Month: June 2015

The Ultimate Ruler

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(NOTE: Reposted from 2 years ago, when I was living in Spain)

I was walking to one of the last classes I will teach after spending ten months in Spain. In the hallway were various groups of students ranging in age from twelve to seventeen. Just as I was weaving my way through them to get to my class “on time” (give or take five minutes—it IS Spain, after all), I heard quite a bit of shouting from a group of boys down the hall. The level of their voices made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck as I immediately sensed danger. Was there an argument that would lead to a physical fight? Would someone end up on the floor?

I looked down at the group, and within seconds I was reminded, once again, that this was no American high school, no American set of adolescents, but rather, the smiling, jubilant faces of boys shouting just for fun.

Teachers here don’t have to worry about guns, knives, drug busts or gangs. There’s almost no such thing as violence of any kind. It wouldn’t even occur to most Spanish students to throw a punch or make a threat. They joke and play and spend their lives outside of school soaking up American video games and movies, filled with violent acts and destruction that is excruciating for a weak-minded girl like me to watch. But they would never actually do any of the things presented in what is to them a fantasy world.

While this year hasn’t been easy on my family and I, I have great appreciation for some aspects of this culture. So many times I’ve had Spaniards ask me, “Why does America think it needs guns? Are we living in Biblical times? An eye for an eye? Haven’t we developed more as a society?”

It is ironic that the ruler of the free world takes our freedom away every day by making us live in fear. When are we ever going to be able to wake up not having to worry that our children can go to school and be safe from some psycho who’s armed enough to defend an entire nation? When will we see an end to the political banter that ends nowhere, so afraid of stripping a singular right from the great Bill of Rights, when we all know the historical (and presently not applicable) context with which it was written? When will we begin to realize that violent acts are NOT A PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE?

Are we really born more violently than the rest of the world? I don’t think so. We are born with the same choices in life, to choose the right or wrong path. But more and more, as a society, the wrong path seems to be more tempting to Americans than to anyone else on Earth. We have a culture that has a far-reaching influence on the rest of the world, primarily through media. And yet… rather than adoring it, admiring it, wishing that they could be a part of it, I have a feeling that most foreigners would admonish huge segments of our society. No public health care. Universities that cost more than anyone could ever afford to pay. And guns available to every man, woman, and child…

I wish I could say that I look forward to going back to America with the same excitement I had about coming here. In so many ways I do. America will always be my home, will always pull at my heartstrings and be at the core of who I am. But living abroad, even for the brief period that I have, has made me question the values of my country more than ever before. How phenomenal it would be for my girls to go to school and never witness a fight, never have to worry about who’s carrying what, never have to have a lockdown or hide behind desks because an armed criminal has escaped.

In Spain, there are rowdy students. Disrespectful students. LOUD students. But there are no fights, no guns, and virtually no violence. It is so easy to say, guns don’t kill people, people kill people… but what are we really saying when we make available the ultimate weapon? The weapon becomes the ultimate ruler of our society, and its violence trickles down into the tiny cracks of our humanity… through the Internet, the movies, the streets… the hallways of our schools.

When will we be able to walk the hallways of our schools, the true foundation of our future, without feeling like prisoners? Something needs to change. How many people need to die for us to realize that something needs to change?

All You Need is Love

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A couple examples of the diversity of South HS, our city, and our society: one family had a 105-year-old Caucasian great-grandma, a 70-something grandma (a South alumnus), an adopted son from Vietnam (also a South alumnus), his Vietnamese wife and freshman son.
 
 Another family lived in a duplex. On one side lived two moms. We walked through the younger son’s bedroom to the other half of the duplex where the two dads lived. They are all raising two sons.
 
 Both families received us warmly and had well-spoken, artistic, athletic children who want to come to our school for its friendliness and DIVERSITY.
 
 These are eye-opening experiences. You can see firsthand that the only thing that really makes a family is LOVE.
 
