Drunken Educator

I want to have something interesting and unique to say about schools. Seems to me as though most everything is being said, but none of the things I'm finding are speaking to the exact thing that I have in mind. Well, other than James Herndon, but then he always says not only the things that I'm thinking but also all the things I wish I had said. I've been considering just typing his book Notes from a Schoolteacher into this blog 750 words at a time because he had it all right back in 1985 when, it seems, the same ill winds were blowing through education.

Still, there has to be something for me to say. I've been at this for seventeen years which seems a good enough time to have amassed some sort of wisdom about this stuff. The hard part about it for me is trying to write persuasively, passionately, but not angrily. That's hard for me because I'm so very angry about the way things are going in education, the way things are going at my job, and the way policy is being determined across the nation. While Herndon seems to be able to speak eloquently and with grace and humor, I tend to sound shrill and peevish. That's not a tone that tends to change people's minds.

If I could put the problem into a simple thesis statement perhaps this would all come together for me. A friend suggested that I boil down my thinking about education to two pages. That's a good idea and were I calmer man more in possession of himself, I would do just that. I think the thing would start as a twenty-three page document and I would cut it down from there. I'm just not sure to whom I would show it after I had finished writing.

My therapist says that I'm still in a bit of a mid-life moment. I told her that I think I've been in that phase of my life for something like twenty-five years. I don't know how to be the man I have a feeling I'm supposed to be. Take teaching for example. I'm a good classroom teacher. I'm not the greatest at it and I'm nowhere near the worst. But my heart isn't in being a great classroom teacher. I want to do something more.

At my first full-time job interview, the assistant superintendent asked me where I saw myself in ten years. That was easy. I told him, "in you job." Then I told him why I wanted that job, what I wanted to do, and it was shortly after that they hired me. I told him that I want to shape decision making in education. I want to be a person who creates policy and makes things happen. I still want to be that guy, but I don't want to be the assistant superintendent of a suburban school. That job sounds so mundane and managerial to me that I cringe at the thought of it.

Instead, I want to be in a job where I write about learning, teaching, and the ways in which schools work and don't work. I want to be working at re-setting policy and getting people to understand that the best schools are designed by the people who work in them. In my dream world, I'm the guy who keeps the people at the top of the school food-chain from ever interfering with the people who do the real work. In the comic-book world of my dreams I would be spiriting people like Arne Duncan away to islands where they could never be heard from again. After a while there would be a crowd of administrators and policy makers hopelessly lost on that island drawing up plans for a shelter that someone else would build someday.

My wife, God love her, wants me to be made education secretary. The only problem is that the first thing I would do is to dissolve the department of education. Okay, that would be the second thing. The first thing would be to dissolve the state boards of education and then dissolve the department of ed. After that, I think I would take some time off and travel. What else would there be to do?

I'm not sure if I've come off as angry or just looney here. Either way, it's probably because I had two lime vodkas on the rocks at dinner and it's bedtime for me. I have to get up early and read some more Herndon. Maybe I'll compose a couple pages about my education philosophy. That or plot my take over and destruction of the temple of the Department of Education. It could go either way. And either way, I'll write on.

First Comes the Choice

Again, again, and again I am reminded that the first duty in life is to make a choice. Over the weekend and into the beginning of this week I have been worried about my relationship with my younger daughter. I get along just fine with my older daughter who is very much like her mother. Because of this, my daughter and I get along just fine and seem to understand each other on a level that doesn't need a lot of words. I have also been her soccer coach and usually I'm her driver to dance and then to Hebrew school on Wednesday nights. We've fallen into that pattern.

My younger daughter, Evelyn, is much, much more like me and, because of that, she has always been more involved with my wife than with me. Evelyn and I butt heads more often than not and, I'm sad to say, have begun to develop the habit of steering clear of one another. The sadness of that has crept up on me over the last few months and came to a head this past weekend and on into Monday. By Tuesday I was looking for ways to fix things.

As I have written before, I would very much like it if there were quicker fixes to things in life, but I haven't found that to be the case. Instead, problems seem intractable or long, long-term. In the face of that, I've been known to give up. Look no further than my recent post about trying to lose weight and get in better shape. I can see why weight-loss surgery is so appealing to people. It's a quick fix that gets done by someone else. Sounds good to me!

I knew that there wasn't a good surgery for Evelyn's and my relationship and there didn't seem to be anyone who could fix things for me. Instead, I figured I would have to make a long, hard slog of it and the chances of success were slim at best. Needless to say, I was discouraged by all of this.

Until I made a choice.

The choice wasn't to fix my relationship with Evelyn. That's too daunting and I don't know the tricks of it. Instead, I chose to be aware of Evelyn. It's not that I didn't notice her around the house. She's pretty loud and cute and tough to miss. I just decided to be aware of her in a real way.

I made the choice to be aware of her and pay attention to her for the day. That was Tuesday. Then I woke up on Wednesday and decided to do it again. And it has been simply wonderful.

By the way, choosing to be aware of Evelyn hasn't meant that I have had to divert attention away from her sister or my wife. I haven't even had to divert attention away from myself. It seems that there is plenty of this awareness to go around.

I might not be able to pull this off every day of the year or even every day of the week, but Tuesday and Wednesday I did it without breaking a sweat and it felt good. Surely, if I fall out of the habit for a day or two, I can go right back to it. Knowing that helps me feel sure that making the choice to be aware really is the solution to the problem long- and short-term. It's shocking to me that it's that simple. I suspect that there is much more to it and that I'm bound to run into some walls or fall down a few holes along the way, but maybe choosing to be aware will get me through that sort of thing too.

A few weeks ago I wrote that choosing to think, feel, and act like a writer resulted in me getting good writing done. I chose a writing awareness and, bam, I was writing. I wanted to be more aware of my daughter, more attentive to her, have a better relationship with her, so I chose to be aware of her and, bam again, I felt closer to her almost immediately. If I keep practicing this, maybe awareness is the way to find a new job, get healthy in body and spirit, and find ways to love myself and the moments of my day. It doesn't sound as crazy to me as it used to. The art of it might simply be to choose awareness and then follow that choice.

So far, so good. I'll just have to keep going with it. Just have to write on.

Tales from School: The Data Myth

My name is Brian G. Fay. I am five feet, ten and a half inches tall. I am forty-three years old, married, with two children. My parents are still alive and still married. I have Associates, Bachelors, and Masters degrees to go along with a high school diploma. I did very well on the New York State Regents examinations with no score lower than an 88. I scored well on the SAT exam and my verbal score exactly matched my math score. I have been a public school teacher for seventeen years. I could go on, but that's certainly enough data for you to know me.

In fact, it's too much data and too personal. I should have simply given numbers, placed myself in a couple of charts comparing myself to other men, teachers, and so on. Some of the information I've listed isn't very presentable in that it won't fit in a spreadsheet. Thus, it can't possibly matter.

You get my drift?

The sum of every number about me is not nearly enough to have much of an idea about me. That said, anyone who reads even a tenth of what I have been writing on this blog since last Halloween will know a great deal about me. They would likely have enough information to draw some conclusions about me as well. Still, even with that, they would probably need to spend a morning with me or the two of us would need to go to dinner in order to truly know enough about me to form a solid opinion.

Yet, every day, students in schools are reduced to test data because it is inefficient for administrators to know the students in their buildings and even less practical for politicians to have ideas about the kids in their city, county, state, or country. Thus, we have student 476859-00003512 who scored in the seventy-third percentile, has a lexile reading score one grade below average, has failed two state exams. That student attends a school that graduates 64% of its students, has teachers who rank from the 79th all the way down to the 16th percentile on the new teacher approval scales, and comes from a good home since there is no indication that he or she has accepted free or reduced lunch.

As I said, students are reduced to these numbers because it is inefficient to look at them in other ways. If there was only a trained adult who could know that student and report on them, then we might be able to do less with the numbers and more with meaningful interaction with the child. But teachers can't be trusted to gather this kind of information. Their data is suspect.

Schools too are suspect and thus their data must be compared across the state. In my state that means that kids in Buffalo have to be compared with rural kids in Cato-Meridian, and those have to compete with kids from the Bronx and all the hyper-funded schools upstate from New York City. A kid who gets up to milk cows before school is expected to know and do exactly the same things as one who rides the subway under the streets of Manhattan.

All of this, looked at in this way is ludicrous. No parent would choose to have their child looked at in this way and no adult looks back fondly on their student number or favorite day of testing. Instead, parents dream of caring adults raising their children up. Teachers long to work with students to create passion for learning. And students dream of not being bored out of their skulls or having to fill in more bubbles with a number two pencil.

