It never gets old: Trek Against Trump

Still relevant, now more than ever—Spock -Trump photomanips I made early in 2017.

1. The Alternative Fact(or); or, The Alternative (F)actor

Actual line from  "The Alternative Factor" (1967) episode of the Star Trek:

SPOCK  (to Trump): "I fail to comprehend your indignation, sir. I have simply made the logical deduction that you are a liar."

2. Objections 

Donald Trump slipped so well into the place of Trelane, a dangerous idiot-child alien, from Star Trek TOS's episode "The Squire of Gothos" (1967).

Spock’s actual dialogue:

"I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline; I object to power without constructive purpose.”

Heads Up, Heels Down

I can’t believe I’d said after my first month in sped (special ed) at this huge high school that I was rather disappointing that the job wasn’t as challenging as everyone had said it would be. Ha! – – classic example of speaking too soon. 

Since then it’s been a wild ride, sometimes like babysitting (yes, boring), sometimes like being a psychologist or a crisis interventionist. Not to mention art teacher, proofreader, exercise coach, life coach, cook and cleaner, etc.

This week…

Yesterday I helped a girl in the hallway who couldn’t breathe—got her to the nurse – –  she could breathe a little bit but she was having an attack of some sort—must check on her today. 

[UPDATE: The student who couldn’t breathe is fine—it was a panic attack. Scary to witness—worse to feel!—but not physically dangerous.]

Earlier in the week, I’d met one-on-one with a student who’d said mean things in class about sped students, though she is special ed herself. (This is mixed class—all sped students, but not all autistic.)

I was amazed to find myself in this position. Isn’t this above my pay grade? It is, in fact, technically—but I said yes when asked because I figured it was a mostly a matter of asking the student to talk about herself. Which she did, for an hour. As I’d suspected, she has been bullied herself for being sped, plus is living with a lot of life challenges… To put it mildly.

It’s the funniest thing, but working at the thrift store in the city’s armpit for six years was the perfect training ground for working with teenagers. I got used to having to step up to situations I didn’t feel equipped to handle— simply because I was there. Even if you studied all this (hostage negotiator, addiction counseling, etc), even if you are trained and experienced, each situation is different—whoever knows what in the world‘s gonna happen? Or what you could possibly do to help.

Life experience may be the best trainer. (Not discounting education! but a lot of this happens on horseback, at a gallop.) 

Definitely the thrift store helped me immensely by forcing me at a PhD level to lower my expectations: “I am not the savior”. And to accept that, most often, all I can do is be there, to say, I know your name and I’m listening to you. Which is what I did with the student.

I wrote “all I can do“, but often “just being there” is the right thing, and even the full Olympic level of engagement . Before I met with the student—on the same day I was asked to—I’d asked the teacher what had already been said to the student. She told me the student’s caseworker had read the riot act to the student – – told her that what she’d said was “hate speech“ and could even be legally actionable.

She’d asked me to give it a try, though, because she didn’t feel that it’d gotten through to the student. “She just sat there and didn’t say anything.”

No shit, Sherlock. This is a child who clearly is herself troubled—how does threatening her with the law help? But I hand it to this teacher that she realized that didn’t work – – and asked me to help because “the student likes you”.

[Side note. Example of the students’ maturity level and sophistication: students in this same student’s class declared me “cool” when I brought in hand made Rice Krispie treats yesterday. A lot of them are just hatching 🐣 out of being little kids.]

The student seemed happy enough to talk, and I thought that was a good thing, but wasn’t sure it made any difference at all. However, bizarrely, I got almost instant feedback that it did. The day after we met, the student again said something mean unthinkingly, loudly in class. 

I said, “Hey, that’s an example of what we were just talking about. Could you say that sentence differently?”

And, bygod, she did! 

Sped students and gen-ed students, neurotypical and neurodivergent people are different from each other—each group, but each individual within each group too.  But the same riding skills apply to all. Like the title of a book I’d loved in childhood put it:

Heads Up, Heels Down

(In English riding, to maintain your posture and to stay in the stirrups.)

My mother always said shoulders back, too.

It was gratifying to see that I’d been helpful, and I’m grateful to have meaningful work, but I’m not in love with this job. Foolishly (?), perhaps, I hadn’t realized that it’s like being a psychologist—it’s emotional work, not intellectual. And I don’t love that. 

