Dear Capital District Writing Project Colleagues,
This issue of Writing Matters reached out to me in a powerful way, probably because of my own crossroads with my personal writing, as well as classroom writing, and the stress of all-things-Education lately. After all, I have that book in my head that I need to write, that blog I need to update and those writing assignments that I know are effective boosters for my struggling students, to plan.
Then Kristen asked me to look over the submissions and well, you would have thought I didn’t want to, despite my volunteering, with how many times she had to remind me to go into the google file, but that isn’t true. I knew I wanted to spend serious time with these words of my peers and, well, life gets me so busy I can’t always remember things anymore. Whether it’s the grocery list, calling for a doctor appointment, sending that note, and so on. I have good intentions but I flounder with follow-through because other parts of life can be very chaotic and stressful at times. (I’m sure you can sympathize) I can’t always find the time for the other things that need it, the things that matter.
But as I read through the submissions and tried to decide what I would submit myself, I asked myself, what is it that is important to me about writing, my own as well as when I read others? And I remembered. I remembered that I want to write that book (not just for the hopes of royalty checks!), but because I have a story in my head and heart that I think will help my daughter deal with empowering herself through her disabilities. I have blog writing that needs to be nailed down in those floating words so others can understand the path and see the hope of living with disability, as an ‘other’. And I remembered that writing also helps me to reset my thinking, it gives me some control over the control-less, and it shines a light on dark shadows and then it allows me to slay my demons.
Writing matters.
Each of the pieces in this magazine touched me deeply. I was moved by the honesty, the reflection, the passion (who knew car mechanics could sound sexy?) and the philosophy through fiction. How we tackle our demons through writing is so varied, so amazing to read. And when we sit down to it, it is life-giving as well.
It made me remember to keep that pen, paper, keyboard available and to be ready-to-go because despite the chaos and stress outside (and maybe because of it), and the time constraints of the other day-to-day parts of our lives, our writing matters. Through the writing we understand what we are thinking, through the writing we understand our desires and fears and hopes. Through the writing we reform the world with our words and find balance and then we pass that gift along to our students because writing matters.
Thank you to all who submitted for this edition. Thank you for sharing and allowing us all in to your chaos and leading us through with your words. What a gift.
Veronica Gaboury and Kristen Breh Montgomery
Table of Contents
- writing, remixing, growing a culture. together. by Chris Mazura
- It’s Not an Ice Bucket by Stephanie Murray
- Working in the Street by Robby Nichols
- Nonna, Nonno, and Me by Lori Beza
- Writing Matters by Jack Rightmyer
- A Letter to Governor Cuomo by Kimberly Young
- Awakening by Brian Rhode
- Poetry by Pamela J. Hoh
- A Letter to My Daughter’s Kindergarten Teachers by Kristen Montgomery Breh
- A Request for Help from Kristen Olby Joyce
- Two words
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writing, remixing, growing a culture. together.
By Chris Mazura
Writing labs will become like studio art courses where students and teachers communicate across the documents as they are being composed. - Stephen Marcus (paraphrase from a reading at the #nwpam14 plenary session)
Coming together at the NWP Annual Meeting (#nwpam14), we continue the 40-year process of creating a culture of learning around the teaching of writing. Today’s plenary session celebrated 40 years of NWP contribution and traced trajectories for the future through a sharing of stories from the past.
When we come together as National Writing Project TCs, we acknowledge the founding generation of teachers, thinkers, and writers. National Writing Project Executive Director, Elyse Eidman-Aadal (@ElyseEA), reminds us that our understanding of the practice and potentials for the teaching of writing in general rest largely on the foundational understandings created across the course of 40 years of NWP work.
The previous generation of teachers and researchers created the distinctions in the field of composition that many of us now take for granted — for example, “writing-to-learn” didn’t exist as thing before the NWP. We know more about writing, and as teachers have more personal understanding of the lifelong process of learning to write-think, as a result of the mentorship of those who came before. This mentoring has opened new ways of being for us as professionals . . . and as people. As a result of participating in this culture, we can conceive of ourselves in these ways:
- The teacher as expert on the subject of teaching and learning
- The teacher as writer
- The teacher as researcher
- The teacher as learner
I am a different teacher because of the NWP. I am a different writer because of the NWP. I am a different person because of the NWP. So many of us testify to that whenever we gather, from grand ballrooms in convention centers to modest living rooms in our communities. Attending my first NWP Annual meeting, I want to offer gratitude to those who have come before: the first generation, the second generation, and my peers and colleagues today.
Thanks for your inspirational writing, thinking, teaching and being over these past 40 years. May the NWP continue to thrive, and may our gathering together continue to deepen and strengthen our culture of writing-to-learn.
It’s Not an Ice Bucket
by Stephanie Murray
Note from author: I shared the following piece with my senior Expressive Writing students on the first day of class as part of a perspective lesson. I adapted a lesson Jacquie Rapant shared, who adapted it from Aaron Theil's noticing lesson. After reading the book It's Not a Stick, I had students write about an object that serves a symbolic representation to them. This was my model.
It’s not an ice bucket. It’s a chilling reminder of the fear that lurks in the recesses of my mind. The fear that creeps down and attempts to smother my heart. The fear of death. The fear of loneliness. The fear of suffering. The fear of ALS.
ALS was a foreign acronym until I met my husband. In that “getting to know you” stage, I asked all of the prerequisite questions. Where do you work? Where did you go grow up? Where did you go to school? What are your parents like? I wasn’t expecting to hear that his mom was dead, having died of ALS a few years back. Little did I know how it would come to haunt our future. So, throughout those beginning months and more so as we became closer, I began to learn about the future mother-in-law I’d never meet, learn about her life, but also her death and the horrific two-year struggle. As my husband said recently, “ALS is like living in a coma; except you are completely aware of your surroundings.”
That was a sad chapter in his life, but having the tough personality acquired while attending a service academy, he learned to deal. The memories were vivid, but the rare disease was behind him. Behind us.
