GRANNY AT THE ZOO

“Granny, I need an adult to play red panda with me,” says Ben, age seven. It is late afternoon on a hot sunny vacation day. We are three generations, sharing a two-storey hotel room. Kids and Granny sleep on the lower floor. Parents sleep directly above. Ben’s parents, pleased to see Granny taking over, are headed for the shower. “Okay Ben, I say with more confidence than I feel. “What do I have to do?” “It’s easy,” says Ben. “I am a red panda in a zoo. You are giving tours.” Our hotel room is ideally arranged for this endeavor. The zoo is a top bunk that doubles as Ben’s bed. The staircase runs up alongside the bunks. Near the top of the stairs there’s a hole in the wall that affords climbers a good view of the bunk. Ben heads for his habitat. I head for the stairs, examining my credentials as I go. . I am suspecting that my knowledge and experience have not adequately prepared me for this job. On the plus side, I was once seven years old and I have presented myself to others as an animal. I was fairly convincing as a pig perhaps, or a dog, possibly a chicken and occasionally a turkey. My expertise came organically. These were the inhabitants in the farm yards of my youth and my knowledge of them was acquired without the enhancement of formal study. I knew where they slept and what they ate. I could have given an impromptu tour of a farm yard to impress any grandchild. As for the red panda, I’ve never been near one. How much do I know about the species? Absolutely nothing. In a desperate bid to buy myself some time, I kneel on the stairs and assemble a crowd of imaginary children, accompanied by imaginary parents. “Notice the panda’s red coat,” I declare, hoping that the red panda has been named descriptively. Later I will ask myself why I didn’t decline this job opportunity at the outset. But I know the answer. The parents needed a shower. With unwarranted optimism I summon my creative powers. Suddenly I remember that I am a tour guide with duties that extend beyond animal description. The safety of the animals and the visitors is my utmost concern. “Please keep your children well back from the fence,” I admonish the parents who have come to the zoo, pointing an accusing finger at one imaginary mother who has allowed a toddler to cross the line. “And don’t even consider feeding Red Panda,” I scold. “That peanut in your hand could choke this precious creature.” To reinforce the point, I pause in my speech and glare at the assembled crowd. “Tell them more,” says Ben. “Tell them about me.” Later I will ask myself why I didn’t volunteer to be the red panda and invite Ben to be the tour guide. Now, grasping at straws, I turn to the imaginary children, a question in my voice. “Can you tell me,” I say, “what is the difference between the red panda and other pandas?” I am hoping there is more than one kind of panda. Perhaps pandas are like bears. Maybe there are brown pandas and black pandas. The imaginary children have been silenced by my previous scolding. They wait for me to answer, and I wonder another thing. How long does it take for the average Canadian parent to have a shower? I keep that question to myself. Suddenly I remember that Ben and I are not alone. I seize the opportunity to extend my reach. “Are there any children not on this tour who can tell me about the different kinds of pandas?” As I say this, I am appealing directly to Ben’s five-year-old brother Evan. He has observed my performance in uncharacteristic silence, but now he comes to my rescue. “There are red pandas and giant pandas,” he tells me and the imaginary audience. “The giant pandas are bears. The red pandas are cats.” “Well done,” I enthuse. “What else can you tell us about the red panda?” “Granny,” says Ben, “Evan is not a human. He is a cloud leopard in the cage next to mine. I want you to tell them what I eat.” I want to tell them this also, and I would tell them, if I knew. Another inspiration hits me. “Hello red panda,’ I say cloyingly, keeping my hands well back from the cage. “You are certainly a hungry fellow. Tell these tourists what you are eating right now.” “Bamboo,” says my red panda. “They have planted it especially for me. Now tell them where I live.” Hmmm. Where does the red panda live? I’m pretty sure I won’t get away with asking Ben to tell the audience where he lives. So I check my mental library. I’ve never been to Africa Asia or Australia so they might be there. I’ve never heard mention of red pandas in south America, and I’m pretty sure there aren’t any in Edmonton. I decide to take a chance. “We find red pandas in Asia,” I say, “In China.” “Mostly in Nepal,” says the cloud leopard in the cage next to Ben. I think of Nepal, everything I know about Nepal. Isn’t that where Everest is? “Look for red pandas in the mountains,” I say, “on the upper slopes.” This seems to satisfy Ben. “Now tell them about me,” says Evan the cloud leopard. Unfortunately, I know as much about the cloud leopard as I knew about the red panda. Still I forge ahead. While I give the speech about the dangers of feeding the cloud leopard, and scold the imaginary parents for letting their children come too close to the cage, I reflect on how times have changed. When I was Seven I came home from school and turned on the television. There I learned about history and nature. The Flintstones taught me about life in the Stone Age and the Beverly Hillbillies educated me about life in Tennessee. Bugs Bunny taught me everything I needed to know about rabbits. Much of the time was spent watching commercials and preparing my Christmas list. In contrast, Ben and Evan know nothing about commercials because their parents don’t pay for cable television. Mommy downloads nature videos and podcasts. When Christmas comes near she says, “Granny, why don’t you get them a subscription to Kids Geographic?” This selective exposure has led to a limited education. They have taught me that the red-crested cardinal is a tanager not a cardinal, and the pine marten is a mammal while the purple martin is a bird. So far they’ve shown little interest in learning about Fred and Wilma Flintstone. And here is a problem. The parents are enjoying their shower. What is a granny to do? Suddenly I have a great idea. It is time to swallow my pride. “Evan,” I say, “Before I conduct the tour, I need a little education. Would you please tell me a few things about the cloud leopard?”

