Snapshots from LearningWorks
Ropes courses, burnout, and home-baked brownies
[This content is transferred from the fourth edition of my Mailchimp newsletter, which released October 26, 2022.]
Your boy is back from Minnesota!
After a long summer of teaching (and rebuilding my ability to write), I can’t wait to tell you about everything I’ve learned in Minnesota. it’s strange being a post-evangelical in a post-Christian landscape--I was a better evangelist for Lu’s Sandwiches than the Lord. It gets even stranger when you add foursquare games, dancing in the cafeteria, and traffic cones launched into the air.
This summer, I co-taught Leadership Academy, a high school/career preparation course, for 17 rising 9th graders. We ended up spending most of our time arm wrestling, screaming “objection” at each other, and balancing on wire ropes fifty feet in the air. Of course, we still had some time left over to work on “real” assignments, like creating zines and videos to advocate for change on social justice issues. Look out Minnesota: this is your next generation of activists, learners, and leaders.
Of course, it’s hard to remain Strictly Positive when you’re catching your breath from chasing schoolbuses or panic-writing the day’s All School Meeting (ASM) agenda or sorting out last-minute logistics for the annual Predator-Prey game. But then you remember you have a veteran co-teacher whose cultural competency and uncanny ability to vibe with anyone empowers you to be a Respectful Champion (love you Louise 💖). And you remember you have a class of ambitious, leaders-in-the-making whose persistence and dedication inspires you to Go Above and Beyond. ultimately, leaning on the strength of my teaching team, my community, and my God empowered me towards Challenge by Choice throughout the whole summer.
These days, I’m a educational consultant with a local hagwon (Korean tutoring academy) supporting the college prep of mostly East Asian students. In my free time, I’m watching college football livestreams, scrolling through Amphibia fanfiction, and running social media and publicity for Claremont Christian Fellowship (follow us at @ccfcommunity!) The post-grad life is kinda boring, but it’s a much-needed reprieve from the constant chaos of urban teaching. If you’re in the Orange County/Los Angeles area and want to hang, give me a holler and we’ll make it happen!
Let's kick off our "behind-the-scenes" with this cool video I edited and screened in front of 200 people for LearningWorks' graduation ceremony! Shout out to my co-teacher Louise for being a creative lesson planner and giving us the most exciting shots.
This was ~Week 5, when I was pissed off with Admin for (unintentionally) making me and my kids their scapegoat for not knowing how to organize Predator-Prey. Admin said, don’t bring food for the kids. I said, F that. So that day, 15 or so kids got some home-baked imitation Tastykake.
In-person teaching is pretty hard. It gets even harder when you're a leadership teacher.
I was on duty for all 3 class periods, with no prep periods in between. (For context, regular teaching fellows teach for 1 period and have 2 prep periods.) I was also assigned to All School Meeting (ASM) committee, so I had to perform a skit on stage every morning before class, eating up my already-limited emotional energy. Admin knew I was autistic and even more susceptible to burnout, but they forced me to stay on this committee anyway because there weren't enough people. To survive, I had to arrive at school at 7 am to set up the classroom, memorize my skit lines, and get my 5 minutes in with the Lord.
One silver lining: the kids gradually began to warm up to my ASM “character.” Eventually, ASM became a labor of love, for which I practiced choreography and freestyle so I could hype up the room before the actual performance.
The grind did grind me down, as well as the people around me. My coworkers' coping mechanism of choice was pot brownies (eaten outside of school hours, of course.) Even Admin wasn't doing much better - the HR person sometimes didn't eat until 8 pm, and the Executive Director often turned to Costco freeze-dried salads as "meal prep." I always made sure to cook actual food and get out of the house every weekend, but I felt overworked, underslept, and stretched to my limits.
It is absurd to expect people to do more with less. And somehow, I made it happen.
My first classroom policy was to create a bathroom signout sheet so people could take bio breaks as they needed. I also created a meme wall so students could take ownership of our classroom. Granted, 99% of the "memes" were one student's stash of animal and Naruto drawings, but they were pretty darn good... (I'm still kicking myself for losing the meme poster.)
