Valentines 2023

 A video for Maya

2nd Semester 2023

Hard to believe another year has gone by. I am hoping to get back to journaling again this year although I don't suppose it will be much easier now that I've fallen out of the habit. At any given time it feels like I have a never-ending-to-do list and I'm always trying to just get to bed before 11. Tonight was a rough night trying to change the car battery. I doubt it will be the fix but I feel good that I am at least trying. We are changing the water in the hot tub, which has been a few or two now project. We also tried to change the water filter below the house but once again couldn't get that off. It feels pretty frustrating to be dealing with the feeling of incompetency all the time but I have to keep trying when it comes to these things.

Work wise things are going alright. I don't love teaching but I don't mind it either. I feel like I am stuck in time at this point, watching my kids get older, but I do enjoy the parenting. At least when I am not too tired and don't distract myself by playing game on my phone. 

Florida was great this year. Actually don't feel bad about returning there year after year to visit my folks and to spend some time in the warmth. 

I start my Georgia Tech. Masters in language this week which I am pretty excited about but have some fears about what I'll actually get out of the program.

My New Years resolution's this year are to stretch, go to bed earlier, read (a little), have more compassion for myself (and for others), and to hopefully get abroad again (or to a bigger trip like Hawaii) this year.

It's late, I've run out of time, but nice to do a little bit of writing again.

Sincerely,

Me

Getting "after it"

My last post here was back in October of 2019. Hard to believe that's over two years ago at this point and has my life has come a bit of a blur. I never realized how having kids would change my perception of time so wildly. I've thought about posting here so many times during the pandemic and just struggled to find the motivation to do it.

I've decided to take the pressure off myself and just write. It doesn't matter how much or for how long but to just write. The pandemic has been hard for everyone. I feel pretty trapped in my routines these days. I watch too much TV (even right now as I type this), but again something is better than nothing? 

Having kids has changed my perspective in so many countless ways. I have a harder time focusing on my own life, which.I suppose is natural, but starting to get grays and feeling there's never enough time is a more recent phenomenon. When I have time I feel like I need to work on school work, in a career that I feel increasingly sure I am ready to leave. But I can't not put significant effort into my work, even when I am not all that effective, which is sad, and again, tied to my feeling of being trapped in my habits.

I've seen some amazing developments of both of my children and that's been fun to watch. The changes happen slowly on a day to a day basis but then suddenly when they make a leap like potty training for Misha and biking more recently for Helena. I get enjoyment out of parenting, but parenting 100% of the time with repeated quarantines has been less enjoyable. I can't imagine being a stay at-home parent and I am working on learning to enjoy my children more of the time. They are exhausting and I've come to grips with the fact that this is not the time in my life to do certain things. It is the time to focus on my kids and not take on volunteer opportunities or leadership roles at work. 

I've just started a new tennis season and I really am feeling unsure about it this time. I love coaching but it's just so much work and now I will be paying for it with figuring out childcare and transportation from aftercare and everything else. The biggest decisions are yet to come. Getting into ACS (or not) would change a lot of my future and whether or not I need to stay at Decatur to keep Helena in the school system. It's been a huge benefit that I suppose I knew I would get taking the job but somehow it still surprised me. But what I can't decide is whether saying two more years after this one is worth it to get TRS in GA.

I still yearn to live abroad and to change things up. When I had the opportunity to (almost) work at Padsplit I was really excited. Despite the lateral movement salary and position wise it was something new, different. I miss that feeling of excitement and made spend a lot of time this summer looking for new work. Going on vacation to the Virgin Islands for Xmas break recently felt more like a "trip" and less like a vacation. There are so many realities of traveling with kids that make things challenging. 

I'll try to reflect some more shortly on why I am not as sure about teaching (although I don't know that I was ever sure about it) and what else has changed since I last wrote shortly. 

Atlanta, Fall 2019 retrospective

Hard to believe that the last time I posted was the beginning of the summer. Back then I had so many hopes and aspirations and the summer felt too short to do hardly anything at all. But I came back to a surprisingly different Decatur. It's been a much better year with much more enjoyable student and classes. Teaching has been fine this year although I don't know if it's changed my mind about teaching as a career.

Nevertheless, looking back at my previous post from June here are a few reactions off the bat:
*I was right about the names and numbers comment - Misha is here now and while he had a few easier earlier days, it's definitely been harder having a second child. You have to be incredibly selfless to be a good parent and at least while I am in this newborn black hole, I can't imagine having more children right now. Everyone is tired in the house.

