A Return

After many years, and many life changes, I have decided to try blogging again. I need a less academic, less structured space to practice articulating my thoughts. A place that is more free, with the only peer reviews coming from whoever might stumble upon this space and frankly, I don't anticipate many visiting here. 

While I have had several posts stewing over the past few years, none of them are floating to the top of the pot so this will simply provide the life background updates. 

After the miscarriage that centered my last post I had another miscarriage and then immediately after a successful pregnancy and delivery. Two years later I had another kid which means I now have a 4 and a 6 year old. They have made life full of delight and also just plain full. I struggled for many years or maybe it was months with a deeply ambivalent motherhood. Now, while I don't always love it, I am at least more at peace with it and am able to delight in the humans beings my children are becoming. 

Seven or eight months after the first kid was born I successfully defended a dissertation that had been largely typed one handed while nursing with the other arm. Then I started a tenure track position is social studies education at Kent State University. And yes, it is the same Kent State University where four student protesters were shot and killed by the National Guard on May 4th, 1970. 

We have now purchased a home in Kent OH and our lives have become quite mundane perhaps, particularly when I compare it to the times I lived in Washington DC where most of this blog was written. I still care deeply about many of the issues I wrote about in the past but now channel that energy into my teaching, research and service. Kids, it turns out, can take a lot of time and energy and I confess to not being a terribly courageous mother. The first Women's March happened when my daughter was a few weeks old. I could have put her into a carrier of sorts and driven up to Cleveland to join others but the thought of trying to nurse a newborn and changer her diapers in the cold persuaded me to stay home and watch my facebook feed. While I have made it to a few BLM protests they have been in Kent, mostly on  my own without the kids although we do talk about the protests. 

Somedays I feel like laundry has taken over my life - but that could be a blog post all its own. For now I will leave this here in hopes that it will commit me to writing more and soon. 

The Miscarriage Post

It seems, from the vantage point of my almost 34 year old self, that time speeds up as I get older. I am always surprised when another semester, another year is complete and have long thought that life might be like summer camp, those first few days when you are getting to know people and everything crawls by, they seem to last forever, and then before you know it, it is Friday night and you are preparing to say goodbye and go home. This past fall though, life slowed down again for a time. It started as soon as I began to suspect that I was pregnant. Once it was confirmed each day took on its own pace, I anxiously awaited for the next week to come when the thing growing inside me would reach a new size, from sesame seed to lentil, to blueberry. We dubbed the growing entity "lentil"and I suddenly had a new companion. Those who have been pregnant know that everything changes the moment you know, every decision about what you eat or drink or do carries new significance, you are making the decision for two.

I tried not to get too excited, I know so many women who miscarried in their first pregnancy. But it was hard. I couldn't stop my mind from thinking of future events, family gatherings etc where this secret that I currently held would no longer be a secret. The timing was perfect for telling the family at Thanksgiving, when I would be into the second trimester, I thought of bringing a new baby to a family reunion in June, of attending conferences with the tell tale baby bump.

I went to my first prenatal appointment alone, my husband was seven hours away, we were doing just one semester apart while he took a one year position as a physics instructor and I finished some final coursework on my phd program. We knew being pregnant while we were apart could be hard, but we had been waiting a while to start trying and didn't want to hold off any longer. I had been spotting for a few weeks before this appointment which came eight and a half weeks into the pregnancy. I had called the ob/gyn, they had sent me to get blood tests and while I was in the normal range for the hormone levels there was some cause for concern, so after going over all the information I would need moving forward in the pregnancy and receiving the big folder of pamphlets, the nurse sent me to get an ultrasound. She said the tech would probably let me hear the heartbeat if everything was ok. I knew the techs weren't really allowed to do or say much more.

Though I had been trying to prepare myself for the loss of the pregnancy almost since it began, I had a sudden surge of hope before going to the ultrasound, I wanted so badly for it all to be ok. A few moments into the ultrasound I saw the tech swallow in a way that seemed significant. I kept waiting for her to pause to listen to a heartbeat but she never did. She sent me back upstairs to the ob/gyn where I focused on the paintings in the waiting room with all my might to just stop my brain from thinking and coming to the obvious conclusion. The woman who took me back to the examining room had a sad smile on her face and once inside the room I located the box of kleenex and again, scoured the walls for anything interesting that would keep me from thinking about the thing I didn't want to think about. When the nurse, Sandy, came in, she said it wasn't good news. Everything was in tact except that what was inside the sac was malformed and disintegrating, the pregnancy wasn't going to work this time.

I left the big folder of information behind, took a lot of tissues, and drove myself home. In many ways the timing was good. Finding out that the pregnancy wasn't going to work before I actually miscarried allowed me to call my husband, who, after finishing classes that day made the seven hour drive to where I was living. He was with me the next day when the bulk of the miscarriage happened, or at least the most painful part (and I must admit I was surprised at the amount of physical pain). He had to leave Sunday afternoon, which of course felt way too soon. My mother came up the next day and stayed about 24 hours and then the even more challenging time came.

Miscarriage is something that we still don't share much about in this country. Women are sharing more and more with a lot of people blogging about it in the past few years in response to this silence. Some women are embarrassed, ashamed, guilty - it seems like something deeply private. While I did not feel shame or guilt (no woman should) there were several reasons why I didn't feel like I could broadcast it right away. One, I didn't want people to know that I had been pregnant, that we were trying. We had guarded the secret carefully and while I was looking forward to sharing my happy secret, sharing this secret seemed quite different.

We don't have a cultural script for responding to miscarriage and I read several stories about hurtful responses and when I did start sharing my news received a few well intentioned, but in the end painful responses as well. A friend asked at one point how he should respond and my advice would be to say something along the lines of "I am so sorry, I can't imagine" and then to just stop talking. It is challenging because women experience miscarriage differently. For some it is a tragedy that stays with them their entire lives, for others it is a relief, and every reaction in between and around that. Women who have multiple miscarriages are likely to experience each one differently. This response allows the woman to continue talking about it if that is what she wants or to change the subject. It also shows her (or the male involved in the miscarriage) that you understand that this can be a painful experience.

