Tuesday Work

When it happens, it will be on a Tuesday.

This is unfortunate, because "Tuesday" is somewhat of a dirty word around teachers in my building. Generally speaking, if something is going to go wrong at school, it's going to be on a Tuesday. For Tuesday is "staff development day." Our day begins earlier than all others days in order to provide time for us to be "developed." Whether valuable or not, these meetings are typically viewed as obstacles to the mounting papers to grade, copies to be made, notes to prepare, or students to help. Any day that begins with built-in obstacles has the right ingredients for disaster. Or at least a sub-par day. And it seems I've had my fair share of those kind of Tuesdays.

It is with this attitude that I approach the concept of "Tuesday work" in this post. It's another idea I came across in the Exploring Calvin and Hobbes collection that I wrote about a few weeks ago. For it was his work on the average Tuesday that Bill Watterson, writer of the Calvin and Hobbes strip, felt he would ultimately be judged.

Said Watterson:

"Comic strips are so ephemeral that daily consistency is sort of the test. You might get lucky and knock one out of the park on Monday, but that doesn't buy you much credit for Tuesday. Everybody's already forgotten it. The measure of a comic is those "Tuesday strips," where you don't hit it out of the park. Proportionally those are going to be the vast majority of your work, so how good are they?"

When I say that it will happen on a Tuesday, this is what I mean. It will be on the Tuesdays of your life, on the days you don't feel great, on the days when life is not going according to plan, on the days after a masterful performance when you're tired and you feel like you've given enough already, that you will build your reputation. You will be remembered for your Tuesdays.

I want my kids to remember their childhood for the great trips we've taken or the Christmas mornings we've planned. And they'll remember some of that. But they'll remember more how I father on the other days, the unplanned and unscheduled days, the days where I choose between time with them or time to myself, when we do nothing special other than eat a meal and read a book and kick a ball in the yard.

I want my students to remember me for the great lessons, my players for the great wins, my fellow church members for the strong sermons, and my readers for the most-read posts. But they will not. Not primarily, any way. Rather, it will be for who I am and what I do in the days in between.

You will build your reputation on a thousand Tuesdays, all stacked up one after another, none of them memorable but all of them influential. What will those stack of Tuesdays build? A mountain of forgettable days? Perhaps. But more likely, they will form a complete and accurate picture of you. Unfiltered, unplanned, unprotected you. How good are you when you're not "knocking it out of the park," as Watterson said?

Whatever you want to be good at, whether it be prayer or politics, will be tested on Tuesdays. More importantly, whoever you want to be, especially to the people you most want to be that for, will be determined by how you spoke to them, how you showed up for them, or how you served them when you didn't have it on the calendar.

Claim Tuesdays as yours. Win them all. Not by being fantastic and unforgettable, but by quietly and doggedly being exactly who you want to be.

Parting Words for My Graduating Seniors (And Probably for the Rest of Us)

I've decided to sit down and write to you despite the fact that I don't feel like it right now. It's something I want to have done; however, getting started has proven difficult. And now it's 8:30 PM and I just want to fall asleep in my chair with a book. But I'm here and I'm writing because I feel compelled by our relationship to have some parting words. Or at least my vision of our relationship, one which I hope is driven by mutual respect and my need to squeeze something out of every possible minute I have to influence you because you were gracious enough to sign up for my class. As you are likely reading this during some of your last minutes in here, and because of that allegiance to your time with me, I am compelled to get down some words.

It is that word "compel" that I want to emphasize today. It is not a word that gets much attention. I don't hear many kids running around saying "I want to be compelled when I grow up!" and I certainly can't find any inspirational graduation cards with trite quotes about finding that which "compels" you as you head off to your next journey. No, in our self-reliant, self-promoting, self-satisfying culture, we rarely stop and think about finding that which we allow to compel us in our lives.

