It’s a tall order for me to reflect on my time at USD, seeing as how I’ve spent five years in this program.  During that time, I’ve been on half a dozen diets, remodeled our house, homeschooled two of our kids for a year, continued “afterschooling” and “summer schooling” all of our kids, had our children in a half dozen schools, become a step-grandparent, student taught at three schools, worked four years for Julian Charter School, had some amazing students of my own, gone to five character education and numerous other educational conferences, started the Parents United for Sane Homework website, made several media appearances on its behalf, started the Grant School Improvement Committee, become chair of the Grant Governance team, written up an outline of what should be taught at education schools, written half an autobiography, gone through a midlife crisis, gone through an intensive experience of personal healing spanning several years, gone to two therapists and a coach, largely healed an ailing and destructive marriage, and done a “therapeutic parenting” program.

Path to Teaching

I started out as the least likely person imaginable to be a teacher.  I’ve always been a quiet person, had a terrible time talking, disliked explaining things, had poor interpersonal skills, tended to fly into rages, not been a nurturing kind of person, and hated school.  So whatever possessed me to do this?

I think for one thing, it was so hard for me to learn to be a decent parent, and teaching is almost like an extension of parenting skills.  So having read so many parenting books and tried so many approaches to parenting that I could write a book about that, I just decided to go all the way and become a teacher while I was at it.

Additionally, I’ve always been drawn to “people who can teach me something,” and tended to become friends with teachers, and told other people that “teaching is the highest calling,” so eventually I decided to apply that logic to myself.

Lastly, the one thing I had going for me is that I do love to learn, and have a passion for practically all academic subjects.   That’s the “dirty little secret of homeschooling” – we’re all really doing it because we want to learn ourselves!

As far as “knowledge and skills gained from the USD program,” my experience has been more like “knowledge and skills not gained from the program,” at least the credential part.  I don’t particularly blame the program, as the problems I see in it are endemic to the entire educational bureaucracy in the United States, as well as the fact that my own educational background is pretty unique.

My educational background includes traditional public school through junior high, two “alternative schools” for high school, and an undergraduate degree in economics from SDSU.  All my life, I’ve generally had some educational obsession or another that was counter to the prevailing norms.  When I was a teenager, it was “alternative schools,” and the ones I went to were definitely alternative.

A lot of this was encouraged by my mother, who was very unconventional.  I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone in these directions on my own, and I don’t know if it was a good thing that I did.  They were definitely an adventure, and perhaps a better alternative than public school, because at least they stood for something, which I’ve always felt public school did not.  When I read about Hyde School in Character First, I felt so strongly that I wish I would have gone there.

So it never crossed my mind to be a teacher, until I discovered Waldorf education.  I started going to a weekly Waldorf “Morning Glories” class with my second child when he was a preschooler.  It’s hard to describe Waldorf; perhaps “the antithesis to our ‘junk society’” would be the best description.  It totally mesmerized me.  Teachers singing songs, reciting poetry and telling stories with handmade dolls throughout the day … No plastic in the school, everything is wood, metal or fabric … Classrooms sponge painted in colors of the rainbow … Children aren’t allowed to watch TV, wear clothes with any logos, or carry their lunch in anything other than a straw basket.  And those are just the “style” elements.  There’s a whole teaching pedagogy that’s impressive, a set of developmental beliefs about children that makes sense, and spiritual beliefs formulated by the founder, Rudolph Steiner, a Christian mystic.  It’s like a deliberate step back into time, which is appealing to a “retro” person like me.  But mainly, I felt that with Waldorf’s emphasis on developmental stages and cultivating children’s imagination, they were treating children with the respect they deserved, which was lacking in public school.  I got a surge of creative energy whenever I was around the Waldorf School.  It gave me the idea of becoming a teacher.

I decided to get a master’s degree in Waldorf education.  However, a few things derailed that plan.  First, after my oldest son started having a horrible third grade year at public school, we took him out of the school and put him in Waldorf.  I thought he had a fantastic year, but it turned out he didn’t like the school and thought it was “weird.”  Our other children agreed.  We also saw some Waldorf graduates give a talk, and were not impressed.  Another big controversy over Waldorf education concerns its delayed approach to reading (not until 2^nd grade, I think), with children being discouraged from reading earlier than that, even if they want to.

I was still going to pursue it, and heard about a training program that had started in San Diego a month prior.  Since they are desperate for (underpaid) Waldorf teachers, I hoped they’d still take me, even though I hadn’t known about the program early enough.  The teacher refused.  I decided to show up at the class anyway, hoping she’d see my commitment to becoming a Waldorf teacher.  I came to the class, and she was so nasty to me, ordering me to leave before she would continue, that I was shocked.  I figured God was shutting a door on that path for me, and I’ve never looked back.  I have fond memories of Waldorf, am still influenced by it in some ways, and like to keep in touch with people I knew from the school.  But my path seemed to lie elsewhere.

A couple of years later, our second son went through a similar school crisis prior to second grade.  He had never wanted to go to school at all, even at the wonderful cooperative preschool all our kids went to.  He begged me to homeschool him, having heard of this idea somewhere (not from me).  I finally figured – I’m in graduate school (I had gone through the credential program at USD by this time); I guess I could homeschool him at the same time – and agreed.

Homeschooling turned out to be a totally life-changing experience for me in many ways.  Before even starting to homeschool, through a remarkable chain of events I heard about Julian Charter School, which had just started, and got a job with them as an Educational Facilitator (EF).

Then I heard about the “Charlotte Mason method” of homeschooling, and was immediately intrigued.  CM is also called the “Living Books” method, or perhaps it could be called the “Anti-Textbook” method.  Living books, as opposed to textbooks or “twaddle” (low-quality books), are books that are written by one person with a passion for the subject; appeal to all ages, are enduring, have literary value, and are usually written in a personal, story-like fashion.

Through learning about Living Books, through homeschooling, Christian and mainstream curriculum sellers, and personal book recommendations from homeschooling mothers via e-mail listserves, I came into contact with a different set of books than I’d ever seen.  It seemed like all my life, I’d looked for books that were engaging, and that had moral values, and I’d completely failed to find them.  Through homeschooling, I found an incredible treasure chest of wonderful books.  I can’t even say how much this lit my fire as far as learning. I started reading to my children constantly, and reading myself.  I’ve been an obsessed book hound for the last four years, collecting “living books” on every academic subject, plus recommended reading lists.  I think other homeschooling parents are mostly like me.  It’s a true renaissance in learning.

