Process(ing)

December 11, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

We’re two weeks away from Christmas Break, and I’m having my seniors write a personal essay. This essay could be used for a variety of purposes — to submit with a college application, to enter a scholarship contest, or simply to explore one’s own identity.

The students read and analyze several models, we practice using sensory language, and then we prepare to write. The first step is to choose from a variety of prompts such as “describe a time when you overcame a challenge” or “tell us about a time you stepped up as a leader”. Then, I direct them to identify a trait they want their reader to recognize in them. Are they hardworking? resilient? creative?

The big lift comes next. Students must respond to the prompt they have chosen while also displaying the strength they have selected by describing a scene — a snapshot or highlight tape — from their lives in which they have embodied that characteristic.

As has been my practice for going on twenty years, I write alongside my students, modeling my process for them in real time so that a) they can see an “expert” at work, b) they can see that even “experts” struggle and fumble, and c) so that they can acknowledge that even for “experts” the writing process is messy, laborious, and non-linear.

This past week, I was doing that modeling when I wrote about the time almost 10 (TEN!) years ago when I left my classroom in St. Louis convinced that I would likely never teach — at least not in a high school — again. I was reading this highlight tape to my students, describing how I tearfully carried a milk crate out of my room, and they looked at me with blank faces. What was I talking about that I might never teach again? I’m standing right in front of them — teaching! — and I’ve been in this classroom since they were freshmen. Was this story supposed to be fiction?

And, you know, sometimes I start to believe it is — maybe I wasn’t really that sick. Maybe I didn’t need to step away from my work. Maybe I don’t have symptoms right now. Maybe I’ve made it all up.

I was feeling that way last night. It was my youngest daughter’s and my youngest granddaughter’s birthday yesterday. I was on the phone wishing my daughter a happy birthday, struggling to sustain a conversation after 5pm on a Friday, “Happy birthday! What did you do today?” She shared how she had spent her day and asked what we were up to this weekend. I explained that her father had travelled to Cincinnati for her niece’s birthday, but that I didn’t have the gas in the tank to go.

“Oh? What do you mean?”

“I just find that in December I have very little margin to do something like a weekend trip.”

“Oh, why? Is it because it is the end of the semester and you have a lot of papers to grade?”

“Well,” I struggled to articulate the thing I have been trying to articulate for going on 10 years — that it doesn’t matter if I have a pile of papers in front of me or not, I am just on E, and E won’t get me to Cincinnati.

The same thing happened when I was FaceTime-ing with my six year old granddaughter. My husband called from Cincinnati to let me watch her open her gifts. She was sitting in her Grogu chair grinning and talking as she tore the paper. The rest of her grandparents, other family members, and some friends would be there soon for a party with pizza, butterfly decorations, and, of course, a purple cake. I watched, smiling, but internally I was interrogating myself, “Seriously, you couldn’t find it in you to go to Cincinnati for one weekend? It’s your granddaughter’s birthday!”

I do this sometimes, I question whether I really need the weekend at home, or if I am just being selfish.

I logically know the answer — even without 4 hours in the car, a change in routine, sleeping in a different bed, and the drain of social interactions, I woke up this morning with a splitting headache and an electric/IcyHot heat in all of my joints from my toes to my neck. During this time of year, it takes a whole weekend to recover from a week in the classroom. I will spend a couple hours this morning writing, then I will go for a long walk followed by an epsom salt bath. Hours might be spent reading a novel or watching The Crown, and I’ll have to somehow fit in about an hour of prep time so that I’m ready to teach my students on Monday. Sunday is more rest — Zoom time with our small group followed by worship and another long walk, followed by more writing and resting, and prepping for the start of the week.

When I interrupt that rhythm, like I did over Thanksgiving, I walk into Monday less resilient than I need to be — I am more likely to be reactive, I am less likely to be on my A game. I will likely miss things — like a small cue that someone is angry and tempted to fight, that another is sad and needs someone to listen, or that my room is too hot or too cold or that someone in my room didn’t get breakfast or lunch. I will be more likely to get an inflammatory issue like pain behind my eye or a headache or extreme fatigue that has me wondering how I drove myself home.

While I can occasionally take the risk and do something social on the weekend, it is really best if I stick to the routine which means saying no to fun opportunities like a whirlwind trip to Cincinnati.

You might ask if I should continue teaching if it costs me weekends with a granddaughter or my parents or our friends? The answer is still yes, absolutely yes.

For one thing, I will see that granddaughter and her sister in three weeks. That doesn’t make up for missing her birthday, of course, but I do get time with both of our grand girls on a fairly regular basis. We FaceTime and send letters, and, honestly, their lives are busy, too. I miss them, but I’m not sure I would see them more if I wasn’t teaching.

And, the reason I continue in the role I have now is because it gives me life. Leaving my classroom in June of 2014 was only slightly less than devastating because my autoimmune disease is absolutely real — I was flaring so badly in that season that I could barely function. I would have never left the classroom if there was any other option.

The six months that I was unemployed and the slow crawl back was a very difficult time. In my mind I was sick, compromised, washed-up, old, past my prime. As I regained my health, as I gradually built more teaching back into my life, I regained confidence and a sense of purpose.

I am not a perfect teacher — I don’t always have the most engaging activities or the cutest classroom decor. I sometimes lose my sense of humor, overuse sarcasm, and fail to give students the one-on-one attention they deserve. Despite all that, I am my best self when I am connected to education, for now that means in the classroom, particularly a high school classroom, especially in a context where I can call out injustice and work to bring a more equitable experience for my students.

When I get to spend my days being the best version of myself, I get more moments of sharing that best version with the people that I love — my husband, my children, and my grandchildren. For a few years there, I think that much of what they got from me was shrouded in self-doubt, self-pity, and an overwhelming sense that I was past my prime.

On Monday, I’ll share my second highlight tape with my seniors, the scene where I carry my items back into the classroom I work in now. I’ll share a glimpse at the slow crawl back, but I’ll focus on the triumphant return. Then I will prod, cajole, and cheer them as they write their own highlight tapes. I’ll nudge them to add more sensory detail, I’ll celebrate their risk-taking, and I’ll gently introduce MLA format and model Standard Academic English norms. I’ll do my best to help them finish strong.

Then, near the end of December, I’ll take a break to catch my breath, and then I’ll pack my bag and head to the land of grand girls where we’ll snuggle, do crafts, eat yummy foods, watch movies, and giggle. I’ll tell them how proud I am when they read hard words and ask good questions — they’ll get the imperfectly best version of me because that is what I am right now.

And for this I am thankful.

give thanks in all circumstances…”
1 Thessalonians 5:18

Slowing Down, Taking Care

December 4, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

After a long, full, and exhausting fall, my husband and I welcomed Thanksgiving break like two educators who — er — really needed a break.

While we could’ve probably spent the entire 10 days in pajamas in front of the TV, scavenging the near-empty cupboards for traces of food and leaning on DoorDash when those ran out, instead, we traveled first to a conference on the west side of Michigan, then to central Illinois for a rendezvous with our daughter and her fiancé, and finally through central Indiana to catch up with my dad and his wife.

It was a fantastic way to spend those ten days — connecting with colleagues from all over Michigan, relaxing in a quiet town, cooking Thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen of a AirBnb, watching college football and basketball, and having long chats with family. We drove back to Michigan full and content.

At the end of driving, we unloaded the vehicle, started the laundry, and unpacked our bags before collapsing on the couch late Saturday. Sunday we met with our small group, went to worship, shopped for groceries, then hosted my brother-in-law who was heading through town.

Then, in a blink, we were up, dressed, and driving to work on Monday morning. And in another blink, I’m sitting here on Saturday morning reflecting on the fullness of the past week — appointments and announcements, parent teacher conferences, and the purchase of a dishwasher among all the other normal bits of life.

Isn’t this the way many of our weeks go? We move through the mundane and the momentous and are somehow shocked that in the midst of all this activity, all this movement, all this decision-making and leading and simply existing, we experience some fluctuating emotions — some super high highs, some rather low lows, and all the degrees in between.

We feel the tenderness of reconnecting with friends and coworkers and the glazed-over fatigue of travel. We feel overcome with joy as we watch our future son-in-law care for our daughter and happiness and pride when our daughter completes a sewing project for which she has had a vision. We feel frustration that the AirBnb isn’t as spic and span as we had hoped it would be and contentment as we lean into each other and watch a tender movie. We feel annoyed that our students don’t arrive on time or listen when we give directions and excited by the possibly of major life transitions. We feel exhausted by the hoops we have to jump through to get a $100 discount on an appliance and thankfulness that we have the money to afford a new appliance in the first place.

