Year 5: Week 18 – The Needs Of The Many

Spock: Do not grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many, outweigh...
Kirk: The needs of the few.
Spock: Or the one.

Decisions we make as a teacher are complicated. There’s always a trade-off, a drawback to a decision that is made in a classroom. For example, when you schedule an extra-curricular group in the morning, some students may not be able to make it because they cannot get a ride to the school. If you have the group meet after school, then other students will not be able attend because of sports practices.

In these situations we weigh the needs of the many against the few. Right? Choose the time that most kids can show up and go with that option. Unfortunately, it’s really not that simple.

Our country is built on the idea that there is a voting majority, however this way of decision making must be tempered with the a responsibility to make choices that are not only best for the majority but for minorities as well. The majority unfortunately often overlooks the rights of the few. It was the majority that put American citizens who were of Japanese descent in internment camps and it was the majority who voted in many states to outlaw marriage equality.

We as teachers are in an important place.  Every day we make decisions for our children that need to respect the our students as a group but also consider the needs of minorities. When we give a lecture, some students may need to have notes printed out beforehand because they aren’t as good auditory learners. If a student in the class has hearing issues every time we watch a film, the subtitles need to be turned on. If a student in the class has allergy issues, birthday treats we give the entire class should accommodate for that students.

As Spock concluded, it is not logical that one or a few should have an impact on the way that many have to operate in a classroom. This logic is faulty because it assumes that by addressing the needs of a minority of students, the majority doesn’t benefit. The reality is that they do.

The majority of students benefit when the treat they get is absent from allergens that may harm one of their classmates. They see that everyone is getting the same treat.  Also, they see that this one students who has an allergy isn’t all that different and that the things that could divide us can be overcome.

When we make choices so that all of our students can feel included, safe and part of a community, we are placing value in each student's experience. This value calls into question not how the needs of the many out weight the few but rather how can we best address each students as a learner and a human being. Sometimes we go with what’s best for the most kids, but more often we think of the few, and the one. Through empathy and care we find by serving the needs of that one we are enriching the souls of all.

Sled

Parenthood – Week 85: I Want My Mommy Too

It started with spilled milk.

I brought Ollie in the kitchen while I cooked up some fried rice for dinner. I noticed that Diana had left a Starbucks cup full on milk on the counter and Ollie wanted to drink out of it.  He reached up with a smile as I gave it to him.  Ollie sat down on the floor and enjoyed drinking milk out of the comically sized Venti cup.

Every so often we take Ollie to Starbucks and get him some warm milk with a little vanilla. This has created a strong positive association with the cup so we often refill a cup after Diana has drunk out of it and fill it with milk.

Everything seemed fine so I turned my attention to the rice in the pan. I turned my attention back to Ollie after stirring the rice and saw that he had poured out all of the milk all of the kitchen floor and was joyfully splashing the milk and spreading it out with widely flailing arms.

Just some spilled milk, not a big deal.

Ollie tried to help me wipe it up when I threw some kitchen towels on the ground but he only made it worse so I moved him into the living room and cleaned up the mess.

It had been a good day at work but a long and exhausting one. Diana was out for the evening so I was on my own with my special little guy. I really enjoy these times we have together and it’s a nice feeling knowing that I can handle taking care of Ollie by myself.

The fried rice was done, the kitchen floor was cleaned up and Ollie was in the high chair ready to eat dinner. The problem was that Ollie wasn’t hungry. Diana and I strongly believe that its important not to force-feed kids. However its difficult to tell sometimes why Ollie doesn’t want to eat. Sometimes it’s because he truly isn’t hungry or because he wants to use a different spoon.

I tried feeding him. Then I tried letting him feed himself, which often gets him motivated to eat but nothing worked. I knew it wasn’t a big deal if he didn’t eat that instance but I was a getting frustrated.
Then Ollie threw up.

The tray of the high chair caught most of it but there was a still a significant amount that hit the floor and luckily just barely missed Buffy. My first concern was to get the floor cleaned up and the high chair moved into the kitchen so that Buffy wouldn’t eat Ollie’s throw-up. Sorry to gross you out, but dogs like to eat puke for some reason.

Anyways, I carried the high chair will Ollie into the kitchen but couldn’t make it through the baby gate which caused the tray to spill on the ground and me.

That frustration I felt when Ollie wouldn’t eat was becoming anger.

I moved Buffy into the den, which adjoins the dining room and closed the door. This way I could clean up the floor and not worry about Buffy. Once Buffy realized what I was doing she started barking desperately, not wanting to be separated from Ollie.  It was at this moment that Ollie, who was a complete mess at this time, starting crying and pointing to Buffy.

I got the floor cleaned up, put Ollie down on a bath towel and asked him to please stay on the towel. After moving the dirty high chair in the kitchen and closing the gate the kitchen, I picked up Ollie wrapped in the towel and let Buffy out of the den.

Usually Ollie loves baths, but not that night. Most of the time when we clean Ollie he really isn’t that dirty. We can let him have a nice relaxed soak in the tub, wash him and rinse him off. This was different. I had to really clean him off from head to toe.  There was no soaking or playing with toys in the process. I had to get him clean.

