what we need this June
is blooming summer beauty
to refresh our lives
loss
A Few of My 57 Curriculum Training Haikus
8:15
summer holidays:
curriculum training hell
for texts i won’t teach
8:25
at least we get paid
for wasted time this Monday
(planning my vacay)
9:00
psycho white girl texts
with teen serial killers:
way to start the year.
9:13
unit one: three essays?
complex texts, presentations…
for kids who don’t read
10:02
college and career:
key words to pressure teachers
to make miracles.
10:48
standards-based rulers
measure how inadequate
their understanding is
11:21
what the fuck is this?
we’re making popcorn today?
kernels are for birds
11:35
connect to their lives
teen rebellion feeds us all
and sucks life from us
11:42
i’ll catch you some notes:
a real, low-level class–
let’s try a scaffold
11:49
these questions lack hope
for virtually all our kids
we’re adding rigor?
11:53
curriculum rocks
when i write it for my kids
so why am i here?
12:47
can we read the texts,
plan together with our teams,
stop mindless bullshit?
1:42
anchor my thoughts, please:
texts are not relatable
to kids in my class
2:24 (Heinz 57)
i’m making ketchup
though it sure as fuck needs spice
just like this training
Love Will Live
in this tragic life
whose pain touches all of us
we must find beauty
around the curved path,
falling angel-like from trees,
a blue mountain view,
the eyes of a child,
the joy of family outings–
hope that love will live
Location:S Leyden St,Denver,United States
Ode to Mixer
i waited four years
to have my Kitchenaid back
too bad you’re broken
this last, lost moment
before i burnt the cookies
will be remembered
goodbye, my mixer,
my flourless-chocolate King,
my sweet-tooth master
i’ve missed your batches,
your easy whipping of eggs,
your strength to knead bread.
but i let you live
in the cold hands of strangers
who kneaded your death
alas, we all die
and it’s time for us to part
forever now, love
may you rest in peace
while i strengthen my right arm
while mixing by hand
Pity Party
Another year is over, and it ends with a tinge of the same sinking feeling that every year begins with. The constant question all teachers ask themselves as they tackle this challenging career: Is this worth it?
Sometimes it is just a small thing that can make you sad or frustrated or feeling burned out. A student who didn’t come back to make up the final he blew off. An administrator who wouldn’t renew a colleague’s contract. A message from admin that our keys, checkout form, rooms, and us, are all being carefully micro-managed. (We can be trusted to instill knowledge and take charge over 150 students in a year, but god forbid we leave without being checked to ensure we followed through and cleaned out our damn desks).
But for me this year, after three years of teaching at the same school, it is the hollow disappointment of not having any real friends where I work.
While the thought crosses my mind off and on throughout the year as colleagues gather together for happy hours that I cannot attend because of childcare needs, or weekend parties or outings where a group of all the people I work most closely with have all attended and I only see the event posted on Facebook (not invited myself), today, on the last day of the year, the smallest event brought me to tears.
I had just heated up my lunch and was sitting alone in the office. A colleague came in and asked me to watch a student who was taking a test in the next room because she was going out to lunch. And while she offered to get me something while she was out, since I’d already brought my lunch, I said I’d be fine to eat in the classroom with the student.
But when I walked into the hall, it hit me: There they all were, in their too-cool-for-high-school clique, purses in hand, chatting and giggling their way to their outing together.
They had already made plans.
I sat alone with the student and then graded her final, texting her teacher that she was done (a text–one of several in the past few months, including accolades toward him and gratitude for one thing or another–he did not respond to).
I brought the test up to the assessment coordinator and went back down to my lonely, empty classroom, and cried.
Because this job is hard enough. Because I fight every day for these kids just like they do. Because I try to reach out to them, invite them to things, and get outright blacklisted. Because I don’t know why I’ve been blacklisted–is it because I have an opinion? Because I’m a “cynic”? Because I don’t fit into their mold of single and alcoholic?
Because it would be nice to have a friend, even a singular friend, who could support me in this constant battle that is teacherhood.
Because it’s the end of the year, and I won’t see or hear from any of them all summer, and … I guess it doesn’t matter.
At my former school, I had so many great colleagues. We ate lunch together every day and laughed so hard that someone literally started choking once and another teacher had to perform the Heimlich to save him. We’d go to happy hour, occasionally, or children’s events, occasionally, or parties. A couple of them I would get together with during the summer, just for kicks, because we were FRIENDS.
And on days like this, when there were no students? There wasn’t a soul in the building who stayed inside eating lunch alone. We’d gather in groups, ride together to a local restaurant to have lunch, and see the rest of the crew there anyway, and we’d make a giant table and laugh until we cried.
And I knew that going to Spain was going to change all that and that I wouldn’t be going back there.
But, three years in, on the last day of school, it just. Fucking. Hurts.
So this is how my year ends. With a pity party.
Looking forward to a summer with my family, a real party with my actual friends this weekend, and a break from this place. God knows I need one.
Moving On…
letting loose anger
to yield this breathtaking view
of hard-won backyard
(her broken heart rests.
i hope she read our class words
and will make it through)
gratitude for now.
all our furniture is home.
as are our daughters.
