engineering win
for my smart, clever firstborn
showing all those boys
Women Will Win
parenting
Live
walk until you can’t
then pull a hundred grass roots
out of the flowers
buy new bicycle
for youngest daughter’s growth spurt
(get new tape for yours)
visit local art
at museum exhibit
amazement beckons
a Sunday funday
filled with every last life lived
in these bright moments
Two-Sided
The Eritrean immigrants asked me, and then apologized profusely when I told them I turned 41 yesterday, for my ID at the liquor store today.
“Just because I am wearing a high school T-shirt does not mean I am in high school,” I attempted to joke. “I am a teacher at a high school, not a student.”
I tried to reassure them. “You’re just doing your job. Don’t apologize.” I hadn’t pulled in an ounce or a sip of wine yet. I carried my Riesling and 12-pack of Blue Moon the six blocks back home, gathering all my steps and burning all my calories before settling into a flurry of Friday tears.
My puppy and my daughters awaited me, pestering me for kisses (puppy) and dinner (teens). Mythili, as always, took charge, grilling pepper jack and cheddar-with-jam sandwiches, heating up our Friday-cop-out tomato soup while her mother paced the living room with her Riesling and screamed and cried, transcript search coming up empty, Facebook chat verifying that sixteen years into teaching, a master’s degree, thirty-six credits beyond a master’s degree, and a three-day teacher strike, had led her all to a salary less than what she’s making now.
The form to verify my “lost” credentials requires a two-sided copy of a transcript that I hand-carried six years ago and placed in a human resources officer’s hands.
The waiting period for the said transcript, if ordered today (done) from the university is fifteen business days.
The time I have to post a double-sided grievance to my school district is thirty actual days.
On the backside of a transcript is a watermarked imprint of how any given university determines eligibility. A description of credits. A copyright. A promise of authenticity.
But no. Actual. Credits.
Words.
Truths.
My school district, my world, our America, is two-sided.
Get your education… so you can pay loans for the rest of your life.
Advertise (through movies and media) to the world how attainable the American Dream is… until anyone with a skin tone darker than Northern European comes and realizes that slavery is real, present, and unforgiving.
Jump through every damn hoop to save a section of your soul with 150 kids every day… just so that bureaucracy can take it away.
Upload your life into a system so unforgiving that you will wonder why you teach… Until, two sides later, you remember why you teach:
Your daughter dancing with the rainbow of humanity at this high school.
Immigrants’ voices sharing their poetic souls all day long so that even the most disengaged students put their phones away. 
Students celebrating art with as much gusto as cheering on the soccer team.
How two-sided the soul becomes when asked, Why do I teach?
Why do I put myself through this constant criticism?
Why do I accept such a pathetic salary?
The answer is two-sided.
Because I love them more than money.
Because I spent the money to be here with them.
It’s not really a coin or a toss. It’s just the other side of the story.
I Remember Columbine
I remember newspapers for a week filled with grisly details,
journalists flooding our city like vampires in search of storied blood
I remember crying all day on my twenty-first birthday,
the tears permanent streaks of worry on my cheeks.
I remember thinking, How can I become a teacher now?
and, Nothing could be worse than this.
I remember that it was ten miles from my home,
with faces just like my own now plastered on screens across the world.
I remember thinking that it could never happen again,
that with this media spotlight on the atrocity, it wouldn’t.
I remember my first lockdown, two years later,
kids huddled alongside me under desks like rats in a sewer.
I remember the silent votes of every white man and woman
in charge of our devolving society that grips guns like lifeblood.
I remember clutching my six-year-old child for hours
after twenty of her American peers were murdered
for the love of the Second Amendment.
I remember living in Spain where the scariest sound
was an infantile firecracker celebrating El Día de San Juan
and every door was open for the world to walk into
what it might be like to Not. Be. Afraid.
I remember when I once believed that someone would shout,
Enough is enough! and Congress would listen
instead of filling their pockets with NRA dollars.
I remember my high school in the ‘bad neighborhood,’
before a police officer stood at the door,
before I’d ever heard the word lockdown,
before I even knew what we would become.
A Credible Threat
At 12:39 a.m., my husband’s phone rang. A text message beeped. He rolled over and turned it off, not revealing to me the message, though I tossed and turned for the next fewer-than-five hours of “sleep” until my alarm startled me into a flood of my own messages. Realities of life in America in 2019.
One person, an 18-year-old child, lost and confused, dead before the day was over, shut down every major school district in a massive metropolitan area today.
This child, infatuated with the Columbine massacre that has been the backbone of her school upbringing, made “a credible threat” to “a school” and kept all the parents, teachers, officials, and students in a state of shock for the remainder of the day.
A girl, a lost girl brought up by school lockdowns, a mass shooting every day of her young life (of all of our lives), school shootings that have taken the lives of teens and six-year-olds, schools surrounded by armed police officers and security guards, and social media filled with conspiracy theorists and bullying…
Was she a credible threat, or was it us?
