truth

And Then I Remember

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

 This. This is why I teach. For three years she’s been in my class. She has gotten married. Had a baby. But she still can’t decode words. She still struggles with basic sentences. I know she has more going on in her mind than Bambara and Mali and motherhood, but I haven’t found a way to reach this girl. I haven’t been able to communicate with her in a way to help her understand. But “reliving” 1880s farm chores today, she said, “I got this. We do this in my country.” And today, today, today, she was the best at something. This. This is #whyiteach
 
 

Short This

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

ten years ago, as a young teacher,
 i would have killed to have such a flawless lesson.
 today?
 one component makes me feel like a failure.
 ask.
 ask why teachers leave this profession in droves.
 why we spend hours collecting fake data points to try to prove ourselves.
 why every damn day they must be
 interacting as if their intelligence
 could not be shown in another way.
 
 ask.
 ask.
 screw the introverts,
 the six weeks prior of building up talk,
 of transition handouts and forced verbal responses and
 Socratic seminars.
 this day, this day when i have them
 writing more sentences in one period
 than they’ve written in their entire
 school careers,
 i am judged as
 not even approaching,
 not even close to being good enough?
 
 Ask.
 i’ll tell you why.
 because with all the hoops and all the hopes and all the reasons i came into this career,
 some days,
 rainy days like today,
 dreary and plagued with doubt,
 it sure as hell feels more like
 an unsatisfactory career
 than i feel like an unsatisfactory teacher.
 
 

Running in Circles

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a teacher’s drive-by:
 surprise observation day
 (six times a school year)
 
 always on my toes
 bending them close to standards
 they’ll never quite meet
 
 but we can all hope
 (miracles do still happen–
 just ask my cat’s tail!)
 
 

Tuesday, Taught

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the kid argument
 that plagues my mornings and nights
 chips away my soul
 
 
 

Bites and Pieces

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somewhere between the data crunch
 that swallows all planning time,
 the tech issues that chew up a third of every class,
 the common planning that gnaws into bitching about work,
 emailing counsellors about kids who’ve bitten off more than they can chew,
 grading grammar that nibbles away time with my own kids…
 
 there’s a teacher waiting,
 the entrée of this piecemeal,
 ready to share the most delectable taste
 of what this world asks and offers.
 
 
 

Silver Lining Lunch Date

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

clouds can’t cover blue
 with a reflection like this
 waiting to bathe joy
 
 

Freedom Has Its Price

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

the raw emotion
 that floods my writing fingers
 has been gone this year
 
 (i await new juice
 to pump up my active voice
 like a sober drunk)
 
 
 

Bricklaying

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

yesterday we learned about sod
 and homesteaders’ dreams being trampled by wind and hail and no water
 and how they were tricked into
 settling on free land.
 
 nothing is free.
 
 how they built brick by sod brick–
 tiny houses not much taller than themselves,
 and posed in front with shovels on the roof,
 no time to take them down for the picture–
 for what if it rained, or a snake crept in?
 
 yesterday i thought i was a teacher,
 and they were learning from me,
 my immigrant students building up their vocabulary
 brick by decoded brick.
 
 nothing is ever what it seems.
 
 today they entered and i asked them to write:
 describe challenges when you moved to a new place.
 
 and with the new words fresh on her tongue, she told me:
 just like the homesteaders,
 my family had to move to a new camp
 and my father had to build a sod house,
 no taller than that one in the picture.
 
 and so my student taught today’s lesson:
 one hundred fifty years later,
 we are still making bricks
 instead of trying to break them.
 
 
 

Map My Classroom

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if you made the choice
 to love and welcome, not hate
 the world would change
 
 

Why I Teach

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

sometimes all it takes
 are some quiet lunch moments
 to feel it’s worth it