Fear

Last week ended when my principal sent me home early, to recuperate after a physical assault from a student. I’d spent my planning period before that in the boardroom, reporting something I can’t even describe in public. The evening before a mother had told me to “call 911” on her son next time he acts up—she’s done. I’d watched a kid carried down the hallway between two police officers, screaming that he hates our school, I’d been called a “b” and an “f-ing b” by a kid showing off to her friends and a kid mad about the application of consequences, I’d found out one student is pregnant and another punched in the face by bullies and frightened to come to school, and I had a student escape back into the classroom five times after security carried him away.

I woke up this morning and spat out the remains of my tooth guard. It’s my second one since January, and last night my molars sawed it in two. I moved my tongue around a second, slowly tasting the sharp tang of my fear. 

All week long the tension had built. All week long my jaws had ached from grinding, my head held sharp darting pains, and I wondered if the nausea I felt came from the flu or my churning emotions. I didn’t want to go back today. To an environment which is so unlovely, so disgustingly loud and dirty and unpredictably nasty and vexatious to the spirit. I was afraid of something. Of myself, more than anything. Of not being enough. Not holding it together. Not giving my best, any longer.

But today was fine. My classes rolled evenly along. Students were about as they ever are, roller coasters of teenage hormones propped up along cliffs of poverty and drug crime. Sometimes silly, sometimes sweet, sometimes selfish. My fear vanished the second they walked in and were their regular old selves.

Yalush, they're sunset, okay?

I am trying, you know, to see what my students can be brought to do for themselves. But also, right now, at this particular moment, I am trying to survive. I am taking notebooks deep into the woods to sit beside streams (and surprise passing little children into waves, since they are the only ones curious enough to look down by the riverbed) and write out the anguish of my children’s lives, to write my anger into compassion and the wall of defensive indifference that has sprung up around me into open arms of caring, as best I can. 

It’s the Dream 

Olav H. Hauge

It’s the dream we carry

that something wondrous will happen

that it must happen

time will open

hearts will open

doors will open

spring will gush forth from the ground–

that the dream itself will open

that one morning we’ll quietly drift

into a harbor we didn’t know was there.

Det er den draumen


Det er den draumen me ber på


at noko vidunderlig skal skje,
at det må skje

-
at tidi skal opna seg,


at hjarta skal opna seg,


at dører skal opna seg,


at kjeldor skal springa

-
at draumen skal opna seg,


at me ei morgonstund skal glida inn


på ein våg me ikkje har visst om.

I always sit in the back of the classroom.

I always sit in the back of the classroom.

Partly, it’s because I’m tall. I don’t want people complaining they can’t see because my head’s in the way. That attracts exactly the kind of attention –any—that I don’t want from teachers.

But mostly, it’s because I want to stay out of their way. I keep out of their way, teachers keep out of my way. I don't talk. Sometimes they come over to repeat the directions to me, and if I get it, I’ll do what they said. If not, I just sit there. As long as you don’t cause trouble, or talk, or nothing, they won’t bother you too much. Most of them just want to get out of here, just like us.

It doesn’t matter that I’m always late. The other students know where I sit, and they don’t sit there. Maybe it’s because I’m tall, maybe it’s because I hang out with all the kids who are always getting suspended, but they never take my seat, and nobody messes with me.

Today I was late. I swung around the corner of the trailers and saw my teacher at the other end. What was she doing in the walkway? They’re supposed to be waiting for us in the classroom, handing out fake high-fives and chipper “good morning”s to the kids who suck it up like it’s real. By now, she should have been in there, solemnly intoning that the Warm Up Activity is silent and “you are working alone, silently,” as though repeating it would make it happen.

I was much closer than her, and swished in the door a good ten seconds before she got near it. I stood inside the classroom a second, taking in the substitute, the other students’ confusion and excitement that our teacher was missing, and then I swung the door back open. Held it until the teacher got into class, nodded with a carefully blank face at her thanks, and moved into my seat in the back of the classroom, where nobody bothers me.

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

Such a small thing. And yet it ended my week, a terribly ugly week, with a flash of beauty and a moment of gentle manners, of one person caring for another for just a second with common courtesy. As I walked out of school, I hugged that moment to myself, and it is going to give me the strength to return to school on Monday and keep teaching. Or whatever it is I’m doing.

Don't Come to Me With The Entire Truth

Olav H. Hauge

Don't come to me with the entire truth.

Don't bring me the ocean if I feel thirsty,

nor heaven if I ask for light;

but bring a hint, some dew, a particle,

as birds carry only drops away from water, 

and the wind a grain of salt.

Tis Not Too Late To Seek A Newer World

Today, I followed my students to the door after the bell rang. They ran out, including the one that security had taken out and who returned (!?!) five minutes later, and the two who came up at the end of the day to sweetly wish that tomorrow everyone would behave better, making my eyelids twitch involuntarily and my jaw lock into unshed sobs. I locked the door securely, and then threw the eraser against the board as hard as I could. Picked it up, threw it again. 
Again.
Again. 

Again. 

Again. 

Well, this doesn’t make for very interesting blogging, does it? Because I threw that eraser for a good five minutes past when I was due for our faculty meeting. It’s a very good eraser—it took the abuse well, and erased the KWL chart while it was at it. Then I had to go to the faculty meeting, and sit through a full hour of inanity, which was only made worse when a colleague accidentally turned in to an administrator the shout-out on which I'd been doodling Tennyson lines. Tomorrow I bet I'll find it stapled to the faculty shout-out board. Thank you, Tennyson, who gets me through the bad moments. 

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Exhaustion

Today one of my girls came to me to talk about why she’d missed yesterday. She’d been at the doctor and found out she’s two weeks pregnant. We talked about how she felt, the father, her parents’ reactions… It quickly became apparent how little control this fifteen year old has over her own life. “You know you can’t smoke or drink while you’re pregnant?” I asked her. She looked down at the ground. Oh, geez. “You have to eat healthy, too.”

“Oh, yeah, the doctor said. My favorite fruits are pears, and apples, and mangoes—“ as she started listing a laboriously long string of fruits, I stared at her and wondered what kind of life she, and the fetus inside her, can possibly have. She sat down to finish an essay. Here’s its ending:

I want to be a children’s doctor, since I’m going to have one on my own in 9 months, I want to learn what to do when he/she is sick, I want to care and watch as he/she grows and becomes something in life like I did. And tell he/she that he/she has every opportunity to do what they want, become it and enjoy, I want to make him/her proud.

But that’s me, don’t do as I did just do what you need and do what you want later…

In my fourth block, a difficult student whom I’ve worked really hard with and had huge successes with cussed me out pretty badly. One eensy step forward, a mudslide back. At security’s appearance, he released a torrent of “fucks.” If I got paid ten dollars for every fuck he dropped, I could afford to stay a teacher in the state of North Carolina.

I walked into school yesterday morning to see a dear student from last semester huddled in the office with his mom—he’s been getting bullied and came home with a bloody nose from being punched in the face— waiting to see if he would feel safe in school again.

This week I have heard, from students in a variety of private conversations:

 “I’m always hungry because we haven’t had any food in the house for two weeks.”

“Why I hate the police is they always accuse me of being a slut when I try to get help.”

“That other time I got beat up I was so glad they stole my bike because then I got a new one.”

“You know, Ms. W, my dad’s an alcoholic.”

“I’ll be straight, my brother’s actually in jail.”

It’s Tuesday, and tomorrow we start midterms, and I want it to be the weekend already, because right now I feel very, very tired.