even escapes bleed
with guilt-ridden winds of snow
that just can’t ice him
renewal
The Last Plane
Red hair, green eyes, tall and sure of himself, he peeks into my room, searching for a familiar face after lunch. I have seen this look before, as my students often seek their native-language counterparts.
“Who are you looking for?” I ask, the after-lunch crowds raucously meandering around our conversation.
“I am looking for you. I am a new student.” His accent is smooth and meticulous, genteel and articulate.
“Oh, OK. What’s your name?”
“Arvin.”
“Where are you from?”
“Iran.”
“Iran? … And… how did you get here??” But I have to look away because the tears are already in my eyes.
“I boarded the plane on Friday morning. I was in the last group of Iranians to come.”
I want to continue the conversation, but I can’t. I can’t because the tears will fall. I can’t because I have to teach for the next ninety minutes. I can’t because every waking moment of my life since this election, since this inauguration, have become a cycle of servitude. Of serving this need or the next, of wishing for this and receiving that, of hoping for the best and seeing the worst.
Instead I tell him where to sit and hand him a hard copy of I Am Malala. We will listen to the lilting Pakistani accent from Audible today as we continue to highlight human rights violations from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (we will highlight thirteen incidents in three chapters; we will connect media suppression and fascism and women’s rights to an education too closely to our lives; we will hear Fazlullah’s rants with an American accent).
My weekly volunteer returns from the library after a time with a group of students. She meets with my Iranian student to explain to him his role in the group as they create posters connecting Malala’s experiences to the UDHR. He fits in well and tells the group he cannot draw very efficiently, so can he please have the role of interpreting the quotation from the chapter and connecting it to the UDHR document?
He has been here for five days. He got in on the LAST PLANE.
After class, my retired-white-woman volunteer asks, “If he just got here from Iran, how come he can speak English?”
And that is when I decide.
I have to start here. Right in this moment. With this woman who drives one mile from her upscale mansion in Cherry Creek North to “make a difference.”
“Pretty much all of the students who come here learned English before they came. Usually only the refugees have interrupted schooling. But most countries start teaching English when the kids are in kindergarten.”
I swear her jaw drops ten inches. She wants to say something, but she doesn’t have the words to describe her ignorance.
“Oh…”
And now you know, I want to say. But I don’t. I don’t cry when I want to, because I have to be strong for them. I don’t tell her that Trump’s America is not my America, not Arvin’s America. I don’t tell her that the combination of students in this room represents the values of our country better than most Americans I know. That a red-headed Iranian entering my classroom five days past an executive order banning Muslims is as beautiful to me as Ziauddin’s tears in the New York Times documentary as he sees Swat for the first time in three months (which we watch at the end of class).
Instead, I say, “Thank you for your help. I’ll see you next Wednesday.”
And that is all I can do to resist.
All for today.
Dedicated to 1/27/17, A Day that Will Live in Infamy
For today, I met with 27 students from Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, and Iran to tell them that they probably shouldn’t leave the country or they might not be readmitted.
“Thank you, Ms., thank you for telling me.” Relief as transparent as grief in their eyes.
For today, first Trump said this about the Holocaust: “In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.”
THEN he said this as he signed the executive order banning refugees from Muslim countries: “We don’t want them here.”
For today, I told my colleagues in our district-mandated common planning, after twenty-seven minutes of discussing Socratic seminars, student placements, and teaching methodology, “Please let your students know about the recommendation from many aids groups and human rights lawyers: students and their families should not leave the country.”
For today, the ONE DAY that a district minion came to “observe,” his title Data Culture Specialist, not a day older than twenty-five and only experience in a Teach for America charter school network, writes: “Strength: The team was considering how current events impact student lives in a meaningful way (Executive Actions). They are team most impacted by these events as they have the most ELA/Refugee students.
Next Step: Continue to push the conversation to be about instruction or student learning/outcomes.” (n.a. Source unknown)
For today, I want to push the conversation: “Do you think my INSTRUCTION is more IMPORTANT than my STUDENTS’ LIVES?
For today: Student learning outcomes? Do you think they will LEARN ANYTHING if they are deported?
For today: I share all of this at dinner in the too-crowded local pub. My husband, my daughters, ages twelve and ten.
For today: My ten-year-old replies, “Mama… he must have been a Republican.”
For today: One. Small. Win.
Real Men Are Feminists
empowered futures
begin with activism
when necessary
Why We March
We march because we have daughters. Because no one has the right to grab them by their pussies. Because “women’s rights are human rights” (God bless you, HRC). Because the world needs a wakeup call.
