Tag: Fulghum

24 Jan 21 – Did you offer to help?

My son was closing the medicine cabinet, toothbrush in hand, and smeared toothpaste all over the mirror. He then tried to wash it off by splashing water from the faucet to the mirror. This did not help.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he told me as I walked into the bathroom.

“He got toothpaste all over the mirror, then he got water on the mirror, then he started to smear it all over the mirror, then he got it in my sink. Everything he’s doing is making it worse,” his sister said in the tone of voice reserved for older siblings exasperated at their younger siblings.

“Did you offer to help?” I replied.

“I told him he was doing it wrong, and he kept doing it even more wrong!”

“Did you offer to help?”

“No.”

“Next time, will you offer to help?”

“…yes…”

Now, thinking it over, I need that tattooed on the back of my eyelids. I need it as an out-of-office message. I need it in every moment I’m working with someone learning something new, and I need it in any conversation where an adult complains about a child.

If the answer is “yes,” then we are halfway there.

In What on Earth Have I Done? Robert Fulghum writes “I have more than enough. They do not. And here were are, face-to-face.” Fulghum’s words are in an essay tackling the moral and practical question of whether to give money to those asking for it in intersections and on street corners.

It comes down do, “Did you offer to help?”

It is not my job to judge them. It is my job to judge me.

Sure, if I give something to each and all of them, I may in the process give to someone who do not really deserve help. That’s the chance I take, but I will have not missed anyone whose need is real.”

– Robert Fulghum, What on Earth Have I Done?

Teachers will often talk about the real world and withholding assistance or the benefit of the doubt to students because such second chances will not be afforded students in the real world. Most of these conversations concern issues of great import in the fiefdoms of their classrooms. In the grand schemes of students’ lives, they are little, insignificant things. Late work, a missed citation, not showing how you got to your answer. The real world. Ugh. Even the IRS will give you an extension.

Our classrooms are the real world, certainly to the students compelled to be there each day. They are the laboratories of civic and social interactions, imparting implicit and explicit norms of what they should do when life’s training wheels are off. Withholding the offer of help and the benefit of the doubt models behavior our students will surely remember, and mimic, when they reach that mythical real world.

They will not remember the late homework assignment, but they will remember whether we helped when they asked.

What if we were to give to all whom ask? Yes, some will game the system, but that’s the system’s lot to contend with. Ours is to contend with who we’ve shown the world we are each day. Or, as teachers, what we’ve shown our students the world could be each day. “It’s my job to judge me.”

The photo below is of a card now taped to the lamp on my bedside table. I can think of few better questions of accountability to end my day with.

Remembering ‘The Good Stuff’

 

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Sometimes I think of all the times in this sweet life when I must have missed the affection I was being given. A friend calls this “standing knee-deep in the river and dying of thirst.”

– Robert Fulghum

I started packing for a move today. I hate packing, and I hate moving, so it’s a special kind of day when I get to be thinking about both.

The nice moment, though, is the special kind of reflection I forget is part of moving from one home to another. It’s the process of deciding what piece of the past, what belongings in the old house need to make the transition to the new house so that it might be the new home as well.

For me, in every move since I first became a classroom teacher, there is a manilla folder that gives me pause. It is similar to the memory boxes my mom kept for my sister and me as we were growing up.

It’s not labeled, and it’s outgrown what’s inside long ago. Still, a manilla folder is the right container.

If it had a label, it would simply be “The Good Stuff.”

This is a folder that holds the notes and fragments of teaching. There are letters from parents, drawings from students, notes passed in class. These aren’t all the piece of teaching.

The folder doesn’t hold any perfunctory Christmas cards clearly scribbled at the behest of a doting parent.

Instead, there’s the note from Kyle, whom I got to teach when he was in 8th grade. Toward the end of the year, Kyle and I had a handful of talks about how his group of friends was changing. He talked in the most nascent of ways about who he wanted to be in high school and beyond, and I held my tongue as much as I could because I knew he had to learn these lessons for himself.

