Story #58: Working It

It is really starting to look like I am actually going to have a job for the new school year. I have been waiting all summer to find out, but I think it might really happen.

Here's what's been going on: When I signed my contract last January, it was to work only for the rest of the school year as the opening I was filling was for all intents and purposes a leave position. But then I got to my school and liked it...and even loved some things (and people) there and so that got confusing, because I wanted to stay. But the person who had left was coming back and wanted her job and so there was just not the possibility for me to come back.

Then the option became available for me to work in the middle school division of our school, because the person doing that job became the Assistant Principal. That person, over the course of the spring semester, had also become someone with whom I was--shall we say--spending time socially? And so going to work at the middle school seemed complicated and potentially challenging too. Also, the MS position was only half-time and so to make up the other part of my contract I would have had to teach. middle. school. Like whoa. Some people are great at it but I am not one of them. Actually I've never done it, so I'm not sure how great I might actually be. But I do not want to try it, and so the point was kind of moot anyway.

All this meant that while I am eligible to fill a position in the district, doing the same job as last year, for 2009-2010 I did not have a school at which to work. There was no school with an opening to which I could go. So I could:

a. apply for other positions within the district, which I didn't because I thought it might actually jeopardize the possibility of getting the job I really wanted

b. apply to other schools and districts, which I did

c. be anxious and frustrated and even cry sometimes which I certainly did too.

Finally it seemed like the waiting might be over, and I went last Monday and had a great interview at a well-located school with a convenient schedule that offers a whole range of community-based services. Seemed great. I liked the (new) principal and the new principal liked me. Afterwards I left and went directly to the district office to tell my director's secretary that I wanted to work there for the fall. And then, I didn't...hear...back. Again. For three days.

Until Thursday when the secretary emailed apologetically, saying they've been so busy and she hadn't been able to speak with the director but now she had and the placement looked good and if I still wanted it (still wanted it?!?!?!?) she'd put through the paperwork.

My email back to her read simply: DO! IT!!! :) and I realized with great relief I was about to have my very own job again, one that I get to keep if I want to, for the first time since October 2008. There was some chocolate-eating and a few joyous phone calls and text messages and then we even went out for drinks that night at Orson (sidepoint: It was such the lesbian scene. The Lex or El Rio or Wild Side West or Cockblock or anywhere else of that genre was never part of my club circuit...so I had never been out like this WHOA) to celebrate. Yaaaaay all my patience and suit-wearing and smart responses to questions about school reform and instructional equity had paid off. Done :)

Until...yesterday morning, when my director emailed me herself (a completely rarity) asking if I would consider a placement at another school. For whatever reason there is a total eleventh-hour opening at a high-profile school that participates in a district-wide professional learning community with other schools and an educational non-profit. They too are getting a new principal and need a strong person with my professional profile to fill their opening. So on Monday I am going to meet with their old principal, now an Assistant Superintendent in the district, and my director to see if this site might be a match for me instead.

I was really starting to get into the idea of going to the school I visited last Monday, though. They have never had someone who does my job placed at their school, so it seemed like a cool opportunity to kind of write my own story about the work I'd do there. Plus it is right. downtown. which I love. And downstairs from the school is Naan N Curry, and Peet's is across the street. And it is by transit and starts at 8:40, not 7:55 like the school I'm going to visit on Monday. Sigh.

I just want to know what is going to happen. I have been advised again and again to trust, to rest in uncertainty, to avoid attachment to or anxiety about things I can't control. Easier said than done...I will keep you posted.

Story #57: Time Off

It has been almost six weeks since I've posted anything here on Different Story, Different Day. That's a lot of days without stories. Of course, countless stories have been unfolding during that time--I just have not been sharing them here.

Time off can feel nice but one thing that I realize, time and time again, when I take a break from writing is that ultimately it is harder for me to understand my world when I do not write about what I see and learn. Plus, telling stories is fun to me and from what I've been able to tell people enjoy reading what I have to say. So, hello again everyone :)

Story #56: Diet Coke Cake

Henry and me hard at work on the batter

Kelli shows off her frosting, ready to spread

Last weekend we were all in Chicago for my mom's surgery. It also happened to be my dad's birthday. "Can I be in charge of the cake?!" my sister in law Kelli wanted to know. "I have a GREAT recipe I want to try--it's called Diet Coke cake and it's incredible!" Diet Coke cake? I mean, I remember food in the midwest being different than what I eat now in California but this was more than unusual. Sure, I thought--as much as I love my dad and love cake, the last thing I was in the mood to do was create some special birthday confection. Plus with a name like that, who wouldn't be curious?

We went to the Jewel on our way home from the hospital Saturday night. I was worried about getting home because my brother had sounded pretty frustrated on the phone when I called to tell him we were leaving the hospital. Spending all afternoon with Henry and Samuel, while fun, can do that to a person. Kelli reassured me that the trip to the grocery store would be quick. "The recipe only has four ingredients," she explained, "even including the frosting. So there's not much to buy."

Diet Coke Cake

ingredients:
one box chocolate cake mix
one 12-ounce can Diet Coke
one tub frozen Cool Whip
one package Jell-o gelatin mix (we chose raspberry)

directions:
1. Empty the cake mix into a large bowl.
2. Add the Diet Coke.
3. Mix until batter is uniform and free of lumps.
4. Bake according to directions.
5. Cool.
6. Thaw Cool Whip until stir-able.
7. Empty the packet of Jell-o mix into the Cool Whip.
8. Fold until blended.
9. Frost.
10. Eat.

Henry and I were in charge of the batter while Kelli and Samuel made the frosting. The cake itself was light, fluffy, moist, and (on a California note) vegan. The frosting--shocking pink in color--was a little overwhelming to me, mostly because the crystals do not dissolve completely and the texture is crunchy as a result. Overall, though, innovative and enjoyable. Most importantly the birthday man seemed to enjoy being celebrated, which is the most important thing of all.

Dad eating Diet Coke cake!

Story #55: Jessica!

Over Memorial Day weekend I went to Tawonga to work as an educator for family camp. The long drive into the mountains gave me plenty of time to think, worry, plan (ha!) and daydream about the future. The scenery outside the car was gorgeous, as ever, but inside my mind it was a mix of beautiful and exciting possibilities about what could be next in my life and disappointing, terrifying fears about loss.

And then, of course, there is the charge to just live in the present, to show up and unpack your stuff and live amongst the tall, tall trees if only for a long weekend. Breathing clear Yosemite air and watching the millions of stars come out helped remind me of the peacefulness that can come from appreciating every moment. Plus camp, for all its dirt and bugs and lack of Internet access is simply very fun. Just when I get tangled up in my own life and upset about what might or might not be, I find myself on stage with my friend Avner and a bunch of other camp staff, not to mention a dozen kids under the age of six, dancing to the Israeli club favorite Jessica. Like the Macarena or All the Single Ladies by Beyonce, the song Jessica has a signature dance and it is super fun...even better when being coached through and cheered along by Avner: "Okay, now be the train, choo choo! Excellent!" So fun. The next time I need to remind myself about the freedom of being in the present, the next time I need a break from the busy-ness of my mind I think I will dance Jessica just on my own, wherever I am. As a matter of fact, now is as good a time as any. Dance it with me, everyone...

Ech besof hashavu'a
hi be'ofen kavu'a, lo levad
im ein gever bashetach
(az) hi potachat bedietat shokolad
k'mo kol echad.

Vehachiyuch shelah ratuv
ani chozer k'shehi tashuv
nas'ah lah lemakom acher.