We don’t, in the moment, always notice that we are having all of these feelings. We feel them, of course, but we keep moving, keep doing, keep checking off those things on our list, forgetting that the emotions we are feeling are messengers — they are trying to to give us information — to tell us that we need to slow down, to take care, to process, or even just to sleep.

And because we forget that our emotions are messengers, because we don’t slow down, take care, process, or even just sleep, the messages get louder and more insistent. Our frustration turns into sarcasm that pops out of our mouth at the least appropriate time. Our fatigue turns into impatient demanding — that others do what we need right now, our way, without question.

And when emotion bubbles over into behavior, we feel bad. We judge ourselves: What is the matter with you? How could you say that? You should be ashamed. You need to get yourself together!

Or we judge others for their behaviors that are fueled by their un-tended emotions: What is their problem? Why did they speak to me that way? They need to get themselves together!

We forget that their emotions are a signal — to them, but also to us — that they might need permission to slow down, take care, process, or just sleep.

It’s a big job to take stock of our own emotions while simultaneously picking up the cues of the people in our lives who also have a broad range of emotions, while also managing the demands of our everyday life. How can we be self-aware and compassionate at the same time?

I have not yet mastered this, but it is a lesson I am working on.

As I now, finally, take the time to reflect on the past couple of weeks, returning to my journal after some inconsistency over the past couple of weeks and returning to a longer yoga session after a couple of weeks of grabbing a few minutes here and a few minutes there, I can feel myself settling. I start to feel a little bit more like myself, a little more anchored, a little more in tune. And I think to myself, there is a reason you are so religious about your rhythms. Writing and yoga and walking and all the other things you do on the daily are the ways you slow town, take care, process, and truly get better sleep.

For all of us, vacations break rhythms — that’s part of their design. We need breaks from our rhythms to take rest and refuel, but I know that I always need to return to the practices that give me the space to tend to my feelings. And when I forget, my emotions remind me.

On Thursday of this past week, a student who I had not seen all week walked into my class and announced, “Mrs. Rathje, I am telling you right now that I am not gonna do anything in your class today.”

Well, I was pretty tired by Thursday, and had not been heeding the messages of my emotions, and her comment instantly set me on edge.

“So why are you even here?” I responded, trying unsuccessfully to check my annoyance.

“My momma made me come.”

“Well, I haven’t seen you all week, so as long as you’re here, I don’t know why you wouldn’t try to engage and get something out of class.” I kept walking around the room, pushing in chairs, picking up papers, instinctively trying to push off the emotion.

“I can’t today. I’m not doing it,” and she sat down in her front row seat and proceeded to scroll on her phone.

Perhaps because I was tired or perhaps because I could sense that my ability to not devolve into sarcasm and guilt-tripping was unreliable, I chose to just let her do her thing. I didn’t beg or try to correct her. I just let her be.

The rest of my students were engaged and completed the assignment with me, but this student remained on her phone.

I continued to notice her presence while ignoring her lack of engagement until she approached me near the end of the hour and said, “Mrs. Rathje could I speak to you in the hall?”

“Sure,” I said as I followed her out.

“I want to apologize,” she said, “I just don’t think anyone understands how hard it is for me to be here.”

While I am unaware of the specifics, I do know that this student regularly checks in with our social workers; this was not the first time I was made aware that she has some personal struggles.

I saw the vulnerability in her eyes and found the wherewithal to say, “I appreciate the apology, and you’re right,” I said, “I’m sure I don’t know how hard it is for you to be here. Have you shared this with your mom?”

“No, I don’t want to talk about it with her.”

This was even more vulnerable.

“How would you feel if I called her? I want to share how much of this class you have missed and see if we can find a solution.”

She looked me in the eye and said, “Ok, you can do that.”

I called her mother, who was very transparent about the severe anxiety the student experiences, and we discussed some options that might be available moving forward. I thanked her for her time, hung up, and made my way home,

The next day, the same student entered my class saying, “Mrs. Rathje, I’m here, and I’m going to do all the work, and I sure hope you’ll call my mom and tell her I did it.”

“I absolutely will do that.”

What caused this dramatic change? Did she just need the space to slow down, take care, process, and get some sleep? I’m not sure, but in my fatigue and lack of action, I accidentally learned that seeing her emotions as messengers, not as a personal attack against me that needed a large-and-in-charge response, allowed me an opportunity to give this senior some space to shift.

And shift she did — at least for one day — and right now, I’m gonna call that a win.

Now, in a blink, I’m gonna step into my next jam-packed week, so right now, I’m gonna go for a long walk then make a second cup of tea, and allow myself some space to slow down, take care, process and get some sleep.

Monday will be here before I know it.

he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Mark 6:31

Light a Candle — a lament

November 7, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

I woke up before five this morning, even though we don’t have school. It’s election day as I’m writing, and it might make sense for me to get up this early, if there was anything on my precinct’s ballot, but there is not.

So, I rolled over and closed my eyes, but despite the fact that I have an opportunity to sleep late, my brain is engaged. It’s problem-solving issues that aren’t mine to solve. It’s running scenarios for situations over which I have no control.

I use my tried and true strategy of grabbing the novel I’m currently working on. Maybe if I get lost in a story, I’ll go back to sleep. But books being what they are, and me being who I am, the story of a racially charged shooting is just giving my brain more fodder.

I sigh, roll out of bed, and tend to a few things over which I do have control — a load of laundry, a few rogue dishes in the sink, my cluttered desk. I’m trying to bring order to my immediate surroundings despite the far-flung chaos which we now find to be just another Tuesday.

Even though this is not supposed to be just another Tuesday. It’s supposed to be a day that I can weigh in, have my say.

It’s election day, and I can’t even cast my vote for change.

So, I light a candle, do some yoga, brew a pot of tea, and go with what I know — words on the page.

I can’t solve problems that aren’t mine — the ones of those dear to me who are trying to find the right employment fit or the ones of two students who, after moving to a new place, likely due to housing insecurity, are no longer on the bus route and will likely move to virtual school, eventually, after they’ve had no schooling for the last few weeks.

I can’t understand why more than half of the country, according to a new New York Times poll, would still be ok with electing a man who’s been found guilty of sexual assault, is currently on trial for financial crimes, and is facing a total of 91 felony counts! when countless are the American citizens who cannot get a paid position with merely 1 felony count.

I can’t fathom the devastation in Israel and Gaza where over 1400 Israelis and over 10,000 Palestinians — mostly civilians — have died. Thousands of lives lost within a month — families destroyed forever. I have no words.

I don’t get how our country has over $105 BILLION to send to Israel and the Ukraine to aid in their wars but it doesn’t have enough money to ensure that our parents (or we!) don’t go broke paying for healthcare or enough to provide an equitable education to all American children, or even, for heaven’s sake, a decent breakfast and/or lunch for my students. (No, I do not consider a Pop Tart and a juice box a decent breakfast for a teenager, even if it is free).

I can’t solve the problems with transportation, attendance, and substance abuse that impact my students every day because those problems are mere symptoms of a larger multi-system malignancy that has roots that reach before my lifetime and spread far beyond my influence.

I don’t have that kind of power. I don’t have that kind of wisdom.

So, I return to what I know. I light a candle. I go to my yoga mat. I breathe in and out.

I sigh a prayer — a simple Lord, have mercy.

Lord, help! Lord, guide! Lord, intervene!

Make sense out of confusion. Make order out of chaos.

Replace poverty with plenty, violence with peace, hatred with love.

You have that kind of power. You have that kind of wisdom.

None of this is out of Your control.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

Of Power and Vulnerability

October 22, 2023October 23, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

We’re seven weeks into this school year, and I’m not sure who is learning more — me or my students.

This is always the case, of course, but I continue to be amazed. You would think that since I am fifty-seven years old, and my students are mere teenagers, that my maturity, at least, would exceed theirs. In some ways it does, for sure, but they are teaching me to receive feedback and to alter my approach.

Now, they don’t necessarily know they are doing this — they aren’t setting goals, writing lesson plans, or assessing my progress. No. They are just navigating their lives in the best ways that they know how, but when our paths cross, they are not afraid to give me the feedback that I need.

And I am not too stubborn to receive it. Not any more.

