10,000 Hours

Another Charlottean TFAnik started a blog: here's her first post.

Brothers-in-arms syndrome... everyone in TFA has each other's back. Right before we run out before the firing squad.

Ghetto Talk: The Holocaust and Urban Youth

In the last week before winter break, my class fought the Battle of the Bulge, morally justified or condemned dropping the A-bomb, criticized/idolized Eisenhower, and then learned about the Holocaust. Only three students, in response to my warm-up question of “Why is it necessary to remember the Holocaust?”, asked, “What’s the Holocaust?”

We started out building on their prior knowledge about propaganda with looks at Nazi anti-semitic posters. We talked a lot, in that intro, about why anti-semitism exists, and what Jews believe, and whether Jews are white or what (a “white power” sign with a swastika had them confused—are you white, Ms. W? Erm, not really sure, kids. To you I am, but let’s find your rural Southern peers and ask them what they think). All questions to which I have no very satisfactory answers. Then we began drawing the obvious parallels between the Nuremberg Laws and segregation.

Next slide: Ghetto: segregated Jewish neighborhood.

Ghetto!

I don’t like that word.

Yo, I’m G!

So, when we say someone’s “G,” we’re calling them a Jewish neighborhood?!

I was stymied. First I threw out the kid who responded to the girl who doesn’t like “ghetto” by asking, “why, does it remind you of home?” Then I started saying something about the sociological implications of transferring the word “ghetto” from Europe where it was applied to the most loathed dregs, the Jewish scapegoats of European bigotry, and slapping it on the dilapidated neighborhoods that minorities in America are relegated to. I stopped—I couldn’t pass it through the academic jargon into their language, nor think of a way to say it that would provide any meaningful next step.

The kid who did her Holocaust memorial butterfly in Christmas colors-- hehe

The rest of class, as I taught deeply interested students about the concentration camps and Final Solution, I chewed over the parallels between Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews and contemporary America’s damning of poor children of color to segregated schools that are in so many ways simply fast tracks to incarceration. My kids get herded off the buses by guards with whistles who corral them with golf carts. Their lives are orchestrated by the bell and fear of authority. At the end of it all, they receive more an impression of an education than an education itself. I mulled the implications of teaching urban youth without doing anything material to improve their situation. If I become, say, a really great teacher, one who learns to get the point across regardless of lack of books or desks or proper heating, won’t I just be colluding in the caste system that America’s set up? People will point and say, “we don’t live in a segregated country, there’s a really good white teacher in that school.” Of mostly African American children and mostly un-experienced teachers.

Beautiful: children from the Holocaust's names above butterflies

As my kids learned about Nazi deceit and Nazi organization, I squirmed. Every time I told them to hush or start working, every lie I gave them about that “being on the test” (I’m not testing them this unit) or “helping to bring up their grade” (the kid with 35 absences isn’t passing regardless), made me feel like The Man. Like I’m part of a system that is treading the same boards as Nazi prejudice. My kids are being groomed to cut people’s hair and fix their cars, not compete with the college-bound. To service the CEOs and professors and doctors being churned out of other schools in whiter neighborhoods. Many of them are being funneled straight into prison—the ones who have been sent to Turning Point Academy are not going to come back and get on the straight and narrow. Those who are working their butts off are still receiving a sub-par education, and if they were as smart as their friends, would realize it and throw their hands in. Unless I’m facilitating a major revolution that overhauls the American education system and redistributes opportunity equitably, I think I may be part of the problem. And I’m not sure how to grapple with that.

In front of me, I had kids grappling with the Holocaust. I had to check in and help them make some kind of sense of it. I used the Butterfly Project from the USHMM to give them a chance to do something positive. Each student received a poem written by a child at Thereisenstadt and began creating a butterfly to memorialize the child. At the front of the room, I’d printed off ID cards from the USHMM site and every so often a student wandered over to read them and incorporate their lives into their project. 

Two of my students, insightful kids who sit in the back, called me over while they were working on their butterflies.

“Um, Ms. W, we’re just wondering… is it uncomfortable for you to talk about this?”

“Yes.” I thought about what to add to that answer. “It is, but I think maybe that’s why it’s important to talk about… exactly because it matters to me, because it’s my history. I mean, how many other Jews do you guys know?” They squirmed a bit in their chairs, and shook their heads. “That’s right. I’m it. So I have a responsibility to share. I think it’s important for people to share the things that are closest to them, to let everyone else see the real picture right from the source, and that makes my discomfort worth it.”

