On Raising Sisters

Scenes from my house just yesterday afternoon... 

T - “Avery, do you want to play that one game.”

A -“That game on the stairs?”

T - “Yes!”

They run off to the stairwell holding hands while laughing and cheering.

One minute later…

Vicious screams like ones that could only come from a prisoner in a torcher chamber – “AGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Avery never lets me be who I want to be!”

A – “I don’t want to play with you while you are crying.  I never get time to myself.  I never get to play alone.” 

Moments later Tessa is sitting on my lap.  Not sure who to side with I go back and forth between telling her that sisters sometimes need space - this is a bad strategy as it makes her howl even louder - and telling her that she shouldn’t want to play with someone who is so mean to her anyway. This is another bad strategy as she begins howling about how desperately she wants to play with her sister.  Then I ask her why she has been throwing so many fits lately if she has a good life.  This is by far my worst strategy yet as she rolls around whimpering while repeatedly saying, “I don’t like my life.  Avery never lets me be who I want to be. “ 

At this point Avery comes in and I say, “Look how sad it makes her when you won’t play with her.”  I realize that Sephus better get home soon to diffuse some of this drama because I am majorly mucking this up.  Avery responds by yelling “NOW SHE HATES ME!” as she storms out of the room.

As I am realizing how incredibly incompetent I am at handling their conflict, Tessa agrees to be whomever Avery tells her to be if she can just play with her.  That lasts about five minutes until the screaming starts again.  Avery tells me that Tessa bit her and Tessa retorts with what she feels is a clear justification.   They retreat to separate parts of the house until I hear Avery approach Tessa in her kindest voice, “I made something for you at school today.”  She hands over the detective badge she was so proud to have decorated for her little sister, and they play for about five more minutes until chaos breaks out once again.  This time I get smart and shove the IPAD in Tessa’s hands.  She sits on the couch to watch it.  Avery crawls next to her.  They sit in such close comfort, heads touching and legs entwined.  I hear silence, then screaming about who can see it better and then, “I have an idea!  Why don’t we each hold one side of the IPAD so we can watch it together.” 

I look at them all snuggled up together and think, “Holy *&#%  (the bad one).”

Raising sisters is hard.  Especially when you aren’t one.  I spend half my time looking at them with a deep longing bordering on jealousy.  How lucky they are to have that special love!  Since finding out I was going to have Tessa the mere mention of sisters chokes me up.  The sign that hangs in their bedroom about playing dress up and being best friends sends my heart to my stomach.  Listening to sisters give Maid of Honor speeches does me in.  The “Do you want to Build a Snowman?” song from Frozen makes me melt.  The scene where Katniss volunteers for Prim causes my Hunger Games pages to become  wet with tears.  Avery and Tessa have a best friend sleepover every night.  They lie in bed rubbing each other’s hair or hold hands while we drive in the car.  Tessa worships the ground Avery walks on and pretends like she is Avery whenever she can.  Avery approaches her like such a caring teacher passing on what she has learned in school and life. 

The other half the time I look at them and thank my lucky stars that my parents gave me brothers.  It appears to be a bit like living in an abusive relationship.  You never know when you will be bit, slapped or insulted and when you will be hugged, showered with gifts or caught in fits of laughter.   Often all six happen in a period of five minutes.  I think back to the screams in the homes of my friends who had sisters growing up over stolen shirts or messes in the shared bathroom… And yet so many of my friends who have sisters talk about how badly they want to give their daughter a sister.  They talk about how important that relationship is. 

While I was pregnant with Tessa I took a graduate class in the Psychology Department about the emotional development of adolescents.  In it we studied sibling relationships.  We were told that the bond between sisters is the strongest of all human bonds.  It is stronger than the bonds between husband and wife and even mother and child.  They measure family relationships based on positivity and stringency.  Sisters, thought not necessarily always high on the positive scale, measure the highest on this stringency scale.  In other words, when they love they love hard, and when they fight they fight hard.  I find this fascinating.  I am struck by this intense human experience that I will never have.  I am okay with that.  My brothers are amazing, and as Sephus wisely told me long ago, “Life is full of experiences you will never have.” 