Tamid chashvah sheha'elohim
ahav lir'ot otanu menagnim
ki zeh harosh shel Jessica
Jessie, Jessie, Jessie Jessica ooh oh ooh oh
ah ooh oh ooh oh
achshav hi rechokah.

(read the lyrics in Hebrew and English here)

Story #54: At The Beach

me up to my ankles in the cold swirling surf of Ocean Beach, staying right where I am even when the shifting sands and chilly toes make it very tempting to want to go

On Wednesday I went to Ocean Beach with Sarah. She is leaving in just a few days to move back to Seattle for the summer. In the fall, she will move to Los Angeles to begin rabbinical school.

Two years ago we had met on the same beach except then it was me leaving for my sabbatical and her staying here in San Francisco. Now it is the other way around. I was going to camp and then Jerusalem, she is going to Zeigler and then to...well, of course...Israel eventually. Unsurprising.

We talked about the ideas of staying and going, about which is easier, about which is more brave. We talked about how going is usually a choice while staying is sometimes not, is sometimes just status quo. I had always thought that going requires greater courage but recently I am beginning to learn that staying is much harder than it seems.

Story #53: Hiatus

I have not written for awhile. On Wednesday I left for Chicago and have spent the past five days with my family. My mother, recently diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, is in the ICU at Loyola University Medical Center. It is hard to think of other things much less write about them right now. I have so appreciated hearing news from friends in the outside world while I've been away. It is a powerful and important reminder that there is more to life than what is happening in our family right now. Thank you to everyone.

My trip home was not only distressing, it was at times very entertaining too thanks to my nephews Henry and Samuel. Many, many pictures to follow--most of them taken by Henry. Below is a preview to whet your appetite. I will post the rest of them soon but for now, I am back in San Francisco and ready for dinner and a good night's sleep. I am sure it will not be long before I post another, more upbeat story...so, stay tuned.

Nathan & I hanging out on the futon, photo by Henry Kotleba age 2

Story #52: Going to Camp

What a surprise, it is 3 a.m. and I am packing to go to camp. I am having flashbacks to last year. Tonight's production is much less extreme than that, though, because when that post was written I was moving out of my whole entire house and going away for almost twelve weeks...unlike now when I am just trying to write a four-day-weekend worth of curriculum and pack up for a school day, a work night, a city sleepover, and a family camp's worth of time away from home.

Somehow it's still hard and it's still the middle of the night and I'm still awake.

I had gotten really good at packing and unpacking, those sixteen months that I was away. Thinking back on that time I cannot help but remember packing for camp, since that was where I went first when I left behind my fancy and well-appointed but underwhelming life in San Francisco. The day that the movers came to take my things out of 1000 Judah and put them into storage, the morning I dropped off my soon-to-be un-partner at the airport and drove someone else's Subaru up into the mountains for the very first time was the beginning of my life at camp and of my year-and-a-half-long sabbatical. I had no idea what was ahead of me and my only refuge from the craziness of living in the woods with hundreds of other people was my little camp house behind the office beside the trail on the way down to Pipeline. That first summer I learned a lot about how to live in nature and in community, how to be flexible and accepting when it comes to dirt, and how to be honest and patient with myself. Now it is two years later and the lessons are different but the need to always learn them, and about who I am, is the same. Packing, while it had gotten very easy during all those months, is hard again.

Back then all I had was three bags and five pairs of pants and my stuffed sheep Pierre. My home was wherever I was, I had no place else to go. Now I have a couch and a Kitchen Aid Mix Master, I have recycling to take out and plants to water before I leave town. Which is easier? Both are complicated. Which teaches me more? In the process of first going away and later coming home, I have discovered how to learn no matter where I go. Camp will always be a home to me, and packing has gotten easier since the first time I went because now I know exactly what ratio of days away to clean socks I should use when calculating my wardrobe needs. What hasn't gotten easier is being up all hours of the night trying to get ready to go. לילה טוב, lailah tov as we say at Camp Tawonga...good night.

Story #51: Meet My Nephew, Gloria

The other night I was on the phone with my brother Nathan, who lives in Iowa. Nathan has two sons: Henry is two and a half, and Samuel is two months old. Samuel is not old enough to talk on the telephone, but Henry is, and partway through our conversation Nathan asked me if I'd like to speak with Henry. Well, of course!

First came the predictable scuffling noise that is Henry trying to lift the phone up to his ear--it is heavy and takes both hands for him to hold it, you see. Then began the adventure that is any conversation with Henry: trying to figure out what he is talking about. You see, Henry is not savvy enough to know that when he begins speaking with someone new he should use social conventions for entering a conversation, such as a greeting such as "Hello!" or a pleasantry along the lines of "How are you?" No no, Henry just continues to speak out loud into the phone about whatever happened to be going on in his mind at the time. This, along with the fact that there is a LOT of conversational filler in Henry's speech along the lines of "ah, ah, ah, ah...." makes it very challenging to know what he is talking about sometimes. The absence of visual cues makes it even harder to understand what is going on.

But, it is always an adventure and so this time--like every other chance we've had to chat by phone--I just dove in.

"Hi, Henry, how are you?" I asked.

"That that that ah, ah, ah, that is not my name," came Henry's tiny high-pitched voice across the miles between us.

"Henry, you have to tell Aunt Sarah your new name, she doesn't know it yet," came Nathan's voice in the background as he coached Henry on what to say.

"Do not call me Henry, my name is ah, ah, ah, Gloria!" Henry said emphatically.

"Gloria?" I asked, confused.

"Yes!" he replied firmly.

"Let me talk to your dad," I said.

It turns out that Henry has decided he wants to be called Gloria, because that is the name of his favorite character in the movie Madagascar. So now we call him that and he loves it. Remember back when it was so easy to try new things, to shift your identity, to imagine yourself as any one of a number of different people with different strengths and talents and dreams?

Story #50: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

This is my friend Sage. She is super-pregnant with her and her wife Emily's first baby. This baby was conceived during the summer Olympics when there was lots of swimming being done by a very famous American. And, babies swim. And, they didn't want their kid's prenatal name to be Peanut or Ishy-Squishy or Cletus the Fetus (they actually have friends who used that moniker for their baby before the baby was born). So Sage and Emily's baby is called Phelps.

Phelps was scheduled to arrive on May 5. Cinco de Mayo! What a fun day to have a baby. We all could have worn sombreros in the delivery room instead of our Team Phelps shirts (pictures to follow). But no, Phelps did not arrive on that day. Five days later, Phelps is still not here. We are all waiting (not so) patiently. Last night sitting on the deck watching the sunset and enjoying a dinner of grilled lamb with vegetables, green salad, orange-basil corn on the cob, and red wine Sage tried to explain to Phelps that it is nice out here and we are looking forward to meeting her/him. No luck. No Phelps.

As you can see from the photograph, this womb's expiration date was May 5. Come on Phelps! Pack it up, let's go.

Story #49: Full

My schedule this past week was very full. Standardized testing rages on in the public schools of California and as our site's test coordinator, my days are kept quite busy managing 28 teachers as they administer a total of 72 different exams. The principal's office is a sea of Trader Joe's bags that get checked in and out each day, one per teacher, with booklets and pencils and schedules and huge ziploc bags filled with pretzels and Goldfish.

