On learning how to teach from a student

She wrote, thank you for treating me like a human. In an email, my student sincerely expressed her gratefulness for being treated like a human being. Wow! I simply told her she didn’t have to take her final exam a week after her brother had been shot. But what in the world were her other teachers doing and saying? Why did I stand out as the compassionate one?

Here is a snippet from an email this student wrote (sans editing):

“I am Just writting you this email to Tell you that I am very thankful for you being my teacher this school year and I hope the best for you through out your many more years of teaching bright and young teenagers. Of course it will be tough and hard to handle but you always have to think "These are not just my students, but my Childern when they step into my class. I add something more to their life then just a book of knowledge. I help them accept who they are and "TRY" push them to work for more then they want to".

"Thank You", I really mean this. With out you I don't know how I could of survived with going to class on a normal basis. Their was plenty of times my mom offered me to get home schooled from earlier this year but I resisted because I had something to look forward too on A-day and B-days and that was you. You have this smile that always let me know that you were there for everyone not just by teaching but by ensuring that we left your class each day with Knowledge from a book and about our selves. I appreciate you more then you could ever know. I am not only a student Im a human and you treated me like both and more. I hope to keep in touch and check on you and see how you are. May be Things will get better for me through out the years but right know I just look at things like " bad things happen know to show me that good things will come later". I have hope and I believe in GOD so i know through him anything is possible. I know I will become everything I've dreamed of. One day on your door step youll recieve a box full of roses and an invitation to my highschool graduation and college gradutaion. Yes, I'll think of you. Because you Thought of me.”

Her message was and will always be the box of roses for me. I never felt like I did enough in the way of connecting. But apparently, it was simply by doing what came naturally that I connected with at least this one student. My first year of teaching I focused on getting my students to think critically, enjoy literature and write clearly in preparation for the high school assessment test and eventually college. Slowly, I’ve moved toward being me more, being more natural, connecting more. I’ve come to accept that for some students, it’s about me reaching them with my words, my hand, my presence. I’m learning that part of my teaching is through the tangible, immediate aspects of humanity: telling a student she does not have to take a final when her brother just died, giving a sympathy card and a journal to a student whose parent just died, giving small gifts to students who are expecting their first child, listening to a student talk about an alcoholic parent. It is not always about the text, it should always be about connecting, touching, taking care of, loving, teaching humanity through being human.

On taking care of my relationship with my oldest son

Yesterday, my husband in one of his more brilliant moments suggested that Elijah and I take a walk together, instead of the whole family going. Elijah, much like his father in terms of brilliancy, said "can I bring my camera" and then told me to get mine also. In the shortest half an hour I have ever spent with my son, we took a walk, chatted and took pictures together. I loved every minute of being with my son, which I haven't felt in quite some time. I wasn't annoyed by his incessant talking and questioning and competing for attention. We had a peaceful and enjoyable time.

In learning how to mother two, nurse, recoup from my c-section and maintain my sanity and still love being a mother, I need to procure more time alone with my oldest sooner than later-when-I-feel-better. We may have to make photography outings our thing: as I loved seeing what he thought snap-worthy.

Enjoy his five year old eye.

February 15, 2009
How can I slow this down?
A few days old, on my breast, pale skin, slick coal black hair, grey eyes, beautiful, no expectations, but to be taken care of, smelling so perfect, so new
How I can I slow this down, the softness, the squishiness, the waiting for brown on the tips of your ears, so we can see how brown you’ll become
Changing features to see who you’ll look like
Waiting for the gas to pass so we can see you really smile
How can I slow this down? So I’m not always waiting for the next milestone, small or large. Where perfection exists even in his crying, in every expression though so unintentional or with little to no meaning, just mostly reflex
Where I just want to hold him and love him and that is all.
Where how much weight I’ve gained doesn’t matter because time is so slow, there is only room for this baby and his hair that is soft but won’t stay put. Hair that shows no evidence of the kink that will come, where there is no evidence of race and despite the belief that newborns come with blue eyes (and the nurse not looking at him, but insisting his eyes were blue), my first had brown and this one grey, like me when I was born and my grandmother’s whose have always been.
To slow it down so I don’t need my camera to capture an expression, his beauty.
To slow down time, so I don’t worry about my first born and his adaption, so I can only see him smiling at his little brother.
So there is only space for imagining a playful, joyful relationship between the two.
How can I slow down this love, this moment, this maternal energy, the beauty of this child, how blessed I feel
How can I put his birth, his being here, his first days, weeks, months in slow motion
In slow motion to make sure I remember, cherish, and never wonder how it went so fast.
How can I slow this down?

On being a mother/On loving my children

February 13, 2009
I look at you (Ezra) and think I’ve never seen anything, anyone more beautiful. How could this be? I don’t remember feeling this way with my first child. I just think over and over how beautiful. It can only be love. It’s amazing. I was only slightly disappointed that you weren’t a girl. I should have known in so many ways.
When we had your ultrasound and the tech said, do you want to know what you’re having. I almost said it’s a boy isn’t it, for her to know so surely, so quickly it must be a boy or it was just my instinct. I also had a dream that when you came out at first you were a girl, then you changed into a boy. And I was only a little disappointed but then thought, well you’re Ezra Daniel. We loved your name and once we found it, never deviated from it like we did with girl names (clue #3). And your birth happened like my dream. As they pulled you out of the gaping hole in my body, I saw a beautiful mass of coal black hair and thought it’s a girl. And then they said it’s a boy and turned you around for me to confirm with my own eyes. Disappointed for half a second and then I thought, it’s Ezra and was elated to finally see you, to have you.
I’m so grateful and I just love that you’re finally here, my Valentine baby Ezra Daniel. How blessed we are! How beautiful you are! What else is there? But amazing love.