Recently, I was trying to get started with my fourth hour class — they come to me straight from lunch, and my expectation is that they would just walk in, grab their materials, sit down, and be ready to engage with learning. Yes, I do see, as I type those words that my expectations border on lunacy. For one, any teenager coming straight from lunch might be transitioning from a fun conversation with peers, from an attempt to engage with a person of romantic interest, or from a mild or moderate altercation with a staff member. To expect them to instantly shed those interactions and be fully engaged in English Language Arts is, although an appropriate academic posture, probably not entirely sensitive to adolescent development.

And I know that, and I prepare for it. Each period, I plan a “gathering” — some short activity to pull us all together. For example, I might display a slide showing that October 23 is National TV Talk Show Host Day and then ask my students, “if you could be interviewed by any TV Talk Show Host, who would it be, and what would you want to talk about?”

We might take a few minutes to discuss and laugh in an attempt to build a classroom culture and foster engagement before I try to deftly transition into the goals for the day.

On this recent day, the one I was starting to tell you about, I could tell that the majority of my students were not with me. I was having a hard time getting everyone to find their seats, to put their phones away, and to engage with our gathering. So, in the “kick butts and take names” fashion that I learned somewhere along the way, I started moving around the classroom in my ‘large and in charge’ type of way in an attempt to get them settled in.

I narrowed my proximity. I bantered with students, interjecting myself into their conversations, and trying to overpower them into submission. This strategy might have worked once upon a time, but my current students are not having it. The power play does not work with them. I know this, but on this particular day, I was frustrated enough with their lack of attention that I reverted to the muscle memory of raising my voice, getting an attitude, and using language that is not typically mine.

My students’ response? They kept doing what they were doing — they were unbothered — until the language that came out of my mouth elicited a “Whoa, Mrs. Rathje, you can’t say that,” and then the room went quiet. And I knew the student was right. My language had crossed a boundary. I had gotten their attention, for sure, but not in the way that I wanted.

I backpedaled.

“You’re right. That was inappropriate. I think I am feeling frustrated because we don’t seem ready to get started. But that is no excuse. I apologize. Can we start over?”

The room quieted, but some of the respect that I had spent weeks building inside of this space, had crumbled beneath my feet, and I instantly knew I would have to do some rebuilding. Nevertheless, my duty to instruction prevailed, and I began with our lesson. Just as we were finding our rhythm, one of my students jumped up and said, “Mrs. Rathje, I gotta take this call,” as she speedily went to the hallway.

Well, that irritated me, but I kept moving with the students whose minimal attention I was holding and then met her at the door when she returned.

“You can’t just walk out of class, ” I said, my attitude re-engaged, “You haven’t been here all week, and now that you’re back, you just jump up and take a phone call?”

I think I expected her to say, “You’re right. I’m sorry,” but instead, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “I am feeling a certain kind of way because of how you are talking to me. The reason I have been missing school is because I was at a party last weekend where my cousin was killed.”

I put my hands up in quiet surrender and took a step back.

“Wow. I didn’t know that. Thank you for telling me. You are right. I didn’t need to give you any attitude. I apologize. I am glad you are here. Will you let me know if there is anything I can do?”

“I will. Thank you.”

Sheesh! Twice inside of twenty minutes, I had had to apologize for defaulting to a power play and my students were the ones who gave me the feedback that allowed me to check myself and try a different way. I thought I was the one who was supposed to be doing that for them.

Each day, I have to remind myself that I am not the center of the universe; the behavior of my students is not directed at me. They are dealing with all kinds of things. For example, not one, not two, but three of my students reported “my aunt just died” this week! I have got students who are homeless, some who work over twenty hours a week, and some who are earning money to help their families pay the bills. I’ve got students who have family in jail or who are on probation themselves. I’ve got students whose families do not have a vehicle and can’t come to get them in the middle of the day if they are suddenly sick or injured or overwhelmed by the amount of loss in their lives.

And these are the things I know about. Many of the struggles my students face are too private to share.

So, instead of being annoyed when my students don’t walk in on time and enthusiastic for learning, I need to be curious.

What is going on that has everyone distracted today? I noticed you weren’t at school for several days, is everything ok? I can see that you are preoccupied with your phone — are you just caught up in scrolling? or is it deeper than that?

I don’t need to have an attitude. Asking a simple question can provide my students with the feedback that might allow them to a) provide me with information that explains what’s going on or b) check themselves and try a different way.

Life is complex and English Language Arts aren’t the top priority for a student who is reeling from crisis. However, it is my job to share the value of learning ELA for the purpose of having strong communication skills, succeeding in postsecondary learning, and for being prepared for future employment. I need to be compassionate in regard to my students’ reality while also engaging them in learning and holding them accountable to meet the learning standards that will give them access to spaces beyond my classroom.

It’s a big job. And sometimes I get tired, and I blow it.

However, I am noticing that the class of 2024 doesn’t have any trouble holding me accountable. They are not afraid to say, “Mrs. Rathje, you can’t say that.” or “I don’t like the way you are coming at me.” or “Mrs. Rathje, are you doing ok?” They are modeling for me the ways that might be appropriate to hold them accountable!

And, if I’m not too consumed with being in control, if I’m brave enough, I might just model for them the ways that they can respond to my feedback.

You’re right, that was harsh. Did that sound sarcastic? I apologize. Guys, can I be honest — I’m not feeling the best today. Can I just take a minute to gather myself? Can you all cut me some slack?

I love these kids so much, and I am so impressed by their ability to notice that something doesn’t feel right and, in that moment, to say something. In this way, they are worlds ahead of me. They are brave, and I want to honor their bravery in a way that seems counterintuitive — I want to be vulnerable.

Brene Brown in Atlas of the Heart says: ” In a world where perfectionism, pleasing, and proving are used as armor to protect our egos and our feelings, it takes a lot of courage to show up and be all in when we can’t control the outcome. It also takes discipline and self-awareness to understand what to share and with whom. Vulnerability is not oversharing, it’s sharing with people who have earned the right to hear our stories and our experiences” (14).

If what I’m trying to do is build transformative relationships with my students, what better way do I have than modeling vulnerability — welcoming feedback, admitting I was wrong, saying I’m sorry, and moving forward in a way that honors the humanity of the people in front of me.

Back in the early days of my teaching, the old pros used to advise us to “not smile before Thanksgiving.” Their philosophy was that teachers had to be hard asses for the first quarter if they wanted to maintain control of their classrooms. For many it worked.

But I’m not interested in control.

I’m in education because I have an insufferable belief in transformation, and in my experience, I have to let go of my need to control in order to create the space in which change is possible.

I can’t create that space through force. I need to be willing to step back — to be the one to create an opening.

If my students are brave enough to hold me accountable, I’m going to be brave enough to try a different way..

Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Romans 12:2

Wins and Losses

September 25, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

I lost some sleep last night— it’s not too atypical for me, a gal in her 50s, to be unable to sleep at night because a) I’ve got some losses on my brain I haven’t yet processed and b) while trying to distract myself from those unprocessed losses, I have stumbled into a particularly engaging murder mystery.

The coincidence, though, is that the book revolves around multiple losses! Somehow reading about fictional losses is preferable to thinking about the real ones I’ve witnessed in the past week.

I prefer to celebrate wins — I just finished the third week of the school year, and the wins are stacking up! The majority of my students have been consistently opting in to learning, the weather has been near perfection, our seniors (and some juniors) toured two colleges this past week, and my newest cohort of reading students is off to a great start!

There is so much to celebrate, but wins in every context are invariably set against an undeniable backdrop of loss. For example, in the last three weeks, our school, which routinely has a 90% staff retention rate, has lost one teacher each week. The first week, our newly hired freshman ELA teacher resigned to return to a district where he had previously been employed. The second week, a strong team member who has taught financial literacy to our students with her whole heart, left to pursue an administrative role in another district. And this week, perhaps the hardest hit of all, our long-time algebra and geometry teacher who has some of the strongest relationships in the building, announced that he is making a career move at the end of next week.

In a small school like ours, with just under 300 students, these blows hit hard. We are a family, after all. We all know each other by name. We razz each other in the hallway. We defend each other in the midst of chaos. We cheer each other on. We have each other’s backs.

And the loss is not only a blow to the morale of the staff, it is the latest in a string of losses for our students.

