Little Matchmaker, Big Commitment: Taking Me Seriously

     

     There are times in my teaching career when I've realized I've done more than just teach. I often serve as a counselor and a parent and a coach and cheerleader all in one. I've even been a police officer of sorts, a comedian, and an actor. Yet, one of the roles I never expected to play was a matchmaker.

     In 2013, not knowing their personalities at the start of the year, I assigned seats to the students in my IB English class randomly. At some point during that year, two of my students who sat across from each other started dating. They didn't know each other prior to my class, but having to sit across from one another forced them to meet. They dated for two years in high school. When they graduated from Atlee, I jokingly said I wanted an invitation to their wedding when that happens. "If it hadn't been for the fact that I sat you two across from each other, you might never have started dating," I said jokingly.

They laughed but promised they would.

They took me seriously.

     This past week I received a save the date invitation in the mail to their wedding. When I opened it, I couldn't help but smile. I haven't seen these two young people much since they've graduated from Atlee let alone from Virginia Tech. I was so honored as I held that invitation in my hand and opened my calendar to, in fact, save the date.

     This moment got me to thinking about the the importance of commitment and promises. How committed am I to what matters most in life? How many promises do I make that I don't fulfill? Are my words just shallow and empty promises or do I sincerely mean what I say? These two former students clearly stood by their word. I am invited to their wedding, and I am going to show up proud to have been their teacher back when their relationship began, back when I served as their matchmaker.

     This month I want you to think about the idea of commitment. Most recently, I have been stuck in a very small room listening to Individual Oral Commentaries. I have heard more about Langston Hughes than I probably need to hear at this point in my life and thought very carefully about how I would redecorate the room I heard these commentaries in during the hours I spent there. I need about a gallon of paint and some black and white photographs, but I digress. This assessment is not an easy one. I know. I tried it several years ago just to see what it was like to be in your shoes. I floundered--a lot. Spending about 29 hours listening to these oral commentaries most recently, I began to think about the commitment you all gave to such an assessment. Most of you started barely being able to speak for 1-2 minutes when we began practicing for this assessment, and most of you ended with far more knowledge about poetry and Langston Hughes, many speaking for 7-8 minutes about a 20-line poem. A moment like that showed true commitment to your learning. Needless to say, I am proud.

You took me seriously.

Students practicing for the IOC

Students teaching the class poetry for the IOC

                                                      A selfie with the student who completed the final IOC

      And my seniors, you most recently turned in your extended essays, an 18-month endeavor of 4,000 words. Along with it, you sacrificed blood, sweat, tears, and more than likely some nights where sleep was lacking. I remember when we began these papers last fall--with your passion projects. Somehow you converted something you were interested in to a research paper of 4,000 words. You showed commitment in your research and your writing. You didn't phone it in when it could have been easy to do so.

You took me seriously.

     Quite honestly, that's a huge part of what life is all about--not being able to talk for 8 minutes about a 20-line poem or being able to write a 4,000 research paper--but genuinely committing yourself to the people, ideas, and things that are most important. I've been thinking about my role as a teacher--and one as a comedian, actor, counselor, and even matchmaker. Regardless of what hat I am wearing at a particular moment, my role is to be committed to my students. I will not give up on you even when you don't read the books or when senioritis (which is a made up disease, by the way) happens to reach its peak. If you don't understand something, I will find a way for you to understand. If you need someone to listen to why you're frustrated, I will lend an ear. If you want to write better, I will help you find your words.

I will take you seriously.

       In 1993 when I graduated high school, Sting released a beautiful song about relationships called "Fields of Gold." There's a few lines in there that stand out: "I never made promises lightly / And there have been some that I've broken / But I swear in the days still left / We'll walk in fields of gold." While the song technically is about relationships, the lines remind me of the idea of commitment in other areas of my life--of promise and taking things seriously. And they speak to me about my job as a teacher and your role as a student--to show commitment and promise even when it would be easier to phone it in, even when it is difficult.

