Mindfulness donuts: today’s events
There was a shooting in Tucson today at the Amtrak station. My school is only a few blocks away, so we were on partial lockdown for a good part of the morning. This fact-of-the-day didn’t even occur to me until I sat down in bed and thought, “Oh yeah, and there was a shooting today.”
When my boss came in to whisper in my ear that we were on “partial lockdown” because of a nearby shooting, my pulse barely accelerated. I nodded. Said “okay” and changed my plans for that morning walk we were going to take together.
See, the morning started out with donuts. Not just any donuts, but fancy “gourmet” donuts, each one different, selected specifically so that I might introduce mindfulness to students with donuts. (I think it kind of worked somewhat? We’ll return to the concept tomorrow over a healthier breakfast option for adolescents.) I wanted to start the day in a celebratory fashion. We’re going to spend a whole week together making malas and mandalas and talking about how to manage our “difficult” emotions . . . and then there’s a shooting because we’re in America and we can’t get through a single damn day without a shooting.
You know what shootings and even active-shooter-drills do for our kids? They frighten them, confuse them, and rob them of actual time receiving an actual education. I mean, I guess they get an education in “coping” or “how violence changes the plans of the innocent” or an education in “21st Century American Life.”
My pulse barely rose. Granted, the shooting was blocks away. At no point did I really feel my students or I were in immediate danger, though the whole city of Tucson had a weird “vibe” today in the aftermath of the deaths. But this stuff used to really freak me out. I used to feel so righteously outraged that as a teacher I have to deal with this shit on a regular-fuckin-basis . . . Now? I sigh, tell a student no, you can’t go to the bathroom now, close the door, tell everyone to have another donut because our walk’s being delayed. They rolled with the change. When one asked if we were on lockdown, I said “yeah.” When another asked “why?” I replied, “Something happened, but not here. You’re safe.” When they probed, I spat out small details. I discouraged, but did not go out of my way to stop them from going to their cell phones.
Eventually the media lost interest. The scene died down. We went on our mindfulness walk to work off all those mindfulness donut calories. Our walk was short as there was a palpable sense of uncertainty downtown after the morning’s “event.” Or maybe I was just projecting.
I was relieved to know it was usual DEA bullshittery on trains (or planes or in your neighborhood) and not domestic terrorism, as I fear it one day will be given the current state of batshittery that our nation seems to be quite dedicated to for a long fuckin’ haul. Then again, one could make a not entirely irrational argument that our “law enforcement” feels, at times, like government backed terrorist groups.
Tomorrow it is bagels, not donuts, for mindfulness morning. I went a little bonkers with the donuts, even though I had a very salient point that I was attempting to make while they stared with wonder at the donut boxes. Maybe what I learned is that donuts are a pacifying, not pedagogical, tool?
Gotta admit, reader, today was weird and brutal in the same way every day in American public education is weird and brutal from coast to coast. And I can’t fight it. I can steer my boat, but I can’t steer the sea. My classroom is my boat. My students are in the boat with me. We’re in the sea. These are the facts. And I’m not about to just “float” here. We’re going to build a mast and carve better oars. We’re navigating the sea in a pretty “no frills” boat. (We are in Arizona, after all.) I have a fairly clear idea of where we’re headed, but the sea will have a lot to do with our ability to get there. I can’t steer the sea or the waves or the sharks or the coral or even the algae. All I’ve got is this boat and the passengers in that boat. When I went into boating, I didn’t realize there would be quite so much shooting . . .
The metaphor, I think, has been taken.
Today was a happy day because even in the most tense moments, I told myself this, “This is wild, and you can change this any time.” I think to be a teacher in America right now, you gotta know your Bruce Lee and “Be like water.” Are there moments of great fear — fear that everything is going wrong and will go wrong and does go wrong? Yes. Are there moments of great joy — joy at hearing their laughter ringing together again, joy at seeing a sudden smile where once there was only a mask, joy at being able to feel a human hand touch my shoulder, joy at hearing children needing something from GruberGruberGruber before I’ve had my first cup of coffee? Yeah.
Joy keeps me coming back for more.
Off to sleep, dream, and awake to simple things: get bagels for children, feed children bagels, discuss feelings, make jewelry . . . remind them constantly of some basic human norms, yes, but they’re middle schoolers living through one of the (dare we simply say the — straight “the” and not as a chaser to the “one”) worst years of our human lives? I mean, for some of us. I think the 1–10% who have all the shit, are doing swell. And though my students are really young, this is their lives.
Just this morning we were talking about it, “I’m the same person I was when I was five.” I owned this unspeakable Truth no adolescent is ready — cognitively and otherwise — to own outright: “We are the same.” And when I was five, it was very much my life just as my life is my own at 45. These are thoughts I have when I’m tired, processing my day, and trying to be a little kinder to myself. In my sobriety, I awaken often to new re-discoveries about myself. When I started caring enough to work a little on myself, things I had forgotten I enjoyed returned to me: painting, drawing, dancing. Playing instruments. Writing really bad poetry, really gorgeous prose, some fairly sloppy blog entries . . .