However, it leaves me in constant awe as I watch Avery and Tessa interact.  I wonder how Maggie will fit into this equation.  It creates this odd disconnect as I look at them and know how often they will turn to each other instead of me and as I realize their conflict will sometimes pit me against one of them in my desire to defend them and their feelings.  I imagine them bitching to each other on the phone about the latest thing I did to piss one of them off.  I imagine secrets I will never share.  At the same time, I know that I can rest easier because of this relationship I am not part of.  As they navigate life, and as they become more and more independent they will still have each other and their love as sisters…  as complicated and messed up as it might seem to this mom who finds the whole thing lovely and alien at the same time.   

On standardized testing, being "gifted" and the challenge of being teacher as parent...

            I was not a good athlete growing up.  No team ever won because of my participation.  Never did I feel the joy of crossing the finish line first.  In fact, one year in gym as I huffed and puffed through my third of four laps to complete the mile fitness test the gym teacher yelled, “alright, head back to the gym, Danielle is done.”  I guess he assumed I had to be on my fourth lap if the rest of class had finished so much sooner.  In seventh grade I played on the D volleyball team.  Did you know they field D teams in schools?  I used to beg that the ball would not be hit to me during softball.  I once won the game ball only because I agreed to go back in the game, reluctantly, after someone got hurt. So, like I said, I was not an athlete…  but I could rock any standardized test they threw my way.  I loved testing week at Bartlett Elementary.  Illinois was a big fan of the Iowa Basic which required losing morning instruction for a week straight as we read random isolated passages about how cameras worked or the history of movie theaters in America.  I knew I could expect hours of quiet challenge in which I would arise victor, not only because I would fall in the 96^th percentile or above on all sections, but also because I would finish most sections with time to spare so I could sit back with my arms crossed as I watched my peers struggle to bubble in guesses for the last ten questions as the timer ticked closer to zero.  When I was in third grade I had to miss a Girl Scouting Christmas event to take qualifying tests to be considered for a transfer to a gifted school with full time advanced programming.  (FYI – My decision to not attend this school was entirely based on the fact that they were dissecting cow eye balls on the site visit day.)  When my friends bragged about the GS event and what I missed, I retorted with, “Well… at least I’m smarter than you.”  This attitude may have contributed more  to my limited social circle than my lack of athletic prowess, but I needed that identity.  I was smart.  I was good.  The test said so.

Having this odd emotional attachment to testing and test scores makes my dissertation topic fairly ironic.  I am studying the tests used to place students in reading intervention.  I argue that the tests often put the wrong kids in my class  - mistaking those with behavior issues or those with experiences outside the mainstream with those who have genuine reading disabilities.  I am finding that the act of testing and measuring takes a mental toll on teachers and students alike.  These scores become reasons for those outside to judge schools as failures, or even worse, for those who have little knowledge about the science and art of teaching to meddle where they don’t belong with policies and practices that will “SAVE OUR FAILING SCHOOLS”.  While at NCTE these past few days I sought out sessions that would fill me with knowledge and resources to support my literature review as I begin finally putting pen to paper for this final step in the PhD process.  Among the best of these resources was a speech by Alfie Kohn.  He has some pretty eccentric/controversial though refreshing ideas about public schooling and homework and grading.  Many would take issues with the suggestions he makes for American schools.  However, the statements he made about testing seem inarguably true to me.  He said that there is absolutely no reason to have a standardized test that ranks unless it was important to you that there be winners and losers.  And as long as we use percentile ranks to determine proficiency, someone will always fail.  That’s a simple truth.  It is necessary to forming a bell curve.  So really, everyone could be FINE and we would still have failing schools and failing students. 