     Next September I will see the commitment of two of my former students on their wedding day. I will more than likely reminisce about teaching them and be proud of how they ended up together. And I will think about the importance of commitment, of the roles I play as a teacher, of promises and how grateful I am that these two young people who are beginning their life together took me seriously.

 

Find the good. Be the good.

      I'm constantly asking my kids what they want to be when they grow up. Their answers have varied from Katie wanting to be a rock star when she was in kindergarten to both girls currently wanting to teach. (I wonder who is influencing that decision). When my son Jack announced at the dinner table recently one night that he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up, my interest peaked. Often he is the kid who gives me very little details about his nine year-old life. "What did you do at school today?" I frequently ask only to hear responses like "stuff" and "things."

     "What do you want to be?" I asked. I couldn't help but smile eagerly.

     After an eye roll that only a nine year-old can give, he replied, "When I grow up, I want to be a man."

     Frustrated, I replied, "But that's not something to be. You already are a man."

     "No. I'm just a boy. But I want to be a man. A good man," he said.

     I usually advise students to shy away from adjectives like "good" when they want to use them in their writing. It's a pretty nondescript way of saying what so many other words can say much better. Yet somehow that adjective tied to what Jack wanted to be--a good man--was perfect. He couldn't have described it better in that moment.

      Last year at this time, I reflected on the idea to choose a word to uphold for the new year. I chose resolution and decided to define my life by living a life of resolution--to commit myself fully to people, ideas, experiences. This year my son has inspired me to choose the word good. This year I've decided to find the good and be the good others want to see in this world. Good--perhaps the most nondescript, boring word I could choose--has inspired me to make some changes in the way I do things in ways that I anticipate will be far from boring.

      For one, I want to surround myself with good people. A student I taught two years ago encouraged me to do this in his valedictory speech. He wrote, "That is my hope for us. That we find those people who are who we hope to be--who value what we want to value. I hope that we choose our future friends not based off of popularity or convenience, but because they challenge us to be better people." I had the privilege of editing this speech before he delivered it, and I wrote down this idea two years ago when I read it. The idea of surrounding ourselves with people we want to be seems so simple yet is not something I see we always do. We want to be the popular kid or the successful kid. We're worried about if the choices we make will get us into the right college and how these choices will impact our GPA. Even adults want to find acceptance in this world more often than not. But do we think about how this will genuinely make us better? How it will make us good?

The next thing I resolve to do in the new year is find the good in situations. Last month, I came into school on a Monday utterly exhausted from my weekend. I tried to pack in too much. As a result, my essays weren't all graded, and I didn't feel like I was ready for the day. A student walked into my classroom and asked how my weekend was. "Just too short," I replied, barely looking up from what I was doing.

"Don't worry," she said, "We get another one in six days."

What an amazing perspective that completely changed the way I attacked the day. Instead of complaining that we were back at school and it was only Monday, this student had it all figured out--she found the good in the situation.

Finally, this year I want to commit to a life of doing good. I had the recent experience to watch this in my students in Theory of Knowledge. As supervisor of the CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) component of IB, I facilitate monthly service projects. This past December, we raised over $700 for the Head Start preschool students at Henry Clay Elementary School. We shopped together to buy items on these children's wish list. Our trip to Walmart that Sunday was exactly as I pictured it: you all were rushing around to grant the wishes of kids you didn't even know and loading the cart full of happiness. Amid the foam sword fighting, bicycle riding down the aisles, and laughing at the looks some of the patrons gave me, I stood proud of what you did--of what we did.

We spent the next day wrapping 56 gifts--some of us learned how to wrap a present for the first time. And then we took a field trip to visit our new four year-old friends.

When we arrived at Henry Clay, I honestly had no idea what to expect. It's not every day that I see my own students interacting with young children. It took all of about 5 minutes for me to turn around and realize that this was one of the best things I have ever been a part of as a teacher. I watched you sit with these young people in your laps, laughing and smiling. I watched two of you stand up and dance with one of the kids, and many threw around tissue paper, letting the eyes of the children light up as they tried to catch it falling in the air. About halfway through the morning, one of the preschool teachers took me aside and pointed to a boy who she had never seen smile and laugh like he was that day. You helped these kids shoot baskets and feed their new dolls.You played hide and seek and got into an epic superhero battle. You brought them so much joy.