Somebody's seen The Boy in the striped Pajamas

As I walked away, I wondered how much the message I’d chosen had been determined by what I see in them: a staunchly articulate young woman whose parents are illegal immigrants and a deeply contemplative, astute young man whom I suspect has only come out of the closet to his closest friends. They will both be good advocates for their communities when and if they choose.

The last day, students learned about genocide in Rwanda. It was a fairly good lesson, with a reading differentiated on three lexile levels (that means I re-typed and bowdlerized and added parentheses with explanations and pictures for two different reading ranges), and then students required to take the role of UN inspectors writing up “special reports” on the Hutu and Tutsi genocide and make their recommendations to the UN. They connected the racist German influence on Rwanda to the Holocaust and discussed global responsibility towards human rights violations. A good ending to the week. Perhaps, just perhaps, I’m guiding them towards responsible, sympathetic approaches to the rest of humanity. The Roman aqueducts and Magna Carta be damned. Right now, I’m just worrying about cultivating humanity, dignity, and respect in my fellow human beings, even when none is being shown to them.

Get More White People!

Number of times my students have used YOLO in their WWI essays: 7 since I started counting. Apparently war brings out the YOLO. 

In another class, a student was asked to write a letter to an administrator about how to improve the school. This was her response:

Is she racist, or is she right? Would increasing the number of white students also automatically (or statistically?) increase the number of affluent parents worried about their students’ surroundings and both willing and able to donate time, money, effort, networking skills and organization to their children’s school? While I admit that the segregation in the school system is disgusting and directly connected to the inequity evident across the system, I’m hesitant to phrase the issue as solvable by pumping in white children as a magical panacea. The white children in themselves won’t do much. The amount of attention and resources they statistically bring with them might. Then again, when I speak to friends teaching in rural North Carolina, I’m less certain.

This morning I was previewing a video that I’m showing my kiddies about doing what you love in life (to contrast with an article entitle “Attention Grads: Don’t Do What You Love”), and kept playing it again and again, distracted from my planning as the panoramic vagueness unfolded. I’m a sucker for lofty rhetoric. It’s probably why I joined TFA in the first place. And blog. Anyhow, I kept wondering whether such privileged problems even matter to my kids. I spent high school loftily certain that I would do whatever I wanted regardless of money, and it works for me because I came to it from a position of privilege, but what does it mean to make that decision from the standpoint of poverty? What is so inspiring to me might seem mockingly out of reach to a good third of them. On the other hand, I have to let them listen to this wondrous accent. 

I’ve been going through a slew of hateful end-of-semester phone calls to parents of students who have racked up so many absences that there’s some kind of legal obligation involved, and to parents of students who have never done their work so have astoundingly low grades, and to parents whose manners over the phone explain appallingly why their students speak the way they do, or else trying to get in touch with parents or guardians who, one by one, disclaim responsibility for the child until I’m left in a hopeless loop that ends me back at the school counselor’s office.

To offset this, I decided this week to call all the good kids’ parents. I informed parents that their kids were student of the month, or top of the class, or had helped a friend through a difficult day. I got to tattle on kids who donated school supplies to the classroom or gave me artwork to hang or did every single extra credit project to bring their grades to astounding 114s. These parents were surprised, and grateful, and one of them cried to hear that her son is near the top of the class and one of the most astoundingly sweet students I have, so happy was she to hear that she’s "doing something right" (not exactly lofty rhetoric but certainly dramatically uplifting). Another told me that they’d framed and hung the “student of the month” award her daughter had brought home. Probably I shouldn’t be printing them on bright orange paper. Sometimes, after dealing with completely unreceptive parents, I forget how wonderfully attuned other parents are, and how meaningful it is to them to hear about their children’s successes. These students, the ones about whom I can call home to praise their hard work and intellectual curiosity and strength of character, are my focus for the remainder of the semester. 

We Do Not Twerk In Class

Things I said this week:

• Erase the penis and you can get out of Hooverville. (It was in the middle of our Great Depression Simulation. I may have used Hooverville as a punitive measure for one student. It won’t happen again… though to be fair the graffiti probably made it more realistic).

