All'orlo del Caos

There is something both lawless and kind about Trastevere, chaotic on the surface, yet soothingly cavalier. The ancient cobblestone streets of this gritty little Roman town across the Tiber River roll and wind tortuously, almost aggressively.  But as I am whipped and jerked nervously, lazily around its creaky coaster, I begin to relax -- trust and go with the tempo. The cars and motorbikes whiz carelessly by, with no governance but also, I discover, no malice. Macho motorists wink with amusement as I dodge them --  there is a pattern to the hazardously disappearing sidewalks, which turn up suddenly on the other side at unpredictable intervals that I am beginning to internalize. Local pedestrians amble obliviously, gelato in hand, and somehow it all works out. It's almost impossible to find your way around -- everyone you stop for directions says something to the effect of, "Ok, well, it's too confusing to explain, but..."  But it's downright exhilarating once you do begin to master it, or at least get enough of a feel for it that you are willing to take a chance of getting hopefully lost.

Not to put too cute or convenient a point on it, but this idea has clearly emerged as the theme -- both for my trip so not-very-far, and for the second language journey.  The Chaos/Complexity Theory of Second Language Acquisition says that learning is messy, non-linear, self-constructed, and happens at the border between chaos and order -- called "the edge of chaos" by physicist and journalist Mitchell Waldrop -- a state which good teachers strive to create.  You need to get lost a bit to grow and learn.

I arrived in Rome just a little over a day ago, and I've gotten lost just a bit.  It's thrilling.

It probably began at this trip's inception. Half-baked and a little impetuous, finding an apartment long-distance, going more or less solo, only a day and a half after insanely busy Christmas and my exhausting semester's end, fairly vague agenda in shaky hand.

Then a blizzard, New York's first snow of the season, delays my flight for two days.  When we do leave, the plane is over an hour late because the baggage handlers, many of whom live in the unshoveled reaches of Queens, could not get to work.  This puts my Dublin connection to Rome -- scheduled for 7:00 pm, an hour and 15 minutes after the original landing time -- in serious jeopardy.  The cute young Japanese guy sitting next to me has a plane to Paris leaving at the same time, and worries, taps and checks the digitized flight progress nervously throughout the trip. The flight attendant, pretty and Irish but stern and unsoothing, does little soothing. "They may hold the doors open for an extra minute or two because they know yoo're cooming and have yoor looggage, but we joost have no way of knowing."  With seven minutes to spare, I tear through the Dublin airport at top old-lady speed, through passport check and security, up stairs and down escalators, over evocatively foggy tarmacks and up the stairs to my plane, winded and sweaty, 7:02.  This Aer Lingus stewardess does soothe, offers me a cup of water with some sweet alarm at my panting dishevelment, says, "Oh, we were waitin' for ya -- it's only fair, ya know."  We wait a few more minutes for other late connectors, and are finally Rome bound.

My looggage is not so loocky.

The airline sounds lethargic and unconcerned, at the airport and now over 24 hours later. They just keep repeating tonelessly -- as if I am every passenger who's ever been separated from luggage, and they are getting a little tired of telling me this already -- that this is not uncommon, and that they are still tracking it. They believe it's still in Dublin, and with the holiday, you know, it may be a while.  You can buy some replacement items, maybe 50 euros or so worth, and get reimbursed.  But I am shockingly alone in another country, and I don't know where I am or where I'm going, never mind how to get somewhere else, like a clothing store. I am tempted to wish I had not done this all, and to cry for my reliable best friend and husband.  Maybe for a brief overwhelmed flash I do.  But this was all and always about the risk and the growth, I have most of my important stuff in my on-board bag, and I am inexplicably happy and content.

I grab a cab to my apartment, and call Alessandro on his cell as instructed, the guy from the broker who is to meet me there with keys and assistance.  I get an operator's message saying in Italian that this is an non-working number, and for yet another panicked minute, well, I panic.  But once again some reflexive buoyancy gets me past the vision of me with a cup on an Italian street corner for a month, and I call my usual contact person at the agency, Mario.  He assures me that I probably just need to dial the country code, but that he will call Alessandro and have him come right away.  Alessandro is a lovely archetype of a handsome, soft spoken Italian morsel (sorry, Julie, just journalistic transparency at work here, you're my real Italian morsel), and he gets me settled into my little cutems flat with keys, closets, recycling instructions and the like, and takes his leave.

I am beyond exhausted, but I want to get a feel for the neighborhood and pick up a few groceries, so I head out.



This is when I am first unceremoniously yanked through the dizzying cragginess of my Trastevere neighborhood, exotic little car horns sounding their irritation at my clumsy foreignness. I worry, in my deepening stupor, that I will need a trail of ciabatta crumbs if I wander more than a twisty-turny block or two away. I have a cappuccino and a pasta pesto at Marco's across the street, buy some milk and bread at a convenience store on the block, and head back home.  Home!

