Webs

It’s a weird vibe and I’m in a stranger contemplative mood. I had a long taxing but fulfilling day, which I will get to in a second.

Right now, I am listening to Little Wing by Stevie Ray Vaughn and it feels like honey dripping from the headphones into my ears and brain and heart.

This music is magical and it is making me fly in through this screen and out of yours. Earlier in the car, after I picked up Kai from basketball ,and she sat in the back, exhausted and absorbed in her phone, when we were both too tired to engage in conversation, I was blasting The Doors, remembering how important it had felt years ago to break on through to the other side, and how now, how futile those youth dipped fantasies feel. Though I still hoped that the words were being absorbed through Kaia's skin like some kind of osmosis therapy.

But where did that tangent come from. I was speaking of this mood. I am drinking a glass of straight Cointreau because we’re out of wine; it is cold and syrupy and coating the inside of my mouth and throat.

Without going into personal student details, I spent today talking to students about how we need to deal with the diversity in our community. Two kids were upset that another student appeared to be getting away with behaviour that they felt inappropriate. I tried to explain to them that sometimes we need to make accommodations for members of our community who have differences, but this one student's views on justice and unfairness are so entrenched that she couldn’t understand why he might need different attention.

We sat and talked in the pod. She 13 me 43. Two humans in very different places in life. It is my job, I suppose to do this work, but I see these conversations as so much more than a job. How else can teenagers learn unless the adults in their lives value and respect their ideas and help them see how they might think differently or change their world view.

I do not think that she understood what I was saying or is willing to change her thinking right now, but these conversations, this mentoring is not immediate or sudden. As teachers, we must chip away at how kids see the world. Give them pieces, remove barriers and trust that they will eventual come to their own understanding. My talk with these girls felt like a failure. I could tell they felt unsatisfied with how I was asking them to behave. These little feelings of failure can be taxing.

In my other classes I was teaching Life Skills, where we have started the Puberty and Sex Ed unit. The authenticity of their questions made me so happy. I think about how terrifying the notion of puberty is and how confusing the onslaught of the sexual experience can be. They were so earnest in their inquiries. So curious and uncomfortable. I know many teachers who shy away from these conversations, but like most things that are difficult, I think they are so important. We middle school teachers have a duty to be more than the imparters of academic knowledge.

We are the web lines between parents and culture and friends and media. We help young people make sense of the chaos that is adolescences.

I apologise for the rambling. Iron and Wine is on Spotify now, and I just like the feeling of the words draining from my mind through my fingers on this page. There is little thought to structure or meaning just the emptying of a day hard earned. I can imagine a construction working coming home aching from the heavy lifting of cement and steel beams, but this work, the work we do everyday, lifting the material of teaching can be difficult to bear too.

These kids are not just names on an attendance sheet. And this has become so much more clear, now that Kaia is in Middle School. I see her changing right before my eyes. And while I might be some kind of expert at work, she might need more than my advice at home. I am relived to know that there are people at school who love her enough to be open and listen and care and help and push and protect and understand.

Thank goodness for good middle school teachers. I could have used a few when I was 13 and all I can hope is to be a one.

A Nice Day

Even though it was not officially summer break, and I had to work, it was a good birthday. I had a nice day with my students. They brought me a cake and sang happy birthday. Friends took me out to play darts and unwind on the penultimate day of school. Thanks Mike, Lee, Scott, Scott, Shawn, Luke.


I received so many great birthday wishes from you all, which made me feel loved and appreciated. I also received two great emails from a student and a parent:


Dear Mr. Raisdana,


As tomorrow, without a doubt will probably be one of the most crazy and emotional days of my life, I want to take this time to thank you for everything you have done for me this year.


As a teacher, something I admire about you is the passion that you approach your job with. As your student, I can fully see that you love your job, and give every day your 110%, something that I try and do as well. From the eyes of an 8th grader, passion is one of the most important teaching tools, sometimes more than any amount of knowledge for a topic.


This passion translates into being such a great teacher in the classroom. You connect with all of us, and this makes us feel very engaged and inspired by you, to change the world through writing and reading.


Thank you for always not being afraid to hand us the reigns, as students, for something that you care so much about. In Off Tangent, I was delighted to take a lead, and this is where I learned so much. Very few teachers trust their students to the extent you do, and, I know this is where the real learning happens.


Thank you for pushing me as a student, giving me tools and allowing me to build the house, you showing me the way the whole time. It has been a great experience, one which I will treasure and learn from as I continue in my life.


