A singular focus -or- What it feels like to go back to teaching

The magical red bucket.

It all started with a red bucket. The very one pictured above.

That's the bucket I took with me to an interview for a teaching job in June last year. I was told to be prepared to present a lesson that I had developed, taught and assessed. I wracked my brain for the most memorable lesson I had used as an English teacher. I even gathered up photos of my old classroom with students reading and interacting and even some samples of old student work. I walked in to that interview confident with that red bucket tucked under my arm!

I got the job.  The boys and I took off for Alaska within weeks of the good news to join Aquaman who was already fishing.

I began reading what my future students had been assigned for the summer. Here's proof - me with the book on board a seiner with Aquaman.

Damn boring, if you want to know the truth.

That was pretty much the last time I came up for air.

In July, I went to a teaching conference. In August, I began planning lessons. I walked into a classroom that looked like this:

And turned it into this:

Yes, the door involves Hello Kitty. 

And a Hello Kitty calendar. I may have a problem.

The lesson I had in that red bucket at my interview is what started off the year.

Since then, I've been buried in literature and professional development and benchmarks. Learning an entirely new pedagogy. Memorizing 150 student names and getting to know them. Grading 150 student essays. Then 150 more student essays. Then hundreds more poems. Uploading and emailing and calling parents. Twelve hour days were standard. If I got in and out under 10 hours, I felt giddy.

At times, delightful reading.
At other times, mind numbing.

There has been no time for my own writing. I've been writing curriculum. I've been writing poetry and essays to use as exemplar models for my students. No personal essays. No blogging.

It is all consuming.

Did I mention the reading? Besides curriculum guides and lesson plans and articles about teaching literature, I also read (or re-read) whatever novels I had to teach. Here's what was on deck this fall:

7th grade:
1) The Giver by Lois Lowry
2) The Maze Runner by James Dashner
3) The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
4) The Pearl by John Steinbeck

8th grade:
1) Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
2) The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
3) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
4) When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
5) Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

For the student book club that I sponsor:
1) Doll Bones by Holly Black
2) Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
3) Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
4) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
5) The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Additional Research and Reading:
1) In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning by Nancie Atwell
2) The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men edited by Michael J. Meyer
3) Classics in the Classroom by Carol Jago
4) With Rigor For All: Teaching the Classics to Contemporary Students by Carol Jago
5) Papers Papers Papers: An English Teacher's Survival Guide by Carol Jago
6) Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons by Nancie Atwell
7) Lessons that Change Writers by Nancie Atwell

I'm sure there's more reading that I've forgotten I did.

Did I mention the bulletin boards? That's my favorite part!

Students add quotes from books - a sort of recommendation wall. 

Such a great quote.

August/September. You can't go wrong with Whitman.

October-scary stuff!

November-books teachers are thankful for.

One of my all time favorite books.

Here's why.

December. What'd you expect? I mean really.

I also celebrated a birthday in there, went on a field trip with 100 8th graders, chaperoned a dance, and gave in to student requests to be the faculty sponsor for a student-led book club.

She who wears the crown must be obeyed. Right?

This was the bus ride there.
Notice there isn't one on the way back. 

Did you know you text requests to the DJ now? Fancy!

I have made myself take a break these last two weeks. That means that I only read two books that were related to school and only emailed a handful of times to confirm my new teaching schedule for the spring that will involve a new syllabus, eleven more novels that I must pick for 30+ additional students I will have, and to welcome a new teacher that I will collaborate with.

You know the most surprising part of all?

I am loving being back in the classroom. I missed it. I was gone from it for three years.

Kids can be real bad. Real, read bad. But they can also be real sweet. Real, real sweet. They give you things. Things they think you'll like. So if they see one Hello Kitty item on your desk, get ready. For things like this:

First gift from a student this year. And it was from a boy!
Boys secretly love Hello Kitty.

Did you know there was Hello Kitty canvas art?

Hello Kitty as an Elf. No better combination.

And they'll make you things. Like this:

Just because. 

Our Of Mice and Men book cover - student rendition.

Favorite student quote from The Outsiders.

