I can do this.

“What happened to you from the first day? I mean, you were so nice and stuff, and now you’re…mean.” Well, I think this week was the first time in my life that anybody has ever called me mean. A lot of teachers, at least around here, take being called mean as a compliment. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it. Then I thought about it a little more. What this girl perceived as me being mean was really just me not letting her get away with doing whatever she wants to do in class. Hey, maybe I’m just finally in charge now…

3 weeks in. I guess we’re starting to get the hang of it. It’s still stressful and exhausting, but at least it’s more of a routine.

A few messages to my students:

-       “Can you come here? I can’t do this.” Saying this in the particular way that you do it does not really make me want to help you. Try this: “Mr. Vander Haak, I’m having trouble understanding this. Could you please help me?”

-       When I say, “Complete the entire worksheet”, I’d prefer not to have eight different people ask me, “Do I answer these questions?” Are they on the worksheet? If the answer to this question is “yes”, please refer back to my original instructions.

-       I can usually notice when things are copied from the Internet. Please don’t do it. I’m not sure if you expected me not to notice (even when you used words like “forb”), or if you just didn’t expect me to do anything about it. I don’t like giving out zeros for plagiarism (and I’m sure you don’t either).

-       When I ask you to wait to go to the bathroom when there is somebody else out already, your sound of disgust is not appreciated. Realize that there is a school policy about letting more than one student leave the classroom at once.

-       “What are we supposed to be doing?” This is a question that should not be asked: (1) when I am in the middle of explaining the directions, or (2) after I have explained the directions, they are up on the board, and, just in case, I have also printed them at the top of your handout.

-       Conversation I have had with more than one of you:
    You: “I don't know how to answer this question.”
    Me: “Have you read the question?”
    You: “No.”
    Me: “Okay, then read the question.”
    You: Reads the question. “Oh, I get it now.”
Can you see how this conversation is unnecessary?

Well, most of my stress comes from students preferring to talk through an entire class period rather than allow me to give 30 seconds of directions and their desire for me to hold their hands and do the work for them (especially after they have completely missed the directions) when I know they are all capable of doing it on their own.

This post has probably sounded mostly like me complaining about my students (probably because that’s what I’ve been doing). Most students seem to be perfectly reasonable, respectful, logical people outside of class, but then we put them all together into a classroom, and it’s like they forget what they’re capable of.

An “I can’t do this” student (see message number one) comes into my classroom after school and politely asks me for help with Chemistry. After 5 minutes, she leaves saying, “Oh, that wasn’t so hard.”

This complaining about my students shouldn’t convince you that I’ve lost faith in them. It really seems to me that way too many students have way too little confidence and self-sufficiency when it comes to school, when outside of the classroom they can be just the opposite. We just need to find a way to bridge that gap between outside and inside the classroom.

Message to students:

-       I don’t want to hear “I can’t do this” one more time, because you can.

My classroom may be a little crazy at times, but I’m doing my best to stay sane. I still somehow get plenty of sleep at night and this weekend I got away with doing maybe three hours of work. Yesterday, we went out to “The Pyramid” (a very large outdoors store/restaurant/bowling alley/hotel/aquarium/taxidermy display) with a group from church. It was nice to not spend the whole day working, and there was fudge there, so of course we had to get 6 different flavors. Then that night we had some friends over for dinner and games and a quick run to Chick-fil-A, arriving 5 minutes before they closed. Hey, if we can find time for stuff other than work, maybe that’s a start toward modeling the “I can do this” attitude for my students. It’s hard, but I think it’s starting to get better.

- David

Vander, No Haak

"Hey, you be careful!" the woman called out the open window of her truck as she drove up next to me. "Memphis is crazy! I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you. You watch yourself!"

I was driving home (well, first to Chick-fil-A) at 7:30 on a Friday after grading for 3 hours. David's off at a wedding in Texas, and I just wanted to get some work done.

So I was finally relaxing (well, partially contemplating the parents I was going to have to call to inform them of their child's detention at 6:30 in the morning), windows rolled down (it's been excitingly cool lately!), when the lady called out to me.

Honestly, first when she called out to me, I had a moment of panic where I thought I was somehow driving incorrectly. I conclude that she was well-meaning. But it makes me think, do I have a giant glowing sign stuck to my forehead? Or does driving a bug, wearing a skirt out of the 50s, and being white, 22, and female, just chock me up as naive?

Given that my voice is going from yelling (not angry yelling, just an attempt to be heard), I feel surprisingly optimistic.

Some highlights from the journal entries I spent 3 hours grading...