Schooling isn't hard to figure out. All it takes is some common sense. Parents who want a great school need to be involved at least a little. They need to know the names of their children's teachers. They need to stop in to school once in a while or, failing that, call to check on things. They have to help their kids with some homework. And they need to stop listening to the nonsense coming out of state capitols, Congress, and the White House. None of those people know what's best for your child and most of them send their children to private schools.

Any system that seeks to reduce my daughters to data points is one I oppose. And here's the trick: I think of every kid in every public school across this country as being at least as worthy of good, caring education as my daughters are. I reject the data train. It is fool's gold. You should reject it too. Tell your representatives and get Barack Obama to fire Arne Duncan. While you're at it, tell Barack that his daughters really ought to be attending D.C. public schools. That might get him to do something real about education in our country instead of trying to run some idiotic Race to the Top.

Write on.

Health, Weight, Happiness

A seemingly intractable problem

I have been, for years now, wanting to weigh less. I'm not morbidly obese. I don't have to buy special sizes in clothing. It's nothing like that. I'm just rounder than I would like to be and heavier than what would make me feel healthy. I have only on occasion gotten this under my control and seen the scale tip in the direction I desire. Those occasions have only one thing in common: they were all times when, instead of trying to lose weight, I was focused on something else.

Here's the best example. Back in graduate school I wanted to play basketball. Not on a team but in a pickup game that met regularly. I found that there was a great pickup game right around noon each day and that coincided with my class schedule and office hours. I went down each day (every day) and played basketball for at least an hour and then went into the weight room for a bit to lift or use the Nordic Track. I wasn't focused on losing weight so much as being able to run the court, keep up with this one guy I was almost always having to guard, and being strong enough to hit an outside shot with some regularity. I think that because I was so focused on these other things, I was able to lose weight.

That last bit is crucial: It was my lack of focus on losing weight that allowed me to lose the weight. I was thinking about other things and was able to see what needed to be done. You might think that knowing that and having experienced it I would be able to replicate the experience now, but it just ain't so.

I weight 210 pounds right now and ought to weigh 190. My dream weight is 185 because that's where I've gotten to each time I've gotten into real shape. So I'm carrying at least twenty pounds of extra weight. This might sound familiar to a lot of you. I know that the weight is bad for me, that I gain weight eating food that isn't good for me, that I don't enjoy that food over any kind of long haul, and so on. I know these things, but come eight-thirty at night you will find me in the kitchen looking for the snack I want to eat while watching television.

In other words, I'm not focused on much of anything healthy right now.

I like to run. It feels good to me and I feel better after doing it. I like to run by myself and I like to run with a group. But it's not like a daily basketball game. I can easily skip a run. In fact, it takes some effort to get myself out on the road for a run. Today, after a week or two of sixties and seventies, the temperature is down in the thirties. It will be something if I get my butt out there for a run. However, if there was a daily basketball game down at the gym, I would be there every single time unless I was injured (and even then).

There is no daily basketball game that I know of, not one that works for me. Most games are played at the Y which has too high a cost for me and requires me to join a league, form a team, and be much more competitive than I want to be. I play ball at school with the kids on Friday's for two half hour sessions, but it's not the same kind of workout. Basketball isn't going to be my answer.

Running could be, but I haven't found the way to make it so. Maybe I need to work on that some more. I just know that when I'm playing basketball at the level I was in graduate school I didn't eat nearly as much. I was happier. I was at peace about many things.

Which leads me to another idea that is both helpful and troubling: maybe I'm distracted from running by unhappiness in other things. I want out of my current job but need something else to do in order to feed, house, clothe and care for my family. Unhappiness in one area is likely the culprit in other areas. Knowing this, can I find a way toward happiness and see if that search takes care of some of the pounds? After all, the search for health and all this talk of losing weight is really just code for becoming happy. Now that I'm aware of that, maybe there's a chance.

Write on.

Tales From School: Temper, Temper

I've never been good at taking compliments or giving them to myself. In teaching, if a particular class goes well, I chalk it up to luck. If a class falls apart, that's entirely my fault. It's not a good way to think. There is something to be said for taking pride in things I do well. Today, that's what I'm doing.

Early today, students wondered what I look and act like when I lose my temper. I smiled. "I look and act like a fool." Then I thought it might be useful to say more. "I really do," I said. "I look like someone who has lost control and is unable to put himself together. When I lose my temper, I lose respect for myself."

We talked about what it is to lose our tempers, to lose control. It is late March and students, some of whom have been with me since September, have yet to see me get angry. That's different from last year and years before. Somehow I have turned a corner. I'm not saying that I'll never lose it again, but for now, I'm feeling peace in the classroom even when things go haywire.

I told them that in September I had set the goal of learning to be peaceful. We talked about how I keep from losing myself when kids tell me to fuck off and overturn desks. It didn't turn into a lecture. Instead, we were sharing our experiences. Every kid heard that my life and work are better because I'm more at peace. It's a lesson more important than English class.

Then, later, when I was coming into my last class I heard a commotion. I hustled in and found two students tussling near a desk. As I moved in, the female student cuffed the male student four times in the side of his head, hard. Her earring was on the floor, his bag was at his feet. Their hands were on each other and things were about to get messy.

I told them to stop and got between them. They backed away from one another. I kept my elbow on the boy and spoke calmly. "Okay, okay, take a breath." The social worker and hall monitor arrived and took them to separate corners. Then I started class.

We reacted for a moment and then I got them to tell the story like writers. I would have gone to paper and pen, but it needed to be more immediate. They told aloud what they had observed, what they thought had happened, what the characters' motivations were, and so on. As they spoke, I refined what they said, putting it in terms of story and reporting. I asked one student where she stood when things broke out. When another said that the girl had "flipped out" I asked for specific physical evidence of that. "What did you see?" The class told the story and a discussed of literary terminology. We talked about what a "reader" can know in that situation and how one "reader's" interpretation changes the story for another. It may have been the best English lesson I've done all year.

Two moments of pride. I haven't lost my temper yet this year and I turned an altercation into a lesson about writing and reading. Both "lessons" were more instructive than any lesson I might have planned for the day and, though they don't appear on any state or national curricula, were exactly what the kids needed to hear and experience.

It's a good day and I feel today like a good teacher.

Write on.

Running Peace

It is so easy to be happy. And yet it's not.

Years ago I came up with the first part of the title. I was away on a trip and it really was easy to choose to be happy. I was surrounded by wonderful people who were tremendously smart and interesting. I was doing work I had long dreamed of doing. I was eating great foot and having good things to drink. It really was easy to be happy. But then life intrudes.

Over the past couple of weeks it hasn't been nearly as easy to be happy. For one thing, I had to go through a terrible day of staff development at my school. It was the kind of day that was clearly not well thought out and, even if it had been, was designed to deliver information to the teachers rather than invoke our expertise or engage our interests and strengths. The whole thing left me feeling drained all this week in my classroom. Each morning I have awakened with a feeling of dreading going to work. I would rather be anywhere else, aside from back at that staff development.

So it hasn't been all that easy to be happy this week and I have struggled. Things have been extra busy at home so I haven't gone out to run much either. That changed today. Soon as I got home, I stepped into my new pair of running shorts, and went out on the street for a short run.

My runs of late have all been miserable affairs. I have felt nothing but tired and uninspired. It's tough to get out running after runs like that and I was a bit nervous about it today. Besides, my knee has been sore for some reason or another (not running since it came on during a three-day break from running) and it could easily have been a terrible time out there.

But it wasn't. Instead, it was easy to be happy.

I started down the road feeling the strangeness in my knee, a blister on my left foot, and all the worry of the week. Then, as I took each step, and the knee got better instead of worse, the blister refused to bother me, and the worries started to fade away, I felt peaceful and the run became a thing of peace.

It turns out that happiness is good, but it's not that constant state of affairs I'm after. Peace is the feeling I want to have dominating my life. I suppose that's obvious to people, but it hasn't been to me. Peace, by the way, doesn't mean that I'm chilled out and disengaged. Rather it means that I'm accepting of what the world is but also restless to see what else I can do. Today's run was all about accepting what the world is and seeing what I could do.

After two miles I was torn. I had been thinking about stretching things and going for a six-miler that I enjoy. I was making plans. That's a bad habit I have. The good thing is that I let the plans slide. Instead of planning, I listened to my body. The knee felt better but not quite right. More important, the blister felt alright but fragile. I ran quietly, peacefully, listening to what was happening within. My foot told me to take the shorter route and my brain said that the longer route would be there when I needed it. I turned back toward home and it was great.

