east meets west

Summer vacation

As I sit in an Internet cafe in Amsterdam next to my boyfriend on our 3-week vacation to Europe, I have to say, I love being a teacher.

Pirate Pup

To John Cena--

You started at the pre-school reading level this year. Now you can read at the 3rd grade level. That is why I am giving you this book to keep. I am very proud of your hard work this year. I can't wait to work with you again in 8th grade.

-- Ms. Shyu

Beach reading

Do you think I care that we live on a mesa in the middle of the desert? Not really. I only have three students in my resource reading class this week since most of my students are either expelled, suspended or on a week-long, school-sponsored field trip. So, my three amigos and I (as we were dubbed by John Cena) went on a little adventure today. We did some beach reading.

They wore their summer's best. We forgot our sunglasses and sunscreen (but I did take the opportunity to laud the benefits of sunscreen. I live in fear of wrinkles). They picked out their reading books and I brought my own, "Guns, Germs and Steel." I brought my (only) two towels and a large sheet. I even made iced tea the night before. We were ready to make our own beach.

We walked to the edge of the mesa, a quarter mile away from the academic building. None of them had ever been to the beach before, so I tried explaining to them what it was like. The sand is usually soft, kind of like the light brown dirt we were laying our towels down on. And you didn't have to kick away the tumbleweed and scrubby grasses. You can hear the soft swish and rumble of the ocean deep in your ears, kind of like how the wind was blowing on the mesa at 30 mph. And everywhere there is blue, from the sky to the sea. They could understand that part a little better. In New Mexico, the bright, blue sky never ceases to stretch. We also happened to be on the side of the mesa that faced the lake. Yes, out of all of mesas I found myself living on, this one has a real body of water by it.

The students and I kicked off our shoes, poured ourselves cups of lukewarm iced tea and lay back on our homemade beachfront property. We faced the sky and the lake and we read our books. I explained that this was the really good part about learning to read: Actually bringing a book somewhere and reading for fun.

At the end, one of the girls turned to me, brimming with excitement. She asked, "Ms. Shyu, you should really take us to the beach. You should just take us home with you!" I just smiled. I thought back to all of the beaches I had ever taken for granted. I know that by teaching, I am (hopefully) empowering my students to attain things like beach vacations on their own. But at that moment, I would have done almost anything to give it to her just for being her. 

Life Skills

Like the slacker I am, I didn't plan any of my field trips until the week before I needed to go. They were organized in a rush, with me running around the administration buildings begging for purchase orders to be signed mere minutes before the bus left. And now, I feel so guilty for having not taken them out earlier in the school year. Because even though all we did was go to the Denny's in North Gallup, it put my kids in their element. It showed them and me why the hell we're doing all this to begin with. (Because sometimes teachers have to be reminded to.)

This is what we worked toward all year. Assessments, standardized tests and unit exams are necessary evils. But when you get down to it, the real progress that I see among my students is in their confidence. John Cena can find the type of burger that he wants in the menu. My other seventh grader knows how to lay her napkin on her lap. They can all budget. They can all figure out how to calculate 15% tip by hand. They aren't (as) afraid of asking questions and paying in public. I should have done this long ago.

The content I teach my students is dictated by their individual education plans. Those plans instruct me to teach multi-digit multiplication, addition and subtraction. Those plans tell me to make sure they read at a second grade level by the end of the year. But slowly throughout the year, I read behind the lines. Because what those plans really are telling me is that my meaty eighth grader needs to learn how to multiply because he needs to learn how to calculate the tip for his meal. And John Cena needs to learn how to read at the second grade level, because he needs to learn how to figure out the what the heck is in a Creole Scrambler.

My instruction in the resource room is to help these students learn enough to be mainstreamed back into the general education classroom. But what I knew for a long time, but didn't fully apply, was that my job is also to mainstream these students into society. Apparently that means playing "restaurant word problems" once a week (I bring in my mom's fancy Chinese embroidered table cloth, plastic dish sets, fruit, cookies and napkins) and eating at the local Denny's restaurant. Watching my students mustering up everything they learned throughout the school year according to their IEPs and applying it at Denny's was among the proudest moments for me this year. I should have done this earlier. I should have done this more. 

Inspiration to not be a bum

I've been feeling like a lousy, lazy teacher lately. It may be that I'm hit by an onslaught of end-of-the-year meetings, am overwhelmed by reams of paperwork, am looking to the end of the year and am disappointed that nearly half of my students are absent/will be absent in the coming weeks. But that's no excuse. I'm the adult here. Adults can't be bums.