We march because we have sons. Sons who will grow into men who can learn how to respect women.
We march because we can’t be bullied. We can’t have anyone–male, female, binary–telling us what to believe. What to do with our bodies. What level of education we deserve. What pay rate we should succumb to.
We march because of our mothers who fought their way into the workforce. Because of our grandmothers who balanced households and work during WWII. Because of our great-grandmothers who were forced into marriages with strange men. Because of every woman who was ever mistreated or controlled by a man.
We march because politics matter. Political policies affect our lives, from whether we have birth control choices to being able to play sports in school to having equal opportunities in higher education.
We march because we are women and men, Muslim and Christian and Hindu and Jewish and Buddhist and atheist, LGBTQ and straight, married and unmarried, parents and grandparents, employees and employers, activists and pacifists.
We march because we are human. Because the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we see it as a binding contract with our government. A binding contract with our world.
We march because we are free.
We march to protect that freedom.
We Name Ourselves Hope
for election week
we read I Am Malala
hope covers dark thoughts
Return of the Jedi
Star Wars costume show
followed by our nation’s truth:
the stench of failure
it seeps through the stacks
into our souls’ library:
let’s check ourselves out
depression so rank
we can’t even choose a book
from our city’s shelves
soon we will rise up
upon realization
of Trumpocracy
but it will take faith
beyond what fits in a poem
to fight the Dark Side
Honesty. Squared.
It’s a Friday in January and my mouth is running rampant. She came, she asked, and I don’t lie.
I know that people hate the truth, and the truth hurts (me the most–sometimes I think this), but she wanted the truth, and had twenty different ways for us to share it with her, most of them anonymous.
But I said what I thought. What we all think. What needs changing. What already works. I had evidence and examples, just like I always tell my students to write in their ACEITCEIT paragraphs. And I splayed my soul in front of God and everyone–I got a 3 (7 is the best), and Nick was as honest as could be when he spoke to me, and said, ‘I sat in my garage for three hours last night in turmoil over this’–and that humanization of the score meant more to me than anything else. That humanization–that’s what teachers want.
And do you know what they said (of course)? You let him give you a 3?
As if they hadn’t heard the whole conversation. As if it weren’t enough, the admittance, the heart on sleeve, the truth.
The, Why can’t you be a little more honest?
On with my day. Two more classes in the afternoon. Coming in a bit tired and a bit disgruntled about the first standardized test of the semester they took yesterday, but still willing to work for me. To discuss and argue about the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and try to decide which one they thought was most important, and write a paragraph about it (ACEIT today, just ACEIT).
If I’d known sophomore year was going to be all about paragraphs… one begins, unable to finish as she shakes her hands between sentences. But look at the progress you have made! I begin, but am interrupted by knock at the door number four for period five, with a para and a stack of papers three feet thick. Oh my God, what have I done? I start to ask, but cut myself off when I realize it’s the first four chapters of I Am Malala, copied times 160, because we still don’t have the books on our tablets.
You just saved my life, I whisper, and pile the pile on the desks.
Then, just after I thought my day was done after my sixth period valiantly pointed out a grammatical error on my sentence stem (Have you ever had an HONORS ELD course?? You should try it some time. Come by any day at 1:11), I remembered my ultimate task: covering the severe needs special education class. Seventh period. On Friday.
There is no amount of money in the world that could be a fair salary for what these women do every day. With needs that range from nonverbal to highly functioning, students who are obsessed with either Play-Doh or making sure my watch is exposed from under my long-sleeved shirt, to vacuuming relentlessly and walking around only on knees, to the computer dying mid-class and the wheelchair-bound girls moaning in distress, to the speech-language-pathologist teaching the alphabet to one girl for fifty minute straight, there. Is. No. Fair. Salary.
Before I left, I saw a man who I visited last summer during one of our home visits. He was chain smoking and playing violent video games in the projects, his tiny apartment nothing but white windowless walls. He was kind and adept, and described his rather difficult job of trying to keep severely autistic teenage boys from harming others. I suggested he apply at our school since his daughter would be attending there. You have a severe needs program there? I didn’t even know! Today I saw him for the first time, and we fist-bumped. You’re the reason I even have this job, he told me.
Best moment of my day.
Or, the walk. Yes, I got in a walk after all that honesty and writing and chaos. Around the park with the little dog we’re watching. And the winter light sparkled just so on those geese, perfect silhouettes against the season.