Along the way toward home I looked down a side street to where my daughters were having a play-date. My wife's car was down there so I turned and went that way. I met up with the girls (who were raking in the money on a sweet's stand where they sold chocolate popcorn and other treats), my wife (who kissed me though I was sweaty), and my friend Michael (who had graciously taken both our girls home with him and who thankfully refrained from kissing me perhaps because I was so sweaty).

There is joy in running. Leaving the house and going down the road is a blissful thing for me especially because I rarely plan where it is I'll be going. There is even more joy in returning to my family and feeling their love. Standing on the sidewalk at Michael's house it was the easiest thing in the world to feel happy. And I felt happy, at peace, and ready to go forward. It was all just so damn good. I want more.

Write on.

School Reform - A Modest Proposal

All morning I have been thinking and writing about real school reform. I've been thinking about the two schools I've taught at prior to my current position. The first school is the model of reform and the second is a patient in critical condition, desperate for the kind of reform that was created at the first. Yesterday, I wrote about how I keep having to look for hope to continue in teaching and that I often find it through the National Writing Project and interactions with my students. Today, I'm thinking about a larger kind of hope and suggesting a system that might be of use in our current sorry state of affairs.

First, the bad news. The current trend is toward homogenization and big data. Thinking about the school that is falling apart, it's clear that the school was hobbled by a requirement to be more like the other schools in the district. This school is far removed from the others, serves a particular clientele, and had done things differently and successfully for years. Being brought under the umbrella of the larger institution removed most of the individualized nature of the place and broke it in ways that it couldn't survive. The program is now much more like the other programs in our district, but it is broken and struggling.

The goal of homogenization was to satisfy big data which is a term I use to signify the kind of data that fits easily in a spreadsheet which then becomes a Powerpoint presentation at a board meeting. Big data reduces students to numbers and teachers to worker-bees. It elevates the test above all. This is the direct result of No Child Left Behind and its uglier step-brother Race to the Top.

The school I used to know is falling apart because it was never designed to be like the other programs and its mission was not to serve big data's needs. My guess is that the school is a loss. It won't be saved, but it could have been, and my earlier school points to how it can be done.

That old school is the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program in Providence, RI. It is an independent public school, which is odd enough, but it is also a program that was designed from the start by teachers. Still, like any school, the place has had to change with the times. Rhode Island, when I taught there, had a program called SALT (School Accountability for Learning and Teaching). SALT could save education. I'm not exaggerating even a little.

The SALT process, when it came through our school, consisted of a team of teachers and administrators not affiliated with our school in any other way save they were evaluating us. They spend a full week in the school shadowing students, attending classes, interviewing staff, students, and parents. It was rigorous. It was exhausting. And their report when it was delivered to us a month or so later was scathing and sent us all into a rage.

A month later I re-read their report and saw what they had meant and saw too that they had been right.

Self-examination is hard. It can sometimes be too hard. Having the SALT team come through and do that examination for us was also painful, but it was something they could do better than we could have. It was a thing they did and did as well as any review I have ever seen. Through the process, after we had finished howling, we saw ways in which we could transform and reform our school to better serve students.

The data included the usual big data, but it also included the wise observations of professionals. It set out to help teachers and the director reform the place to best serve all the students. Most of all, it trusted teachers to do the job of running a school and helping kids learn. That trust matters. It inspires.

I've been gone from UCAP for a long time and I miss the place. Mostly I miss the attitude. Rob Deblois who created the program and still directs it is a teacher leader in every way. He respects his teachers and his students, he learns every day, he teaches every day. That school is a model for how schools can be reformed in this country and, for my money, SALT is a great way to go.

I like thinking about this stuff. Anyone got any idea how I can keep thinking about it, make a difference in schools, and not get lost in the traps of homogenization and big data? Let me know. And until then, I'll write on.

Tales from School: Hope and Things That Matter

Just when I'm running short on hope in teaching, along come reminders as to why I teach. Yesterday, it was a call from a friend and reminder about the National Writing Project (which saves teachers). Today it was Frank during my last class of the day. (Every student I write about is in Tales from School gets renamed Frank).

I was at my desk entering grades from the previous class. I greeted kids coming in. As I was finishing up, Frank came in. He asked, "you got that stuff to make up for the days I missed?" I smiled because I had gathered that work several times over the past few weeks only to have Frank or me miss school the next day. I laughed a little and said that I felt bad we had missed each other so often, and Frank exploded.

This is how it goes in school sometimes. For unknown reasons, a kid goes off. Frank said, "It ain't funny so you can quit laughing at me, motherfucker. Yeah, it's real fucking funny that you won't give me my work and I'm going to fail. Fuck you. Go fuck yourself," he said, flipping a chair and walking out the door. I watched the empty door frame for a moment. The students looked at me. One of them said, "whoa, dude."

I nodded. "Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm sorry I set him off. I didn't mean to but sometimes that's how it goes."

The kid asked, "why aren't you pissed?"

"It's not about me," I told him and started class. We were finishing the movie The Shawshank Redemption, tying it in with the Stephen King novella. I hit play and we settled in to watch.

I went to my desk and wrote a referral for Frank. It was just a note about what had happened, not a disciplinary device. It's a good idea to write these things down. I printed it and went to the office next door (our school is small). Frank was there.

I said to him, "I'm sorry that I set you off like that."

"Don't talk to me. You think it's funny to--" and off he went. He wasn't ready to hear from me yet. I apologized again on my way out.

Back in class, I watched how things were going, then gathered Frank's work together. I wrote a note to him that included my explanation of what had happened, how I had been laughing at myself and the situation and that I would never think of laughing at him. I delivered the work and letter to the office.

At the end of the period Frank stopped by, handed in some work, and apologized. I thanked him and said again that I would never laugh at him or look down at him. He deserves better than that. He thanked me and apologized again. I told him to hit the road before we got all maudlin and started crying on each other's shoulders or something. He smiled. And I had just taught him the word maudlin. Score.

I get tangled up in the nonsense of this job. The Common Core Standards, testing, job insecurity, and so on.  Here's what really matters: talking with kids and helping them learn important things. Kids in that class saw compassion today and Frank learned that he is honored by me. I learned again that life is about kindness and that good things happen when I send good out into the world. There are things about teaching that bug the living shit out of me, but the fact that Frank went from "go fuck yourself" to feeling honored is larger than any curriculum and makes it worth coming to work tomorrow. For that I'm grateful to Frank, to this job, and to myself.

Write on.

Riding A Bike Without Standards

I've been trying to get my daughter Evelyn on a bike for years. First with training wheels but no one likes training wheels and Evelyn is especially strong with her dislikes. Then I took the training wheels off and did the thing where I ran behind her. This worked to a certain degree but then things got hard and Evelyn decided that bike riding wasn't for her. She would stick with her scooter. Being a reasonable father this galled me and so I badgered her. You can guess how well that worked. Evelyn, like her father, is particularly stubborn and doesn't go much for taking advice from others. The bike stayed in the basement despite the fact that her big sister was riding up and down on her bike. Evelyn was fine on the scooter and that was that.

I've been having the Common Core Standards pushed on me at work. Like Evelyn with her bike, I hate them. No matter how you spin it, the standards say that each kid will learn a list of things in a certain year of school or else. The "else" is usually that the kid can't go on to the next grade or that the teacher can't go on in the profession. I get the idea behind it. The folks in charge want to raise expectations, stop having kids move up without learning things, and generally get education fixed. The problem is that all that stuff is poppycock.

Evelyn, had bike riding been on the Common Core Standards, would have failed at least one and probably two grades. She is a wonderful dancer, reads like a madwoman, and can make a scooter go faster than I would have imagined, but because she couldn't ride a bike, she would have failed. And I would have been fired as her parent because I couldn't get her up to the standards.

The thing that isn't taken into account in the standards is that Evelyn wasn't ready to ride a bike until yesterday. She was in the driveway doing whatever when a boy from across the street let her know that he was off the training wheels and riding on two wheels. That made the last tumbler click for Evelyn. She got her bike out of the basement and, while I sat in a chair giving her a word or two of advice, she rode away down the street.

Evelyn didn't need to be taught the lesson again though she was, until that moment, a failure on the standard. She simply rode away. Throughout the next hour I came out occasionally to help her get started on the uphills, but otherwise, she was fine. When she was ready to learn the lesson, she did. Simple as can be.

The Common Core Standards are like this. They sound like a great idea. They sound sensible and reasonable when you look at them on paper and imagine kids on paper. Here's a thing about schools that messes the Common Core Standards right up: schools are populated by real kids instead of the ones on paper. Real kids grow at different times even if they are in the same grade together. Real kids sometimes relate to one teacher while rejecting another. Real kids have good days and bad days.

