Things I've learned this year

Things I've learned this year:

• Don't follow Google Maps when it tells you to exit the highway during a blizzard because small country roads are going to be faster
• Just because you have the money to purchase all the sweets your heart desires doesn't mean you should do so
• Reading truly gives you another life (which is awesome when you're not too happy about the life your body is in)
• You don't necessarily get a notice about paying rent - you're just supposed to know and do
• Don't take the way people treat you personally - there's some overused saying about how people treat you says something about them, not you
• Choosing to laugh instead of cry will keep you sane, but choosing to cry sometimes will keep you human
• Used bookstores are places of magic
• Fried chicken is a food group
• Never buy holiday candy until after the holiday - if you wait long enough, it truly is Dirt Cheap
• I am loved beyond my imagination even when I don't feel it, and that is what matters
• Exercise might actually make you feel better
• Some places in this country freeze during the summer
• It is possible to be so in the middle of nowhere that there are no clear radio stations
• IHOP is not always open 24/7
• Stress actually affects your body
• Dancing to loud music with your husband can do a wonder to dispel said stress
• You need to take care of yourself, but balance is important
• America has more, and more serious, issues than I realized
• Take care not to become a cynic, but also take care not to fall apart - either direction paralyzes you
• People will mask their own cleverness to be accepted
• The Great Gatsby is actually a beautiful and wonderful book
• Cry, the Beloved Country is actually a beautiful and wonderful book
• --> Basically, reread the books you considered "meh" in high school, because your brain probably just hadn't progressed enough to fully appreciate them - not that we can ever really FULLY appreciate literature - but that's part of its greatness, that you can keep reading, keep discovering
• Teenagers' brains have not fully developed yet
• So be kind
• But always be kind anyways
• But at the same time, be mean
• --> Life is a balance
• Ecclesiastes
• You have to choose to be happy 
• Start the year strict. Start the year strict. Start the year strict.
• "...[P]eople will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel" - MA

Aaaand, because I shall always love Stephen Chbosky, and I'm rereading The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and sometimes I complain too much, and I'm having a brilliant summer:

"This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song, and that drive with the people who you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite."

Now I'm off to revel in my last week and a half of high summer.

Toodles,

Anneke

P.S. For all of you who asked, and I didn't know yet, or anyone else just interested - Next year I'll be teaching 2 sections of 10th grade English (so 4 hours/day) + tutoring 1 section of middle school (either ESL or English). Finding out I shall have less work than last year is definitely contributing to my lightheartedness :)

P.S.S. I've been raising money for my classroom library. I've reached $494 of my $540 goal and appreciate any support anyone still feels like giving! https://www.pledgecents.com/cause/yvvhdb/classroom-library


<3.

Riddles

On Thursday we wrote riddles to work on inferences in poetry, so here are some of the best -- feel free to guess!

1. I have four legs and a lot of hair
Roam the jungle and poop in grass
My face is hairy like a Sasquatch and
My body as bald as a naked mole rat
Catch preying gazelles and buffalos out
In the wild where I reside

2. She lies
Comfortable, unbothered nor worried
She grows each day
She moves when she's hungry
Nine months later
She will see the world
She will be the new member

3. He is a man on a team
He wears black or green
At one point he wore a ring
People say he's lame
But he is at the top of his game
At night he fights crime
During the day he has all the time
He's CEO and rich
But he's nobody's itch

4. I am green in color
Like the grass, I have infinite amounts
Being used for numerous reasons
I am what most people need
People are given the opportunity to
Spend me or save me
I could be used to get people
Luxurious things
If new, I am smooth in touch

5. I'm humongous and juicy
With just a tad bit of spice
I'm as spicy as a volcano
Yet cheap as some Reebox
You can get me for a dollar
And some change
I can fulfill your hunger
When you see me, I make your
Mouth moist. I might make you
gain weight. What am I?