And they'll do annoying things like take a selfie of you and themselves with your phone while you're busy with another student.

And you'll marvel at how they can be so frustrating and so smart and so clueless and so wonderful all at the same time.

I think they might actually be learning something with me. So I'll just keep swimming - trying to keep my head above water. Maybe I'll eventually be able to do more than tread water. Maybe I'll learn a few new strokes and be able to look around at the shore by the time June rolls around again.

But until then? You won't be hearing much from me. Which was really the whole point to this post - to let you know why I'm M.I.A. on this here blog. It's for something I care a lot about. And it's all part of a big plan Aquaman and I hatched many years ago so that I would have the summers off with the boys and we could all go to Alaska and join him while he fished for the summer. It might actually be happening, that plan. Fingers crossed.

I'm with the Band

If you don't have this album yet, go get it. 

My Junior year at boarding school, I was assigned a new roommate. We had never met before and yet we somehow instantly connected. After no time at all, we were inseparable. We stayed up late listening to music. I thought I was a music lover, but this girl - this girl - she introduced me to The Cure. She got me in the habit of falling asleep listening to music like Level 42 and Yaz and Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads and Suzanne Vega and Peter, Paul, and Mary. We would write down lyrics and obsess over their meanings and marvel at how in the world Robert Smith knew exactly how we felt at any moment in time. We would take our double cassette recorder jam boxes and splice together our favorite lines from favorite songs until it was a 30 minute collage of teenage angst. We made each other mix tapes - of course we did. She took me to my first concert at - get this - Madison Square Garden. The band was Squeeze, not that it mattered. How's that for a first concert experience?

We graduated the next year and I never saw her again. She went to college, I went to college. We talked on the phone once or twice. Then nothing until 2009 and Facebook. She could see bits and pieces of my life and I could see glimpses into hers. I wasn't sure what she'd ended up doing exactly, but I knew it was in the music business. She traveled a lot, touring with Lady GaGa, Madonna, Dave Matthews Band, Hootie & the Blowfish, Glee, and Dancing With the Stars. Her incredible knowledge of music looked like it had led her somewhere perfect for her.

We finally live near a major metroplex, so it worked out that her touring schedule this year brought her somewhere that we could actually meet up. Twenty-four years later.

She called me and left a message - her voice was lower than I remembered and she called me by my maiden name. It's kind of cool when someone does that. They knew you way back when. We met for lunch but barely ate because we couldn't stop talking. We had both been through things. Serious shit. And yet weirdly similar. It was as if no time had passed. We laughed at our ridiculously stupid younger selves. And I brought something:

High School Yearbook. 

Our yearbook from Junior year. Some of the pictures are pretty funny. Mostly because we had a lot of damn hair.

There we are. 2nd row center. Angie (l) and Me (r). Basketball.

Front row. Me (l) and Angie (r). Softball.

But here's the best part. She had signed my yearbook and it was basically a timeline of every cool thing we did that year. We read over it. Out loud. And remembered.

I dug out an old photo album and brought it along, too.

The time flew by. She was getting texts from the band and had stuff to do. She offered to set aside some tickets for me and the boys for the concert that night. Listening to her stories that afternoon, I realized just how accomplished she was in her career. She was the tour manager for major bands and she had worked hard to get there. It was so her. And while I have been to quite a few concerts in my day since my first experience at Madison Square Garden, I had never been with my children - who are now big ol' teenagers - and never had VIP access.

She met us behind the building with these:

The key to the city. For real. 

And another one.

Just for kicks.

We both realized that she had taken me to my first concert and was now taking my three boys to their first concert. How cool is that?

Second generation concert inductees.

I look ecstatic. Just another day at the office for Angie.

We got to walk around backstage before the opening band went on. We were treated like family. We had dinner sitting at the table next to the singer and bass player. They signed my album cover and photos and the guitar player's dad gave the boys signed guitar pics later.

It was too intimate to even think about taking a photo. We played it cool. We sat at a private table during the concert, next to another band member's grandparents. It was an amazing view.

