Inspirational Teacher Meme

Astraea has tagged me for a meme about inspirational teachers.

As far as in-the-classroom types, I have three that jump to mind immediately.

Mr. Gastman

He was my Language Arts and Resources teacher, and I was his student aid at Cleveland Middle School. Bits I remember of him: he had a way he walked, a sort of measured lope, so that you could tell it was him even from very very far away. He was always chewing on a piece of raw ginger. He was the first person I ever knew who observed the Jewish high holy days. He taught me what it meant to be a critical thinker, to question everything, and to have fun while doing it. He also gave me my first editing credit. I was one of a handful of students who tested many of the problems in a creative problem solving workbook he wrote. He gave me an introduction to philosophy and a tiny peek into what it might mean to be an academic, who worked to study ideas.

We kept in touch for a few years after I went on to high school. I wrote him notes about my classes and whatnot every few months. Each Christmas and birthday, he sent me some beautiful little card or another, often these gorgeous embossed, white-paper things, or contraptions of intricate paper cutting. And no, he was not creepy or inappropriate. Get your brain out of the gutter.

I feel certain that he would continue to be a dear friend if he had not taken his life. I was 17, I think. Or perhaps I’d just turned 18, when a friend (also a former student of Mr. G.) called to tearfully tell me that he’d committed suicide. His memorial was filled with former and present students, colleagues, and friends, who all tearfully told stories, sang songs, recited poetry, in celebration of the man who asked me “Is it possible to think of Nothing?” and didn’t blink twice when I suggested that I teach myself to speak Hawaiian for no other reason than that I was curious about it.

Dr. Dan Pinti

When I met Dr. Pinti at New Mexico State University, I was a biochemistry major, on a path to med school or research. I signed up for an Honors Class he was teaching, Arthurian Literature, I think. Pinti was charmingly self-effacing, critically challenging, and made medieval literature seem alive and real and relevant. He was pleasantly surprised to find a science major who was both interested in old books and astute in engaging high-end critical questions (his words, not mine). He invited me to consider his Chaucer course the following semester. The Chaucer course was an unusual choice for anyone other than English Majors. I declared a double-major and jumped right in. I had several classes with Dr. Pinti over the new three years. Chaucer, Dante, a medieval lit. seminar, and independent study in Anglo-Saxon. I was his research assistant for a semester, and he gave me my second editing credit in the acknowledgements to his book on Chaucer. (I’m seeing a trend developing here: book acknowledgements and foreign languages). And he made me an official heir of his academic legacy by giving me a copy of Brights’ Anglo-Saxon Reader that had been given to him by a professor of his. He was my Honors Thesis advisor, and attended my wedding. I never got a chance to hear him play guitar though. Cheers to you, Dr. P.! Up there at cold and snowy Niagara. :)

Dr. Alice Sheppard

As a graduate student, I encountered a lot of different types of professors. Dr. Sheppard was the first prof I met. We had coffee. She asked a lot of direct questions. She intimidated the hell out of me. Her questions were hard, her expectations were high, but her enthusiasm and her drive zinged off of her and infected me with a similar energy. I worked with her in and out of several years. Anglio-Saxon lit. (there’s another language one), a slog through Beowulf, among other things (it’s funny to me that though the grad courses are my most recent, they run together and are the most difficult to tease out one from the other). When I thought I was making a bold move, she offered a kind of dual advice, providing insight into where I needed to be cautious and where I needed to jump head-first. She was my first choice for a dissertation advisor, though contemplation about my exact area of study, and deference to the power and influence of more established profs steered me elsewhere for a director. Like Mr. G., Alice did not laugh at my more bizarre ideas, but engaged the critical value and possibilities of the ideas with me.

