California Gothic (Part One)

Mrs. Temple woke early, anxious like the night before. Her skin prickled with imaginary thorns when she looked out the window at her rose garden—the constant cause of her anxiety. In her narrow twin bed that rarely sinks beneath the pressure of things related to love, she can already smell rotting roses. Mrs. Temple is old, of course, but her sense of smell grows sharper every year. Her alarm buzzes unnecessarily, and she says something inaudible under her breath—still stale with sleep.

On the other end of town, but on the same morning, Jillian wakes up oddly calm in her double bed that quakes frequently under the pressure of such things. Jillian is a photographer who takes pictures of pleasant things for money and unpleasant things for fun. She has a paying job later that day, but Jillian can’t bring herself to care, making it harder than usual to face the morning that’s started to float aggressively through her window. Instead, she contemplates breakfast: savory or sweet. Today, she picks the former.

It is the Friday after Thanksgiving in a town whose name is as unimportant as the swollen people who call it home. Residents brag they live in California’s newest town—an accomplishment in a state where only dirt is old. The town spreads itself beneath the San Gabriel Mountains on the Eastern edge of Los Angeles, near enough to lick smog from your teeth when the wind blows Northeast, but far enough away that The Lakers aren’t your team. Everything here is fresh, but somehow faded like Mrs. Temple herself. Pretty in the way that Southern California is pretty. Pretty in the way that Jillian is, too: thick and sultry, sparkly like miles of pavement. The driveways curve left and the streets are named after mainstream fruit. Air spreads on toast like soft butter sweating on Formica—not that anyone eats carbs. When they drive, people drive fast through the concrete jungle, tangled strangers until they hit the Pacific. Mrs. Temple and Jillian have their driving licenses, but both refuse to drive because of things remembered only vaguely.

The last time Mrs. Temple and Jillian saw each other was in the ethnic food section of Albertson’s, which makes sense. Everyone in the town knows everyone else—as it goes in small towns—but connections are peripheral and unfriendly. As they drive up the mountains toward home, people may stop to wave, but they could just as easily look straight ahead, waiting for green. No one likes each other much, so they stay in their matching houses and pass the time, whispering strange things into the smoggy air.

During the drought last summer, there was a caterpillar infestation. Throughout town, the branches and leaves of the dry trees became coated with furry green caterpillars. Almost cute, like inchworms. The branches drooped so low with the weight of tiny bodies that they creaked and almost broke, brushing against the sticky sidewalk when they blew in the wind. The caterpillars multiplied every day until something had to be done; people were staidly upset. After enough complaints, an exterminator came to kill the caterpillars. Everyone stayed inside and closed all the windows, cranking the air up to sterilize the discomfort of extermination. Once the exterminator left, the caterpillars were still attached to the tree branches with feet that grasp posthumously. When the wind blew or a kid climbed up into the trees, dead caterpillars rained from the branches and coated the sidewalk and streets in a seventies shag carpet of shriveled, dead caterpillars. You couldn’t walk without stepping on them, little dead organisms crunching underneath the flimsy plastic flip-flops of Southern California. But the trees stood tall and normal after that, so Mrs. Temple finally opened her windows and looked out at the sidewalk massacre.

Goaling For It

Historically, I eye-roll when asked to set goals. The process seems inauthentic and no one ever follows up—trusting me, apparently, to be self-motivated. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because I don’t buy the concept, and those who do crowd the gym until March. But today I’m in a good mood; my eyes aren’t rolling anywhere. Today is the first day of summer, and I find myself with the gift of time, a gift I haven’t fully unwrapped for about two years. So, call them goals or resolutions, call them ideas or bubbles. Whatever—here are my ten things for summer 2011:

1. Put blue feathers in my hair and yellow patent leather Saltwater Sandals on my feet and walk, walk, stroll until my legs are taut and Brooklyn streets know the thwack of my leather soles. Learn to spell onomatopoeia without the red zig-zag.

2. With the help of my redheaded friend Zoe and my silver-sided food processor, learn to make the perfect veggie burger. Then, eat it on my fire escape, which overlooks Greenberg’s 24-hour law firm (drug front) and Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits. Think urban thoughts.

3. Get plugged out. I reach for my phone and my keyboard at a frequency that can’t be healthy. I see borderline robots in my midst, and I can’t let my fleshy parts turn metal. Goal three is to develop moderate relationships with the unavoidable technology of my generation. For starters, I’m writing at Café Pedlar on Court Street, which is a great coffee shop not only because it brews Portland’s own Stumptown Coffee and is currently bumpin’ Wyclef’s Carnival in its entirety, but because it doesn’t have wifi. I suspect this is a money saver or an ambience enhancer, but for me it’s a productivity booster and just the patch I need to achieve—gradually, tenderly—goal number three.

4. Read books outside. Do yoga outside. Play outside. Drink summer beer outside. Do the first three excessively and the last moderately. Some goals must be tempered.

5. Purge the unnecessary. Once it’s all gone, paint a deep blue wall while listening to Paul Simon.

6. Write a lot. Not necessarily with a goal of production or pages or even quality, but with the intention of deciding just how much it is I like writing (if such a thing can be quantified). As I write, think whether it’s worth the isolation and coffee shops, worth the risks and frustrations. Whether writing is something that makes me happy and, if so, in what ways? Decide whether I have a project or purpose, whether it’s personal or public, indulgent or important. Is writing still fun? Then, think about teaching in much the same way. Once my thoughts are entirely in order—wiping my hands of thinking for good—make a poster-sized Venn Diagram of the two endeavors that hopefully includes a healthy middle section. Hang it in my kitchen and go from there.

7. Research graduate school intensely for two or three days then forget everything I learned from the internets. Sit back until a lovely benefactor who’s taken an interest in my future offers me a free ride somewhere great and assures me: “Don’t bother with the application. We know you’re good.”

