LuLu Love

Something amazing happened last week.

One of the dearest people in my life had a baby girl. Jennifer Herther gave birth to Leona Louise Herther, affectionately dubbed Lulu, last week Tuesday. I met Lulu on Thursday, immediately fell in love with the kid, and sat wide-eyed at Jen for the valiant feat she accomplished.

I suppose that things like this happen every day. People have babies all the time. But this one was somehow more real to me than all the others.

You see, I knew Jen as a Dennison. Jennifer Dennison. I knew her as my kindred spirit roommate in Pilsen, the older sister I never had. My running buddy, my fellow social-justice-activist, my wardrobe sharer, and my froyo sidekick. When we lived together I would pick Jen's brain in all sorts of things, from theology to dating advice to health care to please-can-you-help-me-understand-what-an-HMO-is-and-call-up-your-doctor-friends-for-advice-thanks. I still like to pick her brain on her latest nutritional advice and home-buying perspectives and maybe one day she'll be dishing on all the ways to raise kids organically. She's the one that knocked a few ounces of sense into me when I was dating the wrong guy(s) and yet never judged me or looked down on me in the process.

Jen represents a big part of my life: those two all-important years spent in Chicago. Living in the city shaped who I am in so many ways. They were my first years paying the rent. My Teach for America years. My oops-I've-gone-on-seven-first-dates-and-they-all-flopped-years. Jen was there for it all: the good, the bad, and the hilarious (because when you come home from a long day of teaching in CPS all you can do is laugh). Jen is the friend who met me and showed me that I was good enough, flaws and all. What more can you ask for, than someone who finds out about your real, messy self, and then happily accepts you anyway?

Le bebe.

So all of that, and much more, is who Jen is to me. I see myself in her. I look up to her. And for the first time, someone who was so present in the life of adulthood Anna has taken this step into motherhood. It was an overwhelming feeling to meet Jen's kid for the first time. (I cried immediately. Obvi.) 

It's a weird thing, to be a girl in your twenties. First they ask you who you're dating or why you're not dating. Then they ask you when you'll be married. Either it's not moving fast enough, or (in my case) you're getting engaged too soon. Then they ask you if baby fever has set in and when that deadline is pending. To be honest, I have never felt "baby fever." I have felt immediate love for my niece and nephew, total heartbreak at stories of loss, and pure joy for all of the other babies in the lives of my friends and family. I don't know if so-called baby fever will ever hit me (I don't think you have to be ill to choose to have a family one day!) and that's okay. I'm thankful for the timeline God's set before me, and for now I am enjoying it so much that I don't mind seeing other people at different points on theirs. 

So no, seeing Lulu for the first time wasn't a pang in my heart for my own. I felt something different instead. As Jen detailed for me the story of Lulu's birthday (with hilarious interjections from her husband Andrew, as per usual) I just sat there in awe. She approached her delivery day with such grace, so much composure, and incredible poise. The best thing about the story was that it wasn't by any means a perfect or easy experience for her. As I sat and listened to her graciously explain all the medical mumbo jumbo to my ignorant self ("Wait, what does five centimeters mean? Is that bad? Oh wait, that's good! Okay, keep going!"), I felt a new respect for this friend of mine. She laughed her way through explaining the chaos and out-of-body experience of bringing a baby into this world. I sat in total and complete awe at what she's been through, at how she fiercely loves her family, and at how God so perfectly chose her to be Leona Louise's mom. Like so many other times, her experiences reminded me that if she can do hard things, so can I. She inspires me to be brave, to embrace everything meant for me in this scary and beautiful world. 

My kindred free spirit is a mom. And I couldn't imagine anything better. 

The Wall

Over the past week I've been in the process of moving my whole life from this beautiful little Pilsen world over to our new apartment that Brian and I will live in after the wedding. This is a bittersweet process. This apartment has been the site for my coming of age years, it saw me through TFA ups and downs, and introduced me to some fabulous roommates. I love this place so, so, so much. One of the things that I love about it is a little tradition I started on the first weekend there. It was July of 2012, I had just finished TFA Institute training, and was painfully nervous about entering adulthood, meeting people at my school, and starting to work at this crazy job on August 1st. I decided that a little inspiration and encouragement was just the right thing to focus on, so I took a note from a friend with particularly kind words and taped it to the wall. And the Wall of Kindness was born. 

As any Teach For America teacher knows, one little note of encouragement is surely not enough to help you last through the year :) My Wall of Kindness kept growing; with each wonderful note from a wonderful person I had another artifact of goodness to keep me going. I got notes from cousins, sisters-in-law, friends, students, roommates, people from my hometown, and then even a few notes from that Brian Whartnaby guy started showing up in the summer of 2013. Handwritten notes are something that I value deeply, and I loved the daily reminder of the love I have in my life. 

So, as I had to move on and clean out my room, the Wall of Kindness of course had to be dismantled. It was sad. But it was also great. As I peeled each one down, I remembered the person who wrote it, pondered the sweet words on it, and each one brought a smile to my face. It reminded me to add to other people's Wall of Kindness too. So if you were one of my featured favorites, thank you for helping me wake up and face each day for these past two hectic, crazy, and wonderful years. 