GRIT, GRACE & GRATITUDE

A few weeks ago I received an email from my friend and mentor, Ronna Jevne. She was offering an overnight writing retreat at a lodge in the country, and even though common sense told me that the very same email was sent to dozens, maybe hundreds of people in her network, I couldn’t seem to rid myself of the conviction that she was aiming that retreat directly at me. “Ridiculous!” said Common Sense. But I was not listening. “Look,” I said to Common Sense, “there is a ton of evidence pointing to my conviction that this retreat is being offered especially for me. The title of that workshop is Grit, grace and Gratitude, three things I could use right now. And the lodge is only a little way out of the city, so I can take a cab if I can’t get a ride. I’d only need to be away for about thirty hours, which is certainly within the realm of possibility. And you know, Common Sense, I haven’t been writing much lately. In fact, I haven‘t put a word on The Hope Lady blog since some time back in 2015. Yes, when I put it all together, it seems pretty clear that this retreat was designed specifically for me.” “Ridiculous!” said Common sense. I didn’t listen. Life can be pretty dull if you spend too much time listening to Common sense. “You haven’t been writing on your blog,” said Ronna, when I emailed her the news of my pending registration. Her tone was more affirmation than accusation. “See,” I said to Common sense. “I knew it. She’s been checking up on me!” “Just send the money when it’s convenient,” said Ronna, “and I’ll get you a ride.” Ronna and writing and I have a long and storied relationship. Our first encounter happened back in 1993 when I asked her to be my thesis supervisor. “Can you write?” she demanded. Truth was, she needed a Master’s student about as badly as she needed chicken pox. “Yes I can,” I declared with conviction. I needed a thesis supervisor as badly as I needed food for the rest of my life, and Ronna was the only desirable person in the department who hadn’t yet turned me down. “I don’t want to be nagging you,” she said. And I had a supervisor. At the time, I really intended to be self-managing. “I don’t want to hear you whining about how you can’t write,” she said. “The sign on my wall says NO WHINING!” Apparently she’d already had enough whining students to last her a lifetime. “I won’t whine,” I promised. But she did have to nag me, after the fog descended on all my good ideas and the only way out was to disappear and pretend I’d never started a Master’s. And she did help me, even though I whined. “Is there something I can do to move you forward?” said her voice on the phone on a day when I had accidentally answered a call from her. I couldn’t think of anything she could do to help me, so she had to do her own thinking. She praised me when I wrote a little, and laughed when I was funny, and bragged about me when I wrote more. And she published hope work with me, and hoped I would be a writer, which I’ve never turned out to be—though I do love writing when it calls to me. So I’m blogging again, out of gratitude to Ronna for keeping my name on her email list, even though the retreat is still sixteen days away. And Ronna has shown the grace not to utter a word of complaint, or let on that she might be groaning under the weight of responsibility for the good mental health of former students who require more attention than they have earned. I am promising, as you might expect, to write at the retreat without uttering a single whining noise. At this point, it is not clear to me where the grit comes in, but if there’s grit to be uncovered, well, I guess that’s what we’ll find out in sixteen days.

GORE VIDAL

Gore Vidal Dies at 86; Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer --New York Times, 01/08/2012 Gore Vidal was an unexpected teacher of mine. From the New York Times: “He published some 25 novels, two memoirs and several volumes of stylish, magisterial essays. He also wrote plays, television dramas and screenplays. For a while he was even a contract writer at MGM. And he could always be counted on for a spur-of-the-moment aphorism, put-down or sharply worded critique of American foreign policy. Mr. Vidal took great pleasure in being a public figure. He twice ran for office — in 1960, when he was the Democratic Congressional candidate for the 29th District in upstate New York, and in 1982, when he campaigned in California for a seat in the Senate — and though he lost both times, he often conducted himself as a sort of unelected shadow president. He once said, “There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”” That last quote made me chuckle. I remember a time when I also believed that the world would be a better place if people would only listen to me. I think I was fifteen years old. I got over the feeling, but I still remember it. I would not likely have noticed Vidal’s death if he had not died at the time when I had just begun to read one of his books, and I would not have continued to read that book if I hadn’t heard of his death at the moment when I was deciding to return it to the CNIB Library—having read only the first couple of chapters. At the moment before I heard the news I would have told you that I had begun a rather dull book called 1876 by an author I’d never heard of. The moment after I heard about his death, I decided to find out a little more about Gore Vidal. Though I am certain that I would not have liked this pompous and opinionated man, the Times reported other things that endeared Vidal to me. He was an activist who tried to change things. Vidal was gay, and he courageously wrote about that at a time when it was unacceptable to write about it. He created a wider awareness by addressing “sexual deviation” in novels. He as a forerunner of societal shift in attitude and his career paid a price for this prescience. This alone would have impressed me, but might not have kept me reading, for the recording of 1876 was difficult to follow. It was dubbed onto CD from a worn studio recording made for cassette tape. The combination of Vidal’s descriptive prose with the muffled reading was an apt substitute for sleeping pills when I listened from a horizontal position. The decision to stay the course was clinched by another revelation: “He loved to read to his grandfather, who was blind, and sometimes accompanied him onto the Senate floor.” And so it was that I resolved to stay awake through every muffled chapter of 1876. I am glad that I persevered, for Vidal’s extensive research, coupled with his ability to create story, introduced me to a time that can teach us something today. 1876 was a year when Americans lost sight of the importance of their democracy. Fearful of restarting the civil war that had so recently ended, they allowed an un-elected president to push aside the man his country had chosen for the job. They attributed his election to the voting power of the Negroes, who had recently been given the vote. To reverse this unexpected change, they permitted several southern states to produce two sets of election results, one on election night, and a later set of results with different counts. By this means the election was decided. People stepped back when they ought to have stepped forward. I have learned many interesting things from unexpected teachers. Gore Vidal is one of them.

FEEL THE VIBE!

Yesterday Lenora LeMay and I had a visit from the VIBE team. VIBE (Vermilion is Being Empowered) is one of the 38 mental health in schools capacity building initiatives led by Alberta Health Services Addiction and Mental Health in partnership with Alberta Education and funded by Alberta Health and Wellness. The team came to Hope House to show us what they have done with hope. Inspired by a 90-minute Telehealth seminar given by Lenora, they had designed 5 hope lessons for the Grade 5 health curriculum. Then, having attended a two-day hope workshop given by me at the Alberta College of Social Work 2012 conference, they designed 5 lessons for a high school curriculum. They brought gifts—a book of hope images designed by the kids, and the cuddliest hope-opotamus we’ve ever hugged. They came to show us their work and to ask if we had ideas of how they might add to it. They invited their funders to the celebration. All in all, it was hope work the way we like it—collaborative, creative and expansive.