*Summer - It was a lot of fun. We ended up (still) traveling quite a bit. I forgot (or maybe just never got around to it) about posting some photos and comments about our summer travels so I will retroactively do that with my next post.

*Russian - I did work on it some but not as much I would have liked. I was back on the Duolingo train but as I advanced I got more and more frustrated with the emphasis on exact spelling and long, random sentences that didn't seem like everyday conversation type phrases. I will keep working on my Russian during future vacations but will switch to Babel or perhaps something I pay for. I also definitely did not put in 15 min.-30 min./day.

*Reading - While I read the French book I needed to read for school and a few Atlantic magazines, I didn't even catch up on the latter. 1 hour a day from two summers back seems crazy with a toddler around and when Helena wasn't with me was when I wanted to go out, play golf, tennis, or hang with friends. I read a tiny amount but no progress on the Poison Wood Bible. I did start "How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk" after visiting Tobin in San Fran. and slowly making my way through it. Helena is a very difficult age for following directions and cooperating with us so this has been a little bit helpful.

*Running - exercise in general has really fallen off the map. Walking the dog is nice, running is not so fun, and I barely do it at all now if I am being honest with myself. I would like do more but not sure when as I don't have a lot of downtime and it's not very enjoyable.

*T.V. - So there's a realistic goal and the explanation in some part, for why my reading has gone out the window from what it used to be. I watched the new, and disappointing, Black Mirror Season, and more recently finished True Detective Season #3 (slow but pretty good), and Atlanta Season #2 (good, but not as good as the first season).

*Helena time -did a fair number of activities on my wish list there so that was good. Helena continued getting into gymnastics and developing into an expert young climber and a very solid tricyclist now too. Languages have been a natural development of course and even though she mostly speaks in English, she definitely understands most French and Russian. It was fun going to Russian singing class a few weeks ago and weird. Still haven't gotten the hang of tennis yet, need to work on that some more as recently I've been hammering away with colors and not sure why it's been so hard for her to get that.

*House stuff- got through some but not all of the prep. work, so much more to do and now with two houses, ugh. It's been nice moving into a bigger, nicer house but it is honestly at times too big, even with our expanded family of 4. I think part of it might just be buyers' remorse.

*Therapy -This was a fail. I did the research and got some options to do some free trials but no one looked great and didn't know how to decide so didn't decide anything at all.

*2 ideas to research - another fail. Just couldn't find the time or maybe didn't prioritize it but it seems like I underestimated just how much time the house move would take. Every summer for the past few it seems like there's been some big purchase that occupies more of my time than I would have thought.

*School prep. - I did use some of the summer for it and I am glad I did. It's funny though how you can never do enough. Sooner or later you end up in the grind and it's once again a slog to get through all of my school work and still try to be present with my family, especially Helena now.

Overall I am doing ok, just tired so much of the time. I guess that's normal with a newborn and it's been interesting remembering everything from 2.5 years ago with Helena. It's surprising how quickly we forgot things. I guess that's why I have a blog, to remember more.

Signing off for now and until next time.
AK

Yom Kippur hike with Shana

Alta Men's Champions B5 Spring/Summer? 2019

Visiting the zoo near Jonah's house

Visit to Jonah's house

Helena and her cousin Abel 

New elephant exhibit at the Atlanta zoo

Maya and I at friend's birthday party (Hutto's tailgate at the Starlight Theater in late August/September?)

Misha Dov Kessel comes to the world, Sept 20, 2019

A Laborious story 

Mom and dad visit ATL to meet Misha

Field trip to GA State

Leaving Grady with a Grady Baby

Helena's new brother 

Halloween Decorations a few weeks before Halloween at the new house

David Leiberman's wedding one year ago

The band practicing on the new sweet ass screened-in porch:

https://youtu.be/WO9_1rpaElE

Summer 2019

Summer has finally arrived after another slog through the school year. As usual the finish was anti-climatic and it's been a little weird switching to a much slower speed of life. For the first time ever being a teacher, I did not want to leave the country and fly around the world this summer as I usually do. While I love traveling and teaching offers great opportunity, I've reached a point career wise where I need to do some reflecting. This is not easy or fun work but I know it's important; especially, at this crossroads in my life. We bought a new house last month and will be moving in late July (that's part of the answer of what I'll be doing this summer) and Maya is pregnant with #2 due in September so we've got some major life events ahead and approaching the period of less time to take names and numbers.

Most summers, I don't have much to show for my time off. Maybe that's ok as teachers work hard enough they should get to relax and enjoy themselves. Also, I am in the fortunate situation of being in a family with two income earners and comfortable financial situation. But sometimes I wish I was better at creating, building, and finishing tangible projects.

