Reflections on Homeschooling

It’s been a while.

Since I last blogged, I’ve finished the semester (which included grading hundreds–actually, more like over a thousand–pages, finishing up an independent study, advising, and the usual, frantic wrapping up of multiple committees), continued homeschooling M, prepped my summer course, begun teaching said course, submitted two proposals for next year’s CCCC, served as a Stage I reviewer for next year’s CCCC, and started work on my tenure dossier. Of course, there have been the usual run of the mill issues thrown in there, too–various illnesses, doctor’s appointments, plagiarism cases, etc.

I’m starting to feel like maybe I can pause for a second and catch my breath. Who knows how long that feeling will last, but at least I managed to read a book (for fun!) this weekend. That was my Mother’s Day gift to myself.

I’ve enjoyed homeschooling M. I will really miss it next year. I truly wish we could continue, but I just don’t see how I can swing it for an entire academic year. I was able to do it these last several weeks because it was an emergency situation, but long-term homeschooling simply is not a viable option. I know that, but that still doesn’t change the fact that I’ll miss being able to turn around during my office hours and see her engrossed in a book.

Homeschooling has been good for M in many ways. It’s helped her recover her emotional equilibrium; she is so much happier, and there have been virtually no issues with anxiety. Her love of learning has become evident again. Being able to pursue subjects she’s interested in but hasn’t had the opportunity to pursue to her liking has been enormously satisfying for her. She wanted to study rivers and wetlands, so that’s where we’ve been focusing our attention in science. Her class very briefly studied Native American culture last fall; she was in a group that had to learn about tools used for hunting and cooking.  She wanted to learn far more, so in social studies we’re learning about Native American history. Given the fact that Fort Wayne was built on three rivers and that the rivers were extremely important to the Miami Nation who were the natives of this area, we’ve been able to blend science and social studies together quite nicely. That is one of the things I’ve loved the most–being able to show her how learning doesn’t have to be broken up into discrete subjects. Her interest in rivers/wetlands and Native Americans have carried us across science, history, political science, literature, writing, and art.

Academically, she has grown tremendously. I had to move her up to a  fifth grade math book (we’re using Saxon 6/5), and she’s still breezing through it. Her confidence in her mathematical abilities has grown enormously. She has mastered multiplication and simple division (still working on long division), but most importantly, she knows she’s mastered it. She did not have that certainty before. It’s so nice to see her enjoy math and to not constantly second-guess herself. She’d never written a book report before we started homeschooling. Thanks to homeschooling, she has learned about the origins of our country. She had heard of the Declaration of Independence, but she didn’t know that the colonists were declaring their independence from England. She had never heard of the French-Indian War, the Boston Tea Party, the Revolutionary War/War of Independence, or the War of 1812. While she had heard of Paul Revere, she didn’t know what he did that made him famous.

If you’re wondering why she didn’t know these things, it’s because history is taught very sparingly in Indiana now, because the kids aren’t tested on it during the I-STEP (Indiana’s standardized test) until fifth grade. Everything is done with an eye to the test, and if a subject isn’t being tested that year, then very little of it will be taught. I can’t blame the schools, because they didn’t choose this lunacy, but IMHO, this is what is absolutely destroying public education in this country.

So, I’m proud of what M has accomplished. Although I have days where my patience runs out and I snap (like today), for the most part I’m happy with what I’ve been able to do for her education. I try to hang on to that, because I’ve had some bad days lately (emotionally/mentally). For various reasons, I feel very alone. Well, I don’t just feel alone–I am alone. During the past three weeks, the only time I’ve had a conversation with an adult that lasted longer than 10 minutes was when I was paying that person (i.e., my doctor and my therapist). I don’t see that situation changing much until fall semester begins.

One positive decision I’ve made lately is to deactivate my Facebook account. While FB can be beneficial in some ways, lately I think it has not been good for me. It made me feel even more isolated, which is not what I need right now. I realize the idea of FB making one feel more isolated rather than less so might sound counter-intuitive, but that has been my recent experience. I am sure my absence won’t last for long; I’ve discovered since deactivating just how much FB permeates modern life. It has been difficult to log into certain websites and applications without a FB account, and trying to communicate outside of FB with babysitters  is arduous.

