Yared has learned the “Star Spangled Banner.” He played it for me this morning. It was the best version I have ever heard. It made me cry. Actually. Though I will pretty much cry if any of these kids figures something out, takes pride in it, and then shows what they did.
We all clap and the clapping is for real.
“I played it for my dad last night. It made him cry. Okay, it wasn’t a cry, it was more like a “sniff” because he thought it was cool. Maybe he wasn’t crying about that, maybe he was crying about something else, like his pencil broke.
“Really, Yared? Tell the truth…”
“Okay, it made him have appreciation that I am learning something.”
****
I ask them to tell me what they, or we have learned, after the first ten minutes of the day. They tell me all the things we just heard together. The concrete details. I am not after the concrete details. I want them learning to make meaning out of the concrete details.
“But what have you learned that no one else has heard, that only you know?”
There is a subtle shift. Voices alter as they speak about understanding; about hoped for ideas based on theories, supported by the concrete details.
Calder tells me he is going to read the poem tomorrow and it is either going to be “Clenched Soul” by Pablo Neruda, or Robert Hayden’s “Monet’s Waterlilies.”
“Go with Hayden,” I say.
“Alright. Do you want me to read it to you?”
“Yes.”
“He reads and yes, I am so happy, and proud, that my son is telling me that he is going to read a poem tomorrow about Monet’s waterlilies.
Rio sends me an email to tell me to create a Fantasy Hockey Team. A parent in the school with a love of words has scrambled his email message into a Haiku-esque sounding anagram:
link to my hockey fantasy:
Tal makes the team
go to the wall.
I read it aloud to the kids to illustrate how clumsily written words can be arranged to have new meanings which may have been living in them already. This inspires Jesse.
“Want to hear my Haiku I wrote in 2nd grade?”
“Sure.”
“Beautiful, Jesse.”
This leads to a discussion of whether or not small children possess poetic powers. Or, more to the point, what poetic powers do they possess that are not available to the seasoned, experienced writer?
****
One of the ninth grade boys walks into the room.
“Tal, nobody likes me.”
He leaves the room.
“He said that last week,” someone says.
“The more important question: If there is some truth in what he says, why does nobody like him?”
“That’s not true, Tal.”
“What’s no true?”
“That nobody likes him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think that sometimes people think that others don’t like them but it’s just because they don’t see it. The only reason people are irritated at him is because they care about him. Plus he's being dumb."
***
While playing Bimini Ring toss, Tsering announces:
“I am the Ring Master!”
***
The kids seem possessed or stuck on the idea of whether true love or romantic love or eternal love exists.
I tell them a story of what it looks like. What conditions may be necessary for it to be real.
“Someone I love told me this: My friend has known what it feels like to be on fire, burning, in the middle of a room, where no one sees her. My friend said it was hell on earth. My friend cried out and no one moved. She screamed and people kept talking. I told my friend I have known what it feels like to be a softly blown sheet, to be lifting and rising in the sun and breeze. And to settle down gently, to land with breeze riffling over. And then to want to rise again on the next breeze, but to feel a stake driven down into to some corner of my sheet, and to feel myself ripping as I rise, again and again, until there is nothing left of me but a tattered rag. I told my friend I would never let her burn alone in the middle of the room. I told her I would always hear her. My friend told me she would never stop letting me rise and become. She said, 'That's not a promise, that's a truth.' And so what is that?”
“That’s love. A form of it. What were we telling each other?”
“That the other one matters. That part of the deal is that you will look out for each other.”
“Yes. We each put the other at the center. When you know that someone you love is doing that for you, has put you at the center, you feel a wonderful, indescribable feeling of joy and safety.”
They are all looking at me.
“We can do that for each other very easily here.”
****
I read Anna’s sketch, about her father leaning his head back in the car while the rain falls in on his head, listening to Dvorak. While we write our responses we listen to the 4th Movement of the “New World Symphony.”
