Sunday, November 14, 2010

Home to Pine Bluff an excerpt

photo courtesy of Dorriss Tatum
     We slipped away from California in the middle of the night.  My mother was less than miserable in her new marriage and we would leave with her.  My brother, Toure’, one year older than myself, and I packed ourselves into the back of my mom’s old, beat down, banged up, tan Volvo as she prepared to drive us through the California desert, east through Texas, and on to Arkansas.  We made it to Arizona before she gave up and turned around.  Before we went back, we’d spent the night beneath the desert’s pure light, looking up at all those billions of stars whose brilliance shattered the night’s peace.  I remember the silence, then I remember my mother’s voice.  It was a voice much like my grandmother’s; full of stories told in detail and in the rhythm I have come to recognize as purely Black and Southern.   These voices sound like blackberries tastes:  heavy, complicated by a joy/wildness/ and time.  They can be found quite often by accident, if you stop somewhere to get a cool drink, and turn right when you were directed to go left.  They sound like warm, whitemeal corn bread and don’t need nothing to go with them.  In the desert that night, my mother told my brother and me about UFOs and shooting stars as we traced the distant lights falling, streaming and then fading across the black and dotted sky.  She didn’t know we were afraid.  My brother caught a fever the next day and we had to go back.  But I didn’t want to; I wanted to go home.  My brother did too, sick or not.  And I knew he did because I did, and we didn’t do much on our own, that is, separate from each other, from the time  my mother carried me home from Jefferson County Hospital.   
     We’d ended up at Alexander’s a year later, after my mother finally figured out she might not want to stay in California.  We, my mother, my brother Toure’, my new brother Kiye’, and I rolled into Pine Bluff in the middle of the school year, 1976.  Earth Wind and Fire was hot on the radio and things were popping at their usual on the yard of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.  We moved into an apartment that sat on the edge of Lake Pine Bluff, and across from the college.  It had two bedrooms and white vinyl floors.  Fraternity boys lived next door to us and we could hear their canes tapping the floor late into fall evenings. Besides that, the place was quiet and most importantly, within walking distance to my grandmother’s house.   After we enrolled in school, and started taking the bus home, we would sometimes take the wrong bus, and get dropped off in front of my grandmother’s to spend the afternoon with her.  She had stale lemon cookies and lime sherbert waiting for us for just those occasions.  We knew we would get it for going over there, but we decided that price not to heavy for the comfort provided by our grandmother’s kindness.  My mother didn’t want us to weigh down my grandmother, who had already raised eight children of her own, and had my cousin Keesha in the house as well.   She was babysitting my little brother, Kiye’during the day and my cousin, Tarek, would be in on the weekends. Mama told us we need not worry my grandmother and grandfather like that.  But we couldn’t stay away.  And we took plenty chastisement for disobeying her. 
     After so many nights listening to the fraternity boys tap their canes on the floor, and being outdone by the stubborn, country roaches, we moved to the backwoods of the Jean’s edition.  During the sixties my mother had protested the city to get running water into the Jean’s edition.  The neighborhood consisted of lots complimented by white, black or blue trimmed shotgun houses with screened porches.  Most houses had patches for summer gardens.  Green, sharp grass or dirt covered the lots.  Thin, drop-chested, white-haired black and brown skinned ladies sat out on their porches with fly swatters and lemonade or sun tea.  They would wait for you to speak to them as you passed.  You spoke first, “Hey Miss Bob.” 
She would respond, “Hey deaah.  Ain’t chu’ Annie ______ baby?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Tell Mama, Bob said Hey.” 
“Yes, Ma’am,” slowing my walk to stay close enough to hear her without her knowing I needed to. 
“Tell Mama she need to call me ‘bout __________, and tell huh to let it ring ‘cause sometime I be at the back uh duh house, and it take me a minute to get to dat durn phone.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“You be sure and tell huh, heah?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Alright, little bit."  She paused, as if she had a corn hull stuck in her teeth and needed to locate it first with her tongue to suck it out.  Looking at me now with a studied air, “You shole is gettin’ fat.”
“Uhn, huh.”  A familiar conflagration rose inside me.  
“Good to see you walkin’, though.”
By then, I had moved on.   
“Ok, Miss. Bob, I’ll tell huh.  Bye.”  That last bit flat and tippin ‘round mad.  My toes pointed toward North Spruce Street.   

