One of my goals for this year is to be more positive and happy, and to be more positive in writing in this blog.
If you met me, you would not think that I was depressed. I love life and have an energy that is all love. I have a very rough sense of humor, but I learned to treat life with humor.
I have been back in school, but without students this week. The first day back as a faculty I could not sleep the night before. There is no way to begin teaching without feeling the incredible pressure: the expectations of working students and families, the generations of work and thousands of hours that some families have invested, an 80-200 year investment to have a high school or college graduate, wondering when the fights and rapes will happen, who will die, thinking of your enemies and faculty meetings with Orwell newspeak and bullshit, the bleary eyed November meetings
None of it matters because all men have bitterness towards their chosen thing, and I chose this, and I will live with it and live a good life within and with it. The reason I decided to stay at ACE after every inch of me said to leave is simple, because now I know what it is all about. I saw so many horrible things last year, thinking of all that needless death and suffering. But I know now what to do about it. I know what teaching is now. Every single branch, behavior and component of teaching is love and service.
I do this for love and service.
I have been surrounded by love and service from students, and I have not lived up to it yet.
But I thank them, and I will match them.
It is going to be a good year.
So far things are going well. I ignored the teachers who lied on me and they ignored me, I made some progress organizing the union, I saw a lot of old friends, and we have a ton of new teachers who seem very interesting and passionate and young. It is weird, I only have one professional year in, and I am a veteran in some of their eyes.
It has been ungodly hot, in the ninties and no air conditioning. I hate sweating this much in front of these new teachers, some of whom are quite attractive, but I am putting in work and helping out.
Now all I have to do is actually be a teacher, and sadly the lesson plans and unit plans and overall idea of what the hell I am doing are still way too undefined.
I have four days until the first day of school. And I am terrified.
I was helping out shop teacher move some heavy stuff. He is a very charismatic, energetic construction guy with no background in teaching, he came into ACE for the second half of last year. He is from Compton, and has a real Compton streak, he is also a nationally ranked tennis player in his age group, which is around 40.
The dean of students came in and we all started talking about what we want to do this year. Somehow me and this shop teacher both ended up saying "It's all love".
I dedicate this year to love and service of those who need it the most.
Interview with Ed Burns
This is a fantastic interview by Ed Burns, one of the lead writers for The Wire. Ed Burns was a Baltimore Police Detective for 20 years and a teacher for 7.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6524743
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6524743
Mean Streets
You don't make up for your sins in church.
You do it in the streets.
You do it at home.
The rest is bullshit and you know it.
-Charlie
You do it in the streets.
You do it at home.
The rest is bullshit and you know it.
-Charlie
Change
I spend a lot of time at the Harold Washington library downtown. There are always a lot of homeless people around the library. There are two missions down the street, there are a lot of people in the area, but more importantly, the homeless people use the library. There are always clean, hassle free bathrooms. It is air conditioned and heated. And a lot of times people just get a book, sit down at the table, and either read it, look at the pictures, or fall asleep with it in front of them in the hopes that it doesn't look like they are loitering. There is usually a group of three homeless people who have something of a book club, they get into passionate arguments and are very intelligent. They are called "the professors" by the people like me who are always at the library.
On the way to the library a lot of people asked me for change. One guy just kept repeating change, change change in a way that made me forget about money; the way he was looking at me, it was as if he was looking through me and telling me to change.
Cause I know that I need to change.
I had a great time at the library, walked up state street to Borders, bought the second season of the wire, the only one I do not own, and felt great about that. Thought about lunch. There was a homeless women right outside the door who I ignored.
As I was walking to the blue line station at the Thompson center I saw a cop laughing with a maintenance guy on the sidewalk. When I became even with the alley I saw a lot more cops and a shrouded body.
This is the third body that I have seen in my life, and the second in Chicago. The first was a murdered man in Tijuana Mexico who was missing the top head of his head, uncovered and right in front of me.
There is a chance that this was an investment banker who was sensationally killed by his girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, brother and it will be on Fox News and CNN and will be a heartbreaking human interest story.
But it probably was a homeless person.
On the way to the library a lot of people asked me for change. One guy just kept repeating change, change change in a way that made me forget about money; the way he was looking at me, it was as if he was looking through me and telling me to change.
Cause I know that I need to change.
I had a great time at the library, walked up state street to Borders, bought the second season of the wire, the only one I do not own, and felt great about that. Thought about lunch. There was a homeless women right outside the door who I ignored.
As I was walking to the blue line station at the Thompson center I saw a cop laughing with a maintenance guy on the sidewalk. When I became even with the alley I saw a lot more cops and a shrouded body.
This is the third body that I have seen in my life, and the second in Chicago. The first was a murdered man in Tijuana Mexico who was missing the top head of his head, uncovered and right in front of me.
There is a chance that this was an investment banker who was sensationally killed by his girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, brother and it will be on Fox News and CNN and will be a heartbreaking human interest story.
But it probably was a homeless person.
Rules of Teaching Part Seven
71. Pain is the shattering of the shell which encloses your understanding -Kahil Gibran
72. Don't get attached to your feelings.
73. There are some students who you will notice are absent, and some who will come to you the next day and you will not have realized that they were absent. Try to focus on these students, you did not notice because you do not know or notice them.
74. Adolescence is inherently painful.
75 Nothing says I screwed up quite like holding a human ear in your hand -Dr Delaney
76. Monitor your alcohol and caffeine intake.
77. Do no t joke about having a parole officer.
78. If you suspect that a student is lying to you, you need to ask them three or more questions. They can answer two smoothly, but usually by the time you get to three they start to struggle.
79. Every teacher occasionally needs to use the nuclear option, operation shock and awe.
80. We cannot give ourselves, we are our own. James Joyce
72. Don't get attached to your feelings.
73. There are some students who you will notice are absent, and some who will come to you the next day and you will not have realized that they were absent. Try to focus on these students, you did not notice because you do not know or notice them.
74. Adolescence is inherently painful.
75 Nothing says I screwed up quite like holding a human ear in your hand -Dr Delaney
76. Monitor your alcohol and caffeine intake.
77. Do no t joke about having a parole officer.
78. If you suspect that a student is lying to you, you need to ask them three or more questions. They can answer two smoothly, but usually by the time you get to three they start to struggle.
79. Every teacher occasionally needs to use the nuclear option, operation shock and awe.
80. We cannot give ourselves, we are our own. James Joyce
From "The End of Imagination" by Arundhati Roy
I told my friend there was no such thing as a perfect story. I said that in any case hers was an external view of things, this assumption that the trajectory of a person's happiness, or let's say fulfilment, had peaked (and now must trough) because she had accidentally stumbled upon "success". It was premised on the unimaginative belief that wealth and fame were the mandatory stuff of everybody's dreams.
You've lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible, honourable, sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they are less "successful" in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.
The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead. (Prescience? Perhaps.) "Which means exactly what?" (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed.) I tried to explain, but didn't do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote: To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
The Boxer
Hello and welcome to my blog. This is the first post that I have made in realtime, the rest is me writing what has happened in my paper journal.
I am currently getting ready for my second year at school. It is August 7th. I am very excited because I am going to a presidential candidate forum tonight at Soldier Field.
I am scrambling to lesson plan and to get a plan for soccer practice. I have had a couple of hiccups though.
A lot of it is my fault. I made a trip to San Diego when I knew that I had work to do. The first three weeks of the summer were completely wasted, me lying on my ass like I would never teach again, drinking and watching television.
Two days ago I returned from San Diego. At the Kansas City airport a man sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. When I told him that I was a history teacher, he paused, and then said "All they do is teach my son about niggers. Nigger this and nigger that. Why don't they teach about how they acted at the game in Los Angeles (He meant the NBA all star game in Los Vegas)."
It is very difficult to decide how to respond to this. I could just tell him what I think: fuck off, but that does not change anything. So I took a more moderate approach, telling him that the majority of students were black, and that I didn't use that word. I then told him how much I enjoyed teaching my students, how I identified with them from a white rural background more than I would with white suburban students. But basically the conversation was over.
Then I scrambled to get home in order to go to a party. The party was going really well until a boxer was let out, and it bit me in the face. This is devastating for me since my life long dream is to model for Raulph Lauren or Burberry and now I think the dream is over.
Since you all do not have a picture of me, I have to tell you that my modeling dream was a joke and very funny to me. The only things I could probably model right now are PBR and bacon.
The scars might help with classroom management though.
I am currently getting ready for my second year at school. It is August 7th. I am very excited because I am going to a presidential candidate forum tonight at Soldier Field.
I am scrambling to lesson plan and to get a plan for soccer practice. I have had a couple of hiccups though.
A lot of it is my fault. I made a trip to San Diego when I knew that I had work to do. The first three weeks of the summer were completely wasted, me lying on my ass like I would never teach again, drinking and watching television.
Two days ago I returned from San Diego. At the Kansas City airport a man sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. When I told him that I was a history teacher, he paused, and then said "All they do is teach my son about niggers. Nigger this and nigger that. Why don't they teach about how they acted at the game in Los Angeles (He meant the NBA all star game in Los Vegas)."
It is very difficult to decide how to respond to this. I could just tell him what I think: fuck off, but that does not change anything. So I took a more moderate approach, telling him that the majority of students were black, and that I didn't use that word. I then told him how much I enjoyed teaching my students, how I identified with them from a white rural background more than I would with white suburban students. But basically the conversation was over.
Then I scrambled to get home in order to go to a party. The party was going really well until a boxer was let out, and it bit me in the face. This is devastating for me since my life long dream is to model for Raulph Lauren or Burberry and now I think the dream is over.
Since you all do not have a picture of me, I have to tell you that my modeling dream was a joke and very funny to me. The only things I could probably model right now are PBR and bacon.
The scars might help with classroom management though.
The Soundtrack
I love music and making CDs. After a lot of agony, I decided that this one CD represents the intersection and interchange that happend between my students, the environment, and my feelings.
Change by Tracy Chapman
Inner City Blues by Marvin Gaye
So Many Tears by Tupac Shakur
Dark Was the Night by Blind Willie Johnson
Road to Zion by Damian Marley
Lesson Learned by Ray LaMontagne
Spaceship by Kanye West
Until the End of Time by Tupac Shakur
Bring Me My Shotgun by Lightnin' Hopkins
Ride by Cary Brothers
Two by Ryan Adams
Chi City by Common
Corazon Divina by Daddy Yankee
World Outside by The Devilins
Down In the Valley by Otis Redding
Going Nowhere by Elliott Smith
Fast Train by Solomon Burke
De Ushuahia A La Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolla
Champion's Requiem by Mos Def
Either Way by Wilco
Love and Happiness by Al Green
Change by Tracy Chapman
Inner City Blues by Marvin Gaye
So Many Tears by Tupac Shakur
Dark Was the Night by Blind Willie Johnson
Road to Zion by Damian Marley
Lesson Learned by Ray LaMontagne
Spaceship by Kanye West
Until the End of Time by Tupac Shakur
Bring Me My Shotgun by Lightnin' Hopkins
Ride by Cary Brothers
Two by Ryan Adams
Chi City by Common
Corazon Divina by Daddy Yankee
World Outside by The Devilins
Down In the Valley by Otis Redding
Going Nowhere by Elliott Smith
Fast Train by Solomon Burke
De Ushuahia A La Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolla
Champion's Requiem by Mos Def
Either Way by Wilco
Love and Happiness by Al Green
Lesson Learned
The last day of school was a difficult experience to comprehend.