Right now I’m reading my son Nick “Science Matters: Achieving Science Literacy,” which is like the science book I’ve been looking for all my life.  It’s a “great ideas” approach to science, in which the author gives an overview of all the branches of science through 18 great ideas.  It’s incredible well written, and is finally pulling the field of science together for me, after my failure to retain any understanding of science after college courses, and my aborted plan to get an engineering degree.  He explains why “science literacy” is vital, or an overview through which to understand public affairs related to science, and the science principles at work in our daily lives; as opposed to the overly-detailed information taught by schools.  I think this is so true!  The author, Robert Hazen, is the only science writer I know of who has written a high school text that’s an integrated approach to science covering all the branches.

I could go on endlessly about the books I’ve discovered through homeschooling.  I’ve compiled long lists of the best books and curricula I’ve found on every subject for my students, which I keep adding to.  My job is more being a “resource specialist” than anything else.

The next big educational approach to grab me was Classical Education.  I’d heard of Don Hirsch and the Core Knowledge approach ten years ago, through an article in “Reader’s Digest,” and was immediately taken with it.  I call Core Knowledge “classical education light.”  It’s a less intense approach than real classical education, but it is about the supremacy of content, the importance of transmitting the shared stories of our culture, the revitalizing effect of rich content on both students and teachers, and the importance of a complete and carefully sequenced core program that eliminates holes and overlap in studies.

Then the book The Well-Trained Mind: a Guide to Classical Education at Home (TWTM) was published in 1999 and made big waves in the homeschooling world.  I read it and was totally hooked; it made so much sense.  TWTM promotes history as the backbone of education, with students studying world history through a four-year cycle, which they go through three times during their grades 1-12 schooling, each time in more depth.  American history is studied in its place as part of world history.  The other subjects are correlated to history as much as possible, especially literature and historical fiction.  Students are encouraged to study Latin as a first foreign language, plus formal logic and rhetoric.

There’s a large emphasis on the classical trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric, as both stages of intellectual development, components of every field of study, and topics in language.  As far as language, grammar could be seen as the basic laws of written and spoken expression, logic describes organization and cause-and-effect in thinking and writing, and rhetoric concerns argument and opinion.  Every subject has its own “grammar” of vocabulary and basic concepts; the “logic” of how it’s all organized, and “rhetoric” which concerns points of view on controversial issues.

As far as a child’s intellectual development, children in elementary school are in the “grammar stage,” and should absorb vast amounts of information in the most enjoyable ways possible.  Children in middle school are in the “logic stage” and need to study the “why’s,” the causes and effects in every field, and how all the fields of learning fit together.  In high school, rather than students dying their hair green and piercing themselves to achieve “self-expression,” there needs to be a major emphasis on spoken and written argument and opinion through debate and writing.

Through my job, I supervised homeschooling families that used a wide variety of approaches; everything from unschooling to Classical and in between.  It got to where I will no longer take “unschooling” students, because I’m not willing as a teacher to sign off on what they’re doing.  I only take classical students at this point, and have had some very amazing moms on my roster, from whom I’ve learned a huge amount.

A couple of years ago I was reading the San Diego Home Education listserv, and responded to someone who had just moved here from Hawaii and was inquiring about charter schools.  We talked on the phone, and our philosophies seemed to be in perfect harmony.  We liked the same curriculum, and I was so happy because I needed more students.  I called my boss to enroll them, but he told me, “Sorry, there are full-time EF’s whose rosters aren’t full, so this family is going to one of them.”

I couldn’t believe it; it seemed so wrong.  In a state of utter frustration, I started firing questions at him about how he handled enrollments, until he finally said he didn’t appreciate how I was talking to him and got off the phone.  I realized I’d lost it, and didn’t want to lose my job.  So I sent him a sincere e-mail about how I sometimes confuse what I want with what is, and I was really sorry about how I’d talked to him.  But I was still just in a state of grief.  I called the woman and told her what my employer had said, practically crying.

Unbeknownst to me, she then called my boss, and told him she’d like to sign up with Julian Charter School, but if I couldn’t be her EF, she’d look for another school.  He immediately said “sure.”  Kimberly Shaw turned out to be a totally amazing woman with three super-student daughters.  Kimberly works with Susan Wise Bauer, the author of TWTM, to co-author the study guides to accompany her books.  She also owns and moderates two classical education listserves.

We had a great year working together.  For world history, her 10^th grade daughter read a college level text, plus over forty supplementary books!  The middle daughter was a computer prodigy type, and the 4^th grade daughter a very talented writer.  They all had numerous other interests, their house was always spotless and inviting, and the family seemed to work together in an admirably harmonious fashion.  Her husband was wonderful too.  The Shaws moved to Arizona last year, but we keep in close touch.  Kimberly was always very, very supportive of me, and I consider her one of my “angels.”

Another teaching approach I really like is “brain-based learning.”  Some people consider it the latest fad, but I feel it’s the best collection of views I’ve found on instructional delivery.  It encompasses “multiple intelligences” theory, or what I think of as “teaching to the right side of the brain,” and what they call “context-embedded instruction.”  Also research on how to teach, and in general how to educate in a way that’s rigorous but as joyful and painless as possible.  There’s a big emphasis on all the fun elements that can be included in a classroom, such as music, movement, humor and celebration.  I think these are really important, and occasionally see a teacher do one of them, but this approach really “gave me permission” to see all those elements as an integral part of teaching.  I’ve included in here my notes on Super Teaching by Eric Jensen, which is a fabulous book, and my favorite of Jensen’s books.

My latest instructional passion – I think, because I haven’t seen it in action yet – is Direct Instruction (DI).  It’s a highly effective method that trounced every other educational approach in every subject in Project Follow Through.  Direct Instruction was found to be so effective that the results lasted for years, even if its use was discontinued.  It also instilled more “self-esteem” than programs that were designed to build self-esteem!  Project Follow Through was the largest educational research project in history, an almost thirty year, billion dollar, federally funded effort that ran from 1967 to 1995, and followed 70,000 children  in over 180 schools, of over twenty different educational philosophies.  However, the results have essentially been suppressed, since they were not in accord with what the progressive educational bureaucracy wanted to hear.

I think I first heard of Direct Instruction through reading an article in the L.A. Times about two California schools that stood out as successes among the landscape of failing schools.  Both of these schools had rejected a wide number of “reforms” such as bilingual education, whole language, and student-centered learning.  And when I read The Marva Collins Way a couple of years ago, her methods of instruction sounded very intriguing, sort of a whole class choral method, and I kept wondering how to learn about them.  Then when I read about DI, it sounded the same.  Marva Collins seems to have come up with methods that are practically identical to classical and DI on her own.