8. Think about how to teach kids to read. Turns out that shit’s not easy. Think about kids who knew a quarter of the words I did at age four because their homes don’t come equipped with shelves of words. Think about how I can teach better than I did it this year (add constant ability to improve to middle section of my writing/teaching Venn Diagram in black Sharpee). Turn thoughts about teaching reading into hot action around August 8^th.

9. Organize a massive boys against girls game of Capture the Flag on Governor’s Island and convince Claire to come back from Maine to play on my team. Win big.

10. Consider the serendipitous and fortuitous. Sit still and be alone. Then, after about twenty minutes of that, call up my friends because, really, goal four is better done together.

Bragging Rights

The last week of school has a celebratory vibe that I remember from my years as a student and now fully appreciate as a teacher. Though I no longer want my yearbook signed by as many cute boys as possible, I do feel a similar sense of finality and excitement. Everything is a little more relaxed, brighter. There are movies, my outfits are not quite business casual and every day is broken up by something happy: spelling bees, awards ceremonies, school plays. Everyone likes each other more than usual. Annoying student behaviors that drove me to drink two weeks ago are suddenly tolerable. And when I do (still) sip that beer a little too early in the afternoon it feels triumphant rather than necessary.

Yesterday, for example, I was dunked (twice in quick succession) in a freezing cold--and apparently traditional--dunk tank in the humid rain. First, by my boss in retaliation for a splash-attack and then by a seventh grade boy who bid on the prize of dunking me in our school-wide auction. This is either because he loves me or hates me, but I find it's no use to dwell. The dunk tank setting resembles a public execution: Tank in front with jeering students lined up to watch the massacre. The snap of the platform before you hit the water sounds like a guillotine of ye olden days, and suddenly I'm making Tale of Two Cities comparisons in my head. Wondering if I'm the only one...Likely. In a way, the dunk tank experience is pretty terrible. I'm freezing, and I think my shirt is see-through in front of hundreds of teenage boys;I did not bring an extra pair of underwear and I have lunch plans in thirty minutes. But in another very real way, I could not care less. In a matter of hours I'm done teaching for almost two months. More importantly, I no longer must wear Hester's scarlet badge of first-year teacher--skin I'll happily molt like a lazy gecko in the sun. (I'm a metaphor mixolagist). I'm on summer break. I can soak in the free Brooklyn culture, get around to writing that novel and drink white wine in Prospect Park completely free of responsibility.

The difference between me and some of those creative hipsters, though, is that I'm still very much employed. Right now, I feel like teaching is the best job in the world. I like a job that has end points and beginnings, a job that changes yearly and allows fresh starts. One that builds up pressure then lets it go, sharp and fast. I'm on my toes like a ballerina. My biggest fear in life has always been boredom. Sometimes when I watch a boring movie, I start thinking: What if the way I feel now were my constant, my everyday? Teaching is many things--pleasant and unpleasant--but teaching is never boring. For me, that fact overshadows most everything. More likely than not, I won't be teaching in Brooklyn in ten years, but for now it feels really, really right. Cheers.

She's a 10 (Not)

Wise men have said that regret is a wasted emotion, but I do regret not documenting my year in Boston more thoroughly than I did. The year was crazy fodder for something literary—an education memoir or the anonymous journal of an under-rested psychopath responsible for children—but I spent my slivers of spare time drinking Sam Adams seasonal ales (yearly documentation of a different variety) and ensuring clean underwear rather than getting wordy at Cambridge coffee shops. My ambitious goal of daily writing went unachieved, turning barely weekly because I was perma-exhausted from August to August. As such, written records documenting the year are hardly comprehensive: scribbled pages in notebooks that slant downward with sleep and oddly-named documents rife with typos, tucked quietly into the nether regions of my hard drive. That’s all I got.

While I was busy not documenting my life, my writing muscles softening from a suspended membership, my teacher-training program was documenting and analyzing it for me through numbers rather than words. Numbers aren’t supple like words; they don’t give. Historically, I do not deal well with numbers.

I took part in a fellowship in urban education that included an intensive teacher training component that is highly responsible for the way my life looks today; I mean that in the most grateful of terms. The program was residential (MTV considered picking up Real World: Teachers Edition but there wasn’t enough intra-fellow sex on account of lack of energy) and occupied 70 hours of my time, six days a week. The goal of the program is to train unusually effective first-year teachers by distilling the moves of classroom management into a quantitative, objective science that clears up space in the frontal lobe of the teacher brain to actually, well, teach.

We were taught the six moves of classroom management (sit up, hand down, get the hell outta my classroom, etc) and the numerical steps necessary to effectively teach inferences in literature. After passing through a “Gateway” teaching simulation in order to remain in the program, our cohort of wannabe teachers was judged harshly every week on a ten-point scale that encompassed instruction and management in the classroom. There were many, many rubrics. There were numbers and even decimals. It was cold and hard and fact and data. It was all the stuff I hate. All the stuff that clashes garishly with the inner workings of my non-teacher brain.

My emotions ran the gamut. At first, I was above it all—the cynic’s go-to stance on life. A quietly outraged naysayer, going through the moves while shooting back looks dripping with skepticism. How is it possible to grade something as subjective as teaching on a numerical scale? Teaching is about literature and people and engagement, not numbers and data and rankings. True objectivity looked impossible and the philosophies championed by the program clashed with everything I took to be true from West Coast Liberal Arts College (WCLAC). The whole thing required buy-in, and I wasn’t ready to cash in my Americorps salary.

But as the program challenged me on every imaginable level, it also forced me to reconsider snap judgments. There are lots of bad teachers out there who just keep on teaching. Keep on failing kids. Many smart people believe that the key to education reform is training damn good teachers. You can pump anything else you want into a school, but without good teachers, you’re still failing kids even if they have an Olympic-sized swimming pool and personal laptops. In order to train good teachers on any real, replicable scale, there needs to be some element of objective assessment and accountability. This is the assumption under which my program was working, and while it was highly imperfect, the numbers and data needed to be in place to hold us accountable and make us good. I realized this logic holds water and suddenly this English major was pro-number. By August, I had running numerical documentation of my skill as a teacher.