I also had a chance this past week to meet up with an OLD friend from high school, a woman who I hadn't seen since more than half my life ago. We went to Sugar in Hayes Valley and played hipsters for a night--well, she lives in New York City so I think she is probably a hipster most of the time if not always. So fun to see her again and compare stories and lives over overpriced cocktail lounge drinks :)

Then there was the third round interview for something I'm trying to pull together this summer.

Then there was the Tuesday evening therapy appointment and the Thursday evening book group. Did I mention the Friday afternoon haircut? What about the early morning carpools into the city? Oy vey....my days and nights have been very full.

I would expect myself to be paralyzingly tired, what with all this and more going on. But it is as Kelly said: "When you are doing things you love, that make you feel good about yourself, you find more energy. Not even that--the energy just comes! Suddenly late-night phone calls and midnight text messages are racy and delicious, not exhausting."

Um, she's right :)

Story #48: Talking School, Speaking Kid

This afternoon I was sitting in the Starbucks conference room (who knew there was such a thing) at Mariposa and Bryant, taking part in my professional book group. We are reading the book How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. It is a book about communication, about different "languages" or models of discourse that can be found in everyday interactions between people. Sounds boring, maybe, but the content is very key to success in my line of work and also the people in the group are awesome, so it's super fun.

Partway through we were sharing quotes from the book with one another. The person whose turn it was to share a quote would tell us all the page number and approximate location on the page (i.e., "second full paragraph, last few sentences, start where it is 'And in this way...' or whatever). Then we would all find it, and read along in our minds as that person read aloud. Once, though, the woman sitting next to me was lost and could not find the quote on the page that had been announced. "Wait, what? Where is it?" she asked as the person began to read aloud their selection from the text. I leaned over and pointed in her book to the spot where the person had begun to read. "Great, thanks!" she murmured, relieved, as she began to follow along on her page.

As the discussion unfolded I was only half paying attention because the act of showing her where we were reading had taken me back in time to my last classroom, that huge room with a wall of windows tucked upstairs in the ark-inspired building on Brotherhood Way. I taught there for five years, in my little home-away-from-home, and in our class we spent far more time on building community and reinforcing positive social behavior than on parts of speech or memorizing math facts. Just like Kegan and Lahey describe there being languages of interactions between adults, there are certainly languages of interactions between kids too and one joyful thing for me was to help every kid who came into our class become a fluent speaker of the language that helps us get along with one another.

This idea of discourse with children is one of the reasons I first started blogging, almost six years ago now. It was really all Matt's idea in the beginning, he was the one who was most insistent that the stories I told around the big redwood brunch table in his kitchen actually had a far wider audience. Like me, Matt is a bit of a whore for languages and through conversations with him I came to understand that not all adults speak Kid in the way that I do. "How did you know what to say to them, how could you tell what they were talking about?" he would marvel. A bit of natural affinity, perhaps, but a WHOLE lot of practice.

One thing that was always part of the language of my own classroom was the way that you help your neighbor when they get lost during read-aloud time. If we are all looking on our own copies of a shared text (like Friday afternoon during Social Studies, for example, when we would read our weekly newsmagazine Time for Kids) and someone gets lost, you should help them find their place. However, you should not do what comes naturally--pointing at your own page--because then they have to look at your page, find the word you're pointing at, look back at their own page, find the word there, and by then we're on to the next sentence and things have gotten worse instead of better. Instead, when someone is lost during read-aloud you should point on their own page since that is where they are reading anyway. Then they can easily get back on track and you can return to reading your personal text. Don't get me wrong, this took a lot of practice. Kids are developmentally very self-centered. So it was not easy to get them in the habit of leaving their inner world to point at someone else's page. But with time they got it and soon it was second nature.

So simple, right? But such a revolutionary idea: helping each other the way the other person needs help, not the way WE think they need help. As I sat in the Starbucks conference room, pointing to the spot in Jen's book where she should start reading, I smiled to myself and thought back to all the kids out there in the world who point to other people's books and help them get back on track. It is nice to know that the long hours and underwhelming pay and emotional fatigue that come with this job are balanced by the good karma of hundreds of kids becoming adults who have learned the value of helping someone else the way that person needs to be helped.

Story #47: Weird Meat...Blogging From School

Just now I was in the office, in between meetings and curriculum correlations and student paperwork and test coordination. I was, I am not embarrassed to say, actually sitting down and having my lunch like a proper grown-up...something that was truly much easier to do when I was a classroom teacher. I had barely pulled my magnificent leftovers from last night out of the microwave when I heard the secretary's summons. "Sarah!" she called, "Come here, I need you!"

Rushing out with my tupperware and fork in hand, first bite halfway to my mouth, I found two small and somewhat damp kindergarteners sitting sheepishly on "the chairs", a line of brown-upholstered high-backed seats lined up against the wall facing the massive main desk nerve center where the magic of our school site really happens. "Yes?" I asked the secretary. "What's wrong?"

She waved her hand dismissively, on the phone in that way I think she fake-talks when she doesn't want to deal with the world on the other side of her desk. Turning to the two students, I took a deep breath. "Yes?" I repeated. "Why are you here?"

They looked at each other, then at the floor, at me, at each other...time for a different question, obviously, since I was not getting anywhere just yet. "Are you hurt or in trouble?"

"Hurt," the taller one murmured, pointing at his behind. "I fell on my butt and I hurt it."

"You fell on your butt?" I asked, bite number one of my lunch passing my lips as I realized this was not an urgent enough situation to prevent me from eating. "How did that happen?"

"I was running in the bathroom and I slipped on the floor and fell on my butt," he replied, eyes still on the ground.

"You were running in the bathroom?" I asked, for clarification. "Why?"

"We were playing tag!" the shorter student answered, enthusiastically.

I turned to him. "In the bathroom?" He nodded. "Why?" He shrugged. "Is the bathroom the place we usually play tag?" He shook his head vehemently. "Where do we usually play tag?"

"On the playground!" they chorused with practiced certainty. I could tell they'd had to answer questions like this before. Sigh...another bite. "Did you fall on your butt too?" I asked the shorter student.

"Oh, no, I just brought my friend to the office so he could get an icepack for his butt," was the earnest reply.

"Do you need an icepack?" I asked the taller student as I continued to eat my lunch. "Would that help you feel better?"

"I actually feel fine now," he said, twisting his hands in a mix of embarrassment and desire to return to recess.

"I feel fine too but you know what?" his friend asked me, standing up from his brown chair and tying his shoe in preparation for heading back out to recess.

"What?" I asked him.

"Your lunch smells funny. What are you eating? It smells like weird meat." The secretary, finished with the imaginary phone call she'd been on to avoid having to talk with these kids about their sore butts, was now trying to hide her laughter by covering her face with an attendance folder.

"It is weird meat," I replied, nonplussed, fork to lips.

"Can I see?" he asked, shoe tied, on his tiptoes craning his neck to look into my bowl.

"No," I said definitively. "Go back to recess."

"Aren't you vegetarian?" the secretary asked as the boys ran back outside, sure to slip and land on their butts again as they raced across the rain-slick pavement towards the playground.

"I am," I answered around another mouthful of the magnificent Mac-And-Cheese-Chicken-Apple-Sausage combination Sage whipped up for me as comfort food when I went to her house last night.

"Vegetarians don't eat weird meat," the secretary pointed out.

"Spending this much time in an elementary school causes people to make all kinds of weird choices," I answered as I walked back to the principal's office.