 If you took a moment to really see what it’s like on the other side of closed doors, your whole worldview could change. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
 
 
 

Full Circle

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this news sent so quickly in the midst
of my latest sacrifice (summer school)
brings it all together–
the twelve plus years of parenthood
where each of us stepped out of our careers
to stay home
to be there, wholly be there,
for every waking moment of their childhood

(it was mostly him,
a remorse i will carry
long after they have left the house)

and three years back,
when i made that choice
to carry this family to Spain,
and all the weight of it
that i have carried since
(was it the right choice?
was it worth the debt?
will we lose our house?
are the girls’ schools good enough?
have they lost every speck of Spanish?)

all of it comes full circle with his text:
I got the job.
The REAL job.
The DREAM job.
the job he’s been waiting for
since he stepped out of the barracks
and into The Real World,
where he was offered contract after contract
(no benefits, no real hope)
and was better than most of the company employees
(and better than any man you will ever meet)

and here we are.
seventeen years into the marriage.
twelve and a half into parenthood.
a stay-at-home chef, hairstylist,
chauffeur, housekeeper, computer technician,
financial analyst, tax adviser, veteran,
TELECOM TECH.
here we are, dream-of-dreams,
full circle, lifetime opportunity later.

and it was so worth it.
so, so, so worth it.

Fruit of Labor

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six a.m. wake up
 equals branches for fire
 i worked for this light
 
 

Weathering

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flat tire, blue sky
 my Saturday summer break
 (till summer school ends)
 
 goslings with goslings
 we cycle through challenges
 and beat the rain home
 
 My Brother’s Bar waits
 with a perfect patio
 and Arnold Palmers
 
 REI repairs
 what’s left of my human faith
 ride home: tires full
 
 the creek overflows
 not enough to stop my girl
 (daredevil like me)
 
 now, patio time
 lighter rain than what we’ve had
 such is life, weather
 

Call to Prayer

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my morning prayer call:
 please end these flooding puddles
 water can destroy
 
 our house ruined thrice
 our hope so oft washed away
 ponds where there was lawn
 
 but look at the view
 the first-world rainy view
 to make my request
 
 after the drenched walk
 to a surprise bonus check
 to start my summer
 
 it’s like He listened
 by midday? pools and blue skies
 walking can save souls
 
 

Creepy

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one cutting remark
 makes me long for real friends
 why did they all leave?
 
 
 

The Same Zip Code

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we make home visits to welcome freshmen
who haven’t set foot in our school.
on the drive we discuss gentrification,
how these kids are coming across town
to our school because they think it’s better
(but it’s so much better than the remnants
of gangs that linger in their northwest ‘hood,
in the high school that hasn’t caught up
with the white money-chasers)

inside the first house, a blond bombshell
(shy as a country field mouse) lets us into
her gutted bungalow, replete with
granite counters all around, tells us she chooses us
because the people at our school were nicer
than the pompous competitor next to City Park

we make our way back to the south side
and step into a mansion built
on top of one of Denver’s many scrapes,
with oriental rugs leading from
hallway to music room to never-ending kitchen,
with a nice mother and a moody teenage boy
who grunts responses to questions
(because manners can’t be bought)

and then, within the same zip code of
block after block of mansions that
have all but stomped out the middle class,
we pull up to our last stop:
The Red Pine Motel,
settled along Broadway
between a bar and a pot shop.

in a tiny apartment without a table,
a man stands eating a bowl of soup,
his hand half broken and bandaged,
his pony tail tied at the nape of his neck,
his high-heeled wife potty training
her three-year-old in the adjacent room.

