The Fence Rider

I'm going to attempt to either convince myself I'm wrong, or convince myself I'm right. Anyone who knows me realizes I like to waver and straddle the fence on most issues. Perhaps I'm a gutless pig. Maybe I am a man of no convictions. One thing I do know is that I generally see both sides in most arguments. This wasn't always the case, as my side usually won on most issues, regardless if I was wrong. I want to be wrong, rather than right. And with this as my into, let's jump into Senate Bill 5!

In brief, Ohio Governor Kasich (I voted for the guy, so I know full and well what I was getting myself into!) and the Republican side (?) of the Senate is pushing a bill to eliminate collective bargaining across the board for its police, fireman, teachers and other employees. As a "union" busting bill, it's supporters are hoping to bargain with the teachers (and others) on budget, health care and wages without having to bow down to salary demands from the union. There's other issues at stake here as well. The bill also wants to eliminate step increases and salary schedule by imposing pay based on merit (more on this later), proposing workers to pay up to 20 percent of their (our) health costs and for teachers, eliminating class size proposals too (more on that later).

Now with everything happening in Wisconsin, it's becoming apparent that both the teachers and the politicians are not going to budge. Schools are closed with teachers claiming that today's kids will learn that somethings need to be fought for (when they are probably getting in their X-Box games in large volumes) and the Democratic senators leaving the state so they wont have to vote on the bill. And here I am again at a crossroads. How does not teaching prove your worth and how is running from the fight into another state going to help prove your side?

I hope this doesn't happen in Ohio. Some of it is. Some of my colleagues have taken a day off last Thursday to march and speak alongside the numerous other state employees. No one seems to be willing to budge, and perhaps this is part of the problem. Our governor fired the first salvo by saying he would punish striking workers. Our side fired back, and have been pretty much on the defensive end all year. In fact, our union prints a newsletter once a week, and anyone can find at least one instance of the language we use to supposedly work together into condescending diatribes. Every school's business is there to see? How is reporting a grievance of another school's principal relevant to how I'm going to do my job better? They want me to vote a certain way and will sometimes editorialize their feelings about our district. Hey, we all do at times, but the conversations in my teachers' lounge are not printed for consumption (and I'm beginning to feel I need to just stay in my own room for lunch lately).

Now, much of this union busting business is stemmed from state's budgets that have been spiraling out of control for some time. I don't expect the government to figure out the states' spending in a logical manner considering myself and millions of other Americans have thousands of dollars of debt of their own. But when your finances are a mess, you make the cuts that are necessary. On a personal note, you try to cut out the frivolous things and focus on the necessities. This means less movies and dinners out and more on groceries. Simple. Now states don't necessarily think this way. Many are unwilling to cut personal projects and earmarks and are looking to bite into the unions of the state as part of their means. Healthcare spending is high too. I'm not an expert on states' budgets, and if I were I wouldn't be a teacher considering I would need to invest more time in that instead of my own lesson plans.

So old union agreements such as pensions were promised when the economy was fruitful. Now that every state is feeling the fiscal pinch, something must be cut. Do I agree that it should be the pensions of our cops, firemen and teachers? And maybe it isn't exactly the pensions but the step increases that are already in place and are exponentially larger each year. Our healthcare is going up and the state wants us to pay more of our costs. Why couldn't this be negotiated on bit sides before rallies had to be made and tempers flared? Seems silly.

Now, teachers and unions are also projected as a protector of a bunch of lazy workers. Negative stories of bad behavior and tales of "rubber rooms" paint the profession in a negative light. I cannot speak for teachers nationally or what their union fights for or not, but I do know that there is something wrong and broken with the current state of education. There's a tremendous amount of waste in the school system (much on the end of the administrators as well). Do you want to know how many teachers teach from the back of their desks? Do you really want to see the work packets that are printed out and how much seat work really goes on? If it happens at one school, imagine it multiplied throughout and entire district, a state, a nation.

