Year 10: Week 3 - Features And Flaws

One of the most important lesson my therapist, the late Nancy Good taught me was the path to happiness and contentment in your relationships is acceptance. If you are annoyed that your partner leaves dirty dishes out on the table after dinner and your feelings of annoyance are your problem. Yes, your partner can change their behavior, and perhaps they should but if you nag them and get them to change, you will eventually find something else about what they do that will annoy you.

True acceptance is essential in a relationship and that includes accepting flaws. Only by addressing them as a way to help to help your partner, not in an attempt to deal with your own feelings of annoyance, can you help your partner learn to be better person. Only by learning to accept perceived flaws and letting go of our own feelings of negativity, can we truly build healthy and meaningful relationships.

I’ve been thinking about my relationship to my school. How am I building and development my relationship with my school in a healthy and productive way? The answer I’ve landed on in the past couple weeks is to work on acceptance, take responsibility for my own negative feelings, and figure out what are flaws and what are features at my school.

There are imperfections, and things that feel like they should work better at any organization. Some of these things can be improved, these are flaws. Some of these things that seems gratuitous are part of the way an organization work. These things are features, parts of how things work.

Features at my school are conversations that seem to have year after year, personality quirks in colleagues, and ways of working that on the surface do not seem the most pragmatic. After ten years, it’s become clear to me that many of these things will never change, or if they do, these changes aren’t going to come from me. So, I can get annoyed about these things, or just accept them, and see how they come from places of positive intention and really aren’t that big a deal.

Then there are flaws, things that we can and need to address. The problem is that it’s not always clear what are features and what are flaws. Sometimes accepting things as features feels like giving up, but it’s more often a way to move on through a day with a more positive attitude.

People change, leadership evolves, and the culture of a school can change. There are times when features become flaws that can be addressed. The energy and creativity to correct these issues will be available because the institution hasn’t been drained by negativity.

Flaws are challenges, and opportunities for growth. Features are who we are, things that from one angle look like problems. However, from another angle these features are expressions of individuality, diversity of thoughts, and what makes our school special.

Parenthood: Week 336 - To Make You Feel My Love

“Oh, he’s so cute, I want to keep him.”

“Well, go ahead, here’s the diaper bag…”

It’s not the best joke, but it happens every so often me and my friends make jokes about our kids going home with other parents. It’s never serious, and sometimes the other person keeps it going. These jokes are always in the spirit of “your kid is wonderful, I can almost imagine taking him home, but of course I will not.”

I noticed the last time I made this joke, Ollie rushed over to Ethan and grabbed his arm. The way he moved and the held onto Ethan it was clear that he was worried that we would actually let Ethan go home with this other family. I assured Ollie that Ethan would go home with us and he relaxed and let go of Ethan.

It’s been wonderful to watch Ethan and Ollie’s relationship develop. The relationship is becoming more expressive and mutual as both of them are getting better at showing affection to each other.

Ollie was and still is a hand-holder. He willingly and without hesitation will hold my hand walking down the street or when we are watching television. Ethan is not. He will pull his hand away from my hand in parking lots and doesn’t often let me lead him by the hand (even though he is more than happy when I carry him). The one person Ethan lets hold his hand is Ollie. Ethan will do his toddler run up to him, grab his hand, and let Ollie lead him as they hold hands.

Ethan still hasn’t figure out the kissing thing. He presses his open mouth against your face. There’s a lot of slobber involved, but Ollie doesn’t seem to mind. He’ll let Ethan try to kiss him and he’ll kiss him back. Sometimes in a silly way and often in a peaceful way. Even if it’s silly with giggles, I can tell that there is something meaningful going on there.

At times Ethan will walk over to Ollie for a hug. Ollie will let Ethan lean on him and he will hold them. Sometimes this because more of a wrestling match then a hug, but even when it devolves, it’s cute. They aren’t trying to hurt each other, it’s not that kind of wrestling. It’s more about rolling around and tickling.

There are moments of screaming and frustration between these two, but there are also the quiet moments, when Ollie and Ethan are playing together. Sometimes it’s more about them sharing space and other times it truly is interactive.

