New Year, New Thoughts

The fact that 2010 is almost over continues to amaze me. The last year has brought so much change and been so wonderful its conclusion has me both excited and apprehensive for what 2011 will bring.

I moved from New Orleans to Maine in June, my son was born in September and my baby daddy proposed in December. It has been a whirlwind and I have loved every moment of it. I end the year so grateful for all I have and so hopeful for what is to come.

Speaking of that, as I gave up New Years Resolutions long ago, this year I have decided to implement New Years Projects. Instead of swearing off sugar or pretending I will lose the last 10 pounds I want to I will be engaging in two projects in 2011 (in addition to planning a wedding and raising a very active 3 1/2 month old).

The first you will see here on this blog. I am developing a survey to test my theory on failure and with the help of you (all 3 of you who read this) I hope to see if I am heading in the right direction...and then try to publish my findings and their applicability in the business world.

The second you can find here: http://www.icantcometothephone.blogspot.com/. Here I am challenging myself to write a micro story each day inspired by one of my Facebook friends status updates. Don't worry I don't plan on writing about any of them...I am just going to use their words as inspiration. And as part of this I am challenging you loyal readers (all 3 of you) to play along...post your own micro stories...or add to one of mine.

Anyway, whether you have resolutions or projects for 2011 or not. I want to thank all of you who make my life wonderful and challenging and amazing everyday. Without you I would not be where I am today. And where I am, is finally, where I want to be.

Much luck in 2011!

Promising Public Happiness

The Foursquare website told me today that "happiness was just around the corner" when I watched their video to see how their website worked. And it got me thinking about the old saying "if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one their to hear it does it make a sound?"

It seems like a more updated version of this today would be to say: "if I experience happiness and I don’t tell anyone did I really experience happiness?"

If I don’t Tweet it or blog it or Facebook it or Foursquare it or Gmail chat it or whatever it is I’m doing did I really experience that moment of happiness?

Is it possible anymore to just experience happiness on our own or are we so tied into social networking and social media and the need to constantly communicate with everyone we know about where we are and what we are doing that our happiness is someone how tied to our ability to share it. What about unhappiness? Can that still be experienced alone...or does it also have to enter a public forum before it can become real?

Defining Failure

I posted on Facebook yesterday: "Meleena is thinking about the milestones you don't achieve." And got two responses from friends...one said: "you mean like when i didn't run my first marathon?" and the second said: " or I didn't sleep with keanu reeves yet?"

And as so many things do these days it got me thinking about how we define failure. If we tried to run the marathon but only got to mile 5 is that failure? Or if we have always wanted to run the marathon, but never tried, always assuming it was out of our reach is that failure? Are they both?

We wouldn't say a couple who never tried to have children "failed to have them". But we might say that someone who never visited Paris "failed to see the Eiffel Tower".

I think we can break failure down into two distinct categories. Active failure, i.e. I went to Keanue Reeves home every day for 6 months but failed to sleep with him. And passive failure i.e. despite always wanting to sleep with Keanue Reeves I never even tried to meet him.

So if my life is more defined by my failures then my successes...and I believe it is...should I look at these two types of failures differently? And maybe more importantly can we always tell the difference between them?

A Construct of our Failures

I have been thinking a lot since I moved back north about how we recognize the milestones we DON'T reach. The job not gotten, the course not completed, the relationship ending. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that our lives are far more a construct of our failures then our successes.

When I first articulated this to Huey he put his head in his hands and said "oh Pookey..." in a sad voice. He had asked me why I was once again re-reading a Jodi Piccoult book, an author who, while I own everything she has ever written I don't like. And I had told him I was reading it because it reminded me of the failure in my own life to become a writer - and maybe it was that failure in addition to the many other that define me today. I had not meant it as a flashback to unhappy teen years, or that I was disappointed in how my life had turned out. Simply that the failures I have experienced, and, despite wanting to think otherwise, they have been many, have done more to shape me than the successes had.