And so I trained, I simulated, I taught, I was observed, I was rated, I got a job at a sweet school in Brooklyn, I left Boston, drove a Uhaul to NYC in the middle of the night, started teaching 7^th grade reading, slept a little and ate some bagels. Checkity-check. The kicker to all this is that throughout our first year teaching, we were surprise-attack observed by Boston ed. reform types, all versed and normed and calibrated in our ten-point scale. They came to our schools and observed all first-year teachers without knowing which ones were alumni of our program. Then, of course, they rated us. If our numbers were higher than the other first-year teachers in our buildings, the program is—in theory—a success. This was a way to assess both the program and the teachers it was churning out.

Sometime during my first week of teaching—probably Monday morning or Monday afternoon—I totally forgot about ratings and numbers. The reality of teaching 70 kids to read goodly was daunting. The day to day had nothing to do with numbers. It was about maintaining sanity, laughing often, avoiding tears (mine and my students’) and teaching something in the interim. Months into the year, things were relatively calm, and I found myself remembering my moves, my rubrics, my numbers—the foundation of it all. As sanity was setting in the observers started coming in. I realized I wanted those numbers, the numerical validation that I was on the right track.

Then months passed and, characteristically, I forgot about the whole thing. Early last week, I got an email with my scores in it. I saw the subject line in my inbox and flinched with uncertainty. I knew I’d been improving all year, but that knowledge was based entirely on anecdotes, feelings and other wishy-washy indicators. As I hovered above my keyboard, it was hard to imagine reverting back to the harsh black and white of numbers. So, finally I took the plunge and there the scores were, staring me back in the face in all their numerical glory. They were fine. Good, even. But mostly I felt disinterested. In the summery, triumphant glory of the end of the year and the knowledge that I will never again be a first-year teacher, I found it hard to care how some random Boston smarty thinks I manage a classroom. While I recognize the importance of scoring, of objectivity and assessment, I also recognize that nothing I’ve done all year can be crammed into a ten-point-scale. So, I’m not sure where that leaves me—on which side of the tracks.

The personal takeway: I’m okay at teaching. I got some work to do, but I’m on the right track. Also, I can roll with digits.

The political takeaway: If we take seriously the notion that good teaching matters, there has to be a scaleable way to train good teachers. Teachers need to be assessed and held accountable, but this must be done with a grain of salt and humanity (and I think the people who ran my program know this). Teachers should be graded and rubrics should be used, but if it ever interferes with the real stuff that makes teaching a great profession, we know we’ve gone too far.

Because dads aren't bad either

When young women who think think about formation they think first about their mothers. The mother/daughter relationship--in mediocre Oprah's Book Club novels and in what is hopefully a less forgettable life--is fraught yet formative, intense and instructive. In the most ordinary of homes, fathers appear on the fringe of daughterly development. The masculine figures who lurk in the background, forming their sons with baseballs and stick shifts while the second sex sticks together. Though there are fewer pages filled about father/daughter relationships, there are many adjectives worth using to describe them: subtle, deep and important.

In so many ways, my dad helped form me into the woman I am today--still unformed but getting a little closer. On my 24th year of being my father's daughter, here are five reasons I think he's pretty great:

1. My family has a long-running competition over which member is the funniest. We pride ourselves on our own brand of humor whether or not non-members agree. The real truth of the matter, however, is that my dad wins the contest. His funny subtly infiltrating the rest of our jokes. Here it is in writing: I admit defeat and nod my head to one of comedy's greatest.

2. My dad taught me to appreciate good music. Singing, playing and listening. He doesn't care about genre. As long it's good, he likes classical as much as hip-hop. My dad introduced me to The Kinks and Joni Mitchell, but also surprised me with Jurassic Five concert tickets one year. Nothing like late-night hip hop with your fifty-year-old dad.

3. My dad carries smooth green rocks in his pocket and always has an egg of silly putty on hand because it's okay to be quirky.

4. My dad and I name waves at the beach on both coasts.

5. My dad introduced me to Strunk and White's Elements of Styles--one of the best books by which a person can live and write. You must know the rules of writing before you can break them with purpose.

Fathers get less credit in the formation of their daughters, but that's not really fair; their influence is far-reaching and distinct. So, happy Father's Day to my daddo and all the other fathers of thoughtful daughters.

Stumptown Invasion

Last night, I heard contemporary writers Karen Russell and Teju Cole talk their words at a bar in Brooklyn. The type of bar that’s on a vaguely sketchy block where there’s an excess of fried chicken and comments about my ass—more than a white girl knows what to do with. But also the type of bar that draws a good-looking literary crowd when it nabs writers whose names are printed places like The New Yorker. These factors, in combo, make said bar quintessentially Brooklyn. Or, the perfect place to talk Portland.

At the reading, I was small-talking (new verb for one of life’s most banal necessities) with a friend of a friend of a friend when we broached the topic of hometowns. Because, really, are any Brooklyn denizens in the house actually homegrown? My small-talking partner is from Long Island, New York; I’m from Portland, Oregon. So the story goes. This is a conversation I can roll with. She probably knows her lines, but mine keep changing thanks to some uncertain playwright.

Ten years ago, I’d mention my hometown proudly and be staring back into blank eyes. Conversation points did not come easily, but included log cabins and the Oregon Trail—the real path or, alternatively, the nineties computer game where you hunt for bison and get Cholera. Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea and her adorable papoose. Fascinating stuff, really.

“Is Oregon the one right above California or is it more like near Iowa? I mean, Idaho? I think…I mean, Ohio?”

“Wait, Maine?”

“Did your ancestors have a covered wagon?”

“Near Cali, right? How’s the surfing, man?”

“Are there highways?”

I kid you not. For the most part, people didn’t know or care about my pretty, little city. The well-meaning ignorance annoyed me only a very little bit: Portland was my secret, waiting dormant like St. Helen’s in the eighties.

