Parenthood: Week 377 - Hair & Voices

Lucas has amazing hair.

All my boys have wonderful hair. Ollie had a full head when he was born, which did thin out, but came back evenly after a couple months. As his hair got longer little curls came up on the side of his head around his ears. Ethan had less hair than Ollie when he was born and as it came it, in didn’t curl like Ollie’s. On the top of Ethan’s head, the hair grew long, so for a couple he had this little spike on the top of his head, which was super cute.

Lucas has different hair but amazing in its own way. He has these long curls on the sides of his head and on the top of his head, and very thin hair in other areas. If I work on it, I can get the curls on the side of his head to comb over almost all the way over the top of his head to the other side. Especially after his bath, his hair forms into soft ringlets. It’s absolutely adorable, wonderful, and unique.

All of my sons have lighter hair than mine. My hair is technically dark brown, but it appears black. Diana has brown hair, and all of my sons’ hair is a wonderful mix of our hair colors. Ollie noticed one time that his hair looks a slightly different color in the sunlight. The lighter tones of his hair come out and there’s almost an auburn color that appears. Ollie calls the way his hair changes in the sunlight one of his superpowers.

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Ollie says that his brothers and Buffy all have superpowers. Ethan’s super power according to Ollie is that he is loud. Now I’ve talked about how Ethan is loud before, but what I missed in these descriptions is the incredible range of his voice.

Ethan has a whiny tone in his voice when he is being demanding, but he also has the softest and sweetest tone he’s asking for help. He has loud cries of frustration and anger, but he also has exuberant joyful screams of joy that feel like they overload the room with energy like Boo’s laughs in Monster Inc. Ethan has wonderful quiet moments when he talks to himself while playing. It’s almost a whisper, as he verbalizes his thoughts, and explores the world around him.

Ollie has a similar range in his voice. What’s unique about Ollie is that the sound effects that he makes. From a young age he would make sound effects when he played with his toys. Sometimes they make sense as he pretend a volcano is exploding, but often I can’t figure out what sounds he is emulating. I love feeling his energy through these sounds and watching his imagination at play.

Lucas makes these indescribably cute chirps, sighs, and squeals. His laugh is more of a little yell of joy and a chuckle, than a true “haha.” His cries for attention are getting louder as he is getting stronger, and he seems to be exploring new sounds all of the time. Lucas lacks the words, but he doesn’t lack the expression.  Lucas is a wonderful reminder that sometimes words aren't necessary to show someone that you love them.  

How I Came To The Work - Part 3: Awakening

I don’t remember thinking a lot about racism or sexism in my first teaching job. It was a high school band teacher position, and most high school band teachers are White men. I was aware of this but I didn’t see this as a sign of oppression. It just seemed like the result of individual choice.

There wasn’t any conversations during department meetings or faculty meetings about diversity. The other band teachers stuck pretty closely to the canon of school band music which was predominately  composed and arranged by White men. Even the “multi-cultural” music was composed by White men. All these lists of “essential” music and state lists of songs were mostly if not all filled with White male composers. I knew this at the time but it didn’t really bug me.

I felt like an outsider when we’d have these meeting with band teachers at other schools. There was no other people of color, everyone was taller than me, and it was hard for me to socialize and make friends with  other people. At the time I thought it had to do with the fact this was a hard job that was overwhelming, but in retrospect there was probably other stuff related to my racial identity that effected my experience.

My second teaching job, I was a special education assistant, and I started seeing teaching differently. Instead of focusing on what I was teaching, I was focusing on how to teach. The majority of student I was teaching were students of color, unlike my previous job where most of my students were White.

I had all of these new experiences at this job that broadened my sense of humanity. One of my favorite students was this wonderful 3rd grade girl. During a classroom party her mother came and the 3rd grader really wanted me to meet her.  When I started talking to her mom, the girl started translating for her mom, and I quickly realized that her mom didn’t speak English.

I shared a teaching space with students who had a wide variety of special needs including students who non-verbal. I felt discomfort being around students who were autistic, and I learned over time to see that as just one facet of their identity. The modeling of other teachers and the way that they treated them with dignity made me ashamed about my bias and gave me a new way see the humanity in different people.

