Teacher Food

Let Me Tell You About An Incredible New Book

2011-11-26T18:09:00.000-08:00

This is the cover of a brand new amazing book.

Broken Road is the story of going home and discovering the person you were meant to be all along.

The story takes place in a little town in Tennessee. Roxie has gone back to wrap up her dead Aunt Delia's estate. But she's got issues about being there that date all the way back to her high school days. The nightmares intensify, but the people she meets, especially Caleb, the electrician who gets the wiring right at Delia's, and Cole, his partner, help her deal with the loss that haunts her. Interesting twists keep the reader guessing, and the ending will catch everyone off-guard. The characters will live on in your mind, and you'll wish you could go to Derry and eat at Sophie's Place.

Learn more about the book at its website: www.shadetreewritings.com or go to Lulu.com and search by title. The book is available in hardback, softback, and eBook formats. Right now, Lulu.com is offering a 25% discount on the book. Just use code: bymybook305 at checkout.

You won't be sorry you read this one!

And This Whole Time I Was Thinking Snakes

2011-06-06T17:44:00.001-07:00

So, I'm in the iris bed, one of many at our house. An iris is a rhizome, not a bulb, and puts out rhizome buddies from a single rhizome, which can then be snapped off and replanted.

That's all the botany I know.

We ignored the iris (and what's the plural of iris? Irises? Probably something really grammary like "iri") for years when we moved in. Then my daughter and I dug up and separated them and when we replanted we had over 400. Now, it's time to do it again because they don't all bloom and that same daughter who is now grown, married and in her own house said once, "It'd be nice to have some iris at our place" and I'm planning on scoring big father points with her when I bring them over.

I'm not afraid of the outdoors, in fact, I enjoy my time there. I've even become accustomed to the creatures I encounter there, except for the stingers, the nefarious bastards of the property. But the rest I can deal with, including, and I really can't believe I'm saying this: snakes. I mean to say that the overwhelming urge to destroy a garter snake beyond recognition no longer takes over my entirety when I see a little rustling in the grass.

I've raked a few snakes from the bed over which I toiled last night and as I used my fingers to rake last season's leaves and debris from between the iris I wondered if I would encounter another. Surely, escape would be their only thought when they sensed my presence. And then I laid my hand squarely on the back of a turtle.

There is something to learn in every experience, it's the teacher in me, even if the lesson is how truly crappy some experiences can be. So what, I wonder, is the lesson of the turtle? Most fears in life are unwarranted? It's not the thing you fear that will ultimately get you? An unexpected turtle can make you wet yourself a little while working in the iris bed?

The teacher in me knows that some lessons take longer to suss out than others. And this one will stay with me for awhile.

My wife did teach one quick lesson about turtle encounters when I returned. I had to wash my buddies sal and monella off my hands before I could touch her or anything else.

Hmm...turtles must not be very picky about their friends.

Aha! Another lesson!

Wordle Revisited

2011-06-04T06:36:00.000-07:00

You know, if you just stay involved, with your eyes and ears open as well, you just continue to learn.

Of course, this is a wordle made at wordle.net. You can put in a group of words, or just enter a url and the software will create a picture of the words based on their appearance rate. I don't completely know the way it's created. Thank goodness I don't need to.

I've also learned that once a picture is put on the web, the way I've just put this one up, the picture itself has a url. Then the picture can be uploaded to any site accepting pictures by url.

I belong to the National Writing Project and just now we are hosting the E Anthology; a place for teachers to share their writing with each other. This year's E offers the possibility to upload a picture by url. So, I'm posting my wordle here and then I'll pick up the url and repost it on the E.

I have no idea HOW all that's done, but I've learned that it can be done and that's enough for me.

I Wish for You the Best

2011-05-27T07:43:00.000-07:00

"What do you mean, 'he won't be back,'" I asked aloud to my principal.

"Well, he could come back on the 6th, but I think his parents are going to put him in a GED program."

I was stunned.

In the credit recovery lab, I work with a lot of disadvantaged and disenfranchised students. The life-quality of my students runs the gamut, but the ones at the bottom end come from backgrounds hard for an educator to comprehend.

The student we were talking about, I'll call him James, was one of those. He'd moved into our district from another where he'd gotten into trouble. He'd been through a program that had helped to straighten him out. He was nothing but "yessir" with me, as cooperative as possible, and a nice kid to work with. He was struggling to learn algebra. There's something about watching a child struggle to accomplish something, watching them strain and persevere that just makes me want for them. They break my heart, then weasel their way in through the crack, living there until we part at the end of a school year-sometimes longer. Such was my relationship with James.

Earlier in the year he had been suspended for something to do with alcohol. I had heard he was not involved with the drink, but knew who was and wouldn't tell, but I might be wrong about that. Yesterday, he left the school in handcuffs, having been fighting with one or maybe more boys in the bathroom after lunch. A student who has seen the fight on video, taken by a student on his phone, says that he'd been picked on by other students in the lunch room.

A second suspension is an automatic 5 days, and there's only 7 left in the school year.

So I probably won't see this student again, this young man who I enjoyed working with, whose success and personal achievement I longed for. Such is the life of a teacher; we control nothing more in our students' lives than an invitation to improvement.

I just have to remember the guy in the picture. He didn't have it so easy in school, either. He foundered in all the traditional systems. But he made his own way, and then made it his own way.

I hope my student will too.

I QUIT!!!

2011-05-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

We lost four days due to a tornado here in Vilonia; on top of the five snow days.

The tornado days were waived by the state.

For the students.

Recently, the district rolled out the plan devised so that faculty and staff could be paid our entire contract.

