writing in the (mom)ent

Tomorrow, schools in Ontario will be closed to students as unions representing teachers and staff hold the line around this round of negotiations. In 2015, in another round of education negotiations, I posted on this blog a letter to the Liberal Government about the reality of working in education. The following post has many parts of that original letter – because some of the issues are the same.

The Government says this fight is all about money. Teachers are greedy. The Government says everyone has to maintain fiscal restraint. When it comes to fiscal restraint, I can assure you that educational assistants/child and youth workers/early childhood educators, those people ARE experts. They have been living on salaries that make it an absolute necessity to be good at fiscal restraint. After 15 years as an educational assistant, I was at the top of my pay scale, where I had been for 10 years, where I would remain as long as I stayed in the field (2019). Other than a few cost of living increases over the years, I did not see significant gains in pay. I took home under $30,000 a year.

So, yup, fiscal restraint is a well-worn path for educational assistants and others. On that salary, I had to find money to purchase supplies for students that were not available within my school. I am not talking crafts supplies or reward stickers: I purchased books at the appropriate reading and interest level; I purchased manipulatives – hands on activities to encourage students to learn and grow and change. Every teacher, early childhood educator, behavioural or special needs teaching assistant I know have done the same thing. They do that with a much smaller personal budget than anyone sitting in the Legislature. They have done that for students.

The Ontario Government needs to start doing more for our students too.

The Government has not actually been practicing what they preach. The people in Ontario have been and will continue to pay for some ridiculous situations that showed anything but fiscal restraint. Buck a beer? Licence plates that are not visible in the dark? Fourteen percent increases? The cost to get out of contracts to shut down green projects?

The billions of dollars misspent would make an incredible difference in the lives of students in Ontario. That money would allow for more speech and language support, autism intervenors, equipment within schools. It would allow the early learning programs to remain fully staffed and fully supported with supplies and space to run the programs.

What about the senior students, those with learning needs who do not have the depth of programs they need to prepare them for the world beyond the education system? The same students that the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services today called a strain on supportive housing. Those students’ programs have been cut and cut and cut – their support diminished because Governments have underfunded special education for years. And years. And years. These students are capable and want to contribute to society – but they need the foundations to do that and they need those programs to last through the end of their final year of school (and beyond).

I worked in special needs and behaviour starting in 2003. I value the work of all the members of our education system, but special needs is what I know. I worked with the most vulnerable members of the system and of society – children with physical, intellectual and mental health issues. Educational/teaching assistants are the people who, along with the teaching teams, deliver education to students who need more – perhaps it’s personal care, or curriculum support or behaviour management. Every day, members of the educational/teaching assistant employee groups in the province are faced with unimaginable stress and incredible types of successes.

Let me focus on the stress aspects: They feed students who cannot do it themselves. They change diapers, clothing and sanitary pads, often lifting students the size of grown men and women. They can be kicked, pinched, punched, scratched, spit on, urinated on, have feces or furniture or pretty much anything thrown at us. Many have worn protective gear to minimize the chances of injury, which makes it harder to move around. In addition to this physical abuse, we also can be subjected to verbal abuse. Once, I was once hit so hard in the face that I fell to the ground, momentarily unconscious. I have visited the emergency department of my local hospital on more than one occasion, in addition to accompanying students with seizures and other medical conditions. I no longer do the work of an educational assistant in no small part due to the physical injuries that threatened my wellbeing. We should not have to leave our jobs to be safe.

And guess what? When educational/teaching assistants are dealing with out of control students, or otherwise doing their job, you know who was stands right next to them? The teaching staff. Early childhood educators. Other teaching assistants. Their principals. All those employee groups are at risk every day and need to know that they can do their job and have the support of their Government, their community and the educational system.

People in education know how education works best. The Government does not listen to them. Teachers know that class size matters in ways that do not show up on a spreadsheet or in a budget discussion.

Teachers knows that students should not be forced to do online courses. Some students do not have access to a computer or the internet. Students need a relationship to learn; learning is an interaction in which information is shared, discussions take place to assess whether true learning has occurred, and adjustments are made by a trained teacher to ensure that learning happens. None of that happens between a computer and a child.