We get a promotion and go out for a drink to celebrate, take on the new responsibilty, work longer hours, spend more time away from our friends and family, make more money and call it a success. We lose our job due to downsizing, are unemployed for 6 months, rack up credit card debt, put a strain on our marriage, spend more time watching our kids play baseball, become an expert in something that used to be a hobby, find our life more meaningful then ever before and call it a failure.

This isn't about blind optimism and it's not about seeing a silver lining on clouds. It's about taking a good look at who we are, who we were and who we want to be and recognizing that sometimes we need to fail in order to get where we want to go.

Huey came around to my way of thinking when it occurred to him that even our relationship was the result of a series of failures in both of our lives...had either of us not experienced even one, we never would have met and today would look very different.

So how do we measure the milestones we don't reach? By remembering them, and by recognizing what we have gained or learned in our failure to reach them. My life is a construct of my failures...and I feel pretty good about that.

The Last Days

Less then two weeks remain in NOLA. There is always a business that takes over the waining days you have in a place. And while there is so much to look forward to, there is also so much I will miss. The undertone of this - the compare and contrast if you will - is that while I spend my final days in NOLA one of my brothers oldest friends is spending the final days of his life. After a heroic battle with cancer that has dictated his life for the past 18 months he has been admitted to hospice and well...

I wish my students could have met this young man. Who faced every challenge in his life as an opportunity, saw the good in all those around him and while I didn't always understand the decisions he made, lived the life he chose for himself to the fullest. He has spent the last 18 months since his diagnosis surrounded by people who love him. Engaging in the things he was passionate about and not wasting one day. I have said often over the past 18 months that while his illness is tragic, he has been lucky to have had the chance so many of us never do. To truly live his life...and the real amazing thing about this young man is that he did that even before he knew it would be cut short.

I want my boys here in NOLA who see death everyday through violence and drugs to understand that we always do have choices about the way we chose to live - even if don't get to make them about the way we die. That hopes and dreams can survive and be made into realities even when it seems like the world has dealt us a bad hand.

When we first found out he was sick I had already made my decision to leave Boston, but his illness served as a reminder that we really do have to make the best of each day. Even when they are full of work and stress and deadlines and it all starts to feel like we just have to get through it so we can get on to the next thing. Life is the getting through it. It took me 30 years and moving across the country to see that. To slow down. To not let future plans good and bad take away from the here and now.

So I may only have 11 days left in NOLA. And they may be full days full of meetings and packing and friends and students. But I never get them again and so I will hold on to each of them as they pass...enjoy my students - even when I want to beat them with a belt...enjoy my work - even when the paperwork feels overwhelming and enjoy my friends because while I know I will keep in touch with some, many I only had this year with and despite that short time they made an imprint on me and that is worth staying in the moment for.

My love to everyone back home and here. I am grateful for all days past and for this one. Always for this one.

Heading Home

The school year is coming to a close here in NOLA. Our high stakes testing is over. The kids did so well, took it so seriously and I can't help but be proud of them. Even though we won't know the results for a few weeks they did their best and that is really all you can ask of anyone.

It's hard to think back to a year ago. I was just telling people I was leaving. Looking for an apartment and planning my new life here in New Orleans. That was just last year. And already so much has changed. I guess the old adage "what a difference a year makes" was said for a reason.

My separation from my ex-husband has yielded a very amicable divorce and as of June 12th our marriage will be formally dissolved by the state of Massachusetts. A year ago I would not have predicted that.

I am heading back to New England for a tour of my future on Tuesday...returning to work at EMI (I am very excited), closing on a beautiful home in Maine with my boyfriend of nine months (also very excited), and spending a weekend with his family to celebrate the marriage of one of his family members.

So I am finally heading home. Back to Maine where I was born and raised and for some time swore I would never return to. But now it feels like the perfect place to start my life again, to raise a family, and to build the community and relationships that I have always looked for. The last year has been an amazing ride, and while NOLA was never a permanent stopping place I couldn't have gotten to where I am now without it. This past year has taught me more about myself, and about the person I want to be then any year previous and I will always be grateful for the city, my school and the wonderful people I met here for helping me to learn that about myself. I'll post some pictures after we close on the house. I can't wait to paint walls, rip up carpet and cut down trees.