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Brief Portrait of a Woman: Tell My Story


ESE NE TEKREMA

"the teeth and the tongue"

symbol of friendship and interdependence
I met Carol when I returned to college, in Atlanta, August of 1990.  By then I was convinced that Bob Marley was a prophet, and that Bab-y-lon would soon fall.  When it did fall, I would be safe because I'd seen it coming and had covertly stacked up walls of protection:  nights of headachy arguments, a righteously restrictive diet, cot-ton fabrics and a head full of positive vibe-ray-shun! I-ah.

Along with two committed comrades, I rented a two-bedroom house.  Comrade number one, my promised fiance'; and comrade number two, one of his angelically agreeable female friends, a new sister.  She and I shared a first name, so he figured he could talk to us both at the same time.  Either that, or we should change one of our names.

This new sister and I had spoken over the phone all summer.  She arranged our housing and my pickup from Hartsfield International Airport:  an older, slacks wearing man named Louis.  Louis rolled up to the airport with his nephew and his cousin smiling alongside him. No problem.  We could all fit into his plush white Lincoln.   Smelling of wet cigarettes floating in beer, Louis swayed unsteadily toward the car, opening the door for us while I wondered if the ride would cost me the rest of my days.  We drifted down the two freeways leading to the West End.  We asked Louis questions about his ex-wives, hoping to keep him focused on the white lines that guarded against him sideswiping other cars.  Twice along the drive we asked the old man if he was ok to drive before he eventually pulled off the freeway, swerved onto Raymond Street, and killed the engine in front of our new house.  The brown one, second from the corner.   I pulled my stowed California burrito from my bag and sat on the untreated wooden floors of the first house I'd ever rented.  Over the next few days and weeks our thickly painted front stoop emerged as a gathering place for more comrades.

As a group, all of our encounters began with "Greetings," and ended with "Peace," or "Jah guide."  With each other, we plunged deeply into further enchanting notions about freedom and race and money.  We concluded the logic of history made it clear that we should cleave ourselves from what we saw as the traps of eating too much, buying too much, lying too much to ourselves, despising ourselves too much.  We decided to live as freely as we possibly could.

Any given night our house filled with laughter, slow-cooked one-pot food, highly competitive games of Spades, concentrated games of chess, a rock-steady ichieck of a rootical reggae beat, and a lingering coat of frankincense and myrrh.

We wore our hair long and natural.  We ate unsalted, vegan food.  We wore cotton and hemp fabrics.  Threw out our processed soaps and cleaning products.  We bargained rides out to Little Five Points or the DeKalb International Farmer's Market to buy up cheap and interesting whole foods.  We blasted outward, into the street roots reggae, straight up jazz, and any style of hip hop we could find.  Enthused, we dusted off and listened again to the music of our childhoods:  Gil Scott Heron, Richie Havens, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Joan Baez, and Marvin Gaye.  And we read everything.    I had just finished a biography on George Jackson, still shaking my head at how the California penal system justified his murder by San Quentin prison guards (Jackson supposedly had a pistol embedded in his afro).  My roommates enjoyed the Old Testament and the Metu Neter.  We opened a little library in the corner under the window of our front room.

We occupied the thick, green, sweaty neighborhoods around the Atlanta University Center.  We met there because we all went to school there:  Spelman, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, Morris Brown, or ITC.  We moved with our few brown suitcases (tags reading LAX, OAK, SFO, and JFK) and no furniture into that roomy, echoic house on Raymond Street--just down the street from all five schools, yet a miles away from our gated experiences on campus.

