kellementology

life according to me

Tag: Society

  • Hoop Jumping and Birch Swinging

    Hoop Jumping and Birch Swinging

     

    My head and heart are full.

    It isn’t that on most days they aren’t, but the sense of fullness is different today. The difference is the result of something I’ve grappled with for many years — a by product of raising my sons. The result of years of observation, interaction, angst, and tribulation coming to a conclusion milestone by sometimes painful milestone.

    My youngest finished his first year of high school today, and in a few weeks, will be 15. But he did not beat The Geometry Teacher. He received a “D” for his hoop-jumping efforts in her class. In this newly completed step toward the rest of his education, I’m left wondering so many things about what I have strongly held on to about learning and raising humans:

     Some humans are better at being trained to jump through hoops than others. In fact, some are so good at it—it’s the point of their existence. Their day revolves around how many hoops are lined up, how far apart they are, and whether each successive hoop is positioned higher than the last. Whether the person jumping next to them is quicker, or more graceful in their quest to finish first. It isn’t about what is at the end of the hoops they crave. It’s the hoops.

    Some humans are more easily missed than others. Or skipped over—like one skips a step when jogging up a flight of stairs to get to the next floor more quickly. Their non-hoop jumping idiosyncrasies are not easily understood by others, and often difficult to tolerate. They are more than capable of jumping through the hoops than many others. Many. But they don’t seem interested. What they see in the world and think about from one day to the next is difficult to know. They are quiet about much that matters, and talk about things that don’t. Hoops are not one of the things they think or talk about.

    They even bruise differently than most. They haven’t figured out how caught up in the hoop game most people are. So when a zealot moves a hoop at the last minute to trick them, it takes them a while to start the game again. They are only just beginning to understand, or,  if they do understand, have a tendency to forget that there are people on this earth who live to have power any way they can get it. It’s probably another reason that hoops don’t interest them. It’s all so petty.

    I am not a mother of hoop jumpers. And I am routinely reminded of this fact.

    I have diligently tried to raise my offspring to understand the construct of the world. But they are very content to think about, getting around to, considering, being involved, possibly participating, in life’s basic rules of engagement at their own pace. They construct their own hoops. Unfortunately, when you’re their mother, the hoops resemble hurdles. Large ones.

    It’s not supposed to matter to me that so-and-so’s daughter is in “advanced this” or AP that. Or that this person’s son was recommended for such and such. That this acquaintance has a daughter that crosses all her T’s and dots all her I’s all the time. Sometimes those same people don’t understand how hard it is has been to let my children be who they are instead of what I want them to be. What I believe they can become. It’s not supposed to matter. But it does. It always has.

    I’ve tried many years to act like not having a hoop circus at home doesn’t matter. I believe strongly that many have been duped about the educational system so many of us willingly send our children to each year. “All children can learn,” is what that system blithely professes. We have so willingly trusted that it will meet their every need beyond what we have worked to meet ourselves at home. But not every child fits into that system. It’s not supposed to matter. But it does. It always has.

    I cringe every time I realize that my nobly held philosophy could be a sham by wanting more for my boys than they seem to want for themselves. I argue with myself that I don’t really want them to care. I swear I’m not interested in wanting them to want what society expects them to want. The way society expects it. The way the system acts like it’s structured to prepare them for.

    How sad to have to admit that I want for my sons something I say I don’t believe in. I would never tell them because I have acted like a hoop jumper most of my life. And they probably figured that out a very long time ago.

    One could do worse than be a mother of non-hoop jumpers. Perhaps my boys were born knowing that life is a birch and that their job on this earth is to teach me so that I will know, too.

  • Just Words

    Learning By Heart Words can bring me to a screeching halt. Yes, of course, spoken words — especially when I’m not expecting them, take issue with their purpose, or with the person who delivers them. But that isn’t what I’m talking about. At least not today.

    When I’m reading, a phrase molded in just the right way, or a thought expressed at a particular point in the text begs to be captured and saved for another time — to be marked, or jotted down and saved much like a penny found on a sidewalk. Found coins add up over time.