Story #46: Houses

I was working on Sunday and while looking for something in a stack of papers on someone else's desk, I accidentally dislodged a set of flashcards that fell from the pile and fluttered to the ground like so many three-by-five-inch snowflakes. This card was the first I grabbed as I began to collect them from the floor and return them to the desk, rubber-banded this time. "Ah, batim," I thought to myself absent-mindedly as I plucked the word from the ground and reached for another. Surprised by myself, I paused for a moment. Holding the card in my hand I thought back to the time that I wasn't able to read it at all, before the symbols had any meaning or the letters made any sounds in my mind. Now בתים is a sight word, I don't even have to use the vowels included on the flashcard to sound it out but instead I recognize it instantly.

A small reminder of the way things change with time, I suppose. Years ago when I first taught with Jason in our fancy new building on fog-shrouded Brotherhood Way a flashcard like this would not have helped me learn anything because the only alphabets I'd had any practice with moved from left to right. Then there was my first Hebrew teacher: Mrs. Solomon, who let me learn along with the second graders in my class and even gave me my own workbook, and there was summer school at Hebrew University the July that the war raged around us and we took our final in a bomb shelter. There was ulpan at HUC in Jerusalem last year during my sabbatical, and there was the need to make myself understood teaching English at an elementary school in HaGivat HaTzarfatit. And now I know this word, along with countless others.

I spent seven years in a learning community where flashcards and posters like this were on display everyplace you looked, where sounds like ch and ts were on everyone's lips. But I do not choose to live in only that world, unlike many other people, and now there are new letters to learn and sounds to practice and words to read. Coming to a school where cultures different from my own are all around me, where I sat recently in a meeting and learned about Flores de Mayo all the while thinking about the fact that the night before had been Yom HaShoah, just made me so happy that as an educator I really do believe the world is my own classroom and that I can learn something from everyone I meet. Will there come a day when I can read Spanish and Tagalog as effortlessly as I could read this flashcard that says "houses"? Yes there will, and for that I am very glad. I love being a teacher but I love learning even more.

Story #45: Running Away from School

On Friday Carley and I ran away from school and went to Costco...I had never been there before like whoa. It was apparently sample day? Here is Carley eating a pierogi. "It's potato and cheese, even you can have it, do you want some?" she yelled across the masses of people swarming the sample lady. "Mm, never go to Costco on sample day with an Italian," she said, "we'll just eat the whole time." "Speaking of cultural groups and eating, what about an Italian and a Jew?" I said. "Good point!" she replied. "Want another pierogi?"

We were there to buy snacks for students to have as a special brain boost during the standardized testing that's happening at school the next...yeah...three weeks. So, almost 600 kids times twelve days of testing times how many boxes of cheddar Goldfish do we need?! equals SO MANY snacks. $310.25 later we loaded it all into her 2 door Accord (would have been a perfect opportunity to take advantage of all the cargo space in the Subaru, but alas it was in Oakland) and, while tempted to play hooky and get iced coffee at Java Beach, we went back to school. Wow did we feel like we were getting away with something while we were out in the real world though.

Story #44: Thunder

There are twelve apartments in my building, four on each floor, separated by a hallway in one direction and the central staircase in the other direction. This means that when I go out my front door (oh yes, I have a back door to you see, that is how fancy I am now) I see directly in front of me my neighbors' front door. Our apartments are the mirror image of each other. Then there is an apartment above me and also below me, exact same floor plan. The people who live in these three apartments are the ones that feel most like my neighbors, because I interact with them the most. I see the people on the other side of the staircase too, sometimes, but only up in the laundry room or taking their bikes outside. I don't really know what's going on with them on a day-to-day basis.

With my upstairs, downstairs, and across-the-hall neighbors it is different though. I can smell the tantalizing dinners they cook, listen as their children practice for school plays, see the light slicing out from underneath their door at night. It feels more connected, somehow, and that connection of course generates more stories.

The man who lives upstairs, given to playing folk music and sea chanties throughout the day, has recently taken on a new audio campaign. I presume it is to help him sleep, but I have not asked and so I cannot be sure. I first noticed this new soundtrack to his life on Sunday night of last week, just having gotten home from lying about in the park at the end of my block (but, not lying about in that park the way Kelly has been recently) and ready to cool down a bit after the first truly hot spring day in the East Bay. The sun was sinking behind the city skyline as I sat down on my couch with a glass of lemonade, ready for a rest after working hard all day pre-park. Just as I was getting settled I heard the most unexpected sound. Thunder?!

I looked out the window up at the darkening sky with a mixture of surprise and delight. One of the two things I miss most about Midwestern life is the warm-weather thunderstorms, the sky filling with clouds and lightning, the thick heavy air filling with rain. Could it be that a springtime deluge was about to unleash itself just outside my picture window? Um, no...not at all. The sky was inky but clear and the sprinkling of stars shining stronger than the city lights below began to gleam across the sky. What WAS that noise?

By now you have guessed, perhaps, that it was my upstairs neighbor. Beginning on Sunday and continuing every night this week, it thunders upstairs. All night long. It starts at about 11 p.m. and this morning when I woke up at 9 it was still going strong. I must say it is very tranquil, just kind of incongruous when you're getting dressed and ready for the Grand Lake Farmers' Market on a sunny Saturday morning and it's thundering upstairs.

Story #43: Kindly Hold, Please

The three most recent schools at which I've taught have been multilingual in all kinds of ways. First there was the English Hebrew Russian milieu on Brotherhood Way, and then the Hebrew Arabic English remix in East Jerusalem. Now there is the English Spanish Tagalog mash-up in SOMA and what can I say? I know how to say "hello" a million different ways. Have I mentioned I am also a very skilled French speaker? Different story...

All of this is actually fascinating to me because I love to learn, and learn about, languages. I taught myself Japanese and Italian growing up, I built my skills in French from early childhood all through college, and then of course things flip-flopped from right to left and I learned Hebrew. I love alphabets, I love the sounds letters make alone and combined, and almost more than anything I love idioms. Recently I wrote an entire article about the ways in which English, as adopted by speakers of other languages, is being mis-learned and then these tangled-up linguistic accidents are becoming part of actual mainstream native-speaker language. I did it just the other day: "Oh! Look at that fabulous necklace," Sage exclaimed, looping her fingers through the silver chain and well-worn charms. "Where did you get it?" "From the (insert name of turn-of-the-millenium dot-com boyfriend here)," I replied. What? We don't say "the" before people's names in this language. Or as Jody wrote on my facebook page recently, in response to a Friday afternoon indulgence I'd bragged about in my status update: "I love me some popsicle..." Huh? What?! An indefinite article before a noun that names a definite item? Sigh...

Then there are all the funny things that just can't be translated. They're everywhere you listen, really. When I asked her if I could borrow one today, our school librarian was describing how never has a staple remover because she does not use them, she uses her fingernails instead. But, she promised, she would keep her eyes out for a staple remover "from now on" and pass it along to me the next time she came across one. "From now on?" the native Spanish speaker with me asked, quizzically. "Like from now, going forward, until the time that she finds one..." I tried explaining, my efforts met with a blank stare.

Perhaps the most humorous of these was recently in the office of my principal where we found ourselves actually separated by our common language, English: We were talking when the phone rang and, recognizing the number, he answered it. "Ah, yes, yes....I see, okay....certainly. Kindly hold. Kindly hold...kindly...hold...?" He looked at me with confusion, his finger poised over the transfer button but the person on the other end of the line unable to understand that they should wait. "What should I say?" he asked me in a stage whisper, covering the mouthpiece so the person on the other end couldn't hear. "They won't wait, they keep talking!"

"Hold, please," I responded.