To help you consider this truth, let me paint an analogy using the NFL.  Every NFL team is made up of individuals who were one of if not THE best players on their high school and college teams.  However, every season there are losers that are ridiculed by their inability to bring home wins.  Does this change the talent that brought them to the field?  No…  it is simply the result of competition.  Now I like a good football game, so I am not bashing competition for the right time and place, I just question it in the classroom.  What does it do to my kids who are forced out of engaging career-like electives to take yet another year of reading intervention?  What does it do to them to see another “below basic” on a piece of paper they are supposed to carry home to share with their parents?  I always wonder what happens to the kid who  learns about how percentile ranks work and then looks down to see the word one next to his name.  “You are the WORST reader who took this test…”  Many of the people watching Alfie Kohn alongside me were fired up and significantly more political than I am.  They wanted us to do something about these scores and the negative consequences they have on kids and schools.  Others pointed out that we are a society that loves quantitative numbers.  I pointed out that despite my research interests I take a strange satisfaction in knowing I did well on those tests and anxiously await my daughter’s scores despite claiming I won’t put much stock in them.

As the session with Alfie Kohn ended, I checked my email.  In one of the more serendipitous moments of my life, I opened it to find a letter from the gifted coordinator for my district.  It’s subject line said, “EEE students”.  I almost deleted it knowing that none of my students in reading intervention are “gifted” so I didn’t expect the information to pertain to me.  However, I clicked on it to stay in the Oakland loop and quickly figured out Avery had qualified for gifted services and has the opportunity to leave her regular classroom once a week to attend the gifted center where kids engage in multi-disciplinary units - very hands on experiences, that excite and engage.  I was immediately struck by the internal conflict of my pride and my resistance to participate in a system that perpetuates some of the things I hate about education.   Aren’t all kids gifted?  How can we explain to her why she gets to go?  How to we keep her in the mindset of valuing learning rather than the score?  How can I make sure she doesn't brag at school events about how much smarter she is than her friends?

I can’t say we didn’t know this was coming.  Despite my secret desire to give birth to a future athlete, it is probably not going to happen.  Look at their parents’ talents/interests… Avery spends her recesses writing and directing plays complete with scripts and costume/set designs.  Tessa cries and screams at the slightest discomfort.  (Though Maggie does love head butting peers and yells out ball anytime she sees a football!)  I have spent many moments thinking about what I would do when the news came that my children tested “gifted,” but in the end I didn’t think long.  We will send Avery.  She wants to go.  She has asked to go.  Sephus wants her to go.  If I am honest, I want her to go too.    I once asked a progressive professor what she would do if she had a child qualify for gifted programming.  She yelled at me like I was stupid, “I would send them!  And you should too!”  She went on to explain that what we ultimately want is the best educational experience for every child, and that included my own children.  I guess that’s my concern.  Why can’t all kids get EEE experiences every day?  Why can’t all kids get a high number attached to their biggest talents?

So now is the part where I normally end with some sum it up in a sentence advice for living.  I guess my continued belief that I have wisdom or that anyone would actually take it is the fruit of the confidence I got from scoring so high on all those tests all those years...  But I really have no advice - just questions.  If only I knew how to reset my mind and reform a system that I ultimately benefited from.  They don’t ask about that on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills… 

On change, loss, gain, and the here and now..

            Three years ago our district Language Arts Coordinator, Janet Tilley, sat us down at a back to school meeting to tell us she would be retiring at the end of the year.  As she finished up the announcement she shared, “All change involves loss.”  I wrote it down in a tiny notebook I was carrying around to get organized that year, and I have repeatedly stumbled across it since that day.  Each time I do I let it roll around my brain again.  When she said it, our district’s secondary reorganization which would eliminate junior highs and move us to the more standard configuration of  6^th-8^th middle schools followed by  9^th-12^th high schools was a distant reality.  Now, the official start is a mere 12 hours away.  Tomorrow I report to Oakland Middle School while over 25 of my respected colleagues will sit together as Battle Spartans for their first official back to school meeting, and I cannot get Janet’s words out of my mind. 

