Ordinary Woman, Extraordinary Life

On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence.
– William Jennings Bryan

In ten days, Thanksgiving will be gobbling at my door.  I know everyone says that time goes zooming by, but this is a bit ridiculous- it completely boggles my mind that 2012 is almost over.  But that is not what I’m writing about today. Thanksgiving, with its Autumn feel, its warm colors, its warming foods and all of its accompanying events is on my mind.

First and best, Thanksgiving calls my children home.  With their busy and involved lives, they still look forward to this time of being together, if only for a day or two.  It is even more precious to me knowing that eventually this is likely to change as their lives evolve, and so I enjoy each Thanksgiving year as the gift that it is.  This year will be extra special as the Thanksgiving Eve Wednesday, when the kids will all arrive, is also the twins’ 25^th birthday.  It will be the first time in years that we will all be together on their birthday.

Secondly, the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade awaits!  I go every year, unless it rains, and drag whoever will get in the car on time.  Last year it was my husband and my ten-year-old rent-a-kid for her first foray into the city for this special event (I know you are reading this, rent-a-kid, I will pick you up at 6:45 sharp, be ready!).  The year before it was my daughter and her Canadian friend who had spent Thanksgiving Eve partying in the city, arrived home on the 5:30 train for a one hour nap and then crawled into the car to head back to the city for the parade.  Finding a prime spot on the parade route involves some pretty intense planning- leave home at 6:30 a.m.; park the car north of the kick-off point, grab a taxi down to the 70’s, and elbow our way to the front for best viewing.  It is worth all of that to be there for the fanfare and fun.  The massive balloons, the rollerblading clowns, the showy floats with their waving celebrities, and finally at the very end, jolly fat old Saint Nick ushering in the Christmas season.  Then it’s back to the car to sing along with Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant (in four part harmony) and home to finish the final preparations for the feast.

As we sit down around the table, we each tell about what we are thankful for- it sounds hokey and I think the kids are a bit embarrassed that we still hold to the tradition.  My husband and I, however, think that saying aloud that you are grateful for your gifts is a lesson in healthy humility.  Then it’s chow time!  Each year after dinner we waddle around the neighborhood to shake loose our intestines so we can make room for the pies, puddings and coffee to follow.   When we are all in a food coma, the holiday can be called a rousing success.

Anyone who has been following my blog, or who knows me personally, knows that Thanksgiving brings together my two most very favoritest bestest things in the whole world: my kids and food.  What could be better than hanging out together, relaxing, eating and talking just like the old days? Answer: absolutely nothing.  I know how fortunate I am, and that is what I am thankful for.  How about you?

Care Bears Float!

Spidey!

…and Santa ends the parade!

More Thanksgiving quotes can be found at: http://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving/quotes.htm#rPTYFKdq3sDzxMuE.99

You know that young man in scrubs with the ID tag clipped to his pocket at the grocery store in front of you in line?  The elderly woman walking very slowly but with great dignity down the block? The jogger on the street, the bank teller, the bus driver, the county police officer, the electric company meter reader, the harried mother of three dealing with her kids on the street?  They all have stories.  Every person you see everywhere all time; they each have a story- a web of relationships and a fabric woven over a lifetime.  They laugh, cry, deal with joys and tragedies, have a history and future.  It’s truly cool to realize that, just like you, just like me, every single person has a story.  Each of us is a thread that reaches back into history- the family tree is so much more than a drawing.  It shows connections made and lost and new threads that go off in new directions.  Each part of your family tree, and the family tree of everyone you see including those you watch on the news in Syria, Afghanistan, Colombia, Zimbabwe,  Japan, holds a rich wealth of story.  Some of those stories are romantic, some tragic, some uneventful; but if each person would write about her or his life and share it we would never lack for fascinating reading material.

During this recent event called “Superstorm Sandy” I have gotten to hear some of those stories.  My husband is repairing the house of an elderly man after a tree smashed through the roof while he ate his supper.  On Sunday we went to meet with the insurance rep, and had a chance to hear a bit of the man’s story: his wife of many years passed away recently,leaving him with an elderly dog that really was hers, and  he had put his house up for sale so he could move somewhere closer to his grandkids.  Now he had to deal with insurance companies, contractors, temporary relocation (with a large dog which makes it even harder), and other disruptions to his plans.  He has adult children who live far away, and although they are offering to take him in, he wants to stay near the house so he can monitor the whole situation.   He seemed stoic and sad all at the same time.