We have to come two more days after students leave. From 7:30 to 4:00. That will make up 16 hours. We'll write a one page essay about something, anything, we've done at school. For that we get 2 more hours. Then we'll pick up 6 hours of PD on our own, which won't count toward the 60 required for next year. Then the district can pay us our entire contract.

It's professional hoop jumping, at best.

And as anyone can imagine, it's made the natives just a little restless.

And some of us, as you can also imagine, have decided to quit.

And you might think I mean to say that some teachers have decided not to return next year. But that's not what I'm saying at all. I mean some of them have quit this year. And I'm not saying they are no longer coming to school; they are.

But they've quit.

It's videos and video games. It's basketball and softball games between classes. Walks in the nature trail.

And I don't want to be a hard ass about this. I'm 54 years old and this is my 30th year in the classroom. I know tired. I know burned out. Some days I want to quit too.

But we're a 90-90 school. We get 90 minutes a day for 90 days with our students. Of course, we lose a few class periods to pep rallies, student council speeches, and, well, tornadoes.

Do we have more concepts and curricular activities in which to engage our students than we have time for, or do we have more time with students than we know what to do with?

A few years ago, a lady in our district, whose son was my student, shared with me one of my greatest compliments. "Mom," he said to her, "every day I go to school Mr. Rush has something he wants to teach me."

Thank God for summer breaks.

Let us teach until it comes.

Natural, Sure, But Is She a Mother?

2011-05-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

The oddest thing happened on May 1. My wife saw the question and answer in the “Ask Marilyn” column of Sunday’s Parade Magazine. If course, that won’t make any sense unless I give the back story.

Just a few days before April ended, I posed the question to my wife. If humans did something to the planet that caused the death of us all, would the planet eventually heal itself and continue without us?

Well, she responded, there is vegetation growing around Chernobyl (the site of the nuclear disaster in the Ukraine in late April of 1986) but you can’t eat it. It’s contaminated. But yeah, I think the planet would eventually heal and thrive without us.

Even more back story.

Back in September, I read Tim Flannery’s, Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future. Not long after, I read, Eaarth: Making a Life on a New Tough Planet, by Bill McKibben. Both of them talked about Gaia, the Mother Earth, the living planet. The planet is a living being with three parts: earth, ocean, and atmosphere. They work together to keep the planet healthy and living. And of course, humans are messing that natural process up.

I knew about global warming, carbon emissions, and pollution in general, but I’d never heard of Gaia and the idea that the planet was alive.

The planet is alive.

On May 1, Cindy opened the paper and read this question as it was posed to Marilyn by Rod Strassburg of Winston Salem, N.C. “If human life were to vanish from Earth, leaving only animals and plants, how long would it take for the environment to return to a pristine state?”

Well, not exactly my question. But Marilyn took it on saying that the process was thousands of years long. She mentioned the decay of structures we’ve built and when on to nuclear waste citing the same thing Cindy did about life in Chernobyl.

“The planet would forget all about us in maybe 50,000 years—far less time than humankind has existed.”

Ever since the tornado ripped through the town where I teach, any my friends and colleagues stood in utter amazement and horror at the destruction, I’ve been thinking about the planet and the humans and how we think we’ve got pretty much everything under control. So tight is our control, in our own minds, that we live with nearly a 100% expectancy of outcomes.

Take our relationship with the weather or with weather forecasters for example. We expect them to get it right, and we’re angry when the weather is different than that forecasted. Some of us even say, “They’ve changed the weather,” instead of, “They’ve changed the forecast,” or even more accurately, “The weather has changed.”

I’m coming to believe that we who live on a planet that can live without us, who can’t control anything, who cannot survive ten minutes without oxygen, ten days without water, or a few months without food, are the true anomaly.

I hope this thinking changes what I decide to worry about.

Superficiality, Although Long, Is Not A Dirty Word

2011-05-15T05:54:00.000-07:00

One day, roughly thirty years ago, my wife and I were grocery-shopping. While we unloaded the cart at the check-out stand, some liquid from a package of chicken got on my hands. I set it on the belt and without much thought about the implications, looked up at the checker and said, “Your breasts are leaking.”

Her name was Carol, and for a moment, she stopped working, we stopped shopping and enjoyed a really good laugh.

The lifeguard in the picture isn’t Molly. I was going to ask Molly if I could take her picture for this post but it just seemed too creepy. She’s a senior in college; in fact, she’ll graduate on Saturday, and she’s been our early morning lifeguard at the college pool for two years.

We have not learned much about Molly during the time we’ve known her. Once, right before spring break, we learned she is from Texas because that’s where she said she’d be for the break. We know she has a boyfriend, because we’ve seen him drop her off some mornings, and that she rides a bike; her transportation on the other days. We know some of the courses she’s taken because her head is often over a book or her Macbook when we get out of the pool.

We have grown to like Molly and we’ll miss her now that she’s graduating and moving back to Texas for graduate school. She has been kind, genuine, and pleasant in our very brief exchanges between pool and locker room. She’s represented stability, you know, “Situation normal: Molly’s here.” And she’s represented safety; if we’d have tried to drown, she’d have tried to save us.

I developed this post on the morning of Molly’s last day as our lifeguard, while I swam the width of the pool over and over. I searched for a word that describes our relationship with Molly. All I could come up with was superficial and shallow, but those are usually ugly terms for people and I guess relationships too. I guess I could say that we are acquaintances, but I don’t feel like that’s all we are.

So, I settled on superficial and as you can tell by the title, decided there was nothing wrong with it. The truth is most of our relationships are superficial. There are a few folks in my family and some others I work with. And as a teacher, I’ve got students that I get to know pretty well. But by and large, the vast majority of people I see on a regular basis-the servers at our favorite restaurants-the checkers at Walmart-my dental hygienist-my doctor’s nurse, all of these are superficial relationships.

