Constructing Kasun, Educator

Let it snow.  That’s what we say in schools where an inch of snow shuts down our school system.  It seems immature, for sure.

I can’t explain the joy of the first snow day.  The inner child gleefully embraces the stolen time off.  I go back to bed while my husband readies himself for his work.  A couple hours later I go downstairs to find pure daylight and read the morning paper.  I don’t just read the news section but take in the style, metro, and business sections as well.  Then I consider the possibilities.  A walk to the gym for a weekday morning workout?  Go to the neighborhood cafe for some cuppa and a good book?  Clean the house?  Call my mom?  The possibilities are limitless.

We spent six days off last week, two for a weekend, one for a holiday, and three because of snow and ice.  I couldn’t bring myself to come to the blog.  Forgive my absence.  I’m back, for now.  Unless it snows again tomorrow… there’s a threat of the scary “wintry mix.”

I know I have a couple students who I’ve lost recently, and I think I’ve lost them to shame.  I also feel my own shame about not being better, more of a teacher, for them.  I’ll start with the students.

“Brenda, [not her real name], please come back to school,” I implored on her family’s voicemail.  I had caught Brenda on the phone before when I called about her attendance.  Once she assured me she was sick and staying at home.  One or two other times I had left messages.  “I know it’s difficult here for you sometimes, but we need you here.  Please, just come back.  I want to see you, and the other students want to see you.  Come back.”

Part of me wanted to get angry.  A few years ago I would have said, “Hello, this is Ms. Kasun.  Brenda is a very smart student, but please make sure she comes to school.  She is risking her future by not coming.  What’s more, she’s failing my class and several others because of her absence.  Please call me if you have any questions.”  My voice would have been a bit shrill, and I would have felt self-important in the message.  Skipping my class was somehow a personal insult.

But now I know better.  The world my students swim in has little to do with me.  Brenda told me that she likes my class and a couple others but hates one or two.  We talked about why it was important for her to come to school.  She told me her boyfriend, a recent dropout, insists she come to school so she can graduate.

I guess other forces have a more powerful sway on her.  I have emailed her counselor and made my last efforts to try and tell her to come back.  No more guilt-trips, just a plea to see her again.  All I can guess is that the shame is too big for her to call me back, or too big for her to show her face for now.

I called another student, Paul [again, not his real name], who is likely to be expelled.  He has been very angry in my class, sometimes with others, sometimes with me.   The same student has lived through war atrocities as a child that I can’t begin to imagine.  He’s bright, funny, insightful.  And now he’s almost gone.

His phone always worked before when I called.  This week I tried a couple times.  I couldn’t even leave the message I wanted to.  “Paul, we miss you at school,” I would have started.  “I know you did something you’re upset about, but I’ll still be your teacher,” I would have said.  But instead, I got a ring, ring, answer, click.  I’m guessing he saw the district phone number on his caller identification.  I tried again.  Same thing.

It’s possible there was a real phone problem.  But I suspect the power of shame for what Paul did–allegedly threatening security personnel and exploding in class, refusing to leave–kept him, or even his family, from wanting to discuss the matter with school personnel.

And there’s my own shame in this.  Shame for my limited attempts to make these students’ lives better.  Shame for a school system that doesn’t hear and understand these kids.  Shame for our collective impotence as a society to help kids who are hurting.

Finally, today’s Washington Post published information about a UNICEF study on child welfare.  The US ranks #20 out of 21 wealthy countries in child welfare.  Somehow I’m not surprised.

Yesterday I took several students to a conference at a university after school.  Below is a letter I’m going to share with them tomorrow about the experience.

Dear Students,

Yesterday you showed me that you can be very, very good.  I don’t mean well-behaved, I mean “good” like how I want my own kids to be some day.  “Good” as in wanting to do what’s right and not being afraid to do it. 

I was nervous about the entire proposition of taking a group of students to a university to hear a panel of speakers from Africa who have lived through war.  It was a university discussion for university students after school hours.  Would you all be up to the challenge?  At the same time, I was excited by the theme of the conference, transitioning from victimhood to peace-building.  That’s exactly what I hope for all my students to do–not to consider yourselves victims in a country that isn’t always fair to immigrants and their families, but to rise above it.

Now I know some of you didn’t want to attend, and others unfortunately couldn’t.  That’s ok.  I think if you had come, you would have followed the example of the other students.

So after the difficulties of getting the funds for a bus and finding out how many of you might be able to attend, we were set.  Some of the other ESOL students and Black Cultural Alliance (BCA) students wanted to come along, and we set out with one of the BCA sponsors.  I wasn’t certain any of the students would like the conference.  What if the speakers were boring?  What if the bus didn’t show up on time?  What if one of the students got lost?