I get my meager possessions set up and and stored, internet going, explore the apartment, and realize it is freezing.  My-fingers-are-numb freezing.  The heater is on, but I fiddle with it, numbly.  I find and close the kind of hidden sliding mirrored doors to the bathroom, which is unheated and icy -- that should help.  I busy myself with more settling in distraction, when Mario calls.  He is, oddly for someone who wrote that I should feel free to contact him with any problems or needs, in complete denial about my plight.  Simply says he knows that the heat is working, often works too well, and there is nothing more to be done or said. When I express disbelief, he says, as if he has happened upon the perfect solution, "Okay, you know what?  Just fool around with the knobs a bit, without, you know, making anything worse.  See if that helps.  If not, you can call me again, okay?" For some reason, I agree that that is okay.  I fool with the dials, making nothing worse, or, as far as I can tell, better, and happen upon my own solution.  Perhaps Mario is right, and the problem is me, maybe I am feeling cold because I am tired.  I will take a nap.

I wake up, about an hour later, shivering.  I call my husband, chat chirpily about all the wonders and excitement of Rome.  I do have to let on about the luggage and, since my teeth are chattering, about the heat.  Or lack thereof.  And about the Mario brush-off.  I am eager to avoid sounding or being helpless, so without much spousal prodding, I devise a very independent and no-prisoners plan to call Mario again and American-woman his ass.  I leave him a message, a fiery, frozen, let's-get-real message.

I realize how deeply I am loving this.  I am dealing with crap, alone, no luggage, foreign language, exhausted, shivering, and I am okay.  I am so okay.

Mario calls back, and with the prompting of a woman in the background whom I think might be his boss, he is so sorry and concerned about me and remembers there is an electric heater in the apartment.  He just doesn't remember where, and he thinks I should get up on an eight foot ladder and climb up into the loft to have a look (you can see it in the picture).  This to a woman who's afraid of staircases that don't have railings.

Bring it on.

I look in the loft, and in every other hiding space.  The heater turns up in a closet in the bathroom, and it is wonderful and warm and I did heroic things to get it.

I was going make dinner, but I am 31 hours worth of sleep deprived, and a celebration is called for.  Rick Steves can't recommend Trattoria Lucia highly enough, the spaghetti a la gricia with pancetta in particular, and it is right around the corner and it is adorable and cheap and delicious. So popular, too, because of a few recent raves, that they are turning people away in droves. I think I got lucky because I am alone, easy to squeeze into a quiet little table in the corner.  I toast my felicitous independence with a glass of Santa Cristina Annata.

Overwhelmed? Freezing? Whipped and jerked?  Lost? I own this town.

Ruggito.

Head, Heart and Hands

My lessons plans are done, and I can't wait to meet my sixth graders...

...in Italy!

I wrote here some weeks back about emailing a few international schools in Rome, hoping to get a feel for the educational system there on my upcoming trip, create a bit of instant community, and lend my days a meaningful structure by volunteering my teacherly services. I chose international schools to ensure there would be English speakers (I also planned to drop in on a few local public schools for which I was unable to find contact information on the internet).  I heard back from two or three who invited me cordially but tersely to "look around" their fine institutions.  Not exactly the open arms I was hoping for, but a serviceable piede nella porta.

I did write to one all-Italian school, Il Giardino dei Cedri ("Garden of Cedars"), because I fell in love with the description I found. It's a Rudolf Steiner/ Waldorf school, whose stated goal is "to produce individuals who are able, in and of themselves, to impart meaning to their lives." 


No anxious, decontextualized standardized testing drives this educational philosophy, but the imperative to educate the whole child, "head, heart and hands," relying on imagination, and the internal motivation of arts and practical activities in the service of academic development. Academics are de-emphasized in the early years; there is no academic content in the kindergarten, although there is a good deal of cultivation of pre-academic skills, and minimal academics in grade one. Certain activities considered "frills" at mainstream schools are central here: art, music, gardening, and foreign languages, to name a few. In the younger grades, all subjects are introduced through artistic media, on the theory that children respond better to this approach than to dry lecturing and rote learning. All children learn to play an instrument and knit. There are no "textbooks" as such in the first through fifth grades. All children have "main lesson books," their own learning journals which they fill in during the course of the year. They essentially produce their own textbooks which record their experiences and what they've learned. Learning is a wholly non-competitive activity. There are no grades given at the primary level; the teacher writes a detailed evaluation of the child at the end of each school year. The use of electronic media, particularly television, by young children is strongly discouraged.

The curriculum at Waldorf Schools (the amazing Rudolf Steiner School in New York was the first in North America) is designed to be responsive to the various phases of a child's development. The era of human history being studied corresponds in many ways with the stage of development of the child. For example, kindergarteners are presented with fairy tales matching their dreamy state of consciousness, grade 4 studies the Vikings and Norse mythology which suit their war-like feelings (a development I can attest to from personal experience!), grade 5 learn of the Greeks at the time their intellect is awakening and their sense of fair play is becoming obvious, and so on.

