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We made it to the shortlist for the Man BookerPrize, which was a delight and a surprise. Oliver got to wear a tux and I got to wear a fancy dress and meet the Duchess of Cornwall.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Questions for a quiet morning . . .
Today I read a couple
of pieces around the transplant story. One about the night of an anxiety
attack and one about our emergency bag. It feels like
no time has elapsed when I revisit memories from that era. Like there is no
linear quality to time after all – not in the sense of distance, of being able
to walk further and further away from memories and the feelings they invoke.
Time is a bunch of lily pads on gently moving water, like early spring. I land
on one leaf and am once again in the
dark, alone with my fear, separated from Shan by the gulf of her pain and my
anxiety. The memories are still in my body and I have felt that subtle
acceleration of my breathing over and over as I reread my journal and let my
mind drift from one lily pad to another. Was that scene from Vancouver or here?
Before the transplant or after? Chemo in Victoria or Vancouver? Doctor Toze?
Connor? Protcor? Wass? Sing? Rahti? Power? Sheppard? Where am I now? And what
should I be doing? Saying? Feeling? Avoiding? Disguising? Misdirecting?
Translating? Downplaying? Organizing? Clarifying? Where is Shan and what does
she need from me now? Company? Food? Reassurance? Transportation? Medicine?
Reminding? Monitoring? Distracting? Soothing?
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Miss Trunchbull loves literacy
I am currently covering a maternity leave for one of our teachers and so September to the end of January, my life looks quite different than the usual schtick. With all this teaching going on, I have had no time for writing. I look forward to getting back to my writing life, but I am enjoying the teaching very much. It helps to have the best age group (grades 3-5) and an especially sweet group of kids. But it's just been fun to play. I've been Captain Canada, Edna the Ears, Mission Control, a Broadway producer, and that really evil teacher from "Matilda".
No matter what outrageous idea I come up with to help us explore something new, the kids are with me, ready to try anything with enthusiasm.
Not surprisingly, what has been most enjoyable for me is their love of the Literacy Centres. I decided to use Lit Centres in order to best address the huge disparity in ability. I never could have anticipated how successful they would be. The students are motivated and empowered by the choices they can make at each centre and by my expectation that they are responsible for their own learning.
Every day between 11 and 12, my classroom is a quiet buzz of energy:
There are kids reading in the reading centre, alone or with a buddy or maybe listening to/reading a book with a CD. There is a group at one table doing reading response worksheets. At another table, kids choose from 45 activity cards to do a fun (and often physical) activity to reinforce their weekly spelling list. There is a sentence centre with games that have morphed into new games over the weeks as each group experiments with new ways to play them. But my absolute favourite is the creative writing centre. Kids have a myriad of ways to inspire some creative thinking and today the whole class got involved in helping J think of uses for his invisible monkey. They are writing Wanted posters for the strange creatures they make up. (If you see something that looks like a cross between a fairy and a weasel that poops jelly beans, please contact us immediately.) They pick pictures from the Roll & Write dice game and make crazy stories. Emerging writers record them into a tape recorder. They can choose an item from the Bin of Inspiration or the Bag of Weirdness to get them writing. When the chime sounds to move them to their next Centre, the loudest groans tend to come from the creative writing corner.
As soon as my term is finished, I will pack up my Bag of Weirdness, infuse myself with the kids' amazing imaginations and head into my studio to steal as many of their ideas as possible. Don't tell them.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Gratitude
I recently finished reading Ten Mindful Minutes by Goldie Hawn (with Wendy Holden). It is about Mindfulness and its endless benefits to our well-being.
In the chapter on gratitude, she described a two-week study in which a group of students were divided into three groups. The first was the control group and made no changes, the second was asked to record five blessings each day for the two week period. The third group was asked to record five hassles. At the end of two weeks, the blessings group were "happier and healthier" and when re-interviewed after three weeks, the blessings group remained "significantly more optimistic about the upcoming school week and satisfied about school and their lives in general". (p. 131)
Needless to say, I immediately stole Ms. Hawn's idea (and terminology: "Vitamin G"), and instituted a Gratitude Journal in my classroom. I introduced it briefly on Friday morning and by Friday afternoon, there were six entries, expressing gratitude for health, home, family, pets, hobbies, peace, and eyeglasses.
This all made me reflect on the power of gratitude in my own life and so at 4:00 am this morning when I couldn't sleep, I went looking through my journal written during a time when gratitude was hard to come by. I was living in Vancouver and caring for my partner Shan during her stem cell replacement therapy (bone marrow transplant).
I sank into my own words and wrapped myself in the feelings they created. And when I could close the journal and put aside the feelings, I was overcome by the blessings in my life. Revisiting that dark time, I was filled with gratitude.
Suddenly, sleeplessness and work stress and money worries were irrelevant.
As I read the journal, I was struck by the role writing played in my self-care during a difficult time. The next time I get my hands on the Vitamin G Journal at school, I will record my immense gratitude for writing. It has always been a balm for me. I believe it always will.
I've chosen three entries to share here. Please accept them as a way into your own gratitude.
