Year 12: Week 32 -...Used To Be Mine

It felt like almost every second, I was busy today at work. 

There were timely things that got in the way of things that I wanted to do. There was barely time to take a break or relax. Some of this was because of extra duties I chose, but things get complicated. When you choose to do extra, sometimes extra becomes what is expected.  

It wasn’t always this way.  

During my first teaching job, I felt overwhelmed by the basic duties of my job as a high school band director. I struggled to teach my classes and feel successful at this core part of my job. I wasn't on any committees, and I didn’t do any extra-curricular activities that weren’t directly part of my band teaching duties. I didn’t have the freedom to innovate, and it didn’t matter how hard I worked. I was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, and there were no one invested in trying to make this work for me.  

My second teaching job as an elementary teaching assistant was a dramatic change for me. There were no extracurricular activities. I had no planning to do, as I followed a scripted curriculum, which was very effective for my students' needs. This was a really fun job. I learned a lot as a teacher, and I also had break time to chill and have fun with other teachers and assistants. My job ended when I left work, I never stayed late, and things felt balanced. There wasn’t space for me to innovate, but I didn’t mind because I felt successful and valued at my job.  

When I got into my current job, I quickly felt borderline overwhelmed. I was teaching grades I had never taught before and middle school band, which I had never taught before, besides student teaching. I didn’t have a lot of curriculum to use, so I came up with units and lessons. I could have just stayed with that level of work and gotten comfortable with it, but I didn’t. 

There were many opportunities for me to get involved in this school differently. There were committees, leadership roles, and many people interested in collaborating. So I took on more. I got on the committees, became music department chair, and later became a DEI co-chair. I worked on different projects with administrators, staff, and other faculty. And every year, I try something new and different. And every year, I had moments where I was at the edge of what I could handle.  

Why don’t I do less and relax in my job? Maybe it's my need to fulfill the model minority myth and be seen by others as perfect at doing everything. Perhaps it’s because I feel like it’s a way to prove that I am tough and hardworking as my parent. And maybe it’s an attempt to address my personal feelings of insecurities and imposter syndrome. The thing is that I enjoy the extra stuff I do, and I am good at it. I pushed myself and done more and done it well because that’s what I do.

I want to be that remarkable guy who can handle these things. If I’m not, I just a teacher, which should be enough. Maybe it’s not bad thing want to be more than that, but that leads to weeks like this.  

I love the work that I do, but something feels out of balance right now. I wonder what I'm trying to prove because here's the thing, the approval I'm looking for, may never come, so I got to find something else on the inside.

Parenthood: Week 472 - What I Learned From Men Of Color

Fathers have a powerful effect on their sons whether they want to or not. A father’s actions and inaction resonate in the soul of their sons. A father cannot escape the impact on his sons by leaving physically, as a son feels that one action their whole life. A father's accomplishments, regrets, glory, and shortcomings live forever in their sons. Fatherhood is a responsibility and a burden. More than that, fatherhood is an opportunity.

As I listened to nine brilliant educators talk about their fathers, these thoughts came to me. This past weekend I attended My Brother's Keeper: A Retreat for Men of Color in Education. At different times different parts of our identity brought us together, even though the intersectionality of different facets of our identity was undeniable. There were discussions about our schools where our work at independent schools came to the fore and other times when the race was an important topic. At that moment, when we talked about early examples in our lives about what it meant to be a man, our identity as sons of fathers brought us together.

All of our experiences with our fathers were different. There were similarities between some people’s stories that people connected over. The stories revealed pride, insecurities, frustrations, and pain. There were lessons learned from fathers and unresolved issues. There was a determination in the room to be better than their fathers. And here was also a struggle to understand and acknowledge the positives while being unable to forget the negatives.

The most important commonality is that we were all profoundly affected by our fathers. Some people stated that out loud, while others expressed this with the emotion in their voices and how they talked. It’s not a big surprise that fathers profoundly impact their sons, but it was different from being in the room and hearing these reflections. Behind these men's strength, talent, and accomplishments, I could see little boys, all wanting the same thing: to be loved by their fathers.

