Mandescending and Mindfulness

You've heard the term "mansplaining," and I really like it. Whoever coined it was pretty smart. The definition is basically a man explaining to a woman something that the woman is either more knowledgeable about because it's her lived reality as a female, or something she has trained to do and knows how to do already.

For instance, my daughter The Fair was filming an event the other night with high-end equipment she is well trained to use, and some dude tried to tell her how to set up the tripod. Really?

I'm going to add a new term of my own: mandescending. This is where a man is condescending to a woman and dismisses her out of hand, even though her concerns are serious, maybe either health- or job-related.

Yesterday my school district had a professional development workshop, and part of it was yet another session on how to use the baffling new web site for which the district spent tons of money to purchase a full package. The web site does a gazillion tasks but is about as user-friendly as a potted cactus. Every time we get a demonstration, the same guy comes. He's yet another of those paid consultants who spent a few years in the classroom, couldn't wait to get out, and saw this web site as a ticket.

Honestly, I'll be the first to admit that if I had trained as a teacher I would have been looking to move into corporate somehow after five to ten years. The teaching profession is poorly-paid, overly scrutinized, underappreciated by the public, and physically and emotionally exhausting.

Part of what makes it exhausting is trying to learn the web site du jour.

To return to my narrative, I was attempting to keep up with the blistering pace of this man's presentation, and as usual I fell a step or two behind. When I asked why my page didn't look like his, he came to my station, flicked a few buttons, and said, "There you are." And sniffed with derision.

I went to the vending machine and bought a Snickers bar. First one I've eaten in two years.

The joy of the Snickers soon abated, but my fury has not.

This country treats its elders with condescension. Or mandescension, you decide.

In the summer of 1979, I was working in the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of the Johns Hopkins University. I had a job with a special archive of psychiatric documents that belonged to a prominent Hopkins physician named Adolf Meyer. In order to prepare a documentary list of the voluminous records this man kept (which included extensive correspondence with Freud, Jung, and other psychiatric luminaries), the university purchased a word processor. It was the first one any of us had seen.

A technician wheeled the word processor into our office space and showed the lead archivist how to use it. But then an interesting phenomenon occurred.

One by one, the oldest professors in the Hopkins community dropped by to see the word processor. These were men (of course, it was 1979) who had probably written multiple scholarly tomes, using Royal typewriters or even legal pads. They wanted to see the machine in action. And so did I.

A few years later, I found myself working for a publishing house, preparing copy for encyclopedias. The work was done with pencil and electric typewriters. Then the company bought two word processors, but no one was particularly interested in using them. Having had a little bit of exposure to one, I gladly accepted a spot at the word processor. I got a raise.

I know I should have kept up with computing. I know I should be more capable when it comes to new web sites. Perhaps it shouldn't count that I was the most proficient with technology when certain workshop presenters were probably learning to use the potty.

I know my mental capacity isn't what it once was. I don't even write for this site like I used to. But to be dismissed with such thinly-veiled disdain was a nasty jolt. I'm old. I'm obsolete. I'm female. Thanks for reminding me.

But wait, there's more.

After being humiliated in the web site training, I had to go back into a general faculty meeting for both of the Vo-Tech campuses. When both campuses get together, it's a lot of teachers. A good two hundred plus, I should think. We fill an auditorium.

The rest of the long day was spent in mindfulness training. We had to ground, center, follow our breath, feel our feet on the floor (mine were cold), yada yada yada. Be in the moment, and if your thoughts drift, pull back to breath.

First of all, when I do this practice, it is tied to my religion, which I firmly separate from my work responsibilities. So I deliberately let my thoughts go as haywire as they wanted to. Here's the short list:

1. Wow, that guy is such an asshole! Karma's gonna come for him when he's 60, for sure. I'd like to be there when he gets confused over the communication system between himself and teachers on Mars. He won't have tenure. Maybe he'll get fired! Maybe a woman supervisor will tell him, "You're all washed up. Hit the road!"

2. I wonder where that mindfulness facilitator got her dress. Is that drip-dye, tie-dye or some other process? I like the way it drapes too.

3. Damn, I wonder what's going on with this student teacher I got assigned all of a sudden! Did she flake out on her previous assignment? What's up with that? Why did I even agree to do it?

