Renewal, for me, is #return, a bold necessity in all facets of life. I am a proud #unionist and public school educator, attending National Education Association Representative Assembly. As a member of the largest labor union in the United States, this is my first opportunity to be immersed (from the safety of my home) at the national level. I am able to listen to all the debate, share my voice and experiences, and vote on policies that seek to address the many, multifaceted challenges in public education (and greater society) today. There are voices here from at ALL levels of #publiceducation even amidst continuing gun violence in Chicago.
Today, I am no longer in survival mode as the pandemic goes into its 3rd year. I am learning to become an armed educator with a whole new set of skills (and self-care tools). I am NOT, however, nor do I wish to be armed with a gun. I would be understating to say my classroom and my community has been touched by ALL of the issues presented in the first half of Day 2. These eighteen years as an educator have been marked with gun violence and its aftermath: from the tragedy at Pulse in my childhood and adult neighborhood to the unannounced weapons search in a small, sleepy, masked first period during the height of a hybrid (face-to-face and virtual classroom) to the myriads of lockdown drills , as well as teaching Civics on January 6th, to being verbally assaulted by chants of “baby-killer” because masks were mandated across my district (the 9th largest in the United States). My classroom has been affected by #censorship and grass-root movements to shut down learning. I have been called names, been targeted, and threatened. So, too, would I be understating the impact these challenges have had my health. Not only have I sought other employment in another field, I lost my passion and energy for this good work.
And #goodwork it is. I told myself this through the challenges of the past few years, which were exponentially intensified and personalized in #publicschool unfriendly Florida and its convoluted, ill-conceived evaluation system and unsustainable practices. I did not know that I was in need for renewal, but here I am being renewed. And with this renewal, comes commitment. I am renewed by the #democraticprocess here, and the passion of my Brothers and Sisters. And it has been a much needed change from the constant onslaught of the new American nattering nabobs of negativitism.
It’s Saturday, and I’m sitting down to plan. I had the opportunity for a planning day at school yesterday, away from the constant hums and bangs of the classroom; this being one of the first ones in 5 years or so that involve me carving out personal time, which–since Covid–has seemed so precious. Planning next steps felt a little easier than during the huge uncertainties of 2020, the election of Biden, my husband’s retirement, and hybrid digital format, but the “survival” line of thinking habit is so hard to break. It’s hard to shut down the necessities, self-created in a bygone error for a system that wholly operates digitally now. Learning is, indeed, all about connections, inter- and intra-personal ones. Learning with “survival” thinking–for both the student and teacher–is fodder for getting the same results, declining test scores, especially now that 2021 has brought a new set of uncertainties.
To break out of survival thinking and #moveforward, I’ve been setting myself up with a new set of skills, trying to think away from the idea of higher certifications (although I am pursuing them currently) and into other realms. I learned to do this fluidly last year, creating realities (in this crazy hybrid virtual and realtime, synchronous S&#! show) where there were none for #compassion and #listening so #needs and wants could be heard. I also learned what NOT to repeat from face-to-face past school years, and carry this into planning for the academic school year and retiring common core standards (more to come after training on the NEW new standards once again–my third cycle).
Teachers know the realities of any regular year–the traumas we experience or observe in others, but try to ignore. Once you are aware of an injustice or a circumstance, how can we just ignore it away? The public school systems of the United States have perpetuated many injustices, which cannot be ignored or silenced. Covid laid to bare this at an alarming rate, and we just didn’t have time to argue too much about academic excellence and dress code. Nor plan.
This greater issue for me personally was, and still is, sustainability. I’m constantly looking for an even #exchange of energies here, and constantly reminded we are a business transaction, a human resource (which is smaller in my district than the money dedicated to digital infrastructure). Yet, too, as a teacher and learner, I’m reminded here that I have agency. I try, instead, to learn new skills and explore outside of the box, moving forward. We have to learn how to give and take ourselves, and how to model this #balance in a world under great change. It’s a huge step forward for me to carve out time to plan, to understand its importance, and to be focused in something I once felt a great deal of #passion for, even though its #burdens are not sustainable.
Skill-building is just a fancy way of saying #practice (in my opinion) with a little planning. Here’s some actions I’m currently using as I #plan for opportunities:
Planning – Dream, List, Break apart, Chew On, Brainstorm, Revise, Reflect, Analyze, and Stick To
Getting outside – Camp, hike, sleep, hang out, take pictures, watch the skies, dream
Building intra and interpersonal skills with the goal to be connected to others. To hold and be held in their love. There’s sustainability in this :). What’s your attachment style? – One survey for this here.