Which brings me to my tenure at USD.  I was pretty happy for the first few years, because I didn’t know any better, frankly.  But the more I’ve learned, the more disillusioned I’ve become.  I’ve come to doubt more and more of what is believed and taught at education schools, to the point where I disagree with almost all of it.  Just read up on “Project Follow Through” if you want to be appalled by the mainstream world of education, and whether any attention is paid to what works.

The biggest affront to common sense and intellectual integrity that I’ve encountered at USD is the philosophy of “constructivism.”  I won’t elaborate much further here, since I’ve included in this portfolio a chart I created of constructivism and its fallacies vs. instructivism.

I guess I’m just a simple soul and devote myself to trying to understand and appreciate the reality constructed by the greatest minds in history, rather than creating my own.  It is difficult to discern who has credibility or not, and I’ll credit myself with doing a good job in that area.  I am also hampered by the fact that I can’t stand to read the stuff turned out by constructivists, because it makes no sense, is harmful to children, is irritating and a waste of time.

Maybe we are all best described by our gurus, our heroes.  A few of mine at this point would be E.D. Hirsch, Martin Kozloff, Diane Ravitch, Siegfried Engellman and Jane Healy.  They’re some of the few who make any sense.  Martin Kozloff excoriates constructivism as only someone with an extensive education in many other fields could do.  He brilliantly points out the countless fallacies in constructivism related to teaching, history, logic, philosophy and everything else under the sun.

Siegfried Engelmann is the greatest practitioner in American education, in my humble opinion.  I think statues will be built to him at some point in the future, when people have come to their senses.  Unlike everyone else, he puts in the incredible elbow grease necessary to meticulously field test every item in the curriculum he creates.  If a lesson is not mastered by 90% of the children the first time, it is revised until that standard is met.

He makes the brilliant point in his book, War Against the Schools’ Academic Child Abuse, that “Traditional educators express opinions through metaphysical arguments that revolve around the categories they understand; but the real issues – those that make the difference between a program that works and one that founders – are very picky, precise, technical matters.  The difference between the first field-test program and the finished product you developed is simply gritty detail, not global goop.”

He emphasizes “logically faultless communication,” or using the exact right language so that there are no miscommunications between teachers and students.  As a struggling and incompetent teacher myself, I know how hard it is to communicate without simply confusing a bunch of kids.

Like most of the greatest minds and practitioners in history who have stood head and shoulders above everyone else, Engellman has been professionally crucified.  Direct Instruction has been effectively outlawed from education schools and schools in general.  Hopefully that may be beginning to turn around.

(I almost took the following out, please don’t be offended, but I guess I’ll just say it.)  More on my beefs with USD School of Education.  This does not concern the character education program.  One of my complaints is that I was never taught anything about classroom management until student teaching, when we were given a folder of readings, which I didn’t have time to read, and at that point it’s too late anyway.  Plus the readings seemed irrelevant because they seemed to assume the student teacher might have some say in how things were done, which led me to being dismissed when I tried that approach.

In fact there were a whole lot of things I was never taught anything about.  A year or so ago I wrote out a list of “what should be taught at ed schools,” which is included in this portfolio.  I seem to always rewrite programs in my spare time.  It’s not something I set out to do, but the ideas overtake me.

I don’t know at what point I realized that what we were taught didn’t even slightly resemble a “survey of the field,” which is what is needed.  Nor did it very much resemble research-based principles of teaching; also sorely needed.  It wasn’t logical, nor thorough, no overview, vast areas were “left out,” and it was completely tipped to “low achieving students.”

I now have figured out that for every lesson you teach, you really need to have three lessons: your basic lesson plan, extensions for advanced students, and scaffolds for struggling students.  It’s obvious, but nobody has ever told me that, and I think teachers rarely do it.  It’s usually the bright students who are left with their time utterly wasted … well I guess it depends on the teacher.

I expected to learn something about writing lesson plans (or learn more), pacing, delivery, public speaking, the optimal amount of instruction and practice, and so on.  The literacy classes weren’t too bad, but methods block 2 was particularly an ill-conceived hodgepodge.

I guess most people take the “hodgepodge approach” to life, or the “charisma approach.”  It astonished me to see Marc Knapp, former president of the San Diego teachers’ union, quoted recently as saying, “Great teachers are born, not made, and I’m a great teacher.”  What a creep.

So basically, I’ve been trying like mad to educate myself, both in content areas (for the sake of my own education) and in teaching skills.  I’ve read some fantastic books, which I feel ought to be required texts for some of the ed courses.  I’ve included reviews of a couple of them.

One reason I find schools’ resistance to teaching content galling is because I figure – if I’m having to work so hard to learn all the content I never learned in school or college, and I’m a relatively well-educated adult, how could anyone possibly think that disadvantaged children don’t need to learn as much content as they possibly can?!  It’s absurd.

Right now I’m teach writing to second graders in my daughter’s class, and I still don’t feel I know what I’m doing.  I mean things are going okay, but I have a long ways to go.  I’m planning to teach writing classes next year, and I’ll be researching all summer how to do it.  Of course writing is the hardest thing to teach, in my opinion.  I mean, how in the hell do you teach someone to produce fine writing?

My biggest problem is in giving clear directions and explaining things.  I guess it’s the talking and explaining thing, which truly is difficult for me.  Also helping those few students who are really struggling.  Those are probably just the first problems I’ve noticed so far.

I’m not charismatic, not a great teacher, but I am a hard worker, and I’ll get there.  I remind myself of how when I first got the job for Julian Charter, for about the first year I was utterly overwhelmed and struggling.  Now it couldn’t be easier.  So I’ll learn somehow, probably by reading a lot and picking many people’s brains.

But it isn’t like I can just take a class and believe what I’m told.  In terms of writing, for example, which seems to be the direction I’m going, because there’s such a great need for kids to be taught to write, and few people doing it effectively; I’ve already written essentially a book on how to teach kids to write.  I’ve attempted to cover all the possible methods, which include copywork, freewriting and process writing; not just the latest fads, which are process writing and Writer’s Workshop.

The method I use to write is freewriting, which I’ve read fantastic books about, by Peter Elbow, but have never seen anyone teach other than myself.  I almost never make an outline and then write something from the outline.  A lot of people seem to do that, and that’s fine.  But it’s not the only way to go, and I believe strongly in “letting it flow” first, and giving structure to writing second.  I’ve always done that, and word processors make it even easier.

