It's the Little Things

I had my final meeting with this semester's "client," the label we are taught to apply to the kids we tutor for my practicum, this week, and it was predictably bittersweet. Teaching six-year-olds is not my forte, and when my supervisor made criticisms like, "You're using words that are above his level," I wanted to scream, "Duh! I teach high school! I have no idea how to interact with this kid!!" ("Duh" is a word that is on his level, assuming we deem it a word.) We learned all about instructing kids of all ages in the class accompanying the practicum, but not so much about relating to them personally. I muddled through, though, and while I'm happy that I won't be spending three hours of my week enclosed in a tiny space with him anymore, I was a little sad to see him go.

I was originally going to buy him a book or a notebook or a cool pen or something, but funds are tight at the moment and so I decided to just give him a bunch of the stuff we'd done over the course of the semester. Over the last few weeks, I had made several manipulatives for him with colored construction paper that allowed him to spell words by flipping pages or pulling strips of paper to reveal different letters in windows I'd cut out. I made a deck of alphabet cards and we'd play "War" by each laying down a card and determining which letter came later in the alphabet. We practiced sight words, and the ones he could read and spell automatically went on cards, which I punched holes in and strung on a ring.

I put all of this stuff together, stapled a piece of construction paper into an envelope, and wrote his name in sparkly pen on the front, which I decorated with stars.

You'd have thought it was Christmas. He was so excited to get all of these goodies at the conclusion of our session, and told me that now he could "practice at home." I guess one's mom is not the only one impressed by homemade gifts. I guess that's one advantage of working with younger kids; I can't imagine a high school student being too impressed by colored paper and sparkly ink.

Airport error?

I can only assume that, on my way back to NYC from California, I got on the wrong plane and ended up in the Midwest; I just had an unbelievable experience with a random stranger and New Yorkers aren't supposed to be this nice:

I saw an ad on Craigslist for a free bookshelf and was the first to reply that I wanted it. After carting a load of stuff to my new place from my dorm, which is an 18-block walk that I just can't seem to justify paying the subway or a cab to help me with, Dave and I headed over to pick up the shelf. The girl lived near enough that we figured we could carry the thing the 5 1/2 blocks and up four flights of stairs. The shelf is 7 feet tall, and although it isn't heavy, it certainly was awkward to carry. We met a foursome of people about our age leaving the building who offered to help, but we explained that we were going a few blocks and thanked them anyway.

After three blocks, my hands were aching from gripping the underside of the shelf and being already tired from that initial load I'd moved earlier, I requested a break. Dave and I leaned the shelf on a park bench and took a quick rest. We were just starting to pick it up to head out again when a guy I recognized from the foursome appeared behind us. "Are you sure you don't need help?" he asked. "We've been watching you from the corner, and really, it's no trouble." Dave and I declined again, but the guy insisted. He explained that he and his friends had just finished a church meeting, and he was wearing a BYU sweatshirt, so I figured he was either really a friendly Mormon, or else a clever serial killer disguised as one. I decided to trust him and relinquished my end of the shelf, trotting a little guiltily behind while he and Dave made short work of the remaining blocks.

Not only did he carry his half right to our front door, he pushed it up all four flights of stairs and into the living room of our new place. He chatted with Dave and me the whole time and laughed at all of our jokes. As soon as the shelf was in place, he grinned, repeated that he was happy to do it, and disappeared before we could offer to buy him dinner or at least a cup of coffee.

So even though I'm clearly not in New York, I like it here in the Midwest. I think I'll stay a while.

Close call

I was over a mile into my run the other day when I felt something in my shoe. I wasn't planning on being out for terribly long, but even just a few miles with a bit of grit rubbing against your foot can drive you crazy, so I pulled over, yanked my sock around a bit, then took off again. Within two steps it was clear that I hadn't fixed the problem, and within ten steps I was annoyed again. So I hopped on one foot while untying my shoe and brushed off the bottom of my sock with my fingers. Off I went again, and discovered, to my dismay, that something was still not right. At this point my heartrate was slowing down and I was supremely irritated, so I sat down on the curb, yanked off my shoe, and took my sock off completely. I shook it out thoroughly and put it back on. As I reached for my shoe, I caught a glimpse of the bottom of it and saw that this was stuck in the sole:

(The thumbtack is there for scale.)