All I had to do was handout report cards, and say goodbye. A lot of student's couldn't find me because I was subbing for my roommate. I shook some hands. Some people found me and said goodbye, some did not. There were some surprisingly emotional students, and some students who I thought hated me who just shook hands and seemed perfectly calm and friendly.
Of course there was a party at the bar afterwards but I just sat there, feeling shocked. I left early and took a walk by the lake. It was an incredible anti-climax. After all of that, just a strange silence in my head.
It wasn't until the next week that I really began to think about what had happened.
I started thinking about the arbitrary things that do not matter, the dust on the chalkboard, the hard wood floor, the old knife wounds in desks and the silence of a classroom at 7am on a winter morning.
No matter where you move to, no matter what high school, you are alone in the classroom before the day, left with a silence, and then later with a presence of the students come and gone. Of the missing ones like Dan, the sweet heartbreakers like Genvieve, the ones who are happy and will be successful.
I don't know how to explain it, but basically I learned that everything matters, that we are in darkness but surrounded by light, and that every joke is a tiny revolution.
And everything you do, as a teacher, matters to someone. And it matters to me.
All I had to do was handout report cards, and say goodbye. A lot of student's couldn't find me because I was subbing for my roommate. I shook some hands. Some people found me and said goodbye, some did not. There were some surprisingly emotional students, and some students who I thought hated me who just shook hands and seemed perfectly calm and friendly.
Of course there was a party at the bar afterwards but I just sat there, feeling shocked. I left early and took a walk by the lake. It was an incredible anti-climax. After all of that, just a strange silence in my head.
It wasn't until the next week that I really began to think about what had happened.
I started thinking about the arbitrary things that do not matter, the dust on the chalkboard, the hard wood floor, the old knife wounds in desks and the silence of a classroom at 7am on a winter morning.
No matter where you move to, no matter what high school, you are alone in the classroom before the day, left with a silence, and then later with a presence of the students come and gone. Of the missing ones like Dan, the sweet heartbreakers like Genvieve, the ones who are happy and will be successful.
I don't know how to explain it, but basically I learned that everything matters, that we are in darkness but surrounded by light, and that every joke is a tiny revolution.
And everything you do, as a teacher, matters to someone. And it matters to me.
The Story of Croesus
The second law of Herodotus, pertaining not only to history but human life, is that human happiness never remains long in the same place.
The kingdom of Croesus, Lydia, was a powerful Asiatic state located between Greece and Persia (Turkey). Croesus accumulated great riches in his palaces, entire mountains of gold and silver for which he was renowned in the world and which he willingly displayed to visitors. This show took place in the middle of the sixth century BCE, several decades before the birth of Herodotus. The capital, Sardis, was visited by every learned Greek alive at the time, including Solon: a poet, creator of Athenian democracy, and famed for his wisdom. Croesus personally received Solon and took him for a tour of his palace and city, showing him his riches, and certain that the sight of them astonished his guest, he asked "So I really want to ask you whether you have ever come across anyone who is happier than everyone else?"
But Solon did not flatter him in the least and instead cited as the happiest of men several Athenians heroically fallen in defense of their city, adding: "Croesus, when you asked me about men and their affairs, you were putting your question to someone who is well aware of how utterly jealous the divine is, and how it is likely to confound us. Anyone who lives for a long time is bound to see and endure many things he would rather avoid. I place the limit of a man's life at 70 years. Seventy years makes 25, 200 days...No two days bring events which are exactly the same. It follows, Croesus, that human life is entirely a matter of chance..."
"Now I can see that you are extremely rich and that you rule over large numbers of people, but I won't be in a position to say what you are asking me to say about you until I find out if you died well... Until a man is dead you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate."
The punishment of the gods descended after Solon's departure. Croesus had two sons-the strong Arys and another who was deaf and dumb. Arys was the apple of his father's eye, protected and watched over. But this protection failed whe Arys was killed by accident on a hunting trip, by a guest named Adrastus. Adrastus waited for the end of the funeral, approached the grave and then, realizing that there was no one in his experience who bore a heavier burden of misfortune than himself, he took his own life at the graveside.
After his son's death, Croesus lived two years in profound grief. During this time, the great Cyrus comes to power in neighboring Persia, and under him the might of the Persian increases rapidly. Croesus is worried that if Persia continues to gather strength, it could one day threaten Lydia, and so he hatches a plan for a preemptive strike.
It is custom at the time to ask an oracle before making an important decision. The most popular oracle was in Greece: the temple at the top of a mountain in Delphi. In order to obtain a favorable prophecy, one makes offerings to the deity. Croesus, therefore, orders a gigantic collection of offerings. Three thousand cattle are to be killed, heavy bars of gold melted, countless objects forged out of silver. He commands that a huge fire be lit, on which he burns in sacrifice gold and silver couches, purple cloaks and tunics. He also told all the Lydians that everyone of them was to sacrifice whatever he could. We can imagine the numerous and humbly obedient Lydian people as they make their way along the roads to where the giant pyre is burning and throw into the flames what until now was the most precious to them-gold jewelry, sacred and domestic vessels, family relics, favorite clothes...
The opinions which the oracle delivers are typically ambiguous and vague. Croesus waits impatiently for the return of his envoys to the Oracle. They return, and tell their king and told him that the oracle's answer was if you set out against the Persians, you will destroy a great nation. And Croesus, who desired war, blinded by lust and aggression, interpreted this prophecy to support his attack.
So he attacked, but he lost the war, and as a result-annihilated his own great state and was himself enslaved. The Persians too their prisoner to Cyrus, who built a high funeral pyre and made Croesus and fourteen Lydians climb up to the top. Perhaps he intended them to be a victory offering for some god or other, or perhaps he wanted to fulfill a vow he had made, or perhaps he had heard that Croesus was a god-fearing man and he made him get up on the pyre because he wanted to see if any immortal would rescue him from being burnt alive...Although Croesus's situation up on top of the pyre was desperate , his mind turned to Solon's saying that no one who is still alive is happy, and it occurred to him how divinely inspired Solon had been. This thought made him sigh and groan, and he broke a long silence bu repeating the name Solon three times.
Now, at the request of Cyrus standing next the the pyre, the interpreters ask Croesus whom he is calling and what does it mean. Croesus answers, but as he is telling the story, the pyre starts to burn in earnest. Cyrus, moved by pity but also fearing divine retribution, reverses the decision and orders the fire extinguished. But all attempts to control the blaze failed.
Croesus realized that Cyrus had changed his mind. When he saw that it was too late for them to control the fire, despite everyones efforts, he called on Apollo...Weeping, he called on the god, and suddenly the clear, calm weather was replaced by gathering clouds; a storm broke, rain lashed down, and the pyre was extinguished.
Once Cyrus was able to get Croesus down from the pyre he asked him who had persuaded him to invade his country and be his enemy rather than his friend. "My lord," Croesus replied, "it was my doing. You have gained and I have lost. But responsibility lies with the god of the Greeks who encouraged me to make war on you. After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer was to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers, and in war fathers bury their sons. However, I suppose the god must have wanted this to happen."
Cyrus untied him and had him seated near by. He was very impressed with him and he and his whole entourage admired the man's demeanor. But Croesus was silent, deep in thought.
Finally Cyrus asked Croesus if there was anything he could do for him. Croesus was bitter in his silence and was full of sacrilege and hate. "Master" Croesus replies, "nothing would give me more pleasure than to be allowed to send these shackles of mine to the god of the Greeks, whom I revered more than any god, and ask him if it is his normal practice to trick his benefactors?"
Cyrus agrees to the request and Croesus sends another delegation to the oracle. Croesus told the delegation to lay his shackles on the threshold of the temple and ask the god if he was not ashamed to have used his oracles to encourage Croesus to march against the Persians...and they were also to ask whether Greek gods was normally so ungrateful.
The Oracle of Delphi relied:
"Not even a god can escape his ordained fate. Croesus has paid for the crime of his ancestor four generations ago, who, though a member of the personal guard of the Heraclidae, gave in to a woman's guile, killed his master, and assumed a station which was not rightfully his at all. In fact, Apollo wanted the fall of Sardis to happen in the time of Croesus' sons rather than that of Croesus himself, but it was not possible to divert the Fates..."
When Croesus heard this he realized it was his fault, and not the gods.
The kingdom of Croesus, Lydia, was a powerful Asiatic state located between Greece and Persia (Turkey). Croesus accumulated great riches in his palaces, entire mountains of gold and silver for which he was renowned in the world and which he willingly displayed to visitors. This show took place in the middle of the sixth century BCE, several decades before the birth of Herodotus. The capital, Sardis, was visited by every learned Greek alive at the time, including Solon: a poet, creator of Athenian democracy, and famed for his wisdom. Croesus personally received Solon and took him for a tour of his palace and city, showing him his riches, and certain that the sight of them astonished his guest, he asked "So I really want to ask you whether you have ever come across anyone who is happier than everyone else?"
But Solon did not flatter him in the least and instead cited as the happiest of men several Athenians heroically fallen in defense of their city, adding: "Croesus, when you asked me about men and their affairs, you were putting your question to someone who is well aware of how utterly jealous the divine is, and how it is likely to confound us. Anyone who lives for a long time is bound to see and endure many things he would rather avoid. I place the limit of a man's life at 70 years. Seventy years makes 25, 200 days...No two days bring events which are exactly the same. It follows, Croesus, that human life is entirely a matter of chance..."
"Now I can see that you are extremely rich and that you rule over large numbers of people, but I won't be in a position to say what you are asking me to say about you until I find out if you died well... Until a man is dead you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate."
The punishment of the gods descended after Solon's departure. Croesus had two sons-the strong Arys and another who was deaf and dumb. Arys was the apple of his father's eye, protected and watched over. But this protection failed whe Arys was killed by accident on a hunting trip, by a guest named Adrastus. Adrastus waited for the end of the funeral, approached the grave and then, realizing that there was no one in his experience who bore a heavier burden of misfortune than himself, he took his own life at the graveside.
After his son's death, Croesus lived two years in profound grief. During this time, the great Cyrus comes to power in neighboring Persia, and under him the might of the Persian increases rapidly. Croesus is worried that if Persia continues to gather strength, it could one day threaten Lydia, and so he hatches a plan for a preemptive strike.
It is custom at the time to ask an oracle before making an important decision. The most popular oracle was in Greece: the temple at the top of a mountain in Delphi. In order to obtain a favorable prophecy, one makes offerings to the deity. Croesus, therefore, orders a gigantic collection of offerings. Three thousand cattle are to be killed, heavy bars of gold melted, countless objects forged out of silver. He commands that a huge fire be lit, on which he burns in sacrifice gold and silver couches, purple cloaks and tunics. He also told all the Lydians that everyone of them was to sacrifice whatever he could. We can imagine the numerous and humbly obedient Lydian people as they make their way along the roads to where the giant pyre is burning and throw into the flames what until now was the most precious to them-gold jewelry, sacred and domestic vessels, family relics, favorite clothes...
The opinions which the oracle delivers are typically ambiguous and vague. Croesus waits impatiently for the return of his envoys to the Oracle. They return, and tell their king and told him that the oracle's answer was if you set out against the Persians, you will destroy a great nation. And Croesus, who desired war, blinded by lust and aggression, interpreted this prophecy to support his attack.