Angie was able to sneak out and see us, which was awesome. But you know what was really, really, completely fantastic? To walk out of the VIP area, through the crowd, all the way up to the stage where big, burly guys are standing guard while saying, "Excuse me, excuse me," as I pushed past people looking annoyed and flashing my VIP badge and having the Security guy move aside and say, "Right this way, ma'am." That's the very definition of awesome. "Excuse me, but I'm with the band."

And this band. This band. If you don't have this album yet, go out and buy it immediately. It was released a little over a year ago and it has just exploded. Because it's musical genius, that's why. The first song I heard was "It's Time" and it's still my favorite. But "Demons" and "On Top of the World" have gotten under my skin. The whole album is terrific. Don't doubt me. And the icing on the cake? They're really nice guys.

The concert ended and we got to see all that goes in to breaking down a stage and loading things up. We walked out a back entrance where big buses were waiting for everything and everybody to drive all night to the next gig. There were fans waiting behind barriers, wondering who in the hell we were with the personal escort up close and personal where they were not allowed. It was delicious.

But re-connecting with someone who had been a very best friend when I was 16 and 17 meant even more. It is valuable to look back at where you've been to understand where you're going. Another friend of mine once told me that we are our truest selves at about 10 years old - before the world rushes in with its expectations and disappointments. So whatever you did that made you happy when you were 10? That's what you should be doing with your life. So to see that someone I had known and loved and lived with and shared so much with was doing exactly that was inspiring. And to have her encourage me in my writing and to remind me that it was what I had always wanted to do...Well, it's exactly what I needed.

Thanks, Angie, for helping me remember who I am.

Self-imposed exile

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Painting by Kristin Sholl

I need time to myself. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that. I often fantasize about being alone while I am in the middle of daily life, with its deadlines and boys and husband, dog and house, cooking and cleaning. Many women do this, I think. We gaze off at the horizon and wish for a place all our own, without intrusion. Writers may be even more susceptible to this, telling ourselves, "If I only had uninterrupted time. And a little cabin somewhere. Then I could get my writing done."

So I made it happen. Aquaman was home for a while, the boys were in school - there was nothing so pressing on my calendar that I couldn't disappear for a few days, as long as I had an internet connection to receive and send daily assignments for work. Just such a place existed - a small house in the woods by a lake that family friends had offered up. I knew I needed a break - knew I had been short with everyone who crossed my path in the preceding days (okay, weeks). So I grasped at the offer, picking up the keys on Sunday and planning my escape for the next day. 

I left while the boys were at school, after carefully packing provisions for a few days. I went to the grocery store just for me. There was no way to cook at the cabin, so I mainly brought things for sandwiches. And for cravings that I might have. And things that nobody but me likes. Things like potato salad and chicken salad, vanilla cookies, wasabi almonds, hard boiled eggs, and tomatoes. And peanut butter. And Ghiradelli chocolate chips. And Diet Dr. Pepper. Just the essentials. 

I took Yellow Dog with me as a security system and because I couldn't leave her alone with all those boys. Us girls have to stick together. 

I was only an hour away, but so secluded that cell service was spotty. The cabin is built on stilts and surrounded by tall trees. The sound of the wind blowing in the leaves calmed me immediately. I had to turn on the water at the main line, which proved to be somewhat challenging - as I am clueless about such things. Aquaman was unreachable, so I fired up the iPad with its cellular connection and watched a YouTube video about how to turn on and off a water line. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. I figured I'd just live without water for a few days - there was a lake down the path, after all - but Aquaman eventually called and we talked through the puzzle of why the water wouldn't come on in the house when it looked as if it were on at the main line. Turns out there were two water main covers - one for the meter and one for the valve. With water flowing, I settled in to stay a while. 

The first night, Yellow Dog and I walked down to the water and she swam while I sat and watched the sun go down. We walked back up to the house and I sat in a rocking chair on the porch and read a book I'd been trying to finish for weeks. Yellow Dog introduced herself to the two or three other dogs from neighboring cabins, but returned to the safety of the porch. I sat there, surrounded by trees. And birds. The occasional dog barked, far off in the distance, and it sounded a bit like that scene from An American Werewolf in London when they're walking on the moors and about to be attacked. 