I never thought it would feel so good to have identified "home" and to know that is where I am headed.

Defining Dreams

When I was growing up dreaming was encouraged. As long as your dreams fit into the pre-planned box they were suppose to. Sure when I was 7 I wanted to be the unicorn from the Rainbow Bright series and I don't think anyone had a problem with that - as long as the unicorn went to college and became a veterinarian.

I don't want to make my parents sound like overzealous planners for me. They weren't. No one ever said "you can't". In fact I had parents and relatives who encouraged and supported my plans to become a writer, an actress, a singer, a lawyer. But it was also made clear to me that the path to all these dreams was a good education, a college degree and hard work. It never occurred to me NOT to go to college. And in fact I even went a year early - although more out of the desire to get OUT of Freeport then to actually GO anywhere.

But I think now, as I work with my students in NOLA about what my life would have been like if instead of just assuming college was in my future it was always assumed that it would not be. Would the dreams I had for myself had changed? Would I have found a way to Emerson College (or somewhere else that may have been a better fit) anyway? Or would I have sought out some different path. Maybe less tradition, but maybe that would have brought me a different kind of success.

The last few years have got me thinking a lot about how the dreams we have for ourselves - whether created by us or others - impact the decisions we make. Even as a child of divorce, coming to terms with the end of my own marriage made me feel like a failure. Because one of the dreams I had was to be a good wife and mother and suddenly it felt like a dream I could not achieve. Where did that I dream come from? My own desire to beat the odds after marrying too young? The dreams that other people had for me to achieve what they had (or had not) achieved?

And what of my students? Does my encouragement toward college somehow limit the dreams they have for themselves? Or does it simply provide a new avenue for them to dream about? Where is the line between what we think is the right path and what is the right path become blurred by our own experience, our own dreams. If my daughter came home engaged at 20 like I did would I be able to look beyond my own failed marriage and recognize her dream as independent from my failure? If my students do not do to college can I envision a successful life for them even though the only way I have measured success is though an education?

When we teach our children that they can be anything - even that unicorn from Rainbow Bright - we allow them to explore all who they are. And we must find the balance between support of those dreams, and allowing them to experience their own success and failures. I think some days it's enough that my students see me everyday. That they know I am going to be proud of them regardless of what they become - you know assuming they don't become gang members, drug dealers or incarcerated. But even then, they know that if there was a way to support them, that I would. They know that I see their education as more then what happens in math class or biology. That I seek out ways to engage their dreams and help them find the path they need to make it into a reality.

I gave my 6th graders an assignment yesterday to write and illustrate their own myth. Some students completed the project as quickly as they could. Some poured over the art because in part they liked it better and in part because writing anything is a challenge. Some wrote short stories that were barley myths and showed little effort. But one boy has sat quietly in class for two days and written. At the end of class today he had filled three pages with his story and when I came to collect it at the end of class he told me he wasn't done yet and could he please work on it again tomorrow. When I asked him if he wrote a lot he said with this small smile he had never written like this before. I could see in his face, in his eyes, the creation of some small new dream.

I think in the end that is my job. Create the opportunity for new dreams.

This Week's Thoughts

There is a tiredness that comes with this job that I have never known. A daily reminder that life is not fair and not just in places like Haiti. That here in this country there is a significant portion of Americans that we have forgotten. Overlooked. That this American city, that just spent weeks in the national spotlight as Mardi Gras and the Saints Superbowl ruled the news remains in disrepair. So for what it's worth here is what has been on my mind this week:

