Year 13: Week 4 - Having Fun

One of my goals this year is to have fun. I

n the stress of the early pandemic and, well, the later part of the pandemic, it was easy to forget to have fun. And no, fun is not the only important part of music education. However, now, in this time in the world and in my students' lives, and in my life, music class needs to be joyful and fun.

I had a choice to just mail in and not do much with a 5th-grade skit for our County Fair. Each grade for this event puts on a booth for other students. We have an assembly before County Fair in which each grade presents their booth activity. Some grades do a video or a simple announcement. I have taken pride in organizing the 5th-grade doing something funny, awesome, and a little weird.

This has taken the form of having the entire grade rap a verse from a Beastie Boys song and them singing "Rainbow Connection," except the lyrics are "what are there so many songs about rainbows" sang repeatedly throughout the song. This is an opportunity to have fun with humor and music, which is tricky.

Part of me wants to get going with my 5th-grade music curriculum, and no one would give me any grief if I didn't put together a skit, and I was really close this year to just letting it go. But then I got an idea. And I figured that it was important to have fun with this. Things have been going pretty well with my 5th grade, but it felt like we needed something like this. I wanted them to see that I was doing something for them and that the only way to get what they wanted was to really trust me and work hard.

In a short amount of time, I taught them parts of "I Love Rock and Roll,"

"Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," 

And an extended version of "Baby Shark."

 

While we had fun with these songs, I also taught about some important things to think about. Joan Jett was a pioneer as a women rock musician. George Michael did an incredible amount of charity work. He inspired others as an out and proud gay man; the baby shark kids were Korean-American and Korean-Scottish.

Oh, and I made "Baby Shark" much longer than expected by introducing the extended family of sharks in extra verses. I think the other students will find this funny and slightly annoying. But, on the other hand, I think this is funny, and my 5th graders get the joke I'm going for, or they pretend they do.

Was it the most productive lesson this week as we worked on this? I mean, they learned about important artists and great songs. In moments when the pieces we know seem less fun, this memory we all share of the silliness of these lessons will carry us through.

This week, like many weeks, had a lot going on, and not all of it was fun, but I'm glad I chose to spend time with my 5th graders being silly. Genuinely enjoying the time that you share with students affirms how much you value them. In a world where so many people don't seem to prioritize children, taking the time to show students that you enjoy spending time with them helps them see that they are important, powerful, and wonderful.

Parenthood: Week 493 - Soccer

Ethan had this second soccer game yesterday. I don’t know the score. I’m not sure if his team won, but I know that Ethan had fun, and I was so entertained.  These are 4-year-olds playing soccer.

My oldest son, Ollie, didn’t do a team sport like soccer when he was younger. However, he did do gymnastics and dance. While each activity has team aspects, they have different dynamics from a sport like a soccer.  

I’m not sure why we didn’t get around to soccer for Ollie, but my wife, Diana, thought soccer would be a good idea for Ethan, so we went for it. We signed him up, ordered his uniform, and, most importantly, I bought a fancy folding chair. If I was going to be a soccer parent, I would do it right. My folding chair is comfy, it has a built-in footrest and umbrella AND reclines.  

It started raining the morning of Ethan’s first game. To my dismay, I learned that people play soccer in the rain. I was not looking forward to this. A couple of hours later, when we got everyone loaded up in the car, the rain had turned into a downpour. We chose not to put Ethan through playing in the rain for his first game, and it ended up being a good call as the game was canceled five minutes later. 

We tried the next week again, and I thought we were all prepared when I realized I had forgotten to bring his soccer ball to practice. Correction: I had got his soccer ball to practice. It just wasn’t pumped up yet. Good thing there were extra balls Ethan could use. I did pack the ball, no inflated, in the car this past week, but we ended up taking a different car. This time we borrowed a ball from my friend. One of these days, I’ll bring Ethan’s soccer ball to soccer.  

Ethan’s team drills for the first part of soccer, and then for the last part of the hour, it’s game time. There have been many highlights for the past two games: A player sat on the ball and refused to get up. One player laid down in the middle of the field and refused to get up, so the coach had to call the parents to pull the kid off the field. There were a lot of goals, most of them own goals. There was crying, some meltdowns, a lot of running, and some contact with the ball. And for the most part, the kids, including Ethan, seemed to have fun.  

