Daze

There were many things I expected to be doing this summer, particularly writing, but it turns out that hasn't been happening so much.  In fact, the majority of my time has been spent reading, watching movies, and lounging by the local public pool.  I have worked in my classroom some, I'm house sitting for some friends, I've had some really wonderful dinners and lunches with colleagues and former students, but I haven't been terribly productive in the sense that I have produced anything.

And you know what?  I could care less.

Sometimes, it turns out, even the most well intentioned people with the loftiest of goals--well, okay, maybe not the loftiest--turn out to need to just stop.  To breathe.  To reconnect with what it is in them that makes them fundamentally who they are, and it turns out, for me, it's water, words, and movies.  They're a pretty great foray into my little mess.  There are other things that make up the sum total of who I am, namely the fact that I am a fiercely loyal friend and daughter and sister and aunt, a teacher who loves her job, and a woman who dreams of one day sharing her life with a good man, but all of that stuff has been on the back burner this summer.  Not because it isn't important, but because--when I pulled my head up from the daze that is every day life during the academic year--I realized that I am important, my mental health, my sense of self, my, well, me-ness matters, and so I'm getting back in touch with that.

Does that mean I'm lazy?  Unproductive?  Wasting a lot of time doing a lot of nothing?  Some may think so, but for me, this is the best summer I've had in years because there is no point, there is no pressure, there's just me and the sun and the words and the images I love, and we're all--it turns out, much to my total shock--doing just fine.

Quotations

I've been reading a lot this summer, and I'm sure there will be a post on that at some point, but for now, these are a few of the tidbits I'm chewing on.


"One man all by himself is nothing. Two people who belong together make a world." — Hans Margolius

“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”--Rumi

“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.”--Marianne Williamson

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.--From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

 "Change happens when you understand what you want to change so deeply that there is no reason to do anything but act in your own best interest."--Geneen Roth

"What is to give light must endure burning."--Viktor Frankel

'It is time the stone made an effort to flower

time unrest had a beating heart,

it is time it were time.

It is time."--from "Corona" by Paul Celan

"Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat -- was, literally, talked into life."--Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

"The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own."--Calum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

"Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?"--Kathryn Stockett, The Help

Summer Cold

I can't exactly name the ailment that has befallen me, but for the sake of argument we'll call it a summer cold.  I have been super sick the last few days and am hating it.  I'm chugging water like it's been deemed illegal, I'm running through pectin cough drops like their candy, and at this point I should own stock in Kleenex.

I'm on a Z-Pack, Sudafed, a brochial inhaler, Tessalon Pearls for my cough, Tylenol for pain, and I'm fairly addicted to bad movies by now.  As we speak, I'm watching Drive Angry, a particularly bloody Nicholas Cage film with pretty rotten dialogue, but at least Amber Heard is hot.

So, here's how I'm trying to get over the illness: reading, bad movies, and thinking about how much fun I have every time I see this sweet little girl.

Faith

Trying to let go of the need to control the universe is exhausting.  I spend half my day, it seems, trying to conform the world to my vision of how it should be rather than conforming myself to the reality of the world and that, according to GB Shaw, is a surefire sign that I am an irrational human being.  Pretty sure he's right.

Lately I've been asked to blindly trust that certain things are going to go well: finances, personal life, the health of loved ones.  As a woman of faith, I know there is a greater plan that has already decided these things, but as a woman of letters, I also wholeheartedly believe in the power of free will and so I am torn, most days, by the desire to trust and the fundamentally ingrained tendency to doubt and speculate.

I do not need proof of God to believe in Him, I feel His presence in my life and that is enough.  I see His acts and love in action in the world, and that is enough.  These things are, I suppose, my proof.  Where others see senseless acts of random kindness, I see God.  Where you might see a scientifically explainable situation, I say the science behind the situation is proof of something miraculous.

Albert Einstein said there were two ways of looking at the world: as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is.  I am trying desperately to follow the latter.  But, as is the case of all fallible humans on this little blue planet, I trip up.  I get caught in the trap of wanting what I want right now, wanting my vision of the world to come true immediately, wanting the world, as aforementioned, to conform to me, even when I know such wants are ridiculous.