And the thing I thought about between the sides of the pool that morning is how meaningful and enjoyable those relationships are, even though they are superficial. There’s much pleasure to be mined from just getting to know someone, and knowing Molly, even as little as it happened, has been a joy.

By the way, we got to know Carol pretty well too. We talked routinely when we shopped in her grocery store. Eventually, her daughter became my student in the junior high where I taught choir. Her daughter matriculated, and then we left the country. When we moved home, the store had been closed and a different business was in the building.

But I remember Carol, after thirty years. And our relationship was a merely superficial.

What...me worry?

2011-05-12T03:18:00.000-07:00

Even more back story.

I knew about global warming, carbon emissions, and pollution in general, but I’d never heard of Gaia and the idea that the planet was alive.

The planet is alive.

“The planet would forget all about us in maybe 50,000 years—far less time than humankind has existed.”

I hope this thinking changes what I decide to worry about.

A Day For Mothers...

2011-05-08T07:03:00.000-07:00

I have to remember to call my mom today, Cindy says.

I don't.

Oh, my mom is still alive-lives a couple hours away, but we don't talk. I haven't seen her in years.

It's not that my mom made mistakes, or that they were the worst mistakes a mom can make. And I can't say I don't have some good memories. I do. But somewhere between being my mom's son and my wife's husband something went awry. A mom I never knew emerged, and two events clutter the hallway of my memory, scars now, silent witness to a lost relationship.

We had a few pre wedding-day petty skirmishes with my parents, and a few awkward moments at our rehearsal dinner and wedding as well, before Cindy and I moved to another state where I had found a teaching job. That first year passed without incident; we visited, they visited. The next October, our first born came. Two months later on Christmas break, we visited Cindy's Alabama relatives and rolled into my parents' town on the day after Christmas. Presents have always been a big deal in my house, so Cindy and I spent money we didn't have on gifts my parents, grandparents, and sister's family didn't need in the hopes everyone would be happy.

A couple weeks later, we got a letter from my mom. It was a long time ago, but I do remember it was critical from beginning to end. She shared her frustrations with our late arrival, the fact that we'd saved our shopping until we got there, even the quality of the gifts. The last line said, "If you are not going to honor our family traditions at Christmas, maybe you shouldn't come."

Growing up, I felt my parents' love for me most intensely when I had pleased them, and now I was devastated. The letter hurt us both, and our inability to agree on how to respond, what to do next, tried hard to undo us. I wanted to respond out of my "do whatever it takes to make your parents happy" raising. But these weren't Cindy's parents.

Birthdays were a big deal then, in my greater family, a time when we made a special effort to get together. Cindy's is in February, mom in March, my brother-in-law in August, mine in October, my dad and sister in November. Before we married, Cindy learned to decorate cakes and they were always a big treat. My parents had made a big deal of my sister's husband's birthday before we married, and we naively expected as much.

So in March, a few years after the tsunami of my mother's Christmas letter, my mom called to see if we could all get together for her birthday. However, we'd been hurt and angry for weeks because Cindy's birthday had gone unnoticed. No card, no call...nothing. It would have hurt anyway, but since the "Christmas letter" our relationship with my parents was in "healing" mode.

And this was a critical relapse.

My mom knew something was wrong while we talked and when she asked, my heart skipped a beat and then with one huge ka-thwump began a thoroughbred's racing.

"Mom," I said defensively, "You missed Cindy's birthday." I didn't hear her apology next, but instead listened to her own sudden defense from the other side of the phone. I should have reminded her, she said. I told her I wasn't responsible for her relationship with my wife. Then came the classic pause, the one that throughout time has separated the situation as it exists from the rein of horror and destruction that was coming. The "calm before the storm." Then I heard her say,

Well, I guess you don't make mistakes do you.

And that's all it took. During the next few years we traded the most horrific criticisms of each other's character. They unleashed every guilt manipulation and ultimatum a boy who'd been raised to be afraid of his parents, and their displeasure more than anything, could imagine.

We moved out of the country for several years, so the visits were a moot point. When we returned to the States for good, we gave the relationship stew another taste, but the essential ingredient of respect was missing; nothing had really changed. And so, with a few weeks to go before another one of my mom's birthdays, I sent them the letter that explained that I simply wasn't their friend and exactly why. By then, it was as much about my dad as my mom; they both had injected lethal levels of poisons into our relationship.

As a father of grown women and their husbands I realize how few of us can say we are who we are because of our parents. The rest of us have endured and are who we are in spite of them. Parents who want a lasting relationship with their children should probably just accept that truth as humbly as possible. In our youth, we are blessed to have parents; in our dotage we are blessed if our children will hold onto us, under an umbrella of loving and merciful forgetfulness.

Mr. Rush...Is Reading...

2011-05-07T11:42:00.001-07:00

It was our junior English teacher who encouraged everyone who would, to post a sign outside their door about their own reading. “It only makes sense that if we’re encouraging our students to read and improve their literacy, that we be readers too.”

I don’t know why I hadn’t already thought of this-being a big shot Teacher Consultant of the National Writing Project, but there you go. In all honesty, that’s not exactly true. I hadn’t already thought of this, because I still don’t think of myself as a reader.

Everyone has a literacy story, and some are keen on collecting those. You can hear podcasts of literacy stories at the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives; you can even submit your own.

My own literacy narrative is pretty brief. I learned to read in school, went to the library on a weekly basis as a kid, but didn’t actually read the books I brought home. I rarely read assigned reading in junior high and high school. I bought a subscription to Sports Illustrated magazine in high school, and I can’t remember why. However, since I was neither an athlete nor a reader, they stacked up in my room and I eventually threw them out. And no, it wasn’t because of the swim suit issue; that hadn’t started yet.