Life goals for most of us... for some of my kids it's just "toilet"

• In response to a kid who, as we were talking through his life goals, said, “first I pass your class, Ms. W, then I graduate high school, then I get my GED, then I go to coll—“ oh wait, hold up there, sweethoneysugarbabypie, if you graduate high school you don’t need your GED. Awwww. (“sweethoneysugarbabypie” and “awww” were both in my head—he must not know anybody who’s graduated high school. But he will!).

• Um, this essay is well-written, but can we talk about your research? Because the Civil War isn’t on our syllabus.  
• How did I know what “stupida” meant even though I don’t speak Spanish? Because I’m not stupida.
• Yeah, Stalin was a shmuck. Oops! I mean a… none of you know what shmuck means? Oh, it’s dick in Yiddish. Oops!

The level of response I got when kids had to make a "dating profile"
for one of history's dictators

• Who would you rather date: Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini?
• Do you ever study? Nope? Well, that’s probably why she has a D. (To irate parents who came all the way across town to see me about a student’s grade. At least the kid was honest).
• No, we cannot click the ad for “the top ten ways sex changed history” that just popped up on the history channel video we’re watching.
• Gentlemen, we are not discussing our jail records today, we are discussing trench warfare. What's that? No, no, that did not mean that I have a jail record, the "our" was really "your." No, it didn't mean we're discussing them tomorrow, either... oh boy. You are not now nor ever permitted to compare your jail records in my class, capisce? Also, put your shirt back on. Nobody wants to see that.
• Hmmm... an example for fascism that you can understand.... how do you all feel about the administration?
• Did we do anything yesterday? No, we sat around and picked our noses, waiting for you to come back from suspension… No, not really!
• You did real good. (It’s come out of my mouth at least six times this week; I’m counting. But what’s the point of praise if it’s not in their language? 
• Why did you throw the desk? Uh-huh, I see. Do you know that it hit me? It did. It hurt. Did you get in trouble? Yeah. So what better way can you respond to that completely legitimate anger, something that doesn’t get you in trouble and doesn’t hurt people you don’t want to? (In my head: Is this right? Is this what I say? Is this right?)

• In another private pep talk: This is your time, your time. Out there, it’s the adults’ time. But in here, in this class, it’s your time. (I’ve decided that since nobody listens to my heartfelt pep talks, I may as well plagiarize them directly from the Goonies. At least I’ll be entertained while I’m talking.

And, my personal favorite, from today:

• We do not twerk in class.

We NEVER twerk in class! 

And this, when I polled my students:

From the start of my poll in literacy block: we'd just read an article about the pros and cons of texting, so it was seemed apropos that the kids text their responses. Only one admitted a secret crush on Julius Caesar.

Through Her Eyes

Today a new student joined my 4^th block class. She walked into our literacy block while other students were pouring through the door, hesitant and shy, and I exuded warmth and security and the fact that I’ve got her back in the midst of the madness as strongly as I could. It worked; she didn’t hesitate to ask questions and seek help right off the bat. But for the literacy period and our fourth block, I kept having out-of-body experiences, and finding myself suddenly transported into her gaze. What a crazy world fourth block looked like from her perspective! This is what I imagined:

The teacher seems nice. The kids are really loud, though. I hope I’m not going to sit near that little hyperactive one that keeps waving his arms and screaming “lollipop.” Oh my gosh! Those two guys are fighting! Why doesn’t the teacher freak out? Oh, they’re just friends. But I wouldn’t have gotten in the middle of it like that if I were her, she could have gotten smushed by the big one.

Me today. And, you know, almost every day.

How on earth is the teacher going to get everyone to quiet down? Ah, I see. I’m not going to roar “Sparta” the way these kids do when she yells “Athens,” but maybe I’ll kind of whisper it so I don’t stand out.

Oh god, she’s introducing me. Where am I from? Michigan. Um, phew, okay, attention’s back on her. Oh, nope, wait, everyone’s looking at the guy who’s taking his shirt off in the back… huh?

 Oh my god! What was that? It sounded so violent. From here it looks like that big girl just shoved the desk with that little guy out into the middle of the class. She literally just picked him and his desk up and pushed them away from her hard. Now she’s being moved by the teacher. And the little guy’s getting in trouble, too? This doesn’t make sense. I wonder what the backstory is.

Michelle Obama’s face is on the screen. I wonder what we’re watching? Ah, I see. Wow does she not get the realities of public school education as I am witnessing it right here. Everything she’s saying has absolutely no application to this classroom. Okay, a list of advice on how to succeed in school… I can pretty much look around and just figure out what not to do.

