Thank you, President Hinckley. I always knew I liked you.

"To you women of today, who are old or young,

may I suggest that you write,

that you keep journals,

that you express your thoughts on paper.

Writing is a great discipline. It is a tremendous education effort. It will assist you in various ways,

and you will bless the lives of many--

now and in the years to come,

as you put on paper some of your experiences

and some of your musings."
- Gordon B. Hinckley

Love/Hate

There are exactly 3 days left of the school year--2 of which are filled with activities and yearbook signing. I love this time of year--the anticipation of a summer so close, the swimming pools opening their vibrant blue eyes, the book pile stacked beside my bed just waiting for me to dive in, emerging only for food and air. The instant knowledge that enters my mind as the alarm goes off: I only have X more times to consciously do this hour for a long while.

I also hate this time of year. It is all the bidding farewell business I loathe, the end of things. It is reading Oh, the Places You'll Go! with each class--telling them what a great year we've had together--even the nuisance-y kids will be missed. A little.

Even the books we finish in the final week feel so...final. Young Elie Wiesel losing his father in the last section of Night with my 10th graders. Finishing Cold Mountain, again. I "read" it each year with my AP students after their big exam. This year I read it again thoroughly. I've always felt slightly saddened after it is over. But long after I read the last chapters last night, it kept me awake, haunted me. I simply couldn't sleep. I don't know if it is Frazier's exquisite prose. That final scene (prior to the epilogue):

He drifted in and out and dreamed a bright dream of a home. It had a coldwater spring rising out of rock, black dirt fields, old trees. In his dream the year seemed to be happening all at one time, all the seasons blending together. Apple trees hanging heavy with fruit but yet unaccountably blossoming, ice rimming the spring, okra plants blooming yellow and maroon, maple leaves red as october, corn tops tasseling, a stuffed chair pulled up to the glowing parlor hearth, pumpkins shining in the fields, laurels blooming on the hillsides, ditch banks full of orange jewelweed, white blossoms on dogwood, purple on redbud. Everything coming around at once. And there were white oaks, and a great number of crows, or at least the spirits of crows, dancing and singing in the upper limbs. There was something he wanted to say.

An observer situated up on the brow of the ridge would have looked down on a still, distant tableau in the winter woods. A creek, remnant of snow. A wooded glade, secluded from the generality of mankind. A pair of lovers. The man reclined with his head in the woman's lap. She, looking down into his eyes, smoothing back the hair from his brow. He, reaching an arm awkwardly around to hold her at the soft part of her hip. Both touching each other with great intimacy. A scene of such quiet and peace that the observer on the ridge could avouch to it later in such a way as might lead those of glad temperaments to imagine some conceivable history where long decades of happy union stretched before the two on the ground.

It is perfect and amazing, isn't it?

But something about the end of the year gives me mixed feelings. Joy, celebration, and a slight bit of melancholia. Maybe it is the one time of year where I completely acknowledge to myself that yes, I do in fact like these kids, my job more than what I sometimes fear in the middle of the year.

Rising Up

"The greatest waste

in the world is the

difference between

what we are and

what we could become."

~ Ben Herbster

This post, if I'm honest, feels incomplete even as I begin it. Because it sort of is. I'm not sure all of what I want to say or how I want to say it. I fear it will all come out wrong or that it will reveal too much or, well, who knows. It is deeply personal. It reveals my naivete, my-head-in-the-clouds, my weakness. So I want to be clear.

I’ve been thinking lately about potential. About our ability to rise up to that which is within us, but, more often, our tendency to fritter it away with notions that we cannot achieve much. I’m thinking about this for many reasons: the insanely good writer/student I have who, sadly, prefers the football field and friends to honing his talent on the page, for one. I sat him down today and talked to him about it. I thought he should know just how good he could be at this. But he has to want it; he has to do it.

And I think that is the part that is difficult. Reach your potential--this trite little phrase repeated often. But that whole reaching bit means engaging and working and striving and acting and believing. And that alone can be daunting. Life can delay and distract us from what we ultimately want. And then that whole believing bit comes into play. And...

And here is the truth of things: I am good at a few things and know it. And because of that knowledge, I apply myself to a point. I try to excel (in varying degrees of the word try). Everything else feels as though it were a possibility. And potential or no, it feels like too much.

