What is "real" learning?

I actually began writing this post back in December and left it partially written because it felt like a bit of a Pandora's box post---one that would open, go everywhere, make a mess and leave me to try to contain it in the limited time I have to write. 

But this morning, my husband shared an article in our local paper about the computer program the school district uses for credit recovery. The article made the program look like a bad idea, and that isn't an incorrect assessment. What it is is an incomplete assessment. So when I came here to write about something else entirely, I thought perhaps I should finish this post up.  

Let me begin by saying that this year G is taking an online physics class using the computer program mentioned in the newspaper article and that doesn't make me happy at all as a concened parent who knows her son will be attending college. If his school doesn't have a physics teacher to teach physics, though, what option does he have to take this class? As I often say, "We don't live in a perfect world, so the options we have aren't perfect." 

Photo by Samuel Bourke on Unsplash

Two days a week for the past several years, I have worked in a high school with students who have failed classes. Some of them are just behind by one or two classes, while others are behind by 8-10 classes. They are given the opportunity to catch up by doing computer classes using the newspaper-mentioned program and being a part of credit recovery, in which they have one or more class periods per day to work on these computer classes.

In order to graduate high school in the state, a student must have a minimum of 22 completed credits (not just attempted; they have to have passed the class with a D or higher). But over the course of a high school career, assuming students take and pass 7 classes a day and each class earns them .5 credits, they will graduate with 28 credits. Potentially, a student could fail six classes, not make up any of them, and still graduate from high school. Of course, the classes that make up these required 22 credits can't all be PE. There are requirements within those 22, such as 4 English classes, 4 math classes, etc. 

The students who end up in credit recovery are a mixed bag. Some of them went to elementary school with my sons and struggled with school in their earliest years. They are socially fine, but intellectually low. There are aspects of high school study they just don't understand because of the way their brains are made. 

I worked with a student last year, and I tried without success to explain Vertical Angles Theorem to her because she had failed geometry. When one method I tried didn't work, I tried a different way. It was utterly exasperating for both of us. This student worked hard and really did try, but geometry simply wasn't something she understood. 

I remember taking geometry in high school and not understanding it, or feeling like I didn't. I passed the class, probably with an A because I was grade conscious obsessive, but I only now, at age 51 and having worked for the past almost four years with students in credit recovery feel like I have a better understanding of Geometry I. Now Geometry II, with inscribed circles and other kinds of nonsense....not so much. 

Some of the students in credit recovery have horrible attendance, and that is the reason they fail classes. A student turned up the other day who had missed 80 days of school. He simply cannot make that up. As a general rule, schools don't have enough space to keep putting kids who miss school into classes semester and semester. They will age out before they actually graduate. 

Some of the students in credit recovery are ELL (English language learners). I have numerous students who I have to communicate with using Google Translate. I am a good teacher, but I cannot explain geometry using Google Translate without it taking exorbitant amounts of time away from other students who I need to assist. So I'm left with "Do I help 6+ English-fluent students with 12 of their classes or 1 ELL student with 1 class?" 

Some of the students in credit recovery have zero motivation. They might be poor readers, and that may impact their motivation, but some of them do not care. That doesn't mean they will always not care. Some of them are just really immature. Some of them lack motivation because they are foster kids, neglected kids. Some of them are in the early stages of drug addiction that they will pursue with greater ferocity once they are out of their parents' homes. Some of them have untreated ADHD or depression or anxiety and self-medicate with drugs. 

None of them, one on one, is a bad kid. 

I know that what I do is a band-aid for a diagnosis of partially severed arm. 

But we do not live in a perfect world, do we?

Classroom teachers lament credit recovery, and I can't blame them. But I also know that many of the same teachers have repeatedly high numbers of failures who end up in credit recovery, and one has to ask why. Is there anything that could be done differently within those classrooms and among those teachers to help keep students from needing credit recovery to begin with?

