Teach Ten Thousand Stars

I sat in the social worker’s office, doing some final grading. I was the official “regular ed teacher” who  obediently signed off on the papers that were handed to me as one by one, seniors sat through their exit meetings from our school’s “Exceptional Children” (read, in NCspeak, Special Ed). Three different counselors emptied their caseloads and each adjured me to take out some work, I didn’t have to pay attention to the proceedings. But I did.

Dull-looking children sat opposite me, staring at me instead of at their counselors. I was less threatening, I suppose. I gave them encouraging smiles and whispered “congratulations!” when the counselor read off in a dull voice that they were being exited out of the program and out of high school, nervous that I was interrupting the proceedings. As the counselors informed student after student that they were now 21 and being timed out of the benefits of the program, and indeed out of high school, or that they'd scraped through their diploma and could now move on to an uncertain future, I felt a mounting hysteria build. She asked each kid, “do you have plans for after?” None of them did. “Well, hopefully you’ll find a job.” Hopefully. I wanted to stop the proceedings, insist that these children not sign until more help was given them in figuring out the next step. But I signed, and signed, and wondered whether I am content to be a cog in an evil machine instead of the thinking, justice-seeking human being I wish to be.

The last counselor was different. For each child, she built them up. “This is your exit meeting… legal blather, legal blather… and guess what?” The children looked up, anticipating. “You are graduating high school with a diploma, and exiting the Exceptional Children’s Program! That means you don’t need our help anymore? How does that feel?” These children smiled, nodded, lit up. Several reached over to shake my hand of their own volition as they exited the office. They had summer jobs, or had applied for them with her help. Note to self: always spin positive.

 

I passed out goodbye notes to two of my classes. It’s a step up from last semester, when one class was all I could find it in my heart to write heartfelt goodbye notes to. I know these kids slightly better, too—have gotten better at finding out who they are and what makes them tick. They looked up, one by one, to say thank you as I passed among them. As my shining pupil in my last class walked out, he muttered, “I’ll miss this class.” So will I.

Did I teach them anything this year? As I wobbled back and forth, finding my teaching philosophy? As I learned world history and struggled to come to grips with the real, not the textbook facts, well enough to teach it? Can they write better now? Can they read better now? Do they want to? Do they know themselves a little more than they did at the start, have a slightly better sense of their ability to make themselves over, to bring joy to the world and kindness, too? With all the testing, state standards, TFA data dumps and school requirements, did I kill their joy for learning, or help them see around that to the keen edge of knowledge’s horizon? The state exams next week will not prove any of that, but I must have, a little. Still, the adage that teachers learn more than ever their students do, is forever true. And it’s okay. Because it will come back to the students.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

-ee cummings

The People I Love Best

Today during my planning I lingered in the doorway of the gym, to watch the senior award ceremony. The seniors wore their maroon and gold caps and gowns and tall heels that shook the floor of that poor gym as they crashed up the steps. Detached, unknowing administrators blandly read off prize amounts and casually shook sweaty palms with beating pulses before they exited the gym, guffawing loudly and importantly at their authority to interrupt the ceremony with noise.

Halfway through the awards, the senior choir rose to perform. In their long robes, they swayed like a church choir, the ladies carefully shifting their weight silently from heel to heel. A boy in the front conducted, shaking back his robe sleeves and waving his hands in the air ecstatically. He was the best performer. In front, a couple shared the microphone back and forth, crooning into it above the wails of the choir.

Their chosen song was “My Testimony,” by Marvin Sapp. Eyes filled as the seniors mournfully sang, “I’m so glad I made it through / In spite of the storm and rain, heartache and pain…” The song was not your usual graduation lullaby about missing one’s childhood. These kids' childhoods were tough, and they’re proud that they survived them to stand it on the stage. I got chills as I listened. It was utterly foreign and utterly appropriate.

Today was a maelstrom of getting ready for the end. Students went through practice tests on last year’s exams. Third and fourth block were inspired by my speech, “this is your time to study. You are lucky.” Second was not so convinced, and a roar of “No!” greeted me when I told them it had just become an open-notes quiz. Unlike my other classes, they haven’t quite gotten the love of learning for the sake of learning down yet.

The blur of grades, paperwork, recovery-tracking and roster-checking and equipment-labeling that comes with the end of the year has me a serene whirlwind. I like this kind of thing, though it gives me but a few moments to myself. I paid two of my kids ten mini-chocolate bars each to carry school supplies out to my car, and my walls are already stripped and bare, my grades already nearly all chalked up, just waiting for the last day’s worth and any lucky kid who ignored my timeline and tries to turn in late work. There’s something wonderful about these last days, about the hard straight rain pouring outside my window right now and thundering down my chimney, as determined to blast through its purpose as I am at the moment, when everything has crystallized into a clear mountain to be climbed before me.