Ethan ended each game, telling me that he had fun. He did a great job listening and staying with the team. Ethan is not the most aggressive soccer player, but he’s doing an excellent job of tracking the ball and staying with the team. There are moments when he gets distracted, and his head is not in the game, but he responds well when his couch pulls him back in and gives him directions.  

My chair was a great purchase, Ethan has a new activity, and the coaches are doing a great job. I’m all about children providing me with new experiences, and now because of Ethan, I have watched my first whole soccer game.  

Goal.

Year 13: Week 3 - Getting Emotional

For a while, it was easier not to feel. 

When you are wearing a mask and facing a classroom full of students wearing masks, the literal barrier creates an emotional barrier. It's harder to be vulnerable, present, and real when there is so much between us. When the face is covered, and the communication that happens around the words in the face, the brows, and the mouth goes away, you are just apart. It's hard to connect, it's hard to communicate, and it's hard to share deep feelings.  

During the times of wearing masks, there were emotional connections I made with my students, but it felt lacking and strained. Also, with all the stuff going on in my personal life, struggling through the pandemic, sometimes it was important personally to not be as emotionally connected to my students, well, because I had to save that emotional energy for my student or because I was drained from all that my personal life asked of me.  

Maybe it was because of how wonderful this summer was or because of all that is changing in my life, but I've felt an exciting sense of balance. I know that my family is the most critical priority in my life, and the longing that I have to spend more time at home feels right. This clarity is helping make work feel more enjoyable. There are things that I feel like I have a good hold on, and there are many things that I feel behind on. However, I feel I am getting good work done at school.  

Engaging with my students in work feels more connected and emotional than in the past couple of years. As a result, I'm being emotionally affected in a way that surprised me.  

I'd started teaching my 4th graders "Crowded Table" by The Highwomen.  

 

It is fun to revisit the song I have taught in previous years. In my introduction to this song, I talked about what it means to feel alone in a crowd. I talked about how I feel alone as the only Asian-American person in a room. The Highwomen were trying to do something about feeling alone as women in the music industry, which is a feeling everyone sadly experiences. By the time I got to talking about how the meaning of this song had changed with the pandemic, I was barely able to keep it together.  

 

Hearing my students tell me about how the experienced the early days of the pandemic was sad at times, but more than anything it felt vulnerable and important. 

I also felt really emotional when I saw the look of awe and wonder when I showed my students Prince's Superbowl performance.  

 

This was the first time some of my students had even seen Prince perform. I felt so lucky that I lived in Prince's time and that I could share all that incredible about Prince with my students.  

Then there were moments when I got genuinely excited when my middle school students got their first sound on the flute.  

I feel like an emotional mess in class, and it's kind of nice.

Parenthood: Week 492 - Embarrassment

My oldest son told me that I embarrassed him last week. 

This was the first time that any of my children articulated to me that I did something that embarrassed them. Look, I’m not surprised. This was inevitable. I’m kind of a weird, eccentric guy in some ways. Sometimes my hairstyle is a little out there, I wear a lot of graphic tees, and I have no qualms about singing along to music and dancing around the house. So I totally get why one of my children would find me embarrassing.  

This wasn’t like a surprising thing in that sense. I just thought I had more time before the weird, nerdy, and geeky things about me would become something that embarrassed them. 

There are many challenging things to unpack when looking back at adolescence. One of the more difficult ones is how we felt embarrassed by our parents. It’s a feeling most people share when our parents say something or do something that makes us cringe. It’s hard to unpack because, at that moment, the feeling is strong, but in retrospect, that feeling is mean. So what? Our parents wore something that wasn’t cool, big deal. Most of the things that parents do that are embarrassing have good intentions behind them, and instead of seeing that, all we can do as teenagers respond with a lack of gratitude and irritation.  

I know I can’t help how I felt embarrassed at the time of my parents, but I wish had a way of processing those feelings that helped me focus more on how my parents tried than how they misfired in my eyes. And I hope my parents, over time, understand that this was just a stage in my life, a short one in my lifetime, because deep in my heart, I feel no embarrassment when I think about my parents, only pride.  

I’ve decided that I’m not going to spend my energy trying to be cool or fitting in, which means that there are most likely a lot more of my children being embarrassed by me coming up. And like I’ve accepted this on an intellectual level, but I was not prepared for how much it would hurt to hear my child say those words.  

