Dear Family,
I know that you probably didn’t notice the lack of a September letter, but please know that I noticed it and decided not to worry too much about it. The unfortunate thing about months that I fail to write a letter is that these months tend to be more eventful than months that are easy to write about. So let’s just get started.
First, I should mention Luke’s and my quick trip across the country to go to my cousin Morgan’s wedding to Cory Campbell. The wedding was so beautiful, and one of the few traditional American weddings I’ve ever been to. A beautiful venue, a beautiful service, and a beautiful couple.
Cory has been around for so long now that I’m not entirely sure when he first started showing up at our family gatherings. I’m grateful to officially have him in the family and I’m excited to see more of him and Morgan together now that they’re married.
We left Salt Lake before 7 AM on Saturday and arrived back in the morning on Monday. All in all, it was lovely, but the quickest trip of our lives. Luke and I are agreed that we should never plan such a short trip with such early mornings again, for our own sakes.
Yesterday was Halloween, and Luke and I made sure to have very few plans for our first Halloween together. We were so excited that we finally live in a neighborhood where little kids will come a knocking with their cute little costumes and their parents standing back because if their little kid wants a bucketful of candy, they need to be brave enough to ask for it themselves, dang it.
Typing that, I realize what effective practice trick-or-treating can be for little kids to gain confidence in very basic transactional politeness with strangers. I didn’t remember this part of my childhood trick-or-treating experience, but parents do seem to stand a decent distance from the doorstep if their child is old enough to climb stairs while simultaneously holding a pumpkin-shaped bucket. The kid says, “trick-or-treat,” I put candy in their bucket, and then they say thank you (usually) and leave. Sometimes they compliment my costume, sometimes they tell me what their costume is, but that’s for the most socially adept five year olds.
I’m now in a tricky spot with Halloween. For one thing, it’s something to celebrate, which I am pretty much always in favor of. Whether the holiday is my sister who lives on the other side of the country’s birthday or Valentine’s Day (something that effects me more personally) or Christmas, knowing that the day is a holiday makes me a much happier and more energetic person on that day.
Halloween may be all about dressing up, overindulging, and staying up later than you normally would—all things I don’t love—but it is something to celebrate and it helps kid practice basic social skills. I suppose it’s net neutral.
My favorite trick-or-treaters (ascending in my esteem for them):
- the girl who had the same costume character as me (Queen of Hearts)
- the boy with a Hollow Knight costume whose dad had to do all of the speaking for him (he, for reasons I don’t have full context for, does not quite understand the social practice that is trick-or-treating)
- The boy who was dressed as a black chess piece with a king hat, which, when acknowledged, he removed to reveal a rook hat
- The girl who came by at 9:41 PM when I was about to change into pajamas. I don’t remember her costume, but she was probably a young teenager. We still had plenty of candy and I doubted anyone else would be coming, so I said, “Please just take as much as you want.” So she proceeded to pick out every Smarties in the bowl.
This was not an insignificant number of Smarties.
Her father was standing back—giving his daughter the proper independence required for her socialization—but looked really sheepish when he noticed her picking so many pieces of candy from the bowl. He apologized and I reassured him that I really didn’t want to have a ton of candy when the night was over, so I didn’t mind.
The sweet girl said, “When somebody tells me I can take as much as I want, I take as much as I want.” Which was just about the most relatable thing I’ve ever heard a girl say.
After wishing the girl goodnight and happy Halloween, I went and told Luke all that had been said and done, to which he replied, “Oh girl. May you never fully understand social customs.”
Indeed, may she never, so that she can take all the Smarties for those who want to but can’t make themselves.
Besides Halloween, the past two months have been filled with lesson planning, teaching, and grading. Most recently, grading has taken the majority of my time since the end of term was October 15th.
I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not, but I kind of hate grades right now—and it’s not because I had to do a lot of grading this week. Here are the events that led to my current attitude:
First, I read a few books over the summer that were “anti-behaviorist,” meaning that they recommend not relying on rewards or punishments to raise moral and motivated children. As you might be able to guess, grades are one of the most consistent and reliable forms of behavioral reinforcement in children’s lives.
Then there’s the fact that, over the past few weeks, not many, but a few parents have reached out to me about their kids’ grades being below what they need them to be. This is very reasonable and I am learning a lot about how much a perfect (and imperfect) GPA can impact some students’ futures. I’m grateful that my parents never hounded me about my grades or felt the needs to harass my teachers (except when they made me sad), but I’m also grateful that I never had to worry about paying for my own college. And I think those two things are probably connected.
Finally, it irks me that if a student gets an A– as their term grade for a single term, I’m pretty sure that their GPA is officially imperfect and will never be perfect again. There is no repentance in our current grading system, and I kind of despise that we can’t see an A grade as something to work up to achieving throughout the entire year and we instead need to penalize students when they’re applying to colleges for having a bad quarter in tenth grade. When a student loses a family member or something else terrible happens, teachers are expected to mark assignments as incomplete and give the student extra time to finish it later when they’re in a better place. I wish we had a system and expectation that made it okay for the kid to look back at their high school transcript during their senior year, see the C during first term of tenth grade and think, “yeah…that is in fact the term when my mom passed away.”
Or better yet, not have to look back on their entire schooling experience as a series of percentages and letter grades, but instead as a collection of learned skills and exploratory experiences.
I’m grateful for the instruction I’ve gotten about grading and the mercy that I’ve been suggested to give. I feel like Provo High and BYU are doing a good job of reinforcing my desires against behaviorism, and if my future children are completely out of control and not properly potty-trained, then feel free to intervene and send me a sticker chart.