Of course we don't. The word originates from the Latin "compellere" meaning to drive together like cattle, or to force someone into something. It indicates that motivation for an act has come from the outside, as if any who are compelled are slaves, merely doing another's bidding out of fear or guilt or bribery. Synonyms include "force, pressure, press, push, urge." Haven't you earned the right, now that you've done the bidding of parent and teacher and director and coach for 18 long years, to just do whatever it is you want to do?

Sure, you have that right. You've had it for a long time already; some of us were just slow to let you in on that secret. But I hope you want more for yourself that the "freedom" to do as you wish, when you wish, for yourself.

For the best work of my life has been that which I've felt compelled to do.

I am compelled daily by the most fantastic, devoted, caring woman that I could ever imagine. I am compelled by my love for her to pick up my socks when I don't want to, to be wiser that I ever thought possible, and to put the needs of my family above my personal wants. I am compelled to wash dishes some times, vacuum the floors most times, and consider ways to make her smile all times. I have not yet been compelled to believe in Valentine's Day, of course; but she hasn't tried to drive me that way either.

My parents compelled me to avoid a lot of stupid mistakes that I desperately wanted to commit in my youth. My friends compelled me to get out of my own way, to see the world through the eyes of those with significantly different worldviews, and to try many things that I was hesitant to try. Like Chinese food. Or actually talking to girls. My grandparents compelled me to embrace where I came from.

I have been compelled by books. Stacks and stacks of books. Some required by coursework I didn't feel like completing, others recommended by friends or authors, still others mere accidents. But they drove me. They pushed and pressured and demanded in ways I wanted desperately to go and ways I never thought I would.

Teachers have compelled me. Teachers I've liked, teachers I've hated, and even teachers I've forgotten made me go where I didn't want to go. Grazing, cattle-like, I instead was herded into philosophies that I now cling to.

I was compelled by a pompous, bombastic Humanities professor and his atheistic badgering to actually dig in, commit myself to knowing the Bible if I was going to profess it, and purposefully mature in a faith I could barely call active, despite the fancy Jesus fish on the back of my car.

Now I am compelled by God, both through my head and my heart, to live sacrificially, to grow consistently, to love my enemy, and to crave truth desperately. And every day, when I fail in some way, I am compelled all over again.

And I am compelled right now, by duty, by love, and by respect to type these words and offer them in a last-ditch effort to compel you.

Some people are self-starters. They can muster up the motivation to be more than they are right now all on their own. If that's you, I envy you. It's not me. And my experience tells me that I'm not alone. Left to myself, to do as I please, when I please, I would have decades of regret tugging at my soul.

To be compelled is to make something else more important. To get outside of yourself. To submit. It is a reminder that you are not a god. Trust me, you will need that reminder.

So I urge you to put yourself in positions to be compelled by worthy "drivers." That will require many that you don't agree with. Or like. That will require you to personally seek out opportunities to be compelled, and it will require you to keep your eyes open and simply say yes when a compeller finds you. Most of all, to be compelled is to make the decision that something else, or someone else, is more important than yourself today.

Go forth, to your classrooms and workplaces and peer groups and new communities and old communities and families and strangers. Allow them to compel you.

And feel free, whenever the need arises, to compel me to serve you once again.

The Amish Life for Me

A few weeks ago I had a student claim that I was Amish.

He meant it as an insult. It was another good-natured day of intellectual sparring in the classroom, and he took his best shot. His best was accusing me of living an Amish lifestyle. I only knew it to be an insult because of the confident glare and self-satisfied combination of crossed arms, conspicuous lean backwards in his seat, and smug smirk. I wasn't quite sure how to respond.

"I'm not even sure what that means," I responded.

"You know, you're like those Amish people. Your Amish." Another smirk.

"Make me a list," I demanded. "Tell me what you mean. Tell my why I'm Amish." By the end of the class period, he had.

Here's what I got (**used with permission):

Apparently this is what it is to be Amish. Or perhaps I should say "Ahmish," as he spelled it, before listing off his "Ten Reasons" and skipping number 6 completely. Whatever sense or logic failed in this exchange, it did provide good fodder for entertainment in our competitive tête-à-tête. And then I forgot about it, until the Amish were in the news.