I'm sure that this relaxed educational Eden must come with a steep price tag -- affordable only to the privileged few whose academic progress is so thoroughly nurtured on so many fronts that it provokes none of the anxiety with which average inner-city schools must contend.  It is interesting to note, though, that it all began in the chaotic circumstances of post-World War I Germany. Rudolf Steiner had been giving lectures on his ideas for a societal transformation in the direction of independence of the economic, governmental and cultural realms, known as Social Threefolding, to the workers of various factories. In April of1919, he held such a lecture for the workers of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany; in this lecture he mentioned the need for a new kind of comprehensive school. On the following day, the workers approached Herbert Hahn, one of Steiner's close co-workers, and asked him whether their children could be given such a school. Independently of this request, the owner and managing director of the factory, Emil Molt, announced his decision to set up such a school for his factory workers' children to the company's Board of Directors and asked Steiner to be the school's pedagogical consultant. The name Waldorf thus comes from the factory which hosted the first school.


This kind of humane, child-centered education, then -- rooted in what kids do and want to do best -- can, should, and has been done in the inner city. With the children of factory workers, in a time of social upheaval and distress. I have seen teaching in the South Bronx that nurtures imagination and motivates through context. I see no rational case against it: within reason, the Waldorf Schools are an inarguable model for early education. Period.


So finally, last week, I heard from a member of the faculty at Il Giardino dei Cedri:


Dear Joan,

My name is Shelagh Anderson and I am the English teacher at the Waldorf School "Il Giardino dei Cedri" here in Rome. First I must apologise for not replying sooner but I'm afraid I temporarily misplaced your email. Fortunately, after searching diligently for it, I found it.

I read your email at our weekly staff meeting and the immediate response was "Of course!"  Our school reopens January 10 and if you would like to come to sit in on some of our English classes, you would be welcome. I would be particularly interested in giving Grades 6, 7 and 8 the chance to converse with someone else beside myself who is mother-tongue. (As horrible as it may seem, I'm hoping you don't know any Italian.)

I realise you will be very busy visiting all the wonderful things there are to see, but it would be lovely if you could find a moment to visit us. If you are still interested, you can contact me either through this email address or, once in Rome, you can call the school at 06/3690821 or even my cellphone number 377/1182302.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and I hope you have a good trip

Your truly,
Shelagh Anderson


Wow, what charm, how personable!  And they discussed me at their faculty conference!  I packed a folder full of personal artifacts in my luggage, to share with grades 6, 7 and 8 -- pictures of my family, our holiday celebrations, my Upper Manhattan apartment building, classes of mine through the years.  I assured Ms. Anderson that her English language learners are safe -- my Italian is, unfortunately for me, nothing to be relied upon yet.  I just may press them, however, after they have practiced their English with me, to let me at have go at my Italian.  It will be laughable, I'm sure, but I'm always happy to let the kids have a laugh at my expense -- it's a healthy turn of power dynamics . I fall asleep at night imagining what it will be like to chat with the students, learning joyfully from each other. 


You can take the teacher out of the classroom, at least for a sabbatical, but you can never take the classroom out of the teacher. Flight's finally tomorrow...oh, man, am I excited!

Comfort Zone

My Grandma "Mary," c. age 20

My grandma, Maria Fekete, was the eldest child in her family. As a gift for her 16th birthday, in 1906, her family scraped together enough money for a ticket, via steamship, from Czechoslovakia to the United States. This was quite an honor, an opportunity for a new and surely better life than peasant farming had to offer.

It was the last thing Maria wanted.


Life in her little village near Prešov wasn't always easy. The children had to work on the farm, about four hours a day. They had goats and cows, geese and pigs.  They grew potatoes and oats and flax to make their own linen.  In the winter months the girls walked great distances, through snow and darkness, to attend school from 8:00 to 5:00.  They would stop off at the homes of relatives to warm their frozen feet by the fire.

Snowy farm in Presov

But there was an idyllic sweetness to life in this small Slovak farming town. They had an orchard right outside their door, with plums and figs and pears ripe for the picking. Her family grew everything they needed in life, and shared their excess with needier neighbors. Each Sunday, one family member would stay home and make the sausages for dinner while the rest went on to church. The three pretty sisters turned heads when they dressed for outings into town. And the sweetest and most important thing about Prešov was -- it was home.


Yes, the family made everything they could possibly need. Except money. Although the girls helped out on the farm, their efforts were not essential, and there were no paying jobs to be had in Prešov. So when her mother's brother's wife's sister, who was already in the states, told of a Hungarian family who needed a housekeeper, and offered to sponsor one of the Fekete girls, my grandmother Maria was the obvious choice. She was the eldest, the smartest, and the best worker.  


So off she headed, without a disrespectful word of protest, alone, miserable. And sixteen.

Things could have been worse. She had her own bedroom with the Weingartens, the Hungarian Jewish family she kept house for, on 9th Street. Although Maria spoke no English, she found a small community of folks from home in the neighborhood, including her mother's sister-in-law's sister, who had gotten her the job. Maria did speak a little Hungarian, just little enough to completely confuse ingredients and render inedible the very first dinner she made for the Weingartens. Her sickly employer helped salvage things before her husband, a professor, came home from work. But my grandmother, who was used to four or five hours a day of work on the farm, now worked sun up to sundown, with no time or energy for socializing, or improving her English, or feathering her own nest with the modest money she now made.