6. Five vertexes is all it has at once
Good in the sky only once a day
Credited as a diamond
Sitting amongst us all
Stationary places forever
Occasionally we fall

7. I believe everyone likes me on their breakfast plate
I'm best in my tannish brown state
I'm a circle with squares inside
I'm great with milk on the side
Butter is usually on top of me
Syrup above is something you'll always see
A bite, when you see me, you want to take
I'm a close relative of the pancake

8. Red as blood
Small and petite
It holds your life
And your emotions

You don't feel it
Nor do you see it
But when you're
Emotionally hurt you
Think about it

It beats a steady beat
A beat like the beat of
A drum

9. You see me everywhere in nature
I make my own food and nutrients
Bees are attracted to my gorgeous petals
And they pollinate me to make their honey
I can be yellow, pink, purple, anything
I can be enormous to the tiny bugs
Or just a pleasant side to a beautiful woman

10. I sit up high
As you watch my time pass by
My hands go round
I may make you frown
Sometimes I go fast, sometimes I go slow
I'm always scheduled, you'll always know
I'll always have you on the go

11. It is bright and eccentric
Brings trepidation, giggles, and shocks
Some say it's a killer
A killer of family time
You have the control in your hand
It comes to life faster than lightning

This week was full of ups and downs, but the kids had so much fun writing these. I wish I could see that joy in my classroom more often. They couldn't wait to share and guess each other's.

:)
Anneke

Trying Again

A reflective fondness has been creeping up on my lately. I find myself thinking things like, "Wow, I have such a great job, that I get to read student journals," or, "I can't believe people will share things like this with me. Being a teacher is awesome." That just sounded super trite and unbelievable, right? Of course, these thoughts are mixed in with "Only 25 days of school left" and "Why can't this year just be done?!?! I am so over these kids."

But maybe it's only as I'm about to lose my first babies that I can fully appreciate the honor it is to teach them everyday.

Today was cake day at school. Once a month one of the teachers uses the hospitality fund (that we all paid into) to buy cakes to celebrate that month's teacher birthdays. For some reason (perhaps the fact that several of the teachers, including me, were eating cake while on lunch duty) my juniors discovered that it was cake day, and congregated around the teacher's lounge door in the passing between lunch and 6th period. They kept trying to sneak in to coerce (that's one of our vocabulary words this week! I feel proud using it, even though I'm now--EEK!--23 years old) me into giving them cake. When all else failed, a student threatened, "If you don't give us cake, we'll torture you when we come to your class!" At the time, that sounded ominous, partially because this class will come together to torture teachers and partially because it's unannounced observation week, and that would just happen to me. But upon reflection, the entire ordeal is hilarious. I get to work with these kids everyday! And they crack me up everyday. Sometimes because I have to choose between laughing or crying, but sometimes just because life is funny, and maybe I need them to show me that.

Third period a tenth grader broke my stapler (again), and my first thought was, "Oh, I'll have to get --- to fix that 7th period when I have him." So, --- kid walks in 7th period, and I ask him to fix my stapler, and he's pleased that I remembered his awesome fix-it skills (he's previously fixed my computer and pencil sharpener), and then he and another kid fight over who actually fixed the stapler.

The 11th graders took the ACT yesterday. For the two months before that, I had been reviewing for the English and reading tests once a week or so in class. Today I caught one of them in the hall and asked, "How was the ACT?"

"Kind of hard. Except for your English parts! Those were easy, because you gave us all those packets."

"You complained the whole time I tried to review for the ACT."

"Yeah...sorry about that."

And that is the glory of teaching. Yes, they all complain in the short-term. But every once in a while you catch a glimmer of the good it will actually do in the long-run. Like that maybe my annoying insistence that my juniors practice reading comprehension and study subjective vs. objective pronouns may have raised their ACT scores a point or two.

Also, today when I got on a 10th grader about not doing her work, she told me, "You're one of only two teachers that care about us."

"Earlier this year you told me I acted like I didn't care."