The most common response I got that was painful was one that jumped right into hoping for future pregnancies and assurances that we would be successful. I know that it is possible, indeed likely, that we will have a successful pregnancy, but at first I needed people to just understand and share the pain of this event. Sharing someone else's pain is hard, which is why I think we jump to the hopeful response, but it is also a big gift to simply be with someone in their pain.

So I shared slowly and randomly, sometimes on an as-need basis, but not knowing how I was going to react and handle everything made it hard to figure out who needed to know. This also meant that while I was recovering physically and emotionally, I spent a lot of energy going around trying to pretend that everything was fine. The most physically painful part of the miscarriage happened on Saturday and I bled for two weeks after. In some ways I was fortunate because as a grad student I don't have to be "at work" interacting with other people from 9-5 every day. I went into school for the first time on Tuesday attended meetings and a class, taught Wednesday morning and again just tried to keep going without having to share my new big secret. This was simply exhausting. There are so many small interactions every day where people ask you how you are and you smile back and say great, or good, or ok, or alright. You don't say, "Actually, I am pretty terrible, I just lost a pregnancy." At least I didn't. I wanted to keep a certain front up in my grad student/professional life and I also quickly realized that talking about it wasn't always helpful, it just made me tired. So again, I pressed on. My body eventually rebelled through asthma attacks brought on by stress and emotion, random bouts of tears and just a general functioning at about 70% capacity. It took about a week before I could wake up and not have that sinking feeling immediately afterwards, remembering what had happened. It took about a month for me to feel like I had mostly recovered and then another month to catch up on the first month when I had been in survival mode.

There are still important people in my life who don't know about all of this, not because they aren't important but because the role out of information like this is challenging to say the least.

Many people see miscarriage as a loss and what follows as a grieving process. A few people have challenged that there wasn't anything to really lose and I have pondered the same question myself. It is true, there was not a viable life inside of me, however, there was the idea and the hopes and dreams that sprang up around that idea and even though there is potential for that idea to be realized again, the loss of it this time was a true loss. The idea of "Lentil" had already taken up lodging in my heart.

Another conversation I have had many times is about pregnancy in general. Pregnancy is hard. For some people getting pregnant is a huge struggle, for others, being pregnant is painful, nauseating and uncomfortable, for everyone I know, being pregnant is a project filled with anxiety about your own health, about the health of the thing growing inside of you, etc. I had no idea going into pregnancy how intense this part would be, I have prided myself on being cool calm and collected, I keep in mind that women have been pregnant and having babies for thousands of years in all sort of places and in all types of houses or living arrangements, that this is something our bodies are designed to do etc. But that doesn't always make it easy. The public image of pregnancy is one of smiling women cradling their baby bumps, joyous births etc. Yet 1 in 4 pregnancies does not make it through to completion, some ending earlier on and some ending with a still birth.

Couples who experience pregnancy loss frequently feel as though they have to deal with it privately, I found out about a friend of a friend who, after having a miscarriage, told her supervisor she had been diagnosed with cancer to explain the extra doctors appointments and her emotional state. This just shows how extreme the pressure can be to remain silent about miscarriage. My husband suggested that I tell people I was struggling with some medical issues but I chose not to because it didn't encompass the emotional things I was experiencing, so for a lot of people I didn't say anything. I am blogging about this all now to bring it more into public conversation. It has been nearly three months since we lost our pregnancy, and I realize the helpfullness of sharing now is limited for me personally, but maybe it will help other couples know that this does happen. There are more and more resources, communities etc online for people who experience miscarriage, this is my own attempt to contribute and break the silence. 

The Play by Play

For those who are interested, here is the play by play of our big moment. (Big thanks to Cindy and Kevin for the pictures here which they already posted on facebook - we have yet to download the hundreds from the camera that Matt's dad used as the official photographer so there will be more later)

Location - we were at Matt's grandparents' cottage on Lake Huron

Here is a view of the lake:

Here is a view of the cottage and people getting ready:

Here we are getting ready to walk with our "bubble kids," my niece and nephew Emma and Caleb - they were awesome:

People played "Here Comes the Bride" on Kazoos while we walked in - here they are warming up:

We were pretty excited walking in (and as we walked in a bald eagle flew by!!!):

A note on my dress - from the empire waist up is the original of my grandmother's wedding dress, the rest uses material from her her dress (it had long sleeves and lots of train, all of which I preferred not to have in August)  The little blue ribbons are from my mother's wedding dress.

My college roommate and dear friend Mary Lawrence read a poem:

Here is the poem, it is by Elizabeth Bradfield and it is AMAZING

epithalamion (wedding song)
and now, after the night that follows this day of promise and abandon you will wake to a life that is no different and yet is called something else and so, in the way names carry history and song, you wake to each other differently.
may you wake each day glad of each other.
may you keep for each other the small and daily preferences: coffee, soap brand, sock style and music specific to the hour. May they be considered and attended.
consider the luck of having another's joys and sorrows woven through yours, melody made harmony.
and how harmony thrills as it resolves from dissonance.
there will be dissonance. the unpoetic daily and the vast tragic. and there will be time for rough burr to become texture, knots in raw silk. 
Now, there are knottings of the face, tics of expression - a word, the way a cup is held, a hitch in sleeps regular breath - these are waypoints in your maps. 
Remember the star-maps have held their constellations for years beyond counting and no one ever finds such unchangingness dull or grating.
we use familiar points and stories to figure where we are, to find our way home through distances that cannot be known before they are traveled.

Then Matt's sister Erin read some scripture:

Linda (the lady with the beautiful stole on) gave a wonderful homily about how gardening and marriage are similar.  Well, it was much more than that, but you will have to ask her for the details - it was beautiful!!!

After vows, Matt and I read commitments that we had made to each other - I started my commitments last summer before we even talked about getting married and added to them throughout the year - Matt let them stew in his mind and sat down to write them about 2 hours before our ceremony began - we did not see each others commitments at all prior to the service.

