Teacher Appreciation

Two weeks ago was Teacher's Appreciation Week and every day that week different businesses had different promotions going on for teachers. The corporate shitty pizza buffet chain (I guess that idea sounds good...or does it?) Cici's gave me free dinner one night and I remember thinking, "wow, not bad being a teacher." There was never a 'salesperson appreciation week,' because that's not a job people appreciate. It kind of validates my decision to do what I am doing this year. One time earlier this year I was late for a doctor's appointment and when they found out why they were so much more sympathetic because everyone knows or has a child or family member where someone is in school. If not, at some point they themselves were in school and remember how teachers changed their lives.

Even more recently I had a similar experience. It was funny asking Maya and then taking Maya to prom at 30 years old (actually the first time she been 'taken' to prom) for my school. It was a little bit awkward being there as the adult seeing my students all dressed up and grown up. Add to that the music (trap: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_music) and our whiteness and we kind of stayed on the sidelines and ended up not staying that long. However, we stayed just long enough that we got back to our car at the meter 3 minutes late where a parking attendant was writing us a ticket. The woman was sympathetic and swore she couldn't change it once it was written but we could try to appeal it. We both knew that wouldn't work (since we were still in the wrong) and I pleaded with her and told her I was a teacher coming from our school's prom. Once she heard those magic words I could see her face change, soften, and she told me to give her back the ticket. Just amazing.

We are in the home stretch now and my job has improved for the moment somewhat but it's been a long year. One of the longest I can remember for a long time. As the school year winds down I've started to think about my options for next year. What type of place do I want to be if I am going to continue trying this crazy thing out? How can I make this thing more sustainable? How much do I really enjoy it? What age and type of students do I want to teach? Can I tolerate another year of having my students fail at watching a movie for example? I showed Selma recently and told my students that all I wanted them to do was watch the movie (I've actually not shown any full movies this year besides most of Glory and they always complain about not watching enough movies). They didn't need to take notes or do a worksheet, and they would get a 100% on a class assignment for successfully watching a movie. Most of them couldn't actually do this and a few of them failed even. I took 10 points off for talking, being on their phones, listening to their headphones, sleeping, playing cards, or causing disruption. I can't imagine this being a scenario back when I was in high school but this is a different world.

Race & Teaching

I knew teaching US History as a white man to a 99% black population would be interesting this year. I am one of 4 white teachers at the school and none of my students have met any Jews from Vermont so there's been an interesting cultural exchange. Although I don't know really how much of it is an "exchange" as it's hard to get a sense of what impact my presence and identity has on them. Sometimes students will accuse me of being racist because I give them a bad grade and they really do play the race card all the time in ridiculous ways. I get the sense that they think the "White man" is out to get them. Sometimes it's funny and it creates opportunities for learning and sometimes I see a lot of truth (and sadness) in their perspective. Students are curious about my viewpoints and what I think about race and I am also interested to learn from them.

With Michael Brown and the other events of the year I have not shied away from race either. Some students have expressed boredom with slavery and are sick of talking about. I don't think I've taught them about slavery anymore than another US History teacher, after all it's a huge part of the story...and a shameful part and I don't shy away from this dark chapter of our history either.

Yesterday I did a lesson on Martin Luther King as this week we are talking about the civil rights movement. One student commented that she had never read MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and expressed a lot of amazement to me about it. This was touching. But then I had a real downer later in the afternoon when another student complained about having to read his "I have a dream speech" yet again one more time. And I'm sure they have read it before, although many of them would probably get questions about MLK on a standardized test wrong or forget other important details despite this being Atlanta. And I'm not going to skip arguably one of the most influential people ever in US History whether or not they've learned about MLK before or not.

I was telling this student that we should all appreciate what he did and how he impacted other movements and helped created a more fair society. She told me that I wasn't the one that should be appreciative because I'm white. I actually found this offensive but looking back on it maybe I was being naive. This is a very tough thing to think about. I have no idea what she's learned from her grandmother and the stories she's been told about racism and discrimination from her own family. I can't really understand that, and no, I'm not going to play the Jewish card. Jews have had it very good in America for a long time now. How can I possibly understand her perspective? Eventually I showed her the lyrics to Macklemore's "Same Love" which talks about oppression to one group being oppression to all groups and that discrimination to one group is the same as any discrimination so we should all care about it. But perhaps this was not the right approach...

That's what teaching is though - you get lots of different problems where you have to think of solutions very quickly and later on you wish you had spoken differently or taken a different approach. This day will stick with me.