While those kids may not remember this moment years from now, I am certain you will remember the impact you can have on others for a long time to come. I know it's going to take a long time for me to forget the important lesson of doing good I learned from all of you in that moment.

I often relate what I'm thinking to song lyrics, and this time, I'm going a little out of my comfort zone in referencing Southern classic rock lyrics of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Before they graduate, I always ask my seniors I teach to tell me their favorite song. Each year there is always at least one student who chooses "Simple Man." It's a song I always have been familiar with but never really paid attention to its lyrics: "Be a simple kind of man. Oh be something you love."

Maybe my son picked the perfect occupation when he told me he wanted to be a good man when he grows up. And maybe that's all that I want for my new year as well--Surround myself with good people. Find the good. Do good. Always.

Learning How to Be Me In Time: How I Struggle Connecting

     The best teacher I ever had was my seventh grade science teacher. She made a cell out of jello for us to eat (and learn the parts of the cell) and dressed in a full body skeleton costume when we were learning human anatomy. This might not seem like a big deal, but she also was the only teacher who took me outside of the classroom the day after my grandmother died to make sure I was doing okay. All of these things were done in a traditional education system where all desks faced forward and worksheets were passed down the rows. While most of my teachers asked us to memorize facts and read aloud from the textbook, Miss Lewis--a first year teacher--was on the cutting edge of education. She still is teaching today, and I can imagine she only continues to inspire with age. Miss Lewis made a connection with me--with all of us--in a way that very few other teachers did. And she did it by being herself. She had her own style of teaching that no one else could match.

My seventh grade teacher, Miss Lewis, on her wedding day

     I want to be that teacher--the teacher who works hard to instruct her students in her own style. I try not to get caught up in what's "trending" in education; I try to bring relevant experiences to my classroom that I think will help connect with students.  Yet this is not always easy to do in a world where things go out of style faster than I can write about them. Recently, I have been worried that I wasn't connecting with you, my students--that we didn't quite understand each other. I'll let you in on a little secret and tell you that I have had to Google so many of the popular culture references you write about in your work and include in your presentations more often than not. Today I heard  one  you sadly announce that Netflix was cancelling the show, Friends. While this means very little to me as I don't have much time to watch t.v., the first thing I thought of is that this was something that connected my generation to yours. This was something you could talk about that I actually understood. Years from now, my future students won't ever have that connection.

     I constantly try to connect with you by discussing content in relevant terms of today. This month we wrote open letters to the characters from A Streetcar Named Desire and created videos mimicking tv broadcasts like Meet the Press to discuss Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. 

To continue to make my teaching relevant, I also present you, my seniors, with a daily meme. In doing so, I hope it will bring a common understanding to the twenty-plus years that separate us. Let me explain how drastically wrong I was.  Every day I receive a grade from you that doesn't even scratch the surface of a C. "That's just pictures with words," you tell me. "It might be relevant to the topic we're studying, but it's not current." I've learned that cat memes and memes from The Office are no longer funny (maybe they never were funny) and that I should no longer use the traditional "meme font." Memes seem to trend for a week or even a few days in your world, not the months (or years) of existence in which I use them. My favorite comment from you is "That's not a meme." I receive that one regularly as you smile and throw out a D+. These may be some of the lowest grades I've ever received in school, by the way, and they've somewhat damaged my confidence in believing I could connect with my students. Yet, every day I continue to try. Every day, like Miss Lewis, I will attempt to put on the skeleton costume. And for that, I thank you.

