A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. While I love the idea of a traditional Christmas letter, and hope to start on that tradition some day when we are more established, for the moment, another email update will have to do.

I have not written for the past six months for a variety of reasons, but probably the biggest among these is that I wanted to wait to get a sense of what the next act would look like before trying to narrate it; it seems rather poor form to launch into an exposition of anything while in the intermission of a play.

Life for me and Jenn has continued apace. Jenn, having completed one of the more difficult semesters of her program last fall, has started on the last term of classes in her program, and the one reputed by the veterans of the program to be the most fun and least difficult. It has not started out as a breeze, certainly; the first two weeks have been a constant barrage of training on HIPPA as well as any other last-minute clinical information before they actually start to see clients. However, once this routine begins in earnest, the bulk of their time will be focused on treating patients through the free, on-site clinic at the university. This will certainly be a steep learning curve, as the transition to from abstract to applied knowledge always is. However, they have excellent clinical instructors supervising, which enables students to have an added measure of confidence to experiment and “find their feet” in the world of rehab medicine within a protected setting. After this, she will walk with her class in May, her graduate coursework will be over. It is shocking to me how quickly this has all gone.  Although it has definitely entailed some very stressful days, very long nights, a few tears, and lots of frustration with uncooperative technology, Jenn is finishing this whirlwind journey like a champ, and I couldn’t be prouder of her.

For my part, I’ve cobbled together a hodge-podge routine that has served well enough for the past few months. Three or four days a week, I’ve been subbing in the public schools. This has certainly been an interesting, and in some ways, redemptive experience following my difficulties last year. I’ve gotten to know the district well, having been in every school and every grade level at least once. It’s been comforting to know that my difficulties last year were not simply due to my own ineptitude, since I have rarely if ever had a subbing day that was worse than my average day last year.

It is fascinating to see the differences between individual buildings in the same district, and to conjecture as to their causes. The farther east you go (towards the old farm country), the more inclined students are to listen when you speak and comply if you ask them to do something. The closer you get to Washington High, the less likely they are to do so. I am not sure if this is due to the differing demographics of the communities that surround these schools (although they seem to be fairly similar in their racial makeup), or individual building discipline policies, or some combination. I have noticed that the schools closest to Washington High are (with one exception that I know of) very unlikely to have any sort of concrete discipline policy; instead, they emphasize “positive reinforcement”, which in my experience generally translates to no enforcement whatsoever. At one third-grade class I was subbing for, I had three or four students who consistently refused to comply when I asked them to take a seat and stop talking so that we could start a test. One of them mouthed off back to me. I asked her to go to the office and called to let them know she was on her way. She never arrived. After hanging around outside the classroom for about fifteen minutes, her classmates noticed, and I called the office again to have someone come get her. They did…and then sent her right back to the classroom, where she continued doing exactly as she had been before. Later that same period, as I was trying to teach, a side door opened and, unannounced and unexpected, the entire third grade class next to us filed in and sat down in no particular order on the floor. I asked one of them what was going on; she said that “someone’s not being safe.” The teacher, bringing up the rear, asked me to hold the door shut while she used my phone to call the office, and I quickly found out what  “not being safe” meant. As I was holding the door shut, a small body slammed into it from the other side with a surprising amount of momentum. For a minute or two, I was holding the door shut while he screamed, kicked, pounded, and tried to twist the door handle from the other side. If you’ve ever seen Jurassic Park, it was reminiscent of the scene where the two kids are trying to keep the velociraptors out of the computer room. The idea that a single third grader was holding two classrooms hostage with both teachers too afraid to lift a finger to physically stop him would have been comical, if it hadn’t been real.

However, days that bad are the exception, not the rule. For the most part, I’ve found that I have substantially better luck in getting student cooperation, and sometimes even get to teach them things. For my personal behavior incentive, I’ve started doing a “Wall of Fame” on the whiteboards, where I will write the names of consistently on-task students in blackletter calligraphy. This seems to work fairly well, and is certainly a much cheaper method of bribery than candy. I’ve really enjoyed teaching at the other high school in the district, as well as the other middle school and several elementary schools. These experiences have only confirmed my conviction that I love teaching, period; in a way, the age of student and subject matter taught is far less important than simply having students who are willing to learn.

In addition, one day a week, I’ve been watching my now eight-month-old nephew in Seattle. This has consistently been my best work day of the week, and has only whetted the baby fever that has been growing steadily for the past few years.

Finally, several afternoons a week, I’ve been tutoring students from about fourth grade to high school on a variety of subjects, although mostly math. It has actually been fun to re-visit some of the concepts that I haven’t had the chance to look at for nearly twenty years and, on occasion, to really understand them. There’s a Latin proverb that says, “Docendo, Discimus”—it is in teaching that we learn. It has certainly been borne out by my experience.

This has been our general routine for this in-between time. Now, however, I have the privilege of sharing some news that will most definitely mark a new beginning in our lives: Jenn and I found out in early December that she is pregnant. We have been to the doctor’s twice, and last time we got to hear a heartbeat, and everything seems to be going as well as pregnancy can go. We have thus far been spared from the worst of Eve’s curse; besides increased fatigue and hunger, Jenn has not suffered from morning sickness or most of the other physical discomforts of the first trimester. We are incredibly grateful, excited, and terrified to be embarking on this new adventure together, and come August, God-willing, the Thomases in Tandem will add a Trailer in Tow.