Carolina in My Mind

The Queen City

Last week I moved to Charlotte. I drove down to the southeasternmost corner of Ohio, crossed into West Virginia and wended through the mountains for two hours. The drive was beautiful, and North Carolina is beautiful, and Charlotte is beautiful. Boulevards thick with trees and hedges dripping with flowers line every man-made structure, and a rich Carolingian friendliness overlays every interaction. I’ve already met three of my next-door neighbors (one dropped everything to help me carry a desk in), and even the clerks at the stores and the cashiers at the coffee shops engage me in breezy conversation.

Most of my time has been spent checking out IKEA, the library, Trader Joe’s and Harris Teeter’s and Book Buyers, and generally getting my bearings around town. Also, in putting together my apartment, which is absolutely beautiful—it has a fireplace, mirpeset with a view, and walk-in closet. 

I spent Shabbat at the house owned by the rabbinic family who run the Charlotte Torah Center. It’s only a half hour walk from my apartment, but they invited me, and this way I didn’t have to walk home from dinner late at night down the long, dark winding root-filled dirt road that leads down to the main road. There were three other guests staying, young “regulars” who spend nearly every Shabbat there. And I can see why. In any city that’s a Jewish outpost, you expect the rabbinic family to be warm, hospitable, etc, else why would they decide to be chalutzim like that? But this family is also bursting with personality. They have two of their boys at home for the summer, and the daughter will be back this week. The Shabbat table was uproarious and we jumped from controversial topic to hilarious questioning to meaningful discussion. Friday night, the older son and the rabbi and I had a long debate about whether Rabbi Akiva was right to leave his wife Rachel for 24 years of study, even if he did turn out to be one of the greatest teachers of all time. We ended it pleased all around, each feeling like we’d gotten to see something in a new way.

Shabbat morning they ran a learner’s service at Glieberman’s, the kosher restaurant and store in town. It was about an hour of exposition on brachot and the parshah to ten minutes of tefillah, and I’m not sure whether I may not tiptoe by Chabad for shacharit instead some shabbatot. The thing is, I love this family, so I’ll have to see.

Tuesday night, after a day spent shopping and constructing furniture, I went to the evening class on Jewish history at the CTC (Charlotte Torah Center, abbreviated thusly here on out). There were about seven of us there, and we focused on Polish history: the king’s invitation to Jews in the twelfth century, the Jewish golden age in Poland, the Chmielnicki massacres, and also, briefly, on the Reformation’s effect on Jews. How Luther first embraced them because he thought the only thing keeping Jews from converting was the Church’s corruption, and then wrote such vitriolic anti-Semitic stuff that is was used by Hitler a few centuries later. The question that emerged, as it always does, is how any country in which Jews have it good inevitably becomes the country that then decides to wipe them out—Spain, Poland, Germany, etc. And, of course, that light gets turned on America, and as always, we wonder how much longer we have here. Such negative thinking always seems alarmist to me. It’s not that I trust America farther than I can throw it, and having seen the ways in which European Jews must hide their identity and protect themselves with walls and guards, I’m well aware of how real and alive anti-Semitism is. But walking around with an us-them attitude seems unnecessary and too negative. The rabbi made a wonderful point; anti-Semitism is entrenched in Europe after centuries of Church oppression. But America is a country built by the religiously oppressed, by those who fled from and thus understand religious coercion. As such, we are freer here and can perhaps trust it a little more.

About a twentieth of the JCC

After the class, the rabbi took me on a tour of the JCC. Now, I come from Columbus Ohio, and am used to enormous, gorgeous Jewish community structures donated by generous benefactors. But this is without a doubt the most incredibly lavish JCC I’ve ever seen. The Levines, owners of the Family Dollar chain, built it (as well as the rest of Charlotte, some joke). It’s not a building, it’s a campus, with flower-lined drive leading to the sports center, gym upon gym and pools with slides and then the school connected by a hall, with teen lounges and senior lounges and unspecified lounges, newspaper office, meeting rooms and auditoriums and social halls. The kind of thriving Jewish life implied by this is a bit misleading, but there’s always hope—if you build it, they will come.