"Yeah...sorry, I was having a bad day."

And earlier this week, a student complained to me, "This is the only class I have to try in to get an A. I go home and cry about it!" Which sounds terrible. But I'm going to take it in a good way. Yes, you should have to put in effort to get an A.

There's this quote I found on Pinterest in the summer to encourage David: "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow" (Mary Anne Radmacher). I think about that quote a lot this year. I also think about the definition of insanity as trying the same thing over again and expecting different results. Perhaps I am bravely insane, or insanely brave.

Here's to trying again tomorrow -
Anneke

Bunny in Memphis

David and I went to see Zootopia this afternoon. We're on spring break, and tickets are cheap 4-6 every afternoon, so we went to a 4:10 showing. Partway through the previews, a reminder not to illegally record movies came up on the screen. It featured two white men, mid-twenties, one in a hoodie, leaning together with these evil looks on their faces. I leaned over to David and said, "Because only really sketchy looking people do illegal things." "Do we look sketchy because we're here without a kid?" he asked back. "Please," I said. "I'm a girl, and I'm wearing a floral dress. And then you're with me, so you probably get points for that."

Zootopia was a great movie. It was cute and funny, but more than that, it was social commentary in a poignant and inspirational sort of way. At a time when Donald Trump and hate seem to be winning the day, this movie shows the brilliance of fantasy - telling the truth people won't eat up as readily any other way (there's some famous quote about this that I can't recall).

(And yes, I have read reviews where flaws - including that wolves do historically eat bunnies - are noted, and if you take it that far, I see the problematic implications. We could have a whole other discussion about that. No, I do not believe black people historically killed white people. Other way around, really. Maybe we could decide that makes our society even more ridiculous?)

I haven't blogged in a while. Mostly, because lately when I have strong feelings and something to say, that something is negative, and I don't want to share around more negativity in this world. But Zootopia took some of those thoughts and gave them somewhere to go. Yes, a children's movie seems to have restored my hope in humanity, at least for an afternoon.

I started off spring break by reading All American Boys on Saturday. It's the story of a white police officer beating a black teenage boy. It's a story we've all heard too often as not just a story. The particularly interesting part of All American Boys (which, by the way, is a Coretta Scott King honor book) is that it's told from two alternating perspectives - that of the boy who was beat and that of a white teenage classmate whose perspective changes. The novel depressed me at the beginning, because it's true, and then it made me embarrassed to be a white person, because although the white kid's perspective changes, he's so blindly racist at the beginning. I'm embarrassed to be associated with that. I'm embarrassed that it's so true. I want to protest that all white people aren't like that. And yet, before this recent wave of police brutality publicity and Black Lives Matter, was I any different?

(Note: an interesting twist in All American Boys is that the father of the boy who was beat up used to be a cop. He quit after shooting and paralyzing a black teenager who he mistook to be getting out a gun when he was actually reaching for his inhaler.)

Then this morning I started How It Went Down (another Coretta Scott King honor book), which follows the neighborhood shooting of a black teenage boy by a white man. You are thrown into the midst of confused perspectives over what happened, and while I haven't finished it yet, it's clear that people are stereotyping and assuming like crazy, and that's resulting in the white man getting off on the excuse of self defense (sound familiar?). People assume the teenager was in a gang, or he had a gun, and while none of that seems to be true, none of it also excuses fatally shooting someone.

At the end of Zootopia, Judy gives a classic inspirational speech about how she came to the city expecting everyone to get along perfectly, and when she arrived, she saw it wasn't so, but we still need to do our best to make the world a better place. Yes, it's trite, but it's still true. I didn't realize how many problems America had until I moved here. Maybe I'm a bit like the bunny. (People do look at me and assume similar things. "You? Moving to Memphis? To teach in an urban school?!")

As we left the theater for our car, that conversation about the sketchy movie recorders came back to me. Sometimes it's hard to stay out of the system. I had done the same thing. I struggle with this sometimes - if people are going to treat me like a harmless female, is it so bad to try to play that card sometimes?