In the May 10th edition of the Des Moines Register, there was a feature story on the 50th anniversary of Amish civil disobedience in Iowa, protesting compulsory public school attendance for their kids. I had never even heard of this. It's a fascinating article, if you get the time. Apparently, the Amish were being forced to send their kids to public schools rather than their own schools due to state law, which was hugely problematic for the beliefs and values of those Amish citizens. They were backed into a moral corner, testing their traditions and core convictions. They fought back.

It's easy to read their plight and think, of course they fought back. But it's only that simple in retrospect. Here they were, facing off against public opinion, public pressure, and law enforcement. It would have been much easier to comply. It would have been easier to compromise and send those values gently into that good night. Instead, they raged. Rather than publicly obey while even privately grousing about the direction of society, like so many of us are wont to do, they said no.

I now hope my student was right. I hope I've got a little Amish in me. When the pendulum of public opinion swings one way, a way far from my values, will I sit in silence and wait until no one is listening to state my case? When the world's path to success for my children strays from our family's faith and value system, will I have the strength to say, "Not us"?

Yes, it's the Amish life for me. At least I'm hoping so. For convictions are easy, until they're not; which is why finding models, even those whose beliefs run counter to my own, is so important. These models, fighting for a way of life I don't necessarily understand, battled not to change minds and increase the numbers of their team. They didn't read poll numbers to find out when it was okay to publicly state their position. They simply gripped onto a firm vision of what they wanted for their homes and for their families and were unwavering in the face of the opposition.

Where insult was hurled, I'm capturing motivation. I'm not sure that my ancient cell phone (see reason #7) or my small town residence (#4) have any resemblance to the Amish way. But if it's an unshakable adherence to my family's way of life that gathers me under that title, then I'll keep walking that way.

She Showed Up

A few months ago I wrote a post about the fact that 80 percent of friendship is just showing up. As I reflect today on a lifetime of being cared for by my mother, I realize that the same is true for parenting as well.

This week on Tim Challies' blog, he wrote about the effect of looking through old pictures of his kids:

"There are thousands of these photos, each one a little link to days gone by and to time that has already passed. While there is joy in looking at those old shots and losing myself in memories, there is also a deep sadness. Why? Because every photo looks like an opportunity lost. Wasn't it just yesterday that the kids were toddling around, barely able to walk? Wasn't it just last summer that they ran in circles outside trying desperately to get some dollar-store kites to soar into the air?"

When my mother looks back at the past, as she undoubtedly does, and she ponders the fleeting nature of time, she won't look back in regret. At least she shouldn't. Because she showed up.

When I consider the major events of both my youth and my adulthood, I remember my mother being there. Even a cursory glance around my office displays memorabilia from priorities I've had that all come with thoughts of Mom. There are the relics from coaching high school basketball in two different states; she was there. 

I have an old picture of one of my youth flag football teams that I coached while I was at UNI. Those same kids enjoyed football helmet-shaped treats from my mother after a game.

There's even a poster-sized picture of the night in high school I crossed the finish in time for our relay team to set the school record.

When I look at that poster, I remember exactly where she was on the infield of the track, shouting encouragement. Because she was there.

What I am most impressed with, though, and what I find hardest to do myself as a parent, is to do more than show up for the major events. Mom showed up on the average days. In the long hours of the afternoon and evening, with the weight of work and 3 kids and a husband and a house to care for, I remember her showing up when no one else was watching: showing up to play wiffle ball in the backyard, or showing up to play UNO on a Sunday afternoon, or even showing up on the back of a hay rack to stack bales with me in the summer. 

