OK, so I guess I should post this while it's still relatively close to Thanksgiving... My original plan was to post after we got home from visiting my family, but we all know how planning goes... :-)
But anyway, here is my list of things I'm thankful for:
I'm thankful for the opportunity to finish school and get my teaching degree in a matter of months from now... even though I'm not always thrilled with the irritations (aka those really boring textbook note-taking assignments) and the minor potholes (aka "What do you mean I have to take Freshman Intro to Literature after all? The advising department told me that that was covered by my AA degree...") along the way.
In that vein, right now I'm thankful for my Science Methods textbook, which has provided me with almost immeasurable inspiration tonight... inspiration to clean the kitchen, inspiration to write in my blog, inspiration to hunt down and kill all of the new black mold colonies in all of the windows of the entire apartment, inspiration to do anything but read the 4 chapters that are due this week ^_^
I'm also thankful that MacBooks are actually pretty durable little guys... and that I realized that the back of the screen was a little too close to the cinnamon spice scented candles before it melted all the way through the shell o_O
I'm thankful for all of the friends I've made in my cohort at school over the past year and a half, and for the close-knit family that we've become. For the first time I can remember, I've finally found a school where I actually belong, and where I feel at home and wanted.
I'm thankful for Facebook, because it actually does help me to stay connected with people (something I'm really, really not good at in real-life)... and it helps me to keep on top of my hectic assignment calendar (read as "Hey, BTW, does anyone know which chapters we were supposed to read for class tomorrow?")
I'm thankful for my husband and my 3 kids, who keep me on my toes and remind me that I really don't have it all figured out yet :-) Humility is a wonderful thing... or so they keep telling me ^_^
I'm also thankful for my extended family, because they've taught me everything I know about being me. I'm convinced that family is God's way of teaching us to love like He does... You see, with friends, if they tick you off or let you down, you always have the choice of just walking away. With family, though, you're kind of stuck with them... no matter how screwed up they are or how badly they've blown it, they're still your family, and like them or not, you still love them. Of course, that whole part about being screwed up and blowing it applies just as much to you as to them... no matter what we've done or how much they might complain about us on Facebook, they still love us and welcome us back home each holiday.
Our family sees us at our most unlovely... when we're babies who've just pooped all over our best holiday dress, when we're five years old and throwing a tantrum because somebody had the audacity to put both green beans AND sweet potatoes on our plate-- and they're TOUCHING!!!!!--, when we're thirteen and refusing to come out of our rooms because we have to sit at the kids' table AGAIN... and on and on into the totally separate issues of adulthood. Yet in spite of all our issues, our family is still our family, and they still love us-- even when they may not like us very much at the moment. (Remind me to talk about the ginormous difference between "like" and "love" some other time... ^_^)
OK, so you may be saying, "Well, maybe in YOUR family... mine hasn't spoken to each other in years, and not just because of all the restraining orders and conditions of parole..." Still, hear me out... Even if your family says they hate you, or you hate them, or your parents do all their communicating through you, or if your family has disowned people, guess what? You still think about those people and have never forgotten them. Why? Because they're family, and somewhere, buried underneath all the drama and scar tissue, there will always be love there.
See, this is why I say that family is how God teaches us what His love is really like... We came from Him, because He made us. He loves us when we're at our crappiest, and when we've done everything possible-- whether we meant to or not-- to make Him give up on us. Even if we deny our relationship to Him and deny that He even exists, He still shows His love for us by giving us what we need to live and by putting a desire in our hearts to be loved by somebody. When we realize this and love Him back, things are wonderful... maybe not in the circumstances, but in our ability to deal with those circumstances. When we turn our backs on Him, things get messy... and then a lot of the time we go crying out to Him like teenagers calling their parents to bail them out of jail at 3AM ^_^ And then, even if He doesn't come and bail us out right away, we know He's there working on it and that He cares about us. So, it really isn't that big of a stretch to say that family is a lot like God after all :-)
Which leads to the biggest thing that I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving... I'm thankful to God for loving me and saving me when I was at my worst, for knowing how little I deserved His love and for still sending Jesus to die for me so that I could actually know Him as His Child and not just as a pawn in this world of His. I'm thankful for the life that He has given me... I only hope I can remember to be thankful more often than just once a year :-/
So, anyway, true to form, here's a musical interlude that kind of fits the theme and my mood... The song is "Faith My Eyes" from Caedmon's Call's album 40 Acres.
This past couple of months has been full of what Mark Lowry would call "life... more abundantly". What he means by that is that life is full of ups and downs... it's not a plateau by any means. And (further paraphrasing Lowry), if Jesus came so that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10... pretty easy to remember, if I could only remember to remember it...), then this logically means that instead of life being happy little series of hills and valleys...
life should be more like this...
... crazy, chaotic, completely out of our control at all times.
This is how it works. I get that. It keeps things interesting.
Over the past couple of months, I started and finished my first bout of full-day student teaching... 3 weeks in a second grade classroom, which has in itself its very own microcosm of ups-and-downs. This was a higher point in the crazy roller coaster ride of the past few months... the kids were overall pretty sweet, they theoretically learned some math, and I got 27 construction paper "thank you" cards at the end of the last week (plus a Dutch Brothers coffee gift card from the teacher :-D) And now it's back to regular college classes for another 6 weeks or so... happy happy joy joy ^_^
Of course, there's no point whatsoever in mentioning everything that I wrote before that last paragraph unless I'm now going to talk about the abundant downside of life... but at least you can go into reading the rest of this post knowing that no matter how it might seem in the moment, there ARE still high points to life...
Recently, not one but two teenagers within our family's circle of friends have threatened or attempted to commit suicide. Both girls survived, but to say that they are "OK" would be a huge mistake and would actually be a lie. Physically, they look fine... "no permanent damage has been done" as the doctors say. But still, they're not OK.