Not long after I started college, I fell in love for the last time. And she, was a reader. After we married, she could spend an entire Sunday reading newspapers and magazines and Reader’s Digest condensed books. Of course, I did what all us men are supposed to do; I watched sports on our 13 inch black and white.

But eventually, this gal won me over. Her, and the National Writing Project. I had been reading mostly non-fiction, but the NWP convinced me that there was plenty of worth in reading fiction too. And now look! I’ve got the titles of books on the wall outside my room. I’m finally out of the closet! I’m a reader!

I’ve actually read, or listened to on CD, even more books than this. I only got the idea to keep the titles, as opposed to throwing them away, a few weeks ago.

A mind that reads is an open and receptive mind. It’s one that continually seeks knowledge and continues to think and evaluate. That’s the kind of mind I aspire to.

I'm not much of a poet, but I wrote one for her once:

It was 1975

I fell in love

With a vessel of

Passions and

In waters churned

Lay Books.

“You’ve never read

To Kill A Mockingbird?”

Unmockingly exhaled

As easily as

“I’m hungry.”

Their bony spines

From library shelves

Stared at me

Dared me

Scared me.

“I’m not a reader”

Lover’s confessions

Intellectual pillow talk.

“They’re cousins,”

She mused

“Reading,

And sitting still.”

There they were,

Caught in the

Whirling power of this

Amazing Person,

Books,

And I sat still.

I Can Read! I Can Read!

2011-05-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

It all started in a conversation with a teacher. She had a Nook Color, Barnes and Nobles' new Wi-Fi reader. With its web connection you can purchase books from B & N’s million-book online library and begin reading them in a couple of minutes. I immediately thought of my wife, who reads a couple books a week. I knew I had to get her one.

Then a second teacher told me about the Central Arkansas Library System. All we had to do was to get a “gateway” library card from our local library here in Conway. Then, we went to a “member” library in Maumelle and got a card for the CALS. It was that easy, except that first we tried to get the CALS card without the gateway card, which was impossible. It was on the second trip that we sealed the deal. Oh yeah, one other thing…it was free.

Now we can access the CALS online library. I can download books that will go into my iTunes which I can then put on my iPod. Amazingly, I get to listen to books that I’ve never seen or touched.

Of course, knowing I’d get the Nook Color for Cindy, I insisted that she come with me to get her own CALS card. She can download books for her Nook from them too. Right now, we can’t get a book formatted for an Amazon Kindle to play on the Nook. For some reason, Amazon feels it should maintain the right to decide how I listen to a book I’ve bought from them. It’s extension is .azw and the Nook plays .epub.

Now, there’s free software that will convert a .azw to a .epub. However, the Amazon book came with Digital Management Rights (DMR) on it so it can’t be converted.

Now, there’s free software that will remove DMR from a book, developed by people like myself who believe that once folks buy a book the should get to read it on any reader they want. However, I couldn't get that software to work.

Yet…

I took the title for this post from the movie Regarding Henry. I highly recommend this story of redemption, forgiveness, and rebirth. Harrison Ford's character becomes incapacitated early in the film and has to relearn everything. On the day he relearns to read, well, the scene is just amazing.

The Way We Were

2011-05-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

Having crossed the great divide, you know, that 50^th birthday, I find myself ruminating a lot more often over the part of my life that I’ve already lived. Either life has changed me, or I’ve fallen for the conspiracy that I’m a different person than the one I used to be, or rather than the one I was going to be, or I suppose, possibly, both.

I don’t have many pictures of myself as a child; the second-borns’ curse. But I’ve got a few and so I decided to create this collage to serve as my laptops’ background. At least for a while.

The far left picture is a snap of one of those God-awful moments when I was first forced to dance with my sister and, as if that weren’t horrible enough, further forced to pose for the pic. Of course, with her cropped out, I’m glad I’ve got it.

There’s a few from pre-school, and then the one in what is, I think, second grade. Finally, there’s the one with me playing drums. I know it doesn’t belong, but it’s in there for two reasons. The first is that I have it. But more importantly, it means a lot to me that I played the drums in high school. Drumming relieved a tremendous amount of stress, which in turn, I’m sure, added to my father’s. He wanted me to play, “an instrument that could play a melody.” Hell with that.

The earliest me I can remember being is one that was in touch with music. I was sitting in my aunt Mozelle’s car, waiting for her sister, my mom, to come out from the grocery store. At a certain part of the song coming from the speaker in the dash, I sing a few harmonic notes and then asked my aunt if I could be allowed to do that each time that part came again. With her permission, I didn’t miss another chance.

I learned to read music sitting next to my mom in church. She sang the bass part a couple octaves higher than I and when the time came that I could easily hear those root notes in the chords, she switched to tenor and I learned that too. It was the last thing we did together that I remember with any pride.

In this picture, I’m accompanying a choir; my singing and instrumental abilities opened many doors for me that had been, up to those moments, closed. I eventually finished a BSE in choral music education and led my own students in musical activities.

I don’t have much to do with music anymore apart from simply listening, but that picture reminds me of one of the places where I began. I guess they all do. And that just might be a question I’m desperately chasing now that I’m living on the other side of halftime.

Back Into The Fray

2011-05-03T02:33:00.000-07:00

I went back to school on Monday, May 2, after a devastating tornado had swept through the town where I teach a week earlier. When I left the house, Cindy said, "Be careful of other people rubber-necking." She didn't know I planned to film my way through the destruction in preparation for this posting.

