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

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.

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

the broadmoor is a bully

So I went to the last Public Strawberry Hill Master Plan meeting tonight. It was an open house, lots of pretty pictures around, very few people. I was honestly doing ok with the aerial photographs of trails and such, but when I got to the conceptual plan for the picnic area, my heart broke. Not one picnic pavilion for 100, but what appears to be three picnic pavilions, room for at least 250. And a paved road right up into the meadow for their shuttles, with a loopy turnaround.

I had taken some half page flyers with me, simple bullet points outlining where we are in the court case, along with info on the Parks Department's North Cheyenne Cañon Master Plan and its effects on South Cheyenne Cañon. I put them out on the tables, a little pile on each side of their comment boxes, and then proceeded to walk around and talk to folks. The flyers were purple, so they stood out against the white tabletops.

About five or ten minutes later, I noticed they were gone. I scanned the room and saw a woman (one of several standing at the entry table) holding them behind her back. Some of them had been torn in half, and some of them were folded over in her hands.

I approached her and said, "Can I have my papers back please?" At this point, I really didn't think anything of it, and fully expected her to just hand them over. As I reached out my hands for the papers, she pulled away and said that I would have to ask Jack about it. That's Jack Damioli, President and CEO of the Broadmoor. You can't miss him in the room: he's the tall one with the cashmere pullover sweater and loafers. So I walked over to him and asked, "Could I get my papers back please?" Slowly, he stuck his hands into his front pockets, pulled the insides out, looked down at me, and said,"I don't have your papers."

And yeah, it really was in that tone you just imagined: full of power and sarcasm, and it was condescending and patronizing as heck.

Miraculously, somehow, I was still calm at that point, and replied:
"I know you don't have my papers, she has my papers." (gesturing to the woman across the room).
Jack: "Then why are you talking to me?"
Me: "Because she told me that I had to come and ask you."
Jack: "Well, I don't know where your papers are."
Me: "She has them, I told you that already, and I would like them back."

Again, I point out the woman who had them, but she doesn't have them in her hands anymore, which gives him even more license to repeat the line that he doesn't know where they are. This went on for several more crazy-making rounds of me asking/demanding and him lying/deflecting.

Then finally Jack said I couldn't get them back, because it was their meeting. I even told him I would put them in my purse and take them home, if they would just gave them back. He still refused.

I'm not sure where it went from there... me wandering around the room, visibly shaken now, close to tears, a Colorado Springs police officer standing by the door on duty for them (?!), watching me.

I decided to approach the woman one more time and ask her if I could have my papers. She just shrugged and gave me a look that said it was out of her control. I saw a glimmer of pity in her eyes, and I know that if it were just her and me, she might have given them back. She did see me getting one of the chocolate chip cookies from the tray at the end of the meeting, and she told me to take as many as I wanted; I kinda think it was her way of saying she was sorry. I also know if it were just Chris Lieber (used to work for Parks, now works for NES) and me, he might have helped. We had had a good conversation earlier in the meeting -- spirited yet respectful. But their hands are tied, I get it.

I suppose it was at that point that I became the crying crazy woman in the room.

"Just give me back my papers. It's not that hard. They're mine. My paper, my ink. I want them back."

I sat down at a table and just decided to wait. I waited until they were packed up and getting ready to leave, which happened to be about 45 minutes before the meeting was actually scheduled to end, because there was no one there. I waited until Jack Damioli had left. I waited until I thought it was safe to ask one more time. But by then I knew it was hopeless. I simply said to the half dozen or so workers, "I guess I'm not getting my papers back, am I?" Without looking me in the eyes and without really saying anything, I had my answer.

I'm still shook. Not because they took my papers, destroyed them, and infringed upon my First Amendment right, but because one powerful man reduced that whole room to subservience, and me to tears.

The Broadmoor is a bully. Go to brunch with your friends, spend the night with your spouse, ride the cog railway (oh, wait, you can't!) if you want, but please know this: if you do, your money helps pay that man to humiliate me.

My Master Plan

I sit with my notebook and write at a wobbly,
splintery picnic table, one of many under
this public pavilion.  At least some underpaid
city employee was told to paint them brown.

Through the scrub oaks, I see:  four
old ladies with hiking poles and sun hats,
three hardcore mountain bikers, a snake
of multi-generational hikers, two deer grazing,

a young couple from Palmer Park stringing
up a hammock, an elder couple with binoculars,
a mother and teenage daughter looking for a trash
can in which to place their pooch's poop.

I scramble up a short social trail to the mesa
above the pavilion, and there it is: a spectacular
view of Strawberry Fields, where King Philip
plots his Broadmooresque stable and bbq party venue.

Up here, I watch a hawk hover, hear a bluebird
call, and discover a decomposing coyote.
Below, in the south canyon, I watch white whales shuttle
up and down, as a blaring ambulance struggles

upstream towards Seven Falls. The trails
on this wild and unnamed mesa below Mt. Cutler
are slated to be closed in the new Master Plan --
a plan meant to deflect from the city's neglect.

What should a Master Plan have?  What does a City Park need?
Closed public roads? More trailheads and parking lots for tourists?
Private-public partnerships where somebody profits?
Ideas that will never be funded because we can't even afford to take care of what we've got?

Nah.  What we really need is simple and more cost-effective than that:

places that cater not only to our tourists, but to anyone seeking respite from the city

picnic tables made from those newfangled-recycled-weather-resistant materials

small parking areas that make the creek and its coolth easily accessible to all

trail systems that respect and reflect the needs of the locals who use them

a limited number of cars, but only during peak summer weekends

a regular maintenance crew to keep the picnic areas beautiful

friendly city park rangers to enforce the rules

a budget that reflects our values

trash cans near picnic sites

clean, open restrooms

and above all else...

that playground

you promised

the children

in 2003,

but never

built.