"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in." -American Beauty
"Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird." -Anne Lamott
"...wait for the gift my Father promised..." -Acts 1:4
In my last blog entry I wrote how I am motivated to do certain activities such as reading, composing, and lesson planning for no reason other than the pure and intrinsic joy that they give me. Indeed, I am so often engrossed and impassioned by the beauty and diversity of life. God has blessed me with so many gifts and there is just so much I want to do, and see, and experience, and be in this life. I want to be a great teacher. I want to continue to write and share music and grow in my composing abilities. I want to read everything I can get my hands on. I'd like to write books and stories of my own. I want to travel and see the world. I want to make an impact on those I meet and leave the world a better place than I found it. More than anything, I just want to be a great person, and, someday, a great husband and father.
All these goals are well-worth pursuing, but I have recently been struck by how I cannot pursue all of them well at this ripe young age of 22. I compose and read and write and travel and meet and relate and love when I can, but the reality is that the vast majority of my time continues to be consumed by the pursuit of my teaching dream. I might still be able to do all these things in my lifetime, but for now, I have to wait. My dreams of composing and reading and writing and traveling and meeting and relating and loving have largely been slowed down as I chase after the ideal of becoming a great teacher.
With a year in classrooms already under my belt, I am not yet a great teacher. In fact, I'm not even really a very good teacher right now. I struggle to translate my enthusiasm for my content into lessons that are engaging and relevant to my students. I struggle to maintain control of the class and earn student respect. I struggle to connect with my kids and remember what it was like to be in their shoes. I struggle to do anything that will have a lasting impact when I must share a room and classes this year with a considerably more experienced (and Type-A) co-teacher/mentor. I work, and work, and work, and struggle, and struggle, and struggle, and then I work and I struggle some more. And still I am not great. I have been encouraged so many times by so many people that I am going to be a great teacher and positively impact hundreds if not thousands of students. But, for now, I have to wait.
It's even harder to try to achieve all my dreams of greatness when I'm not feeling well. I have generally considered myself to be a pretty healthy person. However, last semester I just felt exhausted and run down all the time. I would come home and take 2-3 hour naps, then sleep for 7-8 hours, then wake up the next morning with a headache feeling just as tired as I did the night before. My coach at MTR was concerned and I was referred to a doctor. I found out that I not only have mild anemia, but also sleep apnea. (For those who do not know, apnea is a sleep disorder where you repeatedly stop breathing during sleep. Your body jolts you awake, you gasp for breath, and then you promptly fall back asleep without remembering any of it. Unfortunately, when these episodes happen every few minutes, you never get to the deepest, most restful stages of sleep. Your quality of life- and long-term health- suffers accordingly).
At first I was surprised and a bit shocked to learn that I had sleep apnea. However, I've come to be less surprised by it. It's simply a genetic inheritance. After a couple of nights doing overnight sleep studies, I am actually excited to get my CPAP machine/mask that will enable me to breathe properly while asleep and get that restful deep sleep I so badly need. But, I know that adjusting to the mask won't be easy, and it will take time for me to recover from my exhaustion and regain the physical and emotional stamina that I need to be able to do anything well, whether it be teaching, composing, writing, or loving. I must wait.
It has not always been easy recognizing that I have to do so much waiting before fully realizing some or all of my dreams. What has helped is the realization that there is more than one way to wait. I am striving to develop an attitude of active waiting.
I'm not a great teacher right now. So, I have a choice. I can sit on the sidelines, work and struggle as little as possible, and wait passively hoping that someday I will wake up and suddenly be a great teacher. Or, I can wait actively and seek out every opportunity to learn something new from my colleagues and students that will help push me one step further on the daunting path toward becoming a great teacher.
I don't have enough time to devote to my music right now. Again, I have a choice. I can sit in my apartment and play my keyboard to myself 15 minutes a day and wait passively hoping that someday some up-and-coming film director miraculously stumbles upon an old recording of "Finding Common Ground" and decides to hire me as the score composer. Or, I can wait actively and use my free time to write out new pieces, one note at a time, a few measures a day, and gradually build up a portfolio of work that I could present should various opportunities (large- or small-scale) arise later in life.
I'm not currently dating anyone and feel overwhelmed at the prospect of adding dating/a relationship/a spouse to my already crazy busy life. Once more, I have a choice. I can wait passively for some "Belle" to fall out of the sky five years from now and everything suddenly be perfect like it was in Beauty and the Beast (3-D or otherwise). Or, I can wait actively and devote what energy I can to investing in the numerous friendships I already have. Maybe eventually, God-willing, one of those friendships, or a connection made through a friend, will lead via a slow, careful, thoughtful, prayerful process into a healthy long-term relationship/marriage.
