What is in a name?

In school one day, I was asked how I would have felt if she didn’t take my name when we were married. I said that it would hurt my feelings. The girl who asked me said that was a bit old school and times have changed. I guess that was an insult or something. I told them that time certainly has changed. I then said that I hope that I have been living up to it. You know, asking her to take my name.

After they expressed confusion I elaborated a bit for them. “You see, she just didn’t change her name when we were married, she changed her identity. She changed it to my identity. On that day she no longer was her maiden name. . . she is now my name. As teens, you all know how important your identity is. You all work very hard to make yours and keep it safe . . . violently some times. Well, she shed hers on our wedding day. I don’t know about you but that is a lot to live up to. Men will never understand how internally deep a commitment this is to her since they are never expected to give up their identity. But girls are expected to do just that. It is kind of the whole submission thing in our society but I take it more as an expectation that I have a job to make sure she never regrets it. I stood on the pulpit and made promises. Promises I intended to keep for the rest of our lives. I need to remember this and live out this expectation that she has taken my identity and has told the world that she is symbolically part of me. I must not fail her expectation or it will be the first step to losing her.”

My proposal was personal.

We were watching another one of those shows. You know. The type where a guy goes all out to propose to his girlfriend. She turned to me and said in an off-hand comment that she wished I had done more. She has said it before and I am sure it is not really a regret but more of an announcement that she wanted my proposal to be more public for us to brazenly tell the world that we are in love and we will be together forever.

And I get that, I really do. There is some stigma about showing off to the world an exclamation of love. It is a reality drama thing. But that is not my thing. I took her out to a nice dinner and we spent a lot of one on one time together. Then I took her back to my dorm room where the lighting was low and the place was quiet. I had a card that distracted her while I got down on one knee and asked the question. It was just us.

Nothing grand and nothing over the top.

Weeks before that night I Prayed to the good Lord. I promised that I would love her and keep her for the rest of my life. We would become one flesh as the Bible puts it and God would look over us as we fulfilled our roles in our union. As far as I was concerned, we were married as of that moment. I had taken it to the Lord and made my promise. All I had to do is ask her if she would do the same. A ceremony and signing a paper are just formalities.

I wanted it to be just us. To me, our marriage would always be just us. I knew that when all the hoopla was over and all the guests were gone, it would be her and me. And, that was the way I wanted to start our life together. I wanted her to know that I wanted her as my wife not as a way to show off to others ( although I do) or as a trophy or show. I wanted her as my wife because she blessed me every day with her commitment, kindness, and love towards me. I wanted her to know that we, together, make our marriage, not other people and their ideas and thoughts. Just us. Our marriage was a marriage of just us.

So, in a dorm room with soft lighting in the quiet still night, I laid my mind, heart, and soul bare to ask her to be my wife. Even though I was nervous and shaking, I was confident that she would say yes because she was my blessing for being faithful. She is my proof of a Loving God. And she said yes.

I know that I can have some nontraditional ways of doing and thinking of these sorts of things but this was right and the right way for me. It fit what I feel our marriage is. It is us, through thick and thin. No fan fair or over-the-top show. Our story of faithfulness and dedication and selfless love is our thing. Who needs to be so extravagant with that kind of love?

Wife Rant

Ok, I talk about my wife and my family a lot. . . Especially my wife. It does not mean I am “whipped” or that I my happiness depends on her or that I idolize her. It means that I recognized the blessing that was given me and I thank the good Lord for having our paths cross that January day back in ’96.

And while I am on the topic, I hate the stereotypes of men that are perpetuated by the general public. I break stereotypes and I model new ones. I love tools and building things like the next guy. I really like to camp and grill and watch football. I also like to cook and clean and changed all the soiled diapers when my boys were babies. I can sew and draw and iron cloths. I am empathetic and caring. I am emotional sometimes. You may think it is a bit girly but I am just a “do everything” kind of Guy. Why not? Stereotypes are for those who lack the drive to broaden their horizons and are restricted by fear of others' opinions.

I have been told that I couldn’t make it without her. I can but why should I when we are a team? I proposed to my wife and made her a promise I intended to keep for my lifetime and hers. I made that same promise to God and meant every word of it. If he calls her home before me, I will make it. It will be hard but I will grieve and miss her every day that I move on because I WILL move on. She would want me to and that is what I would do.