So he attacked, but he lost the war, and as a result-annihilated his own great state and was himself enslaved. The Persians too their prisoner to Cyrus, who built a high funeral pyre and made Croesus and fourteen Lydians climb up to the top. Perhaps he intended them to be a victory offering for some god or other, or perhaps he wanted to fulfill a vow he had made, or perhaps he had heard that Croesus was a god-fearing man and he made him get up on the pyre because he wanted to see if any immortal would rescue him from being burnt alive...Although Croesus's situation up on top of the pyre was desperate , his mind turned to Solon's saying that no one who is still alive is happy, and it occurred to him how divinely inspired Solon had been. This thought made him sigh and groan, and he broke a long silence bu repeating the name Solon three times.
Now, at the request of Cyrus standing next the the pyre, the interpreters ask Croesus whom he is calling and what does it mean. Croesus answers, but as he is telling the story, the pyre starts to burn in earnest. Cyrus, moved by pity but also fearing divine retribution, reverses the decision and orders the fire extinguished. But all attempts to control the blaze failed.
Croesus realized that Cyrus had changed his mind. When he saw that it was too late for them to control the fire, despite everyones efforts, he called on Apollo...Weeping, he called on the god, and suddenly the clear, calm weather was replaced by gathering clouds; a storm broke, rain lashed down, and the pyre was extinguished.
Once Cyrus was able to get Croesus down from the pyre he asked him who had persuaded him to invade his country and be his enemy rather than his friend. "My lord," Croesus replied, "it was my doing. You have gained and I have lost. But responsibility lies with the god of the Greeks who encouraged me to make war on you. After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer was to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers, and in war fathers bury their sons. However, I suppose the god must have wanted this to happen."
Cyrus untied him and had him seated near by. He was very impressed with him and he and his whole entourage admired the man's demeanor. But Croesus was silent, deep in thought.
Finally Cyrus asked Croesus if there was anything he could do for him. Croesus was bitter in his silence and was full of sacrilege and hate. "Master" Croesus replies, "nothing would give me more pleasure than to be allowed to send these shackles of mine to the god of the Greeks, whom I revered more than any god, and ask him if it is his normal practice to trick his benefactors?"
Cyrus agrees to the request and Croesus sends another delegation to the oracle. Croesus told the delegation to lay his shackles on the threshold of the temple and ask the god if he was not ashamed to have used his oracles to encourage Croesus to march against the Persians...and they were also to ask whether Greek gods was normally so ungrateful.
The Oracle of Delphi relied:
"Not even a god can escape his ordained fate. Croesus has paid for the crime of his ancestor four generations ago, who, though a member of the personal guard of the Heraclidae, gave in to a woman's guile, killed his master, and assumed a station which was not rightfully his at all. In fact, Apollo wanted the fall of Sardis to happen in the time of Croesus' sons rather than that of Croesus himself, but it was not possible to divert the Fates..."
When Croesus heard this he realized it was his fault, and not the gods.
Rules of Teaching Part Six
61. Never walk into an enviornment and assume that you understand it better than the people who live there. -Kofi Annan
62. Students who cross the line generally know what is coming and often don't hate you specifically for it.
63. Do not judge class dynamics by how they look. Lecture almost always looks better than group work.
64. Be very aware of how a student dresses everyday. Maybe they wear black because they like Johnny Cash, maybe cause they are goth, maybe because they are suicidal. Be polite and curious and find out.
65. Our mind is random- Dr Delaney
66. You always have to be a teacher, professional and curteous. Even if your ghetto side is like "stomp this mother fucker out, what the fuck is his problem?"
67. Do not allow other students to retaliate even if they are enforcing your rules
68. No one can see intelligence clearly
69. There comes a time when you must act students to change and you withdrawl all other alternatives. They must change. Somethings are not acceptable.
70. You have the right to intervene. Neutrality only hurts the victim.
62. Students who cross the line generally know what is coming and often don't hate you specifically for it.
63. Do not judge class dynamics by how they look. Lecture almost always looks better than group work.
64. Be very aware of how a student dresses everyday. Maybe they wear black because they like Johnny Cash, maybe cause they are goth, maybe because they are suicidal. Be polite and curious and find out.
65. Our mind is random- Dr Delaney
66. You always have to be a teacher, professional and curteous. Even if your ghetto side is like "stomp this mother fucker out, what the fuck is his problem?"
67. Do not allow other students to retaliate even if they are enforcing your rules
68. No one can see intelligence clearly
69. There comes a time when you must act students to change and you withdrawl all other alternatives. They must change. Somethings are not acceptable.
70. You have the right to intervene. Neutrality only hurts the victim.
Chicago FIre
I agreed to help chaperon an after school trip to a Chicago fire game. This is always a bit of a risk because you never know when you will be back and you never know when one of your students might decide to crack open a beer and the next thing you know you are explaining why you couldn't prevent a group of teenagers from embarrassing the school.
I hate to think negatively, and I never show this to the students, but that stress never goes away.
Went with a group of ten Mexican kids and one white girl, a girlfriend. Naturally the young teenage couple decided to make out in back, and I was terrified that a baby would be on my conscience so I ended up sitting on the back of the us, which really pissed of the lovebirds.
The boys were all fired up and wanted to talk about everything and everybody. Students and teachers, and you always want to listen to what they think. But it is always awkward being a part of something that you know you do not belong to.
The game went very well, although there was a brief moment of tension when my kids spotted some Latin Saints and there was a barrage of shit talking and signs flashed. But it was dollar hot dog night so no one really felt like fighting. Listening to the kids scream "culero" at the referee and laugh at everything.
I did not end up getting back to my apartment until well after midnight, but it was worth it. To watch them almost silent on the bus ride home, stoically looking out the window. Young gang bangers and construction workers, tough kids with tough jokes, the sons of immigrants, the mixing languages, it shows that you are living American history, the same as the teachers of Italian and Irish immigrants before.
I hate to think negatively, and I never show this to the students, but that stress never goes away.
Went with a group of ten Mexican kids and one white girl, a girlfriend. Naturally the young teenage couple decided to make out in back, and I was terrified that a baby would be on my conscience so I ended up sitting on the back of the us, which really pissed of the lovebirds.
The boys were all fired up and wanted to talk about everything and everybody. Students and teachers, and you always want to listen to what they think. But it is always awkward being a part of something that you know you do not belong to.
The game went very well, although there was a brief moment of tension when my kids spotted some Latin Saints and there was a barrage of shit talking and signs flashed. But it was dollar hot dog night so no one really felt like fighting. Listening to the kids scream "culero" at the referee and laugh at everything.
I did not end up getting back to my apartment until well after midnight, but it was worth it. To watch them almost silent on the bus ride home, stoically looking out the window. Young gang bangers and construction workers, tough kids with tough jokes, the sons of immigrants, the mixing languages, it shows that you are living American history, the same as the teachers of Italian and Irish immigrants before.
Rules of Teaching Part Five
51. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you have had." F Scott Fitzgerald
52. Students want to belong to their family, and want to be accepted as similar to their family. If members of their family did not succeed, the student may not wish to succeed because it would be showing up their parents, diminishing their ideal of the parent by taking their own life beyond it. The student puts internal pressure on themselves to preserve the position of their parent.
53. Conversely, parents and siblings can put external pressure on a student not to do well because of jealousy.
54. Be fair to all, do not expect the work of one student to another.
55. People always try to make their enviornment more inhaitable. that is why they so often pretned to be somehwere else.
56. I am in the service industry, whether I like it or not. whatever you need you have the righ to ask for my help.
57. Be agile and mobile checking in on groups. Do not stay with any group for long because it disrupts the learning dynamic.
58. If a student is not paying attention or participating, concentrate on exploring ways that they can become more involved and interactive rather than focus on "not sleeping, et al"
59. When correcting behavior, concentrate on explaining to the student whu you expect it, why the student needs it, and that you need the student to set an example for the rest of the class. You need their leadership.
60. If you grade something, pay enough attention to it to be able to defend the grade.
52. Students want to belong to their family, and want to be accepted as similar to their family. If members of their family did not succeed, the student may not wish to succeed because it would be showing up their parents, diminishing their ideal of the parent by taking their own life beyond it. The student puts internal pressure on themselves to preserve the position of their parent.
53. Conversely, parents and siblings can put external pressure on a student not to do well because of jealousy.
54. Be fair to all, do not expect the work of one student to another.
55. People always try to make their enviornment more inhaitable. that is why they so often pretned to be somehwere else.
56. I am in the service industry, whether I like it or not. whatever you need you have the righ to ask for my help.
57. Be agile and mobile checking in on groups. Do not stay with any group for long because it disrupts the learning dynamic.
58. If a student is not paying attention or participating, concentrate on exploring ways that they can become more involved and interactive rather than focus on "not sleeping, et al"
59. When correcting behavior, concentrate on explaining to the student whu you expect it, why the student needs it, and that you need the student to set an example for the rest of the class. You need their leadership.
60. If you grade something, pay enough attention to it to be able to defend the grade.
No More Coffee
On those mornings when I just did not want to go to school, when it was too early to freeze and drive under the orange mercury lights and black sky, I would drive past the school and go to Medici's.
Medici's is a beautiful little bakery on 57th st in Hyde Park. You walk in and it is warm, smells great, and there are professors and students talking and eating. It is completely different then the dynamic I work in.
I walk in the second the open the door for business. There is a beautiful Mexican lady who is tiny and always smiles. And there is Charles, a skinny light skinned black man who always rings me up. Behind these two are a group of Mexican bakers who are always laughing and singing with their own radio playing spanish music while the front is filled with motown and old soul.
I got to know charles pretty well. He always had a good attitude, singing and joking around, with a dynamic style. Talked about working hard, leaving his girl and kids at home every morning around 4:30. I remember when he was telling me this the Maxwell song "Lifetime" was playing.
I usually do not get to Medicis on the weekend, but one sunday I had a friend visiting and wanted him to get a cinnamon role. When I walked in everyone was crying.
Charles had been shot and killed in the parking lot of his apartment complex on the southside.
He had four children.
Medici's is a beautiful little bakery on 57th st in Hyde Park. You walk in and it is warm, smells great, and there are professors and students talking and eating. It is completely different then the dynamic I work in.
I walk in the second the open the door for business. There is a beautiful Mexican lady who is tiny and always smiles. And there is Charles, a skinny light skinned black man who always rings me up. Behind these two are a group of Mexican bakers who are always laughing and singing with their own radio playing spanish music while the front is filled with motown and old soul.
I got to know charles pretty well. He always had a good attitude, singing and joking around, with a dynamic style. Talked about working hard, leaving his girl and kids at home every morning around 4:30. I remember when he was telling me this the Maxwell song "Lifetime" was playing.
I usually do not get to Medicis on the weekend, but one sunday I had a friend visiting and wanted him to get a cinnamon role. When I walked in everyone was crying.
Charles had been shot and killed in the parking lot of his apartment complex on the southside.
He had four children.
Robbing the Liqour Store
A policemen hears a call on his radio that there is an armed robbery in progress. The police converge on the scene. A man with a gun is leaving the store when they arrive. They scream at him to put the gun down but the man points the gun at them. The police shoot and kill him before the robber can get off a shot.
Later they interview the cashier of the store. The cashier says that the man walked up to him and said, this is a robbery. The cashier opened the register, but the man did not take any money. He walks out of the store.
A minute later he walks back into the store and waits by the doors. When the police come, he exits the store.
The police discover that his gun had no bullets in it.