So, thank you for everything Mr. Raisdana, and a great year. Have a great summer, and let's be sure to keep in touch!

This is why I do what I do. And now the parent email:


Hi Jabiz,


Happy Birthday! I hope you are having a great day so far.


I would like to say a Big Thank You for a fantastic Grade 8! What a way to end Middle School, it couldn't have been better for xxxxxxxx!

xxxxxxxx has grown so much under your mentorship. It has been a great year for him; a big deal of learning, big growth in maturity and thinking, fun experiences and of course a great connection with you thru music. xxxxxxxx has been very fortunate to have a mentor like you who is extremely passionate about so many things(what touched xxxxxxxx and I was the night you took time to come and watch his gig at the Chinatown pub after a long, tiring day at school). You have been very influential and inspirational to xxxxxxxx in his last year in Middle School.

\xxxxxxxx is looking forward to his journey in High School. He definitely takes with him memories of Grade 8 that will be cherished. We as parents are very happy to be part of the UWCSEA community.

The connection doesn't end here, for I'm sure we will keep reading your daily writing blogspot as well as look out for copy of your book as soon as it is out😊.


Heartfelt thanks again!


Happy Holidays and best wishes!
….

That’s a pretty good day. I love you all very much. Thank you for being here and listening and reading and sharing and liking and keeping me relevant. Forty Two years old and still trucking.

Riddles Unravelled

That was a fourteen hour day. Took the grade 8s to Pasir Park for some play time. Then a moving on ceremony. And finally, an Oscar themed semi-formal. Needless to say I am exhausted.


Here is my speech for my group this year:


How do you measure a year of schooling in three to five minutes? Especially a year as important as grade 8?
How do you sum up the experiences of 23 people?
Well, according to a famous Broadway musical you count our lives...


In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?


I guess I measure in snippets, in images, in groggy morning conversations. We spent a lot of time together, as most mentor classes do, and during that time we learned a lot about each other through morning meetings, planning events, rafting down rivers, conferring about writing, discussing books and movies and current events. We learned about each other in hallway chats, in between classes and laying around waiting for class to start.


We learned that we are an eclectic bunch. I like to compare ourselves to Indonesia. We are 17,000 different islands, with our own cultures and languages and customs, but somehow we come together when needed. We are dancers and musicians and equestrians. We love lego and dinosaurs, comic books and philosophy. We talk about animal rights and the start of the universe. We are swimmers and footballers and black belt champions. We are unique. We are enigmas. We are riddles waiting to be unraveled. Each and every one of us.


We aren’t the most outspoken group. There are a few of us in class who are like vaults. Involved. Engaged and Listening, but you wouldn’t call us chatty. I mean like we rarely spoke, but that didn’t stop us from forming a cohesive group that to put it simply: gets a long.


On any given day, if you walk into our mentor class, you would find different groups chatting, socializing and being kind to one another.


We joke. We laugh. We work hard. When push comes to shove we get things done. We plan Dragon Cup events and produce creative letters home. We prepare service events for people with disabilities, but we also take the time to play with them, talk to them dance with them. We are not embarrassed by much because we are brave and relish our eccentricities. We don’t care much what other think about us.


We might need an extra push, but I have learned to try and temper my yelling, because this group has never let me down when I needed them. I joke that they do everything super slowly…we even have a song for it, well I have a song for it- Do you guys want to sing it as a group?


SLOW MOTION JRA…..then I clap a few times, yell Come on! Come on! Let’s do this! Which is when they roll up their sleeves and get to the task at hand. We are a relaxed group, often unconcerned about winning or over exerting ourselves. We seldom let things get us down. We work We play. We go with the flow.


It’s always difficult to say goodbye. I feel like I could use another year with this group. But as a famous poet once said, like “the sands in an hour glass so pass the days of our lives.”


So often when 8th grades don the blue shirt and leave our hallowed halls, they forget about us or worse ignore us when we say hello in the canteen or tent plaza. Please don’t be strangers. This is true for all of the students out there. These communities that we build, these relationships that we foster, these bonds that we form are meant to last for much longer than one academic school year. Your mentors want to see who you become. We want to see touches of ourselves in your dreams and your successes.


I look forward to hearing about each and everyone one of them. Have a well earned rest, read lots of books and have a great time in High School. I am proud of the fact that together we can say- You are ready for the next stage in your life. Get out there and grab it.

