullied, even those for whom I secretly am squashing my own drive to bully.

So on one hand I wanted to ninja-kick the arrogant, pretentious Sal.  I barely stifled my roll-my-eyes-till-they-burned reaction just as the other women did when Sal spoke. But when Maddy trotted out her hostile reactions—critically mimicking Sal or complaining just loudly enough to be overheard by Sal about how much Sal was killing her—I’d step up and say, “Stop!”  or “I can’t do this.  That’s enough.”   Thus, allowing myself to be pissed, suffering between these women’s issues, and making myself a target for Maddy.

At first,  I tried my best to smile and suffer through.  Sidebar, we are in the 12-step program for those who love a person with a drinking problem, so tempering Sal was not my place.  We have strict MYOB policies, and unwavering Let Go and Let God sayings.   Sal also had a sponsor present, so the role to tell Sal to chill and tone down her personality really was not mine.  However, said sponsor was doing nothing publicly to help Sal.  Sal is a woman who shoots her own social foot off all the time apparently, and her sponsor is a gentle, let-me-build-up-people’s-self-esteem-with-love sort of woman.  So instead of saying, See here, see how these people walk away from you because you. . .Sponsor Lee gives her a hug.

(Come to think of it, Lee hugged me plenty too, this week.  Hmmmm.)

Yes, at first, I tried to live and let live.  But as events unfurled in a particular order, the sliver in the heel became infected, so to say.

Sal herself had told me three weeks before, with a chipper, sarcastic tone,  “Thanks, K, for once again correcting me.  You’re always correcting me.”

What she meant was I don’t agree with her all the time. That issue? She had been detailing a blind date she had gone on, explaining how all her decisions were based on a book about dating.  She refused to do this or say that because Steve Harvey told her, “Wait to see what the Guy will say when you remain quiet,” or some such nonsense.   Thus, Sal was complaining that when she left blank spaces, the man did not jump up and fill them.

I piped in and said, “Maybe he has a book.  Maybe his book was telling him to keep his mouth shut. . .”

That’s my foible. . .soothe the stress with humor. Hey, not only did this inspire a giggle or two, it might very well have been true.  But Sal didn’t like my response.  Not only had I disagreed with her decision to test this guy, I drew some of her audience away:  I was not letting her talk nonstop while we sat at her feet to learn.

Then later that same luncheon,  when she mentioned how her second husband had taught her to be a “sex object,”  her very words,  a few others made guttural objections, but only I spoke out and said, “Do you mean a sexual being?  Or do you mean sex object?”  She retorted with her sarcastic, “Thanks, K!”

Well, pardon me for correcting you!!

And meanwhile, at that same lunch table Maddy loudly, harshly bolted because she was already sick of listening to the ongoing, dating chronicles of Sal.  I often wonder why Sal does not seem to notice Maddy’s hostility and the rest of us do?  Is she deflecting?  Is she oblivious?  Though not happening to me, the abuse makes me feel awful.

Thus, from the very beginning of its unpropitious origins, I hesitated about going on this trip.   Still, I went.  The company of several of the women was worth the fallout, see?

We had been loosely talking about a girls’ weekend, a vacay. Sal had stepped up and started shaping the ideas into a trip to the beach (one of the women has a beach house.)   She began envisioning a meal plan, with a week-long agenda of retreat-sorts of talks and activities set at specific times.

“Who can give a cooking lesson. . .?   Who wants to do the art lesson?”  And Sal excitedly began pointing out takers before they raised their hands.  After all,  as she cheerfully informs us, Sal has run retreats in her day.

The venerable homeowner, Heather tamped that control impulse right down, saying, “No,  when people come to my beach house, it’s very chill, very loosey-goosey.”  (Thank-Goodness, homeowner.)  Thus, the result was supposed to be a relaxed, girls’ weekend with no intentions other than spending time with each other and the Island’s offerings.

When Sal arrived at my house before our sunrise exodus, she gushed about how much she loves women, swearing how spending time with women is so essential, then reporting how she has such good women friends in her other life, with a play-by-play of how much she loves them.  I easily sensed her discomfort and anxiety, for convincing me that she is stoked to spend time with a group of women seemed ultra-important to her.  I smiled and listened, guessing she was actually terrified.

Quickly, she isolated herself in the very back seat of my Fur Van, wearing headsets, or playing with her phone, while the rest of us talked and laughed. She did pipe in at different points to elucidate us or trump us on various topics.   She also pointedly corrected me a few times, but that was fine.  I don’t mind being wrong.  I do mind being accused of someone else’s BS, by said BS-er.

Maddy was already grumbling loudly by now, irritated by Sal’s quirks, so  I poked her a few times to quiet her. “Let’s just try and get along,”  I mumbled.  The rest of the drive was fine, actually fun, as we got to know each other more deeply and shared funny childhood yarns to pass the bland highway distance.

What I already knew about Sal from weekly lunches only became clearer as we unwound once at the beach house.  She demands the floor, and believes “teaching” us is conversation. And Sal definitely suffers from “You spot it, you got it-ISM”  when it came to her oath that I correct her all the time.  Maybe I do,  I do not know;  but I am not alone in this behavior.

If anyone else introduced a topic, Sal was already an expert and would cut in, expound and rarely let the original speakers continue.  If anyone did this to her, she would visibly react, twitch and flex.  For instance, she introduced the animal game.  Sort of a 20 Questions about an animal of your choice.  She told us who would start, in what direction we proceed, curtailed anyone from asking incorrectly or from answering too clearly or too indistinctly. . .Must be Yes or No, people!  Only one Question, Please!

Someone asked me if my animal had 4 legs.  Well, my lobster had 8. Do I say yes or no?  I said, “Both.”  This threw Sal for a loop, and she kept telling me I had to choose one.  I said, “Sorry. . .My answer is both.  Yes and No.”

Her lips pursed, she seemed to take my rogue response personally, a violation of the rules, and argued for moment that I must choose, and then during her turn to quiz me, she kept asking a series of questions instead of her one and only one.  Hypocrite.  I playfully slapped the bottom of her foot and said,  “One question, please.”  Of course, there’s my sin of correcting her.  I thought she just might pop as she tried her hardest to avoid expose her upset in front of everyone.  I think the game spun out with only two more questions, and we were on to some other interest of hers.

Later, on the beach, Sal mocked and corrected Lee for pointing out the Ghost Crab holes:  “HAHAHAHA.  Those are umbrella holes,” she laughed.

Unthinking, I said, “Lee, you are right,” and pointed out the scuffs the animals make tossing out old sand; when I told her how they might even be hermit crab holes, Sal miffed, hurried ahead.

I learned:  Do not give her severe Confirmation Bias that I always correct her any more food.  Later,  I secretly showed Lee a few pictures of proof that she was right about the crab holes, so poor Sal’s hair would stay on.  “Shhhh.”  I said.  “Don’t tell Sal I showed you this.”  Did I do so to prove Sal wrong? Perhaps. But I wanted to validate Lee.  Plus, I also didn’t like how Sal had ridiculed Lee for her assumption.

When Sal went on and on about being an ENTPFJZZZZZ or whatever Myer’s Briggs parameters she is buying at the moment, telling us how we should get assessed,  Lee was intrigued and wanted to know how to get ahold of those surveys.  I said, again privately, to the interested party, “That stuff was sort of a scam, never scientifically developed, and has been disproved again and again.  Don’t waste your money.”  Lee nswered, “Tell Sal, why don’t you.  She should know. . .”  Uh, no.   I said so privately, so Sal wouldn’t once again be corrected by me. . .though I recognize that maybe I am guilty as charged and there would be no harm in Lee figuring out her alphabet label.  Meanwhile, though I am trying to respect her needs by now hiding my corrections, Sal was butting in here, correcting and condescending there, espousing over and beyond.

At one point, we were all participating in a healthy conversation about, uh. . .Blank.   Sal who had not really been interested, suddenly left the room, returned with her Bible, interrupted and said, “I have a question for you all.”  (We had not been discussing religion at all.)

Sal began reading a passage about Cain and Abel, and then asked her totally irrelevant question.

Heather the Homeowner answered, then Lee starts and was interrupted.  Sal began intensely arguing and answering her own question, rereading passages, citing her deep knowledge since, as she reminds us all the time, she went to seminary school, effectively cutting off anyone else’s opinions.  Lee who is a lifelong Spiritual woman, a former Carmelite, who can quote whatever Biblical passage you desire, was shut down, unable to share.

I could see it all over Lee’s face how much Sal’s actions dismissed her.  I had no opinion about just why God rejected Cain’s offering,  and know Sal doesn’t value my opinion anyway, so I left the table, though I did wonder if this topic about competition is at the very frays of her brain for a subconscious reason.

What were we talking about before that?  I cannot recall.  Clearly whatever it was bored Sal. Or it must have been something someone else was an expert at. . .Either way, at some point almost everyone had left Sal alone at the table gripping her Bible, immersed in her knowledge and interpretations.  We start joking that she is the “Ask, then Answer” Queen. We are going to print T-shirts with  A&A and wear them around her, but we worry that’s too close to AA; plus, we aren’t bullies, just annoyed companions.  She wouldn’t notice or ask, anyway.

What worsens the experience is the tone Sal uses.  She is like Sheldon Cooper in the way her social niceties have been donned as some sort of  unnatural, the-right-way-to-behave outfit that she is forced to wear occasionally.  She will nod her head emphatically, lay her finger next to her nostrils or on the tip of her nose, in a deep thinking pose as she leans towards you when she does actually let you speak.

Because she has learned somewhere that this draws people, she will repeatedly use your name when she asks questions, a superficial verification that she is listening. Awkwardly, her use is like a sitcom therapist: “So I hear, K,  that you must not like that man, K.  Is that what you are saying, K.? You don’t like him, K?”  And on the edge of those sorts of questions, there feels like a glimmer of glee that she perhaps caught you unaware of yourself. (Though, let me tell you, I know when I dislike someone. Uh, Sal.)

She loves to define you.  I mean afterall, she spends the majority of her time defining herself to you. “I’m the sort of person, I’m an EMJT,  I’m. . .I’m. . . I’m.”  Thus, maybe it is natural for her to stick a label in your face, as well.  Dismissively, she says things like,  “OH, you’re one of those people who place value on humor. . .need to laugh.”  or “You’re a Natural Introvert” or “Your right-brained based. . .” Said like she is enlightening you about yourself, while also using the tone of some alien being who has just learned something about the human race.  Ah, this human likes humor.