You may be tired of me saying it, but it is the reality I witness each day — many of my students have suffered deep, deep loss. Just this past week, I learned of a junior who lost her mother since school started and a senior whose grandmother died last week. Then Friday, one of my seniors stepped out of class to take a call during which he learned that his brother, who had been in critical condition, had just died! And these are not isolated cases. Each year — each and every year — I have had a student who has lost a parent. It seems each year I have also had a student who has lost a sibling. And last year, I even had a student who lost her own newborn child.

So imagine that you’re in your senior year, that you spent your freshman year in your bedroom peering into a zoom room on a chromebook that you didn’t quite yet know how to navigate, that you lost one or two or three close family members to Covid, that your family had to move one or two or three times within the last two to three years because they a) couldn’t afford the rent, b) got evicted, or c) had some other family trauma that necessitated a move, and then you show up to your senior year and notice that once a week a staff member disappears. How does one respond in the face of loss after loss after loss?

You might be overwhelmed. You might become depressed. Or, you might do whatever you have to do to survive — you might keep people at arm’s length, or you may put up an crusty exterior so that people don’t know you’re hurting.

I’ve seen that. I watched a girl all last fall defiantly walk out of classes, repeatedly (and sometimes aggressively) spar with classmates, and verbally challenge those who might dare to hold her accountable. She was a junior, but I knew her name because I had repeated hallway interactions with her.

“Where are you supposed to be, LaShay?”

“I’m goin’ to the bathroom.”

“Didn’t you just come from the bathroom?”

“Stop talkin to me.”

She was angry, it was obvious. And she was kind of hard to like, if I’m gonna be honest. And, I’ll admit, that when she was removed from the building and forced to do online learning after an incident that threatened the safety of others, I was a bit relieved. She was a high-flyer, constantly in need of redirection from not just me, but all of the members of the leadership and school culture teams.

When she showed up at the back to school fair a few weeks ago, with her younger sister, who had also been sent home due to the same incident, I swallowed hard and thought, Well, here we go. This time, she’s in my class..

Her sister sought me out, gave me a hug, and said, “Mrs. Rathje, we’re back!”

I hugged her, and said, “Great to see you! Is LaShay here?”

“She’s in the gym.”

“Let’s go find her,” I said.

I walked to the gym, found LaShay, walked up to her, smiled, and said, “Welcome back,” with the most genuine smile I could conjur. I was determined to start off on the right foot.

She side-eyed me, and then looked down.

“You’re with me this year, dear. I’m looking forward to it.”

Without answering, she walked away, to go talk to a friend on the other side of the gym.

The first week with LaShay was a little dicey. She showed up to class consistently a little late. She scrolled on her phone when everyone else in the class followed my direction to “stow phones during instruction,” and got a little huffy with me when I joined her for partner work when she refused to join anyone else.

But I persisted. I pointed out that her attendance had been perfect near the end of the second week, “even if you do tend to show up late,” I said.

“I don’t show up late. I’m here on time. I’m doing my best. My mom has cancer, and I’m the oldest. I gotta get myself and all my siblings together, but I get all of us here on time.”

There it was. My opportunity. I remembered a brief interchange from the year before when I learned that her mom was sick, when I asked her why she was crying in the hallway. She wasn’t crying now. She was, indeed, “together” and she and her siblings were consistently in the building.

“LaShay, I’m so sorry to hear that. I do see you in school every day. I was noticing that you are often late to my class, but I didn’t realize that you were the oldest or that your mother was still sick. You probably have a lot of responsibility right now.”

She looked at me and nodded.

“Ok. I can give you some grace, but I’m gonna ask you to do your best to get here by the bell. It’s something we are really working on this year. However, now that I know what’s going on, I will try to be understanding. Please let me know how I can support you.”

“Ok.” she said, and she got back to her work.

I’m gonna call that a win — a big win! — against a backdrop of devastating loss. She lost half a year in the building last year because of a dust up that was likely a response to the trauma of her mom being critically ill. She is losing some of her childhood and her innocence because she has to take on the mantle of responsibility during her mother’s illness. However, she is winning, because she is developing the skills to communicate her reality in a way that will help her get the understanding she needs.

It takes vulnerability to share with a teacher, one who has historically been on your case, that something is not right in your world. She couldn’t count on me responding like I did. She doesn’t know me that well. But she took the chance, and that’s a win.

On Friday afternoon, I got in my car, and drove to a football field in the heart of Detroit to work the gate at our team’s game. La Shay is a cheerleader — on top of everything else right now, she is claiming the opportunity to fully opt in to her senior year. In order to stay on the team, she will have to keep herself together, stay out of trouble, and represent the school well.

During half time, the cheerleaders came over to where I was standing with last year’s principal, who came to the game because even though she no longer works in our building, these are her babies. The girls took turns hugging their former principal, and I took the opportunity to move in closer.

“LaShay, come here,” I said as I waved her over, “Your principal needs to hear that you are killing it this year. That you’ve got perfect attendance and you’re completing your assignments!”

She beamed. The principal hugged her, encouraged her to keep it up, and hugged her again, saying, “I knew you would!”

Another win — and this girl could really use some wins right now.

Loss is the reality of life on the planet — the hits inevitably keep coming, so it’s important to not only process the loss, but to note the wins. I didn’t always do this. Because I was so frantically trying to create perfection, I didn’t leave the space to acknowledge, let alone grieve, loss. Instead, I defiantly moved forward, demanding those around me to join my pursuit of perfection, and because I was looking for perfection, I didn’t celebrate all the wins.. I lost a lot in those days — the tenderness I could have had in some of my most dear relationships, the opportunity to show the people I love the most the grace that they needed in their losses, and the opportunity to celebrate their wins. I wasn’t brave enough (or self-aware enough) at the time to be vulnerable — to communicate my reality in ways that get me the understanding that I needed.

But I’m brave enough now — brave enough to seek out a defiant young woman in a school gym and to take the chance at building a relationship with her, because she looks a lot like someone I used to be, and it seems she could use someone to help her learn to celebrate the wins that happen against the backdrop of loss.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

*One of the ways I celebrate student wins (and cushion losses) is by providing a steady stream of snacks, supplies, and prizes in my classroom. Many of you have contributed to my stockpile, and I am thankful for you! You make this work possible!

Post-Covid Learning: One Teacher’s Experience

September 17, 2023September 18, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

In March of 2020, we sent all of the nation’s children home in the first weeks of the Covid Pandemic. How could we have anticipated the impact of this decision? While some students were home for several weeks, many students, especially students of color in our nation’s urban areas, were home for more than a year. How might this have impacted their social-emotional development, they mental health, or their learning?

We educators have been beginning to unpack the broad impacts of the pandemic on our students over the last two to three school years. Here’s what I’ve seen.

In the fall of 2021, when my students first returned to in-person learning at my Detroit charter school after 18 months of remote instruction — which for many in my community meant no instruction at all — I noticed extremely high anxiety and a limited ability to interact with peers without conflict. Our students needed support to merely exist in the classroom within six feet of their peers. Although everyone was masked, these students had learned that proximity meant danger. It took some time for them be comfortable around one another, particularly because with some regularity, whole groups were sent home to quarantine after one member of their classroom cluster tested positive. It wasn’t until late in that school year that the Covid protocols changed, masks became optional, and our whole community started to relax a little. The heightened anxiety surrounding that school year led some students to stay home intermittently, to switch to virtual learning for yet another year, or to do their best to muddle through day by day. For teachers, this meant that academics, while important, were not the priority. Since Maslow illustrated his hierarchy of needs we’ve recognized that a student needs to feel safe before he can be free to learn. Our focus was on building predictability through routine and on getting our students the social work supports that they needed.

Much of this carried into that second fall — 2022 — where our back to school professional development sessions centered on the brain science behind trauma. We learned about the amygdala’s response to danger — flight, fight, freeze, and appease — and how our routines and instructional strategies can minimize this response and the interruptions it causes to learning. This is relevant in our context not only because our students have experienced the extended communal trauma of the pandemic but because they have also endured the traumas associated with systemic racism such as food insecurity, housing insecurity, violence, and negative experiences with law enforcement. Our social workers and behavioral specialists worked overtime to anticipate difficult situations, to mitigate conflict, and to restore relationships. Again, although academics were moving up on the priority list, they were not at the top.

As we were moving through the virtual year and the return to in-person learning — I, fresh from working at Lindamood-Bell where our whole gig was reading intervention and remediation, noticed that very few, if any, of my of my students were reading and comprehending at grade level. I lifted my concern to our Director of Academics, “We’ve got to get a reading interventionist in here — these students need support.”

