Questionable Life Choices

I almost forgot my blog post today.  It is 8:57 pm, and my goal was to be in bed by 9:00.  Yikes!  Out of necessity, this will be a shorter one.

Tomorrow I have a final project due for one of my grad school classes.  This has led me to an essential question:  Why do these projects have SO MANY PARTS?!?  This program is designed for those who want to be literacy coaches or, in my case, just want to become better reading and writing teachers.  So why do they assign us projects that are not real-world realistic? This particular assignment has taken me probably 10 hours to complete.  In a nutshell, it is a handout/book talk video about a content area book that can be used in the classroom.  For another class, I did a lesson plan that took me five hours to write.  FIVE HOURS!!!  WHY?!?  How is this going to be help in my job now or in possible future positions?  It's insanity, I tell you,  Insanity!  Why did I choose to pay for torture?!? Just a semester-and-a-half to go...

Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

I love the wider reach that Slice of Life is giving me.  When I "rebooted" my blog a couple of years ago, I had hoped it would be something that people could find, read, relate to, and enjoy.  Maybe this challenge is that dream coming to fruition.  Due to the new readers that are finding their way here, old friends, please forgive me as I lay down some background knowledge that is needed before getting to my point.

I teach Deaf Education.  I am currently assigned to upper elementary, and I love it.  Honestly, that's an understatement.  It's my passion.  It gave (and continues to give) meaning to my life when everything I held most dear was destroyed. I taught General Education for five years, and I struggled.  I walked away from teaching convinced I would never return.  Little did I know that not only would I go back, I would wake up eager to go to work every day.  Okay, most days.  I do get tired by the end of the week!  I also didn't know that I would become an absolute teaching nerd.  I soak in all things Professional Development and seek to improve myself at all times.  What a path my life has taken!

This job is not without significant challenges, though.  The one that drives everything else is the fact that most of our students do not have parents that know sign.   One of the basic principles of teaching English learners is that you use their first language to build a bridge to their second.  Our students need to learn English, but they do not have even a first language.  They are semilingual.  

The impacts of this are far reaching, and if I listed them all I would be writing all night.  And I was supposed to be in bed 40 minute ago.  Suffice it to say that as a Deaf Ed teacher, you are often faced with difficult decisions that reach far beyond the curriculum.  For example, with this utterly insane Momo business and other dangerous YouTube influences disguised as children's fare, you have to face the question of, "What do I talk to my students about because their parents can't?"  Instructions for suicide.  Porn embedded in "Paw Patrol."  It's a scary digital world, and how do you guide our most innocent through that when it really should be in the parents' purview?  What is appropriate in an elementary school setting?  How much do they need to know?  These are students who spend their hours outside of school in front of a screen due to language barriers.  How do you protect them without scaring them?  It is a difficult road to walk.

This massive responsibility is not all dark and depressing, though.  Today held a bright spot.  I have students more advanced than many we see, and they are beginning to encounter English words and phrases that do not have signs.  They must use other ASL grammatical constructs to convey the meaning of these words and phrases.  This where not having a first language becomes really problematic.  But it can also be very fun to open the door to their linguistic and cultural birthright.  I wish I had a Deaf adult who could do this part for me, as it is their language and my students need those role models.  But in the absence of that, I get to take just five or ten minutes a day to start teaching them about their language.  It truly is a joy to open the world to them.  Sometimes, it is important to take the long view and realize teaching is not only about curriculum.

How Many Times Can I Say I'm Sorry For the Same Thing?

Dear Blog,

I'm sorry I haven't written.  It is probably the fifty millionth time I've said.  I'm not sure how many times I can beg forgiveness for the same sin and have it granted.  It's not you.  It's me.  You wouldn't know it, but I love writing it.  Truly, I do.  The problem is, you never make it to the top of the priority list.  And it is SUCH a long list!  Grad school is just killing me.  I know so many teachers who have done it and done it with kids.  I'm not sure how.  I want kids.  I plan to adopt kids once this is over.  But I am grateful I don't have kids while doing grad school.  I might not have survived!

All that being said, I've decided to add something new to my mile-high plate:  The Slice of Life Challenge.  If a teacher wants to be a skilled teacher of writing, he/she should write along with the students.  To this end, this challenge was created.  For the next month, I will be writing every day.  Can you believe it?  Every day!  Hopefully this will be the start of some better blogging habits.  And so I say sorry once again, but this time I have made a commitment to do better.  A commitment that could involve a prize (if I'm so lucky), which at least will keep me focused.  Which is always a good thing.  So we'll be seeing a lot of each other this month and hopefully onward!

Your wayward author,
Amanda

Blogger Wants to Know If I'm Still Alive

I found out that if you don't post for awhile (okay, for forever), Blogger will send you e-mails to make sure you are still around.  Who knew?!?  Yes, Blogger, I'm alive.  Thanks for checking up on my slacker self!

Since I needed to verify that my heart is indeed still beating, I suppose I should make my check-in worthwhile and actually write something.  Since it has been...cough, a few months, cough, since I've posted anything, I do have things to report. 