But none of those fears were valid.  Instead, you were model students.  Better yet, model people.  You filed neatly through the hors d’oeuvres line like refined adults at a cocktail party.  You sat and listened respectfully, attentively, throughout the more than 90 minutes of discussions.  Like you, I was riveted by the discussions.  A woman from Rwanda not only fled her home country during the genocide, she spent three years in a refugee camp in another country only to experience another war that broke out there.  Another woman lived through years as a child soldier with the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.  She described the initiations into being a soldier—killing others and watching others be killed.  Others spoke of different atrocities.  And they all spoke about the need to forgive and the need to take the power of their pain and turn it into victory over war and death.  I was amazed at their courage and inspired to act. 

After the conference, many of you introduced yourselves to the speakers.  Some of you have lived through similar tragedies already.  And you keep coming to school, committing to become someone better than you already are. 

All of the speakers said we can do things to change the world.  Many said you can write letters to senators and representatives.  We’ve already done that for other issues, and we can keep writing.  But they also said we can join up with and start our own organizations.  Some of you said you’re interested after the conference.  I know you really mean that, and I hope we’re good enough teachers to help lead you to find your way.

Thanks for being such good students.  You make me want to be the teacher you deserve.

Warmly,

Ms. Kasun 

You’re reading this blog because I took a five session technology course through the Northern Virginia Writing Project.

Don’t yawn yet! My students are posting to a wiki (a space where you can search through multiple postings and worked on by multiple editors) and Google Docs (a space where several people can collaborate on one article) because of the same course. These are same students who typically don’t have Internet at home, who sometimes show up to my class pecking at keys because they seldom ever saw computers in their home countries. Thanks to the course, I’ve learned several tools which can be helpful for any student. I admit that I’m extra psyched about introducing these tools to students who are typically on the later end of the learning curve with new instructional tools.

So what’s up with the wiki? Well, my students are able to post all sorts of writing about any topic they want on my class wiki. Today was our first experiment. It went surprisingly well. On a large projection screen, I showed them how to log in to their personalized email accounts (which have a heavy filter) at www.gaggle.net. Then I showed them how to use that address to access their documents at Google Docs and also at our own wiki. Check it out at kasun.wikispaces.com.
It took time. Being the Type A that I am, I was frustrated that my students didn’t instantly work through the directions on how to access the documents without my help. By the end of class I was certain they had grown bored of this (largely because I have my own internal pressure cooker set to “high” at all times when students aren’t all engage throughout the classroom). A couple students waited for better than 20 minutes to ask me for help to log in. It was literally zero degrees today outside, and for some reason that made a few students extra late to class, so I also had to deal with them as they came in.

Nonetheless, when I read the short activity evaluation I asked the students to write, I found most of them excited about the applications they had learned. They said they are excited about being able to work on the same document at the same time with Google. They like that they can see my feedback inside the text on the Google Docs as well. They also said they like that other students can read their work on the wiki. One of my least motivated students, who admits that “It feels funny to think,” said that it makes it worth it to work hard to write if other students can see her writing.

Things are still rough and bumpy with our site. I’ll get my other two classes to work on the sites tomorrow as well. For the meantime, I’m excited about introducing technology applications to students who I think deserve them the most.

Sometimes it’s easy to romanticize the people you work with. Aggravating quirks can turn into “endearing” qualities, for instance. Other times there’s no danger in romanticizing. You know you simply don’t like some colleagues.

This week, the “world’s best administrator”–as I’ve referred to her–unexpectedly lost her husband. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but seeing this happen to her–an outstanding educator and friend–is unsettling, to say the least.

The reaction at school was incredible. Students wrote poems and cards and sent them to her. I was with her when she read some of them. A pop-out frog face made her laugh; another student swore she’d take my administrator’s place and bear this burden for her. Teachers and administrators accompanied her and her friends each day to let her know that we love her.

Her husband, who I did not know, was eulogized as a loving, intense person whose biggest accomplishment was marrying my administrator. At the funeral yesterday, the pews were packed, primarily by people who wanted to pay tribute to the man who supported a woman who has touched so many of us–with her unwavering support and creative solutions to the unending problems of public education. Many of us were members of the school where she works.

The staff at my school were informed on Tuesday. At every turn I heard people asking what they could do to help her. Some took food. Some made home visits. Some chipped in for flowers. Others offered prayers. Most of us tried to run the school as best we could in her absence as a tribute to the professionalism she demonstrates each day. Petty grievances among colleagues dissolved as we looked for ways to stretch and be better educators, despite our differences.

I still can’t sort out why my administrator suffered this loss (in addition to the loss of her mother a few months ago) this way. But one of the most unexpected graces is how I’ve finally seen that school–MY school–can be a community when presented with the challenge.