Some teachers lament credit recovery on principle; they don't actually teach most of the kids who end up in credit recovery, but they have an opinion anyway (which is fine; everyone is entitled to theirs). Often, these are the same teachers who think it is unfair for schools to give so much attention to at-risk students. What they fail to recognize is how unfair it is that so many of the kids who do well in school come from upper middle class, secure families to begin with. I tell my children regularly that they have a responsibility to do well because they have been given so much that they haven't actually earned. Their grandparents and parents have laid a foundation that they are benefitting from.

Some teachers say, "What does a diploma even mean if they aren't really learning anything?" and I think the follow-up questions to this are things like: "What is real learning?" Does an "A" or a "B" mean a kid has learned something that they are going to retain? Does an "A" really mean a child has mastered the concept?"

We often have nostalgia for times past, as if the same problems that plague us today aren't mostly identical to the ones from decades ago.  You cannot tell me that there weren't kids in high school in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s who somehow earned diplomas who didn't do jack. (I often suspect that these are the same people who regularly comment on social media about how crappy the district is and how easy it is to be smarter than a fifth grader.) 

If real learning was measured by someone's ability to explain it to another person, would any of us pass high school, either in the past when we actually graduated or now? 

I am a cog in the machine and cannot make any change to the system, but I strive to make the miniscule changes I can in whatever way I can the two days a week that I work with credit recovery students. 

Yes, the students I work with use the computer program, but I explain the FOIL method of multiplying binomials, and I give them hints about multiple choice questions (watch out for "all" and "never"), and I explain Punnett squares and I try to use the face-time I have with them to teach them something because I know, probably better than anyone, how much more and better could be done. 

Post election deep thoughts (why I'm not shrieking nor obeying in advance and how novels help me make sense of all this shit)

I never voted for Donald Trump, and I never bought into the notion that because he wasn't part of government he could "fix" it, draining the swamp and all that nonsense.

I had read Jack Gance by Ward Just, after all, just one of many novels that show how despite whatever idealism a person brings to government, that will soon be beaten out of them for a more realistic (and/or corrupt) approach.  I had also lived and seen just how much the idealism that goes into entering the teaching field is quickly beaten out of you. AND I had become a parent, where the idealism of "my child will never" is destroyed within moments of leaving the safe cocoon of the hospital. 

If anything, in my mind, Donald Trump had a worse shot of fixing anything because he knew nothing about government, probably less than a fifth grader. Government is meetings and negotiations and downright fucking boring, and I never got the sense that Donald Trump could even handle that for a millisecond. 

But beyond all this, the reason I refused to ever vote for him was his behavior---making fun of disabled people, calling immigrants horrible things, telling people they come from shithole countries, his basic linguistic abuse of anyone and everyone. He embodied, and still embodies, the antithesis of everything I have ever taught my children or everything I was ever taught about being a decent human being. 

When I think about people voting for him to pack the courts or "save the babies" or close the border, I heard them compare him to biblical figures who, despite their flaws, did great things. But I saw the choice to vote for him for any of these reasons as a Faustian bargain. I still see it that way. 

Since the election, there has been great gnashing of teeth and shrieking, and perhaps those things are warranted, but they also feel like the exact same response from 2016, and it seems so extra this time. 

I am not at all suggesting that by 2020 things weren't shit because they were. Immigrant children were separated from their families, and the government was unable to locate and reunite them. The national debt grew even bigger under the Trump presidency per year than for many previous presidents.  Hundreds of thousands of people died due to COVID, but the fallout was profoundly shittier for the people who listened to Donald Trump and not their own physicians. None of this seemed like anything that would fall under the "What Would Jesus Do" heading. 

None of the people I see or read about who are carrying on are Cassandra, the Trojan princess. Unlike her, they have not been cursed with the knowledge of the future. And even if they did know the future and could speak to its accuracy 100%, no one will listen anyway. The assumption is that things will be horrible under Trump, and based on past experience, I don't doubt this, but how horrible will they be. Who knows? Will they be equally horrible for everyone? I doubt it. Or will it be like A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes where everyone, but especially women and children, are most ravaged?

