The idea of resiliency has been bouncing around in my head a lot for the past few weeks. Well, if I'm being honest, it's probably been longer than that but only in the past few weeks have I been able to put a name to it.
As a teacher, this is one of the things we talked about frequently, in small and large groups, with specific kids and as general goals for all of our kids. How do we help them become resilient? How do we encourage resilient behavior? How do we have them recognize when they are being resilient? As an adult looking in, I could reasonably easily identify these skills or moments: when a kid's computer didn't start and so they shut it down and got a new one without asking me about it six times or melting down. When a child forgot their book at school and so couldn't complete the homework assignment and sent an email with what happened and a plan with how to fix it, or at least suggestions. (And that this was NOT followed by an email from said child's parent explaining the tears and panic that ensued beforehand, afterwards, and throughout the world-ending ordeal.) A child was being resilient when their plan for a writing assignment completely fell apart when we moved on to the second step of the assignment and they shrugged and said they would probably like their second idea better, anyway. I could go on and on and on, both big and small, moments that were recognized and moments that were so internalized neither the student nor I commented on them. SO then, as an educator, I could identify those moments and I could even, sometimes, recognize them in a way that made other students want to emulate those coping mechanisms and strategies without me having painted a target of goody-two-shoes on the originally resilient child.
Imagine my surprise, then, when upon being faced with the challenge of looking for a new job (which was my choice) and discovered that all of my resiliency had somehow disappeared. Completely.
In an interview that Kirk Nieuwenhuis (#9, a CF for the Mets) gave with reporter Michael Baron (a writer for MetsBlog) on Tuesday, February 12th, Kirk says this: "It is a game of failure but your success is going to hinge on how you bounce back from those failures." "It" here is baseball, but this idea of bouncing back from failure resonated with me because of all my recent thinking about resilience. As Nieuwenhuis points out (and I think bears repeating), baseball is, at it's heart, a game of failure. If a batter hits the ball 1/3 of the time (.333 BA) he is having a phenomenal season; hitting anything above 1/4 of the time (.250 BA) he's doing well. Anywhere else in our world those averages would be atrocious!! Think about if you went to work and were successful with your daily tasks 1/3 of the time. You'd be fired in 1/3 of the time that it took me to write this sentence. So how do MLB players get back in the batter's box day after day, knowing that they are going to strike out / foul out / ground out / etc. significantly more than they are going to get a hit? Because of RESILIENCE. Because of their ability to put that one moment behind them and focus on this next pitch, this next swing, this next slice of time. How many of us truly have the ability to do that?
I have discovered recently that I am absolutely atrocious at putting one moment of failure or mistake or self doubt behind me. That has always been reasonably clear in my every day life, but has come to the forefront even more clearly in this job search process. After reading through ten job postings that are "great fits" that have acronyms that I can't even begin to parse and/or 5-7 years of very specific experience (that wasn't teaching related) was enough to shut down the job search for the entire day. Back at it the next day, and all it took was running into three websites that threw around new phrases like "informational interviews," "personal branding," and "video resumes" to make me go running to repetitive matching games on the computer. Back in the saddle for day three and a single rejection email from a company I didn't even remember applying to was the catalyst for Bachelor watching and a day of laundering every stray towel in the apartment. Where was the resiliency I had mastered during high school and college? Where was the drive to push through until I found the perfect job description, or at least one in which they would read my cover letter and give me a shot at a phone interview before writing me off? Gone, all gone. And why? Because I was in completely uncharted territory. So how does terrifying territory become a vista in the rearview mirror of life? With resilience. Where was that going to come from? Well, the first step for me was naming it.
That sounds overly simplistic, and is not meant to sound like the end-all-be-all solution, but once I could identify with a world (RESILIENCE) what was missing, I could begin to find it. Just like my little cat, Eleanor, I had to hunt down some of those strategies and coax them out of the dust bunny riddled corners of my mind, but they were there. And then I could begin to move forward at more than a snail's pace. By the end of a few weeks I was moving at a respectable Tortoise's pace, at least in the race with the speedy Rabbit. One day I applied to three jobs, the next day one, the next two. And then I met with minor successes. And then some reasonably major ones. It didn't take much - the promise of a phone interview that a friend had set up was enough to make me smile for four days. A phone call from a temp agency was on par with chocolate cake for breakfast AND lunch. A positive comment from a stranger was enough to get me through a day. And so it went, week into week into week. The setbacks still stung and made me sulk, but not to the same degree as they had before I had some positives to counter-balance them.
