Parenthood: Week 178 - Dear Ollie, 2016 Election

Dear Ollie,

I am so sorry. We failed you. We let you down. We tried to push back against the forces of fear and hatred and this time the darkness won.

I'm scared, your friends are scared and many other people all around the world are scared. Fear is a hard emotion, but we can't let it paralyze us. We have to be strong. We have to be brave.

There are people who didn't see the meanness and the hate as disqualifying. They didn't see that these horrible words were about your mother, you and me.

One of the greatest characters in literature is a Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird. He is one of my inspirations for being a dad.  One of his most famous quotes is, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."  It's hard to do this work, but we have to try.  Sometimes people don't make any effort to do this, so you've got to make the extra effort.  It's exhausting, it's a burden, but you have to try.

Ollie, it's not enough to be kind, we must helps others be kinds. It's not enough to be respectful to woman; we have to insist that others are good to woman. And it's not enough that you embrace the wonderful facets of humanity including diversity in race, religion, sexuality and gender, we need to make sure all people do this. This is what it means to be a good person. This is what it takes to make the world a better place.

Your life, the wonderful experiences and joy that fill your day, exist because others before you fought for the rights of others. The way we show gratitude to those people is by continuing their work. We bring meaning to our lives when we work for others as others have worked for us.  With this work, you can change the world.  I know this to be true, because you have changed my world.

Because you are not Caucasian, you will not see yourself in leadership and authority figures, so you will use your imagination to remind yourself that these roles are open to you.  Because you are a man, you will enjoy privileges that woman do not, so you will spend your life making sure that you use these advantages to bring sucess to women.  Because you are a person of color, people will look at you as an "other," and question your place in America, so you will be strong, go high and never forget that those who would make you feel as an "other" are the least American of all of us.

When I'm at work with my students, I promise that I will spend every moment helping them develop the tools that will allow them to create a world where you are valued. I do this work for you. I will never give up on making this world for you as I will never give up on you.

I promise you that I will give you a President that deserves to serve you.  Maybe not today, but someday.  And I promise to spend the rest of my life working to make a world that honors you as my mom and I love you.

-Dad

Year 7: Week 11 – Teach Like A Man

I remember the first teacher I had in school that was a man. He was our PE teacher. Mr. Gowan. He wore a tight t-shirt tucked into 1990’s style warm-up pants. He was bald, wore glasses and whenever I picture him in my mind’s eye, he has a whistle in his mouth. He spoke in short sentences, wore glasses and always carried a clipboard.  Mr. Gowan always spoke authoritatively which seemed at odds with the fact that he was a short man. Basically, if you were to make a cartoon character of a PE teacher, it would probably look like him.

The next male teacher I had was a music teacher in second grade (oddly, he also was my drivers ed teacher years later). He was one of those music teachers who would have rather been playing music professionally. It wasn’t 5th grade that I had another teacher who was a man. In my kindergarten-5th grade school, with three classes per grade there were only three male teachers. All the administration were woman and the only other adult man in the school was the janitor who I remembered because he shared the same name as the football player Joe Kelly.

In middle school, I don’t think changed. I had maybe one male teacher a year. It was still mostly woman teachers. It wasn’t until high school that male teachers started making an impression on me.

I’m really happy about the the fact that my school has teachers who are men, not only in our high school grades but all way down to our kindergarten level. Most of the homeroom teachers from grades 1-5 are woman, but many of assistants and many of the department teachers including myself are men. I would say that almost every student, almost every day interacts with teachers of both genders at my school.

What makes me really proud about the male teachers at my school is that they aren’t all the same kind of “male.” There’s the 5th grade teacher who has Boston sport paraphilia plastered on his walls and the 6th grade teacher who has 1960s music posters all over his front wall. Our 8th grade English teacher loves college football but also loves poetry. Then there’s the middle school choir teacher who plays Pokemon Go, has immaculate handwriting, enjoys watching professional basketball but also geeks out about great choral music.

I look at my male students flailing, trying to figure out what it means to be a man. I have boys who graders wearing sport jerseys, Star Wars t-shirts, capes (on regular school days), and ties. No we aren’t helping them find an answer by presenting them with a plurality of models in masculinity, but we are helping in their journey to creating and develop an authentic masculine identity, based not on insecurities but rather on pride.

Also, it is a important reminder to our boys, that teachers of all subjects, can indeed be men.

Parenthood: Week 177 – Hope In The Park

It was the late afternoon and the unusually warm fall weather made me feel both refreshed from the wind and warmed by the rays of the setting sun.