There are a lot of students who commit educational suicide by the method of death by teacher. The kid won't do their homework, won't respond to anything you do, but will respond to the slight provocation. And then one day you ask them "could you please be quiet" or "how are you this morning" and you get back a big "fuck you".
The key is to know not to take it personally. They are not asking you to go fuck yourself, they are asking for you to let them be, they are asking for everyone to just leave them alone.
And you know that you can't do that.
Later they interview the cashier of the store. The cashier says that the man walked up to him and said, this is a robbery. The cashier opened the register, but the man did not take any money. He walks out of the store.
A minute later he walks back into the store and waits by the doors. When the police come, he exits the store.
The police discover that his gun had no bullets in it.
There are a lot of students who commit educational suicide by the method of death by teacher. The kid won't do their homework, won't respond to anything you do, but will respond to the slight provocation. And then one day you ask them "could you please be quiet" or "how are you this morning" and you get back a big "fuck you".
The key is to know not to take it personally. They are not asking you to go fuck yourself, they are asking for you to let them be, they are asking for everyone to just leave them alone.
And you know that you can't do that.
Roberto Clemente Baseball
I live in between Ukranian village and Humbolt park.
I was returning from a long walk on a drizzly Spring morning and I passed Robert Clemente High School: a sky skraper on Division and Western, close to the giant metal Puerto Rican flags that arc over the street.
Baseball had begun, and Roberto Clemente has an excellent team, as you would expect of the school named after my favorite athlete, and what you would expect from a neighborhood where kids play baseball and stickball in the streets with impunity.
There was a gigantic crowd and everyone there knew each other. Conversations were 3/4 in English and the remaining part were jokes and swear words in Spanish. The people there are old school, in flannel coats and hats with printing on them that show that they are thirty years old or older. Papas and Abuelos sitting by each other watching the grandkid play. Three large gang bangers shouting advice and encouragement.
It is also very exciting because western ave runs parallel to the left field line; foul ball drop all the time, narrowly missing cars or smashing windshields and causing accidents. The crowd watches in suspense and is entertained either way. The parked cars that get hit by balls receive a round of applause, and the person whose car it is stands up and takes a bow.
A very old fashioned and nostalgic part of me always makes me proud to be an American watching Roberto Clemente play baseball.
I was returning from a long walk on a drizzly Spring morning and I passed Robert Clemente High School: a sky skraper on Division and Western, close to the giant metal Puerto Rican flags that arc over the street.
Baseball had begun, and Roberto Clemente has an excellent team, as you would expect of the school named after my favorite athlete, and what you would expect from a neighborhood where kids play baseball and stickball in the streets with impunity.
There was a gigantic crowd and everyone there knew each other. Conversations were 3/4 in English and the remaining part were jokes and swear words in Spanish. The people there are old school, in flannel coats and hats with printing on them that show that they are thirty years old or older. Papas and Abuelos sitting by each other watching the grandkid play. Three large gang bangers shouting advice and encouragement.
It is also very exciting because western ave runs parallel to the left field line; foul ball drop all the time, narrowly missing cars or smashing windshields and causing accidents. The crowd watches in suspense and is entertained either way. The parked cars that get hit by balls receive a round of applause, and the person whose car it is stands up and takes a bow.
A very old fashioned and nostalgic part of me always makes me proud to be an American watching Roberto Clemente play baseball.
Macbeth
I was one of those very strange high school students who really, really liked Shakespeare.
But I remember not liking Macbeth when I was in school.
One of my greatest surprises was how much the sophomore class engaged with Macbeth.
At first they really were not feeling this "lesser than Macbeth yet greater, no so happy yet much happier" riddling (This is some bullshit, was the exact comment) but then things picked up.
"To be king, stands not within the prospect of belief...why on this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting"Macbeth understands something that my students understand, that their place within the social scheme of things is to be soldiers, fighters, but not leaders. The blasted landscape: try south Chicago in February, with piles of rubble and dead weeds everywhere, wet winds sweeping off Lake Michigan. How many people stop these students with visions of success and violence.
"My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man, that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not. .." Still young but surrounded by so much violence, so many fights, the need to not be a punk. They wonder to themselves how far they can take it. They all want to be able to say that they could kill someone because they associate that with safety and respect.
"If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me"
Later on a student proposes a thesis
"Lady Macbeth is a triflin bitch"
Antithesis "She hood but she is just down, using sex and blood to get where her man needs to be"
Sythesis "She gangsta" One of my female students started to read a passage "fill me...with direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse..."
" You see Mr Boston, she just being hard, she dont feel the sex she just using it. She knows they got to get the crown. She just trying to be cold, and you better be cold. You better have some coldness in you or you aint gonna survive these streets, these n****s"
My students have so much ambition, positive and negative, for something better in their life. They have a understanding of human capacity that is more inspirational and tragic than any suburban student their age. They understand the span of human emotion and crime. And they want something better, be it a g pack or a scholarship.
"That is a step on which I must fall down, or else overleap, for in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires...false face must hide what false heart dost know"
But then there was a big turn when Macbeth kills Banquo. A lot of students did not like that. They believed in a very strict code, where if they got busted together they would not snitch, where they could count on each other, that their friends were the only people they could trust. "us against the world"
Others laughed at that. One guy said, "I got locked up with my best friend. I didn't say nuttin to the police, and the whole time he was saying how it was all my fault and that I am bad influence on him and shit. And he came out of it saying how he was my best friend...And he didn't talk because he was scared. He just don't care about nobody. I thought I was an exception but I got played".
Another student said "Yeah, you don't know bout nobody. nobody know bout nobody. Your friends say they are down for you when things good, but you get into a fight they started and they leave you by yourself. They might not mean to, no one mean to be a punk, but when it comes time they can't do it. I aint mad. They dont know. But you cant know about no one either. You only got yourself, and sometimes you dont even got that".
Another student said that Macbeth reminded him of the 2pac song me against the world.
Lady Macbeth going crazy kind of threw them off, but they got it. Macbeth too. "You see dead people man...if you see the body you see the person, right? So how you not going see the person there man? I mean you see that shit and you gonna see dead people and they got a lot of shit they wannna say."
The students liked the ending though. One of them jumped out of his seat and ran around the room. "Ah shit, you knew boy Macbeth wont going out like no bitch."
Another student "Yeah man, just like Scarface. Cept they didn't cut off Tony Montana's head though, shakespeare aint playing with that."
"Yeah man, and like, Tony was like all alone at the end, and he killed his boy and his sister went all crazy and shit, they just like each other, killing the king and going to the top".
"Malcom and Macduff came back on his ass. They got heart cant kill their people like that"
All profanity aside, as a teacher I live for this. I live for these connections.
I live for this shit.
But I remember not liking Macbeth when I was in school.
One of my greatest surprises was how much the sophomore class engaged with Macbeth.
At first they really were not feeling this "lesser than Macbeth yet greater, no so happy yet much happier" riddling (This is some bullshit, was the exact comment) but then things picked up.
"To be king, stands not within the prospect of belief...why on this blasted heath you stop our way with such prophetic greeting"Macbeth understands something that my students understand, that their place within the social scheme of things is to be soldiers, fighters, but not leaders. The blasted landscape: try south Chicago in February, with piles of rubble and dead weeds everywhere, wet winds sweeping off Lake Michigan. How many people stop these students with visions of success and violence.
"My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man, that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not. .." Still young but surrounded by so much violence, so many fights, the need to not be a punk. They wonder to themselves how far they can take it. They all want to be able to say that they could kill someone because they associate that with safety and respect.
"If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me"
Later on a student proposes a thesis
"Lady Macbeth is a triflin bitch"
Antithesis "She hood but she is just down, using sex and blood to get where her man needs to be"
Sythesis "She gangsta" One of my female students started to read a passage "fill me...with direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse..."
" You see Mr Boston, she just being hard, she dont feel the sex she just using it. She knows they got to get the crown. She just trying to be cold, and you better be cold. You better have some coldness in you or you aint gonna survive these streets, these n****s"
My students have so much ambition, positive and negative, for something better in their life. They have a understanding of human capacity that is more inspirational and tragic than any suburban student their age. They understand the span of human emotion and crime. And they want something better, be it a g pack or a scholarship.
"That is a step on which I must fall down, or else overleap, for in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires...false face must hide what false heart dost know"
But then there was a big turn when Macbeth kills Banquo. A lot of students did not like that. They believed in a very strict code, where if they got busted together they would not snitch, where they could count on each other, that their friends were the only people they could trust. "us against the world"
Others laughed at that. One guy said, "I got locked up with my best friend. I didn't say nuttin to the police, and the whole time he was saying how it was all my fault and that I am bad influence on him and shit. And he came out of it saying how he was my best friend...And he didn't talk because he was scared. He just don't care about nobody. I thought I was an exception but I got played".
Another student said "Yeah, you don't know bout nobody. nobody know bout nobody. Your friends say they are down for you when things good, but you get into a fight they started and they leave you by yourself. They might not mean to, no one mean to be a punk, but when it comes time they can't do it. I aint mad. They dont know. But you cant know about no one either. You only got yourself, and sometimes you dont even got that".
Another student said that Macbeth reminded him of the 2pac song me against the world.
Lady Macbeth going crazy kind of threw them off, but they got it. Macbeth too. "You see dead people man...if you see the body you see the person, right? So how you not going see the person there man? I mean you see that shit and you gonna see dead people and they got a lot of shit they wannna say."
The students liked the ending though. One of them jumped out of his seat and ran around the room. "Ah shit, you knew boy Macbeth wont going out like no bitch."
Another student "Yeah man, just like Scarface. Cept they didn't cut off Tony Montana's head though, shakespeare aint playing with that."
"Yeah man, and like, Tony was like all alone at the end, and he killed his boy and his sister went all crazy and shit, they just like each other, killing the king and going to the top".
"Malcom and Macduff came back on his ass. They got heart cant kill their people like that"
All profanity aside, as a teacher I live for this. I live for these connections.
I live for this shit.
Sunday Morning Truce
Often I do not get to relax on Friday or Saterday. I am a very solitary person in a social job, and as much as I would love to go home Friday and do nothing, somehow it rarely ends up that way. Usually it is just me and the roomates drinking, no real elaborate social life, just a way of wasting time.
But Sunday morning is when I truly forget about school. Drinking does many things, but it simply does not allow me to forget. I try to wake up early and walk to a nearby bakery in a shirt: letting the cold freeze me awake. And take a book, have a cinnamon role and coffee, turn the Tupac off the Ipod for a time and switch to some classical music, quiet and orderly, sometimes emotional, sometimes reassuringly not.
It took me several months to read Anna Karina, and I am not even sure if I liked it, although it has passages that are simply beautiful. But in that moment I could forget, be back in college. Read an Eastern European book in an Eastern European neighborhood.
Reading something, being in control, a simple relationship that did not cause suffering or conflict.
And then go to school on Monday and let what would come, come.
But Sunday morning is when I truly forget about school. Drinking does many things, but it simply does not allow me to forget. I try to wake up early and walk to a nearby bakery in a shirt: letting the cold freeze me awake. And take a book, have a cinnamon role and coffee, turn the Tupac off the Ipod for a time and switch to some classical music, quiet and orderly, sometimes emotional, sometimes reassuringly not.
It took me several months to read Anna Karina, and I am not even sure if I liked it, although it has passages that are simply beautiful. But in that moment I could forget, be back in college. Read an Eastern European book in an Eastern European neighborhood.