The assumption is that if Kamala Harris had won, life would be roses, and that isn't a given either. I have been thinking about 11/22/63 by Stephen King about the assassination of JFK and what might have happened had it been foiled. The assumption is that everything would be wonderful in the future if only JFK had been able to complete his presidency, but protagonist Jake Epping visits the future to see the fruits of his work and finds that perhaps leaving history alone to play out as it did was the best option. 

Another thing I have been thinking about since the election is how much someone's political leaning matters to me. 

I recently had a falling out with someone who is very much left-leaning as I am. This person has a good heart, but I was working with this person in a professional capacity and was going crazy. I didn't understand why this person made the choices they did, why they micromanaged, why they were inefficient, how things could be in such disarray. It was stressing me out to a degree I just couldn't handle anymore and so I extricated myself in a way that hurt this person. It wasn't my desire to hurt this person, but I had just hit my proverbial wall. The relationship ended because I couldn't tolerate the manner in which this person operates; what works for them did not work for me. Should I have continued just because we are politically similar? Of course not. 

In another work situation, I am surrounded by people who are generally much more conservative than me. The working relationship is supportive, and I am not micromanaged. They value my input, and I value theirs. They are organized and consistent and communicative, all things I think are important to my professional mental health. So should I discontinue that relationship because we are politically different? Again, of course not. 

In October, before the election, some members of my family and I visited a small town in Kentucky and ate at a local restaurant. This town is largely white, and the county in which this town sits voted for Trump in the election (64/35). 

At the restaurant, I noticed that there were two black children sitting at a table. The little girl was coloring pictures, and the boy was watching a football game on an ipad. Their mother was working tables. What I noticed was how all of the other employees, who were white, took turns caring for the children. One server would sit and color with the little girl. A guy who I assumed was working back in the kitchen took her to a back office so she could watch television. Everyone was looking out for the kids and helping the mom, and that told me a lot more about this restaurant and, perhaps, the town, than who they vote for in a presidential election. 

Yes, this is simplistic, and I know there are horrible racist people in the world. But there would be horrible, racist people in the world if Kamala Harris had won. There were horrible, racist people in the world when Jesus lived. There will be horrible, racist people on the planet until there is no planet Earth. 

But I cannot listen to and watch people shriek and lament and wail because they just make me anxious. 

Whatl I can do is put good into the world in which I live. I can work with students and treat all of them with respect and kindness. I can share stories with them about history and discuss the ways in which life is complex and gray much more often than it is black or white. I can donate to causes that plant trees to help mitigate global climate change and help people have their civil rights restored (because that is a nightmare I will have to write about at some other time). I can stand up for others when they are being harassed or marginalized. I can stay the hell off social media much more than I was. 

I can refuse to submit to unkindness. I can refuse to call the police on my neighbors. I can decide when something is legal versus when something is moral...because don't we all do that anyway to some extent. 

And I can hope that MLK Jr was right and that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, but it will only bend if I am doing my little bit in my little corner of the world. 

Bonus baby's quinceanero (because 15 is hard)

Dear M,

When I look at photos from our family trip to Scotland just a little over a year ago, I am amazed. You seem like such a baby compared to what you are now. I think you have grown a half a foot since that time, although some of that height may be in your hair. 

Worried about mom's driving in Scotland. 

You are, I think, the snarkiest person in our house, a title I've held for a long time and don't hand over easily. Perhaps what makes it so funny is that it is so unexpected given your general reserved demeanor. You don't say much, but when you do it has a sharp bite. You regularly make us roar at the dinner table. [Your birthday picture when you raised your shirt (as a reminder of your "MY NIPPLE" video when you were two) is evidence of this---completely unexpected.]

In August, you started high school with your brother. Each morning when you guys get out of the car, it is interesting to see you walk away. After so many years of you doing "same thing as G," it is clear that you have your distinct styles and personalities. While he is walking with purpose into the building, you have a slow slink; it is a reminder of your entire personality--high on chill.

The transition to high school has been easy. You don't talk much about school, but you also don't complain. You have met or remet some people you used to know in elementary school so that has been good; plus, you seem to have a fairly easy time making friendships. 