But the best pick-me-up? Watching a student who is chronically sleepy, bored and who has claimed since day 1 that writing more than 5 words at a time makes him tired... write. He is using pre-writing strategies like making a web to brainstorm his ideas. He's using a topic sentence, adding supporting details AND using transitions. He's even making an effort to write in complete sentences. Today, he is writing an extensive paper on "Why students should be allowed to use vending machines at school." He is writing a persuasive paper to the school board. I've requested to the school board secretary that he be granted time to present his arguments to the school board members, who run our lives at the school but rarely interact with the students. (As administrators are apt to do, whether they want to or not.)

I'm sitting at my computer right now clacking this entry away as he sits at his desk to write. He's banished me to my desk, saying that he doesn't need help with ideas-- he'll do it himself and then he'll write it all out. He's stubborn about doing this himself. I want to remember this giddy feeling bubbling within me-- it's the egotistical feeling that surely I did something right to inspire this previously uninspired kid to express himself.

There are three more weeks of school left. He'll be heading to eighth grade within weeks. After an entire year of being uninspired, he's suddenly picking up his pace and asking me how to spell "therefore." Surely if he can rev up for the end of the school year, I can pick myself up too.

Parental Rights

I just got off the phone with my father's friend, a widow with two young children. Her youngest is 8, likes to play ball and can read 74 high-frequency words. He also has Down's Syndrome. It only occurred to me tonight as my dad was on the phone with her that I could be of help. After all, I teach Special Ed. Duh. I deal with the laws, the IEPs, the services. For some reason, it didn't dawn on me in the past that I could actually be a Special Educator to someone outside of my school and community.

So, I took the phone away from my dad, who is visiting for the weekend with his best friend Roger, and asked if I could be of any assistance to her and her son. We ended up speaking for half an hour, with me explaining some basic legal aspects of the Individualized Education Programs, how to extend her child's learning and therapies at home, and her own rights as a parent. And then I paused. There's so much to know, I said, and I so admire your dedication as a parent.

She sighed and said she's trying to learn. She's a woman who doesn't speak out much, she explained, but since her husband's death four years ago, she's had to do everything for herself and it's so hard. But she's learned with each passing year that she'll grit her teeth, put on a thick skin and speak up for her sons' rights. That means this soft-spoken woman who still bears a thick, immigrant Chinese accent drudged up the courage to go to her son's school and complain about an unkind teacher's aide. This means she's walked into her son's classroom and ask the teacher to send her son's new high-frequency words home to extend his practice. This means she has the nerve to ask at IEP meetings why her son isn't getting his individualized speech services. This means she's gone against the wills and words of teachers, administrators and therapists with PhDs. I stand in admiration of this woman who knows that she knows her child best.

And I told her so. And I told her not to back down on anything she believes her son needs, because as far as anyone at the school is concerned, she is the most important person coming through the front doors (after the kids, of course). School personnel probably won't tell her that, though. As a teacher, it can be more trouble for me to work with a parent who knows his/her rights and who will put me under the gun until I follow through with their requests. I'm overworked, underpaid and lack enough hours in a day to complete my lessons, my office paperwork and my grading. Not to mention teaching. It's tempting to marginalize parents when most of them do not know the full extent of their rights. I'm not saying that is what I try to do, or would ever want to do, but it's much easier to overlook these things when you're so over-burdened already.

I advised her to sympathize with the teachers, but to advocate for her and her child's rights to the greatest extent possible. I explained what inclusion is. I told her about Parents Reaching Out. I explained that she can call meetings and make changes to her son's IEP any damn time she wants. I explained that she can sit in on any class and any therapy session to learn what to help her son with at home. As immigrants, as a non-traditional family with a child with disabilities, as a low-middle income family in a rural community, they are disenfranchised already. When it comes down to it, we teachers are really here to serve, oftentimes in, but sometimes out of the classroom. Now we just need to let the word out.

Will work for frybread

Before even walking up to front door of the school this morning, I heard my name being called. My own John Cena was hanging out in the school lobby (where he shouldn't have been), opening and closing the front doors (which he shouldn't have been doing), calling out my name. I finally walked in the school, ready to gently admonish, when he sheepishly looked at me and said he had a surprise. We walked into my classroom and he told me to close my eyes. Really tight, OK? And then he placed a round piece of greasy, fluffy frybread on my desk. He and his sister, who is also mentally retarded, had made it. It was the most considerate thing a student has done for me.

"It's because you work so hard, Ms. Shyu!" he explained when I gave him a hug. (In the back of my mind, I was thinking that maybe I wouldn't have to work so hard if he didn't roll around on the carpet during instruction.)