When she asks a personal question, she can convince herself at least she asked it, but more so, she can then talk about herself.  And she never recalls anything you have ever said.  I have told her the story of my son’s travails with ADHD and Dysgraphia more than once.  More than twice.  More than thrice.  But when I go to answer her questions a fourth time, I’m sure that she immediately thinks of herself, her son, her deep, deep knowledge of the brain, as she begins inserting ideas about her adult child into my response.

Sitting in a local bar one night, Heather who had been cornered alone with Sal too often all week tried to begin an inclusive conversation about books over dinner; she asked me directly what titles we all liked most, and I answered briefly with two titles, before Sal butted in with wild enthusiasm, and spent. . .we clocked it. . .15 minutes writing down and detailing all this stuff for Heather like Heather was hoping to make a list instead of generate a discussion. Meanwhile the rest of us twiddled our thumbs, and joked about our Favorite! Books! Ever! Before venturing onto our own topic, abandoning poor Heather cornered at the end of the table.

On another occasion, when Heather was discussing how the wealthy residents around her were the philanthropic back bone of the island community, I began to tell her about these surveys in a book about understanding poverty, one of which was titled,  “Could You Survive in Wealth,”  that supported her ideas.  Sal appeared, interrupted me and talked right over me, fixing my wording, and illuminating my point for me though she had never read what I was talking about, and had no clue what I meant. I never got the info out of my mouth, actually.  Poor Heather was left alone again because, given no room for another word, the rest of us wandered away into another room.

I suppose it is Heather’s business to extrapolate herself, but we did make the effort before we abandoned her.

I began to suspect that Sal was/is grooming Heather to be her new best friend.  After all, aside from charming qualities of being Heather, she has a beach house where Sal can hopefully bring those close friends she told me all about Day 1; perhaps, they are pliable women who will let her run her retreat, complete with an agenda of her own design.  Plus, Heather has established writer friends who might help publish Sal’s master-work memoir. (No joke.)  Did I not tell you how self-involved Sal is?

Or maybe I’m being unfair to Heather.  Maybe the rest of us are so dull, and Heather so fascinating that Sal needed to glom onto Heather at every opportunity leaving little room for the rest of us to talk to her, or her to us. (Frankly, Sal did this to anyone any of us were talking to.)

Plus, I believe Heather never figured out that, though I did unthinkingly wake her up the first morning with my raucous laughter, soonafter, Val was the loud-mouth who wouldn’t adhere to our repeated, Shhhhh, Heather is sleeping.  And when Heather griped about “K’s” inconsiderate behavior to Val, within my hearing,  Val did not admit she was the actual culprit.   Was her silence clueless or dishonest?  Either way, I was as silent as a mouse, thereafter.

So, Reader, you can sort of understand why the Bully in our group was hungry to devour Sal.  And no matter how harsh my wordy depiction here might seem, I am not the bully.  In general, the consensus is that—though not without her charms and qualities—Sal is pretentious, self-absorbed, and self-serving (Though the same age, she repeatedly expected and let Lee wait motherly-like as if Sal were her teenage daughter).  Is there a Myers Briggs alphabet for PSS?

You can understand how each time Sal exhibited these offensive traits,  Maddy would add onto her list of grievances, becoming full-to-bursting with exasperation.

At one point,  Maddy and I were unloading groceries.  Sal came wandering up to the car, not to help, but to find something she was looking for. As we—the two women disabled with massively long, spinal fusions and accompanying titanium hardware, by the way— were placing some groceries just inside the house, Sal simply locked the van up and walked away.   We were still in the middle of unloading.

This set Maddy off.  From then on, whenever she thought she could do it, Maddy snarked sarcastic, pointed comments purposefully loud enough for Sal to hear.  Yell up the stairs in case maybe her voice wasn’t carrying well enough, little, nasty tidbits of ire.

But here’s the question I am finally getting to:  No matter how many of Sal’s prickly traits piled up, the rest of us were trying to stick to our principles.  Let things go that did not matter.  Be kind where it did.  Mind our side of the road.  This meant keeping quiet, or correcting in private or walking away when Sal began demanding all the focus from our hostess particularly and from us by happenstance, instead of saying, OMG, again!  Again?  Again, you have to do all the talking, Miss A&A?  It meant pinching Maddy and saying,  SHHHH.  Or, Let’s just accept this is how Sal is. . .

After all, we have accepted Maddy with her intrusive need to help and her hairpin-trigger of taking offense.

But maybe our principles should have meant, minding our business and letting Maddy be the bad guy unchecked, and allowing Sal handle Maddy’s outbursts herself?  Probably so.

The second day we were there, after I noticed Sal isolating during the car trip, and then mostly in her room. . .Even when we went to the beach, she showed up slathered in her sunscreen and swam away. . .I tried reaching out to her.  Being the outcast hurts, even if your behavior is why you are cast out.  Four of us share an easy, playful humor and can make each other laugh at the twist of an eyebrow, a clearing of the throat.  Sal does not have this gift, and she probably knows it.

I asked her to ride a bike with me, and she was too deep in her journaling.  I went into her room to show her some sunscreen she might like and begin a conversation about her writing.  At dinner, I recalled that originally when she was trying to create an agenda for our trip, she thought she and I would cook together,  I said,  “Hey, do you still want to cook a dinner with me this week?”  She perked up and suggested fish.

Someone else suggested a restaurant instead, and Lee, Sal’s Sponsor thought Sal looked crestfallen.  Our chance to connect thwarted.

When Lee asked me to intervene in that regard, I thought she meant that I was right about how Sal was feeling left out, and was suggesting I take responsibility for  her.

I said, “Lee, the person isolating or pouting can’t sit around waiting for others to come to her. . .she’s got to make the effort. . .I’ve already done–” and I listed my attempts.  I know my husband, with his Sponsees, places the onus of ending isolation on the isolator.   Still, I went to Sal and encouraged her to cook with me anyway when the chance arose. “We don’t have to go out.”

Later, she came to the beach with Lee and me.  Of course, Sal did not sit with us, but went off to swim her brief, solitary laps.  Meanwhile, Lee apologized to me for pushing me to reach out to Sal.  She admitted that she loves her sponsee, but can also see exactly what prompts everyone else into walking away.

I said, “You know, as a teacher, I often see kids who truly want and need friends, but they do things that simply turn people off.  I can always see what they do. . . and it’s so hard not to be able to help them.  Sometimes I can say:  ‘Hey, try deodorant. . .’  or ‘Try to listen more than talk. . .’  But sometimes you just can’t tell them what is offensive to others for the truth is too painful.”

Lee said,  “Right, maybe they can’t change.”  Lee is such a wise, kind person.  Sal probably cannot change.

Sal came out of the water ready to desert us for the house, and I invited her to sit with us and chat. She threw herself into a chair, putting on her  social-stage face, finger-by- nostril, leaned forward, elbow-on-knee, ready to listen.  What I wanted to do was point out that I noticed she was isolating, you know,  give Sal room to unload if she needed, but instead I got an anxious, defensive diatribe about how she only needs a few friends and she’s an EMJTZwhatever, and she does not care what people think, and she only cares about  these few people we do not know, and the rest don’t matter, that she accepts herself as is, her art and her writing take priority over any person here, etc, etc.

I sat quietly as she spun out.

So much for the fancy, wonderful,  I love-women weekend she was touting when we left my driveway. . .was she actually saying she didn’t really care about any of these women? For real?

What I wanted to say was. . .You can see, Sal, how that might be offensive?  And Confusing?

What I actually said was, “Well, I have to wonder.  You wanted to be close to these women and spend time with these women, wasn’t that the point of a girls’ trip?”

But defensively, like she thought I was accusing her of needing friends,  Sal says,  “NO, that’s just your perception.  I was planning a retreat. Not a girls’ trip. There’s a difference. See, I’ve run retreats. . .”

Agggh.  From the moment we mentioned any ideas of traveling together, she was imagining herself as the leader of a retreat and we were her disciples? Was she seriously hoping to shape us with her seminar topics from the very beginning and was only foiled by Heather’s sense of calm? Was Sal actually at one point planning the lessons we could each learn from her?

No, I’m sure she was isolating because she could sense that she was not a relaxed companion, nor a gifted humorist, nor an artist as several of us are,  nor a happy chit-chatter,  and rejecting us before she could possibly be fully rejected was a safer option than quieting down and giving us room to find her enjoyable traits.

Either way, I’m glad I tried, but I walked away thinking, Holy Toledo is she arrogant.  And full of shit.  And in desperate need of friends.  Maybe that handful of women she spoke of in my driveway the day we began our journey do exist.  I hope they do.  I don’t have the energy to deal with this many layers of defenses, nor with this much pretentious self-absorption.

Yet, the next day, I could feel that maybe Sal heard me.  She flopped into my bed that evening and said, with awkward enthusiasm, “What are we gabbing about, Girls?”

My roommate Katie and I would typically hit the hay early and then lie there making each other laugh, sharing family stories or debating politics, so we welcomed her in, scooting over and making room.  However, once the bed began to fill up with others, Sal wandered away when she did not get the jokes.   That’s okay.  Some women are better in one-to-one settings.

Still, Sal tossed on her shoes the next morning and biked along with me (and Maddy, much to Maddy’s chagrin) happily relating to my career because she too is a teacher.  I listened quietly, mostly, as she complained about the several school systems that have blackballed her from hire; meanwhile, I tried to keep Maddy from poking a stick into Sal’s wheels.

But after each of these small efforts to connect, Sal would revert right back to verbally shoving everyone out of the way, while she took her imaginary podium.

Ultimately on the way home,  the final straw came at a Panera.  Maddy wanted  to lunch at a Chinese restaurant that was not open by the time we arrived.  The push and pull in a group of women to choose a restaurant can be a pain.  Uh, I don’t care, what do you want; I don’t care what do you want? 

I kept my mouth shut, so did Lee and Katie.  Only Maddy and Sal went at it, until six ideas later, Longhorn’s won out.  However, as we exited the interstate, Sal saw a Panera and said, “Oh, let’s go there.”

All agreed except Maddy, who was livid, as she pulled into the Panera parking lot.  I said, “I know. We decided and you should have said, ‘we decided already’ and ignored her, and kept driving, but you didn’t,” as I opened my door.

One of Maddy’s childish complaints is “How come everyone is irritated with Sal all the time, but they never say anything to her, but with me, when I’m irritating, you correct me every, single time?”  She means when I pinched her gently for being cruel, or said, “Stop!” when she was voicing mean girl shit under her breath.

