VIP: Very Important Post

This collaborative video of spoken word and visual art contains within its 7+ minutes all that we feel, all that we must remember, all that we are as students, teachers, humans. It speaks for itself.

See the project at http://tothisdayproject.com/.

Too Close, in Too Many Ways

Disclaimer: This post is a selfish attempt at a balm for my spirit.

This morning, I don't want to turn on the television. But I know I will.  I don't want to read or hear the debates around gun control. But I know I will. I don't want to read or hear the laments about the lack of adequate mental health care in this country. But I know I will. I don't want to see the word "loner" or the label "Asperger's Syndrome" attached to this horrific event. But I know I will. And I most definitely don't even want to think about the children and our colleagues and their friends and families in Newtown, Connecticut, which is only minutes away from both where I grew up and where I live now. But I most definitely know I will, over and over and over.

But I will also focus on the sanctity and the safety, both literal and figurative, of the schools to which we send our kids, in which we work. We strive, daily, to make our classrooms and playgrounds and cafeterias and gymnasiums sacred places for our students. We do this in both obvious and subtle ways, and we do it out of pure love and devotion. And when what we create is shattered, we are shattered, too. 

Parents wonder how they can put their kids on buses on Monday and worry about their own schools' safety. In one moment, educators wonder if we'll return home from work on any given day. In another moment, we begin planning how to best support our kids (and their parents) who will have both worried and worrisome questions. In the next, we wonder what more we can do to prevent things like this from happening. We worry about ourselves and our students, and we feel deeply. The loss of twenty children and seven adults (and a very troubled young man who once sat in our classrooms) is a heavy enough grief for this country to bear, and we teachers add to its weight with our feelings of concern, responsibility, and yes, inadequacy. The "how can this happen" question is close to the bone for those of us in education. 

And yet, we will return to our schools and to our work. We will gather each other and our students in our arms and in our hearts and we will march forward together. We must, for to do otherwise would be a surrender to our fears and an abandonment of our ideals. 

For Twenty Eight

The moon

on this 

senseless night

is a slender cradle

for your light

and I'm afraid

the bough

has broken.

But we will 

catch you

- all of you -

in our arms

and hold you

until we are

never full

again.

National Poetry Month

Last night, I sat at a restaurant that is an English teacher's dream. One long wall includes a wide magnetic strip upon which are hundreds of Magnetic Poetry word bits. On my left, a family laughed between bites of frites as their children messed around with language and structure. On my right, a bilingual couple spoke in French and created short poems in English from the words on the wall.

April is National Poetry Month. We've all been touched by poetry, many of us teach poetry, and certainly, our lives themselves are poetry. To honor the poetry within us and around us, I give you two of my favorite teacher-y poems.

First, a gem from my favorite accessible poet, Billy Collins. If you don't yet know "Introduction to Poetry," I think you will enjoy it.

And then, the classic "Did I Miss Anything?" from Tom Wayman. It's a great riff on that bothersome student-to-teacher question.

What's your favorite poem? I encourage you, in this month of poetry, to find it, re-read it (or recite it), and let it please you once again.

Taking More Poetic License

Class Photograph, Miss Chick's School
Lancaster, Massachusetts

Perhaps they mean to stand side by side
In 1941. "Friends forever" one whispers
"...and ever" comes the unspoken reply, a rote
Lesson for two who will bear each other
Up through disease, five children
(The last two a party's legacy),
Two divorces, betrayal and booze,
Too many deaths. Perhaps they mean to
Stand together nearly sixty years later
In a kitchen too small to hold their lives
And whisper those words again.

L.A. Rice
2000

Taking Poetic License

In Class

For Tom

Some days

you worry paper

into loose fabric,

your hands

soundless crickets,

your slender

fingers

in heated rhythm.

Other days

you spin over

one or two

dreadlocks

whispered

into autumn

dry cattails

between

smooth palms.

I am distracted

enough

to write you

into this poem,

to sit at my desk

sliding

hand over hand,

(listening but) hearing

nothing.





L.A. Rice
2001