So what if I talk about my wife so much? There is NO person who is around me who does not know where my loyalty lies. I don’t make it a secret. I don’t say things around guys like I hate being married. Guys seem to think that it is expected and they give into it for some silly reason. You know . . . those statements like – the ball and chain or my old lady or anything that would suggest that being married is not what I thought it would be. My marriage is EXACTLY what I thought it would be because I spent a long time figuring out what I wanted and then looked until I found the person that fit it. No settling. Why would I go and say otherwise?

I look around and see all this pain and hard roads people have had with their relationships. I am sorry to see it really I am. I think it has to do with all the stupid expectations of what a relationship “should” be that the media spews out like the next epidemic. The reality shows that are not real and the cute and supposedly earth-shattering profound memes that wallpaper Facebook and such. You want the perfect relationship – search deep into yourself for your wants and needs, observe what will and will not work for you, don’t rush - take your time and don’t settle, and for goodness sake – you be the one that knows what you like and don’t like -  not your friends family or some other source.
If you think my marriage is not that great or perfect. . . well, you can just go back to yours and I will stay with mine. When I am at home with her, all is fine by me and you are not there. Figure out how much I will take your advice. We work because we have chosen to be with each other and that is the place we most want to be. If you don't like seeing so much about her. . . well, there is an "unfriend" button. Use it.

One last note,

        I am a teacher. I teach people. Kids. I am pretty hardcore if you ask anyone who is in my class or knows me as a colleague. I am serious about my teaching. The education field is hard though and getting harder. We are loosing respect and confidence with all this testing and teacher bashing lately. You can see how it affects our profession with high turn over and unprecedented declines with people deciding to go to college to become a teacher. 

      This is the last lesson I have for my students and it has nothing to do with curriculum or tests. It has nothing to do with policies and agendas. It has to do with people . . . kids. I think our policy makers are not really in touch at all. They truly don't see schools as places full of human beings with feelings, hard lives, and the struggle of grown up into adults. I want my kids to know that they are people and were worth something to me by the way that I treated them. So this is my One Last Note to my kids since they are more than data points, they are people.     

So here it is - One Last Note-

         My job involves more than teaching science. I must teach life lessons also. I have to portray to you, through actions and modeling, important skills that will help you succeed. Hopefully you have picked up on these particular lessons:

1. Accept everyone for who they are and be able to work with them. They are people and have feelings just like you.

2. It is ok to be wrong. Own up to it and either accept your shortcomings as just the way you are or work to improve upon that shortcoming.

3. Be more that just equal with your treatment of others, be fair.

4. It is healthy to laugh at yourself, and it is ok to let others laugh with you.

5. Love what you do for a career; it makes your job more than work. It makes it fun.

6. Look forward to what you want out of your life and don’t let petty stupid stuff get in the way of your goals.

I hope that I not only have taught you these lessons but that I have stuck to these personal rules of treating others in my class that I feel are vital to building good relationships with anyone. In addition to showing you the above through my actions and behavior, hopefully you have seen my personal way of running my class by noticing:

1. Never, ever, ever, ever, get personal with a student when disciplining. Stick to the  behavior I want changed and the behavior that I want it to change to. Attacking a student personally is wrong and cruel. Never say anything that you don’t mean. Once it is  said, you can’t take it back (even with a sorry).

2. Never hold grudges. Students make mistakes just like I do and have bad days. Start  every day (and sometimes just the next time you talk) as if all are bygones already and  nothing happened.

3. Never take out your problems with one student on another.

4. Try your best to make sure every single student feels how you truly care for each and    every one of them.

5. Apologize when you are wrong. You would expect them to.

6. Don’t be a hypocrite. If you ask them to do it, you do the same and vice versa.

7. Finally, as best to your ability – Say what you are going to do and then do what you  said you were going to do.

 You guys are my kids and will always be my kids. I wanted you to learn the science but I wanted to you learn these other lessons even more. If you have seen them and know what they look like in practice, I am happy. Take care and do your best in school!!!!

Father failure

I am a Father failure.

I am writing to just get it out. Put it on paper, because I need to do something. Something besides the tossing and turning of restless sleep with a mind that will not let go of this nightmare day. I have been rolling this in my mind and heart all day and have finally given in to the desire to just pour it out somewhere and here it will be. My mind is reeling back replaying the events of today as if I have a scratched DVD that can’t move forward only to leave me in the worst part of a movie I don’t want to see.

As my fingers are flying across this keyboard, I see myself in my mind’s eye sitting on the floor holding my struggling 14yr boy who screams “Let me go” over and over in a defeated voice while tears stream down my cheeks. I was so scared and confused. My mind was paralyzed and shocked to the point where I didn’t know what else to do but to just hold on and mumble “No” over and over again to his desperate plea.