I felt I needed to own my impact, so I told Ollie I was sorry he felt embarrassed and reminded him that I acted out of kindness. However, I wasn’t sure or felt ready to talk to him about how his words affected me, so I put that aside for now.  

Our afternoon went on. Ollie worked with me to set up some storage shelves. He happily told me about the new algorithm he learned for his speed cubes. Ollie was happy when I played video games with him, and we had a good evening. He laughed at my silliness the following day and was glad to hold my hand as we walked around the park later that morning.  

We had that moment, but it didn’t last and didn’t define our relationship. There will be more moments of embarrassment in the future, moments of joy, and memories to serve as a foundation to grow together as we move forward in our relationships.

Year 13: Week 2 - Feels Like Home

I don't like crowds. 

I don't navigate around people very well, and crowds are often exhausting instead of giving me energy. However, this last week, at school, crowds have been one of the things that have made my school finally feel like home again.  

When I think of my favorite moments of the past two weeks of school, most of them have been when I have been in groups of people in close proximity. For example, when dancing in the music classroom with my 4th graders, we are in a pretty tight circle or grid formation. While dancing spaced out or at desk has had its merit, which we have had to do for the past couple of years, dancing closer to each other feels more free and joyful. Yes, that means that we bump into each other more, but that's an important part of the learning. Because part of what makes a school feel like being at home is learning how to share space by bumping into each other.  

Standing in the lunch room with my fellow teachers, watching our students crowd around long tables in energetic conversations, we cannot help but whisper to each other and point out silly and wonderful things happening at the lunch tables. I find seeing children eat together fascinating. When it's the most joyful, these children transform from being classmates eating lunch together to a family sharing a meal. In these moments a cafeteria becomes a dining room.  

We opened the school year with an assembly, and I had the privilege to lead part of the assembly with a speech and a song. As I sat there on stage, with the auditorium more full than its been since the pandemic started, I just looked around and marveled at the students, faculty, and staff surrounding me. We were all here together, and even though we shared a roof in the past two years, it felt different, being that space sharing the auditorium room. Our community felt bigger seeing us all together in one place and smaller as we were all in one place together.  

I love walking down crowded hallways waving "hello" to classes of students passing by. I love the energy of a lunchroom, and I love seeing students enjoy each other presence while sharing that space in our school.  

A big part of being a community is sharing space together and being together in groups. It's not just about being loud, sometimes, it's about being in a large group and reading silently together. These are what we have been missing so much for the past couple of years. Being together without worrying about spacing provides an important feeling of freedom.    

I was worried that after the experience of social distancing, my students wouldn't know what to do with themselves when social distancing stopped. Here's the good news. They are doing just fine. It's clear that the distancing habits did not stick because I'm having the same conversations about spacing out with them before the pandemic.  

The freedom to be close to other physically is something that, at times in the pandemic, could only happen at home. Now that I'm seeing it in school, that special feeling that school can be another home, is coming back.  

And it feels great.  

Parenthood: Week 491 - Four Years With A Baha

Ethan got his Baha (Bone Anchored Hearing Aids) hearing aid four years ago. 

Ethan has conductive non-sensorineural unilateral hearing loss. His right ear has moderate to severe hearing loss, while his left ear has normal hearing. This hearing aid is attached to a headband that holds the hearing aid against his head. Using bone-conduction technology, the hearing aid transfers sound through his skull to his cochlear nerve.  

Ethan was a little less than a year old when we first put his Baha on. He was pulling up on things but not yet walking. The Baha didn’t make any immediate noticeable change. Those wonderful videos when you put hearing aids on children, and they light up. That didn’t happen with Ethan, but that doesn't mean it didn't help him.

The Baha hearing aid is part of our lives and our care for Ethan. Putting it on him in the morning is like helping him put on socks, and helping Ethan off at night before bathtime is like taking off any article of clothing.  

We’ve misplaced the Baha, but we’ve never completely lost it. It’s been left at school, as his teachers in the past sometimes forgot to put it back on after his nap. Sometimes it’s just around the house, and it gets put in a different place, and we can’t find it. The worst situation was when we went apple picking, and it got caught in branches. Through incredible luck, I found the right rows of trees amongst at least forty rows and heard the quiet feedback from the hearing aid directing me towards it hanging in an apple tree.  