These moments allowed to me before Izzy entered the car and spilled the entire sex ed story, provided by none other than Planned Parenthood and a literal wooden penis named Woody. Yes, they demonstrated how to put the condom on Woody. Yes, “Becca” taught them how to insert a female condom using only her fingers. Yes, they passed around an IUD and pressed it against their skin so everyone in the class could see what it felt like. Yes, the main way to prevent pregnancy is abstinence.
Yes, we live in Denver now, where it’s as liberal as it gets, apparently.
No, this is not the sex ed you remember.
I wonder why my almost-fourteen-year-old thinks nothing about telling me the whole sex ed story? Could it be that she’s my too-honest daughter?
No matter. We made it home and I made dinner. Or rather, I stuck some chicken and potatoes in the oven and called it dinner while I searched for ski condos in Crested Butte. (More than an hour later…) Dinner’s ready!!! Condo is booked!! Friday is done!!!
It’s a Friday in January, and my mouth is running rampant. But at least I’m being honest about it.
Rays of Snowflake
sometimes the day’s best
shines through in a reflection
of reality
The Singles Line
Siri failed me this morning. She didn’t tell me last night that my 4:44 a.m. alarm was only for weekdays. I woke before I heard a sound, in the dark of early morning, wondering how in God’s name had my body managed to wake before such an insanely early Sunday alarm. I lay there for several minutes, listening for the cars on Jewell. But it’s Sunday, I told myself. At 4:23, I thought.
Finally I looked at my phone, irritated that I couldn’t sleep longer. 6:06??? FUCK!
I rushed to the bathroom, hurriedly raked through my tangles, and put on my four layers of clothes. I started tea water, fed the meowing kittens who waited screaming at me outside of the bathroom, scarfed a banana, and threw together a PB&J for the road.
The road: warning signs lit up 6th Avenue. “Slow and go traffic from Floyd Hill to Empire exit.” It was 6:46. And the whole world rainbowed the highway with a string of red lights in search of snow.
I pulled into the parking lot at 8:19 after the harrowing icy drive over Berthoud Pass and backed into one of the final ten spots. I ran to the bathroom, rushed back to the Pilot, and began the tedious process of slipping dress-socked feet into hard plastic ski boots. I carried my skis and poles the thirty feet to the slope, clicked in, and headed 300 yards to the singles line.
Before 11:00 a.m., I had skied ten runs, a near miracle on a crowded day. I had chosen my lifts wisely, and I had only the snow and my speed to wait for. In the singles line, you don’t have to wait on anyone. You slide up ahead of large groups, of brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, young children, lifelong friends.
All day long you hear or partake in snippets of conversations.
“Look at that little girl. Not more than six on the double black! I didn’t do that till high school. And look–her mom can’t even keep up with her.”
“I can’t wait till Maddie starts skiing next year. She’s such a spitfire. She has no fear. She’s nothing like Miles, afraid of everything.”
“Once they open Vasquez Circle, the whole winter world will change. Only half the mountain heads over there because there’s 300 yards of road, and snowboarders won’t go near it. It’s all natural snow and just skiers. You’ve gotta try it.”
“I just finished taking a class at UCD even though I’m from Illinois. Sadly, this is my last day on the slopes.”
“Dad, how many runs do you think we can do before lunch?” “I can ski all day without stopping.” “Maybe five?” (At 10:36).
“Is this the singles line?” “Yes.” Long pause. Red beard below black goggles. Giant grin that glances toward the huge crowd entangled in the group line. “Aren’t we lucky to be single?”
Yes, yes we are. Never mind that my father hurt his shoulder and not one of my three girls wanted to get up and ski today and my husband doesn’t ski.
Today, I could have given in as everyone I know always does and always would. But I said I was going skiing, and damnit, I was. I missed my alarm, crammed into the traffic, and by the end of the day was soaked down to my skin from so much snow. My legs ached. My fingers were numb. I was wholly alone and wholly together with strangers all in the course of a day.
I learned that groups who were smart split themselves to make a long singles line. That way they could get through lift lines faster.
That people don’t care who they ride with or what they say on the lift as long as there’s fresh powder to carve down on the other side.
That I can be free and happy even if I’m alone. And in fact, because of it. I could choose every run I wanted, when I wanted lunch, I could skip back and forth between Mary Jane and Winter Park, I could stop at the gas station and fill up on tea, I could listen to an audiobook instead of moaning over a traffic jam.
I could survive, at least for a day, in the singles line.
Step Write Up 