didaink

Learning *FearLess Writing* with CD Changed Me

Eight years ago, I found myself sitting at a lonely desk about an hour away from the busy streets of Philadelphia. My family and I had moved across the country to a house that overlooked a hay farm. It’s a place where horses, farmers, and mushroom growers live, not a native Californian like me. I didn’t know a soul. Our nearest neighbor worked from home like I did, but he wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type. When I asked if I could list him as the ‘emergency contact’ for my children's new school, he said, “Uh, I guess so, but for how long?”

My husband was at his new job, a promising position his company offered him 20 minutes away, and our kids were busy at their new elementary school, but there I sat staring out the window. I was irritated and distracted by the flickering screen on my computer, reminding me that I hadn’t written anything. I couldn’t focus. I was landlocked and lost in rural Pennsylvania.

Although my family life blog was gaining readership, and a few of my stories had been picked up by a syndicated radio show on NPR, I felt myself slipping away. I was thousands of miles from close friends but didn’t want to burden them with my complaints. Additionally, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother and the barely-there life she had in the assisted living facility she was tethered to in California. There was nothing I could do about her situation; my older sisters held the keys to her care, and I had no say in it. I didn’t agree with their decisions about what was “best” for our mother, or their version of elder care in general. They’d succeeded in blocking any opportunity for my mom to try out living with me and my family in California. That’s why, when my husband was offered a job that included a relocation package, I told him to take it. I knew I’d never change my sisters’ minds, and my mother’s mind was too clouded and easily influenced, her body too weak, to advocate for herself, so I left California and tried to make a new life for myself and my own family.

I sat alone in front of my computer each day, thinking of my mom’s failing health and impending death, and wondered where my writing was going. Yes, I’d authored a blog about the challenges of parenting babies and small children in my 40s, but so did thousands of other moms. Besides, I thought, who cares what I have to say? My sisters certainly didn’t.

I’d toyed with the idea of writing more serious essays or editorials, a memoir even, maybe a novel, but I was still trudging through the muck of self-doubt that grew deeper and thicker in my mind.

You’re not even a ‘real’ writer, a voice said. But it wasn’t my voice, it was the voice of a co-worker, someone I’d once considered a good friend, who’d snickered when I gave her a business card I had made with my blog’s name on it: didaink. “Maybe you should pass these out when you’re ‘real’ writer,” she said.

Soon after, I met a real writer, a New Yorker, who was born and raised in Arkansas – Stacy Pershall. Stacy and I became Facebook friends after I bought her memoir at Barnes & Noble. She’d commented or ‘liked’ a post and that post somehow appeared on my Facebook news feed; it had a photo of a woman giving her 90-year-old mother a bubble bath. This picture of a daughter helping her elderly mom enjoy a bath, in the home she’d lived in for 60 years, made my body light up, down, up and down, and up again, until I burst into tears. Two women, mother and daughter, under the spray of bubbles, white foam stuck to their long elegant noses, their faces filled with laughter. Who was this person, doing for her mother what I longed to do for mine? Crescent Dragonwagon, that’s who.

From there on out, I paid attention not only to her name but what she had to say and write about elder care, food, books, and writing. As I read through her public Facebook page, I learned that she was a poet, a novelist, a cookbook author and children’s book author, and a caregiver to her mother Charlotte Zolotow. She was also a writing teacher who was offering, for the first time, an on-line version of her Fearless Writing workshop from her home in Vermont. I could actually participate in her workshop from my lonely desk in Pennsylvania, and I couldn’t wait to sign-up.

To be clear, her workshop Fearless Writing isn’t about being “fearless” about writing; it’s about understanding how to fear it less as you do the work; it’s about accepting that the creative process is full of uncertainty and fear, and it’s also loaded with discovery and meaning. By learning how to practice your daily writing, one eventually learns to trust what unfolds as one's writing takes shape, evolves, and finally moves forward. Crescent’s Fearless Writing workshop completely changed my writing life. Her down-to-earth, unpretentious teaching style put me at ease and taught me how to value my voice as a writer, how to practice my work, and honor it.

Today, my work can be found in the Washington Post, Microsoft News, Yahoo! Lifestyle, and various other digital and print publications. And I now edit and coach other writers who have difficult true stories to share. I feature their work in the pages of Braving Veracity, an anthology series I sponsor, and a publication where all royalties go to the women writers I work with in the Brandywine Valley of Pennsylvania.

Without Crescent’s Fearless Writing workshops, her guidance and mentorship, I would not have grown as a writer and a person; I'd still be staring out the window at haystacks, my writing still stuck in the muck of self-doubt.

 

"This is only the beginning!” Teaching Gen Z Girls To Empower Themselves

Friday Climate Strike, Philadelphia 9/27/19

Teaching our children to honor their word is one of the most important things a parent can do. Because my daughter felt bullied at age 13 and 14 for being “weird” and "different," I made it a priority to encourage her to make decisions that empower her to stand up for herself and to move forward on her own two feet, not my coattails.

So, last week when my daughter said, “Mom, I really want to go to New York with you for the Climate Strike and hear Greta, but I don’t want to let my teachers down, especially my ecology teacher,” I knew she felt empowered to speak her mind with me.

“I’m sure she’d understand," I said, "After all, she’s a science teacher."

