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#memorablemomentsineducation #33: For those keeping track at home (i.e. no one), I missed a post last week. Since this is the beginning of fall break, there’ll be no more posts this week. Then you’ll have a reprieve as I transition all these moments to my blog instead.

One of my work spouses got married last night, so in honor of his official nuptials I thought it appropriate to remember why and how we teachers need a good support network!

Over the years I’ve had many work “significant others,” and whether it be a same-sex marriage or a heterosexual union, those relationships have provided the emotional, professional, and intellectual succor I’ve needed to be a teacher. Just like at home where it’s essential my husband and I discuss and support one another as we figure out how to parent our own kids, teachers need that kind of unconditional care for one another to determine how best to meet the needs of our students.

Many of my work wives and husbands have coached with me, taught the same subject as I, or had the same students. Teaching can be fairly isolating work, often like standing on an island with just your volleyball Wilson to bounce ideas off of as the sharks circle and you wonder who or what might rescue you. To realize a friend down the hall knows the student you’re trying desperately to reach or a colleague has also attempted to teach 1984 to millennials who don’t recognize a world where personal privacy could be protected is to realize you are not alone. While it’s always rewarding to feel you, and you alone, can create a rich environment where students thrive under your tutelage and care, it can be equally rewarding to know there are others who do the same, who feel the work as intensely as you do, and are willing to listen to you discuss it so as to spare the actual family at home who could care less.

While I’ve experienced a few separations over the years due to retirements and moves, I know we’re still tightly knit friends and colleagues. Thank you to all of them who’ve made it possible for me to leave much of my work at school and come home to a life with more energy and time where it matters most.

#memorablemomentsineducation #32: Everything I’ve ever needed to know about planning a class period, I (should have) learned in yoga class.

I’ve been a yogi for almost as long as I’ve been a teacher; looking back, I’ve seen so many different teachers, styles, sun B series that I could claim to be an expert. But an expert would have figured out long ago how similar a 47-minute period is to a well-organized yoga practice.

Here’s what I’ve got: Start every class with a little breathing, center on what’s important, and warm up. Once your breath has gotten you going, take a moment to set some kind of intention–why are we here and what are we hoping to accomplish? Then dig in and suffer just enough to focus on what’s important, all with the guidance of your teacher. Repeat your moves at your own pace to get a little bit better, a little more flexible, and then reward yourself with those heart-openers which always seem to start in the hips.

And, of course, the best part? Finish off the work with a tiny NAP before closing class and thanking everyone for being there and being them.

I thought my dedicated readers deserved something short and sweet. You’re welcome and namaste for reading all my posts. (You have no idea what it means to me to have a small audience and to have some motivation to write for real!)

#memorablemomentsineducation #31: I was hired for my first teaching job over the phone. I interviewed well enough that Keith offered me the job (I’m sure with a little help from Jeff Stines), and I had six weeks or so to pack up all my stuff, buy a car, find an apartment, and move to Denver. The prospect of teaching at-risk students at an alternative school excited me–how naïve to believe I could be ready at age 21!

I drove through Denver on my way to Arizona a couple weeks after getting the job, so I stopped by my new school to meet some people. My principal gave me a piece of advice that day which still sticks with me–“Your job is to take risks. Whatever we’ve done for these kids in the past hasn’t worked, so you need to try whatever you can to reach them.” At the time I didn’t recognize what a gift I’d received, but Keith set me on a path that has led me well for more than two decades. Too many teachers are not trusted, much less empowered, to take care of their students, to determine the appropriate curricula for their students, to recognize the immediate needs of their students, and to act on all of it. In a meeting today we discussed how we can create a more collaborative environment where educators and students embrace vulnerability and risk-taking. In our discussion, I recognized how I can try new things and remembered why I’m willing, all from one comment made by one man years ago.

Two weeks after I met my principal, he quit to take a job, a promotion, in another district. (Interestingly enough, he would eventually come back years later as a director of high schools.) This second act meant four of us (with a combined 4 years of teaching experience) would open a new school site without a leader. I took charge to build student schedules, order books and technology, and plan first-day-of-school activities. My colleagues jumped in with their own expertise to ensure we had a functioning school building, textbooks and supplies, and policies in place to make all this happen. From that day forward (whether legitimate or not), I believed I was in charge, maybe not of everything, but at least of the areas within my sphere of influence. Four days after the school year began, we got a real principal who came out of retirement to lead us for the next three years. This lovely man willingly indulged our naïve belief we were in charge, and we built a school out of adventure, risk, honesty, and love.