Reading something, being in control, a simple relationship that did not cause suffering or conflict.
And then go to school on Monday and let what would come, come.
Missing Persons
One of my first acts at ACE was to yell at a student and make him cry.
I forget exactly what happened, but I caught him in the hallway and realized that he had lied to me. He kept trying to lie to me, was being difficult, and sarcastically shrugging off everything that I said, laughing at me and refusing to look me in the eye. I just kept talking getting frustrated and a little bit intimidated by how little effect I thought I was having on the kid, wondering what would happen if an administrator came and saw a kid completely ignoring me. Until finally he stared at me, and I stared at him.
And I could see something in his eyes break.
We obviously did not get along very well after that. He was probably the highest ability level student of the special ed students. And eventually we formed a relationship when he lost his ID and could not return to class without a replacement. I paid the five dollars for the replacement. He promised me that he could pay me back in two weeks. I shrugged, I was used to him lying.
But he paid me back.
When I started teaching there, he had all F's. As the semester ended before spring break, he had all A's and B's with the exception of two classes, which he was failing because he did not like the teachers.
But he had a lot of problems. He was only 13, small for his age. He lived with his brother and his wife, his parents lived in Mexico and he had not seen them in years. He broke down crying at Christmas. We talked a lot about my time in Mexico, and about other things that he liked. He was very talkative, very much the stereotypical boy in a man's world, and suffering because of it.
He wanted to transfer to Kelly High School, his neighborhood school. He said that this school had too many rules, and that all the teachers hated him (he may have had a point here). I thought for sure that if he transfered that he would start a fight and get killed or beat bad.
He never returned from spring break. I called his brother after a couple of days and spoke with him in Spanish. The brother agreed that Daniel would come back to school. If a student under the age of 16 misses school for 5 days, the guardians receive a certified mail notice. This happens at the 10 day mark, and by the 15 day mark the police become involved and the parents report to court. It is also possible to call DCFS (Dep of Child and Family Services) and try to get the student separated from their parents on the basis of criminal neglect, but this is very hard to do.
Daniel came back for one day. He smiled and talked about how much he hated it here, and how he would be gone as soon as his brother could come and fill out the paperwork.
But his brother never came, and Dan never came back. The only thing I had to go on was a list of three addresses, and Dan said that he worked at a little corner store called Los Gemalos.
***
Avon was a student that I initially did not realize existed. He would miss two or three weeks and then come in two hours late for one day of school, and then leave. He always reeked of weed.
So when a teacher finally pointed him out to me when he walked in a half hour late (I asked who he was and she said "one of your students") I pulled him out to do work.
It was quickly obvious that he was almost completely blind. He could not read without glasses, which he refused to wear because they looked like two telescopes hanging off a coat hanger (the origianl frame had broke and they now dangled off a coat hanger.
The first day back, he got into a fight with another student.
His file said that he operated at a second grade level. He seemed like a nice kid, and he did not refuse to do anything. But he just had nothing in his eyes, no energy in his body. He lived with his grandmother, and she said that he lay in bed all day.
Another one of my students lives by Avon. He says that the local gangs use him to buy drugs, and that Avon is always giving away his own weed to other kids. Avon wanted to join a local gang, but they laughed at him, took his money, and said maybe they would hire him as a lookout.
Had an emergency meeting with the grandmother after Avon was caught smoking weed while he was in the dean of studetns office. I have never seen someone so addicted to weed. The grandmother was very nice but very old and did not understand what was going on. She told us how Avon's mother and brother had died the same day of completely seperate circumstances, and that Avon was the one who found his mother. Avon does a good job of taking care of his grandmother, but it seems obvious that she is in poor health.
He stopped coming to school
***
There were a total of 12 students that were missing. In an area where minority drop out rate is fifty percent, 12 missing is not bad. As a result, no one else seemed to care. They made it purely a matter of choice. The office was not doing what they were supposed to be doing with keeping definitive attendance records and sending certified mail and court notices. So myself and out scary dean of students decided to clear our schedule and go hunting around the south side for them.
We were wearing ties and baseball caps, driving around in my dented teal pontiac . Enoch the dean is a black man in his thirties. He grew up in the Ida B Wells homes, and got out with a football scholarship. He played defensive end with the New Orleans Saints before he ruptured his Acheilies tendon, after which he had to travel all over the country and Canada playing football. He had a wife and kids, and finally decided to give up on football and return to Chicago.
I am not ripped like Enoch but I am tall, and as a result when we walked through the neighborhood everyone thought that we were cops. First stop was Dan's house in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. As soon as we stepped out of the cars people started whistling in warning and yelling five O. We had to walk a couple of blocks because the street was blocked off, people left their front porches, went into the house, we could here locks snap. I said good morning to old ladies, who glared at me. A group of teenagers watched us, but dan was not with them. I wanted to ask them what school they went to and why they were standing out at 10am on a Wednesday, but decided to chose my battles.
The house looked like a fortress and also looked like it was uninhabited. Enoch went around back while I screamed in Spanish and English. Finally a women came to the window and said that no one by the two last names that I knew lived in the house. I looked at her, tried to figure out if this was Dan's sister in law. But we were at an impass and so Enoch and I left.
We then hit Inglewood and the Crazy hundreds. Every house we went to we could here footsteps or see a curtain move, but no one answered. We would stand on the porch for ten minutes, talking quietly with ourselves, and hope someone would think that we had left and look out.
We then went to Avon's house, somewhere on 98th st west of the Dan Ryan. We drove through more groups of gangbangers until we got to a bungalow house. Two old men were destroying the concrete stairs. They said that we just missed the grandmother and Avon. The man swinging the sledge hammer told us that he was 92 years old, and that he still liked the ladies.
We went to more houses.
We never found a single student.
None of those students returned.
I forget exactly what happened, but I caught him in the hallway and realized that he had lied to me. He kept trying to lie to me, was being difficult, and sarcastically shrugging off everything that I said, laughing at me and refusing to look me in the eye. I just kept talking getting frustrated and a little bit intimidated by how little effect I thought I was having on the kid, wondering what would happen if an administrator came and saw a kid completely ignoring me. Until finally he stared at me, and I stared at him.
And I could see something in his eyes break.
We obviously did not get along very well after that. He was probably the highest ability level student of the special ed students. And eventually we formed a relationship when he lost his ID and could not return to class without a replacement. I paid the five dollars for the replacement. He promised me that he could pay me back in two weeks. I shrugged, I was used to him lying.
But he paid me back.
When I started teaching there, he had all F's. As the semester ended before spring break, he had all A's and B's with the exception of two classes, which he was failing because he did not like the teachers.
But he had a lot of problems. He was only 13, small for his age. He lived with his brother and his wife, his parents lived in Mexico and he had not seen them in years. He broke down crying at Christmas. We talked a lot about my time in Mexico, and about other things that he liked. He was very talkative, very much the stereotypical boy in a man's world, and suffering because of it.
He wanted to transfer to Kelly High School, his neighborhood school. He said that this school had too many rules, and that all the teachers hated him (he may have had a point here). I thought for sure that if he transfered that he would start a fight and get killed or beat bad.
He never returned from spring break. I called his brother after a couple of days and spoke with him in Spanish. The brother agreed that Daniel would come back to school. If a student under the age of 16 misses school for 5 days, the guardians receive a certified mail notice. This happens at the 10 day mark, and by the 15 day mark the police become involved and the parents report to court. It is also possible to call DCFS (Dep of Child and Family Services) and try to get the student separated from their parents on the basis of criminal neglect, but this is very hard to do.
Daniel came back for one day. He smiled and talked about how much he hated it here, and how he would be gone as soon as his brother could come and fill out the paperwork.
But his brother never came, and Dan never came back. The only thing I had to go on was a list of three addresses, and Dan said that he worked at a little corner store called Los Gemalos.
***
Avon was a student that I initially did not realize existed. He would miss two or three weeks and then come in two hours late for one day of school, and then leave. He always reeked of weed.
So when a teacher finally pointed him out to me when he walked in a half hour late (I asked who he was and she said "one of your students") I pulled him out to do work.
It was quickly obvious that he was almost completely blind. He could not read without glasses, which he refused to wear because they looked like two telescopes hanging off a coat hanger (the origianl frame had broke and they now dangled off a coat hanger.
The first day back, he got into a fight with another student.
His file said that he operated at a second grade level. He seemed like a nice kid, and he did not refuse to do anything. But he just had nothing in his eyes, no energy in his body. He lived with his grandmother, and she said that he lay in bed all day.
Another one of my students lives by Avon. He says that the local gangs use him to buy drugs, and that Avon is always giving away his own weed to other kids. Avon wanted to join a local gang, but they laughed at him, took his money, and said maybe they would hire him as a lookout.
Had an emergency meeting with the grandmother after Avon was caught smoking weed while he was in the dean of studetns office. I have never seen someone so addicted to weed. The grandmother was very nice but very old and did not understand what was going on. She told us how Avon's mother and brother had died the same day of completely seperate circumstances, and that Avon was the one who found his mother. Avon does a good job of taking care of his grandmother, but it seems obvious that she is in poor health.
He stopped coming to school
***
There were a total of 12 students that were missing. In an area where minority drop out rate is fifty percent, 12 missing is not bad. As a result, no one else seemed to care. They made it purely a matter of choice. The office was not doing what they were supposed to be doing with keeping definitive attendance records and sending certified mail and court notices. So myself and out scary dean of students decided to clear our schedule and go hunting around the south side for them.
We were wearing ties and baseball caps, driving around in my dented teal pontiac . Enoch the dean is a black man in his thirties. He grew up in the Ida B Wells homes, and got out with a football scholarship. He played defensive end with the New Orleans Saints before he ruptured his Acheilies tendon, after which he had to travel all over the country and Canada playing football. He had a wife and kids, and finally decided to give up on football and return to Chicago.
I am not ripped like Enoch but I am tall, and as a result when we walked through the neighborhood everyone thought that we were cops. First stop was Dan's house in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. As soon as we stepped out of the cars people started whistling in warning and yelling five O. We had to walk a couple of blocks because the street was blocked off, people left their front porches, went into the house, we could here locks snap. I said good morning to old ladies, who glared at me. A group of teenagers watched us, but dan was not with them. I wanted to ask them what school they went to and why they were standing out at 10am on a Wednesday, but decided to chose my battles.
The house looked like a fortress and also looked like it was uninhabited. Enoch went around back while I screamed in Spanish and English. Finally a women came to the window and said that no one by the two last names that I knew lived in the house. I looked at her, tried to figure out if this was Dan's sister in law. But we were at an impass and so Enoch and I left.
We then hit Inglewood and the Crazy hundreds. Every house we went to we could here footsteps or see a curtain move, but no one answered. We would stand on the porch for ten minutes, talking quietly with ourselves, and hope someone would think that we had left and look out.
We then went to Avon's house, somewhere on 98th st west of the Dan Ryan. We drove through more groups of gangbangers until we got to a bungalow house. Two old men were destroying the concrete stairs. They said that we just missed the grandmother and Avon. The man swinging the sledge hammer told us that he was 92 years old, and that he still liked the ladies.
We went to more houses.
We never found a single student.
None of those students returned.
Rules of Teaching Part Four
41. The indivdual is always their own last chance.
42. You maybe the individual's first choice. You maybe their only external authority or personal chance.
43. Use arbitrary circumstancs and commands to develop communication with extremely quiet kids. "Where did we leave off...et al"
44. You are only in charge if you decide to be.
45. "Nobody knows themselves" Toivi Blatt, Holocaust survivor.