Given that, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay away, but I think even the short absence I’ve had so far has been beneficial.

Ya Gotta Have the Want-To

A few weeks ago, my friend BrightStar asked a question that I have found myself thinking about quite a bit over the past few months:  “How do you think your experience in a PhD program, if you went through that experience, changed you, if at all?”

I definitely think my PhD experience changed me. I don’t just think it–I know with absolute certainty that it did. While the general experience of going to grad school–which for me included a MA–changed me, earning my PhD did in more specific ways.

The most noticeable change I see in myself is that I am much more assertive.  I have the ability to advocate for myself and my needs, as well as the needs of others, in ways that I could not do before. This has benefited me professionally and personally, as well as people in my professional and personal lives; I think my students and my children have benefited from my advocacy, for example.

I have no qualms about calling things like I see them. Now, I have always been a fairly blunt, direct kind of person, but I go much further than I used to. For example, at a recent conference with a student, I stated that the graduation rates for young African-American men are extremely, depressingly low and that I do not want to see him become another statistic. I told him flat-out, “You owe it to yourself and your community to succeed. You are too smart and too talented to not graduate, so stay focused and keep your eye on the prize.” Before the PhD, I would not have had the nerve to say this to a student.  I would have worried about overstepping my boundaries or whatever. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, maybe it’s because I’m tired of seeing talented young black men drop out of school, or maybe I just don’t really care what people think anymore. But I wouldn’t have said this before the PhD. I just wouldn’t have. I would have been too worried about what other people might think, what the student would think, etc.

I don’t worry about that anymore. I know what my intentions are when I am tough and direct with students, and I have enough experience now to realize my students know it, too. They know that when I speak to them like that, it comes from a place of care and concern. This student seemed surprised but grateful for my comments, and he later emailed  and thanked me for caring enough about him that I didn’t want him to be, as he put it, “just another black male dropping out.” I get many emails and comments from students that echo his words, so I do think my students know I talk tough because I care.

Speaking of being tough, I have a certain sort of mental toughness that I did not have before the PhD. I think resilience has long been a strength of mine, but that quality was certainly burnished during my Ph.D. That makes perfect sense to me, because I personally think that earning a PhD requires a great deal of resilience; I think that is one of the qualities that separates people who finish the degree from those who don’t.

Like every other academic, I know plenty of people who began their PhDs but never finished. This was a phenomenon I didn’t understand before I earned the PhD–I thought it was all about intelligence and being a good student, and if they were smart enough and good enough to get into a PhD program, then why didn’t they finish? But as I moved through the degree myself, I began to learn that how smart one is or how well one did in school really has little to do with eventually finishing the PhD. Don’t get me wrong: of course one must have a certain baseline of intelligence and aptitude to earn a PhD, but that is a given, in my view. One won’t get into a program without those qualities. But once the degree is underway, those qualities don’t matter very much.

I say this because I know people who are far more brilliant than I who did not earn the degree. I’m not speaking from false modesty, either; I know I am pretty damn smart. Even in a room full of PhDs, I feel comfortable with my ability to keep up with anybody. I’m intelligent, and I received an excellent education, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. But because I am smart and feel quite sure of my own abilities, I can recognize degrees of intelligence, even among those who are quite gifted, and I can freely admit that there are people whose intellectual gifts exceed mine. He was in my cohort at OSU and part of my dissertation writing group that still meets occasionally. I knew from the first day I met him–when he was a brand new MA student–that he was going to do great things. His brilliance was that obvious, and I am so happy and proud that the rest of our field is discovering what many of us have known for years.

But there was another person whose brilliance struck me when I started my PhD. He started his degree that year, too, and if I had bet on who would finish the degree, I would have placed a great deal of money on him. I would have lost, because he has still not finished. I don’t think he ever will.