Because I Am a Woman
I am so angry today because I am a woman and a mother of three daughters. I am so angry today because my mother, one of seven, six of them girls, was the only one in her family to finish college and then earn a master’s degree, and she did so by defying her mother who wrote an anti-education letter to the university to deter her from making that choice (for which my mother won a feminism scholarship). In 1972.
I am so angry today because I work so hard to be tolerant. The world is filled with every walk of humanity, and they all have rights to carry out their beliefs, whether they be nationalistic, religious, or cultural. But. When those beliefs expect and demand oppression, I am no longer a bleeding heart feminist liberal.
I am just angry.
More than thirty years ago, Audre Lorde wrote the most perfect essay I’ve ever read, “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppression”, in which she eloquently describes my angst: “…among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression. I believe that sexism … and heterosexism … both arise from the same source as racism–a belief in the inherent superiority of one ______ over all others and thereby its right to dominance” (1).
I am angry because the police were called. Because Child Protective Services were called. Because they spent less than one afternoon questioning her and her family and brought her back home. She spent today not at school but cooking the meal for her engagement party, henna ceremony, and impending wedding. At age fourteen.
I am angry because it is 2016. Because she lost her mother two months ago. Because her family came here for a future that her father is now denying her. Because we have come too far in this trek for feminism to be taking giant leaps back and putting our girls in a situation of entrapment.
I am angry because my government does nothing to protect children. To protect women. Because an online threat of suicide isn’t enough to PULL. THE. CHILD. AWAY. FROM. HOME.
I am angry because she is me. She is you. She is all of us. She is the caged bird Maya Angelou describes, stalking back and forth in rage. She is the religious martyr who couldn’t stay in Burma because she wasn’t Buddhist. She is the daughter and sister and friend and STUDENT who you wish you had in your life.
I am angry because I am a woman. Because I am a human. Because I am free, and she is not. She is oppressed by sexism, religious zeal, and cultural tradition. And whether you believe in God or support your culture or want to fight for traditional gender roles, none of these things give you the right to oppress another human being.
I am angry because there is no hierarchy of oppression. And when one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed.
I am so angry today. And I will still be angry tomorrow. And the next day. And every day forever after, as long as I am a witness to oppression.
Because I am a woman. Because I am a human. Because this needs to stop.
Help me. Help me make it stop.
They Come, They Go
One of my former colleagues (now retired) always used to say, “They come, they go,” referring to the endless stream of students we see over the years. It was a way to cope with those awful days or those awful kids. Knowing that yes, it might be difficult in this moment, or even for this entire school year, but soon it will be over, and we will have a new set of faces and a new ten months of opportunities to educate, enrich, and touch their lives… Just as they will ours.
I was thinking about this phrase last night when I was making cards and cookies for my seniors, a set of four girls who have shared my classroom for the past three years, always a bit timid, always a bit unsure, always with a smile on their faces as they asked for help. They come from Nepal and Burma, and though have spent their four years at this high school diligently reading and writing, and rewriting, and rewriting …and rewriting, their English is still only at a high enough level for them to attend the community college. Yet, they are taking the chance, stepping their toes in, and pushing forward with the education their parents risked their lives to give to them. They have come…and now, they’re gone.
When Bruce called, texted, emailed, and left a voice mail at 10:53 this morning telling me that Mythili was sick, I had 17 minutes left in class before lunch and senior check out. “She hasn’t thrown up yet, but the principal said she looked like she could at any moment.” I forlornly looked at my bag of cookies and cards, my special sign-out pen. I waited for class to end and my line of three students to dissipate, one demanding to know why she couldn’t have a grade higher than a B+, one wanting me to forgive an assignment she’d lost, and one who can’t formulate a single word of English after three years, and in her broken, muffled frustration, begged for extra work to bring up her futilely failing grade (this one I’ve recommended to be tested for special education, to no avail… The complexities of the public school system).
I couldn’t just leave. I couldn’t just drop everything to pick up my sick child from school. I know that so many people are trapped by their commitments to work and balancing out their commitment to family, but there is something about teaching that keeps you there even when it feels impossible to stay.
I settled what I could with the girls, grabbed my keys, and rushed over to the elementary school where a very shaky eleven-year-old got into my car. I dug around in the back seat for the plastic nut jar, dumped its contents into another, and held it out to her. “In case you need to puke on the way,” I suggested.
She made it home. Barely. Not two minutes in, she rushed to the bathroom and let it loose. I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed the puke bowl, a towel, and an ice cold glass of water.
“I have to go. Senior check out,” I told her as I tucked her into bed. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “OK Mama,” she whispered.
“Do you want the iPad?” I asked, Netflix bribery.
And so I left her. I rushed back to school, heated up my lunch, and waited to sign out and say goodbye to my girls. Just like all the students I’ve ever had, I will likely never see them again. I might hear from one or two from time to time, but once they’re gone… They’re gone. They are not my children. They will get sick and get their hearts broken and fail at jobs or school or possibly life, and I won’t be there to save them or hold their hands or empty out the puke bucket… And so why do I do this?