***
“So, who do think is hotter? Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift?” someone shouts into the room.
There is shocked silence.
I feel this question may be turning us from our appointed mission. Before I can launch into a diatribe and rant, someone enters the conversation.
“Who is Kim Kardashian?” asks a seventh grade girl. “Is she a cannibal?”
Five minutes later, there is a discussion on whether vegetarians or cannibals get more energy from their respective food choices.
***
In morning meeting:
Rider says: “I am thinking about my new niece or nephew that is going to be born. And I was thinking if that wa a good thing or not, this new child coming into the world. And then I was thinking about if I have done anything to make this a better world, and if I have contributed to making it a world a child should want to come into.”
“Well, thinking about it is a huge first step. You can only think of it that way, in that direction. You are creatinge the opportunity to think about how you will live and act.”
“On the bus this morning I was singing gospel songs with Tsering. And before I got on the bus I thought about what I would do on the bus that morning, and if I would create anything, and then when I sat with Tsering, I thought about what I was doing with her, and what I was creating by sitting and singing with her.”
“That thinking is your genius. That’s where you become a person who is worthy to take up space. It’s called being conscious and present in this moment, to an incredibly developed degree. And y’all, how hard is it to do that, to have a still enough mind to be asking those questions every moment?”
“It’s hard because you have to be aware,” someone answers. “But if you can do it it’s not hard. You just have to have the questions in your mind.”
I say to them: “I have these questions in my mind every moment I am in here. I say, ‘I am here to find the light in every kid and to make every kids grow and expand. So every interaction I have I am asking myself, will this make the light in the kid come out, somehow, some way? Every time I talk to a kid, I think about what I am giving and what that may lead to, and how I can give my best and get the best out of the kid in front of me. I do this mostly by asking about five hundred questions. When I ask questions of someone it says I care about that someone. No one will be invisible to me, ever. I will see the kid in front of me and I will make sure that that kid can be seen clearer after I am done asking and seeing and listening.”
“These are all rhetorical questions,” I say. “Watch this, y’all: Tate, where do you live?”
“New Haven.”
“In a one story house or two stories?”
“Two.”
“And is your room upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“And what can you see from you window?”
“The woods.”
“And do you have anything special that you love when looking form that window?”
“Well, when I was little I would look at the green clearing and I used to watch a family of bunny rabbits that came out there, but then they left.”
I look at the class. “Do you see how easy that is? It took a minute and 12 seconds. In that time I revealed Tate to all of us by asking five questions. In five questions. Do you now know more about him? Has he shown something of himself. Do you see that he is ‘somebody?’ Have I become somebody to him? By asking him questions, what have I told him?”
“That you care about him.”
“Yes, and did I lose anything by doing that? Did I risk anything?”
“No.”
“And what did I gain?”
“You got a friend, you got his gratitude for asking.”
“Yes, I made him feel like he is somebody. His life has substance. His life exists for us. We see him, in past and present time, in a place we have never been. He becomes. I become to him, as a person who cares. It is so easy to do this, y’all. You only have to get out of the place you are in.”
“What would happen if I had asked him about a cannibal named Kim Kardashian? Where would we be?”
“No where.”
“In a no place.”
Tate is still sitting next to me, smiling shyly, looking down at his doodle of a sword in his notebook.
***
I have been ranting about the soulless pop music that I have been hearing hummed around school. I have been hearing the name of Justin Bieber too often. I have decided to fight back. It’s a never-ending struggle and I am a soldier.
“You clowns, do you realize that they are feeding you music made out of crap, money, and Chemicals and if they can get it in front of you enough you will start talking about it and start talking about Justin Bieber as though you knew him. They have secret wires running this crap into you and they are stealing your money and leaving you sucking on a piece of air candy with the IQ the size of a chigger’s eyeball?”
“They are sucking your soul out with these poison things. Don’t let them do it. But if you have the junk in you, today I have a temporary antidote.”
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