     Ultimately, I'm okay with the low grades and the disconnect because I've learned something about myself as a teacher through all of this. Maybe the disconnect is what keeps you interested. In much the same way that Miss Lewis intrigued us by wearing that full body skeleton suit in a school full of worksheets, maybe I need to continue to do "me." And maybe the "me" is that teacher who doesn't quite know the popular culture references you're talking about and who thinks memes about The Office are still funny. Maybe the "me" is the teacher who watched Friends the first time around because she is from the generation when the show originated. Maybe that teacher is the one who listens to the Beatles and likes unsweet tea and still refuses to use an emoji when texting.

      I think that's what I most want to tell you in this blog. This is going to sound cliche, but it's really quite simple. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Don't try to please other people to the point that you lose yourself in the process. Don't fear you won't connect with others because you're different or you think they won't understand you. Instead, make connections with others by showing them who YOU are. Be yourself. Even if you find yourself far different from others--or there seems to be a large disconnect--continue to be YOU.

     If you take one look at my classroom, you can deduce that I am a fan of the Beatles. I was not alive in their prime, but I grew up listening to their music. In one of my favorite songs, "All You Need is Love," Paul McCartney and John Lennon sing, "Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time." That lyric says everything to me about the importance of being ourselves.

I often think back to Miss Lewis walking into class in that skeleton costume. She didn't care if she looked ridiculous. She didn't care what we thought. She didn't care that no other teacher in that school was teaching like she was. She knew this was going to peak our interest. And it did. After all, I'm writing about it thirty-one years later.

       I genuinely hope my classroom is a place where you feel like you can be "you." I loved what I saw when we did a silent Socratic seminar at the start of our study of Their Eyes Were Watching God. I witnessed unique and individual thought and a sense of humor.

And seniors, your math projects and ways of thinking during that unit truly showed me a lot about who you are. Do you remember the class where you "invented" a whole new number system--a conversation that occupied all of flex block (and even into your math class later that day)? You are unique thinkers; not every high school student would think about things that way. Continue to embrace who you are.

     That was how I planned to end my blog until today happened. Today I walked into class with my meme projected on the board, and you gave me an A. After all of my worries of feeling disconnected, today I got it right. Tomorrow I will probably be back to mediocrity, but it made me think and believe that somewhere in all of this, I still have the capability of  connecting with you. To speak metaphorically, in a world full of worksheets, I still plan to wear the skeleton costume.You might have to continue to explain cultural references to me, but I'm going to continue to connect--in my own way--and learn how to be me in time.

Get Vaccinated: Create Your Own Opportunities

                                                     "There's no crying in baseball!"

     I was reminded of that iconic line from the movie A League of Their Own when I was watching my son's little league baseball game recently. Two boys at two separate times left the field in tears. One pitched for the first time and grew upset that the other team scored five runs that inning. The second struck out and subsequently ended the game without allowing the two boys on base to score. Both times there were tears. Both times I listened to the coach give a motivational speech to get the nine year-olds to rally.

     "Look at me," I heard the coach say as the boy buried his head into the crux of his arm. "Look at me!" The boy finally obliged "When I pitched for the first time, I hit a kid in the arm and broke his arm. I broke a kid's arm. You pitched strikes. I broke a kid's arm. Think about that." The nine year-old eventually was smiling, but it took a lot of motivation including a story about a broken arm (which I wasn't sure was entirely true) to get him there. This moment served as a catalyst for me in thinking about how we all are motivated, about how I motivate the students in my classroom, and how I, myself, am motivated.

     Somehow everywhere I turned this month, someone was talking to me about motivation. A former student sent me an article by a sportswriter, Jared Carrabis, who covers the Boston Red Sox. The article discussed how Carrabis worked his way up to covering the World Series winning team. He wrote about his motivation to get to the top even when those around him doubted his abilities. While I am not a Red Sox fan, and it was a tough article to swallow four days prior to their World Series win, I read it to its entirety and was motivated because a student I taught five years ago thought enough to send it my way, as he knew I would like the message behind it. And he was right; in that article, Carrabis wrote, "I tell everyone to create their own opportunities." That's what I thought about this month as I explored this idea of motivation. Create your own opportunities.

