looking forward

It turns out I'm an introvert in disguise. For my whole life I've thought I was an extrovert, but nope, wrong. I'm chatty and exciteable and socially adept but I default to quiet solo activities when given the choice. I don't actually prioritize spending time with friends; I practically have to be dragged to social events. HB has been pushing me to get out of the apartment a little bit for my own good. Last week one of my favorite classmates in my grad program, El, invited a few of us to her home, and so I sternly told myself I couldn't skip it.

And so, ensconced in wicker chairs on El's deep southern-style porch, we discussed teaching philosophies, our grad program, and personal growth. All three of them are full-time employed in preschools; I'm minimally employed, flitting between babysitting and tutoring shifts, and spending the rest of my ample free time preparing for the month-long bicycle tour HB and I are planning and working on a few art/zine projects. El just started a job at Escuela, a bilingual preschool in our neighborhood, which incidentally is the preschool that Ezra just started attending. Two of my other favorite classmates also work there, one as the assistant director. All of them have been encouraging me to apply for a substitute position at Escuela for months and months.

So this week, at El's invitation, I did a two hour visit to Escuela.

I loved it.

I don't have a whole lot to compare it to, since my preschool teaching experience is limited to the three summers I spent between college terms working as an assistant/sub/floater teacher at the large, primary-colored, corporate preschool in my parents' very affluent, suburban neighborhood. My impression of that school can be summed up with "loved the kids, hated the rest of it."

Escuela felt completely different. There were no arbitrary rules, and the kids were not only permitted to explore their ideas but given the space and time to really dig deep into their projects. Transitions were gradual and followed a fluid rhythm rather than a rigid schedule, so that part of El's class was outside while four of them remained inside with their other teacher for an extra 20 minutes working on their project (tearing up leaves and petals on a light table and making "ice cream and sandwiches" with them) until they were ready to head outside. Collaboration and conflict resolution arose organically and without teacher intervention. Most of the classrooms were open so that kids could float between them instead of being locked into their own room with their own age group. And, small but important, they have a garden that the kids accessed during their outdoor play, picking and eating the produce they had been growing.

After my visit, I stopped in at the office and chatted with the assistant director (also one of my favorite classmates) about applying for the sub position. She's setting me up with the paperwork, and if all goes well, I should be starting at the beginning of November, when HB and I get back from our big trip. The sub position is a good way for me to feel it out, decide if it seems like a great long-term fit or whether I should continue looking at the other preschools on my "preschool crushes" list.

Ezra's parents are very excited that I'm applying there -- Ezra's dad keeps saying he'll tell the director to hire me and give me a raise right away, which is very sweet but a little overbearing.

I'm really looking forward to it.

High fives,
-MP

what it means to be a girl

Yesterday, when I picked Sasha up from her after school Spanish class, we were barely out the doors of the building when she confessed that Isaac had chased her down and kissed her ("twice!") on the cheek during recess. She shuddered, and explained that she did not like it because "he's gross; he wipes his boogers on the carpet!" She said she waited to tell me until we were out of the building because she didn't want lots of people to hear.

In that moment I heard so much of what it often means to be a girl in our culture. It means people you don't want touching you do touch you in ways you don't want, and then you feel like it's something you have to keep quiet. Because if you don't keep it quiet, if people know about it -- people will remember, it will keep touching you, it will mar you. It will shadow you and taint you in a way it never will for boys.

I know so many adults who would wave this off with a laugh. "It was just a kiss on the cheek," "oh, boys will be boys," "aw, he probably likes you," -- and that is all complete and utter bullshit. I don't care about the details of the kiss, I don't care if Isaac likes Sasha, and I certainly don't think boys should get a free pass for their actions on account of their sex. I don't even care that Isaac has behavioral challenges and some particular special needs -- he still needs to learn to respect other people's boundaries, it may just take more time and support for him to learn it than it would take other kids.

I want Sasha to know that her body is hers, and that she has an absolute right to determine, on her own terms, who has access to it, how, and when. That nobody has the right to touch her without her explicit consent. I want her to know that when these bodily rights are violated, she can and should speak up. I want her to know that there are people in her life that will have her back, that will believe her and support her, that will not belittle her experience or make excuses for the other person's behavior. I wish I could promise her that everyone in our culture would have her back, but she already knows through the subtle power of misogyny and rape culture that she is expected to just stay silent and take it, that making it public can make it worse.