A couple of weeks ago in class, the opening journal prompt asked where your name was from, why you got it, what it meant, etc. A girl named Tyler raised her hand and said, "When I was little, I didn't like my name, because it sounds like a boy, but my mom gave me this name instead of a name like Shaniqua because she wanted me to be able to get job interviews."

Right before spring break we finished Cry the Beloved Country in sophomore English. My final reading question asked students to apply what we've talked about fixing broken things to some current situation. One girl told me that this novel shows that the way to fix a society is to come together, whereas Trump is trying to fix America by breaking us apart.

I could go on and on. The whole debate about how you present yourself vs. social capital is on the tip of my tongue, but I think I'll restrain that for now. Sorry for the long ramble. Hopefully you could make some sense from it. Or at least you thought a little bit.

Shalom,
Anneke

Grownup?

Throughout school people always said, "Don't worry about grades. Your grades now have nothing to do with your future success." I thought, "Oh no! Getting good grades is the only thing I'm good at!"

Throughout college people always said, "Don't worry if you don't know what you want to do yet. God will lead you. You can explore different things." I thought, "Is something wrong with me that I've known what I wanted to do for ten years? Am I limiting God's plan?"

Now I read blogs or articles or statuses from my peers in their early- to mid-twenties, and I still feel like I don't fit. I got married straight out of college and started my "real career," as one of my friends put it recently, by which I took it she meant the career I intend on retiring from. I'm not in grad school; I'm not doing some cool internship in Latin American.

It seems my whole life I have fit the traditional mold in a way that everyone is trying to tell you you don't need to fit, and so I have ended up not fitting.

I love being married, I love teaching [sometimes], but occasionally I feel like I missed being young - as in, something has to be wrong with either me or them, and I know too many of "them" to think they're irresponsible. But how do I feel so much responsibility already?

Part of it is being a teacher. Four years out of high school, I am responsible for high schoolers - "I need my medication." "I'm going to throw up." "Boy Z just pushed a pencil into my hand; can you take out the sliver?" "Can you warm up my sandwich?" "He pushed me!" "Someone stole my lemonade!" + the daily knowledge that I am responsible. In a fire, I am responsible for getting them out of the building. In a lockdown, I am responsible for getting them silent and against the wall. When they are too loud, I am responsible. When they fight, I am responsible. When someone's sister died, and he just ran out of class, and girl Y in the back is yelling at girl Q for hitting her with a book, and boy P needs a pencil, and girl T is about to throw up, and girl R lost her homework again, and no one is actually doing their work (yes, at the same time), I am responsible. When a girl runs out crying because another student is presenting about cars, and her boyfriend is in a coma from a car accident, and I can't find her in any of the bathrooms, I am responsible.

I read somewhere recently about how part of being a grownup is realizing that grownups don't call themselves that. But sometimes I just think, "When did I become this grownup?" There's no middle ground - someone was responsible for me, and now I am responsible for all of you!

Being a teacher is part being an actor - pretending to be this big firm adult. I think as you age, you have to pretend less because 1) you are actually adultier and 2) you look adultier, so you don't have to act so as much. The other day I accidentally called a student "dude." I apologized, but I don't think she had noticed. And of course, the daily battles of not laughing at the insulting or inappropriate jokes. And not telling anyone to shut up.

And here I wasn't going to talk about my job in this post!

I guess sometimes I just start to feel alone in doing what I thought was like...the appropriate path? And I'm just standing here being like, where is everyone else?

In college, we were all in college, majoring in different things, sure, but still in college. And now everyone is doing such different things, and not just different things, but in different...ways?

Snow day tomorrow! So here I am, up late (10:40, mock if you must), drinking my hot cocoa (with whipped cream from my fancy creamer), pondering over the state of things.