We were usually a Sunday morning and a Sunday night church family growing up. If you asked me or my siblings, however, you'd discover that we were quite sure that Sunday morning was enough. Some Sunday nights, if we could time it just right, we would start ping-pong games in our basement maybe twenty or thirty minutes before it was time to get ready for evening church. If we could get Mom to show up, and if we could get the intensity level of those games at a high enough level, we had a chance of "accidentally" running out of time to make the service. I'm confident the sermons of time spent together in shouts of triumph or despair in that basement were far more important than any we missed while not in the pew. And I remember all that because Mom showed up.

I've got a lot of pictures of the event days in my life when Mom showed up. I have even more pictures in my heart of the non-event days, when I didn't know her level of fatigue because she didn't want me to know, when she showed up as well.

She still shows up. She shows up at events, like when I'm giving the sermon at church or my children have a birthday party. She shows up at non-events, like when we're remodeling our house and she commits a weekend to rolling primer on our walls. And she shows up on the phone, around 8:30 every Sunday night, to talk about the week. Her example challenges me to show up for my kids too; not just when they have a program or a game or an event, but when I'm tired after a long day and they just want to play soccer in the yard, or Sequence at the table, or even when they want to "style" my hair.

My wife is in our kitchen right now with our children on this cloudy Sunday afternoon. She has shown up to teach them more about cooking and the art of making jam. She is a wonderful mother. I should know: I've spent a lifetime watching what one looks like.

Happy Mother's Day.

So When is This Due?

Though retired for twenty years now, Bill Watterson and his Calvin and Hobbes comics live on. Recently I acquired an exhibition catalogue put together by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at The Ohio State University that was published this year in March. Not only has the catalogue collected, organized, and commented on Watterson's art and various aspects of the strip, the book contains a long interview with Watterson about varying aspects of his experience at the helm of this popular comic. One exchange between Watterson and the interviewer that stood out to me was in regard to deadlines.

Watterson was speaking about the limitations and constraints of the comic strip as an art form. There are rules that must be followed, constraints that must be respected. The daily strips require one format, the Sundays another. There are color limitations. And then there are the demands of the deadline. Every day, 365 days a year, there's a demand for new content. Right now. Immediately. He spoke of the fact that, in hindsight, he appreciated what those limitations did for him:

"It's going to be black and white, it's going to be ink on paper, it's all got to fit in this teeny little space, and it has to be done by yesterday. Okay, thank you, now I can get to work! I think the hardest part is the deadline. But even there, I've come to respect it. A painting is infinitely perfectible, so I can't tell when to stop. The strip deadlines are so relentless that simplicity and speed become great virtues. . ." (p. 26)

What I found illuminating was the response of the interviewer: "Without that deadline constraint, it wouldn't have been possible to complete so much work."

And there it is. Without someone forcing Watterson into demanding, sometimes unreasonable deadlines for content, one of the greatest, most well-known strip writers would have created only a fraction of the thousands of strips that have captured the hearts of generations. Simply put, without this pressure, he would have accomplished less. Far less.

Dear English students: this is why I am so demanding with you. This is why I don't push deadlines back when you beg and prod and verbally abuse my supposedly non-existent soul. If I did, you would accomplish less. You would read less, write less, learn less, and create less. You might be okay with that, but you won't be in twenty years. Bill Watterson hated the daily demand for new content and the unrelenting stream of pressure on his abilities. At least he did then. Now? Now he's being interviewed on his artistic gift to the world and all the success and fulfillment it's brought him.

Most adults are vocally appalled when I tell them that a national trend in education is to do away with due dates and deadlines, that new conventional wisdom has it that you can't put a timetable on learning and that holding students to a due date is in essence giving up on them. They talk about the real world. And I'm with them. But one question that begs to be asked is this: how many deadlines are adults being held to? Or perhaps more importantly, how much more could we all accomplish under the pressure of a deadline?

I know the temptations to procrastinate that which should be done. I clean the house more and with more vigor when the deadline of company coming to visit approaches. I haven't completed my baseball online rules exam yet despite having it for a week and a half; after all, the season doesn't start tomorrow. My drivers license got renewed 6 months after it was past due, and only then because I feared a stiffer penalty if I didn't finally take care of it. Netflix has no due date; some DVD's have stayed in a drawer for months. Absent a clear and present threat of "past due," I'm mostly worthless.