Even though I left that school (sadly) after seven years, I know the words and actions of my very first principal, who was never my actual principal, can be held responsible for all the good and bad that comes from my willingness to take risks, with my career and for my students.

#memorablemomentsineducation #30:
I seem pretty proud of my profession, right? And I think I should be, but teachers certainly feel the disdain of their community from time to time.

One of those particular times for me, I was driving to pick up my kid from daycare. I’d rolled through a stoplight, turning right, because I was aware the opposite traffic was turning left and no one was coming into my lane. A police officer was sitting at the light across the way, saw me do it, and promptly pulled me over.

When the officer sidled up to my window and asked me if I knew what I had done, I explained rather contritely that, yes, I’d run through that light. He then asked me for my license and registration, and I spent the new few minutes fumbling through my glovebox trying to find my papers. In the meantime, he walked back to his car and ran my license through his computer. While I knew there hadn’t been any tickets in my recent past, I started freaking out a little because I discovered I didn’t have proof of insurance on me.

When the officer returned, he asked me a couple questions, I explained I couldn’t find my insurance, and somehow we started talking about what I did. I explained I taught high school. He asked, “what subject?” “English,” I answered proudly, to which he replied, “Oh, too bad it’s not something useful like math.” Now, at this point I had a couple options—I could ignore his rude, shortsighted comment in hopes he’d let me off with a warning or I could react honestly and risk making matters worse. I didn’t even take the time to consider my response; instead, I said, “Ouch…that’s harsh,” and I meant it. He startled at my answer, probably not realizing he’d insulted me until I made it evident he had. With no apology, he quickly decided to let me off the hook and even more quickly got back into his cruiser.

You know, it’s hard enough to be or to do anything whole-heartedly, but to then open yourself up to that kind of ridicule or misunderstanding is too much. This moment hurt so much because my district was in the midst of exploring different ways to compensate different types of teachers–math and science teachers (i.e. “useful” subjects) should be paid more than those teaching in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade. I know people on the “outside” of education believe schools must be like any other business where some employees bring more than others, but we on the inside don’t recognize those differences the same way. Obviously that cop had no connection to his English classwork or his English teachers; maybe he had a math teacher who took care to make the material relevant and important. But each of us could say that about any number of different teacher-types. None of us is more or less “useful” than the other. We’re not interchangeable or extraneous. Our diverse interests, personalities, and paths are how we meet the varying needs of our students. As Will Hunting says, “One, don’t do that.” Don’t dismiss what someone does simply because it’s not what you want to do.

#memorablemomentsineducation #29:
I’ve discovered I have a complicated relationship with Huckleberry Finn. Watching the film The Peanut Butter Falcon recently reminded me of the book, the character, and my past as a man and his new buddy with Down Syndrome head south on a raft in search of freedom. The many allusions to the book don’t end there, and my well-trained English teacher antennae perked up as the movie unfolded. But I have to admit I wasn’t always so sophisticated, people!

I first read the book in Mrs. Watson’s sophomore honors English course where I encountered the crazy literary theories English teachers cook up to torture their students (or so my own students have claimed). Mrs. Watson would lean across her student desk, grabbing its edge as she assaulted us with intense passion–and a little spittle–all conjured from the mysteries of Twain and his apparent symbolism. I remember believing she’d lost her mind when she told us $40 was symbolic of man’s inhumanity to man.

Fast forward five years, and I was taking a course in American literature, in Dublin of all places, and I was assigned to read this seminal text again. This time, my Irish professor discussed the irony of Huck and Jim floating into the Deep South in hopes of achieving freedom for a runaway slave. Being the only American in the room, and thus an expert by comparison, I silently scoffed at their ignorance of the obvious, yet missed, fact that South is the direction the Mississippi flows….it’s not like they had a motor on that raft!

So when a decade had passed, and I’d spent enough time teaching to develop some wacky ideas of my own about what authors are doing behind the curtain of common characters and expected plot twists, the fates decided it time to take a stab at teaching Huck Finn myself. As I reread and relearned what happened in this funny, disturbing little novel mistakenly lauded as a children’s book, I kept going back to all those wild ideas I’d heard from teachers of English Past. Not only did I recall what I had been taught, I realized there might be some merit to all of it. Soon enough, I was grabbing the edge of my own desk, trying desperately to point out the genius of what Twain was doing while my students directed me to Facebook pages created by other freshmen who’d been similarly put upon by these cockamamie ideas invented out of thin air by teachers wanting to beat literature to death. By this time, though, I knew enough to just smile and nod because what I teach you today may not immediately resonate, but the seed is planted, it will germinate in the dark, it will eventually grow towards the light, and it, too, will blossom into you understanding what the hell I was talking about!