I know because I've been there.
The biggest question that people keep asking is "Why?" As in, "Why would she do such a thing? I mean, look at her... she's beautiful, she's got such a nice family, she's smart, she's got friends who love her... There are thousands of people out there who would gladly trade their life for hers, or who would gladly take the years that she's willing to throw away... What on earth could make her think that suicide is ANY sort of an answer to the momentary troubles of this present life?"
Let me tell you why.
You may have a great family, with a mom and a dad and a nice house in the suburbs. Maybe your family has been attending the same church since you were a baby, or at least since you were old enough for Awanas. Maybe you went to the good schools in town, and maybe you've always gotten good grades and made everyone proud of you your whole life. Maybe you have awards on the wall for your art, or for your band solos, or for your writing... maybe your name has been in the paper as an Academic All-Star or as the top finisher in the long-jump or the 500m dash. Maybe your friends are all good kids with the same sorts of awards on their walls and the same badges on their Awanas vest.
Or, on the other hand, maybe your family is fractured beyond fixing. Maybe your mom and dad spend equal parts of their time fighting and making up, making peace and raising hell. Maybe your mom tells you that you're stronger than your past and your dad tells you to make sure you go farther than he did. Maybe life is tough, but you know that you'll make it if you're tougher. Maybe you've had to work hard for your good grades (or your not-so-good grades), and maybe you're just hanging onto your spot in the Jazz Band or on the soccer team through the kindness of people giving you rides to practices and events. Maybe you're even good enough to someday get a scholarship to a college that's somewhere far away from this godforsaken town you've landed in, and then you will make your own decisions and run your own life.
Or maybe your story is somewhere in the middle, or a mix of both.
Either way, it doesn't matter. Because none of it does.
Your church attendance, your Awanas awards... you know it's all a scam. Underneath, you know how messed up you-- and your family-- really are. You know that the thrill of winning first chair in the band or first place in the art fair will wear off after a day or two... and then everyone will expect you to top yourself next time. You know that no matter how tough you are, or how good you look on the outside, nothing can fix the things that are broken on the inside.
And frankly, you get tired of keeping up the act. It gets harder and harder each day to keep everyone from seeing the real you, from seeing how you're barely holding on, barely holding it together. You feel like one of those plate spinners in the circus... You have to keep all of the plates spinning, because if one plate falls to the ground and shatters, people will notice and you will be a failure. And you can't just stop, because then all of the plates will fall and shatter and no one will notice anything but your failure.
And when your life is reduced to the spinning of stupid china plates, you realize that none of it has any meaning. That your life is meaningless and empty. Nothing-- not your good grades, not your nice family, not your reputation or your status or your trophies-- has any worth or any value.
You have no value.
And when you have no value, your life has no value.
If your life has no value, it is insignificant.
If you're insignificant, then no one would notice if, suddenly, you weren't there.
So, you start dropping hints... "Imma gonna kill myself. I know where they keep the guns."
"What do you care... I'll be gone soon anyway."
"No one lives forever, you know..."
"I wish I were dead."
And then you wait and see what people do. You hope that it will make a difference, that someone will notice you and ask you how you're doing... and actually mean it. You hope that, finally, someone will look behind the mask and either help you spin the plates or take the plates from your hands before they fall.
But instead, they tell you you're just being melodramatic. You're just young, and you don't know yet that it will all pass. You have your whole life ahead of you... don't sweat the small stuff. When you're older, you will understand how silly your life right now really is, and you will look back on these days and laugh.
No one takes you seriously.
Unless you actually go through with it, that is.
And then, when they realize that they could have stopped you, but didn't... when they realize what a great and priceless treasure they let slip through their fingers... when they finally realize all that you could have been was lost because of their inaction... then they'll finally understand and take you seriously.
Death not only is supposed to make you a martyr, but it's also a way out of the meaningless endlessness of spinning all of those stupid china plates. It's a way to say, "I quit... this is stupid...", without anyone calling you a failure or a waste of space. It's a final rebellion against a system built on fakery and mindlessness: If you die young and leave a beautiful memory, you win.
Game over.
But... I'm still here to write this. Apparently, I was such a failure that I couldn't even succeed at suicide... which is the same spot that these two girls who have been weighing on my mind so heavily these past couple of days are in right now. What was supposed to be a final victory over an unfair world has now turned them into victims and prisoners and (according to their parents and the "professionals" who have been charged with watching over them) "persons who cannot be trusted."
But... I'm still here. Let me tell you why.
This life we live... all of the status, all of the activities, all of the homework and practices and awards... in and of themselves, yes, they are meaningless. No matter how much we do, or how well we do it, or how many awards we get, there will always be something left undone, or something we're not perfect at, or someone else who tops us.
All of our nice houses, or our nice families, or our nice friends... Some of that niceness is a facade, just like the siding on a house or the paint on a car. It makes it look better on the outside, but it doesn't do a thing to fix the rusted engine, or the leaky pipes, or even the squeaky garbage disposal.
Without a real meaning to life, life is meaningless. Without a good reason to spin those plates, there's no point to spinning them. In other words, if you're thinking your life has no meaning, no purpose... you may be right.
Which is as scary as standing on a cliff and getting ready to jump.
But... what if there is a meaning to life? What if there is a reason to get up and go out and be?
What if you are valuable because, out of all of the possible combinations of eggs and sperm and all of the situations in the world, someone chose the specific time and place and matter to create you? What if you are not a mistake, not an oversight, not an accident... What if you were chosen to be born into this world, to live in these times, to know these people... for a specific purpose?
Think about it this way. Think of everything you did today, all of the choices you made and the choices you didn't make, all of the things you did and the things you forgot to do, all of the things that were awesome and the things you wish you could take back... somehow, all of those random bits of circumstance ended up with you sitting here, reading these words right now, and thinking about a couple of girls who you've probably never met and who probably won't even read these words themselves.