Off to my first day of FEW—first eight weeks—the professional development before classes start. Today is entirely logistical. Another round of fingerprinting, here I come!

I, Too, Sing America

On my last day of Institute, things were running kind of late. One of my co-teachers was working on something with our FA, and the other frantically searching for help to fix the projector. “Teach something, Hannah,” they urged, as I paced restlessly, waiting to start. They were only half-joking; I’d been running math drills during our random transitions. But today was my last day with our students and I was tired of math. It was going to be literature or nothing. With only five minutes, that meant a poem, and the first one that popped into my head came out so strongly it seemed to billow across the classroom.

From the back of the room I boomed out, “Droning a drowsy, syncopated tune, rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play.” The breakfast-rustling room hushed instantaneously. I strode around it, letting my voice wrap the students in Hughes’ melodiousness. “Down on Lennox Avenue the other night, by the dull pale pallor of an old gas light, he did a lazy sway. He did a lazy sway. To the tune of those Weary Blues. O’ Blues. Rocking to a black man’s soul.”

The class was dead silent, their eyes tracking me the way I wish they’d track me when I’m explaining equivalent fractions. I hit the board and wrote “Langston Hughes” across it, sweeping my eyes across the classroom for signs of recognition. “That’s the beginning of a poem by one of the most famous American writers. Did you like it?” The students nodded vigorously. “Is that what you think poetry sounds like?” No, that was like rap, they told me. We touched briefly on their experience with poetry and the history of the Harlem Renaissance as the projector was fixed, and then I slapped “I, Too, Sing America” on the screen. I read it out, allowing my voice to manifest its full pleasure at the gorgeous succinct punch of the poem. I told them about Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” without using the words “intertextuality” or “refacimento” once, a difficult achievement, and then asked what this poem was about. They looked at it intently, and a gentle murmur spread through the class. Had I planned this, I would probably have made them talk about it with their groups and used specific questions, but we were freestyling.

 

“It’s racism,” a student muttered.

“What?” I asked. He looked down at his desk. “You said it right. Say it louder,” I told him. “Listen up, class. He’s got what to say.”

“It’s racism?” he repeated in a louder voice.

“Yep, racism,” I told them. “This is Langston Hughes’ response to racism. They send him to eat in the kitchen while they, white people, eat in the dining room, but he laughs, and eats well, and grows strong. And someday the people who sent him there will feel ashamed that they sent him away.” As I made my circuits of the room, I could feel a care in my voice to say it right, conscious that I was the one white teacher in the room and was teaching Langston Hughes. As I said that there are often people who don’t like others for things like the way they look, or the color of their skin, or even their age, I let the students hear how that was wrong. And, in a quick moment of decision, I let drop that there are people who don’t like me because of my religion.

“Christian?” someone called out.

“Jewish,” I responded. Then I strode on. I spoke about how Hughes’ words have lasted, how they’ve reached across America. How he might have wanted to fight whomever wanted to keep him back in the kitchen, and that makes sense, but writing was more powerful—it reaches more people. “And what you write, my students, that is powerful too. That can reach across the country, and across time, all across America for generations, just like Langston Hughes did.” Pause for effect. “Now it’s time for reading groups. Split!” (I didn’t actually end it that way. I’d like to because it’s more my style, but you can’t do that with 6^th graders, you have to say: quietly and carefully WALK to your reading groups). Anyhow, it wasn’t teaching so much as a quick model of poetry explication, but it was a revved up start to our last day. And damn did I have it internalized, whatever may have happened during my math class.

One of the brightest students in my class told me she’s not sure what she wants to be when she grows up, but she wants to have time for her family. As we brainstormed together, I hoped to God that she gets a career that challenges her while making time for her family, and thanked God that she has the option.