HOPE LADY PREPARES A SPEECH

I am getting ready to speak at the Greater Edmonton Retired Teachers Association Second Wind Conference, taking inventory of my resources.
I will start with a good title. A good title gets you going. How about, Audacious Hope and the Search for the Future Me? That’s catchy. It puts your mind where it needs to be for a hope talk, in the future.
I’ll take hope tools. After all, the hope tools have built my speaking reputation. If anything can dig up hope, the hope tools will do it.
I’ll take a little humour, of course. That’s what people want in a keynote speech, a little humour with their morning coffee. Humour coats whatever else you put in a speech for easy digestion.
I’ll take my personal experience with teachers, not so much my experience as a student. Those experiences belong in hope talks at other conferences. But it just so happens that I live in a family populated by passionate teachers, hard-working teachers, retired teachers, first-year teachers, experienced teachers in the prime of their careers. Teaching, I have learned from them, can be an enormously challenging, often frustrating, and absolutely fabulous career. On any given day, in any given year, teaching is more or less of any of these three. I understand the idea of a passionate career. It gives me hope.
Then also, because I have no choice in the matter, I’ll take along my own body, the body of a woman my age, a body which, to my consternation, often requires that I call meetings of its parts to assemble an order of things before agreeing to get up after sitting on the floor, or spending a long night in bed. It refuses to remember those university days when I used to choose sitting on the floor. I’ve tried to make it promise better days. But so far it hasn’t been the greatest listener.
Remembering other times, like the times when I was a parenting expert, those times before I had any kids, I wonder if it would be easier to give a hope talk to retired teachers if I had the body of a 30-year-old.

MARGARET-ANN ARMOUR IS A TEACHER

I never cared for chemistry classes. “Get it over with as quickly as possible and make sure you pass,” was what I said. But if I ever get truly interested in chemistry—interested for more than one day—which I’m not promising, I may very well owe the credit to a most remarkable teacher--Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour. It is almost 24 hours since I spent an hour with her, I am not preparing for an exam, and I still remember some of the things she taught me. Now that is something to notice!
Margaret-Ann is internationally known for her passionate teaching. She has a style that makes science accessible, relevant and interesting. “Science is not something done by a group of experts sitting in a lab somewhere,” she says. “Science is all around us, in the natural world and in our own bodies.”
Her teaching ideas are designed with a hook to draw people in, and an unshakable belief that we’ll want to be there once she’s got us.
She told me she could make a yellow compound and then shake it. As she shook it, it would turn red, then green. I was a little bit impressed at that point—a little bit. Then she told me that if we left the compound to its own devices, it would turn red, then go back to yellow.
I listened politely, but then, without even meaning to, I asked a question. “Why does it revert?”
“It’s because the dye in the compound picks up molecules of oxygen as you shake it,’ she said. “But the compound isn’t stable. So it slowly releases the oxygen again.”
It was a story, and I like stories, but since there would be no exam, I expected to forget it some time within the next few minutes. Margaret-Ann, however, was not finished with me yet. “That’s how it is with blood in our bodies,” she said. “It picks up molecules of oxygen in the lungs and the heart sends it through the body. It deposits the oxygen in the cells along the way, then goes back for more.”
I have been taught about the lungs and blood before. I hadn’t bothered to give it much thought. But when I heard myself telling the story to others, I knew that a skilled teacher had been messing with my attentions.
We got into that conversation because she was telling me, at my request, how she engaged the interest of young aboriginal students at a camp the Hope Foundation sponsored on the University of Alberta campus. “When those students came in to the lab the group was quiet. Normally I would get things going by asking questions. But that wouldn’t be the right thing here. They need time to feel that they belong. So I talked for a while and then I went right into having them make nylon.”
The process of making nylon went very well. By the time the nylon was made, the students were involved. They were ready to ask and answer questions. After that, they went on to make Bakelite.
Not missing a chance to engage me, she assured me that I would understand what she was talking about because of the work I do. I would know how important it is to consider first the needs and interests of the people you are trying to help, how important it is to hook them, to make participation irresistible to them.
The lesson ended on schedule. Margaret-Ann went away, but not without leaving something behind. For here I am today, writing about compounds on THE HOPE LADY Blog, and wondering how much the average person would know about chemistry if every teacher could teach like Margaret-Ann.

SO MUCH BETTER

Here is something that gave me hope. I was invited to read a story to a class of teen-agers who have autism. Should it surprise us that they love a good story?
Most of them are boys, some are girls. Some speak clearly, others—not so much. Some can introduce themselves with a smile, for others the very idea is a minefield of anxiety.
The comings and goings are capably managed by four staff. Calm and cool they appear to be, at any point when chaos threatens. And though I sympathize with the teacher who worries about doing it well, and striving to do better, and having one more idea when nobody else has one, I am overwhelmed by the enormity of how far our education system has come, and how miraculously things have changed in the course of my adult life.