E's commitments to M:

As we move forward in our life together I will do my best

…to communicate openly with you, with love, compassion, humor and courage. 

 to walk slowly through life with you, taking time to watch a spider make a web and to joyfully explore the world together,

to continue to play with you, be silly, be loving and not take ourselves too seriously,

to appreciate all that you do for me, the ways in which you are there for me and your very existence in my life,

to not let my career or what I do in the world overtake our love for each other, recognizing that I will be better in the world because of our love and mutual support of each other,

to make music with you,

to stick by you even on days when you drive me crazy,

to hold your hand,

to support you and take care of you and to allow you to support me and take care of me

to continue our mutual commitment to making the world a better place,

to strive for that with you, to challenge you and to allow myself to be challenged by you,

to dance with you, spontaneously. 

To love and cherish you, with tenderness, strength and courage.

M's commitments to E:

 Elizabeth, we have known each other for a year and a half.  In that short time together we have gone on walks, runs, and bike rides.  We have planted gardens, watched them grow and watched them die in a variety of ways too lengthy and horrible to list here.  We have lost family and gained family.  We have written and avoided writing academic works of profound insight, depth, and abundance of typos. As we move forward in our life together I offer you these commitments:

I will give you my open ears and open mind.

I will be there for you in the hard times with a great big hug and a pocket of tissues.

I will be there for you in the good times with a great big hug and a pocket of tissues. 

I will share with you my thoughts, perspectives and emotions.

I will be your number 1 fan and cheerleader or at least a co-#1 fan with Mama K.

I will value your strengths and help you build new ones.

I will share my strengths and lean on you when they are not enough. 

I will make beautiful music, or awful noises with you depending on the context and the listeners perspective. 

I will learn from you and learn with you.

I will walk with you and hold your hand.

I will help carry your load and let you help carry mine.

I will work with you to build a life, a garden, and a better world, together. 

Then we exchanged rings, were announced, blessed and sent out to the sound of kazoos playing Simple Gifts.  

We were pretty happy:

We were thrilled to be joined by so many people who are so very dear and important in our lives including all four of Matt's grandparents!

And my grandparents were all present in my heart!

If anyone is interested in celebrating our love with a gift we are asking folks to donate to one of three different organizations:

Educational Praxis which supports a school in India where I spent some time a few summers ago:

http://educationalpraxis.org/

Haiti Outreach Mission - a program that Matt's church participates in and supports:

www.haitioutreachmission.org

Hospice of Lenawe - the organization my Dad works for that does amazing work in Lenawee County:

http://www.hospiceoflenawee.org/

Thank you for taking the time to see the play by play!  I am still glowing and am so grateful to those both near and far who made this past weekend, and mine and Matt's love possible!!!

Old Wisdom

I have been trying to clean my books out of my parents house and the last box was full of old journals, starting from when I was maybe in the 2nd grade (lots of great reading there, let me tell you)  Anyway, today I stumbled upon some rough poems from 2005.  I had been living in a house with three wonderful men for several months at that point, and while they are all wonderful, it was still lonely being the only woman and my feminist self needed to do a lot of talking that year - so here are some of the results...



It's not a shell

It's not a shell I am coming out of
I am not a snail or a clam
Nor am I merely blossoming
I am more than pretty petals
And don't say that I am finding myself
I have been here all along

Don't say I am overreacting
Just because the smile has left my face

Let's just say the clouds are clearing
And the light that shines is revealing new truth

You may not want me to see or even know that truth
You may wish I would just forget about it
Or maybe you don't understand it
Your clouds have not yet cleared
You may even choose to keep them there

But don't you dare think that I will ever let my truth be obscured again
That I can ever go back to the "pre-knowing" days.

Pickle Jars 
(Also titled "Bag 1" since it was written while I was pulling weeds from our landscaping while all the boys were inside and this one only got me through the first bag of weeds I pulled)

Women have been opening pickle jars for years
With the wisdom and strength of our hands
We have loosened the lid just enough
          Ironing shirts, cooking dinners, lugging laundry, scrubbing floors, raising children...
and smiling when our men come home

We hand the pickle jar over with an apologetic needful look
building their strength as we deny our own
They smile and understanding
and with little apparent effort
finish opening the jar
           They bring home the paycheck - get the promotion
We take the open pickle jar
with much gratitude and appreciation
and return to the kitchen
leaving our man in the recliner, in front of the tv.

Some Changes...

So it has been almost two years since my last post-bee-sting post.  And there have been a lot of changes in my life that will probably steer this blog in some new directions.  This post will consist largely of updates, some changes in thinking perhaps.  First a few things that haven't changed - as I sit here typing I have my mate by my side and have been drinking it all morning, I am wearing a beloved wrap around skirt from a dear friend and a tank top, still my favorite outfit, I am still working in education, though in a different capacity and I still love the world and all that is in it although that love brings with it critiques and hopes for something better.  So changes...

I just finished my second year as a phd student in curriculum instruction and teacher education.  I now teach college seniors instead of middle school students, I am getting married (though I still believe in my love rant), I am living in Michigan and have started gardening.

So yeah, things are different.  On the getting married piece, there has been so much I have learned about love and partnership and about myself in this process.  Matt, my betrothed (such a strange word) is a scientist, a "radical moderate"(to be explained later), a quiet sort of guy - not at all the type I ever saw myself with, not that I thought I would ever be with anyone on a permanent basis.  In the past several months I have wondered if I am giving up on my politics by being with someone whose politics vary so greatly from mine, I have realized that what I thought I wanted probably would never have worked, and I have discovered that how one lives life is perhaps more important than how one talks about it.  I have known many men who proclaim themselves feminists and yet still struggle to act in feminist ways.  Though Matt may never wave the feminist banner himself, I have never known a man more capable of supporting me and allowing for my strength and independence, one who is willing to have a less than conventional partnership in terms of division of labor, or who can love in such powerful ways.  Our differences in seeing the world provide for endless though frequently frustrating conversation, and explaining my beliefs and thinking to someone as ardently moderate as Matt has helped me to clarify and strengthen them. We have both learned a lot about listening, even when we disagree and about continuing to discuss these issues even when it makes us angry and frustrated.