YIKES. I could see only the round base of this thing (I still have no idea what it is), but when I tugged on it I couldn't believe how long it was as the spiky part emerged. It went all the way through my shoe and was poking at the arch of my foot, and had it been slightly longer or just a bit less bent, I'd have found myself with a nasty puncture wound. As it was, the point didn't even break the skin.

Just another fun adventure in the big, bad city.

New Residence Hall

Have an extra $5 million or so collecting dust somewhere? Donate it to TC and they'll name my dorm after you. It won't be "my dorm" for too much longer, however; Dave and I found a great apartment and I've got about three weeks left here. I've already started packing a bit, so it seemed like a good idea to take pictures while my room still looks like my room. As inconvenient as it is not to have a kitchen, it's been great to live here and I'll miss it.

Answers to common questions (i.e. what my mom asked me when I showed her these over the weekend):

-Is that dresser yours?

No.

-Is that table yours?

No.

-Is that bookshelf yours?

No.

-Is that chair yours?

Yes. Anthony drove it over from Ikea for me at the beginning of the year and assembled it. It's great for reading.

-What are those plants?

On my windowsill I have marigolds (no flowers yet), two bell pepper plants donated to me by Ferran, and another plant, also from Ferran, so I only know the name of it in Spanish. There's a cactus on my dresser, the lone survivor of a trio that Dave bought me a few months ago. I thought I'd be good at this stuff after the success of my garden in Visalia, but it turns out my green thumb stops working indoors.

-Is that lamp yours?

No. I'll miss it when I leave. The lower extension swivels so I can shine it on my desk or over my reading chair.
-What's that out your window?

The other tower of my building. I can see right into people's rooms at night, and so have to be careful to shut my blinds at appropriate times, as I assume the visibility issue is a two-way street.

-Why do you have two computer screens?

Because my brilliant friend Nic recommended it. The second one plugs into my laptop and I can drag documents, Internet windows, etc. onto it. It's great for writing papers when I have a lot of things open at once.

-I like your map.

Thanks.

Cultural Geography

Ah, Heritage High School. While the students here inhabit the same world I do on many levels, in other respects our species are alien to each other.

The discussion in a Global History class I observed recently centered around the Cold War. The teacher was explaining the Iron Curtain, so naturally the topic of geography was at the forefront of conversation. A brief dispute about the cardinal directions flared.

I have a clear memory of standing in my third grade classroom, pointing to the walls labeled North, East, South and West as we rotated in a clockwise circle and chanting the mnemonic "Nobody Eats Soggy Waffles." As it turns out, the kids at Heritage and I have this in common; they too use a mnemonic to remember the cardinal directions. One of the brightest girls in the class thought for a moment, then pointing in all four directions recited:

"Never Ever Smoke Weed."

Every day I spend at Heritage is an education.

Words Change Worlds

After an abysmal beginning to my Monday (is there any other way to start a Monday?), I crept into a conference room on campus ten minutes late for a lecture called "Words Change Worlds" which I'd been looking forward to for a weeks. I couldn't have picked a better remedy for my dark mood. Over the course of the hour and twenty minutes I spent in that room, I found myself growing more and more excited until all traces of my former gloom were washed away.

Pam Allyn, the speaker, is the founder of an organization called LitWorld. She's a graduate of Teachers College, too, and her mission, to put it simply, is to make every child on the planet literate. Talk about fearless - I can't think of too many people who would dare to take on that kind of challenge. Pam is thin with very short hair. Her style was at once funky and sophisticated, and she came across as confident, competent, and easily approachable. She had a way of telling anecdotes and posing questions that should have come across as touchy-feely treacle, but which somehow felt hugely significant instead. She accompanied her lecture with a PowerPoint presentation featuring photos of teachers all over the world sitting in conference rooms or standing at blackboards and gorgeous children from places like Liberia clutching colorful picture books.