Sweet dreams,
Anneke

[ ]

Sometimes, when it gets to be so much

and I want to cry from looking into your tired eyes
and I lost the girl whose boyfriend is in a coma
and the boy whose 12-year-old sister just died
or the girl who cussed and ran out
and I don't even know why

or a boy is crying in front of me
and I can't fix it

when I just want to hug
but sometimes touching incites

when you push up a sleeve and see death carved in red

when another girl is gone to a center for a week or two

when the anger bubbles out
and the cussing
the pushing
the breaking
comes
and punishing the behavior won't do anything

when he writes me a letter
when she tells me what happened when she was five

when you worry that calling home might cause abuse

when you watch the video and there's a gun slung around
and go home to hear gunshots outside your window

when you wonder how long the yelling is going to go on
when the kids laugh at fighting

when you buy school supplies
because mama just can't fit a notebook in right now

when you can never count on Internet

when she writes her influential person essay about her grandma
gives it to her grandma on her birthday
and two months later, grandma dies
when grandma's picture is still on her binder

when it starts to seem like everybody's brother has died

and a journal about "I'll never forget" that you imagined ending with birthday parties ends with gunshots and death

a memoir reveals running across the border and worries about death

when it starts to seem like death is lingering in the corner

but everyone still cuts each other down

when you hold the shaking girl
when you force down the food
when you hold her so she can't throw up

when he tells you there's no food at home

when it all blurs together:
Facebook threats
scars
pride
bright eyes
tired eyes
wet eyes

all that's left is silence.

For a lifetime

With all of the hubbub about state tests, sometimes I begin to forget that ultimately, I want my students to think critically and become lifelong readers and writers who engage with the people and world around them. I came back to that a little this week, with starting up third quarter independent reading ("We have to do that again? I thought we were done with that last semester!") and implementing daily journaling, with weekly blogging. 

Over the Christmas holiday I bought more used YA novels to expand my classroom library, from which most of my students' independent books come. Mostly I bought a pile of Nicholas Sparks and Walter Dean Meyers. I introduced them, and my stack of new finds was gone by the end of the day (only 2 books were left for the 3rd class), with students fighting over who got some of them. I introduced The Host as a book by the same woman who wrote the Twilight series and an alien-invasion romance in which the aliens control your mind. A boy picked up on "alien invasion" and claimed it. Not saying boys can't like romance, but I don't think this book is what he is bargaining for.... Him, along with the boy who wrote in his journal that he chose The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy became he liked the movie. (If you've read and seen both, you'll understand why that's a terrible idea.) 

Then the students mobbed around the bookshelf where I keep my library. "You don't have any books that I like," a student complained. "What kind of books do you like?" I asked. "Mysteries," he said, so I showed him House Rules, telling him it was about a teenage boy accused of murder. He and another girl got so excited about it that they are now sharing the book, and the girl is trying to get another copy. 

I switched the Do Now to silent journaling for the first 5 minutes of class (thanks to my donors!), and so far, it's working wonders. For the most part, they actually sit there and journal silently! Starting the class peacefully is a life saver for me, and I think it rubs off on the rest of class for the students, too, since they have been forced to quiet down and engage for 5 minutes. 

Friday I started student blogs, where I'm hoping they can expand one of their journal entries every week, and read and respond to their classmates'. You can see my class blog at msvanderhaak.edublogs.org. There's a list of student blogs on the lefthand side, but they're password-protected. So, for a taste...

"I'll never forget the taste of chocolate. I'll never forget the color of your eyes. I'll never forget what it is to be Mexican. I'll never forget the day i sang to you. I"ll never forget what it was to be 10 years old. I''ll never forget my name...."

"I'll never forget my mom's birthday and favorite color. I'll never forget the time I got to go to Nashville Shores with my childhood friends. I'll never forget the first time I got to hold my baby cousin. I'll never forget losing my cousin to gun violence. I'll never forget losing my granny to cancer. I'll never forget the first time I seen a snake...."