If that ain't random, I don't know what is :-)
But I actually don't believe in randomness. Because when I was at the point where my life had no reason to go on, and where I figured I had nothing left to lose by committing suicide, I discovered that there really is a God, and that He really does love me... not because I was an amazing plate spinner, but simply because He chose to create me in the first place.
I had been told the "good news" countless times by countless Christians growing up... but not one of them could give me a reason why they thought that their God would love me. Sometimes their spiel was, "God loves you... Won't you make Him happy by getting saved today?"-- as if God's love was a limited-time, call-now-while-the-operators-are-still-standing-by sort of offer.
Other times their routine was, "God would hate for you to be cast into hell... If you choose Jesus today, God won't have to do that to you..." Which always made me imagine God standing there, wringing His hands and waiting indecisively for me to let Him off the hook on the whole casting-into-Hell-business.
And then there was always this one: "God loves you. He sent His son to die for your sins. If you ask Jesus into your heart today, all your sins will be taken away and you will live happily with Him for all eternity." To which I had one question... Why? OK, two questions, really... Will Jesus make the kids at school quit picking on me, or make my mom and dad stop fighting, or give me an immunity to head lice? Which is actually more like four questions, but you get my point...
By the time I was 16 or so, I had my reaction to these oh-so-concerned soul winners down pretty pat.
Them: "Hello there, young lady... We're from that (fill-in-the-denomination-here) church just down the street. Do you know for sure if you died today that you would go to Heaven?" Me: "I don't believe in Heaven." Them: (Pause... for some reason, this must never have been the next line in any of the scripts they rehearsed back at the church.)"Well... if you don't believe in Heaven, you'll end up in Hell, then. You wouldn't want that, now, would you?" Me: "Don't believe in Hell either." Them: (Another pause... usually accompanied with frowns and blinking eyes as well.) "Well... if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, I guess you'll end up in Hell, then. Have a nice day!"
Which always made me laugh... If their God was so concerned about me that He sent them to tell me about Him and rescue me from the eternal torments of a lake of fire and sulfur, why were they always so quick to leave me once their script ran out?
But...
God-- the real, true God who really did create the universe, and who really did create me-- is much, much bigger than any of the so-called missionaries who tried to boost their own spiritual self-esteem by converting one more angry, hurting teenager for their church. God really did send His son Jesus to die for me... not because I owed Him one for creating me in the first place, but because He loved me and wanted me to return to Him and be a part of His family. God already knew all about my screw-ups-- after all, if He didn't, then He certainly couldn't have been much of a God at all-- but He also already knew about why I was so screwed up in the first place. God already knew about all of the people I had hurt... and about all of the people who had hurt me. He already knew that I couldn't keep the plates spinning... and He knew which ones were about to fall.
God knew all of this all along... Even when I didn't.
All I knew was that I was at the end of everything I had, and it wasn't enough. All I knew was that I had nothing left to lose, nothing left worth keeping, and nothing left to live for. I figured that, if this "God" or "Jesus" or "Whoever" was real, then great... Maybe He could save me from myself. And if He wasn't... then I was no worse off than I already was, and suicide would still be there tomorrow.
So I kind of put it to God this way: "OK, Jesus... fine. Save me... I dare you."
For the first time in years, I found peace. And for the first time in four days, I was able to sleep.
The next day, I woke up. Nothing in my circumstances had changed... same apartment with the leaky window, same crummy minimum-wage job, same classes that I was struggling to care about and pass, same insecurities about who I was supposed to be and whether I was doing any of it right.
But for some strange reason, now I had hope. And that was what made all the difference.
And so... I'm still here. And now I can see that God let me go through all of the crap in middle and high school-- including my 6 suicide attempts-- so that I could stand here, on the other side of darkness, and say, "Hey... I'm still here. Let me help you across."
As I was thinking about what to write here and driving my daughter back from Youth Group, I heard this song, and it just seems to fit... Yet another example of the Randomness That Isn't that is God ^_^
OK, so I'll be honest and admit that I'm pretty much addicted to Facebook... I use it to keep in touch with old friends and geographically distant relatives, share info about my life and my family with people who care about them almost as much as I do, and commiserate with classmates over the controlled (we hope, anyway ^_^) chaos that is life as a college senior. But sometimes, the things I come across on the ol' FB make me scratch my head and wonder why...
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"TO ALL MY FELLOW NUTS... I just realized... We sit & stare at a screen... We talk to ourselves... We have imaginary friends, zoos, farms, cities, & fake animals... We cook imaginary food in imaginary bakeries... We play bingo that gives no money... We poke people & think its OK... We even write on walls... Think about it... Facebook is a mental hospital & we are all its patients. Feel free to steal this... I just did! :-) Party in my ward later =^}"
Hehehe... "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free..." :-D
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"How bad is the current economy? I received a pre-declined credit card in the mail. CEO's are now playing mini golf. Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen. Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America. Motel Six won't leave the light on anymore. A picture is now only worth 200 words.They renamed Wall Street "Wal-Mart Street". Finally, I called the Suicide Hotline. I got a call center in Pakistan and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck."
Yep... I get all my current events info from Facebook ^_^ Actually, I thought this one was pretty darn clever for FB... I just wish I knew who actually wrote it so I could give credit where credit is due :-)
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"Please copy this if you know someone or have heard of someone who knows someone that may have known someone who knows anyone. If you don't know anyone, or even if you've heard of anyone who doesn't know anyone that doesn't know someone, then still copy this. It's important to spread the message. Oh, and the hearts. ♥♥ Don't forget the freakin' hearts. ♥♥"
My head hurts now. And I gave up after the first period...