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Marge Piercy

So I chose to work with teachers.

Phenomenal Woman

 Today, driving home from work, the radio announcer shared the news, and a deep indigo tear welled up in my soul. A woman who taught me the pride of beauty died today. The stride of my step, the curl of my lips are forever indebted to her. I spent many a solitary high school hour reading and re-reading her poem, until I’d memorized it and could stride down the street with joy in my feet, the sun of my smile beatifying the empty driveways, reciting it.

Earlier this year, I reread I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and pictured my students in her place at one or another chapter, myself wavering on their edges trying to guess and gauge and give. I sat on my southern porch and dipped into the child’s mind with a keen recognition. The selfhood she brought to it gave life to racist experiences far outside my own.

I drove along today, letting the radio’s appropriately chosen The Lark Ascending flitter through my emotions, musing on how a woman so many people have never met can have such a profound effect on their lives. The monolith of her personality emerges from her writing a hazy, solid purple triangle, as defined as any literary symbol of womanhood, jutting into meaning. So many writers lose themselves in social justice, a call to arms so strident it deafens the personal touch. May Angelou gave both. I love her for allowing me to find myself inside her writing and for teaching me of the outside.

Tomorrow my children will read:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

I have faith that the children, too, will rise.

OrNaw

Today I went to verify my rosters before final exams. As I walked into the testing center, the testing coordinator groaned.

“You have more students than any other teacher. This is going to take forever. Buckle up.”

Maybe I'll ditch my crowded classroom and move to China.
... ornaw.

What?! I’m glad I only found that out with six days left of school. It does confer a nice distinction.

This article says that teachers spend, on average, $500 of their own money on school supplies for their students.

Sounds a bit low. My kids really breeze through pencils.

The kids are writing skits for trials-- they're all putting various violent groups (IRA, Tamil Tigers, Weathermen Underground, ANC, etc) on trial, and the jury (the rest of the class) must vote on whether it's terrorism or freedom fighting. I introduced it with the line "You guys will have to decide, are they terrorists ornaw?" and the classes went crazy each time. It's so easy to make them happy. Our new class logo: #terrorismOrNaw?

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Some days, I just don’t know what to say to my kids. I usually end up with "oh."

One of my students who has struggled with motivation and behavior all semester has really been on point the past few weeks, and scored above an 80 on his last test. We’ve been getting along—he answers me with more than a grunt, and favors the class discussion with insights and grins. Yesterday I asked him, towards the end of class, what he’d be doing this summer.

“Going to see my mother. In Puerto Rico.”

“Puerto Rico! Cool.”

“Or Connecticut. I’m not sure which.”

“Oh.”

“She has breast cancer.”

“Oh… how is she doing?”

“Stage three.” Jesus. What… why? Remember, you don’t like me. You don’t share with me.

“You know, they’re getting a lot better at treating it. I hope she’s okay. I’m glad you get to see her.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen her in seven years.” Oh.

Me with confiscated chocolate

A girl’s mom came in to watch her behavior during fourth block today. I had no head’s up, so when I saw the young woman walk in beside her daughter, I asked, “hi, can I help you?” rather interrogatively. I thought it was a student skipping to be with her friend. Eek. In honor of the watching mom, my kids put on an all-out freak show of misbehavior. One student came in and promptly lay facedown on the floor in the front of the class. He scampered up as soon as I took out my computer to get a picture. Glorious. I'm turning into one of my kids-- don't deal with it, photograph it. On the bright side, I now possess a jumbo chocolate bar previously used for hitting people, and a new phone that is well-tested in the art of selfies. Just kidding. I gave them back. But next time I hawk them on the school black market… gotta pay for those $500 of school supplies somehow. I'd probably get more for the chocolate than the phone, the way those move around.

We Do It In Your FACE!

One of my students asked me to come to her step competition. Since it’s Saturday, I can’t make it, but I went to her practice this evening. I rolled into Clanton Park, the usual scene of the gang fights that spill over onto our campus, with slight apprehension. But around me, the park was full of kids playing and adults watching. I was proudly introduced as her history teacher, and then plopped on the grass to watch the step routines.

