Linda Bilak’ Blog

I just returned from my sixth (or seventh) trip to the Southern Zone of Costa Rica. I guess I could count the stamps in my passport to find the exact number….My reading material for the trip was Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin’s Three Cups of Tea.  I had purchased this book for my husband for Christmas. Once he was done with it, it was mine to read next. We have very similar tastes in our reading. We had both read Khaled Hosseini ’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.  They were  moving to us both.The extremely heartfelt story of Mr. Mortensen’s perseverance to create schools for the poorest people in Pakistan was an even better read because it was REAL.  I spent all my time in the airport and on the three airplanes consuming this book.

We arrived the day before school started again in Costa Rica. I figured that out on our trip to the supermarket in San Jose and saw the aisles of the store stocked with notebooks, backpacks, and school uniform tops and bottoms. The newspaper headline in San Jose announced the lowest enrollment in the capital’s schools ever. 

We boarded another plane and arrived in the less developed Southern Zone. Schools here are usually no more than two or three classrooms and a soccer field for recess. The buildings are old and crumbling. There are no glass windows due to the heat. Classes start early so that students are up early and walking to school by 6 am. They are crisp and clean in their uniforms even as they walk along muddy roads during rainy season.  The high school is far away from the village we visit. A friend told me the bus to the High School picks up students at 4;30 am. Most children never make it beyond an elementary education in a country that celebrates a literacy rate of 92%.  

What I want to share is the moment I had in a small market.  We were standing in line with our grocery items when I noticed the young boy standing at the counter making a simple purchase. He was buying a single item, a pencil.  That moment after finishing the Cups of Tea book made my heart melt. I noticed on the counter a box for monetary donations for the village school-I made a point of putting money in every time we stopped in the store.

I don’t know what exactly I will do to help the small village schools of the Southern Zone but I know I will make an effort to bring some simple supplies with me next trip to drop off at the school.   Mr Mortensen has taught us all to try to make a difference.

My professional growth has taken me more offline.   I will admit now that for the very first time in my long career, I accepted a student teacher. I know, I know. I had dabbled in the ‘field experience’ placement arena. It did not go well and soured me on the whole concept.   That is another posting for another day.   I needed to try this when I was ready for it- and I am now able to share the experience here.

What prompted me finally to even consider it, was my niece.  She is currently a sophomore at a Liberal Arts college in North Carolina. She is studying French with the possibility of becoming an education major. What can I say? It runs in the family….. My sister teaches third grade on Long Island.

My call to duty was in recognition of the need for experienced educators to give back to the profession.  Colleagues of mine were shocked to know I finally acquiesced. I had staunchly maintained my distance from any such entreaties.  Somehow knowing my niece would need someone to bring her into the classroom, and the wonderful profession of teaching won me over.  I wanted to make that contribution for someone, to impact a teacher’s future.  I needed to do it, and I needed to it right.

I was contacted by SUNY Geneseo in the Spring of 2008. They had a Spanish/Sec Ed major for my consideration. She was a scholar/athlete with an impressive resume of coaching and working with children already. She also had the academic chops as well. The icing on the cake was her summer plans included a five week study program in Costa Rica.

K. started with me on the first day of the new school year.  Middle School on the first day of school is like Disney World on a holiday weekend, crazy, busy, chaotic, and fun all rolled up.  I assured her she was there to get comfortable, get the flow of things down.  I had every intention of easing her into the front of the room.

Shortly into the second week of school, I started her on team teaching with me. The kids were able to transition from me as the authority in the room to a shared roll quickly.  Things went very well.

By week three of her five week placement, K. was teaching lessons to both 7th and 8th grade classes. She was integrating technology with ease and generally doing a fabulous job.

Week four was solo flight time, I was less present in the room. She had proven her management and could cope with the classes on her own.  I was eager to let her take over.

Final week- Observations by both her college supervisor as well as myself were complete, it was time to start handing the reigns back over to me. The students knew the final days were coming and parties were planned for all their goodbyes.

As I completed her paperwork to file back at the college I realized I had gained a whole new perspective on teaching, more importantly my teaching.

Lesson 1)  I truly believe Middle school is  a great age to teach.  I must have told her fifty times that first week “Middle School is all about the love”. (meaning we spend a great portion of our time connecting with kids in general- and then we can connect them to our content)

Lesson 2) Technology integration takes knowledge, skill and a certain personal disposition to put it all together  successfully in the classroom.  Some people are inherent in their tech ability due to a tendency to be socially wired.  I was lucky to have a student teacher comfortable with it, not sure if I could cover tech and teaching to someone lacking in the basic inclination. This is filed for future candidates…….

