1.  A teacher is in my thoughts


    THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE It is necessary to die in order to be reborn. As soon as you experience impermanence, non-self, and interbeing, you are born again. But if the plant does not become dormant in the winter, it cannot be reborn in the spring. Jesus said that unless you are reborn as a child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Thomas Merton wrote, “The living experience of divine love and the Holy Spirit … is a true awareness that one has died and risen in Christ. It is an experience of mystical renewal, an inner transformation brought about entirely by the power of God’s merciful love, implying the ‘death’ of the self-centered and self-sufficient ego and the appearance of a new and liberated self who lives and acts in the Spirit.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

      “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh

     “When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you
    don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not
    doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or
    less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have
    problems with our friends or family, we blame the other
    person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will
    grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive
    effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason
    and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no
    reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you
    understand, and you show that you understand, you can
    love, and the situation will change”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh

     “Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh, Teachings on Love 

     “If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh, Living Buddha, Living Christ 

     “If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is your presence”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh

     
    “Around us, life bursts with miracles--a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh
     
    “A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it's not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. But before it produces a transformation in the other person, it has to produce a transformation within us. Some letters may take the whole of our lifetime to write.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh, Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh: 365 days of practical, powerful teachings from the beloved Zen teacher
     
     
     “We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.

    From time to time, sit close to the one you love, hold his or her hand, and ask, 'Darling, do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer? Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly. I don't want to make you suffer, and if I do so because of my ignorance, please tell me so that I can love you better, so that you can be happy." If you say this in a voice that communicates your real openness to understand, the other person may cry.

    That is a good sign, because it means the door of understanding is opening and everything will be possible again.

    Maybe a father does not have time or is not brave enough to ask his son such a question. Then the love between them will not be as full as it could be. We need courage to ask these questions, but if we don't ask, the more we love, the more we may destroy the people we are trying to love. True love needs understanding. With understanding, the one we love will certainly flower.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
      
     “Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images, sounds. By such means, ...awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world. If we get in touch with the suffering of the world, and are moved by that suffering, we may come forward to help the people who are suffering.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh 
     
     “If you know how to be happy with the wonders of life that are already there for you to enjoy, you don't need to stress your mind and your body by striving harder and harder, and you don't need to stress this planet by purchasing more and more stuff. The Earth belongs to our children. We have already borrowed too much from it, from them; and the way things have been going, we're not sure we'll be able to give it back to them in decent shape. And who are our children, actually? They are us, because they are our own continuation. So we've been shortchanging our own selves. Much of our modern way of life is permeated by mindless overborrowing. The more we borrow, the more we loser. That's why it's critical that we wake up and see we don't need to do that anymore. What's already available in the here and now is plenty for us to be nourished, to be happy. Only that kind of insight will get us, each one of us, to stop engaging in the compulsive, self-sabotaging behaviors of our species. We need a collective awakening. One Buddha is not enough. All of us have to become Buddhas in order for our planet to have a chance. Fortunately, we have the power to wake up, to touch enlightenment from moment to moment, in our very own ordinary and, yes, busy lives. So let's start right now. Peace is your every breath.”
    Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace Is Every Breath: A Practice for Our Busy Lives 
     
     
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  2. Standard 101

    All children should dress in book characters and enjoy. Our TK class is going to try this today. I'm leading as the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree.
    Kind of a Queen Palm over a coconut tree.

    Happy Halloween!


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  3.  http://www.decodeunicode.org/en/data/glyph/196x196/25AA.gif

    Despite the fact I'm censored, I do write.
    And if it causes some to be uncomfortable....well...then a "best of" series is a good idea.
    In art school it was suggested that feeling of cognitive dissonance spurs change.
    And change we must.
    Garfield teachers-I hear you.


    I wrote these awhile ago. I think they represent everything children taught me in my career.

    See my Mrs. Puglisi's 100 National Standards
    Join our Facebook page

    I just read a nice editorial about HOW RELIEVED a newspaper is if we have National Standards.
    In the New York Times, you can read it here.
    Finally, it said, as if stranded in the desert seeing at the very last moment of possibility the solution to their thirst there at the oasis on the horizon. And like that, it's probably a mirage.
    At least this writer isn't aware how much we are and have been standards driven in the 30 some years I've been working in the field. But it must feel more "right" if the nation says "knows the 50 states" or "understands separation of church and state" or more importantly "understands the role of the free press in democracy." Yeah, well, national control, now that's a cheering thought, so much works so well once that gets going.

    My mom had printed out the commentary and before you knew it, I read the thing.

