BIG plans for the BIG day–only: which day?

Posted on August 26, 2015 by bakrawiec

One of my new “Outer Circle” Twitter PLN friends counseled me to be sure to fully, properly celebrate the first day of my retirement. Be sure to plan something very special, she counseled. Don’t let the day pass without doing something extraordinary. What did I have planned? she inquired.

Got me thinking.

What did I have planned?

Tentatively, my big day goal has been to change it up. No business as usual that day. Since I won’t have a usual place of business to which to go, I’m feeling that it is important to have a change of venue—to be away from the area previously associated with work.

That’s it. That’s as far as I had planned when I was faced with the “do something special” advice and challenge.

Reviewing that tentative plan, I made it definitive. Definitely change of venue. To that I added: definitely time for prayerful thanksgiving for decades of work opportunities and experiences. Despite all its apparent “pains,” work is, after all, a great gift–easier to see as such in retrospect, I might add.

Being quietly, reflectively grateful that day is what I think I really want and need…

The “how?” to celebrate taken care of, there remained only question–the “when?”–what day is “the big day”? What is the day I need to acknowledge as marking my teaching retirement?…I seemed to have some confusing options.

Is it the official retirement date, stipulated by the state pension system, which is always the first of the month?

Is it the first day of the new school year when teachers need to report to school? And I don’t, because I’m no longer an employed teacher.

Is it the day when students start the new school year, and I won’t be there to welcome them back as one of their teachers?

Is it the first day when the library will be open for classes—the first day that I would have taught classes?

Which of those days, I asked myself, is the “real”–most significant day to celebrate my retirement? Which day “really” heralds that my active teaching career has come to an end?

After not-too-much thought, as one who gets overwhelmed by too many choices, I decided to simplify.

Why choose just one? I will mark all those occasions.

Yes! I will celebrate my retirement in three phases—like a Retirement Trio–on September 1st (official retirement calendar day, and no opening day meetings), 3rd (no welcoming students), and 14th (no more teaching).

Delay tactics? Dragging out the pain of separation? …Maybe…Even still, all those three days, it seems to me–each in its own way–deserve separate marking.

Three specially acknowledged and celebrated days to reconcile the past and be ready to embrace the future.

Three days to be especially quiet, thankful, and reflective. Sounds like a plan!

(What do you think? Bet I’ll spend time on Twitter with my PLN Outer Circle?..If you said yes, I bet you’re right!)

How did—or will—you mark your milestone first retirement day(s)?

Posted in Affiliation, Retirement, Students, Teachers, Teaching | Leave a comment

Circling with the bluebird of happiness

Posted on August 25, 2015 by bakrawiec

Last post, I considered the little, but mighty! blue Twitter bird in relation to the expression “A little birdie told me…”

Because of a variety of joys that the Twitter bird has signaled for me (reconnecting with old friends, meeting new ones, stretching my knowledge etc.), when I look at the blue bird logo, I see it as my “Little Bluebird of Happiness.”

Interestingly, when I researched the latest Twitter bird logo, I was edified to learn that the bird is comprised of three circles.

Why do I so resonate with the little blue bird’s being totally circular?

The idea that the Twitter bird, symbolic of the Twitter experience that brings us together, is made of circles strikes me as perfectly appropriate given what one of my closest PLN comrades explained. Individuals with common rite-of-passage needs and interests–in our case, related to our passage into retirement –form a tight-knit “outer circle” of affiliated friends–a friendship circle, albeit permeable, to enclose and embrace each other with mutual support.

In the case of our retirement PLN, previously total strangers just a short time ago, Twitter helped us “find” each other, and now helps us to bond into an outer friendship circle.

Truth be told: right now, it’s that “outer circle” (although “new acquaintances” in ordinary terms) that I’m leaning on more than the “inner circle.”  Gratefully, I’m finding it as indispensably instructive as it is reassuring to get “reality checks” from those PLN members who graciously share where they are and what they have learned at different points along the retirement journey.

