My Take on a Lose-Lose Situation

I’m a retired teacher. Other than my family, teaching occupied the majority of my thoughts and energy from 1970 through 2001. Looking at the school landscape today is painful for me, in several different directions. Although I am no longer a teacher, it is hurtful to read so much negative news about a profession I loved.

I have some pet peeves:

Lack of respect for the teaching profession.

Lack of discipline and the respect for authority within schools.

Teachers/administrators who only want to draw a paycheck.

Administrations who hire and then continue to employ ineffective teachers. All teachers, unfortunately, share the negative feedback.

Extreme emphasis on standardized test scores to the loss of respect for the individual learner AND the individual teacher.

Curriculum and educational policy dictated and generated by people and special interest groups who aren’t in the classroom and never were.

The loss of strong family.

“Us” and “Them” attitudes.

I could go on and on and on. The educational climate is … scary. It often overshadows the good, the hopeful, and the great things that happen in schools.

This week, cell phone videos from a SC classroom went viral. A school resource officer called to a math classroom to “deal with” a female student who refused to give up her phone (reports vary on the reason for calling him) used force to remove her from her desk and from the room. *

Let me be clear. I don’t condone the officer’s actions under the circumstances shown in the video. By that, I mean the student, apparently, did not have weapons, was not threatening to shoot herself or anyone else and put no other classmate in jeopardy.

But. BUT.

There are some things that we should keep in mind as “we” rush to judge. There will be two (or more) sides to this story, because there are always more sides than we know from a distance. There will be extenuating circumstances, with pre-existing biases and previous personal experiences thrown in, right or wrong. For example, on October 30, several hundred* students staged a walk-out in support of the resource officer, demanding his reinstatement. The officer has support. Some students, at least, believe his actions were justified. Why? We may never know, but they believe they do.

 Currently, there are school resource officers in most school systems. They are there, in part, because teachers and administrators believe they need assistance with discipline problems occurring on school grounds during the school day. With mounting violence on today’s campuses, the need for a school resource officer is real. That’s true, and that’s frightening.  

*It appears that the math teacher issued an ultimatum about the student’s cell phone; reports say she was texting in class. When the teacher couldn’t enforce the ultimatum, he or she called on the resource officer to remove the student. The student resisted. The officer forcibly evicted the student. Briefly, he did what he was there for, what he was called on to do. I’m not defending his methods. There’s a fine line between “enough” and “too much.” In view of the teacher’s request for the student to leave, what was his job? Pulling her (resisting) from the desk was necessary, Throwing her was not. That’s my opinion, of course, and I don’t expect complete agreement.

It’s a slippery slope. The resource officer is a trained policeman. But the school campus is not “the streets,” and its students are not adults. The school wants its authority respected. The public wants discipline in the schools so that learning takes place. The public wants resource officers to keep students and teachers safe. The public wants to keep it tidy.

It’s not.

The student faces resisting arrest charges and the officer has, at least, lost his job. Students in the classroom took videos of the incident and posted them online with their cellphones (by the way, I wonder if those students face any consequences? Is it okay to take video and make it public, but not okay to text? Probably not a fair and balanced question. I don’t know the school’s cell phone policy, but I wonder). The SC school gets unwanted publicity. Schools, in general, get more negative publicity. The “R” question raises its ugly head (the officer is white, the student is black). There’s another black mark for police officers (as with teachers, good officers share negative feedback), another sad look at schools and students, another opportunity to promote racial stereotyping, more business for lawyers, and more negative fodder for the news channels to feed upon.

It’s a Lose-Lose scenario. Do I have answers? No, only more questions.

What if teachers could just teach? What if students just wanted to learn? What if officers were still just visitors to schools on Career Day? What if there was respect for school authority? What if there were no doubts about that authority?

What if there had been no school shootings?

What if? What if?

But it is what it is. The climate of fear and mistrust co-exists. Mistakes will, no doubt, be made. And we –the individuals concerned, the schools, police officers, the public – have to deal with the fallout.

The worse thing we can do is sling blame and quit trying.

*Details of the incident based upon published accounts.

                                        

 Lessons I Learned from building BIG the Ostrich

              Courtney's new book The Lies About Truth launches on November 3, 2015. 

 

This story, her "sophomore" book, was a traumatic author experience for Courtney, involving blood, sweat and many tears. A pivotal plot line in the story involves a  blue stuffed toy ostrich (ugly!). The main character names him BIG. So naturally, Court and I thought she should have a visual to accompany her on school visits after the book comes out! 

The search began.

Court was excited when Carla found this picture online. Here was Big. She said it was her perfect vision from the book. But it was a dog toy, only a few inches tall. Made in China.