In other changes, my thoughts on education have been expanded and muddied and clarified and muddied some more - the complexities involved in the basic questions of what knowledge is, who and how it is defined, who benefits and who does not in these definitions seem to cause a paralysis at times in the world of teacher education research and yet they are the questions that are most important and I am most passionate about.  Because the thinking of a grad student is largely centered around course work in the first years I have explored many areas including Teacher Learning, Critical Race Theory, Context and Micro-politics of Teacher Education, History of Education, Reform, Curriculum and many many more.  The same questions keep surfacing about knowledge, what learning and teaching.

So as I move forward, expect updates on gardening, partnership and some of the more troubling questions about education - 

Privilege to Survive

On Monday I had a nasty run in with some sort of stinging bug - and because I live in a community with medical facilities, I have health insurance, and I had people around, it was a small thing, a minor incident. But had I not had any of those things the outcome could have been different, there would not have been the nurses or the doctors, the epinephrine, the IV, the ambulance to take me to the emergency room, the benadryl - I may have survived without those things but there were moments when I wasn't sure - but even without the bug sting and my reaction to it, I survived - I could live in Pakistan right now, or Afghanistan, or Niger, the Philippines or the United States (source) or be one of the thousands of children who die every day either from starvation or preventable disease - and in that case, bug or no bug, I might not have survived - survival is privileged.

yes, we have a medical system that can be god like - make miracles, save lives - and if it hadn't existed, I definitely would have died about two years ago from an appendix leaking toxins into my system - However, the nature of that medical system, the high costs, the privatization makes living, life, something that only the privileged can have and afford. And while I am thankful for the times my life has been saved, I know that my life is no more worthy than the thousands of lives that are not saved every day -so yes, I survived Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday - I survive and am able to live every day because others are not.

Monday was a rough day, and I have spent much of my week rehashing it with others, going over it in my mind, marveling at the wonderful support that others gave me - but I can't forget that Monday, though merely the tip of the iceberg of my privilege was more about that same privilege than anything else... what that means for tomorrow, I am not sure, I'm just sayin.....

The Good Times

For those who have been reading this lately - you may have noticed that I have been a little down on teaching and education. So I decided to write about the good times. This past week I had a day that was every teachers nightmare, the students were mocking my attempts to tell them what to do and then of course doing whatever they wanted which included breaking a few things in the classroom, hitting each other, etc. By the end of the day I was so frustrated my co-workers were encouraging me to use one of the many personal days I have left the following day so I could have a break. I thought about it, and then I worried that maybe Thursday would be one of the good days, or better days. Maybe I would miss one of the "good times" that make teaching worth it. So I came in, and was so glad I did. Not that the day was easy or anything, but there was a moment.

We were walking back from PE at the end of the day and to distract a students who was starting to pick on someone else, I started to talk about the leaves and flowers along the walk. At one point where there was a delightful sweet smell I stopped and asked my students "What is that wonderful smell? Do you smell it?" They immediately located its source in a honeysuckle bush and started plucking the blossoms off and putting the stem ends in their mouth. Having grown up in the North, I had never tasted a honeysuckle blossom. I asked the students in amazement if they were eating the honeysuckle and they all sort of clamored to explain it to me and show me how to do it. It was one of the "good times."

And to be totally honest, there are moments of every day even the worse days that qualify as part of the good times. I have decided that during these last four weeks, with a class that has challenged me in more ways than I thought possible, that I will go to work everyday and focus on the good times, try not to worry about the broken pencil sharpener, the bits of crayon flying about the room, the graffiti scratched into the refrigerator, the screen that has fallen out our window, or the things my students holler out he window in an attempt to get the girls walking by. Yes, I will keep addressing those issues, but I hope not to get bogged down in them. I want to remember the honeysuckle moments at the end of the day.

Prison School

Yesterday I decided to watch some Democracy Now! while baking some cookies. I listened to this report on racism, brutality and humiliation in California prisons. I had to stop what I was doing and listen more closely and gasp over and over as the words in the report matched those we use every day at school. I hope this will become more clear in the post. As I said to a friend last night at dinner, not a day goes by when I am not aware of the oppressive nature of the school I work at and when I am not at least a little bit torn apart by it. Still, when I hear certain reports or read certain editorials I am still shocked at the reality of it all.

This blog is going to be a bit of an experiment in that I am going to re-listen to the report on Democracy Now and simply type my thoughts and reactions as I go along. It may be helpful to watch the report yourself.

They introduce the piece saying there is a controversy rising in California over allegations of racist treatment in prisons. How do we raise the awareness, the issue of education, particularly special education as it exists in my context to the place of a controversy? There are so many assumptions or beliefs that revolve around it. Some that come to mind are "we are doing what has to be done" "these kids won't be successful any other way" "What else are you going to do?" "They are 'special kids' they need/deserve this"

Cruelty brutality and corruption.....

extreme isolation, idleness and deprivation....

A troubling pattern of behavior -

The abuse has been discovered in what were originally called "behavior modification units" that have now been renamed "behavior management units" due to the bad connotation with behavior modification. Interesting that in education we use the EXACT SAME LANGUAGE to describe our schools, programs, and plans. We do not shy away from the behavior modification name, indeed we embrace it frequently bragging about the results. It runs the gamut from the use of detention halls and tardy marks to the school in Massachusetts that is still using electric shock "treatment" as a crucial component in its behavior modification. My school falls somewhere in between as we use restraints and "quiet rooms" as well as a token economy system.

"This was a pretty alarming set of facts to learn..." (every time I share info on where I work, I get a similar reaction)

Now, these behavior management units, how do they differ from what’s normally referred to, I guess, as isolation cells in these prisons? And what are they supposed to do that’s different from those isolation cells?

"How do special education and behavior management schools differ from "regular schools?" ek

My initial thoughts on both of these (the second is mine) is how can prison and when you think about it, school, be considered normal, even in the most usual circumstances? They both involve people who are trapped behind closed doors living in some sort of artificial reality that has an entirely different set of rules and values from those that exist outside the doors. They both seem to exist more for the protection of the people outside than for the betterment of the people inside.