As we learn more about the “outer circle” phenomenon and how we can best utilize Twitter to better educate and bond the members of our “outer circle,” we’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, my Little Bluebird of Happiness circles overhead, lassoing an outer circle of friends, sending and receiving Tweets. I’m on my way, and I’m not alone! That’s the best way I know to make my way into and through retirement.

What about you? What bird type does the Twitter bird remind you of?

Posted in Affiliation, Retirement, Transitions, Twitter | Leave a comment

A little birdie told me

Posted on August 24, 2015 by bakrawiec

Some folks consider themselves connoisseurs of the finer things in life, like fancy wines or jewels. Allergic to wines and really rather simple of taste, if I am a connoisseur of anything—it is of words.

Not that I am a self-proclaimed word connoisseur, meaning that I hold myself up as an expert qualified to judge how other people use them; no. That is not a connoisseurial role to which I aspire.

Rather, I am a self-proclaimed connoisseur in that I love holding up words, examining them from every angle, enjoying and savoring them, as a wine taster or jeweler might do with expensive wines or jewels.

If you are a connoisseur of words, too, I need not say more. You know what I mean.

When I examine words, I appreciate their etymology, how and when they came to be in time and place, as well as their component parts–prefix, suffix, root. I love the cultural aspects of words, how they are borrowed and shared.

(Once, in an undergraduate linguistics course, I learned one, exceedingly long sentence that read in English, but consisted of totally borrowed words. More than once in recent years, I tried to find that sentence. No luck!)

Without admitting to a contradiction to my connoisseurial role, or apologizing for my predilection (much against the best writing rules, I admit), I enjoy sprinkling my conversations—oral and written—with common, worn-out expressions like “Great minds think alike.”

The last time I used that expression in response to a comment on a post, it got me remembering what else I learned in that linguistics course. Language is fluid. Words come into use, and fall out of use, until they totally fall out of sight. As well they should and might. Other words, as well as combinations of words (e.g. common expressions) stay, but change meaning.

Now that I’m on Twitter, I was thinking that when the current generation of youngsters hear their parents say, “A little birdie told me,” the image they might have in mind will not be a busybody neighbor, but a little blue tweet-producing bird, as in the Twitter logo!

“A little birdie told me…” Backyard-fence face-to-face interactions, landline conversations, cell phone text messages, Twitter private posts…who knows what will be the next means to keep parents appraised of their offsprings’ shenanigans.

One thing’s for sure. No matter how secret youngsters think some of their doings and sayings are, an adult, parent or not, will undoubtedly become privy to them!

Meanwhile, as for me, I’m delighted that the little blue bird is tweeting me, not celebrity gossip or exposés, but carefully measured snippets of information that pique my interest into learning more about a variety of topics of both personal and professional interest.

If the bird’s the word (to quote a old song), the word to me is: fly higher–keep learning; that’s the underlying message I hear the little blue bird tweeting to me–140 or fewer characters at a time. And the little bird’s invitation to continue to learn as I enter retirement is music to my ears!

What kinds of information is Twitter inviting you to grow through?

Posted in Children, Expressions, Language, Parents, Words | Leave a comment

Thoughts of death—how much did I know? (Part 1)

Posted on August 23, 2015 by bakrawiec

Like it or not, impending retirement has set in motion for me thoughts of the final retirement from this life as we know it: death.

Not that I haven’t already done considerable–willing and unwilling–dying along the way. “Dying to self” as some spiritual writers put it.

No doubt, to me, retirement itself is a kind of death—an ending to work life as I have known it.

And yet, since I am still alive (vertical and cogent, as I put it), it is equally an invitation—a mandate, honestly, if I wish not to be wasteful with my time and energy– to live fully whatever amount of both gifts I have left.

It’s the dying part I’m thinking about, and how, no matter how close we are to others, our thoughts about death and dying, in this culture of ours, tend to be hidden.

For lots of reasons, explicable and inexplicable—even to me, I’ve always pondered death.

I have no idea for sure, but perhaps a near-death incident when I was a toddler has marked me in ways that I’m not aware of consciously.