Perhaps a year from now I will read this and remember how hard it has been – remember with some surprise because it has all slipped quietly below the surface and disappeared. Perhaps I will be all caught up in some silly trivial thing. Sounds luxurious, like having nothing to do but read a frivolous and entertaining novel.
But truly, I hope not. I hope I will remember how grateful I am to have this healthy amazing body of mine, this strong spirit. I hope it will be vivid in my mind, this great joy to still have her here with me. I hope I will look at every blue sky all year long and remember this one, which heralded the restart, the empty page, the clean slate. Most of all, I hope every blue sky this year will remind me that like today, what I feel is less important than what I know. My heart is a little heavy, my soul a bit darker blue than what I see above me, but I know . . . unshakeably, I know, that I am well, that life is a gift, that joy is a practice.
If I could manipulate the universe, I would defer every blessing reserved for me in 2011, have them all slip past me and fall on Shanny.
There is no blessing to equal that of being loved by the one you love.
I decided to get up so I might get a little writing done before the bronchoscopy this morning. She can’t eat breakfast again and she has nothing at all in her tummy, having puked everything up just before bed last night. Poor thing. She sleeps more than she’s awake right now and she just isn’t having any fun at all. We rarely even get out for a walk. And this week has been 5 out of 5 days at the hospital which exhausts her.
We’re fast approaching the 6 month mark of how long we’ve been away from home. She seems to be getting worse all the time. I’m terrified to take her home in case there is an emergency but I don’t see how she can start to feel better until she can sleep in her own bed, pet Jed, sit on the beach, be surrounded by her friends. This feels like a giant catch 22 and I know she feels as caught as I do. We don’t even know the doctor on Cortes – haven’t even met him. How must that feel for her when she is known here. On Tuesday, Shan told the doctor she was still struggling with her appetite and on Wednesday, the nutritionist showed up at our daycare appointment armed with all Shan’s latest info and a sheaf of ideas to help with appetite, etc. When we go in, they say things like, “So you called in last night . . .” or whatever. They all keep up to date on everyone. When we walk onto C6, the theme from Cheers plays in my head: Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. Too bad it’s a hospital ward.
In the chapter on gratitude, she described a two-week study in which a group of students were divided into three groups. The first was the control group and made no changes, the second was asked to record five blessings each day for the two week period. The third group was asked to record five hassles. At the end of two weeks, the blessings group were "happier and healthier" and when re-interviewed after three weeks, the blessings group remained "significantly more optimistic about the upcoming school week and satisfied about school and their lives in general". (p. 131)
Needless to say, I immediately stole Ms. Hawn's idea (and terminology: "Vitamin G"), and instituted a Gratitude Journal in my classroom. I introduced it briefly on Friday morning and by Friday afternoon, there were six entries, expressing gratitude for health, home, family, pets, hobbies, peace, and eyeglasses.
This all made me reflect on the power of gratitude in my own life and so at 4:00 am this morning when I couldn't sleep, I went looking through my journal written during a time when gratitude was hard to come by. I was living in Vancouver and caring for my partner Shan during her stem cell replacement therapy (bone marrow transplant).
I sank into my own words and wrapped myself in the feelings they created. And when I could close the journal and put aside the feelings, I was overcome by the blessings in my life. Revisiting that dark time, I was filled with gratitude.
Suddenly, sleeplessness and work stress and money worries were irrelevant.
As I read the journal, I was struck by the role writing played in my self-care during a difficult time. The next time I get my hands on the Vitamin G Journal at school, I will record my immense gratitude for writing. It has always been a balm for me. I believe it always will.
I've chosen three entries to share here. Please accept them as a way into your own gratitude.
January 1, 2011
Happy New Year. The
sun is shining and that helps but I am not feeling so great today – woke up feeling
lousy at 7:00 am. I thought I’d get up and do some writing before Shan woke but
I’d only managed to make my coffee by the time she was up. She wanted to have
breakfast and watch a movie. When she asks if I want to do something, I have a
hard time saying no.
Perhaps a year from now I will read this and remember how hard it has been – remember with some surprise because it has all slipped quietly below the surface and disappeared. Perhaps I will be all caught up in some silly trivial thing. Sounds luxurious, like having nothing to do but read a frivolous and entertaining novel.
But truly, I hope not. I hope I will remember how grateful I am to have this healthy amazing body of mine, this strong spirit. I hope it will be vivid in my mind, this great joy to still have her here with me. I hope I will look at every blue sky all year long and remember this one, which heralded the restart, the empty page, the clean slate. Most of all, I hope every blue sky this year will remind me that like today, what I feel is less important than what I know. My heart is a little heavy, my soul a bit darker blue than what I see above me, but I know . . . unshakeably, I know, that I am well, that life is a gift, that joy is a practice.
If I could manipulate the universe, I would defer every blessing reserved for me in 2011, have them all slip past me and fall on Shanny.
There is no blessing to equal that of being loved by the one you love.
January 25
Something is better
today. Not the weather – still sickly grey and damp. Not the atmosphere in here
– Shan woke up almost sobbing with pain. Not my fatigue factor – I had the
worst sleep and have been up since 4:30. So what is different?