Kyle’s note, scribbled in the scratch that belied the haste in which it was written is a simple, heartfelt thank you for simply being there and listening. I knew what it meant to me that Kyle was willing to work through his thinking aloud to me. It was this note, though, that let me know Kyle was also grateful for those conversations.

One card is written out in the experienced hand of a mother. I’d been able to teach her son three of his four years in high school. They had not been uneventful. His graduation was of the sort where those faculty in his orbit had looked at one another as he crossed the stage and traded a glance that said, “We made it.”

This mother’s note simply said she knew things had been trying and she was forever grateful for the time and care I’d shown her son.

The thing I remember most when I leaf through my file is that these notes arrived on my desk or in my mailbox as a result of no superhuman effort, no extraordinary circumstances. These came as a result of me doing my job and those most affected by that work taking the time to let me know they took notice and were grateful.

As much as these notes were a place of support at the end of days of teaching where the temptation was to give it all up to be a turnip farmer, they mean something else now. In my work supporting teachers, leaders, and learners, these notes and the things that led them to being are a reminder of the importance of taking time (just a few moments) to thank the people around me for the time and dedication they show when they do the work we do.

I love my file of good stuff. Even more, I love the idea that something I jot down might make its way into someone else’s good stuff.

Things I Know 365 of 365: Everything has(n’t) changed

flood waters 168/365
I had a car when this year started.

I had a car and a job and lived in the same state as my dog.

None of those things is true today.

For as much as the where and the what of my life have shifted, the who remains remarkably the same. I’ve spent the last few hours reading the first few dozen posts of the year, and of this series.

In many respects, they were some of the easiest posts to write. They came from the top of the pile of ideas and didn’t require me developing the now-constant habit of asking, “How could I write about that?” as I interacted with the world. They also speak to some of the core pieces of who I am and what I know. I am still a kitchen dancer who believes in the power of silly and understands the scaling power of boredom.

I still have questions for Michelle Rhee and like to listen in. I sit in wonder as I think about Sam and the Diatreme.

I won’t list them all. They’re here for your perusal and mine.

Here, just here, in this space and series I wrote and published around 150,000 words this year. Add to that my writing for classes, and this was my most prolific year linguistically.

As much as I’m looking forward to it, I’m nervous about tomorrow. Will I still write? Will I want to? Will I feel purpose?

The answer to each of these, I hope, is yes. Still, the worry is perched in my brain.

In a year that brought more change to my life than most any I can think of, writing here was a constant. At each day’s close, it was what I did. The rules changed and shifted according to my needs, but I was always committed. In the throes of change, this was something I did.

I’ll miss it.

Reading through the posts, I am sad to leave them here. They are the thoughts I found most worth sharing, and now they will sleep as an archive. I’ll miss the conversations. They’ll stay here for my children to find some day when they go looking to know better who I was, and that makes me happy.

In my first post, I mentioned Robert Fulghum. From boyhood, I’ve admired the dances he choreographs with words. Many of his are words I wish I wrote. While I’m still waiting for his reply to my letter so many years ago, I’d like to think I’ve done something here of which he’d approve. I’ve gone on a journey, an adventure of the every day, and left a map for myself should I ever want to return.

Knowing that makes it all worthwhile.

That’s what I know – for now.

Things I Know 191 of 365: I find my friends in the pages of this book

And it is still true, no matter how old you are – when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

– Robert Fulghum

Somewhere between 8 and 9 years old, I pulled a book off of my grandparents’ bookshelf. The title was almost Seussian, so I was immediately intrigued. If had been a gift, my grandmother explained. For her birthday. From a  friend or relative. From some other such individual of the grown-up class.

Could I read it?

A stern look.

May I read it?

Of course, she said, but she didn’t think I’d like it much.

I did.

I liked it so much I read and re-read Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten over and over again until my grandmother handed his second book to me.

I’m still uncertain whether she wanted to read Fulghum’s further writings or if my grandmother was simply following her grandmotherly motivation.

