Gangs and Gays

The past few weeks have been a demon hell ride:
writing sample research and development, GRE study and practice, grading papers about the role of violence in a establishment or dissolution of a civilization, trying to be a human being and remember that I have friends other than my cat, etc.

I have been guilty of getting sucked into that lack of time, that lack of thinking space that I usually allot myself. Well, yesterday and today are worth being mentioned.

Yesterday was the PSAT (oh I feel your pain lil' babies!) and then the kids left at 12:40. As me and my friends ate our FREE (that's right, the only time we get any perks is on half days...free tacos!) meal some hunky, hunky cops came into the meeting area. These cops: Officers Biff and Buff began to set up their aesthetically disappointing poster boards decorated with a variety of belts and bandannas as well as doodling (very familiar doodles) by kids that are of the middle and high school persuasion.

Biff apologized for some bogus news story that featured my high school as one riddled with gang members and Buff plugged he and his partner's fervid need to rid the streets of hoodlums and caricaturists. It was bizarre to think that my little dudes and ladies were being bossed by an older gang man and that 12-year olds had guns and there is basically nothing we can do about it if they are already involved. Our options as per Biff and Buff are 'turn them in' or 'turn them in.'
Heavy business.

There is the gang segment; the downer. Moving on; the inspiration.

I am the sponsor for my schools gay/straight alliance. It is called Spectrum, like the rainbow, and I am really proud that my school allows it. I think our students need the support and need to know that they can be gay, who cares!?! They are still capable and wonderful little babes.
Today these two great people came in to speak during lunches who represent the Atlanta chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). This group works to educate families, assist families, and support people who have recently "come out of the closet." The man and wife duo have two gay sons and one straight daughter and shared their story with the kids who chose to attend the meeting. They also discuss the need for our school to be a safe environment for these kids. Because my attitude about being gay or whatever you are is "So what? You are still a human being" I never considered the need to 'fight' for the rights of gays in my school. However, I whole-heartedly see the need to support them and make them feel safe. That was until I was reminded today that groups and organization exist in the world that work to convince these children that they are wrong or damaged and their 'illness' can be cured. I realized that my counselors in the office don't have any resources to support our GLBT community at school or to educate their families on support groups that can help the family stay together and try to understand. I have placed brochures in my principals boxes as well as my counselors. I wanna fight to make our school a safe place...a real safe place where people can be respected and honored for whatever they are. Kids 'come out' often, last semester I had two boys begin to question their sexual preferences. One, an African-American young man, had a really hard time with it. He spent most his time with the school psychologist. It was a very hard time for him.

In terms of today, I realized that being pro-active isn't always synonymous with putting up a 'fight' and that doing things like this, which seem small, really can make a huge difference. [cue sentimental melody] The couple who came to speak with us wants to do a PR video for PFLAG and they want our group to be in it.

Let's get that education going!

Past, Present, and the Road of Forgetting

I had to leave work today early.  I was sick because I haven't been tending to myself enough.  I have this problem where I get myself into too much and overdo it, especially when I need to reduce the amount of down time I have so that risky thoughts do not move furtively to the forefront of my imagination.  I have burnt out and need a weekend of recovery.  Unfortunately this weekend is going to serve as a reminder of my very recent past and it's troublesome relationship with my present.

I have always considered that understanding and appreciating one's past, analyzing one's past, and reflecting upon one's past is a means to an end where growth and knowledge of oneself and one's purpose flourish.  I have attempted to excavate the terrain of my past, which at times has been very rocky, seeking out my individualism, my purposeful division from other's in order to reevaluate me, my identity.  Basically, I am pro-past. 

However, I am pro-past as a means of understanding oneself more wholly and purely on an individual basis.  I am not a pro-paster who would recommend maintaining an open connection to what was.  The process of losing, moving on, or being done is one that has an end-point.  Classes in school, books, seminars, lunch dates, relationships; these all have an end and become the past.  In my opinion, there is a shelf-life for reflecting: as soon as possible.  These times vary depending upon the situation, of course.  I say all of this to say that I am pro-past with an understanding that the past must only actively exist for as long as it takes to get what you need out of it, then must be tucked away into a cubbyhole in our brains or hearts so that we may continue with the present.  

Tonight I picked up Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism which is some pretty awesome stuff.  Heavy thoughts, heavy reading, but phenomenal ideas and explanations.  My reading in that book led me an essay by T. S. Eliot entitled "Tradition and the Individual Talent" which discusses the connection between the present and the past regarding poets (it also discusses how all poets are crazy as a steel toed sandal and less emotionally aware than your average Sully cat...on which I totally agree).