Step, I explained to my mother earlier this evening, is to dance, what rap is to music. The girls stomped and clapped fiercely, shouting in rhythm and creating a cadence I couldn’t resist nodding to. There were three coaches: the head, named “Coach,” walked and spoke slowly. His track pants sagged and his gait matched it in mellow, artistic coolness. Then there was Robbie, a frenetic youngish guy in skinny jeans and a baseball cap that fell off when he showed the girls the steps. Lastly, a man named “Pop-pop” in a baggy pinstriped suit with red lining poking through took individual girls aside for coaching.

They kept telling the girls to show more attitude. The girls looked mean, and fierce, and screamed, “we do it in your face!” to end the show. They combined discipline with a street style. I could have watched all night. My favorite was the very serious girl of eight or so, standing to the side of all the high schoolers and matching their every motion. After practice, I noticed, walking back to my car, that the parents were standing in a circle with the coaches, having a town hall about the way the step teams were broken up. Even though it was clearly a confrontation of some kind trying to solve an issue, there was a nice feel about it, as though it was a town meeting and everyone was invested.

Earlier this morning, a student of mine looked morose as he walked into the library to wait for health class to start. I headed over to the table where he had his head buried in his elbow, and parked myself beside him.

“How about you tell me what’s been biting you since yesterday, and I tell you that you can handle it because you’re awesome?” He looked up.

“Look, I know there are some things... I can’t solve everything. But it’s killing me to see you so sad, and I have to know if there’s something I can do.”

He waited a second, then answered. “A kid’s been riding me about my skin color.” A pause. I knew who it was. In fact, he’d written an essay about it earlier in the year. Being told he’d been baked too brown so he was black, and comparisons to dark animals. I’d shut it down in class, and called the perpetrator’s mom, but apparently it was still going on: the kid acting up is too much of a funny-man to know when someone’s hurting.

 

“He’s still doing that?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s not going to do that anymore. I’m going to take care of it. You don’t have to worry about that.” There’s something else I want to say, what is it? Oh, there it is.

“Listen, only you can give someone permission to make you feel bad. You’re the one who thinks they’re legitimate. Man, you have beautiful skin—people would kill for skin like yours. But there are going to be times in the future out of school, where people are going to ride you about your skin color, or your accent, or your nationality, or whatever—the basic parts of you that you can’t change and don’t want to. But you just have to remember that you are wonderful, that you are one of my most beautiful students, inside and out, and that if they’re so cracked they can’t see it, well, that’s their problem, not yours. Because you are above that.” Pause. “Okay. I’m going to copy your guys’ work today, and then I’m going to work it out with that kid.”

He went, and I pounded out some frustration on the copy machine, and then sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Sure enough, a good half hour after school started, the culprit strolled through the library doors. I called his name, and beckoned him to follow me to the back tables by the media specialist’s office. He’s a smart kid. He saw my face, and said, “uh-oh.” We walked towards the back tables, and again, “uh-oh.” I cocked an eyebrow at his apprehension, and he let loose another, “uh-oh.” It was those uh-ohs that told me how to approach it. The sweetness of them, the awareness that he knew this was something serious, something he couldn't mess with, allowed me to just talk to him straight. We sat at a table and I watched his expression.

“Look. I love that you’re funny. You make our class funny. But there’s one joke that you took too far. Making fun of this guy’s skin color. I know you’re friends with him, and I know you josh him about it, but it’s become too much. He’s feeling really bad. That’s something serious. That’s race—he can’t change that, and shouldn’t want to.” He was watching me intently, not making a joke, just listening. Probably a world record for him on not interrupting. But the way to seal the deal was with participation.

“Did he say anything to you? Let you know how he was feeling?” Implied: If he had, you are a good person who would stop doing that.

“No, he just joked back. I didn't know.”

“Yeah, he keeps a stiff upper lip. But I know right now that it’s added up and he’s feeling bad about it. So I want to make sure you’ll cut it. There is no place for that in our class. Okay?”

Serious nod. If this kid’s not talking, he’s got it.

“Okay. Get to class.”

We stood up and I felt the joy that finally, finally, I'd run up against a problem that could be solved merely by words. 

“Hey, Ms. W?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you tell my teacher I was with you? So I’m not marked late?” Smart kid. Excuse all that half hour of late with one teacher’s nod.

“Sure.”

And school rolled smoothly on.

A Metaphor

Scene: Empty bus lot, middle of the day. Today, to be precise.

A gaggle of teachers sit on the curb, sunning and eating lunch. A student of mine perches on the railing near us, strumming on his guitar. Some birds flutter above the concrete in the distance.

Teacher 1: I think that bird has a broken wing. Should we…

Me: What? Should we what? What can we do for it?