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"Wow. Steve Jobs resigning as CEO. I'm kinda numb. Everyone out there who has an iPhone just take a good long look at it. Steve Jobs created that. Anyone with a different Smart Phone, know that Steve Jobs still made the basic breakthrough for that to exist. He has affected millions of lives. I'm sad to see him go. I will forever remember his genius."
Um, he's just resigning from his position. He's not dead. And I think he had at least another guy or two helping him with the whole Smart Phone thingie-majigger at some point along the way. Just sayin'...
(UPDATE - Wednesday Oct. 5th, 2011: Wow... Who knew? Steve Jobs is kind of like one of those generational icons that you just assume will always be there... until all of a sudden he's not. RIP Steve Jobs, 2/24/1955 - 10/5/2011.)
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"Thanks Facebook. I'm well aware my anniversary is tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure I don't need to send my husband a Facebook message reminding him.... >.>"
Redundant Facebook is... redundant? But in a helpful, Clippy-the-Microsoft-Help-Paperclip sort of way... ^_^
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And my personal "Uh... Seriously?" favorite of the moment...
FB Girl: "ugh... found out my classes... hate em.. how did i get pre algebra when i culdnt even sound it out? i mean seriously? i kinda wanted easy classes so i can get easy grades... thank you"
FB Friend 1: "Hahaha 8th grades fun easy or not trust me ull have fun just stay away from drama lol"
FB Girl: "is ms f_____ ..... nice..... imma switch cuz of all the crap she posted on her thing she sayss missing work turns into a 0 anhen you have tto bring an ssr book to cklass every day.. yeah i dont do that imma change"
FB Friend 1: "Hahah i hated her i had her no one likes her but she says that stuff and she means it but ever 8th grade teacher expects u to have a ssr book"
FB Girl: "why i dontr get it we all know how to read so why practice more.. seriously?"
Yeah. Seriously. Because apparently, even with all the practice you've had over the past 8 years, you still can't capitalize, punctuate, or spell...
Oh, well, that's OK I guess... but now that I'm thinking about the joys of 8th grade... ^_^
This isn't generally my favorite music style (it's a little too mellow for my usual taste) BUT it just so fits with the whole back-to-school season that I had to include it :-D Enjoy!
Apologies all around for the loooooooooong delay between posts... I've just finished up a couple of Summer Term condensed classes in order to stay on track to graduate in April (about 9 months from now... Squeeeeeeeee! As my little sister would say :-D), and trying to balance those with the general chaos of 3 kids (including 2 middle schoolers) at home for the summer and bored and a hubby looking for work in an economy with about 11-12% unemployment has been... a little bit time consuming :-)
But anyway...
So, time for Part 2 of my little rant...
I'm currently carrying a 4.0 GPA going into my senior year of college, and let me tell you, it's a lot tougher to pull that off in a university than it ever was in the public schools I grew up in. However, I've noticed a really weird phenomenon as I'm attending classes with students who have grown up in today's public school system... Let me illustrate with an example:
One of the classes I had to take last year was a class in the basics of mathematics for elementary educators. One day, the professor was passing back an exam we had all taken, and offered to explain any of the questions that we had missed. One girl's hand immediately shot into the air, and before the prof could call on her, she launched the attack: He had made a mistake in one of the questions, therefore, her answer was not incorrect at all, and she deserved credit for his mistake. With a sigh, the prof ran through the problem on the overhead... and discovered that she was in fact right, he had made a mistake in the problem. As about half of the class had given the same answer as my classmate, the professor gave an extra point to everyone... leading my classmate to begin cheering, "Yes! 100% Oh yeah, oh yeah..." Later on in the term, on a class project, this same student was infuriated to discover that she had only scored a 15 out of 25 (60%)... "But, I'm an A student! You're grading us too hard and expecting too much of us! This is just ridiculous..."
Which is what brings me to the point of this part of my rant... When we make the "A" the standard for our education system (see my previous post for more on that...), we not only discourage a sizable chunk of our student population, but we artificially puff up the kids on the other end of the spectrum... We tell them that they deserve their high grades and that their grades are an integral part of their personal worth. We give them the expectation that they will always get high grades, and that the school system will always work with them to help them maintain their high potential.
However, there are other factors at play and systems at work when it comes to "raising the standards" in our school system. Federal mandates for visible proof of student achievement (no, I'm not going to even start in on NCLB... way too much ink and way too many pixels have been spent on that whole hornet's next for me to add anything worthwhile... :-/) have led to a simplifying of skills and information so that more students will be able to grasp the fundamentals of a wide range of topics and perform more consistently on state tests. This simplifying of skills to reach the majority of students makes it easier for the already advanced students to get A's... which gives them the impression that school is always going to be easy for them because they are naturally smart.
Mixed-ability grouping continues that process, since advanced students in a class often are rewarded with extra free time in class to read, work on projects, or visit while the teacher works with students who need additional help to grasp new concepts; the "smart" kids see that their classmates are still struggling and they assume that there must be something lacking in other children because they don't "get" something as simple as adding fractions, or writing a paragraph, or reading a short story for examples of irony. And then the teachers come up with the brilliant idea of having the "fast" learners tutor the "slow" learners as a way of building community... which gives the "smart" kids the chance to demonstrate to their tutorees just how inferior they really are and how much harder their life is going to be because they have to work for something that "should" come so easily... And the chasm grows ever wider.
By the time kids reach middle school, mixed-ability groupings are discarded (which really makes one wonder about the long-term benefits of such groupings, but anyway...) and all students are tested for placement into the classes that will pretty much determine their high school careers. The kids who struggle are placed into the basic skills classes, and the kids who excel (many of whom have been excelling from the start for a wide variety of reasons) are placed into Honors classes, where they gain the foundational skills to help them in high school AP classes.
