My Haters are my Motivators: Bullying and Forgiveness.

warning: this post has no pictures, is super wordy, and really long. proceed!

About a month ago, we talked about bullying in my classroom management class. We began by talking in generalities; the concept of bullying seemed so distant to us as self-assured college adults.

Then, my professor asked us each to write down an experience with bullying--either as the bullied, or the bully--and drop it anonymously in a hat.

As she pulled the slips of paper out and read them, the normally lighthearted, last-class-on-a-Friday-afternoon attitude melted away and faces turned somber as we all returned to the memories of our fragile child-like state, back when we couldn't see our worlds beyond the playground gossip or the sound of lockers slamming.

We listened soberly as my professor read the stories of students in our very class who had endured physical or emotional abuse in school. I looked around. Everyone looked so confident, so adult-like. Surely none of them had been bullied? But they had. Even more difficult was listening to the stories of those who had been bullies themselves and then sorely regretted it.

It made me reflect. I wouldn't say that I was ever a target for bullies, but even so, I was teased just as much as anyone else, maybe more. I remember loving school but hating school at the same time. I remember tears shed in bathroom stalls and painful hours watching the clock so I could escape the prison of popularity contests and endless drama.

I look back, and all that seems so distant. I almost only have the good memories. I'm so grateful to be growing up and growing into myself, no longer worried about "the kids at school." (And if you are still in school, just know that in a few years, "the kids at school" won't even matter to you.)

When I was home for Christmas, I went into a dressing room at the mall. Lo and behold, the dressing room attendant was one of the meanest girls in the 7th grade. She hadn't really "bullied me," but I remember having classes with her and being teased by her. I was scared of her. As she took my shirt and led me to a dressing room, I thought, "Should I be trying to prove something right now? Like, how mature I am now? How I don't have glasses or chicken legs anymore? Should I be acting extra confident, just to show her?" But then I realized I really didn't care about what she thought. She didn't seem to remember me, and she looked like she had fallen on hard times, and I wished the best for her.

IT FELT GREAT.

It's really nice to look back and just get over things. So here I go:


Dear boy who said I looked like a sissy because I wore a dress to kindergarten,

We all say silly things when we are in kindergarten. I said many such things. And, you were right, I was a sissy! No hard feelings.
Love, Amy



Dear Girls who used to steal things from my bag in 7th grade art class and ask me inappropriate questions and call me a teachers pet and make fun of me until I got teary eyed,

Yeah. That was pretty mean. You guys weren't even "cool girls," but you just decided to tease me to make yourselves feel good about yourselves when I came into your class in the middle of the year and didn't know anyone. But that's okay. You just didn't have confidence in yourselves. Who does in 7th grade? Luckily, I have more confidence now. I hope you do too.
Love, Amy



Dear Boy who kicked me really hard in the stomach in 5th grade during a soccer game, even though the ball was nowhere near me and then laughed when I was on the ground with the air knocked outta me,

That was harsh. But I wholeheartedly forgive you for it. Even though you were probably the most conceited meathead the fifth grade ever saw. I mean, you thought you were the coolest thing since the Backstreet Boys, every point in your spiky hair was carefully shaped, and your mom brought you Starbucks during lunch. I wondered if you were still the same, so I looked you up on Facebook and you are shirtless and flexing with bottles of vodka in your profile pic. (really, it is borderline hilarious how you are exactly the same). I'm sure the natural course of life will hit you soon, and maybe you will be humbled. Maybe not. But I wish you the best! fo'realz.
Love, Amy


Last but not least:

Dear future students of mine:
I'm trying really hard to learn to be a good teacher, but you should know that I'm not perfect. Sometimes I just skim my readings, sometimes I am late to class, and sometimes I intend to write concise blog posts but instead write posts that fall just short of a novel. But know this: I will create a safe, bully-free environment for you to come to every day. I will teach you to respect each other and I will try to model that with my own actions.
Love, Amy
PS: you're not allowed to call me Amy when I'm a teacher, but since I don't post my last name on my blog, you can just call me Mrs. Fredette for now and we'll call it good.

Ode to My Backpack.

I've had nightmares before, terrible nightmares. Nightmares about dying, falling from great heights and showing up somewhere naked. But no nightmare has been worse than the nightmares in which I've lost my backpack.

My backpack is my life.

meet my backpack. ain't it a beaut'?