So on to the question of the day-  what to do? The reality is that we are still traveling for two weeks this summer in addition to two weekend road trips to N.C. Decatur's summer is at least one week shorter than other GA schools because of all of the breaks during the year. The house purchase entails giant check-lists of things to do and Helena is only in daycare 3 out of 5 days a week and only in June. I also have a show for the band to prep. for and a multi-day IB training in July. If I set my expectations too high I will probably just be disappointed so I'll be realistic while also thinking about what I want to do with my time beyond relaxing. I used last summer's wish list (in blue italics) as a guide here as well as comparison of what I might do differently. Who knows, this could be one of my last teacher summers. 8 out of the list of 10 are the same once again with 2 that I switched out.

Everyday stuff:
1. Learn (practice) Russian - goal -15-30 minutes/day
Russian - starting Sunday June 7th- goal - 30 min/week (2-3 days x 10-15 min. each)

2. READ - 1 hour a day; Atlantic magazine catch up from the year and Childhood development books and if I can get around to it since it's been ages, an actual book. I'd also like to find, buy, and read some French children's storybooks.
Continue to read and catch up on old Atlantics (at least 2, maybe 3? in June), read "Le Nouvel Houdini" in July, and if time- continue (finally) the Poisonwood Bible

3. House Exercise w/baby - goal 15 min./day. Time to trim some of that stomach fat
Run once a week for at least 20-30 min.

4. Silicon Valley - 1 episode/day. Heard it's a great series. Looking forward to it.
Watch new Black Mirror (season 5), finish True Detective Season #3 w/Maya, if time-start Atlanta season #2.

5. Helena play time - tummy time, walks with Sherlock (not sure if I can count this here), conversations, swim lessons, and to be determined with the help of #2 reading and lots of Youtube videos.
Gymnastics once/week, teach Helena how to bike, how to hold and connect tennis racket to ball, and continue working on speaking (all languages).

Less frequently:
6. House projects - Need to research new appliance machines, fix fence, move/make new garden, outdoor shower (probably too ambitious with this last one).
Work on prepping old house for sale eventually - get through at least 20 items on big check-list.

7. School projects - French newsletter, Quebec and France exchanges, prep. for next year stuff, tennis tourney research
Therapy - research ppl, try three sessions with one of them. Work towards earning more well-being points if I want to use that $$ to continue with it. Find two ongoing strategies for improving mental health.

8. New tennis rackets/Keyboard research and purchase
Choose 2 promising business ideas, research, and learn more about those industries

9. Hike - Once a week
Would change this to hike or visit new playground with Helena

10. Ongoing house maintenance - dog walking, shopping, cooking, dishes, Helena blog, being a good husband and helping Maya, cleaning, laundry, etc.
All of these things continued + try to learn more about business school, studying for GMAT's, or auditing a class

**Plan for next school year eventually - I will have three preps. with new curriculum next year which is scary. I probably should use some of my summer for this, especially while Helena is still in daycare this month.

Approaching two

It’s hard to be believe it’s almost been two years since Helena was born. We've enjoyed all of it for different reasons but would say it’s become more fun and interesting in the past year. It’s also been harder at times as Helena has entered "toddlerdom" for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to) temper tantrums, incredibly stubbornness and unwillingness to cooperate, increased danger with walking and climbing everywhere, smacking us in the face randomly, and social dynamics in and outside of her daycare class. Thankfully I fundamentally believe that Helena is a good child with a good kind heart. Yeah things could change, but I think she has a pretty good foundation and that she’ll turn out alright based on what I’m seeing so far. 

Helena has been going through a hitting phase recently. After she hits us, sometimes quite hard, and in the face, she says “sowy” in the cutest little voice you’ve ever heard and then say’s hug and it really is sweet. But “why can’t you just do the hug part without the hitting” we ask? Toddlers are complicated I guess is the short of it and other parents have talked a lot about the “phases” to us. We've read some articles also that say it's about security and being scared...huh, strange.

A big challenge of raising Helena has been getting on the same page with Maya. The biggest test of a marriage, at least for us so far, has been having a child. There’s many facets of it; agreeing to values and how we want to raise her, safety, bedtime, and all sorts of other standards, and agreeing on who does what and being comfortable with each other’s roles. Figuring out the balance of time spent taking care of our child vs freedom to still pursue and enjoy our individual lives based on our own interests is really hard. On that front I definitely get out more and find that most of my guy dad friends have the same sort of set up and we all deal with resentment and unhappy wives from time to time. Between band (and jamming with neighbors), sports, coaching, school, yelp, and other interests, I have to get better at saying no. 

