Tag: personal

Teaching + Openness = Pay It Forward

I’ve always considered myself a rational person.  I mean, I majored in math and then went on to get a masters in pure math.  I really always loved the logic and thought that went into proof and how I could think rationally about so many things in life.  Even when life threw me curve balls, I could find a way to rationalize most things and think them through in some way.

In 1996, my mother died of colon cancer at age 56 – probability of a female getting colon cancer at that age around that time was about .018%.

In 2015, my father succumbed to a number of cancers (but mainly breast cancer that metasticized in his brain) at the age of 83.  He was quite a fighter – probability of a male getting breast cancer now is about .01%.

In November 2018, my son, at age 21 has been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia – probability of this happening is 0.2%. (all from cancerstatisticscenter.cancer.org )

All of the doctors say that none of these are related to each other at all – independent events, right? So the probability of this happening in my life is 3.6 x 10^-5.  Pretty crazy, huh? Next to impossible, probably isn’t supposed to happen to anyone.

After trying to deal with this rationally, I decided to deal with it irrationally.  I wouldn’t talk to anyone about it.  Clearly no one could help – what was the point of discussing it with anyone?  Loss, grief and sadness were always a part of my life and this was nothing new.  I just had to suck it up and get over it.  Do my best and move on.  Get through it, I always did.

My husband refused though.  We deal with things differently.  He wanted to tell the world.  He writes emails giving people updates about how my son is doing – people I haven’t even met and I felt it was a huge invasion of our privacy.  But something happened that totally surprised me.   These people, some I knew and some I didn’t know, started sending us things – cards, notes, emails, gifts cards to Panera, cookies, offers to make us dinner, and many other things I never expected.  I couldn’t fathom why they would do this.  I would say to them, “I don’t know how to repay you.” And their response would always be, “You don’t have to, just pay it forward.”

180 degree turn to the world today – students in MAGA hats harrassing indigenous peoples at a protest rally, supreme court upholding the ban on transgender peoples in the armed forces, our bullying, self-absorbed president keeping federal workers from having their paychecks, Republican elected officials losing their integrity and concept of their job to look out for their constiuents – what is happening?  Where is the kindness and care in the world today?  I was losing it quite regularly.

In all of this confusion in my brain, I felt the need to let people know that I had to cancel some public speaking and courses that I had committed to this spring.  I was nervous about tweeting about something so personal, but I know some folks who follow might have been trying to sign up for my course or looking forward to my NCTM talk.

That’s when it hit me.  I received so much love, support and kindness from the virtual PLC of math teachers that I did not expect.  I could not believe it.  People I knew, people I knew virtually, people I’ve never met – all reaching out and telling me that they cared and wished us the best in this struggle.  It was an interesting comfort at a time when my personal struggle was being exacerbated by the complex chaos of the world today.

I do believe that there is no balance between chaos and calmness.  We just learn to take both as it comes.  The peace that was given to me from the #MTBoS and #iteachmath community definitely allowed me the moment of calm that I needed and I will always remember that.  You all are surely paying it forward from someone who did something for you and I hope that I can do the same someday.  I do think that teaching has something to do with paying it forward as we do every day, honestly.  People say they teach because they love it.  But in some way, the relationality that it takes to be a good teacher, be open with people and understand our students is the way in which we pay it forward every day.

Thank you so much for giving me this moment of calm at this time in my life.

 

To Hillary, With Gratitude

This morning as I woke up and found out about the results of last night’s election I was at first filled with despair and finally got myself somewhat out of that funk.  Then I thought about what Hillary Clinton must be feeling – she must be exhausted of course.  What did it take to put all of that energy into this campaign?  And those years of service to this country? And to put up with her husband? And the criticism?  This is not to say she didn’t make mistakes in the public eye of course.  I’m not saying I didn’t disagree with some of her stances, but I just want to look at it from the female perspective.  What I want to say to Hillary right now is thank you.  Thank you for being the first woman to have to go through the ordeal of running for president and dealing with all of the mess that goes with that.  I can’t imagine what that was like.

I have to say that in my career I know what it’s like to be one of two women in a meeting room and have to work extra hard to get a group to listen to your point.  Or perhaps to couch what you want to say in terms that the men will want to hear until they come over to your side in order to get them to vote your way on a certain agenda item or thinking twice about what I wore so as not to get judged.  The diplomatic skills that are acquired in just being a woman in an administrative position are invaluable because of the ways in which you know you need to listen and be heard. Being a woman in mathematics, the message is usually clear at national meetings when the majority of conference-goers are female classroom educators and the presenters are more often male speakers who are not currently classroom teachers.  In my graduate school education in mathematics I had one female professor and I was the only female in the Masters program.  You learn to “blend in” by speaking like them, working like them and going about your business like them.

I wonder if there isn’t a little part of Hillary that this morning just said “Phew, no more of that faking it.”  She was tired of being the male-culture-created part of herself that she had to be in order to run for president.  A few female heads of school that I have spoken with have said that in order to lead, many women are expected to downplay their feminine qualities – to not cry or be emotional, to be sure they are surrounded by male advisors so no one can say you made mistakes because you “are a woman.”  Spending so much time worrying about balancing speaking your mind with being nice to everyone so you are not labeled “bitchy” gets really tiresome.

What this election taught me overall is that misogyny is alive and well in the U.S. (not that Hillary needed to learn that) even more than racism.  My guess at this point is that we will elect a gay man in the future before we elect a woman but either way, I am grateful for Hillary and all she has done to pave the way for each other woman who comes next.  I read that Kamala Harris (CA) was the second black woman to be elected to the Senate, Ilhan Omar (MN) was the first Somali-American woman elected to Congress and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) was the first Latina Senator to be elected.

I’d like to think that Hillary is waking up today really looking forward to spending some time as a grandmother, writing a book and working on the next great way to help kids, health care reform and education.  Sure that’s just me being idealistic, but as a woman, I would like to think that’s what I would do – well, after crying after losing for a little while.