As a college student, my backpack goes with me everywhere I go. It's on my back when I walk out my front door in the morning and it's on my back when I walk into my apartment at night. It goes with me all over campus, and all over town sometimes. It carries my most expensive possession (my computer) and my life-sustaining essentials (granola bars, fruit snacks, sack lunches, lotion, bandaids, advil, chapstick, and my planner, without which, I would be a goner).

It's my footrest when my back hurts in classes and I need to slouch in my chair and prop my feet up. I've used it many a time as a pillow for an emergency on campus sleep-off-a-headache nap. It's my favorite accessory, and sometimes I feel like an outfit is not complete without it.

BFFs

My backpack is one of my greatest friends, for I spend more waking hours with it than anything or anyone else. Sometimes I whisper secrets into the pockets of my backpack. Not really. But I might try it.

My backpack has the capability to hold amazing quantities of stuff without looking chubby. Sometimes I think it is a miracle backpack (hushed whisper).

My backpack has smelled funky for the last few weeks. Something about old peanut butter sandwiches being lost in its depths. It survived the great Gatorade spill of 2011 a few weeks ago, but since the great BYU chocolate milk spill of a few days ago, I figured it was time to give Mr. Backpack a spa treatment. Yep, my backpack is having a good ol' spin in the washing machine as I type. I found 18 pounds of half pieces of gum in the bottom when I cleaned it out (I always tear them in half). I also found my favorite pair of earrings, which I thought I lost in mid-July.

chocolate milk stains: the downside of owning a white backpack.

Dear Backpack,

From the moment I saw you the first week of freshman year at the bookstore sidewalk sale for only 25 dollars, I knew we were meant to be together. You have been with me through so many early morning classes, late nights walking home, campus naps, rainstorms (you were so brave), and library study sessions (thanks for holding so many snacks).

Backpack, even though it's I who have carried YOU through all these times, YOU have truly carried ME. And for that I thank you.

Love,
Amy...

..who should be doing her homework. but writing letters to inanimate objects is much more fun.

Breathing: A How To Guide.

One beautiful thing about Brigham Young University (other than the fact that Jimmer went here and I love him) is that it is built on top of a mountain.

Some say hill... but I say mountain, because hills are cute little green things that you go skipping down singing songs about how they are alive, but mountains are things that make your lungs explode and cause you to want to die.

And so, every BYU student's life consists of trekking up and down these inclines, especially those of us that live down the large hill south of campus. And of course, anyone who ever goes down to the athletic buildings west of campus have to tackle the infamous RB stairs, which look like this:


Oh, so sorry, wrong picture. They just look so similar sometimes! The RB stairs look more like this:


In addition to trekking up and down hills outside, every building has lots of stairs, and elevators are shameful things that everyone will look down upon you for using. (well not really, but kinda)

The point is, unless you are a superior athlete, you experience frequent episodes of breathlessness while traversing this beautiful campus. And that is why I am writing today... to lend support and advice. Because you always seem to be walking amongst non-out-of-breath people who have been walking on level ground when you emerge from a steep ascent like a mountain-climber.

There are several strategies for retaining your composure and cool factor (aka: swagger) while you are desperately out of breath.

1. The "Suff' and Huff":
You mount those last few steps before reaching the top. Your lungs are beginning to burn and you feel the lack of oxygen building in your brain. As your foot reaches the top of the stairs/hill, you begin gasping wildly for air. You walk towards your next class, and see a total hottie approaching. As you pass, you nonchalantly hold your breath and smile. Then as soon as he is out of earshot, you gasp like a fool and breathe as deeply and loudly as possible. You begin to pass someone else and hold your breath, or just breath as quietly as possible. Repeat, until you are breathing normally once again.

social appearance rating: 9... other than the sweat trickling down your brow, you appear totally normal to passers-by!
potential for suffocation: 10.... this is why I have named it the "suff' and then huff."

2. the "Vigorous Nose-Breathing" technique:
This technique is helpful in loud crowds, or in situations where people are mostly pretty far away from you, because it can get pretty loud (you know...). You keep your mouth closed and smile, and try to intake as much air as is humanly possible through your nostrils! Win! An occasional deep breath through the mouth is recommended.

amount of cool factor that remains intact, visually: 87%
amount of cool factor that remains intact, audibly: 0%, because you sound like a wheezing old man.