However, for a lot of these kids, Honors classes give them their first experience with struggling. All of a sudden, they're not getting the easy A's anymore, and when they start bringing home B's and C's, it shakes their self-confidence and their sense of who they are. Maybe they're not naturally smart... maybe they're just like everyone else after all.
Or maybe the class is too hard. Or maybe the teacher just hates them. After all, teachers hate smart kids, right? Because it's the smart kids who don't just buy mindlessly into whatever the teacher says, and who will stand up for the rights of all of the other kids who are being discriminated against by big, mean, evil teachers around the world... or so my daughter's middle school friends would have me believe, anyway ;-) The B's, the C's, the D's... they're all there just because the teacher didn't agree with what the student wrote. The Missing Work Notices are only because the teacher forgot to tell the class that the assignment was due the next day... and the kids who got theirs turned in on time only did so because they're the teacher's favorites and they always turn their work in early anyway. And the whole "only-giving-half-credit for late assignments" deal? "Well, if these stupid teachers would just realize that students have lives too, then they wouldn't be so picky about an extra day or two... I mean, in the big picture, who really cares if I turn it in on Friday or on Monday? The teachers should be grateful that I gave them a little extra time to enjoy their weekend before having to grade my paper... but noooooo, they only want to give me 50% so that they can feel in control! How unfair is that? I mean, I am an A student, after all..."
And then the report cards go home... and the parents hit the warpath. Some crack down on their "lazy teenagers", grounding them or confiscating the iPhones until their grades improve. Others demand to speak with the teacher and threaten to go to the District Superintendent if something isn't done to "rein in" this control freak behavior and put an immediate end to the age/gender/cultural/socio-economic discrimination. And quite often, if the grades don't rise, the students find themselves in "regular" classes the next semester, where they very quickly regain their status as "A" students and return to their happy, bubbly, "smart" selves.
For a lot of kids, this continues throughout high school; they graduate from 4 years of classes that aren't too hard with 4.0 GPAs and are accepted to the universities of their choice... where they crash headfirst into The Real World of university professors who don't really give a rat's patooty what grades they got in high school and who actually hold them accountable for studying-- on their own time-- the material assigned in class o_O Now, maybe I'm just seeing one small sliver of life on this topic... after all, I am in a major of study that has been labeled as "the nation's easiest college major", so maybe we get a LOT of these kinds of students. But still, I wonder if this isn't yet another side-effect of our current public school system :-/
What if we began grading students not on whether or not they meet the minimum requirements on assignments, but on how far beyond the minimum they choose to go? In other words, instead of giving a 100% to all students who met the baseline requirements, what if we gave 50% for meeting the minimum and then additional points for how far above and beyond they went? Granted, this wouldn't work for multiple-choice exams, but maybe we shouldn't be using multiple choice exams as our main form of assessment anyway.
What if we began expecting more of our students-- not just our strugglers-- to actually work hard to earn their grades? Honestly, the only way I see this working is if we go back to ability grouping at the elementary school level, where kids who need additional help are grouped together and given the assistance they need to catch up and kids who are advanced are either moved up a grade or given more challenging work to do so that they too can learn to work hard and achieve more. And by more challenging, I don't mean just more worksheets or longer books... I mean figuring out new ways to them to use what they already know and to move on to the next level of a subject when they are ready.
Some will say that this second change would be damaging to children's self-esteem. I would answer that by stating the obvious: children who struggle in a mixed-ability class are not blind to the fact that they are struggling, and this is also damaging to their self-esteem. It may even be more damaging, because the kids to whom they (and, sadly, their teachers and parents as well) are comparing themselves are often so far above the benchmark that even the average learners in a class feel inferior and incompetent by comparison.
But then again, this entire argument rests on the foundational assumption that students' self-esteem should be based upon their academic achievement... and maybe that's the gravest error of all in the whole system. What if we could find ways to tell all of our students that they are valuable and precious no matter what grades they get or how they score on their tests? What if we as teachers, as parents, and as friends constantly strove to reassure the kids in our lives that we love them no matter what, and that those letters at the top of the page are nothing more than a snapshot of a fragment of their lives?
The song I'm ending with here is a (relatively) old one called "Stupid Kid" from Caedmon's Call... It may take a little bit to find a YouTube video for it (no luck so far :-/), but I will add a link if I find it :-) Until then, here are the lyrics...
I think this place is swell
There’s much familiar here
I get my laundry done
And I get home-cooked meals
And when I’m feeling tired
I can turn off all the lights Ignore the knocking on the door Pretend I’m not alive
Daddy, it’s Saturday And I don’t want to go outside And mow the grass today So, would you love me just as much If I was just your stupid kid? Would you love me just as much If I was just your stupid kid?
They tell me that I’m bright Sometimes I think they’re right But I guess I’ll never know ‘Cause I won’t go outside Some days it’s just so hot And others it’s so cold Too much exposure to the sun Would just make me look old
Daddy, it’s Saturday And I don’t want to go outside And mow the grass today So, would you love me just as much If I was just your stupid kid? Would you love me just as much If I was just your stupid kid?
Well, isn’t this Saturday? It sure feels like Saturday So, wake me Saturday Daddy, it’s Saturday...
And my mind wanders off To things I’ve never seen Are these walls higher than the cost
Of opportunity? 'Cause I’m too big for my bed And I’ve outgrown my shoes But my fear of leaving Is the one thing I just can’t lose
Daddy, it’s Saturday And I don’t want to go outside And mow the grass today So, would you love me just as much... If I never got a job?
If I never left your house?
Would I be of use to you
If I never amounted to much more
Than just your stupid kid? So, would I love me just as much If I was just your stupid kid?
