Past, Present, Future: November re-cap.

I haven't been excelling at observing that middle one though - that present presence - and so my writing has fallen by the wayside.

But these past few weeks, I've done a lot of thinking about the latter.

It was fairly early into the year that I noticed my endearment to Packwood was enough to merit the consideration of a third year in the Cispus AmeriCorps Program. Fortunately, I've always been one to capitalize on opportunities for experiences though, and had been starting down the tedious road of resume/cover letter/application hell...because last week, our team received some rather devastating news.

Every three years, our supervisor applies for a Grant which comprises the bulk of the funding for our program. This grant is what supports the foundation costs of each of our 12 members and the price of having us in the schools, as well as many other core operating costs.

I've been quite out of touch with the details of our political atmosphere in this country lately but I have a basic knowledge of legislation that was passed earlier this year which was meant to help expand the availability of volunteer programs like AmeriCorps, Nation-wide. However, for places like Washington which had to this point, offered above average in the quantity of programs, this meant some major cuts. To determine where to make cuts, the standards for measuring each programs success were drastically altered. Under the new standard, eligibility for the grant became more reliant on concrete, measurable evidence of academic improvement. This means that things like the Open Gym, Library Tutoring, Teen Center and extracurricular opportunities like Field Trips were essentially written off ineffective. Under this logic, because half of our members function in these capacities, WSC is only offering to award us funding for 6 members, charging the schools nearly triple the price to have those members around. Our budget under this set-up would be nonexistent. There is no way that a program this size could be effectively supported. At this rate, AmeriCorps will have no presence in Lewis County next year.

Besides truncating my decision-making process, this news stabs at that ever-expanding soft spot that I have for Packwood. I can adjust and move into a new experience. This allows me enough time to start excepting that outcome. I move. I travel. I build community and leave but I am always carrying them in my heart. My loss is slim-none. The loss for Packwood is unfathomable.

In a way, the roles we fulfill outside of the school are the ones that are more invaluable. The school has Para-educators and other forms of guidance. Granted, I may take issue with some of the structure but at least there is structure; there is something for the kids to grasp onto. But once they leave school, they come back to a town with nothing. AmeriCorps is the only thing providing any after school guidance for kids in this town. It's that time out of the school when they're "forgetting" homework or trying to figure out how to avoid home that we're most needed. And it's those roles that have been deemed unworthy of support.

Two years in and I can see the gifts, potentials and challenges in each kid. I can envision the different directions their life could go, even while they're not up to thinking about that yet. And I can see this program as a make-it-or-break it factor in all of those scenarios.

There isn't much to be done at this point. All of us had that gut impulse to upheave our obligations and go picket in front of big, important rule-making peoples but unfortunately, a federal program soliciting against its higher-ups doesn't look too great, is kind of against the rules in a big way, and won't get us very far.

what we can do is employ each and every one of you who have followed my accounts of Packwood life and believe in the work that we do out here to write letters. Give us a face and show that it's about more than measurable numbers. If you are interested in writing a letter, you can e-mail it to me and I will direct it to where it needs to go.

melissa.meiller@aol.com







So, where does that leave my future?

I don't quite have the answer to that but like I said, I've been exploring. I'm pretty set on staying out Westward and have mostly been applying to positions in camps, schools, shelters, and other various programs in WA and OR that work with youth and families. With one exception: I am currently vying most heavily for a position as an admissions counselor at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. I wish I'd known about this place when I'd looked at colleges. It may be a bit of a selfish reason but I primarily want the job to be able to eventually transition to taking classes there. I think things like that are usually done the other way around.

Either way, the future is a big part of my present right now. I never really figured out how I wanted to consider future after AmeriCorps. I said I didn't want to go back home but I also didn't think I would bring myself to pursue a life out here. But it looks like that's what I'm doing.


Other things that have encompassed my time include:
-taking the kids bowling and having my car full of middle school boys talking about girlfriends
-preparing for our second annual talent show!
-Shivering through a 40-hour power outage; thanks, Typhoon Nuri!
-finally getting a commitment from my sixth graders in getting their homework done at the gym
-Struggling with the complex dynamics of working within a group and addressing miscommunication
-hating my stomach
-most recently though....


Having an amazing time in Seattle with a new friend and going to see this guy:

Highlights of the week

This past week brought about some rewards or otherwise noteworthy moments in and out of the classroom.

After a couple of weeks of more mundane aid work at the school, I had a very hands-on role in the sixth grade. With conferences to attend to and only one month allotted for Mrs. Shook's students to achieve the expected math standard, each student was required to fill out a planning page on how they would reach their goal (well, really the system's goal). After I watched Mrs. Shook go through the process with one student, things got busy and I was handed the rest of the stack. Even among the semi-scripted pool of ideas (do homework, pay attention, check my answers...) it was interesting to engage the students in talking about their current study habits and brainstorm how we might shift them to make them more effective.