Mrs. Weingarten died within a few years, and another several years later my grandmother became the new Mrs. Prof. Weingarten. They had a daughter, my aunt Helen, and when Helen was three, Maria became a young widow.  She met John Lesko, a factory worker from her hometown, through friends the following year, and they were married in 1925. My Uncle Joe and my father came along shortly after, and my grandmother gradually lost touch with, and stopped mourning, her family and life in Prešov.  

My grandma and me, c. age 20.

Although my grandma was quite chatty, she never lost her heavy Slovak accent -- almost unintelligible to those outside the family -- and a certain quirky, slightly peculiar turn of phrase ("Ah, you make me sick," she said often and with little apparent provocation, once when I told her I was afraid of the dark when I was five). When her father finally phoned and asked, after World War II, whether she wanted to come back home, she said, "One foot belongs in Slovakia, one foot belongs in America. But home? My Prešov is nothing but a Russian village now.  I just leave both feet here." She never saw her parents again, and her sister, who was 14 when she left, was 71 the next time they met.


So me?  Married at 21, never left New York.  My kids are growing up and out, cleaving more to mates than mom, and I am undone.  I like to pretend I'm living on the edge by taking this sabbatical, planning a month in a cutems apartment on the artsy side of Rome, completely alone for a few of the weeks.  But at our early Christmas celebration, relatives inquired nervously if I was taking on too much, and my stomach churned as I lied with breezy bravado. I was even uneasy at the fact that our Christmas celebration was of necessity a week early, and Christmas was quiet and, well, just hand-wringingly wrong. I'm completely frazzled by today's blizzard delay of my flight. I want very much to practice my Italian while in Italy, walk the TESOL walk, you know, but I am seriously apprehensive about making a fool of myself.


I know just what Grandma would say if I asked her advice, my hearty, tough, peasant Grandma.  She who had weathered a voyage to a very foreign country at the age of 16, the loss of her entire family, early widowhood, remarriage to my grandfather whom she would describe to my mother as "just no good."  Russian occupation of her homeland, and nowhere to really call home.


If I told my grandma I was afraid, she'd have a simple bit of advice, I'm sure.


"Ah, you make me sick."

Community Disunity

Our integrated unit on Communties was an uncooperative mess.




I have to acknowledge that in general, I am not always as comfortable a collaborator as I know I should be. This is almost scandalous to admit, especially in educational circles, where such group effort is all the rage, in the classroom and amongst staff developers. Supposed to prepare us all for the real world, where "there is no 'I' in team." But I tend to have divergent views on things, and I thrive in a quiet room. I do not always find that people firmly hold their end of the network of mutuality. Joany, I'm afraid, does not always work well with others.  So I was leery of this assignment on which 45% of our grade would be based  -- but not proud, and willing to suspend skepticism.   

But as the real world injected itself, in all its gnarly self-interest, my teammates and I found the 'I' in ignoring, avoidance, resignation and irate.  In the end I couldn't bear to let our group final project and presentation, for "Methods of Teaching ELA to ELLs", fail as miserably as it should have, so I pulled it out of the fire.  But our not-so-joint efforts revealed an ironic failure to model the way people come together to share resources and support each other's needs.

Yennie, a young high school paraprofessional, had me worried right from the start.  Her English wasn't strong, and I had mixed feelings about how sympathetically I needed to walk the walk over this issue in a graduate class.  As an aspiring ESL expert, I felt sheepish about my concerns.  But she wasn't studying English, she was preparing to become an elementary school teacher, and she had difficulty understanding and expressing the most basic concepts. When I said we should wait to see what literature we gathered before we started to plan the unit in-depth, for example, she didn't know what I meant by "literature." When Edelisa explained it to her patiently but incredulously, she still couldn't understand why it mattered so much. Yennie also rarely came to class on time, if at all, and when she did make it, she would slump whinily into her seat, and ask weakly for aspirin.

Edelisa tried, hard, but she was understandably overwhelmed. She was the only current classroom teacher in our little group, and she had a baby at home. On the few occasions when we were given class time to prepare, she offered smart, experienced advice.  She brought, from her second-grade class, literacy curriculum maps, nonfiction books on community, and profiles of actual students and their needs. She scheduled our group planning time of fifty minutes before our weekly class.


And then never came.


No one did, except me, until I gave up.  I was lucky if they made it to class at all.

So I wrote our unit overview and rationale, and enthusiastically gathered a stack of wide-ranging children's genres on the topic. I bulleted teaching points for each, carefully scaffolded for second language learners, and tapped out three out the five sections of our group paper.   

For our final presentation, I created a Power Point, and developed a shared reading lesson on Nikki Giovanni's poem Knoxville, Tennessee , which my classmates in the guise of second graders, would visualize to determine the type of community in which it was lovingly set.  I leveled with my cohort that I was worried about our progress, and that I would be willing to do more than my share since I wasn't working, as long as they committed to timely completion of the remaining sections. As soon as they emailed me their contributions, I would copy, paste, edit and format our unified effort into one cohesive whole.  


