Finals

I don't know if every professor feels this way, but in the days between the last day of class and when the final papers/projects are due, I always feel a bit like a midwife. I find myself checking my email more (I don't have a smartphone, so I'm not henpecked by any of my email accounts), looking into the course management system frequently to see if there are messages there from students. In short, I worry about them. So far, when the papers/projects finally come in, I am thrilled and relieved to find that the vast majority of them did quite well--plenty of evidence of thinking, learning, engagement. But always in the space in between--midwifed.

I may get over this in the fall when my small classes give way to two enormous ones. But. We'll see. Not there yet.

Homesick

I've been feeling unusually blue recently. Spring is attempting to make itself known in Utah and while I recognize its efforts in the blooms on trees, the arrival of many ducks, and an uptick in rain, it's not central PA.

There are no daily thunderstorms that shake the house and occasionally send you to the basement in case that one oak falls on the roof this time.

The rolling hills don't turn that deep russet with new buds waiting to explode.

Creeks don't overspill their banks and give old bridges new reasons for being. There are surprisingly few breezes here bringing in the complex and promising smell of Spring that leaves you longing as the last of the snow clings to the shady spots under the thick canopy of trees.

It seems like it should be small, this one little weather thing. That it shouldn't trigger the grief over all that was left behind in that place--but I remember in the first Spring we lived there in 2005, noticing all of the above and sobbing with relief as I felt that I had finally, finally come home.

I still love my work and BYU feels more like home than I think Penn State ever could because the expectation that I can be a totally devoted Latter-Day Saint AND a critical thinker AND be a contributing academic is the norm (actually, those are more the requirements) and I didn't, generally speaking, feel like it was really okay to be a MORMON PhD candidate at Penn State. (With about three notable exceptions.)

I don't really expect that I'll ever go back to State College permanently. But this afternoon I miss it all, and the dear friends I associate with it all. I have this intense desire to get on a plane and go home, even though I'd just have to turn around and come right back here. Homesick.

Spelling

It is an inarguable truth that I cannot spell well. I come by it honestly. I come from a long line of people who can't spell well on my Father's side. Max can't spell either. The twins can. They must get that from Chris or the Hudson side. 

When I have a word I can't remember how to spell I invent a mispronunciation of it that helps me remember the real spelling.

For example, fry-ends helped me learn friends. And Pee-oh-pull helped me learn people.

Today I invented Pur-pose-eh-lee to help me with purposely.

It serves a purpose, but also--it makes me laugh. Laughing is very important when you are a PhD and teacher educator who cannot spell.

And Now I Shall Write Somewhat Concerning the Love a Heavenly Father Has for His Children

Tuesday evening a little girl ran away from home in our Stake. It was like 15 degrees out and she was last seen in a pink hoodie. She was ten. A gazillion people searched for her until 2:00am. She was found the next morning after hiding at a friends house all night. Here is what I learned from that: little girls can make big mistakes, and one little daughter of God disappearing in your neighborhood--who you don't even know--can cause you to be so unable to sleep that a week later you still remember the fear gripping your heart as you listen to the helicopters swinging back and forth over the neighborhood for hours.

Here is how a search like that works on the ground. You decide you are going to help. You go to the house where the people have mobilized and they have you sign in and give you a map. You don't meet many other people. You just see a few people at the sign in table and a few people coming back for a new map. Otherwise--you have your area. It's very cold and it's very lonely and it's emotionally exhausting. But somewhere back in that house are parents so unimaginably grateful that you are doing that work for them. Because with you helping search for the missing daughter, there is that much greater a possbilitity that the child will come home.

This little girl has some emotional issues. When she was found she was not grateful, not remorseful--she was defiant and angry. But she is still a child (or perhaps, because she is still a child--it's not like she has anything like adult executive thought functioning yet) and she still has her agency and there may be a time when she does realize some small portion of the love that was expended on her behalf and she may repent and if she does it will cause a mighty change in her. (That's what repentance is--a mighty change of heart.)

And that is being a missionary, to me. You go get your papers. You hunt for someone you have never met out of a love you don't really understand and you meet people who are unrepentant and defiant and rejecting of your love.

But then sometimes you meet people like the fellow Elder Hults baptized last week or the one who just committed to a date in February--or the person I was at 19--who is repentant and searching for his/her Heavenly Father's love and if someone hadn't been there to guide and direct--might not have found his/her way back. 

If you are a missionary or returned missionary or just a person who sometimes opens their mouth and answers awkward and difficult questions about their Faith in the hopes that it will benefit the person who is asking--I want you to know how very proud we are of you and your work. It's pretty freaking hard and cold at times, I imagine, but there are Heavenly Parents desperate for us to find more of their children and return them unto them. And I am so crazily grateful that you chose to be part of the search.

And that is all I have to say about that.

P.S. This is adapted from a letter I wrote on the spot for Max just an hour ago when we learned that he DID have access to a computer today (Family History Center) when we thought he wouldn't because we thought he would be at the library which would be closed today. On the upside, this led to the closest thing we have ever had to an email conversation :) Chris was on his laptop and I on mine (which is totally crazy, because I almost never bring it home from work in order to avoid doing work at home) and the three of us tossing letters and pieces of letters back and forth at each other for a little bit. It was actually awesome.

P.P.S. If you want to hear some missionary stories, go to http://sc1calledtoserve.tumblr.com where more than 18 months of weekly letters from State College (PA) Ward missionaries are collected from young women in Ukraine, Russia, and Germany. And also our very own Elder Hults in Nevada (Spanish speaking). They include the range of emotions, including funny, sweet, sad, and mundane. There are plenty of photos (especially from Germany and Nevada) and they make me love humanity even more. We have one Sister and our own Elder still in the mission field and posting weekly letters.

