Nebraska: Illuminating Light Show

Last night, I was minding my own business working on Spanish text books for my job as a teacher next year when to my (non-television watching) surprise the tornado siren started to call out. I grabbed a few things (lap top, candle, beverage, and calendar....funny how we prioritize things in an emergency) and headed for the basement. Five minutes later the alarm fell silent and Jay came home from his softball game to find me crouched in our damp, moldy basement. The imminent danger gone, Jay and I headed to our front porch to witness the spectacular show of dizzying clouds moving in unnatural directions and lightning that seemed to stretch like spiderwebs across the bottom of the system. We managed to capture a few images as seen below. Enjoy!

Summer creeps in like a really slow snail.

Graduation has passed and I find myself spending time working on a few new projects these days. With the unseasonably cold wet weather keeping me out of my gardens, I have taken time to create two new websites for Jay's Woods and my own "professional" online-portfolio. Currently you can find the sites at the following links:

http://senoritastetson.weebly.com

http://jayswoods.weebly.com

Eventually we hope to get Jay's site linked up to his domain name of jayswoods.com, but for now I hope you are able to enjoy what we've made. As always if you have any feedback positive or negative on either site, I would sincerely appreciate it.

I hope everyone else's summer is starting out warmer than mine! Ciao...

Graduation!

This Saturday, May 10th, 2008 I received my Master's of Arts degree from the University of Nebraska. Thanks to all who have been a part of my life thus far. None of this would have been possible without you!

T minus 15 days

Due to having only two weeks left until my final presentation of my summative work for my Master's in education and less than 6 weeks until graduation the odds are good that I won't be posting again until May. Wish me luck and until then...

“You’ve got to work for your supper.”

When I was a child my dad used to regale me with lengthy stories that proposed two dominating themes. One was the trials and tribulations of the wicked witch of the west and the other centered on the numerous values of hard work. The wicked witch was like any other good bed time story. It was just spooky enough for me to beg for more so that he wouldn’t leave my bedside, but PG enough that I could still get to sleep. In contrast, his stories on hard work could keep me up for hours on end worrying that I wasn’t living up to some standard he had set for me without my permission or my understanding.

“Amy you don’t know how easy you’ve got it. When I was your age things were a lot more difficult.”

This is how my dad got rolling. I knew I was in for a doozy as soon as these two fateful sentences popped out of his mouth. The stern scowl on his face and the exasperated look of disappointment in a daughter who didn’t yet understand that life was work, and hard work at that, were enough to put me on the defense.

“When I was your age, I had to walk five miles to school across a marsh and through the woods in the worst of weather to get to my one room school house. Do you know what they did to us if we hadn’t done our homework?”

He would taunt me with the possible what ifs and “horror” stories of his youth. It was clear that I was not supposed to take my ten minute walk to school for granted, that I should be willing to do my homework without the risk of capital punishment because he had gone through the worst for me already.

“I want a better future for you so you don’t have to go through things I did.”

My inner-child rolled her eyes. I had heard the same mantra over and over again. What was he really trying to say? All I knew was that apparently my dad’s life had been difficult and traumatic and I couldn’t fix that for him. Hard work was not appealing to an eleven year old who had dreams of performing on Star Search and moving to Hollywood to live with Kirk Cameron. My desire for instant gratification most certainly did not match up with the struggle he proposed as reality.

“Back in the dark ages, we didn’t have TV. I didn’t get an allowance. If I wanted something for myself, I had to work for it.”

And work is what my father was good at. Growing up he was always home last and tired from a long day of crunching numbers at his accounting job. On weekends when we went fishing the experience was mostly work and very little play. I’d ask if we could go swimming at the beach and the response was frequently determined by whether or not we had caught any fish.

“You’ve got to work for your supper.”

......................................................................................................

This story only scratches the surface of all the encounters I had with my father on the subject of hard work, but it does speak to the nature of the dilemma. I was a child who didn’t want to hear about hard work and he was a man who knew that hard work was necessary to future gain. In retrospect, I can look at myself as a foolish child. I didn’t get it then, but today I most certainly carry the same cultural values as my father.

My dad’s espousal of values does not give him hero status. I do not believe that he had the proper tools to truly demonstrate why he thought hard work was important. Lecturing me over and over on the same point never gave me the experience I needed to understand where he was coming from. It was only years later when I realized that I too had the capability to work hard and the ability to see its’ benefits that I truly understood what he meant. The key was that I had to experience the concept on my own.