Learning a language (or two) – I wrote my first one in German (it’s Haiku–the structure provides me much without getting into my own inner patriarchy) – might share it here.
Reading, writing and creating – A blog, a book, a poem, a video, a website, a masterpiece, a doodle.
Moving – move earth, pick up things, move air, flow like water, breathe the sky, dance, shimmy, move
Learning – Take a class (even if you don’t want to) – Anything! Today’s for me are mostly for professional development but I believe there’s always something to learn and #practice. I practice #NVC in those times of ennui and complete disbelief (there are times when a sense of humor comes in handy and #abandonment is a better course of action).
Practicing with awareness, #NVC, Yoga, Meditation. Turn it into #daily #ritual.
Putting myself out there – EarthmotherYoga is transforming into a business.
Listening without Judgement and Teaching with that in mind and #heart
Here’s one of my favorite videos on how to make #connection and building skills of #listening. May we all be blessed in our #abundance and #practice done and shared in Love.
something else hidden in the muscles of the face, something the throat wanted to say.
Ruth Stone, “The Wound” from Simplicity
Today
everything but
the soreness from lifting you
the rawness in my throat
quarrels captured and salty tears
everything but
triaging our afflictions
dressing words and what is not there
silence and no quick cures
unknowns romance here
except this
Tomorrow
is everything but
alienation
your rights and rites
practiced skills
everything but
my words
once
in allodium
i stay to suture harm
stitches say its my fault, too
(& maybe it is)
this the unraveling of that once
which opened festers
repaired itself unto
today
everything except
dusty ghosts & empty bandage wrappers
the world of gain and political correctness
true to tradition
everything but
what you ask of my days
and I ask of my days
yesterday
i plunged into trauma headlong
and wounds became
everything but
scars
This has been a fragmented school year. The familiar routines still feel uncomfortable. The ringing of bells off and on, picking up students (and teachers) in unexpected places. So many, many hurry-ups and whoopses and much profanity and bold ennui. We practice words we never knew until a year ago but they don’t help us learn. Well, maybe some of us knew the educational jargon before, but memory has been another fragmentation, and of this I write in some kind of long-awaited space, which defies education altogether. The existence of words can make them so. And each morning I study these, like some ancient map or unread dusty book (there are many this year). Literacy and learning fragmented by new words and new Science and (even) here in America, new Civics.
The nonexistence of someone’s beliefs fragment us; it can’t be done or had to be done yesterday. School language is rough and sputtering–fragmented–throughout the day until great intentions need a nap (by lunch time). Fragments of learning evidenced everywhere in my classroom closet full of 17 years of children’s books and classics and hands-on activities. But like some great wall, which may never really be built except what already exists in our nation’s head, beliefs give us comfort, a neat and tidy border from which to cross or turn and go another way. I can almost taste it in the Air. Change. For better or worse. We’ll be writing about it forever, maybe with a little humor.
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
The Destruction of Sennacherib, Lord Byron
I wish to purge and be light again. It’s time. The long fragmented year (and a half) is coming to an end; I wish to read and remember, and empty myself of fragments, writing kennings and highlighting that something can be done, has been done, will be done, about the struggles here–in this space and time of pandemic–in its nonexistence which dictates we must push on through testing, and Saturday school, and special programs to help the learning lag and mind fragmented by impossibilities and directives (ad infinitum). I wish to regroup and find a way back to what I remember, but memories are fragmented, too.
I toyed with words early on, abandoning this blog and my journals, to add big sweeping strokes of color and narratives, upon my backyard fence. Meadow and swamp grass grow through the boards now, speckled with paint of last Spring. Reminders everywhere on my return Home from school where here hours grow and grow and grow, fragmented. And after the inevitable fight for normalcy, what will remain? Testing? Old ways of doing school? Memories? And is my stamina and strength so fragmented as not to be taped together with duct tape, my pandemic friend for fences, computers, and chargers for our learning?