If you could change one school rule, what would you pick and why?

• "I would like to change the rule on tucking in shirts. It makes me feel as if my body is being pulled down as my back is hunched to keep it from untucking. It hurts my back yo!"
• "I think the school should change the rule on tucking in your shirt. I feel like it's completely unnecessary that you have to tuck in your shirt. It can be a waste of time to do because, if you need to get to class and you need to tuck in your shirt, you can end up being late for class. I feel also very angry when it's hot, and you have to keep your shirt tucked in (which makes it hotter)."

What is something you have learned so far?

• "I learned about poverty. I also learned about word play."
• "So far I have learned to open my mind and think outside the box."
• "I have learned how to work well with others."
• "I've learned more vocabulary to use like countenance and meticulous. The meticulously girl lost her homework so she countenancely looked for it."

What is something that helped you or that you enjoyed?

• I have enjoyed just English and Ms. Vandy in general."
• "I love that we have discussions like today. They are fun and everyone gets to discuss their opinions on whatever the topic."
• "Today was kinda fun."
• "I've enjoyed that participating takes a big part."
• "You shouldn't trust everyone."
• "I learned so far that English is fun."

What is something I could change to help you more?

• "You shouldn't have to change anything."
• "Could change by giving notes."
• "Stop ALL These Journal Entry!!!"
• "Well we could start by getting rid of some people."
• "There is nothing that you could do but what you are doing because you already helped me."
• "Talk more to me."
• "Stop me from talking a lot."

Anything else you'd like to tell me?

• "Hi!"
• "I like your class."
• "No not really."
• "I'm a very smart student I just talk a lot."
• "Nothing much but thank you for the help!"
• "Nothing at all because it is good."

Reading journals...

• "So far Mr. Bingley is getting to know the girls independently. He doesn't want them to turn against each other. The mom doesn't care about anything but the man's money. She really doesn't care about her daughters happiness sadly."

So, after that obviously very biased account of my teaching (although the "thank you" came from a boy whom I had given a morning detention to after he skipped afternoon detention twice, and then he sent me a rather rude email, so I was surprised at his turnaround) - all I can say is that I walked the halls after school today with one thought beating through me: I LOVE MY STUDENTS.

Even the ones who talk too much. 

And maybe even the ones who throw paper balls. 

When they're not together.

And the students whom I supervised eating wings in my room at lunch. And left sauce on the desks. 

The students who have already read 400 pages. And those who have read 2.

The students from whom I have confiscated a growing pile of pencils with which they slap each other.

Even that boy who told me today that I hated him (after I called him out for talking out of turn). I pointed out that I didn't hate him. Actually, I thought he was pretty funny (I broke out laughing in the middle of class when he followed up his chant of "Kool Aid, no sugar, fried chicken, no potatoes," with "Vander, no Haak"), and if we were friends, I would really like him. But as I am his teacher, he can't talk that much. To which another boy said, "But we are your friends!"

I love all my students.

P.S. Sometimes I feel like I'm 15 all over again, and sometimes I feel like I'm 50 already. 

One week down.

We made it through the first week of school! - a week that included...

• 1st question of the week: "What religion are you?" This, after me reading my "I am from" poem to the students to introduce myself and model the form they would also use. The question quickly turned into "What race are you?" The other students laughed, and this turned into "Where are you from? There were a lot of words in there I didn't understand."
  
• A think-pair-share on how English will help you reach your goals, which resulted in a boy telling me that a larger vocabulary would help him get women. To illustrate this, he told me that I am "alluring." "Excuse me?" I said. "Alluring?! You don't want to say that to your teacher. Do you know what that means?" "Beautiful," he said. (Okay, it's still weird to tell your teacher she's beautiful, but not as bad as alluring.) "This is a great time for us to look at the difference between denotation and connotation," I said. And so I went on, after reviewing scrawny vs. slender, to pull the definition of "alluring" up on the board.
  
• 3 students finishing their 1st independent reading books (while most of the class is still on page 5).
  
• A discussion on which American ideal is most important - freedom, hope, justice, or individuality? The hope group said without hope, everything else is meaningless (this was also my opinion). The other groups got into a debate about slavery. The justice and freedom groups argued about if slavery was overturned by freedom or justice, and what Harriet Tubman was really fighting for. The individuality group contended that if you're an individual, even if you're a slave, you can "pick your own cotton." When I pointed out that if you're a slave, it's not your cotton, a boy told me, "You've got to own it. You've got to feel like it's your cotton." I changed the debate to "Does freedom or justice come first?" (since this was the core argument in the slavery debate), which led into how we don't have justice. One boy said, "We don't have justice in America because if I was shot, no one would care."
  
