getting my bearings

When I was 21 I went around the world... I really had no idea what I was getting into.

I landed in Bangkok, found a hotel, and woke up in the morning in a state of total shock. My brain couldn't even process the images around me. I took my map and started walking, walked for miles before I started to feel like the world made sense again. And that was a big modern city. I was in Kathmandu a few days later and it was even more dramatic - literally like being blind - because nothing I saw made any sense to me - there was literally no familiar object in my field of vision, no familiar sounds, no words. Gradually the mist lifted and familiarity grew, and six weeks later I felt quite at home and cheerful there.

I'm sure you know where this is going. My workplace is a gigantic culture shock... but my vision is gradually clearing... I am starting to see which way is up and the world is starting to make sense to me.

I am starting to see how much I have been operating on autopilot... all my skills deserted me and I was just clinging on to survival. I have not been kind to the children. I have not connected with them. I have not thought about their success. I have just been in survival mode.

As I type that, I suddenly recall how Wong & Wong's "The First Days of School" talks about survival mode, and how it is a stage you pass through as a new teacher - but some teachers get stuck there. The goal is to avoid that fate. Heh - that was just what I had figured out this week. I have been acting like all the teachers I have hated most - capricious, unempathetic, angry, controlling, petty....seeing this is sad and difficult, but at this moment I don't find it too hard to forgive myself. It has been a hard situation. It has been a giant culture shock...

So now I begin to think. My brain slowly starts to function again... the gears start to turn. I remember how to help students who struggle. I remember how to write good lesson plans. I remember how to simply look into a student's face in a way that conveys that I see them. That always has an immediate and dramatic effect - children are so accustomed to not being seen.

The students have been reminding me of these things in their own little ways... their desperation for my attention and approval, the strange maladaptive coping mechanisms they adopt to avoid my disapproval... when I see these little defenses I remember how I used to get so angry that teachers didn't see their own power. I woudl rage that some teachers have a sort of delusion about this - they see students as huge and powerful, because students have the ultimate control over how a teacher's work is judged; these teachers and spend a lot of time stomping students down, but that's totally backward, it's the teacher who has the power and the stomping is annihiliating... I am one of those teachers now... I can't stay like this!

The other thing I begin to see clearly is that my lessons are too hard. This class of students is known as 'lazy' throughout the school - other teachers tell me, 'you don't have a good class - they're lazy - have been since first grade.' I was tempted to accept this and shirk responsibility... not in the sense that it is my fault... but in the sense that it is my job to address the problem.

They are not lazy - they are, for whatever reason, woefully below grade level. Only four are reading at grade level, and of those four, three have test-passing reading skills rather than genuine reading skills (they do not understand what they read, but can skim and match words in the text to words in a test question). Several cannot read hardly at all, and many more cannot write a coherent sentence.

Fifth grade. A lot of catching up to do. Time to start.

This morning walking the dogs, though, I saw that the morning glories are still blooming. I have time.



Step by step the longest march, can be won, can be won
Many stones to form an arch, singly none, singly none...