Darkness

Em turns 23 in a few days. For her birthday, we went to the Darkness, the 3rd best haunted house in the US.

Even the getting there was an adventure. After The Office we piled into our two cars, my car following in the others. Following did not trouble us as it sometimes does, but we missed the turn the first time we passed the haunted house. When we found our way back, the other car turned to wrong way again, away from the parking lot -- and onto the entrance ramp to the eastbound highway. Now, to understand where we were, we got off the "Last Missouri" exit. So getting back on the highway meant that we were headed to East St. Louis with no exits in between. We followed them onto an exit ramp, where the first thing I saw were two graffiti-ed speed limit signs. Not confidence-inspiring. After a brief nerve-wracking detour off the highway, we headed back to St. Louis and eventually wound our way to the Darkness.

We bought tickets and stood in line. Ana and Triss had worked themselves up nicely in the car, both of them claiming to "not do scary." I would have said the same thing but for Busch Gardens haunted houses in previous Octobers. However, the sign above Darkness boasted "America's Scariest Haunted House," which intimidated me. (I fact-checked this. Of the rankings on its website, Darkness has one in which it was rated best; for most, it fell somewhere in the top 10.) Byrd and Meemaw stayed pretty level, and Em was in an excited mood. However, once the line wrapped inside the building and characters started growling at us, I discovered that Em like haunted houses not because of her fearlessness, but rather because she enjoyed the adrenaline rush of being scared. Translation: her courage could not help me!

We finally got up to the front of the line where we joked with the ticket collector before he sent us in. I told Em to go in first, and, with much protesting, she did, with me following behind, holding onto Triss, who had Ana pretty much piggy-back, while Byrd and Meemaw brought up the rear. Almost immediately, when the hall got dark and foggy and things started dangling from the ceiling, Em stopped and started going backwards! I was not about to stop, so I ended up at the front of the hand-squeezing train of Vincentian volunteers.

Highlights of the haunted house include when a man in a hoodie scared Em into running; when Ana told a character in the wall, "We already screamed for you -- you don't need to scare me!"; Meemaw and Ana both cussing; and Em having conversations with the characters we passed. (Example : Crazy woman says, "Get out of my room!"; Em replies, "We going! To the exit! Right here!") Apparently Ana also started a litany of saints and told characters, "You're good at your job! God bless you!"

For one section we had on 3-D glasses, which I discovered I hate as much as I hate strobe lights. Problem with leading : I don't like not knowing where I am going. The floor, the walls, and characters' make-up popped out in a crazy way. We were booking it inside that house, and the group ahead of us had a few too cool for school guys who were dilly-dallying. We figured that earlier, a cloaked man who tried to block us wanted to keep us from running into them. (I think I stepped on his foot because he was in my way.) Well, in the 3-D section, they paused behind a corner to wait for us. I jumped -- Em screamed -- and I got mad at them, so I pointed and glared at anyone who jumped at me for the rest of the haunted house, which was not much.

We spilled into an arcade at the end of the labyrinth laughing and gasping. As we walked out, we sang "Happy Birthday" to Em, and Ana jumped as 2 men came out of porta-potties. And, in spite of fears voiced as we drove there, no one died or peed their pants.

Bosnian Coffee

Yesterday for formation, we had a woman from Bosnia come for dinner and serve us Bosnian coffee. Like coffee from Greece and parts of the Middle East (as per friends' experiences), this coffee is made with grinds mixed in and about 6x as strong as regular coffee. So you drink approximately a shot glassful, and don't get to sleep until midnight.

Before coffee, we had dinner from a Bosnian restaurant in town. Phila dough, plus meat and cheese and spinach equals deliciousness. Our guest told us about her experience moving to the US from Bosnia and some about her culture as a Muslim Bosnian American.