Then it exploded. Now, in a place like Brooklyn that’s soggy with hip, my hometown renders me interesting, even exotic. Ca-ching—Insta-cool-cred. At least, among a certain set. No longer Seattle’s kid cousin desperately trying to measure up, Portland is a quirky media darling in its own right. It’s a city on the tip of everyone’s tongue. There’s a certain kinship between Brooklyn and Portland (the third point of the isosceles hipsta triangle perhaps being Austin, TX); people here salivate for Stumptown.

As such, people now ask me things more along the lines of:

“Oooh, I read about Portland’s food cart culture in The New York Times! It’s really great for vegans/freegans/schmegans, right? And if I identify along the LBGT spectrum, I’ll fit in, yeah?”

“I’m sure you get this all the time (accurate), but what do you think of that new show Portlandia? Is the dream of the nineties really still alive?”

“I heard there are bike lanes everywhere. More bikes than cars! Like, better than Williamsburg?”

“Do you know the Decembrists? I mean, personally?”

People love Portland. Or people assume they love Portland based on what they’ve read in (insert reputable publication that’s not too mainstream) or what their friend’s cousin told them when he visited in the summer of 2009. “He fell in love with that city, and he’s just like me!”

I spend a lot of time talking Portland. Often, it’s forcefully self-initiated to people who’d probably rather not listen, but with equal frequency my PDX monologue is the avalanche result of curious hipsters who dig local food, fixed-gear bikes, mountains, clean air, free range, tattoos and independent bookstores just as much as, well, I dig those things. Portland is mentioned in the blog “What White People Like,” but the truth is that every other yuppie thing listed in that blog falls under the Portland umbrella.

Mostly, I don’t mind chatting up my city (especially if it’s while I’m getting chatted up myself) and listing its multiplying points of virtue to those who will listen—an expanding demographic. Truly, I can’t say enough good about my hometown.

It’s complicated, though, with Portland, OR. There’s more (or less) to the paradisiacal Western city than meets the Ray Ban-clad eye. As more and more of those curious hipsters move from places like, say, Brooklyn to Portland, the job market gets increasingly depressing, the PBR more expensive and real-estate sky-high in neighborhoods I used to consider affordably sketchy. Despite endless culture, the city is small and can’t support the amount of idealists who long to call it home. Nike only has so many entry-level positions and the number of tatted-up baristas the city needs isn’t quite unlimited. I heard somewhere that Portland has the highest unemployment rate in the country after Detroit. DETROIT, man. There’s this whole new Portland culture that’s foreign to me: young, smart, unemployed people who drink a lot of vices. I can spot them because they can’t handle the rain; they don’t know understand Goretex quite like I do. So, I’m not sure if they’re living the dream of the nineties and, if they are, I’m not sure they’re loving it. As an actual Portlander, it’s a culture I can’t quite tap into in the way I can tap into a similar culture in Brooklyn. When I’m in PDX, I do my thing and they do theirs.

First of all, I’ve been in absentia for six years, which for now is a decision I feel 100% great about. Another reason, though, is because the reasons I love Portland don't get printed in many national publications. Until five years, I didn’t care about organic restaurants, food carts, urban growth boundaries, hourly bike rental and local microbreweries. I’d be lying to say I still don’t care, but there are others reasons why I believe Portland to be the best city in the world. These are reasons I don’t share with small-talkers who want the scoop because it’s not what they want to hear. I aim to please.

I love the Portland Rose Festival (sadly I’m missing it this week), which is an antiquated, vaguely-misogynistic month of parades, carnivals and what amounts to a beauty pageant. My dad used to take us every year and buy us foam lizards on a metal stick, so much red licorice that Josh once vomited sticky red after the tilt-a-whirl and funnel cake certainly made from inorganic ingredients. I also love the public stairs—a secret network of overgrown steps that separate two Portland neighborhoods and make the perfect place to drink obscene amounts of malt liquor, whether you are 16 or 25. I love my parents’ backyard where we have dinner in the summer and laugh late enough for citronella. I love that the kids I used to babysit for in high school are now graduating from that same high school. I love walking outside of a coffee shop when it’s drizzling and I don’t have a hood. I love restaurants that aren’t trendy—gasp.

I’m getting nervous. If Portland’s a spot to which I want to return, peeps are beating me back to my own territory. When the original hipsters (Lewis and Clark) came across green Oregon, there was unlimited territory to chart and call home. Now, employed territory don't come cheap. That’s mostly a silly, concern, though, and I’m sure Portland will take me in should I choose to hitch up my wagon train and head west. The resentment I have for new Portlanders is entirely jest; after all, I’m doing the same thing in Brooklyn. It’s just an odd phenomenon when your sleepy hometown becomes fodder for half of the NYT’s travel section. At hip readings, I’m torn between talking it up and keeping it to myself. Some writer once said (it maybe was John Cheever) that every writer has a fraught relationship with his hometown—true enough, whoever you are.

And The Oscar Goes To...

Officially, I'm a reading teacher. I teach three sections of seventh grade reading to a total of 68 kids. Seems like a big responsibility--and, in many ways, it's daunting beyond belief--but in reality it occupies only a small fraction of my work day. The rest of the day occurs on the fly, off the cuff, certainly not in my job description. I don't think I'd have it any other way. Responsibilities could include, hypothetically, cleaning up the shattered mirror that a kid broke into dozens of dangerous shards while primping during Act 4 of Romeo and Juliet. And then, once we're out of glassy danger, dishing out a consequence for said offense. It could include explaining to a kid for twenty minutes that there are other fish in the sea (like anyone heartbroken believes that), and that writing his crush's name all over his homework/arm/backpack/desk isn't going to help anything, least of all his grade. It could even include going to the Party Store on Atlantic Avenue at 6pm on a Monday to spend 500 thankfully-reimburseabal-dollars on helium tanks, iridescent table cloths, Styrofoam plates and ribbon (ribbon, ribbon, ribbon).