4. Getting old sucks. I'm so tired all the time. I'm sick of people. I don't want to go out for lunch. I don't want to go to the gym anymore. My body is so weary, and my feet are cold. Why don't they turn on some heat in here? Dammit, I thought about putting foot warmers in my shoes, and I didn't do it! Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

5. I wonder if I should pull back the ivy in the back yard just a foot or two. But grass doesn't grow well, and Mr. J never mows the lawn. Isn't the ivy better? But pulling the ivy would be good exercise. Yeah, but you know how annoying it is working with that English ivy. Yeah, maybe I'll just leave it. But if I had a nice straight line down the back, I could put up a stone border, like a rock wall ... what, am I supposed to be feeling my back against the chair? Fuck that. Fuck this whole thing.

6. I think I'll stop by Woodstock on the way home and see how they're doing. It's sort of on the way. Let's see, if I take Haterfield-Berlin Road to White Horse Road, and then ... that leads right to Springdale. Easy! Because it's such a long slog up Route 73. Oh! Why does everyone have their hand up in the air? Did I miss something? Who cares?

7. I can't believe I'm hungry after wolfing down that Snickers.

8. Donald Trump is an asshole. All powerful men are assholes. Geez, even Bernie Sanders couldn't run a tight ship. But this country will never elect a woman. Women won't vote for a woman. I wonder why that is? But I know it's true.

9. Camping or a hotel? I'm too old for camping! I'm not sleeping in a tent on the ground. But the hotel is so expensive. I could use that money to improve the front porch, so I don't have to look at the disgraceful, hideous house across the street ... Is it time to go yet? FUCK! Another two hours? I can't even. Like, camping isn't as bad as all that. You wake up in the cool morning air ... snap, I would have to buy so much equipment. But then I would have all the equipment, and I could use it again! Yeah, use it again to go camping. I'm done with camping! I spent my whole teenage decade in a tent! You know what else I'm done with? Mindfulness! Just another trendy stupid thing our school district is flirting with. You'd think they would train us on what to do when angry parents start shouting in our faces.

10. Whoa, look at the shop teachers! They are giggling like kids. Welding and mindfulness: perfect together.


If you've gotten this far, I know you get the drift.

Readers, my stats tell me that I have had over a million page views here at "The Gods Are Bored." I think a significant number of those are spammers of the pornographic variety. Still, someone has been reading my drivel. If that is you, do you want me to bake you a pie?

Crossing the Delaware

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" I'm Anne Johnson, and this is my safe space. Come on in. Weep with me, or have a cup of tea. Extra credit if you admire the upholstery on my settee.

My three readers know that I grew up in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, out where you can throw a stone right across Maryland and into West Virginia. I spent a lot of time along the Potomac, and what a beautiful river it is. At this very moment it is much cleaner than it was when I was a kid, and much wildlife has returned to its shores.

Rivers are funny things. They can sometimes be forded on foot (I'm thinking of the upper Potomac) and yet they so often serve as boundaries. They separate states and nations. In our culture, they also separate mindsets.

In September I went home to Appalachia and took a long walk along the Potomac. I was on the Maryland side, which is a national park. But I couldn't help looking across to West Virginia, literally a stone's throw. I could see little vacation cottages and even hear snippets of conversation over the still water. I thought, for the 10,000th time, how wonderful it would be to retire to West Virginia and buy a little cottage along the Potomac.

Then I got in my car, and I was almost forced off the road, quite intentionally, by a monster truck carrying two males and flapping a Confederate flag. They flipped me the bird as they roared around me at a no-passing part of the road. My sin? Pretty sure it was the New Jersey tags on my car.

Look at this pretty stretch of river! It's not the Potomac. It's the Delaware. This is the Delaware Water Gap, and I beheld it for the first time last weekend. Yes, I live 100 miles from the Delaware Water Gap and have never been there. Boy, have I seen the error of my ways!

The Delaware River separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. I've traversed it hundreds of times, riding the train between my home and Philadelphia. Never gave it a second thought, really.

It deserves a second thought.

Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I am intensely glad to live on the eastern bank of the Delaware River.

Gone, with the swoosh of a rebel flag from an over-sized pickup truck, is any last vestige of nostalgia I might have had for the homeland I have cherished all these years. Gone, with this presidential election, is any expectation that I could live among the generations of mountain people who have succeeded my grandparents and parents. I'm not painting with a broad brush in any glib way. This is painful to me. How can you do anything but mourn when a state that was created because of its anti-slavery population turns blood-red?

Well, one way is to embrace a whole new river. Like George Washington, I have crossed the Delaware triumphantly, and it turns out to be a swell waterway.

More about water in future posts. There will be future posts. Lots of them. Written and published on the eastern bank of the wet and wonderful Delaware River.

