Mrs. Quiggle
I didn’t know they made teachers so old, but Mrs. Quiggle was that old when she was my 8th grade Home Economics teacher. She perched on a high stool in the corner of the classroom, leaning over a wooden podium that she used as her desk. Home Ec was my favorite class, along with math — two classes that didn’t require a whole lot of talking in front of your peers, you just gotta follow the instructions. There was one instruction that I tried my best not to follow, and that was pressing the seam open after sewing a set of stitches. Oh good Lord, ain’t nobody got time for this laborious step, and I hated ironing more than sin.
Mrs. Quiggle could always tell though when I skipped the ironing nonsense, “Now, here, young lady, you didn’t press the seams open again! See how it’s puckered here and not lying flat as it should here? I’m going to need you to remove these stitches and start over again.” All I wanted to say in reply was, And I’m going to need you to retire, Mrs. Quiggle, before your body gets cold.
I sewed pretty sundresses with gathered ruffles and biased trimmed shorts. I made baked Alaska and chocolate fondue. I appreciated Mrs. Quiggle’s teaching and all, but I wished she’d stop bothering me about the pressing-of-the-seams. Why couldn’t she be like other normal old people who took breaks often and drank tea and ate Honey Maid graham crackers?
It was now springtime. I went to check the mail and found a letter addressed to my parents from Mrs. Quiggle. Well, hell, Mrs. Quiggle, you know my parents are still back in Vietnam, and it’d be a hundred years before they could come over! By the way, they don’t know English anyway. What is the point of writing this, Mrs. Quiggle, what could you possibly want to tell them — how I failed to press the seams between stitchings?!
I opened the letter, read the full-page of Mrs. Quiggle’s perfectly slanted handwriting to my parents, beginning with, Dear Parents of Phuong Nguyen.
I sobbed. I read it again and sobbed. Mrs. Quiggle wanted my parents to know that in all her years of teaching, I had surpassed the number of points earned by any student by a wide margin. I got well over 200 points, beating the last highest score of 70 something. (I should have this letter saved in a box somewhere — the same box where I keep my three children’s ultrasound images.)
She never had to remind me to press the seam again. I continued to sew through high school, through college, through mommyhood. The secret to a beautifully sewn article is in the pressing of the seams. This sets the stitches and removes tiny wrinkles. It’s like origami where each fold needs to be creased precisely and sharply before the next fold. It’s like doing the right thing the first time when we already knew what the right thing was. It’s like telling the truth the first time when we already knew what the truth was.
Happy Thanksgiving!
On Sunday, I wrote a longer-than-usual email to my siblings about my intentions to begin gathering facts and etching memories for a bucket-list item of writing a book. I told them it could take anywhere between 3 to 10 years, meaning I have no clue.
I have three reasons to write this book: Nicolai, Gabriel, Sabrina.
My sister, Kimzie, replied:
I never forget how I got here, but being reminded of how I survived makes me eternally grateful for my children.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
A Love Letter to MTBoS (a.k.a. my #TMC15 keynote)
Thank you to Lisa Henry for asking me to talk at TMC and for believing that I could pull it off. Thank you to Baylor for the letter below that kicked me in the gut and said, “Stop whining and finish the slides.”
I looked out to the audience and began with this ad lib.
And off I went. Here are the slides for my keynote.
Thank you for being the kindest and most gracious audience.
Much love,
Fawn
Here and Now
My first official day of summer. My three kids are away at three different places. At my desk alone are 74 things that beckon my attention. A small pile of thank-you cards make me smile.
Years ago a vice-principal told me that teaching is hard because the reward is not immediate, that you don’t know the influence and impact you’ve made on a student until many years later. I think I knew what he meant, but I also thought that time and distance would make it even more difficult to find out.
Why can’t the rewards of teaching be here and now. Why am I spending hours crafting this lesson if my students didn’t care to learn it. How am I supposed to care about my students if they didn’t care about me. How do I make it through another day.
What does a teacher consider to be a “reward” anyway. How many Starbucks gift cards should I be getting — as compared to my colleagues. (There is nothing worse than showing off to the wrong people. I can just imagine saying, “Hey, Erin, I got six gift cards from kids today!” And Erin replies, “Ha!! I got twenty.” Shit.)
Teaching is physically and emotionally draining. And if that sentence doesn’t describe you as a teacher, then I think you should write a how-to book.
So I’m thinking now of the small daily rewards from students that must have fueled and replenished the parts of me that felt drained and lost. These are the things that they do and say. Almost on a daily basis.
Tito dashes into my class with an excitement like he hasn’t seen me in weeks, “Hi Mrs. Win! How are you? I’m the first one in here again.”