Does the union protect these teachers? To a certain degree. Worse is that we protect our own. We see the ones we want to work with, the teammates who you would have your own kids being taught by. We see them yelling in the halls and we say nothing. We see them take almost every Friday off while the rest of us are working. We hear them complain in the lounge and realize that seniority is the only thing keeping them employed.

I'm ready for a merit-based pay scale. I welcome it. I don't want to lose my job to someone who has had more years which makes them better. I am aware of the ramifications. First, there is no rigid, proven way to evaluate my worth as a teacher. It's almost like parenting. Is there a test that proves I'm raising my son right? Will a test score prove my worth or the worth of that parent who makes sure their child is doing their homework instead of being on facebook. Batelle has come up with a convoluted method called "value-added" and if you can understand their charts and graphs and measurements, it shows a child's progress. Will that be the key to unlocking a merit-based system? Will it be like the NCAA BCS super computer calculations? Like, will the # of office referrals, test scores, days absent, degree earned and # of students in my classrooms create a score that ranks me in my building? Maybe I should be against Senate Bill 5 on those reasons alone, but why isn't my union doing more to base pay and layoffs on merit rather than years? This doesn't even take into account the cops, nurses and firemen!

As a taxpayer myself, I'm also feeling the pinch. My daughter's school keeps raising the prices of sports and is cutting teachers and services district-wide because of failed levies and budget constraints. A no vote is somehow anti-schools and a yes-vote means I just voted for the next tax increase to come. Where is the end? I would pay for more cops and firemen and health care. Why can't I just come to the table, without striking, without fear of being fired and work these things out? The suits on both sides are to blame. If the schools are this bad, why are the suits still holding their jobs?

I don't see the bill passing regardless if I rally or change my profile on facebook to show my allegiance to my union. It is though, a sign of things to come. What do I want to do? I just want to teach.

Anthem of Love

I recently read a post on Facebook about the separation of church and state argument. It detailed how an organized group of kids can meet and pray and live faithfully, just so long as it is not endorsed by the administration, district, and therefore, not a teacher either (not sure about the last one in terms of off-site. The young life volunteers and mentors at my daughter's high school sometimes work within the school district as coaches and teachers).

I've been mulling over the many times God shows up in my school day. While I don't "teach" theology, I do teach and enforce the morals of respect, support and family. That's Jesus right there. While I don't openly pray with my students, I pray for many of them. And while I don't lead a class into the aspects of sin and Jesus' grace, I do work on showing forgiveness and giving an equal share.

Recently, we've had two school assemblies featuring speakers for Black History Month. Having been doing more and more research about the history of slavery and some of its most notable faces, I've come to understand that there really isn't a way to discuss slavery and the civil rights' movement without mentioning the faith of many of its people.

Now, I know this can go both ways. some can argue that the Kingdom-Over "faith" of Christianity and more than likely Catholicism, was one of the main roots of the evils of slavery. Besides winning land for the crown, giving faith to the Natives of the new land was another top priority. Now, if it had to be forced, the more the merrier. I also understand this highly complex relationship, but knowing this allows me to know that love and grace wins more than brute force. We can learn from those mistakes as well. Should we forget? Of course not, but what can a teacher in central Ohio do to alleviate the sins of the past?

Back to the speakers. One of them was a characterization of Sojourner Truth. Among the retelling of her history of being a child born into bondage and being sold from her family at 9, told of how singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," became an anthem of her love with God. I'm looking around for my principle who is probably ready to pull the woman off the stage like she's at the Apollo Theater Amateur Night. Then the speaker goes into singing, "Jesus Loves Me," and I'm in the back, smiling as ever at the situation. I teach in an age where you can't offend anyone or speak of anything Christian, but I'm in an all-school assembly singing "Jesus Loves Me."

A Week later, we have another speaker, a radio personality and ex-body builder who spoke to the kids about a healthy lifestyle and staying positive. He ends the lesson by saying, "Put God First" and had the kids repeat it. Awesome! God isn't separated from schools. He's knee deep in them. The only thing that's close to being separated is that the schools cannot endorse any one religion (maybe you're thinking we did with the speakers we chose).

