Education/teacher

Purge, Pack, Move


If I were going to write a memoir, that’s what I’d call it and then subtitle it with – Lather, Rinse and Repeat.

I bring this up for two reasons.

The first is that my blog reader is crammed with Eat, Pray, Love crap as the Julia Roberts adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book is opening or has opened.

The reviews are mostly “meh”. No surprise. The novel itself isn’t much. One review pronounced it too “talk-y” as in the character constantly describes how she feels and her observations about every freaking thing. As if a movie about a writer documenting her journey to enlightenment should be somehow more visual than word-packed.

My favorite review so far was written by Helena Andrews at The Root. It took up the theme of Gilbert’s book and named it “white girl problems”. Couldn’t have found a better genre for it.

White girl problems are essentially the non-issues the pale and the privileged focus on in the absence of actual adversity.

When I attempted to read Eat, Pray, Love, Will was just going into hospice. A book by a woman bemoaning her serial monogamy – that horrid pretty girl issue of having always been someone’s girlfriend or wife – while I was losing the only man I’d ever had a long-term relationship with in my entire 41 years didn’t go over well.

Sucks to be her, I mentally eye-rolled as I put the book on a shelf never to be cracked open again until I decided that some of her syrupy half-wit might be useful when I was writing comps for my education masters about six months later. I knew Gilbert was a poser but my professor didn’t.

Andrews though draws this awesome comparison between “white girl problems” lit/memoirs and a line from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. There is a scene where the Mad Hatter observes that in the real world, Alice has lost her “muchness”.

“You were much more … muchier.”

White girls in the real world then are searching for their muchness.

Gilbert’s muchness turned out to be the exact thing she thought was her problem – love and being in a relationship – because her journey ends when she meets the man she is now married to.

So much for issues.

Which brings me to my second reason, and it is related to the loss of muchness. My memoir. The one that’s pretty much written and is screaming to be edited and shopped.

I can’t.

I know. I have been saying that for a while now, but I am sure of the reason behind my reluctance. And it goes beyond my belief that books about overcoming tragedy by being plucky, witty and boot-strappy are so common place that they’ve become clichés onto themselves.

Rob followed a link to a widow blog and the author was describing her experiences at a Blogher style convention for widows complete with keynote speakers, author panels and how-to workshops. A couple of her encounters with people who’d mined literature from their experiences and turned them into books and/or workshops had left her feeling removed and as though she was possibly doing widowhood and grieving wrong.

And then I knew why I haven’t finished my memoir.

I can’t give people their muchness back. I could write a memoir, package it and sell it out of workshops and conventions, but a person’s muchness comes from within not from without.

I felt/still feel sometimes as though I didn’t do widowhood right. The way I felt, and the things I needed to do for myself, were often so out of step with other widows, books on grieving and even memoirs of widows that I wondered how I could be so far out in the weeds when everyone else seemed to know where the paved road was.

I can’t do that to someone else. Lead them to believe – even inadvertently – that I know the way.

Especially since I really don’t believe there is a process to grief or a one size fits all way to navigate the first year or that the whole honoring of someone’s memory should even be numbered in the top twenty of a person’s priority list.

The blogger mentioned how pleased some of the authors seemed with themselves, their lives and this opportunity to basically headline a conference. And I can totally understand her and them.

It’s amazing when people read what you’ve written and tell you it meant something to them. It would be easy to let that dominate and forget that the subject matter makes you more responsible to your readers than that of a fiction writer.

If what I write inspires someone, wow, but if it makes someone feel inadequate, wrong, or persecuted by the fates? Ouch. It would bother me the same way that the kid in my 3rd hour English class who’d given up because he’d never gotten a grade above a D used to bother me. Even though that wasn’t really my fault, I had to fix it. It was my job.

