May: The Time of Year When I Adopt My Students' Idiosyncracies

Anyone with half a brain knows that teaching is a crazy, crazy job. At what other job would you encounter a male skipping gleefully down the hallway in front of dozens of people? (Today, 13 year old boy.)

 By May, the teaching-student boundary can sometimes get a little blurry. You have to remind them that you're not their mother, and they may not argue with you about whether or not they need to follow your directions. You give the class a direction- "OK, stay in your seats until I say it's time to go."- and they totally ignore you. Of course, you rein them in, because that's your job.

Almost every year, I notice in May that I've begun to adopt the behaviors of my most idiosyncratic students. Maybe I find myself using a word they use, or laughing in that high-pitched way that they laugh.

Just this week, I noticed that I do this thing that one of my funniest, most creative students does. He'll come up to me and start telling me a story. I'm interested for like 2 seconds, then my attention span goes. As he sees my face start to glaze over in boredom, he makes his eyes pop wide and continues to tell the story, using his eyes popping every few seconds as a way to try to keep me interested in the story by making the story seem eye-poppingly interesting. His stories aren't boring, but he gets to his point sort of slowly.

Anyway, in the past day or two I've found myself popping my eyes at people as I begin to tell a story and then realize my story is TOTALLY! BORING! (Eye pop! Eye pop!)

And I think, oh no, here it goes again- I've adopted my students' behaviors.

Emergency Preparedness: Cosleeping, Cheezits, Chocolate

Welcome to the May 2013 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Emergency Preparedness
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared their plans to keep their families safe. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
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We live in Stamford Connecticut, a city on Long Island Sound.  Hurricanes are usually tropical storms by the time they get to us- more of an annoyance with power outages- but in October 2012 we could tell Hurricane Sandy would be serious.  We knew it would strike Monday, October 29th, so on Saturday I sent my husband out to look for a generator.  I had a freezer full of breastmilk and I was going to protect it all costs!  

All of the hardware stores were out, so he swung by the Honda Motorsports store... just as a truckload of small generators was about to be unloaded.  He was second in line, and we knew we were very fortunate to locate a generator with only a couple hours of effort.  The line was 30 deep before he left.  

I’m a teacher.  School was cancelled on Monday in anticipation of the storm, so we had plenty of time to get last minute snacks.  That’s usually the extent of our storm prep: Cheezits and chocolate. And batteries and flashlights, of course.
   
We were optimistic that we wouldn’t get hit too bad; we’re over 4 miles from the Sound so I wasn’t worried about flooding.  We often don’t even lose power during bad storms, unlike the areas north of us that have more trees and consequently lose power for longer periods of time when storms knock down power lines.  Still, I knew we’d probably lose power during this one.
 
On Monday the weather was fine around noon; I actually did a call in interview with my friend Christopher Gabriel, a host of radio station WDAY in Fargo North Dakota.  (He was my neighbor when I lived in Rye NY 15 years ago and one of the funniest, smartest people I know.) “It’s not too windy out, actually,” I told him.  We wrapped up our interview around 1, and almost immediately, the wind got scary.  By 3pm the trees were roaring, and by 5pm the power went ZAP. Gone.  

Husband has some backup power for computer/TV, so we had an hour of TV after power was out.

This article "Residents abandon homes, shore up against Sandy" from a local paper shows photos of Monday rapidly going downhill. The park I jog in was already under 2 feet of water before the Hurricane even made landfall.

Setting up the generator 

We got the generator going to power the fridge (my breastmilk!) and the TV (my husband’s pride and joy).  We had one lamp on and spent the afternoon and evening watching news coverage of the rising waters in NYC. It felt very strange to be able to watch other people lose power and get flooded while we websurfed and watched TV.  It was surreal... especially when we saw images of the NYC tunnels and subways flooding.

As night fell, we dragged the queen-sized mattress into the living room so the baby and I could cosleep in comfort, and we set up a cot for the 3 year old.  I wanted to sleep with the kids in the living room, the part of the house furthest from the tall trees in our backyard.  My husband was quite happy to stay in the king-sized bed in the back bedroom... right under the giant tree.  The man loves his creature comforts.

 
Cosleeping comes in handy in emergencies- if you and your kids need to sleep somewhere different (as we have other times when we’ve lost power or heat), your cosleeping child can adjust quite easily since YOU are their familiar sleep environment!  My favorite picture from the storm is of me nursing the baby (10 months) on the mattress.  The wind thankfully calmed down during the night so I was able to sleep without fear of a tree crashing down on us. Falling trees did kill several people in the region and that’s always my biggest fear during any storm.

Redding Road Race Review 2013

Today I ran the Redding Road Race, my first race ever.  There was a half-marathon and a 7 mile race.  I ran the 7 mile and a friend ran the half-marathon, which started first.    

The half starts with a loop of the farm. This is the end of the loop.  My friend is in the blue tank!

Race tips and highlights:

1. The course is hilly but not too bad.  I ran the 7 miler despite only having ever run 2.5 miles before that. I chugged along and did the whole thing, slow and steady.   By slow, I mean I may have only finished ahead of 5 or 6 other people.  You don't get much slower than me. 

My view: sorta lonely. A strong self-image comes in handy.