Another story I got to hear during the recent events was that of the young couple who volunteered with me down on the Lower East Side.  They both had appearances of Asian roots, but one can never make assumptions.  She is a third generation American from Connecticut who speaks  only English.  He is a long-time Australian who speaks only English with that lovely Aussie “accent”.  They met at a University in Sydney when she did her semester abroad during her undergraduate years.  After graduation they worked for a couple of years and then he left everything behind to follow her to the states where they were married three years ago and now live in New York City.  I love to imagine the reaction of both of their families to this still-unfolding story.

I think the reason I like to meet new people all the time is that I love stories.  I love to read them, hear them and (obviously) tell them.  I guess I see every person as a source of entertainment.  Is that bad?  I think most people enjoy sharing their stories with someone who really wants to hear them.  So next time you are bored, strike up a conversation with a total stranger ,and drive it towards listening to that person’s tale.  You will likely be pleasantly surprised by a good story.

The roads around here were cleared on Friday by the US Army.  It was quite a sight to see huge humvees and trucks on my own corner, with people in uniform working away.  After five days of being stuck in the house and feeling a bit empty and helpless, I decided on Saturday to head down to the Lower East Side of Manhattan to see what I could do to help the people stuck in the high rises for almost a week with no power or heat or hot water.

I took the railroad in to Grand Central Terminal, and I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I saw was business as usual: families and groups of people crowding around the information booth, posing for photos and pointing at the beauty of the terminal.  The subways running downtown were not working well, so I hiked my duffelbag full of blankets and clothing on my shoulder and walked the mile and a half down to Ave B and 10^th Street.  On my way, not knowing what to expect, I stopped to buy two large bottles of water and a foot-long Subway sandwich cut in four pieces to share.  When I arrived at the volunteer site, it was mobbed with hundreds of people who had come out to help.  The organization that I signed up for is GOLES, and was listed by Occupy Sandy via Twitter.  As we all stood waiting for instructions, we chatted with each other and tried to figure out what the GOLES acronym could stand for.  We found out later it means “Good Old Lower East Side.”  Not too suprising…

After about twenty mintues we were told to form groups of eight.  My group was composed of five young women, a young married couple and yours truly.  We were assigned a building, given instructions and as much food and water as we could carry, and off we went.  We got to know a bit about each other as we walked north to Ave C and 20^th Street.   When we found our building, there were two security officers blocking the door.  They asked for ID and warned up we would need flashlights.  Five of us had flashlight apps on our cell phones, and that was it for light.  We climbed fourteen flights of stairs carrying our supplies, and banged on the steel doors of each apartment yelling, “We are volunteers.  We have food and water.  Is there anyone inside who needs help?  We can get you medical attention.  Is there anyone at home?”  Over and over again on each floor on the way down, we went through the same routine. On every floor, several doors opened to us.  All were elderly people, some alone and some couples.  They were cold, hungry and worried.  We were invited in to some of the apartments for a few minutes of human contact.  Most of these people had not been outside of their apartments in over five days, as they could not make it down the stairs and back up.  We gave out our supplies, and took their trash bags full of a week’s worth of garbage with us.  We wrote notes on each apartment: occupied or empty; medical concerns (one ninety year old who would not leave her very sick cat even if she could make it down the stairs and a wheelchair bound man with a home health aid who had not left him, among others); and necessities.  When we had canvassed all fourteen floors, we took the list of items and went around to various stores to purchase what was needed: batteries, toilet paper, Depends adult diapers, canned milk; whatever the people had requested, we worked to find.

As we left the building to go do the shopping, one of the security guards was still there.  He told us he was doing 18-20 hour shifts and sleeping in the van on the street.  His own home in New Jersey was washed away and he had not seen his wife and children, who had only been rescued the day before, since the hurricane hit.  He was cold, exhausted and beyond patience with the people complaining about having no power.  While purchasing items for the old folks, we bought him a large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and some hand and feet warmers.  He became emotional when we returned, saying he could not believe what we were doing.  We received similar responses from the residents of the building as we came back with their requests.  All were grateful for our efforts, and it felt good to be able to do something for someone else.