I know this about human nature. I know this about myself. So I've put myself on a writing deadline every month. Every month in 2015 I've met the deadline. Most months I've met it on the last day of the month. Other than avoiding the self-loathing involved with failing at a simple personal goal, I've also found that what was true for Watterson is true for me: I've accomplished well more than I ever could without it. I'm at over 26,000 words of typed prayers for the year. That's more than all of last year. At 1/4 of the way through the year, I'm over half of the way to last year's blog total. I am thinking better, loving better, enjoying better. The only change is the deadline.

Tomorrow some of my students take a high-stakes AP Exam. We've been in heavy exam prep mode over the last two weeks. I have some students who have considerably ramped up their efforts to learn more before this deadline. That sense of urgency did not exist in December, when perhaps it was a little easier to take a few days off from reading and writing. I don't fault them for that. Rather, I see myself in them.

If it matters to you, give yourself a deadline. Or put yourself in a position where someone else is holding one up for you. See what you can do. If me and my friend Mr. Watterson are any indication, it will be far more than you thought possible.

So How Does This One End?

"Nothing spoils a story more than a weak or inappropriate ending." 
- Roy Peter Clark, Help! for Writers

In my last post, I referred to the importance of leads in the writing process and the connection with "conversational leads" that people use, particularly in apologies. Tonight I look at the flip-side: the necessity for a strong ending.

The quote I lead with says it all: write a strong ending, and it will crown the passionate prose in the middle. Muddle it up or coast to the finish line, and no one will remember the middle anyway.

As it goes in writing, so it goes in life. I think back to some of the endings to stories in my life and feel the weight of Clark's statement.

I remember the ending at Towanda. Camp Towanda was a summer camp where Emily and I worked the summer before we got married. We both had one year of college left and decided that summer freedom was there for the taking, so we took: we met a guy named "Z" on the UNI campus during a summer work fair who convinced us to come live in Northeast Pennsylvania for 10 weeks over the summer and work the camp. 

I'm tempted to fill the space here with cliches about how great the summer was, but they will be just that - empty words. They will not bring the story to life. I could write books about my experiences that summer, and I hope I do some day. Working with other twenty-somethings from most U.S. states and several countries from around the world, along with the couple hundred Jewish kids attending the camp all summer long, has a way of treating you to life experiences. Our summer at Towanda is not a story; it's a volume.

But that volume has a clear chronology, a beginning and a middle, and suddenly the end was upon us. The ending of the story needed to fit. And it did. As Clark wrote, nothing could have spoiled this haloed time more than a forgettable ending. Instead, I'll remember that night forever. It was an hours-long party at a small-town bar, pitchers of Yuengling Black and Tan flowing, a consistent, raucous din of uproarious laughter and back-slapping and tears and Aussie-slang. We tried to make time stand still, just for a minute; but it didn't. After a few short hours of sleep in a hotel room crowded with Israelis, my future wife and I got up, hugged our two newest lifelong friends, shed a few tears, and closed the story. The concluding paragraph fit masterfully.

Our Sutherland story ended just as perfectly. In English class I teach something called "circular structure" or "framing." In a frame, the conclusion refers back to the lead. It's an effective way to make sure that whatever you're beginning with, it's important and relevant enough that it will make a powerful end as well. Our Sutherland days ended at a grill-out with our friends on the farm of my assistant coach, the same one who invited me to come meet my new team at a grill-out when we first moved there.

My senior year of high school basketball was filled with victories and top ten rankings and endless success. I don't remember any of that nearly as well as I remember the ugly upset we endured at the hands of our rivals well-before the state tournament glory we had envisioned. On too many days, I remember the bitterness of saying goodbye to my beloved teaching and coaching job at Nora Springs under circumstances I didn't think were best for anybody, rather than remembering three of the best years of my career.