Troy Girsgonelle believes that being in love is chemical while loving someone is active, and not always pleasant.  That to truly love someone we must be willing to sacrifice our wants for the sake of what it is they need in the moment.  While it is easy for me to follow this logic in terms of those I love--I will always and without hesitation sacrifice for them, it is the right way and only way for me to behave (no judgment if you disagree, it's not for everyone--but I've been thinking a lot about how this applies to loving ourselves.  If I have a vision for what should be, what I actually believe will come to be, then maybe--just maybe--I ought to be willing to sacrifice my want of the culmination occurring now in exchange for loving myself enough to wait for things to happen as they must.

[Cryptic enough for you?  There are just certain aspects of my life I'm just not comfortable writing about on the interwebs.  However, I am grappling with these concepts, so they feel like good blog fodder.]

I guess my point here is that I'm wondering how to do it, to just believe that things will all work out for the best, to have faith not only that the universe will provide & that God has a plan, but that those provisions and plans mirror what it is I want.  Of course, I know that's not how it works.  The act of faith means not expecting what happens to follow your preconceived notions, but instead trusting, blindly.

So here's to trying not to see in the dark any more.  To breathing deep.  To saying yes.  To faith.

Neruda

Sonnet XVII, Pablo Neruda

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or where from,
I love you simply, without complexities or pride;
I love you in this way, not knowing any other way of loving
but this, in which neither I nor you exist
so close that your hand on my breast is mine,
so close that your eyes close when I sleep.

Joplin Benefit

I've spent the last week planning this benefit; if you can make it, I'd love to see you.  Excellent music for a truly worthy cause.

A Summer Without Work, Pt. I

I have had a job every summer since I turned 13.  I started babysitting for a coworker of my mom's, her three kids, one a newborn.  I loved it.  I felt powerful and strong and in charge, and I loved having my own money.

From there I worked at a local bakery and gallery in Lindsborg, then at the Lindsborg Pizza Hut, then for my dad working construction, at an Applebees, as a telemarketer, at Barnes and Noble, at the Manhattan Public Library, for Lovewell in FL, for SYT in Lawrence.  This year, though, I'm not working.  Not officially, anyway.  I'm redesigning the curriculum for all three of the classes all teach in the fall--20th Century Lit needs to be more contemporary, more diverse, Adv. American Lit needs to be streamlined, and I'm creating a course pack for American LIt that students can annotate as opposed to having them read from textbooks so packed with extra features that they often miss the text itself--and I'm planning to write.  Really write.  I want to do something with my writing, have always wanted to, and so it's time to make that a priority.

And, honestly, it's time to make myself a priority.  I tend to throw myself into other peoples' projects, into work, into anything that distracts me from the here and now of my own life.  Not because my life is so all fired terrible that I can't deal with it, but I tend to put everyone and everything else first.  But, this summer, I want to settle and rest and focus and feel for myself.  I think it's time.

To that end, this was my first day: woke up at 8, played with Z, read and emailed for a couple of hours, went to the pool for three hours where I read The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg, picked up my last LAC paycheck, went to the bank, picked up new contacts, got gas, put away my laundry, played with Z, had dinner H & J, got yogurt from Orange Leaf, wandered CVS for thirty minutes, now watching old Law & Order SVU and blogging.

I was worried I wouldn't know what to do with myself this summer.  Not really feeling all that concerned anymore.  Up later this week: thrifting Thursday in KC with the girls, Samantha Crain & Langhorne Slim @ the Bottleneck Friday.  It's good to be me.

Good Friends

Nippe, Carrie, Jamie and I at Taproom on 5/29 to celebrate Ryan's 33rd birthday.  I've known these ladies for 20 years.  We all keep getting better.

Just Like Starting Over

Tomorrow is LHS graduation and, while I am very excited to work at it and to see all the graduates matriculate out into the next step of their lives, it will be bittersweet.

While endings are a cycle of life we all must learn to accept, it can be difficult when the action we have to take is painful, and not necessarily something we want to do so much as know we need to do.

When kids graduate, for many of them the posturing about being out of school masks a deeper fear of what comes next.  The loudest celebrants are often the most insecure, singing the praises of the end of this chapter all while quaking at the prospects of what comes next.

As someone who went through a pretty serious ending herself this year, I have this advice: let yourself be afraid.  Let yourself feel whatever it is you are feeling because burying it only makes it worse.  And, embrace the changes that are coming.  They are frightening, terrifying in fact, but they also mean something new and beautiful is on the way.