The Teaching Blues

I'm breathing again. That's how it feels early April at Spring Break and our one week off. Not having a break in February like other schools was tough as all we had was MLK day and President's Day off in February since Xmas in December. It's weird to have a job where you just think about breaks and summer, and it's grueling to go too long without a day off. I mean maybe that's most most jobs that people hate, but for teachers it's less about not liking our jobs and more about just how exhausting the job can be. And this is coming from someone with a lot of energy who doesn't often 'slog' through life although I know I am still new. And then you have people like Success Academy (just written up today) and KIPP who preach needing more time in the classroom...

I've been exploring options for next year and went to a teacher job fair a month ago. Leaving my newly minted resumes on the table brilliantly in my house, I hit the road and arrived ready to shmooze feeling a bit naked without my credentials. A few interviewers were shocked when I told them I could email them a resume and told me if I was looking for any info. I could check their websites. What's the point of having a job fair where you just drop resumes when you can do the same thing from the comfort of your home? Working in sales I learned that paper is often just a crutch. A true professional has all of the info. in their head - you are the product and you just have to convince people of whatever it is they are interested in. Besides, isn't anyone interested in actually learning about each other anymore? And why is the discussion of fit often missing from job conversations? I didn't realize that my first employer Equal Exchange was more of an anomoly in this sense but after Fenix this is one of the most important things to me I am thinking about at this point in my life. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest fit) I would say I am currently at a 5. 

But the bigger question is what am I doing with my life? Maya is starting as an attending next year with Grady Hospital, the big public hospital in Atlanta, like every other hospital - operating under the Emory umbrella. She is way more set in her career than I am. Coming up on the finishing dash of my first year of teaching, I have no idea if I could do this as a career. At the moment my intuition suggests no. Out of anything I've ever put so much effort into I've never seen so few results (I bet I could get more results learning Japanese). Yes there is the intrinsic reward of helping young people and doing something that matters in the world, but it just doesn't pay enough for the amount of work required of a truly good teacher. I am no martyr and while I am passionate, sometimes I feel like I don't actually have enough of it in me for teaching in particular. It still seems just like one option among many of important work out there. And yes, I know it will get better, the first year's the hardest, yada yada yada, everybody keeps telling me that. And that's why I'm trying this again at least for another year. But what type of career asks you to endure a  bunch of shit for awhile until things get better? Most? Law and banking probably - except in those cases you maybe are more likely to work your way up a ladder. Besides becoming an administrator or principal, you don't start making a lot more money or getting a lot more opportunities necessarily as a veteran teacher...do you? 

One good thing about teaching is that people respect the profession, way more than sales at least. Everybody always has something positive to say and conversation is easy with new people. Sometimes there are perks too; I mean beyond the free gas station coffee for teachers in February or discounts for Hawks and Braves games that I've gotten. I was running to a doctor's office about 10 minutes late last month and they cut me slack because they knew I was a teacher and they knew how hard it is too leave school in the middle of the day. That felt good. 

On the other hand, earlier that day, one of my students finished an assignment early with 10 minutes left in class so I asked them to do another reading and with all of the teenage attitude she could give, she responded stubbornly, "I'm not gonna do anything more than what's required." With the amount of sleep I run on and the dozens of more serious problems I face every day, I just don't even always have the energy to try and fight that. Take one student, let's call him Frazer. He comes to class 30 minutes late with no excuse the other day, asks if he can go to the bathroom 2 minutes in, I say no (which is also by the way a weird position to be in; I have the power to tell another human being whether or not they can urinate?), he leaves anyways and I'm responsible for wherever he went and whatever he does now while I'm still trying to manage the 8 other things going on (it's the ridiculous amount of multi-tasking consistently that is exhausting). So I call his mother as I've done many times, since write ups very little consquences at my school and I can't figure out how to reach this one student, only to hear her say in disgust: "I'm so sick of this child" and hang up before hearing anything else. I guess that's better than being hung up on in a cold call during a sales conversation but inspiration can be hard to come by in any industry I guess.

It's much easier to say that you are someone with high expectations, you would never give up on a student, and you understand that everybody learns differently (as 100% of teachers'schools promote), and another to execute. One of my colleagues constantly reminds me: "We aren't here for the many, we are here for the few." That makes the challenge feel not quite as daunting, but it's a weird reality and much further from the pedagogical non-sense that dominates my certification program and permeates the political rhetoric around education that we hear about on the news constantly. It actually reminds me of time in Uganda when speaking to an international development professional who told me: "Impact a village? What? I challenge you to just impact one person this entire year. I mean truly change their life." Either that man was super jaded, or one of the very few real people around.

I'm still deciding. 

Some scenes from my whiteboard recently...I do not have a teacher's handwriting

Buckhead Blues

A lot of people that visit Atlanta come for a business meeting or some type of conference and will invariably end up in Buckhead, my least favorite part of Atlanta. Buckhead is notorious for awful traffic, being a high rise concrete jungle, having to valet parking unnecessarily, offering more strip clubs than you could possibly visit in a weekend, and being full of rich snobby people (it's where Justin Beiber moved). For some people, this is where they get their highly inaccurate opinion of Atlanta. From a simple Google search:

"Exceptional shopping and dining within a sophisticated urban atmosphere, Buckhead Atlanta offers distinctive retail stores, upscale restaurants and affordable..."

