teaching

Love notes

/ Fran Haley / 9 Comments

These kids.

First they wanted to know why they have to be in this reading group.

Now they want to know why they can’t come every single day for longer amounts of time.

These kids.

They are so hung up on what is “fair.”

When I ask Why? I am told: Because things are not fair at home.

I say You know I am going to be fair here.

These kids.

They notice everything. They want to talk about nails and where I get my holographic pencils.

They want to know when I will get cooler prizes in my treasure basket (a reward for working hard. I asked them what their favorite candy is. I bought it all and also put holographic pencils in the basket…the first things to go).

These kids.

They want to know if they can have two prizes (-Did you all work hard? -Yes. – Okay, You can have two…yes, all of you).

They want to know what I will do for them when we get to the end of all their reading passages.

They inform me that they want McDonald’s to celebrate. They have already composed their order…although it changes every day.

They want to know if they can eat it in my room with me.

These kids.

They all have stories. Parts I know. Parts I don’t.

I have questions about fair myself.

These kids.

They want to know who has the highest score, who’s going to be first, who’s going to update the group star chart.

That fair thing, again.

I am not going to decide for you, I say. You figure it out amongst yourselves.

And they do. Fairly.

These kids.

They don’t know how much they’re rising above, how many odds they’re beating.

But they can see their own trajectories climbing with every reading assessment.

And they linger in my space when they’re supposed to be going back to class.

When I look up after assessing the last one’s progress, I see why…

They were writing on the board.

These kids.

Love you kids.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge

The edge of understanding

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

It is said that
instruction should begin
at the edge of understanding

I know this edge

where the solid ground ends
and the unknown begins

all certainty suspended
as the mists roll in
obscuring the chasm
before me

I would linger here
until the end of my days
on the foundations that
sustained me thus far

if not for the Guide
speaking one step
at a time
into being

only materializing
when I place my foot
forward
to find a firmness
beneath
before I can
fully see

a little
of the mist clears
while the edge
on which I’m standing
under construction
is expanding

At the Edge of the Caldera… ER’s Eyes – Our planet is beautiful. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Autopsy data

/ Fran Haley / 1 Comment

a poem inspired by a professional development facilitator

The educator
in analyzing
student
scores
numbers
and notes
must DO
something
in response
otherwise
all you have is
autopsy data

Rembrandt —The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Public domain.

Expectations

/ Fran Haley / 10 Comments

As a literacy coach and intervention team facilitator, I am tasked with communicating expectations of my administration and the district to my colleagues. It’s a tricky position (correction: these are tricky positions. Plural. Sometimes I feel like Bartholomew Cubbins, wearing 500 hats). At present, my fellow educators are, in the wake of COVID, undergoing state-mandated Science of Reading training while adjusting to new curriculum and new leadership. It all comes with new expectations.

Truth be told, however, many of these expectations aren’t new: Problem-solving as a professional community, finding what we need as educators to give the students what they need. Bridging gaps. Collaborative planning. Collective responsibility. None of these are new; they just feel new if they’ve not been done effectively before…the bottom line being the determination of this is what the kids really need; how do we make it happen?

It’s formidable challenge, in a time where there are many needs, and when educational philosophies, beliefs, and mindsets clash. I recently wrote about endurance (from a spiritual point of view). This new school year follows one of extreme exhaustion. We will not endure without leaning on one another. We will not build our strength in isolation. We will not succeed without stamina. Or vision. Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). Grappling with expectations is, well, expected. Everything, everything, everything rests on one of two beliefs: it can be done or it can’t.

I believe it can.

Yesterday my granddaughter visited. The hummingbird feeder rings I ordered for us had just arrived. Perfect timing. We took them out of the package, washed them, made a tiny batch of sugar water, and filled them. Off to the yard we trotted to stand with our arms resting on the fence near one of my two feeders where a handful of hummingbirds compete for their nectar throughout the day.

You can see for yourself, in the photo, my granddaughter thinking I don’t know about this…yet there’s a layer of hope and fear in her expression: Will the hummingbirds actually come drink from my ring? Will I be scared?

After a while: How long is this going to take?

The secret, my love, is patience and persistence. If it doesn’t work the first time, we will try again, and again. Hummingbirds have come to drink from the rings of other people in other places; they will eventually do so with us. Keep trying. Believe. I will stand with you until it does.

Oh, right.

I started off talking about teaching, didn’t I.