It's only when we have the courage to leave on situation--for whatever reason--that we learn what we are capable of in the next one.  I believe in the power of change, of transformation, of the joy that can be borne from intense sorrow.  I believe in it because it happened to me.

So, graduates, fellow travelers on the journey of life, here's to starting over, one step at a time.

Mom

Sometimes, all it takes is an hour face to face with my mom to make me feel like I'm normal again.  No matter how scared or alone or out of control I feel, she knows me.

There isn't a day that goes by when I'm not thankful for her.

Today, I'm extra-thankful.

It's not who I am, it's who I'm with...

If I loved this any more, it might be illegal.

Because

Because she listened, I knew I had the right to speak.
Because she asked questions, I learned how to think.
Because she wasn't outgoing, she made sure I was.
Because she know the value of comic timing, I do, too.

Because she always told me I could, I never doubted myself.
Because she said I was beautiful, I grew to believe it.
Because she told me the truth, I learned the value of honesty.
Because she laughed more than she cried, I do, too.

Because she wanted to know me, I wanted to know her.
Because she kept her promises, I keep mine.
Because she believes in God, I understand the power of faith.
Because she wanted to be my friend, I wanted that, too.

Happy Mothers Day, Mama.  I love you.

The Rules of Nature

For a few minutes this afternoon, the sky cracked open and dark clouds poured out their colors, streaky silver and grays that somehow made my grass greener, the inky indigo sky looked painted on, the world seemed to say, "Look at me, look at all this life, even now in the middle of a storm."

I've been thinking a lot about the last year, about how hard it was at times to get out of bed, to brush my teeth, to smile when all I wanted to do was cry and scream and wonder why things hadn't gone as I'd planned.  I think the lesson I was supposed to learn--the lesson I am still learning--is that no matter what you think you want, what you need will, eventually, materialize.  You just have to try not to resist it, to open yourself, to give up any and all semblance of control and just keep breathing.

The sky, this afternoon, didn't fight the storm, it opened itself to the rain, the thunder, the strange lightning that seemed to be right beyond my windows.  And now, just a short time later, the sun is pushing through and the bright white edges of post-storm clouds are rubbing elbows with gray cousins, making way for light and dark because, as it turns out, the world big enough for both.

I don't always look up from my life long enough to see the miracle of mid-afternoon storm clouds.  I did today, and for that I am thankful.

I hope you, dear reader find tim to close your eyes, to breathe, to accept that whatever storm is raging in will, if only by the sheer rules of nature, eventually end, and give way (I promise) to sun.

Seriously. I'm good. I got this.

I am good at my job.  No.  Seriously.  I am.  A lot of people may say that and what they really mean is "I am good enough at my job to be able to get paid without actually expending much effort," but that's not me.  I eat, sleep, and breathe teaching.  I'm always thinking about ways to make the lessons  I teach more engaging, I read all the time in an effort to keep my brain sharp and to try to find new works that might be of interest to my kids, I'm not afraid to try things beyond my comfort zone, and I love love love talking about what I do with like minded folk.

To that end, I work with amazingly passionate people.  Two of my colleagues/friends and I serve on a committee that met today, and throughout the afternoon I caught myself several times thinking how awesome it is that I get to be in a job where I can say, "THESE are my colleagues."  These guys--smart, funny, engaged, committed--are two of the best, and along with our cross town counterparts, we assembled today to do a job that really needed doing only to be derailed late in the game by a bombshell that sort of threw off all we had accomplished in the preceding three hours.

I am not angry at the woman who ran our meeting, I don't think she realized the late in the day information was as potentially game changing as it turned out to be (and yes, I realize I am being cryptic, but public education is taking a hit right now and I want to be careful).  And, I think she means well.  She advocates for us, wants us to get what we need to do our jobs effectively and efficiently, but the powers that be make that as hard for her to give to us as it is for us to get it.

So, today my question is this: should it seriously be this hard to do my job?  Should I seriously have to spend hours and hours planning and drafting language about what should happen only to be told that all of it is contingent upon a maybe for next year, or that some of our assumptions have been altered due to the change of mind of outside parties?  SERIOUSLY.  This is teaching.  This is education.  I don't need committees and administrations and technology departments and textbook companies and the federal government an standardized tests and common core and state boards of education and angry local newspaper commentators to help me do my job.