(Or at least this is what I tell myself all those time when my students doubt my obvious wisdom…)

#memorablemomentsineducation #28:
Yesterday, I woke from a dream in which someone was speaking fluent French, and I understood almost every word of it. What does that say about my brain and what it has retained over the years? More than we ever realize.

Right after I graduated from high school, I traveled to France on an educational tour with my teacher and several classmates. I remember Madame Swetz telling us we might end up dreaming in French if we were lucky and immersed enough in the experience. I’m not sure I reached that pinnacle, but I do recall rich moments from that trip 25 years ago!

We traveled on a large bus with two other school groups from other parts of the U.S. One of the other teachers, a man who reportedly married a real live Frenchwoman, had the worst French accent I’ve ever heard. He would stand at the front of the bus and bark out instructions or information in a butchered form of the language I’d come to love. I even invented a sentence where I would mock his Midwestern drawl superimposed on lovely French phrases by saying it to my friends: “J’ai perdu mes cartes postales a huit heures moin le quart.” God, I can be quite the snob…I suppose that explains my affinity for the French in the first place!

On that journey, I also made a new friend, Eliza, whose parents mailed her care packages while we were gone. I’ll never forget her sharing a newspaper clipping from her mom that included book reviews for books she might like. I’m sure at the time I thought, what kind of mom is this? Who takes the time to cut out reviews and send them to her kid who’s going to be gone for just three weeks? But I remembered one of those books, and years later when I became a teacher at an alternative school, I sought out the title–Daniel Pennac’s Better Than Life–because he tells the story of trying to reach at-risk youth in Paris through literature. The book became a foundation for my teaching philosophy. If you’ve ever seen a list of the 10 Rights of the Reader, then you know his work as the rights were first introduced there.

Don’t ask why I’m discussing this particular moment now, but I just love to know there’s a bit of serendipity to learning. Sometimes learning is built on being in the right place at the right time, open to the novelty of experience.

#memorablemomentsineducation #27:
In Colorado’s public schools, we observe a unique holiday around October 1st every year called October Count Day. On this special day, schools account for the kids in their classrooms, and those numbers dictate the funds allocated to districts to educate their students. Attendance matters so much on this day schools will trot out all kinds of tactics to get kids to show. (I’m sure there’s a similar audit in other states, I just don’t have much knowledge of what they look like elsewhere.)

Depending on what chart or source you consult, you’ll find a different answer as to where we rank in public school funding. Suffice it to say, though, we show up in the bottom ten states, alongside our neighbors Arizona and Utah and those notoriously underfunded places like Alabama.

On this year’s October Count Day, after our administrative assistant came on the intercom to remind us for the fourth time to take “positive attendance,” one of my freshman students chirped, “Oh, yeah, we have to take attendance so the teachers get paid.” At first glance, that comment might sound supportive and “woke” as she gets the struggles teachers face, but know this particular quip was delivered with a good measure of teenage sass and no understanding of why we take October Count so seriously. I calmly responded (okay, maybe not calmly) that our count has very little to do with my pay and everything to do with their education, the resources they utilize, the services they receive, the quality of instruction they experience. We discussed what that money pays for, and I tried to impress upon all my students the fact they attend a pretty great high school, especially when you think about what’s available in other parts of our amazing state.

But, what really irked me about her comment was how it represents just a glimpse into the problems of our even larger conversation about public school funding. If you asked any Coloradoan what the most confusing state issue we face is, it would have to be how in the world we fund anything! The system makes no sense with amendments, acts, and referendums that have been passed over the years to help the situation but have only made it worse. No lay person can understand it, so in that vacuum of understanding, we insert assumptions about where we believe the problem lies.

Last spring’s teacher walkout or even strikes across the country seem to suggest the problem stems from low teacher pay (oh, and it does!), but really that’s simply a symptom of a larger issue with fully funding our public schools and our youth’s future. The reason we see the problem manifest in teacher pay is because teachers are the only ones who seem to be saying anything about our unwillingness to do anything about our schools. While I get that I’m in the trenches and see it firsthand, this problem is one that must be owned by our parents, our communities, our business leaders, and especially our politicians!! We all should care about our public schools no matter whether you work in one or send a child to one because a functioning democracy depends upon a functioning electorate, which can come only from a guaranteed, free, comprehensive public education!