But perhaps I am being too vague?

I am. I know.

So let me try and begin again. I feel as though I have the potential to be a really good teacher or a really good writer or a really good fill-in-the-blank, but I sometimes fall short. For whatever reason. And it is frustrating and sad to me that I want so very many things for myself that the desires seem to cancel each other out.

My biggest fear is living a life of mediocrity--survival in place of purpose and intent. Laziness or insecurity in place of confidence and dedication.

Fear it though I might, sometimes I drift into the mediocre. I get glimpses of that potential and wonder why I'm not always there, performing at that level in my own life. I wonder when it is that I will ease into the intended shape of myself, as bread rising up.

Image found here.

From the Desk of a Self-Admitted Worry Wart: A Gratuitously Narcissistic Post

Blogging should never be a hassle, but rather, a joy. Or something along those lines. Unfortunately, as with most things in my life, it has simply become another cause for anxiety. Yes, I need help. Possibly a xanax.

Irrational though it may be, lately my thoughts run along these lines while I'm checking your blog: "Oh no! I haven't blogged anything in a while and, and, and..."

And what? I mean, really? It isn't like the blog-mafia is going to rip my firstborn out of my hands the moment s/he is born.

Nothing. Will. Happen.

But the truth is, I am an anxious being. I've come to accept this fact about myself. I'm realizing that I've always worried. In first grade I stressed about poor Brandon What's-his-face in my class. I vividly recall having an emotional breakdown to my mother about the kid who liberally picked his nose for the world to see: "But Mom," I'd wailed, "I pick my nose too. I just don't do it in front of other people."

I should have known then.

I stress. A lot. Don't mind me. I'm the one in the corner breathing into a paper bag.

But, for the purpose of alleviating some stress and possibly so I can say I posted, I'm being self indulgent and fessing up to my anxious ways.

Here you have it. The "Lucky" 21 things I commonly stress about (in no particular order):

1. Work
2. Going to the gym
3. Skipping the gym
4. Driving behind grandma's that go 10 below but you can't seem to get past them (yep, not worth it, but I stress nonetheless)
5. Being late (which I usually am)
6. Blogging
7. Work
8. Not getting enough sleep
9. Mondays
10. Money
11. Work
12. Family
13. Friends
14. Students
15. Strangers (such as people broken down on the side of the road)
16. Work
17. Unwanted tasks on the to do list (that keep re-appearing because procrastination settles in)
18. Looming dates and appointments
19. Blood work
20. Car drama
21. The possibility of a catastrophic/maiming event striking anyone at any minute (blame my roommate for working the ER's trauma bays at our neighborhood hospital)

I'm a mess, people. I even worry a little bit that some of you aren't comfortable with my admission.

So be honest, what do you stress over? And how do you cope?

*She is too fond of books, and it has addled her brain.

This week I sat down to read. And read. And read.

Finally.

I finished Lahiri's The Namesake today. It is still with me, sifting in. I love when books do this, drip and then diffuse throughout the whole of me. Like a single drop of color in clear water, my hue is forever changed, if only slightly.

I find it impossible to describe this sensation to those who aren't "book people." My students, for instance, have already separated themselves into book people and, well, everyone else. Some might jump ship later in life. Perhaps. But I think this visceral, emotional connection to books forms early. For me, it isn't plot alone that draws me. It isn't the want of entertainment. It is the characters I live with, embody, for a time. It is the prose (oh, the prose), the layers and motifs and words upon words upon words. The details. It is the ideas that lend themselves to human observation, to truths. It is the fact that whenever I see a copy of Jane Eyre I grow nostalgic for that first summer I learned what books were capable of--that summer after 8th grade I spent wandering the moors of England, fearing and needing Mr. Rochester at once. It is that my mind can still hear the sound of the sliding automatic doors, can still feel the warm summer air stirring with the cool air conditioning of the Weber County Library of my childhood. It is that this memory is still one of my favorite sensations.

It does not seem ridiculous or shameful or odd or pitiful to me that some of my life's happiest moments are those in which I fell just a little more in love with books and all they offer. The spines of books along my bookshelves each tell their own story, yes, but also relate a narrative of where I've been--each book came to me at what was so often the perfect moment in my life. Some books are a ritual, repeated year after year.