Until it wasn’t. Until ALS crept back into his life, our lives, unlocking doors that had been gladly sealed shut.
I first met my husband’s uncle during a Christmas gathering. It was the last time I saw him as he was. He was feeling ill; but the doctors hadn’t made a diagnosis. I don’t remember where I was when I heard the news, but I do recall my reaction. Disbelief. ALS had struck again.
Will it strike thrice? Silently we began to worry, gingerly tiptoeing around conversations of the disease, the disease that had appeared to be sporadic may in fact be familial. Lurking in the genes of my husband, my sister-in-law, our future children. Perhaps the genes are tainted, perhaps they aren’t. We don’t want to know.
We walk to “Strike Out ALS” every October via the St. Peter’s ALS Regional Center. We make annual donations. We stay informed. But we mostly stay distant. We act on faith. We act on denial. We act on the knowledge that there is nothing we can do one way or the other. We live.
Awareness begins to spread in the form of ice-filled buckets of water pouring down the gleeful heads. We watch. Sometimes. We are grateful for the awareness where there had been none. We are grateful for the donations where there had been few. We are grateful for the renewed hope. The hope that distinguishes ALS victims from most other disease-sufferers. There is no hope. Until now?
Still, I close out of the videos. I’ve had too much.
It's not an ice bucket. It’s my fear splashing its way down the heads of millions of friends and strangers alike.
Working in the Street
Robby Nichols
The van had already lived 180,000 miles as a Bell South phone company work vehicle, the blue stripe of the company’s design still visible against the silver-faded-to-flat-gray paint. Only the D’s remained from the name DODGE across the front of the hood, and the previous drummer in my band had Sharpied in some Os to make it read DooDoo. Jonathan and I worked on the van in the street below my house in North Chattanooga a few years before the neighborhood was redubbed “The North Shore” during its gentrification. It was August and brutally hot, too hot to sit on the pavement, too hot for a mammal to be outside.
Despite the heat of the day, the bearing race needed more heat in order to expand so it could be freed from the wheel spindle. Unfortunately we had to tend to this business immediately; the calendar forced our hand. We needed the van to take us and all of our guitars and amplifiers and drums to Memphis. Our band had a rock show booked the next day. Sweat dripped freely from my forehead and sizzled on the pavement. My hat and shirt and underwear were sweat-soaked. Chrome-handled tools accidentally left idle in the sun became forbidden objects. We scrambled for shade.
My best maintenance efforts were no match for the aging van. Most recently, a wheel bearing failed on the front driver’s side wheel, and in the resulting friction and heat, the doomed bearing had bonded its inner race onto the spindle, effectively locking the wheel. I would later learn the terms “interference fit” and “friction fit” to describe two metals attached in this way, bonded on a molecular level. A teacher I once had for a BMW factory-certified transmission rebuilding class, a class held in sunny Daytona Beach and spread over five full days and four transmission types, joked, “Interference fit is what makes sex feel good.”
Ball bearings are used in variety of applications on vehicles and other machinery, mostly to make wheels roll. My dealings with ball bearings have mostly been confined to transmissions, wheel hubs, and steering heads on bicycles and motorcycles. They are composed of an inner and outer race, or ring, between which balls roll. Each race has a groove in which the balls rest. The larger, outer race fits into a bore, like a cup in the cover of a transmission case or a wheel hub. The small race in which the shaft rides, such as a transmission shaft or a wheel spindle, is the inner race. Insignificant problems can cause ball bearings to fail quickly and mysteriously: vibration; lack of lubrication; contamination with dirt, water, or solvents; tightness; looseness; or any combination of the above. Over the years, guys at auto parts stores and skateboard shops have always insisted that bearings don’t last if they’re not manufactured in Germany or Japan.
This wasn’t the first automotive surgery I had performed on the van. A few months earlier Jonathan and I had replaced all the ball joints and tie rods. Labor estimates from a couple of garages helped me realize I could barely afford the front end alignment that would have to follow the job of replacing all those steering components. Lying underneath the van on the dirt floor of a basement garage, Jonathan, filthy as a miner, had bludgeoned a ball joint spreader tool until it was gouged and misshapen, the end of the shaft mushroomed from slow, painful, in-your-face strikes with a four pound short-handled sledge hammer, the type of hammer masons use to split bricks and pavers.
Before we started this procedure, we went to the downtown library, pulled a copy of a Dodge repair manual, and Xeroxed the relevant pages for 50 cents a page. Just getting information could be an all-morning mission in the days before the Internet, but we relied on the exploded parts diagrams to make sure we were taking apart and reassembling the steering components correctly. After I limped the newly repaired van to a garage for an alignment, the wheels sat straight, but the steering box was so worn out that steering required a busy back-and-forth jockeying of the wheel, the sort of pretend driving B movie actors do when they are handling a prop steering wheel while having an animated conversation with a passenger.
My stepfather, Richard, brought over an industrial propane plumbing torch. It had a two-foot wand and was fueled by a five gallon tank like the kind used with a barbecue grill. I guess Richard felt like he needed to make a contribution to the effort. After all, he was responsible for finding this automotive hair shirt and recommending I buy it. Jonathan was roped into this endeavor because he was a bandmate and a fellow tinkerer, and because he was in his mid-20s in Chattanooga with nothing much better to do. This beat TV. He stood in the street, braving occasional traffic, and using the torch to heat the race on the driver’s side spindle. Both front wheels were removed from the van, and it was resting solidly on jack stands. I was on the sidewalk, armed with a sledgehammer. A ten foot steel sign post ran from the sidewalk, into the passenger side wheel well, alongside the axle, to the thin edge of the stuck race.
Some drunk had run down a street sign one night a few weeks earlier, and I removed the steel post from the yard of the abandoned house across the street. It seemed like there was always some drunk running into something in that town in those days. I held onto it, thinking it might come in handy sometime—some time like this day. I used the sledgehammer to strike the post, and with each blow, my crude chisel had to be repositioned.