Maddie seems most genuine when she comes right up to me, “How has your day been, Mrs. Nguyen?”
Jonathan greets me with, “Go Oregon Ducks.” And before a quiz he says matter-of-factly, “I’m ready for this. I feel loose and ready because I learned from the best.”
The kids give me rousing applause after a lesson they know I’ve worked hard on and that they’ve learned from.
They applaud me when I share something good or semi-brave that I did.
They know how to deliver sarcasm kindly, “What favorite lesson of yours do we get to do today?”
One 8th grader would start, “I love you, Mrs. Nguyen!” Another kid follows, “I love you more!” Yet another, “And I love you most!”
John, an aspiring musician, remembers all the concerts I go to and tells me what songs he likes.
They roll their eyes and smile when they know I’m lying.
I realize that so much of my daily interaction with kids isn’t directly tied to mathematics. Even though in my teaching head, it’s all about math, it’s all about problem solving and struggling and asking questions. But my students’ heads aren’t filled with math the way that mine is. They just want to make it through the day — like the rest of us grownups. They are social creatures. They need to talk to each other or they’ll die.
Then as the last days of school draw near, the rewards I get are these tangibly beautiful thank-you cards from students that mostly say how much they’ve enjoyed my class and what an amazing teacher I am. You know, it is what it is :)
But these two cards — from parents — made me cry.
(And just now. Just now I recall someone recently accusing me of practicing “zero-sum teaching.” I don’t fucking think so.)
My Gratitude and One Share
I sat down wanting to share a lesson I did in Algebra on Friday, but I’m weepy because it’s Veterans Day. Please allow me to share this first.
I love this country. I love the America that welcomed me and my brothers and sisters with open arms 36 years ago. I love Mrs. Schnettler for patiently teaching me English, Mr. Hoon for making me feel visible in math even though I couldn’t speak the language.
I was too young and stupid to understand the nuances of war. Can’t say I understand it now. But I knew what life was like without freedom. I understood when my mom told me I couldn’t repeat what was said at the family dinner. I heard the bombings at night. I was aware that my teachers had to teach from a curriculum laden with Communist propaganda. Fear weaved itself into my blanket of insecurity. Hunger — and the shame of it — marked my days.
For the generations of servicemen and women, on behalf of my three spoiled teenagers, I thank you with all my heart. You give me and my family this privileged life that I know was my childhood dream when I stared at the black sky in Saigon.
Another great lesson from MARS is Interpreting Distance-Time Graphs. You really need to do this lesson if you want to hear kids spend full periods sharing their thinking on graphs.
The first part of the lesson was like a pre-assessment, a peek into their current knowledge. They described what may have happened in this graph.
What they wrote blew me away because I learned so much about what they know and do not know. Here are a few:
Tom walked at a constant speed for the first 50 seconds. Then he began to slow down. At 70 seconds he began to speed up. He stayed at this speed up to 100 seconds. Then he stopped.
Tom must of tooken a different road. That had more curves or he simply took the long way.
First he kept at a constant speed. Next he went back 60 m. He went at a constant rate. Finally he got to the bus stop and waited for 20 sec.
While he was walking he was speeding up so he was probly running. However when he got to 100 meters he slowed down, so he probly began walking then he sped up again, and once he reached 160 meters he traveled at a constent speed.
In the second part, they were asked to choose which story best matched the graph. Two-thirds — two-thirds! — of my 8th graders picked choice B!
We had a lot of work to do! In pairs, students worked on matching 10 graphs with 10 stories (one story was intentionally missing, so they had to write one in). After they got a good start with this, I then passed out the set of table of values for them to add to their matching. I wish you could hear all the conversations in the room!
Teaching American kids — what a privilege and an honor for me.
[Updated 11/12/13]
I have this great book called A Visual Approach to Functions that I will use to follow up the lesson above. While I can’t share the book here, I found a section of it — the section that fits perfectly with this lesson! — online that you can download here.]
I Really Needed to Read This Note Tonight
Only 9 hours until the first class bell of 2012-2013. I still need to shower and get some sleep. I need to wake up early enough to make my kids’ lunches also. They’re seniors, for crying out loud, can’t they make their own lunches? Oh, but they might forget to pack fruits and water. Do I have any clean clothes to wear and what am I wearing as it’ll be warm again tomorrow? What am I forgetting?
Shoot, I need to clean out my school bag.
I turn my bag upside down to literally dump everything out. A small blue envelope drops out along with two paper clips, a napkin, some papers, a bag of hot cocoa mix. I tear into the envelope not even guessing whom it’s from. I’m really tired.
Oh no, it’s from J. He wrote this back in June! I’m so sorry I’m just reading this now.