    For months I've tried not to read too much she handed over fearing it might contain yet another blow. Being a teacher right now is open season. I believe they expanded the season.
    I work in an Underperforming school, in some very difficult poverty, and therefore the Secretary of Education and my President may well label me "bad." Neat. That's the reality, among many now sadly. My close friend and partner teacher continually invites this National leadership to her classroom. To spend real time, and then maybe open awareness, dialog and learn about the realities. So far, no helicopter on the lawn.

    Last night I began thinking about my own "standards" what I'd wish for children.
    What I OFTEN do not see. But we aren't allowed to talk about that. And all too often as teachers we have been labeled if we did talk, about that anyway. Labeled as excuse makers. But just the same I'd like to see these things as standard.
    I know that's not what's being talked about. Still, it's what I assert matters "nationally."

    What I'd wish for the children I work with is this kind of bottom line. A set of standards. According to the best theory we have our not attending to these underpinnings of care and security prevent educational, personal, community health, well being, and stunt normal development. But that's not as easy as saying the teacher is bad. Not as target ready. Rather than fire, you might have to approach the entire situation by building good facilities, launching into community health, figuring out how to provide work, you might have to build a butterfly pavilion in every community, imagine, or cough up some art supplies, time, you might need to drive where I drive and really in-depth and individually look at things.

    So Today, before I do other things that I need to do, I'm going to list my standards:

    1. All children should know love.

    2. All children should know that they have a bed to sleep in tonight, and next week, and for their life.

    3. All children should have adequate, even delicious food, and know all about their food.

    4. All children should have support within the walls of their homes.

    5. All children should have the experience of play.

    6. All children should know nature, value nature, interact within nature, and be in families that have some capacity to do the same.

    7. All children should know, have, and be able to be friends.

    8. All children should have clothes to wear that help keep them warm, and expresses their beauty.

    9. All children should feel that their family is accepted, and is of value.

    10. All children should learn language, learn to speak by finding their world one that enjoys communication, the more languages that they know the more broadened the understanding.

    11. All children should have health and DENTAL care that their families are not fearful about, or simply can't afford or have, and know illness cannot bankrupt them. They need health care that attends to their well being.

    12. All children should be regarded as potentially, and individually, and instantly a part of whatever cosmic beauty, goodness,whatever we wish to call it, that exists and as such is the reason we all live with hope and possibility.

    13. All children should be permitted to listen to adults that are permitted to think.

    14. All children should be assured of schools, fair schools, schools where we do not reinforce unfair notions that already existed at birth, like if your family "has more" or lives on some piece of real estate or is somehow smarter or edging out another, then your school will be better. This unfortunately underpins the current national policy. That even includes the President. Whoever they are every child deserves a very nice school. Not a me, then everyone else educational model. (Check out Finland)

    15. All children should have books. Libraries are great.

    16. All children should have toys, but maybe ones parents make as well as buy.

    17. All children should have parents, family, neighbors, mentors that make things.

    18. All children should have systems at work within their lives that build healthy communities seeing them as the reason the community exists.

    19. All children should have adults that can cooperate, hear one another, resolve conflict, have the capacity to demonstrate love, attention, concern, solutions, turn taking, deference.

    20. All children should have paper, pencils, crayons, scissors, sprinkles, cookies, cups,cans, materials, glue, paste, making and doing.

    21. All children should have adequate sleep and rest.

    22. All children should have music. Every form, in utero on, to listen and sing to, in choir, to play, as a part of life. As a part of study.

    23. All children should be involved in learning projects.

    24. All children should know transportation systems to get them around safely.

    25. All children should enjoy celebrations, the most important at least once per year a celebration of that child and their value to our life.

    26. All children should begin the process of literacy not as a race but as a right, a joy, an exploration, and a normal function.

    27. All children should enter school believing and maintaining as long as possible a joy in learning, and a belief in self as not "behind", not labeled, not seen as less.

    28. All children should experience lives without bullies, and when there are bullies, teasing, cruelty, be able to easily find the resources, the support, the fairness to have access to help. To be heard.

    29. All children should know technology.

    30. All children should be given opportunities to demonstrate understandings.

    31. All children should learn within family and school to cook and care for their food.

    32. All children should be served food at school that is interesting, fresh, well made, delicious and not a frozen, re-baked, cultural wasteland.

    33. All children should be allowed to respect, care about, and return to teachers as important to their lives. They should know Mrs. P may well be in the same school in her room waiting 20 years later to see you again!

