Poems on Words

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At the beginning of May, our TFA training included an assignment to write a poem about the words we hear and use and want at school. We were forty first-year teachers almost finished with that first year and the forms our poems took were varied but so connected. You could hear the day 171 knowledge vibrating with regret at knowledge we didn't have day 1; you could hear the curse words our kids cautiously test out and the swears we drop over dinner; you could hear the humor and the hubris and the hope for next year when maybe just maybe we can use words a little bit better and take our kids a little bit farther. 

40-some of us read - only one sent me theirs (and a few OWE ME THEIRS ahem - email me and I'll add 'em), but I wanted to post them here because I felt they captured the rhythm of days here better than I could write. Having all forty would be best but two will have to do -  

(This is the first time I've posted a poem in a public place since I contributed to a, um, poetry blog during my freshman year of high school. I'm so sorry (*relieved) to inform you that the site is gone and you will not be able to read my free verse teenage angst). 

Poema de la Lengua

"Te la bañaste” - wide eyes

“Pinche negro” - blindly and smoothly said.  

“Ok, so does it mean…” - correct but unsure

“ahorita lo ago”- now

 

“Diache, y con jabon!” - low eyes

“not in my room” - slim stare, mountain voice

“hm, but you do know...” - soft eyes, cuddle voice, comfort pose

“ahorita lo ago” - later.

 

hope stands right with the water

still with no touch, splashed with the pressure 

speaks with different voices

the same words of patience.

-----Jogene Castillo -----

 

Lessons

Miss, miss, I hear 

them saying, sometimes in 

my dreams, sometimes in 

the half sleep after

the alarm goes off and before

I drive to them again. 

Meess, meeeeeesss, Omar says - 

"Can I help today?" in English when

he's rested but

"Nombre porqueeeeee?!" in Spanish when

he's sad,

sharper but more 

sure. 

I'd like to talk with

them about

books in 

Spanish.

*

Comparing and contrasting? They asked,

What's that ?

(Face palm, two days

before STAAR). Bueno, dije yo - 

Think of contrast as contra, and comparing as 

tu compadre - and a lightbulb went off, 

illuminating two worlds. 

*

Thank you, Miss, round-faced Nahomi says

on the way out the door. Thank you,

Miss Parker, Nickolas says, and when

those words

come out crisp I think  how

my name is unusual

here. My name is 

unusual and my tongue is

unusual, capable of 2 and 3 worlds despite my 

skin but too soft, still, too polite. I've

untamed and unteased it, tried to 

toughen my tone and tighten my words. 

They listen; I laugh; but still I

breathe most

freely when I can speak my age, let long words 

and swear words spill and 

roll across a dinner table,

reflecting. 

*

There must be a middle ground, a 

frontera where I speak to children like

grownups and give them

the words they need, in

both tongues, for

both worlds. 

Weekend Reading

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Prologue

At dinner on Friday, we reminisced about Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan, and Good Charlotte. I remembered on the drive home that I can sing all 13 tracks of Avril's "Let Go," including guitar riffs. Seventh-grade Charlotte felt that album expressed all the drama of her life. Dear middle school crush: Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?

Sara teaches high school and Emily and I both teach 4th grade. We wondered - do our kids struggle to express their emotions  because they aren't coming into teenager-hood with angsty music? When I turned on the radio in 4th-7th  grade, XXXtina Aguilera sang about getting dirrtay and Nelly said it was hot in hurrr, but Avril and Green Day held down the fort for those with more complicated desires. Though Adele is on the radio now, I don't think she resonates with my kids. She's too much misty British countryside. My kids press skip, looking for Ariana Grande and Rihanna and J Balvin. I'll take an informal poll tomorrow. I want them to be able to hear music that expresses emotions other than a hope for sex. 

On Identity

Yesterday, I listened to the episode of This American Life that had inspired our conversation about middle school music - a replay from 2011, entitled "Middle School." The whole episode merits a listen because middle school dances will always be hilarious; the following segment merits a listen because the US sometimes seems like a giant middle school dance where being accepted carries much higher stakes.  Domingo Martinez writes about his Mexican-American sisters' attempt to fit in in 1980s Brownsville, the border town at the very tip of Texas, 65 miles southeast of where I teach. 

"Mimis in the Middle"

Don't skimp out - listen to the segment. It's only a few minutes long and Martinez' imitation of the lilting, Spanish-tinted Valley English sounds like our copy room conversations at school. I love it; I've caught myself speaking something like it. 