They (behavior management plans) had carrots and sticks associated with them. The sticks were a reduction in privileges. Prisoners lost contact with family members, in many cases. They lost time in the exercise yard. They lost the ability to draw from the prison canteen. They lost access to electronic media, such as television, very restricted access to reading materials. Kind of an isolation tank, you might say. And the carrot was that for good behavior, in other words, reduced rule breaking in the prisons, they could gradually earn back a few of those privileges and eventually graduate into the mainline prison environment, where they could be a more—have a more normal prison experience.

In our school we have a point sheet system that determines what level a student is on (red, yellow, green, blue, and silver) With these levels come different privileges such as internet access, extra food from the school store, listening to music, Friday recreational activities and more freedom of movement (being able to walk the halls without an escort). Students drop their level by breaking the rules. Extreme rule violation can result in time (5-20 minutes) spent in the "quiet room" (a small bare room with a door that can be held shut from the outside). Students earn back privileges slowly by not breaking rules. However, the opportunity to go back to "normal school" is extremely rare for our students.

The path was something called “life skill” classes. These were things like anger management and Alcoholics Anonymous, things that prisoners could use to essentially heal themselves, at least by design. What I found was that these classes were largely dropped by the prison system. In other words, budget cuts and lockdowns, where prisoners are locked in their cells, often, all but all week, every week, except for perhaps two or three visits outside the cell for a quick shower, in many cases—these kinds of conditions made the classroom part of the program increasingly meaningless. And so, what you were left with was fear and deprivation. Now, fear and deprivation can be a powerful motivator. As a result, the prisons reported that these were successful programs. They reported that rule violations were down as a result of the behavior modification program.

Again with the language. We do "lockdowns" in our school, sometimes on a class by class basis, sometimes on a school wide basis. Lockdown in school means that students are not allowed to leave their seat without permission. There are maybe 3 or 4 opportunities to use the bathroom in a day. Students only leave their seats for the required computer programing meaning they no longer go to a teacher or TA desk for tutorial. Education comes to a halt as students are expected to complete worksheets on their own, in their cubicle all day long. So yes, "these kids of conditions [make] the classroom part of the program increasingly meaningless."

On another note - is behavior modified through fear and deprivation really modified behavior? Or is it simply a fear of deprivation? I frequently wonder the same about my students. I have learned that it is impossible to force a person to be respectful, or to care about others and the world through punishment, and yet that is what we try to do every day.

This guy is a guy who has a criminal past. And I think viewers may logically say, “Why believe a guy like that?” Prisoners do lie. They aren’t the most credible sources, because they’re constantly trying to game the system.

If I only had a nickle for every time I heard someone make a similar statement about our students, or about "inner-city kids." And I think these statements do reveal underlying beliefs some people have about who can be trusted and who can't, and more often than not, our beliefs are racist, because they are so strongly associated with skin color.

I should add that I want listeners to understand that most correctional officers do their jobs professionally and well, even in the difficult conditions of overcrowding in the California prisons, and they deserve a lot of credit and thanks for their public service in an often dangerous and difficult job.

Yes...what is frightening is what it can mean to do your job "professionally and well" I have found in my position that it asks me to act against my own senses of freedom, justice, and fairness. That my definition of doing my job well is in direct conflict with the administration's definition of doing my job well. To meet the standards of the administration I would have a quiet, well controlled, and thoroughly tested class that never questioned adult or system authority and always obeyed. My desire for a lively class, in which students feel they have a right to question has never lived up to those standards.

Which Side Are You On?

The other night I had the honor and privilege of being at a benefit where Bernice Johnson Reagan, founder of Sweet Honey and the Rock, Civil Rights Leader, and Cultural Activist spoke. She told stories about her connection to the Highlander Center interspersed with songs.

One story she told was of a woman whose husband was leading a strike - there were some local people angry about the strike who were threatening to kill her husband. He managed to leave the house but the people came and ransacked it while she was there, destroying everything. And she knew almost every single one of them. In her anger, she wrote a song "Which Side Are You On?" demanding some sort of response from the neighbors who had destroyed so much of what they worked for.

As we sang the chorus over and over I thought about my classroom. Do my students ask the same question? They must get confused because while I encourage them in developing an activist voice at some moments, I also support the oppressive systems in the school. They may not even wonder - they may say flat out that I am not on their side - or maybe they understand the struggle. I sometimes try to tell them.

But most importantly I have to ask myself this question. Which side are you on? Am I on the side of point sheets, and suspensions, and silence in the classroom? Am I on the side of a better world existing for my students? Yes and Yes. And it is a HUGE contradiction - more later.....

They Tried To Warn Me

While getting my M Ed, people told me that dealing with the requirements, standardization, etc. of teaching were going to be hard. They told me it would be harder than I could imagine, that it would make me want to stop teaching...and part of me tried to believe them, but the arrogant part thought that I could rise above any administrative bureaucratic stuff. That I would simply shut the door and create a haven of freedom in my classroom. But it turns out, they were right.

I am approaching the end of my third year of teaching, and have decided to start a PhD this fall in Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education. To be totally honest, I am not sure what I will be able to do there - I just knew that teaching was starting to suck the life force out of me, it was leaving me angry all the time, I kept approaching despair. The past few weeks are a good example of why.

Two weeks ago at our weekly Tuesday teacher meeting the reading specialist informed us of the new testing plans for next year. Not only will we continue our monthly testing of reading, math and comprehension levels that take the teacher out of the classroom for a full morning, but next year teachers will spend the first 4 weeks of school administering math tests individually to students. The rest of the class will be in the classroom with the teaching assistant. The school year is now just short of 10 months. That means from this test alone teachers will spend more than 10% of the year not teaching but testing. Evidently with our monthly testing we have done this year we have become an exemplary school. Many other schools in our region will have to do the same because of what we have done. Our requirements will become more strict in terms of timeliness of data entry etc. This is all happening in the context of a school where teachers do not get planning periods, where we are discouraged from taking our students outside except for PE classes that happen twice a week, where student behavior is individually monitored and documented every twenty minutes on a point sheet that determines a complicated set of priveleges and punishments. In short, where education has already slipped into the background.

