Perspective

The kids have been working on a fun project today, and I've been doing a lot of thinking (partly to avoid end-of-term grading... ugh). One of my co-workers has been talking this week about a situation going on at her husband's school. He is a teacher at one of the worst of the KCMO schools, where the gang activity has begun to affect the safety of the teachers as well as the students. Gang members have been stealing teachers' coats so that they can use the car keys to steal their cars. A female teacher was cornered and sexually assaulted by a group of gang members until another teacher came along in the nick of time. In an effort to "take back" the school, some of the staff have actually chosen to arm themselves at work today, and after a shooting at the funeral of a former student, they fully expect retribution to occur at the school this afternoon.

I've been emailing with A. about this all day, getting his point of view and comparing to the situations at his school. He tells me stories every day about the wacky things that happen at KCK's alternative high school, and we generally have a good laugh about it. His students get suspended for maliciously throwing cookies at each other, smoking pot in his classroom's bathroom, and other relatively entertaining offenses, but I still worry if I think too much about the metal detectors he walks through each morning. Thankfully, his school chooses to remove potentially violent students before violence can occur - if they didn't, I would be a nervous wreck all day every day. But it wasn't too long ago that the KCMO problems were in KCK as well. Those students (and those teachers) are blessed to have an intelligent principal who cares.

Then there's me, teaching "JoCo brats" to write. I've been feeling stressed lately, ready for break, and the last couple mornings have been particularly difficult where getting out of bed and making myself drive for 40 minutes has been concerned... but as I write all of this, my innocent little kiddos are dancing around my room to the Numa Numa song, decorating my fake (deciduous) tree for Christmas, and "cleaning" the room after a long day of puppet making. Despite the times I have to tell them not to wrap crepe paper around their heads, and ask them thirty times to stop talking and read a book, and constantly remind them to keep their hands to themselves... I am extraordinarily blessed.

Each bad morning this week has been turned into a good day by kids gluing fake Santa beards to their faces and asking me what I want for Christmas, re-creating Amelia Earhart's plane out of Legos, making up goofy songs about llamas, and shamelessly rocking out to Queen. There are no guns here, my students wish me no harm, and they wouldn't know what to do with my car keys if they found them. They don't know what pot even smells like yet, and if they're throwing cookies at each other, they're laughing about it (even if I'm not). I wish I could keep them like this forever.

Idiot-savant poetry

It has been FOREVER since I've posted here. I won't be so immodest as to think anyone has been disappointed by that, but I offer my apologies anyhow. I think my New Year's resolution this year might be to update/write more. The spring should be a little easier on me as I've finally settled into a routine and without any grad school work, there will also be less on my plate. The plate will still look like the kind you get at a Chinese buffet, with a million different things piled together and flowing over the sides so that you get soy sauce on your shoes and rice down your sleeve, but I think the spring plate will have a little more sesame chicken and fewer of those powdered sugar fried things that look like a really good idea but just make you sick.

Anyway... I wrote an honest-to-goodness poem yesterday, but it's not done, and it's also not postable. I have my reasons. It might be available upon request, but the whole world doesn't need to see it. It felt really good, though, both to write again and to process/exorcise that demon, so you may see more relatively soon.

Enough cryptic crap; I came back here today because I've got another addition to the collection of awesome accidental poems that appear on the magnetic surfaces in my classroom. I have no idea who put this tiny gem together on the side of my desk or if they knew at all what it could mean, but it's kind of perfect (punctuation added for effect):

Our pedagogue
Stalwart, day to-do'ed

- Discovered December 6th, 2010

If this job kills me, THIS is what I want on my tombstone.

Guess who wasn't paying attention in class...

…and not for the first time, either. Yes, the teacher can often be the worst student, and for this I am thankful because I wouldn’t be where I am now if A. and I had been ideal students throughout our teacher training. (Put two nerdy kids in front of computers, bore them to death with lessons about skills they already have, add ridiculous websites about cats, and you’ve got a recipe for LOLZ and disaster. Warning: byproducts may also include a temporarily broken heart, but that’s another story.)

That first computer class was a lot of fun (no thanks to the instructor), but my favorite memories of the “we’re just friends” phase come almost exclusively from the three classes we had in one particularly hellacious room last fall. Yes, every Thursday for 9 weeks, we were trapped in room 247 alongside our colleagues as a rotating panel of professors appeared before our bleary eyes over the course of 6 hours. If you looked at my bag on 247 Thursdays, you would think I was packing for a weekend camping trip. Computer, books, lunch AND dinner, multiple layers of clothing (the room was alternately sweltering and freezing, of course), and supplies for a bottomless cup of tea were diligently packed and hauled up the hill each week. At 2:00, everyone would stake out their spot (preferably near a power outlet), spread their stuff all about them, and stay put until 8. It wasn’t long before everyone had self-assigned seating, and thus, Team Awesome was born.

Team Awesome typically consisted of a hilarious engaged (now married, still hilarious) couple, Kylee, A., and myself. Team Awesome’s purpose was to get ourselves through those marathon classes with at least a shred of sanity intact, which meant there was a LOT of muttering, giggling, and general heckling throughout the evening. We played flash games, we shared ridiculous links and videos, we made fun of each other, ourselves, and everyone else.

As mind-numbing as those classes were, and as frustrating as those hours could be, I’m grateful for them and for room 247 (where I have another class by myself this semester). I sit in that room now and think back on those ridiculous memories (lowering the steaks, the hammer of justice… don’t ask) and I get an odd sense of nostalgia when I compare that time to what I have now. Because when circumstances changed, as circumstances are wont to do, it was those ridiculous and fun nights that gave me the courage to invite one particular (and newly-single) member of Team Awesome over to watch MST3K’s professional heckling one June evening. And when the news spread? Not a single member of Team Awesome was surprised.


