Mission Impossible: The Dangers of Working in a School

I know that people often think of East High as a rather bland place, at least from a cultural perspective.  And I suppose that, if a person is limited to strictly visual cues, such a judgment might seem reasonable.  But, hey, I'm a librarian, so you shouldn't be surprised that I'm pulling out the "don't judge a book by its cover" adage here.

After all,  as I consider the nearly 24 years I've spent as a teacher at East, I find myself looking at a surprisingly diverse pool of students who've crossed my path.  And, while I haven't always had a lot in common with those students, like most educators, I've worked darned hard to find a personal connection I could make with each one of them.

Whatever the outsider may think, it is not the subject matter that keeps me teaching.  Nor the curriculum, the standardized testing,  the continual evolutionary tweaks and reinventions of my profession that keep me showing up each day.  Heck, it's not even my peers--whom I love deeply--that keep me at it.

No, it is the students, that rag-tagged bunch of hooligans and geniuses (sometimes one and the same) that pull me out of my warm bed on a cold, dark winter morning. Even--sometimes especially--those with whom I seem to have nothing in common, besides the fact that we are both called "Spartans."

As a teacher, I am expected--mandated, really--to be a Democrat who respects and helps educate Republicans.  A Protestant compassionately connecting with Catholics.  A woman reaching out to young men.  A white person making connections to brown people.  A middle-class person building relationships with students who call the City Mission "home." 

The great balancing act of being a teacher is to somehow find a way to be both authentic to who I am and also remain distant from the parts of myself that might close me off from others.  My classroom should not be a forum for my personal agendas any more than it should be an antiseptic stage of regurgitation for someone else's ideas.

Somewhere between those ranges of experience is what it means to be human--that messy interaction of fact and fiction, love and hate, fear and courage.

It ain't an easy balancing act, folks.  If I were solely focused on the delivery of FDA-approved curriculum and EPA-approved testing measures, it still wouldn't be an easy schtick.  Throw in the desire to figure out how to bring in some humanity, to recognize and respect the myriad secret lives that each of us haul along each morning, and it can be either downright discouraging or incredibly invigorating to do the job each day.  But it's always a bit exhausting.

So maybe you'll understand if I sigh deeply and roll my eyes a bit when I hear the latest vitriol and clucking tongues hissed in my general direction, all in response to the impossible job that faces every educator every single day--building meaningful bridges across a human landscape that is wild and beautiful, varied and complex.

Believe me when I say that no school is as bland--or as scary or as broken or as perfect or as rotten--as the one painted by those who reside outside of it.

They Say It's Your Birthday...Not That You'd Tell Anyone

Some people seek the limelight.  They pull up their overfilled wagons, open their maws and let all the sunshine and energy and attention flow into them until you think they might burst from all the fuss.   These can be perfectly nice people, mind you.

But they are not Mark Holt.

No, Mark is one of those people who, if he happens to be in a photo, usually has his eyes half shut, or is tucked into the last row, content to blend in with the background. That's why it's amazing I found this photo of him, standing proudly by his man-room acquisition, an old mandolin that someone had forgotten about.  Mark saw that thing and realized that it still had some sparkle and life left in it, so he bought it.  Gave it a new life.

Quiet people are like that--patient and observant, forever able to see the potential in half-broken things that we noisier folks simply can't be bothered with.  Thing is, they also have a great capacity to enjoy the sunshine-sucking people who draw their energy from the clangy fuel pumps of crowds and chatter.

If Mark were of the earth, he'd be the Oglala Aquifer, running deep and cool beneath the sandy soils of us shallower types, quietly nourishing us in our wilder pursuits, a seemingly endless source of support and encouragement.

I am no prima donna, nor do my tastes run towards the higher end of things.  Still, I can think of no time in our 25-year marriage when Mark has said "no" to me.  No time when he has thrown up a barrier between me and my dreams or ideas, even if those things mean we will be hosting a party with 50 tired teachers in need of dancing and cold beer.

They say opposites attract and, given the satisfying life that Mark and I have made for ourselves--one in which we still get a daily kick from each other--I'm apt to agree with them, whoever they are.  I am steadier, happier, deeper and more content with Mark Holt in my life.  Yes, I still occasionally pull up my overfilled wagon next to the "sunshine" pump and milk it for all it's worth, but I know now that the fuel that really sustains me is back home, sitting quietly in his man room, admiring his collection of once-orphaned items, made shiny and new in his steady presence.

Happy 50th, Mark.  Mighty glad to have you in my life.

Stormy Weather

It is one a.m. and I have been awakened
   --roused, really, for who can sleep when the sky has been falling since noon?--
roused, then,  by paparazzi lightning and a drumline of rain,
relentlessly keeping beat upon my shelter.

As I shuffle across the hall,
my hand runs lovingly along the north wall
grateful for its vigilance against the storm.

And, where sleep should return, there is only an ache.
--A memory of Cardinals
tucked into the nest just outside our back room.
A not-so-distant storm, its long, wet fingers
forever rushing down the awning,
stopping finally--fatally--in the twiggy home just below it.

I wake the next morning to a yawning earth
burbling the remains of the night's long drink.
 And silence, too.  A nest of broken, quiet bodies
huddled against the odds.

That damned awning came down within days,
forever stained by the long, slow night of death it brought.
A Judas where a Noah was needed.