Additionally, I did a lot of copywork as a child.  I was never told to do it, and in fact was discouraged from doing it, but persisted anyway.  In first grade, we were assigned to write reports sometimes (yes, this was back in the old days).  I always wanted to “be prepared” with a stockpile of reports, for some reason, so I wrote a lot of them on my own, ever ready to turn one in.  My method was simply to copy a topic out of the Children’s Encyclopedia.  My teacher used to admonish me to “put it in my own words.”  However, I saw no sense in doing this, when the encyclopedia said it so much better than I could!  She was very nice and didn’t really press the point.  Then as a teenager, I would copy whole chapters out of books I liked.

Anyway, most of my “artifacts” in this portfolio are book summaries and lists, because that’s how I generally learn, by reading and summarizing.  I hope I haven’t blown it by not including pieces that are more distinguished, but I wanted to put in things that represented my thinking at this point as much as possible.  On second thought, I will include some papers that have more literary value than my lists.

In conclusion, I’m sorry to be the “eternal critic.”  My husband says I have ADD: “Always Dissatisfied Disorder.”

Personal Journey

During this last month, I’ve been reflecting on how unbelievable it feels to me that I’ve actually become socialized to be a teacher.  Part of it happened through classes, part through student teaching, and part through my job.  But probably the most significant part has been an inner saga, that played out quite recently, through my work in creating and “being” the Grant School Improvement Committee.

I began this project full of an incredible amount of rage and pain, directed toward this school, the teachers, and the former principal.  My attached “Unfit Teachers” paper explains some of my issues with the school.  But I have to admit it probably goes deeper than that, to being a metaphor for my life.

I started off with such a deep-seated fear, distrust and anger toward teachers, it’s hard to even describe it.  It reminds me of children who hate their mothers after their fathers abuse them.  It’s like you have a big problem, and you hate the person you wish would have protected you.

I’ve had a lot of big problems in my life, and they all seem to have parallels to issues in education.  I feel like my parents and I lived out many of the social problems of our current society, a generation ahead of most people.

My mother’s parents were both college professors.  My father’s parents were a writer (his mother) and an engineer.  So to begin with, both my parents had mothers who worked, at a time when that was uncommon.  They were both abandoned to neglectful daycare arrangements, which led to major emotional problems.  Then my mother’s parents divorced, at a time when that was very uncommon, after her father took up with one of his students.

My mother attended City and Country School in New York, one of the oldest progressive schools in the country.  She had a nervous breakdown in college, spent time in a sanitarium, and switched colleges.  There she met my father, who had come home from the war.  The big things they had in common were that they were both going to therapists, were both non-religious Jews, and both loved to eat.  My father started a business as a stock market analyst, after learning to invest some money he had inherited from an uncle who had committed suicide, as had his grandfather.

So I come from a family that is very brilliant and successful, but has pretty extreme psychological problems.  My parents loved my sister and me, tried hard, dealt with our other autistic sister, but were very clueless about how to be parents, how to be happy, and many other things.  They raised me in an “anything goes” fashion that reminds me of many kids I see today whose parents refuse to discipline them.  There must be other people in the world who were raised as I was, but in my entire life, I’ve never met one.

I married a formerly Catholic man who hated his childhood (which was the opposite of mine), became a Catholic myself, tried to heal from my nightmares, and save the world in my own small way, as my mother had taught me.

School was the one point of structure in my childhood, and I was always a good student.  But I avoided teachers, and was never close to any of them.   In retrospect, my life was bad enough that I needed “replacement parents,” but it was outwardly normal enough that I wasn’t forced in that direction, so I never reached out.

To skip forward, my whole way of dealing with life began to unravel during the time I was at USD.  There was one professor that I was kind of broadsided with such strong feelings for, felt so mentally and emotionally connected to, and so unable to escape it, that I actually started talking to him.  I told him a lot about my life, and the things that had caused me pain, including my teenaged sex and drugs misadventures.  These were hard to talk about, but I needed to.  He listened to a lot of what must have seemed very strange from me, but had an incredibly healing effect on me through being his wise, appreciative, accepting self.

I told a friend about this, and she said, “Well, I think I’ve had a crush on every professor I’ve ever taken a class from …”

I told her, “Well I wouldn’t describe it that way, plus I’ve never had a crush on any professor in my life!  There were a few at San Diego State that I really liked, who were fantastic teachers that I’ll never forget, and I had a bit of a personal relationship with them, but it didn’t go that deep …”

Maybe his voice just reminded me of my dad, only a nice version, and I always respond to people’s voices more than anything else.  But mainly, I come from a family and extended family of emotionally disturbed sexual philanderers.  I seem to have a great need to connect emotionally with men who are not that way, and I can sort of feel that quality.

Something similar, though nowhere near as intense, happened recently, mostly in relation to the principal at Lee Elementary*, Mr. R*.  He is similarly a very unusual and warm kind of man.  We’ve had a pretty contentious relationship, however, as I was trying to deal with problems at Lee, and probably not doing it in a very graceful way.  Though I always felt he was very honest and forthcoming with me, which I value above all else, and always felt I could trust him, and that he was an incredibly kindly and caring person.  However, I was coming from a place where I felt I needed to bring certain things out in the open.  When I look back at some of the things we said to each other, they were pretty bad.

Somehow, though, things started turning around between Mr. R and me.  I learned a lot about how to deal with meetings, get along with people, and accomplish things and kept trying to do better.  He seemed to appreciate my efforts, perhaps decided I wasn’t crazy after all, and got more friendly.

Toward the end of the year, every time I met with him, even though I was often pissed off about his decisions, something in me started shifting.  I always felt like he was so loving, that I could see love pouring out of his eyes.  I remember being at a meeting, and I started thinking dreamily, “He’s so nice … I like being around him … Maybe I should just enjoy this feeling … Why am I always fighting him? … Maybe I should stop doing that … It doesn’t get me anywhere … “

I felt like I was under his spell.  I went through my mental process of, “Am I being seduced?” but that just didn’t seem to be what was happening at all.  Even if I saw him from a distance, I got this same feeling, of love pouring out of him.  I got this calm feeling in response.

I didn’t give up on what I was trying to accomplish, but somehow all the fight went out of me.  I wasn’t thrilled with what was happening on the school’s end, but I don’t have control of the situation, so there was nothing I could really do, and fighting wasn’t getting me anywhere.  The less I fought the more cooperative he was anyway.  I had always seen him as my ally, really, and he started becoming that.

