Discoveries Of A Reluctant Renegade

What I’m learning after my Popeye moment: “I’ve had all I can stand and I can’t stands no more!”

[mrn808]

Wonders

I’m just a public classroom teacher.

I’m not an academe, I’m not a theorist, I’m not an authority on the ins and outs of public education policy. I meet my students where they are and do what I can to inspire them, to enlighten them, to empower them to live lives of wonder. I grieve for the ones I fail (although I know I cannot meet the needs of each of them) and celebrate those who blossom during their time in my class (although I know I may have had nothing to do with that blossoming). I’m a soldier in the trenches rather than a captain or a general.

Day after day I invest myself in the students in my classes—not just in their academic success in a narrow course of study, but in their growth as members of the human race, of global and local societies, as whole and integrated persons—and I do it happily. I like my job, and I live for those moments when a student lights up with the realization that s/he can do something s/he never thought possible.

What I don’t like is the way politicians and captains of industry and just about everybody else try to reduce my job and me to a number—a grade, if you will—and presume to tell me how best to do it. I am a professional—I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in my fields, I have post-baccalaureate education in the specifics of pedagogy, I have countless hours of professional development and continuing education—yet anyone who’s ever sat in a class as a student feels competent to tell me how to do my job.

I’ve sat in a doctor’s office—does that make me competent to be a doctor? Of course not! I’ve sat in a courtroom—does that mean I’m qualified to criticize how a lawyer practices law, or dictate how an attorney must conduct a case? I don’t think so!

Like me, doctors and lawyers (and plumbers and carpenters and every other skilled professional) have invested time and energy in learning how to do what it is they do. They are experts in their field, and I lack their specialized knowledge and expertise. Likewise, they lack my specialized knowledge and expertise.

I am competent in my field—attested by certification and credentials, professional performance evaluations, and the testimony of former students over the course of some 18 years in the classroom—and I make the effort to maintain and develop my competence through continuing education and professional development, as well as professional and informal collaboration. In recent years, however, so many outside the profession have cast aspersions on the competency of teachers in general (and by extension, my own competency) based on uninformed assumptions about who and what education is for, and those aspersions have dramatically teacher efficacy, morale, and retention.

“Test scores!” goes the cry, as if test scores ever told anything beyond a student’s test-taking skill and relative affluence. “Reading” and “Math” and “Science,” oh my! College and career readiness! Never mind the effect poverty has on the developing brain, never mind the distractions of food and home insecurity, never mind the social and economic pressures that eclipse the wonders of the mind that we teachers long to share with our students. “Raise those test scores, and if you don’t, we’re going to penalize you for being a bad teacher!”

I get it. Captains of industry and career politicians know just what they want public schools to produce: compliant, competent workers and complacent, consuming citizens. But we teachers don’t work for the captains of industry or the career politicians.

We work for our students. We meet them where they are and do everything we can to kindle curiosity, to stimulate intellect, to tickle fancies, to engage students’ minds and hearts not for some pie in the sky by and by future college or career readiness, but because it is good for our students right where they are, right now (it also equips them for success in whatever future they choose).

Could we all deliver the product that so-called “education reform” asks us to deliver? Absolutely…if all our students came to us with secure lives—consistently good nutrition, proper housing, a stable home life—then we (teachers and students) could quite likely deliver the specific wonders so many seem to expect. But not all our students come to us so prepared. Many struggle with malnutrition, or inadequate housing, or a chaotic home, or all of the above. With those students, the wonders we can deliver are very different, but they are still wonders—maybe not the wonders we privileged folk hope for, but wonders nonetheless. In fact, they may be the more transformative wonders—when a disadvantaged student gets something out of school that s/he never had before, the impact is profound.

That’s why I am a public school teacher—because working wonders with disadvantaged students is every bit as rewarding and maybe even more important than those worked with privileged students. Working these wonders with all these students is so necessary and so precious and so valuable (and so hard and heartbreaking).

Will wonders never cease? Not on my watch, no.

[reluctantrenegade808]

2001 days later, all still true, although I have changed the way I refer to teaching. I love the work; the job is just a job, with bosses good, bad, and indifferent, and conditions likewise.

[reluctantrenegade808]

If you watch the Olympics with the sound and captions turned off and you avoid Twitter and other social media, you *might* avoid *most* of the sexist condescension of commentators, pundits, and fools.

[reluctantrenegade808]

I'm not "social" enough to be "in" with the extroverts—and that has nothing to do with me.

[reluctantrenegade808]

Breathe in patience, Breathe out hurry, Nothing ever hastened due to hapless worry.