I miss being around books all day, and I’m looking forward to volunteering at the store a lot after school ends in a couple weeks. (Damn long school year.)

Here’s something I do love about this job though – – getting paid a living wage. Teachers and aides complain about the pay, and I see what they mean, but I’m always saying, it depends what you compare it to.

————

 PS. I’d texted a friend in education that I thought it was adorable but untrustworthy that the students said I was cool —it’s just because I bribed them with Rice Krispie treats, I said.

 But then she added…

Intuition isn’t always right

I’m at bus stop now with bag of rice-krispie-bar makings for students’ birthdays—I’m going to make them during my break.

Lots of interesting/challenging and humbling experiences with the students since I last wrote a catch-up – – including realizing my attempts to help a kid manage OCD were wrong. I was following my intuition, but OCD is like a bug-bear in your brain, and I was unintentionally feeding it. 

It would certainly help if there were coordinated action plans for working with the students that were clearly communicated to everybody, but I go between five classrooms and guidance comes in bits and pieces from here and there, sometimes contradictory. Best help, honestly, comes from the internet. Including instructions for microwave production of Rice Krispie treats.

New Duds

My first attempt at a girlettes linoleum-cut print—“In Their New Duds”. 

Print is not without charm, not a total dud; but not correct either…. (Dolls are harder than bears to get right. Their faces are deceptively simple.) Will keep trying. Much to learn about thinking in reverse, etc.

New old clothes

 Mary T gave the girlettes a bag of vintage doll clothes—mostly a little large so tailoring is commencing 

Don’t squeeze people’s heads

This morning at work.

Me, to student who has grabbed her friend’s head and is squeezing her face: “Don’t squeeze people’s heads. Your friend is telling you she doesn’t like it, and you could accidentally hurt someone.”

Student: “But her head is so nice and squishy!” (But she does let go.)

So, it’s like that, often. 

My student in art has made progress— I’m giving this student simple figures by Jacob Lawrence (African American artist) to copy in oil pastels, and I’m really proud that he’s catching on (with guidance)  to looking for shapes and colors in them to draw.

(As far as I can tell, he doesn't care about all this, but I can’t be sure and learning to look for patterns is a good skill anyway.) 

Yellow Stone Bea R.

      

^ Holey Bear 4: “this stops now”. Linoleum print portrait of thrift-reject rescue.

Lettering by student.

 I showed him my prints with his handwritten Bear names, and thanked him. 

“You have the coolest handwriting—I love it!” (He told me he’s not good at anything, which is so not true! I make sure to tell him what he’s good at.)

He doesn’t focus or comment on the prints—incoming images kind of make him … uncomfortable? But when I asked him, “How many Bear names can I ask you to write?”he said, “Probably a lot. As many as you want!”

Love the word break, BeA  R.

Oh--another example of student success.
Remember I'd written about the student who likes hugs but whose hugs have become too . . . groiny, as puberty hits? And while some teachers won't hug him at all (understandably), I'd instituted "count to three" hugs, finishing with a high 5 and a fist bump.
(He'd called me Grandma once, so I am in a good position to keep hugging him anyway.)

Well, our 3-second hugs have evolved--we now have a little choreography.
We dance a "one-two-three" twist, do a 1-2-3- hug, high five, fist bump, and end with sparkle fingers.

High standards & Holey Bears

Three “Holey Bear” ^ linoleum prints 

—————

 I love the art teacher, so I was surprised this morning that he said to me– speaking across the classroom room so everybody could hear – – he said,

“Fresca – – I told this student that I’m sorry I didn’t do what I’d said I’d do for her, but I told her she should get used to men letting her down, because men are always letting women down. Don’t you think so?”

“No, I don’t”, I said.

“You don’t?” he said, obviously surprised, like he was expecting I was going to jokingly go along with this.

“No,” I said. “I think humans let humans down, for sure. But men and women? We’re in this together. We should hold each other to high standards.”

“‘Hold each other to high standards’ he repeated, “– – I like that. But this weekend, somebody said to me that men always let women down…”

“That’s kind of a mean thing to say,” I said.