Here now fragmentation gives us imperfect organizational cell called public education, splitting off into new life without mention of what worked in the old one, tidied up by memorandum of understanding and PDFs covering i-cloud assignments and on-the-spot withitness. Here exists fragmentation of all that is real: budget, time, students, teachers, learning, reading, words. Our books piled high and in misuse and border control. I miss just reading, and I know the students do, also, but…
The hour is late, and I have some fragments to sweep up and out the door and into my car so I can drive away, never really knowing what the Day is until it’s over. I wake to sleep and sleep to wake, fragmented from myself and dreams. And writing my blog has that same deja vu; a chance for irresistible circumstances to collapse in its own silence and return to unknowing and unknown as a pleasure. I’ll leave the fragments of incompleteness and ubiquity to my memory.
All the Elements
Came to play
Danced and sang
And went their way
Fire in Moon
Moon in Fire
The South whispered secrets
Of North's dark desire
Bring me your frankness
Your spices and ice
Weave in the lemongrass
Bundle this tight
Walk all the quarters
Crouch on the ground
Fill sacred space
With a Leo's Moon Sound.
All the Elements
Came to play
Danced and sang
And went their way.
#fullmooninleo
In previous incarnations, prior to the imminently eminent momentary unknowns and everyday survival modes of 2020, I was a sloppy #yogawitch. Not a person to methodically organize my life was I, any facet, focused more on the only structure I learned: language. Going through the motions of life while learning the rules through reading and writing #teaching and #practice’s purposeful mistakes, splitting infinitives deliciously aimed at irritating my perceived naysayers. Breaking small rules was an unconscious act of intention awry–a small wickedness and hidden pleasure. Over time, I let this go, confronting and discarding these darknesses hidden to me.
Shadows still dance in my inner realms and these, my familiars, I have learned to organize and call upon to move me past my disorganization and anxieties (I simplify here–there are many helpers involved). I can find these readily in myself and, as such, I began to see them in other places, outside my purview, in the collective. Last night’s full moon allowed these to dance and sing about us in our Full Moon circle. I hear and see those beautiful poetic birds of mystery; you can see them, too, maybe? They are here and here and here and here and here and every morning on my morning playlist (maybe you’ll find comfort and strength here, too?). The sound (not the words), as #memories fills my sight, organizes my Day and Night; my flow feels genuine and intuitively organized.
This is not to say I don’t recognize the sharp oppositions in play in the greater world–only my tiny justification of how presented before I saw my inner chaos. In those “other” roles and realms, those of mother, wife, teacher, daughter, sister, friend, employee, adult, woman, shadows pooled: a stack of dishes; a pile of laundry (clean and folded–or dirty); #practices scribbled down in the wee hours of the morning to do again (as if); a teacher closet with an #abundance of learning unused and a file cabinet of empty files which commiserates; a grocery list with items circled and forgotten; a bottle or two of lotions and perfume I’d never put on (the glass extraordinarily, iridescently filling spaces). Abundance of words and worlds I possess and reflect upon–light bouncing off every corner of my mind; the fast pace of my physicality finally caught up to me, and my body had to slow down, creating a new spaces and organizational flows.
Death is a real thing to me now. There. I said it. I wrote it. Death is a real thing to me now. Understanding comes from experience, I think. What was 2020 but one long catalog of lessons in being alright in the moment while doing what is epically needed to be done? And I understand I get confused, I get things wrong, I make typos, I run around in circles (literally) while I think of what I am doing, and I fucking procrastinate every hard task (as I am doing today), but I understand that each moment is predicated on the words I say to myself–spoken or carried within my thoughts (an element in myself). Beautiful organization takes time, and that same messiness in discovering this, carried me through 2020. Processing in new ways (and historical ways to me on Erika-Standard-Time) allowed me to handle death in the classroom.
My day-to-day as a teacher in a hybrid classroom during the pandemic is predictably challenging; we all do the best we can in our levels of awareness to #balance and ground and survive. I return to language here–mostly poetry (in all Her forms) and runes (ancient communication). And then, I enter our classroom and continue to practice the appropriateness and preciseness which convey the standards as equitably and compassionately as I am able. This is #goodwork, and this is happening all over our building–some teachers have multiple areas to teach (#gratitude for how they still do the same in separate spheres of realities). As I, too, run for the bigger classroom for my bigger face-to-face classes with my computer screen projecting my shirt and lanyard, with mouse and sheets of paper in tow, always one dropping to the floor), I’m learning to quell the words of self-doubt in mind which causes us to waffle in indecision at the most critical time for language–6th period!