You continue to be the cat whisperer and are even willing to pause your dinner to go pet S or S when they flop on the floor. This fall break you got to do something you enjoy---power-washing. I still need to pay you for that (oops). You are always willing to be helpful to me, your grandparents, or really anyone. That is a good quality to have. 

What stuns me about you turning 15 is that in one year I will begin teaching you to drive, a fact that seems impossible. How is my baby getting so big and hitting all these milestones so quickly? It took forever, it seems, to get N to hers. G's have come quicker, and yours have spun me in circles with their speed. 

You were and are my unexpected joy, and I continue to watch you peel back the layers of your personality and become who you are. I'm glad you are my bonus baby.

Love,

Mama

Young and sweet, only 17

 Dear G,

This past week you turned 17.

I've said this before, but I have a harder time believing yours and M's milestones than I do N's. I'm not entirely sure why. I suspect it is because I had three and a half years with just her, when time moved so slowly. Once you and your brother came along, time started moving at lightspeed. 

Plus, N hit her adult size by middle school, while you and your brother continue the normal slow-grow of maleness, in which one week you are tiny, the next you tower above me, and within six months I need a small crane to give you a proper hug. (I have been the smallest  one in the family for awhile now, at least in terms of stature.)

So where is your life in this moment?

Well, you've had a bumpy and busy six months or so. 

You experienced an unpleasant falling out with some friends in the spring, which is good training since these things can and do happen no matter your age. You worked your first job this past summer, which provided you not only a paycheck but the experience of tedium which all jobs have at least some of the time. You took the permit test and have spent about seven hours behind the wheel, which I think has further cemented your desire to one day move to Europe and use their great public transportation system. 

You are taking eight classes this school year, including an AP, a dual-credit, and an online one, and you are very focused on school being for learning, not for socializing. You are your father's son, for sure. 

One thing that has surprised me is your desire to try some new clothing, which might not seem like a big deal but totally is. You come from at least two generations of persnickety clothes-wearers (me and your Nana), and while I will not be sad when I no longer have to be involved with your clothes purchases, I am proud of you for trying new styles and textures. 

We continue to have movie weekends, and it is fun to hear you pronounce virtually of them as being in your Top 10. Fortunately, we have raised you to be willing to laugh at yourself so when we poke fun of you for saying this, you are (mostly) willing to enjoy the joke. 

Even harder for me to believe is the reality that in less than a year you will be an official adult. I don't think either one of us is really prepared for that, but as I've learned, you move at your own pace in your own time. You have come such a long way since the days when you threw temper tantrums--I am thankful every day for the doctors, nurses, and therapists who have helped (and continue to help) you become comfortable in your own skin. 

You have always been sensitive and empathic, and while these are wonderful qualities, they can make it hard to live in this world.  I hope if you've internalized anything in these 17 years, it is that your dad and I love you so much and that we want to help you become the best version of yourself you can be. While the struggles you've experienced haven't always been about happy events and conversations, these have led us to understand you better, you to understand yourself better, and all of us to more firmly solidify our bond. 

Enjoy your new games and your key lime pie!

Momma

Let's bludgeon the phrase "You got this!"

I hate the phrase "You got this!"

I hate the exclamation point on the end of the phrase.

I hate the toxic positivity that this phrase expresses. (Everytime I see it, I imagine the person saying it with bulging eyes, a weird grin, and maybe holding pom-poms and waving them like a lunatic.)

I hate that people use this phrase all willy-nilly, whether someone is starting a new job, wallpapering their bedroom, making a recipe they've never tried before, or getting ready to undergo chemotherapy for a life-threatening cancer. 

It is back-to-school time so I'm seeing "You got this!" all over the place, and it's driving me insane. 

Yes, yes, I realize the intention when people use this phrase is to offer support, but it is just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad phrase (to borrow from a writer who recognized and used a great phrase when she thought of it). 

Here is the thing:

You don't know whether the person you're saying "You got this!" to actually has "got this." 

Maybe they are a freaking hot mess of unmitigated garbage as they prepare for their job or chemo or wallpapering extravaganza. I know from watching a parent go through chemo that there is no "I've got this" going on in their heads. Cancer has got them, although the hope is that that isn't a permanent condition. "You got this!" sounds insincere and trite. 