At least two distinct worlds existed in the University Center.  We walked through the outside world onto the campuses of our college world with its sculpted trees, mix-matched tulips, and buildings with names like Rockefeller and Woodruff.  Outside the gates was the outside world, John Hope Homes and The Bottom, located at the pit of the slope of James P. Brawley Drive.  The Bottom sat smack in the dead center of the projects we dared through on Friday nights, looking for cheap liquor and new adventures.  The outside world spoke a language different from ours:  staccato, the words clipped at the end.  Carol was part of this outside world.

Many evenings we sat on our stoop as folks came by to play chess or just talk about the latest.  We had food--sometimes from Busy Bee, or Paschal's, a nice vegetable plate--or we had cooked up a big pot of brown beans and basmati rice.  Music played out into the street and a local would stroll by and ask if they could join us for a beer.  "Have some?" we would say.  And that would be it.  Some friendships come to us so quietly we don't even know from where.  They begin with an acknowledgement, however, an invitation:  we need each other.
  
Carol and I first spoke when she came by and I was alone.  I hadn't worked that day, nor had I gone to school.  I was not extremely friendly at that time, but was always willing to talk and to listen.  We ate together as I listened to her talk about her life.  I heard a subtle desperation in her raspy tone.  She looked at me with something I'd then mistaken as fear and confusion.  We talked about general stuff: where we came from;  what we liked to eat and listen to;  what we thought about the coming change in time.  I hated it.  Short days, less light.  She liked it, the day a dismal waste of time.

The next time we met to talk Carol brought her bottle.  Tucked in the back pocket of her loosely hanging jeans, it read, "Gin." I would stick to sipping my beer, hanging over me a fear of liquor as ominous as the fear I maintained of the worst parts of myself, the two always cavorting together.  Plus generic alcohol crossed my danger threshold.  I tipped my last swig of stock and noticed Carol's eyes, the color of root beer and soft like warm water.  She asked me about the flag in the window.  I told her we flew the Ethiopian flag because we all come from Ethiopia.

"That's in Africa?"

"Uhm huh."  Both of us talking slowly now.

"That's my daughter's name, Africa." She says proudly.

"Oh, yeah?"  I said, inescapably intrigued.

"Huh whole name, Africa Zaire."

"Wow!  That's beautiful, Carol.  What made you think of that?  I mean, Zaire?"

"When I was pregnant with her, my daughter Africa, I got real sick.  I didn't have no where to go, but some missionaries, I met.  They had a little church downtown.  Took me in.  Wanted to make sure I had my baby safe and right.  They told me to stayed wit them all the way through.  Had my baby in Grady, them two missionaries waiting right theay.  Told em I would neva forget them.  They was from Zaire, Africa.  So I named my baby Africa, Zaire.  It sound betta like dat."
"I think you might be right about that, Carol.  I like that.  Africa, Zaire."

That night Carol passed out on the floor of our living room and left a little puddle in the unfinished floorboard-- to remind us of her visit.   I went to school and to work the following days and would meet Carol's daughter, Africa, one day as I walked up Jeptha.  I knew she was Carol's daughter because she looked just like Carol, but with skin like fine black ink in a bottle.  I said hello as she passed, explaining that I knew she had to be Carol's because she had Carol jumping all off of her.  She was an older teenager.  She was also pregnant.  The next time I saw Carol, I would have to congratulate her on becoming a grandmother.
                                            .                             .                              .

Carol came by the house one evening as I sat on the stoop, the sun ducking behind a cloud in a western corner of the gold and blue sky.  The neon light from Paschal's Hotel beamed through our window.  On the wall it reflected a red, gold and green intimation, much more impressive than the flag we'd hung in the window.  Holy smokes we'd said staring at the back wall, now sure we were in good stead.  Carol plopped down on our stoop, partially drunk and not too steady.  She was completely different during the day when she hadn't had a drink.  But it was nearing nighttime, she was full of liquor, and in the mood for singing.  She sang to me, "I'ma tell you something, but you got-TA tell my story!  Only if you tell my story!"