I wrote this morning.
That’s the difference. Wasn’t spectacular prose; wasn’t a new idea. I just
wrote 10 pages of a first draft. That’s all. And that made me think about
another project. And that made me go and dig up my notes for 5 Days and read
them and now it’s 11:30 and I feel like I can face the hospital today.
February 11
Honest to god, I was
just trying to move the recycling bin icon on my desktop screen and my journal folder got itself out of the document file and opened itself and here I
am. That is a bit spooky but sadly, also indicative of the level of
technocraziness that happens with me that makes everyone else think I’m a liar.
I really didn’t DO anything. I was nowhere near the files. Anyhooo . . . on
the other hand, it’s just the universe telling me to write.
It’s 6:00 am and I had
a pretty decent sleep last night – was in bed by 10:30 and don’t remember being
awake much at all. I decided to get up so I might get a little writing done before the bronchoscopy this morning. She can’t eat breakfast again and she has nothing at all in her tummy, having puked everything up just before bed last night. Poor thing. She sleeps more than she’s awake right now and she just isn’t having any fun at all. We rarely even get out for a walk. And this week has been 5 out of 5 days at the hospital which exhausts her.
We’re fast approaching the 6 month mark of how long we’ve been away from home. She seems to be getting worse all the time. I’m terrified to take her home in case there is an emergency but I don’t see how she can start to feel better until she can sleep in her own bed, pet Jed, sit on the beach, be surrounded by her friends. This feels like a giant catch 22 and I know she feels as caught as I do. We don’t even know the doctor on Cortes – haven’t even met him. How must that feel for her when she is known here. On Tuesday, Shan told the doctor she was still struggling with her appetite and on Wednesday, the nutritionist showed up at our daycare appointment armed with all Shan’s latest info and a sheaf of ideas to help with appetite, etc. When we go in, they say things like, “So you called in last night . . .” or whatever. They all keep up to date on everyone. When we walk onto C6, the theme from Cheers plays in my head: Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. Too bad it’s a hospital ward.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
A piece I wrote called "Normal" (published in The Healing Muse, Fall 2012) has found its way on-line by way of the editor, Diedre Neilen who read most of the essay on-air. She even pronounced my name correctly!
The Healing Muse is the literary magazine published by SUNY Upstate Medical University. Here's the link:
http://blogs.upstate.edu/healthlinkonair/2013/07/03/a-visit-from-the-healing-muse-normal/
Saturday, October 26, 2013
WORKSHOP WRITE
Sunday, October 27 ❦ 1 - 4 pm
at the
Cortes Co-Op Café
free to attend,
donations accepted
contact Susanna
(250) 935-0347
cortesliteracy
@gmail.com
You are invited to join us
for an afternoon of fiction
writing. We'll use a
variety of writing
exercises and prompts to
get our hands and brains
moving.
Come prepared to play a
little... write a lot and
share if you wish.
There will be time for a
short break, so please
bring a snack and some
water or tea, as the Café
will be closed.
The workshop will not
include critique time, but
there will be an
opportunity to share with
the public at a later date.
with
Monica Nawrocki
Sunday, August 25, 2013
End of an era
Beginnings and endings. September and June. Grand openings and Going out of Business sales. First day of school and Graduation. Gettin hired and gettin fired or maybe retired. Openings and closings. Birth and death.
More often than not, we humans have a hard time with endings. I imagine that hard time is due in part to our natural aversion to change, but also we tend to focus on what we are losing as opposed to what we have gained. I really like the concept of having a celebration of life as opposed to a funeral, because it moves the focus from loss to gratitude for what/who we had.
In all life's transitions, it takes some work to focus on the positive and this last week, reconnecting with all kinds of friends in Winnipeg, I was reminded daily of this simple fact: the pain of loss means you had something valuable to lose.
Today, my mind and heart are filled with memories of the RSC. The Regional Support Centre is the school I worked in before I moved to the coast and has been referred to many times in this blog. The RSC was an important part of my life; both professionally and personally. It made me the teacher I am and in a myriad of ways, contributed to the person that I am.
And as of June, 2013, the RSC is no more.
Philosophy in the world of education is, by necessity, an ever-evolving thing. The latest philosophy adopted by the district involved says the resources heretofore spent on the Centre will be put to better use elsewhere to serve the needs of their at-risk students.
And so after about 25 years, the famous blue doors close forever.
While I, so far removed, am feeling a bittersweet sense of nostalgia, the most current edition of the RSC staff are feeling the sharp stab of loss. I don't pretend to know what they are experiencing and can only hope they will each find joy and fulfillment in whatever comes next for them. I trust that there is comfort in the knowledge of a job well-done.
The first and second directors of the RSC decided to host a small gathering to acknowledge the passing of the RSC era and I was thrilled that they had it while I was in town. I saw people that I hadn't seen in 5 years. I saw people I hadn't seen in 10 years. Or 12 years. Or even 16 years.
I did what I had done many times before at RSC parties at Bob and Sylvia's house: I ate, drank, talked, laughed, teased, was teased, and played horseshoes.