The experience that impacted me the most was this little Asian boy who I taught. He had some language processing issues, which is why he got special ed services. And I taught him how to read.

I taught him how to read. 

That’s an amazing thing for me to think about. Reading is such an important gateway to the world, and I was the one who empowered him with these skills. I don’t know if he felt a unique connection with me because we were both Asian, but I know that I felt special connections, and a higher level of commitment to him, because I saw a part of myself in him.

I didn’t take this job looking for my eyes to be opened to the diversity of the world, but it came to me in ways I never expected. I had all of these experiences with people who different than me, and I found connections looking at these differences full on, because I couldn’t ignore them. And with one special boy, I saw myself, and something more in education. So when there was an opening at school that put diversity as a central part of their mission, I was intrigued, and I applied...

Parenthood: Week 376 – Ollie Doing For Ethan

Ethan wanted an invisibility cloak too.

We were in the middle of our bedtime routine and had just finished brushing teeth. Ollie went into his closet and put on a red zip-up hoodie and told me that this was his invisibility cloak. Earlier that evening we had watched the part of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when Harry gets the invisibility cloak as a Christmas Gift. Ethan then told Ollie that he wanted an invisibility cloak too.

Ollie went to his closet and took out a button-down shirt. He carefully put it on Ethan to his delight. Ethan started to try to button the shirt, but his little fingers failed him. Ollie noticed this, and told him that he would help him. Slowly and carefully Ollie buttoned Ethan’s shirt. He explained how the button hole eats the button and it comes out the end. Ethan was quiet, looking down and learning through the work of his brother.

When Ollie was done, Ethan was so excited and proudly stated that he had a cloak too.

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen them move that fast together on that scooter.

Ethan is still trying to figure out how to use his scooter. He can kick and move forward pretty well, but he has issues with steering and often veers over to one side or another and inevitably needs my help to straighten out. Ollie has developed good skills on his scooter and can move at a pretty fast pace comfortably.

I don’t remember the first time they shared a scoote, but I do remember the squeal of joy from Ethan when he rode on Ollie’s scooter with him down a ramp. It’s a really cute thing that they do. Ethan stands on the front part of the deck, and Ollie stands behind him on the back part of the deck, and they are off. Ethan sometimes kicks, but it’s Ollie who does most of the work, kicking, breaking and steering the scooter.

This is something that Ethan asks to do and it’s also something that Ollie wants Ethan to do.

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There are moments when Ollie and Ethan have disagreements. A lot of the time it’s because Ethan tries to play with a toy that Ollie doesn’t want him to touch. Ollie makes a castle with blocks, Ethan tries to play with it, and Ollie gets upset. In the moment of emotion, Ollie doesn’t use his words well enough, and Ethan doesn’t understand what is Ollie’s work as his impulses take over. These moments are challenging to use, and often we need to separate Ethan and Ollie apart, and facilitate reconciliation.

The noise and the stress of these moments can be exhausting that sometimes makes me miss the good moments between my sons which are far more than the tough ones.

Ollie is a great big brother, and he’s well on his journey of learning how to love and be loved in return. Sometimes the way he shows love to Ethan works, sometimes it doesn’t but he’s trying and that makes me proud beyond words.

How I Came To The Work - Part 2: The Set-Up

I’m going to start the first essential question in getting a better understanding race in America and becoming anti-racist: When did you become of aware of your race, the race of other people, and racism as a system of oppression? 

I’ve been aware of race for as I long as I can remember. My racial identity was never in question. I knew my parents were from Taiwan. Along with other cultural makers like language and cuisine, I understood at an early age that I was not part of mainstream American culture, and by American culture, I actually mean “White American” culture.

Even though I was raised deep within the “colorblind” culture of the 1980s that taught that the best way to deal with race was to “not see it,” I was VERY aware of race. I knew how many people were Asian-American in my classes, and I knew that my neighbors growing up were Black.  And I knew that most of the people I saw on television were White.  I wasn’t upset about this fact, as I was woefully unaware of what this White presentation communicated to me about who was valued in our society.

The first time I remember being offended as an Asian-American was watching the Siamese cats in  Lady And The Tramp in middle school. The first I felt prejudice was when I was in late elementary school and one of my teachers was surprised that I wasn’t that good at math. The first time I became aware of racialized views on family was when I found out that some Asian parents in my high school community were critical of the fact that I had a White girlfriend. And the first time I became aware  that I had issues related to my racial identity development was when a large group of Asian-American students sat together in my college dining hall and I felt physically sick.

