Caregiving in a Bar

A Caregiver’s Workshop over Apple Martini

 

After spending all morning at the AARP conference, friend  Elaine and  I went to the Pineapple Room at Macy’s for lunch. Fortunately, as it turned out, there were no tables but the bar was open.

 

I love sitting on bar stools; it makes me feel wicked. I ordered an Apple Martini ( the best in town) and  a salad. Soon a man sat next to me. He noticed the leis around my shoulder and asked if I were celebrating a birthday. “No,” I explained, “I just gave a lecture at the AARP conference.”

 

And now the most unique “pick up” began, not by one but by two. Since I’m no longer 25, this is the best I can expect in this game of “pick up.”

 

Our conversation led to his story of his wife struggling with caring for her father with dementia.

I sensed all the loopholes so began a mini-workshop. A woman next to him leaned over and said, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but I’m caring for my sister who has Alzheimer’s.”

 

So over my Apple Martini, I gave a condensed version of what I had covered earliar at the conference. They took my business card and hope to read my books on caregiving. The stranger said, as we left, “This was meant to happen. Thank you. ”  Yeah, but he didn’t pay for my drink.

 

Elaine said, “This is way better than sitting at a table in a restaurant. This would never have happened outside of a bar.” Elaine paid for my martini lunch.

 

 

 

 

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A Note to Fathers

Jan Ken Po Craft Fair

I was at the annual fund raiser for the Jan Ken Po summer school for Japanese American children  in Sacramento today. This past summer, I was invited to teach haiku writing with my Wordsworth the Poet books,  so I’m familiar with their curriculum on preserving the Japanese culture in children. I was there today to sign my books for Heritage Source to help the fund raiser.

A young girl, about 7, recognized Wordsworth the Poet book, dashed over and held the book to her chest, saying, “Wordsworth! I want Wordsworth!”

Her father asked, “Isn’t this the book you heard in school?”

She said yes, but she wanted the book.

Father said,” Since you already heard this story, there’s no need to get this book. “

The young girl began to weep as she put Wordsworth back on the table.

Father pointed to a book on the other table and said, “Here, I’ll buy this book. There’s no sense in getting a book you already read.”

He selected a book without looking at the content. Girl kept saying, “But I want Wordsworth the Poet.”

I was interrupted by a customer so I lost track of the little girl and when I turned, they were both gone.

I later walked the aisles, looking for the girl. I found her near my table again, alone. I told her I would get Wordsworth the Poet for her and would sign it. She shook her head and said no, it’s best to get the other book that her father chose. I knew I, too, had to uphold her father’s decision.

BUT: I ran an inner dialogue to her father:

Don’t you know that a book, like art and music and any of the arts, are to be appreciated over and over again?  Don’t you listen to a favorite song over and over again?  Don’t you read your favorite poem and even memorize a few lines? How about a work of art on your wall?  Your child is crying for a book and you don’t hear her? How can you purchase a book by title alone? Do you think a book is a book and one book is like any other, in this case,  Wordsworth the Poet?  How did you know your child had heard this story in school? Wordsworth musts have so impressed her that she told you about it. I wish you could have heard what your daughter had  said to me…so much wisdom, knowing she couldn’t make you lose face by accepting the book from me.

Ah Wordsworth, I’m glad you weren’t here today. You would have whipped your tail at the father. You would have screamed, “Fathers, listen to your children and learn from them.”

All in all, it was a very  wonderful  day for sales  and signing close to  100 books was a good kind of pain for my carpal tunnel hand. The other pain was hard to take.

First photo with Carolyn of Heritage Source—2nd photo with customer Yvonne Ishimoto

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A Set of Red Suitcases

Broken Promises

A friend once gave me  a magnet for  my refrigerator door  that said: Three things  you must never do and one of them was: Never break a promise to a child.

During my last visit to a school in Hawaii, a teacher approached me with, “I’m a friend of your niece Ann. You must be her Aunty Fran who bought her a set of red suitcases when she graduated from high school.”

I recently heard two stories of  promises  made to children.

Jane ( name changed) received all A’s in elementary school because her grandfather promised  her a new bicycle if she took home an all A report card. She worked hard, thinking of that bicycle throughout those years.  Her grandfather never did buy her that bicycle and something worse than a promise was left broken.

Another woman I will call Susan, was on the honor roll list throughout high school because her father promised her a car for her graduation. It wasn’t a one announcement promise; he reminded her throughout the years of that car. She thought of all the car models she would be driving at graduation. He never did keep that promise and once again, something  irreparable was broken.

