Parenthood: Week 19 – The Name Game

About 6 hours into child labor, Diana asked me what name should we choose for our coming son. I looked at the short list of names we had decided on as possibilities and she said, “Oliver, let’s name him Oliver.” Without disagreement or discussion, I agreed with Diana. In retrospect she probably could have won my approval for almost any decision that would affect both of us like the paint color for our new house or where we would take our next vacation.

When people ask me how we came up with the name for our son, I usually tell them that story. It’s true, this actually did happen, but there’s a little bit more to it than me going along with Diana during a tense and stressful moment.

We knew Ollie was going to be a boy as soon as the technician could see. Even before she could “officially” see that Ollie was a boy, she said that she was 90% sure. Diana and I figured that we would have enough surprises in our life even with knowing our baby’s gender.

This allowed me to have time to unpack and work through my feelings about having a son and kept the baby gifts from being all yellow and green.

We figured out a couple things that were important with our son's name:

1. Our son needed a first name that was more than one syllable because of having a last name that was one syllable.

2. We wanted our son to have a unique name that not everyone had, however we didn’t want our son to have a name that people would have trouble spelling or think was crazy.

3. It was important we like both the full name and the nickname.

4. Since his last name is Chinese we wanted his first name to reflect his Welsh and Polish heritage.

For the first couple weeks after we found out we were having boy, this is how it worked: Diana would come up with a list of names and I would reject almost all of them because I previously had a student with that same name. This is a thing that teachers have to deal with. We associate names strongly with certain students that we like or dislike. Of course if there’s a student who is more challenging you don’t want to name them that and even if you use a name of a student you like, it can feel weird.

I estimate that in the past seven years I’ve taught around seven hundred students. So there’s a lot of names that I have strong feelings about.  While Diana got frustrated about this, she understood this and we continued to work together to find names that might work.

After looking through multiple baby name books, the names that made it to our short list came up from our own ideas or from friends. It was the latter process that led us to Ollie’s name.

Diana’s friend Alice really loves the name Oliver but her boyfriend is named Ali, so she has given up that name for her future baby because of the confusion between Ollie and Ali. That’s where we got “Oliver.”

Over breakfast one of my friend's Allie told me that if she was a boy, her parents were going to name her Jameson. We laugh about the connection with the name of an Irish Whiskey but after thinking about it, Jameson made the list as well. The origins and meanings of these names made sense. Oliver is associated with olive and its symbolism of peace. Jameson means “son of James” which works, as James is a family name for Diana’s family. It’s one of her brother’s middle names.

Then there was the discussion of whether we would do “Jameson Oliver,” or “Oliver Jameson.” We don’t mind Jamie Oliver but there was the issue of O.J. associated with the not so revered football player.

What’s interesting is that all of these cultural associations and well as well as the fact that many names remind of students I have taught ended up not being of any real significance. Last school year I taught three boys named Oliver and when I think of the name Oliver, or look at my boy, I don’t think about any of those students I’ve taught that share his name.

Names are important, but the meanings we attach to names are often fluid and the same name can have multiple associations good and bad. Yes, cultural history is important and family heritage should be considered, but I don’t think choosing Ollie’s name was one of the most important decisions we made.  The name is a big decision but it's more about the identity that one creates around their name than the name itself.

If you ever met Ollie, you would agree that somehow we landed on the perfect name for our special little guy.

Year 4: Week 5 – In Defense Of Textbooks

Not all teachers are created equal. Some teachers like myself would prefer to write their own curriculum and create their own teaching materials and assessments. Some teachers would rather teach out of a text book. Is one approach innately better than the other?

Some people argue that teachers should be creating their own materials, but this ignores the reality of teaching in many school districts and communities.

I was taught in college that teaching was all about creating innovated curriculum.  I really enjoyed doing this, however, I learned the hard way my first year as a teacher that I simply didn't have time to create everything from scratch. The hours I could have saved using materials readily available and created by other educators would have allowed me to focus on the many issues I struggled with at that job that eventually led to me not having my contract renewed after my second year.

As I started my next job as a special education assistant, I still held onto idea that I wanted to create my own material. So I was pretty shocked when I learned that I would be teaching small group reading and math not only out of textbook but also by following the script. I'm not talking about a suggested way of asking questions in a teachers guide, I'm talking about a word for word script.