Nonetheless hard work is a value that my culture holds as extremely important. Whether it was my father admonishing me about how easy my life was compared to his or my mother telling me that I had to help weed the garden before I could play. These sentiments were usually in accord with what I learned at school. Despite tracking practices that led students to believe that intelligence was innate, we were never given the impression that school would be easy. In fact my school prided itself on being difficult.

As a child, I frequently joked with my dad that he was a “plugger”. There was a comic in the Boston Globe each day that detailed the life of a dog that always worked hard, but never saw much reward. He just kept plugging away. There was a distinct disconnection between what my father preached and my viewpoint that his own hard work was futile. It was hard for me as an eight year old to see the connection between the endless hours at work “bean counting” and the roof over my head, the food in my stomach, the cleats for soccer practice, and so on. My father did not always enjoy his work, but he did it so that his family could live comfortably and so that I would have better opportunities than he.

The disconnection that existed for me as a child did not fully integrate itself until I was in my early twenties. One might account this to my own cognitive development, but I believe that his education of me could have been done in a different way. Perhaps if I had been able to experience the meaning behind his values, I would have learned them sooner. Similarly in school systems there can be disconnect between preached values and the way that they are taught. Nieto and Bode point to this contradiction as they state,

When schools are not cared for, when they become fortresses rather than an integral part of the community they serve, and when they are holding places instead of learning environments the contradiction between goals and realities is a vivid one. The chasm between ideal and real is not lost on students. (p.139)

While Nieto and Bode are also speaking to the broader contradiction of the education system, I feel their point rings true for my learning. The more “real life” experience there is in education the more connections students can make. Authenticity creates an education worth fighting for and one that students can engage in.

Today my father’s work and message resonate in my life. I have learned through experience that the things I work for mean more to me. I have seen that my education, formal or informal, means more when I take note of the process I went through to get their. As a parent now, I hear myself telling the same stories my father once told me. I regale my step-daughter with stories that start “Back in the dark ages…” just as he did. I try to make sure that she too takes part in the work that goes on around the house. In addition to stories, we try to engage in real life practical applications that show results. Instead of being the authoritarian, I try to be the coach. I hope these skills will benefit me in my future role of educator.

Citation:

Nieto, S., & Bode, P. (2008). Affirming diversity: the sociopolitical context of multicultural education. Boston: Pearson, Allyn and Bacon.

Vignettes from the particular:

What is academic success? How have ethnic minority children faired in my experience?

One night volunteering at Bettie’s Place, a women’s soup kitchen, I passed out crayons and other art supplies to tired, wary children while their mothers hounded me for packs of cigarettes. Interestingly the art supplies had been donated by children from local schools while the sought after cigarettes were supplied by the shelter.

At my college being an ethnic minority meant you were driven, brilliant, and often poor enough to qualify for financial aide. Laura was a gifted and passionate woman. Her scholarship was ripped out from underneath her the second year of college because her family made slightly more than the established poverty line. She was sent packing despite her hard work.

I befriended an eight year old who struggled with his school experience. He often got into scuffles with his peers and had a hard time listening to school authority figures. At home Mark was sweet, curious, and yet sullen. Three years before I met him his mother had passed away leaving Mark, his younger sister Christina, and his father behind. Matt often watched after his sister as dad, the man whom he blindly trusted, made and sold methamphetamines out of the garage.

While waiting tables, I became friends with a Colombian man named Eduardo. We bonded through my faltering Spanish and his supportive encouragement. He always took the time to inquire how I was and I tried to respond in kind as we worked our respective jobs. Eduardo has a Ph.D., but cleans dishes every night.

I met Dante who had given up on every type of institutional system and instead relied on gangs for support. He was one of the most business savvy people I’ve ever met in my life. In spite of huge cultural differences, we became friends. This 6’, 250 lb., heavily tattooed, California gang leader carried on philosophical conversations about respect with little ole’ me. We found a common ground.

A Sudanese family registered five of their children at a local school where I was employed. During recess, we were required to walk around the playground for exercise. Dana the youngest and most vulnerable of the girls frequently needed reassurance and comfort during this time. She would approach me teary-eyed and sniffling looking for a partner to walk with. Her peers didn’t know how to console a lifetime of heartache. Neither did I. We would walk hand in hand slowly and sadly around the playground.

