I've written a novel!

It's done! I finished the clean up of the first draft of my novel yesterday!  So, regardless of whether I ever find fame and fortune, I am now a novelist!  I sent it off to my critique group last night, and they'll help find and fill the holes in late July.  I'm both excited and nervous as hell. It's the biggest thing I've ever written.

It's been a four-year journey.  I'm a mom of two wonderful girls and I work as a middle school teacher, so simply finding hours to write in was probably actually the hardest part. Well, that and learning how to write a novel while doing it. Luckily, I also have a very supportive husband.

When I look back on it, T gets a lot of credit for getting me here. He was the one who looked around at gather and craigslist and meetup for a critique group for me when I expressed a desire to get back into writing after our youngest was born.  That critique group has grown into one of the most important things in my life.  They keep me honest--in life and in work.

T was also the one who found a writing retreat for me when I said I needed a longer stretch of time to focus on the task.  As an eighth night gift, he bought me three days of writing time through a local organization called Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, run by Jeannette Stokes. Periodically, they hold these weeks of quiet and writing for women at Pelican House at Trinity Center.

It was perfect for me.  The house is silent during work hours. You're within easy reach of the beach and some marshes if you need to walk.  They feed you (quite well), so you don't have to spend any time and energy on figuring out where your meals will come from.  There's even usually coffee that someone else made.  I've been able to go twice now, and I've never been so focused and productive as a writer as I was at Pelican House.

I did most of my writing in this room:

It's perfect for me. I can see and hear the sea. The room is tiny--that photo shows most of it right there.  It's in a cupola at the top of a little spiral staircase.  The only distractions are the ones I bring in with me. Next time, I'm bringing a little folding table and I may just live in that room the whole time.

So maybe this is the first draft of my acknowledgements page.  Thank you so much, T. 

The Hospital Is No Place for Sick People

So, I ended up in the emergency room last night. I had fever and chills, and have a history of some fairly serious infections, so it was a "better safe then sorry scenario." I was there was from 6:00 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.

Jeez the hospital is terrible.

I went to a good one. I'm fortunate to live in a place with two big well-regarded hospitals. The care is excellent. But the processing and facilities leave you feeling like cattle.

Here's my night at the emergency room.

I arrived 6:00 or so.  I was really really woozy and almost fell trying to come in the door. The security guard fetched me a wheelchair, while my husband gave the desk people my cards.  With no wait at all, we went in to see the triage lady, who did all the computer stuff, took my vitals and categorized me.  The seating was reasonably comfortable, her tone was calm and polite. That's the end of the good part.

From the triage office, I was sent to a nurse to give samples. She was able to take my blood without problem, but I was sent to the bathroom to give a urine sample only to find that it the most poorly set up bathroom ever for these purposes. There is no place to put anything down. Even the top of the toilet paper dispenser is rounded. There's no garbage can in the stall.

So, I'm woozy, in danger of falling at any time, and trying to clean myself with wipes and get the lid off the specimen cup with no place to set anything. I'm completely horrified thinking about the germ level in that room. Since there was no garbage can or other flat surface, everything sat on the floor at some time. Sounds like a good way to get an infection to me!

The door to the room is so heavy that, weak and woozy,  I couldn't open it when it was time to leave. It also seems to be soundproof because no one hears me saying that I can't get out. There's no little red pull cord for emergency help like you have in the other parts of the hospital. Luckily, my husband stayed nearby and he heard me and let me out.

I had about an hour in the waiting room. The waiting room has stiff and inflexible chairs and 3 different televisions blaring 3 different terrible programs. Keep in the mind that I'm sick. I want a dark, quiet room and to lie down more than anything. We found a corner as far away from the TV as possible and I huddled against the wall, using my jacket and a blanket I brought from home to try and find some degree of comfort.

After an hour, I get a cot in the hallway. I am not particularly tall, 5'6", but the cot was shorter than me, narrow and quite hard. I couldn't stretch out on it completely.  Still, being able to lay down felt like heaven after having to sit upright in the lobby. The nurse was friendly and gave me anti-nausea meds right away, so right away I felt better.