Waiting is inevitable. It's how you use the time that counts. Passive waiting inevitably leads to failure, frustration, and disappointment. Active waiting may not lead to perfection, but it might lead to greatness, and it will make you a better person, which is probably the most important thing anyone should be striving for anyway.
Life is what you make of it. Your attitude makes all the difference.
"Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!" -Psalm 27:14
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
On Reading
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -Mark Twain
There are certain things that I just plain love to do for the pure and intrinsic joy they give me. Most people that know me know that I love playing the piano and writing. They might also suspect that teaching and learning, especially in my field of History, is something that gives me that kind of joy- I can get caught up in planning lessons and grading and lose track of time just as easily as I can composing. Something else I love in that way, and felt like giving a bit of time to in this here blog, is reading.
The first time I received any kind of public recognition for anything was, in fact, for reading. When I was...5? 6? I don't remember for sure...I joined my local branch library's summer reading program and read a ridiculous number of picture books. I got my picture with the librarian in the paper for it.
The next time I got myself in the paper, a year or two later, was for much the same thing. My mom was leading some community event or other and there was a photographer there. I had no interest in whatever it was my mom was doing, so I sat out in the lobby with my stack of library books. The photographer thought I looked cute curled up in the chair with a book and snapped another picture of me. It ended up in the paper with a quote from my mom about how I had read about 100 books that summer.
I haven't stopped.
The journey hasn't always been easy though. Frankly, my schooling did a pretty good job of almost stamping out the joy and education that reading gives me. By the time I reached high school, I had become so frustrated with the seemingly endless stream of tests and quizzes asking every minute literal detail from whatever work of supposedly great literature we had just read (and with the seeming irrelevance of said works of literature), that I very nearly did stop reading for pleasure. I just read those seemingly pointless books that my well-intentioned teachers were forcing me to read, and then went home and found other (in retrospect, considerably more pointless) ways to occupy my time.
It was a little easier for me to enjoy reading again in college, but only a little. I chanced revisiting books like To Kill A Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye and found that they were considerably more profound and relevant than when I had initially encountered them at age 14. Academia, though, teaches a particular way of reading that, I think, eats away so much of the pleasure of it. I became adept at consuming massive quantities of text in a very short period of time, extracting arguments and supporting details and never stopping to sit and just digest every single word and let the beauty of the language wash over me. Worse, after all the homework got done and I tried to curl up with books like, let's say, The Fountainhead or Brave New World, I just couldn't get into them. Literary novels like these don't really have an argument and details to extract in the way that a book like, let's say, Manning Marable's Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006 does. Novels are pure story, a place for your spirit to escape to and become engrossed in while your worldly body rests on a comfy sofa in front of a roaring fire as the snow falls gently outside your windowpane.
A year or two ago, I had lost the ability to do this. I'd read a page or two, get frustrated with the lack of any immediately obvious point, and then go to my computer and see what the latest three facebook statuses were. And, the viscious downward spiral of Twitterosis continues.
Now that college is mostly a memory, though, I am pleased to say that I have once again regained the ability to sit and read for an extended period of time, for no real reason more or less than that pure and intrinsic joy of it, again. I just was blessed with a glorious two week vacation at home in Western New York, and the one thing I probably did more of than anything else (well, besides planning lessons for the new semester that starts in about 33 hours) was curl up with a good book and read. I started and/or finished seven wonderful and diverse books in those two weeks. I recommend them all, for various reasons. The list is below.
1) The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauf. This classic, the first in the Oxford History of the United States series, is filled with 700+ pages of dense text that can't be bigger than a size 9 or 10 font and answers any question anyone could ever possibly have about the circumstances surrounding our country's founding. (Alright, I'll admit it...I did skim parts of this one. But only parts!)
2) No Greater Love by Mother Theresa. In this simple and quick read, Mother Theresa shares some of her wisdom on topics such as prayer, love, poverty, and forgiveness. I couldn't read more than a sentence or two without feeling simultaneous deep humility and inspiration.
3/4) Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 and Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World, by Rafe Esquith. Rafe is my new hero and inspiration when it comes to teaching. Esquith has spent the last 35+ years teaching 5th grade at an inner-city school in Los Angeles. None of his students speak English as a first language, but that doesn't stop them from learning every subject (yup, even science and social studies and art and music and PE), traveling the world, and putting on a full-fledged unabridged production of a Shakespeare play (complete with live rock music accompaniment) every year. In these two books, Esquith shares some of his witty wisdom and profound insights about teaching (TLYHOF) and parenting (LTF). Anyone who works with children in any capacity should take a look at these (and Rafe's first book, There Are No Shortcuts, which I read earlier last year).
