Adelante

This week, I didn’t get to march but I’ve been moving, a dawn to dusk rush of making copies, passing breakfast, creating exemplar responses, filling manila envelopes with mystery words, giving out Dojo points, texting parents, chasing kids for tutoring, resetting classroom procedures and correcting behavior and chanting and cheering - clap clap AWESOME - and then wolfing down a chocolate bar after pick-up duty before typing in data and meeting with parents and finding videos on Martin Luther King before driving home past the lettuce fields and the taco stands and the Walmart, sky streaked with the last bit of the sun that does rise the next morning, yellow like a Valley lemon. 

This week, my smiles became bigger and my hugs more frequent but my no’s became firmer. I see so clearly now how they need to learn what is right and what is wrong. They can’t play around during class time or tell a classmate they hate them or laugh, describing Rosa Parks as “negrita.” They need to learn why that's not ok. They need to learn the words justice, discrimination, equality, overcome. They need to learn about Civil Rights leaders of all races. They need to learn how to turn and talk with a partner they may not know or even like, agreeing or respectfully disagreeing, because just that, I need to believe, will bring us all forward. 

Notes From a Movement, Not Stapled Together Yet Because It's Sunday and I Still Have to Put in Grades

This weekend, through the support of my school district, I was lucky to attend the TFA 25th Anniversary Summit in Washington, D.C. 

Writing now feels like picking avocados in a rush at the supermarket, hoping they'll be ripe, hoping the whole pile won't fall to the floor when you pick one from the bottom. This weekend was so big picture - so much talk of news and history and a path forward - when my day to day is so small. I've been using words to illustrate the things on my desk and my kids' faces when they get in their mom's car at the end of the day. Using them to tease out a generational issue feels harder, further out of my reach, but necessary.

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Between the sessions and swag bags, around the cocoon of the privilege of discussing privilege in a huge DC conference center, hung a legacy of struggle and good will, hard work and resilience. That first corps members asked - how can I afford to fail? And the question today is the same, for Teach for America and for all educators. 

Education is a civil rights issue; teaching should be a fight. Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston gave a speech tying Selma to our march now to educational equity. The change we seek hasn't fully happened. Churches are still bombed, police still shoot, some schools in Memphis prepare only 4% of their students. But we've got to keep working. Quasi religious rhetoric: shining lights and climbing mountains. Words building to a crescendo just like the spoken word poet who reminded us to live like we have a microphone under our tongue - our words matter and our silence is dangerous.

I will be thinking about my words all week. I will be smiling at my kids more. I will be thinking about how I, doing my best job, can advocate for them. I remembered the love that needs to go into the classroom every day. Without that, you don't have anything; without that, teaching is just talking and making copies. 

I've been listening to Martin Luther King's speeches for the past few weeks now, ever since Spotify made a playlist that intersperses them with Common and John Legend and Jay-Z. We read about him and Rosa Parks and the kids wrote about him as their hero without my prompting. As I understand more and more the lack of services my part of the country receives - as I feel both outsider and insider for the privileges I have - As I listen to the news from Flint, from New Mexico, from New York- I've been thinking about and wondering if what I'm doing, anyone doing, is any progress at all. 

On Friday afternoon, I ran around the National Mall. I stopped near the Washington Monument, imagined the grass full of people, imagined a clear firm voice. I kept going. Three chalk-like boulders, a full story high, turned gold around rush hour. I jogged in. 

There's a small path, like someone split a rock face. Martin  Luther King stares out at the tidal basin, chin up, reminding of the way to carve a path through monumental obstacles. How you move doesn't matter, but you've got to move.

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(While my efforts to make #teacherstryna a trending hashtag were unsuccessful, you can read my notes from some of the sessions I attended here: https://twitter.com/charsnewweb )