I did the filming and was careful to stay in between the lines and to remain aware of when someone in front of me stopped. Another teacher was not so lucky. A rubber-necker did cross the center line and hit him, almost head on. He was unhurt and came on to school saying at our faculty meeting later, "This was the first day after all this mess, I had to be here." Oh yeah, his house was damaged in the storm an he belongs to one of our displaced families.

We got the word about our end-of-day faculty meeting about noon through email. I went to the hall to ask my neighbor teacher if she had heard. Just then students entered the building and, referring to one of the boys, she said, "This kid lost everything."

To him she said, "How are you doing?"

"I'm here," he said, then pointed to the girl next to him. "Staying with her."

At the faculty meeting we learned that the state department had called on Wednesday morning and complained that we were not giving the end-of-course biology exam.

We're going to use a google doc to help us keep track of all our displaced students and what they need. The principal ordered an extra 1000 graduation invitations and earlier in the day we heard the announcement that if any seniors had lost their graduation gowns, they should come to the office. They just have six school days left.

Students in our cross town rival school have been fund-raising all this week for our students.

And life remains a mystery.

And Now...a Word From the Little Book

2011-05-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

Honey, I don’t think I’m going to do this again next year. Is that okay?”

“Well, of course.”

“You’ll still love me?”

“Of course I will. What a silly question.”

“Will you still respect me?”

“Hey, I never respected you.”

“Okay, as long as nothing’s changing.”

That gem, just a snippet of conversation, is one of the entries in the little book pictured above. It’s a writer’s notebook. Back in 2004, I attended the Summer Institute of the Great Bear Writing Project at the University of Central Arkansas. I learned I was a writer, well that we all are. I’ve been attending those institutes ever since.

A few years ago, we learned how to easily make books like the one pictured above. We didn’t know it then, but these books are very much like those described in Kim Stafford’s The Muses Among Us. The book is a place to catch things, and its use is thoroughly described in Ralph Fletcher’s Breathing In Breathing Out.

The book is simple to make. Take two sheets of typing paper and fold them in half, at the middle of the rectangle, three times. Cut the edges so all 16 pages can be turned. Lay it down and staple it on the final fold a couple of times. Then glue the cover, cut slightly larger than the book, onto the outside pages. This cover is cut from a discarded wallpaper sample book. Any other tough material would also do, even a grocery bag.

So not long after I made this we took a trip to Alabama and I captured this exchange. I hadn't seen this book in a while and when I reread this I felt all yummy and warm inside. Who wouldn't want that feeling?

Here’s a few other pearls from within:

From a boy to came to school early one near freezing fall morning for math tutoring, “My nipples could cut glass!”

“If you piss in your pants you can stay warm only so long.”

“She was one of life’s brush-back pitches.”

“Popeye meets Descartes: I think, therefore I am what I am.”

And finally, from my precious wife on why we simply had to stop at Walmart one day…

“Hey, I have things I want to buy that I don’t need!”

Sunday Mornings Around Here

2011-05-01T06:22:00.001-07:00

"Here on the rock...." I love that old line from Andy Griffith!

Here at our house, Sunday's are great days. When I wake up, there's a newspaper in the front yard! It just shows up there, amazing. And inside is all this really bad news and announcements about how I can spend a LOT of my money. But also, tucked inside as if to make it impossible to find, there's a crossword puzzle.

Cindy and I started doing these together a few years ago. She'd heard that forcing our brains to recall info, like words, would keep our minds supple as we aged. Somehow, it would hold off senility and possibly Alzheimer's, although in my case, I think we started a bit too late.

One of the best things about the Sunday crossword is that it's something we do Together. Figuring out all the letters that go in those boxes makes us slow down, and just be together, in the same place, doing the same thing. And, of course, we learn new things. Well, I mostly learn words and concepts that Cindy has known for a long time.

When we're stumped we go to L.A. Crossword Confidential where we find the puzzle already done. Incredible.

We work the New York Times puzzles too. I just learned that they get increasingly more difficult through the week. Occasionally we can do about 75% of the Thursday puzzle. I've yet to enter a word in Friday. We can find all the answers to those too, at Web's New York Times Crossword Solution.

Somehow, this crossword puzzle feeds my teacher need for indulgence on a Sunday. I mean, it flies in the face of all a teacher has to do when I'm sitting on the couch, lazily asking my wife for the answers to the clues.

Oh yeah, the other thing pictured? That's the Walmart shopping list...for the other Sunday indulgence in my life, as well as, obviously, every other resident of this town of 53K!

The Little Things

2011-05-01T03:59:00.000-07:00

So...we put on this conference for the National Writing Project here in Little Rock. I was the conference committee chairperson which is a long title that means, "responsible for a gajillion details."

This conference goes down as one of the last one's hosted by the NWP because this spring we lost our funding. If that makes you as sad and mad as it does me, please contact your congress-persons.

Through the 20 plus months of preparation, I learned an immeasurable amount of information, methods, styles, and a lot about people, especially myself. And then, when the days came, I learned a lot more.

This is one of the directional signs from the conference. Signage was one of my responsibilities. I created the digital mock ups that were sent to the printer. On this specific sign you can see the hasty work of one of our volunteers. I had actually created the sign with the rooms on the last two floors switched. I was embarrassed and so angry with myself that morning. Clearly, I had not reached perfection.

It took weeks, but I learned that there will be little things along the way. And it's the big things that count. Everyone found the rooms they were looking for and it was a great conference. No one will remember something like this, and if they should, it won't matter. It's the other stuff they're remembering that counts. Not a little thing like this.

I'm An Old Dog, and This Is A New Trick...