Once, when as a mother, I allowed my children to eat potato chips in the sight of their panicked grandmother, my mother finally “confessed” the reason for her repeated advice–pleading, almost, really–not to let them eat them.

As a toddler, I accompanied my parents on Sunday car outings. Kneeling between my parents on the front seat, I regularly faced the three elderly nursing home passengers in the back seat, joyfully interacting with them, enjoying their attention.

Seems as if on one particular outing they shared more than conversation. They shared their potato chips, one of which got caught in my throat.

When my frantic mother tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the chip, my father sped the car to the nearest hospital, at which point I was already blue. As the story goes, he was racing up the hospital stairs, carrying me in his arms, when suddenly, the chip dislodged itself.

Fast forward a couple of years, when, no longer a toddler, but still a preschooler, I clearly remember the following incident.

My aunt and uncle took me to visit some friends who grew some kind of little seeded berries, which they gave me to eat. Somehow, at some point in the eating, I knew that I could not account for one seed. I hadn’t consciously swallowed it that I was aware, but I knew it had inadvertently gone into my mouth without coming out again.

I clearly had been taught not to swallow any inedible seeds or something terrible would happen. Apparently the most terrible thing I could think of was dying.

Not wanting to get into trouble for mistakenly swallowing the seed, I didn’t tell anyone about the missing seed incident/my impending death–not my aunt or uncle, nor back home, not my parents.

But as if I were saying it to myself this morning, I clearly still know and hear myself saying, “They will be sad when I die.”

Could it be that I connected the potato chip incident with the missing seed? Could it be that under four years old, I knew what it meant to die?

In any case, that evening, when my mother brushed my teeth, guess what? That blessed unaccounted for seed, which undoubtedly had become lodged between my teeth, suddenly popped out.

Hooray! I thought to myself. I’m not going to die.

And I never–not then, not any time before they died–told my parents about what transpired with that “stuck seed,” not even when I  learned about the “stuck potato chip.”

…Oh, an interestingly, in connection with the potato chip story, my mother told me that the person after whom I had been named was one of the women who sat in the back seat of the car the day that the potato chip got lodged. (Ironically, could she have been the one to give me the near-fatal chip? I wondered, but I never asked.)

And of my name, of which I never was a big fan, I especially did not like the meanings I would find when I did name searches as a teenager: barbaric, strange.

But more recently, I do like the updated, more PC meaning: mysterious.

Mysterious. I always did and do like mysteries. I like pondering philosophical questions. I like wondering. I like being introspective. I like thinking about not only life, but death.

That’s one reason I became a hospice volunteer. That’s one reason I am grateful for the time in retirement to befriend death.

…It’s the dying, the losing independence, that, if I’m honest, I fear more. And that is why I am grateful for working with others to better understand, prepare for, accommodate to the future that is unfolding.

What mysteries of life and death do you find yourself now pondering?

Posted in Death, Dying, Retirement | Leave a comment

Thoughts of death—how much did I know? (Part 2)

Posted on August 23, 2015 by bakrawiec

Believing without a doubt in an afterlife, I look forward to knowing the answers to some elusive questions that have arisen in this life. Likewise, I have no doubt that I will get answers to questions I’ve never even thought to ask; I’ll learn about events in my life I never knew about–like the potato chip incident (from the prior post), if my mother hadn’t finally told me.

Others, I’m sure, are in for big surprises, too!

Someone I don’t know by name and saw only once when he was about six or so will be in for such a surprise, as will his parents, when they learn how my husband, totally anonymously, without any thanks or fanfare, likely saved the boy’s life one Saturday morning at a department store, when the child ended up—no adult guardian(s) in sight—on an exercise table with the bar (he somehow was strong enough to pull down) about to press on his little neck. In a flash, my husband lifted the bar, and the frightened child went running, without crying or saying a word–I assume–to his unknowing parent(s) or shopping trip guardian(s).

That incident was a lifesaving one I saw with my own eyes. Another one, involving me, was invisible to me. To this day, I would not have known about my involvement, unless the person whose life she said I spared had told me.