Five years after the day we man-handled a burned-up wheel bearing race from the spindle onto which it had welded itself, I worked in a motorcycle shop. There, in a more scientific environment, I used a freezer to chill and shrink shafts and a pressure cooker full of heavy-weight gear oil to heat and expand bearings when I assembled transmissions. Back on the street in Chattanooga, I didn’t have many other options or tools like an air powered die-grinder or a Dremel rotary tool with a cut-off wheel to remove the race by simply cutting it. I had a steel sign post. I also didn’t have the know-how gained from hearing other stories about metals stuck on shafts. For instance, I had not yet heard the story of a friend who had his titanium wedding ring carefully snipped from his broken and swollen finger in the ER after he wrecked his motorcycle.
Sweaty sun-burned hours passed. The torch flared. I swung the sledge repeatedly in its croquet-like arc. Jonathan and I invented a new language of curses and formed a bond born out of our shared frustration and misery. Resigned to our fate and mesmerized by the heat, we slowly worked the race free. The van was soon readied for the five hour drive across the parallelogram of Tennessee, at the zenith of southern summer heat, with no A/C.
Nonna, Nonno and Me
By Lori Beza
I’ve known all my life that my Nonno (Grandpa) came to America and worked for the railroad, earning money to bring his family after him. In eleventh grade I learned that many Italian immigrants worked on the railroad. It was a ‘thing’. It made me feel like my family was part of American history – something my mother probably never felt.
I’m not sure how old I was when I first heard the story about how Nonno left his family for 6 years in order to save the money to send for them. In any case, I was too young to realize what it really meant. Now I know. I can’t even imagine what their life must have been like to make such a sacrifice for their future. I wonder what opportunity would have to present itself for me leave my family for a year? Let alone 6 years. When I went to Korea a few years ago, I racked up $500 in cell phone bills, even while I spent time Skyping and emailing. Oh, and I was there 17 days. And my children were in their 20’s.
So what must life have been like for my grandfather to leave his wife and sons and travel halfway around the world? What must it have been like for my grandmother to be left alone with a three-year-old and a one-year-old and a promise that money would be sent from America? Talk about rolling the dice.
But, they did it.
In 1923 when my grandfather set sail on the ship the Guglielmo Pierce, WWI was still a fresh memory. Times were tough. A hold out from industrialization, Italy lacked many of the modern conveniences found in Britain and the US. And, importantly, it lacked the jobs. Fascists were gaining power riding a wave of Italian nationalism. Regional and political differences meant fascism did not appeal to everyone. In fact, the town where my grandmother was born was an anti-fascist stronghold in the 1920’s. For 6 years, their only communication was via hand-written letters.
By 1929 Nonno had saved enough money (or was it the visas) for Nonna and my uncles, now 9 and 7, to set sail for America. Family lore holds that Nonno’s brother, sister-in-law, and their children were supposed to come along as well, but they were turned back at the ship because they had bad teeth. So Nonna and my uncles set out on their own.
Even so, my grandmother must have been feeling pretty confident that things were going her way, or maybe she was trying to ensure there would be a growing family in America. In any case, she made a marriage agreement for my 7 year old uncle while on board the ship. Her son and his future wife, a two-year-old still in Italy, would inherit the family property, she promised the grandmother.
After six long years Papa, Mama and their two boys were all together again. While the whole rest of the country was heading into the Depression, my grandparents were realizing their dream. Within a year, their first daughter was born, and then, in 1932, my mother arrived. In just a few years they purchased what came to be known as ‘the farm’. Over 160 acres – unbelievable riches.
In 1947, my uncle’s promised bride arrived. I only recently spoke to her about it. Now 87 years old she told me in her heavily accented English that she was 20 years old when she unhappily left all she knew - her brother, father, step-mother (and a boyfriend!). I asked if she liked my uncle when she met him in New York. “No!” she exclaimed, “I wanted to go home.” She followed, more quietly with, “He was good to me. I loved him.” She told me she was happy to have electricity and ride in cars. She gave birth to Nonna and Nonno’s first grandchild.
My mother, who learned English when she went to school, did all she could to be a red-blooded American, including, eloping at 18 with my father – a non-practicing Methodist of fuzzy lineage. Neither my father, nor any of my siblings could converse with her parents – even after they began speaking to her again.
Nonno and Nonna’s ‘American’ kids, never really knowing the hardships their parents had faced, had little interest in running the farm their parents had sacrificed so much of their lives to acquire. Farming was out of fashion. Even the daughter-in-law so recently arrived did not jump at the chance. My grandparents ended up selling the farm when they got too old to run it themselves.
Even though I was too young to know them, I want to honor them somehow. To thank them for their sacrifice. So I’m desperately trying to get all the stories written down before the people who know them leave this world and take the last bits of my courageous, immigrant grandparents with them. And I’m planting zinnia like Nonna and making wine like Nonno.
Writing Matters
by Jack Rightmyer
I was a college senior getting ready to graduate with a teaching degree, but what I really wanted to do was to become a writer.
“But shouldn’t writers have exciting lives?” said my dad over one of my college vacations. “Writers usually fight in wars and travel to exotic places. They don’t usually grow up in suburbia, attend a four-year college, then sit down and become a bestselling novelist.”
“Bob, what are you saying?” yelled my mother. “You want Jack to sign up in the Marines and go and fight in some war?”
“No, I just think Jack needs to go out and work for a while, learn a little bit about life, meet some people, before he becomes a great writer.” My dad then put on his glasses and went back to working on his New York Times crossword puzzle, which he did every day of his life.
“Emily Dickinson never worked a day in her life and she wrote great poetry,” I said.
My dad looked up at me from beneath his reading glasses and then took his tiny sharpened pencil from behind his ear and went back to working on the crossword. I guess he wasn’t too impressed with the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I was going to argue that the Bronte sisters never worked and never socialized with anyone and they wrote some of the best novels of all-time in the English language, but I decided against that.