I rode the train home, exhausted and happy, and came in to my cold, dark house.  We do have a generator which we can run several hours a day, enough to make some coffee, have some light and even watch a little TV or access the internet.  We are really luckier than most of the people I saw today.  I hope that my visit and time helped to warm them up a bit from the inside out.  And I hope they get their power back soon.

As I stand here at the kitchen counter banging out this blog entry on my laptop, I am thinking about all of the things I count on in my everyday life.  I am standing at the counter instead of sitting because I am one of the lucky ones: we have a generator that pushes power to the refrigerator, the well, one electrical outlet in the kitchen, and the cable box in my bedroom.  So my laptop is plugged in to that one outlet next to the sink, and here I stand.  One of the lucky ones.  And I’m thinking about what Hurricane Sandy has done and left behind, and how if affects our lives.

First, without electricity, I notice how quiet it is, both inside and outside my house.  No buzzing, no music, no humming, a complete absence of the sounds that have been woven into my daily fabric since I was born.  I don’t miss it as much as I notice that it is not there.  The quiet is kind of nice.  And I am sleeping better, and I am sleeping more too.  There is not much to do after dark now, and no blinking lights from the cable box to wake me in the middle of the night. And it makes me wonder that, although I don’t seem to need more than a few hours sleeps on a regular basis, maybe we did get more rest before the invention of electricity.  Thanks dudes (too many to name http://www.electricityforum.com/who-invented-electricity.html ).

Living out in the woods means we have a well with a pump that runs on power.  So when the lights go out, so does the water.  Before Sandy arrived, we filled a bathtub so we could flush the toilets, and we filled containers and pitchers so we and our dog and cats could drink.  At that point we did not have the generator up and running, and we were not sure if it would power the well.  At the grocery store nearest our home, the first empty shelves had housed Poland Springs and their competitors.  Apparently all of my neighbors have wells and pumps too.

When our electricity went off, because many of our trees in the area came down on the wires, all of the stores for miles around closed up.  No Dunkin’ Donuts, gas stations, restaurants, bars, CVS, Target, Staples.  It’s a strange feeling not to be able to just drive down the road to pick up some “necessity.”  Yesterday the grocery store managed to open for a couple of hours; they have limited generators, but not too many employees could make it in.  The roads around here are blocked by downed trees and wires, making it difficult or impossible to get from point A to point B.  Another thing I take for granted is the usefulness of my car in getting around.  Nothing wrong with my car due to Sandy; but the roads are all but impassible.  It has been two days since the hurricane and there is no sign of these local streets being opened.  The town trucks are busy in more populated areas.  Same goes for Con Edison, our electric company.  We are probably last in line since we are in a more rural area.

My cell phone service, including texting, is very spotty.  I have had more luck staying in touch through Facebook and email, which seems funny but there it is.  So I sit here at home, wishing everything would go back to normal.  I want to be at work with my little cuties, as we are missing one of my fav holidays, Halloween.  I want my power back and my cell service and my cable and my stores and my roads.  I realize I am whining, and it makes me sound weak.  You should know that I am a camper, and I know how to survive without a lot of things.  But I am not camping right now, and I want my life back the way it was.

As I said, I am one of the lucky ones who just has to wait a few more days or weeks, and then until the next storm, everything will be back to normal.  I cannot forget those who lost loved ones or their entire homes and neighborhoods in this mess.  Theirs is a new normal that I cannot even imagine.  Thoughts and prayers go out to them all.

Sandy has come and gone, thankfully.  In her wake there is devastation and disaster.  Locally, all roads in and around our town are blocked by downed trees and live electrical wires.  We are personally without water, power, phone and internet, except for a few hours during the day with a generator.  And we are some of the lucky ones, even though a large tree fell on and damaged our other home across town.  The men from our contracting company found a way to get trucks in and are cutting apart the fallen trees.

The best I can do is keep them in coffee and the fresh chocolate chip cookies I baked yesterday.  It seems a lot of us were baking and cooking before the storm hit.  Probably good therapy, as I have said before.