“But that’s not fair to her if no one’s in her class on Friday. She wants to strike too, but she won’t get paid if she does. And the writing club meets on Friday. I don’t want to let my English teacher down or Margaret. They’re counting on me."

My daughter’s friend, Margaret, a senior, has been a loyal friend and the one who inspired my 16-year-old to join the creative writing club at the high school they both attend in rural Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s public school system, like many “swing” states, did not embrace Greta Thunberg’s global Climate Strike like nearby New York. Climate Change is still not a priority in states like Pennsylvania, and even in progressive Philadelphia last Friday for the global strike, students and teachers who participated in the Philadelphia Strike were not excused or paid for their absences.

My daughter felt that was horribly unfair, and because she attends public high school in a poor district outside of Philadelphia, she wanted to support her teachers and the parents of classmates who couldn’t afford to take the day off to attend the strike in Philly and New York.

“Mom, if I’m the only one in my class who’s striking, that kind of makes me privileged. I mean, you’re getting paid to write about it, aren’t you?”

She was right. I’d be paid for the piece I was scheduled to write on Sept. 20, even though I was also striking because of my own beliefs.

Consequently, when I told my editor the news that my daughter would not be joining me on September 20 after all, that editor (who felt the title of my Op-Ed should be, “Why I Brought My Daughter to Greta Thunberg’s Climate Strike") cancelled my assignment. Seemingly, the publication she works for was no longer interested in publishing a piece about my daughter’s decision to honor her commitments and Climate Strike the following Friday in Philadelphia.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for my daughter) that publication, which features news stories about women by women, will not get to deliver to its readers an important piece about what my daughter said to me after she made her own decision.

“Mom, can't we strike another Friday?” she asked.

“Of course, we can!" I said, "And we will, as soon as next week, if you want."

"Okay, cool," she said.

And like Greta said on September 20 in front of hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, "This is only the beginning!"

I couldn’t be prouder of my daughter’s decision to keep her word and honor her commitments, and I’m sure Greta Thunberg’s mother is exceptionally proud of Greta for honoring her words and her commitments – and as a result, Greta has not only empowered herself, she’s empowered an entire generation. Now, millions of children value her words, her integrity and her leadership.

Greta’s commitment to Gen Z, even with the challenges she faces as a person with Asperger Syndrome, demonstrates incredible determination and strength. And her desire to continually confront adult leaders who refuse to listen to the science is just one more example of her commitment to the truth.

Keeping our commitments to the truth, each other, and to future generations is what Greta’s movement is all about. It's about how actions always speak louder than words. And it’s this level of maturity in Greta and in teenage girls like her that gives me hope as a woman and a parent.

My daughter’s commitment to the environment, her teachers and friends who inspire her to make a difference every day, gives me additional hope that young women can and will change the world, and perhaps save “adults” from themselves. It's the adults who've created this environmental crisis. We are the ones who’ve looked the other way and haven't held our leaders accountable. We are the ones who continue to ignore the science. And we are the ones who must listen to Gen Z now.

It’s past time for so-called adults to finally honor their commitments and invest in a planet that's healthier and safer for our children and future generations. As one teenage girl’s sign so poignantly reminded people in Foley Square last Friday: "70-year-old men should not decide my future."

Global Climate Strike, NYC-Foley Square 9/20/19

Philly Climate Strike: 9/27/19

Dear Superintendent Kolwe: do the right thing for Valedictorian, Andrew Jones

Dear Superintendent Kolwe,

    As media outlets continue to run with the story surrounding Amite High School’s treatment of Valedictorian, Andrew Jones, which prevented him from his graduation ceremony because of chin hair, I wonder how long it will take you to turn this around, admit to an error in judgment and hold another graduation ceremony to honor Andrew Jones.

    Yes, even school officials make bad decisions and enforce meaningless rules that have no place in education. Andrew Jones should be commended for standing up for his right to express himself with a mustache, goatee, dread locks, eye hair, ear hair, or any other hair he chooses. His behavior demonstrated great leadership, and he should be applauded not admonished for holding true to his beliefs in the wake of pressure to conform to meaningless rules that would undermine his integrity.

    Why did the district target "beard" hair and not mustache hair? Or require students to pluck their eyebrows to a certain height or shave their legs and armpits before graduation? What about the brand of mascara girls must wear so that their lashes aren't too long at graduation? What length of head-hair is acceptable? A young man's chin has an involuntary ability to produce hair, a young woman's doesn’t. Based on your district’s policy, males have the extra burden and expense of shaving their face every morning for school and their female classmates do not.

    The policy states that "female" students may wear earrings, yet no length of the earring is mentioned in the district handbook for seventh grade-twelfth grade students. However, males are forbidden to put anything in their ears because this might distract from the “learning environment.” What kind of message does this send to my son when his sister is allowed to wear earrings with her uniform but his earlobes have to remain bare? Your policy clearly favors girls over boys, which violates the last "Major Infraction" of your written policy: #48: sexual discrimination.

    Superintendent Kowle, I hope you will lead your district in doing the right thing to abolish this discriminatory and nonsensical 'beard' policy. I hope you will show your community that even adults make mistakes, and when they do, they should admit their mistakes, apologize for them, and offer to make up for them. As parents and educators, isn't this what we teach our children to do? I urge you to host another graduation ceremony for Andrew Jones. The tradition of a graduation ceremony should honor students' achievements and promote their leadership skills without focus on their physical appearance, whatever it may be. A school should never punish students based on hair or hold them back from celebrating the leaders they already are and, hopefully, will continue to be.