BRINGING HOPE TO OTHERS

The most useful thing I have learned about bringing hope to others is this: I have to keep a huge inventory of stories, symbols and language that grounds my own hope. I do this so that I can still find my hope at the times when I don't appear to be successful at bringing hope to others. Far from being a well ordered searchable catalogue, my inventory is a random assortment of positive societal changes I have noticed, things that turned out better than I expected, times when I was okay but didn’t know it, and physical reminders of pivotal life events. I polish this collection regularly and
keep it firmly centred in my mind. When I need them, I choose items from the inventory to remind me that I can hope even when the world refuses to change at my behest. I need them more often than I ever could have imagined.
Yesterday I found myself trying to jot a simple answer to a question asked by Loraine, a psychologist who works with troubled teens. She wrote:”How can I help bring hope back to those who have hoped and been repeatedly disappointed and with good reason do not believe in hoping for anything?”
It’s a good question, one faced by so many of us in the helping professions. As Karen W. Saakvitne so aptly states in an article entitled How to Avoid the Occupational Hazards of Being a Psychotherapist, “psychotherapists hear that which society wishes to silence.” Society wishes to silence it for good reason. Hearing it makes us feel terrible!
The act of opening ourselves to hearing terrible things presents us with two important challenges, the obligation to do our best for the people we are helping, and the duty to be all right after we have done the work. As we strive to improve our professional practice, we tend to search for better tools we can use to help others, losing sight of the things we might need to do so that we ourselves can be healthy.
Loraine had mentioned hope to a troubled teen. He had said,”When you hope for something it never happens. Chances of it succeeding are 0.7 million zeros, no, infinite zeros!" You can bet that every one of those zeros represented a disappointment, a time when adults and friends had failed him. No wonder Loraine felt stuck. I felt stuck also when I first read his words. Why should such a boy be expected to hope again?
I myself rarely work with troubled teens. On the matter of dealing with them, I have very little advice to give. Yet even as I read her question, characters from my hope inventory were lining up, ready to parade along the road of my consciousness. Among them was the teacher who once lived under a large tree in the far corner of the grounds of the school where he now teaches. Following close behind was a woman who told me that her life was changed by foster parents who took her in when she was 16. These leaderly adults, now the prize of our society, came to me, real and clear, raising my hope by their very presence. They had been through hard times. They had not turned out as expected. What could I do but thank them for reminding me that, when I get to thinking that nothing good can come of a situation, it’s time to start doubting myself?
To Loraine I wrote: “Implicitly your very presence and interest likely brings hope because you are a caring, reliable adult. This is the most important thing to keep in mind when you are working. You are already bringing hope. It is all too easy to forget this when you get bogged down in agreeing that they have no reason to hope because they have been disappointed.” When I wrote this I was imagining the adults who, in years to come, would remember Loraine’s caring. I was hearing the stories they would tell.

Saakvitne, Karen W., (2001). How to Avoid the Occupational Hazards of Being a Psychotherapist, Innovations in Clinical Practice: A Source Book (Vol. 20) P329.

SUBSTITUTES

My friend Scott has been sending me childhood stories lately. What a pleasure it is to read them! Short, vivid and descriptive, they are gentle invitations to a by-gone day. Reading them you can almost believe you are growing up with Scott in the 1950’s.
He’s got me interested in my own memories, few and undescribed as they may be. Still, the older I get, the more of them I seem to have. Go figure! So I am finding memories back there, and I’ve started to notice a few things about them.
There are a couple of kinds of memories, the ones I actually have, and the ones I wish I had. The memories of my real childhood tend to be dull, devoid of the intrigue and adventure craved by a reading world. The memories I wish I had are diverse in nature. In fact, they are quite subject to variation, depending on the context of the present day. On the days when I’m feeling light and cheerful, I wish I’d had a more adventurous childhood—one you could sink your teeth into. Why are there no stories about Wendy breaking an arm in a fall while trying to retrieve a robin’s nest from a sky-high poplar? Where are the tales of a teen-ager sneaking out of the house for romance after the folks had gone to bed? What is the potential entertainment value of a childhood lived out in relative obedience?
On other days, today for example, I wish I had more memories—any memories actually--of me in the role of a compassionate child, a kind child, a supportive child. There are kids like that, you know, and I really want to grow down to be like them.
There’s one such child attending elementary school in Guelph Ontario. I heard the story from my daughter, a substitute teacher—correction—an emergency substitute teacher. In Ontario, you see, they have two kinds of substitute teachers. Substitute teachers have their names on a list and when somebody is unable to teach they get called in. Emergency substitute teachers lurk on shadowy lists that are more mysterious. They are called in when the notice is so short, or the conditions so difficult that no substitute teacher can fill the gap. When it’s time for the second bell, and the teacher is lying delirious on the floor waiting for an ambulance, that’s when you need an emergency sub—one who will take charge with no preparation, no orientation and no lesson plans.
I don’t know if we had emergency substitute teachers when I was a kid. Maybe I’ll recall that later. For now I can only say that I disliked subs of all kinds. My list of complaints against them was lengthy indeed. They failed to follow our established routines. They seldom knew what to do. They didn’t learn our names. They had trouble controlling the class. Sometimes they were idiots and I had the facts to prove it! Once, when we were studying the theories of Freud in a high school psychology class, a sub came in and called him Frude. How outrageous! I fumed at the very idea of paying a salary to such an incompetent!
But time changes perspective. For my daughter, who is now a sub, I have nothing but respect. Imagine getting up in the morning and racing off to teach a class of self-righteous little Wendys. I brace myself to hear the tales she will tell.
Here’s today’s tale. Every classroom has its own features. Her Edmonton room had a telephone for direct calls and an intercom for messages intended for the entire school. Having made a rushed entry into an unfamiliar class, she had not noticed the absence of a telephone when a voice came over the intercom. “Excuse me,” it said. She hushed the children and there they sat, waiting quietly for an announcement to be made. Finally, a child whispered, “You’re supposed to say Hello.”
“Good thing Grade ones and twos are kind,” she writes to her mother.
Her mother says, “Good thing you didn’t have to emergency substitute teach your mother.”