Ollie jumped out of the stroller and ran towards the slides. He knows this park well.  The play area has different playground equipment for different ages and it’s suited for little ones who can barely walk, all the way up to teenagers.

I looked around the park and saw a woman in a hijab with her husband chasing around their school-aged kids. A group of older boys wearing Yakamas on their heads with Tzitzit coming down from their shirts chased each other nearby while their parents sat on a bench and enjoying the sounds of each other’s laughter. A blonde girl, dressed in a flower-printed summer dress twirled around, watcher her skirt extend up giggling as she became dizzy and fell over.

The other parents traded pleasantries as Ollie and I walked by and there was a calm feeling of peace in that park as we shared the space and the time together.

When you become a parent, you start to view the world differently. Certain things, like going out to bars, don’t hold as much meaning while other things like the cuteness of baby socks make you sentimental. You become less tolerant of people being unjust when you see the potential for this harm on your own child. However, you also start seeing and experiencing special things that we share as human beings.

It’s in the common experiences of childbirth and parenthoods, but it’s also in the places that our children take us. In libraries, parks and zoos, there is rarely strife. Instead what you see in these places, are people, all kinds of people sharing time with each other, co-existing, and agreeing to respect this space and time.

We talk about division and polarization in our country. We see footage of people screaming at political rallies and we’ve suffered at a country listening to a political candidate tap into people’s deepest fears and prejudice.s  One of the reasons that hasn’t gotten to me is that I don’t see any of this when we take Ollie places. I don’t see this at museums, I don’t see this at Ollie’s school and I don’t see it at the grocery store.

How we view our government is a reflection of how we view ourselves. If our insecurities lie in our bonuses that only serve to heighten a level of privilege, than we see the worst in our politicians as we are not ready to see this dark part of ourselves. However, if we choose to see the world through the experiences, hopes and feelings of our children, we will see hope in politicians and our government. This isn’t blind ignorance. This is a choice to believe in our politicians as we believe in ourselves and our children.

Parenthood is all about hope and optimism. If you don’t believe that your child’s fever will break or that your baby tomorrow night will actually sleep and not keep you up all night, you’re not going to make it as a parent. Luckily, there are moments like the park yesterday when I see Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream alive and well. It is these moments that fill us with hope.

Look at the world. If you want to find pessimism and selfishness, well, you’ll find it, but if you want something to believe in, look at our children.

Year 7: Week 10 - Halloween & The Cubs

Halloween

Halloween was on Monday. It’s kind of cute, but it’s also very difficult to handle as a teacher. Many schools do parade and then a party in the afternoon leading into dismissal. My school does the parade in the morning, followed by a short party and then back to work. My son’s school simply avoids Halloween all together and let’s the parent organization put together a Halloween party after school.

I’m a fan of what my son’s school does. It doesn’t disrupt the day very much and avoids awkwardness that often comes up with costumes and Halloween. Some kids wear store bought costumes, others have parents who help them make interesting and creative costumes, some students don’t have the financial means to buy a costume and other simply don’t celebrate Halloween. There are social problems when groups of students coordinate costumes, and most schools render some costumes pointless by not allowing masks or weapons as part of the costume.

There are a lot of issues going on here with Halloween and school.  It’s important that we really think about what it means to bring Halloween into the school day. Even if the vast majority of the families and students are good with spending a lot of time in the school day celebrating Halloween, that doesn’t mean that it’s right.

Cubs

In addition the Halloween this week, teachers in the Chicagoland area had to deal with the World Series. Students came in Thursday morning exhausted from staying up to watch the final game of the series and our school, since it was near the parade route, cancelled classes today.

Thursday was awkward because I tried to teach, but many students were really out of it, having only slept a couple hours the night before. Many kids were really excited and bouncing off the walls, and when they asked me about watching the game and my own excitement, I felt it was important that I was honest. I didn’t watch the game, and I don’t care at all about major league baseball, the Cubs, or the World Series. I love how happy my friends are and my students are about this win, and this joy is really great to witness. However, I made the choice that I was not going to pretend to care more than I do, because that would be disingenuous.

Last week during a transition in one of my 3rd grade music classes, one of my students asked a question about the Cubs and clearly had no idea about the playoffs or the series. A group of boys started making fun of him for not knowing what was going on, and laughing in disbelief about his ignorance, meanly questioning, “How do you not know about the World Series?” I interrupted the boys and said, “I don’t know what’s going on either, I don’t watch baseball.” One boy in a Cubs hat looked up to me in disbelief asking, “You’re joking, EVERYONE watches the Cubs.”

