A Desirable Person

This picture has nothing to do with this post. I just like it.

"What is desirable in a person is kindness, and it is better to be poor than a liar."

Proverbs 19:22

One of the big challenges of teaching is to provide instruction - especially correction - without adding humiliation to the mix. And, while this is true at any age, I think it must be especially true with adult students. Especially adults who are taking professional development or special-interest courses. 

Remember when I wrote about "conscious incompetence"? It is a horrible feeling, being aware of one's own lack of skill. The word uncomfortable doesn't begin to describe it. 

Yesterday, I took a course in media relations. It was a very good course, with lots of practical exercises and critiques. Most of us in the classroom had many years of communications experience and even actually had some media experience as well. But one person had clearly been thrown in the deep end. 

As we individually prepared for our radio interview, the teacher, Carl, saw that one student, let's call her Nancy, was flushed and had written only three or four words on her paper. Her body language spoke dejection. He spent a couple of unobtrusive minutes with her, quietly working through the problem, then allowed her some time to finish the task and pull herself together. 

When it was her turn to record an interview, he let Nancy choose whether to go first, last or somewhere in between. He gave her space and time to feel comfortable, so she could do her best, so she would be able to learn rather than feeling stressed (which effectively blocks all incoming information). When it was her turn to be critiqued, he was encouraging but also provided constructive pointers. 

I happened to leave the classroom at the same time as Nancy, and I asked her how she felt about the day. 

"Well, it wasn't easy," she said, "but I'm glad I did it. I feel like I learned a lot and will be able to apply it to my job."

Today, I reflected on how I witnessed his caring and kindness towards one student who faced a bigger mountain than the rest of us. It could have gone differently. She could have left feeling wounded, and we bystanders could have felt embarrassed for her, perhaps angry on her behalf. Instead, we not only learned some skills for dealing with the media, but we also shared in a very positive human experience. It felt good to be part of that, even if only on the periphery. 

So, thank you, Carl.

Girl on a Mission

I was once a teen missionary. When I was 17, my cousin Ruth and I went with Teen Missions International to France. Yes, indeedy, I was an evangelist in France.


My cousin Ruth (as a teen)
who, along with her husband,
is serving as Missionary-in-Residence
at LeTourneau University in Texas.

That stretches the truth a little. While we did do a very small amount of [awkward] evangelism, the main thrust of our work in the sleepy little town of Vaux-sur-Seine was to construct dormitories for a Bible seminary, the Faculté Libre de Théologie Évangélique, so that others could carry out the work of evangelism in France.

Before we got to France, however, we went to a rustic compound in the muggy and mucky Florida Everglades. Part of the Teen Missions International approach is to run all the missionaries through a pretty rigorous two-week "boot camp." We learned how to evangelize, how to build a square foundation, and why the missionary calling was so important.

I have some pretty vivid memories from those two exhausting weeks:

• Washing my jeans by hand and waiting for them to hang-dry in the 90% humidity.
• Standing with my back to Ruth while she used the latrine, to give her a modicum of privacy. The stalls had no doors, the toilets did not flush (I don't think) and all paper waste had to go into a garbage pail. The stench was hor-REN-dous and dysentery was rampant. (I do hope they have working plumbing now.)
• Swimming in the opaque pond and wondering if we were really safe from alligators.
• Running the obstacle course every day, as part of a team-building exercise.
• Trying desperately to stay awake as I sat beside a missionary telling the story of her brother being killed by the natives he was witnessing to, and then she, herself, going back to the same tribe to translate the Bible for them.
• Flirting with boys despite the "No 'Dear'-hunting" policy.

Here are a couple of pictures. I'm not actually in them, but these are pictures from the Teen Missions obstacle course.


The Slough of Despond
Yes, I fell in. Of course I did. Did you expect otherwise?



Jacob's Ladder
This was a lot of fun, like the climbing structures at Ontario Place.

It may sound quite horrific, but I loved it and was not homesick at all. It also gave me a lifelong appreciation for our civilized amenities: running water, electricity, and plumbing.

Eventually, we did make it to France, where our accommodations were quite spectacular. We entered a marble-floored foyer flanked by a broad, curving staircase. A grand piano graced the salon. We all marveled at the bidet. The grand house had lush green lawns rolling right down to the Seine River.

The Faculté Libre de Théologie Évangélique
Our lodgings, at top.
The dormitories we helped build at bottom.

The village of Vaux-sur-Seine was ancient, built on the side of hills, with narrow cobblestone streets. There was a lively open-air market each week.