46. Don't say "I;m not mad, but..."
47. If students act with uncertainty, force them to demonstrate what they know.
48. If you are disapointed, you need to explain to everybody. Do not be quiet, do not sulk. You have the right to intervene.
49. Sometimes there are no shortcuts.
50. Teachers assume that students will ask questions if they are confused. This is a mistake.
42. You maybe the individual's first choice. You maybe their only external authority or personal chance.
43. Use arbitrary circumstancs and commands to develop communication with extremely quiet kids. "Where did we leave off...et al"
44. You are only in charge if you decide to be.
45. "Nobody knows themselves" Toivi Blatt, Holocaust survivor.
46. Don't say "I;m not mad, but..."
47. If students act with uncertainty, force them to demonstrate what they know.
48. If you are disapointed, you need to explain to everybody. Do not be quiet, do not sulk. You have the right to intervene.
49. Sometimes there are no shortcuts.
50. Teachers assume that students will ask questions if they are confused. This is a mistake.
Si Se Puede
May 1st is traditionally the day were nationwide Latinos exercise their political right to rally. Some of the older teachers are very aware that May 1st is the world wide day for Marxism. Others just hate it, saying that the illegals are taking advantage of the schools, and then taking advantage of the day to leave schools.
I thought it was remarkable. Went in and only half the students showed up. Almost every hispanic student was gone, gone with their family and people.
After school I headed downtown to try to catch the end of the rally. I thought I was too late, but I managed to catch the parade at the very end. It was breathtaking, to see all the streets of downtown Chicago closed, walking down the middle of any street.
And then to see so many people. The Latino community was somewhat disappointed by the turnout: only 200,000 people. To see them all marching, endless, was stunning, a progression of people as history is a progression and intersection of people. I saw my own history there, and once again the abstract concept of American that was tossing me back and forth.
By shear dumb luck, after ten minutes, I saw my students. They were all walking together at the front of the column. And by another miracle, they all saw me and started screaming. I walked with them for a little ways, but you never want to get to close, you want them to experience this for themselves. It is one of the hardest things about teaching, we share the failures, but most of the successes are private and happen when we are already in the student's past.
But I am glad that they had their moment. I am glad to see some families, some youth, work together for the idea of what it is to be a people.
And from that point on, the Latino students always found me and say hello, or what they were thinking, or just to giggle at my Spanish.
I thought it was remarkable. Went in and only half the students showed up. Almost every hispanic student was gone, gone with their family and people.
After school I headed downtown to try to catch the end of the rally. I thought I was too late, but I managed to catch the parade at the very end. It was breathtaking, to see all the streets of downtown Chicago closed, walking down the middle of any street.
And then to see so many people. The Latino community was somewhat disappointed by the turnout: only 200,000 people. To see them all marching, endless, was stunning, a progression of people as history is a progression and intersection of people. I saw my own history there, and once again the abstract concept of American that was tossing me back and forth.
By shear dumb luck, after ten minutes, I saw my students. They were all walking together at the front of the column. And by another miracle, they all saw me and started screaming. I walked with them for a little ways, but you never want to get to close, you want them to experience this for themselves. It is one of the hardest things about teaching, we share the failures, but most of the successes are private and happen when we are already in the student's past.
But I am glad that they had their moment. I am glad to see some families, some youth, work together for the idea of what it is to be a people.
And from that point on, the Latino students always found me and say hello, or what they were thinking, or just to giggle at my Spanish.
Things Fall Apart
Reading Things Fall Apart did not go over very well with the Sophomores. The black kids were determined to make fun of the Africans, which frustrated me to no end, and the other teacher even worse. Everything was so alien.
Just like Romeo and Juliet though, the book was ironic compared to the experiences I was having.
I remember the title from the Yeats poem. "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold...and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. "
I started fighting with the special ed team. I had been trying to decide for sometime between teaching history or pursuing special ed or bilingual ed. I had been looking at programs, but I hesitated. I liked special ed and I was learning a lot, but I felt like I wasn't doing that great of a job.
Then the director of ed said that I was going to teach history and civil engineering next year if I hadn't already enrolled in a program, and that made me relieved just to have that in front of me.
But the special ed staff were very angry, and thought that I had deceived them. They also do not like the director of ed very much. Before they could not stop complementing me "you're so smart, you are our man or it is so good to have a man in the department, thank god you speak spanish..." Now there was nothing but tense silence.
One women is more obnoxious than the others. She always tried to tell me what to do. I snapped at her once for calling a kid a fag, another time she corrected a student of mine for not having her shirt fully tucked in and said that while that might work when I am there teacher, she had higher standards. The thing is, the girl was just standing up from a chair, and had a small part of her shirt sticking out.
The students were having trouble to. I came into our office and saw one of our most needy and struggling, most challenging and annoying, and yet dedicated students getting arrested. She cried I don't want to go to jail and the cops started screaming at her "shut the fuck up". Two of the spec ed teachers were crying. This student does have a history of fighting, but this one took the cake. A male in class was using some tool or other and she tried to snatch it from him, they got into a fight, and he had her in a headlock and was punching her, somehow she got a pair of scissors and stabbed through his ear, tearing it, and slashed his face.
She wasn't doing well before this, she has an older boyfriend, her first serious one because she comes from a protective family, and unfortunately she is also just very unattractive and slow, and we think this guy is an asshole. Her grades were slipping.
"B" in my reading group was falling apart too. He was not happy because one of his best friends got killed in a drive by. He also got roughed up in gang fight. He was not passing a single class. Sometimes he would sit there silent, and then lash out with his leg and kick something, without warning.
He started smoking weed inside the school, started skipping classes (I found him hiding in a closet once), and then one day I saw him drawing gang graffiti and he flipped out. He only lasted a couple of weeks after that, and then left for an alternative school.
His mother blamed everyone, and was beside herself, but lashing out and incoherant, and you had to wonder if she was on drugs again.
There were two weeks with back to back expulsionary hearings, and students were being forced out in droves.
Just like Romeo and Juliet though, the book was ironic compared to the experiences I was having.
I remember the title from the Yeats poem. "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold...and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. "
I started fighting with the special ed team. I had been trying to decide for sometime between teaching history or pursuing special ed or bilingual ed. I had been looking at programs, but I hesitated. I liked special ed and I was learning a lot, but I felt like I wasn't doing that great of a job.
Then the director of ed said that I was going to teach history and civil engineering next year if I hadn't already enrolled in a program, and that made me relieved just to have that in front of me.
But the special ed staff were very angry, and thought that I had deceived them. They also do not like the director of ed very much. Before they could not stop complementing me "you're so smart, you are our man or it is so good to have a man in the department, thank god you speak spanish..." Now there was nothing but tense silence.
One women is more obnoxious than the others. She always tried to tell me what to do. I snapped at her once for calling a kid a fag, another time she corrected a student of mine for not having her shirt fully tucked in and said that while that might work when I am there teacher, she had higher standards. The thing is, the girl was just standing up from a chair, and had a small part of her shirt sticking out.
The students were having trouble to. I came into our office and saw one of our most needy and struggling, most challenging and annoying, and yet dedicated students getting arrested. She cried I don't want to go to jail and the cops started screaming at her "shut the fuck up". Two of the spec ed teachers were crying. This student does have a history of fighting, but this one took the cake. A male in class was using some tool or other and she tried to snatch it from him, they got into a fight, and he had her in a headlock and was punching her, somehow she got a pair of scissors and stabbed through his ear, tearing it, and slashed his face.
She wasn't doing well before this, she has an older boyfriend, her first serious one because she comes from a protective family, and unfortunately she is also just very unattractive and slow, and we think this guy is an asshole. Her grades were slipping.
"B" in my reading group was falling apart too. He was not happy because one of his best friends got killed in a drive by. He also got roughed up in gang fight. He was not passing a single class. Sometimes he would sit there silent, and then lash out with his leg and kick something, without warning.
He started smoking weed inside the school, started skipping classes (I found him hiding in a closet once), and then one day I saw him drawing gang graffiti and he flipped out. He only lasted a couple of weeks after that, and then left for an alternative school.
His mother blamed everyone, and was beside herself, but lashing out and incoherant, and you had to wonder if she was on drugs again.
There were two weeks with back to back expulsionary hearings, and students were being forced out in droves.
Bar Louie
I have been many things in my life: landscaper,plumbers assistant construction worker, janitor, shipping clerk, came from a hard drinking town, had a lot of friends who were marines, cousins who are police:
But the truth is no one drinks like a teacher.
No One.
I am not necessarily proud of this fact, but there are certain groups of professions who are more directly affected by the American experiment, and we end up being known by all bartenders and we don't even have to ask for drinks. They already know.
Bar Louie is the bar where most south shore and grand blvd teachers go, for lack of better options than anything. I used to love getting drunk there and taking a long walk on Lake Michigan to sober up.
Then there is Tumans, the bar next to my apartment. But that can get a bit scary because in between my apartment and the bar is a funeral home. And if you go to Tumans and because you love the students (sarcastically or worse, you really do love the students) and you love them so much that you are pointing to your empty glass, you have to walk by that funeral home and hear it talk back to you and let you know that the last glass you had might not have been a good idea.
Alcohol erodes us.
But the truth is no one drinks like a teacher.
No One.
I am not necessarily proud of this fact, but there are certain groups of professions who are more directly affected by the American experiment, and we end up being known by all bartenders and we don't even have to ask for drinks. They already know.
Bar Louie is the bar where most south shore and grand blvd teachers go, for lack of better options than anything. I used to love getting drunk there and taking a long walk on Lake Michigan to sober up.
Then there is Tumans, the bar next to my apartment. But that can get a bit scary because in between my apartment and the bar is a funeral home. And if you go to Tumans and because you love the students (sarcastically or worse, you really do love the students) and you love them so much that you are pointing to your empty glass, you have to walk by that funeral home and hear it talk back to you and let you know that the last glass you had might not have been a good idea.
Alcohol erodes us.
Parent Teacher Confrences
I am always nervous for parent teacher conferences because you never know what to do until you hear what the parent has to say. Sometimes you have to tell the parent that their child is an avatar of Satan, other times you have to defend the student for no other reason that you feel sorry for them.
And other times, well, they look at you and thank you for what you have done and you think about that driving home and are glad that you are a teacher, feeling like the master of Chicago and the future.
This conference promised to be interesting. It started when I saw two teachers run out of the gym. When you see this you get a feeling that something just happened that we will be talking about at the bar later.
What happened was one of my girl students, D, was at the first conference with her gym teacher. D's mother works for the post office (and although my mother is a mail carrier I have to say...) and is quite postal. Turns out D is failing gym because she refuses to dress. So the mom started slapping the shit out of her in front of the other teachers. D naturally was crying, Mother kept screaming about how she just paid $200 to get D's hair done and this is how she acts.
So when D was sitting at the table, I did soften what I was going to say. The mother's breathing slowed.
A's Mother came next, with A looking down so all we could see were the rows of his greasy hair and the gold chains on the back of his neck.
These mothers are intimidating and remarkable. The young males all think they are tough, fighters and gang bangers, but they have only seen a part of this life, and these mothers have seen much more.
It shows how tough they are, but also how much more complex the neighborhood is, how social problems are denying us the ability to see functional, caring communities who are tougher, more self less and united then most American communities. And how confusing and tragic this make the social conflict, and how much more important.