UPDATE (8/2/2011):OK, so here's a video for the song so you can all sing along... Just kidding, no singing necessary-- I figure if I can't carry a tune in a bucket, I have no right expecting anyone else to either :-D
About a week ago or so, I had a couple of conversations with a couple of different friends about their kids and those kids' recent experiences in school... which got me thinking (once again) about the way we've set up our school system. Or more specifically, about what we've turned it into over the past few generations...
A little bit of context before I jump up onto my soapbox...
One of my friends posted on a major social networking site, in frustration, about how her son came home with D's and F's on his most recent report card... after multiple emails, phone calls, conferences, and whatnot about how he's perfectly capable of getting As and Bs but just doesn't seem to care. I know this kid, and he's not a dumb kid in any sense of the word... granted, there are days when he'd forget his head if it wasn't attached, but hey, we all have days like that, right? Having been that kind of student at points in my own life, I tried to be encouraging: middle school's not all THAT big of a deal, and even if this kind of thing continues into high school, it's not the end of the world, etcetera etcetera.
Later that day, I ran into another friend at the grocery store, and we started talking about her first grader, who is in the middle of the IEP process at the elementary school he and my younger son both attend; because he struggles with behavioral issues and decoding skills, his teachers get frustrated with him because he has trouble completing his work in the same time frame as his classmates... even though he can talk circles around them and demonstrate his understanding of the concepts just fine. The usual first impression that teachers, specialists, and other kids seem to have is that my friend's son is a "slow learner"; once the IEP process is finished and he starts receiving special education services, this may serve to reinforce this misconception.
OK, so this is probably the point at which I start soapboxing... consider yourselves warned :-)
For those who don't already know, I'm an elementary education major, with one more year left until I graduate and apply for my Initial Teaching License. Before I transferred to my current school, I was working towards an Associate's Degree in Paraeducation, with an emphasis on Special Education; in my days of running a day care center, I worked with several students designated by the school system as having "special needs", ranging from ADHD to ODD (Oppositional-Defiant Disorder) to PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). The kids I know with these alphabet-soup labels are actually the reason I wanted to become a Special Ed teacher in the first place; these kids are people, not disorders.
Which is in part the whole reason for this post.
Where along the road of American Education did we get the idea that the "A student" is the standard, the ideal? Why do we beat ourselves up whenever our kids don't get straight As, or when they're diagnosed with learning disabilities, or when their test scores come back placing them in the 50th or 60th percentiles instead of the 90th or 98th? Why, when our kids start failing things at school, do we automatically assume that there's something wrong with them, something broken that needs to be fixed?
Maybe the problem isn't them at all... Maybe it's us.
Our schools and our educational system are designed for maximum instructional efficiency... How can we educate the largest number of kids in the most effective way possible so that as many kids as possible score at or above the minimum required benchmarks? We seek to streamline our educational practices so that we can fit more information into a shrinking amount of time (as more and more districts cut school days to keep their budgets in the black), and then we worry and fret about whether or not they will get enough of the answers right on our state's standardized tests for us to keep our jobs. We align our curriculum and our daily lessons with our state's Dept. of Ed. standards, and make sure to cover the items that we just know are going to be on the upcoming OAKS (or ITBS, or CTBS, or whatever they call them in your state) tests. We focus on getting as many of our students as possible to Benchmark, and then hope that someone later on will have the freedom to teach them how to postulate, how to ponder, how to seek, and how to discover.
And then we wonder why some of our students don't seem to be "getting it", and why others don't seem to care. We wonder why our middle schoolers agree via Facebook that school is boring, and that it's a waste of time that they can't wait to leave. We wonder why the drop-out rates don't seem to be dropping, even with all the Positive Behavioral Supports, effort incentives, extra privileges, and other bribery systems we've put into place for motivation. We wonder at the fact that the diagnosis rates for specific learning disabilities are skyrocketing, and why ADHD is diagnosed 3 times more often in boys than in girls. We wonder at the increasing violence in our middle and high schools, and we wonder why our anti-bullying programs don't seem to be making a difference. And we wonder at the rising numbers of teen and young adult suicides, especially among those diagnosed with learning or behavioral disabilities.
What if the problem is that, by aiming our instruction and our behavior management plans at the 68% of students in the middle of the bell curve, we have created an environment where the other 32% of our students are allowed to fall by the wayside? In a classroom of 30 students, that means we accept that at least 3 out of every 10 of our students-- at least 9 out of our whole class-- are going to fall short of the mark in some way... and we consider that to be an acceptable casualty rate.
Who are these 9 students that we're not aiming for? Maybe they're the kids who already know the material we're teaching, or who learn it quicker than most students, and they're the ones sitting at their desks bored and looking for trouble. Maybe they're the kids who, no matter how hard they try to focus and make sense of our teaching, just don't understand what we're talking about. Maybe they're the kids who have so much other stuff going on in their lives outside of the classroom that our exciting new lesson on phonics or slope-intercept form just really isn't all that important to them.
Does any of this make them stupid, or disabled, or defective, or broken?
We and our multi-billion dollar educational system seem to keep telling them that it does.
When kids start pulling in Ds and Fs, the first thing we do is try and encourage the kids with incentive systems such as Friday Fun Day or punish them by keeping them in from recess. When that doesn't work, we call in the parents for a conference, where we ask them to tell us what is wrong with their child that keeps him from doing his work (and where we surreptitiously watch to see if the problem is perhaps with the parents instead of the child). When that still doesn't work, we (and/or the child's parents) lecture the kid about how they're throwing their future away, and how when they get into "the real world" (as if their own world is somehow imaginary or something...), they'll find out how important slope-intercept form, the Pythagorean theorem, and the life cycle of a frog really are. When all our impassioned lectures, our wheedling, our nagging, and our screaming doesn't work, we sigh and shrug and either place them into a lower skill group (where maybe they won't mind doing the work as much because it will be easier), or else refer them for Special Ed evaluation in the hopes that someone, somewhere will be able to figure out what to do with them.
