The Lucky Ones

This week in Birmingham I have been blessed by an opportunity to reacquaint myself with the things that make me who I am. It has been bliss. And, while I have recommitted to things that used to be defining characteristics of Shelli which needed to be reclaimed, I have also realized how much I appreciate the changes and growth I have experienced in the past three or so years. Only upon stepping and looking back have I really been able to see how formative these years have been. And while I would potentially change many things that have happened to me/that I have done, the one thing I feel 100% certain about is that I have been blessed by every person who has come into my life, either strolling or decisively, during these years. I cannot in this moment think of a single person who has not enriched my life and, while it's truthfully probably the ENFJ in me that seeks the best in every single person, I like to think its because I have good taste in the people I choose to make a part of my life.

So thank-you for the role you have played so far in me. I pray that you will find in me a similar peace and that, if you feel driven to, you reach
out to me for whatever support or love you may need. Being super nice all the time may not be my jam, but love and service are. And honey, I love you too. :)

That being said (sorry for the longest intro ever), I spent some time yesterday reminding myself of the best moments in 2012. Here are the ones I landed on, in no particular order. Cheers if you are involved in any of the following moments. If you were not, let's make some awesome memories this year. :)


Getting relationship advice from my campers at maywood this year.

October brunch with house visitors. Aka how to have a surprisingly alcoholic brunch.

Mad Men party, proof that twenty-somethings love a solid themed party.

AU Singers reunion + Tyler and Jess’ wedding (aka mock WEGP reunion)

Every Wednesday at Brodioke.

Brunch at Café Gratitude

fun. Concert during spring break in Birmingham

My parents being safe through the tornado that destroyed our house. God is so good.

My first day at the K. and all of the following days. :)

The creation of a drink named for me for my birthday. A little tart, a little sweet, a little strong.


Here's to another year where the wonderful days outnumber the bad, where my teacher friends change lives every day, where all of my friends touch lives for the better every day. Where people discover or rediscover their passions and find their calling to service in whatever realm suits them. To a year filled with beauty and quips and positive media experiences and opportunities for growth with as little destruction, of physical and spiritual things, as possible.

Happy 2013. Dwell in love y'all.

The Go Getter

Quick diversion: how great are the Black Keys? And Alex Clare? And David Guetta? And the Glee Cast? Those are the only four things I want to listen to these days. #noshame.

Today, DP says to me: "I just feel stupid. I know reading is hard, but its easy for some people. Why isn't it easy for me?"

I felt entirely confident in my response:

"D, remember we talked about whose responsibility it was to make sure you learned how to read? Whose job was that over the past four years?" "My teachers." "Right. and even though it's not your fault that they did not do that for you, it is your problem and we have to work hard every single day to be great readers."

And he looked at me. He didn't say anything. His fist was clenched on the carpet and his eyes were filling with tears - not the angry boy tears that I hate so much. Those are self-pitying tears. The tears in the corner of D's eyes were full of anguish that I couldn't possibly extinguish in one mini-lesson on mindset. He took a deep breath, collected his book, independent work packet, and pencils. He walked to his desk and slumped into it, more like a ragdoll than the energetic, optimistic (albeit, dramatic) student I work with twice a day, every day.

I can't read minds, but if I had to guess what D was thinking after my manifesto, I would guess he was thinking "but, still." Potentially, he was thinking "Ms. Brown, I've been working hard for weeks and it still feels really really hard." and maybe he was thinking, "What if I can't do enough?" 

Today, I one hundred percent believe that we can do enough to get D prepared for college. But, today, I don't know what to say to him to make him believe it. 

Like You'll Never See Me Again

I'm tired. It's October. I love my job, but today, it hurts to care so much.

Fix You

My best stories from my first year at Kauffman are about K. I remember the first day I met him: he was running in fitness. No worries, he was supposed to be. They were playing a game called "Hill Bill" and learning about teamwork. He was the fastest at running and tagging in his cohort (named for Wake Forest University, the "difficult" cohort that year). I remember his face seemed much older than any 10 year old boy's face should be and that he was silent. I assumed that was him: quiet and athletic. My favorite combination in black boys. Usually they are also sweet and soulful and artistic. He reminded me strikingly of my brother as I never knew him.

I few weeks later I met another version of K. Same child, different person. This person was sneakily rolling tennis balls (they are on the bottom of the desks to keep them from scratching the floor) across the classroom, making beeping noises during instruction, and twisting his face away if you spoke directly to him. This would be the K I knew best. A student whose guardians gave him medication to put him to sleep rather than at the time it was prescribed - before school. The child who made me believe that medication really does help some students, and made me terrified of how different he was with and without it.The one who was found at least once a week tagging behind our dean in the halls because he was causing major disruption in class.

