Be the change you want to see.

As kids, we all knew about the pothole down the road that you had to avoid on your bicycle, or which neighbor's yard you'd never trespass in, for fear of a dog perhaps, or some grown-up's anger.

These are workarounds. This is knowing your environment, and keeping yourself from harm.

As kids, some of us knew grown-ups in our lives who had to be managed. Or avoided. Or placated. Or hidden from.

* I remember my fourth grade teacher, who used to hug all the pretty girls. I was maybe nine, and I envied Charlene (*not her real name), tiny and blonde, shy as a mouse, with Mr. M's arm around her. At the time, I didn't understand why she looked quietly miserable, when his hug looked so warm and affectionate.

* I remember my tenth grade English teacher (the third one we'd had that year) who struggled ineffectually to "manage" our class of high spirited and mischievous honors students.
His face is clear in my memory, though his name has faded. I had asked him to please control the class because I, at least, wanted to learn. He shrugged his shoulders and said helplessly, "But, Liz, what can I DO?"

* And I remember my dad. He started working from home when I was around 13, firmly planted in his comfy chair with his cigarettes, newspaper, and yellow legal pads. I remember him commanding me to fetch him yet another beer from the fridge's endless supply.

I was shocked and pleased in equal amounts to discover, some time last year, that someone had coined a phrase for these kinds of dysfunction. "The missing stair". Because some ideas are nearly impossible to understand until you have a name for them.

To deal with a Missing Stair in your life or environment means that some necessary thing is broken and everyone has just gotten used to, adapted around the brokenness. Used to it, enough that nobody talks about it anymore, and the collective assumption is "well, that's just how it always has been, we all just deal with it." Or maybe you've heard it phrased as "It's just part of the culture here," or as "boys will be boys."

*explosive sigh*

I call bullshit on that nonsense.

* My tenth grade teacher needed a mentor, or at minimum, direct instruction in how to manage teenagers in a classroom.
That skill is something that actually can be taught, something that can be learned and practiced. He should have been taught those skills, and he should have been provided with good examples to follow. His teacher training, and our school administration, should have seen to that, and failed to. (I am particularly incensed about this because it was something my own teacher training lacked as well, twenty years later: one of many things that convinces me this brokenness is systemic.)

* My fourth grade teacher, it turns out, was (eventually) reported to authorities and removed from teaching at my elementary school. I did not understand at the time, when the kids were gossiping on the playground, what it meant that Mr. M was no longer teaching at our school. Or why when I asked my parents about it, they made faces and changed the subject.
The silence around this subject is a kind of brokenness that could perhaps have mended by using the story, the true story, as an age-appropriate teachable moment on how to trust your gut instinct, how to be safer around adults, on appropriate or inappropriate touching, or on how to stand up for other people.

* And of course, there was my dad. The lessons I could learn from his life are manifold. But whatever it was that he needed, well. I don't know.
What I've learned from his example, I've had to unravel, unlearn, and relearn over years of ACoA meetings, journal writing, talk therapy; and my own year of total abstinence from alcohol.

Shame and silence NEVER solve these kinds of broken. The Missing Stair effect occurs in large communities and inside our own heads.

Problems like these fester and persist in the darkness and the silence.

Acknowledge the broken stairs. Point them out.
Please.
Talk about them. Research. Offer assistance, if you have it to give.

Because if one of us has a hammer, and another has nails, and someone else has some solid boards, and someone else actually knows how to fix a stair?

We will never know that the stair could actually be fixed, until someone says, "Hey, I have this thing that might help fix that missing stair..."

and I am so fucking tired of jumping over the broken places.





Hey y'all? I have this thing that might help fix that missing stair.
(listens for responses)



This has been my Week Two entry for therealljidol, and the prompt was "The Missing Stair".

Beta-readings done by chippychatty, wrenb, and violaconspiracy! Thanks, guys, you definitely made this better.

Please go read and enjoy my colleagues' entries here. To vote for my entry, find me at the bottom of the second poll, link is *here*.

Thank you for reading!

I did Two Hard Things That Were Hard today.

One was to wake up after a night of almost no sleep to initiate an emotionally difficult conversation.

Two was to keep my mouth shut at a time later on when responding as my first impulse demanded, would've made things worse.

Here is where I say the thing that may get me in trouble : I fucking DO want a cookie. After doing Hard Things That are Hard? Yes, I want to hear a "good job" or a "thank you" or "I appreciate your efforts" BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I NEVER GOT AS A KID.

Similarly I will never get tired of hearing someone I respect tell me I'm pretty, they love me, they're proud of me, I said something that made them think or laugh, BECAUSE THAT also IS WHAT I NEVER GOT AS A KID.

