we stand scorched by sun
for a staff pic no one wants
on fragile bleachers
this after staff talk
the same pointless PowerPoint
that’s plagued our careers
after late release
of the rowdiest last class
prisoners of bells
after no planning
scheduling glitches abound
grade books that won’t load
after absent kids
gone for testing, Muslim Eid
gaping holes in class
after percussion
the endless percussion of
kids who can’t sit still
after fall won’t start
with no air conditioning
and no new pay raise
and you want to teach?
it sucks the life out of you
(but—kids blow it back)
education
Day Dealings
sunset on this day
can’t capture light nor finish
what the day has dealt
i’ll run till i die
or die trying to run free
from days that chase me
Credibility
i don’t ask for much
(credit where it’s due would do)
and a little faith
you’ve given neither
but i won’t back down, i won’t
(they’re worth fighting for)
someday you’ll see that
(or maybe you won’t; but me?)
i’ll credit their fight
Because Riona Would.
All three of my children were born in the evening. If you are a mother, you can acknowledge the significance of this. They were twenty-one months apart, so when I had my third, my oldest was just three and a half.
The first two spent their first night in and out of my arms, crying because of a reaction to the pain medication I’d taken during labor or because she was THAT starving.
But Riona?
I barely heard a sound from her… for EVER.
She lay next to me in the bed for all of that first night. She murmured a little, nursed a little, and settled back into sleep, happy to be near me.
And so it began. The ending of my motherhood with the child who came into the world as peaceful as a lamb.
And that is why I am crying now. Because you didn’t take a moment to see her. To listen to her soft calls, to her murmurs in the night. Because you thought an eight-almost-nine-year-old’s protests meant nothing.
What you. DON’T UNDERSTAND. Is that SHE never protests. She gives in. She listens to her older sisters’ whims and plays along, whether she really wants to or not. She fits into the jealous eye of her eldest sister, who often teases her because “no one can ever be as nice as Riona.” She is just like her father, same birth sign and all: born with a pure heart, giving, generous, willing to sacrifice all for the love of those around her.
Riona is the one who, back in March, cried herself to sleep because I told her we couldn’t afford camp this year. Riona is the reason I have sacrificed four weeks of my summer for summer school and home visits and Spanish class, all in the futile hope that I could pay for that one week of camp for all three girls.
So. NO. I do NOT want to hear that you “lost” her paperwork, sent in the SAME envelope as my other two daughters. I don’t want to come back from 50 hours of class in 5 days to hear that my youngest daughter was told she was leaving on Tuesday, was not allowed to participate in any camp activities because of this even though she ADAMANTLY TOLD YOU SHE WAS LEAVING ON FRIDAY AND YOU NEVER CALLED US TO CHECK, was told her camp store account was EMPTY WHEN SHE HAD $16 DOLLARS LEFT AND COULD HAVE BOUGH CHAPSTICK FOR HER DRIED LIPS, or that she was just… some other eight-year-old.
Because she’s not. If you could see her, really see her, for the gentle soul that she is, you would understand why I can’t stop crying. You would understand why I have given up half of my summer for my daughters to have the experience that you have now stripped from her. You would understand that a protest from a small voice should be THE LOUDEST PROTEST YOU HAVE EVER HEARD.
But you are not a mother. You are eighteen years old and have yet to learn the reality of this kind of pain.
And that is why I forgive you. Because Riona would.
The Same Zip Code
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
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.
Weights and Measures
a half day of waste
for undeserving seniors
with enough credits
the choices they make
based on so few students’ needs
hurt everyone else
education’s weight
while in line we stand. and wait.
weigh in: their way out
can they hold their weight?
while the society waits
an old way to weigh?
let’s measure anew
let loose the weight we all bear
find another weigh
I Could Have Skipped This
I could have skipped this
but then I would have missed
the sunrise glistening
like a sparkling curtain,
opening today’s show
(carried by wind that
pushes against me, a
wall I will fight now
for the pat on the back
later today)
I could have skipped this
but then I would have missed
the absences she’s had,
the plight of the struggling student
who so demurely
will not ask for help
(but will accept the
help I offer her)
I could have skipped this
but then I would have missed
the smiles on their faces
as they took turns riding
the scooter round and round,
the perfect homemade ice cream
dripping happiness from their chins,
(the memory that I created
with a spontaneous choice)
I could have skipped this
but then I would have missed
the chance to make
a lesson that will enlighten
them, make each of us stronger,
and create the collaboration
that guides them to the
success every student deserves.
I could have skipped this…
but then I would have missed
the life that I have chosen
because I didn’t skip this.
Ode to Pod
for years I’ve dreamed of this day
so why am I not smiling? my own
classroom, my own walls, my desk
in the corner with no one to bother me,
no one to pester me with the constant
openings and closings of doors,
students incessantly filing in and out,
no little pod desk accessible only
by interrupting someone else’s teaching.
but if I hadn’t been here I wouldn’t
have heard Hanna wondering about
lessons that I then reached out to share
(making our co-teaching the best
teaching I’ve done so far);
been close enough to Karen to see
the endless hours she puts into teaching those kids;
heard Bill complain about the toilet
overflowing and everyone in homeroom
giving him crap about it (punny, I know!);
I wouldn’t have caught clips of those
conversations Bill and Scott had with
their students (the ones in trouble,
the bullies, the ones with family issues)
and witness, firsthand, how to mix humor
with discipline in a way that is nothing
shy of teaching’s greatest masterpiece;
I wouldn’t have visited Tammy’s lab
to see the limitless ways that students
could be brought to think for themselves.
if it weren’t for my little windowless pod,
my small desk that Bill cleared his crap for
(with nothing overflowing), I wouldn’t
have the friends who make me feel
less departmentalized (in my solo
department), I wouldn’t have even
had a brownie list, I wouldn’t have seen
the best teachers in the school, but would
be in the dark, just like I thought I would be
when (during the overcrowded days)
they put me in this dark space
that, in fact, has brought nothing less
than a world of light into my life.
Admission
calling me out in front of them all
isn’t the way to get to the truth
because it’s more polite for me
(as my mother always said)
to admit nothing at all
than to lie to your face
your reaction is as ironic as if
you’d admitted me into your classroom
to run it one day (my way)
only for you to pat me on the back
and thank me for the gift
(the gift that in three years
you wouldn’t allow me to give you)
but I will seal my lips this one time
(though I admit you know me well)
and use the scapegoat I have stood by
all these months, tucking it in my
pocket in case of further inquisitions,
though you and I both know why
I’ll (you’ll) never admit the truth.
Step Write Up 