I loved him unceasingly.

My stories about K are oft told and retold. The best calls over the walkie-talkies were about him. The cleverest remarks came from him and the most frustrating conversations were with him. And last Friday was his last day at our school. I'll probably never see him again. I have no idea if he has been at a school this week. I've hoped in the back of my mind that his family would change their mind and re-enroll him... but I know that's not how our school works and not often how people work - how rarely we admit missteps.

Last week I started singing a song, "How do you solve a problem like K?" I'm afraid the answer is simple. Time. and love. I had one and won't have the other. I think about some of our other kids that are really difficult and what I know is that they have someone fighting for them, someone who loved them and fought for the time to help them. I'm not sure who was fighting for K. It probably should have been me. We always say that we're lucky to have our kids until their high school graduation... but the truth is, too many of them we won't have. And I don't trust other teachers or schools to take care of our kids and to teach our kids. That may sound really unfair.... but Kansas City schools do not have a track record good enough for K. K is brilliant - it's clear from his brand of misbehavior. It was always clever and demonstrated critical thinking skills. It was also the kind of behavior that 1) gets a kid referred into the sometimes hopelessness of special education and 2) leads adults to teach kids by their words and actions that they cannot be successful. K is so much more than a problem to solve or get rid of. Each of our kids are.

So this week I've been looking for my new K. I think I found him. I know I've found the conviction to be a fighter for him. I just pray that in another building somewhere, a teacher better than me is seeing the brilliant, soulful, sometimes silent student that I love and taking the time to figure out what he needs.

with love.

Southern Heart

Sometimes you end up doing something totally different than you planned.

I guess that's my major takeaway from the past 12 months. Sometimes you (and by you, I mean I) end up not being best for kids, end up at a totally different (let's be real - better) school, end up doing a totally different job. I can't even be shocked anymore because, as my awesome ex-MTLD said, I roll with the punches, always. And so it was not entirely shocking when our principal asked me to be our Learning Support Specialist. I still don't know that much about the position but, for the first time since last August, I feel 100% confident that I can be great for our kids. It's an awesome feeling. So, right now, four days before our new 5th graders walk in the doors, I am spectacularly unconcerned with all that I need to learn about Special Education and about recognizing what skills students need to develop and about differentiating strategies to make content accessible to all of our students... all I can think about it how unbelievably excited I am to meet our new kiddos and to actually know what the heck to do with 5th and 6th graders.

Today, I not only believe in the reality of transformational change. I have always been grounded in the mission. I believe I can and will be a major part of that for kids. I am so excited to implement my vision and to use my newfound knowledge of assessment and meaningful goal setting and... just to have a chance to really show the impact of love to a whole new group of kids. Here's to an excellent school year and the best team in all of Kansas City. :)

with love

S

At Least I'm Not As Sad (As I Used to Be)

5 more weeks of school.

That's about 3 weeks longer than most of my friends but I don't mind. I'm actually really excited to share those extra weeks with the students I've grown to love so much. I'm excited to meet the new staff for our school and to be able to talk with the new corps members about what it really takes to be a transformational teacher. [side note, just used an html code and felt like I was writing on live journal. It made me super thankful that when I first started social networking on the internet, it was necessary to know the occasional html code. Now kids just type and press click. Crazy.]

But I would be lying if I said I wasn't, in a lot of ways, ready for summer. I've dedicated myself to sticking to my summer work plan and not drowning myself in education reform and effective teaching strategies like I am apt to do during breaks. I plan to read Emily Giffin books and revisit my favorite collections of essays (David Foster Wallace, it's been a while). I plan to buy a sewing machine and channel my inner Pam Brown to try recreating pieces from the anthro website before buying them. I plan to bake and decorate our house and drink coffee and tea and sleep.

It will be some kind of wonderful.

But, for now, I have five more weeks. I woke up this morning thinking about relentless pursuit. For those of you that are hip to TFA lingo, you already know that in the beginning "relentless pursuit" was one of the major tenants of Teach for America. Corps members were reminded over and over that they needed to be relentless in their pursuit of excellence for their kids and for the educational systems of America. By the time the 2011 corps members showed up, the philosophies had shifted a bit and were more focused on the transformational change part, at least in my view. The idea seemed to be: the kind of people who come into TFA are already going to be relentless, we don't have to push them. Today, when I was getting ready to go work on lesson plans, I realized that I did not have a clue what relentless pursuit meant before this year. I didn't have to.