After dinner, she put on the coffee in a tall pot on the stove. While we waited for the water to boil, she explained coffee in Bosnia. They have it twice a day at least, before and after work, always with a sweet and always as a leisurely social event, not like American grab-a-cup coffee. It reminded me of tea with my roommates last year. No matter how busy we were, it seemed like there was often a conversation around the tea. When the water boiled, our guest/hostess spooned in coffee. It boiled again and was ready!

Byrd dressed in traditional Bosnian Muslim prayer clothing, which covers everything other than the face, hands, and feet. The covering of the hair made me think about the question of Catholic veiling. After she explained praying, our guest poured the coffee into beautiful golden shot glass-sized coffee cups. We had little pieces of cake and sugar cubes with the coffee.

After you drink the coffee, you can read the grinds like tea leaves. You flip the cup upside down, wait for it to dry, and read the patterns of the grinds as they flow down the side. Ana read mine. First, she decided, "It's a chicken!" On second consideration, she found the Blessed Virgin Mary, or maybe just a woman holding a baby. This, according to Ana, means that I would have a child. Next Ana found 3 or 4 other figures, who apparently were perhaps bridesmaids, but maybe not.

I told her the important part was the man involved : did it tell her who I would marry? After some more looking, she declared that she had found a clown. It works : I don't think I've ever liked a guy who was not something of a clown.

Our Bosnian guest/hostess told us that a baby meant something new in the future and took her own peek at the coffee grinds. She didn't really offer any insights though. We bid her goodnight and I proceeded to stay up too late.

I didn't have chicken for dinner today so I think Ana's first guess was wrong. However, when I heated up some of the coffee our guest had left and showed the grinds to Ana, she saw a long and winding road. So maybe I have a long path to a chicken dinner.

Try Again

In 7th grade, my class went to the Richmond Science Museum. Every single other year, the 7th grade went to visit the Amish in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I was rather bitter about this change for a long time.

Yesterday, the 7th and 8th grade went to Amish country and guess who went with them? Finally, my life has come in a complete circle... or something like that. The trip took 3 hours each way, which meant we spent more time on the bus than in Amish country. We had a bus tour of the area, then got off at a farm house where the lady of the house cooks and serves meals. After lunch, we got to explore the farm a bit and pet the horses.

I smiled so wide at seeing the small town with the open fields of corn and dark soil. Once again, however, I missed the mountains, thinking how flat the land looked. Our tour guide then told us we were in the flattest county of the flattest state in the country. I felt better about marveling at the flatness.

When we disembarked at the farmhouse, the silence struck me. Without electricity or many cars, the ambient noise dropped to nothing. How beautiful! And the air smelled clean and like food! We went inside, where the smell of the house and the homemade bread on its way out made me certain the entire 6 hours on the bus was worth this one meal.

To my disappointment, the students' xenophobia kept most of them from even placing the food on their plates. Even now, they look at me in disbelief when I say that meal is the best one I've had since arriving at St. Louis. And my housemates cook well! I enjoyed everything: chicken, meatballs, green beans, mashed potatoes, pasta, fresh bread, and pie.

After lunch, we went to the stables, where the kids encountered horses for the first time. Besides a few being terrified and no one knowing how to be quiet, that went well. I enjoyed watching some of them wait patiently for their louder peers to pass so that the horse would come back and they could pet it. The man of the house was shaving a horse that would be sold as a show horse tomorrow. Which I guess means she's already been sold. The chicken and nursing puppies were also a big hit.

Finally, we returned to the little town of Arthur. Watching my students dash across the street made it hit home how much of city kids I have. I knew that each car would stop and wait patiently for them here, as cars would not in St. Louis.

The town had an old fashioned soda and ice cream counter which many students hunted down. The lady working there put the carbonated water and syrup in the cup from separate taps. I was mesmerized!

I hated to leave. Much as I enjoy St. Louis, these past few tastes of the country have made me realize how much I miss that peace. There are no late night Colonial Williamsburg walks here, or afternoons on the river. I can't find peace away from the world in the tiny glories God placed around us.