3. The "Man Those Stairs Made Me Sleepy!" method:
This one is simple: Just cover your mouth and pretend you are yawning like a bear coming out of hibernation while you desperately gasp for air. A bear that yawns for a really long time. Disregard the adrenaline that is pumping through your veins while you feign drowsiness.

success in camouflaging your out-of-shape-ness: high
chance for receiving concern from others that you have narcolepsy: very high

4. The "I Just Really Enjoy Whistling Silently" strategy:
This one is definitely one of my faves... you just purse your lips into whistle formation and breathe deeply. I enjoy it because you have the ability to take deep, life-sustaining breaths, but it keeps your mouth gasping to a minimum.

sustaining life: 5 stars
flirting by looking like your lips are puckered: 8 stars

5. the "I Shamelessly Enjoy Living" mindset:
In this method, you actually disregard what people think of your hot-mess desperate breathing, and decide that you enjoy a regular intake of air, so you just breathe as much air as you need and don't think about how people perceive you.

self-confidence and sensibility score: perfect 10
creativity in breathing technique: a disappointing ZERO.

And lastly,
6. "Exercise So You Are In Shape Enough that You're Not Actually Out of Breath When You Summit Over 100 Stairs."

But that's just crazy talk, so we won't go there.

Becoming a Teacher.

Becoming a Teacher, Part One.

I walked slowly up the sidewalk on Thursday morning, shivering with my parka on in the cold rain and biting wind. I was heading to an elementary school for my weekly tutoring session in a special needs math class. I was resentful that it was so cold this early in October, I was still sleepy from a poor night's sleep, and I was more than a little downhearted as I glanced up at the dreary sky.

I had to blink hard to fight back tears.

The fourth grade students in the class were happy to see me. That made me smile a little. The teacher asked me to work with a few students in another room, including one boy I had worked with every single week so far.

He was a frustration. He never sat still. He laughed at me. He threw his pencil. He ripped his paper. He crawled on the floor. He pestered his classmates. He didn't solve the problems. He just didn't care.

The other students with me knew how to do the problems. I told them to do the worksheet on their own, and ask me if they had questions. They finished the worksheet in five minutes. I turned to the boy. He was running around the room. "Come on over here." I said, "We're going to work on the white board."

I wrote the first problem on the board, and handed him the marker. He got quiet. He didn't know how to do the problem. He had no idea. No clue. He didn't even know what the problem was asking. He didn't know how to start. He just really didn't understand math. And he couldn't stay focused long enough to learn it.

Over the next hour, we worked together on ten problems. I drew pictures, I helped him count on his fingers, I made sound effects, I turned erasing the board between problems a game (countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!), I gave high fives, I told some jokes, I pushed him on, I pretended my hands were a scale and taught him that if he put the same number of markers in each hand they were still balanced (just like an equation). He listened intently. He was trying to learn.

I constantly fought the attention battle. He was distracted by the cobweb in the corner of the room, the sound of kids playing outside, even his own shoe. His gaze was constantly floating away from the numbers I had written so largely on the board directly in front of him. I picked up his hand and used his own pointer finger to touch each number as we said it out loud. I helped him count on his fingers when we added.

We worked intently, minute by minute. My mind was racing, searching for more ideas to teach him in a way that would help him, even a little.

He understood. HE UNDERSTOOD! He completed all ten problems, and he understood each one. We returned to the classroom. The rest of his classmates had already left. They finished in a matter of minutes, no doubt.

He handed in his paper. I told him I was SO proud of him and couldn't wait to see him next week. He smiled at me and left the room.

I put on my parka and walked out into the cold rain and bitter wind, but my heart was warm. It was so warm that I felt it radiating throughout every inch of my body, and I couldn't stop my entire face from beaming as I walked.

I had to blink hard to fight back tears.

Room-Cleaning Gems.

Cleaning out one's room--along with dental appointments and eye exams and errands that have been on the to-do list for months--is one of the special joys of being home from college for a long visit.

You leave the room clean, of course, when you go away to your cute apartment. You may pop in at home every couple of months, pulling items out of the closet to grab a favorite hat to take back, piling last semester's textbooks on the desk, throwing all the things that aren't quite treasure but aren't quite trash into a heap in the corner because you can't decide what to do with them. And then one day you drag home a suitcase and throw it open for a week-and-a-half visit, clothes spilling out haphazardly as somehow the objects occupying the room multiply until you hit the low point: having to carve a path from the door to the bed.

And then you hunker down, and you clean.

That's where I was today. I was itching to clean up the mess, to sort out the piles and to...well, dive headfirst into my childhood.

I've lived in the same room since I was four years old. Despite all the cleaning out and weeding through of it, that room contains my history, and there are always treasures to be found. Every once in a while I get the urge to, not only clean off the floor and clear off the surfaces, but open the cupboards and drawers and begin pulling things out. Each time I embark into a cleaning frenzy, I am able to let go of more things than I could the last time: glittery butterfly clips, broken sea shells I don't remember, spiral notebooks from high school chemistry. And each time, I discover treasures: usually ordinary items, shoved into the drawer years ago, that remind me of who I am.