Then the other night I had a dream.  In the dream, I was at a meeting with Mr. R.  We tripped and fell over, and he was laying on top of me.  I smiled at him and said, “Lucky me!”  I woke up and practically screamed.  I thought – good god, what is happening to me?!  When I start dreaming of getting physical with other men, that’s about as close to a sex dream as a good little girl like me gets, and maybe I’m really going off the rails.  Though I told my husband about it and we both laughed.

On the other hand, maybe it’s a positive image.  He’s on top, in control, and I’m happy about it.  Maybe I’ve been “tamed by love,” and it feels good.  I do have the feeling around him like I can finally relax, that I’m around someone who knows what they’re doing.  It’s almost like I can feel the stress hormones leaving my body, and the “sense of well being” hormones set in.  I’ve cried a lot of tears thinking about this whole situation, and it’s felt like another healing.

I guess, being the attachment disordered child that I am at heart, I go through these little attachment dramas with those few men in the world that I admire, feel I can trust, and am, in fact, lucky enough to have anything to do with.

I also talked individually with several very good teachers at Grant in the course of trying to accomplish things there, learned a lot from that, and wish I would have done it a long time ago.  Plus I’ve come into contact with several other wonderful school administrators in the last few months, through one strange means or another, who really inspired me.  Nancy Girvin was one of them.

Then there was also my relationship with “Mrs. Judith Picket*” this year.  She is Nina’s teacher from St. Monica’s; an uptight, pathologically unappreciative teacher who was ruining Nina’s life.   It started when Nina was so miserable in school that she was acting terrible at home, begged me to homeschool her, and told me she wanted to “be in a class where you’re the teacher all the time.”

This is a daughter who doesn’t normally want a whole lot to do with me; who is sweet and charming in public, but an incredible pain-in-the-ass and non-stop trouble-maker the rest of the time.  I was so panicked by her wanting to homeschool that we somehow compromised on that I would teach writing in her class each week.

Of course this meant that I had to deal with Mrs. P, and I quickly learned why Nina was so depressed.  I had to put in an incredible amount of work, figuring out how to teach writing to second graders who had never written anything in their school lives other than worksheets.  Mrs. P let me do it, to her immense credit, but never even said “thank you.”

Dealing with her was so stressful and traumatic for me that I called another parent in the class, who I barely know but who’s a psychologist, to pour out my troubles, because I felt like I was going under.  She was very appreciative of my efforts.

Ultimately, Mrs. P and I built a working relationship, and I learned a lot from doing that.  It was a very “undefined” situation, and I had to internally spell out for myself exactly where the boundaries were.  I decided I needed to 1) never criticize her overtly or by implication, 2) never ask her to do anything for me, unless I considered it very carefully, 3) check everything I did with her.  This probably seems simple and basic, but it wasn’t for me.  I was having to take over a class for someone who didn’t communicate, was very defensive, never thanked me, and do it without offending her.  It reminds me of student teaching!

I also had to emotionally cope with her pointed lack of appreciation, and I am someone who definitely has “appreciation issues” myself.  I decided that what’s usually going on in these types of situations is that the ungrateful person is lacking in feeling appreciated themselves.  So I made a commitment to go on an “appreciation campaign” for Mrs. P.  This was wrenching to get myself to do, however, since to say that I didn’t appreciate someone who was making my daughter so unhappy is an understatement.

I started thanking her every time I left the class.  I had the class write an acrostic poem, and used Mrs. P’s name as an example.  I knew that children always try to like their teacher, and even though I was choking on trying to say appreciative things about her, the kids would probably manage.  They did, and she seemed grateful.

I realized that Mrs. P considered herself a “hip person.”  She started trying to joke around with me about sexual comments the kids would inadvertently say.  This was on a seven-year-old level, and really wasn’t amusing to me, but I tried.  She showed me a paper (my daughter’s of course) in which she was supposed to write, “Kim sees Bob,” and she’d written “Kim sex Bob.”  Mrs. P said, “She hasn’t a clue …” I almost said, “Nina has been a total seductress and sex maniac since she was born, and unfortunately does have a clue,” but of course I didn’t.

At this point, we actually have a warm relationship.  Nina finally seems fine with school.  Mrs. P actually sent home a positive progress report (one of our issues with her was her picking Nina apart in progress reports, and not saying anything positive; which was galling since Nina is an excellent student and very popular).

The whole experience was one of the many things in my life that doesn’t fall into the category of the “rational.”  I can’t understand it in my usual way.  In the beginning of the year, Nina had tried two other schools, was unhappy with them, and so we ended up back at St. Monica’s, which felt right.  But as the year progressed, with Nina being more and more unhappy, I questioned why this whole thing had happened.  We made concrete plans to switch her to our local public school the following year, and couldn’t wait for the year to end.

Then when I started teaching the writing, I felt maybe that was the larger purpose, because the practice definitely did me some good.  And ultimately it seemed to cure Nina’s unhappiness.  At this point, Nina tells me Mrs. P is “fine,” and she is thrilled about the idea of attending St. Monica’s through eighth grade!  I’ve decided that although I’m not thrilled with the teaching methods used at this school, at least the school has a “heart,” which the public school lacks.  The teachers definitely aren’t there for the money, and they seem to all have some passion.  Nina’s first grade teacher was a wonderful nun who also had a degree in school counseling; Mrs. P is a fantastic pianist who does the school music program; and the third grade teacher loves science.  I also think the school will slowly improve its curriculum as it converts to Core Knowledge, and the teaching methods will improve if the teachers attend the yearly Core Knowledge conference, which I will definitely advocate for their doing!

The upshot of both my volunteer projects this year and my USD experience is that I feel like I’ve lost a lot of my hostility to teachers, and a lot of my anger and pain in general.  Coming to grips with the teacher thing has been like a healing of my soul.  It amazes me.

I can finally smile at people with sincerity.  If someone says, “How are you?” I can say “fine” and mean it.  It used to be that whenever anyone said, “How are you?” I felt like saying, “crappy, shitty,” and going into a litany of pain.

When you start having feelings of love, that’s what’s really frightening.  I’ve even started having feelings of love for my father, which amazes me.  Recently we went to dinner and he started needling me with his same tired arguments that he likes to bring up.  The first one was an attack on “organized religion.”  I told him something like, “Studies show that attending church make you healthier, happier and improves your sex life.”  I’d never before even been able to reply that coherently to him.

Then he brought up his second favorite attack: “The Pope did nothing for the Jews during World War II.”  I replied, “The United States was in a much better position to do something for the Jews than the Pope.”  It was a total breakthrough for me to be able to say anything to him about those subjects.