I know I am not alone. I feel the energies move through me as shadows, pooling and accumulating in great abundance; warnings to be careful what type of #abundance one calls. This organization destined to fail: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. The pace is harried and my husband reminds me at home I don’t need to run to bed, and in his calm way, guides me to see my organizational spaces work both ways: to let out as well as in.
Here I linger on a blog. I let my mind get lost in those words that bounce around and catch in the shadows’ dark pools. I let the greater picture captivate my inner sight, the soft rhythm of a needed day off (one which I promised would involve grading). I am no longer a sloppy #yogawitch; today’s plans include my abundance of #dreams and #goals. This, the continued practice of letting Death’s presence remind of Life’s import, helps create and maintain #irresistiblecircumstances wherever I go.
Nec reditum Diomedis ab interitu Meleagri, nec gemino bellum Troianum orditur ab ovo; semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res non secus ac notas auditorem rapit, et quae desperat tractata nitescere posse relinquit.
-Horace
December’s almost-predictable roller-coaster ride leads me to a beautiful #abundance of creative ideas and promised into 2021. The quarantining process brings with it a shift of #perspective with learning new tools, such as #mindfulness, through a turbulent 2020. At school, we literally had opportunities to re-invent the teaching wheel (and that’s as close to autonomy as you can get in any content). As with most of 2020, great scarcity and unknowing brought #irresistiblecircumstances to discover the important people in our lives and places of refuge, along with how to receive and return Love. Revisiting and tagging thought categories has been useful in seeing #whatis, essentially the #practice of yoga with all that is available, any time and in any place, with the difficulty and uncomfortableness of 2020 snuggled right up against #pain, #grief, and #catharsis; working through resistance requires hard work. Who is to say whether it is the work of 2020 that makes us weary or 2020, a tag itself in omnipresence.
Today, the proverbial 2020 train creaks and clacks slowly up to its pinnacle, and I sit here, stuck between past and future. Experience dictates caution (just like a teacher). Intuition advises my adrenals to scream and get off the ride, but healthy curiosity reconciles with the dose of knowing or, rather, acceptance. Daily walks in Florida’s #skog in the perfect Season among the miles of sandhills, prickles, and humorless humidity has uncovered Nature’s own inherent wild ride–a message to perhaps slow down the pace and look around in the #irresistiblecircumstances which one has created for oneself.
What is Walk
Whether through the miracle of birth
This body Earth
holds host to the catalog of dismissed #abundances:
the water oak, the cypress, the wild sages and cassia,
the thistles and duckweed, the blooming poison ivy,
the water lettuce, the tickweed and asters of the brush,
the sweetgum and inkberry, the ribwort plantain,
or through the death of 2020;
This body Earth
returns to inner fertility of a Florida mid-winter:
moss carpeting the realms below the roots
home of ant, snakes, spiders, and little birds
(a recurrent theme) while
Spanish moss dangles fat and lazily from canopy
and across the pale dead grass,
a pair of hawks glide to dinner
witnessed
along with vultures and their darker intents
(Not a look of someone doing someone else’s work)
A rotting log from a bird’s eye view.
Blistered feet will write the story of thorny 2020:
We are almost 16 weeks into this 2020 edition of a Covid school year; school is still more about adrenaline than passion. As drive myself through adrenal fatigue and increasing #pain cycles, there is still much comfort in seeing students participate in all the various forms. There is routine in examining the old texts, seeds of our Constitution, and discussing fresh perspectives of Enlightenment. Inequities present themselves, easily imagined as we live the reality of our ancestors. Rich and poor, the work of school is useful to all.
Self-management hangs heavily in a synchronous learning environment, from discussions of leaving something on the stove (when working from home) to managing the impossibilities of impromptu Internet glitches and patches while all at once some magic learning happens. In any case, there’s hardly a time to pause unless we make time for this release. And, just like physical pain, mental anguish and stress takes a toll. Were our forefathers (and foremothers) not the same in their dreams, fears, and internal dialogues? Did they take a moment to seize an opportunity for gratitude (the mindfulness strategy today)? Did they trace the Night’s path across their backyard sky, or take a nap in the emerging sunlight on a cool day, or savor a hot cup of tea in quiet contemplation, and find hope there?