Starting a new job is terrifying, and to be told "You got this!" may make the person feel like they "should" feel confident, which makes them feel even more scared and nervous. 

Moving into a dorm and starting college is, likewise, scary as hell. "You got this!" presumes that everything will be fine, but maybe everything won't be fine. Maybe the kid will hate dorm life and their roommates, hate their professors, and change their major 17 times before finally dropping out to do something that actually fulfills them. 

To me, blasting "You got this!" as a comment on every new thing that someone is dealing with is careless and downright unkind. 

And it's also really lazy.

"You got this!" to the person who is getting a new job instead of saying "It is so nerve-racking to start a new position, but I know you are smart and a hard worker, and any job would be lucky to have you."

"You got this!" to the person who is wallpapering their bedroom instead of saying, "Man, I did that once and glued my legs together, but I think you are probably a better direction follower than I am. Good luck!"

"You got this!" to the person starting chemo instead of saying, "I really hate that you are having to deal with this, and I am sending you hugs and wishes for comfort and peace."

So I would like to bludgeon that stupid phrase to death, bury it under a rock, and forget about it forevermore. 

Helping my kids embrace their "fuck thats"

If you ask my mother, she would probably tell you that even as a young child, I was very in tune with my "fuck thats." (Suffice it to say, I wasn't always the easiest kid to handle.) 

I had (and have) strong opinions and wasn't (and am not) scared to tell anyone what those opinions are. I don't try to knock people over the head with what I think, but if a discussion or debate comes up, I'm not a shrinking violet. 

When I was a kid I hated going to church and made zero effort to try to shut my mouth about it. I let Mom, Dad, my brother, the priest, god, and the devil know how I felt. But I kept going until I was 24 years old (which is about when I learned not only to say my "fuck thats" but also act on them). 

As a teenager, I hated messing with my hair so while other girls had their long locks, I got mine cut at a barber shop. I said "fuck that" to looking like every other teenage girl. 

Despite coming out the way I was, when I had my own children, for a short time I thought of myself as an artist, rendering in clay what my children would become. I would shape, mold, and produce these amazing kids.

I quickly learned that 1. I don't know what I'm doing and 2. they are who they are from the moment they are born and while I can do some things to guide them and provide them a solid basis on which to form, I am not the artist that creates a child. 

At the same time, I also began to resent the idea that my child was an extension of me, both for myself and my kids. Just as I was a person beyond being a mother, my children are not little Carries or little Ds running around. They may have similar things in common with us because they share our genetic code, but they are not us. To not see them for who they are is as wrong as people seeing me only as a person who has produced children. 

N loves to shop, and I despise shopping. It isn't an activity we do together. But we both love reading, so we talk books.

G loves to play video games, and I have zero interest in them. It isn't an activity we do together. But we both like films, so we watch them together. 

M loves.... I'm not sure, exactly. We're still working on activities we do together, but he enjoys being snarky, and I love his snarkiness. 

Recently N and G have been in situations where they have felt like someone is trying to make them into something they aren't or get them to do something that doesn't align with their desires. 

For the past several years, the popular thing is for college students to do "study abroad" for an entire semester or multiple semesters. It can be a cool opportunity, but N doesn't want to do it, yet she feels some pressure from classmates and even some teachers to do it. So we talked about why she shouldn't feel badly that this isn't something she is interested in doing. 

She would rather travel after college when she can feels like she can have total fun and not worry about fitting in schoolwork between visiting new places. Doing a semester abroad is her "fuck that," and it is totally fine if she doesn't do it. 

I had encouraged G to join Beta Club or National Honor Society this year since before long he will apply to college and for scholarships. I figured these groups are the least time-consuming things he could probably get involved in at his high school. He thought about it for a couple days and asked if I was going to make him join one of these organizations. 

"I'm not going to make you do anything beyond go to school and work to the best of your ability which is A and B work," I responded.