Eliot argues that the poet is always affected by the past through the "old, dead poets" and the influences they have had upon him, which is similar to Harold Bloom's ideas in The Anxiety of Influence (except Bloom saw this as a catalyst for anxiety).  Eliot argues that "the difference between present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past's awareness of itself cannot show."  Okay, so shelf life?  To be knowledgeable of what a past encapsulates, but to move forcefully into the present as if the past is history...because it is.

Currently in my life I am struggling with ideas of past becoming too involved with my present and the ways in which that past seems to haunt me, to not let me go.  In the application of Eliot's ideas to my own personal problem I think he is supporting my pro-past decision (shelf life, cubby hole)...I think.  Or is it better to deny our past the credit it deserves with the universal knowledge that the experiences we have become a part of who we are?  I think it is indeed anxiety-inducing to understand that there is a solid, complex connection between the past and the present,  and if gone without being attended may seep into our subconscious and twist the tales of history (see slavery in the United States) because often the past is meant to be forgotten, we are meant to 'write another chapter,' and prodding into the depths of what should be forgetfulness can really be gut-wrenching (on both an individual and national level).  When though, if we continue to live solely in the present without acknowledging it's friendliness to the past, do we learn?  If we aren't learning from our uncomfortable pasts we maintain a static notion of identity, but where do we find the strength to continue to poke the rotting animal within to find answers when this animal suffered a painful death, one that we do not wish to revisit often?

Paper Progress and Archiving Oldies

Proving myself to graduate schools may be the death of me.

I set aside today for the latter half of my introduction to this paper.  My to do list said this:

Establish idea of community, establish idea of classroom community in my classroom, identify which characteristics are transcendent, then establish the two communities I will be analyzing.

I basically spent all day thinking of community.  To define community is...not possible.  What is community?

I am not well versed in scholars of sociology or anthropology so spent my day looking for those people.

I then lost my focus and my brain shut down.  

Man.

Tomorrow I get back to it.  When I know I need someone to support my idea in this intro part, which won't be research heavy, I am just going to enter brackets.  Maybe that will keep me focused.

Speaking of not being focused on one topic...

Someone once told me that I was not a writer.  This someone also determined that I was inadequate in other aspects of my life, according to this person, which means very little to my sense of self or worth in my life.  The thought that I, someone who writes for various purposes every day, discusses writing every day, teaching writing every day, and reads books (that were written) every day, is not a writer has recently caused me to ponder what qualifies one as a writer.  I think I am a writer, whether I publish in paper back journals or win awards for what I compose.  What is a writer?  What is community?  Unanswerable questions may be the death of me actually.

So many questions.

I have written more with my students...they are writers, right?

"The 'Art' of Forgetting"

Dedicated to a man and woman who wore their heads on their necks upside down and backwards and to the things that they wished out of their lives and the things they maybe wanted back one day.

If only my mailbox could muster the courage to form the words you must’ve meant.

As if a little glitter is enough to patch up a hole in the wall that begs the bitter wind enter safely.
Or a check hidden in a fold could buy back skinned knees, honor roll certificates, pre-fem playground games, post-pubescent heart troubles, the first rally, the first and second graduations.
All things spectacular, mediocre - a fall from Grace,
a journey to enlightenment - have rushed past without your knowing.

Hallmark certainly doesn’t erase snotty noses, smoking barrels, swallowed fearlumps, or sheets hiding tiny, tear-stained faces from a troubled memory.

The days of sugar and spice and everything nice are long gone and the evenings completed by mothball scented animal crackers have been tucked into the pockets of forgetting.
The only thing worse than a Driftwood Dad is the older generation of bandits that acted as his accomplices.

And if you knew me at all you would know that I hate pink and don’t believe in angels.

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Thinking more on writing and writers I thought that maybe what makes a writer a writer, aside form skill and public acceptance, is one's courage or ability to share what s/he writes.  I have books of secrets, archives of baby thoughts dating back to 1996, but never had courage to publish or share.  I was published when I was in kindergarten though.  That is a fact.  A story I wrote in elementary school was published in a journal and I was in the newspaper along with a friend of mine for this achievement.  Does this qualify me and my abilities?  Great!

Here is this piece, and here's to sticking it to those who think they have all the answers, but are truly grasping for straws.

"Tiresius Bound"

Knee deep in the entrails of then – of nevermore
The son of the Shepard seeks truths in the sewage of yesterday’s massacre.
Veils of ignorance, of falsehood, slurp in excrement scraping along behind the staff that clanks the rusted and forgotten pipes.
Seeking ablution for becoming lost in this wasteland.
Following only the sounds of filth flowing into an
unknown abyss the blind prophet seeks his grail of contentment.