Boromir knows.

Four students spend almost the whole class screaming to each other. They’re not mad, just loud. The guy behind me sat and did nothing for the first ten minutes, and then he suddenly woke up and asked to borrow a pencil. I gave it to him. He seems okay. Quieter than the rest. His eyes are really red, maybe he needs more sleep. Or maybe… huh.

Two students from another class came in. The teacher gets all strict-sounding with them, the way she did when that one boy wouldn’t sit down (is he standing out in the rain right now? Where did she send him?). She’s making the one near me write an apology to his teacher. He’s looking at me. Please, please don’t let him talk to me. Oh, good, he’s talking to the kid who got pushed earlier. Oh, man, this is really different from Michigan. I can’t believe they’re getting away with saying this kind of thing to each other! Your lips have ghonorrea? What does that mean? There, she’s sending him out. And reading that other one’s reflection, and saying something to him to make him laugh—how can she laugh with him? How one earth is she still laughing when these kids are so crazy? The class kind of works—it’s rolling forward in a sort of unstoppable chaos, and everyone does some amount of work. I guess it’s better for her to get them laughing instead of screaming.  

Somehing I ponder often.

The bell. Everyone’s stampeding out. A girl who was screaming all class long goes up and gives the teacher a hug. Now the teacher and she are in a duet singing, "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." I'm so confused.

“Um, Ms. W? I don’t know where to go next.” She’s looking at my schedule and asking one of the pair of really sweet-seeming guys, that sit right at the front of the class and waited to say bye to her and show her their drawings, to walk me. I hope he is as sweet as his smile.

--------------------------------------

My kids have started writing "G-d" on their papers -- I saw it in a war poem and then in a letter of advice to a younger sibling. It’s funny what catches on—why can’t they mimic my perfect spelling instead of my religious idiosyncracies?

I made a lot of phone calls tonight, and when I reached one student’s home who hadn’t been in for two weeks, her 23-year-old sister picked up. I asked for her guardian, and was told I was speaking to her. Oh. She sounded hopeless—what could she possibly do about 15 absences when her sister is only 6 years younger than her, and she has her own child to worry about? So I asked to talk to my student, and told her how much we miss her and how she has to do recovery work. She promised she’d be back tomorrow: “I give you my word, Ms. W.” She gave me her word at least twice in the call. It sounded so solemn, and I hope she keeps it, and that she gives me her work, too.

Nobody Not You Get You Like You Got You

YOU GOT CAUGHT.

My second block came back from Thanksgiving in a mood to learn. Well, to be fair, two of my most difficult students were out Monday—one suspended and the other I don’t know where. But this gave two of my other students, incorrigible kids who usually sullenly refuse to work and erupt into profanity when prodded towards education, some space to engage in class. They’re really adorable, and their smiles lit up the class as they shot into the air when they thought the picture on the board represented their group’s vocab word (okay, it may have been disingenuous of me to give them “militarism,” but you gotta play your crowd, you know?).

One of my most challenging students filled in only his name on his guided notes and left the paper in the classroom. I had to laugh, though—he’d written his name under the warm-up question: what do you think causes wars? Yes, you cause wars, child. Very very small ones.

For our literacy block, my students watched Michele Obama tell them to care about their education. Then they wrote letters to their younger siblings, or cousins, or younger selves about how to succeed in school. Some of the letters were so poignant or funny I transcribed a few here. It makes quite a good list of advice:

Yep.

Be on point.

DON’T DO DRUGS.

Choose good friends. Over and over, they wrote this one. Over and over, I wrote "amen" beside it.

Raise your hand always to speak –from a student who never does… is this ironic?

Reach for the galaxy, not stars, because there are already footsteps on the moon.

Don’t be stupid… YOLO! Is it just me, or does that seem to be paradoxically incompatible advice?

If you do this, you will have more suxes Took me a little while to decode this into “success.”

Adorable: the student who wrote his letter to his "little bothers". If I had little brothers I'd probably call them that too.

Poignant: Dear little sister, in life there are ups and downs but for me it is mostly downs. Hopfuly it is the opiset for you. –I can’t help feeling that life has indeed dealt him a poor hand since he’s a ninth grader who can’t spell “hopefully” or “opposite,” but has a curiosity about history that even his fershlugina class can’t destroy.

