You didn't forget...

You didn’t forget.  You just didn’t care enough to remember.

Those were the wise words of my junior high math teacher.  He said it all the time.  In the context of forgotten homework, forgotten classroom routines, forgotten report cards and backpacks and lost pencils.  He didn’t use it in a passive-aggressive way—which certainly could be done, and would be a mistake, given the power of the words when used without judgment or manipulative intent.  Like Mr. Pim.  “You didn’t forget.”  (Insert gentle shrug.) “You just didn’t care enough to remember.”

It resonated with me because most of the time, he was exactly right.  I knew, even then, early in my teens, that I’d never forgotten anything that really mattered to me.  I had forgotten things I didn’t care about.  In school, certainly, but in other stuff, too. 

It’s about the value we place on things, and how that value establishes our priorities.

I grew to use the saying myself.  In my twenties, I used it, together with tears and anguish, when a boyfriend forgot I needed him to attend an important staff gathering and he bought tickets for a country concert—with another woman.  Who eventually became his girlfriend. 

I used it in my thirties, when I myself was a middle school teacher, and wanted my students to evaluate their own academic priorities. 

I have used it as a mother.  I said it this morning, in fact.  My son told me he’d forgotten to feed the cat.  “It appears you didn’t care enough about this task to remember.  How can we make your chores more of a priority for you?”

And I use this phrase in a constant conversation with myself.  I have a lot of things to juggle every day, and there are a lot of ways to split my time.  Sometimes, the things I have deemed less important become things I forget to do.  They just slip my mind.  Yet, when I don’t take care of those things, I sometimes come off as scattered and flighty.  Like I can’t remember stuff.

But there’s a dirty dark secret about some parts of my job.  I should care about every aspect, but I don’t.  I can’t.

An example:  I don’t really care about our monthly custodial inspections.  That’s when one of our directors comes out to our school and walks around the building with the custodian and I (“white gloving,” they call it).  We look at every surface in the building.  We follow a checklist and assign a score to classrooms, restrooms, windows, desks, small-group meeting space, the library, the gym, and every other nook and cranny in the building.  These inspections are valuable in many ways:  they give us a standardized score for how our custodians are maintaining our school; they give us specific areas to celebrate and specific areas to grow; and they keep us accountable and focused.  But the inspection itself?  Mind-numbing.  When I tag along, like I’m supposed to do, I look at my watch approximately five times a minute.

To be clear:  I care very much about our custodians, and about having a clean school, and about accountability and assessment and comparing scores and goals and all of that.  I do.  I just don’t care about the white-glove inspection.  Give me the scoresheet at the end of the daggone thing, and I’m good.

But that’s not what I’m paid to do.  I’m paid to participate in such things.  I’m paid to make them a priority. 

So:  How do I attend to things I don’t care about?  How do I make sure I remember the things I need to remember?   I’ll share some specific ideas next week.  See you then!

Beowulf, revisted

Ever been part of a class in which you studied Beowulf?  I have.  Twice.  The first was in high school.  We read an anthologized version that had been heavily edited and contained lots of bold-faced explanations in the margin of the textbook.  The second was in college, when we read the real thing.  The whole thing.  And we talked about it.  For days and days and days. 

Just to set the stage, here: Beowulf is the oldest surviving poem known to man. It’s hard to read.  Really hard.  That sucker has almost 3,200 weirdly placed lines telling convoluted story of Beowulf’s long and awful battles with beasts and demons.  I remember nothing about it—just utter, full-on bewilderment.   It’s a miracle I survived the ordeal.

If it were a text vs. reader matchup, this reader lost.  Both times.

Here’s the truth:  Beowulf humbled me.  A lot.  Both times I read it, I had been feeling pretty smart.  I could quickly comprehend most texts I came across, and could talk at length to friends and teachers about meaning, theme, purpose, point of view, and all the other story elements we rely upon when we talk about texts. 

Not Beowulf.  I couldn’t seem to dig my way through the thick writing, the metaphor, the rising and falling action.  I relied solely on the text’s margin notes and Cliff’s Notes for a fighting chance in my battle against this poem.

Most of us, even those who weren’t English majors, have the story of the text that humbled us.  The one we just couldn’t grasp.  For some of us, it was Shakespeare.  For others, like me, it was an epic poem written hundreds of years ago.  It may have been philosophy—Socrates, maybe, or Plato—that stumped us, no matter how hard we tried or how much we were told it’s a Large Part of our Grade.  We’ve all faced off with a text—and lost. 

I recently stumbled across a college literature anthology.  I flipped through the pages, landing on Beowulf.   I skimmed through, feeling embarrassed that I’d never really understood it.  I wondered if I might have a better chance now, having grown in confidence and experience as a reader, and knowing how to hunt down online resources and supports. 

So in a valiant display of fierce defiance, I dug in.  I’m two decades beyond when I last laid eyes on the piece, and this time, knew what to do. I read, and I read again, and I read again.  I consulted websites and library books.  I found blogs and websites to talk me through the story.  In time, I came to a peaceful, if begrudging, sense of understanding.  It was hazy, but it was there.  There was not a great epiphany of understanding—no “ah-ha!” moment, no elation, no conquering fist thrust in the air.  But there was respect:  I recognized that the poem held layers and layers of brilliance, especially when the context and setting were considered.  And the story was actually pretty good. 

I finally feel I can put it away for good.  I also feel satisfaction: I did it.  I saw the light at the end of the poem, as well as I needed to, anyway.