Would You Like That Jumbo-Sized?

I thought in leaving Yosemite two summers ago, I was leaving DNC forever. Lies!

We can raise money for our athletics program by working concessions at the Rams' games. The concessionaire is, you guessed it, DNC. Ana and I took registers today.

This was my first time ever selling alcohol. The 30-and-under ID policy made me slightly nervous, because I have a really hard time telling people's ages in the age range of 20ish-35ish. However, everyone I knew I should card was born in the '80s. The people I were unsure about were born in the '70s. The women I didn't want to card but a coworker told me to card were born in the early '70s. So apparently I am a better judge of age than I realized.

I wanted to tell some fun stories about selling food, but I actually don't have any good ones. It was a fairly boring day in the world of food services.

Apples to Apples

Today, we went apple picking! As is the usual in St. Louis (or at least my adventures here), it rained this week. However, I woke up this morning to sunshine -- which also means I woke after sunrise! -- and thanked God for apple weather.

We drove down I-64 East, which can take me all the way home to the 'burg. (It's Homecoming, so I had W'burg in my mind a lot today.) It also took us to an orchard/tourist farm. We rode a wagon out to the trees.

Some of my favorite memories growing up come from fruit picking adventures with my family. While holidays and other formal family occasions brought about stress, I don't remember fruit adventures being that way, although that could be the fault of my memory. The parts I do remember include long car rides out to the mountains, bumpy roads, boxes full of apples, climbing trees to reach the top ones, coming home muddy and sticky with the trunk of our minivan weighed down with the expectation of apple pie and applesauce and fresh apples for weeks to come. And of course the joy of being outside in the mountains, in the air, in the trees, under the open blue sky.

Today, I missed the mountains, but the apples tasted fresh and real. My friends looked for the "perfect" apple, something difficult to find at the orchard, but it lengthened our venture, since we can't afford or use boxes of apples. The trees were small but the air was fresh and the sky was open. The only thing I really missed was the mountains.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I'm actually going to work backwards from the order of my title. I spent most of today grading papers on behalf of the history teacher, who assigned essays as well as a test for the end-of-quarter exam.

I learned some interesting information from these papers. For example, the "lost essential" of social studies is the "use of geography." (Hint: change the o to an a.) Captain John Smith was captured by a "tork." (Try "Turk.") And, my personal favorite -- did you know that Columbus was friends with Lief Eriksson and other Vikings? He explored North America for the first time with them.

In all seriousness, though, I could decode the nonsense, or at least understand where the idea originated. As many times as I shook my head, I laughed out loud. These kids get points for trying, even if they sometimes forget that names get capitalized and sentences get verbs. These crazy, inaccurate, grammatically confusing papers are what I dub "the ugly." I like the ugly. They are indubitably the original work of 6th and 8th grade students trying to understand history, even if they get confused along the way.

However. The ugly sometimes are the bad in disguise. At other times, the bad don't hide. They shine in all their different-voiced glory, shouting to me, "I came off-line!" Their cries are quickly corroborated by a Google search. Most of them came from Wikipedia or free paper and easy fact websites, although one guy got his from a historical society. If you're going to copy, have his sense: use a reliable source. Also, don't use the textbook. That's just dumb. I got some that came word for word from the textbook, spelling and grammatical errors not included. I don't know if they were trying to cheat smart, or if they just were too lazy even to copy right.

The ugly is very depressing and frustrating, which is why I wanted to end on "the good." It has nothing to do with essays. It has to do with two of my most frustrating students. One of them was absent yesterday. He is frustrating because he does nothing most of the time; he just wanders, acting clueless. But every now and then he has motivated spurts, and he does the work well! I just don't know what causes them, so while I encourage him at these points, I don't know how the make them happen more frequently. They are infrequent, though, so he ends up in trouble with me a lot.