Ok, I nodded my head yes, laughing a little.

"You promise to tell my story?"

Again, I nodded yes.  She then broke into a ballad about a man who took her down to Savannah/and tried to make money off of her/because he knew she liked to smoke crack.

"You like to smoke crack!?"

She smiled, "Yesssss!  I lovvvvee to smoke crack."
She said this as her hand waved through the air in an operatic moment.  I sat amazed. Carole didn't hit one note, but sang with passion.  I smiled and nodded my head with a beat, encouraging her to continue.  "He tried to sell me to other men/ He thought I didn't care nothingggg about myself.  I told him I wasn't raised to work on no street corner/ My momma taught me better than that/He passed out afterwhile/And I slipped away out a teeny tiny bathroom window/ Walked through the rain to get to a phone to call my uncle/ And he took the bus down to Savannah and found meeeeee/You gotta tell my stooryy!  Somebody tell it, please."

"Ok, Carol," I said, still tickled and stumped about the liking to smoke crack part.

That was October, 1990 and the last time I saw Carol.  Africa soon had her baby.  I would soon be expecting my own (testing the bounds of my commitment to communal living), and Carol would be dead by winter.  From the neighborhood I heard she'd had a stroke that killed her where she fell.  That urgency in her voice, that desperation and fear that I then had not understood, I see now as I see her eyes, the color of root beer and soft warm water.  

Cool slanting light marks another change in time.   I am thanking the night, then the day, and alas, I sit here still, at this desk--having fulfilled a promise to a friend:  to tell the story of a woman named Carol.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Putting Away Childish Things



In his Inaugural speech, delivered January 20, 2009, President Barack Obama rolled out a lot of reality that left many listeners and watchers deflated. Obama, who my AP Language students and I found to be a rhetorical master, changed the tone of the conversation he had entered one white cold day in Springfield, Illinois. He'd chosen to announce his bid for the presidency at Abraham Lincoln's home town. Obama knows how to woo an audience. He knows the art of the soft sell. I find his rhetorical prowess unmatched. I have seen few to beat him. One close, Bill Clinton, who could convince the sun not to shine, faltered by way of his fallible real persona--which eventually evidenced itself, diminishing his credibility even among die hard friends of Bill. In his Inaugural speech, Obama took on a sober tone, left the stirring cacophony where he'd last used it, and said quite sternly that is was time to "put away childish things." He had a foreboding in his voice. Now we see why.

Getting the job is one thing. Doing the job is quite another. Put away childish things. Obama is a genius. Any African American man who can become president of the United States of America has to be genius. That is not to make some heavy proclamation about the deep seeded racism that pervades the country, it is just an honest assessment. Obama convinced white Americans many of whom would probably not want their sons or daughters to date an African American, to vote for him. They put their futures in his hands. And rightly so, he was the best man for the job. Only problem is that at this time in American history, the job must be absolutely backbreaking (in a very white-collar sense). Let's look at what it was when he took that oath of office on January 20. We had Iraq, Afghanistan, a collapsing economy (and all that entails), the threat of global environmental destruction, North Korea, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Israel, Pirates, the CIA, Al Queda, Pakistan, gas prices, Gay Marriage, a health care crisis, and let's not forget the pending Swine Flu scare. Time to put away childish things.

