Essential Questions

Essential Questions

How, exactly, did I manage to show my sophomores Hotel Rwanda in my English class today? Good question . . . my head is still reeling from three hours of pausing and explaining. Explanations that don't seem to roll off my tongue in a confident cadence. Each day we are required to have an essential question on the white board in our rooms. The question must address a component in the standard course of study and should be answered by the end of class. I left it blank today. I was also observed today. What can I define as essential? When it comes to one million slaughtered lives what constitutes an essential question? My questions, as a white female living in the free world, could never parallel the same vein in which this atrocity occurred. The only freedom I felt today was my ability to teach; an ability that often gets overlooked by the lobbyist scandals and bipartisanism, which seems to trickle down to the coffee we drink and the cars that we drive. Essential factors in our daily routine that could signify the difference between one choice finger or all five. (Vermont has 3 Starbucks in the entire state . . . ) I guess I should bring you all to the dawning of this project before I lose you.
One of the required texts for 10th grade North Carolinians is Elie Wiesel's memoir of the Holocaust, Night. Having come down from a particularly dry unit of Greek drama, I decided to jump start my students with the chilling memoir while I still had them in my good graces. I was excited for this unit, particularly becuase I was going to take a chance and expand the Holocaust to the present day massacres in Darfur. My sister just spent her summer working at a refugee camp in Kenya and told the most haunting stories of people who have escaped with little more than their souls, many of them from Rwanda and Somalia. My hope was to have her come to my classes and tell her story; I wanted my students to comprehend genocide as it is happening presently, not simply through a memoir that is six decades before their time. Since George Clooney is not available to come to Siler City, and law school is a total BITCH, I had to settle for my mediocre knowledge and Google skills. Darfur was not on their radar. Neither was Rwanda or Somalia . . . unless you mention Black Hawk Down. Thus, we enter my unit on genocide. My essential question on the first day of study was, How can literature combat violence in the world? Idealistic? Definitely. Do we have time to be realistic? Absolutely not. If bumper stickers and coffee cups are our only tools for identification, who's really the idealist? I sent the permission slips home to their parents and each one was signed. I gave them an overhead preojected timeline from Belgian colonialism through April 6, 1994 and the rest is history, so cliche. These are some of the questions posed to me today: "Is my skin too light to be a Hutu?" "Is my nose narrow enough?" "What does the UN do if they don't make peace?" "Why didn't the Tutsis fight back?" "What were your children if you were a Hutu and your wife was a Tutsi?" "Was that President Clinton on the news?" "Can that happen to us?" "Is there genocide really taking place in Darfur?" "How did this happen after they pleaded for help?" "Is it better to be a nigger or an African?"
Write down your answers to these questions and feel free to share them with the people you work with, carpool with, buy coffee from and your loved ones. My essential question tomorrow will be: What is your personal responsibility to help stop these daily atrocities? Will you be realistic or idealistic?

Essential Questions

How, exactly, did I manage to show my sophomores Hotel Rwanda in my English class today? Good question . . . my head is still reeling from three hours of pausing and explaining. Explanations that don't seem to roll off my tongue in a confident cadence. Each day we are required to have an essential question on the white board in our rooms. The question must address a component in the standard course of study and should be answered by the end of class. I left it blank today. I was also observed today. What can I define as essential? When it comes to one million slaughtered lives what constitutes an essential question? My questions, as a white female living in the free world, could never parallel the same vein in which this atrocity occurred. The only freedom I felt today was my ability to teach; an ability that often gets overlooked by the lobbyist scandals and bipartisanism, which seems to trickle down to the coffee we drink and the cars that we drive. Essential factors in our daily routine that could signify the difference between one choice finger or all five. (Vermont has 3 Starbucks in the entire state . . . ) I guess I should bring you all to the dawning of this project before I lose you.
One of the required texts for 10th grade North Carolinians is Elie Wiesel's memoir of the Holocaust, Night. Having come down from a particularly dry unit of Greek drama, I decided to jump start my students with the chilling memoir while I still had them in my good graces. I was excited for this unit, particularly becuase I was going to take a chance and expand the Holocaust to the present day massacres in Darfur. My sister just spent her summer working at a refugee camp in Kenya and told the most haunting stories of people who have escaped with little more than their souls, many of them from Rwanda and Somalia. My hope was to have her come to my classes and tell her story; I wanted my students to comprehend genocide as it is happening presently, not simply through a memoir that is six decades before their time. Since George Clooney is not available to come to Siler City, and law school is a total BITCH, I had to settle for my mediocre knowledge and Google skills. Darfur was not on their radar. Neither was Rwanda or Somalia . . . unless you mention Black Hawk Down. Thus, we enter my unit on genocide. My essential question on the first day of study was, How can literature combat violence in the world? Idealistic? Definitely. Do we have time to be realistic? Absolutely not. If bumper stickers and coffee cups are our only tools for identification, who's really the idealist? I sent the permission slips home to their parents and each one was signed. I gave them an overhead preojected timeline from Belgian colonialism through April 6, 1994 and the rest is history, so cliche. These are some of the questions posed to me today: "Is my skin too light to be a Hutu?" "Is my nose narrow enough?" "What does the UN do if they don't make peace?" "Why didn't the Tutsis fight back?" "What were your children if you were a Hutu and your wife was a Tutsi?" "Was that President Clinton on the news?" "Can that happen to us?" "Is there genocide really taking place in Darfur?" "How did this happen after they pleaded for help?" "Is it better to be a nigger or an African?"
Write down your answers to these questions and feel free to share them with the people you work with, carpool with, buy coffee from and your loved ones. My essential question tomorrow will be: What is your personal responsibility to help stop these daily atrocities? Will you be realistic or idealistic?