This is the kind of teacher I wanted to be. Energetic, serious (with a liberal dash of fun), smart and intimidating but also accessible and not infallible. She was also the first among my profs to make me feel like academic work was sexy. There was something exciting about the power and the play of words and an engagment with them in a critical way. And also that our critical work didn’t have to stop at the edges of the page or the door of the classroom. Our critical tools gave us insight into the political and cultural structures around us, insight that could give us power and pleasure and understanding.

Though she has left academics to become a dancer, I have no doubt that Alice continues to be a thinker and critic of ideas and structures. And I have no doubt that she is still intimidating as hell. :) Cheers Alice!

Others

I had planned to continue to discuss specific inspirational teachers of the non-classroom type, but I’m clearly too babbly. Know though that all of you who have given me a way to understand the world in a different way, or who have given me a new skill, I appreciate you all as well. Oh there are knitters and farmers and teachers and dj’s and moms and family members and other professors that are worthy of admiration and praise.

Aspirations and Fear

I realized this week—to my surprise and confusion—that I still aspire. Not the breathing-in kind of aspiring. The hoping-to-achieve kind.

It’s been nearly eight (!) years since my first child was born, and five years (!!) since I left graduate school and payroll work. Only one of my three kids is in school right now. I have two-and-a-half years to get all three of them there. But that point is suddenly close enough that I can see the reality of it. Close enough that all of those things I said I might do when all three kids are in school are now barrelling toward me more quickly than I expected.

I thought I’d be ready for this. The decision to leave grad school and paid work was gut-wrenching for me. I knew, though, that my children would only be small for so long, and it was important to me to be their primary caregiver through their earliest years. And that one day they would go to school, and at that point I would figure out some other professional me to be.

As I see that point coming closer, I find myself unready. Unsteady. Terrified. And exhilerated with the possibilities.

Some of you might say it’s the anxiety about the babies growing up. And there is some of that of course. But I trust them, and while I will sigh nostalgically over their baby selves, I also know that their growing selves will be just as interesting and sigh-worthy.

No, the anxiety and excitement and confusion is about me. About my self-identity. The caring for my very small children is important to me. I would not have left grad school if I didn’t feel that the care of their early selves was the most important work I could do for them. Them going to school, though, provides me with the time to begin to rebuild my individual identity, the one that is separate from my children. It is very unlikely to be the same me that I was before I was a mama, though there are still big chunks of that fierce girl (a feminist intellectual, determined to fight The Man, and make new knowledge) left in me. It is very unlikely to be completely disentangled from the mama-me either. I AM someone’s mama now.

How will those bits of fierce girl and fierce mama fit together? And what other pieces will fit in there? Who will I be and what will I do?

For a full 24 hours this week I decided that I wanted to get an Accounting Degree and become a CPA. This seemed like a very reasonable thing to want to be. I would study for a few years, and be virtually assured a steady job with steady pay that would allow me to support my family in the event of catastrophe, or to allow my husband to take a turn away from the payroll as the before-and-after-school parent.

Ha.

I don’t really want to be an Accountant (though, seriously, all of the numbers and the puzzle of making them make sense does seriously appeal to that hyper-organized, A-personality, keener part of me). I want to be a writer. But boy oh boy is that scary.

Look, if I became an Accountant, I’d have to put in the work (and the money) to be a student for a few years, but at the end of it I have no reason to doubt that I’d get a reasonable job. To become a writer, I’ll likely have to put in some hard work for a few years, producing readable, publishable material, but there is no virtual guarantee at the end. The work might suck. Or the market might be resistant. From what I hear the publishing industry is hard. This lot-of-work-for-no-guaranteed-return is scary. Make-me-think-about-Accounting scary. Shake-in-my-boots-and-make-me-want-to-overhyphenate-everything scary.

Two trusted people poked me just the right way at just the right time. I remembered that scary isn’t always bad. If I wanted to avoid the unexpected and the difficult, I’d never have become a parent. If I wanted an opportunity to CREATE (which, as you might notice, I love to do) anything like new knowledge or understanding, I could do it with writing. If I wanted to try to pick up and rail against The Man, I could do it with writing. I can write in the space between packing the kids off to school and greeting them with a snack. I could write and find a balance point between the two.

