What's in a name?
I'm one of four daughters, and we have such ordinary names: Loan, Nga, Phuong, Chau. By ordinary, I liken them to Bob, Alan, Laura, Ann. I asked my mother about this -- knowing that my father didn't have a say -- begging for an explanation of why in sweet Jesus's name that she'd neglected to give us prettier names. She said it would be vain to do so, and God would punish such vanity by giving you an ugly daughter. She cited several girls in our neighborhood who had pretty names but had faces that were "bored to death" to look at.
Phương vs. Phượng
Phuong means "direction." At least Kanye West and Kim Kardashian named their daughter North to specify a particular direction. And Phuong without the dot under the name is more of a boy's name. If I just got that extra dot, my name would mean phoenix, a pretty big deal bird. So, I grew up wishing I had a real girl's name. I wanted one of my girlfriends' names which were of exotic flowers and birds and of cardinal virtues.
Then I arrived in America, and it got a lot worse.
I had to tell people how to say my name. Most folks put emphasis on the "o" sound, and upon hearing me say it, they would overcorrect and emphasize the "u" sound. I was always flattered that they even bothered to try. (I also had my last name Nguyen to contend with: Newan, Negyan, Wen, Noogen, Noowen, Um-no.)
Phuong was usually misspelled as Phoung. I get it, most English words have -ou instead of -uo, like pound, ground, loud. And mousse -- not the chocolate kind that you eat, but the copious amounts that went into my perpetual perms.
Whenever I ordered food at a counter and was asked for a name so they could call me when my order was ready, I would give some random name, like Julie or Amy. That only worked if I remembered what random name I'd used. One time I forgot what name I'd used -- because it was a long wait, okay? -- so when no one came up to the counter to get the brown to-go bag when the server beckoned, Julie, your order is ready, I walked up and asked, "What exactly did... Julie... order?" This charade went on for longer than necessary.
Then, freshman year at Centennial High School in Gresham, Oregon, my classmate Tim -- tall, brilliant, handsome -- scribbled something next to my name on a piece of paper. I had to look at it closely. He added -us at the end of Phuong. Tim smiled as if he'd invented recess, "Fungus!" Phuong-us. Of course.
That marked the end of Phuong for me. I don't remember exactly how I came up with Fawn. I knew I wanted to replace the Ph- with F- because why use two letters when one suffices. I wanted to drop the "u" because I never wanted to be referred to as a yeast or mold again, and it was probably wise that the letters f and u shouldn't be together in a name.
I made the official name change when I became a U.S. citizen. I didn't have the campaign My Name, My Identity to dissuade me some thirty years ago. My mother is one of the few people who still call me Phuong. It is a pretty name now that I hear it.
Serenity Prayer (and Teaching)
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Some things teachers cannot change or have little say in:
The adults who work at our school
The students who show up for class
Their parents and home life
The curriculum (we may have input, but unless we get to make the final decision, we go with what comes in the box)
The physical space we call "classroom"
That impossible faucet
Things we can change
How we react and respond to the adults in our building.
I don't think I said two words about anything during my first 900 days as a teacher, and I was a science teacher at a middle school. I did what I was supposed to do: show up, teach, return the classroom key to the office before I go home, rinse, repeat. I was the quiet type anyway, so quiet that when I announced my decision to become a teacher, this person laughed, "How can you be a teacher? Ha!! You can't be a teacher, you're so quiet!" I was offended and said, "Shut up, bitch!" Actually, no, I didn't say anything, I just smiled, a quiet smile that betrayed my suspicion that she might be right.
I found my voice on Day 901, on staff dress-up day, maybe it was Halloween. I walked down the hallway in scrubs borrowed from my husband at the time. A male teacher who also donned scrubs said pleasantly, "You can be my nurse." Equally pleasant, I said, "I'm dressed as a doctor today."
Maybe that was a trivial story, but the likes of it happened a lot. I was a young Asian (am still Asian) female (still this too) -- and somehow this permitted certain people to say whatever to me.
How we treat our students.