When Ethan got a new Baha about a year ago, the doctor suggested that we don’t need the safety line that attaches the Baha to his shirt since he was older. So we went one day without the safety line, and we lost the Baha, though we did find it soon after. And that’s why the safety line is still in use.  

The Baha can’t get wet, so whenever there is rain, or our kids are playing in sprinklers during the summer, we’re very conscious of getting his Baha off his head and putting it away. Sometimes, Ethan is done with his Baha and needs a break. When he was younger, he would take it off and leave it around the house, but now he knows to tell us if he wants to take it off so we can put it away safely.  

Most days, Ethan has his Baha on after changing out of his pajamas in the morning until he gets ready to sleep at night. It has been with him most of his waking hours for most of his life. This small device gives his right cochlear nerve more information and makes the world more full, vibrant, and meaningful. If Ethan had been born only a decade earlier, his experience with hearing loss would have been very different, and he would likely wouldn't have gotten a hearing aid so early in his life and not developed as well as he had.  

Ethan is doing really well. He is smart, sharp, speaks really well, and has an excellent vocabulary. He’s funny, clever, silly, and sweet. And he's determined and loving. The Baha didn’t make him any of these things, but it helped ensure his disability did not get in the way of all that is wonderful about Ethan.

Year 13: Week 1 - My Authentic Self

I stood for a couple of seconds, thinking, “what am I doing here?” 

It was the first class of the first day of the school year, and a class of 5th graders was quietly looking at me. It felt surreal. I wasn’t sure what to do. It felt like I hadn’t done this in years. Part of it was that I wasn’t as prepared to teach as I would have liked. I should have started my preparation earlier.  

So much of my week leading into teaching was taken up with tasks that kept me from planning and preparing for my classes that I didn’t come into this week with as clear a plan as I would have liked. I don’t feel bad about the choices I made about what I prioritized. I’m proud of some of the work I did last week, but the trade-off is hard to process.  

Being in front of my students felt right this week. It’s like playing a role that accentuates part of my personality. I still feel like I’m me in front of them, but different parts of me come forward. It’s like flexing a muscle. It’s all there inside of me, but I just let it out different ways and bring forth parts of who I am more than others.  

I don’t want to be inauthentic with my students. First off, they can see the right through teachers who aren’t being honest, real, and upfront with them. They can sense when you don’t believe what you say. To be an effective teacher, there has to be honesty in your words and intentions, even if they are presented deliberately, more appropriate for students. Second, I can’t do a job, which I can’t bring forward parts of my authentic self.  

I’ve spent too much learning to love myself and figure out who I am to go to a job where I can’t let facets of my authentic self come out. I don’t expect a job to be place where I can be my full and authentic self. We play certain roles and must change ourselves for different situations professionally, which is fine. I don’t have any issue with that. But, there’s a difference between being professional and having to be inauthentic.  

So I stopped thinking, and I just did, and we got to work. Teacher Tang is energetic, encouraging, weird, kooky, and enthusiastic. He loves dancing, grooves to whatever music is playing, and is afraid to show that he is confused, impressed, and proud of his students. As I write this, I am none of those things in the quiet of the night, but those pieces are inside me.  

I’m not sure who I am, but I know I want to spend as much of my life being as authentic as possible. Teaching can bring me closer to this goal because I genuinely love teaching children and helping teachers be better educators. If that love is real and I let people see it, I am being more real and honest with myself. This is something I need for myself and I look out the year ahead.          

Parenthood: Week 490 - The First Week Of School

The start of the school year means a lot of different things to parents and their children, especially in the past couple of years of this pandemic. 

It's complicated.  

The start of a school year is a fresh start. If things didn't feel right or didn't end poorly in the previous school year, now is a chance to make things better. But, on the other hand, if something was great in the last year of school, there's fear that it might not feel that good again. Add into all this the fact that the beginning of the school year for the past couple of years has been filled with the anxiety of not knowing what the school year was going to be like to the pandemic has made it hard as a parent to know how to feel.  