Our schools are closed until at least Wednesday, which is good since I am stuck here until the roads are cleared.  I am hearing on the news of an entire neighborhood block in Breezy Point, Queens, which burned to the ground; flooding waters up to and beyond the lower East side of Manhattan, and the very sad news of the death of several people including two young boys in our county, and  the son of a friend of a friend in Queens, who were all  hit by falling trees.

The storm was a “freak” rare thing, they say…the collision and collusion of two major systems that came together and caused the havoc we are left to deal with.  The howling wind and the sounds of bending and snapping trees that we heard through the night is not something I would like to experience again.  As usual, neighbors come out and help neighbors, and reaffirm the best of human nature in the face of the worst of nature itself.

On the day of my fiftieth birthday party, with a list of one hundred guests and a rock band scheduled to arrive, Hurricane Irene changed it all.  Last night, when we hosted several friends for a “Haunted Housewarming,” Hurricane Sandy loomed large in the conversations. My friends are beginning to think there is a pattern.  While I think this is kind of funny, as I sit here watching dark clouds gather and the wind pick up, I am beginning to think it is not really a laughing matter.

The media loves a good fear fest, and just like that boy who cried wolf, it makes me not trust much of what I see, hear or read.  The mere fact that a storm has never taken a sharp left off the ocean to slam into the mainland, ever, makes me think that a) it won’t happen this time either or b) this is going to one hell of a shit show.  Predictions in the media lean towards an Armageddon-like attack on the entire Eastern Seaboard.  Staten Island could wind up under nine feet of water (and while I often joke disdainfully about that other borough,  I would not wish this on anyone); my daughter in Washington D.C. is being offered sandbags in her neighborhood; my son in Buffalo stands to see an epic blizzard; my daughter in New Hampshire whose front door step leads to the Atlantic Ocean should be making plans to evacuate.  Everyone in my area is fighting over generators.  Yesterday when I went to the store for chips and beer, the place was mobbed and the shelves almost empty of staples like water and milk.

We have dealt with some pretty big storms in the last fifteen years.  The 1991 Perfect Storm, also known as the Halloween Nor’easter of 1991, closed all bridges into New York City and kept me from getting home to my then small children.  As I panicked sitting in my car at the bridge toll booth because the babysitter was actually threatening to leave them alone so she could get home to her own family, I waited until the police were not looking in my direction and I sped out onto and across the bridge with the wind trying to push me into the Long Island Sound.  On September 16, 1999, Hurricane Floyd produced rainfall up to 13 inches and wind gusts of up to 60 mph.  Our little town was six feet under water, and we woke the kids up to walk into town and see the devastation.  In September of 2003, Hurricane Isabel battered the city, leaving lots of damage and a million people without power.  Last August  we hosted Irene, who was not a nice guest, and had a twelve-inch snowfall on Halloween that left us in the dark for days.

So it is not unprecidented that we have devastating natural disasters with serious repercussions.  But I am hoping that when Sandy dances past a hundred miles off shore the way a good hurricane should, we will all have a good, shaky laugh of relief.  I will keep you posted.

As long as I can remember, Halloween has been one of my favorite holidays.  I have always been jealous of those lucky people, including my first bf in kindergarten, whose birthdays fall on this particular day.  I think my love of this holiday is mostly due to its fun factor. As a child, candy and dress-up on the same day? Have I died and gone to heaven??  As an adult, dress-up and its accompanying mystique still reign high up there on my list of how to have a good time.

I find it so interesting to see which costumes and disguises my friends choose.  I think for some of them, this is the only day they have to live out a fantasy character.  Hence the closet bad girls choose witches, vampires, and sexy kitties.  What does it say when they choose an innocent cheerleader outfit or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz or Janet from the Rocky Horror Picture Show??  I know some people would say that I’m digging too deep into people’s choices.  Maybe.  I know some people just choose something cute or fun just because it’s cute or fun.  And I know some people, mostly of the male persuasion, who refuse to purchase or wear a costume and then at the last minute grab a lamp shade and a clown nose and call it good.  It doesn’t matter really;  it’s just totally amusing.