The hats you wear as teacher are diverse: confidant, disciplinarian, life coach and, the latest, party planner. Somehow, I ended up on the decorations committee for the network-wide Writing Oscars, which is exactly what it sounds like. Kids across the network were nominated for excellent writing in four categories: persuasive writing, creative response, literary response and personal narrative. Brooklyn-based writers were the judges and chose a lucky winner to receive the coveted Oscar in each category.

I hate decorating things as much as I love writing things, so it follows that I had mixed emotions about my position on the decorations committee for the Writing Oscars. There wasn't exactly a choice in the matter, though, and there I was at the Party Store--a place I hadn't visited since picking out lavender Bat Mitzvah decorations (bad choice) in the seventh grade. Like too many vodka-tonics on a Friday night, what goes around comes around. We spruced up the auditorium of the Uncommon High School in Crown Heights. There was red carpet scotch-taped to the floor, a life-size Oscar cut-out for photo ops, Martinelli's Apple Cider (you may remember it from Passovers past) and digital projection coming atcha from all angles. There was even a soundtrack. 

Decorations committee is a force to be reckoned with. Is a force with which to reckon? I've long espoused the benefits of teaching kids (people, really) to write. And to write well. A functional use of the English language is one of the most important tools to have as you enter high school, college and the real world (whatever that means). A true talent for words is rarer, less pressing, but even better. It's shocking how little emphasis is placed on grammar, sentence fluency and punctuation in the majority of schools today. Teaching kids to write is hard, particularly in urban areas where subject/verb agreement comes a bit less naturally, but it's undeniably important. As a somewhat judgmental adult, I find myself analyzing other adults' writing and wondering how it's possible that so many people never learned the basics (with a statement like that, you better believe I'm gonna edit the hell out of this post). As editor-in-chief of my high school then college newspaper, I constantly wondered (in red pen) if people didn't know, didn't care or were never taught. I take people more seriously if they know how to write--I'm probably a snob--and I tell my students as much. Writing is up there with riding a bike and learning to swim. Important. I'm happy to work at a school that honors writing in the way that other schools may only honor sportier endeavors. Serious categories like response to literature and persuasive writing tell students that this stuff matters; those endless essays and short responses are getting you somewhere. Today, it might be the Writing Oscars; in ten years, the skills honed could give you the advantage you need to score a job over hundreds of other qualified applicants.

At the ceremony, kids were dressed to the nines anxiously awaiting their category and the chance to possibly take home a Writing Oscar. The acceptance speeches were adorable. Writing teachers, mothers and God were all thanked profusely (you know you're not in Portland, Oregon anymore when kids start talking God and everyone just nods). Frequently, speeches started dramatically with: "I never expected to be up here." Wait, you, as a ten-year-old kid in Brooklyn, never expected to win a plastic Writing Oscar for your personal narrative about your hamster's funeral? Well, I guess that sorta makes sense... 

A 6th grader, who probably falls somewhere on the autism spectrum, took home the award for creative response, my personal favorite category. Like I said, it's important to know how to write--how to use conventions, how to make words make sense on paper, convey meaning. What's less important, but to me pretty exciting, is being able to write creatively. Very few people enjoy or even attempt to do this. Fewer still are any good at it. This kid walked nervously up to the stage in a mini-suit and red tie and looked out over the audience. Breath was bated as he fumbled. After kissing his Oscar (really), he rambled nervously for a while, thanking the usual crew. Then he said something that made me take pause.

"I sometimes write instead of doing my homework. Sometimes I get so lost when I'm writing that I forget to go to bed. Sometimes I even lose my homework because I'm writing so much. I get confused. And my parents get mad at me."

Eventually he got slow-clapped off stage because there was no cue music or lady in a gown to assist him off. The speech was endearing and awkward and funny all at the same time. But I know this kid. Pretty well, it seems. He loves writing so much that it overcomes him. That other responsibilities pale in comparison to the task that is his prose. He may not know what words deserve capitalization or that you should never begin a sentence with "you was...", but I got the feeling this kid can write. Maybe kid's got gift. The teacher in me suspects he's likely failing all his classes because of that misplaced homework, but the writer in me has a suspicion--whether it's correct or not, who knows--that this guy in the suit is the real deal. You just don't talk about writing like life or death unless you really, really care.

Girls School

In the past few years, a distinct change has occurred in the way I talk about women's college.

About four years ago, I was kind of embarrassed by the fact that I spent my collegiate years surrounded by 1,000 muchachas. There was a nagging concern that I was missing out; the concern spurred me to seek experiences that weren't there and reject others that were. While there was sporadic dating, there was little beer pong, fewer random hook-ups and a general hormonal imbalance that affected life in myriad ways. Although I stood behind the education I was getting and loved the hyper-smart girlfriends I was proud to call my own, I was constantly comparing my experiences to those of my friends at more traditional schools. Measuring up afternoon teatime and white wine “Grey’s Anatomy” parties to football games at the University of Oregon or trashy nightclubs around NYU.

When people asked me about the women’s college experience, I’d stumble and justify: “Well, it was part of a consortium, so it wasn’t really women’s college. Like…halfway women’s college—best of both worlds. Not like Wellesley. Not like SMITH. God, no, I wouldn’t go there. I’VE KISSED A BOY!” My odd responses revealed a frustrated sense of lack or impulse to defend.

That language has changed, and I'm happy with the shift. Turns out, it feels better to stand behind your decisions than to question them.

Now, I speak proudly of my women’s college. Maybe even ad naseum. Not only am I annoyingly in love with my own women’s college experience, I’m a staunch proponent of women’s higher education (a sadly dying institution). It’s something I feel, actually, quite strongly about. Right up there with education reform, the state of Israel and bulk candy. And really, who woulda thunk?

I do get sick, though, of the three stock questions I’m asked when I reveal the single-sex quirk of my undergraduate experience. Unsurprisingly, the question slingers are usually men—typically on a first date or at a party when the topic of schooling inevitably comes up.