    34. All children should have time with the adults that conceived them. Daycare should be an option that is last on the list.

    35. All children should be allowed comfortable school furniture. Very comfortable.

    36. All children should do more each day in a school than they sit, or rarely be engaged in passive workbooking.

    37. All children should be educated in reasonable, perhaps even outrageously small groups, so that each child can and does get the care they need. No more than 15.

    38. Children should have opportunities to draw, color, illustrate, print make, dye, batik, sketch, paste, cut, collage, design, sparkle, explore, respond within art so that they have experienced quality materials and competent artists actively. Real papers, real crayolas, real inks, paints, that allow them to become human through art. And not bought by their underpaid teacher.

    39. All children need to hear the big pictures, even when we are still engaged in understanding the big pictures.

    40. All children should learn about their brain, body, systems, and how they work.

    41. All children should see the differences in cultures, people, societies as opportunities to become aware and to be amazed.

    42. All children should find mathematics from the time they hold the concept of three, until they are fully grown, as a part of everything we do, that mathematics has history, context, thought, theory and that they can find themselves perfectly a part of the understandings of this within its forms and functions. Male or female, rich or poor. (I'm pleased this worked out to be number 42)

    43. All children should learn to observe, should learn this within natural settings.

    44. All children should be engaged in science.

    45. All children should know animals, their care, to care for animals, support, raise and love them and understand as well the cycle of life.

    46. All children should know schools that support all of the above, and fight for these things ahead of anything else.

    47. All children should run on beaches, in grass, have playgrounds, feel forest floors, fly kites, gather leaves, cross streets safely, visit fire stations, meet the police in nice days to learn about hard jobs with the ability to ask them about their work, go to groceries, learn about money, see movies, roll down hills, sled, walk by crocus, talk to grandmas and grandpas, collect and recycle, play cards, take turns, have dice, play Candyland, do dance, gymnastics, try waterslides, learn swimming safety, go to farms, pet animals, cut pumpkins, smell pine, wash the floor with a friend, have chores, taste baked bread, knead dough, water plants, grow seeds, take care of fish, walk in lines, put on shows, sing with friends, flop on the floor, use blocks, without feeling anything but how good all of that feels.

    48. All children should develop constructs of learning that set and achieve goals, with the child involved.

    49. All children should be read to and start to read in a lap in a house or a home.

    50. All children should be cleaned, bathed, cared for as if they were a joy.

    51. All children should have shoes.

    52. All children should have coats and sweaters, gloves, hats and people that care whether or not they are wearing them or have them. And possibly make them for them.

    53. All children should have rules, limits, safety nets, systems, understandable patterns, routines, mentors, and those that love them well enough to have flexibility and judgment in using them ahead of rigidity and power.

    54. Children should be able to learn about work.

    55. Children should learn about how their society functions in terms of money, jobs, labor, roles, learning of others and their situations and within something hard to define, with open minds, with introduction of the complexity in society, the stratification.

    56. All children should feel that their family has capacity, intelligence, worth and intrinsic value.

    57. All children should sometimes ask and receive.

    58. All children should sometimes cope with a no.

    59. All children should have sharing time, if possible far longer than adults teaching them want to tolerate.

    60. All children should be allowed to wash their hands before eating, after play times as a normal experience.

    61. All children should attend schools, live in houses with adequate facilities to know a toilet, a bath, a way to clean clothes and to enjoy being clean.

    62. All children should live in a world where if mental illness affects the family there are ways to have, find, sustain help for them, and not drown.

    63. All children should have bandaids, both the real thing and the metaphorical kind. To heal.

    64. All children should be able to hear stories of kith and kin, hear other children's story, and grow within structures that value these experiences of "our story" above all else.

    65. All children should move in dance.

    66. All children should know sport.

    67. All children should watch Reading Rainbows, once per week well through 8th grade.

    68. All children should learn to build a fire, how to use a compass, how to set up a tent, ways to safely do the things that ensure our survival, taught in ways that don't frighten, but do allow them confidences and maturation. Camp, they should get to go to camp and ALL children need a trip to the nations capitol and to museums.

    69. All children should skip a stone over a pond, catch and cook a fish, throw back more than they catch, know snow, understand seasons, begin to feel the earth under their feet, be taught the earth's movement, time, the calendaring systems with contexts that engage them fully in experiential learning.

    70. All children should make large sidewalk drawings in chalk.

    71. All children should make presentations, displays, have fairs and experiences to present to families that come, watch, interact, appreciate and value as community experience.

