The Learning Curve

The most amazing part of being a teacher is what you learn. 

Last Monday the VCE results came out.  Text messages went into overdrive, parents breathed collective sighs of relief and graduates all over Victoria jumped for joy and shed tears of disappointment.  I was awake by 6:04am, waiting for the flood of text messages letting me know that either all the hard work had been worthwhile or that I should seek alternative career options.

Some students did better than others.  In general the reality is, the more work a student puts in, the higher the grade.  However, natural talent, god-given brains and simple DNA also play a part.  Salt of the Earth is a wonderful young man.  He was not blessed with a flair for writing and he comes from a non-English speaking home.  This year he did particularly poorly in his first assessment task.  However, instead of adopting the always popular "Fuck it" attitude - something which I am an expert in - he decided to grab the proverbial reigns and spent the rest of the 2010 academic year pushing himself to do better.  He listened to every bit of constructive criticism and took on board every suggestion.  In the end however, he was disappointed with that little number which told him where he ranked in the subject.

For most students, particularly private school students this is the cue to start the tantrum.  "My teacher was an idiot.  I worked so hard.  I clearly wasn't prepared properly.  She never did this, she did too much of that.  My school sux..."  and on it goes.  And I must admit, I felt guilty.  I kept thinking about how I could have prepared Salt of the Earth better, what advice I should have given him that I failed to.  I so desperately wanted this tenacious young man to succeed, I assumed the fact that he didn't get the score we both wanted him to must have been my fault.

Knowing he had been disappointed by the result on Monday, I checked up on him yesterday.  He told me he had also been going over the year in his head, trying to work out where he had gone wrong, what he could have done better.  And then he thought about 2009.  And then he thought about 2008 and all those years that came before 2010.  He acknowledged that while he worked his arse off in 2010, in the years leading up to it he had pretty much ignored the subject.  He recognised that considering he only really worked for 9 months, it was a tad unreasonable to expect a better result than the one he achieved.

Salt of the Earth you are an amazingly mature young man.  You see the bigger picture and your place it.  You don't accept excuses but you're willing to see the reason and acknowledge the cause. 

Salt of the Earth you have taught me a great deal.  And let's face it, you were in the top 10% of the state.  Not bad for 9 months work.

Merry Christmakkah Marilyn

So apparently my husband loves me. He really does. He just needs me to change a teensy little bit. All he needs is for me to never scream or yell, never criticise or nag, be consistent with every thought, word and deed I express, never complain or say or do anything that may result in conflict and never bring up the past. Above all I must always be happy. That shouldn't be too hard, should it? Hopefully I'll be getting a lobotomy for Christmakkah and then all will be very Stepford indeed.

Hubby believes he has cornered the market on being reasonable and rational. He sees himself as the bar that we should each aspire to reach. Gosh I wish I was more like him. Emotional repression looks like so much fun. The key to being reasonable, I have discovered, is never raising your voice. You can be as cruel and as emotionally distant as you want as long as you don't yell. Maybe that was why Hitler got such bad press. All that yelling at those rallies was certain to eventually offend those genteel WASPs. If you're going to murder millions, at least have the decency to do so quietly, thank you very much.

I, like most other Jews, was raised in a house of yellers. My mother yelled, my father yelled, my sister yelled, I yelled. And guess what? We all still yell. And I don't think that's such a bad thing. I don't believe that because I will occasionally raise my voice that I am a bad person. I don't believe that yelling equals irrational. Yelling means, "LISTEN TO ME GODDAMNIT! I AM SICK OF SAYING THE SAME SHIT TO THE SAME PEOPLE OVER AND OVER AGAIN. YOU MUST TURN YOUR ATTENTION AWAY FROM RIVER COTTAGE AND PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I AM SAYING" or something like that.

According to hubby his wishes for me to change reside in his desire for us to be 'happy'. And that's not a bad thing. But the reality is you're not always happy and at those times I want honesty and truth. I want anger and sadness and whatever else is making you feel miserable. I want the mess of life and emotions, with all the tears and tantrums that come with it. I don't want civilised cups of tea on a white linen couch. I want the rollercoaster. I am the rollercoaster. And I want that to be okay.

Marilyn Monroe once said, "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." Well I say, Merry Chistmakkah to you Marilyn! I suspect underneath all that coy, heavy lidded flirtatiousness was one hell of a yeller. I suspect that you too found that in the end men wanted not the woman you really were, but their version of you. The toned down, somewhat muted and, in all probability, far less entertaining Marilyn. I hope you never allowed them to press that mute button. I hope you saved your best for you and for those who truly accepted all of you. I hope that in the end you told the men in your life who couldn't handle you that it was their weakness that was the problem, not your strength. I hope you told them to take their reason, rationality and refinement and stick it up their incredibly tight arses.

But then again, look where you ended up.