A Morning Person's Observations #3

Rolling with Fluidity

I've written a couple times about my new job this year, running a GED program at a non-profit for Seattle homeless youth.  In February, Madden and I moved closer to the city, and Andy joined us.

Back patio, my spring sit spot

Through the spring and summer, I would crawl out of my window onto our back patio for my morning sit spots.  I saw a lot less from this location than my previous spots.  The only natural, permeable space back there is in the garden bed.  My main observations have been of the ants coming to and from the garden bed.

There was a board leaning up against my window, and every night at the same time I heard it rattle.  Finally I fell asleep with the blinds open, and saw a little mouse crawl up it one night!

Starting in October, there has been construction on our apartment building and we're not supposed to

use our patio until February.  I've taken to walking to work some mornings to sip my tea on the way to work and try to naturalize this way.  On several occasions back in the spring, I saw bees tumble out of cups of flowers!

Bee having a snack

We moved the center, and then the new one needed to undergo some more construction after we got all of our stuff there.  Luckily, SFBC took my classroom in for a few weeks so I didn't have to stop teaching so close to the GED's deadline.  It's still been a difficult fall, leaving a construction site at the apartment in the morning to meet with staff at another construction site at work until it was time to go to the church and teach.

I stopped seeing a lot of my regular students, the ones who can still finish before the deadline.  I've broken down from the stress a lot and found myself sleeping and watching TV more.

I've missed living in a natural setting this year.  Living close to Volunteer Park and taking walks there has helped.  I'm moving again in February, and hope to find the perfect spot this time.  Urban enough to get to work and the grocery store with no problem, and some natural gifts incorporated somehow.  Hopefully no more construction!

Moments with Strangers #3

Papusas and Dow

Whenever there is a "moment with a stranger" that ends in me getting asked out by a man, it does not make the cut to get recorded in this blog.  Those moments with "courters" make me so grumpy, I've never equated them with my happy/funny/interesting moments with strangers I do write about.

Whenever I'm in the U District, I get pupusas.  The only other pupusas in Seattle that I know of are at a Latin Folklore shop in Capitol Hill.

This is my experience with Capitol Hill pupusas:

"Can I have a zuchinni pupusa?"

"We're out," says the server.

"Can I order the pork and cheese without the pork?"

"Oh...we can't make it without the pork..."

...because they are pre-packaged, frozen pupusas?  To be fair, this is predominantly a coffee shop.

But Juanaco's Tacos is a different story.  They're all about the pupusas.  You see them being made by hand in the kitchen while you order.  This is the thing I miss most about D.C.

"You're from D.C.?!" exclaims Carlos, one of my newer students, a refugee from El Salvador.  "There are lots of El Salvadoreans there!"

"Verdad, eso es comó yo sabe hablar español."

Carlos laughs and is forgiving with my rusty Spanish because he's glad I try.  He and I have decided that everyone should know a few conversational phrases in Spanish, but as a teacher, I should learn how to speak it fluently.

So, I go to Juanaco's Tacoas and hope someday I'll be brave enough to practice Spanish here, but it always feels too presumptuous for me to start.

There's a crowd of novices in front of me, who seem to be reading each and every item on the menu a foot back from the counter.  I fidget a little.  "Are you all in line?" I finally ask, as sweetly as possible.

They shuffle forward with lots of questions.  I'm doing my best to look super patient.  "So, you must know what you're doing?" asks one of the group members.

I smile and nod as patiently as I can.

"Tell me," he says, "what's good?"

"Well, pupusas, obviously."

"What's a pupusa?" he asks.

Why are you here?!  I respond in my head.  But out of my mouth comes, "It starts as a ball of dough.  They poke a hole in it and stuff all the fixins in there, whatever you want.  Meat, beans, cheese."

"My favorite things!  I love it already," he says.

"Then, they flatten out the ball and deep fry it, it's kind of like a tortilla but with all the good stuff inside already.  You dip it in the spicy coleslaw or salsa."

This, of course, is the description of the proper way to make pupusas.  Not the description of how Laura Beth and I made them for her school project.  I came into the kitchen and she had already dissolved to rolling out a circle of dough, laying down a layer of cheese and beans, then putting on a top layer of dough, and pinching the sides together.  It was creative, I'll give her that.

"Wow," he says, eyes wide.  He hands me his menu, "Can you order for me?"

"Oh...I don't know."  This has all the suspicion of turning into a pick-up ploy moment with stranger, and I just want some lunch.

"Please," he says.

It's our turn to step up to the counter and arguing will only increase the time it takes to get my pupusas.

"He'll have the #7, one pupusa with meat and cheese, one with loroco."

"What kind of beans on the side?" the guy behind the counter asks.