And then there was this past week of standardized testing. The school I teach at is for students with learning disabilities. Most of my students do not read beyond a second or third grade level. There math skills are on a similar level. Yet they were all expected to take an 8th grade test this year. Most of the math concepts they had never seen. The decoding of the reading for many of my students was nearly impossible. In addition, the district has taken away the read-aloud accomodation meaning we can no longer read the test aloud to students who have dislexia of some sort. The tests leaves the students so demoralized and frustrated that we will spend the rest of the school year helping them feel competent again. Even though we spent the afternoons playing kickball and football and other fun activities we had around double the number of fighting incidents this week as we do in other weeks. The students were clearly frustrated and anxiety ridden even though we had explained to them over and over that their score on the test didn't matter, that it was not their fault that they didn't know things on the test because for a variety of reasons they had never been taught the material.

At somepoint in the middle of all of this a Henry Giroux article showed up on Truthout. Though I am not technically a public school teacher, it all rang so true for me it took me a few days to read it cause I had to swallow so much anger. In addition, the school I teach in is a part of the privitization movement that I am against in so many ways. As a result we are not unionized and we pay dearly for it. Many of the fundamental aspects of our school are passed down through the company that is based in New Jersey, the antithesis of a school that is meeting community based needs. Yes, the teachers and other staff in our school are well intentioned wonderful people, but I feel that the structure that the school is set in, both national, district, and privatized expectations, are making it increasingly difficult to do any good. As a teacher who is asked to teach several subjects, on several different levels without a planning period or lunch (I spend from 8:30 am to 3:15 pm with kids) I feel undervalued and exploited making it difficult maintain any sort of moral or positive attitude towards my work. Yes I love the kids, and yes, there are parts of teaching that I love. However, it is difficult to keep students engaged with lessons that are loosely developed becayse I have simply not had the time to work on them, it is difficult to maintain a learning environment when students are not adequately engaged, and in the end there are just huge amounts of frustration. My following blogs will go into more detail as I prepare to leave the school and need to both analyze and publicize my experience there. At this point, I ask you to read the Henry Giroux article and keep your eyes and ears on education in this country - look at the race to the top guidelines which will be the topic of another post soon - it is all frightening and needs to be acted on. More later.....

Or does it explode?

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

- Langston Hughes

* A friend recommended to me that I make this post more of a conversation, so consider it unfinished, but also consider yourself a part of the finishing process - ask questions, give answers...

I have gotten into answering rhetorical questions lately, sometimes obnoxiously, and in response to Mr. Hughes, rhetorical or not, I say yes. That dream explodes in my classroom everyday, it sags, it dries up, it festers. It stinks and it crusts over. I have been overwhelmed this year by the frustration and anger that is present in my classroom on a daily basis, a frustration I frequently contribute to as my students engage each other and at times myself in power struggles over minute details, fine lines, and different truths. Many days I have found myself biking home with an angry look on my face, cursing under my breath at every car that thinks of getting in the way, at the stoplights that slow me down. For months I have been trying to trace some concrete historical path to what happens in my classroom every day. Today if felt like finally realizing the obvious when the above poem slipped into my head on my bike ride home.

My students, all African American, all eligible for free and reduced lunch, are the living result of a dream deferred for generations. And yes, it explodes in fights, yelling, seemingly unreasonable reactions. It dries up in students who have already given up on themselves, who are too afraid to put themselves out there, to try. It stinks like rotting meat in students who are so unsure of their own place in this world that they establish themselves through their cruelty to others. It festers in students who come in angry every single morning and cannot seem to let their hands relax from fists to pencil grips. And it sags when students sleep through the day, or simply say it is too hard. Finally, it crusts over with a false sweetness all the times my students say what they know I want to hear, instead of what they think or believe.

My students are living results of thousands and generations of dreams deferred. Washington DC was at one time a safe haven for slaves. Freedmen's villages were set up to receive escaped slaves (and also keep them segregated from the white population) Now those villages, sometimes keeping the same names are huge housing projects. Under served and under educated the illiteracy rate in DC is one of the highest in the nation (after all we are just a few generations away from a time when it was illegal for Blacks to learn how to read). Incarceration is another way in which the dreams of Blacks in Washington DC are being deferred. Disenfranchisement whereby the residents of our nation's capital (majority Black) are not represented in the congress that makes the final decisions on the cities budget and laws. City spending has left some neighborhoods untouched while others are pristine. Finally the AIDS rate in the District of Columbia is the worst in any city in the United States. Most of these issues are not exclusive to DC, and I would argue that my classroom is not the only one that explodes.

The amazing thing is that middle schoolers have this resilience that makes it so that even as they sit amongst mountains and mountains of dreams deferred, they still have moments of kindness, of trying for something different or better, of working together. They don't have as many moments like this as I would like, but I also sometimes miss these moments in the midst of the sagging explosions and stinking festers and the drying crusted over sweetness.

So what is my role in all of this as a white woman? I don't know exactly. Maybe it is to remember and to voice that there are historical roots to behaviors, not from bad families, or bad genes, but from dreams that have been deferred over and over again by the forces or oppression, indifference, racism, ignorance. I must resist the urge (that is both classist and racist in nature) to simply label my kids as "bad" as though they carry some inherent evil. Maybe I need to work with students in sifting through the dreams and understanding the forces that keep them dreams and not reality. Maybe it is my role to help my students see through the words others place on them. I am utterly inadequate in all of these things and frequently fear my failure does more harm than what little good I am able to do. And yet every morning, I find myself on my bike, cursing at the cars under my breath...

Love Rant

Who hasn't written one of these, about a love lost or found, a betrayal or a connection? This one is about definitions of love, of me, of we. Of a love that goes beyond Valentines hearts and wedding rings. No, i am not hating on your partnership, just offering up another vision, another way of having a life overflowing with love that flows between more than two people, flows through more than blood and water.

