Orchestration

My life is good.  I am blessed.  My life is good.  I am blessed.  If I repeat myself enough, I'll be able to pull myself up by my bootstraps and buck up a little bit.  Again, I find myself avoiding my blog.  I'm afraid to dig too deeply into my thoughts.  If I even begin to scratch the surface the wall that I have been so carefully constructing may crumble and then poor Doug will be left with a blubbering mess of me.

Thanksgiving was wonderful and awful.  Awful because I had to work.  National Day is coming up and celebrations have already begun.  Our morning tabour assembly has turned into quite a production filled with skits, speeches, competitions, dances and demonstrations.  The boys show up in the morning with scarves, hats, waving flags and balloons.  Their faces are painted with the UAE colors of red, black, white and green. Our normal 15 minute tabour has turned into a 45 minute production. 

Yesterday morning after making my rounds and wishing my fellow Americans a Happy Thanksgiving, I found myself volunteering to be on one end of a tug-o-war rope.  When I volunteered and swished out in my long flouncy skirt to yank on a thick rope, I thought I was headed toward the winning side.  I was wrong.  I didn't pay close attention and while I was flexing my muscles at my boys, I missed the Arabic version of, "Ready, set, GO!"  Next thing I knew I was trying to dig in with my Birkenstocks on a slick brick courtyard floor.  I didn't even have time to kick off my shoes and coach my team mates with a rhythmic, "PULL!  PULL! PULL!"  We lost.  I was sad.  Personally, I think the sides were stacked against us.  Oh well.

It was hard to watch the celebration with all of the red, green, white and black and not see one single turkey feather, Indian headress, or Pilgrim collar and buckles.   This morning, though, after church, Doug and I made some stops in the city.  We ended up literally, going to three, yes, three, different grocery stores to get the things we needed.  At our second stop, I saw Christmas trees.  A store here called, Carrefore, had a good sized display set up near the entrance to the store.

I can't help but think of all the times at home when I have walked into Meijers, or K-Mart, or the mall and have felt unindated with all of the commercial hype of glitz and blitz and the not so subliminal messages of, "Buy! Buy! Buy!  Spend! Spend! Spend!"  And I have turned away, or shaken my head and tisked my tongue to grumble, "Oh, good grief,  what will they think of next?"

But, today, felt different.  Here it is Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.  By this time last year, Doug and I had already collected the mandatory lists from all of our children, we had strategized our plan of attack, and would have already been standing in lines wrapped throughout the stores with our coveted prizes in hand smirking at the latecomers rushing through the store doors.

Today, when we entered the main aisle of Carrefore, off to my right, I saw it... the sparkle, the glimmer, the glow, the twinkle and the comfortable, good old feeling of  "home."  It was like adjusting my shoulders into just the right fitting coat.  For a moment, the tension seemed to leave that space between my shoulders and for a moment, I imagined I might be in the center aisle at Meijer Thrifty Acre.  For a moment it was good.  There were several Christmas trees set up, blue and red and silver and white.  My eyes drank in the shiny blue bulbs, the silver garland and the twinkling white lights.  Home.  I miss home.

I miss my children, I miss my family, I miss my animals.  I miss pumpkin pie and grape jelly and toothpicks with dental floss on the end.  I miss my colleagues and I can't believe I'm saying this, I miss my Reading Recovery On-going Professional Development meetings.  I miss being able to discuss theory and problem solving with my Reading Recovery colleagues.  It is a good feeling to be challenged and to be made accountable and to have to search through the writings of Marie Clay to find words of affirmation or words of wisdom to guide my teaching.

Each day in my classroom is a struggle.  I struggle to find the fewest just right words to communicate to my students what it is I want them to learn.  I struggle to hold their attention and to not become the Charlie Brown teacher sounding like the honking horn.  I struggle to get to each student.  I struggle to make my room a print rich environment with very limited resources.  I struggle to meet the high expectations of my employers and administrators.  I struggle with finding the time to plan and to find resources to use to teach the guidelines.  I struggle to find the patience to endure just one more meeting for "only a few minutes."  Well, I only have a few minutes everyday.  