All education staff know that funding matters – funding for programs that allow learning to happen for all students, at all levels. Presently, the Government only funds special education so that frontline workers – teaching/educational assistants – are present to do personal care and ensure safety, no curriculum support. Students with special needs do not have the intensive support needed for them to meaningfully and actively participate in the learning environment.

This is why the negotiations in education are not going well: the Government wants the public to think it is all about money, specifically compensation. Well, they’re half right: it’s about money and funding the system so all students can be successful.

Do people in the education sector want to receive fair compensation? You bet. Just like every other person in Ontario. But the Government has only focussed on the compensation issue. It’s time to focus on the bigger picture. That’s why education sector workers strike – for the biggest issue: students and their learning environment.

Walk a mile in the shoes of a teacher or an early childhood educator or a teaching assistant. You would love aspects of your job. And you would be devastated that your Government undermines you on a personal level and constantly on a professional level. You would be devastated to see amazing students not get the chance to succeed because your Government felt it was important to support projects that got votes over supporting students; a Government who feels that undermining people who work in education is the way to get negotiations done.

And that, no matter how you spin it, is the reality. The Ford Government has chosen other priorities in front of the future of Ontario: children and the people who are educating and shaping them every single day.

Stop taking a Government fed view of education. Really find out what is going on in education, how schools are still somehow succeeding to support students without sufficient funds, but also find out how much more could be done if the Government would focus on what really matters.

Get real. And think about the reality of the lives of education workers in Ontario.

Most importantly, think about the reality of the lives of students. It is about the students. The reality is that the Government has left people working in education no choice but to keep walking the picket line.

 

Some time ago, I was sent a prompt from Firefly Writing‘s subscription service, Hello Writer. The prompt was to write about our vices based on a poem by Ceclia Woloch called Fireflies.

This poem barely covers all of my vices, and some are (happily) former vices, but this is the flow that happened.

and these are my vices

self-doubt

self-criticism

lack of boundaries

Hot Tamales and JuJubes

angry words for careless drivers

mindlessness when

mindfulness is needed

(which is always)

calling children sweetie

when they’re too old

or unknown to me

exhaustive worrying

about health and adults

who were children

and people’s perceptions

avoidance and procrastination

thinking about writing

more than actually writing

thinking I’ve failed

more than knowing I’ve

succeeded

living in the past

when the present is fleeting

Somehow today, I started to think about all the things.

It started with the idea that this is my final post of the year that I committed to writing at least one blog post each week.

I began January 19 and wrote at least once a week for all but four weeks for the remainder of the year.

One week in October, the first week Evelyn was hospitalized, I didn’t write. And the two weeks after she died, I didn’t write.

It all felt too raw. Losing her was one thing; watching her die, well, that was a whole lifetime of feeling packed into a few weeks, and especially her final few minutes.

Actually, I wrote a lot, but I couldn’t trust myself to post anything.

And now, I’m done with that weekly writing commitment. Partly because it felt performative. Yes, it got me writing, but it wasn’t the type of writing that I have learned to benefit from through my writing courses this year.

I write all the time – even when I’m not physically engaged in the act, I’m writing. I’m bombarded with ideas and fleshing them out. Seeing where they go.

But when I need to sit down at this space, I back away from the ideas and the feelings and the words I want to put down. I feel that it is not a place where I can be the writer I want to be, the writer I am now.

I write as me in the past.

And that’s where my brain went today.

To the things and the events and the people that have shaped me; the past (including the way, way past – the “before I was born” past), the present and the future.

And then I went to the place of thinking about those same factors – events, things, people – who continue to shape me because I let them and not because they should.

Writing has taught me to stop running, but to turn and face those things that haunt me, that anger me, that propel me forward while still looking back, while ignoring the present, and not living within it.

Writing has grounded me in something that meditation allowed me to glimpse: the present. This moment.

For at least ten minutes everyday for the past five plus years, I have meditated. And in those minutes, I am nowhere else, but simply here.

Nowhere else.

Writing, although often a distractive activity, allows me to leave on the paper all those things that have buzzed, like an angry swarm of bees, around my head for years, always threatening to sting if I didn’t keep moving, moving, afraid of what could be if I stopped and let myself feel the feelings.

Writing has allowed me to turn and see that it was only my fear buzzing, haunting me.