Well, today he walked into school and gave me the hugest smile and a wave! I told him that I'd missed him yesterday (which was true), and he kept grinning. All day, he worked hard on today's exams and make-up exams from yesterday, and he smiled and waved every time he saw me. Since he was in a productive mood on Tuesday, that makes two good school days in a row for him!

The other one is a girl who needs attention and will act wild (but not maliciously so) to get it. She says crazy things to get reactions, and she's high-maintenance as far as attention goes, but she is no serious trouble. She too doesn't work most of the time, sometimes because she can't, and other times because she doesn't want to. I'm starting to figure her out though -- she just needs to be away from people and distractions. Escaping distractions is no mean feat in this school, but every now and again it shall be done.

Today, she was one of the few left at the end of the day, so Ana and I took her into the building for study hall. However, since there was no work for our two middle schoolers to do, we let them go to play with the after school daycare. This girl, who had been running her mouth about how she didn't want to go upstairs with us, gave us the quickest sad look before we left.

Those two moments let me know that at least I am touching some kids, somehow. Those sorts of moments are little hugs from God.

Swings

We have a playground next door and have had similar thoughts:

Pretending Hard to Be a Teacher

This weekend, I went with the rest of the middle school faculty to Chicago for the annual NativityMiguel Network of Schools Convention. This weekend was basically an excuse for all schools within the network to get together and party without students, while learning and networking.

NativityMiguel claims to "break the cycle of poverty through education," but since the oldest schools are barely celebrating their 15th anniversary, there is little firm data. I believe in it, however. The ideas behind the model are fairly simple, and based off of two schools: Nativity and San Miguel. (These schools have a richer history than NMNS, which may be part of what convinced me.) Some of the basic ideas : the schools are faith-based, serve in underserved communities, involve families, and keep students in school more hours for more days.

Oh, did I mention that the schools are middle schools? So we face the particular challenge of getting students into high school, seeing them through it, getting them into college, seeing them through it, and getting them into the real world. No one sees results for literally ten years. At least.

The Convention drew together teachers, principals, board members, and grad support counselors from across the country. And I had my first teacher class. I learned how to teach students by using games and the way the parts of their brains communicate. I took lots of notes, which I intend to use in class. I also became very confused about how to identify right and left brain tendencies, something I thought I had known, but not according to the definitions I encountered. I'd share what I was taught, but I really don't get it.

The other teaching session I went attended focused on curriculum, with the ultimate point that teachers should plan by: 1) deciding what to teach, 2) deciding how to assess it; then 3) deciding how to teach it. And not in any other order. It seems very intuitive to me, even though the speaker spent an hour and a half convincing us it's true.

Our keynote speaker blew me away. Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries spoke about his ministry to gang members trying to reform their lives. After David Bereit, he's my hero.

We also had a few minutes Friday night to wander the streets of Chicago, although we didn't get out too much. We ended up at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company, a Forrest Gump-based restaurant, eating a late dinner and enjoying ourselves. Ana especially loved the transformation of people once you get them out of the school. I know at least one of the teachers was fascinated by the way I changed from Ms. Z to me.

Nobelity

I will try to tone down the sarcasm that I normally aim towards our nation's leader for this post, because Obama did at least have the self-awareness to say he did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

I realize that not all winners can be Ghandis, MLKs, and Mother Teresas. There will have to be a few Elie Wiesels and Gorbachevs thrown into the mix. In all seriousness, if you look at a list of laureates, you see a collection of people who did things for the world. Even the more controversial figures have acted on a global scale. Take Henry Kissinger, for example. Controversial figure, to say the least, but he was working in Vietnam. Or Al Gore. The credibility of his facts is, well, fairly non-existent, but he shared the award with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and what happens to the environment matters to the whole world.

President Obama, as best I can tell, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for hope. It makes me feel better about the US education system from a global perspective. Even my slowest students realize that there is a difference between hope and peace. They are also starting to grasp the idea that rewards come after actions, not as motivation to do something.