 “I thought so too!” he said.

None of the students said anything, so I have no idea what they thought – – but telling a room with a lot of 15, 16-year-old boys in it that men are always going to fail women and telling girls that they should expect it is pretty atrocious. 

And yet it’s the sort of thing people feel they can say… (Btw, the teacher is a Black man, in his fifties.)

I really do like and respect this teacher a lot – – and he seemed kind of relieved that I rejected his statement. Later he even said thank you. And he gave me a new linoleum block to carve!

So, here’s the third of the Holey Bear prints—portraits of thrift store-reject rescues.❤️

This is Unknown Bear. The lettering on all the prints is by my student. (He prints it out, I photograph and reverse it so I can carve it backwards. He doesn’t seem to care that I ask him to do this, but I’m not sure… He doesn’t mind, certainly.)

Try everything, and make lots of mistakes.

Every day some student or many students do something brilliant. (Not necessarily related to class instruction.)

I demonstrated How to Make a Zine to the English class on Friday--the one that read Romeo and Juliet forever. The class is working on graphic novels now--they're reading El Deafo and will make their own little graphic memoir.

I'd showed the teacher my zine--How to make a zine like this-- and suggested we offer that format to the students for their projects. She thought it was a good idea. Unexpectedly we work together pretty well. Her teaching skills are underwhelming*, but she's nice enough and she treats me with respect––a winning strategy!––and I reciprocate.

The teacher turned half a class period over to me, and zine making went generally well – – and extremely well in a direction I had not foreseen.

I handed out the instruction zine, ledger size (11" x 17") pieces of paper, and scissors, and led everyone, step-by-step, in making one. 
I’d say about half the class was mildly (or not at all) interested,
almost half was pretty interested,
and two people were lit up by it – – including a girl who is usually hiding under her hoodie. I'd only recently learned that she loves to draw, and she’s pretty accomplished. 

I don’t know her story, but her stuff is dark and sad, sometimes disturbing.
At any rate, she obviously loved making the zine, so I asked her if she wanted more pieces of paper. She proceeded to make six more, put them in a tidy little stack in front of her, then started illustrating her first one.

I was chuffed.

These little things that come in from the side can make a big difference in a person’s life – – for 2+ months this girl has not shown any engagement in class that I could see, and all of a sudden she lights up.

The other enthusiast was a boy who always seems disengaged, kinda spacey. Halfway through the demonstration, he'd finished his zine and was helping the kid next to him.

"Have you made these before?" I asked. (A couple kids had.)

"No," he said, "I looked at the directions."

LOL, he was the only one who did, or, anyway, the only one who could follow them.
I find 3D instructions really hard to follow, and the ones I drew in the zine weren't clear and complete.
He must have good 3D intelligence, and it was so nice to see him shine.

I was telling my friend KG about this--how happy I am that I could unlock some of the students' joy and competence--and relieved too. After all, I said, laughing, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

She replied, “It doesn’t matter!”

Weirdly, I think this is true.

What matters more is getting yourself aligned with who you are, and working forward/outward from that.

My best supporter, librarian John, advised me:
"You are new here, and you came in midstream--that's a hard thing to do. Try everything, and make lots of mistakes.
Next fall you can start fresh with everyone else."

That's my plan.
________________________

*Example of the English teacher's approach:
she'd suggested that instead of me demonstrating how to make a zine, we just show a youTube video about it.

Why do so many teachers use videos? They're inferior. I mean, especially when here was a live person volunteering to teach the task.
An episode of Hidden Brain podcast, Close Enough: Living Through Others"  how watching video tutorials of experts teaching things doesn't result in us doing things better--or doing them at all:

"Watching seems intimately connected to our perceptions that we're learning. [But] watching experts perform a skill, watching them over and over again, improves people's confidence but not their ability. . . . It turns out there's all sorts of internal reactions and feelings and emotions and nerves that make it harder than it seems."

I told the teacher I thought it'd work better if I led the students in person, step by step.
And of course it did.

These are not the students who sign up for after-school robotics, the self-motivated, well-supported students with high processing speeds.
These are kids who work better with a lot of support, who find things hard going, and who are used to being treated as problems.