"Hold, please?" he repeated, hand over mouthpiece, confused.

"Hold, PLEASE, that is what you say to them to make them stop talking," I instructed.

"OH! Hold, PLEASE," he said with new confidence into the telephone. And just like that, he pressed the transfer button and replaced the handset into the cradle. "How did you know to say that?" he asked, mystified.

"I'm not sure, I think that's just what you say. I'm not sure people are so very familiar with the expression 'kindly hold'," I told him.

"Well good, it worked," he said with finality as he turned away from the phone and rose from his desk. "Now I know."

Story #42: Tomorrow is Forecast to be Cooler Than Today

Oh my goodness, I most certainly hope so. It was hot today at school and I will confess: I was complaining. When I saw the weather report this morning, I didn't even think it would be that bad. I've lived hot places before, like Jerusalem in July and Yosemite in August. Triple digits? HA, I scoff. But something about 90 degrees in April in SAN FRANCISCO was just too much.

I tried to prepare when I got dressed this morning, bringing down from the shelf in the closet the large plastic storage box stuffed full of the wardrobe for Israel and camp. Interesting, isn't it, how those two places require much the same clothing? Just more modest in Jerusalem and more, well, I don't quite know what the wardrobe is more of at camp--not modest, to be sure, but something. I chose the longest biggest most cottony skirt I could find, I picked out a tank top for a little modesty and the light gauzy short sleeve shirt to layer on top. Strappy Danskos and a sweater to ward off the early morning chill completed the outfit and I was on my way.

Except that there was no early morning chill, and by the time I got to casual carpool at 7:30 I was sweating. My strappy shoes gave me blisters before recess and I resorted to the flip flops I'd shoved as an afterthought into my lunch bag to wear on the BART ride home. Flip flops at school? Clearly my common sense was impaired by the heat. Open-toed shoes around that many children, any of whom might stomp or bleed or drop hot lunch on your feet? Terrible choice.

By the time I walked three loooong SOMA blocks to my 3:00 meeting I was beyond wilted and had a hard time recovering. The fact that I had to get up and speak in front of everyone did not help. The fact that not only the person whose job I took midyear, but also the person who is taking my current job for next year, AND the person whose job could potentially be mine next year if the stars align and the creek don't rise were all there during the presentation REALLY did not help. No no no it did not.

I came home and laid down and drank lemonade and talked to Mara forever and now I feel better so I am going to make dinner. Except nothing hot. Maybe a salad. And a popsicle. Then a cool shower and lots of writing and picking out another warm weather outfit for tomorrow. I already know what I will wear--it is for super-hot temperatures, this particular combination. It wraps around and is drawstring-y and tunic-like. If the woman from School Health Programs did not think I was pregnant already on Friday (different story for a different day) she will for sure tomorrow morning when she sees my linen-y voluminousness. Ahhh....cooler. I'm ready for it.

Story #41: Which Sister Are You?

Here is a picture of me and my brother, Nathan, at our parents' house one Christmas. Can you guess how many years ago it was? Hint: it was not the same year that this post's story took place. Don't let my present-day youthful radiance throw you off!

Three or four years ago now I was in Iowa over winter break visiting my brother and his family. One evening we had dinner at the home of my sister-in-law's grandparents and I found myself seated between two of her cousins, a pair of brothers who are two of--wait for it--ten siblings. One of them I'd met before many times (see the "Oh! You must be Nathan's sister, I can tell because..." comment referenced in an earlier post) and the other of whom I'd attended mutual events with but never met face-to-face.

"So," the one I'd just truly met said, "Which one of Nathan's sisters are you?"

I blinked, politely. I was already a little thrown off in general as a vegetarian in Iowa at a Christmastime ham dinner, not to mention disoriented by the subzero temperatures that made my California blood freeze up every time I went outside. This, though, was really more Twilight Zone-ish than I could handle. I tried to think of what to say that might not be openly rude, but could only come up with repeating the question as a strategy to stall while I either thought of something else to say or hoped someone nearby might rescue me. "Um, which of Nathan's sisters?" I answered his question with a question.

"Yeah, you know," he said around a mouthful of scalloped potatoes chased with creamed corn, "He has that sister who's a teacher in California, and then the other sister who lives in Israel, and then the one sister who just learned how to swim a few years back, plus that sister who won the hog-calling contest at the state fair, and well there's also the sister who dated that one guy for years and years but, um, doesn't anymore, and well, you know--which one are you?"

By now Nathan had his hand over his face, horrified at how embarrassed I might feel by all of this, and Kelli was unabashedly laughing into her napkin. Ah, I see what's going on here...

Nonplussed, I put my forkful of macaroni salad down and look him right in the eye. The kid has nine brothers and sisters, and has lived in Burlington, Iowa, his whole life. Based on his own prior knowledge, no wonder he is confused. "I'm all of them," I answer. "Nathan only has one sister."

"OH," he gulps while his brother on my other side rolls his eyes and my own brother gets up from the table for more food. "Really?! I just, you know, somehow thought that you must have a bunch of girls in your family, well, because, each of those things on its own seemed kinda unusual to me, so I just never imagined, well, anyway...does anybody else want some more ham?"

Later on the way back to their house Kelli apologized to me. "You know he wasn't trying to make fun of you, right? It's just that in his family, everyone's life is always the same, beginning to end. You have to know that Nathan adores you, and talks about you all the time. Over the years he's told all different stories about the places you've been and everything you've done, and he just never thought to explain that the sister in every story was always the same person. I hope you weren't too offended by my family."

Not offended, just entertained. I think the conversation was probably way more awkward for the cousin than it was for me. My life is just my life, you know? I guess to the casual observer I can see how it would appear to have many lifetimes inside it. I'm just lucky, I guess, or that's how it feels to me anyway.

Love you, funk soul brotha...xoxoxyouronetruesister

Story #40: Forgive *This*

I am not ashamed to tell you that I owe a lot of money. Horrified, yes, but ashamed, no. You see, I--like many people--went to college, and the summer before my senior year my parents' employment situation changed, and so to finance my fourth and final undergrad year of out-of-state tuition I took out a loan. Then, two years later, I went to graduate school. I was an in-state student that time, but still I was working as a teacher and going to night school, and teaching salaries in the state of Iowa at that time were $100 a day. So, I took out another loan and added it to the first.

Fast forward four years. By now I had moved to California and gotten a handful of years in the classroom under my belt, and so I went back to grad school for good this time. Not the dabbling, inquiry-based approach I took the first time but a rigorous, three-year, full-time, thesis-requiring, dual-credential-awarding program. Again, on a teacher's salary and by this time I was also paying dot-com-era rent on a studio in San Francisco. So I filed another FAFSA and took out my third loan and when I saw the numbers on the page, knew I could not even conceive of ever being able to pay off that much money but also knew that saving up for graduate school tuition would never happen either. So signed my promissory note and dove in.

Seven years have now passed since I walked across the stage that foggy, chilly May day at San Francisco State and received my Masters degree. I have very diligently paid my student loan every month since then. The balance goes down but the hole in my budget where the monthly payment comes from remains. So, as part of my Spring Break to-do list I decided to contact my lender and ask about loan forgiveness programs for teachers.

You hear about them all the time in our line of work: teach in an urban public school system and your loans can be forgiven, work with high-risk populations and your debts will melt away before you know it. So I called today and spoke with Michelle, my representative, only to be told that my loans do not qualify. You see, only loans taken out since October, 1998, are eligible for the federal loan forgiveness program. But, she suggested helpfully, maybe my state offers programs like this for teachers?