But her accurate observation does beg the question:  Why do we openly correct Maddy for being badly behaved, but not Sal?  Why is cutting us off, correcting us, stealing the conversation, etc. a lesser offense than fake-whispering something mean and hostile?

We sat with Sal to my left, Maddy to my right.  Very symbolic.  Somehow we get onto the boring topic of local hospitals.  We seem to agree that Eastside isn’t as good as the other major one in our city. Sal asks pointedly, “How so?”  It is not exactly her words that irk. It’s the imperial, professorial tone she uses. She might as well, have said, “Proof, and debate, children!”

We sort of sat there exhausted with ourselves and her.  I sighed.  I was too tired to  respond. We had already agreed.   What was there to defend?  I took a bite of my sandwich.

Katie sighed as well, and said, “What?  What do you mean ‘how so’?”

Sal asked again, “I hear that you don’t like Eastside, what makes you say that it is worse than Medical Center?”  Again, the prove-it tone.

 

And here it is.  Every conversation for her is a lecture, words are her control mechanism, we are all her learners.  Who cares that I have taught far more years than she, and I’ve taught adult learners, yet I don’t talk like this to people.   Being a teacher doesn’t mean one suddenly is a self-appointed sage.   Who cares that we are all smart, educated women, somehow Sal thinks we simply do not know what she knows.  “Educator” is her identity,  and she relishes it, curries it, no matter how narcissistic, condescending or patronizing she must be to maintain that identity.

For a woman who brags about how well she knows herself, she is astonishingly unaware of how she affects her companions.

There’s a moment of silence where the rest of us eye each other in shared “Can you believe this woman” camaraderie.  Really? Is she really interested in the fine points of which hospital is better? NO!

I feel the briefest moment of pity for the woman, for Sal is filled with cues and codes that are not natural and have no real foundation.  She knew that to be involved in that conversation she had to generate more,  that a good argument has evidence behind the opinion. . . but she had no intuition that we were tired, we were in agreement, we were only barely spitting out boring data, and had no intention, no need of dancing in her debate.  Katie and I say a few things to be polite, only to satisfy Lee, Sal’s motherly sponsor.  Sitting there in silence like Sal didn’t exist would have been too rude.

But Maddy?  No.  She seethed and began muttering hotly under her breath.  Sal went to the bathroom, and Maddy let loose with us, another sharp complaint about how irritating Sal is and we all just accept it.  I said nothing, and she jumped up and shot me a hostile comment.  I said, “Hey, I’m just sitting here.  I didn’t say shit.”

But Maddy was mad that she was the only one with the balls to say, “Oh, fuck off, Sal.”  She hasn’t said that outright, but she’s done her best to make sure these thoughts are known.  While the rest of us sigh and occasionally vent behind our hands.

What Maddy doesn’t understand is that Sal’s self-absorbed, social ineptitude is a personality flaw. An irritating, annoying and offensive at times, personality defect.   Does she deserve a “Fuck Off?”

However, Maddy’s open anger and hatred is a character flaw, right?  This belief that you can be excusably mean to someone who bugs you is a character defect.  Personality defects do not have immorality at their core the way character defects do and in that view are more allowable, right?

While those two are off, the remaining perfect three people (I mean myself and the others) discuss this:  Is it more acceptable to blindly offend others due to self-absorption or actively do so as a twisted form of self-preservation?   In other words,  open ignorance of how self-absorbed you are is a lesser offense than being hurtfully hostile to someone who bugs the shit out of everyone, right?

Yet. . .yet I did have fun with Maddy–and not Sal–most of the time.   Maddy is hilarious, which allows her hostility room, sort of like a big, social point system that has been honed among women since 7^th grade, where “annoying know-it-all, conversation hog” is always, always ranked below “fun, but cruel mean-girl.”  But aren’t we over that, by our age?

After being trapped for eight hours in a car with this dynamic, I no longer cared about which moral argument prevailed, which offense was a lesser violation of morals.   I was ready to boot both their butts out as soon as my car hit home.  I didn’t even want to slow down first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NPR and the Teacher Shortage Crisis

As I was riding along the other day, my favorite topic came on NPR:  teacher shortages and why no one wants to become a teacher anymore.  I hooted.

The announcers tossed out loose statistics that had no edges.  Here’s one I remember from 20 years ago:  3 out of 5 new teachers quit within three years of starting their careers.   Apparently, hiring and retaining has only gotten worse.

But before I get into why this is true, let me say what I always think when I hear about this loss:  What are these freshly hired, and quickly disenchanted workers supposed to do now with that degree?

Back in the day, universities placed education majors in their “field experience” the very last semester of their schooling.  Honestly, if you never experience the real work until you are almost finished with your degree and suddenly discover this is not the fantasy you had, what then?  You are still likely to go into the career, hoping that once the kids are really yours, maybe you will like the career better.  The stats say no.

Teachers are leaving in droves long before retirement.

Many universities have wisely started putting college students into real life settings as soon as possible, trying to give future teachers a taste before it is too late to set them on a more palatable career path.

One young woman comes to mind.  A freshmen from a local college, she hoped to be a Middle School teacher and was assigned to spectate one of my high level and one of my low level senior classes.  She came twice a week without a warm word for the kids, behaving as if it were just me and her against the world. She’d choose a desk with her back to my class and roll her eyes.  When my students were gone, she would openly express how much she hated certain kids, and dreaded coming to my first period.

You guessed it: she couldn’t tolerate my low level Seniors who struggled not only with grammar but with sitting still and being polite.  I loved the hell out of them.  They made me laugh and were always game for something different, and slowly I taught them to enjoy Shakespeare and to become friends with the various structures of the verb “to be.”  But my student teacher cringed over how loud that one laughed. “God. . .you could cut glass with that cackle.”  Or how that one talked back: “Didn’t his Gran-momma teach him nothing?”

I felt no qualms at saying to this 27-year-old university student, “First, as a new teacher, the likelihood that you will get the cushy classes with well-behaved teenagers is nil. Second, if this stuff is setting you off, you might think about choosing a different career.” As a college freshmen, she had all the time in the world to study business or law instead. I have no idea what became of her.  I was just glad that she was at the beginning of her college adventure and had time to change her mind, so that some poor, undeserving class would not end up with her hate anyway.

But that disillusionment between reality and what teacher-wannabes fantasize is only part of the problem of why teachers do not stay.

The NPR report interviewed former (and current) teachers who complained about pay and respect, long the issue.  Yes, trying to buy bread and pay the mortgage is a pretty good reason to leave a profession.

However, I never whined about the pay in the beginning; few government employees are going to make it rich off their salaries.  I counted my fabulous benefits as part of my pay.  As long as the state kept up with inflation in other regards, I was okay.

Lately, however, more often than not, pay increases do not keep up with the cost of living.  In 1995, starting pay in one county in my state was  $26K; it is now $31K.  I was lucky, Twenty years ago, starting pay in my county was 36K.  Today it is 41K.  How does $5000 cover the fact that the median house price in our area is now $250K, more than double, from $119K in 2001?

Lack of respect rather than lack of funds is even harder to accept.

Some people have dreams of showing up naked to work, or forgetting that they have some big meeting.  In my nightmares, my classroom gets out of control, like a big, mouthy, spontaneous party and I’m the voiceless person no one notices. . .And children are not stupid.  They have been led to believe that “Those who can, do. . .Those who can’t, teach. . .”  Why should they automatically respect me just because I am a human being?

The concept that teachers have to earn a child’s respect  is so strongly part of modern day society, that it is one of the greatest obstacles teachers face.   Today’s television depicts children and teenagers as far superior in brain power and social credibility than any adult on the show. . .if there is an adult on the show; and most teachers on children’s television act crazy, cruel, or half dead.   No wonder students can be so insolent.  But the idea that any worker deserves disrespect from the get go. . .Young teachers complain this is why the money isn’t worth the hassle,

But opposition asks, is this really a new problem?  Books and movies from earlier decades  prove there have always been some classrooms that are out of control.  Ever read To Kill a Mocking bird or The Chalkboard Jungle, written long before my time, where students are threatening the lives of their teachers?  This idea  that back-in-the-day children behaved. . . but they are misbehaving now is quaint.  Teachers have always needed a bag of tricks for good classroom management.

However, though history proves disruptive kids have always acted up,  when it comes to today’s discipline rules, there is a difference between generations.

When my parents were students, they could be expelled for chewing gum:  my generation, I was paddled for skipping lunch period to go to McDonald’s and cell phones equaled a panel (expulsion trial), but today children carry guns and cellphones to class.  One child, at my school, was not disciplined for lighting up his vape in class because his parents were able to argue he needed it for his asthma.

So maybe it isn’t the kids, but the administration’s rules that have changed that new teachers can’t deal with?

Differing rules and administrative attitudes along with differing teaching environments can drive teachers away.  Yet, no one wants to discuss or solve this issue openly.

Schools can vary dramatically, where at one, the biggest problem is cheating and at another the heaviest load is violence on a daily basis.  In a rough south ATL school, droves of kids amble into classes 10-20 minutes late, without consequence from bottom to top.  There, a school-wide,  full-blown gang riot  sent a teacher and several students to the hospital after police in riot gear stormed the place; covered up, the event made the nightly news only as a simple fight between two boys. North of the city, my son’s high school will give him a detention for that sort of tardiness and the halls are empty when the first bell rings; plus, in contrast, the news reported a massive cheating scandal across a grade level at a similar school because the principal was cracking down seriously and wanted the public to know.

Where and when and who make a difference in teachers’ careers.  The “tougher” the school district, the harder it is to keep teachers.    Why stay when faculty know the teacher up the road is making the same money for far less stress.  Yet, to solve this crisis with “combat pay” is unconscionable in some minds; as if acknowledging the elephant in the room is racist or classist.  In one school where kids would threaten hall-duty teachers to their face, steal supplies directly off of rolling carts, and then lie when referred for discipline, one PTA teacher-parent shot down the principal’s solution of patrolling the hallways in pairs,  “How dare you suggest I am afraid, that our kids are something to be afraid of. . .” She lived in the community and did not like what the solution said about her neighbor’s children, did not like appearing weak.  Meanwhile, three separate incidents of violence against that school’s teachers in just one year had shot holes in her indignation.

Her blindness, this idea that we deal with all schools and all teachers in one system in exactly the same way is part of the problem.

Even so, most teachers do not desert the classroom out of physical fear;  instead, some of today’s hardest “misbehavior” for a teacher to deal with is a total lack of concern for due dates or grades.  And parents are not on our side, believe me.  Nor is administration.  The latest trend, particularly in urban areas, is to allow multiple retakes of tests or to assign loose due dates. What teacher has the time to rewrite every quiz, test, exam, and then re-administer these to kids repeatedly?  How does one ethically grade a semester’s work from their students in the last  few weeks of school? Giving the same test over is not a fair or accurate assessment, and rushing through “grading” means plenty of unread material.