Ollie tries to do a lot for Ethan. He’s Ethan’s translator, his guide, his friend, and his brother.  Ethan sees Ollie as someone important, someone he wants to be like, and in his admiration, there is love.  I'm proud of how both of them have embraced their roles as brothers and I'm excited for our little one to join them in this brotherhood as this duo becomes a trio.

Year 10: Week 2 - Piece Of The House

I didn’t sign up to be a teacher to be a performer.
There are aspects of teaching like reading a book aloud, and when I sing a song to my students which are very much performances. However, this isn’t the same as when I used to get up on stage during recitals, concerts, or march in football games in the marching band as a performer. In those moments the performance is about sharing art, but it’s not about teaching. For me those performances were more about my own personal gratification then when I read a book to a class of students. I love doing both, but it’s a different feeling. Performing in the role of a teacher is less about me then performing in the role of a performance artist.

My goal as a teacher is to do as little as possible during a student performance. If I can get away with standing at the back of the auditorium and the students can perform a whole song, then I’ve done my job. Student independence is an amazing thing to watch that fills me with so much pride as an educator.

As a music teacher in a school community, there are times when I’m called on to perform, and I more often than not avoid these situations. I’ll usually try to elevate some other faculty member to be featured, or I’ll have students be a part of a performance for an occasion. I’m good at what I do, but this school is not about me. It’s about the community and most of all it’s about the students.

Here’s the thing, I do love performing and moments when I do get on stage and perform for the student body, I really enjoy. When people compliment me, I am gracious and try to present some kind of aura that it’s not that big a deal and that performing isn’t something that is important to me. It’s funny, one of my colleagues, always calls me out on this. She sees through my fake humbleness and sees how much I enjoy this part of the job. I feel like I’m in denial a little bit about this because I don’t want to be that person who takes up too much and space and air time. I am in positions all of the time in meetings and on stage to have my words be heard and I just don’t want to overdo it…and at the same time, I need to embrace what I enjoy and just go for it.

We had a teacher who led a chant at our opening assembly, kind of a call and response hip-hop flavored song. Since he retired six years ago, we’ve had other people try to do it, groups of faculty, and even some students and it never really clicked. I never put myself in the position to do it, rather trying to involve other because in a way it felt easier to deny my desire to own this moment, while in reality it was creating a  unproductive internal conflict.

So this year, I dove it, told people I would do it, which surprised some. It was awesome, so much and I’ve been hearing from all corners of the community how much they appreciated me leadership and my performance. It feels great and it doesn’t feel like it was too much about me.  It was a gift that I could gives something I could give to the community.

That moment on stage was a reminder that being a performer can be as much about the audience and it’s okay for me to get up on stage and do my thing. There are moments when we need to step aside and let others lead, but there are moments when it’s okay to take the stage for your community. I don’t regret trying to give this space to others in years past, and I don’t regret taking this moment for myself this year.  

Parenthood: Week 335 – Long Time Coming, Part 3

So much was better with this new house. My mom had a kitchen that suited her culinary creativity, and my dad had his own space on the bottom floor. There were neighbors who were friends that would come over and do the neighbor things like come over for a beer, and share baked goods. These were small things but were elusive at our other house.

Things first started to feel different when one of the neighbors had her first child. This was the first baby I really spent time with and this was when where I finally came to understand something important about my mother. She is that person at a wedding or family event that always finds a baby and has one on her hip. In this little one’s grip, bright eyes, and cooing sounds I felt that magic. I remember sitting on a couch and having this baby be put in my arms. She was so warm, so fragile, and so beautiful. As I stood up holding her, there was a weightlessness, a feeling that in my arms I had an enormous responsibility, I was holding everything.

Babies are possibility, hope, beauty, and the most wonderful kind of mystery. Holding a baby is what taught me that true strength in life is how we support others, stable, solid, gentle, caring and strong all at the same time. I believe that if we can hold each other up like we hold babies, much of the world’s problems would disappear.

I have a feeling my mom feels the same way.

This was the house where Diana got to know parents and feel connected to my family. They welcomed Buffy into this house. It may seem odd to have brought Buffy along with us to this house for the past decade, on almost forty plane flights, but it makes perfect sense when you know how loved and cherished her presence was in this house by my parents.

This house was the place where I met my nieces for the first time. And this house was place where my children, surrounded by love, incredible food, and family, developed love for my parents, which has had a profound effect on them in their journey of learning to love themselves.