Oh, the Places You Will Go

We are still getting used to the difference being in Provo means for friends and family visiting. It is, apparently, easier to get here and easier to get away than when we lived in Pine Grove Mills, PA. We have enjoyed the steady stream of visitors from State College, PA and the visit from my Father and Step-Mother. There are plans in the works for a future visit from my Mother, and a tentative plan to head to CA for a weekend or so in mid-August with stops in the Sacramento area and the East Bay (and what the heck--maybe we can catch a Heller-Simon at home in SF).

Recently I received a letter from a dear old friend on the Rez in Arizona asking me to pin down specific dates to come visit her and in looking at the map we realized that the window of opportunity she was offering us was a) right about the time the Spring semester would be ending, b) right about the time Max would be released and c) right about the time it starts to get really hot in Provo, Utah. (Okay, that last doesn't really factor into it, but it would be a tender mercy as far as I'm concerned.) At any rate, it's likely that picking up Max would be easily on the outward bound or home bound route.

Sometimes friendships spanning many decades can settle into a level of comfort that makes it okay for long periods to pass without seeing each other. You write. You update each other on the mile stones of children and grandchildren. You worry over their daughter with pneumonia and they celebrate your son's graduation from afar. This Spring and Summer I had a gradually increasing fear of not having heard from her, so much so that I tracked down her daughter's email address and phone number and left messages with her. It turned out that my friend had a bit of a health crisis that summer (with a happy ending), but it helped me realize that it had been too long and it was time for me to go back to the Rez for a visit with one of my favorite women on the planet. She has been part Aunt, part older sister to me. In a sudden realization just a few days ago, I realized that she wasn't the age I thought she was. She was frozen for me in her mid-fifties because that's about what she was when I was her teacher and she was my principal in the very early 90's.

So now we are waiting to hear from Max's mission president when Max will be released (there is a question between two Wednesdays right about that time in June) so we can find a way to combine those trips to go get him and to go spend a few nights in a recently refurbished Hogan soaking up the humor and energy and generosity of my friend. It will be a summer of many reunions I think, and these two will be the first. I'm glad my Department Chair talked me out of trying to teach a summer term course. That's not where I am needed this summer.

New Semester, New Students

One thing I imagine that non-teachers think about teaching is that when you teach the same class--in the same day or from semester to semester--that it must get completely boring.

It does not.

I admit I have a certain amount of restlessness in me that appreciates the opportunity to teach new classes. If I do get the chance to teach a new class, I jump at it. Recently I jumped so high that they gave me a new class to teach in a big way--but that won't kick in until next Fall. More on that in the future.

In the meantime, I am teaching the same class I taught last semester and EVERYTHING is different about it. Mind you, this course is a LOT like the course I taught every spring for five years at Penn State. Not exactly--I'm always tweaking it. But over time there are things I got rid of that I brought back in because the course needed them and things I used for a long time that I got rid of and found I didn't really miss. That's kind of the point of teaching it for a long time--it should evolve into a rich and interesting course where students tell the next incoming group to take the class--that they're going to love it.

Last semester was my first at BYU and I taught the course twice a week for 75 minutes each time, which is exactly like the format at Penn State--except at 2 credits instead of 3 credits, the course ended weeks early. That was weird. But I had 28 super terrific students and we had a good time figuring things out, learning to think about some things in new ways, and coming away having grown and changed a bit--all of us.

This semester is my second at BYU and I have the same course, but I tweaked it considerably in response to two huge factors. The first was that my favorite textbook had been rewritten and is better than ever with new expanded sections on bilingual education and translanguaging and other greatness. So that meant moving some things around and using it as an anchor text. I'm not usually so textbook oriented. But I love it.

The next issue is that I have the students for the whole semester this time, but only 110 minutes a week. This is causing chaos in terms of how and when I cover certain ideas. In the end, I'm covering more topics--but with less time spent on each. We'll see. The first day was not a strong one. Too much time on the syllabus and not enough on the reading. Next week will be better.

But to get back to the thing that non-teachers don't know....each class is its own entity. They have a feeling, a personality, a way of moving together and being together and thinking together that makes them unpredictable and exciting--and sometimes frustrating and nerve wracking. Every time you get a new class--you are meeting a new group of students--but you are also beginning to get to know the entity that is that class. I'm tempted to name this winter's class, but I'd have to let them pick the name and that would be weird. "When I talk about you on my blog, what you like me to call you?"

I am currently reading the class's first reading memos. The class discussion was not particularly helpful this week (normally it's a very large part of the information for the week) because it was getting to know you week and syllabus week and also key information about ELLs week. So mostly they got that last part from the reading and not from me. So one of the things I'm discovering about this group is that they are very smart. They have, collectively, excellent recall of their multicultural course. They are already making connections to previous courses they've taken. After I gave my speech on improving their academic writing--many are already using proper APA citations and reference lists.

I'm happier than a rescue pup who finds themselves adopted by a dog-food manufacturer for the purpose of being one of their 200 dog-food testers. (They really exist. And there are people whose job it is to wrangle the doggies all day--big open dog park time, smaller open rooms for quieter times, kennels at night.)

I only have 23 students this semester and it may drop to 21 (no sign of two of them yet). If that happens, I'm making it my goal to learn ALL of their names by week 6. That would be a personal best.

Regardless, the semester is off to a good start. This is a good class--and you can research and write and all that good stuff--but if the teaching doesn't go well, it's not a good semester. In the end, at least in Teacher Education, it has got to be a good class. I have one :)

That Moment When...

That moment when you're working along and a subject line from an incoming email flashes on your screen and out of the corner of your eye you see it has Bakhtin in the title. So you click over to your email only to find it was Barack. I love my President, but I was hoping for an email from Paolo Infante--scholar extraordinaire--not another fundraising plea.