I initially thought this was ridiculous until I started working with this program. I was teaching math and reading to students who had various developmental issues and one of the strategies was repetition. For example, it was important that a student spoke a short "a" sound a certain amount of times. The script allowed me to not have to sit there and count how many times they read a word or did a math problem. Instead I could focus on their understanding, their focus and assessing their progress.

Keep in mind, I was trained as a music teacher so these programs allowed me to teach these other subjects, I hadn't studied. It was a scripted reading program that helped me teach a kid how to read. That's one of my biggest accomplishments as a teacher, and I still get teary-eyed remembering him read to me at the end of the school year a book he couldn't read at all that previous September.

I've met remarkable teachers who create their own curriculum and amazing educators who teach out of a text book. Like most teachers I'm somewhere in-between. If I had the time, I'd create all of my own stuff, but it's not realistic and while I enjoy academic research, the time I save using other peoples' materials is better focused on getting to know my students.

There's a disdain that some educators associate using textbooks to government education standards, to standardized tests, to NCLB and finally to the downfall of American education by turning teachers into robots. And no, I don't think that it's okay for principals to evaluate teachers strictly on their adherence to a textbook. Also, I don't think a teacher should stay 100% with a textbook, that is simply not a responsive way to serve students.

So if you aren't using a lot of stuff from textbooks, check them out. There's a lot of great stuff out there that will give you some awesome material and perspectives on different ways to teach. Don't work so hard.

And if you have a textbook that you are forced to use, think of it more as framework to build off of than a cage. In this way, the possibilities are limitless.

Buffy & Ollie: Weeks 17 & 18

Parenthood: Week 18 – Logic Vs. Emotions

We live our life balancing what we feel with what we know is logical. Often we react to a situation with an illogical feeling that doesn’t really make sense in a situation.

I’ve lived my life working to be in touch with my feelings and validating the feelings of the people in my life. If we are true to ourselves, we balance our ideas about the way that we should reasonably feel versus what we actually feel.

This is a very tricky thing to do because if you don’t validate your feelings, as crazy as they may seem then you get in a cycle of negative self-talk that only makes you feel like your reactions to the world, the basis for who you are is not important. At the same time we can’t let illogical feelings  petrify us and keep us from what we want to do in our lives.

I’ve gotten pretty good at striking this balance but today I really struggled as Ollie got his second round of immunization shots.

Ollie is truly blessed to live in a time in and in a country that expresses care of the youngest members of our society through immunizations. There are children all over the world that die of diseases and illnesses that Ollie will never have to face. Ollie will never know the horrors of rotavirus or the debilitating effects of polio. There is no reason for any parent to not embrace these immunizations with open arms and give thanks to the scientists behind these immunizations who have literally saved millions of children’s’ lives with their work.

Now here comes the illogical part: Witnessing your baby getting shots is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do as a parent.

During the first round of shots I was holding Ollie and I couldn’t bear to look. As the needle approached his thigh I looked away instinctually and to my surprise, Ollie barely made a sound.

Today was different.

By the time we got to the shots, Ollie was cranky and overtired. He was not a happy baby. When Ollie cries, it’s  horrible to hear but it’s worse since his tears ducts, which once upon a time did not produce tears, now produce large drops that make my heart ache.

He took the oral immunization well even though he was crying and now it was time for the shots. I was standing on the side of the table holding his torso. One nurse was standing beside me and the other nurse was standing on the opposite side of the table. Without fanfare, they both stuck a syringe in the thigh close to them, and this time, I couldn’t avoid seeing it.

The moment when the needles entered Ollie and he screamed in pain brought tears to my eyes and now hours later still makes me shudder.  Right after it happened, I told myself how grateful I should feel and somehow as I was trying to hold back tears, I managed to thank the nurses for their work.

President Obama said in an interview that the most difficult moment in his life was watching his daughter Sasha get a spinal tap when she had meningitis. Harder than anything he had ever done in life including the challenges of being President was this moment. A spinal tap is a far more gruesome thing to watch than getting a shot, but just like the immunizations, it’s something that we are lucky to have in our lives but is horrible to witness.

Logically we shouldn’t be so horrified about these things but we are, because when your child is in pain, even when if it’s for a good reasons, it gets to you. It touches something so deep insides of you, it’s almost beyond your control.  I don't think that this conflict in feelings versus logic when it comes to situations with Ollie will pass anytime soon.  It's probably going to get worse before it gets better. 

Yes, it's tough but that doesn't mean it's bad.  And don't forget the most wonderful things in life are based on feelings that logic cant come close to explaining.  Never has this been more true than the way that I feel about Ollie.     