And are teachers being paid for this repeated effort?  Of course, not!

If an architect has to revamp a drawing four or five times until the client is happy, he gets paid for every single version, every single hour.  If a doctor has to retest for more possibilities or repeat a surgical procedure, he earns a ton of new money . .teachers don’t. Under this retake-test opportunity, I had students who would not study at all, hoping they could pass without effort first. And THEN, if they performed poorly, they would ask to retake the test once they studied.  Makes perfect sense to me.  I would have done the same as a kid.  But as a teacher, my afternoons could be filled with retesting rather than planning or advising.

To me personally, a bigger, but related problem to discipline and lesson planning is that  teachers seem to be required to be entertainers now.  No longer can a teacher say, “Read this,” and then explain how to or what to.  We have to come up with activities that compare to a NASA or Disney World experience, smile and pander and drop one-liners every few seconds. Though I usually would try to oblige, I once had a teen rate my lesson on a day I was stressed and exhausted and just wanted them all to sit quietly and read. (Teachers have those days, too, now and then.) Typically my biggest fan, he said as he left the room,  “Ahh, you really missed this one, Ms.  I give you a D for today.”

I wish I could blame television for that  annoying expectation.  But district Bigwigs are the ones behind this idea that we need to be Jerry Seinfeld, Abraham Lincoln, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Nye the Science Guy all in one.  Teachers can be down-rated on their principal visits (AKA reviews) if a girl in the back row quickly checks her makeup in her phone screen; we are supposed to be that on-our-toes about holding kids’ attention.

And bosses are often the worst in education; often they are men who went into education to be a coach and really never wanted to teach social studies, or worse,  left the classroom because they hated teaching and hated kids.  I had more than one boss who had never been in the classroom, which means we have people telling us what to do who have never known how to do it themselves.

One woman in particular had jumped from counselor to assistant principal, and we suffered all her grand ideas. . .you know. . .old stuff that was new again, yet she had no interest in listening to experience.   She believed naysayers were automatically negative, rather than being smart or weathered.  She would curry the young, new teachers,  and punish those that did not cheer her every move.  (Ever taught a freshmen Lit class with forty kids while the other freshmen lit teacher has six students, but said administrator refuses to balance the numbers?  Talk about punishment.)

At first, I thought this boss’s attitude was a sign of ageism, until I realized she just wanted sycophants, and figured the newbies were easier to shape in that regard, and the experience teachers impotent against her.

Unfortunately for students, this new boss’s  and her proteges’ inexperience made them all ignorant of how their “newly discovered” bullets were not magic.  Whole Language, Basal Reading, Phonics?  In, out, and in again based on the whims of administrators who never taught.  I had one boss who threatened to fire or at least transfer us if she ever caught us teaching grammar or mechanics in isolation, so trendy was her latest idea.  At no point could we map and practice exercises on the board showing kids how to use apostrophes or conjugate verbs. . .

As pay-for-performance becomes more of reality, teachers are becoming more cut throat, more willing to toss each other under the bus in order to secure the whatevers from the powers that be: those uncountable rewards, like a good lunch hour, cushy, fun subjects or the room with all the computers.  Performance is often marked by how well one teacher’s kids do compared to other teachers’ students.  I was once held up as the “good example” in a school wide meeting, causing my peers to come defend themselves to me:  “Of course, your kids are gifted. No wonder your scores are better.” (this was true, though supposedly, the county had a system for balancing out this discrepency in their comparisons.  Or “Well, it’s not fair,  You’ve been teaching here so long, kids know you better. . .”   They were angry with me, though I had nothing to do with the public comparison.

A much more dangerous form of comparison is the politically skewed one. My ex-husband, an elementary school teacher was given a PDP—a Professional Development Plan is the equivalent of a shape up or ship out warning—because 20% more of his students did poorly on a statewide test compared to his peers’ students.  Four of each of the other teachers’ kids failed, five of his did.  So ONE child more and he deserves to be fired?

The fact that he actually had more students overall than the other three teachers did not matter. . . Notice the way the numbers were skewed? The principal wanted to prove to the public and her bosses that she took standardized testing and performance-linked jobs seriously, so whomever had the most students fail at any grade level, got a demerit and a threat, no matter the fallacy in logic.  23 more would equal one more in her math.

With those sorts of principals, teachers are less likely to share good lessons even when forced to collaborate if they can earn the favor of a boss by having better scores or better Cred with the students.  (Just one kid more?)

We already muscle for rank over classroom location, subjects like AP, class sizes.  Now throw in pay-for-performance, and add in a faulty way of measuring performance through comparisons, and what sort of peer environment is percolating?

Plus, we know that the concept of better is very loose.   I’ve worked with Teachers of the year who could not pass an AP test to save their lives, who administer the fewest, and simplest of quizzes and let children cheat. . .I’m sure that in every profession there are those people that do a half-assed job, yet still gain accolades.

Why wouldn’t new teachers or even seasoned teachers quit if they have other options?  A

Most importantly, Is this the environment parents want their children in?

Finally, the dirty truth that no one outside of teaching gives a hoot about. . .the biggest reason teachers jump ship:  The hours seriously suck if a teacher really is going to do a good job. 

Sure, anyone can never read student essays, arbitrarily jotting a grade on the top. (I worked with a woman who would say, Freshmen don’t need to fail. . .” and would give out high grades to undeserving students.  How easy is that!!)  But if you do want children to learn, and you do have an ethical system about who earns excellence, then you have to put in hours that no other profession requires.  This is why people gripe about pay.

Yes, new lawyers and new doctors have ridiculous weeks.    But when I was first bringing home 31K  with 7 years of college and two degrees, multiple certifications, my buddy the Ob-Gyn was freshly hired at 180K.  His 70 hour weeks were well-rewarded.  And. . .what’s more he was paid while he was still in training, whereas student teachers work a fulltime job (their field experience) for no money.  True, the doctor’s education cost big bucks, but his school loans can be paid back with that salary within a year or two.

Grading student work is a whole extra job.   My work day, I had to be in the door by 6:45 and not out before 3:00.  Those are the required hours, but all teachers are there much longer.  And if not, they are still working when they get home and through the weekends.

Teachers are in the classrooms or monitoring the hallways for 7 hours straight and are not supposed to be caught grading at those times.  Our attention should always be on the children. That 8^th hour assigned as a required planning period is eaten up with meetings and responsibilities, or just plain rest.   The lunch break is 20 minutes tops; since teachers are last out of the room and first back, this short time gives us just enough minutes to run to the restroom and stuff a sandwich in our mouths.  And in some states, teachers have to dine with (and monitor) their students, so it isn’t even a break.  Some bosses don’t mind if we try to catch up in those minutes between classes, or in the mornings;  others require us on duty in the hallways the second the bell rings.

Yes, I get summers off which is one reason I don’t sweat the salary, but if you do the math of how many hours I worked in 10 months,   NOT COUNTING the required extracurricular activities that young teachers are contracted to do,  I worked enough hours for a year-round job and then some and made peanuts.  Now toss is how most new teachers cannot get a position unless they contract to also coach some sport or activity an extra 20 hours a week at cents per hour, and you can see that we build up resentments over being exploited like crazy.

When I taught at a local university as a part-time adjunct, people would ask what I do. You know, meeting someone at a dinner or some event, they’d hear my answer and sometimes become a little self-conscious;  they’d make some humorous, self-deprecating remark about their grammar-as if I were policing them silently in my head-or wonder aloud about how smart I must be.  But now, upon hearing I teach high school, there is a completely different response as if the air had just shifted and a nasty smell had arrived.  You can see their respect level drop as their eyes dart away or worse, they confront me about their negative opinions about public education.  I am the same person, with the same credentials, but the respect I earned as a college educator was very different.

I find that hard simply because what public school teachers do is more essential and honestly so much more important than being a university adjunct, and I love my work and my students.  I assume this is a remnant of a time when children’s teachers were often servants and are now civil “servants”.  But it is a sad trend that simply makes a hard job easier to leave for many people.

Those of us who stay,  are we masochists? 

No, some stay because there are no other options.  Some stay because we can schedule around our children.  Most stay because we love what we do and know how important we are.  A month ago, I was vacationing in a mountain town three hours away.  A young man pushing a stroller stopped me on the streets of the charming village, and asked me if I remembered teaching him.  I certainly did, though so grown now, in his thirties, I barely recognized him.   He said, “I had to tell you what you meant to me,” and introduced me to his family, asked if I was on social media.  Two weeks ago, dining with old friends, one of them asked me if I recalled teaching a certain student named Jane.

My friend, said, “Well, I ran into her with her family and she was asking about you.  You taught her freshmen and senior year,”  Yes, I replied.  “Well, she says even with college, you are still the best teacher she ever had and still looks at one of the projects you had her complete.”  I had just had one of those nightmares about losing class control that morning and sure did need to hear that!

Then last week,  I was dining with my boys at a local steak house and heard a familiar cackle split the air.  The girl whom that  college student hated was now a graduated, young woman working her way through college as a hostess.  She caught sight of me and ran across the foyer, yelling, “OMG,  I can’t believe it’s you!” and hugged me so hard I thought I’d fall over.

Those experiences, knowing I made a positive impact is what makes the profession worth staying for many teachers!  But unless something changes to bring in more strong educators, what will become of the profession?

 

 

 

 

Teaching Old Teachers New Tricks . . .(or my opinion about a stale issue)

Each morning,  I often do a little reading before I get on with my day.  Doing so today made me think about how, more than a decade ago, students from some class I did not teach had to survey various people for their opinions on impending tech in the digital world.  When teachers often only had dry erase boards or even chalkboards to illustrate their lessons, I was asked: Do you read anything online?  Do you read novels on tech devices?  Do you prefer paper books to digital books?  Do you think digital reading will replace paper books?  Could you teach with only digital information or will we always require paper?

Apparently, for years,  I was their lone interviewee who could accept or even predict the demise of paper textbooks, paper and pen assignments, paper novels, so powerful the hold of ink and wood pulp on our population in the past.  I’d roll my eyes loudly whenever the topic rose in meetings or faculty rooms when others would whine their discontent.  I had a wild imagination then about all the things I could do with technology if I could design it my way.  Picture a classroom with walls of screen like in Minority Report. . .the fresh images, charts, and “motivational quotes” that I could match to each day’s lesson alone would be astounding.  (The ADD kid would be overwhelmed by the noise my digital, visual landscape created.)