“Anyway, Jack is going to be a teacher, and he’ll be an excellent teacher,” my mother said. My mother was the type of person who thought I would be excellent at everything I ever did. The first time I ran the New York City Marathon she thought I had a chance to win it.
“Teaching is ok,” I said, “but I really want to be a writer. I really like writing for the school paper.” I had been writing for the college paper since I was a freshman doing mostly movie reviews. I loved writing movie reviews. The college paper would get two free tickets to attend premiere movie showings, which meant I could bring a date and not pay for her. This always impressed the date, and then all I would have to do was write a 500 word review of the movie. It was a perfect situation. I liked movies. I liked dates, and I liked seeing my name in print every week when the college paper came out.
“Well, if you’re going to be a writer you have to know everything,” said my father. “Here’s a question for you, 57 down, four letters, ‘Name the college founded by Henry Vl.’”
“What?” I asked befuddled.
“A writer’s supposed to know that sort of stuff.” My father went back to the crossword.
“When you become a teacher you have all those vacations,” said my mother. “You can write your books then.”
But teaching seemed so boring, I wanted to say. Teachers never traveled anywhere. They did the same old thing every day. I was twenty years old and I wanted to see the world. I could see the world as a journalist. I figured I’d start out as a newspaper writer and then after a few years move on to magazines like Time or Newsweek. After living this glamorous and exciting life for ten years I’d be ready to settle down and write my bestselling works of fiction. I’d probably write stories set in Europe with big issues of poverty, war and prejudice, but the stories would be more character driven than plot driven. They’d be literary bestsellers.
I also knew my dad was right. I knew I’d have to get out and experience the world before I could sit down and write about it, and journalism seemed like the best choice for me.
The only problem was my college had no journalism degree program. They had some journalism courses, which I took, but to get a degree I’d have to declare some different major. Liberal Arts seemed too much like a nothing. An English major meant I’d have to read too many dull poems like The Fairie Queen, so I chose Education as my major figuring it would probably be pretty easy, and taking courses like Child Psychology might pay off later when I had kids of my own. I also had some excellent high school English teachers, and I’d feel proud telling them how I had majored in English Education myself.
Being an Education major with a specialty in the teaching of English meant I could still take a lot of English classes. I loved reading, and reading a book by Dickens never seemed like a homework assignment to me. I also loved writing, and English classes since ninth grade were always my favorites. There were some fun English professors at my college who loved getting classroom debates and discussions going, and I’d always join in the spirited discussions.
But I wasn’t the most organized college student. Once, as a junior, I was taking a cheery course called “Death and Dying.” We did a lot of reading on death and grieving, and we even had to go to a nursing home and interview some elderly people about their lives and their thoughts about one day dying. In one of the last classes, after an exciting discussion about the beyond and back ‘going toward the light’ experience that many people with near-death experiences have described, the professor said, “Well, that was a great conversation we had. I’m so glad you had such strong opinions about that Raymond Mooney book. Pass up your final projects, and we’ll meet for our last class on Thursday.”
Everyone in the class began taking out reams of paper from beneath their chairs. I looked around the room wondering if they were playing some sort of practical joke on me. I took out my notebook and found the syllabus for the course, and sure enough, right there in front of me on this date it said in capital letters FINAL PROJECT DUE, and it listed about twenty different things you could write, read, create, film or draw. It was actually a very creative assignment and one that I normally would have totally enjoyed doing, but I completely forgot about it.
I walked up to the professor, someone I had gotten along with very well through the semester, and told him, “I was typing my paper this morning and my typewriter jammed. Could you give me an hour to re-do the paper?”
“No problem, Jack.” he said. “I’ll be in my office all afternoon.”
What a screw-up, I thought, as I raced out of that class and back up the hill to my dorm. How could I have ever done something so stupid!
Fortunately my roommates were all at class so it was quiet. I sat down at my somewhat cluttered desk, turned on the electric drone of my Smith-Corona, and then thought, ‘What am I going to write?’ The course was on death and dying, and I had very little experience with that topic. The most profound loss I had experienced at that point in my life was the death of my cat Mitzi, and I’m sure the professor would not be too impressed with a paper about that. Death, death, death, dying, death, I kept thinking. I checked my watch. I said I’d get the paper to him in an hour, which meant I had only fifty minutes left. There was no way to get to the library and search for a topic, and that’s when the idea came to me. I could write about Anthony.
For three summers I worked as a maintenance man at a local nursing home in Albany, painting rooms, mowing lawns, doing landscaping, and Anthony was this gentle old guy who lived there and loved feeding the birds every morning. He must have weighed all of ninety pounds, and even on the hottest, most muggy day he’d still be outside walking around in a sweater. Anthony was always friendly, and he’d ask about my college and what courses I was taking, and he’d want to know what New York City was like. Anthony seemed totally at peace and I never heard him complain. He always had a smile on his face.
I began writing my paper, and I described all these qualities about Anthony, and then I explained what happened on my last day of work that particular summer. It was late August, one of those absolutely perfect summer days we often get in upstate New York, a bit chilly in the morning, but perfectly sunny with no humidity. As usual Anthony was walking around the grounds in the morning, and I walked up to him and told him this was my last day. “I’m going back to college in a few days,” I said.
“Back to New York,” he said with his usual enormous smile. “I used to live in New York. I lived in Brooklyn, in the Flatbush section. Have you ever been to the Flatbush section?”
Every time we talked about New York, he’d always inform me that he once lived in the Flatbush section. “What a beautiful day to go for a walk,” Anthony said, and then he pulled his heavy sweater tight around him and shuffled away holding bread crumbs to feed the birds. He’d feed the birds every morning at the same time and some days there would be over one hundred birds waiting to get bread from him. It was like a scene from the Hitchcock film “The Birds.”
I was at lunch when word came to us out in the maintenance garage that Anthony had not reported for his daily medication. “They want us to go out and search for him,” said our boss Jerry. “He might be a bit confused. Maybe he got lost.”