I also admired and helped consume a cake with RSC in big letters and LOA in smaller ones. LOA was the password on all the Centre computers after one especially memorable student referred to the RSC staff as a "League of Assholes" one day.
And while I ate my cake, I looked around at a group of people that I feel connected to in a way I have never before or since experienced in my professional life. I realized that in addition to all the kids that still live in my heart from my years at the Centre, I have bonds to people I have not seen or spoken to in years. That event left me with gratitude, again, for the opportunity to be part of such a special place; a place where I was pushed to be my most authentic self everyday; a place where it was safe to grow and learn; a place where I felt supported and appreciated.
Sylvia and Bob were my bosses. My mentors. My friends. They created an amazing thing.
I am sorry to say good-bye to the Centre, but mostly, I am hugely grateful that it ever existed at all.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
More often than not, we humans have a hard time with endings. I imagine that hard time is due in part to our natural aversion to change, but also we tend to focus on what we are losing as opposed to what we have gained. I really like the concept of having a celebration of life as opposed to a funeral, because it moves the focus from loss to gratitude for what/who we had.
In all life's transitions, it takes some work to focus on the positive and this last week, reconnecting with all kinds of friends in Winnipeg, I was reminded daily of this simple fact: the pain of loss means you had something valuable to lose.
Today, my mind and heart are filled with memories of the RSC. The Regional Support Centre is the school I worked in before I moved to the coast and has been referred to many times in this blog. The RSC was an important part of my life; both professionally and personally. It made me the teacher I am and in a myriad of ways, contributed to the person that I am.
And as of June, 2013, the RSC is no more.
Philosophy in the world of education is, by necessity, an ever-evolving thing. The latest philosophy adopted by the district involved says the resources heretofore spent on the Centre will be put to better use elsewhere to serve the needs of their at-risk students.
And so after about 25 years, the famous blue doors close forever.
While I, so far removed, am feeling a bittersweet sense of nostalgia, the most current edition of the RSC staff are feeling the sharp stab of loss. I don't pretend to know what they are experiencing and can only hope they will each find joy and fulfillment in whatever comes next for them. I trust that there is comfort in the knowledge of a job well-done.
The first and second directors of the RSC decided to host a small gathering to acknowledge the passing of the RSC era and I was thrilled that they had it while I was in town. I saw people that I hadn't seen in 5 years. I saw people I hadn't seen in 10 years. Or 12 years. Or even 16 years.
I did what I had done many times before at RSC parties at Bob and Sylvia's house: I ate, drank, talked, laughed, teased, was teased, and played horseshoes.
I also admired and helped consume a cake with RSC in big letters and LOA in smaller ones. LOA was the password on all the Centre computers after one especially memorable student referred to the RSC staff as a "League of Assholes" one day.
And while I ate my cake, I looked around at a group of people that I feel connected to in a way I have never before or since experienced in my professional life. I realized that in addition to all the kids that still live in my heart from my years at the Centre, I have bonds to people I have not seen or spoken to in years. That event left me with gratitude, again, for the opportunity to be part of such a special place; a place where I was pushed to be my most authentic self everyday; a place where it was safe to grow and learn; a place where I felt supported and appreciated.
Sylvia and Bob were my bosses. My mentors. My friends. They created an amazing thing.
I am sorry to say good-bye to the Centre, but mostly, I am hugely grateful that it ever existed at all.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
Friday, May 31, 2013
Surviving June
The end of the school year is just around the corner and you're hanging on by your fingernails! You teachers are up to your eyebrows in evaluation, paperwork, and activities. And inexplicably, you are seeing behaviours in your classroom that you haven't had to deal with since September. What's going on?
As a staff member, you may be starting to mourn the loss of the group you have worked so hard to create. Or you may be starting to worry about next year's group. Maybe you are changing grades or schools. Maybe you are losing a colleague or friend who is moving on. You are experiencing the stress of transition. Hopefully, after all these years on this ever-changing planet, you have developed some strategies for dealing with change.
Meanwhile, your students may be starting to mourn the loss of the group they have grown so attached to. Or they may be worrying about next year's class. They are definitely changing grades and maybe even schools. Maybe a close friend is moving away or going to a different school next year. They are experiencing the stress of transition. And if no-one guides them, how will they ever learn any strategies for dealing with change on this ever-changing planet?
Many of the niggling annoying behaviours of June are about anxiety. Kids will experience high levels of stress when they know change is coming but can't yet picture the new situation clearly in their minds. Even kids who would tell you they are not thinking about next year at all, will experience the agitation that comes with subconscious awareness of upcoming transition. Part of the end of the year needs to be about facing the changes that are coming.
The last thing any of us want is to be "fighting" with our kids at the end of the year when we should be enjoying them. So what can we do to ease the time of transition for all of us? Most importantly, we must model to the kids how we are dealing with the transition. It's important to say out loud when we are feeling sad about the upcoming good-byes. To say out loud when we wonder what next year will be like, who will be here and who won't. To say out loud, every day if necessary, that change is hard, but change is good.