• In the midst of the above debate, a boy on the freedom team called someone else "stupid." I went over and sort of glared at him and told him off, accidentally getting a bit closer than I had intended ("in his face," he said). A couple of minutes later, a different boy called someone else "stupid." "Go over there and get in his face! Do your batman pose!" the first boy called, apparently imitating me, legs spread out, hands on hips.
  
• A young man checked out The Complete Works of Shakespeare for his independent reading book. The next day he showed up with another book, but he assures me he is going to return to Shakespeare after.
  
• A young lady telling David she doesn't like my class because I don't let her sleep, and the same young lady telling me she doesn't like David because he took away her phone.
  
• Grading 75 100-question multiple choice tests in booklets. Never again.
  
• My first ever parent phone calls! No, I didn't call because someone was in trouble, just to introduce myself. Amazing how the tone of the parent changes when you clarify that.
  
  Second week coming up!
  
  Love to all,
  Anneke 

Drive-in Milkshakes - Welcome to America

This week was a bit of an odd one. We had professional development, setup, and registration at school Monday-Thursday and then Saturday. (We still worked Friday, of course, but not technically required.) After the blur of making it to Thursday, and feeling somewhat off kilter, we decided to go for milkshakes Thursday night.

Which brings us to sitting in the Sonic drive-in Thursday, circa 8:30, reading over the menu.

Me: "Half price milkshakes after 8pm!"

David: "That's a lot more reasonable than 2am-4am, like at Steak and Shake."

Me: "Did you know, that was also 2pm-4pm."

David: "Then why didn't we go then?!?!"

Me: "I tried. I guess it doesn't have the same allure for college students."

Which of course brought back 2am Steak and Shake runs. That time I went to sleep, got back up from 2am-4am, and then slept a couple more hours before getting up for class. That time before Christmas vacation my flatmates and I dyed our hair, got milkshakes at 2am, and then I slept 45 minutes before my flight back to Tokyo.

The thing is, none of those times were entirely voluntary, or at least entirely my idea. I had always told myself it was one of those insane things American college students did, and I went along with it as a friend.

And then Thursday night, David and I went out and got milkshakes (okay, actually Blasters) at 8:30pm. And we got fries to boot! And we sat in the drive-in.

Maybe I'm finally turning into an American.

First day of school tomorrow!

In this moment

Last night some friends from Michigan stopped by Memphis to meet us for dinner on their way to Texas. Aiming for some level of Memphian authenticity without having to battle crowds, we met them at Soul Fish Cafe, on the outskirts of Midtown (which is sort of like Eastown, if you're from Grand Rapids), just into Cooper-Young. Afterwards we walked around the block to get milkshakes at Java Cabana.

Driving on the highway on the way back, top down, I had a chance to look around more. There was the great dark sky above me. Trees popping up in clumps. (There are these amazing trees everywhere still flowering in the middle of July, with little white and pink blossoms.) City lights twinkling around. I stuck my hands up (David was driving, not me, in case anyone got worried), and my palms were getting buffeted by the wind in a way that was half attack and half hug. Bugs were chirping. Something was playing loudly on the radio.

All I could think was, "In this moment, I swear, we are infinite" (Chbosky). (If you don't know what I am talking about or just want to relive the rush again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlWpupgrTCQ - the quote is also in the book - this is one case where I think the book and movie are both spectacular and complement each other nicely.)

It was one of those moments where everything sparkles and you're completely enthralled just to be alive. Which made me realize how negative I've been.

"Why can't we find anywhere to recycle cardboard?"
"It's always so hot in our apartment!"
"I wish I could walk to a cute little coffee shop. Or anywhere, really."

That last complaint had been simmering for a while, but it recently came out in a Skype conversation with my sister, who lives in Oregon City. She was complaining that although there were 2 coffee shops she could walk to, one of them had no atmosphere but good coffee, and one had great atmosphere, but terrible coffee.

I laughed. If I walked 30 minutes (through the heat), I could get to a Chick-fil-A or iHop.

But you know what? We chose to do that. We could have lived in the cute little areas. And we chose to live here. So now I need to own it and stop complaining.

