Let’s go back 5 years.  When I was 40, I was at a PI school near downtown San Jose.  Due to how many years under NCLB it hadn’t reached ALL of its goals (it doesn’t matter if the school aced 4 out of 5, you were still in trouble for the 5th), it was cruising towards some low-level of soul-sucking awfulness of interference.  I was ready for a change since I was tired of the constant meetings that allowed for very little else, including working with students (unless I wanted to give up my lunch time).

So when I heard about a school going K-8, I jumped on it.  My dream job had always been a self-contained 6th grade.  The first year was not successful.  I had a hard time with the kids, the community, the rationale for what was going on, and they had buyer’s remorse with me.  Somehow, by February it was better.  However, it was slow going.  By the end of the year, I thought, well, maybe next year.

The next year was better, the kids were far more fabulous, I had my own class, and I thought I was going forward.  I still didn’t have a team or a colleague, but I had hope.  It wasn’t great; it wasn’t bad.

Year three was wrong.  I remember being astutely aware that we were not making progress.  I wasn’t making progress.  I couldn’t figure out how to move ahead and actually make it work.  We needed to be a full program.  I even suggested one thread for K-8.  It didn’t seem to matter if I noted it wasn’t working, or tried to get us to go in a direction, or even suggested that we determine a course, I was wrong.  I was what was wrong.  I remember crying in a meeting knowing that I was considered the asshole letting everyone know that I hadn’t envisioned the program being this way.  I cared.

Now… it’s over.  I can’t do it anymore.  OK, that’s a lie.  I can do it.  I have skills and the capability.  I just don’t want to.  In four years we’ve never managed to move beyond mediocre.  One could say that it’s my fault.  After all, I’m the only one who’s been there all 4 years.  I’m the only constant in a sea of suck.

So I’ve asked for reassignment.  Yet, there are ripples in the fabric.  I’m hearing tales of others who are being recruited who “will” make it work.  Who have vision and ideas.  It breaks my heart.  First, that I was never allowed to really try with support.  Second, what if they encounter the same thing?  I know I’m jealous at someone being able to groom the program and actually make it something.  On one hand I want that person or that team to be wildly successful.  On the other hand, it just emphasizes what a waste these last four years have been.

Now what?  I’ve asked to stay; to move to a lower grade.  I’ve signed a transfer form, for whatever that means.  Maybe it’s time to leave this particular district for good.  People say that I’ll just run into the same problems in different places, but maybe that’s the right thing.  After all, if you get divorced, is it healthy to live together?  Sigh.

This makes my obsession with Goyte’s “Somebody I Used to Know” more poignant.  Is this how it will be when I’m gone?

Today though, I clicked the unsubscribe button on each and every one of those messages.  While I recognize that my old system wasn’t time consuming, there were times when I was bored or simply wasting time that I would click to see what was on sale.  Then a good week later, boxes would arrive.  While I don’t mind spending money on stuff I’ll use, and I do use what I’ve bought, there’s still that part of me that realizes, I didn’t need more.

As I see it, out of sight is out of mind.  I am working to render my email box as irrelevant as my snail mail box.  I know that the amount of mail will be small, and that it will most likely be related to Facebook and Pinterest, but that’s the risk you have to take in simplifying your life.

Maybe, just maybe, if I’m lucky, the absence of garbage will attract the interesting, the pithy, and the personal.  If not, I haven’t lost a thing.  I might even gain time and money.

Like any 10-year-old eager to shoot outside to play with her friends, I tend to solve the problem by hiding it.  Sure, I don’t shove loads of dirty clothes under my bed anymore, but I have been known to buy baskets for my clutter.  At some point, it becomes a basket, filled with stuff, that needs going through, that I ignore because, to be honest, that was it’s real purpose.  No matter how much I protested against the accusation.

My husband is a neat, organized person.  He is Felix to my Oscar (that’s ironic, isn’t it?).  He has systems in place, works them, and knows where things are immediately.  I know where things are approximately.

What I’m learning about myself, at the ripe old-age of 45, is that I don’t really need to organize.  I need to simplify.

So I started with my digital life.  When Facebook updated itself last, I was getting all sorts of stuff on my wall — people, bands, consumer goods, etc. that I’d “liked”.  I unliked all of them.  Soon, my Facebook wall was uncluttered.  Would I like to know about these things?  Maybe. Is it worth digging through the visual clutter to get there? Not at all.

Due to having gone a bit non-linear last summer, I shut down my Facebook account for a few days (it was HARD). When I reactivated it, I made a conscious decision to get rid of people.  It sounds callous, but to be honest most of the people I “friended” from high school, I’d only done so to see how they turned out.  There were very few that I actually cared about or even wanted to be friends with.  I also had, between family, acquaintances, colleagues, and students something over 300 contacts.  I can’t keep up with 300 people, that’s just crazy.

So I didn’t. I first worked to get rid of 50.  Then another 50.  I vowed to work down to 150 contacts.  Right now, I’m a little over 100 people I’m friends with on Facebook.  And of those, truthfully, I only really care about 75 of them.  To take care of my students, I started a new “identity”.  I have about 150 friends there.  I rarely check it.  It’s not relevant to my day-to-day operations.