I have talked a lot about the times it is best to abandon a text, but at the same time, I believe there are texts we shouldn’t abandon forever.  There may be some real good to come out of trying again.  Maybe it’s the gift of understanding and mastery.  But it may also be a gift of humbleness, resilience, and respect.

Final score?  Beowulf—2.  Me—1.  But my win is the one that counts.    

Questions to Ask

A few months ago, I wrote this post—about how reflection only works if we put ourselves in front of a mirror and take a really close look at ourselves, without letting blame get in the way.

I heard from some teachers and school leaders who asked for specific questions they could consider when looking in that mirror. 

Here’s a start.

When thinking about successes:

How did the momentum begin?

What was your role?

What was the antecedent to success?  In other words, where did it all begin?  

What are next steps?

When wondering what areas need improvement in your work:

Look at the people you work with.  Do they seem negative, frustrated, or unable to move forward?  Why might that be?

Are people talking to you—repeatedly—about a particular need or concern?

What makes you fill with dread?  What are you avoiding because solutions are murky or difficult? 

When thinking about traits you’d like to foster in yourself and others:

Make a list of your favorite character traits.  Install them into this sentence (I use "loyal" as a character trait in my example, because I looooooooove loyalty):

What does (loyalty) mean?  To whom are you (loyal)?  Who do you feel is (loyal) to you?  Why?  

What kind of people surround you?  Are they people who make you a better and bigger person--or an ineffective, marginalized one?   

When you are struggling in your job, and aren’t sure why:

What are you loving right now?  What is "filling you up"?

What is making you uncomfortable?

Are there ways that you—or others around you—could work more efficiently? 

Are you balancing your work with your life?  Are you doing the things you need to do to keep you healthy? 

What commitments have you made?  Are they the right commitments for you, for now, for the people you love?  Are you honoring them?

These are just a few questions to get you started on trying to figure out what is working and what isn’t.  It’s not easy being a teacher and a school principal, especially these days.  Pointed, focused  reflection on how we’re doing can help us keep balanced and tuned into our own success and challenges. 

I Didn't Expect Today

This godawful election is finally over, and like a lot of people, I didn't expect it to end as it did.

And I really didn't expect how quickly I would need to deal with my own feelings about it—my shock, my dismay, my acceptance, my grief—so I could help others deal with theirs.

It's my job, and I was honored to do it, today, of all days.  This day.  But I didn't expect it, so I wasn't ready, and I probably wasn't very good at it.

What took me aback?

I didn't expect to hold teachers while they wept.

I didn't expect to force the words, "You must get yourself together.  Because you must be your best, regular, uninjured self when you receive your students."

I didn't expect to tell them, "You must prepare yourself.  For children who are repeating what their parents say.  For it being their truth.  You must prepare for conflict and confusion in conversations."

I didn't expect to be angry.

I didn't expect that a night of restless, limited sleep, divided by bleary-eyed iPhone news updates, would leave me so ill-equipped for the emotional upheaval in myself and those around me.

I didn't expect a low-grade headache and stomachache all day.  That my eyes would fill with tears unexpectedly, quickly, and without warning.

I didn't plan to have no words to describe my swirling emotions.  There isn't a word that gathers it up, all together: fear + shock + dismay + betrayal + disgust + loss of hope + insistence upon hope.  Is there?

But I do insist upon hope.  I do.

And I believe things happen for a reason.

So there is reason in this.  Maybe not rationality, or logic, or anything that resembles predictability--but there must be a reason for all of today's unexpectedness.  And I will seek to find it, and seek to understand, and seek to accept.  And hope.

Modern Poetry and Quotes

My sophomore year of college, I reluctantly enrolled in “Modern Poetry.”  It was required for all English majors.  Obviously.  It was also the only class I had dreaded:  I’d always found poetry—the kind written by real poets—to be hazy and nebulous, and had never been able to penetrate what seemed a special, secret language found in poetry.

When the class started, I learned the poetry we would study wasn’t “modern” at all, but rather a study of very un-modern poetry.  The most “modern” poet on the syllabus was sixty years dead. 

Okay, then, I thought.  Whatever. 

The point, I discovered, was to show us the progression of poetry over time, and how it influenced poets who were writing in more modern times.

So: We started with Beowulf, then made a multi-century jump to John Keats, then spent time with Ralph Waldo Emerson, then Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson, and W.B. Yeats.

Studying these greats, I finally understood.  These poets!  So, so good!  Some of their one-liners were breathtaking, in the literal sense:  I would read a line, stop, breathe, not breathe, think, and re-read.  These lines, written some 200 years earlier, spoke to me.  Me.  A scrappy but lost college girl who was trying to manage college and a looming life. 

I now recognize that I connected so thoroughly with these poets because of their simple way to encapsulate something real, something true, and something universal that everyone can understand.  In fact, I now identify my connection with these poets as the beginning of my ongoing love affair with quotes.

Many—most?—people love quotes.  They speak to us.  They are simple, one-line zingers that capture a collective reality, something we’ve all felt or can understand. We hear a quote, and we think, Yes!  We think, Someone understands.  We think, See?  I’m not alone. 

Let’s go back to the original masters, the ones that spoke to me so many years ago from the pages of a Modern Poetry textbook. 

Yeats: 

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

And say my glory was I had such friends.

Emily Dickenson: 

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

Forever is composed of nows.

Emerson:

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Right?  Those words?  Those thoughts?  How something said a century ago can still apply to us, today, here, now? 

I imagine these expert poets, penning these truths so long ago, with charcoal and ink-dipped pen.  And still, here, today, they speak to us with their essential truths.  We still share them, pin them, post them, and Tweet them.  And most of all, in this modern world of ours, we learn from them.