I taught summer school (again).  I have new wood floors (not a fun process, but they look nice).  I started grad school (paying for torture).  My roommate moved out (sniff).  A new roommate moved in (yay!).  I wish I could find another roommate but have been unsuccessful (anyone know anyone?).  I tutored a student during the summer (she fills my soul in a way I can't describe).  School started again (best kids and co-teachers ever).  I want to move closer to my sister more than anything, but it's too expensive ($$$).  I have once-and-for-all decided to adopt.  And that is where I will expand some.

As previously noted, I have a great desire to have children.  I have accepted that biologically it isn't going to happen.  It's been a very difficult path to acceptance, although it I will say it helps considerably that I am the biggest pain wuss you'll ever meet.  This was always a possibility for me, but marital circumstances and then divorce nailed that coffin shut.  I have never given up the dream of having children, though.  Whether it was by being a stepmom or through adoption or both, it is something that I have wanted.

Not too long ago I made serious inquiries about international Deaf adoption.  I tried every which way I could think of to make it work, but in the end I just couldn't imagine paying $30,000+ to adopt when we have kids here who need homes and those adoptions are free.  I thought about fostering as a way of dipping my toes in, but in the end I decided what I really want to do is provide a permanent home for kids who otherwise might not find one.  I went to an information meeting and signed up to take the mandatory 35-hour class.

Then school plus grad school started.  I QUICKLY realized I could not do it all.  My plan was always to adopt as close to after grad school as possible but not before. That is December of 2019. I also remembered that adoption licensure has to be maintained.  I have to take 20 hours of classes every year after the first year of licensure.  Since December 2019 is a year and a half away,  I would take the 35 hour class, get my license, and then have to take 20 more hours a year later.  On top of that, this summer I actually don't have any grad school classes because of the way the schedule worked out.  That would be a MUCH better time to take that class.  Taking all of that into consideration, I decided to put my plans on hold.  The only reason I hadn't done so sooner is that I have gone back and forth on this so many times, I didn't want the doubt to creep in yet again.  That and I looked at photo listings and fell in love. But it honestly is not quite the right time.  Close, but not quite.  So the plan is still in place with the original time table.  It will happen.  Just not yet.

June Gloom

In my past life, I lived in Monterey, California for a couple of years.  There is a phenomenon in California knows as the "June Gloom."  Because it rhymes.  Sort of.  Get it???  Due to whatever weather and landform conditions exist there, June and July are the gloomiest months of the year.  Overcast and just sort of icky.  Which always makes locals laugh just a little at tourists' expense because that is high tourist season.  But the worst weather of the year.  It's a cruel trick, really.

As it turns out, every year I have my "June Gloom" experience.  It is, after all, the month of marriages.  Including mine.  It is also about the time of year HeWho asked (rather, demanded) for a divorce.  And in a world of Facebook where we constantly show off only the best parts of our lives, it is a month of anniversary posts.  It is a triggery minefield, and I have a love/hate relationship with them.  I truly do love seeing the happiest moments of my friends' lives.  The pictures are beautiful and full of light, life, and love.  The best parts of the human existence.  Of course, it is the part that no longer exists for me.  I've mostly come to terms with it, but that doesn't make me immune to setbacks.  Every June my own fog comes rolling in, and I tend to wallow in it for a bit.  Until I realize that I am WAY too busy to even maintain a causal online conversation with a man, much less a relationship.  (Grad school is no joke, y'all!)  And I'm okay with that.  Most of the time.

*I just reread the description of this blog.  I claim I'm not letting my divorce define me anymore.  And yet my last few posts are a bit contrary to that bold declaration.  Have no fear...I may have a bit of the June Gloom at the moment, but there are plenty of good things happening as well.  I'll be sure to share some of those things next time!

The Annual Mother's Day Post

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a Mother's Day without a post from me about it.  I actually wasn't going to this year.  I've pretty much said what I wanted to in previous posts.  Granted those posts don't exist online anymore because I did a blog reboot, but I still got it out of my system.  Mostly.  I will end this with a bit of a PSA that I like to give regularly.  But really, what drove me to my blog today was my students.

When I got up this morning, I was feeling melancholy but not weepy.  For once, I thought I was going to make it through church with my "public face" intact.  Then, as one of the speakers was up there giving his talk, I started thinking about the kids I do have in my life.  I absolutely despise the "every woman is a mother" line (see PSA at the end), but I do play a very large role in a few special kids' lives.  To understand that role, you need to understand the life of the average deaf American child.  (And possibly other countries.  I just don't know, so I can't speak to that.)

95% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.  And while there are no absolute numbers that I know of, VERY few of these parents learn to sign.  Anyone who is involved with the Deaf community in any way can attest to this.  I can't go into specifics in a public venue due to confidentiality, but suffice it to say I can estimate the number of families that sign, and I would guess it's under 20%. These kids go home and sit at their computers/tablets/phones/TVs in isolation.  That's not a life I even want to imagine living, but it is what I see every day.