A Blur Of Green

When I was younger, probably in about grade five, I used to go horseback riding on a regular basis, about once a week, with the Canal Community Alliance, a group that helped those of us living in the Canal- the poorer part of the very wealthy Marin county, have fun and explore the world around us. The CCA gave us opportunities that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Horseback riding once a week at Miwok Stables out passed Tennessee Valley road was one such opportunity.

We would arrive at the stables after school and begin the process of our weekly lesson- lead the horse out of the stables and prepare them for the ride; we would saddle them up and put on the bit and bridle. Then we would usually have a riding lesson in the round pen on the grounds of the stables, followed by the break down of the gear and the cleaning of the horse. I can still smell the blanket and remember the froth of sweat and soap as we lathered and rinsed off the horses.

We usually were assigned the same horse and mine was named Chica. She was a slight golden Palomino, who as far I was concerned was made of gold. I loved her smaller frame, slightly neurotic nature and her not so subtle sense of flash, all of which reminded me of myself.

Some days, if Chica was out with another ride, I would get stuck riding Sade; she was a giant mare with zero personality. She was a horse that you would need to kick to death to get her to even raise her head and stop for a second from grazing on some shrub just outside her paddock.

But not Chica. She knew me and I knew her. Sometimes all it would take to get her going was a quick clicking on the inside of my cheek, and to be honest, sometimes even less than that, and we would be off.

I rode at Miwok for at least a year, maybe more. Perhaps Trista can help me fill in the details as she was there too. In our time riding, we learned how to move the horses from a walk, to a trot, to a cantor, to nearly a gallop.

I’ll never forgot one long ride, must have been a special weekend ride, when we rode our horses down to the Pelican Inn near Muir Beach. On the way down, we were allowed to break up our typical single file line of walking and trotting and let the horses run.

I remember getting Chica up to a full paced fluid cantor. It felt like we were alone in the wilderness- jumping over small creeks, the trees a blur of green, and ducking from the low hanging vines. It felt like hours as the two of us broke into a sweat as we traversed down the mountain to the beach.

Later that year, Chica and I entered a show and did quite well. I had the second, or was it first place, ribbon in a box of my stuff for years, but it has since disappeared.  We were not meant for shows or ribbons. Chica and I were made to gallop through the west Marin forest. Tired and exhausted. Moving way too fast.

I loved that horse.

…

Dear XXXXX,

I am sorry I got a bit snappy with you today after you told me that you couldn’t come to our Daraja meeting o Thursday. I reacted to your excuse with anger and frustration, and as your teacher and mentor, this was childish of me. I understand that you are dealing with some stuff, and I can appreciate and understand how hard that can be at your age. I am sure you do not need someone like me barking at you in the hallway.

Sometimes, we adults, lose sight of how hard it can be to be twelve. I remember when I was your age, feeling like no one was ever listening and no one really cared about me. Teachers were always yelling out of anger and frustration and dealing with me like I was a problem and not a person. I swore I would never do that when I became a teacher, but there I was doing it today.

So again I am sorry.

It's just that I want you to learn the very important lessons of honouring your commitments, staying with things when they are hard, respecting the people who care for you...the listen goes on and on.

The only interaction we have had is through service, but I do see you in the halls. Who knows, maybe next year you might be in my class, or our paths might cross in a different way. I hope that when we do meet under different circumstance that we can find a way to get to know each other a bit better, and I might be able to help you sort out whatever it is that you are trotting to sort, and teach you some of those lessons in a different setting.

Best of luck, we will miss you on Thursdays. I am sorry that the GC was not what you were looking for. Who knows maybe one day you might change your mind, and I can take you to Kenya and show you why the work we are doing is important.

In the mean time, find something that gives you joy and feeds your passion. If you are not sure what makes you happy or keeps you going- relax. That is okay too. It has taken me nearly forty years to figure it out.

Be a kid. Be kind. Ask for help and you will find your way.

Apologetically yours,

Mr. R
…

Ted Cruz is gross and creepy and he makes me feel dirty every time I see his face. I don’t think I could physically handle his presidency. I am quite certain he is a criminal and a monster. I just wish he would go away from public life, and return to what ever backwoods Texan church parking lot he lurks in.

…

Observations:

• Our memories sit half-baked in our minds waiting to be thrown back into the kiln, but they will not look the same now as they did back then. 
• Apologizing to a child is one of a teacher’s most important skills. We should do it way more often than we do. 
• I've never seen a Republican I like. 

...

1. Share a childhood memory that brings you joy. 
2. Tell us about an apology that you should have made but for some reason didn’t. 
3. Which current candidate gets under your skin the most and why?