“you can come and look, do your check,
do what you need to do.”
we exchange glances.
do they they think we’re the cops?
are they used to this?
my colleague reassures him that this is a friendly visit,
that we have papers and t-shirts
and hope for a better tomorrow
(God save us all)

we sit on the bench-like singular piece of furniture
in the kitchen/living/dining room,
(no more than 100 square feet)
with a miniature gas stove and not a single
speck of a counter, granite or otherwise

the boy is running late
and both parents engage in disgruntled talk
when he arrives,
and they plain as day tell us what he’s like
and he plain as day answers.
they use words like imaginative.
engaging.
photographic memory.
and the little girl sports her
oversized South Future Rebel t-shirt,
and the uncle waits outside and begs
to have a t-shirt too,
so proud are they of sending their boy
on the one mile
(the one million mile)
walk between their dwelling and
the grandiose Italian architecture
that will be his high school,
where he will walk past
block after block of mansions
in the same zip code
through the disappearing middle class
into the institution
that will grant him a future
or place him right back
into the thin line of poverty
that hovers over our city.

and this is what it’s like to be a teacher
in today’s world.

The Buck that Burns Across My Back

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It is 14:52 on the eve of ESL summer school. We have spent an entire day, AN ENTIRE DAY, planning for a sixty-five-minute lesson from curriculum that we first laid our eyes on this morning after a completely different and unrelated ENTIRE DAY presentation of curriculum yesterday. And at this moment, he announces that tomorrow, for the first day, the schedule will be “different.” That all our lesson planning has just been flushed down the toilet that has become our society.

I cried on my two-mile walk this morning. Not because it was too hot, or the views of the Perfect Denver Neighborhood weren’t impeccable. Or because I had to teach summer school for four weeks to pay for summer camp for my girls for ONE. But because of an article I read about the University of Phoenix, of all things. About how, in five years, their enrollment has decreased by fifty percent. And starting July 1st, a new law will require that they prove that their graduates make enough money to pay back the loans that their for-profit greed has forced them to take.

I was thinking these things as I made my way across town to the locale of this year’s grant-funded summer school, the University of Denver, a NONprofit institution with gorgeous grounds and transgender bathrooms and air conditioning and classes that start at $1200 a CREDIT.

And how screwed I am. Not because I think that the University of Phoenix is so damn amazing that it could grind up the 100-year-old trees of Denver’s “Ivy League of the West.” But because I have to do this. I have to do this damn summer school and have a part time job as an adjunct-but-never-real professor, that I have to bend my will to the beck and call of disorganized, incapable-of-communicating administrators, all for the buck that burns across my back.

That the measly $600 that I sometimes earn in a month at the University of Phoenix is sometimes all that keeps us from bowing down to debt.

And when he comes in at 13:33 and tells me that they haven’t been able to contact more than 11 students for our summer school, I ask him if it will be cancelled, if I will be shit out of luck on all counts this Tuesday. “No worries… it’s already accounted for… a grant. No pasa nada.” And his blue eyes and Argentinian accent are slappable. “And who paid for it?” I demand, the third time in two months I’ve asked, a question he’s dodged until this moment. “Well… you have. The taxpayers. The READ Act.”

And it all circles back to me. The University of Denver grounds I stand on that have been manicured by professional gardeners. The school I could never afford to attend, nor will any of my children even think of applying to. The public education that is filled and funded with so many holes, twenty-seven gorgeous textbooks, full-color photos and activities galore, a slew of classroom supplies including an electric pencil sharpener, that 11 students will take advantage of … all the rest? To waste.

The “for-profit” evil University of Phoenix that has allowed my family to break free of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle that is a teacher’s salary, that allowed us to live on a pittance in Spain, that has allowed me to… breathe.

What is an education worth? Why won’t parents commit to a forty-five minute bus ride for free materials, expert teachers, individualized classes, and free breakfast and lunch? Why won’t the University of Denver be asked to publish data on how many students graduate with a super-fancy psychology degree and start their salaries at $22,000? Why won’t our government ever just see that EDUCATION SHOULD BE FREE??

This is my Tuesday. Let the games begin. The Hunger Games, real world style.

Recycle

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a wasted training
 a waste of district dollars
 a waste of my day
 
 but at six-thirty
 they shoveled mud off the path
 giving me my ride
 
 at least there’s a view
 a day’s cycling release
 to shed off the waste