2011-04-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

So, I'm reading this book. I'm on the National Writing Project's E Team, a group of teachers who respond to other teachers' writing during the summer. Every spring, we do a session of professional development by reading and discussing a book. This one is NWP's latest document; a response to their earlier watershed book, Because Writing Matters.

It's been a fascinating read. It's already old news that folks in my age bracket, mid-fifties, are digital immigrants. Younger people, those born into current technology, are natives. Reading about the technology exists and how it can be used in classrooms has inspired me to begin learning how to use technology that's been around for a long time. So tonight, I'm trying something new. I'm going to try to post a video on my blog. I've already figured out how to take a video on my new Kodak Mini (thank you Staples for the $70 coupon!), and how to upload it to Youtube.

It's an incredible uninteresting 53 seconds. The ending is kind of interesting. Probably not something you need to know, though.

Enjoy this first stab. If I can get it to work, it's only the beginning.

Signing off,

Mike Rush

Digital Immigrant

A Word While I Wait...

2011-03-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

It was the summer of 2004; that's when my life changed.

Not just personally, but professionally. Maybe that should read, not just professionally, but personally. For I was in one of the National Writing Project's Summer Institutes. Eighteen days, which, at the time, seemed like one. A single long day when I discovered that I was a writer, a writer, who taught. Beyond that, I was a teacher leader-someone who had something to offer other teachers. You'd think I was a brand new insecure teacher: I had 24 years under my belt.

I went to the Annual Meeting that fall and joined a couple thousand other Teacher Consultants (TCs) of the National Writing Project who had, at one time, been born into this begetting agency as I just had. Every workshop offered at the convention was led by other teacher leaders and I heard in every room the call that I belonged-that somehow, I was one of them.

Initially, I led advanced institutes of writing with other TCs for two consecutive summers, writing books for educators in both cases. I also led an after-school writing group in my district, but eventually, I became a co-director of my site and have worked for the past six years as a presentations coach and co-director of our summer institute. I've worked closely with about seventy-five fellow educators in our service area, facilitating their own discovery of their abilities and gifts.

A few years ago, I was invited to join the E-Team, a group of TCs who respond to writing by summer institute participants posted to the national web site. Right now, I am the co-coordinator of the remarkable, unequaled group of teachers. At this time, I have probably responded to the writing of over 1,000 teachers all over the country.

As a Fellow of the National Writing Project, I was not only awakened to the present, to the immediate investment I could make in education, but I was also inspired to forward thinking. In May of 2010, I finished my masters in writing and that fall I taught remedial writing students at a local junior college, using everything I'd learned in the summer institutes.

Because of NWP's philosophy that anyone, everyone can write, I suggested to my wife that I believed she could write a book. We actually wrote it together; Broken Road was completed in the summer of 2011. We're currently working on the sequel.

The most recent opportunity to serve my profession and the teachers who comprise it came in March of 2011. The task actually began 20 months prior, when I became the conference committee chairperson for a national conference held in Little Rock. I led a team of TCs from our site who hosted 200 educators from across the nation.

The National Writing Project didn't teach me to do any of these things in which I've been involved over the last seven years. The NWP invited me to do them while at the same time, it revealed in me that I had these abilities all along. The beautiful truth is that every TC has tremendous capabilities which are totally unknown to them.

And now the National Writing Project has lost its funding. Who will open the eyes of teachers who haven't yet been awakened, who haven't heard the message that they can write, they can teach, and they have immeasurable, limitless gifts to offer students, educators, and the craft?

If this truth could have come to educators apart from the NWP , it would have.

A nation of educators waits.

The One Only You Could Tell

2010-09-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

Cindy and I went to hear Jeannette Walls speak at a local college the other night. The place was packed with more than, what appeared to be, 500 people, and most of them with a finger in between pages in their own copy of her memoir, The Glass Castle. This, her first book, is the story of her horrific childhood which involved a unique blend of parental attention and neglect, alcoholism, and her own determination to climb beyond her childhood circumstances. It’s garnered a bit of success, having sold 2.5 million copies in the U.S. with translations into twenty-two languages…and then there’s the movie deal with Paramount. Suffice it to say, a vast majority of this crowd had read it.

Walls is an elegantly tall, leggy redhead, and was funny and engaging while she regaled us with stories of what she’d learned since her book had been published. She’s talked with plenty of people who’ve read her story (her words for the book) of an escape from wanton poverty in rural West Virginia. Her style was self-depreciating and we laughed heartily when she said that she had read reviews by readers at Amazon, “just a couple of times…a day.”

But it was when she spoke of a few scenes in the book that I began writing this post in my mind because I learned something important about Walls, my fellow attendees, writing, and publishing. Each time Walls mentioned a scene, I could hear “uh-huhs” “that’s rights” from those seated around me, and a few “oh yeahs” from the lady on my right. These people not only knew her story, some of them had it memorized.

Not only did they have intimate knowledge of Walls’ story, I realized they were actually in awe of it, as though her story might be one against which no other story would be able to stand. If my suspicions were correct, they had no comprehension at all of the power and import of their own stories.

It’s easy to look at the kind of success Walls’ story has enjoyed and feel like few other stories can compare. The Glass Castle went to the NYT bestsellers list and hung on for weeks, sitting right now at #30. How do we measure the difference between a story like Walls’ and any other person’s?

What came to me while I listened to Walls speak is this: the success of her story is not measured by the impact it has upon a single person, but by how many people it is impacting. In other words, it’s not about how much it means to a single person in her audience, but by how large that audience is. Her story means no more to a person in her audience than my story means to someone in my audience, or your story means to someone in yours.

Some stories appeal to more people than other stories do, but we must never begin to think that one story has more import than another. That erroneous thinking is just a spit away from dividing us into those who have a story and those who don’t, leading us to a mentality that maintains some of us can write and some can’t, or should and shouldn’t, have something to say…or not.

