I am from…. July 29, 2011

So in one of our many Diversity Sessions at Institute we read a poem called “I am from”  and then we were asked to write and share ours.  So here it is.

 

I Am From backyard swimming and shuckin’ corn

Get back from wherever you are by the time the street lights are on

From family full and abundant with some whoops and additions always being brought in

From a community of all the same colored skin

I Am From struggling to keep up, to teaching my sister to read

from negative image to being me, truthfully and honestly, all the time, REAL

I Am From escaping the small town glory to the mid-rise midwest even with negative dollars to my name

From being far enough away to forget some of the pain brought on by a man w/o a name anymore except “Jerkface”

I Am From figuring out that the blacks and whites of this word don’t even begin to amount to all the gray inbetween especially when dealing with love

I am from leaving everything behind, everything that I know, over and over again in hopes that my presence and actions will be enough to change

This world.

 

-MCML

The top five things I’ve learned or relearned from institute so far. July 17, 2011

The top five things I’ve learned or relearned from institute so far.

 1.       Students don’t care who you are, what you look like or what your weird quirks are; they just want someone to teach them, provide structure and care about them.

This has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn throughout all of my training as an educator.  Before the first day of school I start worrying about what my students will be like and what they will think of me.  My trans identity definitely plays into this a lot.  I think that what I most fear is that my students will not be able to learn from me because they will be to bias or to distracted.  This past few weeks has shown me otherwise.  All six of my students are doing just fine.  In fact one of my students on a classroom culture survey put my name at the top as Mr. Miller and then said “she” for all the responses about me.  This past Friday on their exit slip (end of the day quiz type thing) she got 100%.  Clearly she is confused by my gender but it is not impeding her growth as a student.

2.       Structure is the key in all classrooms big or small.

The second day of class after finding out that I only had a few students I decided to sit in a circle with my students to teach them.  The problem was that since this was not the structure they are used to and since I did not present them with the structure of the day there was a lot of confusion and inevitably they did not get that much out of that day.  Now that we have a structure in place where my students come in start a “Do Now”, we have a lesson, work in groups/partners and then do independent practice they are doing so much better!

3.       It is better to get sleep than write the perfect lesson plan.

I have been going to sleep between 1 and 2am every night during the week.  This makes me extremely tired however there are other folks that are not going to be until 3-4am when we have to get up at 5-6am.  Inevitably, these folks are super tired and low energy in the classroom.  If you ask what they were doing the night before they will tell you that they were lesson planning.  This is ridiculous.  Lesson planning and practicing should not take that long.  Perfection is not going to happen.  When your perfect lesson plan goes awry you need to be on your toes and awake to manage it.  That is why sleep is more important that “the perfect lesson plan.”

4.       Be careful what you say, it will come back to bite you in the ass or come back to shower you with love.  Your words determine which it is.

If you are tying to give an example of something around your peers make sure to clarify to a T because if you are misunderstood you will end up with a confrontation on your hands.  This applies to both students and colleagues.  If you clarify everything and be pleasant and loving your words will make their way back around to you in the form of praise or adoration.

5.       Good teaching is good stealing with modification.

This is probably the most important lesson that I have learned.  Stealing a lesson plan without making it your own is a disaster.  However, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  If I can find a lesson plan that teaches what I want to teach why not use the problem set or examples as mine.  I’ll modify the ideas to meet my needs as a teacher and spend half the time I would trying to formulate my own original idea.

Advocacy for Education July 2, 2011

Since I am blogging about the variety of experiences that happen while I embark on this journey in Baltimore, I have a few people that ask more specific questions about the stuff I write.  So today I’m going to address a few questions that I was asked about my last blog and also relate my answers to what has been going on the past few days.

 

How will you advocate for your profession?

I think that I will do this in several ways.  First, as I am teaching I will be the best teacher possible so that my students grow and achieve beyond what people think is attainable.  I will work with parents and community members to build relationships. It may only take one teacher who reaches out to change the value that people place on education it may take fifteen teachers.  No matter what it takes I will work to at least be one teacher that makes a difference in the mindset of the parents and community that I live/work in.  It was discussed today that students are a product of our expectations and I think that teachers are often the product of the expectations that the community.  Additionally parents are often the product of the expectation of teachers.  If we don’t create a system where high expectations are the norm then there will never be respect for the profession of teaching.

Will you ever feel convicted to interrupt/interject into a conversation like on the train?

I have often spoken up against people who have made comments similar to the ones I heard on the train that day.  On this particular day it was early and I was not in the mood to get into the conversation with complete strangers.  When I have spoken up it usually does not come out with a positive ending.  Typically I end up more frustrated and the people don’t have any gained respect for the teaching profession.  Society has its mind made up and it doesn’t want to change anytime soon.  It is going to take holistic efforts both in the classroom and out by teachers, parents, students and other community members to change the perspective about the teaching profession.

Do you have aspirations to change people’s views, or do you believe that not to be appropriate?