I struggle with patience for well-meaning folks that want to provide me with activities to teach CVC words to my first graders with  early emergent writing skills.  I struggle with patronizing individuals who want to provide professional development to show me how to use a big book.  I struggle with people who want me to teach word families and to use only visual information and expect me to teach not using meaning and structural cues.   I struggle with what I know are best practices and with what I know are not. I struggle with keeping my integrity intact and my ego in check. 

And yet, I see my boys grow.  Sometimes, I look back over my day and I think of the conversations I've had with the boys.  Somehow, we are communicating.  Today, at least 3 or 4 boys let me know they saw me in the Tug-o-war.  I think they got a kick out of it.  Each day, we have conversations about where we are going and when we will go.  We have built things together, we do projects together.  I think they want to take care of me.  They have taken stacks of books out of my hands to carry for me to put them away.  

Two days ago, they were so wound up.  They would not settle down, it didn't matter what I did I could not get them all to listen, I was angry and frustrated and eventually I was literally moved to tears, and when they looked at me and saw my distress, they stopped, they settled and they began to listen.  I could see the compassion in their eyes and the age old "man-look" of panic and confusion and concern for the crying female, and could tell they just wanted to make everything better.

They know when they are being naughty.   Yesterday, I had a list of several boys that needed to stay in during their break for being disruptive.  I began by letting the boys go to break one-by-one.  Then, the rest of them ganged up on me.  Somehow, more than one slipped through the door and they were gone!  Like a pack of wolves out the door they went.  Well, I had already corraled two of the boys on the list and they stayed dutifully behind and put their heads down on their desks.  I was alone and couldn't chase after the other offenders without losing the two I had.  Within a few minutes, much to my surprise, I had one of my runner rule-breakers come straggling back through my door.  He had willingly given up his freedom and came back to pay his dues, or perhaps he was just returning to the scene of the crime, or perhaps, just maybe, I did get through to him some of my expectations.  I'm not sure how it all came about, and then, not one more, but two more of my buddies came back.  Of course they giggled and continued to cause me more grief before I could get them to settle down long enough to think they were being punished instead of me.  Maybe, just maybe we are making progress.

There are two things I know I am doing well with my boys.  Those of you who know me well won't be surprised.  First,they are beginning to write.  They love their journals, and I love their journals.  Yesterday, I told them to draw pictures of the UAE flag in their journals and to write/draw about the National Day celebrations.  Beautiful flags were made, but to my concern, mafi-letters (no letters) mafi words.  I could tell a mini lesson was in order.  With much difficulty and energy I gathered them all on the rug.  The next challenge was to get them to "shouf" look at me and then "ismak" listen.  Ten minutes later, I was able to introduce El Konin boxes and stretching words by saying the word "f-l-a-g" slowly.  I drew attention to the "f"sound, we made links to the Zoo Phonics fish by putting our palms together and wiggling our thumbs making the "f" sound, and then.... I drew the letter F.  "F_l_a_g" I said as I dragged my finger beneath the word.  "Flag/fish", I made links to the initial letter.  I saw lightbulbs go on!  The room was freakin' flashing with lightbulbs all over that room!  F's were drawn, flag was stretched and was written "f l g" , M's for mangos and B's for burgers were drawn and written and UAE started emerging on journal pages and finally to end the day, a pizza was drawn and when I pointed out the word, "PIZZA" next to the pizza on our ABC chart, awareness dawned and my writers emerged and a word, an entire word "PIZZA" was written and read aloud next to a drawing of a pizza, "Miss Sheri, Pizza!" Abdul Satar proudly read.  Meaning, structure and visual - orchestration of the three cues needed for reading. .

And so I struggle, but we are learning.