There is hope in all of this, because alongside real kids in the schools are real professionals who know how to teach. Even now as the Common Core Standards are being rammed down a square hole, teachers are adapting and flagging the work that they do with the labels that the standards demand. The standards, like so much that these teachers have dealt with for so long, are simply another hoop to jump through. Get it over quickly and get on with the business of teaching.

My daughter Evelyn is and will be for her life the youngest person in her class. Her birthday is the cutoff date for entry and my wife and I took the chance of sending her rather than holding her back. I remember saying that we would help her with whatever she needs and make sure that her youth didn't get in her way. One way to help Evelyn is to tell her teachers that we don't give a damn about the Common Core Standards, the testing, and all the other nonsense that business people (who put their kids in private schools) seem to think is necessary.

Evelyn, now that she is ready, rides her bike up and down the street like it's nothing. She simply enjoys the feeling of riding and I doubt that she will remember tomorrow what it was like yesterday before she could ride a bike. All she will want is to ride on. And that's all I want for her.

As for me, I'll work toward real progress in education instead of the mirage and misguided foolishness of the Common Core Standards. And you can bet your ass I'll write on.

A Cheap Notebook for Me

For the past two and a half months I have been struggling to write by hand. I have kept writer's notebooks for more than twenty years and every so often this sort of thing comes over me. I just don't want to write in the notebook. I'll type. I'll write on other paper. But I can't be brought to the notebook. And though this has happened many times, the simple solution still gives me trouble. I should just get a new notebook and move on. For some reason, I struggle with this. I would feel odd about it except that I know too many people who finish bad books because they are unwilling to quit in the middle. I'm the same way with notebooks. And yet today I stopped eighty pages short of finishing a notebook. The reasons why are writerly and so they seem just right for talking about here.

First, here is what I think a writer's notebook ought to be: something inexpensive and comfortable. If it costs more than a couple bucks, it's not for me. This includes Moleskin notebooks which so many people take as _the_ writer's notebook. That might work for some people but it doesn't work for me. I tried on, thinking that it was just the thing when I got it, but it was a trial for me. Natalie Goldberg (whose book _Writing Down the Bones_ shapes a lot of my thinking about writing) suggests using cheap spiral notebooks, preferably ones with cartoon characters on the front. I disagree. Spirals catch on everything, rarely have a stiff back (so I can't write in my lap), and it is all too easy to remove the pages. Bad, bad, and bad.

My ideal writer's notebook is a composition book. Those marble covered things from middle school. I like them to be wide ruled even though I used to have minuscule handwriting. The wide lines encourage me to write large and messy. I go faster that way because there is more room to maneuver. I found out a long time ago that thinner 60-sheet notebooks are better than the 100-sheet versions, but the smaller ones are harder to find. I just found a way to get them and will likely by a dozen when I order them. The shorter notebooks are nice because hanging on to any one notebook too long feels like I'm not doing enough writing. A 60-sheet notebook is also lighter and I like that.

The real beauty of a composition book is that tearing pages out is difficult and usually leads to the whole thing falling apart. Keeping what I write isn't that crucial. I've thrown away many a notebook. But not being able rip out a page and get rid of it right away makes me linger with what I've put down. That's a writerly thing to do. Living with the stuff I'm not happy to have written makes it more likely that I'll write more soon.

So, my ideal writer's notebook is a 60-sheet composition book, wide ruled and as inexpensive as I can find it. This is the antithesis of the notebook I quit today. That notebook is faux-leather bound, filled with128 sheets of heavy college-ruled paper, smaller in height and width than a composition book but much thicker, and has an embossed quote from _Hamlet_ on the cover. The quote "To be or not to be..." if you must know and because of that I've named it my suicide notebook. I can't balance the thing in my lap well. When I write on a table, it's thick enough that my writing arm doesn't rest correctly on the table. And I just can't stand to write in it. Everything is slow, wrong, and yicky. These, of course, are technical terms.

So I've set it aside. I bet I'll toss it out soon enough. Nothing inside of it is really lighting my soul on fire. I'm so much lighter now with the other notebook. I feel free.

It's a poor workman who blames his tools but it's also a fool who tries to do good work with the wrong tools. I know my tools. I write in composition books, mostly with a fountain pen. I drink black coffee. I type into Google Docs or 750words.com. I print things on a monochrome laser printer. I don't need much more. I don't need anything fancy. It turns out that fancy gets in the way. Writing is complex enough without unnecessary complication. Keep it simple. Keep it plain. And keep writing. Or, put another way, write on.

Simple Pleasures

Simple Pleasures

A cup of hot decaf coffee in the evening as the sun is setting and a spring chill is coming on. I sit on the front steps watching the world go by with the dog by my side smelling the world go by. The coffee is dark and black and it tastes like warmth.

An afternoon run up to the stand-pipe for one of the great views of our city. I chug up the hill watching that round brick building come closer and closer. Then I'm up, jogging slowly around the top of the hill looking out at the Carrier Dome, MONY Plaza, the State Tower Building, and Onondaga Lake (which Hayden Carruth rightly called the Oldest Killed Lake in North America). Coming down the hill I forget that I'm running because I'm still carrying the vision of the city under all that blue sky and sunshine.

A gentle series of kisses from my wife, our eyes closed, our lips just touching. One and two and three and more. I feel myself let go of everything else in the world. There is nothing but her and me and love.

The cat standing on my shoulders. Odd, I know, but delightfully so.

The right song to listen to. Today it was "Rhapsody in Blue" which I have only just discovered this year and which, it seems to me, is as beautiful a piece as I have ever needed to hear. I think I've listened to it four times today. The piano hurts, it sounds so good.

A good piece of chocolate. Dark and just the right amount of bitter (a lot like the coffee). One piece sits in my mouth for minutes slowly melting. The taste of it lingers in my mind for hours.

My daughters' smiles. The movement of their hair as they run. Their faces as they sleep. The sounds of their voices. And, oh, the joyous sound of their laughter. Their very breathing in and out.

The feel of my heart beating in my chest. Thump. Thump. Thump. Steady and strong, slow and sure. It is my father's heart. My grandfather's heart. A muscle stronger than any other in me. It is the heart that will carry me for 99 years and then some. I want to write poetry about my heart.

Poetry. The idea that Thursday will see the delivery of Mark Strand's new book to my house. The fact that I just thought of that Hayden Carruth poem up above and that the mention of Carruth makes me think of that great "Letter to Hayden" poem by Bridget Meeds and that makes me think of Carruth's poem about Raymond Carver which makes me think of Carver's book A New Path to the Waterfall which gets me thinking of Strand's "Elegy for my Father" and on and on.

Writing poetry as I did Wednesday morning when I wrote a prose poem about the shift to Daylight Savings Time and knew even in its roughest first-draft form that it was good.

Writing these 750-word entries nightly, knowing that something will come, something good, something that will make my life better.

A friend stopping by while I wait for my daughter at Hebrew School and asking me if I would like to do a run that I'm probably not capable of but am considering trying just because he asked.

The fact that Aaron Sorkin will give the Syracuse University graduation speech and I will find a way to be in attendance.

That my parents have moved back into town and have let me help them with their move just as I'm letting them help with the kids.

Having a brother who says yes to what ever it is I ask him even before he can imagine what it is I'm asking.

The simple pleasures of my life far outweigh the troubles and as I was writing today at school I realized that complaining doesn't carry me forward. I will still complain, I don't see a way around all of that yet, but there is so much pleasure in my life right now. There has been for a long time and there ever shall be. In a few weeks I will go out west to Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon with my best friend for a week of hiking and running and soaking in the wonders of those places. I am married to a wondrous woman whose mysteries continue to unfold like petals though I have known her for two decades. My children charm me and everyone they meet. They are the wonders of my world. And I, when I think about it just right, am becoming the man I have always wanted to be.

Simple pleasures with every breath, every beat of my heart, everything I lay my eyes upon. This is a good life. Breathe it in. And, of course, write on.

The Writing Project Save Teachers

Earlier, in an attempt to write a blog entry for today, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek essay about why teachers suck and attributed it to the professional development that teachers receive. Sensing that it wasn't my best work and had come from an angry place, I showed it to my wife who failed to laugh even a little. My intent had been to be funny and she assured me that it was anger rather than humor that I had sent out into the world. I knew then that I would have to give it another shot.

This time around, rather than talking about the staff day that is planned for everyone in my school this Friday, I want to talk about a professional development opportunity that I will miss out on.

I belong to the Seven Valleys Writing Project (7VWP) which is a local site of the National Writing Project (NWP) located at SUNY Cortland. The National Writing Project is the only thing other than pay and health care that have kept me in teaching the last five years. It's that simple. The NWP has saved me as a teacher. I have no doubt about it. The 7VWP has put me together with incredibly thoughtful teachers doing some of the best work in education. And every one of them is desperately searching for ways to do their jobs better.