My most earnestly studious reading group student wrote: I brag about my hoes.

Me: Huh. What does that say?

Student: I brag about my house.

Me: oh-oh-oh-oh. Let’s spell “house” together.

Two of my students are usually among the last to get picked up, and while we’re waiting, I teach them a word in Hebrew or Norwegian (first they have to guess which language it is) and then they teach me a new Spanish phrase. Usually I let them pick it, which has led to both such practical phrases as “necessito un trabajo” and “puedo tener agua por favor,” but also such gems as, “no me gusta encurtidos” (they showed up on the lunch menu a lot), which I’ll probably use never. But the last day I chose the phrase.

“Tell me how to say, you are an amazing student,” I told them. So they said: “eres un/a asombroso/a estudiante.”

When the first student sighted her car, I hugged her, telling her, “eres una asombrosa estudiante.” She smiled and told me, “eres una asombrosa m…” I knew the word she’d filled in the blank must mean “teacher.” I laughed and told her to keep being her, she was going to rock 6^th grade. I walked my last student to his car. He is the gentlest, most gentlemanly young scholar, utterly committed to his learning, and every day I wish I could tell his mother so. So today I held the car door open and told him, “eres un asombroso estudiante” so that she could hear, and waved the car away, wiping away quick tears.

My Teacher is OLD

I rather typically adore my students. They are hilarious little bundles of personality, and they’re getting more comfortable in their own skins. As their comfort levels grow, so does the chatting, and classroom management gets harder, but it’s worth it for these gems:

Me: It’s hard to remember your age because it changes every year.

Kid: It is when you get old.

Me: So the inside is the dividend and you divide it by the divisor

Whole class: Ms. W, Ms. W! It’s pronounced ‘di-vie-sor’, not ‘di-ve-sor’

Me: Contemplating a good hard head knock against the whiteboard

Kid: (in a stage whisper) She doesn’t even like math. She told me during lunch.

Kid wrote today: I text with my selfphone.

Kid: I’m going to tape firecrackers to my sister’s bike on the fourth of July.

Me: I’ll stay off your dark side.

Other kid: And off his bike.

A kid narrated his own behavior during breakfast this morning, complete with sing-song monotone (that is a true paradox and this is only funny if you’ve heard TFAers narrating behavior all over the place the last three weeks): I'm raising my hand, I'm sitting in my chair!

Adorable.

Wednesday in honor of Kafka’s birthday a roach crawled along the wall of the classroom while I was teaching. The kids all volunteered to kill it, but I decided to delegate to my CMA, who happened to be observing. There’s a funny spot on the observation video where a kid calmly raises his hand to tell me, “Ms. W., it’s a roach,” and then we see about five hands go up asking, “can I kill it? Pick me, pick me! Punch it!”

Wednesday was possibly the best lesson I’ve taught yet. I modeled finding the variable for them, released them gradually with the steps, allowed them to do their (differentiated) worksheets, and then set up a contest with each member of a team doing one step. They were solidly engaged throughout, and working with the concept in comfort. Whee for learning how to teach!

On the eve of the fourth I chilled with friends and saw fireworks from afar; on the fourth itself we all went to a baseball game between the Tulsa Drillers and the San Antonio somethings, complete with fireworks. Teach for Americans celebrated American independence in style.

On a darker note: At a recent diversity dialogue, I (in the interest of vulnerability, transparency, and all the other TFA buzzwords) suggested that perhaps the reason I, though frustrated with my current inability to teach our learning delayed student, am not frantically nor desperately searching for ways to get him to learn, is because he’s white. I can look at him and think complacently that at least I’m not racist. But I’m betting it doesn’t matter much to him why his three teachers aren’t bothered to find a way to get him to learn; as far as he’s concerned, class is a lost cause. One more week to figure out a way to calibrate my class so he learns something.