I replied, “No, you are wrong. Not everyone is into baseball. It’s great that you enjoy watching sports. But I don’t and that’s okay. There are many things that I’m into that you aren’t but I don’t get to make fun of you about that fact. You don’t get to make people feel bad for not being into what you enjoy.  The best fans, don't make others feel bad for not being fans but rather try to include non-fans by being kind and explaining things.”

Parenthood: Week 176 – Thank You Mr. Kirk

One of the reasons that racism is annoying is because it reminds people of their own race. You might think, “well, if you have pride in your own racial identity, why would that be a bad thing?” Let me explain. Being reminded of good and bad things related to parts of your identity that you cannot control choose feels awkward at best and offensive at its worst. “Doesn’t that woman’s accomplishments make you feel proud to be woman?” These comments don’t usually have their desired effects and the reality is that the vast majority of the time that people make comments that remind you of you gender, sexual orientation, and race, is that it’s not in a positive context.

So when Mark Kirk made this dig, “I forgot that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington,” at Tammy Duckworth during an Illinois Senate Debate, he offended me deeply, not because he reminded me of something about myself, but something about my son Ollie.

Tammy Duckworth is mixed race like my son. She is half-Thai and half-Caucasian. My son is half-Taiwanese and half-Caucasian. I don’t think about this fact very often, and lately, I’ve been avoiding thinking about this part of his identity.

I’m not ashamed of the fact that Ollie is mixed-race, I’ve just been worried lately. There are many experiences that I will be able to help him with because I’ve been through them too, like learning how to play piano, and going away to college. But I’ll never know what it’s means to be mixed race. It worries me, that my son will have struggles that I cannot completely understand related to his racial identity.

What Mark Kirk said, is exactly what I fear my son will have to deal with: people who will “round” Ollie's racial identity to being Taiwanese. When Kirk made that statement, he was saying, that it didn’t matter that Duckworth’s father was Caucasian. He saw her as a minority. Kirk made false assumptions related to her race and used these assumptions to make an insult based on his ignorance.

When you “round” a person to the minority that you see, that you assume takes over their racial identity, you are telling that person that part of their parentage is not significant, not relevant and simply does not exist. When someone "rounds" my son to Asian, they are be expressing to my son that my wife, his mother is not part of Ollie’s identity. Calling Ollie Asian is telling him that the part of him that comes from his great-grandfather who fought in WWII, who’s family died in Auschwitz aren’t there in his eyes and in his soul.

Kirk apologized with this tweet: "Sincere apologies to an American hero, Tammy Duckworth, and gratitude for her family's service." This apology is devoid of any meaningful acknowledgment of the hurt and offense that his words caused. Kirk’s words echoed the disgusting and shameful “one-drop rule” in American history (e.g. the Floridian act in 1865 that stated "every person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood shall be deemed and held to be a person of color.”) Kirk’s words were one more verse in the “you are not American, because you do not look white, and it doesn’t matter how much of your ancestry is white, because you look different.” Kirk’s words reek of not only of racism, eugenics and white privilege. His tweeted apology only confirmed his ignorance, stupidity, insensitivity and lack of understanding of the over 9 million mixed race Americans.

Don’t make assumptions about peoples' race. If you’re not sure, it's best not to ask until you become friends with them. If you have to know for some odd and crazy reason (I can’t think of one instance where this knowledge is essential) ask them, “how do you racially identify?” And then take their word for it and move on. You do not deserve to know this knowledge and if you are bothered because your brain feels better putting people in racial boxes, than deal with it. Be uncomfortable not knowing.  This is only a small taste of the discomfort, we feel every day when people make insensitive racial assumptions to our face.

I am proud of Ollie’s heritage. He has ancestors from Taiwan, Poland and many other countries. People in his family have fought for freedom across the world from each other in WWII. However, I’m still working through this “mixed-race” label. It doesn’t seem accurate. All it does is say that he is a combination of two different categories on a form. It doesn’t capture any of depth of his racial identity.

Thanks Mark Kirk for the reminding about the racism and ignorance that my son will face. I hate that people like you not only make these disgusting comments but also don’t have the character and wherewithal to make things right after saying something so stupid. Don’t worry though, I’ll be around to help my son understand what these comments mean and how they are expressions of fear and racism that cannot touch the pride that I will help my son build within his heart.

