Christmas 2005
Dear family and friends,
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah to those we hold dear!
We have had an adventurous year, with my working full-time for the first time in almost 20 years. Last January I opened a school for the county court schools, a large network of one-room schoolhouses for troubled kids. I had been subbing for the court schools, and actually felt I did better with the juvenile delinquents than with regular kids. So I felt fortunate to be hired to start a middle school in Spring Valley for habitually truant students. The job had many advantages, including a shorter day, a full-time aide, lots of freedom in how I taught, and a wonderful facility that included pool tables, couches, bathrooms, and my own office, housed in a former rec center!
So I started out with big dreams, but was quickly drawn into a maelstrom of problems I had no experience with: kids who cussed me out to my face, no principal onsite to send them to, daily heated showdowns, constant suspensions and expulsions … a parade of probation officers and social workers … students absent to see the judge about their truancy contracts, kids who disappeared … parents with bench warrants for their arrest, homeless parents, “tweeker” (crystal meth addict) parents … transcripts with straight “F’s,” special ed students, kids who were worse off than the special ed kids but weren’t classified … students who couldn’t read in the 7th grade, kids who could read something and then have no clue what they’d read …
So I feverishly researched how to teach phonics, fluency and comprehension to middle schoolers, and got to try a lot of different curricula and techniques. During all of this, I was still working for Julian Charter School on the weekends, driving my own children’s carpools every afternoon, and dealing with the endless details of our bathroom remodel every evening, so I was barely surviving.
Then a few fortuitous things happened. I found a friend of mine from graduate school, who had originally told me about the court schools, teaching nearby at the only other middle school in the court school system. It was good to reconnect with him, and have someone to talk to. Secondly, there was an emphasis at staff meetings on discussing racism in an honesty way, and discussing your “racial history.” I told them, “when I was in elementary school, there was only one black kid at the school …” At the next staff meeting, I was chatting with a teacher sitting next to me, when I looked at his name tag and practically fell over … he was that one black kid at my school, whom I hadn’t seen since sixth grade! We had a great time catching up on the last 35 years! Finally, I had been complaining about my struggles to anyone who would listen, and a friend connected me with someone she’d met in a class she was taking, who also worked at the court schools, in the mountain district. This woman worked at an incarceration facility, had worked with SED (severely emotionally disturbed) students for 20 years, and had some excellent ideas. At her suggestion, I put all my worst students on contracts, where I assessed them every half hour on three things (staying in their seats, respectful language, and completion of work), and all privileges were contingent on their charts. That helped a lot. I also found out a fortunate thing: no matter how horrible students might be, nobody really wants to create a disaster; it is too painful for all involved. So every time I had a particularly horrendous day, the next day was usually much better.
In the end, although I often felt so emotionally battered that it wasn’t unusual for me to be crying on my way to work, the bottom line was that the job was relatively easy for
me, or at least doable. The kids were an interesting and honest bunch whom I will never forget. The parents, contrary to what you hear about “uncaring parents,” all loved their children intensely, and were sweet and supportive toward me. The other court school teachers were real characters whom I enjoyed greatly. It felt like I was in a world of misfits and wackos, and I felt so comfortable and at home there! I also loved the little neighborhood of Casa de Oro, and the fantastic and cheap taco and fresh produce shop next door. I never would have left the job in a million years. However enrollment never reached what it was supposed to be, and the site closed in June.
I soon get a new job for the fall, teaching a combined 7th and 8th grade class at All Saints Episcopal School in Hillcrest, just a few miles from our house. In the new job, I would teach everything except math, so I spent the summer studying physical science and American History. I forced my family to watch documentaries about U.S. History with me every night.. At first they howled in protest, but fairly quickly realized that Ken Burns’ Civil War was more gripping than the rest of what was on.
They also didn’t have many alternatives. I had finally gotten so fed up with the kids staying up all night watching TV, and then wanting to sleep all day, that I had the cable disconnected. After having initially suggested this action, Mike complained the most about it. At one point he said, “Do you want Jake to become a veterinarian?” “I don’t know, why?” I asked. He blasted, “Because that’s what’s going to happen, since he now spends hours a day watching Animal Planet!” Animal Planet was the only station that came through without cable.
I also did about five years’ worth of decluttering, cleaning and filing over the summer, which really stank, but needed to get done. Our housecleaning problems were exacerbated by the fact that a baby possum had gotten into our house and lived here for several months, coming out at night to eat cat food. We caught occasional glimpses of it, but couldn’t catch it. As I was cleaning the basement, I came across possum droppings in interesting places.
We took a summer trip with our pop-up camper, which nobody was excited about this year, because they wanted to be home playing hockey. What I’ll always remember about our vacation was two weeks of Mike and Jake doing non-stop William Hung imitations. They never stopped making us laugh. If you don’t know who William Hung is, get a teenager in your life! (He was the contestant on American Idol who was so bad that he was advanced as a joke, but has since released CD’s with his unique singing and “success philosophy.”)