I failed and failed at this. The same way I'd failed at times as a parent to my own three children. I yelled, sent the kid out, made sure I got the last word because I needed everyone to know I was in charge. The side effects of my behavior always included shame, regret, guilt. Mostly shame. To give myself some grace, most of these incidents involved my believing the child had lied or demeaned another person.
Then I got better. I learned to hit the pause button and quiet my indignation. I learned to listen -- like listen to their eyes and hand fidgets, their breaths and moments of silence. I learned to get the full story, at least find more truths than the half-truths I was getting. I learned to see the child in front of me as if I were his mother. Mostly, I listened to the better version of both of us.
I read what a student had written about another teacher, fresh from a recent incident. He didn't want to give me the paper, and I only asked for it because he was supposed to be writing an assignment on that paper. As I was reading, he said, "I didn't mean to... I was mad..." I finished reading and looked up, "Do you feel better now that you'd written this?" Tears brimmed his big brown eyes, he nodded, "Yes." I crumbled up the paper and tossed it into the garbage can, "I'm glad. No one else needs to see that note. I love you. [The teacher whom he'd written about] loves you too. We care about you." He straightened up, wiped his eyes, and thanked me, and off he went to lunch. Not until he was out the door that I thought, Ah, shit, he still owes me the assignment. But then I thought that no one else needed to know that he wrote on a different topic instead. Full credit.
Most days it was about giving my students the best math tasks and challenging them. But on all days, it was about kindness and making the most of our time together. I did always laugh with my students though. Sometimes we laughed so hard we were in tears.
Know that parents are sending us their best.
That's it. End of story. Just like the customer is always right, the parent is always right. They may have funny ways of showing it -- like being belligerent and crazy -- but they do care about their babies. Also, no matter what color skin the parent has, he/she cares about his/her child as much I do about mine.
Make the curriculum come alive.
There are a lot of good resources and people out there to help us with this. Teach in a way that no software or Khan can replace or replicate what we do. To make math come alive, we need to come alive. Students are the best bullshit detectors, so let's not even try. Make up for our shortcomings with all that we are passionate about, and hopefully topping that list is building a relationship with our kids. Even if math is not their favorite subject or dividing fractions is a big zit, they still enjoy coming to your class and think you're badass for coming to their games and wearing that stupid costume, for the third year in a row.
Attend to your physical space.
Bring in real plants, they make everything better and don't demand much more than some water and light. And they don't talk back. Hang shit up. Anything. Some teachers have perfected this, I'm the least of them. Maybe this is the only reason to get on Pinterest. Please don't post Classroom Rules though. I mean, do you post Home Rules in your home? Mr. Vaudrey says music is good for your class too.
That faucet.
Quit your job. Change building. Investigate this most important feature the next time you interview for a job.
And wisdom to know the difference.
This wisdom should help us talk more about thriving in teaching rather than mere surviving in teaching.
An Update
The young nurse asks how my day is going as she wraps the blood pressure cuff around my arm. I pretend to be relaxing on a yacht to yield low numbers, and the machine beeps 124/74. Dammit, I’ve never been above 120 — the yacht is sinking and death is near. She tells me that the procedure I’m about to undergo is quick. Math practice number six beckons and I ask, “What is quick?… Like five-seconds-kinda-quick or…?” She smiles, “About fifteen minutes.”
I want to choke her. I hate pain, any kind of pain, especially the needle-poking kind of pain. You know the 0-10 pain scale they post in the exam room? Getting a flu shot registers at least a 7 for me.
The doctor, who also looks very young, explains the procedure that she’ll be performing. Her voice is remarkably well-modulated and soothing, but not enough to drown out words like a long needle, grade two, some pain, numbing, cauterize, burn, death. Maybe I imagined that last one. I want to ask her where she’d obtained her training and how many times she’d performed this exact procedure. But I’m afraid that sounds like profiling which will trigger her dulcet voice to morph into a shriek, You are the worst patient! I should just let you bleed to death!