The environment of the hallway was bad enough to make my husband, who was quite healthy, ill. The lighting is harsh and relentless. It's like sitting under the heat lamp at a cheap buffet. Even though I couldn't see a cause to keep us under this kind of lighting, it was never dimmed. Even on an airplane they dim the lights after a certain hour.

The noise is horrendous. You are surrounded by machines beeping and pinging, and because the "walls" are all just curtains, you can hear each doctor, nurse, and patient in complete detail. I could tell you all about the woes of the patients around me (so much for privacy) and which doctors are condescending to their patients and which ones act like we have brains in our heads. One of the doctors succumbed to "speak English louder" at her patient who didn't speak English. At least there was no TV.

I have a gift from my father, which is the ability to go into a defensive sleep when the world is overstimulating or awful.  So, that's what I did. I pulled my blanket over my head, put a finger in my ear and my other hand over my face and went to sleep. I woke periodically when my body protested the hardness of the bed and wanted me to shift or when someone came by to bother me.

I was on that table for five hours with only a few respites.  Twice, I needed to go to the bathroom. This is not as simple as it sounds. I needed a nurse to disconnect me from tubes so I could sway my way down the hall to the bathroom. Once it was easy to get her attention, the second time I was hurting pretty good by the time we got her attention.  (The bathroom was gross as well, with paper on the visibly dirty floor and packets from urine sample wipes all over the sink--there was no where else to set them--which grossed me out thinking about the germs again).

At some point, I was removed to another part of the hospital for another test. Actually, come to think of it, I was still on that bed. They just moved it and me.  But at least the lighting was calm and dim and the environment was quiet in that hall. I was the most relaxed I'd been the entire visit. I wish I could have spent my time up there waiting for the results, but they shuttled me right back to my cell. At some point, the nurse brought me Motrin to help with the headache that having to be in that horrible hallway had given me.

I'm lucky, I know, to have such easy access to care. I suspect that our emergency room is one of the nicer ones. But I do wonder why care doesn't include consideration of the environment. I was sick and scared. Many around me were sicker, with more cause to be scared. But the environment is not conducive to rest or privacy. If you weren't already under stress when you came in, you sure would be from the noise, light and lack of privacy.

If it wasn't where they kept the doctors, I would never go to a hospital when I was sick. It's no place for a sick person.

Getting Excited Over Blended Learning

Blended Learning is what they're calling it this week.  In my brain, I call it one to one.  All we really mean by it is students with computers. And it's happening in my district next year!

I'm so excited!

Kids in grades 6-12 will get laptops.  So, instead of scheduling lab time for my kiddos, I can rely on having access to that technology for them every day in my classroom.

I've been working from a blended learning mindset for a while now.  The things we are blending are meatspace and cyberspace. The kids still come to me and see me and interact with me and with each other in real time and space, but a lot of what we do is additionally available online in some format: a resource list in a classroom website, an online option to turn in work via moodle or google docs, a recommended application for i-devices of one sort or another.

There are a lot of nay-sayers around. People who spend a lot of time and energy focused on what can go wrong and how kids can abuse it. 

I'm becoming a zealot for it.

I don't think this is just because I love technology so much myself. I think it's just a recognition of how people work with information in the twenty-first century.

Once upon a time, I had to memorize a lot of data. Now what matters is what I do with that data, and if I can organize it in helpful ways.  Can I find what I need to know when I need it and apply it? Of course, memory is still part of that . . .and some things do need to be able to be done without research or reference in order to be efficient. But that's another topic altogether.

And, yes, kids will try to use it to be lazy and to cheat. Some kids will try that no matter what format you present the learning material in. They are not invested in our system.  That's a different struggle entirely--getting buy-in from the disenfranchised. If I could solve that one for every child, I'd be Teacher of the Universe!  All I can do is try to win them over, one child at a time.

And when I look at blended learning through that lens, all I see are possiblities.