As part of my coursework to become a library media specialist, our professor assigned us, in teams, to report on an aspect of the biography of an educator-author. Another student and I chose to reflect and share on the chapter related to death. She because her brother had died when he was a teenager and she still, as a middle aged adult, was trying to reconcile her feelings with his death, and I—well, you know if you read the prior post, I’ve “always” thought about death.

Truthfully, if one of the other students hadn’t privately told me the next week about the impact my words had on her, I honestly wouldn’t likely even remember what I said. Apparently, I talked about how, no matter how many near-death experiences you have, you only get to die, really die, and never-come-back-to-life die, just once.

I said how the thought of that, in contrast to all the things we get to redo over and over again, made me realize that I hoped when the time came I would have the courage and the strength to die well. To die without screaming, kicking, delirious with fear and panic and protest, but that I would be resigned, at peace, that I would die a respectful death, not only for myself, but for my family and friends—for everyone who would know how my story came to an end.

Since I can only die once, I want to do it well.

Little did I know that that night, there sat among our colleagues one who had made a life-and-death decision, intending that weekend to end her life by overdosing.

“You saved my life,” she told me. “You said unlike so many other things in life that we can do more than once, birth and death are different. We get to do each only once. You said that you had made a decision. Since you got to die only once, you wanted to do it well. And I thought about myself and my family, and I knew I couldn’t let my life end that way. I knew I couldn’t kill myself.”

Sorry to say that after our certification program ended, I lost track of her. When I think of my own death, I think of her, grateful that she said those words back to me, so that I can better keep them in mind, praying for both of us that when the time comes, we can die well, and in the meantime, we can live well—to live a life worthy, to paraphrase St. Paul, of the calling we both, individually and collectively, have received.

By your kindness, by your words, by your encouragement, whose “life,” physical, emotional, or spiritual, do you think, have you enriched–and remarkably, perhaps, even saved?

Posted in Death, Dying, Living, Retirement, Transitions | Leave a comment

What have I done to myself? Retro Q & A revisited

Posted on August 22, 2015 by bakrawiec

Referring to my marketing experience in a recent post got me remembering.

The work-life-identity-question I asked myself on June 30 when I submitted my resignation-for-retirement purposes letter: What have I done to myself? …That wasn’t the first time I posed myself that question.

No. The first time I used those non-rhetorical introspective words, I was sitting in a tiny cubicle at the end of a long hallway, feeling quite isolated and alone, smelling the nauseating cigarette smoke emanating from the cubicle behind me, making its way–uninvited–into my cubicle, adding to the internal sensation that a real cloud of doom was engulfing me.

Stream of consciousness by the afternoon of my first day in educational publishing went something like this:

I used to be vital. Used to engage students in thought-provoking conversations and activities that I created. Now, I’m sitting here, all quiet and alone, asking and answering question after question in student and instructor textbooks. Ironic and sad. I never even used those things when I taught… What have I done to myself?

Further irony: as in a partial O’Henry Gift of the Magi twist of fate, unbeknownst to me, at the same time I was regretting my employment decision—to leave teaching for publishing–my husband was turning down a textbook authoring opportunity with a competing publisher because he didn’t wish to jeopardize my standing with my new employer. Since he didn’t want me to feel bad over his lost opportunity, he didn’t tell me.

That’s all I would have needed to hear. Would have given me a sacrificial reason to immediately leave the job I regretted taking. But, not knowing, I toughed it out, until I just couldn’t bear it any longer.

Fortunately, God provided a colleague in that moment who saw I had marketing prowess and arranged for a transfer down one floor to the marketing department–where, I am happy and grateful to say, I flourished.

Marketing was my thing! From writing ad copy, coming up with slogans for products and campaigns, writing scripts for media tools, working with photographers and artists on magazine, catalog, and other promotional pieces, creating and selecting premiums, orchestrating exhibits and various conference social events, meeting authors, presenting in front of state committees, providing professional development workshops for teachers, constructing market research surveys and observing focus groups, these and so many more tasks kept me thoroughly invigorated.