The questions repeat themselves, over and over, never-ending like a Mobeus Strip. At this point, I’ve got my answers down. They are, verbatim or in some close iteration:

1. Did your parents force you to go there?

Polite response: No, I picked it myself after looking at lots of different schools. Smile. Did your parents force you to go to Duke/Wesleyan/The University of Kentucky?

What I’d like to say/what I will say after two beers: No, you idiot, I’m not a Mormon or a woman from the 1860s. I was allowed to choose whatever college I wanted, and I happened to choose a women’s school because I visited the campus and fell in love with every aspect. Because thousands of women CHOOSE to go to women’s college every year. And they are all—er, they are mostly all—perfectly sane human beings with agency over their education.

2. Was it like finishing school/did you get your MRS?

Polite response: No, the classes are really the same as at any small liberal arts college. Do not giggle. Do not allow the questioner to think for one second that this joke is funny or original.

What I’d like to say/What I will say after two beers: No, you idiot, this is the year 2011. Finishing schools don’t really exist anymore, and I sure as hell don’t think my parents would spend $40,000 a year so that I could pour tea and write the perfect thank-you note. Do I strike you as unfinished? Because I am, and I like it that way. And that’s sexist and not even sexist in the funny way, asshole.

3. Did you have a lesbian phase? (marked number three, though it's certainly the most frequent) 

Polite response: Nah. I had a boyfriend who went to the school across the street. No time for a lesbian phase! Look questioner directly in the eye to make him feel uncomfortable and like a vaguely homophobic pervert.

What I’d like to say/what I will say after two beers: No, you idiot, I’m straight. Oh, and it’s kind of absurd to think that being surrounded by women turns you into a lesbian. So, if you’re asking me that just to fulfill some weird fantasy of yours, it's not gonna happen.

What I may say after vodka: Nope, no gay phase here, but some of my friends had one, and I kinda wish I had, too, because, really, what better time?

Women’s college taught me a whole hell of a lot: how to write, how to read, how to think critically, how to be independent, how to have confidence around men and how to get what I want.

But here’s what I really learned in women’s college:
 

1. Feminism isn’t (and maybe never will be) over, so POST-feminism is a crock of shit. (Read Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy). That makes post-feminists mostly shit talkers.

2. Support your friends in whatever (or whomever) they do, whether that’s a mime performance or a math nerd.

3. The best setting for deep thinking is the floor.

4. Pants are overrated. Innovative punctuation is underrated.

5. Young women really are more inclined to show their smarts in a single-sex environment. That’s not just bullshit from the NYT education section.

6. Pubic hair upkeep and preference is an endlessly fascinating and appropriate dinner table conversation. I’m not sure if that’s pre-or post-feminism. Take your pick.

7. If you’re straight you can’t hang with the lesbians…

8. … but If you’re a lesbian, you CAN hang with the straight girls. Unfair?

9. That thing about girls being synced up? Not a myth.

10. Brunch is the best meal, and it’s even better done outside. With champagne. Without clothes.

These are lessons I’m proud to internalize. While some I could have learned at any co-ed institution, others are specific to my experience at a women’s college. While I still wonder what exactly I missed out on by attending a tiny women’s college in the Inland Empire, I rest easy knowing that my four female years were a welcome drop in the bucket of a looming co-ed life.

Meta-Fiction

There was a time when I wanted to write. Like, for real. I’d been scribbling forever, it challenged me, and it seemed logical to keep on arranging words. I’d maybe write the next great American novel and chill excerpted in the Norton alongside Didion and Morrison. Together, we’d ensure that women are well-represented in the American canon—as writers, not women writers. My novel would be a multi-generational tour-de-force, probably about West Coast Jews or semi-dysfunctional upper-middle class families (write what you know, they say). I’d be Philip Roth with boobs. Then I wanted to write a collection of Gothic short stories twirling with supernatural conflict and deeply-flawed protagonists with blue, blue eyes. Next it was the education memoir: hard-hitting facts sprinkled with the real talk that comes with working in the trenches. My literary fantasies were either misguided or eclectic, but I knew I wanted to write.

College fed the dream; college is the perfect dream food. I took writing classes (in things like experimental fiction where I wrote stories with footnotes and without vowels), cared deeply about the difference between the em-dash and the en-dash, and got feedback from people whose words I respected. I wrote more pages than I drank cups of mediocre coffee, and that’s saying something. At the time, it all seemed blindingly important. Apparently, this is what $40,000 a year gets you. I can’t think too hard about true value.

It wasn’t until I decided not to write (like, not for real. Not for now), that I started to consider the danger—lurking beneath the imagined glamour—of a life spent devoted to the craft. Writing fiction is something you do mostly alone, which is why it often breeds angst, unrest and egotism among those who practice. Too much time spent poking around in your own churning brain, creating characters, charting their lives, making them hurt and then letting them go. You get to play God with people you created in seven days (or less, or more), and after a while the God-complex goes to your head. If you can control your characters, why not take control of your own life and the people in it? Form it like supple clay into the life you want. You start to compare your existence to that of your protagonists, and it can be hard to measure up. Your own life’s plot tries to be a step ahead of where it really is because you’ve already outlined how things should go. As a writer of fiction, you wonder why there’s not more drama, more color in your own life. There’s a very real danger of living in the words on your page instead of the words you speak and are spoken to you. Your grasp becomes rather loose.

This is why I’m glad I’m not writing for now, though I want to keep the pencil moving so it doesn’t dull entirely Why I’m glad to be doing something meaningful with real people—something more parts selfless than selfish. Last week, I had a weird series of events that reinforced why—for me, right now—writing is better left on the periphery than hitting center stage. At the very least, it reminded me why I shouldn’t take myself too seriously.

A boy I recently dated confided that one reason he no longer wanted to date me was because I’m too bossy. I wanted to scream DUH, Captain Obvious; Of course I’m bossy. It’s my flaw in the key of major. I know that. I self-analyze to a fault. Apparently, I even blog about myself. I’ve been called bossy since I was 12. I come from a long line of fine bosses. My roles include teacher and older sister to a loose canon of a younger brother. I like getting my way. Like the characters I used to create (and now keep tucked away deep in folders I only tinker with late-night), I too have assorted flaws. Mine came with me, though, there was no writer puppet master to form the perfect literary flaw. Astutely, he picked up on something I already knew about myself, but instead of working with it he wrote it off (pun intended).