I grappled uneasily with my options as days turned into weeks, the deadline approached, and nothing was forthcoming. With just a few days to go, I heard from Yennie that she was sick, and nothing from Edelisa.  Was it all a test -- if I ratted out my ne'er-do-well groupmates to the professor, would I reveal myself to be sorely lacking in collegial heroism? What to do?


So Saturday night before the Monday it was due, I wrote the vaguest of pleas to the professor, simply saying that "some of us" were having trouble meeting the deadline, and asking for advice on how to proceed. I felt -- the whole situation seemed -- juvenile, unprofessional.  She wrote back saying that she appreciated my professionalism (!), and that we should hand in what we had and speak to her after class if need be.


In the mean time, Edelisa's contributions trickled slowly in, with sizable last-minute flaws, and too few minutes to polish them.  On Sunday afternoon, Yennie left a whiny, congested phone message that I should call her, despite the fact that I told her I would be out.I returned her call later and left a message that I could hear she wasn't feeling well,  but it was too late for us to talk things through. Would she please be in touch with the professor to let her know that was going on? But on the Monday the project was due, Yennie emailed me her paltry contributions, I spruced them up a bit, and rehearsed my shared reading presentation.  We were, no matter how it had happened, ready.


But as I slid in -- with a sigh and a forced smile -- next to Yennie and Edelisa in class, I overheard them explaining that neither one of them had completed their individual projects, which included the presentation.  My jaw tightened and I flushed, but I no really longer felt the weight of the team responsibilty -- they had carelessly snipped us all into individual orbit. While another team presented their unit, my team reviewed the Power Point, and quickly patched together demo lessons for their read-aloud and guided reading portions. The class applauded for the first presentation, asked a few good, polite questions, and we were on.


We made our way through the pre-planned slides just fine. As we had agreed on beforehand, I explained to the class that instead of telling about our lessons, we were going to actually deliver them as if they were our second grade class. This, at least, would spice up our sorry proceedings a bit. Edelisa tried, self-consciously and with little preparation, to teach her guided reading lesson.  But she couldn't pull it off for long, and slumped into a dry but reasonable explanation of it instead. Yennie just announced, defiantly, "I'm not going to do any acting," and simply told us what her read-aloud would consist of.


I posted my poem, with illustrations, on the board.  I told my "little-ones" that poets chose their genre to express a feeling, often with imagery.  I wanted them to relax and listen, visualize the speaker, details about the community in the poem, and the feelings the poet expressed about it.  I posted captioned pictures of some of the trickier vocabulary, okrah and barbecue, gospel and barefooted.  We visualized, smiled, it was over and it was good.  The professor talked about what a valuable unit was, rich with varied literature and important concepts, like resources and responsibility. She invited the class to ask questions.  


Jose wanted to know (and I think I quote him verbatim), "Don't you think you tried to do too much with the poem? Shouldn't you have broken it up a little -- I felt kind of overwhelmed."


Jose couldn't have known what a martyr I felt like at that moment, whether deservedly, gracefully or not -- and that I was tempted to hurtle over the desk and smack him.  I held my tongue and answered his question with humble consideration, while wondering venomously if this was the kind of unsupportive feedback he planned to give his young students some day.


That's what I learned in school today.

Knoxville, Tennessee I always like summer Best you can eat fresh corn From daddy's garden And okra And greens And cabbage And lots of Barbeque And buttermilk And homemade ice-cream At the church picnic And listen to Gospel music Outside At the church Homecoming And go to the mountains with Your grandmother And go barefooted And be warm All the time Not only when you go to bed And sleep Nikki Giovanni

Manhattan Bridge Overpass

My nephew Zach is a middle-aged lesbian.

Zach's mom at the reRun Gastropub Theater

Okay, no, really he's a straight guy, and he just turned fourteen. As a matter of fact, we took him out for his birthday this weekend, his parents, my husband and I. Saw a documentary called Beijing Taxi in Brooklyn's artsy DUMBO neighborhood (for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass"), at a really cool theater called the reRun Gastropub. They serve white Russians, duck confit sausage, and, our choice, the garlic popcorn drizzled with bacon fat (I'm still humming). You sit in car seats with the belts still available, and chat with the director afterwards.  Then we had dinner, great pasta, lots of atmosphere, and the conversation turned, as it often does with Zach, to literature, politics, urban adventures.  He insisted, from firm personal experience, that my Linguistics professor is misguided when he claims, too loftily, that language teachers need to know all about the deeps roots and structure of language.

Birthday dinner and fine conversation

Now don't go worrying that the rude label I slapped on him up top is a gratuitous swipe at an undeserving birthday boy -- it's his own self-description. And as I see it, it's actually high and apt praise.  You see, Zach has the interests and mind of an adult, an analytical, urbane, klatschy adult very much like his two moms. Prefers an evening at a foreign documentary to a rock concert or a Harry Potter premier. He's pretty comfortable in the company of his smart, edgy peers at the Chapin School, rehearsing theater productions, playing guitar, but he'd just as soon be railing about Glenn Beck's latest blackboard inanities with adults.  And before you go assuming that his intellectually superior head must be a tight fit through the door, let me say that the qualities that strike most folks first and deeply are his earthy sweetness and honest humility.  (He is not, as it happens, a perfect deity -- he has flaws, just so you know, but they are not the subject of this entry!)