Dear Mrs. Nguyen
You have been an awesome, amazing teacher this year! Learning Algebra was fun, but you really brought it to a whole new level! My favorite project we did was the Barbie Bungee jumping, and I also really liked how you brought up the idea of doing an online e-portfolio! I will always remember how excited you got when you told us stories or shared pictures, and you’ve made the class crack up so hard to a point where I was crying! I will also be crying because once I’ve left Mesa, and all your classroom’s memories will stay in my heart. But of course I will move on to Geometry in High School, with a different teacher and a different class and still have fun. I hope to see you again Mrs. Nguyen!
From,
J.D.
Although it’s a 3-month old note card, the timing is perfectly serendipitous for me to read this the night before classes begin. Maybe no nightmares tonight — that would be a first. Maybe I’ll have a good first day. Maybe tomorrow’s school lunch will be yummy. Maybe I really love to teach.
May we all have a wonderful school year.
You are a girl. Female.
Nicolai and I had another nice conversation this evening when I drove him back to his dorm. The sun was a giant orange ball sinking near the horizon of Pacific Coast Highway. We talked about girls. I talked about my mistakes, lots of them. I told him the same thing I said at the dinner table two weeks ago when my sister and her two kids visited, “Don’t marry someone you love. Marry someone who loves you.” My sister disagreed.
I settle in to make the one-hour drive back home — Pandora is set to Elton John Radio. I get a whole mix of great nostalgic songs from Journey, The Beatles, Stevie Nicks, CCR, and EJ himself.
A sense of gratefulness envelops me.
I see the waves still slapping against the sandy beaches under the now dark sky. The ocean does not sleep. The dark waters flood me with memories of our escape: our days floating out somewhere in the South China Sea, our boat bobs up and down without a captain because there is no fuel for it to move anyway, all 13 of us on board already know tomorrow was never promised to any of us. But I’m only 11 years old, and I really don’t want to die.
We all see it because it’s the only thing we’ve been looking for — our glimmer of hope. It is a single dot in the canvas of blue sky and blue water. The dot gets bigger. The men wave their dingy white shirts, hollering out for help but only hearing their own voices bounce off each other. My own mouth is dry, I try to yell for help too but no words come out, I’ve been without water for a long time. The bigger dot is now elongated. Then it begins to look very much like part of a ship’s mast. An eternity goes by when the dot has finally morphed into a ship. No one speaks of it being a possible pirate ship —
I’m grateful to the Thai crew of this ship — this large fishing vessel — to feed us and give us water. I still can taste the sweetness of the giant steamed squids from that night. How do you thank people who save your life?
If you put my three kids into three separate rooms and ask each this question, What does your mom want for you? They should all give you the same answer, To be kind and to be happy. It’s a mantra I’ve been repeating since they were little. Nicolai, on his own, ended his 8th grade valedictorian speech with a familiar quote from Mark Twain: Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
I know “be kind and be happy” is vague — like lazy parenting — but life is vague. I want them to define their own happiness. But I don’t want kindness to be a choice for them, I just want them to be kind.
All 13 of us were rescued by the fishermen who reached out with immeasurable kindness. Then this great country welcomed our family with open arms. This is the only America I know — the America that made it all possible for me and my family to go to school, earn a college degree, work, raise a family. How do you thank a country for all this? There has never been a single moment when I hear or sing the American national anthem and not tear up.
I’m now about half way home. But I don’t want to rush the drive. It’s a perfect night, the highway is sparse, I turn up the volume — Stevie Nicks is singing “Landslide.”
I’m overwhelmed by all the kindness that comes in small packages too.
I’m in 6th grade. Carla, tall with brown short curly hair, sits next to me in class. There is a form that we all have to fill out. I write down my first and last name. Then I am stuck because I don’t understand what the form is asking me. I glance over at other kids’ papers and see that they’re already halfway through the form. Carla smiles at me because she always does. She notices that I’m not writing. I’m embarrassed that I don’t know enough English to fill out this form. She leans over and puts a check in the “female” box for me. She says quietly, You are a girl. Female. And she points to Tony across from us, He is a boy. Male. She smiles again. Carla doesn’t know that I still think of her today.
I’m pulling out of the school’s parking lot. It’s the start of winter break and also my three-month maternity leave. I’m really pregnant with my first baby. I see Brian, my 7th grade student, running fast toward my car, he’s out of breath. I turn off the engine and step out of the car. Brian pulls out a blue stuffed animal from under his jacket. He says between breaths, I’m glad you’re still here, Mrs. Nguyen. Here, I want your baby to have my stuffed animal that I got when I was a baby. I want to tell Brian that I can’t accept this precious blue floppy eared stuffed puppy from his childhood. But I can’t get myself to say anything. His kindness breaks my heart.