When I was of trick-or-treating age, we used to take shopping bags and hit the apartment buildings down the street.  We would run down the hall of each floor, knocking and yelling “trick or treat!” and then run back down as the doors opened and collect our loot.  There were years that we filled four shopping bags full of sweets.  In those days, people gave the big candy bars; I don’t even think the small ones existed yet.  We would dump out our goods on the floor and do some horsetrading amongst ourselves.  Then mom would come in and make us do a big pile of the stuff we didn’t like to send to the soldiers in Vietnam.  We had enough candy to last to Thanksgiving.

When my kids were small, we had a party every year for a few of their friends: pizza and movies.  Then we would, along with several families from the block, walk to about twenty houses nearby.  We grown-ups would take along a glass of wine to sip while the kids went nuts.  Once they got home, they would dump out their takings and do some horsetrading amongst themselves.  Then my husband and I would come along and collect our “mommy and daddy taxes”.  They had enough candy to last to Thanksgiving too, and it was all good.

In school, I love to sing Halloween songs and chant poems; teach the children how to make some crafts they can take home to decorate their houses; read lots of books on the topic; and try to keep the kids focused and doing some semblance of learning.  The energy they build up towards Halloween Day is quite overwhelming, but I love it too so I get it.  On the day of Halloween our school forms up and marches through the streets of our little town, with police escorts on the corners and families members lined up along the parade route taking photos.  Beyond adorable.  We get back to class and enjoy some treats, and then I send the kids home to really crank up the celebrations.  Super fun.  Halloween hangover the next day? Not so much.

Halloween is one of those days when the focus is on throwing off the yolk of everyday life and taking on a new persona or at least enjoying a little controlled fright.  The religious origins of this holiday are ignored by  many, but some cultural and religious groups still take that part very seriously.  A meal at family plots in the cemetery actually sounds like a perfect way to spend Halloween.

Why do some of us love to embrace the spookiness of this day?  Trips to local haunted houses or hay rides through the woods where we know damned well some freak with a chain saw is going to chase us around holding the bloody head of some poor prior visitor who couldn’t run fast enough- why do we do it?  I think it is probably for the same reason that some of us love roller coasters: a relatively safe way to have the crap scared out of you, knowing you will most likely make it home in one piece.

Some people claim to hate this holiday.  I cannot relate or understand it…so if you are one of those please chime in and ‘splain it to me.  For the rest of you- enjoy this day that celebrates the dead with some ghoulish goodies and some entertaining tomfoolery.  Happy Halloween!!

Growing up in New York City was not always easy, but it definitely had its advantages.   Beyond the variety of restaurants and entertainments and the ease of getting around, one of the best things about growing up in a city that hosts people from every nation is the fact that it hosts people from every nation.  On my block in Queens, in the two story garden apartments, were families with roots in India, Puerto Rico, Korea, Japan, Europe, South America.  The subway trains that I rode on daily passed through neighborhoods picking up people of all shapes, sizes, colors.  The schools I attended in Manhattan were attended by kids from all over the city.  I was surrounded and immersed in “It’s a Small World After All” land every second of my early life.  As a result, I learned to look past appearances; truly what Martin Luther King Jr referred to when he hoped that one day we would judge people based on the content of their character.

I clearly remember the day I learned that I was white.  I was in third grade, and I had been chosen to attend an experimental school at the District 28 School Board offices in Forest Hills.  Of course I did not know it at the time, but the “experiment” was two-fold: mix thirty or forty white and black children from a cross-section of economic standings, and put them in a setting with no teachers or curriculum or goals.  Don’t ask…seriously, true story; although as I have searched and researched, there is no record of this ever occurring.  All morning we wandered around a large room, doing very little of anything.  I remember a bank of speed reading machines and at times I would be so bored I would sit at one and let the sentences zip by.  I don’t remember there being books to read or much of anything to do.  In the afternoon, we were bussed over to Russell Sage Middle School, where on good weather days we spent our afternoons wandering around the blacktop doing nothing much.  I made a new best friend, Diedre, and we would sit and play jacks for hours.  I went on the school bus to her home in Jamaica a few times, and I was harassed by the other kids to the point where I had to sit near the driver to feel safe.  I just thought they were mean kids.  Then one afternoon, another student came over to where Diedre and I were playing to hand me a note: “Dear Maureen, get your fucking white ass out of our school.  You cannot play with Deidre anymore.  Love, Janice.”  As I handed the note to my friend to read, I looked down at my arm, and then I looked at her chocolate brown arm that I had grown to love. I looked up at her face, which had a horrified look on it.  She stood up and backed away from me as I began to cry.  I took the note to the adult supervisor, and was whisked home and back to my local public school the  next day.  When my mom asked me why I had never told her I was the last white kid left in the school, I told her that I had really never noticed.   This event in my life did the opposite of scar me; it taught me the pain of discrimination based solely on skin color, and helped me decide pretty early on to never judge anyone before I got to know them.