[This is where you listen to it: here's the link again: "Mimis in the Middle"]

What struck me most about the whole episode was a wonder: would any of my students do this? Would any of them dye their hair blonde and ask for Jordache jeans and a tennis racquet? Would any of them give themselves Connecticut names and pull their families into a game of make-believe so that they could feel more accepted?

I can't imagine it. My students carry the weight of many disadvantages, but I do not think they lack pride in their families' heritage. They all dressed up for Mexican Independence day. (The girls twirled in their folclorico skirts at recess and re-braided their hair in the hallways. J. was wearing a gaucho outfit but passed me a distressed note at 10 am saying he had split his tight pants. Mom came in with a pair of jeans). They know the line dances to Tejano music and they also have Latino pop stars like J. Balvin and Pitbull who sing in Spanish even to audiences in Connecticut. They speak Spanish and English in the hallways. At school and at home, everyone looks like them. 

Today, in the Rio Grande Valley, it's me who doesn't fit in. When the 5th grade science class was learning genetics, I was the only person they knew with blue eyes. I do think the Valley has evolved and grown so rapidly since the 1980s that wealth and power look Mexican. Here, at least, my students can grow up feeling that they belong, that someone who looks like them can be successful. 

As to whether they feel American - I don't have an answer for that. I'll need to ask them. And of course, that sense of fitting in will change for them if they leave the Valley and go most other places in the country. 

If you didn't listen to "Mimis in the Middle," you're missing out:

"I was sorry to see the Mimis go. We all were. When they were at their peak, the Mimis had been capable of creating a real sort of magic around them, enchanting both people and places so you could be looking at the same, dreary landscape as them, the same hopeless and terrible event, and while you might be miserable and bitter, they would be beaming, enthralled, enthusiastically hopeful...They were a gift to anyone who got caught in their Anais Anais perfume. They made all of us Americans."

I hope my students can make it into middle school and beyond carrying that same magic and hope - without the perfume, because holy moly the Axe the boys are wearing is already strong enough.

On Citizenship

The Valley is in D.C. as the Supreme Court begins to hear arguments in United States v. Texas. A decision in favor of DAPA could potentially grant temporary legal status to 4 million people who are in the US illegally. 

You can read more in the McAllen Monitor, here. 

"She said her research shows that U.S. citizen children are negatively impacted by their parents’ undocumented status and are often unable to experience the full rights of citizenship. Most of the children she’s encountered live in constant fear that a parent, sibling or other close family member could be deported. She said this uncertain legal status involving any family member restricts the entire family from opportunities to earn good incomes, get ahead at work, and gain access to education and health care."

There is one last Border Patrol checkpoint about 100 miles north of McAllen. The first time I drove through, it made me nauseous. As you slow down to the checkpoint, signs tell you how many pounds of drugs have been seized and how many would-be migrants have been apprehended. 

"Transporting illegal aliens is illegal," they remind you. 

I don't know for certain about the legal status of any of my kids' parents. I do know some of them do not live in the US. S. helped his mom study for her citizenship test, while H. helps her mom clean houses in Reynosa on the weekend. 

But that checkpoint made me feel the fear that I imagine any of my students might feel, going through. They look like the people Border Patrol wants to stop. (Border Patrol does have a very complicated and important job. More here, on the Texas Tribune).

I was so shaken I said, "Good morning, ma'am," to the male officer. 

"Don't worry," he laughed, "Second time that's happened to me today."

He was white. I was white. 

 "Are you a U.S. citizen?" he asked. 

"Yes sir," I said, wondering when he'd ask for my ID. He didn't.

"Have a great day," he said. I guess my skin color was proof enough for him. 

On Learning English

     As we near state testing, the huge disadvantages facing English Language Learners (ELLs) become crystal clear. 94% of my students are ELL. MALDEF, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Organization, filed a lawsuit in 2014 against the Texas Education Association (TEA) for failing to supervise and improve programs to help ELLs succeed in school. More here. 

This article in The Atlantic highlighted some of the work that IS being done to help ELLs in Texas. 

"Elena Izquierdo, a professor in bilingual education at the University of Texas at El Paso would tell you that immersing Spanish-speaking children in English classes doesn’t work. She’s now consulting the El Paso Independent School District as it moves forward after its cheating scandal, and says that type of approach was what led to the scandal in the first place.