This means that as Deaf Educators, we develop relationships with our students that are perhaps even more meaningful than the relationships they have with their families.  Now, it's important to note that most of these parents do clearly love their children.  There are many extenuating circumstances and situations that I probably don't even know about it that are obstacles in learning to sign.  I have some pretty strong opinions on this issue, but I never want to discount the love the parents have their children.  And their children love them in return.  They are family, after all.  But the fact remains that without language, that love is hard to convey.  Those relationships are almost impossible to form.  So when you can communicate clearly with a person, a bond forms.  A bond that has only strengthened for me by virtue of the fact that we have had years together.

Well, this is their 5th grade year.  In just a few weeks, they will be graduating and leaving me.  I knew this was going to be hard for me, but I got a taste of just how hard today at church.  I thought about these students and how deeply I do love them.  I want to take them home with me.  I want to give them all the language and experiences that they are missing out on.  I want to play an even larger role in their lives as they prepare for adulthood.  But the fact is, they are not mine and I can't.  And that hit me in the gut today.  I will see them occasionally over the next few years, but it is almost certain that eventually I will just be a memory for them.  I hope it's a good one, but a memory all the same.  With a prayer and A LOT of determination, I managed to hold it together for the hour I stayed at church.  Then I went home.  It was just too much.  Maybe next year will be the year I stay the entire time.

PSA Time:  Please, please, PLEASE don't tell a childless woman who is hurting that "all women are mothers" or "it takes a village" or anything else along those lines.  I know you think you are offering hope and encouragement, and I do appreciate the feeling behind the words, but the words simply hurt.  I don't want to be a mother figure to someone else's children.  I want my own.  I can't raise a child the way I want to when they belong to someone else.  I do somewhat fill the hole at my core by being an influence in the lives of children, but it is only a partial filling.  They are not mine, as much as I might wish some of them were, and all the words in the world won't change that.   A hug.  A "that would hurt, and I'm sorry you are hurting."  A invitation to do something fun (because singles rarely get invited to do things with the married women and that hurts too).  Those all work.  Empty words really don't.

P.S. to the PSA:  Also, asking if I want to take yours because they are driving you crazy doesn't help either.  I am happy to babysit if I am available.  I do like to use my relative freedom to help those in need.  But you aren't seriously offering me your children.  They are still yours.  And it still hurts that I don't have my own.

Disclaimer to the PSA:  Not every hurting childless woman feels this way.  Some are perfectly fine with the sentiment and even offer it themselves.  (Although that one is hard for me to understand--how do you not know?!?)  But I know many who feel hurt by this.  Those words hurt me, and it's my blog.  So I share.  :)

Puns and Unicycles

I hold a great appreciation for the pun.  The dumber, the better.  I especially like it when I think of a really so-bad-it's-good one myself and crack myself up.  Which leads me to yesterday...

I was reflecting on my life, as I am wont to do at times.  This time I was thinking about the circle of my life.  In high school and college, I was hopelessly awkward and rarely went on dates.  When I went out, it was often as the third wheel.  Somehow I managed to get married (a miracle that baffles me even after the demise of said marriage), and it was good-bye third wheel.  Which was pretty nice.  Third is really not an enviable position to be in.  So then I started down the pity path yet again, and the thought popped in my head that now I'm third wheel again.  Immediately, my silly side derailed that train of thought because the next thought was, "No, you're not a third wheel.  You're a unicycle!"  Now, to some that might sound like a depressing thought, but I seriously laughed at my silly punniness with that one.  And then promptly took my unicycle self out to see Black Panther.  It turns out, the unicycle life has its perks.  One is that you don't have to work around anyone's schedule or wants but your own.  I hadn't seen the movie yet but wanted to.  It was a Saturday night.  So what was stopping me? 

This actually brought me to a moment of awareness of healing.  It caused another reflection of the last time I tried going to a movie alone.  I was in the midst of the divorce process and fighting against it HARD--and hitting a pretty painful brick wall now known as the ex.  I was working in a school, and at that time all anyone was talking about was the movie Frozen.  I really wanted to see it but had no one to see it with.  I decided that I needed to learn to do things alone anyway, so I went.  It was a disaster.  I was the only childless adult there, and I cried the whole time.  I was a wreck!  And I never went to a movie alone for the next 4 years.

Last night was my first new attempt.  I went to a church youth fundraiser for dinner and then left early to catch the movie.  I enjoyed every minute of it.  Well...almost every minute.  There were some political anvils I didn't care for very much.  But putting that aside, I am a big fan of the comic book movie, and this one did not disappoint.  And being an action movie, it got my blood pumping a bit so I decided upon getting home at 10:00 pm I should put that to good use and get a short spin workout in.  So I did.  Very not my usual weekend activity/bedtime, but it worked for me.  I was so proud of myself.  This really was quite a milestone for me.  And I get to do it all again this next weekend when I go see Infinity War.  I thought about seeing if any of my friends wanted to go, but tickets are actually a bit hard to come by right now, and I REALLY must know who is dies RIGHT AWAY!  So score a point for the single ticket...much easier to buy than a pair or group...Unicycle for the win!