I believe that it is very appropriate to want to change people’s views especially when it comes to something you are passionate about.  The important part is how you go about trying to change their views.  I could argue about education to people until I am blue in the face but it won’t change their mind.  I have to align my values with my profession and encourage my colleagues to do the same so that one day their minds will be changed.

And so it begins…. June 21, 2011

I am currently sitting in Barnes and Noble – John Hopkins/ Starbucks Cafe waiting several hours before we can check into our week long housing.  This morning was interesting already though.  I almost missed my flight but made it at the last moment so it was so fine.  The lady sitting next to me seemed annoyed at the beginning of the flight but then seemed to chill out as the flight went on.  Perhaps she was just cranky and tired at first, after all it was 6am.

On the train ride into Baltimore from the airport I overheard a very interesting conversation that I thought was rather ironic considering the circumstances.  These two people probably in their mid to late 20′s were discussing how nice it must be for teachers to get the summer off and how sure they work with bratty kids but the summer break would be worth it not to mention they ONLY work 8am-4pm, that MUST be nice.  Clearly these folks have never spent a day in a classroom as an adult, so it goes.  According to these geniuses  I’m about to embark on one of the easiest career choices possible… here’s to that!

-MOACML

Letter to the Anti-”It Get’s Better” Folks January 6, 2011

To all of the people who are anti-“It gets better”,

At the beginning of the “It gets better” campaign there was much excitement and hope for the future of LGBTQ youth.  The original point of the campaign was to show youth who were struggling and maybe contemplating suicide that their life would indeed get better.  It was to show that in this moment right now, maybe they are hurting, but it does not always have to be like that.  Part of the “getting better” comes from their own choice of being who they really are in whatever way that is possible.  Some of the “gets better” comes from the negative people in these youths lives either coming around or not being part of the picture.  There is not just one part of getting better!  Videos have come from all types of people from all different walks of life.  Older teens sending their shout outs to the younger, celebrities, a miscellaneous hodgepodge of adults and even college groups all posted videos.

So as I began to take pride in what our movement is accomplishing, I suddenly was smacked in the face with an anti-“It gets better” rhetoric.  A group of people were against all of this hope, survival and progress.  I would expect that such rhetoric would come from more privileged communities, such as the ones that are consistently not allowing LGBTQ folk to have our freedom.  Instead it came from within the community itself.  This group noted all of the bad things that are still out there. They threw out the problems of privilege still running in the midst of the campaign. They took away some of the hope that a person may have gotten from the campaign. Instead of pulling up their big kid britches and addressing the problem by making their own video to encourage the youngsters like themselves to survive, they are complaining and tearing down the project ; the same project that may be keeping one more LGB TQ youth alive! I know that I personally participated in an “It gets better” video and encourage LGBTQ folks of all types to do the same. I want to see my people represented in the videos just as much as the next person, so I did something about it.

It’s depressing that even with one small crumb of progress the community that I call my own shouts it down for all of the problems that still exist.  Some people have decided that their life is miserable and will always be miserable and nothing will change that.  Additionally, do not try to tell them that their life gets better because the truth is, it won’t get better for them, they have self determined that they will now and forever be miserable.  Of course as the old saying goes misery loves company. I refuse to be that company, so you can keep your anti-hope, anti-life, and anti-progress faction and I will take the small movements, every last morsel of progress, every last bit.

MOACML

Fear for Once September 2, 2010

I am a non-binary gendered person who is clearly and visibly queer to a lot of the population, aside from those who see what they want to see and ignore the true facts.  The people who don’t place me in a binary box by their own decisions inevitably do one of three things.

1. State “FAMILY!!!!” and become giddy

2. Stop and stare and then make a comment to their buddy trying to figure out “what I am”

3. Look decide that I’m a foul creature that either has a mental illness or that needs to be “saved by the grace of God”

The third group is the one I am going to focus on today.  This group is the one that breeds hatred. Out of this group of people come the people that have so much insecurity and are so scared of difference that they do crazy irrational things.  People that kidnap their “friend” and take her to the woods to beat her up because she is a lesbian, people that beat others up as they come out of a known lesbian bar because of orientation, people who post flyers all around a neighborhood stating that we should still be labeled with a mental disorder, that the government shouldn’t protect us from hate crimes, that align gays with molesters, that state that they are “put(ting) stuff together” to show us that we won’t be tolerated. All of these things have happened in my region recently.

I’m scared, terrified actually. I’ve had friends randomly beaten up before for being gay. I’ve had people make ignorant remarks to me. But when a group that you associate with closely gets called out in a flyer that has been placed around the region by Neo-Nazis (true story – the National Alliance – at least the flyer directed people to their information) it becomes more real than ever before. .