Within a few years of first answering these kids’ surveys, I was requiring my own students to complete massive, argumentative research papers-you know those quintessential “topic” papers English teachers love-without the cumbersome index cards of meticulous notes from education yore, or even the “more modern” expensive, photocopied pages of books and magazines that some teachers required as “proof of authorship.”  Students could, if they chose, never touch a piece of paper at all.

“Woe is me,” cried a few of my peers, even some of the young ones.  “What about teaching kids to use a variety of print sources, you know. . .go pull a book off a shelf?  Pick up a print magazine?   What are you doing, Keren, letting these children only use the internet for their research. . .What kind of teacher do you call yourself!!!”

As if books and magazines, even encyclopedias are not on the internet.  (Even back then they were easily accessible online to students with the right passcodes.)

This morning, I opened up my laptop and perused The NYT for updates on Trump’s latest shenanigans, read a teary article about daughterhood from The Texan, poked my nose in a few nonfiction books I want to start. Immersed in the words on the screen,  I suddenly thought about that survey and then about grading those essays, my students having provided digital copies of all their research, highlighted in various colors to match their organized plots.  Orange for this area of fact, pink for this area of opinions, or whatever categories they chose, etc.

How much easier it was for them to cut and paste a passage or phrase from the digital work into their properly quoted and cited writing,  no longer hand-copying it onto a 4×6 card and then retyping it back into their paper.  In those old days with archaic methods, seeing if they had misquoted or mis-paraphrased was more difficult for me.  Their digital sources often helpfully provided a bibliography entry of their own title, simplifying what was necessary to copy into their paper’s works cited page.  And though I still taught them where to find this in printed books or magazines, how simple for students who struggled to grasp where to put an author or title in the required order when it was there already on the source.  When to use a comma, a colon, a period in the entry was already completed for them most of the time.  Some apps highlight what piece of info to use in APA or MLA citations, too.

Grading,  I could use the “review” feature on the writing app/software we used, and leave common remarks.  Infact, they could have a number of drafts that showed all the changes up to the final. All of it, the research, the providence of source material, the writing, the substantiating, even my reviews and remarks and grades were all submitted to me digitally.  Instead of a mile-high stack of plastic covered three ring binders from 150 students, I carried a small box of thumb drives.  Eventually,  I did not even need those, for as technology caught up, I could access our server and thus, their work, from home.

I think, however, about my college roommate, a budding writer who would lay out her notecards all over the mangey royal blue carpet of our apartment, moving them to rethink her vision.  Typing out, and then cutting up her essays into pieces and moving bits here and there, like a jigsaw puzzle, helped her think. . .She still does this before any publication is ready.

There are apps that help do that now, too;  writers can create a visual post-it board or organize a multiscreen view, move their beloved tidbits back and forth and see all in one tree or circle or staircase. . .whatever image they seek for guidance.  And interestingly, one might worry that by having so much of the organizing and finer points of editing completed for students by an app might make the students lose something in translation, some element of analysis and vision missing, perhaps.  No. Instead I found that their thinking was actually deeper and more clear.  Something about not trying to keep track of all the moving parts of the research paper methods of my youth allows today’s learners to think about the topic, the argument they are making, with less worry about the form.

Back in the day, my peers  when surveyed would say, “Never!  I need to hold the moldy pages of my favorite novel in my hands, smell the ink, enjoy the blurb filled covers. . . Never,  No!”  And to them novels by tablet would never replace their enjoyment of paper books.

And even as I admit that I do prefer a damp, inky magazine to my iPad when lounging on the beach. . .my son is completing his 12^th grade summer reading on his phone. And only a few weeks ago, wanting to get a head start on the school year, he finished his online economics class-opening to end-without touching a piece of paper.

Sure, technology has created some major headaches for teachers, too; I was ignorant about the sheer difficulties of upkeep, the replacement of missing keys or cords that kids stole, the holes that might appear on the white boards or laptop screens.  And worse, the simplicity of cheating that technology offers is depressing;  but  I’ve taught my students that if I can Google one of their sentences and find anything similar to it, they’ve plagiarized.  (It’s a good lesson in learning to paraphrase or summarize properly.)

Of course, one can easily purchase an essay now online and call it one’s own.  But you know, twenty-five years ago, I was doing my required volunteering at the GSU writing center.  All adjunct professors had to provide some of their time there, and in came a phone call on our 1-800 grammar hotline.  I have no idea how a woman from another state found us, but she was looking to buy a research paper for her son.  Could we sell and mail her one?  I said, “Ma’am, we don’t do that sort of thing here.”  She said, “Well, I’m sure somebody somewhere does,” and hung up.

What once was on paper is now digital.  Faster, simpler, but the same. . .Are any teachers still fighting this?  Any readers?

 

The Lost Art of Learning through ‘Free Range Parenting’

I was a lucky girl.  My parents not only allowed me to play outdoors freely, they often demanded I go outside and find something to do:  Don’t return until the streetlights flick on.    Reading an article recently in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/04/free-range-parenting/557051/) that discusses the dissonance between classes and races when it comes to this “new” concept called “Free Range parenting,” I had to laugh.  While the author makes a valid and stimulating point, I was thinking about her lost opportunity to discuss the benefits of this “Free range parenting.”  I mean, for millennia, parents of all races and social strata have practiced it until the aberration of the 1990s when fearful parents began to cling to their children and control their every move.

Luckily, for the sake of a child’s creativity and intelligence, as well as the sake of teachers everywhere, we are swinging back to allowing our children to play like I did as a child.

Typically, when people criticize today’s lack of childhood “free” play, they target organized sports because they believe there are lessons in relationships and authority lost in the modern multitude of organized teams, today’s prime, often forced, activity for children and their parents.   However, the benefits I gained through “free-range” playing were not only an understanding of interpersonal dynamics, but also the foundations of a budding scientist and artist, maybe even an academic.

In my adventures outdoors, I set shoe box traps for rabbits, laid out dandelion pulp for mice and brought home accidentally dug up baby moles. We rescued baby birds and placed them gently in nests, then would hide, waiting to make sure their mothers returned; they always did.  My friends and I captured all sorts of insects: lady bugs, red and black ants, daddy long legs, pill bugs, deadly black widows, trapdoor spiders, bumble bees, honey bees, hornets, wasps. . .We played with most and killed the scariest, smooshing them when we were too young to respect their rights.

Various reptiles and amphibians amazed us, causing us to sit still and watch them hunt.  My brother and I would scoop up frog eggs or new tadpoles and bring them home to watch them gain their legs and lose their tails, returning them to ponds when they were hopping frogs.  We’d attempt to rescue lizards who gave up their own tails when our cats grabbed them excitedly, but more often the speedy reptiles would keep on trucking sure to grow more. . .All of this taught us naturally the foundations often illuminated in early biology lessons: exoskeleton, endoskeleton, regeneration, eggs versus live birth, mammal versus reptile, etc.

While left to our own entertainment, we kids would find chunks of quartz that we thought were diamonds.  When my father told us where we might find more, we’d try to break open rocks searching for what treasure might be inside. How many  pirate, explorer fantasies did we act out that developed our literary sense. Pieces of mica that looked like mirrors and glass made us think, hmm, is this how a mirror is made? Did this lead to the invention of glass?  Shale that we could crunch with the tires of our bikes made us feel as powerful as superheroes. The coal that kicked up when we were walking on forbidden train tracks was so pure and black, making us wonder, really? Future diamonds?

We’d pick up chalk-like rocks to draw on the tarmac, marking our four square and hopscotch games, even the bases for kickball.   And of course, sand and mud were everyone’s favorite media.   A girlfriend and I used to shape figurines of ladybugs and snowmen out of the clay in our yards, paint them with our cheap tempura paints, and try to sell our artwork by the side of the road in front of our house.   Imagine how much more interesting geology lessons are with this personal knowledge of the variety of rocks that make up Earth.

And then comes the blending of geology and physics that I learned on my own.    My friends and I played in creeks, looking for crawdaddies, racing leaf boats, building dams.  We built castles and motes and canals in the sand. The movement of water, creeks, and rivers, brooks and ponds, even oceans and tides all showed us the power and etherealness of water.  The weight of it, the random choice that it takes as it tracks through our fingers, the holes and patterns that it makes in the rocky, sandy, mucky edges and piles of pepples  held our imagination.  The power water has to move and float us and suck us under was wonderfully frightening.  With these experiences I could easily understand what the teacher told me about erosion and flooding and water tables beneath the ground.

In the warming Spring, we’d race one another, rolling down grassy hills or skating too fast around curves.  We’d climb trees, sometimes falling from too high only to have the the wind knocked out of us.  We’d build teeter totters out of logs and rocks and ledges where we could balance and play king of the hill. Or we’d grab onto thick vines to swing across what we imagined were deep ravines, pretending we were Spiderman. My brother and I would ride our bikes into ever shrinking circles or figure eights, losing control when the wheels were moving way too slowly.

All this movement, whether we knew it or not, gave us a personal understanding of gravity, weights and balances.

In fact, when my pal Bitt Nelson rode his bike over a ramp we had set on a pile of sand at a construction site, and flew too far, only to bash his face on a sand loader, forcing his front teeth into his sinuses, we certainly adjusted ourselves.  We didn’t stop riding, but we learned faster than he ran home crying what we had to change not to repeat his catastrophe.

And when summer came, sitting on hot car hoods, standing in shade to find relief from the scorching sun, noticing how much hotter the black tar is versus the white painted line down the middle of the road, the cool of grass, the heat of concrete, the burn of asphalt, we learned quickly about heat transfer and what could relieve it.  We learned the simple exhaustion that comes from spending the whole day physically rushing and rough housing and playing, planting, digging, climbing.  How hungry we’d get playing and then begging our mothers for something to snack on, assuring her it would not ruin our dinner, quickly understanding why breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  All these moments created a vague knowledge of energy.

Years ago, when we played our disorganized sports-the impromptu baseball and football games run by only children- true. . .we learned negotiation and authority as people do say, but also the geometry of boundaries, the physics of messing around with a ball. Sometimes games were not impromptu but scheduled, by us, for us.  See you Saturday, right?  Behind the Olsen’s house? 