Resiliency is one of the most important traits we can foster in our children, our students, ourselves. Paul Tough's new book, How Children Succeed, is on my shelf and high on my list of to-reads right now, and I know from hearing him speak that resilience is an underpinning of all he talks about: Grit / Perseverance / Etc. but all the same meaning. How do you overcome obstacles? How do you keep moving forward when things don't work out the way you wanted them to originally? And I have discovered that my method is: VERY slowly. And with lots of growing pains. For a girl who has always always always had a plan, and a backup plan, this wasn't something I ever thought much about. I was resilient because I always knew where I was going. Now that I don't, resilience seems to be a more nebulous thing for me. But I'm finding my way. And reminding myself of the ways I have been resilient in other places in my life. Transference is also something we teachers always talk about - learning a skill well enough to transfer it to a new situation. So I have named my next task, apparently: perfecting the transference of my resilience throughout my life to where I am now.
It is a challenge, but one I am open to. My task has been named, and I am moving forward. :) Lots of rambling (if you made it to the end, thanks!), and perhaps a few lessons: Teaching kids resilience is difficult but oh so important. Transferring resilience from one aspect of life to another is not as easy as one (or at least me) might think. I am never going to be a professional athlete. :)
Monday, March 11, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
I Hate Titles
So, this was not supposed to be the topic for my first blog post. I had some great ideas - the issue of resilience, the importance of great girlfriends in a woman's life, an intro into who I am and why anyone might want to read what I have to say, etc. And we'll get to all of those, but this is where I am right now: I hate titling things!
For instance, I had been letting the idea of my first blog post (on this blog, the YA Lit blog I've been talking about for six months is a whole other issue) for a few days, close to a week, and finally today decided to just jump and put it out there. And so I click on "start new blog" and the first blinky cursor to come up is in "Title." Well, shucks, I don't know what to title my blog, I haven't firmly defined the parameters of this blog, or what the goals are, or who my audience is, or or or or. So I finally type in "Percolations" after chatting with my friend Sharon, in Texas, who is awesome and didn't even tell me it was super weird to just throw into the middle of a conversation that I needed a title for a blog. And then I pick my layout (Simple) and head to my first blank page in the BlogWorld... and they ask me for a title for this blog post.
I never wrote titles for papers or assignments until I was finished with them. All of the titles of my documents in my documents folder, and now GoogleDrive, are as factual as they can be: KBlakeResume2.12.13, or AdministrativeAssistantCoverLetter, or Giver Quiz chapters 1 - 5. For me, titles are either factual or they have to come at the END of a task. How do I know what my final conclusions are going to be about this topic until I have fully processed them by writing them? How do I know what the actual focus of this blog post is going to be until I have finished it? So often writing changes my understanding of things that I am stymied by the idea that I have to write a title first.
That was always one of the most taboo things I would tell a middle schooler about a paper, a poem, a document... you DON'T have to give it a title right now. Give it a Working Title, and recognize that it can change. And for those kids that couldn't move forward until they had something centered on that first line I was always a little frustrated, hopefully only inside my head. Why was it so hard to just put something down for now and go back and change it later? Well, that was easy for me to say, I wasn't doing the assignment for a grade, or handing it in to someone to give me feedback. It took me a long time to get comfortable with using Working Titles and not feeling tied down to whatever I wrote at the outset of a task / writing assignment / project / etc. And, for some reason, I am right back to that original place of middle school panic about not having the PERFECT title IMMEDIATELY.
And why is this? What is it about a title or a definition of something that stymies so many people so fully, and so immediately? I think it is the sense of finality that comes with it. The title is the absolute first thing people see about a story, a document, anything that is given to us in written form. And there is a sense of finality about writing it down: once it is on the paper, or in the computer, that defines what has to come next; that defines what this entire written piece MUST be about. So how do you get past that? How do I re-remember that anything in writing can be changed? If I am the author, I have the final say. So, that title can be just a placeholder for now. For me, the computer has changed that. When I was writing with pen and paper as an adult, I would just literally NOT write a title down until I was finished with at least my first, usually my second or third, draft. And then I didn't have to look at it, or feel it mocking me, or feel constrained by my Title.
