Lemonade from Lemons, Hay While the Sun Shines, and Cups Half-Full

Cups definitely more than half full.
Beignets and Cafe in New Orleans

My summer winds down, a little more quickly than I might have hoped for (I know I just composed a post about loving summer!). Kids don't start back to school for another month, but I have a string of training to attend. It is all paid for by virtue of a grant, which is wonderful, because contrary to popular belief teachers do not get 'paid for doing nothing' in the summer. What we get is nine and a half months of pay stretched out over twelve months. You all know teachers teach for the love and passion of it- not because we are lazy and want summers off or because we can't do anything else. But I digress...

Just Before

There is this tremor, this
last gasp of the darkness where everything, even
the warmth leaks out. All that is left is crisp,
empty chill that tells no tales of the past
and gives the future no succor.

You might feel that it is the beginning of the end -
and yet it is all harbinger and no horror.

Just before the sky turns pink.

Anarchist Dictator

"If I were the impossible anarchist dictator, every freight train would be required to have a passenger car, with no attendants, so anyone could hop on anywhere and ride for free at their own risk."     - Ran Prieur

I have been a teacher for ten years now, something I never thought to be. I hated school. Truly hated it. I had the second lowest GPA in my junior class. I think that was the year I couldn't even make myself go in and register for classes during the summer because the sound of the bell grated on my sensibilities.

My ideal world did not include desks, and more importantly, being told what to learn and how to learn it. I believed then, and still do, that kids want to learn. They are interested in their world; they explore and discover naturally. Now, for ten months out of the year I arrange desks and I arrange learning. I tell kids what they need to learn AND how they need to learn it.

Splat

I used to rebel-
before these days of cognitive dissonance. I thought
I knew

but now the me that reminds
students to take their seats - repeatedly -
is in discord with the rest of me. I am this impossible thing -
this anarchist dictator. I rise up

to embody 

what I am not. Rebelling
with one hand and squelching uprisings
with the other. It is easy
to see how Castro got that way.

(Thank you to my brilliant and dear friend Aimee Day for the quote and the inspiration.)

The Angels: Patty Damon- 7th grade Science, DeAnn Broom- Texas History,
and Me - Readin' and Writin'

On the other hand, I know some things about kids that I didn't back when I was a kid. I know that they need structure to learn in groups. I know that they need warriors to fight for them. They need adults who are willing to battle with them and for them. That willingness to fight for their education is how they know I care.

I also know that kids who have to deal with the effects of poverty need to have higher expectations set, not lower. If you start out in life behind the curve you have to run faster and longer to get where you want to go. Educators who make excuses for kids are doing them a disservice.

It is a impossible to sustain the level of outrage and fight needed on your own, especially given the pressures of modern education: testing, funding, bureaucracy, cruelty, group-think, inequity, disinterest... 

Dear Student,

I want to borrow a quart of outrage
to use when I cannot find it in myself to
stick up for you yet again, when they say
you don't have the support, or the will, they say -

I need a soupcon of courage to tell you
that you are worth the struggle and that
if you don't pull your head out of your ass
and start acting older than your age, you will never
read above a third grade level.

I need to borrow will - because I have lost mine
in paperwork and sad eyes and your anger - and it might as well be yours -

because mine was never enough for the both of us.

Can you loan me a spine, I need it so I can smile at you
as you walk through my door and I will try to convince you that whatever it is
you are running from will always nip at your heels
until you turn and face it.

I have a relationship with the moon...

Childhood

Lying in the back seat of the car. Watching the moon stand still while the rest of the scenery rushed by.

Other Night Lights

My dad (who always carried me in
 from the car even if I was fake-sleeping)
 and me on a road trip to Cali.

Driving highways late

at night sitting low in the back

seat. The slow arc of a spot-

light in the sky. Searching

for something really important – 
alien life or missing children. I didn't realize for

years that it might be prosaic. A huge

sale at a used car lot or the opening

of a new supermarket. Really, it was about

the beam slicing like a light saber

in slo mo. Me low in the back

seat, imagining infinity.

Adolescence

It is a hippie infestation...