I understand now that earning the PhD takes so much more than being brilliant. As I blogged many years ago, “ya gotta have the want-to,” to quote an evangelist I once heard preach when I was in high school. Getting through the exams, the dissertation, and all the self-doubt that comes with it takes perseverance and resilience, and those qualities have nothing to do with one’s brilliance or previous stellar performance in school. In fact, I sometimes think that the reason why some folks struggle once they get to the dissertation is because they were so successful in school–they don’t necessarily know how to handle academic challenges, because they never had to learn that skill before. I know that I really had to learn how to revise while writing my dissertation, because until that time, my early drafts had always been more than enough to earn gushing praise from my professors. The dissertation was really the first time I heard–repeatedly–”This isn’t good enough.” That was a difficult adjustment for me, as some of you well know, but I did whatever I had to, because I wanted that degree more than anything. I had the “want-to” quite badly, and I would have walked through fire to get my PhD. At times, it certainly felt like that was what I was doing!

Walking through that metaphorical fire shaped me. Just as fire forges metal and shapes clay and glass into different forms, my PhD forged me into a different kind of person–stronger, tougher, and more resilient than I was before. I am far more sure of what I know and what I don’t know. I am more accepting of criticism and more adept at standing up for myself when that criticism is unwarranted. I can say “no” more easily now than I could at any other stage of my life (though that has a lot to do with my years in the professoriate, a subject for another post). Even though revision was something I really had to learn as a dissertation writer, I now feel I am better at revising than generating. Those experiences also made me a better teacher of writing, because I can now understand the struggles of my students in ways I really couldn’t during my early years of graduate school.

While I have my struggles, I am proud of what I have accomplished and the person I am today. I like who I am, and I strongly believe the PhD helped me become the type of woman I always wanted to be–confident and assertive, while balancing a sense of mental toughness and caring.

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Everybody Hurts

 

I felt the need to share this video today. I have several students working through difficult issues this semester; I’m struggling with my own. I’m also seeing people who I love very much experiencing great pain; I wish I could help them, but there is little I can do other than to listen and be there for them. So, this one is for all of us.

Blech

I am feeling very down on myself right now.

My first day of teaching did not go as well as I had hoped. I’ll be honest–I don’t know why I think it went poorly. I just have a bad feeling about it.

I gained a lot of weight back this summer. I am so disgusted about this that I can hardly stand to look at myself in the mirror.

I am worried about P. He started stuttering in March or April, but then it went away for a while. It came back in late May/early June, and he is still stuttering at times. I asked his preschool teachers about it today, and they stated that they had noticed and are concerned.

I feel like a bad mama because I did not ask questions sooner than I did. I didn’t ask before because the stutter has come and gone in the past, and it comes and goes through the day (and week). It’s always worse when he is excited, tired, or angry. I allowed that fact to convince me that there wasn’t really a problem. And now it’s clear there is a problem, and I am wondering how much damage I’ve done with this delay.

I feel like a bad mama because the thought of trying to find a good speech pathologist, let alone running him back and forth to appointments, is completely overwhelming.

There are lots of other reasons why I feel like a bad mama and professor, but I don’t have the energy, or the will, to blog about it.

I just don’t feel like anything is going well right now. It’s not a fun place to be.

Social Media Overload

I received my iPad yesterday. I’m not blogging from it right now; for longer items, it’s much easier on my arthritic hands and wrists to use my desktop with its full-size keyboard. I do have to say, however, that the blog looks fantastic on the iPad. I didn’t know WordPress changed the layout of blogs for the iPad. The result is incredible.

But I digress, as that is not the point I want to make.

The point is that now I have an iPad, which means that I now also have Twitter and Tumblr accounts, since the project I’m part of–which is the reason why I got an iPad for free–requires that everyone involved have these accounts.

We’re also required to have a Facebook account, but as you know, I’ve been on FB for five years. Then there’s Google Plus; I signed up for that a few weeks ago to see what all the cool kids were talking about. And, of course, I’ve been a blogger for quite some time; I have active accounts on WordPress and Blogger. Let’s see, what other accounts do I have? I belong to Flickr, Del.icio.us, Diigo, and Yahoo, though those accounts are all in various stages of dormancy.