Lesson 3) I can be positive when guiding someone into new territory. That was HUGE for me. I tend to be a realist, a pragmatist. Ok, I tend to be a cranky New Yorker when my patience is tested.  I made a real decision to be POSITIVE for her sake. It worked out better for ALL INVOLVED. Go figure.

Lesson 4) I enjoyed not being the instructor-but finding resources to support her instruction.  This was a delightful experience. I knew I liked investigating new applications and resources but I could consider making that the focus of my career if the opportunity presented itself.

Lesson 5) My students  benefited by having a student teacher experience. They have made a connection to her that is maintained now by email that I set up for them to keep in contact.  Kids can make a  strong meaningful  personal connection quickly. It is evident to me now.

I would like to thank K. for the growth I experienced through the process.

I learned what makes me a passionate teacher.  I think I might try it again!

I missed all the hoopla of NECC. I am missing all the magic of the DENminars in Maryland.  I am learning things not connected to wifi or my mobile.  I am installing flooring, painting, plumbing, and ultimately creating a porch on a cabin.  I am working outside with my hands in the garden. My labors will reward me with the best tasting tomatos, peppers, basil, oregano, cilantro in the world. I will make tomato sauce and salsa from scratch not from a jar.  I picked blackberries from the bushes in my yard and ate them with ice cream.  

I am stunned by the push to think this is ‘green’ living. It is living the way it is supposed to be done.   I can stand back at the end of a day and feel real satisfaction for the work I have done. It is visible, evident and real. For me, I need this kind of break from teaching(from even thinking about teaching). I warned my folllowers on twitter I would have nothing ed relevant to say this summer.  I have all kinds of interesting things to say if you want to know about my newly acquired do-it yourself skills. How come I learned NONE of this in school?

I was tagged by Terry Shay(twitter @tjshay) for the worst job meme that taught you a lesson for your current career.  I begged off on my responsibility to complete by still being up to my eyeballs in teaching at this date in June. Well an unexpected field trip has alleviated some of my duties today and I have a moment to complete the task.

Here is the original question: Looking back on your life, what was the “worst job” you ever had that ironically helped prepare you to one day become an educator?

I am sure no one would see this coming in a million years.   No, it was not the gig as Assistant Director/Arts and Crafts person for 4, 5 and 6 year olds at a Summer Recreation Program in my town.(hours of gluing and painting stuff to ‘pre-assembly’ for tiny hands to finish-beat working Burger King like most of my friends) Nor was it the job as Dance Instructor at the same sleep away camp I attended as an adolescent in the Adirondacks. (It was fun at 14- it was outrageous at 18!I always suspected the staff had wayyyy more fun after hours.)

The job that really affected how I view my professional responsibilities as a paying JOB was the short stint I did as a temp at Chemical Bank on Long Island. I was assigned the collections department.  I got to see the reality of debt from the financial institution end of it. Talk about depressing.  There were  sections of collectors who worked in three areas.

Join me on the Dantesque tour of credit hell:

The first group was the 30 day arena.  These people called you obviously if you had missed a payment on your house, car, boat, credit card, loan whatever after a short period. I am sure they heard lots of “Oops! Did that not get sent on time- I am so sorry.”

Then you moved into the 60 day collectors. These people were less forgiving on the phone and made frequent follow up calls daily. It is hard to plead ignorance to them. They don’t buy it.

The last group was the doomed 90 day collectors. I felt sadness just walking near this area to deliver their mail. These people were about to foreclose on houses, repo cars or boats and come take what was rightfully the bank’s property.

What did I learn here in this office environment?

• I hate cubicles. I could never work in such a divided substructure(Claustrophobia aside…..)
• It was mind-numbing work to do menial tasks all day like answer the phone and sort other people’s paper(even if I was the best alphabetizer the temp agency had ever seen)
• DEBT is a horrible thing- and even the well intentioned can find themselves in a bad place financially and FAST.