All of this prepared me to hear a different story in my college American history class. My college history professor focused our understanding of American history from the end of the Civil War to the Vietnam War.  She structured this class by following the oppression of different group of people.  For the first time, I heard of Asian-Americans being part of the story of American history as she taught about the American internment camps of Japanese-American citizens before and during WWII. This piqued my interest in my people’s history, so I followed up this class with taking the course, Asian-American History. This class along with a lot of quality time with a psychology graduate student in therapy helped me come to terms with my racial identity.

What I knew of race, and racism was of the past, not the present.  This served me well for some time.  In graduated school, all of this knowledge helped me understand the need to represent cultural with authenticity in education.

This is where I was when I entered education. I knew about the racial sin of our past, and like so many, I was unaware of the how this story was not done. I understood racism, but I was unaware of how systems of racism permeated every part of our society. I had done some good work on myself, and work on my craft as an educator.

I saw myself as a teacher and a person who was not racist. Like learning fingering on a flute, I felt like I had this part of my pedagogy down, and instead of continuing on an anti-racist journey, I sat down at the side of the road content, unaware of all of the racism  around me, and throughout our society.

I had no idea how much I had to learn, and that my work had just started.

Parenthood: Week 375 – My Heart's Inspiration

The worldwide pandemic turned our world upside down. If felt like everything changed in our personal life, our jobs, and in our lifestyle. With uncertainty, anxiety, and lack of direction, and knowledge we strove ahead, one week at a time, one day at a time and in the difficult moments, one hour at a time.

Now we find ourselves in an unprecedented time in our country. Racial tensions have once again boiled over and Black citizens who have been here before are being met by allies willing to fight, and willing to stand up against police brutality and anti-Black racism. Corporations are taking stands, and the people are being awoken the truth of our racist past and racist present. More of us than not are trying to figure out the best way to make we don’t have a racist future.

These are really tough times. There is so much going on. Every day there’s good news, and there’s horrendous news. While curves seem to flattening in many places cases of Covid-19 are spiking. Yes, more people than ever before are painfully aware of the murder of Black Americans by policemen while the whole world is watching, and the murders continue.

It’s not getting any better for Asian-Americans. The number of hate crimes directed against Asian-Americans continue to rise.

With all of this going on, life as a parent continues. Nothing was taken away from our work as parents to give us space to deal and process all of these things. It just piled on top of what was an already full plate of the emotional and the physical work of parenting. There are times when I looked at friends and colleagues who did not have children, and envied their ability to sleep in, binge watch television shows, and enjoy drunken zoom calls. However, those moments past.

The last thing I do before I go to sleep is kiss my family goodnight. I have found myself lately the last one to sleep. I kiss Ollie, Lucas, Ethan, Buffy, and then finally Diana. In the dark, I feel all of their presence, and hear the quiet breathing of my family, and I know in my heart that all of this is right.

My families very existence is an afront to all of those who would deny the pandemic, who would say that “all lives matter.” Our work, our relationships, and our family resists all of the bigotry, hate, ignorance, and racism with our love and kindness. All that we do for our children is helping them become citizens full of empathy and love so they will have the tools to resist and fight against the oppression.

When I didn’t that video, I thought of my children and pressed play. If I faced the horror, I would be better able to help my children eventually face it as well. When I’m tired of the work and it seems like everything is moving too slowly, I know that even the smallest amounts of progress will help my children. When I can’t find optimism in the sadness, I see hope in my children’s eyes.

I simply couldn’t do any of this without them.

How I Came To The Work - Part 1: Introduction

I’m new to the game.

I didn’t identify as a person of color until I was in my early 30s. I didn’t go to my first DEI event (conference, training, institute) until the summer of 2017, and it wasn’t until last year, that I didn't fully grasped the true depths of the savage inequities in the criminal justice system until…last year.

It took four different presentations before I understood the concept of privilege, and while the myth of meritocracy got demolished in my brain pretty quickly in one podcast, my understanding of true power of the patriarchy continues to evolve.