Ollie cried as I cleaned him, rinsed him off, and got him dressed. I sat down in his room with him on my lap trying to rock him so that he would calm down. Ollie just wouldn’t stop crying and he kept screamed “mama.”

I love hearing Ollie talk and use his words but one of the hardest things about his use of language is when he calls for Diana when I am alone with him. The tough part is that he is smart enough to call for his mom but he isn’t cognitively able to understand that she is not home and will be back later.

At this point I was spent.  I didn’t have a lot of words or tricks left to calm Ollie down.  I had an upset toddler, a kitchen that was a disaster, a high chair that was a mess and a pile of clothes and towels that needed to be rinsed and put in the laundry machine.

I looked at Ollie sad eyes as he cried for his mother and I told him what I was honestly feeling, “I want my mommy too.”

At that moment I knew exactly how Ollie felt. We both wanted that one person in our world who could swoop in and magically fix everything. Diana was at class and my mom was across the country.

So we sat there and we both cried and eventually we calmed down. I put on some “Elmo’s World” for Ollie while I cleaned everything up. After a warm cup of milk, Ollie was ready for story time.

As I read to Ollie with him sitting on my lap he kept interrupting and turning his head to me and saying “hi” is a soft, joyful and angelic voice. I would say “hi” back and he would turn around satisfied, listen for another minute and then say “hi” again just to let me know he was thinking of me.

As I put him he bed, he softly cooed “da-du” and I told Ollie that I loved him.

Parenting can beat you down sometimes and make you cry for your mom.  Sometimes we need to be reminded that while we are parents, we never stop being a child.  We can feel lost, tired, depressed and lonely.  Just because we are parents doesn't mean that we don't tough times, and darker moments.

Nothing that happened that night was that bad, but it was still tough.  I'm not sure why these events beat me down the way they did but I'd do it all over again for that happy ending.

Year 5: Week 17 – Weird

This was a weird week.

The first week back from winter break is a unique challenge. My younger students as a group have forgotten how to act a students. This means that I have to slow down and spend time reinforcing concepts like “waiting to be called on,” and no, I’m not being sarcastic.

Some of my students, especially my older ones seem to enjoy being back in the swing of things. Middle school kids sometimes need the structure of school to provide them with much needed mental challenges that they often do not provide themselves outside of the context of the school.

I was very deliberate to be overly structured this week with my lesson, which my 3rd and 5th graders fought while my middle schools really embraced.

Part of the weirdness of this week had to do with the fact that for the second winter in a row we have temperatures that were so cold that schools cancelled classes. Most of the schools in the county including the Chicago Public School (whom we usually line up with when it comes to days off) cancelled school on Wednesday and Thursday. Administrators felt that the sub-zero wind-chill was a health hazard for students walking to school or waiting for school busses. Also, there is the issue of students being outside during emergency evacuations.

My school didn’t have any days off this week. This resulting in some minor complaints, but mostly jokes among the faculty and some whining amongst the students but for the most part our community embraced being at school even if other people were at home.

The biggest issue with the weather was indoor recess. If it’s too cold to have kids stand at bus stops then it’s too cold for students to go outside for recess. Young kids need to get outside for recess. They need to move around, socialize, and act silly. When they can’t go outside we try to let them play around inside in the classrooms but its not the same. I can always tell, my third graders had indoor recess. They seem unsettled like they are confused about something but they don’t know why.

We got through the cold and we got back into the swing of things. There are grades and comments that I need to jump into, my band kids have a concert coming up and my little kids are getting recorders soon. The excitement about this instrument is really cute and I really look forward to getting them going on what for many of them is their first instrument.

I kind of like weeks that feel “weird.” Yeah, it’s a challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun. I guess this makes sense because I'm pretty weird, I mean, I’m actually excited about giving a classroom full of third graders plastic recorders.

Blank Space by Taylor Swift

After months of not writing about music, leave it to Taylor to bring me back into the conversation.

Taylor Swift’s newest album 1989 is a reminder that Taylor Swift still has got it. People have been critical of the fact that this album, produced by Max Martin (the genius behind Britney Spear’s greatest hits) is not a country album. That is true, but so what?  Many of the greatest country singers of all time, like Kenny Rogers, charted on the pop charts and many of them deliberately recorded pop music in an effort to be more than a country artist.

Taylor Swift broke big in 2008 with “Love Story” (which I wrote about in this previous post). While this continues to be my favorite song by Swift and easily in my top 10 pop songs of all time, I appreciate and respect Swift’s evolution as an artist in the past six years.

“Blank Space” one of her strongest songs on 1989, reflects her growth as not only an artist but a self-aware and thoughtful public figure.



Swift knew that she would be criticized for diving so deeply into pop music so she led with “Shake It Off,” which was a hilarious but also inspiring response to the criticisms that she knew she would receive. Just like “Blank Space,” “Shake It Off,” is a song that people claim to not like but can’t get enough of because of its musical invention and intriguing message.

We live in a world where gender stereotypes are still strong in interpersonal relationships and this is so often illustrated in pop music. “Blank Space” is an exception taking common ideas and stereotypes and forcing us to reexamine them.