[reluctantrenegade808]

Let Her Be Seasoned By Singleness

Over the course of my adult life, I’ve at different times looked for different qualities in a potential lover. For most of it, the only significant expectation was that she want me—my self-loathing made me believe that that was the best that I could hope for—but because I didn’t see myself as worthy or desirable, I couldn’t see it (or believe it) when a woman did want me. Thus I was lonely and desperate.

Of late I’ve changed—cast off self-loathing, come to love myself passionately, begun to really believe that I am both worthy and desirable—and as I have, I've also raised the bar considerably. Most recently, I've come to want a woman who is comfortable and adept at living single. I've gone from having being single to loving it and it's made me a better match, and I want the same in a prospective lover—someone who (like me) wants to be in a (great!) relationship, but who (like me) is whole in herself and knows it because (like me) she's lived it and found joy in it.

Because I deserve a lover who doesn't need me but wants me, and my lover deserves the same.

[mrn808]

Wonders

I’m just a public classroom teacher.

I’m not an academe, I’m not a theorist, I’m not an authority on the ins and outs of public education policy. I meet my students where they are and do what I can to inspire them, to enlighten them, to empower them to live lives of wonder. I grieve for the ones I fail (although I know I cannot meet the needs of each of them) and celebrate those who blossom during their time in my class (although I know I may have had nothing to do with that blossoming). I’m a soldier in the trenches rather than a captain or a general.

Day after day I invest myself in the students in my classes—not just in their academic success in a narrow course of study, but in their growth as members of the human race, of global and local societies, as whole and integrated persons—and I do it happily. I like my job, and I live for those moments when a student lights up with the realization that s/he can do something s/he never thought possible.

What I don’t like is the way politicians and captains of industry and just about everybody else try to reduce my job and me to a number—a grade, if you will—and presume to tell me how best to do it. I am a professional—I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in my fields, I have post-baccalaureate education in the specifics of pedagogy, I have countless hours of professional development and continuing education—yet anyone who’s ever sat in a class as a student feels competent to tell me how to do my job.

I’ve sat in a doctor’s office—does that make me competent to be a doctor? Of course not! I’ve sat in a courtroom—does that mean I’m qualified to criticize how a lawyer practices law, or dictate how an attorney must conduct a case? I don’t think so!

Like me, doctors and lawyers (and plumbers and carpenters and every other skilled professional) have invested time and energy in learning how to do what it is they do. They are experts in their field, and I lack their specialized knowledge and expertise. Likewise, they lack my specialized knowledge and expertise.

I am competent in my field—attested by certification and credentials, professional performance evaluations, and the testimony of former students over the course of some 18 years in the classroom—and I make the effort to maintain and develop my competence through continuing education and professional development, as well as professional and informal collaboration. In recent years, however, so many outside the profession have cast aspersions on the competency of teachers in general (and by extension, my own competency) based on uninformed assumptions about who and what education is for, and those aspersions have dramatically teacher efficacy, morale, and retention.

“Test scores!” goes the cry, as if test scores ever told anything beyond a student’s test-taking skill and relative affluence. “Reading” and “Math” and “Science,” oh my! College and career readiness! Never mind the effect poverty has on the developing brain, never mind the distractions of food and home insecurity, never mind the social and economic pressures that eclipse the wonders of the mind that we teachers long to share with our students. “Raise those test scores, and if you don’t, we’re going to penalize you for being a bad teacher!”

I get it. Captains of industry and career politicians know just what they want public schools to produce: compliant, competent workers and complacent, consuming citizens. But we teachers don’t work for the captains of industry or the career politicians.

We work for our students. We meet them where they are and do everything we can to kindle curiosity, to stimulate intellect, to tickle fancies, to engage students’ minds and hearts not for some pie in the sky by and by future college or career readiness, but because it is good for our students right where they are, right now (it also equips them for success in whatever future they choose).

Could we all deliver the product that so-called “education reform” asks us to deliver? Absolutely…if all our students came to us with secure lives—consistently good nutrition, proper housing, a stable home life—then we (teachers and students) could quite likely deliver the specific wonders so many seem to expect. But not all our students come to us so prepared. Many struggle with malnutrition, or inadequate housing, or a chaotic home, or all of the above. With those students, the wonders we can deliver are very different, but they are still wonders—maybe not the wonders we privileged folk hope for, but wonders nonetheless. In fact, they may be the more transformative wonders—when a disadvantaged student gets something out of school that s/he never had before, the impact is profound.

That’s why I am a public school teacher—because working wonders with disadvantaged students is every bit as rewarding and maybe even more important than those worked with privileged students. Working these wonders with all these students is so necessary and so precious and so valuable (and so hard and heartbreaking).

Will wonders never cease? Not on my watch, no.

[reluctantrenegade808]

Make yourself at home

The door is open, the lights are lit, the music is playing, be welcome and sit. Enter my heart and be home.