Forcing him to join an organization that he has zero interest in doing (his "fuck that") would cause both of us endless grief, so why do it? I was president of my school's NHS when I was a senior, but he isn't me. Would it possibly be beneficial to him to join? Maybe, probably. But would it be beneficial for him to be forced to join when he absolutely doesn't want to? No. 

It has occurred to me on occasion that when my kids ask me a question, and I respond with "I don't care" they may take it as "My mom actually doesn't care," but I try to help them understand that things like what clothes they wear or hairstyles they have or interests they pursue (provided they are legal) doesn't matter to me as long as they are doing what they like and not hurting others in the process. I didn't care about field hockey one iota but I supported N when she played (and complained about it too if for no other reason than to emphasize how much I freaking loved that kid because I did "the sports thing" to support her). 

I think they have learned that mom "not caring" about a lot of trivial things means that I do care about who they are an awful lot. 

I'm ready for the long pause that is menopause

I had two glasses of wine earlier and tipsy-texted a friend to bitch about work-related people things, so I'm in an oversharing mood. The buzz is gone, but I read an article in The Washington Post about the changes that one's brain undergoes during the years before, during, and after menopause and felt a need to write about all the hormonal nonsense that I've been undergoing for the past....hmmmm....six years. 

While I wouldn't say perimenopause is too much trouble, it is just enough trouble to have me wondering the following:

                                                Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Could I be dying of colon cancer? (due to bowel changes that started around age 44, which were followed soon after by a colonoscopy which found my colon to be a perfect specimen.)

Could I be dying of colon cancer? (because I can no longer drink coffee because it brings on full-blown um....unhappy bowels. Started two years ago--age 48. It is the only food/drink that I have an issue with.)

I don't worry about these too much because most women around their periods have bowel changes, so whenever my GAD starts to fly straight off the handle, I remind myself that it probably isn't a terminal diagnosis. 

Could I be in the early stages of dementia? (because I cannot remember anything, cannot remember the names of things, cannot remember why I walked upstairs/downstairs/into a room, call things by the wrong name even when my brain tells me I'm saying the correct word.)

The only reason the aforementioned one doesn't worry me too much is because of what happened to my brain when I was pregnant, age 30. I told a classroom of 6th grade students that if one particular boy didn't do well on the spelling test I was going to kick his butt, except I DIDN'T SAY BUTT. When they looked at me stunned, I said it AGAIN, EXCEPT I DIDN'T SAY BUTT. 

It was then that I realized I had not once, but twice, told a room full of kids that I was gonna kick a kid's ass. While this might be par for the course in 2024, it was not the usual in 2003. 

This anecdote is my personal experience with hormones fucking with my brain at a young age, and therefore, anything is possible now. 

Do I have a fever? (because I get hot for no apparent reason or for exerting myself in only the slightest possible way that would not make anyone under normal circumstances hot.)

Did I tinkle a little in the bed? (because I wake up and am lightly damp. I don't have full-blown hot flashes that douse me in wetness but dampness that wakes me up. Sticking one foot outside the bed cools me down.)

Why the hell do I want to have sex so much? (I'm confused; my husband is WAY confused. This hasn't occurred since 2006 when I desperately wanted to have a second child and D complained we were having sex too much. What dude complains about this? I have yet to let him live this down 17 years later.)

Why am I completely wide-the-fuck awake right now? (I walked 18,000 steps today, didn't have any caffeine, and took a Unisom, but I'm wide awake and have read 9 chapters in my Kindle at 3:00 am.)

How many days has it been since I took my antidepressant? (Oh, wait. I did take it. Today and everyday. Right on time.  I'm just on the verge of running away to the woods so I only have to deal with my own shit...not everyone else's. It's hormones....right.)

So all this....no big deal really....but I think I thought it would start later, like around age 50. Six years or so in and I'm sort of ready to be done. Turn the spigot off now. 

I feel like everyone talks nonstop about periods and pregnancy, and then that's it. Radio silence. So maybe that's why I'm writing this, to let someone know what this perimenopausal stuff is like for me. Maybe they won't feel like they are constantly, maybe on the verge of cancer or dementia or fever or generally falling apart.