We broke up in three groups of two and wandered around the grounds of the nursing home looking for Anthony. Occasionally we’d yell out his name, but mostly we walked around the sunny grounds, talking and looking for any signs of him. He wasn’t in the grassy, lawn area where he always fed the birds. Whenever we came upon anyone we’d ask if they had seen him, but none had.
I must admit I was enjoying this opportunity to walk these enormous grounds on such a perfect day. I was paired up with another young guy named Rich, and we were having some good talks about the current baseball season. It was so much better than mowing a lawn or digging a ditch, and I knew that we’d eventually find Anthony, and I had only a few more hours to work and then I’d be home packing for my upcoming school year. I was already looking forward to seeing all my college friends and knew this year would be filled with more adventures and laughs. And that’s when I saw some medical people, nurses, a doctor, and they were running toward the stream about one hundred yards ahead of us. “They found him,” said a nurse over her shoulder to Rich and myself. “He’s in the stream. Anthony.”
Rich and I began running over there, but they wouldn’t let us get too near. Jerry stopped us. “I found him. He fell into the stream. He’s dead. He slipped on that grass over there.”
I could clearly see where the grass had fallen away and down below was a stream with rocks and running water. It was a pretty steep drop to the stream below. An ambulance with its siren blaring came tearing into the nursing home parking lot. EMT’s jumped out and raced down the hill to the stream. We all stood around not knowing what to do. I could see Anthony’s body far below. From this distance his body looked like a store mannequin, and the EMT’s were examining him. His body wasn’t moving at all and the nurses and the doctor were standing around shaking their heads.
Sitting in my dorm, I wrote about that experience and how it made me feel. It reminded me how quickly our fortunes can change. We can be admiring what a beautiful day it is and then seconds later we could be dead in a stream. I also wrote how quickly everyone seemed to just go back to work as if the life of Anthony meant very little to us all. Quite a few of the maintenance guys were grumbling, “Why would he walk out so far to that stream?” “Maybe he wanted to fall and kill himself?” “Do you think somebody murdered him?”
But knowing Anthony the way I did, I’m sure he just wanted to walk over and see how beautiful that stream looked and hear the water rushing over the rocks. It was an absolutely perfect day, and the grass gave out and he fell. To this day, I hope he didn’t suffer. I hope he died immediately.
Writing about that experience finally gave me the opportunity to grieve for Anthony. The tragedy happened on my last day at work that summer and a few days later I was back at school and taking classes and seeing my friends and I had pretty much forgotten Anthony. As I wrote that paper, it occurred to me that I didn’t really know anything about him, what kind of work he had done, if he had ever been married, why he wanted to feed the birds every day. I knew he lived in Flatbush, but I never asked him any questions and now it was too late.
Years later I had an opportunity to interview young-adult author Walter Dean Myers and he told me one of the reasons he enjoyed writing, “….was that it gives me the opportunity to reflect on my life and the people I’ve met, and when I write about these experiences I can relive them and feel them. Most people never have a chance to do this or they do it in a very superficial way.”
The paper I wrote on Anthony finally gave me a chance to reflect on him as a person, at least what I knew about him, and on his death and when I was done writing I had tears in my eyes. I didn’t even care about getting a grade for this paper. It had been satisfying to just write it all down.
And that’s why I wanted to be a writer. I had dreams of writing stories and magazine articles that would move people and make them stop their busy lives and reflect on something of importance, and it also occurred to me that I didn’t have to fight in a war to write. There are stories all around me, and all I have to do is open my eyes and pay attention.
A Letter to Governor Cuomo
By Kimberly Young
Dear New York State Government,
By now, it is very clear that Mr. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State Address presented a point of view on education that included significant anti-teacher rhetoric. I’m writing to you to provide the teacher point of view so that the public and you can see multiple perspectives and hopefully, in the future make sound decisions that are in the best interest of New York State’s future, and in the best interest of the students whom Mr. Cuomo’s proposed policies and attitudes will directly affect.
Our state is not in crisis in public education because of teachers. Teachers in NY have earned their right to their profession. Since implementing the new teacher education standards in 2007, all incoming teachers must pass rigorous testing, pre-service teaching, and have their Master’s degree within five years of education. Many teachers hold Bachelor’s degrees in the content areas they teach and a significant number of teachers hold multiple Master’s degrees related to education. On the whole, your educators are intelligent, competent individuals.
Mr. Cuomo’s incentive to get highly effective teachers will not work on educators like me. The Governor’s plan sounds great in theory but will be limited in impact. Mr. Cuomo said, “You want teachers who can perform and do perform? Then incentivize performance with a performance bonus and pay them like the professionals they are.” I disagree. I am a professional but I don’t want your incentive because according to the current system I will never be able to reach highly effective no matter how hard I try, because I choose to teach the students who are most at-risk and who have special needs. I choose to teach the students who struggle most. While these students try their hardest when they can and do show the most growth, they don’t always meet your standards for proficiency. A special education student can now receive a 45 on one exam if they have a 65 in another, yet I can’t use the 45 in my class even though it may fulfill their graduation requirements because I can’t predict the future and neither can they. For some students, that 45 may be the highest score they’ve ever received. Do I want them to do better? Absolutely - and I’ll never give up on them if you give me the chance to teach. I can’t control who attends school and when including test day. Initially, the teacher evaluation system was supposed to take attendance into account, but we all know that’s nearly impossible, so theoretically, I can have a student never attend class but sit for a test. And I’m still responsible for their score. I can’t control who shows up psychologically and emotionally not ready to take a test because of death, tragedy, or significant health or family issues. Quite frankly, in that situation I’m far more concerned for their physical and mental health anyway - and I’d rather see them get the support they need to overcome their challenges. They may take a test again. I care more about my kids than just their test score. Again, do I want them to do well? Yes. Do I try to get them to do well? Yes. But can I control what they do, how they feel, and even their attendance on test day? No. I cannot no matter how much I try. I can motivate. I can provide incentives but in the end there are so many factors that affect a child’s ability to perform.