I noticed within his Inaugural speech an allusion to Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening." Obama said he had "promises to keep." And in the poem the speaker stops by a wood, mesmerized by its majesty. He becomes entranced by it even and only awakens from his stupor at the sound of his horse's bells sounding an alarm. That alarm pulls the speaker back onto the trail to keep his "promises--" his duties to himself and to those around him. I liken Obama's brilliance to the still beauteous woods. He is poetry. He is like Scottie Pippen or James Baldwin--butter smooth. He slides into pocket and announces his intentions.  He peers keenly into the soul of a problem; matches his wits against it, then attacks like some old time thinking cowboy like Josey Wales.  Slow and thoughtful.  He refuses bating.  He side-steps entanglement.  He does his job.  Those are the promises he said he'd keep.  The bells chimed and we all awoke.  By the time Obama took office on January 20, 2009, our country was in deep, deep trouble.  And real work, the kind of work that doesn't answer to 24-hour news cycles and instantaneous internet blogging and retweets is what we actually need, despite I desire for instant fixes.  We live in an age in which our attention span as a nation is completely diminished.  We see it all around us, but the long run is what we need right now.

Obama's campaign awed all who watched him. He made the women cry and the men wish they could. Made the old wish they were young again, and the dying wish to live a few more days. And now, probably more thanks to Glenn Beck,  FOX "news", and the billionaire Koch brothers,  all news channels say his approval numbers are down in Ohio.

Time to put away childish things. We have to deal directly with the astronomical difficulties which face this nation. We must do so with patience and wisdom. We cannot switch to this solution because that one is not working quickly enough. We must trust our better instincts: Obama is the man for the job. He has a human instinct which I find uncanny. He does not seem easily swayed by partisanship, nor is he ideological to the point of destruction. He appears to have the grown-up ability to be reflective and willing to make adjustments.

We are at a crossroads in America. Our old way of doing business is oppositional and quixotic. In a world as complicated as ours we must be able to talk in ways that are not oppositional and in ways that allow for difference. We must do away with the idea that we can avoid the consequence of our collective errant ways by latching on to leaders who, in reality, are just as human and fallible as are we.

We lived for eight years under the slipshod, neglectful leadership of George W. Bush, neglecting every one of the issues that we now face with much reticence and pain. We elected him; twice.  That administration  damaged or neglected everything we, as a nation, cherish. We all knew it would be a challenge to recover from those eight years of dreary, dysfunction and barbarism.  After Bush and the failure of trickle-down economics and military isolationism, we elected a president who said we had an obligation to put away childish things: including putting away the notion that we exist solipsistically on this planet and we can have a "re-do" whenever we want.  Our economy is upside down with billions of dollars in the pockets of the top one percent of our citizenry, with more and more Americans finding themselves shut out of the promise of the dreams we once took for granted.  No more are the promises of employment.  No more are the promises of home ownership.  No more.  Unfortunate, and maybe impossible to accept.  And do we have to resign ourselves to this horrible revelaltion?  Well, of course not; if we can, take the lead of the nation's leader and "put away [these] childish things."  Once we as individuals decide not to be manipulated by dogma, psuedo-intellectual idealogues, and other forms of time-wasting tomfoolery-- once we decide--ENOUGH--we will break free.  And let's also appreciate the moment.

What did Obama take on?  Such a meta-complex of problems.  For eight years, those of us who think about Global Warming, education, labor relations, fiscal balances, open government, and the concept of karmic reciprocity, seemingly sat on our hands; some protested and wrote letters and investigated--but to no avail.  The clock ticked for eight years, as we watched the Bush adminstration arrogantly exploit fear and prejudice for corporate profits.  Let's not forget.

We cannot forget how much damage the Bush administration wrought.  When something, anything, has been neglected for any amount of time, just as much if not more time is required for the process of reconstruction. We are in reconstruction mode. Let us do away with the childish idea that we can have what we want right now. We have a huge mess on our hands and it is going to take slow, methodical, painstaking work to fix it. Moreover, our leaders can only lead when we let them. When we respond to poll after poll, none of which seem quite accurate today because of the lack of land-lined homes, we play into "I want it now."  When we turn off to public servants because they no longer meet our superhero expectations, we play into "I will vote against you out of anger."  When we turn to uninformed, non-credible, gossip commentators as if they have the answer to what ails the country, we become the enemy we thought was the other guy.