REMEMBERING ERIC CARDINALL

Not long ago a teacher whose work I follow posted a blog about one of her teachers.
POSSUMS, DUCKS AND SQUEEGEES

When I responded with a comment about the on-going memorable influence of teachers, she said she didn’t seem to know much about the influential teachers in my life. Well, there was a challenge. Allow me to introduce you to the Eric Cardinall that I knew, junior high socials teacher at the Jericho Hill School for the Blind, 1965-68.
So often you don’t know what you didn’t know until you learn it, and even then sometimes you don’t know you didn’t know it unless it happens to be something really significant. Mr. Cardinall and I started together at the Jericho Hill School for the Blind. Before we got there I had been attending Lougheed School a thousand miles away in Lougheed Alberta, and he had been teaching half a block away at Jericho Hill School for the Deaf. Suffice it to say that the worlds we had left were light-years distant from the world we had entered. The world we had entered was comprised of tight little knots of blind students who had been learning together for many years. There were things they’d been taught, ways of being a blind student from the first day of school. I had been speaking sighted language. He had been speaking sign language. I, the only Wendy I had known in the first 12 years of my life, was joining a class of 12. Two other Wendys had been there a long time. They lived their lives by double names first and last. How else could you speak to either of them without getting the attention of neither or both? Now that there were three of us, it was the rule that I should become WendyCookson, a compound name uttered as quickly and loudly as possible to avoid further annoying confusion.
“Too confusing,” declared Mr. Cardinall, tied in a tangle of Wendys on the first day of school. “I shall call you Cooky.”
I’d never been called Cooky before. It would have been completely out of order back in Lougheed, where Cooksons were plentiful. But in this foreign landscape the name was all mine, a gift of individuality from Mr. Cardinall, a man carving out his own space as he carved out mine. He was learning Braille. This was a bit surprising to me. Having travelled so far to attend a school for my kind, I did think the teachers would know Braille. But it wasn’t required of the junior high teachers, and so the majority of them didn’t bother with it. We read Braille—or nothing if we weren’t good at Braille. They read print. Mr. Cardinall studied in the evenings and learned a little more each day. Proudly he would display his new learnings. I knew how he felt. I had learned Braille on my own a few months earlier. Every day of that heady time had seemed like Christmas.
Mr. Cardinall taught me geography—by touch. “Here,” he said, “are five balls of play dough for each of you.” We each laid down a sheet of paper and placed the balls where he said they should go. One was Saskatoon, another Regina. “Off to the left and a little way up is Edmonton—the closest we’ll come today to where Cooky lives. Place Calgary below it. Now go way down and a little to the left for Vancouver,” Walking around the room, he adjusted our blobs for more accurate relativity.
I wonder now if Mr. Cardinall knew that I had never before given consideration to the relative location of cities. Mine had been a life of guided transportation. People took me places. I got into a car, or boarded a plane. The rest of it was unimportant until I discovered that I hadn’t known it. Yesterday, as I booked a plane ticket to Saskatoon, my hands reach back through time to touch those play dough blobs. I’ll be flying a little bit down, and a little to the right.

AND SO IT GOES

One of this blog's most loyal helpers has come out of the shadows with a blog of her own. It is a little commentary on moments that make a teacher's job worth doing.
And so it goes  

HOW HOPE HAS MADE A DIFFERENCE

I've been watching in awe for the past few months as a program for hope and kids developed. It is truly an inspiring program, the brilliant work of my colleague Lenora LeMay, executed with the help of many others. My congratulations go out to everyone who has worked on it. I had intended to write about it, but I give you three links to the work of a better journalist. All three articles cover different content and are well worth reading.

Teens Go to Trade School

McCauley Teens Wipe Out Graffiti

McCauley Students Speak Up

NAMING

The note in my inbox has a simple ending.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Sincerely,

Indira

It’s such a friendly ending. And even though I know she sent this letter to several thousand people, and even though I know she wouldn’t know me if we met on the street, and even though this note is coming from the University of Alberta and the line below her name says
Indira V. Samarasekera
President and Vice-Chancellor …

I can’t seem to shake the feeling that she sent that letter directly to me. It’s the personal style that does it, the warmth that comes with the simple use of her first name. If ever I meet her on the street, it will be all I can do not to call her Indira.
I’ve come to believe that naming is an important part of human relationships, that in my case especially, it carries a hefty emotional impact. Take, as an example, this little grudge I’ve carried for thirty years or so. My colleagues and I had been gathered in a board room to meet our new CEO. He’d come all the way from Ontario just to lead us. The room was tingling with anticipation. Things got started on a friendly enough note, a little formal perhaps, but friendly. He invited us to come to him any time we had concerns or ideas, and then he said, “I’m asking you to call me Mr. Evans. It’s a mark of respect for the position.”
The impact of this one short sentence was far greater than he had envisioned. Fifteen minutes later that speech was taking on a life of its own, repeated and savoured by employees in the bathrooms of the office. It even got an official title. We came to know it as the Just-Call-Me-Pete speech. If anybody did a little bit extra, say refilling an empty toilet paper dispenser, or mopping up a bit of spilled coffee, that job was said to be done out of respect for the position.
Mr. Evans turned out to be a good boss. He didn’t even waste much time becoming it. It was only a few hours before he began to show his genuine caring, his empathetic nature, his eagerness to fit into an Alberta office landscape. But it was too late to make a clean start. With a simple sentence he had brushed a stroke of tarnish on our shining hope, and the humour generated at his expense was too disrespectful to be shared for his enjoyment.
The whole naming thing has been an issue with me this winter. Once again the icy winds of January found me taking up a place at the front of a classroom, an accidental professor, an expert of sorts who can safely say that she never once aspired to a career in academia. The desks were occupied by a broad range of students, some maybe as young as 20, others pushing 50. Before I could say”Good evening class,” somebody had already called me Dr. Edey.
“I’m not a doctor,” I said, already aware of the misunderstanding that lurked on the threshold. They assumed I was being humble. Actually, I was being factual, and more than that, judicious. The College of Alberta Psychologists has decreed that no psychologist licensed in Alberta may misrepresent her credentials, which she will be deemed to have done if she cannot show evidence that she has taken direct steps to correct descriptive errors made by others.
“Please call me Wendy,” I begged. I’ve had to ask newspapers to print official retractions. I didn’t want to put any of these students through that! I knew as I said it that this was not humility talking, not even truly factuality or judiciousness. Even if I had a Ph.D. I wouldn’t want to be called Dr. Edey every Tuesday night for thirteen weeks. It doesn’t suit me.
Soon things took on the familiarity that comes with a Tuesday night routine. I learned to call them by name. The classroom atmosphere was friendly. Most of them called me Wendy. Some of them didn’t call me anything at all.
Still, this experience wasn’t exactly like my previous flirtations with accidental professorhood. There was one among them who called me “Teacher.” Factually accurate by any standard, it sounded funny in a university class. I wanted to say, “No no. That’s not me. That’s my daughter.” My daughter teaches elementary school. Lots of kids call her Teacher.
To my surprise, I didn’t say it. I might have said it the first night, but the impulse passed quickly. He’s a new Canadian, and something warned me that he wouldn’t feel right if he tried to use my first name. In the final analysis, Teacher isn’t such a bad thing to be called, even for an accidental professor.