I Used Black Magic To Teach a Kid To Read

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" This may be the first and last time I ever talk about black magic, so do a bookmark or whatever. I never intend to do black magic, but occasionally it happens by chance ... and in this case it had the desired effect.

Now, all you school teachers, read up on this post. You may want to use this spell too.

Earlier this week I went to a school meeting about a thing called data driven assessment. This is basically where you use standardized test scores to plan your lessons and to see which kids are learning, and what they're learning. All of this based on little bubbles they fill in using Number Two pencils. After they take the standardized tests, the school sends them to this geeky company (name withheld), where they're inputted and then you can zap into them 100 different ways. The school meeting was basically intended to show us teachers some of those 100 ways to read the data produced by our students.

Now, I would have thought this all to be so much flatulence into the wind. Except, lo and behold, I discovered one student who completely and totally learned to read in one year, with my instruction and black magic!

For the sake of giving him the same kind of due respect our modern educators seem to want for kids, I will call the student 07890.

07890 was one of those students who, if he was interested in the work at hand, would apply himself and do a good job. He caused no trouble, was polite, on time, and usually on task.

On the first of four standardized reading tests I had to give last year, 07890 scored a 1 out of 13. There's no such thing as "hopeless loser" in data-driven instruction. The data company labeled 07890 "partially proficient."

The school year progressed, and 07890 revealed himself to be a rather indifferent student who was satisfied with C-plus grades. One day I said to him, "I've noticed that if we're reading or writing about a topic that interests you, you really get into it."

07890 replied, "Yes, I can't always motivate myself to work on things that don't interest me."

I promised I would try to find books and topics that would interest 07890.

On our second standardized test of the year, 07890 improved slightly. This time he got 3 out of 12 questions correct. You see? Already I was having the kind of influence that only a great teacher can have. He improved 200 percent!

Sadly, on the third standardized test of the year, 07890 plateaued. He got another 3 out of 12.

This was a disappointment. 07890 was somehow maintaining a B/C average in my class, while being unable to read!

Aha. The proof was in the pudding. When the final marking period came, 07890 showed his true colors and began missing assignments, turning in work that was incomplete, and just plain not doing stuff. This is what you would expect of an illiterate student, after all, especially if he's a freshman in high school.

I can't say I didn't warn 07890. I told him he was failing the marking period. He shrugged it off.

So I had to turn to black magic.

This black magic is the well-known teacher spell, "Academic Behavior Report." It's a form letter that teachers send home to parents when students are not doing well in class. I am always loathe to send these things. How do I know what sort of punishment will be meted out upon a kid from a parent who gets the letter? But I had no choice. I might add that, if I had known of 07890's standardized test scores at the time, I might have sent a letter home sooner, just out of sheer concern for his near-complete illiteracy.

A distinctly humbled 07890 came into my classroom a few days later and asked if he would be allowed to make up the assignments he had missed or done incompletely. I gladly granted him complete freedom to do so. I also suggested that he might try a little harder on the next standardized test. If he did well, I said, it might boost his grade.

Imagine my surprise at the teacher meeting on data driven learning, when I saw the computerized assessment of 07890's standardized tests! On the final test of the year -- the test he took after the black magic was applied -- he got 12 out of 12 answers correct. No, I did not help him! There was clearly magic at work from a higher power!

(Here I wish to add that 07890 and all of his fellow freshmen would have done better on Test 3 if the testing company had actually keyed in the correct response for one of the questions. Every single kid got the answer wrong, because they all chose the correct answer -- and the machine was programmed to accept a wrong answer. If this makes sense, then you can see the vast benefits of judging teachers by standardized test results.)

Normally I don't pat myself on the back for spell work, but this case is so rare and exceptional. As a teacher I like to think that I taught a young man to read in one year. And what a convincing actor he was too! You'd have thought, the way 07890 stuck his nose into football books, that he already knew how to read. He sure had me fooled. But no matter! He knows how to read now!

Let us all applaud the presidents and governors and other educational muckamucks who think standardized testing is the shits. They're so right! Any computer can tell you how well your students are doing. The teacher's only role should be to sharpen a large supply of Number Two pencils.

One final note: In school year 2010-11, my students spent seven school days doing standardized tests. This was just great for me too. Think of it. Seven days I didn't have to plan a lesson! Add to that the three days I was out grading standardized essays, and that's two whole weeks of school without one word from the teacher! I tell ya, folks, with a little black magic and a gross of Number Twos, teaching is a snap.