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.

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.  

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.

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.