I said that during the 2021-2022 school year and found myself in August of 2022 at an intensive training week for the reading program called Adolescent Accelerated Reading Intervention (AARI). I would be piloting this program for one year — last school year. During that academic year, I worked with 18 freshmen over the course of two semesters. Each of them started AARI with an instructional reading level at or below third grade. Over the course of one semester, the students and I worked on decoding (sounding out words, breaking words into syllables, etc), which is not part of AARI, building a mental movie about what we were reading (also not AARI), and using the text to support our thinking and developing metacognitive skills (all AARI). After one semester of work, I only had one student who did not improve at all — and that was likely due to the fact that he was absent almost half of the days that we met. Two students grew one grade level during that semester, most grew two to three grade levels, and a few grew four or more grade levels in one semester. It’s quite a remarkable program.

As a result of this success, and the data I obtained testing students over two semesters, our school adopted a broad tier-two intervention called Read 180 for all of our freshmen for this school year. That means that rather than 18 freshmen getting the intensive remediation that I provided, ALL incoming freshmen would receive an intervention that, delivered via computer, in small groups, and with the aid of an instructor, yields two years of growth in one year. I was very excited to hear that we were getting help for all of our freshmen. I was even more excited when I learned that I would be providing AARI to a select group of sophomores and juniors.

I have spent the last two weeks working one-on-one to evaluate students who scored the lowest among their classmates on the Reading and Language section of the PSAT last Spring. (Perhaps one day I will write a whole post about my feelings regarding standardized testing in general and the SAT/ACT specifically, but not today.) I pulled each of these students to my room, had a conversation with them, administered the Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI) and determined their need for AARI. I was gut punched when I realized that two sophomores and one junior in our building scored at the first grade level for reading comprehension. How in the world were they functioning in high school? How could they continue to show up if the content of their classes was that frustrating?

Most of the students I selected for the class tested at the second or third grade level when measuring reading comprehension. When we take into account that many of them did not read much from 2020-2021, and that many of them have been in a trauma response for the past two to three years or more, this is not terribly surprising. What is surprising is the half dozen students I met with who scored much higher. These few lit up when I told them that the PSAT is not an accurate measure of their intellect, that although Covid was devastating and their skills are possibly rusty, they have the capacity to be successful not only in high school but beyond. I looked them in the eyes and assured them that now that I know who they are and what they can do, I will be watching and expecting great things. These few, mostly black males, sat up straighter, looked me in the eyes, said, “Yes, Ma’am,” and “thank you.” One young woman who, despite severe anxiety, demonstrated a keen aptitude for academics said, “I am thankful for you and what you are doing..”

The ones who qualified for my class had an equally amazing response. To a person, they acknowledged that “reading is hard for me.” They said, “I need this class, ” and “thank you for doing this.”

Here’s what they didn’t do. They didn’t say, “I don’t need help with reading.” or “I’m not taking some dumb reading class.” They didn’t refuse to read lists of words or answer questions about the similarities and differences between whales and fish. They didn’t question why I was pulling them from class. They didn’t resist.

No, these students recognize what they have lost. They know they need help. They know support when they see it.

How do I know? Because for the past two weeks, as I have moved through the halls, I have heard these students, and the students I worked with last year. They call out, “Hi, Mrs. Rathje.” They don’t act like they don’t know me. They don’t avoid me. No. They stop by my room, they give me a fist bump as I pass, they throw their arms around me in a hug.

But they do these things not just to me. They love all the teachers in our building because they feel safe here. They see the hard work we have done to create a predictable environment. They notice us responding to their mental health needs. They understand that we see them, we know what they have been through, and we are here for them, cheering them on to success.

On Friday, I was calling all the parents of my new cohort. “Good afternoon, this is Mrs. Rathje from Detroit Leadership Academy.” I explained why I was calling, that we had noticed since Covid that many of our students are below grade level in reading comprehension, and that their student had been identified as one who could benefit from this class. Most parents said, “Ok, thank you,” or “Whatever he needs, I support,” but one mother took my breath away.

“Thank you so much for noticing this. I lost both of my parents during Covid and to be honest, I’ve been deep in grief and didn’t even realize that he was falling behind. Thank you so much for paying attention to him.”

These students are not behind in reading because they are dumb or poor or Black. They are behind in reading because they have been through a lot, their learning has been interrupted, and they need some support to get back on track.

I can’t wait to get started with them and to cheer them on as they learn and grow this year.

I’m a sucker for a story of restoration, especially when I have a front row seat.

I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
Psalm 27:13

*For data surrounding the impact of Covid on learning, check out the documents linked below:

Harvard School of Education, May 2023

Center for School and Student Progress, July 2023

NWEA Study, Chalkbeat, July 2023

**If you know an educator in the Detroit area that cares about educational equity, please connect them with me. Because of the nature of our work, we are always looking for partners, teachers, coaches, and other encouragers.

Front Row Seat

September 11, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

The Thursday before school started, we the staff of Detroit Leadership Academy took our stations around the building, preparing for the open house where students would come to get their schedules and chromebooks and begin to reconnect with the world of school after eight weeks away.

I was at the main entrance, checking students in. I didn’t know the freshmen, of course, they were new to our building, but I was watching for those students I recognized, especially the small group of students I had had in my reading class the previous year.

“Hey! How was your summer?” I said as I stood from my seat to receive a hug. “It’s so good to see you!”

I was also watching for last year’s juniors, who would be my new senior class. I knew some of their names, but we aren’t familiar enough for a hug.

“Are you ready for this?” I would say, “You ready to be a senior?”

The replies were varied: “Of course!” “Hell, yeah!” “I think so.” “I’m not sure.” “I’m scared.”

I’ve seen it from every group of seniors I’ve ever taught. Some things don’t change; others do.

The first day of school was predicted to be in excess of 90 degrees, and since our school doesn’t have air conditioning, our administration determined to have an early release. We would see each group of students for just 30 minutes, and then they would board their non – air conditioned busses for the sweltering ride home,.

I had two box fans and two ceiling fans blowing, and my two operational windows as far open as they go. I stationed a cooler full of water bottles covered in ice at the front of my room, and kept the lights off to keep the room as cool as possible.

When the bell sounded, my students met me at the door, got their seat assignments, and made their way to their desks. It took me a while — perhaps until this reflective moment — to register that something felt different.

This wasn’t the fall of 2020 where I met my students inside the small square of the zoom room.

It wasn’t the fall of 2021 where my students entered my room mask-clad, the vibration of anxiety among us palpable.

And it wasn’t the manufactured bravado and audaciousness of 2022 — the defiant swagger born of two years of persistent trauma.

No, this past week, the first week of school year 2023-24 felt….light…spacious…and maybe even hopeful.

As I shared the big picture goals for the year — the district-wide vision that all of our students would be accepted to a college, that 80% of them would enroll in some kind of post-secondary training, and that all of them would attend school more than 90% of the time — I watched the faces of my students, expecting the usual push-back, disinterest, or defiance, but what I saw was a collective subtle nod, an acceptance of this reality, and (an at least temporary) buy in.

Now, don’t be mistaken. I still saw seniors struggling to stay off their phones. I still had one student who, when I mentioned that we would be filling out the FAFSA together, stood up from his desk and said, “I ain’t doing that.” I still had at least one student who proclaimed his main post-secondary goal to be “making music”. It was a room full of high school seniors after all, but something felt different.

While our community regularly struggles with chronic absenteeism, the majority of my students attended all four days last week — even though the temps did crawl into the nineties and both my classroom and the busses were stiflingly hot. Not only that, all of my students made eye contact with me this week. All of my students, even on day one, responded to my call for attention. All of my students participated in gatherings, like the one below, where I asked them to stand and move to the four corners of the room to demonstrate their preferences and interests.

And all of my students participated in the making of our class contract, and when asked, every single student in my class stood up and signed their name in agreement to our class norms.

Some teachers may not think this is a big deal. Perhaps they get 100% buy in on every activity they do in their classrooms, but this has not been the case for me. Not since Covid. Not in my little charter school in Detroit. Not with seniors. Not in this demographic that has historically and recently suffered so much.

In the past few years, it has taken me quite a bit of time to build the relationships and trust that lead to this kind of engagement. When I first started at this school, I was some middle-aged white lady from Ann Arbor — how could I have any idea of what life was like on the other side of the zoom camera where an adolescent Black student sat on her bedroom floor trying to figure out what a URL was and how she was going to move from one zoom room to the other.