I absolutely loved the challenge of educating and persuading customers–internal and external—to “beat” –outplay, outsmart, out-win—the competition, whether it was other product lines within the company vying for our sales force’s attention, or other brands out in the marketplace. Every day was different and fast-paced—much like teaching, and I got to “play” with ideas in a big-stakes arena. What a joy!!

So now, I find myself trying to apply what I learned in order to “grow where I’m planted,” so to speak. Outside the full-time work arena. Play, now, in a new sandbox, but with some transplanted, familiar sand and toys that I know and love how to use!

And that is why engaging with new friends through blogs and Twitter, I felt energized yesterday as I felt myself putting on my marketing hat again, thinking of how to attract and engage others in the enterprise of making retirement work for us as whole persons.

Please stay tuned.  As soon as there is some news to share, some invitation to extend, we will surely let you know. Your input is invaluable. Please participate with us.

Meanwhile, what work energizes you?

Time and energy are limited. What use of them makes you feel fully alive, useful, learning, vital?

Retired or not, I think that’s the payback all humans most desire when they invest their time and energy, don’t you?

Posted in Employment, Marketing, Retirement, Teaching, textbooks, Transitions | Leave a comment

a tale of two supervisors (real-ly!)

Posted on August 21, 2015 by bakrawiec

Once upon a time, a long time ago, at two different times and places, two department chairs came in, unannounced, one to an eighth grade social studies class, and the other, to an eighth grade language arts classes, both with the same objective: to observe the teacher–me.

When neither one saw me where they expected—at the front of the class—both asked, almost verbatim, “Where’s your teacher?” with a sense of urgency that left me, sitting calmly at a student desk in the back of the room, thinking they thought I had gone AWOL, jeopardizing the health, safety, and welfare of the fourteen year-olds in my charge.

Before I could announce my position, as if by invisible cue, both groups of students immediately turned, arms outstretched, pointing to where I was sitting.

As I stood, the social studies teacher waved me off. “I’ll come back when you’re teaching,” he said. Then he turned, retreating.

My students proceeded with their trial of King George III, a culminating activity for the American Revolution unit they been studying. Every student had a role in the proceedings.

My favorites were the students who dramatically embraced their roles, testifying against the King, some tearfully, relating how British soldiers had come into their homes, demanding food and lodging, frightening themselves and their children.

That being said, my proudest moment, I think, was at the end of the five classes’ worth of trials and one jury found the King innocent.

“I’ll come back when you’re teaching.”

And to myself, I shook my head, thinking, Just how do you think this trial is happening, with me sitting, without interrupting the proceedings, in the back of the classroom, if this lesson is not a reflection of my teaching?

Fast forward to the second supervisor. Same opening scenario. Students pointed me out…

As I stood, the language arts supervisor motioned for me to join him where he stood, in the doorway to the classroom.

“I’ve seen enough,” he said. “If your students can be up here, at the board (There were chalkboards then.), teaching each other, explaining how to diagram complex sentences (We did that then.), you don’t need to be observed. Congratulations. Even my high school students couldn’t do what your students are doing.”

He left me feeling gratified and speechless–except to say thank you.

Which supervisor, do you think, became my hero? Which one, do you think, affirmed me as a teacher?

Empowering and equipping students to think for themselves; to take responsibility for their learning: that’s what I thought my role was.

Nowadays there’s fancy terminology for the two different teaching styles: sage on the stage: that’s what the first supervisor was looking for; guide on the side: that’s what the second supervisor recognized and applauded.

The nerve-wracking problem today is that now that observers are looking to see—expecting and demanding to see—the guide on the side every time they appear—announced or unannounced–to observe, it creates a situation in which teachers are reluctant, hesitant, even fearful, to be the sage on the stage—even when that role is perfectly appropriate and called for.

Yes! I liked having students actively engaged, as in the two lessons supervisors had literally walked in on, but on another day, they would have seen me on center stage, providing direct teaching, dare I say “lecturing,” for students to have the underlying background needed to proceed on their own.

As much as I prided myself on being an inductive-approach teacher, for expediency sake, there were times I “sage-on-the-stage” taught. And I am not apologizing for it.