The sad part is, so many kids know that their test scores aren’t often a reflection of what they know and what they can do and while they often get another chance to take a test for graduation, I am only measured by their first try. But you probably don’t care about that either. I am held accountable for one bad day and the other 183 days and my students’ progress in academic, social, and emotional realms doesn’t seem to matter.
And what about the students whose parents hired a tutor so that they would be successful but the teacher provided limited support? That teacher then gets credit for someone else’s work. Sometimes highly effective teachers by number are the least effective long-term. Digest that one. Blame me when scores are low, praise me when they're high, but don’t account for all the other possibilities as to WHY a student received a score. Tie it to my name no matter what.
The external factors I don’t control don’t seem to matter to you. Lucky for my students and my schools, I’m not selfish and would rather support students who struggle than ditch them for students who have numbers more likely to play out in my favor. I’m not a gambler with students.
Would an extra $20,000 be nice? Sure, but respect is nicer. I didn’t go into education to make millions.
On a side note,. who is paying the additional $20,000 for highly effective teachers as your incentive program continues to grow? Local school boards are already struggling to meet ends meet and NYS has one of the highest tax rates in the country.
We, the teachers of New York State, are professionals and deserve to be treated as professionals. The field of medicine is known for their Hippocratic Oath. They promise to always act with good intent and never to intentionally harm. Let me tell you something, teachers take a similar oath - it’s called dedicating your life to teaching. The majority of teachers work to improve student achievement on an hour by hour basis in this country and work toward creating citizens who are not only academically competent, but who uphold values of hard work and have the skills of ethical decision- making, problem-solving, communication, and technology. Not every student is going to graduate and become a white collar worker - some will be farmers, others will be skilled in a trade and build our homes, fix our cars, clean our public facilities, and run our public transportation systems. The most important thing every teacher wants for their students is for them to be successful in every way they can. We recognize the diversity of our students and the diverse needs of our society. Do you?
You want me to be a better teacher? Stop attacking public education in the public forum; instead start supporting it. Don’t withhold budget numbers from schools so that you can rile up supporters for your anti-teacher agenda. Take time to roll out curriculum changes (for example, Common Core), provide adequate professional development to assure every teacher is prepared to modify their classes and involve educators in conversations about change. Furthermore, don’t reduce my name to a number. And most importantly, respect students and their needs.
I’ll always perform but it will be in the way of changing lives and it just may not fit your standards. If gigantic increases in test scores happen as a result of me teaching to my best ability and with the resources I have, then great! If not and I tried my best, my kids tried their best, and they walk away ready to try again and move forward, it will be just as good. I’ll be right there waiting to help them again when they’re ready.
You want me to be a better teacher? Come into my classroom and see me teach before you judge me. Provide me opportunities to grow and get better, don’t assume I’m incompetent.
And before you judge me based on a student test score, meet my students. Know my students. Respect my students.
And remember, always consider multiple perspectives before making a decision.
Thank you for your time,
Kimberly Young
Passionate New York Teacher of Students Who Matter
Awakening
By Brian Rhode
Note from the author: The following piece is an excerpt from the story Awakening. I will be self-publishing an e-reader version of this story in its entirety through Amazon in the coming months. Stay tuned for more details and purchasing information. -BR
Chapter 1
“You can learn a lot about yourself killing zombies, y’know?”
“Wh…what are you…gack!” I gagged before I could finish my question.
“Did you just say gack, Travis?”
Sterling had just clobbered a big buck zombie by driving the meaty end of his aluminum baseball bat straight down through the top of its skull. The resulting spray of brain matter coated the walls of the sewer around us, and, since I recently was cleared to stop wearing a facemask in the CC, (Concrete Colon), my mouth as well.
This wasn’t the first time I’d eaten zombie brains, but I certainly hadn’t had enough to keep from gagging whenever I got a spongy brackish mouthful. Leaning a hand against the slick damp wall I swallowed quickly before shouldering my own graphite Louisville Slugger and trotting after Sterling. I hastily mopped the rest of my face with my sleeve while I chased his retreating form. He’d gone through eating a zombie heart at his Open Heart Ceremony over a year ago and had been promoted to a master hunter eight months after. He had just been given active mentor status at the last tribal council and picked up his first green hunter two weeks later, which was me.
“So you’re still learning to appreciate the unique bouquet of zombie noodle, eh, Travis?” he asked when I caught up with him.
“Yeah,” I was still salivating hard and wiping the tears from my eyes as we continued down the pipe, “swallowing that shit makes me react just like I’m puking.”
He smiled and chuckled, “I remember, but you keep choking it down when you can. Aside from the liver, zombie brains will boost your immunity faster than anything else.”
I decided to ask him something that had been on my mind for a while, “So, were you scared before your OHC?”
“Well sure,” Sterling furrowed his brow for an instant, “You know there is always the chance that you aren’t strong enough to make immunity, which means you slip into the zombie death from eating the heart, but that is the chance you must take.”
His ivory pupils were constantly scanning, but he was always more than willing to talk. He had a broad easy smile that made you feel immediately comfortable. His long red and milky white hair fell below his shoulders. All the full zombie guard had a similar striking look. It was the effect of immunity. It appeared as if cream had been poured onto their head and swirled around their natural hair color. It made them stand out for sure. It also emphasized their pale lime complexions. On the whole they looked like green marble statues with tracks of veins visible up and down their slightly transparent skin. It would seem pretty strange if you hadn’t grown up watching guys like Sterling patrolling the encampments like I did.
“But, what is life without fear, Travis? It’s the one of the ways you know you’re still alive,” he added flashing another smile at me.
“Zombies don’t get scared, do they?” I asked.
“Perhaps in some way, but I think their ravenous need for eating trumps everything. Their brains are blitzed, totally convinced they are always dying, so all other desires are pushed away, staying alive, or something like it, at all costs is their only goal. Fear doesn’t fill a stomach, Travis, but nothing makes us more human either.”
“That’s not the only thing.” I spoke so easily with Sterling, which surprised me from time to time considering the way that I had always idolized the Z-guard.