When I drove home I thought about the mothers thanking me, saying I was doing a good job, asking if they could, telling how important it was for them to get an education...
Makes me want to be a teacher, to be a better teacher.
And other times, well, they look at you and thank you for what you have done and you think about that driving home and are glad that you are a teacher, feeling like the master of Chicago and the future.
This conference promised to be interesting. It started when I saw two teachers run out of the gym. When you see this you get a feeling that something just happened that we will be talking about at the bar later.
What happened was one of my girl students, D, was at the first conference with her gym teacher. D's mother works for the post office (and although my mother is a mail carrier I have to say...) and is quite postal. Turns out D is failing gym because she refuses to dress. So the mom started slapping the shit out of her in front of the other teachers. D naturally was crying, Mother kept screaming about how she just paid $200 to get D's hair done and this is how she acts.
So when D was sitting at the table, I did soften what I was going to say. The mother's breathing slowed.
A's Mother came next, with A looking down so all we could see were the rows of his greasy hair and the gold chains on the back of his neck.
These mothers are intimidating and remarkable. The young males all think they are tough, fighters and gang bangers, but they have only seen a part of this life, and these mothers have seen much more.
It shows how tough they are, but also how much more complex the neighborhood is, how social problems are denying us the ability to see functional, caring communities who are tougher, more self less and united then most American communities. And how confusing and tragic this make the social conflict, and how much more important.
When I drove home I thought about the mothers thanking me, saying I was doing a good job, asking if they could, telling how important it was for them to get an education...
Makes me want to be a teacher, to be a better teacher.
Excerpt from The 42th Parrallel by John Dos Passos
The young man walks fast by himself through the crowd that thins into the night streets; feet are tired from hours of walking, eyes greedy for warm curves of faces, answering flicker of eyes, the set of a head, the lift of a shoulder, the way hands spread and clench, blood tingles with wants, mind is a beehive of hopes buzzing and stinging, muscles ache for knowledge of jobs, for the roadmaster's pick and shovel work, the fisherman's knack with a hook, the swing of the bridgeman's arm as he slings down the whitehot rivet, the engineer's slow grip wise on the throttle, the dirtfarmers use of his whole body when, whoaing the mules, he yanks the plow from the furrow. The young man walks by himself searching through the crowd with greedy eyes, greedy eyes taut to hear, by himself, alone.
The streets are empty. People have packed into subways, climbed into streetcars and buses, in the stations they've scampered for suburban trains; they've filtered into lodgings and tenements, gone up in elevators into apartment-houses. In a show-window two sallow window-dressers in their shirtsleeves are bringing out a dummy girl in a red evening dress, at a corner welders in masks lean into sheets of blue fame repairing a cartrack, a few dumb drunk bums shamble along, a sad street walker fidgets under an arclight. from the river comes the deep rumbling whistle of a steamboat leaving dock. A tug hoots far away.
The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into the tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take the jobs, live in all the boarding houses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. All night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself, alone.
No job, no woman, no house, no city.
Only the ears busy to catch the speech are not alone, the ears are caught tight, linked tight by the tendrils of phrased words, the turn of a joke, the singsong fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence, linking tendrils of speech twine through the city blocks, spread over pavements, grow out along broad parked avenues, speed with the trucks leaving on their long night runs over roaring highways, whisper down sandy byroads past wornout farms, joining up cities and fillstations, roundhouses, steamboats, planes groping along airways, words call out on mountain pastures, drift slow down rivers widening to the sea and the hushed beaches.
It was not in the long walks through the jostling crowds at night that he was less alone, or in the training camp at Allentown, or in the day on the docks at Seattle, or in the empty reek of Washington City hot boyhood summer nights, or in the meal on Market Street, or in the swim off the red rocks of San Diego, or in the bed fill of fleas in New Orleans, or in the cold razorwind of the lake, or in the gray faces trembling in the grind of gears in the street under Michigan Avenue, or in the smokers of limited express trains, or walking across country or riding up the dry mountain canyons, or the night without a sleeping bag among the frozen beartracks in the Yellowstone, or canoing Sundays on the Quinnipiac;
But in his mother's words telling about long ago, in his father's telling about when he was a boy, in the kidding stories of uncles, in the lies the kids told at school, the hired man's yarns, the tall toys among the soldiers after taps.
It was speech that cling to the ears, the link that tingled in the blood: U.S.A
U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in leather, a radio network, a chain of movie theaters, a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in bu a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public library full of old newspapers and dogeared history books with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world;s greatest river valley fringed with mountains and hills. U.S.A. is a set of big mouthed officials with two many bank accounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.
The streets are empty. People have packed into subways, climbed into streetcars and buses, in the stations they've scampered for suburban trains; they've filtered into lodgings and tenements, gone up in elevators into apartment-houses. In a show-window two sallow window-dressers in their shirtsleeves are bringing out a dummy girl in a red evening dress, at a corner welders in masks lean into sheets of blue fame repairing a cartrack, a few dumb drunk bums shamble along, a sad street walker fidgets under an arclight. from the river comes the deep rumbling whistle of a steamboat leaving dock. A tug hoots far away.
The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into the tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take the jobs, live in all the boarding houses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. All night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself, alone.
No job, no woman, no house, no city.
Only the ears busy to catch the speech are not alone, the ears are caught tight, linked tight by the tendrils of phrased words, the turn of a joke, the singsong fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence, linking tendrils of speech twine through the city blocks, spread over pavements, grow out along broad parked avenues, speed with the trucks leaving on their long night runs over roaring highways, whisper down sandy byroads past wornout farms, joining up cities and fillstations, roundhouses, steamboats, planes groping along airways, words call out on mountain pastures, drift slow down rivers widening to the sea and the hushed beaches.
It was not in the long walks through the jostling crowds at night that he was less alone, or in the training camp at Allentown, or in the day on the docks at Seattle, or in the empty reek of Washington City hot boyhood summer nights, or in the meal on Market Street, or in the swim off the red rocks of San Diego, or in the bed fill of fleas in New Orleans, or in the cold razorwind of the lake, or in the gray faces trembling in the grind of gears in the street under Michigan Avenue, or in the smokers of limited express trains, or walking across country or riding up the dry mountain canyons, or the night without a sleeping bag among the frozen beartracks in the Yellowstone, or canoing Sundays on the Quinnipiac;
But in his mother's words telling about long ago, in his father's telling about when he was a boy, in the kidding stories of uncles, in the lies the kids told at school, the hired man's yarns, the tall toys among the soldiers after taps.
It was speech that cling to the ears, the link that tingled in the blood: U.S.A
U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in leather, a radio network, a chain of movie theaters, a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in bu a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public library full of old newspapers and dogeared history books with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world;s greatest river valley fringed with mountains and hills. U.S.A. is a set of big mouthed officials with two many bank accounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.
Romeo and Juliet
We have been reading Romeo and Juliet in the 9th grade lit.
I found A out in the hallway first period, sobbing.
It was very strange for me to see that, watching him just bawl, the little Latin King with his hair slicked back.
I got him downstairs to the conference room. Finally I found out what happened.
He had been dating a girl for about a month, another freshman, very quiet in class but very active on the streets. She was very attractive and very sexual. They both started getting in trouble, cutting class to make out or worse, never doing their homework. I had watched all my progress go to nothing, but I was very worried. I knew that she was much more experience than him, and a lot more dangerous. I could not tell him this.
I also knew that she had high social work minutes, and that she had missed time at the beginning of the school year because she had an abortion that went wrong.
Finally he calmed down enough to tell me what happened. He told me that she had gotten arrested or ticketed for driving without a license. She had thought that her sister's boyfriend (she is an upperclassman, he is in prison) had somehow gotten out or was there threatening her. Turned out to be a different guy.
Anyway, the girlfriend lives with her mother, an alcoholic. Somehow it was decided over the weekend that she would have to move in with her father, who lived in Iowa, and who has a highly abusive alcoholic. "A" found out about this from the sister this morning.
I got the principal in and the sister. We started calling people. An aunt, who the sister lives with, agreed to come in. But she was late, and when she did come I was out of the school. We talked to the social worker. We tried phones, some rang and no one picked up, most were numbers that were no good.
Picking up lunch.
We never saw her again.
He had a new girlfriend the next week. We never spoke of this.
I found A out in the hallway first period, sobbing.
It was very strange for me to see that, watching him just bawl, the little Latin King with his hair slicked back.
I got him downstairs to the conference room. Finally I found out what happened.
He had been dating a girl for about a month, another freshman, very quiet in class but very active on the streets. She was very attractive and very sexual. They both started getting in trouble, cutting class to make out or worse, never doing their homework. I had watched all my progress go to nothing, but I was very worried. I knew that she was much more experience than him, and a lot more dangerous. I could not tell him this.
I also knew that she had high social work minutes, and that she had missed time at the beginning of the school year because she had an abortion that went wrong.
Finally he calmed down enough to tell me what happened. He told me that she had gotten arrested or ticketed for driving without a license. She had thought that her sister's boyfriend (she is an upperclassman, he is in prison) had somehow gotten out or was there threatening her. Turned out to be a different guy.
Anyway, the girlfriend lives with her mother, an alcoholic. Somehow it was decided over the weekend that she would have to move in with her father, who lived in Iowa, and who has a highly abusive alcoholic. "A" found out about this from the sister this morning.
I got the principal in and the sister. We started calling people. An aunt, who the sister lives with, agreed to come in. But she was late, and when she did come I was out of the school. We talked to the social worker. We tried phones, some rang and no one picked up, most were numbers that were no good.
Picking up lunch.
We never saw her again.
He had a new girlfriend the next week. We never spoke of this.
Rules of Teaching Part 3
31. Do not tell jokes about cocaine
32. Don't tell jokes about "your baby's momma"
33. Always be direct and deliberate when giving instructions. Do not joke then.
34. never use sarcasm with regards to instructions and expectations.
35. Students do, most of the time, want you to like them. So be careful... or use it to blackmail the shit out of them.
36. Students who are physically or mentally smaller will struggle with group work.
37. Group work must be divided into mini goals and deadlines.
38. The structure of how a group is sitting determines who is participating.
39. Being stern, demanding participation allows students to have a social excuse for being dedicated to their work.
40. Nothing is promised. So never make promises that you cannot keep.
32. Don't tell jokes about "your baby's momma"
33. Always be direct and deliberate when giving instructions. Do not joke then.
34. never use sarcasm with regards to instructions and expectations.
35. Students do, most of the time, want you to like them. So be careful... or use it to blackmail the shit out of them.
36. Students who are physically or mentally smaller will struggle with group work.
37. Group work must be divided into mini goals and deadlines.
38. The structure of how a group is sitting determines who is participating.
39. Being stern, demanding participation allows students to have a social excuse for being dedicated to their work.
40. Nothing is promised. So never make promises that you cannot keep.
The Road to Jerico
We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school -- be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base....
Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother.
Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony." And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem -- or down to Jericho, rather to organize a "Jericho Road Improvement Association." That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.
But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles -- or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.
Martin Luther King was killed the next day.
The Students*
I forgot to introduce my students
A (M)-in many ways my favorite student, just because I have a connection with him that most teachers do not have, and I am proud of it. When I came to the school everyone told me that he was a Latin King, and everyone told me that he was a fuck up. He is somewhat weird, intimidating, but very popular among the Hispanic students. Not necessarily because he was mean, but because he did not do anything, and he would get in trouble. But for some odd reason we instantly hit it off.l Part of it was that I was carrying him, and I know that he used coming to see me in the office as a way out of getting caught for being tardy or for not doing his homework done.