   

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

We are the change that we seek.

-- Barack Obama

 

Yours sincerely,

Dida Gazoli,

Parent & Writer

#MyNameIs = FirstAmendmentRights

  I go to Facebook to connect with people I've lost physical contact with over the years. I've had to move several times across the country and life has drastically changed for me since I left California. I connect on Facebook every day to communicate with and support those who I don't see in person very much anymore or not at all. Like everyone on Facebook, I still want to keep up with friends and family, their lives, their stories and their struggles.

When I lived in Silicon Valley I used to hate Facebook, and I mean "hate" equaled sickened. I felt I saw what Facebook was really about up close every day as I passed the Mercedes and BMWs on my commute to my toddler's expensive preschool ~ the "Facebook.com" craze just another chance for the venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and the wealthy to get even wealthier because of an ad-driven business/sales model. It was the anti-Craigslist to me (shout out to Craigconnects), a site and concept I dearly loved and respected for its integrity to not sell-out its business model. I still remember in the early Eighties in San Francisco when you could, but didn't have to, send Craig a $10 check if you wanted to list a job opening on his bulletin-board style (electronic) list.

But fifteen months ago, I saw the power of social networking come to life in an entirely new way, something I'd never seen or experienced before. I finally witnessed the power of what "community" does for those who are suffering unimaginable loss, those who are isolated, those who sometimes experience both multiple losses combined with isolation. The support I saw pour out and into my dear friend and mentor, Crescent Dragonwagon, via the Facebook page Fearless Love for Crescent Dragonwagon is the proof of what electronic 'social' communities can do to support someone in their darkest hour. Sites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter are founded on this model, of course, and our GoFundMe effort (shout to Tammy Johnson, Angelic Rodgers and Renee Rodgers) for Crescent kept her not only afloat financially in those first horrific days and weeks, but emotionally in the months and year that followed. I only witnessed this support, the hope that it gave to her -- I can never fully begin to understand how it felt to live and breath that hope after multiple loss, not just one home, but two, not just one person, but two people, who she loved and lived with and cared for daily.

When I think of how many people suffer social harassment for just trying to be who they are or who they want to be, those who have been targeted on Facebook and kicked off of it because of the name they most identify with, it turns my stomach and gets my blood bubbling. I've had a name my whole life that I NEVER identified with but finally, and thanks to this dear man, Jon Kastl, embraced. The name was there all along, but I could not see it until he saw it and said it first, the last letters of my given name. I find myself writing emails to various people these days after the death of my mother, using all 3 of the names I am known by to family, friends and in my working/professional life and life as a parent. This is why the #MyNameIs movement is so near and dear to me... I am finally able to identify as myself because of those 4 simple letters: d i d a. In this way, I also saw how Crescent was made to suffer isolation and loss all over again simply because of her interesting and unique name.

It amazed me, though, how fast people came to her aid and supported the Reinstate Crescent Dragonwagon Facebook page, within hours almost 300 people had liked the page I set up. It gave me even more hope than ever that this platform of people could make a significant difference in one person's life. Imagine what one *billion* Facebook users can do to change the world and improve it. Our age of technology driven communities must support NOT alienate people. It must empower, not further abuse, those who suffer isolation and threats of violence on a daily basis. Lil Miss Hot Mess and Sister Roma and their community of LGTBQ know all too well how it feels to be alienated and targeted by bullies and bigots, their First Amendment rights violated regularly.

Please join me and write to Facebook under the "Report A Problem" option. Give them your feedback on "Let us know how we can improve your experience with Facebook." Select Privacy as the category of "product" they ask you to select, and tell them to stop "fake name reporting." Fake name reporting punishes identities not destructive behavior. So, turn off the ads, Facebook, and turn up the user support for ALL of your users. And read the stories of the users you discriminate against because of the fake name reporting option on Facebook. There are better ways to punish or stop abusive users who spread hate and violence in the Facebook community. A "name policy" should never infringe on anyone's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and identity.

#MyNameIs = FirstAmendmentRights.

Happy Birthday, dear Dragonwagon (Love, Dida)

I often can’t get to my words as fast as I would like each day, as I sit and face my blank screen or piece of paper. And on those days, when doubt speaks too loudly and drowns out my quiet instincts, I hear it bully me again. “It isn’t even important, what you have to say! Let a ‘better’ writer say it, dummy!” That’s when I hear my fearless leader’s voice, “Do NOT call my friend, Dida, a dummy, under any circumstances!” She's right there, standing up for me, the little novella in Danny Shanahan's New Yorker cartoon.
It’s her voice I hear now in my heart and it shuts Mr. Doubt right up. Her name is Crescent Dragonwagon (no, really, it’s Crescent Dragonwagon, that's her logo on the left) and she reminds me on a daily basis that what I have to say *is* important, even if it’s just for me to see and read, and even if no one ever reads it, and no one is ever moved by it one way or another, I am moved by it. This is why I write the words down in the first place and that is enough. At the end of the day, that is more than enough.

Another writer asked me recently what my ultimate goal is for writing a novel. "Do you want to see your name in Barnes & Noble next to Barbara Walters or Danielle Steel?" she asked. I had to admit (and I might have even laughed a bit too loud at the thought of my name next to those names) that I had no desire to see my name in Barnes & Noble.