My favorite thing about teaching so far has really just been the students. I love my students and the little moments I get to have with them, both while discussing relevant, productive things, and while discussing completely irrelevant, distracting things.
One of my students the other day, when I asked him whether his table was discussing the assignment and not their personal lives, turned to face me and asked, “Ms. Wonnacott, did you vote for Trump?” His whole table laughed, because this question was not at all related to whatever they had been discussing (which was, unsurprisingly, not at all related to whatever they were supposed to be discussing).
When I told him I wouldn’t tell him that because I’m not really supposed to discuss my politics with students, he said, “Oh yes you can, you’re just not supposed to try to convince me about any political opinions.” Unsurprisingly, this did not compel me to change my answer, and I resorted to, “So, what do you and your group think are some notable patterns in Oedipus?”
I’ll be honest, this kid is one of my favorite students, not because of how much he talks in class or because of how he treats me, but because I respect the way he interacts with others. I’ve seen him shut down mean comments that his classmates had about another student, and I’ve seen him engage in one the most even-tempered discussions over Trump between two disagreeing parties that I’ve ever seen.
I have a couple of students who I like for very different reasons. Some are always willing to answer questions in class, some I’ve had to tell to get off their phone enough times that we have a fun little rapport, and some are just so respectful and willing to do their work and ask questions in a way that makes me happy.
Then there’s this one student who I just have the weirdest tendency to accidentally make eye contact with during quiet moments in the classroom. I suppose this shouldn’t reflect poorly on me, because I’m supposed to be looking around at the students pretty regularly to make sure they’re on task. This student just has a tendency of staring at the front of the classroom at odd moments.
Normally when I accidentally make eye contact with a student, I either smile, make a funny face and shrug, or just look away. One day though, I caught this student looking at me with a particularly scrutinizing expression, and so I just, “What?”
He said, “Ms. Wonnacott, it’s just so weird. You somehow simultaneously look forty and twenty.”
I’m inclined to feel complimented by this, since I’m usually more concerned about looking like I’m their age than looking too old. But I mean, still.
It just seems like the kind of thing a kid whose parents didn’t let him go up to the front door alone on Halloween would say.
The final thing I feel I have to mention about school is my way of getting there everyday: my electric scooter.
Luke and I are waiting to see how long we can survive in our respective jobs with just the one car. Since Luke works in Orem and I work in Provo, it’s been pretty easy for me to simply scoot (I’ve decided this is the proper verb) to work while Luke drives. I really don’t mind the scoot at all, though I have to admit that one of my worst fears for the school year was that my students would ever see me on my scooter.
This fear has now been realized several times.
Since I’ve actually gotten to know my students, I’ve been less afraid that they will lose all respect for their teacher who scoots to work everyday. I even did my best to acknowledge my mode of transportation in conversation a few times so that no one would feel like they had discovered some hilarious secret about me if they noticed me on the road one day.
I’m actually quite glad I did this, since it gave me the chance to laugh at myself with my students instead of just feeling like they were all laughing at me, possibly without me ever knowing.
The first time (as far as I know) that a student of mine saw me on my scooter I found out about one day in class. The student was talking to me and his table group and casually mentioned that he had seen me on my “dinky little scooter” earlier in the week because he had stayed at school late to makeup a math test. “I saw her and I thought, ‘Yup, that’s my teacher.’ Then I laughed my a** off.”
Then, there’s the cross country kids, who see me on my scooter more than anyone else because they run on the Provo river trail for practice after school. They’re all nice, because they run cross country. So they don’t make fun of me, but instead tell me they saw me the next day with smiles on their faces.
Finally, there was last week. I had to leave school as soon as all of my students left my classroom because I had scheduled a meeting with a principal at a middle school that I’m interested in teaching at if any spots open up soon. Normally, I stay after school for at least half an hour for the dual purpose of being available to students who might want to talk to me and avoiding the crowds of teenagers flooding out of the school during the minutes after 2:15. I knew that I would see a lot more students while securing my scooter and riding away than I normally do, but I did not expect to see two of my fourth period students at the bike rack at the same time I was there. While I was unlocking my scooter, I heard, “Yo, is that Ms. Wonnacott?” And I said, “Oh hey!” as though I wasn’t mortally embarrassed.
In response, my student said, “Don’t worry, Ms. Wonnacott. When I get a car, I’ll bless you up with a ride to school.” I laughed, because there really didn’t seem like any good response to that kind of a statement, then I quickly excused myself to go to my meeting.
So, you could say that I have now faced pretty much all of my teaching fears and insecurities.
I still have no idea what I’ll be doing come December 6th, since I finish my student teaching December 5th. I’m a little grateful that I do have several students who I think will be a little sad to see me go, not because I need to be missed but because it reassures me that I’m at least having some positive impact on them.
I don’t feel like I’ve done much besides think about school during these past two months, but I’m happy to say that I truly feel that I am getting better at managing my time, teaching with purpose and direction, and maintaining expectations with my students. I’m not as stressed as I was during my first month, and I still love every minute in the classroom.
Luke is also doing quite well. We’re both approaching a bit of a crossroads when it comes to work, and Luke is dealing with his own questions about the future well and with the dedication that he is so good at applying to the things that he cares about. Our current question is whether we should pursue a promising job in Phoenix, Arizona or continue with prospects in Utah county for the time being.
Part of me is terrified of change, while the other part of me has literal very cold feet and would not mind being in Arizona right now.
We love our friends, our jobs, and our community here, and I hope that all of you can say the same this month. I’m thinking of you and love you.
Love,
Sophie
Senior Contributor to The Famlet Monthly