The subway ride home

Zach spent most of his early years in the suburbs of the Metropolitan area, but always knew something was amiss, the fit off just a bit.  As a toddler he told my sister, while gazing at the New York skyline, that he would like to get his own little apartment in the city. He insisted, still does, that it's in his genes, and I have to agree. This fall they did move to Manhattan, and he immediately seemed like a new man.  There was a comfort, a bounce to his gait that I had not seen before, and he moved through the hustle and thrum with not a shred of overload -- he was home.  His parents settled on the upper east side due to work and school considerations, but Zach is already drooling over the hip allure of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, of artsy enclaves like DUMBO and booming Bushwick.

I'm so excited for Zach, and thrilled to be witness to his adventurous homecoming -- no matter what his wonderful secret identity. It couldn't be happening at a more perfect time in his life, just as he needs and can benefit from the indie life and culture.  I'm really just so damn glad to have my Zach this close.

But I'm a city kid, too, born, bred and proud myself.  So I'm sneaking through his turnstile for as long and as much as he'll allow. Yeah, I'm pretty pleased that close is a subway ride away.

Gimmie

When I was little, I had a tantrum. Just one my whole childhood, but it was mythic, the stuff of bemused family lore.  On the surface, it was over a toy, a stuffed monkey I wanted, just around Christmastime, as it happens. But it couldn't be dismissed as a simple case of the Yuletide gimmies -- I wasn't normally an acquisitive child, and incapable (until my Vesuvian teens) of stridency.  So my meltdown was affectionately relegated to the Lesko family cold case file.

Until I wrote about it recently -- used it as an evolving model for writing small moment personal narratives and memoir with one of my fourth grade classes.  As I added back story to the small Macy's moment, to demonstrate how separate vignettes can be tied together thematically into memoir, I came to understand what it all had really meant.

I had fallen in love.  

Why do we love the people we fall madly for? My daughter says when the thud is hard and first-sight, it is always because they remind you of someone else.  With adult hindsight, I can see that my monkey reminded me of me in many ways, but so much better.  We were both dreamy, sort of discombobulated and unassuming.  But he was firmly self-satisfied, unconcerned with the doings and opinions of others, and his edge of sadness was just that, an edge only, with no seeping bleed.  He kept that at safe bay by pleasing, entertaining, loving himself -- with a soulful gleam that said I can be hurt, but I will laugh again, so what? And I felt enveloped and held aloft by my better half, by this love.

So I went to dinner with my new friend Kymm from my Linguistics of Bilingualism class, the lovely lady in the DOE ad. I would like to say I fell madly for Kymm at first sight, but the truth is that I was too busy squinting headachily at the professor, then rushing off to catch the 7:30 bus home to a late dinner and a hungry husband.  But at second and third sight, when I stopped to notice her snarky twinkle and her passion for her students on a few bus rides home together, I was pretty smitten.  So I asked if she wanted to catch a meal after our last class, and she squealed, "Yay!" 

I was in a bad mood after a crappy domino chain day, but she took me to Mobay, a fun and funky Caribbean/soul restaurant on 125th Street. We drank two "Mood Adjusters"apiece, ate all kinds of rich deliciousness.  We talked -- about work, relationships, whether I should return to my old school -- nonstop, deeply, hilariously.  She spoke disarmingly of heartbreaks, but also of the strength and resilience in her well-exercised, independent, upbeat ticker.  Kymm is going to get tired of my saying this, but she glows, and my mood was SO adjusted.  

She invited me a couple of days later to see the LaGuardia High School production of Hairspray, which was breathtaking, professional, a trippy real-life episode of Glee. What a great show, too, about good things like fat acceptance and racial integration, gender fluidity and just plain, gorgeous lunacy.  Kymm told me, during intermission, how she had orchestrated her presence as a dean at this artsy academic phenom by force of both lucky accident and a spirit of I-will-take-nothing-less, and made it sound like quite a reasonable modus operandi.  She glowed some more.  I sent her the link to my log, and she WOWED excitedly that I was talented enough to just forget about deciding what school to work in after the sabbatical, and write full time.  I can't and won't do this, but adore her for nudging me further outside my well-settled box.  I imagine this is something she might do, indeed has, in many ways.

I don't know that Kymmie reminds me of me, or anyone else.  I don't even think I like her for reasons I can enumerate, exactly, though I'm sure -- and reassured -- that the folks we love have a lot to tell us about ourselves.  What a wonderful, just perfect all-I want-for-Christmas gift my excellent new friend is -- why would anyone covet a Wii?  I am enveloped and held aloft by her company, her soulful gleam that says I can be hurt, but I will laugh again, so what?

Thud.

Some of you have read my Monkey story, but I am reprinting it again, below.