I’ve started walking home from work—from Williamsburg to Cobble Hill. I go a mile through Chasidic Williamsburg, a mile through the Marcy Projects and then a mile through gentrified Fort Greene. Strangely, the Chasids, the Bloods and the Hipsters provide me with ample space to think. So on the day of the bossy accusation, I did just that. My ex used to call me bossy all the time, but I figured it was meant to be endearing. He loved me and so could appreciate my not-so-fatal flaw. I accepted his flaws like he accepted mine—that’s how strong relationships work. If human beings weren’t deeply flawed, wannabe writers would grapple for material and no one would become the next Roth. I worked on being less bossy, with him there to tell me it’d be okay even if, at the end of the day, I couldn’t stop inserting myself.

But when I was thinking-walking-analyzing after being called bossy yet again, I started to get worried. Maybe my ex actually hated the fact that I was bossy. Maybe there’d been a misread, and it was more off-putting than endearing. Maybe if I hadn’t got to it first, it would have been an offense worthy of a break-up.

So, because I am unable to talk myself out of my own bad ideas, I called him up to ask! We are at a point in our post-relationship where a random casual phone call is mostly amicable, but this idea was probably imprudent. Rehashing relationships had gotten me into trouble hours earlier, and I wasn’t quite prepared for a sequel.

My ex answered the phone and, after brief pleasantries, I posed my self-centered concern like I’d practiced in my head on Bedford Ave. Instead of analyzing it together or whatever I expected, he called me out like I needed to be called out so badly. Like only someone who still knows you a little too well can call you out. Surprisingly (perhaps only to me), the call-out was about writing not bossing.

“LEL, if you’re just calling me to get a quick sound bite for your blog, which I read, forget it.”

BUSTED.

And there you have it: He was absolutely right. For writers, the desire to write sucks you quickly out of reality—down the literary rabbit hole. I’d been living two double-spaced pages ahead of my scheduled plotline and planning my next written endeavor rather than just taking it all in. I wanted to pull the parts together from characters across the country and create something neat on paper. I’d fallen right into the writer’s trap. Subconsciously, I’d already been planning my companion piece to Tina Fey’s Bossypants. And yes, I know this is all Meta-Fiction, because here it is! My writing had become self-important and its fruition felt more real than real life. This is why writing is dangerous when left unchecked. Where real life is concerned, you can’t plan the plot before it happens. Real life doesn’t fit into perfect paragraphs, which collide flawlessly into theme and (un)resolved conflict. If you think you get to choose the drama you want, the flaws and conflict you find most interesting, and the conversations that work for snappy dialogue, chances are you need to get out from behind your laptop.

Point taken.

Puppy Love?

"Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books" -William Shakespeare

Sometimes, when you're a middle school reading teacher, you may do things in class solely for your own personal amusement. The days are long and often require innovative spicing up. You may occasionally ask certain questions or call on certain kids because you know the responses will quickly become the best part of your day or at least make for a good story over drinks with your friends who toil away in a cube rather than a classroom. I'm not sure about the morality of using kids for laughs, but sometimes it's so worth it.

Today was one of those days. There's something equal parts irresistible, scary and adorable about reading Romeo and Juliet with seventh graders. At first, they're grossed out that Juliet's an innocent 12 years old when she meets, falls immediately in love with, sleeps with and marries Romeo. Ewww, SICK. Then, slowly, one by one, light-bulbs blink and they start to realize: "Wait. I'm only 12, and I believe in true love! I've been in love! Five times since April! I'm in love right now!" Suddenly, those star-crossed lovers aren't so gross; that's real life, man. Shakespeare's not just some old dude who flows in rhyme and allusion. He knows what's up; it's like Shakespeare's been to middle school in the South 'Burg. Finally, someone gets us. The first time you relate to literature is really, really delicious, and that's written without an ounce of sarcasm.

So I asked my classes if they believe it's possible to find true love at 12. Serious question. They took some time to get their thoughts down on paper--all pens were moving because this is real talk--then we came together to debate the topic as a class. As you might imagine, almost all hands were raised. It's like they care more about young love than literary devices or something. The response was a resounding yes. Of course.

My first instinct is to laugh. Their relationships consist mainly over Facebook. A "serious" relationship could start and end (with tears) before the school day is over. All amorous communication may exist through an intermediary friend--you know the one, probably doesn't have a date of his or her own, but is gregarious and loud-mouthed and perfect for making things happen. And quick. Nonetheless, it's all in the name of true love--pure and sweet.

It's easy to laugh, write-off and preach, to hopelessly attempt to bestow your "wisdom" onto the younger generation and tell them that they're too young, too inexperienced, too naive to really know about love. But I was doing the same shit just ten years ago (okay, I never really had a middle school boyfriend: My hair was too frizzy and my boobs were too small). At each stage of life, you know only the stage you're in. Foresight is difficult to obtain. To a 13-year-old, that's all you've got, and it's an early, half-formed version of what will fairly quickly transform into real dating, real relationships and real heartbreak.

At 24, the most serious thing I've got under my belt is a two-year relationship. It seems heavy and real to me when I look back on it, but those two years were a drop--an immature drop--in life's gigantic bucket. We felt love, I think, but who knows if that feeling felt any more authentic to us than the same feeling feels to a 13-year-old. While I can look down at the kids with the shoddy wisdom that ten years gives me, I'm not exactly in a position to judge.

In some ways, their relationships are adorable. In New Orleans, the brightest girl in the grade and the brightest boy in the grade started dating--match made in middle school heaven. The cynic in me laughed, but then I looked the other way when I saw them holding hands at the aquarium and trading marine biology facts while contemplating a gigantic stingray. That's pretty damn cute; who am I to break that up?