JRP 247

Once again in this grey, hard-backed chair
with little give or support,
I rest with my baggage at my feet
and, as always, on my mind.

Back in this room, this place,
surrounded by beige walls and
carpet lined by squares,
sitting at tables a friendly vandal left her mark on –
the same tables that left a mark on me –
your living ghost hangs over my head
alongside teleconferencing equipment.

Discussion drones on
indifferent to my inattention -
unfocused out the window,
beyond the golden valley
to an invisible skyline.

In reality, I’m only wistfully wasting time
the way we used to
because now I only need to look
past the fireflies in the yard,
under a crisp linen sheet,
up to a crowded stage,
or through the space in my mind,
and there you are: smiling,
waiting for me.

Bells sound and I gather my things
as the prison doors unlock.
It’s not time for peacoats and scarves yet,
but the memory warms me anyhow
as I walk outside alone –
the campanile is no longer our cue for goodbye,
but rather my signal to dial and say hello
the way only a cold, dark alley knew I wanted to.

September 8th, 2010

One down...

I am tired.

Fortunately, this time it’s the kind of tired that accumulates from too much of a good thing (several good things, even). I have survived my first week of teaching; a week that included changing the name of my course, a fourteen hour day on Back to School Night, improvising due to a malfunctioning projector, and employing the principal as an emergency substitute when an IEP meeting ran long. This week has already felt like a month, except I hope that in a month, I know a lot more than 60% of my students’ names!

All of that sounds negative, but as I had hoped/expected, this has been one of the most rewarding and affirming weeks I’ve had in a long time. I'm amazed at how quickly I went from the terror of realizing that of everyone in the room, *I* was supposed to be in charge (yikes!) to the familiar ease of talking with kids and leading them toward a goal. I already feel right at home in my classroom with these fascinating students, and I’m cheesily excited about what we’ll be able to accomplish together this year. Our classroom already feels both fun and productive, and I hope we can maintain that balance as the kiddos get crazier.

Some highlights from week one:

• I’m creating a fleet of miniature copy editors by offering extra credit if they find published mistakes to put on our “wall of shame.” There have already been submissions.

• I spied a student carefully copying Thursday’s “Big Word of the Day” onto a growing list at the back of her journal, completely unprompted. Call me dorky, but that's awesome.

• Magnetic poetry is a big hit - the best additions to my metal desk and bookshelf so far are: “death must be 2 good to like mr. experience,” “whisper music in a picture/I almost run 2 winter inc./diamond feet boil over scholarships,” and my personal favorite, “a juggernaut butt said you have a repulsive man lust.” (That one is just so perfectly middle school boy…)

I very smartly planned for them to do their first class presentations for the next two days so that I could take today off – happy birthday to me! I’ve already watched one movie and there’s another on tap, but for now I’m grabbing a book and I’ll catch you poolside. ;)

Aubade

Just a few months ago, I had to google the word "aubade" to learn what this particular type of poem is... now, I actually know what it means. So, I tried my cheeky little hand at one.


Aubade

A sonnet could describe your hair;
sandy and tousled under my chin,
and your freckled shoulders tangled in the stripes -
but a neat fourteen lines can’t capture
the way I begrudge the light
playing across your face.
The sunshine gets to spend each day with you,
piquing my jealousy.

The quiet comfort
as I brush my teeth and watch
your peaceful stillness -
- cannot adequately be explained in a haiku.

O, waking!
Sinews stretch toward a new day,
releasing a sigh for the passing of another night.
Sleepy, smiling eyes meet,
spreading a warmth neither an ode
nor the covers could contain.

Peanut butter kisses preclude reluctant responsibilities –
like clockwork, the garage door rises with the sun.
You walk away,
I steel myself against the glare,
and another aubade is complete.


July 26, 2010

From tweet to poem

"Sitting outside KS Union, feeling nostalgic about moving away from campus, freshman orientationites passing by. A nice full circle moment."
- about 21 hours ago via web


Disorientation

Stickers peeling and glossy bags swinging – they’ve arrived.
Clutch that folder tight; it holds all the answers – for now.
I, the wizened old veteran, sit silently watching,
desperately waving through thick air
in a vain attempt to catch a few more remembered moments
of grounded familiarity – even as they slide away
into new, uncharted territory.

Cracking numbers on a pilling t-shirt aren’t all that dates me –
walking shoes well-worn, an iPod dented by Oread concrete,
and subtle impressions from a five-year furrowed brow
separate me from the crisp, shiny silk screens in their hands.
They, too, will earn their blisters, scratches, and creases,
and they will inevitably be replaced as they replace me,
but these bricks and stones will continue to keep watch
as they always have.

July 8, 2010

Quiet

Things are changing a lot right now, and you know my feelings on change. Although this set of changes is beautiful and welcome and a long time coming, I've been discombobulated and have had a hard time finding my own words lately. They've been overshadowed by the re-definition of everything around me - rediscovering music has been a particular obsession: some lyrics, long loved and hoped for, finally ring true while old standbys are suddenly strangers, which is endlessly fascinating to me... but inevitably, this lends too much credit and meaning to the words of others. So, it's been a little while since an insta-poem has visited me - but in the quiet of this evening, it's a refreshing feeling. Suggestions are welcome.



Being a solid ball of light is hardly ever easy.
Liquid energy rushing within, seeking escape;
I’m full of bees, and believe me, making honey is taxing work.
Mercifully, you instill total calm because it’s what you need from me,
and therefore what I need from you.
Like pouring smoke on a hive, the buzzing stops.

July 2, 2010