Going beyond classroom culture, I led my very first jigsaw lesson, assigning groups of students to research time management methods and create graphic posters educating the whole class. I also introduced the concepts of community/structural care and grind culture, encouraging students to apply them to their own contexts. ("LW is grind culture." -Alex) For our final project, I had students create zines and videos challenging viewers to take action on social justice issues impacting Minneapolis.
On the weekends, I baked a whole batch of baked goods for my coworkers and me to share the following week. Regardless of whatever happened among us the previous week, every Monday meant a fresh start (and fresh cookies). I believe in a God of second chances; baking and breaking bread was my way of inviting God into my workplace.
To be sure, I couldn't do it without my co-teacher Louise's excellent people-watching skills (and lesson planning!) or my mentor teacher Marlee's seasoned wisdom. And it was my students who are the true heroes of this story.
2 co-teachers. 17 kids. Countless memories.
I could tell you about "d," (Darrius) the kid who trusted me with his legos and Naruto drawings and who started a brief but profound conversation about the importance of thanking God before we eat.
...or about Walter, the one kid who actually liked writing essays and chased the busses with our teaching fellows to wave the other kids goodbye.
...or about Elise, who never failed to call me by my nickname "Jovial Joseph," even after we realized that the classic "name and action" icebreaker game does not work super well with angsty teenagers.
...or about Kadija, who rocked a Somali flag hijab (now that's a Respectful Champion) and mentored younger students.
...or about Siham, who had an uncanny talent for intricate henna sketches and nudging our homeroom to complete their problems of the day.
...or about Amaya, who beat just about everybody at arm wrestling and helped other students with video editing.
...or about Persephone, who learned Chinese calligraphy in her free time and stayed behind after class to help Louise and me clean up.
...or about Clara, who carried her group's zine project almost singlehandedly and challenged herself to at least attempt the high ropes course, even when she was scared of heights.
...or about Leila, who had the funniest off-the-wall remarks and delivered a fiery speech about why the Winx Club remake was a disaster.
...or about Bristol, who built a really cute cardboard snake and added to Louise's judge fit by duct-taping school supplies into a makeshift gavel.
...or about Fathi, whose easygoing, roll-with-the-punches nature made her super fun to play with during our annual predator-prey game.
...or about Malcolm, who made an excellent lawyer during mock trial and checked in on Louise so she wouldn't fall off the low ropes course.
...or about Roman and Xerxes, the dynamic red family duo who chair-raced and aced presentations together.
...or about Millie, whose undeniable passion for anti-racism shaped her piercing insights about racialized power dynamics at LW.
...or about Alex, who impressed me with his cutting-edge commentary on capitalism and their willingness to call me out on my janky lessons. I really wanted to be their friend from day 1. One day we did get to sit down and have an honest heart-to-heart. We swapped coffeehouse recs and ideas for making LW better for the next generation, hugging it out at the end.
...or about Aniya, who taught me the numbers in Hmong and joined me in dancing to K-pop in the cafeteria. She also impressed me with her unstoppable laser focus (I had to remind her to take breaks). Aniya's gifts were always a blessing, especially her last one: a red panda container stuffed with fruit jellies. (Like myself, Aniya had appreciated connecting over our shared Asianness.)
Oh wait, I just told you about all our students.
Here are some of my favorite coworkers, as well as the lessons I learned from them!
Tyler: the white dude wrapped with tape and stickers--he was nice enough to let his eco-art students turn him into their final project. The kids loved Tyler because he would trade Pokemon cards and stimtoys with them, and they would even check in on him when he was feeling down. I loved Tyler too--we bonded over being autistic men being emotionally overworked by the demands of ASM committee but still trying to give our 100% to the kids.
Lesson: wash your hands regularly. (Tyler had his students swab different surfaces around LW and place the samples in Petri dishes to develop. By the end of a week, the dishes for “phone surface” and “foursquare ball” were the nastiest.)
Elise: the blonde girl. fun fact: Elise was a former student of my grad school buddy Elise, who was also a teacher at LW. Elise was one of the youngest teaching fellows (a rising 12th grader), but I always appreciated how she took charge of brainstorming plot devices for ASM and spoke truth to power during staff meetings. Elise especially won my respect by choosing personal responsibility over defensiveness whenever I called her in. She says I softened the blows by holding her accountable in a loving way (read as: jokingly roasting her), but I could tell she was really trying to be teachable and grow as a servant-leader for her students.
