Constructing Kasun, Educator

Here is a smattering of observations from last semester’s work here and how it felt.  They’re some final reflections before other activities drive my attention elsewhere (I’m about to go to the Opening Ceremony for the Korean Fulbright teachers I’ll be teaching over the next several weeks, for example).

I never took a day off.  Not. one. day.  That was unwise (I’m being kind to myself).  Yes, we moved during the semester; I went to a friend’s wedding in California; my in-laws visited for ten days; my dog got sick and had emergency surgery, etc.  There were a couple days when I really needed a day, just one.  But I refused to allow it.  It was a sick sort of fear that if I missed just one day, I’d fall behind, and I’d have only myself to blame.  In reality, if I had given myself a day off–even a day a week–I probably would have been more clear-minded about doing my work.

I almost didn’t take time off during this holiday (yes, I still have work–the Korean teachers, the advisory program doesn’t follow the university schedule, unfortunately).  I started to realize I was angry at myself for not getting a break, fantasizing about summer break already.  That was wrong, especially since I was feeling guilty for not working enough during my break.  So I just came off four days of a self-imposed break.  At Pedernales Falls on Rob’s birthday (Saturday), I felt myself having thoughts, the kind I used to have when I wasn’t working and feeling sick about working.  

When I finished writing my last paper at the end of the semester (I wrote forty-five pages in the last couple weeks… this isn’t remarkable for graduate school, but an indicator of how busy I was), I felt not just a sense of relief.  I felt like I had just gotten out of jail.  When did graduate school become prison?  Again, I like what I’m studying; I’m passionate about it.  But I do not want to feel imprisoned.  

So, next semester, I will give myself permission to have breaks.  If I end up feeling constantly shackled, my work will suffer, and I will suffer.

And now it’s off to work.

I like using a high-currency education word start.  I’ll assess my measurable goals (SMART goals?) and then quantify these measurements.

Not really.  The funny thing–coming to study at the University of Texas isn’t quantifiable.  What would I measure?  My GPA?  Hours spent paper writing?

Things are about as clear as mud.  I like the challenges of being here.  Starting a new program.  Professors with diverse backgrounds–some are very young, others very seasoned and well-published.  Being pushed to learn in ways that are sometimes uncomfortable.  At the risk of exposing my deep ignorance, I’ll take a stab at offering some things I have learned:

–Concrete historic explanations of institutional racism in the experience of immigration–see information about “Operation Wetback” if you have any doubts.

–Enhanced depth of understanding regarding the mismatch of teachers (usually, white, middle-class women) with an increasingly diverse population.  Over the holiday season, I have met many white, middle class women teachers (disclaimer–like me), and tried to explain my interests in pursuing my PhD with sympathy toward their work.  Those conversations feel kind of uncomfortable, because we talk about race, power, and class and how to try and meet students with backgrounds different from one’s own.  Solutions for what to do about “those children” (you know who I’m talking about, right?) are never ready in a twenty-minute holiday party meeting.  But we share experiences, and I listen.  I guess I’m most moved by how these teachers really want to understand what to do.   

–Better ideas about how to do research… I’ve developed better skills (through practice in one of my courses–thanks Dr. Urrieta!) at listening to people I research, respecting their positions, attempting to highlight their ideas through multiple lenses… lenses of current histories and cultural contexts, my own ideas, their lived experiences.  I have been informed by various ways of knowing (and stay here to learn more from these perspectives) including Chicana feminist epistemology, critical race theory, and others.

I read (and write) a lot.  I hear from other students that I’ll be reading a lot more next semester.  Yikes.  I tell myself that since I have gotten used to Texas (not really, but why stop lying to oneself?), I’ll have more mental space to read.  One of my professors for next semester emailed us a complaint a student sent him about how the nine books he’s asking us to read are above that student’s budget.  He was not moved and instructed us on how to purchase used books online.  I don’t blame him.  The texts are all great and important to the field (Cultural Theory).  

I haven’t made many friends.  Maybe in time.  So it’s kinda lonely here, and I miss my friends and former colleagues more acutely than I had expected.  And when I talk to them and hear about any of their problems, I feel a sort of existential angst that I am so far away and can’t be present to accompany them through struggles and joys of their lives.  

I have taken up biking and looking into state parks.  So has my husband.  The parts of natural Texas we’ve seen are beautiful.

I wonder if it was “worth it” to uproot our lives from the Washington, D.C. area and a solid PhD program where I was studying before.  Can I whine a bit about how much I miss working with and learning from Dr. Wong at George Mason?