The start of one fantastic letter: I'm going to be honest and keep it real, I have messed up my freshman year. I absolutely love weed and skittles. Wow on her honesty—the rest of the letter was about how she wishes she’d gotten it together earlier, and at the end of a page and a half she wrote, “I wish I had time to finish this.” Note to self: find out what skittles is. Are?

And my favorite, by the same student: nobody not you get you like you got you.

I made a Chanukah party for my 3^rd block at the start of literacy block today—they’d won the class behavior points prize so I surprised them with not just chocolate, but gelt, donuts, and dreidels to play with. They were really cute and quite good at the upside-down trick. It was also delicious to see kids who aren’t perhaps great at writing, or historical details, or speaking English, the stars of the class while they spun dreidels upside down.

My class is now a propaganda machine

My classes today were fun, all three of them. We were creating newspapers about events in WWI, and each class elected two “editors” who were responsible for answering students’ questions, editing their articles, creating a front page and layout, and assigning stories. The classes all voted really good students, both academically and socially intelligent, into the positions, and it was nice to watch them going around helping their peers, distributing i-pads for research, standing over students telling them where to find information, and nudging students into working. In fact, in every class I suddenly had two surrogate teachers. I’m betting they learned more about each of the battles of WWI than if they’d been doing their own research (though they did a bit, on what newspapers looked like in WWI). I did have to spend a good five minutes deleting pictures of weed off one of the i-pads (“we didn’t take those, Ms. W, promise!” and my response “you don’t even know what those are, right?”). The nice bit was that with two helpers fielding the basic assignment questions, I got a chance to observe and really talk to students more than I usually do. Someday I'm going to count the number of student interactions I have in any one class-- it's all a careful series of touching up relationships with students, edging them into feeling like they belong in the class, like they can succeed and are expected to, that their peers have their backs and that the sky is their limit. The newspapers are in the middle of being drafted and look good, with ads and propaganda and surveys of citizens and articles about the Lusitania and the Battle of the Somme and the Treaty of Versailles (okay, so it’s not a newspaper from one specific time, but that’s okay). Extra, Extra: I don't want this semester to end.

In honor of almost the end of the semester, and my phone calls to parents of failing students...

Suckling at the Teat of Knowledge

Inside joke. Because when you're one of four crazed first year teachers sitting in the media center during your planning period two days before Thanksgiving you all inevitably talk about suckling at the teat of knowledge at the top of your voices while all around you students stop, stare, and then sidle by uneasily. 

And this must-read link which encapsulates EVERYTHING about teaching: New Classroom Rules.

Savage Inequalities: Life In a War Zone

Yes, I am reading Jonathon Kozol. I thought I would learn about students in inner city schools. And, as I read about students who go to schools where the basic infrastructure is broken, where they play in toxic sludge that seeps through the playground dirt, where they have 20 books for 100 students, and where it is clear that MLK’s dream has never surfaced because the student population is entirely black, I realize with shock that this is where I teach. How can you live in a reality and be completely oblivious of it? Yes, of course my students are mostly minority. And of course there's a connection between their races and the lack of resources they face. But I hadn't quite connected the reality of everyday school life with the statistical, general anti-racist endeavor I've embarked upon. 

This is what you call ironic. 56 years ago, Dorothy
Counts tries to integrate my school and leaves after
four days because of violence and harassment.
Half a century later, the school is segregated once again,
but with a different race. The violence remains. 

Friday was an adrenaline-rush day. The campus felt like a war zone. Police were everywhere. There’d been a gang fight at a neighborhood park that had bled over onto campus in the morning, and the principal recruited some extra security. Apparently gang violence ramps up around Thanksgiving time. The principal came on the loudspeaker to ask teachers to check their email—we were in “restricted movement,” meaning that students would stay in the trailers and could only leave in an emergency, escorted by a security guard.

What bravery looks like

My classes were 1/3 down in size. Many students had been suspended during the fights over the past few days or, during the campus-wide searches, been found in possession. Class was a lot calmer with only 25 students, and I felt incredibly peaceful as I moved around the classroom. It’s much easier to keep track of that many bodies, and give them the attention and guidance they need.