Memoirists open their lives for reasons that are far different from that of a fiction writer. It’s more than telling a good story. My story and opinions as a blueprint for grieving would be a responsibility like the one I took on as a teacher. And it would mean never fully closing the door. The pain would always have access of sorts to my now. A liberty that it doesn’t deserve and that I don’t owe it.

Besides, I’ve written my story – here and in a hundred different places all over the webosphere via comments and guest posts.

Purge, Pack and Move would be an awesome title though.  Sigh.

Young Americans Don’t Know Their U.S. History


Twenty-five per cent of Americans don’t know that the United States won its independence from Great Britain according to a poll conducted by Marist University this last Independence Day weekend.

The Marist poll asked just one question: “On July 4th we celebrate Independence Day.  From which country did the United States win its independence?”

And though 74 per cent of Americans were able to give the correct answer, a disappointing 26 per cent didn’t know with the majority of them saying they were “unsure” of the correct answer.

And those who guessed incorrectly? From whom did they believe Americans liberated themselves?

China. Spain. France. Japan. Mexico.

It gets a bit worse.

Those folks who knew the correct answer were mainly white, earning over $50,000 a year and male. People in the northeast knew their American history better than those in the south (no surprise as they have always been revisionists), and people under 29 would probably benefit from a Wii version of the American Revolution because they were most likely to not know that the United States fought against Great Britain in the epic revolution that led to the holiday we so love to celebrate every July.

Another public education failure?

Maybe.

I don’t really buy into the idea that America was ever a nation of Rhodes Scholars who’ve been dumbed down over recent decades thanks to a fiendish conspiracy of elementary school teachers and a steady diet of insipid television programming.

We were all quite dumb to begin with.

Over the last decade, the study of civics and history of any kind has taken a back seat to those subject areas that are most heavily tested like math and reading. Because only a few subject areas count in the standardized testing game, those that aren’t get shorted. Civics and American history aren’t make or break tests in determining whether a school is a success or failure. When your school’s reading or math scores can push you into a turnaround, that’s where the time and effort goes.

It could also be a byproduct of our television and movies that “re-imagine” historical events with more attention to the entertainment aspect than the facts, and the sad reality that we are a culture of now. If it happened yesterday or last week, it’s old news. In a world were everything is tweeted and updated within seconds, how can anything that happened over 230 years ago matter?

Our public school system came to be not just as a way to warehouse children once they were no longer put to hard labor the moment they could fetch and carry. It existed with the intent of producing a literate citizenry able to participate as members of a democracy. Our nation’s history and the rights and duties of its population were as important to the curriculum as the 3 R’s.

When I was in middle school, I learned some of my American history watching cartoons on Saturday morning. Schoolhouse Rock cartoons ran in between shows and regaled me and my peers with ditties designed to teach us about the American Revolution, The Constitution and how bills became laws. Simple? Yes.  Effective? Very. Over thirty years later, I can still sing along with most of the tunes.

Schoolhouse Rock should remind us that it takes a village to teach our children well, but the first step towards ensuring that future generations are less ignorant about America’s roots might be the unshackling of public education from mindless testing and allowing teachers to get back to all the basics.

On the Verge of Summer


Solstice came and went earlier this week and already I notice daylight beginning its steady retreat toward the long winter.

But for the near daily late afternoon or evening rain showers, the weather sings. Temperate, mostly sunny and gloriously Albertan, the gamut of the blues competing for dominance behind clouds that seem smashed flat against an invisible ceiling.

School is out today. Normally I would lament ten weeks with child underfoot, but this year I am looking forward to having Dee about 24/7. Eight – nearly – is a wonderful age. Probably the best era of her childhood so far if I factor out the social intrigues.

She danced at the school assembly after all. Went off without a hitch. The mother of her little friend was prevailed upon to allow the girl to perform with Dee though that was not my doing or intention really when I clued the classroom and music teacher to the issue.

I’d sent quick notes just letting them know why Dee wouldn’t be dancing. No blame or hysteria or pleas to intervene. I really was okay with Dee not dancing and she seemed okay too – mostly because she didn’t know the real reasons behind it.