       And then I faced a question I have never been asked in twenty years of teaching and one I felt tongue tied in answering. It was a question not even Google could answer. "Mrs. Pace, in your long experience as a teacher, have you seen a lot of cases of senioritis? I don't know how to get motivated." The student asked this question in all seriousness with intention, curious as to how he could change the lack of motivation he was experiencing this year. I found myself at a loss of words. I've taught seniors the past seven years, and every year I see students who seem not to be as motivated as the years before, as if some kind of disease is paralyzing them. And maybe it is. I've seen seniors desire that graduation date in October, and I've even seen juniors try to do what they can just to get by. School sometimes seems like it's a rite of passage, a hoop to jump through in order to get to what we really want. I wish I had some kind of cure for the lack of motivation. I wish there is something I could say that would bring back that drive. I had nothing. No story of a broken arm when pitching could motivate these seniors. No story of how I stayed motivated when I was in high school twenty-five years ago could motivate them either. I felt like I was failing them as a teacher, and the group who stood around me was still waiting for an answer.

       I'm still not sure how to answer that question, and quite frankly, I don't remember what I said. I'm not sure how I motivate my students. I'm not sure how I get you to smile when you're in my room and enjoy writing or reading (although I'm aware that some of you never do enjoy either one), but I'm motivated every day to try. I have ninety days to teach you what I am most passionate about. Ninety days. When you look at it like that, it's not a very long time. So, instead of wishing the days away, appreciate where you are in the moment. Find some reason to embrace the life you are currently living, not the one you will live next year or the year after that. Create your own opportunities.

      Think of what you've accomplished in this past month alone. Juniors, you've completed your first major writing assignment (along with many other smaller ones) in IB English. You re-enacted the iconic "Stellaaaaah!" scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. Cumulatively you read or are reading 257 books this quarter.

Seniors, you've explored math as an area of knowledge in TOK. You turned in drafts of your extended essays. You partnered with a first grade class at Pearson's Corner Elementary School to motivate those kids to read and love reading. Those kids are counting on you and your encouragement; they are motivated by you.

       So, I suppose the only thing I can tell anyone who feels unmotivated or who is impaled by the symptoms of senioritis is to get vaccinated by creating your own opportunities. Find something to hold onto and breathe life into. Maybe that's your biology homework. Maybe it's the work you do in inspiring young kids. Maybe it's your commitment to marching band or football or DECA.

     I don't often stray from the classic rock I listen to, but the lyrics of "Whatever It Takes" by Imagine Dragons have been circulating in my head recently: "Don't wanna be the parenthetical, hypothetical / Working hard on something that I'm proud of."

As the song suggests, find something to be proud of and make it your own. Change your mindset. Don't be a parenthetical or a side note or a hypothetical idea that wonders what would happen if you tried. Instead...try. Don't waste a moment and if you do, be sure at least it's memorable among friends. Get Vaccinated: create your own opportunities.  After all, there's no crying in baseball.

Taking Life Less Seriously

     My husband and my son Jack are the resident funny guys in our house. Jack's been telling knock knock jokes since the age of two and often keeps me laughing at even the most desperate moments. I remember the first joke he told:

                              Jack: Knock knock
                              Me: Who's there?
                              Jack: Ken
                              Me: Ken who?
                              Jack: Can I come in? It's freezing out here!

As he said the punchline, he folded his arms and pretended to shiver as our entire dinner table erupted in laughter. That night, I sat at dinner stunned that a two year-old could possess the intelligence to tell a joke in the proper cadence. At his two year-old doctor's visit, he told the pediatrician the same joke. She was so impressed that she made him tell it to all of the nurses. I later learned from my daughter that he was no boy genius-turned-comedian--that he learned that joke from watching Yo Gabba Gabba on t.v. Today his sense of humor has matured, and he still keeps me on my toes, making me smile at the times when I probably need to the most. Jack's sense of humor, like my husband's, often balances my seriousness in our house. It's always been this way. My husband and Jack see the humor in any situation while I will honestly admit that I stress or worry or sometimes take things a little too seriously.