I worry about the economy and hope Rob keeps his job.  If not… well…  I worry about the global economy and remember I’m not likely to ever go hungry because of my own social networks and then feel guilty about worry #1.  And I try to comfort myself recognizing that our species will most likely persevere regardless.

Finally–for that cultural theory class–I’m supposed to give my professor a three-page paper about my research interests.  If you’d like to write it for me, give me a holler.  That little piece of work is truly clear as mud at this point.

*** a side note–I’ll be teaching Korean teachers on a Fulbright for about four weeks, starting next week–a course titled “American Public Education” through a language institute in Austin.  It’s so strange being on the other side of Fulbright, but exciting, too.  A great opportunity to put to work some of what I’m learning in shaping the ways Koreans understand education from a U.S. perspective.

I’m not referring to the amount of time it has taken me to update my blog.

I’m talking about change.

For the first time in my life, I feel a sense of immense possibility.  The election of Barack Hussein Obama to the US presidency is a landmark moment.  Like so many of us, throughout the world, we were struck, unsure of how to believe this moment could be true.  I remembered an Arab man who spoke to us, a group of Fulbright educators in Israel a little over a year ago, a professor from the Negev Desert… that our country’s own racism test would be what happened to Obama in the presidential election.  And who could believe it–we passed.  That doesn’t mean we’re finished–far from it, but the scope of possibility has just opened up, as if we are on the edge of discovering an entire new dimension to the universe.  

In real terms, after the hugs I exchanged with colleagues in my department at an election night party, many of them people of color for whom this election holds perhaps even deeper meaning, I drove home, holding back tears all the way.

The following morning I was on the way to the middle school where advisory has become a regular part of the schoolweek.  The plan I had crafted was a debriefing that each teacher would do with students about the advisory.  I crested a hill, a vast purplish Texas horizon before me, and I was overwhelmed.  These students, almost all African American and Mexican, would know that concretely this country is ready to be led by a man of color.  

In advisory, the children were heavily engaged and curious to make more sense of the election.  First and foremost, they understood this was the US’s first African American president.  They knew Obama’s daughters would get a new puppy.  They wondered what Obama would do first; they even asked how the world would change.  That question itself hadn’t occurred to me as such, and the quiet girl who shared it with me humbled me.  So much possibility.  They knew this was the US’s 44th president, and most of them had stayed awake the previous night following the election news.

And there’s still work to do.  I need to write more lesson plans for next week’s advisory.  I have a paper due on Monday.  I’m frustrated by California’s vote to ban gay marriage, worried about a soaring unemployment rate, a world still full of inequality.  But we may just be on the edge of a new kind of world, one in which our better selves create a better world.

Today was orientation for students new to the Curriculum and Instruction program at UT.  

Bold, earthy, and robust describe the employee-description of a kind of coffee I purchased at that nameless swanky grocery store where I always leave feeling a little bit entitled to piped-in lounge music, high-end salsas, and gourmet lifestyle.  When countries are only important because of the origin of the coffee bean, you know you and the people you represent are in trouble.  Yikes. (And I try to stay informed, but I’ve been so well marketed to that many countries DO mean more to me because of their coffee beans.)

So the orientation wasn’t bold, earthy, or robust.  But it was informative, and maybe my header got your attention–and there’s a reason.  Here are some nibbles of information that seemed important:

1. Earthy–Get a bike.  You won’t find much parking on campus.  Or learn to use the buses.

2. Bold–Learn to “balance” (this from the last in a line of about seven grad students on a panel–why wasn’t this advice given earlier)?

3. Robust–You will deal with lots of numbers–course codes, registration dates, your “RIS” (something that means there’s a widget in the way electronically of your registering, namely–tuition payments, overdue book fees, parking tickets, etc.).  I had a quick flashback to a scene from Woman in the Dunes where the protagonist laments how he has been reduced to a series of numbers and forms of identification–perhaps the moment where he was willing to lose all that and spend the rest of his life fighting sand while regaining his sense of self by throwing those numbers to the wind.

***

I met with my sort-of advisor on the spot (sort-of because, I’m told, you shouldn’t commit to an advisor until your research interests are much clearer).  I was the one doctoral student in my program at the orientation (should this worry me–there was a mini repeat session this evening as well?) among lots of technology and education folks (some curriculum and instruction, as well).  He advised me the way my priest counseled my husband and I before our marriage–guerrilla style advice-hit hard and fast, and hopefully glossing the essentials.  He mentioned having family and/or friends in town this afternoon, hence the quick meeting? On one hand I’m lucky to get any facetime with him; on the other–I’m high maintenance and want to feel like I know what I’m doing.  One big nugget of good advice from him–go ahead and take the somewhat advanced qualitative methods course with a good prof in my program.  I hadn’t planned on it, but my sort-of advisory agreed I’d be ready and that the professor didn’t have prerequisites that would keep me out of the course.