Barack Obama is the man for the job. He is doing a job that I would not wish upon anyone friend or foe. He cannot quit. And guess what, he doesn't make as much money doing it as he probably should, so how about we give him a break, show some maturity, and act with a little more patience?
© Tasha Keeble 2009

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Slow Your Roll Education Reformers: Take Heed from the Wisdom of the Romantics and Simplify, Simplify, Simplify


Have the courage not to adopt another's courage. There is scope and cause and resistance enough for us in our proper work and circumstance.
-- Society and Solitude Ralph Waldo Emerson






I recently had a conversation with my youngest daughter concerning the often repeated and now cliché phrase warning folks against the practice of “drinking cool-aid.” Amazingly she, who is only now 16, knows exactly what the phrase means, but never knew the circumstances of its progeny. And as she is bright, insightful, and inquisitive, I will assume many of her generation, are sure of the content of the phrase, but unaware of its roots. She was astounded to learn the phrase came from the horrible events at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. A self-proclaimed prophet of the Lord, Jim Jones, established Jonestown. He and his followers were members of the People’s Temple community, which had grown out of Jones’s dream of a utopian society in which barriers of race and class disappeared amid an egalitarian religious construct. They moved into the Bay Area in the 1970s and flourished in a political climate that supported the church’s aesthetics. Everyone was considered equal, but Jones operated as its head. And according to reports, People’s Temple initially moved to Guyana, South America partly as a result of Jones’s growing drug addiction-induced paranoia. We know this story very well.
After a visit from Congressman Leo Ryan and his contingency, over a thousand men, women and children (including babies) drunk cyanide-laced cups of cool-aid in an act of what Jones referred to as “revolutionary suicide.” So when anyone quite flippantly admonishes another for “drinking [the] cool-aid” I often cringe in a place very deep inside my psychic memory—because I remember when it happened. I remember seeing the women and children deceased and huddled en masse in the naked, steamy, jungle mist. I also remember seeing the face of a woman I worked with in the late 1990s in San Francisco in one of the old film reels of the People’s Temple. When I worked with her, I didn’t know she’d been a member of People’s Temple. She’d obviously survived, and I wondered how she made it out, and at what point she said to herself, “Hey, maybe I’d better be safe; this is leading to no good end.” It is a simple act. It is also often the sanest action one can take—extricating oneself from an unwise adventure. According to the wisdom of the ages, all answers come from within. And when that iron string within us all singularly tingles with the foreshadowing of grave danger, the unwise will turn outward for confirmation; the wise will turn inward. Though some insist that this is the way, our own experience and soul-teachings tell us it is not. I say, listen to the Soul. In order to do so, one must first acknowledge the voice from within that warns against foolishness in the form of drinking from bitter cups of destruction.
Do not drink of the cup of reformist conformity that in this day insists that more complicated schemes of revision will make it all better. On the contrary, in order to make it better, we must simplify. To paraphrase Emerson, “there is at last nothing more sacred than the integrity of one’s own mind.” When we provide students with clear, simple, consistent pathways to the integrity of their own minds, we win, and they win. We cannot do that, however, when we jump from one educational philosophy to the next, and in the meantime, drag students along with us. Not only is it not working, it is downright foolish. And truth be told, if we were a family, we would be considered dysfunctional, and CPS would definitely be involved. We practice a “foolish consistency” in our inconsistency. For the last 3 years I have had to tell my students, “I don’t know, because I don’t know what things will look like next year.” I have tried to operate as an English Department Chairperson for the last two years and have repeatedly had to say to colleagues, “I don’t know because I don’t know what things will look like next year.” We operate amid insanity, and school districts rather than “implementing” some new foolish promise of success for our “failing” schools, should insist on eliminating toxic habits of behavior—namely, the toxic habit of jumping onto bandwagons, citing “research” as the rationale. Any researcher can tell you that social science research starts with supposition and assumption—also with a goal implied or not. That goal usually