motivation when I’m tired

(Alternatively titled: A teaching philospohy)

In trying to understand who I am as a teacher
I found a misconception I had been holding on to:
I thought the pull to teaching was math.

(And I do love math
I am grateful to have it as a partner in this endeavor
I love its definitiveness and ambiguity

Give me good pattern any day of the week and I’ll be happy
Or an algorithm
a visualization
a comparison
a mapping
a graph 
a prediction 
a puzzle

Math is a language where you can express 
both more 
and less 
than you can with words.

Math carries a precision that syllables and sentences never can
Yet fails to articulate the finest points of humanness)

But to say I am tied to teaching because I love math 
is a knot that will unravel under tension. 
I would not have ended up here if I had not accompanied a bouquet of trans folks
On legs of their expeditions:
Through crushing expectations
Through meeting themselves 
Through glimmers of expansive freedom
Through letting the world in to meet them.

I teach in order to hold a place for these gender explorers and defiers
For these norm breakers 
For these students looking for someone to see them, to know them.

	
I stumbled into teaching with my crochet hook and calculator 
with enormous and hazy and overwhelming dreams
To chip away at these walls against which my back is pressed
To exist where they said we couldn’t
To make space
for us.

final project for my first grad school class in teaching in 2019

long and short term goals and dreams

But who’s to say which is which

• Create a math elective
• Decorate/organize classrooms and office
• write a play
• create knit/crochet clothing
• create a gender retreat or pen pal network or mentoring network or something related to giving the trans youths a place to explore gender
• write pretty math puzzles
• make cool escape room puzzles
• crochet cool things
• knit cool things/learn to knit
  • One of the knitting projects designed by Tom Daley (https://bytomdaley.com/)
• Research the crossover of fiber art and math
• journal/post updates more consistantly
• write poetry
• Create art with trash
• Learn more about 3d printing
• Write a letter to students thanking them for being my first group I’ve thought for a full year
• Do a workshop on gender/trans competency for faculty
• Learn to roller skate more
• Find a way to get back into dance

right now in Texas

powerful people 
Think that it is abuse
To let me feel free

They want our existence to be reported 
Our support systems ripped out from under us

They want us gone
Because we make them question every lie they ever told themselves about how they were allowed to exist through the world

We make them confront the terrifying expanse that the universe becomes when you realize it is your right to define yourself boundlessly,
to be fully human, 
fully unique and yet the same, 
fully perfect 
and yet never not fully a work in progress 





There are people 
Who Think that it is abuse
To help me feel free

But who refuse to see the enormously obvious, heart shatteringly painful reality that is
That their words rip open barely healed wounds 
There will be unthinkable, unforgivable pain because of this
There will be lives broken and lost.


I want to hold a message of hope. 
Of ‘we will prevail’. 

But it’s hard to stay positive and be a trans person in a world where your right to exist continues to be questioned in new old ways.
I’m tired.
I’m in pain. 



——-
Required afterthought:
But we will care for eachother 
And we will care for ourselves 
And we will be free 

small poems (1)

I push myself constantly for growth.
But what if I just maintain for a while?
Enjoy the view from here?

deep breaths

I began to bind my chest when I was 8 years old.
I remember feeling ashamed.
I remember feeling confused.
I remember feeling helpless.

But as it became apparent that my body could not be controlled
I tried even harder to minimize the evidence.
Tight tank tops turned into layers of camisoles
which turned into layers of compression sports bras
each one a size smaller than the last.

Binding made my back ache and ribs bruise.
I couldn’t seem to take a full deep breath.
But without it
the pain was much deeper
much more all consuming.

It wasn’t until the age of 20
that I was able to breathe fully for the first time.
A deep breath filling my chest, allowing it to expand entirely.

And that takes its toll on a person.
12 years of taking shallow breaths
of holding back.
of hiding.
of monitoring every millimeter.

These full lungs make me lightheaded.
There’s too much oxygen,
Too much possibility.