When my kids were small and we were not quite settled, we always looked to live in a diverse area to give them a good social education.   We wound up in a small town with diversity in every way: language, skin tones, economics.  I can proudly say that my kids learned, as we hoped that they would, to look past appearances.  My son attended Caribbean birthday parties that were loud and rocking with family joy and amazing food.  My daughters had friends whose families spoke a variety of languages, and they were proud to share their own multi-cultural heritage.  My kids had friends who grew up in section 8 housing and friends who had, not a bedroom of their own, but a wing of a mansion of their own.  As teenagers they were not afraid to take the train down to New York City and wander around; some of their friends looked to them for security and confidence.  I credit their social development directly to our choice of places to raise them- it was made with a conscious decision to seek out a diverse population.   It was that important to us.

At one point, before we found our wonderful town, we lived in a community where we were in the minority.  We loved our neighborhood, our children’s friends and their families, and the Mexican restaurant down the block where they knew our names.  Our children learned to ride bikes with no training wheels at the local park, alongside all of the other families and kids.   We were glad our children, who were still quite young, were colorblind when it came to making friends.  However, there were rapid changes occurring in the neighborhood that were of great concern to us.  Our children were facing growing discrimination each year from some of the other students at their school.  My husband and I attended school and district and community meetings, which wound up falling apart amidst accusations of racism which paralyzed any attempt at productive conversations.  The small city was dysfunctional and falling apart. It was an economically depressed area which, while we lived there, was becoming increasingly violent.  The last straw before I nailed up the for sale sign on the front yard was a mid-afternoon robbery murder just around the corner from our home.  Then one day I was walking home several blocks after leaving the kids to play at a friend’s house.  Walking towards me was a young man dressed in gangster hoody and low-slung jeans.  He was looking directly at me, and I debated crossing the street.  I decided not to give in to my fear and walk past him.  It was my neighborhood too.  We looked each other right in the eye as we approached, and I was not sure what his eyes were saying.  As we came to pass, he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and I tensed up.  Out of his pocket he pulled a flower, and without a word handed it to me and kept walking.  I stopped with the flower in my hand, and turned and called, “thank you” to his back and he waved a hand.    It was with sadness that we sold our beautifully-remodeled home, to this day one of my favorites, and moved on.

The world is home to an incredible variety of cultures, languages, skin, eye and hair color.  A sheltered life among one type of culture is, in my opinion, crippling; unless one intends to stay in that community and never leave or have to do business on the outside.  Growing up in a diverse population leads to the ability to truly embrace all that humanity has to offer, and the ability to give every person you meet an equal chance.  My school building is home a rainbow of cultures, much like the neighborhood where I grew up, and I could not be happier.  My students, naturally colorblind at this early juncture in their lives, are developing friendships and social relationships based on whether their chosen playmates share their interests, are friendly and kind, and know how to have fun.  That is exactly as it should be.

…What’s the matter with kids today?  A great song from a great musical!

Kids have not changed, probably throughout human history; certainly not as much as people would have us believe.  The world around them has changed, technology has changed, the definition of family has changed, economics have changed, the experiment called “education” changes constantly; but kids? Not so much.