We need to say that we are all in transition, that it causes feelings, and that our feelings don't have to leak out into cranky little behaviours, they can go elsewhere; into conversations about change, about last year, about next year, about how we feel. They can go into telling each other what we have appreciated and enjoyed. They can go into pictures and notes and cards and games and songs and dances . . .
We are all exhausted and nothing is more tiring than the prospect of change. Name it - for yourself and for your students. Put it out in front of you where you can work with it, or it will likely sneak up behind you and bite you in the . . June.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Why I don't want to talk about Bullying
Well, this won't be popular, but I do not want to talk about bullying any more.
The word bully (which meant "sweetheart" around 1530) has taken on so much emotional baggage in the last decade or so, that it has become skewed. It is no longer a tool of communication, but a weapon.
I don't want to talk about bullying because it divides us. I have spent my adult life trying to minimize and be mindful of the word "bad". Little kids tell me about "bad" kids at school and I look at them blankly and pretend I don't know what that means because "I never met a bad kid. We all make bad choices from time to time."
I once had a little guy roll up his pant leg and show me a spot on his calf. "I'm only good to about here," he said. "The rest of me is bad."
If you feel bad, you act bad. Label a kid "bully" and that is what you'll get. Label a kid a victim and that is what you'll get. If you tell kids we're splitting up into teams, they'll quickly suss out which team meets more of their needs and join up.
When you tell kids they must stand up to bullying, you are asking them to choose a team, drawing a line down the middle of the playground, or the team, or the classroom.
I am tired of watching kids throw these words out so they can watch the adults fly into overdrive without really looking at the situation. I can think of one specific situation where a student with really weak social skills (but who was making progress with coaching) started to get feedback from his peers about the way he conducted himself in friendships with much younger kids. The boy, whose behaviour could easily have been interpreted as bullying at times, went home and reported that he was being bullied by those peers who tried (sometimes inappropriately) to hold him accountable for his treatment of younger children.
As soon as the word "bullying" came into play, the young man so in need of coaching, was off-limits to staff for anything but protection from those "bullying" him. The family was all too happy to lay the blame elsewhere and ignore the obvious problems.
There is no "we" in bullying, just "us" and "them". Anyone else have alarm bells going off? Us and them is the beginning of everything destructive in our society. We have a problem with how our children treat one another and we are not going to solve it by finding ways to constantly push away personal responsibility.
So, if we are going to get to Us, let's start with Me.
I am 47 years old and I have been a bully and a victim and everything in between. I am capable of selfless compassion, self-absorption, and careless cruelty. To ensure that I am never engaging in behavour that hurts others or myself, I choose to think of my behaviour in these terms: aggressive, assertive, passive.
Ideally, I want to be living in my own little bubble of assertiveness. That means (to me) that my bubble moves through my world with me safely in it. When I am beginning to impede the space of someone else (lack of awareness? bad day?), then the assertive person in the next bubble will simply let me know that I'm taking up more than my fair share of the available space. Oops, sorry, I say, and roll my bubble over a little. When the proximity of someone else's bubble makes me feel squished, I speak up and tell them, kindly, to move over.
Why can't this language replace the bully lexicon with older kids? Why can't we talk about the fact that we are always "behaving" and that the key to happiness is finding a balance and trying to monitor your own behaviour as much as possible. Accepting the nudges of others graciously is part of growing up - learning social skills. Understanding that we are all capable of all behaviours is the core of our compassion. Working together to create harmony is the essence of community. There is no community in "us" and "them".
When we find an inequality of balance, we need to investigate where it comes from. Aggressive kids are trying to meet a need. What is it? And how do we help them meet that need in a more appropriate way? How are we helping the aggressive child by shining the "bully" spotlight on them? When we do, we are likely exacerbating whatever created the behaviour in the first place.
I don't want to talk about bullying when there are better things to talk about. I want to talk about teaching the positive curriculum of human kindness. Let's spend money on Roots of Empathy and Zones of Regulation and the Focus Kit, to name only three of scores of curricula available to help kids develop compassion, self-awareness, and self-regulation.
Right now in our little school the grade 3,4,5 teacher and the school counsellor are delivering lessons to that class from the Zones of Regulation teaching program. The sense of community is actively nurtured every day in various ways. Built on this crucial foundation, discussions are developed regarding our feelings and how we help ourselves move from one "zone" to the next. And because there are no bad guys and good guys, everyone feels safe to explore their own strengths and vulnerable spots.
To address the little flickers of "bullying" behaviour that arise, the adults have been talking about aggressive, assertive, and passive behaviours with this analogy: Keep your remote control safely with you at all times. Don't leave it laying around so anyone can pick it up and push your buttons (passive), and never push the buttons on someone else's remote (aggressive). You are in charge of your remote. If you see one lying around, return it to the owner (You look like you're in the yellow zone. Don't forget to keep control of your remote. Why don't we go play?) If you see someone playing with someone else's remote, you could try to help or you could let an adult know.
What's important here is that everyone has a remote, everyone is tempted to play with one they don't own from time to time, and everyone is responsible for their own. They all made cardboard remotes of their own design, and a poster in the classroom reminds them to keep their remote in their pocket and don't push anybody else's buttons.