Walls said she felt a sense of pointlessness several times while writing The Glass Castle, something like the thought that no one would read her story, or it would be hugely insignificant. I’m so thankful that thinking didn’t win out in her. Hopefully, it won’t triumph over any of us.

Picture courtesy of: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/tfd-archives/tfdarchive-mar03.php

Holy Smokes, Where Has The Time Gone?

2010-08-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been nine days since I was here. I got on a pretty good roll there for a while; the ideas were plentiful and I had time to craft and share them.

Then school started and here I am, nine days later. This happened last year and I almost decided to shut down the blog. If I couldn't keep up with it, I just wouldn't have it. But this time I don't mind; for the first time, I don't mind.

And that's because I've learned a little something about myself, and about life too.

About myself I've learned that I have lived most of my life under a cloud of certainties. Maybe it was my upbringing; my dad never had any questions. He knew what he thought about everything; and he knew he was right. Be good, be right, be excellent-that's the way I was raised. So I entered life, my marriage, teaching, I was going to do everything perfectly. I'd be the perfect husband, father, and teacher. If course, I made a gazillion mistakes, and they ate at my dignity on a routine basis.

I've also learned, after 50 years of living, the experimental nature of life. Nothing is certain; everything is an experiment. Okay, maybe death is a certainty; but death presupposes life, and that's not a certainty. We study, we plan, we execute, but it's still an experiment. We gather data, tweak the variables, and try again. I don't know a single teacher who doesn't plan to do something different in the following year to make something better in their classroom.

Here's my current life experiment: Can an over-fifty guy finish an MA, teach full time in a public school, in a college as well two nights a week, plan a national conference, co-coordinate a national group of teachers, be a good husband of over thirty years, a father, grandfather, keep the garden alive in this Arkansas heat, and still make it to the blog every few days?

I don't know-it's an experiment. And understanding that takes several tons of weight off my shoulders. I'm responsible for how well I plan and prepare; I'm responsible to perform up to my best, but I'm not responsible for outcomes.

Like ol' President Bush, I'm sniffing the test tube, taking down some data, learning, tweaking, moving forward.

Of course, you are too.

Photo: http://visualrinse.com/category/flash/

Well...It's Over

2010-08-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

And I'm exhausted.

I'm talking about my first week as a college instructor, and my first day with students at the high school where I teach. And I'm beat.

That's me on the subway, heading home from school today. Not really. I'm not Asian, and there's no subway in central Arkansas. But that is pretty much what I looked like not long after I got home.

Like every other teacher on the planet, nearly, I talked more today than I did all summer. I'm a Wongolian, so I tell my students all our procedures on the first day. I have four 90-minute classes without a prep period.

But it's my first two college classes that take the "what the phuh" award for the week. Hours before I was to stand before students on the first day, I received an email asking me if I was aware that a state-required test had to be given to my students. I was not. So I decided I'd do it on Wednesday, switching the Monday and Wednesday plans. An hour later, I was told the test had to be given on Monday in the first class. I had no idea how to proctor the test, so my mentor teacher came and did it for me. So, on my first night of teaching a college class, I introduced myself and turned my class over to another teacher.

Last night, I was on my own. We worked through the syllabus, and then went to the lab so the students could take yet another diagnostic test, the in-house test given by the department. However, I couldn't get all the boxes checked in the right order on the computer thingy so the students could actually see the test to take it. Luckily, we had another computer-based activity we could do.

In summary, my first two nights as a college professor have ended with my not being able to do for my students what they needed. On the first night, a different teacher did it for me, on the second, I punted.

This will get easier, but I'll think about that tomorrow.

I'm going to bed.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiromy/73726954/

New! From Rhonco! It's the Whisper Phone!

2010-08-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

First, I must tell you that this isn't my idea. I learned about this from a teacher who attended one of our summer institutes at the Great Bear Writing Project. I made up the name "Whisper Phone" but that's the only part original to me.

I'm going to start teaching writing at a junior college tomorrow and I felt like I had to have these things, so I made them. Anyone who writes knows that the first publishing of any piece is when we read it out loud, even if that reading is only to ourselves. When we hear that piece aloud, we automatically catch grammar and syntax errors. It's a natural phenomenon of writing, and it works.

But in a classroom, that's a little difficult for students. How could a teacher handle 30 students reading their work aloud at the same time? It would be mumble-jumble "no one can hear themselves talk!" Unless, of course, the teacher has a few Whisper Phones. And they are so easy to make. To construct ten of these, I bought one ten-foot length of 3/4" PVC pipe, the kind used in house plumbing. Each one needs two 3/4" 90 degree elbows (the bags said "soc and soc" on it), and one 3/4" 90 degree Street Elbow (that bag said "soc and SPIG" on it). Cut the pipe into pieces between 4" and 5". The elbows fit on each end pretty snugly. The street elbow was loose, but a small piece of electrical tape made that snug too. Each one probably cost me less than a buck fifty.

I've put a picture at the bottom of the four pieces separated. They could all go in the dishwasher, however I'd remove that piece of tape first. The piece students speak into could be removed and cleaned easily. Band directors know of a spray they use on mouthpieces that multiple students use.

I'm not kidding, you whisper into a Whisper Phone and your voice will be loud and clear, but just to you.

By the way, that's not a tick on my nose. I must have scratched myself. Yeah, that's it. I was saving puppies from a burning building - had to jump from a third story window with my arms full of the little guys. One of them must have nicked me with a paw on the way down. Uh huh. The puppies were all safe. Of course, I got the scratch, but it was worth it.

