Send Doughnuts

I had a wonderful time working with a roomful of teachers over two days at my Grassroots Workshops last week. During a morning break, I talked with a teacher who was concerned about not being able to reach all her kids, that there was a handful of students who were failing the course, and that she’d tried everything. I said, “But you are reaching the other 25 or 30 kids in your class.” She said, “Please tell my principal that.”

So,

Dear Principal,

Your teachers are working really really hard at this thing called teaching. The role of a teacher is not unlike that of a parent. And if you’re not a parent, then think of being a neurosurgeon or an astrophysicist, being a parent is way harder than that.

It’s practically guaranteed that your teachers have not reached all their students today. But, there is tomorrow and the day after that. Please remember that Teacher A in room 23 may not have reached all her students in the academic sense, but she smiled and said hello to Melissa, gave Joey a granola bar and Jake a sharpened pencil, laughed at Amanda’s joke.

Your teachers need your implicit trust and continued support to thrive. Show them you have their back and give them feedback frequently, but wrap each feedback in kindness, empathy, and humor. This makes all the difference in whether or not they want to show up for work tomorrow.

Some years ago, I had a principal who asked me the same question more than once, like he forgot or didn’t hear my answer the first time. He asked, “Fawn, how do you motivate kids?” I replied, “I don’t know. If I knew the answer, I’d write a book and make millions and quit teaching.” Now that I think about this, clearly he thought I’d given him the wrong answer, therefore he had to ask me again in hoping that I’d learned something over the course of two weeks.

Before I became a parent, I judged all parents. You’re a horrible parent because your child is a brat and disrespectful. It’s your fault that your spoiled kid is ungrateful and entitled. What a loser of a parent you are that your kid fails half of her classes and makes all sorts of excuses while doing so. You must be a bigger asshole than the little asshole you’re raising.

Then, I gave birth to three kids. At one time or another, honestly, more like an extended period of where’s-the-goddamn-light-at-the-end-of-this-tunnel, my own flesh and blood were disrespectful, ungrateful, entitled, jerks, assholes, whiny, rude, arrogant, mean, neurotic.

But, if you had said any of these things about my kids to my face, I’d probably stab you with a fork. I’m equally defensive as I’m protective. Until you walk in my shoes, you have no right to judge me. I’ve been a teacher longer than I’ve been a parent. One role blended into the other.

When an administrator makes a statement or asks a question to imply that his teachers are not working hard enough, it unravels the trust like pulling on a loose thread of yarn. Sure, there’s ineffective hard work, but it’s hard work nonetheless. Teachers want pretty much anything and everything to help us do a better job, but this advice or suggestion cannot come at a cost of making us feel any smaller and more unappreciated.

So,

Dear Principal,

Please stop being evaluative, start being helpful and send doughnuts.

Between 2 Numbers

I created a new site, it’s called Between 2 Numbers.

From the About/Contact page:

The inspiration for this site came from John Allen Paulos’ book Innumeracy. I read the book back in 2008, but reading it again this past summer reignited the inspiration and turned it into fruition. In my lesson plan spreadsheet, I started a column of “tidbits” to share with my students; it’s filled with mathematical fun facts, latest news, and stuff you see on here. I teach middle school mathematics, and ratios and proportional reasoning make up large portions of the curriculum, so I’m always comparing stuff, like tossing my flipflop onto this big Danish clog while visiting Solvang, CA, and wondering how big or tall the person wearing such clogs would have to be.

My goal is to have at least 40 entries to match the number of school weeks.

I would love to hear how you would use the site with your students and any other feedback.

And I hope your school year is off to a great start. I get to teach 7th and 8th-grade math this year. We’re on a block schedule for the second year now, and I’m getting used to it. Be well and teach well, my friends!

Community Circle

We have Core time with our homeroom students — mine are 8th graders — for 3o minutes at the end of each day. Core is our SSR time, but ELD students are in ELD during this time.

Once a month, however, we use this Core time to do a Community Circle (CC). We’re in our first year of implementation, and because my kids have shown genuine engagement in CC time, we hold it almost every Friday.

I normally pick one or two questions/topics for us to go around and share our answers/thoughts. Questions such as, “If you could be any animal, what would it be, and why?” and “What is your favorite food?” are light-hearted and fun.

But, if the topic gets any deeper than that, then I’m pretty much a wreck.

I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.

I cried when talking with my students about my father, about my son, Gabriel, about the time when I ran away from home.

I get all choked up at workshops when I speak about a specific student.

Just last week, our school invited Kaiser Permanente to put on a play called, Someone Like Me, for our junior high students. It’s about adolescent bullying awareness, and one of the characters had written in her diary that she wanted to kill herself.

The thought of one of my students ever contemplating suicide makes my heart ache, my chest heavy, my head throbs. After the assembly, we were instructed to hold a CC with our students back in our classroom, but I was too emotional to even talk. Luckily, my colleague was there, and I’d asked her to facilitate the discussion.

I don’t want to know what my kids tell their parents when they get home. I wouldn’t be surprised if it went like this, “Jesus, Dad, Ms. Win cried again in our community circle today. And we were just talking about Jell-O.”

Oh, my God, that reminds me. One time — in the evening of our school’s Continuation Ceremony some years ago — a student pulled her father toward me to introduce us, “Dad, this is Ms. Win, she cried just the other day because she was afraid we girls would get pregnant.”