THE CART IN THE RIVER

So here’s a story about how a seemingly impossible thing can get done if you keep your mind on it, and here also is a story about the difference that getting that thing done can make.
Kevin Jones is the guest speaker in my hope class. He is telling the eager students about his hope study and service projects with kids. The kids were learning about hope, focusing their attention on things that could make the world better. They talked about a shopping cart in the river. They wanted to get it out of there. They didn’t know how to make that happen. The hope project is supported by a local Rotary Club and the Rotarians were invited to breakfast with the kids. One of the kids told some Rotarians about the cart in the river. The Rotarians got a boat and extracted it on that very day. This is really a great story. The class loves it. We think it is finished.
And then one of the students says, “I used to look down at that cart in the river and wonder how it could be taken out. Then one day it was gone. Now I know how it happened.”

DRAWING HOPE IN A CLASSROOM

What fun it is to go to a classroom where the kids have been making hope art. If you haven’t had a chance to do it, you have missed an amazing experience.

Last Thursday I visited a very active classroom. Most of the children were either 6 or 7 years old. All had met the requirements for assignment to the category known as ‘behavior disorder’. They were lively and bouncing by the time I got there, but their teacher said they had had a very peaceful morning. Why had they had such a quiet morning? Well, it seems they had been doing their hope art, giving it their full and undivided attention. It was so unusually tranquil that their teacher called the principal in to witness this uncharacteristic peace.

A memory, clear and sharp, came to me as the children introduced themselves, telling me about their hope creations. The memory was of a conversation I had a couple of years ago, when the hope art project was still an idea in its infancy. The conversation was with a teacher.

Her: “I just don’t think this project can work.”.

Me: “Why not?”.

”I know it’s a good idea and all,” she said thoughtfully, “giving the kids the challenge to think about hope and draw something. But I am thinking about some little people I have known, little people with no support from home, maybe not too smart, been through unspeakable things that you and I cannot even imagine. I think about me asking them to draw about hope, and these kids sitting there, failing again. It would be cruel to expect them to draw hope!”

I don’t recall what I said. I wanted to persuade her, so I imagine I told her that I believed it would be okay. I believed it because I have met hundreds of adults who have been through unspeakable things. Some of them are seriously considering suicide. Some of them are not too bright. And yet I would be willing to risk asking any and all of them to reflect on hope and draw something. If they seemed unable, I would help them a tiny bit.

I don’t recall exactly what she said in response, but I do recall that she wasn’t convinced by what I had said. She was thinking that it’s different for adults than for these little people. She was thinking that classrooms are different from counselling sessions. She was thinking that I probably didn’t understand what teachers face in their classrooms. I wouldn’t have disagreed with any of this.

I know a number of teachers who have struggled with the idea of making hope explicit in their classrooms. Many years ago I had another conversation with a teacher. He told me that a teacher wouldn’t be wise to ask kids to draw hope because they would all draw pictures of the latest toys in the department store. Since those toys would be unavailable to some of the children, he said it would be unfair to start such a process. At that time I had much less experience. What he said made sense to me, given the materialistic attitude of our society.

On the other hand, I have known teachers who embraced the idea of doing hope projects. They did them purposefully, anxious to see what would happen, suspending any fears they might have had about the worst possible outcomes. One of these was in command last Thursday, in the classroom where I was meeting little people who were proudly displaying pictures of rainbows and animals and such. There was no mention of toys, even though Christmas is coming. I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about the conditions that disrupt children’s behavior so badly as to render them unmanageable in a regular classroom by the age of 6 or 7. We know they are more likely to be in a behavior disorder classroom if they have been abused, neglected, or have parents with mental illness or addiction issues. Some were damaged by drugs or alcohol before they were born. We know that poverty is common in their ranks.

It was an exciting day in that classroom. They had a guest—me. The had art to show. But there was more. One of the children was proudly displaying a chicken puppet. It was on loan from the principal. It was his reward for the marvelous behavior he had shown during the peaceful art time that morning. The whole class was bursting with chickenly pride.

Many lessons were evident during my hour in that classroom. It was abundantly clear that you don’t have to be smart to understand what hope is. You don’t have to be rich, or clean, or popular, or happy. You don’t have to be an artist to draw hope. What is it about hope art that leads children to that reflective place deep into their centre core? From where does it draw the power to create a quiet lull in a behavior blizzard?

Hope art projects create many benefits. They give children the space and quiet time to think about hope, to feel hope, to do an act of hope, and then to see the mirrored image of their own hope when they show their work to others. Some of the children in this busy classroom found time to make two or three drawings. Some of the drawings will be exhibited in the children’s hope art show. Others will be displayed in their school.

Though the art can stand on its own, and sometimes it has to, there is no doubt that the best way to experience a hope art project is to see the children and the art in the same room. You get more out of it when you see what went into it. That’s when you feel the hope. That’s when you experience the separate, private and individual meaning of each and every rainbow that found its way onto a page. That’s when you know that the process of considering hope is every bit as significant as the outcome. I wish you had been there with me. If you have never visited a classroom where the children have been making hope art, you have missed an amazing experience.