"She is helping the El Paso Independent School District roll out a different plan, one she calls the “Ferrari” of bilingual education programs, that she says could serve as an example for best practices for districts like El Paso. The program, which the district began in  2014, teaches all students in English half the time and Spanish half the time. Beginning in the district’s kindergarten classrooms, all students learn all subjects in both languages, so everyone becomes bilingual, she said. The district will continually assess the students to make sure they’re learning in both languages and comfortable about speaking in all subjects in both languages (in Ysleta, students learn Social Studies in Spanish). They’ll also be allowed to test in both languages, until they’ve become comfortable enough with English to focus on the state tests."

Night Flight

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Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who is best known for writing the children's book The Little Prince, might have preferred the title aeronaut to author. In the 1930s, he spent a lot of time in - or over - Patagonia, flying mail for the Correo Sur. He drew Patagonia into The Little Prince, and Argentina drew his name onto its maps, naming one of the peaks in the Fitz Roy Range after him:

(The image on the left is from http://ibarrafernandez.blogspot.com.ar/2010/04/antoine-de-saint-exupery-en-la.html; the other is from Le Petit Prince)

This is a beautiful essay from Robert McFarlane on Saint-Exupery as humanist, environmentalist, aeronaut. 

Alejo, the new manager of the guest house at Monte Dinero, is also a pilot. When he moved down here two weeks ago from Buenos Aires, he brought a stack of books by Saint-Exupery, and he was nice enough to lend me one, Vuelo Nocturno/Vol de Nuit/Night Flight. 

In Daily Themes, we did a week on translation. The syllabus included this quote: Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing…. It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift. (Harry Mathews)

To make my brain move, I did a rough translation of a passage I liked from Vuelo Nocturno. I italicized where I added something. I'm including the Spanish at the bottom, which itself is a 1960 translation from the French by J. Benavent:

***

Descending over San Julian, with the plane’s engine running slower, Fabien felt tired. Everything that brightens the life of man was running towards him, getting bigger: the houses, the little cafes, the trees along the avenue. He was like a conqueror who, at the end of his days, starts paying attention to the places he’s collected and discovers the humble happiness of mankind. 

Fabien was feeling it would be nice to let down his guard, to allow himself to feel the clumsiness and exhaustion that were seizing him, and to live here like a simple man, who looks out at the same view every day. He would have accepted this little town: after choosing, he thought, you can take in stride the randomness of fate - love it, even. Choosing limits you in the same way love does – it digs you in deeper. Fabien would have liked to live here for a while, to gather here his share of eternity. He’d only be living for a relative hour, but the gardens of these little cities and their old walls, over which he flew, seemed outside of himself, timeless. …And he thought about friendships, girls, a simple white tablecloth - everything that can become timeless, too, when you know it. The little town was slipping as he skimmed over it with his wings, unfurling the mystery of its enclosed gardens, whose walls no longer protected them. But Fabien, after landing, knew that he had only seen the slow movement of a few men among stones. That town, by not moving, kept locked up tight its secrets; that little town rejected his gentleness: to enter it at all would mean renouncing action, standing still.  

***

Al descender sobre San Julian, con el motor en retardo, Fabien se sintió cansado. Todo lo que alegra la vida de los hombres corría, agrandándose, hacia el: las casa, los cafetuchos, los arboles de la avenida. El, parecía un conquistador que, en el crepúsculo de sus empresas, se inclina sobre las tierras del imperio y descubre la humilde felicidad de los hombres.

 Fabien experimentaba la necesidad de deponer las armas, de sentir la torpeza y el cansancio que le embargaban – ye también se es rico de las propias miserias  - y de vivir aquí cual hombre simple, que contempla a través de la ventana una visión ya inmutable. Hubiera aceptado esa aldea minúscula: luego de escoger, so conforma uno con el azar de la propia existencia y incluso puede amarla. Os limita como el amor. Fabien hubiera deseado vivir aquí largo tiempo, recoger aquí su porción de eternidad, pues las pequeñas ciudades, donde vivis una hora y los jardines rodeados de viejos muros, sobre los cuales volaba, le parecían, fuera de el, eternos en duración. La aldea subia hacia la tripulación, abriéndose. Y Fabien pensaba en las amistades, en las jovencitas, en la intimidad de los blancos manteles, en todo lo que, lentamente, se familiariza con la eternidad. La aldea se deslizaba ya rozando las alas, desplegando el misterio de sus jardines cercados, a los que sus muros ya no protegían. Pero Fabien, después de aterrizar, supo que solo había visto el lento movimiento de algunos hombres entre las piedras. Aquella aldea, con su sola inmovilidad, guardaba el secreto de sus pasiones; aquella aldea, denegaba su suavidad: para conquistarla hubiera sido preciso renunciar a la acción.