This Friday, several of the 7VWP's teachers will be leading a staff day at a local school. Rather than so-called "experts" from outside the profession, a group of teachers will go into another school to talk about their expertise and, more importantly, encourage the teachers at that school to discuss their own expertise. You see, the NWP model is all about helping teachers see that they're knowledge and wisdom, their accumulated experience and scholarship matter. Indeed, these are the only things that will save education. Teachers are the people who have kept education alive. The NWP honors that and the 7VWP will introduce that incredible concept to teachers this Friday.

I will be at a very different type of staff day, but the less said about that the better.

I was the fourth person on board at the beginnings of the 7VWP but I haven't been heavily involved of late. Just when I needed a shot of NWP energy the most, President Obama killed all funding for the program. This happened about the same time Scott Walker was killing all teacher union power in Wisconsin. It happened as the Common Core Standards, a nationalized curriculum. It happened as a system was being implemented that will pay teachers based on test scores and fire those who don't get their kids to fill in the right bubbles with their number two pencils. In short, Obama killed the NWP funding just as education in America was circling ever closer to the drain.

My hopes for the profession were circling the drain as well.

Since then I've figured out a few things. One, I have to decide whether or not to stay in this profession. There’s no point in teaching if it’s not something I love to do. There’s no real point in doing much of anything if I don’t love it, but teaching is an art as well as a craft and arts require devotion. If I can continue to love teaching despite what is being done to education, then I will stay. Otherwise, I need to move on.

Two, if I’m going to stay in this profession I have to get connected again with the best practitioners I know and those people tend to belong to or are about to join the 7VWP. So I need to get back up to speed with those people.

Three, I need to write about teaching, speak to parents about it, and write to politicians. I need to work for change in schools since I know that we are going in absolutely the wrong direction.

Oddly, my first decision in this is to not vote for Barack Obama in November. I’ve mentioned this before and explained why, but suffice to say that he has been Bush-league if not worse when it comes to education. Arne Duncan, his secretary of education, is beyond bad for kids in this nation. I can’t vote for Arne, I can’t vote for Obama.

What comes next, I’m not sure. I need to decide if I’m going to stay or go. To do that, I have a lot more thinking to do. I also need to be looking at what else there is out there.

Whatever the case, I’m sure to write on.

You Go Out For A Run (in the second person)

You so don't want to run. All day you've been at work thinking that you wanted to run, but now that you're home and free to go, you so don't want to. Your body is tired. Your ankles are creaky. Mostly you're just in the mood to sit down. On the couch. For the night. You could order pizza and probably spend the evening there. It sounds so good. You stare at the couch. The cushions form into lips. "Come to me," it says. You sigh.

Your wife asks why you're staring at the couch. It takes a minute to remember where you are. Who you are. What you're doing. You shake your head and say, "nothing." And then, you hear yourself say, "I'm going out for a run." Your wife says that's fine and tells you to enjoy yourself.

Enjoy? Yeah, right. Your body is too old today to enjoy running. You haven't had enough water. You didn't eat well enough. You have too few excuses to avoid the run but enough to persuade anyone it won't be any fun. You go over those reasons as you strap on your GPS watch and set it to find the satellites. You're distracted staring at the watch and when it finds the signal you notice, regretfully, that you are standing at the end of the driveway.

Damn it.

You hit the start button and since the watch is running you might as well go. You head out on your regular running route. Nothing feels good. Your calves are tight. Your ankles really do feel sore. Your legs are heavy and already you're breathing hard. It sucks to be over forty. You're too old for this. Your watch tells you that you've covered a quarter mile.

It's a perfect day for a run. Warm enough in March that you're running in a short-sleeve tech t-shirt, shorts and no shoes. You've been waiting for a while to get out barefoot in warm weather and here it is. You should be loving this, but half a mile in, you still can't find your gait. Every step is like trying to write with the wrong hand. It's just not natural. You really think that you should stop and walk or turn around and head home. Even the wind is pushing against you. Like the couch, it wants you to go home.

You tell yourself you'll do 5K. You're tired. This is a good chance for a recovery run. No need to go longer. So you press on against all good reason. Then, you turn right instead of going straight to the turn around. You tell yourself that you'll just go around the parking lot, but then you're behind Manley Field House and the Carmelo Anthony Center. You'll just go to the other side of the lot and circle back to the turnaround. You're too tired to go farther. But then you're running up the driveway to the crematorium, setting up a four-miler.

What is wrong with you?

Now it's two miles you have to run back. You curse yourself because you're still not feeling the run. It's still all foreign.

You run back toward home. You pass a friend's house and wave to her as she stands talking to her friend. You look down at your watch and see that you're back to a 9:20 pace, the thing you've been working toward for a while. You wonder when that happened. And how. Your legs still feel tired, but the form which should have fallen apart is coming together. You hold the 9:20 through the last mile and a half.

You stop the watch and walk the last hundred feet to your driveway. The watch says you've run 4.39 miles. You stand, breathing hard, and have one clear thought: that was great.

Write on.

Running in Syracuse

Saturday, I ran a race with a few friends. It was the 7th Annual Shamrock Run here in Syracuse and there were over 3500 runners out there in the cold and left-over snow. It got me thinking about a couple of things: One, why do I pay money to run when I could just as easily do it for free? And how is it that Syracuse is such a great running town? I've been thinking about these two things ever since.

First, the money issue. I've been trying to save some money. I'm not going crazy about it. I still drive a car (though not nearly as much), still get coffee at Starbucks (though mostly ground beans that I then make at home), still go out to eat on occasion (about as much as ever). I'm just trying not to make impulse buys. I'm still trying to resist the urge to spend hundreds of dollars on a phone I don't need. Basically, I'm trying to be aware of what I spend.

So why spend money to run? I could just as easily get out for a four-mile run up and down some pretty mean hills near my home. I could get together with friends and have a festival atmosphere. I would get the same exercise without spending money. Then again, I don't have 3500 friends with whom to run. There is something to running closed roads with that many people. It charges me up. It presses me to do things I wouldn't do without the crowd. I run harder than I do on regular runs and push myself harder. Lance Armstrong, I've read, trained at least as hard as he raced. I'm not Lance Armstrong (just take even a passing glance and you'll see). I need something to push me and a race fits the bill.

Mostly though, it's about doing something with a whole lot of people. Left to my own devices, I would spend even more time on my own. It's a challenge to get out of the house, to do things with others. I'm not a complete hermit or introvert, it's just easier to keep to myself. Not better, just easier. Racing gets me out there, and that makes my life better, it makes me happier. It's made even better when I run races with close friend. We drive together and talk before, after, and during the race.

I suppose that it all boils down to camaraderie (a word I like but sadly can't spell without assistance from my comrades). Being with others, if you'll forgive the cliche, lifts me up. So that's why I run races. That and it's just so much damn fun.

The answer to the other question about why Syracuse is such a running town has something to do with what I just talked about. 3500 people came out Saturday to run because winters are often tough here. This year's winter was light on snow, but the skies are grey more often than they are not. The economy, while it's not in free-fall, isn't supercalifragilistic either. People are looking for work, wondering how to pay bills, and so on. We can't make Spring come, so we get out there and run. Running makes its own blue skies.

Beyond that, Syracuse is a friendly town. Its roads, more often than not, have wide shoulders on which runners stride side-by-side. We have one of the best running stores anywhere in Fleet Feet Syracuse. We have running clubs galore, several colleges and Syracuse University. We have a tremendous parks system that I would put against any city's. And, though I'm not sure how this impacts running, we have Wegmans. Anyone who has ever been to Wegmans knows that not mentioning Wegmans is a mortal sin.

Syracuse, simply put, is a running town and I'm a runner. I run through Syracuse on my own, with my friends, and in a bunch of races held throughout and around the city. Running really does bring out the best in me and in this city. I'm typing this on Sunday evening, sitting outside on our front steps in shorts and a long-sleeve t-shirt. I ran with my wife and dog this morning. I've seen more than fifty runners in our neighborhood today alone. It is unseasonably warm and, lo and behold, the sky is a perfect blue. I love this town.

Write on.

Waking Up Aware

For those paying attention to details, you'll notice that the date seems off. I write these essays the day before I publish them. So there you are. 

I woke this morning ready to go. It's a feeling I treasure. I'm not ready to take on the world so much as to accept what the world has to offer. I've shaved my head and my face, showered, emptied the dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen. Last night we had friends over and I picked up some of the debris from that. I'm also marveling that while others were imbibing at the rate I usually do, I was set to take it easy and just be there. We even watch the Syracuse Orange lose a Big East Tournament game and I was okay with that. Later this morning, I'll run the Shamrock 4-mile run here in Syracuse and I hope to be just as aware through the running of that as I was unloading the dishwasher.