Stories

One of the various email lists that I occasionally read linked me to an article in the New York Times. A little while ago, a pro-life activist was shot. I wrote about it, but commented that his views were likely not the cause of his murder, based on what I'd read. I don't know anymore, but I do know how fantastic it is for a paper like the Times to cover an abortion story in this manner.

Even if I would prefer being called pro-life.

A Times blog also showed some of the graphic images that some activists use. While I have mixed feelings (mostly a range of disapproval, disappointment, and sorrow) about the use of graphic images, I like the way the blog presented the pictures. There's plenty of warning, but curiosity will drive most people on. And the power of the visual reality, for which so many people fight, will have a chance to work its magic.

Crosses

Yesterday I subbed for the 7th grade and history teacher. It was a challenging day, to say the least. The 6th and 8th grade history classes went well, but the 7th grade had more than a little trouble. The constant rain that kept us inside all day made it worse, and I suppose they were about due for an explosion.

When I got home, I had trouble shaking the day. I was so tired of being responsible for other human beings. That is a lot of pressure! Finally, a late night chat with Em put things into perspective.

She talked about the film, Freedom Riders, which I haven't seen. She made her point however : a lot happens in these children's lives bigger than school. I can forget it easily, because they minimize the harder parts in life. None of them (or few) have any conception even of their socio-economic stati, which is beautiful and frustrating at the same time.

Em also mentioned the importance of our community, in supporting each other and carrying each others' crosses. The image came to my mind of Simon of Cyrene. And instead of my community helping me bear my cross, I realized that these students have crosses that I can't imagine, and I am here to help bear them. No wonder I feel so much pressure. There are 64 middle school crosses and 3 teacher crosses coming at me from that school, for all of whom I am called to be some sort of Simon.

Rather than overwhelm me, however, the idea comforted me and put bits of life into their proper places. I can't deal with all the attitude from the school; I can't solve all these kids' problems; I can't even meet their educational needs. But I can extend a hand, or at least a finger, and help with their crosses. It will take patience and counsel to understand how, but it makes sense, and, with the grace of God, I can do it.

Magical Teacher Moments

I have them every now and then. Today, I had three.

The first two happened while the 6th grade was journaling. One of the boys put up his hand, and when I went over to see what he wanted, he asked me which "there/their" to use. Up until that point, I wasn't convinced that any of them realized that different forms of that word exist/matter, let alone thought about which to use when. But he had "the" written on the page, and his pen poised for the next letter.

To understand the next moment, you must also know that it takes massive amounts of effort, patience, repeated commands, and physical escorts to make the 6th graders settle down for 10 minutes of journaling. One of the bounciest girls, after finally settling down, announced, when we were done journaling, "What if we want to write more? I'm not finished!" And she had written more than most of her classmates!

Finally, during the last block of the day, the "Math Enrichment" class for Ana, a few students, and me, I sat down with one of the brightest kids in the 6th grade. A math teacher from St. Louis University High School had been working with him on Algebra, and today I got to help him. He figured out how to add a negative and a positive number! It may seem small, but he figured it out on his own! And he was doing 9th grade math!

Church and State

Catholic Social Teaching is called the best kept secret of the Catholic Church. It makes sense; think about how often we hear that being Catholic means kneeling nicely at Sunday Mass and praying the Rosary daily. Then think about how often we hear that being Catholic means fighting for the rights of workers, joining the struggle to empower disadvantaged communities, or creating safe havens for pre- or newborn babies? Sure, every now and then we get that image, mostly along with the message that these people are the extremists, sometimes even the loons, not your regular, run-of-the-mill variety of Catholic.

What if it's the other way around? What if those who advocate CST live exactly as a true Catholic should live, and the rest of us are "Catholic Lite" : same surface taste, but no substance underneath?