5) Life Without Limits by Nick Vujicic. The author of this book was born limbless (i.e. no arms and no legs), but that hasn't stopped him from traveling the world to share his inspiring message of hope and love, stopping along the way to do things like learn how to surf and star in a lovely little short movie ("The Butterfly Circus," which I highly recommend you google and watch online immediately). In his book, Vujicic shares his story and how things like finding your purpose, having faith, and being resilient when confronted with inevitable failure are essential to living a well-lived life and achieving your dreams. Once again, I could not put this page-turner down without feeling simultaneous deep humility and inspiration.
6/7) The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. I've been a King fan for years- he has a way of taking the most ridiculous scenarios and writing about them in such an infectious way that you can't help believe that you are watching them actually unfold. These two books are the first in King's seven-part epic "Dark Tower" series. I first tried to read The Gunslinger a couple years ago and just couldn't get into it. Upon mostly overcoming Twitterosis and regaining my ability actually read something for fun, I figured I'd give it another shot. On second reading, the first book turned out to be a solid introduction to the world of Roland, the last gunslinger in a world that has "moved on." I liked it, but it still isn't my favorite thing King has ever written; it felt like he was trying a bit too hard to be "literary." The Drawing of the Three however, has been brilliant so far (I'm about 2/3 of the way through). King stripped away the first book's pretentiousness and instead does what he does best- tell a pure and engrossing story. I won't give any of the plot away, but suffice it to say that I have really been struggling to put this one down.
My students are going to read. And if I can do anything about it, they're going to enjoy what they read, damn it. However I go about achieving this goal, I hope I don't school my kidlets into not reading rather than educating them into it. Reading has so many benefits, for me and for anyone else who takes the time to set aside their Twitterosis long enough to sit down and actually read a book. (As for me, I still like reading real books...you know, the kind that are actually printed with ink on paper. I was a long, stubborn holdout on getting a cell phone and I imagine I'm going to be much the same way when it comes to trading my excessive quantity of books for a Kindle).
I guess I'll concede that vociferous reading does have a couple of downsides. First, not many people do it, so you're liable to be mocked, ridiculed, ignored, or labeled as a "nerd" or a "geek" whenever you decide it's high time to curl up in the lobby with a stack of five tomes (I've learned to just take such treatment as a compliment). Second, it can be a bit hard on your vision if you don't learn how give your eyes a rest every now and then; I'm not very good at that and seem to grow a bit more nearsighted every year. Still, all in all I'd say the trade-offs are worth it. People who read learn how to slow down, focus, concentrate, and commit to something more lasting than the latest Twitter trends. In the process, us readers gain so much knowledge and understanding, in so many different ways, about this little thing called life. As a result, I believe we are able to live better, richer, more fulfilling little lives.
And besides, it's just plain fun.
There are certain things that I just plain love to do for the pure and intrinsic joy they give me. Most people that know me know that I love playing the piano and writing. They might also suspect that teaching and learning, especially in my field of History, is something that gives me that kind of joy- I can get caught up in planning lessons and grading and lose track of time just as easily as I can composing. Something else I love in that way, and felt like giving a bit of time to in this here blog, is reading.
The first time I received any kind of public recognition for anything was, in fact, for reading. When I was...5? 6? I don't remember for sure...I joined my local branch library's summer reading program and read a ridiculous number of picture books. I got my picture with the librarian in the paper for it.
The next time I got myself in the paper, a year or two later, was for much the same thing. My mom was leading some community event or other and there was a photographer there. I had no interest in whatever it was my mom was doing, so I sat out in the lobby with my stack of library books. The photographer thought I looked cute curled up in the chair with a book and snapped another picture of me. It ended up in the paper with a quote from my mom about how I had read about 100 books that summer.
I haven't stopped.
The journey hasn't always been easy though. Frankly, my schooling did a pretty good job of almost stamping out the joy and education that reading gives me. By the time I reached high school, I had become so frustrated with the seemingly endless stream of tests and quizzes asking every minute literal detail from whatever work of supposedly great literature we had just read (and with the seeming irrelevance of said works of literature), that I very nearly did stop reading for pleasure. I just read those seemingly pointless books that my well-intentioned teachers were forcing me to read, and then went home and found other (in retrospect, considerably more pointless) ways to occupy my time.
It was a little easier for me to enjoy reading again in college, but only a little. I chanced revisiting books like To Kill A Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye and found that they were considerably more profound and relevant than when I had initially encountered them at age 14. Academia, though, teaches a particular way of reading that, I think, eats away so much of the pleasure of it. I became adept at consuming massive quantities of text in a very short period of time, extracting arguments and supporting details and never stopping to sit and just digest every single word and let the beauty of the language wash over me. Worse, after all the homework got done and I tried to curl up with books like, let's say, The Fountainhead or Brave New World, I just couldn't get into them. Literary novels like these don't really have an argument and details to extract in the way that a book like, let's say, Manning Marable's Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006 does. Novels are pure story, a place for your spirit to escape to and become engrossed in while your worldly body rests on a comfy sofa in front of a roaring fire as the snow falls gently outside your windowpane.