I’m going to take this year and think about who I want to be when I grow up.  I can’t be everything to everyone, nor do I want to.  I will not be more popular if I carry the right purse, wear the right fashions, or create the perfect home sanctuary for my family. It doesn’t matter how many educational books, videos, and realia I buy.  The teacher I am is the person who doesn’t have any of those things.  It’s the person who plans the lesson and activities and cares about the learning. The people who love me, love me.  My real goal needs to be making time to be with them and doing my professional best — without the bells and whistles.

In looking at 2012, I think it’s safe to consider two life goals.  One: become the best teacher I can be.  Really be present to my students, their parents, and my colleagues.  Pare down the educational offerings and go deep.  Two: create a home life and system where my home can be a center of fun for my family and their friends — find a simple way to entertain.  If home isn’t where the heart is, what is it then?

Sigh… Boy do I have a big task in front of me.  I’d better get started.

Why?

Seriously, I can’t paint my house with any kind of success.  The first time I painted, I ended up knocking over a paint can in my bedroom and having paint soak into the carpet, which was a huge clean-up mess.  The second time, I removed the tank on our stool to “thoroughly” paint the bathroom wall, only to incorrectly place the tank back onto the stool.  I rendered the bathroom useless for a very long time.  Essentially my husband had to take over, sigh, make comments, and fix it.  Not pretty. Plus, it’s still not really done.  While the walls, ceiling, and molding are complete, I’ve never returned a cabinet or shelf system for storing items, nor a mirror, or even a towel rack that my husband likes.  Honestly, I don’t want to have to go out looking for matching items, buy them, and then install them.  I am, very much, DONE.

Then there is the cost and clutter.  In order to do a DIY project, you have to buy the parts.  Then those parts need to be stored until such perfect alignment of the sun, moon, and Mercury rising which will bless the start of the project.  Which, given that I believe I’m ADD, will be interrupted by something, so then the project will be set aside to deal with some other issue (Facebook, Pinterest, Bejeweled…). The project will sit there, until I’m sufficiently nagged, incomplete until there is perfect alignment of the sun, moon, and Mercury rising for the restart. Until then, it needs a home.  Given that organization is not my strong suit, rather than storage, it will be added to the top of a pile in my garage or Harry Potter’s apartment.  That, my friends, is technically referred to as clutter.  Once abandoned, some new shiny project will catch my eye completing the circle of not life, not death, merely DIY purgatory.

Let’s face it, I’m an idea guy.  However, if I want a final project, I need to  find someone who is into implementation.

This is what I referred to yesterday, when I pointed out that American women are heavier now than in the 1960s which would definitely account for WHY models are so much “thinner” than the general population.

But then the had to include clothing size.  Are you f*cking kidding me here?  PUH-LEEZE!  Honey, the measurements for most clothing has changed as well over the past 40-50 years.  A size 12 in 1960 *IS* a size 6 or 8 in today’s sizing.  Don’t believe me, grab a pattern.  Last I checked (mid ’90s), I could wear a 16 in clothes, but would need to buy a 22 pattern to fit my rump.

Look, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t look at our standards of beauty and see if we’re expecting too much, being too narrow, or heaven forbid, making average or thin women feel they aren’t tiny enough, but let’s not fake that we as a society hasn’t grown larger over this time.

That’s just foolishness.

Then something jumped out at me.  It was a statistic.  God, I loves me some statistics. This one said that in the 1960s, the average model weighed 8% less than the female population.  Now that number is 23% less.  The implication, of course, is that models are thinner than before — dangerously thinner.

No, my friends, the general female population is fatter.

*Please note, I’m a chunky monkey myself.  However, I’m pretty sure that I’m right.

Based on what I see, the iToy is a right of birth. I'm stunned at how many toddlers I've seen who know how to "work" their parents' phones, or better yet, the number of parents who hand the phone over to the toddler to "keep him/her quiet" and entertained.

From my perspective, late elementary is probably the earliest appropriate age, and that's really only because of the number of businesses and people who don't have landlines anymore (and the absence of pay phones). Keb attends a weekly game tournament. Due to the fact that we don't want to sit there with him for 4-5 hours, he has a phone so that he can call us when he's done. Actually, it's more like we call him. The responsibility piece really isn't there yet. However, before we got him a phone, he used mine, and he never asked for one. It's just not the big thing in our community.

In my mind responsibility is the biggest phone factor. When your child reaches an age where he/she is completely responsible for this item that is or can be quite expensive, is responsible to your rules, and knows where the item is when you ask, then that's the right age.

When I taught 5th grade, a student desperately wanted a cell phone. His parents gave him one of their "dead" phones to carry for a month. If he had it every time they asked and didn't lose it, they would get him a phone. By the end of the year, he'd gone through three dummies. He kept saying it was because it wasn't real, but his parents felt that if he was serious, he would have kept track of his phone. I always liked that idea. It made sense and tested whether it was a want or a need. It also made sure they weren't going to keep paying for that phone.

In my mind, older is better than younger with phones. After all, if you don't know where your elementary school kid is, you have more problems than a phone can solve.