“Of course not, but consider the irony at play here. These creatures are so frantic with fear of ceasing that they concentrate only on eating. That is a trap in itself. They can’t truly live, they can only continue to exist, and that is why they are the walking dead,” Sterling said.
I smiled and added, “I thought it was because they walk around without a pulse and eat humans.”
“Okay, that, too.” Sterling shot me another broad smile. “I was speaking more philosophically, you know. If you fear dying too much you never truly live.”
“Oh, I…” I started to say.
“Sh,” Sterling cut me off, “get to the side and crouch down.”
I followed his directive immediately, chastising myself on the way down. How did I miss the sound? Or, the gangrenous scent of decomposing flesh that now filled the tunnel? Sterling was never harsh with me. He picked up early that I was hard enough on myself. I would be sulking about this for the rest of the night. In fact, he always told me that I needed to accept my imperfections as something to celebrate, because they made me human. I didn’t always get that one because nothing is more imperfect than a zombie, especially one about to cease. As the virus ravaged a body, flesh and organs would fall off until there wasn’t enough muscle left to keep it moving, definitely far from perfect. If I wasn’t so enamored with him I think he would annoy me.
For now, I crouched gripping my bat handle, squeezing and twisting my hands against the leather grip. The hair on my arms stood up, except for where dried brains had gelled them down. I didn’t breathe, straining my ears. Sterling stood staring ahead with one arm at his side, the other loosely held the top end of his bat. The moments stretched, I occasionally gasped for air, and then, quite casually, Sterling flipped his weapon around and snatched the thin neck of the bat out of the air right above the bottom pommel.
“It’s time, you ready, Travis?” Sterling asked.
I popped up, eyes wide, breathing in and out quickly and coarsely.
“Easy, Travis,” came Sterling’s voice, “you have to stay loose. Even out your breathing or you are going to cramp up. Just get into your rumble zone and find your rhythm.”
There was a lot that I had to learn about zombies. Our library was filled with movies, books and comics about them. I had grown up consuming these. I always watched and read more than was required by teachers and parents. Although, in the CC I was learning about misconceptions quickly, it also had taken me about a week to understand why baseball bats were the weapons of choice among the Z-guard. Much of the folklore expressed in stories and movies held portions of truth. One way Zombie Death spread was through bites, and even a dismembered head was dangerous, but zombies weren’t quite as hard to put down as many stories have portrayed. True, a dismembered hand could still grab, but it needed the muscles of the shoulders, chest, and back in order to be deadly. Also, zombies did eventually die. Eventually the tissues would fall apart and a zombie would cease to be. Consuming flesh delayed decomposition slightly, but all zombies slowly fell apart. So, one needed only to thoroughly incapacitate a zombie and leave it in order to eliminate its threat potential. Guns eventually ran out of bullets, and relying on them often became more of a crutch than an effective weapon. Swords took off heads and limbs quite easily, but enough arms could trip up someone and a severed head could still bite. So, dropping a zombie boiled down to three things: shatter both shoulder areas, break the jaw, and crush the top of the head down through the neck, perfect work for a baseball bat.
“I was told you had decent scores in the rumble box, Travis,” Sterling began swinging his bat in lazy arches in front of him crossing from left to right and back again.
“I do alright,” I said with a smirk.
“This isn’t the time for modesty, Travis. It is a trap set by pride. One thinks they are being humble, but they are actually trying to increase their own esteem by coaxing others to bring up their accomplishments. If you are good, state it plainly when asked. You betray hidden feelings of doubt in yourself and there is no room for doubt now, Travis. You are going to need that skill.”
“Y-yes, I do well,” I immediately stammered.
“Good,” Sterling said, “because this is certainly the next level, I think we are about to see a herd.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Indeed,” Sterling added, “here they come.”
I lifted my bat and began mimicking Sterling’s movements. I bounced at the knees and forced my breath to be even and deep. “Stay fluid,” I said to myself, “crack the jaw on an upswing, break left, break right, shatter the crown.”
“Travis McCawlem, what is novice hunter training protocol number two?” Sterling’s tone became formal and his swinging bat came to rest straight out in front of his chest as if my response was the key to unlocking its movement.
“Number two?” I asked.
“Yes, Travis, number two,” Sterling said more softly.
“If odds present too overwhelming and a zombie zone cannot be contained all novice guard should disengage and return to Homestead without breaking stride.” I said the words automatically and they were hanging in the increasingly rank air between us before the weight of what he implied settled into my gut.
“Good, Travis, if I say go, do not break stride until you are at Homestead. Do not try to help me. Am I clear?” Sterling asked into the darkness of the tunnel ahead of him.
“I, uh, I…” I knew that because of Sterling’s immunity a bite from a zombie, or even many bites would not affect him, but if he were overwhelmed without me, brought down, feasted upon…I closed my eyes against the image.
“Am I clear Hunter Novice T. McCawlem?” Sterling asked more sternly. He only used my official title when he was absolutely serious. Nothing would sway him.
“Clear, Master Hunter Toshlen!” I exclaimed in return.
His bat resumed its casual arch. “Good, Travis,” his tone was softer again, “because this Z-zone is about to splatter…hard.”
I turned my head toward the shadow of the tunnel before us. The noises now were unmistakable, the shuffling, the grunting and moaning, the pawing at the concrete floor and walls. I squinted and caught the first set of vacant eyes peering back toward us out of the darkness. Zombies were coming.
Haikus
By: Pamela J. Hoh
Haiku #1
Sweet-Georgia sun-kissed pit
Cyanide torn from dying flesh
A warm blushed peach in my hand
Haiku #2
Beluga whale smiles
Musical notes of laughter
Two hearts beat as one
Haiku #3
Black eyes of the sea
Beluga belly laughs waves
to my heart and back
A Poem
By: Pamela J. Hoh
Cubes to work with: star directional, guy walking a tightrope, magnet, cactus plant
Walking a tightrope
he looks gingerly over the side.
Down below lie cactus spines,
sharpened to fine points
Inspiration for balance
lest he should fall.