So, I go back to the novels I've read and the references to God. Shilo. Day of Tears. Sounder. Because of Winn Dixie. Stone Fox. Maniac Magee. The list is an awesome sign of the writers who wrote with their experiences and sometimes, their faith (I can only assume, but in each case it's dealt with respect and reverence). And if I'm getting into this topic full bore, how can we truly understand the people we are expected to learn about without mentioning the faith of these people? This also means we talk openly about Ghandi's and Malcolm X as well as Martin Luther King Jr.'s. Can I expect my kids to understand the abolitionist movement without first understanding that many of the first were religious men? The history books make short thrift, in my opinion. Does it mean that my own education should be as well?

I'm chapter 6 into Day of Tears, about the real-life slave auction of the Pierce Butler plantation slaves. My theme of the story is to make the kids realize how slavery was not only deplorable and a horror beyond belief, but that it was a systematic breaking of a man's spirit. I spend the time to re-read sections of the story when slaves brokered for their own lives and to keep the masters from selling their families, and end up sounding live slave auctioneers in the process. The kids of today have no understanding of this. They only know talking back, respect and personal space. Will today's black youth ever understand that feeling of worthlessness? I'm going to keep asking them and emphasizing and teaching. It's the best that I can do.

Meltdowns, Moms and Magic Elixirs

(The first part of this blog was written a few weeks back, discarded and then found again)

Tonights are the easy nights. Baths are done (Milly did open a bottle of "bath paint" that soiled the bathtub something dark purple, but otherwise, uneventful), kids are eating more than screaming and their clothes are put away. This past weekend was anything but.

We took the kids to Indiana University. My eldest had a tourney/camp and after we realized the hotel we were staying in had a pool, we decided to make it a daycation. Of course, the second we get there, a sign in the lobby tells us the pool is closed for maintenance. Despite the bad news, I kept telling myself, "Don't freak out."

Of course, we sometimes end up doing the opposite of what we tell ourselves. We remind ourselves to not say something stupid, and it's the first thing out of our mouths. So, it's not five minutes into the room that I'm getting after kids for jumping on the bed or Cruz for screaming. Not an hour before I'm regretting the decision. Soon, it's a full blown meltdown.

Then after the meltdown, you remember your proclamations. This will be a good weekend. I will help out with the kids. I'm here to help you relax. Then it all crumbles in front of you like some spilled cup of ice (which, ironically, did happen a few times).

(The rest is fairly current.)

But the weeks after have been bittersweet (we introduced that word in vocabulary to the fourth graders concerning a slave owner who sold his slaves and who used the word in his narrative, pretty interesting to see their responses). We finally got to see some indoor softball games of Lisa's, I fell back into a solid routine with my reading groups and Del and I delved back into Bible studies and share groups.

Thanks to some great ideas discovered from Sunday school, I transformed some lessons and reworked them for my needs at school. Also in the mix was an idea from Lisa's campaigners evening where they prayed for one another. So last Monday we had them finish the sentence, "I am at my greatest when I..." And the kids wrote down their answer, passed their papers to the right and wrote down the same answer or new ones. By the end, each had 28 "greatness" examples. The next day, we shared our favorites. Some of them were pretty good, like showing their work in math or cooperating with others. Then we chose one we wanted to work on, one idea we aren't strong in but wanted to improve. We wrote that one goal inside a tracing of our hand. After taping our hand-goals on the cabinets, each student laid their hands on them and said, "I am going to help (name) with...(whatever their goal was). Empowering day for me and the kids got into it. So far, the kids have been using that language in the class with one another. It's good to have a family to come to work for!

Not that this school week hasn't had their down sides. Despite some productivity in Social Studies projects and compiling picture book materials for their k-1 read-alouds in a few weeks, I had a collision of wills with a parent, one that I haven't had since my second year of teaching.

Of course, I have a habit of rattling hornets' nests. I've often told my students, that if I have to make everyone at your house mad at me so that they can gain an education, then that's the price I'm willing to pay. I rarely use the power of office referrals to social workers to get the desired affect of getting a kid in class. Sometimes, it's the power of the comment box that gets them before it gets to that point. Needless to say, when you see a mom wearing a hoodie coming down the hall after you with her kid in tow, followed by a sub principal who had the assumption something was amiss, you know it's not your day.