Altered reality: Diversity and my hometown community

In my hometown racial diversity was not a reality with the exception of Monday through Friday from 7 am until 3 pm. Our school system was so economically and ethnically white that only a handful of local college professor’s exotic children could be construed as minorities. Fortunately due to the good sense of civil rights activists in the year of 1966 a program was created that changed the racial climate and make up of many suburban towns in Massachusetts. The mission of the Metco program is as follows:

…to provide, through professional leadership and voluntary citizen action, the development and promotion of quality integrated educational opportunities for urban and suburban students in the Greater Boston community and to work towards the expansion of a collaborative education program with the Boston and suburban school systems. http://www.metcoinc.org/aboutus.htm

In short, every year about 30 racially diverse students hailing from poor inner-city communities would make their way on a long bus ride to my little town in search of better “integrated” educational opportunities. Graduation rates, standardized test scores, and college enrollment suggest that the academic component has been achieved, but I still find myself wondering at what cost to the abandoned inner-city community, and more importantly to the developing identity of each child.

In elementary school, Metco kids were just like any other kid as far as I was concerned. The only difference perhaps was that I wasn’t able to go over to their houses and play after school. Middle school brought greater awareness of differences. My peers from Boston were almost always visibly tired after their 5 am bus ride from Boston. I didn’t know any of the music they listened to, I wore different clothes, and my after school experiences were quite unlike their own. With adolescence came acknowledgment and hyper awareness of these differences and more.

Late middle and early high school brought a new beast: academic competition and labeling. Students were filtered into low, middle, and high achieving groups. While we all struggled to differentiate and integrate ourselves, the school began to reinforce the negative judgments we made upon one another. Penelope was a smart girl and a know-it-all, Jonah was funny, but a trouble maker, Arnold was a little weird and sometimes made people uncomfortable. The school began to separate us off into our future social stratus spheres. Have you ever noticed how all the AP students sit at the same lunch table and the remedial math kids hang out together after school in the smoking corner?

The same was true for Metco kids. I can remember one and only one Metco student I ever saw in any of my AP classes. In addition, she was socially isolated from her Metco peers. While most of the Metco students had their own chosen area, sitting in their own corner of the cafeteria, this student sat with a table of similarly tracked white girls from Wellesley.

I’m not trying to say that this program was bad or that numerous benefits weren’t had by the increased cultural diversity, but rather that our community wasn’t able to behave in a completely unbiased manner. Tracking is one institutionalized mechanism that separated us, but so too did the socialization compounded by our perceived academic levels. I wonder sometimes if coming to my high school didn’t send a powerfully negative message to these young minds. Act white, learn like a white student, and you too might be a rich “white man”, but at the same time we’ll never see you as deserving of AP status.

Childhood Wisdoms...

Edith P. Guild was my Scottish great-grandmother. There weren’t many friends of mine who still had their grandparents around let alone great-grandparents. Great Grammy, as I knew her, was somewhat of a mystery, a novelty, and a curiosity to me at the same time.

This was a woman born before the turn of the century. In my young mind anything before 1977 was a long, long time ago. She had traveled with her sister on steamer ships like the Titanic. She lived in a small apartment in an old folks home furnished with all sorts of ornate exotic furniture. In particular, I enjoyed a small cast-metal sculpture of a cat that looked soft enough to pet, but felt cold and smooth to the touch. Great Grammy always had butterscotch in a covered candy dish and shortbread cookies filling a glass jar on her small kitchen counter. Visiting her was like traveling to a far off world.

At Christmas time, Great Grammy and I were always parked next to each other. The youngest and the oldest seated side by side in their isolation from the rest of the table. We might as well have been at the “kiddie” table, for we were rarely spoken to. Early on I became aware of the inconsistency of the “adults” actions. While I was taught to respect my elders, I was clearly the only one paying any attention to Great Grammy and she to me. Through the long family dinners with multiple “important” conversations occurring, the most valuable discussions were heard if one took the time to listen to our exchanged whispers.

Perhaps because no one listened very well to Great Grammy anymore, she had a penchant for giving advice. It was hard tune in to what she had to say. She moved slower, talked slower, heard less, walked hesitatingly, and she shrank every year by about two inches. In order to communicate you had to slow down your hectic life’s pace, breathe, and listen, really listen.