I do worry that young love is not always entirely innocent. Before marrying the teenage couple, Friar Lawrence warns Romeo of the dangers of love that moves too fast, untempered. Beware speedy love, it's like too much candy in your stomach. Like many things in the inner city, middle school love can move fast. In some cases, it might move faster than you can get latex on a banana in health class, if you get my drift. I'm sure you've read the articles, seen some stats: contraception isn't always totally approved of or utilized and teen pregnancy rates are high. While 13 seems young, it definitely happens. Young love can turn from adorable stingray viewing to life-ruining pretty quickly if kids don't have their facts straight. It grosses me out to think about, but mostly it makes me nervous. There are certain byproducts of puppy love that don't feel entirely innocuous.

The questions is how, as a young educator, I should react to the trysts of my students. To laugh, to turn the other cheek, to warn, to advise, to make them stop? It's definitely a case-by-case basis and maybe it's not really my place at all to meddle. Puppy love got a certain Shakespearean duo into big trouble, but that has little by way of modern-day comparison or warning. I think the best thing to keep in mind is that love feels very real to those who are in it, whether you're 13, 24 or 86. Perhaps all action taken or advice spewed should be predicated on that truth. So go ahead and touch palms in the aquarium, but let's leave it that.

Preguntamé

A few weeks ago, I wrote that first dates are the easiest aspect of dating; I may need to amend. While I still believe the wisdom of my younger self, I had an experience last night that tried the theory. Holes have been punched.

What I definitely don't want is for this blog to become a chronicle of bad dates or even good ones. Dating blogs are a little nineties, a little "Sex in the City." I'm too femmy to write a full-on dating blog, and, frankly, I'd be lying to say I go on enough dates to warrant an entire blog ("Wayne, I don't even own A gun, much less many guns to necessitate an entire rack.") When the spirit hits me, however, I may write a post about dating. I vow to counteract every such post with something highly intellectual so I can remain in the good graces of the women-folk over at Scripps College. At the very least, I vow to pen something about teaching in retaliation, which--for better or for worse--dominates my life way more than dating.

Now that that's out of the way, this post is about a date. A bad date. Worse than bad: Boring. I've long considered Boring (with a capitol B) to be the highest insult you can dish out--the worst form of slander. I fear people call me Boring behind my back, and because I believe in karma, I use the adjective sparingly (mostly about movies). But in this instance I'm confident it's warranted. Allow me to be heavy-handed.

Really this post is about a pet peeve that I encountered on a bad, Boring date. My pet peeve is when people aren't inquisitive--when they refuse to ask questions, to find out more. And it's not just because I like to talk about myself, though I do. Questions allow you to know a person, to get into a person's head and figure it all out. If you're not asking questions--if you're nixing inquisition--chances are the conversation is mostly about you. Not only are you depriving yourself of the pleasure of good conversation, you're sending the message that you just don't care. You're scoring a second date only if the girl loves an asshole.

Here's a brief tutorial on how to have a conversation, in case you've never had one before or on the off-chance you're a one-legged deaf-mute straight outta Southern Gothic literature:

Conversations are about getting to know people, at least initially. Definitely on a first date. Ask simple questions--topics could include your job, your family, your friends, favorite bars. Open up. Get your convo partner to open up. Reciprocate in kind when asked a question; it's the normal, polite thing to do. Also, the person asked you first, so it's a throw-away--easy stuff, no excuses. If you're feeling conversationally ambitious, stray from the standard questions and get creative. Banter and intrigue will flow from questioning, but you gotta start with the basics.

This man, I'll call him Dave (Dave is his real name. Cue libel), did not ask me a single question in the time it took me to drink one beer and him to drink two (it was a sign when I didn't order a second, buddy). He missed social cues, he rambled about himself, he was dreadfully dull.

The conversation went a little something like this:

Me: "So, what do you do?"
Dave: "I'm a resident nurse in a hospital uptown."
Me: "that's awesome!"

Wait for it. Return question. Reciprocate. Do it. This is easy, man.

Nothing.

Me: "so, you must have seen some crazy stuff...?"
Dave: Tells a long, Boring story about blood.
Me: "wow, that's intense. sounds like you really like what you do, though."
Dave: "yeah it's great."

Wait for it. Again, nothing. Alright, back to me.

Me again: "So, how long have you been a RN?"

And so it flowed--or so it didn't. My simple questions went un-returned over and over again. Much, much later, it seemed to hit him that he didn't even know my profession, so about an hour in, he somehow figured out I'm a teacher. Other than that, though, the date ended and I don't think Dave could have told you much of anything about me. Whereas I could ghost-write D-Money's biography, he could barely write my 150 word obituary (is that morbid?).

After a while, this one-sided conversation/therapy session got so unbearably capital B Boring that sick thoughts started flowing through my head: I'd rather be anywhere but here. I'd rather be stuck in traffic on the BOLT bus to Boston. I'd rather be sitting at grad school (formerly, my personal hell) listening to a lecture about how to effectively teach math to fourth graders. I can't believe I wasted eyeliner on this. I want those beer calories back, but that Negra Modela is the only thing stopping me from slitting my wrist with a tortilla chip.

About halfway through the date, I faked a bathroom trip; I've never done that before. I leaned my back against the bathroom door and texted my roommate SOS. Then I checked my Facebook account. And nytimes.com.

This pet peeve has long bothered me in friends, family and dates alike. It's bothered me in people I love and in people I never want to see again. Asking questions of other people shows you're interested. It shows you care about them--whether it's a first date never to be repeated or years into a friendship. Relationships of true value are about reciprocation. You give information and you take information in. It's just kind of how it works.

I wonder how non-questioners got to be that way. Maybe they were raised by wolves or maybe they really are just that self-centered. Being a good conversationalist is a tricky skill, and I definitely don't have it down, but I do know that showing interest and being inquisitive gets you far--on a first date and in life. I don't have that much patience with those who can't do it because it just ain't that hard. Start simple and work your way up. A good conversation is worth the throw-down.