"But, don’t you want to sell it and see it in print? Don’t you want the success that they have?"

No, I said, I really didn’t care about that kind of success. That’s the publishing world’s idea of success, not mine. And at almost forty-nine years of age, I can finally say I don't need anyone else's approval of my work to call myself an authentic writer. After taking Crescent's 36-day “Virtual Fearless Writing” workshop this year, I finally feel I am already "successful," two of the short stories I am most proud of have been featured on NPR, thanks to Tales from the South and living in Arkansas, something that is truly incredible in and of itself. I am also writing every day which is another miraculous gift. But the most fantastic achievement of all is that I am finally at peace and enjoying the writing process. I am finally discovering new ways to layer and season my work to reveal a richer, more authentic, heartfelt story. I couldn't care less about any money I might or might not receive from finishing my book.

This fellow writer from my writer's group did look at me a bit sideways after I gave my little speech about why I write and what my ultimate goal is for my novel, which is just this: to finish it for my own self-satisfaction.

I do have a deadline, though, not because an editor gave me one but because I gave it to myself. My deadline is my 50th birthday (you'll just have to ask me how far away that is judging by the look of me that day!) but if I don’t meet my deadline, I know it’s not the end of the world, not by a mile, not if I enjoyed the process and wrote the story authentically, embracing fear as my partner, finding my 'helpful inner editor' waiting on the shore up ahead. I have Crescent Dragonwagon to thank for that realization, something it has taken me ten years to understand. I now know, thanks to her voice, that I am no dummy, not under any circumstance. Crescent, I am so grateful that you were born, Fearless Dragon.  Happy Birthday.

L  ike a present sent just for me, even on your birthday, I am still opening up this gift

O  ften unspoken as I write, although I do sing it throughout the day

V  essels of gratitude setting sail to you ~ on board, what you have given me and

E  ach one of your students. I call myself one of the lucky, one of the sacred, one of

 

D  ragon’s fearless writers and finally, I can let go.

I   ‘m finally moving forward, my instincts holding me steady, holding me tight.

D  on’t even try to get in my way now, I’m not stopping, I have a story to tell

A  nd I will write it with honesty and passion and love because you, Crescent, taught me so well.

 

 

 

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Charlotte Zolotow, Whose Books Tackled Children's Real-Life Issues, Dies at 98

Carl Liu! Look at you!

There was something about Carl that I could never fully describe. And I would try. I'd relentlessly try to tell people about this man I worked with and his amazing drawings and designs, but I just had inadequate words to describe him and his gifts. I had never met or seen anyone work like this before, especially a designer. I would see him quietly sketching in his little black book every day, throughout the day, taking small things into three dimensions loaded with brilliant colors and toy-like features, and I wondered how he saw it all in his seemingly quiet mind. What did this fascinating brain really see before he took it to his fingers and pushed it out through his pencils and pens and onto paper?

“Carl what are you working on? Can I see?” and he’d show me his work like they were stick-figured cartoons.

“This is incredible. Incredible! How do you do it?”

 

I think he got tired of listening to me constantly telling him how awesome he was, but I didn’t care ~ I might have been a broken record to him, but I couldn’t help it. His humble demeanor blew me away every day when he came through the studio’s double-metal doors with his bike and helmet. He was the most gifted artist and designer I had ever met, and I had worked with many talented artists over the years.

There was a girl who had broken his heart the year before I met Carl. He had asked her to marry him and they were engaged until he found out the truth about her, something that silently tore him apart.  He reluctantly told me what happened on a day when I had asked too many questions over lunch. I was always asking him questions, though, and he would politely answer, always shy and a bit wary of women and for good reason.

He worked quietly and seriously in the office, but then when he would bust out laughing and his giant smile opened wide and made you sing, I would think to myself, How could she do it? Rip this angel of a smile to shreds? I wanted to hunt her down and confront her, make her pay for what she did to my buddy Carl.  I might have secretly wished that Carl was my real brother.  Maybe that’s why I asked him so many questions about his family in Asia.  Unbeknownced to Carl, I’d dreamed of having a younger sibling my whole life, particularly an Asian brother or sister, and I never really knew why.  Years later I found out that my father had wanted to adopt a Vietnamese baby after I was born.  Maybe I overhead my father talking about it when I was a child? I don’t know… but very soon after I met Carl at Motorola, I felt this unexplained kinship to protect this very tall, little buddy of mine, Carl Liu. 

To see him now so happy with a genuinely beautiful, loyal partner and their two gorgeous girls, makes my heart sing gospels on this Sunday morning. “Carl Liu! Look at you!” Your blossomed smile brings me such joy today, little buddy. I knew from the moment I saw your work that you had incredible gifts to offer the world.

As good a day as any...

"She keeps me warm... she keeps me warm...," the notes grow higher and sweeter.

I grab the carton of eggs from the refrigerator and keep going.  My ten-year old daughter joins me, “I can’t change… even if I tried, even if I wanted to. My love, my love, my love…”

It was one of the best songs we heard this summer. The only one they really listened to on the radio when it played a few times on our long drive home after visiting Washington, DC. They didn’t attempt to sing along and neither did I. We just listened -- a first from two children whose mother was once a singer.

My son walks into the kitchen and starts to hum the melody with us. 