2. My favorite thing about the race was that when I was about halfway done-- jogging on quiet roads, with a couple people behind me and a few waaaaay up ahead that I could see faaaaaar up in the distance-- a bossy man on a bike rode by and said, "Stay to the left please.  Half-marathon leaders are coming through.  About 300 yards back."  I perked up.  I was gonna have company!  Sure enough, a fleet-footed guy blew past a minute later.  
    "Good job!" I said. 
    "Thanks- you too," he huffed back.  
Soon I was surrounded by HORDES of people- fast people! Running near me... for the rest of the race!  The last few miles were so much fun.  Not only did a bunch of the half-marathonners lap me (trailing glory in their wake that rubbed off on me), at another point, the course doubled back on itself, so people from both distance races were running in the other direction!  I went from being alone to being surrounded by the energy of hundreds of other runners.  I was so thankful to the race planners for doing that.  I can't even tell you how encouraging it was to not be left all alone in the back even though I was clearly one of the slowest people out there.  I still got to run with everyone else!  That's crazy... crazy awesome!

Before I started the race, I wasn't sure I would be able to finish.  Not only had I never run anywhere near 7 miles, two days ago my arch started aching while I was running.  I told myself I'd alternate walking and running if my arch really hurt.  Fortunately it only ached a bit, and I just took it slow.  I didn't take a single walk break, even on the hills.  Once I hit mile 5, I knew I was gonna have no trouble running the whole thing.  I listened to my body and it said, "Girl, you got this! Take your time and keep going."  

My finish, to cheering crowds!  Thanks Jon S. for the pic!

I achieved my two goals: finish the race, and finish before my friend who did the half-marathon so I could cheer her at the finish.  I may be slow, but I'm proud of  the progress I've made in my running since I started last Thanksgiving.  Running doesn't come easily for me. I'm not light or slim-hipped and I have terrible feet.  In January I injured my Achilles heel (how many ways can I find to injure myself?) near the end of my first Couch to 5K program and had to take 2 months off.  That sucked, but I joined a local Fit4Mom 5K program a couple months ago and carefully got back into running.  Getting back up to 2.5 miles with that group made me able to run this 7 mile race today.  Slow and steady...

The Day I Got Called Justin Bieber

It's very common for (and terribly charming when) students accidentally call their teachers "Mom," but even I was surprised when one of my students called me "Justin Bieber" last week.

My students are writing features, and this student is writing about paparazzi.  She said, "Now, Mrs. R., I'm NOT going to write about Justin Bieber"-- (I'd forbidden them, even though they begged me, to write features on Justin Bieber)-- "but recently he's had some run-ins with the paparazzi, so is it OK if I just MENTION him."
Me: "Oh yeah, sure, sure."

Then, I hauled out my fancy new iPad-blue tooth keyboard set up, and the kids got all excited, saying, "What IS that? Is that a tiny laptop?"
And the student writing the paparazzi article craned her neck to get a good look at my iPad setup and said in an jokingly exasperated voice to me, "--Justin Bieber!" and then shook her head in confusion.
Me: "--Did you just call me Justin Bieber?"
Student: "I meant to say Mrs. R.!  I was-- never mind!"

So that's the story of how I got called "Justin Bieber."  I doubt many people- especially women- can brag about the same!  I must admit I found it very flattering.

Work-Life-Writing Balance

This fascinating NYTimes opinion piece, "Why Gender Equality Stalled," goes into (among other things) how American families have very little help in balancing work with the demands of family life.

Even in my more-family-friendly-than-most-jobs job as a teacher, I find it very challenging to meet the demands of my work with doing everything I need to do for my family.  Having young children is very intense; not only do they need you physically, you are also their emotional center. It's pretty much a given that if they are awake, they are on you!  After being separated from them all day, I like that... but this is a very demanding time in life, I feel.

I am thankful that I went into teaching; I like having more frequent vacations than the average job so I can be with my children.  Something that's true, and that I think about quite often, is that I went into teaching because I felt it would be the best job to have when I had kids.  And even if I didn't meet a good husband, I was going to have kids as a single mom.  That's how much I wanted kids.  I chose this job, along with other reasons, like it's fun and rewarding, because I knew it was a job that I'd be better able to balance with kids if I needed to be a single mom.

Greedy Breastfeeding Mothers Featured on NPR

I whipped up this letter in response to a really terrible NPR piece on breast pumps.

Dear Mr. Siegel and Ms. Chace,
I'm amazed that this piece was deemed good enough to air on NPR.  You portray breastfeeding mothers as greedy people trying to get a luxury good for free.  Your economist's opinions were promoted over actual information by breastfeeding and health experts.
 "CHACE: But our economist, Katherine Baicker, isn't so sure that eliminating the cost of the breast pumps really induces much extra breastfeeding. Rather, she thinks most of the money spent will go towards people who would have been breastfeeding anyway."
What is the evidence she has for this?
"BAICKER: So the question is whether the value that those people get from the breast pumps is worth the cost in terms of increased health spending and increased premiums."
Actually, that's not the question.  The question is, is a breastpump, which allows a mother to give her baby the healthiest food possible, full of antibodies and cancer-fighting cells, as important as other aspects of the baby’s medical care?  Of course it is.

Studying Early Man's Cave Art AKA Cured Meat

My students thought this was the famous "red disc" 40,000 year old cave art.
I said, "Uh, guys, that's SALAMI."
Them: "What? Oh.  I thought it looked a little weird."
Then I told them to add the slide to their Powerpoint presentation to the class and see if the class figured it out.  Of course, the class missed it, because that's just how sixth graders work.  In the fall, they are still very literal.  If you show them a slice of salami photoshopped on a wall and tell them it's cave art, they will believe you.  They will also believe way weirder stuff than that.  That's why teaching sixth grade is so fun.