    My frame of mind guides me to these bits of someone else’s thinking — bits buried in much larger and sometimes very forgettable text. The weightiness of the words and their message, not quite in focus, sit on the edges of my life, pushing at me to notice them and to think about what is important. Or better yet, force me to wonder why I haven’t committed myself to pin point their significance. It’s odd to think that words written hastily on a two-inch square note can hover in and around an office, and then a house without becoming lost. Car keys are misplaced, sunglasses left behind, and important papers tossed carelessly aside — but a red sticky note manages to appear here and there over the course of a couple of years, moving from desk, to organizer, to counter and patiently waiting for interpretation, and application

    Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

    I don’t remember where I found the words, or what text they were buried in, or who made reference to them. I read so many different eye-crossing publications then:

    Leading in a Culture of Change by Michael Fullan;

    The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation by Daniel Yankelovich;

    Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald A. Heifetz;

    Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum: How Ideology Trumped Evidence by Richard Allington;

    Paradoxes of Group Life: Understanding Conflict, Paralysis, and Movement in Group Dynamics by K. Smith & D. Berg;

    Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by L. Bossidy & R Charan; and

    Learning by Heart by Roland Barth.

    Only a fraction of the list. I won’t bore you with the countless publications read on methodology, content, and practice that also filled my brain. But you do have an idea, about why I may not exactly remember where I first saw the words, right? And why I choose not to read such meaty books right now? I’ll understand if you suggest my head is buried in the sand.

    What does matter — or at least it used to — is what was happening at the time that I found the words.

    I was serving in my first assignment as an administrator at a large elementary school located in an impoverished area just south of our city center. The school was nearly a hundred years old, surviving rebuilding, renaming, and a shift from its original population of immigrant students from Eastern Europe, to that of African American, and then in the past decade, to immigrants from Mexico. The poverty rate was 99%. Over 95% of the children spoke English as a second language. The literacy rate was dismal in both Spanish and English for a majority of them. A unique aspect of the school was that a good portion of the staff had worked there for a long time — many for ten, even more than 20 years. Unusual for an inner-city school. Approximately one-third of the staff was male — also unusual for an elementary school, many of which are completely staffed by females.

    For more years than I know, the school had been struggling academically, regardless of its population. At one point, it was designated as one of a group of schools court-mandated by the state to improve and monitor student reading, language, and mathematics progress. For twenty years this went on until it was decided that the initiative largely failed. Nothing had really changed — except the shift of ethnicity of the students.

    The school is closed now, but before that happened, emotions amongst staff and local community members ran high. People were angry. Teachers were tired of the expectations thrust upon them with regard to improving their practice. Staff was split between: 1) those who felt they couldn’t possibly work harder than they already were for little or no “measurable” gain in student learning; and 2) those who were viewed as dead weight, and professed to care about the students, but never quite walked the talk. Teachers vacillated between being angry with parents for not providing for their children, and contributing what they could to support family members who often had not been in school themselves.

    Fuzzy Martin Luther King Jr.’s words — found and written on that small piece of paper — were apropos, but never quite tacked to the bulletin board over my desk. Instead, they began their drift in and out of presence, catching my eye on just the right day, conjuring a flare of vindication when I most needed it. But upon hesitation, they forced me to think about my role in the tension the school was wrapped in. When you’re the leader, everything is your responsibility, regardless of when you arrived. Regardless of what you know. Regardless of what you believe everyone can join together in doing for the school.

    I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be…

    I couldn’t say the words aloud. If I said them in reference to the seething undercurrent that was our “professional” community, then I believed I would appear to be casting blame. I would be perceived as pointing my finger at the naysayers, exhibiting weakness, behaving as one of our very young students upset to be accused of something he or she didn’t do. I kept the words to myself.

    I don’t know that I believe the words at this point, five years later. They suggest that I’m incapacitated unless others pull themselves together. Is that always true?

    Isn’t it more true that with each example we set, another follows? Isn’t the effort I make to live my life in the best way I know, something others may emulate?

    Am I incapable of being the best that I know how to be if I point fingers at those who I deem as obstacles to my success?

    The red square of paper will continue to hover in and around my life prodding me to occasionally wonder about the decisions that could have been made with my staff at the elementary school, but the context is so different now.

    Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly…

    My small experience seems so inconsequential considering King’s intent, rallying individuals to consider their involvement, or lack thereof, in making a difference, in speaking out and doing something — anything — about what is not just.

  • Genetically Meandering and Goal-Free, or Something

    Funny how a subtle change in a suffix or hyphenation can significantly change the connotation of something. As in goal-less or goal-free. One clearly implies not only lack — but a negative one at that, and the other, a sort of liberating, non-shackled state of being. Sort of the difference between:

    • the sad sack who hits the alarm button in the morning with a mental list of, “get up, take a shower, feed the animals, take the car in, pay the bills, defrost the Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner, label my linen closet…” and

    • the ebullient chap who bounds out of bed each day exclaiming, “Yes! The whole day is ahead of me and I can’t wait to find out what amazing things will come my way!”