“Love is patient, love is kind,” I sing. “Love is patient, love is kind,” my daughter mimics. “I’m not crying on Sundays. I’m not crying on Sundays… I’m not crying on Sundays,” all three of us singing in unison while I scramble up eggs on Monday, the first day back to school. 

My daughter is in fifth grade now. My son just turned seven, a “second grader” this year. He can read well at seven, and sometimes I’ll see him sounding out the words on the tabloid magazine covers in the checkout line at the grocery store, absorbing all the pictures and the headlines as he chooses a pack of sugar-free gum. Some of the most memorable this summer, “Paris Jackson tries to commit suicide, takes pills and cuts her wrists.” “Glee star, Cory Montieth, found dead in hotel room.”

So, when is the right time to talk to your children about subjects that they are inevitably going to read about or hear at school? And how do you approach a fifth grader about important issues when her little brother has the ears of a fox? Do you separate them? Then, during alone time with the older one, you breach the subject? Or is it better to discuss it as a family? But should you wait until they ask you about it? Is the “best” time to talk to your kids before or after the fact? After they’ve heard the word “faggot” from one of their friends who uses it against another boy who cries easily? Do you wait until after they’ve stood there in silence and uncertainty, not knowing what to do or say next, watching that boy run away and hide in the bathroom until he pretends to be sick so he can go home early and contemplate how he’s going to tie a noose around his neck? Should we sit back and let pop music and celebrity do the job for us? Those last two questions scare me enough to make a decision.

They sit down on their stools at the counter and I realize today is as good a day as any.

“So, do you guys know what the song ‘Same Love’ is about?”

“It’s about someone’s childhood?” my daughter says, the question mark in her voice still hanging in the air.

“Yes, that’s partly true,” I say. “It is about someone’s childhood, and it’s about equal rights. It’s also about discrimination against people for being who they are. It’s about the rights of gay people who want to be married, just like me and Papa.”

I see my son’s eyebrows go up and his eyes are listening now, too. It’s the first time I’ve said the word "gay" out loud to him. My daughter asked me what the word meant in the car the first time she heard “Same Love” on the radio. It was just the two of us that day. So, as I was changing lanes, I told her very matter of factly, “Gay means happy, and it also describes someone who falls in love with a person who is the same gender, like our friends Jon and Mark in New York.”

“Mom… What’s discrimination?” my son asks between bites, and I look him straight in his intelligent brown eyes and begin.

“It means treating someone unfairly, calling them bad names, or taking away their rights just because their skin is a different color or because they love someone who is the same gender, like Jon and Mark.”

My daughter speaks up, “Mom, one time on America’s Got Talent, a man was singing opera and he said say that his family didn’t want anything to do with him anymore because he was gay. The only person that was there to hear him sing at his audition was his boyfriend. He could sing opera really, really good.”

“Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!“ they sing in their best operatic voices, remembering a scene from Mrs. Doubtfire, a movie they just saw for the first time. Their mother had told them it was the other best ‘movie of the summer’ when Despicable Me II was sold out.

My son goes back to eating his breakfast quietly and doesn’t say another word, something that rarely happens unless it involves popcorn or ice cream. I realize that last week’s Time magazine is sitting there on the counter next to my son's plate. The cover has a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. on it and it reads, “Founding Father.” My son saw me read the issue cover to cover last week, and he heard me talk about it afterwards with his dad. He heard me say that it was the 50th anniversary of the "March on Washington." He heard me tell my husband, a Brazilian, that this was the very first peaceful march of its kind during the civil rights movement and that Martin Luther King’s speech changed people’s attitudes about equality for black people, not just in the United States but all over the world… and new laws were passed because of it.

I had shown my son last week the picture in Time of all the people standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in the exact same spot where he and his sister stood this summer. I showed him that famous black and white picture and I asked him how many people he thought were there that day, August 28, 1963. He guessed 200,000. “Oh my goodness! You are so close,” I told him, “There were 200,500 people there that day. Just look at all those people. They all stood up and changed the world.”

I look over at the clock and realize it’s almost time to leave for school. On the first day back to school, let’s be early, I say, and they go gather up their backpacks.

“Mom, am I black?” he says.

“Black?” I answer, laughing. “What?”

“Look how dark my skin is now.”

“Honey, that’s because your tan… from being in the sun so much this summer.”

“But, look how dark I am.”

“I know, but that’s because you’re Italian and Brazilian.”

“No I’m not! I’m black, Mom.”

“Okay.”  I decide to let him be who he wants to be today. This is a day for firsts, even for a 'second' grader.

“Hey, you know the rapper that wrote ‘Same Love,’ Macklemore?”

“Yeah,” he says, stopping to look back at me.

“Well, he’s not black and he’s not gay, but he is the first rap musician to stand up for gay people’s rights, and that’s why he wrote a song about it. So, guess what that makes him?”

“Brazilian?” he answers.

“Maybe… ” I say, smiling, trying very hard not to laugh. Then I start again, “It also makes him a hero and a fantastic human being.”

He turns around and puts his new backpack on and runs out to the car to join his big sister. I have no idea if he’s gotten anything I’ve just spent the last fifteen minutes trying to explain. He seems completely oblivious. Or is he? Well, I tell myself, at least he heard about it from me… at least they both heard it from me, first. 

"I'll take Geography for $300, Alex."

Brain, Child Magazine (The Magazine for Thinking Mothers) asked its readers this week, “What's the most interesting way your parenting differs from how you were raised?”  