These women are now adults and those broken promises are part of their childhood memories.

I was in my early twenties when my niece Ann attended Kindergarten. I told her ” When you graduate from high school, I’m buying you a set of red suitcases.”  Red was always my color of romance ever since I read of that red wagon in the Dick and Jane reading  series in first grade and I wanted to add red to Ann’s life. Ann graduated with honors and I did give her a set of red suitcases which took her away to college. They must be worth something at the antique shop today.

Had I broken that promise, her  friend  would have told me,
“You must be her Aunty Fran who didn’t get the red suitcases you had  promised her when she was five.”

If there’s a run on bicycles and cars tomorrow, some promises are being  glued back again. For Jane and Susan, it’s too late.

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The Unadoptable Child

A.K.A. The Invisible Child

Every year, during my teaching years, I played a little mind game  and selected one child  I would  consider  “adopting.” He or she was that child who entered the classroom like a ray of sunshine and never lost that sparkle in the eyes. That child would be easy and loving and laughed a lot and didn’t know what it meant to be unkind to other kids.  That child soaked up everything I said or taught and thought I was a genius. Often, I would think of adopting more than one.

I know what you’re all thinking, that you  would have been that child if you  were in my class.  I always thought I, too, was that incredible child who impressed my teachers so much,  had they played my mental game, they would have chosen me.

Wrong! OMG. I came across my old report cards from grade school through high school.

My grades are C’s and B’s with a few insignificant A’s.

Grade 6: Final grades: all B’s and C’s :

Grade 7: I’m a little smarter with 2 A’s in Eng and Soc Studies but C in Math.

Grade 8: B’s and C’s and a male teacher’s comment:  Frances is a good student and needs only to   participate in class activities.

Things get worse:

Grade 9: B’s and C’s and 1 D in Algebra

Grade 10: B’s and C’s with one A in Biology

Grade 11: All B’s except A in Chorus and Short Hand.

College material? Definitely not!

Now get this: My character traits are worse. I received 1 which is Good, only in neatness and reliability. I guess I combed my hair and my nails were clean. And you could depend on me to run errands.

I got a 4 which is Poor in Initiative and Leadership. Most of my character traits are 3′s. What kind of a kid was I?  Surely not adoptable!

I had no character! I was lazy and showed no effort in my studies. I have one line in my Kapoho: Memoir of a Modern Pompeii that reads: ..I was never really there; I was daydreaming, designing life somewhere else, in New York City, or Hollywood.

You would think I would have day-dreamed with a little more character.

My mother’s signature is on each report card. I guess for as long as she saw 1 for neatness, it was all right.  I didn’t get pregnant and got suspended from class only once which they didn’t know about, so I guess 1 in Neatness made up for that kid that I was…a barely average child with such character flaws.

                                

In all fairness to that kid, Mr. McClellan was the PE teacher who taught Algebra and knew as much Algebra as I did. And he definitely wasn’t as neat as I was…and had

worse handwriting than I did.

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Why We Teach

July 22, 2012

Dear Miss Kakugawa,

It has been 46 years since I was your student in the first grade at Waiakea Elementary School.   I was 6 then and I am 52 now.  Before the half-century mark comes to pass,  I think it is time that I said hello and thanked you for teaching me to read and inspiring in me a love of words.

I have thought of you so many times in my life but perhaps at no time more powerfully than when I heard the Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 2010 of novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.  It began, “I learned to read at the age of five…. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me.”  (Here’s a link to his very moving and beautiful speech:  http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/vargas_llosa-lecture_en.html)

While I obviously cannot claim to have reached the heights of Mario Vargas Llosa (!!), I can say that being an avid reader has enhanced my life in so many important ways, from launching me into an academic career to giving me refuge from the mundane and hectic features of everyday life.

I have such clear memories of you as my teacher in the first grade.   I remember learning to read and how exhilarating I found it!   I recall also when one of your poetry books came out a few years later.  I think it may have been your first.  My father and I went to a book signing you did at a small shop in downtown Hilo.  It made quite an impression on me!   I still have that book, as well as another one of yours, in my parents’ home in New York.  I have gone back to the poems they contain from time to time.  Doing so transports me back to a past that I have such fond memories of.    Yet it is also a past full of people with whom I have long fallen out of touch, somewhat regrettably.   I have been back to Hilo only once since we left in 1972.   My parents have never returned.