With their bodies and brains growing and developing in fits and starts, at lightning speed or at a snail’s pace, kids are doing what they have always done: working hard to make sense of the world around them, and working hard to find their place in it.  From the earliest time of their lives, they watch what the adults are doing and saying.  Then when we are not looking, they imitate us.  They play house, school, doctor, cops and robbers, dress-up.  I love to spy on kids playing pretend! Sometimes they nail our foibles in endearing or hysterically funny ways.  And we hate it; the mirror is not always kind.  Last year at our talent show, the fourth graders performed a skit as their teachers.  Their caricature could have been shown on a television show- they demonstrated an almost scary knowledge of their teachers’ idiosyncrasies.  If you think kids are not monitoring your every facial expression and response, you are kidding only yourself.  When I was growing up, my father used to say, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Yeah, right.

Kids are born impulsive and curious.  And there is little we adults can (or should) do to make them stop this any earlier than they are ready for.  Electric currents are running through them every waking moment, and they really cannot help it.  I know each child is different, and I won’t generalize by saying which gender seems to have more electrical current, and I know plenty of kids of both genders who are quiet and well-behaved and cooperative.  And I wonder what’s wrong with them.   I actually feel a bit sorry for those little ones, like they are missing out. I want to say to them: Get up, jump around, get in a bit of trouble!  I guess you can tell I love the live wires.  Kids are funny as hell even when they are behaving like rotten little rats. Kids need to run, jump, scream, climb, slide, tumble, laugh and cry.  When it starts getting to me (because, after all, I’m old), I say to them: stop acting like kids!  This is more for me than for them…

Kids need to play!  We need to encourage play as much as possible and for as long into their lives as possible.  They learn so much through this type of interaction.  Think of puppies, kittens, lion cubs,  elephant calves: what looks like playtime for them is actually survival training. They learn pecking order and manners; self-preservation and meeting their own physical and emotional needs; how to communicate and survive and thrive as part of a community; problem solving; decision making;  negotiation; socially acceptable behavior and rules; dealing with consequences.  Human kids are doing the exact same thing.  They need an enormous variety of play in order to learn what they will need as adults: competitive games, cooperative games, games with adults and games unsupervised by adults.  We do a huge disservice to children when we limit their playtime.  Through play, they learn who they are and who they aren’t.

Self-esteem is a learned and earned thing.  We need to stop with the empty praise and trophies for all.  Competition is healthy and necessary on many levels. I’m not talking about adult-type of competition, and I believe we start children on sports teams and competitive dance or gymnastics way too young.  What I am saying is that children know when they are not good at something, and telling them they are wonderful at everything they do leads to some unforseen consequences.  They stop trying: why bother when they will get praise for just showing up?  They do not learn their strengths and weakness; personal knowledge about strengths and weaknesses is what motivates us and helps us choose career/life paths.  Fostering a false sense of self esteem also can unwittingly support bullying: if a child truly thinks she is good at everything, it can open her up to teasing she will not be prepared for nor understand.

Sibling rivaly and fighting/arguing with other kids is normal!  Once again, we may cause actual damage when we, because we cannot tolerate the noise and emotions, stop children from bickering or intervene and make a judgement as to who is right and who is wrong.  I am in favor of letting the kids work through their issues, as long as it does not come to blows.  Later, when all are calm, is a good time to discuss ways to solve problems, and the fact that many times one person feels she or he “lost”  or “won” the argument.  Fact of life, and again, a survival skill for the future.

Many times when I have family conferences, I have to tell parents about some negative behaviors that their children are exhibiting.  I tell them how it is affecting our class and our learning.  I tell them the strategies I am using to aid their child’s healthy development as a part of our learning community.  And then I tell them how this particular behavior will probably be an asset to their child as an adult.  The bossy kid who wants to be in charge of all decisions and always want to be first?  This child will one day be a leader who others look up to.  The kid who never stops talking?  This child is developing incredible verbal skills and hasn’t a shy bone in his/her body- this child may someday command a roomful of peers.  The argumentative one could easily become a lawyer; the caring one, a great parent and maybe a teacher or doctor; the quiet, non-social one may become a researcher.  The idea that each child is developing important skills that are uniquely her/his own, and the fact that I don’t hate or dislike the children no matter what they do (since my job is to know my learners and my resources and put them together to help them make their next steps) can relieve parental anxiety and make the family trust me as a partner for their child’s education.

So what’s the matter with kids today? Nothing.  Really. If anyone has a problem, it’s us; the adults.  We should know better, and we had our turn, and now we need to step up to the plate and help the kids become adults that are productive,constructive and caring.  Kids are puppies and kittens; let them enjoy it while they can.