This required some serious thinking and spelling on my part, two categories in my upbringing that my parents invested copious (C-O-P-I-O-U-S, "copious." In Latin, "cōpiōsus," plentiful, rich)amounts of time preparing me for.

However, when I was a child I was never asked a single personal question. My parents had little interest in their children’s personal feelings or their views on the world, with the possible exception of world geography. Even then, it wasn’t because they were interested in my opinion about it, they just wanted to know if I could spell the names of the cities or countries that I was learning about in school.

Questions in my household weren’t even questions – they were clues. I provided the question to the clue that my Alex Trebek-style parents delivered across the dinner table, ala our home edition of “Jeopardy!”  We were often given clickers at the table, all seven of my brothers and sisters and I… in case we finished dinner early and had time for some “fun.”

“This capital city is known as the Athens of South America,” my father would bait.

Click-click-click. “What is Bogotá??” I might be lucky enough to blurt out before the other seven clickers went off, each one vying for my father’s praise, while my mother looked on nervously because dessert was melting.

“But, can you spell it?” he might fire back, trying to make sure I had an actual brain in my head instead of gumballs and a lucky memory.

My parents shot out competitive spellers like piping hot rolls from a thin oven mitt. My older sisters traveled back and forth to Washington DC from California to compete with the best spellers in the country under the age of fourteen.

I never made it to DC, and I don’t think my parents ever fully recovered.

“That one went out on sheriff in the seventh grade – ‘One R, two F’s!’ we tried to tell her. ‘Two F's!’  Poor thing, look at her..,” they’d tell their academia friends, pointing and shaking their heads.

Because my opinion never mattered much to my parents but my spelling and my grades always did, I try to take the pressure off my own children when it comes to academics. And I ask questions. Lots of questions. Too many questions.

“Mama, I don’t want to talk about it!” my five-year old son tells me, cutting me off when I ask him how he feels about getting a “3” and not his regular “5” from his preschool teacher.

“Well, if you feel like talking about it, just let me know.  Because, I am all ears… You know, when you’re ready… So... Are you ready yet?”

“La la la la,” plugging his own ears, hoping to drown me out.

My parenting style isn’t much of a “style” as it is a chance for me to get to know my children.  This is something my parents didn’t have much time or energy for, trying to feed and bathe and educate eight kids most of their lives. But it is what I revel in… asking my kids about their lives, hearing their opinions on their little world and the other enormous one spinning around them. We sit down at our own dinner table now, looking over at the globe, while they ask questions about South America or Italy and their heritage, over black beans and pizza and even some good ‘ole American hotdogs.

And when it comes to questions about spelling, I often have to turn to my eight-year old daughter for help, especially on double consonant words. Because, I still can’t remember if there are two R’s or two F’s.  More often than not, she’ll keep her patience with me and she tries not to point.

“That’s okay, Mom… it is a tricky word. Just remember: she then riff."

 

Loud in MY house of Motherhood

Rarely do I land upon a book that changes me as a mother... but, then came Loud in the House of Myself aka LITHOM. 

As a mother of a girl who is already struggling with body image at age eight, who is also intensely emotional and creative, I found that it was initially excruciating to read the details of what this young girl experienced. Stacy as a child was just too familiar. I had to stop reading for a while because it was too painful to idly sit and watch this tormented young girl unravel under the watch of her Arkansan family in a town the size of a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Besides, the way I stumbled upon Stacy Pershall and her memoir was fortuitous. I went to Barnes & Noble in Little Rock that afternoon to buy only David Sedaris’ latest book and walked out holding a copy of LITHOM with “Strange Girl Army!” inscribed in pink ink, the author’s infectious smile and mural of colorful tattoos indelibly part of my experience in the South. 

Here was my other problem but the reason I picked it back up: I loved the way Stacy wrote, her ability to paint the painful details of her childhood with such an honest, almost comical, stroke that I couldn’t stop caring about this little girl and how much she loved her mother and father. I fell in love with her one-of-a-kind quirks (the love for Hot Wheels instead of dolls, how she wanted to be Schroeder from Peanuts with a lit candle on her tiny toy piano, her love for Sugar Daddies, my all-time favorite candy from the 70’s). 

She was smart and full of what I call “the sillies,” doing things her own unique way as a child, writing stories that showed her creativity, and in the beginning her mother accepted all of it… all of her eccentricities. She probably even celebrated them and laughed a little too loud about them like most every mother does who thinks her child is the cutest kid in the room. 

But, as I continued to read, I grew angry with her mother, her father too, for their negligence in accepting their beautiful, artistic, tormented daughter as she got older, for ignoring what they, no doubt, had observed all along, for never even going along for moral support when she got a tattoo that held meaning for her when she reached adulthood -- just to hold her hand, if nothing else, even if they didn’t agree with it. 

Then, it hit me. They had absolutely no tools by which to reach her. It was as if she had fallen into a well, calling out for her parents, but they didn’t have the right kind of flashlight to see her or the right rope ladder to pull her out, and she and they kept slipping off the rungs back into the dark. 

There were no books like LITHOM in their world, or for that matter, on any bookshelf in the South, let alone Prairie Grove, Arkansas. There was no Amazon, no Goodreads… and even the almighty Oprah, who Stacy’s mother might have turned to at the time on the topic of eating disorders, was of no help either, Oprah herself obsessed with diets and fitting into her “skinny” jeans as American women cheered her on. 