But the music teacher took it upon herself to call the friend’s mother and pointed out that Dee and her daughter were friends and that should supersede everything else. And the mother agreed.

Which also doesn’t surprise me. She’s a decent and reasonable person. She and I just approach life and motherhood differently.

I went to school and helped Dee into her costume and did up her hair before the assembly. I saw the mother whose non-reaction – no smile or wave – pretty much summed it all up.

Awkward, as Dee would say.

I suppose so. Less and less do I care about other people’s take on me as a person. As my mother constantly pointed out to me while I was growing up,

“What other people think of me is none of my business.”

Dee performed in front of the whole school and didn’t miss a beat. The audience was enthralled.

But they are also quite well-trained. As I have mentioned before, the staff and administration at Dee’s school are stellar. I still don’t understand the hesitation on the part of some  parents I have met here about sending their kids there.

Yes, some of the population is working class and some more are quite needy, but none of that really matters at the elementary level. When kids begin to be more influenced by peers than family in the pre-teens is when environment and peers need to be monitored closely, but even then I would argue that a strong teaching staff and an administrative office who lay down the law in a clear and even-handed way is more important than anything else in selecting a school.

But I digress.

Family picnic was yesterday and Rob cleared a bit of his day to attend.

On Wednesday I taught my second yoga class. Everyone in attendance was nursing injury.  A lesson for me in thinking on my firmly pressed into the mat feet.

Teaching yoga continues to be totally awesome.

I had a scare, however, the other night where my future as a yoga instructor is concerned.

Kat sent me an email asking me to redo a question. I’d completely blown it. Didn’t get a single point. And it was a major question.

When I reread what I’d written, I could see right away what I hadn’t done but I also know why I missed it. It was on actions: simple, complementary and counter. A concept that only really started to be clear after the in-class review for the in class test on the Friday of our last session.

That’s the problem with learning – and teaching for that matter. With things needing to be tested and verified for grading and granting of this or that certificate and degree, the real time needed for each student to digest and integrate information doesn’t neatly fit into arbitrary time frames.

You can parrot back facts and theories without really making sense of them.

I know what a simple, counter and complementary action is. Definitions are easy to remember. But actually coming up with examples by pose? That’s just starting to make sense within the last week and a half.

Teaching that first class was a major eye-opener for me. It’s too bad that YogaWorks doesn’t have a component that requires teaching classes outside of the training. Teaching each other within the workshops was never quite the same thing.

But, I wrote the take home a month ago and then moved on to studying for the in-class test and preparing for my sutra presentation and the teaching of my pose.

I passed the last three, by the way.

Kat told us that most people who fail, failed the take home. And I think I know why now. We had a study session for the in-class, but there was nothing comparable for the take home. The reasoning being, I’m sure, that a take home let’s you use books and notes. What it doesn’t allow for is the give and take of the study session. We weren’t supposed to help each other.

There are valid reasons for not allowing people to read each other’s take homes and offer suggestions and ask questions. My personal opinion though is that they don’t apply to yoga – which is collaborative in the training process to a large extent and fosters the idea that we learn from each other through discussion, practice and collaboration.

Awk, the teacher in me is coming out. I see and I critique.

I haven’t heard back since I sent in my reworked question and rather than continuing to hyper-ventilate, I chose to believe that all is well.

As Rob says, the worst thing that could happen is I have to rewrite the test.

So true.

I managed to write for Care2. My posts are both in the hot topics this morning. I’d be pleased but they were written to incite mindless raging commentary and I am certain my poor karma is wilting as a result.

Nothing more for 50 Something Moms though. The blog is closing. The SVM partnership hit an iceberg and as they are unable to resolve it, they are closing. I am torn as to my feelings, but I think it was time for me to move on from it anyway. So, it’s all good.

Stepping away from the keyboard now. Sunshine beckons.