My s-o advisor signed my “advised” form in front of the graduate coordinator and the Graduate Advisor (also a professor at UT).  ”Oh, a blank check?” half-smile, raised eyebrows.  My s-o advisor communicated a lot in about 10 steps of facial gestures to him.  It was a short study in a long history of love.

Back in the larger orientation session, I think the 30 or so other students were either completely overwhelmed and had almost no questions or they were frustrated at the two women who had lots of questions (a Spanish woman behind me, and, well, me).  ”What do you do when you want to register for a course that’s already full?  How do you get your on-campus wireless to work?  What does the second digit in the generic course code (not the “unique number” we’ll need to register with) mean?”

The out-going (pun intended) graduate coordinator is moving into a higher, warmer spot at UT–and he is clearly a genius.  He managed to cut off the Graduate Advisor so that the new students might meet briefly during the break with the eight or so professors who had dutifully made their appearances at our orientation.  I could tell this man had skills as he cut him off.  I was wondering if he’d do it while the profs waited in the back of the room–and he was clean, quick, and graceful.  He’s also a juggler.  Really.

Classes start in a week.  I have a list of the five I’d like to take.  I can only take three.  My future may or may not depend on who I start to learn from now and the way I tune my own research interests (all 31 flavors) into the expertise of the folks I’ll be studying with.  I will log in promptly at 10 am to register (as indicated in my online sign-in slot) while I participate in the beginning of the Institute meeting at 10 am (the institute where I’m implementing student advisory at a local middle school). I can only hope those classes will be bold, earthy, and robust.

I’m at Mozart’s Coffee Roasters.  Jazz in the background.  Laptops are open–”Let’s focus on me,” beckons one of the stickers at my coffemate’s table.  Lots of people from all over the world–accents, flourish of dress.  To my right percolate the calm waves of Lake Austin.  Sun is coming down, and it’s a bit hazy.

I’m hard at work on the student advisory program I’m managing.  Toiling away at the design of the two-day training I’ll be running (with the lead guidance counselor’s help) at the middle school which wants to turn its failing test scores around (I understand they got the lowest test score in Austin–not good for No Child Left Behind).

Ok, the last paragraph isn’t exactly true.  But I’ve wanted to say that for a few days.  I’m not really working right now at all.  It’s hard.  I’m distracted.  New town.  Flying ants.  Thoughtful people.  People who, according to another Austinite, look like they’re homeless but really aren’t–just choose to look that way.  The gray-haired guy who works in the kitchen here sings, “Wasting Away in Margaritaville,” as he restocks the serve-yourself coffee.  And I… procrastinate?

This isn’t my normal style.  Typically I can crank out the work.  But.  I. Am. Losing. Focus. YES, I am supposed to work 20 hours a week in the fall at the institute with the advisory program.  YES, I will take classes.  But right now I am NOT WORKING.  My old school district might as well be on Uranus.  Though I’ll admit to missing some great colleagues and beautiful students. But I want to go to author’s readings, swim laps by the pool.  Finish reading The Shock Doctrine.

Another bite of chocolate cheesecake. Another sip of coffee.  Inspiration.

***

I spent all day Thursday in meetings related to my institute work with the university.  My colleagues at the institute (slave graduate laborers like I’m becoming) are smart, kind, thoughtful.  I’m already learning from them, and I feel welcomed.

Our director is whip-smart and took me to a meeting with very talented, mostly professors from UT who are designing the UT Middle School.  It will probably be a charter school run within the Austin public school system, a continuation of the already functioning UT elementary school.  I was supposed to present what UT’s advisory program would look like.  I had two sheets of bulleted notes and one academic quotation to support me.

These folks had packages.  Multiple academic citations.  Super-duper advanced degrees.  Familiarity with talking a lot because they are the authority.  I reminded myself that my unique strength was my real and valid experience from several US public school contexts.  Nonetheless, I was relieved when the meeting had already gone on for too long and the director and didn’t have time to present.  We (I) will buff up the bulleted pages into real texts with academic citations.  You don’t dare build the university middle school without them.

What are my research questions?  Where did I put them?  Maybe they’ll be back in the next post.