As much as I try to avoid the area and it takes me a good 25 minutes to get over there, for one reason or another I'll end up on that side of town from time to time. Last weekend with my Air BnB guest we had decided to check out Prohibition, one of Atlanta's premiere speakeasies. This was after I had gone to a "Jews and Drink" event at the Chabad In-Town earlier that week and listened to a talk from a mixologist from Bacardi who recommend the place.

Of course I did zero research and just went straight there which was problematic since I couldn't find "there." There's no sign just an old school phone booth with no instructions. Apparently you need a code to get in, adding to the supposed "secret-ness" or "coolness" of the place. A women then approached and put her finger on a small detector on the wall and all of the sudden an opening door is revealed (I am so not "in"). I was like "oh great we'll just follow her in." She actually turns around, looks at me, and without a word closes the door in my face. This was a just a normal customer I guess. The Air BnB guy and I just start laughing, it was too ridiculous. A few moments later a guy from the bar walks out and tells me my shoes aren't classy enough so we get turned around.

Nothing from this experience, especially again it being Buckhead, surprised me. But it did give me a good chuckle. A friend recently asked me if I missed the coffee business and after thinking about it for a bit I told him, "not much." There's a lot of pretentious ridiculousness in all of the foodie related industries. It's not an awful way to make money and don't me get wrong, I appreciate good food related things as much as the next guy, but for thinking I am doing something meaningful in life, even working in Fair Trade it could be lacking. Furthermore, while I'm all for liveable wages, $15 cocktails (probably $20 or more in NYC) seem just as overpriced as the $6 pour-over coffee.

I love these recent skits giving shit to mixology in particular:
1. Portlandia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLxC1bJmF_U
2. Fog & Smog (the Whole Foods Parking lot dudes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_id6i7OBj0
-> This one even has the lyrics: "What's the password...you enter through a phone booth" just like my experience!

And finally this Onion video about foodie chef Tim Allen is great.
A few unrelated pictures from the last few weeks:

My friend Marcos and I with Sherlock at Kennessaw Mountain enjoying a nice winter hike on President's day weekend.

Police "Boda Boda" in ATL. Terror alert I heard

2015

Happy New Years! 

Belated post from the Miami Phish New Years show.

A Jewel in Chattanooga

The Big News: Maya and I got engaged!

The story to be forever memorialized:

Back when I went to Vermont for Thanksgiving my parents had offered me my mother's engagement ring. This is a super fancy diamond ring, generous offer, and even up to that point I still was undecided about the whole marriage thing. I decided to take it and maybe the physical reality that it represented helped me make the decision. After I had the ring on me for awhile the whole thing felt more real to me. While I've never felt like I "had" to get married I haven't really been opposed to it either. This seemed like the right move at this point in my life.

So fast forward a few months I had just finished school and was gratefully starting Christmas break. I decided to surprise Maya and take her on a trip to Chattanooga. It's only 2 hours North of Atlanta and a great little gem of a city with a surprising amount of stuff to do.

We stayed in a very nice Air BnB apartment overlooking the Tennessee river. The place allowed dogs and had a hot tub, so it was pretty much perfect. Despite having a fever and feeling horrible we went for a hike on Lookout Mountain that was supposed to be the shorter route. We instead of course took the longer 5 mile hike, lost Sherlock for an hour, and went down what we thought was the wrong side of the mountain. We had met a strange but very friendly christian Southerner named Smith on the mountain earlier in the day. Just as we had turned around at the bottom to hike back up and down the mountain to find our car (supposedly the quickest way), we ran into Smith. Smith was our savior because he parked at the base near to us and volunteered to drive us back to the actual location of our car (about a mile down the road). As the sun set and temperatures decreased I actually felt like it was destiny.

As we walked and shared stories Smith commented on how we were a nice couple. I explained that we weren't married...yet. He responded with a "let me be the first to congratulate you." Wow. Great timing. 

So later that night as we lit the Hanukkah candles, I gave Maya a beautiful hand-made glass picture frame with a nice picture of us. On the back I wrote, "maybe Smith was on to something. Perhaps this would look better with a wedding photo here. Why don't you ask Sherlock?" While I am no expert on these matters, my understanding is that if a couple has a lovable sweet pooch they pretty much are obligated to use the dog in the engagement process. So Sherlock comes over with a scroll I've tucked into his collar. The note tells her to check her purse where I've hidden the box with the ring in it. I ended up proposing classical style on one knee on the porch outside our Air BnB overlooking the river. Maya trembled but did not hesitate to say yes! Wow. Feeling thrilled and glad to be done with that nerve wracking hopefully once-in-a-lifetime event.

