I have always found it interesting the way people can change their perception of you based one small piece of information.  I developed an understanding of that earlier in life than most people should, and I think it's taught me to keep my distance, and not share much of myself with others.  This is something I've been working on changing, but a lifetime of behaviour isn't easy to correct.

This lesson was taught to me before I could even really understand it.  A couple months before my third birthday, I was diagnosed with a non-specific sarcoma in the area surrounding my left ribs and lung.  For all you non-science types out there, that's cancer.  It's a pretty simple story; it was a hot May long weekend and we were visiting my grandparents in Montreal.  I was running around shirtless (as most two-year-olds do when it's hot) and my parents noticed my ribs were sticking out on my left side.  That Tuesday I went to see my family doctor, Wednesday a surgeon and by Friday I was in an operating room having a couple ribs and part of my diaphragm removed.  I still find it amazing how quickly everything happened; on the weekend I was a normal kid and by Friday I was a cancer patient.

Prior to my surgery, my parents were told my chances of survival were low.  However, the surgeon was far more optimistic after the surgery and he announced to them he was convinced he had successfully removed the entire tumor.  Just to make sure I did two years of chemotherapy.  I lost my hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes, threw up constantly and spent more time in the emergency room of the hospital with fevers than I care to remember.  I missed two months of kindergarten while an chicken pox epidemic worked it's way through the school's population.  I was poked and prodded and examined by god knows how many different doctors.  I was on a first name basis with all of the nurses in the Oncology department, who all found it "sweet" that I would get so nervous I actually threw up before the chemo treatment.  It was a lot of physical stress for such a small person, who didn't really understand what was happening.  I have a lot of sympathy for little me; I think she had it pretty rough for a couple of years.

Between the successful surgery and the two years of chemo I appeared to be cancer free, though you have to wait 5 years before they are confident.  But those five years came and went, and I was officially declared to be cured.  But being cancer-free isn't quite  the same as being free from cancer.  Once you've gone through something like that, it really has more of an impact on you than you might think, both physically and emotionally.  Physically it left me with a decreased lung capacity due to the removal of part of my diaphragm as well as two ribs, and it also gave me a wicked scar that extends from the middle of my back horizontally across the left side.  Side effects of chemotherapy have left me with missing and malformed teeth, hormonal imbalance issues (a big problem during my teenage years), brittle fingernails and fatigue. 

Emotionally, it's hard to know how much of who I am I would have been regardless and how much was shaped by my early life experiences.  But you have to think that spending a big chunk of your formative years in and out of the hospital is going to have an effect.  Plus, something a lot of people don't consider is how cruel kids can be.  When I was younger I was often picked on for my scar, and when we were older and kids knew what it was from, I lost a few friends because one girl told them if they played with me they would catch cancer.  Seems so silly and petty in retrospect, but when you're 8, losing friends is the end of the world.  All of these experiences taught me to hide my past; to not tell people what I had been through. Rather than being proud of the fact that I had overcome such a difficult challenge, I became ashamed of it.  I have spent most of my life feeling this way.  I always felt like my cancer was a taboo subject, something to hide rather than share.  On the few occasions where I have discussed it, I found it very difficult.

Recently, I have been trying to overcome that.  This past winter I went out and had a daffodil with the date of my surgery (26/5/79) tattooed on the inside of my left wrist.  Now whenever someone sees it and asks, I have to tell my story.  It's starting to get easy, but it still feels uncomfortable at times.  I'm also pushing myself beyond my normal physical limitations by participating in a fundraiser for Sick Kids Oncology this fall, which is a relay (I'm on a team with my sister, two of my cousins and a friend) from Toronto to Blue Mountain.  I'm not much of a distance runner, but I'm pushing myself to train for this so I can be part of helping some other kid like me.  If you'd like to check out my page go to our Team Momentum page at: http://searscanada.akaraisin.com/greatcanadianrun/teammomentum.  You can learn more about the run, and what it is for, and make donations.