I could ask her, but I like the not knowing better.

Tonight, as I sat reading and writing in the local coffee shop-cum-used bookstore, I looked up in a moment of frustration and saw a copy of All I Really Need to Know… on far away shelf.

From there, I wrote frenetically, driven by the fear that someone might see the book before I finished and buy it from under me.

If this 1988 tome meant so much to me, surely others placed the same value on its contents.

Luckily, the book was still shelved when I finished.

I took it to the counter, waited in line, handed the barista the dirty fork from my fruit salad and said, “I’d like to buy this book” with more bravado than I think she was expecting.

I’ve been reading it ever since. I read through dinner. I read when I got back home. Were it not for drooping eyes, I’d still be reading.

It’s been some time since I returned to Fulghum’s prime work, and I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before.

I’m not sure if I wasn’t ready or hadn’t lived enough yet, but tonight, as I read, I heard the voices of those who shaped and continue to shape who I am.

In one essay, I heard the voice of the college professor who became mentor and now is friend and colleague.

In another, I heard Bud’s tone, wit and optimistic pragmatism and was reminded why I value his voice and Fulghum’s.

I heard my mom in one essay, Ben in another and Chris in another, still.

In the moments I paused and now as I write this, I’ve started to wonder.

I wonder if I would have collected, valued, cherished and pulled these people so winter-blanket close to me had I not picked up and fallen into copacetic agreement with that book when I was 8 or 9.

Logical, rational me says of course I would have. These pieces of identity were in place long before the book or any of the people happened into our life, says he.

I’m tempted to listen to him only briefly. I don’t care for what he’s selling. It doesn’t sound like me.

The whimsical version of the truth suits me much better. In this book I find not only myself. I find those who are the LEGOs of my life – no pattern or instructions, just time to play and think of what I want it to be.

Things I Know 1 of 365: I know nothing

Scio me nihil scire.

– Socrates

Saw that coming, did you? Fair enough.

Here’s where that logic gets away from me.

If I know nothing, then everything is empty and I wander around hoping to find something I can know. And, while I do a fair bit of wandering and learning, my life is admittedly built around what I think I know. So, I know nothing, but think I know something.

A few weeks ago, I was walking with a student and listening to him talk about his writing. The struggle was around trying to argue a point. He could tell me where his brain was on whatever he was writing about in the moment he was writing.

The struggle came when he started to remember that he didn’t know what he didn’t know. He might learn something down the road or unlearn something he’s already picked up that would change his perspective on the issue. Worse yet, he could walk down the path that led him to realizing his point was wrong. Then, there would be this archive, this indelible record of not just his thinking, but his wrongness.

Knowing he did not know kept him from knowing where he was right then.

All of this is to say I know I know nothing with absolute certainty. This year, these 365, are more mile markers along the road of understanding.

They are to serve as reminders of where my thinking used to live and hopefully push that thinking deeper.

Aside from Socrates, another philosopher to whom I turn on a regular basis is Robert Fulghum. If the name rings a bell, it’s because you remember Fulghum’s book that inspired a decorative poster found in many classrooms in the early 90s – All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. My grandmother gave me Kindergarten after she’d received it for a gift. It blew the mind of 9-year-old me. It still does. I’ve read everything Fulghum’s ever published – more than once. I’ve given his books as gift to more people than I care to admit.

And, when I was 14, I sat down to write Fulghum a letter.

Though my handwriting was atrocious, I decided against using the family’s computer in order to show him what I said was true.

I wrote several drafts.

My offer was simple. I would come to him, wherever he was, and spend my summer cleaning out his garage, painting his house, whatever needed to be done, if he would teach me. I wanted to know how he wrote things that were so clearly true. I wanted to know how he saw the world with such understanding. I wanted to know.

I never heard back from Fulghum.

In some secret part of my brain, I keep hoping he will happen upon my letter some day when he’s reaching for a pen that’s fallen behind his desk.

Until then, here are the things I know for now…in this moment…but not really.