Is it us?
When will guns ever be considered a credible threat? When will gun stores who sell shotguns to 18-year-old out-of-state children be considered a credible threat? When will assault rifles be considered a credible threat? When will her online banterings (cries for help), the banterings of every filled-with-angst teen, be considered a credible threat?
One “shoe bomber” entered a plane. We remove our shoes in security.
Thousands of children died in car accidents. We put them in car seats.
Thirty babies died in baby swings. We recall the swing.
Are these credible threats?
Just as Sol Pais grew up with the Columbine tragedy as a backstory to her school experience, I have grown into my teaching career, my parenting life, with its everyday reality. I was a junior in college when the front pages of both newspapers in Denver were filled for weeks with the news of, Why? Who? How? All the major networks sent reporters that day for an emergency special. All of America, seeing the horrific scene played out on television, sat in numb disbelief.
Twenty years later, hundreds of school shootings later, there might be a few headlines for a day or two. A growing number of protests. A teary-eyed president’s remarks. An ignorant president’s remarks.
Yet, we have done everything but what we need to do to prevent the credible threat of another mass shooting.
We have lockdowns and lockouts at least four times per school year just for practice. Our kids huddle like rats in cages under desks in a dark corner of the classroom, always acutely unaware if this will or will not be the day they die.
We have more security guards and armed police officers walking the hallways. Some schools even arm teachers.
We watch videos to start the school year showing active shooter training for our district staff.
We have metal detectors, clear backpacks, and every exterior door locked to outsiders.
We have to talk to our kids, all of our kids–our students and our own–on a regular basis about reporting threats to Safe2Tell, about keeping an eye on suspicious students, adults, about what guns can and will do.
But…
The most credible threat in the world, the simplest solution, has never even been considered.
What if we just stopped selling guns? Assault weapons?
What if this 18-year-old child barely knew about Columbine because, after all the horrifying media attention after it occurred, our senators and representatives went back to Congress and represented the victims, rather than the NRA, and passed a bill that could save every credible threat like this from ever happening?
What if, at 12:39 a.m., I could dream a peaceful dream, and not have to think about what I’ll say to my daughters today and my students tomorrow?
There is only one credible threat here, and it is not an 18-year-old child.
It is ourselves. Our government. Our inability to bring the life, liberty, and security that we so proudly proclaim we offer in this “dreamland” of the United States.
The Best and Worst Time
clouds that light the sky
over friends who will still play
childhood’s sunset
Monday Brights (Instead of Blues)
cat-loving reader:
the only words to describe
my middle child
Choose Students, Not Charters
For most of my daughter’s sixth-grade year, I hated 2:00 p.m. Like clockwork, I’d receive a call and an email at 2 telling me that she had to stay after school for some form of detention, euphemistically labeled college prep, mandatory tutoring, or refocus.
My husband and I, both working parents with inflexible schedules, had to scramble to figure out something.
At 4:00, she’d have to sit in a room with all the other misguided students and compose essays about why she forgot her MLA heading on her paper, why her computer wasn’t 80% charged at the start of the school day, why her belt was brown and not black, why she DIDN’T HAVE AN ERASER ON HER PENCIL.
At 5:00, I’d have to fight rush hour traffic, carpool absent because of the delay, trek across town to extract her after a 9-hour school day and sit with her as she cried over ninety minutes of homework.
These are the hoops “involved” parents jump through to get “the best” charter school education.
Imagine these hoops for single parents, parents without this school near their neighborhood, or parents of special needs children who struggle with remembering things.
Imagine students of color being held after more than all the white kids combined as they groom them to obey the norms of white society.
You don’t have to imagine it because the majority of families at these charter schools have helicopter parents whose sole goal is COLLEGE. At any cost. Even the cost of shutting down neighborhood schools, stripping Black and Brown neighborhoods of their sense of community and teachers of a decent salary.
Imagine a typical public school, where we open our doors to every student, and we don’t make parents sign contracts where they agree to last-minute detentions because we work with students on second chances.
Imagine students of every demographic and race, every language, whose family circumstances prevent their parents from being as involved as the parents at these charter schools, finding a teacher who will give them an eraser, a teacher who will forgive their missteps, a teacher who will listen to their whole story and guide them to wherever their future might be, college or elsewhere.
Imagine if there was a regular public school in every neighborhood, some with magnet programs, some with choice-integration bussing, and all with teacher salaries with public pension retirement plans that hold them in the profession years longer than their Teach-for-America counterparts promise.
Imagine if our school board put their vote of confidence in those students who don’t have involved parents instead of putting money into the pockets of charter-bond-selling millionaires and charter CEO salaries.
Imagine if school choice was just one word different: student choice.
Choose students. Not the broken promise and the disruption to our day, our lives, and our public education.
March Mantra
skiing is breathing
fresh snow brings fresh life to life
winter is heaven
My Chauffeur
a milestone reached
after sixteen years a mom
she earns her license
Step Write Up 