Post TCAP Stress Disorder (PTSD)

It starts the same way every day for three weeks. Your student or students are sitting at the their desks.  You carefully hand out the test booklets, warning the children not to open the test booklet until you say so.  You make sure there are no distractions in your room. As soon as you say start...your fate is left in the hands of a small child whose brain is not fully yet developed.  You stand there in silence hoping that they had a good night's sleep and they will read all of the directions carefully.  You carefully walk around making sure every student doesn't move onto the next test session. For an hour or more your stomach is a complete ball of nerves.  You hope your students with ADHD will be able to sit and concentrate for the whole test. What about your students that are reading two years below grade level due to a learning disability? Then the student or students finish early and you sit there in complete silence with only your thoughts.  As the clock slowly ticks by you start to feel as if you are in the twilight zone. All you have are your thoughts. Another minute goes by and your mind begins to think about everything you can't be doing right now such as grading papers or all of the chores at home. Then your mind suddenly shifts to deeper issues. The argument you had with your spouse last night.  The disappointments of your life.  The hopes and dreams for your future. You start to wonder if your students skipped any questions. You hope they went back and checked their work.  Time is up.  You want to breathe a sigh of relief but you just can't, you know you will have to do the same thing tomorrow. Hence the new disorder of Post TCAP Stress Disorder is created. 

Now I know I am being quite silly.  But really for three weeks straight teachers and students are a bundle of nerves.  Here is a conversation I had with one of my students. 

4th grade boy: If there is a fire would they make us stay and finish the test?

Me: Of course not! We would do everything that we practice in our fire drills.

4th grade boy: Really? I thought they would make us stay and finish the test. Would they make us take our books?

Me: No, we would leave everything just like we do in the fire drill.

4th grade boy: Hmm...I thought they would want us to bring them.  They sure seem to really like their books.  

The best part is how he talks like there is this governing TCAP body that watches over his every move :)

The Tale of the Very Long Hard Day

 

                "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Psalm 147:3


As I left work today, my heart was full of pain. It was weeping for several of my students.  As a young girl, my literary heroines were Anne Shirley and Laura Ingles-Wilder.  They made teaching look so romantic.  Of course they all had the difficult students, but in the end everything turned out perfect (I know it's fiction). I have been waiting for that dream to come true.  Today I changed my mind.

What did I learn today? Teaching is messy.  It's been messy and hard since day one, but I thought it would get better over time. If all my students were robots, teaching would be the easiest job in the world.  A robot doesn't have to deal with a crazy home life, a learning or emotional disability, or bullies.  A robot isn't alive.  Life is what gets in the way of teaching and learning.  Some days I feel like I deal more with the kids' emotions than the actual curriculum I am suppose to teach. A mentor teacher once told me that you are not just a teacher but also a counselor.  You have to figure out each student's personality and find the best way to reach them. 

The conclusion I came to, as I sat in the parking lot on the verge of tears, is that I'm glad teaching is messy.  I don't think I would want it any other way.  Every one of my students has something special to offer. They are each uniquely made. I am so honored to be a part of their messy lives. 

The Tale of the "List"

 

Once upon a time when I was 19, it was popular for girls of the marriageable age to create a list of the qualities that they wanted in their future husband.  My girlfriends and I created many of these list and would share them with each other through email (facebook had not yet been created).

Here are some of the qualities that could be found on our lists:

• Funny
• Dark hair
• A Christian
• Blue eyes
• Love his family
• Tall
• Want to have kids
• Like to have fun
• Brown eyes
• Plan romantic dates
• Easy going
• Blonde hair
• Don't care about sports 
• Like to go dancing
• Be able to talk about his feelings 
• He could only be one year younger or one year older
• Play the guitar 
• Had his life figured out

Fast forward ten years and here is the new list my roommate and I came up with the other day.

• Own a home with a garage and dishwasher 
• Be able to drive in the snow
• Be able to fix things around the house
• Be able to move furniture 

After much discussion we realized that this new list was just as unrealistic and unfair as our lists from ten years ago. We came to the decision that we really just need a butler :)

***I must note that my single girlfriends and I have come to the realization that these lists are unfair expectations to put on men and is not very loving.***

The Origin of Ms. No-Bingo

This first tale is dedicated to all of the people in the world who struggle with dyslexia.  The Dyslexia Research Institute  estimates that 10-15% of the U.S. population has dyslexia.  Dyslexia doesn’t care about your gender, socioeconomic background, or race.  It can take on several forms such as effecting the way one reads, writes, or even speaks.

My Sicilian last name has always caused me problems.  My grandfather changed the way he said it because the Italian pronunciation tickled his nose. To most of my students I am Ms. B.  One student in particular never could just call me Ms. B. He kept on trying several variations of my last name.  For some odd reason the variation of Ms. No-Bingo stuck. 

This particular student struggles with reading, writing, and at times expressing his thoughts.  I get it.  I too have some form of Dyslexia (I can’t tell you how many errors I have made in just writing this one blog post).  I am always saying the wrong word or writing ‘their’ when I mean to write ‘there’. Words on signs get mixed up in my head.  For the longest time I thought the name of a favorite coffee shop was Cork and Screw (I completely missed the meaning of what I was saying too). My roommate at the time informed me that it was Cork and Cafe.  It was too late though,I had already told my date to meet me at the Cork and Screw. Then there was the time I was going to meet a date at The Cruise Room for a drink.  But I kept calling it The Center Room.  Everyone just looked at me funny when I would tell them about The Center Room.  Finally a concerned co worker looked it up and corrected my mistake.

I have not always been able to make light of my dyslexia.  In the seventh grade I was writing a play and had my friends read it. It took place around a swimming pond and instead I had written swimming pound.  I don’t think my friends meant to embarrass me but from then on I was terrified of writing let alone showing it to anyone.

In my short years of teaching, I have had many mothers break down in tears when they come to the realization that their child has some type of learning disability.  I’ve seen the pain in a father’s eyes when he sees that his son has inherited his struggle with reading. But friends, Dyslexia is not the end of one’s life.  It is just one more obstacle in life that one has to overcome every day.

If you want to know more about Dyslexia I recommended checking out The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.  Dr.Sally Shaywitz is one of my heroes!