    Okay, well, maybe the contrast is a bit strong, but I came across this site not too long ago, and am probably one of the few who didn’t learn about it on Oprah, because I sort of forget to actually watch Oprah. Yes, I’m home. No, I just don’t think about it. The television doesn’t usually go on until about 7 or 7:30 so we can trash our brains family style watching things like Jeopardy, So You Think You Can Dance, Hell’s Kitchen, and — well, you get the idea. We are sort of in the “goal-free” category of television viewers. We “meander with purpose” to borrow Stephen Shapiro’s phrase.

    My mom often tells me she hasn’t had a goal in her life. This admission often comes after we’ve been discussing “stuff.” The stuff can be any number of “things.”

    Things like life.

    Not so small a thing, or even closely related to stuff. But if I listen carefully, the goal issue usually connects to the idea of planning on, organizing for, going through, and/or getting a career. Not a job or work. A career. Why other things don’t seem to be considered that took her determination and perseverance is beyond me.

    IMG_0892 I’ve noticed that people have a tendency to lord it over those who haven’t jumped through life’s hoops. Like there are a set of rules somewhere that we have to follow so that we can be recognized at the end of The Road. Kind of like a graduation. You get there, someone reads your name, and then there’s a list of what you’ve “done” with your life. Career seems to be at the top of the list. Especially a career that is connected to education. A formal education. One that was obtained at an easily recognized and even prestigious institution.

    But what if you haven’t done those things? What happens if you have a completely different set of rules that you live your life by? What if your life is goal-free instead of goal-less? More importantly, what if your goals have always been things like:

    • keep your children clean, fed, and well clothed;

    • be relentlessly productive because it is an end in itself;

    • teach your children to be practical;

    • make sure your children do their homework, and clean their rooms;

    • be extremely organized and tidy;

    • make sure your children understand that manners are important, and that they are a reflection of the entire family while in public;

    • focus on functionality;

    • teach your children how to cook, sew, garden, and take care of the house;

    • take time to grow, appreciate, and smell flowers;

    • pay your children an allowance even though you shouldn’t afford it, and teach them how to save that allowance;

    • buy musical instruments and pay for lessons when you know you can’t afford it;

    • tolerate inane jobs to earn a paycheck to feed your children;

    • make sure your children understand that nothing in life is free, so working very hard is how you get ahead;

    • have a day job and a night job;

    • make sure your children understand that education is important;

    • try different jobs when you no longer have to worry about feeding your children;

    • keep reaching because you know there’s something out there for you, just waiting, if you could only see it more clearly, and so many other things didn’t get in the way, distracting you, making you wonder if you should be afraid of reaching.

     

    Yes, what if your life has been filled with those kinds of things?

    Are you goal-less, or goal-free? The whole concept fascinates me because it is easy to line up a few people we can all identify as being successful without too much analysis. We default to the “who’s productive and wealthy” criteria that is so often the crux of  our society. But then, after assembling these iconic individuals, we have to examine whether they’ve all jumped through those hoops I mentioned earlier. Often, they have not. What we learn is they had their own set of hoops, and that the hoops were of varying sizes, movable, and sometimes intentionally avoided, or dismissed as being a waste of time.

    Hoop-less, or hoop-free? Maybe you think it’s all just Hoop-lah.

    What do you want to do? What matters to you? What is important? What will sustain you — and not just your bank account? Because I think that’s the key. If this whole business of making lists and setting goals is never going to be more than crossing off the things on your list, or checking off those boxes, then all you’ll end up with is a list of things you crossed off. Or maybe not.

    What if that list says things like:

    Travel around the world?

    • You have to want to do this, of course…

    • You have to at least think about how to begin or where to begin

    • You will need to consider how much or little to take with you

    Read untranslated works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

    • You might want to consider learning Spanish…and practicing a lot

    Be famous?

    • This is relative considering the guy who just got caught for spamming up our emails. Okay, so infamous. But still…

    • You can’t just sit and wait around for it to happen.

    • You have to at least learn what spam is and how to make everyone else miserable with it.

    • Or lose a lot of weight eating Subway Sandwiches instead of home-baked chocolate cookies with macadamia nuts.