I have felt more than a little out of myself the past few weeks and it's nice to, if only for a morning, wake and feel like I know what's what and who I am. Like I said above, I treasure this feeling.

Here's the thing about being aware, however: I realize that I won't feel like this every moment of today and that tomorrow I might find myself in a different place. Accepting things means accepting that I won't always be happy and, more importantly, that it isn't necessary or even desirable to feel that way. There is the whole range of emotions out there--or rather, in here--and it would be a pity to give up all the others in order to exist only in one. That said, mornings such as this remind me that how I react to the world, how I act is about sixty-five percent my decision and thirty-five percent the status of the world. I don't expect to be able to choose happiness during the zombie apocalypse, but most of the other times I have a better than average chance.

I write about this sort of thing a lot. I'm unwilling to comb through the old entries and tally how many times, but I would bet that I've written about this at least a dozen times since I began last Halloween. I'm gnawing on the subject because it's the thing that I most want to learn and need to know. Just considering how I feel this morning makes me want to understand better how it works and feel more like I can make this happen more often in my life. I want to be this aware when I feel the other emotions too. What would it be like if I could be both angry and self-possessed at the same time? I think it would make me feel better. Since I learn through writing, that's why I have said so much here about it. For better or worse, you have tagged along on my learning journey.

There is part of me that worries that you folks have this all figured out already, that you're reading this and muttering a collective, "duh, Brian." All my life I have wondered if I was the one who didn't get it. I realize now that I'm not the only one, but I still worry that most of you have life sussed out to a degree that I only dream of. If so, I'm not sure I want you to let me know. Maybe you could take pity on a guy and just tell me that you struggle with this stuff too. I don't mind if you lie to me about it.

This reminds me of the race I'll run in a little while. I have no chance whatsoever of winning this race. Nor is there a chance that I will come in last. I am in the great middle and it's not a bad place to be. More important, the race I run today will occur in two places: on the streets around Syracuse's Tipperary Hill and within the confines of my mind. I'll be running my own race today. Running it with friends, but running it with the goal of achieving awareness while I run. This isn't quite as highfaluting as it sounds. I want to run and pay attention to my body. I want to know what I can do and push that boundary just to know myself better. I don't want to "kill myself" on the run so much as know myself.

There is talk of the runner's high. I've felt it. That moment when I am at peace, when my body is doing all the things it was meant to do, when I am just going along and living completely in the moment of each step, that's the runner's high for me. I've felt it when writing, when holding my children, when staring into my true love's eyes. It's the best feeling in the world and it's mine (and yours) for the low-low price of being aware.

Write on.

Wanting Shiny Things (Again)

Wanting Shiny Things

I wrote a few days ago about how I am not going to buy a new cell phone. Not yet. There is one I want and over which I keep getting excited. It's expensive and I have a perfectly workable phone in my possession, so it's not a necessary purchase, but still, it's fun to want it and think about how it would be to own it. As I said then, the wanting of it isn't difficult, it is actually enjoyable to consider.

My wife is not excited about such things. She couldn't care much less about cell phones, computers, or the like. Whatever works is fine with her. She doesn't buy these things in our family and never has. She is more than content to live with whatever we have in the house for her to use. We bought a new computer for her only when the one she was using was near death. She got an iPhone only because I bought it for her as a gift and she has since grown to enjoy it. Unlike me, she does not put herself to sleep with dreams of new operating systems, fast Internet connections, or the lure of a new cell phone.

It's not like I don't know this about her and it's not like she doesn't know these things about me. Still, it causes some friction. I tend to talk (a lot) about the thing that I'm dreaming of having. My wantings aren't very internal. I let most everyone know. I'm working to curb some of that, but there is a purpose to it beyond hounding people into getting it for me. The purpose is to feel excited. I'm a guy who often enough loses the energy of excitement. I've been known to fall into dark holes. Wanting a new phone (or whatever item I'm thinking about) is a shiny light that I hang on to.

On the other side of this is my wife who worries about money. She doesn't feel safe without money in the bank and she's not at all sure how much money will help her to feel safe. It may be that we are almost there or it may be that there is no amount that will ever set her mind at ease. She sees the price tag as a flashing red light, a warning sign. It has danger written all over it. When I show her a new cell phone and am all golly-gee over it, she is thinking, oh no, we can't afford this and it sends her into worry.

Thursday, with time on our hands without the children, we went over to the store and looked at the phone I have been thinking about. I was child-like (hopefully not childish) about it and wanted her to feel the same kinds of excitement that I was feeling. I should have known better. She was nervous and practical and hoping that I would see the reason of things. She should have known better.

We came away from the store separated. Me feeling denied. Her feeling put upon. This lasted through most of the evening. The funny thing about it is that now she probably wants to buy the phone to make up for not being excited and I don't want to buy the phone because I don't want to make her nervous. It's the damn Gift of the Maji in reverse.

There was a time not long ago when an episode like this would knock me out of my orbit. I translated the lack of connection into the notion that we were not in love. Now, I'm hoping that I've grown. What we went through yesterday is simply the friction of being in love of being together. She is not me, I am not her. There are things that I feel that she won't feel and vice versa.

The day after going to the store and looking at the phone I'm seeing it differently. I'm seeing myself and my wife differently as well. The phone is interesting and neat, but it isn't necessary and wanting it isn't necessary either. It has been fun to think about it, but there will be some other device next week (or sooner) that will likely be as interesting if not more. I can be interested in that when it comes around. More to the point, I can be excited about it and want to share that but not go into it expecting and demanding that others be excited about it with me. If I need someone else to be excited about it, then there is something wrong with what I'm doing for myself.

So no phone for me. Not today. I can wait. I can want but not have. At least I think I can. It's worth a try.

Write on.

A Plug For Poetry

I got looks today from the kids at school when I mentioned that I read poetry for fun. They couldn't imagine it even from someone as odd as they think I am. It's not so different when I mention it to adults. The general reaction is summed up in one word: Why?

I am typing this in bed looking at the two shelves that hold my poetry collection. There are seventy-four books there and two more downstairs. I have eight anthologies and then books by thirty-five authors. Very few of these are what I would call academic texts and even those that fall in that category are pretty accessible.

When I read poetry I listen for authors who write conversationally. In graduate school I did my thesis on E.B. White's writing which is elegant and conversational. He sounds like he's speaking to me. I like that. I aspire to it. And I want to hear that kind of voice in poetry. I want someone to speak to me, not down to me.

Most of what keeps people away from poetry is the sense that it is highbrow. It's what we English teachers have tended to teach, that poetry is like a locked box that can be opened only by a teacher, that it is like scripture, which is to say that it is not for ordinary mortals to understand on their own.

To that I say, rubbish. Good poetry for me isn't simple, but it is very often plain. Listen to Robert Bly:

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted. 
The only things moving are swirls of snow. 
As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron. 
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. 
Driving around, I will waste more time. 

Nothing could be plainer and, if a reader wishes, nothing could be simpler. Bly's poem works for me at just about any level. When I "teach" this poem to students, I ask them to read it out loud a couple times and then, since I usually time it with a good snow storm, ask them to write a piece in which they use weather, an empty landscape, and the idea of "wasting" more time. Composing their own words opens the poem for them much in the same way I imagine painting opens up the world of the museum.

Other poems sound more mysterious. Listen to Mark Strand:

Mother and Son
The son enters the mother's room
and stands by the bed where the mother lies.
The son believes that she wants to tell him
what he longs to hear--that he is her boy,
always her boy. The son leans down to kiss
the mother's lips, but her lips are col. 
The burial of feelings has begun. The son
touches the mother's hands one last time,
then turns and sees the moon's full face. 
An ashen light falls across the floor.
If the moon could speak, what would it say?
If the moon could speak, it would say nothing?

That ending kills me. I can stay in it all day. I often look at the moon and wonder why it won't say anything. There is nothing but beauty in Strand's piece.

Beyond beauty and the sound of it, poetry is also the retreat of the busy man. I would love to read Anna Karina, but I'm a slow reader and getting through it would take a long time. But I can get through a poem in moments. Reading a poem is the literary equivalent of looking at a snapshot.

Like snapshots, there are some poems I like and others which don't speak to me at all. I recently grabbed an issue of a literary journal I've been thinking of submitting poetry to. If this issue is any indication, I shouldn't bother. I've read six of the thirteen poems and none come close to appealing to me. Each reminds me of why others don't read poetry: they are dense and fragmented. None sound like someone I want talking to me. They are a cross between the guy outside Starbucks who speaks only in broken sentences and a street preacher shouting about the errors of my ways.