Differentiation, for example. Differentiation is a big buzzword in education these days. Basically, it has to do without providing different ways to access information and interact with it based on the strengths and abilities of the kids.  That might mean providing materials in a language other than English, or written in a lower-reading-level of English or not as written words at all, but as a video or audio file. It means that kids are allowed to show what they know in a variety of ways.

I struggle with managing this in the classroom. There are so many varying needs and abilities in any one middle school class (I teach 6th, 7th and 8th grade Spanish). 

But in a blended learning environment, I can keep a variety of materials "on hand" digitally and share different ones with different kids with a couple of clicks. I can change my mind in the middle of class and give a kid different materials.  I can give quick assessments for a big picture of class comprehension or a small picture of one student's comprehension.

So bring on the blender.  Let's see what we can make with this baby!

A Woman of Substance

            My sister thought she was a scary old lady. I kind of thought so, too. But I wanted to be scary like that.  People did what our Great Grandmother Lena said.  She was in charge of things. You didn’t cross her.  The world took her seriously.  

            These were all things a skinny little freckled girl wanted.  No one took me seriously. Not the way I wanted them to. At the time, I blamed the freckles.  No one could take me seriously when my freckles and dimples made me look like a cute little girl, instead of the very serious writer I was inside.  Really, it was probably because I was an eight-year-old girl.  I just wasn’t supposed to be this serious and ambitious yet.

            I was a writer! It was my identity. I was Jo from Little Women and, if my family had needed me to, I could have written books to buy our firewood. Never mind that we didn’t have a fireplace. I wrote poems, stories, essays, histories, whole books. My teachers and parents and aunts and uncles all thought everything I did was just wonderful.  I enjoyed the praise, of course, but I knew they weren’t taking it seriously.  They weren’t offering any critique. 

            Great Grandmother Lena was the only one among my relatives who didn’t just respond with blanket praise when I showed her my poems and stories.  Sometimes this made me want to cry, but it also made me value her opinion. She knew that I would grow to write bigger and better things. Things that mattered.  Through her eyes, I could see this, too.  Her praise was worth so much more because it was so difficult to earn.

            Throughout my childhood, I heard a lot of things about her, but not from her. She didn’t talk about herself or her history. She wasn’t a grandmother who told stories.

            I knew, though, that she had been married, and that her husband had died a long time ago, even before my mother was born. I always had a hard time imagining a husband for her.  She seemed so self-sufficient, so sure. Was there really room for someone else’s opinion about how things should be done?  Was he dour and dark like her?

            Grandma Liz, Lena’s daughter, had adored her father.  She said that he was funny and affectionate, that he liked to sing as he walked the little family farm doing the chores. When Grandma Liz talked, you knew it was her father that she had loved with all her heart. It was so hard to imagine this Irish man singing his way through a life beside my German great grandmother.  I always imagined him being a little afraid of her, like the rest of us.

            Now that story makes me awfully sad.  I think she must have really loved her husband, that he had been the lightness of her soul, a lightness that she lost entirely when he died young.  I don’t think she ever even considered dating someone again, let alone marrying. He had been it for her.  And he died when they were both so young. She lived another half a life without a partner. It makes me hope that there is heaven, and that they are together there.

            But that’s all conjecture, probably me projecting how I feel about my own husband into the outline of her story. Grandma Lena never told me how she felt about her husband. That was private.  You didn’t talk about private things.

            What Great Grandmother Lena did talk about were her convictions. She was a woman with a lot of opinions about life and how one should live it.  As my Great Grandmother, she obviously felt she should teach me these life lessons.

            She told me that you can’t rely on a man to take care of you.  She didn’t think much of women who couldn’t handle their own problems.  When something broke at her house, she fixed it. It made her angry when she couldn’t. If she hired a repairman, she made him explain what he was doing so that next time she would be able to fix it herself.  Being afraid was no excuse.  You just bucked up and did it anyway.  This was probably why she and my Grandma Liz did not get along as well as they might. Grandma Liz was happy to let her husband take care of things for her.