Even though I was going slowly and helping every student with every fold, one girl (one of my favorites ) cried out halfway through,
"THIS IS STRESSING ME OUT!"

I told her no one had to make the zine--it wasn't a graded assignment, it was just for fun.
And I said, "I'm sorry to stress you out."

"That's okay," she said, "It's better than what we usually do in this class."

Ha, how's that for a backhanded compliment?
She did finish making one zine with me though, and I count that as success---simply that she hung in there.

She would have done nothing with a youTube, given that she wasn't inspired in the first place.

Not that watching experts is bad--if it inspires you to try for yourself.
From Hidden Brain:

"It's really important, as we're trying to pick up new skills, to have a longer term mindset in place. If you have that mindset, it's good to feel inspired to action by experts that we watch.

But mental simulation just isn't built to incorporate physiological reactions - internal states. Those are states reserved for experience. Unfortunately we spend so much time just in a state of mental simulation."

I find this comforting as I flail about at work. My many years of life experience help me, but very little of that is with children.
Luckily children are people, and a lot of my experience transfers.
But I'm gonna practice, practice, practice.
Fail again, fail better. And take heart when I succeed, at least with some students.

F(l)owers

A student picked a little spray of white lilacs outside the school door and gave me them. 

In art class, a different student asked to draw a Mother’s Day card, so we used the lilacs as inspiration.

He wanted to write “flowers”—I added the l.

Email Overview: entirely sponsored by serendipity

    ^ drawing the ‘how-to-zine’ zine

A young woman who'd volunteered at BOOK's at the thrift store friended me on FB recently--I hadn't seen her since Covid, and she's moved out east.
Her beautiful spirit was always grace in the grind, and I was glad to meet her again. She emailed asking for a copy of the How to Darn a Sock zine, and I wrote back.

I'm putting most of my email to her here, as a record of where I am at this moment:

Hello, Akiko [not her real name]!!!

It was so nice to see you pop up on FaceBook a while ago! Thank you for friending me there, and all those years ago (five?) at the store too.

You were actually just the tonic that I needed a few weeks ago.
See, about 12 weeks ago, I started working as a Special Ed Assistant (SEA) with autistic students at W High School.

I've had nothing to do with public education since I left it myself, forty-plus years ago.
I remember high school un-fondly, as being like mind-control prison.
I was surprised to discover that it's not changed much!
There aren't dress codes, so that's better;
but the doors are locked from the inside and outside, and that's worse:
"Let's give up freedom for the illusion of 'safety'."
Is that a good trade?
I don't think so.

"We have to lock the doors because of shooters," everyone tells me.
???
"Uh-huh," I say. "Haven't you seen the movie? The call is from inside the house.
Like, it's quite likely a shooter would be a student like at Columbine who brought guns INSIDE the school. And now everyone's trapped inside."

Anyway---I was feeling down about this the day you popped up, and I was heartened:
THERE ARE PEOPLE LIKE AKIKO out there, working for a different world for kids, and for all.

I remember you gardening with young people, for instance--and of course the bang-up job you did with kids books at the store.
Thank you!

I felt so encouraged by those memories --and how you are always so generous with your support of other people working for Community-- I felt boosted to keep doing what I can do inside the system.
And actually, I can do a lot.

It's like at the thrift store, where I'd felt so down sometimes about the larger system, but I never stopped believing that miniature things matter, like approaching each person AS A PERSON... asking them their name, etc.

One of the last things that came to me at work was the opportunity to bless a little plushy dog that a street worker was buying herself for protection. I was putting out toys and I happened to be holding a magic toy wand (from Frozen, LOL). I offered to bless the stuffed dog, and she accepted. I said something like,
"Be a good friend for our friend, watch out for her and keep her safe."

It was actually a high point of my time there--
that I could take what I'd learned at the store (don't be afraid; see everybody),
blend in my love of stuffed animals (did you know I repair/restore them sometimes?),
and call on my time in the Catholic Church, which is almost the only human place where I've encountered remnants of magic.
And now I can take that into school!

There are TONS of opportunities to import "stealth magic" into high school for kids who are mostly treated as not-equals in school.

I want to add, there are some wonderfully creative, smart, loving adults and opportunities in the school too.
A student could have a great time there, getting involved in theater or robot-building; studying ASL or Arabic; and other cool things.