But having a child means sacrificing certain things to some degree and if it’s annoying to have to text your girlfriend every time you want to stay out a half an hour later to you then fatherhood may not be right for you. I’ve learned that giving up doing something I want to do in favor of spending more time with Helena can be very rewarding and not always so sad. Still, it’s an ongoing daily practice to figure out this balance and not abandon my own life interests and pursuits.

But of course all of this has come with many positive new life changes too not related to sacrifice. Despite not being able to choose when I want to be dad or not, most of the time I spend with Helena is enjoyable and often fun; especially when we are doing activities together. Bad weather days with nothing on the schedule can be long and challenging. I can’t tell if Helena has the same cabin fever that I have or if it’s all toddlers. In thinking about the former, we’ve brought her everywhere with us often whenever we want and she’s adjusted quite flexibility with her nap/bed times and eating schedule. 

Helena continues to take it all in time and thrive from all of her new experiences. She is lucky and I'm beginning to see what intergenerational privilege and opportunity looks like from a 1st hand perspective. It's also fun to re-live those 1st experiences with them, which is something many parents told me before I had her.

Toddlers are innately hilarious and way more interesting than any other human you will ever observe. Helena thinks of things we would never try being so trained by life’s daily routines. She experiments with combinations of foods, caps for containers on other items, shoes on her hands, and brushing her teeth with a razor (less good, we had to stop that one), to dipping just about any food in her milk. 

Toddlers can also be ridiculously sweet and non-judgemental in a way that is refreshing and reminds us all of our common humanity. They will play with anyone anytime and will laugh just like anybody would at a real loud great sounding fart. I know this sounds corny and trite, and maybe it is, but experiencing it all so up front and personally is different and wonderful and I guess, in part, why people have kids.  

Communicating with some one who doesn’t quite have the language yet (even through gestures- we never really tried to teach Helena sign language...maybe with the next one) is also something to get used to. I believe the two year old language explosion has also begun as she begins to parrot us more and more (in whatever language we are speaking) surprise us unprompted with multiple word short sentences that we’ve never heard before. She is always listening and observing even if we don't think she is. When we were recently robbed by our air Bnb guests Helena saw that I was down and kept saying “sawee papa.” This small thing helped me remember about everything I had and what I didn’t lose and to keep things in perspective. When you think about what’s important in life, and why you have kids in the first place, it makes the $3000 loss of electronics and other stuff a little more palatable. I’ll try to look back on this post and remember this when Helena is being a big pain in the a*#.

New school similar story. Life check-ins

After one year at Hapeville, three at Dunwoody, and many hours of frustrations dealing with Atlanta traffic, I decided to apply for one job opening at a nearby high school. Decatur is one of just a few decent public schools in Atlanta and while I’m open to working at different types of schools, my motivation (as well as my own upbringing) has been in the public sector. This was the only school I applied to (perfect opening) and I once again was lucky (or skilled?) enough to make the change I wanted happen. 

Switching to a school closer to home has been good in many ways. In some other ways it’s been very hard but difficult to pinpoint why except that maybe I was expecting for things to be more different. Teaching is teaching though and mostly my life is not drastically different (after all I went from one “DHS” to another) and I feel like my teaching days could be numbered. I have the passion and motivation to do a pretty good job still day-in day-out w/out shooting for teacher of the year or creating a new French exchange program.

First I’ll start with the pros. Besides going from 1.5 hour of commuting most days to 45 min being awesome, I am working in a much smaller school district now. A lot of the check list type things I have to do I understand better and don’t feel as many frustrations with a county system that doesn’t have to apply a one size fits all as we are the “City schools” of Decatur and not Dekalb County. On the other hand, there is surprisingly still a lot of red tape for things like student technology use, fundraising for a club, doing a field trip or having a guest speaker, or getting a “black-out” day off. I had to watch some school safety videos over the Winter break that were pretty much a waste of time. Still, mostly we don’t have do quite as many useless trainings and/or grading protocols we don’t agree with. 

My class sizes are also smaller and we have something called learning connections - a 45 minute block once a week to do whatever we choose to do with students (my Fall semester one was board games and I really enjoyed it). Everybody needs a break like this in the school week, it’s smart, and it’s a chance to interact with students in a very different way that is much less explicitly pedagogical. Finally, the teaching support at Decatur is unlike anything I experienced at Dunwoody with real feedback and suggestions for improvement and more support staff (although I don’t always feel like they are that useful). Languages at Decatur, like at Dunwoody (except for Spanish), are not co-taught whether you have 1 special ed. student or 8.