Pam talked about the work she'd done and its challenges. Her tales reminded me of just how much one must shift one's perspective when working with people in countries so very different from the developed ones we inhabit. Nothing can be taken for granted. One teacher she met in Africa spent his evenings in a library copying chapters from a textbook, which he would copy again onto the blackboard in his classroom the next day. This was his way of coping with the lack of textbooks at his school. The students would cope with the fact that virtually none of them have access to writing paper by memorizing the information on the board. Pam wisely pointed out that, when looking for ways to help improve literacy in this situation, she has to look at things from a very specific perspective if she is to make an impact. In another instance, Pam led teenage girls, also African, in designing their ideal classroom. Number One on nearly all of their lists? Sanitation. They fantasized about having a wastebasket in each room, and a designated place to empty that wastebasket (preferably not right outside the classroom door) so that students' environment would be conducive to learning and not feel dirty. Their second unanimous priority was single-sex classrooms; the number of girls in Liberia who drop out of school because of harassment from their male peers is pretty scary. While LitWorld's goal is not school reform so much as it is spreading literacy, the two factors are connected in many ways. Students who leave school because they fear for their personal safety are not going to learn to read.

Another hurdle is getting appropriate books to children. Never mind collecting the actual books; a bigger problem is that appropriate books may not even exist in print. Many children's storybooks are not available in the languages LitWorld needs them to be, in part because so many of them don't translate well. Many books would be confusing to children from developing countries because the authors take certain kinds of knowledge for granted, the kinds of things that would be second nature to a child from the US but which would baffle a child in Laos. A character scrapes his knee badly on the road after falling off his bike. A child in a village with dusty roads may interpret that very differently from a child growing up in a world of paved thoroughfares. (Never mind the concept of owning a bike. Never mind the concept of having ridden a bike even once and the sensation of speed and precarious balance.) What's a refrigerator? How do you explain a swimming pool to someone who's never seen one? Pam's solution to this problem is (surprise!) ambitious, but very appealing: teach kids to write their own stories so they will grow up to be authors who will provide appropriate books for the next generation. One of her biggest priorities is balancing reading with both creative and autobiographical writing for the children with whom she works.

One of her biggest triumphs is conceiving and arranging World Read Aloud Day, which began this year and is to take place annually from here on out on March 3rd. She showed us pictures sent to her from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, different parts of Africa. Children sat cross-legged on the floor openmouthed as teachers in colorful costumes, sometimes assisted by similarly dressed older students, read and acted out stories. She said that over 40,000 people participated this year, and she hopes for more next year. I will certainly keep that date in mind and spread the word.

LitWorld has some sort of project going in Harlem. I didn't get specifics, but I have emailed the organization to volunteer my time in helping get it off the ground. I know there is a library involved.

Pam made copies of her latest book, What to Read When, available for us for free! I haven't had a chance to look at my copy in depth, but it's essentially a collection of books matched with different ages and developmental levels. It'll be a great resource to have, I think.

For interested parties, here is the website for her organization: http://www.litworld.org/

Read on!

Progress?

The upper West Side, where I hang my hat, is full of neighborhoods with beautiful old brownstones. Many of them have fallen into disrepair, but as the neighborhood gentrifies (and no, I'll not engage in debate with you about this topic, thanks) they are being restored and often carved up into apartments where each family occupies a floor.

While walking home from Heritage, I spotted this monstrosity:

Frankly, I think the owner of this building, both the architect and contractor who managed the remodeling job, and the city official who decided that everything was up to code should be shipped off to a desert island or summarily shot at dawn, whichever appeals more to the jury. The picture doesn't show it, but on both sides of this abomination and all the way down the street to the corner in either direction are lovely, graceful, historic brownstones which have been lovingly and authentically rebuilt. And then there's this....this...thing. I'm not necessarily against modern architecture, and I've always thought that neighborhoods that controlled the aesthetic qualities of the houses built in them were kind of ridiculous. But all of that seems to fall away when I look at this picture and remember how this insult to domestic domiciles gaped from the middle of the otherwise charming street.

Liberal as I may be in many senses, some things should be sacred.

Jersey Boys

Once again, I took advantage of the discounted Broadway tickets I can get through TC and went to see "Jersey Boys" last night. "Jersey Boys" is a documentary-style musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Each of the characters does voice-overs now and then to share his perspective, and the story generally moves in chronological order from when Frankie and Tommy began singing together all the way up through this year, when three of the original four members talk about what they're doing with their lives now; the fourth one died a few years ago.

Thanks to the litigious nature of our society, most shows that involve any manner of mature subject matter now have to post warnings in prominent places. A sign hung in the entryway of the August Wilson theater warns patrons that gunshots, bright lights, fake blood, and "authentic profane Jersey dialect" are all included in the show. All were true, particularly the last one.