While I have had the privilege to be in affinity spaces with people of color, I am rarely in groups of men, socially or professionally. I went to this retreat to put myself in an area out of my comfort zone. Encouraged by the fact that two of the facilitators were incredible people I had worked with before and the advice of two work friends, I decided to go, and I’m happy that I did.

In addition to talking about our fathers, we spoke of challenges in being a man of color in independent schools, toxic masculinity, explored some current research about leadership, and had time to bond and get to know each other. The only other times I can remember that I felt included in a large group of men since my college fraternity days almost twenty years ago was when I worked with men of color who were facilitating a Young Men Of Color Conference.

There’s nothing wrong with the fact that I like hanging out with people in smaller groups and that most of my close friends are women. But I am starting to see how I can feel belonging in groups of men. While many of those barriers that make me feel awkward in groups of men are created by toxic masculinity and the patriarchy, some of these barriers are maintained by me.

I need to figure this out for myself and my sons. Because my issues with relating to men will become my sons’ issues. I know I can’t be perfect, but I want to be better. 

Fathers are up against a lot. The messages around masculinity are unclear, but our sons are even more confused than us. But we don’t have to know the answers; we just have to embrace these challenges with our sons. We may not be able to change our world, but if we are willing to do the work, we can give our sons the power to change their own world. It’s too great an opportunity to pass up, so let’s get to work.

 We are worth it, and our sons are worth it.

Year 12: Week 31 - All The Highs And Lows In One Week

“Everything just needs to stop.” 

This week had it all. There were moments when I felt effective as a teacher and other moments when I felt inadequate. Many things happened as planned, and there were surprises thrown at me that I didn’t expect. People did supportive work that felt validating, and people made choices that puzzled me and led to me having to do more work. I solved problems, learned about new issues, experienced great kindness from some colleagues, and thoughtless words that felt irritating.  

Every workday felt like a race. Things I wanted to get done often had to get put aside for something that had to get done. There was little to no lull in my day, as things filled up my day, leaving me to look at my to-do list and have to accept all the things that I planned to get down would be left undone. There were two days when I worked through lunch, and often I felt like I worked right up to the last second of my prep time before running to a class to teach, that I didn’t feel fully prepared to teach. 

In short, I experienced all of the highs and lows of a typical school year in one week.  

Monday was a teacher in-service day. We had a excellent training around gender. It felt empowering as we learned about best practices to better support all of our students, especially those who are LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming. It was also a sad and sobering presentation. The presenter talked about the reality of anti-trans and anti-gay sentiment in America and how it would surely lead to more suicide attempts by LGBTQ+ youth. 

Later in the morning, I led a session about how to examine and transform traditions to make them more inclusive and better align with our schools’ core values. I didn’t feel like I had adequate time to prepare for this workshop, but it went well. I’m glad that I created a space where people with different experience levels at my school felt comfortable speaking up. The engagement of the participants made me hopeful that we could help some of the traditions in my school evolve to become more inclusive. I want to do more facilitating professional development in diversity work, and I was grateful to have this opportunity to work on these skills. 

I was looking forward to getting back to work with my students. My 4th graders, 5th graders, and 7th-grade band all have performances coming up in a couple weeks. All of these students were making significant progress. Ever since our school went to masks optional, I finally felt like I could really teach singing. I’ve had students sing songs since the beginning of the year, but it didn't feel like teaching. For most people wearing a mask prevents people from opening their mouths wide in a relaxed way, which is essential for singing. The way that masks come into contact with the face and mouth gets in the form of articulation. Masks mute sound, making it difficult to assess students’ singing. 

Without visualizing students' full faces, many things about singing techniques are nigh-impossible to evaluate and correct. Yes, there were still some students who wore masks after we went for a masks optional policy, but within two weeks, the vast majority of students were not wearing masks. So when I found out Monday night that we were going back to a universal mask policy, I felt profoundly frustrated and sad. 

My students were making meaningful and impressive progress with singing techniques because we could sing without masks, and now all of that momentum would stop. I knew I would have to plan differently. With masks back on meant that the students would learn songs slower, and I would once again have to adjust my curriculum and give up focusing on singing technique. What made it worse was that I had no time to process or plan for this change.  