Imagine a world where elementary school teachers spend over two weeks of prime instructional time several times each year administering individual assessments to students, while the rest of the children sit in their seats working independently awaiting their turns; where eight-year-olds take reading and math tests in ninety minute sessions for six days in Spring, also during prime instructional time; where students in first grade are evaluated on their fluency in reading nonsense words, and their scores affect their teachers’ performance ratings.    Welcome to post No Child Left Behind, also known as Race to the Top…American Public Education 2.0.  What a sad time to be a child, and a teacher.

As I walk around my school, I see the faces of stressed out colleagues, and listen to their constant bitching at lunch time.  They feel constrained, hands tied by the noose of assessments and paperwork.  As of this year in New York state, a teacher who is concerned about a student beyond normal concerns must record eight to twelve weeks of paperwork on individualized interventions before coming to the Response to Intervention team to ask for possible Special Education evaluation.  The way this plays out, a child could be deferred for two or three years before an evaluation is done.  While the teacher is carefully planning and monitoring for this child’s instruction (and these days, there are likely to be several students that a teacher is really worried about), she is also running a classroom full of other children who are all moving along the learning continuum at their own paces.  The teacher cannot forget that she will be evaluated at year’s end on the test scores of every child in her room.  Some teachers may have thirty or more students, especially inner city schools with the neediest of students.  And many of those teachers have no teaching materials, no technology and not enough chairs, desks or pencils.  Creativity in the classroom is hard-won, as exhausted teachers lack the energy and drive to tap into their own strengths as educators on their own time.   Grade-level common prep times are spent (as directed by the administration) on discussing the progress of students on assessments, instead of on creating engaging instructional plans.  Teachers feel the loss of professional trust and value- they have begun to feel like robots administering prescribed instruction.  It’s a cold feeling.

As I walk down the halls, I also see the children.  They are still children, thank goodness, who in spite of all of the pressure for the most part can barely contain their boundless energy.  Their held-in smiles and stiff, silent soldier-like walking down the hallways belie the joy they can’t help feeling.  These smiles say, “I will try to do what you say, but when you let me out of the cage and into the sunlight, look out!”  It breaks my heart that we can no longer freely allow the sunlight into our classrooms.  Truly the joy has gone out of teaching and therefore out of learning.  Unless one resorts to subterfuge. 

Subterfuge is my middle name.  “Question Authority” was a bumper sticker in my high school and college years, and a personal mantra.  I attend the meetings and dutifully schedule the multitude of assessments and record-keeping required to keep my job.  But when the door to my room closes, and it’s just me and those delightful bundles of unbridled energy, I (gasp) let the joy reign.  I read aloud to the kids at least two picture books each day, sometimes as many as five; we sing and dance and chant; we read and write and play and negotiate and discuss and problem-solve.  We count and think and criticize and make decisions and deal with consequences.  Our classroom is a happy, busy, buzzy place.  Oh Kindergarten!  The first stop for these kids in the next twelve years of their lives. If they hate school and see it as a dark, mean place, their next twelve will be torture.  I will not be an instrument of torture, nor will I be a cog in the RTTT wheel.  Just as I did years ago as a Whole Language teacher in a traditional school culture, I quietly do right by my students.  And the proof is in the pudding: real learning that sticks; skills that develop over time and deeply; social and emotional growth.  Wouldn’t you want a teacher like me for your kids?  I would.  Whenever I have a question about what I should do, I put the kids first. What a concept.

I hope the new crop of teachers (having been to a recent meeting where I was the oldest teacher in the room by ten years made me very aware of them) some day gets a chance to really connect with the true educators’ dream: to touch the lives and minds of their students in a meaningful way.  I hope when that day comes where they have to plan and design engaging curricular units of instruction that tap into and celebrate students’ learning styles and intelligences, they can still think for themselves enough to find that long-lost creativity.  I did say, “when” and not “if” for a reason.  I’m a cockeyed optimist, can’t help it.  I just hope the future comes sooner rather than later, at least before I retire in the next ten or twelve years.  I’d like to come out of the teaching closet and be openly joyful about my chosen life’s work again.