Year 4: Week 4 – Puddles

One of the common phrases that come up when I talk to teachers at my school is “they have to step in their own puddles to learn.” It’s the idea that in order for students to learn they need to make mistakes. Most of the time we find out about these mistakes after the students have made them, like when a students flunks a math test. Other times we can view students in the process of making a mistake and as teachers we have to make the decision whether or not to let them make that mistake.

Earlier this week, I saw some of my students walking towards a “puddle,” and instead of steering them away, I let them get their feet wet.

I asked one of my fifth grade classes to come forward and sit on the carpet so that we could sing a song together. The boys collected towards the left side of the room and the girls sat together on the right side of the room. I didn’t really mind the split in the genders and it some ways it made the activity a little easier to organize.

We had learned two different parts to a song and I wanted them to try to sing them at the same time. The first time we did it the girls sang well but some of the boys were singing in a silly manner. I told them to make sure they were singing in their best voice and we tried again.

This time some of the boys sang obnoxiously loud. We stopped quickly and I noticed that the boys were giggling. I decided to be more explicit, because clearly my previous directions didn’t work.

The boys seemed to comprehend what I was asking for in their singing and they nodded in understanding. As I faced the girls to complement them, I noticed two boys moving around the group  whispering while other boys nodded in agreement.

At this point, I knew that something was up, but I decided to move forward and start them singing again. This time most of the boys sang as softly as possible. After I stopped them again, it was clear some of them found this hilarious. We were just about at the end of class, so I excused all of the girls and made the boys stay behind.

Then I let them have it. I reminded them of the saying I have up on the wall that it’s not the mistakes that define a person's character but rather how they fix them. Yes, they made a mistake by singing too loud, but the way they reacted to it is what was the major issue. Then I pulled out my rarely used “I’m embarrassed as a man”-card.

I told them how some people have lower expectations for boys than they do for girls and the fact was that they reinforced the idea that boys are less mature. Not only as teacher was I concerned, but as a man, I was offended by what their actions say about the way people perceive what it means to be a man. Right after I excused them, the classroom teacher proceeded to have fifteen-minute discussion about what happened.

If I had stopped them before they sang that last time then they would have never seen the consequences of their actions. It’s our job as teachers to let students make mistakes in a safe way. If we always catch them before they fall, they will never learn how to get up. This may mean that in the short term that class seems to be less productive, but in the long run the lessons they learn from stepping in their own puddles will resonate with them.   

Me & My Boy

Love

Parenthood: Week 17 – Being A Go-To-Work Dad

If it were financially feasible I would be a stay-at-home dad.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, but I love Ollie more.

Before Ollie I would think about work when I was home more than I would think about home when I was at work. Now since coming back to work after Ollie was born, I think about home, far more at work than I think about work when I’m at home.

It’s been a great beginning of the school year, and while I’ve been getting a lot of good work done it’s hard being away from Ollie. I know he’s well taken care of when I’m away and I know that it’s important that I’m at work for financial reasons and my own growth as a person. However, I still yearn to be home with him.

Sometimes Diana will send me photos of Ollie when I’m at work. I love these photos but they also make me miss him even more. I just don’t fully feel at piece unless Ollie is near and as much as I try to focus while I’m at work, this is a feeling that I can’t shake.

As much as it is tough at work, the thrill of coming home and seeing Ollie, Diana and Buffy is amazing. It was always great to come home to Diana and Buffy but adding Ollie to the mix makes it even better. I usually give everyone a hug and a kiss, hurriedly change out of work clothes and have a conversation with Ollie about how his day went (actually this mostly involves me making funny sounds and having Ollie laugh at me).

It’s been an uplifting, powerful and positive thrill to come home to this every single day that I’ve been at work. That feeling hasn’t diminished at all.

You would think that having my attention be more focused on home while I’m at work would make me do a worse job as opposed to a better one.However  I’ve had done some of my best teaching this fall because Ollie has given me an important perspective on my students and my life.

Having Ollie has reminded me of some of the most important lesson I’ve learned about being a teacher: I’m not that important, Most of the time a crisis isn’t actually that big a deal and the quality of life you have outside of teaching directly effects the quality of your teaching.

Being away from Ollie hasn’t really gotten that much easier, but I don’t really want it to. Missing Ollie reminds me of the greatest motivating factor in my life and the most important part of who I am.