One of the sad results of our negligence of CST expresses itself in the political realm. Our negligence allows political parties and actors to co-opt passion for justice and tricks people into believing that justice solutions reside in a specific party, politician, or piece of legislation. The belief that we need just political action forms a core part of CST, but so does the idea that political action will not fix the world without the action and support of the faithful outside the political realm.

This dichotomy of political and religious solutions poses a fascinating question in a country that obsesses over the "separation of church and state," which we translate into the "restriction of religious actions and values to the church building and maybe home life." Not quite what our Founders had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment.

The Post-Dispatch today had an article that focused on the breaking down of this false wall with a "church-state disaster relief partnership." Tim Townsend, who wrote the article, explained Missouri's system that facilitates the state government and religious groups to work together at providing disaster aid. Using Katrina as an example of where the government failed and religious groups pulled through, he describes how this cooperation happens at a national level as well. Reading the article brought back memories of Sociology of Religion and Latino/a Migration, when we discussed religious-based justice movements. (We used Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo's God's Heart Has No Borders, a great book.)

Townsend does not discuss any Catholic groups, however. (Hondagneu-Sotelo does. Apparently on a small scale, you find Catholic justice groups all over the place.) Why are Catholic groups not discussed? I can think of a few reasons, and I don't know which is the case. First, they could simply fly under his notice, for a variety of reasons. Second, Townsend could not like Catholic groups. Or, third, they simply are not there, as part of the governmental partnership, or at all. Each of these reasons would have very different implications as to what we need to change to receive the notice that these Baptist and Methodist groups received.

Of course, this begs the question : Do we want that notice? I do. Not for the praise that Townsend rightly gives religious-based groups, but instead for the image change. If we make CST part of the image of a Catholic, maybe we can motivate ourselves to live up to that image and we can become the change in the world.

The Inside of Your Head

I like my new schedule and the chances I have now to work with small groups of students. I hope it will help me get into their heads some. The more time I spend with these kids, the more I see them as individual human beings (duh) and the more I realize that I just don't understand how their minds work.

Some examples:

Yesterday we had a huge thunderstorm while the 7th grade boys were working social studies in the library with me. The first crack of thunder did not resemble thunder -- it sounded like something had exploded outside the building. I actually didn't realize it was thunder at first. I thought someone had crashed their car outside the school. I expected the sirens that I heard soon after to stop at the school. But I kept me seat and my head and kept working.

The boys, however, were out of their seats in seconds. "School's over!" they said, not to cause trouble or be smart, but simply because that was their conclusion, by their use of logic. It took a moment to convince them that yes, we did have to stay in school.

I gave some 6th grade boys a test today. Their history teacher told me that I could help them figure out the answers, just don't actually tell them the answers. I let them get started, and they thought long and hard about the matching. And put down answers resembling a "priest-king" is a "group of territories" and an "empire" is a "type of writing." After thinking. Yet, the moment I pointed to "priest-king" and said, "What type of answer should this have? Is it a person, a place, or a thing?" they could answer "political and religious leader."

Another question read, "Why was the invention of the sailboat helpful?" or something along those lines. The answer their teacher wanted was that they used wind power over muscle power. I tried to help: "What would they have used before sailboats?" "Well, like, a canoe or something." "Then what's the difference between a sailboat and a canoe?" "Well, it can carry food."

What?! I really want to know what goes on in their heads, because I just don't understand. I have the feeling that if I understand the insides of their heads, I will be able to reach them better.

Which is the ultimate point of my third observation about the ways their minds work. When they are out of the classroom at break, they hit the uneven blacktop and start games of basketball, football, and volleyball in and around jump rope, tag, and races. Their attitudes completely change. I realize that this might happen with a lot of people, but I was the same on the water (racing) and in the classroom: intense, goal-driven, optimistic, and focused. They have such good team work, attitude, focus, and skill in sports that I want to figure out where it comes from and how it works so that I can channel it into the classroom.