Empty Benches (acrostic)

 

Early Tuesday

Morning, Lakes

Park called

To me

Yes, the empty

Benches caught my

Eye. They were wet, so

No sitting. Instead I

Chased the sunny photo op

Heightening my awareness

Everything alive and

Singing out loud.

Wolf

 It’s the New Moon. Today I pulled the Wolf card which means Teacher. It feels fitting for the end of the school year.

Expand your limited view of the present situation

Look and new ideas—delete old ideas

In the discovery and rediscovery of every inch of ground comes the knowledge that nothing remains the same

Wolf is urging you to seek teachers and pathfinders that will show the way to new life experiences

The teacher can be a small still voice inside, a person, a leaf, a cloud, a stone, a tree, a book, or the Great Spirit

Take up the sense of adventure

"The Crying Generation"

 

When I turned 14, my mom got me a subscription to Teen magazine. I loved the articles, and I learned a lot about how to be in the world. Yes, there were the models in ads who were casually beautiful, but Teen made sure we knew we were fine the way we were. And the magazine eventually got cut up into fun collages or passed on to a friend, so they weren't hanging around intimidating us. I preferred Teen to Seventeen, simply because it made me feel comfortable in my skin.

I'd read Teen when I received it and then it would be another month before it would show up again. I'm not sure what it would have been like if a daily issue, with new images and pressures, showed up every 24-hours.

This is not the way of the world now with smartphones and Instagram in our mix.

In reading The Anxious Generation, I have learned a lot about how girls are affected by smartphones, especially beginning in 2010 when the forward facing camera was introduced. That was an flashpoint. Everything gets recorded and is there forever. The constant drumbeat of new posts and the pressure to be noticed never ends.

Since then, depression rates for girls have skyrocketed, not just in the United States but in European countries and Australia. It has to do with images of beauty -- very often filtered beauty -- which are standards our girls cannot achieve. It has created an out-of-control mental health crisis. No matter who I talk to, they know anxious girls, even as young as 5. It is why nearly every time we have a parent meeting about a girl, anxiety is mentioned.

Last week an 8th grade girl in my creative writing class turned in a draft of a story called "The Crying Generation." The main character is a girl terribly stressed about how she looks, who is feeling ignored by parents who see her as a "pearl" and don't hear her crying in her room at night. She feels she has to keep putting on a brave face against all odds, and it is wearing on her.

I don't know which is more heartbreaking: the knowledge that smartphones have harmed our kids. Or that the kids know it and now they feel trapped.

Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation, has a Substack page called "After Babel." On it is an essay written by a member of Gen Z. It is well worth reading, and watching the accompanying video. In short, it's about Gen Z feeling nostalgic for a time they never knew. The video is from 1999 when a senior recorded his last day of high school. You can read it here: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/a-time-we-never-knew

All I can say is I'm grateful for the information I'm receiving from Haidt and others, opening my eyes to the depth of this situation. Every parent and educator needs to inform themselves on this, because we need to make a collective effort to change things. I'm on my way to making those changes, and it has renewed my purpose as a teacher.

Lightening Up

 

The quote above is about the workplace. And it goes for the classroom as well.

This week I made a commitment to lighten up, to lead with love and joy. Then after reading The Anxious Generation on Tuesday, I knew even more how important this is for all of our well-being. I erased my list of rules off the board (which baffled a couple of students who needed to know why), and proceeded in focusing on my temperament in the classroom.

I don’t miss the rule list. My compass is now within me.

Last November, in a time of high stress, I started a Find Joy Journal in my classroom. I was recording things that brought joy, so that I wasn't just focusing on the negative.

When my world blew up in late January, the Joy Journal disappeared off of my desk and, although it kept calling out to me from its new home in the closet, I ignored it.

Until this week.

I finally got it back out, to begin recording joy again. But things have shifted. I find now I am writing about how I am changing. How I am purposely reacting differently to things that used to drive me nuts. I'm going to list a few of them here and anyone reading may think What was the big deal to start with? Believe me, I'm wondering now myself.