I just couldn’t believe how fast and fully this whole scenario had gotten out of control and where we ended up. We were both on the floor, completely drained of all energy. We had struggled verbally and physically for about 15 minutes now. One of us was pleading to be let go while the other was saying no and holding on. My wife was sitting on the couch across the room not wanting to look at us and determined to block it all out and separate herself from the insanity of what just happened. I could see it though, the pain in her eyes. . . the utter helplessness and defeat. It was there. This went beyond what she could handle both mentally and emotionally. She eventually had to leave the room. She could no longer bear to see this episode we were having. That is when I finally let go of him and he literally jumped up and ran out of the house. He fled like he was running from a serial killer. He was getting out and away like a prey running from a monster. He was running from me.

Words will never justly explain how broken I was in that moment to see my son run from me like he was fleeing for his very life. My mind was shutting down and my insides were freezing into a mass of broken machinery that rebelled against my mind. My mind shed all thoughts and gave into the pain of loss and rejection and failure. It went numb with a blankness that was terrifying. It was like working your whole life to build the mansion of your dreams just to have it swallowed by the earth in a quake right as you lay the final brick.

How did it get to this point though? How did all those years seem to go to waste where each day ends up being a struggle? I guide my son in the way he should treat others and care for himself while he pushes back with a tenacity that can topple mountains. He argues and pushes his views beyond the thoughtfulness of others.  It crushes my spirit and stomps on my faith a little.

It is sad to say that this all started with a very seemingly benign event. I was weeding out the movies we owned to turn in to McKays for credit. When my son saw me doing that, he went ballistic. He got to the point where he actually fought me to not take them. Really, we like scuffled over it. I tried to explain the whole needing to reduce clutter and to let go of things that we didn’t use anymore. But it fell on deaf ears. And then it was chaos and it happened soooooo fast. Faster than I could react. Faster than I could think. And then it was too late to go back. It was at a point where I had to dig in. I had to take the stand. All I could think of was if he blew his top and went ape crazy and got his way, how fast would it happen again when he looked back and saw how effective that behavior worked? But, here I am still hurting and still in pain with the memory it. Here I am writing at 1:00 in the morning when everyone else in the family had gotten beyond it and is sleeping tight. I am not over it though. I have messed up somewhere and I am hurting really bad with it. I am questioning my whole worth being a dad.

I am just going to come out and say it because there is just no use denying how I feel. I have failed as a father. There, it is out. The tears are rolling with it and it is on the table.

You see, back when I received the news that I was going to be a dad, not once did I think that I would be sitting here 14 years later wondering what the hell happened. I mean, how did he end up this way? I wanted him to have high esteem, and to be generous, easy going, able to adjust and accommodate, thoughtful, dynamic, talented, and full of faith. What he has turned out to be is not what I have bargained for. It is eating away at me here this early morning as I am breaking inside from how he acts and treats me and his mother and from the mean spirited and calloused way he speaks to us. He is so greedy and entitled that it is stifling. It is hard to believe that he really could have grown up in our house with us as parents.

What really bothers me deeply is that he does not show us in action or words that he loves and appreciates us. That is what it is.

He is not like this when he is away from us. From all I hear, he is engaging and well received outside our home. He has a great sense of humor and is a little demure. He works well with others and interacts with intelligence and poise. I know because I have been told. I see it at home too but it seems like the arguments and hurtful words are just a response of “no” away. Why does he treat us so horribly and rage at us when we give so much as it is? It is hard to help him see all that he has and how fortunate he is but that is not the teenage way now is it. What I have been seeing is greediness and self-centeredness. I see no empathy for our feelings and how we struggle to have time to ourselves when we give so much to them. I see a boy that does not want to spend time with me or his mom unless he has the idea that maybe we will buy him something. Inside it hurts a lot to see my son so distance in his values from what I hold and I have no idea how I trained him to be this way.

Here I am pouring my feelings out of how pained and damaged I have been from the struggles I have with him and I am starting to have this deep sense of guilt for feeling this way. . . for writing such horrible things about my own son. I am so hurt and broken from the effort I have been giving. The wearing away of my emotional endurance is going to overtake my determination to keep teaching important values. But it is like walking upstream in a raging river. He pushes back so hard with his wants and desires in a fury of entitlement that just pierces me. But again, here I am hating myself all the same because he is my son and I am not supposed to feel this way. I am not supposed to hate how he does this to me and his mother. I am supposed to love him and support him and encourage him. I am just tired. I am beaten down.