Each visit I had with her led to a new insight and a rule that I must follow obediently. Lessons usually came in the form of admonitions to treat my mother and grandmother with more respect. I was able to see irony in the fact that Great Grammy was telling me to treat these women with the respect that I seldom saw them give her. The lesson I remember most vividly was also about respect, but it was more self-centered rather than other centered. She shared this simple almost prophetically wise idea with me.

“Never ever let a man treat you anything less than a queen.”

Where this came from in her wealth of experience I’ll never know, but it has come in handy more times than I can count. It’s funny how some things stick with you while others fade. Hearing these words as a twelve year old, I had no clue what they would mean to me in my twenties. Perhaps they stuck out because the subject matter was slightly different than her usual fare. It’s possible that I just thought it odd that a ninety year old woman would give love advice to a twelve year old. No matter the reason it stuck. Years later, ...I could hear her whispering those words of wisdom in my ears.

Change is the only constant

Note from Amy: This week's entry comes from my fiancee Jay Ryan. In an effort to start writing essays for his future website, he has been tackling some of his philosophical thoughts on his occupation of woodworking. The following is an initial attempt at hammering out some of his ideas. Please feel free to share your thoughts and feedback with us. Also if you are interested in seeing some of Jay's work, stop by and visit him at his temporary website: http://www.myspace.com/jayswoods

That said I hope you enjoy this weeks entry...

Robinson Jeffers wrote that, “surely one always knew that life’s end is death.” Eventually everything fails; you, me , the tree…. the stone, the very air, the sun, presumably all that we know and all that we don’t. Change is the only constant.

Glue is chemical in nature. Since we first realized that spit would hold together……….., we have looked for more efficient glues. We humans have become very skilled at manipulating compounds for all kinds of purposes. We are very skilled at making glues, and yet most glues that were made a hundred years ago have failed by now. Modern glues are likely to last longer, but only slightly longer from the perspective of geologic time. A weld will fail before the steel that it holds together will rust away. Similarly, glue that holds wood together will will fail before the the lignins and the cellular life that is a properly dried tree desires its own return to the earth.

Screws are made from all kinds of metals.. Archaeology teaches us that most metals are likely to last longer as an artifact in the earth than are most woods, but temperature, a tar pit, an ice age…. Not all rules are fast. Whe wood is screwed together, the grainlines that represent the structure of the tree are rended apart, rendering the wood weaker as a whole than it was before.

But wood beats both glue and screw as its own fastener. Wood can be shaped to interlock with itself and hold itself together for hundreds of years with no assistance from its occasional allies either glue or screw. The force, the very core of this this thing that we call life when it comes from the dirt and from the sun in the form of a tree is a truly amazing ally of our own. The forests have been with us since before memory. They were are only fuel, save the sun, for many thousands of years, before oil. They have built our houses, bridged our rivers cleaned our air… they are our partners in this endeavor, this time that we spend on the planet. Most trees would outlive us with ease if we did not cut so many of them down.

The crafting of something from wood should be special. Whatever the purpose; be it a home or a chair, a cradle or a cathedral. Care should be taken, consideration should be given, when a person has only a hundred years to give, some portion of your time should probably be given to creating something that outlives you, the longer the better.

-Jay Scott Ryan, 2008

Connecting to Individual Students

February 8, 2008

As a child could you recite all your times tables faster than everyone in the classroom? Did you live to practice the twenty designated vocabulary words each week? Was anticipation racking your brain wondering what exciting science project your teacher had in store for you? Did school always make sense to you?

If you answered yes to all of the preceding questions I would be astonished. But this is the student that all teachers secretly hope for: the accomplished, internally motivated, eager learner. Wait…Is it? Perhaps it is that we hope our ways of teaching will inspire such enthusiasm. But the equation of successful teaching is not as simple as…

Create great lesson plan + Implement it = Success.

In contrast to this naïve formula, I believe that the relationship between individual students and their teachers is one of the biggest determining factors that facilitate successful learning experiences.

I’d been working with Wade on his math facts for weeks. Personable, friendly, sometimes shy, and an extremely polite third grader, Wade was working with me because his teacher decided that he needed extra help catching up with peers who could recite math facts faster than he could. (Not to mention the administrations desire to boost standardized test scores.) That’s the basic story. What was behind his struggle was surely more complicated and nothing I could fix.