I hung up, discouraged. My state's budget is such a mess that there isn't even enough money for me to have a job next year at this point. Pay back my student loans for me? Please. And, further Internet research shows that not even the lion's share of my loan, taken out since the eligibility date, qualifies for forgiveness because I consolidated my loans in 2004 and now it is just one big amount that I will never pay off.

Much is reported in the media about teachers leaving the profession. In California, the attrition rate for new teachers is greater than 50% in the first five years. But, I am not the teacher who spends a few years in the classroom and then goes to work in retail or sales or marketing or or or. Education is the only professional practice I have ever had and will ever have. Both my parents were teachers, my brother is a teacher, and I am a teacher too. I do not plan to leave teaching for a higher-paying position, even though--as I posted last year in the blog I wrote during my sabbatical--I was offered a job last spring as the night desk clerk of a super-sketchy motor lodge out by Ocean Beach for $10,000 more a year than I make now as a veteran teacher with a Masters degree, seven credentials, and more than a dozen years experience. I am tired of always having a second and third job, of not being able to go anywhere on the Spring Break I worked so hard to earn, of budgeting constantly and never being able to, as Kelly so wisely said so long ago when we were all living at The House of Flowers, buy avocados. Is it too much to ask Uncle Sam to free me from the tens of thousands of dollars in loans that I spent learning how to do my job well, especially when it is a job no on else seems to want?

Forgive me for complaining. It looks like the only thing I qualify to be forgiven for at this point, so I am going to take full advantage.

Story #39: Stories

Yesterday morning I went for a walk to Lake Merritt for Birkat HaChamah (post with that story=coming soon). Afterward I went to--where else?--Trader Joe's and on the way home stopped at Arizmendi on Lakeshore. Sitting at the metal cafe table, enjoying my brioche knot and glad I was bundled up against the damp chilly breeze, my mind wandered back in time to another Pesach morning, another day before not the first but the second night of Passover, at another Arizmendi.

Spring Break, 2007, and we were sitting outside the co-op bakery's home in the Inner Sunset. Unlike yesterday in Oakland it was hot and sunny that day in San Francisco and we sat not in North Face down jackets and wool socks but in tank tops and flip flops, the sweet smell of shea butter sunblock mixing with the delicious aromas pouring through the shop's open windows. That morning we'd woken up and decided to, you know, host a seder (the marathon-style multi-hour dinner and community observation of Passover): the way you do at 10 a.m. on the morning of second night. We found ourselves with post-its and pens and highlighters and scissors and tape and scratch paper and about half a dozen different haggadot (books used as guides for participating in the seder), me doubtful we'd get it done but her convinced that in eight hours we could prepare a text, cook a meal, pull together two dozen people, set a table, provide art materials, and facilitate the individual and group experiences and reflections on liberation that are hallmarks of the holiday. Really?!

In the end we completely pulled it off: highlights included pulling huge chunks of mortar-bound brick out of the sea at Baker Beach, driving them home, dripping, in the back of the Subaru, then soaking them in bleach water and actually using them for the seder plate...boiling a half-dozen huge beets in the world's largest pot and then laughing as the blood-colored water poured out into the kibbutz-style kitchen and made everyone shriek...buying paper and clay and oil pastels at the art-supply store on Van Ness, then encouraging everyone to draw sculpt sketch share their insights as the meal went on...bundling up in borrowed button-fly jeans and cozy wool socks as the sun went down over the East Bay hills and we closed the big picture windows against the nighttime Marina fog, keeping everyone warm as we stayed until late in the night talking and singing.

The text we created, cut and pasted old school-style with scissors and glue stick, came from many sources but primarily from a book called A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices. On my way to Arizmendi yesterday I had tucked it into my bag, just to flip through while enjoying one last pre-Passover pastry, and among the post-its and matzah ball soup stains I found again one of my favorite quotes, not just in this book but about the holiday:

When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, humans would live like the beasts, only for the day.

Reb Zebulun said, "Today we live, but by tomorrow today will be a story. The whole world, all human life, is one long story." Children are as puzzled by passing time as grownups. What happens to a day once it is gone? Where are all our yesterdays with their joys and sorrows? Literature helps us remember the past, with its many moods. To the storyteller yesterday is still here as are the years and the decades gone by.

In stories time does not vanish. Neither do people and animals. For the writer and his readers, all creatures go on living forever. What happened long ago is still present.

--Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel laureate, from Zlateh the Goat

I have found no better explanation than this one of why I tell stories. We used to ask each other impossible questions, like "What job would you have had if you lived a hundred years ago?" Had I been born one century earlier, I know I would still have been a teacher just like I am in the modern day. But as our rhetorical meanderings continued and we wondered what our lives would have been like not a century but a millenium ago, my answer changed. Teaching and learning looked different then, but community looked the same and so did shared experience, so did collective wisdom. A thousand years ago I would have been the one people came to with secrets and stories, the one with the agonizingly accurate memory, the one who shares the lessons from generation to generation.

Singer was right--time does not vanish. It is the telling of stories that allows time travel, that creates the possibility of living on forever. As you tell your stories, of Passover or Easter or the equinox or last year's Spring Break or whatever it may be, I wish for you the chance to feel yourself as part of not just the stories told before you but the stories your loved ones will continue to tell as time goes on.

Chag Sameach--a wonderful holiday to you :)

Story #38: How Much Would You Pay?

There's a game we used to play called "How Much Would You Pay?" I am not really sure how it got started or who played it first but it is now a part of the vocabulary. How Much Would You Pay? is ironic in that it is an inherently fake game, played to try and put a price on impossible things. Perhaps the most telling example of How Much Would You Pay? took place on my first trip to Israel in the summer of 2004, with Rebecca. She had been to Israel, many times, and had lived there for the year not long before but I had never been there and did not know quite what to expect. Some things were exactly as I'd imagined, and some things were completely different.

One thing that there had been no way to predict is the fact that in Israel, there is no Mexican food. None. Not like, kind of here and there but it's hard to find and definitely not kosher....not like, you have to take the bus to Tel Aviv and get it there on Sheinkin Street where the hipsterim hang out. None, like, yeah. None at all.

Living as I was in San Francisco, where the burrito is an inexpensive and readily-available staple food, I was floored. I do love Mexican food, but suddenly my love had turned to obsession. Eating a burrito was all I could possibly think about. I am an adventurous traveler, and that includes trying new foods as well, but in moments of 115-degree-Fahrenheit weakness when we had been on the bus all day and the drama of my trans-Atlantic personal life became too much to bear I was not in the mood to try yet another Middle Eastern combination of dates, lentils, skinny cucumbers, and fermented cheese. I wanted the rice-and-beans predictability of the goodness that comes wrapped, bolster-shaped, in foil with chips on the side for $6.49.

So we began to play. At the beginning of the three-week trip I declared I'd pay, you know, the standard price: seven bucks, or whatever, for a vegetarian burrito. By the time we were queued up to board the El Al flight back to JFK my price had gone up to 450 shekels (US$75) and Rebecca was SICK of hearing about it. You can easily guess what I had for my first dinner back in the States upon my arrival at SFO 24 hours later. El Balazo, aw yeah...