Of late, without much ease in movement, I find myself processing the words, words, words, in a such way I never anticipated in my half-century. Could the younger me have envisioned a day I wouldn’t remember vocabulary or concepts or need the constant reminder of my stumbling and bumbling access to the more common areas of my brain? Likewise, did I intellectualize the day I couldn’t lift the weight of the world and a barbell locked and loaded to squat beneath or push overhead?
School becomes a challenge, tripping over the next item to do, procrastinating the great and honorable task of grading (and grade-entering to create irresistible mixed-media digital content); however much I love to craft a lesson, the sheer amount of energy to make any decision has taken flight to darker realms, suspended.
Survival depends on Day and Night, a marriage of predictable opposition. I am held by spaces between polarities, and Day’s quiet appearance transforms Night’s #abundance into actionable steps toward the future. And while little of life outside of school setting presents itself in the traditional way, each Day has offered fresh #perspectives. Brought into a classroom, our community is light of hope itself–we will survive. Rich and poor, the perspective of familiar cycles is Hope.
For days now, I’ve hobbled around, tears falling on every inch of our yard and house, crying with great fury and despair or just weeping over some huge emotion working its way through my already too tired mind and body. How do I wrap my head around each day? each hour? I cry at songs, at lines of poetry, at words in the pages of a book. Yes, I stand in today’s presence and yes, the “lions hunker down/in tall grasses/and even elephants/lumber after safety.” The emotions are immense; anger, fear, and grief pummel gratitude and compassion. Love feels lost in Her very own ocean. Being injured and adrenal-compromised, I’ve turned to Nature and poetry.
I don’t know much about lions and elephants other than what I’ve learned in school and reading, but I’ve been watching all the little birds who reside around my house. In these moments, I have much gratitude for having the privilege of even having a safe place, a home, much less the time for creation or quiet observation. I know I could fill it in other practical ventures. I could be planning next school year and ALL the possibilities, or thinking about it (which I do way too much). I probably should do that more than writing poem, painting on fences, and writing blog posts, but not over watching all the little birds. I am mesmerized.
The backdrop changes every moment (how could you not appreciate that?) and each morning (before dawn), I sprawl out on looking up at the sky in the middle of my backyard, and hear the little bird’s good mornings (what sweetness). Everything is slowly waking up. Nothing rushed until Sunrise comes in Her usual hurried way, and the little birds make preparations. Within 10 minutes, the Little Birds are flying formations, zipping down the street, setting up watch posts (very specific locations), and calling to each other in staccato–all well-placed and efficient.
In come the crows (because crows do what they need to do) and a small airborne war ensues while the Muscovy ducks, ibis, woodpeckers, and doves chime in (all sort of little birds). Every few days (I started counting two days ago), a bird of prey swoops in and around and all the Little Birds and the Big Birds shut up. There’s a stillness that is intense. What will happen next?
Yeah, that’s the point. None of us really know, but based on the natural cycles, not statistics (although statistics can be a pretty good indicator of how things are going, depending). Wait, and see. And here we are in whatever week and condition we are in, but do we have clarity?
My last poem (last night) is about grief (I’m not even sure what tense to use anymore). If I’ve learned anything in 2020, it’s how to identify an emotion in myself. The tricky part for me is how to separate that emotion from reality AND whose emotion is it…I’ve spent a lot of time working this as part of mindfulness and practice. I’ve learned how my mind flitters and sings, like a little bird, and then flies into action with all I’ve got. It’s intense. It was a normal way of going about my life for a long time. It’s familiar, and because of this familiarity–I know it–I can make myself move toward the bigger picture.
I’m not a participant in the War of the Birds any more than Maya Angelou was a zoo-keeper or hunter on a safari. For the most part, I’m a worker of words and a processor of emotions. A teacher. Whether I go back to school virtually (a reason for practicing with the resurrection of my blogs and other backburner type of Erika projects–there are many) or face-to-face or much more demanding (a mixture of the two), I still am a worker of words and a safe holder of the dreams and fears of my students (and their parents). I practice. Poetry helps me process and brings clarity.
Essential to any change in public education is our understanding of what is essential to learning at all. Familiarity. This takes time and dedication and shared commitment. Familiarity is knowing, remembering, and identifying (at that moment or later with reflection) what emotion you are feeling and what triggered it. Learning comes when students (and teachers and parents) feel safe. Safety should be the norm, not feeling safe, but the conversation starts here for me. What makes us safe? What can we do right now to move that way?
