Slam!

I made my students do a Poetry Slam. I forced them to watch one done at the White House by a very talented young man and told them to write a poem. What they turned in was crap and I told them so (in nicer terms than this). So I made them watch a few more videos (all COMPLETELY appropriate for the classroom), gave them a lecture about poetry not being all about rhyme scheme and repetition but about a visceral connection to yourself and your emotions. And I made them do it again.  They did, so I did 🙂

I love teaching.  I LOVE teaching and every day I see teachers who don’t.  I see teachers who have lost sight of the student, who are just coming to a job.  I see teachers who blame 16-year-old kids for not giving a crap about their education without stopping to discuss the clear fact that NO ONE in this country gives a crap about their education, sometimes not even their parents.  I see teachers who are more worried about the terms of a contract than the needs of a student.  I see teachers who use all their sick days and personal days, too.  I see teachers who get pissed off when they know they’re going to be evaluated because it means they actually have to teach something.

And I see teachers who are moving from sub job to sub job because they dared to move mid-career or decided to spend a few years at home with their children.  I see teachers with experience and degrees left on the sidelines while recent college grads get the few contracts available because they’re cheaper.  I see teachers trying to find a way to reach growing classes due to a shrinking staff and juggle the modifications from 15 IEPs.  I see teachers become mediators, nurses, counselors, mothers, and disciplinarians all in the span of 60 seconds and hear them turn boys into men in less than a sentence.

I see an industry in serious need of reform on every level and a country that can’t see its way to doing anything other than blaming the teachers.  I see an industry that is ruled by politics and not be knowledge, more interested in money than books, and more occupied with answers than with questions.  I seen an industry that no longer serves the public in the way that it should or could and must be changed NOW.

And most importantly, I see the student, the child waiting to be lead in the right direction.  I see the student whose search for knowledge survives even the worse teachers in the worst schools in the country.  I see the student who finds his own books when his school has none and the student who gets up before 5 AM and rides the bus for over an hour to get to the charter school across town and NEVER misses a day.  I see potential.  I see the future and I DEMAND to be a part of it.  Give me a job!

Tea “Party”

I think it’s a little unfair that the Tea Party gets to categorize themselves as a third party when all of their candidates are running as members of the Republican Party.  If they want to call themselves a party, the need to see if they can stand on their own and win on their own.  I don’t think they can, and I think they know it.  I wonder why the media has not called attantion to their differences from the GOP while mentioning that they are still running AS the GOP.

Discuss…

How do we convince people who do not derive power from it or lose out as a result of it that the White Male Privilege does exist and that it would be almost universally beneficial to eliminate it?

Violence

One of my students was shot and killed yesterday just standing on the corner with his friends.  He was dedicated to turning his life around after making some bad choices as a very young man. Violence is a real problem in America. I believe education is the solution, but I’m open to other suggestions.

Walk Like an Egyptian

I marvel at the courage of the Egyptian people.  Granted, their courage is spurned by 30 years of oppressive rule, but it is more than a little impressive.  Mumbarak has no hope for continued rule, and I can’t imagine he’s doing more now than trying to find a way to save face while stepping down and trying to maintain order, but the political repercussions are not what this post is about.  I am awed by the power of people, any people, to stand up to something much greater than themselves and refuse to back down.

So many times as people we have a “can’t-win-don’t-try” mentality that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  We bend over and take all kinds of crap from invasions of our privacy by advertisers to the most corrupt of politicians and continue to do nothing about it.  Even when our nation’s government is completely deadlocked due to the inability of a few “men” to reach any type of compromise we sit back and simply chalk it up to “the-way-of-the-world”.  It’s ridiculous!  The Egyptians and Tunisians demand change in oppression that did not come overnight, but crept up on them slowly over a number of years as they watched their freedom erode and their government grow more corrupt.  Sound familiar?

Indirect Censorship

The Parent’s Television Council has decided to “scold” various TV shows for their representation of teenage sexuality.  Most of the shows they chastised were geared towards adults, shows that young teens shouldn’t be watching anyway.  Of course, whether or not a child should be watching a particular show should depend on the maturity of the child and the decision of their parents, not a Parent’s council.

Indirect censorship groups are gaining way too much power.  Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club are censoring the release of Jon Stewart’s new book, Earth, for unknown reasons.  Blockbuster and other video stores decide what they want to release to the public, and it’s usually based on the owner’s morals rather than actual inappropriate content.  The rating system for movies in the US has absolutely no rhyme, reason, or rubric.

