search: empathy

blood and diamonds

sometimes, it's what we choose NOT to talk about that defines us.

like anyone else, i peruse the magazine covers as i wait for my groceries to be bagged. did you know angelina jolie is coming clean about her relationship with brad? and apparently they've discovered obama's 34th birth certificate. the glossy covers are hard to ignore and even easier to chat about over coffee.

then whenever i get around to checking twitter, i can tell you what my friends are watching, drinking, hoping at any given moment. i might even be able to give you a scandal-by-scandal account of the bachelorette...though i've never watched the show.

we are connected... no, informed, in so many ways.

tonight i sat down to watch the movie blood diamond. it took a hollywood adaptation to bring me back to the streets of amsterdam. to the girls in the windows. to the human trafficking flyers. to place me once more in a darkened auditorium watching a documentary on invisible children. to hearing a 15-year-old talk about how many he has killed. to a classroom studying the history of violence in south america. to creating ads exposing the human rights stories of the "disappeared" in colombia.

the final line of one of my favorite goo goo dolls songs comes to mind...

"what's the point in all this screaming, you're not listening anyway."

playing favorites

"teacher's pet!"...man, i used to LOATHE that phrase. the general response was an urge to extend claws and go for the eyes. my burning glare cloaked the teensy, tiny bit of satisfaction that i tried to stamp down.

i've now seen the other side. yes, i have "pets." we all try to hide it, pretend as if all students are the same and we love the one that disrupts every lesson as much as the one that offers to erase the whiteboard. HA. not so much. i can only say "please get down off that chair and get to work" so many times before the urge to knock the chair out from under forms a slideshow of possibility in my brain.

but there's a growing stigma against recognizing those that excel in the classroom. the thought is it might "discourage" other students. my favorite quote on this comes from the movie the incredibles:
"but everyone's special, dash."
"that's just another way of saying no one is."

insight from cartoons...i love it.

so, in the interest of being fair, honest and encouraging, i try to pick my pets for many reasons. some for helpfulness, some for caring, some for the smile they bring, some for the academic standard they set in my classroom. and if anyone wants to take me to task for making these students feel special...well, bring it on. maybe one day the other students will wake up and realize that they too could get teased about being some teacher's pet.

they just have to TRY.

the great war

today i herded my students into a box. with dirt, a lantern, an old stiff blanket and some vienna sausages.

two days ago we made a 20-foot timeline with clothespins and index cards, and took a poll on who would venture into No Man's Land.

seven days ago a 10-year-old girl observed, "so, i think germany was just using austria-hungary's fight to get their own power. probably countries do that a lot."

there are many complaints that i could make about teaching: lack of respect, testing that demoralizes, mainstreaming.  but there are days that i just LOVE. days where i see a lifting of eyebrows, a churning of thoughts, and a realization of a world outside their own.

these are the days that i fight to get into the trenches.

DCF

it's a long form, full of comment lines and "circle here if..." areas. a full two pages of a brief history, worded in broad strokes and uncomfortable details.

"only the facts, please," they ask.  as if you could detach your heart from a child's broken stare.

i've never had to fill out the DCF form. but i've watched it done on kids who scamper through hallways and flash a hesitant smile at me in the lunch line. how terrible that school could be someone's sanctuary. how awful that a teacher told by society not to touch or hug or love could be a kid's only support.

we tune it out, even i tune it out. "arrested for beating her 8-year-old with a shoe," "kids taken into foster homes after father locked them in their room for 3 days," "1-year-old left sitting in parked car for 45 minutes." the night's news stories seem to run into each other.

it gets harder to ignore when you're the one writing the headline.

if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off

savi is 2-years-old now and "no" is her favorite word. she thinks it's a hilarious response to EVERYTHING you ask her. as fun as that is (tongue in cheek),  i can't wait for the day she learns, "not fair!!!"

because she'd be right.

life is not fair. a year teaching students, some of which who wonder when they'll next eat, has reinforced that. watching while a friend's dreams crash about him, seeing my youngest sister struggle with pain and an illness that just won't go away...neither of those are fair.

and waking up to an email informing me that the father of one of my former middle schoolers went into the hospital for a headache this week, only to be rushed into emergency brain tumor surgery and now is being unhooked from the machines. that's not fair either.

life is not fair. in fact, it's so tragically unfair sometimes that i wonder how we get through it. every day brings another disappointment, another trial.

which is why i'm so glad...no, i'm so thankful that i know EVERY DAY that this is not all there is.

you know you're a floridian when...

two days ago i was in raleigh, bathed in rain and a chill 40 degrees.

two hours ago i was laying out on my deck, a wide-brimmed hat my only protection from the blazing sun. book in hand (and covered in spf 15 serena!), i fed my inner sun goddess. sporadic water breaks were timed when the sweat became too much to bear. on my most recent way inside, i glanced up at the thermometer perched on our tiki bar.

91 degrees fahrenheit.

what's most messed up about this? in the 10 seconds before i glanced up to enlightenment, my thoughts had run along these lines:

"man, i'm glad it's not REALLY hot out yet."

tonight i shouted

and waved around papers and rolled my eyes. i may have even thrown a pen (or two). the catalyst for this meltdown of frustration and anger? a grade of 34 on a vocabulary quiz.

one quiz. a single F made me lose it. why?

because the kid that got the F is smart. he had a week to study 12 words. and he had a study guide.

it's not the failing grade that makes me contemplate throwing in the towel (or throwing a towel at him). confusion and mistakes i can deal with. laziness? not so much.

maybe i used to care too much about school grades. but at least i cared. and i definitely used to rage at my parents for insisting on excellence and homework and studying and on and on....but at least THEY insisted.

how am i supposed to convince kids that school matters if they've already been taught it doesn't?

symbols and seers

six more weeks of winter in florida is not so dire a fate. so we'll have 65 degrees instead of 75 degrees...i think i'll manage.

what gets me thinking is the logic behind the prediction. if phil the groundhog sees his shadow it means six more weeks of winter. if he sees no shadow, bring on the spring.

but for there to BE a shadow, there would have to be sun in the vast blue beyond. for no shadow, a lingering slate gray sky.

it almost seems like foreshadowing gone ironic. then again, he IS only a groundhog.

we the people

i read this article and it didn't break my heart until the very end. can you imagine a life where fear and death and loss are a monday morning wake-up call? it's hard to hear the stories, harder still to understand them. we are so lucky. so very blessed.

i was privileged enough to peer through windows into that life, to sit with refugees in amsterdam (many of whom are from the middle east and africa) and hear some stories. horror stories, really. but they don't regard them as such. "haven't seen my wife or daughters in ten years," "...death threats so they smuggled me out of the country," "thrown out of my tribe for my words," these are the stories of their lives. yet many of them thanked God, in whatever name they called Him, for his mercy.

we know of the crimes. we read the headlines. but we don't understand, we can't. i'm almost thankful that i can't understand fully...that empathy would be shattering. yet i read the hope in the last paragraph of this article and i am humbled.

"whatever is in america, it will be a thousand times better than what we had in iraq or turkey because there are work opportunities." an iraqi refugee says this about the united states, after finding out his family has a chance of resettling here. he continues, "there is no discrimination, no hatred."

no discrimination, no hatred.
land of the free, indeed.

imagine

one voice. i would still like to believe that's enough of a catalyst.

http://instantkarma.org/