I came into school Tuesday morning unsure how to handle all that was ahead of me. My first class was a section of the 7th-grade band. I tried my best to sound excited and optimistic as I started class. I remembered a piece of advice I had heard years ago: always commnicate with your presence that you expect to listen to an excellent musical sound from your students. So I did this, but I didn’t expect the best sounds. This was the first day back after spring break. But then my student started playing, and they sounded tremendous. I wish they could have seen my smile.

My 4th graders participated with great effort in music class. They worked well with the singer despite wearing masks, and they were invested and joyful as we worked on sound effects for their upcoming play. Then I had a challenging 5th-grade class. As we started singing warm-ups, I heard some soft singing, which slowly diminished into nothing. There was literally no singing. This class was shy about singing, and I had made progress getting them to sing out, and now with masks back on, all that progress was gone. I returned the next day and, with energy and enthusiasm, and got them singing louder. Part of me wanted to give up, but I couldn’t. That's just not possible for me. So I gave that class my all. It was exhausting, but the progress felt good.  

This week reminded me that I can’t fix everything, good comes with the bad, and the bad is rarely that bad. This week, the best I could do wasn’t enough for some people, but I left work knowing that I gave the day my all. This doesn’t make me impervious to having my feelings affected by other people’s criticism, but it does help. 

I genuinely don’t have any regrets this week. I did far more good than bad. Among all the week's challenges, I made some colleagues feel valued and helped some of my students feel joy. ” 

That’s enough for me.

Parenthood: Week 471 - Spring Break With A Sick Kid

There are universals in parenthood. One of the most challenging is dealing with illnesses of your child. 

Some parents deal with chronic medical conditions that shape the lives of children and their families. Some parents deal with the life-threatening illnesses of their children that are traumatic and resonate throughout their lives of parents. And all parents deal with fevers, flu, colds, and other viruses.  

In our modern life, much of the stress and anxiety as parents come from how childhood illness affects work, school, activities, and siblings. This compounds the practical and emotional challenges of caring for a sick child. Parents should have the financial and job security to care for their sick child, but unfortunately, many do not. We do not live in a society that prioritizes children and families, and this is obvious and painful for many families when a child is sick.  

Over time, I’ve become less stressed and anxious when my children get sick. I remember being so worried the first time Ollie had a fever. I was checking his temperature every ten minutes. I was horrified when I woke up to the sound of Ollie coughing when he had croup. When one of my children has a fever, I give them Tylenol and a croup cough, which still sounds horrible. But I know what to do to help with that.  

One of the byproducts of the COVID-19 pandemic is that I am much more comfortable taking time off work to take care of my children when they are sick. In addition, I can apply many of the tools I set up and used during remote learning to sub plans so that my students can still have a productive music class even if there is no music substitute teacher. Also, the pandemic has given me a healthy dose of perspective about what are my real priorities in my life.  

I was thinking about all of this as I sat on the couch with my sick 2-year-old Lucas last week during my spring break. During my time off, Lucas got over a cold, went to school for a day, developed double ear infections, and stayed home the rest of the week. While I did have work that I was hoping to catch up on and some errands I wanted to take care of, I was able to adjust my life and take care of him. We are very privileged to have access to great health care. So we were able to get Lucas diagnosed and treated in a timely way.  

All of this made this experience of caring for Lucas strangely relaxing and calming. Lucas is not a cuddler like my second son Ethan. So it was kind of nice that he was snuggled up in my lap. He’s only two years old, but he’s still such a little guy, and he’s pitiful and helpless when he’s sick. It’s nice to know that even though he grows so fast, he still finds comfort cuddling up with me. 

Part of me was annoyed that Lucas got sick, and it cut into my plans for my spring break. But more than that, I’m happy that I could be there for him when he needed me. That moment when his smile came back after feeling so sick, was beautiful.

Year 12: Week 30 - Turning 40 At School

I saw the teachers and students begin to walk into my classroom, and I gave them the sternest look I could. I covered my mouth so my students who didn’t have a view of the door could not see my mouthing, “not right now!” After a couple of seconds, my colleague caught the vibe, waved off the students, and they slinked backward through the doorway. 