Here are a few memories from my time in France:

• I learned how pitiful my high-school French was. But I was the most fluent member of our team, so acted as translator during our one or two evangelism forays. I also learned that, in France, "salle de bain" is not synonymous with the lavatory.
• I bought a rum ball at the market, not realizing that it had real rum in it. It was confiscated as contraband, which was fine with me because it tasted yucky.
• I bought a pastry at a pâtisserie -- a tartelette filled with rose-coloured mousse. Expecting something sweet and fruity, I was shocked to taste salmon! But was too embarrassed to say anything.
• There was a tunnel from the kitchen to a small bunker-like apartment where our team leaders lived. I always wondered if it might have been used in the French Resistance.
• We went into Paris for Bastille Day and experienced crowds like I had never seen. I was caught in a crush at the barricades and could not stop to help up an older woman who had been knocked down. It was very frightening and has left me with a distaste for large crowds.
• While walking back to our bus from the light show, our human chain broke. A man handed me what I thought was a sparkler and, just as the girl whose hand I had dropped turned to shout, "No!" the firecracker exploded in my hands. The man roared with laughter. As my fingers tingled, I was devastated that someone could find such pleasure in doing something so hurtful.

Oh, goodness. Each memory triggers another. So I will leave you with a final picture of a memorable summer from my youth.

That is Ruth with her head in the cement mixer
and me standing beside her.

Conscious Incompetence

Pileated Woodpecker

At a conference I attended recently, one of the presenters introduced me to the expression "conscious incompetence." It's that psychologically painful stage when you realize just how incompetent you are at a new skill. It comes from the so-called four stages of competence.
Here's the Wikipedia explanation:

1. Unconscious Incompetence
The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.

2. Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.

3. Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.

4. Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

Looking at these, it occurs to me that not only is conscious incompetence the most uncomfortable stage, it is probably the only stage that doesn't actually make you feel good. Here's my synopsis (much pithier than Wikipedia's):

Unconscious Incompetence => Ignorance is bliss
Conscious Incompetence => OMG, I totally suck!
Conscious Competence => Dayum, I'm good!
Unconscious Competence => Gretzky on skates

I am currently at the "OMG, I totally suck!" stage when it comes to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and it is kind of driving me nuts. I know just enough to do some really cool stuff, but also enough to get into trouble.

For example, I did some subtle (I think) but good things to Brian's picture at the top of this post, using Photoshop. Here's the original picture, at right. It's a good picture: high resolution, good shot of the woodpecker, decent exposure. But the few tweaks I did (not just cropping) make it stronger, I think.

On the other hand, in trying to do those few simple things, there was still a lot of trial and error (and undoing).

And one of the larger projects I had at work this week involved Illustrator. The design itself was relatively simple, so I didn't think we would need to hire a professional designer (famous last words, eh?).

Well, I uploaded the final artwork to the production company yesterday and got a "Please call us first thing in the morning" message from them last night. Turns out that, while the design itself was fine, I hadn't integrated all the files the way the printer needs them. (Just how DOES one convert text to "outlines"?) It was easily solved by uploading a couple of extra files.

I need to be patient and keep on plugging away. I just don't like this in-between stage of "OMG, I totally suck!" I am, however, looking forward to feeling like I rock.

Wait! I'm not d

*flush*

[I'll explain in a minute.]


The Junior hallway at Pauline Johnson Public School.
Those are classrooms on the left, with the library on the right.
This is pretty much what it loooked like when I went there,
though I'd heard they had put up walls. Or maybe that was a dream.
Source


The school I went to from Grade 1 to Grade 6 was an ultra-modern experiment in open-concept education, and I was among the "plank holders" who attended it during its first year. The classrooms were divided from each other by low partitions that could be moved aside for larger group activities.

The library, which was in a sort of sunken courtyard, formed the core of the school.

Each section was crowned by a pyramidal vaulted ceiling plastered with sound-absorbing tiles.

The whole thing must have driven the teachers absolutely crazy, but it was pretty cool for us students.

So, here's the explanation for the intro: one of the lasting memories from that school, however, has nothing to do with its contemporary architecture, and much to do with its conventional plumbing.

The toilets overflowed with alarming frequency. Or perhaps it was just me.

In any case, I eventually adopted a "cover me with septic water once, shame on you; cover me with septic water twice, shame on me" attitude. Since those early years, I have always waited until I am fully wiped, zipped, buttoned, tucked, and belted, with the door unlocked before I flush the toilet.

So I can make a speedy escape, of course.

And every bathroom in our house has a toilet plunger beside it.

Technology, however, has caught up with me. Now the newfangled contraptions flush automatically as soon as you (a) stand up, (b) lean forward, or (c) twist to reach certain parts of the anatomy that are not reachable without twisting (yes, I'm talking about ankles).
And every time that happens -- every time! -- I panic. OMG - the toilet's going to overflow and I'll be swept away in a tide of fetid, toilet-paper-strewn water! And people will see it and say, "Oh, look, there's her pooh!"

GAHHHHH!

No. It hasn't happened yet, but I live in fear.

Not to mention the ickiness of backsplash while sitting on the throne.