A year or two ago, I had lost the ability to do this. I'd read a page or two, get frustrated with the lack of any immediately obvious point, and then go to my computer and see what the latest three facebook statuses were. And, the viscious downward spiral of Twitterosis continues.
Now that college is mostly a memory, though, I am pleased to say that I have once again regained the ability to sit and read for an extended period of time, for no real reason more or less than that pure and intrinsic joy of it, again. I just was blessed with a glorious two week vacation at home in Western New York, and the one thing I probably did more of than anything else (well, besides planning lessons for the new semester that starts in about 33 hours) was curl up with a good book and read. I started and/or finished seven wonderful and diverse books in those two weeks. I recommend them all, for various reasons. The list is below.
1) The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauf. This classic, the first in the Oxford History of the United States series, is filled with 700+ pages of dense text that can't be bigger than a size 9 or 10 font and answers any question anyone could ever possibly have about the circumstances surrounding our country's founding. (Alright, I'll admit it...I did skim parts of this one. But only parts!)
2) No Greater Love by Mother Theresa. In this simple and quick read, Mother Theresa shares some of her wisdom on topics such as prayer, love, poverty, and forgiveness. I couldn't read more than a sentence or two without feeling simultaneous deep humility and inspiration.
3/4) Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 and Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World, by Rafe Esquith. Rafe is my new hero and inspiration when it comes to teaching. Esquith has spent the last 35+ years teaching 5th grade at an inner-city school in Los Angeles. None of his students speak English as a first language, but that doesn't stop them from learning every subject (yup, even science and social studies and art and music and PE), traveling the world, and putting on a full-fledged unabridged production of a Shakespeare play (complete with live rock music accompaniment) every year. In these two books, Esquith shares some of his witty wisdom and profound insights about teaching (TLYHOF) and parenting (LTF). Anyone who works with children in any capacity should take a look at these (and Rafe's first book, There Are No Shortcuts, which I read earlier last year).
5) Life Without Limits by Nick Vujicic. The author of this book was born limbless (i.e. no arms and no legs), but that hasn't stopped him from traveling the world to share his inspiring message of hope and love, stopping along the way to do things like learn how to surf and star in a lovely little short movie ("The Butterfly Circus," which I highly recommend you google and watch online immediately). In his book, Vujicic shares his story and how things like finding your purpose, having faith, and being resilient when confronted with inevitable failure are essential to living a well-lived life and achieving your dreams. Once again, I could not put this page-turner down without feeling simultaneous deep humility and inspiration.
6/7) The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. I've been a King fan for years- he has a way of taking the most ridiculous scenarios and writing about them in such an infectious way that you can't help believe that you are watching them actually unfold. These two books are the first in King's seven-part epic "Dark Tower" series. I first tried to read The Gunslinger a couple years ago and just couldn't get into it. Upon mostly overcoming Twitterosis and regaining my ability actually read something for fun, I figured I'd give it another shot. On second reading, the first book turned out to be a solid introduction to the world of Roland, the last gunslinger in a world that has "moved on." I liked it, but it still isn't my favorite thing King has ever written; it felt like he was trying a bit too hard to be "literary." The Drawing of the Three however, has been brilliant so far (I'm about 2/3 of the way through). King stripped away the first book's pretentiousness and instead does what he does best- tell a pure and engrossing story. I won't give any of the plot away, but suffice it to say that I have really been struggling to put this one down.
My students are going to read. And if I can do anything about it, they're going to enjoy what they read, damn it. However I go about achieving this goal, I hope I don't school my kidlets into not reading rather than educating them into it. Reading has so many benefits, for me and for anyone else who takes the time to set aside their Twitterosis long enough to sit down and actually read a book. (As for me, I still like reading real books...you know, the kind that are actually printed with ink on paper. I was a long, stubborn holdout on getting a cell phone and I imagine I'm going to be much the same way when it comes to trading my excessive quantity of books for a Kindle).
I guess I'll concede that vociferous reading does have a couple of downsides. First, not many people do it, so you're liable to be mocked, ridiculed, ignored, or labeled as a "nerd" or a "geek" whenever you decide it's high time to curl up in the lobby with a stack of five tomes (I've learned to just take such treatment as a compliment). Second, it can be a bit hard on your vision if you don't learn how give your eyes a rest every now and then; I'm not very good at that and seem to grow a bit more nearsighted every year. Still, all in all I'd say the trade-offs are worth it. People who read learn how to slow down, focus, concentrate, and commit to something more lasting than the latest Twitter trends. In the process, us readers gain so much knowledge and understanding, in so many different ways, about this little thing called life. As a result, I believe we are able to live better, richer, more fulfilling little lives.
And besides, it's just plain fun.
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