Year 7: Week 10 – Hoedown

I spent a good chunk of my 3rd grade classes this week, galloping around the stage pretending to chase cows.

Welcome to music education.

My school periodically has sharing assemblies. These are opportunities for people to share with the school what they are learning about in class. The nice thing about these presentations is that they do not need to be big polished productions. Previous sharing assemblies have featured 1st graders demonstrating how they practice their handwriting. This is a good opportunity for sharing musical things that don’t fit into our regularly scheduled performance.

This year, I’m really committed to doing more movement in my music classes. Movement activities and dancing is one of the most important ways for students to understand musical concepts and interact with music. Most of all, learning about music through movement is a lot of fun. The more I teach, the more I realize that problems that I hear in songs can be best addressed through movement activities. For example, my 5th graders are learning a song in ¾. They aren’t feeling the beat and they song keeps slowing down whenever they sing it. Simply having them clap a three-beat pattern while they sing has given the song a sense of pulse and immediately fixed the problem of the piece slowing down.

While I'm doing all of these movement activities and I keep thinking back to this dance that I learned six years ago during a music education workshop. One of the teachers was really into movement activities and folk dances. She taught us a dance that went along with “Hoedown” from the Copland ballet Rodeo (most people know it as the Beef commercial song). I could only piece together parts of this dance so I went through my old class notes, found her email and asked her for some help. She responded within a day and sent me the choreography she had created.

The majority of the music education community is like this. They help when they can without asking for monetary compensation. It’s been six years since I work with this teacher and I had not kept in touch, but she was more than happy to help me out. I try to do the same for others as I freely share ideas and arrangements that I create with other teachers.

I made some changes to the choreography and we got to learn the dance to this song. Yes, 3rd grade is kind of borderline for galloping around the stage and pretending to lasso and chase cattle. However since my kids had gotten so into doing movement activities earlier in the year and got to know how fun it could be, the vast majority of the kids went for it. It helped that without any shame or hesitation, I did the steps along with them.

This week we did it on stage with each class separately and next week I get to practice it with the whole grade followed by a performance the next day. Yes, sixty 3rd graders galloping around a stage. I never thought I would be doing something like this as a music educator, but I’m making it happen. Even if the performance doesn't happen, I’d still feel satisfied with the work we done and the fun we had in the process.

Parenthood: Week 175 – Do you love me when I’m mad?

Ollie didn’t run up to me.

Usually when I look into his classroom during pick-up, and make eye contact with him, he gives me a big smile and runs over to me, sometimes forgetting to carry his lunch box in his excitement. As soon as he gets out of the classroom door, he gives me a hug, sheds his backpack and lunch box, expecting me to carry them for me. Then he grabs my pointer finger, holds it in this hand and leads me out of the school.

Today was different. Ollie saw me in the doorway, and he smiled but that look receded quickly as he walked over to me. He didn’t take off his backpack or drop his lunch box. He only grabbed my finger when I offered it.

I asked Ollie how his day was and he didn’t respond. This isn’t unusual for Ollie. He’s never been one to recollect his day to me, but this silence felt different. As we walked through the playground, Ollie asked me a question.

“Daddy, do you love me when I’m mad?”
“Yes, I love you when you are mad.”
“Do you love me when I’m sick?”
“Yes, I love you when you are sick.”
“Do you love me when I’m sad.”
“Yes, of course, I love you when you are sad.”

I stopped walking and knelt down in front of Ollie. “Ollie, I love you when you are mad, when you are sick, when you are sad and when you are happy. I love you when you yell at me. I love you when you are sleeping and when you are being silly. There’s nothing you can do that will every change that” I reassured him.

I picked Ollie up and gave him a hug and I felt his small fingers reach around the back of my neck and his head relax into the nape of my neck. “I love you daddy,” Ollie whispered in my ear. “So, you want some bread? I got some pretzel bread from the grocery store,” I asked. Ollie enthusiastically answered, “Yes!” He jumped out of my arms and gave me a huge smile that was so big that it made his nose wrinkle.

I tell Ollie that I love him and that I’m proud of him multiple times a day. Part of me is a little sad that Ollie questioned my love, however a bigger part of me is proud that he was thinking about what love meant and felt comfortable expressing his thoughts and concerns.

The most important thing we learn how to do in this world is to be loved and to love others. In order to do this we must first learn to love ourselves. This self-love comes from every hug and “I love you,” we hear from our parents.

So go give your kid a hug and and say "I love you."  You may regret not saying these words enough, but you will never regret saying these words too much.