It reminded me of the last scene of “The Four Feathers” in which some old guy keeps fabricating war stories, and the protagonist who has finally proven his courage finally sets the record straight.  I thought – maybe if you’re no longer hating someone, you can confront them with grace.  I seem to get locked into a syndrome where I hate people (especially teachers) and can’t question them or set them straight in a nice way.

In conclusion, I can’t even say how much the character education program has touched me, or penetrated me, really.  Often I feel like I’m “the only sucker who takes things so seriously.”  But that’s the way I am.  And be that as it may, when you’re dealing with morality, you’re dealing with the deepest issues in people’s souls.  Writing papers about character issues would often touch some deep vein in me.  But many of these “pockets of pain” got cleaned out and healed.

This program has also been like a reparenting experience for me.  There are a number of people I’ve connected with who have changed me.  It’s not anything I expected in a million years, but it sure has helped me more than anything else could have.  It’s funny how life takes us in directions we never would have imagined.

Maybe it was coming into contact with some decent men that was ultimately healing.  We all have “seasons in our life” in which we deal with different issues.  This was my “men” season.  Every time I establish a benevolent relationship with an admirable man who isn’t trying to exploit me sexually or otherwise, that has a healing effect on me.

Lastly, I apologize if this has been tedious and self-centered.  I’m a girl … all we really care about is relationships, weddings, things like that.  Or maybe I’ve been reading the book, Your Mythic Journey too much, about writing your life story as a mythic voyage.  Actually, I have the book but hadn’t read it.  I don’t need to.

It’s your character, stupid!

Somehow I’ve left out any discussion of character.  It’s such a big topic in terms of my past that I’m not even going to get into it.  In terms of the present, I think about character a lot, because as a parent of three kids and someone in a marriage, it’s central to all of life.

I’m writing a book I’ll either call “Baby Steps: a Guide to Character Development for the Challenged Family” or “Midlife Crisis Moms” or “An R-Rated Guide to Character Development” or who knows.

Frankly, it’s beyond me how a family of fairly intelligent, idealistic, highly-functioning people like myself and my husband could be such idiots.  I’ve had to search high and low to find character development activities that were on a low enough level, that were idiot-proof enough to actually be able to help us.

What I’m seeking with my family is “character without sanctimoniousness,” or “guidance without being intrusive,” or “teaching without its being contrived.”  With your own children, I’m their mother, not their teacher.  The line is blurred quite a bit because of homeschooling.  Or maybe it’s the good old question of – Can you teach character, or only model it?

I believe strongly that you can and should teach it, but you can’t shove it down people’s throats, and I’m still searching for that artful way of how to teach without intruding, controlling, or creating a backlash.

I’ve tried the “stories approach,” of reading stories with moral content, and although I think it’s good to do and doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t change anyone either.

I’ve had to learn to set limits, and create and enforce routines with our kids, and I think that does work.  You have to set a bottom line of acceptable behavior and enforce it.  Particularly with my daughter, who is someone who pushes the limits at all times, setting and enforcing a standard of behavior has been key.  Not easy; it takes a lot of work.

I’ve tried changing my own attitude, and that has definitely worked far better than anything else.  My husband’s and my relationship has gone from being half supportive and half destructive to being completely supportive, and that has been a true miracle.  I think the first big change I made was to learn from a therapist to not be “reactive,” as he put it.  It used to be that when I was viciously attacked, I would automatically attack back.  I didn’t even see that I was doing it, or that it was a choice.

I learned to not “react” in that way, but to “play dead,” is how I think of it, to emotionally disengage, to not respond.  I do say “ouch,” which I think is an important way to vent slightly, and let the person know they have hurt you without attacking them or being drawn into an argument over the particulars.

My second big change was due to reading The Surrendered Wife, one of the most profound books ever written.  I learned to make active efforts to not be controlling, and in fact to promote my husband’s being in control.  I think this amounted to my learning to support my husband in an area where he needed it, and he in turn stopped attacking me, and has treated me increasingly better ever since, so things are much improved.  Not that they’re perfect, but I can hardly describe the change.

Another very ailing relationship I’ve had has been the one with my older son, Nick.  Again, this has been such a long story, including traveling extensively into the world of “attachment disordered children” and their treatment, that I won’t get into it here.  Except to say that with Nick, things are far from perfect, but they’re much, much improved.  I think one big factor is my husband’s having gotten the boys into ice hockey. Nick is an outstanding goalie, and is so revered and sought after by so many hockey players and teams that I think that has improved his outlook on life considerably.

As far as my relationship with him, I think the biggest change came recently.  While I was applying for some teaching jobs, and trying to think of how I could distinguish myself from the hordes of unemployed teachers, I started thinking about studying up on the subject of Socratic Seminars, and then became fixated on the more general subject of “questioning.”  I did web searches and bought some books about Socratic seminars and questioning.  I also remembered that Tom Lickona’s parenting book has a chapter about the “Ask, don’t tell” method.

I’ve made a sincere effort to stop “telling” Nick anything, but only to ask him questions.  I think this has had a large positive effect on our relationship.  While he seems resentful and oppositional when I tell him things, when I ask, he seems thoughtful and not angry.  So that has been one breakthrough.

I also realized at some point recently that I’m always hurting his feelings.  I can see it in his eyes.  It’s easy to do with someone who’s always screwing up and acting in an appalling manner.  But I told myself another thing that is probably obvious to everyone else: that if I can’t be kind and calm in what I say, keep my mouth shut.  I keep slipping in that one, and it’s not good.

In fact I taped a little list of reminders to my computer that says:

©      Eating only makes things worse.

©      Stop being angry.  Start being inspiring.

©      Any area in which we’re weak requires lots of advance planning.

©      If I can’t be kind and calm, be quiet.

©      Building relationships is more important than anything else.

©      With God all things are possible.

©      Stop being in my own little world.  Share it.

©      Ten ways to not be a slob:

• Keep papers in neat stacks
• (I need nine more!)

I’d like to start character related classes for Julian Charter School, so that has been a motivator for me to try to develop activities with my family that would work for a class.

Awhile ago we came up with a humorous-but-serious family motto: “I’m not your punching bag.”  It reflects the rather primitive level we’re on: let’s try to not kill each other, physically or emotionally.  It made me laugh every time I thought of it.

Last week we had a family meeting and I tried adapting one of the PeaceBuilder activities to our family.  It’s so simple that you can’t fail, yet well-thought-out enough that I think it’s quite useful.  It’s called “increase or decrease the peace?”  They have all these little behaviors or things kids might say printed on cards.  You read one, and ask the students, “Does this increase or decrease the peace?”