Poetry isn't all like that. It isn't like what your English teacher forced on you. And it's not complicated. Grab a  Billy Collins book. He's good. He's funny and as readable as can be. Or, if you feel daring, read my prose poems, poetry disguised in the familiar garb of paragraphs with commas, periods and words from margin to margin.

Poetry. Good for your soul and it just sounds good.

Write on.

Return of As Easy As Thinking It Makes It So

After yesterday's post about just saying that I want to be more writerly and that being enough to make it so, I had a few comments asking if it really was that easy. The answer is, yes! And it's also no.

I took the section of yesterday's post listing titles and ideas to write and ran with a few of them. I drafted three poems and the first six pages of a short story. One of the poems was good enough to publish on my poetry site. All this is great news for a guy who had just said that he wasn't composing anything. I declared that I wanted to write more and, bam, I wrote more. Deciding to do it was enough to make it happen.

The other side of this is that writing is still difficult. I'm applying for a job and got great advice about the application letter from a friend who is both smart and a good writer. His email was a thing of beauty. I read and reread it, marveling both at the quality of advice and level of writing. Then I sat to write the letter I need to write and that didn't go well at all.

I can blame it on the sixty degree day here in Syracuse, the people stopping to talk as I sat on the front steps, that I had to go to Wegmans for groceries, and that I needed to prepare dinner. I produced a page of really awful prose. I should burn that page and, just to be safe, bury the ashes. It was that bad.

The lesson for me is that writing doesn't always go well but that it does only take deciding to do it. Later today I'll take another crack at the application. I'll decide to write and words will come. It might take a couple dozen tries, but words will come.

The friends who asked if it is as easy as simply deciding to write are wise to wonder about my conclusions. I made it sound easy yesterday, only to run into a bit of hard reality. But then I came to the computer moments ago thinking I had nothing to write here. Pushing that thought away, I decided that I still wanted to write and that something would come.

Something did. Isn't that a kick in the pants?

Since this works in writing, I'm going to try it with other things. I want my life to change. Things are stale inside me. So I'm working on changing jobs. I've been thinking about it for years. I'm curious to see if getting a new job can happen simply by deciding to get one. I wonder if I can find a new job by living life looking for what's next. The crazy thing is that right now, typing these words, I believe I can. Call me after a few job rejections come in and I may have changed my tune. Then again, maybe I won't.

I don't mean to be flip about job searches. There are people looking for work who don't have the luxury I do of having a job already. They aren't out of work simply because they haven't decided to change that. I'm thinking about myself here, not labeling others. I want to train myself to believe in possibility.

Every day is a new opportunity. I've been letting most of those slide just as I have passed up endless writing inspirations. For at least a day I grabbed on to the inspirations. I like imagining what happens when I stop passing up the opportunities.

Write on.

As Easy As Thinking It Makes It So

In class yesterday, as the students and I wrote, I felt that I hadn't written much of anything lately. Sure, I publish these essays daily, but even they have felt forced. I've spent more time staring at the screen wondering what to write about. Some would call this writer's block, but I'm not much for that particular diagnosis. I was, after all, in the middle of writing when the thought occurred to me. I just wasn't thrilled with the things coming out on the page.

The day before I had revised two old prose poems. That's work I like doing, but often enough revising old writing gets me wondering why I'm not producing new stuff. As I pushed the pen across the page in class, I wondered why I wasn't writing more poetry or fiction. What would it take to get me back to that?

Right away the answer came: I need to be looking at the world as a writer. I need to live a writerly life. This doesn't mean I have to grow a goatee, take up smoking, and live at the bar Bukowski style. I look terrible with a goatee and smoking is out of the question. The bar on the other hand... I just  need to see the world as though everything in it were waiting to be added to my page.

Easier said than done, I thought, but it turns out that saying it is the key to doing it. Soon as I said it I began seeing things to write.

I drove home from school on Route 81, past the old Penfield Mfg. Company building and the little Victorian house that sits on the roof of it. A story blossomed in my head about a child asking her father about the house and the father telling a deep and intricate story about the owner of the place, his son who was friends with the girl's grandfather. The whole thing would be an elaborate lie, a story he tells to pass the time on a long drive and to do...something else. I haven't quite figured out that last bit, but that's okay because I started writing it in my head as I drove. Soon as I could sit with my notebook, I began scribbling ideas for it.

As I writing that that, a woman came in to the waiting room with a young boy. She was reading a book on her phone and the boy kept trying to see what it was. A poem idea came to me about a fairy-tale nurse refusing to show her charge the pictures in the book she read to him each night. The book is blank but glows when she reads it, illuminating her face and making her seem young. The boy keeps trying to look at the book but she presses it to her chest each time he peeks and tells him that there are things he must learn from the stories before he can read them himself.

Titles came to mind: The Cat Told Me She Was Dead. The Lunchbox of Notre Dame. Snow Melt. You Want Syrup On That? Going to the Art Museum Alone Imagining I Am The Buddha. Lancing a Blood Blister.

I saw characters and settings. A man sitting on the closed toilet holding a paper towel to his bleeding nose and lip. He dreams of Lauren. She waits for his call. Outside his window the sirens are blaring and his dog howls and scratches at the door.

And a recurring image of a boy pushing his hand through a glass door.

It all came to me because I said to myself that I need to be more writerly. There remains only the tasks of writing some of it down and keeping myself open to the world in this way.

Already I feel more alive, happier, ready to do something. This way of thinking extends past the page. It's not just about my writing. It's about living. I don't want to sit still and wait for things to happen. I'm ready to make things happen on the page, ready to make my pen sing, make the keyboard talk. I'm excited to make myself aware and alive, and to write on and on and on.

Wanting Things

I want a new phone. This is a sign of other things. I get to wanting things when I'm unhappy and feel the need for something new to happen. Not knowing how to fix that leaves me feeling wanting some thing to fill the void. In this case, it's a new phone that is gee-whiz, zap-pow cool!

The phone is the Samsung Galaxy Note. It's a big phone or small tablet that makes phone calls. Take your pick. It fits a niche I've long wondered about. An iPad is too big and doesn't have a keyboard, but my iPhone screen is too small for web browsing or writing. I have experimented with a bluetooth keyboard for the iPhone just to see if I can write that way. It's not bad but not great.

The Galaxy Note would work just dandy. That said, I shouldn't buy one. Not yet anyway. I'm pretty sure that wanting one is just a symptom of something else. And let's face facts: I don't need it. This isn't a question of need. It's all about want.

I'm okay with wanting so long as I don't rush to get it. In this case, I'm giving myself thirty days to think about it. Thirty days of waiting can be a good thing.

See, waiting isn't necessarily the hardest part. Waiting is good. Waiting thirty days allows me to read more about it, go to the store and try it, look for ways to pay for it, consider my desires, and so on. It also gives me the opportunity to fill the hole in my life in other ways.

Prior to writing this, I rewrote several of my poems and sent one off to a magazine. I have two out of four more ready to send. Writing and publishing are pretty good ways to fill my gaps.

Tomorrow, I'll run and see how that feels. I'll get a new book from the library. I'll see my therapist. I'll work with students at school. Then, I'll talk with my wife about it and see where her thoughts are. She's excellent at not buying things and helping me think about what I want and need.

It's not a bad thing to want a phone. It's okay to buy one too, but there is good to be had in waiting, thinking, and trying to fill my life without charging my credit card. I might buy the phone, I might not. The goal is to be happy. I'll have to figure out what will make me feel that way.

One thing surely does help. And that's to write on.

I Get the Science Fair, Making Popcorn, and Bad Teachers

Last night I had to work hard not to get upset. I read a NY Times opinion piece called "Confessions of a 'Bad' Teacher" and it got me thinking again about the insanity of the teacher ranking systems and the pay for play games being played on our children in order to advance political agendas. I could go on about that for an hour or so, but instead I want to think about the science fair and about making popcorn.

I finally get the science fair. My daughter wanted to be in the science fair last year but her teacher didn't give her that option. It was one of the things I didn't like about the guy. There were many things I did like, but this one bugged me. She has her chance this year and has decided to work on volcanoes. I didn't get it when she signed on to do the project or when she announced her topic, but I got it yesterday. She was on the computer typing her draft of the paper to go with her project and then was looking for information about volcanoes. I suggested that we check out YouTube.

We watched Mount St. Helens erupt and you should too. We watched, all told, about an hour of excellent video about volcanoes. We looked up Vulcan to see why his name is the root of so much of the vocabulary. We both learned a lot about the subject and about working with each other. This isn't the first time we've had this kind of experience, but I get the science fair now. The science fair is all about giving my daughter and I a chance to learn together. I'm so grateful for the opportunity.