But, overall, if you're in a locked building and some people (adults) can get out, but you (kids) can't... ?
Yeah.
Not equal.

So, little things like introducing zines---not so little!
I made the sock darning zine in art class---I attend this "gen-ed" (not special ed) class with one autistic student, and I can work on my own stuff.

The librarian who is my favorite person in the school (surprise, surprise) suggested he put the zine out in the library, free for the taking.
YAY!
(I will work on other mending zines and send them to you, but so far this is the only one.)

Then I got the idea to make another zine with instructions on "How to Make a Zine Like This"
(I'll mail you a copy of that one too, and I'll put it out at the library too)---
and the special-ed English teacher I assist said we can offer zine-making as an option to kids when they make their own graphic memoirs.

Sadly to me, most of my immediate coworkers don't care about this sort of thing.
They tend to focus on getting kids to comply...
Sigh.

But again, that means there's lots of room to introduce a little liberation...
The other day in that English class, the teacher had to leave for about 10 minutes, unexpectedly.
She handed me a grammar worksheet about pronouns (first, second, third person--not gender), and asked if I'd teach it.

I started into it, and it was immediately clear the students didn't even understand the concept of parts of speech at all---no one had laid the groundwork by explaining what grammar IS.
I was unprepared, but I brought in...
Stuffed animals! (I can't even remember how this came up, but it sort of fit in naturally...)
I said I sleep with a very soft koala--did anyone else have a plushie?

I said that no one had to talk, but eventually everyone joined in talking about their stuffed animals!
The English teacher is always shutting the kids down---she wants them to be QUIET--so any little conversation about their lives feels important.
And some kid brought up a scary experience---unrelated to anything except his entire life---and we talked about that a little.

So many of the kids have tough life experiences...
We could so easily be talking about that as we read Romeo & Juliet, etc.
I actually don't understand why the teacher discourages this, because it'd be so much more fun and meaningful for the adults as well:
We're stuck here all day too!

I don't understand a lot of what I'm seeing, so I'm waiting and watching... and doing what I can when I see openings.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to sew/mend more again in public--outside at parks and waterfronts-- with my friend Julia, who I met years ago when we both volunteered at Steeple People Thrift (closed before your time, I think). We used to do that a lot, before Covid.

People often stop and ask what we're doing if we sew in public... So we thought we'd start doing that a lot more.
We're going to be mending at the riverfront this Saturday by Stone Arch Bridge & the farmers market---This is not something we're announcing, it's entirely unofficial--
entirely sponsored by serendipity.

I'll bring my sock mending zine to give away.
I wish you could drop by!

I'm happy you've connected with a good person out east! From your FB, it looked like the break-up with S. was rocky--I'm sorry about that.
And your birthday came with a mental health crisis? I'm sad for that, but it looks like you have good support... and GOOD SPIRIT!

Thanks, by the way, for your words of support for the supporters--your acknowledgement of that work was really nice for me personally.
It's like we're all the clean-up crew for each other, mopping up the damage inflicted by systems like the one that thinks it's a good idea to lock students in...

But we can do it!
We can create within those stunting systems!
We can send tendrils of green growing things through the bars!

On we go...
Love, Fresca

My Zine, “How to make a zine like this”

Side note: OVERHEARD in the student lunchroom “…her and her piranha-looking ass”.

(School is sometimes more colorful than the thrift store, even.)

BELOW: I made this zine, “How to Make a Zine like this”, partly for English class where the students will make their own graphic memoir.

I’ll demonstrate in person—the zine is more of a reminder.

Zine-making instructions were harder to illustrate than darning a sock.

Forest Funeral (warning: dead mouse)

You know the Girlettes like to lay things to rest. They were happy, as it were, to find a dead creature (mouse?) that required their services…

WARNING: 1 photo w/ dead mouse 

(1st photo below)

They used a roll of birch bark as a sledge to convey the mouse to burial site (w soft ground)…

A spoon to dig the grave in a soft spot

… and they said the heart sutra—“gone, gone, 

utterly gone beyond —

yay!”

Zine in the library

Copies of my zine is out for free in the library! It was the librarian’s idea—he’s one of my favorite people in the high school.