Sep. 19: OK, who put the tack on my chair?

It’s Day #19 of the September Blog Challenge. Today’s topic:

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Are you anything close to your previous ambitions?

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a teacher. I like to think it’s because I wanted to help people learn and grow, but looking back, I may have followed that dream because I liked the idea of bossing people around. Playing “school” as a kid was my favorite activity, and this is probably as good a time as any to offer a public apology to my playmates for insisting on always being the teacher.

Although I had envisioned teaching kids, after a year of teaching preschool in college, I changed course and worked toward a degree in business education to prepare me to be a corporate trainer instead—there are far fewer students who wet their pants in the corporate world. A couple months after completing my degree, I got a job as a software trainer. I loved that job, and did it for four years until the company closed. After that, I worked as an independent contractor for several businesses and local school districts, still training adults. I liked the part-time training; I found the burnout—very common in the training field—came much less slowly that way.

I’m still an independent contractor and my business card still says I do training and development, but I haven’t taught a computer class in quite a while. This is because most people who work in offices know how to use word processors and spreadsheets by now, and software upgrades do not typically necessitate re-training. I still teach the occasional theory (soft skills) class, but I’m asked more often nowadays to do one-on-one training sessions. I love those, but sometimes I miss the classroom setting.

I was surprised to discover just how rewarding it is to train adults. There are days when a student will come to me after class with tears in their eyes, saying “Thank you—this is going to completely change the way I do my job.” In my project management courses, students almost always start discussions about balancing work and home; it can get intense and very “Dr. Phil” sometimes. I love the feeling of leaving work knowing that I made a difference today.

So… YES, I followed my childhood ambition, with some slight modifications. What about your childhood ambitions? Are you doing now what you always dreamed of doing?

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If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

Oct. 29: Surprises, secrets, and a little parental pride

We had parent-teacher conferences last night. They went pretty much like they have since Katie’s first one in kindergarten—both kids are doing fine, they meet or exceed all the important markers for their grade, they’re well-behaved and fun in class, blah blah blah. And Victor and I sit there—like always—stunned, because these two kids are pretty much little poo-heads at home all the live-long day. I know we’re not the only parents shocked that their kids are liked at school; at home we worry that they’ll never make friends if they continue on the path toward being total assholes, but apparently AWAY from home they’re delightful. Pffft.

(Note that I did not call my kids “assholes.” I simply said they’re on their way to being them. There’s a difference, and that is an important designation or I end up with CPS banging on my door.)

During Jack’s conference, his teacher said that after they dance every morning, they start their first assignment and Jack is always something something something I don’t remember anything else after she said they dance every morning. We were all WHAT? YOU DANCE IN CLASS? AND JACK DANCES? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? She’s been teaching them the Charleston and the box step, they know how to walk like Egyptians, they do a big hair thing (Jack and Alec are the two long-haired boys who can do that one with the girls), and she’s secretly preparing them for a class performance at The Nutcracker. OMG. I remember little else about his conference, but I know I love this woman for making my kid do this. OMG, so much. OMG.

Katie’s conference had fewer surprises, but I adore her teacher as well. Maybe it’s just because it’s fifth grade and there’s, like, serious work being done or something, but it seems like Ms. Y has found a way to make everything they do FUN. Katie’s doing really well with writing and math (ding-dong! Asian stereotype calling!), and loves being in class every day. This makes me very happy to hear, as I remember fifth grade being one of my most challenging years of school.

When I started fifth grade, my parents had just separated and it was my first year in private (SDA) school. I knew some kids at my new school from church, but for the most part, everyone and everything I knew changed. There was one classroom per grade, and some of the classes had fewer than 20 kids. It was a small school. They didn’t have a TAG program, which I had been in at the public school, and I don’t know if my teacher was lazy or stupid or just didn’t have time, but she absolutely would NOT give extra work to kids who finished ahead of others. I remember completing my entire spelling workbook by the end of October. I caught on pretty quickly that if you didn’t learn at the same speed of the others, you needed to slow down. I have often wondered if things would have been different if I hadn’t had that evil teacher in an already difficult year.