The year I moved from middle school to elementary, I had so much STUFF that people were giving me organizational materials.  Of course it didn’t help that I had MY middle school stuff, the previous teacher had left HER stuff, then I was GIVEN more stuff to teach elementary. Sigh.  Seriously, it was paper, books, boxes, more of all that plus storage containers and file cabinets — all in disarray.  Finally, one day a coach at the school asked if there was anything I needed help with.  I took her to my room and showed her this environment what looked like a paper factory had swallowed a school supply store and vomited the contents all over my room.  I needed help organizing ALL THAT STUFF. (Seriously, it was looking like an episode of hoarding)

She was kind, came in and asked if I cared what she did.  I needed clarification.  She wanted to know if she had permission to throw things out that she knew were useless.  Of course, I answered.  About five hours later, the room was a lot neater, more organized, and felt peaceful.  She threw away old curriculum and training manuals.  She grouped materials.  Once she started, I could figure out what to keep and what to get rid of.  I’ll be honest, I had been hoarding teaching stuff because I just didn’t know.

From there, I continued to weed, give away, and discard. I realized that not taking or buying was much easier than having to find homes for new stuff.  Even if I’m given something, it is mine to decide what to do.  Most of the time, I’ve just gotten rid of things that I truly cannot fathom having to store.  If I don’t have a place for it… well, I don’t have a place for it.

While buying boxes, tubs, notebooks, and other organizational systems work for others, I know that I can’t keep everything.  Therefore, I just stick with what I learned that day.  You don’t have to organize what you don’t have.  If it doesn’t really fit into your system, don’t buy it.  Don’t buy with someday and some vision in your mind of perfection and idealism.  If something comes in, for goodness sake, send something out!

I’m still working on being organized.  I’ve just learned that for me, organization doesn’t come with binders, boxes and label makers.  It comes with simplification and paring down.

First, this whole uniform thing happened before I showed up. Therefore, I assume that SOMEONE wanted it. If people are to be believed, parents initiated this policy for a variety of social reasons: safety from harm (not wearing gang colors), respect (no one has better clothes than anyone else), and pride (private schools do it). I’ve never bought any of this.

Quite frankly, kids find ways to make gang affiliation known despite the uniform — their shoes or shoe color, a bandana, the addition of a chain, or a colored undershirt. This, of course, means that if I’m responsible for their safety, it becomes my job to police the additional non-uniform accessories. That is, I swear, it’s own full time job. Yet, I do it because it’s my job to do my job. Since I’ve been charged with upholding this policy, I am expected to check out the kids attire. Which I do, daily, and it’s a quick once-over because I know what I’m looking at. Yet…

When they’re not in uniform it becomes a REALLY BIG DEAL. Why? Because the kids speak the truth. “Why are you bugging me, making me change my shirt because NOBODY CARES!” I explain that it’s my job to care about this, their safety, and the school community. Therefore, I am sending them to the office to get (whatever piece of clothing is missing or to remove the offending piece of clothing).

Are you a good predictor?

Yes! The kid returns with a note about how we don’t have uniforms to loan, we’re not calling home “just for that”, and that the kid is “fine.” Mind you, this is never an administrator’s note, but the intent is clear. Don’t bother us just for that. We have more important things to worry about. I believe it’s this attitude that fuels the “pick your battles” cry. No one cares, so why do you?

Good point. I care because I am a good soldier. If I’m given marching orders, I will carry them out. I will question crazy, but I will do as instructed if it’s relatively non-harmful and expected of me. I was TOLD (and have been told each year) that we need to make sure the kids are in uniform. Hell, I’ve even been yelled at about their jackets (even though I made sure all the kids were in SCHOOL uniform daily). No good deed goes unpunished is the phrase.

Because I will question crazy, I’ve actually tried to address the uniform policy by stating we could just get rid of it. You’d think I killed Santa in a room full of kindergartners (again). THE HORROR! THE HORROR! Eyes wide, mouth agape, people outraged (note: the very people who don’t support or enforce the policy are the most outraged) and I’ve been told we MUST have one. After all the parents (allegedly) voted for it. Mind you, it was before my time so no one has currently voted for it. I’m told that the kids don’t know how to dress. “You should have seen how they dressed before the uniform policy. The girls were little hootchie-mamas!” I’m even told that it’s always been this way, so who are we to change it.

Well, as I see it (remember, Wynnell’s Warped World View) if you don’t enforce it, believe in it, or support it, why keep it? Institutionalizing clothing, stressing out your loyal soldiers while giving a pass to people who don’t give a FRACK, and forcing kids to conform when there’s no need seems more than capricious.

My solution? Dress code policy and teaching kids to work within confines. However, given that educational change is glacial, I suspect I’ll be complaining about this for years to come. Yet, at no point will I stop enforcing it because to do so smacks as a complete lack of integrity. I’ll leave that to my colleagues.

Because I’ve shared this on every other avenue I can find, I’m posting it here too. Taed will be annoyed ’cause he thinks it’s just “eh.” However, Keb is with me. He loves it too.

Gotye — Somebody I used to Know (with Kimbra)