We visited Jennifer and Patrick in Bend, Oregon, and got to see our second grandchild, baby Elliot, who is very cute. Jennifer is now an at-home mom, and they are terrific parents. We visited Yosemite (for the first time), Hearst Castle, and the Monterey Aquarium. But the high point of our trip was the tour we took of U.C. Berkeley; everything about it was so impressive. Especially when our tour guide was describing his freshman math class, and said, “William Hung was in it”!
So now I’m in my new job. Rather than interacting with probation officers and social workers, I’ve now become familiar with the “vestry,” “rector,” “sexton,” and other
religious folk who sound like something out of a Charlotte Brontë novel. The downside of this job is that it’s a tremendous amount of work – about 70 hours per week.
Mike has been really heroic throughout all this. Now, as well as his full-time job and half-time duty of taking the boys to hockey, he does a huge amount of cooking and cleaning. He came up with one dish that we ate every single night for months: pasta with Italian sausage, tomatoes, onions and grated carrots. It was delectable, and we never got tired of it (although for a carboholic like me, getting sick of pasta would not be a bad thing).
Luckily, I had signed up Nina to buy lunch every day. However one day she had a field trip and Dad had to provide lunch. He selected from “Dad’s basic four food groups”: red meat, pasta, sports drinks and sports bars. During snack time, while the other children were eating little packages of goldfish crackers, Nina chomped on a large barbecued pork rib and tried not to make a mess. At lunch, while the other children ate their sandwiches and sipped their juice boxes, Nina ate Dad’s pasta and drank Gatorade.
The next day, when Nina needed to bring a snack, Dad struck again. He had bought brown rye flat bread at the Alpine Village in Los Angeles, and put that into her backpack. Nina ended up explaining to her friends that Dad had packed “fitness bread from Germany.”
With all his added duties, Mike’s life is almost as much a quest for survival as mine. At times he has been heard screaming, “These kids are never in school for an entire week! It’s nothing but minimum days, doctor’s appointments, dentist’s appointments, orthodontist’s appointments …” It’s a major struggle for Mike to get his work done, but he gets better and better at completing it during hockey practices and other odd moments. He is also driven crazy by his state-issued laptop computer and cell phone, both of which work only sporadically.
Nick is a junior at High-Tech High, and we are researching colleges, which is hard to get used to. His year has included a great internship at Quaalcomm, which entailed substantial responsibilities, a 10-day class trip to Mexico to study endangered Sea Turtles at Bahia de Los Angeles, and his weekend job at the Ice Arena. Nick and Nathan started a successful car-detailing business over the summer. They built a huge cart which they pulled to their various neighborhood jobs on the back of a bike, that attracted attention and garnered more business. Nick’s big disappointment was that he wasn’t picked for the Jaguars AA hockey team. He did make the Jaguars A team – also an intense competition – and is having a good season. In his spare time, Nick likes to redo his online digital portfolio for school, and learn new features of his specialty, Flash animation. I’ve been trying to follow my husband’s precept that “family outings” should consist of going to hockey tournaments together, and accompanying them to more of Nick’s tournaments, which has been enjoyable for all of us.
A recent vignette: I came home from work and collapsed on the couch. The boys came home, and we exchanged news about our days. I said, “We made soap today in science, and one of my students said, ‘Why does every science experiment we do turn
into a disaster?’ The lard and baking soda solution boiled over onto the hot plate. The finished ‘soap’ looks like the fat on top of a soup.”
“Eeew!” said Jake.
“You need to use lye,” said Nick. “That’s what we used when we made soap.”
“When did you make soap?” I asked him; thinking maybe it was in the 3rd grade.
“A couple of weeks ago,” said Nick “We made vanilla, and cinnamon, and lemon … we made four scents.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “As part of science?”
“Yes,” he said. “Dr. Vavra’s wife owns an organic soap-making business.”
It was time to throw in the towel (so to say). Can I not compete or what? First of all, his science teacher is a Ph.D. chemist. Then, he has an “organic soap-making business” in the family!
Nick added, “Their son is a model for the soap business.”
Jake is now officially a teenager, complete with braces, pimples (a few), sagging pants, MP-3 player cords hanging out of his ears, a tendency to sleep as much as possible, and odd forms of self-expression. His favorite is to sing a line of a song repeatedly, each time turning it into a tortured scream at the end. It’s hard to describe without hearing it. Jake is now attending High Tech Middle Media Arts, and is very happy there. He can typically be found on his class website, to which the students post writings, and critique each other’s writings. Jake suffered a knee injury over the summer which has temporarily waylaid his hockey career. However he has taken up lacrosse, and is nuts over surfing. “I’m not a poser any more!” he said (referring to wearing surf clothing). “We’re all posers,” I told him. I was particularly proud when Jake voluntarily made the decision to delete “Grand Theft Auto Vice City” from his computer! (Of course then he installed a new game involving auto racing, or is it shooting, or both?) I told my students about Jake’s decision, and they said, “Why? That’s a really cool game!” I told them, “I think he decided it wasn’t a good use of his time.”