When I was a teenager my friends and I held Full Moon Festivals. As a result the moon became our communion, our gathering point. We were a family; we frolicked, we watched the moon rise and set. Often we would still be there at dawn. I lived at the edge of the Puget Sound. The connection between the moon and the tides is science at its most magical.  Our low-lying driveway would flood with the highest of the tides. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent - happy, angry, thoughtful - at the beach.

Current

I am going to the water

don’t follow me.

Lifting the hatch and riding

the current, you might see the other

side of madness – fishes and loaves

and crystalline shards of goblets ground

between our teeth melting

to slink between my toes. Where

they came from.

I am going to the water don’t

follow me.

In the foam my toes feel the earth

move beneath me standing at

the center of stillness. All of the turns

I have ever taken are putty

in foreign hands. Tiny sillicates drift

glistening from side to side, looking

for home. But not homing. What you

think I might be I have never been.

Through every ripple I will

hold you. I am going

to the water

do not follow me.

Adulthood

My relationship with the moon has become complicated, as is true for most things in adult life. Now that I live in a city I sometimes go months without noticing the moon. When we lived in New Mexico the moon was very present. The moon is both the upsurge of passion and the constancy of the tides. In this month of the blue moon - I want to call forth the passion.

Incantation

Stand with me in this tilting lot

wet black cement of the just rained.

The sky is orange to the east and

deep purple to the west. Look up

at the trees and wires filled

with mewling Grackles. Barbed

wire against the darkening sky. The air

chill and damp; I wrap

myself.

The way the dark birds move together

squid ink sprayed across

the water. And the sound – Alien

earthy whispered screams.

We won’t go inside for ice cream. We

shouldn’t be placated by creamy sweetness. Stand here

with me. Rub the rosemary between your fingers. Look

back over your shoulder. It is just enough to be dangerous.

The Beauty of Women

Dedicated to my girlfriends.

Beauty and Advertising

The expectations we hold about how women should look and how much time, energy, and money it takes to get there are utterly ridiculous. This was true in our society prior to the practice of photoshopping models. Hell, make-up is very similar to Photoshop! Corsets and spanks perform the same function. Please, don't get me wrong, I support a woman's right to pluck, stuff and paint anything that she wants, but advertising is pervasive and insidious. Hats off to the Julia Bluhm for trying to get the editors of Seventeen to stop altering young women's bodies on their pages.


Article about Julia Bluhm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-dieken/seventeen-magazine-photoshop_b_1663430.html

The following is a poem that I wrote that is in response to some of the craziness I see in the young women I know and what I remember from my own adolescence. I am afraid we are letting people who want us to buy things tell us what sexy is, and if you add to that the very human desire for love and attention it can be a toxic mix.

Rebellion is one way to fight society's expectations

It Needs a Fucking...

Feeling a little bit

little girl lost. I want

to be dream girl princess be-

love-ed. Take me under your wing and tell

me everything is going

to be ok – like ice cubes

plucked from a stainless

steel bucket clinking – chinking

their virgin squares-  into tumblers ready

to accept booze – long legs

up the side

of the glass.

Hoping the tiara will fit

a girl today

kissed on the side of her head in the

hall way.

Photo by Tom Van de Ven

-by a boy who she said

maybe, you know…

tell her, she could get in trouble. Plucked

pubic hairs – conversely get rid

of that plucked chicken look. What describes

when something is

exactly

the opposite of what

it should be? For most women

natural beauty is anything but. Hours

spent with glistening images, and the

sign on the door says Don’t clean

the stainless mirrors in the men’s

or women’s restroom. Steam expands

to fill available space.

Getting Older

I have always celebrated milestone birthdays with a flourish; taken pride in being a woman who welcomes age and wisdom. Forty was difficult though. Somehow, overnight, the quality of my skin changed, my hair thinned and I realized that no matter how much I denied my societies expectations of female beauty they were all within me - time bombs waiting to be set off by the big 4-0. Trite but true. How do you hold on to feeling lovely from the inside out in a world that tells you that all that matters is your outside?

Like Those Women

The wind is warm                                                                                          

here, but even on lake-days

where I am from

you shiver inside your towel, the snakes

soft and green, surprising your bare

toes in the grass.