I look at the orderee but he smiles and holds up his hands.

"Black," I say, not wanting this to take any longer than it has to.  I put the menu down.  "I'll also have the #7, two pupusas with beans and cheese, black beans on the side."

We pay separately, neither acknowledging any other option.  He thanks me and sits with his friends.  He really just needed help ordering lunch.  A truly nice moment with a stranger.

My other recent moment with a stranger was sitting next to the King County Executive at a fundraiser.  "I just voted for you," I told him.

"That was nice of you," Dow said.  Then he told me to pour him more wine.  "Please," he said as an after thought.  At least he's been good for transportation.

Art Day

I have to admit that when Teacher Appreciation Week rolled around, the ugly green-eyed monster took over me.  I kept seeing posts from my (extremely hard-working and deserving) teacher friends detailing all the wonderful presents their students and parents got for them.

Over at the RISK Learning Center, the weather was spectacular, which means attendance sunk through the floor, and I practically taught to an open house.  For Teacher Appreciation Week, my students played hooky.

So I got grumpy during Teacher Appreciation Week.  Grumpy and jealous of the flowers and gift certificates presented to public and private school teachers.

I came in the next week and sat down next to Tracy.  Tracy is also an intern, so he'll come in before class and work on math in the morning if we don't have enough tasks for him that day.  Tracy is one of the most creative, socially aware students I have ever worked with, four out of five of his test scores are the highest I've ever seen, and he hates math.  Not only that, but he has a heightened sense of oppression over your average young person.  If a math problem asks him to calculate the percentage of sale for a clothing item bought at a department sale, Tracy will argue that he doesn't need to do this problem because he'll always buy his clothes secondhand anyway, and isn't that a ridiculous amount for the retailer to charge the consumer for a piece of clothing, and why is the consumer putting their money towards that instead of something better, like local GMO-free food to support a grassroots farming group?

Tracy tugs at my heartstrings since these are all values I parrot, so I really can't just ask him to be quiet and figure out what 60% of 200 is like a good drone.

Division, fractions, and word problems have all gone very slowly, and usually include some whining and creative distracting and head banging on tables, by both student and teacher.

So when I sat down next to Tracy I was not expecting this.

"I think I figured out math..."  He moves his finger along the multiplication chart he's been creating.

Tracy would panic anytime we did Multiplication Madness.  He's been spending a lot of time studying his multiplication chart, so it doesn't catch him off guard when it comes up.  Flashcards disgust him, it feels too similar to brainwashing.  So he used his detailed artistic abilities to create the biggest handwritten multiplication chart since the invention of computers.

"There are patterns to the numbers," he says.  "The ones place for the 4s goes 4,8,2,6,0, and then it repeats.  The ones place for the 8s goes 8,6,4,2,0, and then it repeats."  He looks at me.  "Why didn't you tell me there were patterns?"

This is my favorite reaction.  The way a student assumes you held this knowledge the whole time and just wouldn't give it to them.  They never seem to get that I learn from them the best ways to teach.  It's about listening to the student to figure out their needs.  Tracy needs to create something himself, he can't do someone else's problems with an answer key.  Even if I had given him a blank multiplication chart, he would not have done as well.  He needed to actually draw his own, and as his teacher, I needed to understand that.

And that's when I let go of my Teacher Appreciation Week jealousy and started appreciating being a teacher.  I absolutely love my job.  I love watching students help one another.  Joe turns to Valerie and Sandra who are also working on reading packets.  "Are you guys reading the questions first and then doing the reading?  I just started doing that, and it really helps me focus while I'm reading."

"Oh, that's a good idea," says Sandra.  "Thanks, I'll start doing that too."  Until that interaction, I hadn't heard Sandra string together more than two words.

I've seen Tomas grow up before my eyes as he cuts the hardcore drugs out of his routine, gets a job, and comes out to the world as the beautiful person he is.  Even his peers turn to me and say, "I'm so glad Tomas is getting his life together, he was really scaring me for a while."

Pangaea, traveling would be so easy!

I've read some beautiful journal entries about hopes and dreams for the future, about the desire for bullying to end, about favorite memories.  I've also read some hilarious entries about being a transient and run ins with local sheriffs.  My favorite journal entry ever was when I questioned the students what they would change about the world if they could.  Fay writes, "I would put all the continents back together like it was Pangaea again.  That way traveling would be easy."  Yep, I can learn to humbly be inspired and appreciate being a teacher, and getting stood up when the weather is nice.

RISK Learning Center

After a month of job searching, trying to cook, learning a few yoga poses, journaling, walking around Fremont, and going out to eat grilled cheese for lunch, Polly (my mentor from SEA) helped me learn about a job opening at Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets (PSKS).