Party Mix and Politics

I liken the teaching staff at a school to a bag of GORP:  chunks of very different snacks, all of which affect your body in different ways (proteins and wheat and chocolate goodness) and, separately, have flavor explosions in your mouth that are delightful.  They never mix and become one, sometimes the combinations can be satisfying, but still the peanut and the raisin are alone in their journey to the pit of your belly.  

I am not sure what influenced this particular metaphor, it is rather ridiculous, as am I right now.  I have just been reflecting on the differences between me and some of my colleagues.

Today I took part in a conversation, rather was on the receiving end of one, where a friend and colleague was discussing his feelings of going on to a PhD program.  He wants to start a writing program for underprivileged children who wish to work hard modeled after a rather successful author's writing workshop and centers in other cities.  This idea, these types of ideas, are amazing and promising when put into action.  My frustrations came from the realization that his ideas are rarely acted upon.  He allows the "system" and the "administration" become excuses for why he should not dream or do.  

He reminds me of a friend who is a Libertarian, which I personally think is crap (it's my blog, I can say it).

To me the idea of being a part of a party that is anti-big government in a country that is run by big government is synonymous with giving up.  

It as if I, as a public school teacher, were to say, "the system is far too flawed, I can't do anything" rather than doing what I am doing:  making changes, in one of the countries most flawed systems, from the inside.  To surrender to the powers that be, the powers that know nothing of classroom life, would bear no fruit, would win no small victories.  I choose the small ones, politically and in my daily life.  We have to work in the systems that exist, because they aren't changing...only shifting...very slowly.

Back to my colleague.  This colleague says daily, "I don't feel like teaching today."  This colleague thinks highly of only his advanced placement students and these thoughts are represented daily in the language he uses regarding his regular level kids.  This colleague cannot make a change because he will not allow for one in his life.  

He, quite frankly, has given up.

In this conversation, when I could get a word in, I would say things like, "Well, you shouldn't allow the way the administration feels to determine your classroom activities or your personal philosophies...look at "A" and me.  We are doing whatever the hell we want in our classrooms and it is working and it is, well, very different, but no one (knock on wood) has given us grief about it. We are pushing brand new ways of thinking and blowing kids minds with HUGE questions every day.  Do you think the administration has any clue what we are talking about in here? Do you think that stops us?  No."  These statements were met with, "Yeah, but..."  

Don't gimme that cynicism! I am fighting my own demons every day!  I frown at the state that the world is in, but I smile and cry too because good things are happening and I am making some of them happen.  The world is a pretty place littered with a little bit of ugly and bad, not the other way around.  

A very dear person to me told me recently that a person has to make her own happiness.  It's true in all that we do.  Everything.  

No matter how much we love something, it can be hard.  I think you just have to be a fighter.  

Tonight my heart has a lot of sadness in it and sometimes I want to cross to the other side where things are half empty and people are never good, but I can't.  No one has ever changed the world by saying, "No we can't."  

  

I have written something and it's my blog and I put things I write on here.  It follows this posting.

Cheers to a life worth living!

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Réquiem ætérnam:
Réquiem ætérnam dona ei Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Amen.
                                                                                                         -Eternal Rest

"Vigil for the Departed"

Let us attend to the soul of the lost:

An altar littered with mementos of a sunbeam gone too soon:
Poems that speak of truth in a heartnest,
Banjos that once tweetled tin can tunes,
Trifles, like confetti dreams, that fell from planes,
A handmade honeypot, drained of it's sweetness.

The tenor bell tolls:

Hyssop in mason jars bow as St. Martha sings of hope.
Cor mundum crea in me…
Forgive me father for rainy days and dreamcharms.
Forgive me father for uniting passion and reason.
Blot out my iniquity and make me pure.

Rest is given to the souls of the faithful:

As perpetual light radiates St. Joseph's
hope of a pilgrimage is laid to rest,
lamp lighting and Sweetgrass fantasies drift heavenward.
Thou preparest a table for me,
I shall break bread in the solitude of my healing.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive…
Forever and ever.

Amen.

The Morning After: Open House

Dante may believe that there are only 9 circles of hell, but after my first open house experience, I would argue this theory.

I started my day yesterday at 7:45 in a meeting regarding a very intelligent student's progress.  His progress:  he's doing great!

I didn't leave work yesterday until 8:45 p.m. and didn't get home until 9:30.  

During the day I did my normal teacher routine:  Teach kids great things, let them write a lot and read a lot, attempt to grade some essays, stress that I don't have the daytime to work on my own essay, stare at a stack of books and feel guilt shoot up through my side; a guilt that sings, "Na-na-na, boo-boo. You won't go to grad school!"  