I want to hold someone’s hand. I need to hold someone’s hand. I’m so tempted to ask the nurse if I may hold hers, but she’s busy getting all sorts of scalpels, chisels, and cleavers for the doctor. I should have brought me a fake hand to hold. I settle on holding my own, my right holding my left. I want to pass out. Instead, a few minutes in, I can’t hold back the tears. I’m quietly sobbing. I ask for some tissue paper. The doctor’s soft voice, “Are you okay? We got you, here you go, you can have the whole box.”
She asks about my pain level. I tell her, honestly, that I’m okay, pain wise. “I’m just stressed.” My brother Vinh passed away two weeks ago. My cat Charlie has been missing since the evening before. Now, this.
I drive straight to work afterward. A few hours later, my son Gabriel texts me a picture of Charlie safe and sound. (Charlie is at the forefront, the other monster is Tugboat.)
My math coaching job is great. It’s new yet familiar, structured yet flexible. No one has to remind me how tough teaching is. But I did forget. I forgot about stuff that became second nature to me, like classroom management, building a rapport with students, speaking up for them, and planning a lesson.
I now have the privilege of observing different classrooms, modeling a number talk or task, designing a lesson and co-teaching, working with younger students, facilitating PD, creating slide decks and docs that might be helpful. There are three of us TOSAs in the district: English, ELD, and Math. I don’t get to see much of these two smart, strong, caring women outside of meetings, but they make me laugh and have my full admiration. There’s something special here with personnel. I liken it to the DNA that Oregon Ducks’ head coach Cristobal often speaks about, the DNA of each player that collectively makes up the team’s DNA. The culture is good here. My bosses are passionate and grounded, their roots are strong within the community because they are part of the community; their history is their present. It’s a cool place to be, and I feel very fortunate to be a part of an incredibly hard-working and caring network.
On the pain scale, work has not exceeded level 1, so I’m grateful. Wouldn’t it be great if somehow our pain level could be visible to others and our charge as humans is to lower each other’s numbers? And the more people’s numbers we can lower, the lower our own number gets. I think kindness is a potent pain reducer and can be self-administered too.
A New Position
I just accepted a math TOSA position (grades 5-8) with the Rio School District.I’d spent the last 30 years in the classroom – my school as my second home, my colleagues as my family, my work as my life and identity, but most of all, my students as my children, my babies, my heart.Then, I thought about not having to grade papers and not having to write sub plans when I’m deathly ill. Hell, yeah, I wanna be a TOSA.Other stuff that I will not miss about teaching:
Having that patent nightmare, always the week before school starts
Finding my lunch in the microwave at 3:00 PM because I’d forgotten about it
Ignoring and hanging up on any and all nature calls
Feeling guilty on the weekend for not preparing for Monday’s lesson, and feeling guilty on all weeknights when I haven't worked on the next day's lesson
Hearing students coming back from an absence and asking, “Did you do anything? Did I miss anything?”
Hearing students ask the day before the grading period ends, even though it’s a widely-known forbidden question, “Is there any extra credit?”
Pretending to laugh at their stale jokes
Lying to them that I’d missed them during winter break
Dreading to open that one parent’s email
Having to choose between sleep or exercise because God gave teachers fewer hours
I’m excited to embark on this ambitious assignment. I hope to support the teachers by meeting them where they are, and if they’re always at happy hour, I’m willing to work with that. I’m in this to listen to their concerns and ideas and will try my best to refrain from uttering nobody cares. It’s imperative that we build our relationships on trust and respect, and plus one on the respect if they cheer for my #GoDucks too. I look forward to a co-teaching model that honors the students’ contributions and their rights to the best versions of us, if not the best education. I will remind us about self-care.
Many thanks already to Jeff Linder and Andrew Stadel for answering more questions about math coaching than I knew to ask.Let’s have a fantastic year of learning and supporting each other, all while cheering on one team – STUDENTS.
2019 Is an Odd Number
The arrival of 2019 means I have to scroll down even farther to find my age year when I fill out an online form. Ugh... 1985... 1975... 1970... 1967... Here it is... 1965!
I just came back from a short trip -- via long-ass flights -- to Melbourne for my niece's wedding. I did a lot of walking and eating (not unlike what I do elsewhere), but the highlight was seeing my all-time favorite, koalas.