     As serious as I can be sometimes, I suppose I was always taught to have a sense of humor. My grandmother used to sit with us at her kitchen table and say, "Let's laugh." We all would crack up over nothing in particular. Every time I find myself getting too serious about something, I think of the lady who always welcomed laughter into my life.

     Laughter is something I've learned is important to take with me into the classroom. I don't like a quiet classroom, and if my students can laugh and have fun even for a short period of time, I find it to be a successful class. I've learned to develop a thick skin and a sense of humor most days of teaching just to keep up with the teenagers who enter Room 211. I'm far from perfect at this, but I always try to maintain a sense of humor. Years ago when I was a young teacher and track coach, I was frustrated at the athletes I was coaching who seemed to be lazily completing a workout around the track. I usually was the quiet coach who pulled kids aside to get them to do what I wanted, but the lackluster performance in this workout had me all worked up. "Pick up the pace, NOW!" I yelled. Moments later, a group of runners came charging at me, picking me up into the air and running me around the track. I wanted to yell more, but I just had to laugh as I called for them to put me down.

     Last year, upon studying The Crucible by Arthur Miller, I was explaining to my class that the female characters in the play were called Goody in a similar way that we place Mrs. in front of a woman's name today. My class started to affectionately (or at least I think the intention was affectionately done) call me "Goody Pace." It somehow shortened itself to Goody and somehow has been another reminder of the importance of maintaining a sense of humor.

     Just a few days ago, I found this sense of humor tested when a student's parent decorated my house with JMU gear as JMU geared up to play UR in football. While she made the resident funny guys in my house very happy (they are JMU fans), as a Richmond alum, I had a hard time soaking in all of the gold and purple adorning my tree. It was yet another reminder to maintain a sense of humor.

       A sense of humor. I think that's what I want you to think about this month now that you have a month of this school year under your belts. Juniors, you've already been forced to do new things in English class. I've asked you to write differently, begging you to give up the three-pronged thesis for good. I've tested your oral presentation skills by having you do literary presentations. Some of you have created videos using the green screen in our classroom. I've asked you to use technology in different ways and even record your own voices as you try to comment for eight minutes on a poem. These are not easy tasks, and it might take some time before you master them. If you've noticed, I haven't assigned you any long, formal writing assignments yet. I want to give you the tools you need to pursue those--one being a sense of humor.

 Seniors, fall is busy, and by now I'm sure you've realized that the myth of senior year being easy is far from true.You have college essays to write and applications to complete. Yet, you come into Theory of Knowledge every day keeping me on my toes. After all, you were the ones who affectionately gave me my nickname Goody. I've asked you to try a new app, Flipgrid, as a way to reintroduce yourselves to the class as well as discuss psychological experiments.

   

 You wrote letters welcoming new students to Atlee. Yet, what excited me the most was the day I walked into class, and you had set the table, saying "Welcome to our family dinner." You had drawn plates and food on our dry erase tables, showing me that yes, I still need to maintain a sense of humor. Somehow you created an environment that sadly often goes to the wayside in the typical American home these days. The environment you created around that "dinner table" brought back memories of the family dinner when I heard my son's first joke--a true reminder of the need not to take life so seriously.

      And the B4 class who spent over four hours with me during the tornado experience--I probably need to thank you most of all. Every time I wanted to complain, I looked around at what was happening in that classroom. You were making the best of the situation. You were talking and playing games (when we were not ducking and covering, that is). You showed me the importance of remaining calm in a situation. Thank you for showing me a sense of humor was the most necessary item to possess in that classroom that day. Please don't take offense to this, but I hope we won't have any more four hour classes together anytime soon!

     So that's what I encourage you to do this month. Sit down and laugh. Find the humor in the situation no matter what kind of stress you are experiencing. Life's too short to be taken too seriously. I may never be the resident funny guy in my house, but I've learned to let things go sometimes, and I know I'm better for it. Even if it does mean I have to be called "Goody," am picked up around the track, and have some new purple lawn decorations, I'm still laughing. I always will be.