Two teachers thought it would be fun to “invade” my class and sing “Happy Birthday” to me. I would have been fine with them coming into any other class, but this was one of my trickier classes, and I had just gotten them settled and in the right mind frame for class. It felt like such an absurd moment that made me have to stifle laughter as I continued my class.  

This was a couple of Wednesdays ago, my 40th birthday. I’m not sure what to do with birthdays. The mixture of feelings of social isolation, and perceptions of societal expectations, and insecurities with aging left me feeling lost and confused coming up to my 40th birthday. I came to school not wanting to talk about my birthday and just wanting to get through the day.  

I wasn’t sure what to say about my birthday if people asked, and while I wasn’t ashamed of getting older, I didn’t feel like reflecting on it openly. Through social media, people found out it was my birthday, and when people said “happy birthday” to me, I smiled and thanked them. Some people asked, “how does it feel to be 40?” I didn’t feel comfortable saying in passing “confusing and disorientating,” so I just lied and said “great.”  

Late in the morning, I had a meeting with two other people. I enjoyed this weekly meeting. It was a space that made me feel safe and valued. So when one of the people interrupted our discussion, “hold up, is today your birthday?!?...and you are turning 40?!” I confirmed the question. When she asked me how I felt, I decided to be honest.  

This was the first step to feeling better about myself and my birthday. As I unpacked my mixed feelings about my birthday, I got affirmation and validation. The two other people in the meeting said that I needed to ignore societal ideas about celebrating birthdays and do what I wanted. Then one of them told me, “you should mark this day somehow. You have accomplished so much in your professional and personal life. You should take this day, this moment, as a way to honor that and be proud.” When she told me this, I could see in her eyes that she was proud of me and proud to know me, and I felt deeply what she said. This made me think that it was okay to feel how I did about my birthday. 

The next day I made my way to my office after a challenging day of teaching. One of the choir teachers caught me in the hallway and told me to come into the choir room. I was ready not to be a teacher, but I dug deep and found more and followed him in the class. The room was filled with one of the high school choirs. Many of my former students were in that class, and they sang a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.” I let myself enjoy the attention, looking at these wonderful students and thinking about how proud I was of them.   

“How old are you?” yelled one student.  

“Forty,” I replied.  

“You don’t look a day over forty,” commented another student.”  

“Well, I am exactly a day over forty,” I said, and everyone laughed.  

They presented me with a cake, and I thanked them for the song and the moment. I felt good at that moment for the first time about turning forty.  I still have a lot of processes and unpack about turning forty. I didn’t expect my colleagues and students to help me in this work, but they really did, and I’m so grateful for their kindness.

Parenthood: Week 470 - A Good Day

It felt tough day with Ethan.   

When we were getting in the car to leave the house, he started screaming for a book he had left inside the house. Before we arrived at the gardens, Ethan started complaining that he was thirty. We told him to wait. Then he started demanding that we give him water. We did have fun at the gardens, but we ended up leaving early because of something Ethan did. I don’t remember what, but unfortunately, the outing ended with sterns words.  

Later in the afternoon, he took a book out of Lucas’ hands that he wanted to look at that caused Lucas to start crying. Ethan didn’t do a great job eating his meals, and he was out of control during his bathtime.  

As we were getting ready for bed, Ethan said “I had a great day. I did so much stuff!” I looked at him with utter disbelief. Did we live the same day? Don’t you remember all of the frustrating moments? As Ethan started listing off all of the things he enjoyed about the day, I sat back and couldn’t help but smile.  

Sometimes among all of the frustrating moments in a day, it’s easy to overlook the good times. It’s nice to know what stuck with Ethan were the nice moments in the day. I’m not sure if this is a reflection of Ethan’s personality or his age, but it’s a wonderful part of him.  

*****   

So Lucas didn’t feel like pants. No big deal. 

We were going to spend the morning at home, after taking Buffy for a walk. It was just me and Lucas. He was at the tail end of a cold. I was a spring break, so there was no reason to push it and get him to back to school before he was 100%.  