I thought I didn't really know much about the Four Seasons, but once the show started I found that virtually every song was one that I had not only heard before but could sing along with just about from start to finish. Talk about prolific. The score was made up entirely of Four Seasons music, so when the occasional character broke into song about how sad he was that his wife had left him or what have you, it seemed more authentic than in lots of musicals. Much as I love musical theater, it's hard to get around the fact that people don't generally burst into song in the middle of conversations in the every day world. It was believable, however, that these guys would express themselves through music. It was surprising to learn about the origins of many of the songs; because they're mostly catchy and poppy, I wouldn't have suspected that there was anything autobiographical about any of them, but turns out there was in most cases. Interestingly, Bob Guadio, who played the piano and wrote nearly all of the Four Seasons' songs, wrote the score for "Jersey Boys." Despite my nosebleed seat (I really should invest in binoculars) I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone.

All about the Benjamins

The security deposit for our apartment had to be in the form of a certified check, not a personal check, and so I virtually emptied my gasping bank account on Saturday and ferried the money to our new landlady. Dave reimbursed me with a stack of bills on Sunday (bartenders always have cash on hand), and on Monday I headed to CitiBank to resuscitate my account. I was relieved to hand the wad of cash to the lady behind the bulletproof glass; walking around New York with over a grand in cash is not the way to spend what should be a carefree, sunny morning, even if one has to travel only about a block and a half through an affluent neighborhood.

I was interrupted from filling out the deposit slip by the testy observation, "This is fake." I blinked and begged the cashier's pardon. "This one, it's fake," she elaborated, waving what looked a lot like a one hundred dollar bill at me. "It's paper." It was obvious that I was already a complete imbecile for not recognizing this fact myself, so I did not point out the local custom of using paper currency in the United States.* "Uh, it is?" I contributed after a lengthy pause.

"Feel the difference." She stuffed the apparent counterfeit and a true blue Benjamin through the slot at the bottom of her window. I extended tentative fingers and thumbs to rub each bill. They felt the same to me. "And look, it tears," she continued, ripping about half an inch into the fake. "And look." She ripped half an inch into the real one before I could even yelp. The fact that both motions produced a tear did not seem to faze her; the identical-looking rips apparently provided a bulletproof argument to anyone with more than ten brain cells.

"Uh… so… what…." I stammered, wondering whether I was about to be clapped in irons. She was already busily stabbing at a keyboard and moments later I heard a printer begin to hum. I learned that she would be sending the bill to the Federal Department of.... Something for examination. If it was real ("obviously not," her gum seemed to snap at me), the amount would be deposited into my account. If it was indeed a fake ("more like 'when'" said her cocked head), I should submit the freshly printed form to my accountant in spring of 2011 and I would get the money back in my tax return. So, she assured me, I had a mere 16-or-so months to wait.

Following the successful deposit of the rest of the actual money I'd brought, I contritely perused the form on my way out of the bank. I noted that she'd typed in the branch and the amount of the money and checked the box that declared that I didn't appear to be suspicious. While ordinarily I dislike being typecast, I decided that this time I could live with it.

*Yeah, yeah, it's printed on a blend of cotton fibers. Whatever. Looks like paper to me.

Karen Arenson

We had a guest speaker in my writing interventions class today. I'm sure I would have met the announcement of any change in the pace of our weekly lectures with pleasure, but I was especially excited about hearing Karen Arenson speak. Karen retired from The New York Times recently, where she covered mostly educational issues. Her career as a journalist was much-lauded, and now that she has retired, she has graced Teachers College with her presence for the last few weeks and my writing class was one of her scheduled stops.

We were all supposed to read four articles (not her own) which she had selected ahead of time and come to class prepared to discuss them. I couldn't wait to hear what she had to say about them, and so instead of my usual slapdash highlighting and distracted skimming, I printed them out and filled the margins with careful notes on the stylistic choices made by the writers. I think I was the only one who printed them and brought them to class, although several of my classmates made comments that convinced me they had at least glanced at the articles.