I am a proud anti-racist, anti-colonial, privilege-acknowledging, social justice-embracing, demolish-the-patriarchy-preaching, diversity practitioner. I see the racial, sexist nature of our society everywhere I go, and in everything I see. My work is interwoven deeply into who I am and it is impossible to have a relationship with me and not see how diversity, equity, and inclusion goes beyond my work to every facet of my life.

Like President Obama’s view of LGBTQ rights, I have evolved and continue to evolve. It has taken years of work, the patience of so many teachers, colleagues and friends, thousands of pages of books and articles, and hours upon hours of podcast and books on tape for me to get to where I am as a diversity practitioner. While I am proud of where I am, I know that there is so much work for me to do.

This work is will never end. There will always be another perceptive for me to experience, another concept to wrestle with, and more for me to learn. It’s a journey, and like a life well lived, the learning, the growth, the evolution will never end. That seem daunting, but for me exciting. At the core of DEI work is understanding myself better, and seeing the world for what it is, and in all of the darkness, and trauma, finding hope.

I’m going to spend the next couple Friday’s unpacking my journey with DEI, and how I got to where I am. In the whirlwind of all that has happened in the past couple weeks, I feel a need to reflect, honor those who have helped me along my way, and share with others what it means to be becoming.

As these posts help me better understanding my journey, I hope my story helps you find your own way into and through this work.

I came to this party late, but I was welcome in with open arms.  I'm glad you are here and wherever you are at in this work, I welcome you.  It's a journey that has changed my life, and if we join together in this work, we can change the world. 

Parenthood: Week 374 – Thorns & Roses 6/8/20

Thorns

Ethan screamed. For about ten minutes while Diana went outside to water the plant, Ethan demanded to water the plants with her. It was his bedtime, and I made it clear that he needed to get ready for bed. My words meant nothing to him. As he leaned on the baby gate at the top of the stairs, he screamed how he wanted to go outside and water the plants, over and over and over. Could I have relented and let him go outside and join Diana? Yes, but I felt it was important to hold firm and have him not dictate his life through throwing a tantrum.

It not fun to hear your child scream, no matter what the context. Even if you are 100% sure it’s a tantrum and you know intellectually it’s the right decision to let your child scream it out, it still hurts. The reptilian part of my brain still feels stress whenever I hear any of my children cry or scream and it’s a struggle to not give in. Sometimes doing what is right for your child feel horrible.

Trying to cook dinner with a baby with new found scooting abilities is challenge. Lucas is moving now. I’m so happy that he’s doing so well, at the same time, part of me wishes he would just cool it. He doesn’t move quickly yet, but it’s unpredictable. I’m not sure how he starts in the middle of the living room and ends up half-way underneath the couch.

Combined with getting dinner started late, getting ready for this meal was very stressful. There’s an art to cooking with little children around, and while I got it done, it was a mess. As much as I love the art of cooking, I don’t always actually love cooking, and today it was not fun.


Roses

It blows my mind that Ollie can read a book. Even though the book he was reading to me today had a part that was unfortunately racist, it was so wonderful to witness him exercise the power of transforming words into thought. Ollie has always had good reading comprehension, and what impresses me the most right now is his fluency. Ollie doesn’t love reading as much as other activities, and we’ll keep working on that.

Ethan is so much fun to play with. He just wants attention, and I feel the times when is most toddler are times when he’s not getting the attention, he feels he needs. We had a moment this morning when we were playing Duplos together and it was really wonderful to see how creative he was an persistent in trying to make the blocks do what he wanted them to do.

All of my boys have beautiful smiles but there’s something different about when Lucas smiles. Since he doesn’t talk yet, his facial expressions take on more importance in his communication. Almost all of the time when I look at him, he smiles at me, sometimes when I smile first and other times it happens before I smile.

It’s the most amazing thing to see him smile.  It really does light up my life.

Year 10: Week 37 – The Call

In the middle of preparing dinner, it hit me and I asked Diana to take over. She heard the trembling in my voice, and immediately took charge, as I ran upstairs and it all came out.

Was this the first time I cried about something that happened in my life as a teacher? Well, if there was another time, I don’t remember it. I mean this was a sit in a chair, hugging my knees up to my chest and crying into a hand towel moment.

So, what went so badly? A Zoom call.