            It really surprises me now to realize that Great Grandmother Lena never got her driver’s license.  It seems out of character for such an independent woman to rely on others for a ride.  In a way, I’m glad she didn’t.  I wouldn’t have known her the same way if my mother hadn’t been the one to take her where she needed to go. 

              I wonder now if it was part of her general mistrust of technology.  After all, her house still had things like an outhouse, a pump, and a wringer-washer in the 1980s.  She always said that there was no reason to fix something that wasn’t broken, but I wonder if she was just a little nervous about new-fangled things. It’s a soft thought, imagining this powerhouse of a woman cowed by machinery.  I guess she wasn’t all steel after all.

            What little help she accepted in life, was not from men.  It was my mother, her granddaughter, that she called for a ride. Not her son or any of her grandsons.  So, the lesson is, I guess:  if you have to accept help, it is better to take it from another woman than a man. And you should always repay your debts, if you are forced to take any on. If people help you, you find a way to help them in return.

            She told me that hard work is the most valuable thing we have to give. That God values effort. She had no patience for laziness, physical or mental.  Although she never had a paying job outside her home—few women of her generation did—she worked hard every day of her life.  She canned. She tilled. She sewed. She kept to a schedule of household maintenance including turning mattresses, re-caulking windows and doorframes, and a house-emptying spring cleaning on top of just ordinary daily cleaning and cooking. I cannot remember ever seeing her idle, except when she read. Which, of course, is not really idle. Just still.

            She told me that you should not take anything from anyone.  Good people took care of their own needs. “You don’t buy frivolous things then cry that you can’t afford butter for your bread.” It’s irresponsible not to have a nest egg and emergency funds. 

            But, at the same time, when we have extra, we should share it. You should give at church and support charities to help people who are not as strong as we are.  “Strong women take care of themselves. And others.”

            She taught me that being pretty was not nearly as important as being intelligent and self-sufficient. She believed this without bitterness.  She didn’t wish for the softer life a prettier woman might have had.  She didn’t want someone to take care of her or pamper her. She dismissed it with a wave of her gnarled hand.  “Women like us, Samantha, we don’t need that useless stuff. We are not decorations for some man. We build our own destinies. We are women of substance.”

            “Women like us.” I couldn’t be prouder to be included in any group. I only pray she would still think that we are the same kind of woman.

Grownup Birthday Parties

When I was a kid, I knew exactly what to do on my birthday: have a party!  There were two kind of parties: homemade and store-bought.

A home-made party was at your house. Your mom made stuff you loved to eat and decorated a cake. Balloons and streamers and banners covered whatever part of the house you were going to be allowed to mess up. Your friends came over and ran around like crazy monkeys until your Dad was sent to tell you what it was time for: games, presents, food, cake, etc.  A couple of hours later, the kids were given small party-themed bags full of candy and useless plastic toys and sent home to start their exhausted sugar comas.

A store-bought party was at a place, like a bowling alley or bouncey house or zoo or amusement park or whatever.  The format was the same, but your Mom looked less harried because she wrote a check and let someone else do all the running. I always thought that having this kind of party meant that the birthday kid was rich, though, as an adult, I've realized you can spend just as much at an at-home party. 

I can count the number of birthday parties I've had after turning 21: one. When I was 33.  My now-husband and I were newly dating. So, we had a birthday party for me, largely so his friends could meet me.  My five-year-old daughter was thrilled!  She picked out a Hobbit-themed cake for me. I talked her out of $50 worth of balloons, though,  claiming they wouldn't let us have them at the bowling alley.

While that party was a really great day, full of happy little moments, I haven't minded not having a party since. Once you become an adult, parties are a lot of work. Even if you have it somewhere-not-your-home and just buy the food/cake/entertainment, there's still planning, coordinating, decision-making.  And your mom doesn't usually just take care of it for you. Especially if your mom, like mine, lives twelve hours away.

Our youngest has a hard time understanding why Mommy and Daddy don't necessarily want what she thinks of as a birthday party. 