So we started with flash cards. The good old standby that reminds me of the countless times I, myself, used flash cards and wondered if they really ever taught me squat. After weeks of flash cards, the progress was minimal.

Everyday, I try to strike up a conversation with Wade hoping to figure out just what makes him tick. Could there be some answer to the riddle of his brain that might unlock math facts for him. Wade tells me that he spends his weekends working on the family farm helping with the cattle. Mind you this boy is about 4 feet tall and skinny as a rail. At his age I thought weeding dandelions was hard work let alone rounding up cattle. I start to wonder if labels of school failure have been misused. This kid has more practical knowledge about cattle than many of his “city” peers who already have their times tables memorized.

Drawing from my own experience, I thought back to math class with Mr. Tiberio where I had found success. One of the most notable things about the way he taught was that he always made sure we understood the rationale behind math concepts. His idea was that if we simply memorized something we would never truly understand it. Well if that worked for a high school math class, why couldn’t it work for Wade?

And so our conversation grew. As Wade and I worked on math facts we started to draw a relationship between his work with cows and the numbers. He told me about injecting cows with 2 ccs of an antibiotic. So we thought about how much antibiotic he would need for 20 cows. We talked about starting with 12 ccs and dividing it among 3 cows. The practical applications started becoming apparent and the math facts started clicking.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all teachers had more time to develop these necessary relationships? Too many students have no idea 1) why they are learning what they are learning and 2) how it could actually apply to their own life. In a time when standardized testing seems to guide our schools we have seemingly forgotten the importance of knowing our students and helping them understand why it’s all worth it. Or more importantly letting them tell us what they are curious about!

Picture taken: December 2007 Ice Storm in Central City, NE

Turista, turista!

What is diversity anyway?
In what ways is my life shaped by the diversity of U.S. society?

During the summer of 1994, I was an idealistic, sixteen year old setting out on a journey to see the world. After years of classroom Spanish, I found myself on a plane traveling abroad to test my language skills in Costa Rica. My upbringing in the Northeast hadn’t come close to preparing me for what was in store. Raised in a predominantly white suburb of Boston, I had access to good formal educational opportunities, experience with different socioeconomic cultures via church community service projects, and a supportive family that held education as a priority. That said, my childhood was still quite sheltered and lacked a worldliness that only experience could provide me.

Upon arriving in Costa Rica, all of my “preparations” seemingly became obsolete. My five years of Spanish couldn’t keep up with even the most patient of native speakers, my experience with diverse people didn’t cover the isolation of being a blond, blue-eyed girl in a land of brown-eyed, dark haired Spanish speaking people, and I had left my supportive family behind.

The culminating moment of my trip occurred one day as I traveled to the University of Costa Rica where I was taking classes. Seated on a bus feeling bewildered, alone, and perhaps a bit frightened, I was jolted out of my thoughts by a banging on the side of my bus. At first I wondered if perhaps the bus had broken down. Only days before, the implosion of exhaust from the last gasp of an old engine had left me coughing and sputtering as noxious fumes filled the crowded bus. But the banging grew louder and more intense with each frantic strike. As I peered out the window, I saw an irate man looking directly at me and yelling “¡Turista, turista!” It was clear to me that I was not welcome in this man’s country.

Quickly turning away from the window, I wished with all of my might that the bus would pull away and leave the man behind in the busy street. I sank deeper into my seat wishing that I was not American, that I did not have blond hair, that I did not feel somehow responsible for this man’s anger, and that the other passengers did not share his resentment. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to cry out “I’m not like them!”, but instead I sank lower as the bus pulled away and I let out a sigh of incomplete relief.

Knowing I wouldn’t change my appearance nor reject my native country, I struggled to find a way to adequately cope with relating to a culture that at times appeared to resent my very existence. Costa Rica taught me that fear and misunderstanding are inherently tied to one another. While it was not possible to have a heart to heart with an angry man on the street, through time and patience, I was able to share my own diversity with those who I became close to. By taking the risks of putting myself out there, sharing my experiences, and accepting differences in those around me, eventually the intimidation and misunderstanding I felt was reduced. I can only begin to imagine what the experience must feel like for an immigrant in America.