Lesson: when in doubt, add a debate to your course plan! (Elise was a science teacher, so she amped up her class on microbes by adding a debate on whether the government should mandate COVID-19 vaccines. The kids had a lot of fun, and I'm considering doing something similar when (read as: if) I step back into the classroom.)
Anab: the black hijabi woman making the peace signs. One of two returning teaching fellows, Anab proactively friend-tored newer fellows and spearheaded planning for Celebration (LW's graduation ceremony). She was the first person I sat next to in orientation, and we connected over trading and comparing stimtoys (tangles are significantly quieter than fidget cubes).
Lesson: knowledge is currency. For example, Minnesota culture is quite insular--if you didn't grow up or go to college there, it's really hard to make friends. It's also quite implicit--people can have whole conversations through body language, and autistic people like me sometimes miss out. (Anab and I had quite a few conversations demystifying why the workplace got weird sometimes.)
Chris and Marlen: the black person with red hair and glasses (Chris) and the Latina in the floral tank (Marlen). We dormed together at MCAD (thankfully, we had our own apartments) and would usually take the bus to and from LW together. I even had weekly pho and boba runs with Marlen, where we got to debrief the week's events and get to know each other better.
Lesson: never wear your work lanyard in public (here's some insight on my experience as an autistic person: my working memory is super spotty, so I didn't always remember to take off my work lanyard once I left LW. This is unwise for public spaces, like the bus, because anyone can see my name and where I work. I wouldn't know that though--autistic people have a hard time building street smarts. So Chris and Marlen had to perpetually remind me to take off my work lanyard...RIP)
When I wasn't scrambling up the LW dopamine treadmill, I was pedaling through different parts of Minneapolis on a nice ride bicycle. the city has this bike-sharing program called "Nice Ride Minneapolis," where $40 a month gets you unlimited 45-minute rides. That's borderline OP, especially when you consider all the side benefits: extra nature, sunshine, and cardio. (I think I lost ~10 pounds by the time I came back.)
Thanks to Nice Ride Minneapolis (tm), every week was a new adventure. Minnehaha falls was so fun: I loved vlogging and splashing around in the river. I also got some nice shots at the Stone Arch Bridge and the mill ruins. (But I would have come with an empty stomach had I known there was a festival nearby...) Boneshaker Books, Minneapolis' most radical bookstore, was also pretty cool--its selection on the environment and indigenous history was pretty strong, and I even bought a book claiming that laziness is a capitalist myth. I will say though that the one adventure I would take back would be Target Field: the shots were amazing, but baseball was lowkey kind of a snoozefest.
My time in Minnesota has a very special place in my heart. LearningWorks allowed me to teach and learn in a cross-cultural context, and I gained valuable memories and experiences from my students and coworkers. I am even more confident that my vocation is to work with high schoolers in an educational setting.
But teaching also constantly thrust me into survival mode, making it really hard for me to be my best self. I was reactive. I struggled to self-regulate. I slapped together a disorganized curriculum. I was snarky and impatient with my students and coworkers. I made many cultural missteps with Muslim members of the LW community. I melted down in front of the kids multiple times. I didn't make much time to rest, reflect, or otherwise just be.
And I burned down.
My body bears the scars of grind culture, of systemic ableism, of toxic workplace politics, of my own failures. Healing will take months, even years.
I will not be applying to teacher schools this fall…if at all.
So why did I paint this picture of a great adventure, only to drop this mood-killer on you? To set up my final idea: keeping it Strictly Positive. Strictly Positive, one of LW's official norms, was a meme among my teaching cohort (I'll let you imagine why). But with the help of my therapist, I turned it into one of my most important survival skills.
For me, "strictly positive" doesn't mean toxic positivity. It acknowledges that the education-industrial complex throws shit at you and demands that you turn it into diamonds. It also acknowledges that wallowing in shit is self-defeating...and that you can still find diamonds.
"Strictly positive" means intentionally seeking out the diamonds in yourself and in the people around you. It means savoring those diamonds and giving thanks for their existence. It means choosing into joy and gratitude today, tomorrow, and every day after that.
Now that sounds like a great idea!