[mcdyke-deactivated20171112]

being a female means needing to see 10 different doctors to get a proper diagnosis because they always think you’re exaggerating and/or lying

[leftiesneedrights]

define proper diagnosis. I mean, does that just mean the diagnosis you want?

[mcdyke-deactivated20171112]

no :) it means going to 10 different doctors who disbelieved your symptoms until the 11th found cysts on your ovaries :) which may mean infertility :) sit on a cactus :)

[cobra-23-deactivated20151224]

I call bullshit

[40yodater]

Of course you do. Like the first 10 doctors. 😒

[cobra-23-deactivated20151224]

I call bullshit on the story. If you think you have an issue you should see a specialist not just your PCP.

[40yodater]

Like the 4 “specialists” I saw for the crippling numbness in my face and legs I had for over a year while they told me it was “stress”? When it was finally found that I had scars on my brain and spine? Those “specialists” we’re male neurologist who wouldn’t give me an MRI because “women stress too much”. Go fuck yourself.

[beesplosion]

MY SPINE WAS BROKEN FOR 2 YEARS BECAUSE MY DOCTORS TOLD ME I JUST HAD BAD CRAMPS AND REFUSED TO TAKE XRAYS. FUCK YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. WHEN WILL BOYS REALIZE THEIR EXPERIENCES ARENT STANDARD???? I ALSO LOVE THIS IDEA THAT YOU CAN JUST GO TO A SPECIALIST WHENEVER YOU WANT LOL IF OUR PCP DOESNT BELIEVE US WHEN WE TELL THEM OUR SYMPTOMS THEY ARENT GONNA REFER US TO A SPECIALIST YOU FUCKING MOLDY WALNUT

[proudly-pro-choice]

My parents began noticing something large in my throat, saw a specialist….Guess what? Told me to lose some weight..even though I wasn’t overweight. I would have my period for weeks at a time. Was told that it was teenage hormones and stress.

Two fucking years later I attempted suicide they ran a battery of tests as required and bam! They find out that I have untreated Hashimoto’s. The “thing” was a goiter. Possible symptoms of an untreated thyroid disease is the goiter, unexplained weight gain, and depression. All they had to do was test my blood, but they said young people don’t have thyroid problems. 😒

-Allie

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Ten years ago, my mother—who is a pretty tough cookie—started feeling both ridiculously wired, anxious, and incredibly emotional. Every doctor she saw told her she was going through early menopause, even though she was still menstruating. Her health declined to point where she was barely sleeping, losing weight, and crying constantly, which was a huge red flag because my mother never cries. Finally, she went to see another doctor 2.5 hours away who referred her to an endocrinologist. And what did the endocrinologist say? He diagnosed her with one of the most advanced cases of Grave’s Disease he had even seen, and said if she had gone just a few more months without being treated, she could have FUCKING DIED. 

Also, it turned out that her thyroid levels had been moving out of the normal range in a progressive pattern for years, but nobody bothered to look at her past test results until after the diagnosis. They would just do a test, see that it was “in the normal range” and leave it at that. She could have caught it before she even had symptoms, instead of basically being accused of having hysteria. 

[celestial-cat-prince-deactivate]

i had a brain aneurysm/hemorrhage ten years ago, doctors still tell me im faking my disability BECAUSE YOU CAN TOTALLY FAKE LIMITED MOVEMENT OF THE LEFT SIDE

[symphonicsadness]

My sister had intercranial hypertension which was causing headaches, dizzy spells and loss of vision, and you know what the hospital told her? She was being a hysterical girl and making it up. A few weeks later she spent roughly a month in hospital and had several lumbar punctures to relieve her RECORD HIGH spinal pressure that was causing so much strain on her brain and optic nerves she was being sent blind.

[fail-sage]

Everytime I see this post (and it’s been a good 5/6 times), it has different stories and experiences of women who have been horribly mistreated by doctors and it just blows my mind that this is so big. It’s absolutely disgusting how terribly women are treated in the medical world and something needs to be done about that.

[kirawords]

my friend lea had back pain, then pain in her legs and feet, and then numbness. despite seeing 7 different doctors over 2 years, by the time they found the cancer it was inoperable. chemo and radiation didn’t work. the cancer spread. she died and left behind a 5 year old daughter.

[kaijuno]

A few years ago I would go through spells where I literally could not stand on my own and I couldn’t get out of bed. I would be freezing and too weak to eat. I would keep having heart palpitations as well. I got up the money to go to a clinic and they told me it was just stress and to basically just work on chilling out. I saved up money for a few weeks to do this and I pretty much get a “chill out” from them. As time went on it got worse, most noticeably the heart palpitations were happening almost constantly. I went again to a different clinic and was told it was normal and that it was probably stress. They did no tests, and they told me it would “just go away”. Two weeks later I ended up collapsing going down some stairs, and at the hospital it was discovered that I had such severe anemia that my heart could barely keep up with trying to get enough oxygen to my body. I had developed left ventricular hypertrophy (my heart muscle is too big) and because of them ignoring me and dismissing me I’m at a much higher risk of heart attacks and stroke now.