As the years past, more memories of my children and my nieces' running footsteps and squeals of delight filled the space inside of myself that I held this house. My parents insisted that this was a place of play for their grandchildren, so they filled the house with toys in  almost every room: a drawer in the kitchen, a section of the buffet, and well, half of the living room.

My parents worked hard, constantly to make this a place where their grandchildren could be children,  and could have the space to explore the world, and feel what it meant to be a family. 

They were successful.

Before I knew it, the time we spent in this new house eclipse the time we spent it what was my childhood home. The twenty years in this new house, versus the eleven years in our previous home. The years have filled this place in my heart, and given it shape. It’s a shape that’s hard to describe, but impossible not to feel. It’s the shape of gratitude, of something gained, and of something unforgettable

Our last night in this house, I held Ollie as I said goodnight. Close to tears, I told him that I was sad that we were no longer going to visit this house. Ollie replied, “I’m sad too daddy, and sad is okay.”
We talked about what we liked about this house, and what we would miss. I reminded him that this place was wonderful because of his grandparents and the new place would be just as great.  I also assured him that my childhood toys, my parents kept, would also be in the new home we would visit.

I held him in silence, feeling in concert all that we were going to miss. Ollie has made me feel better with his laughter and smiles his whole life, but this was the first time his sadness an empathetic reflection of my emotions made me feel less alone and validated about all that I was feeling.

The next morning in the rush to get ready to leave for the airport, I made sure to find a moment, as Ollie suggested the night before to help him write a note to the house to say goodbye.

I am proud of my parents. Through sheer will, hard work and determination that created places I could call homes. In doing so, they taught me make homes out of the places in my life spending energy on the place itself, but more importantly on making the people inside feel seen, valued, and loved for everything that they are and everything that they will become.

Year 10: Week 1 – The Zeitgeist

The view looks very different depending where you are standing, and if you look too closely at the cracks in the wall, you might miss the beauty of an entire building.

This first week of school, well two days of teacher meetings and two days of classes has been everything. There have been awesome highs, frustrating moments, welcomed reunions, and some challenging situations.

I see more than I have ever before. When I started ten years ago as a teacher I had a view of this school that was focused on myself and my immediate work. This was important because it was a tough year, and if I had too many other things outside of my specific job of teaching, I don’t think I would have made it.

Slowly my view on the school expanded. Becoming music department chair exposed to me the way the department was run and how the music department fit into the larger community. I began to think less about my work solely and more about how choices fit into the context of other department.

The view of the school completely opened up when I become co-diversity, equity, and inclusion chair. This position put in more meetings with administration, staff and other teachers outside of the music department that I didn’t know well and previously rarely interactions. Like eating the forbidden fruit, I couldn’t unsee and unknow all that I was learning about my school. From admissions to fundraising and communication, I became keenly away of the many different layers and perspectives that made up my school.

At any span of time in a school community there are amazing things that are happening, and challenging situations. This isn’t as clearly revealed when your perspective is more singular. However when you see as many different angles as I see, the ebb and flow of different parts of this school create a complex and challenging understanding of the organization.

It’s like trying to figure out the zeitgeist of the world by watching forty televisions all at the same time set on different channels. It’s almost overwhelming but amongst the noise, there is a feeling, and this week, even though some of those screens showed me things that were tough to deal with, the overall feeling was positive.

This is a wonderful school, and I feel fortunate and privilege to teach here. However, there is work to be done, and challenges that arise daily. There is more good than bad and at our core, there is hope optimism, and more of us who believe, then do not.

I’ve always believed that if you are more frustrated by what this school is not, then excited about what this school is, then perhaps it’s time you move on to another place. After ten years, I can say that I am still excited, and hopeful. I am frustrated at times, as I was this week, but that’s okay. It comes from a place where I believe that we can and should be better, not a resignation that things can never improve. Some of this is accepting perceived flaws as features and learning to enjoy the view, and processes for all of what this place brings to our students.

Parenthood: Week 334 – Long Time Coming, Part 2

This was a house of compromise. My parents made the choice of this house was not solely for us. They had to find a place that my father’s parents could live with us. This house had a downstairs where they lived that had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living space. In this way, almost half this house wasn’t our space. My grandparent’s presence as a child in some ways had the presence of ghosts. They could be seen in the summer afternoons in the backyard drinking and eating snacks. I knew they were around and on few occasions, they would come upstairs to visit me, but our interactions were rare.