Teaching for many of us is often described as a passion, a calling,  a reason for being.  Yet let’s not forget it is also our work, our job, our livelihood.  It is the way we make our means to support ourselves financially. It is a responsibility of ours to be ever vigil of our fiscal well being.  Money smarts is the lesson I learned to let me be an educator who did not have  to worry about how to pay my student loans.We all know they don’t teach that in teacher prep programs.

Today would have been the day I was to carry the Olympic torch in Shangri-La, China. How sad to think of the people of China. The last thing on their minds is the August Summer Games. I hope the three winners brought a check for earthquake relief efforts with them.

I would have. 

Teachers died in their classrooms with their students. How tragic. 

69, 000 people.

This has been a hard year. I have had to struggle to get my students to want to do more than the minimum. Of course, there are those students who do go beyond expectations. There always are. Unfortunately, the norm is not those children.  I tried to get an active exchange going on epals again this year.  It was difficult to encourage students to write beyond a single sentence in Spanish(their target language).  I found myself approving the same tired old messages(example: My name is_____. What do you look like?)  My collaborative partner and I exchanged  class pictures via our own websites/blogs.   I think Pedro and I did the best we could to encourage the communication to expand beyond the simplistic, banal messages. In truth, I think the Spanish students of La Solana did a much better job of trying to keep it going and interesting. Pedro- gracias a ti,  casi llegamos al fin del año escolar con éxito.

I just read with horror a message written by one of my students to one of the Spanish exchange partners. Bear in mind this student should know better. His grade is in the top 5% of his class and has never been a behavior issue.

(name)

Why do you write in Spanish? Aren’t you supposed to be writing in English? It is getting annoying.

signed,

(one of my students)

I deleted it. Thank God there is a teacher level of monitoring on epals!

That is reflective of the rude behavior they exhibit in class towards each other and to me. I do not have to subject the WORLD to that nonsense. The basic lack of manners is evident no matter how many times we talked about online etiquette.IT was the final straw for me. I am deleting all of their accounts. I may try again next year, since this group is moving on to high school.  ¡Adiós y buena suerte!

Clay Burell has examined a personally painful time in his teenage years, and has found there is an audience for the stories that we all have hidden. He has asked for us to create a thoughtful meme of our tales.  We have them, many of us, in our past.  They are there still like a scar from falling off your bike when you were ten.  You may not see the scar that was left from this experience-but you may understand me better for the telling.

I was the ’smart one’ in my family. School came very easy to me and I excelled in all subject areas. I loved to read. I consumed books in a day. The libraries both in my elementary school and the public one in town were visited weekly. My library card’s corners were worn soft from constant use and handling. I was not just a bookworm.  I played softball and was a great fielder. I credit my brother for the backyard catch sessions in which he would burn them in to me to see what I could handle. I got good at taking a hard throw and my accuracy to return the ball to him in a snap landed me at shortstop.

My community on Long Island was not very diverse in either its ethnic or religious composition.  The town which was on the shore of the Great South Bay had its socioeconomic dividing line-the Long Island Railroad tracks.  My side of town was very middle class, mostly Italian-Americans.  I wasn’t.

Elementary school was a very nurturing place. I lived a block from my school. We all walked there in the morning and ran home in the afternoon. I remember playing in the schoolyard all summer. I attended Brownies and then Girl Scouts there as well. We would have snowball fights on the piles of snow the plows pushed to the edge of the parking lot. This building was full of people I knew and I felt safe there. My mom was president of the PTA. By the time I was in 6th grade, my final year there- all that changed.

L. was a friend of mine. Her mother had become a Jehovah’s Witness, and so her family converted from Catholicism to follow the doctrines of her new religion. That made her ‘weird’ to the other kids. In our classroom in 6th grade, our male teacher decided to let the cliquey girls decorate a bulletin board. They choose to put pictures from TigerBeat magazine of teenybopper idols on the bulletin board-Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy, whoever the teen heartthrob of the moment was. I was somewhat put off by this-since I never read any of that stuff to begin with- and I was appalled in was now in my classroom but I just steered clear of the nonsense. L. was drawn to the bulletin board, or maybe the chance to feel ‘in’ the group. She tried to staple something up and I heard them be really cruel to her.   She said nothing.

 I said “Why don’t you leave her alone?”

It was at that moment the universe shifted and the focus turned on me.  I stood up to them and they were going to make sure I felt their wrath.  It started with the whispering and then the direct looks at me. It spread-the original group of five spread the message to the rest of the girls in the class not to talk to me. Friends of mine since kindergarten shunned me.