*snarl*

I give myself EXPLICIT PERMISSION to want that cookie. Explicit permission to attract that cookie, to find safe people whom I might ask for a cookie, to feel my sadness and my rage about growing up without any fucking cookies.

Because also I was taught growing up, both directly and by example, that there Are. No. Cookies! for you, and no matter how hard you try to be worthy of one, to work for one, to ask or to suffer because you want (or need!) a 'cookie'? You get NOTHING.

Fuck that shit.
I'm in charge. Y'all, I grew up, and now I make a choice.

I make cookies every fucking day, you know? and I give them out to friends and lovers and strangers I have just met. I make them by the bushel. There ARE enough cookies.

Sometimes I make cookies just because i can. I have what i need to make them and i just do it. Other times i know I am wanting to please people because I still crave approval and a smile is as good as a cookie. I'm okay with that.

And sometimes? Sometimes, (I am *such* a subversive! ) sometimes I *actually* make cookies that are just for me. Exactly what I want and need in that moment.

And then I have what I need.

Some days I run out of cookie ingredients altogether. Days like that suck horribly because it's scary and flattening. I'd say I'm lucky because that happens pretty rarely, after 11 years of learning how to make and share and ask for a cookie. I have good cookie makers around me all the time now. There's a reason for that.

I. Am. Allowed. To. Want. A. Cookie.

So, for that matter, are you.

Here endeth the lesson.

Posted via LjBeetle

fools_and_irish challenged those of us in education to talk about what we would do to improve the education system as it currently exists in California/USA.

I have one thing to say to that: train the teachers better.

• Give teachers concrete skills and a chance to practice them under supervision until they have attained mastery - AS LONG AS IT TAKES for them to attain mastery.
  
• Train teachers in the social skills-of-connection with kids, because kids are looking to like and love their teacher, if you give them a chance. They also learn best when they like their teacher.
  
• Make sure each teacher has enough mastery of his/her subject that they can give lectures and develop lessons without having to copy from someone else or from a book or website. A teacher who doesn't know their stuff can't foster the trust of the students - they know something is fake about that teacher, and the learning situation goes south.
  
• Correlation to the previous point - for the Gods' Sake, DO NOT PLACE SOMEONE IN A ROOM JUST TO HAVE A BODY IN THAT ROOM. Have a qualified confident teacher teaching that subject. Some principals and some personnel offices get so desperate for teachers they put whoever in, and as shipoffools999 so gracefully put it, it's like they throw the fledgling in the room with the students, close the door, and pray for a good outcome.

Another thing I have to say to that: TREAT the teachers better.

• Half an hour lunch? You're kidding me, right?
  
• Healthy food on campus.
  
• Frequent chances to network/collaborate with peers. And either feed us or give us paid release time.
  
• No Stupid Inservices. If you need to educate us on some particular topic, don't shove all of us into the library and have someone lecturing us. Teachers bring tests to grade to those things, and tune out. If it's important enough to train us, it's important enough to do it RIGHT, or to optimize our time. Small group work. Online material and tests to make sure we absorbed what we are supposed to know. We're professionals, treat us like that. Save the cattle calls for pep-rally teambuilding efforts. Boring inservices are INSULTING.
  
• ** Encourage continuing ed, ON CAMPUS. Each one teach one, right? If each teacher WAS PAID and taught an after school class once or twice a month in their specialty, FOR OTHER TEACHERS, you'd network out, teachers would be less isolated, we'd have more fun, more loyalty, less stress, and duh, we'd learn something. Why do you THINK we're working IN EDUCATION?? I would totally have gone to a modern dance class taught by Kelly C., or a history class by Thatcher P., or an art class by Barbara B., math class with Mr. S., weightlifting with Cesar O. (and not just cos he was cute!), and I would gladly have taught a class on pantomime, improv, stage makeup, and we woulda had FUN!!! Teachers are LEARNERS. Work with that. Build on that.
  
• ** Each school should have at least one full time substitute teacher on staff. You could apply to have that sub cover you for the morning while you went to the dentist, catch your 6th period if your kid needed picked up from the other school cos she was puking, you could apply to have help (if the sub wasn't otherwise engaged) to do research, help decorate your room, help you organize your paperwork and lessons or help you grade papers or record grades. Teaching is often damn LONELY. MITIGATE that. We are all social creatures, few people really like sitting or working alone in their room. The morale improvement ALONE would be TREMENDOUS.
  

I know I have more ideas but these are the ones that brew in my brain.
To sum up:

Give teachers RESPECT
Help teachers LEARN
Make teachers CONFIDENT
Remember teachers are ARTISTS and PROFESSIONALS. (Treat em like it!)
Let teachers have PRIDE and help us to BUILD COMMUNITY.

Here endeth the lesson.

HEREis Carolyn's contribution.