 

So the search continued. Courtney ordered a stuffed ostrich from a toy company. It came in its own crate. It was adorable. But it wasn't blue. And it wasn't big. 

It wasn't BIG.

Finally, came the inevitable conclusion - this was last year - that I would have to make one. It shouldn't be too hard. I mean, look at that ugly blue thing above. Simple, right?! 

Riiiight.

I really did look EVERYWHERE for patterns. The only patterns I found were for crochet. I can't crochet well enough to alter patterns for the size we wanted.

I looked at pictures of real ostriches.

You have to admit they are so ugly, they're cute. Just like Big. But  that didn't help me much with a pattern.

I came to the conclusion that I'd just have to gut it out and do it myself (Little Red Hen-ish). For close to a year, I thought about it, looked for inspiration online and thought about it some more. I went to countless fabric shops and found several pieces of "fuzzy animal" material that would work. But they weren't in blue. Or not the right color of blue. I couldn't seem to get serious about the pattern until I found the material. Looking online, I eventually checked Jo-Ann's Fabrics and found what I needed. In July, on a trip through Nashville, we drove to Cool Springs where one is located, and I bought the material. YAY!

"Channel Your Brave" Time

I used newspaper to draw - after some starts and stops - a pattern of sorts. I cut it out of scrap material and even basted it together. I sort of sang (in my head) "I think she's got it; By George, I think she's got it." 

That was so premature and way too overly optimistic. Such is the stuff of dreamers.

To say the least.

After I basted together the scrap material, I was still afraid to cut out the "fuzzy animal" material. I took the day off.

The next day I cut out the fuzzy stuff. Sort of. My scissors didn't want to cut a straight line through the stuff. (I had conveniently forgotten how much trouble the cutter at the fabric store had had when cutting it off the bolt). That day - that WHOLE day - I worked on the head. And made the tail, the topknot and the legs. And I thought Wow, this is going really well. I only have the body to make tomorrow, and it will be finished!

Hahaha. Premature celebration.

The body. Oh, man. Here's where my inability to visualize 3-D pieces kicked my tail. I will spare you my pain, but let's just say that I cut, re-cut, re-sewed, adjusted, altered, re-sewed, changed my idea of how it would look ... mucho times. All day. At three o'clock I got out of my pjs and ate lunch. 

That fuzzy fabric changed several things. It would not DO what I needed it to do. Thank the Good Lord for felt. And Velcro. 

At 6:30, I put on the finishing touches and texted Court this picture:

 

And this one:

 

He is BIG.

Court's reaction made all the effort worth while! Let me say that again: HER reaction made me forget (almost) the sewing drama. She loved him.

Big is finished! 

*crawls off to the couch with wine*

Top Ten LESSONS LEARNED

1.  Just because one can draw doesn’t mean one developed the skill set (ever) to look at a one dimensional picture and envision how to make a 3-D replica. In fabric. In this century.
2.  Find a pattern. DO NOT EVEN THINK about making a stuffed animal where none exists.
3. Blue stuffed toy ostriches are – apparently - NOT in high demand. 
4. “Fuzzy Animal” material in UK blue (as per the author’s vision in The Lies About Truth) is darn near impossible to find.
5. Do not try to cut out “fuzzy animal” material. EVER. It is EVIL. (and it frays like Satan - that's Satan, not satin).
6. Do not try to sew up “fuzzy animal” material. (see above)
7. The truths about revision for an author are also true for the sewer when making a stuffed ostrich without a pattern … envision, re-vision, rework, edit, re-vision, rework. Repeat. And Repeat.
8. No matter how a homemade pattern APPEARS to work on the practice fabric, it will not actually look  the same after it is stuffed. (See #6.)
9. I repeat: SEE #2.
10. In the aftermath of extreme sewing trauma (I now suffer from PTSD - that is post tramatic sewing disorder - there is a ridiculous sense of accomplishment (i.e. this list), but that in no way means one should even think about repeating the process with any subsequent book characters that Courtney C. Stevens dreams up!

        If you want to read more about Big (you do!) then pre-order Courtney's book at Parnassus Books in Nashville, or pre-order from Barnes & Noble or Amazon. Or buy it when it comes out on November 3rd this year! 

Reviews:

"As she did in her beloved debut, Faking Normal, Courtney Stevens does a spectacular job of chronicling a smart seventeen-year-old girl's discovery of her own inner resources to overcome the aftermath of a tragic car accident involving her five best friends.  First she must forgive her friends, then she must forgive herself.  No one writes better about resilience and ‘channeling your brave’ than Stevens does." --Cammie McGovern, author of Say What You Will

In Courtney Stevens’ The Lies About Truth, Courtney writes beautiful and flawed characters that contain raw emotions. The Lies About Truth touched my soul.-- Katie McGarry, bestselling author of Pushing the Limits (.)