I recently read this article with my AP students and had them write their own essays about what they believe to be "The Art of Reading." As for me, well, I knew the reason I have a post card of Toni Morrison in all her wisdom posted on the bulletin board directly above my office desk. This essay only confirmed it: I connect with her. She is one of the book people.

I am aching for the year to end, for summer to arrive. To lounge about, sinking into book after book after book.

In the meantime, you should really pick up this book.



And The Interpreter of Maladies if you are a fan of short stories.

Oh, and I must thank my fellow book people who recommended Lahiri in the first place.

*(And thank you, Louisa May Alcott, for my title.)

Things that Must Go: Scapegoating Public Schools

The Issue: Childhood obesity has reached such a crisis that it is a threat to national security.

The Reason: Potential recruits don't meet the strict physical requirements for military service.

The Solution: Fix the school lunch system?

I heard about this on the news, then read this article about it. Honestly, I am incensed. Is it unacceptable that 27% of young Americans are obese? Absolutely. Are school lunches (and breakfasts for that matter) sub-par? Why else do you think I brown bag it each day? What frightens me here is that, once again, society's ills are solely depicted as the schools' responsibility.

I call foul.

We educators are in the business of educating. That is why I became an educator--to teach. However, schools as a whole have been assigned the task of playing band-aid to societal issues better suited for surgery. If there is one thing I've learned about the public's attitude toward education it is this: it is ALWAYS our fault. Whatever it is, we did it. Blame us. Sorry 'bout that.

But I can't help but wonder: why not tackle the entirely corrupt and completely disgusting system of mass-produced "food" companies? What about city governments that allow for a fast food joint on every corner in the lowest socio-economic neighborhoods? And whatcha gonna do about those who believe good parenting is as simple as sitting their child in front of the nearest video game console?

I'm sure part of school scapegoating originates because government agencies can ask favors of other government agencies. And there is some truth here--school lunch isn't anything to write home about. Furthermore, when you see what is being served it becomes a bit saddening that those students on free and reduced lunch in my neck of the woods eat two of their daily meals in the cafeteria--Monday through Friday. I completely support that school lunches should be addressed as a part of the solution to this epidemic obesity. But something tells me that school lunch is where this big government solution for obesity ends.

The recipe is simple: Fix something about the school system, pat yourselves on the back, call it solved. Works like a charm every dang time. Except when it doesn't.

To "The Man's" credit--it has to be difficult to point fingers when some of these "food" companies tip their hats--and wallets--to certain politicians. But what happens when a school lunch revolution is the only attempt at fixing this issue?

School lunch: definitely a place to start. Frankly, if lunches improve I might be able to buy my lunch every now and again without fearing the Frankenstein Food down in the cafeteria. It isn't so much the notion that we need to improve the quality of what we put in our mouths--including school lunch--but that the first (and potentially only) culprit for blame is placed public schools. If I could change one attitude in this society it would be this: The public school system is not the culprit of every societal ill, rather, it serves as a microcosm of the society it in which it exists.

In Which I Assign Myself 500 Pages of Bad Reading

Let's start by clearing up this one little detail: I'm an idiot. Stupid, really.

Case(s) in point:

1. Call it a delusional vision of who I wish I were (read: a hard *assed teacher), but I assigned the AP kids 10 page research papers on self-selected debatable topics they've lived with all year long. Nearly 50 kids, 10 pages. All due earlier this week. Yup. That was stupid.

2. Add that lapse in judgment to the pile of Spring Break grading I procrastinated beyond, you know, Spring Break and you start to see that teaching English is far less preferable to, say, teaching gym.

3. I'm blogging rather than facing any of this because ignorance is bliss.

4. Combine all of the above with the brilliant timing of after school study sessions with the AP kids, starting back on the weight-loss-get-in-shape band wagon from which I so miserably fell over the past three months (oops), and teaching an all-new unit on argumentative writing with my 9th graders (not my forte nor theirs) which requires the time and energy equivalent of my first year of teaching and I'm thinking I've got to be on a top ten list somewhere.

Like I said. Stupid.

*For obvious reasons this is not the week to give up my ever-so classy tendency of talking like a teamster. We'll save that one for later.