We figured things out ourselves, like what qualities draw others to a person, like those in Brian Culpepper who was often our favorite captain of street football games or meadow baseball.  Why was adorable Theresa Olsen always picked last in games of football? (Not because she was too slow or too uncoordinated or even too unpopular. . .she was finicky and prissy and whined too much.) Yet we let her play, for we also learned to be nice from each other, allowing the little kids who could never score join the teams because they were ours, a part of our neighborhood.  We shared which neighbor’s yard was welcoming and which neighbor was off limits.  We’d say, Don’t hit it so hard that it goes into Herr Golembush’s yard, don’t run so fast that you can’t stop before you slam into the Nelson’s rose bushes.  The Base is the yellow yield sign, the ball is a foul if it passes the camellias. . .

How often when they play an organized team sport are today’s children welcome to just goof around and test the ball?  Seeing how fast the ball could roll up, down, or over a hill, how fast hitting it squarely mattered, the arc of the hit, the lob, the toss, the strength of the bounce, the angle of the bounce. . .They are told how to hit in today’s games.  And do they learn which player is the best at the game themselves without being told?  Or whose yard is the best for that game that day?  Or who is on whose team?  Almost never.  Adults decide the who, what, where, when and why of each sport, directing children on how slow,  how fast to play, and even what to see and what not to see.

I suggest not only should children play disorganized sports with no adult supervision, but just play.  Just simple, imagination-full play.  Yes, The Atlantic makes a valid point about the unfair judgment over which children play “free range” the most, but her point should be that more people, if not all people should be encouraging it.

Great teachers often use what children already know to create scaffolds between knowledge and understanding. But what if there is nothing to scaffold from? Through the play of my childhood, I built the foundations of all the sciences and some math: biology, physics, geometry, geology, chemistry, even meteorology as I watched in the sky the evolution of the clouds, hoping I would get to swim or fish or play ball.  Do today’s generation of children arrive in class with this foundation anymore?  Do they know what shale or tadpoles or a robin’s egg even looks like?

 

One Foot (and a Whole Heart) Still in Childhood

 

My youngest son, Evan, is now a freshmen in a local high school.  He was anxious about going because he’d heard the rumors that every rising ninth grader hears: the upper classmen target you; in fact, they will target YOU specifically especially if you are short.

All summer he has been measuring himself against me, having grown about five inches in the last year.  I now look at his chin.  But this doesn’t mean he is tall yet.

The men in our family are average height. . .not short, not tall.  They tend to range between 5’10” and 6”, if you leave out a set of cousins whose Dad was 6’5”.  The man was not a blood uncle, so my sons can forget that gene pool.

My youngest was born an average length and a solid weight of 8 lbs. 4 oz.  But he has been below the curve of average size most of his life.  Some of this is heredity; some the fault of the ADD meds he has had to take which curb his appetite. But no matter what I do to circumvent these effects, my boy is simply built like his Dad in bone-skinny, and me in height-short.

I am certain he will catch up to his peers soon since he is still hovering on the child side of puberty, while many have gone far beyond.  And having taught high school for years, I know a growth spurt when I see one coming on.  I’ve watched countless boys 5 foot and some odd inches leave ninth grade and come back men in the fall of their tenth grade year, or even the eleventh. . .or twelfth.

No big deal.

To me.

But to him, he knows that there are ADULT males at the school: seventeen and eighteen year olds who weigh 250 pounds and roam the halls looking for kids like him to carry around by the hair.    Good thing Evan is witty.  And he tries very hard to hide these superstitions, too, posturing as older and wiser than that.

But here’s the thing that makes my tears well.  My youngest is still the youngest of not just my family, but of his peers in terms of maturity, and I’m watching him struggle with leaving childhood behind.  He shifts between being stoic and manly, and whiny and emotional, between knowing things he shouldn’t yet, or oddly innocent of common knowledge.

A few weeks ago, he did express this fear of these giant upper classmen and their possible hazing of the freshmen.  I comforted him by saying, “That’s mostly rumor and lies.  Seniors and Juniors are far too busy just living their lives, dating, working, applying to colleges.  The tenth graders are the ones to worry about. . .”

“Whaaat?”

“I’m just kidding.  Sort of.”

We smiled, but we both knew it was simply one of those rites of passage he’d have to face, just like the inevitable teasing he and his buddies have gone through as their voices began to squeak and squawk into something deeper. (His is still wavering up and down.)

Then toward the end of the week, I had to get a document notarized.  As we waited for the UPS store to open, he said, “How am I going to handle being an adult?  I hardly know anything.  Like Notary. What the heck is a Notary? There’s so much I don’t know.” He listed a few things from the previous week that were news to him.

I said, “Relax.  No ninth grader knows what a notary is.  I’m sure I didn’t at your age.” And then  I explained their duties.

But he’s right.  There is so much Evan doesn’t know that I or his brother did know at his age.  My youngest, because of his dysgraphia, is not a reader, and readers are filled with information, even if much of it is useless.

“Well, you know how you fix that. .Read more, watch more news, get out of the house and do more stuff. . .” I said, mentioning how he had been attached to the same pajama bottoms day in and out all summer.  “The more you experience. . .the more you know.”

Luckily, this is our son who loves to travel with us, and he does love new experiences, so his fear of being an adult ignoramus is somewhat baseless.  But I knew I was listening to a child face his future as a man who had to “know stuff.”

Then this past weekend. . .after snapchatting or tweeting or whatever young teens are doing now, with a girl who might or might not be his girlfriend. . .he came downstairs and asked if we could watch Harry Potter together.  After thirty minutes of digging, we located our DVD collection.  We hadn’t touched them in probably four years or more.

Tony and I sat with Evan, inside on a sunny Sunday afternoon, while we watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone, for the Brits.)  At the moment Harry enters Olivander’s store to get fitted for his wand, my youngest raced upstairs looking for his two wands that we had bought the year Universal opened its version of Diagon Alley.  Again, I had to help poke around to find where the toys were.

And my boy, who just a few days before was yucking it up with me as we viewed a particularly adult version of Key and Peele, spent the rest of The Sorcerer’s Stone watching with a wand in both hand.

Yesterday was Evan’s first day of high school.

And many of you might know, there is a vast mental age gap between middle school and high school.  Students go from being led in a formal and silent line down the hall to the cafeteria, to near autonomy at lunch time.  Their lockers in middle school are usually inside their homerooms and assigned to them.  In high school, they buy them if there are any left over, and rarely see the little closets all year.  He’s moved from a school with 1300 pupils, to one with 3400.  He has more teachers, more subjects, and more strangers in his life than ever before.

He came home exhausted.  We went over his homework, and organized his new notebooks to his teachers’ liking.  I fed him pancakes and bacon, a special breakfast-for-dinner occasion.  He asked to watch Chamber of Secrets, another Harry Potter, this time without the wands.  And my child, beat from getting up at 5 a.m. and navigating pending adulthood, went upstairs to go to bed early.

When I came up to kiss him good night, I found him already sleeping.  But not in his room. . .instead, he was curled up in my bed, on my pillow, soundly out.  How many years has it been since he stopped climbing into our bed at night?

And I can’t tell which made me more weepy: the joy or the pain that both come from watching him cling to his childhood, or from knowing this would be probably one the last few moments I could baby him.

In a few weeks, he won’t even remember how uncomfortable starting high school was.  He will be fine.

 

Thinking of Love: Nonverbally

I recently had an epiphany about romantic, expressive men.  And for a bonus, I also got the elusive relationship closure that so many of us seek.  It was a surprise gift from the universe. . .and my unsuspecting husband, Tony.

On New Year’s Day, I ran into a lover from my deep, dark past.  He, his grown daughter, my husband and I sat for about thirty minutes socializing, very quickly catching up. Meanwhile, Former Lover kept, as they say, making eyes at me.

This was not an affair that had ended well.  But it had ended so long ago, I no longer hurt to see him or speak with him.  We are both plumper, a tad greyer, and definitely more lined, but it felt like we had just seen each other the last week.  We chatted and joked briefly, and then my husband and I climbed into our minivan and sped away.

That was not the closure.  Former Lover had been a man who, met years after I lost my virginity, had actually woken my sex drive.  Our connection, though doomed, was immediate and ridiculously hard to define.

He was a musician and an artist.  No matter what time of day or night, he had some instrument of creation in his hands, a drum stick, a worn nub of charcoal, a guitar, maybe even a teapot.  It was not the Art or the Music that seduced me as is cliche; instead, his sheer joy while lost in his work and play was impossibly attractive. Oh, and he was.  . .is British, for all you Anglophiles out there.  I know, a sexual awakening, creative Brit?  Aren’t they supposed to be uptight and cold?  He wasn’t. Former Lover was prone to saying things about his heart beating faster or not being able to think straight when I was near.  And when words failed him, his body never did.

Much later, a short year into my relationship with my husband,  I was uncomfortable and feeling insecure.  I knew he loved me; he tells me so every day, in those exact words..  But. . .something was missing.  We had more than a few conflicts over the fact that he doesn’t give physical compliments very often.  And if he does, they come across as forced or awkward.  “Uh, well, don’t you look cute. . .”  At first, I just thought he was not verbal.  But, no, he was voted most talkative in his high school.  He can articulate. In fact, he fully compliments my cooking or my intelligence all the time. And one of his greatest assets his how much we talk, late into the night.

I then suspected that maybe, though attached to me, he didn’t really find me sexy or even pretty.  I figured, he was a practical man who had made a practical choice and had married the smart, talkative, nurturer, instead of the empty, distant model.  He would get perturbed, annoyed and then angry with me for voicing these thoughts.  But I periodically have had trouble shaking this sinking feeling.

I said to him, “There have been men in love with me before, a number of them who wanted to marry me. I KNOW what it feels like to have a man want me.”  And this wasn’t it.

I reflected back on the men who had loved me, some of whom I had loved in return.  All of them had been expressive about their love and their desire.  They would tell me how gorgeous my eyes were when they gazed longingly into them.  One man used to sigh into my then long, curly hair and go on and on about how he wanted to one day die in it.  (Not as creepy as it sounds when you are in the middle of being loved.)   One used to tell me I had the most delightful ass on the planet. Another, as I mentioned, described how pit-pattery he felt.  I believed every single word from these men. It was the passion they exuded, the eyes that seemed only for me, that made their musings true.  They openly and verbally reacted to my attempts to look nice when I dressed up, to my natural appearance, and my very smell.

NO, I am not a raving beauty.  But these were men who knew how to make me feel like I was.