So let me stop this hallmark card and get real.

I am single and I am happy, and I am complete, and I am not waiting, I am not "in between" something, or preparing myself for someone - I am not unloved or unlovable - I have a long list of people to lean on at the end of a hard day, I have deep loves with many hearts, and if you ask me why I am "alone" I will tell you that I am not and that I don't have to, nor do I want to justify my single state against partnered expectations.

I experience a love that allows me to develop community, to make more choices, to express myself more widely, to be in awe of more of the amazing people I share this space with.

So now I am going to stop the poetic and get a little political. The hyper-focus of our culture on romantic, heterosexual, family making love is detrimental to our ability to join together, form community, experience solidarity. The energy that we, in the United States, spend on finding that special someone and then keeping that special someone is huge. Again, I don't want to put down those who have found these amazing and wonderful relationships. The love between two people can create worlds, not to mention more humans (or the space to care for humans. However, when we are taught to focus so much on that one relationship, that narrow definition of family, it discourages the collective action that is necessary to keep the power in the hands of the people. So find your love, but also appreciate all the love you already have with family and friends. The hours we spend in bars, at parties, on match.com or okcupid, could be spent organizing, meeting and working with people to make change, thinking and reading about how to turn this world upside down.

So expand your heart to love more, to love those who suffer due to your comfort, those who work for no pay so that we can have our cheap Walmart products, those who are targeted with our fear. Make that love so big it will cause you to want to act in a way that will undermine your own privilege so that others will not have to lack in order for you to have. Keep the romantic love, and make it grow into something more - make yours a revolutionary partnership, or community of friends, or family.

Honest Moments

I wrote this several months ago in response to my discomfort with myself. I need a moment of honesty - I thank those who have been honest with me in reading the poem and in many other moments of my life.

The boys leaning against
the wall seem familiar with
the place. Cops swarming "Move off
the corner! No loitering here!"

The memory of my students' stories...
"The I-pod was right there. I could have lifted it off
the white man so easily!" and
the only colors I see are black and white and
the blue of the policemen's uniforms and
the blue men make me mad glad all in one breath because
the fear is rising up past
the hatred of abusive authority and
the racism rises above
the solidarity and
the confusion reigns supreme.

The questions in my head are too many and
the answers keep coming from
the eleven o'clock news and
the education of a little white girl and
the absence of another voice

The manifestations of oppression validate
the ideology of
the dominant group so well I can't see past
the rhetoric and
the lies. I only hear
the voices of my friends and family
the assurance that
the world IS as it seems, as we believe it to be and that
the "we" DOES include everyone

The problem is I know just enough to know there is another story
the story that some would rather not hear
the story I must find so I can understand
the truth in
the lives of
the boys standing against
the wall so familiar with
the place.

Choosing Human-ness

(I am going through and finishing old posts, this one was started months ago and is simply a reminder of something I think we all know, and the image, well, I agree with that message as well)

I was having one of those afternoons today when nothing seemed to be going right. I showed up in the wrong place for the thing I needed to do, got lost going to the other place, didn't have the right stuff, blah blah blah. I am sure we have all had those moments - I was hot, sweaty (I was biking this whole time) and tired of the backpack that seemed to have grown twenty pounds heavier during the whole experience. And then a person treated me in a less than human way...I knew it wasn't personal as he had treated the woman in front of me in a similar way, but still it jarred me. The next human interaction I had (other than between me and drivers of cars) also felt less than human...and my initial response was to retreat, be less than human to others myself and simply stop interacting as much as possible.

And I thought about people who receive less than human treatment every day, due to the color of their skin, their class, their ability, their gender or sexual orientation. First I thought about how awful that must be, but then I realized that many of these people manage to remain human, and treat others as humans despite of, or in defiance of how they are treated.

The retreat always feels safer, more protected. When faced with an awkward situation, it almost always feels better to be aloof, or disdainful, or just plain ignore a human. And when we are hurt, or down in any way it also feels good to retreat into ourselves, assume the weight of the world, and either martyr ourselves or others. I know all of this because it is my usual response. I hope that some day I can find the strength or the inspiration, or whatever to maintain my human-ness in defiance of all that is not human.

No Words

sometimes there are no words
or is it too many
the flood of anguish
the pain that goes beyond
anything that could possibly
be captured in the boxes of
words we hold in our minds

for me there is no depth
to the word peace - it is
white doves and olive branches
nothing so strong as to bring
a revolution that somehow holds
justice in its sweeping arms
peace is long flowing skirts
and flowery meadows, it is
Kum bay Yah and hand holding
circles - smiles hugs and tears not
food clothing dignity, not freedom
not healthcare or security

and speaking of security we need
to revolutionize that meaning too -
no border patrols and airport checks
but guaranteed food, shelter and
medicine - the security that comes
with equality
and needs no guns or night
vision binoculars wire
tapping our private unjust lives

Base Ten

Here is another reflection - I have been trying to write in verse lately (as you can see it is only moderately successful). This is a little late in being posted as I have been without internet.

Base 10

Because most of us are born
with 5 fingers on each of 2
hands
And some of us die with the
same
We measure things in 1s, 10s, 100s
and 1000s

For the rich and famous of the
US of A, 1 can keep us riveted to
24 hour news coverage for days

For inner city poor it takes
100s to draw even a
20 second news blurb

This morning on the radio
The woman dragged out
One T-h-o-u-s-a-n-d
Palestinians killed
Finally, it was news worthy
Finally it was a crisis

Imagine if we were born
with only 4 fingers on each
hand
Imagine if the mathematicians
hadn't counted their thumbs.
It would have taken 488 fewer
deaths to catch our attention.
Although maybe then, the standards
would be shifted again.