Teacher 1: I care a lot about birds. Birds are my thing. That poor bird, it’s trying to fly.

Keen-eyed Teacher 2: No, I think it’s two birds. They just look like one because of how they keep rising and falling together.

Teacher 3: Oh, yeah, they’re fighting.

Me: You know, that could be a metaphor for our whole experience here. We think we see a bird with a broken wing, rush in to help it, and realize when we get closer it’s just two kids beating each other up.

Scene.

Today was flies. Lots, and lots, and lots of flies in my classroom. My first block got creative and made flycatchers out of scrap paper and tape, which were incredibly useful. They caught nary a fly, but they kept the kids from swatting and screaming, the two activities they’d been most engaged in previous to fly-catcher-building.

We played a game with points to get students to understand the difference between capitalism and socialism. It’s amazing how staunchly my high-flyers defend capitalism and my low-achievers advocate socialism when I suggested averaging all their grades together to be fair. 

Fourth block today my inveterate talker wouldn’t shut up, so I beckoned him up to the board to deliver a rousing lecture on socialism vs. capitalism. He did a great job, coached a bit by the over-aged student, W, who sat in the front row occasionally heckling with questions geared to get him around the difficult issues, and the class both laughed uproariously and listened intently, so it was a win all around. I walked to my car surrounded by the sound of students calling goodbye to me, sad that I won't have the same children next year. 

Everyone Has Their Toes Out

Today one of my slower, sweeter students walked in early. She cast her eyes around the classroom, and then glanced appreciatively at my feet.

“Everyone has their toes out,” she observed.

Yes, my toes are out. And my legs in sundresses, aggressively displaying that I am five miles into my half-marathon training and more muscled than is quite feminine in our day and age. And my smile, because the past few weeks have been so good. I told a friend that life’s been too good to blog about, and she responded, “people want to hear about the good stuff, too.” Do you? Do you really?

You want to hear that I spent two days at a SIOP workshop where I learned fantastic strategies for engaging my English Language Learners, that I tried one of them today and the kids were all over the drool-and-pass (my name for it)? That the obvious nugget of wisdom dictating that graphic organizers must get turned back into text hit me with a crack of joy?

You want to hear that I invited teacher friends over for Shabbat dinner and chilling with these people was the loveliest Shabbat ever, even though they kept asking me what food was? Challah and matzah ball soup they knew. Falafel they had to ask about, and babaganoush gave them pause.

You want to hear that a student nominated me for a best-teacher contest at the local mall and I won? That I gave my best doodler and my most inveterate story-writer a sketchbook and a journal after class, and the glows of their enthusiasm stayed with me all day? That my kids spent all Friday deeply immersed in their essays on the atomic bomb, weirdly intent in ever single class?

You want to hear that I spent motzash playing bananagrams with friends at Ben & Jerry’s, that I bumped into my favorite security guard while jogging the McAlpine Greenway, that I’m reading my last George Eliot novel for the first time, that the TFA 2013 corps is creepily forwarding to me the contact information of every Jew or maybe-Jew in the 2014 corps so I can call them and welcome them to Charlotte?

You want to hear that I survived my last TFA session of the year, despite an agenda that listed:

·      Ice Breaker (5 min)

·      Reflection on failure in general (20 min)

·      Reflection on personal failure (55 min)

·      Closure (Reflection on reflection, obs. Mine: TFA fails well.)

And in which I managed not to projectile expel my disgust with TFA catchphrases too violently, though eventually the repetition of “honesty and vulnerability… pushy reflection… fullness to the conversation… move us and our leadership forward…” without any regard for connecting sense moved me to a vocalized mockery.

You want to hear that I attended my first Charlotte Teacher’s Institute seminar on human agency and met a delicious old, ancient, antediluvian math teacher (the only male in the seminar) who tickled every bone in my body with his assumption that because I said things that were intelligent, I’m neither a Humanities teacher nor a Democrat?

  

You want to hear that today I shared my grandfather’s testimony with another class learning about the Holocaust and they stared, open-mouthed, silent, unbelievably fascinated while I spoke, wrapping the magic of something I care about around them and nodding in tune when I laid on them the responsibility to never forget and never let it happen again, anywhere to anyone?

You don’t want to hear the lazy birdsong outside my window, the ice cubes clinking in my sweet tea, the soft susurration graded papers make as they slip onto my carpet, the text alert from a happy parent, the slow click of the clock telling me that it’s 6:00 and I’m done, done, done with every single thing that had to be accomplished today. Now for a jog and a swim and a slow rendezvous with George Eliot on the porch. You see? Too good to blog about.