My grief poem was like a reminder on how to get there. In schools (and at home), we don’t talk enough about grief, about loss, about what follows. And it is true I have students who don’t experience a crippling grief, but loss is still familiar, and if it’s not–maybe that’s the challenge to what happens next.
<p class="has-drop-cap" value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">In the classroom (virtually or otherwise), I invite discussion. Still, I am vigilant. I'll sing the morning song, but I won't let you rob our nest, even if it is a part of your role. A crow's going to do what a crow's going to do, but when even the lions and the elephants mute themselves…In the classroom (virtually or otherwise), I invite discussion. Still, I am vigilant. I’ll sing the morning song, but I won’t let you rob our nest, even if it is a part of your role. A crow’s going to do what a crow’s going to do, but when even the lions and the elephants mute themselves…
With the publishing of my husband’s 3rd book, The Complete Orlando, Florida, Civil Rights Movement: Cooperation, Communication, and Reflections, 1951-1971, the current state of affair has required much discussion. We tread lightly, Fred and I, around the news of the day and work. Time together is important and I don’t personally invite most topics since we moved in this house. We both know these are there. We have 5 children, a grandchild, many, many good friends and loved ones with overly complicated and beautifully simplified words, words, words. And we have our own. However, discussion is what is needed.
Treading lightly, we thus discussed our individual roles in the greater (because they are too ominously present) institutional systems. Our lives today have been set upon this same landscape. We work with a similar set of worldviews within current belief systems, which seems both to harbor and shoulder oppressions and epic anger or (worse of all) massive indifference. These are the same institutions that also provide nourishment (however lean it is for some) and opportunity. And, overall, we can always agree that we have been blessed with good friends, a beautiful family, and home.
I could catalog inequities I see in a year in school. Likewise, I could also name every day in which my husband came home from a shift (or two or three or four) safely. Institutions. I’m pretty sure we both can still see some of our darkest hours in our work roles, but we mostly keep these hidden after all these years, which is why any discussion is tenuously challenging and uncomfortable (for me). What is said cannot be unsaid, just like what I can’t unsee what I’ve seen. Who am I to call upon my darkness as a weapon? Nevertheless, I can imagine, to a certain degree, the intensity with which Fred, as a police office, had to do his job in order to come home. Likewise, I CAN imagine my students and other people having experienced or experiencing epic wrongs and been hushed so they don’t even bother anymore. I can even name, regretfully, many times (with good intention or brilliant indoctrination), I was the person that caused a student pain unnecessarily, mostly through sarcasm. Words. Why do we wait to use the right ones? Who are today’s bards?
The advent of our supersized chaos demons coming to roost on both sides of 2020, with their demands of annihilation, human sacrifices, order from ranks or ranks from order, or just business as usual, muddies the water. We can’t see the future from the present or the past from the future, so how should I even approach students of next year? How do I even start a conversation in the digital or brick-and-mortar classroom of substance where students come willingly?
Moreover, educators have been talking about (but not much truthful discussing) the train wreck in American public education for a decade now. Somehow, this burning train went off a bridge into a river and re-emerged in a subway station in some city somewhere on fire again (and it was Florida train). Even with far greater (because they are too ominously present) immaculately conceived train wreck paradigms out there ready to be implemented by next week’s school board, teachers (as are police officers) are busy working. There seems never to be a good time to talk about all the elephants in the classroom, let alone the world (Life’s irony, not social distancing measures). Even without tests, we are still teaching to the tests (and there is NO discussion about them–I could even lose my teaching certificate for using my photogenic memory to analyze a question, let alone speak out about one of the most common ways the institution entrenches status quo and American ideals which leave us feeling less than what we truly are).
In the classrooms in my conscious carefully-selected memories, we read books and share stories. The words were soft like whispers then, but our classroom transformed and we became Hamlet or (in my case) Ophelia. On the American playground, I played cops and robbers, Axis and Allies, cowboys and Indians, bad guys against good guys, boys against girls, red Rosy, tag, king of the hill, and other games of social competition. I was unaware or lacked an understanding of privilege and power, but it was there among wonder and kindness. Now, it feels like I was just immature, practicing in a safer, kinder world only because I was without understanding of tragedy and hardship, of the true injustices hidden below the foundation of society not affecting me. And, now enters the constant balancing act of finding the words and not giving away too much of the plot (and do I even really know it?). That’s the thing with conversation…you think you know what the person is going to say…you project it on them, whether it was said or not, you plan, you refute…no, not with true discussion. You hold space for everyone before yourself.