Now that I have an iPad, I feel like I should be investigating other social media tools (or, at the very least, social media-ish tools) as well. Tonight I found myself playing around for quite a while with various tools to allow online scheduling by students for office hours and other appointments. I started to set up a “Meet Me” page on Doodle before I got a little frustrated by the interface; instead of marking when I’m available, it looks like I’m going to have to designate when I’m not available. That’s a pain.

As I was feeling frustrated and a bit overwhelmed by that issue, a larger sense of unease swept over me. Just how many social networks have I joined? How many will I join? When and where will it ever end?

It feels like a lot–too much. Lately, I find myself feeling more and more like I have too many things to check. I am logging on to some platform or another way too many times a day. I have four email accounts (two of which I check daily) in addition to the social media. Once school resumes next week, I’ll be back to receiving upwards of 200 emails a day. It’s exhausting. Just thinking about dealing with all the email, on top of everything else, makes me feel anxious and overwhelmed.

Don’t get me wrong–there is much about social media I really enjoy. I like doing my 30 Day Book and Song Challenges on Facebook. I like my Glee status updating (even though it drives some folks nuts). Blogging means a great deal to me, even though I don’t do it as often as I used to or anywhere near as much as I’d like. But there is a limit to all of this, and I think I’m at it.

I am sure many of you struggle with these issues as well. What are you doing about it?

On Forgiveness

What does it mean to forgive?

I have thought about this question many, many times over the course of my life, though it has been on my mind more lately, due to some personal issues.  I’m thinking about it tonight because I just read an article about the importance of forgiveness in Oprah’s magazine (which I bought for my Atlanta flight but didn’t finish at that time). And as it’s Good Friday,  I can’t help but think of Christ on the cross and his words, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Forgiveness has always been a vexed topic for me. The main two reasons why are these: I was sexually assaulted when I was seven years old, and I went to a fundamentalist Christian school for grades 1-12. I heard, over and over again, that we must forgive, because God forgives us and “if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your transgressions” (Mark 11:26). Passages like Luke 6: 27-37 also left a deep impression on me:

But I tell you who hear: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. 29 To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other; and from him who takes away your cloak, don’t withhold your coat also. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and don’t ask him who takes away your goods to give them back again. 31 As you would like people to do to you, do exactly so to them. 32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive back as much. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. 36 Therefore be merciful, even as your Father is also merciful. 37 Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Set free, and you will be set free.

As a young girl, I was left to deal with the impact of my sexual assault completely on my own–I received no therapy, and my family never talked about it (I assume my dad still does not know). I was young, scared, angry, and very much alone. I was in a rigid and repressive religious environment that emphasized I could not receive God’s forgiveness–which I needed so I could go to heaven and avoid hell–if I did not forgive others. While the teachers and preachers at my school did not know of my sexual assault, I took their words to heart and applied them to my situation. I felt that I had to forgive my molester, or else I would go to hell.

And I didn’t have a clue as to how to forgive such a monster. If forgiveness means that we are to offer the other cheek to someone who strikes us, what did that mean for me? Was I wrong to have fought back against my abuser? Was I supposed to lie there and allow him to rape me? In my childhood mind, without any adult in my life to help me cope and work through these issues, this is exactly what I took that passage to mean.

I couldn’t accept that. I could not believe that God would really want a child to allow herself to be raped. This was the first time I began questioning religion and the literal, “word for word” interpretation of the Bible that I had been taught was the only true path to Christ.

Later, as a teenager, I did began talking. I confided in a youth pastor who visited my school, as well as one of my brothers. Their responses gave me much of what I needed emotionally–love, acceptance, awareness, and sorrow for what I had lost. But neither of them helped me resolve the question of forgiveness that vexed me so. They both gave me an answer along the lines of, while God may expect us to forgive, that doesn’t mean we have to forget the wrongs that were done to us or allow them to happen again.

I didn’t understand what that meant then. I still don’t.

In my mind, forgiveness implies that the act that has been forgiven is OK, that it’s acceptable that it happened. I can’t do that. I suspect what my brother and the youth pastor were trying to tell me when they said I don’t have to forget was that forgiveness doesn’t mean the act was OK or acceptable. As an adult, I’m almost 100% sure that is exactly what they were trying to express.