This book has changed me for the better, but I resisted it at first… because I was scared – scared to look too closely at things a mother doesn’t want to really see or confront. Had Stacy’s writing not been so rhythmic, so intelligent, so genuine, I would have stopped and gone back to reading David Sedaris for kicks after carpool, math homework and dirty dishes. 

I now encourage mothers to read this book to better understand our girls and boys, to understand mental illness and our healthcare system better. We, their parents, need to seek out memoirs like Stacy’s and educate ourselves about things that are too painful most days to contemplate. When it’s too painful and we want to look away, that’s how we know that we need to keep reading. This is how we learn what type of ladder or flashlight we should have in our parenting tool shed. We may slip and fall until we find the right one, but then we just make another trip back to Home Depot or the closest Wal-Mart Supercenter.

 

Are letter grades the reason teens cheat?

“So why did you cheat, Lila?” I asked.  Lila is an A student and a soon-to-be senior at Palo Alto High School.

 “To get a good grade,” she confessed.

“How would your parents react if you told them?” (Both parents are graduates of a prestigious Ivy League university and both are high-earning professionals in Silicon Valley.)

“They’d be shocked.”

“Did you cheat in several classes or just one?”

“A few,” she admitted, her warm brown eyes low and lost.

“And do you remember anything that you learned in those classes?”  I asked.

“No, not really… except maybe how to cheat.”

What are the Lila’s of Silicon Valley telling us about their world and the letter-grading system?  What has the need to get an “A” done to them?  Is it, in fact, the prime reason they cheat?  Are college admission offices really seeing then the truth on high school transcripts and SAT scores or are they often evaluating a carefully concocted lie?  If so, what are parents, schools and higher education doing to change the status quo?

Questions like these have been tapping me on the shoulder ever since I read Denise Pope’s book, Doing School.  Her book resonated with me, especially after I overheard another teen last year (also an A student and a top athlete) casually talking about how he’d cheated his way through various classes in high school that he thought were a waste of his time.  He and one of his college grad friends were rapping about how dumb you’d have to be not to cheat if a class was boring or you didn’t like the teacher.

So, last month when Stanford Law School announced that they are doing away with the traditional A-F grading system (following the lead of other elite law schools like Yale and UC Berkeley), I decided to take a closer look at the letter grading system at the high school level in our community and even at the university level.  

Innovative undergraduate programs at schools like MIT, Reed College in Oregon, Evergreen State College in Washington, and New College of Florida (NCF), as well as UC Santa Cruz, have also incorporated broader grading systems which include individualized performance evaluations, with the focus off grades and back on a more personalized approach to each student’s learning experience.

Will Stanford Law’s decision influence Stanford’s undergrad program to take the focus off grades?  Are these ‘out-of-the-box’ approaches working?  Are students really challenged and motivated?  Could they actually learn more and enjoy college more without receiving or knowing what letter grade they were given by their teacher?

Now that my own daughter is about to start Kindergarten, dangling her innocent feet into the icy cold waters of the American public education system, I have finally decided to begin my quest to unearth the answers to some of these questions.  I have begun by interviewing teens at Palo Alto High and Los Altos High, and even Stanford freshman.  

I’d like to hear from them first.  What do they think about what Stanford Law has recently done to improve learning and take the focus off letter grades?  What changes would they make at their own schools to improve how they’re graded and evaluated?  What would they tell their parents if they could about the pressure they’re under to academically achieve? What if they came clean about cheating, what would actually happen to them? Has cheating, in fact, reached epidemic proportions because of the need for the "Almighty A”?

I recently spoke with author, Denise Clark Pope PhD, a leading researcher and lecturer on the subject of pressure to compete and achieve in high school.  Her book, Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, openly talks about how we have created a culture and an education system where kids are doing whatever it takes to get the grade and win the attention and the recognition of their parents and teachers, but at the cost of their own well-being and self-respect. 

Dr. Pope is also a lecturer with Stanford University's School of Education, where she founded and directs Challenge Success, a national research and intervention project for K-12 schools.  Because her work has inspired me to explore the topic more closely, I wanted to ask Dr. Pope’s reaction to Stanford Law’s move to take the emphasis off grades and place it back on learning.

“Do you think that the law school’s decision will truly impact or change students’ overall learning experience?”

“Students who are grade-oriented will most likely continue to try for the Honors or “H” status because that’s their mindset, but many students just want to focus on the work instead of the grade,” she replied.

“Will Stanford University follow suit and change their grading system?”

“I know that a few folks have suggested doing what MIT has done – not grading first year students or at least not grading the first quarter of work.  The idea being that it is such a big transition from high school, not wanting to overload incoming freshman with grading anxiety but rather saying, ‘Here, let’s get your feet wet first.’”

In the final pages of Doing School, Dr. Pope speaks about the need to listen to high school students before we can even begin to change or impact their education successfully.  If we don’t listen to teens and their ideas about how to improve their learning experience, how will we begin to understand how to reach each student emotionally?  And without reaching students emotionally, truly understanding what they care about, there is little hope for reigniting their passion for learning and discovery.

There’s no telling how long cheating has been going on in the classroom.  In 2005, a Duke University study revealed that 75% of all high school students cheat in the United States and if you include copying homework, it climbs to 90%.  Last year, in Reagan McMahon’s article “Everybody Does It,” (SF Gate, September 9, 2007), Dr. Pope states that 80% of honors and advanced placement students cheat on a regular basis because they have more to lose if they don’t cheat.