Ann Kakugawa has given me an important emotional bridge back to the Hawaii days.  After a three-decade lapse in communication, I am in contact with her again.  Although I have yet to see her in person, it almost feels like we never lost touch.  I will probably go to Alaska next summer and am so looking forward to seeing her in person. In addition to providing me with your e-mail address, Ann has brought me up to date on your writings.  I can’t wait to read Kapoho.   My family, along with the Kakugawa clan (your brother, Ann, Jill, and Lynn), went out to visit you and your mother there once.   I have the clearest memory of that day.  It was the first of several times that I was around your mother, who had such a nice way about her: calm, gentle, and very Japanese.

Hawaii holds a very special place in my heart.   Its emotional meaning is no doubt heightened by the fact that it was the last place where we lived as a whole family.   As you probably know, soon after my family moved to New York (in 1972) my brother Danny died.   My parents and I have grieved his loss and cherished his memory ever since.   Despite the enormous hole his death left, we have led good lives.

I went off to Cornell University as an undergraduate (I started in 1978), then onto Berkeley for a Ph.D. in political science.   I am now a professor at the University of Texas, and my area is Latin American politics.   My country specialty is Brazil.  Here’s my professional link:  http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/llilas/faculty/hunterw1

I love my work – both the teaching and the research/writing aspects — and I feel enormously privileged to hold a tenured position in a university that supports my aspirations and interests in both spheres.
I am married to Kurt Weyland, who is also in my department.   I met him in Brazil, but he is a German national (who went to Stanford while I was at Berkeley).  We have two wonderful sons, Nikolas and Andreas.   Niko is now 14.   He is the one posing in front of a store called Niko in Berlin!  Niko “has the magic” when it comes to language and literature.   My other guy is Andi (12) and he is in the photo with my parents.   He is very straightforward, funny and lively.  As you might discern, Niko got a big dose of the Japanese genes and Andi is more European.  Kurt, myself, and my parents (both still alive) are insanely in love with them.

Just writing you brings back so many wonderful memories!   It feels good to finally express my gratitude – however overdue — for the lessons you taught me long ago and for the example you provided of being a writer.
Warmest regards,
Wendy Hunter

(printed with permission from Wendy.)

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NPR on Teaching

Students come First, No excuses accepted.

I couldn’t get through NPR to give my two cents worth on the subject being discussed: teaching

This would have been my contribution with a few suggestions:

1.To the parent whose gifted twins’ passion for math is not being met because the teacher feels caught within the system called curriculum, testing,  and has a whole classroom of kids to teach. Not acceptable.

Math was always my weak area so I worked with the math dept at the College of Education.

Whenever a student needed advanced math and I knew I couldn’t meet that need, I asked a math professor to come in to have one-to-one lessons with these students. He often told me my students in third grade, understood math better than many of his college students. My classroom had no walls and teaching was individualized as much as possible. Decision making and being in control of their own learning were core to our classroom.

2. No, no, the best of materials and books do not result in better learning. Teaching  training needs to look at teaching as an art. Teaching is not about knowledge of subject matter alone, we need to  understand how children best learn. I had a rule: whenever a student wasn’t learning, or loving school, or lacking the passion to learn, the teacher was either doing something or not doing something.  The minute we blame the learner,  or the system, we stop teaching.

3. But…but…it’s difficult to teach with children at different learning levels. Create an environment where students will resolve their own problems by making creative decisions about their own learning.  One of my best moments came from a student who asked, ” Why is Ryan ( a gifted student) so smart and I’m not? I think my parents aren’t doing something right.”  I suggested we ask Ryan and his answer was, ” I guess I read a lot.”  To make a year long story short,  we had many parent-teacher conferences,  that student became an avid learner and would test me out with the Farmer’s Almanac and felt smarter than the teacher when I couldn’t answer all his questions.

Students had to read two or more books of their choice  a month. They added their book titles to a filing system in the class, along with their analysis and honest personal reactions to each book. They felt liberated  to say, “I hated this book because …” Students began to go to these files to read books recommended by the above average students. Everyone wants to be smart.  I also read daily to the students and explored all the literary elements and devices and they in turn, used these tools to discuss their books. We all became poets and writers in every subject area.

4. Students are capable and want to learn beyond their designated grade level.

We brought Shakespeare into our classes…they loved it when I introduced William with:    Macbeth is usually taught in high school but I think you can handle this.

No, I guess there was a reason why NPR didn’t accept my call…. I couldn’t say all this in a few minutes.

The rest of my views on teaching are in  my Teacher, You Look Like a Horse book.

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