First Things First

2010-08-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

The man in the picture is not me. And this picture has nothing to do with the content of this post. But when I did a Google search of the post's title, this is one of the pics that came up, and since I enjoy a beer every now and again, I chose it. And while I'm off topic, let me say that this blog has hit the 100 post mark. I know other bloggers might accomplish that in a fortnight, but it was a big deal to me. I'm better at starting than anything else. So maybe when I finish this, I'll raise a glass to myself. By the way, the pic comes from http://thousandbars.blogspot.com

So anyway, a few days ago my wife and I visited the campus where I'll teach this fall, and my classroom door was locked. It hadn't been on the day I was hired, and I was assured it would be unlocked, at 6:00 pm, when I had class. But on this day it was locked and Cindy and I brainstormed the options should it be locked the night of my first class.

Which led to thinking about first classes. And what teachers do first. And how I believe that what we do first with students on that first day tells them what is most important to us. If our first objective is to know students' names, then students feel our knowing them is very important to us. If the first thing we do is expound upon the rules, then students know the most important thing to us is their obedient behavior.

And then there's the teacher who has no instructions or seating chart posted as students enter, allowing them to sit wherever they choose, who comes in with the roster and begins seating them alphabetically saying, "This will make it easier for me." Students are probably going to leave thinking the teacher's ease and convenience is of paramount importance.

My division chair said in an email that the room should be open once the semester begins. It's not like we can meet outside if it's not. The high on Monday will probably be 102F; the heat index in the 120s. But we'll figure something out. And my students will learn that it's pretty important to me that I figure out how to have class, even if the room is locked.

And then I'm going to learn all their names.

What Would It Take To Make YOU A Better Teacher?

2010-08-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

I went bowling today. I also modeled for the picture on the left. But my skirt wasn't that short. I've obviously been victim of photo shopping.

But as I was saying, I went bowling today. And that's not remarkable in the least except for one thing. It was my second day of professional development in preparation for the new school year.

See, we've got this new principal. Well, he's not new, he's been our vice principal for the last five years. So, he's been living with us, learning us, reading us, and thinking about how he might make us a better faculty if he ever became the principal. And then he did.

And what he must have seen over those past five years was a bit of frustration, dissension, fragmentation, and bitterness. Well, I'll just say it. We've been having a little trouble getting along. We've even tried Eaker's Professional Learning Community model and still, we've been a disjointed group.

And then he took us bowling.

It was ridiculous, really. We rode in a bus that was supposed to be air conditioned, but what are you going to do in Arkansas in August. So we sweated our way to the bowling alley, broke into teams, donned our geekazoid shoes and hurled our balls down the alleys.

And then the magic happened.

We laughed, at ourselves and each other. We cheered and applauded people we've struggled to talk to for years. Teams competed against each other with an average pin count.

Then he took us to lunch.

We ate a great buffet, and the talk among our forty teachers was deafening. On the way back to the school, the lady I shared a seat with said these two days of professional development were the best she could remember since she became a teacher here, nearly 25 years ago.

When we got back to the school, we met in the library for a moment to receive instructions for the rest of the day. He recognized the top three teams and then floored us with this announcement. "The award for the top team is that I will do your duty for one week this school year."

Then someone said we ought to sing happy birthday to our new principal, because it was his birthday. We gave him a big card our art teacher had whipped out on a sheet of poster board. It had those little creatures from Who Moved My Cheese on it, because he led us through that yesterday.

Then someone thanked him for the day he'd given us and the group broke into spontaneous applause.

He said, "This is what I meant when I said yesterday that we're all on the same team."

And my eyes filled with tears.

"Why? Why? Well, Because I Can, Of Course!"

2010-08-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

The other day I posted my first Prezi. The title is, "There is more to learn than I have life left!" It was a pathetic little Prezi, remarkably similar to a three-year-old's first date with a Crayola eight-pack.

I enjoyed creating my first Prezi, but I do get bothered sometimes by the expectation that ability brings. For example, now, on top of everything else, we can create prezis. And eventually, I'll run into someone who will respond with alarm when they find out that I don't make them and use them in my classroom all the time. Or that I don't have an active twitter account, or that my cell phone doesn't connect to the internet.

Ability doesn't define desire and really shouldn't. Just because I can make full length movies on my laptop doesn't mean I want to. It isn't as though I've been sitting in my house, unsatisfied, and now that I can Blabberize a picture I can go on living. I'm not railing against technology or the very cool capabilities that now exist. It's the same old argument, not every new advancement appeals to everyone. There was a time when someone said to me, "What, you're a writer and you don't blog?" So now I do that...at times...when I can remember.

My basic desires haven't changed much over the years: I like a warm bed, a comfortable and private place to use the restroom, and tasty food. But occasionally, like the other night, I'll get into something fun. And if it stays fun, I'll keep doing it.

This summer I was in an incredible all-day workshop on digital stories. In case you don't know, a digital story is a collection of photographs displayed like a slide show. Text can appear on the picture, or vocal narration can accompany the story, and music can even be added in the background. Just download photostory 3. Using it is about as easy as finding your teeth with your tongue. It's very intuitive.

By the end of the workshop, we had all made a brief digital story. Well, almost. The presenter brought $10 microphones we could use to add the narration. Mine never worked, some kind of compatibility problem with my microphone settings.

So, I never really made one, but the point is, I haven't been back. I haven't even considered making a digital story. I think I would, in a heartbeat, if I had a reason to. If I had a story to tell, and an audience to tell it to, and a digital story just seemed the best way to tell it...well...I'd be working in photostory3 instead of this blog.

If it brings you joy, then I say do it. Fun wasn't ever supposed to seem like work anyway.