What if observers came in, today, at those moments? I’ll tell you what. I would have been labelled and marked down for being an ineffective teacher–an old-fashioned sage on the stage. Bad luck—bad timing for when they walked in? Unjust.

That’s what’s wrong with observations. They never tell the whole story. They snapshot. Teaching is a panorama. Trust the process, that’s what I say. One, two, or three snapshot observations geared to new artificial checklists of what constitutes effective teaching are frustrating and demoralizing. “Everyone” knows, really, who is really teaching, starting with students. Let teachers teach and students learn–even while both play at it.

King III. Diagramming. That’s my happy and sad, but true, tale of two supervisors.

Moral of the story? …I very much appreciate “hearing” your ideas. (I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. Hint: I like to think in familiar expressions, not that you have to!)

Posted in Education, Evaluations, Observations, Supervisors, Teachers, Teaching | Leave a comment

Does form inform? …Informative! (I hope)

Posted on August 20, 2015 by bakrawiec

That’s it. It just happened again. I have no choice. I must say something.

Every time I find a blog I want to follow, nine times out of ten, the blogger has chosen a design identical or very similar to mine.

Surely, this is no coincidence.

So I ask you.

Do those with similar ideas share similar spatial preferences for how to convey them?

From my study of psychology, I know that correlation does not mean causation, but still…Could it be? Is it possible? Do similar minds think alike, not only in substance, but in form? (Yes. I think so!)

As a former marketing manager, I, for one, concentrated considerable time and energy on layout and design, certain that how the message was conveyed was as important as the message itself—maybe, initially, even more important.

First, capture the reader’s (consumer’s) eye and attention, make it pleasant and easy for the reader (consumer) to find the message, and voila! the message then speaks for itself.

As reader-consumer, on a personal level, I am as adverse to visual noise as I am to its oft-times partner: aural noise.

As I shared with my library students: I admire those who can appreciate and devour the new genre of graphic fiction and nonfiction. Sad to say; embarrassed to admit, I am not one of those readers.

Graphic presentations are just too exceedingly busy for me. My eyes are never sure how to travel. I begin to feel overwhelmed. To get a headache. I want to close my eyes. Turn away from the page to seek relief.  I need to end the dizziness. Help! Someone.

More importantly, I love words. I want to savor them—peacefully. I don’t want to have to work so hard to find and appreciate them. I like the graphics to showcase the words, to be a non-intrusive background, like a silver tray presenting tasty confection treats, but I certainly do not want the graphics to obliterate or overpower the words. No. Never.

As a librarian, I was a fussy picture book consumer. Sometimes I absolutely loved the story, but the visuals… They screamed, and I wanted to scream back. (I didn’t. With limited funds and so many other choices, I just didn’t order them. …Take that!)

As much as I am heartbroken that my dream to become a children’s picture book author has not (yet) been realized, I console myself with the notion that I would rather never be published than have my words illustrated in a way that makes want me to deny any relationship with them. (Who me? …No, I didn’t write that book. Horrors!)

Back to the blog designs and my hypothesis.

Surely there must be some foundation or some doctoral candidate needing a fresh topic to originally research who might be willing to investigate this potentially ground-breaking social media phenomenon.

Until disproved, I remain convinced. It is no coincidence. I gravitate to reading ideas when those ideas are presented in my preferred layout and design. Assuming my blog reflects my preferred layout and design, then it stands to reason that the blogs I am drawn to follow have designs that match mine. The end.

What say you? Have you noticed yourself favoring or disfavoring blogs that match your blog’s visual presentation?

(If not, what are you waiting for? Check it out. Now that you are retired, what more important things could possibly demand your time and attention?)

Posted in Blog, Books, Layout & Design, Librarian, Reading, Retirement | Leave a comment

game called on account of darkness

Posted on August 19, 2015 by bakrawiec

When our son started playing Little League baseball and International youth soccer many years ago, the neighborhood parks didn’t have artificial lights. And so it happened now and then that the games were called on account of darkness.

I thought of that Monday night close to midnight when I put out the lights following an invigorating first live Twitter chat—a lively interaction about play, playfulness, and resilience in education.