    72. All children should learn about feelings.

    73. All children should make, have, use puppets, experience drama and plays.

    74. All children should find that they are valued for their opinion, and asked why, and expected to be heard as well as listen to another.

    75. All children should have literacy as a foundational right, have books be the center of educational experiences, find that what they read, experience within words to be valued as highly as possible.

    76. All children need access and understanding of history, time-lines, historical figures, historical perspectives, historical understanding of things we have learned from both our successes, but also our mistakes.

    77. All children should write, read and engage with poetry.

    78. All children should respect their own learning, and understand that their achievements help them individually to evolve, not to better over others, but to become more fully alive. And thus of value to others.

    79. All children should learn about the systems of religion, philosophy, schools of thought.

    80. All children should learn about death, in caring ways we should allow them to develop their understandings so they are not paralyzed by both their fears, but the realities they will face.

    81. All children should have a backpack.

    82. All children should look forward to each day.

    83. All children should be allowed to wear hats. Sunglasses too.

    84. All children should have someplace to do their homework, and someone that cares to talk about it with them.

    85. All children should find their talents and learn to use their strengths understanding as well their weaknesses.

    86. All children should laugh.

    87. All children should watch the sky. Value weather, learn about the earth, be engaged in the atmosphere, understand water tables, be aware of how these systems work.

    88. All children should learn to answer a phone, safely , and intelligently.

    89. All children should write, in a multiplicity of ways, all day and as a part of understanding, as a tool.

    90. All children should one day look up in their classrooms and rather than seeing an authority in the "watch" their teacher mode, see a President or an Ed Secretary or other important folk in looking at all the things they are doing, valuing their learning, finding within that community things to see as right in their learning.

    91. All children should take turns and know they will have a turn.

    92. All children should understand that if they do work, try, show themselves to be willing to learn, make mistakes and process them, that they can enter into fields they choose, that no door is closed because they are not rich, they should understand careers and opportunities and their roles, as well as community roles, in seeing them into futures.It should not be a mystery.

    93. All children when they fall, need a helping hand.

    94. All children should feel that they work within dynamics that see success over failure.

    95. All children should know the warmth of a heater, the light of a bulb, the luxury of air conditioning in rooms over 80. All children should see the value in those comforts and fully understand how that is provided to them.

    96. All children should get gifts.

    97. All children should make and give cards and gifts as expressions of thankfulness and connection.

    98. All children should have a blog in a child safe atmosphere.

    99. All children should learn within local settings that help to set goals and standards and to maintain ways to over see this.

    100. All children should be integrated, rich, poor, black, white, restricted by disability, glasses wearing, free thinking, Republican household, Democratic, representing every color, creed, view, and from such a base learn about self and others to the best of our ability to mix ourselves together within community, neighborhood, nation, to think of such things as more important than writing a bunch of standards and thinking that was the same as doing all of the above.


    I have more but I have work to do.
    I've taught children missing all of the above.
    I've taught these last 27 years knowing stories of kids that might break your heart that renders much of what I hear "proposed" into a joke like stance for some of our children while I was, and teachers like me were, scapegoated over understanding the complexities of the issues. Children deserve better than that. They deserve thinking adults. And schools and systems designed for them to do well. If this is addressed as the NY Times writer thought by these standards then I assume the above has been articulated into systems, structures and supports.
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  4. I enjoyed this You Tube.



    My mother is gone now.
    And God bless her she insisted I take her to vote right up until she died. The last time she voted she was so weak with pneumonia, COPD, with other issues, but we went. She proudly questioned everything they did, accused me of trying to force her to vote a certain way, raised hell over whether or not putting the ballot in the slot was done correctly, and finally looked with a very suspicious eye at the little "I Voted" sticker she told me I could just have. I believe followed that with a "let me have it back." Then she took a mint from my purse and we left.
    She worked the polls in Morgantown, WV in her long, wonderful life, was a member of the League of Women Voters and valued voting so highly.
    She was not asked for a picture ID thank God the last time because I had no idea how we were going to achieve that if they did ask. She was too weak to go sit for hours at the DMV, as I noticed the nation was suddenly requiring things like this,  and I doubt the birth record we had met the test of today. So I'd have been trying to figure out how to get one from Ashland, Va and she'd have had a pretty word or two to say-especially after voting all her life. And yet this is what is going on in our country to prevent "fraud," which no one seems to have evidence is occurring. I'm so glad that she voted with her dignity intact, and without long lines,  as she could not have stood in them.