We had one for T recently. It wasn't really his birthday.  Because his birthday falls right on top of Christmas, Chanukah, and our oldest girl's birthday, we have T's birthday, observed, and hold it two months late.  There were some trappings of a birthday party: food, guests, games and cake.  But no one sang "Happy Birthday" and no gifts were given.  Several of our guests probably didn't even know that T's birthday was why we were having a party.

T was happy with that. He's not a center-of-attention sort of fella (yet another reason he's awesome).  He appreciated the gift of the time to just play games with out friends, ignoring other responsibilities for a day.  He even, quite willingly, took on a goodly portion of the prep work to make it happen.  It's a really different idea of what make a good birthday party than our children have.

Our littlest had a good time playing with our guests, but she really didn't understand why we didn't decorate or put candles in the cake.  I think she was worried that, if that's what we think a party is, that hers will be like that, too. (She'll be 5 this year: she's so excited about her party!)

We're having a store-bought party this year.  She wants Chuck E. Cheese (shudder).  It sounds terrible to me, but I love her and it's what she wants.  I'm sure the kids will have a good time, and the parents will be nice about it. We'll do the same for whatever their kids ask for. 

I guess that's what a birthday party is really all about: celebrating the way you want to.

Keeping Heart

It's that time of year again.  And that time seems to come earlier each year. It's the time of year when I am so frustrated, overwhelmed, and annoyed by petty small things (mostly other adults that I work with and all their concerns that seem, to me, to miss the big picture), that it's hard to care.

You see, I'm a teacher.

A public school teacher. In North Carolina: a "right to work" state. "Right to work" seems to be a euphemism for exploiting workers, at least from this side of the fence.

Since I have taught in other states--Alaska, Kansas and Kentucky, namely--I have a wider view than some.  I know what it is like in other places.

Some things about my career choice are rough all over.  It doesn't pay well, especially not when you consider the level of personal commitment, education and variety of skillset it entails to teach successfully. I'm only half-joking when I say that I can only afford to do this because they pay my husband very well for his work. I know we'd have a lot less nice things if we had to rely on only my income.

It's also a truly staggering load of work each and every day. Each day I am supposed to prepare five forty-five minute long lessons on a variety of topics that include technology, differentiating my presentation for a variety of learning styles, background knowledge levels, academic skills and interests for 130 people.

With only 90 non-supervisory minutes per workday, I am supposed to also make contact with the families of these children with the good or bad news, collaborate with all the other staff that supports them in their learning (gifted learning experts, exceptional children experts, other subject area teachers, school counselors, school nurse, family welfare experts, autism specialists, hearing impaired support staff, etc., etc., etc.), evaluate whatever work the children produced that day (for 130 people), and handle my own "secretarial" stuff (making copies, responding to emails, submitting paperwork, etc.).

Some things about my job are harder in North Carolina than they were in other states.  Unions, for all the negative impact they have on the field (protecting poor teachers and making it hard to fire them; hamstringing potentially awesome programs for fear of setting precedent), also have some tremendous positive impact on my work conditions and I have sorely felt their lack in my six years in North Carolina. My non-supervisory work time is not nearly as protected.  The structures for giving and receiving criticism of my performance are not nearly as balanced.  Things happen all the time that leave me in a stunned silence. Can they really do that? Yes, apparently they can.

So, why do I stay? And how do I fight the bitterness so that it's a good thing that I am staying?

The obvious answer is the kids. There are plenty of frustrations involved with children, but they are the good kind of frustrations.  When I am frustrated with a child, it is because my heart is involved and I want so badly for him or her to find success, to "get it", to learn to use their strengths and safeguard against their weaknesses.  These are frustrations that inspire me to great heights and bring out all my strengths.  These are frustrations I am successful in combating often enough to feel like I am good at my work.

It's not just the kids though. I really truly love learning. I love thinking about the ways ideas connect, and being surprised by new connections.   Maybe there are other fields where I can be paid to live the life of the mind all day, but I haven't found them.

