Life homework: our turn on the planet

My friend Jesse Sensibar, also a Tucson/Flagstaff writer/educator
by way of Chicago, says in Tucson you gotta “roll with the fire.”
I like this expression.
I like the idea of rolling with fire
the way I might “roll with” a river
(water being, of course, the easier metaphor
for me;
I still mourn water).

Midwestern, Eastern, Southern readers:
there is no river in Tucson.
There are places called “rios” but there is no water in them.
I am told the monsoons out here are most impressive,
and I do hope climate change does not prevent them this year.
I want to know a monsoon. Moreover, I want to “live” a monsoon.
Simply because a monsoon is one of the amazing experiences
we are afforded during our turn on the planet:
a monsoon. Yes. Bring it.
I’ll roll with the fire for a good, proper,
healthy monsoon.

My Irish-German-French DNA is ill equipped for Tucson. I get flushed and puffy and grumpy. Makes sense when I consider my ancestors’ bodies were built for much colder climates.

Today I did what, in America, we call “teaching.”
I did not lecture.
I did not frantically enter grades.
I did not punish a single student
for a single goofy thing they, being young humans,
will sometimes naturally do.
I listened. And I listened to the sound of my students listening.
Really listening, which is different from hearing.

My students and some of my colleagues and I made Mandalas with an actual Art Therapist today. I am NOT a visual artist, though I enjoy playing. As an educator of writing and reading, I often require my students to make themselves vulnerable. If students who aren’t naturally gifted writers (and there are many) trust me with their attempts, I — who am NOT a “naturally gifted” visual artist — can trust my readership with my attempts.

And I think that is the line along which
American education systems will ultimately part.
The line, as my friend and force of nature,
Tracie Hall referred to earlier this week
when she was taking time out
of her incredibly busy day as the Executive Director
of the American Library Association, to meet with
my students and talk about lines “of demarcation.”
The line of demarcation in American k-12 education will,
mark my word, be this:
the difference between schools that want to teach students how to “hear”
vs. schools that want the students
to learn how to listen.

I am happy to talk in more depth about this specifically, but I’m pressed for time as the following picture depicts:

The Inferno, Diary of Anne Frank, and “The Big Book,” respectively.

I am lesson planning.
Not because I HAVE to. I could just take
the rest of the afternoon off and no one would
begrudge me that need (I’m a cancer patient recovering from eye
surgery and alcoholism — I could use some personal space), so
I suppose I don’t HAVE to do any damn thing, but I WANT to.
Another line of demarcation in American k-12 education will be this:
Schools that employ teachers who “have to”
Vs.
Schools that employ educators who “want to” and “must.”

This is not a value judgement.
Children (students, I mean) are human beings.
Each different from the next.
Some students will do better in “have to” schools
while others (like the kind of kid I was)
will do better in a “want to and must” school.
Adults are much the same. Some do well in “people” jobs
and other’s fare better in “non-people” jobs.
As my friend Carol, from the South, might say, Takes all sorts.
(Secret: I love folksy, regional expressions — they are fascinating and they also just delight me.)

Dante’s Inferno. Always such a fun text to teach — even when students REVOLT from the poem; like my former student and friend, Mae B.
She hated Alighieri. We had coffee and snacks together recently
and recalled, with laughter, and playful banter, the difficult time
Mae gave me as my student in the American classroom.

The Diary of Anne Frank — I became aware,
shortly ahead of spring break,
that none of my SENIORS had encountered this text
in their American education. Shocking.
To borrow part of the modern gestalt
that I am firmly “not okay” with:
Not directing American students to The Diary of Anne Frank
is not okay.*

• Argument: the expression “not okay”
  is a lazy expression and is often applied to things
  that are far beyond “not okay” territory: like racist rhetoric.
  That’s not just “not okay” — it should be “an offense.” Not
  a legally punishable offense, unless you — like Derek Chauvin — take your messy racism and use it to murder someone you’re ostensibly being paid to protect. Words can absolutely have great power and can and have been and will continue to be weaponized and misused as a way for those sad broken souls who covet, above all other things, power and paper money (as if those things have ever truly saved a person’s actual life) to keep their
  power and paper money. My point is if someone is, for example, saying
  something racist you need to make them aware of the fact that what they’re saying is TROUBLING or is DISTURBING or is WORRISOME not just “not okay.” By “you” I mean fellow white friends and readers.

At my suggestion, my school agreed to gift my World Lit seniors their own copies of Anne Frank, which we will be reading together in their final weeks before graduating into the next chapter of their wild lives.

There is something so powerful about the fact that my seniors
and I will be reading Ms. Frank’s words and private thoughts to the close
of a year when we, too — though certainly not to the devastating extent that Frank and others teenagers like her experienced (the thought is still, at least to me, almost more than my heart can bear) —
have suffered because of the immoral choices of others.
Where we too have “lost” so much because of the appalling,
sinful (in the most secular sense of the world) cowardice
shown by people in positions of power, and the deafening silence
(but for when it pertains to their comfort) on matter of common sense and common good where it concerns public health
among my white American brethren.
Mass death, political instability, isolation:
my class of 2021 high schoolers know a lot about this.
And they know far more than I do about the experience
of getting through AS A TEENAGER.
I am a grown ass woman and I struggle most days
to keep myself organized, appropriately calm (or appropriately nervous),
and emotionally solid.
How does a TEENAGER do this?
I think about Teen Gruber.
I don’t know how well she would have fared
under such stressful political/social circumstances
being laid atop a large pile
of more private (some typical, some atypical)
calamities happening in my body and my mind.

Alcoholics Anonymous or “The Big Book” as we in AA call it —
is not a literary masterpiece.
I am a writer and reader.
I like literature that feels “masterpiece-y” to me.
That said, I have made a promise to myself and others
that I would not drink alcohol. I need AA, right now,
to ensure that I am not tempted to do so.
The book, at times, is very boring.
But this is “lifework.” (It’s kind of like homework,
but lifework makes you feel reasonably happy
and healthy
in your day to day life.)

Today, my peers Mike, Eric, Cori, and Janeece (among others)
got a chance to, as educators, help students do a little
“lifework.”
There were no worksheets involved.
There were no correct answers needed.
There was no homework.