Although she isn't a terribly flowery writer herself, Karen chose articles filled with vivid description. We talked about hooks that are both elegant and informative and admired one journalist's ability to report on what should have been a straight-forward, lackluster event and turn it into a compelling story. She highlighted weighty words which elegantly conveyed meaning inexperienced writers would have struggled to accomplish with several sentences. Newspapers are all all about efficiency, and so every word is important. This reminded me of poetry, where the same principle applies, except that the two genres are on opposite ends of the literary spectrum in my book. Interesting parallel.

Purloined from a website - we didn't actually get to see Karen in action.

Some of my favorite moments:

-Karen said that the way to get noticed is to write about a mundane topic in an exciting way (which seems obvious, but it's much easier said than done).

-Apparently the editors at the Metro desk used to choose one or two words each month and the journalists would compete to see who could work them into a piece first. Two that she remembered: stygian (related to the river Styx) and tatterdemalion (a ragamuffin). Fun idea!

-One legendary reporter worked his way up to the point to where he didn't have to do much field reporting and spent most of his time at his desk on the phone with newbie reporters who'd go out and do interviews and collect facts for him. Karen remembers hearing him snap things like, "What do you mean you don't know how many steps there are? Go back and count them!" into the phone. Junior reporters, provided they survived the experience, all said that they learned volumes about observation from this guy and became adept at sizing situations quickly and asking the right questions as they prepared to write their own pieces.

Urban Easter

While running through Central Park today, I saw a pack of kids scrambling to cram plastic eggs into plastic bags, shepherded by a few indulgent adults hovering above. I never considered the difficulties of having an egg hunt when one lives in an apartment with no yard. A family could do a lot worse than Central Park, however; it is absolutely stunning at the moment. I can call the profusion of daffodils "riotous" without feeling dramatic.

We had Easter with the Allens one year (can't remember where we were, but it may have been the Grand Canyon) and the four of us kids had to wait in one of the hotel rooms while our parents concealed eggs and gifts in the other room. I remember that it was tough to find everything somehow, which says volumes about our parents' creativity; I mean, how many places can you hide things for four different kids in a hotel room? I could be making this up, but I swear Luke's grand prize turned up in the air conditioning vent. That crafty bunny...

On the hunt

Dave and I have decided to be roommates starting in May, and we spent Wednesday looking at apartments on the upper West Side. The experience, like most of my New York experiences, has been nothing short of enlightening. I've rented apartments before, but this market is like nothing I've ever seen. For one thing, space is at a premium and so people have done some pretty creative (and often unsuccessful, in my opinion) renovations in attempts to improve living space. I've seen closets about 18 inches wide carved out of random wall spaces, entryways between apartments at such an angle that if residents of both places exited their units at the same time they'd have no choice but to do so cheek-to-cheek, and shower-baths with the showerhead on one side of the tub, the drain on the opposite side, and the faucet and control knobs protruding from the wall in the middle. Many landlords don't bother to take unnecessary steps like cleaning sinks or making sure that cabinets have frivolous features like shelves in them; grime, rust, and the structural supports on which residents can rest their own purchased sheets of plywood seem to suffice. It's certainly not a renters' market. I remember going to see Ferran's new place after he'd signed the lease and it was filthy. But unless you're planning to pay top dollar – and in New York top dollar is high enough to give most of my social circle a nosebleed – these are the things you deal with. You spend the money you'd have to pay for a more high-end place on Lysol and paper towels.

The most surprising thing about this whole ordeal has been the speed at which reasonably-priced places move. Realtors will tell you that if you like the place, you need to put in an application within half an hour, and they're not kidding about that. I watched one gorgeous place vanish before my eyes. I made the mistake of looking at apartments one Wednesday, thinking that I could show places I liked to Dave on his day off on Monday. This line of thought is laughable to me now – every apartment I saw and liked was gone within a day or two of my looking at it. In Nashville, I remember considering one unit for about a week before making up my mind, and it waited patiently for me until I did.

The rental system here is coordinated by middlemen. Dave and I submitted an application for a place we liked on Wednesday, and we spent ages sitting in the real estate office while our realtors made call after call to the representative of the landlord of the building, who in turn had to call the landlord once or twice for real answers. I made two separate trips to CitiBank for account information to put on the application, and my father, who is going to be our guarantor (landlords aren't eager to rent to unemployed students and bartenders whose incomes are tip-based and therefore undocumented) had to locate, fill out, scan, and fax an unreasonable number of times. All of this makes things easy for the landlord and horrendously complicated for us. But if we don't take the place, there are other people in line behind us who will, and the landlord knows that we all have to live somewhere.