Punishing bullying behaviour is not working. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Time to start looking a little deeper.
Please don't take my compassion for aggressive kids to mean that I am unaware of the suffering of victims. Quite the contrary. When I worked at the Regional Support Centre for at-risk kids, our clientele was 90-95% male. At the same time that I worked there, my partner worked at a program helping sexually exploited youth transition out of the sex trade, with 99% of the clientele female.
It was an interesting time at our house. My partner would come home raving about the perpetrators (largely male) who had caused so much agony and destruction in the lives of these girls. Meanwhile, I had spent my day with aggressive males, trying to help them correct patterns of behaviour before they became the men my partner was talking about. But guess what? Many of those boys had been abused in a myriad of hair-raising ways. We saw the cycle played out in front of us every day. And in those environments, using flimsy terms like bully and victim took us nowhere. We needed words like physical and emotional safety, stability, self-respect, trust, and healthy communication.
And since this has turned into a full-on rant, let me end with this: where do kids learn how to behave?
They take what they see around them, and apply it to how they are feeling in the moment. So, if a child lives in a home where one parent dominates the other, what do you expect? If a child lives in a community where the haves manipulate and exploit the have-nots, what do you expect? If a child lives in a city or province where leaders use aggression and intimidation to wrest control from one another, what do you expect?
Calling our kids "bullies" is a pretty dishonourable way of avoiding the screaming inequalites in our society.
Take this post for what it is; an opinion and - despite my title - an invitation to dialogue.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
The word bully (which meant "sweetheart" around 1530) has taken on so much emotional baggage in the last decade or so, that it has become skewed. It is no longer a tool of communication, but a weapon.
I don't want to talk about bullying because it divides us. I have spent my adult life trying to minimize and be mindful of the word "bad". Little kids tell me about "bad" kids at school and I look at them blankly and pretend I don't know what that means because "I never met a bad kid. We all make bad choices from time to time."
I once had a little guy roll up his pant leg and show me a spot on his calf. "I'm only good to about here," he said. "The rest of me is bad."
If you feel bad, you act bad. Label a kid "bully" and that is what you'll get. Label a kid a victim and that is what you'll get. If you tell kids we're splitting up into teams, they'll quickly suss out which team meets more of their needs and join up.
When you tell kids they must stand up to bullying, you are asking them to choose a team, drawing a line down the middle of the playground, or the team, or the classroom.
I am tired of watching kids throw these words out so they can watch the adults fly into overdrive without really looking at the situation. I can think of one specific situation where a student with really weak social skills (but who was making progress with coaching) started to get feedback from his peers about the way he conducted himself in friendships with much younger kids. The boy, whose behaviour could easily have been interpreted as bullying at times, went home and reported that he was being bullied by those peers who tried (sometimes inappropriately) to hold him accountable for his treatment of younger children.
As soon as the word "bullying" came into play, the young man so in need of coaching, was off-limits to staff for anything but protection from those "bullying" him. The family was all too happy to lay the blame elsewhere and ignore the obvious problems.
There is no "we" in bullying, just "us" and "them". Anyone else have alarm bells going off? Us and them is the beginning of everything destructive in our society. We have a problem with how our children treat one another and we are not going to solve it by finding ways to constantly push away personal responsibility.
So, if we are going to get to Us, let's start with Me.
I am 47 years old and I have been a bully and a victim and everything in between. I am capable of selfless compassion, self-absorption, and careless cruelty. To ensure that I am never engaging in behavour that hurts others or myself, I choose to think of my behaviour in these terms: aggressive, assertive, passive.
Ideally, I want to be living in my own little bubble of assertiveness. That means (to me) that my bubble moves through my world with me safely in it. When I am beginning to impede the space of someone else (lack of awareness? bad day?), then the assertive person in the next bubble will simply let me know that I'm taking up more than my fair share of the available space. Oops, sorry, I say, and roll my bubble over a little. When the proximity of someone else's bubble makes me feel squished, I speak up and tell them, kindly, to move over.
Why can't this language replace the bully lexicon with older kids? Why can't we talk about the fact that we are always "behaving" and that the key to happiness is finding a balance and trying to monitor your own behaviour as much as possible. Accepting the nudges of others graciously is part of growing up - learning social skills. Understanding that we are all capable of all behaviours is the core of our compassion. Working together to create harmony is the essence of community. There is no community in "us" and "them".
When we find an inequality of balance, we need to investigate where it comes from. Aggressive kids are trying to meet a need. What is it? And how do we help them meet that need in a more appropriate way? How are we helping the aggressive child by shining the "bully" spotlight on them? When we do, we are likely exacerbating whatever created the behaviour in the first place.
I don't want to talk about bullying when there are better things to talk about. I want to talk about teaching the positive curriculum of human kindness. Let's spend money on Roots of Empathy and Zones of Regulation and the Focus Kit, to name only three of scores of curricula available to help kids develop compassion, self-awareness, and self-regulation.