(A few days later)

So I have come back and read what I typed so frantically the other night. I have had a few days to re-center myself. I have talked to dad ( well I basically sobbed my way through all the pain, guilt, and confusion with him). Lord, what am I going to do without his council? I can’t even begin to contemplate that right now. I am come to realize that what I am experiencing is normal for having a teen. Well, the tantrums and severe reactions are not but that is my son’s slight autism tendencies magnifying these episodes. I am going to keep trudging on. I am wrong about him not loving us. He does. He just has moments where it is clouded by anger and frustration. I just have to try and not let it hurt so much. It is hard you know. Words. They are sticks and stones some times. They don’t break bones. They break hearts. It is worse. Especially when they come from people you love.

I am hesitant to post this. Part of me does not want to put it out there the struggle in my house and my guilt for writing such harsh words. I have only put my side of it here and not how my wife is handling it. The other side of me has this need to post it so that if other parents are struggling they know they are not the only ones. I have been told that it gets better but it looks so impossible from this side. Just hang in there. I was once told that I was given this child from the good lord because I was the only one that could raise him and his uniqueness. Well, we will see. I just have to power through my days and nights of shaky ground with faith and endurance only the good lord can give.

Here I go again.

I am weak sometimes.

I am not even sure were to begin on this one. Honestly I am feeling a bit down and don’t know what to do but vent and write about it. It is hard to explain  to anyone who is not a teacher because they have no idea or reference to what I am talking about.

Today I found out that my test scores for being evaluated happens to be a "1." I know, to the average person that means absolutely nothing at all. To a teacher in my state though, it means that basically none of the kids in my classes showed any growth with what I taught in class. One hundred and eighty days of dedicated lessons that were presented with all the enthusiasm and tenacious drive that I exude like sweat on a hot day pretty much didn’t translate at all to the kids knowing anything on a test that is supposed to measure all the stuff I taught. Yep. They did not learn anything according to this test.

On top of that, being evaluated by a person who just scores a bit on the low side kind of deflates me a little. This would not be a big deal if it was not for the other evaluators that do not coincide with this person. Now this can be a bit of moaning and groaning but seriously – basically I was a "2." Again, means nothing to the average Joe. Basically, being told that I scored a "2" is telling a me that I am just above incompetent. I am just a little more than a warm two legged human like babysitter that happens to share the same space as the students. The evals are still subjective even though they have a check list to be able to make it objective.

I think that what the issue is, I guess, goes back to two things – morale and fear. How can a teacher have good morale when being beaten down so much? Really. I have a lesson every day and I give it the good ol' one-two. I am told I am enthusiastic and motivated to do the best I can and to hold the course. I am giving the best way to remember and solve problems in the only way that I can. What more can be asked really?

Oh, but you do not understand how education works – it is never enough. NEVER. There is always more to ask and to do and to fill out and to jump through and to be beaten down with. . . . and . . . and. . . .and . . .

You see?

No. You cannot.

Not unless you are a teacher.

Fear though, that is my crutch right now. I have already had it on my mind: the whole losing my job thing. I have reminiscing about the one who, with deliberate effectiveness,  was able to remove me from his school with basically a mountain of paperwork. I look at this "#1" and think how easy it is for them (the education department) to create an opportunity to have hard core data to offer a principal to release me from my job again. It was really easy to do. Fail at getting tests together for the state, crash the whole system on line, wait until a week of useless testing has past for other subjects, and then give the test for my kids last on a Monday after 5 days of meaningless tests already. On top of all that, let the news channels broadcast to the whole world that the tests don’t count towards anything that will affect the kids but in silent glee make sure it still counts to teachers. Go back and read that again. I bet you will still not understand the frustration. How can that be an objective measure? 

So I fear that this "1," this simple number that means nothing to the average person, is taking over my thoughts and emotions. It is lurking in the back of my 16 years of experience mind whispering “incompetent. . . incompetent . . . incompetent.” My rational mind is resisting the silliness of this background noise. My rational mind is telling me that there are many many in my boat. My rational mind knows that my principal knows this is not a true measure of me. The little child in my mind that sits in the back corner that had been beaten down, though, is whimpering. That little part of me that still remembers is trembling. That is the part that is peeking around the corners and tickling the flutter buttons on my heart. And I hate it. I hate that it is still there and that it still affects me. I am ashamed of it a bit.