So I told her, as briefly and firmly as I could, that what Isaac did was not okay, that if she doesn't want somebody to kiss her they need to respect that, and if they don't respect that then what they did is wrong.

She said she told her teacher right away, and it sounds like he gave her a similar soundbite and promised to talk to Isaac. I hope he does, and that he conveys to Isaac how inappropriate his actions were.

I wish every boy grew up being taught to respect girls' boundaries, to wait for permission instead of waiting to be stopped.

Hugs,
-MP

school blues

Due to a combination sick day and teacher in service day, Sasha only had two nights to complete a week's worth of homework this week. Getting this kid to slog through her 15 minutes of reading and a couple of counting-related math problems after school each day is usually challenge enough. Compressing it all into two days was hell. For me, and for her.

The most frustrating part about it -- even more frustrating than the fact that if she would actually focus on the task at hand for five minutes we'd be done with the worksheet in that five minutes -- was that the "goofing off" she was doing was actually something I wanted to be able to encourage. Usually her goofing off is just a lot of begging to watch movies and/or a disjointed soliloquy, but this day it was totally self-led literacy. While I tried to steer her toward writing her spelling words on her whiteboard, she preferred to explore words with "th" and "sh" sounds, Sasha as teacher and me as her student. It would have been awesome to be able to capitalize on this moment -- Sasha so rarely initiates literacy related activities, and she actually mixes up "th" and "sh" a lot when she reads and writes, so she could benefit from the practice. But I felt like my job was to make sure she completed her worksheet, learned her spelling words, and earned a signature on her reading log.

I ended up mostly feeling angry at our education system. At her teacher for giving her a standard set of spelling words unrelated to her particular interests, and a worksheet with math problems she doesn't understand or care about. At her school district, for adopting standardized testing benchmarks, and requiring teachers to teach to that at the exclusion of other enriching things. At a lack of funding for public education across the board, so kids like Sasha get lost in large classes and don't get the one-on-one attention needed to be able to understand lessons and concepts and advance academically.

I do get excited about all the possibilities of alternative schooling and homeschooling. We have some really kickass homeschool and alternative school programs and resources in our area. Some day, when HB and I have our own kids, I think that will be our route, if we can make it work. I don't want my kids to have the desire to learn beaten out of them by an education system that is not responsive to their particular needs and interests. I want them to experience learning as empowering, relevant, and just plain awesome.

High fives,
-MP

in which grad school is the best

Mondays are solidly my favorite day of the week. I have just Ezra for the first half of the day, and then sometime after a nap, a walk, and several rounds of snacks, I plunk him in the Ergo and go fetch Sasha from school. We always meander home fairly slowly, swapping weekend stories, pointing out the things we see, and of course discussing Harry Potter.

I get Sasha set up with a snack, lay Ezra down for a nap, and return to Sasha to get her going on her math or reading homework, and then it's time for me to clamber onto my bike and head off to campus, leaving the kids in their dad's care for the remainder of the afternoon.

The reason Mondays are my favorite is because I get to go to class.

This is a stark departure from my undergraduate college experience, which for me was much more about community building and identity formation than academics. In undergrad, two thirds of the classes I was taking were not in my specialization, and many of my classmates would show up to class not having done the reading homework and then bullshit their way through the day's discussions. (I was absolutely not an exception.) In grad school, everything I take is immediately relevant, and I can trust that not only have all of my classmates done all of the reading, but they've also likely done extra reading and research simply because they are as excited about what we're learning as I am.

This semester the class I'm taking is a diversity & social justice course. I consider myself fairly well versed in social justice issues, but I didn't know there are so many resources for early childhood teachers for building anti-bias themes into their curriculum! I read both of our textbooks in just a few days each, and launched into an independent project where I'm reviewing children's books that feature diversity and anti-bias themes. It's a really fun project, and one I've been meaning to start since I began collecting names of social justice themed children's books two or three years ago. My professor just gave me the kickstart I needed. If any of my readers are interested in seeing the blog I've started to document my reviews, email me at hugsorhigh5s at gmail and I'll send you the link. It's connected to my real name, so I won't post the url here.

More and more I'm feeling ready to take on more coursework and scale back on nannying. I really miss the classroom environment, and I'm so incredibly excited about curriculum development, so I'm hopeful that I might be able to move on from private childcare to preschool teaching as early as this fall, and increase my classload as soon as summer term. I'm waiting to have those conversation with Sasha's family, because it will mean my slow and inevitable goodbye.

Hugs,
-MP