            I remember being in a psychology class during my sophomore year in college and reading that one of the wonderfully fascinating and frustrating things about being human is you can hold two completely contradictory thoughts in your head at once and vehemently agree with both of them.  I knew that there was a flipside to Janet’s words the first time I heard them.  If change involves loss, it must also involve gain.  And I am gaining so much this year.  I am insanely excited about what lies ahead.  We have amassed a dedicated OMS staff full of people who genuinely care about kids.  I am about to start my dream position.  I am department chair, which means I get to spend district money on books and cool pens while getting to be bossy in a sanctioned fashion J.  I am part of piloting the position of reading specialist which means that in addition to working with young readers, I get to serve as an instructional coach across all content areas in my building.  Repeatedly throughout my graduate program I have been asked what I want to do when I “grow up” and I always respond that I want to find a way to work simultaneously with students and adults learners, and this position creates the perfect opportunity for me to do so.  I am finally teaching a methods course at MU where I get to help future teachers discover how to best incorporate media literacy and talking to learn in the classroom – two of my favorite topics.  I was able to attend an OMS social tonight and see that though many friends moved on, many stayed behind, and we shared some hearty laughs today.  Plus, I can see the potential for so many new friendships and professionally fulfilling relationships. 

            See… so much to be so excited about… and yet as I drove home tonight, I could literally feel the choke in my throat that meant tears were threatening to spill.  It snuck up on me.  I was sad enough to cry before I even realized I was sad.  I drove home contemplating the truth in Janet’s words once again.  There was such a beautiful honesty in her willingness to lay the hard part of change out there for all of us to consider.  Being a teacher, you never get over the pang of the loss of summer and the changes it brings that we felt so prominently in childhood.  This summer it is hitting me especially hard as I am being inundated with change.  I am sending three ever-growing girls off to new schools/grades and day cares after long summer days together.  I am folding up tiny summer dresses for the last time.  I am months away from giving away all of our bottles.  And even though each age has brought more joy than the one before, a part of me will always long for those chubby thighs and toothy grins of an infant turning toddler. If all goes well, I am embarking on my last year as a PhD student.  I am figuring out how to work in a building without many of the people who gave me a reason to go to work each day.  All around me friends are experiencing new babies, new marriages, new jobs, new living situations and these big changes remind me we are on a fast train that doesn’t like to make exceptions for those of us who happen to drag our feet and pout whenever life threatens to become unrecognizable. 

These thoughts all ran through my head as I drove home with Tessa after our OMS back to school party.  She is four years old right now and is a perfect example of someone who embraces the joy (and perceived pain J) of life.  As we neared my neighborhood Right Here Right Now by Jesus Jones came on the radio.  She and I decided to turn off the air and roll down all the windows while we sang as loud as we could.  She asked if I would take the long way home so we could have a little more time together tonight.  I drove all through the streets of Vanderveen with little direction in mind.  I lived in the moment – “right here… right now.. there is no other place I’d rather be…”

All change does involve loss… and gain… it is our job to find ways to roll down the windows during that change and enjoy the here and now for all its scariness and glory.  I hope I can live that this year.  I hope I can grow while still respecting the past.  I hope I can watch my friends do the same. 

And to all my CPS friends who have played a large role in my ability to say I am happier now that I ever have been in my life – Happy first day tomorrow.  May we always find ways to enrich each other’s lives no matter where we are. 

On being married ten years...

                  “You take two bodies and you twirl them into one.  Their hearts and their bones.  And they won't come undone.”  Paul Simon, Hearts and Bones 

Sometime this past year, one of my good friends texted me and asked me why I never get mad at Sephus.  Never?  I responded.  I wanted to kill him twice yesterday and once since we woke up this morning.  (Okay – I was exaggerating, but marriage is HARD!  Wonderful… but hard.)  When I told her that, she wondered why I never complain or talk about it.  I guess I figured that getting frustrated was such a normal part of trying to navigate life as two that it hardly warranted mentioning. As I complete my tenth year of wonderfully hard commitment, I feel nostalgic and reflective. 

Sephus and I got engaged 11 short months after falling in love.  We were still in that goo goo, ga ga, stars in our eyes, drunk on love stage of our relationship.  We wanted to spend every minute together. We fell in that early version of love so fast; I think we mentioned marriage for the first time just two months in.  It was made of equal parts of these:

1)    Genuine connection through shared interests and values

2)    Overwhelming relief that someone had finally picked us (we were both known for being that good opposite-sex friend who would make someone so happy someday because we were so wonderful, blah blah blah so we were always crushing on someone who would not requite)

3)     Being hopeless romantics in love with being in love. 