I know that I have no reason to feel this way. I know that I am better than average and that I am solid with my style and pedagogy. I know that most will think what I am thinking and feeling silly. I know all this in my mind. But then, it is hard to hide from my past and my feelings. It is a prison inside with my own mind and fears and trepidations. I fight and reason with them but in the end, how do you reason with feelings? Feelings exist with no reason. It is a losing battle to fight against feelings.

So I am going to carry on. All will be alright. I am sure it will all blow over just like in past years with failed attempts of “authentic” evaluations.

But then again, that is not the issue in the first place.

Reflections of an Old man on Veteran's Day

Today is veteran’s day. I find myself again thinking back to my grandpa and the few stories he would tell of his service in the war. He served in the army and was stationed in north Africa and south Italy. Grandpa never told any stories about battles or the darker side of the war. He never wanted to relive any of it and he felt that it did us no good to tell us the horror he went through because we were kids.

There were times, though, that he talked vaguely of some of the trials he went though. It seemed that he just let his guard down a little and would reminisce a before he realized what he was saying. Then he would stop talking about it. One day he absently said that the .32 caliber pistol that he had coated in nickel was pointed at him before he came to have it. When I asked how he got it to not point at him, he just mumbled something and changed the subject. He mentioned once about how he got grazed by a bullet across his stomach and that if he was as fat then as he was now, he would have gotten it for sure. Then there was the time he told me that I needed to be careful waking him up in case he might try and hit me as he came awake. The look in his eyes when he said it was hard to take because I saw the fear that he felt at the thought of mistaking me for someone else in the drowsy time of waking. Like I said though, these times were very fleeting.

Most of the time, he talked of the good times he had while he was in the war. In one story he describes how his band of guys picked up a couple of baby rabbits that they had come across in their travels. They kept the rabbits as pets for quite a while until the rabbits did what rabbits did best – they bred. Grandpa said that they ended up having quite a few cages that were really stuffed with rabbits and they had to finally do something about it. They didn’t want to care for them anymore so they decided to butcher them all about and have a grand feast. That is just what they did too.

Grandpa was quite the ingenuitive person. People of importance seemed to come to him with problems they needed solved and to find inventive ways to repurpose things. One day, a Colonel or some other higher ranking officer came to him with a specific problem they were having with a missile. He was told that these missiles were designed to be hung from a fighter plane and used for air to land purposes. The problem was that the wires that fired the missile were run on the outside of the launch tube. When the missile was fired, the back wash of the missile would burn the wires off each time so that they had to be replaced every single time that they were fired. What they wanted was to somehow turn these missiles from air to land use to land to land use.  Grandpa was more than up to the task.

First he decided that he would run the firing wires in copper tubing so that they would not be burned each time the missiles were fired. Then he formed the tubes into a double row so that there were about eight to ten in each row. Of course he attached all this to a platform that could be moved. Finally, he wired the firing mechanism to a dial he call a rheostat so that he could just turn a knob one click to fire a missile.

So he relates the story:

“”The officer asked me to demonstrate the launcher for him and I was more than happy to show him.”

“Fire a missile Sargent,” he said and I turn that dial once and off it went. It struck the burn down range right where I wanted to.

Then he said, “Fire two of them.”

I turned the dial two click and the missiles flew out one right after the other. The Officer saw how fast I launched them and asked, “How fast can you fire those?”

I said, “Would you like a demonstration, sir?” and he said get on with it.

“I took hold of that dial and just spun it completely around (he made a motion with his hand that looked like he just spun a top). There was fire all over the place and when it settled the hill I was shooting at was practically gone!”

With a sly smile he said, “I turned to the officer and said, ‘would you like another demonstration, sir?’ and he turned to me and said, ‘Jesus Christ Sargent NO I don’t want another one!”

I have my Grandpa’s medals from the war and now I have his jacket. There are not enough words that can be said to explain how much they mean to me. No person can understand the depth of his character and his mentorship. No one can truly know the price he paid with his life and duty. All I ask is that if you would like to protest something about our country that displeases you, do it in person or in the form of votes and freedoms of speech. Keep it civil and educated. Keep it peaceful and with honor. But please – please – do not disrespect our flag. Our flag is a symbol of our country and our countries values based on the constitution. Maiming it or destroying it or abstaining a pledge to it is not protesting an injustice; it is protesting the values and the freedoms that you are exercising. In a way, you are insulting all those people who fought, like my grandpa, for the values our national flag stands for. Your problem is not with our values and the constitution. It is with people.

Happy veterans day to all those who have served and who are serving.