While I’m not a big one for doing things to please other people, it did help, this week, to have two people point out to me in their own unique ways, that they do want to read what I write. That they do want me to give it my best shot. And that no decision has to be made RIGHT NOW. I still have a little time.

But I think I’ve already decided. And here it goes. One baby step at a time. I will try to add Professional Writer to my list of personal descriptors.

Deep Breath.

*****
P.S. Today R and C were involved in an incident that resulted in a spectacular head bonk for C. He has a goose egg on his forehead the size of Manhattan Island, otherwise he is ok. We’ll check on him a few times tonight. In the moment of the trauma, I acted exactly as I had to. Did all of the things I was supposed to do at the right times. Soothing, icing, hugging, checking pupils, and asking the right questions. I really am sure that he’ll be fine. But the aftermath leaves me wrung out, on the weepy side, and with muscles shivering with fatigue and emotion. Seriously, if I can convince an injured four-year-old to hold the ice pack to his swollen head in spite of the searing pain, surely writing won’t be so hard. ;)

Supplemental Laundry Center

“Use it up. Wear it out. Make it Do. Or do without.”

I totally wish I could remember where I read this, but applause to the person who generated the phrase. At it’s heart, it’s a phrase about frugality, I think. For me, it satisfies twin drives: the desire to save my family money and the desire to save resources and be environmentally and socially responsible. Oh, I might add a third—the creativity and cleverness that is often involved in the “make it do” part.

We are a single-income family with three children under eight, so I face the challenge of this phrase every day. One step at a time, we’ve whittled down our practices to make the most of what we have. One car. One walking commuter (payroll spouse). One biking commuter (oldest kid). Nearly year-round garden. No cable or satellite television (remind me to post about this as a watershed change in our lives). Second-hand clothes that are reused and remodified until every last bit of lint is shaken out of them. Home cooking and food preservation. Compost pile. Jam-packed recycling bin. Green electric company. Just to name a few.

But I know there’s room for more changes.

We live coastal South Texas. The same climate that makes it possible to garden almost all year long, is the climate that makes August feel like sitting in a pot of boiling water. We need the heater (mainly for one chilly bedroom) here and there for a total of only a few weeks each year. There are a few weeks before and after the heat need where the house is comfortable with windows and doors open. The other six to eight months of the year, the temperature inside the house and outside challenges my body’s internal thermostat. This makes air conditioning our single biggest energy suck.

We set our thermostat high (82F usually), turn it off when we’re not at home. Employ strategic window curtaining to minimize sun-warming (an opposite strategy occurs in winter, with strategic curtain-opening to warm cool rooms). In other words, we’re trying.

With three small kids, I do one to three loads of laundry every day. I estimate that this makes laundry our second biggest energy suck. We had tried a clothesline when we first moved here three years ago. We strung a long line between two trees and hung up some stuff. We gave up after a few days because of things blowing away in the sea “breeze” (yes, I did use clothespins), a general lack of drying in the high humidity, and other life events sucking our time and energy.

I am committed now to trying again. I have a new clothesline, strung in a spot slightly more sheltered from the wind, in a cradle of fencing that will likely catch any clothes that decide to take flight. And I have a splinter-free table for the laundry basket. So, yes the SLC is just a table and a clothesline, but doesn’t it sound so fancy? ;)

I am on day five of daily hanging, and so far, I’d say my renewed committment and our slight modifications are working. The humidity does seem to prevent the clothing from drying completely most days. Seams and pockets are very resistant. One day this week, everything dried completely (I cheered and did a snoopy dance). The other days, I took things down at the end of the day and tossed them in the dryer to finish them off.

Overall I think it is going well. I’m using the dryer less than one-quarter of the time I was using it before. I look forward to the next electric bill to see what kind of an impact it will make.