I hate those infrared sensors, though I do like the idea of not having to touch the plaguey toilet handle. [Not entirely sure "plaguey" is a word.]

I don't even want to think about what astronauts deal with. (Or, for the grammatically sensitive among you, "with which astronauts deal.")

It's wonderful being a girl!

Don't ask me why, but the other night as I lay tossing & turning (and NOT sleeping), I remembered the little sex-education pamphlet that provided me with my initial enlightenment about puberty. It was called, (if I remember correctly), "It's Wonderful Being a Girl," and was published by Playtex or Kotex or something.

Like most girls of my generation, I was absolutely fascinated with the glorious changes that puberty held in store. As far as I was concerned, that principally meant breasts. I wanted them. I wanted big, cantilevered breasts that would enter a room whole seconds before the rest of me did. I wanted boobs that would be so distracting they might cause car accidents and would definitely have boys fighting for my favours.

Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Menstruation was also something I looked forward to. I just knew I would be one of those girls who rides horses, swims and does cartwheels during her period. (As if I did any of those things prior to puberty. Well, I did used to do cartwheels. And I rode a horse once.) Hah! The joke's on me.

While waiting for those two great manifestations of womanhood, I read my little pamphlet many, many times. I kept looking at the classic cross-section diagram of a woman's inner workings, expecting to find something ... more. What weren't they telling me?

Of course, the biggest thing they weren't telling us was about boys and their parts. When educators finally saw fit to teach us about male anatomy, they used the classic diagram with a flaccid penis. The erect penis was never so much as alluded to. My girlfriends and I knew, in theory, about erections, but none of us had actually seen one (or would admit to having done so), so we had conversations about what way it pointed when the guy was sitting, standing or lying down. Whether it could break. I guess we couldn't figure out the whole hinged nature of the workings. It is pretty mind-boggling when you think about it.

And I couldn't fathom that any boy would want his privates touched any more than I wanted mine touched. I actually told a girlfriend that if any boy had the effrontery to touch my breast (clearly a look-but-do-not-touch zone), I would - get this - touch his penis! That would show him! I couldn't think of anything more off-putting or dreadful. Any boy in his right mind would obviously be horrified and would immediately stop touching my fabulous breasts. Duh!

Ah, the innocence.

Eventually - fortunately before my breasts were ever touched - I learned a thing or two.

Now, flash forward to high school. Grade 13 Biology included a section on, ahem, human procreation. The test for the unit included a many-times-reproduced, hand-drawn, blurry diagram of a woman's reproductive organs. Various parts were numbered, and we were required to label them and give a one-sentence explanation of their function.

Ovary. Fallopian tube. Uterus. Endometrium. Cervix. Bladder. And ... what was that one? The number was positioned towards the front of the labia. Would they really ask us to label the clitoris? It had never once been mentioned in class, this little mystery button.

I struggled. In high school, I was the goody-two-shoes leader of the Christian club. Such a good girl was not supposed to know about something as naughty as a clitoris, let alone explain its purpose.

But I was also a bit of an over-achiever. I could not bear to leave a blank and possibly not get a perfect score on my test. So I labelled it. And I stated that it was meant to stimulate lubrication to facilitate intercourse. (I didn't dare go so far as mentioning orgasm. At least lubrication served some practical purpose.)

Eventually, the time came to "take up" our tests.

Urethra. It was the frigging pee hole! GAAAAH! Fortunately, the diagram was bad enough that the teacher gave me full marks for my unorthodox answer.

Interestingly enough, when I googled pictures for this post, every single diagram included the clitoris in its labels. Times certainly have changed.

But the writers of that little pamphlet were correct: it is wonderful being a girl. Especially one who knows her anatomy.

Tax anxiety

Ever since I started working outside the home, I've had real anxiety attacks around doing my taxes. I'm talking about heart-pounding, lump-in-the-throat, cold-sweat anxiety.

Partly, this is because when I first started working I was a self-employed contractor, so I didn't have a standard W-2 or T4 upon which to base my income and deductions. I had to pull together my shoebox full of receipts and records, hand it all over to a tax professional and pray to God that everything was on the up & up.

My taxes are still complicated because I file in both the United States and Canada. Double the pleasure, double the fun. And, much as I'm proud of Canada's social system, especially health and education, I am not delighted when my entire U.S. tax return -- and we're talking almost $3,000 -- gets syphoned into the Canadian revenue system. And then some. Sigh. It sure would be nice to just spend some of that "found money."

Instead, I have to scan and mail all my U.S. information to an accountant in Ottawa who charges a hefty sum to calculate how much I owe the Queen.

So, although I get to stay in my wrinkly pyjamas and fluffy slippers today, it doesn't feel much like a day off because I'm doing my taxes. I just keep reminding myself how good I'll feel when the whole thing is filed and done with. Kind of like that joke about banging your head against a wall: why do it? Because it feels so good when you stop.

Done with my break; back to my head-banging now.