The following year, my giddiness at finally getting to be “in the flesh” with students was met with distrust, apprehension, and the layers of protectiveness that Covid and generations of systemic racism had produced. My students were stand-offish, skittish, and surly. It was well into the second semester before I had any meaningful relationships.

Last year, it took less time to build trust with most, but some still refused to engage for the entire year. Yes, the entire year.

So when I got 100% opting in on the first day last week, I was a little stunned.

I was even more surprised on Thursday when I collected the student survey I had handed out and started to read the vulnerable responses to my question: What are you concerned about as you start this year?

Do I have enough credits to graduate? Will I be able to fill out the FAFSA if I’m undocumented? Will I be able to stay focused?

I was in awe of their transparency with their answers to my question: What do you want me to know about you?

English is not my first language. I get mad easily. I am a hard worker. I am funny. I hate school.

And I was touched by their responses to my question, How can I support you this year?

Push me. Help me understand. Explain things when I am confused. Be patient with me.

I’ve just finished the first week of school and I know more about this year’s seniors than I have known about many of the grads for the last three years. Why is this? Is it a sign that the trauma from Covid is waning? Is this just a more self-aware and confident group? Have I been in this school long enough that I have built a reputation of being one who can be trusted? Or is this just evidence that God’s grace is flooding my classroom?

Perhaps it’s some of all of that, but I am not going to look away. I am sensing a rare opportunity with this group. It is smaller than any senior class I have ever had, and they have already opened themselves up so much. I am sensing that we just might become a little family, and I am here for it.

So pray for me, if you would. Pray that I would truly see these students, that I would hear them, and that I would be willing to share with them what I know about the English language, of course, but more importantly what I know about life, about vulnerability, and about change.

Because guys, one thing I know about people who are willing to open themselves up is that they are on the verge of transformation, and I am going to have a front row seat.

What types of changes do I think I’ll see? I’m not sure of all of them, but I have already told my students several times this week that “this is the year when we make the transition from childhood to adulthood.” And for many of these students that is more true than I know. One just had a baby. Some will move straight into the military. Some will go straight to work. And even those who are moving on to more education in college will be shifting to a world that they have never seen before — one where the students around them will be from vastly different backgrounds, one where they won’t necessarily be near the family they have been used to, one where they are going to feel potentially more vulnerable than they have ever felt before.

So the fact that they are already willing to bare a small bit of themselves to me gives me a lot of hope that they will be ready for all the change that is coming at them, and because of that I am sitting on the edge of my front row seat.

I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
Psalm 27:13

Supporting Change

August 28, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

In a little over a week, I’ll be standing at the door to my classroom, waiting to greet my new students. I have seniors for English Language Arts, and I’ll also have one section each of sophomores and juniors for the reading intervention I lead.

For the past few weeks I’ve been analyzing my scope and sequence, reviewing my summative assessments, and examining data from last year. Last week I met with colleagues to plan and prepare. This week I’ll be in my classroom arranging desks, putting up decor, and finalizing my lesson plans.

As I move closer and closer to being with my students, I am beginning to wonder what their summer has been like.

Mine was filled with family, wedding preparation, food, celebration, and time in the garden, with friends, and in long, luxurious reading sessions.

To be honest, with all the activity around here, I haven’t given much thought to what my students have been up to.

Have some of them had summer jobs? Have others been responsible to care for younger siblings at home?

Have they spent time with their friends or family?

Have they had plenty to eat? Have they been safe? Have they suffered a loss?

Are they ready to come back to our building — to the predictability, the routine, the familiar faces?

Do they have what they need to feel comfortable walking through those doors on day one?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that we’re changing things up for our students this year, and change is hard. When teachers learned last week that we’d changed from a block schedule (four 100-minute periods a day) to a traditional schedule (seven 50-minute periods a day), there was some scuttlebutt in the room. The rhythm in the building will be different — students will get up and move every hour, and seven times a day the halls will be teeming with the entire student body. The goal? That each student will interact with each of their teachers every day.

Ultimately, the change will benefit both teachers and students. Our data shows us that our students need more “at-bats” — they need to touch math every day, practice language arts principles every day, and get micro doses of science each day. We moved to the block schedule during Covid to simplify virtual instruction — to give teachers more time with each class to get connected, to build a sense of community, and to be able to touch base with each of the students within the confines of the zoom room. When we returned to in-person learning, we kept the block schedule to minimize the amount of change that our teachers and students were managing. We remained in the block schedule last year, but as June rolled around and the data came in — low attendance, low test scores, low family engagement — we had to take a look at making some changes.

We’ve got to see our students every day. We’ve got to build a stronger sense of community and belonging. We’ve got to strengthen connections with our families, to clearly convey the fact that we want their students to succeed — in high school, but more importantly, beyond high school. We’ve got to build strong relationships so that our students and their families can see the why of education — the possibilities it provides, the doors it opens.

And in order for our students and families to be able to buy in, they need to be able to trust us — their teachers, their staff, their administrators — they need to see that we are for them, and that can only happen over time and with plenty of reps.

The good news is that we have a strong, committed staff. We routinely retain over 90% of our teachers. Inside an environment like ours — one with 100% free and reduced lunch, 99% students of color, and a history of educational inequity — this kind of loyalty is rare. Our teachers function like a family — one that cares wildly for its kids.

These teachers and administrators, seeing the data and recognizing the work it would take to reconfigure their instructional plans into a different model, took a collective deep breath and got busy. They want their “babies” to have what they need — mastery of content, success in the classroom, an opportunity to move beyond the high school to other worlds they have not yet dreamed of. And because of that, they are willing to do the hard work — not only of reconfiguring their plans, but of communicating their buy-in to a few hundred teenagers who will likely have some opinions about this change.

I can see it now. I’ll be standing at my door next week wearing the stupid grin I always wear on the first day back to school — man I love love school! — and the students will start showing up at my door.

“Mrs. Rathje, what’s up with this schedule?”

“We’ve got seven classes every day?!”

“Ya’all doing too much!”

“I’m already ready to go back home!”

It’s the sound of discomfort around change. They had pictured what this first school day would look like, but when they arrived, reality didn’t match expectations. And if you’ve lived through some trauma, which most of our students have, the unexpected can be unsettling. So, I’ll want to hear my students. I’ll want to acknowledge that they are experiencing something new, and I’ll want to assure them that everything will be ok.

“Yes. The schedule is different this year. Yes. We’ve got seven classes every day. Yes. It’s going to feel like a lot for a minute. And, yes, I am sure you feel like going home. Let’s look at your schedule together. What period do you think you’ll enjoy the most? What time do you have lunch? When will I see you each day?”

I’ll want to come beside my students. I’ll want to let them know that although change can be intimidating, it can also bring a freshness, a new outlook, an opportunity for something different.

They won’t believe me right away. Life has taught the students of today to be wary — to be suspicious — to anticipate the other shoe to drop. So, I’ll have to encourage them to hang in there, to give it a try, to go through the motions, to watch and see.

They’ll grumble, but most will find a seat. They’ll engage in whatever silly gathering activity I lead them through, some rolling their eyes and exuding disinterest or annoyance. I’ll reward any tiny glimpse of compliance, engagement, or cooperation, and I’ll work hard to call each student by name beginning on the very first day. I’ll share my interests with them by showing this slide:

Then I’ll invite them to make something similar to share with the class. Some will love the opportunity to have the spotlight. Others will beg me to let them just show me — not the rest of the class.

I’ll begin to see who my students are, and they will begin to see me. That will be the start — of relationship, of trust, of finding a space in which to learn and grow.

My students might be uncomfortable with change — most of us are — but this teacher has been through enough change to know that possibility lives on the other side. I won’t get it all right, but hopefully I can be a reassuring voice as we move through this change together.

I’ll let you know how it turns out, of course, and I would love your prayers and encouragement along the way.

Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.
I Thessalonians 5:11

*If you are able, support or encourage a teacher in your life. If you would like to support me and my students, email me at krathje66@gmail.com and I’ll send you my wishlist.

Second Half Living

April 3, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

A couple of years ago, I turned 55.

I imagine when some people hit an age like 55, they begin to think about retirement and the end of their careers, but since I had already been in a long season where I thought my career was over and had recently returned to my profession, I was still energized about teaching, still excited about being in the classroom, and still looking forward to many more years.

That didn’t stop the reality of my age though — the fact that the number 55 is just ten years away from 65, the age when Americans qualify for Medicare.