Gratifying enough was the near-retirement experience of maneuvering (successfully, I think!) through a first Twitter chat. (The retired teacher who encouraged me to learn and lurk affirmed my bravery in actually adding to the conversation. Gave me A+ for my efforts. Felt good to be a good student—despite my admitted insecurity and nervousness).

Unexpected were the revelation-ary aftereffects of pondering what others—as well as what I, myself —had said about the role of playfulness in the classroom; playfulness for all concerned—students and teachers.

And then, sometime around one a.m. when I still couldn’t turn off my brain, when I still kept reflecting and interconnecting with my life what I had read in the Twitter thread, it occurred to me—as if a light had been switched on in the darkness, and for the first time since I turned in my retirement papers, I understood more clearly and fully what had precipitated that action….

As an only child, I learned to be my own playmate. From the time I entered kindergarten, one of the games I played was “school,” with me (of course!) as the teacher.

During the school week, my poor dog was cast in the role of my student. On Saturday mornings, I would knock on neighborhood apartment doors, collecting neighborhood children for the next installment of my own version of an ongoing school drama in which I was playing the leading role–teacher.

Time past. I stopped forcing my dog to be an obedient student; I stopped knocking on neighborhood student-playmates’ doors. But I never outgrew my heart’s desire to teach. Yes! Praise God, the day finally came when I was able to fulfill my lifelong dream for real—I became a certified teacher.

Starting out in a district that required an inductive approach, sans textbooks, I was jubilant, creating materials and orchestrating scenarios for eighth grade social studies students to “play” (“explore,” as someone suggested last night, might be a more PC term for those opposed to the idea of students’ playing) at learning.

The decades passed, always with me playing at teaching and learning in a variety of different contexts and roles. I worked hard—very hard—but always with a sense of playful joy, as I realize now, grateful for the chance to be creative in providing learning experiences for my students (and myself, along with them!). In fact, when I hear myself, I realize I often say, “I’m still playing with that idea…” or “Let me play with that idea…”

In what has turned out to be my last teaching job, for these last ten years, I have been very professionally fulfilled. (Happily!) still no student textbooks in place, only now I was preparing materials for hundreds of students from grades PreK-5, in my role as a library media specialist.

Time out! …Correction.

Yes, I have been a library media specialist for the last ten years. Incorrect, I have not been feeling professionally fulfilled all ten years. No. I have been feeling increasingly less and less professionally fulfilled for the last two of those ten years.

What changed? …Enter the darkness. Not the darkness that comes with dusk in the absence of artificial light, but the darkness that comes when deep in one’s core, one knows that something is wrong—that one is not being true to oneself. A darkness that robs the light, the fire, the spark that makes one jubilant in one’s life work—in one’s “job.”

Oh, I could have continued forcing it—that fire of enthusiasm and commitment when one does what one believes in. I tried doing that. I had a retirement plan that was not intended to take effect for two more years. I am not a quitter. No matter what, I was not giving up, not succumbing to the darkness.

My body betrayed my plans; my body manifested the frustration and stress my spirit was experiencing, participating in a way of being and doing teaching that I did not believe in.

“Teaching’s not fun anymore.”

How many times from how many teachers’ lips I heard those words these last two years. Works spoken with accompanying deeply sad voice and downcast countenance.

Those who haven’t been in the game, haven’t lived how the rules have changed, rules that encouraged and included accommodations for “fun,” can’t imagine, I’m sure, what it has been like to have the life sucked out of teaching.

Not that I blame anyone who doesn’t understand, who hasn’t been a player in the game. “Having” or “not having” “fun” seems trite. Not something that a professional adult should speak aloud about seeking or missing.

I understand. Taxpayers are over-taxed. The last thing they want to hear is that someone on their payroll wants to have fun on their dime. …If only I had words to explain what is the meaning and value of teaching as a sense of having fun, and the deleterious effects on students when teachers feel unpermitted to provide “fun” for them.