I have Lucas a snack of some crackers. As he sat down looking at his bowl he turned around and started pointing towards the open pantry behind him. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying so I lifted him up he pointed at a different box of crackers. So I got him those crackers in a different bowl. No big deal. 

I got Lucas out of his high chair and decided to do some dishes. I saw that Lucas was walking over to the bookshelf. I walked over and closed the baby gate so he wouldn't go upstairs. A couple minutes later I saw him walk by the kitchen with a marker in his hand. Ethan recently started enjoying working with marker, but he couldn’t get the caps off. No big deal. 

A couple minutes later I saw him bring some more markers into the den from the living room. I didn’t think much of it. As I finished the dishes I walked over to the den and I saw red marker drawn all over half of the couch cushions. I looked to the side and saw the marker without a cap on and there was Lucas in the living room calmly looking at a book. This felt like a big deal. 

I felt a rush of panic and frustration. My children don’t draw on the furniture. Ollie had never done this. Ethan never did this. What is going on? I went over to Lucas, and looking at this little one sitting, oh so innocently, I couldn't get mad at him. He didn’t know better, and I should have known better. As I started wiping the couch with a baby wipe the marker came off immediately. Thank goodness for washable markers. I took the cushion covers off and when I cleaned them in the sink they came off completely. I had to do some extra cleaning, but the couch is fine. No big deal.

We had a great morning. This was a big deal to me.

Year 12: Week 29 - The Return To Taft

Like so many things in the past two years, I told myself that I would believe it when it happened.   

The last time I had been to Lorado Taft was fall of 2019. Except for the year my first son was born a couple of weeks before the trip, I’ve been to this 5th-grade outdoor education retreat every year that I’ve been at this school. The trip to Lorado Taft is one of my favorite things about being at this school. It’s a four-day, three-night trip, usually in the fall in the first part of November. We take all the 5th graders with an awesome group of teachers and us. Every time I get back from the trip, I can’t imagine doing it again, and every fall, I’m excited to go.  

There’s a lot about this trip I don’t like. I’m not an outdoorsy guy, and while we eat and sleep inside, we are outside for most of the day. The food is only okay. Managing groups of children outside of the school environment is a challenge, especially at night. The lack of creature comforts takes its toll. Especially with young children, it’s hard to be away from home for four days. We’ve dealt with this in the past because my mom has come out to help take care of the children, which has worked out well.  

I don’t get much sleep on these trips, which have become less of the contrast as we’ve had our three children at home. The main thing that has been brutal is the weather. We’ve had great weather, and we’ve had horrible weather. The coldest I’ve ever been has been on this trip.  

I keep coming back because of the faculty and staff who every year. I’ve bonded with them in a way that simply doesn't happen during regular school hours. There’s a core of people that have gone every year for more than a decade on this trip with me. It’s wonderful that we share memories and work so well together. And it’s so much fun to get to know new people on this trip. It’s good for me to stretch myself and put myself in a place of discomfort. There are always magical moments with the students on this trip among the challenges.  

This fall, we decided to reschedule the trip. Yes, but it didn’t feel right. Conceptualizing this trip with COVID-19 mitigations was difficult. I didn’t want to spend four days away from home. Some faculty and staff shared my feelings, so we decided to try for the spring.  

The trip was shorted from four days to two, and we left this past Monday morning. There was a feeling of doubt about whether this trip would happen, and when I got on the bus, I realized this was actually going to happen.  

So how did it go?  

I was as tired after the two-night version of this trip as I have been in the past when we went for four-night. The trip lacked some of the depth and meaning of previous trips, but the students didn’t know this and had a good time. It was colder than I expected, but overall the weather was fine. There were challenging and beautiful moments with the students, and I loved the time I shared with faculty and staff on this trip.  

This trip felt like a return and a step toward returning to ourselves and our traditions.  

Last week was complicated for many reasons, and it’s hard to reflect on this trip. I know that I’m glad I went and I am still recovering from the trip days later. I can’t imagine making another one of these trips, but I have no doubt next fall, I’ll be excited to return to Lorado Taft.