Right now in our little school the grade 3,4,5 teacher and the school counsellor are delivering lessons to that class from the Zones of Regulation teaching program. The sense of community is actively nurtured every day in various ways. Built on this crucial foundation, discussions are developed regarding our feelings and how we help ourselves move from one "zone" to the next. And because there are no bad guys and good guys, everyone feels safe to explore their own strengths and vulnerable spots.
To address the little flickers of "bullying" behaviour that arise, the adults have been talking about aggressive, assertive, and passive behaviours with this analogy: Keep your remote control safely with you at all times. Don't leave it laying around so anyone can pick it up and push your buttons (passive), and never push the buttons on someone else's remote (aggressive). You are in charge of your remote. If you see one lying around, return it to the owner (You look like you're in the yellow zone. Don't forget to keep control of your remote. Why don't we go play?) If you see someone playing with someone else's remote, you could try to help or you could let an adult know.
What's important here is that everyone has a remote, everyone is tempted to play with one they don't own from time to time, and everyone is responsible for their own. They all made cardboard remotes of their own design, and a poster in the classroom reminds them to keep their remote in their pocket and don't push anybody else's buttons.
Punishing bullying behaviour is not working. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Time to start looking a little deeper.
Please don't take my compassion for aggressive kids to mean that I am unaware of the suffering of victims. Quite the contrary. When I worked at the Regional Support Centre for at-risk kids, our clientele was 90-95% male. At the same time that I worked there, my partner worked at a program helping sexually exploited youth transition out of the sex trade, with 99% of the clientele female.
It was an interesting time at our house. My partner would come home raving about the perpetrators (largely male) who had caused so much agony and destruction in the lives of these girls. Meanwhile, I had spent my day with aggressive males, trying to help them correct patterns of behaviour before they became the men my partner was talking about. But guess what? Many of those boys had been abused in a myriad of hair-raising ways. We saw the cycle played out in front of us every day. And in those environments, using flimsy terms like bully and victim took us nowhere. We needed words like physical and emotional safety, stability, self-respect, trust, and healthy communication.
And since this has turned into a full-on rant, let me end with this: where do kids learn how to behave?
They take what they see around them, and apply it to how they are feeling in the moment. So, if a child lives in a home where one parent dominates the other, what do you expect? If a child lives in a community where the haves manipulate and exploit the have-nots, what do you expect? If a child lives in a city or province where leaders use aggression and intimidation to wrest control from one another, what do you expect?
Calling our kids "bullies" is a pretty dishonourable way of avoiding the screaming inequalites in our society.
Take this post for what it is; an opinion and - despite my title - an invitation to dialogue.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Writer Me
I am, like so many of us, living in a couple of different worlds. In my case, I am a teacher on some days and a writer on others. How we integrate our various worlds is a very individual thing. Mine is interesting because while they overlap completely in terms of my main interest - people - my time spent with each practice is clearly delineated.
When I am teaching - while I am soaking up what I observe in terms of human interaction - the main part of me must be completely present to do my job well. And when I am writing, the teacher part of me must be dismissed (as much as possible) to allow the writer to move in a less linear fashion, exploring the raw data collected by Teacher Me.
Both worlds require and nurture creativity in their own way.
But I digress.
What I really wanted to tell you is that I have managed a rare and precious immersion into my writer's world. Are you at a costly workshop, you ask. Nope. Did you pay to go to a retreat? Perhaps go through the rigorous application process for a subsidized retreat? No, again.
A while back, I was complaining to my one friend who cannot listen to whining without coming up with some sort of plan; while I do appreciate that I can work part time and have time left over to write, what I longed for, I told her, was a block of time to immerse myself in my writing. To not answer the phone, chop wood, trim ferns, do laundry, plan dinner, think of excuses for not vacuuming or leave the project for a day (or more) of teaching and then have to find my way back in again.
My friend, the problem-solver, said, "Why don't you try house-sitting?"
Eureka!
I joined a house-sitting website and here I am.
Welcome to my one-week writing retreat. I am in a lovely house in a beautiful neighbourhood. (Can you hear the ocean? It's right there!) There is no phone here, no TV. There is a grocery store within walking distance, and two charming little Westies named Enzo and Bailey for company. They like to walk, cuddle, nap, eat, cuddle, and walk. And nap. Enzo likes when I read to him but Bailey is more interested in processing with me. I mutter aloud all day as I work and often catch him nodding sagely. Well, maybe I imagined the nodding, but he is definitely listening. As an added bonus, I have made two new human friends, as well.
Here, I never have to leave my work. I think about my characters as we walk around the neighbourhood or down to the beach. I imagine them here in this environment. I imagine running into them. When we return home, I can feed the dogs and myself without ever really exiting the fictional world.
All this, for the price of a bus ticket.
So, my writer friends, something to think about. Have laptop; will travel.
I 'm not sayin, I'm just sayin . . .
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Perfect Child
The other day when I taught the grade 3,4,5 class, I got to
spend a bit of one-to-one time with a particular student. She tends to stay to
herself so I don’t know her as well as some of her more outgoing classmates. As
I was chatting with her and marvelling at her humour and insight, I suddenly
had a flash of this same little girl in kindergarten. She was rolling around on
the floor while the rest of the children were sitting in a circle, singing. At
each invitation to join, she made her disdain abundantly clear and carried on
with her rolling.