1. Boys constantly having to have their hands on each other. I'm letting it be, and it seems to subside a bit. It always intensified when I complained.

2. Silly things. I have a boy named Leo in 7th period who is hilarious. Instead of shutting him down, I joined in to the laughter. And then everyone got back to work.

3. Fancy hand claps and handshakes. Okay, sometimes they were doing them at inappropriate times...but now I welcome their doing things in unison. It is part of necessary play, as I learned in Haidt's book.  

4. Broken pencils on the floor (usually ones I provided.) If it keeps a kid from shutting down or giving someone else a fat lip, it's done its job. I say this in the wake of a girl who had a pencil in her hand when presenting her project which she was slowing breaking into little pieces. What a way to handle the nerves of public speaking! I've never seen that before.

Needless to say, I found that I didn't get quite as tired when I came home, so that alone makes this experiment worth it.

Learning Together

 This is a story about teaching something I know little about to kids I don't know at all.

On Thursday I received an email from my assistant principal that a 6th grade Science teacher wasn't feeling well and would be leaving. I had to cover her 10th period class.

When I received the instructions it was noted that this would be a difficult class, and she provided a couple of suggestions.

I have covered a lot of classes this year, and most of the time it is 7th graders. I know almost all the 7th graders so that helps a lot. And even when I'm in 8th, I know quite a few of them.

However, when it comes to 6th, I'm flying blind. What transpired was a throwback to when I was a substitute teacher and had to wing it.

The lesson was on stars, in particular, how they are formed. The "essential question" was a lot of blah blah blah I didn't even understand, let alone expect struggling readers to get. 

So I had them stand up a form a star with their arms and legs. We sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Then we started through the slideshow lessons.

We managed to figure out a few things (stars are made up of hydrogen and helium). I kept reminding the kids that I didn't know this stuff, and was learning with them.

And then there was a video.

The first time through on the video was blah blah blah. Something about a H-R Diagram. (Never heard of this in my life. I still don't exactly know what it is.)

The second time through I heard something I could relate to. It had to do with protostars (never heard of them.) But what the voice on the video told us was that protostars are what stars are before they actually form. If a protostar is too cool, it won't form. If it is too hot, it is too unstable to form. It has to be the perfect temperature.

Walla! We know how to connect this to something we know...GOLDILOCKS.

We discussed this and everyone chose what color star they were. With about 8 minutes left, I turned them over to coloring pages. Two sweet girls--Waverly and Leena -- gave me their pages demanding I hang them in my classroom.

You can bet I did.

I saw the science teacher yesterday, and I could see the look of "what happened?" on her face. I told her a brief version of this story and she was laughing her ass off. 

Honestly, it was a good time. And it was a beautiful reminder of a number of things:

1. I still have what it takes.

2. Being silly can help in times of unknowing.

3. Learning together is what we are always doing.

4. Spontaneity is a weird and wonderful thing.

Last Meeting

We love the Creative Writing Club because…

 

–it gives us our own time to write our stories in peace and quiet

–no one judges our writing

–we can write all the stories we want

–it gives me energy

–free cookies

–gives me a break

–challenges me to find new prompts and activities

–I get new ideas

–there is more freedom to write

–it helps me get back into my own writing

–generates more ways to think

–we discover how every writer has their own voice

 

Written May 1, 2024 by Hazel, Isabella, Gabrielle, and Ms. Sadler

 

The Bridge

 

Go and open the door

glance about

The mysterious myth of your

existence is not fragile

Take those big breaths

Find your determination

The echo of your soul

is soft, but not tender—

Like cool, wet sand

Go and open the door

The rain has stopped

Don’t beat at the walls

of your desperation

Recover the wind

What your heart speaks

is worth hearing 

Listen. Seek.

Go and open the door

Yesterday doesn’t define you

The winds of heaven—

the true colors of your life—

fly to you in an instant 

Exit the maze of perfectionism

Fall into the communion

of long-delayed realization

that the bridge leads to

amazement and admiration

5/1/2024

4:49 pm

 

Composed at the last Creative Writing Club meeting

using word tiles, a list of words the member generated,

and opening lines from other poems as fodder for creation.