“This realistic YA novel explores the weight of the past, the value of the truth, and the meaning and process of forgiveness, which teen readers will identify with. A great addition to any YA collection” (School Library Journal)

At the levels of sentence, character, story, and soul, Courtney C. Stevens’s sophomore effort, The Lies About Truth, is staggeringly good. Sadie Kingston is struggling to heal after a tragic accident claimed her boyfriend’s life and left her irreparably scarred. With help from some unexpected places, she’s finally beginning to put the pieces of her life—and her heart—back together. This one is quietly wonderful.

–Stephanie Appell, Parnassus Books

"Stevens keeps the focus on Sadie's turbulent emotions in this heartfelt examination of the consequences of disfigurement." (Kirkus Reviews)

Snow 2015

Ode to Snow?

“Snow – Snow- Snow- I want to wash my hands, my face and hair in SNOW …”

Not so much.

With all due respect to Rosemary, Bing, Vera and Danny, and Irving Berlin, I’m over Snow.

At least for this season.

On February 16, I was in Tennessee, visiting my mother. We had two inches of sleet  there.

And that was bad enough, but back home in Kentucky, more than ten inches of snow fell at our house, followed by three more inches a few days later. And COLD. Both Tennessee and Kentucky had some overnight subzero temps, and it stayed continuously below freezing during the day with little or no sun. The snow lingered. It thawed a tiny little bit during the day IF the sun shone, but refroze every night. By the time I came home over a week later, the shiniest, slickest coating of thick ice (that I’ve ever seen) topped the still deep snow. And though our awesome Ballard County road department plowed and cleared (mostly) the main roads, our secondary roads and driveways and parking lots remained a problem. It looked and felt like an ice skating rink! Treacherous!

And it lingered. How many times have I heard this old saying? “If the snow hangs around, it’s waiting around for another snow storm.”

 

Look at the icy sheen on the snow!

 

Monster icicles!

Well, there’s a reason that sayings become adages.

On March 3^rd, we drove to Nashville for the day, leaving behind clear roads, but yards still covered in snow.

 

 Heavy rains set in on our drive home, and by the next morning, most of our snow had disappeared. 

In this process, I learned a new phrase: Ice Damming. The heavy snow piled on our upstairs deck had nowhere to go when the rains came, except inside. We currently have a big water stain on our living room ceiling. But it, at least, is paint-able. A friend of ours was not so fortunate. Her roof collapsed and water came pouring into her house, causing thousands of dollars’ in damage. The national news posted similar events all over the storm affected country.

Here, the joke became … if there’s still snow on the ground the weekend we Spring Forward for DST, at least we’ll be able to see the snow after six p.m.!

A couple days later with the snow gone and the rain finally ending, it felt like Winter MIGHT be drawing to a close. Come on SPRING!

But no.

On Monday, March 9 (MARCH, for heaven’s sake), Kentucky caught another Winter Storm. Overnight, it dumped a foot of snow on my house! A FOOT OF SNOW. IN MARCH. (Some communities got 16 inches, some got 25 inches!). As a retired teacher, I empathize with the school systems who must cope with make up days, testing schedules, and children who have missed nearly two weeks of school!

 

We haven’t had this much snow in several years. At least not in one storm. It was a wet snow, unlike the first one, and good snowman-making material. We never make one, but I enjoyed all the amazing pictures posted on FB. My favorite was the re-staging - ‘Snowman style’ - of raising the flag at Iwo Jima! Folks never fail to amaze me with their creativity. 

 (FB)

We shoveled the deck this time (Yep, we learned our lesson!).  And this snow was followed by sun and slightly warmer temps. It didn’t last nearly as long. 

We've had more snow than we're used to in Kentucky, but we are mighty thankful we don't live in Boston. Much of New England had one big snowstorm after another - a true Snow-pocalypse - with nearly five or six feet of the white stuff on the ground at a time. The cyber pictures were interesting! 

 (FB)

 (FB)

In the interval between the end of the snow and some drying up of the yard, I cleaned and straightened my screened-in porch (can NOT wait). I scouted the yard for emerging bulbs (and found them) and picked up fallen limbs from the storm. Definite A-N-T-I-C-I-P-A-T-I-O-N of warmer weather to come! Our local weatherman blogger says we’re not out of the woods yet; there’s more cold to come. BUT I think I see a spring light at the end of the winter tunnel!

Come on, Mother Nature! We’re SO ready for SPRING!