The key problem with this whole scenario? It focuses on the kid (and the parents, if we're feeling particularly generous that year) as the source of the problem. It never stops to consider that maybe we-- our classrooms, our schools, our districts, and our American public school system as a whole-- are contributing factors to our students' struggles.
What if our students aren't motivated to turn in their worksheets and comprehension questions because they don't see the point in jumping through hoops to prove to us what they already know? What if they don't see why they need to learn slope-intercept form when their graphing calculator and computer can do the work for them? What if the reason that their homework isn't done and their library books keep disappearing is because they were stuck riding around in the car all afternoon while their parents are turning in job applications or babysitting their younger siblings all evening so that their parents can work and pay the bills? What if they're tuning out because we're teaching on something they already know or because we've lost their interest 7 minutes into the 15 minute lesson?
I guess my point here is that maybe, when our students aren't performing (which may be the most accurate word for the process in this whole blog post) to our expectations, we should first look to see if the problem is something we can fix before relegating the student to our academic Island of Misfit Toys. Perhaps by telling students that their academic problems are something broken in them that they need to fix to earn our approval, we have created the monsters that we identify as the biggest problems in the public school system today.
But then again, there's the other side of the story... which, considering the length of this post already, I think I'll post another day. I'm sure there's enough here to tick enough people off for one day :-)
I like to include at least one song in each of my posts... a bit of a shout-out to those of us (not me, unfortunately) who are musically inclined, I guess. The only song I can think of at the moment that even remotely applies to the topic is this one, but hey, it's Switchfoot, so it works if for no other reason than that :-)
OK, so, once again, I'm sitting here thinking about how our lovely Oregon May (sunshine, blue skies, highs in the mid- to upper- 60s) seems to have turned so suddenly back into a not-so-lovely Oregon March (wind, clouds, showers... yeah, you get the picture), and somehow that gets me thinking about the past, and that somehow (yes, my thought processes usually are this random...) leads me to put together my "Top 10 Reasons Why It Sucks To Be A Skinny Girl":
10. We're always cold. Always. Not just in October, or December, or January, or March, but always. When it's 87 degrees out and the rest of the world is lounging around in their shorts and tank tops, we will be the ones shivering and wondering when summer will finally arrive as we grab our favorite GFU hoodie and bury our heads and hands in its folds. Oh, and this would be in July or August, mind you... because here in Oregon, that's about the size of summer as we know it :-)
9. We have the dubious privilege of being able to shop in at least 3 different sections of any department store: Women's, Juniors, and Girls 7-16. It's very difficult to find work-appropriate clothing that doesn't require a shiny pink patent leather Hannah Montana belt to hold them onto us, and it's even more difficult to earn the respect of your fifth graders when you're wearing the same outfit as three of them. Just trust me on this one...
8. Every time we go to any grandmother's home-- whether it's our own grandmother or not-- for dinner, we always get clucked over and served double helpings under the mantle of "fattening us up". Which isn't so bad, for the most part... unless of course the grandmother's specialty involves pork, leftover goulash, or Spam and green beans. Or all of the above... together. Then things get scary...
7. Every time we go home to visit, our mothers shake their heads at us and mutter under their breaths about how "college cafeteria food just isn't what it used to be and if only we would just live at home things would be better..." Which is really sad when you're 35, married with several small children, and you can't even afford cafeteria food. Which then moves right into Reason #6...
6. People assume (especially if any of the aforementioned small children are as skinny as we are) that we simply CAN NOT COOK.
Okay, well, I guess in my case they would be right... I'm not a creative cook, or a particularly good cook. I don't really even LIKE to cook. But I can sure microwave stuff really well, and I LOVE to bake :-D Actually, I'm getting better at cooking stuff that everyone in my family can and will eat, and I do eat what I cook, so the implication that I'm incapable of cooking actually does chafe a bit, the more I think about it...
5. A lot of women automatically assume that their boyfriends/fiancees/husbands are looking at us and wishing that they (the girlfriends/fiancees/wives... not the guys doing the looking) were skinny like us. Given my personal dating history and that of the other skinny girls I know, I can most assuredly tell you that this is simply NOT the case... or if it is, those women do a really, really, REALLY good job of keeping their men-- and any others in about a 15 foot radius, for that matter-- from showing any interest in us whatsoever.
4. When we go out to lunch with a group, the first thing that the host or hostess at the restaurant does is point us to the salad bar. I really despise the salad bars at restaurants, because honestly, if I wanted to eat lettuce and veggies, I'd spend the 3 bucks for a bag of Fresh Express and a bottle of Catalina and pig out at home. When I go out to eat-- especially if someone else is paying-- I want REAL food and plenty of it... nom nom nom :-D
3. Women who look just fine to us feel that they're perfectly entitled to begin conversations that involve food with, "You're so skinny... I hate you." And then they smile and say they're just kidding... usually. But still, the damage is done. No one likes to be told that they're hated for something that they can't control, and it's especially damning when, if we were to turn the tables and say, "Wow, you're a bit chubby... I hate you...", it would end the friendship right then and there. It's also hard when all the while, we're looking at them and wishing that we had those kind of curves, and remembering all the times that our husbands or boyfriends have looked at women with curves and tried to gently suggest that "it would be OK if we had curves like that too..." Constructive criticism be damned, it hurts to be told you're not good enough.
2. Nothing ever quite looks right on us. Even when we think we look fine, we constantly have friends and relatives looking us over when we walk into a room, shaking their head at us, and suggesting that we just need to get more rest, we just need to eat more and eat better, or we just need to stop working so hard. They ask if we're feeling OK, compare our arms to toothpicks and wonder aloud if we really do disappear when we turn sideways. (The answer to that last one, BTW, is that no, we don't, but right then and there, we wish we could...) What they don't see is that the mirror at home points out the roundness of our cheeks and the way our chins get wider when we tilt our heads just so, and that it laughs at us when we suck it in to make ourselves look slenderer. What they don't know is that we are trying as hard as we can to eat, to rest, to look normal, act normal, be normal.