"I'll never forget my first love. I'll never forget my 15th birthday party. I'll never forget [name]. I'll never forget my first credit card. I'll never forget my dad. I'll never forget I am a child of GOD...."

"Well if I could go anywhere when I wanted it will be Mexico because I will be able to see my family again. It will be our first time seeing each other. I will go to the fair and the beach also. We will go and eat some Mexican food like tacos and some other things. We will go to some other places like the stores and buy things that see needs. It will make me happy to go and see her because she is very sick...."

"If I could take a road trip, I would go to Italy by myself maybe. I would go alone to get away and explore. I would eat their pizzas and pasta. I would like to shop and meet new people."

"If I could take a road trip anywhere, I would go to Mexico. Despite being of Mexican descent, I have never been to Mexico. I would like to know the place where my parent grew up in better. It would cool to see the cultural differences that it has compared to the US. I could also try foods that my mother doesn't know how to make, which would be an amazing experience. That's why I would go to Mexico...."

"If I had a personal robot it would be called Mrs. Pat. Mrs. Pat would be my best friend and my servant. She would help me out with my kids, help me cook, clean, and do my work for my job. She would go shopping with me and she would get to do whatever she want. She would look like a real human. She would be mixed with all races...."

"My robot servant would like Rihanna, and it will sing all of my favorite songs made by her. It will cook only meats and soul food. And read me bedtime stories as a singing tone till I completely fall asleep and well fed."

"My robot will always go shopping with me. She is going to be my best friend. It would have magic super powers that let her pick out gorgeous clothes for me. She would be able to fix me any type of food I want to eat. I will never have to pay for food again...."

***

In Sunday school this morning we talked about different types of love, one of them being covenant love, which "binds us to another person because God has commanded us to love" (Aaron 45). The writer expands, "In covenant love we love those who do not deserve love, who do not reciprocate our love.... In practicing covenant love we may have to act lovingly until we begin to feel love or even if we never feel love as an emotion" (45). That was a good reminder for me to love my students first. And that I don't need to feel guilty if I don't FEEL love for all of them all the time.

***

Then during the service, my 4-year-old biggest fan crawled under 5 pews to sit by me. Before proceeding to lick my lyric sheet. Love in all forms.

***

This past week we watched The Great British Baking Show, which is a fantastic show that I just want to live inside (or maybe just move to Britain). I think it inspired David a little, because yesterday he made pizza and bread, and this morning he made eggs Benedict. I'm contemplating trying some bread of my own this afternoon, but we did score some Christmas sale chocolates, so tea is already covered....

All in all, I would say that life is getting better! At least this week was better. Break reminded me that I do have loving support network and things I like to do, and that I am a real person outside of my job. This week seemed to allow a little space for that still, plus some of David and my New Year's resolutions to live a little more. So far, that's mostly translated into food, going out for Indian Friday night, working at Starbucks Saturday morning, and going to crepes Saturday afternoon. But we were out of our apartment so much! Yay us. And we're only 22. We're going to be really fun by the time we hit 30!

Now we have a jigsaw puzzle half completed (thanks Mom and Dad!), a dropped Phase 10 game out (25% off for teachers at Barnes and Noble this week!), my current novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane sits beside me, and visions of chocolates and bread are dancing in my head...along with the possibility of dragging David out for a walk in the brisk sunshine. Here's to a lovely Sunday afternoon.

Shalom,

Anneke


P.S. I'm adding some photos of our break at the end here (credit to Bette, Brian, Brandon, Caitlin, and Thomas) for anyone who hasn't seen them on Facebook - here are our smiling (and not so smiling)
faces!

Seattle, by Pike Place Market, with the Christopher



One of many many large meals out with the Vander Haaks (thanks for all the food)


David on Tony the reindeer



Photos of this break would not be complete without Guinness and Prudence



One of many delightful teas in Portland

Top of Multnomah Falls



More tea



My dearest darling - love to Beetlejuice and back <3