 It felt amazing, but it was unrealistic.  You can’t maintain that for long.  Sometimes I miss it, or try to live vicariously through a friend on the cusp of it as she prepares for a first or second date, but I’m enough of a realist to know you can’t go back to that.  I have happily traded it in for something much more comfortable and boring.  Sometimes I tell people we were dumb to not wait it out a little longer, and really get to know each other, but really I think we were smart to jump in both feet first.  If you spend too much time getting to know someone, you will see the faults while you can still back out. I think the beauty of marriage is being forced to work through that hard stuff.  Running away is not a choice anymore. You can’t balk to avoid that hard conversation.  Despite the song, breaking up can actually be easy to do when you are dating.  I loved that marriage took away my permission to leave whenever a fight flared up. My mom once told me that you haven’t been married if you have never thought about divorce.  Growing up, one of my biggest fears was my parents splitting.  Mind you, I had no real reason to fear that, but I did.  So hearing her advice made me a little concerned.  Now I can relate to being so mad you take a moment to think what would life be like single.  Luckily, the daydream lasts about one second as I realize how absolutely crappy it would be! 

Life got hard after we got engaged.  We lost both of our grandmas in the months/days before our wedding.  His mom was first diagnosed with cancer the February before our wedding. In our first 18 months of marriage we lost his mother quickly and painfully.  Money was tight as Sephus completed his Master’s Degree during his first year of teaching. We survived an unplanned but much celebrated pregnancy that ended in miscarriage at 12 weeks.  Both of us lost relatives that we cared about. (I kept thinking we would attend a lot less funerals if we didn’t know each other.)   And just when we thought we were about maxed out on pain, we watched on as my little brother fought to heal from a house fire which resulted in a 45 plus day stay in the hospital.  Our personal emotional needs during these tough times took a toll on us.  I tried to repeat these sayings in my head “Marriage doubles your joys and divides your sorrows” and “We don’t know what we will face, but we know we will face it together.”  However, saying these greeting card clichés is easy, but truly forgiving and accepting each other’s inadequacies when we needed each other most was much harder. 

I have always loved the Paul Simon quote about marriage.  It sounds so romantic, especially sung by his soulful voice.  And I agree with the can’t be undone part, but the more I think about is as I celebrate ten years of togetherness, I think the first part of the quote speaks to the struggles many marriages face.  You can’t take two bodies and twirl them into one.  If you do, you will ultimately see yourself at the core of that one and assume the other one is being assimilated into your being.  When we get married, we are seeking another player in OUR lives.  Sometimes it is hard to remember that we are marrying someone who also has a life  - separate from ours…  with separate dreams and needs and preferences.  We need to appreciate each other’s separateness and work to bridge the understanding between our two minds, hearts and bodies.  That takes listening, and bending, and respecting, and loving. 

To me, marriage is about just making it work and agreeing to struggle through life together.  (Now I write all this with the caveat that some people are in truly damaging relationships.  And when they stop and ponder the divorce question they cannot say they are better off together.  I respect the courage it takes to admit that and do not write this as condemnation.)  The rewards are bountiless once you make that commitment.  It means having a co-coach to game plan your life with.  It means crawling into bed with someone each night so you can process your day in the quiet dark.  It means having a face to go with the pang in your heart brought on by every cheesy movie or love song.  It means sharing the load based on your strengths (read not having to pick lice out of hair because you don’t have the patience.)  It means someone to call you out.  It means surprise laughter as you get ready in the morning.  It means faith that someone else chose you once and would choose you over and over again given the choice. 

I think a more realistic quote on marriage is the Bible passage we had read at our wedding.  It appreciates the separate lives that join in one marriage in an attempt to make the journey of life more joyful and ultimately less challenging. 

Ecclesiastes 4:9

Two are better than one,

because they have a good return for their labor:

If either of them falls down,

one can help the other up.

But pity anyone who falls

and has no one to help them up.

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.

But how can one keep warm alone?

How can one stay warm alone…

So Happy Anniversary Sephus! Here is to ten years of sharing labor, picking each other up and staying warm.