Hitler Just May Have Been a Roman emperor . . .

As a brand new high school English teacher I have been humbled by the information passed along to me from my students. Although I was excited, apprehensive and somewhat devastated to begin this new role, I have simplified my feelings into one word: Awe. It's been one week since entering the classroom and I have learned a few things that Harry Wong never bothered to cover. First thing: high school is a completely different beast than middle and elementary, BUT--I think I love it . . .
My school happens to be very diverse but they don't know that. We are made up of 1/3 Latino, 1/3 black and 1/3 white. Socioeconomics range from poverty to fully-loaded-SUV-driving sophomores. Many students are not documented and they are eager for you to know that. There is a chicken factory down the road that lures any kid 16 and older to come to work full time. I'm not quite sure what this factory produces but if I were you, I wouldn't be eating chicken McNuggets ever again. Ever. Siler City (the location of my school) is not really a city. It consists mostly of a fast food strip that has bullied its way between thousands of acres of farmland. Super Wal-Mart is also there. Enough said.
I have learned that having students write me a letter in the 3rd person (Seinfeld episode: Jimmy) is one of the most non-threatening ways to get them to tell me everything. When a student draws a Star of David on their notebook, homework, body etc. They are not professing their devotion to Judaism: they are a Crip. (as in the Bloods and Crips) The super-hero Spiderman spider web, also not a testimony to their animated superhero obsession . . . I have learned that these gangs in Siler City are physically harmless. The kids who get dumped by their fathers reach out for male bonding and role models, since they won't find them at the Super Wal-Mart.
I have learned that my teacher's desk can be a safe haven for an ADD student to do his best work. (Just make sure there is nothing personal written on the desk calendar . . .) If you ask the students to read quotes from literary figures posted around the room, and then have them write what they think might come next, you will find wisdom that is usually reserved for Ivy league graduates. If you set the bar high some students will jump; if it's too low they will stumble and trip.
If a student insists of being called "Bubba", that's OK. Call him that, even if you fake a southern drawl. Be idealistic, if you are not then they won't be either. It's OK to let them know when you are disappointed; it's also OK to let them know how fabulous you think they are.
When you promise to give an "energetic" reading of the Iliad, make sure you practice beforehand at home. Those Greeks had a bad habit of using big words that don't exist anymore.
And finally, when you ask students to research specific time periods on the internet DO NOT LAUGH when they come to you excitedly and tell you that Hitler was ruling Rome in 400 B.C.E. Bite you lip, take a deep breath and make a mental note to switch the syllabus so Night comes next and Julius Caesar is last.

Cop Out

I have lost myself again--accepted into a teacher licensure program as a potential high school English teacher. A writers cop out on every level, right? Does a law school student accept a job as a fast food cashier? I know, I know--teachers are necessary and the job itself is anything BUT a cop out. But what does it mean for a person who was adament about making a living as a writer, no matter what it takes, to bow out so easily? Lack of self-confidence, I think. Thesauras or none, I have not allowed myself to sit with a notebook for hours on end since I left Santa Fe this summer. "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" Not deciphering hip-hop tunes and comapring them to Frost.....in my own space with warm paint and comfortable furniture--but just enough for myself and maybe a guest who is proof reading--a typewriter and a computer and lots of fabulous pens (no ball points allowed). Then to have time and peacefulness to spend with my own family.
But now benefits and social security plague those dreams
Repaying loans and movie tickets take precedent
Can I be more excited when I tell them?
Bread Loaf was far better than this.
Life sentence--until you retire.
But I will still get to teach Native American history,
well at least I can tell them the true story of Navajo,
okay, maybe I will settle for a Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Let's be realistic about administrations
No child left behind without a deficit.

Moments of Being

What are the moments called right before we fall asleep, as we realize our best story lines, or the perfect words to quit that job and maybe the lyrics that will make us famous? Answers to questions and absolute clarity--and then it melts away into subconscious. Waking at dawn wondering how those things seemed possible--maybe it was just a dream--feeling your muscles contract and becoming aware of the weight that you have to lose and the dog to walk and the loans to repay. I should have gotten out of bed and written things down last night--tonight I will--but what if the burbur on my soles ruins it? I will keep a notebook at the bedside table--but what if the lamp wakes him up? I will have a flashlight to see my manic scribbles--but what if I sit up and the moments disappear? I can't take those risks--I will be thankful that I have moments at all--moments a pen or tongue could never replicate--moments of being that can only be.

As I write this I think about my father, who will be turning 61 in 11 days, and the gift I hope to give to him. Moments of his being that changed my life in accidental ways--moments he may be unaware of and those which he rarely gets credit for. Moments are just those--but memories are forever.

Fonts Matter

Seemingly perfect choice for the first entry-- Arial--though spelled slightly differently from Ariel I think the point is made.

I have been told that Sylvia sat at her desk with a thesauras on her lap--constantly searching for the word that would have more imapct than its dead-weighted parent--or maybe a cousin? She was afraid of dead weight--as we all should be--and now is disected with scholarly scalpels that were sharpened in the Ivy libraries. The thrill of a Cut, followed by promises of Tulips, make for smoke filled screenplays and abstinence from trust funds.

Bitter? yes. Jealous? maybe so.

Not having material to write about makes dwelling on the past seem productive. Read someone elses story and come up with your own "Live with like-minded people in a setting that supports total immersion in your work. Food and lodging included free for those who qualify. Gamble a small fraction of your life on the chance to create a new future as a professional poet, novelist, screenwriter" (Haunted)

Will I qualify? The "small fraction" will be worth it in the end, won't it? Five summers of travelling the globe in search of the most refined English will most definitely bring me to the other side--but who will know the difference except for me?

Most importantly I will learn that fonts matter.