Swift as the narrator tells about all of the possibilities of a relationship. It could go well and as she sings “could go down in flames.” This idea, the potential failure of a relationship is suppose to leave people petrified, but Swift is undaunted. She still is excited about the possibility of a relationship even though she’s been hurt in the past. We aren’t supposed to look at relationships this way. If a relationship doesn’t last forever and ends with both people dying at the exactly same time when they are elderly, it’s a failure, right?

That’s what many of us are told, and with that attitude, we fear the bad possibilities that could happen which petrify us into not being ourselves, and not truly being with and for the people we love. “Blank Space” is asking us to break this down, embrace the bad with the good and just enjoy the uncertainty, revel in the unknown, because that’s what living life and loving others is really all about.

Swift admits to having a “long list of lovers.” Shock and awe. She admits to loving “players.” She sings about being “reckless.” Is she communicating an irresponsible approach to love? No, she is being honest about what life is like for many women her age. In a world where many people have yet to see “slut-shaming” as a pervasive and insidious problem in our society, Swift has given voice to woman who will not be made to be ashamed for playing the “game,” which men rarely receive shamming for embracing.

The bridge “boys only want love if it’s torture,” invites us to ask some important questions. In its repetition, it’s placing the stereotype that woman embrace and create drama and placing it on the guys. It’s not clear if she thinks guys only want love so that they can feel drama or if they want to be instigators of “torture.” If she is saying the latter, than she is warning girls about the misogynist power structure many guys still inject into their relationships with woman. If she is simply saying that guys enjoy drama as much as girls do then, bravo, because while not all boys are like this, many really do bring on the drama.

Taylor Swift’s “blank space,” represents embracing the possibilities of love. Along with this, the song itself expresses a level of pride in what it means to not be ashamed of what we desire in our love life and the choices we make as we live our lives.

Like great pop music, Taylor Swift is more powerful than she appears. Her long list of “Starbucks lovers” I mean um . . . “list of ex-lovers” may be right. Swift may be insane, but she might also be the most one of the important voices of her generation.

Parenthood - Week 84: Toddlers In Crime

Amelia loves Elmo.

When my niece is over at my mom’s house she has a special Elmo doll that she carries around. My mom also bought an Elmo doll for Ollie, my son. He likes to watch Elmo but he is not as into the doll so he would carry the doll to somewhere in the house, put it down, forget about it and walk away. Inevitably, Amelia would pick up Ollie’s Elmo, run over to Ollie proudly and give Ollie his “Elbow.” Amelia calls Elmo by his name, while Ollie calls this character “Elbow."  Amelia is always careful to make sure that she refers to Ollie’s little red monster doll as “Elbow.”

I’m not quite sure why Amelia enjoys taking a bath with Ollie. Maybe its because it’s one of her favorite activities, I'm not sure.  So we were all surprised when she first brought up this idea last summer. On the first night we were visiting, last week, we had Ollie take a bath early. When Amelia heard about this she threw a toddler fit. She really wanted to take a bath with Ollie. Like most of the times toddler’s get upset, it really wasn’t that big a deal but there was something endearing that doing something with Ollie was the focus of one of these outbursts.

The next night, they did take a bath together. Amelia carefully poured water over Amelia’s head and Ollie returned the favor. There were giggles, splashes of water and they both had a blast.

Amelia is a year older than Ollie and that means, they are only now getting to the point where they can really play together. A year ago when Ollie was barely crawling and Amelia was walking and beginning to talk they interacted with each other but there wasn’t a strong connection between them. Now that Ollie is a year and a half and Amelia is approaching three, the developmental stages they are in put them in a great place to have fun together.

Amelia can walk, run, and jump while Ollie can get on his feet and walk quickly behind her. Amelia speaks in sentences, has an ever exploding vocabulary, while Ollie's language skills focus on nouns, verbs and phrases. Even though there are clear developmental gaps, something really clicked last week when they were playing together.

Amelia is a very empathetic young girl. She showed great concern every time Ollie got upset and even tried to calm him down herself. This combined with the fact that Ollie follows Amelia around and copies her every action makes for one of the cutest pairs of kids you will ever see playing together.

There were a couple times last week when Ollie would gesture or ask for something and none of us adults could interpret this toddler communication. To our surprise Amelia would chime in and explain to us what Ollie wanted. This was both baffling and beautiful.

Amelia and Ollie are cousins.  We hope that they become friends like I am with some of my closer cousins, but there's a chance that they will become disconnected like my own distant relatives.  There will be times when they have more and less in common as they grow up and this combined with their individual developmental stages will influence their relationship.  We'll deal with these this as they come while giving them space develop a cousin relationship that is organic for both of them.

Right now we are all enjoying their affection for each other and not worrying too much about the future.

When we were putting Ollie to bed, Amelia came into the bedroom and wanted to help put Ollie to sleep.  She crawled into Diana's lap with Ollie as they read a picture book.  Afterwards we put them both in the crib and for a minute they lay down and snuggled together under blankets.  It was then that I truly understood the meaning of cute-overload.

Fishees