My mother tugged my chubby arm briskly, my little feet practically leaving the ground. Her lips were pulled tight, her eyes looked distant, as if her body were beside me but her thoughts someplace else. “Quickly, Joany, Macy’s closes at 6 tonight,” she muttered quietly, without much expression. She whisked me through the heavy glass and bronze revolving doors, and my head began to spin.

A forest of grown-up legs was all I could see as we rushed toward the slatted moving stairs. As we got closer, the crowd cleared a bit, and I could just about make out the tops of a few display cases -- some with sweaters neatly laid out, some with soaps and perfumes, all pink, too sweet and frilly. But there was one case, one case that seemed to hold my gaze like a magnet as I scampered by quickly but reluctantly to keep up with my mother. There sat a colorful community of stuffed animals, all bedecked in vests, suspenders and top hats. Some were smiling, some pouting thoughtfully, blubbery bears and jittery giraffes. Toward one corner of the case, leaning haphazardly against a rather self-important fat black cat, was a red monkey with a black and white bow tie. His eyes were wide and dreamy, his scrawny, spidery body looked playful and warm. But the way he was sitting looked accidental, not neat and purposeful like the others. He looked alone and forgotten, as if some hurried child had brushed him aside in pursuit of a better toy. I felt sorry for him. But the imaginative sparkle in his eyes and the small, almost-smiling mouth made it look as if he had some private joke he could enjoy all by himself, that he wouldn’t mind being left alone to bemusedly tune out the noise of angry, grown-up voices, the sight and smell of day-old dinner dishes and quarrelsome, unbathed kids. No, he wouldn’t even notice. He would be a good friend, no matter what.

As we moved just past the display, I planted my feet firmly on the marble tiled floor, unaware that I had stopped my mother’s anxious rush toward Kitchen Supplies.

“I want that monkey,” I said looking back, talking quietly, almost to myself.

“What? What’s the matter?” my mother snapped distractedly.

“I want that monkey,” I stated matter-of-factly, but a bit louder.

My mother’s “No,” was short, annoyed but unconcerned. She must have mistaken this for a run-of the-mill case of the gimmies. She made, with my hand still in hers, a move toward the escalator. I would not budge.

“Jo- -,” she started.

“I want the monkey,” I said, louder, quivering.

My mother, sensing that her usually placid, compliant child had fallen under some sort of spell, knelt down to reason with me sensitively and convincingly.

“Joany,” she began softly, firmly, “I can see how much you want the toy, but I don’t have the money right now. You know your father- -“

Realizing that she could not actually see how much I really wanted, needed that monkey, I let flow the rising tide of tears dammed up at the back of my throat and eyes. I opened my mouth to try to explain to her, to help her understand that this was not just a toy I wanted. But what came out of my mouth was a warbly, unintelligible, piercing, “I WANT THE MONKEY!!!” My mother’s eyes darted self-consciously around her as she grabbed the monkey and headed swiftly for the cashier, while I snuffled breathlessly in tow.

Indeed, he was a good friend, my monkey, for many years, through my parents’ divorce, through restuffings and patchings, until one day he could be patched no longer. And though I cried on that day, too, it was not with desperation or need or fear. These were loving tears of goodbye to a friend who had taught me how not to be pushed aside, how to hold onto humor and imagination amid chaos, how to enjoy being myself even when no one else seemed to notice. A friend who stuck by me till the end, a friend I never really did lose.

Language Artistry

Ah, we finally hit useful, concrete terra firma in my third TESOL class, at the foundation of the "what-does-it-all-matter" pyramid:  Methods of Teaching English Language Arts to Second Language Learners.  Although I entertain myself no end with musings on first impressions, I think I am learning not to put much stock in them.  I figured the professor -- still teaching in the primary classroom and instructing her first university level course -- for a pretty young thing, her blond, petite cheeriness emblems of a want of substance.  This literacy coach would have to rein herself in not to overshadow the sweet sylph.

Need I admit I was off a bit?

The first sign of her classiness, in my typically egocentric view, was her actually seeking out my input after we had shared our professional backgrounds in the first session.  She continued to do this -- asking my opinions, brightening with no sign of ego when I volunteered an interesting slant -- throughout the semester.  But make no mistake about this overshadowing business:  as Wayne Campbell would put it, I am not worthy...

I have written here about my tendency to pit organization and fastidiousness against joy and substance.  In my life, in my classroom.  I am sure I do this as a defense, after the fact of my own stubborn, lopsided inclinations.  But if I needed a role model to embody and convey the power that the two combined unleash, and the possibility that it can be done, this student was ready and the teacher appeared.

Her class unfolded, as her teaching must, too  -- like a gorgeous, brilliantly engineered K'nex project. Each well-planned, delightful structure connected to others, captured attention, provided support, looked deceptively like child's play. She shared enormously affectionate anecdotes and tapes of her own second language learners, who became the flesh-and-blood backdrop of our work together.  In each session we practiced what we'd discussed  --- internalizing, socializing, collaborating.  We planned and executed read-alouds and shared reading incorporating picture-pointing, yes-or-no questions, and other scaffolding for ELLs.  We made Monster Clozes for creative language structure deconstruction.  We placed everything in meaningful context.  We created elegantly integrated units of study with the highest but most supportive of standards.  And we did it all with her infectious warmth and collegiality, and tenderness about our students, even as we fretted, productively, about them.