Expression of uncertain expectation. After she left, I went out again when the hummers were more active. A couple of them hovered nearby, considering me and my outstretched, ringed hand (hummingbirds are highly intelligent and curious). If they come to me…they will come to my granddaughter. I will see if can make it happen for her.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge

The way of it

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

On the first required workday
before school begins
I drive the familiar backroads
once again

dew-drenched pastures
and old weatherboard barns
defy time
they are
their own world

then to my delight
a patch of tangled sunflowers
on the right
must have been growing here
all summer
I didn’t know
I think of Van Gogh
walking the rustic village
of Arles

up ahead, the pond
I scan it quickly
for the great blue heron
and there it is
at water’s edge
nearest the road
big and gray-blue
like a watercolor rendition
so perfect a pose

I feel light
like these are signs
that all will go well
with the work
lying before me

peace becomes strength
in my spirit
in my bones

on the second workday
I see it all again
even the heron

I can always face
the day ahead
whenever I see
the heron

I am so light
I could soar

then on the third day
without warning
orange signs on white gates
say the road is closed

I must detour

no passing the pond
no seeing heron
standing with elegiac grace
in the still water

although I know
it’s there

so on I fly
day after day
going out of my way
to get to where
I need to be

for now at least
I have the sunflowers

Vincent would say
it’s enough

keep painting the day
and the required work
beautiful
around the barriers
until they are gone

that is
the way of it

Coming home; the pond is just ahead but I can’t see it

Pedagogy poem

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

with thanks to Glenda Funk on Ethical ELA’s Open Write today: “What do you owe to pedagogy? Today I’d like us to consider this question and compose a poem in which we explore an idea related to pedagogy, the methods by which we teach, the methods by which we learn. The poem does not necessarily have to be about school. Simply think about teaching and learning as a global phenomenon.”

This is the poem that came today, in reflecting on what I owe to pedagogy… of course, it’s a story-poem…

The Heart of Pedagogy

Little boy in the shop
at Christmastime
spends his money
on a gift for his mom

a matted illustration
of a bird holding a primer
encircled by a flowery heart
and these words:

A teacher
in wisdom and kindness
helps children learn to do
exactly what they thought
could not be done

-Honey, it’s beautiful!
I love it, says his mom,
even though
I am not a teacher

Little boy grins
in his snaggletoothed way:
Yes you are, Mama

She sees the bright belief
there in his face

she cannot bring herself
to diminish it

for maybe she would be a teacher
if only she had finished college

which she does, many years later.

The boy can’t attend
to see her walk across the stage
because he’s taking final exams
at the university
where he’s a history major

-What are you going to do
with that degree?
everyone asks him
-are you going to teach?

No
He’s emphatic:
I do not want to be
a teacher
No

which is, of course,
the path that immediately opens
leading him right back
to the very classroom
where he was a student
where he finds
his old AP history exams
stashed in the cabinet.

The summation of the matter:
we’ve both done
exactly what we thought
could not be done
haven’t we, Boy

for in the end
as in the beginning
teaching is about believing

then in finding
a way.

The Boy’s gift has remained on my bookcase for over two decades. He was in high school when I returned to college. The verse became the foundation of my teaching philosophy as I obtained my degree and additional certifications. It applies even now to the coaching work I do with teachers. As for the Boy: he was a beloved high school history teacher and soccer coach for several years before entering the seminary for divinity degrees and the pastorate. In awe, I watch him teaching his young daughters…and remember.

Season of shivers

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

September. Days growing notably shorter. Darker mornings. Sun blazing at midday, chorus of feverish buzzing from the treetops, cicadas singing loudest just before the last.

School. Children swathed in masks. Eating lunch all over the building for safe distancing. Even in a recessed section of hallway, sitting on the floor in portable blue plastic seats with built-in tabletops for food. A study in balance. Like seesaws. It takes coordination to stand up without losing what’s left of your lunch.

In the evenings, exhaustion. Everyone expresses it. Everyone. The nightly news drones on: Death and dying. Afghanistan. Hurricane destruction. Epic flooding. Rising COVID cases. Delta variant. And you might want to invest in warm clothing, Viewers. The Farmer’s Almanac predicts an unusually cold winter…it’s being called ‘the season of shivers‘…

Season of shivers. So poetic. I want to make something out of it, turn it around in my hand like a crystal, watch it sparkle in the light. I will hold onto it a while.

Isn’t it already a season of shivers. Church closed again, three weeks to date, as COVID struck a number of our members at once. Granddaughter in kindergarten for a week, now quarantined for two, following an exposure. Colleagues wanting to talk about intervention for students who were kindergarteners and first graders during the last year and a quarter, when instruction went virtual. A frantic clinging to norms when norms are gone. We can’t start with intervention. We must be about reinvention. Daunting.