1. inclusion remains a bad idea in our nations schools
2. no matter how many new, well educated (they call us highly qualified) teachers enter the schools of the countries urban and rural poor there needs to be a fundamental shift in how parents, community members and students see education before a change will ever happen
3. when a student hits a teacher they should be expelled. period.
4. we really do over diagnose and over medicate for ADD and ADHD, and no one seems to read the warning labels for putting children as young as 11 on adult dosages of drug like Aderall
4a. one of the most common side effects of being given too much Aderall (as in an adult dose to a child) is paranoia, hearing voices and other mental issues that look a lot like schizophrenia
5. I am growing tired of sleeping in the constant glow of a parking garage
6. I own a cat who sleeps with his tongue hanging out
7. Someday I would like to teach in an actual school building - not a modular trailer
8. I miss MOOO mac and cheese on Fridays, Zen Philadelphia rolls during the week and Capital Coffee House bacon, egg and cheese sandwich's on Saturday morning
9. I love coffee with chicory and beignets and will miss them when I leave NOLA
10. I need to find a new good book
11. I plan to start bringing a camera with me everywhere - this city has so many faces and I feel like I need to start capturing at least a few of them.
12. I am not a morning person
13. I am going to start practicing the piano again

Time moves in circles. Numbers take on importance. 25 days until my students take the key state test. 16 school days until the end of this marking period. 35 school days until my next trip to Boston. 42 days until I turn 31. 22 days since my divorce was final. 1 work day until the weekend. 4 hours until I go to bed. 40 minutes since I ate frozen waffles for dinner. I try to spend more time looking forward then looking back. I guess that the last thought for this week.

15. focus on whats ahead.

A Tangent on Inclusion

Inclusion is the term we use in education to imply that every student regardless of IQ, physical disability or learning disability should spend as much time as possible (80% or more of their day) in regular education classes.

In theory the idea comes from a good place. By including all children in regular education you allow for socialization with their peers and the opportunity to work "on grade level" in the pursuit of future academic endeavors. I had opinions about it prior to entering the teaching profession but my brief experience in New Orleans has turned my opinions into more informed ones.

While its heart is in the right place, the idea of inclusion hurts students ability to be successful. inclusion tells us that every student should be moving toward the same educational goal - which these days is college. The challenge is that college is not the best end result for many students - special education or not. A student reading on the 3rd grade level is not benefited by sitting through day after day of biology class, in which he can not read the notes on the board and can not complete the independent work because he does not understand what is being taught. More often then not this student excels in other areas where reading does not inhibit them - working on mechanical things, math, or sometimes just an incredible work ethic that will enable them to experience success in their lives.

Rather then trying to fit every child into the same mold, it is time to remove the idea of inclusion and instead focus on the specific needs and talents of our children through trade schools, extensive pullouts to help students overcome deficits and career counseling and training to ensure that once out of high school there is a career path they can follow.

Everyday I am amazed by my 10th grader who can not write a sentence but can re-program my computer while I eat lunch. By my 10th grader who does not understand passages written for a 3rd grader but whose passion and sense of community makes him a better person then I will ever be. By my 9th grader who can not stay awake in science class because he doesn't understand the basic principles but who has the biggest heart and just wants someone to believe that he can be something more then everyone has always assumed he will be.

I teach for these students. To help them reach there goals - even though they are contradictory to the goals of the school and the system in which I teach. It's time we taught the whole student and inclusion does not allow us to do that.

Plans and time

The school year is more then half way past. I try to relish in the small moments of success my boys experience. Like being awarded "most improved student" for bringing grades up from F's to B's & C's and listening to one of my students talk about his dream of becoming a fireman and his excitement over having his drivers license. I try to focus away from the negative. The boys I can't reach no matter what I do. The ones who can not articulate what they plan to do after high school because they never thought about it.

My time in New Orleans has been so extreme. Torn between a job that is by far the hardest thing I have ever done, and new friendships and relationships that bring such joy and excitement about the future. This job will eat your insides if you let it. It is so easy to be consumed with what you can NOT do that you can easily forget what you are doing. Just by showing up. Everyday. Because they notice when you don't.

Time creeps along...and I am caught trying to make sure that making plans for the future does not happen at the cost of the present. That excitement for what is to come does not mean I miss moments to enjoy now. That the chance for failure does not become more likely then the chance for success. I find peace in quiet moments, like watching the Saints school the Cardinals in a playoff game, learning new definitions to words (like down here "excuse" means "get out of my way" not "pardon me") learning to cook Cajun style and making plans for what is next. If you've read up to this point you know I love big reveals...

Until next time, may you all be Gucci.