Today I was reminded of two aspects of my being:

1. I have always loved to write, and...
2. I had a unique downright strange sense of creativity.

Exhibit A.
One summer, I decided to create my own code. I believe I was ten or eleven, and I think it started on a car trip from Utah to Vegas. I gave each letter a symbol and made a chart for it, just like normal kids do when they create a code to write secret messages to their friends.

But then I memorized it. I practiced it so much that I didn't need to look at the chart to know the symbol for each letter. And I could read it. And then I filled a binder with pages of stories written exclusively in my special code.

feel free to use it for all your secret note needs.... it's a pretty sweet code.

binder-ful of stories

more pages

even more pages

The bad news is: I can no longer read this and am way too lazy to decode pages and pages of the stories I wrote. In addition, I am now concerned that I was a more abnormal child than I could have ever imagined.
The good news: If the US Government needs a code to relay secret messages in a time of war, I totes got them covered.

I think I have always been a writer at heart (although usually not in code... thank goodness). When I was in kindergarten or first grade, my mom bought me a little black and white composition notebook, and I filled it with stories: about a bunny who didn't like carrots, a girl who didn't like being the middle child (hmmm), and a girl with a dog named Cookie. As I got older, the tales became much more dramatic, and usually typed on the computer. Most every story included orphans, kidnappings, princesses... and often several elements of a movie I had just watched. (oops) I had plans to be published and famous after writing the next great.... children's chapter book.

Today I discovered the beginning of what could have been a masterpiece. It is entitled, "Anna's Adventure" and by the looks of the handwriting, I think I was about twelve.

Chapter One.

Anna was a fun-loving, brave, and spunky girl. So when her father announced he was going to a remote African jungle to collect scientific research, she begged to go. The next thing she knew, she was in a jeep escaping an angry pride of lions. She wondered what she had gotten herself into.

Chapter Two.

"You sleep in the higher hammock. You'll have a better chance of survival," Anna's dad said. They had arrived at their jungle hut finally after they got away from the lions. Anna looked around. Yuck. It was dirty, smelly, hot and mosquito infested. She felt a sting on her leg and looked down. "Dad!" She called, "I was stung by a beetle."
He ran in, then gasped. "It's poisonous!" he yelled. But it was too late. She fell to the floor with a thud.

Chapter Three.

"She's alive!" her dad shrieked. Anna sat up and looked around. She was in a big hut, surrounded by African tribal leaders. "Anna, these people saved your life." She met Chief Poko and the others, then she and her dad left the hut. On the way out, she collided with an American boy her age. "Anna, this is Matt. He helped me carry you here." Anna blushed and smiled. She had found a friend.

Dang. I'm super bummed it ended there. But c'mon. Chased by African lions and stung by a poisonous beetle and saved by a hot American boy all in one PAGE?? This could have been like a safari-themed Twilight.

Lost Posessions Paradise.

Somewhere far, far away, there is an island surrounded by bright blue, shark-infested waters.

No human has ever reached its shores alive, though many have died trying.

The beaches are sandy and warm and the palm trees sway lazily in the calm breeze. Coconuts fall gently into the sand and the birds sing beautiful melodies as the peaceful tide rolls in and out.

And every day, a large white ship with gleaming smoke-stacks splashes its way onto the shore to deliver its precious load : millions of eager bobby pins, chapsticks, and socks from homes worldwide.

Meanwhile, their friends across the globe slip slyly through open windows and into air vents and down pipes when their owners aren't looking; they head for the shore to catch a ride onboard the ship that will take them to the faraway island.




Every bobby pin dreams of the day when they will sift through the warm sand instead of enduring their lot in life: being shoved into the ponytails and dirty bangs of girls 'round the world. Every chapstick imagines the salty ocean waters and warm sun as it is smudged against cracked lips day after day. And every sock reminds it's spouse that one day, they will no longer be subjected to smelly feet and sweltering shoes; when the time comes, he will slip away while tumbling in the dryer and promise to send for her later.

These essential personal possessions endure the drudgery day by day, but they are plotting, they are planning, they are hoping. And one day, they will slip away, unseen, and head straight for the island of bobby pins, chapsticks, and socks to live out their existence in balmy bliss, never to be heard from again.

This is really the only explanation I could come up with for why those dang things are constantly disappearing. I've decided it has to be true.