Reschool Yourself

Author Archive: mjdicker

P.E. Class: I’ll Take the Physical Challenge

The experience that I remember most vividly from middle school is P.E. (Physical Education). I remember hating the class because I didn’t consider myself the least bit athletic. When I was little, I’d enjoyed playing pickup baseball and basketball, but I later developed a performance anxiety that held me back from doing any official team sport. My P.E. teacher, Mrs. Garner, always seemed surprised at my lack of sports interest and skill because she swore that I “walked like an athlete.” I did not find this complimentary at the time, envisioning myself swinging my arms in a lolling, ape-like caveman stride. Did I actually walk that way?

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Back in middle school, the only things I remember liking about P.E. were:

1) Square dancing, especially with my crushes.

2) Pickleball, a game like ping pong played on a tennis court. We were coincidentally playing Pickleball this week, and I found that I still have some skillz.

3) Mr. Turner, the hot new 25-year-old P.E. teacher. I imagine that good-looking Mr. Andrew Ryan, who graduated from Altimira the same year I did and now teaches P.E. and Leadership, is the new Mr. Turner for the current middle school girls.

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October 17, 2008 Middle School 5 Read more >

Middle School: Some Things Never Change

Middle school. Junior high. These are words that often bring up humiliating memories of sweaty palms at school dances and frustrated tears in the girls’ bathroom. People tend to raise their eyebrows when I say that I’m returning to middle school and say, “Well, THAT should be interesting. I would never go back.”

I first set foot on the campus of Altimira Middle School as a grown-up a few weeks ago, when I introduced Reschool Yourself at the weekly staff meeting. Afterward, I stuck my head into the gym and watched the kids run around in their P.E. uniforms, a flood of memories of relays and tumbling and square dancing came back. Without warning, I felt tears welling up. It was bizarre, because I hadn’t realized that my middle school memories still carried such a strong emotional charge. Clearly, there would be some psychological processing in my future.

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October 16, 2008 Middle School 5 Read more >

Keeping Secrets in Sixth Grade

Today I started middle school — a different campus, and completely different world. There’s nothing I’d like better than to share my first action-packed day of sixth grade, but unfortunately it’s after 2:30 a.m. and I need to be up in less than five hours. I’ve spent all night developing the plans for the spring phase of Reschool Yourself and can’t wait to share those with you, as well. Apparently my middle schooler classmates have taught me the art of keeping a secret…and then blabbing it the next day. As soon as I have a moment, I’ll write about:

– Changing in the locker room and running the track in P.E. clothes

– Standing around in a patented pre-teen cluster at lunch

– Triggering a variety of memories about classes, teachers, and personal dramas

I’m going to try a new approach of simply documenting what I’ve experienced each day without necessarily commenting on its greater significance. I hope this will let me share more as I go, and I can put on my psychology hat later. For now I’ll say that I’m in sixth grade this week, seventh next week, and eighth the following.

Ugggh, I just remembered that I didn’t do my homework, and there’s a test on the Language Arts selection first thing in the morning. Guess who’ll be getting up extra early to cram?

October 14, 2008 About the Project, Middle School 3 Read more >

Assessing Old Habits As a New Chapter Begins

I’m back home, and after a week of balanced living on the east coast, I’m finding myself already getting sucked back into an unhealthy routine. For the past few years it’s been this way: extreme relaxation on vacation, then extreme stress as soon as I went back to work. I would love to find a balance someday soon.

Right now I wish I’d scheduled in a few extra days to recover from jet-lag and finish processing my elementary school experiences, but I’m scheduled to start middle school tomorrow. I had also hoped to start rested and energetic instead of draggy and coffee-fueled, but alas, it will not be so. Sigh…it’s true that old habits die hard. At least I’m making progress in other areas, which helps keep the little setbacks in perspective. Perhaps starting a new chapter of the project will help me make some positive changes. Here’s today’s progress report.