    Everyday I see something powerful, but when my Mom cast her last vote in America she showed a voter card no one asked to see here in California, gave her address, signed her name and basically went to the booth and cast her votes remarking loudly (because she was so hard of hearing) that the bastards weren't going to stop her until she was dead- from voting.
    That's Mom.
    The last of a generation that were larger than life. And Mom, the bastards keep on going.

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  5. Deeply embedded in our culture is the notion-if you make billions you might ALSO be able, through your wealth, to masterfully solve all the "problems" of this world-a living god. It's nothing new as an idea on the planet really. This book does not examine the fallacies of this view, of WHY Gates is seen as remotely qualified to determine an educational system in a democracy-but it does do a great job of talking (through basically very digestible essays) about HOW Bill Gates Foundation has "worked" on education if you can let loose of notions that's such a terrific thing, or even have a small space for such a thought, then the book has something to offer you by way of facts. Anthony Cody is an educator, well educated, and willing to look at the effects on public education from what clearly is a corporate attempt to "enter the playing field" of education as expert.  So many do not have even a beginning understanding of the Gate's Foundation education work, not really,  and many more attribute what are very tuned, honed, and deliberate strategies to a benign desire to just help out. Gates and wife themselves promote that view. Are we all really just "in this together"? The fact Gates own children are not in public school might give you a clue about how he views the schools. Over the course of time this ed writer/activist presents his careful work documenting and dealing with The Gates Foundation.

    What I enjoyed was the readability. I know the essays stick with you as they have framed my understanding for a good while-they appeared in EDWEEK, and are incredibly useful to a public teacher in understanding why and how teacher evaluation among other issues are changing. I will be reading and using this book as I inform myself of the position of those I personally see doing so much damage corporatizing, data driving, and monetizing to ultimately privatize school. For me this informs my own eyes seeing those with $ further isolated in wealth from the policies and Gates driven work, and those without with nothing to give and left further isolated and "behind"-clearly the terrific losses in public ed over these last years have roots. This is how I see it-but the book will have multiple interpretations and uses. And you may well not use the book in that way.

    If I were in school in study to be a teacher, now, I'd expect a course called "The Corporate Education Model"  and Cody's book on the reading list. If I were a parent trying to understand my way through schooling my children-I'd read this book. If I were a teacher, school Super., Board Member I'd read this book, and frankly if I were a citizen in a DEMOCRACY I'd definitely want to understand the perspectives of this teacher as he interacts ultimately with the Gates Foundation.

    At some point- as Cody often does- we might want to pose a question, for me that is-"Does this billionaire have your children's best interests at heart?" That, again is not a question directly addressed here but ultimately this might help you address the incredible impact the Gates has had on your child's public education, and will have as it pores money towards its goals,  and how our current society is having that public education "framed"as failure. And teachers as "bad."
    Is this always done in benign good hearted wisdom?
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  6. h



    Kanye West insists the audience boo these folks with the temerity not to stand when he orders them up.

    He won't do the song if all do not rise before him.



    What crappy behavior.



    Why would anyone give this person money, power, influence, "a brand"?



    Grow some compassion and spend time looking at who you are Kanye, you need only think about how you made these folks feel.








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  7. Every once in awhile I see a questionaire and I just want to do it.
    I like this I think because my MOTHER loved to grill people with questions, she thought of it as good manners when most folks probably took it another way. Or not. I just know I miss her a year after her death and I miss being questioned. These would not be her thing, but it serves the purpose I think.
    Just a silly post before I go to work on a Saturday! This comes from here.http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/open-gently/201310/36-questions-bring-you-closer-together



    1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

    My brother Ken. Old friends like the Catlett's. Though she is dead I'd give a lot to have Freda Vandervort or my Mom. I really have little interest in celebrity. Maybe I should say openly I feel I'm judged by looks, weight-so I think many "famous" would just see me as one looks at something disgusting. Also I have furniture that's worn out. Again I'd feel that. I can see no appeal I'd hold for those "famous" in some way I'd admire. I can see myself just wanting to thank them which i can do in a short note. Someone very kind, as I imagined Robin Williams-you think they might tolerate for a minute or so your thanking them, but I see most just putting up with it. At a dinner-that would get so odd. I'd like to offer dinner to those that care about me.

    There is one person out there in the world I'd like as a guest because they hurt me deeply, in ways that did a good deal of damage and I'd like to look them in the eye and ask why. I'd like to understand their problem.I'm not talking to be mean. I'd like clarity..I'd like to close that and heal that and see that as it is.