Despite the cumbersome process, I liked our realtor. He was excited to show us the place we ended up applying for, and the fact that he wasn't prepared with the keys to the unit didn't stop him; borrowing Dave's frequent movie-goer card, he jimmied the locks to both front doors while Dave and I watched openmouthed, and had us in the foyer in three minutes. He was unable, however, to jimmy the lock to the unit itself, and had to jump on his bike to pick up the key from his office. Dave and I waited for him in the lobby of the building and passed the time by talking about how it looked like, if we did get the place, we wouldn’t need seventeen deadbolts for the door after all.

Things I've learned to look for:

-Good light and lots of windows – not as easy to come by as you'd think, since most buildings are so close together that lots of windows doesn't necessarily mean good light. A bright space feels bigger.

-High(ish) ceilings – also make a place feel bigger.

-Wood flooring – I don't even want to know what caused the stains I saw on some carpets, and I certainly don't want to live with them.

-Hallways/stairwells that do not smell like kitty litter.

-Closet space

-Nearby amenities - laundromats, grocery stores, and subway stops

-Safety - I tend not to worry about this aspect (perhaps to my own fault) but Dave, who comes home from work around 5:00 A.M. on the weekends carrying several hundred dollars in cash, does.

Social Graces

Last night, I met up with some friends to celebrate Kat's birthday. Kat is a bartender who works with Dave. She's from Tennessee so I'm predisposed to like her, but I'd probably like her even if she wasn't. The friends of hers I knew already seemed very cool, so I dressed for the occasion and made the trip down to the meatpacking district anticipating a good night.

It ended up being a good night in that I learned a lot. Otherwise, there wasn't much that was good about it.

Kat's friend had made reservations at an Italian place called Nero. The guest of honor was an hour late, but we all had a decent enough time munching on free bread and sipping very much not free cocktails. In observance of my budget, I had only one glass of wine, which I regrettably paid for up front (more on that later). When Kat finally arrived, we ordered our selections from a highly overpriced menu and chatted while we waited. I'd met up with Dave for a huge, late lunch that day, and he and I decided to share a pasta dish since neither of us was particularly hungry. Kate (not to be confused with Kat, although I get it wrong fairly consistently), on Dave's other side, has just begun her 8,937^th diet and so ordered a salad and a glass of water.

Our food came, and Dave and I quickly polished off the noodles in Prego sauce that I could have probably produced in my dorm kitchen in about a quarter of the time for about 1/100^th of the price. But I liked the group I was sitting with and tried to be cheerful, while simultaneously making mental notes not to return to Nero unless someday I felt that my bank account was troublingly large. I was glad Dave and I had elected to share a dish and that I hadn't ordered any more drinks, and skipped an after-dinner coffee as well. At least I'd had a reasonably good time for a fair price.

I didn't even see bill come, but I definitely heard one of the girls at the other end of the table, a vapid-looking brunette who had spent most of the evening busily spilling out of the top of her strapless dress, announce that we each owed $60. A flurry of surprised chatter arose, as all everyone around Dave, Kate and I commented on how surprisingly low the total was, considering. Dave and Kate and I held a hurried, whispered conference that involved much swearing. Kate's salad was $15, and for her portion of Kat's dinner/drink costs and tip she should have put in no more than $25. I owed something like $15, and Dave, figuring in several Coronas, owed something like $30. I had actually been a little concerned about a situation like this earlier in the meal as I watched the girls around me order trays of drinks, appetizers, and coffees. But instead of lightly announcing early on that I was on a budget and therefore was going to pay only for what I ordered, a I certainly should have done, I didn't say anything.

The only thing our disgruntled trio wanted to do less than pay $60 a pop for water, lettuce, and several noodles was to create a ruckus that would put Kat's moronic friends in their places and almost certainly ruin Kat's birthday outing. So we ponied up the dough, bid the group goodnight, and hurried to a dive bar where Kate and I had a pina colada each and Dave polished off a pint of beer. I hadn't known Kate well before all of this, but a sense of camaraderie seems to have sprung up between us. I rode the train home poorer, wiser, and happy that I made a good friend.