The ending matters. No matter how well you've done something, or how good a relationship is, a faulty goodbye, a half-effort near the finish line, or an abrupt and misplaced word can alter the taste of the story so much that the middle of it barely rings true anymore.

I will remember that this month, this final month with my seniors. Five years down the road, for most of them I'll probably be just somebody else whose class they had once upon a time. I know there are some things that I do wrong in the classroom, but I'm also pretty sure that I get a couple of things right. In our final month together, I'll either punctuate my strengths and leave them remembering my classroom fondly, regardless of the demanding schedule I held them to; or instead I'll coast, letting distraction and busyness and grading and self-focus slowly separate us until it was like we never spent a year or three together at all.

We've all been given time. Time to work, time for relationships, time to parent, even time for vacations. And time ends. There will be a close to all of the stories you and I are currently in. Finish those stories strong. The magnitude of the middle depends on it.

In Writing and Apologies, The Lead Says it All

English teachers like myself work tirelessly trying to teach our students the importance of a good lead.

A lead is the first thing a reader will see, introducing the content and the tone and the reliability of the piece. It provides a statement in it's attempt to lure the reader not only regarding the subject matter at hand, but also the type of reader whose attention it is attempting to grasp. A good lead speaks volumes in approximately 100 words or less.

Roy Peter Clark, one of my favorite writers about writing, even went so far as to rank the leads of Pulitzer Prize submissions, citing one in particular that effectively uses 25 semicolons. Now that one goes straight to the heart of this grammar guru, dangling that prize on a shiny hook.

It is in a lead that we learn where a piece of writing is headed, and it's also a great indicator of where a conversation is headed. I have found that's especially true if the conversation is an apology.

The apology I write about today was a fairly public one. Another star in the world of professional sports acted boorish and awful, exploding in a tantrum of arrogance and villainy. Which is fine unless you're caught on tape. She was. The apology came a day later, through Twitter, America's favorite place for apologies.

The apology was fine. It hinted at remorse. It accepted responsibility. It could have been dowright genuine. Except. . .

There was a qualifier. That qualifier came in the form of the lead, the first couple of words, the attention-getting precursor that shines a light onto the truth of what is coming. Her lead? "In an intense and stressful moment. . ."

And there it is. As a reader, I can stop there. The tone is set. I can see where this is going. My actions were bad, I'm sorry, there's no excuse for what I did, except for the one I'm leading with. Even though she's taking full responsibility, it isn't really her fault. Her emotions got the best of her. She was pushed into these actions by extreme provocation. Her guard was down. This isn't who she really is.

Except that it is. It is a tired excuse, but an age old one. I was tired. I was really frustrated. I was having a bad day. I was at my wits end. I was just really upset and I took it out on you. But the reality of frustration and stress and fatigue and irritation is that our "guard" is, in fact, down. The guard that we put up to protect others from our real selves, the carefully crafted persona, thick and vibrant as makeup, is only a facade. That is who we want to be. Or perhaps more likely, who we want others to think that we are.

But behind that mask is who we really are. And that mask gets washed away under intensity and fatigue. Who are you really? You are who you are when you are unguarded, unprepared, unexpecting, and bare of all comforts. How do you treat you're wife when you're tired? How does your parenting change under duress? What words and behaviors accompany you in a gym or a field when an official's call goes against you? What kind of a student, employee, sibling, and citizen are you when you haven't been treated well? Or, as Snickers commercials have so entertainingly reminded us, when you're "hangry"?

It's an important question. Duress doesn't bring out the worst in everyone; it just brings out the most real. And rather than excusing away our behavior on those days, perhaps we more appropriately can use those days to see just how loving, just how open-minded, just how forgiving and patient we are.

I've come to understand that most days I get a chance to see this. Most days I will get tired, stressed, frustrated, or wronged. If I'm going to face the real me on most days, then I better go to work improving the real me that everyone will see.