You Better Believe It

So I noticed the date this past Sunday. It has been a YEAR since I graduated from college and I absolutely cannot believe it. I’m an adult! (Yep, read that sentence just like you SNL-lovers all read it.)

That feels wrong. It feels wrong to say that I’m an adult because I honestly have no idea how to change the oil in my car. I feel like that’s something adults should be able to do, and I don’t know how to do it. I feel like a 14-year-old trying to fly under the radar and hope nobody notices that I’m playing hooky from 7th period only to send me back from whence I came. I usually feel like a complete imposter in this adult world post-graduation.

 Last week, however, I had someone at work pay me the compliment that they were surprised that I was 23. They thought that I acted more like a “27-year-old or something”, not a newbie right out of the gate. I have to say, I took a moment to note the statement. It’s not everday you feel like that at work in your first year of teaching. And during that one small moment of satisfaction it dawned on me how I’ve managed to stay afloat in the adult world. The secret lies in these six words:

Fake it ‘til you make it.

 You’ve heard it before, but it is the single most helpful phrase to shake off those I’m-an-inadequate-fresh-piece-of-meat-who-has-no-clue-how-to-function-in-the-real-world blues. It’s kind of been my mantra since August 1st, when I, who had no business educating in the neediest of school districts in the country, was in charge of the 2nd-grade-fates of 23 children. I had never been in an education class, let alone did I know what a 7-year-old even looked like. I didn’t know what “best practices” were for teaching and I had no freaking CLUE what RTI or IEP or PLC meant. But if I could give any advice to fresh graduates or young adults who feel like they’re in over their heads in the working world, I’m telling you to just go ahead and fake it.

Start telling yourself that you are competent, successful, and independent, and you will start to become those things. The famous George Costanza once said, “It’s not a lie if you believe it,” and to be honest I’m starting to think there’s more wisdom there than I initially thought.

Believe all the things you want to believe about yourself. Need to go to church alone for the first time? Just believe that that’s what normal people do and march right up that aisle with Starbucks in tow. Have no clue what the educational term your advisor just used in an email actually means? Google it and reply as if you knew all along. Need to navigate a weird new city with psycho drivers? Simply believe you can merge with the best of them, check the mirrors often, hang on tight, and go to town up that freeway. Afraid to walk up the steps to your apartment by yourself? Believe you are a badass girl, check up and down the street, ready the keys between your knuckles just in case, and get inside without a sweat. Not sure what is going on at work? Believe that you are one of the most competent people in the room and present yourself that way. Stay engaged, take notes, dress more professionally than you should, participate when you can at staff meetings, and be a positive energy in the room – don’t be the new girl cowering shyly in the corner. This sounds so silly; it’s an odd idea to take extra care to go at the everyday things of life with an intentional gusto, but it works. It starts to rub off on your subconscious and you start to actually become a brave, smart, independent person.

My best days of teaching are those days when I believe I’m a good teacher. My best experiences with behavior management are when I make it clear to my kids that I am an adult who will not back down.

My most fun social gatherings with new friends happen when I believe I’m a fun person whom people will like.

 My most successful days of grad school are those when I believe I’m an energetic person after a long day of teaching, ready to learn something cool and new. They’re the days when I’m highlighting, note-taking, raising my hand, and forcing myself to nod my head.

 If you go through the motions of a confident person, you start to be that confident person. The more adults I meet in this work world, the more I realize we’re all the insecure 22-year-olds at heart; it’s not just you and me. This year I’ve seen 56-year-old professors get completely flustered in front of a classroom only to have everyone take a 20 minute break, I’ve seen school leaders break down into tears because of stress from district pressures, and I’ve seen coworkers say how they feel left out of the social scene at work. We’re all fighting feelings of inadequacy. Some people have just mastered the art of believing that they can. And so they can.

Believe me, for every one day I feel like an actual adult, there are seven others where I feel like a complete loser. I recently just wrote about the necessity to be real about your struggles and your difficult days. You need not always be an impenetrable wall of confident thinking and optimism. I just have found that, when put in sink-or-swim scenarios (and I can quite confidently say that was my scenario this past year), turn to confidence before you turn to cowardice.

This year has taught me that when they throw you in the pool before you learn how to tread water, tell yourself to swim, no, COMMAND yourself to swim, and you WILL. 

 Just don’t tell anyone you still need your rubber-ducky-arm-floaties to do it.

Not the Same

This title was directly inspired by this song by Ben Folds. Harkens back to my senior year of high school when his music is all I would listen to.

If you read my last post, you may think I'm a rambling preteen girl who has no capacity for any reasonable insight about important things. That may be true, but I do, from time to time, think about things other than TV shows and books that happen to be en vogue at any given point in time. This long weekend has allowed me a few minutes to reflect on where I'm at in the school year. I'm six months into teaching. Half a year in this city and with my kids. And I have definitely changed. I am not the same. 