We were THOUSANDS

Recently I went to a huge protest in Washington DC about the violence happening in the Gaza Strip. This was my reflection:

I got caught up in
the joy on young girls
faces and for a moment
their smiles
made me feel hope
marching some how together
I did not feel alone

We
We were marching
and there was hope in
our numbers fierce
independence in our chants
an independence not based
in individual desire
but in a demand
for change and I wonder
if any of my comrads
feel the same disappointment
now looking at the news
and seeing nothing.

We were thousands
Thousands
And we were stopping
traffic and screaming words
We carried our signs in the cold
pouring rain
and yet I know
no one will see us
no one will hear us

We were thousands
of invisible souls marching
through the capitol
of the most powerful of nations

And part of me wonders
if this
is just a small part
of what it feels like
to be
Palestinian.

Thoughts and Laughs from the Past

I recently finished a masters degree from an international service sort of school. As a part of the finishing up process we were given our admissions essays back. I read mine over with great trepidation, fearing the arrogance and idealism of my youth (all of four years ago:)) Instead I found the seeds of my then eminent change in how I saw the world. I won't burden you all with the whole thing, but just the inspiring and funny parts. Enjoy!

For almost as long as I can remember I have wanted to save the world. My earliest memories are of hearing of people in pain and distress and picturing myself sweeping in to rescues them. It doesn't take one long to realize that this was a selfish and vain goal, a goal entirely based on a desire for glory and praise. As I have grown, the nature of my desire for international service has changed dramatically I learned that "saving the world" is not as easy as it sounds, and that it is more likely to happen in tiny increments that are hardly visible, rather than one sweeping action by a sole woman on a mission. I also learned that though there are many Mother Teresas in this world, only one of them has ever been given proper recognition.

....When I arrived in Argentina I was naive thinking that my one year of college Spanish would prepare me to be fully immersed in a country where they speak Castellano. It took me all of four seconds in the airport to figure out I was wrong. Then the house dog biting my my first night in my English-less host home taught me that communication is in no way limited to words. Three months later I discovered that you could wear the same outfit for three days in a row. Not only was there no snickering, but also, life continued much the same as it had when I wore a new outfit every day, only less laundry and less decision making.....

Just a few reflections. I would say there was still some arrogance, still some assumptions about helping and helplessness - I will save that for the next post.

Guest Blog from Lu

So my housemate, Lu, sent me and several other people this email yesterday. I asked her if I could paste it in here as a guest blog post and she said yes. I love it for its frankness and the revelations - enjoy.....

I'm only writing about this because if I could have coffee with any of you, I would tell you about it in person. But by the time I see you again, life will have gone on and there will be other news to share, so I just didn't want to go without sharing something that is deeply shaking me today.

I'm particularly outraged right now because I spent all day yesterday at a Virginia jail meeting with detained immigrants, many of whom were traumatized women who came to me in tears desperately asking me to find out what had happened to their families. Many of these women were arrested while in bed with their husbands one night (one of them told me they handcuffed her naked, didn't even give her enough time to dress). Then they separate the parents from their children (who are often U.S. citizens, so they don't get deported) and finally, they send each parent to a jail corresponding to their gender. They are not told where the other spouse was sent, when they will be deported, or what happened to their children. Needless to say, it is difficult to keep your composure when you are listening to a woman telling you this in the hopes that you can help her, when all you want to do is break down with her and cry because your country has learned nothing from all the lessons it tried to teach you in high school about what happened during WWII in the U.S. and abroad, and so many other examples of horrible inhumane behavior that we claim is unacceptable and we use to chastise other cultures. Shame on the U.S. gov for what it is doing. And the part that hurts me the most is how I see it affecting American society, sending a message to people that it is ok to see the "other" as inferior and unworthy of compassion or at least respect. It doesn't help that I just finished reading the book Beloved about the incomprehensible carnage that results when we violate the sacred bonds between human beings, such as mother and child.

Anyway, and then I see something in the news, and I just can't handle it. It is one thing for Americans to treat presidential elections like they're sport events - which lowers the integrity of the process bad enough - but this. How can we ever think that we can solve a problem of terrorism stemming from a place so far away, when we are doing this to each other right here at home. This is deeply disturbing to me.

"A women's club in San Bernardino County sent out a recent newsletter with a photo of Barack Obama surrounded by fried chicken, watermelon and ribs, sparking widespread outrage and rebuke from GOP leaders and Democrats."

What struck me about the article was a comment by a member of the organization which speaks volumes about what I feel lies at the heart of the problems I encountered at the jail yesterday.

"If I was racist, I would have looked at it through racist eyes," she said. "I am not racist, which is why it probably didn't register . . . None of us are racists"

I know you are all living your lives in different parts of the country, working in different professions and interacting with different people. But, please, I beg you, don't fail to engage in dialog about these issues when the opportunity arises. It is so important. I know it is difficult for us to talk about these kinds of moral challenges facing our society. But there are people who are being deprived of their liberty, who don't know if their lives will ever bring them back to their most beloved and whose voices cannot be heard.

A woman at the jail yesterday said to Brooke (another volunteer like me), "you come here and give us hope, but what can you really do for us?" Brooke responded "We will tell others. We will tell your story so other people know."

Lu

Stinky Elections

So I didn't want to write about the elections. I will frequently turn off the radio or change the station when there is yet another round of analysis. Also, in my recent reading of A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn repeatedly makes the argument that electoral politics creates a government safety valve for the people's anger against the inequality and injustice that exists in this country. Well, I mean he talks about how over and over again, energy and anger that might of gone into strikes, protests, and direct action was redirected into elections for people who have not and probably won't change the fundamental structures that create the inequality and injustice. That said I have just two things to say about the current elections. I will keep it brief and leave the interpretation up to the rest.

1. I feel that over and over it has been implied that Sarah Palin's being a mother of 5, a "hockey mom" makes her less qualified as a leader - That argument is total malarkey - at the same time, I sincerely hope we do not elect her as a vice president or Mccain as president for many other reasons.

2. Come on, we HAVE to elect Obama - he probably won't bring about all the fantastic change he speaks of, but we need whatever change we can get at this point - and yes, my reasons run a liitle deeper - i am hoping everyone will develop their own though at this point. if you have questions or comments, please comment :)