Before last summer I would have said that I had relentlessly pursued everything I had gotten in my life: to get scholarships and internships and good grades and to get into law schools and then to get into TFA... Today I am painfully aware that I did not. Don't get me wrong - I worked hard for those things and I would never say that they simply came to me. To do so would, I think, undermine the importance of accomplishments not just for me but for anyone who had achieved similar things. But I was certainly not relentless in my pursuit of those things. Because (and here's my point, promise), I never had to fail at those things and then try again. Then fail... and then try again. And then fail and try once again. I put in the hard work and they worked out. The first time. Possibly the second. Mostly the first. In August, I was woefully unprepared for what it felt like to fail and come back with the same amount of dedication and focus. I thought relentless pursuit was defined by intensity. I see now that it is defined by redundancy.

Practically, I know that having people help me through effective coaching and practical feedback has been the game-changer in my teaching career. The fact is, relentless pursuit alone would not have made me an effective teacher back in September. But I think it's worth noting that I had to have a major mindset change about what it would take to be a good (not even great teacher) for kids who desperately need people in their classrooms every day who not only care deeply about them but have the ability to give them the very beginnings of equal opportunities in this country. Yeah, it takes intensity and passion and all those other things. But I had to learn to shoulder my feelings about struggling. to shoulder my complaints about the lack of support and poor training, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It was new for me. It still is. But as the adult in the room, the one who had access to an amazing educational experience and the right combination of dedication and empathy to want this job - I have to, daily, get over myself and relentlessly pursue what it takes to be life-changing for kids.

Here's to five more weeks.

with love,
Shelli

Be Calm

You’re right. It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that you’ve spent six years in a school system that is chronically broken. Where adult after adult says they care about you while in reality they would rather not fight and push and demand what they should to ensure that you are receiving an excellent education. It’s not fair that culturally, you have been told to respect people who demand it from you and show that they are the dominant ones, while 90% of your teachers were raised in a world where they automatically respected positions on authority. It’s not fair that habits that you got from your parents that they got from their parents, that run rampant in schools around the country are the behaviors with which we believe and know you cannot move forward in life. It’s not fair that you’re having to move forward with blind trust that the work you are doing will lead to better opportunities in a better life. Especially since you’ve likely never seen the fruits of the “education” your family and other people in your community received – some of which went to the best public school in the city. It’s not fair that it feels sometimes like we’re asking you to be someone that you are not. It’s not fair that the light skinned and haired kids from the suburbs have opportunities with mediocre work and sub-par instruction that are withheld from you until you prove that you are exceptional. It’s not fair that, in this day and age, people who look like you and are successful are assumed to either be extraordinary or to have played a system. It’s unfair. It’s unfair that you have to jump over hurdles that most of your instructors could never imagine just to make it to the building every day, then you get consequences for reactions that are natural outside of our building. That you’re being told by me and every other teacher that what we’re doing for you is so important… but you know that all of your friends in neighborhood are told that their education is just as important and just as meaningful, yet they don’t get punishments for rolling their eyes. They don’t make 17% on tests. And again you have to blindly trust that we are leading you down a path that is the definition of transformational.

If I had a crystal ball, the only thing I would use it for would be to show you that it’s worth it. That the battles we’re having now will in fact set you up for success in a way that another school would not. That we’re pushing you so hard now to teach you how to be in school. That it will get easier over time. I wish you could see yourself sitting in a college classroom, putting the critical thinking skills you learned in 5th grade to good use, asking thoughtful questions and pushing your fellow classmates thinking with questions. I would want you to see that, all those years ago, your teachers were not against you. They were not the enemy. And that school wasn’t just a place you had to go every day. That it changed your life. And we cared so deeply about you that we couldn’t let it be easy and let you sit in class not finishing work.

But you’re right. It’s not fair. And my prayer for you is that when you make it through our system, you are faced with a generation for whom equal opportunities is not just a catch phrase. Where those opportunities are given to kids in classrooms, every classroom, across the country. I hope by then you can see fair.

Headlines

"I pray that enterprising educational leaders around the country take the lessons that we've learned from the finest charters and apply them to their schools and school districts. And I pray that their efforts lead to the beginning of the end for that latest incarnation of school prayer that worries me most, the prayer of families whose best hope for their children's future is the random chance of a lottery."

Took the words out of my mouth. Check it out:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-ross/a-charter-school-prayer-f_b_1189125.html?ref=education-reform

I promise I'll legit blog soon. :)