So I wrote various put-down or rude things I’d overhead my children (or myself) saying recently on cards, plus some positive things, and put the cards in a paper bag.  I explained this activity to our kids.  They said, “Let’s act it out!” and insisted on acting out all of these items.  So we had a hilarious time acting out various boorish and helpful behaviors.

I invited my kids to write things down on cards so we could play it again the following week, and they made a bunch of cards.  I heard Nina mutter, “You’re a shrimp” as she wrote it on a card (she always tells me she’s the smallest one in her class).

Of course the big question is: will this do any good?  I guess time will tell.  However, one of my goals is to put together a stand-alone character education curriculum for after-school programs or special classes.  So I’m always happy when I can come up with an activity that is fun, creative and helpful for kids.

Lastly, I suddenly had an insight that maybe what makes programs effective is a daily pledge!  Part of PeaceBuilders is a daily pledge, essentially a commitment to their five principles.  Several users of the program mentioned to me that they felt that kids took their commitment to this pledge seriously.

This morning I dropped my daughter off at St. Monica’s school, and I have probably described many times what a wonderful atmosphere exists there; so great that I call it “enchanted,” but I’ve never exactly been able to pin down how it’s created.

As I dropped Nina off and heard the beginning of “I pledge allegiance to the cross …” I thought –  That’s it!  They have this daily pledge of allegiance to the cross, as well as the flag, that I’ve never heard another school do, even a religious school.  Maybe that’s why it’s such a nice school.  More probably, an elderly nun directress yelling at kids on the playground, or strict enforcement of behavior standards, or general oppression?  But paradoxically, those kids are so well-behaved and happy.  (John Rosemond recently wrote a column in which he said that kids should be scared of their mothers, and I really wonder if that isn’t true.)  Here is what they say:

Pledge of Allegiance to the Cross

I pledge allegiance to the cross of Christ and to the faith for which it stands – one Church, holy, Catholic and apostolic, with grace and salvation for all.

Morning Offering:

Father in heaven I give you this day,

All that I think and do and say

And I unite it with all that was done

By Jesus Christ Your only Son.

Amen

I think the key to family life is to ritualize it, and make it fun.  You have to have simple routines that you keep doing until they are automatic.  With us, we have a “family prayer time” in the morning (without my husband, who won’t participate), and this is the routine that has worked best.  Maybe it’s because it’s centered on God, the most important thing.  Or maybe it’s because I’m a “morning person” and I have the energy to enforce routines in the morning, whereas all our after-school and evening routines fall apart because I’m out of energy.  My husband is very anti-routine, and that has been a large problem, although he’s less opposed as time goes on, and is even starting to support the routines a little.

We have changed our family prayer time routine many times, but this is its present form:

1)    Review Latin proverbs and vocabulary (2 minutes)

2)    Say a memorized prayer or poem together, or work on memorizing a new one

3)    Whoever got to family prayer time first gets to light the prayer candles.

4)    Read from family prayer journal or write new entries.

5)    OR read out of “Family Book of Inspiration,” in which I sporadically write down good things the kids (or parents) have done.  I’ll probably change this to a game modeled after PeaceBuilders “Peace Cards,” in which kids pick a card at random with some desired behavior written on it, and then name someone who has shown that behavior.  It’s essentially a reversed way of praising; choose the praise first, and then name someone who deserves it.  Another “prompt for challenged people.”  On the front of this book, I’ve collected the categories:

©      Wise use of time.

©      Being a contributor.

©      Random acts of kindness.

©      Problems we have faced and solved.

©      Good character when no one is looking.

©      Leader for the right.

6)    Each person says their own prayer.  Our rough guide is something Nina made at school, which has strips of colored paper hanging down that say, “Praise God,” “Ask for forgiveness,” “Ask for help for others,” “Ask for help for ourselves,” “Thank God.”

7)    If there’s time left, I read a bit out of “What Do You Stand For?” or discuss something I’ve noticed related to character or social skills with the kids, or ???

This all takes about twenty minutes, which is all we have.  As far as the kids’ attitude, I think they like it.  They won’t initiate it unless I do, and there are many things I’ve tried to get them to do, such as writing in the prayer journal, that they won’t do, and I’m the only one doing it.  So they are basically going along with me, but I think that’s enough.

Getting them to memorize prayers and poems was really a struggle in the beginning.  But I stopped trying to require anything of them, and simply kept reciting aloud myself.  So if they memorize, fine, and if they’re just stumbling along with me, fine.  Amazingly, the best memorizer is Nick.

In general, I’ve stopped fighting with them or trying to require much.  I encourage them to come to family prayer time and to be on time, and we discuss problems with that, since our middle child tends to be perpetually late.  But if they choose not to attend, are late, or need to do homework instead, I don’t make an issue of it.

I think it amounts to that I’m finally getting it into my thick head to reward good behavior and ignore bad behavior.  This is particularly key with Nina, who continually engages in fits, demands, orders, profane insults, disobedience, power-struggles, etc.  I don’t know where it comes from; I truly feel that we’ve been pretty damn good parents to her.  I think kids are born with their personalities, and I remind myself that “the wildest colts make the best horses,’ and so on.

With Nina, I focus less on getting into a fight over “You’ve got to do this now,” and more on “If you want to play with a friend, you must do a, b and c first.”  In other words, sequence of events.  She will generally throw a fit, but finally comply, and be in a very good mood after complying.

Probably this all sounds very basic, but I can hardly describe how hard it’s been for me, since there was no structure or requirements in my family.  All the things I get my kids to do – chores, music practice – I never did as a child.  Additionally, I would probably be a lot “tougher” in my requirements, but my husband strongly disapproves of any consequences, and sabotages them, so I have to adapt to that.

My monumental effort at this point is to develop a weekly “family meeting” format that actually works.  I’ve been trying to do this for the past ten years, without a whole lot of success.  My husband is always opposed (although he goes along with it if I initiate), whereas the kids are neutral.  But I feel that the elements are finally in place to succeed at this time.

I think putting things into a game format works best, and it has to be a game that is very simple and adaptable to your situation.  Reading the PeaceBuilders curriculum helped me a lot.  They have little activities that are so simple, they are “idiot-proof,” which is what we need!  But I they are well thought out.

Activities need to have “prompts” which are objects, sort of scaffolds … They need to be adaptable to whatever the family is thinking about and struggling with at the moment … and there needs to be a built-in reward.  That is my formula for success.

1)    Object – prompt – gets you to do it, reminds you of how to do it, provides a structure.  Examples: Whiteboard for writing items for family meeting agenda; jar and cut-up index cards for writing observations of people’s behavior that can be used for “Increase / Decrease Peace” game.