    2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

     Not as I once wanted. I wanted to write. No longer.  I think I'd like to be seen as really capable in some area-inventive. Fame to me now seems like the cultural "value" and as I sitt and meditate I see nothing "good" in that. What does this do?
    Givesadvantage.
    That I do not value.


    3. Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you're going to say? Why?

     I have enormous struggles with phone calls-terrible apprehension so yeah, I kind of do rehearse. It always goes way worse in real life. I think this was how I first learned or figured out I have serious social anxiety. Work related ones are horrible. I rehearse to try to be able to cope and talk when I make the call-it never works. My mind shuts off like a kid experiences.


    4. What would constitute a perfect day for you?

     Painting all day and a nice break looking out the balcony of my pretend studio at nature. Or big city lights. Or a trip walking around a city, or going to Vienne France or a day with someone who cares for me...silly free day.


    5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

    Yesterday. Both.


    6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?

     I guess the body. I've suffered a lot.
    Or..
    Well I know what Alzheimer's looks like. This is tough, 


    7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?


     Well I thought I was dying so many times. But, no. I have ways that increase the fear.


    8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

     We love children and education, art, and we seem to share a deep similarity in regards to creativity.


    9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

     Family, friends and the million breaks I got on this planet.



    10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

     I'd take away the cigarettes mom smoked, and Dad smoked.


    11. Take four minutes and tell you partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

    I lieu of that I'd ask him to tell me my life story or his, and I'd listen very hard to who he sees.


    12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?

     Play piano very well. Or lose weight very quickly and be athletic.


    13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

     I'd kind of like to see my children's lives long from now-but....that might not be good. So no, no future looking for me.
    I read this wrong.
    I'd like to know what I can do to help other's like me and to help other's feel like I help their life.
    I'd like to understand why other's see me as someone to do awful things to or to lie about or to gossip about, distort. I'd like to know why someone could over 3000 miles away read just some amazon reviews I wrote and then set about to hurt me . I am not being self pitying. Whatever I evoke-I'd like to understand that so I can change it. Or at least modify it.
    I'd like to make other's feel supported and cared about.




    14. Is there something that you've dreamt of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?

     Wearing a dress-I'm fat.
    I long to be thin and to feel like I am a person that doesn't make others want to throw up seeing me. Or to have real invisibility.
    I am trying to do that.

    15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

     Having my children, teaching others to read. I've done nothing really. Drawing. Perhaps it was training myself to draw.


    16. What do you value most in a friendship?

    Loyalty and trust. Longevity, being there, knowing I'll not be told I waste their time, knowing that they will call on me for help.


    17. What is your most treasured memory?


    Way too many. But I do like to recall the births of my kids as huge moments.



    18. What is your most terrible memory?


    Mom's death. The agony of the loneliness after.

    19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

     Yeah I'd try to go see Ken for a week, and visit a few people i love and miss. I might try to get the kid's ear a bit more to tell them about myself or to hear them, reassure them, make sure they know i love them and see them as strong. Try to mitigate the sorrow by saying I had a good life and minimize the poor me stuff-(no regretfulness )I'd take times especially for Jack. I'd take time to prepare him because it would be hard for him. I would just get on a plane and go discuss something with someone that hurt me-for my sake I think.



    20. What does friendship mean to you?

     Humor, caring, interest in the other's lives/feelings, finding the good, supporting, not dragging a ton of hurt to their door. I've only just started to DO that over say that...and I fail all the times as my model was dragging hurt to another, It's something that I think of like beauty-you know it when you have it. I think of friendship as a true gift to another.
    I think of friendship as not something to waste.


    21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

    I hope I live a loving life. I hope it is a love driven life.


    22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.

    His mind.
    His music.
    His creative, inquisitive nature.
    His physical charm.
    That he can take you as you are and that he evolves.

    23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?

     Well not so close physically. I feel my childhood was both wonderful and fearful. My feeling is that I was not protected as a child should be-and my childhood bore horrendous emotion destruction- and by 15 my father utterly abandoned me. I feel my dad damaged me by not loving and caring and lying to himself and others about HIS behavior. So that's hard and sad. But I had other wonderful things. And some unbelievably cruel unnecessary things.

    24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

    I love her dearly. Her death was so hard, is so hard.
    I regret things for her. 
    She encouraged my art.
    She cared the best she could.
    Her addiction to cigarettes often controlled her.
    She had awful anxiety-I'm so sad about that.
    She was a million times smarter than I ever will be.
    We were very close. It was very hard to see her suffer.
    She loved to laugh. I miss laughing-Jack has no humor really. So I miss it so much.


