Happy Birthday to Nico?

Today is Nico's birthday. I am not sure why, maybe because two seems so much more grown up than one, but I have been very excited. I stayed up last night and wrapped his presents, hung our Happy Birthday sign, and told the story of when Nico was born to Alexandra and Nico when I put them to bed. After the kids and Adam left this morning, I laid out all his presents on the kitchen table. Adam and I met at 4pm at his office, got tiny cupcakes (the same cupcakes that my friend Nicole Macrini brought to the hospital when I had the boy), and went to get Alexandra together so that we could pick Nico up as a family and have an amazing night together.

The night would include: happy family dinner, sweet walk home, presents that would include Nico squealing for glee with each gift and Alexandra not getting jealous, cupcakes and ice cream, fast baths, painless bedtimes, and great photos to document all the super cute moments from that linear trajectory of the evening illustrating what a great little family we have.

But his is what happened instead:

Alexandra started whining that she was too tired to scoot to the Chinese restaurant after picking Nico up, so Adam put her on his shoulders. Nico saw her on his shoulders and started crying. We tried to distract him to no avail ("Look! A bus! A dog!") and his crying turned into full-blown tantrum that necessitated us stopping on the side of the sidewalk, letting him out of the stroller, offering him daddy, mommy, walking, carrying, stroller, backpack--anything to get him to stfu--but nothing worked. He slumped on the stroller, hysterical, writhed on the ground, and walked around aimlessly while screaming.

Then we got to the Chinese restaurant (it's en route to home) and Adam decides to go in and get take out (Nico is on my shoulders at this point somewhat consoled but intermitedly crying, Alexandra is back on scooter, Adam is pushing stroller). Alexandra realizes that we are not going into the restaurant b/c Nico is crazy, and she throws a full-blown-I-should-be-locked-in-an-asylum-tantrum. I only saw the beginnings because I left them to start walking home, but I heard them coming from about a block away as I got home b/c her screaming was so loud.

So we get kids in house, where they literally tantrum for the next 30-45 minutes, including slamming my hand in a door, throwing food, knocking heads on ground, and other insane tantrum behaviors. I start drinking beer. Things. are. not. good.

Nico finally stops. Alexandra stops about 20 minutes later. They eat hot dogs, bunny crackers, and corn for dinner. Bath (Nico throws tantrum #2 then falls asleep on changing table). Bed.

Holy crap.

No presents, Adam and I eat Chinese food after they're in bed, I have another beer, and now we'll eat cupcakes without kids. Totally sucky night. And for some reason, I'm just sad that Nico didn't get to have presents and cake on his birthday, although he doesn't know he missed out.

God, parenting is exhausting.

Survivor's Guilt

Like many of you around the country, I have been listening to a great amount of news coverage this week on the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. Having been here in New York City on 9/11, these conversations have given me a sort of personal pause; I have been reflecting on what the last 10 years have meant to me. The ten year anniversary of 9/11 also coincides with my teaching career: ten of my eleven years in the classroom were at Cobble Hill, a school that became my second home. It was on my second day of teaching my classes that the planes hit, and all my memories of that day are tied to my old school.

Teaching in a struggling inner city school is the work of civil servitude in the truest sense of the word. No, teachers don't run into burning buildings like firemen, but they do challenging and seemingly impossible work on a daily basis that fosters a sense of "brotherhood" (to steal from the firemen) between them. The united struggle of working in such a school becomes a twisted badge of pride--a deserved one.

In the last ten years, a handfull of us stayed at our school through the administrative upheavals and many new people joined the faculty that continued to be the fabric that held the school together. These teachers have watched me grow as a person and as a teacher. They have celebrated my marriage with me, the birth of my two children, and the completion of my never-ending doctoral work. They let me cry when I lost our first pregnancy and had to continue to teach a class of eight pregnant seniors, when my close friend died, and when the frustrations of the job became too much. We were a very close staff, and one of the things I am most proud of as an educator were the respectful, loving, friendly, and caring relationships we modeled for our students. We supported each other in an unsupportive environment.

The teaching profession employs a lot of war metaphors. Those of us in hard schools consider it "the trenches" compared to the selective fancy schools. When I emailed my colleagues that I was leaving Cobble Hill several wrote back saying, "You did your time." Therefore I guess this feeling of survivor's guilt that I am having right now fits right in.

