Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Gardening contains all the Stages of Grief

The initial elation of DENIAL is in the planting, 

scientifically believing that something will sprout

from a seed.   It's experimental magic.

It isn't even time to pray yet.

Outside, I plant straight rows of peas and gently scatter carrots.

Inside, he sets seeds he's saved into tiny black pots 

he has also saved.  They take up space in the dining room, 

while we watch them grow into tomatoes and peppers.


ANGER is reserved for the animals

even though it's not their fault.

Did we build the fence high enough to keep out the damn deer?  

Don't forget to close the gate!  

How many little black flea beetles did he crush

between his fingers today?  It's the tiniest of battles

in a world wide war, but still,

it's ours to fight.  And it's better than fighting each other.


In July, the BARGAINING begins.

What is the one thing you'd sell your soul for?

Hail netting that holds?  A mild mid-summer? 

At least the devil listens.

There's an abundance ready to cut and clean and cook and eat

and I realize I'd sell my soul

for time to go backwards (just for a little while)

and for one single red beet to pull out of the ground.


When you're down to seeds and stems —

that's DEPRESSION.

When the zinnias turn brown and hang their dead heads 

and the tomatoes go to mush on the vine

and we wonder if it's worth it to water.

He says this is the last salad 

I say these are the final flowers

It's October. The hummingbirds have left.


ACCEPTANCE is noticing the purple hues

of what might be the last morning glory, 

not caring if it is the last morning glory.

There are seeds to save.  Maybe

we'll try for some more lettuce,

or clone some tomatoes and peppers.

I'll put dead flowers in the vase he gave me.

He won't forget to put roses on my grave.






Friday, June 12, 2020

that classroom vibe

INTRO:
Today is the last day of the Advanced Institute of the Denver Writing Project. Coming as it did on the heels of our transition to remote learning and the Black Lives Matter movement, we all had a lot to process. Our assignment, at the end of the week, after much reading, reflection, Zoom meetings, online discussion boards, and three eye-opening, mind-blowing writing workshops with Nicole Piasecki, Jovan Mays, and Mark Overmeyer, was to answer this prompt: "Using your own style and structure, create a personal essay that describes your identity as a teacher and/or your teaching philosophy." Here's what I managed to write, out of a combobulated brain full of so many thoughts...

VERSE 1:
Sunday afternoon
my 19-year-old White son 
went downtown, 
to City Hall
where he stood
next to his Black girl friend
holding a small piece of cardboard 
cut from a box, 
on which he had written in black sharpie:
VIBE CHECK THE POLICE


CHORUS 1:
Monday morning I was asked: “What is your vibe right now? What is your teaching vibe?” The fact that this word— vibe— had entered my world for two days in a row struck me as somehow important.  Synchronous.  Serendipitous. Vibey.  
My vibe right now is worry.  And doing projects to keep from worrying.  Grief and mourning for classroom and country I pour into scrubbing the tub, chipping the paint, baking the muffins, and above all else: re-arranging the furniture.   I wonder if this is a distraction, or a healthy outlet for emotion. Or maybe it’s an attempt to change the vibe in my home, the way I change it in my classroom.      


VERSE 2:
I’ve heard people say 
to check in on your Black colleagues
I haven’t done this
I don’t know how to
Yet


CHORUS 2:
Student writer Nick Speranza, Arts Section Editor for his high school’s online news site The Radnorite, declared vibe to be the 2019 word-of-the-year. He wrote perhaps the best definition of vibe check that I could find:   “A vibe check is a genuine expression of empathy, a joking threat that encourages your friends to be happy, and a bizarre internet joke all at once.”  

On the surface, a vibe check means “How are you?  What’s going on?”

At a deeper level, however, it seems to be asking, “What are your struggles? Are you ok? How can I help?”


You can always vibe check a mother by asking about her children.  Maybe that’s a place I can start.


BRIDGE:
White socks
Black shoes
I bet her mama shined those shoes
the night before, scrubbed
her white socks and white blouse and white sweater 
so clean
the White children would have nothing to laugh at
Ruby was brave
Her mama was braver
Would I have done it?
Allowed my child to be the bridge?