And, as things go, in any marriage or classroom when two isn’t one (ek), we have different ways of seeing the world. The discussion, the witnessing and bearing witness, being present to uncomfortable truths is important and uncomfortable because it is intimate. Not everyone sees the necessity, not everyone jumps at a chance to put it all out there, and some will even intuitively run away or fight it. I’ve been working on this in the classroom: the structure of a common vocabulary based on consent given not taken (by me or anyone else). It’s still a balancing act. That’s the work of civil servants…trying to let any trace of altruism and Love be untarnished by the emperor’s newest clothes, which are just a cover up of blemishes and ulcers burned in institutional sanitation methods in order for everything to come out clean and white.
And here I am on the tightrope between two greater (because they too are ominously present) abysses. I’ve been working on balancing this whole time, and definitely still operating in full survival mode. Am I Evel Kneivel or Zarathustra? Or am I that teenage girl who still says, “Fuck that…let’s talk about Dido,” even though I never hear what’s really being said. What rabbit hole isn’t worth going down sometimes to see another possibility that always exists within the problem? And what problem doesn’t involve politics? And what politics doesn’t involve some personal driving force? Having felt my way in and out of this so many times (with the structure of the words, words, words), isn’t it possible to teach this? Is that what all my schooling was about? Whether the conversation is with oneself, or words in a book, or an author from 2000 years ago, or with a loved one, a lover, a foe, or even in a different language, conversation is necessary (just as force is necessary, in some cases), if only to provide a structured backdrop on which to practice how to just be and grow in spite of our circumstance…
Still, I am awake (I’m a professional–my personal mantra). I have resources and privilege which allow me access to realms (even when it says “everyone”) others cannot enter (that’s one oppression, my friends). I know I’m leaving a lot out. I ask of myself many things, but I demand of myself action beyond words. Can I contemporaneously commit to preserve, conserve, or change some part of myself to make the institutional systems for the better? What kind of world makes a person fear another doing their job? How do I tease out creative thinkers not just persistent reactors (and not just for my teacher evaluation)? How do I take a student gently into our own tragic human faults, seen and unseen, so that they see how choices, conscious and unconscious, can be made for everyone without losing sight of the wondrous human inventions that have given birth to civilizations as well as exploration?
I could make a case that waxing poetic is avoidance. I recognize my overuse of adverbs (adverbs being very difficult to teach as a second language depending) here and how the quality of my actions might make a more pronounced and instant impact, but for whom’s sake? I once thought I only should only teach reading and writing…but these same words, now, are more of a portal of transformation in whatever my content areas (I teach 4+ subjects in a school year). The same advent birthed chaos demons brought us writing, and with it, a ton of textual evidence of human suffering and man’s ways to eliminate suffering (a favorite BG quotes here and my favorite translation/text here), as well as methods of inflicting suffering (my first Latin sight reading on a test in high school was on torture).
In ancient texts lie ancient cities and landscapes built by our ancestors, sort of like parks and natural landmarks which call on some to plunder or pilgrimage (or both). Words pave (not past tense) a path by which a reader (or perhaps just a wanderer) might find (depending on the verb tense) these hidden gems. In the Indus Valley (and it probably stands to reason in many other places), the road gets paved right over the existing path (formidable important first words forgotten even beneath the below) and what still breathes beneath remains. What remains…words or something more? What is it but words unless you travel there with a teacher? How do we bring the millions of conversations which led to exploration and dialogue into today and held our heroes and heroines in equal regard, even in their humanness?
In reading, we call the purposeful and thoughtful placement of words and images throughout the the classroom a print-rich or literacy-enriched environment. In second language learning, we draw on comprehensible input, immerse ourselves and our learners in the target language (on everyone’s level) for 85-95% of the instructional period. Does it not stand to reason that students need to practice social interactions with a common vocabulary, since most of our life is spent trying to relate (or not) to another? Drilling and testing on the concept of epochs and eras with a classroom of 11 and 12 year olds (many of which are students who are DH/H) is EXACTLY why the train keeps going off the track (usually on fire). Still, maybe, must maybe, next year (or any year), a student will not only hear the words whispered to them, but also see.
Or at even better, understand why the women of Troy are still lamenting…