American’s are allowing their information, their books, their TV shows, and their movies to be censored with no knowledge of why or how.  They put bling faith and trust in an agency without knowing the true purpose of the censorship.  I’m so tired of being told what to watch, what to read, what to think…  Even though I choose not to listen to these agencies, I find it more and more difficult to gain access to the information they don’t want me to have, even if it’s just a little sex on Glee.

Effin’ SCOTUS

10 years ago this week, SCOTUS made one of the worst rulings in recent US History with Bush v. Gore. Things have only gotten worse from that day, and it is continually proven to us by our political and judicial leaders just how unimportant we actually are.  I think that’s all that really needs to be said today.

Food Insecure

I think Americans believe that if we put a “spin” on something, it won’t seem as bad.  That must be the reason why we’re calling 1 in 6 Americans “Food Insecure” instead of hungry.  Granted, sometimes they have food, sometimes they don’t.  It’s not like they’re starving to death, right?   

The media likes to mention it now because Christmas is coming, and a lot of Christians like to believe that everyone has food at Christmas; therefore they will be more likely at this time of year than at any other to contribute to food banks and soup kitchens.  I’m finding it exhausting to live in a “Christian Nation” that doesn’t care whether their neighbors are “food insecure” or going without health care or have their heat turned off or are having their homes foreclosed on or are unemployed or…  I’m finding it more exhausting to be surrounded by people who REALLY believe that there’s nothing that we, as individuals, can do about it other than change our vote in November.

If you really are Christ-like rather than Christian, please take the time to clean out your pantry and donate anything that’s been there longer than six month.  Go to the Dollar Store and buy a few extra cans.  Please, donate food.  MANNA and Philabundance are my favorite local food organizations, but I don’t care if you hand a can of chicken soup and a spoon to a homeless person on the street.  Make one less person “food insecure”, if only for a night.

Invoking 9/11

I tried to have a discussion with a few friends of mine about the Wikileaks scandal and Assange’s arrest.  My argument was against censorship and the slow errosion of our freedoms for the past 9 years.  A Republican friend’s argument was that she would rather have to jump through hoops at every turn if it prevented a terrorist attack.  I countered with the Benjamin Franklin quote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” and said that I would almost rather there be another terrorist attack then slowly lose my rights one by one.  That’s where she invoked the third rail of debate: 9/11.

The conversation immediately descended into the depths of hell, with several other Republicans coming to her aid.  A few of my more liberal friends came to mine, and it turned out that NO ONE was really discussion the issue at hand: Is what Assange did really illegal?  If documents written by the government of and by the people are taken by one of those people, is it really stealing?  How do documents become “CLASSIFIED”?  Who decides on the Constitutionality of that classification?

The important thing is this: If every time we attempt to have an adult conversation someone decides to end the discussion by screaming, “REMEMBER 9/11,” nothing will ever be discussed, let alone agreed upon.  The constant steering of political discussions to the irrelevant (especially since the wars fought and most of the security decisions made since have NOTHING to do with the terrorist attacks) makes us all sound like children and does not further discourse in any way.  A nation divided we definitely are, and I fear, a nation divided we shall remain.

Christmas Cookies

Right in the middle of baking a type of cookie I haven’t made in nearly a decade a memory so vivid and strong roard through my entire body so quickly that I had to stop and sit.   There was a time when all of my hristmas cookies were for soldiers.  Some of them I knew, some of them I’d never met, but in the years following high school and well after I finished my Master’s degree, there wasn’t a batch of cookies that wasn’t sent, at least in part, to one base or another.  The revelation of what made me stop sending the cookies is what immobilized me this afternoon.

One by one the soldiers I knew came home, went off to war, and came back again, though not one of them returned whole.  One, in what many of us imagined to be a particularly difficult episode of PTSD, shot a Preacher’s wife sniper style, first in the wrist to “disarm” her, then in the head for the kill.  A few came home in boxes.  Some never went to war but were lost to me in other ways – failed relationships or friendships that just couldn’t survive the span of distance and time.  There came a time when I watched these men I had known so well become pieces of themselves, and selfishly, I just couldn’t watch anymore.

So I don’t have any soldiers to send cookies to, at least not this year.  My cousins, two in the Air Force and one in the Army, stopped speaking to me a year or two ago because they couldn’t understand that though I value the military and its sacrifice, I cannot get behind these wars we’ve been fighting for years.  They’re young.  Maybe they’ll learn to separate my opinion from me as an individual, but I don’t have much hope.  And I’m not sure the situation could be altered in any way by a box of cookies.