What words did she say to prepare her daughter
before she watched her be marshaled 
away with four White men?


When you walk into that school, 
you old your head high,
Ruby Girl, but remember
to look down when you come to those steps,
‘cause everyone will be waiting for you to stumble


And remember to breathe, ok? 
As long as you just keep breathin’, you gon be alright.


And she was.
Ruby Bridges vibe checked them all.

Ruby Bridges


VERSE 3:
The classroom vibe is everything
I create the vibe
starting from the outside


Good Vibes
don’t happen by accident
You have to orchestrate
them, which requires a magic wand
strings of fairy lights
three comfy chairs and a sofa
mismatched wooden bookshelves
along every wall
(where you somehow know where every book
is even though they are not in alphabetical order)


You even have to re-arrange the furniture
to metaphorically match your genre:
Poetry, a seated circle around a round rug
Memoir,  small groups for sharing
Fiction, sitting directly across from an IR of their own choosing
Informational, rows facing forward, 
Literary analysis returns us to our circle, older this time
Argument, two sides facing in


My classroom isn’t where I work,
it’s an extension of my Self


This is what I am afraid of losing —
If my students cannot feel that classroom vibe,
how will I be able to teach them?


The outer vibe creates the inner vibe. 
More than one student has told me 
that the 90 minutes they spend in my class
every other day
is the only time they feel calm.


How can I re-create that safe haven in a virtual world?  


Have we been liberated from fluorescent oppression, 
only to find ourselves in a blue light sleepless state?
What have we lost?
What have we gained?


CHORUS 3: 
We have been given an opportunity to re-think, re-question, and re-purpose ourselves as educators.  We didn’t give CMAS, and the world didn’t end!  We changed grading and teacher evaluation policies overnight in ways we never would have considered before!  Inequities were made visible and impossible to ignore!  Police have been voted out of our schools, curriculum is being re-visioned, and teachers are realizing that we have a role to play in dismantling our very own system.


Now is the time to examine the questions that underlie the questions.  The time to ask all the hows and whys.  The time to spout crazy ideas that maybe don’t sound so crazy anymore.  

Teachers need to bring up questions, again, about school funding structures and all the vestiges of history that have left our school system, still, in so many places, separate but unequal. We need to ask why our teaching force is still predominantly White, and then we need to ask how can we find and support the young people of color who want to become teachers. Ruby Bridges had to take a test to get into William Frantz Public School — how and why is testing still being used to determine who gets to go where?


And maybe someday soon, Zoom will create a “seating chart” function that, when enabled, will allow me to continue re-arranging the “furniture”.  What if we could make circles, rows, and groups, out of those little windows, in an attempt to create that classroom vibe?   


It’s not a distraction, my need to re-arrange, it’s an acknowledgement that my physical space creates my vibe.  When there is thoughtful order and structure on the outside, only then can I maintain my inner vibe, the one that allows me to show up, speak truth, create community, and be present every day with my kids.





OUTRO:




I became fascinated by Ruby Bridges after writing from a photo of her in Jovan’s workshop (see "Bridge" above).  Afterwards, I learned that her mother actually went to school with her on that first day, and didn't let her go alone, as I had imagined it. They sat in the office for the whole day, watching all the other parents come in to take their children out of the school.  Ruby prayed for the protestors every day on her way to school, asking God to forgive them “for they know not what they do”.  She wasn’t angry at the other kids not playing with her, because she understood that it was their parents who made them do it, and if her parents had told her not to do something, she wouldn’t have either.  
Ruby experienced little trauma from her experiences, according to Robert Coles (a White psychologist who offered to help her pro bono).  Instead, Robert Coles learned from Ruby, about conviction and courage, grounded in faith.  

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

how learning happens while building a garden bed

1.  Use the appropriate tool inappropriately
2.  Fantasize the result of your labor and assume your binding spell and a little luck will be enough
3. Overestimate your ability to do it by yourself
4.  Confuse the top with the bottom
5. Worry about waking up your teenage son, outside whose window you are noisily hammering
6.  Ignore the details
7.  Forget that preparation and clean up are actually longer than the build


Sunday, July 1, 2018

multiple choice

A.
...but What You Do doesn’t fit into these boxes


the head gardener said from across her desk
which is larger than mine which is larger
than my students’.  It does give her some respect --
she’s almost at the top of the school-desk
chain, after all.