I'm good.

I got this.

Reflections of (the way life used to be)

The title of this post comes from a Supremes song that I love.  It was used as the theme music for China Beach, a show I used to love.  Why the nostalgia?  Well, after a month of writing every day (and I have to admit to being proud I only took passes on two occasions), I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be disciplined, not only when it comes to writing, but in life in general.

I loved swimming when I was a kid.  LOVED it.  Took lessons, was ready for lifeguard status a few years too early and then our family moved to a town with no YWCA, no pool, no high school swim team.  I wonder if there is an alternate universe version of me where I am--gasp--an athlete??  Anyway, I was disciplined to keep going because I took lessons, I had a place to go, a reason to learn, and--in the water--a completely silent space that belonged only to me.  My body cutting through the chlorine, little legs kicking, arm over arm towards a healthier, happier, stronger me.

I haven't been that focused on something very much in my life.  I devour books, music, I ingest the people I love, swallowing their good and bad qualities, trying to carry them around with me at all times so that I feel less alone.  Yes, it's true: I have a bit of an abandonment thing.  I couldn't tell you why.  No horror stories from childhood, just a few lame boyfriends who didn't really take the care they should have with me, but this post isn't actually about that.

The point I'm trying to make, and there really is one, is that the last month of making myself write, even when I really didn't want to, reminded me that there is a payoff from such discipline and focus.  I found myself reflecting on things I hadn't thought about in years, I caught myself looking forward to the challenge of finding something to say each day, and--in maybe the cheesiest sentence I've ever written--I, simply, found myself.

I remember, now, what it means to be dedicated, disciplined, focused.  I'm ready to live that girl's life again.

Day 28

Today's poem comes to you from my friend and colleague.  It is better than anything else I could even attempt today: 1606 & 231

Day 24

In the words of my preacher this morning: "May we all embrace the resurrection in our lives by turning away from hopelessness and darkness to, instead, surrender ourselves to the joy and light of love."


Seven Stanzas On Easter, John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

[Written for a religious arts festival sponsored by the Clifton Lutheran Church, of Marblehead, Mass.]

Plans

I have this glitch when it comes to planning.  I like the idea that having a plan will somehow assure me that things will go smoothly, even though I also believe planning too much is the death of spontaneity and creativity.  See: glitch.

I believe the line that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans is true, and I know that no amount of planning can make up for the magical and mysterious things that happen out of the blue. I'm in a place right now, though, where the comfort of planning is very seductive.  See, when you're planning everything--how people will react to something you say or where to go for lunch or how to spend a Saturday--you don't have to focus on being afraid of just letting things happen.

Blind faith and trust that all will be well can be pretty elusive, and not knowing what's coming down the pike can be terrifying when you want so much for things to be a certain way.  But, if I've learned anything over the last year, it's that life can surprise you by how completely differently things can turn out from your original, well, plans.

So, I'm going to satisfy my urge to plan by making a few little ones in an effort to curb my (at times) OCD-ish need to plan everything.  Here's what's on deck:

In honor of National Poetry Month--April--I'm going to participate in National Poetry Writing Month.  That's a poem a day in April.  Will they be any good?  No telling, but I  feel better when I'm writing, even if what I'm writing is less than stellar.

I'm going to try to set aside a little money each month for my niece's college fund.  If I can manage even $20 a month, between now and her high school graduation I can come up with $5000, and there's no better gift I'll ever be able to give her than the gift of education.

This summer I'm not going to work.  I usually take a summer job, but not this year.  I want to work on me, making myself as strong and healthy and happy as I can be.  To that end, I plan to take Zelda to the Dog Park early in the morning Monday through Friday, and I'm going to start swimming laps in the city pool.  I want to spend my afternoons reading and writing.  Nights...well, I'll leave those open to the universe.

Wish me luck.

We Don't Need No Education

In the immortal words of Pink Floyd, "We don't need no education."  For those in the know, this statements double negative actually suggests that education is exactly what we need.