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October 12, 2008 About the Project, Personal Development, 0 Read more >

Reschooling Tool #7: Be Thankful That It’s Not Worse

For the last few days, I’ve been spending time with my college roommates on the east coast. Today the girls and I took in the beauty of historic Concord, the setting for much of the American Revolution, as well as the first intellectual capital of the country. Among others, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott wrote their great works here, and Louisa’s father, Bronson Alcott, was a pioneer of progressive education.

After a fascinating tour of the Alcott house, where Louisa May set the loosely autobiographical novel Little Women, we went to a fall festival at the Old Manse on the Concord River. Emerson and Hawthorne each lived here, and you can understand why the setting inspired such great works. Sitting under trees bursting with red and orange fall leaves, the girls and I gorged ourselves on freshly made kettle corn and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I felt peaceful and happy…and then began to feel a little sick.

At first I thought it might be a sugar overdose, but I soon suspected that the cramping pains beginning in my mid-section and shooting down my legs were due to what the colonists called “female complaints.” Dizziness and spotty blackouts followed, and I spent the next half hour sitting on the ground with my head between my legs repeating my own advice: Stay calm. Accept the situation. Keep a sense of humor about it. Instead of walking around Walden Pond as we’d planned, my friends and I headed home so I could lie on the couch and sip tea (which the girls later told me was new mom Charlotte’s Mother’s Milk tea that “promotes healthy lactation.” Thanks, ladies!).

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October 11, 2008 Reschooling Tools, 1 Read more >

Reschooling Tool #6: Choose the Ridiculous Interpretation

This post continues the story begun in Reschooling Tool #5: Accept Things As They Are.

I find that when I pat myself on the back for an evolved reaction to a situation, the universe tends to respond by kicking up the intensity, as if to say, “Congratulations, you were worthy of that challenge–now try this one!”  My last entry described how I drained the car battery of my anxious grandpa in Maryland one night, and here’s how the story continued.

As promised, the AAA tow truck operator arrived and jump started the dead battery; he informed me that it would charge completely during the 20-minute drive home. As I steered the Mazda toward the parking lot exit, I called my grandpa to tell him not to worry, that I was finally on my way. Mid-sentence, I came to the parking lot exit and realized that I could leave only by swiping an electronic “Smartcard,” which of course I didn’t have. I wasn’t allowed to pay the $4.25 fee with cash or credit card, so I would need to go back into the Metro station on foot and buy a Smartcard there. Unfortunately, I couldn’t park the car again so soon after the jump start, or the battery would die again. As the toll booth was empty, I couldn’t ask a staff person for advice. During this series of realizations, my grandpa was on the other end of the phone asking me what in the world was going on. I hurriedly explained the situation and told him that I’d call him back.
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October 10, 2008 Personal Development, Reschooling Tools 1 Read more >

Reschooling Tool #5: Accept Things As They Are

I’m on the east coast this week, visiting my grandparents in Maryland and my college roommate outside of Boston. This entry was hand-scrawled the other night and transcribed.

I’m making history tonight: I’m paper-blogging for the first time. I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of my grandpa’s 1990 Mazda in the parking lot of the Greenbelt, Maryland train station, writing under the dim light of a lamppost. I parked here four hours ago when I took the train to D.C. to meet some girlfriends. My fretful Chinese grandpa had cautioned me about 20 different possible dangers, including pickpockets and car thieves. He requested that I phone him at every turn: when I arrived at Greenbelt, then at D.C., and again upon my return to Greenbelt, and when I arrived safely at my car.

I gently told my grandpa that I’d lived in a fairly rough neighborhood in San Francisco (the Mission District), and I knew how to handle myself. I didn’t want to stress him out and planned to say at the end of the night, “See? You had nothing to worry about.” I would have succeeded in doing this, if not for one threat that neither my grandpa nor I had foreseen: Headlights that don’t beep when you leave them on as you exit the car.
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October 10, 2008 Personal Development, Reschooling Tools, 2 Read more >