But he was a good kid, no matter what else, that is what I saw in him. Medium height, thin with long hair slicked back to his neck in perfect shiny rows after god knows what glue or whatever was put into it. He told me stories about Mexico, about how much he loved Guadalajara and how much he wanted to move back there after he graduated from high school. He loved going there with his dad, and was very proud of both his parents. the last time they went there they got into trouble however, because someone tried to rape his sister so he and his dad fought him and ended up almost killing him.
Throughout the year he almost gave up. didn't turn in major projects, lashed out. I have given up on students before. I am not proud of that, but I have. I just look at them and they look back at me, and there is nothing left. They haven't hit bottom yet so they do not want to change, but they are suffering enough not to care. But when i looked into his eyes I always saw something that told me that he wanted it, no matter how he felt or acted.
I think this student was close to that point, but he did have good parents. And then as the school year went on, he had me.
A (M)-in many ways my favorite student, just because I have a connection with him that most teachers do not have, and I am proud of it. When I came to the school everyone told me that he was a Latin King, and everyone told me that he was a fuck up. He is somewhat weird, intimidating, but very popular among the Hispanic students. Not necessarily because he was mean, but because he did not do anything, and he would get in trouble. But for some odd reason we instantly hit it off.l Part of it was that I was carrying him, and I know that he used coming to see me in the office as a way out of getting caught for being tardy or for not doing his homework done.
But he was a good kid, no matter what else, that is what I saw in him. Medium height, thin with long hair slicked back to his neck in perfect shiny rows after god knows what glue or whatever was put into it. He told me stories about Mexico, about how much he loved Guadalajara and how much he wanted to move back there after he graduated from high school. He loved going there with his dad, and was very proud of both his parents. the last time they went there they got into trouble however, because someone tried to rape his sister so he and his dad fought him and ended up almost killing him.
Throughout the year he almost gave up. didn't turn in major projects, lashed out. I have given up on students before. I am not proud of that, but I have. I just look at them and they look back at me, and there is nothing left. They haven't hit bottom yet so they do not want to change, but they are suffering enough not to care. But when i looked into his eyes I always saw something that told me that he wanted it, no matter how he felt or acted.
I think this student was close to that point, but he did have good parents. And then as the school year went on, he had me.
Test Time
I was only a few weeks into the test when finals came around. With special education students most of the take the test with me in small groups. It was very difficult because I did not know how they were doing in the class, and I did not have an idea about what the kids were responsible for knowing prior to my arrival.
But even though most teachers think that giving test is a rather boring part of the day, time to read the newspaper, it fascinates me. To watch them suddenly so serious, seeing that composure or caring that we wanted so badly to see and sometimes doubted whether it existed. And I dread it too because I know some students have studied so hard and are concentrating and they will fail. And some of them will never truly get over that feeling. Some will dropout, or will be very proud of graduating but will feel that same feeling of failure just thinking about college and won't do it.
I want so badly for them to do well. I wonder what is going on behind those stony young faces.
But even though most teachers think that giving test is a rather boring part of the day, time to read the newspaper, it fascinates me. To watch them suddenly so serious, seeing that composure or caring that we wanted so badly to see and sometimes doubted whether it existed. And I dread it too because I know some students have studied so hard and are concentrating and they will fail. And some of them will never truly get over that feeling. Some will dropout, or will be very proud of graduating but will feel that same feeling of failure just thinking about college and won't do it.
I want so badly for them to do well. I wonder what is going on behind those stony young faces.
Corrective reading
Teaching someone how to read for the first time is the most exciting, boring thing that I have ever done.
You start with the very basics: the letter A makes the sound, and then you give the short a sound as though that is the only sound that the letter makes, you know that although 15 or 16 that these students are not ready yet for multiple vowel sounds. It is fascinating also because I so rarely consider the remarkable ability to know language, its complexity and shear volume of words. The repetition is remarkable and infuriating, and although you help the students, a lot of it is waiting for them, encouraging them to fail for hours until finally they get it.
The program is very scripted: the first third of the time is all speech, I say something and they repeat it. The second third of the period is basic reading: I put a letter on the board and ask for the sound. The third part is written.
To this I added time for conversation, time to learn how to read a clock, and count money.
I had 3 students
J-My rock. First day I walked into the classroom he was there, looking down at the table. He is a kid who is so shy that it scares you; what should you say to him, is he doing ok. So we start a conversation, and by that I mean I talked to him and he would nod or say yes or no. It took me about ten minutes of talking before I got more than a one word answer from him. He is a large kid with big powerful shoulders and a big powerful stomach, he looks just like a lineman and wants to be one. He has a little fro and a whiskery goatee. He has a stutter. He was born in the Robert Taylor homes, and left when they were demolished. He now lives by a dangerous stop on the green line. He watches the Chicago bears all the time, and cannot remember a single name of a bear: but he knows all their numbers.
He was never late and always came to school. He had a great attitude about work, and even though he was quiet, later he would come to my aid (I helped out in his biology class) and shake his heads and say "you shouldn't do that" in a quiet voice. Didn't sound like much, but if a student kept misbehaving he would repeat himself, and students were able to figure out that J although shy was not a punk. He had a great smile that would flash occasionally and a gigantic, heaving laugh.
An A grade is anything greater than 60 percent, to pass he must have over 25 percent in a class.
Working with him has been the biggest pleasure of my teaching career, and the thing that I am the most proud of.
B- tall and skinny, with a lot of scars on his arms and gigantic eyes. Also dead silent in class but more sociable and problematic with other students. He also spoke under his breath, and could not raise his voice without becoming annoyed. Everything you say to him takes at least five seconds to be processed. He cannot write or read, but passed his Freshman year. And elementary school for that matter. He always had a completely vacant look on his face, although he would smile from time to time. He would also occasionally have very violent spasms of anger that could not be predicted. You could explain things to him and he would get them (he was much quicker inside of his mind than J) but he would completely forget them within a half hour. His homework was non-existent, his overall class grades were in the single digits, and he often skipped class or school. He was known to be a part of a gang, and spent some time in the hospital after he got hit in the head with a lock.
The suspicion is that his learning disability is the result of being a crack baby, and that he suffered significant natal brain injuries. Meetings with his mother, regrettably, seem to support this theory. She is always half screaming with anger at the teachers and B, but also has a lot of guilt issues and will change her mind and say it is not our fault, crying, and then reverse herself and lash out again. B's elder brother is a known drug king-pin.
Bobby is alternatively cooperative or hesitant with me, and makes slow progress.
G-half Honduran and half Mexican, G was tall, skinny and very handsome as the girls kept telling me. ESL. He is much quicker mentally, but also has bizarre associations. Once I showed him the letter J and he was convinced that it made a sound like shhh. I corrected him and he got it, but occasionally another, equally random sound would come out of his mouth when he the same letter, and he had a lot of other strange connections. In class he was very popular, and used his good looks to get smart girls to carry him through the class.
Working with these students in infuriating to me: how they got to me, a non-trained person filling the role of a specialist, and they cannot read. Reading should be a fundamental human right. I believe that people have the right to literacy in American society. There was nothing making it impossible for these students to read, and they would eventually. But it is amazing to me that the most basic opportunities in our society are denied to the rural and urban poor by criminal neglect. CPS had to cut their reading specialist positions, and here I am dealing with illiterate 16 year olds who have trouble counting money, are below a 3rd grade level in most classes, who cannot spell where they live...
Sometimes I lay awake all night, hating.
You start with the very basics: the letter A makes the sound, and then you give the short a sound as though that is the only sound that the letter makes, you know that although 15 or 16 that these students are not ready yet for multiple vowel sounds. It is fascinating also because I so rarely consider the remarkable ability to know language, its complexity and shear volume of words. The repetition is remarkable and infuriating, and although you help the students, a lot of it is waiting for them, encouraging them to fail for hours until finally they get it.
The program is very scripted: the first third of the time is all speech, I say something and they repeat it. The second third of the period is basic reading: I put a letter on the board and ask for the sound. The third part is written.
To this I added time for conversation, time to learn how to read a clock, and count money.
I had 3 students
J-My rock. First day I walked into the classroom he was there, looking down at the table. He is a kid who is so shy that it scares you; what should you say to him, is he doing ok. So we start a conversation, and by that I mean I talked to him and he would nod or say yes or no. It took me about ten minutes of talking before I got more than a one word answer from him. He is a large kid with big powerful shoulders and a big powerful stomach, he looks just like a lineman and wants to be one. He has a little fro and a whiskery goatee. He has a stutter. He was born in the Robert Taylor homes, and left when they were demolished. He now lives by a dangerous stop on the green line. He watches the Chicago bears all the time, and cannot remember a single name of a bear: but he knows all their numbers.
He was never late and always came to school. He had a great attitude about work, and even though he was quiet, later he would come to my aid (I helped out in his biology class) and shake his heads and say "you shouldn't do that" in a quiet voice. Didn't sound like much, but if a student kept misbehaving he would repeat himself, and students were able to figure out that J although shy was not a punk. He had a great smile that would flash occasionally and a gigantic, heaving laugh.
An A grade is anything greater than 60 percent, to pass he must have over 25 percent in a class.
Working with him has been the biggest pleasure of my teaching career, and the thing that I am the most proud of.
B- tall and skinny, with a lot of scars on his arms and gigantic eyes. Also dead silent in class but more sociable and problematic with other students. He also spoke under his breath, and could not raise his voice without becoming annoyed. Everything you say to him takes at least five seconds to be processed. He cannot write or read, but passed his Freshman year. And elementary school for that matter. He always had a completely vacant look on his face, although he would smile from time to time. He would also occasionally have very violent spasms of anger that could not be predicted. You could explain things to him and he would get them (he was much quicker inside of his mind than J) but he would completely forget them within a half hour. His homework was non-existent, his overall class grades were in the single digits, and he often skipped class or school. He was known to be a part of a gang, and spent some time in the hospital after he got hit in the head with a lock.
The suspicion is that his learning disability is the result of being a crack baby, and that he suffered significant natal brain injuries. Meetings with his mother, regrettably, seem to support this theory. She is always half screaming with anger at the teachers and B, but also has a lot of guilt issues and will change her mind and say it is not our fault, crying, and then reverse herself and lash out again. B's elder brother is a known drug king-pin.
Bobby is alternatively cooperative or hesitant with me, and makes slow progress.
G-half Honduran and half Mexican, G was tall, skinny and very handsome as the girls kept telling me. ESL. He is much quicker mentally, but also has bizarre associations. Once I showed him the letter J and he was convinced that it made a sound like shhh. I corrected him and he got it, but occasionally another, equally random sound would come out of his mouth when he the same letter, and he had a lot of other strange connections. In class he was very popular, and used his good looks to get smart girls to carry him through the class.
Working with these students in infuriating to me: how they got to me, a non-trained person filling the role of a specialist, and they cannot read. Reading should be a fundamental human right. I believe that people have the right to literacy in American society. There was nothing making it impossible for these students to read, and they would eventually. But it is amazing to me that the most basic opportunities in our society are denied to the rural and urban poor by criminal neglect. CPS had to cut their reading specialist positions, and here I am dealing with illiterate 16 year olds who have trouble counting money, are below a 3rd grade level in most classes, who cannot spell where they live...
Sometimes I lay awake all night, hating.
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