 I'm over 50% of the way to my goal of $1000.  Hopefully by September I will be 100% there, both in my fund raising and my physical preparation (let me tell you, the physical part is the one I'm most worried about!).  Wish me luck...I'll keep you posted!

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I recently started teaching Margaret Atwood's novel The Edible Woman which has been a challenging endeavor.  I'm a passive fan of Atwood's works, in that I've enjoyed the books and poetry of hers that I've read, but at the same time I haven't really been moved enough to seek out any other works.  So I was excited by the opportunity to work with a new text; new, at least, from my perspective, as the novel itself is from the mid-1960's.

Personally I really enjoyed the novel.  Atwood proves to be quite skilled at creating dynamic, interesting and yet at the same time somewhat symbolic characters.  Her use of language is engaging and her attention to detail is exquisite.  What I find most fascinating is the way she captures the essence of humanity through our own contradictions.  No one is ever consistently the same.  Even the most predictable of people can act out of character.  It's is these contradictions that not only make us interesting, but make us human. 

The challenge I face now is, how do I make these kids care?  Trying to prepare lessons for this novel has led me to contemplate the constant struggle I find myself going through, which is how do you engage an audience that only sees your class as a stepping stone to other endeavours?

Don't get me wrong, I am not idealistic or naive.  I know that, no matter what I do, not every kid is going to love books.  But recently I feel frustrated by the feeling that I'm not engaging anyone.  And the problem I'm running into the most?  The students just aren't doing the reading.  It doesn't matter what kind of activities, handouts, assignments, media extensions, cross-curricular connections or societal comparisons I make; if the students don't do the reading they aren't going to be engaged.

I know a lot of people would tell me the problem is with the literature we study.  To be fair, I can see how some of it wouldn't necessarily be engaging to a teen-aged audience.  But does it mean we shouldn't study classic works of literature just because students don't think they're interesting?  To me that's on par with saying we should remove algebra from the math courses because some kids don't find it interesting.  If we left course design up to them we'd be watching movies, surfing the net and sending text messages all day. 

The reality of the situation is, a great majority of students these days have no work ethic.  Couple that with no understanding of the concept that actions have consequences and no experience with taking ownership over the decisions they make and students today are a difficult bunch to engage. Throw in the fact that despite all of that they still expect to get a mark above 80% and you're pretty much screwed.

The problem, as far as I can see it, is that education has ceased to be about learning.  Every year it feels like I see fewer and fewer students that are truly interested in actually learning something.  The average student now sees education as more of an exchange of currency for goods, with their time being the currency and marks being the goods.  Accordingly, they believe the more time they invest in the class, the better mark they should receive. 

And truly when you get down to it, every thing is ultimately about the mark.  At one point, marks were used to measure what you had learned in a course.  Now it seems that, along with so many other things in society, they are something to which people feel entitled.  I can't tell you how many times a student has said to me "Miss, you have to give me at least an 80 in this class..." or "I won't accept anything under 85 in this course."  And when they don't get what they want they don't see it as an opportunity to learn, or to improve.  I offer extra help.  I am willing to stay after school and assist with essays, presentations, review diffuclt concepts, look over rough drafts or anything else a student might want help with.  But they aren't interested in giving up their free time.

 So what do you do?  Do you just keep plodding along, knowing 90% of them haven't done the required reading? It's the easiest choice, because it keeps things pretty simple.  It's easy to say to yourself, "They chose not to do the reading, so these are the consequences of that choice." But when you truly love the work you're studying and you honestly believe your job is to teach them not what to think, but how to think for themselves, just accepting the status quo isn't acceptable.

I really don't know what to do.  I find myself frequently considering a career change.  I love what I do, but I'm really starting to feel like the time for teachers who actually want to teach is coming to an end and I really don't know how to be anyone other than who I am.

So like Marian McAlpin, I feel I'm experiencing a loss of identity.  I can identify with her as being an "edible woman" because I too feel like I'm being consumed by the society around me.  So do I "adjust to the situation" as Marian would?  Or do I bake a cake in the shape of a teacher and feed it to the students?

I'll keep you posted...

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