Why We Can't Have Nice Things (Like Affirming Your Identity)

It's Tuesday, and "Julie" is crying. When I ask her what happened, she says that "Kate" is being mean to her in Spanish. I ask her if Kate knows how she feels. She shrugs and goes to tell Kate that she's sad. The two second graders come back hand-in-hand and tell me Kate has apologized for forgetting about The English Rule.

The English Rule, I learn, is exactly what it sounds like--you can only speak in English during recess. Some adult at some point in their lives (someone on recess duty, I'm guessing) decided that the way to stop kids from teasing each other in languages they don't understand is to stop them from using them entirely. Hearing that reminded me of the time I worked at ASU, when a manager decided that the way to avoid people leaving food wrappers at our front desk was to ban food altogether. This kind of behavior management is, I'm learning, ridiculously common. People arguing because of toys? No, let's not teach them how to share or respect each other's property, let's just ban toys from school. People arguing during lunch? No, let's not teach kids how to resolve conflicts, let's eat silently. Let's ignore these opportunities to teach kids really important social skills and ban things instead.

This is not the kind of educator I want to be.

Kate and I had a conversation about why it's not nice to tease people at all, let alone in another language.

"But Julie is my friend, I was just joking!"

"What's the difference between a joke and teasing?" (We had already talked about this last week.)

"Laughing with someone and laughing at someone..." (She remembered!)

"Can someone laugh with you if they don't know what you're saying?"

"No..."

She told me she hadn't thought about it that way before. She apologized to Julie again, not for breaking The English Rule, but for doing something hurtful. Before they left, I told both of them that they shouldn't think it's bad to speak other languages at school, and that it's cool that they know Spanish and Mongolian, respectively. I then learned how to say "Hola, me llamo es Grishma/Sain baina uu, minii ner Grishma baina" and taught them how to say "Namaste, mera naam Julie/Kate hai."

Taking "the thing" away when "the thing" causes conflict feels wrong. But it feels especially wrong when "the thing" is someone's culture. I don't want any child thinking their culture is inappropriate at school. You, your family, your background, your food, your holidays, your opinions, your personality--they're all needed at school. So speak in Spanish all you want, Kate. Just don't tease people.

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Year-End Resolution Recap: Part 3

In 2015, instead of setting resolutions in January and trying to keep up with all of them and then angrily abandoning all of them when it became hard, I chose one per month. Overall, it was an awesome experience, and much easier to maintain when I was only focusing on one thing at a time.

Read Part 1 Here || Read Part 2 Here

This was the month I finally found a place to live. September was extremely difficult because I was really exhausted and discouraged. I had lived in San Francisco for two months, emailed a bajillion people and interviewed with a handful to find a home, was still learning how to budget in a city where I had to pay six fucking dollars for a dozen eggs, still learning how to do my new job, and was away from almost my entire support system.

I was tired all the time, and I regretted moving to San Francisco. I woke up and felt dread every single day. I wanted to move back to Phoenix, or move away to any other easier place to live. Every time I looked at my suitcases, it felt so easy to just go online, buy a ticket, take those still-packed suitcases and dip out. But I made a commitment to a school, and I know how hard it is on schools when people leave mid-year. I had to decide whether I'm actually going to try to make a life here (for at least a year) or leave.

So, I unpacked.



In an effort to try to like San Francisco, I decided to vlog every day. I knew I'd grow to like it if I did things that weren't worry about living here, and vlogging seemed like a good way to still feel connected to those I love.

And you know what? It really helped. I wasn't going to make vlogs of me worrying, so it forced me to actually find the positive things about my day-to-day life. It added up. I really like living here now, thanks to doing this.

Vlogging is also much more of a time commitment than I was ready for. I made it to October 16th and fell behind and then decided it was too late and deleted all my unused footage because I was mad that I wasn't able to keep up with it. So I didn't really meet my goal of doing it every day. But a half a month was enough for what I set out to do.

You can watch a playlist of my vlogs here:

My inability to respond to people in a timely manner has been a habit for my entire life. I literally cannot think of a time I didn't have any unread texts or emails, and the more I thought "I really need to respond to this person" the less likely I was able to do it. It sucks. It sucks for me and it sucks for the people trying to reach out to me.

It also gets in the way of me being able to do my job well. In October, I did something super vulnerable and reached out to my supervisor asking for help on answering emails on time. And so she helped me. We came up with systems that work for me, ones that are in many ways counterintuitive to everything I was taught about organization systems. 

But organization is a thing you learn, not something you're born with. And I was able to get my work inbox to zero and keep it that way since then.

I love food, but I can't feed myself on a schedule. I thought it was one of those "i'm barely an adult and my body will magically, at some arbitrary point in the future, crave foods at certain times and then i'll probably eat regularly" things but... it's not. Eating properly (i.e. healthily) is a skill that you learn and practice, not some innate radar that magically activates at some point in your life.

I don't really know much about healthy eating habits (other than "try to eat vegetables, and eat often enough so you don't pass out") so I didn't know where to start with this one. Eating breakfast every day seems like a good idea though, so that's what I set out to do.

I sucked at it. I think I had breakfast like 4 times this month. I realized that if I want to eat regularly, I have to actually plan for it and maybe go to the grocery store once in a while.

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At the beginning of the year, I recorded this video with a bunch of goals and resolutions I'd set for myself. Looking back, I think I actually accomplished most of them. It's been a good year.