Whether my comments in the hall that day amounted to frustration, disgust (her words, not mine), stress, soap box, tiredness or my subconscious need to uphold my reputation in front of the kids, but doors were closed, fifth graders were laughing behind then and my kids were probably pretty stunned. Amid all this, I wondered what her daughter was thinking when mom comes to the school to chew out her teacher?

There's a lot of questions and questioning between my colleagues and I this week. Do we ignore how the boys talk to the girls in class? Do we throw our hands up at the borderline learning disabled kid who is reading at a second grade level? Do we snicker at the mom who requests to move her kid to another class as if that's the magic elixir that will suddenly cure their child's' mischief?

More to come....

Lorenzo the Lion

Tomorrow is back to school! Excited, a bit tired and always stressed because my greatest fear is failing on stage miserably. Then school starts and it pretty much goes the opposite of what I may be thinking about my lesson plans.

My mother texted me the other night and told me my Tío Lorenzo died. He's my grandmother's last brother that lived in the "valley", a southern part of Texas near the border that is known to me as such a regional landscape as long as I can remember. We would take yearly trips to the valley to see my abuelita, our second cousins, weddings and the occasional funeral.

I haven't been down since my great-grandmother passed almost 15 years ago. I miss the Spanish conversations between my grandma and her sisters (they always seem like they are arguing, and only for their facial expressions and tone, for all I know they are talking about dress sizes). I miss the outpouring of love from my cousins and the general feel that I'm in some alternate universe where the still-standing house my grandma grew up in is somehow too short for words. I sat in that house smelling the smells of a Mexican kitchen and looking at pictures of my great-grandfather in his military uniform.

Back to my Tío. His name was always pronounced "Lee-un-zo" or "L'onzo". He made trips up here to Houston many times and you always knew he was in the room. He was a strong presence (I can't imagine him and my now deceased grandfather in the same room. I wonder who was loudest?). He owned his own business (a funeral home that he passed on to his daughter) at a time that I never quite grasped that Mexicano men could be more than just city workers and laborers. He was the kind of guy that was always in dress pants, dressed nice. He was corporate Dos Equis. And even though I'm marginalizing what he meant to his family, there is no doubt he was a loved figure. He would get after my mom and I for my lack of Spanish speaking skills and told us both about it. When he called to talk to his sister on the phone and I answered, I better knew what he was saying! He never compromised. And if I spelled his name the way I thought it sounded it would look as if he was born from the grandest of all animals--Lion-zo!

After calling my grandma about her plans for the funeral, I was watching "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." As a kid, it was one of those movies that was close to me because it was one of my grandfather's favorites (along with Foghorn Leghorn cartoons) and my dad distilled this sense of movie wonderment as a kid and I knew a lot of the comedians in the movie. So, it went that all I could think about was my Houston family. My grandma's side in the valley, my grandfather's in Ohio. Me somewhere in between.

Now I watch it and wonder what my grandfather was probably laughing about all those many years ago. Was it Spencer Tracy's dreams of Mexico? Was it the foolishness of Sid Ceaser trying to blast through a locked door with a sledgehammer and getting nowhere? Was it the nagging mother-in-law that was attacking him with a purse? Or did he sometimes feel like Jonathan Winters when he destroyed the entire gas station, tearing through walls like they were paper mache? I vaguely knew the two men, my uncle and my grandfather. One from language barrier and the other from age. Death has them both, but they are released now, one in memory and one we mourn. We are much better in our life for having known them.

Optical Insomnia

It's 3 am and I'm still awake.

Perhaps it is my over stimulated brain, anxious for tomorrow's events to happen and play out in real time as they imagined. Maybe my body has been over rested from being on Christmas break, with feet that don't know what to do with themselves but to itch for a walk downstairs for one more drink of water. And of course when all you're thinking about are a countless random things, you begin to wonder what it all means.