Children. The most resilient of us all. I am sent to the cafeteria to supervise half of second grade while the other half is spread across the hallway and classrooms. Two to a table, facing the same direction. Cheerful. Chattery. They have to finish eating in time for me to clean all the tables before the next grade level arrives. I am the only staff member present. Normally there are two. Even office staff is pressed into service at lunch time, covering all locations. Skeleton crews, everywhere.

I manage it. The kids are in two lines, masked, lunch boxes in tow, awaiting their teachers. They watch me. They’re not sure what to make of me. They are quiet.

Beyond the propped cafeteria door, a balmy September afternoon. The swelling of cicada-rattles. Loud.

Do you hear that buzzing? I ask.

Nodding of masked heads. Like little bobbers on water.

Do you know which insect makes that sound?

Cockroaches! shouts a boy.

Crickets? offers a girl.

No. It’s a cicada.

They like the sound of the word. They say it aloud: Cicada.

I describe it. With my fingers: This big. Long wings. Hatches underground, climbs to top of trees. That buzzing is made by the males. It’s a love song. Doesn’t sound like a love song, does it?

Giggles. Shaking of heads.

They have questions, but their teachers have come. They must go.

Thank you for telling us about cicadas, says a girl, as her line begins snaking away.

At the door, the last boy stops, turns back: Where is that rattle, on the cicada?

In his belly, I say.

The boy nods. He runs along the sidewalk to catch up with his class.

I stand still in the shadowy silence, this momentary transition, listening to the miniature buzz-saw, helicopter-blade whirring of the cicada congregation. Loudest they’ve been all summer, just as it begins to die.

How well they must understand, cicadas, about the season of shivers.

Shiver. benjaflynn. CC BY 2.0

*******

When I began writing this post, I hadn’t planned on including cicadas. They crept in of their own accord. Because I love them, and their song, I let them stay. I often write of them. Cicadas represent, among other things, personal change and transformation.

Many thanks to the Two Writing Teachers community and the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge. Sharing our stories is also about personal change and transformation. We grow through it.

Last hurrah

/ Fran Haley / 18 Comments

Twenty-four hours ago I woke with the sun by the sea, rested and at peace with the world. I spent a few hours sitting at the ocean’s sandy altar beside my beloved sister-in-law, who’s like my own flesh and blood, speaking of the past, present, and future. Remembering loved ones lost. Cherishing new little ones, our children’s’ children. Hardly any other people were out and about; the beach seemed to be our own for these few sacred hours.

“Look! Dolphins!” my sister-in-law pointed. Out in the glimmering, watery distance, a distinctive leap…dolphins, navigators of the deep, ancient symbols of protection.

Just above the surface, gliding with astounding grace despite their unwieldy appearance, brown pelicans. Flocks of them. More than I’ve ever seen at one time before. Breaking their flight with dives and a mighty splash of white spray, catching fish and bobbing for a while in the waves.

Pelicans, a symbol for resourcefulness. And sacrifice. Legend has it that mother pelicans sacrifice themselves for their young, if need be. They wound themselves to feed their children with their own blood. They are social birds which hunt cooperatively—representing teamwork. Community.

Twenty-four hours ago, I sat breathing the same salt air as the pelicans, stood in the same sparkling waters as the dolphins.

Today I pack my bags, load my car, and return to school, masked. COVID rages on. Many unknowables lie ahead.

Yet I remain at peace. Diving, leaping, or gliding, I shall navigate as called for in the ebb and flow of moments. Children await, life awaits, time does not. The ocean remains. A reminder of constancy, of strength.

Here’s to the mighty plunge.

Low-flying pelicans. Tony Alter. CC-BY

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers…strength and protection to all in this uplifting community of teacher-writers, seasoned navigators of life and story-sharing.

Take heart

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

Written while waiting for word from the governor about schools re-opening.

Suspended animation

upended education

sense of desolation

facing the fall.

What school should be

we cannot see.

Ill winds still blowing

so much not-knowing.

Separate, there’s a cost.

So much is lost.

But not all

in one fall.

Until the surging tide

should subside

virtuality

may be reality.

Enduring

assuring

we will outlast

passing shadows cast

in empty halls

on empty walls.

By decrees

or degrees

a calling

for not falling

is conversely

full of mercy.

Choosing heartache

over heartbreak

choosing to be stronger

being a little longer

apart.

By whatever decrees

by whatever degrees

however they fall

however we start

dear ones, above all

—take heart.

Photo: Heart. Glenn Lascuna. CC BY