The next week, I started to see those shifts (a little; I mean, it isn't an over-night thing). In Open Gym,  one of the more reluctant and unresponsive kids in the class came right up to me stating he had reading and math to do, and sat down for an uninterrupted 20 minutes or so. This made me realize that our other Open Gym kid from that class should have his homework also and I got him to (begrudgingly) tackle his as well. This happened on Wednesday as well. TWO Open Gym homework days in a row! It was a tingly feeling inside.

In school that week, I was even more hands-on. It began on Tuesday when Mrs. Shook dished out 4 lengthy pages of kill-and-drill fraction problems. One particularly stubborn girl who reminds me a lot of myself at that age sat stark-still at her desk, unwilling to shift her sight from some trivial focal point on her desk (another tactic of defense I know well.) I sat beside her desk patiently and quietly after making a brief empathetic statement about how I could relate. After a few minutes, she finally shifted her demeanor and we ended up using the big classroom smart board to tackle the problems. By the end of the hour, two other students had asked to join us and the three of them were plowing through the problems with increased speed and a slight enthusiasm that perhaps they didn't even notice was creeping up as they began to understand.

As much as I adore Mrs. Shook, I often find myself cringing during reading hour, as she places inflections willy-nilly across the page and reveals subtle hints that she is not quite paying attention to the words she is taking off of the page. So when I was asked to go in the hall and catch one of our students up on some chapters she had missed in absence, I had to contain my excitement. I kind of love reading aloud. We read about 2 and a half chapters and at the end, she complimented me on my reading and we both admitted our anticipation that had arisen from the action-packed chapter.

The next day, the three math musketeers eagerly gathered around the smart board to tackle math with me again. At reading time, there was yet another student that needed to be caught up. He was one who, after an initial burst of encouraging improvement at the beginning of the year, had relapsed back into very intensive behavioral and academic barriers. For the past few weeks, it had been nearly impossible to interact with him and then he'd disappeared from school for a week. After being rather apathetic about coming into the hall to read with me, we ended up having an incredible reading period. With him, it wasn't as easy to tell if he was really paying attention and it occurred to me that I should probably pause and use some prompts that would normally be used in the class reading time. I offered our usual stem "When the book said ____ I thought this was important because _______." Not only was his response insightful but when I offered him that attention, he began to initiate his own thoughts as they came up during reading. He was far more in tune with what I was reading than I'd thought. At one point in some snarky dialogue lines, he interjected with his own tone of snobbery. I laughed at his impersonation and he then asked if he could read all of that character's lines. We started to switch off almost every paragraph of reading and his inflections were more accurate than even Mrs. Shook's.

Teaching these kids is like the weather and from day to day, there doesn't always seem to be a clear line of improvement. But on weeks like this, I just bask in the sunlight.

Something between vulnerability and strength

It is so easy to use the holidays as a marker: I'm going to change this habit after that ball drops. I'm going to fix my digestion after this sugar fest. Life will slow down after I wear myself out. Well, sure it will. Cause you wore yourself out. But life keeps going. 

And November has kept going. It is a bit calmer - no holidays to fret about fitting in and the rain makes relaxing days by the fire all the more acceptable - but things don't just solve themselves. October was rough and November has only tried to take the wheel. I'm not miraculously on a smoother road. 

In the last week, I've had time to contemplate why shifting has been so much harder lately. I've thought about what I have dropped and what tools I haven't been accessing; what is different from previous efforts to navigate struggles? Unless we take time to account for the details, situations can look so similar. But there is a lot that is different: 

-I have not been honoring my idea of the transitory. Everything feels so permanent and so heavy. I can’t move energy if I’m waving Medusa Magic on it. 

-I’ve dropped trying to reach out. This one is a snagger. When I feel supported, I can be incredibly good at communication. But the slightest deterrence can spiral into big cycles of isolation. These are scary and lonely, especially when I cannot pinpoint how they’ve arisen. What began as recognizing a difference of character with a couple of people feels like it stealthily accelerated into this larger animosity with the team. Missed group outings our misunderstandings have made me feel excommunicated over night. I don’t want to over-dramatize my perceptions but the alternative has been to become more and more distant. Without an outlet to talk to the group about the challenges affecting my life right now, I probably just come across as a disinterested, somber sod. But I know a lot of this comes from stewing in my observations. And I’ve done very little to explore how to turn this around. 

-I’ve dropped the greater picture and I've dwelled on the detriments. I haven't been writing, I haven't been sending letters, I haven't been challenging my habits with new routines, I haven’t been exploring the extra topics that interest me. I haven’t been taking time to remember things beyond the immediate discomfort. 