I’d long ago outrun the actual negative things. Now, I needed to name them and write them out of my head so that I can move. Forward. Sideways. Wherever I want to go.

Writing has also given me another gift: a way to tell the stories I’ve always been creating in my mind since I was seven. The stories of the things that go bump in the night, that went bump in my life.

Of love. Of laughter. Of sorrow. Of fear.

The stuff of life.

Writing for me is sometimes like finding a piece of wool on the floor. When I pick it up, it becomes apparent that it’s not just a piece. It is the end, or beginning, of something that begs me to follow it. I begin to shape it, to wind it into a ball. And as I gather the wool, winding it round and round, I am taken up and over furniture and round corners, and down stairs, and the world I am in is poorly lit. But the idea of letting go, of abandoning the adventure of seeing where the wool will lead me, never enters my mind.

And then I have gathered it all, so now I must knit all the pieces together. And sometimes I’ll have to go back, pull out some stitches because something’s not right. Or I have to check the pattern, make adjustments. 

Then after a long time, I have a sweater I think I like. Maybe.

And right there – the idea of a long time – is why the idea of writing a weekly blog post no longer appeals to me.

I can’t write well in a few minutes. I need time to do that.

And I also can’t put anything on my blog that I might want to submit for consideration for publishing down the road (because a blog is considered ‘previously published’ in the world of publishing).

So, if and when I come to this space going forward, it will be different.

I can’t say what that will be – perhaps book recommendations, or links to great articles, or, as always, rants about the government.

Or writing that is like that wool sweater – something I think I maybe like and want to know what you think.

So I’ll see y’all when I see ya.

Thanks for coming along for the year long ride.

This year, this decade, are almost over. And this one has been big for me and my writing life.

I took my first course back in January and it has been a truly wonderful ride. I have more knowledge, more stories, and a greater ability to understand the connection between writing, reading, and me.

My mother is a writer. I know that for her, being a writer means being paid for your words. And that golden ticket has not yet been awarded to me. (So am I really a writer?)

I can clearly remember, as a teenager, reading mom’s stories, the stories she had shoved into the back of filing cabinets. These pieces were full of wonderfully rich characters and deeply descriptive phrases.

I knew even then that some of her fiction stories were her way of working through her complex and complicated life. I read and reread them, trying to figure out how she did the work of writing, but also in hopes of understanding what parts of the stories were real and which were fiction.

Writing is a deeply personal experience, no matter the genre. My mom did a great deal of reporting on the Arts and investigative pieces but it was her piece on her journey through cancer which won a National award.

As I meet other people in my classes, I become keenly aware that everyone writes for different reasons and those reasons shift and evolve. And as I read their work, I know that we all have something to say and that it will land and have deep meaning for readers. My courses and the people within them have given me confidence – another takeaway. Confidence to keep writing and to submit my work here and there.

Like my mom, I write. And I do a lot of writing to work through life. I also have rediscovered the girl who was me, the one who used her imagination to escape her complicated life.

Life is far less complicated now, and that joy of writing has returned.

to say those times

made me happy

is not the full story

they woke me

to what it meant

for my heart

to move beyond

a vital organ

to little hands

and little feet

and hugs at bedtime

to smooth the sad

these memories and

what is my today

means that heart

is healed

(Full disclosure – photo has NOTHING to do with this blog post. I just loved finding this birdhouse.)

Yesterday I sent off my final assignment for my Fiction class and the day before, one for Creative Non-fiction.

Big sigh.

I am heading into the final stretch of my certificate in Creative Writing. One more course then the Final Project. A little 20000 – 25000 word project. No biggie.

Big lie.

I’m loving this opportunity to write all the time. It’s a dream.

And I’ve learned so much. My classmates are kind and generous with their feedback; my instructors are supportive and clear in expectations; and, my writing is definitely improving from all this love and attention.

I could do courses indefinitely- and I will because this is a big field to learn about. But for now, I’m feeling capable. Capable of writing good stories, essays with meaning, and revising them without feeling that I’m in over my head.

So as we enter the last month of my year long blogging challenge to write weekly, thanks to everyone who has followed along. I’m glad you’re on the writing journey with me.

In all my writing courses, there are two pieces of advice that bubble up again and again:

show, don’t tell, and

kill your little darlings.

