Hello Internet...
My name is Sara Vandygriff. I am an artist. I am hoping to be
an art teacher. I am a free spirit and my fingers are much more comfortable
clutching a paintbrush than pounding at a keyboard. Oh, and I am a
recently surprised-to-be-single mother (surprised...as in "Surprise,
future ex-wife of mine and mother of my toddler! I'm leaving you... for your
also-married-with-children friend! Don't try to change my mind, I already moved
my stuff out! Ta-ta!" - paraphrasing my soon-to-be ex husband). I
am just now pulling my head out of my very depressed turtle shell and taking
inventory of my life and myself. Here's what I came up with. In
rapid succession, I've lost my husband (and, obviously, my friend too),
most of my family income, my townhouse... I had to take Lucy and move in
with my parents. I moved away from my friends (the ones who didn't steal
my husband), my town of 10 years, coworkers I adored, and the freedom to eat
ice cream for lunch while still in my pajamas without getting the stink-eye
from my mother. I gave my whole life up (well, what was left of it) and moved
in with my parents because I realized I finally had a chance to do something He
never "let" me do... pursue a career that meant something.
My second year of undergrad studies as a Fine Art major, I met Him on a blind date. We hit it off. We got an apartment. He seemed so supportive of my dreams. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go the art history route, or art teacher, or art therapist... so I knew I'd have to go to grad school. I eventually graduated and hurried to get a temporary part time job to tide me over with insurance til we decided where we would end up - a friend got me a bank teller job. We got married. I brought up grad school... shot down. "You've got a good job at the bank with good hours. Just suck it up." So I picked up more hours and let the resentment build. Then we had a long, difficult pregnancy and a beautiful baby girl. Lucy got older and I brought up school again... he pointed out how ridiculously expensive babies are ... so tough luck, dream's dead. "In fact, look into getting a full-time position," he said. Nearly 10 years in, I had just started working up the nerve to bring it up again when he dropped a bomb on everything and left. With my married friend. And her kids. Gone.
So that's my recent life in a painful nutshell. While I wait impatiently for karma to make a (hopefully grand) appearance, I decided something good should come out of this kick in the teeth... and it's going to be working my tail off to get a career I am passionate about: where I help people, I create things, I am challenged. I don't want to be a bank teller anymore. I want to be an art teacher. I want Lucy to see me excited about what I do, not trudging to a meaningless job that pays the bills. So, years from now, as she's helping Mommy divvy up glue sticks and tear up newspaper for paper mache we will talk about the fun projects Mommy is doing with her students, heck - we might try a few out at home.
Anyways, on to the pertinent part of this...after all, we're here to talk about education and technology (and eventually, art). My relationship with technology is only slightly better than my relationship with my ex. It has been a long standing joke in my family that I have been cursed by the technology gods. When it comes to computers and phones... just call me Murphy...If it can go wrong, it will. My phone is the one that updates and erases every photo I've ever taken. I can have a homework assignment done a week early, yet 6 minutes before class I'm still fighting with one printer or another to spit out my essay! (Because, in my undergrad days, we submitted actual paper!) Let me describe a typical December crisis for you. I love photos and I enjoy designing photo albums. Digitally, believe it or not. I am also queen of the photo gift. Are you the grandparent of my child? Fantastic! Christmas solved... then something inevitably goes wrong technologically. I can't tell you how many Christmas IOUs I've written because of technical difficulties.
As for social media. I use Facebook. That's about it. (I've used both Instagram and Snapchat but sparingly and not for a while. At the beginning of the year I started online dating via Match.com. That's a whole new level of fodder for a far different venue than this!) But Facebook is my go-to way of keeping in touch. I especially like it now because I get to keep up with my in-law family, which I'm very close with... but at the moment, for obvious reasons, things are strained. I barely ever post anything myself. And if I do, 90% of the time its pictures of my kid. I observe rather than contribute.
The same cannot be said for teenagers. I watch my teenage cousins, thumbs a-flyin' constantly over their phones and obsessively taking selfies. It worries me... it seems like an addiction. I worry what the technological landscape will look like when Lucy is old enough to enter it (which, at today's pace, seems like maybe a year or two... Toddler Twitter may be a thing before we know it.) I found a really insightful article by Clay Cranford entitled Understanding Why Social Media is So Important to Teens
"Social media has created a feeling of connectedness never experienced before in human history. Your children do not know a world without the Internet or social media, and they can’t imagine being in a world without it. In a study conducted by Cisco, they found that more than half of the young people surveyed considered the Internet an “integral part of their lives,” as important as food, water and even air. Social media was something “that they could not live without.” (Cisco, 2014)
Seriously? As important as air? It seems laughable as a
mature adult. I've never been one to measure my self worth or my public
image by other people's "likes" or comments. I'll admit it,
I've secretly rolled my eyes at those not-so-mature adults who give so
much credence to the basically anonymous hoards of internet opinion-givers.
Until I became one of those people... because of a recent social media
war gave me some perspective.
Right around Christmas, after a particularly painful argument in which my ex couldn't understand why I wouldn't let him have Lucy both Christmas Eve (when his family celebrates, always) and Christmas morning.... so our daughter could be there with his girlfriend's children and they could have a "family Christmas" of their own. Apparently I'm "spiteful" because I wasn't supportive of the new family he's so quick to create while I'm still sifting through boxes in my parents' basement to find my baking supplies to make cookies for the half of my family I still have left.