    25. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "we are both in this room feeling..."

    Well we both don't know I'm doing this.
    We both  love France.
    We both are feeling sleepy this morning.


    26. Complete this sentence "I wish I had someone with whom I could share..."

     stories of my life and their life. A cup of cappuccino, or anything I cook-much is rejected. How about share a steak?

    27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.


    I am.  That I struggle with being judged and that I am sensitive to rejection and abandonment and that my art supplies are not his art supplies-I cannot have a respect for that intrusion.


    28. Tell your partner what you like about them: be honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.

     I like hands.
    I like an ability to care about my feelings.
    I like when he shows up.

    29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.


    I do. All the time. Right now every minute I'm teaching-hard year.

    30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

    A week ago, after teaching Friday. I rarely cry but this school year I am. Alone and with others.
    Mostly alone. Well I cried a year alone. I don't think anyone knew after Mom died.

    31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

     Sure-skin.

    32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

    Lots of stuff. I am struggling with humor that seems to be cruelty in disguise.
    I'm not into jokes about beheading.


    33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?

     I just don't know. I think more astounding is when you tell someone something important-you care for them and they just don't seem to give a nut about that. It's so trivial to them. So easily thrown away.  I want my family and friends to forgive me for my failings. And I want them to know I really did appreciate and see them as wonderful. I'm sorry for any hurt.


    34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?


    Pictures. To remember.

    35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?


    My husband, my kids, my mom I had to face, my father, my brother, my close friends. Honestly this seems strange. I know we do face death. I just  love them so much. My kids.

    36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

    He's sleeping and hates things like this more than anything. But he does try to help in his way with my issues. I might actually share I'm trying to do a better job of solving my own issues.
     I've really needed him on this TK job.
    I'd like him to help me hold a system accountable.
    And dealing with Mom's death. And with health issues.
    And to better understand why the last ten years were hard in some particular ways.


    Turns out this was not exciting-sorry/
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  8. It turns out teaching TK, so far-three weeks- is the hardest job I ever had.
    Except delivering balloons, all the fast food, working in grocery, and the class in Watts.
    I'm not a good clown. BTW
    I looked great-full make-up, big bushy rainbow afro.
    But after that I could not be funny-it was a case of here is your balloons, see ya.
    I had to sing sometimes when folks ordered the singing balloon bouquet.
    TK right now is exactly like that.
    I'm brave to try. In fact I'm brave to teach different levels and sustain being out of my comfort zone.


    Every September 11 I like to read a poem my daughter wrote a good while ago on September 11 as she helped me teach. She was getting ready then to go back to CalTech. It is a poem, by Sylvia Mary Puglisi-who just got engaged on Labor Day, in Europe while traveling.

    This poem was written exactly while my daughter was teaching in my room, she was listening to me read a book.
    She captured, for me, something that I feel but cannot-myself-put into form.


    september 11th, by Sylvia Puglisi,
    A depressing sort of poem. But there could hardly be a happy one today, I suppose.

    * * *

    september 11
    17 first-graders
    moment of silence skipped
    for the immediacy of fresh strawberries
    and the novelty of pencil sharpeners
    (which may never wear off in this lifetime)

    invisible principal over the intercom
    (like in the old cartoons that reliably reproduced so many aspects of school particularly the cliched plots and precocious love lives)
    reading bad poetry in a
    flat lifeless voice
    like shakespeare in junior high
    with unenthused classmates
    esoteric
    and meaningless.
    stephen asks me to sharp his pencil
    and wonders why i
    teacher stands there for several moments
    staring blankly ahead
    looking like she's about to cry
    and then laughing quietly
    at how absurd it all is.

    come to the rug, children.
    i want to tell you a story
    of something that happened before you were born
    to people you will never get to know
    in a place you've never been.
    (next will be a story of a
    giant blue-green ball hurtling through space
    and a giant yellow ball
    they hold like lovers
    el sol y la tierra
    we love story time
    especially doctor seuss!)

    in the story it is a tuesday
    just like today.
    here is the sign for tuesday, make a t with your fingers and circle
    tuesday
    a cold bright tuesday just like today
    it was september 11 that day
    just like today.
    september is a long word that starts with an s
    and let's count to eleven
    one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven
    and in spanish
    uno dos tres quatro cinco seis siete ocho nueve diez once
    once upon a time
    in the year 2001
    before most of you were
    born or when you were the tiniest infant
    gnawing your fist and smiling to the delight of your parents.
    on a day just like today
    when little children just like you were counting the date
    a bad thing happened.
    a very bad thing.