During one class, an assistant principal came in with two security guards and asked for two of my students. One is a boy whose previous communications with me have been: “I don’t do anything because I’m from the G,” “Fuck this test,” “I’m fucking suspended because you won’t let me go to the fucking bathroom and I said ‘what the fuck?’ ” and on this day, when I showed him his grade and asked him, straight-up, what he could do differently, he said, “yeah, I know, I just did nothing and chilled all the time, but you talked to my mom, and I’m going to do my work now" (yes!). The other boy is a bright hyperactive kid who likes to eat in class and litter the wrappers on the floor, sit on the desk with his back to me, and interrupt class. He's a ninth grader who sucks his thumb. The only time he listens is during lectures, when his eyes get wide at the historical facts being presented. Anyhow, they were both taken out by the principal, and I found out later during a faculty meeting that student searches have been approved. And a good thing, too-- a knife was found on campus.  Last week it was a clip of bullets. I think about how I feel strangely safe and untouchable—as a teacher I’m mostly background noise— and then contemplate the danger my students move through daily.

After school ended, a school-wide faculty meeting was called. The head sergeant on campus walked us through what gang signs look like. Apparently all that cute patriotic insignia is actually gang colors. Black means ready for a fight. Camouflage isn’t good either. We’re told to be very observant, and I think about how I have no idea what to observe.

That day, in my fourth block, a truly enormous cockroach crawled down the whiteboard. My students yelled and jumped up on their seats and I stood indecisively in front of the whiteboard with a paper towel in my hand, unwilling to touch such a large specimen. After it disappeared behind the board, I forgot about it and took it as a matter of course. Another teacher had popped in earlier to tell me about the enormous rat he saw scurry beneath his trailer. It all seemed normal, or at least something to smile at. But the truth is, it isn’t.

What my high school window should have said years ago

In the school I teach at, the heating was broken in the gym for the first two months and students sweltered in 90+ degree heat as they played volleyball and basketball. One teacher I know teaches two classes at the same time, running up and down between the floors to give instruction and set her kids working independently. Another teacher has a class of 65. I teach classes of 35 students in a trailer with space for 25 and desks for 33. The administration is too small to handle all of the 1,700 students' needs even with their sleepless dedication, and passes on the impossibilities they face to the teachers-- everyone is making bricks without straw. One of my students was suspended because she was attacked by boys in the bathroom and everyone involved got suspended, including the victim. I was thinking of going in to do some grading today but on second thought realize that it’s not safe for me to be on campus on a Sunday without security and plenty of other teachers around. My students who live in the area get to make no such decision. The school has more cockroaches than teachers. The part that adds a Daliesque surrealism to the whole? The fact that this takes place in a completely pre-Civil Rights, almost utterly segregated school. I have 2 and a half white children in all of my 110 students. Can we look at such inequality and say that race has nothing to do with it?

The thing is, that it’s hard not to accept these things as normal. Talking about the difficulties seems like grandstanding, emotional drama queening, and, especially in TFA, a constant battle of one-upmanship where everyone wants to prove that their school has the biggest challenges. I mean, Friday was crazy. But it was also a good day. There was a blood drive on campus, and droves of students flocked to donate (supervised by security guards, of course). While waiting to donate, two of my brightest students debated with me about women in combat in the marines. My classes finished their Industrial Revolution projects with serious intensity. One student started a classwide karaoke of Katie Perry songs which everyone joined in with as they worked, as only adorable 9^th graders can. I debuted the snowball activity which I’d been taught in my recent workshop, and at the end of 4^th period, as I saw a whole lot of paper on my classroom floor, I held up the wastebin and beckoned students to ball it up and make a basket. By the end of five minutes, my floor was pristine.

 

So you see, the students are eager and curious and work hard when given the chance, and are also silly children eager to sing and play and have fun. But they do these things in an environment that is filthy and violent and sometimes downright scary. We bring up inequality and race and power differentiation often in class—after all, world history is full of it. But how aware are they, really, that the mere fact that they have lost an average of ten minutes a week of learning due to insect-related invasions of their classroom gives them a disadvantage to students in schools that never see a cockroach? Will colleges take into account the fact that my students cannot take books home because we only have 35 for 110 students when they’re assessing applications? Will my students whose band practice or basketball games are cancelled due to safety considerations or equipment malfunctioning still receive scholarships to the universities of their choice? And will anyone ever say anything about the fact that America has lost its dream?

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun? 
Or fester like a sore-- 
And then run? 
Does it stink like rotten meat? 
Or crust and sugar over-- 
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?