So, how does Silicon Valley rate? Have we here in the privileged backyard of Stanford University done a better or a worse job at over-loading and stressing out our youth?  What would students really say about cheating to get the grade when they aren’t being threatened or judged by an authoritative adult in their lives?  Do they feel it violates their integrity or self-respect?  A little?  A lot?  Can they articulate that yet or does that come years later, after they’ve received their college diplomas by hook or by crook.  I hope to share my findings in the coming months.

 

Let’s step back a bit, though, to 1983 -- twenty-five years ago.  (Okay, that’s quite a few steps back.)

It was a pivotal time, not just in my life and my education, but also for technology and the world we know today in Silicon Valley.  1983 was the year I would graduate high school, the year before my father would die, the year before Steve Jobs would present to the world the first desktop computer – an amazing 9” screened, black and white Apple Macintosh.  I wouldn’t know it yet, but I would do the same thing at the University of San Francisco that Steve Jobs did after his first semester at Reed College.  I would leave college and begin to love learning all over again.  Jobs would eventually become one of my heroes, a self-directed innovator who saw a vision of the future because of a profound love and passion for discovery in the present.

Twenty-five years ago when I was a senior in high school, it would have been me, instead of Lila, giving the same answers to those questions.  It’s no big secret -- cheating in school and lying to your parents strolled hand in hand in my generation, too.  But it seemed much more sophomoric, especially when Ferris Bueller and Tom Cruise in Risky Business made lying to your parents and teachers look so fun and glamorous, particularly in your skivvies.

Like Lila, though, I also had very academically successful parents.  The expectation in households like Lila’s and mine were set by our parent’s achievements, and with high achievements comes high expectations and insurmountable pressure to compete and please.  However, in the Eighties, it was generally the kids who never did well (mostly “the jocks” in my high school) that were cheating off the kids who studied hard and always did well (“the geeks,” as it were).  Today, it is the “smart” kids who are leading the way, caught up in a broader spectrum of pressure from home to do well at everything – academics, sports, social-clubs, music, band… and the list or beat goes on.

During the Eighties, teens fell into clearer categories than they do today, and it was the students mostly, not their parents, pushing for more extra-curricular activities.  Parents today know that leading universities want youth who are unique, students who stand out both academically and socially, and that’s why they’re pushing their children harder.  Is this healthy? Is it helping their kids?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  What would parents do differently if they knew how much their kids cheated to keep up?  What would parents say if they knew that cheating is now considered among their A-student children to be a very helpful, time-management tool?

Eleven out of the twelve teens I’ve interviewed so far admitted to cheating or helping others cheat.  Each said that the number one reason they do it is because of pressure from their parents to get a good letter grade.  The second reason, they said, is because they don’t have enough time to study and cheating makes their life a lot easier and manageable.  The third reason is pressure from friends who may drop them socially if they don’t let them copy their homework or cheat off their test.

Do they consider cheating to be wrong or a big deal?  Not really or at least not until they get caught.  But that almost never happens.  Why is that?  A seventeen year old from Los Altos High put it this way, “Because the people who do it are really smart and good at it.”

I was particularly bad at cheating in high school, which gives you a fairly good idea of my academic skill-set, although, I did try… many times.  I was no different than any of the teens I’ve interviewed.  I just don’t remember cheating being “no big deal” or ever casual.  What I remember was almost throwing up during my SAT exams, doubled-over in pain, thinking that my whole life and future teetered on the outcome of those English and math scores.  The fear and pressure that consumed me as I walked into that auditorium flapping with Flock of Seagull haircuts came from parental pressure to succeed academically, but it also came from a strong desire to impress my parents and family to gain their respect and attention.  Sad, ironic and true.

Coming from a strong academic family, letter grades and SAT scores were everything (both my parents were educators, however neither of their parents went much past the 4th grade in school).  Because my parents couldn’t afford private university for their eight children on a teacher’s salary, academic scholarships were expected.   So, the thought that I might just be an average student with a creative, artistic streak was not an idea that was easily entertained or accepted.  “Average” and “creative” were code words for “failure” – not just for me but also for my parents.  And talking about happiness without academic success was just not in my parent’s vocabulary or probably in any book or thesaurus they may have consulted on the subject.  Academic achievement meant better opportunities in their generation.  It meant better pay, better jobs, better houses, better appliances, better cars, better families and better children… and, of course, it still does.  However, being better doesn’t actually mean happier – not then and certainly not today.

Had I just been able to make out the answers on Lawson’s test form (Lawson was my calculus-loving, former 3rd grade boyfriend, who had a functioning car and offered to drive me to take the SATs) I would have whole-heartedly cheated that day.  Without a doubt, I would have cheated my way into a bright and shiny new college education.  Fortunately for me, though, little Lawson turned out to be a 6’5 giant at seventeen, and his exceptionally long basketball arms blocked all the answers I so desperately wanted to call my own.

Thanks to Lawson and his gifted arms, I didn’t get into Stanford like one of my older sisters who was awarded a full academic scholarship.  No, my path to learning and education would be different – maybe even more challenging and gratifying than studying at an elite university.

(If you’d like to read more about Dida Gazoli’s research findings regarding the letter grading system in Silicon Valley and what teens and their parents are saying about it, email her at [email protected])