PSKS is a partner site of SEA, and they share similar values.  PSKS has been around Seattle for 18 years, working with homeless and at risk youth and young adults.  There are lots of different programs, community building activities, outreach, case management, the list goes on for a while.  The idea for almost every program at PSKS came from the Core, a self-governing group of active and involved PSKS members who meet once a month to discuss the fulfillment of the mission and vision of PSKS.

My program, the RISK Learning Center, is a GED program for 16-25 year olds.  RISK stands for Re-Inventing Steps to Knowledge.  It's a low barrier program, students are expected to meet a minimum 2 day a week (6 hours) attendance requirements.  The school day is planned in a student centered way, and is intentionally left flexible to meet diverse student needs.

I love all the students I've been blessed to work with already.  They are all incredible, intelligent young people who have some story of being told "no" by society in one way or another.  One of the first questions I get when people hear about my job is, what are the students like when they walk in your door?  Do they carry anger, agression, behavior problems because of the way they have been treated?  While the students definitely carry baggage, they come to RISK dedicated to learning.  I am impressed by the hard work and commitment I have seen.  So many students come to me at the end of the day and ask for homework.  One of my volunteer tutors describes homework as a chance for the student to see how much they can do without the teacher present.  The students are eager to prove their progress and accomplishments are their own.

One of my favorite times of the week is the days when Cadence shows up early so we can listen to the lastest song he's created.  He uses some free software online to mix different beats and lines.  I ask one day what the difference between electronica and techno are.  After Cadence explains, I respond, "Ok, so electronica is more melodic, and techno is all about the rhythm and tempo."  Cadence raises his eyebrows a bit, "I guess."  His reaction cracks me up.  I explain that I'm classically trained in music, but I'm intrigued by Cadence's musical creations.  This is a classic example of my relationship with these students.  I don't try to pretend I'm anyone else but who I am, but I hope I make it clear that I'm open and supportive of whoever they are or what they're interested in.

The balance of my program is perfect for someone with my teaching style.  When Olivia, the previous teacher, trained me, she set me up for success.  She left me with a structured school day full of meaningful activities.  I also get a lot of flexibility in my teaching.  One of my tutors called me a hummingbird, flying around the room and hovering with each student for as long as needed, only to be called somewhere else at a moment's notice.  She sees how helpful this can be for the students, to be able to adapt to each of their individual needs, which is important in a GED program where someone is writing essays, someone is working on fractions, and three more students are learning algebra.

I can switch up the schedule when needed or desired.  We have art on Fridays with a volunteer, and on December 21 my co-worker David told myths about the end of the world, then taught some students how to make their own planets with spray paint art.

I enjoy being open to all the different student needs, but I can also tell I'm still treading water.  I need a little more time to get my feet under me and be the most creative teacher I know I can be.  When I have more planning time (next summer?), I hope to create a few lessons that highlight the key concepts of the 5 GED tests.  One of my tutors is wearing a "Punctuation kills: Let's eat Grandma" T-shirt on Tuesday, so I'm going to use this opportunity to try structure the day with a group grammar lesson!  Let me know if any teachers reading this have some good punctuation games or activities.

Jerri

When I first moved to Seattle two years ago, my grandfather, a retired American Baptist pastor, told me two of his and my grandmother’s friends from college were here, Jim Rowland, and Jerri Bottomly.  When I started looking for a church community and found Seattle First Baptist online, I had a feeling this was the place where my grandparents’ friends would be.  My parents confirmed my suspicions, and told me how my grandfather still had multiple copies of dozens of sermons by Rod Romney that Jerri had sent my grandmother over the years.

I first met Jerri in Fellowship Hall while she was busy serving coffee.  As soon as she learned who I was, she exclaimed, “You’re Donna Beth’s granddaughter, I want to know all about you!”  The feeling was very mutual.

Despite the generation gap, Jerri treated me like a friend.  She took me to lunch many times and asked me all about my life and told me all about hers.  I immediately loved Jerri’s honest and open nature.  She told me the stories about my grandmother I hadn’t heard anywhere else.  Stories of living with my grandmother and other Round Robin friends, as they call themselves, in college.  She joked with me that she was one of the catalysts for my grandparents’ relationship, that she’s part of the reason I am here today.  We traded poems, stories, and other pieces of writings about my grandmother.

I told her I was thinking about joining the church.  “I’ll be your sponsor when you do!” she said.  It wasn’t a choice, but it didn’t need to be.

When I think of Jerri, I will think of bright and bold colors.  I will think of how loving and supportive she was.  I will think of a positive, beautiful spirit.  I’m so grateful for her friendship and the opportunity to have her in my life these past two years.