Now, this is not easy. Hauling wet clothes in the basket out there is not for the faint-of-back. And the lifting and clipping is a good upper-body workout. I doubt I’ll be able to do it on sick days. And I’m curious what impact the high summer humidity will have. I wish my line were just a smidge longer. Right now, it’s a W, one line strung at angles between the house and fence. I wish I had just two more spans. One day this week, I did one load in the dryer because I ran out of room on the line.

Unintended perks: My preschoolers love to hang out under the wet laundry. It’s a fort. It’s a space ship. It’s a cool spot out of the sun. They also love to put the clothespines back in the bag. And the work of the laundry actually seems to go by faster in the morning, because I do the load and hang it up, or do one load of wash after another, without having to wait for the dryer.

And no. Not washing by hand. Not gonna do it.

Next post: Aspirations and Fear

Variety Update

After one week, I’m still on track with my fitness goal. I’ve walked every day this week—170 minutes, or about 9 or 10 miles. My first ten weeks is based on time moving rather than distance. Because I’m walking on sidewalks, my distances are estimated. Though I do know that the trip to the elementary school and back is a smidge over 1.2 miles.

Due to unexpected scheduling, I walked in the dark for the first time today. I live in a safe little town, but the idea of walking at night still made me rather nervous. Many of the streets—even main ones—are sporadically lit, so much of a nighttime walk occurs in real darkness. If I had planned ahead on this one, I’d have taken the giant flashlight with me—you know, the one that doubles as a blunt object? Because I was nervous, I walked too fast, and my lower legs and toe joints are sore for the first time tonight. I had planned to walk one more time tomorrow, then start running Wednesday, but I may have to give myself a day of recuperation to make up for the zoomy walk tonight.

Other issues:

The sleeping goal is mostly still on track. With the exercise, I’m finding that I get impossibly tired at around ten o’clock. The writing goal is turning out to be a bit more challenging…

The exercise and sleeping goals have the advantage of having quantitative markers (moving for 30 minutes; in bed by a certain time). The ‘write every day’ goal is more qualitative. I want this goal to be flexible enough to encompass a variety of different types of writing, but I think I need something more concrete to guide the goal. Perhaps like exercising, I should strive to write for 30 minutes per day. Or have a schedule of different types of writing for each day of the week (such as Blog on Monday, Catch up on Correspondence Tuesday, etc.). I’ll have to think on it.

Oh yeah, I’m still a knitter too! Knitting: scrap sock. Black cuff, then alternating one row of black with one row of whatever teeny ball of yarn I pull out of the bag (currently dark blue). I’m doing a solid black heel and will continue with the blue until it runs out, then grab another ball. The other sock will be slightly different. I’m saving a small ball of a slightly lighter shade of blue to start off the stripes on that one.

Next Post: The Supplemental Laundry Center

Shh, what was that your life was saying?

Here’s a phrase to ponder:

“a suicide bomber detonated in a crowded marketplace today”

The phrase strikes me as odd, because it wasn’t the bomb that detonated. It wasn’t that the bomber detonated the bomb. I have an image of a person with no explosive materials strapped to his body, walking into a crowd of people and just… Boom. I’m not trying to be funny here either. In order for a person to willingly kill oneself as a suicide bomber, to kill oneself while trying to takea bunch of other people along for the ride, well, it seems to me that such a person might actually have to detonate inside in some way.

I have to work on this one, and verify the phrasing of the article.

In a completely unrelated context, I heard the phrase “Let your life speak.” It was identified as a Quaker saying. I have pondered it all day, marvelling at the lovely simplicity of it. Wondering how my life speaks for me. Paired with the suicide bomber, the phrase is really rather different. When he detonated, was that his life speaking? Or was that his death speaking? Are they separate?

Did the boy in Omaha today detonate too, with a gun instead of a bomb?