Teaching is a serious occupation. Consider the awesome responsibility inherent in educating other peoples’ children. But taking teaching seriously does not equate with never being playful; nor does it preclude having fun with students. Quite the opposite.

As a library media specialist, rather than a classroom teacher, I still enjoyed a modicum of flexibility—until these last months, when even I felt the strangulation of Common Core, PARCC, and demoralizing evaluation systems, when even I had lost the opportunity to provide playfulness for students.

Oh, one could argue I could have stood my ground. Could have fought the system. Could have continued doing what I believed in. Trust me, for some months I did just that.

Finally, in the end, I had to cede defeat—something I detest, having been called “tenacious” all my life.

In the end, as I came to realize and understand upon reflecting on the Twitter thread, the real problem was that my heart was no longer in teaching. Playtime was over. In the end, I now realize, I had called the game on account of darkness—the darkness of teaching without playfulness.

If I had been younger, I would have looked for a teaching job somewhere else where the lights still burn bright and teachers and students can engage in an enterprise of authentic learning that takes into account that not everything that takes place can—or should be—reduced to a mathematical evaluation of either student or teacher.

Truthfully, I don’t have the energy to start over someplace else, nor do I think another district would hire me at my age. Worse yet, in this state, at least, I don’t know if such a utopia exists.

Time to call it a day. Game over. Called on account of darkness.

Age has its privileges. I can refuse to play in a game I don’t believe in, and I don’t believe in the kind of teaching that is being perpetrated now, while testing and evaluation corporations grow rich.

I need to be playful; to be a play-er. That’s who I am. That’s what I’ve been since my earliest years, when it comes to teaching.

Bring on retirement from full-time public school teaching. As a lifelong learner, I’m not done having fun. I’m not in the grave yet. It’s time to find another game to play.

I leave behind a prayer that sanity and humanity will return to education. Let the teachers teach in human ways that provide a light, a spark, a fire that illumines and burns brighter with the joy of playfulness and laughter. Amen.

What kind of darkness, if any, have you experienced in your occupation?

Posted in Children, Education, Employment, Playfulness, Retirement | 2 Comments

cleaning up my own messes

Posted on August 18, 2015 by bakrawiec

Having been privileged these last ten years to interact with a thousand or more children transitioning into their school years, I‘ve seen up-close what R. Fulghum observed.

From social behavior (playing fairly, keeping one’s hands to oneself, etc.), to personal growth (living a balanced life, being aware of wonder etc.), Kindergarten really does give us an opportunity to learn everything we need to know to be healthy, happy individuals and community members—lifelong learners.

Lame duck librarian or not, I still think (and nightmare) about something I’ve inadvertently left undone, a la Fulghum’s reminder that kindergarteners learn, among many other valuable lessons, to clean up their own messes.

Yesterday, I did some of that cleaning up myself, albeit remotely, with the assistance of someone who helped me get started as a library media specialist. Seemed only fitting that she would be there to help me wrap things up–cleaning up an online account in preparation for its roll over to my replacement.

When the stroke of midnight September 1st signals my retirement, I admit I probably won’t stop fretting about the social behavior aspect of kindergarten lessons vis a vis my former employment. With lucky thirteen days till retirement, I’m pretty sure I will continue to wonder if there’s some inadvertent mess I haven’t cleaned up.

Hopefully, though, the pendulum will swing and I will be more able to focus on the personal growth aspects of Fulghum’s insights, in as much as retirement offers a full-time- work-free second childhood (not child-ish-hood), practicing lessons learned in kindergarten, enjoying the spontaneous joys inherent in the learning journey.

In that spirit, I suspect I will continue revisiting R. Fulghum’s words of wisdom, as well as posting some reflections.

Meanwhile, I hope that as I continue on my retirement journey, those of us on a like journey will engage as Fulghum reminds we did back in Kindergarten: sticking together; holding hands. What a blessing that would be, wouldn’t it?

If you would like to revisit Fulghum’s words to see if they speak to you, here is one link you might use: Fulghum’s quotes from Goodreads

Posted in Children, Education, Kindergarten, Lessons, Lifelong Learning, Retirement, Transitions | 2 Comments