1. People always assume we have an eating disorder.
Which is sometimes-- not always, but far, far too often-- true.
For some of us, at some point in our lives, someone told us that we would be happy if we were just a little bit thinner, that we would then be pretty and that people would finally love us. Sometimes that person is a parent, or a boyfriend, or a so-called friend at school, but more often than not, it's an invisible voice that we can never quite trace, a voice that seems to come from all sides and always pops up when it's least wanted or needed. We see other girls who seem to have it all together, and whether they're skinny or not, we assume that, if we were only prettier like them, we would attain what they have naturally. What we don't see is that they are scrambling just like we are to pretend that everything's fine and that inside, they're often thinking that if only they were pretty like so-and-so, then they would be happy too.
I struggled with anorexia from the time I was 13 until I was 19; it took me another 3 years and placing my unborn daughter at risk to finally break its hold over me. I honestly believed that, if I could just stick with 3 pieces of bread and a couple of glasses of milk each day, I would finally be slender enough that my face wouldn't resemble a potato and my thighs wouldn't wobble like beached whales when I walked. Of course, I always ended up eating more than that and cursing myself for being such a failure... everything in my life always seemed to come back to my inability to control myself and the inescapable fact that I was, and would always be, a failure. The most ironic thing? At my heaviest, I weighed only 131 pounds, which is completely normal for a 5-foot-6 teenager. More often, my weight hovered around 114... nowhere near overweight.
When I was 19, I finally admitted that my not eating was a problem and resolved to make myself eat more. Funny thing, though... suddenly, my appetite all but disappeared. Even after Jesus Christ saved me at the age of 20 (which is yet another long story that I may or may not go into at another time), it just didn't seem like my eating was all that important in the big scheme of things-- I mean, after all, aren't Christians supposed to force their bodies into submission and show self-control in all things and avoid gluttony and all that "be holy as I the LORD am holy" good stuff? (Yes, I'm being sarcastic here... please don't start posting comments about how I'm misinterpreting the Scriptures and making Christianity into some sort of ascetic self-mutilation cult. Thank you... o_O)
What finally gave my the wake-up call to start actually doing something about my anorexia was when the doctor who was to deliver our first child became concerned because, at 8 months of pregnancy, I had stopped gaining weight; she feared that my inability to eat enough had caused the baby to stop growing entirely. Two additional ultrasounds were inconclusive; there wasn't enough detail to tell anything other than that our soon-to-be born daughter was alive, but not moving as much as she had been before. For the first time, my eating disorder was endangering someone other than myself, someone I had been charged by God to take care of and to protect-- not to starve and cripple. Our daughter was born nearly 2 weeks past her due date weighing 8 lbs, 2 oz and (after spending a few additional days in the hospital for unrelated issues) perfectly healthy, so it turned out to be just a scare for all of us. BUT... I guess I needed something like that to shake me out of my stupidity and motivate me to actually conquer my eating issues. To this day, though, I have trouble gaining weight and keeping it on, and even though I eat and eat and eat, I never quite make it to the point where people actually believe me when I say that I'm fine. So I guess I will always be one of the "skinny girls"... and at this point, I'm OK with that :-)
There is a song I've always loved that helps me to put an image to this struggle with myself; maybe I like it so much because I have no innate musical talent of my own BUT if I did, I wish I would have written and sung this song myself :-) Anyway, here is a video that someone else made for the song, followed by the lyrics...
"Piece of Glass"
Can’t believe that I did it again
Wake me up from this nightmare
‘Cause this monster’s wasting me away
Taking my days
Every day, I live a bit less
One night leads to another
Even if I went back
Would they recognize me?
Or criticize me?
Who are you that lies when you stare at my face?
Telling me that I’m just a trace
Of the person I once was
‘Cause I just can’t tell if you’re telling the truth
Or a lie
On you I just can’t rely
After all, you’re just a piece of glass
Still I control this nightmare
When I call, it answers
But I can’t tell it when to come or
When to stay
Who are you that lies when you stare at my face?
Telling me that I’m just a trace
Of the person I once was
‘Cause I just can’t tell if you’re telling the truth
Or a lie
On you I just can’t rely
After all, you’re just a piece of glass
“Don’t talk… listen.
Hold Me tighter
Stay with Me just for a while
Until the sun shines
Stay with Me
Just give Me one more day…”
Who are you that lies when you stare at my face?
Telling me that I’m just a trace
Of the person I once was
‘Cause we’re not the same
You’re just a picture of me
You’re gone as soon as I leave
You’ve lived my life for me
And you’re no more than just a piece of glass
You’re no more than just a piece of glass
-- Danielle Young & Derek Webb
Anorexia is something that never completely goes away; it's always at the back of your mind, whispering in your ear and calling you names like "fat", "ugly", and "cow". It laughs along with the jokes about ugly people and pokes you in the ribs to tell you that, hey, they're laughing at you too. It tells you that no matter how hard you work or how far you go, you will never be pretty enough, attractive enough, special enough, or good enough for anyone to love you. And when someone finally does tell you that you are enough, you are special, and that they do love you, it calls them a liar. Anorexia is the enemy within; its weapons are the mirror and the scale, and it seeks to destroy us from the inside out. We are not strong enough to battle it on our own and win because it is us; this is why we need God's love and His strength to fight it on our behalf. And now, well into the second decade of this war against myself, I can at least say that I'm not losing nearly as often anymore... and that gives me hope for tomorrow :-D
And now that it's almost 12:30 in the morning, I think I'll be signing off for now... until later :-)