I won’t go into all the things that made her so horrible, but I know I made it obvious that I had no respect for her. She hated that, and told my mom in the fall parent-teacher conference that I frequently rolled my eyes when she would speak. I got in big trouble for that—Mom lectured me the whole way home on how I needed to respect authority even when I didn’t agree with what they were doing. I bet she was thinking to herself that I was exactly like my father.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t so brilliant at that age that I knew my teacher was worthless, but I certainly knew I didn’t like her. I’m also pretty sure that my kids’ evil detectors are fully functioning, and that we’ve been fortunate they’ve had wonderful teachers so far. I’m totally crossing my fingers that our luck continues.

In the  meantime, I’m gonna keep the secret that I know Jack dances every day. It might be my favoritest secret ever.

Jul. 30: Plinky ~ bad teacher

Plinky is back. Yay! Here’s my first one since it returned. It’s from a week ago, but I just now finished writing up my answer, so… sorry? (Pssst… I’m not really sorry.)

Describe the worst teacher you ever had.

I never thought anyone could top my fifth grade teacher in the “worthless” category, but that was before I took my first management class in college. The professor was the type who wrote up his class outline in 1965 and never bothered to update it again. Exams were always multiple choice—the ones that came with the textbook, because GOD FORBID HE PUT ANY EFFORT INTO TEACHING—and classes were all-lecture-all-the-time, straight out of the book. We never had projects or papers to do. I can’t even remember daily assignments, but there must have been some, right? Or quizzes? Maybe Mike Devitt can remember—he was in the class too.

What made this ineffectual and out-of-touch teacher even worse was that he was a male chauvinist. I mean, the guy was, like, 749 years old and never changed his way of thinking since the days it was okay to tease girls and punch boys. I was almost embarrassed for him sometimes. Almost.

The strange thing was that even with all of his old school ways, he was a really nice guy. I was a reader for one of the other professors in the department, and whenever he saw me working, he’d stop and chat for a little while. I guess not taking time to prepare for his classes gave the guy time to get to know his students.

I have one happy memory of that class: a new kind of M&Ms had just come out, and a bunch of us shared handfuls nearly every day. Yes, what I got out of my first management course in college was a long-term love of peanut butter M&Ms, and not much else.

Sep. 4: Back to school-ing

School starts soon. Have you heard?

Yesterday the PTO board members served lunch to the faculty and staff as a big ol’ welcome back to the school year. Sunshine—a fellow board member and one of my new favorite people—coordinated the event and chose a western theme that was a lot of fun to put together. I forgot my camera, as always, but got a few shots with my phone.

Sunshine’s table decor—is that the cutest? YES. It is.

Pulled pork sandwiches, chili, potato salad, cole slaw, watermelon, chips, trail mix, puppy chow, cake

I’m not sure how none of us PTO-ers ended up in the photos; probably because we were running around while everyone was eating. But I do love that I caught Mr. N—above on the far left—making a very angry looking face because I can’t think of when I’ve ever seen him angry.

Speaking of Mr. N, he’ll be Jack’s teacher this year. Katie was in Mr. N’s class for second grade, and with the confusion of the school district budget cuts and the school splitting this year, we weren’t sure if we’d be lucky enough to get him again. Big hooray! Another thing I was thrilled about was to find out who Jack’s classmates will be—lots of kids we know and love, as well as awesome moms like Dawn, Stephanie, Lovely Lori H, Kristen, Dina and Julie. Our field trips will be so much fun this year! Mr. N will probably be tired of all of us hens in a few weeks but HA!—he’s stuck with us.

I met Katie’s new teacher yesterday and she seems very nice. What I’m most happy about is that Parker, Sophie and Erika are in her class too. Again with the fun moms!

Obviously these things all contribute to the year starting on a very good note. Feed people and they’ll be nice to you. Help them get ready for school and they’ll be even nicer.

And that’s what a bunch of us did today; we assembled back-t0-school student packets, worked on bulletin boards, created math folders, stapled volunteer forms, laminated signs, distributed piles of stuff to teachers… pretty much anything that needed to be done, we helped with. Our fingertips were dry and flaky from all the paper handling by the time we left. It looks like the first week of school will be a LOT more of the same.

I’m planning on getting a lot of around-the-house projects tied up this weekend. The kids’ room re-do is finally coming to an end, thanks to our trip to IKEA today. Like many families on Labor Day Weekend, we’ll be sorting through clothes, getting school supplies put in backpacks, filling out forms, and cleaning as much as we have energy to do so. Which hopefully will be a lot.

May 2: Plinky ~ My arch enemy

Today’s Plinky prompt:

Who was your arch enemy when you were 10?

Change the name, if you're a wuss.