Yeah, that. 

Which brings me to my first hesitation about being alone: fear. 

Me going out to a cabin on the Texas/Oklahoma border by myself is surely a plotline in a horror movie. Bringing Yellow Dog was my defense. I wanted to conquer that fear. I thought of Cheryl Strayed in Wild, hiking for weeks by herself on the Pacific Crest Trail. I wanted to think that I could do that. But really? Um, no. No, thank you. But I would at least like to stay a few nights alone in a cabin without creeping myself out. 

I did a little work. I ate a cold hot dog for dinner, and washed down some vanilla cookies with a Diet Dr. Pepper (I paid for that caffeine later when I couldn't fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning. Prime werewolf time, mind you). I settled in on the couch and finished my book. I moved to the bed and finished the other book I was halfway through. 

And this is mostly how things went for two days. It was heaven to wake up on my own in the morning - no person or alarm disturbed me. Even Yellow Dog slept in. I worked. I got some writing done. I read another book. And my Poets & Writers magazine. I took a THREE HOUR NAP. My cell phone did not ring. No TV. No music. I had a lot of time to think. And here is what I thought:

I'm not ready for this. I don't want to live in a cabin by the water, just me and my dog. I want my husband. And our kids - them running crazy down to the lake, setting snares in the woods, having fires at night, not bathing the entire time, smelling of charred wood and sweat and BOY. I caught glimpses of the elderly man who lived one cabin over. He spent a lot of time tinkering in his garage, walking with his dogs. Alone. What I claimed to want. Only not yet. 

There was no one demanding I get up or make breakfast or lunch or dinner. And you know what I felt? Lonely. Like my family and their lives went on spinning without me. Aquaman steps right up and plans fun things for he and the boys to do and kisses me goodbye when I leave, only worried about me - hoping that I  haven't waited too long to get away for a break. 

"You going to be okay?" I asked him before I left. 

"Sure - are you?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" I didn't understand. 

"You're not going to go drown yourself in the lake, are you?"

"You mean, pull a Virginia Woolf?" I asked him, chuckling. 

"Who's that?" 

His response surprised me. He's arrived at this conclusion all on his own - he never saw The Hours - Nicole Kidman portraying Virginia Woolf - filling her pockets with rocks and walking right into the river to drown herself. And she preached solitude - A Room of One's Own - for writing. And she killed herself. 

So why do I long for space of my own? Solitude? Why do we count the years that we will be "stuck" in one place so the kids can finish school with some hope of stability? Here I am. Alone. And it's not all it's cracked up to be. Although I think there is nothing wrong with the people who live happily as hermits on a lake in a cabin with their dog, mabe that's not what I want. Maybe I need to rethink this. Maybe I need to relish the time I have with our three boys who are quickly becoming young men. Who still want me to read to them before bed every night and will try to sleep in my bed when Aquaman is gone on a boat trip. Or when they're shy at a party and will sit on my lap, even though they are much too big for it now. 

I figured out I really like hot meals. Cooked food. The second night I conveniently found some charcoal, a lighter, lighter fluid, and a grill tucked away under the house. I roasted cheese hot dogs for myself and Yellow Dog and ate my potato salad. I sat by the grill and read some more. And wished that my family was there with me. I am nuts. 

So I packed up my stuff this morning and headed home. It turns out you can only eat sandwiches and peanut butter for so long. Yellow Dog got into the car as soon as I opened it to load gear- a full 15 minutes before I was ready to leave. She was not going to get left out there. I locked the cabin up tight, making sure everything was as I'd found it. I turned off the main water line. As soon as I got off gravel roads and to a major highway, I pulled into a Starbucks and ordered a Venti, iced, soy, Cinnamon Dolce Latte. No whip. I had gone two mornings without coffee. Maybe that's what propelled me back to civilization. 

I went to the woods to live deliberately, like Thoreau. But what I mostly did was read. And nap. And eat cookies. And miss my family. 

And I guess that's something.   

Ah. Civilization.