NURTURING HOPEFUL SOULS: Practices and Activities For Working With Children and Youth

The Hope Foundation of Alberta has published a new and exciting resource for teachers and youth workers who want to use hope strategies with children. Nurturing Hopeful souls is the creation of hope specialist Lenora M. LeMay. Grounded in her long experience as a teacher, this book invites adults to engage children in activities that put hope front and centre. It describes ten sample learning activities and leaves the door open to those who would want to create activities of their own. Though I love the idea of creating hope trees and taking hope photos, I must confess that Coping with Hope Suckers is my favourite sample activity from the ten she has highlighted.

It would be enough if Lenora’s book were simply an activity book, for we surely lack such a resource. But it is much more than that. Pulling together some of her favourite concepts from hope research, Lenora presents a broad perspective on hope that embraces resilience and goal-setting. There is something in this book for thinkers, and something else for emotional types.

Nurturing Hopeful Souls acknowledges the need to help teachers be hopeful. Lenora writes:”Not long after I became the HOPE KIDS Manager, I responded to a call from a principal asking if I could speak to two of her staff who were worried about their students’ futures. I listened to the teachers describe the students’ sadness and lack of hope and how these students needed a safe and trusting environment where they could connect with others willing to listen and comfort them. I felt that these teachers were, literally, the students’ hope. They were experiencing what many teachers experience-a deep concern for children who appeared to be without hope. And, as hopeful individuals, these teachers did what hopeful people often do-they reached out for support.”

Lenora LeMay is likely the world’s most experienced youth hope facilitator. She has been nurturing youth hope programs in classrooms and community centres for the past eight years. Always insistent upon crediting a team of colleagues for her accomplishments, she prefers the role of learner to the role of expert. She sees her book as a beginning, a door opened to people who will teach her more about the craft she knows best.

Nurturing Hopeful Souls costs $34.00 plus shipping. To order a copy call the Hope Foundation at 780-492-1222.

Check out Lenora's blog www.learningtohope.blogspot.com

AND HOW DO WE LEARN?

I have been noticing lately how the most popular academic speakers open the ears of professionals with PowerPoint, and then retreat, as quickly as possible, to the language and stories that touch the human heart. I have been noticing how impatient are professional audiences are with the highly professional presentations they appear to demand. Isn’t it funny how we rarely get the opportunity to touch the hearts of professionals unless we begin with professional language and possibly display it on PowerPoint?
Last week I sat among an audience comprised mainly of people who work in vocational and residential facilities for people with disabilities. We were listening to Al Condeluci Ph.D., supported by PowerPoint, an expert in the field. How extraordinary it seems that I have now told many others the essence of what I heard him say. I heard him say that all people want a job—something meaningful to occupy our time, a house—a place that is ours to inhabit, a car—a way to get somewhere, and friends. I heard him say that any of us who do not belong in a community need a gatekeeper—an accepted member of that community to bring us in and find us a place.
This is what I did not hear. I did not hear anybody saying he was wasting their time because they already knew the information he was giving them. I did not say it either, though the information was not new to me.
If he had presented the research from his PowerPoint, I would have had to look it up in order to present it again. But since he presented it to the heart through the door of story and the simplest possible language, I did not need to look it up in order to remember it.

SEARCHING FOR A SUPERVISOR

I wasn’t looking for a mentor when I first met Ronna Jevne. I was looking for a thesis supervisor, somebody who could get me through a process so I could come out of academia with a degree. In fact, I had already asked several potential supervisors. My rate of rejection was 100%.
The problem, at least on the surface, seemed to be my choice of thesis topic. I wanted to study humour. All the professors I approached denied any knowledge of the academic material relating to humour and therefore declined my request. It’s a cruel process, looking for a supervisor. Chalk it up to lack of preparation on my part, but I had never supposed that professors, once you had been admitted to the program, would cherish the right to refuse you. Even if I had imagined it, I would never have dreamed that they would not want to supervise a study of humour. Of all the potential topics I could pursue, it was far and away the one for me. I thought everyone would be equally fascinated.
By the time I got to Ronna, late in the game because she was just returning from a sabbatical, I was getting desperate. I’d never been good at sales, but it seemed that I either had to convince Ronna to supervise my thesis, or change my topic and restart the pleading process. Nothing could be taken for granted so I did a little research. The findings were inconclusive. My knowledge of Ronna was limited. I knew of her work from reading newspaper articles. I attended the event launching her book, the Voice of Hope. The student Rumour mill offered mixed reviews.
Gathering the shreds of my confidence, I made an appointment to meet at her office. It was clear at the outset that she hadn’t been sitting there idle, hoping a student would come by with a thesis idea. So I leapt into unfamiliar territory and put forth the theory that humour is related to hope. Not missing a beat she asked me how they were related. If I had an answer, I don’t know what it was. At that point I went into shock. My memory of the next few minutes has been distilled to a single point—she said she’d do it.
If this meeting had taken place a year earlier I would have greatly relieved Ronna by rejecting her. I would have said that I did not want to study with someone who was not completely enthusiastic about studying with me. After all, I was nearly forty, and I had left a good job to come into the Master’s program. But the very real possibility of being forced to abandon my dream of studying humour had humbled me. In return for her grudging agreement to take me on, I promised to make the process as painless as possible.
With a tentative foot in the door, I pursued my interest in humour, and later whole-heartedly joined Ronna’s quest to develop the finer strategies that could be employed in a search for hope. Many concrete ideas developed a reliable stability as we practiced using them. We now call them hope tools. One of the ideas, originally worded by Denise Larsen, was to ask people to recall a time when things were going their way, only they didn’t know it.
The day I met Ronna Jevne was definitely one of those times. If I had known the person behind the agreement, I would have been more hopeful. I never guessed that I had just gained the support of somebody who would stick with me through thick and thin, a teacher who would look beyond my faults with a curious gaze on my potential. I did not know that I had found someone who would call me up to ask if I needed encouragement, someone who would cover for me if I missed a deadline, compensate for my ineptitude at logical academic writing, nurture me when I was overwhelmed, stand boldly beside me when I made errors and ultimately turn me into a hope specialist. But I did not know her at all, so I thought I was making a compromise, forfeiting my ideals, settling, out of desperation, for something less than I had hoped to receive.
Hope tools help us search the past for experiences that might support our hope in times of uncertainty and pessimism. There are days when things look bleak. I rail against injustice. I predict the worst outcomes. When I am clear-headed enough to remember the hope tools in my kit, I take a moment to ask myself if there was ever a time when I was okay, only I didn’t know it. Searching my memory I find indisputable evidence of times when I was unknowingly okay, even more than okay. Then I have to open the door to the possibility that this bleak moment might be another of those times.