[spacebabenumber-25]

I went to the doctor with severe intermittent pain in my upper right stomach area that was so bad I had to miss school. Despite the fact that my period has been on a regular 3 month cycle for years, and I still had two months left until my period, my doctor told me it was period related cramps and or indigestion. 2 months later I’m in the hospital getting my gallbladder removed. It was so obstructed that there was gangrene developing my my system.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

So…everyone who’s given me shit for that one post (about medicine and equal treatment and shit) can just read this because I’m sick of defending my case.

[dynastylnoire]

Relevant

[reluctantrenegade808]

It's these stories and all the ones that never get told that make pieces like the brilliant theatre piece The Waiting Room so powerful to me. Art can help amplify these voices.

[theseeds4life-deactivated202302]

[sugarissweetlove-deactivated201]

<3

[reluctantrenegade808]

All of this! And when you *split* your attention—say, by checking your phone when you are in the presence of an actual person—well, that certainly seems to say *something*.

[reluctantrenegade808]

I have not been part of a romantic relationship during the holidays for...well, for decades, and for many reasons (that those who are single for the holidays will understand intuitively), I was miserable. I saw myself as alone (never mind my wonderful family), and I felt lonely.

This year is no different than the others in terms of "relationship status," but I'm experiencing it on different terms this year, despite being held an ocean apart from most of my family on top of everything else, and I hope that sharing how it's different can be of use to others who, like me, are single during the holidays even though they'd rather not be.

This year, I don't think I'd myself as alone for the holidays. I will certainly experience solitude (though I don't much like a much as I'm getting), and I certainly don't have a significant other with whom to make romantic memories (though I've never stopped wanting that relationship in my life), but I don't label it as "alone" or "lonely." I'm single, but that label feels different. When I call myself "alone" or "lonely," I feel incomplete, but when I call myself "single," I can see myself as whole.

It's the culmination of a lot of work—I'm not saying it's easy or that there's some magic self-help formula that will yield "results in 30 days or your money back"—but I want you to know that there is a way to find contentment rather than resentment as a single during the holidays, despite our culture's subtext that the holidays are for family or romance exclusively.

It isn't that I don't feel my loneliness highlighted by society's images and expectations—I do—it's simply that I decide the narrative I will tell, and that narrative is independent of relationship status, family circumstances, whatever.

Happy Holidays, whatever that may mean to you, and I wish you strength and peace.

[elephantjournal]

I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.

John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (via elephantjournal)

[reluctantrenegade808]

When someone suggests you should just do what they do (and it's something completely true to their nature and utterly foreign to yours), it's hard not to hear that there's something wrong with being how you are.

[reluctantrenegade808]

When you want reciprocity, but you don't want your friends to feel obligated to reciprocate; you just want them to want to.

[elephantjournal]

We can love, and love, and love, and there might be no end to our caring. Let’s be kind. Let’s care for others.

[reluctantrenegade808]

No conditions, no expectations.

[reluctantrenegade808]

Spoiler Alert: I don't resolve this issue in this post.

To love oneself—all of oneself, including the bits that maybe get in the way, sometimes, of heart's desires—is vital. What it isn't is easy.

My greatest stumbling block in this is my sometimes-debilitating shyness. I am many wonderful things—kind, sweet, generous, caring, compassionate, intelligent, thoughtful, talented, even handsome—but somehow being shy trumps all of those whenever (often!) it interferes with the social experiences and relationships I devoutly desire. It feels like a flaw, a fatal flaw, and yet in many years of trying, I've never managed to "correct" it.

Lately, I've been trying to love it as an integral part of who and how I am. I've been trying and mostly failing; every time I'm in a situation where my shyness creates a barrier when I yearned for a connection, I feel like a failure and I blame my shyness for it.

It doesn't help that we live in a world that preferences boldness and deprecates shyness. Our culture doesn't seem to appreciate introverts the way it does extroverts. Bombarded with subtle and overt messages that exalt what I am not and mock what I am not, it is no wonder that changing the way I perceive make is difficult—like everyone, I am a product of my environment, though as a human being, I can transcend my conditioning.

Just... It's not easy, and I'm not there yet.

[steampunktendencies]

Steampunk Nixie Clocks by Bad Dog Design

“All made from original antique cases, be it wood / brass or a combination of the two”

[reluctantrenegade808]

Wow! Where'd you find that many nixie tubes?

[reluctantrenegade808]

elephant journal published my essay on dating…