I've been reading all the anti-teacher, anti-education, anti-knowing anything other than what the right wing wants you to know sentiment currently clogging the atmosphere, and it's taken me awhile to decide how or if I wanted to weigh in on the argument.  As a teacher, I'm personally tied to the conversation in a way that makes objectivity nearly impossible, and as a person who has loved to learn since I was a child, I'm definitely part of the touchy-feely liberal problem rather than the detached, bottom-line, money driven solution.  But, dear reader, if you know me at all, you know I wasn't going to be able to keep myself out of this cesspool for long, so this morning I'm jumping in.

There are two camps at the moment regarding education in this country: 1) those who believe teachers are a lazy set of union-thug represented 'those who couldn't do' slurping wages from the federal teat like Depression-era babies whose classroom effectiveness should be measured against how well students do on standardized tests (this group also tends to believe privatization, i.e. charters, is an effective solution to the money drain education places on state and federal budgets), and 2) those who believe that we are a country with a solid educational system (save the narrative we are being sold about it from the--predominantly Republican--legislative bodies that are seeking to vilify it in the name of balancing state and federal budgets).  Most of the folks in group 2 tend to think the answer to the problems in education--and we know there are problems--aren't going to come from cutting budgets, but by increasing them.  Provide technology in all classrooms at all grade levels to support students who are learning in a digitally advanced world, encourage students to participate in activities and projects not only in their community but in their state and nation so that they learn their actions and ideas have the ability to change the world in which they live, and pay teachers a wage that is comparable to what anyone with a professional degree in any other field earns.

First, I'd like to address the group 1 concerns.  I was a union member the first three years I taught but, after I divorced, I couldn't afford to pay the dues any longer.  I still value the work the union does in terms of bargaining for my right to have planning time built into my schedule, but I recognize that no collective bargaining body is ever going to be completely respected by people who do not need it to exist.  Just as the striking mill workers in Lawrence, MA asked for bread and roses in 1912, those of us who have relied on union representation understand we are asking for a quality of life to be protected from legislators who may not recognize that the nature of public service jobs can make those of us who perform said jobs fall patsy to the political agenda of a ruling person or body.

The idea that teachers teach because they couldn't do something else, well, I'm going to say that's true for some of us.  If I want to live a life in which I am fulfilled, enriched, and revived each day by the job I am paid to do, I couldn't sit behind a desk and answer phones, I couldn't punch numbers into a spreadsheet, and I couldn't proofread articles someone else had written.  I've had jobs that fit all three of those descriptions, and each morning when I woke to work I was as miserable about how I earned my paycheck as I was when I arrived home each night, brain dead and exhausted from monotonous work that meant nothing to me.  I couldn't do those things, but I can teach.  I can make seventeen year old boys excited about deciphering metaphor in The Great Gatsby which means I'm helping them sharpen critical thinking skills they can apply to other difficult situations outside of the classroom, and I teach sixteen year old girls that their lives are as valuable as the lives of their male classmates by showing them that Hester Prynne had a choice in The Scarlet Letter and she chose to stay in Boston and in so doing she was able to make a living and raise her child without being beholden to a husband.  And we talk about the consequences of the actions that led to that choice so that, when they are confronted with a situation in the future that seems to be instantly gratifying, they'll remember there are repercussions for making those choices and will perhaps think twice.

As for suckling from the government teat, I could break down the amount of hours I work each week (55 on average) and talk about the numbers of books I read and hours I spend each summer preparing for the courses I teach during the academic year, but I'm not going to be able to sway anyone.  I know that.  I'll just say that with my B.A. and M.A. in English and my teaching credential, I am qualified enough to earn $20-40k more per year than I currently do were I working, say, as a corporate trainer (which is just private sector code for what I already do: teach) but I choose to make less because high school students need impassioned and dedicated educators to prepare them for the world beyond structured academic walls far more than middle aged executives need me to train them on the selling points of some new needless product or sales technique.