    Winged Victory

    People who want to do things just do them. That’s why Nike tells us to “Just Do It.” What they really mean is, “Shut the funk up and get off your arse. Go brush your teeth and quit stinking up the air space with your monotonous jabbering about what you’re going to do or want to do or wish you could do if only you could do it.” Nike knows us. Well, they really just want us to pay a fortune for their products made for a fraction of a penny on the dollar in third world countries, but that’s another topic. So their marketers know us. Or get paid to act like they do. A lot.

    The problem is, when your head feels like it’s going to pop off every minute of every day because you’re just trying to make ends meet (whatever ends are pertinent to an individual’s life) heading in a semi-focused direction beyond survival can feel a tad bit overwhelming. Making that list may seem easier than doing something unfamiliar. Articulating those goals make seem like organizing for action. Being industrious and productive can look great on the surface because you’re “getting things done,” but that just takes up time. The rest of it is horribly messy and doesn’t really fit in any kind of a list, so you never really have to do it. Right?

    And when you run out of time at the end of the day, you can get into bed and dream about what you’d really like to do, if only you had the chance.

    I am a meanderer. I waver toward whatever I am interested in. Detour here, wrong turn there. Learning and taking notes along the way, but rarely with the journey being described as the shortest distance between two points. The plan would be to get there in the shortest amount of time, but there are just too many shiny things I have to wonder about and understand along the way.

    So probably more goal-free than goal-less. But always purposeful.

    Unflaggingly. Thanks for the genes, Mom.

  • Sadness: Random Senseless Purposeless Pointlessness

    Sadness: Random Senseless Purposeless Pointlessness

     

    *February 15, 2018–Yesterday, a young man walked into a high school in Parkland, Florida and shot 17 people. Since I first wrote the angry piece below, there have been 162 school related shootings in the United States. Incidents from a pellet gun aimed at a passing school bus to  the unthinkable massacre of 20 first-grade children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary. I’ve not included the mass shootings which happened outside of schools–and there have been many. Clearly, no one has done anything to prevent these senseless tragedies from happening, nor do they seem to care. 

    It’s not an accident that on days like today, the newspaper is folded in a particular way when I slide it from its clear bag. The “Currents-Health” section is strategically viewed first, along with the latest piece on “Portion Patrol.” But the largest article on the page, “A sense of urgency” seems vague so I’m forced to flip it over to find information that will help me know if my indigestion is bad enough to seek assistance at the ER. This is where the publisher’s strategy of trying to cover up the main page headlines fails, because now I can see them. And even though I knew they’d be there today, they are sobering. How can they not be? And how can I not read what’s written there regardless of how sad and angry it makes me?

    Quite a long time ago, our local paper ran a dramatic and now famous photograph on its front page of a fireman carrying a small child from the rubble of a building destroyed by a monster. So many people complained about the inappropriateness of that photo being the first thing they saw that morning when they opened the paper, that now, sensitive material is always buried behind another section. Or tastefully covered, so that it can be avoided, or perhaps made more palatable after readers have had the opportunity to peruse something far more important about how granola “hangs with bad calories,” or whether that fart stuck crosswise is worth seeing a doctor about. (more…)

  • Tax Day & the Haves and Have Nots

    Since waking at 3am today, I’ve read three days worth of our local paper, April’s edition of O, and done a great job of not reading the book I’m supposed to be reading. As a result, I’ve been preoccupied by something that used to happen frequently when I was part of the working world; things and issues of the day connected. No matter what I read, or what conversation I had, at some point, ideas converged whether they were supposed to or not. You know, the lights are on and someone is finally home. The point is, it happens rarely now. My brain has relaxed and now gets to think about what it wants, so it meanders everywhere, taking in often unrelated pieces of information that could be useful, but will most likely not synthesize into earth shattering points of lucidity.

    You wouldn’t think that reading pieces about the Imus fallout — some better than others — Internet spawned narcissism, “Who pays what on TAX DAY,” or a pathetic letter to the editor of O grousing about “class privilege” regarding the actions of women who will do anything to conceive a child, would have anything to do with one another, but they must. I can feel the telltale signs of defensive belligerence on low burn right now, so after reading the post in Wonderland or Not today, I’ve decided that the only way to sort it out is to write. Not complain, or snark, or whine. Just express myself about something that has been on my mind for a very long time. This would be an excellent place to stop reading if you don’t want to delve into my dark side. (more…)