So the weekend before Christmas the "new family" must have had a Christmas celebration of their own. And he POSTS IT ON FACEBOOK - a whole album entitled "Life is Good". The man literally has NEVER made a single post... not when we got married, not when his daughter was born... not a virtual peep. Yet there he was - 22 pictures deep of him wrestling with all 3 kids, smiling with his arm around Her, Them baking cookies (he never baked with me)... I was livid. Distraught and livid. I resisted the urge to comment but I found myself wishing there was a "disgusted with this post" button. I started obsessively checking Facebook for a week - to check people's reactions to it. I was pleased that literally only 11 people even responded - most of them her friends. No comments either - just 11 "likes". Conspicuously absent were his family, her family (neither of which approve at all of their behavior) - they didn't respond at all. And there was a sick vindication in that for me.
Around New Years, I posted a rather lengthy 'resolution' that basically outlined my plans to stop dwelling on the pain of the past and move forward. I never said a negative word about Them - although I did make some references to "greener grasses that will undoubtedly shrivel over time meanwhile I'm turning what's left of my metaphorical 'yard' into a garden for my daughter and I." And it blew up. I got something like 80 "likes" (that's like way more than half of my friends list) - my family, his family... heck, even her dad! The comments were numerous and super supportive. I felt like I had won. But won what? I was investing WAY too much mental health and emotional vindication in the 'thumbs ups' given by people who minutes earlier were sharing cat memes.
This whole experience came flooding back when I read Katie Benmar's blog post, My Favorite Teachers Use Social Media: A Student Perspective. A real, live teenager. In it she says:
"When you're in middle and high school, a lot depends on your status in social media. Where you fit into the large, seemingly mysterious network of school cliques is directly related to how many followers or friends you have online and how many "likes" you get on your social-media accounts. Getting a large amount of likes on a photo posted on Instagram or Facebook secures your status. It makes you feel important, popular, and well liked. Once students have a certain number of followers or likes, it's easier for them to feel they have control or power socially. Someone who's "popular" on social media can be incredibly intimidating. What they say goes."
Did getting more online support give me some sort of a social upper hand? Did it "secure my status?" I don't know.... but I sure felt better about myself! The divorce lawyers won't care whose side the internet took but I sure did. So, congratulations to me, I'm a 31 year old single mom and I'm thinking along the lines of a 15 year old girl. But in the grand scheme of things, there is merit in this - in understanding just how important this wide (and frankly terrifying) social media world is to the students I will have someday soon. This was a volatile and emotionally tumultuous relationship - but let's be honest, those words describe a large portion of the hormonally charged friendships and relationships in middle and high school. And for today's teen, your private life becoming public (either by your own volition or others) is pretty much inevitable.
So if adolescence is basically intertwined with social media, I suppose teachers might as well tap in to this resource and bring a little education into the midst of all the drama. Why not reach out to them on a venue they're going to be glued to anyways? Andrew Watts' A Teenagers View on Social Media was invaluable as a guide to 'kids these days' and there newfangled social media. Seriously, I had no idea several of these networks even existed. While I doubt I will become proficient in all of them - and I'm sure more will undoubtedly gain popularity in rapid succession. In the mean time, while I am learning how to be a teacher I may as well learn to be friends with my computer and (outdated) smartphone. I think this Instructional Technologies class - which I am writing this for - will be beneficial to me. I'm going to need to relate to my students on whatever level I can. Judging by the length of this, my very first blog post ever (and if you've stuck with me to this point, kudos to you, intrepid reader) I think I may become a rather prolific blogger. I may try to keep things a little more professional - and on topic - from now on...but I guess this medium really let me unleash a little pent up frustration. Plus, I needed a backstory for my social media exploits story, and a little intro to who and where I am in life at the moment. (Trust me, I had to go back and erase several paragraphs of less important - but more cathartic - ranting.) I really enjoyed Steve Wheeler's Seven Reasons Teachers Should Blog and my blogging experience thus far is kind of summarized perfectly within his blog:
"Blogging can crystalise your thinking. In the act of writing, said Daniel Chandler, we are written. As we write, we invest a part of ourselves into the medium. The provisionality of the medium makes blogging conducive to drafting and redrafting. The act of composing and recomposing ideas can enable abstract thoughts to become more concrete. Your ideas are now on the screen in front of you; they can be stored, retrieved and reconstructed as your ideas become clearer. You don't have to publish if you want to keep those thoughts private. Save them and come back to them later. The blog can act as a kind of mirror to show you what you are thinking. Sometimes we don't really know what we are thinking until we actually write it down in a physical format."
Link Topic
So I'm going to blog. I'll experiment with other things
to. By the time I'm a real, live art teacher I'll be able to do all sorts
of things. Maybe I'll learn cool ways to connect my students with famous
artists' biographies - or even with current, working artists. Maybe I can
make and post "how-to" videos of the projects we'll be doing to refer
to throughout the process. I have no idea what I'm capable of. I've
literally never done anything but post to Facebook - and it took me 4 days to
figure out how to erase my relationship status because I didn't even want to
glorify the situation with an "it's complicated." So I'm going
to use what the internet has to offer and look at it as career development.
I'll grow my PLN. What is a PLN you ask? Well, I just learned that myself...
So, if you have suggestions for blogs, articles, whatever other mysteries the internet holds, that may help me on this quest to restart my life and become an art teacher, I'd love it if you shared them with me! Thanks for sticking with me to the end... which is more than I can say for my ex! (Hah - comedic drum-and-cymbal combo). Seriously, though, I appreciate it and look forward to blogging more!
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