Stage one-Isolation was complete. Stage two-social ridicule began next.

Having a male teacher who was oblivious did not help my situation. The girls mocked me and laughed at me openly in class and no one stopped them.  Lunch was bad, gym class was bad, I was never away from THEM. It spilled over to violence only once on the playground-they goaded some other girls to push me around on the playground. I was shoved to the ground and I stayed down knowing if I got up, they would do it again or punch me. There were no adults there to stop it. I never went out for recess again. EVER. I talked to the school librarian and she understood. She allowed me to come and help in the library as the first grade classes came to her, instead of going outside to 6th grade recess HELL.

I began crying all the time at home. I became physically ill from the stress. I tried to stay home from school sick. My mother knew that there was something really wrong in my class- she made phone calls to both the teacher and the principal but really nothing changed. I was the favorite target of abuse.  It was a lonely awful place.

The depth of their meanness was proven when I received a call from my softball coach.

She had just gotten off the phone with someone claiming to be ‘me’. I had a sprained finger from jamming it. Someone had called her pretending to be me.  I had just come from the doctor, and she should take me off the roster- I wouldn’t be able to be on the team any more.  She was suspicious and asked to speak to my mother. When the phone was handed to another obvious non-adult-she knew it was a deception. NO KIDDING. They were trying to ruin everything I did, including softball.  At the next practice, the coach made the entire team run bases. The nasty little ringleader had the nerve to run up alongside me and still threaten me with a glare saying I better not tell anyone it was her.

Softball season was Spring. School finally ended in June. Summer came but no one has ever feared Junior High as much as I did.  After what I had just lived through, my level of anxiety was ratcheted up to the zillionth degree. Thankfully Junior High was EXACTLY what I needed. I was in classes with the other kids that liked to read-the smart kids! Those TigerBeat buying, gum snapping girlgang members weren’t even in my gym class.

I still recall the real physical response I would have if I happened by one of them on the staircase. Honestly, I was free of them and the daily torment that they inflicted on me. I came back strong- and school was once again an exciting experience filled with new things to try.

I heard years later the ringleader had gone away to school for college and had not even lasted one semester.  She had complained to her mother about not having friends….I laughed.

I still take on bullies.  I still stand up for others when I feel they have been wronged. Ask around-my twitter pals will tell you. I am steadfast as a friend. I don’t let others feel isolated or picked on.  I patrol my classroom, my staff lounge and my online network. If I can help others face their tormentors and stand tall. I am there.

The answer to all our prayers!  St. Cyberus is the patron saint of all things internet.

Cyberbullies making your life hell? A quick shoutout to this guy ought to set your world right again.

Thought since we are all busy discussing religion, twitter and NECC merchandise….. a quiet moment of reflection should be observed.

Feel free to add your own intentions here.

I almost wrote “Rooting for the underdog” but then that image would have confused you even more.  This post is in honor of Cinco de Mayo.  The reason why I did not title it that was because I saw there were already two on the DEN site and neither had to do with what the actual date signifies. Let me explain.

I am a Spanish teacher who is also fascinated by history,  science, art and music.  When I embraced Spanish, I took it upon myself to be able to teach more than just the language. (My students have painted murals on my classroom wall, learned how to create mayan hieroglyphs, and listened to rainforest howler monkey calls.) My students have usually heard of Cinco de Mayo-but it is often misinterpreted as “Independence Day”. No, that would be September 15th. 

Here we go, Mexico had defaulted on a debt to Britain, Spain and France. France came to collect from the impoverished nation and took advantage of the situation. The US was no help, since in 1862, we were involved in our own Civil War.(The French were well aware the US was not going to intervene).  French troops had been sent to Veracruz to march inland toward Mexico City. The Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862 changed the plan temporarily. Under General Ignacio Zaragosa a small, ill-equiped, ragtag army defeated the powerful French troops. The French had not known military defeat since 1810 and the infamous Battle of Waterloo.  This swelled the patriotism and pride of the Mexicans to defend themselves against such a mighty power.  The humiliated French did counter by sending many more troops. The following year they succeeded in taking over Mexico City and remained until 1867.

So they won the battle, not the war. They took on a bully- and won against the odds. It was a fleeting victory, but it served to inspire them to fight foreign domination.   
   Especially those from imperialist states bent on world conquest . Now you understand the image I chose. Ok, class dismissed.