And my husband isn’t one of those men.  Yet, that expressive passion I enjoyed from former beaus, even my ex-husband and Former Lover, is how I have always felt about my man. Tony.  He drives me insane with desire: His smarts, his goodness, his love making, his very being.  (To gain a picture, he somewhat resembles Clint Eastwood from the early Dirty Harry days. In fact, I had never found Clint a sex symbol until I fell in love with my husband.)  Whatever this former lover awakened in me, my husband puts to bed in the very best way.  He is the sort of lover every woman wants-gentle at times, considerate, but with just the right amount of manhandling to get his way.  I compliment him all the time.  I’d finally come to believe that inside, My husband feels the same way, when once, frustrated at my insecurities, he shouted, “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.” Enough Said.

So. . .a few weeks after this reunion, you might suspect how I’d react to receiving an effusive email from Former Lover.  (He knows people who know me.)   In it, he expressed how much he was still feeling toward me, and easily tossed out these words:  “My relationship with you was the most honest, intelligent, intuitive, erotic, and fulfilling of my life.  You got into my psyche more deeply than anyone ever did.”  He went on to express how he wished we had married all those years ago, issues be damned, and gone and lived the last two decades together.  In less than so many words, he was secretly seeing if I was “available.”

Nice to hear 20 years later, eh?  Do you wonder if I was tempted?  He was off to Central America in a few weeks.  I could easily jump on a plane and restart my life all over again.

I was stunned.  Angry a little at the tardy sentiment.  Envious of once again hearing such fine words. Irritated that he thought it appropriate to interfere in my love cocoon.  But also tickled pink. Tickled, tickled, tickled.

Though Former Lover hoped I’d keep all this hush-hush, I immediately told my husband, full transparency.  I was uncertain how he’d take it.

In stride. His first comment: “See, you still got it, Baby.”  Well, hmmm. Okay, yes. After how many gained lines and pounds?  “This guy sees you after 20 years and thinks to himself, ‘I want some more of her. I made a grave mistake all those years ago.’”

I also told my husband how sometime earlier last year I had written an amends to this Former Lover-we both owed one to the other for blowing up quite a lot of our world when we imploded as lovers.  I had tried writing before years before, but now, in Al-Anon and working a 12 step program, I felt the need to do so, with full responsibility. I’d written a heartfelt note, but suddenly my computer frizzed as it can do.  My words of contrition all disappeared.  I saw this as a sign to keep my mouth shut and mind my business.

Tony tells me this:  “Making an amends is for you.  God knows you did so with good intent, and cleared your mind. It doesn’t matter that the guy didn’t receive it. That this guy surfaces only months later, we run into him accidently, and now he is ‘resmitten’ with you, gives you a sense that what had happened years ago was real, true emotions on both sides.  Doesn’t that feel good to know now?”

There’s the closure, especially since I can respond with an amends now.

Here’s the epiphany:  All the men who have loved me in the past have been EXPRESSERS in various ways, artists, writers, musicians, even a stand-up comic.  They dealt daily in the world of sharing what was inside their hearts and souls.  I had veered away from men like Tony-business and math-minded, practical, relatively conservative.  In college, those practical guys had been the ones who seemed too preppy, they peed in the ice machines, and date-raped women in their fraternity houses. (How’s that for a childish generalization.) I stayed away from them.  But somewhere in my middle age, I got sick of the liberally slanted men.  Getting a divorce from my son’s Dad, an artist who had taken over a decade to figure out a career where he could actually contribute money to the household had left me cold.  And all my other boyfriends-even this Former Lover in question- had spent their lives stumbling  along, too, leaving all the heavy lifting to their wives or girlfriends.

Opening my mind, once I was single again, I found this trustworthy, practical, dependable Man, Tony,( . . .and yes, a former frat boy,) who has trouble verbalizing his attraction and his love for me in more words than “I love you, Baby.”

I had sacrificed the oh, so easy sway of big, fat words, for the strength of a solid man’s man.  And I’ve only benefited.

Those loving words in the former lover’s email were very pretty.  But also extremely simple to say, and not do for that guy.  My husband finds it much easier to do than say.  He understands commitment in a way no one else in my world ever has- takes care of his part of our world and then spoons me to sleep.  He also stands in the greeting card aisle for hours, reading all the cards to find one that says what he cannot.

The other night, my oldest son met his Dad for a movie.  After the film, en-route to somewhere else, he had a crappy flat tire on a major highway, and couldn’t get the spare loose.  Whom did he call?  Not his artsy-emotional Dad whom he had just left, but his step-Dad, Tony who quickly gave him directions to wait in the car safely till he got there.

This stoic man is the love of my life; I’m his, and we both know it.

Five Things You Hate about Teachers and What You Can Do About Them. . ..

5. We Have Summers Off.

(And Christmas, and Easter, and Thanksgiving. . . ) So many breaks, you’d expect EVERYone would try to become teachers. I can’t count how many times people work this issue into the conversation once they discover I am a career teacher. Currently, close to two-thirds of newly minted teachers quit the profession within three years of gaining a full-time teaching position, never to return. Maybe, as people like to blithely assert, they were women with a “Mrs. Degree” who were just waiting for Mister Right to marry them, so they could work at home raising their own kids and not yours. Maybe they landed a rewarding spot on American Idol. But whatever it is, summer breaks are just not long enough to keep that two-thirds in education for a career.

Just the other day, in fact, a man standing next to me in the UPS line overheard I was a teacher; he baldly squawked, “You know, I hear these complaints about them teacher salaries…(I had not been complaining about a thing.)  Y’all got three months off in the summer, go get a job in the summer if you all want more money instead of sitting on your rear ends.” He said so with a pleasant smile like insulting someone you just met about their professions is completely socially acceptable, like so many other people do to teachers.

I just sighed and did not correct his grammar, nor his incorrect count of how much time I have off in the summers. I didn’t even try to discuss how many hours we work in a year stuffed into ten months. . .nor how many redundant classes I have to take each Summer in my time off. . .nor did I explore the offensive skewed salary scale/experience/hours-worked ratio of teachers compared to other more lucrative careers, like lawyers and doctors–Three degrees, 70 hour weeks, for what-per-hour??  I learned to stop doing that a long time ago.

I simply smile now and say, “Oh, I agree. Why don’t you go into teaching, so you can enjoy summers off?” and walk away.

4. We can’t be fired.

I know. That dirty thing called tenure. First, be honest: every job has due process, every single one. If you have not enjoyed due process when you were let go, then either you were screwed and you need a lawyer, or you were laid off through RIF.

Teachers get cut when there are not enough jobs, and we sometimes meet the nasty end of due process. I have known teachers who have lost their jobs for being drunk, stoned, or just bad. I have known drunk docs and immoral lawyers who are still practicing, protected by members of their profession. All it takes in any case is a boss who is willing to do the paper work, willing to apply due process, yet often they are too busy, or too political, or even too lazy to do so.

Consider an obstacle in education personnel decisions that doesn’t exist in other fields. To fire a teacher brings public scrutiny. (How often do most jobs and their failings get accounted for in the media? No one cares if a teller or a computer programmer gets axed. And unless a lawyer or a doctor goes to jail, no one reports their dropped contracts.  But a teacher? When a teacher loses a job, the community often makes a newsworthy stink.

Education is always in the media; it is a political machine that is fodder for the public. In fact, I recently heard yet another dig at tenure on Tim Allen’s last comedy.

But imagine you have a school principal willing to bring on public scrutiny and fulfill due process anyway to get rid of the “bad teacher”: to prove someone is a weak teacher is difficult since the standard for quality varies and seems subjective.

Sure, you’d think that the public would all agree about which teacher is good, but people really don’t. For instance, the guy who curses in class, yells at your kids till they cry, has a high failure rate, but gets fantastic results on Nationally-Normed Tests. . .do we keep him?  Or how about the teacher who is cheerful, supportive, motivates quality projects from children, coaches everything, has a high pass rate, but a somewhat questionable result on national tests. . .which educator is best? Not everyone values test results as the only indicator of talent in a teacher.  Some people adore the tough assholes and see them as demanding challengers, and some people want their children adored and cushioned.

I have worked with all sorts of teachers.  The woman who is always on-time and rarely misses a day, who keeps excellent records and files, whose bulletin boards are oh-so-spiffy seems like such a great  employee. But wait. . .she assigns too much silent bookwork, and sits at her desk daring the children to speak or complain; they are bored stiff and hardly learning, yet the teacher breaks no rules.   Then there is the well-loved, creative teacher with fun, interactive lessons, but she’s hopeless at discipline, and gee, she seems to miss a lot of Mondays and often skips her lunch duty. . .but, my goodness, look at those stellar literacy scores!  And then there is the favorite coach, who runs a tight ship in his history class, and motivates his kids to achieve and mature into respectable adults; however, his emails home seem illiterate, and his lessons are mimeographed from 1972. . .

Many principals face these very real conflicts: teachers who have strengths and weaknesses.

It is rare to hire perfection, which is what we expect in our teachers.  We want great, dependable employees, intellectual subject experts with creative and up-to-date lesson plans, fantastic human relations gurus, entertaining performers, kind and compassionate, moral leaders, but also strong disciplinarians who never have a rough day or show any weakness. . .Tough to find in one human being.

Plus, each principal knows the old adage: the devil you know is sometimes better than the devil you don’t know, causing them to try to rehab rather than replace their weaker faculty.

Plus, time constraints affect a principal’s staffing choices in ways that do not occur in other careers.  Due process takes any boss precious time to document; however, when a principal finally succeeds at letting the flawed teacher go, and then hunts for someone better, finding a stronger applicant takes months, which can leave your children without a teacher.  No one wants that.  You’d think in this economy, talent would be climbing out of our pores. But, no, not so.  Worse, trying to hire qualified replacements in classically “tough” schools with higher crime, higher failure, is nearly impossible; few apply. Fewer stay.

So stop thinking that teachers can’t be fired. We can, just as easily as you. The difference is that when people lose a job in most industries, the boss just makes their colleagues pick up the slack.   Principals cannot do that; children are not “tasks” that can be dumped on someone else’s docket.  Losing a teacher may mean leaving a classroom with a sub whose only credentials are a high school diploma and a pulse.

(And update:  Covid issues have only made this problem far worse.)

3. We were often “C” level students in college or high school.

The most embarrassing statistics prove this true. While that doesn’t describe me or many of my fellow teachers, it is generally correct. What’s worse, teacher’s education programs are notoriously tedious in work load, but lacking in intellectual demands, so we are talking about “C” students in non-rigorous degrees.

What are you willing to do about it?