2)    Adaptable – You have to keep changing the material you’re dealing with, and have a method for coming up with the new material.

3)    Reward – There needs to be an element of fun, reward, or competition, to motivate people.  My kids seem to enjoy dramatizing and being recognized.

4)    Novelty – It’s good to have an element of novelty and surprise, such as drawing something out of a hat.  I tend to not be that way; I prefer structure, sequence and perfect logic.  But other people seem to respond better to the “novelty” theme; it makes it fun.  Maybe I need to have this perfect structure as the creator of the game, but not expect others to be interested in it.

5)    Easy – No one has any time or energy left.  It has to be easy with no planning required.

I enjoy “sharing thoughts,” but haven’t gotten that to happen much.  I have the problem that I constantly think, write, and read, but I’m very bad at talking, even with my own family.  I don’t seem to be able to talk without a lot of support.  My husband has a hard time comprehending that because he is a “talker,” my complete opposite.  I have tried to get it across to him for the past twenty years that unless he will sit down with me, look at me, and make some pretense of being interested, I’m not going to start just blabbing about myself.  We had constant fights and power-struggles over this issue for about 18 years.  I think I finally overcame my extreme problem with “asking for what I need” rather than blowing up, and he became more interested in filling my needs, so it doesn’t seem to be a problem any more, amazingly.  Additionally, I became so grateful to my husband for everything he does with the kids, that everything else began to seem not very important.

However, I’ve realized that I tend to “get into my own little world” and not share it, and that is really a problem.  I feel lonely, unconnected, and like I’m failing as a mother to pass on family values.  Also, I’m the only female in my family other than my seven-year-old daughter, and males tend to have different priorities.  Although my husband is a wise and sensitive person and deep thinker (despite the distorted picture I probably paint of him), as is our middle son, and they are both extremely communicative as far as guys go.

However, I guess this is one of the many paradoxes of my life.  Life is filled with so many ironies; so many “cosmic jokes,” as my mother would say.  God must be laughing all the time.  That the only person I have to talk to about horrors of education schools is the former dean of the education school … That I started a network of “attachment parenting” groups, and it turns out that my son (not to mention my husband and myself) are attachment disordered … That I am majoring in character education, and my family and myself are pretty character-challenged, not to mention my husband telling me last week that he “doesn’t believe in virtue – only humility.”  What is the meaning of all of this?

An old friend of mine who teaches at San Diego State once told me that “our greatest weakness contains our greatest strength,” or maybe it was vice versa … something about our greatest strengths and weaknesses being intimately connected.  My mother would probably say that we were all born with “cosmic problems,” but God gave us strengths that would allow us to overcome them.

One thing that’s always driving me is that I feel my mother taught me so much, that has allowed everything I do to work, only it was in a very strange form, such that I find it hard to talk about that, too.  I feel a very intense need to pass along the wisdom of my mother, only I need to transform it into a form that is understandable.

One thing I keep a list of is “the big questions in life.”  I know this will somehow be key, and I keep adding to it, but again, I haven’t yet gotten it into a form that I can use.   Also “Greek wisdom” seems key.  I think of these in relation to high schoolers.

I have countless writings that I’ve begun, and projects I’ve begun, that have not yet reached fruition.  I sometimes think about what it takes to make progress in life, and the fact that I’ve tried so hard but haven’t gotten that far.  I think the issue is that in order to accomplish anything substantial, you have to progress along a number of fronts at the same time.  You have to have the ability to act, the intellectual base to know what you’re doing, the capabilty to be` in relationship with others, and be driven, which I see as a spiritual issue connected with one’s mission in life.  If any one of those four is missing, you won’t get far.

For me, I’ve always been strong in my ability to take risks and act, been obsessed with research and achieving understanding, and had a tremendous amount of inner purpose and drive.  What has killed me is the “relationships” part.  I’ve been so troubled, and so unable to deal with people, that it’s been the weak link in everything I’ve tried to do.  So I always prioritize that first – anything that can help me get through my inner issues and have better relationships.

This year it feels like I’ve been locked into battles-to-the-death with everyone from my son’s principal to my daughter’s teacher to my professors to my children.  But they’ve all turned out not only positively, but miraculously.  A lot of my long-term, profoundly ailing relationships have been healed: my relationships with my husband, son, teachers, and the world.

Future

Within the last year I’ve gone from constant writing but nothing I wanted to publish, to feeling ready to become a publishing machine as soon as the time seems right.  It started with my “Unfit Teachers” paper.  I thought – I’ve finally got a topic nobody else is writing about!  Since that time, I’ve listed dozens more articles and books I’d like to write.

Since I think I’ve gone on enough, below is an outline of my future plans:

• Writing
  • Education column
  • Books
  • Articles
  • Teaching
    • Writing classes
    • Character development classes
    • Present at ICCE conference
    • Homeschooling my own kids
  • Professional development
    • Direct instruction – observe, get training
    • Supplementals in English and Social Studies
    • San Diego Area Writing Project summer invitational institute
    • Brain-based learning certification
    • Doctorate
    • Study world history, philosophy, ethics, world religions, worldviews, leadership, etc.
    • Reading list a mile long
  • Staff Development
  • Start a school
  • Character Education activities
    • Window painting contest
    • Art contest
    • Game
  • Education activist
    • Character education
    • Core Knowledge
    • Curtail teacher unions

In conclusion, the other day I was at the hairdresser, and picked up a wonderful book called “Wise Women.”  It was photographs of elderly women, half naked, with a short quote from each woman.  The women were all gorgeous, sexy and elegant, and gave me some hope.  I gazed at one striking woman with waist-length gray hair.  My hairdresser (and former neighbor and friend) came and looked over my shoulder, and I said, “Brad, this is an incredible book; isn’t this woman gorgeous?”

“What do you like about her?” he asked skeptically.

Unable to comprehend that he didn’t see how lovely she was, I said, “Her hair is long and beautiful …”
“I’d agree with the ‘long’ part,” he replied.

Why did I get into this?  Oh yes … One of the women, in her 90’s, said, “I’m a totally different woman than I was at 60, 70 or 80 …”  I’d never quite thought about that before, and that statement really encouraged me.  Maybe we all fear aging as stagnation and losing energy.  I hope and expect that myself and those reading this will evolve to ever more fascinating, enlightened and effective stages of our lives.

Sorry this is so long … I really only touched on things.

*Names have been changed

Daria Doering

School of Education

Graduate Portfolio

May 10, 2003