Because teaching is about balancing out the apathy, the misbehavior, the bad attitudes, the low skills… With those bright spots, those kids who care, those girls who touch your heart and make you feel that the world has the possibility of becoming a better place. And I can’t let go of that. I have to hold onto those moments or all of their apathy will break down my empathy.
Because before Bruce mass communicated with me about my own daughter, I learned about someone else’s daughter. One of my students. A para and another student came searching for one of the boys in my class who has been nothing but trouble for me all semester. He shouts out in class. He makes racist remarks. He ditches. He throws away a perfectly good brain to apathy, something I’ve seen too many times in fifteen years.
“What has he done now?” I asked.
“Oh, he hasn’t done anything. We need to ask about O. Do you know O.?”
“Yes, she’s in my third period… But she hasn’t been here because her grandmother is dying in Illinois.” O. comes in with a jeweled hijab every day, a smile, a dedication to learning. She hadn’t missed a day of school until a week ago.
“Well, she ran away with M.’s brother last night because her parents are making her marry a twenty-seven-year-old on Saturday. And she posted on Facebook that she wanted to kill herself.”
“So… Her parents came in and met with the principal and made up a story about her grandmother dying?”
These were the only words I could muster. They were looking for M., I pulled up his schedule, and they were gone from my room as quickly as they had arrived. I had twenty-three minutes till my next two classes to stew. To wipe away tears. To think about the bright young face that is being robbed of her youth. Of her dignity. Sold.
What could make them do this? What could make them travel the world to bring their daughter away from the poorest country to the richest, where all the opportunities were set out before her, just to give it up, to give in to the old world beliefs that it is acceptable to send a FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD into a trap of a marriage?
When I see M. thirty minutes later, I ask him about her. “Where is she? Is she OK? Is she with your brother?”
“She’s fine Miss. She’s getting married on Saturday. You don’t understand. It’s an Asian thing.” (One of his favorite expressions).
He’s as flippant as if he were talking about his latest rendezvous in the park, his latest date, his latest excuse for not coming to class.
I want to grab his shoulders and look into his eyes and shake him and ask him, “Do you really think it is acceptable for such a young girl to be forced to marry??”
But I don’t. He will leave my class soon (They come, they go) and I will no longer have to hear his ignorant remarks. But O.? She has already gone. Two years older than my oldest daughter, her opportunities for a future have been stripped down and shaped out into a malformed mold of submissiveness.
I carry her home with me. Just like my senior girls who are so kind as they say goodbye, her eyes, her smiling face, come home with me. I check on my daughter who has settled into a nap, puke bucket still empty. I sit in my living room, cat in my lap, wondering why I couldn’t just stay home with her. Why did I go back? Why did I feel I needed to sign a paper for four girls I’ll never see again?
Because ultimately, the truth of this profession is that the students never leave. Each one of them holds a place in my heart, even if it is a hollow place marred by disrespect. Even if it is a broken place marked by abuse and abandonment. Even if it is an unforgiving place where I will forever wonder what I could have done to save them.
And I can’t be the mother I need to be without carrying their stories with me. I can’t come home and exchange silly texts with my nine-year-old and console my forlorn thirteen-year-old whose biggest crisis in life is that she lost her watch, and nurse my eleven-year-old, who’s just a bit weak from a mild stomach flu, without knowing about all that they could be facing.
Rape. War. Abuse. Addiction.
I can’t control who walks into my classroom, or how much it hurts me to accept the pain that trails behind these kids as naturally as a shadow. They come with every story you could ever imagine from the complex rainbow of humanity. Mothers who have died of cancer. Fathers who have never been around. Perfectly happy little families from picket-white-fence yards. Seemingly happy families with closets full of skeletons. Mental illness. Disabilities.
And they go… With all of what they’ve come with. And a little bit of me. Just like I will always carry a little bit of them.
And that is why I hug my girls tight. I wrap Mythili up in her quilt and promise Riona she can buy the terrible chips and tell Isabella she can get a new watch…
I don’t tell them about O. Or M. Not today.
Because I don’t want them to carry that pain. Because I want to shelter them in the love of the perfect little family we’ve created. Because they are girls with the world in front of them, and I want them to know how safe they will be with whatever choice they will make.
Because they have come into my life as my daughters. They are mine. They are not my students. And though I can’t give them every moment of my time, I know that I will never be able to let them go.
Because they are the eyes, the smile, the hope of every student I have ever had… And every student I have yet to meet.
They will come, and they will go.
And I will always be here. For all of them.
Sprung Upon
a single email
can spring up late Friday tears
i’ve been holding in
friendship’s mystery
lies in glad discoveries
so easily lost
my heart aches and blooms
for all that i have… and don’t
(that’s how petals fall)
Refocus
when you’re trapped by gloom
and unable to say why
refocus your lens
you might catch a glimpse
of golden sunlit peaks;
a stand-alone tree
spring rain bringing food
(hidden in these rays, raindrops)
to a front range ranch
refocus your lens–
windows will open your eyes
to a clearer view
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