It is disconcerting to realize that I have taken steps backwards. That I was a teacher of writing for ten years, and constantly told kids that the first step was to get your ideas down and then you could go back and add and delete and change and fix, because as you write your ideas change and solidify and morph completely, so revision is completely necessary. And I believe that. I know that. I do that. Until I've had to come up with so many titles and headlines and such recently, I would have told you that I was completely fine with revision. But, apparently, I still have some roadblocks.
So, I hate titles. And I will probably want to change the title of this Blog several times, and I haven't even published my first post yet. Luckily for me, the Post Title box is still changeable, so I don't have to panic about that one quite so much.
Until my next title-ing panic attack, I wish you all a good evening.
For instance, I had been letting the idea of my first blog post (on this blog, the YA Lit blog I've been talking about for six months is a whole other issue) for a few days, close to a week, and finally today decided to just jump and put it out there. And so I click on "start new blog" and the first blinky cursor to come up is in "Title." Well, shucks, I don't know what to title my blog, I haven't firmly defined the parameters of this blog, or what the goals are, or who my audience is, or or or or. So I finally type in "Percolations" after chatting with my friend Sharon, in Texas, who is awesome and didn't even tell me it was super weird to just throw into the middle of a conversation that I needed a title for a blog. And then I pick my layout (Simple) and head to my first blank page in the BlogWorld... and they ask me for a title for this blog post.
I never wrote titles for papers or assignments until I was finished with them. All of the titles of my documents in my documents folder, and now GoogleDrive, are as factual as they can be: KBlakeResume2.12.13, or AdministrativeAssistantCoverLetter, or Giver Quiz chapters 1 - 5. For me, titles are either factual or they have to come at the END of a task. How do I know what my final conclusions are going to be about this topic until I have fully processed them by writing them? How do I know what the actual focus of this blog post is going to be until I have finished it? So often writing changes my understanding of things that I am stymied by the idea that I have to write a title first.
That was always one of the most taboo things I would tell a middle schooler about a paper, a poem, a document... you DON'T have to give it a title right now. Give it a Working Title, and recognize that it can change. And for those kids that couldn't move forward until they had something centered on that first line I was always a little frustrated, hopefully only inside my head. Why was it so hard to just put something down for now and go back and change it later? Well, that was easy for me to say, I wasn't doing the assignment for a grade, or handing it in to someone to give me feedback. It took me a long time to get comfortable with using Working Titles and not feeling tied down to whatever I wrote at the outset of a task / writing assignment / project / etc. And, for some reason, I am right back to that original place of middle school panic about not having the PERFECT title IMMEDIATELY.
And why is this? What is it about a title or a definition of something that stymies so many people so fully, and so immediately? I think it is the sense of finality that comes with it. The title is the absolute first thing people see about a story, a document, anything that is given to us in written form. And there is a sense of finality about writing it down: once it is on the paper, or in the computer, that defines what has to come next; that defines what this entire written piece MUST be about. So how do you get past that? How do I re-remember that anything in writing can be changed? If I am the author, I have the final say. So, that title can be just a placeholder for now. For me, the computer has changed that. When I was writing with pen and paper as an adult, I would just literally NOT write a title down until I was finished with at least my first, usually my second or third, draft. And then I didn't have to look at it, or feel it mocking me, or feel constrained by my Title.
It is disconcerting to realize that I have taken steps backwards. That I was a teacher of writing for ten years, and constantly told kids that the first step was to get your ideas down and then you could go back and add and delete and change and fix, because as you write your ideas change and solidify and morph completely, so revision is completely necessary. And I believe that. I know that. I do that. Until I've had to come up with so many titles and headlines and such recently, I would have told you that I was completely fine with revision. But, apparently, I still have some roadblocks.
So, I hate titles. And I will probably want to change the title of this Blog several times, and I haven't even published my first post yet. Luckily for me, the Post Title box is still changeable, so I don't have to panic about that one quite so much.
Until my next title-ing panic attack, I wish you all a good evening.
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