Although I will be working with the same student population (just one year later in their educational trajectory), there is a part of me that feels I deserted my people when I left my school; I deserted the profession that I had so zealously advocated for throughout the years. I feel like public education of the poor right now is a sinking ship, and somehow I jumped and survived. And I feel guilty.

I know they will all be fine without me, that they will keep working and crying and laughing and drinking and teaching and thinking and making the best of the broken system they are a part of. I know it was definitely my time to go. What I don't know is when I will stop feeling like somehow I escaped and left them behind.

Struggle

I taught my first college class today. Freshman Composition at Kingsborough Community College, a charming little campus facing the water at the end of Brooklyn. I have had a lot of anxiety about my new job and the switch to teaching college even though I know I am very qualified and capable of doing so. Transitions simply do not come easy for me, and I have been trying to process why I have felt slightly weepy all week. Today I figured it out.

Today went like this:

In the hour before class I ran into FIVE students from Cobble Hill (the high school where I had taught for the last 10 years). That was reassuring--like I was still home in some way--and made me feel grounded. Good start.

Then I went to my classroom to set up. The smartboard worked. The kids came (mostly) on time. They were sweet, engaged, and responded to my sense of humor. I could not believe how diverse they were; it was a Noah's Ark slice of New York City: a few Black kids, a few White kids, a few Asian kids, one kid back from Bangladesh, some tan supermodel-looking girl who went to a female military school (what?), a girl in hijab...It was like the United Nations in my classroom. They were all lovely. And intriguing. I am so excited to teach them.

I taught for 2 hours. Easily.

Then I got in my car and cried.

Why?

Because it was easy. Because I felt so appreciated, respected, and given the benefit that I knew what I was doing by these students. And I realized that I have been on the verge of tears all week while starting this new job because everyone--students, colleagues, the IT guy--just expect that I am competent. I have received more compliments on my resume, my interviewing process, and my work in the last couple of weeks than I had ever heard in my ten years of teaching. I have been told how certain individuals at the New Community College fought to get me an interview because they knew I was the "perfect" fit for the job although others doubted me due to my lack of college teaching experience. I was given a computer of choice, a bag of office supplies (although I had my own, which all have my name on them written hugely in white-out in case anyone ever tried to steal them from my classroom), and a warm welcome. It has been mind-blowing.

And it's so hard to explain how much these gestures hurt me. I didn't realize how much I had been broken by the lack of appreciation I was constantly fed while teaching in such a hard school for so many years. You simply get used to being treated like shit, even when you are considered one of the "good" teachers by the administration, the Network, and other higher-up individuals. There's such a deficit approach to teachers right now--they are seen as all lacking in myriad ways and that's why kids are failing--but I hadn't realized how much I had internalized it and how much it had really destroyed me as a person. I feel like I have been grieving all week in some strange way.

The struggles that teachers in inner city schools face are impossible to describe to anyone who hasn't walked in their shoes. Every small thing becomes a struggle in that environment, and while the successes feel even greater when they are surrounded by such insurmountable struggle, they day-to-day of the system that created that environment does eat away at you. I am only just realizing that.

Which makes this new job very bittersweet.

*Hopefully* Back

I have missed my blog.

I don't know how and/or why life suddenly got too busy, crazy, chaotic to jot down my thoughts in this space, but between finishing my dissertation, graduating, job hunting, staying at home with two kids all of July & August, taking one job, quitting it to take another job, leaving the Department of Education, joining the faculty of the City University of New York system I have just not had the mental space or energy to put my thoughts down in this space.

But I have had thoughts.

And it sounds almost tragic, but sometimes when I don't get my small and large realizations down in my blog it's like they don't happen. Or, they lose some sense of tangibility, even if I have told them to friends, Adam, and any Joe at the grocery store who will listen over the cachophony of my wailing whining children.

But I am hoping and praying to the universe that all will settle down now. It's September. There's a new normal about to happen here: Alexandra is going to pre-Kindergarten at a new school, Nico is starting a new daycare, and I'm starting a new job as Assistant Professor of Developmental English for the New Community College, a branch of the City University of New York system. Now that all has been thrown up in the air and has resettled, I want to come back to here. I have missed it.