What does any of this have to do with the present day? Perhaps you recall my post from a few days ago about things I refuse to wear over vacation. I have stuck by the promise I made myself not to wear my watch, and mostly it is very good for me. It is not the logistical matter of elapsed time that I seek to avoid, because clocks of course are everywhere. Rather, it is the sense of being physically cuffed with a constant reminder of the truth that time is passing and the related response that I personally experience, which is an overwhelming sense of never being able to get everything finished. So yes, can I walk into the other room to view the clock on the wall or can I look on my cell phone and see the time? Yes, but that is not important. Being free of constantly checking my watch in an attempt to faux-determine how behind I've fallen is my goal.

Unfortunately this has had the negative side effect of making it a bit unusual to be around me, since my discomfort about not knowing what time it is definitely affects others. Example: last night we were waiting for the performance to start, and as cool as I'd been playing it I suddenly lost my marbles, consumed with an urgent and undeniable need to know what time it was. I leaned over and murmured into her ear: "I'll pay you five dollars if you tell me what time it is..." And just like that, How Much Would You Pay? was on. I hadn't planned to play it, but that impossible need to acquire something just beyond reach had struck without much warning and I reverted to the game I haven't played in years now.

Do you think she told me? Nope. "Seven?" I offered hopefully. "Do you really want to know?" she asked. I stopped to consider. "Not for seven dollars, I guess," I replied, sinking back into my own seat. Come on, you could buy a burrito with those seven bucks. A girl's got to be thrifty, these days.

Story #37: Small

note: That is not me when I was small. It is someone else in my family. Can you tell who it is? There is a hint in the photo, and a lot of you have seen it before and already know the answer. If you do, don't say. If you don't, it might be fun to guess. Look how small that person is! They are not small any more :)

Recently we were out at Zeitgeist (another Story for another time) and the person sitting next to me on the bench in the backyard ended up squeezed kind of close to me, as can happen when you try to fit 36 people at one picnic table. "Hey," she said as she measured my thigh with her hand, "You're pretty small."

It's true in one way, I suppose, in that I am not the biggest adult. Actually for being an adult I am on the shrimpier end of the spectrum. On a tall day I stand 5'4" and am only slightly more than half the title of one of the best albums of all time: Sixteen Stone, by Bush. So really compared to many grown-ups I suppose that's not so big.

(sidepoint: Do you like the way I avoided telling you how much I weigh? Aren't girls weird? Isn't body image stuff messed up? What if some people thought that was too much? What if some people thought it was too little? Perhaps those of you who've been blog followers for awhile remember the OLD post about the social confusion I encountered around having my pants size outed? Yeah. Looking to avoid that kind of awkwardness again...)

But, it is hard to reconcile this objective information with what feels true to me about my size. I do not consider myself small in the least. Actually the opposite, I worry I am too big a lot of the time: big mouth, big ideas, big plans, big passions, big mistakes, the list goes on and on. And comparatively I am large in relationship to others in my life, considering that I spend six hours a day with hundreds of people mostly under the age of 12. So at school I am TALLLL. And wide. And big.

In the end it's all relative, I guess.

Story #36: Scheduling my Spring Break

On Saturday night when I was leaving their house after an evening of Indian food and the Final Four, Emily said to me "Hey, Happy Spring Break tomorrow!" Oh--I got all kinds of upset. "Tomorrow is just Sunday, just the weekend," I insisted, "NOT Spring Break! Spring Break doesn't start until Monday." I turned to Sage, knowing that as a fellow teacher she would understand. "Tell her!" I insisted.

Every teacher knows that the weekends around a holiday do not count as part of the actual holiday itself. Right? Let's take Spring Break, for example. The first weekend is just the weekend you earned by working all week. THEN it is vacation for five days (sidepoint: I am currently in the first half of day two and so far have been camped out on what I was recently told is my uncomfortable couch reading, writing, and chilling out--should shower soon? Nah...overrated). THEN it is a bonus weekend! Then it is school once again.

Yesterday I finally had to sit down and make a schedule for Spring Break. I knew if I didn't that I would just wander around all week (one of my favorite things to do) and that suddenly it would be bonus weekend and I would not have done anything: not anything fun, not anything productive, not anything.

Not that not doing anything is bad. It is just not my natural disposition and would likely have made me, you know, anxious.

So now my schedule and to-do list are complete. Some things are still up in the air, like going to Chicago (kind of permanently up in the air right now, and expensive) and my newfound search for summer plans. But some things are scheduled and that is nice.

Yesterday I went on a hike in Joaquin Miller State Park up in the Oakland hills by Chabot (scheduled), did laundry and cleaned my house (scheduled), and had an outstanding evening full of picnic-ing and world-premiere theater and ice cream (scheduled, with a slight delay at the beginning but fine in the end). Today's list includes making boring but necessary doctor's appointments, calling my insurance agent, figuring out what to do this summer, reflecting deeply on Passover which starts tomorrow, paying bills online, and, oh--daydreaming, napping, pizza, and maybe last week's episode of Lie to Me on hulu.com.

Because you know...it is Spring Break, after all.

Story #35: Things I Insist on Wearing Over Spring Break

1. flip flops
2. my favorite jeans
3. lots of sunblock while I'm playing outside
4. my swimsuit in the pool at Mills
5. my hair down since there's no fear of lice
6. all my springtime playclothes
7. of course: my red shoes :)

Story #34: Things I Refuse to Wear Over Spring Break

1. my watch
2. itchy mascara
3. overly helpful undergarments
4. sweat-producing tights
5. pinchy shoes
6. school clothes

Story #33: Harvest of the Month

Unfortunately this posting from the WAD does not include any instructional materials to help teach students about why, after eating asparagus, your pee smells so weird. Hmm. Guess I'll have to develop some kind of curriculum for that part of the conversation.

WHO: All Staff at Elementary, Middle and High Schools

WHAT: April’s Harvest Of The Month! – Asparagus!

Did You Know?

* White Asparagus is grown from the same crown as the green asparagus.
* Asparagus, per one-half cup serving, has the highest content of folate of any vegetable. Folate (folic acid) is helpful in replicating DNA and RNA, and researchers believe folic acid may be helpful in reducing the risk for certain cancers.

HOW:
• Distribute Harvest of the Month materials:
- Copy Educator’s Newsletter for every classroom teacher
- Copy Family Newsletter, send home in weekly envelope
• Make tasty recipes found in both newsletters
• Prepare and offer Marinated Salad with Asparagus Guacamole, from the newsletters, at your next staff meeting
• Teach a lesson from the Educator’s Newsletter

WHY:
The goal of Harvest of the Month is to increase fruit and vegetable awareness and to motivate children, families, and school staff to make healthier choices.

WHEN: April 2009

For more information about the Nutrition Education Project,
visit www.healthiersf.org and click on the icon

Story #32: The Sex in the City Moment

I have a friend who just started dating again not long ago. So did I, for that matter, but that is not the story being told in this post. Because of this somewhat unusual coincidence, I want to make it overwhelmingly clear that when I say "I have a friend..." I mean exactly that: this story is about a real friend of mine. I am not using the phrase in the ABC Afterschool Special kind of way, like "I have a friend whose parents are getting divorced," or "I have a friend who makes herself throw up when she eats." No. This is a real story, about a real friend. Okay.

My friend called me the other day to share news of her recent adventures. All of them have been very safe, and very responsible, and very flirty, and very fun. Some of them have ended early and chastely, and others have ended differently from that. One was particularly remarkable:

"So," she confided over the phone, "I had a sleepover. BUT NOT that kind of sleepover! Nothing happened. So much of nothing happened that I didn't even get undressed. It was like something from Sex in the City."

Sigh. This is yet another situation in which not having had television since 1999 really hampers my ability to have social conversations. "What do you mean, like something from Sex in the City?" I asked.