I spent half my day at the emergency room, awaiting news of whether or not the wheezing and shortness of breath I had been battling over the past week was bronchitis, pneumonia or worse. Urgent care shot me up with a steroid and ordered me to the ER, I refused and got progressively worse. Delcina finally harassed me into going, and I was undoubtedly thinking more of the cost, time and possible bad news more than getting myself better.

Despite all that, I read some more of a book I had been reading "God's Politics" (and interestingly enough, quite a bit of information I didn't know about the Israel-Palestinian conflict), people watched (Del and I had some bad fun out of the sound of someone vomiting) and talked like husbands and wives do when their isn't a task involved or being interrupted by phones, kids' requests or the television. We left the ER, made a Kroger visit an ended the night with a banana split. It's good to be sick, indeed.

Over the past week, the inevitable wait for sleep to sweep over me like a smooth blanket never arrives. There's the thoughts about my family. Sometimes the distance from some of them is a blessing unto oneself. I always tell my mom that I love coming to Houston now because I see the best of my family. The vacation time, stress-free from work. The cousins playing together, grandma's making my favorite meals, eating out at the places I can't get here. And we've all grown up some too. As a teenager, I was too full of pride to listen to any advice. Lost and mean spirited. Who the hell was I to appreciate what I had on front of me?

And then a sleepless night turns into music, and jokes you've made during the week, and quips you want to remember the next time you see that one person. I end up thinking about women I shouldn't be thinking about, and creative ways to get my kids at school to be more than creatures of their environments. Then eventually, my thoughts turn dim and I try to black out everything (sometimes I have fun shooting the Devil with a shotgun, or chopping him with an ax and telling him to get out of my head). When I was a kid, I used to squeeze my eyes shut hard enough to see glittering spots of white and yellows. It's never really black you see when you close your eyes. That would be the end, wouldn't it? I see cloudy impressions, sometimes distant faces, those freaky optical illusion pictures that seem like two faces at a standoff, or is it an hourglass? Sparkly, faded renditions my synapses shooting fireworks.

The Reluctant Worshiper

Something today at church clicked. Perhaps it was the man sitting in front of me playing solitaire on his cell phone (ironic, the game that shares a synonym for "being alone"), or perhaps it was my son throwing a tantrum in Sunday school class. Maybe it was the youth director asking me if anything was going on at home (regarding Cruz), or the snow falling lazily outside. Maybe it was the talk I had with Rob about another friend who will be spending his first Christmas without his wife who recently passed. Or maybe it was none of those things. Maybe it hasn't clicked yet, and that's the problem.

The advent season, along with a strong message from the church to spend less (money) and give more (time, love), it goes without saying that the time of season brings out people to church who normally don't attend during the year. It's been a complete transformation to see how I expect to go to church on a regular basis, rather than the former, when i only attended for weddings, baptisms or on religious holidays like Easter and Christmas. You can tell there's a new crowd at church. Sometimes your favorite seat is filled with the butt of another person whom you've never seen. You might sit a row closer, a row back, you see the back of heads you never knew before. Sometimes you have a new-member ceremony or a baptism, like this morning.

Two babies were introduced to our church family. Beautiful kids. One of them rested on a relative's shoulder in front of us and suckled on her hands. The young man sitting next to her kept his head down for much of the service (even during the morning "welcomes" he made a point not to shake anyone's hand), and at one time I stood to sing, I realized he had been playing solitaire on his phone. Another gentleman, about a row up, fidgeted with his phone and had the look of frustration about him. He sat with his back halfway turned as if to leave at any moment. A man on a fire drill routine.

I saw myself in both of them. The reluctant worshiper, like myself over the past few weeks, with eyes on something else. Your phone, the church pamphlet, a pretty woman. Mind elsewhere. Lunch, what failure God is making you see right now (or the failure you're choosing to focus on at the moment. God has to see us in a loving light, or he'd be done with us for sure), an attractive woman's neckline.

I wondered of my emotions were on my face, exposed for everyone to see like these two men. Was I upset that my church family did not show their true love of Christ to these two men enough for them to look up from their phones, enough to smile, enough to shake someone's hand? Was I upset that I was not worshiping to my fullest, haven't been in my personal life?