Women here go for long walks in the hot

air, growing brown and lean. Where I am

from the women are plump and pink

spending days cozy with books. Snakes here

are sandy brown and rattle

like seed pods. I am easier alone here.

The summer the rains flash

suddenly, drenching one hill

and leaving another chalky with dust. Where           

I am from it mists on firs and stony

beaches and swamps for ten months.

the days are short

the sun never shows. Here

there are days the sun never leaves completely,

long hot nights I wear cut-offs

and tank tops watch the lightning

flash on dark hills. Bare my feet on warm rocks in the dark to feel the sun.

Desert Sunset 

Here the plants flower

when they can, leaf when possible. In a dry year

the ocotillo flower early - then wait

months – for the rain

to leaf, verdant

alien pipe-cleaners arc from the ground.

Where I am from green

crawls

round the edge of every square of pavement

slinks from dank basements –

swallows

junk cars in fields.

I walk dry hills and like those women

I am growing lean and brown

Love and Choice

I met my husband, Joe, years before we started dating; we ran in the same circles. I remember the exact moment when I started falling for him. I worked at The Country Aire, a natural grocery in Port Angeles, Washington. Joe had just returned from a trip to Thailand and at one glance I could see and feel the electricity he brought back with him from that trip. My feelings for him were further confirmed by the twinge I got when a mutual friend talked of setting him up with someone else. The poem below is our wedding poem and tells the story of that 'first meeting'. Perhaps more importantly it tells the story of us choosing one another.

Joseph Elvis Vastano of the Intrepid Heart

When you leaned in

toward me, across the counter

and told me

you were glad

to see

me and I knew

as you walked away, the tips of your curls red-sunshine-gold

that you were.

That we keep choosing

to face one another’s walls-

instead of walking out

onto the open plains of life lived alone.

When I turn around and you are still there, and again, and again- still there.

It is not easy,

it is not clean,

it is gloriously messy.

Like Saguaro. Like rocks on the hillside. Like flood waters in the desert

I imagine

adventures before us- sorrows and joy.

Trips across continents and waters. Worlds from

the inside-out.

Really though- it is all imagined.

We cannot know what faces us.

As I face the unknown it is you I want at my side, Joseph

of the Intrepid Heart.

Choice

Of all of the things I think I know about marriage, it is choice that impresses me the most. While we don't choose to fall in love, or when and certainly not with whom - we do choose to keep love, to do the things that sustain it, and we keep expecting to fall into love yet again.

Many of my favorite couples (you know who you are!) are people you wouldn't think would work well together. It is my guess that from the outside Joe and I were an odd match.  This man I keep choosing to spend my life with is as willful as I am. The poem that follows is a rant, a declaration. We choose to use our powers for good.

We will not be torn apart by Wrath or Zest or Zeal.

 

We will not be torn apart

by passion, rather we will be joined

by it. Your water to my fire

we make steam – and power the gears

and pistons of our own valiant

new world. Our machines will fly

like eagles no matter how improbable

they seem. Your fish and my lion

will splash in the sunlight. We will accelerate

into hairpin turns. Your stories will dance the tarantella

around my poems then lean in close

for whispered truths.

We will not be torn apart by resentments,

rather we will hike up our trousers and wade

in and part the waters of them. In their wake

we will discover sand dollars, snail

houses and moon stones. We may not hike

to the top of the ridge hand in hand, but surely

we will stand there together. Look out at high-

country lakes, the ocotillo, the golden eagle hefting

from the boulder, the tiny glittering cities.

We will not be torn apart by passions, rather

we will uncover them. You bring the dynamite

and the blasting caps. I will bring the earplugs

and a nice picnic lunch. After the sediment

settles we’ll eat bread and cheese and sort

our treasure.

Joe in the tent by a lake in Arizona, with our trusty steed standing by.

Our Future

While we cannot know our futures -to paraphrase a poet I know- but it is fun to hatch schemes. In an earlier post I talked about my sadness that our son is growing up and moving on. That sadness is truly counter-balanced by the places Joe and I will go and the treasures we will sort.

Personal Teaching

This is a video I use to introduce myself to students at the beginning of the year. 