The other night we watched a movie based on a true story about a bodyguard whose charge (a little girl) was kidnapped (which turned out to be part of a moneymaking scheme-gone-wrong by her father). Then he tracked down all the people behind the kidnapping, killed them all, and eventually exchanged his own life for hers. After the movie was over, the kids asked me how I’d liked it. I told them I hadn’t particularly – that it was suspenseful and sucked me in, but did I learn anything from it? Did it make me a better person? I thought not.
After awhile Jake said to me, “We did learn things from the movie. I learned that if you’re going to do something risky, things are bound to go wrong. So don’t do anything risky with those you love, such as your daughter. Also, that rich people shouldn’t live in Mexico. There’s no middle class there, just a huge lower class and a small upper class. So they’re always doing things to the upper class.”
Another time I was criticizing the fact that they teach only Spanish and Mandarin Chinese at High Tech International High School. Jake said, “It makes no sense at all. Mandarin is a tonal language, and anything you say can be interpreted several ways, depending on the pitch of your voice,” and he demonstrated. “Plus,” he continued, “It’s written through thousands of pictograms, and how would students learn those …” He never ceases to amaze me.
It reminds me that a couple of years ago, Jake told me that his goal in life was to use 11% of his brain, rather than the 10% that people typically use! (And I feel that many people I deal with use a lot less than 10%!)
One of my greatest sources of happiness is that all our children’s teachers for the last few years have been so outstanding. Their knowledge of their fields, the creativity of their assignments, and how much my children have enjoyed and gotten involved with their schoolwork has amazed me. I’ve often told my kids, “Tell me every single thing your teacher says, every day, so I can copy them!” Jake’s class just built “balloon race cars” from scratch to demonstrate Newton’s third law of motion … Nick’s class has held “trials” of many figures from U.S. history …
Nina spent two weeks with her friend, Faith, in Spokane, Washington over the summer, flying there all by herself. Now she and Faith keep in touch through spending hours (literally) each night together in online role-playing chatrooms like Habbo Hotel, Runescape, and Neopets. I don’t recommend this pastime, except that it does keep Nina connected with her friends, and since I am not available to either stop her or do anything else with her, well, that’s the way it goes, for now. Nina also does creative things in her spare time: she writes lots of poetry, and creates wonderful collages. Nina is quite the socialite these days, but I am most proud of her because of her sterling character traits. She and Jake have convinced me through repeated passionate entreaties to give money to the poor (meaning those who beg on street corners); something I would never do on my own, due to the usual arguments about their using the money for alcohol and drugs, and the fact that we lived among them downtown and witnessed various scams for so many years. But I’ve decided it’s a good thing for me to stretch myself in this area, and I do it in honor of my beloved children.
I often call Nina “health girl.” This is shown during our forays to those incredible, all-you-can-eat Chinese food palaces. While the rest of us take off at a run for the coconut shrimp and egg rolls, Nina fills her plate with melon, salad, a skewer of skinless chicken yakitori, and a dainty bit of Chow Mein. And she’s not even trying to lose weight! That’s just what she likes to eat!
Nina’s latest coup is that she managed to convince the orthodontist that she didn’t need to wear her retainer any more. Or maybe, as Jake claims, the orthodontist felt so sorry for us, after Nina had lost her retainer for the fifth time (actually I lost it this time), at great expense each time, that he relented. Or maybe he doesn’t care because if her teeth go crooked, it merely means more business for him!
Some entries from the family diary:
We now have two types of family meetings: regular family meetings and “emergency family meetings,” when things are so bad that someone (i.e. Mom) is on the verge of violence or a complete breakdown. Our family meetings – which the kids call “family disasters” – invariably end up with everyone screaming, at least one person crying (Nina or Daria), roasts of various family members, at least one person stomping off (Mike), and Nina singing and dancing (her response to most things in life). Also lots of comedic interludes and laughter between the screaming and crying.
I am proud of the fact that we have actually been cleaning our house all by ourselves for the past several months. Maybe “clean” is an overstatement, but I don’t know that the house is that much worse than when we had a cleaning lady every two weeks.
One of our greatest pleasures is our newly remodeled bathrooms, one with two sinks and a whirlpool tub, which is getting a lot of use. We have no shortage of family members who are sore, lame, or feel like we’ve been run over by a truck.
On a recent Saturday night, after midnight, I got restless and couldn’t sleep. I heard our children talking downstairs and went down to visit them. But I couldn’t see them anywhere, until I finally found them all crammed into the bathroom together. Nick was shaving, Jake was flossing his teeth and braces, and Nina was alternating between intently making faces into the mirror and asking, “Don’t I look like a monkey?” and exclaiming “Shut up!” to her brothers. Apparently they were trying to get her to brush her teeth. The children said, “You’ve gotten up before we’ve even gone to bed!” So it goes …
Daria Doering 
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