Matthew Daly

I promised myself that I would use this thing for my personal reflections during my summer course, but never quite got around to it.  Let's see what we can do about it during the full semester.

So, to catch everyone up, I am on my second semester seeking a Masters of Education from The College at Brockport.  To be specific, I am in the Alternative Adolescence Mathematics Inclusive Education program.  It's Alternate because I already have a full math education and just need education classes, and it's Inclusive because I'm learning to work with students with disabilities.  (This is not to say that I will focus on special education; the modern reality is that American classrooms strive to place students in the least restrictive environment in which they can learn effectively.  As a result, the general education setting contains students with a diverse array of gifts and needs and a large part of a teacher's energy is spent on identifying how education can be tailored to meet the needs of all students and particularly those that need accommodations.) 

Anyways, this semester I have four courses on deck.  That's overloading in Brockport's eyes, but I got a 4.0 under the same load last semester and my advisor doesn't seem to mind.  The first is Inclusive Teaching Middle School Mathematics, which is the first of my field studies which looks to be dealing with lesson plans and common standards and all that paperwork as it intersects with the reality of effective teaching.  The second is Teaching Language Skills in Middle and High School Content Areas II (can you guess that I love being in an environment where administrators won't use two words if eleven will do?), which is about literacy and comprehension strategies and differentiating instruction and many things that will probably be far more engaging that the way the course catalog makes it sound.  (I adored the prequel class, although I have heard rumors that this class ramps up the scholarly rigor.)  My third class is on Assessment for Special Education, which I think means diagnosing education-related disabilities rather than accommodating students with disabilties on general education standardized tests, but I'll know more on Thursday.  The fourth class doesn't start for another few months, and it's on drug awareness and public health and such.  Sounds like a bunch of boring seminars, but it's a critical certificate for schoolteachers so into the breach I go.

Here is a list of facts that were personally reinforced for me this very long and exhausting weekend. Some of them are more important than others, and I would be honored if you found them worth reflecting upon.

1) Don't stop talking to your brother just because Glen Beck or Michael Moore tells you that his (generally mainstream) ideas are treasonous or otherwise corrupting your noble ideals. If they told you that that's what I'd say, then they can doubly suck it.

2) Every children's toy that makes noise should have a mute switch. Especially if the noise is loud and annoying and on a very very short very loop.

3) If you're the only person in a crowd that is drinking alcohol, you should probably stop. If you can't stop, then you should definitely stop.

4) If you read a Bible passage in front of a large crowd of people as if it were a poem and not a government document, then they get a better chance of being able to actually hear it, which is a big plus when it's saying something neat that even you didn't know was there.

5) Being able to solve a Rubik's cube still seems to be an impressive feat, even if it takes you close to ten minutes to recall how to do the last few bits.

6) Be fair with your family, if you are able. Take what you need, offer what you can, and leave to recharge when you must. I am enormously privileged to live in a family healthy enough that this happens, but have hope in times of calamity that this will be the time that things will work as they should rather than as they have.

All of this put together adds up to the fact that I miss the heck out of my uncle and am glad that I can do my part to help lay his body and estate to rest and more deliberately live my life in a way that reflects the ideals that he lived so nobly.

I should start getting used to talking about me, especially since I'm doing some interesting stuff that I'll probably have to be talking about before long.

I've been spending the last handful of weeks as a volunteer math tutor for the Rochester Educational Opportunity Center, helping folk to get their GED and qualify for an LPN license and similar sorts of job training and college prep opportunities. The organization I am working for is a non-profit affiliated with one of our local state universities that does all this training tuition-free for qualified prospective students (and it seems like pretty liberal standards to establish the economic need) and it really seems to do a lot of good in helping people to chart out a better future. For me as well: it's not a paid position and doesn't even count as field work for a Masters in Education (even though the affiliated university is the one at which I'll be studying), but it'll be a leg up to have the experience in both the schmoozing sense and in being actually prepared for a room full of adolescents.

And so far it's been going really well. The staff is thrilled to get all the help they can, and they've been very helpful and welcoming. The students have been very generous with their praise as well, and even though there is selection bias in my hearing primarily from the sorts of student that I am helping, I can also objectively see that they are growing from one class to the next. That has more to do with my students being eager to be taught and willing to invest the time and brainwork than in the role that I'm playing, but again I am a critical catalyst in that reaction and if I don't give myself credit for my part then I can hardly expect people down the road to independently offer me future opportunities.

At the same time, it has been very challenging and I have yet to even comprehend the scope of the challenges. Math anxiety is a significant hurdle, and I don't have any specific strategies for dealing with it. (Nor do I have any personal experience with it at this level no matter how much I know about other sorts of anxiety.) I have also come to appreciate that people who talk about anti-racism math have their thumb on a very real and important problem. Again, I see it when I see it, but I'm still soaking in it and I've got to figure out how to confront that. 95% of my students are women, 90% are people of color, and I'll go ahead and guess that at least 95% of them aren't commuting from my upper middle-class neighborhood. In short, the only thing that comes easily to me in this class is the math.