Cons: Most of all, I miss my department and department chair who was one of the best “bosses” I’ve ever had. My current group of co-workers are nice but the department is split and there are no personalities like I had with the guys at Dunwoody. While it may just be a case of being newer and getting to know my colleagues more, I can’t see myself coming as close to the (mostly) ladies in my department as I did with the guys back at Dunwoody. We also have a riff between two of the different groups of ladies and as such the department doesn’t feel very cohesive. There are two German teacher guys but not sure how well I connect there. Beyond coworkers I am still getting used to the IB diploma. The diploma itself is in quite a bit of transition so it’s also hard to judge but it doesn’t feel that much more meaningful or challenging than the accelerated/gifted into AP paths I saw at Dunwoody. It look a minute to get used to using the rubrics, understanding the systems, and I still don’t properly get all of it. I wish I had been more properly trained in it but I am told that next summer I will.

I gave up a couple of k in salary from Dunwoody and I think I preferred the block schedule. The French program is also less existant at Decatur as there is no French club or exchange with a partner high school in France. Yes I could help build these things but not sure I have the energy given what it would mean for Helena and the family. Also, applying for a grant for a language conference at Decatur only to be told after doing all the work that they didn’t have grants for things like that was depressing. None of my colleagues seem to be plugged in or engaged in the broader language teaching community. We also don’t have much cohesion in our curriculum or teaching methods across teachers or languages.

I also miss many of the Dunwoody kids. It could be this is similar to the coworkers thing and it will just take time to forge some of the nice relationships which I had at Dunwoody. The students come from different populations and politically speaking Decatur is much more in line with my way of thinking. Overall though, I think some of the disrespectful kids at Decatur could be worse than what I had at Dunwoody. The lack of care and cooperation and feeling of a few of my students doing the exact opposite of what I frequently ask of them is exhausting. Watching students put their head down and refusing to even respond when I ask them if they are ok is sad and hard to manage. Could their lives really be that bad and incomprehensible to me to justify their behavior? Or am I so far off that I can’t even guess what’s going on?

As always, I try not to take it personally but there have been several emotionally taxing days at Decatur this Fall/Winter. By the time we got to Winter Break everybody was ready for a it. And unlike Dunwoody, Decatur has a year-long rather than semester schedule so although it will be easier coming back, I’ll resume all over again with the same challenges in my first semester. I’ll of course try to implement some changes; namely with the ongoing cell phone challenge and lack of effort/motivation from an incredibly large group of students. I’m pretty pessimistic though unfortunately about things really improving and while my day-in day-out experience is ok, I’m not super excited about my job. All of this may be less of a critique of Decatur and the move I made, despite the length of the cons in this entry vs. the pros, and more of a reflection of where I am at in my 5th year of teaching. 

I often don’t feel like I am having much of an impact with my work and this is one of my primary motivating “get up in the morning” factors. I know many teachers feel this way and the long-term effects are hard to see. I know the work is important and worthwhile, but at least as far as teaching French goes, I don’t know that this is the right time of a young person’s life to do it when they lack motivation or belief that it’s even possible to do. I sometimes wish it was an elective course but the language enthusiast in me also recognizes the inherent value of learning a language, whether or not students ever end up using it. On the other hand, I am not proud of how many students pass my classes having such little proficiency in the language (frankly it can be embarrassing) and I never know how much of it is a reflection of me and my teaching vs. the inherent difficulty in the task.

Teaching anything is hard, but learning a language in a non-immersive environment feels unattainable for students outside of the top third of a class. And I do think they forget about what they learn fairly quickly as evidenced by students I meet in the hall a year or so after they take a class with me not being able to say or understand anything in French outside of “bonjour, ça va?” I know this is not really a fair measure of anything since I don’t remember anything myself from high school. On the other hand, one of my motivations behind teaching a language is that it’s practical and I don’t have to explain why students are learning something most days.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching over the last several months and started career counseling towards the end of last summer. The progress has been slow but existant. In starting on this path of reflection and planning I’ve realized that teaching is a great fit for me and my personality and life goals in many ways. Simultaneously, the more I’ve thought about it the less excited I feel about continuing down this path namely for the reason cited previously - I feel like I could have more impact using my French in other ways or just in general not even necessarily doing something related to education or language. I still like the idea of building something and learning about something completely different in a different industry. Going back to school is another serious consideration as I think there could be a lot to be gained with an advanced degree. But these ramblings suffice for a pre-New Year reflection and I hope to keep up on this blog a little better in the next few months.