When November started, I wanted to overhaul it all at once - I wanted to power-house push everything useless out of my life. I’ve never been good at baby steps and so when I fell short on November 2nd, I felt failure. But just as I need to step back and evaluate what had really changed, I need to remember to evaluate how big the seemingly little changes really are. 

“It’s like a full-time job” I blubbered through the phone the other night, overwhelmed by everything that weighs on me besides all of the job-jobs I have. 

And it is. Focused and effective self-healing is a full-time job. So the smallest accomplishments that I am able to find while juggling all of my obligations is no small thing. 

I may not be able to obtain the ideal time, space and resources that I want for healing but I can take more ownership and control over my outlook. And that has preceded real results in the past. 

Halloween AmeriFesties

October 31st, a day for which Americans spent almost 1 billion dollars more than just last year on - up to 7.4 billion - and a day on which almost half the country chooses to don an alter ego and gets to scarf down the majority of their annual sugar intake in one night, and you would suppose that as a group working with tons of kids, we'd have a lot going on.

Well, you'd suppose right. 

Our last Open Gym that week fell on Wednesday the 29th and so the festivities started. Even though we had no intention of going all-out, I managed to concoct a pseudo-party. There was no hope of gathering the kids into scheduled groups for games but at the last minute, the Packwood Grocery had been kind enough to donate bags of Reeses and each kid got one for participating in a game. We had 'Pin the bow tie/heart/sunglasses' on the Skelleton, Pumpkin-shaped bean bag toss, and various masks for the kids to pose with. However, I was pleased to find that the biggest hit was the craft project I'd found: Mason Jar Halloween Luminaries. For a bulk of the evening, I was glued to the front of the gym, running between games and setting kids up with glue and tissue paper to make glowing pumpkin faces (and one lone Frankenstein). Kerissa and I dished out homemade treats for snack and kids came by the table here and there to decorate ghosts and other spooky cut-outs that I'd scattered about. I wasn't expecting to see many kids in costume since they usually come straight from school but I still wanted to get festive. I'd decided last minute to be a Pheonix and between some fiery-colored clothing I had, some red fabric and a makeshift mask, I pulled of an incomplete version for the evening.

But the big night was Friday. After our team meeting in Morton, our group spent the afternoon decking out the teen center in streamers and webs, dispersing our endless supply of candy around the room and wreaking havoc on the computer room to fit the bill for the setting of a Zombie Apocalypse. We had originally planned to go wild with games and haunts until we heard tell of a town-wide "Zombie Apocalypse" game being hosted by the math teacher of the school. Most of the kids would (understandably) be opting for that as the night's feature event and so we partnered up to act as a Safe Haven for humans and a place where unfortunate zombified victims could have a chance of resurrection via solving riddles. It was a huge success. The team was decked out in their costumes (I'd added a beautiful plume of feathers on my "cape" and replaced my mask with Ariella's amazing face-painting skills) but we were no match for some of the ensembles that strolled through our doors. One of our kids dressed up so convincingly as a woman that it took many of us a good deal of time to realize who it was. Another was made up as a cow after accepting a hand-me-down suit from his great Aunt. We saw Bacon, the queen of hearts, a couple of hand-sewn Elsa costumes, Buzz Lighyear, and dozens of other intricate designs. Two teen girls brought in their make-up sets and hosted a face-painting booth while we ran around between zombie games, coming up with riddles for the desperate player, and nibbling on our wide array of treats here and there. Part way through the night, those of us at the teen Center took shifts to break and go across the street to the Haunted House that the Fire Hall was hosting. It was surprisingly well-done, leading us through pitch black, disorienting hallways and into psychedelic, topsy-turvy rooms of fading sanity. A couple of the teammates had volunteered themselves and put on some stellar performances.

Photo Credit to Katy Nevinsky

After all was said and done, the team went from play-at-work to more play. Back at the Cispus house, we had our own celebration complete with music, dance, our own poisonous concoctions and some costume alterations. I dipped out on the earlier end, feeling pretty fulfilled with the celebrations. 

As the evening had started that night, I noticed that I got the most enjoyment from watching the parade of characters pass by our windows and come through our doors. In the mess of life, Halloween has become less interesting to me. But that night, I realized that just because I don't take time to go all-out any more, doesn't mean I've lost an appreciation for it. As we left the teen center that night, I had no longing to be one of the kids strolling around the streets, but I had a huge smile on my face for the sight of those still out late into the night, living a different life for that moment. In so many places, Halloween has adopted so many rules and regulations that it is no longer an escape. Trick-or-treat usually has to be wrapping up by sundown and school teachers never draw an affiliation to the holiday. In a town where so many kids deal with less-than-ideal lives, it was nice to see that they could still immerse themselves in this one.