But my worldly, killjoy boyfriend spoiled the moment by suggesting my students could be trying to poison me with Ex-Lax (likelier with lard).  This is from the same man who threatens to put Nair in the shampoo of his enemies. On the other hand, I don't think it would be particularly wise to eat it, as much as I appreciate (and adore) frybread. I know it's good, because my student told me so as he patted it lovingly with his bare hand. We are off to a good day.

EDIT- Apparently my Bill was not so far off with the Ex-Lax threat. He is indeed a wise and worldly man...

15

I was mortified the first time my students had the nerve to tell me that I look like a teenager. It wasn't so much that they dared speak to their elder with such disrespect, but more that I know I look like I'm 15. Eighteen in make-up and heels.

My youthful looks aren't so blatantly obvious back home in the D.C.-area where there's a lively mix of all ages. It blended in quite nicely in the college setting and didn't stand out much in the newsrooms. But this is Tohatchi and I'm the only Special Educator without a grandchild. I am one of two teachers at the school under the age of 40 and without children. The other is engaged to be married.

So when pressed to pick between the two dominant populations at the school-- students or staff-- it's almost natural for me to gravitate toward the age group less than a decade younger than me. It'd almost be natural, except that I'm the teacher. Technically, I'm in charge...

... which brings me to laugh. Because after more than 9 months of this "being in charge" business, I still feel like a kid. Sometimes as I run a meeting, I pause mentally and realize that I'M running a meeting; that these adults are listening to what I say and doing as I tell them. We must all be crazy.

I admitted this to my colleague, "Mrs. Smith", the other night when we went to dinner at Denny's together in town. She scoffed, saying she would never have imagined that with the way I carry myself and conduct my work. Plus, at 23, she recalled, she was already living on a ranch in Texas with her 4-year-old daughter and husband.

I'm quickly seeing how, like most things, age is relative. My 12-year-old student who returns to school on Mondays with mysterious bruises (that Social Services doesn't do enough about) has an older soul than mine. Perhaps I feel so especially young because compared to the ages and scars around me, I am still a kid. Regardless, Mrs. Smith and I agreed, what's key is that I'm still older and in charge on Monday.

Wrestling is like ballet

It no longer baffles me when I'm asked on a weekly basis by colleagues when I am going to get married and have babies. But apparently my life has become so pitiful that even my students are giving me advice on my personal life.

Take one of my 7th graders for instance. He advised me after school today, in all seriousness, that I should marry John Cena. "Ms. Shyu, Ms. Shyu, because, John Cena is a very nice man. Really. He is. He'll make a good husband. He's a good wrestler too. Please, will you marry him?"

Perhaps I would have taken his request a little closer to heart if he didn't proceed to jump around the room, waving his hand across his face, chanting, "You can't see me! You can't see me!" Apparently that is the very nice John Cena's tagline.

But I did take the opportunity to puncture the 12-year old's dreams by letting him in on a secret that those entertainment wrestling shows on TV he and his peers watched with devotion, were fake. This comment did not seem to deter him from running around the classroom, describing how he and his brother were going to wrestle and throw furniture around the house like John Cena and the Undertaker and goodness knows who else. So I tried to break it down a little more clearly for my student, who happens to have mental retardation.

"You know, the TV show owners, they write down what the wrestlers are going to do. It's like a TV show or a movie. It's all made up."

This didn't sway him. Or stop him from explaining how his dad and brother stole his wrestling belt from his locker so now he has to toss them from the edge of the ring. So I kept going.

"Hey, you know, those wrestlers practice for days and days on what they're going to do. They try really hard not to hurt each other. It's really like a dance. You know, wrestling is like ballet."

That got his attention a little better. "Like ballet?" he asked. I thought I got him. Perhaps I will end unnecessary juvenile violence on the Navajo Nation after all.

"Yeah, like ballet. So what you're watching on TV is really like a dance. But what you do at home will hurt, right? Because you don't have coaches telling you how to do your moves the right way, or help you if you get hurt. Because if you do ballet the wrong way, you'll get hurt. And it's the same thing with wrestling. You will get hurt."

He stands by, eyeing me.

"So is wrestling real?
"No."

"Are you going to keep wrestling when you know you're going to get hurt?"

Pause.

"I can't wait to go home, I'm going to lift my auntie's table and then I'm going to break it. And then my brother is going to steal my belt from my locker. Man... I can't wait to fight him..."

Relativity

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Salt Lake City grading third-quarter diagnostics for my students. I'm here for the annual Council for Exceptional Children conference. I'm growing more and more disappointed as the scores seem to get lower and lower. One student made 8 correct punctuation marks on an assignment that had 62 possible points.

But then I compared the scores to his second-quarter results. His punctuation skills had spiked by about 60% apparently. He had gone from 8% correct to 12.9%. Thankyouverymuch. Significant gains are relative. Good work, kid.