It's funny how 23 second graders can change your life. They've changed me in a lot of ways I am not so proud of: I look older than I am, could fall asleep for a 3 hour nap at any given moment throughout the day, and have lost my hot runner bod that I earned this past summer (moment of silence to mourn the loss...). I feel guilty about the other ways I've changed, like sometimes having a negative attitude, a complaining spirit, or an aura of impatience. But there are other ways I've changed, and it started to come into my mind this weekend. For some reason or another, I was introduced to ten or so new people in the past few days through friends of friends at various events and I had to continuously say my schpeal about where I'm from, where I live in the city, and what I do for a job. Stuff like that can make you do a double-take on who you are and what you're doing with all your time. And why you're doing what you do. 

I just have been thinking about who I am and what my job is in this crazy world. This does encompass my current job as a teacher, but I'm thinking more about my Job with a capital J. Like what I'm supposed to be doing with all my time. Like how I'm supposed to be spending my life. The way I've lived most of my life has not been the way I live it now. I've generally lived a privileged, comfortable existence as I bee-bopped through the years making friends, playing sports, loving school, and generally focusing all of my attention on, you've guessed it, ME. I did what I wanted to do and I spent my time making myself feel happy and important. You could generally say that I zipped from the mall to starbucks and back to my heart's content. I never truly went without money and I never truly had any sort of discomfort in my path. Of course every life has struggles, but I had it good. I still have it good. But just by a different standard this time. 

Doing this Teach For America thing changes you. It's not anything valiant or wonderful that I've done that makes it this way, it's just the inevitable byproduct of living and working with my kids. It's all on them. It comes from meeting T who is 7 and babysits her 4 younger siblings alone. It's about D who wants to play in the NFL but has a heartbreaking home situation and hopefully will just make it through middle school without getting into trouble. It comes from so many other kids who have lives and dreams and experiences that I never would have known had I stayed on the path I was on before this year. You don't run into a lot of kids from East Garfield Park in Starbucks. Of course (as my last blog post and many others before that indicate) I can talk about nothingness just like any girl. I'm not above stupid banter (in fact, it's my specialty). But this whole thing does make conversations about dinner parties and side tables and yoga class a lot less interesting. The lens has changed. 

It's changed because now I've seen a tiny taste of the real deal. I can't go back to my old life just pretending that this world doesn't exist. I've seen it, I'm in it, and it's too late. I can't pretend there aren't kids on the west and south sides who have lives and joys and personalities and talents and families just like anyone else. This of course is something I will keep thinking about (and therefore probably blogging about...my apologies to you) for a long time into the future. For now, I'll try to keep thinking about my Job with a capital J (I realize that is a silly way to put it). What I'm supposed to do when the comfortable life I lead isn't a possibility for kids just a few miles down the interstate. What I'm supposed to be doing in this world where the west and south sides do, in fact, exist, right along with millions of other places on earth where injustices are done and the brokenness is winning. 

Yes. I'm not the same anymore. Good. 

Reset

Goodness.

I feel like so much has happened with teaching that I never actually give real teaching updates. Let's just say this: it's all over the place at the moment. It's funny how when big things happen all at once, you don't take the time to process them like you do the lesser things in your life. It's easy for me to write a blog post about clothes that I'd like to wear, recipes I've tried, or things I do with my friends, but not one about the single biggest thing going on in my life right now. It's almost as if, if it's so big, it's too big to unpack. It's too big to talk about. I think people do that a lot. It's easy to catch up with friends about what they ate for lunch but not about how their new move went, or how their new marriage is going, or how their job search is turning out. You leave the big stuff wrapped up and put it aside in the corner, because the process of talking it out would be just be too much. Not too hard or too good or too bad, just too much. Sometimes in my life I feel like I fall victim to this ailment, and now is one of those times. Things that I love to do, like run, pick out cool outfits, read, and blog about my life, fall to the wayside as the big stuff demands my full attention.

My birthday just happened (23 years old? Whaa?) and with that milestone also came a whole bunch of changes. This is the big stuff for me right now.

Turns out, because of another teacher leaving and others coming in for the 2nd grade level at my school, I am switching classrooms six weeks into the school year. This means a new room, a new co-teacher, a new group of 25 students. As if I wasn't NEW enough to this whole thing, right?

Needless to say, I miss my first rambunctious crazy room full of 2nd graders already. A lot. They keep sending me notes and inundated me with love and birthday cards last Friday. I want to keep my relationship up with them even as I get to know my new classroom of students. I also miss my old co-teacher, Katey, as we got along really well. But. My new co-teacher is really wonderful too. And I already am starting to learn the names in my new room. And I'm starting to roll up my sleeves and get to work on this new challenge that has fallen into my lap.

So if you have been wondering where I've been with teaching updates, wondering where I am with funny 2nd grade stories, and wondering where I am with life, this is where I've been. Trying to process the big changes that life throws at you. I think now I'll start to walk up to that big monstrosity I've put in the corner, start to peel back the paper, and unpack it little by little. Hopefully I'll get better at talking it out instead of pushing it to the side. It's time to keep working at becoming a good teacher for these new students and helping them become who they were meant to be, who they need to be. It's time to get to work and get going. Hopefully, of course, whilst wearing some cute fall teaching outfits. Hopefully :)