Seriously, I’d signed up to teach math. What is all this crying bullshit? I want to be a badass teacher, and badass teachers don’t cry, for Pete’s sake!

But, there’s still hope for me because one of my student’s moms tweeted this:

Lillian

Lillian naturally comes to mind when I plan a lesson. She eats it up. She goes above and beyond. She’s thoughtful and appreciative. She shares her thinking with the class in mindful and modest doses. She smiles quietly at my jokes. I wish I had a copy of all her math work — especially her written reflections — because each and every piece holds the joy of my teaching. Here’s one:

At the Continuation ceremony last year, Lillian delivered a succinct and grateful valedictorian speech.

A month ago, on March 11, I got an email from her.

I was looking at old pictures on your Twitter and in my camera roll, and I could totally see how much I loved your class. I was tearing up. I’m moving up to Math 3 Honors next year, yet I’m not sure I’ll ever be as excited about math as I was in your class. My current class is something of speed and prior knowledge… Not my favorite environment for growth, but you live and you learn to deal with it.

To this day, I remember so many little things about your classes. You truly changed the way I saw the world. I think my intense activism and political vocalness is in part your doing. I use my voice because you gave me one. I’m not a shy little sixth grader anymore. I’m beginning to come into my own as a badass bisexual intersectional feminist. I’m learning, and you pushed me to do so. There’s a lot of work for me to do on myself and the world around me. Maybe my first pattern equation wasn’t so far away (You told me “just because her equation is right, yours isn’t any less right”).

I miss being her teacher. I miss watching her persevere and hearing her explain her thinking in number talks.

Then, last week on April 7, late in the evening, I saw this video of Lillian posted on Twitter by her friend, Sam. I asked Sam for a copy and got Lillian’s permission to share it here.

I cried hard. Not because her poem is eloquent and powerful and makes me so goddamn proud, but because her message is all too real and urgent. The expectations placed on students by parents and teachers — on top of self-expectations — can be and are enormous.

We talk a good talk — about respecting the child and letting her learn at the speed of learning, about persevering and playing with mathematics, about nourishing critical and deep thinking in problem-solving, about ensuring access and equity, about cultivating a voice grounded in truth and heart.

But I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always walk the walk. I’m bound to a system that requires me to issue a grade at the end of the quarter. I have to do this for each child four times a year. Because that’s just how it is.

At what cost?

Be Brave or Be Desperate

I had lunch with a former colleague — I”ll call her Laura — whom I hadn’t seen for some 20 plus years. She’s now retired and was in my town for a wedding.

I got into my car, entered the restaurant’s address into my phone, Google Maps said I’d arrive at 12:05 PM, and I was upset for thinking I lived closer. I texted Laura to let her know I’d be 6 minutes late. She texted back, “No worries!” (I hate being late, it’s rude and arrogant.)

I instantly recognized her. Of course, she was wearing an Oregon Ducks sweatshirt. We hugged, and the waitress showed us to an empty booth. Laura reminded me that she still needed to get a pair of TOMS after lunch because of the blisters she got from walking all day yesterday in her new shoes. I then reminded her that 20 years ago, we were in Nordstrom for her to buy new underwear because she was too lazy to do laundry.

She handed me two gifts wrapped in The Sunday Oregonian COMICS — one dated November 8, 2015, the other July 3, 2016.

We both regretted that neither one us thought of the Dammit! Doll. I mean, Jesus, just look at its mishappened head and scraggly yarn hair. I could have made that.

I really wanted to order a thick juicy burger because this place could put together a great thick juicy burger. But Laura said she wanted to order something healthy, so I opted for the turkey sandwich instead. (Who goes out and orders a turkey sandwich when it’s readily available in your own fridge at home?!) Then Laura ordered, lo and behold, a goddamn burger with two strips of bacon! (For a split second, I wanted to tell her that there was a burning car outside right behind her, so when she turned to look, I could steal her bacon.)

When we were colleagues in Oregon, Laura was teaching math, and I was teaching science. We became friends on Facebook just this past year, and she learned from there that I’ve been teaching math and giving talks at conferences. She used the word “brave” to describe my speaking at conferences. She said it at least three times, “You’re so brave.”

I told her I was terrified each and every time that I accepted a keynote or featured speaker assignment. She looked puzzled. I told her that the honor of being invited was always bigger than who I was, so it was hard to say no. And I didn’t want to say no. My father, a math teacher his entire career, would want me to accept. I’d told my own three children that doing the easy stuff ain’t worth their time, so I accepted because I could hear my own voice preaching. I accepted the invitation to speak because I wanted to bring the voice of classroom teachers and students to the forefront. There are stories to be told, and they are fresh and alive.

I’m not brave, I’m desperate. I’m desperate in wanting to share what’s happening right now with the 100 students on my rosters. But I’m terrified that I might get their stories wrong. I’m terrified that I may inadvertently amplify our small successes and diminish our big failures. I must get it right — the-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth-so-help-me-God kind of right — or I’ll die a miserable death. Back in December, at CMC-North, Dan Meyer had invited me and two other teachers, Shira and Juana, to be part of his keynote. I’m grateful to Dan for the invitation and was excited that we teachers got to share with a wider audience.

So, if you’re in the classroom, I hope you’ll consider speaking at conferences and workshops because the number of students you currently have is the number of reasons you have to say YES. Consider co-presenting with someone if it would be your first time; it is less scary that way. My first gig was with this tall white dude. Be brave, or be desperate, I think one is just a glorified form of the other.