After accepting my fate as the girl behind the desk, I begrudgingly began grading papers.  

In no time, or two and a half hours later, my student's parents filtered into my room, sat in the desks, and listened to me ramble for about 7 minutes...6 times.  I am a fast talker, but in order to give the parents what they wanted (to hear their kids are being challenged, in what ways, being prepared for life and, unfortunately, tests, and maintaining an excitement in the classroom) I had to hurry it up.  I performed all day for children and then again for parents.

Today was picture day and pictures are taken in English class.

I had to escort six classes to the gym and deal with club fair and my club's table today as well.

I can't remember the last time I was this exhausted, but still the thought that I haven't looked at my research in two days is hanging over my head like a bucket of slime...just as the 120 essays that have yet to be graded are.

How to find a balance?

How, how, how?

Yes We Can? I sure as heck hope so!

Week in review:

Been going nuts reading new books, towering stacks of books, walking to the copy machine reading books, books under my pillows at night, books while I am driving down 75S...kidding. There is SO much to know before I begin writing my research paper.

It's coming together though...finally. So is a list of schools. So is a list of programs. One thing that most definitely is not coming together though is my bank account! I am nervous about the debt that school has the potential of creating, but when I start daydreaming about going back to school and being in that environment I can imagine myself nowhere else.

On another note, my job rules right now and my kids are hard workers. They are thinking and writing and working independently and it is blowing me away. It is as if I am running a miniature college classroom right here where I am. I will post some of their personal narratives, or at least pieces from them, soon to show you guys what they are pumping out in here.

Things I have decided:
A teacher in my hall is boring and I wouldn't want her as a teacher if I were a kid:
"As I stated, you need to watch the movie and answer the questions. Blah, blah, robot voice, blah, monotone, Stop Talking, sit still, you're late, blah."
Where is the livelihood? These kids kinda hate school, it works better if you don't seem so bummed on it yourself.

Certain kids have a crush on me and it is working to my advantage in that they say "Thank you, Ms. C" when I assign them homework. I'll take it. It is pretty hilarious actually.

My journalism class is really surprising me with what they are doing. They piss me off and make me laugh real hard, but this paper is going to be a different world this year.
One of my kids sat at the end of the lunch line and collected student's spare change as they retreated with their rectangle pizzas all day and filled an entire can with money for the paper!
Little entrepreneurs I tell you!

I have a severe intolerance for people who don't listen. Who cut you off in the midst of a sentence and are only holding their breath until it is their turn to talk again. Students do not do this...teachers do this and it makes me want to puke on them.

Teaching writing and research has made me significantly better at both.

Finally, Obama is a good man, a politician, but damn does he make me want to believe him.
I am proud to be an American today when he can stand without fear for his life and claim the nomination for the people.

[cue Lee Greenwood!]

High Hopes

My life is now full of skepticism riding on the shoulders of determination.  

After working towards determining what my next step should be:  Master's degree in African American studies or a Phd. in American Studies, I have decided that both should be pretty great.  This year I will be putting a great amount of money aside, the first little chunk will go towards applying to at least 6 grad schools (mostly in the Boston and NY areas); both MA and PhD programs with the hopes of getting accepted to ALL of them and getting to pick!  Weeee!  Reality:  probably not, but I am going to bust my ass, sorry Mom, trying to get ready.

I am dedicating the next two weeks to writing a research paper, because the ones I drafted in undergrad don't seem to be quite right for grad school applications.  I am very interested in the following things:

 

Race relations; primarily between black and white Americans

the way history influences self-perception and identity regarding race and gender

affects of segregation/integration in public school setting on race identity

presentations of african americans in literature at the turn of the century

There are more, but I am trying to stay focused right now.  It is real hard to come up with a specific topic for research when I am so conditioned into getting the assignment.  It seems that I am suffering from exactly what I complain that my students are suffering from.  The difference is I have too many exciting ideas and they have an overwhelming apathy towards all forms of research and study.  

Someone help me find a focus!!!  Until then I am going to read and read until my mind explodes with more and more possible ideas.  

Here are ideas in my head:

Integration:  The "us" and "thems" in public education

Racial mistrust

Idea of color blindness:  

For blacks and whites to live comfortably with one another in the US do we have to avoid and forget that we are black and white? If we do this then what are the personal and social implications for our identity as human beings and our individual cultures?

Is color blindness synonymous with the erasing history when without understanding this history we are all lost children.  

"Acting White:" Self-fulfilled prophecies in African American youth; the ways in which society, culture, and a tradition of community support the idea that doing well in school is somehow synonymous with acting white.