That said, there is plenty of pain in the ass that comes with this opportunity, but that's pretty much the story of child rearing. I can live with the trade.

Then there is the popcorn.

Each evening before bed, the girls get a snack of some kind. Last night they asked for popcorn. My wife isn't feeling well and is lying on the couch. I was at the kitchen table reading the article about teaching that got me good and upset. Neither of us was going to make popcorn. So I said, "why don't you two make it yourselves?"

My girls are eight and ten years old. Just so you won't think that they are morons, we don't use microwave popcorn around here. It costs too much, makes a terrible stink, and is wrapped in way too much packaging. We make popcorn with oil, kernels, a pan, and some heat. Then we throw salt and maybe some butter on it.

So the girls said that they were more than happy to make the stuff. Under my direction, they got down the pan and added two tablespoons of oil. They tossed in three kernels, put the lid on, and turned on the heat. My younger kept us up to date with very regular bulletins about the status of those three kernels. "Haven't popped yet! Think they might pop! Nope, not yet!" And so on. Our older daughter got down a bowl and I told the younger to take a break from the play-by-play in order to measure out half a cup of kernels. When the three kernels had all popped, she added the half cup to the hot pan, replaced the top and resumed the narration.

As a teacher, leading them through this process, I was very effective in that they made popcorn and no one was injured. But I think that my lesson plan would have been cut by an administrator who would have favored technology in the kitchen. "Kids need to learn how to use microwaves in this day and age," I can hear them say. "Where is the technology in this lesson?" I think fire is a hell of a technology, but I wouldn't expect that to please anyone. Further, if they were tested on this process, they might suggest adding four kernels to the oil or mix up and put half a cup of oil in the pan first. My oldest would likely forget to cover the pan. The youngest would add salt by the pound. In other words, they would fail the test and I would be fired as their father and teacher.

The science fair worked because we had a question: why do volcanoes erupt? We will be thinking about that for the next few weeks and on through our years. The popcorn lesson worked because they got some good popcorn out of the deal and went to bed with their bellies full. Learning is about a lot more than testing. Any parent knows that. Any human being knows that. And yet we are running our schools in a way that is contrary to everything we know about learning, about kids, about teaching, and about how the world works. That's just stupid. If I could, I would give the people creating education policy in this country a test and then fire them for failing it.

Until I can do that, I suppose the best I can do is to have some popcorn, calm myself down, and write on.

Friendship

Had a lovely chat yesterday with a friend that put me in a healthy and good uncomfortable position. I like how contrary that sounds because it hints at what I was feeling which was all sorts of conflict. First, a bit of background.

I got out for a nice long run yesterday with a bunch of friends. The temperature was way up in the high fifties, low forties, but there was a massive wind. Still it was easy to get out the door and run a mile down the road to the house where we were all meeting. Soon enough, we were out for a good run. I started up front with my friend Scott, the only other guy in the group, and we talked about the usual things we talk about on the run. You know, family, work, our vasectomies, the usual. It was great.

Then, for a while I was running with his wife, Kristin and Jess and Margaret, mostly listening to them as they talked. I've learned a lot about listening while on runs with people. I'm starting to be comfortable with the idea that I don't have to speak much, don't have to be noticed. I don't have to perform.

Next, I noticed that one of our group, Karen, who is struggling with a pain in the back of one thigh, had drifted back. I slowed up and ran with her. She's about as interesting to talk with as anyone as she makes me laugh but then can be serious in the next sentence. I find myself asking questions just to get her to tell me more.

With just a few miles left, I paired up with Kristin again, but this time on our own. She has been reading here about how I hadn't been running, how I had felt myself fall into an emotional and she's comfortable enough to mention things. She started asking me questions about how I was doing. My first reaction at times such as these is to say, "I'm fine," because I've been trained well not to admit any problems. Today, I curbed that tendency and tried to say instead what was really happening. I told her that, yeah, I had been having a bunch of troubles. That was the first discomfort.

The second came when Kristin offered to help me. She suggested that I could check in with her about running and she could check up on me. She even explained how she didn't want it to go -- that she didn't want it to be a pressure situation but more of a friendly reminder. This was very uncomfortable to me. I mean, just think of it, a friend was offering to help me. Heaven forbid!

This is the kind of discomfort that I need in my life. I need to get used to the idea of someone wanting to help me and used to the idea that I am not doing this all by myself. It's good for me because it's a stretch. I haven't always done well by myself, though I'm happy with the things that I can accomplish on my own. When I'm in trouble I need help.

I see a therapist once a week. I write about my life and publish it every day. I rely more than ever on the loving care and understanding given me by my wife. Why shouldn't I also depend on friends who want to help me and accept their kindness? It's a generous thing to say, Yes, please.

So, I know Kristin will read this and my public answer is this: Yes, please. I'll keep you posted about what I'm doing in my running because running has become such a good barometer of how other things are going on in my life. I'll also maybe sit you down sometime to talk about what we want to do with our lives. We both are in periods of transition and transformation. That's exciting and it's also stressful and unnerving. It's scary. Things aren't as frightening when we get to do them with a friend.

I ran yesterday, put in eight and a half miles. I ran barefoot for the first time in a while and between the mileage and all the time off I have reduced my left foot a little bit to hamburger. I'm typing this with that left foot resting on an ice pack and wondering what it will feel like on the next run. Whatever the case, it will be better than not running and feeling depressed. It will be better to be out on the road supported by friends.

Write on.

Finding Pieces of Happiness

As I write, I have the Brad Mehldau Trio playing "Granada" on YouTube from Jazz at Baltica 2006. It's phenomenal and puts everything in the world to right. Along with that, I have gotten back out to run. It was just exactly what I needed. On top of that, my urologist finally cleared me for safe sex after eight months of waiting. It turns out that sperm are hardy things and last in the pipes for a while. Who knew? But now I'm free and easy. Well, I've always been easy, but that's a whole other discussion.

The point is that I'm finding little pieces of happiness and putting them together into some sort of mosaic. I'm calmer than I was yesterday. I'm not nearly so anxious. In fact, as I wrote that last line I paused to check myself and I can't feel any anxiety anywhere in my body. What a relief.

Let's take these things apart. First the music. "Granada" is a gorgeous tune that showcases Mehldau's playing as well as anything he performs. His left hand keeps a rhythmic line going but dances all over the place playing its own thing. Meanwhile, his right hand is playing a lyrical dance of its own. It's hummable. It gets my head moving, my shoulders bobbing, my feet tapping out the rhythm. Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard help out a lot there playing bass and drums both as the perfect backing band but also as virtuosos in their own rights. But it is Mehldau who carries the day for me. I have listened to him for days on end. He might be the perfect writing companion for me.

I've pretty much given the urology report, but it's a relief to finish with something I never expected to take more than a month or two. I've long since recovered from the surgery (that only took a couple days) but I have been waiting to get a green light for a while. Not just for the obvious reason, but also to have the thing complete, to put it behind me. And that's what I get to do now. Ahhhhhh.

The run more than the other two is what I'm happiest with. It was a short one, two and a half miles on the flat course outside my door. I've run it hundreds of times. I've run it faster. I've run it slower. But today I just ran and remembered everything I've known about running and health. It was even warm enough to go without shoes. The first five or six dozen steps were all punctuated with question marks. I found myself wondering if my back was too sore, if I was cold, if I was going to get tired, and so on. But then the question marks became periods and commas. It was smooth sailing.

It was chilly out there, but not in a March kind of way. The temperature was in the forties and the roads were mostly dry. I saw that I could do it without even strapping on the FiveFingers. I love running barefoot, feeling the pavement under me, knowing everything about every stride. I felt the tiny gravel beneath me, the occasional puddle, but mostly I felt the world sliding under my feet as I moved through it.

Running is restorative. There is all this talk about recovery runs and I get what is meant by that, but every run is recovery for me. I think that I've come to grips with the fact that I go through some emotional downturns (I can't quite call it depression) and, like alcoholism, there is no cure. Instead, there is treatment, a twelve million step program if you will. Alcoholics count days sober. I count days out running. Today was day one. Running restores me to health.

I'm still about the same weight I was before I ran. I run the same speed I have run for years. I can run a little farther than I used to (though today, two and a half was enough), but nothing much changes in my running and that's just dandy with me. Maybe someday I'll work on getting faster or running a lot farther. Lord knows I would love to run a lot thinner, but right now it's enough to stay out of the emotional downturns for a while and remember how to lift myself up out of that.

There's no telling how long this recovery will last, but I see again that I can recover and that's just what I needed to know on this happy day.

The trio is doing there take on "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover." It's another perfect song. I just had a good run. The doctor gave me a good report. To that, I say, write on!