But those last two paragraphs are both true and coexist in balance. My best isn't good enough, and my students deserve even better than my best. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't do what I can do. The alternative to me teaching this class isn't Jaime Escalente taking over the class for me; the alternative is no class at all. I need to fail a little bit better every day, because a lot of people are still going to succeed in spite of me because of me.

So shortly after writing yesterday's post, I got an email from my Census boss saying that those of us who didn't get enumerator jobs could maybe do some clerical work this week since it is OMGWTFBBQ week preparing all of the casebooks for everyone who didn't mail in their forms. He gave a phone number which ... didn't get answered by a person and the voicemail was ignored for at least an hour. I then made another one of those bold decisions that I've become capable of, that since I know where my grandboss sits I can go see her even though if I don't know the number of her direct line. The worst that could happen is that I get escorted out by security.

The best that could happen is what did happen. I said "I heard you need help", thinking that she'd tell me when to come back. She brightened and said "let's find you a chair!" and I spent twelve of the next thirteen hours working. And and my chair turned out to be right next to the superboss who was the most capable of being concerned about my falling through the cracks and working to get me into the final round of training next week when all this dust has settled. That's no sure bet, but at least this time I'll know. But at the least, making the decision to seek my fortune instead of waiting by the phone probably made me nearly a thousand dollars in income this week alone. There's probably a moral in there somewhere.

The work itself is routine office work with the printing and the collating and the cross-checking and the metric-keeping. But it's fascinating to be there. First off, during a recession, Census workers turn out to be the cream of the unemployed crop, so everyone is a caterer or a masseuse or a retired businessman with a lifetime of world travel. Plus we all get to comment on how inefficient the work processes we're doing are, and how we'd do things differently to make the work easier for people in the field. And I even get to share my bounty of Excel wisdom with a cow-orker who needed to make a spreadsheet report. So that was my lesson for the day, both in my work and in my work outlook: to find the awesome you've got to penetrate the corporation and meet with the people. They're awesome and smart even if they look neglectful and ill-conceived from a distance.

Also, holy cow I don't know for certain, but I think I printed out and ran my hands over 7000 pieces of paper yesterday. I'm not sure I've ever done that in a month before now. Now I've got to go make lunch and head back so I can collate and punch holes in those papers I think.

I think I may have decided what I want to be when I grow up. A schoolteacher. Which is mildly disturbing, since I was scared off of that when my graduating class deemed me most likely to return to my school as a teacher and that seemed non-complimentary. But I'm great at math and good with people as long as I'm not terrified of them and from talking to the teachers in my acquaintance they've been waiting for quite a while for me to want to jump into the square hole alongside them.

The exciting news is that I went to the campus of our local state school that has an excellent reputation for education on Monday and talked to a whole bunch of different people who all had their own ideas of what it would take to get me to the literal head of the class. The not-so-exciting news is that this afternoon I talked to the person who actually seemed to know the answer to that and her answer was the most disappointing of the lot. No, I don't get to pursue an MS in mathematics, no I can't apply in the fall for an MSEd, no I can't actually teach for at least three years (maybe after two years in special circumstances). And, not being affiliated with the Math department, the prospect of a teaching fellowship has probably dropped to zero.

The thing about this that tweaks at me is that all I've ever heard is that there is a back door for people who want to teach math in under-served communities but have the knowledge without the credentials. I'm hoping that one of my friends can show me where that back door is, because the front door is mighty unappealing. I'm mildly tempted to talk to the Math department guy again and see if he thinks there is good placement for people with MS in Math, because I got such a buzz from looking over the course catalog at that program. As you might imagine, my advanced undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon make the first year of study for an advanced degree at a state school a cakewalk, plus the hope of a fellowship and the knowledge that admission for Fall 2010 is still a few months away. Oh well, I suppose that at least I might be able to clean up the leftovers part-time after I get my boring old MSEd.

I stopped by the state vocational rehab place with an update. When I told my assistant caseworker that my plan wouldn't start until January from what I can see and that I'd probably need some sort of work placement for the interim, she smiled and said that it would at least be better than what I had been doing. That wouldn't be hard. I continue to be glad at how much I'm able to get done and how wonderful and supportive my team is.

1) I don't own a cellphone or a laptop. This isn't a philosophical position, I just have yet to have a need for them.

2) I once co-wrote, co-starred, directed, and edited a twenty minute movie to roast a friend at his wedding. It turned out to be pretty good for a home movie filled with in-jokes.

3) In addition to that, I have appeared on stage (both singing and acting), and in local newspapers and radio in several points throughout my youth. (I've only been on television in crowd shots.)

4) To the best of my knowledge, my name has never been in national media; the closest that I can say is that I was one of the three volunteers who actually carried out Diskette Day, a promotion giving away Macintosh disks to the first three hundred students at the Carnegie Mellon/Case Western football game in 1987. That made it into CNN and ESPN and the Wall Street Journal. And, as good and entertaining as the Tartans (and the band) are, it didn't work (although it surely didn't help that it was raining that day) and I had leftover Mac disks to last me through the remainder of my undergraduate career.