The first piece of advice is exactly what it says: as a writer, I need to show you, through rich descriptive writing, an emotion, a scene, an event. I should not list off the physical characteristics of a person or tell you my emotional response – I should show you.

Example:

I poured my tea. The sound was surprising. 

versus

I heard the tea pouring into the cup, filling the silence of the house. I had made a thousand cups, but that was the first time I noticed the auditory beauty of the ritual. I smelled the mint of the tea blend and was mesmerized by the spin and whirl of hot water into a cup, like an eddy in a pool of still water.

(Hopefully you ‘saw’ the tea more clearly in the second example.)

The second piece of advice sounds a bit like a call to action against someone we love – kill your little darlings. As a matter of fact, the first person giving this writing advice stated it even more violently:

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. (Cornish writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, pen-name Q)

Stephen King, being Stephen King, states, “…kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” Kill three times in a sentence is rather severe.

But what the heck are one’s “darlings”?

When writing, often in early drafts, there can be some really brilliant phrases or single words that come out of one’s brain, through our bodies and on to the page. And we are convinced, completely and utterly, that our work will be diminished without those words.

Judith Claire Mitchell, author of Reunion of Ghosts, sadly parted with a self-description her main character used, stating she was “negligible as an eyelash”. Mitchell was deeply saddened by the loss of these four words, but less so when she saw another writer use them. In the end, her darlings were apparently not so darling.

Now, four words, not such a big deal, maybe. Perhaps. But some people ‘kill’ entire pages, entire bits of stories, entire characters, settings, etc. Because for whatever reason, those pieces of writing simply do not work in the larger piece.

One of my instructors equated the idea of having to make these type of choices to knitting. You have knitted a beautiful sweater and proudly show it to a friend. The friend admires the work and all the fine stitches. But then, the friend points out how the neon green is gorgeous, but it doesn’t seem to go with the rest of the overall piece.

Knitting means unravelling all the work after that neon green section and reworking the sweater. Often, taking something out of a piece of writing is the same: the writer Marian Palaia (The Given World) tells of having to not only cut a few words, but a third of her first draft, including a main character, Cam. The ultimate kicker is that the first word of the novel at that point was “Cam”.

That certainly would be a large chunk of unravelling.

Sometimes little darlings are truly ‘little’ – a word or phrase here or there. But when you have fallen in love with the sound of those words or phrases, it feels impossible to imagine your story without them.

There is a solution – and that is also something I hear with each class I take. Create a file for your ‘little darlings’ – whether they are words, or phrases, or entire stories. And kill them for the sake of your story.

A better analogy might be that you are engaging in literary cryogenics – merely putting them on ice until the right environment comes along to resuscitate them.

I have a file of little darlings – and big darlings. Stories and paragraphs, sentences and words. They lie awaiting the day when they too can shine.

After I Fall Down the Stairs at the Golden Temple, by Mary Oliver

For a while I could not remember some word 

    I was in need of,

and I was bereaved and said: where are you,

   beloved friend?

There’s so much going on in this poem – I was first struck by it because of the endearment of beloved friend in reference to a word. I do so love words.

But it is the idea that the word is forgotten that I am struck by more.

It’s hard to watch as someone becomes a regular patron of forgetting.

Forgetting a question just asked.

Forgetting what they ate for dinner.

Forgetting a comment just made. Again. Again. Again.

And on the flip side, those around the person need to be able to forget dealing with the forgetting. Not for days or weeks. But for a while.

We need to be able to go sing at the top of our lungs in a karaoke room the size of a phone booth. (Best five dollars and twenty five cents ever spent. Just sayin’.)

The effect of spending time with someone who is forgetting makes you mindful – to be present. To appreciate life for what it is, in this remembered now.

 

Thank you to Mary Oliver for her words; they have sustained me more than usual of late.

Fall

the black oaks fling
their bronze fruit
into all the pockets of the earth
pock pock

they knock against the thresholds
the roof the sidewalk
fill the eaves
the bottom line

of the old gold song
of the almost finished year
what is spring all that tender
green stuff

compared to this
falling of tiny oak trees
out of the oak trees
then the clouds

gathering thick along the west
then advancing
then closing over
breaking open

the silence
then the rain
dashing its silver seeds
against the house