I mean, I know I’m just grounds maintenance
-sometimes-
and even need boxes
-occasionally-
But mostly, I’m the one who lets the Portulaca grow.


What I Do doesn’t fit into those boxes


It began so hopefully.


I took a seat, noticed the books that lined the shelves
behind her by authors I didn’t necessarily agree with.
Still don’t, filled as they are with all those foolish
lists and diagrams and charts.


And boxes.  
She opened my file, and with it the End-of-Year Conversation --


“You’re the best teacher I’ve got, you know
that don’t you?”
I mumbled some uni-syllables in some un-rememberable
order: “Wow. No. Um. Yes. Well. Oh. Um. Thanks.”
and considered (not too guiltily, I must confess),
the Pay-for-Performance payout I would get.


… but What You Do doesn’t fit into these boxes

B.  
You see, you and me, we can’t have a real relationship
if your job is to judge me, compare me to my friends,
and by those boxes that you checked
during a half-dozen ten-minute “Spot Observations” --


determine my salary.
Even you don’t like doing it, I get that, please don’t
tell me.  Even within an argument essay,
that's a pretty lame attempt at pathos.

C.
It’s all irrelevant anyway --
there will never be enough money
for us all to be Exemplary.


Race to the Top means someone’s at the bottom --
competition in our world sows even more doubt
and insecurity than we already know.


We are all the lettuce of the parable --
who need more water and less sun and certainly
less blame for not growing well.


D.
And what seeds are we really sowing?
Do we truly believe that the re-seeded Portulaca will bloom
in the cracks of our neighborhood sidewalks?
Or should we weed them out?
Rev up the Weed Eater and lop off their little blooming heads
to make things more tidy?

Don’t judge me for how many blossoms
there are, or how many seeds take root --
because some will never find their way under the concrete to the light
and others have been blown so far away
and planted themselves in places where
the woman holding the garden hose speaks another language.


E.
Schools are not Businesses
Students are not Consumers
Knowledge is not a Product



F.
You wanna know what our schools really need?


We need Professional Development we seek out ourselves
and you pay for it, and we convince all our colleagues
to come along because it will make us all Exemplary,
Racing to the Top as if we were holding hands
in a long line of Red Rover Red Rover
and we’re going to hold so tight that noone we call over
will ever be able to break through.


And we really don’t care if we get more money
for how tight we hold hands or
when our name gets called or
if we break through and get to bring someone over
to our side.   We’re the ones who would rather be
happy than rich and you know it --
and you’ve taken advantage of it for far too long


We need more men.  More people of color.
We will get neither if the seeds
of funding and fairness
don’t find a place to grow

We need accountability -- of course we do.
We would be the first to admit this.   
We strive every single goddamn day to be
accountable to our students -- and ourselves.


But it’s hard, because there’s no box for
Makes Moments of Joy or  
Uses Love to Impart Knowledge, or
Demonstrates Authenticity


And even if there were, there would still
be a gardener, looking out the kitchen window
comparing us to our fellow flowers
in the window box


We need our own mentor texts
(red ones and yellow ones and even some purple ones)
to cross-pollinate with the convictions of youth
and create a whole new, fearless hue.

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

orphans of meadowgrass

I want for her
a heart
that will never
be cursed,
shoeless feet
to walk the earth
beyond the wall
       (the boys who guard the gate
are so easily swayed)


outside her village,
she will learn
to sing her
own lullabies
    
(but that won't be the hardest part)
she will realize that she
has forgotten her mother's
voice, and she will not
recognize her mother
tongue.  She will wander
until she finds the well
in a land where she doesn't
know the rules.
      (except this one, which never changes -- animals always move toward water)

they may worship
the organs
of stoats
or have
no vowels
in their alphabet
or maybe even
not have
a word

for heart