You demand excellence from medical students and law students and even engineers, why not education majors? (Well, I personally think there should be no such thing as undergraduate education majors; I am as appalled as you when I discover one of my children’s teachers or a colleague is a numbskull).  The cut off point for staying in a medical, engineering or law program is exceptionally high for students: most must maintain a 3.5 or higher.  Enrollees who fail to meet these GPA requirements or to pass their boards or oral exams are out of luck; afterall, we do not want someone to design a bridge or replace a heart valve who has a 60 percent knowledge of the subject, right?  But education majors can carry a 1.8 GPA; they have no oral exams.  To pass an education certification board exam is super easy.  I can honestly say, failing the English Educators exam in my state means the teacher must be barely literate.

Much of my explanation about tenure applies here. The trouble is. . .whenever any state does raise standards, folks stop going into the teaching profession, or scarier, fewer folks qualify or meet those standards, resulting in a teacher shortage. With that, we are forced to hand out provisional teaching certificates to people with no training at all just to fill the podiums.  This is a nasty cycle that experts and politicians have failed to break.

Does this problem exist because academically sound graduates have plenty of work options. . .? Do you want someone teaching your kids who had no other choices?

Understand, school systems are victimized by supply and demand, stymied by funds, and hindered by even colleges and what they expect from or teach their education majors.  Not enough high-level high school graduates go into education programs; then not enough stellar college graduates go into teaching, which leaves the richer counties in position to competitively hire the best candidates, and the rest to accept the left-overs.  Plus, “best candidates” are hard to judge since so many education degrees come from paper mills.

Notice each state supports only one or two medical schools and offers few law or advanced engineering programs making the system of credentialing these professionals selective…But education degrees? Almost all colleges and universities everywhere graduate them. . .which leaves the resulting talent pool suspect.

How can you mock the low achievements of teachers when you also expect such low standards of them to begin with?

2. We are with your kids more than you are.

Admit it. When you first sent your babies off to school, aside from the secret joy you felt that you had more free time, or that your day care bill was shrinking, you were uncomfortable with someone else being so central in your child’s life.

Studies in child development show that children shift their hero-identity focus from parent to teacher around first grade. So instead of your son or daughter believing your word is God-like, now it’s “Mrs. Belachik says this. Mrs. Belachik says that. ..” ad nauseum. This does not sit right.  In fact this sits so poorly with some parents that I have watched my friends and neighbors tear apart teachers behind the closed doors of Bunko games, book clubs, and scrap booking meets, discussing their children’s teacher’s clothes, hair, and personal lives-from wedding faux pas, to pregnancies, and even husbands, as if we teachers are cast members of Housewives of Education County, not the professionals who love your kids.

Jealousy is an ugly beast to feed.

Add in that we are around your elementary-aged kids for 8 hours a day while you are with them, once they finish their bus rides, perhaps 6 waking hours–some of which they spend with buddies, computers, television and not you. . .You should feel a little threatened.   Even in high school, teachers seem to spend more time with your kids than you do, since as teens mature, they spend even less time with their parents.

An uncomfortable truth: Today’s families rarely eat, ride in cars, or watch television together… But teachers are in your kids’ faces for a good portion of their lives; so important, we teachers.

1. We are the government (who once controlled you.)

You may think Summers should be my biggest reason you hate teachers.  But no.  It’s the fact that we are the government that burns you up. And a government that once had total control over you and wouldn’t let you sleep in class…

Many people try to overcome this truth by acting like they are no longer under the thumb of a teacher, but now the boss who pays teachers’ salaries.  (That’s another insulting comment people like to spit at strangers!)  “I pay that woman to teach, not give my kid detention!” Or “I pay you to get my kid into college, why isn’t he getting an A?”  Or some such variation… Never mind that you pay the salaries of everyone who provides you a good or service–launderers, policemen, doctors–somehow with teachers, you feel more smug bossiness.  I’ve never heard someone say “I pay my doctor’s salary, how come I have heart disease!”  or “My taxes pay for that cop’s job, how come he arrested my kid for drunk driving.”  But woe to the teacher who offends your wishes and desires.

Perhaps, what makes you so irritable is that this “salary” you pay teachers just pops right out of your paycheck as a tax and moves into a system that the media loves to tell you is failing, a system that once controlled you, a system that is overrun with politicians and government debacles.

Think of how we feel.  Geez.

Imagine when you have been shaped to question any form of government, its intentions, its policies, its spending, its system of “checks and balances”, its buddy politics. . .and then you go to work for that very government.  It is your boss.

Most people I know who stand around at cocktail parties complaining about the governor, the president, the Republicans, the Democrats, etc.. are the same ones who complain about education. Ironically, they don’t seem to know that any education system is one of the most political machines out there.

Who sets the education budget? The government of that state. Who defines standards? The government of that state (along with those people who moved out of the classroom usually within six years of their teaching career to become politicians/lobbyists on some governor’s panel.)

Who runs your local system? A board that campaigns for office. Who puts principals into power over your teachers? That very board.  How does one gain notice to earn a position of power from the board? Play into that board’s belief system. Who earns leadership roles under those same principals? The political ones who say, “Yes!” to his/her every whim, no matter how ridiculous it seems.

Can you recall any local or national election that did not have education as one of its central platforms? Never forget that in education all leaders, from principals to every member of the central office and the board, are politicians.  The system is designed to eliminate individual insight and creativity, and endorse sycophantic behavior. I imagine this is true in the business world too, or comic strips like Dilbert wouldn’t be so popular.

Teachers are at the mercy of any politician who is staging a campaign to his constituents. If you voters make it sound like you want higher standards, he says he will attach pay-to-performance. He doesn’t care what massive testing does to your kids in the long run; he doesn’t even care if it’s a valid evaluation system. (Before you get all up in arms over student testing  linked to teacher careers, I am all for it, once it is fair, infallible, irrefutable, and valid-but right now it is only political and meaningless.) If you demand more discipline, then he creates a zero-tolerance law. Or the opposite, if you are tired of zero-tolerance rules, suddenly there are no rules. . .

And here’s a dirty secret: Many politicians use studies to prove whatever their whims are. In the science world, studies are usually strictly validated. Not so in education. The education studies that politicians toss around are performed by students seeking degrees in education programs. . .education programs that are not rigorous. . .education programs that don’t care that the study sample was too small, or even “made up.”  Education programs never truly require validity testing in their published studies. Yes. True. Scary. (Did you not see my answer to Complaint Number 3?)

Remember, education curricula are not science programs; they are not required to apply nor even study empirical, objective testing methods at all.  The results can be skewed or misrepresented.  The study itself can be set up in an invalid format.  Their results are not submitted to any peer reviews nor retested the way medical or psychological experiments are for validity.  But anyone running for any office gloms onto those slim, invalid studies.

And if such studies are performed by a group that is not in an education degree track, then the group is trying to make money for their byproduct book, or they are a political lobbying group. Thus evidential studies the politicians lean on are not standardized; They are filled with flaws, and distortions.

The fact that education is so politicized is damaging to your children, but somehow the taxation part is the only aspect you reject?  Look more deeply.

Okay. . .so. . .What can you do about any of this?

So. . .Here we teachers are, maligned for our free summers, mocked because we are par-educated, resented because we get to see your kids more than you, disrespected because we are “the man.”   Go ahead and toss in that, even though we suffer from the very government you do, we whimsically were once in charge of you when you were a student and you hated school–couldn’t wait to graduate–for we gave you tests someone else told us to give, we demanded that you read things that some board approved, and sometimes we were rude to you because we were too busy with the other 37 kids in class. Probably.

No wonder you hate us.

Yet Resentment doesn’t bring change.  Don’t just vote your people into office; examine the promises they make against reality. (You Floridians once actually believed your governor when he promised to cut the sizes of English classes in half. Californians at one point believed that every kid would get a state provided laptop. HELL, a whole load of people believed The Clintons and then The Bushes that everyone could be above average by this century. Really? Do the math. Go review the definition of average.)

Examine who moves into power and why in your entire education system. And definitely pay attention to how the money is spent.

Most importantly, help come up with a clear cut picture of a good vs. a bad teacher. Discuss this seriously with your friends and coworkers. Principals and parents each have their personal opinions that vary vastly. I have known bad teachers–ones that seem illiterate–whom parents will defend to the end. I have known great teachers whom parents want to lynch simply because they weren’t passing out “A’s” like candy. So collectively, as a country we have to agree with what defines good teaching and then be willing to enforce it. As it is now, many of you don’t even agree about norm testing.

And if you know of teachers who are truly bad, like grading arbitrarily, sleeping at their desk, drinking from their cupboards, writing illiterately in their email. . .document it, take it to the board, force the principal into due process. Don’t just criticize it.

Require improvement in the talent pool. I personally believe teachers should have to have Bachelor’s degree in any tough core subject, then complete a rigorous Masters degree in Education before being credentialed. Getting into these graduate programs should require stellar GRE scores, not the current, lower-than-national average scores. Then, prior to being certified, teachers should pass boards that are as strict as those for other important professionals.

Ask yourself why this profession doesn’t draw/keep its intellectual talent. What can we do to make it more, say, palatable to smarter people? You know the answer to this is very difficult to admit, which is why you probably are not a teacher with your summers free.

Teaching is a tough, sometimes completely unrewarding job; as a taxation-based field, it can never offer financial rewards on par with other intellectually demanding careers. My own test scores and academic records could have led me to med school or law school. But I wanted to be a teacher. I didn’t care about the money. I hate blood and I hate legalese. My career rewards are my students’ success. But this isn’t enough to draw everyone to teaching.

Since the certification methods are unlikely to change, instead, you must politically, and openly press your administrators to hire folks from the toughest colleges, with the highest scores on whatever test is most current for certification. Make it public. Make it embarrassing if you have to.  But make that happen.

Right now, pretty much all level colleges, from the “we take anyone with a pulse” community colleges to the private Ivy League offer teaching degrees. Only three locations in my state now offer law or medical degrees. You want “smarter” teachers, you have to change THAT!  Expect selectivity in education programs.

About your jealousy…It doesn’t matter how normal it is for your kids to transfer hero worship to us; even I, as a parent, want to clock a teacher now and then when I think she thinks she knows more about my kid than I do. I completely understand your discomfort. Once I became a mom, I learned how to communicate with parents of my students, for I suddenly related to what they fear. But build a positive relationship with your child’s teachers.

I can admit as a teacher, for parents who talk to me as a partner, not a servant, not an enemy, not a rival, somehow, I am psychologically unable to neglect their child. As a parent, I try hard to see my children’s teachers as part of my team and make sure they know it.

There is much you can do to improve education. Do something. Don’t just walk up to a teacher you have just met and unload your personal bitterness. We are not the enemy, no matter how much you hated your 11th grade calculus teacher.