My flash of infinity opened me to the positive, which made me realize how negative I've been, so here are 10 reasons I love Memphis:

1. Flowers in July
2. I feel like it's really summer. Yes, you sweat by just existing, but that's how it's supposed to be. And there are sounds of bugs all around you. It's like...I'm home again. There are dead semi/cicadas on the ground. That's what summer is.
3. All the sides that come with breakfast - for instance, at Blue Plate Cafe, if you order an omelette, it comes with 2 biscuits and gravy and your choice of grits or 3 pancakes or hash browns.
4. Donuts at church every week
5. Sandwich brigade at church (once a month during Sunday school hour we make sandwiches for people who are homeless - we made 800 yesterday)
6. Laundry in our apartment (as opposed to the basement, at college)
7. Our mini garden (Bruce the spruce, Paulo the cilantro, Angel the oregano, Mei-chan the basil, Archie the parsley, and Plato the sago palm)
8. I will not have to trudge through snow to scrape our bug, Jeeves, in February. (I try to remember this when the black leather seat is burning my thighs.)
9. The roads all have such darling names, like Birch Run Lane, Frosty Meadow Drive, and Autumn Springs Cove.
10. Every apartment complex (at least that we looked into) has a pool. Maybe once it cools down a little, we'll try ours out.

Peace,
Anneke

Scoreboards and Shower Curtains

Hello!

This is David writing on here for the first time! So you can probably expect a less intellectually stimulating post, and more of just relaying some stuff that’s happened,  but we all need a break sometimes.

It’s funny how something that seems to be such a negative experience in the moment can be looked back on fondly only after it’s finished. We finished teaching summer school on Wednesday, so now at the end of it all, you finally get to hear about my experiences.

My summer school experience was rather different from Anneke’s. At the school where I was teaching, all students were there for credit recovery—meaning that they were taking classes that they failed during the school year in order to move on to the next grade. So, you take 14 ninth graders (hopefully going into tenth) who failed classes (so many of them already face a great amount of disengagement from school), put them all together in a room in the summer when they’d rather be out with their friends or at a job making money, and you can imagine trying to get them invested in physical science is difficult. Very difficult. More so toward the beginning, I’d get back from school having taught only one 90-minute class and I’d be exhausted or sad or angry or all of the above. It was nothing like my student teaching experience. In college I had learned overarching philosophies of classroom management. It turns out that didn’t entirely prepare me for a difficult classroom to manage. Thinking that I should be more prepared to teach than my colleagues who had not studied education and obtained teacher certification like I had did not improve my confidence. Less than a week in, I went to my teaching coach and said something along the lines of, “I’m failing miserably and I don’t know what to do.”

So, he told me something I already knew, but probably needed him to tell me in order for me to really get it together and do it: I needed to focus less on all these strategies TFA had given for management and more on relationships. Things did get better. It takes time. For things to actually get good, I needed more time.

I’m going to stop there with the struggles and move onto a few highlights of summer school!

1. There was the student who put her head down in every class until I told her that she could write a scientific explanation as a rap and even perform it at the end of class that day. She worked furiously for the rest of class.

2. There was the student who started out not doing her work, and never contributing in class (she wouldn’t even respond when I’d ask her a question one-on-one). We had daily “exit tickets” (4-5 questions students had to answer at then end of class, like a short quiz) and the first few she failed terribly. It definitely wasn’t that she wasn’t smart—she was just very very quiet and would silently struggle and fail (something that can be hard to catch when you’re dealing with the more visible disruptions to learning in the classroom). It probably didn't help that, as I would discover later, other students picked on her. So every day I’d talk to her, and every day I’d tell her I knew she could do it and that I was there to help her. Our relationship grew, and by the end of the summer, she realized that I was a safe person, and my classroom was a safe place, and she not only raised her hand to ask for help in class, she even started contributing in front of the whole class! She passed with flying colors (100% on the final test), and hopefully obtained some new confidence along the way.  

3. There was the student who was probably the most difficult to deal with. No matter how many times I had to tell him to have a seat, to not leave the classroom in the middle of class, to stop snooping in the closet or drawers of the desk up front, and no matter how many times he responded with “get out of my face”, I never gave up on him. As often as I could, I would sit down and work with him one-on-one. By the end of the summer, he was still all over the place in class, but I’d have him smiling and high-fiving me when he got something when it was just us working together. He’d still say, “get out of my face”, but I think he knew I was on his side.

4. There was the student who on the last day came up to me and said, “You know, I think I’m actually going to miss you.”

5. Every single one of my students passed my class and the other two classes they took at summer school! And I could actually write a highlight about all 14 of them (but we’ll stick with four for now).

6. Summer school ended with a staff vs. student basketball game. After talking up my abilities all summer, my students were a little disappointed with how much I was exaggerating (students were the visitors, in case you couldn’t guess).

So yes, summer school was hard, and yes I am glad it's over. I was sad to leave my students though. 