And in the last class -- just as I worried about over-saturation leading to complete non-absorption -- we made our own personal word walls of what we'd learned, and then applied it all to complex, realistic scenarios.  Brilliant, just right.  But as the soft blur of the too-muchness of the semester came into refocus, flashing lights and rude buzzers announced what we thought was a fire drill.  We all, the whole university, fled the warm finals crunch of our classrooms and spilled grumblingly but spiritedly into the frigid night.  I chatted, shivering, with the professor and some classmates as blaring fire trucks pulled up and the pungence of smoke wrinkled our noses. Learned that the professor's in-laws were visiting from Spain, and were adjusting to this winter climate.  Discovered that a classmate's brother was a fire fighter. Told them about my upcoming trip to Italy to practice my own second language learning.  The professor made me promise to send her the link to my sabbatical log, and I will do so with pleasure.  I realized out loud, shivering but cozy on the plaza, that this class and the others had led me to trust the messy magic of the process, while learning a bit about some elegant structures that can make the ride a little smoother.  It was all coming together, the dizzying, heady theory and the steadying but playful methods.

My own colorful, second language roller coaster of K'nex-tions.

P.S. The professor has written a fabulous book, not used in this class, but recommended highly by others:
http://www.heinemann.com/products/E02682.aspx

No Method to This Madness

I have "Prof.  Mister Rogers" again for the next, slightly more real-world class in Theories of Second Language Acquisition. Sounds promising, no?  Here we'll find out how our ESL students learn, and plan accordingly.

Yeah, not so much.  It is still very heady and academic, and the field is hotly contentious -- proudly so, it seems.  We spent the entire first class deconstructing every single controversial word of the course title, down to "of," which spurred some valid linguistic defense of Clinton's famous, albeit annoying challenge to "is." Students have incurred the quietly curled lip of the professor, who tersely puts them in their "this-is-NOT- a-methods-class" place, when they dare ask a question about classroom application.  We now usually know better than to attempt to extract any teaching wisdom  from the controversial madness of, say, the Formalists -- who claim that we are all born with the non-communicative grammar of language programmed into our brains -- versus the Functionalists, who insist we learn language much the way we learn anything else, and that it is all about communication.  The class, we are reminded frequently, provides a foundational knowledge of the subject we will all teach, that is, language, in much the way a calculus class would be part of a math teacher's coursework -- and the latter would likely never touch on pedagogy. It seems to me that if the experts are so flagrantly and insistently in perpetual disagreement, that's shaky, headachy foundation indeed.

"Biyey"

But, happily, the real world does inject itself, in the form of bi-weekly papers we write and share about snippets of language use we have overheard, and the possible theories behind them.  So, if you and I have had a conversation recently, or emailed one another, you have likely served as one of my research guinea pigs. Thanks, and no letters of protest to PETA, please.

I won't bore you with many more of the details of the SLA Theories class.  The subject matter and instructional style are so similar to the Linguistics -- apart from the arguments over whether and how native-language principles, even if they were universally agreed on, apply to second language learning -- that I have often been caught doing my own confused academic code switching.

The really wonderful, happy accident about this class, though, is the cast of characters the students represent. They are a colorful polyglot of opinions, personalities and insights, who give our somewhat rigid and less than vivid leader a run for his money, and the rest of us a good, smart time.  There is Biyey* (pronounced B.J.), the Ecuadorean intellect and guy's guy, who expounds on the dazzling circularity of making meaning as "I send a message to you and wait for you to send a message to me that you have received and understood the message that I sent, in a way that I think I understand so that I can in turn send a message to you that I have understood that you have understood my message."  There is Claricia, the stylish and effervescent young African American woman who works at Lincoln Center and regales us with her sophisticated-yet-gigglish tales of precariously negotiated interactions with international visitors. Who could forget Asuman, the young Turkish prodigy, who began the class after only two weeks in the country; who has realistic aspirations of transferring to Columbia, and holds her ground firmly, fetchingly, almost tearily, as she parries with the professor and scientific wisdom?  And I can't wait to have dinner and drinks after our final class with my new and, I predict, good friend Kymm.  She is a language teacher and dean at LaGuardia High School, mixes small-town warmth with Big Apple edge, glows and twinkles with kind intelligence, passes funny notes and stifled snickers about the professor's many peccadillos.

Kymm, in front of a DOE ad featuring her.

A few classmates who've had the professor before tell me he usually brings a couple of bottles of wine to the last class.  This surprises me  -- as people said of John Kerry, he is not exactly the guy I thought to have a drink with. My classmates say they appreciate the potential in him, rose and thorns, and enjoy the puzzle. I guess, and I love them for their sweet, smart capaciousness.  I am glad to toast with them!  There is no doubt that he is brilliant, knows his subject, provokes thought.  I am still waiting to see if I understand his message and can send him a message that I understand his message.

Maybe the spirits will help.

*I have changed the names of, and altered details about, some of the folks who make an inadvertent appearance in this blog.