Every time I noticed her that year she was doing her own thing,
to say the least. I felt anxious just watching her, but I distinctly remember
the kindergarten teacher’s response when I asked about that little bundle of
wild. The teacher, Dayna, filled my ear with how great that little girl was and
how much she loved this, that, and the other thing about her amazing personality
and on and on it went. I looked back at the little girl lying prone in the
middle of the classroom. “Right,” said I.
And now I get it. When I look at the nine year old version, I
see everything Dayna could see – and I could not – in the five year old
version.
There are two points to this story. The first is an ode to one
of the most amazing Early Childhood Educators I have ever worked with. Dayna
always fills my ears with how wonderful and amazing and unique and creative and
brilliant her students are. (While we watch them lick sticks or shove spoons
down their pants.) When I substitute in her classroom, I spend the whole time
doing head counts and rubbing my fingers nervously over the pile of bandaids in
my pocket. I can’t do what she does. I can keep them safe and happy and maybe
they’ll do some learning if I stay out of their way, but I will never be able
to do what Dayna does.
My second point is that there is a perfect child in every student we work with. That is the version of the child that the parent is referring to when they are mystified by your version. Sometimes that version is blindingly bright, sometimes it’s carefully camouflaged, but a parent can always see the perfection.
So how do teachers keep the vision of that perfect child in the
midst of a large group of challenging and demanding personalities? As a
teacher, is there a “magic” age for me? An age at which I, like Dayna, can see
all the potential and possibility when I look at a student?
There are days when the five year olds make me nervous and the teenagers
make me tired but eight to ten year olds almost always make me want to play.
The way they learn fascinates me, the way they try on new personalities and
discard them like mittens fascinates me. The way they teeter between
egocentricity and boundless compassion fascinates me. The way they want to work
as much as they want to play. The way they cautiously reach for independence
but still want to please you . . . it all fascinates me.
Is the age that fascinates you the age you should teach? Or is it just the age you’ll find most enjoyable? Were
you thinking I would have answers for these questions? Nope.
But here’s to all the teachers, like Dayna, who look at a child
and see their best self; who inspire each child to be their best self. And here’s
to the perfect child still residing in each one of us.
Apparently, mine is nine and a half years old.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
Sunday, April 14, 2013
This just in:
The next Still Point Arts Quarterly will be out in early June and will include my piece called Transcend.
Here is a preview of the magazine and for those of you who don't live out here in lotus land with me, a preview of spring. (Hang in there!)http://www.stillpointartgallery.com/uploads/files/SPAQ10_SUM13_PREVIEW.html
The next Still Point Arts Quarterly will be out in early June and will include my piece called Transcend.
Here is a preview of the magazine and for those of you who don't live out here in lotus land with me, a preview of spring. (Hang in there!)http://www.stillpointartgallery.com/uploads/files/SPAQ10_SUM13_PREVIEW.html
Conversations
The piece posted below came from a writing assignment in a workshop to "write a conversation".
It was amazing the things people came up with. Try this one for yourself. Do a little eavesdropping. Well, a little extra easesdropping, then. Write it out. Or write one half of it. Look at it with no visual cues and see if it is the same conversation or not. Quite a fascinating exercise.
But first, from many years back, I offer my first ever stolen snippet of conversation, from a table of 60-something women having coffee in a fast food joint. This was the only line I heard as I walked past:
"You're the same as me, Gladys: my girls can do anything and my boys are useless."
Now, how could I not write that down?
http://www.sawmillmagazine.com/vancouver-conversations/
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
New directions
So I've been thinking about this blog and the fact that I teach a lot less now and write a lot more. Interestingly, I spend the same amount of time thinking about behaviour. But that's why I write, really. Writing is my way of understanding behaviour; that of the characters, the real people who inspire them, and ultimately, my own. And because I am working on projects for kids (YA and MG novels), I am still spending lots of time thinking about kids.
In the early stages of the YA novel, a writing group gave me the feedback that they just couldn't relate to the main character - for a variety of reasons - and when I spent some time with it, I realized that I was a little annoyed with my grieving 15 year old protagonist, Andi. I was not creating any sense of compassion or connection between Andi and the reader because of my own feelings for her. You see, I was a grieving 15 year old once, and unlike my protagonist, I did not start partying or lying or generally falling apart. I was a good little soldier. And I was resenting my character because she got to be a "normal kid". That was the underlying issue beneath my "annoyance". I gave her the space to grieve in a very real way and then I was annoyed with her when she took it.
The upshot was all good:
1) I finally acknowledged that I didn't get a lot of help with my grieving and (apparently!) that pissed me off a little. Some healing occurred for me.
2) Once I decided Andi did deserve to work through her grief however she saw fit, I found some compassion for her. When I rewrote, the tone was completely different and the problem resolved.
3) I learned that writing is just like teaching that way: if you ask a student - or character - to face something difficult, you better be prepared to deal with your own issues.
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