I think about my children and how different their experiences of starting school have been. Ollie was chill about returning to school, but he started reacting to the newness and anxiety of it all toward the end of the week. Ethan, my second child, was pretty good once school started. However, the week before school started, he was a mess and expressed his fears and anxiety by being difficult and cranky. Lucas, our little one, got into the week okay, and I bet the second week will probably be harder as he slowly gets into the groove.  

I think about my hopes for my children this school year. I want them to learn stuff, but more than anything else, I want them to continue to grow as curious learners. I want school to be where they feel excited to learn and explore and feel the support of teachers and peers as they engage in work that they find meaningful.  

We try to understand what school is like for our children, but it's really hard. school has changed a lot since our childhood. Our lens as adults often fails to see and feel our children's experiences, but we do the best we can with the seemingly little information we get about what our children do in school.  

Going from having your child be a baby when you know what they are doing and experiencing the vast majority of the time to having your child be away from you for most of the day is a transition that all parents go through but is challenging to process. I don't know what they are doing for a good amount of the day, and I wonder. Part of me wishes I could be with them more, but I also know that it is good for them to have a life away from me and their own experiences.  

Part of how I process the start of the school year for my children is mixed up with the fact that I'm a starting school too. One of the ways that I process the school year is by not making a big deal out of it. This is a way that I deal with my anxiety and the fact that the start of school is, in fact, a big deal to me after all these years. Maybe I should lean into how momentous the start of the school year is for my children and myself.  

My first day with students is tomorrow. I'm not nervous, but I am excited. I want a chance to start fresh, and I've got some good stuff from last year. So maybe I'll remind my students of this: you can start fresh this year and take the good part of last year along with you. You can and should have both.

Year 13: Week 0 - Out Of The Frying Pan

And just like that, we were back. This week we started. It was the week of teacher meetings leading up to the first week of school next week.

This week felt like opening the front door, seeing rays of sunshine, but unsure if it would rain. You could decide to stay indoors, go outside with a raincoat just in case, or go outside, head held high, and focus on the sun's warmth instead of fearing the rain. I chose the latter.  

I've been through a lot in the past couple of years as a teacher during this ongoing pandemic. August has been a time of great stress and anxiety these past couple of years. Going back in person in the fall of 2020 was led up by a summer of unknowns. How would we do school? Would we be in-person the whole year? What would school be like?

August of 2021 didn't feel a lot better. Things were better. Many of us were vaccinated, and things felt like we were returning to normal. However, the summer wasn't as "normal" as we thought, and the fall of 2021 was somehow more complex than the fall of 2020. We knew that things would be bad in the fall of 2020. In the fall of 2021, we hoped things would be better, but they weren't. Masks had to go back on, and concerts had to cancel. Hope for a more typical school dashed in 2021 was more challenging than not having hope at any assembles of "normal" in 2020.

Coming to school, it almost didn't seem real. Most people weren't wearing masks, and the uneasy stress I had experienced in the air for the past two falls was gone. Instead, it felt like we were doing business without the pandemic being at the forefront of our concerns. Of course, people mentioned it and had questions about mitigations, but for the most part, anxiety about the pandemic did not take over people's concerns and energy.

This was a full week. I got a lot done, which felt very satisfying, but I didn't get all I needed to get done to be ready for next week. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun meeting and working with people new to our school, and it was nice connecting with colleagues I have worked with throughout the years.

Some things were new that I had to deal with and some things that carried over from last spring that needed work. I felt annoyed at some things that came up. I had to dig deep to find more patience, and I was almost overwhelmed, but I could refocus. I felt excited to return to work, sad to be away from my family, concerned about all I had to do, and proud of what I had accomplished. 

There was time to laugh, time to connect, and time to empathize.

In the next couple of months, there will be joy, and there will be frustration. There will be challenges, unforeseen, and unexpected moments of kindness and grace. The pandemic isn't done with us, but that doesn't mean we have to let it take us down. I'd rather hope for more and be disappointed than expect the worse. There's too much potential and good to fight for to just be anything but optimistic. 

Being a teacher means believing that tomorrow can be better than today. 

I didn't make it this far, through some of the most challenging years of teaching in my life and the history of American education, to give up. 

I'm still here. 

I am in better shape mentally and physically last year. I have the power to impact my students and colleagues positively, and I have the privilege to work with wonderful, taltended, and inspiring children.

Here we go. Out of the frying pan...