Leaving church and walking up to class, I stopped by to see a friend. I've been chosen again to be part of the next Emmaus Men's Walk in March and told him I'd be ready. Will I? Will it be the kick in the pants I need? Will it give me the energy to pick myself up off the mat?

Then once in class, I see the look on my son's face. Downcast, surly. Like the two men in church, both my son and I resemble now. Two faces not ready for church today. Two faces that need some focus and adjustment. Two faces that need some discipline. But love too. Lots of love.

I sat for the remainder of the hour, my wife teaching class among the chatter and laughter of our beautiful fourth graders. I spent most of my time trying to reassemble an eraser that fits together in a 6-piece puzzle. One of the girls had broken it apart last week, and I was struggling to find the proper way to fix it. One of the kids (his name is Clay, another bit of irony in this fantastic, puzzling day) asked to try. We both couldn't make sense of it until almost the end of class. Until we noticed the pattern. We even broke it apart again to see if we could recreate the magic. Unbroken. Broken. Magic. Faith. Seems like a pattern, doesn't it?

There's a Softball in my Eye

I hate softball.

There, I said it. I hate the one sport that I willingly sought out for my daughter to play at age 11. The motivation then was to involve her in something. Perhaps it was that dad fear of his daughter becoming THAT girl. so, sign them up for everything. Chess club, band, choir, sports. Anything to keep the guys away. College scholarships? Yeah, that will work too. Just keep the guys away. Too busy for dating. Too busy for relationships. Too busy.

And softball was fun. It helped me build some daughter/dad time when she was a tweener. I loved our talks on the way to practice as she was rushing to put on her socks. The smiles when she scored. The surprise of her first triple.

There were underlying issues I dealt with. Being gone every weekend. Less time with my younger kids because I was taking score, or lobbing whiffle balls an hour before games. Early wake-up calls. Losing on Sundays. Losing on late Saturday nights and not even getting to play on Sunday. Playing 14u.

But, in the end, my daughter excelled. She was everyone's favorite teammate. She compliments well. Not the star but certainly not the runt of the litter. Fast but not lightning. Flexible. the utility player. Kinda like she is in life. Everyone's best friend, great grades but not 4.0. Not the loudest one of her bunch but no slouch. What a young lady she has turned into. And it has nothing to do with my quest to keep her away from guys or to keep her too busy to socialize. I hate softball but I love her. It's a good "but then" to have.

This fall and now going into winter, I've stayed away from any of her tournaments. If I ever missed a game during the summer, I took it out on whoever was making me not be there. I cancelled appointments and denied visitations from friends. Sorry, softball tourney. Sorry, practice. Sorry.

I did not handle this sub culture well. I enjoyed the notoriety that went with the game and being involved. I joined a softball message board and met hundreds (okay, tens perhaps) of people. Giving myself to God helped in that regard too. Instead of wins and losses (well, not sure if that itch to win will ever leave, just not by any means necessary) it was being on the right team, the right place. All the whiffle pitches and cookouts and hour before games with bad coffee were supposed to lead somewhere. A scholarship, recognition, maybe even some coaching glory. I grew selfish. Instead of loving the game because it accepted Lisa, I loved it for how it made me feel.

And this lead to other feelings. Resentment isn't something you carry around lightly. What kind of person am I to be jealous of a teenage girl. Why? Because she plays better than Lisa? Because she's treated better by the college coaches? Why am I picking on the flaws of everyone and not noticing the log in my eye? I tell my friends and they side with me. Friends sometimes comfort you instead of telling you to get over it. If I get over it, I'm weak and submissive. But isn't that the way I have been taught by my church community? Submit yourself.

So, now I sit at home on the weekends and get text updates about how my daughter is doing. This past week she finally told me she wanted me there and that it had obviously upset her that I haven't been to one game since August. How do you tell your daughter you don't want to see her coach, or a friends' mom or dad, or even their own friend? What kind of dad have I become?