"Well," she said, "I hadn't planned to sleep over and I didn't want to take my clothes off so I slept in my dress."

THAT'S awesome, I think. I am so proud of my friend for going out an having fun...even if she her adventures only get told in blogland and not on cable TV.

Story #31: Overheard at Dinner

Last night at dinner we were taking a break between the meal and the chocolate cake when conversation turned to Trader Joe's. There was much excitement about a new addition to the Trader Joe's line-up: kosher brisket, in the freezer section. "Is it called Trader Shlomo's?" I wanted to know.

"I think that's kind of weird, when Trader Joe's turns their name into a different name on the labels of some of their foods," the fifth-grader seated next to me at the table mused.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Oh, you know," he explained, "something like Trader Jose's salsa or Trader Giotto's noodles."

"Got it," I said. "I remember I saw Trader Ming's Sweet and Sour Chicken one time."

"Exactly," he affirmed.

"What do you think about that?" I asked him. "Do you think Trader Joe's is doing it to try and be respectful of other people's cultures, or do you think it's like teasing?"

My conversation partner and seatmate pondered a moment. "Well," he replied, "I guess I'm not sure, I can't really say because I am not any of those cultures so I don't know what it feels like for them. I'm Irish. Now, let's say they had Trader O'Malley's something--THEN I'd have a point of view. I guess for now I just think it's interesting."

Now, there's a kid raised in Berkeley by two liberal educators for you. Yeah.

Story #30: Blogging From School

I always feel like I am getting away with something when I blog from school. It is the grown-up equivalent of writing notes in class :) Not all computers at school have access to blogger, but mine does, so it feels double super extra mischievious of me.

Today generated many stories--as do most days at school--but the one story I want to tell right now is that there are only two! more! days! until Spring Break. Tomorrow, and Friday.

PHEW.....

(more later, including perhaps stories from today involving mice, teeth, Ebonics, burritos, and the overwhelming urge to make a break for it...to be continued)

Story #29: The Grand Express

http://www.yelp.com/biz/grand-express-oakland

From August, 1999, to June, 2007 I lived in San Francisco. Then from June, 2007 to October, 2008, I kind of lived everywhere and also nowhere which is a much longer series of stories for another time (extra, extra, read all about it here). And six months ago when I got my own apartment again I moved to Oakland.

Choosing to live in the East Bay was a complicated decision and one that was exactly right for me at the time. It is warm and sunny and cheaper here, there are wide open spaces and big old trees and a lake at the end of my block and hills to ride my bike through. There is a stellar taco truck by Fruitvale BART and, when need be, there is IKEA. That does not mean I don't miss living in San Francisco every single day. Not long ago someone asked me the million-dollar question: "So, when are you moving back to the city?" I startled myself with my instant response: "Next year," I replied.

Those plans are up in the air because my work situation is so ridiculously uncertain. Maybe I will move back, and maybe I won't. For now I have a rockstar apartment next to Lake Merritt. It is big and old and funky and clean and safe and has three (yes! count them) closets. It has a huge kitchen which is perfect because there is little else I love to do more in this world than play with my food in the form of cooking. It has hardwood floors and a two-tone paint job and a retro telephone you use to buzz people up from the front door.

And...it has the Grand Express. Located directly across the street from my apartment, the Grand Express is the corner store to end all corner stores. It is open from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. and it attracts ALL manner of patrons. Unlike corner stores in the city, the Grand Express has a parking lot which means that it is frequently the staging area for anything from 100-person bicycle protests headed down Grand towards Broadway to late-night dance parties with half a dozen low-riders circled up, stereos pumping Kanye West in unison.

The most notable feature of the Grand Express is its large, well-illuminated sign. Clearly visible from every room in my house, including the bathroom, the blazing letters in yellow, blue, and red advertising LIQUOR & GROCERIES is a hideous, ridiculous eyesore but is indeed an excellent landmark. Just last weekend I gave directions to a person who'd never been to my house before, and of course mentioned the sign as an indicator that she'd reached her destination. She found my house, no problem. So, it's good for something after all.

Story #28: A Bad Sleeper

(This is one of my all-time favorite photos of myself because it is such a random, ironic commentary on the fact that I just can't get my act together to go to sleep in my actual bed. Here you see that I am asleep on a trampoline right in the middle of the living room floor at my friend Melissa's 28th birthday party. ZzzZZzz...)

My nephew Samuel is what Nathan calls "a bad sleeper". What this means is that Samuel wakes up a lot during the night, can't stay asleep for long periods of time, falls asleep in weird places outside of his bed and then wakes up all fussy and disoriented, and is generally not well-rested.

Some would say that babies, as they try to orient their schedules to the overall schedule of the world, are not great sleepers in general. I would say poor kid, he's a Kotleba. He's cursed. You see, we Kotlebas are not good sleepers. I remember growing up, and even now when I visit my parents, that my dad would consistently fall asleep in his chair watching the news. Attempts to wake him were met with resistance, to the point that we would all just get ready for bed and leave him there where he would remain, upright but unconscious, until a few hours later when he would get up and spend time cleaning the kitchen, locking up the house, taking a shower, and getting ready for bed. He sleeps in shifts, my father, and now so does Samuel. And, so do I.

My fractured nights have gotten worse since January when I actually got a couch, because now after dinner I sit in the living room and read or write or study or work until the time when I suddenly and seemingly with no warning fall asleep: fully dressed, lights blazing, for hours. I usually wake up on my own around midnight but then, Dad-style, have to do the dishes, get in the tub, iron my clothes for the morning...the whole nine yards. By the time I actually get into my bed about an hour has passed and I have somewhere between three and four hours before my alarm goes off in the morning. Let me tell you: seven hours slept in shifts is waaay less restful than slept one after the other.

Story #27: Lice

Not long ago I was walking down the hallway at school with student I'm tutoring. He just arrived from Russia and is a complete newcomer, logistically speaking, so we are doing things like practicing number words by playing Bingo and sorting the foods in the kitchen pantry to learn the names of fruits and vegetables. This particular morning we were walking around the school introducing ourselves to people so we can practice greetings and conversation starters like "Good morning!" and "How are you?"

We had just finished up our lesson for the day, a game where we practiced color words and spatial orientation vocabulary by jumping in and out of a rainbow's worth of hula hoops, and were walking back to class when the assistant principal came racing by us down the hall. Her long blonde curls were pinned up haphazardly on her head and her hands, rubber-gloved, were held aloft. "LICE!" was her stage-whispered response to the quizzical look I gave her.

After dropping my student back off in class I returned to the office to find a full-scale infestation in effect. Kindergarteners were piled up everywhere waiting for someone to flip through their hair with the long thin wooden sticks that look eerily like the stirrers from Starbucks. In all I think we sent something like 18 kids home. Gaah.

Getting lice is every teacher's nightmare. As soon as the last student got picked up and sent home with the trilingual information packet about how to do their family's laundry (less pertinent for families who live in transitional housing and don't have ready access to a washer and dryer, but still) I sat myself down in a chair in the principal's office and made the student advisor check MY hair. Her verdict? "Mmm..." she said, rubber gloves rustling as she used the stick to section my hair and scratch at my scalp. "Very smooth, what conditioner do you use?" she wanted to know. All I wanted to know was whether or not I had lice. In fourteen years as a teacher I have had many cases of pinkeye but never this. Fortunately with a snap of the gloves coming off the student advisor pronounced me lice-free this time too. Sigh. All in a day's work.