THE ULTIMATE BURN-OUT PREVENTION TOOL

And when I reflect on how hard I have worked
To be informed
To be credible
To present important content
To accurately convey the results of research …

Then what choice have I but to be amazed
That the feature people most often remember
From the training I have given them
And mention when they see me years later
And ask to have repeated
Is a verse my children brought me from a week at summer camp?

And why do they respect it so fully?
Is it the humour?
Or the repetition?
Or the body movement?
Or the message it delivers?

Or is it simply the touch of amazement
That the Ultimate burn-out prevention Tool
The pride of any management guru
Could wear the disguise of a simple verse
Brought home by kids from summer camp?

A MINOR INCONVENIENCE

One time I lost my head and mistook myself for a sighted person. I don’t know quite how it came about, or how long it had been brewing. Mostly I chalk it up to the giddy euphoria of getting my Master’s degree.
Getting a Master’s is one of the few life goals I ever set for myself. I envisioned it before I was twenty. Actually I didn’t really envision getting a Master’s, for I knew that would be hard, given my tendency to be an average or slightly above average student. But I envisioned myself as having a Master’s. So when my fortieth birthday was rapidly approaching, I gambled on the possibility of being admitted as a mature student, hoping I’d somehow picked up some real smarts along the way. My Master’s degree was everything I’d hoped it would be. With those letters—M.Ed.--behind my name I felt emboldened to do things I hadn’t done before, like applying to teach a humour course at the Naramata Centre summer program. And when the Naramata people accepted my proposal, I set out to teach a course that would be so visually satisfying that no participant would be able to claim they’d been cheated by the narrow view presented by a blind instructor. With a little help from the sighted world I assembled overheads, posters, cartoons and other funny pictures. Then I planned out a program of humour that I hoped would keep us laughing for the entire week.
We arrived early at Naramata, the way instructors do, and set up our campsite. We got the keys to my classroom. David helped me set it up. While we were putting stuff on the walls he glanced out the window and noticed a blind man passing by.
“There goes a blind guy,” he said cheerfully. “Maybe he’ll be in your class.”
“Surely not,” I said. In all our Naramata family summers, taking everything from massage to storytelling, we had never once encountered a blind person. But later on that evening, when the classes assembled in their rooms for the opening welcome, I heard a cane tapping and a classmate volunteering to find him a seat.
My heart sank. I couldn’t believe my terrible luck.
I had been a blind student so many times, but I’d never once considered the possibility of teaching one. I remembered the early university years, before the advent of disability services, when I would stroll in on the first day of class and introduce myself to the professor. “I’ll need some system for writing exams,” I would announce. “And I’ll need you to talk while you write on the blackboard.” And those professors faced with a lecture theatre of 500 first-year sociology students, would start calculating before my eyes. Some of them weren’t too gracious. Most of them were amazing.
Then there were the years of disability services. I would phone professors several months in advance to warn them that I would be taking their class. Disability Services would arrange my exams. I would ask the professors to read the material they were showing on the overheads. I expected them to be gracious. After all, this time I was in the Faculty of Education. The classes were small. Most of them were gracious. But some of them would simply put up an overhead crammed with information and leave a silent time for the class to copy it down. I turn to my neighbour who would begin reading in a hoarse whisper that could be heard all over the room. Some profs would actually start talking again over the sound. The life of a blind student is always a mixed bag. You want to fit in but you need special consideration.
Three seconds after he arrived, my new blind student came forward to introduce himself to me. I tried to reach out but words of welcome caught in my throat. We were on two different planets. I could hardly speak to him, so furious was I at his presence. Here was I, making my teaching debut with a stimulating class for sighted participants, and he wouldn’t be able to participate. He, on the other hand, was delighted to find me. He hadn’t been blind for long and was having a little trouble adjusting. He’d been feeling pretty down, he confided. He thought maybe in a humour class he’d be able to make it without feeling too conspicuous. He had never imagined that he would find a blind teacher. Already it was giving him hope.
That night, while the other campers slept in the fresh mountain air, I fumed in my sleeping bag. In all my years of teaching professors how to teach a blind student I had never once considered that my presence might have angered them, might have ruined their plans, put them on the spot, made them feel inadequate. A mild inconvenience, is what I would have called it. What was I going to do with all my visuals now? How was this guy supposed to participate? Why hadn’t somebody warned me?
By the time the crows had begun to welcome the dawn I was ready to set about undoing a whole week’s curriculum. Every day’s activity had to be re-planned. There would have to be choices participants could make. In each block of choices, there had to be at least one choice that would work for a blind person.
Now a humour class is not the easiest thing to teach. It doesn’t work if people don’t laugh. The class turned out to be a group with mixed abilities and expectations. Many a time I thanked fate for sending me the blind guy. He had a natural gift for humour that kept us all in stitches and made my job much easier than it would have been without him. I ended the week happily.
Then I made myself a promise. I would never again try to teach like a sighted person. Anybody who ended up in my class would have to do without visuals for a while. I’ve kept that promise through twelve years and hundreds of classes. It has saved me a lot of work. And if a blind person ever again shows up without warning, I will be ready.