Finally, the standardized tests as measurement for teacher effectiveness argument is bunk in about a hundred different ways.  Those tests are created by the same companies that create and sell expensive test-prep materials school districts buy to boost test scores which means the tests are designed to be ambiguous so the companies who created them can make more money on the aforementioned test-prep materials.  If the tests were accurate measurements of what students learn in a classroom--and I am only speaking about the reading and writing tests here as that is my only realm of knowledge--there would be items that required students to evaluate text, to think critically about why an author used a particular metaphor to describe a character and what that metaphor means in the greater context of the novel, to explain how setting functions to develop a story line, to analyze the use of the word 'belligerent' in place of 'angry', to distinguish between the protagonist and antagonist in a text where none of the characters are particularly likeable, and so on.  But, instead, our tests ask students to make value judgments, to regurgitate prefix and suffix meanings, to choose the best answer from among ambiguously worded multiple choice items without ever having to argue why they made said choice.  We ask our students, on tests, to spew back facts rather than to think for themselves and this is why measuring teacher effectiveness by test score is asinine: students only truly learn when they are willing to work on learning on their own and they are more inclined to do so when they are working on a problem to solve as opposed to memorizing arbitrary definitions.

Just as doctors who tell patients to eat healthy and exercise shouldn't be evaluated on how many of their patients follow their advice and lose weight, teachers cannot be measured by test scores because no matter how much we prepare students, if they don't do some work (that they feel is valuable) on their own, their scores will reflect their choice not to work far more often than they will reflect a teachers' work in the classroom.

Group 2, of which I am a fierce and vehement member, understands charter schools only work in communities with people willing to pay for them for all students, and we know that students benefit from one on one teacher instruction when possible which only happens in classrooms with a 25:1 or lower student to teacher ratio.  Which means money.  More teachers, smaller class sizes.  More salaries to pay, better student performance.

Group 2 sees the benefit of teaching students in a technologically capable classroom.  I'd love to see my students making film trailers of the novel we've studied in class, condensing the text down to the barest elements in 2-3 minutes of visual and audio representation to illustrate the major themes and how that book may best be marketed to the generation that will be reading it in my next class, but lack of money means lack of technology.

Group 2 knows students thrive in environments led by role models who look like them: people from the same ethnic group in leadership positions are proof of their own ability to rise above whatever hypothetical limits their culture or home life may have set for them prior to their ever setting foot in a school.  According to the 2009-2010 KSDE Report Card, 10% of the student population at my high school is African-American, but we have no African-American classroom teachers, and my students have noticed.  In a recent class discussion about race as it relates to the changing literary landscape in America during the Harlem Renaissance, one black student said, "It is weird that we talk all the time about how anybody can be anything he wants, but there ain't no black teachers in this school."  Indeed.  And the answer, sadly, comes back to money.  Non-white teacher candidates are a hot commodity in Kansas.  As the ethnic make-up of our schools becomes more diverse, so should our faculty, but unless districts are able to pay comparable wages, those sought after teachers will be smart and choose the district willing to pay them more.  Think I'm making this up?  A current open position for a certified teacher advertises starting salary as $34,780 in my district.  Up the road about 30 miles, starting salary is $38,583, and at another school within 30 miles it's $39,240.  Four or five thousand dollars may not seem like much, but when you're a new teacher paying off student loans, it can make al the difference in the world.

The last thing I'm going to contribute to this conversation is a quotation from an article by education historian Diane Ravitch.  Her comment--though far from ending the debate--seems to strike at the heart of what I'm trying to get at.  There are two camps in this country, but we all have the same goal: we want an educated populace.  How do we go about achieving that without dumbing down curriculum, vilifying an alienating teachers, or becoming a totalitarian police state intent on progressing an agenda driven by test scores rather than real thinking?  I don't know, but I'm willing to talk about it because it's the most important conversation any of us can be having right now.

Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their life chances. There was a time—which now seems distant—when most people assumed that students’ performance in school was largely determined by their own efforts and by the circumstances and support of their family, not by their teachers. There were good teachers and mediocre teachers, even bad teachers, but in the end, most public schools offered ample opportunity for education to those willing to pursue it. The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985.--Diane Ravitch, excerpt from The Myth of Charter Schools

Until I Have My Own Words

Too much noise and self-doubt and future fear have silenced the words for me lately.  A few things here and there, but nothing like the onslaught that hit a year or so ago.  I remember feeling flooded with images, the pressing need to create what did not yet exist in the world.  The recent poems come, mainly, from a word I hear or read that I want to try to toy with, but the urgency is missing.  The attentive eye I used to turn towards beauty has been distracted by the dreary day to day that simply does not inspire.  So, until I have my own words, I'll share these with you.  They, tonight, make me want to write more than I've wanted to in a very long time.


   Dogfish, Mary Oliver

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

*

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

*

It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.

*

Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly

*

the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

*

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.