5) Speaking of Carnegie Mellon, I imagine that I am one of the very few people to graduate from that prestigious university with a full four-year degree in the past thirty years without taking a single computer programming course. It is required even for Drama majors and there is no placing out of it with the single exception that the first Computer Science AP exam turned out to be so OMGWTFBBQ hard that they decided to give people who got a 4 or 5 a pass. All the same, my degree carries great geek cred because people know that Applied Math at Carnegie Mellon is our code for computer programmers and they don't notice that my degree is in pure math.

6) I don't know my IQ. I'm outside the range of the normal test, and I've never cared enough to go hunting for the actual number. I think that it's a metric desperately searching for a context in which it is relevant. Abraham Lincoln is said to have claimed that his legs were long enough to reach the ground, and that's how I feel about how smart I am.

7) I don't recall ever saying "I told you so". I don't even think it. What I think is "I'm sorry I wasn't capable of persuading you enough back when it would have made a difference."

8) I can sing, but you've never heard me doing it. (Actually, I sang once at a boink, having been dared to sing the rap portion of Barenaked Ladies' One Week, which I can do except for half of the line about the golf clubs.) I was a soloist in my elementary school choir, but left it when my voice broke in eighth grade. (The only course that I could transfer to mid-semester was computer programming, which was the start of a beautiful friendship.) The choir director, who went on to help train Renée freaking Fleming can still pick me out of a crowded room after nearly thirty years, bless her soul. In my adult years, I sang bass for a small church choir, and my voice was described as "complex" and "adding depth". I presume that these are euphemisms.

9) I can ballroom dance, but you've never seen me doing it. Technically, my frame and signaling skills are very credible, but my mind freezes when it comes to actually leading in a way that shows off my partner's grace. I'd be an awesome follower if I ever trained for it, but there isn't much application for male followers in the world, alas.

10) I enjoy playing games, but it's an experience that I enjoy from the perspective of strengthening my knowledge base and having fun and not so much from winning. Specifically, I can't play Pictionary or Acquire because I am frustrated at my lack of growth and I don't play Settlers of Catan because it really screws up the dynamics when someone isn't playing to win. The one exception to this is that I refuse to throw a game to a child. There's no shame in doing your best and coming up short, especially if you've embiggened yourself in the process. I'll never be a parent, but I've got some wisdom to pass along.

11) I love people. I just do. You could be some asshole who has dedicated your life to pissing in my metaphorical Cheerios, I don't care. There's a jigsaw puzzle in this universe, and you've got a piece of it, and I want to get to know you. I'm afraid to do that, which sucks, but there we are.

So tonight is TNSOL night for the Census, and it's 1:30 AM and I'm already home getting ready for bed. Not only did we not see a single homeless person through about a quarter of downtown, I didn't even get to enumerate any of the fun quasi-legal parts of town like the abandoned subway tunnels or the Lower Falls.

In theory, I'm glad that everyone has somewhere better to sleep in 40-degree windy weather. In practice, I feel like I missed an opportunity to be embiggened.

Little was my second car. Dad suggested that it was a good idea to buy a new car, so that you could get to know it from the beginning and hear when she started squeaking or rumbling. I settled on a Saturn because I hate the notion that car dealers know the bargaining game better than you and are out to make you pay $500 more than you should, and Saturn uniquely didn't play those games. I got a small engine and standard transmission and no air conditioner because I liked the fact that it was both cheaper and better mileage that way. It was a harder decision to turn down the power windows and locks, but it would have brought the price tag all the way up to $13,000 and that'd be a crazy amount to spend on a car.

Little and I have been to thirteen states and two provinces together. Despite being from Tennessee, she handled some of Rochester's harshest winters like a local. As far as I can recall, she's been to four weddings and three funerals. She's carried one baby and witnessed one makeout session. A little over 128,000 miles, and I don't think she went fifteen of those miles without me behind the wheel. And for nearly exactly fourteen years, every time I walk through a parking lot looking for her I see her and smile because I had the prettiest car in the lot and I've been getting 41 MPG in the summertime all this time.

Still, she's been aging. While continuing to run like a dream, the annual inspections have been in the habit of turning up expensive problems. Two years ago, I had to totally replace the brakes and exhaust system, which was a few kilobucks. But this year, she failed with a rusted subframe, and I know enough about cars to know that's the beginning of the last chapter. I don't know if turning down the repairs was callous or sensible. I don't even know if I should be thinking about it like my car was a pet that I'm having put down.

Tomorrow morning the local Vietnam veterans group will come to tow her away. She's at my parent's house, so I've already seen her for the last time. My understanding is that she's going to be crushed because she's got a non-repairable condition. I get that, but I hope they strip her pull out all of her good parts first, because there are a lot of other '96 Saturns on the road and I bet her engine still has a lot of life to offer.

I still don't know what will happen next. I can't imagine what car I want next, and I can't envision myself bargaining for it. In the mean time, I'm driving my Mom's 2008 Yaris while she and Dad are down in Florida, which is very much appreciated and a satisfactory car, but.