has a lot more to do with the desires of the researcher’s ego and pocketbook than with anything else. Doubters may wish to spend time within post--graduate environments to test this idea. And this does not suggest that researchers do not genuinely believe in nor have passion for their subjects. It merely means that research is theoretical, and any theory’s practical application must be proven over periods of time and with sound evidentiary support. That evidence should be gathered by independent operators and not by those conducting the research. Why? Well, put simply, the evidence could be biased. It is biased by the desires of those conducting the research who may wish to prove their latest theory, and sometimes do so on the backs of students who are unaware of their guinea pig status. But theorize on, I say, because theory does not trump experience. Nevertheless, the question remains, how do we improve schools?
Ask me, I say simplify. In his seminal work, Walden, Henry David Thoreau said, he went, to the woods because [he] wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die, discover that [he] had not lived." Thoreau insisted on clearing one’s head of all the noise generated by an overly demanding and busy world. The process of clearing one’s mind of distraction is one we engage in every day, if we are learning. We must be still.
When I, nearly twenty years ago stared out of the humongous open glass window on the second floor of Giles Hall, my junior year of college, first learned of these Romantic artists like Thoreau, I was immediately halted by their clairvoyance.
The air was clean, and the sun was true, and a hummingbird toying with a cherry blossom outside the classroom window distracted me. My professor, who later became a friend, shook me with the words of these men and women: Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. She drew me back into the classroom. She told me how these 19th Century thinkers demanded that we simplify our lives rather than further complicating them in the name of progress. They said that too much complication leads away from the essence of life, and away from spiritual grounding: a state for which we all yearn.
Believe it or not, I had for a long while been distracted by things outside the classroom window. Looked outside the door for something. Walked off of school campuses to find something that would (as my mother would say) “turn my tickle box.” More often than not those things were political, social, and emotional. They were the things that ruminated through my mind as I lay on the warm playground slide, cutting class, glad for the sun and its friendship. Questions about why I was and who I was and how we had come to be and why we were where we were and why he was in charge and why they are so angry and they are so tired and they seem to not care. They were simple questions of an existential nature—a nature of which we all are. I did not want to be in a room wasting my time listening to someone denying my existential nature because they assumed I did not think on these things. These were all things that demanded the existence of a need to give and receive Love. And much of the time the world is in direct action against the notion that I, we, know much about Love. But it is Love that makes the student, teacher and the subject worthy (substitute effective, memorable, inspiring). This is a proven fact. No research needed. No data. History has illustrated this plainly. Experience. It is that simple. Give me a space, a book, a student, and time and I can share my love for this subject in the way that those who love this subject shared it with me. In practicing this profession, this is the essence of living “deliberately, and front[ing] only the essential facts of life.”
The best moment I had all year in a classroom came when I asked a student to complete a comic strip on an excerpt from Angela’s Ashes. He had a great deal of trouble getting started and I shared with him that I thought a lot of students have a hard time doing little art projects because they think it needs to be a certain way. He told me, “Yea, ‘cuz I suck at art.” I said “Oh, no! You can’t. It represents you. I bet your mom would be so happy to see it. Art can never suck.” He said, “So you think I should apologize to my nephew for telling him his work was ugly?” “Yes, I said. That would be really sweet.” Now do not be mistaken, I teach this student ninth grade standards and beyond, but that moment was the best I can recall thus far.
I love my students, so I continue to try to function amid dysfunction. I love myself so I continue to make a living doing what I believe is my best gift to the world, teaching English. Nothing at last, according to Emerson, is more sacred. This is the goal of the educator, finding the sacred in the small spaces granted us. It is a simple formula for success.

Copyright 2010 ©

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