Stop thinking we raise our voices so we can get paid more and start realizing we know and see how our students deserve more!

(P.S. Colorado voters, you have a chance to make a small dent in this problem by voting YES on Proposition CC. Educate yourselves, your neighbors, your friends because this matters.)

#memorablemomentsineducation #26:
Parent/Teacher conference season is upon us, and I’ve had some doozies! I actually miss conferences now that I don’t get to do them. One minute you’re getting chewed out and the next you have a mom crying about how important you are to her kid. I never knew what I was gonna get, but I was invariably guaranteed some eye-opening experiences and a chance to gain insight on how my students ended up a certain way.

You won’t believe this story, but I swear this is exactly how it went down.

I must have been in my second or third year of teaching, so let’s just say I had no clue how to talk to parents, especially those who’d lived long enough to have teenage children, given that I wasn’t much past those teen years myself. The dad of a young woman–sixteen years old, who’d already lived through two abortions, some drug addiction, and countless other issues–showed up like any other affluent, white, middle-aged man to talk about his daughter. He obviously cared about her and her education, enough to leave his VP-level corporate job early so he could meet his daughter’s teachers. At the time, we held individual conferences in our classrooms (something that most schools don’t do anymore for fear or likelihood an altercation may ensue with no one else present). I’m sure I had only a couple conferences that night, so I was excited to talk to somebody, anybody! I love gabbing it up with parents (at least when they’re not mad at me), and this dad and I were chatting away when I happened to ask whether his daughter had recovered from her illness since she’d had a stomachache earlier and spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom. That was all I said, and within an instant he told me, “I have to go.” He stood up and walked out the door. I sat stunned, wondering what I’d said.

Later, I shared the incident with my much wiser colleague Jules, and he mused that I had unknowingly broken the news to this father that his 16-year-old daughter was pregnant again. It wasn’t until then that moment the thought even crossed my mind, and yet it was so obvious and I was so naive.

#memorablemomentsineducation #25:
Not gonna lie…I’m starting to feel the pressure of producing something worthy and pithy for these things, and if I cover every day this school year with a moment, I’ve got 156 to go! So this moment is brought to you by my current preoccupation–watching the most recent episode of This Is Us on my DVR.

Last year, I met a senior girl who had no shame about discussing her obsession with this TV show. After I was willing to admit I, too, watched this show, accepting and even inviting the fact I would cry during every episode, we developed a bit of a bond. Every Wednesday in class, we ran through the ins and outs of the episode, what happened to the characters, and predictions for where the story arc was headed. It helps that the class is focused on Narrative Art in Lit and Film, so we had tons of fodder for our conversations as this drama loves to play with narrative structure! Part way through the year, another show debuted that piqued our interests, which meant we we had twice as much to discuss!

This fall, my student went off to college, and our shows were on air again. The best part? She emailed me, Mrs. Holladay, just to share what she noticed about the season premieres. That’s what stories, whether visual or written, do for us–they bring us closer together, they give us a means by which to connect, and they enable us to share our loves and interests. That’s one example of what makes my job pretty great!

#memorablemomentsineducation #24: I’ve been kicked out of class more than one time. In 5th grade, I was removed from class for flipping off my teacher.

I can’t remember who started it, but Jeremy Ryals and I were amused by the act of rubbing our middle fingers between our eyebrows for quite some time—like 20 minutes time—until eventually our poor student teacher could no longer act like it was accidental. I was sent to the teacher’s office in our pod for the remainder of the afternoon. When my mom came to run our Girl Scout troop meeting, she got to hear all about what I had done, but she waited to unload her wrath until we got in the car. I can still describe every detail of the dash in a Buick Skylark circa 1985 because that is where I stared while my mother screamed at me about my embarrassing and ridiculous actions.

To this day, I can’t tell you why I did it. I actually liked our student teacher. I don’t think I could say I did it to impress Jeremy either. It’s just one of those moments when my ill-formed frontal lobe hadn’t yet stopped me from starting something and continuing it until an adult stepped in to say “no.” As a teacher, I have watched students behave in similar, yet perplexing, ways where no one can pinpoint the cause or logic behind any of it. I guess I’m just happy to know that Miss O’Connor stuck with teaching and nothing we did that day prevented her from believing in a future career.

Because we all have those days, those days where you think it’d be better to become a bank teller, as my officemate puts it, or own a flower shop, as my colleague explains it. We all have our backup plans, if for no other reason than to get us through the days when students are just idiots….without really meaning to be, myself included.