Her steel grey eyes like magnets,
he chances a glance.
HIs foot slides, causing a wobble
a collective gasp goes up
And he goes down, down, down
Mesmerized, he falls
and down, down, down,
into a sea of steel grey spines
Exquisite pain erupts
and the crowd goes wild
And lo, she waits for him below
the girl with the steel grey eyes
A hush moves through the crowd
to see not just the one,
but now two entwined
Walking a tightrope.
A Letter to My Daughter’s Kindergarten Teachers
By Kristen Montgomery Breh
Note from the writer: I can relate to Veronica’s introduction to this edition, because I too struggle to find time to put word to page, but I made time for this piece, a letter to the team of teachers who would ultimately decide who would be responsible for teaching my first born throughout that ever-important first year of school: Kindergarten. I had fun writing it, and I hope you have fun reading it.
To the Wonderful Kindergarten Teachers:
Our 4 year old, Sophie, has the gift of gab. Since she was 2, we have written down in a little book her many funny and insightful utterings. She has caught us off guard with things like, “[The song] Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk says, ‘Smack your grandma’ but that’s not nice” and “I have a problem in my kitchen. The problem is I can’t get anything in my kitchen organized...I know, it’s very upsetting.”
Sophie is the same kid who disappears into her room for long periods of time to play with her Legos, who comes out for a pack of fun fruits, watches five minutes of Sesame Street then disappears back into the room she shares with her two sisters to build some more neighborhoods. She is the same kid who is starting Kindergarten this September 2015 - a month before her 5th birthday.
“Did you buy ice cream? That’s phenomenal!” 11/21/14
Sophie exudes joy. This is one of my favorite things about her. It emanates from her, small rippling pulsations of life and excitement. She has a zest for life. She smiles from her cheeks, her dimples popping through, gentle freckles speckling the corners of her eyes. She must tell me at least twice every day, with her head thrown back and a twinkle in her eye, “Mom, you’re the best mom in the whole entire world.” I know I’m biased, but we don’t call her Sophie Sunshine for nothing.
“I’m texting my boyfriend and my husband. I can text them both on my Attitude phone.” 11/13/14
Did I mention she can talk? Oh boy can she talk - in all ways sassy, spunky, inquisitive, and sweet. She uses words like “mishap” and “content” and “situation” and tells fantastical stories followed by, “I betcha didn’t know I made that one up.” She’s curious, the kid who asks “What color is God?” and then decides after some conversation and deliberation that He’s red because love is red. She’s the kid who after I told her that my ears were bleeding from all her talking, she laughed and told me, “I know I talk a lot.”
Mom: What do you hope to learn in Kindergarten?
S: "Well, I'd like to know more about caterpillars turning into chrysalises. I know a lot already but I want to know more. [Goes on to explain how a caterpillar eats too much and feels stuffed until he eats a green leaf then he goes into a chrysalis and comes out a "beautiful butterfly." Think Eric Carle.]
M: What questions do you have?
S: I'd like to know how the caterpillar turns into a butterfly. 2/18/15
It is my greatest hope that Sophie will have a Kindergarten teacher who can nurture and inspire the creativity, curiosity, imagination, and language that we see at home to stretch her intellectually, someone who will help her to develop her understanding and practice of kindness, fairness, and empathy, and someone who, despite all the State mandates and emphasis on Common Core standards will give her many opportunities to simply have fun.
We are confident that as a team you can choose the best classroom that will suit her needs. Over the course of the 2015-2016 school year, please let us know how we can best support your hard work and dedication from our home. We look forward to working with you!
Mom: "Did you wipe well?"
S: "I wiped fantastically."
12/8/14
And she knows how to wipe herself. Fantastically.
Can you help?
Hi Colleagues,
I participated in the CDWP Summer Institute in 2010. Since then, I haven't had as much time as I would like to be involved with the group thanks to the arrival of two little ones. However, I greatly value the group and the insight other teachers are able to provide. I would like to gather some information from my CDWP colleagues in preparation for a professional development presentation I've been asked to give on literature circles. I teach 5/6 English Language Arts at Albany Academy. Specifically, I would love to know:
- How are you using literature circles in your classroom? How are you assessing the lit circles?
- How are high school level English teachers differentiating reading? Are you using lit circles or some other means to provide a variety of texts for different reading levels?
Any feedback you are able to give would be used solely to explain to my fellow teachers how others are using literature circles in classrooms across the Capital Region.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Kristen Olby Joyce
5/6 English
Albany Academy for Girls
Two words that describe your teaching at the moment:
Brian Rhode
|
unrelenting struggle
|
Daniel Penna
|
CULTIVATING INSIGHT
|
Molly Fanning
|
student centered
|
Stephanie Ames
|
Reinventing. Crunched.
|
Rose Kemp
|
TEACH TOLERANCE!..
|
Amy Salamone
|
silenced
lonely
|
Linda Grimes-Picarazzi
|
Beleaguered, determined
|
Heather O’Leary
|
Persevering
Sacrificing
|
Aosta Edelman
|
Totally awed!
|
Chris Mazura
|
Abiding (in) paradox
|
Matt Ball
|
treading water
|
Kimberly Young
|
Love/Hate
|
Robby Nichols (’13)
|
knee-deep satisfied
|
Shannon Clegg
|
Delightfully challenged
|
Alicia Wein
|
Perpetual crossroads
|
Stephanie Wrobleski
|
overwhelmed (but!) inspired
|
Bob Yagelski
|
Beginner's mind
|
Nancy Gort
|
tired, unmotivated.
|
Lisa Liverio
|
enlightened and astounded
|
Kristine Schaffer
|
Holden and Phonies
|
Jamie Mullins
|
reflecting and reminiscing
|
Lori Beza
|
Needing nurturing
|
Ashlee Palandro
|
Invigorating, inspiring,
|
Claudia Stone
|
BALANCING APPRECIATING
|
Veronica Gaboury
|
Usually overwhelmed
|
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