I love the trappings of school as well. I like awards ceremonies and book fairs, school plays and events, showcases and projects.  I love trying out new technologies and seeing what young people can make out of them.

If I'm honest with myself, the very difficulty of the work is part of the appeal for me. Thanks to my Mom and Dad and the way they raised me,  I'm a workhorse. I delight in checking off large numbers of items from my to-do list.  It gives me a sense of accomplishment.  I like feeling like not just anyone could do what I do.  I like the feeling that my work is big and important.  I'm not sure I could feel that way in other fields. 

On a bad day, I think, "You hated school when you were in it. Why are you still here?" On those days, I am tired, overwhelmed and feeling put-upon and unappreciated. I mumble to myself and my children suggest that I should take a walk.

But on a good day, I think, "School is my home. It's where I belong."  Yep, I'm just that nerdy.  And I'm good with that.  Here's to more good days!

Our Latest Shakespeare Date

It was time for date. T & I hadn't been out alone in too long. It doesn't have to be all that long to be too long for us.  More than a week is too long. We have this horrible buildup of too many unfinished sentences and a lack of quiet moments. Children are lovely, but they can make it hard to have a conversation and conversation is at the heart of our attraction.

So, we talked about what to go do. Luckily, we live in a great area of the country full of wonderful things to do.  We thought about going to see a double feature big screen showing of Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Lon Chaney's Wolfman at the Carolina because I am a big old movie fan and T's appreciation is growing.  But babysitting was going to be a problem on Friday night.  

We thought about just walking around Franklin Street looking at stuff and talking, but T's got a foot problem right now, and it was supposed to rain. Walking was going to be a problem at the art museums, too, and no one had anything we were really drawn by right now and hadn't already seen. We didn't really want to just go eat.

Then, T had the thought that we hadn't seen a play together in a while (this is how lucky I am--I have a husband who has "theater" in the top five list of places to take me on a date night).  Fiasco Theater was doing a production of Cymbeline at Duke.  Shakespeare. Shakespeare that neither of us already knows by heart.  Perfect!

Shakespeare is special to T and I. 

First off, we are both tremendous word nerds. We drive our tween crazy when she wants help with her vocabulary homework because we can go on for fifteen minutes about the various ways a word might be used and where that word came from.  We email each other articles about new language items we see on the Inter-webs.  We quote from Much Ado About Nothing to flirt.

Second, we are both romantic saps. We're a collective sucker for happily ever after.  But at the same time, it has to be a believable happily ever after.  We're not an easy sell.

Then, there's the coincidences of Shakespeare for us.  Our first real date (the one where we both went in knowing this was going to be a date and not just friends getting together) was on Shakespeare's birthday.  Our first couch-movie together was 10 Things I Hate About You. Our first dress-up date was Twelfth Night at Playhouse in the Park.

Cymbeline, by the way, was amazing! It was a lot of fun to hear echos of other plays and other lines that I knew better. I figured it would be worth seeing, because I have enjoyed every Shakespeare production I have ever seen--even the bad ones. The writing is that good--it's hard to kill if you have any talent at all.

And Fiasco Theater is a group of six very talented and versatile actors, who each played multiple roles in the production. One man was the king, the doctor, and Cloten the oaf/villain.  Another was a servant, the long last Prince, a rich Italian host, and a pompous Italian general. One of the women was the evil stepmother queen, the runaway kidnapper of princes, and a couple of different men.

Costuming was simple. Additions of jackets, hats, or small props were made on stage as actors transitioned from one role to another. The actors made the transformations with body language and voice. Costuming was just a nod for the less observant audience member. Or maybe they just like to play dress up a little.

All six actors were also amazing singers and musicians and the production made wonderful use of this with a variety of music--madrigal, martial and bluegrass--all worked naturally into the show.

The untangle at the end, the reveal of who everyone really was and how they relate to each other, was brilliant.  I laughed aloud to the point that I snorted.

So, another wonderful date, brought to us by William Shakespeare, and Fiasco Theater. Thank you!