Around this time, two years ago, I wrote These Twenty Things -- the nerve I had to suggest we should do this and that. But, I do wish I had more time to write because recording in this space helps me reflect on what I enjoy most about teaching, which is mainly about what my students take away from a lesson, and perhaps more importantly, what they put into it.
There are a variety of things in education that I still don't have a good grasp on, like differentiation and Problem-Based Learning (PBL). I get what they are, I just don't think they play out in the classroom [of 35 students] nearly as efficiently and effectively as intended. They are hard to do, most teachers have not had the training, or the training they get is from people who have never consistently implemented them.
But here are a few things I trust I have a good handle on.
Begin with a challenging task so everyone has access to it. Fully invite students to work on the problem, individually at first, then in small groups, then with the whole class. When sufficient time has been devoted to this (this can mean 30 minutes or two days, depending on the task and your students), then go do your regular routine, but invite students who finish the regular stuff to continue with the challenging task. I normally see this gets flipped around a lot, that teachers ask students to do the challenging task after they finish their regular work. The problem with this is 1) at least half of the students don't get to it, and 2) those who get to it don't care about it simply because the teacher didn't care enough about it to fully introduce it. It's not lip service when I introduce each PS with, This is definitely my favorite one!
Wait time and asking for a classmate's help. Y'all know about the wait time. I usually wait, then I say to the student, "Would you like to call on a classmate to help you?" If the called-on student is not able to help, then I ask the same of this student. This should keep more students paying attention, and it's one more way for me to stay out of it.
Deal with "bad" behaviors in a different (unexpected?) way. I have two recent examples. I was on detention duty, and instead of copying down a selected passage we gave, the student had written a very angry note to another teacher. He had hoped to hide it from me. When I finally got him to produce the note and read it, he started to tear up. I said, "Do you feel better now that you'd written all this down?" He said he was mad and didn't mean anything by it. I said, "You wrote it, and I read it, and now it'll go into this garbage can. Done. Sometimes it helps to get it on paper." Another one was when a student brought a pencil to me and said, "It has bad writing on it." Along its skinny spine was the inscription: fuck you bitch. I thought of one particular child who may have written it. The next day, at the start of each class, I projected the pencil under my doc camera. I said, "The spelling is all correct, that's always good, but punctuation needs work. Anyway, if this is your writing, I hope it was a good stress release. Next time though, please write it on a piece of paper instead, this was our classroom pencil, and now I have to throw it out. Waste not!"
Go ahead and give your students lots of advice because you can't do this with adults without risking getting punched in the face. My usuals:
That soda is not good for you. Eat a doughnut instead. (Hey, the sugar ratio of soda to a doughnut is 3.5 to 1.)
If you want to cheat off of your friend's paper, I offer a free how-to clinic at lunch. I mean you do a horrible job at this, I can TELL for chrissake.
It's not all about you. Learn that early and learn that fast. Your parents may love you unconditionally, but have you ever tried to wake them up early for no good reason?
Always brush your tongue too.
Don't trust places that claim "We're like family," and yet they don't let you eat for free.
Your real friends are not the ones who attend your party. They are the ones who show up when no one else does.
Oh, and there's a book that you or your school should get. It's Necessary Conditions by Geoff Krall. I know it says "secondary math," but that's some marketing talk, it's really for any teacher, you!
And finally, I'm incredibly honored and grateful to be at the following meetings this year:
February 20: Washington ESD, Vancouver, WA, full-day workshop
April 5: NCTM Annual, San Diego, IGNITE
April 25: Ross Taylor Symposium, Duluth, MN, full-day workshop
April 26: MCTM Spring Conference, Duluth, MN, keynote + session
May 3: Wisconsin Math Conference, keynote
June 19: HIVE, Open Up, Atlanta, talk + panel
July 11: CAMT, San Antonio, keynote + sessions
August 7: Ohio Annual Meeting, keynote + session
August 15: NYS Master Teacher Program, full-day workshop
May 8, [2020]: OAME, Ontario, featured speaker
I sincerely hope I get to connect with you at one of these places!