The language barrier meant that I never had a conversation with any of my grandparents my entire life. Once I felt regret about this fact, but now I feel none. This is a feature, not a flaw of the condition of immigration. To regret this fact is to regret all that my parents sacrificed for my brother and I to create an incredible American reality out of the American dream. Which in reality is a cruel illusion that is unattainable to most who come to this country as the cruel expression of racism, sexism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism, and other forms of oppression refuse to relent in the face of progress.

The house was too small. My brother and I had our own space by my parents did not. The street our house was on was busy street, bringing dust into our house and there were no parks, or much of anything in walking distance besides houses filled with people more strangers than neighbors.

But it was my home. The first home, I knew and I felt as my home. My parents worked hard, constantly to make it a place where I could feel safe, have space to follow my interests, and feel what it meant to be a family. And they were successful.

They were so successful that I didn’t understand why they chose to move my senior year of high school…to another city. My commute to school doubled. I was further away from the few friends I had, and I didn’t want to leave my home. I didn’t understand what I get now that my parents were free of their commitments to my grandparents so they were truly on their own. Also, I didn’t see how my parents were done compromising.

I was a teenager, but in general my teenager moments were kept to a minimum. When it came to moving to this new house, I let all of my teenagerly angst out. My parents tried to make things better for me by doing almost all of the packing by themselves and doing the big move when I was away at a retreat. I understand this approach, but I think making me more involved may have gotten me to process all of this better.

I eventually saw the benefits of the new house and in the next couple years when I would return from college, I saw this place as a respite, almost like time away at a spa. Away from communal bathroom, dorm food and the pace of college, I could relax. I grew to enjoy this house, but it was a big house, and something felt missing. In the nights, I would stand in the living room with its high ceilings, in the silence of a street, calm and quiet, knowing that this was my home. However this house felt empty a like plastic bag, lacking shape, needing more memories to fill it for this place to take shape in my heart and feel like my home.

Year 10: Week 0 – Ten Years

There’s not a lot in my life that I’ve done for ten years. Yes, I’ve had relationships longer than a decade, my car is around 12 years old, but I’ve never been at a single school or job for this length of time.
Ten years is difficult to conceptualize. As Tanya Tucker sings in her new incredible song, “Bring My Flowers Now,” “The days are long, but the years are lightning.” I know there was so much work that I did, and so many things I went through, but it doesn’t feel like tens year’s worth of experiences. It somehow feels like less.

After year 3, there was a sense of settling, a sense that I knew what was going on, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone.  Somehow I always managed to find new challenges, even though at times these felt more like crises.

As the year has started, at time I have felt inundated with things I needed to take care of, but I’m determined to make sure that I see these as features of this job. We are annoyed at what we don’t accept, and problems can be feel annoying because they happen year after year.  This regularity proves they are features.  Does this meant that we can’t change things and make them better? No. True acceptance is not about not giving up on improvement, it’s about helping you become less emotionally involved and frustrated.

I learned long ago in my being right is overrated in personal relationships. I don’t lose anything by telling Diana that she is right and I’m wrong, and I don’t gain anything if I prove myself right in my mind to her but it leaves her feeling annoyed with me. This past week, I’ve applied this to my work and given up on being right and focused more on being effective. The interesting thing is that some of my most effective moves have been completely giving up the idea that I’m right.

It feels like a loss to not let someone now that they are wrong. However, if I do make it clear they are wrong and they shut down, than what was the point? Maybe it’s okay if I let them think the wrong thing if it means that we can move forward to fix a problem together. My words probably aren’t going to change their mind anyways, so what’s the point?

Like every year before there are unique challenges up ahead. I’m looking forward to working through things with others, enjoying lessons that I’ve done before, and taking the time to enjoy making things happen inside the classroom and in administrators offices.

I’ve made three professional promises/goals for myself.
1. Don’t work hungry, and eat more often (sometimes I skip meals).
2. Remind myself that the annoying tasks are helping students, and have a point.
3. Work to elevate others, faculty and students.

So here we go.  Another ride through this school year.