Ten years sounds like a long time until you glance backward and realize that ten years ago was when I first visited a rheumatologist, when we first considered moving back to Michigan, and when we were starting to say goodbye to St. Louis, to our teenagers, and to the life we had come to know.

It wasn’t that long ago, and ten more years will surely pass quickly.

I think it was out of the recognition of that reality that I jokingly declared 55 to be my halfway point — I was going to live to be 110!

I was finally enjoying life again having learned to manage my chronic illness and having navigated a long season of grief. I was learning so much about myself — what makes me tick, what I like, what I don’t like, how I think, how I believe, what makes me wonder, and what I want to impact. Surely I needed another half a lifetime to further explore what I was learning and to put that learning to good use.

Now, who knows whether I will actually live to be 110 or 85, or 58, but regardless, I am certainly in the second half of life, what Carl Jung and Richard Rohr describe as the phase of “undoing much of what has been accomplished in the first half in order to get at a deeper heart of human life.”

Rohr (and Jung) say that the first half of life is “focussed on the development and enhancement of our Ego and its mind-set: ambitions, plans, competitiveness, judgments about others, looking after oneself, one’s career, one’s family” and mine certainly was! Didn’t you, like me, run from high school to college to marriage to children to parenting and career, making snap decisions to take care of yourself and those that you loved only to come to the screeching realization around 45 or so that many of those decisions, though well-intentioned and possibly even prayerful and consulted upon, were ill-founded, poorly motivated, and simply wrong?

Didn’t you, like me, stand in the wreckage, grieving, wondering how it passed so quickly and why we don’t get a chance at a do-over?

That, according to Rohr, is the kind of devastation that leads to the openness that allows for growth in the second half of life. He says, “The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further.’

Sheesh. Does that make me feel any better? I don’t know.

What it does help me lean into though, is my current reality.

I am, at now 57, learning more and changing more than I believe I have at any other time in my life. I have not only a therapist but also not one, but two, instructional coaches, and a small group that my husband and I meet with weekly. My therapist is helping me unlearn behaviors that are deeply rooted in my childhood — ways of coping that once allowed me to navigate my realities that became patterns that are no longer useful. My instructional coaches help me see how strategies that were effective in the classrooms I served in the 1990s and early 2000s can be modified to meet the needs of the students I have now. Our small group provides a judgment-free space in which to interrogate long-held beliefs, to sit in unanswered complexity, to admit our failures vulnerably, and to be loved unconditionally.

Thirty year old me wouldn’t have received so much input from others. She was busy kicking butts and taking names — doing what she needed to do to look after herself and her family. She “knew” she was right and she didn’t have time for the input of others.

But after all those “right” moves and the “supposed achievements” of that era have fallen apart, I’m in a new position.

I am, as they say, “coachable”.

I was getting ready for an uncomfortable encounter recently, and the anxiety was building as the date grew closer, so I kept bringing up the pending situation with my therapist. Because of my history in similar situations — of feeling unheard, undervalued, and “tolerated”, I had some real emotions, so I couldn’t see clearly. I could no longer define the purpose for the encounter — why was I going to meet with this person if the potential for hurt was so great? My therapist prompted me to think about what I needed from the interaction and reminded me to set my “past baggage at the door” so that it wouldn’t clutter the reality of the current situation. She helped me practice language to express my needs, and even though I had some anxiety throughout the interaction, I was able to manage my expectations and come away feeling content, even though the outcome might not have been exactly what I had pictured.

That’s something, isn’t it?

One of my instructional coaches and I are working on my ability to not let the way my students show up impact how I show up. You would think that after three decades in the classroom, I would have this down — that I would be steady Eddy in the face of student behavior, and for the most part I am. However, these past three years have put me to the test. The students I see today are in some ways very similar to the students I taught back in the fall of 1989. However, in some ways they are very different. They have been through a lot and they show up erratically — late, loud, hungry, irritable, disrespectful, and unconcerned about how their white middle-aged teacher might feel about it. Mostly, I greet them at the door smiling and hopeful and navigate through class with a no-nonsense approach, but guys, I am also a human being who gets tired, who loses her patience, and who falls back on muscle memory. I still have the default switch that flips over to kicking butts and taking names when the going gets tough, and while that might’ve worked in the past, today calls for a different strategy — a calm, sure response rather than a powerful reaction.

That was super easy to type, but much more complicated to execute.

Many of my students enter the classroom unable to leave their “past baggage at the door”.

(How could a teenager know how to do that, when I am still practicing at 57?)

They don’t leave it at the door, but they lug it right in, dripping debris in their path and dumping the entire mess all over my classroom. Picture all the shit of 20 or so teenagers heaped among the desks of my classroom. It’s a little crowded. And smelly. And uncomfortable.

One student shoves another student because she is crowding his space. Another puts her head down because she “just can’t deal” with the chaos. Others try to position themselves in such a way to ignore the heaping stench so that they can opt in to learning, complete their assignment, and move through their day.

My students don’t need me in those moments to shout or demand or ridicule. No, they need me to draw on the coaching that I am receiving and the years of experience I have gained from living my life dragging around a heaping pile of my own.

They need me to be unfazed by the stench. They need me to be prepared and engaging. They need me to have compassion when they “just can’t deal” and they need me to be nonjudgmental so that they can choose, at any moment, to join whatever it is we are doing.

I was having some difficulty with a particular student. We’ll call him Tyler. He comes to school almost every day, but he makes it to my class just once or twice a week. When he does come, he arrives late and loud, making comments that draw all the attention toward him, interrupting my class and disrupting any hope of learning.

I was complaining about this student to my coach and she said, “Make him feel like he is part of the classroom.”

I stared at her with jaw gaping,.

“Use what he has to say to direct him back to the class.”

As I sat staring at her, I realized that I had been falling back on old faithful — trying to get him in line by shaming him, telling him that the reason that he acts out is because he doesn’t know what we are doing, rather than doing everything I could to rope him in so that he would know what we are doing,

Damn.

And because I’m not still 30, not still sure that I have all the answers to everything, not still consumed with the advancement of my self and my family, I gulped and said, “Wow. You’re right.”

I went on to tell her that this very student had surprised me with his written work and that perhaps I could use it for a model in class. She said, “Don’t do that! He thrives on negative attention, and he will sabotage that attempt! Instead, tell him quietly, privately, that you were impressed with his work. Let him know that you see him, but do it quietly.”

And you know what? I did. And he received my compliment and turned in his assignment on time and lowered his volume just a little bit that day. It was a very little bit of movement in the right direction, but I will take it, because I know that he is still in the first half of life — he is still developing his ego, still looking after himself and his ambitions, and in his context, that is much more challenging than I think I could ever comprehend.

It’s quite a juxtaposition — me in my second half of life spending so much of my day surrounded by the unfiltered, confident bravado of teenagers, but I have to believe we were made for each other — they with their uncensored commentary on my wardrobe choices and teaching strategies followed by their genuine questions about what my prom was like and how I spend my money and me as a spectator in the room watching them navigate love, friendship, and loss as they plan for their future.

I know what’s coming for them — a season of challenge and discovery as they plan for and navigate their way into adulthood and the inevitable realization (at some point) that they’ve gotten a lot of things wrong. Maybe the best thing I can provide for them right now is a normalization of the fact that we make a lot of mistakes but that we can try again. We can learn, we can grow, and more importantly, we can give one another grace along the way. I think that’s what I wish I would’ve liked to have known in the first half of life. It’s what I’m thankful to know now.

for from His fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.”
John 1:16

What World do We Live In? Part 2

March 6, 2023 ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

**I wrote a piece called “What World Are We Living In” in the fall of 2020 when I first started commuting from Ann Arbor to Detroit to teach in a small charter school and began to daily witness the disparity between the two communities. The following post grew out of an experience I had last week in another school district.

Last Wednesday, instead of driving to Detroit first thing in the morning, I drove to Oakland County to participate in a day of professional development along with a dozen other teachers who use the Adolescent Accelerated Reading Intervention. I’ve been using the program for a little over a semester, with great results, but I have been aware that I might not be crossing all my t’s and dotting all my i’s. Having the opportunity to be a fly on the wall of two separate classrooms as other teachers implemented this intervention would hopefully help me see what I’ve been missing.