This one is easy.

Keri (her real name!) and I became fast friends when I started fifth grade at TVJA. We both lived with our single moms, and because most of our classmates’ parents were married, we banded together as the odd ones out. But friendship, like all things at that age, is fickle. The next school year we both started playing the flute in band and suddenly our friendship became competitive. Some might have said it was downright hateful. There were probably other issues too, like fights between mutual friends and playground stuff and all that. I don’t remember. I just know that we went from being best of friends to not being able to stand each other anymore. We continued like that through junior high.

In 1983-84 TVJA added a tenth grade, and while a lot of kids went on to academy (high school) for ninth grade, nearly all of them had left by tenth. Our class was eight students strong, and one of those students was Keri. This was distressing to me—her too, I’m sure—but our mutual hatred simply couldn’t survive the small class size. I think it surprised us both that within weeks we were civil again. Keri and I ended up being best friends through the rest of high school.

I went to Washington state for college, and Keri went to Virginia. We had little contact for several years, but when we were both back in Portland in the early 90’s we got together occasionally. In 1994 we made a reunion trip to San Francisco with the other two girls from our tenth grade class, exactly ten years after our memorable class trip there. Keri later moved to Seattle and we lost touch again.

The happy ending to my arch enemy story: last week we found each other on Facebook and are slowly getting caught up again. Many of my best memories of high school and beyond involve Keri, and I’m glad she was my enemy for only a few years instead of for EVER.

The not so happy ending (for someone else): I ran into our tenth grade teacher last year, who is now pastoring a church near where I live. He told me he quit teaching after that infamous school year. We broke him! I suspect it was being stuck in a van with eight teenagers on that very long drive to and from San Francisco…

Nov. 26: Monday meme

Today’s meme is taken from the site every, every minute.

YourTurn: As you look back on your education, can you identify which teacher(s) had the greatest influence on you? In your opinion, what qualities made them a great teacher?

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Ferguson. I remember she was kind and gentle and I learned a lot from her. I don’t remember anything specific except that I adored her. Katie had an amazing first grade teacher last year and we’ve talked many times about how special those first all-day teachers are; kids never forget them!

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Lippen-Holtz, had long hair and wore a lot of turquoise jewelry and no makeup. She loved books, and because I loved books too, I loved her. I remember a lot of story times in our classroom, listening to her read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Harriet the Spy, and other kid classics. She was fabulous. But that was my last year in public schools and my last year of having a “normal” book in the curriculum. Sad. Priorities in SDA schools can be so screwed up.

My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Webster, had a great influence on me, but not great-good. Great-huge, and negative. Bleah. She is one of the biggest reasons I am no longer SDA. She was as hardcore as they can be, and in my memory, pure evil.

In junior high I had an English teacher that I wrote about a few days ago. He read Where the Red Fern Grows to us. He cried at the end, and I always thought that was brave of him. I wondered if the school knew he was reading that book to his class—it had the D-word in it, for goodness sake!—but didn’t care because it was like fourth grade again.

Mr. T-Bury was my favorite teacher in high school. He taught history and citizenship education, both of which I hated, but I still loved going to his class every day. A few times a year he would call us into his office individually to discuss our grade and things that might be affecting it. Even though I did all my assignments, I usually got C’s on exams. I really made no attempt to hide my disinterest in the subject, but Mr. T-Bury still cared. When he retired from teaching six or seven years ago I went to his retirement party and was not one bit surprised at the huge turnout. He was an incredible teacher, the kind you know is not paid nearly what he is worth. The kind that also has no idea how much he positively influenced his students.

I had a few professors at Walla Walla College (now University) that stand out as no less than amazing: JoAnn Wiggins, my adviser and major professor, (whom I consider a good friend now) is admirable because of her dedication to teaching applicable lessons and knowing that technology changes how business is done; Becky Hendricks, a business professor—she’s the one responsible for my love of the bookkeeping part of accounting and, surprisingly, the play “Our Town”; and Dan Lamberton, my modern poetry professor, whose influence opened my eyes to the beauty that is poetry and literature.

I think what stands out most as I collect this group of most influential teachers is that they all truly loved what they did/do. They weren’t just coming in to work every day; they cared about the things they taught, they cared that their students learned, they really did believe in the things they were teaching. As a trainer, I have tried to apply these same principles to my teaching style because I know how important they were to me as a student.

What about you? Who were your most influential teachers, and why?