But what, then, does forgiveness mean? What does it mean to forgive, but to remember the wrong? Wouldn’t that be “holding a grudge”?  And, on a related note–one that I am currently struggling with mightily–how do we forgive those who continue to wrong us? Or who have never apologized or seemed one bit remorseful for the hurt they have caused?

I think part of why I struggle with the concept of forgiveness is that I have only heard it defined as what it is not; in other words, I’ve only been told what it does not mean. It doesn’t mean we forget. As the article I read tonight (which I can’t link to, unfortunately–it’s not on Oprah’s website) states, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean rationalizing or condoning abuse. And forgiveness doesn’t mean a sudden case of amnesia” (255). But what, then, is it?

At the very end of the article, the author attempts to define forgiveness:

Forgiveness [. . .] is not about pretending you don’t feel angry or hurt. It’s about responding out of kindness rather than rage. It’s about letting yourself feel the full spectrum of emotions–grief and anger and hurt, but also kindness and compassion.

This idea was helpful to me. I can see that there are people in my life–people who have hurt me quite deeply, including my abuser–who, according to this definition, I have forgiven. When I think of my abuser today, I do feel immense anger and disgust. As I wrote above, he was a monster. At the same time, I know now that he was not born a monster. Someone made him into that monster by sexually abusing him. That in no way excuses what he did to me and, undoubtedly, countless other children, but it does enable me to feel something for him besides anger and hate. I can honestly say I don’t hate him. I pity him, and I feel sorrow for whatever drove him to abuse children.

This conception of forgiveness has also led me to re-think my guilt about my reaction to those who hurt me in my adult life. I am someone who does not hesitate to cut out of my life those who betray me or repeatedly hurt me. I do believe in giving people a second chance, but those who hurt me time after time eventually lose my goodwill; those who betray me lose it immediately.

In either case, I cut those people out of my life; they are, in essence, dead to me. That doesn’t mean I’m rude if I have to deal with the person; I am not. But I will never, ever pretend to be their friend, or to even be friendly. Politeness is all I can muster.

For many years, I felt that this meant I carried grudges, even though I felt this response was, in essence, self-defense. I imposed an emotional distance in order to keep from getting hurt again. Quite often I was motivated by feelings of hurt and loss, not by feelings of anger or vengeance. I just didn’t want to let these people back into my life so that they could hurt me once again. I learned this lesson of self-protection in therapy a long time ago, and over the years I accepted the idea that I had to do this for myself, even if it meant I wasn’t a “good Christian.” However, I did feel guilty that I was not living up to the ideals I was taught.

Tonight I’m thinking that guilt has been misplaced. Protecting myself doesn’t equal holding a grudge. When I think of the people who I have cut out of my life in this way, I feel many emotions; in some cases, I don’t even feel angry anymore. I just feel sad. That’s hardly the sign of someone who is holding onto bitterness. That sounds more like forgiveness that does not forget.

Maybe I’m further along with this whole forgiveness thing than I’ve given myself credit for all these years.

Well, That Sucks

There are times when I really miss pseudonymous blogging.

Tonight is one of those times.

Question of the Day

A question I’m struggling to answer right now: how does one know when enough is enough?

Coming Out of the Dark

A new year, a new semester.

2010 was hard. Fall was hard. It’s a relief both are over.

I’m glad for a fresh start, though I am apprehensive. As you can probably tell from the tone of the blog, I’ve been doing better the past several weeks. The depression is lifting, at least a little.  The good days are starting to outnumber the bad. I feel like the emotional fog I’ve been fighting through is starting to dissipate.  That’s a relief.

I still have bad days, though, days when I don’t want to get out of bed, and feeling stressed out contributes to that dynamic. The first week of the semester is always stressful. I am looking forward to meeting my students (and greeting returning students), but I also know this week will be exhausting. I’m already feeling overwhelmed and anxious about that fact.

I know I’ll make it through, though.  I always do.