The beginning of my commute looked largely the same as it does on my daily trip to Detroit — interstate highway merging onto surface streets. However, I noted that while my regular route takes me past fast food, gas stations, minimarts, and older working class neighborhoods, this route into Oakland County took me past Starbucks, Trader Joes, and nicer restaurants before it led me through residential sections with large suburban homes. And then, when I took the final turn, I saw the school where I would begin the day.

It was a sprawling two-story building on a large piece of property surrounded by multiple well-lit and freshly-lined parking lots. I found a spot, grabbed my stuff, and made my way to the guest entrance at the front of the building. I approached a door, pushed a button, and looked into the camera before I was buzzed in to a glass-enclosed foyer.

There, a staff member/gatekeeper looked me over and buzzed me through the second door. She knew why I was there and directed me to room “two-oh-something or other”.

“Which way is that?” I asked.

“Up those stairs and follow the signs.”

I walked up the open carpeted stairway in the expansive atrium to the second floor, also carpeted, and found the group of teachers already in conversation.

They sat in a semicircle in the [also] carpeted classroom. I found a seat in the back of the room in a bar stool height chair next to a tall table. The students had not yet arrived, and the teachers were discussing what was on the agenda for the class this day — one of the final steps of reading a book in the AARI program, mapping the text.

I heard the bell ring in the hallway, and the students started coming in, finding their resources in a strategically placed filing system, then making their way to the table where I was sitting. I relocated myself and began to observe.

Right away I noticed a t I hadn’t been crossing when I looked at the big piece of butcher paper where they had started their text map. My students and I had mapped our own text the day before, and it looked somewhat similar to, if noticeably messier than, the one I was looking at, but there was one big difference — ours was written all in black on white paper. The map in this classroom was color-coded to illustrate its organization — sections of the book written in sequential order were outlined in pink, those written in a compare/contrast format were outlined in green, etc. I mentally thunked my forehead with my palm and said, “the colors! why do I always forget the colors!” And then I noticed the posters hung on the wall in this spacious classroom. At both the front and the back of the room, the teacher had full-color posters representing each of the eight text structures. Oh, I’d like to have those, I thought. If I had full color posters in my classroom instead of the black-and-white print outs I have, I might remember to use the color coding system!

One teacher asked, “Where did you get the posters?”

“Oh, I just printed them on our poster printer!”

Oh, I thought, they have a poster printer.

The class functioned mostly as my class does. The teacher had seven students around the table; one was absent. I have ten on my roster right now; typically one is absent. She used the socratic questioning that I use, and her students engaged as much as mine do, if slightly more politely, but then again, when I had a guest in my room last semester, my students were on their A game, too.

The second building was a literal carbon copy of the first, down to the same double buzzered entryway and carpeted stairs. We gathered in a classroom that “isn’t currently being utilized” where we found flexible seating — restaurant like booths, chairs on wheels at tables, and the one I chose, a rocking pod-like chair, where I noticed I could quietly shift my weight and stay better engaged in the discussion we were having before our second observation. Wow, I thought, I have some students who would benefit from chairs like these.

When the bell rang, we walked down the hall where our second teacher met us at the door and invited us first into her classroom and then across the hall to another room that “isn’t currently being utilized” so that she and her students could map their text.

Like me, she had a projection system where she displayed a slide that she used for her gathering — the time when we engage with our students to set the climate and build community. Her students were seated, much like mine are, around the room at desks. The difference I saw was, again, the carpeted floor, the colorful text-structure posters, and stacks of resources in every corner of the room.

In the room across the hall, we again found flexible seating — bar-height chairs with optional attached desks, lower seats on wheels, and one other form of desk-like seating. Again, full-color posters on the wall illustrating each of the text structures and some key questions to ask during the AARI process.

The students again were on their A-game, and I wondered if that was the case every day, even when they didn’t have a dozen teacher-y observers. I mean, what would get in the way of their learning in an environment like this?

As I drove home, I continued wondering, why do these schools look so different from my school? Why do students in Oakland County walk into a brand spanking new building every morning, pick what kind of chair works best for them, experience the warmth of carpeting, the advantage of full-color visual aids, and, when it’s hot outside, the benefit of air conditioning, while my students just thirty minutes down the road are bussed onto a crumbling parking lot, walk into an aging building with an inadequate gym, some windows that open and some that don’t, no air conditioning, no rooms that “aren’t currently being utilized”, one seating option whether it is appealing or not, and a jillion other obstacles to learning on any given day.

Is it just a case of money?

I spent some time this morning trying to figure out Michigan’s formula for school funding that might explain this disparity — why one child’s experience is so different from another’s when they both reside in the same state. But guys, I don’t understand the model.

It’s complicated and based on per student funding from the state, property taxes, income taxes, and even cigarette taxes! Low-income (and underperforming) districts like mine are supposed to get supplemental funding from the state — which is earmarked, but historically not always allocated. And even when it is allocated, why are most Detroit schools in disrepair, lacking in resources, and understaffed when schools in higher income districts are well maintained, richly resourced, and fully staffed with high quality instructors?

Why do they get the cool rocking pod chairs and my students don’t?

Is it because those students deserve better?

No! All students deserve better! Yet these disparities continue to exist — for going on centuries now.

And why?

The simple answer is systemic racism — in education, yes, but also in real estate, in health care, in hiring, in so many sectors of our society. It’s the historical practice of separating those who have from those who don’t to ensure that those who have will always have and those that don’t never will. And the remedy is anything but simple. It begins with recognizing that selfishness and greed have created the structures in our country that enable some to have a lovely experience and to guarantee that others do not.

Now, if you are in the camp that thinks I am completely off base and that the difference in schools is sheer economics and not based in historical racism at all, I ask you why the establishment is so up in arms about our students learning African American history or looking at history through the lens of Critical Race Theory? If there is nothing there to see, why not let our kids take a look for themselves? Maybe you’d like to take a look for yourself. If so, I recommend you check out the 1619 Project* which is available through The New York Times, on Apple podcasts, or in video form on Hulu. And if you still think I’m out of my mind, come spend a day with me at my school. Get to know my students and decide for yourself if you think they deserve more.

Yes, I feel pretty strongly about this.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that my seniors and I just finished learning about systemic inequities in preparation for reading Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, where we see through the lens of his experience the structural racism of Apartheid and how it impacted his childhood experience. We learned terms like unconscious bias, prejudice, racism, and systemic racism, and my students created posters to illustrate disparities in health care, generational wealth, criminal justice, and education.

When I returned to my students on Thursday and we started our class with a review of terms, I saw that not everyone understood that Apartheid was like the systemic racism we see in the US. In order to help them fully make the connection, I asked them to recall examples of where we experience inequities in our community. As they started to list them off, I told them about my experience in the Oakland Schools.

I wondered if it was necessary — to point out the details I had experienced. Would I be rubbing it in their faces?

But then I thought, Don’t they deserve to know what the experience of students 30 minutes away is like? especially as we prepare to read this book? especially since some of them are about to go to college and may study beside some of these very students who are walking carpeted hallways, sitting in rocking pods, and enjoying an air conditioned full-sized gym? (Let alone taking AP classes, music, and other electives we are unable to offer.)

I described what I had seen, and I could see their faces register the reality — the reality that their experience is not equal to the students I observed just 24 hours before.

“This is educational inequity,” I said. “It is one aspect of systemic racism. And why do you suppose it’s not easy to change?”

“Because,” one student answered, “it’s part of so many systems — not just education. And they don’t want it to change.”

“Who doesn’t want it to change?”

“The people in power.”

“Yes.” I gulped. “I suppose you are right. The people in power don’t want it to change.”

Pretty astute observation for a kid from Detroit? No. Kids from Detroit have this down, folks. They understand disparity; it’s the world they live in.

And the people in power can do something to change it. We are the people in power, my friends — people who vote, people in education, people in the church, white people — we can make choices that begin to make a difference for my students and their children and grandchildren. If we do nothing, this pattern will continue for more generations, and we shouldn’t be ok with that.

It’s not enough to fight for what’s best for our kids; we have to do what’s best for all kids.

As we established in my last post, I have “an insufferable belief in restoration.” The first step in restoration is acknowledging that our stuff is broken down, dilapidated, and no longer working, so I’m gonna keep talking about what’s broken to those who have the power and resources to fix it.

I hope you’ll start talking (and doing something) about it, too.

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it.
Proverbs 3:27

*The 1619 Project is one of many places to start learning about historical systemic racism in the United States. For a list of other resources check out Harvard’s Racial Justice, Racial Equity, and Antiracism Reading List.

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