    bad people
    very angry, nasty people
    who perhaps did not have enough
    people to love them
    hurt our country
    the United States of America
    you know America in sign language, children
    it is like a hug in a circle
    show me, children.

    our country was attacked
    some airplanes were flown into buildings
    important buildings
    two tall ones in New York
    which fell down
    also a military building called the Pentagon
    which has five sides
    show me five fingers, children.
    very good.
    and the last plane
    the good people took from the bad people
    and flew into the ground instead of a building.
    many, many people died.
    the people in the planes and the buildings
    and some of the firefighters who tried to save them
    they were heros, do you know that word?
    it means brave, brave people who did something amazing
    like going into a building that is on fire and falling down
    and rescuing people.
    are you listening, children?
    isaac, put your head down.

    this was the biggest attack on American soil ever
    which means
    that it was really scary for us
    really scary for your parents
    who probably grabbed you
    their babies
    from the cradles
    and held you close
    and whispered soft comforting words to themselves
    as they watched pictures on the tv
    and cried or
    just sat
    watching.

    the world is different now
    you don't know because you don't remember
    how it was before
    you can't ever know the time when parents
    worried about teething rings and toes
    and not fiery explosions.
    you weren't sitting there like i was
    in a classroom on tuesday
    (which was picture day and everyone
    was dressed to the nines
    it was two days after my birthday
    and i had new clothes
    i was looking sharp)
    a whisper went around
    that something terrible had happened
    a disaster
    an earthquake
    a bomb
    people were dying
    where? new york
    new york which was more magical and mystical to us than disneyland
    new york with the giant apple and the statue of liberty
    with the buildings that scraped the sky.

    there was a moment of silence

    kids fidgeted a little just like
    you fidget today just like
    we fidgeted when old men with gravelly voices told us of pearl harbor.
    they speak of it like an old scar
    the memory is still fresh.
    september 11 is for me a cut
    that it took a long time for me to realize was bleeding
    like the scrape on the leg that i got from band
    which i didn't feel at the time any more than a poke
    but later my band teacher gasped and
    pointed at when the blood was dripping to the floor.
    i have a scar now, too.

    but you children have no scars
    you are young and
    tiny and unblemished and i
    truly hope no history is made in your lifetime
    because it is a messy business
    or so i have found.
    we with memory scars will age and fade
    recounting stories for
    our childrens' school reports on historical events.
    you will grow and replace us and get your own scars
    falling off your bicycle.
    you will remember the date as a
    sad story and me
    teacher crying a little when you're not looking
    and so will move past me
    into the future
    without my fears and doubts.

    this consoles me, children
    on this big blue ball going around the big yellow ball
    you have danced around six times
    keep dancing, children
    the slow beautiful waltz of time.
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  9.  When I first saw the bay again in Monterey a few days ago, my daughter Sophia called, upset, from work. She said that Robin Williams was dead. The most beautiful view I miss so much, and this news. It is an amazing way to take in earth wide news.
    Since the whole world felt a personal relationship with him, I can only add that my Mother loved him ( who didn't?) . He made her laugh. She thought that was priceless in this world of monetized realities. She kept her humor even on her last day on earth. I hope he died into the peace he sought.
    Mom would remember things she heard that he said, and laugh outloud. She even loved the more "blue" bits.
    I think he'd have enjoyed her. I can't put my mind around this death, to me he embodies "creativity." So losing this does darken the days. Good grief it's tragic.
    My daughter asked me to watch this show this week over and over. So here is something just to say farewell. And thank you.



    But I like this one too much. When they end I just cry.



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I'm a public school elementary teacher from W.V. beginning my career in poverty schools in the 1980's. (I have GIST cancer-small intestinal and syringomyelia which isn't what I want to define me but does help define how I view the meaning of my life.) I am a mom of 3 great children-now grown. I teach 3rd grade in an Underperforming school, teaching mostly immigrant 2nd Lang. children. I majored in art, as well as teaching. Art informs all I do. Teaching is a driving part of my life energy. But I am turning to art soon. I'm married to an artist I coaxed into teaching- now a Superintendent of one of the bigger Districts in the area. Similar population. We both have dedicated inordinate amounts of our life to the field of teaching in areas of poverty hoping to give students opportunities to make better lives. I'm trying to write as I can to the issues of PUBLIC education , trying to gain the sophistication to address the issues in written forms so they can be understood from my teaching contexts.I like to blog from daily experiences. My work is my own, not reflective of any school district.
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