Summer school is over, and now we’re looking forward to the coming school year. Sounds like I might be teaching physics and chemistry now, but I still don’t even know that for sure…

In other news, Anneke and I have moved into our new apartment! We still await a good amount of our stuff that has been in storage for the summer, but it’s starting to feel like a home. And it can’t be a home without a periodic table shower curtain.

Reevaluation

"You need to reevaluate your driving skills."

It was while pulling out onto the road that I realized I didn't know how to get back to the University of Memphis. We had been going from store to store, stocking up to outfit our upcoming apartment, so just reversing our path (which I had forgotten anyways) wasn't going to do the trick.

I asked David to put it in the GPS, and meanwhile attempted to make something up. I pulled up to the stop sign, turned on my left blinker, and waited for the cars already stopped the other directions to go. When they cleared, I pulled out into the intersection and began to turn. That was when I realized that the two cars coming into my lane weren't stopping. Apparently it was a three-way stop, not a four-way one. I waited in the left turn lane, then sidled right into the lane and pulled towards to the next stop sign. Still in the far left lane.

About twenty feet out, David announced that I should be turning right. I made a quick dash across two lanes and stopped in the right turn lane, waiting for the other cars (for this actually was a four-way stop) to go ahead. The man in the car on my left rolled down his window. It was a plain car, but he was in a police uniform.

"You need to reevaluate your driving skills."

This post is not actually about my possibly poor driving skills (I would like to term them more "poor sign reading skills," although I admit those are critical to driving). It's also not a rant about the speed of GPS warnings. Or my lack of direction.

The line seemed to me like it should come out of a movie, and then I should have some life epiphany, because I realize that I need not only reevaluate my driving skills, but also my entire life.

I almost wanted to take it that way. I want my life to be more like a story, and I was in a slightly bad mood, complaining about long hours, difficult students, and impossible restrictions and expectations.

"But," I thought, "I don't want to reevaluate everything. I still know I'm supposed to be here, doing this. I just need to be better at it."

David and I have been watching West Wing together, and tonight we watched the finale of season 2. And as the characters dealt with degenerative disease, an embassy under assault, a tropical storm, a friend killed by a drunk driver, and life constantly under watch, all the while making giant decisions, I thought, "Who am I to complain?"

Then I finished the last 30 pages of Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys. Between Shades of Gray is a novel of historical fiction, about a girl and her family who were deported from Lithuania to Siberia during WW2. And as I read about frostbite, starvation, drafty mud huts, scurvy, and death, I thought, "Who am I to complain?"

Those last pages left me with a few thoughts:

"We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer" (307). First of all, that is just a beautiful metaphor. Let's take a moment to appreciate that. Secondly, "Who am I to complain?" - at least I'm standing on dry ground. And lastly, boy, isn't that true. What are we doing? But, how can we do it better?

"From my rotting body flowers shall grow, and I am in them and that is eternity." - Munch As a Christian, that is not where I claim eternity comes from. And yet, I think it carries some truth. The circle of life is beautiful, but this can also be metaphorical, in the love we leave with others. I don't want to say your life is worth only what you pass on to others, but I believe this is critical in a way we often overlook. Isn't there some reflection of Jesus in that?

"Maybe you don't really want to die.... Maybe you just think you deserve to." This is said to a man who has spent the entire time griping about how he wants to die, yet never doing anything about it (after the first night, when he jumped out of the truck). 1) It's very true that some people feel like this, and I need to get better at helping teenagers with no self esteem (I'm not sure how much my pep talks do after fourteen years of learning otherwise), and 2) I think this sentiment is true of humans in other contexts, too. Sometimes almost in the opposite way, as in "Maybe you don't actually want to do that, you just want to want to do it." The relationship between action and belief is a funny one.

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." - Camus Not much to add here, except to get over myself, again. And get back to it. (Although perhaps, again, we could all stop to appreciate the beautiful phrasing.)

I also finished The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, this week. I read it in preparation for teaching it to 10th graders, although I would recommend it to everyone. It makes poverty up close and personal and delves deeply into family and love in a very hands-off way. However, if that's your only look at poverty, make sure you read up on systemic oppression and poverty as well. That's my one concern with teaching the book, so I'll be sure to include some articles in the unit, too.

I go back and forth about the Fourth of July. I'm not sure how to feel about it. Mostly I just remember my great aunt and her cakes, and I make a cake in memory of her. Mostly I just like a reason to celebrate with my family. Although as David and I are in Memphis this year, that's not happening as much. So that all complicates it more.

My love to everyone,
Anneke