The rest of the weekend was fun - we got massages and went to Rock City. I'd recommend Chattanooga to anyone who's interested in random getaways, railroads, outdoor stuff, or proposing marriage. 

Lucky guess sizing the ring

Returning to the familiar

              I always enjoy going back to Vermont. It's beautiful really any time of year and I think more and more about living there again some day; especially, since every year I return it seems a bit more distant. The divide between my high school acquaintances, friends, and favorite places widen. Walking on Church Street I half want to see old friends and half don't. This year for example, I saw Nick Obie, a perennially awkward encounter - more on that later.  There are other things about coming home that also feel more familiar. My parent’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” esque squabbles for example, are ridiculous, and I often wonder how common my experience is with my parents. 

               My dad was talking about this guy who made a table they were going to pick up and he was insisting to my mom:  "I want you to shake his hand when you see him." "Ok" my mother said in a rather nonchalant manner. My dad continued: "No, I mean, when you meet him you need to see his hand." My mom said "I don't wanna shake his hand," but he persisted, "there's a reason the company's called 'Big paws,' you’ve gotta see this." All I could do was shake my head.

               On our drive to Boston to meet the rest of the family for Thanksgiving my parents easily spent 15 minutes arguing about where to eat and get off the highway for dinner. As my mom fumbled with the Road Ahead app and my dad complained about every option she mentioned, we got further and further from West Lebanon (the "big" rest stop). My dad kept complaining about how we should have stopped there and how, as he originally suggested, we should have gone to “Angelinos.” "It would have so much quicker and right off the highway." "Dad," I tell him, "it's D'angelos" to which he repeated, "What's the name of it? It's not Angelinos?"  He then goes off on this story of the time he called up Angelinos because he was disappointed with his sandwich. "You have to be careful at Angelinos, if you ask for a Philly cheese steak sandwich they don't put anything on it. I called them up, just said there's nothing in there. And the manager just told me that's their Philly steak sandwich. I had to tell them typically there's mushrooms and peppers."  

               This time around Vermont I also had an awkward encounter with an old high school acquaintance: Nick Obie. Every time I see this guy, which isn't very often (maybe once every other year) it's awkward. Which is better than it used to be when I actually held a grudge against him. The awkwardness stems from a story that happened over 5 years ago that Nick rightfully still feels bad about and for which he continues to apologize every time I see him.

               It was the winter after I'd unfortunately landed back home with not much of a life after I graduated from college. My parents were heading out for the weekend and my dad jokingly said to me like he used to in high school: "don't throw any parties," and then added, "not that you could anyways since you don't really have friends around here anymore." I actually was angered by this, what I felt was a misplaced joke, and told my friends that I was going to show him and prove him wrong. I would throw a party just to spite him.   The funny part was that in the end he was right. I think I maybe had 8-10 people over and one of them, Nick, was more a friend of a friend that I did not invite (despite what you may say Ryan).

               Early on in the night, maybe around 10 pm he disappeared and after shortly confirming that he wasn't hooking up with one of the two girls there (that would have been surprising anyways) we learned he was in the downstairs bathroom. I asked if he was ok; after all I only observed him drink one or two beers. He replied that he was fine and that he'd be out in a minute. An hour later he was still there. I mistakenly ended up going to bed forgetting about him. The next morning he was gone but with a trace: Correction- a large trace.  The porcelain toilet seat was somehow chipped, the toilet paper holder was torn out of the wall with the actual bar itself missing, and bloodstains were spattered around the walls of the bathroom.

               To this idea I have no idea what happened in there. None of it makes sense. Obie was not answering his phone and no one else knew what happened either. He did actually go by the house supposedly with his dad afterwards while I was gone but determined he couldn't fix it and ran away, again ignoring my communications.   When my parents came home I had no way to explain it. My dad was furious and demanded to see Nick but of course that was impossible.   I spent so much time and energy trying to track this guy down to no avail. I demanded compensation (it was actually several hundred dollars worth of repairs because the whole wall had to be redone) and couldn't believe I had to take the blame for him. 

               I ran into him finally about 6-8 months later and he was very apologetic and ashamed. He actually wanted me to punch him in the face. I have to admit it was tempting but I knew it wouldn't solve anything. Honestly, he's kind of a sad figure.  Over 5 years later he is still ashamed and embarrassed when we unexpectedly see each other but that’s how Burlington is, it’s a small town.

...Home is where the heart is

Herb's 2014 garden pride: Giant squash to be brought to the family Thanksgiving in the North Shore

Our annual trip to Costco to buy a bunch of things I don't need at great prices

Ian's 30th Birthday, out in Burlington. How did his little sister become 21?