Sure I’m not going to let them scare me into hermiting in my house. I’m going to go out and be proud of who I am as I always do.  However it does make me more aware of my surroundings and a bit more careful. I also try to remind myself everyday that this is backlash pure and simple.  As Queer folk are given the equality we deserve those that hate us become more nervous and scared.  As we progress forward we have to remember there will be a few steps back.  These actions of hate and harm are those backward steps. So lets keep pushing forward leaving the idiots in the dust.  Send your love my and every other queer’s direction together we can be free to be who we are.

Solidarity,

MCML

An Old Poem Brought to Memory August 25, 2010

I wrote this about four months ago and realized tonight the amount of difference in my life in just those four months. Its been about a year and a half now since the person this poem is written about and I parted ways which is about the same amount of time we were together.  This poem acts as a closer for me and I think it is appropriate to post it completing that chapter as I move on and have a date this coming weekend, the first that I’ve had since.

Lie in the Rain –

We sat there in silence after you spat out

I love you

I didn’t assure you the same for two days

And I did so braving the ice and snow

Almost sliding off the road to be frozen

Before I could be frozen in fear of replying

And now we again sit in silence

Peering into a space that used to be

What we called love

And the weight in the air settles on my heart

And makes me what to lie in the rain

And wash the heaviness on my soul away

Like the last bit of snow before spring

The commitment I made now sending agonizing chills through my body

As the freezing of those words happens

Never again to be thawed

To be used as fuel for a fire of passion and dependence

And as the quiet continues my mind returns back

To that first night of uncertainty

And I question if I had assured you sooner

If perhaps we wouldn’t be here now

Sitting in the rising ash of the smoldering wreckage

Of the last eighteen months

And I realize that its only half my blame

For my nagging, over protectiveness,

And fear of losing what we had together

And as for the latter, well you can’t blame me now

But in this moment what aches the most

Is that two people can’t be together

Because of a difference

That doesn’t make a difference to me

And so as this silence draws to a close

I’ll utter one last farewell assurance

Then I’ll go and lay in the rain

And wash the heaviness on my soul away

Like the last bit of snow before spring

MCML

Old Cat Tranny August 9, 2010

I had a conversation with a friend a while back that instead of growing old and being an “old cat lady” that a gender neutral term needed to be inserted and so came the not so politically correct use of “tranny” but hey I’m describing myself so there. I was talking with a different friend this evening about being alone and hating it. I was  then instructed to write a poem. Here is the results:

Old Cat Tranny

Home from the bustle of work

Sits the keys down with the hope

That for one night more

There be will to cope

One day at a time

Was said when young

Between then and now

Forty years strung

Not one day passes

Without a thought

Of the years flying by

And love that was sought

Death not being

The biggest fear

But dying with no one

but a cat near.

Remembering the Simple Things July 10, 2010

Sometimes in life we get caught up in all the crap in life that we have to do, places we have to be and things that should have been done yesterday.  It is very difficult to remember the simple things and appreciate them in all of the hub-bub.  Often times it takes a tragic event to remind us and only a few moments go by before we are back into our lives forgetting.

I am fortunate enough to work with a group of children who appreciate  the simple things every day and this serves as a reminder to me to stop and appreciate them as well.  The children  that I work with have multiple disabilities many of whom are autistic.  A few days ago I and a child that I work with at the day camp were on a bus going to a field trip.  The windows were down and the wind was whipping through the bus.  I have never seen this child as happy as she was that day.  Her smile was gigantic and she was giggling.  I asked her what she was so happy about and she signed back “wind”.  Wind….that was all.  Talk about the simple things.

She reminded me that day that something as simple as wind blowing on you should be appreciated.  It has been several days and I haven’t forgotten yet, but how long will it be before I slip back into the day to day not remembering the lesson that she taught. I can hope that it lasts a life time but is that realistic? I suppose only time with tell and for now I will stop and appreciate the wind.

MCML

To the Beautiful Trans-feminine Person on the Metro… July 9, 2010

Today while on the Metro bus as I was sitting with the camper I work with at the day camp I looked in front of me and saw someone who had very masculine features but that was dressed in a frilly black skirt.  Upon closer inspection…aka this person moving closer to me due to a crowed bus I clearly saw an Adam’s apple and a five a clock shadow that was trying to be covered with make-up, additionally this person was wearing a stuffed bra, they were wearing earrings and  they had shaved legs and arms. And while they are clearly read as a male person in feminine attire frequently (as stated by two other persons that I work with) I had admiration for them being on a particularly crowded city bus, being themselves, and not freaking out about it. This person and my eyes met for a short period of time and there was a whole conversation made just by our eyes and head nods. My interpretation is something like this: (the bold is the other person)

Hello

Hello,I know that you and I are similar

I know that you are my family

This means that we are not alone in this crazy world

I know and I feel better just knowing that

I wish you the best, but as to not draw attention I’m going to look away

(as I was getting off the bus) Good day and Best wishes

Same to you

It does make me feel better knowing that I am not alone and that my own kind recognizes me for who I am even when others around me don’t. Furthermore I want to again express my utmost respect for this person being their beautiful self even when a lot of people would not want to be in that situation. I hope we meet again.

MCML