"I am From" 

I never thought that I would be a teacher. I wanted to be an actress, on a stage in New York - trying on other people's lives. Or I thought that I might be a psychologist - another empathetic profession. Or, for a while, I wanted to be a lawyer. I was the lawyer of my family, arguing every point, angling for a lighter sentence for the accused. I thought for a while I wanted to be president, however my dad kindly informed me (when I was a mere pup of 14 or so) that I had already done things that might preclude a run for president. Thanks, Dad.

I ended up as a teacher largely by accident, and like most of us I hated middle school. Now for nine months of every year I go to middle school five days a week. Crazy. Unexpected. I struggle with the ways that being a middle school teacher shapes me, maybe even changes me. Sometimes I feel like it makes me someone who isn't a lot of fun. Someone who is constantly saying things like, "Pull-up-your-pants. Nobody wants to see that." and, "What should you be doing right now?" I also am a confiscator of "I <3 Booby" bracelets. Wow! How did I get here?

I know teachers who find ways to integrate themselves and their teaching more fully than I seem to be able to. My husband, Joe, teaches college composition and does great job of bringing himself into the classroom. It allows his students the license to do the same, and to be as engaged as he is in the world of the heart and ideas. The Joe I know and the one that teaches those kids are the same person, excited and exciting - no holds barred. My brother-in-law Scott teaches high school. He and I had an engrossing conversation last summer during a car ride from Seattle to Salem (Scott - Please forgive me if I get some of the details wrong). He teaches at a school that is project based. I had asked him how he prepares for the upcoming year. He described his immersion in the culture of India for the upcoming year's theme. He checked out every book he could find and took out the desks so that students could sit on the floor on cushions. Class started every day with a quiet meditation time. The thing that struck me is that Scott's learning is integral to his teaching. His process makes him more Scott, not less.

It is summer now and I am reveling in the time I have. I read, I write, I am cooking gorgeous food. I have plenty of time for swimming with my friends, taking care of my physical person... Hell, I have plenty of time to sleep and no alarm clock! I know for those of you who don't have an academic schedule this sounds like an embarrassment of riches... It is and maybe I should just take my lumps; be less me for part of the year and then wallow in my freedom for a few months every summer. Somehow, I think that I am cheating myself and my students if I am content with half measures.

One career I did want when I was a child was to make a school; one that fosters students' innate curiosity and helps them grow to their best selves.  

School in Denmark with 'private spaces' for children
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2010/11/ordrup-seven-spaces-of-technology-school-environments-embodied.html

I went to a conference last week and one of the presentations gave me a bit of school envy. It was about the design of places of learning. My experience working in public schools in the U.S. reveals that it is difficult to change the paint color; imagine what superintendents would say to a hallway like the one below or to private spaces similar to the cubbies above. Our answer to school reform is testing and 'accountability'. Sigh... There  is a lot more that we could and should be doing to re-form our schools.

Yuyu-no-mori Nursery School in Japan uses a giant net for their  3rd floor hallway

http://www.designshare.com/index.php/projects/yuyu-no-mori-nursery/images@4526

What would the school look like that would allow teachers and students to be their authentic selves? What can I do to make my classroom that place for me and my students?

...and a poem to close. Students who have disabilities struggle valiantly to fit into the mold of industrialized education. 

Dominic’s hair

looks sweaty. When I see him

in the hall He says Feel my head. We do not

touch students, his hair looks greasy

and damp, like the man in the rubber room

his eyes are mad and shift. I don’t want to

touch him

but I do. His hair is soft,

downy, dry. Carefully, my fingers

touch – There is a small bump, an egg.

Dominic was breaking pencils

on his head,

in Seventh Grade Life Science. Nobody

noticed, except his friends – who

thought it was funny.

in the morning before

school, three weeks ago

– the superglue

Dominic brought to affix the head of his bacteriophage

proved too enticing – again to his friends. They glued

together their thumbs and forefingers. In the end

Joel got it in the eye. I told the principal

Dominic has Tourette’s. He is a good kid.

He is just like the rest of the boys,

skittering toward lunch detention,

jail or an early grave.

Today I took Dominic

to meet the tech teacher. On his way out

Nice to meet you. He said,
shaking her hand.
Odd, from the mouth of a thirteen-
year-old. Stilted, formal. Just
like the rest of us.