Along with some other teachers I was working with, we had put together a wonderful plan for an Zoom music sharing for our middle school band students. The idea was that we were going to have a Zoom call with so that there was some kind of live sharing event. Instead of having students perform live, we’d watch videos of student performances as a group. This seemed like the best way to have some kind of group experience but not put the pressure of performing online on the students.

I worked hard on editing their videos together and arranging this event. I checked and double-checked the video sharing settings and everything seemed like it was good to go. Then the call happened and I shared the first video. The sound worked but the video froze. I frantically texted some other teachers on the call and they gave me helpful feedback, but I still couldn’t get the videos to work right. I tried everything I knew and after ten minutes of struggling, we finally got the videos to work. What should have taken twenty-five minutes took almost forty minutes to get through.

I felt horrible during that call, after the call, and well, for the rest of the day. Luckily the second Zoom event I hosted later that afternoon went out without any issues. I told myself that if that one had the same issues as the first one, I would be tears, but I did end up in tears a couple hours later.

This was about more than the fact that the call didn’t work. This was about weeks of uncertainty, the feeling of inequity in the world, doing so much and working so hard while others openly questioned the very reason that I was apart from the students that I loved. This was a harsh reminder that things are not fair.  Just because I kept it together for the other teachers in my department, for my students, and for my family, it didn’t mean that I was going to get a break. And sometimes you can do everything right, and work as hard as you can, and things fall apart, and it can feel like there’s nothing you can do about it at the time.

I’m okay now.

Diana, my wife was wonderful that night. The next day, I had a Zoom with one of my principals, and he told reminded me of all I had accomplished and that some issues with a Zoom wasn’t a big deal at all. He told me to be nicer to myself, and he was right.

Even with all of the issues in that Zoom call, and throughout distance learning, there was more good than bad.  More joy than frustration, and more laughter than tears for me and my students. 

Parenthood: Week 373 – Parenting In Such TImes

I just watched the videos of peaceful protestors in Washington D.C. get fired upon by with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash bangs because trump wanted to walk over to a church and do a photo-op. I saw this on phone as I was browsing around while giving my son a bath. I didn’t have time really research all of what had happened or even process any of this because I was on, and needed to get my children through their bedtime routine.

That’s been this whole past week. Attempting to process all that going on in the world, while staying focused on taking care of children. Keep in mind, I got three little one. It’s at least a part-time job if not more that me and Diana put into caring for our sons every day. It’s feeding, dressing, laundry, cleaning, and educating. Yes, there are many wonderful moments that are stress-revilers, like when we went to the beach last weekend, but there’s a lot of this that is work. It takes a lot of mental energy from both of us to keep moving forward, and when there horrendous traumatizing events in our country, it’s even harder.

My sons have no idea what’s going on. Lucas is a couple months old, he was born in December. He has learning how to crawl! This is really exciting, but we are his world. Ethan is two years old and like most toddlers, he is very self-centered. He knows that there is different skin color and hair color in the world, but he has no idea about racism, and cannot grasp the concept of oppression. Then there’s Ollie, who has just recently turned seven years old.  We've made efforts to raise him through an anti-racist philosophy, however I’m not going to talk about what is going with him right now, while it lays in my mind unprocessed.

The events have been an important reminder that the anti-racist work at home needs to continue. We’ve been working our way through movies since we’ve been quarantined half an hour at a time.  It  hit me this past week that every single of these almost twenty films was written and directed by white people. So, for the last three days we watched My Neighbor Totoro. It was the first film Ollie has seen that was written and directed by people who were Asian with characters that were all Asian. This was a joyful thing, and really important to broaden his perspective beyond what is white in film.


Decentralizing white voices in my house for three nights through one movie was something that I felt l could do with my children. It also made feel proud that one of Ethan’s favorite books right now The Big Bed has all Black characters. It’s a cute book about a girl convincing her dad that he has no place in his bed because she wants to co-sleep with her mom, which is basically Ethan’s dream come true, though it’s probably co-sleeping with me.



We all have to do what we feel like we can handle.  If all you can do right now is hug your children a little bit longer, that's okay, that helps teach.  Love of a parents helps children develop self-love, which is a powerful tool against racism.  Don't forget, love will always be enough.